by Lee Lamothe
Ray Tate watched the sadness on her face. He felt a thumping in his chest, out of all proportion to any investment he had in her, in her life. He realized he loved everything: her voice, her skin, her cinnamon, her wit. Her sadness and her heart.
She handled the increasingly sharp turns in the road with the four fingers of each hand on each side of the steering wheel, sliding close to the rock face when she went in blind, coming out a little wide, the Xterra holding the road like glue.
“When this thing’s down, Ray, we should take a holiday, see what’s what with us.”
“Well, Djun’, all I can offer you is gin and taps and mad Parisian beatnik love.”
“Cool-ee-oh, Bongo. Tonight let’s —” Her head whipped. “What did the cook tell you? About that old bush rat’s vehicle?”
“Rusted out old pickup. Grey.”
“Just went southbound, looked like a woman or a guy with long, black hair behind the wheel.” She spun into a U-turn.
* * *
Through the window of the diner they saw Phil Harvey on the phone. He looked exhausted, his forehead leaning against the wall as he spoke, his hair hanging loose. Inside his black leather bat coat he sagged. The short-order cook watched him. When Harvey hung up, the short-order cook waved him over and they started talking. Harvey took some money from his pocket and gave it to the cook. Outside he looked at each vehicle in the parking lot, missing the Xterra backed in among a half dozen rigs. Harvey went inside and came out with a coffee. Favouring his left arm, he boarded the pickup and headed south.
Chapter 24
Cornelius Cook was impatient. Gabriella Harris-Hopkins’s ass haunted him. He dwelled on the boots and the jodhpurs. If she wasn’t wearing them when Harv did his deed, Connie Cook would have to locate a pair of each.
In his bedroom he snacked away on frozen malted chocolate bars and flipped through the newspapers. There was an array of photographs taken the day before at the racetrack. His wife and Gabriella Harris-Hopkins posed with a short Colombian jockey. She looked snobby and resistant and perfect. The step-granddaughter was there but for Connie Cook she didn’t hold the heat Gabrielle boiled up in him. There was the mayor with a wardman, the mayor with a pair of predatory builders who smiled like rats. No mayor with Connie Cook. Whale, he thought. Should get to vote twice, he’s so fucking fat.
When Harv called, Connie Cook was getting anxious. Figuring the time it would take to get the drums of precursors up to the lab, even allowing for notoriously bad Interstate traffic, he figured Harv would have contacted him by now.
“Where you been, Harv. Fuck, what’s going on? Where you been all night?”
“I’m still up here. I couldn’t get away. There were … ah … you know?”
Connie Cook didn’t know. He loved the obscure gangster talk, the paranoia that every phone was bugged. He didn’t care, anyway. “So,” he said, mimicking Harv, “so, ah, you’re, ah, gonna come … home? You delivered the …” His mind groped. Through his bathroom door he saw a bottle of mouthwash on the sink. “You delivered the mouthwash?” He smiled proudly to himself.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem. I had a problem with … some people I hadda straighten out.”
Cops or crooks? Connie Cook said, “Their guys or our guys?”
“Our guys. It’s okay now. I’m on the way. But I’m gonna need a ride at some point, get the rest of the way in. I’m driving a wreck and if … those … other guys spot me driving it, they’re gonna pull me over and take the fucking plates off. You want to … ah, meet me?”
“Sure. Where?”
Harvey said, “Let me think.” After a minute he said, “Ribs. Remember the ribs, that time we were heading up? With the sauce you liked?”
“Ah, I think. Ah, yeah.”
“Motorcycles out front. You said you’d need two of them, one under each cheek of your ass, to —”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Connie Cook laughed. “Yeah, but when? What time? Because I need you Thursday night, Harv, to, ah, pick up that thing for me, that thing I really need, you know?”
“Okay. You know how many … treats you’ve had? Up there? Don’t say the number, but you know, right?”
“Sure. Every one of them.” Three girls had been brought up for Connie. Agatha Burns was the third. The first two had been cheap and tawdry and had misread his needs, making sounds of pleasure at the worst possible time. Ooo, they said, taking to the crank nicely, ahhh. Two that would never be missed. Scrags, Harv called them. “Yeah, I know the count.”
“Well, add two to that. Then, wait an hour after you get there. Take a cellphone just in case, but don’t use it unless I call you, okay? So, that place, that time. Wait an hour.”
“Perfect. And Harv. The other thing I need. Thursday night? Right? I got it —”
“Let’s talk when I see you, man, okay? I promise you, you’re going to get what you need. We’re back in business.”
Connie Cook’s wife was in the front living room lifting stacks of books from a cardboard box when he came down the stairs. He’d be expected to absent himself while a dozen of her cronies, including Gabriella Harris-Hopkins, sat around and imagined symbolism and subplot in the latest literary bestseller. His wife often invited the writer to attend.
“Book night, Thursday, Connie, okay? No fooling around, sending us pizzas.” She gave him a stern smile. “No male strippers at the door with candygrams. I mean it.”
“Promise. I’m heading up north sometime Thursday to a mine site for a couple of days.”
“Do they ever find gold in those things, Connie? Except for the money you pour in?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Are you going to help Gabby out, that donation she needs? She’ll be asking me about it.”
“Yeah. I think. Tell her she’s got to get something on paper, okay, or we’re all going to be homeless artists.” He looked at his watch. “I gotta go.”
* * *
Halfway back to the city Harv left the state highway and began working through a grid of county roads. He kept an eye on his rear-view, especially when he crossed unpaved back roads, looking for a telltale cloud of rising dust behind him. The pickup was a shimmering mess. It ran like a dog with a broken back. South of Apple Grove he backed the truck over some ruts into a country driveway where he’d have a view of anything following him.
The big Taiwanese stamping machine had turned out forty thousand pills by dawn. They were wrapped in tubes of foil and fitted through a rip in the passenger seat of the pickup with his silver fluted revolver. Any bent Chinaman in the east Chinatown would pay a buck each, easy. That was half the going rate for bulk but for Harvey it was all profit. Another mad bout of chemistry and magic and he could get to a hundred thousand. They all had lightning bolts on them. They were all a bright pink. He’d have to be careful the Chinamen didn’t rip him but there were fallbacks and ways to prevent any Chinatown gambit.
He’d do the grab for Connie Cook Thursday night, move the victim up to the farmhouse to await Connie’s arrival. The transit would be done in a rental van. While he was waiting for Connie he’d be the crazy cartoon chemist. When Connie arrived to claim his prize, Harv would give him the bad news: goodbye. He’d disable whatever vehicle Connie came up in and would leave in the van. He’d become really fond of the fat pervert and planned to send someone up to the farm to rescue him.
An old farm wagon pulled by a tractor came rattling down the road. Harv had a minor thunderbolt: what if I was him and he was me?
For a moment there was a cloud of snow across the fields then it was gone. It meant something and he reached for it but it eluded him. Maybe we’re all snowflakes and life is when a wind blows us alive, briefly, until our season ends? Far off clouds edged down over the lake from Canada.
Christ, he thought, I’m tired. The click and hum of the tablet-pressing machine was still in his body rhythm. His shoulder ached.
An Xterra came down the road and passed, a clean-cut guy in the passenger seat consulting a map. Harv c
ouldn’t see who was driving. But it passed and didn’t pause.
Agatha Burns had been mortified that she’d sucked his burned fingers, licked his glistening cheek. He’d never met a real victim before in his life. Everyone asked for it in some way. Being too young and born beautiful, where was the crime in that?
I’m sorry, Harv, for what he made me do. I just want you to know that.
He closed his eyes for a minute and recalled the exact moment, the exact sound of her voice.
He opened his eyes, smiling.
The Xterra was full across the front of the pickup. A black woman in a stupid hat was leaning on the passenger side door, smiling tensely back at him with her hand under her leather jacket and a pistol half-drawn. A clean-cut guy with a gun in his hand, pointing it at Harv’s windshield, stood a couple of feet off his front fender.
The woman called, “Don’t move.”
At the same time the man called, “Put your hands on the wheel.”
Harvey didn’t know what to do.
He heard the man call, “Oh, fuck. Hang on, Harv. Djuna, you do it.”
“Okay.” She called, “Hands on the wheel, Harv.”
Harvey heard them laugh.
The clean-cut guy said, “Well, that was professional.”
The woman laughed and said something that sounded like, “Rongobongo.”
Harvey tentatively put his hands at the top of the steering wheel, expecting to absorb a bullet.
The black woman with her gun fully out came up alongside the passenger side, not crossing the white guy’s field of fire. She jerked the passenger door open. “Sorry about that, Harv. We don’t arrest a lot of people. Conflicting directions can lead to tragedy. They taught us that. Is that right, Ray? Clarity is your friend?”
The white guy had come up the driver’s side while she was talking. He was smiling. “Yep, otherwise: heap bad medicine.” He had the driver’s door open and Harvey by the back of the collar of his leather coat and on the ground even as Harvey mentally put bleached blond hair on her head and a dripping beard down the white guy’s face.
“Lawyer.” His shoulder ached from the impact and as he waited for the handcuffs he flexed his wrists so there’d be some slack when they were secured, even if they were tightened up. The man patted him down and Harv heard the depressing clank of cuffs. The woman said something and after a moment the guy didn’t handcuff him.
“Fucking lawyer.”
The woman rounded the front of the pickup. “Harv, Harv. Don’t be like that. You can trust us, man, we’re not like all the others.” She seemed positively gay to meet him.
“Lawyer.”
The white guy said, “Maybe later. Right now I could really use a coffee. It’s been a long day. You up for a coffee, Harv?”
“Law-fucking-yer.”
“Okay, if you’re sure. But we haven’t arrested you or anything. We’re just saying: let’s get a coffee. You don’t have to talk. You haven’t done anything wrong, right? We’ll talk, you just listen.”
“If I’m not busted, then I’m walking.”
The white cop shrugged. “Then we’ll arrest you and that means no coffee for you. Whatever.”
Harvey climbed to his feet. “I’m not talking.”
The black woman said, “Cool-ee-oh. Most people in your position, in my experience, they just fucking talk themselves into trouble. Right, Ray? Blah blah blah and the next thing you know they’re behind the pipes, going, Fuuuuck, how stupid am I?” She ran her hand lightly over his pockets. “You ever notice, Harv, how there’s not many mute people doing time? Think about that, buddy.”
The white cop nodded. “Tell you what, Harv, let’s go for a cup of coffee. We’ll leave the pickup here. When we’re done, we’ll fuck off and go about our business, you can go about yours.”
Harvey looked from one to the other. “What’s this about?”
“Well,” Ray Tate said, “at first we thought it was about murder. But it turns out maybe you didn’t put Agatha Burns in the ground after all. Maybe. Now it’s about a great fat fucking master criminal and pills with double Cs on them.”
“You talk, I walk? That’s it?”
“Unless you confess to something outrageous and we have to arrest you for it.”
Djuna Brown said, “My advice, Harv? Listen first and then if you really want to, maybe you can say something. Maybe. But I have to tell you, I’d be really fucking careful.” She leaned towards him and whispered: “This guy? This partner o’mine? I think he’s a rope smoker, high all the time, looking to just get laid and watch a parade.” She snickered. “I think we both better be careful of this guy, you and me, pal.”
* * *
Ray Tate kept his gun in his jacket pocket and his hand on the gun. He didn’t belt himself into the Xterra and sat slightly sideways, facing Djuna Brown as she drove, but keeping an eye on Harv sitting in the middle of the back seat. The intelligence file on Phil Harvey put him as a suspect in at least two homicides. The cop in him wished he’d chained Harvey up but he recognized Djuna Brown was developing a nice style of her own and she’d at least made Harv smile.
They found a coffee shop in a little hamlet where the state road ran under the Interstate. There were baskets of new potatoes, autumn melon, and herbs near the cash register. A man reading a Minneapolis newspaper looked surprised to see them. He stared at Phil Harvey in his bat coat. The place was empty and he told them to sit anywhere. They sat at the farthest table from the entrance and said nothing until after they’d been served mugs of coffee. Harvey sat with his back to the door, Djuna Brown and Ray Tate facing him.
Djuna Brown took off her khanga hat and ran her fingers through her spiky hair. She stirred her coffee. “I gotta ask you one, Harv, nothing to do with why we’re following you around the countryside. That, there, on your face. That’s gotta hurt, right?”
Phil Harvey looked at her closely and raised his eyebrows slightly but said nothing.
“No, Harv. That came out wrong. What I mean is, I mean, I knew it hadda hurt when it happened, but now? Do you ever forget it’s there?”
He tilted his head and sipped his coffee.
She shook her head. “Sorry, not my business.” She gave him a small smile and stared directly at the mass of scar tissue. “The only reason I ask is that a friend of mine’s kid was playing in the garage, lit himself up with some solvent. Horrible, wicked mess of his ear, neck, and shoulder. Not as bad as what you got going on there, but it ain’t a mild dose of acne either. Long story short: the little guy says it still hurts, that when he dreams about it, he gets the pain all over again, like it’s happening right then. I babysat him a while ago and when he woke up screaming I told him that’ll go away. But really, I don’t know. He wants to stay in and never go outside.” Her face became sad. “He calls himself a circus freak.”
Phil Harvey seemed to have forgotten Ray Tate was there with a gun in his pocket. He couldn’t take his eyes off hers. They sat in silence for several seconds.
She lightly clapped her hands together, “Okay, sorry. So: why we’re here. You know who we are, right? We’re the Chemical Squad. I’m Trooper Brown with the Staties. This beatnik here is Ray Tate with the city. You’ve heard of the Chem Squad, right?”
Phil Harvey made a single blink.
“Good. Anyway, we’re pretty much fucked from coast to coast on this thing we’re doing. Probably we’re going to lose our jobs after we fuck this up a little more. So, what we’re doing, Harv, is we’re looking to seize some pills. Double Cs on them. Save our jobs. For a while, anyway.” She glanced at Ray Tate. “Right?”
“Killer pills.” Ray Tate nodded and forced a yawn, “Bummer.”
“Yep, Harv, those ones. Captain Cooks.”
There was a flicker in Harvey’s eyes.
“Oh, we know about the Captain, Harv,” she said. “We’ve been on this a long time. We know about Agatha Burns’s stash house up in the south projects. But you know that because you seen us up there. We know
she moved a bunch of boxes out of there and put them in the back of your cool Camaro and you guys drove off together. Her and you and a silver gun. She hasn’t been seen since. At first we thought, Whoa, neat, we got a homicide, find Harv and link him up, promotions all around. See, she left a note behind, said if I vanish, whip Phil Harvey with bicycle chains until he tells you where my body is. Then … Ah, what else, Ray?”
Ray Tate was content to sit back and watch her work. It was pure free-form jazz. It was hard, he knew, sometimes, in an interview to shut the fuck up and let the one doing the work, work. Everybody wanted to get their oar in the water, pull for the winning team. Always a mistake. When she wanted him, when she sensed her voice might be taking up too much space, she’d toss him a softball. He said, “Then there was a camper truck blew-up up north, dead body inside. Turns out it wasn’t Agatha like we thought, it was some old broad.”
“Right, Ray. Then, Harv, there’s an incident in Chinatown, bunch of kids get branded with double Cs. This is where the trouble really began for you guys. The kids were students being looked after by Willy Wong, a pal of the mayor. Now, we know this mayor’s a fucking dipshit, but c’mon, putting a branding iron to people’s flesh? He’s pissed off and he’s right for once. There’s things you do and there’s things you don’t do and branding girls on the tits, that’s too weird, even for Chinatown.”
Phil Harvey seemed dazed. His head started to shake but he caught himself.
She gave him a few seconds then continued: “Then those two other kids died of an overdose — Double Cs. In the mayor’s ward. Well, that’s that. The leashes come off and away we go. Get that fucker Harv, they said. Noose him up with barbed wire, put him so far back in a cell he’ll get sunlight by U.S. Post. Melt the key. My God: stop the madness.”
Ray Tate was impressed. It was a perfect interview even though it was borne of free-form jazz. It had a Bitch’s Brew quality that somehow, impossibly, came together and you could find something warped in there to snap your fingers to. She had facts but she presented them slightly wrong. She didn’t mention the Chinaman getting the blank fortune cookie at Willy Wong’s warehouse, but she got Willy’s name in there. She didn’t look at him so he didn’t speak. He waited for her to change gears, let up pressure on one place, apply it in another.
