by Lee Lamothe
She did. “Not for no reason, Harv, but let me ask you: you went through something there on your face, right? And it hadda hurt, it hadda hurt like nothing else hurts that you could imagine. And it had to stink something awful, I guess. So how come you’d put that fucking iron on a girl’s tits? What the fuck is that all about? I interviewed that poor little girl and I gotta tell you, if you’d been in firing range at that moment I’d’ve just shot your fucking nuts off. Fuck — ah, shit, you fucking cocksucker.” She rubbed her face and got up unsteadily. She had tears in her eyes. “Never mind. Ray, I’m gonna buy a melon. Anyone want one?”
Phil Harvey turned to watch her walk to the front of the shop.
“She’s not much of a cop, Harv. You’ve met a lot of cops in your time, I know you have. You ever seen one like that? Laughs and cries. Buys melons. Probably not much of cook, either.”
Harv twisted again to look at Djuna Brown paying out the melons. He murmured: “How old’s the kid? In the garage?”
Ray Tate had found his role and he shrugged. “This is her interview. You know how it works. We don’t do good cop bad cop. We do strange cop weird cop and she’s both of them. But there’s rules in my job, there’s rules in yours. Me? I don’t give a shit. People get fucked up if they’re not careful. You fool around in a garage and there’s stuff in there that’ll burn you, well, hello? You can’t be surprised that you get burned. Same thing, you don’t watch the temperature when you’re cooking, whether it’s making fried potatoes for dinner or cooking something else for profit. But hey, you know that too, right? Me, I don’t mind a good crispy French fry once in a while.”
Harv stared at him.
“I know, Harv, I know. I’m an asshole.” He wanted to give her time to get back into her bag with Harv. He needed Phil Harvey to like her more than him. He prattled. “But like they say: If you want sympathy, it’s in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. I have to tell you, I’m putting in my papers so I don’t give much of a shit about Double Cs or how you burned the girl’s boobs. Fuck her, right? I’m moving to Paris. That’s in France. I don’t speak French but that just means I won’t have to listen to mutts lie to me in English all fucking day.”
Harv looked at him in absolute neutral. Ray Tate felt a chill.
Djuna Brown sat down and put a bag of melons under her chair.
Ray Tate said, “Harv spoke, Djun’. He wants to know how old the kid is, got burned in the garage.”
“He’s eleven, Harv.” She turned to Ray Tate. “Sorry about that, guys. I kinda lost it. If you had boobs you’d understand.”
Phil Harvey looked at her, then looked away, then looked back, “There’s a vitamin E cream he should use. It don’t work very much but he’ll feel he’s helping himself, got some control. He’ll see it working even if nobody else does. He should fuck everybody and go out. Be who he is. If the family’s got dough, graffs.”
“Graffs?”
Harv nodded. “They take skin off your ass or something, graff it on your face. Sixteen grand and get in line. Or get some bum ID and go over the border to Canada, maybe get it for free.” He stopped talking and clamped his mouth.
“Sixteen grand. Jesus.” Djuna Brown took out her notebook and made some marks. “How come you haven’t had it done, Harv? You’re a high-miler so I’m not gonna bullshit you and tell you you’d be a good-looking guy again, but how come not?”
He got an innocent look on his face. “Sixteen grand. Where’d I get that kind of dough?”
Ray Tate waited for Djuna Brown to laugh then he did too. He said, “Nice one, Harv.”
“Guys,” Harvey said, “I gotta go now.”
“Hey, if you gotta, you gotta.” Djuna Brown drained her coffee. “We’re heading down towards the city in a few minutes. Get yourself a coffee for the road. We’ll give you a lift. That old beater you’re driving won’t make it, man. Anyway, at least have a melon.”
Ray Tate watched Harvey thinking about getting up. He waited for her to shift gears again.
She put her cup down and made a face. “You know, the other night we were hanging out, me and my buddy here, and we had nothing to drink except gins and waters. Gins and tap waters, who the fuck drinks that? Alkies, that’s who.”
Ray Tate said, “And beatniks. The cool folk in the nighttime.” He leaned confidentially to Phil Harvey. “It’s the big thing right now, Harv, in Paris. I read it in a magazine.”
“Them folks, gin-and-tappers, them’s us.” Djuna Brown shook her head solemnly. “I never thought of myself that way. When I was in high school, think about this, Harv, when I was in high school do you think I could ever imagine a series of events that would take me from my homeroom class to a grimy pad in the middle of the night, fighting off a beatnik pervert? That I’d become a gins and taps kind of girl? Me neither. But there I was, getting stupid at three in the morning with this here hipster. Then again, Harv, I bet the last time you were in the bucket waiting for parole you never thought of a possible series of events that would have you shooting the shit with some cops, buying melons in the countryside, right? Sitting with guys trying to help you out from the mess you’ve got yourself in. Life. It’s a winding road. So, look, I know you’re worried. But we don’t want you.”
“I’m going now. I’m not putting anybody in. Under no circumstances does that happen.”
“Hey, Harv? We’re the Chemical Squad. We don’t lock people up, we handcuff pills. We investigate a bit then we swoop in and suck up all the chemicals, leaving the host body drained, to wander the underworld and tell the tale, instill fear and confusion. We’re like vampires. ‘Hey,’ we hear guys go afterwards on the wiretaps, ‘Hey, where the fuck did those fucking guys swoop down outta? Yikes. They’re everywhere.’” She looked at Ray Tate, pleased with herself. “Them’s us, them guys.”
“So that’s it?” Phil Harvey made a reluctant laugh and shook his head. He looked like he’d enjoyed Djuna Brown’s riff. “You just fucking want pills? No people?”
She shrugged and looked at Ray Tate.
“That’s the game,” he said. “We just want chemicals and this week we want Double C pills. Pills, Harv.” He wanted to put her back in the game: “We don’t get no points for bodies, right Djun’?”
“Bodies, no.” She tilted her head as though weighing in with a complex thought. “Pills is good, bodies is trouble. Bodies need warrants and reading those confusing Constitutional rights and handcuffs and stuff. Pesky shit. Then you got to get sobered up enough to go to court and make sure you didn’t make any mistakes, depriving liberty of some poor citizen. So, no, we don’t do that, Harv. You ever heard of us taking in a serious body?” When he didn’t speak she continued. “Or how about this one: you ever see a cop giving evidence against a guy, getting in the box and in the middle of telling his lies to the jury he just starts puking up gins and taps on the prosecutor? Juries think it’s fucking funny when it happens but it can tank the case when they get in the deliberation room. ‘That cop puking on the lawyers?’ they say. ‘Seemed a little sketchy to me, that guy.’” She shook her head. “Me? I’d rather not say nothing under oath to nobody.” She felt she’d said enough and sat back.
Ray Tate said, “You know we’re on you. We’re an inch from that place you got up near … Passion?”
Djuna Brown said, “Passive. The stinky place off the highway there. A day or two, we swoop, Harv.”
Phil Harvey was startled. “Ah, fuck …”
“Yeah,” Ray Tate said, “we know about that. We know there’s that fat prick in all this someplace, causing no end of misery. If we’re going to pile on anybody and wire him up to the pain machine it’s him. We’re going to take that guy. We like you, Phil, but we don’t want you, short of murder. Give us the pills, give us the fat guy, take a hike, get your face fixed.”
Phil Harvey shook his head. “No bodies. I don’t tip nobody over.” He was silent for a long time then looked from one to the other and said to Ray Tate, “I think your car alarm’s
going off.”
Ray Tate immediately stood up and left the shop.
* * *
He was dozing in the passenger seat of the running Xterra when Djuna Brown came out of the shop with Phil Harvey. They stood a moment on the little parking area, close enough that their visible breaths mingled. He noticed how little she seemed, swinging her bag of melons, her chin lifted towards Harvey, massive in the sinister leather coat. His hair was tied back in a ratty ponytail. He’d found some sunglasses somewhere and in spite of the gathering darkness he’d put them on.
Phil Harvey looked away and said something.
She nodded and tilted her head.
He said something else and pointed across a field opposite the shop.
She turned and looked and made a beautiful smile.
Harvey handed her something and she put it into her pocket.
Ray Tate twisted to see what they were looking at. But there was just a lone tree with clouds roiled above it.
For some reason Djuna Brown touched Phil Harvey’s arm as she walked over to the Xterra.
She dropped her melons behind the seat and started up as Phil Harvey stood watching them. Ray Tate looked over his shoulder as she drove off onto the road and headed to the Interstate. Phil Harvey didn’t move. He stared at the tree in the field.
Djuna Brown checked Tate’s seatbelt as though he was a child. Just before they reached the highway back to the city she pointed at another lone tree on a hilltop.
“See that tree, Ray? You know there’s more of that tree under the ground than on top — a lot more than we see? Harv was talking about that.”
“Wow.” Ray Tate nodded. “Heavy.”
“No wonder he thinks you’re an asshole.” But she laid her hand on his thigh.
Chapter 25
Connie Cook was into his third plate of ribs, paper napkins tucked into his shirt collar, a crumpled field of them stained red across the table. He felt pretty good. The waitress was a pal. When he’d asked for a hot red sauce she’d said, How hot? He’d said, Honey, you don’t got a sauce hot enough that I can’t eat. She had a wicked smile and said, Oh, yeah? She came out of the kitchen with an unmarked bottle and held it over his platter. Say when. She began soaking down the meat.
The ribs were fiery and he sweated immediately. His nose ran, his scalp tingled. He enjoyed himself immensely, sitting in a country place with his jacket off, bullshitting with a waitress, sucking meat from bones, stacking them into a log house on the side plate. Fat he was, sure, but he had the impression the hot red sauce was melting the blubber. His bland skin was taking on a healthy pink glow. When he looked up he saw the waitress pulling on a ski jacket over her apron and handing her tickets to another woman, he called her over.
“You off?”
She nodded. “Those are pretty good, huh?” She lifted an eyebrow. “And the sauce? I didn’t bring you the real hot stuff. I took pity.”
He laughed and reached into his pocket. “I feel like I just blew a fireman.”
“Been there, done that.” She laughed, a pretty middle-aged woman his wife’s age who, he thought, might have missed the boat at some point and had accepted the fact. There was poorly covered grey in her hair and she had clear, direct eyes. He put a twenty on the table.
“That’s okay, mister, we split here, it all goes in the pot.” She zipped her jacket. “Good to see a man that knows how to enjoy a meal.”
“Look,” Connie Cook said, “there’s gonna be a good tip on the bill. The twenty … Well, I needed this, okay. I’m in the middle of a hard couple of days and this … Well, I want you to have it. Humour me.”
“Sure. Thanks. Come again, huh?” She took the twenty and on the way out he saw her stuff it into a big glass jar full of bills and change. As she passed through the door Phil Harvey came in in his bat coat, a canvas sack over his shoulder.
Connie Cook felt sad. His life had been a litany of girls and women who rejected him. Connie the Whale. Cookie No-Nookie. A translucent lump in the lives of people who saw him as a melting iceberg of blubber. Sharpies. Predators. As he watched Harv locate him at the back of the dining room he thought, once I get all this bad shit out of my system I’m gonna come back up here, have another plate of ribs, see a little about the waitress. His wife could have it all, the house and the cars and the country place and the stocks. He had enough stacked cash from his dealings with old Harv to get himself away, get into shape, get that grey in the waitress’s hair fixed up. They’d sit on a porch someplace and joke about hot red sauces.
“Fuck am I starving and I’m fucking frozen.” Harv dropped into the seat opposite, put his knapsack beside him, and grabbed up some ribs. His hair was back behind his ears, straggling out of a ponytail. “This fucking life.” He gnawed at the meat and threw the bone away onto the table. He double swallowed. “Jesus fuck, Connie.” He reached for Connie Cook’s beer. He felt his lips were blistering. “Cocksucker. Are you fucking nuts?”
“Hard day, Harv? Should I have ordered the hot ones?” Connie Cook waved over at the replacement waitress and pointed at his beer and at the plate and held up two fingers. “Have some more ribs. I know you like ’em hot but they didn’t have any really hot sauce.” Connie Cook felt pleased. He realized he never got to joke with anyone except Harv. Harv was a buddy and genuine, a real guy, a real pal.
“Man, Connie, I don’t know how you eat this stuff. My asshole’s going to have heartburn in the morning.”
The waitress put down two beers. Harv drank his off with one hand and pointed at the glass with the other and made a circle above the table. The waitress nodded.
Connie Cook sat back, satisfied. “So, Harv, tell me. How was the day in the criminal underworld?”
“Let me give it to you all at once, Connie. Here goes: We got the drums up to the place, got them unloaded. I hadda bring the kid up with me, account of my arm seizing up from one of the guys at the warehouse, had a tire iron or something. I blindfolded the kid. We did the heavy lifting and had to stash his truck because it was all over the news. Then I blinded him again and drove him in the old fuck’s rattletrap down to the restaurant and he called down for a ride. So when I go to take the pickup back up to the place, the old fucker’s gone. Don’t know how he did it because I had his truck. But he’s gone. No sign. No nothing. I got the place ready to start work then headed down here. The pickup died and I left it by the side of the road, gave a kid in a van twenty bucks to drop me near here. And here I am.” He kept his face frozen. No mention of the Chemical Squad, no mention of giving the guy who owned the shop a hundred to drive him back to the swaybacked pickup so he could retrieve the forty thousand pills and the gun from inside the passenger seat, pretending to be lost and running the guy ragged, just in case the Chemical Squad had guys on him. The pills and the gun were in his knapsack.
“Just as well the old guy’s gone, with what we’re going to be bringing up there soon, huh?” He looked at Harv carefully. He didn’t care much, right then, about cranking out the X. “You know what I mean, right? Thursday night?”
Harv nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to need everything you can give me, Connie. I don’t want to get the wrong thing, you know? When I go shopping.”
“I got it all. The time, the place she’ll be at. How do you want to do it?”
Harv thought. He scraped at a rib with his knife. The waitress put down two more beers and Harv took them both to his side of the table. “Ah, can I get inside? To get the … thing?”
“Not this time. This time she’ll be coming out. It’ll be late at night, the street’s dark, not much traffic.” Connie Cook gave him a big smile. “In fact, Harv, you’re doing the grab at my place.”
“Not your wife, I hope? She finally got you nuts?”
“No. A pal of hers. She’ll be in there most of the evening Thursday, then she’ll be coming out. They’re having their book club night. It usually goes to maybe ten, ten-thirty. Get there a little early, scope things out. The one I want is Gabby. Five-ten
. She’s got this shiny blond hair, slim chick. Drives a new Lexus, really dark blue, it’ll look black. Personalized plate, something to do with her name. You’ll know it, when you see it.”
“What if she doesn’t come out alone. What then?”
“Get creative. But if this doesn’t work I’m not gonna like it but we’ll do something else. She’s got this kid sometimes around her, a little younger, same looks. She might do for now.” He thought dreamily for a moment that the step-granddaughter might attend, although he knew she wouldn’t, and Harv could grab them both up. Stuff them in the sleeping bag, in the back of a vehicle, and after that it would be Connie’s party. Quality time, the bitch had called it. It could be a long winter, if she survived it. The farmhouse would be snowed in. How he’d get in there for visits, he didn’t know. Snowshoes? He laughed at the thought. Snowmobile, that was more like it. Roar up to the place slow so she could hear the engine and begin panicking. Oh, no, it’s Connie the Oak. Help. Yikes. “Maybe follow her? She’s staying down in Stonetown, that big old stone building a couple of blocks up from the river. Condos. Maybe, there?”
“And crank? You going to shuffle her up.”
Connie Cook was pleased. “Nope. This time I’m going to win her over with my love, Harv. It might take a little while longer, but I’m a persuasive guy.” He sat back to let the waitress put down the platters and some more beer. He caught her looking at him. When she went back by the serving window she commented to the cook, something he thought was nasty. “Anyway, once you’ve got … Once you’ve picked up the groceries then head on up there. Set her up in the main house, call me on my mobile, and I’ll come up. I’m gonna need the house, Harv, okay? You’ll have to put something in the barn, keep you warm while you sleep.”
