by Lee Lamothe
Ray Tate felt Djuna Brown shuffling beside him. She reached and took his lighter from his shirt pocket, and lit Mona’s cigarette. She sat beside her on the chesterfield, close. Inside the front door the dog was scratching obsessively. Mona stared at the door as if wondering if it would hold.
“Mona,” Ray Tate said, “quit fucking around. We don’t want you or Gary. We want to find Jerry Kelly.”
Mona didn’t say anything. She picked at a scab on her knee.
“Mona? You know who he’s talking about, hon’?”
“No. I don’t know anybody named …” She began licking her lips rapidly, her eyes looking anywhere but at them. “… with that name?”
“Where are you from, Mona?” Djuna Brown used her fingertips to push the brittle blond hair away from Mona’s face and looked closely at her skin, her eyes. “Jesus. You from up north? You’ve got the blood.” She glanced up at Ray Tate. “Indian Country.”
“Martinsville. Up near, ah …”
“Widow’s Corners. I know Martinsville. I used to work up there.” She gave Ray Tate a look and he moved down the porch, giving them space. “You go to the government school? Near the barns?”
Mona made a little shrug, wary of a trap.
“You miss it? Man, I’d kill to be working back up there. You know Buck? Guy I knew, he had a place in Martinsville.” She wanted to say enough stuff so the girl would pick up on a subject to react to that she thought was safe. She laughed. “Pickup Truck Buck. Every time someone got robbed of their pickup, we’d send a wrecker around to Buck’s place and recover the chassis.”
“Buck’s my uncle.” Mona looked up at her as if she’d been given a present. “You know Buck? Really?”
“Buck’s sister, Shania, is your mom, right? Fuck, girl. I know who you are. Not Mona, though.” She was silent a few minutes. “You’re one of the Sherriffs.”
“I was Sharon.”
Djuna Brown smiled happily. “Sharon Sherriff.” She smiled. “I arrested your dad a couple times. How’s he doing?”
The girl made a small grin, feeling safe on family territory. “He’s okay. He stopped beating my mom after she shot him again.”
“Well, good.” Djuna Brown turned slightly so her body excluded Ray Tate from their conversation. “How come you came down here?”
“School group. To the museum, they had an Aboriginal art show. I met a guy … He took me for a ride on his motorcycle and next thing it was now and I was … you know, living here?” She tugged at her hair. “With this.”
“And with the dogs.”
She nodded. “With the dogs.”
“And Gary.”
She nodded.
“He turned you out, right? Put you out there?”
The girl looked past her and cut her eyes at Ray Tate.
Djuna Brown realized she wasn’t that far gone, that she still had her shame. There was something left, an ember. She felt relief and a little excitement at the possibility. This could be police work, real policing. “Ray?”
He took the envelope of photographs from under his shirt and handed it to her. He left them alone on the porch.
At the curb in front of the house there were two jumbo green garbage bags, a pile of Styrofoam packing moulds, and a bundle of cardboard, all tied with twine. He glanced back and saw Djuna Brown and Mona with their heads together, Djuna nodding as Mona spoke. He opened a small switchblade and ripped slits in the garbage bags; one of them contained tattered cats, furs of various colours, some coagulated red stuff. He thumbed through the cardboard and found flattened corrugated bags of high protein dog foods and brightly coloured boxes that had contained a deluxe currency-counting machine and an Alba compression device, the kind used to compress stacks of paper.
He got into the 500 and was sleeping in the passenger seat when Djuna Brown came down the steps an hour later and thumped her fist on the roof. “Ray, we need a drink.” She looked tight around the mouth and her little teeth were hidden, her lips pressed back against them as if resisting biting into something. She got behind the wheel and tossed the envelope onto the floor. She stared at the house for a long time. “We need us a whole buncha them.”
Jerry Fucking Kelly, she said when they had some cold beers in front of them at a sports bar on Erie, was emerging as a master arch asshole.
“Jerry was over last night, or maybe the night before, she doesn’t remember time too good. He commented on what fine shape Mona was in. Gary said she worked out a lot, like zero percent body fat. Jerry said he bet she couldn’t outlast one of the dogs on the treadmill. And the party was on.”
“What’s with the leather mask? When I saw her through the window she was wearing this weird thing.”
“Jerry’s games. Jerry thought if the pit got loose it’d protect her face. Jerry likes her face, she said. She fucks with it. After they were done with her, Jerry told her to dye her hair blonde and leave the mask on until he got back. So she did.
“Anyway, last night or the night before, they got her high and put two mills end to end, Mona, naked except for the mask in front, and a dog named Arterial on the one behind her. Artie. They tied Artie on kind of loose so he was always at her legs, snapping at her ass. Sometimes Arterial got a good chunk, other times he just went up on his back legs and got her with his claws. She jumped off from the pain and Gary had to pay Jerry a hundred bucks out of what he was going to earn on this thing they’re doing now, up north someplace.” She took a long swipe at her beer. She looked ready to cry.
“Fuck,” Ray Tate muttered, making a mental picture. “Fuck me. What’s she gonna do?”
“She can’t leave, she said. She has to feed the dogs. If Gary doesn’t come back, she’s going to poison the dogs and start over again. She’s eighteen, Ray. She’s drop-dead gorgeous; I’d kill to look like that.”
“She’s walking dead. You know that, right?”
“No, Ray.” She got angry, a little loud. “Fuck you, not at eighteen. No way. Nobody walks dead at eighteen. She’s still got shame. You saw that. She’s still got shame, so she’s salvageable.”
He liked the way her heart talked. He hoped she wasn’t but thought she was wrong. “Well,” he said raising his beer for a toast, “keep thinking those good thoughts.” He drank. “She look at the pictures?”
“Gary is a mini-Jerry. He bought Jerry’s old club bike off him. Drives Jerry’s old humpback Cadillac. Now he wants a Saab, silver, like Jerry’s. Gary told her he got his head kicked in that time in the picture because he had a cellphone. Jerry doesn’t like cellphones. Not Jerry’s fault, he said. Jerry’s careful. He had a concussion, nosebleed for two days. Jerry Fucking Kelly.”
“Gary Fucking Dorset. Got a certain ring to it, I gotta say. What’s this thing they’re doing, up north? Something to do with Marko?”
“Well, she’s not sure. She didn’t know Marko. Jerry doesn’t use the phone, just drops by to see Gary. He came by two nights ago, she thinks two nights ago, but maybe last night, and they talked. Gary went out to a phone booth and made a call, then went someplace in the Caddy. Came back with a machine of some kind in a big carton.”
“Currency counter. The box was in the garbage. Deluxe model, scans for counterfeits, reads holograms. The whole nine yards. And a paper compressor.”
“We’re rolling right, then, right?”
“Yep. What else she say?”
“Gary’s got her going out at night with a pillowcase, taking cats and dogs for the pits.” Djuna Brown made a small smile that was at odds with the rest of her face. “She said she must still have goodness inside her, otherwise the animals wouldn’t have trusted her.”
“How’d she do with the pictures?”
“Not bad. She filled in some of the question marks, the skiddy guys. Doesn’t know Abner. Never heard of him. She knows Julia Gurr’s name from Jerry mentioning her to Gary. Cool name, she said.”
“She know what they’re doing?”
“Nope. She thought Gary said something sometim
e about going to China, dropping her off on the way to earn her keep in biker bars in the Badlands, but she doesn’t think the Cadillac would make it to China.”
“Maybe Chinatown?”
“I don’t know.” Her hands were in little fists on the table. “Let’s take a bit of time, right now, go in there and get her out.”
“Later, maybe. But right now we’ve got to keep moving, work off what she gave us.”
“Promise, Ray. We’ll get her out and home to Buck. He’s a tough guy, but a good man. She’ll be safe with him.” She looked into his eyes. “I’ve got to save one, at least, or I don’t want to see Paris again.”
Chapter 18
Cool morning air slipped through the windows of Bobby Preston’s safe house. His mind was right. He had a variation for part of the problem, anyway, keeping Marko and Jerry off him so he could operate.
Transit was still the big one.
Overland was difficult. He’d been off the grid since the pig train died in the river the previous winter. His contacts who worked the border points had been shuffled around in an attempt to improve security. You never knew who was working what shift and where.
Air was impossible. Even if on short notice he could unearth a pilot and a light plane, zipping across the invisible towering wall of radio beams around America would be risky, if not suicidal. A rocket from the ground wasn’t an impossibility.
And the river was out of the question. He was afraid of the river. He knew the river, its indifferent appetite.
He showered in his unfinished bathroom and dressed. Outside, he walked through the factories, passing clusters of workers, and lined up at a catering truck to get a dead baby with raisins and a coffee. He bummed a man in a white hardhat for a cigarette and stood smoking it, watching cars passing. Then he walked south, facing the northbound traffic. When he spotted an empty taxi he flagged it and climbed in, giving the driver a location. After five minutes he told the driver he’d changed his mind and headed him out to East Chinatown. When the driver dropped him, he walked aimlessly, circling until he came to a strip mall full of electronics and computer outlets. At a shop owned by a badly scarred Chinaman he paid a premium for instant service and obedience. The Chinaman smoked a cigarette while he listened, then shrugged and went to work.
In Bobby Preston’s flat Julia Gurr paced, checking the street periodically. She’d seen the blue 500 twice during the night before she fell asleep with the lights on. In the morning when she awoke it was gone, but there were two other vehicles, a pickup truck with a camper in the back, and a ratty Cutlass with a busted and taped tail light.
She clutched a mug of coffee under her chin and inhaled the fragrance. They were up on her, she decided. Bobby was right to leave her alone. He had to stay clean, he had to be able to operate. For Zoe.
When one of the cold phones chirped in the charger she grabbed it up and said nothing, listening. He’d taught her to imagine her words on a printed transcript, being read before a jury.
“Hey.”
“Ah,” she smiled. “You.”
He laughed softly. “Ah … You should wash your hands.”
She took the phone into the bathroom, closed the door and ran water in the sink and the shower. “Okay.” She sat on the toilet seat and pressed the phone hard to her ear and covered the other one with her palm.
“You see any stuff? On your back?”
She nodded as if he could see her. “That blue … All night. Gone. Now someone else, too.”
“All right. We got those other guys, our friend and his crazy friend, you know? To worry about more. We have to control them so they can’t operate me, jerk me around.”
“Can you operate? From where you are?”
“Yeah. Ah, I got a plan. … shit … The thing you’re using now, right now? I got a new one, fixed so I can’t hear you, you understand? I call and you can hear me, but I can’t hear you.”
She thought about it. “What if we need to talk?”
“Can’t. I talk, you listen, that’s it. This is the only way it’s going to work. If I could do it by myself, I would. But those guys have got you and Zoe to hammer me with, manipulate me. But if they can’t, then they can’t.”
“What if I need to talk to you, what then?”
“That’s the point. You can’t. You’re going to have to make the moves as I give ’em to you. I’m only gonna call on the thing I’ve got to the thing you’ve got.”
“What if something goes wrong? If they get funny?”
“That’s up to them. Get with our friend, tell him how things are. He’s the only one that can fuck it or make it work. Him and his loony pal. You have to tell him that. I talk to you, you talk to him. Nobody, but nobody, talks to me.”
“I got it. I’ll call him and get it rolling.”
“Okay.” There was a long pause while he tried to think of something to say. “Okay, ah … You’re okay? We’re okay?”
“Can we do this? Really?”
“Sure. No question. A couple of days, we’ll get … her back and go away. Maybe, ah … try again. You know? If you want?”
“We’ll see. Do we have a plan?” She thought for a moment. “Ah, wet or dry?”
“Dry, has to be,” he said. “I can’t get wet.”
She sighed, relieved. “Good, good, good.”
“I’ll get back with the variation. Your guy and his pal have to follow it, no fucking around.” He was gone.
She turned off the taps and shower and went into the bedroom and dressed. She went up to the window and watched the Cutlass for a while. She’d been under surveillance before. If there was one out front, there was one out back. A one way street meant there’d be someone up the block in case she exited the house on foot. The decision she had to make was whether to make her move at the house, or lead them away, then get fancy with taxis and buses and revolving doors. And once she left she could never come back. And she couldn’t go home, either, in case they were up on the apartment. And where would she be at the end of the day when another night came down?
Bobby Preston played taxi chess, winding up three blocks from Tiger Truong’s garage. Truong’s office was at the rear of the building. On the wall was a picture of a very much more youthful Truong and his young family with their heads circled by magic marker, sitting in a leaky boat with a hundred other migrants, waving for help, a huge military ship of some kind looming behind them.
Truong stood as Preston entered. His face was deeply lined, markings that looked, under certain light, like he’d been ripped down by claws. His hair was iron grey and clipped close to his skull. He had two gold teeth in the front of his mouth. He greeted Preston with a series of firm handshakes.
“You are at work again?” He looked happy about it. “Work is good for a man.”
“Yes, a small thing. A lady will come soon with money. A quarter million mostly in fives.”
“Honest fives or that Chinese?” Truong cranked his hand and made the sound of ticking machinery, ka-chung-click-ka-chung-click.
“Honest fives. Used bills, not from nothing heavy.”
“How much for these, to me buy them from you? And what do you want back? Gold? We have lots of gold.”
“Four dollars and twenty-five each, American. We need Canadian or American, big bills, fifties, hundreds. No smaller.”
“For four I would take it all. The friend rate, okay?”
“Perfect. A lady will come soon.”
“Ladies are welcome, always, at the enterprise of Truong. She will take away the money, too?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I make sure my grandson makes nice boy for her.”
Chapter 19
The slaves were kept in a clean but rundown shed two hundred yards from Chyna Lily’s log house in the centre of Paradise Not for All, along a winding path that crossed a wooden bridge festooned with tangled Christmas lights. The path was soft and marshy and, with Chyna Lily’s morbid obesity, it was a challenge. She used a three-wheeled gas-
powered ATV scooter to get around even the near reaches of her paradise. Because of the sponginess of the hollow, she’d hired some local workers to construct a raised bridge on eight-by-eight beams that allowed her to manoeuvre her scooter onto the platform and ride over the hollow.
Handfuls of glass and thin metal chimes, made from beading and tin cans, decorated the bridge. When night winds came in autumn, the singing of the glass and metal was ethereal. Chyna Lily told buyers who visited the main house that the sounds were the singing of angels, voices left behind with no host.
Chyna was big on angels, who she believed were the epitome of light, the essence of slender, so she created forever-youthful creatures of her female lovers. She loved to watch flesh disappear from their bodies, making matchstick people who loved her and depended on her. Some of these lovers, who shed too much of what they needed to survive, were buried wrapped in bleached sheets under the rows and rows of plants she maintained. Their decaying flesh, she was convinced, gave her crops a certain touch of flavour that many of her customers said was discernible within the scent of the smoke.
Love, Chyna said, it’s the love you’re tasting.
She was thinking about love and smoke when she heard the engine of Jerry Kelly’s van on the road, returning from another run. As quickly as she could, she went onto the porch and, with a metal spoon, urgently banged against a cowbell. “Aurora,” she called, “Aurora, come home.”
Already living at Paradise Not for All when Jerry Kelly brought his slaves up from the city was a young woman who’d figured out how to manipulate Chyna Lily’s heart. The young woman, who Chyna named Aurora, had arrived a month earlier to tee up for the next harvest of the wild crop. Aurora had heard for years about the needy dyke who’d isolated herself in the north woods. She played to her role: she was pliable at all times. When she desired a tap inside her elbow or between her toes, she made herself available to Chyna.
