by Lee Lamothe
“Yes, of course, Sharon. We were just talking about getting you home. We’re coming to get you.”
“Jerry was just here. He said Gary … I’m alone, now. Jerry took Gary’s motorcycle? And his leathers and helmet?”
“When?”
“He just left. I think … Maybe it was … ah … yesterday? But I wouldn’t let him come in … I’m gonna kill the dogs, June. I’m going to go back home. I’m sick, I’m hot. You know? I think from the bites? I want to go home. To the people. To heal. Can you come get me?”
“I’ll take you, okay? We’ll ride up together, get with Buck and make it right, okay? Get you healed.” She waited a moment. “Sharon, don’t bother with the dogs, leave them. Get out of the house. I’m on my way, wait on the porch. I’m on the way right now, okay? I’m coming, Sharon.” She listened to silence for a few minutes and cut her eyes at Ray Tate, biting her lip. “You there? Hello?”
“It really smells bad in here, June.”
“Can you get out?”
“I don’t know.”
“We’re on our way.”
The Cashman was on the phone in the Sector Eight inspector’s office. When they came in he waved them to chairs and mouthed, “Hambone.” He had a big smile on his face and blew them a kiss of perfection off the tips of his fingers. Into the phone he said, “Ham, we don’t have a count. We’ve got the boys with toys securing the dough … At least ten million bucks … A body count … four, but they were all mutts … One guy outstanding, I think … He’s the doer, did the four, our guys put out some gunfire but by then all the dead were dead …” He listened and then laughed and hung up.
A charger stuck his head in the doorway. “We got a carjacking near the river. Male white, pulled a guy from his car, tied him up, and jacked it. Sounds like our outstanding.”
“Okay, Foley. Put it out there. Armed and dangerous.” The Cashman turned to Ray Tate and Djuna Brown. “Hambone is a happy man. I’m a happy man.” He sat back in the swivel chair and put his feet up. “You fucking guys. I love you. I got to say, I had doubts at first, but Ham was right. You guys came through.” He looked at Djuna Brown, fidgeting impatiently. “What’s up? Fuck, don’t tell me there’s a problem.”
Djuna Brown said, “We need a door team to take down a house in Tin Town.”
“There any dough over there?”
“A victim.” She was too anxious to lie to him, to suggest there might be money in the house. “We need an ambulance and some guys to go in, kill some dogs, and get a girl out to the hospital.”
“And,” Ray Tate said, “we’ve got a kidnap victim outstanding. We’re going to have to do something about that.”
“Right, right. Okay, we’ll get on both of those tomorrow. Right now we’ve got to get our lies straight, get some details over to the press people at the Jank, set up a press conference.”
“No, boss,” Djuna Brown said insistently, knocking her knuckles sharply on his desk as if to wake him up. “Listen up. I need a team now. Now. Tonight, not tomorrow.”
“Djuna, we’re up to our eyeballs here. We’ve got big brass balls being pulled from bed, we’ve got media up on the river. There’s a lot of bodies and a lot of money. I promise you, we get this sorted, we’ll get on it. This is heavy headquarters shit. We’ve got to do it right.”
She visibly relaxed. “Ray? Give us a minute, okay?” She had a sweet smile for him, but the cords in her neck were still tight and her eyes were too wide.
“Djuna …”
“A minute. Save yourself heartache later.” She became gay and sparkly. “Get us some café au lait, Bongo. And croissants. We’ll all have a Parisian breakfast.” She was smiling at him and it was a smile he’d seen the year earlier, during the riots when she went nuts on everybody. It was a smile that looked like it really hurt to make. She stared at him, not blinking. He didn’t move. She said, “Ray? You want to get the fuck out, pal.”
Jim Cash looked back and forth at them. “What the fuck? Ray?”
She rounded on him. “Talk to me, don’t fucking talk to him, you fucker. You wanted the millions and we got you the millions. They’ll be all night counting it, there’s so much.” She leaned over the desk, her hand on her cool little automatic in its clamshell. “I like you, boss. You’re a cool guy. But I’m promising you this, I’ll shoot you. I swear to fuck, if you don’t get on this, get me a door team over to Tin Town, I’m going to wait outside your fucking house one morning and when you come out to get on your cool motorcycle, I’m going to shoot you right in the fucking nuts. Your dick will be a memory while I’m in France fighting extradition and eating bouillabaisse.”
“Ray, you hearing this? This shit?”
Ray Tate knew she liked Cashman, liked that he rode motorcycles like a teenager and took the pain. He went avian. “Sorry, boss, I was thinking about birds. You know for the common Canada goose it’s a hard fucking life? We don’t give a shit about them, usually. Everybody, when they want bird for dinner, they go for the chicken or the turkey. Maybe, maybe sometimes the duck. But when you want foie gras, well, tough titty for the old goose. What they do is, they put this tube down the bird’s throat and pump —”
“Ray, man.” She looked at him with a genuine love. “My little beatnik birder and his wing-ed thoughts.” She turned to the Cashman and gave him the sweetest smile as though she hadn’t threatened him and he’d already committed to putting a team together for her. “So, okay, give us an hour, a door team, and an ambo to take the girl to St. Frankie’s Heart. It’s the right thing, you know that.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Fuck me.” He picked up the phone. “Go get her.”
Chapter 36
The house always had a funky odour even though Gary Dorset had lined the basement ceiling with plastic sheets and drywall and caulked it to keep the noise and the smell out of the main floor. But this was stronger, closer, somewhere in the kitchen. She’d looked for a source but she couldn’t find it.
Sharon Sherriff tried to hang the telephone receiver on its long coil into the old fashioned cradle on the kitchen wall, but missed. She found herself losing balance and it fell to the floor. She collapsed in a wooden chair, her perfectly shaped but chewed and bruised bare legs straight out, and tried to parse the moves required to pick up the receiver and put it back into the cradle. But she became focused on her legs and feet. They were dark, almost black. There were nip marks on her bare feet from Gary teasing her with Arterial. Her jaw was tight and her teeth seemed stuck together. She stood up, then lost her balance again, and fell back in the chair.
Once the little black cop came and got her and took her back to Indian Country, she knew there were healing ceremonies she’d have to perform to cleanse her spirit of shame and guilt. It would be painful, wrenching. There would be smoke and heat. Uncle Buck would help her out. She’d purge herself and get healthy.
There was still goodness in her. Why else would the cats and little dogs, who were canny about such things, be so trusting of her as she wandered the streets at night, whispering with her pillowcase? She still had goodness about her.
Arterial scrabbled his claws against the reinforced basement door. There were other dogs down there, but Arterial had a frantic murderous rhythm that she recognized. She couldn’t take her eyes off the door. It seemed to shimmer, float in the air. She was sick. Her eyeballs were sweating and wouldn’t blink.
She focused. Empowerment meant she had to find her own power, and use it. Being a victim waiting to be saved meant she’d given up on her self, on her own spirit. She had to act, she had to take the first step. Once she did that she’d deserve to receive healing.
Wobbling, she made her way to the refrigerator and spooned thick high-protein dog food into a pair of bowls. Then she took rat poison from under the sink and carefully stirred in a tablespoonful at a time. From the cabinet over the sink she took bottles of Seconal and began twisting capsules apart and pouring the powder into the mix. She stirred until it was smooth. Period
ically she smelled it, but all she could smell was the funky odour of the kitchen.
She picked up the food bowls from the counter, then as she reached for the basement door her throbbing foot became entangled in the mess of tangled telephone cord. She started to fall, but recovered herself, falling against the door and slipped the latch.
She was looking in confusion, a bowl held in each hand, away from her body, at the basement door opening.
Two pits boiled out, Arterial in front. He recognized her as his playful pal and went for the ripening rotted flesh of the purplish black of her leg, a flavour that unbeknownst to her had filled the house like a rank fog.
The other pit got right down to business. It launched straight up between the bowls and in a silent rush took her throat right out from under her chin as she fell forward.
The bowls clattered and after ten minutes the dogs became bored with dragging her inert body around the room and went to sniff at the bowls of food. It was the rat poison that tipped them off and they instead posed themselves on each side of Sharon Sherriff’s body and waited like guardians with bloody muzzles.
There was an ambulance and a Sector car in front of the house in Tin Town when they arrived.
The young charger from the Sector car walked up to the 500 as they climbed out. “A door team’s on the way. What’s the play?”
“We’re doing a tactical rescue, a female victim,” Ray Tate told him. “It’s a dog house. You got an onboard shotgun?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“Get it.”
Djuna Brown was staring at the house, biting her lips. “I told her to come out, wait on the porch.” She led the way up the steps and tried the door. “I told her to unlock it. Fuck.”
An ambulance guy came up the steps, leaned around her, and sniffed around the door frame. “Ugh. This is going to be bad. This a dog house?”
Ray Tate said it was.
“Okay, health-and-safety issue. We’re waiting in our unit until you stabilize the stage. You whistle, we come.” He went down the steps. “That smell isn’t just dogs. That’s something rotting foul.”
The young charger stood on the steps, holding his shotgun at port arms. Ray Tate held his hand out. “Gimmee.”
The charger said, “If it discharges, I have to report it.”
“Give it to me, man.” He waited. “Don’t make me humiliate you, okay?”
The charger gave over the shotgun.
Djuna Brown looked in the window. She could see right down the hallway into the kitchen. She saw the top half of Sharon Sherriff’s ripped body and the alert pit bulls flanking it. She made a sob. “Ray? She’s dead. There’s two dogs in the kitchen with her. She’s ripped up, Ray, we didn’t …”
“Not now, Djun’, we’ve got to get her out, one way or the other. Maybe you should wait in the car.”
“Oh, Ray, what they did to her.” She leaned and vomited nothing but coffee acid over the porch railing. “I … She’s all …”
“Don’t look.” He put his palm on her heaving back until she finished. “I’ll get them for you, don’t worry.” He called the charger onto the porch. “I want you to softly scratch at the door. Nothing heavy, okay? I’ll take them through the window. But remember, softly, or they’ll run and hide and you get to go in there and get ’em. Softly, softly.”
“No.” Djuna Brown held her hand out. “Gimmee.”
He gave her the shotgun and stepped back and she gave him a smile as though he’d given her a gift.
Chapter 37
“Where’s Chyna, Roar? Where’s that girl of ours?” Jerry Kelly beamed, but his eyes were flat glitter and his bloodless smile was paint. The ride had taken him hours and it had been unpleasant with the chill of the late summer night cutting into him, slipping through the gaping zippers and the rips of Gary’s leathers. He’d had to stop for coffee several times, and to piss a lot as his kidneys rebelled against the constant engine vibes.
Aurora felt terror in her throat and thought she might piss it out. “She took off. When she heard your bike. She said you were bringing more snakes.” She saw the real Jerry Kelly now, his motorcycle helmet dangling in his fist, a multi-purpose item, swinging gently, hypnotically. “Did you come back for me?” She tried to give him an alluring smile, but it trembled. Her eyes skated everywhere else, as though the emanations from his face were strong light and she couldn’t squint enough to avoid it.
He looked out across the porch to where the ATV usually sat. The space was empty. The shotgun was there, leaning. He took her arm and brought her outside. “And where’s the other sweetie? Chyna’s guest?”
“She’s in the lean-tos. Chyna sent her down there to hide out. I told Chyna you wouldn’t like it, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
“I think she’s around, nearby. I think she’s someplace close in the weeds waiting for me to leave.” He swung his helmet in an idle circle. He led Aurora to the porch steps and sat her down. Under his hand her nerves rippled and her muscles jumped. He held her close and entwined his hand gently in her hair. “How we gonna get her out here, I wonder. Any ideas? What, Roar, would make old Chyna make an appearance?” He stood up suddenly. “Maybe if you give her a shout, Roar … She’ll listen to you.” One hand was on her shoulder and the other entangled in her hair; he reefed her, pushing away with one hand and ripping her hair forward from the back with the other. He stepped back as she screamed, a ricocheting animal sound built from waves upon waves of escalating sound, layer upon layer, stacked into a crescendo. In his hand, he thought, it looked like the pelt of a small bloody animal, Aurora rolled on the ground, maintaining her scream for what seemed like an impossible time.
“Perfect,” He swung the helmet hard against her head and she went still and he called, “Chy? Chy, dearie, c’mon out. Don’t make me go for the axe. You hear me? If you’re shy, you can just tell me where you stash your dough. I’ll grab it up and go. I want the stash, you hear me?” He listened and was rewarded with the pussy sound of the scooter. It skipped off the first attempt at ignition, then caught and buzzed in its weak hornet way. In the grey-blue dawn of the hollows he saw the flash of a purple muumuu.
“Dootchbag,” he muttered. He tossed the helmet away, went onto the porch, and picked up the shotgun; he broke it and then dropped it. Fucking Gary, he thought, ate the last one. He got onto the motorcycle and kicked it. He sat revving for a few moments, looking for humour here, a little fun role for himself. Gladiator Jerry, he decided. The tournament? The joust?
He twisted the accelerator and took off in a wide wow of dirt, like he’d done at club runs and field parties, back when he rode with the Riders. He came out of the arc with a mighty twist of the accelerator, aligned the bike to the centre of the road, and committed a confident wheelie. There was a soaring in his chest as he steadily rode down the centre of the road. Passing over the bridge, he decelerated but his backwash still set the trinkets a-song. Broken sunlight flickered through the trees and prismed on the bits of glass, flashed off the shards of tin.
At the slaves’ workshop he stopped and shut off the engine. No sounds of the fleeing muumuu. With the economy of an Indian tracker, he dismounted and crouched over the dirt to read the tracks of the three-wheeler. Ahead it went, down the slight gully where the trees were fat and close together, an almost non-existent track leading to the horrors and maybe delights of the lean-tos, a refugee camp for seekers of reality-only-better.
The scooter started now, afresh, and not too distant, he thought. Clever Chyna knew the old Indian trick of stopping to listen for the hoof beats of pursuers. The scooter engine revved into a hornet roar, a gear shifted, and it began running.
Mindful that the angry Colombian dwarf could already be ogling stewardesses on a flight north from Bogotá, Jerry Kelly remounted the bike, figuring his timing. Two minutes and I got the fat bitch. Five minutes, no more, and she tells me where she’s been hiding her vast profits all these years. No tools to bury her in a big fucking hole and it’d be a
waste of time, anyway. He thought about Presto’s kid and decided to play that one by ear. So I’m outta here in an hour, tops, maybe even with an abbreviated but creative wave of destruction.
Branches of scrub brushed his shoulders on both sides as he idled down the narrow track. He climbed a short rise and saw, twenty-five yards straight ahead, the lean-to camp. The scooter was off the dirt road, sideways. There couldn’t be much past the lean-to. Attila the Hun, a long-time hero, would ride his horse right through that camp, he thought, revving up his speed. Start clubbing people down without pity. Laying waste.
He saw the girl up there on foot, a little worse for wear, wearing one of Chyna’s muumuus, this one purple as well. She broke from the lean-tos and headed into the bush beyond. She looked back, her mouth open in appealing terror.
He revved hard and picked up a good head of speed, letting the screaming engine terrorize all, near and far, with its power. He wished he had his helmet with its mysterioso visor, an anonymous plunderer, more a beast than a human.
The trees overhead were in full canopy. Unaccountably, perhaps from another existence as a vastly different organism, Jerry Kelly had a déjà vu feeling he was travelling through the moist, bright thorax of a giant insect. The muumuu, purple, intrigued him. He received in his mind a clue: if Zoe had been the one riding the scooter, then where was old Chy —
From behind a thick tree, Chyna Lily swung the axe with enough force that the sharp wedge of the head and the forward motion of the bike sufficed to take Jerry Kelly cleanly in the smiling, friendly mouth, to hold him in the air as the bike continued its road to plunder.
The shock of it froze him like the flicking of a light switch. His life, such as it was, didn’t pass before his gaping, gawling eyes, but there were a series of faint life sketches, fog-like and superficial, old fading Polaroids that flickered against the screen of his cortex.
