The Mammoth Book of Wolf Men

by Stephen Jones

  ID photos of García and Scotchman appeared in an iris, and cops gathered to josh the patrol team.

  “They found the van?” Stuart asked.

  “What van?” García said, fighting off a hug-happy hermano.

  “The black van,” Stuart insisted, feeling dumb. Something about Obregon Street was nagging the edge of his mind. “From last night, remember?”

  “Didn’t see no van, man,” García said, eyes swiveling towards an angling security camera. Its directional mikes could pick up what he was saying, but his face was out of shot. García shook his eyes from side to side.

  Stuart gathered he should drop the subject.

  Plenty of people wore sunglasses at night, especially those who also carried white canes. But this blind girl was waving a snub-nosed pistol. Far less aesthetically stimulating than anything on Muldoon Pezz’s wall, it could still put a dent in a person. García yanked the gun out of her paw and whipped the heavy glasses from the suspect’s eyes. They were red marbles, with tiny yellow irises like pus in pimples.

  This one was far gone, a tertiary zonkbrain.

  The girl’s friends backed off and let the officers make an arrest. They were piling out of a club in the Jungle, having made enough trouble to prompt a call to the cops. Probably, they’d just run out of money and the management dropped the dime to bring round the garbage collectors.

  Through windows as thin as arrow-slits, strobe-lights pulsed. A band named Dire Tribe did a scratchrap take on “Heart Attack and Vine”. A sumo wrestler in combat armour barred the door, watching García and Scotchman take care of business.

  When Scotchman shoved the zonkbrain against the patrol car and pulled disposable cuffs from his belt, the penny dropped. Stuart realized what bothered him about Obregon Street.

  The zonkbrain, mad eyes leaking blood, twisted and kicked out blindly. She wore a ra-ra skirt and combat boots. Scotchman got out of the way of the kick and jabbed his stun-stick into her side. There was a crackle and the smell of ozone. She was so zonked she didn’t feel the charge.

  “The Caldiarre in the garage was cuffed,” Stuart said aloud, recalling the horror-flash image. “His arms were fixed over his head. In the news footage, his arms are loose, stuck out like a scarecrow’s. Someone uncuffed him.”

  “Case closed,” García said. “Don’t think on it, man.”

  García waded in and pummeled the zonkbrain. He took her head by a beaded scalplock and slammed it against the hood of the car. The fight went out of her. Scotchman got his ratcheted plastic noose around the perp’s wrists and pulled tight. It would have to be clipped off with special shears.

  Some clean-up cop must have cut the cuffs in Obregon Street. They were disposable, so they’d been disposed of.

  The zonkbrain’s boyfriend stood back, astonished but not appalled. He seemed to find it all quite entertaining. Struggling with the cuffs, she fell in a fetal ball, leaking foam. The sidewalk where she twitched was patterned with overlapped and faded spray-paint body outlines.

  “Too far gone for detox,” García said as she rolled into a gutter clogged with concaved zonk squeezers, take-out food McLitter, and empty shell cases. Scotchman helped the girl stand and wiped off her mouth.

  The boyfriend laughed and left at a run, taking off with his buddies for the next club. Some night, it would be him dribbling strawberry froth on the sidewalk.

  Why would cops cut the cuffs? Because cuffs meant cops?

  Cops covered cops, that was the first thing Stuart had seen onstreet: Scotchman distracting him while García popped pills. García was right: he shouldn’t think about it, he’d only get his brain hurt.

  A combat ambulance arrived. Zonkbrains fell between offender and casualty, and rated secure hospital facilities. A Paramedic, a Chinese guy in dark coveralls, hit the street.

  “Why the camouflage?” Stuart asked.

  “Whites make too good a target,” the Paramedic said.

  García helped the Paramedic sling the zonkbrain in the back. Scotchman threw her white cane and dark glasses in after her.

  As the ambulance turned a corner, Stuart noticed it was the same model vehicle as the van on Obregon Street, jungle-striped rather than dead black.

  The sumo guardian looked up at the sky, weary shoulders weighted down by armourpads.

  “It’s always like this in the Jungle when the moon is full,” he said. “It gets to their rotted brains. Moonlight is like a drug.”

  “Gone quiet back there, Stuey? What’s going down?”

  Stuart was thinking hard. He couldn’t help it; in his mind, he was putting together a jigsaw. The picture that emerged was scary, but he couldn’t stop himself from fitting in the pieces.

  They were driving down a well-lit strip. There were clubs and allnight shops. Pedestrians wandered onstreet, drifting between cars.

  The banner with the names of the Disappeared of Los Angeles. Copissue cuffs on the Caldiarre kid. A garage full of dead zonk dealers. The closed investigation. A van so black it fades into the night.

  There were shots in the night. García sighed.

  Every time Stuart turned on the television in his hotel, Chief Ryu was talking about the War on Zonk. Ryu reminded him of Gomez Addams, a shark-smiling little man in pinstripes. Mayor Jute was always behind the Chief, voting more funds to special Zonk Task Forces.

  Stuart wasn’t thinking Task Force. He was thinking Death Squad.

  “Fuckin’ Jungle,” Scotchman said, hitting the brakes.

  A car was overturned in the street. A couple of kids with guns crouched behind it, dodging and returning fire from a low rooftop.

  A slug spanged against the windscreen, but didn’t shatter the armoured glass. The shot came from the roof faction.

  “Shoot ’em in the brain,” Scotchman muttered, unslinging a pump-action shotgun. He got out of the car, bent low, and ran across the street. García radioed for back-up.

  Scotchman straightened and fired at the roof, not apparently aiming at anything in particular.

  García finished his call-in.

  “This time, man, stay here. Hollywood can’t afford to lose you. Needs all the talent it can get.”

  García drew his Colt Python and slipped out of the side door.

  García and Scotchman didn’t come back. Stuart heard gunfire, shouts and sirens. The patrol car’s radio crackled, but no messages came through. He shifted on the squeaky seats and thought of the Disappeared, remembering crowd control smoke settling on the protesters in Millennium Plaza.

  If, for some reason Stuart couldn’t fathom, you wanted Millennium Plaza, you had to have the Jungle as well. It was how the city worked. All the folks at Muldoon Pezz’s party were standing on the backs and heads of the onstreet scavengers who scuttled away when the shooting started. If Pezz stepped out into a riot, even toting his precious Leveller, he would last about seven seconds before someone drew a bead on his unprotected hairstyle and pre-empted his last punchline. And Stuart Finn didn’t kid himself he was any fitter to survive out in Darwin City.

  The street was clear now, as if cordoned off to be a movie set. The skirmish had shifted. García and Scotchman must be in pursuit. Everyone else had made a policy decision to get out of the way.

  Stuart had enough background for his script now, and wanted to go home. He could work in Bath and fax the pages to New Frontier. The council might complain about the spare change brigade, but even the rabid right didn’t suggest rounding them up and putting bullets through their eyes.

  A pebble-tap hit the window near his head, startling him. He looked out and saw a black-uniformed cop chest. A gauntleted hand made a beckoning motion.

  Stuart was puzzled, then realized he was invited to get out of the car. He nodded, and pushed the door. It wouldn’t give. There was a green light on the inside handle. Like a London taxi, the rear doors could be locked from the dashboard. To prevent prisoners making a break. Last night, in Obregon Street, the lock hadn’t been on; that was how he had been able to
wander into the garage and see what he shouldn’t have seen.

  He shrugged an apology at the uniform. The green light cut out and the door pulled open. The lock was overriden by remote control. Stuart stepped out and looked into a silver-visored crash helmet. His own face was fish-eye reflected. Other uniforms, García’s back-up, stood about. They wore no insignia, just black jump-suits and crash helmets. Stuart could tell they were cops by the gizmo-weighted belts. And the walk, the stand, the attitude. Actors couldn’t fake that.

  Stuart pointed in the direction that García and Scotchman had taken off. The uniform shook his helmet and laid a gauntlet on Stuart’s shoulder, then spun him around to face the patrol car.

  Something bit Stuart’s right wrist, like the jaws of a dog, and he heard a familiar rasp. He was being cuffed.

  Over the top of the car he saw the black van the uniforms had come in and his knees became water. He fell down before the uniform could cuff his other wrist, and realized he was yelping.

  He was a writer, not some hero. He was not going to survive. He would be one of the Disappeared.

  Still squealing, he shrank and writhed under the car. He shut his eyes, but nothing changed. He saw boots. Other boots joined them. There was a buzz of communication.

  They were being cautious, Stuart realized. He hadn’t been searched so no one wanted to lie down and take a shot in case he was nestling his own gun, ready to hole a visor. The patrol car weighed a few tons, so they couldn’t lift it. By accident or instinct, he had gone to ground.

  Something small and white had fallen out of his pocket and lay on the gritty asphalt next to his cheek. It was Leitizia Six’s card. It recited Leitizia’s name, address, phone and fax, representation and major credits.

  He raised his head and banged it against the underside of the car. Pain jammed through his skull.

  Those cop bastards had set him up for this. García and Scotchman. How was that for high concept? That wri-die was right: the cop was the natural enemy of the black man, even a black man who’d been to public school and wasn’t in the least onstreet or zonkbrained or even bloody American.

  Boots shifted, heels clicking on the street. He heard the car door opening. The floor was armoured, so they couldn’t shoot through it. This moment, he was turtle safe. It wouldn’t last. They could pour petrol in the street and drop a match.

  Maybe his Dad would be like Jack Lemmon in Missing, and bust the LA Death Squad story in a fit of grief-stricken political outrage. It didn’t seem likely, though.

  The engine engaged, loud near his head. They were going to drive a few yards and expose him to the air, like lifting a rock off a worm. He twisted to look at his feet. Moonlight fell on them as the car moved. He pulled in his hand so his fingers wouldn’t be squashed under a wheel and banged his elbow on armour-plate.

  Lying like an animal, extremities tucked in, he waited for bullets. The boots stood around, in a circle, examining him. He looked up black-clad legs, past weapon-heavy belts to flak-armoured chests and expressionless silver screens.

  He remembered the boy in Obregon Street, who had seemed crucified. Suddenly, he prayed for a bullet. The alternative was to be hung up and worked on.

  One of the squad popped a stud in his helmet and pulled it off. He was young, of indeterminate race, with long hair tied back.

  “I always like to be face to face,” he said.

  XII From the Corrido of Diego

  “This city grew, encompassing the village of my birth, spreading fingers across the state. Wherever I wandered, I would find myself back in Los Angeles.

  “In 1919, my corrido caught up with me.

  “I was fighting still, striking owners of canning factories and fruit orchards who treated my people as cruelly as any of the patrónes of old. Indeed, many were far worse: with a superfluity of labour, wastage was acceptable. If a union organizer was whipped or an overworked family starved, there were many in line for the job vacancies.

  “It was the year of the Great Influenza Epidemic. In a few months, a disease cut down more of my people than the worst sweatshop tyrant could in a lifetime. And what could I do? I could not kill a disease.

  “For ninety years, I killed the enemies of my people. But I was alone. The tide of death swept around me, rushing faster. I recognized how little I could do, but each moon night I fought harder, killed more.

  “That year, I left my zig-zag-zig in scores of hides.”

  “As grapes ripened, itinerant pickers gathered and were signed up for work. I was among their number. We moved into shanty towns near the vineyards, dormitory shacks.

  “During the harvest, I found a magazine under my cot at the dormitory, left by one of the few anglos who worked the vineyards. It was All Story Weekly, and it contained the third instalment of “The Curse of Capistrano”, a serial by Johnston McCulley.

  “The action was laid in an Old California that never was, a scramble of different times: the time of the mission, the time of Mexican rule, the time of the Gold Rush. The hero of this idiotic fiction was Don Diego de la Vega, a young noble who masked himself and rode as a renegade. This defender of maidenly virtue and justice called himself Zorro, the Fox. In this Zorro, I heard echoes of Joaquin Murieta and Salomon Pico. But in his mark, carved elegantly with the point of a blade rather than slashed with a claw, I saw myself.

  “As a people, we tell stories and sing songs. Nothing happens which does not become a story or a song. I had plainly crept into these legends, and in retelling they had seeped through to this anglo writer. I do not know where McCulley heard of the zig-zag-zig.

  “I was shocked for a moment, but assumed this obscure story would pass and be forgotten. It was, as even I could judge, not very good.”

  “The next year, I was running. For the first time, the night-work of Fox was not written off as that of an animal. The name of Diego came up in police investigations, and my description circulated to Pinkertons in the pay of those I killed. The science of the century nipped at my heels.

  “I took shelter in the centre of the growing city. In the old district around the fresh, new railroad station. Many thronged to California, looking for work in motion pictures. Cowboys and beauty queens paraded the streets, hoping to be discovered. Thousands had been employed by D. W. Griffith for Intolerance, whose sets still dominated a backlot.

  “In a mission (at last, I had returned to the world of my father), I heard a film company was looking for men of my people. They paid up to fifty cents a day.

  “Between moons I need to eat as anyone else, so I turned up at the United Artists studio. A crowd of red-headed Irishmen and cornfed Swedes were all shouting caramba and arriba at the tops of their voices. With many others, I was picked as an ‘extra’ in the new Douglas Fairbanks picture.

  “On my first day, I was singled out as a ‘type’ by an assistant director in knickerbockers and a knit cap. A costume was found for me, a carnival parody of the dress of the ricos, and a moustache gummed to my lip. I was given a hat and a sword and sent to the set.

  “These films are now called silent pictures, but the studio was noisier than a factory or battlefield. The air rang with the din of construction, the rattle of cameras, the shouting of directors, the chatter of extras and the boom of powder-puff explosions. Instrumental combos competed and clashed, supplying “mood music” for scenes of love, violence, tragedy and comedy.

  “The Fairbanks set represented an Old California hacienda or some such nonsense. Doug, as he was called by all, appeared – a notably diminutive hero, which explained why many taller men as qualified by looks as myself were unable to secure employment on his set. He was dressed in black, with a mask and a broad hat.

  “Short and tubby as he was, Doug Fairbanks was a hero who looked like a hero. His face, I was relieved to say, did not glow unnaturally. I have never killed anyone famous, which may account for my longevity.

  “In the scene being shot under the blazing arc-lights, Doug fought a villainous officer (a type I rememb
ered too well) to a stand-still, humiliating his defeated opponent by leaving a sword-mark on the man’s neck.

  “After the fight was filmed several times, a make-up man came on set and worked on the actor who played the dastardly officer. I stood nearby, momentarily fascinated as the makeup man drew in and elaborated a fresh scar. He stood back to admire his handiwork. Doug came over and grinned famously at the wound he was supposed to have inflicted.

  “It was a zig-zag-zig. My zig-zag-zig.

  “ ‘What’s the name of this picture?’ I asked another ‘extra’.

  “ ‘The Mark of Zorro,’ I was told.”

  XIII

  The breath was forced out of Stuart’s lungs as the killer cop knelt on Stuart’s chest, padded knee coming down hard. He slipped a knife from a sheath on his utility belt. Its serrated blade shone silver in moonlight.

  The knife would be the last thing Stuart ever saw.

  He had published a novel. That was something. A year ago, he’d have said he could die happy after the achievement.

  The cop raised the knife for a backhand slash. At the top of the arc, he paused for the briefest instant.

  He would have liked to have had sex.

  Stuart forced himself to look not at the blade but into the eyes of his murderer. He saw nothing.

  “Any last thoughts, nigger?”

  This was one time he wouldn’t think of the right thing to say twenty minutes after the moment passed.

  Then, in a rush, the weight was off him. An animal – a big dog? – barreled out of nowhere and struck the cop in the side, wrenching him off Stuart, carrying him across the street and sidewalk. They crashed against the chain-link shutters of a pawnshop.

  Under the three ball sign, the animal dropped the cop and trampled with barbed feet. There were scatters of blood.

  Stuart sat up, too astonished to hurt. The Death Squad stood about, stunned. The animal moved too swiftly for the mind to develop the eye’s photographs. It wasn’t a dog, it wasn’t a man.