Internecine

by David J. Schow

  Our Sister pulled a stopwatch out of her habit and clicked one of the studs, monitoring the sweep hand.

  “Who’ve we got here, today?” said Dandine, hands in pockets, no more casually interested than if we’d walked in on grannies watching a soap opera.

  “Oh,” our Sister said, “our Mr. G, here, devoutly hopes that one day he will become a U.S. senator. Or is it a congressman? Which one is more important?”

  “Fewer senators than congressmen,” I said, amazed I’d found the breath to speak. The mackerel aroma was killing me. Past that there was a stale, locker-room smell that wasn’t an olfactory bouquet, either. Something was venting from the pores of the guy on the leash that stank like nerve gas.

  “Oh, I believe you are correct, Mr. L. In that case, our friend here would be a congressman who wants to be a senator. Sister, may I have the honor of presenting our new friend, Mr. L?”

  The other Sister was panting with exertion as she humped over to greet me. When she had pulled back to cock her kick, I’d noticed that she had a clubfoot. Otherwise, the Sisters could have been . . . brothers. It had taken me this long to twig to the fact that these two were little old men, in nun drag. You’ll understand that I had a few other things to occupy my immediate scope of attention, but Dandine should have warned me, goddammit. Not that it made a scrap of difference.

  The other Sister’s handshake was not so vibrant. “Do excuse us, Mr. L,” she chirped. “We were right in the middle of this when our dear boy, Mr. D, gave us the pleasure of this social call. Normally, we would deflect such an interruption, but after all, this is for Mr. D, isn’t it?”

  She squeezed Dandine’s cheek between thumb and forefinger and gave him a matronly hug.

  “So what is this, Sister?” asked Dandine, amused. “Atonement for bad highway services?”

  “Oh, no,” said the first Sister. “The gentleman there, Mr. G, was very specific in his requests. He even brought his own waivers, which was very considerate. Time.” She clicked off the stopwatch.

  Mr. G thrashed around on the floor, trying to secure one knee so he could hoist himself anew. He grunted and snot spurted onto his chin. Veins bulged from his scarlet face, and his eyes were bloodshot, rimed in white. It hurt to look. I could feel my cock and balls trying to contract, to hide behind my lungs.

  “If he stays on the floor for less than a minute,” said the second Sister, “then we get another ‘go,’ as they say, until we’ve each had three tries. One would think that the urge would be to hold back, but he insisted we use all our might and kick as hard as we possibly can. The sensation is quite liberating, actually, for the good Sister and I. The urge to kick harder, every time, is somewhat empowering. . . . He has stood up, inside the minute, every time. So now we move to the next phase.”

  She smiled sweetly and returned to spoon more cat food into Mister G’s slack mouth. “You can lie down now, dear,” she said.

  Mr. G fell forward onto his face and rolled until he was spread-eagled. The Sister gingerly taped his violet, malignant-looking penis to his stomach, and separated his testicles as though arranging a lace doily.

  Then she stomped down hard on his left ball, using her heel.

  I felt a black hole swirl open from the top of my rib cage to mid thigh. I think my own mouth was hanging agape.

  Mr. G folded together like a flimsy lawn chair, convulsing.

  “Ow,” said Dandine. His bemused expression had not changed.

  “It is Mr. G’s wish,” said the first Sister, “to ultimately become handicapped through this abuse, in order to somehow curry sympathy with his constituents.” She leaned closer to us. “Personally, I think that part might be just a story.” She winked.

  Mr. G gradually flowered open again, and the other Sister stomped on his opposite gonad, this time with the club heel of her orthopedic shoe.

  “Oh, it’s my turn, now,” said our Sister. They exchanged places, her compatriot in the Calling clumping back over to us.

  “Now, my delightful Mr. D,” said the second one. “How may we serve you?”

  “I’m afraid it’s rather indelicate, Sister,” said Dandine. “Please know that I would not impose unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  “Tish-tosh,” she said. “Away with that.”

  I could not resist glancing past her. The first Sister repositioned Mr. G’s testicle as though placing a golf tee. Then, stomp. I was grinding my teeth.

  “I don’t want to compromise your position,” said Dandine, “but I need to ask you a few questions about NORCO.”

  Concern—maybe fear—crossed the second Sister’s expression like a passing storm cloud. “Oh, my,” she said. “This is serious.” With one weather eye on me she added, “We do not like NORCO. The Sisters try to have as little truck as possible with organizations of that caliber. We leave them alone; they leave us alone. Sometimes a disruption in the order, a change, is inevitable . . . alas.”

  Stomp!

  The guard/gardener lifted his hand in farewell as we exited. Dandine had already left a thick envelope on the sterling collection plate that was situated in a small nave within the reception parlor.

  “My compliments on the Bordeaux,” said Dandine.

  “Come again?”

  “The wine. Thanks.”

  Two plus two equals . . . “Wait—you took it from my apartment?”

  “Didn’t you notice?”

  “You lugged around a bottle of vino in that rucksack, all night?”

  “I didn’t have time to shop for the Sisters.”

  Suddenly I was exhausted all over again. Atmospheric pressure, or something, crushed my shoulders down. My headache resurged. “Well . . . I guess that’s better than leaving it as party supplies for those bums who swarmed over my place last night.”

  “Exactly, that’s the spirit.” He seemed pleased.

  “So the Sisters aren’t connected to NORCO?” I asked, recalling the second Sister’s dismay.

  “Remember all the little competing clubs I sketched out for you?” said Dandine. “Information brokerages exist in a gray zone, with friendlies and hostiles distributed according to whatever alliances are formed or dissolved within a given time. Like week to week. The Sisters exist outside of NORCO, which makes them especially valuable to me, even though NORCO might use them to gain some other piece of information tomorrow.”

  “The Sisters wouldn’t sell you out to NORCO?”

  “I wouldn’t completely rule it out. But information spoils very quickly. They would tell NORCO useless truths. Unless NORCO decided to cross the line with them, and that’s a bridge you can never un-burn. Put yourself in the position of that fellow in the Cub Scout suit. Sooner or later under such coercion you might change your loyalties.”

  “So the trick is to utilize the information before the other side can,” I said. “And make sure by the time they get the news, it’s academic.”

  The Sisters were like a mom-and-pop boutique, maintaining a safe distance from the Walmart of NORCO.

  Right now I really, deeply, and truly wanted to talk to Katy Burgess about her pet politician, G. Johnson Jenks, and I admit that it would be to try to score points with Dandine that might keep me in this puzzling game until I could see something that was really, deeply, and truly a revelation. But it might also be a test of Katy’s mettle and grit, and that intrigued me, too. Against the rules of contact, just now. But maybe later . . .

  There had to be one single person I could contact that NORCO had not covered. The idea was a devilish itch inside my head. One person from my planet. One resource I could contribute. It was there but I couldn’t call it up; right on the tip of my brain, making me feel the way you feel when you forget your own phone number.

  I saw Dandine’s expression click back to combat-neutral. Then his eyes glinted with a light that suggested he was revving up to work fresh, new violence.

  A muscular GTO, cherry red under about eighty coats of lacquer, was parked alongside the Town Car, its butt
canted upward over fat racing slicks. A well-worn New Balance athletic shoe with gaudy neon-colored treads was sticking out the driver’s side window, chocked between eye-searing chrome trim and the rearview mirror. Some metalzoid post-punk madness was churning out of the sound system (the door speakers were blown and frazzled, diluting the effect of the bass) and exhaled smoke rolled out of the cabin. I could see the top of someone’s head—dirty blondish hair reaching every which way. At our approach, the head levitated a couple of millimeters so that stark blue eyes could spy on us, through the black leather gap between the top of the dash and the curve of the steering wheel.

  “Yo,” said the guy behind the wheel.

  “Declan Morris Zetts,” said Dandine. “He likes people to call him DMZ.”

  “The Zetts?” I asked.

  “Mm-hm. Excuse us for a minute, would you? Thanks.” He proceeded without waiting whether to see if I’d accommodate him or not. I played it safe and hung back near the Town Car.

  Zetts dismounted his charger with a loosey-goosey, whazzup attitude I guessed was his normal operating mode. He was wearing ravaged jeans and a NASCAR T-shirt, untucked. When he saw the expression on Dandine’s face, incoming, his smile faded and he seemed to contract, like a pet awaiting a thrashing.

  “My bad, right?” he said.

  Dandine stopped with his nose an inch away from the kid’s. Zetts squirmed in place, trying not to look at his master’s eyes. Then Dandine grabbed his head in both hands and lifted him off the ground, pressing their foreheads together so all Zetts could see was a single, gigantic eye, finding him wanting. I know this because my stepbrother used to do it to me . . . only I was eight, he was seventeen, and my version seemed less physically impressive. Zetts’s feet dangled in the air. He might as well have been stuck on a forklift.

  “What’s the difference between a convertible and a sedan?” asked Dandine. “Let’s try something simpler, something even your lump of brain jelly can understand; What’s the difference between a blue car and a black car? Still too tough?”

  “It was dark in that fuckin garage, hey—

  “Shut up. In one single moment of apocalyptic imbecility, you have set off a bomb that can put us all under anonymous headstones. That man standing over there is just one of your victims. I am another. Guess who’s going to be the third.”

  “That would be, uh, me—right?”

  “Think carefully before you tell me a story. You’ve had all night to get it right, and it had better not be a fairy tale.”

  He released Zetts, who had to grab the door of the GTO to keep from falling. His feet flailed in the dirt and gravel of the lot.

  “Shit, dude, there was a security guy in one’a those golf cart things there! I had no cover, nada; I had to like get under the goddamn car!”

  “You’d better have grease on a shirt, to prove it.”

  “Your fuckin wish is my fuckin command!” Zetts grumbled, trying to save face. He dug his proof out of the backseat of the GTO, a black, long-sleeved tee with a white logo (FUCK FUCKITY FUCK FUCKFUCK)—ruined by his crawl.

  “Zetts, did it ever occur to you not to wear a black shirt with big white letters on it for a stealth job, a drop job?”

  “You said it was a sixty-second job, in and out, max! I was under that fuckin car for half a fuckin hour! Fuck, man! Besides, nobody in the world would be stupid enough to take the key if they like didn’t know what it was for!”

  I looked around for something else to do while they chatted.

  “Zetts, meet Mr., ah, Lamb.”

  “Meetcha,” Zetts said. It took a moment for him to blanch. “Oh . . . shit. You’re kidding, right?”

  Dandine waited for Zetts’s synapses to fire.

  “You’re not kidding,” said Zetts. “Aw, geez . . . fuck me, huh?”

  “Tell me they haven’t bought you,” said Dandine. “Whether you remain whole enough to smoke that bag of stinkweed in your glove compartment rather depends on your answer—dude.”

  “Oh, no, waitaminute, no, no, no, no—it ain’t like that at all.” Now he was making eye contact, earnestly. “Totally no. I work for you. I so do not work for anyone else. You might think I’m a moron, but if there’s three things I am it’s loyal, loyal, and loyal. No. Uh-uh. Negatory, man. I would never—”

  “Because you know what would happen to you,” Dandine interposed.

  “Damn fuckin straight, I do. Look, even I am not that dumb, okay? You tell me who to hit and I’ll fuckin do ’em myself, right now, for free.”

  “Did you bring my kit?”

  “Yes, sir, fuckin-A I did, sir.”

  “Then you and I will talk later.”

  Zetts retrieved a black Halliburton case from his trunk, still contrite. “Anything else you need,” he said. “I mean it. Anything.”

  Dandine nodded. “I know.”

  Then he handed the case to me.

  “We’ve got NORCO all the way up our ass, to our scalps,” said Dandine. “Alicia Brandenberg is not the target. It appears that I am.”

  I felt as lost as ever. Outside the window of the Town Car, the world of the walking dead drove onward to their fates, doing their best to gridlock the northbound 101.

  “According to the Sisters,” he said, “NORCO has activated an entire working cell to take me out of the picture. You and me—we both stumbled. You found the hit-kit. I was supposed to be the fall guy for the aborted hit. Together, we messed up NORCO’s play, and NORCO usually responds to interference in a totalitarian way.” He glanced at me. “Imagine if you inadvertently derailed some oil conglomerate’s plan to hike gas prices. They wouldn’t be jolly.”

  “Then, why the brouhaha with our little friend, Choral?”

  “Because Alicia Brandenberg is the excuse. Because NORCO never pulls a one-way op unless it benefits them somehow.”

  I took a pull from a sports bottle of water. My sunglasses hurt my head, but the lingering overcast of the day was still too bright to bear without them. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Maybe I’m tired. But I still don’t follow.”

  “NORCO is positioning one of their bought puppets for political office, so say the Sisters. In your terms, it’s Jenks or Ripkin—one or the other—and they never field puppets without leverage.”

  “So, Alicia Brandenberg,” I said.

  “Yes—mixed up with one or both.”

  “She’s Jenks’s campaign manager.”

  “But according to you, and according to the dossier, she’s familiar with Ripkin, too. What if it’s more than a cordial exchange of evidence, like two lawyers sharing paper for plaintiff and defendant? What if it’s deeper?”

  Possibly a rhetorical question. Or maybe Dandine was just asking himself, putting the thought out into the air for scrutiny.

  “The thing that kills me” (and Dandine said this without a scrap of irony) “is Choral’s story. Linda’s story. This Brandenberg person does not walk like a NORCO duck. She whiffs more like an indie contractor. Because if NORCO had positioned her just to be set up, that seems wasteful. Choral’s description didn’t make her sound like an idiot. So now I’m thinking . . .” He paused. Looked at me with that odd head-tilt. Then said, “Tell me what I’m thinking.”

  Keeping track of this plot had become like finding a needle in a haystack—of needles. I let free association and momentum move my lips, “You’re thinking that Alicia Brandenberg is another of your ‘random factors.’ Aligned with no one. On her own. Working to her own ends. Maybe playing both candidates against each other. But NORCO found out about her, and moved in, made a threat; made a deal, more likely. So she works in their interest, but not for them, which would explain a gap or two.”

  “And she calls them when her fake assassination plot curdles,” said Dandine. “Yeah. I’m liking the way you think, Conrad Maddox. Whomever prevails, NORCO can claim they were looking out for his image. They didn’t have a puppet—they’re waiting to move in and claim one or the other.”

  “With you dead as a by
-product? Some kind of diversion?”

  “They don’t tell anyone to frame me. They tell Alicia to tell Choral to tell Varga to do it. Everyone involved only knows two-thirds of the story, and NORCO makes sure the various pawns never compare notes. And they get rid of me in the bargain, as a bonus.”

  “But why would NORCO want to get rid of you?”

  This was the question for which I could see Dandine steeling himself. “Because I’ve been a bug up their craw ever since I quit.”

  My water tried to snort out the wrong tube. “Whoa—back up a second, there, Secret Agent Man. You worked for NORCO? You’re, like, a disgruntled ex-employee? I think I need to get out of the car, now, and just go get killed, you know, quietly, by myself.”

  “I freelanced. When I stopped, I thought all accounts were settled. Turns out NORCO doesn’t have a retirement program. They hate losing anything, perceiving it as a gain for a competitor. It’s rather like shredding documents.”

  “Shit, I could’ve told you that. The ad business works the same way.” Hell, the whole world worked that way. “If you can’t be assimilated, your throat gets cut. Figuratively. Financially. Credibilitywise. The only difference is, we don’t blow people up or shoot them in the head.” Even as I said it, I knew it was facile and bogus. We did kill people—we destroyed their lives with commerce, we sabotaged careers, we pulled our own smug versions of dirty trickery. How many strangers do you know whose lives you wouldn’t casually sacrifice for ten grand? For five? For a free meal at a fancy restaurant?

  Advertising killed people all kinds of ways. We generally just kept the bodies alive. Better spending potential, there.

  All Dandine said was, “NORCO doesn’t advertise.”

  “In my field, the Holy Grail is still word-of-mouth.” I thumped the armrest out of frustration. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”

  “I didn’t trust you yesterday,” he said. “I was having enough difficulty marshaling your cooperation. Or getting you to believe in NORCO in the first place. I was hoping it wouldn’t come up.” He shrugged. “It did, just now.”

  I phased out, not wanting to look at him. Trying to intelligently frame my next question. Five or six car-lengths ahead of us, an LAPD metro cruiser flaunted its privilege in the fast lane. We were stuck behind a laggard, rickety pickup loaded with pool-cleaning gear. Beside me was one of those garishly legended radio station promo vans, the kind that wander the city and give prizes to folks displaying the correct bumper sticker. Its pilot was wearing dense mirrorshades and headphones, lost to the beat of some flavor-of-the-week band. It was one big clashing riot of visible ballyhoo—Web sites, frequencies, call-in numbers, all over it.