Ring Game

by Pete Hautman

  So far, Hyatt had visited a health food store, an espresso shop, and now Dunkin’ Donuts, all of which were too public for their purposes.

  “The man’s diet get worse every stop he make.”

  “They said he abused his temple,” Chip said.

  “Say what?”

  “That’s why Polly and Rupe had to shun him.”

  “Shun? I thought he got his ass kicked out. I heard he was skimmin’.”

  “They said he was abusing his body.”

  Chuckles laughed. “You mean I eat a longjohn I lose my job?”

  “Hyatt Hilton was an Elder. You’re only a deacon. Higher offices demand higher standards of behavior.”

  “Good. I like them longjohns.”

  Hyatt Hilton pushed open the glass door and ambled over to his Beamer. He wore a loose white collarless shirt, a pair of baggy trousers with vertical red-and-gold stripes and a pair of slip-on huaraches. He climbed into his car and pulled a pastry out of the bag without seeming to notice the yellow Corvette parked across the street.

  “What’s that he got? A fritter?”

  Chip did not reply. Hyatt began to eat.

  Chuckles licked his lips. “It look good. They really kick him out for eating donuts?”

  Chip said, “Abusing his temple.” He didn’t like talking about this. The whole situation with the Elders was very unstable, very need-to-know. Chuckles didn’t need to know, even if he was Head of Security. “There he goes,” Chip said.

  The Beamer pulled out into traffic. Chuckles let it get a half block away, then followed.

  Chip said, “It was not strategic.”

  “Say what?”

  “The butyric acid. We should have planted it in his garage with a small explosive device, then triggered it from a safe distance. That would have been strategic.”

  Chuckles said, “You ask me, the whole idea sucked. I mean, Rupe, he just don’t have Polly’s cojones. She bad.” Chuckles accelerated to catch a light, staying two cars behind the Beamer. “Sometime she scare me.”

  “The concept was sound,” said Chip. The butyric acid had been his idea. “The execution was not strategic.”

  “Whatever. I still like Polly’s approach a whole lot better. You want to make a point, you break a bone.”

  Chip wished, not for the first time, that his bosses, Rupe and Polly, would sing in harmony. Ever since Hyatt’s excommunication, he’d been getting conflicting sets of instructions. Rupe would tell him to do something, and then Polly would tell him what he was really supposed to do. In this case, Rupe had asked him to suggest a nonviolent way of making an impression on Hyatt Hilton, and Chip had suggested the butyric acid. He was familiar with butyric acid from his years working with Operation Rescue. A few ounces of butyric down the roof vents could shut down an abortion factory for weeks. Rupe had approved the action. Rupert Chandra abhorred violence, but had no qualms about using aromatherapy to alter human behavior.

  Polly suffered under no such strictures. After Rupe had issued his instructions to Chip and Chuckles, Polly had invited Chip into her office for a private talk. “I want you to go ahead with the butyric acid plan,” she said, locking the office door. “But tomorrow, after Hy’s had a chance to get himself smelling good again—just about the time he starts thinking we’ve done all we’re going to do—that’s when I want you and Chuckles to go talk to him. Make sure he gets the point.” She planted a long pink fingernail at the top of Chip’s sternum, raked it slowly down his chest until it caught at the first button. “But don’t say anything to Rupe, understand?”

  Chip understood that Rupert Chandra was to be shielded from such things. Rupe was the holy man. Polly was the hands-on Elder, the one who gave the difficult orders, the one who got things done. “How long you want us to talk to him?” Chip asked, standing at attention, his arms at his sides, the way Polly liked it.

  Polly began to unbutton Chip’s shirt. “Until you hear something break.” She tugged his shirttails out of his khakis.

  “What should we break?” Chip asked as Polly unbuckled his belt.

  “How about a foot?” She unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans. “Is that easy to do?” She had his erect penis in her hand.

  Chip’s left knee was shaking. “Sure,” he croaked. His hands wanted to be on her, but Polly had made it clear to him on previous occasions that he was not to touch her. He had to simply stand there, gritting his teeth as she milked him, slowly stroking, staring into the flared nacelles of his nostrils. It took him about fifteen gasping seconds to come.

  “Good,” Polly said as she squeezed the last drops of semen from his softening penis. “Break his foot.” She wiped her hands with a Kleenex, took a seat behind her desk, and turned on her computer. Chip tucked and zipped and buckled and got the hell out of there. It was always the same. This was the fourth time Polly had jerked him off while asking him to perform a task—usually something with which she did not want to bother Rupe. Chip wasn’t sure how he felt about it, but it was part of the job.

  Later, when Polly had left for the day, he returned to her office and retrieved the inseminated Kleenex from her wastebasket. Chip did not like to leave his genetic code where anybody could walk off with it.

  Chip did not tell Chuckles about his private encounters with the First Eldress. It was embarrassing, and besides, Chuckles was black. Chip did not consider himself to be a racist, but it would never have occurred to him to talk about white sex with a black man. All he’d said to Chuckles was that Polly had given them another job to do.

  Chuckles hadn’t acted surprised. In fact, he’d seemed to know all about it. Behind the Corvette seats lay an eighteen-inch pipe wrench, which Chuckles had purchased that morning at Menard’s.

  “Polly understands strategy,” said Chip.

  The BMW turned east on Lake Street. Chuckles followed.

  Chip said, “You think he knows we’re here?”

  “You shittin’ me? Man, I didn’t go with this paint so’s I could fade in the trees. Course he knows. Give him time to think on it, repent his sins. Let him get scareder. Sooner or later, he know we gonna be educatin’ him. The scareder he is, the better it’ll take.”

  That morning Crow had begun his day with a renewed sense of purpose.

  Instead of brooding over whether he should pursue his investigation of Hyatt Hilton, he would simply dive into it, find out what he could, report back to Axel, and be home in time to receive Debrowski’s promised call. He decided that the most direct approach would yield the most productive vein, so after pouring a few cups of coffee into his stomach he hopped in the Goat and drove over to Hyatt Hilton’s place of residence. He would get his information direct from the horse’s mouth. It might work—a guy like Hy, once you got him going, couldn’t help but yammer on about himself. It would be worth a try.

  He turned onto Hy’s block just as Hy was climbing into his BMW. Crow accelerated, thinking to flag him down, but as Hy pulled away, a yellow Corvette pulled out between Hy and Crow.

  Crow followed, keeping the Beamer in sight. Hy turned left on 24th Street. The Corvette also turned left. At Hennepin, Hyatt turned right, followed by the vette and by Crow. Hyatt stopped his car in front of Tao Foods. The Corvette passed him, then pulled over to the curb. Crow rumbled by the vette, glancing at its occupants as he passed. Two men, a pepper and salt combo. Crow circled the block, then took up a position on the far side of Hennepin and waited. What would it cost to open a health food store? Crow was attracted by the idea of a retail store. He saw himself sitting behind a counter, people waking in the front door and giving him money. Health food was a growth market, wasn’t it? Crow let the fantasy take shape, then rejected it. Too many weirdo customers. Hy came out of Tao Foods with a small bag, got into his car, and drove off, followed by the Corvette.

  After a quick stop at Caribou Coffee, Hyatt proceeded to Dunkin’ Donuts. The vette parked across the street, and Crow found a spot just up the block. He was becoming increasingly curious about the me
n in the Corvette. Could Axel have hired someone else to investigate Hilton? It seemed highly unlikely. Were they cops? Not in a yellow Corvette. Bill collectors? That was possible. Maybe they were looking to repo Hyatt’s BMW.

  By the time Hyatt reached Caribou Coffee, he had become convinced that the Corvette was, in fact, following him. Once inside the coffee shop he was able to get a closer look as the car drove past. He recognized Chip Bouchet’s pug-nosed profile through the tinted glass. Just seeing him brought the smell of butyric acid flooding into his olfactory memory. Hyatt couldn’t see the driver clearly, but he guessed it was the one they called Chuckles, the same guy who had hoisted him into the dumpster a few weeks back. Hyatt’s face assumed a rigid smile, and his jaw began to pulse. He ordered a triple cappuccino to go. As his milk was being foamed, Hyatt noticed the yellow GTO.

  At Dunkin’ Donuts he became certain that both the Corvette and the GTO were tailing him. Were they both from the ACO? Hyatt couldn’t get a good look at the guy in the GTO. In any case, it didn’t look like the sort of vehicle of which Polly would approve. And what was with these yellow cars? Hyatt considered his options as he devoured his apple fritter. He thought about pulling up in front of a police station, going inside, and making a complaint. That would solve his immediate problem, but since no one was breaking any laws, it wouldn’t prevent them from turning up on his back bumper the next day to continue their program, whatever that might be.

  He needed a plan that would not only make them go away today, but would convince them to stay away. Hyatt imagined various scenarios, some of which gave him great satisfaction, but all of which ultimately turned out to be implausible due to the fact that he lacked heavy weaponry, martial arts training, or super powers. He imagined a brace of rockets erupting from his exhaust pipes, taking out both yellow cars, sending up twin columns of fire and smoke. That would be cool.

  Hyatt’s eyes dropped to the gas gauge. He would have to figure out something soon. He wished he had a car phone. When the money started to flow, he would have cell phones in all his cars. Thinking about cell phones made him think about radio waves, and thinking of radio waves made him think of Jimmy Swann, and thinking about Jimmy Swann made Hyatt Hilton smile.

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Maybe he tryin’ to score.”

  Chip frowned and lowered his chin. “Crack street. Everything boarded up. Looks like Beirut.”

  “When you in Beirut?”

  “I saw it on TV.”

  A row of neglected Victorians lined the west side of the street, each one competing with its neighbor in a race toward disintegration. Several of them had plywood panels instead of windows, and fluorescent orange notices tacked to their front doors. The opposite side of the street contained a handful of less distinguished but similarly neglected homes; three vacant lots; and a cheaply constructed, two-story, cedar-sided apartment building decorated by a multicolored skirt of spray-painted squiggles along its length. Five young men lounged on its front steps, working their way through a case of malt liquor. Other than the men on the stoop, the street was abandoned.

  Hyatt Hilton pulled over across the street from the apartment building, in front of a sagging gray Victorian, one of the few houses on the block with glass in the windows. Chuckles stopped a hundred feet behind him. For several seconds, nothing happened. Hyatt sat in his car. The men on the stoop continued to laugh and talk and drink. After half a minute, one of the young men, a lanky, tea-colored youth wearing a sleeveless white, red, and black Chicago Bulls shirt that hung nearly to his knees, stood up and ambled down the steps to the curb. He leaned forward, shading his eyes, and peered across the street at the BMW. Hyatt’s hand appeared, waving him away. The kid turned back to his friends and gave a theatrical shrug. One of them said something, and the kid turned toward the Corvette.

  “Here he comes,” said Chuckles.

  “Tell him to get lost,” Chip said.

  The kid slowly approached the car, his head ducking and weaving as he tried to see through the glass.

  Chuckles lowered his window. “Sa’n’?” he said.

  Chip didn’t know how these black guys did it, made a whole sentence—What’s Happening?—into a single grunt.

  The kid bobbed his head, checking out the interior of the car, grinning to give them a look at the gold cap on his front tooth. He looked even younger up close, maybe fourteen or fifteen, with an advanced case of acne.

  Chip leaned over and said, “Hey! We don’t want any of your crack, Pizzaface.”

  The kid took a step back, a stony expression on his cratered features.

  Chuckles said, “Never mind him. He disrespec’ his own momma.”

  The kid rolled his thin shoulders. “’Scoo’.” He turned and glided back across the street to his place on the stoop.

  Chuckles raised his window. “Man, don’t you want people to like you?”

  “Goddamn crackheads,” Chip growled.

  “They just tryin’ to get by. Hey, there he go!”

  Hyatt had left his car and was walking quickly up the walk toward the gray Victorian.

  “What do you think? We go in after him?” Chip said.

  “I don’t go in no place blind. Uh-uh.”

  “I’ve got to urinate.”

  “Just hold it. I’ll piss my pants ’fore I walk in on some thing I don’t know who it is or what it is about, situation like to get me capped.”

  Chip crossed his arms. “Death doesn’t scare me,” he said.

  “I know. You fucking immortal.”

  “You better watch your mouth.”

  “Hey, man, I believe, all right? I regenerate my cells till kingdom come. Only I don’t think I’m so advanced that I can regenerate ’em fast enough to close up a bullet hole ’fore it kills me. You know what I’m saying?”

  19

  I teach that all men are mad.

  —Horace

  HYATT HADN’T SEEN JIMMY Swann in two years. For a long time they’d had a successful partnership going, a little piece of the local cocaine trade. Hyatt had been retailing grams out of Ambrosia Foods while Jimmy dealt out of his attache case, making the rounds of the downtown brokerages, law offices, and night clubs on Friday afternoons. They weren’t exactly heavyweights. A couple ounces a week, that was plenty. Every few weeks Jimmy would phone his second cousin down in Florida and have him ship up another quarter kilo inside a bundle of Tampa-made coronas. Hyatt would foot half the bill, they’d spend an evening around Jimmy’s scale weighing out grams and quarter ounces and smoking the cigars, which were not bad, and then they’d go their separate ways until their inventory once again ran low. The arrangement suited Hyatt, since Jimmy took all the risk of bringing the cocaine into his home. Hyatt didn’t have to put out a dime until the product was in his hands. He’d never been sure what Jimmy got out of their arrangement. Maybe he just liked the company.

  In time, the increasing popularity of freebase and crack had slowly shifted the bulk of the local coke trade from a circle of disaffected, disorganized anglo hipsters—which included Jimmy and Hy—to a more comprehensive and better-organized network of black and Latino gangs. Hyatt quit dealing and focused his energies on trying to get the ACO—at that time little more than an idea—off the ground. Jimmy had continued to buy and sell coke until his cousin got cracked down in Tampa. Hyatt hadn’t heard from Jimmy since then. He’d meant to call, but what with one thing and another he’d just never got around to it.

  Jimmy had always been peculiar. He’d never had much to say, except when he was high, at which times he talked continually, but even then he didn’t say much worth hearing. Toward the end of their partnership, Jimmy had developed an interest in radio waves, which had led to his wearing a headband woven from copper wire. When asked about it, Jimmy would say only that it protected him from the transmissions of “unfriendly entities.”

  Jimmy had also acquired a shotgun during that period, a Browning twelve-gauge auto, for which he had traded a half oun
ce of coke. He had wrapped the entire gun in Reynolds Wrap to prevent the unfriendly entities from “fucking with it” and kept the foil-clad weapon by his side at all times.

  Jimmy’s preoccupation with radio waves had caused Hyatt to think of him that morning, but it was the shotgun that had inspired him to visit. He was reasonably sure that Jimmy would be happy to see him.

  Hy leaned on the front doorbell. “C’mon c’mon c’mon,” he muttered, grinding his thumb into the button.

  A muffled voice came from the other side of the door. “What do you want?”

  “It’s me, Jimmy. Hy. Hyatt Hilton.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want you to let me in!” Hy looked down the block. He saw the yellow GTO parked at the far end of the block. The Corvette had drifted right up behind his BMW. The passenger window rolled down to reveal Chip Bouchet’s swinish visage.

  “I’m busy,” Jimmy said.

  Hyatt said, “I got a situation here, Jimmy. Let me in!”

  Three long seconds passed.

  “You come to pay me my money?” Jimmy asked.

  Hyatt thought, What money? He said, “Yeah. Whatever. Just open the door.”

  “You can come in, but your friends stay outside.”

  “They aren’t my friends!”

  Hyatt heard a series of locks being opened. The front door swung open, and Hyatt stepped inside. The door closed. Hyatt blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The first thing he saw was a crinkled aluminum foil log about six inches in diameter and four feet long. The log had three pair of antennae jutting out at odd angles, with foil flags at the tip of each antenna. The fact that it was approximately the right length and that Jimmy Swann was pointing it at his groin led Hyatt to conclude that this was the latest stage in the evolution of Jimmy Swann’s shotgun.