by Pete Hautman
“I’m looking for Charles Thickening,” he said, producing a smile made ghastly by a freshly broken tooth. “Chuckles.”
“And you are …?”
“Arling Biggie. A friend of his. A good friend.” Biggie sniffed through his good nostril, producing a liquid gurgle in his sinuses. “He’s a member of my health club.”
Benjy noticed that Arling Biggie’s rather large hands had clenched into fists. He smiled. “Would you like me to page him?”
“How about if you just tell me where he is. I’d like to surprise him.”
Benjy’s smile broadened. “I understand. Just go on up to the second floor.” He pointed to the stairway at the far end of the foyer. “Turn right at the top of the steps, go all the way to the end of the hall, and turn right again. You’ll come to a door marked ‘Maintenance.’ That’s the Security Annex. I think Chuckles is in there.”
Biggie nodded and headed off toward the Security Annex. Benjy looked up at the security camera mounted on the wall and wished that such things worked in both directions. It would be interesting to observe Chuckles’s reaction to the appearance of his good friend Arling Biggie. He was thinking about going up there himself to watch when the front door chimed again, announcing the arrival of yet another bandaged man, this one accompanied by a leather-jacketed woman.
49
If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
—Nora Ephron
“IT’S A GOOD THING I don’t play games,” Debrowski said. “You’d be too confused to breathe.”
Crow laughed. “What do you call jumping out of the car and walking away? That’s not playing games?”
“That’s reality, Crow. It’s not a game unless you give do-overs. You weren’t going to get a do-over.”
“Yeah? I’m not so sure I like the sound of that. In any case, I really am sorry. I was an idiot. I really did think you wanted me to leave and go back to the States.”
“Crow—you’re doing it again. Don’t try to make it right. Just be sorry.”
“Hey, cut me some slack here. I’m trying.” Crow turned into the parking lot of an old school building.
“Me, too. Is this the place?”
“This is it. You want to live forever, this is where you buy your ticket.”
“Tell me again what we’re doing here?”
“Just stirring the muck.”
The slim, dark-skinned man at the reception desk greeted them with a cautious smile. “One God?” he asked.
“Two,” said Crow. The guy didn’t get it. No sense of humor. He said, “I’m looking for a fellow who works here. I don’t know his name.”
The man peaked his black eyebrows, waiting for more.
Crow used his middle finger to push up the tip of his nose, giving the man a look into his nostrils. He held the pose until the man’s confused look suddenly gave way to comprehension.
“Oh! You are looking for Charles Bouchet!” He laughed. “We call him Chip. He’s our Security Chief.”
“Is he here?”
“No he’s not. I haven’t seen him yet today.”
“Do you expect him?”
“Yes. No. I mean, I expected him this morning, but apparently there was some error in our scheduling. I really couldn’t say when he’ll be in. Is there something I could help you with?”
“Is Rupert Chandra in?”
“Dr. Chandra is on sabbatical.”
“Do you know how I can reach him?”
The man shook his head. “I’m sorry. He won’t be available until September sixth.”
“Where is he?”
“I can’t help you with that. I’m sorry.”
“Let me ask you something, ah, what’s your name?”
“Benjy.”
“Benjy. Thank you. Suppose that an insanely violent man walked in here and threatened you, and only Rupert Chandra could convince him to spare your life. How would you go about contacting him?”
Benjy licked his lips. “The situation seems unlikely to arise.”
“Really?” Crow look at Debrowski. “What do you think?”
“It could happen,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen.”
“In such a case, I would probably offer to make a phone call,” Benjy said quickly. “But it might not do any good.”
“And why is that?”
“I have Ms. DeSimone’s cell phone number. They might choose to ignore it. In fact, they’ve as much as told me they would not be taking any calls.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
“Dr. Chandra and Ms. DeSimone.”
Crow picked up the telephone handset and pointed at the keypad. “Punch it in,” he said.
Benjy slowly punched in a number. Crow listened to five rings before a sleepy woman’s voice at the other end said, “Hello?”
“Hello. Who am I speaking to, please?”
“Depends,” said the voice. “Who are you?”
“This is Joe Crow.”
Crow listened to the response. He turned to Debrowski and said, “It’s Carmen.”
“Oh man!” Chuckles groaned. He was staring at the monitors, following Arling Biggie’s progress through the building. “He’s comin’ right on up here. What was my man Benjy thinking? I’m gonna have to have me a talk with him.”
“Maybe Bigg just wants his limo back,” Flowrean said.
“My guess, the man wants a piece of me first.” He stood and opened a tall white cabinet by the door. Inside were two shotguns, a rifle, and assorted other weaponry. Chuckles selected a twelve-ounce leather-and-lead slapper sap. He closed the cabinet, reconsidered, went back in, and slipped a stun gun into his jacket pocket.
“I mention step number eight?” he asked.
Flowrean shook her head. “You said there was only seven.”
“I add my own. It’s the same as the Boy Scouts.” He smacked the slapper against his palm. “Be prepared.”
“How about if I go talk to him?” Flowrean said.
Chuckles pointed at monitor number three, which showed Bigg advancing down the hallway. “If you gonna do it, you best do it now.”
Flo did not know exactly what had happened between Bigg and Chuckles, but judging from the condition of Bigg’s face, it had been unpleasant. They stood facing each other, ten feet apart, in the hallway outside the Security Annex. Bigg’s mouth was open, but nothing was coming out.
Flo smiled and tossed Bigg a set of keys. Bigg caught them, recognized the key fob, and grunted as if he’d been elbowed in the gut.
Flo said, “It’s parked downtown, on Tenth between Hennepin and LaSalle.”
Bigg said, “You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay.”
“I wondered what happened to you,” he said. “I tried to call you last night from the hospital.”
“I wasn’t home,” she said reasonably.
Bigg looked pointedly at the door marked “Maintenance.” “Is ‘Chuckles’ in there?”
“He said to say he’s real sorry about what happened.”
“I doubt it.” He looked again at the limo keys and pocketed them. “What about you? You want to explain to me how come I got hit over the head? I thought we had a date.”
Flo felt a twinge of guilt. “I’m real sorry about that, too. I got into the car, I thought it was you driving. Where were you?”
“I was in the alley, stuck in between a couple of dumpsters, knocked out cold by your friend in there.”
“Oh.” She had thought it might be something like that. “I didn’t know that.”
“Why did he do that, Flowrean?”
“I think maybe he was mad about the gym. You know. When you talked to him. He didn’t like that.”
“I did that for you. You said he was bothering you.”
Another twinge of guilt came and went. “I didn’t know him so good then. Chuckles is really a nice guy, Bigg. You don’t have to be mad at him anymore. You could go get your limo now. Everything is even-steven,” she said
brightly.
“It doesn’t feel even-steven to me. He hit me with a wrench. He coulda killed me.”
“Chuckles would never kill anybody. He just wanted to meet me.” She smiled happily, hoping to infect Bigg with her cheer.
Bigg regarded her balefully for several seconds, one red eye blinking. He thrust a forefinger at her. “You want to know what I think, Flowrean? I think you set me up.”
“Me?” What was he talking about? She hadn’t even wanted to go out with him in the first place, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to be kidnapped by Chuckles—though she didn’t mind it so much after the fact.
“You’re crazier than a fucking fruitcake, you and your dead fish. Where do you people come from? What the hell did I do to deserve this shit?”
Flo’s smile collapsed. She was trying to be nice, and he was being mean to her. “You look at me,” she accused. “In the mirror.”
“I look at you all right. So what? That makes it okay for your boyfriend to crack my skull open? You better find a new place to work out, honey, ’cause you’re not welcome at Bigg’s anymore. You or your nigger boyfriend.”
Bigg made a move toward the door. Flo stepped back. Let him go in, get himself hurt. See if she cared. She backed off a few more steps. Bigg had one hand on the knob and was pulling the door open when she saw a revolver appear in his other hand. Flo’s heart stopped; she reversed direction, forcing a great gout of energized air out through her throat. The resulting shriek, had it been a half step higher, might have shattered every window in the building.
“Where is she?”
“Where are you, Carmen?” Crow’s brow furrowed. “She says she’s in the middle of a cornfield. She—what’s that?” He blinked, then said to Debrowski, “She says she met Wayne Savage.”
“Who is Wayne Savage?”
“I have no idea.”
“He’s on TV,” said Benjy.
Crow opened his mouth to ask Carmen what she was doing in the middle of a cornfield talking on Polly DeSimone’s cell phone when she said, “If you see Hy, tell him I’m not gonna do it.”
“Do what? Get married?”
“You tell him and his pig-nose friend I don’t wanna do it.”
An enraged banshee or some similar creature chose that moment to let out a heart-stopping shriek. The sound echoed through the halls, raising the hairs on the back of Crow’s neck.
“Lord God in heaven, what the hell was that?” asked Benjy.
Crow looked at Debrowski. Her eyes were as wide as he’d ever seen them. He said to Benjy, “You don’t know what that was?”
Benjy shook his head.
“Then tell me this: Is there a young woman named Flowrean on the premises?”
As Benjy nodded, they heard the sound of three gunshots.
Over the past twenty-four hours, Chuckles’s thinking had become remarkably clear. The ongoing conquest of Flowrean Peeche—one inch at a time—had boosted his self-confidence far above its usual plateau. Every increment of his ongoing seduction had come off perfectly. He had waited patiently for the opportunity, he had grasped it, and he had never once lost sight of his goal. This was power, such as he had never before experienced. He now saw himself as a force of nature, a conductor of life. He saw himself as a player.
Was this the seventh step? Be God? If so, there was irony here, for his new vantage point revealed the church as a simple conceptual tool, a way of thinking that could be subsumed into a larger world view, embracing not only the Amaranthine Principles, but also Flowrean Peeche, his Good Luck Charlie tattoo, and chocolate-frosted longjohns.
The visit from Bigg was a minor ripple in the overall plan, an easily handled glitch, nothing more.
Chuckles’s strategy was simple. As soon as Bigg came through the door—assuming that Flowrean couldn’t get rid of him—he planned to zap him with the stun gun, then give him a tap on the back of his head with the slapper. The combo should be as effective as the pipe wrench, maybe better. He positioned himself beside the door, the stun gun in his left hand, ready to jab it into Bigg’s gut and squeeze off a bolt. He wasn’t even nervous. It might be interesting. He’d never had the chance to use the stun gun before.
He could hear Flo’s voice and Bigg’s muttered replies. The handle turned, and the door was pulled open. He saw Bigg’s bandaged face and began his thrust when Flowrean’s scream hit him in the back of the neck.
Chuckles’s body remembered that sound. His thigh went weak with remembered pain, his knees liquefied, and the stun gun dropped from his fingers as his hands moved to protect his groin.
The paralyzing effect of the scream lasted only for an instant. Bigg jumped back into the hall slamming the door shut between them.
Bigg was also affected by Flo’s outburst—the scream caused him to freeze momentarily, almost long enough for Flo to reach him, but not quite. He saw her coming in time to swing. His fist caught her high on the chest, knocking the wind out of her. She dropped to her knees, gasping for air.
Bigg pointed his revolver at the door and fired three shots through the door. The reports were sharp and loud and echoed for a full second in the empty hallways. He turned back to Flo, who had regained her feet, and pointed the gun at her face.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. He backed away a few steps.
Flo coughed, holding her hands crossed over her chest. All her attention was on the door with the three bullet holes.
“He had a gun or something,” Bigg said.
Flo called out, “Chuckles?”
No reply.
Bigg turned and fled.
Without a doubt, one of the oddest hallucinatory experiences in Carmen Roman’s adult life—and there had been many—was waking up to the sound of a ringing telephone and finding herself in a strange vehicle, alone, in the middle of a cornfield. And then answering the phone and having it be Axel’s friend Joe Crow, asking her a bunch of questions. And then something happening in the background, and Joe Crow tells her to hold on. Hold on for what?
While she sat waiting for him to come back on the line she noticed that her borrowed chinos and the driver’s seat of the Range Rover were soaked dark red. Carmen’s first thought was that she had bled from her arm, like in the chapel, but her arm looked fine.
So where was all the blood coming from?
Benjy jumped up at the sound of the shots, started running toward them, changed his mind, ran back to the desk, then looked helplessly at Crow.
“What should we do?” he asked.
Crow handed Debrowski the phone. “You talk to Carmen. I’ll go see what happened.”
“Crow, if you get yourself shot, I swear I’m gonna just let you die.”
“I’ll be careful.” Crow trotted toward the stairs.
Debrowski watched until he disappeared, then put the phone to her ear. “Carmen? This is Laura Debrowski. You there?”
As Crow reached the top of the steps he heard footsteps slapping the worn linoleum floors and saw a man with a gun running down the hall. It looked like Arling Biggie, and it was.
Crow shouted, “Hey! Bigg!”
Bigg stopped and raised the gun; Crow ducked back into the stairwell and shouted, “It’s me, Bigg! Crow!”
“Crow? Are you in on this, too?”
“In on what?” Crow peeked around the corner. Bigg was walking quickly toward him, looking back over his shoulder.
He reached the stairwell and stopped, looked at Crow. “You look worse than me,” he said, pointing the gun. “I’m holding you responsible.”
The revolver looked small in Bigg’s hand, but it was big enough to scare Crow. “Responsible for what? Was that you shooting?”
“I just shot the door. Think I slowed him down. He had a gun, something in his hand.”
“Who? You’re not making sense, Bigg.”
“Him and that bitch Flowrean.”
“Flowrean?”
“And that big black son-of-a-bitch. Look what he did to me! You see this face?” He st
arted down the stairs, shouting, “I want my limo back, Crow.”
Crow let him reach the bottom of the stairs, then followed. He wanted to make sure Bigg and his gun left the building. Debrowski and Benjy were still standing by the front desk. Bigg ran past them and out the front doors. Crow ran back up the stairs and down the hall. He heard a voice and followed it to a small room where Flowrean Peeche, sitting on the floor holding a phone, cradled the head of a large man with a gold canine tooth—the warm-up act from the anti-aging demonstration. Crow’s eye was drawn to a bright red blossom on the lapel of the man’s white sport coat, but it wasn’t a rose at all. It was blood.
Flowrean dropped the phone. “You be okay, baby. Ambulance coming.”
The man coughed and blinked. Crow knelt and pulled the pocket square from the man’s breast pocket, slipped it inside the sodden shirt and pressed it gently to the wound. “Hold that there,” he said to Flowrean. “Is that the only place he got hit?”
“I think so.”
“You called 911?”
“I called,” said Flowrean. She sounded very young.
Crow stood up. “He’s gonna be okay. He’s gonna make it,” he said, not believing it.
“I know that,” said Flowrean. “He immortal.”
Debrowski was still on the phone when Crow returned to the foyer.
“You still talking to Carmen?”
Debrowski shook her head and held up a hand, bidding Crow to wait. “Yes, that’s the cell phone number. She said she’s losing blood, I don’t know why. She’s in a cornfield, so I assume it’s out of town. In a Range Rover. Look, why don’t you call her? She was getting pretty woozy there, but she might still be able to answer the phone. You can locate her from the cell phone, can’t you?” She listened for a moment, then smacked herself on the hip with her fist. “Listen, I’m just telling you what I know. The girl is missing, she was kidnapped yesterday afternoon. I’m telling you how to find her … yeah … yeah. Just a sec.” She moved the phone away from her mouth. “Crow what’s that cop’s name? Your friend?”
