by Rex Miller
“That's my good big boy. Sleep good now for Mommy. And when we wake up we'll have a FEAST. We'll slay the fatted calf,” she said with a delighted screech at her rapier wit.
But Chaingang was far away, dreaming of the face of the cop and the things he would do to that face, the ways he would change that arrogant appearance, and the thought of it stretched part of his own face in the rictus of a bloody smile, and then the big man dreamt of the song of the killer whales and slept.
SOUTH BUCKHEAD
“Listen to this,” he said, reading in a loud voice anyway so he could be heard in the next room but screaming the words he wanted to emphasize. “Designer Bob Mackie attaches a muff to this classic evening fur. All right. Check it out.” He was getting louder by the second. “I'll go muff-diving in that! HEY, you listening?” There was no comment from the dining room, where the long-suffering woman sat at the table with a pile of bills. The wife of Eichord's old pal Chink.
“C'mere, you gotta see this, hon,” said Detective Sgt. James Lee. “Listen to the way these people down there live. West Palm Palace highlighted by a spectacular two-story cathedral-ceiling living room this magnificent home is enhanced by a beautifully landscaped half-acre lot that includes a marble pool. Gourmet kitchen,” his voice squeezed into his version of the late Mr. Gleason's how-sweet-it-is voice, “four guest accommodations. Now reduced to sell at only two million four hundred thousand.” He stopped and laughed and turned a page. Perusing in silence for a few moments, then beginning to read aloud again, the awe apparent in his voice as he read, “Unique in all the world. Exquisite Palm Beach oceanfront estate. Walled castle, twenty-seven rooms, beautifully furnished. For the uncompromising. Property includes three-bedroom stone caretaker's cottage on grounds. Eight million, two hundred thousand dollars. EIGHT MILLION DOLLARS, are you listening?"
The woman in the dining room spoke for the first time, “What did you charge to Visa that was $37.92?"
“Don't bum me out with that. Prestigious ocean view in panoramic setting. Five bedrooms, four baths. FOUR BATHS! Oceanfront deco breakfast nook. Entrance foyer with glass walled elevator facing the Intercoastal. This gorgeous showplace is perfect for entertaining. Covered loggia overlooking the Olympic-size pool. What the hell is a loggia?” he asked, mispronouncing the word.
“One million eight hundred and forty-five thousand dollars! Who the FUCK are these people?"
“Hey,” The woman screamed at him. “Watch your language in there, that's ENOUGH!” She scared him and he flinched at her voice, which was louder than his. “You're not with Dana in some bar now. This is your home."
“Sorry, I just read these things and...” He trailed off.
She put the stack of bills aside and came in the living room. “What are you reading? You shouldn't read this ... your blood pressure. Where did you get this? What is this? Who sent you this?” She had the habit of asking the same question about eleven different ways as she spoke, and she leaned over and read, “'Oscar de la Renta's opulent version makes this one of Palm Beach's favorite ... Oh, what a lovely stole. Where did you get this? Who sent you a paper from Palm Beach? Who do we know in Palm Beach, FLORIDA?” For a second she couldn't remember what state Palm Beach was in, California or Florida? She'd never been to either place.
“Beats me. I got it in the mail. Look,” he said, turning the page, “Mediterranean elegance. This beautiful home is designed around an inner courtyard complete with fountain. Formal dining room, sixty-foot living area, spectacular paneled library of seven thousand leatherbound books in sets, five bedrooms including two master suites, servants’ wing, four car garage, wine cellar, silver vault—SILVER VAULT!"
“Don't read any more,” she said, taking the paper from his shaking hands. “Who sent this anyway? Who do we know in Palm Beach? Do we know somebody down there? Jeff, maybe? Would he have sent it?” She didn't care about the real estate in Palm Beach; her only interest was in who might have sent her husband the foreign newspaper.
“Mmmmmm,” he said, mm-ing “I dunno,” giving the words a three-syllable count of grunted sound in the familiar articulated shrug.
“I wonder who sent this.” The paper was an alien artifact to her and she looked at it in awe. Something that had dropped off a passing spaceship. The Martian Daily News.
“Guys buying their wives Bob Mackie muffs you be lucky you get a CLOTH coat every five years.” He shook his head.
“You hear me complaining?” She stood in back of him looking down at her husband of nearly twenty years.
People living like goddamn kings on the ocean, we got to figure out how to pay the credit-card charges. You shoulda married some rich joker and not some schlemazel cop don't got fifty cents in his pocket."
“You hear me complaining?” she asked him again. “Come on, get up, I gotta vacuum. Outta my feet.” She had a unique speech pattern and frequently left English words out of a sentence. “Outta my feet” translated as “Get out from under my feet.” He got up.
“We got a card from Jeff. Dawn loved those little stick-on earrings you seat her. She wore ‘em to her tenth birthday party."
“Guys be giving little ten-year-olds diamond earrings. I give stick-ons,” he muttered as he went out into the yard.
He went outside and tried to decide where to sit. He looked at their shabby lawn furniture with the cracked pink-and-gray arms and went over and sat on the wooden bench he'd made. The sparrows roosted in the tree above it and they had left droppings all over the bench, but he decided it wouldn't bum him out as badly as sitting on that cracked plastic.
The white bird droppings didn't bother him but here and there, where a sparrow had ingested some berries, a disgusting streak of red or purple-colored excreta decorated the bench.
He sat gingerly and put his arm across the back of the bench, propping the part of the paper his wife had failed to confiscate across his arm and read “Tradewinds luxury: sumptuous estate on .75 acres with tennis court, pool, maid's quarters, 5 bdr, 6 bth, guest house, private security fence with electric eye gate, sunken loggia, $2,900,000.” He let tile paper slip from his hand and flutter to the ground.
It was then he realized for the first time that he had his arm resting in some birdshit.
CHICAGO
It was very cold down there on the bottom of Lake Michigan with the rest of the singing killer whales. But he fought the strong urge to wake up from whatever it was he was in—this state of grace that allowed him to enjoy the rare and treasured privilege of studying their mysterious, melancholy mode of communication in this way. It was so restful, reassuring, restoring, to wait here in this dark, cold, untroubled place.
He would like to wait here until all humanity passed by, wait until their systems had relaxed, wait as he listened to the interplay of the great whales, experimenting, as always, reaching out with his unusual mind, hoping to find the level that would allow him to eavesdrop and manipulate their subaqueous thoughts as he enjoyed their sad songs, and then he would float back up to the surface, coming up under the carefree people he hated so passionately—how easily he could kill them then—and he smiled as he let himself match his strong pulse to the distinctive, throbbing theme music of the movie shark. And this was a unique thought for the killer, as he thought, Ta-dum, ta-dum, in his mind, thinking the notes in tempo with the heartbeat music of the white shark, because it was one of the only times he had ever told himself a joke. And the smile on his bandaged and blood-encrusted face was as wide as the wrapping of taped rags would allow, and he came to fully for the first time and pulled himself up saying, “Get food,” and the old woman nearby almost had a heart attack at the sound of the deep voice in back of her.
“OH! Shit, boy. Oh, my stars. Land sakes alive, Big Boy gave Pippy a start then. Oh, Big Boy mustn't startle Mommy.” She looked at him with her head cocked to one side.
He thought how easily he could pinch that ugly face in his strong paw and snap that withered neck. He could kill her, even in his current state, as mos
t people could swat a fly. “GET FOOD."
“Yes, sir,” she said, and began fumbling with a can opener and something he could not see. He was having trouble getting his eyes to focus. He felt intermittent waves of dizziness, but he sensed they would soon pass. He must have nourishment. While the old lady opened a can of something he dragged the huge duffel bag over and rummaged around in it until he found several things he wanted. He took out some money from a secret hiding place and unfolded a ten-dollar bill, then a twenty, then larger bills, which he hid again. Then he took the small metal mirror and looked at himself for the first time. He was a thing that could not be shocked, but he was almost shocked at what he saw. He began peeling the mound of bloody rag from his head.
“Don't do that, Big—"
“SHUT UP,” he roared at her, and she looked away. He removed the filthy rags. The thread or whatever she'd used had made the wounds in the side of his face look like something out of a horror movie. “Give me clean water,” he commanded, and the old woman handed him a small pop bottle with cloudy water in it. He began to clean off his wounds and then studied her handiwork. It would suffice to hold the skin closed for now. He put a battle dressing on and gave her some money. She drew back her hand, but when she saw he wasn't going to hurt her, she reached out and took the money.
“I'll tell you what I need. You go get it and bring it here. Then I'll give you this.” He showed her a fifty-dollar bill.
“Okay,” she said brightly, and he immediately sensed she was quite deranged and that the lure of money would not be what would pull her back. He told her what to get him but he could see she would not be able to carry it out.
“How long have"—he chose his words with care—"you and I been here.” She smiled at him. “How many days?” He thought he might kill her then if she refused to answer him.
“Pippy will count up,” she said, and turned away from him. He felt nausea and dizzy waves that shook his body. He picked up the cold can of tuna fish and began eating out of the can, devouring great hunks of the food and then washing it down with the rest of the cloudy water that was in the bottle. “Sixteen days,” she said proudly. “Oh, look! Big Boy ate all his dinner like a good boy. Pretty Pipper will give him a nice dessert now."
She reached for something and held it in her hands where she alone could see it, and made a show of peering into her hands. Then she laughed and offered it to Chaingang, holding out her hand as she said, “Big Boy's nice dessert treat.” She was holding a tiny dead mouse in her hand. He stared at her in disbelief as she dropped it and cackled away into the darkness. Insane and lucky.
He tried to get to his feet but the effort was too much and he sat back down with a splash, realizing then that he was still immersed in his own dried filth.
It was then that intense hatred probably saved his life. A surge of scarlet hate poured through him and the raging tide propelled him to his feet, forcing him up at the thought of the cop who had done this to him, and the momentum carried him forward as he plunged ahead into the wet black stench looking for a way up.
Soon he had forced himself to return through the malodorous sewer tunnel to the place where the old woman was waiting, and he tapped the last of his strength to glean what information she might be capable of dispensing. He learned how she had happened upon him, his body half out of the water, washed into a nearby submain where she sometimes went to seek shelter. He learned how she had found his huge “bag of pretty treasures.” And from what he could gather, nobody besides the crazy sewer lady knew that he was alive.
He sent her scurrying off on his supply errand, the dog limping along beside her, and as soon as they were gone, he gave in to the soporific pull of his total exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep.
BUCKHEAD SPRINGS
It was a good, solid marriage, this crazy, hot thing of theirs. It broke some rules but, hell, a lot of great things break rules—that was what rules are for. She broke some of Eichord's rules about women, and with every misconception shattering, with each new stereotypical cop thought breaking like so much cheap glass, his smile would get a little wider. She was good for him, and the reverse was also true.
She'd saved his butt one time and she was a good-enough lady that she never looked back and said, Way they go, or patted herself on her gorgeous back for it. She was a caring person. She genuinely liked people. There'd been a time when all that had hung precariously in the balance and Eichord had been a part of that case. He'd asked her out and she wasn't having any of him, or men in general, having been at her lowest all-time ebb, and the two of them had pulled each other up.
There were only two things she didn't like about the marriage: she had to leave Dallas, which was so much a part of her she couldn't shake loose from the Big D sunshine, but there was sunshine here too. The people were a little different: closer in, tighter, kept more to themselves, not open like she was used to knowing. But she was a monogamous family-oriented lady and she'd build their own world around her lover.
Their new friends were a problem. She'd left a couple of girlfriends of years’ duration and in trade had inherited a couple of stuck-up, nosy neighbors, and a bunch of “hard-on cops.” The closest thing Eichord could deliver by way of what ordinary folks call friends or close acquaintances.
It had taken the passage of some time and then the constancy of the hot sex had tapered off to something approximating normalcy, whatever that was. All that meant is that they didn't do it every waking hour. They just couldn't get enough of each other. It wasn't like they were snowbound and had nothing else to do, or like they were trying to prove they were still kids. Eichord especially was reaching the point where he couldn't ball four, five times a night nonstop like he could when he was a kid.
Nobody cared. It was the nearness and warmth and love and touching and sweet companionship and trusting and, most of all, the laughs. They just knocked each other out. There was a lot of laughing. And any marriage where there's a lot of laughing and a lot of touching—you don't have much to worry about. Nobody's counting how many times you get it up. You're both too busy laughing. There'd been plenty of sex and a lot of ha-has and as much genuine caring as both of them had hoped for.
After the honeymoon year they'd reached the point where they could get out of bed long enough to have a few of Jack's acquaintances and buddies over and have a party. It was a borderline disaster. To say that Donna hated his friends would be unfair. It would be true, but it would be unfair. Now they'd learned to laugh about that too.
“We about ready for another cop barbecue?” She smiled at him.
“I don't know. I think you and I can handle it but I'm not sure Tuny's up for it yet.” They both laughed. Dana had cornered Donna in the kitchen. It had been ridiculous, offensive, and she couldn't believe it. She had taken Jack aside and whispered, “Who's that big, heavyset dude? What's his name—Tuna?"
“Dana. Dana's drunk. Why"
“He hit on me in the kitchen,” she had whispered to Eichord, who could not hear above the noise of the party crowd and music. There was barbecue in the back yard. A big wet bar going inside. Party time. Very domestic.
Donna was in a sexy black hostess gown. Dana Tuny was plastered and had come onto her in the kitchen.
“He WHAT?” Eichord had thought she'd said Dana had hit her in the kitchen. He couldn't believe it. He was flying pretty high too.
“He propositioned me. Is he supposed to be a friend of yours? Some friend."
She looked so serious Jack had broken up. And they went in the bedroom amidst jeers and naughty remarks and he told her about Dana. Yeah, believe it or not. He's a kind of friend, he'd said, he's not kind of, he IS a friend. He had told her, “He's a pain in the ass, even when he's not bagged. Tomorrow he'll get up, and if he remembers it, he'll be so contrite he'll fall all over himself apologizing. He gets a little booze in him, he's a lost soul. But he's covered my ass more than once. Come in behind me when the captain was laying for me and made it right, back when I was on the
sauce so bad. Went in to cover me against a dope gang one time, him and me with handguns against a couple of wise guys with submachine guns. He was right there. Something like that you don't ever forget. It cuts a lot of slack for somebody."
So she had gone back to the party and later Dana had cornered her outside and she had smiled in his fat face as he breathed a hundred-proof fumes in her ear and whispered, “Hello, beautiful. Wanna sit on my face?"
She never missed a beat; she had backed off and said loudly, “I'll pass personally, but if you want some oral sex I think I've got you a partner."
“I'm your man,” he had replied as the people around them chuckled.
“She's right next door. She'd go for you."
“Huh?” She had gestured toward the fence.
He had said, “Your neighbor lady, you mean?"
“No! Lord, no! The neighbor lady's chow is in heat."
The cops still ragged Tuny about that one. They'd tell him it was Donna Eichord on Line One, calling to ask Dana if he wanted to go and get some chow. Things like that. She had really put them all away with that one.
“Yeah,” Jack said as they laughed about it, “you zinged him once and for all with that one."
