Slice dje-5

by Rex Miller

  Daniel Bunkowski's sperm inside her, Sissy sees her man leaving, and she tells him, “The next morning I knew he'd taken advantage of me, you know, ‘cause I was so sore."

  The door of the shack opens and she tells his huge back, “Uh, hey, you know maybe next time you ought"—but he is out the door now—"to take [SLAM]—some precautions...?” she asks, her voice trailing off into nothingness. A small tree falling in the forest.

  BUCKHEAD STATION

  It was unusually quiet in the squad room, but Eichord only noticed the stillness when it was shattered by a phone on Brown's desk, and the ensuing one-way conversation that Jack tuned out. Eichord, Lee, Tuny, and Brown were all doing paperwork. The clack of Tuny's typewriter and the deep sonority of Brown's resonant tones had a lulling effect on Jack, who was sleepy and bored and clock-watching at three in the afternoon.

  He was doodling. Drawing a picture of the little kitten, a terrible likeness. Filling in the clearly delineated M in the middle of the cat's forehead that seemed to mark so many gray cats, a species of animal about which he knew next to nothing.

  But he thought about Boy, their dog, the day it was killed. He still remembered Boy, whom he'd adopted, or who had adopted Jack, while he was working on a murder case in Dallas. He remembered that last day he was holding the dog in his lap and he told the animal, “It's hard to imagine you used to be a starved, puny mutt. Now look what we've got.” He patted the dog. “I guess I've made you what you are today,” he said as he affectionately patted the obese canine's low-slung belly. “Fat,” to which Donna had said cheerfully from the next room, “I certainly hope you're not talking to me,” and they'd laughed. That same day Boy had run out in the street in front of the wrong truck. Adiós, Boy. He was glad he'd brought the kitten home. He was sitting there thinking about Tuffy when Lee said, “Jack!"

  “Yo."

  “Quit that daydreamin'."

  “Right."

  “You had a weird expression on your face. What were you thinking about?"

  “Pussy,” he answered truthfully, “gray pussy."

  “I ain't never had any that old yet. Peg's starting to look a little gray but it may be only a urinary infection. That's what we suspect anyway."

  “I'm beginning to suspect YOU'RE a urinary infection. I know you sure can piss a person off."

  “Hey, that's not bad. Well, that's all right. Shit. I was starting to wonder if you'd lost it. Long as you can still zing one now and then I don't have to worry. In case tub” — he gestured at the rotund cop typing at the desk next to his—"ever gets hold of a bad burrito and pulls the pin on me I at least know where I can get a partner with a sense of humor."

  “Listen to this shit,” fat Dana said. “There's a Peter Drier in Records down at Metro. Dig it, girls, we ain't even got a washcloth in the men's room and those assholes have their own Peter Drier!” He screamed, stamping his feet the way he'd seen Sammy Davis Jr. do once on TV. “Oh, damn, I'm funny."

  “Uh huh,” Eichord said, yawning loudly.

  “Yeah,” his partner said as he turned, “Chunk, you really are a fucking ton of fun."

  Jack got up and stretched. Then he shoved his chair up to the desk and left for home. Shank of the afternoon. He'd had it. Fuck it. He was tired of listening to the phone ring and wondering when it would be IAD wanting to talk to Jimmie Lee.

  And every week that went by without another problem Lee would say to him when they were alone—nudge, nudge, “See. I tole ya. Nobody's gonna know nothin',” and Eichord would let his shoulders droop and he'd close his eyes and just stand there, his entire body screaming. No ... WRONG ... But Lee would get all the more adamant about it. How it had been “just one of those things.” And it was all over. But they both knew it wasn't like that. Eichord had done a lot of stupid things in his time but he'd always been wise about money. And he knew and he knew that Chink knew: stolen money never spent well.

  STOBAUCH

  With the injection of sex into their bizarre relationship something else changed between Daniel and Sissy. He began to notice her for the first time. This, in itself, was not good. He was beginning to notice that she was THERE, a human presence where for so many years there had been nothing. He had never tolerated proximity of any kind, even slammed down tight behind bars he was the classic example of a con doing his own time. Daniel was a loner.

  Now he would come “home” after his days of exhausting work and be vaguely irritated that someone was there waiting for him. And one day he noticed something that would completely alter his life. He almost never spoke to Sissy anymore, and of course from the moment they'd begun having sex the whole Hollywood and model fantasy had been dropped. Neither of them ever spoke of it again, almost as if by mutual consent.

  Neither of them spoke about much of anything. She had tried to initiate conversations but even Sissy ultimately caught onto the fact that her man was neither listening nor responding to anything she said, so she settled for what he gave her, which proved to be a warm place to stay, a roof, a sufficient amount of caloric intake to stay alive, a TV set, animals to play with, the odd moment of brief sexual usage, and no further demands on her physically or intellectually.

  He had lost an enormous amount of weight already. The first week alone he knew he had dropped over twenty-five pounds just in water. Although he was too heavy to be weighed on ordinary scales he could easily estimate his own body weight and calculated he'd lost between sixty and sixty-five pounds and it was still melting from his hugely corpulent frame. The thing is, he had noticed something that had all but turned him around. His stomach was getting smaller, but hers appeared to be growing larger. At first, without consciously thinking about it, he'd assumed her weight gain was due to a totally sedentary life. Then, as he made more new holes in his belt, cutting more excess leather off the other end and cinching up the baggy pants he was wearing, it dawned on him that he'd impregnated her.

  “Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?” he said suddenly, confronting her outside the shack. He towered over her like a grizzly.

  “Umm. Well. I wasn't sure at first."

  “But you're sure now?” She looked up at him and smiled. She nodded and blinked her eyes, waiting for his reaction. There was none. He walked over to the Caprice and got behind the wheel, noticing that the steering wheel didn't wedge against his gut quite as much as it had, and motioned for her. “Come on—get in.” He drove into town to the local one-doc clinic and had her examined. She seemed to be healthy, and about ninety days along.

  The doctor had regaled them with stories about all the women who went three and four months without a period, and made sure that Daniel understood, ahem, that his weight on top of her after a certain point, cough, might cause discomfort. Checked out her plumbing. Gave her two aspirin and a pat on the head and told her not to smoke or drink too much caffeine.

  “How do you feel?” Chaingang asked later, paternally.

  “I have to pee bad,” she said, completing one of their typically crisp exchanges of dialogue.

  And he went back out into the fields with his special, blacksmithed weed slinger and worked until he could no longer see, smashing out at the stubborn and infinite vetch again and again, the sharpened blade slashing into the obstinate weeds, the smoothly welded brass straps helping the fiercely slung tool cut a path through the overgrown meadow. Ten with the right hand, ten with the left hand, ten with the right hand, over and over and over, the rhythm never slackening, never changing, the man showing no signs of tiring, of ever stopping. He kept swinging his blade of vengeance, chopping at the vetch like the Grim Reaper, relentlessly hacking his way through this vast acreage of Mother Nature unattended, slashing through Mother Nature rampant, defying her with every brutal blow. Weeds, grass, vetch, all the thick stuff flying into the air, sometimes over his shoulders, showering his head, coming down on his back, the strong man oblivious to everything as he concentrated, swinging the cutting tool, slashing hearts, ten with the left, ten with the right, ten m
ore, ten more, each vicious swing in heartbeat tempo, fuck Mother Nature, fuck Mother Nature...

  BUCKHEAD SPRINGS

  Eichord was out under the big red maple thinking about the birthday Donna had given him. The treasured Disney comic book and the tapes of rare hero chapters were safe inside. He loved the idea of what she'd tried to do for him. He could no longer lose himself in nostalgia the way he had once been able to do. Either cop burn out ... too much shit ... or this thing with Chink. God, it bugged him. It bugged him that Jimmie would TAKE, number one. Number two, he wished he'd never been told about it. What would he do when IAD pulled him in and said, “Did you know?” Fuck it.

  What it boiled down to is he would lie. No question. To protect a real friend like Lee. Who's kidding who? He'd stonewall it just the way all the other assholes did these days. He'd smile and cross his legs and protect his balls to the walls. What more could you do? Or what LESS could you do, in his case? He owed the kid that one.

  Jack remembered their trip together. Years and years before, back at the beginning of the whole thing. Before McTuff had ever heard of a cat named Eichord. He'd been sitting there, a fish out of water, partnerless, no track record, a strong candidate for the drunk tank, and listening to fat Dana, not so fat back then, and Lee talking nostalgia.

  “...those fuckin’ Buicks with the outrageous portholes on the side. God they were sharp. Every time I drew a picture of a big ole limo in school I'd draw three or four portholes onnit."

  “That was the damn Chrome Decade: 1949 to 1959. Began with the Riviera and ended with the Seville. Remember the ‘59 El Dee? Oh, my, mercy sakes. Big ole righteous fins on that sucker. God! Wouldn't ya like to have been rich enough you coulda got a ‘53 El Dee when you were born or somethin'—you know, like your first words to mommy when you're three: ‘Get me a ‘53 hog!’”

  “Put it in a garage somewhere and pay the rent."

  “Yeah, keep it cherry. Pay rent on a garage from 1953 to now—shit! If you'd put that in gold you'd be Nelson fellering Rockefucker by now."

  “I'll tell ya a classic vehicle. Wanna hear a classic?"

  “Yeah."

  “Here ya’ go: the 1948 Chevy Fleetmaster station wagon."

  “Oh, fuck. Wait a minute. You want a classic—get serious. Here's a classic. Ya ready?"

  “Unnn."

  “The ‘56 ‘Vette."

  “Wait—the ultimate. The ‘51 Buick LeSabre rag top."

  “Here ya go. The 1957 Ford Fairlane.” There was a long pause. “THE ‘57 FORD FAIRLANE? You're crazy!” And on and on. Little Deuce Coupes and ‘51 Starlites (what the hell was a Starlite?) And being smuggled into the drive-in in a ‘37 Chevy coo-pay. That whole mythology of chrome and full mills and speed-shifting and dual H-wood glasspaks, and how the shift levers impeded the flow of romance way back then, and before long Eichord couldn't stand it. He had to go to the files and look through the old crime reports where the pictures of the cars were.

  So in a way Lee had given him his career. It was there on the page with the grainy Kodak shot of the old car. It was a story about a homicide.

  The picture of the car hadn't turned him on much but the homicide report caught his eye, and he took it over to the desk and sat there immersing himself in the old crime reports the way a curious detective will.

  It was a homicide of “ancient history” even back then. Today it would be over thirty years old. It was 1957 and the main witness looked awfully shaky. The more Eichord read, the deeper he got into it and pretty soon he was on the phone and getting records pulled out of dusty boxes. He started talking to people, dredging up ancient facts and suspicions, and—he thought he had something.

  It began with the suspicious crib death of an infant and ended with the death of a husband. But as Jack examined the reports more than a few contradictions loomed. The more he checked, the more the facts began to tear at the old contexture of interwoven lies. Then he found the woman's first marriage, which she'd been so careful to hide from the prying eyes of history and police, and he found the other mysterious infant crib death. The same MO. Suffocation. He saw a portrait of a killer emerge. It was a Buckhead homicide that would take him to the Orient.

  He devoted weeks to it. Backtracking. Hiking over long-gone trails. Stirring the dirt where the forgotten ashes had long since been blown away. He found opportunity, and then motive, and then ... the key. One of the accomplices had spent too freely. He saw what it had been all along. A careful, smartly planned insurance fraud.

  She was sixty and living in Hong Kong, the last anyone could determine. He took it by the numbers. The reports. The requests. The channels. The warrants. The long series of confabulations with the Hong Kong cop shop. Extradition conferencing. The considerations of the circuit attorney and the assholes in the State Department. But Eichord wanted her badly, so he hung in there and persevered and pissed and moaned and caused a stink and generally irritated everybody to the point where they'd give him his way just to shut him up. He was going after her.

  He would have to take along an interpreter, and a Chinese-American detective by the name of James Lee was right there in-house, and why the hell not? So off they went. In the end he'd solved a case that had been on the books “forever,” and the positive ink it pulled for the department had changed his way of life completely, catapulting him into the hot seat when the Dr. Demented shit hit the headlines. All because of Lee. He'd probably never have nailed her had it not been for Lee and the man from Kowloon. The incredibly fierce warrior who allowed them to penetrate the bamboo veil of one of the ultra-secret societies called triads—the ninja who would slice off his tongue to prove a point—the fearless, frightening, awesome, and awful man who Eichord always thought of as “the man from Kowloon,” but who was Jimmie Lee's older brother.

  HUBBARD CITY INTERCHANGE

  When his face had finally healed it was nowhere near so disfigured as one might imagine. Bullet wounds can heal to be little more than small puckers as the damage recedes with time. Knife, gunshot, and other wounds will sometimes completely disappear with the years, or leave great, sunken cavities in the flesh. It just depends.

  Bunkowski's face was badly marked if one looked at it in profile. Two of the punctures looked like what they were, bullet holes, with the third wound having more of a superficial furrow effect.

  But straight on or from other angles the marks were not so unusual or noticeable. Unless one inspected the three wounds they appeared to be almost a series of pockmarks the way they were joined so closely in the plump contours and distended bags of his face—what was once referred to as baby fat. They were like insect bites on an otherwise featureless face.

  Additionally his face in repose was quite a different face than the one in animation. At will he could manipulate his rubbery mask to reflect any emotion from beatific, disarming innocence to fearsome menace. If you squinted a bit the bullet wounds became little more than dimples.

  By working with a mirror he was soon able to learn how to hold himself so the people he came in contact with would see the face at its least alarming. By holding his mouth in an exaggerated way and causing the fat of the cheek to dimple and pucker he could conceal, to some extent, the ravaged appearance of his cheek.

  The motorist pulled over and the grateful hitchhiker ran to catch up with the car.

  “Hi,” the young man said as he opened the door tentatively.

  “Hi,” the huge man said in a deep rumble. “Where ya headed?"

  The youngster, just a kid really, tilted his head in the direction they were pointing. “North."

  “Where you bound for?” the man asked, jovially, as the car pulled back out into the traffic.

  “Lincoln.” He was shirtless. He tossed a small duffel bag into the back seat. “Nebraska."

  “Well, I haven't been up there for years."

  “You been to Lincoln?"

  “Yeah. I was in sales up there years ago. Good town."

  “I guess so,” the boy said without con
viction, obviously of a different opinion.

  “How old are you?"

  “Fifteen.” The boy smiled. He had a pug nose and a very deep tan. Rather long hair worn in the current fashion.

  “Fifteen,” the driver said in amazement. “I figured you for seventeen or eighteen easy."

  “I'm almost sixteen,” the youngster said, as if that explained it.

  “Where you hitchin’ from?"

  “Huh?"

  “Where did you start out from?"

  “You mean this morning?"

  “No"—what an idiot—"you know, when you started out on your trip? Where did you start from?"

  “Lincoln,” the kid said, as if he'd had this boring conversation three hundred times with motorists who'd picked him up. “I hitched down to Jackson,” it sounded like he'd said.

  “Jackson, Mississippi?"

  “Florida."

  “I've never been there. Where's Jackson, Florida?"

  “Jacks. You know, Jacksonville."

  “Oh, Jacksonville. Sure. That's a fun town, I hear."

  “Absolutely,” the kid said, shaking his head. “Bitchin’ party town.” He smiled as if he couldn't take any more party.

  “So you sound like you had a good time."

  “Had a real good time. I hate to go back."

  “I bet. Your folks'll be relieved to see you, though, huh?"

  “Don't have any. I live with my sister ‘n her, uh, boyfriend. But I gotta go back."

  “You in school?"