Hex-Rated

by Jason Ridler

  “She lied!”

  “She had no reason to lie.”

  “She’s a lying dyke!”

  “Her personal life is none of our business.”

  “I can’t believe you’re taking that whore’s word over mine.” Then he tapped Cactus’s chest with each word: “I’m a fucking customer.”

  “Mr. Coleman, I’m warning you. Do not touch me again.”

  The feather lip laughed. “What are you going to do, Tonto? Get your silent Lone Ranger buddy to beat me up? Or are you guys wearing the wrong costumes for the eight o’clock magic show? Come on, Cowboys! Say hi-ho—”

  “Silver” died on his lips, because when his finger touched Cactus at the end of “hi-ho,” several things happened quick as lights out: Cactus gripped his hands broke his wrist, spun himself around Coleman’s back, and cupped Coleman’s mouth shut like a draw bridge to imprison the scream.

  “Mr. Coleman,” he said, voice as level as before. “You were warned. We only give one warning. If you come back here, I will break your other wrist. If you come back a third time, I will break your ankle. You can do the math. Should you come back with a gang of friends, we will retaliate in kind. Or you can go home, try your luck at any of the Strip’s fine gambling establishments.”

  Cactus shoved Feather-lip toward the parking lot. Cactus strode off toward the VIP parking section without me.

  “We can take my car,” I said.

  “Your windshield is busted and the LAPD has you on a ‘suspicious character list.’“

  I ran to keep up with Cactus’ gait, tearing the plastic wrapping off the cards. “How the hell did you know . . . you have a police scanner.”

  Cactus smiled as we strode through the chained off section, guarded by a young Latino kid in short-sleeved dress shirt. “I didn’t say that. Jesus? Tell Edward I am on a supply run. And nothing else.”

  The youth nodded, unchained the ritzy section. The streetlights crackled on as the evening darkened. But you’d spot this car in a black hole:

  A 1950 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn, waxed and shining as if it had run off the assembly in London and landed here. Edgar was a fan of British cars, and had a Silver Wraith. I’ll say this for the British, they sure know how to name their cars. Cactus opened the driver’s side door. “Get in the back.” He sat inside. “And keep your head down.”

  “So the cops won’t see me?”

  He slammed the door and rolled down the window. “No. So nobody sees you.”

  “Don’t want to be seen with your old army buddy?”

  “No. Didn’t buy this car to be viewed as some chauffer.”

  I hid my sore mug, knowing he was right.

  CHAPTER 18

  “YOU BETTER HAVE A PLAN.”

  Laying across the back seat, I flicked off glass that was still stuck to the fabric of my slacks. It pinged off the window and landed on my thigh. “Of course I do.”

  “Improvising is not a plan.” Well, that was a matter of opinion, but I did my best to make it sound as if I’d spent more hours than Ike on D-Day getting this sucker ready. Cactus finally said, “Fine, but if we die, I am hunting and killing you for eternity.”

  “Deal.” But the line up for inflicting my eternal misery started in Oakland. I placed the anting-anting in the car. For this plan to work, I needed bad luck.

  Cactus drove to Iron Surplus in a car that probably weighed three times as much as Lilith and smelled like well-tended leather. The density was cozy, but it didn’t make my day easier. My cheeks smarted as I rubbed away some of the worst pain from psycho-Fulton’s smashfest. Whatever strength I’d gotten from a bag of jerky faded, but now didn’t seem the right time to ask Cactus for drive thru on the Strip. Food whenever you wanted it was, for me, a kind of dark magic. Like the rest of the country, I’d felt the sharp edge of hunger gnaw my belly like rusty teeth in the thirties, and had been desperate enough to steal from those whom I thought had more.

  But while Golden Arches sprang up across this country, as Kings of Burgers gobbled up more real estate and flooded the streets with mass produced meat pabulum, I knew in my heart of hearts that this was some kind of Fat Faustian bargain. For twenty years I’d watched as the starved waistbands I’d known as a kid, held up with rope above skeletal ankles, had given way to wider and wider frames from those who’d never tasted real hunger, the taste of dust and bleeding gums, of sucking on bark chewing on shoe leather. So I learned to cultivate my hunger away from the promises of two thousand calories in two minutes for two dollars.

  Except In-N-Out. That stuff’s sublime.

  Night thickened. I took out the cards Cactus had thrown at me and began a mindless ritual I’d had since I turned ten on the road. I fanned the deck, took half, hit them on my knee, took half in each hand and cut them, slapped the pieces together and did a 360, then a Faro shuffle, a Hindu shuffle, then presented them over the seat. “Pick a card, Cactus. Any card.”

  He didn’t look back. “You auditioning for a croupier?”

  I folded the deck back into my hand. “I may need the work if I don’t solve this case.”

  He snorted. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad you found a job. Where did you get your gumshoe license?”

  “Frank Gurney’s Private Investigator’s Full-Measure Certificate Class.”

  “I don’t know Gurney.”

  “He lives in Sacramento. I did it via correspondence.”

  Cactus’s eyes flared in the rear-view mirror. “A matchbook degree?”

  “It’s legit, Cactus. I studied, I passed, and I was certified by the State of California.”

  “I feel safer already.”

  Cactus sped up, hit the break, then reversed so fast that I bounced around the back seat like a Mexican jumping bean. When he stopped screeching the tires, I picked up the deck that had splattered like the Queen of Heart’s army. “Easy, Cactus! What was that for?”

  He opened the door quick. “Get out.”

  I shoved all the cards in my right pocket, the left currently holding the anting-anting, and pushed open the door. When I got out, I could see the hullabaloo. Cactus had wedged his car between a Volvo and a Voklswagen Beetle at the speed of SHIT!, tighter than nun’s naught bits. Two blocks ahead, on the opposite side of the street, stood the three-story monster called Iron Surplus.

  “They know we’re coming?” Cactus said, flexing his knuckles until they cracked.

  “Doubtful. And we need them in shape to chat. Which means, follow my lead.” He looked back at me as if I’d said his ass was on fire. “I know, I know, I’m breaking with protocol, and you outrank me when it comes to raising Cain. But they’re going to toss racist darts at you like Olympic champs, Cactus, and I can’t have you going Karate Master all over them until I know what they know. Information is what we want, not body bags.”

  Cactus spat with a precision reserved for snipers and hit a stray cockroach on the street. “I won’t leave here without breaking Nazi skulls.” Rumor in my platoon was that Cactus had interrogated the worst of the worst: SS, Hitler Youth, the diehard fanatics who wet themselves thinking of the Third Reich as Xanadu, who cherished the destruction of the peoples of Europe, who cheered when the Kristallnacht and sounded the klaxon for the first steps of the Holocaust. Cactus went into those minds to find out details about the absolute bottom dregs of humanity, to see what other horrors bled there in the pits of their nightmares. For him, they were the supreme evil that walked the earth, and that we’d only barely stopped. “That’s what you said we were here for. If this is a bait and switch, James, you can take those cards and—”

  I strode across the street to a chorus of honks. “After we get the intel, Cactus. After we get the intel they are all yours. Just let me do the talking.”

  Three stories of poorly drawn M16s, Dog Soldier helmets, and combat boots made the face of Iron Surplus a garish eyesore even within the brightly colored dreamscape of the Strip as the sun kissed the horizon. There were two mannequins guarding the entrance like Roma
n centurions. One was decked out in the battle fatigues of a modern GI currently sweating bullets in the Mekong Delta. The other was a Prussian officer in a blue and gray greatcoat, complete with silly German helmet with a spike on top. A sign was taped to the wooden door. “No Dogs. No Homeless. No Hippies, Cowards, or Canadians.”

  My anger bristled. Back in the day, it said “No Black, No Dog, No Irish.” Or “No Jews, No Blacks, No Trouble.” Despite what politicians will feed you with your TV dinner, there are no good old days. Rome was filled with slavery. Colonial America, too, for all the good sense of the Declaration of Independence, which also shat on the savage “Indian.” If a performer had the wrong skin drink at the wrong water fountain off the Chitlin Circuit, there’d be another dead black kid being cut from a tree, and touring Alabama and Mississippi I’d seen men and women hung from pine and oak.

  The past? Goddamn did I want a future that looked nothing like it. I was glad to live in a world when Martin Luther King walked, and ashamed to be in the one that had him murdered. If there was any hope in humanity, it was in taking the best from the past and running like Jessie Owens away from the rest.

  I shuffled the cards. “You ready?”

  Cactus nodded. “I’ll cover the door, and your back.” He rolled his shoulders and I heard gunmetal beneath a double breasted jacket.

  “No guns unless there is no other option.”

  “That’s up to them.”

  Arguing with Cactus was like moving a mountain: impossible and annoying. Guns were a trouble multiplier. And I could not afford a shootout and Dixon on my ass. The porn palaces of San Fernando awaited my arrival, and Maxine and Nico needed me alive if I was to find them.

  I pulled the stupid big door.

  Iron Surplus stank of old rubber, older sweat, and memories. It was a warehouse room with ranks and ranks of uniforms, dress and service. Gas masks hung on walls: gruesome clothes with filters and bug eyes which had tasted mustard gas in the Great War, modern diving masks with filters used by riot squads when they needed to poison a peaceful protest. Tables filled with boots. All used. Including pairs of russet leather combats from Korea, dusty gray dirt still in the treads. One still had a leg, the top end below the knee sawed off in red and white. I walked further. Blood dripped out of the cuffs of a Marine dress uniform as a bloody red stump of meat hung out of the hole. There was a ping-pong table full of severed heads and more flies than Alaska in spring, the buzzing worse than the track lighting high above my sweating head. Pieces. Everybody was in pieces.

  Brimstone . . .

  Hey, James!

  Private!

  Gotta light?

  Gotta smoke?

  Gotta spare blanket?

  Gotta spare hand?

  The hissing ghosts of my own mind awoke with the smell of distant battlefields and freshly made graveyards, of frozen blood and burning moonlight, waves of Red Chinese soldiers chasing us like a plague across the blue hellscape of Chosin.

  Cactus shoved me. “Forward.”

  The ghosts receded as fresh sweat poured out of me and I was pretty sure this suit was blending into my skin like some super hero costume.

  Four pairs of eyes sharpened me to the knifepoint of my current predicament.

  Paler than spilled milk, each guy wore a green wife-beater and hair buzzed into box cuts. One was tall, one was short, and one was ugly as freshly made turd. The only customer in the store was a twelve-year-old kid with buck teeth buying a Marine t-shirt from a massive desk and display case at the back, next to the zigzag stairs that went to the next floor. The kid put on his shirt as he left, as if making some statement to the generation he was growing into: I am not one of you. I am your enemy. I am going to read Steinbeck’s war bullshit, forget Grapes of Wraith, lie about my age, and kill some gooks for Tricky Dick.

  “Cold wash it,” said the man at the desk as the kid passed by me and into the world. Behind the desk was a twisted mirror. My age. Similar build, but hitting the barbells ten times a day and showing off the goods by wearing nothing but a utility vest. Hints of gray in his dyed blond hair, right at the razor edge of his sideburns. Eyes baby blue. Stank of cigars and hate. “What do you want?”

  “Fine store you have.”

  He crossed his arms, flexing his guns. “If you don’t buy something, we don’t want your kind in here.”

  “Kind?” The three other thugs did a lazy pincer movement around the tables of belts from long-dead men. “You don’t serve the Irish?”

  He looked me up and down. “We don’t serve faggots. Or their mutt boyfriends.”

  I shuffled the cards to bring everyone’s attention back to me and away from Cactus: the giant mirror in the store’s left corner showed him standing silent as a sentry at the tomb of the unknown soldier.

  “Ah. Right. It must be the tux. See, I was at a funeral.”

  “Don’t care if you were at the funeral of Robert E. Lee. Buy something, or leave. Now.”

  The glass case between us was full of buttons, bullets, and mementos. “Then I’ll need your help to find it. I need an Iron Cross. An early one.”

  The cashier raised an eyebrow and the three thugs froze. “It’s illegal to sell works of the Third Reich without proper authentication papers and being vetted by US Customs.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But we both know that the Iron Cross pre-dates the rise of Hitler. The Prussian officer’s uniform outside clearly shows you have material from the First Reich. And yet, I don’t see anything out here from the era of Bismarck or the Kaiser.”

  He caught the line I was throwing him. “You want a pre-war Iron Cross?”

  “Pre World War Two. Something that might have been worn in the Great War would be fine. Perhaps by a corporal. One who served in Belgium.” I smiled.

  The guy smiled back, knowing full well who I was talking about. “That would be expensive.”

  “Don’t let the tux fool you,” I said, shuffling the cards again in my hand. “I just made out big at Wild Card. And Mr. Hayes over there,” I said, nodding back to Cactus, “is a representative who will back my buy. In short, he’s collateral. Show them your card, Mr. Smith.”

  Come on, Cactus, I thought. Play along.

  Cactus’s tough, weathered hand reached into his breast pocket.

  Spit died in my mouth.

  The three thugs secured themselves around him. The faint ghosts from piles of ragged gear chewed on my nerves

  Brimstone, you didn’t realize your name was Bull’s Eye, put out that cigarette!

  James, I can’t feel my hands . . .

  You’re a coward, Brimstone! COWARD.

  Slowly, Cactus retracted his hand.

  In it was a black card. He handed it to the thug on his right.

  “Says he’s from the casino,” said the thug with the one-eye-brow, and I choked back my surprise that the gimp could read.

  “If the merchandise is up to snuff,” I said, reigniting the patter, “you’ll make out like bandits, enough to open new stores across the US. Heading East, of course. A fertile operation like this needs . . . breathing room.”

  He snickered. I’d overplayed my hand with Nazi gibberish. “What you’re asking for is rarer than courage in a kike.”

  I grinned to hold back a left hook. “And time is pressing, as I’ll be leaving for Brazil this evening. So perhaps you might have something less prized, but no less compelling.” In the mirror, the thugs closed in on Cactus. “A pendant of the Thule Society? One with the two snakes, shaped like lightning, a precursor to the symbol of the SS.”

  The Nazi before me squinted his eyes. “Who are you?”

  “James Brimstone.” I shuffled my cards. “Perhaps you remember from my teenage act: ‘Brimstone, Master of Cards?’“

  “Brimstone? That don’t sound Irish.”

  I shuffled loud. “Can’t all be born a Hitler.”

  “Well, Brimstone, you got ten seconds before I scalp you and your Injun buddy and throw your carcasses out the back of my s
tore.”

  I cut the deck and folded the halves in each hand. And all the junior members of the Third Reich Club were eying the flash. “See, that’s the problem with you Nazis. Act first, think second, and I was about to offer you the chance to help me out with a problem because we likely have a mutual enemy, and instead you harass my friend here. And if you don’t lay off, I’m afraid I’ll have to raise you on scalping, and promise that should they move one more inch towards my friend they’ll be staining that carpet crimson.”

  The Nazi snickered and pressed a button.

  “You are one stupid cunt.”

  Thundering jackboots came from the upstairs, as if in waiting, and five guys ran down, each in matching hate-wear from 1939. The Nazi in front of me yelled “Grab the—”

  Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright!

  You can always bank on an idiot picking violence whenever options are available: I spun on my heels and snapped three cards from my right and two from my left with the precision and accuracy of David’s sling shot and watched in near slow-motion as my body Joyrode the Zen-like experience of a perpetual “now” while ten missiles shot across the room and at the thugs on the stairs:

  Two kings and three eights lodged themselves into each thug’s head about an eighth of an inch deep and with a satisfying “shluck.” Not a bad Full House.

  A pair of sevens sliced the hands of two reaching for weapons on their belts. The Rules for Stud Poker sliced the cheek of the one with the holster, while the joker cut his index finger right to the bone.

  I glanced in the mirror to see, amazingly, Cactus had already dropped his thugs to quivering masses and was adjusting his cufflink. This was going too damn well!

  Until I noticed the audience in the mirror.

  Skulls in helmets, gas masks, skulls with grenades in their mouths, skulls eating other skulls, tables piled high with bones and dog tags, helmets teeming with maggots, and the snows of Chosin raining down like a burial mound being built one flake at a time, growing ice around my feet.

  Stay with us, James! Stay a while! Stay forever!