“You sure do sling the bull.” She finished her pie and slid away the plate. “I ought to dump my coffee in your lap. So why am I not doing that?”
I took out my pack and lit us both, relieved. “Maybe I’m the first guy you ever met in this place didn’t think pushing a rig was the most romantic job in America. It’s boring as hell is what it is. You make up stories just to keep from aiming straight at a bridge abutment.”
“It’s pretty clever, especially that bit about being able to move around being a big advantage. You ought to write for the movies.”
“You need to know somebody,” I said. “And it helps to know how to spell.”
She laughed. I grinned. It was going to be all right. Then the cook made a racket behind the counter, and that meant her break was over. She thanked me for the pie and the entertainment, and I got up like a gentleman when she rose. She pressed against me briefly–probably an accident, but try telling that to my physical reaction. She switched her hips in the tight uniform walking away. I was going to have to stop in on my way back across country.
Back behind the wheel I stuck the flask in the glove compartment and fired up the diesel. The Anderson job was out, at least at that location. If I was to get a jump on all the others looking for a big payday I’d have to follow him when he left, run him off some lonely section of road, and do the job with a jack handle, or anything but a knife. It would help that he wasn’t going by the name Anderson and that the Feds would make sure it didn’t get out that a witness in their care came to a bad end. If Liz read about it, she’d think it was an accident and wouldn’t connect it to me.
One thing was sure. I needed to save the whiskey from then on for after the job, as a treat instead of a stimulus to action.
Anderson pulled up half an hour late, his company rig plastered with mud from some detour down a dirt road, probably in search of a crap game. The man had no pride, in his workmanship or anything else. The cargo of Arrow shirts I was carrying may have been just a cover, but I’d deliver them on time. Apart from ridding the world of a rotten snitch, I’d be doing some dispatcher the favor of not having to can him.
He went into the diner, looking as sloppy as the way he approached his duties. I remembered what Liz had said about there being two types of trucker, the big-bellied kind and the kind that looked like Randy Travis. I adjusted the rearview for a look at the stalwart chin, the granite squint, the hair cut short at the temples and left long in front to tumble go-to-hell fashion over the forehead. She’d felt firm and warm pressing against me. I wanted another pull at the flask, but I tamped down the temptation with a smoke.
I dozed off, I think. I jumped, alert all at once and cursing, but Anderson’s filthy tractor-trailer stood where he’d left it, and the clock on the dash told me only five minutes had passed. At least I’d had the presence of mind to ditch the butt in the ashtray, where it had smoked itself out. I didn’t remember doing it. Blackouts are a good sign to cut back.
I turned on a late-night talk show for company: the war, the economy, yet another scandal on Capitol Hill. If I’d ever had reason to regret the path my life had taken, self-esteem was only a dial switch away. I put in Johnny Cash and tried to keep up with him on the Rock Island Line.
Forty minutes passed, an hour. I pictured Anderson lingering over a plate of slop, maybe chatting up Liz. I hoped to hell he wasn’t trying to impress her with his career in crime.
I got restless after ninety minutes. His desks and crap were due in Milwaukee by noon. I didn’t picture him highballing it to make his deadline. He was exceeding even the margin of ineptitude I’d drawn up for him. I ditched the cigarette I’d started and stepped down to investigate. He didn’t know me from Donald Duck. I could sit slurping coffee on the stool next to his and he’d think I was just another gear-cruncher, feeling all superior because he was just slumming from the wise-guy life.
The place was jumping. Just in the time I’d been out of the loop the lot had filled with Macks and Peterbilts and the odd Winnebago, and Liz was too busy filling cups and plunking down bowls of chili to notice me. There were more beer guts than Travises crowding the counter, but Anderson wasn’t among them, nor at any of the booths, where the knights of the road sat belching onions and air-shifting down steep mountain grades for their bored audiences. I went down the narrow tiled corridor that led to the showers and toilets.
Anderson wasn’t in any of them, not even the ladies’ room, where a schnook like him might wander into without stopping to read the sign on the door. The only door left was marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
He lay there on the floor among the mops and cartons of toilet paper and industrial-sized mustard dispensers, on his face in the middle of a stain that didn’t look like anything but what it was. I bent to feel his neck for a pulse, but didn’t get that far. The knife stuck out hilt-deep from just below his left shoulder blade, flat, with a brass heel and a printed wood grain on the steel handle. I groped for the buck knife in my left pants pocket, purely from reflex. It wasn’t there.
The door flew open and the rest was shouting and shoving and my feet kicked out from under me and two hundred pounds of county law kneeling on my back and the muzzle of a big sidearm tickling the back of my neck. I heard my rights and felt my shoulders pulled almost out of their sockets and the cold, hard, heavy clamp of the cuffs on my wrists.
I kept my mouth shut, credit me that. I was as sober as a Shaker and met every pair of eyes that locked with mine during the hustle through the crowded diner and out the door toward the radio car, where some kind soul who cared whether I suffered a concussion pressed down my head with an iron palm, shoved me into the backseat, and slammed the door.
The lot was desert bright, sheriff’s spotlights adding candlepower to the pole lamps, the night air throbbing with sirens grinding down and radios muttering and spectators’ chatter and the monotonous drone of official voices ordering the crowd to disperse, go home to your families, nothing to see here. I sat staring at the gridded polyurethane sheet that separated me from the front seat, where a fullback in uniform sat on one haunch with a foot on the pavement, murmuring into a mike, lights twinkling on the Christmas-tree console that divided the bucket seats in front.
When I got tired of looking at that I stared at the carpeted floor at my feet. I hadn’t a chance with a not-guilty plea. The cops would track me through the ICC log and place me at the scene of every hit I’d performed. A good prosecutor would find a way to bring that out in court, even if my knife in Anderson’s back wasn’t enough. (“Someone picked your pocket? That’s your defense?”) You can’t argue with the record. I was pinned as tightly as my old man in his bar where customers kept going in and never came out.
I raised my eyes to meet those of the curious pressing in for a closer look before they were manhandled out of the way by the hard men who had taken over the truck stop. One of the pairs of eyes belonged to Liz, looking less tired now, with that smile on her face as she made a gun with her finger and shot me with it.
I didn’t know what it meant at first. Our conversation had taken place on the other side of the flask and came drifting back in pieces. One piece slowed down long enough for me to reel in.
Her other job wasn’t as glamorous as this.
And as she faded back into the crowd, I heard the rest, as clearly as if she were still speaking: “You don’t have to move around. I see just as many opportunities as you do just staying in one place.”
Saturday Night at the Mikado Massage
The ironic thing about the night Mr. Ten Fifty-Five died on Iiko’s table was that she was supposed to have that Saturday off.
She’d asked for the time three weeks in advance so she could spend the weekend with Uncle Trinh, who was coming to visit from Corpus Christi, Texas, where he worked on a shrimp boat, but the day before his bus left, he slipped on some fish scales and broke his leg. Now he needed money for doctors’ bills, and Iiko had volunteered to work.
The Mikado Massage was located on
Michigan Avenue in Detroit. On one side was an empty building that had once sheltered a travel agency. The Mystic Arts Bookshop was on the other and shared a common wall with the Mikado. There was a fire door in this wall, which came in handy during election years. When the mayor sent police with warrants, they invariably found the bookshop full of customers and the massage parlor empty. On the third Sunday of every month a man came to collect for the service of keeping the owner informed about these visits. Iiko had seen the man’s picture under some printing on the side of a van with a loudspeaker on the roof. Detroit was the same as back home except for no Ho Chi Mirth on the billboards.
Although its display in the yellow pages advertised an all-Japanese staff, the Mikado’s owner, Mr. Shigeta, was the only person in residence not Korean or Vietnamese, and he was never seen by the customers unless one of them became ungallant. He was a short, thick man of fifty-five or seventy with hair exactly like a seal’s, who claimed to have stood in for Harold Sakata on the set of Goldfinger and had papered his little office with posters and lobby cards from the film. He kept a bottle of Polish vodka and a jar of pickled eggs in a crawlspace behind the radiator.
Iiko had been working there four months. She made less than the other masseuses because she was still on probation after a police visit to the Dragon’s Gate in the suburb of Inkster, which had no fire door, and so she gave only massages, no specials. She kept track of the two months remaining on her sentence on a Philgas calendar inside her locker door.
The man she called Mr. Ten Fifty-Five always showed up at that time on Saturday night and always asked for Iiko. Because he reminded her a little of Uncle Trinh, she’d thought to do him a kindness and had explained to him, in her imperfect English, that he could get the same massage for much less at any hotel, but he said he preferred the Mikado. The hotels didn’t offer Japanese music or heated floors or scented oils or a pink bulb in a table lamp with a paper kimono shade.
Normally, Saturday was the busiest night of the week, but this was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when, as Mr. Shigeta explained, the customers remembered they were family men and stayed home. Mr. Ten Fifty-Five, therefore, was the only person she’d seen since early evening when Mr. Shigeta had gone home, leaving her in charge.
Mr. Ten Fifty-Five was duck-shaped and bald, with funny gray tufts that stood out on both sides of his head when he waddled in from the shower in a towel and sprawled face down on the table. He often fell asleep the moment she began to rub him down and didn’t wake up even when she walked on his back, so it wasn’t until she asked him to turn over that Iiko found out that this time he’d died.
Iiko recognized death. She’d been only a baby when the last American soldier left her village, but she remembered the marauding gangs that swept through after the Fall of Saigon, claiming to be hunting rebels but forcing themselves upon the women and carrying away tins of food and silver picture frames and setting the buildings on fire when they left. Iiko’s brother Nguyen, sixteen years old, had tried to block the door of their parents’ home, but one of the visitors stuck a bayonet between his ribs and planted a boot on his face to tug loose the blade. Iiko hung on to her mother’s skirt during the walk to the cemetery. The skirt was white, the color of mourning in Vietnam, with a border of faded flowers at the hem.
When Iiko confirmed that Mr. Ten Fifty-Five’s heart had stopped, she went through his clothes. This was much easier than picking pockets in Ho Chi Minh City, where one always ran the risk of being caught with one’s hand in the pocket of another pickpocket. Iiko found car keys, a little plastic bottle two-thirds full of tiny white pills, a tattered billfold containing fifty-two dollars, and a folding knife with a stag handle and a blade that had been ground down to a quarter inch wide. She placed it and the money in the pocket of her smock and returned the clothes to the back of the chair. The tail of the shabby coat clunked when it flapped against a chair leg.
Iiko investigated. There was a lump at the bottom where the machine stitch that secured the lining had been replaced by a clumsy crosshatch of thread that didn’t match the original. This came loose easily, and she removed a small green cloth sack with a drawstring, whose contents caught the pink light in seven spots of reflected purple. When she switched on the overhead bulb, the stones, irregular ovals the size of the charcoal bits she swept weekly from the brazier in the sauna, turned deep blue.
She found a place for the stones, then went out into the little reception area to call Mr. Shigeta at home. He would want to know that a customer had died so that when the police came they would find nothing of interest except a dead customer. While she was dialing, two men came in.
Both were Americans. One, a large black man with a face that was all jutting bones, wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and a Pistons jacket. He towered over his companion, a white man with small features and sandy hair done up elaborately, wearing a shiny black suit with a pinched waist and jagged lapels. Their eyes continued to move around the room after the men had come to a stop a few feet from the counter.
“Sorry, we close,” Iiko said.
She was standing in front of the sign that said OPEN TILL MIDNIGHT.
“You’re back open,” said the sandy-haired man. “Long enough anyway to tell us where’s the fat bald guy that came in here about eleven.”
She shook her head, indicating that she didn’t understand. It was not entirely a lie. The sandy-haired man, who did almost all the talking, spoke very fast.
“Come on, girlie, we know he’s here. His car’s outside.”
“The stuff ain’t in it, neither,” said the black man.
“Shut up, Leon.”
“Not know,” said Iiko.
“Leon.”
The black man put a hand inside his jacket and brought out a big silver gun with a twelve inch barrel. He pointed it at her and thumbed back the hammer.
The sandy man said, “Leon’s killed three men and a woman, but he’s never to my knowledge done a slant. Where’s George?”
“Not know George,” she said.
“Keep it on her. If she jumps, take off her head.” The sandy man came around the counter.
Iiko stood still while the man ran his hands over her smock. She didn’t even move when they lingered at her small breasts and crotch. He took the fifty-two dollars and the knife from her pockets. He showed Leon the knife.
“That’s George’s shank, all right,” said the black man. “He carries it open when he has to walk more’n a block to his car. He’s almost as scared of muggers as he is of guns.”
The sandy man slapped Iiko’s face. She remained unmoving. She could feel the hot imprint of his palm on her cheek.
“One more time before we disturb the peace, Dragon Lady. Where’s George Myrtle?”
She turned and went through the door behind the counter. The two men followed.
In the massage room the sandy man felt behind Mr. Ten Fifty-Five’s ear, then said, “Deader’n Old Yeller.”
“I don’t see no marks,” Leon said.
“Of course not. Look at him. He as good as squiffed himself the day he topped two forty and started taking elevators instead of climbing the stairs. I bet he never said no to a second helping of mashed potatoes in his life. Check out his clothes.”
Leon returned the big gun to a holster under his left arm and quickly turned out all the pockets of the coat and trousers, then with a grunt held the coat upside-down and showed his companion the place where the lining had been pulled loose.
The sandy man looked at Iiko. She saw something in his pale eyes that she remembered from the day her brother was killed.
“This ain’t turning out the way I figured,” the sandy man said. “I was looking forward to watching Leon bat around that tub of guts until he told us what he done with them hot rocks. I sure don’t enjoy watching him do that to a woman. Especially not to a pretty little China doll like you. How’s about sparing me that and telling me what you did with the merch?”
“Not know merch,” she said
truthfully.
Leon started toward her. The sandy man stopped him with a hand. He was still looking at Iiko.
“You got more of these rooms?” he asked.
After a moment she nodded and stepped in the direction of the curtain over the doorway. The black man’s bulk blocked that path.
“Search the rest of the place, Leon. I’ll take care of this.” “Sure?”
“Sure.”
Leon went out. Iiko led the sandy man through the curtains and across the narrow hallway. This room was larger, although still small. A forest of bottles containing scented oils stood on a rack beside the massage table. The sandy man seized her arm and spun her around. They were close now, and the light in his eyes had changed. She could smell his aftershave, sticky and sharp.
“You’re sure a nice little piece for a slant. I bet old George had some times with you. Especially at the end.”
Iiko didn’t struggle.
The sandy man said, “I could use a little rub myself. You rub me, I rub you. What do you say? Then we’ll talk.”
After a moment she nodded. “Take off clothes.”
“You first.”
He let go of her and stepped back, his small hard fists dangling at his sides. He watched her unbutton and peel off the smock. Without hesitating, she undid her halter top and stepped out of her shorts. She wore no underthings. She knew her body was good, firm and well-proportioned for her small frame. She could see in his eyes he approved.
He took a long breath and let it out. Then he took off his shiny black coat. He hung his suit carefully on the wooden hanger on the wall peg, folded his shirt and put it on the seat of the chair. His ribs showed, but his pale, naked arms and legs were sinewy, the limbs of a runner.
He saw that she saw. “I work out. I ain’t going to do you no favor like George and clock out on the table.”
She said nothing. He stretched out on his stomach on the padded table. “No oil,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin my clothes. Just powder.”
Evil Grows & Other Thrilling Tales Page 5
