by Rex Miller
“Right or wrong, that's the way I felt. But all the marriage talk had me ripe for a relationship exactly like the one we had. You made me want constancy, a stable thing with a sexy lady, all the trappings of marriage without the reality.” Without the trap. “And the next girl I met hit me between the eyes.
“She was just like me. It's funny now. Actually a laugh riot. I really thought this beautiful dope fiend had chosen me to fall for because I was such a stone hunk, see. I really fucking loved myself back then.” Mary laughed. “I was a goddamn fool.
“We got onto the fastest lane there is—really heavy into junk. Then she let me find out who she was. She was an undercover narc. I just couldn't handle it. I went deeper over the dope edge. That was when I was given my option. I could do hard time—they had me on ‘possession with intent,’ which carried a stiff mandatory rap, real serious time in the can—or I could help her make this case."
“The case turned out to be a caseload. And they kept pulling me deeper and deeper into the jam. I stayed with this—I stayed with her. That's what's so impossible to understand now. Why I didn't just do the time, I'll never be able to explain even to myself. I did end up doing more time inside my skull. They trapped me. Of course, they had a lot of help. The thing about undercover work is—you got all that nice junk right there at your fingertips. You're not much different than a plain junkie—your life is centered around scoring—it's just that narcs are also trying to bust their fellow junkies. Other than that, we were the same as any other doper."
Mary watched him as he talked about it. His hands were moving all the time: rubbing his eye, scratching his arm, touching his face, tapping time on the steering wheel. She read the fear in his body language, and it made her even more afraid.
“Eventually you get pulled into things you couldn't imagine doing before. Hell, I was straight compared to what I'd become when she got through getting me into the scene. It's amazing how easy it is to slide from doing a little social blow to having a big-time jones. Or to slide from a couple of hits at a party to doing eight balls or slamming or basing. You just slide in. That's the problem. Your head keeps telling you how great it is."
“But you knew right from wrong, Royce. How did you ever—” She cut herself off. “I just don't see how you could believe that drugs wouldn't take you down. You're not that stupid."
“I still don't say all drugs are bad for all people. Hash ... weed ... there are some things that some individuals can handle, and they get a nice high and that's it. It's like boozers—some people can drink some things. Moderation. That's the thing. But if you've got an addictive personality, you shouldn't be doing these things. Cocaine, that's another matter altogether. Nobody handles it. Everybody thinks they can. It's so insidious. It's ‘not addictive.’ Everybody and his brother is blowin’ snow. Suddenly you've got a second mortgage on the house and you're talking kilos, dealing, and you just keep sliding."
He told her all the details of the operation against the punk Happy Ruiz, how they were going to use his vulnerability to get a big trafficker, one of the top executives for the Colombian cartel. The details of the setup:
“I was perfect for it, since this was my turf. I was a homeboy. I was a known stoner. I would start using, become this punk's good customer. Then I do some small-change dealing, supposedly. Keep buying more coke, and finally—set up a deal where I could contract for serious weight, getting our boy into as much of a bind as possible. Time it to coincide with a big shipment so they'd be anxious to move a large amount, play to their greed; only, when the punk set it up, I'd vanish into the woodwork. He'd have to use his emergency line of communication to contact the boss man."
He explained about the phone scam and how ELINT, the phonemen, could nail the otherwise invulnerable dope trafficker by the local pusher initiating an emergency contact. Everybody would fall, and Royce Hawthorne would be cut loose in the bargain.
They reached Whitetail and got out and went in the Perkins cabin. Royce built a big fire in the stone fireplace and they sat in front of it, sipping cheap wine and munching cheese.
“For whatever reason, they've decided to let me twist slowly in the wind. The thing about that is—you're in trouble, too. You're with me, and they know you're the one I—cared about. That we've been seen together a lot since Sam's been gone. They'll try to hurt you, too. I was an imbecile and a jerk to get you involved. I just didn't think.
“Now—I call ‘em at the regional office with a tip on the biggest drug lab in the history of the Western world and they like blow me off!"
“What do you mean?"
“They're not about to do anything. The head guy just goes—oh, yeah, that's very interesting. Three hundred acres of—uh-huh. Armed guards and dogs. Yeah. Okay. Cool. We'll get right on that."
“Maybe that's just his way."
“You don't get it. Look: If you're mounting a big-scale, expensive operation against an underground lab, you've got to coordinate your Clandestine Laboratory Enforcement Team; it's a major-league-type SWAT operation. You've got what they call a ‘hammer'; a HAMR is a Hazardous Materials Response, and it involves special vehicles, personnel, weapons, tactics. You don't just say, ‘Oh, yeah—what's that address again? Twenty-fourth and Plowed Ground? Okay—we'll see you next Tuesday. Take care.’ It doesn't work that way.” He took a large gulp of wine.
“What does all this mean?"
“It means that for whatever reason, they've written me off. And that means you're in great danger. Happy and his biker goons are still running around loose. For all I know, this so-called serial killer they keep talking about is part of this whole mess. I have nobody I can go to. The FBI doesn't appear to give a shit. It's as if this were a U.S. government operation of some kind. It's got like a security umbrella over it—almost as if a the bad guys had diplomatic immunity."
What he didn't say would have just frightened Mary more, and for no point. He rubbed his ankle where the sheath knife was itching. He didn't even have any weapons to protect them with. His shotgun was in the pawnshop, and didn't work too well to begin with. He'd had a Saturday night special he'd sold to buy coke one night. She had no idea what a bodyguard he was. He looked up at the fireplace, noticing the pegs in the stone, as if an old musket might have hung there once. Even it was gone.
“Did you have a gun up there once?” He hoped it was still around.
“Yeah,” she said, “it was broken—didn't shoot.” Her mind was on other things. She was thinking about that money he'd borrowed. About what Marty Kerns had told her. “Something was broken off it. It was an old antique. It'd been Sam's grandfather's. I think he decided it would get ripped off and he put it in our cold storage box. I haven't seen it for a long time.
“I want to ask you something. When you borrowed that five thousand dollars ... it was for cocaine, wasn't it?"
“It was for gambling. I was supposed to scurry about and act like a junkie dealer would act. Trying to get his investment money together. It was all planned. But I had to make it look real. You were convenient, and I knew there was no risk—I wasn't going to lose."
“How did you know that?"
“There was a dealer at this place—The Rockhouse—where all the stoners hung. This one dealer, she was one of us. She'd been put in place just to make sure I'd win my seed money."
“So I was just a—somebody to be used, to you."
“You have to understand, babe, when you think like that all the time, it becomes an unshakable habit. I'm a user. It's my nature. Did you ever see that movie with Charlie Chaplin—Modern Times? Remember the scene in the factory where Chaplin is caught between the gears? That's the way it is—the way it was—for me. You reach out for whoever or whatever is at hand, you know?"
“Yeah.” She knew.
27
NORTH OF WATERTON
Doyle Genneret, the belligerent, rich, and ruthless “cattle rancher” who was the owner of the “World-famous Genneret Ranch and Exotic Animal Farm,” was in the ma
in office with a bookkeeper, Sally Peebles, and his hirsute foreman, Dean Seabaugh.
Genneret's background had been in livestock and farm machinery. He'd made a killing in the market and sensed an undeveloped category of stock sales: “exotics.” Giraffes, camels, lions, tigers, bears, kangaroos. “Lordee!” he was fond of saying. “If you don't see it here, it don't shit."
His main customers were farm boys who wanted to show off for a good year in wheat, or play one-up against the neighbors, something for the grandkids to ooh and ah over. He was aware that a lot of these old boys were turning around and selling exotics themselves, some of them were in the breeding game. But he didn't mind—he knew what the market could stand, and it was fat and juicy. You could turn on the radio or the TV and hear what hogs was a-bringing', but they didn't have a quote on leopards or honey bears. He knew where the roof was on the prices—there flat wasn't one.
The primary cash producer was the Genneret auction, a monthly “Exotic Animal, Livestock, Gun Show and Auction."
They'd had a few problems with some of them humane society dingbats, but nothing to worry over. He didn't even call ‘em animals, he called ‘em his “stuff.” He kept his stuff in a series of twenty-three overcrowded barns and corrals which required a staff of nearly two dozen hands. More when he went on the road with an exhibit.
His rule of thumb for hiring was simple: you got to be smarter than the stuff. Dean Seabaugh, his foreman was a like mind. He was infamous, even on the ranch, for having whipped a lion to death. He has a slight temper. He shared the boss's view that if them animal rights assholes want to worry about something, “let ‘em go take a tour through the freakin’ slaughterhouse. Whey do they think them streaks, ‘n’ belts, ‘n’ shoes ‘n’ crap come from?"
Magic Silo had come to the edge of the Genneret property line and flashed on a tubular opening in the thick, junglelike wooded area. His storehouse retained the images of masses of gigantic verticillate leaves, looped and whorled like huge fingerprints, that papered the walls of the jungle conduits similar to this one.
He looked closely. Something nudged him. Déjà vu? The floor bore the signs of trail. He'd seen incredible “hardballs” inside natural tubes such as this one, ceilings with precisely carpentered dink bamboo. He touched a great leaf with a midrib like the rigid blade of an epee and saw his sign.
Saw the man-tracks the way he'd spotted trip wires and traps and deadfalls—saw the sign, felt the presence of some human intrusion. He, Daniel, was the grandmaster of concealment. Nobody could track a human being like him. He read sign in bright moonlight—but how?
He froze. Chilled those vital signs. Waited. Listening. Reaching out for the enemy who was somewhere near. Would the Genneret outfit have a security unit? At night? Working the woods?
He remained very still for a long period—motionless—barely breathing. He heard something and his face broke into a wide and dangerous grin. Slowly he eased into the pipeline, with the focused concentration that had kept him alive so long, moving through the shadows.
The Genneret outfit was forgotten the instant he saw the watcher and identified him. The farm and the cruel men would have provided him with a smorgasbord of wildly delicious opportunities. Another time—perhaps.
When he saw the movement in deep shadow, he froze again. The huge links of the yard-long, friction-taped killing chain dangled at arm's length.
Now he knew what the sound of the human voice he'd heard represented; it was a watcher whispering into some kind of microphone. A headset thing, maybe, with a transparent tube-type mouthpiece and connected earplug.
“Negative,” he heard the shadowman whisper, “Blue Leader, I do not have a visual.” Chaingang moved forward as the man spoke into his tiny plastic mike, the powerful right arm in motion as he moved, the massive tractor-strength chain moving through the air, propelled by a wrist and forearm and upper bicep of steel, a blur of snaking chain whirling into the deep shadow and connecting.
The chain made more noise crashing into the bushes than the man did falling. Only a hard splat, an off of air, a relatively quiet clump of dead weight—two hundred pounds plus machine gun—falling in a crumpled heap, marked the kill. It was a far more merciful extermination than Bunkowski would have been preferred, but this was no auction house security guard. This was one of them—the invisible eyes. If they were this close, and in the numbers that they would have to be, logic dictated that he expedite his plan's final stages.
He checked the fallen man for life signs. Quickly searched for ID and found neither vital signs nor identification. The weapon was ID enough. That and the commo gear. He was very still again, listening, his sensors scanning for the presence of a partner.
Satisfied after several moments, he eased his great bulk down to the ground beside the man, carefully inserting the earpiece, which he'd found near the watcher's bloodied head. The umbilical cord that connected the headset to the guts of the radio apparatus was too short to facilitate much slack, but with his head beside the inert man's, he was able to insert the earplug.
There was nothing. He waited. As the seconds ticked by, he wondered if they had decided to move in and take him. Were they though with him now? Had he fulfilled his function? Was this experiment or operation now to be aborted with extreme prejudice?
“Blue Leader to Blue Tracker Five—do you read, over?” He grinned into the dark silence, stifling a coughing explosion of mirth. He could utter words now, and the watchers would hear him. What of it?
“Blue Leader, this is Blue Tracker, did Five confirm a visual on Side Show?” The other voice was less clear, but he could hear it.
“Uh—Negative, Blue Tracker, stand by one. Blue Tracker Five, do you copy this transmission? Over."
Chaingang removed the small earpiece and took the high-impact microphone between his thumb and index finger and squeezed. Crunch!
He silently backtracked his way through the pipeline to his vehicle, fighting to keep a damper on his rage, but boiling with irritation at having his plans for Mr. Genneret so rudely interrupted.
Chaingang was gone. Inside the office of the show and auction company, mean Dean Seabaugh, Sally Peebles, and Doyle Genneret shuffled papers and talked of a workaday things, oblivious to their luck. They should have run to their wheels, driven to the nearest airport, and chartered the first thing that would fly them to Vegas.
Lady luck was smiling on them this night. They'd come this close to riding the Genneret Exotic Animal, Livestock, Gun Show and Auction on the midnight red-eye straight to hell.
There are those to whom solitary confinement, isolation, and the horrors of restricted movement would be a nightmare. Others, perhaps, might find solace in the heart of private darkness. If it is all you have know, your escape can be a kind of exquisite pleasure—even the severe challenge of the biter.
He is wonderfully alone now, and the night is chill, but he relishes the feel of it on his enormous body and stands—nude and gigantic—the cold breeze somehow pleasant as it cools his skin. He thinks about monkeys. The lights in the distance twinkle and beckon, as his mindscreen scans poisons and toxic drugs in preparation for John Wayne Vodrey, the amputator of children's pets.
What care he will manifest in his application of extended pain to Mr. Vodrey. Curare, Pavulon, Succinycholine, and Venticol all cross his field of thought. Paralysis, respiratory malfunction, pain enhancement, each widen the travesty of a smile that distorts his doughy face.
Who is this strange, poor, genius, idiot, clown, killer, animal lover, people hater? Is he Lucifer, Gilles de Rais, Iago, or Frankenstein's monster? Whoever he is—he can hate. God on high, how can he hate! To him you are less than a microscopic mote, less than the smallest, slimiest elongate, less than a whiff of puke-stick, less than frog-spit on stagnant water, less than the sum of your parts which he will cheerfully render into blobs, clots, gouts, of bloody clabber and gure-deck. So imagine, if you will, how much he feel about Mr. Vodrey?
No evil will suffice. No scr
eaming, splatter-drenched revenge will begin to palliate, abate, or atone. He cannot show Jones Wayne Vodrey the blunt chain-kiss of his great disdain or the Poe-fear of premature burial (paralyzed by rare poison and made insane by drug-enhanced awareness of pain) and the awful anticipation of the unknown. But he will come up with something.
Having identified the problem, his unique mind will collate and assess the product stored, produce a working hypothesis, test and reassess, forming in the anomaly that is his cerebral cortex a procedure and course of action.
Even now as he examines data retrieval, something tingles on his skin. Perhaps it is only the cool of the November night on his vast nakedness. As always, he does not ignore the pinpricks that have touched him.
He shivers as a leisurely lizardly slithery leathery feathery thing causes him to shudder in the darkness, while he watches the Tinytown lights across the flat field.
From the road one can see nothing, but from behind the ruins of the sharecropper shack—from the empty field—one would see the bright stab of light in the mouth of the thing, and know that a hot fire burned in the belly of the beast. It scared his innards with the unexpected intensity of the sensation that something, a factor out of his grasp and beyond his field of vision, was wrong.
Travel down Whitetail Road far enough in a meandering northwesterly direction, circling around the pond and through the surrounding cotton fields to the northwest, and you come to 771, a county blacktop that runs back toward the river. Right before you hit Market Road there's a little job to the right, nothing more than a gravel run, and it will take you through a pit stop known locally as Finch Hollow.
There's a café and general store that doubles as the post office drawer for the thirty or so inhabitants of the tiny farm community, a gas station, a feed-and-seed operation, and an out-of-the-way pay phone located over by an MFA oil sign.
The same phone had been used the day before by a “Mr. Norman of General Discount Stores, calling from Scottsville, Kentucky.” He had reserved a room at the Tennessee Motor Courts of Maysburg, for their sales manager, “Mr. Conway.” They thought he would be checking in within the next couple of days. They'd call and cancel if he was going to be late. “He'll bill it to his Visa or MasterCard,” the sissified voice of Mr. Norman proclaims to the motel clerk. The line rang.
