Chapter 39
TEMPTATION
Cris stood in front of Cinder-Ella's house and tried to guess which way was east. He finally stopped a mail carrier and asked the way to the river.
In the fifties and sixties, Shreveport had been a big center for scrap metal, and as a result it had become a shipping hub in the south. Now, because of the extensive rail and shipping lanes, there were all kinds of local factories making everything from ball bearings to furniture. They were tucked in among lush trees heavy with Spanish moss.
The summer air was moist. Cris walked until his shirt was dripping. The majority of buildings he passed were fifties-style motel structures; an occasional antebellum house looked out from between its stucco neighbors like a beautiful mistake.
It took Cris almost an hour to find Black Bed Jungle. When he saw it through the trees, it lived up to the warning. There were almost no dogs or children, always a bad sign. Also, the dwellings were even more temporary and makeshift than usual. In other camps, hobos would often build a house of scrounged lumber and materials, then leave the dwelling behind for others to use. This jungle had no "permanent" structures; they were unfriendly hovels built by unfriendly men. As transients moved on, the hovels were immediately picked clean as vultures' prey.
Cris stripped off his inappropriate polo shirt, with the monogram horse and rider, and rolled it up out of sight, wrapping it around his waist. His once lean muscles had become thin and stringy. He still had the shape of a college athlete, but not the bulk. He reached down and grabbed some damp river mud, then rubbed it in his new head fuzz and on his face. It took a few minutes before it dried, then he shook his head and rubbed his face until he had knocked most of it off. It left him looking dusty and lost, as if he had not bathed in weeks. Then he removed his good Spanish leather loafers and hid them under the moss of a tree.
Barefoot and shirtless, "Lucky" Cunningham walked into Black Bed Jungle. No one bothered him; he had transformed himself into one of them. In his current state, he was of no benefit to anyone. After one glance, he was ignored.
He began to wander through the jungle, his gait uneven, as if dazed or drunk. He also had a growing desire to have a drink
His mouth began to water and his stomach began to ache. He remembered reading once that if you were on a diet you should stay out of the kitchen, because once you entered a room where you were accustomed to snacking your hunger would overpower you. Cris had always been drunk in these jungles, and now an unreasoning thirst for a drink overtook him. He could feel his resolve crumbling, so he kept moving, remembering Kennidi and his promise of vengeance. But his hand was in his pocket on some money, certainly enough to buy a bottle from one of these 'bos. These conflicting thoughts were in his mind as his eyes scanned the transients in the jungle.
Then Cris spotted Ben Brook Bob and the Pullman Kid. They were down by the lake, away from the others. Cris remembered them from a few years back. Ben Brook Bob was a mean son-of-a-bitch, who was almost Cris's height and weighed at least 250 pounds. Worse still, he was half crazy. Cris recalled a time outside of Denver when he had seen Ben Brook Bob fly into a rage and attack a hobo with a hammer. He had almost pulverized the man before several 'bos had pulled him off. The Pullman Kid was a boyish-looking "bottom," Bob's personal property and homosexual lover. There were quite a few gay men on the rails, as the train-riding society had a scarcity of women.
Cris figured he could probably get good jungle scuttlebutt from the Pullman Kid if he could separate him from Ben Brook Bob, who would jealously protect his slender lover. Twenty minutes later the Pullman Kid moved off, leaving Bob by the river. Cris trailed him, staying out of sight by skirting the tree line at the edge of the jungle. He soon realized that the Kid was going into the woods to take a shit. The man-boy took a bottle out of his pocket and set it down on the ground. Then he undid his belt, dropped his pants down around his ankles, and squatted. Cris stood in the trees a short distance away, his attention split between the squatting Kid and the bottle of rye which was sitting tantalizingly before him. Then he must have rustled some leaves, because the Pullman Kid looked directly up at him. "Howdy," Cris grinned. "Been a long time, Kid. Go ahead and pinch that one off, then we'll talk." He moved out of hiding and picked up the bottle of rye. Just having his hands on the bottle made Cris's stomach rumble. He could already imagine the fiery warmth of the liquor going down his throat.
The Pullman Kid shot him a look of dismay and quickly stood, yanking his pants up and pulling his belt tight. "I don't know you," the Kid said, fear and excitement competing for control of his narrow face.
"We met a few years back at Gnaw Bone Jungle outside of Denver. You still swappin' spit with Ben Brook Bob?" Cris grinned lecherously, trying to keep the Kid off balance with attitude, holding his bottle in front of him.
"You better gimme that back and get the fuck away from here. If Bob sees you talkin' to me, he'll kill you."
"He won't know we're talkin' 'less you get dumb and tell him. All I need is some info. I heard Fannon Kincaid was here at this jungle. I wanna know where he went." And without even realizing it, Cris was unscrewing the cap on the bottle and raising it to his lips.
"Get the fuck away from me. You got any idea what will happen, Bob catches us together?" The Kid was panicking.
"Just answer me. You seen Kincaid around?" Cris took a mouthful of liquor and held it in the back of his throat. But something wouldn't let him swallow. He heard Clancy's voice somewhere in his subconscious: "He's gonna know if you fuck up, so you ain 7 gonna drink. You're gonna go get this godless prick.9' Cris stood there, unable to spit out the liquor, unable to swallow it. Then the decision was taken out of his hands.
"The fuck you doin' with my punk?" Ben Brook Bob's voice cut the momentary silence like a sickle slashing dry wheat.
Cris spun toward the voice, but he was too late. The huge hobo hit him in the face, and Cris went down hard, spewing rye whiskey. He rolled right, a split second before a knife thrown with deadly accuracy stuck in the ground and quivered in the exact spot he had just been. Cris came up to his feet in a fluid motion, just in time to take Ben Brook Bob's rhino charge. Bob buried a shoulder in Cris's stomach, screaming in rage as he hit Cris's thin wiry body, driving him back until they both fell painfully into a pile of rocks.
Ben Brook Bob was now snarling like a wild beast as he threw three quick punches at Cris, all of them hitting him on the side of his head, knocking stars into his eyes and blood into his mouth. The fight was already on the verge of being over; Cris was still conscious, but just barely. In a desperate combat-training reflex he pulled Ben Brook Bob in close, Ranger-style, taking away his chopping fists and pinning his arms to his sides. As Cris's head cleared slightly, he rolled once, scissor-kicking and pushing hard with his left leg, until he was on top of Bob. Then he shifted his grip for better traction around the big man's chest. Because Cris was weak, his hold slipped. Bob heaved backward and broke Cris's grasp, stumbling to his feet. Cris was dizzy and still on his knees. Ben Brook Bob turned and kicked Cris square in the face with his hard leather boot. Cris went over on his back. Bob rushed him, but as he charged, the ex-Ranger managed to kick his bare left foot up between Ben Brook's legs. The ball-shot doubled Bob over. While on his back, Cris reached up, grabbed Bob, and pulled him down. This time he shifted his grip quickly and got a choke hold on the muscled neck of the larger, groaning man, squeezing off the blood supply to Bob's brain. In a last desperate effort, Bob lunged up, and Cris heard something pop in Bob's neck. In seconds, Ben Brook Bob was facedown and out on the ground. Cris struggled up to his feet and faced the Pullman Kid.
"Don't hit me," the man-boy shrieked in terror.
"Talk to me, you piece of shit," Cris said, trying to scare the little pansy. He was completely spent by the two minutes of fighting, and he knew that if the Pullman Kid just turned and ran, Cris would never catch him. Fortunately, this tactic didn't occur to the skinny Kid.
"Leave me alone," he said, backing up a few s
teps.
"You tell me what I want to know or you're gonna get the same," Cris bluffed. His head felt light on his shoulders and his vision was blurred.
"I don't know shit about Kincaid or that fat killer he travels with. Me an' Bob, we only been here a couple hours."
"What fat killer? Who you talkin' about?" Cris took a threatening step forward, and the Pullman Kid looked to Ben Brook Bob for help, but the huge hobo was still facedown.
"The one they call the Texas Madman," the Kid blurted.
"Were they here in this jungle?"
"Two of them was over by that table. Down there by the trees, lookin' at some shit. That's all I know."
"Which two?"
"Just the Texas Madman an' some skinny mean fucker with tattoos all over his forehead... 'Eat Shit,' and Tuck you' over his eyebrows."
The Pullman Kid's lips quivered; he seemed to be only fifteen or sixteen, but Cris had been told once he was really twenty-five. "Bottoms" like the Kid were passed around among unparticular hobos, and Cris didn't know whether to feel sorry for him or just disgusted. "Why don't you go home? Get the fuck outta here," Cris finally said. "You don't need this guy up your ass. Get out before he wakes up."
"Maybe I will," the Pullman Kid said, but just stood there like a cornered animal.
Cris turned and moved out of the small clearing under the trees, leaving the emptied bottle of rye on the ground where it had fallen. He walked toward the table that the Pullman Kid had pointed out. In the dirt nearby he saw some sheets of paper. Other sheets were half submerged in the shallow water at the river's edge. A few carbons had been blown into the bushes. Cris gathered them up, then moved quickly out of the jungle.
He made his way back to the tree where he had hid his loafers. Then he began the long trek back to Cinder-Ella's house. Halfway there he found a garden hose coiled at the side of a building. He turned it on, then washed the dirt out of his hair and the blood off his face. Surprisingly, despite his fatigue and the aches from the fight, Cris felt a swagger coming into his step, like the last days before the Rose Bowl, when he was quivering with excitement and the thrill of competition. He had gotten what he had come for, but more important, he had withstood temptation. He didn't know if he would have swallowed the rye or not, but he had hesitated ... he had gone to the edge, but had not crossed over. As he walked, there was a new lightness in his step and in his spirit.
Once he got back to Cinder-Ella's and was sitting under the shade of her gnarled magnolia tree, he spread the carbon papers in front of him. Stacy was looking at him strangely as he studied the sheets. Cris seemed to have been roughed up, yet was smiling. She could sense a change.
"Here," he said, pointing. "Somebody marked this one in pencil."
She read:
MAN-SH-PT-BR [KCS]
"It looks like a manifest train heading from Shreveport to Baton Rouge, on the Kansas City Southern track," he said. "Then they marked a transfer to this manifest train on the Norfolk Southern Line, which goes all the way up to Baltimore." He looked up at Stacy. "Why Baltimore, I wonder?"
They sat there for a long time, thinking.
"Baltimore is just about fifty miles from Fort Detrick," Stacy finally said.
Chapter 40
EMPEROR
When Caesar rode through the crowded streets of Rome, Buddy had heard, he'd always kept a slave standing next to him on the shaded litter. As the crowds cheered, the slave's job was to whisper into the Emperor's ear, "Caesar, thou art mortal."
Buddy had never had someone performing this mind-leveling function. Quite to the contrary, Buddy's slaves seemed to constantly bring out the worst in him. The more he paid them, the more obdurate and demanding he got.
Now he was sitting in the "command" chair, directly behind Billy Seal, who was driving the thirty-seven-foot motor home that Buddy's assistant, Alicia Profit, had rented. He was screaming at the black stunt driver, pointing frantically at a turnoff on the Interstate. "You fucking asshole, that's Interstate 20," he shouted, as they flashed past the connecting ramp, while Billy slowed looking for a place to turn around.
The motor home was full of "Brazil Nuts," his affectionate yet degrading term for his inner circle of employees.
Alicia Profit was on the cellphone, which was always attached to her head like a bracketed utility. She was rearranging the new dubbing schedule on Deadwood County Countown, a feather-covered gobbler that Buddy should never have shot. He was trying to rush it into the theaters so that it could perch on the screen during January, with all the rest of the major studio turkeys. January was the dumping ground for bad pictures in the film business.
Seated next to Alicia was Rayce Walker, dressed as always like a rodeo contestant in faded blue jeans, a silver conch belt, and dusty rough-out boots the color of sandpaper.
Then there was John Little Bear, who rarely spoke. His black eyes burned with intensity from a flat brown face that looked like it must have been hit at birth with the wide end of a shovel. John Little Bear had balls the size of cantaloupes. Buddy had seen him drive trucks off motel roofs, do high falls from twenty stories into air-bags, and set himself on fire. Crackling like a Christmas log, he would run out of an exploding building, the flames consuming him until the director yelled "Cut!" and the stunt safety team smothered him with blankets and doused him with fire extinguishers. With his hair and eyebrows already singed, Little Bear would shrug and repeat the life-threatening stunt if the director wanted a second take. All of this impressed Buddy, but he still failed to show John Little Bear any respect. Nobody told him when he was acting like an asshole, so Buddy abused them all like helpless orphans, his raging ego always out of control.
"This fucking guy has this Prion shit, and we're gonna find out where he's goin' and get our hands on it," Buddy blurted. He'd already said this three times before. "He can't be hard to trace. There are fifty people in his fucking congregation. He's a wild-eyed evangelist with silver hair. He'll leave a trail two miles wide. ... Crank me up," he shouted at Alicia, who whispered something into the phone and hung up. She got her compact of cocaine out of her purse and expertly chopped two lines. While Buddy zooted the load, the Brazil Nuts tried not to notice, looking nervously out the window at the passing landscape.
He wiped the residue from his nose and glared down at a map, waiting for the rocket blast to hit. "Shreveport is just twenty-five miles up ahead. Rayce, when we get there, we go to the cops and show 'em your badge, see if they'll escort us to the jungle where these hobos all hang. Then we bust chops until somebody talks."
Rayce had a New Mexico Sheriff's badge, and it had been Buddy's "get out of jail" card more than once.
The Shreveport P. D. was in a brick building on Lee Street, in the old section of town. Heavy, gnarled oaks overhung the sidewalk and rested their twisted limbs on the low eaves of the police annex, leaning like tired soldiers after battle.
Buddy and Rayce were on the third floor of the building, in a cluttered two-man office with no window, talking to Detective Beau Jack "Bobo" Turan. He was a heavy-set cop who looked to Buddy like he would sweat in the middle of an Alaskan blizzard. Bobo was listening patiently as Buddy finished introducing himself, managing to get in three of his hundred-million-dollar-domestic-grossing pictures.
Rayce Williams's badge lay open in its leather case in front of them on Bobo's desk. "We just happen to be having a special on hobo assholes today," Bobo grinned. "First somebody killed that yard bull, then somebody else killed one of those jungle buzzards just four hours ago. I got a fuckin' roomful downstairs, all of 'em rummy-eyed dick-brains with memories like Nazi war criminals. I was just getting set to close the case, say my dead hobo killed my dead yard bull, call it a trick, and kick the whole sorry bunch loose."
"Killed a jungle 'bo?" Buddy asked.
"Yeah. The way I get it, the perp blew town already. Got in a fight in the jungle down by the river an' chilled the vie. Some fudge-packer named Ben Brook Bob, took him two hours t'die. Broke his windbox, S
pecial Forces-style."
Buddy looked at the Shreveport cop, but said nothing about Cris Cunningham. "My son, Mike, was killed riding the rails," Buddy finally said, looking at the sweating cop. "I'd like to talk to the men you have downstairs. I'm trying to find out who killed Mike. Maybe somebody down there ..." He let it drop in mid-sentence because Detective Bobo Turan started smiling. "I said something funny?" Buddy asked softly.
"This ain't a fuckin' movie, Mr. Brazil. These people, they don't stand around talkin' to guys in five-hundred-dollar shoes about who killed who. I got the dead asshole's butt-boy down there cryin' like an unwed mother, an' even so, the little faggot won't even give me the time of day."
"You tried paying for the info?" Buddy asked, letting a snide smile inadvertently fuck up a pretty good suggestion.
"Yeah, sure, that was gonna be my next move. The Shreveport P. D. gives me thousands in hustle money t'drop on these douche bags. I just ain't gotten around to it yet." Sarcasm was dripping like humidity on a flower shop window.
"My son died in the Oklahoma panhandle," Buddy persisted. "That's way out of your jurisdiction, so it's nothing you have to worry about, but I need closure here." Buddy reached into his pocket, pulled out a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, and started peeling them off. When he reached ten, he dropped them in a pile on the desk next to Rayce's badge.
"What's that for?" Bobo Turan asked, cocking an eyebrow dangerously.
"That's for the widows and orphans of dead Shreveport police officers, or the Police Betterment Society, or it's for your new backyard patio barbecue. You choose. But me an' Rayce would very much like to spend a few minutes with the guys you have downstairs."
Bobo looked at them and shook his head sadly. "You Hollywood people think you own the whole fuckin' world, don't ya?" When Buddy started to retrieve the money Bobo looked at him sharply. "Leave it be. You got five minutes," he said, snapping up the cash faster than a frog hitting a swamp fly.
the Devil's Workshop (1999) Page 27
