Bullets of Rain

by David J. Schow

  "You feel like you need a hospital?" Art decided to partake of the coffee himself.

  "Naw, no hospital. I'm good. Kinda pointless, anyway-who can get to a hospital? I've never depended on them."

  "Well, about an hour ago some guys from the navy showed up here in a Hummer that looked like a landing craft. They were going to check on the houses downbeach and then come back, in case anybody needed a lift back to civilization."

  Luther's expression darkened. With the rain wiped from his face and head, perspiration beaded in its place as stress voided through his pores. He could not stop continually probing the back of his head. "You mean you stayed here, like, on purpose?"

  "I'm an architect. I designed this house to stand up to a hurricane. Here's a hurricane. So this is the acid test. If it passes, I win a lot of contracts."

  "Nice shutters," said Luther, observing the corrugated metal that shielded the windows. "Like a fortress. I thought maybe you stayed because of, you know, that woman."

  "Suzanne."

  "Yeah, right, Suzanne."

  "I only met her yesterday."

  Luther's eyebrows went up, then down; no big deal. "That ain't right. It's too weird."

  Art watched Luther's gaze focus on the intangible, doping through evidence, working it out in his head, seeing if the story held water. He zapped over the topic of Suzanne easy as a speedbump and zeroed-in on the stuff that interested him.

  "Navy wouldn't send guys out in this kinda storm for any reason," Luther said. "What'd they say they were here for?"

  "There's a huge microwave dish out on the end of the jetty north of here," said Art. "They said their remotes were down and they couldn't adjust the dish, and were nervous about the storm."

  "Ahh, bullshit." Luther waved his hand, dismissing that plotline. "No reason to check something like that until the storm goes down. Stupid to check it in the middle of the storm, man, think about it. They anchor those things in pilings that go down fifty feet. You couldn't break into it; I couldn't. It's just a big relay dish. Anything they tell you about having to get in there in the middle of a goddamned storm, somebody's jackin you."

  As paranoia, it was tempting. "They had uniforms. They acted like military guys. They were driving a military vehicle." Art leapfrogged to the most important question: "If they're not for real, why did they come here? Why me?"

  Luther stared into the depths of his coffee mug. Coffee always provided answers. "O'kay. If they're for real, they're incredibly stupid, reckless, or acting against orders. If they're not for real, then what? Ratpackers, maybe, pretending to be some sort of authority so they can case houses, knock them off using the storm as cover? Unlikely. The score'd have to be small and portable-cash, jewelry, something like that-and it'd have to be worth the risk. The uniforms would be like those bank robbers who wear suits and ties, right? All the witnesses remember is the suit and tie."

  "So I'd remember the uniforms and not the faces?" said Art. "If so, that failed miserably. I could sketch both these guys."

  "Was that Humvee a military one, or one of the civilian knockoffs?" Luther was racking up angles of attack like any decent strategist.

  "Big, dark, you tell me. It was a Hummer, that's all I know."

  "Hummers are civilian. Humvees are military. Can't get the civilian ones in military green, or camo, or desert tan, anymore. Military ones don't have amenities like leather seats. Or air-conditioning, except for the ambulances. Best way to check: Sit in the driver's seat. If there's no park setting on the transmission, it's military; don't know why. The military ones have really wimpy horns, like, who needs it, right?"

  "A civilian one could be tricked out to fake a military one, though?"

  "I guess. Some people have been able to buy decommissioned ones and spruce them up. I know a producer guy in Malibu who leases a couple from the government for a buck a year-you know, because he makes the military look so good in his movies.''

  Jesus, thought Art, did everybody know somebody in Hollywood ?

  Luther bulled ahead. "Anyway, whoever they are, if they're coming back here, we need to clean house, right?"

  They just looked at each other.

  Art's loaner jacket was ridiculously tight on Luther, where Suzanne had vanished into it, despite what a smartass would call her substantial front porch. Cowled in ponchos, zipped up and weather-snapped secure, the two men leaned against the storm to accomplish their work.

  The final resting place of the late Bryan Simonsen, the former Bry-Guy, turned out to be thirty yards up the slope of the hill on the far side of the coast road. His bier was a wheelbarrow; his shroud, the bloodstained plastic tarp from the garage. The two men-judge and executioner, torturer and assassin-discovered an uprooted sycamore tree, roots dangling, ripped free like a rotten molar. It had upended a gouge nearly three feet deep, which the men spaded out to waist depth by the light from a pair of nine-volt lanterns. The wind kept knocking the lanterns over. The focused twin sprays of lamplight made the evening look like a projection of severely damaged nitrate-black film. Blowing rain bowed the two men, both of whom had done violence with gunfire to the stiffening body they had wrestled and cursed all the way up the hill. It sheeted the mud from their plastic cloaks as they interred him without obsequies. It was too noisy outside to make themselves heard, anyway. To keep themselves from cartwheeling down the slope on the return hike, they literally had to hold hands, sealing this compact, this vow of silence between two murderers. Both men knew the circumstances and justifications, yet the entire process seemed, to Art, to be tainted with guilt. They did the best they could.

  Only one murderer, truly, Art thought. What did that make him? An accessory before the fact?

  Back at the house, with Blitz calmed down anew, Luther held another mug of coffee to thaw his frozen fingers and ran details like someone who was used to this kind of hasslement.

  "Okay. We didn't have time to dig for slugs, so I'd suggest you make that gun disappear. You have others?"

  "Yes." Art had changed into doubled dry sweatshirts. Suzanne was still dead to the world. His eyes kept checking the emergency floods, which he swore he could see dimming already.

  "You got specific ammo for it, I'd ditch that, too. Unless you have spare barrels, and you can switch those out and keep the gun. No? Shame to lose it."

  Art was already running the tab in his head. A couple grand for the generator and attachments, two more for the pistol, plus damage to the Jaguar and the garage in general. Another bill Bryan would never pick up. Compared to attorney fees for a trial, this killing was still a bargain. He wondered what Derek's hotshot lawyer, that Cutler Jr. guy, would make of such an account.

  "So where are the so-called navy dudes? Aren't they supposed to be back by now? Maybe you got lucky and the storm ate them." Luther delicately tested the back of his skull again, hoping the news was better this time.

  Art shrugged. "Does your head hurt? You want something for-?"

  "Naw, better to be straight. Too many toxins at Price's. I needed the exercise, outside, and the adrenaline to flush my system. You know, if those guys in the Humvee are for real, we can't get rid of Bryan 's car. It'd look suspicious. Have to dump it eventually, though.''

  "What about the toxins at Price's?" Art tried to make it sound concerned and innocent, and fumbled the emotion.

  "Shit, you saw me at the party. I was out of control."

  "Seemed like you were a little too in control. So sharp it hurt. I figured speed; some kind of upper."

  Luther laughed. It was harsh, like a smoker's cough. "Fucking Price and his party favors, man. He slip you any of that shit?"

  Art was glad to be occupied in the kitchen, and not seeing Luther's eyes directly as he lied. "What shit?"

  "Those capsules. These capsules." He dig into his pants pocket and produced a prescription bottle with the label torn off. He spilled several of the home-dipped black-and-white capsules onto the glass of the coffee table for inspection.

  "Do you know
what they are?"

  Luther pursed his lips dourly and shook his head. "I heard Michelle call them Mr. Hyde. They flip you. Flip you for real."

  "What, you mean they uninhibit you? Hell, all drugs do that- change your personality."

  "Naw, it's different. It's like they locate your opposite self and bring it right up to the surface. Or they find what you do your best to suppress and spotlight it. Maybe put you face-to-face with what you don't want people to see, ever. All I know is I took one, and I ain't never hit a woman before in my life, until I had that girl Katha rolled over-you should pardon my Frog. I just started slapping her, and it made me hard as a spear. Right after that was when you met me in the hallway."

  Art remembered Bryan weeping in Price's bathroom. Suzanne's one-eighty mood swings, just like Jekyll and Hyde. The way he'd savaged Bryan in the garage after ingesting the drug. He had not felt possessed or spacey, just angry, collecting his due. Perhaps that was the most sinister quality of Price's concoction-you didn't feel any different. As Luther said, you just… flipped. Almost instantly.

  "I figured there was some high-end coke in here, but I'm not a pharmacist," said Luther as he snapped open a Buck knife from yet another pocket. He unscrewed one of the capsules and dumped it onto the glass, using the knife tip to browse the granules.

  Art saw that the contents of this capsule were almost all black. The difference between this and the dosage he'd swallowed was like the contrast between a graphite sketch on white paper and scratchboard. Scratchboard was black; you made images on it with white lines. He could swallow one of these now, and become the guy who could rape Suzanne and leave her for dead, the guy who could shoot Bryan and think about frying his nipples with a blowtorch, the guy who could defeat all corners in the middle of this goddamned hurricane.

  "It looks like ground pepper," Art said, heart thudding.

  "Little more kick than that," Luther said with a grin. "It was a horror show, all right, with Price playing super-dad and feeding these to his flock and watching them flip. Didn't bother him no more than some wacko artist, picking colors for a painting-you know, one of them masterpieces that looks like throwup? But you know what? I never saw Price take one."

  "That's when you decided to leave?"

  "Well, the house coming apart had something to do with it, but yeah, the party was pretty much over for me."

  "Excuse me for saying so, Luther, and tell me I'm out of line, but what does a guy like you owe a guy like Price, that he'd do that to you?"

  "Wasn't like that. Price was my friend. Got me a high-end lawyer once when I needed it. Regular customer for, you know-'' Luther mimicked a pistol with his thumb and forefinger. "I figured Price's little get-togethers are always good for new customers. Hell, I met you, didn't I?"

  "But what about him doping you?"

  "Wasn't like that, neither. I take shit or don't take shit of my own free will. I was just taste-tasting the latest. Decided I didn't like it. So, keep these if you want." Next to the sinister mound of black powder, four of the capsules were getting ready to roll off the table. Luther scooped them back into the bottle he'd brought and casually tossed them to Art, who caught the pitch one-handed. The house seemed to lurch again but it was an illusion; both men felt the press of moving air bulidozering against the exterior. Luther looked up toward heaven. "Damn."

  "Did you really hit that woman?" Art felt like his own ventriloquist's dummy, his arm up his own ass, wiggling his jaw and making him say things to deter notice from all the aberrant things he'd done in the past few hours.

  "Katha? Oh, man." Luther drained his coffee but his voice stayed parched. "She's this corporate ice princess from the city. Real standoffish. So naturally I come in looking like her worst nightmare. No business card, no lunch there."

  "You weren't appropriate dating material?"

  "Huh! You tell me." Luther presented himself as though the conclusion was obvious to anyone with a brain. "Till later last night, when she got a look at my gun, grabbed my crotch, and asked me to fuck her. With the gun. Never asked my name. She drops her clothes and wants me to put a rubber on my gun, wants the barrel up her ass with a round in the chamber and the trigger cocked."

  "Jesus. She must have dropped one of Price's little party favors."

  "Maybe. I didn't see her do it. But by the time I was butt-naked with her trying to ride me like a horsey, I sure had, and she found herself on top of a different guy. You know what? I think Price had cameras in all them rooms upstairs. Why not? It'd be his style."

  "Like, for blackmail?"

  Luther shrugged. "For whatever. What are you going to do with whatsername, Susan, in there? She's part of this, too."

  "I don't know. I don't even know if I know what she's like in reality."

  "Yeah, but you banged her anyway, didn't you?"

  Art's expression seemed to crack. He felt lame.

  "My point," said Luther. "Man, you got any water? I'm dry as kindling."

  Art desperately craved another beer, but forwent the urge. Blitz trotted back in, looking for an excuse for recess. The three of them went to the garage. While Blitz peed, humiliated at having an audience, the two men cleaned up whatever evidence of Bryan they could locate. A little Windex, some scouring powder, a squirt of lime dissolver to remove the smell. Art had some of that silicon-based abrasive for cleaning scuffs off the Jag while matching the paint tone. Luther poured some salt on blood spatters on the concrete floor and pulled most of it up. He frowned at an indistinct, stubborn stain and dribbled a dollop of motor oil on the spot, smearing it around, then mopping up. "This way, not even a police dog could sniff it out," he said, and Blitz wandered over to make sure.

  Art stripped the tatters of duct tape from the metal frame, and wedged a brace against the ruptured portion of the garage door so it wouldn't blow open again. They swept up a pound or two of broken glass. The generator, hanging half out of its special compartment, was totaled; Bryan might as well have used a sledgehammer. The Jeep was bleeding transmission fluid onto the floor.

  Luther returned Art's grin. They had beaten the return of the navy guys, whether they existed or not.

  Blitz began to look toward the ceiling, sniffing air that had some sort of new message for him, and Luther put his hand out in a cautionary mode. Freeze.

  Art pantomimed his response: What?

  "Listen,'' Luther whispered, his eyes now tracking around identically to the dog's.

  Art said what? again, his hands open, his breath barely exhaling the word. He heard himself do this. More importantly, Luther heard it, too.

  "The storm," said Luther. "It's stopped."

  Art thought of Neil Armstrong, of spacewalks, of being the first human to set foot on Mars. That was how he felt when he stepped out his own front door, with Luther and Blitz handling the rearguard action.

  The quiet was unnerving, an atmospheric presence that leaned against their eardrums with its lack of input, bringing tinnitus, the roar of silence, phantom ringing, aural anomalies. The gentler air now feeling them up was heavily ionized and tasted like electricity. Gray clouds peeled upward in the distance. The sense of moving air masses, far above them. The denizens of Atlantis must have experienced all these weird sensations just before they sank for good.

  "Is that it?" said Luther, touching the back of his head and feeling static. "Holy shit-look at that!"

  The air had regained enough lateral visibility for both men to clearly see the funnel cloud that was tearing things up downbeach. South, about where the Spilsbury house would be. It was hundreds of feet high, its scorpion tail tearing up the ground and anchoring the black dervish to the earth. The top of the funnel modulated as though hungry for more. All the way up its corrugated length, airborne debris was embedded in the loops and twists of its fury.

  And the ocean was now more than halfway to the house. Fifty yards of the beach Art had been accustomed to seeing every day were underwater. The tip of the jetty was submerged, but the Sundial was still there, poi
nted at a forty-five-degree angle to the horizon. It had several feet to go before the lip of the dish tasted the ocean.

  "Ten minutes ago the wind was a hundred and twenty miles per hour," said Art, unable to take his gaze off the tornado raping the shoreline just inside the half-mile mark from his home. "This is nuts."

  Art looked straight up, and for five seconds imagined he could actually see the evening sky.

  "Look at that thing,'' said Luther, equally transfixed by the funnel. "Bet there's people flying around inside it."

  Maybe Price, thought Art. One could always hope.

  "I can't tell if it's headed for us or away from us," said Luther. Blitz barked a couple of times but the tornado ignored him.

  Art was holding his head. His sinuses had impacted at race-car speed. "What did he call it?"

  "Who?"

  "Willowmore. The navy guy. The eyewall. He said that if the eye of the storm passed south, it would… that tornado is inside the eyewall of the storm."

  "We're in the eye of a hurricane?''

  "Which is moving south, which means the other side of the eyewall is coming right at us from the north. The wind is going to change direction any minute now, and we'll get hit again." Behind them, in the direction of the jetty, the sky had assumed an ultraviolet hue. When Art saw the clouds moving, he thought of cream in coffee.