1988 - Stinger

by Robert McCammon

  15

  Dark Karma

  At the moment Daufin was trying to learn the nuances of English, Cody Lockett was operating the hydraulic lift in a garage stall of Xavier Mendoza’s gas station, cranking up a Ford that needed new brake drums. He was wearing old, faded jeans and an olive-green workshirt that had his name beneath the Texaco star; his hands were greasy, his face streaked with grime, and he knew he was a long way from resembling the well-scrubbed gas jockeys in TV commercials, but staying clean didn’t get the job done. In the last hour, he’d changed the oil in two cars and the spark plugs and points in a third. The garage was his territory, its tools hanging in orderly rows on the walls and gleaming like surgical instruments, a rack of tires giving off the smell of fresh rubber and an assortment of cables, radiator belts, and hoses hanging from the metal beams overhead. The garage door had been hoisted up and a big box fan kept the air circulating, but it was still plenty hot anywhere chrome reflected the sunlight and engines were continually turned over.

  Cody got the lift as high as he wanted and locked it in place. He plugged in the electric gun that unscrewed lug nuts and began to take the tires off. Working here helped him forget about the old man. There was more than enough to keep him busy today—including hoisting out the destroyed engine of that sea-green pickup in the next stall—and sometime this afternoon he wanted to find time to tinker with his motorcycle’s carb and smooth out the kinks.

  The signal bell rang as a car pulled up to the pumps outside, but he knew Mr. Mendoza would take care of the gas customers. Sonny Crowfield had knocked off just before Cody came in for work—which was just as well, since Cody couldn’t stand him; Crowfield, in Cody’s opinion, was a crazy half-breed and a Rattler to boot, always talking shit about how he was going to someday stomp Jurado and become president. From what Cody heard, even the Rattlers didn’t have much to do with Crowfield, who lived on the edge of the autoyard, all alone except for a collection of animal skeletons—and where and how he got those bones, no one knew.

  A car horn honked. Cody looked up from his work.

  At the pumps sat a silver-blue Mercedes convertible, its paint glossed to a high shine. Behind the wheel was a man wearing sunglasses and a straw Panama hat. He lifted a hand in a brown leather driving glove, motioning for Cody to come out. In the seat beside him was a husky Doberman, and another one crouched in the backseat. Mendoza emerged from his office and went around to speak to the driver. Cody returned to his job—but the Mercedes’s horn rapped out an impatient tattoo.

  Mack Cade was as persistent as a tick. Cody knew what he wanted. The horn honked again, though Mendoza was standing right there trying to tell Cade that Cody had work to do. Mack Cade was paying him zero attention. Cody said, “Shit!” under his breath, put aside the lug-nut gun, and wiped his hands off on a rag, taking his time about it; then he walked out into the glary sunlight.

  “Fill ‘er up, Cody!” Mack Cade said. “You know what she drinks.”

  “You’ve got garage work to do, Cody!” Mr. Mendoza told him, trying his best to cover for the boy—because he, too, knew Cade’s game. “You don’t have to come out and pump the gas!” His eyes were black and fearsome, and with his silver hair and bushy silver mustache he resembled an aged grizzly ready for a final tooth-and-claw battle; if those damned dogs weren’t there he might have snatched Cade out of that fancy car and beaten him bloody.

  “Hey, I’m particular about who touches my car.” Cade’s voice was a silky-smooth drawl; he was used to being obeyed. He smiled at Mendoza, showing a line of small white teeth in his deeply burnished face. “Bad vibes round here, man. You’ve got a real dark karma.”

  “I don’t need your business, or your bullshit either!” Mendoza’s shout made Typhoid, the dog in the passenger seat, stiffen and snarl. The dog in the rear, whose name was Lockjaw, was frozen and staring, his single ear laid back along his skull; that and the fact that Typhoid was a little larger through the shoulders was the only difference between the two animals.

  “You sure about that? I can bring in my own gas trucks, if you want.”

  “Yeah, maybe that’d be just fi—”

  “Hold it,” Cody interrupted. “You don’t need to be my watchdog,” he said to Mendoza. “I can look out for myself.” He walked to the diesel pump, withdrew the hose, and primed the numbers back to zero.

  “Let’s give peace a chance, Mendoza,” Cade said as Cody started feeding the fuel in. “Okay?”

  Mendoza snorted angrily and glanced at Cody; the boy nodded that everything was under control. Mendoza said, “I’ll be in my office. You don’t take no shit from him, understand?” He turned on his heel and strode away, and Cade revved up the volume on his tape deck. Tina Turner’s raspy voice thundered, “Better be good to me!”

  “You can clean the windshield, too,” Cade told Cody as soon as Mendoza was in the office.

  Cody went to work with the squeegee; he could see a distorted image of himself in the reflective lenses of the man’s sunglasses. Cade’s hat was held on by a leather chinstrap, he wore a silk short-sleeved shirt the color of sangria, and tie-dyed jeans. Around his neck dangled a few golden chains, among them one with an old peace sign on it, and one of those small gold ingots with foreign words. On his left wrist was a Rolex watch with diamonds set in its dial, and on the right was a gold bracelet with “Mack” engraved in it. Both of the Dobermans were watching with keen interest as Cody’s squeegee went back and forth over the glass.

  Cade lowered the music. “Guess you heard about the meteor. Far out, huh?”

  Cody didn’t reply. Of course he’d seen the helicopter sitting in Preston Park, but he hadn’t known what was going on until Mr. Mendoza had told him. If Mr. Hammond had heard his wife’s truck had been hit by a meteor, Cody mused, he sure as hell wouldn’t have dicked around school so long after the bell rang.

  “Yeah, I hear the meteor’s hot too. Radioactive. That’s supposed to be a secret, but I heard it from Whale Tail at the Brandin’ Iron, and she heard it from the deputy. Seems to me a little radiation might spark this damned town up some, huh?”

  Cody concentrated on getting the guts of a smashed moth off the windshield.

  “I’m picking up some more bad vibes, Cody. There’s a real purple haze around this place today, man.”

  “You’re buyin’ gas, not talk.”

  “Whoa! The stone face speaks!” Cade rubbed Typhoid’s skull and watched the boy work. He was thirty-three years old, with a soft, cherubic face—but beneath the sunglasses his eyes were cold blue and cunning. Cody had seen them before, and they made him think of the hard steel of rabbit traps. Under his Panama hat, Cade’s hair was pale blond and thinning, combed back from a high, unlined forehead. Two diamond studs glittered in his left earlobe. “Tomorrow’s your last schoolday,” he said; the shuck-and-jive had dropped from his voice. “Big day for you, man. Important day.” He scratched beneath Typhoid’s muzzle. “I guess you’ve been thinking about your future. About money too.”

  Don’t answer him! Cody thought. Don’t fall for it!

  “How’s your father doing? I missed him last time I stopped in for a doughnut.”

  Cody finished the windshield and glanced at the diesel pump. The numbers were still clicking.

  “Hope he’s okay. You know, with the town shutting down and all, it probably won’t be too long before the bakery goes under. What’s he going to do when that happens, Cody?”

  Cody walked over to stand by the pump. Mack Cade’s head turned to follow him, the smile as white as a scar. “I’ve got an opening for a mechanic,” he said. “A good, fast mechanic. The opening won’t last but for a week or so. Pay starts at six hundred a month. Do you know anybody who could use the money?”

  Cody was silent, watching the numbers change. But inside his head six hundred a month kept repeating itself, gaining power with every repetition. God A’mighty! he thought. What I couldn’t do with that kind of money!

  “But it’s not just the money,�
�� Cade pressed on, smelling blood in the boy’s silence. “It’s the benefits too, man. I can get you a car just like this one. Or a Porsche, if you want. Any color. How about a red Porsche, five on the floor, top speed a hundred and twenty? You name the options, you got them.”

  The numbers stopped. Cade’s tank was full. Cody unhooked the nozzle, closed the gas port, and returned the hose to the diesel pump. Six hundred a month, he was thinking. A red Porsche… top speed a hundred and twenty…

  “It’s night work,” Cade said. “The hours depend on what’s in the yard, and I’ll expect you to work sixteen hours straight if there’s a rush on. My connections pay high green for quality work, Cody—and I think you can deliver it.”

  Cody squinted toward Inferno. The long fall of the sun had started, and though it wouldn’t be dark until after eight, he could already feel the shadows creeping up behind him. “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t.”

  “I’ve seen the work you do here. It’s tight. You’re a natural, and you shouldn’t throw away a God-given talent on junkers, should you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s to know?” Cade took a solid gold toothpick from his shirt pocket and dug at a lower molar. “If it’s the law you’re skittish of… well, that’s under control. This is a business, Cody. Everybody understands the language.”

  The boy didn’t reply. He was thinking of what six hundred dollars a month could buy him, and how far away from Inferno he could get in a red Porsche. To hell with the old man; he could rot and turn into a maggot farm as far as Cody cared. Of course he knew what Mack Cade’s business was. He’d seen the tractor-trailer trucks turn off Highway 67 and pull into Cade’s autoyard in the middle of the night, and he knew they were hauling stolen cars. He knew, as well, that when the big trucks headed north again they were carrying vehicles without histories. After Cade’s workmen had finished, the engines, radiators, exhaust systems, most of the body parts, even the hubcaps and paint jobs would have been changed, swapped around, made to look like cars sweet from the showroom floor. Where those finished chopshop specials went, Cody didn’t know, but he figured they were resold by crooked dealers or used as company cars by organized gangs. Whoever used them paid heavy money to Cade, who’d found Inferno the perfect place to stash such an operation.

  “You don’t want to wind up like your old man, Cody.” The boy saw his face reflected in Cade’s sunglasses. “You want to do something with your life, don’t you?”

  Cody hesitated. He didn’t know what he wanted. Though he didn’t give a shit about the law, he’d never really done anything criminal, either. Maybe he did smash a few windows and raise some hell, but what Cade offered was different. A whole lot different. It was like taking a step beyond a line that Cody had balanced on for a long time—yet to cross that line meant he couldn’t come back. Not ever.

  “Offer’s open for one week. You know where to find me.” Cade’s smile had clicked back on, full wattage. “How much do I owe you?”

  Cody checked the numbers. “Twelve seventy-three.”

  The man popped open his glove compartment, and Typhoid licked his hand. In the glove box there was a .45 automatic and an extra clip. His hand came out holding a rolled-up twenty; he snapped the glove compartment shut. “Here you go, man. Keep the change. And there’s a little something extra in there for you too.” He started the engine, the Mercedes giving a clean, throaty growl. Agitated, Lockjaw stood stiff-legged on the backseat and barked in Cody’s face. He smelled raw meat.

  “Think on these things,” Cade said, and accelerated out of the station with a shriek of flayed rubber.

  Cody watched him speed away, heading south. He unrolled the twenty. Inside it was a small, capped glass vial holding three yellowish crystals. Though he’d never cooked the stuff before, Cody knew what crack looked like.

  “You okay?”

  Startled, Cody slipped the vial into his breast pocket, nestling the cocaine crystals under the Texaco star. Mendoza was standing about six feet behind him. “Yeah.” Cody gave him the twenty. “He said to keep the change.”

  “And what else did he say?”

  “Just chewin’ air.” Cody walked past Mendoza toward the garage stalls, trying to sort things out in his mind. He felt the pull of six hundred dollars a month on his soul, like a cold hand from the midst of a blast furnace. What’s the problem? he asked himself. A few hours of work a night, the cops already paid off, a chance to move up in Cade’s operation if I wanted. Why didn’t I say yes right then and there?

  “You know where his cars go, don’t you?” Mendoza had followed Cody, and now leaned against the stall’s cinder-block wall.

  “Nope.”

  “Sure you do. About two or three years ago, a DA up in Fort Worth was found in the trunk of a car with his throat cut and a bullet between his eyes. The car was parked in front of City Hall. Of course it had no ID numbers. Where do you think it came from?”

  Cody shrugged, but he knew.

  “Before that,” Mendoza continued, his burly brown arms folded over his chest, “a bomb went off in a pickup truck in Houston. The cops figured it was supposed to kill a lawyer who was workin’ on a drug bust—but it blew a woman and her kid to pieces instead. Where do you think that truck came from?”

  Cody picked up the lug-nut gun. “You don’t have to lecture me.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like I am. But don’t you believe for one minute that Cade doesn’t know how his cars are used. And that’s just in Texas—he sends them all over the country!”

  “I was just talkin’ to him. No law against that.”

  “I know what he wants from you,” Mendoza said firmly. “You’re a man now, and you can do as you please. But I have to tell you something my father told me a long, long time ago: a man is responsible for his actions.”

  “You’re not my father.”

  “No, I’m not. But I’ve watched you grow up, Cody. Oh, I know all about that Renegade shit, but that’s small compared to what Cade could drag you in—”

  Cody pressed the gun’s trigger, and its high squeal echoed between the walls. He turned his back on Mendoza and went to work.

  Mendoza grunted, his gaze black and brooding. He liked Cody, knew he was a smart young man and could be somebody if he put his mind to it. But Cody had been crippled by that bastard father of his, and he’d let his old man’s poison seep into his veins. Mendoza didn’t know what was ahead for Cody, but he feared for the young man. He’d seen too many lives tossed away for the glint of Cade’s fool’s gold.

  He returned to the office and switched on the radio to the Spanish music station in El Paso. Around nine o’clock the Trailways bus from Odessa would come through on its way south to Chihauhau. The driver always stopped at Mendoza’s station to let the passengers buy soft drinks and candy from the machines. Then, except for an occasional truck, Highway 67 would lie empty, its concrete cooling under the expanse of stars, and Mendoza would shut down for the night. He would go home in time for a late dinner and a couple of games of checkers with his uncle Lazaro, who lived with him and his wife on Bordertown’s First Street, until the ticking of the clock eventually urged the time for bed. Tonight he might dream of being a racecar driver, roaring around the dirt tracks of his youth. But, most likely, he would not dream.

  And that would be another night gone, and another day approaching, and Mendoza knew that was the way a man’s life ran out.

  He turned the radio up louder, listening to the strident trumpets of a mariachi band, and he tried very hard not to let himself think about the boy in the garage, who stood at a crossroads that no one on earth could help him travel.

  * * *

  16

  Inferno’s Pulse

  The shadows grew.

  In front of the Ice House, the old-timers sat on benches smoking their cigars and corncob pipes and talking about the meteor. Heard it from Jimmy Rice, one of them said. Jimmy got it straight from the sheriff’s mouth. Hell, I didn’t get to be seven
ty-four years old to be kilt by no damned rock from out yonder in space, I’m tellin’ you! Damn thing just about fell right on our heads!

  They all agreed it had been a near miss. They talked about the helicopter, still sitting in the middle of Preston Park, wondering how such a thing could fly, and would you get up in one? Hell no, I ain’t crazy! was the unanimous answer. Then their talk drifted to the new baseball season, and when was a southern team going to win a series? When time runs back-assward and horses stand on two legs! one of them growled, and kept chewing on his cigar butt.

  In the House of Beauty on Celeste Street, Ida Younger frosted Tammy Bryant’s mouse-brown hair and talked not about the meteor or the helicopter but about the two handsome men who had gotten out of it. The pilot’s a hunk too, Tammy said. She’d seen him when he went into the Brandin’ Iron for a hamburger and coffee—and, of course, she and May Davis just had to go in there for a bite of lunch too. And you should’ve seen the way that damn Sue Mullinax flounced herself all over the cafe! Tammy confided. I mean, it was a disgrace!

  Ida agreed that Sue was the nerviest bitch who ever tied a mattress to her back, and Sue’s butt just kept getting bigger and bigger and that’s what so much sex’ll do to you too.

  She’s a nymphomaniac, Tammy said. A nympho, plain and simple.

  Yeah, Ida said. Plain-lookin’ and simpleminded.

  And they both laughed.

  On Cobre Road, past the Smart Dollar clothing store, the post office, the bake shop, and the Paperback Kastle, a middle-aged man squinted through his wire-rimmed spectacles and concentrated on inserting a pin through the abdomen of a small brown scorpion, found dead of Raid inhalation in the kitchen this morning. His name was Noah Twilley, and he was slender and pale, his straight black hair lank and going gray. His skinny fingers got the pin through, and he added the scorpion to his collection of other “ladies and gentlemen”—beetles, wasps, flies, and more scorpions, all pinned to black velvet and kept under glass. He was in the study of his white stone house, thirty yards behind the brick building with a stained-glass front window, a stucco statue of Jesus standing between two stucco cacti, and a sign that read INFERNO FUNERAL HOME.