Carrion Comfort (63 page)

G
entry wondered if he was going insane. As he rushed back to Community House, he wished Saul was conscious so they could talk about it. It seemed to Gentry that the world had become a paranoid nightmare where cause-effect chains had broken down completely.

The twin called G. B. stopped Gentry half a block from the house. The sheriff stared at the muzzle opening of the crude pistol and snapped, “Let me through. Marvin knows I’m coming back.”

“Yeah, but he don’t know you bringing some dead honky dude back with you.”

“He’s not dead and he may be able to help us. If he
does
die, I’ll make sure that Marvin holds you responsible. Now let me through.”

G. B. hesitated. “Fuck you, pig,” he said at last, but stood aside. Gentry had to pass three more sentries before getting to the house. Marvin had extended their defensive perimeter a hundred yards in each direction. Any unknown vehicle on the block was to be fire-bombed if it did not get moved. A green van with two whites in front and God knows how many in back had spent thirty seconds considering Leroy’s ultimatum before moving out at high speed. Perhaps it was the liter bottle of Shell unleaded in Leroy’s right hand that convinced them.

Monday night had been entry into nightmare.

Marvin and the others had returned to Community House through alleys and backyards, Leroy bleeding from a dozen shotgun pellet wounds, all of them except Marvin semi-hysterical in the aftermath of the gun battle in the dark apartment building. They had dragged Calvin’s and Trout’s bodies into the building and Marvin had planned to send Jackson or Taylor back with Jim Woods’s panel truck, but the confusion they returned to sidelined that for hours. By the time they did send a truck shortly before sunrise, the five bodies were gone and only anonymous pools of blood remained on the second and third floors. No authorities were on the scene.

The Community House was bedlam when they returned. Shots were being fired at every shadow. Someone had put out the fires in the derelict autos, but smoke still hung over the block like a cloud of death.

“He was here, man, the honky monster, man,
here
, like in the house, he got, like, the wimp Woods and hit Kara real hard, man, and Raji like saw him chasing the camera chick across the yard, man, and . . .” babbled Taylor when they arrived.

“
Where
is Kara!” roared Marvin. It was the first time Gentry had heard the young man shout.

Kara was upstairs, said Taylor, on the mattress behind the curtain, hurt real bad. Gentry followed them upstairs. Most of the gang members there were staring at Woods’s headless body on the pool table, but Marvin and Jackson went straight to where Kara lay unconscious, being tended to by four other girls.

“Doesn’t look good,” said Jackson. The girl’s beautiful face was almost unrecognizable, the forehead swollen grotesquely, eyes darkened with draining blood. “Should be in the hospital. Pulse and blood pressure way down.”

“Hey, man,” protested Leroy, showing a right arm and leg peppered with bloody circles, “I hurt. Lemme go with you and get fixed up and . . .”

“Stay
here
,” snapped Marvin. “Get these assholes together. Nobody gets within half a block of here, dig? Tell Sherman and Eduardo to get their asses over to Dogtown and give Mannie the word. We want the troops he promised us last winter when we helped them out in the Pastorius thing. We want them
now
. Tell Squeeze that we want all the midgets and auxiliaries on the street
now
. I want to know where that fucking Voodoo Lady is.”

As he continued to snap orders and while Jackson tenderly carried Kara downstairs, Gentry pulled Taylor to one side. “Where’s Natalie?”

The youth shook his head and then let out a gasp as Gentry closed his grip on an upper bicep. “Shit, man. Honky monster after her. Raji seen them going across that yard, between the buildings, man. It was
dark
. We went after him, couldn’t see nothing.”

“How long ago?” Gentry squeezed harder. “Hey,
shit
. Twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five.”

Gentry went quickly downstairs and caught Marvin before he left. “I want my gun.”

The gang leader stared with pale blue eyes that were as cold as sea ice. “That son of a bitch is after Natalie and I’m going after him. Give me the Ruger.” He held out his hand.

Leroy let his shotgun slide into his right hand. The barrel moved toward Gentry and he looked to Marvin for the word.

Marvin tugged out the heavy Ruger and handed it to Gentry. “Kill him, man.”

“Yeah.” Gentry went upstairs, dug out the extra box of cartridges, and reloaded. The heavy Magnum bullets slid in smooth and heavy to Gentry’s touch. He realized that his hand was shaking. He leaned over and took deep breaths until the shaking stopped, went downstairs to find a flashlight, and went out into the night.

Saul Laski regained consciousness just as Jackson inspected the wound. “Somebody been working on you with a can opener it looks like,” said the ex-medic. “Give me your other arm. I’m going to give you an ampoule morphine while I work on this.”

Saul put his head back against the mattress. His face and lips were white behind dark whiz kerns. “Thanks.”

“Thanks, nothing. You going to get my bill. There are brothers here that would kill for this morphine.” He injected Saul with a swift, sure motion. “You white boys don’t know how to take care of your bodies.”

Gentry talked quickly before the morphine put the psychiatrist out of touch. “What the hell are you doing here, Saul?”

The older man shook his head. “Long story. There are more people involved in this than I ever imagined, Sheriff . . .”

“We’re finding that out,” said Gentry. “Do you know where your Oberst is?”

Jackson finished cleaning the wound and began restitching it. Saul took one glance and then looked away. “No, not exactly. But he is here somewhere. Close by. I just met a black man named Jensen Luhar who has been one of the Oberst’s agents for years. The others . . . Colben, Haines . . . let me loose in the chance I could lead them to the Oberst.”

“Haines!” said Gentry. “Damn, I knew I didn’t like that sonofabitch.” Saul licked his lips. His voice was growing thick and dreamy. “Natalie? She is here?”

Gentry looked away, glowered at shadows. “She was. Someone got her . . . took her away . . . twenty-four hours ago.”

Saul tried to sit up. Jackson cursed and pushed him back. “Alive?” managed Saul.

“I don’t know. I’ve been searching the streets for the past twenty-four hours,” said Gentry. He rubbed his eyes. He had not slept for over forty-eight hours. “There’s no reason to think that Melanie Fuller would keep Natalie alive when she’s murdered so many others,” he said. “But something keeps me looking. I just have this
feeling
. If you can tell me everything you know, then maybe together we can . . .” Gentry stopped. Jackson was almost finished. Saul Laski was fast asleep.

“How’s Kara?” asked Gentry as he came into the kitchen.

Marvin looked up from the table. A cheap city map lay spread out there, anchored by beer cans and bags of potato chips. Leroy sat near him, white ban dages showing through torn clothing. Various lieutenants came and went, but the house had a quiet, purposeful atmosphere far different from the chaos of the day before. “She’s not good,” said Marvin. “The doctor says she’s hurt bad. Cassandra and Shelli over there now. They’ll send someone over if anything changes.”

Gentry nodded and sat down. He could feel the fatigue toxins working at him, putting a sheen of dull light on every surface he looked at. He rubbed his face.

“Dude upstairs going to help you find your woman?”

Gentry blinked. “I don’t know.”

“Can he help us find the Voodoo Lady?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Jackson says he’ll be able to talk to us in a couple of hours. Any of your people have anything?”

“Just a matter of time, man,” said Marvin. “Just a matter of time. We got the girls, the auxiliaries, all going door to door. No way white old woman like that be here and
no one
know it. Soon as we find her, we’re ready.”

Gentry tried to focus on what he wanted to say. Words were becoming hard to manipulate. “You know about the others . . . the federal cops.”

Marvin laughed. It was a thin, cold sound. “Yeah, sure, they’re all over the fucking place. But they’re keeping the local pigs and TV people out of this, right?”

“Must be,” said Gentry. “But my point is that they’re as dangerous as the Voodoo Lady. Some of them have the same . . . the same powers as she does. And they’re hunting for a man who’s even more dangerous.”

“You think they done any of the stuff to Soul Brickyard, man?” asked Marvin.

“No.”

“They have anything to do with the honky monster?”

“No.”

“Then we let them wait awhile. They get in our way, we’ll do them too.”

“You’re talking about forty or fifty plainclothes federal officers,” said Gentry. “They’re usually armed to the teeth.”

Marvin shrugged. Someone rushed in and spoke softly to him. The gang leader gave quick, sure orders in a calm voice. The other man went out.

Gentry lifted a can, found there was some warm beer left, and took a drink. “Have you considered just walking away while you can?” he said. “I mean, just getting everyone under cover and letting all these vampires fight it out?”

Marvin looked straight at Gentry. “Man,” he said in a voice not much louder than a whisper, “you don’t understand much. White folks, government, the pigs, the greasy white politicians around here— they all be fucking us over for a long time. Nothing new about what the honky monster’s doing to black people, but he doing it to
us
on our turf, man. You and Natalie say the Voodoo Lady really doing it, and I think that’s right. It
feels
right. But not just the Voodoo Lady, either. Behind her, be others ready to shit on us. Be doing it a long, long time. But this is Soul Brickyard. The people they kill here— Muhammed, George, Calvin . . . maybe Kara . . . they’re
ours
, man. We’re going to kill that honky monster and the white bitch for that. We don’t expect no one to help us. But if you want to be with us, you can be, man.”

“I want to be with you,” said Gentry. His own voice sounded slowed down, a 45 r.
P.M.
record played at 331/3.

Marvin nodded and stood up. His hand was very strong on Gentry’s arm as he pulled the lawman to his feet, moved him toward the stairway. “What you got to do now, my man, is to go sleep. We call you when something goes down.”

Jackson woke him at 5:30 the next morning. “Your friend’s awake,” said the ex-medic.

Gentry thanked him and sat on the edge of his mattress for several minutes, holding his head and trying to get his mind to work. Before seeing Saul he clumped downstairs, made coffee in an ancient percolator, and came back up with two steaming, chipped cups. A dozen or so gang members snored on mattresses in various rooms. There was no sight of Marvin or Leroy.

Saul took the coffee cup with a heartfelt thanks. “I woke up and thought I’d dreamed everything,” he said. “I expected to find myself in my apartment with a class to teach at the university. Then I felt this.” He held up his ban daged left arm.

“How did that happen?” asked Gentry.

Saul sipped coffee and said, “I’ll tell you what, Sheriff. We will do a deal. I will start with the most important information and talk awhile. Then you will do the same. If our stories connect in any way, we will pursue the connections. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Gentry.

They talked for an hour and a half and then questioned each other for another half hour. When they stopped, Gentry helped the older man up and they walked to a barred window and looked out at the first grayings of dawn.

“It’s New Year’s Eve day,” said Gentry.

Saul reached to adjust his glasses, realized that he did not have them on. “It is all too incredible, is it not?”

“Yes,” said Gentry. “But Natalie Preston is out there somewhere and I’m not leaving this city until I find her.” They went back to the alcove to pick up Saul’s glasses and then went downstairs together to see if they could find anything to eat.

Marvin and Leroy were back by ten
A.M.
, talking earnestly with two tall Hispanics. Three low-slung automobiles idled at the curb, each filled with Chicano youths eyeing the blacks on Community House porch. The black gang members glowered back.

The kitchen had become a command center, entered by invitation only, and twenty minutes after the Hispanics left, Saul and Gentry were summoned. Marvin, Leroy, one of the twins, and half a dozen others stared at them in silence.

“How is Kara?” asked Gentry. “She died,” said Marvin. He looked at Saul. “You told Jackson you wanted to talk to me.”

“Yes,” said Saul. “I think you can help me find the place where I was held prisoner. It can’t be very far from here.”

“Why should we do that?”

“The place is a control center for the police that have the area staked out.”

“So? Fuck them.”

Saul tugged at his beard. “I think that the police . . . the federal people . . . know where Melanie Fuller is.”

Marvin’s head came up. “Are you sure?”

“No,” said Saul, “but based on what I saw and overheard, it makes sense. I think the Oberst tipped them to her whereabouts for his own reasons.”

“This Oberst be your Voodoo Man?”

“Yes.”

“A lot of the government pigs are on the street. Would one of them know about the Voodoo Lady?”

“Perhaps,” said Saul, “but if we could get at the control center, ah . . . talk to someone there . . . I think we would have a better chance to find out.”

“Talk to me, man,” said Marvin. “It’s in an open area about eight minutes’ drive from here,” began Saul. “I think a helicopter has been landing and taking off from there regularly. The structures are temporary . . . possibly mobile homes or the kind of trailers you find on construction sites.”

Saul wore a balaclava and gloves when he left the house with Gentry and five of the gang members. If Colben and Haines believed he was dead, Gentry had suggested they not disabuse them of the notion. They took Woods’s panel truck for the short drive west on Germantown Avenue, south on Chelten, and then west on an unnamed street into a ware house district.