Man Down (17 page)

7

The resort that hosted PoolCon—rising like an immense domino tile from the Strip—was a shimmering light trap purpose-built to lure Middle America in its hordes.

As Turner and Grace checked in, jostled by tanned, toothsome conventioneers, Grace said, “Meet me back here in an hour and I’ll show you a bit of old Vegas.”

Turner showered and dressed in the only suit he owned—a relic of his Jo’burg days, the style so dated that it was almost fashionable again—a midnight blue sharkskin shiny as a scummy puddle of gasoline, cut just too narrow for a body once kept lean by youth and chemical abuse but surrendering now to early middle-age, a small paunch swelling the buttons of his white silk shirt.

As he finger combed his damp hair before the bedroom mirror Turner felt a strange dislocation, as if the essence of the man he’d once been still lurked in the fabric of the suit.

A sudden barrage of bloody memories kneecapped Turner and had him sitting on the bed, staring sightlessly at the giant abstract of vomitous beige swirls suspended above the vanity table.

He was tempted to call Grace and beg off.

But his urge to escape the suddenly claustrophobic room had him making for the vast lobby, where he stood beneath a desert succulent watching the bank of elevators.

Turner heard somebody say “John” and spun, confronted by his adolescent fantasy made manifest: a big blonde in a black sequined cocktail dress that could have been painted onto her.

An anxious look crossed Grace’s face, like a rogue cloud on a summer’s day.

“Is this too much?” she asked, slumping a little, flapping her hands at the dress.

“No,” Turner said, the words that she was waiting for—that she deserved—the words of flattery and seduction that he’d once been able to spout with such facility stuck like a hook bone in a throat dry with nerves and rust.

But his face must’ve betrayed his feelings for she smiled and twirled, her dress shimmering like moonlight on the ocean as it settled on her curves, calling, “Come,” over her shoulder.

A taxi took them away from the epileptic neon of the Strip and left them in a warren of older casinos.

Turner tailed Grace into a cavernous room where aging cocktail waitresses (like harnessed cattle with drinks trays strapped to their shoulders) shuffled past empty gaming tables tended by mournful croupiers who stood waiting to deal cards and spin wheels. 

A dusky man in a soiled leisure suit, a comma of oily hair falling across his left eye, turned from the craps table and offered Grace the dice to kiss—she smooched them as she passed—and the mulatto rolled them with a careless flick of the wrist.

They were already walking by the time the dice landed and the stickman made his call, but Turner knew the quadroon had won.

They were led to a lounge off the casino by the snake-like brushing of a snare drum and a throaty trumpet.

Bathed in purple light, a quartet, all over fifty, all with Humpty Dumpty waistlines straining at their white jumpsuits, launched into a languid version of “The Look of Love.”

As he and Grace crossed to sit Turner saw a bar counter, a few rows of tables holding a sprinkle of gray haired patrons, a small stage and an empty dance floor, spotlights spearing down indigo shafts from the ceiling.

“So, is this Rat Pack enough for you?” Grace asked, lowering herself into a chair.

“It makes me feel so young,” Turner said and Grace laughed.  “How do you know about this place?”

“Years ago I dealt blackjack at a casino nearby.”

“You were a croupier?”

“For a while.”

“Why’d you stop?”

She looked at him, her eyes never leaving his as she lit a smoke.

“I was what they call a party pit dealer.”

He shook his head.

“I dealt blackjack dressed in lingerie,” she said as she waved the match dead.

He stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“I’d like to have seen that.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve. The tips were good but, believe me, it got tired real fast. The highlight of my night would be watching a turf war between two hookers fighting to work the high limit poker room.”

A waitress arrived to take their order and Grace said to Turner, “I know what I said on the plane but I’m going to get a little liquored up, okay?”

“Sure.”

She ordered a Jack and Coke and raised her painted eyebrows at Turner.

“A club soda?”

“Yes.”

The waitress left and Grace took a long drag on her cigarette, looking at Turner through the smoke.

“So, John,” she said, “tell me your dark secrets.”

Turner shook his head.

“I don’t have any.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true.”

“We all have dark secrets.”

“Then tell me yours.”

She laughed and shook her head, stubbing out her cigarette.

The song ended to a smattering of applause and for moment they were left in silence. Then a man close to seventy, wearing a tuxedo, a curly black hair piece perched on his head like a toy Pomeranian, trotted onto the stage and launched into a hoarse rendition of “Witchcraft.”

Standing, Grace said, “Let’s dance,”

“I don’t dance,” Turner said.

Grace held out her hand.

“Come.”

Turner stood and allowed her into his arms.

It was awkward at first, but Grace leaned in close and he felt himself melt a little against her heat, the scent of her in his nostrils.

They danced their way through a Sinatra playlist and then they returned to their table and as Grace drank and smoked a warmth took Turner low, a heaviness dragging at his groin and he wished he could open his fist—clenched with desire and the terror it had induced—and see three yellow and black pills lying like a trio of dead bumblebees on his palm, pills that would fold him in their narcotic embrace and soothe his anxiety.

“Come, John,” Grace said, taking his hand and leading him from the lounge.

Back at the hotel Turner followed her across the echoing expanse of the tiled lobby to a waiting elevator, his rubber-soled shoes a pair of squealing mice taking fright at the gunshots fired by the heels of her stilettos.

Turner pressed for the twentieth floor and the doors had almost closed when there was a discreet ping and they whispered open again, revealing three couples in evening dress who joined them in the cabin, journeying to the penthouse restaurant.

They were in their fifties, the men clearly prosperous, sleek and well-fed and their women—with helmets of hair like confections of spun sugar—were fashionably gaunt, wearing the haunted expressions of the terminally
malnourished
.

Turner retreated, his back to the mirror, Grace forced up against him as the cabin filled.

As the elevator drifted upward Turner saw Grace’s hand at her neck, shifting her hair so that it swept over her left shoulder, leaving her back revealed. Her fingers, deft as a conjurer’s, loosened the clasp of her dress.

Turner hesitated for a moment and then he took hold of the tab of the zipper that ran from the nape of her neck to the cleft of her buttocks and unzipped the dress with a slow, fluid motion, the teeth making a little purr of pleasure as they gaped.

The fabric of the dress fell open on the pale skin of Grace’s back, revealing the black strap of her brassiere and then, when the tab ran dead against its stopper, the lace fringing of her panties.

Grace had a beautiful spine, each vertebra standing clearly delineated beneath her taut skin, like a fine necklace of bone.

Turner, standing side-on to Grace, his groin pressed against her upper thigh, ran the index finger of his right hand slowly down her backbone and she shivered and a rash of gooseflesh spread across her skin—as distinct as Braille to his fingers.

Turner felt his cock harden and rear up against her hip as his fingers disappeared beneath the hem of her underwear, traveling over her buttocks that clenched at his touch and finding the moist heat between her legs.

One of the women glanced back, blinked and then looked away, fixing her eyes on the LEDs counting them upward, her mandible working as she chewed her molars.

The elevator sighed to a stop and the doors oiled open onto the carpeted corridor, Turner’s hand still buried in Grace’s dripping center like some profane glove puppeteer.

Turner withdrew his hand and guided Grace through the couples, their eyes drawn to her unsheathed spine, and as the doors closed he heard mutters of outrage.

When they reached her room Grace slipped the keycard into its slot and the mechanism whirred and clicked. Turner pushed open the door.

Once they were inside Grace kicked the door closed, the room dark but for the slit of light that seeped in from the corridor. She threw Turner against the wall hard enough to jolt the air from his lungs.

As Turner gasped for breath she covered his mouth with hers and kissed him, her tongue searching for his, his hands dragging her dress up over her hips, yanking at her underwear.

Grace’s hands shook as she took hold of his belt, freeing the tongue from the silver buckle, the leather screaming softly as she bent it to release the prong from the notch.

The belt fell open with a muted jangle and as Grace unbuttoned Turner’s pants the hot weight of his flesh brushed her skin and, again, he was starved for breath.

She ran a fingertip along the length of him and then she stepped away, walking into the blackness toward the bed, the sheen of her dress like swarming fireflies in the dark before she disappeared.

8

Turner sat with his back to the living room wall watching Lukas Bone and Tard leaning their elbows on the kitchen island, talking softly. Tanya stood hugging herself, staring out through the glass door at the glowing rectangle of the swimming pool.

Turner’s gaze shifted to Bekker’s body, the grip of the dead man’s pistol just visible in the waistband of his jeans, behind his right hip.

The weapon that would be in a state of Condition 1 readiness.

Turner back with Bekker one night in the Mercedes with its death pall, ranging through Johannesburg, the bent cop saying, “Life, Englishman, is all about edges. Advantages. About seeing around fucking corners. Like this.” He freed a hand from the wheel and slapped the automatic at his side, “I always keep one in the pipe. Same with everything else. Be ready. Be first. If you wanna catch a fox, you’ve got to be in the fuckin forest.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Turner felt like asking Bekker, now that the ex-cop had been terminally trumped in Tanya’s spin on Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Bone, crossing to Tanya, jabbed a finger at Turner.

“Watch him, Tard.”

The brute took the order literally, squatting down and staring into Turner’s eyes, the wash of his sewer breath a noxious cloud.

When Turner tried to look away the beast clamped his jaw in fingers unspeakably filthy, the stench rising from the grime caked in the grooves of his skin and under the torn nails redolent of night soil and charnel houses.

Bone stood close enough to Tanya for her to feel the heat of his body.

“I see you wear a wedding ring?” he said.

She stayed silent, watching the tireless pool cleaner do its work, wishing she were in the water, naked and clean.

“Answer me, now.”

“Yes, I wear a wedding ring.”

“But he don’t?” Nodding toward Johnny.

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Bone sniffed and cleared mucous from his throat.

“I have no respect for a man who doesn’t honor his vows. You’re of a like mind aint you, Tard?”

“You better know I am,” the geek replied, still eyeballing Johnny.

Bone held up his left hand, a flash of silver on his fourth finger.

“I’ll go to my grave wearing this ring.”

Tard wagged a hand in front of Johnny’s face. A tarnished wedding band peered through the folds of fat in his filthy digit.

“Until death us do part,” he said.

“Since this state once frowned upon the union between two men, Tard and me had to travel to California to get wedded a few years ago.”

“All the way to Los Angeles.”

“Exchanged our vows at a courthouse in Tarzana.”

“Always loved that name. Tarzana.”

“Why we took us that little pilgrimage.”

Bone leaned against the glass, smiling down at Tanya.

“Then we treated ourselves to a honeymoon in the Mojave, didn’t we, Tard?”

“Sweet memories, Lukas.”

“Oh, the sweetest, Tard. The sweetest.” Bone laughed. “Remember that hitcher we picked up over to Baker?”

“Chunky fellah in his forties?”

“That’s him.”

“Weren’t he a pussy?”

“Goddam, he proved to be a disappointment. Just two days and his flabby heart gave out.”

Tard giggled swamp gas. “Next one was a keeper though.”

“Yeah, that skinny little lot lizard we snagged at that truck stop. Where was it, Tard? Barstow?”

“Ludlow.”

“Yeah, Ludlow.”

“She was a feisty little thing.”

“Lasted three weeks, remember?”

“Oh, I do. I do remember.”

“Cursing us to all kinds of hell until you ripped out her tongue with a pair of crimping pliers.”

“Yeah. That tongue smacked of tobaccy and jism and Thunderbird wine.”

“You’re a fuckin epicurean, Tard.”

“Don’t rightly know what that means, Lukas.”

“Means you have a fine palate.”

“A fine palate?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’ll own as I do.”

“You know, this skinny cunt kinda brings that lot lizard to mind,” Bone said, nudging Tanya’s calf with his work boot.

“Damn right, Lukas. Two peas in a pot.”

“Pod.”

“Pod?”

“Pod.” Bone nodded at Turner. “I’m bettin she’ll last a lot longer than him.”

“Who can say?”

“Well, the proof of the puddin will be in the eatin.”

“Surely will.”

Bone headed toward the front door.

“I’m steppin out to bring some equipment from the truck, Tard. You have the conn.”

Tard laughed.

“Yeah, I
have
the conn.”

Bone exited and Turner heard his boots crunching on gravel and then the rattle of a truck door sliding open and a minute later the slap as it closed.

He darted a glance at Bekker’s gun.

Turner knew Tard would break him like a wishbone if he tried to move, so he stayed still and Bone returned, carrying a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a hard-sided kit box in his hand.

Bone dumped the duffel bag in the lobby near Peter’s body and crossed to the kitchen island, clattering the kit box down on the counter.

“Mommy, you get on over here.”

Tanya stayed by the door, staring out at the water.

“Don’t make me speak twice now.”

Moving like a sleepwalker she crossed to the kitchen.

“Okay, bring Daddy in.”

The monster grabbed Turner, smothering him in a bear grip, the stench of stale piss and unwashed underparts almost overwhelming him, and manhandled him toward where Bone and Tanya stood.

Bone opened the latches on a kit box and revealed a DeWalt cordless circular saw lying in a bed of foam, its yellow and black rubber grip and jagged-toothed blade splattered with tawny smears and stains.

Tard seized Turner’s left hand and extended the ring finger, laying it flat on the counter, his other fingers folded back.

Bone lifted the saw and squeezed the trigger, the carbide blade spinning as the motor screamed.

Bone released the trigger and held the saw out to Tanya.

“Time for a little DIY,” he said and powered the saw again for a short burst.

Tanya shied away, the teeth of the blade blurring as it revved.

“Take it,” Lukas Bone said. “Take it and cut the cheatin bastard’s finger off.”

Tanya shook her head.

“Come on now,” Bone said. “You know you want to.”

He smiled, revealing teeth as small and yellow as kernels of butter corn.

“Let the punishment fit the crime.”

She stared at Bone, then slid her gaze to Johnny and
the men disappeared and
it was a week ago and her kitchen was restored to its pristine, almost surgical cleanliness, and her husband and her daughter stood together at the island in one of their cozy little huddles—Johnny sipping coffee, Lucy guzzling one of her endless, blubber-building Cokes—unaware that Tanya had left her office where she occupied herself with busywork and mindless internet surfing,
flitting from the
New Statesman
to
The Guardian
to bolster her self-righteous anti-Americanism
and when she grew angry and bored, dipped
metaphorical toes into the obscure arcana (a German philosopher’s last days in a gay bath house in Biarritz; an Ecuadorian diva’s descent into madness marooned on a paddle steamer on a remote tributary of the muddy Orinoco) that floated to the surface and was then swept away by the online tide, and stood eavesdropping in the murk of the corridor.

“Dad?” her daughter said in that maddening nasal twang.

“Yes?”

“Why is Mom always so mad?”

“She’s just an intense person.”

“She’s a real downer.”

“Your mother does her best.”

“No. She’s a cunt.”

Johnny stared at the child.

“Whoa! Where did you learn that word?”

“From her. Mom.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah. She calls me that. She calls me a cunt.”

He shook his head.

“You don’t want to be using that word, kiddo, okay? It’s seriously disrespectful.”

“Then why does Mom use it?”

“Do you want to be like Mom?”

“No, I
never
want to be like Mom.”

“There you go then.”

She nodded.

“Okay.”

She sipped her Coke.

“Why can’t Mom be more like Grace? Grace is nice.”

“Yes, she is.”

“Do you like her?”

“Grace?”

“Yes, Grace.”

“Sure I do.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Really? Oh wow.”

Johnny looked at her.

“Wait. Hold on. What do you mean by like?”

“I mean like, as in
like
. Boy girl like.”

“Boy girl like?”

“Yes.”

“Then no.”

“No?”

“No. I’m her boss. That’s it, okay?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I wish you and her were together. I wish Mom was dead.”

The girl fled the kitchen and dropped her fat backside onto the couch, eyes glued to some Kardashian arsefest.

Back in the now, blinking at the lunatic with the power saw, Tanya heard the skinny boy saying “You will be redeemed by the blood” and in that instant she surrendered to the madness that had stalked her all the years since that furnace of a morning in the canefields and her eyes darkened with rage and the weathered skin of her face stretched tighter across her bones, her thin lips clenched white and her eyes sank deep into her skull, and she nodded, held out her right hand and took the saw from the leering man.

Turner watched as the weight of the power tool dragged his wife’s arm down and she almost dropped it, grabbing at the housing with both hands, wincing at the pain of her broken fingers.

Tanya regained her balance, lifted the saw and cranked it, experimenting with the heft, getting used to the handgrip.

Turner, his finger held in Tard’s vise-like grasp, felt sweat pool beneath his arms and in his hairline and his balls clenched tight as fist as he saw the shark-toothed blade spin and scream.