The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (78 page)

Bingo was reluctant to get involved; he shrugged his shoulders. “How about Angelo?”

“What about him?”

“I was only wondering.” Bingo had avoided Sonny’s eyes.

“Christ, Bingo! Just tell me!
What? What
is it this time?”

“Fuck you, Sonny! Never mind. Forget it! Do what you want! I don’t care! But I’m not fucking around with your fucking Mr. B.!”

Bingo did not care if Angelo took over everything in El Paso. Bingo did not want to be bothered with anyone, and he sure didn’t want to get involved with the government. Max Blue hinted he and others had performed special “services” for the U.S. government at home and abroad. Bingo didn’t give a shit about “rendering service” to his country. He didn’t trust the government, especially not if that government had got favors from Max Blue in the past. Because Bingo knew exactly what Max did. Bingo’s roommate had left a
Time
magazine open on Bingo’s bed. Bingo had felt a cold chill sweep over him when he saw his father’s name and the family name printed in a newsmagazine. The article concerned a big Mafia hit at an outdoor café in lower Manhattan. A gruesome photograph had showed one of the dead men still gripping a cigar in his teeth. When he found the magazine, Bingo had been on his way to a party. He had bought a fifth of tequila and a gram of cocaine, but he had not left the room that night. Bingo had stayed in the room sipping tequila and snorting coke as he read and reread the magazine article.

The magazine article had contained speculations from prominent law enforcement officials concerning the source and the meaning of the gangland assassination. On the long list of possible explanations, the name Max Blue had appeared four times. One theory was Max had only
pretended
to be badly wounded, and Max had only
pretended
to retire to the golf course in Tucson. The most macabre speculation had been that Max had indeed almost died from gunshot wounds, but that close call with death had also changed Max Blue. Max Blue and death had made a deal, according to the magazine reporter.

Bingo had never forgot that night. He had never snorted so much cocaine by himself before; he had never been so high or drunk so much tequila. Something about the cocaine had made Bingo read the article again and again; he thought it was quite funny to learn about his own father from the Crime section of
Time
magazine. All night Bingo had sat at his desk, snorting coke and sipping tequila with Pink Floyd tapes in the background while he brooded about himself and his family. Sonny had always tried to tell Bingo their parents didn’t want kids; but Bingo was not so sure. Everything had ended the morning Max had got shot and Uncle Mike had died.

The roommate had been away for the weekend. When he returned, Bingo had not mentioned the magazine. The roommate had already arranged for a new room the following term. Bingo could trace his all-night affairs with booze and blow to that night he had spent reading family history in
Time
magazine. Bingo had seen no reason to change anything now that he was settled in El Paso. In a family of go-getters, Bingo was the flop. Bingo wanted nothing more than to stay high in his hacienda in the sand dunes.

ROY HAD MADE IT a practice always to refuse the cocaine Trigg offered him. Roy was aware Trigg was watching him walk. If Trigg had not watched Roy, the cocaine might have been nice. Trigg had made a point of bragging about its origin and quality. Always a rock as big as a fist; always pink flake.

Trigg had not acted edgy before. Roy glanced at the glass desk top for signs of cocaine, but the glass was clean. Trigg had laughed nervously. “No, it isn’t
that,”
meaning cocaine. “I have something I want to talk
to you about.” Trigg kept his eyes on Roy’s eyes. Roy wondered what meaning a blink might have had then. Would Trigg back down?

Roy could see Trigg was uneasy about something but at the same time anxious to talk to Roy. A sixth sense Roy had developed in ’Nam told him when a woman or a man wanted to talk about sex. Roy had not pegged Trigg for a faggot, just a pervert in a wheelchair. Roy expected a double date with a couple of whores to the hot tubs or maybe dirty videos of Peaches going down on Trigg in his chair. Later when Roy had been rethinking everything, he had to laugh at himself for being so slow. Born yesterday.

Roy had always known Trigg felt inferior. At first Roy had assumed it was the wheelchair, but Trigg had felt inferior long before he had collided with the car. Trigg liked to get drunk with the help, that had been one of Trigg’s negative points according to Peaches, who took her work for Bio-Materials seriously. Peaches had caught Roy staring at her titties. Still she had happily talked for hours with Roy about “negatives and positives.” Peaches didn’t consider discussing negatives and positives about coworkers as gossiping or snitching. Impulsively Roy had asked Peaches to tell him his own negatives and positives, but she had refused, saying she did not know him enough to say anything. Roy had looked down quickly before she could see his face. He had been surprised at the pain her words had pushed into his chest. He wondered how it felt to have a heart attack.

Peaches knew but did not care about Trigg’s “illegal” sales to certain West German biomedical consortiums. Peaches said once you were dead, it mattered little what became of your body. Peaches had seen something, but later when Roy had tried to get Peaches to talk, she had refused. Trigg had to be very drunk and use a lot of cocaine before he would start talking about “it.” That had been all that Peaches would say.

Trigg did not consider the subject sexual, but rather a story about the blood plasma and biomaterials market worldwide. Trigg disliked psychiatry and psychology, which could be twisted to explain anything. Trigg had never denied that picking up hitchhikers had excited him. He had thought of it as a roll of the dice or a hand of five-card draw. The winners and the discards. Discards were “locals” or those with too many kin. Trigg had found that his wheelchair automatically took the suspicion away from the hitchhikers who might have been uneasy about a drive with him. Trigg would always wave his hand at the backseat and his wheelchair. Trigg had not minded the killing.

They are both getting drunk and they have snorted a gram of cocaine between them.

“Nobody ever notices they are gone. The ones I get,” Trigg had said, looking Roy in the eye. Trigg had been too drunk to remember that Roy was himself “homeless.” Trigg talked obsessively about the absence of struggle as the “plasma donors” were slowly bled to death pint by pint. A few who had attempted to get away had lost too much blood to put up much fight even against a man in a wheelchair. Of course the man in the wheelchair had a .45 automatic in his hand.

Trigg had paid extra if the victim agreed. Trigg gave him a blow job while his blood filled pint bags; the victim relaxed in the chair with his eyes closed, unaware he was being murdered. What Trigg does with the swollen cock in his mouth never varies: he catches an edge or fold of foreskin between his teeth. The cock might shrivel temporarily, but then it would encourage greatly from the nibble. All this Trigg performs from the wheelchair. Trigg blames the homeless men. Trigg blames them for being easy prey. He holds their jizz in his mouth until he gags. They got a favor from him. To go out taking head from him. He doubted any of them could hope for a better death. They were human debris. Human refuse. Only a few had organs of sufficient quality for transplant use.

“Trigg the Pig,” Peaches had said bitterly, “he blabs his big mouth too much.” Peaches had been upset about Trigg’s drunken ramblings. Her face had reddened. “Did he tell you about ‘the harvests’?” Roy nodded his head, but Peaches had refused to talk any more except to say everything was done legally. She had seen court papers signed by a judge authorizing everything. Peaches recovered her composure. “Transients die all the time. They don’t go to doctors and they don’t eat right,” Peaches said. She had looked Roy squarely in the eye to let him know that was how she would testify under oath.

Clinton said there had been some grumbling among the men because their leader was not eating with them and sleeping in the tin-and-cardboard hooch the men called Command Headquarters. Roy told Clinton to tell them to assemble that night and he’d give them a full report. Rambo had no secrets from his men. Rambo had been working on secret sources of money for their group.

Clinton had got a group of blacks and a few Hispanics together for his own brigade. All of them were older men, and one look in the eyes and you could see they’d been there all right. Clinton’s men said they’d
take women in their brigade too, although this was a signal for joking and laughing about the “orders” they’d give these women.

In private Roy had warned Clinton about accepting women into his unit. An integrated unit was one thing; all the men had fought together before in Vietnam. Most homeless women had a bunch of kids; they would be a mess. Women would be more trouble than they were worth.

Roy would not tell Clinton his suspicions about Trigg’s biomaterials business until the right moment. Unless they found a better “incident,” Rambo planned to mobilize and rally his army of homeless to accuse the blood and biomaterials industry of mass murder.

THE DAYS WERE GETTING COOL by evening, and when Rambo came to “brief” the men in the evenings, they would be standing around bonfires, passing bottles, smoking and talking. Each week more tents and lean-tos appeared along the gray clay banks of the Santa Cruz River. The mesquite groves along the riverbanks were checkered with plastic-tarp shelters, and blankets and sleeping bags drying on mesquite branches. Rambo and Clinton marched their men in Homeless Day rallies, but they were careful not to have any member of their unit arrested in the protests. Rambo and Clinton got high just retelling the events over and over again, how the “activists” were keeping the poor and homeless stirred up and assembled, which was all Rambo and Clinton wanted or needed. The activists had urged the people to occupy vacant government buildings, but Rambo and Clinton were no longer interested in the scraps thrown to them.

Rambo let Clinton evaluate the volunteers. Clinton had a good eye for white men. Clinton’s blacks were always doing comparative studies among themselves, and they’d compare notes on white-man behavior. All Rambo said was he was glad it was they who had to observe white men’s behavior and not him. Observing the behavior of “white” people,
his “own kind,” had been what had cut Roy loose from the world. He had no regrets. He was where he belonged. Corporations and big business had seized control of America during the Vietnam War, and only a poor man’s army of patriots could hope to restore the people’s democracy to the United States.

Clinton and Roy inventory the empty vacation houses twice weekly as the winter visitors begin to arrive in Tucson for the winter holidays. Clinton keeps the records and sorts through the mailboxes at each of the vacant houses. Some were so rich they forgot they had Tucson bank accounts. In the piles of letters at one house they had found blank checks and an all-time teller card; in a separate bank envelope they had found the personal code number.

Roy and Clinton regret they can’t tell the others about the vacant houses, but they don’t want to move too soon. Their operation requires a great deal of planning and thought. But when the cold rains come in November, Clinton is angered by the men who are shivering, and they begin to outfit their men with used field jackets from the surplus store. The bankcard works every time at the automatic teller machine. Clinton keeps careful records. Clinton organizes reconnaissance marches into the desert on the edge of the northwest side of the city where the men scavenge firewood for the camps. The trouble with these men is they are all wrecks—smashed by cheap wine and car wrecks, ruined by police and nightsticks. Clinton takes all the men who volunteer to go. He uses his wood-hauling patrols to weed out the drunks and the crazies from the “dependables.” Clinton organizes patrols when he feels the jumpiness begin to spread from his hands into his stomach. Moving the feet always helps, he says.