The Holy Terror (11 page)

* * *

A few minutes before, Mike Surfer had sat with his hand pressed to the glass door of the Marchinn, watching as Wilma Jerrickson perched herself near the curb ram, her left hand grasping an Illinois Bell telephone stand until the last of the cabs had accelerated through the yellow light. He watched as she rested in front of Shopper’s Corner, the cherry red neon Magikist lips washing its color into her hair. Behind him, Karl and Etch were having a minor argument over some sports statistic.

Gramma’s small frame was finally lost from view as she turned north, passing under a La Croix mineral water billboard.

Surfer nodded to Nutman at the front desk, reading a Joe R. Lansdale suspense novel, before wheeling back up to his room. He had to clean his shunt, he recalled Gramma’s reprimand guiltily, and it wouldn’t hurt to wash up a bit. He hoped that Victor Tremulis would come by tonight. Surfer had invited the boy the night the second man had been found cut up and murdered.

He knew how difficult it was for Victor to meet new people.

* * *

That Michael, Wilma thought as she increased her speed after passing Walgreens. He worries about people like me too darn much. What’s going to happen to me in a crowd like this...?

Even after rush hour ended, there would be stragglers and window shoppers. State Street had achieved mall status during the Byrne administration. Lady Jane had followed up on Mayor Bilandic’s “Beautiful Chicago” theme by giving the city’s east-west base street a needed facelift. A hundred trees had been planted along the half-mile stretch that designated the mall, the sidewalks had been extended and paved with octagonal grey brick, and car traffic was closed between the elevated tracks at Van Buren on the south and Lake Street on the north.

She stopped at the Benton Place alleyway that ran along the south end of the Chicago Theater The marquee lights had been turned on when dusk was still a rumor. Gregg Aliman was putting on a show tonight, whoever he was. Now, Sinatra...

As she backed into the alley, a passerby was telling her companion about a cat who went “poody” on her stole. In front of Shoppers Corner, the black preacher Marclinn residents knew as Brother Preacher Man tapped his humming microphone to ensure that it was working.

Another nice man who helps others, she thought. Just like Michael... The sidewalk preacher spoke nightly on the evils of tobacco, adultery, and crack: Wilma caught a whiff of baking bread from Skolnik’s each time a gust of wind came up around her. She fingered the babushka in her pocket, deciding to tie the lilac colored cloth like another scarf around her neck, thinking that Henry would be driving up any minute now.

Henry Mazjec was her nephew and had worked for the city for eighteen years. More to please his auntie Wilma than his father Bernard, Henry, a thin man who dressed like he was one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables, picked Gramma up every December ninth, so that she could visit St. Adelbert’s on the tenth, and on whatever holiday gettogethers there were.

The cold was making her giddy, huddled up in her ‘sweater and jacket and long underwear under her grey slacks. Oh, Henry, where are you? Then, just to think about something other than the wind, you’ll look better in a sweater washed in Woolite...

* * *

At the Marclinn, Colin Nutman was talking to Mike Surfer over a Co’Cola. “Mike, you want to wheel out there and protect Grandmama,” the Englishman with the de-formed hand said. “That’s it, ennit?”

“She’s so tiny, Colin.”

“Mike, the papers are saying this guy uses a blowtorch on his victims. How’s he gonna get away with that in front of the theater, hmmmm?” Nutman often went right to the jugular.

“She’s so tiny,” Surfer repeated.

* * *

In the Benton Place alleyway, Francis Haid stepped forward to say hello.

“Don’t you dis me,” Conover said to the hustler leaning in the doorway of Ronnie’s. “You best not play me for some bluegum moke, Erwin. I’m tellin’ you what it is, like.”

The off duty cop from the district across the river was standing next to a beater of a Gran Torino. Only car fuckin’ spics ever buy, he thought every time he saw one cruising the streets. When he was down slummin’, as the cops at Chicago Avenue or Saloon Street called the Loop beats, he was very big at trying to hip to the black experience. About twenty years too late.

Erwin “Smooth Tee” Truvillion, his unlucky sounding board, thought that the blond cop was better suited to block traffic. Only reason he was down here clownin’ was to impress that white trim that, right this minute, was waiting in line for her steak dinner. Tee shot a brown eyeball into the fast food joint and saw Conover’s cop pal Mather further back in line by the steam tables: Ooo-wee, Home. Tee had to admit that Reve Towne was one fine piece.

He guessed that Conover was blowing pone his way to catch the trim’s attention that he was hip. It seemed that the grey meat only showed when the girl was visitin’ that cripple place across the street. Now, Conover was right in his knowledge that Tee made his living by procuring gold chains from the necks of unsuspecting El riders and hawking the golden lovelies out here when the dark came out.

“I’m sayin, m’man,” Tee responded with the finest in hustler panache. “These belonged to mah sistuh an’ she doan wannem an’mo, dig?” This coming from a man dressed in the newest threads: black Perry Ellis slacks with double creases, matching tie and wool scarf, and a tranquil light-blue oversized Girbaud shirt with clusters of Morse code-like dots and dashes across the chest. His ankle-length black leather trench coat was open, and the many gold chains “his sister” had offered up for sale rested in a half-dozen drooping pockets.

What a joke this all was.

* * *

The preacher’s mike finally kicked in:

STOP SINNERS, his litany always started. Do not HEED the SINS of tobacco or of alcohol forsake of sex outside the wedded... the WEDDED bounds of Ho-ly Ma-tri-Mo -ny! Re-PENT!

In different ways, Erwin Truvillion and the preacher, Charles Latimore, were both on the same team.

The crowd passing before him broke and he saw the old woman, he couldn’t think of her name, from the place across the street. She was talking to a large man in a padded jacket. Looked as if the guy was pushing her backwards, and that was crazy.

* * *

“Crumbs.” That was the first thing she said to him.

Stepping closer, he realized how truly small she was. He towered above her. The gold fillings in her teeth were spattered with melted cheese. And Francis Haid was probably as tall to her as the theater marquee was to himself.

She pointed to the ground behind him.

“Urn, pardon. Ma’am?” Polite, the way Father had taught him.

“Crumbs,” Wilma repeated, as if the word alone would sate both of them. He looked into her wide eyes. “’S funny, young man,” she had to raise her voice above another gust of wind. “I’m too old and my eyesight is so bad that I can’t even read the bus route signs. Not that half the buses don’t even have chair lifts.” She mashed her tongue to the side of her mouth, a defiant gesture.

“But I can see those crumbs.”

Haid couldn’t see anything on the ground resembling crumbs of any sort. Maybe she meant the hard snowflakes. The usual detritus was there, in the gutters around the curb and wedged into the octagonal tiles. Wrappers for Kit Kats and a Butterfinger, the latter being only partly consumed, the orange insides making it appear in the twilight as a florescent turd. Crumpled packs of cigarettes and a dozen or more discarded flyers advertising ten percent off jewelry. To the immediate right of the alley was a planter. The corpse of a bird lay in the corpse of the plant.

“Can’t see them, son?” The crafty smile again. And she called him son...

“There they are, over to the left. There, see?” It was a game she played, this failing eyesight gag, to keep the chill out of her bones.

Haid was all set to go along with his company’s delusion when he did see the bits of bagel near the bird’s remains. Shit, he thought. What a last meal.

“I’ll admit you do have better eyesight than I do, ma’am.”

“So sweet, so sweet.” Wilma’s head swayed as if with romance.

Truth be told, the Painkiller would be turning her head soon enough. It would take several more tries before he would get it done right. The way Father expected of him.

“Anyway, that’s not the point.”

“Pardon?” Haid shook his head in confusion, strands of hair made oily by his compulsion in using Glover’s hair tonic a dozen times each day falling from place.

“No, son.” He smiled at her use of that word again. “What I mean is: why can’t I read the damn bus stop signs anymore? Oh, I can’t go telling Michael that, but how do they expect me, or, God forbid, someone worse off than me, to get around in this city? Sometimes I think, you know what I think,” and to this, Haid shrugged, “I think, my kind of town? Hah! Someone should go wake Mr. Sinatra up from his daydream.”

“I can help, really I can.” Haid spoke like he still had trouble believing it himself. He reached down and firmly touched her shoulders, realizing at once that her bones felt as hollow as flutes. He was afraid to massage them.

“Oh, this life,” she sighed, the f in life trailing off like a sputtering firecracker in a ghetto housing project. A tired sound.

The veins pulsed in his hands. His skin moved in waves, up and down his arms, pinching where the ripples met his cheap watchband. His hands were hot bricks.

His heart beat three times, each beat like the click of empty chambers in a gun.

“… on the way, sure as the sun comes up and the day is long, winter’s here to stay awhile.” She was still smiling, still talking.

The hell if the days were any longer, he thought, but let it pass. They were both on their way to their graves. He never expected to reach her age. He wondered how cold she really was. He smelled dying things all around him.

The entire length of his arms tingled now. They were now a dozen feet back from the street. To their immediate right, at the intersection of the north-south breezeway separating Marshall Field and the Trailways bus terminal, was a battered set of red garbage drums. The drums sat beside double doors, and the doors’ windows were cross-hatched with greasy hand prints.

“No, I don’t mind the cold. Lived here a long time. Long time.” Wilma Jerrickson clucked her tongue. Haid gazed down at her wrinkled face, her thin neck with flesh sluicing off of it like melting wax on a candle stem. The flesh dripped down into the folds of her heavy jacket.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’ve lived here all my life, too.”

“Lived in Uptown, I did.” She made a count of numbers using thumb and forefingers. “Before that, oh maybe six years, we lived on the Southwest side. 43rd and Whipple.”

The sounds from the street had died away. Haid knew it was time for her to make peace with his God.

So, lookit here man: like, the Tee had been all ready to chill out and cool down man, you know, take a chill pill, but then, like, you see, this low-rent cracker Conover goes and says, “Man,”— this was in a whiny, piggy voice, you know?— he says, “Man, I’ll leave you dyed, fried, ‘n laid to the side!” An’ so’s Tee’s itchin’, like, scratchin’ away like’n he’s got lice makin’ home of his short hairs, when Brother Preacher Man he makes an appearance. Says the show must go on, like.

The Brother From Another Planet, like, he goan go see Gramma down by the Thee-ater, see’s she not in trouble, some kinda hinky vibes he be feelin’, you know? So, he go and leave Tee from his hoedown showdown wit’ de copper cracker muddah—fakker to man the mike instead. See, the Tee he owes the preach so he says yes of course he be watch the mike, n’ the Brother is gone like into the erif.

The cop Conover he smile a shit-eatin’ grin when Mather he comes out of the steak place. The Tee mutters under his breath as he picks up the microphone. “Muddah-fakken greymeat,” he spits.

Then he smiles beatifically at the passing crowd.

“Our Father, Who Art In Heaven,” he begins, believing it.

* * *

Haid could no longer feel his hands on the woman’s frail shoulders. He kneaded the soft flesh as if each bulge was one of the Zywiecka, beer sausages, Father would bring home from Mitch and Janina’s on Friday afternoons.

“You know, son,” Wilma seemed oblivious to her impending salvation, yet he still saw a knowing wink in her right eye, gleaming like the chrome in her chair.

“I’m taking you home now,” his voice rolled out in waves. It was difficult to keep his voice level. His chest, his other body parts, strained. He tried to stop thinking about the other body parts, though Father had said that there was nothing to be afraid of.

He clenched his teeth until they, too, throbbed.

“All right,” the woman looked up at him, the deep hue of her eyes reflecting decades. He bent down closer. “Son,” she finished.

A tear slipped down her right cheek and sizzled into the grey folds of his jacket. Moving back for purchase, he steadied himself for the one final thrust into his chest. Into the promised land. My lungs are blue skies, he thought.

Then he heard the voice. No, not Father’s. The voice wasn’t coming from within his chest, but from behind him, behind them, sounding both out-of-breath and wary, questioning.