The Shaft (26 page)

    'They busted him for the dope in your purse. You fucking owe me. You want to keep your public access twat between your legs and not in my garbage disposal, you level with me and don't ever, ever lie to me.'

    'I'm not lying,' she lied. 'Cruz flushed the dope. I didn't see a gun. Bauhaus… there was no time at all, from the moment the cops dropped out of the trees. Cruz acted fast. If they had tied any dope to you, bigtime, we'd all be freezing in cells right now. The cops don't have shit on you. Cruz did okay.'

    His grip relaxed, but did not release. The door to the blue bedroom closed and the hallway filled up… not with Cruz. Jamaica did not recognize the man except by genus. He had curly, golden-fleece hair that looked abnormal above the tight tweed jacket. He was gangstered out in a black shirt and a dove-gray tie knotted tight as a hangman's noose. The suit was buttoned and looked ready to burst. No question about the bulge at the armpit; no attempt had been made to disguise it. 'Marko,' Bauhaus nodded.

    Marko scoped the living room with eyes like ball bearings pressed deep into hot black rubber. He followed Bauhaus' glance and parked himself accordingly on the sofa next to Krystal just as Jason chalked up a fresh kill. Whee. His notice was drawn more to the potato chips than to the stalk 'n' slash antics onscreen, or Krystal's boobs.

    'Do I pass or what?' Jamaica was impatient and angry. Enough accusations, enough fencing, enough of Bauhaus and his nasty little boner.

    'I always liked you, my dear.' His voice passed her ear hotly. 'You give better head than the children, here. You stay straight with me and it's good dope and fast times and everybody makes out, yes?' He paused to deepen his tone significantly. 'You cross me, and I'll pick up the phone one more time. And when the knife work is done, you'll have a hole in your crotch big enough to hide those two kilos in. You understand and approve wholeheartedly, I'm sure.'

    She let the spark rise in her eyes, heightening the amber there. 'Okay, okay, I read you, I'm not stupid.' Her retort was tempered by her knowledge that Bauhaus could make good on his vile threats. He could make her evaporate, and no one would ever miss a hooker with a quick mouth.

    'Now. Go await my pleasure in the big bedroom.'

    'Gimme a break, Bauhaus. Not tonight. Not after all this shit.'

    He smiled and came around to pat her cheek. Not quite a slap; not nearly a love tap. 'Ah, I do like that. Such fire and defiance. Next time I luck you in the ass I'll have you sing 'Addicted to Love' while I bugger away.' He clapped his hands loudly. Marko did not look over. Lord Alfred, catamite-in-residence, snapped to attention like a pointer. Jamaica ate another face-to-face tap-slap. 'All this brutal honesty has aroused me. And Lord Alfred is much tighter than you ever were.'

    Her expression told him to get on with it.

    'Marko will see our friend Cruz to a hospital. St Jude's, I think. Make sure he's not broken as well as busted. He is two days behind, and as you know, I have a slight operating loss I need to recoup. What is Jonathan's story?'

    'He just wanted to get Cruz out of jail.'

    'Why?'

    Lord Alfred drifted past, bedroom-bound, butt jiggling beneath his monk's robe. His necklaces and bracelets clinked and jangled.

    'Look - why don't you ask Cruz?'

    'I did, dearest. Marko, my stout yeoman, helped. Grilling someone naked carries a tremendous psychological advantage. And if your answers, just now, had deviated from his… well. Never mind. Uncrease thy rumpled brow. But before I go back there to play with Lord Alfred, you, my dear, are going to moisten me up, and Jonathan's going to see you do it. Because you are a whore. And you insulted me in front of him. And I am not one of your lucking cops. And because I pay you, and you'll goddamn well do what I demand, or you'll stop breathing right now. Right, Marko?'

    Marko nodded. He hadn't missed a thing.

    She saw the light. She knew he could make it happen. Her bloodstream was rocking and rolling with Bauhaus' primo drugs; because of him she had had every conceivable orifice breached. She had accepted cash, purloined dope, and if she had ever believed in possessing a soul, she would have pawned it years ago. He could force her to become nothing, make her die and blow into oblivion with the next winter wind.

    If he made her disappear, then he won. Bauhaus was one sick ticket.

    And so it came to pass that Jamaica was pressed to her knees there on the flagstones of the kitchen, Bauhaus' reddened member waving an inch from her nose like a blind cobra. She was sorry that Jonathan would have to see her with a mouthful: Sorry for him, because she kind of liked him. Sorry for herself, because unlike Jonathan, she needed to act the part as well as speak the lines.

    Krystal did not have to get up to change cassettes. Friday the 13th Part Six commenced in Super VHS. It was the neatest one in the series, even at silent-movie speed.

    Chari kept to her stool, immobile as a sculptor's bust. Marko sat, stayed, did not fetch.

    Bauhaus grabbed Jamaica's hair and thrust, making her gag unexpectedly. The occipital ridge of her head banged the bar cabinet; the small fridge there started up at the shock. She felt the purr of its motor vibrating the laminated woodwork. She concentrated on it.

    Her saliva oiled Bauhaus up good.

    She was sorry for a lot of things. But Cruz still had the dope. That dope could transmute into money just as surely as fairytale spinning wheels made straw into gold. If Cruz could retrieve the two kilos, then most likely he could save the gun as well. She remembered seeing the candy box go into the trash bag before everything was stuffed out the bathroom window.

    And if Cruz still had the gun…

    Preseminal fluid lotioned the roof of her mouth. An old, old taste to her. Jonathan came out of the bathroom, rubbing one eye. He looked up and then grated to a petrified standstill in the hall.

    Just as dope could become cash, Bauhaus could be changed by a bullet or two. Either way, such changes might mean freedom, she thought.

    Might they not?

    

    

    'Well, lookee here what the dawg drug in…'

    Bash was flipping an X-Acto knife in the air, trying to see how many times he could get it to somersault and still catch the end that didn't have a point on it. He stopped to swig half the contents of his Twilight Zone coffee mug, then spent some time trying to guess why Jonathan looked so wrung out.

    'Lemme see. No, don't tell me; I know this one…' He was turned up too loud and wrapped too tight. 'She told you she was from Salinas and it was her first time in the big city, and normally she never considered doing stuff like this, but you know how it is when you run out of money, and-'

    'And Merry Exmas to you, too.' Jonathan's voice was crawling up from the back of this throat this morning. 'Ho. Ho. Ho.' He slumped behind his light table. All his rubber dinosaurs forgave him. The world is your squeak toy, they lied.

    'You okay?' Bash shifted to Big Brother mode, just concerned enough not to go mushy. 'If you ain't sperm crazy then you look hammerstruck, Dino Boy.'

    Jonathan grunted. The room refused to resolve into focus. Jessica waved hello from the hallway as she bustled off to xerox something. Always in a hurry to reproduce. He was thankful that her workload kept her from seeing how wasted he was this morning. Or maybe she knew, and was permitting him to save face. He had no mouth for storytelling, not even for Bash.

    He told Bash anyway.

    He started with his apology, for returning the truck late. He knew Bash would tell him sorries were unnecessary. He made a pallid grab at losing the morning in work. It was difficult to see what purpose all this ant-like industry served. When you completed a job another sat right down in its place. You had to have reservations just to catch a breath. Jobs had backed up. Bash was in his face.

    He tried truce mode. 'You know when you feel the need to explain something? And it's something you shouldn't really be talking about in the first place, except that it's so big you can't keep it to yourself, you can't contain it all without bursting?'

    'Cammy frequently complains that I'm so big she can't contain all of me without -'

    'Yeah, right. Well. What happened last night was sort of like that.'

    'Let's haggle.' Bash grinned. Frankenstein's Monster:
Gooood
. 'Give me juicy tidbits. Edited highlights. And I'll pull some of that small shit off your desk so you can preserve your sterling rep around here, since you look like you're about to faint and put out an eye on a compass point.'

    Jonathan was in no mood to play tough; he genuinely needed the help. Take the proofing,' he said, handing across a stack of sheets. 'I track the words but they don't mesh into anything meaningful.' Layout seemed more accessible. Cutting and pasting the paper maelstrom into a juxtaposition with straight lines; smacking disorder on the side of the head and making it behave. Bash battened gleefully on tales of police raids, naked prostitutes, mayhem in the snowy night. Jonathan veered around most of the drug stuff, and was yanked under by a shock flash of recall that reminded him of several straw-fulls of pharmaceutical chuckle dust still assuming squatter's rights in his parka. There now. The thought stole his wind like a rabbit punch to the sternum.

    'Gas pain?' said Bash. 'Your face just went as blank as a Butt Person's brain scan.'

    'Tired.' He wanted his sinuses to drain and his brain pan to stabilize. How much had he drunk yesterday? Had he gotten round to eating? Would any damned thing take the dead lead out of his buns this fine, blinding-bright Illinois morning?

    The thing really clogging up his head was Jamaica. All sass and steel and aerodynamic curves, a cherished memory permabound in a rectangular bloc of blue water, eyes Hinting green and streetwise, motions fluid and sensuous, tongue scalding, then, to Jonathan, merciful.

    Her mouth engorged with five stubby inches of beet-red Bauhaus bratwurst.

    Tougher now, to moon over Amanda. She was gaining a sepia tint, spoiling on the shelf of his memories. Amanda was passing from the ripe blush of guilt and recriminations into the decay of old news.

    Senses blunted, he had shuffled away from Bauhaus' bad pad, unable to encompass any more weirdness for one twenty-four hour slot. By ramming his dick into Jamaica's face the overweight drug lord was making some kind of power point. By permitting such a gross violation, she was acceding to some unknown politic. Bauhaus held some Damoclean blade over Jamaica's life, and thus, the privilege to part her bee-stung lips with his crooked little chimp-choker.

    Jamaica would have an explanation. Hope broad-jumped eternally.

    And through it all, Jonathan thought:
Who are you, to judge?
While he didn't have to judge, he decided he didn't have to witness, either. He took his money, ran, and hoped Jamaica did likewise after paying her own bills.

    Truck back to Kenilworth. Keys to door. Head to a pillow still simmering in her spicy scent. Autonomic actions all, prefacing two hours of sickly sleep. No rest. When his faithful travel alarm blew reveille he rose, no more sentient than a coffee-swilling robot. For the first time he noticed the trail of blood on the hopeless carpet.

    He had booted out the black cat…
jesus, decades ago
.

    The pawprints in the blood were still fresh enough to glisten. Definitely cat feet. Passage had occurred while Jonathan was sleeping. The red swath commenced low to the wall next to the wheezy steam heater and meandered past the cot. Jonathan had tracked it to the bathroom. From the smears and skids he pictured the cat's bloody progress: A slippery leap from the closed toilet lid to the edge of the bathtub and thence to the windowsill. Presumably it had hooked its claws into the cardboard sealing off the broken window. Presumably it had slid into the airshaft, seeking edibles, and gotten a long surprise tumble down to a full-stop impact fraught with pain and broken cat bones. Jonathan had popped the cardboard out. It was still stained by the fecal grease, which had dried and crusted now like burned pie filling. He had called into the shaft. No meows. The worst was feared, but without a light, what could he have done?

    And he still had no idea of what had become of Cruz.

    'I love stuff like that,' Bash enthused. 'Like having the
Enquirer
read to you. Except it's all so rich you couldn't have possibly tall-taled it together.' He was not completely serious, and his face reflected a snap or two of doubt. 'I suppose you cleaned all the blood and stuff up?'

    'No time. I didn't want Capra to get pissed at me for being late. By now it's dry. I wonder what happened to that goddamned cat?'

    'Gone to cat hell.'

    He peeled up angular hanks of masking tape and worked over his job with an eraser to eliminate a few errant thumbprints. He preferred working with the table's underlight on so that he could see how his pasteup aligned in terms of silhouettes - dark, darker, darkest - as well as hewing to the longitudes and latitudes of the photo-blue graph. Without work on the board the light was too strong. He moved the next job in his stack into position.

    'You don't suppose Capra would miss one of those highpowered garage flashlights for a day or two, do you?'

    'You going to check out the shaft tonight, bro?'

    Jonathan tried to work moisture into his dry lips, feeling skin cracks with his tongue, which was just as arid. 'Damnation,' Bash went on. 'I'd do it with you, but 'Camela?' That's a big ten-four. We're in what you might call the negotiation phase.'

    'What happened?'

    'She did the one thing my get-rid-of-Cammy campaign never counted on, swabbie. She went and started being nice to me. No naggery, no face powder and eyebrows all over the bathroom sink.' He lowered his voice, aware that the subject of his discourse lurked in this selfsame building, and who knew what walls had ears? 'She's dropping weight like crazy. In another week she'll be able to slide into one of those evening sheaths that drove me so nuts in the first stretch of the race. She wants you to come to dinner tonight. She told me to tell you she promises no char. She bought me a hat.' He bobbed his noggin in the direction of the coatrack, where hung a floppy, mustard-colored newsboy's cap.