The Shaft (7 page)

    Bash had chosen the surface streets because the highway had become a nightmare of vehicles jumbled together in HO toy chaos, not so much an orderly, frozen row of taillights as a mad, Modernist neon sculpture: Black pavement, sliced from an ice frosting in double strips; police flashbars winking pink to crimson on the snowbanks; whirling frost-blue from the tow trucks; the brilliant glare of high beams pointed in the wrong directions for progress on the road. And everywhere, white, descending from the sky like a hex of legend to bedevil mortals foolhardy enough to attempt travel. White, blanketing all, the starched sheet on the corpse, the non-tint of bloodless leftovers, the visual expression of absolute death.

    Bash's eyes memoed the freeway deadlock with his usual bitter bemusement. 'Like I said, they all try to ignore the snow. Stupid. And… congratulations. You have just made your first successful excursion through the township of Russet Run without getting robbed.' His voice dropped into his deadly Rod Serling impersonation. 'And survived.'

    'Russet Run. Sounds like what you get when you eat too much Tex-Mex.'

    'Your first dry township, me bucko.'

    'So that was one, huh. I noticed it looked a touch haunted.' Actually, Jonathan hadn't, but it sounded good.

    The streets began to shed their commotion of crowded brick buildings, metamorphosing into a series of woodland suburbs linked by scenic roadways lacking many streetlamps. In moments it was all trees, shadows, and snow. Jonathan fantasized the night-time eyes of forest creatures, chatoyant, monitoring the motorway and trying to figure out what automobiles were.

    'They're heavy into oaks in this neck of the woods.' Bash was still in tour-guide mode. ' Oakland, Oakdale, Oak Run, Oak Park, Oakwood. The mighty oak, lending a touch of spurious class to the progeny of gangsters and bootleggers. You'll see more Frank Lloyd Wright architecture here than in any other part of the country. Actually, I dig the hell out of the houses - there's very little ticky tacky here. The houses aren't all falling down or rotting, like in New Orleans. If I never see no more Spanish moss in my life, it'll be a lifetime too soon, you know what I'm saying?'

    
Splash!
Jonathan had sunk back into fugue and was jolted to reality by the truck's obliteration of a genuinely awesome puddle of ice.

    'Sorry,' he said. 'I'm phasing out. Too much time on the white line.'

    'Mm. Road fever. Classic case. What you need is some Terminal Turbo from Uncle Bash's killer espresso robot.'

    'Or a Quietly Beer.'

    He regretted missing Bash's anecdote about Quietly while busying himself in misery. If he waited a respectful distance, he could probably coax the story out again; Bash loved rattling on, never more so than when the talk involved one of his personal theories on why the world was so fucked up.

    'What the hell is a Terminal Turbo?'

    'Santy Claus - in the voluptuous form of Camela - hath bestown upon my pore white head a Krups Espresso Novo. Top of the line, state of the art. When I first got it I spent a week trying to figure out how to froth milk for cappuccino. It looked like the Amazing Colossal Man had ejaculated all over my kitchen. Whitewashed it. Now I'm pretty good at driving that ole foam nozzle. I had to drink all my experiments. Espresso is too expensive to waste. Speed while you learn. I spent the next week or so grinding my teeth to sleep. Once I got the espresso right I cross-bred it with a Hot Shot. You use four measures for two and a half cups; really strong. Add a shot of Bailey's. A shot of Kahlua. Add inspiration of the moment in the form of amaretto or Frangelica or chocolate or whatever. A hybrid is born. Voila-Terminal Turbo.'

    'The Doctor Frankenstein of coffee.'

    'It's aliiive!' Bash's Colin Clive really sucked. 'It knocks you down and wakes you up at the same time.'

    Jonathan wondered how many Terminal Turbos had greased Bash's tubework already.

    They slalomed into the oncoming lane to dodge a fool trying to parallel park in a snowbank twice as tall as his Le Car. The traffic moved at fender bender velocity and that was about it.

    'Hey squirrel dick!' Bash bellowed. 'Get a license! Get a brain! Get some motor control! Buy a fuckin' American car!'

    'Where are we now?' Fleeting panic hugged Jonathan. Irrationally he thought that alone, he could never pick his way to the bus depot through all this Bosch.

    ' Elmwood Park.'

    'Wet or dry?'

    'Wet. I think.'

    'Then there is a God.'

    He watched the artful way Bash would shift down and cut speed preparatory to hanging a turn, utilizing the truck's momentum against the treacherous bushwhack of ice. They sla-turned onto a smaller side street. Neat houses smothered in snowfall paralleled to meet at some infinity point in the darkness beyond Jonathan's vision. An Exmas card view, with the cold light of a television fire in each parlor window. Life in the cadaver locker, the calm of bloodless blue-white flesh, the stability of rigor mortis.

    The alley into which Bash cranked the truck was stopped up with a two foot drift of snow. In the dim light it looked like a concrete wall. Tire ruts had been excavated and were half full of falling snow already. The Toyota 's jacked chassis swept on through. Jonathan thought how frustrating this passage would be for a conventional auto, like trying to jog through waist-deep water. Bash slammed into first and floored it to negotiate a steep concrete ramp leading to a second-level parking slot. The garage was open to the weather; the space into which Bash slotted the truck overshot the edge of the building above by several feet. As a consequence, each parked vehicle had won a neat mound of snow on its hood, a foot or so.

    'Yesterday the wheels froze to the concrete,' Bash said. 'It was hysterical. I finally jarred the truck loose by jacking it up and then knocking out the jack.' He smacked his bare hands together and got an echo from the far side of the parking bay. 'Can't go nowheres if your wheels don't go round.'

    When Jonathan opened his own door the frozen wind tried to shove it shut again. He gawked at the door in mild surprise. When he tried again he put his foot into it. Above them the apartment building shot upward for five floors. More TV light up there, from windows blurry with condensed moisture.

    'Is this it?' he said.

    'Home Sweet.' Bash rolled his big brown eyes. 'Welcome to Hell.'

    

    

    'Welcome to Paradise, sailor. You've got to be Cruz.'

    The Corvette must have been carrying around at least eighty coats of lacquer; it looked as if it had been dipped in blood-coloured liquid glass. Cruz tried to see through the window crack.

    'I'm Bauhaus, and I detest idling among the peasantry.' The voice came in a draft of warm air through the crack. 'You get my drift? Jump in before your balls turn to ice.'

    Cruz tossed his NIKE TEAM bag onto the floorboard, got his legs around it, and crimped himself into the low-slung suicide bucket. Water pooled on the rubber floormat. His hair dripped condensation in the heat of the 'Vette's cabin. First freezing, now soaking.

    'Christ-o-mighty, kiddo, we're gonna have to procure you an overcoat if you plan on staying in this distribution zone a spell.'

    Bauhaus stuck out a powdered and uncallused hand. He was large and fleshy-pale. Cruz saw Armani lapels tucked into a big London Fog trenchcoat with a hefty fur liner. The guy probably wore colored silk underwear.

    Cruz tried to warm his hands in his armpits and nodded a quick acknowledgment. He wanted Florida, Rosie, and his bowling shirts. He did not want to make new friends. The Corvette peeled out of the loading zone to the chatter of Cruz's teeth. Bauhaus withdrew his unaccepted handshake and peered briefly at the road unwinding ahead of them, pretending to concentrate on his driving. The interior of the car stank of some top-end lime and woodsmoke cologne.

    Once his teeth stopped, Cruz's split lip began to throb. Warmth brought the pain of thaw. He stamped his feet on the floorboard to restore circulation and soon it felt as though acid was coursing through his veins down there. His nose leaked. When he cleared his throat, the snot came up the temperature of ice cream. It was totally repulsive.

    Bauhaus reached across and poked open the glovebox to reveal tissues. Cruz saw a crooked stack of compact discs and what might have been the butt of a revolver.

    As Cruz hocked and ventilated, Bauhaus said. 'So. Feel more human, kid?'

    Talking to Bauhaus was going to be unavoidable. Rosie would tell him it was all for his own good. 'So,' Cruz said. 'Why Chicago?' He'd been dying to ask that. 'And don't call me kid.' Now that his moustache was history, he was more sensitive about his looks than ever.

    'Sorry. Off on the wrong toe.' Bauhaus rummaged around in the depths of his coat. Every movement brought the backwash of cologne. Cruz's eyes stung, then watered. 'That stick?'

    Cruz accepted and fired up, using the dashboard lighter. After dusting his nose and pounding down airline alcohol, he welcomed the draughts of sweet smoke. It was another kind of warm air. Bauhaus refused the pass and dug out a chrome breast pocket flask with imitation Deco engraving and a blued dent in the cap. 'Got my own insulation.' He swigged and chuckled to himself.

    Jolly dude, this Bauhaus.

    They zipped past a spotlit welcome sign featuring the signature of the current mayor in three-foot neon script. After a few more inbound miles, Bauhaus sighed and said, 'Okay. I'll tell you why Chicago, kiddo. I mean… sir.'

    That sounded even worse. Inside his skull Cruz saw Chiquita tumble, and rupture redly, and change his life.

    'Had another boy. Man, I mean. Another runner by the handle of Jimmy McBride. Did his summertime rounds on skates, for godsake. Too too bad to the max. He's currently in the slam for porking some thirteen year old junior high school squack from Oakwood. In Oakwood they take Ash Wednesday seriously, slick, you copy what I'm saying? No liquor. No sense of humor. Jailbait offense is worse than cannibalism there. Just the pits. Doesn't mean dick that his little quail was totally wasted on Peruvian flake and Lite Beer. She and Jimmy did it four times on her parent's heirloom dining room table. Ma and Pa walked in on Act Five. Girl wins herself a bellyfull of bambino - strictly dark meat, if you hear what I'm saying? And Ma and Pa, being standup local God freaks, don't have a clue about how to unsmear their precious except maybe lock her up in a nunnery after she drops. They have money, they have community standing, they have a kind of exposure that I can't afford to pull. So poor Jimmy goes away for awhile, because even if I slid him free I couldn't run him in Oakwood again… and the Oakwood High footballers need their dope to go ten-for-ten this season. Shit, man, I made fifty grand off those guys in side bets last year. Paid for this bucket you're riding around in now.'

    Cruz held in his toke and grimaced.

    'So guess who called me on the phone with a solution to my little conundrum? Go on, guess.'

    'Rosie.' Rosie had a way with logistics, making something that was useless one place real important in some other place. Rosie had been apprised of the vacancy in Bauhaus' chain, and had efficiently tucked Cruz in where he could serve as something better than guppy chow for the Gulf.

    'See, it's warm enough to talk. We're gonna be pals you and me. You'll like the setup here. Less pressure than all that urban narcotics kingpin crapola. Fewer Cubans. Ain't some hitter shoving a MAC 10 in your back everytime some Columbian dickhead overblows and gets paranoid.'

    In Emilio's sphere, Cruz, as an entry-level distributor, would have done a quick pickup-dropoff in the back of a Mercedes limo. He would have spoken to Emilio's second or third under Rosie. Bauhaus' web was out in the Chicago suburbs. He had come to collect Cruz at the airport personally, marvel of miracles. Cruz wasn't sure yet whether this was outback hospitality or merely the pull of a phone call from Rosie.

    Bauhaus' neighborhood was well-plowed. In this neck of the country you measured status by how clear your roads were kept when it snowed. A winding upward drive, distant city lights, a lot of trees. The Corvette was kept in a heated shell inside of a stable-like four-car garage.

    The House of Bauhaus was a textbook of cash without class. The entrance door was a double-wide portal in carved, weatherproofed oak. The brass handle, center-mounted, resembled the go-grip of some medieval torture device. Cruz's eyes went first to the Cutlass box mounted flush with the brickwork. Its crimson LED telltale winked on the half-second, an electronic sentry tapping its foot with boredom. Below the box was a metal speaker grille and a lighted doorchime button. Bauhaus, sniffling, vast breaths steaming in the chill, bent to punch in his code.

    Next came an oblong foyer with mirrors and a lot of hanging draperies in cancerous red. Lacquered Chinese tables bracketed the far end and intricate gold-painted molding was suspended from the ceiling. One inlaid door turned out to be a closet. Dead ahead were sliding doors of thick, smoky glass that parted with a hum and a grinding noise when Bauhaus played the proper tune on the keypad of a second Cutlass box.

    Cruz examined the ceiling of the foyer. Good, thick heat billowed toward him. He was starting to feel damp and sticky. He looked closer.

    'Cameras?'

    'Yeah.' Bauhaus yanked off his heavy gloves. 'If I dislike what waltzes through the front door, I can detain it inside my little airlock, here.' He indicated the foyer. The entrance doors throw titanium bolts, two up, two down. The glass doors fracture along cleavage lines - they're more like stone than actual glass - and they'll deflect a point blank.44 Magnum round at a forty-five degree angle of entry. No way a second or third shot can be on target. By the time the rude awakening occurs, I've weighed options and moved. We've had fire drills. We can dispose of, or conceal, what the cops call 'evidence of illegal substances or merchandise on the premises,' see?'