Authors: Elias Anderson
Cherry was able to put her worries to rest. Jim was a
different person when she picked him up the next morning at ten. She didn’t
want to spoil it by bringing Alice and Crystal up, or ask him how he was doing.
He seemed to be doing just fine, smiling and laughing, cracking jokes with her,
feeling her up when she would let him. He loaded his bags and popped the hood
of the car. He checked the oil and some other things and pronounced the car in
perfect working order, said they should have no problems. Cherry asked him if
he would drive and he got behind the wheel and they were on their way.
They smoked a joint as they went up the 101 along the coast,
slow moving at first even though it wasn’t rush hour, but once they got past
the turn off for Topanga the traffic lightened up and they were able to just
cruise along, smoking weed and looking out at the ocean. It made Cherry a
little sad, thinking of how she never went to the ocean any more. Just a couple
years ago she practically lived on the beach, swam every day, surfed a little,
or just sat on a beach towel and looked out at that never ending expanse, how
it rolled and rolled and rolled and would never, ever stop, not until the very
end of the world. That would be the world’s last breath, the tide. It would be the
very last beat of the world’s heart...and then, nothing.
They stopped in this little cafe Cherry knew of in Ventura
and had a nice leisurely breakfast. It was a little after one when they got to
the hotel in Carpinteria. It was nicer than Jim had any reason to hope for,
despite what the website had shown. They could hear the ocean from their room
but not see it. It was only a block to the beach.
They unloaded the car and walked to the beach and when they
got there, raced each other to the ocean. Jim splashed in and the water was
cool but not as cold as he’d thought it would be. He dove under and let the
cool water envelope him, cleanse him. He stayed under water as long as he was
able and then came shooting to the surface. He started swimming toward Cherry
and the tide went out so he was half running half swimming and he hugged her
tight to him and let the waves crash into their bodies as they kissed and all
this plus the telephone call he’d made caused the pall he’d been feeling to
finally finish slipping away. He’d done the right thing, he knew he it, and
shouldn’t feel bad about it, and it didn’t matter if someone else thought this
might make him a narc because he’d never tell anyone about it, he’d keep this
one little bit of good to himself and hold onto it like a small, brilliant
jewel. He felt good for the first time in a long time, he felt clean and happy
and even a little healthy. He wanted Cherry right here, wanted to carry her
back to the waterline and put her down and make love to her in the sand.
He knew it was impractical and wouldn’t happen but Cherry
felt him growing hard and hugged herself closer to him and when the water came
back in it was up to their chests and she put her hand under water and squeezed
him and they left and walked quickly back to the hotel room.
When they were done, both satisfied, they dozed off and
half-slept for a couple hours or so, dozing in and out of consciousness. When
he woke up Jim was alone in the bed and heard the shower in the bathroom. He
lay naked and happy in the cool sheets and watched television.
Soup sat on the couch and stared at the man in the shadows,
just standing there, his hands behind his back. Soup couldn’t see his face but
thought the man was smiling. Soup scratched at his arms, first one then the
other, trying to get the feeling of bugs out of them. He had been scratching
for he didn’t know how long but instead of being just a little red his arm was
crusted with black lines of scabs and the dark red of those long furrows he had
dug that had yet to coagulate; they weren’t deep enough to really do anything
about the bugs yet, they weren’t even really deep enough to bleed all that
much, so he had to keep going. He could feel them in there, little bugs, little
black bugs chewing away at his muscles and crawling through his veins. Right
now the infestation was mostly contained to his arms but he thought it might
spread soon if he didn’t do anything.
Soup cocked his head and listened, stopped scratching while
the man in the shadows spoke.
“It will, for sure?” Soup asked. He liked that he didn’t
have to wear his teeth, that the guy was smart enough to understand what he was
saying without them in. Soups gums ached all the time now, but it was murder to
have them in, so there they sat, in a cup on the bathroom sink like an old
fucking man.
“Really?” Soup asked. “You think spray would do it?”
“These aren’t your everyday bugs dude.”
He wasn’t sure what to do but knew he had to do something
soon because his arms were connected to his chest and his heart and lungs were
in his chest and if these fuckers could get into his heart they’d get into his
brain and from the right angle with just the right vision right now it didn’t
really seem all that crazy that Zig had shot himself. Who could blame the guy?
Feeling them up in his head like that,
knowing
any minute they would
finally eat enough of his brain away that he wouldn’t be able to walk or talk
or maybe stop shitting himself? What kind of a life was that?
“I will,” Soup told the shadow man. “Don’t you worry about
that. If I feel ‘em in my head I’ll do the same fucking thing.”
There was a pounding on the door but it didn’t matter; it
had been happening on and off for days now. Someone would start pounding on the
door and when Soup finally opened it just before he could see who it was they
were always gone. The last couple times he saw the vague blur of the person as
they rounded the corner in the hall and the first time that had happened he’d
given chase but when he got around that same corner there was no one there,
they must have had an accomplice, someone holding the elevator door for them
and he wondered not for the first time if this was an inside job and if it was,
how likely was it Two Step was involved, as the Shadow Man suggested.
“No way,” Soup said. “Step’s my boy man. Besides the first
couple times he was here.”
And what better cover to have? This way he made himself
almost out to be the victim just like Soup was. True, only Soup had heard the
knocking, but Two Step had gone out with him that first night, checking the
parameter of the building, making sure the door downstairs was still closed and
no one was lurking around but what better way, what true fucking genius it was
to have someone do it while he was home and throw Soup off the scent but no one
could fool him forever, no one, he was too far ahead of the curve and you might
fool me for a while but not forever, and now I know.
“Now I know,” Soup said.
“Now I know.”
And who else would Two Step be involved with? He’d always
been so fucking tight with Jim so that was the obvious answer and while on the
surface Jim didn’t seem like the type, Soup had seen rare flashes of absolute
brutality come from Jim. It wasn’t like he blew up a church or raped an old
lady to death or something, but little bits of hate would slip off his tongue
or that thousand yard stare he would get once in a while that reminded Soup so
much of Lance’s eyes.
“Hypothetically,” Soup asked. “Let’s just say Jim is
involved, right?”
“Okay, hypothetically Jim is involved.”
“Strictly hypothetical. But if Jim was involved, wouldn’t
that mean that Cherry was involved, too?”
“Almost certainly.”
“She picked him over anyone.”
“Over you.”
“Right, over me. Over everyone else too but...”
“But over you.”
“Right. Over me. Plus she can be a real bitch.”
“Like the night before going to Sue’s?”
“Exactly! She could see I was in pain right?”
“We needed to score.”
“And she just sat there eating in fucking slow motion.”
“Who would do something like that?”
“Well I would, but not to someone that was
supposed
to
be
crew
right?”
“Right. Now what about Tattoo Nik?”
“He can’t be involved. It can’t go that deep. I know it
can’t. This is too risky for him. He’s a business man.”
“So he’s for hire.”
“I guess he could be for hire,” Soup said and leaned back and
scratched his arms, pulled one long black scab free and rolled it between his
fingers until it was just little black chunks clinging to them and the blood
had oozed down his arm and started to thicken and darken again but this time
he’d gotten a little deeper, he knew he had, and he loaded his pipe and leaned
back and took another long, long hit. As the chemicals exploded through his
brain the shadow man became a real man for just long enough for Soup to get a
real look at him. Sure he was still in the shadows but it didn’t matter he was
wearing a hat, a
fedora
, and had a long thin blade of a nose and a wide
smile and a pinstriped suit and to Soup he looked just like the Joker from the
Batman comics, not when he was all wacky and shit but when he went totally
fucking crazy and started killing people like how he was in “The Killing Joke,”
when he laughed as he shot Barbara Gordon in the
fucking spine.
Instead
of the purple suit and hat and white skin and red lips and green hair he was
all shades of gray and black, except his eyes, which Soup had never seen
before, but when The Joker stepped forward out of the shadows as a sign of
solidarity to Soup, to let him know he trusted him enough to let him see his
face, his eyes had glowed red, the same red as a glowing hot pipe that someone
has really laid the torch into, to get every last fucking
molecule
of
gack from. The bells were clanging in Soup’s head, it was like he was in the
top of a bell tower filled with a thousand giant bells, they were shaking his
eyes in their sockets and the room seemed to blur and vibrate and his arms
started jerking and he went away for a while and when he came back he was
laying on the floor and covered in sweat, his chin covered in drool and his
body ached like he’d just ran a marathon, all his muscles felt pulled and
overworked and he collected himself back onto the couch and smoked a cigarette.
He didn’t yet know he’d pissed himself, just a little.
The Joker had left, but Soup still heard his voice in his
ear, almost inside his own head.
“But Doug is coming.”
“Right,” Soup said. “Doug is coming. Doug is almost here.
He’ll know what to do.”
“Doug will know what to do.”
Xander wore a single breast charcoal gray suit with a black
shirt beneath it, open two buttons down at the throat and no tie. His shoes
were the same color as his shirt and crocodile skin. He wore expensive-looking
mirrored Aviator sunglasses. Nik wasn’t sure what he had expected, but it
hadn’t been this. If you just looked at his clothes he looked like some typical
L.A. yuppie out for a night of overpriced drinks and hundred dollar hamburgers.
There were a few little things that spoiled this illusion though, that gave him
the look of a fairly good impersonator, but an impersonator nonetheless. You
could tell the guy had been through some shit. His hair was closely cropped,
short enough so that when he turned his head you could see a couple good sized
scars, one the exact size and shape of a dime. He had another thin scar slashed
across his mouth, from just above the left corner to just over the center of
his chin on the right, where it curved down around the cleft. Tattoo Nik found
himself wondering exactly what had happened, who had given him the scar. He did
his best not to stare at it.
“So,” Xander said. “Gomez tells me you want to move up. That
right?”
“It is,” Nik said.
“So are you greedy, or just stupid?”
“Neither,” Nik said. “I’m a business man. I see the market,
I have an excellent customer base, all I’m doing is looking to open up my supply.
I can make you a lot of money.”
“Are you a fucking cop?” Xander asked, bringing a pistol out
from a holster beneath his jacket and setting it on the table. “Because if
you’re a cop, you’ll never see the outside of this room again.”
“I’m not a cop.”
“Are you a rat?”
“No.”
“How do I know?”
“Gomez trusts me.”
“And?”
“And you trust him, don’t you?”
“I don’t trust anyone,” Xander said. “At least, not anyone
on your side of the table. Below me. See, anyone below me could cut themselves
a pretty sweet deal with the pigs by rolling over on me. You’re lucky I woke up
feeling curious today or you never would have gotten this meeting. You
understand that, don’t you? I don’t know how many drug pyramids you’ve been a
part of, but it normally doesn’t work this way. There aren’t normally
promotions like this. Usually if you want something, you gotta take it. Like I
did.”
“I’m not going to try and take anything from you, Xander. I
don’t want to get shot,” Nik said. “If you tell me to fuck off I’ll go back
home and just sell to a couple close friends and never bother you again. I’ll
stay where I’m at. If I can’t do this the right way, and if we can’t handle
this like the business it is, I don’t wanna do it.”
“That’s why I’m still here, Nik. Because I see this as a
business. It’s not a way to fight the power and it’s not a lifestyle. You
should never become your work; you understand that, don’t you? Especially this
work, because it will
fucking
ruin you. I know that, and that’s why this
condo is paid for, and why I have a Benz downstairs and a Beemer at my house in
Palm Springs.”
Nik said nothing, just held Xander’s gaze, staring his twin
reflections in those mirrored shades.
“How do I know you’re not wearing a wire?” Xander asked.
Nik stood up and took his jacket off, then his shirt. He
held his arms out to the side and turned in a slow deliberate circle, making
eye contact with the huge fucking goon holding the machine gun in the corner.
“Drop ‘em,” Xander said.
Nik dropped his pants.
“Jesus Christ,” Xander said, laughing. “I was just fucking
with you there, man! I didn’t know you’d be free-balling.”
Nik laughed with him, feeling the energy in the room shift.
A lot of that had to do with the goon lowering the gun and taking his finger
off the trigger, lighting up a cigarette and turning his attention to the
baseball game that was on the humongous television mounted on the wall.
“Alright, I think we might be able to work something out,”
Xander said. “But I’m not going to just hand you a fucking bag full of dope and
send you on your way, you know that, right?”
“I have money,” Nik said. “I’m not looking for you to front
anything.”
“No, what I mean is, you’re gonna have to do a few things
for me, make me know for sure I can trust you.”
“What is it you need?” Nik asked, striding to keep his voice
even.
“You need to make a delivery for me. A big one. If you can
handle that we can start talking weight.”
“Okay,” Nik said. “But look, man, I need to tell you
something. I don’t want to do this, but if I’m going to be working for you, my
loyalty is to you. No one else.”
“I like what I hear so far,” Xander said.
“It’s about one of your dealers. Martin.”
Xander slumped back in his chair and took off his
sunglasses, squinting his eyes and rubbing the bridge of his nose, giving Nik
his first look, albeit a short one, at his naked eyes. They were such light
blue he almost looked as though he had no color in his eyes at all.
“Fucking Martin,” Xander said. “I knew it was going to come
to this.”
“Do you want--”
“No, listen...I appreciate you coming to me on this. I’ve
been thinking for a while this man was a fucking liability. I don’t even care
what it is he’s done. Just hearing his name from you...I just, I can’t believe
he’s still fucking up. Not after last time.”
“I wasn’t sure if I should say anything,” Nik said.
“No, absolutely, Nik, you did the right thing. Everything
you see and hear comes to me, okay? I can’t be out there on the streets, you
know? I have to rely a good deal on guys like you. So here, take this...” From
his pocket Xander took a cell phone and held it out. “I’m the only one that has
this number, okay? Keep it that way. It’s already programmed so when someone
calls you and the name “Mom and Dad” pops up, you answer.
Every time
, no
matter what time a day or night it is, no matter where you are or what you’re
doing, okay? Never answer that phone if any other number shows up, you got
that? Don’t make any calls on it except to Mom and Dad, okay?”
“Yeah man. I got it.”
“Sometimes you might get a text from that same name. Read it
right away and always erase it. Never reply to it unless there’s a question
mark at the end, and when you do reply, keep it as short as possible.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, good. Now get outta here, I got some things to deal
with, we’ll be in touch about that delivery, okay?”
“Okay, man. And thanks. For the chance, you know?”
“Hey don’t worry,” Xander said. “Someone gave me a chance
once, in fact, I came to God pretty much the same way you’re coming to me, and
I respect that. Just remember...this is all business, okay? Don’t give credit,
don’t front anyone, not even your friends. I don’t accept partial payment for
anything, and I don’t like it when you’re late. We’ll talk soon, okay?”
Xander stood and held his hand, and Nik shook with him, and left.
He couldn’t stop smiling.