The Spider Inside (19 page)

Finished, Jim collapsed against the wall. He looked into the
tub and it seemed to be stained almost black on the inside, especially near the
drain where there was a clump of hair, blonde. Lance’s hair was black.

There was also a hacksaw, also stained black, in the tub.
Jim wasn’t done throwing up after all.

When he was he realized here was a chunk of glass sticking
out of his palm. He pulled it out and bled into the sink until he could get a
towel wrapped around it.

He went back into the living room. Lance was lying on the
floor, his eyes rolled back, his foot twitching, drool shining on his chin. His
forehead was most definitely dented.

Jim reached into Lance’s shirt and pulled, the thin fake
gold chain snapping easily. He held the key in his hand and looked at the
bedroom door, at that lock on it. He licked his lips and went to it, pressed
his ear against the wood. He heard a shuffle of movement and another low groan.

He put the key in the lock wondering if he should call the
police, if they would charge him with what happened to Lance or whatever was
going on in this room, wondered if he should just leave. He dropped his hands
from the lock to do just that, but there was no way. There was no way he could
spend the rest of his life wondering what was behind that door, wondering if he
smashed a guy’s head in for no reason.

Jim turned the key and the padlock popped open and he
removed it, then opened the door.

The floor was covered in newspaper. There were knives and
things hanging on the wall. In the middle of the floor was a spike, pounded
into the floorboards, and on a foot of chain was a Golden Retriever. The eyes
were glazed but open. Jim could see every bone in its body, it seemed like, and
the fur had fallen out in patches. It tried to bark but was wearing a heavy
muzzle. Three of the dog’s four legs ended in stumps wrapped in dirty, blood
stained cloth. The dog’s stomach was cut open and its guts were hanging out,
sitting in a pile next to it. It looked as though they had been chewed, and Jim
saw in his mind this starving dog turning on itself and eating his own stomach,
he saw Lance in here, watching, sitting on the stool that was in the opposite
corner.

He would come in and take the muzzle off the dog and shoot
some dope and sit here, and watch it, and torture it. Jim looked at the wall
and found a sledge hammer.

It only took one stroke. There was not much blood, and no
noise.

Jim wiped the handle of the sledge and hung it back up on
the wall. He headed for the bathroom but couldn’t face it again, the hair, the
blood, the hacksaw. He collapsed against the hallway wall and slid down it,
buried his head in his arms, and cried, his back hopping with the sobs that
seemed to tear through him like exit wounds. He wasn’t sure how long he sat
there.

In the living room he put the bag of dope in his pocket and
stared down at Lance. It smelled like Lance had shit himself. The worst thing
Jim could think of to do was to leave him there, eyes rolled back, tongue
lolling out, feet twitching, so that was what he did.

Jim got back in the car and drove off. A block away he
handed the bag of dope to Cherry. She took a bump and offered him one but Jim
motioned with his head to the back. Cherry climbed in the back and rubbed a
little on Two Step’s gums, shook him out a bump on her little compact mirror
and held the tooter to his nose. It wasn’t enough for Two Step, but it was
enough for now.

At some point she climbed back into the front seat. It
wasn’t until after she offered Jim another bump that she noticed his shirt was
covered in blood, that his face was splattered with it, that he had a towel
wrapped around his hand, and as she stared, she watched the black wet spot on
the towel spread and grow. She realized she didn’t know where they had been or
who they got the dope from. Cherry also knew she was in no shape to hear the
story, and Jim didn’t look like he was in the mood to tell it. She leaned back
and closed her eyes again. It was another day before Jim spoke again, and that
was when he told them, and by then, it was time to go out and get some more.

Nik sat once again in front of Xander, having again been
searched. He kept looking down at the boots Xander was wearing, black and white
snakeskin cowboy boots and normally he would never think of something like
cowboy boots but these were just killer, and he reminded himself to ask Xander
where he’d gotten them.

“Peru,” Xander said.

“Pardon me?”

“The boots, you dig, right? Yeah, I got em in Peru.”

“They comfortable?” Nik asked.

“Surprisingly so, yeah. I thought what the fuck, cowboy
boots? I figured I’d have blisters and shit on my feet within an hour of
wearing them, I mean, I’m just not a boot kind of guy.” Xander smiled and shook
his head. “Second I put em on, man, I wanted to be buried in them. If these
were waterproof I’d never take em off.”

Nik turned and looked at one of the guys with machine guns,
who stared back with no expression.

“So you hear anything about these busts, man?” Nik asked. “I
usually come up with pretty good word, you know, but right now nobody knows
shit.”

Xander let out a deep sigh and took his sunglasses off. He
set them on his knee and rubbed his eyes. His eyes, Nik thought, made Xander
looked a thousand years old. The lines around them were deep and there were
dark circles beneath them. The perfect tan gave away to a slightly paler shade
of skin the exact shape of the sunglasses. Xander’s eyes had almost no color to
them, as if all the things he’d seen had bleached away part of him. Nik
wondered if that was why he wore sunglasses all the time, because it was
actually painful for him to be without them.

Xander stared at Nik and finally let out another sigh and
slumped back, and for the first time, spoke to Nik as if they were equals.

“I just don’t know,” Xander said. “All my top fucking
earners get popped and I don’t have a clue. I don’t think we got a rat, at
least, no one high up enough to know who I am, but you never fucking know,
right? I mean, really, you could be the rat, right?”

As Xander spoke an arm like a band of steel wrapped around
Nik’s forehead and he felt the cold steel of a knife pressed against his
throat. He didn’t struggle, he held Xander’s gaze. This was to be expected.

“Was it you, huh?” Xander asked, standing and walking over
to Nik. Xander bent down with his hands on his thighs until he was eye-to-eye
and seemed to search for something inside Nik.

“I got nothing to do with any of this, man,” Nik said, his
voice calm and low and steady.

“You’re the newest guy, right? It’s always the new guys you
gotta look out for. I didn’t ever really trust you, you know that, right?”

“You don’t trust anybody. You told me so yourself.”

“That’s right. Why do you think I sent Gomez with you on
that run you did? Because any sign that you’re going to fuck me over, Gomez
would have gut-shot you and left you to bleed to death out in the desert.
Vulture food.”

“I’d do the same thing for you,” Nik said. “All I have is my
word, Xander, and I’ve given it to you.”

“I don’t think that’s enough. I don’t think your word is
enough.”

“What else do you want?”

“Blood, son. The only thing that matters is blood and money.
I already got the money, and I don’t need any of yours. But a man willing to
give you his blood…well
that
is a man you can trust. That is man who
will move upward in this organization.”

Nik found himself thinking of Gomez, and how he had that end
joint of his pinky finger missing.

The band of steel around Nik’s forehead loosened and the
knife came away from his throat. The man who had been holding it there now held
the knife out to Nik.

Nik looked from the knife to Xander to the knife to Xander
again.

“I need you to take it, Nik.” Xander said. “Bring me a
table,” he said over his shoulder. One of the men with machine guns brought a
coffee table over.

“If you are loyal to me, if you didn’t have anything to do
with these fucking pigs crawling up my ass, you’ll give me blood. You can
either walk out of here and leave a piece of yourself behind, or you can be
carried out of here, in pieces.”

“I’ll need something bigger than this then,” Nik said.

Thirty seconds later he had a meat cleaver in his right
hand.

Nik didn’t hesitate. He pressed his closed fist against the
edge of the coffee table with his ring finger of his left hand flat against the
smooth wooden surface. He lined it up once with the cleaver, meaning to hit at
the second joint, leaving himself enough of a finger to wear a ring on if he
ever were to find a girl he wanted to marry. He took a deep breath and with a
grunt brought the cleaver down as hard as he could.

Xander grabbed his wrist and stopped the blade about a foot
from the flesh.

“Woo!”
Xander screamed. “Jesus fucking
CHRIST
man
that’s
what I’m talking about!” Xander cackled madly and Nik
wondered how sane he might be.

“You were gonna do it!”
Xander said, pulling the
cleaver from Nik’s hand. “You crazy mother fucker! You were gonna
chop your
fucking finger off
for me! Man, I didn’t--Steve, get us a couple drinks
will you?--I didn’t think you had anything to do with this shit, man, I really
didn’t. I
know
though, now. I
fucking know it
! You really have no
idea what this means to me, and for you, too, if you still want in?”

Nik took a drink of the cocktail Steve, who had held the
knife to his throat, handed him.

“I don’t want anything else,” Nik said.

“Okay, good to hear, good to hear. Now listen, here’s what
the situation is. We need to wait a bit before we can really put any weight
out, let things cool down a little, see if we can weed anyone out as a fucking
rat, gather intel, whatever the fuck it takes, right? I’ve been doing that,
ever since they pulled Gomez. Popped him at his daughter’s birthday party. She
turned fifteen, it’s a real big thing in the Latino community, right it’s a--”

“
Quinceañera
,” Nik said.

“Right! She’s a woman now, that kind of thing. But I think
we wait maybe another week, tops, and I’ll send you back up to Boyardee again,
solo this time. You down for that?”

“Absolutely,” Nik said.

“How about your crew, man? They set on dope?”

“They’re scrambling, you know, but I think they’ll get
through.”

“Okay, I would love to give you a package to let go to em,
but right now I’m tied up with this new batch. Just let them know if they can
hang until next week, you’ll have some testers, lay a little freebie on em, you
know? Make sure they don’t take that business elsewhere.”

“Sounds good,” Nik said.

Xander dug through his wallet and pulled out a small stack
of bills, pressed them into Nik’s hand.

“Consider this a signing bonus,” Xander said. “You stick
with me, your life is going to change forever, I promise you.”

“I could use a change,” Nik said. The two of them laughed,
and clinked their glasses together.

“To change, then,” Xander said.

Nik smiled. “To change.”

They stood in the street, looking up at the apartment they
knew was Frog’s.

“What do you think?” Cherry asked.

“I...I don’t know,” Jim said. “He was better last time,
right?”

Cherry nodded her head.

“Come on,” Two Step said, pulling at Jim’s shirt. “Where
else we gonna go, man? We already been everywhere. I need a fucking hit. It’ll
be fine, man. He crazy, but he ain’t gonna do nothing.”

Jim looked at Cherry one last time. The last time they had
run low had burned a lesson into his nerve endings. Nik had said it might be a
day or as much as a week before Xander finally let go of another batch, and
there was no one else. If they didn’t score from Frog, today,
right now,
they were all going to be in bad shape.

“You sure you don’t to wait out here for us,” Jim asked,
more out of habit than anything else. Either way he was going in, but as he
hoped to fuck her later he thought it best to act concerned.

Cherry was chewing her bottom lip again, and Jim knew she
was jonesing as much as he and Step were.

Finally she shook her head. “Nah, fuck him. Let’s just try
and get out of there quick, okay?”

“Ah, mos’ def,” Two Step said, and they walked toward the
building.

Frog answered the door before Jim could even knock.

“Come on, come on,” Frog said, in a low, urgent whisper.
“Get in.”

The three of them hurried in.

“What took you so long?” Frog asked. “I’ve been waiting.
Who’s this?” Frog looked from Jim to Two Step.

“Ah, you know Two Step,” Jim said. “He just hasn’t been here
in a while.”

“Where you been? Locked up? He’s not out on bail is he?”

“No, not at all.” Jim said. “I just mean I’ve been buying
for him. Doesn’t like to leave the house if he doesn’t have to, you know?”

Frog laughed. “Fuckin-A! So what’s up, guys?”

“Just looking to score,” Jim said.

“Right, right. You called what? Four, five hours ago?” Frog
asked, then turned and walked toward his table.

The three of them exchanged a puzzled glance and followed
him into the kitchen. Jim took the money out of his pocket.

“How much?” Frog asked, scratching his arm.

“Well, we need four eight balls and a teener, if you
wouldn’t mind doing it.”

“For a shiny guy like you? Never in life, hombre. Never in
life.”

“Much appreciated,” Jim said, and handed the money over. The
nerves and angst he had gathered outside, debating whether or not to try and
score through Frog were gone.

Frog counted the money, stopped halfway through, and scratched
his arm, really worked at it, his nails going back and forth really fast until
the skin beneath them was an angry red. Frog resumed counting the money and
laid it on the table next to a partially disassembled hand gun that from the
look, he had been in the middle of cleaning.

“They won’t get me like this,” Frog said, scratching his arm
again. “They think they can, but they can’t.” Frog stood and walked to the
other side of his table and moved a plastic shopping bag full of dope. He
picked up the knife that sat beneath it, then returned to his seat.

Jim watched in a slow dawning horror as Frog took the knife
and dug the very tip of the blade into the skin of his forearm. A bright red
drop of blood welled up, beaded around the blade and grew, grew until it was a
quivering mass, and then it slid down one side of his arm.

“What the fuck?” Cherry said, her voice high and breathless.
Jim hardly heard her...it was as if she were speaking to him form the bottom of
a well.

“I’ll always fight,” Frog said. “That’s who I am, what I do.
What I’m supposed to do. And I have fought, and I won, but there was no reason
for it, you hear me? There is no reason I should have won. They haul me in but
through shitty police work, through laziness and the breaking of a few small
but key rights or amendments, the right signature on the wrong warrant...it
adds up. I’ve never even had to go to trial. It’s not like I had some hot shot
lawyer or a relative with money or influence...shit my own dad is doing life
out in Chino right now...all I had was a half-smart public defender, young guy,
looking to make a difference, I guess. Tired of copping pleas, ready to fight.
So there I was. So fresh off the street I’m still half high, still tweeking,
still grinding away my teeth...and on the other side are these fucking narc
cops, right, looking like they just won the fucking lottery or something, I
guess because of how much shit they popped me with, thinking I’ll be sure to
give up names to save myself...and while it’s true they’re holding a list of
charges a page long in one hand, in the other is this warrant. It was some
guy’s stupid, mistake, you know. They had me, dead to rights. There was nothing
I could say but fuck it, I’m gonna fight it, you have to. I’m not giving up
anybody, and I’m not gonna take the first piece of shit mandatory sentence they
hand me, some number of years and month figured out on a sliding scale or a
chart by some fuck in a suit that don’t have the balls to come down to the
holding cell and look me in the eyes, much less be out on the street and catch
me...No, I decide to fight it. If they can take me to trial and pop me, I’ll
just do whatever time they hand out. But this warrant, all it specifies is a
car.

“Maybe it was a typo, maybe someone filed the wrong paperwork,
it don’t fucking matter. This shit happens all the time, man. I know this for a
fact because I got off on bullshit technicalities the first two times they
busted me...the third, well, the third time was by the book, down in San Diego
this was, the first two were in Phoenix, but down in S.D. I know they got me
and I’m going away for a long time, but I’m still gonna fight it, make them
prove that shit, you know. See who they put on the stand. A few key witnesses
never showed, others changed the story they gave the prosecution, you know, all
the sudden maybe they didn’t have their glasses on that day and couldn’t be
sure who they saw, that kind of thing, and the charges just kind of...went
away...but then they go and put something like this inside me while I sleep.”

Frog drew the blade down his arm, splitting the skin. The
blood went from a thin trickle to a heavy, constant flow. Frog pulled the knife
out and laid it on the table, where the blood dripped slowly off the blade.
Frog extended his pointer finger and worked it back and forth against the cut
he’d made. Jim turned to look at Cherry, whose face had turned gray. Two Step
didn’t look any better. Jim’s mouth was dry, too dry to speak, to swallow,
anything. He tasted bile in his mouth and forced it back down.

Finally Frog pulled his finger from the widened wound, which
was now bleeding quite badly. Frog held the tip of his finger close to his face
and examined it. Jim couldn’t see anything but blood on it, but Frog’s face lit
up. “Gotcha you little bastard,” he said, and flicked his finger toward the
floor. He brought his foot down and stomped something that wasn’t there to
anyone but him, ground this mysterious nothing into the carpet with the heel of
his boot.

Frog took a towel and wrapped it around his bloody arm,
soaking up the worst of it. He took the uncapped bottle of disinfectant and
poured the thick orange liquid onto his arm, going back and forth over the cut,
flooding it. Another towel goes around his arm, and he lit up a cigarette,
turned back to Jim.

“Every time I get out, I get a little bigger, you know? The
first time they popped me in Phoenix I wasn’t nothing but a dumb kid who got
his hands on more gack than he knows what to do with, wasn’t even planning on
selling it, just gonna keep it for myself, you know? Maybe kick an eight ball
or a dime now and then to keep a little money coming in. But I come out and I
know more, I know how to get around things and how to do bigger business
without worrying about being charged with a bigger crime, on and on, finally
Hinky gets hold of me, some guy I grew up with, up here in the big city doing
big things, and next thing I know I’m on the bus up here from San Diego, and
look at me. I got more dope than I could ever smoke, more money than I could
ever spend, more pussy than I could fuck. I got more coming in every single
day. But there ain’t no reason for it, see? I should still be up in Phoenix
somewhere serving out the last few five years of that fifteen-to-twenty they
was gonna give me, free as any man ever walked the earth.”

Frog carefully pulled the towel away from his arm. The blood
had clotted a little but still seeped through, still trickled. Frog took a
needle and some string and one handed began to sew his own arm up.

Cherry felt like she was going to vomit, but couldn’t look
away. It seemed a little like magic, the way Frog worked the shiny silver
needle in and out of his flesh, closing the wound with the grace and aplomb of
a battlefield surgeon, and smoking a cigarette while he did it.

Frog finished and grabbed his bloody towels and sewing kit
and headed toward the bathroom.

Cherry leaned over to Jim and Two Step. “Can we please just
leave?”

“We already gave him our money,” Jim said.

Two Step said nothing, just bounced on his feet a little,
back and forth, one hand drumming fingers against his thigh, the other worrying
the medal around his neck.

There came for the bathroom the sounds of running water, a
cabinet opening and being closed. Five minutes went by, and they waited. Cherry
chewed her bottom lip, only stopped when she tasted blood. Jim stared at the
pile of drugs on the table, and kept checking his watch. Two Step kept on being
Two Step.

Frog reappeared at last, a fresh, clean white bandage
wrapped around his arm, not a drop of blood to be seen. When he walked by Jim
saw he had taken the time to clean under his fingernails.

“Now then,” Frog said, taking his seat. “We need four eight
balls and a teener?”

“Yes,” Jim said.

Frog moved the gun he had been cleaning when they arrived
off to the side and slid forward his tray piled with dope.

“Normally I wouldn’t do a teener,” Frog said as he worked,
cutting and scraping and weighing and bagging. “But, you’ve caught me in a good
mood.”

He set four bags and one smaller bag on the table and pushed
the tray away, pulled the gun toward him, started putting it back together. He
didn’t speak, he didn’t look at them. It was as if he had forgotten they were
there.

Jim, Cherry, and Two Step watched silently, until Cherry
nudged Jim.

“So, we good?” Jim asked.

“Good to go,” Frog said, not looking up. There were a few
clicks and the gun was reassembled. Jim took comfort in the fact he could see
the clip, lying next to the tray. It was within arm’s reach, sure, but at
least, right now, it wasn’t in the gun.

Frog lay the gun on the cloth he had cleaned it over and
picked the five bags of drugs back up. He turned and held them out to Jim.

Jim took the stuff from Frog and thanked him.

“You ready?” Jim asked Cherry and Two Step. Cherry stepped
closer to the door and had her hand on the knob when Two Step finally said
something.

“Wait,” was all he said, but Jim felt something change in
the room. Maybe Frog felt it too, or maybe it was Frog that caused it, but he
looked up from the pistol he was cleaning.

“You remember me, right?” Two Step asked. “I used to come
over here with Lance?”

Frog gave him a long, slow look. “Sure,” he said finally. “I
remember you. You’re the nigger that can’t sit still.”

A small sound came from Cherry’s throat and Jim put his hand
on her arm, hoping she would get the signal to be quiet.

“Step, come on man, let’s go,” Jim said.

“No, wait,” Frog said. “This here looks like a man with
something on his mind. You got something on your mind?”

“I heard you’ll make trades, sometimes,” Two Step said, working
the St. Christopher medallion back and forth between the fingers of one
shaking, sweaty hand.

“Sure, I do trades. You got something you want to trade,
that it? You want to make a deal? Deal with the devil, nig? I tell you what,”
Frog turned to the table and started loading a brown paper sack with bags of
gack. Had to be six months’ worth went into that bag. Frog folded the top over
and then rolled it down tight. He set the bag on the floor in front of him.
“You leave the girl, I’ll give you this. All you have to do is walk out and
leave her here.”

“Fuck you!” Cherry said, and started unlocking the door.

“No fucking way,” Jim said. He stepped in front of Cherry,
and said to his friend, without taking his eyes off Frog, “What the fuck are
you doing, man? We got enough!”

“I never have enough!” Two Step shouted back.

“Fuck this,” Jim said. “We’re leaving. Now.”

“Nobody leaves!” Frog said and popped the clip back into his
pistol. To Jim the small metal click of it sliding home was the sound of the
end of the world.

“We’re doing business,” Frog said. “And nobody fucking
leaves until we’re through. What do you say, spade? That’s probably
twenty-grand worth of shit in there.”

Two Step took a long look at Cherry that was like a knife in
her heart, then shook his head as if to clear it. “N-no, no, we can’t do that,”
Two Step said. “I got this, though.” He pulled from his pocket a baseball card
in a small plastic case. “It’s a Nolan Ryan rookie card,” he said, taking a
step forward. “It was m-my dad’s.”

“Do I look like a fucking card shop to you? I thought you
came to do business. You got anything I won’t have to fence?”

“I, uh, well, I got a knife.”

“Let me see it.”

Cherry opened the door a crack. Frog jumped to his feet and
racked the slide back on his gun.

“NOBODY FUCKING LEAVES!” He screamed, stalking forward and
planting the barrel of the gun square in the middle of Jim’s forehead.