Tropical Freeze (32 page)

Benny took off the blond wig and snugged on a red Mohawk. Pulled it tight around his ears. Held up the hand mirror for the side view and squinted. No, too flaky. One of those punk rockers or whatever.

Myra looked off at the water and said, “Did you have Gaeton done?” She turned those glasses on him. “Did you, Benny?”

“I didn’t
have
him done. I wiped him myself.”

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

“Hey,” he said. “What’d you think? I was going to let him blow the whistle?” He patted the bristly flattop and said, “Anyway, it was strange circumstances. I saw an opportunity, and I took it. I didn’t see a lot of alternatives. Chalk it up to the cost of doing business. One guy on our team for a dozen on theirs.”

“It’s got to stop,” she said. “All of it.”

“OK, the fact is this, Myra,” Benny said, “I’m thinking lately, Jesus, do I really want to be in the asshole smuggling business? Is it worth a hundred K to put myself at this kind of risk? I’m having serious second thoughts here. Considering getting back to basics, just run my company. Diddle around with the politics down here. But if I decide to get out, then I’ll decide when and how. Me, alone.”

Myra said, “It has to stop, Benny.”

“I don’t see you all have a whole lot of leverage. You try to bring this out in the sunshine, Myra, nobody’s going to get promoted, not ever, not to nothing.”

Benny pulled off the punk rocker and tried an early Elvis. Deep black, ducktails. Benny smiling at it.

“My bucket’s got a hole in it.” He sang it, moving his shoulders. “My bucket’s got a hole in it. It don’t
work
no more.” Then to Myra: “I bet you didn’t know that. Flip side of ‘Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog.’ I heard that first on my old man’s Victrola. Down there in that freezing Chicago basement, cranking up that Victrola. My bucket’s got a hole in it.”

Myra leaned forward, waited till Benny brought his eyes back to her. Got a lock on them.

She said, “Where’s Gaeton now?”

“He’s biodegrading,” Benny said, “evolving into fossil fuel.”

He didn’t like how he’d said that. His voice had sounded thin. But he looked at her, and she seemed to have bought it. Then he considered for a second asking her if she’d ever heard of a guy surviving a shot like that. But Christ, no. He wasn’t so hard up yet he had to ask Myra for help.

Benny shook his head and looked out at his luxurious view. The silver ocean, coconut palms in the dusk, a pelican drifting by. Real postcard shit.

He had to get a fucking hold on himself. This Gaeton thing was starting to spook him, thinking any minute he’d turn around, there the guy would be, a zombie, holding out his arms, saying, oooooh, Benny. Why did you shoot meeeee? I thought I was your friiiiiend.”

He took off the Elvis and put it back on the Styrofoam. He rubbed his slick head and took another careful look at his property. No zombies anywhere. His goose chills dying out. Headache down to a throb.

He said, “Look, Myra, don’t get your bowels in an uproar. Gaeton Richards was inside our long johns for months. It was just a matter of timing when to do him. He was your fucking fault anyway. If I had to wipe him, it was because of you.”

She took off her glasses and scowled at him.

Benny said, “You were banging this guy, what, a year or two?”

She didn’t answer him.

Benny said, “He’s there in your bedroom, the lights are out. Sweet nothings are getting said. You’re both drowsy and maybe there’s some wine in your bloodstream. Maybe you let something slip. Let him get a look at something he shouldn’t have. The guy a little more of a straight arrow than you.”

“That’s not how it was, Benny.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Benny said. “I think you were playing this both ways. Having me run your sting operation for you, and then sending Dudley Dooright down to make sure you got an inside view of things. Telling me one thing, Gaeton another, your superiors something else.”

“Think what you like, Benny,” she said. “The point is, we’re calling this off.”

Benny picked up Myra’s white sunglasses, put them on, checked himself out in the mirror. Liked what he saw.

He pulled over another Styrofoam head. Dreadlocks.

He said, “Well, I’ll consider your suggestion, Miss Myra. I’ll think long and hard on it. Let you know soon as I come to some decision. For the moment, though, I think I’ll stand pat. Extradite a few more of these guys. Cash their checks, punch their tickets. You know, this public service stuff grows on you. You should think about it, trying it sometime.”

“I’m evidently not making myself clear enough,” she said, looking off at the eastern sky. “We’re not giving you a choice.” Myra brought her gaze back to Benny. “By Monday things are back to business as usual. Strictly by the rules.”

“Or else?” Benny said.

“That’s right,” she said. “Or else.”

Benny looked into the mirror again. No. Dreadlocks were out. Even Benny didn’t have the balls for that.

Thorn was on his back now. He’d twisted and lurched and brought the linoleum around a half turn. His shoulders were hunched forward from the pressure of the roll, arms numb. Probably should be grateful for that.

A bruising wind lashed at the shed. On the workbench the pages of a yellow legal pad fluttered. He watched a steady strobe of lightning under the door crack. A few raindrops had begun to tick against the roof.

And swaying on its cord, the single yellow bulb washed its ghastly light over the jumble inside the shed.

He tried making his right hand into a fist. But there was no room where it lay, mashed flat against his thigh. By edging it into the cavity between his legs, he could do it. Gripping hard and letting go. Repeating that. Pumping, pumping. Luring the blood back to his veins.

Then he shifted his hip to the left. A very subtle movement. An inch difference at most. But enough to wedge his open right hand back along his upper thigh, inch by inch. The hand with life in it again.

He jimmied it across his thigh until it pressed against his right pocket. And yes. It had not been a fantasy. He had carried it with him, snug and closed and deep inside his pocket. Gaeton Richards’s Buck knife.

He worked his hand upward, nudging the knife with his fingertips higher into the pocket. Straining his shoulder up. When he had raised his hand as far as it could go, his fingers were still a few inches below the brim of the pocket.

He closed his eyes. Concentrated on breathing. He listened to the palms clatter outside, the rush of wind into the shed. He heard something falling over out there. A ladder, a bicycle. Then the rain began its thick muffle.

The knife was there. It was just a few inches away; the right physics would get it out. A slight yoga move inside that unyielding cylinder.

Thorn wedged his hand up to the pocket again, hooked his thumb over the brim. He pulled down, levering his elbow against the linoleum. He grunted and heard the seams give. Curling his fingers up to push the knife higher as his thumb tore down, until the knife slid cool and heavy into his palm.

Yeah, well. Now to breathe. Then to open the sucker.

He slithered his hand back to the gap at his crotch. He knew if the knife slipped from his grip, it would fall between his legs and be lost a few impossible inches away. So with meticulous slowness, Thorn tweezered the blade. First finger and thumb, pinning the casing against his groin, his sweaty fingers slipping on the steel and slipping again.

The first tremors of a muscle cramp pierced his palm. He groaned, held still. And willed the hand to relax. The air through his nose was burning now.

It took a few moments, but he held off the cramp and went back to work. He opened the blade a quarter of the way, held it there. But as he readied himself, the oil of his sweat broke the connection and the blade shut.

He cursed and rearranged the knife in his hand. He pinched the steel, spreading it a quarter, then a third of the way open. His hand beginning to quiver slightly. He held the blade open against the pressure of its spring, trying to find a better purchase on the slick metal. But the butt of the casing slipped from his groin, and the knife sliced shut on the meat of his thumb.

He dragged in a gallon of air.

Squeezed his eyes. He touched a finger to his thumb and could feel the lid of flesh connected by only a flap of skin. A bright burn there.

But at least, Thorn told himself, breathing hard, at least the blade had not snapped all the way closed.

He twisted his thumb around and jammed the wounded flesh against the sting of the blade and got it, got it all the way open.

Dexterity, he thought, the mother of extraction.

Yeah, Yuk it up. Give him a minute to coagulate his thoughts and he’d come up with a dozen of those. Funny guy, Thorn. The guy with a missing thumb tip. Guy with a very sloppy vaccination scar. The goddamn Houdini of linoleum. Hadn’t seen a roll yet that could keep that man trapped.

Against his leg he pressed the cap of his thumb back into place. Grimacing. The blood draining from his consciousness. The shed went away, came back. He held the thumb hard against his thigh, trying to focus on the corrugated aluminum ceiling, the hush of the rain.

When the pain began to dwindle, Thorn took hold of the knife again, gripped it hard, and stabbed the blade up, then wiggled it through each layer of the linoleum. Rocking it till the blade tip surfaced through the burlap backing. He forced it forward and cut what felt like a slow, wavering line.

He lifted his head for a look. It was less than an inch. No, even less than that. He’d just put a new edge on the blade the day before. He knew it would do the job. An inch an hour perhaps. But it would work.

He wasn’t at all sure of the time anymore. After Ozzie had left, Thorn might have passed out for a while. He might have drifted for hours. It could be three in the morning. The way his head felt, the soreness in his throat, hell, by now it might even be July.

He cut. In a while he lifted his head again to check the progress. The gash was still less than an inch. It had taken a decade.

He needed to make a circle large enough to reach his hand through. Cut the nylon cord. It was a simple operation. Didn’t take much subtlety. Just the stamina to saw the blade up and down, pushing it forward with all the force he could summon.

Thorn eased his head back down. At least he didn’t feel the hurt in his left shoulder or his thumb anymore. That, he supposed, would come later. When he tried to manage what he would have to manage when he was out of the roll of linoleum. If he got out. If he got out before Ozzie returned. Thorn jammed that blade ahead.

“Mr. Cousins do that to your face?” Roger asked her.

“What?” Darcy said. “You think I arrived this way?”

She couldn’t bring her teeth together. An eye-clamping ache when they touched. Her jaw was probably broken. She lay and looked out the window, at the tangled arteries of lightning printed bright against the black. Then gone. The thunder echoing down the long canyons of the atmosphere. Even with the windows shut, wind stirred the lace curtains.

Roger stood at the foot of her bed, glanced out the window as a stroke of lightning hit nearby, the shock waves rattling the glass.

“He’ll be back soon.” Roger took a seat in an oak rocker next to the window. “I’ll talk to him,” he said. “You need a doctor.” He swallowed, looking at her.

Roger wore a white polo shirt, the tail outside his faded jeans. No watch or jewelry. He looked like he was halfway down a slide into Keys sloppiness. He kept bringing his eyes back to her chin, her right cheek.

“You want a drink, vodka, anything?”

“You don’t need to good-cop me,” she said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

“I’m not doing that,” he said. “I’m concerned about you, is all.”

Darcy nodded her eyes.

Outside, lightning. And the sky blew apart and compacted into the vacuum just as fast. It boomed. Tidal waves of air pounding the shore of the solid world. The tuning fork inside her began to hum.

Roger said, “He gets home, he’ll be drunk. I’ll see he goes right to bed. His own bed.”

“You’re telling me,” she said, “you’re going to stage a coup?”

Roger sat in the leather wingback by the window.

He said, “I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore. That’s all. I draw a line there.”

“A good American male,” she said around the swelling in her mouth, “protecting their women. Trying to do what’s right.”

Roger said nothing. Looking at her, waiting.

She said, “You ever meet Gaeton Richards?”

He looked at her carefully.

“It’s possible,” he said. “I may have.”

“Used to work for Benny.”

“All right,” he said. “What about him?”

“He was a good American,” she said. “Trying to do right.”

“I have no reason to doubt that.”

Darcy said, “He was the man, if something happened to you at two in the morning, a heart attack or just a bad dream, a suspicious sound outside, you knew you could call him up, he’d come. Always. Every time. A neighbor, a man down the street. Even if you were a stranger. He’d come. He was that kind of person.”

Roger said, “Maybe you shouldn’t be telling me this.”

“People think they can do things alone,” Darcy said. “They think they’re braver than they really are, and then they cut themselves off from people because they think they’ve got the gristle, the smarts, they can do it all alone. All of it.

“They don’t think anybody would help them anyway. They’ve lost their faith in humanity, maybe. Everybody’s a scofflaw, driving through red lights. After a while you begin to think you’re the one doing wrong if you stop and obey. So, it happens, you get cut off. You think you got to do it all by yourself.”

“You’re into something,” Roger said, “in over your head.”

She nodded that she was. Way over.

“And I assume you’re not who Mr. Cousins thinks you are.”

“I’m not who anybody thinks I am,” she said. “I’m like a soul got caught migrating, trapped between bodies. Just out here floating. Waiting for something to open up.”

Roger smiled. He looked out at the lightning, at the coconut palm tossing just outside the window. He said, “I think I know how you feel.”