“I was out wit’ a gorgeous bitch the other night had a giant schnauzer on her,” Tuny said.
“Ummmm,” Monroe Tucker hummed, walking into the room. Stomping, more than walking. The grunted, monosyllabic humming was a noise he would sometimes make when Dana Tuny did something he found particularly moronic. It meant “fuckin retards.” Monroe was the sort of two-fisted, bad-looking dude if you saw him coming toward you in a wild Afro and a dashiki you'd have to fight the impulse to cross the street.
Eichord got up and went into the john, regretting it immediately. Some visiting class act had penciled a bit of graffiti on the wall: nightcrawler was here. It set his teeth on edge. There was a night-crawler out there, to be sure.
Washing his hands and face, he looked up at the aging cop in the mirror and wondered why in the hell he felt so frightened or whatever it was all the time. Frightened wasn't it. Apprehensive?
When he came back into the squad room, the retards had grown tired of laughing at the dog show and the set was off.
“Hey,” one of the detectives said to Eichord, “you're the big sleuth around here'—winking as he said it—'so let's see how you do. Ready?'
Eichord smiled in response.
“I'll read about him and you tell me who it sounds like. Ready?'
“Okay.” It was a psychiatric manual.
“Listen—who am I describing? Bed-wetting, stammering, chronic masturbation, and thumb-sucking all typify immature personality disorders.'
“Christ, that's fat Dana to a damn tee.'
“Sheeeeit! Thass got him down cold, man. Bed-wetting, chronic masturbation, uh, immature cocksucker. Fuckin’ Tuny, man.'
“Come on, gotta bad one,” Brown said, snatching his jacket off a hook, giving them an address as everybody got up in a screech of chairs, telling them the sketchy details as they took the stairs two at a time, all five men hurrying to the parking lot. Two persons down. Gunshot wounds.
“No big fuckin’ hurry,” Dana wheezed. “They'll stay dead, f'r crissakes.'
Halfway to South Buckhead the call changed from a double homicide to a single homicide and then to a “man believed shot” in the clear.
“Is this gonna be a cluster fuck?” Dana whined as he drove, Eichord riding in the back seat with Tuny and Tucker. Tuny ‘n Tucker—TNT.
“Do flies like barbecue?'
They got on the scene, a fleabag in what was left of Buckhead's old Skid Row, and found a rookie uniform cop getting his ass chewed out by a couple of grizzled old bluebags out of Metro.
“Shit, I'm sorry.” He was just a kid. “I don't know—'
“Yeah. Tha's right. You don't know,” the older of the officers said sarcastically as he walked away in disgust.
“Shit—this is just some old wino,” one of the Buckhead guys said.
“No shit. Brilliant deduction.'
“It was just ... I saw all the blood ... an’ I—” The kid looked like he was about to lose it. The Buckhead detectives were ragging him mercilessly.
“Hey, boy, if you feel like you're gonna faint, put your head down between your legs and breathe deeply.'
“Yeah. If you feel faint, put your head down between my legs and suck deeply, okay.'
“What happened?” Eichord said to the young cop as he moved away from the body. The ambulance guys were already bagging him.
“I fucked up,” he said, with a bad redness to his face. “Dude downstairs came runnin’ up an’ ... and shit, I couldn't make sense out of ... And then he says there was a shooting. He thought some ole dude didn't like this old boy got into it with him. Hell, I never even looked for the gunshot wounds ... He said shotgun, and I saw the one body and ... and the blood all over the walls an’ ... and I—'
“Let's go outside.” Eichord took the young guy out into the open air. “Hell, you'll get used to it. First time is a bitch,” he spoke softly to the rattled cop. “These winos take that last big swig and aspirate blood all over the walls. It looks like a gunshot death, all right. They drink themselves to death down here with depressing regularity,” Eichord said, with grim knowledge of his subject matter. These winos? We winos. Get it right.
In the car the three cops got trading horror stories. Eichord told them about the crime photos they'd showed him in Vegas. A homosexual murdered his lover. Took a week disposing of the body each time he left the house. Used chain saws, hacksaws, an ax, knives, everything but a damn blender. There wasn't a piece of the victim bigger than a breadbox.
Tucker spoke up, “You shoulda tole me you was goin to Vegas, man. I coulda got yo white ass STRAIGHT.'
“I didn't know I was goin myself, Monroe.'
“Shit. I RULED that town, bro. Vegas is my kinda town.'
“Yeah?'
“I got so much white pussy las’ time I was in Vegas—and this ain't no jive—I hadda finally put a whatdya call them things in the store windows?'
“Vibrators?” Dana said, but they ignored him.
“MANNEQUINS,” Tucker said after a beat. “Yeah. What I finally did was I got this fuckin MANNEQUIN and put it in the car with me. You know, with a wig and shit on it, to keep them little horny white broads from hasslin’ me every time I pulled up to a stop sign.” He shook his fierce head. “I never saw anything like it.'
“Hmm,” Eichord said, smiling as he watched Dana struggle. It was more than he could stand. He looked at his partner and said, “If you hadda mannequin in the car with you, that'd make TWO dummies in there.'
As he knelt at the altar in his sacred sanctuary, the soreness and bitter hate and towering fears have drained from his body. Revenge, so hot and sweet as to coat his tongue at the thought, will cleanse his physical being from the aching, hideous years of immobility. Punishment—swift and violent—the stiffening joy of instant retribution, will purge his soul of the evil thing, and once purged, bankrupt of emotion, he will allow himself to be renewed.
He breathes in the purity of this room where he so loves to sequester himself. His strength builds here and soon he will move out into the gathering dusk, hard and unstoppable. Burning with desire and the intoxicating knowledge of invulnerability.
He stares at the object in the golden glow of the portrait light, focused in the center of the wall, nestled in its special alcove, his favorite deco icon. Exhaling, he allows himself another deep, shuddering breath of anticipation, and then, with the grace of purity, he stands and moves from this room. Moving with the odd, sliding steps that are just another part of his uniqueness. Totally the master of anything that may cross his deadly path, exuding confidence and the sort of bonhomie you apply like cologne to your persona. Superficial but overpowering.
In his dark heart he is ten feet tall and fearless, and now he knows that he possesses the magic of the ancients. He has conjured up the force of darkness and it is so remarkably easy: no incantations or amulets or forbidden books are required. The only requisite is that you must immerse yourself in his mandate ... only then, as you carry out the punishment of human scum, will the evil be purged from your soul.
In a car he uses only for these moments he headed without conscious direction toward a run-down suburb of Buckhead, listening to the obsolete voicing of an antique dance band playing from his tape deck. Strange music that he thinks of as reflecting the deco sensibilities; orchestral horn voicings at once hypnotic and soothing, the reed section of long-dead musicians standing behind a tuxedoed maestro as the saxes take him back to another half- century with their ligatures and embouchures and the syncopation of the aggregation tick-tocking back into time. Nicki liked to tease him about his music.
He could feel her imprint next to him, sense her fragrances in the vehicle, imagine her so slight and womanly, curled up into him as he drove, pressing against him everywhere she could fit her slim body, the beautiful, hot, anorexic bitch, caressing him with thin fingers, whispering heatedly into his ear in her woman's voice.
He'd told one person about her, long ago. Once. Once, in Nevada, he'd talked to a man about her. Some idiot.
