Slob

had led to another, and before long the Wood. Man was down and out, among the street people. So it sometimes goes.

'What say, brother,' said Dr. Geronimo, who claimed to have lived with the Comanche tribe for many years learning potions, spells, and miscellaneous divinations and witch doctoring. But who had in fact lived with some stockyard workers in Omaha, from whom he'd picked up a variation on the fortune-teller pitch which he used in his current dreambook emporium. It made a nice little lucrative sideline to the roots-and-herbs thing

'I ain't got the two hundred. But you know Deuce, doncha'?'

'Yeah,' he commiserated, 'a deuce ain't easy to come up with, but that's the price.'

'No, doctor. I say you know the dude calls hisself Deuce? Deuce Younger?'

'Say what?'

'You know, man. The biker dude. Guy runs the Flames?'

'Oh, yeah. I know the man. So?'

'I got something.'

'Yeah?'

'I heard he put three hundred on the street for anybody could give him the one that hit Mr. Tree.'

'Now, Woody, you're a good old gentleman, and you best be not messin' with them boys.'

'Yeah, but I need that stuff. And if he gave me three hundred, I could buy a cap of Alura, and me and May could take a real honeymoon together.'

'Uh-huh.'

'See.' He leaned close to Dr. Geronimo, bathing him in terminal halitosis, Old Spice, and body rot, as he whispered conspiratorially, 'I know something.'

'Huh?'

'I know where he lives.'

'Who, Deuce?'

'No. I know where the one who kills lives.'

'Yeah?' he said, feeling suddenly very sober inside. 'Where?'

'Under the street,' Woody Woodpecker said, proudly, in a cracked voice.

Instinctively Dr. Geronimo knew that Woody was not lying and he was getting a scent of some money here, and he wished he had not purchased that nasty old hippy sunshine and picked today to do that half tab, because he was going to need his wits about him if he was going to get into this particular can of worms.

'Under the street,' he said, his eyebrows raised in question.

'Under the street. I know where he goes. And I seen him kill Mr. Tree with a big chain thing. An' I seen him try to get that one called Lester, and then I watched where he went. And me and May watched the hole where he went down and we never seen him come up there but May seen him come up about a block away, just by luck. And then we figured how he hides down there in the water mains and sewers and that. Can you get hold of Deuce Younger and tell him I can show him where the one who kills is?'

'Now, Woody, you're sure about all this, are you? Hey, bro', this is very important. I mean you 'n May didn't get hold of no bad Lucy and trip out on some Phantom of the Opera thing?'

'Huh? Fat man of the opera? No, this guy's down in the manholes, ya' know. I can take Deuce right to him. But I gotta' have my money like I heard they put on him. The three hundred. Okay?'

'Hey. Fine with me, my man. But I'll have to call around for ya. I mean, I don't know where Deuce is just like dat.' He tried to snap his fingers and missed. 'But yeah, I'll try to run him down. Thing is, I'd have to have a small finder's fee for that. Say thirty-three percent of recovery?'

'What's that mean?'

'If you get three hundred I get one hundred. It's only fair, Woody. That way you get your cap of precious dick-stiffener, and I get a hundred-dollar bill for helpin' get you together with the Flames. What do you say?'

'Uh, yeah, I guess that's okay.'

'All right. Now Mistah Woody, we need to be abso-posi-lutely 101 percent on this, dig?'

'Yeah?'

'You can go find the guy that kills people. He's still there. Under the street, I mean.'

'Yeah.'

'You sure because I don't want Deuce Younger and a half-dozen biker maniacs upside my head cause you made a mistake, ya' know?'

'No mistake, Dr. Gee. I seen 'm go down 'n come up. Not always the same rabbit hole but I know he's down here. I know where he stays,' Woody Woodpecker whispered, 'but I want the money first.' The doctor nodded, and another strange alliance came to pass.

And the cannonball-shaped black man scratched his head and thought for a minute, looked closely into the wacky countenance of the Wood Man, and asked again, 'No mistakes about this?'

'Huh-uh, Dr. Geronimo. I know where the big man who kills people stays underground. How fast does that stuff act anyway?'

'Yeah, um-hmm,' the man told him, reaching for the big directory.

'Dr. Gee.'

'Huh,' he said, leafing through the pages looking for the Wathena Salvage Yard. 'Yeah.'

'That Alura. I mean, how fast does it act?'

'Instantly,' LeRoy Towels told the wino, not without a degree of impatience as he picked up the telephone and paused one last time while he considered whether or not to dial.

'Instantly?' Woody asked incredulously.

'You do a little of this baby'—he nodded vaguely as he stuck his finger in the dial—'you be ready to fuck a junkyard dog.'

The Flames

There were four Flames lounging around the filthy shack that served as an office for the Wathena Salvage Yard, of which Pop Meiswinkle was the proprietor on paper. He'd purchased the yard, as he liked to say, 'lock, schlock, and bagel' from the Wathena Brothers when the elder sibling had come up with a bad case of lead- poisoning complications as a result of acute seenus (as in 'I was out with my girlfriend and my wife seenus').

But in the ensuing months he'd been taken over by a corporate raider named Deuce Younger, who made him an offer he thought was worth consideration. Something along the lines of 'we run the place and give you a cut or one night we come in here and slit your fucking throat from ear to ear and bury you in an LTD.'

So the Wathena Brothers Salvage Yard and chop shop had become a pit-stop flip-flop in the hot-car ring that headquartered in Cook County, Illinois. In the true spirit of free enterprise the biker club The Flames had diversified to the extent that they not only controlled a respectable slice of the methamphetamine market, but they actually made a fairly impressive dollar in the salvage business. When the enterprising team of Dr. Geronimo and his trusty aide Woody Woodpecker arrived at the yard, Deuce Younger was in the midst of a weighty corporate conference with his top counsel.

'That dirty cocksucking bastard motherfucker,' he was saying, referring to a colleague in the salvage profession. 'He comes in here what—maybe every six months with that portable car crusher, and you know, you can't say shit to the motherfucking asshole sonofabitch, and he backs that tractor trailer in here like he owns the dump, and you know, man, I can't stand here and count every fucking car that comes along. We started with what was it 172. Something like that. End up with a 164 count—that greedy cocksuck stole eight fuckin' cars from us. Eight goddamn fuckin' vehicles, man. I don't fucking believe it.'

'Fuckin' unreal,' a Flames bodyguard agreed.

'And you can't say shit to the bastard. You know how it is. What the fuck are you gonna say? Call the cunt a liar. You gotta have him. Shit.'