Koko

“He must owe you a hell of a lot of money, or you heard something about the guy—something bad. He’s involved in something, and you want to stop him.”

“That’s about it,” Poole admitted.

“So Vic is alive after all. I’ll be damned.”

“Most people who deserted are still alive. That’s why they deserted.”

“Okay,” Simroe said. “Nobody who went into that war came back exactly the same way. You sort of think you know how far certain people will go—and maybe you don’t. Maybe you never do.” He downed a huge quantity of beer in one swallow. “Let me tell you how I got to know Vic. Back at Rufus King, I was kind of a half-assed hood. I had a big Harley, boots, evil tattoos—I still got those, but I hide ’em these days—and I tried to be a real badass. I didn’t know what else to do. I was never a real hood, I just liked riding around on that big old bike. Anyhow, Vic started hanging around me. Vic thought the whole biker bit was cool as shit. I couldn’t shake him off, and after a while I just gave up trying.”

Poole thought of Spacemaker Ortega, Spitalny’s only real friend in the service and the leader of the Devilfuckers—Spitalny had simply transferred his affection for Simroe to Ortega.

“And then I sort of got to like him. I got to thinking—here’s this kid, kind of dumb, his old man’s always breathing down his neck. I tried to give him advice. You gotta take care of yourself, you little asshole, I used to tell him. I even tried to get him to lay off Manny Dengler, ‘cause there was a guy who had real problems, I mean who was in shit up to his neck all day every day. I mean, I used to worry about that little cat!”

“I saw his mother this afternoon.”

Simroe shook his shaggy head. “I never met the lady. But the old man, Karl—man, he was something. Out there on those corners every morning, every night, yellin’ into his little mike—little Manny singin’ some stuff, hymns or shit, top of his lungs, and passin’ the hat. And the old man would cuff him right there on the street. It was a show, man, a real show. Anyhow, right after I dropped out of school Vic dropped out too—I tried to argue him back in, but he just wouldn’t go. I knew I wasn’t goin’ anywhere but the Valley, and I kind of wanted to get into uniform first, be a hero with an M-16, do my part. You know. And you were there—you know what happened. I saw good guys getting blown away for no reason at all. Fucked me up pretty good.”

Simroe had been in Bravo Company, Fourth Battalion, 31st Infantry, the American Division, and he had spent a year fighting in 120-degree heat in the Hiep Due Valley, wounded twice.

“Did you have any contact with Vic once you were both in country?”

“Just a couple letters—we were going to get together, but it never worked out.”

“Did he write to you after he deserted?”

“I knew you were going to ask that. And I oughta dump this beer over your head, baby doctor, because I already told you I never heard from him. He just cut himself off from everybody, I guess.”

“What do you think happened to him?”

Simroe pushed his glass through the puddles on the wet table. He looked up at Poole, testing his judgment, then back down at his glass. “I suppose I could ask you the same. But I’ll tell you what I think, Doctor. I think he stayed alive about a month, tops. I think he ran out of money and tried to get into some action, and whoever he was with killed him. Because that’s about what Vic Spitalny was good for. He was good for screwing up. I don’t think he lasted six weeks, once he cut out on his own. At least I didn’t think so until you showed up.”

“Do you think he killed Dengler?”

“No way,” said Simroe, looking up sharply. “Do you?”

“I’m afraid I do,” Poole said.

Simroe hesitated and opened his mouth to say something, but then an uproar broke out at the bar and both men turned to see what had caused it. A group of young men in their twenties and early thirties had surrounded an older man with curly hair and the pudgy beatific face of a village fool. “Cob,” they were yelling, “Go, Cob!”

“Catch this,” Simroe said.

The younger men milled around the one called Cob, punching his shoulder, whispering into his ear. Poole became aware of some bitter, familiar odor—cordite? napalm? Neither of those, but an odor from that world. Cob, they said, come on, you fucker.

The one called Cob grinned and ducked his head, pleased to be the object of so much attention. He looked like a janitor, a broom pusher for Glax or Dux or Fluegelhorn Brothers. His skin had an odd greyish tinge and in the curls of his hair were caught what looked like pencil shavings. Come on, you dumbass motherfucker. Cob! Do it!

“There are guys in here,” Simroe said, leaning across the table, “who claim they once saw Cob lift himself a foot and a half off the floor and just hang there for thirty-forty seconds.”

Poole looked dubiously at Simroe, and heard a loud metallic noise like a series of backfires, or a burst from a machine gun, a BRRRRAAAAPPPP! that did not sound at all like a noise any human being could have produced. He looked sideways in time to see a torpedo-shaped sheet of flame four feet long shoot out toward the middle of the bar and disappear into itself. The cordite-and-napalm stench became much stronger, then disappeared.

“Clears the air, doesn’t it?” Simroe said.

The younger men were banging Cob on the back, handing him bills. Cob staggered back a step, but caught himself before he fell. One of the men put a glass of beer in his hand, and he poured it down his throat as if dumping it into a well.

“That’s Cob’s trick,” Simroe said. “He can do that two, maybe three times a night. Don’t ask me how. Don’t ask him either. He can’t tell you. Can’t talk—no tongue. You know what I think? I think the poor bastard fills his mouth up with lighter fluid before he comes in here, and stands around waiting for someone to ask for his trick.”

“But did you ever see him light a match?”

“Never.” Simroe winked at Michael, then poured another beer. “Another guy in here will eat his beer glass if he gets drunk enough.” He swallowed beer. “You met Dengler’s mother, you said? She tell you anything about old Karl’s going off to jail?”

Poole’s eyes widened.

“No, I don’t suppose she did. Old Karl was arrested during our freshman year. A social worker came around to check on the kid and found him locked in the meat locker in the butcher shop, pretty well beat up. The old man got a little rougher with him than usual, and put him in the meat locker to get him out of the way until he calmed down. She called the cops, and the kid told them everything.”

“What everything?”

And Mack Simroe told him. “How his old man, old Karl, used to—well, abuse him. A couple of times a week, starting from the time he was five or six. Used to tell him he’d cut his pecker off if he caught him messing with girls. Manny had to go to trial and testify against the old man. The judge sent him away for twenty years, but after he did a couple years he got killed in jail. I think he made a move on the wrong kid.”

After what they said, Poole remembered. Everyone lied about us.

And: We kept that boy busy.

And: He had to be put in chains. No matter what anybody said.

And: We closed the butcher shop a little bit before that.

Michael saw Dengler’s face glowing at him, uttering nonsense about the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

She said: We didn’t know what would happen to us.

And: Imagination has to be stopped. You have to put an end to that.

He had ignored or misinterpreted all these things. At the bar, the man called Cob was smiling slackly upwards, his eyes unfocused and his skin some color between light purple and the grey of iron filings. After what they said. If a man could float up into the air and hang there for thirty minutes, that was what he would look like. Levitation took a toll. You had to pay a price. Not to mention what fire- breathing took out of you.

He made things up. Isn’t that part of the original trouble?

It was the levitation that really did it to old Cob, Poole thought. One of the young men touched Cob’s