The Last Bender, Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

          Peter Lafferty still didn’t answer his phone. He and David Watts lived about fifty miles apart, Watts in Guernsey, Lafferty in Spartan County, both swank suburbs where upper management types rear litters of mallrats. They lie like barbells on either side of the city. Dead center is Five Joints, named for the neck, shoulders and thighs (the five joints) the thieves there like to cut when betrayed.

          Market stalls shadowed by faded blue and green tarps propped up on makeshift poles extended to the street, which was clogged with hawkers, whores, pimps, cut throats, drunks, drug addicts, and psychos riding a riot of jerry rigged conveyances. Cyclos chugged and belched by three-wheeled rusty heaps and double-decker vans patched with fiberglass. Dented black bikes bound for the food stalls at the north end sagged beneath basket-loads of poultry, pumpkins or cabbages. Barefoot children swiped pens and watches and ran off through steaming puddles of oil and water. Horses pissed and shat in the gutter. Sometimes they collapsed and died there alongside less fortunate human beings.

          Three story tenements without running water presided over the stinking tumult. Snarls of wire brought electricity up from the streets through the windows, and between airshafts. Aside from machine shops, hock joints, butchers, jewelers, fabric rooms and discount retailers there were strip joints, girlie boyboy bars, prosthetic freak runways, transvestibules, bowling alleys, pool halls, pinball parlours, wig shops, tattoo dens, taverns, dirty bookstores, places you can go to smell body odors and whack off, toilets, baths, steam rooms, saunas, whirlpool spas, smoking lounges, exotic pet emporiums. Every kind of whore walked or sat there, from the kind you gotta chase and capture to the kind you gotta flee. Appliances, dry goods, auto parts, bike wheels, parachutes, dogs, parrots, sides of beef, lamb and pork, children, old people, monkeys, pots, pans, coprolites, pickled body parts, fresh shit, t shirts, discount socks, paintings, sign boards: all were for sale, new, used or slightly damaged and most likely stolen. You could get your fortune told in tealeaves, tarot or palm; your astrology charts done; a pap smear or EKG performed for half price or get psychoanalyzed. A woman in taffeta with long pretty feet and thick eyes could counsel you on a career, recommend what wine to have with fish or fowl or fart in your face if that’s what you like.

          Everyone ended up here at some point during the day, but at night few outsiders dared to enter and those who lived within stayed home, because at night Five Joints discharged its most vile and prurient effluent onto the streets where it made its way to the border and seeped into all the empty gutters beyond.

          I left my car in a lot a quarter mile south of the Joints. The rates were pure extortion but that was better than a stolen car which I couldn’t have afforded to replace.

          While a half dozen Alsatian Shepherds reared and snarled on their leashes, I filled out the three page release form, paid the cash and left the keys with the car jock, who looked distantly related to the pups, at least when he smiled and had to shove his tongue back in his mouth it was so long.

          I walked through the increasingly distressed blocks that shade off into Five Joints as they narrow and start to turn this way and that and the new yellow and red brick give way to stained plaster and tile roof. Cobblestones emerged through the asphalt like fossils in eroded rock. Soon stern faced women were at the curb dumping buckets of sudsy water and chamber pots.

          My ex-wife Corrie grew up around here. She ran barefoot as a child over these cobblestones till she was seven and went to school. There the burkahed nuns dressed her in a uniform and gave her a new pair of black canvas shoes every year. Her family started out at the bottom end of the rag trade, eventually importing silk and cotton. Her mother was a tailor. Her father was an enthusiastic tea drinker. When she was 14 they moved out to a neighborhood near mine.

          She used to go back to buy fireworks to sell to kids from the suburbs and hang out in the bars snorting meth and fucking guys who cracked her up. By the age of fifteen she’d been raped twice and carried a gun. But she’d also acquired, vis-à-vis fancy magazines and some intrepid adventures into the glass lined, sunglassed neighborhoods, a taste for nice clothes, good t.v. and a more mannered life. This life she adopted as her own. The street had taught her to dissemble. By the time I met her she could be what suited her best. Corrie was always working an angle for the bone. Like most people who came from the Joints, Corrie didn’t sign up for things, but she’d’ve made a good soldier. She was smart with her mind and her body and strong. Corrie came first and luck followed her around more than she deserved. But she never went to any war farther than the one down the block or a mile away.

          We met in a bar. She liked to work the drunks for cigarettes and bum change before heading home on the bus. In the morning she’d sling hash or temp in some office, whatever came around that paid cash and wasn’t too regular. Some nights she’d put on trendy clothes and yak art with the suntans in some nightclub. She knew what to drink with what and what color to wear in what month, things I picked up like lint too.

          Well, I saw her there in that puke as you go dive in a suit with padded shoulders and skinny lapels, red hair hanging in her eyes. Her face was locked up under a hard look she only broke to smile for something. She asked me for some change and I laughed. Then some pock-faced geezer gave her fifty cents and wanted her to dance, but she wasn’t having any of that. Had we been in Five Joints she’da had some sort of back up (her brothers ran a racket in the sweat shops), but this was Kennedy Avenue and she was all alone. The bartender was no good. He was so intent on watching those gonorrhea cultures of his grow that he never took his eyes off the incubator and the autoclave. The other customers watched the geezer grab her by the wrist and try to drag her onto the dance floor. She broke his grip easily enough and that was when I saw the seven sisters, the cluster of cigarette burns on her right forearm. She spit in his face and he called her a bitch. Now everyone shifted in their seats. A woman began to laugh. She had a real Ha Ha laugh. It was hard not to like a laugh like that. It was as infectious as a yawn. Soon she had the whole place going. Ha Ha Ha! But the whole bar laughing pissed off the geezer and he went mad. It was time to start calling Corrie names and asking for his money back. I started to get nervous, especially when he let out a hard wolf whistle. But then Corrie backed down. She put out her hands, said she was sorry, didn’t want any trouble and backed towards the door, but the geezer wasn’t having it. He wanted his money back. The guy didn’t get there by being smart. He was a glob of crud who had to scrape himself off the toilet every morning just to get wake up. He wanted more. Maybe he hadn’t spit blood for a month; I don’t know. He reached out and touched her shoulder and she spun around so quickly he didn’t even react till after she’d busted his jaw and kicked his two balls up his asshole. In the blur that followed, somehow, without thinking or planning anything I flew out the door with her and we spent the rest of the night walking around with a bottle of Ouzo we bought from a Macedonian grocer.

          Her sweet voice was pure horseshit. And then there was that tough, other voice, the one she used to crack wise with. It wasn’t how she said something, but how, when she looked at me a certain way, it was like the sun shining on wet autumn leaves.

          It used to be that every time I came to Five Joints it meant working the whole seven and a half years through my head again. But this time, I didn’t hear her cracking wise on every stoop. And I didn’t see her in any windows. I couldn’t smell her pussy on my fingers anymore. I didn’t taste her twat on the air.

          I hailed a horse cab. The little box bounced and squeaked along behind the small, exhausted horse, lurching around corners. I picked at tears in the ancient vinyl seat. People hissed and whistled as we drove by, the crowd on the sidewalk thickening till it flowed into the street and became a sluggish entity which opened only very reluctantly to allow the bikes and carriages through, closing in behind them.

          The hack was an old mute. A thick scar bisected his Adam’s apple. In his left ear were a couple of earrings made from junk and wire, one gold, the other chrome. Spattered skin and muscle showed through his yellow tank top and when the wind was up he grabbed for his slouch cap, holding the reins in one hand. Each finger was tattooed with a faded blue number. Every so often he made kissing noises with his lips. It wasn’t clear if these were meant for the horse or humans. As the haze burned white, garbage and excrement in pools of stagnant water heated up and began to stink, mosquito larvae winking in the murk. Ice dripped from the fish stalls. We arrived at the municipal hospital. I told the hack to wait and gave him a fin for the ride. On the corner a girl sold bunches of flowers from a steel bucket, glads and roses with fern and baby’s breath. Next to her a roast pork man had set up his butcher block, cleavers and mallet. Already the whole pig hanging from a hook was attracting as many customers as flies. Right in front of the revolving doors an old lady in boxer shorts and a bra hawked boiled corn on the cob from a steaming cauldron. She had a rumpled face and two of the bluest eyes I have ever seen.

          “Hey,” I said.

          She sang, “Hello baby, you want corn? I’ll give ya a nice big cob to stick in your mouth!” She stirred around in the water with a two-foot pair of wooden tongs till she found a fat piece, which she slathered with margarine and handed to me on a paper plate. I gave her half a buck and bit into the soft, starchy kernels, watching people pass. I tossed the plate and cob into the gutter and as I wiped the grease off my lips she shouted, “It was a big piece of corn, huh? Hot corn! Hot corn!” That got the guy with the pig going. He liked to blast a little air horn which shook windows and practically knocked a filling out of my teeth.

          At ten stories the hospital was the tallest thing for miles around and took up a whole block. The lobby was steaming hot and heaped with bodies, as if hell had erupted in a canker that discharged people. They lay everywhere, in no particular order, on cots, gurneys and the floor. Stunned and gape jawed, they pushed I.V. drips around in circles. Quiet children gazed at nothing, rocked and sucked their thumbs. Men keened, women wailed and nurses ran about. A naked man by the front door sat upright spewing blood into a bedpan till it overflowed. Flies crawled over the faces of anyone too sick or catatonic to shoo them. Several phones rang through the air without cease, giving the ongoing crisis the feel of unanswerable frenzy.

          I was there to see my friend Dr. Perry Anders, a surgeon I met in the war who used to work for the cops. He knew the dirt on every cop and cop department in the city.

          No one paid me any mind. I stepped between beds. Every possible sound of human suffering was repeated back and forth, the call of pain and response of emptiness. The elevator, when it came, was silent. But it always opened on the same scene.

          I got off on the seventh floor, surgery. Here people were parked with a purpose. They were the lucky ones, the ones with a place to go. Orderlies pushed gurneys back and forth while Dr. Perry, as he is known, leaned against the wall looking out on the town through a dirty window. In one hand he held a cigarette, which he smoked laconically down to the last half inch, sucking every bit of it in. In the other was a bone-saw dripping blood on his sneakers. His fingers were elegant and long. His hair was black, tied back in a ponytail. I hated to interrupt him. Evaporated mind is the only quiet anyone could expect of a day like his. Out there, in the milky sky, you can rest. No joke or tragic obsession to ignite you. Out there is an unlettered world where unspoken minds can be.

          “Dr. Perry,” I said. He didn’t turn around.

          “It’s my break,” he said flatly. “I don’t cut bones for an hour.”

          “I’ll take you out to lunch then. My bark.”

          He let that stand, dropped the cigarette, ground it out with his heal and turned around.

          “Jack. I didn’t realize.” Then he spoke a little louder to a nurse scribbling notes on a clipboard down the hall. She looked up and came over, stethoscope bouncing on her pink sweater. “Sterilize my saw. I’m going to lunch.” The thud in her face grew momentarily sharp. She took the saw from him and walked away. “Let’s go,” he said. “This place stinks.”

          He knew a decent buffet three blocks off Gil Bates Road. We took the horse and buggy. Our combined weight really put the horse’s nose out of joint. Periodically it cast resentful looks in our direction.

          We took our plates of spaghetti in white clam sauce, garlic bread, boiled chard, olives and sliced cucumber to the grey Formica tables. He had a half carafe of red wine and I washed down three aspirin with a large cola, lemon no ice.

          “What happened to you?” he asked.

          “Came home to cops. They mistook me for an intruder and sapped me.”

          “Uh huh. What happened to low risk corporate Dicktitude?”

          “I keep asking myself the same question.”

          “If you ever want in on some rewarding work, I got two offers. First, you can do security at the hospital. Pay’s low but you can always sell blankets to the patients.” He took a big gulp of wine and smiled.

          “Yeah, or I could jump in front of swank cars and work the personal injury caper for a few months. What’s the other?”

          “This,” he said, spreading an ad out on the table. It was for mercenaries. “Seems things are heating up in Champa. They need soldiers, medics, to defend the government.” He smiled the same way as before.

          “Don’t we support the rebels? They control the countryside.”

          “That’s true, but in the towns the government is strong and popular. People there believe in something.”

          “I don’t see my name anywhere on that paper.”

          “Oh well, you take it anyway. Me, I just might go. They got nice beaches and green mountains. If I saw one more leg off with those morons, I’m outta here. This motherfucker from Harvard smokes during operations. Plus he’s about as funny as a folk singer. The guy’s a dishwasher turned cutter. Ivy League. What a load. They send us their legacy bozos, free.”

          “Hey, that’s two birds, one stone. They don’t gotta worry about him cutting their own, plus they get to kill the poor and everyone goes Yahoo.”

          “Love Mercy Pity Peace.”

          I chewed on that bleak epigram for while and said, “So, you’ve heard what’s going on at Monozone? The kidnappings?”

          “Oh,” he yawned. “When I can’t manage to tune it out. That marching band shit drives me nuts. Who’s that numbskull they got on t.v.? All night long, I’m telling you, these assholes are watching tube and cutting and smoking. Monozone. Don’t you work there?”

          “Yeah, I work there. This kidnapping, it stinks, know what I mean? And they hand me the garbage to throw out, however I can.”

          “I’m glad some things don’t change.”

          “At least I’m getting paid for it. Anyway, one guy who went missing, he’s some sort of a hot shit. They want me to handle it with the cops. But Special Investigations is run by this prick Bunuel. He’s not on the take. My boss wants to know if there’s a man under him ready to come up for air. It’s either that or I gotta hit him. Me, I’m all done hitting. My zip is spent, my duck is de nada. Last night I had some business with a couple of bad guys, you know? I helped do three and all night I’m shaking in my sheets.”

          “I’d say you’re all done then,” he said gently, lighting a cigarette.

          “Yeah, I guess so. Violence is starting to freak me out. And I can’t take shit for it. Can you help me out here with a name?”

          “Bunuel’s on the up and up. He’s a good man. It’s what they used to call old school. You’re figuring him to double you up on the sweet end. Not Bunuel. He gets his teeth in, forget about it. Plus, he’s tight with army brass. High up too, a couple of generals in the family. A legacy, you hear? And no one likes a kidnapping. It’s bad for business. He’s hard to get to.”

          “How about blackmail?” I asked.

          “What, a cop?”

          “He must have some secret he doesn’t want in the papers.”

          “Sure he does, Jack. Don’t you? But his must be secret, cause I don’t know about it. There may be another way. How evil do you feel?”

          “Pretty evil,” I said, wondering why am I willing to carry Laraby’s load as my own?

          “You need a strong stomach to try this. There’s a guy in Special Investigations by the name of Michael Einzer. He has different sponsors, young and hungry. They’re starting to move. This might fit into their five-year plan. The guy lives bigger than his pants. Some local bankers loaned him money. They want it back. You pay off his debt, he might be dumb enough to move against Bunuel for you. If he succeeds, he’s got the weight behind him to hold the position. And if money’s the thing, then you go to the bank he’s into and work a three way deal. They keep a finger in his pie. That way your boss doesn’t lose a dime, his creditors get some serious slug with the cops and his patrons control a little bit more. Two drawbacks here. One, his bosses and the bank may not like eating off the same stick. Two, you’re stuck with that evil, stupid prick in charge of Special Investigations.”

          “Thanks, Perry.”

          “No problem.”

          “They kept us alive for this,” I said, pushing my plate full of empty shells away and sucking down the rest of the cola.

          “I kept us alive,” he said. “They ate us like a dog, ass first.”

          “It was a good education though.”

          “It was an education. I certainly learned to work a saw fast. You were really brave Jack, till that mess with the truck. But I guess it all fell off the bone then. I still got patients who eat that shit. You can always tell by the way they walk in at night.”

          “How’s that?”

          “They flicker, like a t.v. and talk loud about nothing at all. Then their eyes go grey and they just sit there, waiting for something to happen. That’s when you notice. That they’re shot through the thigh or got a knife in their butt.”

          “Do you remember what it was like before? Cause that’s the thing I always think about. Did Tranzidene change the way I think so much that I can’t remember the past the way it was? I experience all my memories as if that dead center had always been there. Maybe they created us. Maybe we were all locked up in some asylum before the war, in cold storage. And they fed us false chemical memories till they woke us up to fight.”

          “Yeah, well I remember getting my ass dragged onto a troopship and landing 60 days later in a field of blood and shit.”

          “They didn’t drag me anywhere. I volunteered.”

          “Jack, that’s something I always try to forget about you. C’mon. It’s time to go. I got work to do.”