The Last Bender, Chapter 22

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

          The Guernsey town David and Wanda Watts lived in is called Tudor Caravan. On the PaCificATolL Rd. it’s called Exit 49.

          They weren’t kidding about the Tudor either. Every third house was sided with recycled vinyl stucco-and beam panels, even crappy, two-bedroom bungalows. And the stores had wooden signs that said things like ‘Ye Olde Soapery’ or ‘Yon Taverne by the Lake‘. The cops, who stood on every corner, were chipper looking fellows with pinched pink skin and tailored navy blue uniforms. It was a town under internal occupation. I asked one lounging in his squad car how to get to Hancock Gulch.

          “That’s Gully,” he said, eyes narrowing. Then: “You’re not from around here.”

          “No sir, I’m here on business.”

          “Pull over so I can see your license and registration, please.” I pulled over and thought bad things, but kept my head, and so did he. “What kind of business?”

          I fumbled in my pants for my wallet and untaped the glove box which caused a variety of small, unrelated items to tumble out. “That’s kinda private.” I handed him my license and Monozone ID. He studied them like they were written in runes.

          “Monozone, huh? In the city?”

          “That’s right.”

          “Weren’t you, uh, having some trouble there? I think I read something about it in the papers.”

          “So you got ’em here too, huh?”

          “Troubles are everywhere.”

          “Well, I meant newspapers.”

          “Please get out of the car and place your hands on the roof,” he said, backing away several feet, hands on hips.

          “You’re gonna pat me down? I’m on the job here. You don’t pat me down.”

          “Just do as you’re told.”

          “What, am I a Martian?” I asked in a low grumble, cautiously leaving the car. I didn’t want to get charged with inciting an officer to riot. I stood by the door. Then I couldn’t help it. I started to crack jokes. I said, “You make it up as you go along?”

          “Shut up or I’ll break your teeth.”

          The roof of the car was almost too hot to lay my hands on, but I did, and spread ’em. He patted me down and found the guns.

          “Are these concealed weapons registered to you?”

          “Tell me, do you wear yours to get yourself hot before whacking off on the mirror?”

          “I’m going to have to run you in. These guns are illegal in Tudor Caravan. I’ll write you up and let a judge decide. If you resist arrest in any way, verbal or physical, your sentence will be automatically doubled. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be used against you. You have the right to an attorney. Do you understand?”

          “Yeah. What about the phone call?”

          “Lie face down on the ground and place your hands behind your head.”

          This was beginning to piss me off. He looked about nineteen. I lay down on the street. Cars slowed down as they drove by, kids alert at the windows. People coming out of Ye Olde Cheese Shoppe stopped to stare and point. From the vantage of the street, they loomed like over inflated beach balls, with their fat cheeks and brightly colored leisure clothes.

          He kicked my feet apart with casual brutality and felt around my balls and down to my ankles. Then he cuffed me.

          “Please stand and get into the rear of the squad car.”

          “It sure is a good thing the fine upright citizens of this town have such vigilant peacekeepers. They look like a well-fed, well-rested lot, eager to work for an honest wage and eager to pray to an honest god. I sure do wish I could live in a town as decent and upright and hard working as this.”

          He pulled onto the road and drove along slowly. I watched his face in the rear view. It looked like an armoured personnel carrier, but a new one, without character. “Hey, officer. I think I have to shoot my mouth off now. You do this for love or money?” It was like watching t.v. alone. Nothing I said made any difference. “I don’t know about you,” I chattered on, “but I like to eat pussy. Not as much as Veal Scaloppine but more than Sole Florentine. Maybe it’s the spinach, I don’t know.” Still no spike in the flatline. I gave it another go. “Now sucking cock, that’s a whole ‘nother bag. Do you prefer circumcised or un? I think as long as a man cleans carefully under the hood there’s no difference. Basically, it comes down to choice. But I do prefer a nice fat cock as opposed to a long skinny one. The long ones make me feel like I’m gonna throw up. The fat ones just fill out the cheeks. Each pussy of course is different too. You got your thick lipped and thin lipped, your shallow and deep. And some have a heavy, salty taste, others a thin acidic one. Sometimes the juice is a little gooey, sometimes almost like water. Yes sir, there’s just no end to the variety of human genital taste and texture. And as a connoisseur I don’t feel like I have to choose once and for all. One day I can suck a nice fat cock with a thick, mulchy sperm and another lick a long, slippery cunt with a briny cum.”

          He took off his mirrored aviators and wiped his eyes, which looked like faded denim stitched on either side of a doll’s nose. He pulled into a circular drive and stopped beneath a portico; we had arrived at the Gaol & Constabulary, a joint stock company no doubt. It was not a Tudor building, but an imposing, old-fashioned structure nonetheless, made out of roughhewn sandstone blocks and barred windows. A holly tree proceeded to the second floor in stately tiers. He opened the door.

          “Let’s go Mr. Bartell.”

          The sergeant’s desk was commanded by a middle-aged woman with a heavy round face framed by jellied ringlets. She kept tugging at the uniform, trying to make it fit right. “Who’s he?” she asked in a city accent. A city blue with twenty years retired to a soft seat in the suburbs.

          “Bartell, Jack. Concealed weapon, unlawful entry, verbal abuse, resisting arrest. He’s City. Somewhere called Skylar Rd. Works for Monozone. Print and process to hold.” I didn’t like the way he leaned a bit on city, but Monozone he squashed.

          “Skylar Road heh? I know Skylar road. Kennedy Boulevard. I grew up near der. Who do you know? You know deh Robutos?”

          “Yeah sure, I know the Robutos. He dry-cleans my suits. I took care of their cats once.”

          “Oh yeah, dose demn cats. Doll, you’re in a mess.” Her round face split into a warm, cinnamon bun smile. The man in blue fumed near by. His face hadn’t budged a follicle but he was blinking up a storm. The desk sarge gave the cop her best look down and said, “All right buddy, come on back sos I can print your paws and empty your pockets.” Then she dropped her voice. “I can get you a phone call, but det’s it.”

          The lobby was paneled. It had bad lights and looked like worn out, slightly green crud. They took me through a door and everything changed. First, when the door shut it didn’t click but made a sucking seal sound. The air was cold and extremely dry. Walls, floor and ceiling were white. Way above burned high intensity lamps. A mechanical voice said, “Welcome to Tudor Caravan’s state of the art criminal process facility, wholly owned and operated by Urizen Corporation, the world’s largest private incarcerator, developing executive control systems for over thirty years. Urizen, a Watts Group Subsidiary. Please follow all instructions.” Urizen, Horizon. I remembered the ad in St. Claude’s journal, for eager young lab rats. Maybe Horizon was still in business. Maybe Horizon was a member of the Watts Group.

          “What about bail?” I asked the wall.

          Batman said, “You heard it. Keep moving.”  

          “Does he ride with us the whole time?” I asked the desk sarge.

          “I have a right to see you through. The judge hears bail cases in the morning–you’ll be sent to him then. They got lawyers and bail bondsmen there. Don’t sweat about it happening tonight.”

          We walked through another stainless steel door that wooshed and squooshed like the one before. “Well you must be fucking kidding. I drive into town on business. I ask this joker for directions and he pulls me over for no damn reason–“

          “The condition of your car and overall appearance are grounds for suspicion.”

          “Where’d they find you anyway? I bet you don’t even eat donuts!”

          “Dey don’t even dive muff,” she said. “Sit down Bartell and fill out de forms. It’s got all de usual and den some. Put yer personal stuff in des tray. I’ll be back to print yeh.” She pulled her caboose out the door. The form was five pages long and full of boxes that said for official use only and red herrings like, if you answered yes to question 27 please answer questions 33-35, if not continue on. They wanted my annual gross income and income after taxes but not including taxable payroll deductions; nontaxable payroll deductions should be included but as a separate item in column A of Schedule C. The first mistake I made was putting my name below instead of above the line; the next was putting first name last. After that the mistakes snowballed and I stopped crossing things out. On forms alone they would have booted me out of the army, but I kept passing all their intelligence tests. Either that or because I just wouldn’t die.

          “Yo boss, form’s done,” I said.

          He looked at the smeared, expressionist artwork I presented for his approval and narrowed his eyes. “This doesn’t look like it’s a job well done, Mr. Bartell.” He could no longer disguise his contempt.

          “It looks medium rare to me, but you’ll have to decide for yourself.”

          “Sgt. Hazel!” he barked. She came back in and printed me. Then they led me down a hall to an exam room.

          “All right, strip,” he said.

          “What? For a ticket you’re gonna poke my shit?”

          “Strip, Bartell,” she said, as if it were the funniest thing in the world. “Give us a thrill. You’re deh first guy under forty we done des to.”

          Reluctantly I took off the suit and lay each folded piece on the exam table. As soon as I was naked, the cop very deliberately knocked each piece of it off with his nightstick. He said, “Hop up on the table.”

          “Why’s it always hop?” I asked.

          Hazel said, “Bartell, don’t make things hard on yourself.”

          The paper was cold and crinkly. We killed some time not looking at each other, until a tall woman of about twenty five came in wearing a white lab coat over a tight pair of pencil leg jeans, carrying a clipboard. She had shoulder length blond hair and smelled faintly of jasmine. She smiled and sort of fluffed up her hair. Then she licked her lips and played me up and down with her eyes. They were blue, with streaks of violet and green. “Look at his little penis!” she said finally, just as bright and cheerful as could be. “I haven’t seen one that little in weeks. O.K. on your side, show me your butt.” She snapped on the rubber gloves and stuck a popsicle stick up my ass. “Clean bum, more or less. Now sit straight and open up. Uh huh. Bad teeth. Lift your arms. Ts ts ts. Shrapnel scars. I might have guessed. Or should I say gassed? So Mr. Bartell, what did you do in the war? Thank god my husband had a college deferment. I mean, he wouldn’t have gone. We were opposed to the war. But still, I admire that you people can live with yourselves. He’s clean.” She scribbled furiously on the clipboard and tore off the pink and yellow sheet, giving one to me and one to Hazel. The white she kept.

          “What’s this?” She turned around and left.

          “It’s your bill,” Hazel said. “Urizen outsourced strip searches. Give it to me. I’ll put it in with deh rest of your stuff.     

          The Law Man handed me a paper shirt and pants and a pair of slippers and said, “Put these on when I tell you.”

          “What about my phone call?”

          “I told you not to sweat about that tonight.”

          Hazel winked at me. We headed out.

          The next stop was a room with high ceilings and white walls. Screwed into the walls, from a few inches above the floor to a few shy of the ceiling, were these translucent red panels that glowered like jars of maraschino cherries in the sun. The floor was porcelain and sloped towards a drain in the middle. They told me to stand in it.

          The lights went off and the glowing panels became brighter and brighter till all I could see was a deep burning red. I was engulfed in an intensifying heat. Batman and Hazel wore white hoods with tinted eyeholes. I covered my eyes but it didn’t seem to matter. The light penetrated my skin and bones so that my insides boiled and ached. It stopped. Cautiously I blinked and looked around. They still had on the hoods. My skin felt like it had been burned smooth. A chilly trickle of water fell on my head. It turned into a stream and then a torrent of lukewarm water so strong I couldn’t stand up under it. I refused to kneel, fighting it until I caved in and fell on all fours, water beating and beating my back till I was flat out on the floor.

          All at once it stopped. They took off the hoods. The air smelled like burning hair and alcohol. Hazel handed me a towel. As I dried off, the lights brightened, but the temperature stayed the same.

          “Stand straight and look at deh white dot,” she said, pointing to a white dot painted on the door. As soon as I locked in on it there were three rapid, blinding explosions of white light followed by whirs and clicks. “O.K. Photo session’s over. You were beautiful,” she said, ticking off more items on the clipboard, which he stiffly initialed. “Now hold out your hand.”

          “Why?”

          “Just do it,” he said.

          “Now look, Dutch. I wanna know why I’m holding out anything but a ten inch shiv to you.”

          “It’s standard procedure. Everyone gets a tag. So you don’t escape or hurt anyone. Now hold out your hand.”

          I refused. That was it. There was nowhere to run to. That didn’t matter so much. I wasn’t holding out my hand to anyone.

          He grabbed my fist and tried to force it open. That wasn’t working so he bit my arm. I could not believe that he had me in his teeth. That popped it open long enough for him to press a laser pen into my palm. It felt like a burning needle. A whiff of smoke rose from the skin as he removed it. He had burned a small red U crossed by a lightning bolt into my skin. And the bite marks in my arm were starting to turn dark red.