The Last Bender, Chapter 27

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

          “Laraby?”  

          “Jack. It’s night. Where the hell are you? Why didn’t you call or come in? It’s a fucking mess here. There’s no control. Reporters, cops, lawyers, relatives, insurance dicks, my god! I’m tellin’ you, I’m outta my fucking mind with it! If I go to one more meeting I’m gonna blow.”  

          I could smell the sweat through the phone. “I was in jail.”

          He huffed. “Jail?” Then in an addled voice, “Jail.” He screamed, “Why?”

          “Hubble Watts.”

          There was a pause. “What is it with you and Hubble Watts? Drop the bone, Jack.”

          “He controls everything. He runs the jail, he’s got the only restaurant, his kids live there…. When I said ‘Monozone’ they clipped me for the night with some weird ass implant. I even got bit.”

          “Hypnotic restraints. Big deal. Old hat. Last year’s R&D. You oughta read the trade rags.” He breathed into the phone three, four times before saying, “Well, go ahead and take it as sick leave. If you got bit, you earned it. Anything else then?”

          “No. Except that I talked to a friend. Michael Einzer’s a guy under Bunuel who’s ripe to move. He’s got different backers in the brass. If you need some lean to go with the fat, he’s in the hole to some Five Joints bankers.”

          “I’ll get right on it Jack. Good work.”

          “You want me to talk to him?”

          “Nah. You gotta stay clean with Bunuel. What else?”

          “Well, this is too big for the phone. But a ball is in play. An error could cost us the game.”

          “How soon?”

          “I’ll have details tomorrow night. But we’re talking about a big project.”

          “Big?” The screws tightened his voice. “How big?”

          “About the size of a city.”

          “Metro area?” he flashed.

          “No. Not that big. But more than just downtown.”

          “This is out of the question. We’ll talk tomorrow.” It was like he was spitting in my ear. I hung up and kicked back on the couch with a lemon cola and a Brainard’s individual key lime pie, ready to relax. But then I realized I would never relax till I talked to Stronghole, so I called him.

          “Meet me at work,” he said.

          “Now?” I cursed the telephone. I cursed ever having dialed it.

          “Yeah now.”

          “C’mon Stronghole, I’m wiped out. I just got in.”

          “Stop whining Bartell. I’ll pick you up in ten, fifteen?”

          “I’m hungry.”

          “I’ll bring sandwiches and coffee. You like deviled ham?”

          “If you cut off the crust.”

          I flipped through the weather channels. Then I hit the all-night news channel, the police blotter. A reporter stood in her trench coat outside an apartment building. Wind woomfed in the microphone and blew her burgundy hair about. Uniformed cops swaggered back and forth, glaring at cameras and sipping coffee from paper cups. Parked behind her were an ambulance and a bunch of black and whites flashing green and red.

          She said, “Police don’t know the number of victims yet and no one here will tie it in to the mysterious Slaughterhouse Five killings at the Pechardine, or yesterday’s bloodbath, but sources say the crime scene is the same. Tonight there is only fear, spreading door to door like plague. Police urge calm, but area residents are fleeing. If you have any information, please call the hotline number flashing on your screen. Again, if you’ve just tuned in, we don’t have all the details yet but police report that there has been a murder or murders in this building, that there are no bodies and that the walls and ceiling are covered in blood. Thanks Chuck.”

          Stronghole picked me up and we drove into town listening to a tape of the Dentures. It was raucous. All these banjos and clip-clop horse sounds and hooting and whistles. Some woman hollered something about work stomping and leather goods while a man grumbled about his teeth not fitting right. Then it sounded like raccoons fighting in a pile of metal garbage cans. Then like drunks banging on the hoods of cars as they walk down the street. I was tired. I ate the sandwich. It had a funky taste, but I liked the way it felt, the way the lettuce crunched into the spongy meat product. I washed it down with strong coffee from the thermos.

          “This is good coffee,” I said. “Expensive.”

          “Pringle works in a gourmet shop after school. She gets it half price.”

          “Pringle?”

          “My older daughter. Didn’t get that far in my file?”

          “I got far enough. You work for Monozone when you could be a doc somewhere else.”

          “Could be. If that’s what I wanted.”

          “You mean, you like pushing sticky notes around and spooking on the lives of poor working schlubbs?”

          “No,” he laughed. “That’s just a pay check till I qualify to teach. That wasn’t in the file. That’s just between us.”

          I took a moment to work it through. “Teach? Teach what?”

          “Math. I want to teach math. To children.”

          “I don’t get it,” I said.

          “That’s cause you don’t get me, Jack. See, in the war, I killed kids. I know it. So now, I gotta take care of them. Kids.”

          “I don’t know how you do it,” I said. “Stay so calm. Have a family.”

          “I never let it get to me.”

          “But it does eat away at you, right? The sickness in your head?”

          “I don’t feel a sickness in my head. Like you said, I took it once for someone. But I don’t put my mouth there anymore.

          “Anyway, it’s been totally fucked up around here. Bunuel is kicking ass. People turning on each other. Everyone wants to know, who cracked first. He had me in the chair for two hours. He even tried to make Laraby sit.”

          “I know how to do that. You gotta look at him a certain way and then believe you can make him do things. I can make Laraby sit while I stand.”

          “Congratulations. How did you manage to skip out on all this?”

          I told him about getting busted and Braque and all the rest of it. I even told about the waitress. “And then her fucking water breaks, right when she’s serving us.”

          “So I’m right about Watts,” he said.

          “I never said you weren’t. But there’s more. It’s not just Bunuel asking questions. It’s homicide too. They’re on to us.” He looked at himself in the rearview. “You know there was another killing tonight.”

          “Why do you think I’m here? The stakes are getting kinda high. We have to get around Laraby and find St. Claude and give him up to Homicide or Bunuel. And we gotta pin it on Watts.”

          “Yeah, well this is the kicker. Wanda says David will give up St. Claude for six million bucks.”

          “Oh!” he said, throwing up his hands from the wheel, which he grabbed and then looked at me. “What are you talking about? Do they have him? Can they do it?”

          “Those two? They aren’t holding St. Claude hostage, but they know where he is. He’s somewhere in Tudor Caravan, holed up with that Urizen Corporation. She may be working a scam but I believe her. The money can’t be for David, not if he’s on the smart pill. They don’t go for that. Not for sex either. No, the six million’s for herself. But he’s getting something, to front for her. What I wanna know is this. If Monozone has exclusive rights to import the fungus, how do they get it at Urizen? Do they go back to smuggling?”

          He agitated his jaw. “That’s not it Jack. They synthesized it. Now they can make it anywhere.”

          “O.K. What do they do with the pill?”

          We thought for a while and looked at lights. He said, softly, “Research. Accelerated research Jack. Higher productivity.”

          “And if it makes you nuts?”

          “That might piss someone off.”

          “Then they might be running away from someone,” I said.

          He looked at me and swerved the car a little. “A possibility.” He squinted at the road. “The ducks at the warehouse worked for Watts.”

          “Or Laraby.” He gripped the wheel. I looked at him. “We need to be careful.”

          He parked by the courthouse on Dalay Street and we walked up Bartholin Plaza. The Monozone building glowed like cheeks on a flashlight. Pigeons unflocked and fluttered into packs. He hit the night buzzer a bunch of times. A bank of lights blazed on and three guards stepped out of the door, guns cocked. We showed them our ID and they snapped-to like military chumps. We walked into the dark halls. On the stairs I asked Stronghole where we were going.

          “Down to the basement. That’s where the night clerk does all the filing for the whole building. Interesting guy. A friend of mine.”

          We stomped down three flights of stairs to a door he opened with a key. In all my years at Monozone I had never been to the basement, to the custodial staff rooms or shipping and receiving. We entered a cinder block hallway that smelled like bubble gum.

          “This is the laundry,” he said, careful to keep his voice below an echo. “Up ahead is the kitchen. This guy, they call him Killer.”

          “Killer? And he doesn’t work for us?”

          “He’s retarded Jack. Supposedly. Supposedly he only knows the alphabet. Only problem is, he’s not really retarded. They just think he is. He’s a drummer. The dummies don’t know the difference. He’s as smart as you or I am, give or take. He caught on from the git-go what they wanted upstairs and gave it t’m in spades. He’s been running secret documents outta here for years, as a side line.”

          “No one knows? Doesn’t Ozzie Bond know?”

          “Ozzie Bond? Now he is retarded. No, Ozzie Bond’s not in on this. Killer kicks back for protection, everybody uses him. To fix their performance files, for promotions. See? Everyone’s safe with a retard filing clerk.”

          “How’d you find this out?”

          “Jack, I told you. You got to listen on the back stairs. That’s where it all goes down. On ten they bark and wag but this is where it all gets flushed. Also, I was with Priscilla–“

          “Priscilla?”

          “My wife. You really didn’t read far in my file, did you? Priscilla likes thrash music so we leave the baby with Pringle and go down to the Joints to thrash at the Feather Duster. Killer’s the drummer in the house band. I recognize him and figure it out pretty quick.”

          The file room was one of those monuments that are only great because of their size. Running floor to ceiling, spaced evenly about, as far as the eye could see, were filing cabinets. Aisle after aisle of grey, 40 foot tall filing cabinets. Along the walls were wooden card catalogues.

          I thought of all those pieces of paper stamped and signed. Every memo, every requisition, every termination notice filed. There was an order for my lemon drop suckers. Another for the orthopedic seat pad I requested last year, along with my recent inquiry as to why it hadn’t yet arrived. There’d be a typed transcript of every recorded conversation in the building. The life of Monozone in triplicate was listed, mapped, described, criticized and falsified in these files. Everything from its abstract reasonings down to its filthiest machinations was included.

          Killer stood by a black cart stacked with files and a clipboard. He was six two or three and so thin he looked like he’d been starved and broken on the rack. He was dressed all in black: faded, skintight jeans, high top sneakers, torn T-shirt and battered leather jacket. His skin was like an eggshell and his hair a rag of lampblack. In one hand he carried a set of metal stilts, in the other he held onto the cart, where he slouched over his work, dark glasses riding down his nose. He looked like he was about to yawn but never did. When Stronghole introduced us, I could not help myself, but yawned for him.

          Stronghole said to Killer, “Forgive him, man. He’s been playing with matches.”

          “Raw,” Killer said.

          “So, like we agreed then?” asked Stronghole. Killer thumbed through a stack of lime green folders. He had rings on all his fingers and spider webs tattooed on the back of his hands. As he worked, the muscles in his forearms jumped.

          “Badump bump. No problem Mr. Hole,” he said, humming and shaking his head. “Just gotta get to the number. Man wants the number now, wrong number lady, try again, again and again–“

          “How manya my guys pay you?” I asked.

          “Benny Slaughter, 1945, syncopated riff–” he beat it out with his fingers. “Then Brazil meets the Guernsey shore–” he beat out a different line. “Feel the change? Sweet sixteen.”

          Stronghole touched my shoulder. I flinched. He withdrew his hand and placed it over his mouth, saying softly, “Killer doesn’t like to speak. He’s supposed to be retarded, remember?”

          “Clearly,” I said. “So Killer, you like your work?”

          “Nope.”

          “How’d you get yer name?”

          “Waterfront,” he said. “Rats, not people.” He shook his head sadly and said, “People, man.”

          Stronghole had to be kidding about this guy. And what the fuck’s a guy his age going to thrash clubs for? I pictured him more the lounge type. I could see it, him and Priscilla in silk shirts with some sort of floral theme, sipping pink cocktails in a club. They’d be laughing at a funny man who clears his throat and says, “And that was when he said he was a virgin! I tell ya, I had so many dicks in my mouth, I felt like a guy at the dentist. [BEAT] You mean, your dentist doesn’t do that to you?”

          “Killer,” I said. “I hate to rush you, but–“

          “No my brother, you must buy it,” he said. Now and again he interrupted himself to file a folder. To reach the upper level he had recourse to a variety of stools and ladders scattered about. He was surprisingly agile, given that he looked like he was about to drop from anemia. His head bobbed like flotsam when he spoke. Every few steps he drank some beer from a can he kept on the lower shelf of the cart.

          “When’s your next gig?” Stronghole asked.

          “Hey, could ya not ask this guy distracting questions?”

          “Hey hey hey, here we be. Yep. You got the money honey, I got the time.” He put on the stilts, which made him about eleven feet tall, and clamoured up a ladder to the highest level of files, over which he teetered, almost reduced to the size of a dot. He stepped jerkily down and handed Stronghole a folder. Stronghole counted out five one hundred dollar bills and Killer’s lips rose from their beery pout, which I took to be a smile. “Thank you Mr. Postman….”

          “Always a pleasure,” Stronghole said, directly to his feet, since he refused to look that high up. I don’t think it was a neck problem. It just wasn’t in him to do it.

          “Yeah, bub,” I said. “Keep up the good works.”

          He raised his eyebrows, shook out his hair and pursed his lips. Then he did a little stilt dance for us, a nervous, stomping circle. “Five big ones. You boys must be jealous. Yessir, I’m like a one eyed cat, peekin’ in a seafood store.”