The Last Bender, Chapter 8

 

CHAPTER EIGHT

 

Before going to lunch with Linda I stopped in at the office to chew things over with the guys. No one chews a bone better than a room full of rum faced, tobacco stained dicks.

            The security section is a cinder block tank about four thousand feet square, with a tan vinyl floor, acoustic tiled ceiling and metal cubicles dipped in fluorescent acid. In the middle of this monument of toxic furniture was the conference area, where we met most days to review cases and receive directives from the boss.

            For instance, it was around this table that we were briefed on the new Program for Associate Comfort (P-fAC). The board had decided employees were spending too much time away from their desks. They did an efficiency study and found that a bulk of that time was spent urinating. So they instructed Human Resources to devise a way to stop it.

            First they tried a voucher system. Each employee got a set amount of Comfort Chits, time they could use whenever they wanted, provided of course it was actually spent peeing. But people used theirs up by Wednesday and there were all kinds of fights about it, with some people selling theirs and others counterfeiting bogus scrip. It was a real security mess.

            So someone at Human Resources decided to review the literature. Turns out GenerAL ClimAcTerix had developed a catheter system for large scale information outfits. Associates use a suction based catheter system, eliminating the invasive needle, so they can pee at their desks. A network of PVC tubes pumps the waste through a special filtration unit and sends it back to the drinking fountains and coffee makers. Highly cost effective. 

It also served as a lounge where we could go between jobs to read newspapers and wash down packaged crap out of the machines with those distilled urine coffee drinks. There was always day old pastry.  

            In front of the conference table was a twelve foot white board and projection screen. On the whiteboard someone had drawn, in colored markers, a large, rather detailed picture of two dogs fucking.

            I stood a little out of view. Half the staff were seated around the table. Everyone worked for Laraby. To us, he was all the boss that mattered.

            Needles Velasco crossed his feet on top of the table and sat tipped back in the chair. He had a high bald head with white curls cropped close to his cinnamon skin. He penciled in a crossword puzzle on a baroquely folded newspaper. His cheroot smouldered in an ashtray on the floor.

            Next to Needles was Ozzie Bond. He got his name chasing tail in a boy’s school where he was chief of campus security.  When they caught him boffing a fifteen year old hockey goalie all he could say was, “I got me an Ozzie Bond.”   No one ever knew what it meant. He was a short, mean looking guy with a pencil mustache, shoulder length black hair and a young, pink scar running ear to ear. Ozzie Bond sat on the edge of his chair, shoulders straight, eyes flashing as he slapped cards down on a game of solitaire.

            Church Bonano and Sidestep DuBoise were talking, loudly, at the corner of the table. When Sidestep was a regular hoof, the Housing Authority cops jumped him one night in the tenements and busted him up with billy clubs and boot heels. They beat him so hard, one side of his face was paralyzed. He was arguing the common sense position against Church, a big fat guy I couldn’t quite figure. First he came off as a man of peace. But then, if you got him going on one of his conspiracy theories, and you contradicted him, like Sidestep was doing now, you could see him start to fray. His toadlike eyes were large and glossy with an excess of fluid; they bulged and started to drift as Church attempted to convince Sidestep that some Regulator was poisoning all the wells in Inania with mercury, so that people would have to buy test kits and filters from a company owned by associates of the chairman’s wife’s first husband, the current marriage being a front and a payment in sexual flavors for services rendered.

            Sidestep retorted, out the side of his mouth, that there were “No appreciable levels of mercury in the water.”

            To which Church replied, “Doesn’t matter. The kits are rigged for positive 89% of the time.”

            Church, after Laraby, had been with Monozone longer than any of the other dicks. They were tight. He was known to go out on jobs for Laraby. So no one ever underestimated Church.  

            Stitch Balleti and Cherry Cologne debated the racing form. Stitch had a long neck like a goose. She wore her hair in a crew cut and twisted her rings whenever she had to talk to more than one person. She rolled a thick cigarette one handed and lit a match off the floor, puffing up a big, acrid cloud which she blew at Cherry, the redhead from uptown. 

            Banger sat alone. Her nose looked like it had washed up in a flood. The left side of her upper lip was raised in a permanent scowl and when she spoke, I thought she was spitting teeth.

            That left Juice Martin.

            Juice and I went back to the war. He was a juice freak. When they wired someone up for sound, Juice was the man. He never left the room. He was jumpy, thin, with a black goatee and pistol eyes that hovered close to a laugh. He drank weight-gain shakes, worked out, ate slabs of rare steak,  piles of French fries and quarts of ice cream, but he couldn’t put on a pound. Everyone knew about his juice thing, it made you kind of nervous. Guys like Juice find good luck in war. They take to it. And it likes them back.

            My compadres, in a frieze. Ozzie Bond’s scar forever young, Church’s thesis in mid air, Stitch’s match flaring against the floor and me looking in.

            Juice bounced up and down on his toes. He was the only one not dressed off the Goodwill rack. How he managed to afford those shiny black and grey suits with lines sharp enough to shave on, beats me. He bounced back and forth between the guys, patting Banger’s padded shoulder, kissing Cherry on his chicken skin cheek, saying, “hey hey,” and pointing out the Queen of Spades on the King of Hearts to Ozzie Bond, who scratched his side burns and lifted his face chin first, as if to say, “The fuck you want?” before realizing it was only Juice.

            I went over to the machines and fished around for a buck, finding one and feeding it in, punching a box of Lemon Drop suckers. I popped one in and poured a cup of muddy chai, sprinkled in four bags of sugar and some CreaMate.

            “They do it at night,” Church insisted.

            “Who, Church, who?”   Sidestep wanted to know, using his hand for emphasis.

            “The oncefeds, that’s who. But not direct. You got to be subtle. First you got to send out the light sensitive additive to your field agents. These guys don’t even know they’re workin’ for you.”

            Sidestep cut him off. “Who they think they’re workin’ for?” He looked hotly frustrated.

            “For the water company, that’s who.”

            “Then who cuts ’em a check if they ain’t really workin’ for the water company?”

            “The Department of Collections, that’s who. They tell the water company they got to hire temps to put in the additive at night. It’s already IN the regulations. Who can’t look it up in the Industrial Law Decrees? Now, this additive, not only is it a source of serious revenue, it contains the mercury.”

            Sidestep had him there. “I thought you said the tests was rigged for false positives. I thought that’s what you said.”

            “I don’t like when you try and make me feel stupid.”

            “I don’t have to try, you doin’ it all by yourself. Ain’t that right fellas?” There was general, murmured consent but no one looked up from what they were doing.

            “Ask Jack,” Church said.

            “Hey Jack,” said Stitch. Her voice wasn’t low but it was dark, like the failing light of autumn. “Whodya like in the sixth?”

            “I dunno, Church,” I said. “Whodya say put it in the water?”

            “Cherry said Thirst To Survive looks good, but it’s a wet track.”

            Cherry said in his slouch heavy brogue, “You can’t always bet on a sure ting.”

            Church was crosswired; it put a strain on his cheeks, made his eyes prick. I heard him whisper, “The oncefeds, that’s who.”

            “The feds?” I asked him. “And it’s so the chairman’s wife’s first husband can make out?”

            “He has the patent on the test kit.”

            I sat down backwards on a chair. Needles watched me over his paper, looking very stick-like. “Helluvu mess,” he said.

            “What mess is that?” I asked.

            “I dunno…” he sang. “Three letter word for basin.”

            “Value Added Tax,” I said.

            “Or tub,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “They say Leonard Sykes dismembered his victims and boiled the flesh off the bones. He served the soup to homeless people in the park and sold the bones to occult shops around town. Of course, his bathtub backed up and flooded the downstairs apartment. When the landlord broke in he found a jar full of teeth and ziplock bags stuffed with hair. He was calling the police when Leonard came home. The officers arrived in time to catch Leonard sawing off the landlord’s head. He wore goggles and a rain coat.”

            “All of this is apropos to what?” I asked.

            “Tub versus vat for basin.”

            I asked him if he had been on the Sykes case.

            “I knew the first two victims. They were regulars. After that, he discovered college students. The last one was a ballerina. We got him to confess to that one.”   He went back to his crossword.

            Stitch asked, “You think it was a nut job on staff who whacked the lab, Jack?”

            Before I could answer, Juice said, “He don’t know. Stateside, Jack is all P.R.”

            “Everyone’s after a smooth bowel movement,” Church said. “It’s ideal.”

            I said to Juice, “Fuck you.”  

            He stood over me and bounced. “It’s the kinda thing that might make a good dick mad. It makes me jumpy.”

            “That’s right,” Needles said. “The pack’s got its hackles up. They think we oughta find out what happened.”

            Cherry scratched a spot on his neck and said, “You got t’admit, it takes some kinda cold to do a room like dat.”

            “So I’m not mad enough,” I said. “Is that it?”  

            “What if they didn’t resist?” Stitch asked.

            That was interesting. I waited for more, but she went back to the racing form. I asked, “So, what’s the word? What do you hear?”

            “The word is this,”   Needles said. “You and Stronghole are here to plug leaks. We plug the clean up crew. You plug us. Out of town pros plug you. All plugged up.”

            “People I talk to are scared to shit,”   Ozzie Bond said. “They takin’ days off.”

            Banger pulled the chocolate chips out of a muffin one by one and ate them. She said, “I ain’t sceered.”  

            “You guys whack any janitors yet?”   I asked. “Banger? Cherry? Sidestep?”

            “I’d tell you?” Banger asked. Cherry coughed and rubbed his nose and made a noise.

            Sidestep just stared at me. He said, “I seen the news this morning. This place is gonna stink. Get yourself an agent, Jack.”

            “I don’t have orders to plug anything but Laraby’s butt with my nose.”

            Church said, “I think someone offered him a deal and when he wouldn’t dance, they sent a duck in who lost his cool.”

            “I wanna know why they did the Pechardine. That’s where the doc was done,”   Sidestep said.

            “That’s just illogical,”   Church said. “They don’t do St. Claude, he’s the man with the bucks. Someone on the job went nuts. Maybe oncefeds.”

            “Six, seven people, by definition, that’s a nut job, right?”   Needles asked. “Anyway, they do the technicians in the lab, use the guards to escape, take ’em to the warehouse, and do ’em there.”

            “That’s not what bothers me the most,”   Church said. “What bothers me the most is how they did it. Look, there’s only a couple of ways in or outta this place, right? How come no one saw them?”

            “Duh basement,” Cherry said. “The custodians smoke on the loading dock. There’s this old freight track with a hand car. It runs between the basements of duh whole piazza.”

            “Maybe no one got iced at all,” Church said. “What if they get whole blood from a blood bank and spray the place with it? That’s why no fibers or hair.”

            Stitch shook her head. “I like passive victims. They were drugged or already dead.”

            I looked at my watch. It was time to go. I said, “Fellas, later. Ya been a big help.”

            I hoofed it down the hall to Stronghole’s cubicle. He was reading over some crap and slurping on a tropical ice drink. Without looking up he said, “There’s been a lot of action in and out of that lab.”

            In the cubicles, people come up on you all the sudden. You can’t control what they might hear or think they hear. Because it makes no difference if you say a thing or not. “Yeah, well hold the thought. Walk me to my car and tell me there.”

            The elevator arrived with a ding. We mashed our way on. It was like being packed in a box full of stuffed animals.  But by the time we were in the basement we were alone. The elevator let out onto a short hall between the laundry and the garage. The walls were brick. It was lit by an old bulb in a cage twenty feet overhead. The light made a squiggle of orange on the puddles. At my car door we stopped.

            “So, what happened in shipping?” I asked.

            “I talked to Pete Torvino. Nothing gets in or out without his say so. He says six months ago they started getting big packages. And then two, maybe three weeks ago they start shipping them back out. He doesn’t like it. But when he asks around all he gets is ouzo, till he reaches Stanislau, who says he’ll look into it. Next thing he knows he’s got a summons to see McLaren–”

            “Who’s McLaren?”

            “Building Super. The guy runs the building out of a basement office. He tells Pete not to stick his snout into it. Then he tells him if he does stick his snout in, he’s gonna nail his paws to the floor and kick him. Says he’ll be rattling a cup on a dolly. So Pete pretends to bail. But Pete can’t let go of it. He’s that kind of a guy–”

            “What, so they can strap him to a gurney?”

            “Cut the wise. So Pete wrote a security report and routed it through us, instead of through Buildings and Grounds.”

            “Where’s the report?”   I asked.

            “That’s just it. There’s no record of it.”

            “So, does he remember where they were shipped to?”

            “He said all over Guernsey. Nothing particular.”

            “Maybe someone down there was taking care of it for them. What was in the boxes?”

            “I figure vinyl coffins which they don’t velcro right. The lab goes out by mail.”

            The garage was quiet except for the sound of condensation dripping down from the ceiling into the standing water. We kept our voices low. “So, what’s the deal with St. Claude’s financials?” I asked.

            “The only thing he owns is some Horizon Corp. Horizon has title to both his townhouse and a beach cottage.”

            “Check out that house in Pine Point. See if anyone’s been there.” It felt a little cold. By the smell of the puddles, the sewers had backed up onto the ground floor. I decided to take a chance on it and show him the paper. As I unfolded it I felt a footstep in my neck, like a crick, and motioned Stronghole to muzzle. The pressure of the shadows changed.  

“What is it?” he whispered.

            “I don’t know.” I looked at the paper for a second, and then, it was like everything shifted around. The light and shadow were different. There was a faint smell of cheap aftershave and hair grease mingling with the auto fumes. Juice stood not three feet away, bouncing. “Jack,” he said.

            “I can’t talk,” I said.

            “It can’t wait.”   He sniffed at Stronghole.

            “He’s cool,” I said. “Let’s have it.”

            “What’s on the paper, Jack?”

            I folded it up. “Nothing.”

            His whole body twitched. It fixed his face in pain. “Are you holding out on me, old buddy? I kept you alive. I fed you.”

            “Relax. It’s nothing but a number this girl gave me.”

            “No shit, Jack. That’s great. Hey, it’s a girl. I wanna hear that. All the time. Good news, good news.”

            I opened the car door. “So, see ya later?”   He stood there smiling. We got in the car and drove out.

            “Where we going?” Stronghole asked.

            “Around the block. What do you think of this?”   I handed him the paper, looking for cars in the rear view.

            He looked at both sides. “That’s a file number. Where’d you find it?”

            “Never mind about that,” I said. “Can you find out what it is?”  

            “Sure.”

            We rounded the block. “What do you think happened?”

            “I didn’t see the lab Jack. You did.”

            “Yeah. I saw the lab.”

            “How’d it feel?”

            “Like being tossed out a window.”

            “Why did they do it?”

            “We’re not supposed to think about that,” I said.

            “I don’t cut my head off for anyone.”

            “I don’t like Juice being in the garage. Juice doesn’t drive. But I’ll tell you what. He may be ampy, but he never sniffs at other people’s shit for long. He sees what’s in it for him, but what’s in it for him, I don’t see. I’m gonna talk to St. Claude’s slug,  Clara Turback.”   I laughed. “Evalyn St. Claude’s on her third scotch, right? And first she calls her a slut. O.K. I understand. But then she says there are things she won’t do. And one of them, this Turback does. She’s a felcher.”

            “Aphel, a what??”

            “Felch, with an F, a verb I think. What it means, beats me. That’s what the lady said.”

            “Well it can’t be good. Don’t get too close. I’ll find out about the number. I’ll call.”

            “Just don’t get me out of bed for it.”