Trigger Man

  With the woman’s license in my hand and the man’s wallet in my underwear, I skirted the end of the bed and tiptoed across the carpet to the hallway. Just before I got to the door the guy in the bed turned over and snorted violently. I froze for five minutes until his rhythmic breathing reestablished itself. Then I closed the door slowly and went out the way I’d come.

  I paused at the back door, looking out the windows for anything out of the ordinary. Still all quiet. Like the night had been cut out expressly for me. I was just as careful shutting the door behind me as I‘d been coming in. Thoroughness. I still didn’t know how much money was in the wallet but it didn’t make any difference. You can’t get greedy. That lesson had been impressed upon me by a two-time loser who’d talked out of one side of his mouth because somebody had whistled a bullet through his other cheek bone. It hadn’t looked especially pretty, but at least that sonofabitch could still breathe. So I never allowed myself to forget. You have to be satisfied with what Fortune provides and know when to get the fuck out. All I needed was a little starter money. Now, I just had to leave with no one being the wiser.

  Coolly, I checked the lock to make sure the bolt had passed through. Fine, snug. I slipped through the porch door and followed the same route back to the boathouse as I‘d used earlier. No barking dogs…nothing. I climbed into the azaleas and retrieved the clothes I’d left there. They were chilly and damp in the night air, even though the humidity was still pretty bad, but most of the water had drained off. By morning I’d be fine. Barring catastrophe, of course. I always tried to keep that thought close enough to keep me straight. Squatting low and holding the penlight in my teeth again I rifled the wallet. Some sharp-dick named Stanley Ryster. Four hundred and seventy-two fucking dollars!

  I closed my eyes and whispered a short prayer to whatever god of petty theft makes these things possible. There were still no lights bursting on from inside the mansion, no alarms from the high eaves to spell me of my reverie. I stuffed the woman’s license into my back pocket, and the man’s wallet into the front left. They’d be wet, but money dried. Now for the kayak.

  I disappeared back inside the boathouse, careful to leave the Yale lock just where I’d found it. I always like to make ‘em work for it, make them wonder a bit, just for a while, if in fact they have been picked. Any advantage added time and time is something you just can’t get enough of. I know that now.

  ***

  I thought I knew that then. When I was just a skinny kid staying alive by any trick I could pull. But I didn’t, not really; only now with the moon showering its cold light down upon the city, as I sit and watch the smoke rise and mingle with it, only now do I realize that you just can’t ever get enough of it.

  And the grown up thief, the man named Jesse Avery, flicked the cigarette he’d been smoking through the window to the street below.

  ***

  Once inside I loosed the kayak rope from the boat hook. Then I carefully took the oars from their rack and laid them on the wood-planked deck. As usual I had to fight the urge to hurry now that I wasn’t inside the house. That’s the hardest thing to do but I pride myself on control, of not letting my emotions get the better of my common sense. I breathed in deeply, relaxed, and scrutinized the boathouse one more time for anything else that would be feasible to take. My eyes were drawn again to the ice chests stacked against the back wall, blocking the door through which I’d be leaving. The one on top was small enough for good use. I’d use the tether-rope and drag it behind the kayak to the other side of the lake. It was dark blue, thankfully so, since all the others of varying sizes and shapes were white. Sure giveaways in the moonlight.

  I walked around the horseshoe-shaped deck to the bank of chests, figuring to pull the bottom, and largest one, out of the way of a stinking trolling net which hung down from the ceiling. But when I gripped the handle and tried to pull, nothing. A muffled sloshing within made it clear: the goddamn chests (or at least the bottom one) were full!

  Shit! And since I couldn’t keep an eye on the house from here, it was time I could ill-afford to waste. However, I couldn’t get the hinged section of deck up without moving the chests, and without that the kayak was going nowhere.

  I reached up and set the one on top (the one I’d be taking with me) off to the side once I’d fought through the vestiges of the net, and next busied myself with the rest of the unstacking. There were two more chests of varying sizes stacked on top of the deep-sea, and I was happy to find neither one of these had anything in it.

  As I reached down to grab the handle of the biggest (hoping I could pull it out of the way with less trouble now) an odd, warning tingle began at the very base of my skull. The hair stood up along my neck; my skin rippled into gooseflesh along my arms. But my heart stayed cool, my mind clear. I figured the damn thing probably held over a hundred pounds of water, ice, beer, fish, whatever the hell you needed. Obviously Mr. Ryster hadn’t taken the time to empty the bastard when he came in. Sure and--

  The eyes were the first thing that struck me, the first thing I recognized as human. That, and the black fan of hair trailing out from the bloated face. The eyes were stretched wide, swollen and huge in a face that could scarcely contain them. The familiar, cloying, sticky stench I remembered from Grandma’s house began to crawl upon the boathouse.

  It took all the control I had to keep from screaming then, but somehow I didn’t. Somehow. Then I stood up in the ghostly darkness, staring down at the small body stuffed into the ice chest. Watching as the water lapped over the edge to wet the deck planks. The drops sounding very loud inside the boathouse. There was no telling how old she was but the license I’d found inside suddenly took on a whole new significance.

  A taut, bloated fist with fingers like sausages floated to the disrupted surface and for one, bare, cataclysmic moment I knew she would suddenly grip the edge and climb free of the stinking ice chest. She’d pull her dead, water-logged body from the cold water and do whatever the dead did to the living to exact their revenge.

  But the madness passed. It didn’t go easy but it did pass.

  She was very small, her license, later, put her at ninety-seven pounds. The water was a little discolored, I don’t know from blood or what, but I don’t think she had on any clothes. She was pretty crammed in, but I admit I didn’t study her that closely. And suddenly those twenty-three dollars felt like cold, brutal murder in my pocket.

  I wondered if there was any movement in the house now. I’d completely lost track of time and it appeared old man Ryster wasn’t such a good ole boy after all. I didn’t know what she’d done, but she wasn’t gonna be doing any more of it. I imagined the boathouse door facing the house slinging open and the Breathing Man coming inside. And goddamn, he had plenty more chests.

  With that thought I turned quickly (too quickly) on the slick deck. My foot went out from under me, catching my other leg at a nasty angle, and I rolled with the fall, hoping to save myself a torn ligament. Right into that fucking chest. I hit the sticky water, my right arm glancing off the inside wall as my face, shoulders, and left arm followed. The moment my face broke the surface the oily water was all over me. The sticky-sweet presence rushing up my nose and I gagged, choking. My right elbow connected with the bottom of the chest and my face pressed up tight against skin that was as loose as taffy left on a summer porch. My left hand scrabbled for a hand-hold on the other side, and when it did I wrenched myself free of the chest and its dead occupant. More putrid water splashed over me as I sat down hard on the floor. The smell threatened to suffocate me. A flap of her hair that had torn away was stuck to my cheek and I slapped it away.

  Then I scrabbled to my feet again, careful now of the slick deck. The water was in tumult. I could see a big mop of wet black hair, a hand, what must have been a section of blue-white thigh. I thought of myself in there with her. The smell grew huge.

  I figured the dogs would be raising holy hell if I didn’t get the lid shut down tight, and quick. But I still had
the kayak to handle so any speculation on why she was there would just have to wait.

  But the goddamn chest was still blocking my getaway. I hunched down at one end and put a shoulder to it, closing my eyes and straining with everything I had to get that damn thing moving. I guess the spilled water helped grease the deck because when it went, it really went. The putrid water rolled over me with a thick, embedded stink and I thought I’d puke my guts up right then and there. But I didn’t. I collapsed on the now-empty section of hinged deck and looked at the chest. One of her arms had washed over the side and stuck blue/white at a right angle as if she were trying to point toward the house. There was no way I was touching her. Let the dogs raise holy hell, I thought, I’m getting the fuck out. I wouldn’t be restacking shit either, and the small igloo I’d had my eye on earlier could stay the fuck where it was.

  I stepped off the hinged section, found the catch that locked it in place and threw the bolt. Then I wrenched the section straight up and let it stand. Next I pushed open the lakeside door and breathed in the fresh air sitting like a fat man sprawled across the lake. The thought of the Breathing Man finding me now made speed paramount. Securing the door with a wood wedge I found close by, obviously suited for that very purpose, I rounded the corner, picked up the two oars bundled in one arm and the tether rope with the other. Then, carefully so as not to knock the oars, I lowered myself into the murky water (hoping to kill the smell clinging to me like glue) and pushed the kayak out as I backed away with it.

  With the moonlight glow surrounding me as I passed the open door, I reached up and knocked the wedge loose, letting the door swing closed. I thought I heard a bolt catch but wasn’t sure. Regardless, I wasn’t going back to check.

  It had clouded up a little more since I’d come ashore, and I once again thanked the god of petty theft for its protection. Because this was surely out of the scope of my usual business. Regardless of the game, I hadn’t been expecting to pull money from beneath the nose of a murderer. I set the oars to their locks and began stroking for the opposite shore.

  Chapter 10:Maniacs

  Next morning things didn’t work out as planned. By the time I’d reached the opposite shore the night before I was exhausted, I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. I think it was the stench, as if I were in fact dead myself, somehow attempting to escape my own fate. I left the wallet on the bank and splashed back into the water, trying to wash the reek away. Sometimes, though, I can still smell it. Times like tonight.

  I intended on going to the Greyhound station on Florida Boulevard first thing in the morning but lost the nerve. Ryster’s crime hung around me like a hangman’s noose, and knowing how I’d left things, I half figured him to be patrolling the area, looking for another motherfucker he could stuff in one of his chests. I knew of an abandoned building on Acadian Thruway, just on the other side of the lake adjacent to where I was. Hadn’t been used since some old LSU running back got busted printing his own money there almost a decade before. A rusted ladder clung to the back of one peeling wall, and I felt sure no one would be up there today. Too goddamn hot. And even though I didn’t like the idea of whiling away the day while Ryster investigated my trespass, I could go no farther. I’d just have to slow down a little on my way to Nowhere.

  By the time I sat huddled on the deserted, gravel-strewn roof, the sun was high and hard over the treed horizon. It was miserable, fuckin miserable. I got virtually no sleep, just occasional lapses of consciousness during the hottest parts of the day, and the continuous image of Ryster cruising the lakes in what would no doubt be a 500 class Mercedes didn’t ease my nerves one damn bit.Thankfully, a nearby oak had grown over the edge of roof on the side away from the road and it wasn’t too bad, considering I didn’t have any other alternatives. But I was hungry as a bastard and just before dark I cut out.

  It took about two hours. Hiding in Sweet Olive Cemetery right down the street from the Greyhound station, I took a moment to buck myself up. I was fourteen, didn’t have one iota of identification on me that was mine, and looked spitting distance from the nearest trash bin. I hoped my clothes didn’t stink as bad as I thought they should. My hair had gotten pretty long lately and I raked the bangs down over my eyes in case there happened to be a poster up somewhere with my face on it. Also, I hadn’t shaved and had a nice little black, patchwork shadow on my face. From the look I had at myself a bit later in the distorted gaze of the Greyhound bathroom mirror I definitely qualified for a veteran of the hard-core circuit. Truly, completely sickening. Standing there assessing the mess I’d become, I remembered all the talks my Grandma and I had had, and her close-to-frantic pleas to ‘do the right thing, always’ above all else. And here I was. What a fuckin chump. But that always amazed me about her: the fact that she never gave up. She really believed life could be good, that if one honestly and faithfully steered the course, things would have to get better. I hope she wasn’t wrong. I hope she found what she thought she’d find. As for me, I hardly care anymore.

  Even so, when I need strength, I conjure her face. I imagine her laughing, joking like she used to, and I actually do feel a little better. Maybe only be for a second or two, but every little bit helps. Tonight I can’t get her off my mind…

  But back to the Greyhound station. Once again, I was the Invisible Man, so it turned out I didn’t need half the courage I showed up with. I just walked straight up to the counter, eyes hard ahead, money in hand, and bought a ticket to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was the only place I was familiar with (by name alone, I now realize), and I was already convinced I had to get the hell out of Baton Rouge. I had the uneasy, pressing notion that every second spent here inched me closer to some crushing doom, whether from Ryster or elsewhere. Just one of those little things that keeps on giving.

  Well, somebody’s snaggle-toothed grandmother rattled off the charge and took the money. When she handed me the ticket and told me which terminal the bus would leave from I still had two hours, thirty-seven minutes to wait, according to the clock screwed into the wall above her head. Anyway, I was feeling safer than I had in days (sitting there quietly with my hands on my lap as the arriving buses rumbled in the loading terminal) when the two assholes stepped aboard my bus and made their loud way to the back. Man, I could tell they were trouble the second I saw em. And it was nothing really too obvious, just two fuckin scumbags. But I knew.

  ***

  I’ve wondered plenty since if things would have been different if the bathroom on the bus hadn’t been out of service. Always those little things, inconsequential it seems until they all add up and fuck you hard. It’s one of the series of jokes life plays all the way along. Those odd little moments of time that stay behind to remind you where either things went good or bad. Is there something important hidden in each one, some essential thing left undone? Is that what makes em linger, continually haunting you with the suggestion that an overlooked opportunity or circumstance has eventually, and scarier yet, irrevocably, brought about whatever current reality you now experience? Ahh…the perils of philosophy.

  So you might wonder how for want of a working bathroom was the kingdom lost? to paraphrase some work I’ve since forgotten. I’ll tell you: it’s a long goddamn ride from Baton Rouge to Little Rock and with a busted restroom, it made for a lot of evil potential.

  Shreveport’s where I fucked up. I was tired, dogging in-and-out of a fitful, uneasy sleep. The day on the rooftop had done me no good. My head was fogged, my stomach as good as empty. My eyes felt like someone had been ice-skating on them. And I really had to piss. Just about that time, as luck would have it (I thought), the driver came over the intercom to announce a rest stop in Bossier City.

  I didn’t think about the two assholes at all. If I’d’ve been more sharp, perhaps awake for fifteen minutes longer…but it really doesn’t matter now. It has become a concrete moment that always unfolds the same in eternity. If, in fact, such a thing even exists after its passing.

  When the bus
pulled over I got out and went into the convenience store across the parking lot to get a candy bar before going to the restroom around back. By the time I got through the line, the last person from the bus (I thought) was shuffling out, but I wasn’t worried. The driver had announced a fifteen minute break and I knew I hadn’t burned but ten. He’d be there when I finished.

  And just like that my guard came down another notch.

  I’d just unzipped when I heard a sharp scrape behind me. Then a hand came down on my shoulder along with a demonic, hissed warning: “Scream an I’ll fuckin kill ya. Even if’n I hafta kill everbody else in this muthafuckin place, it’s a done deal. You fuckin undastand?” My urge to piss dried up like a desert sandstorm and I nodded. For a moment I thought Mr. Ryster had followed me, that he’d been waiting vigilantly in one of the stalls, and now he was gonna cut out my fucking heart. I didn’t move a muscle, but I heard another pair of sliding feet come closer to the one who had me. So there were two.

  The voice came back to my ear. “Yer gonna back inta that stall wit me, young pa’tna.” I’ll never forget it. Word for word. “Keep ya mout shut if ya wanna live, bitch,” and he pulled me roughly through the swinging door. I don’t know where the other guy went. Whether inside the bathroom or out I can’t say.

  The one behind me got up on the toilet lid and hunched over my shoulder so nobody else coming in would see him. I could still hear someone pissing off to my left. I kept my mouth shut, trying to get a plan together, weighing my best chance of escape. He said he’d kill me and I had no reason to doubt him. I remembered the two getting on the bus in Baton Rouge. They had the look of killers and the whispered urgency in their voices of desperation. I could only play for time and hope like hell to get some.

  After a few more minutes the lone pisser finished up and left. I heard the door close and then reopen again a second later. The other pair of footsteps echoed on the tile. “Clear, Dingo,” its voice said. Dingo grunted and stepped down off the toilet lid, pushing me out of the stall as he did so. I turned around to see. Definitely the two fuckers from the bus, the fucking bus that was now short at least three fucking passengers! The fucking bus that was probably leaving as I stood alone with these two murderers! Because I knew it; I could smell it on them like cheap cologne. They would kill me if I wasn’t very careful; perhaps they’d kill me regardless. I kept my breath steady and my eyes up. The one behind me grabbed both shoulders again and said a little louder this time: “We gonna walk outside an down the road, boy. You gonna walk ‘tween me and Pete here, an ya ain’t gonna do one gotdamn thang. Ya got that? Ya do an I’ll kill ya wit this gotdamn gun. Now, ya fuckin un’erstan what I’m sayin?”