39
Mercury and I looked through more records, trying to make comparisons, and then I had had enough. What I needed to know was, where was Belinda? And there was nothing more Mercury could tell me that would help answer that. But at least I was armed with some information about my adversaries, and the first rule of war is Know Your Enemy.
I left the newspaper office feeling as if my small corner of the world was ruled by something dark with tentacles that reached into all parts of my life; some monster from behind the veil of reason. Only someone like Booger could enjoy a world like that. I tried to remember what it was like before I knew of Caroline and before I knew of the war and Booger, and even before I had loved Gabby. What it was like when I was a child in my underwear playing Tarzan in what was now Jazzy’s tree, calling out to all the apes to come and save me.
I drove on through the night, back toward my place and Booger. I glanced in the rearview mirror, saw there was a car behind me, the only one on the street, and I watched it in my mirror, then I turned off. I hadn’t gone far when I realized the car had turned too.
It could be a coincidence.
I decided not to drive home. I drove over to the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart, went inside, but not before I saw the car pull into the lot. It was an old car and maybe it was green. It was hard to tell in the lights of the parking lot. I was beginning to think I had seen it before. I tried to think where, but all I could think of was that I had seen it; a spot here and there, a time now and then.
Maybe it was like a déjà vu thing, where you think you’ve seen something before, but your mind is playing tricks on you. Tired and stressed as I was, it could be that way.
I went inside and stopped at the magazine rack by one of the checkout counters and stared at stuff there. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a guy come in. He looked a little ragged in the clothes department, but he had a hard-looking body and close-cropped hair. I couldn’t make out much else about him, not from that distance, but I figured he was the guy in the car.
I moved away from the magazines and down some aisles, but he didn’t follow. There were more people in the store than you would expect that time of the morning, and they trailed along the aisles like zombies.
I found a large diet soda and went back toward the checkout counter. I didn’t see my guy anywhere. When I got near the checkout, he was there. He suddenly came out of nowhere and pushed a case of beer onto the runner in front of me and the sleepy-looking kid behind the register checked him out while I studied the back of the guy’s head. He took his beer and left.
I paid for my diet drink and left. I drove away, and behind me I saw the lights of a car come on, and pretty soon the car was behind me. It was a good distance behind me, but I could tell it was the same car from the way the headlights were set. It was hard for him to be sneaky this late at night when the streets were damn near empty.
I decided to ride out to the edge of town, where it was dark and the roads were narrow. The car followed. I went a little more swiftly, and then I took a curve and saw a road that he couldn’t see, not yet, not until he made the curve behind me. I whipped onto that road as I cut the lights, looked back over my shoulder through the back window as he passed and went over the hill, on down to the other side.
I turned on the lights and backed down the road, back onto the highway, went the way he had gone, driving fast.
I came down the hill and saw his taillights, noticed he was slowing. He had just figured out he had been snookered. He pulled to the side of the road and sat, waiting for me to pass. Maybe he didn’t know for sure I was on to him.
I went on down the hill like I was going to pass him, but I turned off the road toward him suddenly and gave my car a little gas. I could see his eyes in the headlights, big as saucers. I hit his car with the front of mine and knocked it, flipping it over a couple of times, and the front end of my car went off in a ditch and if my old wreck had had airbags they would have popped out. But all I had in my car was a seat belt and a hope for good luck.
I sat there and looked at his car through the windshield. It was resting on its roof, rocking a little from side to side. The lights were still on and I could see him hanging upside down in his seat belt. Some of the beers he bought had busted open and were spraying and foaming about. He didn’t have air bags either. Good, I thought. I hope he busted his head on the steering wheel.
I didn’t even know the guy, but I didn’t like being followed, and I figured he had some connection to all the bullshit I was dealing with.
I put my car in reverse, and was surprised I got enough traction to back out of the ditch. I parked the car alongside the highway, turning it so that the front pointed the way I had come. I turned off the lights and pulled the key, pulled the .38, went over to his car and tugged at the upside-down door without success. I kicked at the glass in the window, but all it did was bulge. I bent down and looked at him. He had been stunned, but now he was starting to twist in the seat belt, trying to figure out how he had ended up the way he was. I hammered at the glass with the butt of the .38 and the glass popped, made a kind of gooey-looking star that spread from one end of the glass to the other. I hit it a few more times, finally got it busted out good. I reached through the window and grabbed the guy by the ear, turned his head toward me and hit him with the butt of the .38. I did that two or three times. Once or twice because he needed it, and once because I wanted to. He went out.
I had to work at it, but I got his seat belt unsnapped, and when it let him loose, I got hold of him and dragged him out of the car, cutting him on the broken window. I dropped him on the ground, still unconscious. I reached inside the car and turned off the lights, and then I killed the engine by twisting the key. I pulled the key out and threw it in the ditch.
When I turned around he was waking up. I said, “Pardner, I don’t like being followed.”
He was up on his hands and knees now. He lifted his head, said, “Go fuck yourself.”
I kicked him pretty hard in the throat, and he rolled over holding his throat and making a noise like someone trying to swallow a couple of Ping-Pong balls.
I got him by the back of his belt and dragged him up the side of the ditch and over to my car while he continued to grab at his throat. I stood back and kicked him hard in the ass. “Get up,” I said.
He got up. I watched in case he went for a gun. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
He almost laughed, but his throat was too sore to give more than a kind of cough.
“I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have, but I will,” I said. “Put your hands on the trunk and spread your legs, and I’m going to put this .38 to the back of your skull with one hand and search you with the other. You make a move, you might get to see your brains jump out the front of your head before you die.”
He was breathing better now. He stood up slowly, put his hands on the trunk and said in a voice that was raspy and tired, “I haven’t got a gun. It’s in the car.”
I put the .38 to the back of his head and patted him down anyway. He didn’t have a gun, like he said, not even a pocketknife. All he had was a pocket comb and a cell phone. I put the cell phone in my pocket and threw the comb away. I had him stand back, and I used my left hand to unlock the trunk.
“No man,” he said. “I hate tight spaces.”
“Bullshit. Get in the trunk or I’ll leave you here beside the road and let the vultures pick the lead out of the back of your head.”
He looked at me. Maybe trying to size me up, see if he could take me. He finally turned and got in the trunk and I closed it.
I went around and looked at the front of my car. The bumper was bent, but nothing else. Even the lights still worked.
I drove us back to my place.
When I got the guy in the house and made him sit down on the couch, I gave Booger a little rundown on what had happened.
“And so,” Booger said, “you thought you might bring me a present, and it’s not even Christmas y
et.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to give him to you,” I said.
“Oh, please, please,” Booger said. “I ain’t had nothing to play with since my pet alligator died from strangulation.”
This caused the guy on the couch to turn his head and look at Booger in an odd way.
Now that I had the guy inside, and I could look at him good, I saw he had a bad eye; it was the way Ernie had described it. He also had a bunch of bruise spots I had given him. They made him look a little like a speckled pup.
“Glug,” I said, “good to meet you, you sonofabitch.”
“I don’t know you,” he said.
“Yeah, but I know you, and I know you’re following me so you can report to Stitch.”
“You’re gonna know your girlfriend’s skin right off,” Glug said. “Something happens to me, I don’t report back, then that bitch is as good as dead. Dig?”
“Her name is Belinda,” I said, “and any more disrespect concerning her, and you will be looking for your head. Dig?”
He nodded.
I got his cell phone out of my pocket. I tossed it to him, said, “Make that call, and tell him you’re watching, and nothing is happening. You don’t make the call right, I pop you right here.”
He called and the call was short and sweet. He told Stitch, or whoever was on the other end, things were good and that I was at home. He said he was sitting down the street from my place, watching. When he finished the call I took the phone. I said, “That was all right. Now, there’s some information we need to know.”
“Stitch finds out I talked,” Glug said, “you don’t know what he’ll do.”
“That’s right,” I said. “We don’t. But I know what we’ll do if you don’t.”
“You know what,” Booger said, “to do this right, you know, so we can have like some room to work, and a little privacy, we need someplace protected, some place where you can’t hear a fellow scream.”
40
I cut the electrical cords off some lamps and we used those to bind Glug’s arms behind his back. We tied his legs together too, leaving enough room so he could move at a kind of shuffle. I put a pair of my dirty underwear in his mouth, something with some slick stains on it, and tied it in good with a rag I tore off an old sheet. Then we got a phone book that Booger wanted, and he got his duffel bag, and I got a lawn chair, and we put all of it, including Glug, in my car.
We did it quickly and carefully. I was pretty sure no one saw us.
Booger sat in the back with Glug. Booger had Mr. Lucky pointing toward Glug’s lap, the barrel of the shooter against Glug’s balls. Glug didn’t struggle at all.
I drove us to the place where Ronnie’s landlord had stored her goods, and I rolled down the window and touched the code, and it was still the same. The gate unlocked itself and folded in. I drove us past the gate and over to the storage shed where Ronnie’s stuff had been.
Booger got out and went at the lock and opened it quick. I drove the car inside and Booger closed the doors. I cut the engine and left the headlights on, pulled the gagged and bound Glug out of the car. Booger sat the lawn chair in front of the car, center of the headlights. He grabbed Glug and pulled him over to the chair and pushed him into it. He said, “You sit there, and be pretty.”
He went back to the car and got the phone book. I grabbed his wrist, said, “I don’t know, Booger. Maybe we ought not.”
“Depends on if you want that girl of yours skinned or not.”
“How do we know if he’s telling the truth?”
“Torture works, in spite of what people tell you. But the only way it works is the guy’s got to know we don’t care if he dies, and you know me, I don’t care. He’ll tell me the goddamn truth, you can count on that. But whatever you want, buddy. Have it your way.”
I let go of his wrist.
Booger walked over to where Glug sat and hit him hard in the side of the head with the flat of the phone book, hit him so hard he fell out of the chair and sprawled out on the ground. He was trying to yell, but that underwear gag was holding.
Booger sat him up in the chair, gave him a pat on the head, then hauled off with the book and hit him again over the same ear, not quite knocking him out of the chair this time.
“I just want you to know,” Booger said, “that I can do this all night, but you can’t. I’m going to take out that gag, and when I do, you yell, it’ll be all over for you except for us throwing your dead ass out somewhere beside the road. Got me?”
Glug nodded.
Booger punched straight down and hit Glug in the balls. Glug bent over, almost fell out of the chair, but Booger helped him up by kneeing him hard in the face. When he sat Glug back up in the chair, Glug was bleeding from his nose and it had taken on a new shape. His lips didn’t look so good either. Blood had colored the underwear in his mouth.
I went around and stood behind the car and looked at the closed doorway of the building and tried to pretend I wasn’t part of this. I heard Booger hit him a couple more times with either the phone book or his fists, and I got myself together and walked around front, and found a position between the headlights.
Booger untied the rag that held the gag, said, “How’s the teeth?”
Glug nodded.
“Good,” Booger said. “Can you talk?”
“Yeah,” Glug said. His voice was small and seemed to be climbing up from his throat on broken legs.
“That’s good, you can talk. You couldn’t, wouldn’t be any good to me or my man here. What we want is some information. In case your man Stitch calls. We want to be ready to do whatever we need to do. You’re kind of like our little inside mole.”
“He won’t call,” Glug said.
“No?” said Booger.
“No.”
“And why is that?” Booger said. “That don’t seem like good manners, saying you’re gonna call, then not calling.”
“Because he’s playing his games.”
“You’re playing games too,” Booger said. “And I got to tell you, me and Cason here, we ain’t good sports. We don’t play to lose, and we sure don’t like to play when we don’t know we’re playing. But if we’re in, hey, we’re playing for keeps. Know what I’m saying?”
“They’re nuts. I play for the money. But they’re nuts.”
“Tell us about the money,” I said. “And tell us about who they are.”
“You don’t understand. It’s the money to me, and they like money fine, but they like this game they play. I’m just a man for hire. For them, it’s a whole different thing.”
“Them being Stitch and the supposedly dead whore Caroline?” Booger said.
“Yeah,” Glug said.
Booger looked at me. “Told you she was alive, bro. I am one smart motherfucker, give me that.”
“I give you that.”
“You didn’t know that, did you, bro, that I’m a smart motherfucker?”
I told him the truth. “No. I knew you were smart, but not like this. I didn’t know that.”
“You’re finding out all kinds of things about me, aren’t you, Cason?”
“I am,” I said.
Booger walked around behind Glug and touched his head a couple of times with the phone book, made Glug jump a little. “I’m thinking, without even asking a question, I might just swat you for the fun of it, pilgrim.”
“I’ll answer,” Glug said. “You ask, and I’ll answer.”
Booger clapped his hand on Glug’s shoulder, and Glug startled like a rabbit. “Oh, hell, I know that. I’m just talking about what I might do because I want to do it. There ain’t no other reason behind it than an urge. You ever get an urge, my man?”
Glug didn’t know how to answer that question, so he gave a statement. “Whatever you want, man. Whatever you want.”
Booger looked at me. “He wants what I want, bro. Ain’t he agreeable?”
“He is,” I said.
“What we want,” Booger said, “and I believe I can speak
for my bro here, is some no-bullshit answers. No cleverness. No hesitation. You hesitate, and you meditate horizontally. So, what we want is to know where…” Booger turned to me. “What’s her name again?”
“Belinda,” I said.
“He wants to know where Belinda is. And if he wants to know, so do I. What me and him got going here is what they call one of them hive minds. He thinks it, I think it. That’s how we’re playing this. You understand?”
Glug nodded.
Booger turned to me, said, “Ask your question, bro.”
“I want to know where she is,” I said, “and I want to know what this is all about. I want to know everything, and I want it in a nutshell, and pretty damn quick. But mostly, I want to know where Belinda is.”
“She’s all right until the morning, ten a.m.,” Glug said.
“What happens then?” I said.
“Stitch pops the nigger.”
I thought about that a minute. “Judence?”
“That’s him,” Glug said.
“Why?” I said.
“He likes games, and there’s the money he’s getting.”
“And what do you get?”
“Money, sometimes a little poontang, depending on how Caroline is feeling. Mostly she’s just banging Stitch, but sometimes, she’ll do me a favor. She can make you crazy, way she acts.”
“Who’s giving Stitch this money that you get a piece of?”
“That white preacher,” Glug said. “The one on TV.”
“Reverend Dinkins?” I said.
“Yeah, him.”
“You got a real name other than Glug?” I asked.
“Gregore,” he said.
“What kind of fucking name is that?” Booger said. “Don’t hunchback assistants have that name?”
“That’s my name.”
“Well, it sucks,” Booger said.
Coming from a man who preferred to be called Booger, I wasn’t sure exactly how to take that.
Booger hauled off and hit Glug with the phone book in the back of the head, knocking him out of the chair, hitting him so hard he went smooth out.