Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille (13 page)

Fred came up a moment later. He said, “I got her.”

“Her?”

“I’ve seen her before. I don’t know where.”

My heart and stomach did an amazing series of quick acrobatics. “Souci?”

“No, I’d remember her.”

“Ah. We need to get help for Rich.”

He shook his head. “Too late, Billy.”

“No, he—” I looked at him. He was no longer breathing. “Damn,” I said, my voice quivering.

I think he may have had more hats than anyone I knew. Three top hats (two black, one grey), a bowler, three leather caps and one woolen cap, and others. The one I remember best was a brown leather cap, with a snap. I don’t remember anything else that was going on that day, or even where we were, but I remember Eve kept pulling the cap down over Rich’s eyes, while he tickled her. I remember his big crocodile grin.

He had a strange fascination for the sounds people made during lovemaking, which was his biggest failing as a housemate. He would not only fill you in on what your other housemates had been up to, but what he thought of the sound effects you and your lover had made last night.

One Christmas we were in London, and the bomb scare was very real, so we didn’t dare leave. Rich brought the motorcycle into the dining room and decorated it with bulbs and lights and strings of popcorn. At midnight on Christmas we killed all the other lights in the place and he turned on the emergency flashers.

He had a nasty, unpredictable temper, but he always seemed gentle.

He spent a great deal of time thinking up ways to get rich. He very badly wanted to be wealthy. Now he never would be.

“Let’s go, Billy.”

“We can’t leave him.”

“You want to explain all this to the cops?”

I shook my head. Fred helped me to my feet. He took Rich’s .38 and put his own Beretta in Rich’s hand. “It might fool them,” he said. “At least for a while.”

I nodded and took a last look at Rich, sitting with his back to the wall like he was resting, Beretta in his hand. My ears began to pound as I turned away.

We made it back to the apartment without being stopped, although about halfway there we started hearing sirens, so we took a longer, more circuitous route. Tom and Jamie and Rose were all there.

As we walked in the door, Jamie said, “What is it?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I realized that I wasn’t wearing a shirt, but that I was still holding the bloody bundle in my hand. Fred took it, said, “I’ll be back in a moment.” He walked out.

“What the hell happened?” said Jamie.

The phone buzzed. I stared at it, wondering if it could be Souci, and I felt a flash of cold, black rage that I would want it to be, that I could think of her at a time like this. I marched over to the phone and picked it up—at least in part in order to avoid speaking with Jamie. If it had been Souci, I don’t know what I would have said to her. But it wasn’t.

“Billy!”

“Yeah, Libby?”

“Where’s Fred?”

“Fred is fine. He stepped out for a few minutes.”

“Okay. The police were just here. About Rich. They said he’s—”

“Yeah. I was there. How’s Eve?”

Libby shook her head. “They’ve sedated her and taken her to the hospital.”

“Damn.”

“Are you and Fred going to be all right?”

“Yeah.”

“The cops are on their way over to you now.”

“Thanks for the warning. Any idea who shot him?”

“The girl who was in here with Carrie. Danielle.”

“I remember. The photographer.”

“Was she? That’s funny, so was Rich.” There were traces of tears at the corners of Libby’s eyes.

“Thanks for the warning,” I said again. “I’ll see you later.”

Fred came in as I disconnected. I said, “That was Libby. The police have been there.”

Jamie said, “Would someone please tell me—”

“Rich is dead,” said Fred.

Jamie stared. “Oh, man.”

Rose sat down. Tom’s mouth dropped open. At that moment someone knocked at the door. I opened it and found myself face-to-face with the light grey uniform of the New Quebec Municipal Police Force, or the Munis, as they were called.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Kevely. Do you remember me?”

“Um, vaguely. Sergeant Iverness?”

“Yes. May we come in?”

“Certainly. Please.”

“Thank you. This is Officer Devenois. I believe I’ve met all of you before.”

“Sit down.”

“Thank you.” His eyes fell on the shotgun by the window and his eyebrows rose.

“It’s mine,” said Jamie. “There are no laws against it, are there?”

“No. Not yet, at any rate. Is that also yours?”

Jamie followed his glance to the .357 Magnum on the counter.

“Yes.”

“You like guns, eh?”

“Big guns,” agreed Jamie.

“I see.” He turned back to me. “Do you know why we’re here?”

“I just got off the phone with Libby down at Feng’s, and I’ve just passed the word on to my friends.”

His mouth tightened. “Indeed? She wasn’t supposed to call you.”

“Oh. Are you sure she understood that?”

“Hmmm. Perhaps not. Well, I’d like to question each of you separately. Is there a place we can do this, or need we go to the station?”

“No,” I said. “My room will work, I think.”

“Excellent. We’ll start with you.”

I led him back to the room. His eyebrows rose when he saw my knife and harness. He looked a question at me, but since he didn’t actually ask it, I didn’t see a need to answer. He began asking questions and I answered them as best I could. I lied a lot. I think he knew it, but he didn’t bring me down to the station, so that was good enough for me. I was very exhausted when he finished with me and started on Jamie.

After a long time they left, and we stared at each other. “Wow,” said Jamie. “They get anything from you?”

I shrugged.

“Rich,” said Rose, her eyes wide. “And poor Eve.”

“I know,” I said.

Tom said, “What happened?”

“We were attacked,” said Fred.

“They were trying for me,” I said.

“They’ll try again, you know,” said Tom.

“I know.”

“I’ll stay with you,” said Jamie.

I said, “Are you sure your attention can be spared from—never mind.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter. Look, I’ve got to sleep, all right?”

I felt curious eyes on me, but no one said anything.

I went off to my room, but I didn’t sleep until almost morning.

It started simply enough, as always.

Her father said, “Libby, find the quarter-inch wrench for me,” and she went off to do it. The workbench had been a strange and wonderful place when she was younger, and even now, at fourteen, there was a certain fascination. She looked around for the wrench but didn’t see it. While looking, her attention was captured by a red box, with three wires coming out of it and a dial in front. One of the wires had a dull needle-like thing at the end.

She wondered at its purpose. Her first idea was that it had to do with testing car batteries, but she had seen her father do that, and he didn’t use this thing. It obviously had something to do with electricity. She wondered what would happen if she stuck the needle into a socket, but decided that it would probably be a bad idea.

The other two wires, one red and one black, had clips at the end. She attached one clip to the handle of the clamp, the other to the workbench, and began gently touching the needle to the saw, the wall behind the workbench, one of the nail jars, the—She was grabbed from behind and swung around. Her father slapped her on top of her head, hard, and the box fell onto the floor.
Good. I hope it’s broken
, she thought.

“I told you to get the wrench, not play with every tool I own.” He slapped the back of her head hard enough to make her teeth rattle, looked around for the wrench, and finally spotted it on the paint shelf. He took her by the arm and roughly dragged her over to the shelf, took the wrench, and threw her across the garage, where she banged her right elbow painfully against the old cedar buffet.

What finally did it, she decided later, was that the wrench hadn’t even been where he said it would be. As he turned away, she grabbed the nearest thing to hand, an old push broom, and charged him. He turned around at her footsteps, and she swung, the big end catching him in the side. “Ufff,” he said, and took a step backward.

“You’re never going to hit me again,” she screamed. “I’ll kill you if you hit me again.”

He yanked the broom from her hand, snarling, and threw it off to the side. As he stared at her, she realized that she had never seen him this angry before. The thought came,
He’s going to kill me. He’s really going to kill me. I’m going to be dead, and maybe go to Hell
.

As he took his first step forward, the flight reflex took over and she was gone, into the house, slamming the door behind her. When it opened, she was down the hall. His footsteps clattered behind her like the Four Horsemen, and when she looked back she saw Death, and it was gaining on her.

She opened her bedroom door and dived up onto the top bunk, squashing herself into the corner. By accident, it was the right thing to do, because the bed was so wide and her room so small that no one her father’s size was able to get past it, and the bed was long enough that his arms couldn’t reach her, although he kept trying, like a creature out of a monster movie.

She never watched monster movies after that, but he did go away and, like all the other times, the incident was forgotten by suppertime.

Forgotten by him; never by her.

Breakfast the next morning was a portion of prepackaged pudding that the label claimed was chocolate, served with a helping of mutual quick frost from each fellow roommate to every other. But the coffee was hot and there was milk to lighten it and sugar to make it sweet. A tense stillness, a deafening quiet, made the little apartment stifling. No one spoke, no one even looked at anyone else, we just watched the walls close in.

At one point Jamie stood up, got out his Gibson six-string, and started singing. “Sir James the Rose,” but no one responded, and soon he became quieter. Presently he stopped.

What is there to say?

I slipped into my room to play my banjo, but I couldn’t manage to feel any enthusiasm for that, either, so I stopped after three or four plunks. I went through the list of things I wanted to do, mentally crossing them out as I came to the ones that broke some natural law, could get me arrested, or I was certain to regret in a few hours. When I found one that survived all of the cuts, I went back into the living room and said, “I’m for Feng’s. Anyone else?”

“I’ll go along,” said Jamie, I think figuring to protect me.

“All right,” I said, because I couldn’t think of any way to say no.

“I might as well,” said Tom, since the rest of us were. Rose was already there, waiting on tables so Fred could cook, since Eve…

Jamie put the shotgun into a canvas bag and stuck his pistol under his jacket. I took along my knife so Fred wouldn’t give me any shit about not having it. Tom had his .45.

“Should we bring our instruments?” said Tom.

“I don’t much feel like practicing,” said Jamie, which was unusual for him, but understandable. I didn’t feel like practicing, either, but I was feeling contrary. I said, “I’m bringing mine. I might not want to come back here for a while, since every time we do we have to worry about getting shot at.”

“That makes sense,” said Jamie, so we all packed up our instruments. Nothing untoward happened on the way to Feng’s, except that it was a real pain to carry a banjo all that distance. We arrived just before the dinner rush. I’d mostly skipped breakfast, and it had been several hours ago, anyway, so I ordered lamb paprikache, with spaetzle, lemon-grass soup, and an appetizer of celery root. Everyone sat down at a booth, but I was feeling antisocial, so I asked Fred to bring me my dinner in the bar. As I walked away, I felt three pairs of eyes on me.

I waited for the food and watched Libby work. I wondered if we were now something different than we’d been before last night, but Libby kept being her cheerful self, which I guessed meant not. This was almost certainly just as well.

As I sat there, Rose, in her stupid white waitress uniform, came up behind me and put her arms around me. “How’s my brother?” she said.

“Why is it, with all this great food, Feng couldn’t have found waitress uniforms that didn’t look like something out of JC-Penney’s Old People’s Sale?”

She kissed my cheek. I said, “I’m all right, I guess. How about you?”

“I’m worried about my little band.” She pronounced both
t
’s in little.

“Are you? Why?”

“I don’t know, I just am.”

“Have some whiskey.”

“I will.”

She sat down and did this.

“Are we ever going to play again?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If we get out of this alive, we might. If we all die, then probably not.”

“I do not wish to die,” said Rose, as if she had considered the matter carefully and just reached that decision.

“All right, then you won’t.”

“That is a good thing. But Jamie has to live, too.”

“All right, I’ll take care of it.”

“And we need Tom to play mandolin.”

“That’s true.”

“And Fred and Libby to bring us food and whiskey.”

“Right.”

“And Eve and—oh.” She stopped, looking stricken.

Fred arrived with my celery root. It was very tangy and had a trace of lemon in the dressing, so I suspected it would go well with the soup. Libby brought me a glass of burgundy, and it was okay.

“It seems like you’re angry at Jamie,” Rose said.

“Well, there was some stuff, but I don’t think I’m angry. I don’t know.”

“That’s good, because I’m the only one who gets to be mad at Jim.”

“I understand that now.”

“I think we need to get you a girl.”

“Yeah? Okay. Find one for me.”

“She has to be a good one, because you’re my brother.”

“Pick one out for me. I’ll trust your judgment.”

“I will. You know that girl Souci, she wasn’t very good for you.”

“People keep telling me that. I wonder if her friends are telling her the same thing.”

“You know, it isn’t any of my business, Billy—”

“Oh, go ahead and say it.”

“Well, I just wonder if you didn’t arrange for things to fall apart between you and Souci. I mean, it almost seems like—”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve thought of that, oddly enough. Maybe it’s true. It’s certainly a lot easier to be hurt than to, oh, hell with it. I’m not a shrink. Maybe it’s true. Either way, it doesn’t help.”

“I know.”

She dried the corners of my eyes, downed her whiskey, hugged me, and went back to the restaurant.

Presently Tom sat down next to me. “Did you know that James Cagney never actually said, ‘I’m gonna do to you what you did to my brotha, you dirty rat’?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “I
did
know that. And Bogart never said, ‘Play it again, Sam.’”

Libby said, “Get something for you, Tom?”

“Orange juice.”

“Coming up.”

I said, “You going to call Carrie?”

“Why? She’s a whore.”

“That’s harsh.”

“It’s true.”

“So you’re not going to call her?”

“I don’t know.”

My salad bowl vanished and my soup appeared. Yes, it complemented the salad very nicely. It went well with the wine, too, in an odd sort of way. Slurp slurp. I’m a very loud soup eater.

“It’s Justin,” said Tom. “I hate him. Did you see how he was looking at me? Like I was dirt.”

“I was pretty surprised you didn’t blow him away.

“I almost did. Right there. You know, he treats her like shit.”

“How do you know that?”

“She told me.”

“When?”

“Last night. I called her.”

“Ah. I think Libby would say you’re a pinhead.”

“Libby would be right. Billy, you ever cry about Souci?”

“Yeah. You ever cry about Carrie?”

“Yeah. If she ever found out, she’d probably be proud of herself.”

“I don’t think she would be. Souci would, though, if she knew I had. She probably guesses.”

“Yeah.”

“But I can’t help thinking she really cared about me.”

“God, are we ever pinheads.”

“Yep.”

“Are you pissed at Jamie?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Souci told Carrie and Carrie told me.”

“Oh.”

“Well, are you?”

I thought about that and tried to answer honestly. “I don’t know. I’m hurt. I’ve never been jealous before so I’m not used to it. Jamie’s my brother, I couldn’t hate him. But I don’t know. Suppose she made a pass at him. He could either say yes and feel guilty about it, or say no and feel resentful. I guess I’d rather he felt guilty than resentful. It’d help to know he felt guilty, though—at least a little.”

“He probably does, in his own way,” said Tom.

“Probably.”

“But what if
he
made the pass at
her
?”

“Then,” I said firmly, “I don’t ever want to know about it.”

After a moment, Tom said, “Man, I still can’t believe that Rich is dead. It’s like it isn’t real.”

“I know what you mean. I keep turning around, expecting him to be there. And every time I walk by his bike, it hits me again. It sure is weird how the brain works.”

“You mean how we’re bummed out about our love lives when what we’re really upset about is Rich?”

“Yeah.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Heh.”

We said nothing more for a while, then Tom wandered off into the restaurant. I finished my soup and had more wine. Jamie joined me. He had a beer, I switched to coffee. I decided I was drinking too much coffee lately.

He said, “How you doing, bror?”

“All right. I’ll live, anyway.”

“You seem kind of down.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Is it about Souci?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, look, Billy. I know her pretty well—”

“Yeah, even biblically.”

He looked at me. Then he cleared his throat. “Would you believe me if I said she isn’t good enough for you?”

“No. She good enough for you?”

“Huh?”

“Never mind.”

“How about—”

“Let’s not talk about her.”

“All right.”

The food showed up and Jamie was politely silent out of respect for my pleasure. Business in the bar picked up and then slacked off while I ate. Libby brought Jamie another beer, then leaned on the bar and said, “So, how’s it going, gentlemen?”

“All right,” said Jamie.

I said, “How’s Eve?”

She shook her head. “Not catatonic, but not responding to anything. On the other hand, she’s still sedated, so that may be part of it.”

“I hope she comes out of it,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“I wish I didn’t feel responsible for it.”

Jamie said, “Did you pull the trigger?”

“Well, no.”

Libby said, “Did you order Rich to go along? Did you even
ask
Rich to go along?”

“No.”

“Then why feel responsible?”

“Because they were protecting me. Whoever it was, was probably shooting at me, and if he’d let me get shot, he—”

“Rich figured he was doing something important. It was his choice.”

“I know.”

“If they want to kill you that badly, we’d better not let them.”

I said, “I just wish I knew why they were doing it—what their goals were. That’s what I’ve been racking my brains with and I can’t figure it out.”

Libby nodded. “Yeah. If we knew what was in it for them, it would help.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think anything is in it for them, exactly. I think they believe in what they’re doing, at least on some level.”

Jamie said, “Destroying entire populations? They believe in that?”

Libby said, “I heard a rumor today that war broke out on Mince. Nuclear war, every city on the planet. If Sugar Bear is behind it, that’s another, what, eight, nine thousand people they’ve wiped out? You think they believe that’s the right thing to do?”

“What’s Mince?” said Jamie.

“A colony world around a star somewhere between here and the Fishbait Cluster.”

I said, “From talking to Rudd, I do think they believe in what they’re doing.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Jamie. “Are they religious nuts?”

“I don’t know. He referred to the Physician, and a cure, which could be a religious reference of some sort. But I ought to have seen symbols of his religion if there was one, or heard something in what he said. I don’t know.”

“Well,” said Jamie, “let’s make a list of all the possible reasons why a group of people would want to destroy humanity, and—”

I said, “That’s a joke, right?”

“Right.”

I sighed.

Libby said, “Why does anyone want to kill anyone? It’s probably the same reason, only bigger.”

“Money figures in there pretty highly,” I said.

“So does jealousy,” said Jamie. I winced.

“Hate,” said Libby.

“Power,” I said.

“Revenge,” said Jamie.

“If we’re making a list,” said Libby, “put money in twice.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and if we’re going to mention hate, we should mention fear, like you said.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“Fear of what?” said Jamie.

“Hell if I know. Besides, they probably aren’t all like—shit.”

“What?”

I stared off into space for a moment.

Libby said, “What is it, Billy?”

“Maybe they
are
all like Souci.”

Jamie said, “What do you mean?”

I gestured to Libby. “She was telling me about hate and fear.”

“What about it?”

“That Souci got angry because she was afraid.”

“I could believe that,” said Jamie. “What about it?”

I ignored him and asked Libby, “When’s the first time you ever saw her mad?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually
seen
her mad.”

“Yes, you have. The first time you two met.”

“That was right here. You two were sitting at that table and—oh, right, she got mad and walked out.”

“Do you remember why?”

“Ummm, it was a political argument, wasn’t it? No, I remember, it was Hags disease.”

“Right. It was something that scared her so much, she got angry, because that’s what she does.”

“Well, and?”

“Maybe these people are scared about something.”

“Like what?” said Libby. “What’s going to scare someone so badly he’s willing to help destroy entire populations?”

“It’s a quarantine,” said Jamie. “They’re trying to prevent infection.”

“From what?” said Libby.

“Now that I think of it,” I said, “why not Hags disease? They had it on Earth, they still have it. It’s a one hundred percent fatal communicable disease. Isn’t that enough to scare someone?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Scares the shit out of me,” said Jamie.

“So, how do you protect yourself from a disease like that?”

Libby considered this. “To start with,” she said, “I’d pour shitloads of money into research, to find a cure.”

Jamie said, “And be as careful as you can of people you don’t know—”

“How about this?” I said. “You select a group of your friends and peers, and isolate yourselves from everyone else.”

Libby looked thoughtful, then shook her head. “I don’t think it would work. You’d need a whole planet.”

“So? They’re rich.”

“It wouldn’t work over the long run,” said Libby. “How do you ensure there isn’t any contact between you and the rest—oh.”

“Yeah. First you isolate yourselves, then you get the rest of humanity to blow themselves up.”

“A little extreme, I’d say.”

“What,” I said, “history doesn’t have any examples of nutcase fanatics?”