God Is a Bullet (22 page)

The street is empty save for a few stragglers going about the night. An occasional car or truck sprays rain onto the sidewalks. He dials again, gets thrown back in his face a flatline of unanswered clicks.

He looks up the street where the mist seems to come up off the cement like coal gas. He spots a lone figure moving out toward him from the far sidewalk.

Bob starts up the street. The isolated figure shapes up in the light-pool from a pawnshop window. Bob sees it’s Wood. He stays to his side of the street, but gets close enough so he and Wood are just two empty lanes apart.

“Headcase wanted me to tell you she’s going a little night-skying with us.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Night-skying—witches’ mountain shit. The making of the dead.”

“Where is she?”

“Over the hill and through the woods to Grammy’s house …”

Bob begins to cross the street.

“It’s best not to cross.” Wood holds up his hand, making like a marionette. “Go on back to Appalachia or whatever white-trash penal colony you escaped from. And things will be cool. You shouldn’t a been following us. It doesn’t look good on your résumé.”

Bob keeps coming. Wood angles a few steps back. An alley begins to open up behind him like the cave for Ali Baba.

“If she’s blowing me off I want to hear it from her.”

“Sorry, no prerecorded messages …”

Bob keeps coming. A cab runs the road, raising a wave of street rain against him. Wood steps back and, like an actor at the end of showtime, takes a bow. The mist flues out the alley and fills the night around him. A black and silver sprite, Wood traffic-cops up his hands and with the red padding in the palms wet and dull and the white circled anarchist’s
A
wet and shiny, he screams out, “Judgment!”

He is gone as fast as Bob can charge forward. The alley is a dead blind, and Bob stops. He listens for a bootfall or a voice but there is only the steel dirge of the storm along the rooftops and gutter tins. One or two window lights from above and down the alley do nothing to improve the view.

Bob readies the cattle prod and pistol for the walk forward.

His feet hardly lift as he starts into the alley. The water runs over the ankle of his boots. His breath runnels through his nose like sandpaper. He flashes on that CHP poster by the bar, with the face hidden behind a gun.
IS TODAY THE DAY?
He draws up the pictures of Sam and Sarah and even those of little Polly Klaas. The unwilling dead breathe fire into the willing and alive.

“If anything happens to her,” he shouts, “I swear to you, I swear, do you hear me …”

A moment later one of those window eyes blinks in a blind’s move.

“Go fuckin’ back …”

He is shocked to hear Case’s voice.

“Case?”

“Go on back, Bob …”

He can’t tell if her voice is coming from street level or higher up. There is a hollow ring to it as it waves from one wall to the other.

“Where are you?”

“Just go back! It’s alright …”

At the end of the alley, sixty feet back, is a ten-foot-high brick wall with barbed wire curled across the top and held in place by metal rods.

“Just let me see you.”

He listens hard but she doesn’t answer. Within moments, somewhere beyond that brick wall a car engine turns over.

“Case …”

Something hisses near a Dumpster beside him.

He jerks around. There’s a rush of boot metal, and a pinwheel of sparks comes flying at his face. He tries to block it with the cattle prod.

He watches the next seconds in half frames. Something red and dynamite-shaped ricochets off his wrist. He jumps back, chased by a tearing jolt that sends burning white-hot rays up his arm and across his eyes. He smells the slicker as it starts to singe. Blinded, he fires a shot off without the slightest hint of an aim. He stumbles over a rut into the mist and lands with his back against a prop of rotting boards. He stops breathing, clenches his teeth. He torques out for the fight he can’t see but knows will come. A woman, somewhere high up, has begun to yell in Spanish. A figure leaps over Bob flashbulb fast, cutting the mist in half. Bob hacks at it with the cattle prod, which hits a piece of metal railing and sends out a fireline of sparks. The red flare lies guttering through the haze beside Bob, lighting the ground around him. He pulls himself closer within the folds of his coat, scrabbling sideways to become a harder target. The figure
leaps out through the mist again, and he rakes the air with the cattle prod but misses. The figure counters with a knife.

His breath rushes out of him. He feels a lit match across his chest. The figure shouts coarsely, “Couped!” It then rushes out the open end of the alley.

He sits there for minutes with the gun aimed in case the figure returns. His hand comes up to his chest, feels where his slicker and shirt have been sluiced. He struggles to his feet, his eyes begin a half turn around the alley. That woman is now watching from a window. She is pointing down at Bob and talking to someone else in the room. Bob’s legs are a little wavy, but he hurries away.

Walking back to the Dakota, with his hand inside his coat and pressed to his chest, he can feel the blood coming down his fingers. He climbs in behind the steering wheel and pulls the door shut. For a moment he rests his head on the wheel, but thinks better of it.

He pulls away, working the wheel and shift with one arm, driving the car badly for blocks till he finds a small empty lot and parks alongside a couple of Dumpsters.

He turns on the overhead light. He tries slow breathing. His hand comes out of the slicker so he can unbutton it. He sees his open palm has been imprinted with blood. Dark, with the skin behind it pale and waxen.

He flashes on Wood’s hand with the insignia sewn there. Blood brothers now, hey fucker. He takes off his slicker so he can look at the wound in the rearview mirror. He grunts as he pulls the shirt up.

His eyes focus on the fifteen-inch-long beauty mark. Done with a fine hunting blade. He flexes the lips of the wound. Long, but not too deep. A dozen sutures will hold that kiss together.

He turns off the overhead light. He lets his head ease back onto the steering wheel. Just a few minutes’ rest. A few minutes to gather his guts as best he can back in order.

Order. It used to have some position in his day-to-day existence.
Now it’s minute-to-minute, and even that is just a crowd of woes.

Fuck it. Weld that wound closed with fishing line and needle. And when that’s done dig out the shotgun and a heart full of rounds, and then get a little aggro, as they say.

Cyrus sits at a table with a view of the road in what passes for a cantina. It is in the middle of Maquila Row. A mile-long encampment of low, mean-structured factories of cinder block and tin, asbestos and sheathing. Once just the desert of Baja California Norte, it now blooms with American-owned sweatshops and semis rigged out for points of profit across the border.

The rain has stopped. Cyrus turns toward Errol, who speaks in a low, controlled, but furious tone. “I don’t appreciate waiting three days for you in El Centro. That’s bullshit. You understand!”

Cyrus listens without interest, notices across the mud lot the van parked away from the trucks and battered vehicles lined up there. Lena is sitting behind the wheel as she’s been told. But Granny Boy has gotten out and is drinking a beer. He motions to Cyrus that he’s just talked to someone on the phone and then gives him the thumbs-up.

“Are you listening to me?”

Cyrus turns to Errol, his eyes like black ash. “I hear, but I don’t necessarily listen.”

“You can do all the shape-shifting you want for that crew of yours, okay. I don’t give a rat’s ass. I don’t do charity work. I don’t give to any church. And I can’t be left sitting around waiting …”

Cyrus leans forward for a little playful confrontation.
“You want to know why I was late? We were doin’ rat patrol. We had this little pretty-pretty with us. You know I like the taste before they even have hair on them.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” says Errol.

“We were having her good when this spic came along. After I went through his wallet I saw he was some kind of mineral prospector and—”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“Don’t want to hear what? We have to keep our claws sharp, don’t we? So I test myself. Unfortunately, I end up testing myself against amateurs.”

Errol has had enough and gets up. He takes a map from his pocket and tosses it on the table. “Take a look. See if you have any questions.”

There is no shortage of disgust in Cyrus’s face as he watches Errol cross the huge room. The space is more fitting to a barn than a bar.

Errol orders another gin. The whiskey is lined up on wooden shelves. The bartender is Latin, from the far south. On the back of his hand is tattooed a pentagram. He looks at Cyrus to see if he, too, wants another drink. Cyrus nods. A couple of speakers are blaring out some homeboy Spanish version of “The Weight.” Errol makes his way back through dozens of card tables and Salvation Army reject furniture, where factory dogs play cards and talk away their lives over beer.

Errol sits, passes Cyrus his drink. “You and I have a good business. I don’t want to get into any Hunter Thompson bullshit with you. Okay?”

Cyrus is thinking that Gutter and Wood ought to be rolling in with Headcase pretty soon. Then he’ll put this yuppie swine through some real weed-crawling.

“We all keep our claws sharp,” counters Cyrus. “So don’t tell me you’re not fuckin’ with me, alright?”

“How am I fuckin’ with you?”

“The dead one.”

Errol gets a little nervous, as he doesn’t understand. “You’re talkin’ cryptic.”

“Headcase,” says Cyrus. “Maybe you’re fuckin’ with me just a little for being a few days late by telling her you’d hook us up, huh?” Cyrus’s movements are controlled and precise as he drinks his tequila, but there is fury around the bloody thunderbolts under his eyes.

“I thought maybe you’d want to bleed her a …” Errol stops. Sees this whole thing is a fuckup. That no matter what he says, it won’t go. He has touched off something and in doing so crossed over into the demon’s country. He tries to get the moment back by sliding the map across to Cyrus. “The pickup will be west of Algodones. Tomorrow night. Two mules …”

Cyrus has yet to take his eyes from Errol, and in his red shirt with cutoff sleeves and black jeans he is like some blood-stiffened hide.

Errol takes a long drink of gin. “We’re gonna get into it, and over what? That cunt. It was just …”

Cyrus folds his hands and stares thoughtfully at the face across from him.

“Are we in business or are we out?” says Errol.

“You’re a phony fuckin’ mock …” The architecture of Cyrus’s face takes on a churchman’s solace. “I know who you are,” he says.

Errol adjusts himself in his seat, anticipating the bizarreness to come. He’s seen this drill before with others. Sometimes it’s just malicious indulgence, but other times …

“Maybe you’re right, Cyrus. I’m sure I’m as phony as the next. But all I can tell you, if it wasn’t for the me’s of the world, there’d be no you.” Errol gets up, but Cyrus grabs him by the arm and forces him to hold his place.

“You got it the wrong way round. I created the likes of you. For my own pleasure. And when I’ve had enough, when I’ve watched you defile yourself enough, I will have you in
my belly. And you are dangerously close now to turning this quiet spot into the sight of a nightmare.”

Errol stands there, just haunch and flesh and now fear, but he tries to will himself through it.

Cyrus spots the beat-up white Cherokee they’ve picked up lumping over the rain-swelled potholes of the lot. He can see Case wedged in between Gutter and Wood as the Cherokee pulls around. Cyrus looks back at Errol, smiles. He lets him go. He stands. Sees Errol ease up a bit but knows he still isn’t sure.

“I’ll bet,” Cyrus says, “that for one second, even a swine flu like you was praying to that fag from Jerusalem.”

Gutter leans over so his head is right next to Case’s. “You can feel him, can’t you? The Wicked King is knockin’ on coffins.”

He says it to cut deep. She can see Cyrus staring out the window. Framed by the bar’s overhead fluorescent light, his skin looks more yellow than she remembers. She eyes Gutter watching her and Wood beside her tapping out a beat on the steering wheel. The cold silence of street wolves on the watch. Catch dogs waiting for the whip or the finger roll to call them to the kill. Suddenly time has brought her back.

Cyrus motions Wood to drive around behind the bar. Case still has the gun, and she keeps Bob’s canvas coat close around it. Wood spins the Cherokee through the lot until he comes up along the passenger side of the van and slows.

Case spots Lena in the driver’s seat talking with Granny Boy, who is leaning against the driver’s door. For a moment
her and Lena’s eyes lock. Lena slides around in the seat. Her hand, with a cigarette in it, tries to wave, but it is a poor, melancholy excuse of a move.

Case nods back.

Granny Boy comes over and leans in the window. He’s got on a perfectly grooved speed-freak grin. “Come back to the goats, huh, lost sister?”

“I’m ready for the velvet collar, Granny Boy.”

Before he can get it on, Gutter shoves Granny Boy’s face back. “Come on, Cyrus wants us to pull around the bar.”

Case notes the disquieting way Granny Boy quickly stops looking at her. The Cherokee swings around, rising and falling through potholes. The trim of the headlights makes a sweep that catches Granny Boy climbing through a cloth drape that hangs across the inside of the van.

Case picks out a pair of whitish legs lying on the green carpet spread across the van floor. Knees facing down, close together. She can’t stretch her look too hard with Wood kicking out and the van backing up, its headlights going on right in her eyes.

That trigger of desperate survival that junkies have is struck. If Gabi was alive they’d have to keep her somewhere. But talk about fuckin’ mayhem, keeping her in the back of a van as you trip the border.

Of course, it could be some doper chick they picked up on the road who’s stoned out. But it could be Gabi, the legs looked young enough, still with the baby fat on them. They were close enough to be tied. Fuck … Her head wheels are starting to cook, even fry some.