Headhunter (6 page)

The Indian moved among the tables, closing in on her.

Not ten minutes ago he had been fronted two bundles of junk. The Man had said it was the best around since the last time the Horsemen had done a sweep of the street. "But move it fast," the Pusher said. "Harness bulls get a whiff of this an' they'll kick in the door ablastin'." "Why the front?" the Indian asked. "That's not usual practice?" "I trust you, my man," the Pusher said. "Now where would a motherfucker like me be without a little trust? Just move it
fast,
my man."

The way the Indian figured it, he'd push forty-five caps and save five for the fix. Mixed with a little bouncing powder, the speedball would have him in space by eight. It had been at least a month since he had done a borderline fix and his heart was beating fast.

Tonight would be the night. As soon as he moved the bundles.

"My man," the blond whispered as soon as the Indian came within earshot. "Am I glad to see you."

Her face was twitching like dead matter coming alive.

"Sorry to disappoint you, blondie, but I couldn't score."

But it was just the old pusher joke, getting off on the interplay of hope and anxiety on a junkie's face, tasting the feel of power, the power to give or withhold, then opening his mouth a little bit to reveal the balloon behind rotting teeth, reveling in her sigh of relief as he said, "Oops, my mistake. I had some all the time. You got a place?"

The blond shook her head. "Not near here. Fix me, my man, fix me. Then just let me split."

"You want one or two, lady? It's seventy-five a hit. This is de-e-e-lux goods."

There was a slight flicker in the blond's eyes, but that didn't matter. She was in no position to balk.

The blond nodded twice.

"Meet me out back in five," he said. Then the Indian turned away.

It was at that moment that they both saw the black man who had just walked in through the door. His shoulders were thick, usurping the space where his neck should have been, and his chest strained the material of his blue denim shirt. He wore wide bell-bottom blue trousers without a belt which looked as though any second they'd be down around his ankles. Under the edge of his white toque peeked a receding hairline. His face was round and he sported a pencil-thin moustache on his upper lip. The man was weighed down with jewelry: several gold chains in the hair of his chest, eight small rings on his manicured hands, a single stud in his left ear. Judging from his look, however, there was little chance that even in this part of town anyone would try to take them off him.

The Indian blinked at the man who nodded toward the back door. Then the black turned on his heels and left by the front. The Indian slipped among the tables and went out through the rear.

When they were gone, the blond stood up and quickly made her way to the back of the pub. As she entered the hall leading to the washrooms a man of about fifty with running pimples all over his face slipped a hand between her thighs. She pushed him away and entered the women's room.

The room stank.

There was the smell of urine everywhere and three separate puddles where people had puked on the floor. A soiled Kotex floated in one of the puddles. The only window was open to the alley as if the smell of garbage would somehow freshen the air.

The blond entered the toilet cubicle that was directly beneath the window. The seat was missing from the toilet. She stood up on the edge of the porcelain bowl and peeked out through the window.

For less than a minute the woman watched the black man and the Indian talking. They exchanged something. Then they turned away from each other and walked in opposite directions.

Once they were gone from sight, the blond climbed down, took out a pen and a matchbook, and began to make some notes.

5:40 p.m.

From somewhere out there came the squeal of wheels on rails and the smash of train cars being shunted. From somewhere else came the sound of a foghorn lost on the edge of the harbor. For now the fog had come rolling in from the sea, swallowing up the physical world and disembodying its sounds. For the month of October, the weather was back to normal.

The railroad hut sat on the edge of the National Harbors' Board property, twenty feet from the Pacific Ocean and several thousand yards from the western terminal of the Canadian Pacific Railway. It was here in a synapse now shrouded with vapor that four thousand miles of rail linked up with the shipping routes of the Pacific Rim. Here was the reflex ganglia of the country's nervous system.

The man who sat at the single window of the railroad hut was smoking yet another cigarette. It was an Export A, no filter. He was one of those men who are politely described as being corpulent. His beer belly pushed out the front of his suit, permanently stretching the leather of his belt out
of
shape. The butt of a Smith and Wesson .38 stuck out from the top of his pants.

He turned at the sound of the door behind him being opened.

It was the blond from the beer parlor.

"I think I'm onto something," she said. There was excitement in her voice.

"Yeah?" the man replied with no emotion in his tone.

"Problem is I might just blow my cover getting to it."

As she spoke, the woman removed two No. 5 gelatin capsules from the pocket of her jeans. She walked over to
a shelf on one side of the hut and picked up an envelope, then she sealed the caps inside it and marked the exhibit with her name, her Regimental Number, the date and the designation 56 C. In an RCMP undercover drug operation each person the operative scores from is given a number. Their picture then comes down from the target board and goes up as a hit. The letter "C" in this case indicated that this was the blond
's
third buy off this particular hit.

"Outrageous price," the woman said, handing the envelope over to her cover man. He put it in an "E" exhibit pouch. Then the blond sat down by the heater near the
door
and began making notes in a large black court book.

"You said you were onto something," the man reminded her. Again without emotion.

She looked up. "Before the buy, 56 made connection with this black dude in the alley. He had that swagger of the
nouveau riche,
you know what I mean? Flaunted jewelry. Arrogant air. That sort of shit. I think he's one step up and probably a link. I'd like to go after him and forget single cap sales."

"Well you can't," the man said, bitterly. "Spann, you've been pulled."

"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked, frowning.

The man grunted and lit another cigarette. His fingers were dark orange from nicotine stains.

"What do you mean 'pulled'?" the woman asked again.

"Clean up. Fuck off. Report to Heather Street. They just sent word down you made the Headhunter Squad."

The woman tensed, involuntarily. Now her heart was pounding fast.

"It should have been me-, lady. It should have been me." Then he turned back to the window to stare out at the fog. "Write out notes on this big connection before you go. Give me something to do."

"Yeah, sure," the woman said, almost in a daze. Then she added very quietly, "Who do I report to?"

Snorting, the Corporal turned slowly from the window. On his face there was a faint sardonic smile.

"The news is big, Spann. About as big as it comes. Chartrand, our bloody Commissioner, is bringing back Robert DeClercq."

Eyes

New Orleans, Louisiana, 1957

Jazz was in the streets, and it wafted up on the warm night air, a musical mix of ragtime and bop and boogie-woogie and swing, drifting up over the heads of the Mardi Gras revelers snaking through the French Quarter, up over the mingle and jumble of rich and poor, of black and white, of priest and libertine, up, still up over the surging crowd of people lined eight deep, some on scaffolds, some on stepladders, some on the tips of their toes. The music rose over the parents who sipped pink liquid from hurricane glasses as they pushed and shoved their children to the front of the line, children munching on peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs and apples-on-a-stick, everyone shuffling through a carpet of confetti and broken bottles. The jazz rose up over the sea of costumed masked revelers infiltrating the crowd, the "He-Shebas" dressed in drag as butterflies and snails, a King Kong here, a Zigaboo there, the Queen of Hearts and a fig-leafed Adam and Eve. Away from "the Big Shot of Africa" and the Zulu King's retinue, away from a one-eyed cyclops, away from the white leather cowboy garbed in front and bare-ass naked behind, up and away from Royal Street with its banners and its streamers, up until the jazz slid softly through the wrought-iron balcony where the black girl stood at the window.

The black girl was naked.

Crystal stood with her back to the room, swaying, her breath quietly hissing through white, even teeth. A trickle of sweat ran down between her shoulder blades toward the small of her back. As her body was still tingling with the aftershock of orgasm, the fireworks that exploded over the city seemed to explode in her head. She felt good. Secure. For just a moment she wondered if her father would turn his sexual advances on her younger sister now that she was gone. Then she managed to push the thought aside since it spoiled her mood. From fifteen feet away, Elvis begged her,
"Don't be cruel."
Crystal smiled and slowly rocking, began to sing along.

"You want some of this?" a voice asked, louder than the radio. "It'll ice the top of your head."

Crystal turned from the window and walked over to where Suzannah sat at a glass table chopping up cocaine. The razor blade cut through the powder and tapped on the glass to the music. Finished, the white woman put the blade down and picked up a crisp $100 bill, rolling it into a tube and handing it to the girl.

Crystal plugged one nostril and put the tube to the other. Leaning over the table, she inhaled the drug. Then she switched hands and sniffed cocaine into her other nostril. During the process, she felt a hand cup one of her breasts. The nipple puckered.

"That ought to cool you, honey," Suzannah huskily whispered into her ear. The woman's other hand slipped up between the girl's thighs.

Crystal shuddered, uncertain whether it was Suzannah's touch or the spreading effect of the snow. But she didn't care, for all that mattered was the warm shiver tingling through her body. After a while she closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the woman.

Suzannah laughed and said, "Better watch that. Crystal dear. Pussy is addicting."

Then the woman turned her back on the girl and herself bent over the table. She ran the bill around the glass and sucked up most of the powder. Finished, she wet her index finger and washed it across the surface, completing the ritual by rubbing its tip around her gums.

Suzannah was a woman who dripped sexuality. Twenty-eight years old, she stood five-foot-ten in her bare feet and had a luscious figure. Her head was shaved bald, and she too was naked. As Suzannah bent over the table, from behind her Crystal could see six small gold rings piercing the labia and glittering among the hairs of the woman's crotch.

Suzannah straightened up. Pinching her nostrils several times as she sniffed in deep breaths of air, she glanced up at the. Gustav Becker clock ticking on the wall. The time was 11:33. She turned to Crystal and said: "We haven't much time, dear, until our guest arrives. He'll be here in an hour."

Frowning, Crystal walked over to the window. At the end of the side street, where it intersected with Royal, she could see the parade of floats and, for a moment, even the figure of Comus holding his goblet high. The crowd cheered as he went by, swept away as if caught up in a surging tide. Crystal sighed.

"Must we miss the party?" she asked.

"Sweetheart," the woman said softly, her eyes now glazed and her face flushed by the cocaine's effect, "you must realize that some things are more important than others. Like this man tonight. He is
very
important
for us."

Crystal nodded absently, suddenly feeling the jittery intoxication of the drug. Her face felt frozen and there was no sensation in her teeth. When she looked down at her chest it seemed as though her heart was beating wildly in an effort to break free, each tick of the clock vibrating this room into sharper focus.

The room would have been similar to any other rich, elegant parlor in New Orleans were it not for the walls. To Crystal, it was eerie to have so many empty eyes watch her every move. Suzannah had decorated this half of the upper floor of the ancient Lafon house entirely in antiques. Most of the furniture was by the cabinetmaker Prudent Mallard, immense, ornate, and Victorian. Though Mallard had used carved rosewood, Suzannah had used the masks.

There were more than a hundred different masks covering the walls.

On the wall opposite the window were the masks of Africa: an Oule Mask from Bobo and a Senufo Fire-spitter; a Nalindele Mask and an Ashanti Fertility Head.

On the wall to the right of the window were hung the masks of the Near and Far East: a Mummy Mask from Egypt and a Roman Mask of Pan; a Japanese Gigaku and a Chinese T'ao t'ieh Face.

In the wall to the left of the window there were three closed doors, and around the jambs, framing them, were the masks of America: a Death Mask from the Inca and a Salish Spirit Mask; a Six Nations Iroquois False Face and a Hopi Katchina Doll.

And on the window wall were the modern masks. To the left of the pane was a Beelzebub by Theodore Benda and a German Executioner's Mask. From above it leered a Corbel

from England, a Creon Mask from Stratford, a Death's Head Hussars Busby. While to the right hung a New York Yankees' catcher's guard, a World War I gas mask and a shroud from the Ku Klux Klan.

Out beyond the window were the masks of Mardi Gras.

Catlike, Suzannah padded across the floor and began to stroke Crystal's hair. Together they watched the parade.

"What does all this
mean?"
  Crystal asked. "That's what I'd like to know."

"Mean? It doesn't
mean
anything. It's just something you feel. You let yourself go."

Crystal closed her eyes, moving her head in time to the stroking of her hair. It felt so good.

"You see," Suzannah added, "Carnival appeals to a basic human urge. Almost everyone has the desire hidden within them to occasionally don a mask. There is
no
culture in-history in which masks have not played a part." Suzannah whispered, "Come with me."

Together they walked to one of the doors set into the wall to the left. The woman swung it open and they entered the bedroom beyond.

This was a room in conflict, a riot of red and black. The walls were of red satin, the curtains of red velvet, the spread draped across the bed a red patchwork quilt. The carpet, however, was black. The furniture—a dresser, a wardrobe and a mirrored washstand—was of black ebony and onyx. And attached to each of the four posts supporting the canopy bed were chains and handcuffs of forge-blackened steel.

Suzannah crossed to the washstand and sat down on its chair. As she picked up a jar of makeup, she was staring at her own face in the mirror, thinking the reflection was showing signs of age. The small creases at the corners of her full mouth and green feline eyes had been there last week. The lines on her forehead had not. Concerned, she rubbed one hand across her shaved head, noting the blue veins that spread like fingers reaching up from her temples, counting the pulse-rate at which her heart pumped blood.

Suzannah opened the jar of stage makeup and began to blacken her eyelids. Spreading the grease with her index fingers, she worked the shadow in a narrowing slit around the sides of her head. Then she cleaned her hands with cream and began chalking her entire face white. As she did this, her eyes seemed to sink further and further back in her head. Fascinated, Crystal sat down at the foot of the bed and watched.

When she had finished, Suzannah painted her fingernails a bright scarlet red—the same color as the satin walls of the bedroom. Then fanning her hands to dry the lacquer, she turned to the girl and said: "You and I, Crystal, we have a lot in common."

"We do?" the girl said, surprised.

"Well, of course. That's why I asked you here. A few years ago, after I got rid of my husband, I did just what you've done. I too escaped down the Mississippi River. Only I made a mistake. Whereas you were smart enough to get a job in a laundry, I spent half a year removing my clothes in a sleazy Bourbon Street strip joint. It was awful!"

"You were married?" Crystal said, surprised again.

"Yes, dear. We lived at the top of the world. But let's not talk about that. The man turned out a bum. Oh he was tough on the outside, shiny buttons and all, but inside where it counts he was a sniveling little boy—lost and living in the shadow of his father. In fact, love, he was the
last
man to lay a hand on me. But I took care of him. He doesn't matter now."

"When were you divorced?" Crystal asked with interest.

"Divorced? We were never divorced. The man just died. That was Christmas Eve, 1955."

Suzannah stood up and crossed to the dresser and pulled open one of the drawers. From it she removed a pair of sheer stockings, then carried them back to the washstand. As she walked her breasts swayed, her shoulders softly rolling to keep them moving. Crystal stared transfixed.

"Good coke, eh?" the older woman said.

"Can I have some more?"

"Later, dear. This stuff is stronger than you think. Believe me."

Suzannah sat down on the chair and raised one of her legs to pull a stocking on.

"Do me a favor, love. You see that drawer second down? Open it and bring me one of the scarlet ones."

Crystal moved to the dresser drawer and pulled it open. Inside, it was filled with wisps of lace and nylon, all of them black or red. The girl removed the tiniest of garter belts and brought it to the woman. Suzannah fastened it around her waist, tethering the stocking tops with two snaps at each thigh. Then she looked up.

"How do I look, sweetheart?"

"Stunning!" Crvstal said. She was beginning to shiver her throat suddenly dry. She tried to wet it by swallowing, but all she got was a taste of bitterness running down her throat from her nose.

Suzannah stood directly in front of the girl. Her suspenders ran like blood-red transversal lines down to the white of her thighs. Crystal could hear the material rasp ever so softly.

"Do you understand, love, how men make women whores? You can see them in every city, every house, every office building. Well, it makes me sick. Women like I was, stripping in clubs and letting men ogle their tits and ass. Millions of women sitting on their fannies adding up figures or typing words. Women working in laundries and washing dishes. You want to know a secret, love? Just between you and me? Each day those women peddle their ass for peanuts—never once realizing that there is a market just waiting to be tapped. A market where women can get back their own."

Suzannah flicked her eyes at the clock. The time was 12:09.

Turning from the girl, she walked over to rummage in the wardrobe and remove a set of clothes. She carried the outfit over to the bed and set part of it down on the quilt. Then as Crystal watched, Suzannah wiggled her body into a black leather corset.

This corset was cut low in the front to accentuate her cleavage. It ended just above her groin. Two leather straps ran from the armpits up to her neck where they fastened to a black studded collar. The sides of the garment were stitched with red laces, the bodice cut in circles to reveal her nipples. To complement the corset, Suzannah pulled on two shoulder-length black gloves also stitched in red, and snapped them to the collar. The fingers of the gloves had been sliced off, and revealed her scarlet nails. Then she pulled on a pair of spike-heeled, red-laced, knee-high boots and picked up a thin-lashed leather cutting whip. The handle of the whip was decorated with a pretty blood-red ribbon tied in a large bow.

Returning to the washstand, Suzannah removed a flat bottle of rouge from its onyx surface. She held the container out to Crystal and said: "Would you color my nipples while I paint my mouth?" Shivering, the girl nodded.

When they had finished, Suzannah bent over and sucked on Crystal's breasts until both tips were hard buds. Dipping a finger into the makeup, she slowly rouged each nipple until it was a brilliant red. Then with one hand she took the girl's face in her fingers and looked deeply into her eyes. The bow on the end of the whip brushed Crystal's cheek.

"Men are swine, lover,
please
remember that. You and I are linked by what we have in common. I was also raped by my father."

Crystal blinked, her eyes locked with the woman's, unable to break away.

"Yes, dear. You are not alone. And believe me—
no
man will ever hurt you in
my
house. You're safe here."

"How did it happen to you. Please tell me. I want to know."

Suzannah sighed. "All right," she said. "I was born on a vineyard in the south of France. In 1934—when I was five—I was sent to school in Paris. During the War my father collaborated with the Vichy Government. He was a traitor. Anyway, in 1941 my parents called me home. By then the Germans were in Paris and they thought me safer on the family estate."

"You lived under the Nazis!" Crystal exclaimed, wide-eyed.

"Yes, dear. But they weren't my problem. Near the end of the War my father started drinking heavily. And he beat my mother up. By then the Allies had landed and the Germans were retreating. My father was living in fear of reprisals for his collaboration.