Lizardskin (22 page)

“Up to it? Not likely I’ll ever forget it. I haven’t got it figured out myself, yet. I
do
know what happened to you.”

“Yeah? What was that?”

“You got into that scrap over at Bell’s Friday? And then down the side road later—I heard you and your friends talking, I guess it’d be yesterday now? What day’s it?”

“Sunday, I think. They took my watch. I’d say Sunday.”

Blitzer pulled the sheets back and slowly levered himself onto his feet. He pulled the robe around him.

“I’ll use the facilities there, if you don’t mind me going first?”

“Not at all. You can’t remember about it, or you don’t want to right now?”

Blitzer shuffled across the linoleum, talking over his shoulder as he walked. “I gotta tell the city bulls anyway, so I’ll practice on you. Gimme a minute to drain Elmore here.”

He closed the door and left Beau speculating on the habit men had of naming their nuptials, and did women have names for theirs, or was that just a male thing? Thinking about it, he’d never met a woman who called her nuptials by name. He’d named his Captain Happy years back, around the time he first discovered it had a variety of uses, some better than others. Bucky apparently called his Elmore. Eustace called his Champion, after Gene Autry’s horse. Beau had it on good information, however, that Eustace’s wife referred to it as Trigger, because it sometimes went off unexpectedly. Myron Sugar referred to
his
as Brutus, for reasons he would not disclose, and Finch Hyam had named his Willy because that was occasionally the question, Willy having a mind of his own sometimes.

There might be something in all of this, some profound insight about life, death, and the meaning of the universe. But
he doubted it. Blitzer came back out of the bathroom and interrupted Beau’s train of thought.

“Hey, Sergeant. You know the difference between consternation and panic?”

“Can’t think of it.”

Blitzer settled into the chair and bounced a fist off his chest, clearing his throat. He had better color now, although his breathing sounded like somebody pulling a boot out of a mud puddle.

“Consternation is the first time you can’t get it up the second time.
Panic
 … is the
second
time you can’t get it up the
first
time.”

Beau’s laugh hurt his belly, and Bucky’s ended in a gasping wheeze.

“Okay,” said Beau. “This guy goes into a bar—”

“Oh, right. That’s original.”

“Guy goes into a bar, he’s got this tiny little man sitting on his left shoulder, see?”

“Tiny little guy on his shoulder, yeah.”

“Okay, so the bartender comes over, sees the little man sitting there, but, hey, he’s a bartender, you know, he’s too cool to say anything, so he asks the guy what he’ll have. The guy says oh gimme a double bourbon and branch. So the bartender pours it out, brings it over, sets it down in front of the man. Boom, this little man gets up, runs down the guy’s arm, kicks the drink over, laughs like a loon, and runs off down the bartop kicking over everybody’s drinks, pissing in the peanuts, running wild. Now the bartender sees this, they both watch, and the bartender says to the man, hey, what the hell you hanging round with a little bastard like that for?”

“I think I heard this.”

“Yeah? Well it’s almost over. So the guy says to the bartender, I’m an archaeologist, you know, and I was on this dig in the Sahara, and I found this lamp—”

“And he rubs it—”

“And he rubs it, and the genie appears and tells him he has one wish, and he—”

“He wished for a ten-inch prick.”

Beau looked at him.

“What kind of name is Elmore anyway?”

Bucky looked back at him.

“We go back for years. Elmore’s my buddy.”

“So do me and Captain Happy.… You hear the one, guy wants to tattoo his girlfriend’s name on it, her name’s Wilma?”

“Yeah. Welcome to Jamaica’s the punchline. You hear the one, two lawyers are walking down Main Street, they see this magnificent woman, a real heart-attack blonde, and one lawyer turns to the other and says, ‘Man, wouldn’t you like to screw her!’ And the other lawyer shrugs and says, ‘Outta what?’ ”

Trudy was standing in the doorway, listening. “I have one for you. You hear about the miracle baby born here last week?”

They both stared at her. “Nope,” said Beau.

Trudy brought the trays in and set them down.

“Well, it had a penis
and
a brain. What do you call a woman without an asshole? No? Divorced! One more?”

“Okay.”

“What’s twelve inches and white?”

“No idea,” said Beau.

Trudy pulled the tray-table up and handed Beau a warm wet cloth.

“Absolutely nothing. Who wants some oatmeal?”

After the trays had been cleared away and Beau had cleaned himself up in the bathroom, he managed to shuffle back to the bedside chair. He sat down in it and watched Bucky run over his cheeks with an old Schick.

“So … can we talk about this a little?”

Blitzer settled himself back into his pillows and switched off the razor. He sent Beau a sidelong look.

“I’m not really inclined to. You ever been in a situation, it gets to be a situation before you notice?”

“All the time.”

“You ever been to the Mountain Bell truckyard?”

“I’ve been past it, in the cruiser.”

“Okay. I’m the night man at the yard. Mechanical and maintenance. We got thirty-eight trucks, a coupla cherry-pickers for the lines, but mostly handivans and Vanagons. My job, I used to be a motor pool ramrod. I was motor pool chief at Da Nang from ’66 to ’68 for the Third Marines, and the 109th Tactical. You know ’em?”

“Heard of them.”

“Yeah. You in?”

“No. I tried but they four-F’d me.”

“Four-F’d you? Christ, and you a cop now?”

“Well, I used to play football. I was a pretty good middle-linebacker in Ukiah, and later I played at Cal State. Scouted by Notre Dame, too.”

“No shit! What’d they say?”

“They said, what the hell
is
that boy doing?”

“Yeah. Tough. What was it, your knees?”

“The knees, yeah. I was at Fort Ord, the docs asked me to do a couple of things, stair tests. They could hear my knees clicking across the hall. Sounded like a jar full of nails, they said. That was the end of my military career.”

“What I heard, you done your share right here at home. I never fired but one shot in anger, and that was during Tet. Tet, wasn’t anybody could get to a piece who
wasn’t
firing. Whole damned country went up like a frying pan fulla bees. Damned funny, I go through three tours and a whole buncha Veetnam hookers, and here I almost die in my own hometown.”

“About the fire? How much do you remember?”

“It was a bad one. I’ll never forget it. I’ll dream about it. I’m working on this oil pan. One of the guys popped it up there on the Musselshell ridge, hit a rock, up there where they’re blasting a new road outta Musselshell? God knows why.”

“I know it.”

“So most of the service vehicles are back. I’m down under in the pit, working up, got a burred bolt on the panhead. I hear this one last truck comin’ in, I think, hey who’s that? It’s late,
right? Most of the guys are in hours ago, so this one guy’s working real late.”

“They have to sign in?”

“Well, technically they do. But mostly, they just park ’em and lock ’em unless they got a problem with the truck.”

“What time’d this be?”

“Late. I’m on at eight, this was after midnight. It was the last truck in, because he hadda park it way at the far end of the lot, the rest of the trucks got all the good spots—”

He suddenly snapped forward and began to cough, pulling a sheet up into his face.

“Damn … god … damn.”

Beau had a theory about where this was going, but he didn’t want to lead a witness. He drank some juice and waited for Blitzer.

“Anyway—where was I? Whoo! Need to breathe, don’t we? Stop a guy from breathing, you get his attention right away there!”

“Spoil his whole day. I like to breathe
all
the time.”

“So—I say, hey fuck it, go back to work. Ten minutes later, the smoke alarm goes off, and I come scuttling out from under the truck. There’s smoke drifting in from the lot outside, and it sets off the alarm. If there hadn’t been a wind, we’d have lost the whole yard. As it was, I got the can and went racing out there. You could see which truck it was from the windows, ’cause they were glowing. I saw—well, shit. Anyway, I get to the last truck there, I see the way it is, flames all over the forward section. I open the rear doors and … well, that wasn’t the right thing to do. The air gets to it. Hottest part is halfway up the cab there. Front of the cab, well, there’s nothing I can do. Not a thing. If I could, I would have. You—well, the flames are real bad now. And there’s this gasoline smell.”

Beau held his peace and waited.

“I don’t know. Like airplane glue. Solvent. Something like that. So I give it up, and I’m starting to close the doors, see if that’ll slow it down, and wham! The thing just
blows up
in my face. Knocks me on my ass. I get up, race back to the phone, and call the fire department. Then I go back, and you
can see the first truck’s a goner, nothing I can do for anybody. So I get in to the one beside it, it has the keys in, and I’m backing it out when—this gets a little fuzzy here—there’s smoke all over the place now, and I’m thinking hell, if the tank goes and I’m too close … anyway, I stall the fucker.”

“I wouldn’t even have
tried
.”

“Maybe not. You—you ever seen anything like that?”

“Once. Before I was on the force.”

“Well, it’s a … and anyway, these trucks are mine. I take care of ’em. Know all about ’em. It’s my job. It’s gonna be on me, this whole fuckup. Been with Mountain Bell since my discharge. Anyway, I get it going again, get it out of the way. Smoke’s real bad now. I’m going back for the next one, I get to it, get my hand on it, open the door, and next thing I know I’m lying on my back halfway across the lane and I can hear the sirens coming and the smoke is … black. You know. Covering me. Like water coming up. I try to crawl, and the next thing I’m really sure of is I’m in a bed and there’s this cowboy standing by the bed looking down at me and saying no, he ain’t dead, or something. And there’s voices in the room, and I have this thing in my throat and I pass out again.”

“That was Tom Blasingame. He’s a friend of mine.”

“Looks like a gunfighter, some old-time marshal?”

“Yeah. That’s him. You okay now?”

“I’ll do.”

Beau was silent for a long time.

Blitzer studied him sidelong, wondering where this was going.

“The guy who died.”

“Yeah?” said Blitzer.

“His name was Hubert Wozcylesko?”

“Yeah. We called him Woz. He was an asshole but what the hell. This mean something to you, Sergeant?”

“Yeah. It does.”

Everything went pretty smoothly until he got to the elevator. Trudy caught up with him there, pushing a wheelchair with a vase of flowers in it.

“This is really a phenomenally dumb idea, Beau. Look at you, you can hardly stand up. Dr. Malawala will bust a vein when he gets here!

She jammed on the brake and swiveled the chair around, her braid flying like a whip, her bright eyes wide and full of professional disapproval. Beau liked her—she was the nicest nurse he’d met in years—but Beau had a limited tolerance for hospitals, and he had just reached it.

He pushed off from the wall and set a little weight on his leg. The muscle sent him an instant warning, strong enough to bring tears to his eyes and drain the blood from his face. Trudy reached out to hold him, but Beau caught her hand in his and held it softly.

“Trudy, am I up for physiotherapy?”

“Yes. Of course. You have about a week of it. That’s another reason why you ought to get out of your clothes and back in this chair and go back to your—”

“So what’d they expect me to do in physiotherapy?”

“You’d practice walking at the balance bars. Do some stretches. Learn to use crutches for a while.”

Beau leaned forward carefully and kissed her soft cheek. She smelled of baby powder and doughnuts, and he had a pang of feeling in his heart, sharp and sudden, saddening.

“So what am I doing? I’m walking. I’m stretching—no, never mind, honey. My mind’s made up on this. Now I’ve signed out and I’ve made my bed and folded up my little nightie and I’m all dressed and I left Mr. Blitzer all my juice, and you can take him back those flowers there. A lawyer gave them to me, and I don’t like lawyers.”

He adjusted his jeans, making room for the big Smith at his belt. The elevator door opened. The Hanrahan rumbled out of it like a bull out of a barn. She took in the scene in a moment, and her thick white face seemed to blossom into patches of red and yellow. She wheeled on Trudy.

“What
are
we doing with this patient, Nurse Corson?”

Beau started to say something, but she raised an imperious hand, pointing a finger the size of a billy club at his head. “As for you, we’ll just turn right around and—”

Beau stepped backward into the elevator, pulling Trudy and the wheelchair in with him. The Hanrahan clutched at the doors as they began to close, her coated lips stretching into a large gaping hole, baring a set of teeth as even and yellow as military tombstones. Beau reached up and gently but firmly detached her fingers from the doors. They began to close again.

“I’ll call security! You are in no position to—”

“Hey, Hanrahan,” said Beau, as the gap narrowed, “do the world a favor. Mutate now and avoid the rush. ’Bye!”

He wiggled his fingers at her as the doors closed. They could hear her voice booming down the shaft as they dropped away. Trudy looked up at the roof of the elevator and started to smile.

“Jesus, mutate now! She’s gonna be so pissed!”

“Yeah, I liked it, too. The DA used it on me last Friday. How much trouble will she give you?”

“Hanrahan? Everybody hates her. But we’re unionized, and they’re short of nurses. I’ll be okay.”