PIKE (13 page)

“Goddamn, motherfucker. Please. There, I said it. Please.”

“No.”

“Come on. Five minutes is all I’m asking for. I won’t even say nothing to them. Peek in through the window is all.”

“Five minutes?”

“Five minutes. Motherfuckin’ please.” He looks at Rory. “C’mon, man. Help me out here. I know you got an old lady, you know what it’s like.”

“Sure, I got an old lady,” Rory says, “She’s a good old gal. Esmeralda Muckinfuch.”

“There you go,” Bogie says. “I knew you had a good one.”

“Can’t beat her when she’s sober,” Rory says, burrowing into the seat and closing his eyes. “Just got to when she’s drunk.”

“C’mon,” Bogie wheedles, “help me out.”

Rory waves him off.

“How’s about we make a trade,” Pike says. “I let you see your kids for five minutes, you shut your fucking mouth for an hour.”

Bogie doesn’t make it an hour. He doesn’t even make thirty seconds past pulling up in front of his place, a brick townhouse in a bank of six, set back in a Corryville hill, the foundation visibly sinking. “That’s mine right there,” Bogie says. “See, they’re outdoors, all of ‘em. I ain’t even got to ring the doorbell.”

Two toddlers, mummified by their snowsuits, are waddling and kicking through the soot gray snow out front of the townhome. The sky above them like something vomited over the city. “They’re twins,” Bogie says proudly. Behind them a thin woman stands at the doorstep in a man-sized winter coat and slippers, smoking a long white cigarette. She’s blonde. Her face sags on her skull. Bogie’s face darkens. “And that’s her. Be lucky for her if I don’t cut her fucking throat and take a shit in her mouth.”

“Keep a handle on it.” Pike pulls the truck to a stop across the street from the townhouse. He rolls down the window and lights a cigarette.

Bogie rests his chin in his hand and stares out the window. “Goddamn, they’re something.” His voice breaks and tears clear trails down his filthy cheeks. “Goddamn motherfuck it. Not again.”

The woman peers at the truck, sucking on her cigarette. Then she turns around and knocks on the door and says something they can’thear. The door bursts open and two enormous men sprint out of the house, waving axe handles. “They got bigger sticks since I saw them last,” Bogie notes.

Pike steps coolly out of the truck, rests his right elbow on the hood, and levels his .357 at the closer of the two. “One more step and I’m putting a hole in you.”

They skid to a stop, the one in front hurling his stick over the truck. “Fuck y’all!” he yells, his mouth a black hole ringed with shards of teeth.

Pike smokes with his left hand. “He’s got about three and a half minutes to sit in the truck and blubber over his family. Then we’re leaving. You’re willing to get shot over it, that’s your business.”

“You don’t know what that motherfucker is,” the redneck says.

“I know exactly what he is. I know what you are, too. I can see it all over you, you redneck motherfucker.”

The redneck puts his hands on his hips and looks down at his work boots, thinking it over. Then he nods. “We won’t make no trouble.”

“I figured.”

T
he Dancin’ Bay grooves to Bruce Springsteen, the rickety metal horse over the outside entrance cantering to the vibration of the bass. Inside the air’s hot with bourbon fumes and cigarette smoke, the joint hustling and bustling with locals elbowing for position. “Goddamn,” Bogie shouts. “I love this motherfucking song!” He dashes through the door to the jukebox.

“Keep moving,” Pike says.

Bogie turns and bellows a line from the song into Pike’s face, his singing voice like a sick bull elephant. Pike takes him by the back of the neck, faces him down the bar. Bogie squirms free of Pike’s grip, turns on him. “You got no heart, man, that’s your problem. The Boss sings about real people. He cares about motherfuckers. Not like you.”

Pike looks at him. “The only time the Boss thinks about a shitheel like you is when he’s wishing all your kind had one neck. And he had his hands around it.”

“Fuck you, man. You don’t believe in nothing. That’s your problem.” Bogie pivots and heads down the bar. “Yell out if you see her,” he calls over his shoulder. “She’s about two hundred pounds. A big old nigger bitch.”

Rory smacks him across the back of the head.

“Ow. Shit.” Bogie rubs his head. “Look around you motherfucker. It’s almost nothing but niggers in here. Ain’t none of these motherfuckers care if I say nigger.”

“I might care a little bit,” says a wide black man with a patchy gray beard. He turns on his bar stool, grinning three teeth. “I might care a whole bunch.”

“Shut up, Lawrence.” Bogie whips out with a mock punch that snaps off an inch from Lawrence’s nose. “I might kick your ass.”

Lawrence slaps his knee. “Who you looking for?” he says, when he’s finished laughing.

“Chandra.”

Lawrence throws a thumb down the bar, towards the pool table. “Right there. She’s in a good mood, too, soaking a couple of young bucks out of their paychecks.”

“Told you,” Bogie says to Pike. “Hold up.” He sidesteps to the bar, pulls the cap off a glass jug of white and pink pickled eggs and fishes around, dirt and blood swirling off his filthy fist into the brine. He pulls two pink eggs out and stuffs one into his mouth, whole. Rory wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and feels a little faint.

“Goddamnit!” The bartender is a round white man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “I told you about sticking your fucking hand in there, Bogie. Use the tongs.”

Bogie swallows the egg without chewing. “Aw fuck you, Jimmy. I ain’t dirty.”

R
ory can’t disagree on one point, Chandra is big. She towers over the pool table, the cue stick like a splinter in her hands. Two black kids stand behind her. The heftier of the two wearing a Griffey jersey, rolling his cue stick in his hands like he’d like to stick it in her eye socket. His skinny buddy sipping on a beer, trying not to topple under the weight of his afro. Chandra shoots, sinking the eight ball.

“A hell of a shot,” Bogie says. “I mean it. One hell of a shot.”

Chandra picks two fives off the side of the table. “I told you not to come around me when I’m shooting. You’re bad luck, motherfucker.”

“Then you’ll admire my timing, see? You ain’t shooting now.”

Griffey’s mouth twitches into a tough guy sneer. “You a cop?”

“We ain’t cops,” Pike answers.

Griffey’s head snaps towards Pike. “Was I talking to you?”

“He’s mine,” Pike answers. “You talk to him, you’re talking to me.”

“Settle down,” Chandra says to Griffey. “They ain’t cops. Or at least Bogie ain’t. He’s most kinds of fuck up, but not that kind.”

Griffey taps his cue stick on the floor, unconvinced.

“You better have a gun,” Pike says to him. He unholsters his and thumbs back the hammer. “And you better be real quick going for it.”

Griffey’s lips twist, and for a second Rory thinks he might make a move anyway. But he tosses the cue stick on the table and stalks down the bar, his buddy wobbling unsteadily after him.

Chandra points her cue stick at Pike. “I could’ve soaked them niggers all night.”

Pike holsters his gun and picks two twenties out of his wallet. He sets them on the pool table. “Bogie?”

“We need to know where to find them Vietnam motherfuckers that hang out in the Mount Airy Forest,” Bogie says. “I heard you been up there with them.”

Chandra’s heavy lips purse. “What do you want with them?”

“We’re looking for someone,” Pike says. “One of them knows where she is.”

“Well, I hope not. I went up there with a couple of them boys one night. All they talk about is scalping gooks. And camp wives. That’s it, for almost four hours. Those are some motherfuckers that are lost in history.” She looks from Pike to Rory. “You know what a camp wife is?”

Pike nods. Rory shakes his head.

“Gook bitches they’d kidnap out of the villages. They’d keep ‘em on leashes and drag ‘em around to do their dishes and suck their dicks and shit. When they wore one out they’d shoot her in the back of the head and pull another from the next village. They started talking up that shit with me too. One of them was trying to teach me Vietnamese and I was a little stoned, having fun saying the words. I mean they’re funny sounding, with all them vowels. But then I caught one of them motherfuckers beating off while he was listening to me. That’s when I knew it was time to get the fuck out of there.”

“How’d you get away?” Rory asks.

“Oh, hell.” Chandra booms a laugh. “I ain’t one of those little gook bitches.” She pats the front pocket of her overalls. “I carry a little .38 for just those kind of motherfuckers. I popped the hammer back and stuck it in the dude’s mouth that was teaching me. I didn’t take it out of his mouth until I was standing at a bus stop heading back downtown.”

“So where do we find them?” Pike asks.

“That’s easy. They ain’t nearly as well hid as they like to think they are. There’s an entrance off West Fork Road. If you got a piece of paper, I’ll draw you a map.”

I
t’s just where Chandra put it on the map, just how she described it. A dirt lot by the side of the road. A trashcan chained to a tree and a small hidden trail winding into the snowy woods. Pike pulls a box of .357 shells out of the glove compartment and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. “Still got your gun?”

Rory pats the front of his sweatshirt.

“Don’t I get nothing?” Bogie asks. “I’m a free white motherfucking man. I know how to use a gun.”

“The only thing you’re free of is sense,” Pike says.

“Fuck you.” Bogie taps his forehead. “I’m free if I say I am. This is America.”

Pike thumbs open the wheel of the .357, checks the chambers. “Did you know that Parisians rioted when the police tried to hang street numbers on their houses?”

“What the fuck’s a Parisian?”

“Somebody who lives in Paris. A Frenchman.”

“Well why the fuck didn’t you say Frenchman? Sounds like a fucking Frenchman. Ignorant motherfuckers. How in the fuck would anybody find anybody if there weren’t no street numbers?”

“That’s what I’m getting at. Freedom’s something the French have a history of. Something dumb fuckers like you never gave a shit for at all.” Pike pushing the wheel back into the frame.

Bogie crosses his arms. “You say that again and I’m leaving. I don’t care how big you are, neither. I’ll be done with your motherfucking ass.”

Pike laughs and opens the door. He steps out of the truck and stands, eyeing the faint trail. It rises away from them through the woods upthe side of Mount Airy, then disappears as the ground banks into a ravine. He sniffs the air and catches the hint of a wood fire. “Let’s walk.”

They swat their way through the spindly branches up the hill. Pike can’t see ten feet in front of himself for the gray underbrush. He keeps his hand on his pistol, thumbing at the hammer every time one of the snow laden branches snaps or a clump of snow thuds from a tree. Then the ground starts to grade down, and the unmistakable smell of a campfire lingers in the air. Pike sidesteps down a decline to a frozen stream at the bottom and shoots a glance over his shoulder to see Rory coming, his gun tight in his gloved hand, Bogie stumbling behind, snuffling uselessly at a stream of snot. Pike hops the creek.

Something moves in his peripheral vision, a blur. He swings his .357 up, left, right. Thunk. An arrow, buried in the snow, not a foot in front of him.

“Drop the gun,” a thick voice calls from the trees. “The next one goes in your neck.”

Pike drops his gunhand and holds the other back at Rory and Bogie to keep still. “Who are you?”

Short breaths. Catching like somebody trying to keep a steady aim. “Drop the gun,” the voice repeats. And with it, a glimpse of red, flashing off to the side of a large Scotch pine. Pike blasts a .357 slug into the tree, the report like an avalanche crack. Bark flies and a man shrieks and falls from behind it, clutching his eyes and squirming in the snow. His compound bow dropping beside him like a disseparated wing, four broadheads standing out of the arrow rest.

Pike sets the red bandanna in his gunsights. “Go get the bow, Bogie.”

Bogie’s face drains of blood. “What if there’s more of them?”

Pike keeps his .357 steady. “Superior firepower.”

“This outlaw shit’s getting out of hand,” Bogie mutters, creeping up the incline on all fours. He snatches the bow off the ground and scrabbles beastlike out of the man’s reach. Nothing shoots at him, nothing comes after him. He stands and struts back to Pike.

“Now you’re armed,” Pike says. He walks to the man, who lies face-down on the ground, and crouches beside him. He grabs his neck behind the jaw, pins his face to the ground. “There more of you?”

The man tries to nod in Pike’s grip.

“Where?”

“The top of the bank. Jesus, my eyes are bleeding.”

Pike rolls him over. He’s right. His eyes flutter open at Pike, the balls bloody red and blasted with nicks and scratches. He can’t keep them open. “I’m gonna kill you,” he hisses at Pike. “I’m gonna get my eyes clear and I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna shoot you fucking dead and I’m gonna scalp you.”

Pike cocks the hammer on his .357 and it clicks home, loud. “See the fix you’re talking yourself into?” Pike says.

The man lets loose a phlegm-choked sob. He stops talking.

Pike pats him on the shoulder and stands. “Good boy.” He waves at Bogie and Rory. “Let’s go.”

T
wo men sit on rocks in front of a firepit in a clearing at the top of the other side of the ravine. Both white and rawbone skinny, one of them wearing a Fu Manchu mustache, the other a beard, sipping delicately from bottles of Black Label beer, watching the fire. A cooler sits between them, a syringe and bloodstained belt on top of it. Behind them, a tarp shelter strung between three maples flaps miserable in the light wind. They don’t bother to move as Pike and the boys enter the clearing and stand opposite the fire. If it wasn’t for the frost wisping out of their nostrils, you’d think them dead.