Prodigal Blues (20 page)

"What's with the tape?" I asked.

"Grendel has—
had
—a network of customers who pay top-dollar for entertainment of a very specific nature."
 
He gave the tape a little wave.
 
"You're looking at Connie's final performance, with stereo sound.
 
A thousand dollars a copy."
 
He nodded toward the other bus and trailer.
 
"That gentleman over there is one of Grendel's distributors.
 
He copies and sells this…'entertainment for specific tastes'.
 
Whenever enough orders are taken, a meeting is arranged.
 
Grendel had one scheduled for tonight.
 
We give that guy this tape, and he gives us the cash taken in from the last few orders—minus his twenty-five percent commission, of course."

"Of course."
 
I wanted to vomit.
 
"How many…
distributors
are there?"

"Five.
 
And they all deal with me.
 
None of them has ever seen Grendel's face."

"A silent partnership."

He nodded.
 
"Now it's time for your second test," he said, disabling the dome light and opening his door.
 
"Get out—and make sure you follow my lead."

"What are you going to do?"
 
The idea of participating in a transaction like this was more than I could stand.

Christopher slung the bag over his shoulder.
 
"You'll see.
 
Leave your door opened just a crack.
 
Come on."

Sixteen steps.
 
It took sixteen steps to get from my door to the passenger side of the other bus.
 
It was one of the longest walks of my life.

Both the driver's-side and passenger windows had been rolled down.
 
I stood where I was supposed to as Christopher, plastering on as much of a smile as his facial prostheses would allow, went around to speak with the driver, who reached up to disable his dome light and in the process accidentally flicked it on for a few moments, giving me a brief but clear look at his face.

I wish I could tell you that he was a sweaty, pale, beady-eyed little toad who stank of semen-stained underwear, colored his comb-over with shoe polish, had dirty fingernails, a nose covered in exploded capillaries, and a pronounced facial tick; I wish I could say that one look at him would scream 'pervert' to a one-eyed man a hundred yards away in a rainstorm; I wish there had been something,
anything
about him that set off the gothic bells and brought in the thunderclouds; but like
Grendel
, he looked utterly harmless:
 
clean, well-groomed, and conservatively dressed.

"Beowulf Antiquities, Inc., at your service," said Christopher.

"You have a new friend," said the driver, not looking at me.
 
"I wasn't told anything about you suddenly getting an assistant."

Christopher held up the tape.
 
"Connie."

"You're kidding?
 
He finally… wow.
 
I mean,
wow
, y'know?"
 
He reached through the opened window and took the tape, turning it over in his hands with tenderness, even reverence.
 
"He said this one was going to be special."

"I have a supporting role," said Christopher.

The driver looked back at him.
 
"Well… good for you.
 
About time."
 
He slipped the tape into a canvas satchel on the seat beside him, then removed two very thick brown envelopes and passed them to Christopher, who stuffed them into his shoulder bag.

"This is really going to be something," said the driver.

Christopher's smile spread up into his eyes.
 
"You have no idea," he said.

And then shot him right in the throat.

At first I wasn't sure what happened—or maybe I was and my brain just didn't want to register the truth of it—because I knew I heard the bird-chirp and I definitely saw the white flash but then for several seconds absolutely nothing else happened, the guy just
sat there
like he'd momentarily forgotten something or was waiting for a fart to finish, but then he jerked around, facing the windshield, and one of his hands moved up to his neck and his index finger probed the entrance wound like the Little Dutch Boy at the dike and when he pulled out his finger the blood started spurting, arcing up against the inside of the roof and running down the windshield and when he opened his mouth to scream the only thing that came out was more blood, slopping over everything, and then he just fell on his side, clawing at his neck, his legs shuddering, feet kicking out, eyes rolling up into his head and thick, wet noises spluttering from the hole where his Adam's apple used to be, then his bladder and bowels gave out at the same time, the piss coming so fast and strong it squirted right through his underwear and pants, spraying the dashboard, and the stench of his evacuated bowels hit me in the face and stomach and I grabbed the door to keep from passing out but the stink didn't faze Christopher one little bit,
 
he threw the door the rest of the way open and grabbed the guy's legs and when he did that the driver's torso started thrashing around, blood showering outward like it was hooked up to a water sprinkler, and by then I could feel my stomach getting ready to give up the ghost but Christopher was hissing, "
Son-of-a-bitch open the door and grab him!
" and I did but his arms were flailing all over the place and one of his hands cracked against my nose and for a couple of seconds I couldn't see anything but throbbing bright phantoms, then another punch landed on my shoulder and brought me back but I still couldn't get a grip so I did the only thing I could think of, the only thing that made any sense—if
 
anything makes sense when you're in the middle of helping someone murder another human being—I climbed inside and grabbed his satchel and slammed it down across his chest, throwing myself on top of it, pressing against it with everything I had until his arms stopped flailing and his legs finished kicking and the
geysering
blood became a slow stream and then a spurt and then a trickle and with one hard shudder and a quick last spasm from the bowels it all just stopped.

I should've been screaming but I wasn't.
 
I wasn't even there.
 
This wasn't my body on top of the bloody corpse, it was something I used to walk around in.
 
I was out in a rowboat with Dad near Buckeye Lake, watching him cast off his line and listening to him talk about how Mom was going to fry us up some damn tasty walleye for dinner tonight if he had anything to do with it, and sitting there in that boat I decided to turn around and look down into the water where I saw a familiar body lying on top of a pile of meat and I asked Dad, "What would you do, if you were in this situation?"
 
And without turning around, Dad replied, "I love you, Mark, you know that, but son, I'd never have
gotten
myself into that situation, so I can't help you, I'm sorry.
 
Now be quiet, else you'll scare away the fish."

"…me now."

I fell out of the boat and sank down into that familiar body.
 
My lungs filled with water.
 
Drowning was supposed to be peaceful, right?
 
God I hoped so.

"…at me!"

Something hard slapped my face, snapping my head to the side, and the water was gone and so was the boat and so was Dad and I felt my heart sink because, damn, walleye would've been tasty.

I blinked my eyes several times, then righted my head.

Christopher looked at me over the dead guy's legs.
 
"Don't flip out on me now, Pretty Boy.
 
Deep breaths, that's it, c'mon, in, out, in… good, there you go… now look at me, right here, right"—he snapped his fingers three times—"over here, that's it.
 
You with me now?"

"…yeah…"

"You sure?"

I swallowed, tasting blood.
 
I hoped it was mine.
 
"I'm… I'm sure."

"Listen to me.
 
Turn around and close the door.
 
Stay inside."

"I don't want to."

"I know you don't, and I'm sorry, but you need to do this for me.
 
And you need to do it now."

I dragged myself the rest of the way inside, yanking closed the door.
 
I slipped on a puddle and dropped onto my ass, pulling the satchel down on top of me and almost cornholing myself on the stick shift.
 
I curled up into a ball, hugging the satchel to my chest.
 
I was now sitting face-to-face with the thing the driver used to walk around in.

"I need to run over to our trailer," said Christopher, pushing the guy's legs back inside and closing the driver's-side door.
 
"I'll be right back.
 
Don't go anywhere, okay?"

"…okay…"

Then I was alone.
 
More or less.

I listened to the sound of something dripping off the seat and spattering against the rubber floor mats; the staccato rhythm seemed muffled, more like the sound made by someone cracking their knuckles through heavy gloves, not liquid at all, but no one in the world had that many knuckles, so I decided they were drumming their fingers against something hard but with a softer covering, a leather briefcase or vinyl seat-cover or even the dust jacket on a book:
 
tappity
-tap-tap-tap;
tappity
-tap-tap;
tappity
-tap-tap-tap
.
 
I wished they'd decide on a cadence and stick to it.

I looked at my crimson-slicked hands.
 
They were trembling—no, wait, scratch that—my hands weren't trembling, just my fingers.
 
How was that possible, only your fingers getting the shakes and not your entire hand?
 
I started to ask the guy lying in front of me and then remembered that he was well past answering anything ever again.

His face was shiny and mostly dark now, except for his eyes, which shone up out of the gore like pearls in fresh mud.
 
His mouth was open, lips pulled back in a silent rictus scream.
 
A small bubble rose to the surface of his mouth, jiggled, then burst with a soft
pop!
 
I stared into the maw, waiting for another bubble to rise up, but one never did.

I started humming to myself.
 
"All Through the Night."
 
I thought I was maybe a little off-key; if Thomas were here he'd help me to get it right.
 
Maybe I could even ask him why he sang the "…hill and dale" line wrong each time.

I tried to convince myself that I was a decent man, a good man and loving, faithful husband, and that those things still counted for something right now, even if I was ass-deep in blood and piss and dead-man's shit; I tried telling myself that a man could go back to his life after something like this and still feel clean, principled, and blameless; and then I decided I was full of it and tried getting back to the boat, but Dad had rowed away to a better spot.
 
Walleye are sneaky little devils, but I doubted they'd outsmart him.

I squeezed the satchel tighter.
 
There was something soft inside.
 
I opened it up and took a peek.
 
There was the tape Christopher had given him, and a suede-covered organizer, a bunch of some folded papers and more brown envelopes… and then I found it.

"Hello, you," I said, pulling out the stuffed Buttercup doll.
 
I wondered if all of Grendel's distributors had a thing for the Powerpuff Girls.
 
Maybe that was a prerequisite for joining their club.

"I'm sorry about what happened with Blossom," I said.
 
"It was just one of those things.
 
It didn't mean anything."

Buttercup glared at me, but there was love in her eyes.

I pulled her close, stroking her hair.
 
"It'll never happen again, I promise, I do, I swear to you…."
 
Then I started crying, but Buttercup didn't make fun of me, she understood, she said it was all right, everything was going to be okay as long as that stupid old Mojo didn't come along and ruin everything.
 
The dirty little monkey-faced dork.

I held her close, wondering how I was going to break the news to Tanya, when Christopher appeared in the window.
 
"Get back here, Pretty Boy.
 
Look up.
 
That's right.
 
Now, you take a couple of deep breaths, get your legs working, and climb out here."

I stuffed Buttercup into the front of my pants, silently apologizing for the temporary rudeness.
 
She said it was okay but, jeez, hadn't I ever heard of deodorant?

Once outside I filled my lungs with the crisp night air.
 
No other vehicles had come to park on this side, and in the trucks and behemoth, not a creature was stirring, not even a light.