Squid Pulp Blues (9 page)

“That’s an ugly piece of shit, you got there, Henry,” Tommy said.

“Take it or leave,
Pingpong
.” He put the gun on the desk and waited as Tommy took out the cash from his pocket.

After the quick transaction, Red Henry got up from the chair and ushered the two out of the room. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I
gotta
go pick Susie up. She’s been out there all night and Christ knows she probably spent most of the money already. Boys, if you follow one piece of advice, let it be this: never marry a whore.”

Tommy gave a wry smile but Jake didn’t have a reaction. His mind was on Peachy.

As the door was shut behind them, they walked toward the bar to get a drink. Before they could reach it, however, a fat man in a raincoat blocked their path.

Tommy let loose the fakest smile he could muster. “Detective
McMadigan
, how nice to see you.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch. You drink here, too? I had
no
idea.” The cop laughed and the sound that escaped his throat was filled with cigar-phlegm. He was a round man with a face full of dull, gray stubble. His shirt was stained with red wine and yellow spittle, combining to form
tentacled
shapes over his overwhelming gut.

“What can I do for you, Detective? You see, my friend and I here are in a rush to catch a movie.” Tommy, without realizing it until it was too late, felt his jacket pocket where he had put the gun. He was relieved to see that the detective didn’t notice. He was too busy eyeing up Jake.

“Who’s this goofy looking bastard?”

Jake started to sweat. He had heard about Detective
McMadigan
but never had the displeasure of running into him. From the stories that Tommy and others have told him, the cop was partial to a whole slew of odd behaviors. On any given day he may show up an ex-con’s apartment and force him to dig out his stash of girly magazines or ask the guy’s wife to strip while he played his harmonica. She’d then be subject to a wide range of mental abuse mostly involving being nude and forced to recite old Honeymooners routines. It’s well known even in the police department that Detective Shawn
McMadigan
is behind the prostitution ring that moved in downtown. It catered to those who liked to live on the wild side of Thompson.
McMadigan
made sure to provide customers with anything they desired be it born-again housewives addicted to prescription pain medication or bald hookers with dwarfism.

“This is Jake Waite.” Tommy turned to his partner. “Jake, this is Detective
McMadigan
. I’m sure I’ve mentioned him a time or two.”

McMadigan
put his hand out and smiled, yellowish saliva sliding off his dull teeth. Jake reluctantly shook the cop’s hand and was pulled forward. The detective put his mouth close to Jake’s ear. “If you stick with this guy, then I know you’re looking for trouble, my kind of trouble. If I
gotta
teach you, that’s fine by me. Ever get gang-raped by a group of angry cops?”

The twinkle in the cop’s eye was disturbingly pornographic in nature. Jake looked into the speckled orbs and saw himself being torn apart by sheer force of
McMadigan’s
cannibalistic penis. He saw its teeth, its gaping mouth, and its mucus-filled nose. It was joined by three others, all belonging to members of the Thompson Police Department, their nightsticks being no match for their throbbing rods of power-drunk retribution.

Jake pulled away and headed for the door. The detective’s face turned angry and shouted. “Hey, I’m not done with you.”

Digging into his pocket, Tommy took out a twenty-dollar bill and discretely handed it to
McMadigan
. “We really have to catch that movie, detective.” He rushed out the door before the cop could do anything, though he knew that with a greased palm, Detective
McMadigan
would probably save his abuse for another day.

Once outside, Tommy ran to catch up to Jake who was walking down the sidewalk, away from their car.

“Christ, Tommy, that guy is a psycho.”

“Yes, I know. I told you about him. What the hell did he say to you?”

“What did he say to me? He fucking threatened me with a gang-rape! Thanks a lot for giving him my name, too, by the way. Real fucking smooth.”

“Shit, he’s a cop, man. Getting your name would be easy as fucking pie for him, anyway,” Tommy stopped walking. “Shit!”

Jake stopped two footsteps ahead and turned. “What?”

“Forgot to use the phone.”

As they both stood there cursing, Tommy felt a tug at his coat. He looked down to see a bald dwarf in a blue velvet coat. “Hey, baby,
wanna
date?” Even without a hair on her head, the woman was quite attractive with Russian facial features and a pierced nose that added a touch of feminine brutality to her allure.

“Uh, no thanks,” Tommy said, not finding the sight of the woman even the least bit surprising. Where there was Detective
McMadigan
, there was a dwarf hooker. From Tommy’s experience, that’s just the way it was.

“How about you, honey, thirty bucks, half and half.”
She moved over to Jake and sucked on her finger. Her crude gesturing made Tommy so queasy that he knew that he’d vomit if she touched him.

“Maybe some other time,” Jake said. He made eye contact with his partner and shook his head slightly to the left. The woman saw this and stuck up her middle finger.

“Fuck you both, then.” She walked away and moved on down the sidewalk where she was accosted by a longhead dressed in an old moth-bitten business suit. The longhead looked at the dwarf, looked up at the sky, and then slapped the woman in the face before running off past Tommy and Jake, almost knocking them down.

“Jesus Christ, man. Tonight’s just getting worse and worse.” Jake took out a pack of cigarettes. “Hey, you know who
McMadigan
reminds me of?”

“Who?”

“Orson
Welles
in that movie
Touch of Evil
.
Ever see it?”

“No, I don’t think I have. Any good?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking good.” He took a drag and blew the smoke upwards, looking at the stars in the process. “Okay, well I’m still worried about Peachy. Do we go to a phone and call Aaron like you wanted? I think we should just get the hell out of town for a few days. Let things simmer down.”

“Despite the fact that I think you’re overreacting just a little bit, I guess I agree with you. Let’s go back to the car and get going.”

They walked back the other way, toward their car, passing another alleyway. If they had looked down that alley, they would have seen the longhead who had slapped the dwarf. They would have witnessed him sitting on a large snapping turtle and using one hand to shave his head with an electric razor, his hair falling off of his elongated skull like burnt wheat. If Tommy and Jake had looked down that alley, they also would have noticed that the longhead’s body was slowly shrinking to about the size of a dwarf.

Chapter 5

Peachy drove down
Main Street
blasting the radio. His head bopped to “She’s Lost Control” as he nearly skidded into a group of teens who ran across the street throwing snowballs at each other. He muttered a curse and then looked past the kids and saw Tommy and Jake getting into their car.

“Oh yes, you
cocksuckers
, I got you now.” He gripped the steering wheel and then felt his stomach bubble. His bowels exploded, letting loose a storm of diarrhea into his diaper. The deluge was far more than the diaper could hold, so much of it leaked out down his legs. “Oh, Christ, not now!”

He looked down at his lap to make sure he wasn’t leaking shit onto his car seats and didn’t see the ice patch that was clearly evident on the road. The car slid horizontally into a parked car that had been parked behind Tommy and Jake’s.

A fat man came running out of the bar. “Son of a bitch! Get the fuck out of the car!”

Peachy opened his glove compartment and pulled out his handgun that had been carved from an elephant’s tusk. It had been a gift from his great uncle who was a world traveler and was known within the underworld as Bootlicker Benny in reference to his tendency to steal the shoes of his rivals’ wives. His uncle had never endorsed the nickname but he had never rejected it either.

Peachy gripped the gun in his hand but hid it in his sleeve as he stepped out of the car.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Peachy said, smiling and trying to sound like a remorseful driver. Then he saw who the fat man was and the smile quickly dropped into a frown.

Detective
McMadigan
smiled sinisterly. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Keen. You’re in a world of shit, now, aren’t you?” He put his hands on his hips and nodded his head.
Oh, I’m
gonna
have a whole lot of fun with this motherfucker,
he thought,
and after I’m done with him, he’s
gonna
need more than a diaper.

With one slick motion, Peachy swung his arm up and unloaded three shots, hitting
McMadigan
twice in the torso and once in the neck. The detective fell backward, barely able to register what was happening. His last living thoughts were of an elephant with diarrhea spearing him repeatedly with its tusks.

Screams echoed through the streets as the terrified pedestrians ran to take cover. Peachy ignored them and went back into his car. His mood quickly darkened as he realized that more shit had leaked out of his diaper and had formed a trail along the street.

After getting back into the car and pulling
 
away, he ejected the
Joy Division
cassette from the car stereo and continued the ride in silence. In honor of his great uncle, he kissed his warm, ivory gun and pretended it was a boot.

Chapter 6

“Hey, Tommy, how about we stop home?” After being threatened with a law enforcement gang-bang, he was less worried about Peachy.

“First you want to get out of town,
then
you want to go home? If Aaron’s got someone after us, first place they’ll look is our place. Then the barn. We’ll stick with the original plan.”

Jake leaned back. “Okay.”

The car swerved to the right and Jake grabbed the dashboard. Tommy groaned and slammed on the brakes. “Would you look at that shit?”
           
Walking across the street, through the slush and ice was a longhead.

“It’s another longhead. Yeah, he’s walking his dog. So what?”

Tommy pointed. “That’s not a dog.”

The longhead was walking a snapping turtle on a leash. The animal was wearing snow boots that were obviously made for an infant. While Tommy and Jake watched, the longhead stopped at the sidewalk, unzipped his pants, and proceeded to urinate on a parking meter. The passersby ignored him as they do whenever they see a longhead. To acknowledge them was to bring thoughts of war, guilt, and consequences.

“Just drive, man, just drive,” Jake said, making himself look away from the scene. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the snapping turtle take a step into the stream of piss. It splashed off of its shell in large droplets that mixed with the downpour of snowflakes.

Tommy pulled away and went one more block. He slowed down in front of the movie theatre. “I have an idea.” He pulled into a side street and parked the car. “Let’s see a movie.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nah, listen, we’ll hold up here, keep our eyes on the door, and see if anyone’s following us. What’s a better hide-out than a big, dark room?”

“I don’t know. A big, dark room out of town, maybe?”

“I’m just saying, if we go out of town and Aaron gets wind of it, it’ll look like we got something to hide which isn’t the case, am I right? So, this way we’re not doing anything but watching a movie.”

Jake nodded his head reluctantly. “Okay, fine.”

They walked around the corner and up to the ticket booth. Tommy looked up at the marquee. “Hey, which movie do you want to see?”

“What’s the difference? We’re not actually here to see a movie.”

“Oh,
whatever,
just pick one.”

Glancing up at the titles, Jake was surprised to see that they were all old movies. “Let’s see…
Ball of Fire,
um
,
 
Remember the Night… Flesh and Fantasy
….Never heard of these.” He directed his statement toward the ticket seller.

“We’re running a marathon. All Barbara
Stanwyck
pictures. We’re also showing
Clash by Night
.” The ticket seller was a lanky bearded teenager who, Jake thought, looked happier than he should’ve been to be working on such a cold night in an unheated ticket booth.

Tommy took out the remaining money from his pocket. “Two tickets, then.”

“For an extra five dollars, would you each like a Barbara
Stanwyck
Halloween mask?”

Jake made a face. “Are you serious?”

The teenager smiled, revealing a bright overbite. “Yes, very.”

“No thanks, no masks.” Tommy handed over the cash and took the tickets.

As they walked away, he heard the ticket seller mocking them, speaking in a faux-Spanish accent, “Masks? We don’t need no
stinkin
’ masks!”

Tommy and Jake stepped into the theatre but not without taking one last look out onto the street to see if anything looked amiss. From what they saw, the Thompson night was close to a normal one.

The theatre lobby was large; it reminded Tommy of a church foyer, albeit one with movie posters and a floor sprinkled with popcorn. He stepped up to the snack bar and turned to Jake. “Want something? I got a few dollars left.”

“Just popcorn, I guess.”

The girl behind the counter had both her hands in the popcorn machine. She was making hand-washing motions, sticking her arms deep into the popcorn. Tommy caught her eyes. “Can I have large popcorn, please?”

She looked at him, eyes grey and blank. “We have no popcorn.”