“Matilda?” the cabbie said. “Oh, you mean the skinny little bitch. The one they call Cock Gobbler.”
“I don’t know,” Chimney answered, his face turning red.
“Me, I like ’em with a little more meat on their bones.”
“You’d probably enjoy fucking a hog then,” Chimney said.
“What’d you say?”
“I said you look like a pig-fucker.”
The cabbie narrowed his red-veined eyes and slowed the car down just as they hit the business district. “You got a smart mouth on you, don’t ye, bub?”
Chimney rested his hand on the little Remington .22 he had in his pocket. “Just shut up and drive.”
“You don’t tell me what to do in my own cab, you little shit,” the man said.
The boy looked around at all the people on the sidewalks. He hated to leave the sonofabitch off the hook, but now was not a good time to be losing his temper. There was too much at stake, he reminded himself. Besides, what did it matter what this dried-up bastard thought of anything? You could tell by looking at him that he was on his last legs, him and his goddamn ulcers. “Just let me out here,” he said, ignoring the cabbie’s glare. He let loose of the gun and dug two dollars out of his pocket, dropped them on top of the greasy slice of meat lying on the front seat.
59
JASPER WAS ON his way to the bench hoping to meet up with Junior when he passed by the jail and saw Lester Wallingford tacking a new wanted poster to the billboard by the front door. Having once been instrumental in bringing a pickpocket to justice after he had seen the man’s mug on a flyer, he now made it a habit to stop by at least once a week to check out new criminals. “Who they lookin’ for now?” Jasper asked.
“Still hunting for them Jewetts,” the policeman told him. “Jacked the reward up some more. They’re thinking they might be in Ohio now. I’ll tell you what, those bastards come through Meade, ol’ Lester here will be a rich man.”
Jasper didn’t say anything. He was studying the drawing on the poster. Funny how that one looked like Junior. He’d have to tell him about that when he saw him. He read over the long list of crimes they had committed: included were arson, robbery, kidnapping, rape, murder, and several others that he had never heard of. What the hell was “bestiality”? Or “necrophilia”? He looked again at the drawings. My God, he had to say, the one on the end really was Junior all over again. But, shoot, it couldn’t be. That boy wouldn’t hurt a fly. Still, the more he looked at the poster, the more the other one favored Junior’s brother, too. He had seen them standing in line in front of the Majestic last night waiting to buy tickets. But what about—
“What’s wrong, Cone?” Lester said. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
“Nothing. Just got a lot on my mind.”
“Only thing you got on your mind is shithouses.”
“You don’t know me,” Jasper said. “You don’t know nothing about me.”
“I know you like to watch women takin’ a whiz. That’s what I know.”
Because Jasper spent so many sleepless hours walking the streets late at night, he knew more about the cop than the cop would ever know about him, including the fact that he almost always ended up at Lucas Charles’s little room above the Majestic whenever he closed down the Mecca Bar. Jasper was right on the cusp of asking Lester if his father knew about his relationship with the theater manager when he realized such information might be put to a better use later. Instead, he pretended to storm away, but then stopped and waited at the corner. As soon as the cop disappeared, he hurried back to the billboard and tore the poster off, stuck it inside his jacket. Making his way to the park, he sat down on a rock near the pond to study it. The Jewett Gang? Surely there had to be a mistake. But then how could there be another person walking around who looked identical to Junior? Or Cob, or whatever his name was. And where was the third brother? Had he gotten killed or run off? He thought back for a minute, trying to recall everything Junior had told him about himself, and then he realized that he didn’t know anything. Hell, he had done almost all the talking; Junior just nodded his head once in a while and ate doughnuts.
Jasper folded the poster carefully and put it in his pocket. He watched a small flock of geese glide in and land on the water with a flapping of wings. Before you knew it, the snow would be falling, and another year would have passed without him having his own indoor facilities. But then he thought about what had been on his mind when he opened his eyes this morning. Not the usual, not porcelain commodes or claw-foot bathtubs or running Sandy Saunders out of town or the mass of hair between Mrs. Arnold’s legs. No, he had been thinking about meeting up with Junior, having him to talk to while he did his job. Bagshaw, the dump keeper, as nutty as he might be with his doll baby and rotten produce, was right. Jasper was looking forward to it, to seeing his friend. His friend. He said it aloud. “He’s my friend.” Except for Itchy, he had never had anyone he could call that, unless you counted his uncle the broom maker, and he wasn’t all that sure a blood relative counted. True, a man could have a mighty fine water closet with $5,500—Christ Almighty, he could have one in every room of the house and still have money left over—but how much was a friend worth? You couldn’t put a price on that, no matter how hard people tried. He got up and started out of the park, his measuring wand balanced on his shoulder. Sure, lots of people would give up a buddy for a lot less than indoor plumbing, or the chance to run a comb through Mrs. Arnold’s pubic hair. Sure, they would. But Jasper wasn’t one of them. No, sir, he wasn’t. He stopped and took the poster out of his pocket, looked at it one more time. Then he balled it up and threw it in the pond, watched two of the geese start swimming toward it.
60
BOVARD WOKE UP to find himself lying flat on his back in a dark room with a rag stuffed in his mouth. No matter how hard he tried, all he could move was his head, and he finally realized that he was chained to a floor. He was confused. The last thing he could recall was listening to a couple of drunks bickering in the Blind Owl. The man kept telling the woman she had the face of a bulldog, and she kept comparing his cock to a green bean. Then they’d give each other a big, sloppy kiss—he could still almost hear their puckered lips smacking—before starting their vile insults all over again. But that was all he remembered.
He pushed his tongue around in his mouth under the rag, and discovered, to his shock, that some of his bottom teeth were missing. He twisted his head from side to side. Had he been in a fight? Was he in a hospital? Was this one of Lucas and Caldwell’s crazy games? No, that couldn’t be it. They’d never go this far, no matter how doped up they got. Nothing made any sense, but then slowly, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he became aware that someone else was in the room, sitting on a cot not more than a couple of feet away from him. Jesus Christ, it was that fucking barkeep, holding a jar in his lap. Then he vaguely recalled picking up a beer and seeing him in the mirror. He heard the man cough, then spit, felt a slimy gob of phlegm splat on his forehead. He struggled against the chains, but they were so tight he couldn’t even make them rattle. He tried to force the rag out of his mouth with his tongue, but it was useless. Making an angry moaning sound in his throat, he banged the back of his head against the floor, tried to make the bastard understand he better turn him loose right now.
Pollard smiled at his efforts. It was nothing new; they all acted the same, at least at first. Some of them gave up quite easily, others hung on hoping for a way out almost until the end, dreaming of escape: the law rescuing them perhaps, or the man who was doing this to them experiencing a change of heart, and so on and so forth, a hundred different scenarios playing out in their terrified heads. He had wondered about that a lot, why would one man surrender his life so quickly and another never admit defeat, even when he had to know he was beaten? Did it have something to do with the way they’d been raised, or if they believed in God, or if they had a family depending on them? There was really no way of telling, but he had a feeling this one w
as a fighter, which was the type he preferred. The last one, the carpenter, he was ready to cash in his chips before the first night was over with, and it had been hard to keep things exciting with someone so weak and worthless.
“Do you know what I’m going to do to ye?” he asked the lieutenant. “No, probably not. I doubt if you’ve ever been in any kind of fix like this before. Well, for starters, I’m gonna pull all your teeth out. Don’t worry, I won’t break ’em, I promise. I’ve done it plenty of times before. See, I got quite the collection here.” He held up the jar and shook it. “After that, I usually do something special with the tongue. And, no, no, don’t ask me why I do it. Hell, I don’t know myself really. I think it’s just because I can. Let’s see…Shit, I forgot where I was. Oh, yeah. Then I’ll whittle on ye for a day or two, maybe take your guts out while ye watch. From what I’ve seen in the past, you won’t be in too good a shape by then. And then the last thing I do, I mean after your heart quits beatin’ and all that shit, is saw you into little pieces. Not to eat or anything like that. I tried that once, and I have to say I didn’t care for the taste of it, though I have been thinkin’ lately that maybe I didn’t fix him right. No, just makes you easier to carry when I take ye over to the creek. Won’t nobody know what happened to ye except me. I’ll dump you in the water like fish bait, and you’ll just disappear. But we’ll save all that for later. Right now I hear some customers knockin’ on the door.” Then he set the jar of fangs and grinders down just a couple of inches from Bovard’s head, and left him alone in the dark room, rank with the smell of dead men’s body fluids soaked into the wood floor, to dwell on what he’d said.
61
WHEN THE BAKERY opened, Cob was the first customer in the door. He’d been waiting across the street for over an hour. “So it’s you again,” Mrs. Mannheim said in an agitated voice. Last night, within minutes of finally nodding off, she’d been startled awake by a dream in which one of the Von Kennels’ sons had been arrested in a train station in Syracuse for possession of a pound of Wiener schnitzel that his mother had given him to eat on the journey. Greta Von Kennel was her closest friend, and Mrs. Mannheim hadn’t slept another wink worrying about it. Now she had a ferocious headache.
“I’ll take some more of those doughnuts,” Cob said.
“Oh, you will, will you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Same as yesterday.”
Mrs. Mannheim stared out the front window for a moment with bloodshot eyes, wondering what sort of trap was being laid for her. Her first impulse was to tell the fat oaf to get lost, but then maybe that’s what they wanted her to do. Perhaps there was some law or town statute about refusing a customer service that she didn’t know about. Her head felt as if it might explode. Just how low those people would go in their efforts to crush her was anybody’s guess. She wouldn’t put anything past them, especially that cane-twirling insurance salesman. No, she decided, just treat him fairly, and they won’t have anything to work with. She went ahead and counted out a dozen, set the bag on the counter. She watched Cob pick them up and casually start out the door. The woman shook her head in amazement. “Where you think you’re going?” she shrilled.
He stopped and looked back at her. “I got to meet the sanitation inspector.”
Oh, she thought, so he wasn’t afraid to admit it, he really was in cahoots with those city boys. Granted, Mrs. Cone’s boy had always seemed harmless enough, but the crooks had probably promised him a promotion if he played along, served as the middleman. Either that, or they’d dug up some dirt on him and were using it as blackmail. She’d heard rumors that he had a cock the length of a French baguette, and it was hard to tell what sort of depravity something like that might lead to. She stared at Cob, her eyes blazing now. The audacity of this fat bastard, grinning at her just like he did when he attempted to trick her up yesterday. “What about some money for the doughnuts?” she said.
“Well, I thought they was…I thought they was on de house. Wasn’t that what ye said?”
The woman began to tremble as she felt the headache erupt into a full-scale migraine. “If you leave here without paying, I swear to God I’m calling the police.”
Cob hurriedly reached in his pocket for the five-dollar bill he still had and handed it to her, then started back out the door. “Hold on!” she screamed.
“What?” he said. “Ain’t that enough?” The mention of police, as well as the woman’s behavior, had him spooked. What did she have against him? What had he done? He should have asked Cane what “on de house” meant; maybe that was the problem.
She threw the money at him, then pounded her fist on the counter, even though the noise felt like someone was driving a nail through her head. Just then, Ludwig, hearing the commotion, came into the room from the back, where the ovens were located. “Gertrude, what are you doing?” He looked over at Cob standing by the door, a frightened look on his face. It was obvious that the young man was a bit touched. Or, at the very least, slow. She should have realized that; half of her family was mentally handicapped in one way or another; and Ludwig was growing increasingly concerned about his wife. For weeks now she had been going on about secret plots being hatched against them. Last week, she’d even burst into a tirade about the Lewis Family being agents of the Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition. The Midwest Anti-Germanic Coalition! He’d checked with some of his cronies at the chess club, and according to them, there was no such thing. And the Lewis Family? Men so besotted with skanks and booze that he doubted if they’d be able to find Germany on a map! Why couldn’t she see just how lucky they were to be living here, thousands of miles away from the war?
“Ludwig, he’s tryin’ to set me up,” she said. “Make it look like I cheated him.”
The baker looked down at the money on the floor, and picked it up. “Is this yours?” he asked the chubby boy in the bibs.
“It’s…it’s…for the doughnuts,” Cob stuttered.
“Here,” said Ludwig, handing it back to him. “Go ahead and keep it.”
“But—”
“No worries, my friend. The doughnuts are on the house today.”
Cob left and headed for the bench uptown to meet Jasper. He sat down and dug his hand into the greasy sack, pulled out a doughnut. What the hell had happened back there? First they didn’t want his money, and then they did, and then they didn’t again. How could you make money selling doughnuts like that? Why, they’d be out of business real quick if they kept that up. Then he wondered if maybe the five-dollar bill Cane had given him was counterfeit. A banker once tried to pass off fake money to Bloody Bill, and it hadn’t turned out good for him, not good at all. By the time the outlaw got through dragging him up and down the streets behind his horse, there wasn’t enough skin left on his hide to make a pocketbook. That might explain why the woman didn’t want it. But still, if that was the case, why did they give him the doughnuts anyway? He was thinking these thoughts when he looked up and saw Jasper coming around the corner, right on time. Maybe he would know, but first, Cob wanted to tell him about Mr. Bentley.
62
AFTER THE ALTERCATION with the cabdriver, Chimney had a sweet roll and a glass of milk at White’s Luncheonette, then went to the hotel and asked the clerk for his key. He stumbled weak-kneed up the stairs to his room. Locking the door, he laid his pistol on the nightstand and stripped off his clothes. He fell onto the bed, intending to sleep the rest of the morning away, but within a few minutes, he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Matilda as a little girl lying on a corncob mattress with a bunch of dog turds. Finally, he gave up. He splashed some water on his face and put his clothes back on, then went downstairs and out to the Ford. He started it without a hitch and drove out into the country west of town. He ended up in a little burg called Bourneville. He bought some cheese and crackers and two bottles of warm beer at a general store and asked the man behind the counter if he could leave his automobile parked there for a while. He walked along the border of a
field planted in winter wheat until he came to a creek. Taking out the Remington, he fired off a few rounds, reloaded it. Then he sat down on the bank and ate his lunch while watching the water roll by, thinking about what Matilda had told him last night. He’d never met anyone before who’d had it rougher growing up than he and his brothers, and for some reason, maybe because she was a girl, that bothered him. What would happen to her when she got older and the men didn’t want her anymore? She told him last night that the only reason Esther, the fat one, was still working was because she’d do things nobody else would do. He opened the other beer and drank it fast, then tossed the bottle into the water. What if he asked her to come with them to Canada? Tell her he’d take care of her, that…that he was offering her…shit…offering her an opportunity, a chance to quit whoring. Be honest with her, so she’d know what she was in for. Sure, Cane would pitch a bitch, but he knew his brother well enough to know he wouldn’t hurt her, no matter how much she knew about them. He stood up and stretched, then started back up through the field. Wouldn’t hurt to ask, he thought, and if she turned him down, well, at least he’d have tried to come to her rescue.
As he approached the store lot, he saw two dirty-faced boys looking at the Ford, though standing back at a respectful distance. One appeared to be around eleven, the other nine or so. They were weed-thin and barefoot, dressed in patched overalls and frayed, homespun shirts. They reminded Chimney of him and his brothers when they were that age. “You ain’t thinking about stealin’ my car, are ye?” he said, as he walked up behind them.
They both whirled around when they heard his voice, then the bigger one said, “No, mister. We was just lookin’ at it.” The other didn’t say anything, just looked shyly at the ground.
“This here’s what they call a Tin Lizzie,” Chimney said. “What kind do you drive?”