Anything Can Be Dangerous (14 page)

“
Damn!”

“
Hey, at least we don’t
need to wait for the dental x-rays.”

Jimmy shook his head, still squirming
from the surprise like a snake trying to work itself out of an old
skin.

Stuart’s smile faded as he glanced at
his watch, then to the door. “Okay, let’s get this over with. We’re
pushing the limit here.”

He placed the manila folder he’d
grabbed on the dead man’s chest, flipping it open. A second later,
he produced an ink tray from the pocket of his lab coat.

Jimmy lingered at a distance for
another moment, then moved forward again. He gave a fleeting glance
to the shredded mess of torn muscle and broken bones in the bag—all
that remained of the cadaver’s neck—then refocused his attention on
Stuart as he held up the man’s right arm and dabbed his blue-gray
fingers on the ink-soaked felt of the tray. The top form in the
stack of papers Stuart had opened contained two rows of sequential
square boxes, each labeled for the digits of the human hand.
Starting with the row marked “Right,” he pressed the man’s fingers
into the appropriate spaces one at a time, rolling them from side
to side to transfer their impressions. He then repeated the
procedure for the left hand, all except for the smallest
finger.

For that box, he dabbed his own left
pinky in the ink and rolled it on the paper.

He took the original fingerprinting
sheet out of the file—the one Doc. Harrington had done when the
Sheriff first brought the corpse in, Jimmy guessed—and crumpled it
into a wad, using it to wipe away the excess ink from his hand.
Once finished, he stuffed the soiled paper in his pocket, slipped
the new form into the file, and gathered up the folder.

“
I still say it should be
your print on that paper,” he commented. “This was your plan, after
all.”

“
I got a record,” Jimmy
said. “You don’t.”

“
Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that’s
my end of it… Your turn.”

Jimmy reached into his back pocket,
extracting a sandwich-size Zip-Loc baggy and a dirt-flecked pair of
pruning sheers.

He met Stuart’s eyes… then looked to
the cadaver’s left hand.

To the smallest finger.

His heart hesitated in his chest as
his hands moved forward, positioning the tool’s cutting edge
between the first and middle knuckle. Then, after one last glance
at Stuart, he squeezed down on the sheer’s handle with both hands
as hard and as fast as he could.

Shick!

Stuart grimaced as Jimmy lifted the
severed digit from the table, holding it between thumb and
forefinger.

“
You really gonna eat that
thing?” Stuart asked.

“
I ain’t gonna
eat
it,” Jimmy corrected as he
slipped the finger into the Zip-Loc bag. “I’m going to do like we
talked about and just ... chew it a little.”

“
This is nuts,” Stuart
said.

Jimmy eyed him. “Hey, we’re in this
together, man. Don’t start getting fidgety on me! Just keep
thinking about that old lady who burned herself with the coffee
from McDonalds. What’d she get for her lawsuit ... a million? Two
million?”

“
Actually, I think it came
closer to three.”

“
Exactly! Now imagine
what a big-ass chain like Smokey’s will have to shell out when I
find a human
finger
in my
food!” He clapped his hands together. “Hot damn, boy! Even split
fifty-fifty we’ll both be rolling in it! I’ll make sure a couple of
guys from the worksite are with to see me spit it out. Then those
patty-flipping pricks will have to pay through the roof for
emotional stress.”

Stuart’s expression remained as
serious as ever, but Jimmy noticed a renewed gleam of determination
in his eyes at the mention of the money. “Just remember to cook
it,” the kid said. “You gotta simmer it in the chili for at least
three hours at 180 degrees so the spices will permeate the flesh.
That’ll give any prosecutor in the country an uphill battle to
prove it wasn’t in the mix from the start. Especially since
Smokey’s meat supplier just got busted for hiring illegals. I
Googled the case settlement last week and ...”

Jimmy shook his head and
laughed.

“
What?” Stuart
asked.

“
Nothing,” Jimmy answered,
heading for the door. “I just knew hanging out with a nerd like you
would pay off eventually.”

3.

Jimmy waited three days, just like
they’d planned, allowing the police time to do a fingerprint check
on the Mexican, and when no word came from Stuart to abort the
mission, he drove to work on the forth morning with the finger in a
Styrofoam cooler full of ice on the passenger seat.

With the lid on, the white rectangular
box hardly looked worth the three dollar price tag. Because he knew
what lay inside it, however, Jimmy couldn’t help seeing the
container as something secret, something important, and for part of
the drive from the Shell station, he imagined himself as a
character on one of those TV medical dramas transporting an
urgently needed donor organ.

He arrived at the job site just after
nine, coming to a stop amid the larger pick-ups and SUVs of the
regular work crew. Construction had been suspended for the last few
days due to the rain, but today the steel skeleton of the new Park
Street mini-mall bustled with activity.

Before getting out, he peeked in on
the finger. It lay in the Zip-Loc bag like a half-curled worm.
Smiling, he closed the cooler’s lid and got out of the
car.

The ground remained soft and moist
from the recent rainfall, and Jimmy’s feet made loud smacking
sounds in the mud as he walked to the construction company’s mobile
office. He noticed Tom Ryder, the foreman, talking with two of the
subcontractors working the same site, animatedly clapping them on
the back as he always did during conversations, acting like a
father congratulating his sons on a well-played little league game.
Jimmy ducked into the trailer to clock in before the man spotted
him.

He found Jeff Densi, the lead mason,
out by what would become the entrance to the mall’s parking lot.
Jeff crouched beside his brother, Roy, near the first of two walls
that divided the lot from the sidewalk, and when seen side by side,
the two looked like the working-Joe equivalent of Laurel and
Hardy.

Jimmy waved hello as the men looked
up.

Jeff had been kneeling alongside the
guide wires that outlined the wall’s base, and he stood up as Jimmy
approached, maneuvering his bulk with ease. He returned the
greeting eagerly enough, but his features appeared grim. “You’re a
half hour late, Cooley. What gives?”

Jimmy put on his apology face. “I’m
sorry—”

“
I gave you a break with
this job,” Jeff went on without pause. “You wouldn’t have it if my
regular bricklayer hadn’t wrecked his back.”

“
I know, Sir—”

“
With your work history
you’d be lucky to get hired at a firecracker stand, let alone
anywhere else. I took you on ’cause I didn’t have another
choice.”

Jimmy nodded, trying to look humble.
“It won’t happen again, man. I just couldn’t find my lunch box this
morning… I think Meg must’ve taken it with her when she
split.”

Jeff had been glaring at him with what
Jimmy had come to know as his “business look,” but at the mention
of Megan, his true amiability reappeared and his face softened.
“Your woman left you?”

Jimmy nodded.

“
Shit, pal, I’m sorry to
hear that.”

Roy had stopped his work to listen and
now leaned on his shovel like a farmer watching his crops grow.
“Women,” he said.

Jimmy shrugged. “Like you said, I’d be
damned if I could hold a decent job for long, and that doesn’t look
too good on a home loan application… She must’ve just got fed-up
with living with a loser.”

Jeff waved his comment away. “Hell,
kid, I didn’t mean it like that. Don’t be so hard on
yourself.”

“
I guess.”

The big man hooked his thumbs in his
suspenders and simply nodded, looking uncertain of what else to
say.

“
Here comes Slappy,” Roy
commented, breaking the silence. He tipped his head in the
direction of the company trailer, and Jimmy spotted the foreman
making his rounds.

Jeff clapped his hands together and
gestured at the wall base. “Okay, let’s get back to it,” he said,
sounding relieved to have gotten off the subject of Jimmy’s muddled
love-life. “I hope everything works out for you, Jim—I really
do—but we got a schedule to keep.”

Jimmy nodded. “Don’t worry about me.
Besides, I got a plan to get her back.”

“
Yeah?” Jeff
asked.

Jimmy looked at the Smokey’s
restaurant across the street and thought about the finger in his
car.

“
Why don’t you boys join me
for lunch, and I’ll tell you about it.”

4.

Just before lunch, Jimmy went to his
car under the pretext of retrieving his wallet. Using his body as a
shield, he reached into the cooler and snatched up the Zip-Loc bag,
slipping it into the pocket of his jean jacket.

Jeff and Roy had already started
across the road to Smokey’s, and Jimmy caught up with them as they
fell into one of the lines behind the bank of registers along the
counter. The lunch rush had the small building packed to capacity.
He wiped his brow in an unconscious reaction to the crowd, and his
hand came away covered in sweat.

He stood in line, pretending to count
his pocket change as he waited to order.

Jeff bought three cheese burgers,
fries, an apple pie, and a Coke.

Roy went for a fish sandwich and a
fountain drink.

Jimmy got a soda and a bowl of
chili.

They grabbed a booth at the back
corner of the main dining room as a trio of teens vacated their
seats to leave. Jimmy pulled the plastic top off the paper bowl of
chili as Jeff and Roy sat down on the opposite side of the
table.

“
I hear they got a new
titty bar open’n up over by the air base,” Roy said, sipping his
drink. “Seeing as you don’t got no current attachments, Jim, maybe
you’d like to check it out sometime?”

Jimmy had steeled himself to keep
cool, to just act normal so the others wouldn’t get suspicious, but
he suddenly found himself speechless as his thoughts focused on how
to execute the plan.

“
Damnit, Roy,” Jeff
answered for him. “Can’t you see the kid’s just had his heart
ripped in two?”

Roy shrugged as he bit into his
sandwich. “Just thought seeing some skin might cheer him up, is
all.”

Jeff’s bushy mustache twitched under
his nose. “You ever think about anything else?”

Roy paused his chewing for a moment
then shook his head ‘no’.

Jimmy reached into his pocket as the
two men exchanged looks, splitting the bag’s seal with his hand. He
had to force a neutral expression as his living fingers found the
dead one. Then, with the finger cupped in his hand, he picked up
the packet of Saltines that had come with his order and tore open
the plastic. “Check out the peach by the register,” he said,
crumbling the crackers. “I’d like to see her in one of them
places.”

The men looked over their shoulders,
and he dropped the finger into the chili with the crackers,
stirring it under with his spoon. Initially he’d planned to take a
few bites before getting to business—to make the lunch seem more
authentic—but the thought of swallowing a single drop of the food
after the finger had been mixed in with it made his stomach flop
over in protest.

Get a grip, Jim. Think
dollar signs.

He churned the chili, feeling the
finger’s weight against the plastic utensil. Then, with a furtive
glance to make sure Jeff and Roy had their attention on their own
meals, he scooped the finger into his mouth.

It slid off the spoon, onto his
tongue, taking up far more space than he liked.

Don’t think about it,
dumb-ass, just do it!
he thought.

And he did.

He bit down, feeling the rubbery
texture of the finger’s skin, the hardness of bone. The heat from
the chili had yet to penetrate the cold from the ice and as his
teeth came together, a frigid liquid spurted against the inside of
his cheek.

His empty stomach seemed to fill with
a putrid green liquid in reaction to the sensation in his mouth and
his body instinctively fought to expel the nauseating object. But
just as he prepared to spew it onto the tabletop, Jeff and Roy
turned away, facing the front of the store to look at the
menu.

They won’t see it!
his brain raged.
They have to see me
spit it out!

So he held it in his mouth, feeling
its horrid presence.

And it moved.

He’d raised his hand, about to slam it
down on the table to regain the men’s attention, when he distinctly
felt the finger uncurl, its nail scraping the side of one
molar.