Mystery Girl: A Novel (32 page)

“You watch her,” she told one of the aerobics dudes, Billy or Joel, I forget. “You bring him with me.”

The other muscle dude, (Joel?) poked me with a gun, and I followed John, afraid of another blow. As I passed Nic I heard a small whimper, whether of fear or sympathy, I don’t know. Blood still dribbled down my chin, my shirt was soaked, and my tongue had definitely located an empty spot on my upper left corner.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured Nic, or tried to, but it sounded, well, rather worrying, like “Doonesbury.” The guy behind me pushed and I coughed out my tooth. It went skittering across the tile floor. “Toof, toof!” I yelled, chasing it around. John turned back.

“What now?”

“He puffed me,” I explained as I searched the floor. It was gone.

“Stop fooling around. Both of you,” she said and led us into the studio. She pointed to a rattan armchair. “Tie him to that.”

I tried to say it wasn’t necessary, but “necessary” was too hard to say, and Joel bungee-corded my arms to the arms and my legs to the legs of the chair. I had a perfect view of the mural. I noticed how artfully the blood had been done: where the woman drove a sword into the bull, the gore seemed splashed on, as though it had actually gushed onto the painting, rather than being in the painting, if that makes sense. Also, I couldn’t help observing that Naught had taken special care with the genitals. Where the bull’s oversized penis met her vagina, every vein and curlicue of hair was lovingly and realistically rendered. On the other hand, the sky was stylized, with the sun dead center between the bull’s horns. And the landscape, now that I stared at it, looked familiar. The long desert horizontals, the odd rocks and rounded protrusions, the witchy humanoid cacti. It was Joshua Tree, the national park right by Twentynine Palms.

The pain in my mouth had receded to a low, steady throb, like a bass line, more soul than funk, and there was less blood than before. I figured they intended to interrogate me now, and I quickly reassessed my obligation to Lonsky and the cause of justice in general. I decided to take a quick shot at lying and then talk. John calmly set her gun down and removed her fanny pack, while her sidekick languidly aimed his gun at my lap. He leaned back against the fresh mural.

“Careble,” I said, lisping through my fat lips. “Baint’s web!”

Joel frowned at me.

“Webaint!” I said. “Webaint!”

“You shut your face up!” The boy barked in a thick Russian brogue, waving his machine pistol at me. I flinched and ducked automatically, although of course I couldn’t move. A howl came from the next room. “Whada buck is dat?” I blurted, straining against the bungee cords. “If dat Nic?”

“Let me check,” John said and looked into the next room. “Yes
it is.” She glanced at her companion and they both giggled. “Our friend has a fetish for nipples and your lady has pleasant ones.”

“Thass unef… You don affa do dat!” I sputtered, blood spraying through the gap where my tooth had been. John unzipped her pack, rummaging in it calmly like she was looking for her lipstick, then crossed to the table behind me.

“Liffen,” I said. “I fink we got awff to a bad shtart. Maybe you hab the wong idea. I’m only here becauf I ga a note fum a shrange hombre, bery shrange…” I was straining to the left as I spoke, toward where I thought she was, but John appeared on my right, and before I could register what was happening, she leaned over my hand, where it was lashed to the arm of the chair, and wielding a small, sharp pair of gardening shears, the kind with a spring between the handles, she grasped my right pinky finger, and neatly chopped it off, just below the joint. My finger jumped away, like a snipped twig.

Stunned and numb, I found myself staring at the little stump for an endless second before blood and searing pain began to flow. Then I screamed, so loud and high I shocked myself. The terrible wail seemed to come from far off, perhaps from a small animal caught in a steel trap. My hand too seemed a mile away, pumping blood like a faucet someone forgot to turn off. Tears flooded my eyes and my vision burned. I was crying. Then I felt the left pinky go. I entered a new realm of pain. Both hands seemed to be like torches, blazing.

“I wuz gomma talk,” I whimpered. “I wuz gomma talk…” I fought the urge to faint. My vision cleared slightly and she appeared before me, holding my two little pinkies in her palm.

“OK, now,” she said, delicately sliding a pinky, nail first, into my right nostril. Joel snickered. She slid in the left, also up to the first knuckle so it stuck. “I want you to listen very careful. Are you listening?”

I nodded. “Yef.” I had to gasp air through my wounded mouth.

“Good,” she said, lifting the shears again, and showing them to me, the hook-nosed blades now caked with blood. “Because I am only going to ask you eight more times…”

“No,” I howled, screaming like a child, now too frantic even to spill my guts, stuttering, bubbling, squirming, and crying. Joel laughed uproariously. John snapped the shears like a hungry red beak before me. I shook my head and a pinky flew out. Joel guffawed even louder, pointing at me with glee. He noticed his arm was blue from wet sky. Looking down, he realized that he’d smeared his clothes with paint, smudging the mural behind him. He began to curse madly in Russian while John pointed at him and laughed merrily. Furious, he pointed his gun at me.

“Fuck you off, you fuck!”

I shook my head. He took careful aim at my face. I held my breath. Then his skull exploded. I heard the shot, breaking glass, and a whistle past my ear. His brain matter sprayed over the mural and, as John and I both stared, his eyes rolled up and he fell, revealing a back covered in a muddy rainbow of paint. As he hit the ground another shot rang out, chipping out a chunk of the bull’s flank and revealing white plaster beneath it.

John reacted, diving like a swimmer across the room to the table where her gun lay and snatching it up as the table, cluttered with paints and brushes, collapsed beneath her. I twisted in my chair, unable to see the shooter behind me. As several more shots cracked the air, John sprang back up like a jack-in-the box, gun in hand, and unleashed an ear-splitting barrage. I tipped my chair violently sideways and went down as smoke and fire danced around the mouth of her gun. More glass shattered, I heard a grunt, and, like a deer, John dashed from the room.

I lay on my side in the sudden stillness, though I could hear voices and scattered shots beyond the walls. I craned my neck to see behind me. Uncle Coffee and Donuts lay dead in the patio door, eyes wide, chest soaked in red, a pistol still clenched in his fist. His upturned cowboy hat sat nearby, like an empty bowl. The fall had loosened the cord on my right leg and I could feel that the flimsy arm of the old chair was shaky too. Twisting myself as I never could in yoga, I managed to get my right foot on the floor and then to
stand, crouched low like an ancient hermit, the chair still strapped to my back like a skeleton I was taking for a ride. I hobbled up to the room’s remaining table and leaned the chair’s right arm (and my own, still tied) against the table’s edge. I took a deep breath, and before I could reconsider, jumped up, bringing the chair down on the rim of the table with all my weight. The chair’s arm broke, loosing the cord and freeing my own arm as it also freed a new spurt of blood from my hand. Hissing through my teeth, I wriggled out of my trap, undoing the cords from my left arm and leg. I felt like shit, but even gimping around on numb, twisted legs and trailing fat drops of blood from both missing pinkies, I was desperate to escape that room. Fear and adrenaline kept me moving. The pop and boom of gunfire came from next door like the night’s storm crackling over the sea. I picked up Joel’s gun from where it lay alongside his paint-smeared body, clutching it awkwardly between my crippled hands. The mural was cracked, as if the desert had broken open, revealing the void beneath it. The bull was split down the side. Mona had a bullet in her mouth. Ducking low, I crept up to the door and peeked into the living room.

John and Billy, her other muscle boy, were crouched behind toppled furniture, firing out onto the patio through the holes that had once been glass doors, while random shots from beyond blasted the room to bits. In the midst of it was Nic, crouched in a corner like a terrified animal, shaking like I’d seen mice and bunnies shake. Her top was ripped and her breasts bare, but from what I could see her nipples were intact. I leaned against the doorframe. Shock had really set in now, and I was in less pain, but numbness was spreading through my hands. Finger by finger, they seemed to fan like fronds, and the loss of blood was blurring my mind. The walls were swimming and the paintings swelled, images of Mona palpitating into life, fattening and flattening, dancing and flowing along the edges of my eyes. I struggled to aim the gun. My hands were trembling, slippery with blood and oddly unbalanced without their pinkies. Nic
saw me and released a small choked cry, like a single swallow fluttering away. The muscle dude looked over first, saw me propping my gun up, weak legs bent, and he laughed, calling to John in Russian. She turned to me, smiled, and raised her gun.

I shot her. My aim wasn’t much, and my hands shook, and the power of the gun threw me, but it didn’t matter. I squeezed the trigger and the gun spat and a row of huge red tears opened in her flesh, belly, chest, face, and she fell back, dead. The boy went to fire but I squeezed my trigger again, wheeling in his general direction. This time I didn’t aim at all and I was low, but the line of bullets cut across his thighs and he went down on his knees, firing his own gun up into the ceiling. He grunted—“Kafka,” it sounded like—staring at me with big dark eyes. “Kafka,” he coughed again, softly. By now my head was spinning and my ears rang. Steadying myself against the wall, I raised my gun carefully and shot again, a full burst right into his chest. He fell on his side. “Beckett,” he whispered as blood flowed from his lips. The room was quiet. Nic and I both stayed where we were, she curled and staring, me against the wall, gun in both hands, leaking blood. I felt as though I were on the deck of a ship at sea, riding the high tide of my own wavering consciousness and feeling the house slide away beneath my feet. Ramón appeared in the doorway, holding his pistol. He rushed to Nic first, and checked her quickly. Blind Uncle stepped in, calm as ever, holding a rifle, which seemed to be pointed at me. Ramón called to him in Spanish, wrapping his jean jacket around Nic. Then he came to me.

“OK, amigo, it’s over now.” I nodded and let him take the gun. “We’re going to bring you to the hospital.”

“Glate,” I said, my voice sounding surprisingly calm and yet odd, as if it were coming from someone else, another guy just off to my left. “I fink I’m gomma pass ow now.”

“Good idea, go ahead,” Ramón said.

“Pleab done forged my fingerth,” I added, or imagined I added, as everything went dark.

81

I MISSED MOST OF THE NEXT
twelve hours, so I will just report the highlights as they were related to me. Ramón and the Blind Uncle somehow got me to the car, where they propped me in the back along with poor Uncle Coffee and Donuts, whom they hid under a blanket. Nic found my fingers. She dropped them in a ziplock bag and put that in a cup of ice, having heard somewhere that it was the thing to do. They rushed me to the closest large hospital, in Puerto Vallarta, and my fingers were reattached while my armed protectors sat outside. Nic paid in cash. They brought in a dentist to patch up my tooth as well. When I awoke my fingers were like two small portions of cotton candy, wads of white cotton over gauze, held in place with tape. They told me to change the dressings daily and to see a doctor in LA right away. Nic told me she’d called Lonsky while I was out.

“Great. What did he say?”

“He said your injuries were unfortunate but that our overall conduct was most suitable.”

“That’s it? Did you tell him about my wife?”

She patted my shoulder. “Of course. He said don’t worry and that we would figure it all out together. Everything will be fine.”

“Right. Just tell me what he really said.”

She frowned. “He said interesting, but that he had to get off the line because his breakfast was ready.”

“That fat bastard. What about Zed being alive? And the movie?”

“He just said return to America. He said to call your friend the cinephile, whoever that is, and see if he’ll meet us with a projector.”

“Milo? Lonsky wants him to come to the house?”

“No. We’re picking Solar up and going right out to the desert to get the film from that bank. He said not to tarry.”

“He’s coming? To Twentynine Palms?”

“Yup.”

“That is serious. We’d better get going.” Determined, I pushed
away the covers and stood up. My bare feet hit the linoleum. “Um, can you help me put on my pants?”

Ramón called a fellow taxi driver to take us to the airport and then returned to Tepic to organize another funeral for his uncle. The Blind Uncle gave us tight hugs. Ramón said he’d spoken to the owner of the white house, and the bodies we’d left behind would disappear. He shrugged.

“I am sorry to say that this is easily done in Mexico.”

“Thank you,” I said. “For everything. I don’t know what I can do to repay you.”

He smiled. “That is easy,
cabrón.
You can find the man who is responsible for my uncle, and my cousin too. And then you can kill him.”

82

I HID MY HANDS
under an airline blanket to avoid stares on the plane. “How’s my tooth look?” I asked Nic.

“Fine. Just let it rest,” she said, tucking me in and opening a magazine. We had not discussed the events of the previous night, except to ask each other, in an overly caring way, every time the flight attendant brought apple juice or we buckled our seat belts, Are you OK? But something between us had shifted. We sat close, shoulders and thighs touching, as if that were a normal thing. We lapsed into long silences and then picked up the strands of unfinished discussions. We were a couple. It was as if we had lived out a long, rocky relationship in a few days. And like many couples, we had a secret drama, those others who both joined and split us: Mona, a woman neither of us knew, but who had brought us together. And that other shadow, my wife, who had disappeared, only to return as a stranger, arriving out of a past grown so mysterious, it loomed before me now, imminent and impenetrable, like the future.