The New Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction (105 page)

I guess the stud in there had never dug that he was supposed to be gone in two seconds without pain, because his body was still arched up in that terrible bow, and his hands were still claws. I could see the muscles standing out along the sides of his jaws like marbles. Finally he flopped back and just hung there in his straps like a machine-gunned paratrooper.

But that wasn’t the end. He took another huge gasp, so I could see his ribs pressing out against his white shirt. After that one, twenty seconds. We decided that he had cut out.

Then another gasp. Then nothing. Half a minute nothing.

Another of those final terrible shuddering racking gasps. At last: all through. All used up. Making it with the angels.

But then he did it
again
. Every fibre of that dead wasted comic thrown-away body strained for air on this one. No air: only hydrocyanic acid gas. Just nerves, like the fish twitching after you whack it on the skull with the back edge of the skinning knife. Except that it wasn’t a fish we were seeing die.

His head flopped sideways and his tongue came out slyly like the tongue of a dead deer. Then this gunk ran out of his mouth.

It was just saliva – they said it couldn’t be anything else – but it reminded me of the residue after light-line resistors have been melted in an electrical fire. That kind of black. That kind of scorched.

Very softly, almost to himself, Victor murmured: “Later, dad.”

That was it. Dig you in the hereafter, dad. Ten little minutes and you’re through the wall. Mistah Kurtz, he dead. Mistah Kurtz, he very very goddamn dead
.

I believed it. Looking at what was left of that cat was like looking at a chick who’s gotten herself bombed on the heavy, so when you hold a match in front of her eyes the pupils don’t react and there’s no one home, man. No one. Nowhere. End of the lineville.

We split.

But on the way out I kept thinking of that Army stud, and wondering what had made him sick. Was it because the cat in the chair had been the last to enter, no matter how violently, the body of his beloved, and now even that febrile connection had been severed? Whatever the reason, his body had known what perhaps his mind had refused to accept: this ending was no new beginning, this death would not restore his dead chick to him. This death, no matter how just in his eyes, had generated only nausea.

Victor and I sat in the Mercedes for a long time with the top down, looking out over that bright beautiful empty peninsula, not named, as you might think, after a saint, but after some poor dumb Indian they had hanged there a hundred years or so before. Trees and clouds and blue water, and still no birds making the scene. Even the cats in the black suits had vanished, but now I understood why they’d been there. In their silent censure, they had been sounding the right gong, man.
We
were the ones from the Middle Ages.

Victor took a deep shuddering breath as if he could never get enough air. Then he said in a barely audible voice: “How did you dig that action, man?”

I gave a little shrug and, being myself, said the only thing I could say. “It was a gas, dad.”

“I dig, man. I’m hip. A gas.”

Something was wrong with the way he said it, but I broke the seal on the tequila and we killed it in fifteen minutes, without even a lime to suck in between. Then he started the car and we cut out, and I realized what was wrong. Watching that cat in the gas chamber, Victor had realized for the very first time that life is far, far more than just kicks. We were both partially responsible for what had happened in there, and we had been ineluctably diminished by it.

On US 101 he coked the Mercedes up to 104 mph through the traffic, and held it there. It was wild: it was the end: but I didn’t sound. I was alone without my Guide by the boiling river of blood. When the Highway Patrol finally got us stopped, Victor was coming on so strong and I was coming on so mild that they surrounded us with their holsters’ flaps unbuckled, and checked our veins for needle marks.

I didn’t say a word to them, man, not one. Not even my name. Like they had to look in my wallet to see who I was. And while they were doing that, Victor blew his cool entirely. You know, biting, foaming at the mouth, the whole bit – he gave a very good show until they hit him on the back of the head with a gun butt. I just watched.

They lifted his license for a year, nothing else, because his old man spent a lot of bread on a shrinker who testified that Victor had temporarily wigged out, and who had him put away in the zoo for a time. He’s back now, but he still sees that wig picker, three times a week at forty clams a shot.

He needs it. A few days ago I saw him on Upper Grant, stalking lithely through a grey raw February day with the fog in, wearing just a T-shirt and jeans – and no shoes. He seemed agitated, pressed, confined within his own concerns, but I stopped him for a minute.

“Ah . . . how you making it, man? Like, ah, what’s the gig?”

He shook his head cautiously. “They will not let us get away with it, you know. Like to them, man, just living is a crime.”

“Why no strollers, dad?”

“I cannot wear shoes.” He moved closer and glanced up and down the street, and said with tragic earnestness: “I can hear only with the soles of my feet, man.”

Then he nodded and padded away through the crowds on silent naked soles like a puzzled panther, drifting through the fruiters and drunken teenagers and fuzz trying to bust some cat for possession who have inherited North Beach from the true swingers. I guess all Victor wants to listen to now is Mother Earth: all he wants to hear is the comforting sound of the worms, chewing away.

Chewing away, and waiting for Victor; and maybe for the Second Coming.

We were doing all right, Norah and I. We’d been married three years, but the honeymoon wasn’t over. With us, the honeymoon should last forever, we figured at the time.

I was a police reporter for the
Star
, and on that beat you meet a lot of people, none of them likely to bolster your faith in human nature. It was Norah who did that for me. It was Norah I turned to every night for a renewal of the faith, as they say. Besides all that, she could cook. Not many like her, none like her. None I’ve met, at any rate.

We had a small home, out in Shore Hills, and a small nest egg in the First National, and a small heir in the rear bedroom named John Baldwin Shea, Jr. We had about everything we wanted except a new car, and cars just weren’t available.

Maybe we were beginning to get smug. Maybe we had too much.

This June Drexel angle was routine enough, at first. She was a witness in the Peckham divorce mess, and I happened to run across her in the DA’s office. I’d taken her out, quite a few times, in high school. The way she acted, in the DA’s office, it looked to the others, I’ll bet, as though I’d never stopped taking her out.

“Johnny dear,” she asked, “have you come to rescue me?”

I blushed, and stammered, “Hello, June,” and tried to ignore the laugh I was getting from the other reporters.

The DA looked at me sharply. He was trying to get some dope on Peckham from June; the divorce to him was only incidental.

June sighed, and said, “Johnny and I were such good friends.”

The DA said, “I won’t be needing you any more, Miss Drexel.” And to the reporters, “That’s all, boys.”

We started to file out, when he called, “Would you mind waiting a moment, Shea?”

I closed the door and came back. I was probably still blushing. He had a smile on his broad face. “That’s where the
Star
gets its copy on Peckham, is it?” he asked.

We’d been running a campaign on municipal building graft, and Peckham’s name had been mentioned frequently. “Hell, no,” I said. “I haven’t seen that babe since high school. If I never see her again, it’s OK with me.”

He was smirking now. “Let’s not be modest, Johnny. You’re not a bad-looking guy, you know. You’re right in there, pitching, aren’t you?”

I shook my head. I was beginning to get hot. “I’m happily married. That’s the way I intend to stay. She was just trying to embarrass me, and through me, the
Star
. She’s no dummy.”

“No,” he said, “she isn’t.” He was looking thoughtful. He tilted his head to one side, studying me, and tried to look chummy. “The
Star
and I usually get along all right. We’ve worked together before, you know.”

I nodded.

“Mr Cavanaugh would want you to work with me, Johnny.”

Mr Robert Justice Cavanaugh was the owner of the
Star
. He was a big man, a very big man in this town. I said flatly, “You’d better talk to him, then.”

He nodded, and he wasn’t smirking or trying to be chummy any more. He said quietly, “That’s exactly what I intend to do. That’s all, Johnny.”

He didn’t frighten me. Cavanaugh would back me. He was just desperate and frustrated and annoyed and was taking it out on the first stooge who happened along. He didn’t frighten me – much.

I left the quiet room behind, and went out into the clatter of the outer office. A flash bulb went off in my face.

Bitsy Donworth, photographer for the
Courier
, said, “Nice shot. Could we have a statement, dear?”

The,
Courier
was a tabloid, the kind of paper that would play up something like this. Any relation to the truth in the
Courier
was purely coincidental.

I thought of Norah. “Don’t make the mistake of printing that picture, Bitsy. You’ll be asking for trouble.”

“The
Courier
,” Bitsy replied, “thrives on trouble.”

“But
you
don’t,” I said. “You’re too small. This would be personal trouble, Bitsy.” I realized I was making a damned fool of myself, but I was past caring.

Jug Elder, who handles the courts for the
Courier
, said, “Run along, dear. You don’t want any trouble with us.”

Jug goes about two hundred pounds. I figured about half of it was fat. I should have run along, as he said. But I walked over to him, and slapped his face. My name is Shea.

He drew his big right hand back, and I let him have it, right on the button.

I could feel the shock traveling up my arm, and I could see him go crashing backward into a desk. I saw the flash bulb go off again, and then the red went flashing through my brain, and I was moving in.

The next thing I knew, a couple of reporters from the
Journal
were holding my arms. Jug was getting up slowly, rubbing his chin. Bitsy was on his way out. The DA stood in his doorway, asking, “What the hell’s going on out here?”

One of the
Journal
reporters said, “Jug fell down, didn’t you, Jug? You all right, now?”

All the stenos, the cops, the help in the outer office were watching us. It had happened so quickly that none of the girls had had a chance to scream.

“I’m all right,” Jug said. He didn’t look at me. I’ll bet he didn’t even want to look at himself.

There was a murmur of voices from the spectators. The DA took one swift glance around the room, and then his door closed.

I went out with one of the
Journal
reporters. He said, “The
Courier
’ll print that picture. They’ll make some kind of a lousy story out of the whole thing.” He swore.

“They’ll probably print both pictures, now,” I said. “I wonder, you think there might be a libel angle—”

He shook his head. “Not the way they’ll write it. Avoiding libel suits is a business they understand. They’ve made an art out of that.”

He left me, there on the sidewalk, and I walked down to the coupé. I was thinking about June. I was remembering her hands, her pale, fluttering hands, always moving, always reaching. They’d repelled me, back in high school, repelled me and fascinated me. I remember, I could never take my eyes off them.

She had jet-black hair, this June Drexel, and her pale complexion was almost sickly in its whitness. But she’d done a lot with that contrast, that and the dark-blue eyes. That and the reaching, grasping hands.

As though she couldn’t get enough of whatever it was she wanted. A high-school kid wouldn’t know what it was. I wasn’t sure, even now, and high school was ten years behind me. There’d been a war and a wedding and a birth in my life since then.

To hell with her, I thought. To hell with her and her hands.

I drove back to the office. I went up to the city room and hammered out a couple of routine stories from the department.

Our local political man, Tom Alexander, was working at the machine next to mine. I asked him, “You think this Peckham was playing house with that Drexel dame? You think his wife’s got a case?”

He smiled cynically. “The
Star
thinks so, slave. The
Star
would like to nail Peckham any way they can.”

“But why?” I said. “Peckham’s no bigger than some of the other grafters in this burg. Why him?”

He shrugged. “Ours not to reason why, Johnny.” He lighted a cigarette and considered his next paragraph. Then he looked over at me. “Is this a professional or a personal interest?”

“Why should it be personal?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” He pulled at an ear. “Your tone of voice, I guess.” He frowned, and went back to work.

To hell with June Drexel, I thought again. And to hell with the
Courier
. Just for good measure, I threw in the DA.

I went over to pick up Sammy Berg and we went out to lunch. I told him what had happened.

He shook his head sadly. “You know Cavanaugh, Johnny. Dignity, all the time; ethics, every minute. He’ll blow his stack.”

He didn’t, really. The early-afternoon edition of the
Courier
came off the press, and there was yours truly, in both poses. There was a story you could read any way your mind happened to run, though it would prove most interesting to a low mind.

I remember thinking, I hope Norah doesn’t see this, just before I got the summons from R.J.

I was nervous. I won’t say I was frightened, not at first, but the palms of my hands were wet, and I wanted a cigarette. In R.J.’s office, nobody smokes.