Эд Горман - Moonchasers and Other Stories

“I’ll need some bullets for it, too,” Linnette called after him.

He turned around and looked at her. “Bullets? What for?”

“Given the price I’m paying, Mr. Kelly, I’d say that was my business.”

He looked at her for a long time and then his cornball grin opened his face up again. “Well, small fry, I guess I can’t argue with you on that one now, can I? Bullets it is.”

The carnival employed a security man named Bulicek. It was said that he was a former cop who’d gotten caught running a penny ante protection racket on his beat and had been summarily discharged. Here, he always smelled of whiskey and Sen-Sen to cut the stink of the whiskey. He strutted around in his blue uniform with big half-moons of sweat under each arm and a creaking leather holster riding around his considerable girth. His best friend in the curly was Kelly at the shooting gallery, which figured.

Aimee avoided Bulicek because he always managed to put his hands on her in some way whenever they talked. But now she had no choice.

She’d visited seven more carnies since Hank and nobody had seen a woman dwarf.

Bulicek was just coming out of the big whitewashed building that was half men’s and half women’s.

He smiled when he saw her. She could feel his paws on her already.

“I’m looking for somebody,” she said.

“So am I. And I found her.” Bulicek knew every bad movie line in the world.

“A woman who’s a dwarf. She’s somewhere on the midway. Have you seen her?”

Bulicek shrugged. “What do I get if I tell ya?”

“You get the privilege of doing your job.” She tried to keep the anger from her voice. She needed his cooperation.

“And nothing else?” His eyes found a nice place on her body to settle momentarily.

“Nothing else.”

He raised his eyes and shook his head and took out a package of cigarettes.

Some teenagers with ducks ass haircuts and black leather jackets — even in this kind of heat for crissakes — wandered by and Bulicek, he-man that he was, gave them the bad eye.

When he turned back to Aimee, she was shocked by his sudden anger. “You think you could talk to me one time, Miss High and Mighty, without making me feel I’m a piece of dog shit?”

“You think you could talk to me one time without copping a cheap feel?”

He surprised her by saying, “I shouldn’t do that, Aimee, and I’m sorry. You wanna try and get along?”

She laughed from embarrassment. “God, you’re really serious aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I am.” He put out a hand. “You wanna be friends, Aimee?”

This time the laugh was pure pleasure. “Sure, Bulicek. I’d like to be friends. I really would. You show me some respect and I’ll show you some, too.”

They shook hands.

“Now, about the dwarf you was askin’ about?”

“Yeah? You saw her?” Aimee couldn’t keep the excitement from her voice.

Bulicek pointed down the midway. “Seen her ’bout fifteen minutes ago at Kelly’s.”

Aimee thanked him and started running.

Linnette had a different taxi driver this time.

This guy was heavy and Mexican. The radio played low, Mexican songs from a station across the border. The guy sure wore a lot of aftershave.

Linnette sat with the gun inside her purse and her purse on her lap.

She looked out the window at the passing streets. Easy to imagine her brother walking across these streets, always the focus of the curious stare and the cold quick smirk. Maybe it was harder for men, she thought. They were expected to be big and strong and—

She opened her purse. The sound was loud in the taxi. She saw the driver’s eyes flick up to his rearview and study her. Then his eyes flicked away.

She rode the rest of the way with her hand inside her purse, gripping the gun.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine her brother’s hand on the handle, on the trigger.

She hoped that there was a God somewhere and that all of this made sense somehow, that some people should be born of normal height and others, freaks, be born with no arms or legs or eyes.

Or be born dwarfs.

“Here you are, lady.”

He pulled over to the curb and told her the fare.

Once again, she found her money swiftly and paid him off.

He reached over and opened the door for her, studying her all the time. Did it ever occur to him — fat and Mexican and not very well educated — that he looked just as strange to her as she did to him? But no, he wouldn’t be the kind of man who’d have an insight like that.

She got out of the cab and he drove away.

Even in a bleak little town like this one, the Ganges Arms was grim. Fireproof was much larger than Ganges on the neon sign outside, and the drunk throwing up over by the curb told her more than she wanted to know about the type of man who lived up there.

She couldn’t imagine how her brother had managed to survive here six years.

She went inside. The lobby was small and filled with ancient couches that dust rose from like shabby ghosts. A long-dead potted plant filled one corner while a cigarette vending machine filled the other. In the back somewhere a toilet flushed with the roar of an avalanche. A black-and-white TV screen flickered with images of Milton Berle in a dress.

A big woman in a faded housedress that revealed fleshy arms and some kind of terrible rash on her elbows was behind the desk. The woman had a beauty mark that was huge and hairy, like a little animal clinging to her cheek.

She grinned when she saw Linnette.

“You don’t have to tell me, sweetie.”

“Tell you?”

“Sure. Who you are.”

“You know who I am?”

“Sure. You’re the little guy’s sister. He talked about you all the time.”

She leaned over the counter, coughing a cigarette hack that sounded sickeningly phlegmy, and said, “Linnette, right?”

“Right.”

The woman grimaced. “Sorry about the little guy.”

“Thank you.”

“I was the one who found him. He wasn’t pretty, believe me.”

“Oh.”

“And I was the first one who read the note.” She shook her head again and put a cigarette in her mouth. “He was pretty gimped up inside, poor little guy.”

“Yes; yes he was.”

The woman stared at her, not as if Linnette were a freak, but rather curious about why she might be here.

“I was just traveling through,” Linnette said quietly. “I thought I might stay here tonight.” She hesitated. “Sleep in my brother’s room, perhaps.”

Now the woman really stared at her. “You sure, hon?”

“Sure?”

“About wantin’ to take his room and all? Frankly, it’d give me the creeps.”

Linnette opened her purse, reached in for her bills. “I’d just like to see where he lived and worked is all. I’m sure it will be a nice experience.”

The woman shrugged beefy shoulders. “You’re the boss, hon. You’re the boss.”

Kelly was arguing with a drunk who claimed that the shooting gallery was rigged. The drunk had been bragging to his girl about what a marksman he’d become in Korea and wanted to do a little showing off. All he’d managed to do was humiliate himself.

Aimee waited as patiently as she could for a few minutes and then she interrupted the drunk — whose girlfriend was now trying to tug him away from making any more of a scene — and said, “Kelly, I’m looking for a woman who’s a dwarf. Bulicek said he saw her here.”

The drunk turned and looked at Aimee as if she’d just said she’d seen a Martian.

Aimee’s remark unsettled the drunk enough that his girlfriend was now able to draw him away, and get themselves lost on the midway.

“Yeah. She was here. So what?”

“Did you talk to her?”