Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“Hey, fuckface,” the fat man said behind me. “Coffee.”

“Coming up,” Muhammad said. He started to turn away, and I put my hand on his arm. He twitched galvanically but stopped.

“Him too?” I said.

“Sure. Sure, him too. Like I told you, anybody who can get them. Listen, is it legal to serve coffee?”

I lifted my hand, and he bustled around doing his job. When he put the cup on the saucer it jittered. He carried it to the fat man and put it on the table, and the fat man asked him a question, his eyes on me. Muhammad shook his head hurriedly and came back to the counter.

“Get out of here,” he said quietly, pouring more coffee into my cup. “Don't come back unless you've got a platoon with you.”

All the black, bitter bile I'd been holding back since the moment Yoshino had pulled down that white sheet rose into the back of my throat. I could hear my heart in my ears. “The hell with it,” I said to Muhammad. “Nobody lives forever.”

The stool squealed as I swiveled around so that my back was to the counter. The fat man looked directly at me and blew onto the surface of his coffee. His lips were thick, loose, and rubbery, and his sideburns ended in knife-sharp points that angled downward toward his fatty pudding of a mouth. His T-shirt said, You can die looking . The icecream pimp and his girl were in conversation, but the hardcase with the Japanese or Korean girl narrowed his eyes at me and turned the chain saw up to the setting marked Amputate. The girl, slower than her protector, gave me a tiny, stoned smile. Then she looked at him and stopped smiling.

I put my elbows up on the counter and stared back. “Oh, Jesus,” Muhammad said behind me.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said to the room as a whole.

The ice-cream pimp stopped talking and turned to face me. His girl looked at her feet.

“I hate to interrupt your sugar rush,” I said pleasantly, “but I've got a problem. You see, I'm looking for somebody.”

“Golly,” the fat man said after a long moment. “Who would of thought it?” He looked beyond me at Muhammad, who produced the first audible cringe I'd ever heard.

“What's your name?” I said to the Japanese or Korean girl.

“Junko,” she said. Japanese, then.

“Jennie,” her protector corrected, taking her left hand and squeezing it until the knuckles turned white. “And Jennie doesn't know anybody.”

Junko/Jennie sucked her breath in sharply. I heard her knuckles crack. “No,” she said to him, and he sat upright in a jerky fashion, looking genuinely astonished, and bent her hand back sharply. “No,” she said in a much higher voice, readdressing herself to me. “I don't know anybody.”

“She doesn't,” Muhammad said behind me. “She doesn't know anybody in the whole world.” Junko emitted a thin squeal. The hardcase kept his eyes on me.

“Let go of her hand,” I said to the hardcase. “Let go of her hand or I'll cut out your fucking tongue and feed it to the pigeons.”

He dropped Junko's hand and lifted his own and displayed it, palm open and empty. “Hey,” he said, “am I looking for an argument?”

“You?” the fat man said in disbelief. “Mr. Flower Power?”

“He looks like a nice guy,” I said. I still hadn't gotten up, and Muhammad tugged at the back of my shirt. I sat forward and he let go with a long sigh.

“He is,” the fat man said, sitting back in his chair. “What with his widowed mother and all.”

“Am I a nice guy, Jennie?” the hardcase asked. The girl, who had been tentatively flexing her fingers and wrist, looked up at him as though her head had been jerked on a string and nodded.

“Junko,” I said, getting up. “Do you know her?”

I put the yearbook picture of Aimee on the table in front of her. She shook her head in the negative without glancing down.

“Look at it,” I said.

She turned her eyes to the hardcase, and he lifted his eyebrows in a classic gesture of indifference. The only sound was the fat man slurping his coffee. Then she looked down at the picture, and a tiny jolt of electricity went through her shoulders.

“But she's-” she said.

The hardcase slapped his hand down over the photo and said, “Tssss.” Junko sat back as though she'd been slapped, and gazed at him. “But she is,” she said.

“Tsssss,” he said again. Then he looked at me. “She doesn't know her,” he said. The knife scar above his mouth twitched. It was a thin, curved, clean slice that traveled from the side of his nose right through his upper lip.

“I know you're a nice guy,” I said. “Look at your character witnesses. But at the moment, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to Junko.”

“Junko’s not talking to you,” he said. He picked up his plastic cup of Coke and sipped at it. “So fuck off,” he said.

“There's a bug in your Coke,” I said.

He looked down at it, and I slapped him across the face. My hand caught the Coke and sent it flying. I slapped him again backhand just to let off some steam. His head rocketed back, and Junko let out a tiny scream. The ice-cream pimp's girl watched in fascination. The Coke had hit the wall and made a nice brown splash.

“I’d punch you,” I explained, “but you're not worth it.”

He got up slowly. There was a big red splotch heating up on each of his cheeks. The scar was white and livid.

“Oh,” I said, “I'd love you to.”

He had to step behind Junko to cross behind the table and get to me. When he was standing directly behind her, he gave me a crooked smile, grabbed a knot of her hair in one hand, and yanked backward. Her head went back and her eyes rolled.

“Stick out your tongue, Jennie,” he said to her. Her tongue came out all the way to the bottom of her chin, and his other hand appeared with a knife in it. It was a very shiny knife. He angled the blade down toward Junko's tongue and touched it against the pink surface. The edge was angled away from her face so that if she pulled her tongue back the knife would slice right through. “Don't move,” he said to her. Then he looked back at me.

“So,” he said, “you want to feed somebody's tongue to the pigeons?” He gave me the full chain-saw grin. “We got a tongue right here,” he said. “Good as any deli.” He let go of her throat and tugged at the tip of her tongue. “Don't suck it in, honey, or you'll lisp for life.”

The girl had closed her eyes. Her fine black hair curled on her shoulders and her body was quivering, but her tongue was as still as if it had been carved from marble.

“Okay,” I said, “she doesn't know her. Let her go.”

One of his eyebrows arched upward. “Oh, don't worry,” he said. “I'm going to let her go. Paul.”

The fat man stood up and moved behind him. “May I be of service, my dear?” he asked in a courtly fashion.

“Hold her tongue,” the hardcase said.

“A pleasure,” Paul said. He reached two greasy fingers down and took the tip of Junko's tongue between them. A knife materialized in his other hand and came to rest where the hardcase's blade had been a moment before. Junko moaned.

“You and me,” the hardcase said, stepping away from her. “Back to the pinballs.”

“I don't play pinballs,” I said, looking at the fat man's knife against Junko's tongue.

“You're not going to play,” he said. “I am.”

It didn't sound good, but there wasn't any alternative. Junko hadn't swallowed in half a minute.

“He's a cop,” Muhammad said from behind me.

“Yeah,” the hardcase said, “and I'm Cary Grant, you dumb immigrant. After you, jerkoff.”

“You do anything to her,” I said to the fat man, “and I'll come back for you.”