Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“Careful,” the hardcase said. “You might make his hand shake.” The fat man let loose an explosive chuckle, and one of Junko's hands flew up in a gesture of pure desperation. I headed for the pinballs.

“Against the wall,” the hardcase said, “facing me. Right between the machines.”

I backed up until I felt a cold wall behind me and a pinball machine touching either hip. Even the most optimistic real-estate salesman couldn't have called it anything but a dead end. Cold sweat trickled its way down my sides.

“Hands behind your back,” he said, glancing toward the big window that fronted onto Hollywood Boulevard. I followed his gaze and saw his point. From the street, anyone curious or stupid enough to look in would see the fat man's leather-clad back, between them and Junko, Muhammad polishing glasses, the ice-cream pimp and his lady enjoying their Cokes, and a couple of old friends having a chat between the pinball machines. I put my hands behind my back, feeling the rough texture of the stucco.

He lowered the hand with the knife in it. “Hope you hang left,” he said. Then, very quickly, he stuck me through my jeans with the tip of the knife, just to the right of my fly. I felt a pinpoint of pain and my legs turned to water. “Move and you'll leave with her tongue in your pocket,” he said. “Let's try a little lower.” He stuck me again twice, jabbing the knife in and pulling it out so fast I could barely see it move.

“Three's the charm,” he said, grinning lopsidedly at me. His teeth were rotted and brown; too much cocaine leaches away the calcium. I wished briefly that I were his dental hygienist, going after his tartar with a jackhammer. He must have seen something in my face, because he said, “But four's for fun,” and he stuck me again, deeper this time. I had to fight to remain standing.

“What you're going to do now,” he said, “you're going to go away. And you're not going to come back. Are you?” He gave me another little jab, in the hip this time.

“No,” I said. “I'm gone.”

He backed away, folding the knife and slipping it into his pocket. “Then get the fuck out of here, chickenshit,” he said. He thought better of it. “No,” he said, smiling with the half of his mouth that moved, “hold on.”

With a little grunt, he dug deeper into the pockets of his jeans and came out with something that looked like an aqualung for a skin diver from Lilliput, a flat black tanklike affair with a nozzle at the end of it. The whole thing couldn't have been more than five inches long. Well, the anopheles mosquito is even smaller than that.

He did something to the end and a needlelike blue flame flicked its tongue at me. He brought it up under my nose.

“Ever do any welding?” he asked. He was having fun.

“No.” The heat of the flame pricked against my upper lip.

“You ever want to, this'll do the job.” He held it a little closer to my face, and I let out an involuntary moan.

“Knock it off,” advised the fat man. “Or else hold it lower. People can see.”

“Skin melts,” the knife pimp said. “Next time you're back, we'll melt some. Understand?”

I nodded.

He gave me the half-grin again and lowered the flame. “Scram, pussy,” he said.

I passed him as widely as possible, feeling like the Guitar Player being tossed out of the Oki-Burger. When I passed the fat man, he nodded at me, and I said, “You can put the knife away.” I sounded shaky even to me.

“When you're all the way out,” he said.

Muhammad was assiduously stacking cups and saucers as I passed the counter. Neon was blinking on up and down the Boulevard. When I reached the door the fat man stepped to one side and Junko sagged forward, all the way to the table.

“Listen, you guys,” I said with the little bravado I could muster, “I'll see you.”

The hardcase snickered. “Come back,” he said. “We'll have a tongue sandwich.” He got a laugh.

I'd been sitting in Alice for at least five minutes, bleeding through my jeans and waiting for my legs to stop shaking, before I heard again what he'd said to Junko when she'd started to answer my question about Aimee. It hadn't been “Sshh,” as in “Be quiet.” It had been “Tssss,” as in a cigarette being put out in a bucket of water. Or a cigar in someone's navel.

I was half-drunk and more than halfway to disorderly when Hammond and his friend walked into the Red Dog. I'd gone straight to the bathroom, tugged down my pants, and looked at the punctures, little purple-black slits that were already ringed with an angry red. Then I'd scrubbed the blood off my jeans with water and handfuls of paper towels and emerged into the bar looking like someone who couldn't hit the urinal even if the wind were right. I felt spent, incontinent, inadequate, and stupid.

I'd taken most of it out on Peppi, the aggressively lesbian barmaid, hassling her nastily about the quality of the whiskey she was foisting on me. I'd spent the rest of it on scorn for the burned-out cops in the bar who were trying to attain a level of intoxication at which they could shake off the fear and frustration of the day and kid themselves into thinking they were having a good time. Cop groupies, a scary bunch as a whole, were trying to help. I scorned them too. They didn't seem to notice. Scratchy sixties rock-and-roll screeched from the speakers. The Red Dog was a cop bar, and no compact discs were allowed.

Hammond, as usual, was heard before he was seen. I'd run out of scorn and I was gazing morosely at my drink, trying to remember why ice floated, when the patented Hammond Sonic Boom cut through the Buckinghams singing “Kind of a Drag.” “Peppi,” he bellowed, “upgrade that asshole and bring us a couple more. It's on him.” He pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down, smiling around the room at no one in particular. “Jerks,” he said through the smile. “No one above lieutenant. Sit down, Max.”

The man who sat down was a slender little dandy with fine sandy-blond hair, blue eyes, a harpist's spidery hands, an air of permanent melancholy, a very good suit, and an impossibly long, droopy nose. He looked everywhere but at me as he sat, and he dusted the chair before he sank into it. More than anyone else, he reminded me of Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in GonewiththeWind . He had the same air of overbred aristocratic uselessness. “Max Bruner,” Hammond said, looking for Peppi. “Simeon Grist.”

Peppi pulled my drink off the table with ill-concealed displeasure and put a new one down in front of me before serving doubles to Hammond and Bruner. When she plunked down Bruner's drink he pushed it toward Hammond with one hand and took Peppi's sleeve with the other. It looked casual except that it was so fast. He hadn't looked at either of them.

“Soda,” he said quietly. “No ice.” She strode back to the bar in her seven-league boots and her incongruous black mesh stockings. Peppi made black mesh look like chicken wire.

“Simeon here wants to know about the kids,” Hammond said, putting the top half of his drink into the past tense. He burped and looked at Bruner expectantly.

Bruner turned flat blue eyes to me. “What's his interest?” he asked softly. So softly, in fact, that I wasn't sure I'd heard him right until Hammond said, “Interest? What do you mean, what's his interest? For Chrissakes, Max, he saw the kid with the belly-button.” Bruner continued to gaze at him. “Which, by the way,” Hammond said, “was earlier. Earlier than the broken neck, I mean. Scar was maybe a week old.”

“He's not a cop,” Bruner said without looking at me. His long thin nose drooped and twitched as he talked. I couldn't take my eyes off it. Hammond cleared his throat explosively and I realized I was staring. Peppi materialized and put a glass of plain bubbly soda in front of Bruner.