Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“So what are we going to do?”

“You're going to stay in the car,” I said. “I'm going to have a campfire.”

“I was a Campfire Girl.”

“You're still going to stay in the car.”

“What kind of a campfire?”

“You'll see.”

We'd made a right off Cahuenga when I smelled something. It could have been Alice's brakes, but I hadn't braked lately. I'd worked most of the way through the litany of automotive malfunctions before I realized what it was. At the same time, I realized what I'd forgotten.

“Oh, balls,” I said, pulling over. We were on a quiet little winding street. “Damn you, Jessica.”

“Damn me? I didn't do anything.”

“You're here,” I said, getting out. “If you hadn't been here I'd have remembered to tape his goddamned fingers.” I ran around to the passenger side, threw the door open, and yanked back the blanket. The pimp glared at me over his shoulder. He'd worked the little butane torch out of his pocket and was holding it to the tape at his wrists. What I'd smelled was burning tape and singed blanket.

“Ah-ah,” I said, taking the little blowtorch from his hands. “Creativity is not always rewarded. Mustn't use up the gas. I've got plans for it.” I got the tape and passed it around his fingers and his thumbs for insurance. Then I rifled his pockets and came up with a couple hundred dollars-Junko's take for the evening-and his switchblade.

“Much better,” I said, slamming the door on his feet. The door swung back open, and he moaned. “Pull the feet in or lose them,” I said. He pulled them in, and I slammed the door again.

Five minutes later, we were there.

At that late hour, the reservoir was the picture of placidity. Moonlight gleamed from its surface, and no joggers plodded around it, chasing the waistlines of their youth. Except for the electrical carpet of L.A., spread out and glittering between us and the ocean, we might have been in the Donner Pass.

“Remember the Donner party?” I said, hauling the pimp out of the car by his belt. His elbows cracked against the ground and he made a mushy sound. “I didn't think so. Guys like you have no frame of reference. The Donner party ran out of mules or horses or whatever pulled their wagon train in a pass some miles northeast of here. Then the snows came.” I dragged him up against an oak tree, substantial but not too thick, and slammed his back against it. He grunted.

“Jessica,” I called, “the battery cables. They're in the trunk. Use the ignition key and bring them here.” To pass the time I slapped his face a couple of times. “After a while, the people in the Donner party did the only thing they could do,” I said. “They ate each other.”

“Big fucking deal,” he said. His forehead was bleeding where it had hit the pavement, and it hadn't done his disposition any good. He was still nobody you'd like to be seated next to at dinner.

“It was to the Donner party,” I said. Jessica brought the cables and I wound them around his chest and waist and passed them around the oak. He took a halfhearted kick at me, but his heart wasn't in it. He knew it wasn't going to do him any good. “You see,” I said, “they didn't have any matches. They had to eat each other raw. Imagine the emotional trauma it must have caused. In the twentieth century it would have kept a squadron of psychiatrists fat for years.”

“Fuck you,” he said. The sliced side of his mouth twitched in the moonlight.

“Hey, this is serious,” I said, tying a double square knot. “For you, anyway. She and I are going home when it's over. You're not.”

“What do you think you're doing?”

“Well,” I said, “for one thing, I'm getting even. But we've got another agenda here as well. At an earlier point in our thus-far unsatisfactory relationship, you said Tssss.’ I want to know what Tssss’ means.”

“Like I said, fuck you.”

“ As I said. Jesus, is it really harder to speak good English than bad? It doesn't take any more words. Do your hands hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Well, here's something to take your mind off it. Pull in your tongue.” He did, and I slammed him under the jaw with my fist. “See?” I said as his knees sagged, “if I hadn't told you to pull in your tongue, you'd be standing here bleeding to death and pleading with us in broken English. Your problem is that you don't know who your friends are.”

“Your problem is that you're an asshole and you don't know what you're fucking around with.” He was sweating, and his tongue came out to lick off a drop that was rolling past the corner of his mouth. Then he looked at me and yanked his tongue back in as though it were the retractable cord on a vacuum cleaner.

“Well, tell me,” I said reasonably.

He looked away for a moment, thinking about it. Then he gazed over my shoulder at Jessica. “Who's the pretty little thing?”

I hit him in the stomach. “As I mentioned, there's an agenda here,” I said, flexing my knuckles to make sure they were okay, “and my job is to see that we stick to it.”

He made windy huffing sounds and then straightened up and gave me the worst look he could manage. “Man,” he said, “you can talk to me all night and you're not going to learn nothing.”

“Anything,” I corrected automatically. “And you're laboring under a delusion. You don't talk, and you're the steak for the evening. Unlike the Donner party, we've got fire. Jessica.”

“Yeah?”

“Go back to the car. Get the gasoline can and the tool kit and bring them back.”

“The gasoline can?”

“Do as you're told.”

Muttering, “Yes, massa,” she went and got them. The pimp looked at the can with some skepticism.

“You wouldn't dare,” he said.

“I don't think I'll have to,” I said, pulling my belt out of my pants.

“I'm scared to death,” he said.

“Wait,” I advised him. “Tell me a little later.”

I took the can from Jessica and used my belt to fasten it to the tree above his head. Then I opened the tool kit, took out a ten-penny nail, and punched a hole in the bottom of the can. A couple of drops of gasoline hit him on the right shoulder.

“God.” He sneered. “I've never been so frightened.”

“I don't suppose you did much physics in high school.”

“I didn't do high school,” he said with some pride.

“Jessica, explain to this little beast the effect of atmospheric pressure on the flow of a liquid.”

“Huh?” Jessica said, safely behind me. Her eyes were enormous.

“I have to do everything myself,” I complained. “The flow of the gasoline is slow right now because the top on the can is tight. But when I loosen it, like this,” I said, going on tiptoe and giving it a twist, “the weight of the atmosphere- which is fourteen pounds per square inch, by the way- pushes down on the gasoline and the flow increases.”

Sure enough, the gasoline began to drip steadily onto his shoulder.

“So?” he asked, but with less certainty.

“So,” I said, “do an experiment. Find a measuring device, anything that's more or less steady. Your heartbeat would do if it weren't about to speed up, which it is. Find something that doesn't give a shit about you. The crickets will work. Listen.”

I held up a scholarly finger and all three of us listened.

The crickets shrilled in the trees with monotonous regularity. “Count the pulses of the cricket noise and then count the drops of gasoline. The crickets don't care if you live or die. Count the pulses as I open the top a little further.”

We all stood there as the crickets rubbed their hind legs together. “Three drops to a pulse,” I said. I gave the top of the can a twist or two. “Now we've got five. Atmospheric pressure, you see.”