Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

“Junko told you this?”

“Sure. Move the fucking torch.”

“Who'd they kill?”

“That's why she'll never leave me.” I took hold of his chin, and he rolled his eyes wildly to keep the flame in view.

“Who?” I said.

“One of them, one of the ones in Junko's group, was a Mongoloid, you know, one of those idiot kids who looks like an Oriental? God only knows where they found her. I mean, that kid wasn't going to tell anybody anything, but they put her through obedience school anyway. And when she made a mistake, like the little dope was bound to do sooner or later, they offed her. Junko was watching, with a bunch of other kids. Said she threw up all over the floor. Right up to the point where they cut the little dummy, she figured they were only fooling, even after what they'd done to her. They made her clean up the mess, I mean both messes, hers and the dummy's. So, see? I look like a pretty nice guy.”

“How did you get her?” I felt like throwing up myself.

“They used her up,” he said with an obvious effort. “Please move it.”

Jessica started toward it but I waved her off. “Don't touch it. He's got a minute or two, unless the fumes kill him. What do you mean, they used her up?”

“They got tired of her. They passed her around to every- one a few times and then nobody wanted her anymore. They always need new ones. New babies.”

“How old is she?”

“Now?” He looked at the horizon and tried to focus his eyes. “Sixteen. Then, she was twelve.”

“Four years ? They've been at this four years?”

“Just about. She was one of the first ones.” He kicked out feebly at the torch and missed. “Please,” he said, “I'm talking to you. I'm talking to you, right?”

I reached down and picked it up. “They just let her go?” I asked.

“Sure. What's she going to do? She came to me.” He kept his eyes glued to the torch as though he thought I was going to touch the flame to him.

“How long ago?” I asked.

“About a month.” Bingo , I thought.

“Why wouldn't she go to the police?” Jessica said.

“That's the first thing they teach you,” he said. He sounded like he'd run a marathon. “Don't trust the cops.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Money,” he said. “These people are making lots of money. Cops like money, same as everyone else. You go to a cop, it might be the wrong one. Then you'd be dead, just as simple as that.”

“She didn't come to you,” I said. “You bought her.”

“Wrong,” he said.

“You bought her. You're connected with them. That's how you know they had Aimee. In fact, you gave them Aimee, didn't you? A month ago. And they gave you Junko.”

“Please,” he said, sounding very young. “I'm getting real sick.” I realized for the first time how young he was, realized for the first time that I didn't even know his name.

“Sick, schmick,” I said. “You can still die. You took Aimee to her ‘agent.’ ”

“No way,” he said weakly. He was on the verge of tears.

“I want names.”

For the first time in several minutes he looked directly at me. “No,” he said. “I don't know any names.”

“Let's change tack,” I said. I went right up to him, and his eyes followed the flame in my hand. The gasoline fumes poured off him in waves. He didn't even see his knife in my other hand.

I stuck it through the fabric of his denim jacket and sliced down. The knife went through it like margarine. His skinny chest, slick with gasoline, gleamed at me. “We can start with skin instead,” I said. Behind me, I heard Jessica step back.

“Don't matter,” he said, looking at me again. “I'd rather die this way.”

“Well,” I said, “I don't think you know what's involved.”

“Fuck off,” he said. He closed his eyes again. “Just kill me.”

“We'll open with a nipple,” I said.

He shook his head, his eyes closed now. “So do it,” he said.

I turned around and saw Jessica looking at me with eyes bigger than Bambi's. I looked down at the torch in my hand, and then turned and walked away and tossed it into the reservoir. It hit the water with a hissing sound and disappeared.

“Untie the cables,” I said to Jessica, turning back from the water. When she did, he fell forward onto his face. His hands were still tied behind him. Then he turned his head and retched.

He retched for longer than I would have believed possible, until his stomach was empty, and then he retched air.

I put my fingers into his hair, lifted his head, and rubbed his face into the vomit. “This is for Junko's tongue,” I said. When I pulled him upright, he was covered in dirt and vomit.

“Don't move,” I said. I went behind him and cut the tape binding his wrists. I left intact the tape over his fingers and thumbs. Then I took the money and cigarettes out of my pocket and shoved them into the front of his trousers.

“For Christ's sake,” I said, “don't try to light up.” I threw the knife into the reservoir and then undid my belt from the tree and dropped the gas can to the ground. “Come on, Jessica,” I said, walking toward the car.

“Wait,” he half-sobbed. “What about me?”

“Oh, I haven't forgotten about you,” I said, still walking. “You'll be on my mind for quite some time.”

“How am I supposed to get home?”

I reached back and pulled Jessica along behind me. He yelled after us as we walked, but I tuned it out. At the car, all the violence and ugliness came up into my throat, and I had to turn and spit it out. When I got into Alice, my throat hurt and my mouth was sour and foul. I started the car. Jessica sat against her door, small and self-contained and silent.

As I hit the lights and shifted into drive, I said, “I'm afraid you're not seeing me at my best.”

“You're fine,” she said. She was quiet until we'd bumped all the way down the road and made the turn that would lead us onto the Ventura Freeway.

Then she shifted in her seat and faced me. “Do you really think he gave them that little girl?”

“Maybe. He got Junko at just about the right time.”

She turned and cracked her window and breathed the fresh air, getting the gasoline out of her lungs. After a moment she turned back to me. “If he hadn't told you anything,” she said, “not anything at all, would you have let him catch fire?”

“No,” I said. A mile or so passed in silence.

“Softy,” she said.

Upon returning home, as Annie told me later, Jessica received the first spanking she'd had since the age of four. When she was four, Jessica cried. At thirteen, she responded by running away.

“She's not going to come here,” I'd said the first and second time Wyatt and Annie called me. “After last night, I'm the last person she'd want to see. Try Blister's. Maybe she's gone up there to punish you.”

They had tried Blister's. There was no one there. Wyatt had broken in through a window on the assumption that they were both inside, hiding. They weren't.

“I'm afraid they've run away together,” he said on phone call number four.

“She'll be back,” I said. “She knows that Blister is a walking abscess. And she's not going anywhere alone. After what she's seen, the street doesn't look any better than the Seventh Level of Hell.”

I wasn't in the best of shape. I'd awakened twice in the night, escaping the dream vision of Junko's pimp on fire. My mouth tasted as though I'd been gargling with gasoline. After the second time I'd cajoled myself back into sleep, I had a nightmare about someone in a pig costume. It was one of those peculiar dreams where nothing frightening happens but the air is charged with the kind of low-voltage electrical hum that makes the hair on your arms stand on end before an electrical storm. The person in the pig costume slowly walked up a flight of stairs and into a room. I followed, and the pig stood with his-her-back to me, and that was when the hum started. Then the pig mask came off. When the big pink pig started to turn around, I woke up. I was wringing wet, and cold to the center of my bones.