John Lutz - Flame

At the edge of a thick wood was a large metal sign lettered WESLEY SLAUGHTER AND RENDERING, with an arrow pointing up a side road. There were several bullet holes in the sign; the graffiti of high-spirited hunters.

Carver followed the arrow and was on a two-lane concrete road that skirted the woods for about half a mile, then abruptly cut through them. Angled up a slight grade. The sun was suddenly half as bright, as if light were absorbed and hoarded by the surrounding trees. It was quiet inside the car. Carver cracked the window a few inches. It was quiet outside, too. Something about this place; even the songbirds and crickets seemed to prefer elsewhere.

He smelled the slaughter and rendering plant long before he saw it. Up close, the odor must be overpowering.

A huge semi pulling a stake trailer used for hauling livestock loomed around a bend, roared and rattled past him going the other direction, and disappeared from his rearview mirror. The sign on its trailer read MANGLY BROS. PRIME HOGS. FEEDER PIGS..

Carver drove for another few minutes, then braked the Ford to a halt when he saw the sprawling complex on the wide plain below.

The buildings were gray and vast, with flat, corrugated steel roofs broken by chimneys and vent pipes. Behind the largest structure a line of at least twenty boxcars rested on a siding. Along the side of the same building was a row of parallel truck trailers backed to a dock. Here and there among the buildings were fenced rectangular areas crowded with hogs. Hundreds of hogs, milling about and so close together their motion created a wavelike effect. A truck was backed against the chain-link fence of one of the rectangles, and several men were offloading hogs, using what looked like electric prods to hurry the animals down a wooden ramp and through a gate.

Ominous dark smoke hung like a pall above the endless blacktop lot. The afternoon sun glanced off row after row of parked cars, providing the only brightness and color in the scene below. The stench that drifted up to Carver was of warm internal organs and fresh blood, cloying and stomach-jolting. A job was a job, he told himself. Still, he wondered how the employees ever got used to coming here day after day. But he knew that any job created mental calluses; in St. Louis, he’d known slaughterhouse workers who casually drank the blood of slain cattle for nourishment and antibodies to help them fend off colds.

His mouth was full of saliva that tasted bitter. He swallowed. Yuk! Licked the same vile taste from his lips.

He pressed the button that raised the car’s power window, but as he drove toward what looked like the plant’s office, the smell found its way into the car with increasing potency. Hertz would have to hose out the vehicle with disinfectant.

He drove down a narrow dirt road he probably wasn’t supposed to be on. Saw dozens of hogs being prodded along through a slanted wooden chute. Workmen in blue denim joked and yelled for the livestock to keep moving toward a shadowy doorway. The wallowing hogs balked, bumping into each other in confusion something like panic, their tiny eyes glittering like diamonds set deep in flesh. Carver didn’t like the noises they were making. And there was something different about the smell now that he was much closer, something subtle yet familiar. Then he recognized it; he’d been aware of it in the cramped backseats of police cruisers, in stark interrogation rooms. The undeniable scent of terror. For the first time, he considered becoming a vegetarian.

He circled beyond some new-looking truck trailers lettered with the company name, then parked the Ford in a visitor’s slot along the front of a smaller brick building set well apart from the others.

When he climbed out of the car into the heat, the stench of slaughter was even thicker and more acrid. He was surprised to feel weakness in his good knee. This was nauseating. It was like being inside a castaway tire with something a week dead. He smoothed his pants, buttoned his suitcoat, and limped along the walk toward glass double doors that hinted at cool, pure air on the other side.

The smell wasn’t nearly as strong in the reception area, but the grim charnel odor of mortality still clung. The crescent-shaped room was cool, however, and surprisingly plush. Behind a long desk that was curved to run parallel with the curving, richly paneled wall behind it, sat a slim, gray-haired woman who once must have been a beauty but who’d been assailed by time. She wore oblong glasses with thick dark rims, and Carver was sure that if she removed them and revealed the flesh around her eyes she’d look close to sixty. With the glasses on, a quick glance at her would lead to an estimate of forty. The desk she sat behind was covered in front with the same thick red carpeting that was on the floor, without a break or visible seam, as if the desk had sort of grown up out of the stuff like a mushroom. There were brass-framed modern prints on the unpaneled walls, and on the curved, paneled wall, large gold letters spelled out WESLEY SLAUGHTER AND RENDERING, INC. ., above three closed doors that Carver assumed led to offices.

As he approached the woman behind the receptionist’s desk, she smiled at him and slammed a fist down on a stapler to attach some papers to a sheet of thin cardboard. Her smile and her abrupt action seemed incongruous.

She couldn’t do anything about her hands; they were at least sixty. The brass plaque on her desk said her name was Maxine. No last name, just Maxine.

She gazed up at him through the lenses set in the thick frames. They magnified her blue eyes and gave her a fishlike expression that failed to diminish the impression that in her youth she’d been quite a number. But she’d either never learned to put her lipstick on straight or she’d lost the knack. Or perhaps she’d been in a hurry this morning. Her lips were the same violent red as the carpet.

Carver planted his cane in front of her desk, returned her smile, and said, “Boyd Emerson to see Mr. Wesley, Maxine.” Nice name, Boyd Emerson. Substantial. The real Boyd Emerson was a con man who died of a heart attack in the patrol car when Carver was in the Orlando Police Department.

The woman’s fish eyes didn’t blink. The askew red lips said, “I’m not Maxine. She’s the regular receptionist.”

“Well, can you tell Mr. Wesley I’m here, please?” Carver stopped smiling and glanced at his watch. Busy and important man; no time to fuck with peons.

The woman who wasn’t Maxine didn’t seem impressed. She said, “I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

Carver put on a puzzled and annoyed expression. Getting into this acting thing. The Boyd Emerson executive persona. “We had a definite lunch date.”

“I see. But-”

“Check his appointment book, can you? Emerson of Longbranch Feeder Pigs.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Emerson, but I don’t have to check his appointment book. Mr. Wesley’s . . . well, he’s passed away.”

Carver did a shocked expression. Then one of grave concern. Paul Newman, one of his favorites, never did it better. “My God, when was this? I saw him just two weeks ago. He didn’t say anything about being ill.”

“He wasn’t ill,” the woman said. “It was a car accident. In Florida.”

“Christ, that’s terrible. I mean, not that we knew one another all that well. Only met half a dozen times, actually, at this function or that. But he was such a healthy, vital man.”

“We’re all grieving,” the woman said, “as you can well imagine.”

“Of course,” Carver said, “of course.” He stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “Then the contract . . .”

“Pardon me?”

“Oh, nothing. Business, but it can wait till later. When you’ve adjusted to the change here.” He bowed his head for a moment. “Something like this, so unexpected, has a way of jarring things into proper perspective.”