James Burke - Light of the World

The West End of Broadway in Missoula was a study in contradictions. The vista was lovely. The mountains were mauve and purple in the sunset, the river wide and braided over the rocks and rimmed along the banks with willows and cottonwoods. The street was lined on either side with bars, liquor stores, casinos, and run-down independent motels. Saturday-night knifings were not unusual; neither were sexual assaults. If you wanted to get falling-down drunk, laid and dosed with the clap, shanked or shot or just beat up, arrested, and jailed, this was the place to do it.

Tony Zappa drove around to the side of a motel by the river’s edge and parked in a handicap zone not far from a green door with a tin numeral nailed on it. He took off his gloves and looked up and down the street at the bars and casinos that had turned on their neon signs, then gazed through the window of Gretchen’s pickup at the rolled leather interior and the polished woodwork and high-tech gauges on the dashboard. He looked at the heavy tread on the tires and the chrome on the radiator and the moon hubcaps and the Frenched headlights and the waxed three-layer black paint job, all of which were high-end modifications that cost high-end money.

He tapped his gloves in his palm and went into the office. The clerk was a kid with zits on his forehead and thin arms wrapped with tattoos of snakes and skulls and bleeding daggers. He was glued to the screen of his laptop. On it, a naked man and woman were in full-body inverted congress.

“You know the broad in room nine?” Zappa said.

“She’s a guest.”

“I know she’s a guest. What’s her story?”

“How the fuck should I know?” the clerk replied.

“I can see this is a class joint, the kind that protects its guests’ privacy. You accept food stamps?”

“I can give you a break on a coupon from Screw magazine,” the clerk said. “You got to provide your own sheets, though.”

“You’re a funny guy. That boner fills out your pants nicely. Enjoy your movie.” Zappa left the office and got ten steps down the sidewalk, then turned around and went back. “I’m gonna ask you this once, and I don’t want a smart-ass answer. Is the girl in room nine by herself?”

“She came in by herself.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“It’s a single. On Sunday nights, it’s twenty dollars. For two people, it’s thirty dollars. She paid twenty dollars.”

“Are you retarded? Answer my question. You see anybody else hanging around? A cowboy, maybe?”

“We have three kinds of guests here: shitkickers, drunk Indians, and street people. The street people pool their money and send one person in, usually a woman. The Indians drink on the balcony and puke over the rail on the cars down below. Most of the street people were kicked out of detox.”

“I didn’t ask for all that information. Did you see a shitkicker in her room? A guy with a white straw hat?”

“No.”

“If you’re lying to me, I’ll be back.”

“Go fuck yourself, man.”

“Tell you what. I’ll be back whether you’re lying or not.”

Zappa went back down the sidewalk to room nine and twisted the doorknob. The door swung back slowly across the carpet. He could hear the shower running in the background. “All right if I come in?” he said, his eyes searching the room. “Can you hear me? I’m coming inside. Don’t come out without a towel around you.” The bathroom door was ajar, and the water was drumming loudly on the tin sides of the stall. “Hey, I’m inside now. I’m closing the door. I got a little weed. You mind?”

No answer.

He turned in a circle, letting his eyes adjust to the poor light and the shadows the neon sign outside created through the curtains. There was nobody else in the room. He pulled a Ziploc bag from his coat and sat down in a chair by the bed and rolled a joint and lit it, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign above the doorway. He stood up and faced the bathroom, holding down the hit, releasing it incrementally, feeling a great calm take hold in his chest for the first time that day. “What are you doing in there?”

He heard the outside door open behind him. Before he could turn around, an arm that felt as hard as angle iron clenched around his throat and squeezed his windpipe shut and almost snapped his head from his shoulders.

“Howdy-doody,” Wyatt Dixon said into his ear. “Let’s talk about what you boys done to my friend Miss Bertha. It’s a pleasure to get together with you.”

Gretchen was dressed and blotting her hair with a towel when she came out of the bathroom. Tony Zappa was sitting very still in a chair, his hands duct-taped behind him, a rubber ball wedged and taped inside his mouth. His eyes were bulging, the tubes of muscle in his triceps as taut as rope. She spread the towel on top of the bedcover before she sat on it.

“We’re going to keep it simple,” she said. “You got stung. We win, you lose. Maybe you can walk out of here. Maybe not. That depends on what Wyatt decides and how much you cooperate. I’ll be up-front with you. When I was a little girl, I knew several guys like you. I see them in my dreams and sometimes in the middle of the day. I’d like to kill them, but I can’t do that because they’re already dead. That makes you the surrogate, Tony. You know what the word ‘surrogate’ means?”

He kept his eyes on hers, not moving, the rubber ball wet in his mouth.

She pulled on a pair of latex gloves. “I’m going to take the ball out of your mouth. You’re going to talk in a normal voice and answer our questions. You’ve got no parachute, no cavalry, no Love Younger to back you up. You thought Compton was a bad gig? Those were your salad days, pal.” She pulled the ball from his mouth and set it on the carpet and wiped her glove with a paper napkin. “Don’t speak until I tell you,” she said. “I know everything there is to know about you. You were in juvie and Atascadero and Lompoc. You went down once for distribution and sale to minors and once for theft from the mails. In juvie, you were repeatedly sodomized. Maybe it’s not your fault you’re a bucket of shit. Believe it or not, we’re probably the best friends you’ll ever have.”

He started to speak. Dixon slapped him across the side of the head, so hard his eyes crossed and the imprint of the blow glowed on his skin. Gretchen raised her hand for Dixon to stop. “He’s all right,” she said.

“Leave him with me, Miss Gretchen.”

“No, no, Tony wants to cooperate. He’s been around the block a few times and isn’t going to take somebody else’s weight. Right, Tony? Whatever you did, you were ordered to do. In a way you’re a soldier, just like mobbed-up guys are. Here’s the problemo with that. From everything Wyatt and I have been able to figure out, your attack on him and his friend was meant to provoke him, not scare him off, because you know a guy like Wyatt doesn’t rattle or scare off.”

“It wasn’t me,” Zappa said.

“Wyatt saw the red spider on your hand.”

“Years ago kids all over East Los wore those,” Zappa said. “Love Younger hires ex-felons and gives them a second chance. I know at least two other guys working for him who were Arañas.”

“How’d you get bruised up?” she said.

“Fell off a ladder.”

“Look at me,” she said.

“What do you think I’m doing? Where else am I gonna look?”

“When is the last time you saw Asa Surrette?”

“Who?”

“You were wired up earlier,” she said. “Why would a guy who did time in Lompoc and Atascadero be wired up in a yuppie bar on Sunday evening?”

“Because I’m not good with women. Because you got big knockers. Because you look like you could rip the ass out of an elephant. I get nervous about those things.”