Jonathan Nasaw - Twenty-Seven Bones

“What’s the tie-in?”

“He’s one of the victims who washed up last week. But all the story says is that police are looking into a disappearance, anybody who might have seen the guy please contact the SLPD, blah blah blah. Not exactly journalism at its finest. I’ve been thinking seriously about selling the story to one of the Virgin Islands papers, or the San Juan Star, so the news will filter back down here and people can start watching their asses a little closer.”

Lewis blew a smoke ring, watched the breeze coming off the sparkling sea tear it to rags, passed the pipe back to Bendt. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, chappie.”

“Why not?”

“Blow your job for one story? That’s the definition of killing the goose that lays the golden egg.”

“Golden egg, my honky ass! That cheap sonofabitch Faartoft ain’t paying me in golden eggs.”

“Think of the rest of us, then. You weren’t here for Blue Valley, you don’t know what can happen.”

“You mean other than more people getting their hands cut off?”

“I mean, news gets out that there’s a serial killer called the Machete Man active on St. Luke, you can kiss the cruise ships bye-bye. Then there’s a ripple effect. No cruises means no tourists, no tourists means restaurants start shutting down, people can’t pay their rent, which is bad for me, ad revenue in the Sentinel drops, which is bad for you….”

“Okay, okay, I get it.” Bendt took a last hit, handed Lewis back his pipe. As Lewis rose to leave, though, Bendt gave him the wait-a-sec-I-just-thought-of-something-but-I-don’t-want-to-blow-the-toke wave. “Hey, I almost forgot.” He handed Lewis an envelope. “I snagged these a couple weeks ago, been saving ’em for you.”

Lewis peeked into the envelope. The photos were of Holly Gold in the shower, shot from above, through the screen window of the building known to the Corefolk as the Crapaud.

“What do you think?” asked Bendt.

“I think we’re even-steven on the rent this month,” said Lewis with a grin.

Wednesday afternoon at the overseer’s house. Bennie was out shopping. Emily was online, confirming arrangements for their trip to Puerto Rico this coming weekend, for the annual meeting of the Caribbean chapter of the Association of Anthropologists and Archaeologists of the Americas. Phil was at the typewriter again.

After logging off the computer, Emily lugged a footlocker over to the wall and climbed up on it. Phil heard her, turned, saw his wife from the nose up, peering over the wall. “Zeppo, you look like Kilroy-was-here,” he commented. Zep or Zeppo, short for Zeppelins, was one of Phil’s pet nicknames for his wife.

“What are you writing about now?”

“Dwayne.”

“Ah, more smut.”

“Don’t knock it,” said Phil, turning back to the typewriter.

“I’m not-I can’t wait to read it. The last excerpt got me moist.”

“Here, then.” He took the page he’d just finished out of the typewriter, bundled it with the rest of the chapter, and carried it across the room. “I warn you, though-if I hear that vibrator going, I’m coming in there.”

“If you hear the vibrator,” said Emily as she reached over the wall to take the thin sheaf of paper, “I don’t need you.”

Chapter V

By this time it had become obvious to both P and E that the receptive, strictly opportunistic approach they had been using was simply not going to cut the mustard. They had continued to volunteer for night watches at the various hospices and nursing homes in the area, but now instead of waiting for the final breath, which was hard enough to predict, and hoping they were alone when it did arrive, which happened all too infrequently, if left alone with a patient in the so-called “active” stage of dying, they would help the process along.

Eventually, however, they began to get the impression that concerns were starting to be raised about them at the institutions at which they were volunteering. They were left alone with a dying patient less often, and when they were, they often felt as if they were being watched.

With the customary domains of the dying denied them, and serendipities like the homicidal prostitute or the dying medicine woman not likely to present themselves on a regular basis, the couple was in a quandary. But their problem, they came to understand, was rooted not in the suspicions of the small-minded guardians of the dying, but in their own minds. They had allowed themselves to become trapped by their Judeo-Christian cultural assumptions. The customs and superstitions of their own tribe, so to speak.

So if it was acceptable to hasten the imminent, inevitable demises of the hospice and hospital patients, they began to ask themselves, why then was it unacceptable to hasten other demises which were equally inevitable, if not quite as imminent? And yes, that would encompass the entire human race.

A daring proposition. Frightening to some, insane to others. But those others had never experienced what they had experienced. It was like the joke about the pope setting birth control policy: you no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules.

So E turned the analytical laser of her brilliant scientific mind to the problem of how to attract, isolate, and overpower subjects. Although as stated previously, neither P nor E could be considered conventionally attractive, E did possess one particular set of female attributes which in the couple’s native culture were valued above all other female attributes: overdeveloped mammaries. Theirs was a breast-ridden society, if one may coin a phrase, and when it came to attracting male subjects and isolating them in conditions of absolute privacy, there was simply no better bait than E’s twin forty-fours. Overpowering the subject, of course, would be left to P.

It should be noted that in these early days, the couple, still constrained to some extent by residuary Judeo-Christian ethics, agreed to confine themselves to subjects they found morally objectionable. Subjects whose hastened demise could do nothing but improve the DNA pool. Subjects like D.

They met D in a working-class tavern in the same city where P had his apotheosis with the homicidal prostitute. They drove to the bar in separate cars. E, in extreme decolletage, played the scorned woman at one end of the bar. P, armed with a snub-nosed revolver, kept an eye on her from the other.

E fed the jukebox. E muttered about the inconstancy of men in general and her husband in particular. D, a swarthy man in his midthirties who’d been ordering shots of cheap Scotch, beer back, all night, slid onto the stool next to her. E allowed him to buy her a drink. She danced with him. He pawed her drunkenly, mumbled filth into her ear. She feigned arousal. The seduction was accomplished with ridiculous ease. All three left the bar separately. E met D at her car and took him back to their house by a route circuitous enough to permit P to get there first.

P hid himself in the bedroom closet. (B was off playing poker at an all-night card room.) The front door opened. He heard giggling, a slap. Footsteps stumbled up the stairs. The bedroom door opened. Peering through the keyhole, he watched E and D disrobe.

E lay back upon the bed. D positioned himself between her legs. P waited for the signal: E was to bring the back of her hand to her brow. She did not signal. D entered her. She did not signal. D began thrusting brutally. She did not signal.

It was clear that E was no longer feigning arousal. Her eyes closed, her wide aureolae puckered and pebbled, her nipples hardened to thimbles. She did not signal. Her knees rose higher. Her heels drummed a tattoo against D’s clenched buttocks. D spewed filth: fuckmeyoucuntfuckmeyoucunt. E commenced her orgasmic moan and locked her legs around the small of his back as she came. D continued to thrust and swear. She tightened her legs around him. He swore, he thrust. She signaled.