T. Wright - The Devouring

And Benny Bloom wanted girls. Not girl nerds. He wanted the cheerleader types, the foxes with creamy white thighs and huge breasts and softly sculpted necks. The trouble was, the only ones who got those girls were jocks-the guys with meat for brains and tree limbs for arms, and pants three sizes too small at the crotch. The guys who could say "Hi, baby" and get away with it (Benny had said "Hi, baby" once, just to try it out, because he'd heard the jocks say it. "Baby?" asked the particular cheerleader type he was talking to. "What do you mean?" Benny shrugged. "Jeez, I don't know," he answered. "Just that, I guess? 'Hi, baby.' I was just trying to be friendly. I didn't mean anything by it. I'm sorry." "Don't mention it," said the girl, smiling to herself, and walked off).

And Benny had wondered more than once what it would be like to be a brainy jock, the kind of guy who could say "Hi, baby," and quote T. S. Eliot in the same breath.

"Hi, baby," he said now (at approximately the same time that Ryerson Biergarten, Creosote in his arms, was sitting down at the bar at Frank's Place), and Nurse Carlotta Scotti answered, "Sorry, Benny, but did you just say something?"

And turned away from her, his buttock exposed for yet another shot, he said again, "Hi, baby," and added in the same breath, "In the room the women come and go/ Talking of Michelangelo."

"What woman is that, Benny?" Nurse Scotti asked.

"Hi, baby," he said again.

And she said, half scoldingly, "No, Benny, please don't flex your buttock, it only makes it harder to get the needle in."

But Benny wasn't flexing his buttock. Benny was changing.

~ * ~

The bar at Frank's Place had a high sheen from too much varnish and was streaked with beer. When the bartender asked, "What's your poison?" he looked like he really meant it.

"Ginger ale," Ryerson answered.

"Uh-huh," said the bartender, raising a very thick and bushy eyebrow. "One tall ginger ale coming up."

"Actually," Ryerson said, as Creosote strained mightily to lick his chin, "I was looking for someone." He glanced about. Frank's Place was all but empty. At the rear the two haggard men who'd come in before him were seated at a small wooden table playing cards. At the opposite end of the bar a buxom woman in a tight green dress sipped at what looked like a water glass full of whiskey. As he glanced at her, she glanced at him, grinned, looked away. Ryerson repeated, "I was looking for someone, but I-"

"Her name's Doreen," said the bartender, and nodded at the woman in the green dress.

Ryerson said, "No, you don't understand. I was looking for a man."

"Not here you don't look for no man," the bartender growled.

"I'm afraid you still don't understand," Ryerson said. He stopped. An image had shot from the bartender's mind to his. "Have you got a back room?"

"A back room? What for?"

Ryerson shrugged. "For whatever."

"Yeah?" said the bartender, leaning over the bar. "What kind of whatever?"

Creosote finally found Ryerson's chin and gave it a long, loving lick.

The bartender nodded. "You talkin' about something with that dog? Is that what you're talking about, mister? If it is-"

Ryerson decided it was time to change the subject. "Do you know a man named Lucas?"

The bartender shook his head immediately. "Don't know no one named Lucas."

And from the opposite end of the bar the woman drawled, “Ah do."

Ryerson looked at her. She had the water glass full of whiskey poised at her lips. "Whatchoo want with old Lucas?" She took a slug of the whiskey, put it down hard. "You a friend a his? You don't look like no friend a his."

Ryerson got up from the barstool, went over to the woman, sat beside her. Creosote began to whimper.

"Somethin' wrong which your dog?" the woman asked.

Creosote tried to burrow in between Ryeron's side and arm; Ryerson stroked him reassuringly. "Hey, it's okay, fella," he said, then, to the woman, "He comes here, doesn't he?"

"Lucas? Sure. He comes here. He's a friend a mine."

Ryerson foundthat he could read from her only what he usually read from crazies, and animals-what looked in his mind's eye like the snow between channels on a TV set. "A friend of yours?" he said, and wondered why she'd been so quick with information. "Is he here now? It's imperative that I get in touch with him."

"Imperative; is it?" said the woman. " Im perative?!" She grinned, took another sip of the whiskey, glanced down the front of her low-cut dress, reached in, and adjusted her bra.

Creosote's whimpering grew louder.

She went on. "Why don't you tell Doreen what's so im perative, and I'll relay the message to him when he comes in."

The bartender brought Ryerson's glass of ginger ale; "Buck fifty," he said, and Ryerson dug in his pockets, found a dollar bill and some change, and put it on the counter.

~ * ~

Detective Third Grade Andy Spurling's fondest memories were of growing up in Syracuse, New York, where he was thoughtof as the toughest kid on the block, and the quickest with a six-gun. His six-guns, of course, were made by Mattel, but they were made of real metal, not plastic like they are today, and they were heavy, and their action was much like the action of a real gun. The one he carried now, for instance.

He was the toughest kid on the block because he was the biggest, and the most aggressive, and pain had never bothered him a lot-a fact which had put the other kids, even the smart ones, in awe of him (he remembered particularly the time he held the lit end of a cigarette against the back of his wrist; he remembered the acrid smell of burning flesh, the gasps of the kids gathered around him, his own tight sneer against the pain).

He knocked on the door of Apartment 3C at the Livemore Apartments-he had a bad-check arrest warrant in his suit coat pocket. He listened to the movement inside the apartment, tried to gauge just what kind of movement it was, whether someone was going out a window, or merely getting up from a chair. Funny, he thought, that the memories from his childhood should return with such vibrancy in the last few days, ever since that incredible mess on Lawrence Street.

"Yes, who is it?" he heard a man call from within the apartment.

"Police," he called back. And there was silence.

Maybe, he thought, the memories had returned because he'd realized at last that his position with the Buffalo Police Department was always going to be pretty low, that he was probably never going to make captain, or even lieutenant. Maybe he'd make sergeant if he tried really hard. Sure, twenty years before, in Syracuse, when ' he was a tough eleven-year-old kid who could hold lit cigarettes against the back of his wrist, he was top of the heap. But when you were grown-up, people had words other than "tough" to describe that sort of thing. They called it "stupid," and "juvenile," and even the assholes who hung out at sleazy bars weren't impressed by it anymore. What did impress lots of people, though, was gunplay. Eleven-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, thirty-year-olds-it didn't matter. Guns demanded respect. And Christ, but he was good with a gun!

"What do you want?" he heard from within Apartment 3C.

He put one hand on his .45, in a shoulder holster, and the other on his stomach, because, for the past five days, it had been giving him lots of trouble. "Mr. Warren Anderson?" he called.

"Who's asking?" the man called back. "Are you …" A surge of pain; he winced. "Are you Warren Anderson?"

"No. He ain't here."

"Open the door, please."

"I said Warren ain't here. He went south. He went to Florida."

Spurling hesitated, hand tightening on the .45. What would Guy Mallory do now, he wondered, and another surge of pain pushed through him; he winced again, a small "Uh!" escaped him. How would that tough eleven-year-old kid from Syracuse react-not only to the pain, but to this man he had to haul in? The hell with Guy Mallory. Mallory was too cautious; Mallory followed the book, the damned criminal-coddling book .