Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

ROURKE [ cutting him off ]: Now, everyone calm down. We’re not—

BROMBERG: Oh yeah, I’ve got a rush starting here. I’ve got—

WILSON: Jesus, Billy, I feel—

ROURKE: I know what you mean. I know what you’re saying.

JACOBI: I’m getting a little, ah, Billy, you feeling kind of—

ROURKE: I know what you’re saying—

Bromberg gets up out of her chair suddenly and knocks it over. Eva watches her face as she cranes her neck out a bit and starts to look quickly around the table, an odd smile spreading over her lips. There’s a small flutter of her right eyelid, but either she’s not aware of it or it isn’t bothering her. She runs a hand around the back of her neck, comes around the front, and runs her index and middle fingers down the line of her Adam’s apple and into the shallow cavity below, then further inside the front of her blouse. She says, “I am fucking buzzing,” in a quick, clipped voice that raises slightly in pitch with each word. Her free hand starts to slap against the side of her leg.

Rourke leans over to Wilson, gives out a quick, high laugh, sticks his tongue into her ear. Wilson starts a rolling giggle and Rourke tries to whisper, “I’m hard as a freakin’ rock,” but it comes out fast at full volume and suddenly the whole room is convulsing with laughter.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Jacobi chokes out. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Wilson slides out of her seat and into Rourke’s lap and they start kissing, a weird, birdlike peck around the proximity of each other’s mouth, their tongues suddenly taking on lizardlike movement, darting in and out of the holes of their mouths like enraged snakes. They begin to lick each other’s face as Jacobi, still in his seat, begins to spit out filthy limericks that get unintelligible after the second one. Jacobi’s head starts to jerk in unexpected directions, as if someone had harnessed it and was tugging in random directions with too much force. The motion doesn’t seem to bother him, though. He smiles a big idiot’s grin as the head leaps side to side, up and down in jagged Tourette-like seizures.

Rourke starts to unbutton Wilson’s blouse, his fingers flying, either unaware or uncaring of the others’ presence.

Bromberg’s the only one who seems to be growing unpleased with her condition. She’s squatting against a wall, on the verge of hyperventilating, talking to herself. Eva tries to make sense of the sounds, but between Jacobi’s singsong babbling and the sucking noises issuing from the tangle of Rourke and Wilson, she has no success.

All she can do is watch as Bromberg’s mouth starts to move open and closed, faster and faster, until the lips, tongue, teeth, gums, and black and pink interior are a blur, a messy haze of spastic tissue. An arena of muscles stimulated past known kinetics and into a world of helpless speed. It’s as if a point will come where the mouth will be forced to explode, where the tongue’s absolute, maximum capacity for movement will not be enough.

Eva looks away from the sight and climbs down off the toilet. She doesn’t want to witness the arrival of that point. She stands rigid for a moment in the small confines of the stall, puts her hands against the cool green metal wall to steady herself, and closes her eyes.

But she can still hear the sound, the awful, scratchy, buzzing sound, as if a high-speed motor had materialized in all their larynxes. As if a minute hive of unclassified insects had formed in the throats of all her carriers.

The Barracuda flies through the five-way intersection at Hoffman’s Rotary, a new lesson in speed, congestion, and odds. Lenore maneuvers the car like she was the last fighter pilot left to hold the line against a barbarian aggressor. She comes inches from impacting half a dozen cars. Horns blowing the full range of the scales fill the air.

Woo is almost on the floor. He screams, “Shouldn’t you have one of those flashing red lights mounted on the top?”

“Probably,” Lenore yells, yanking the wheel to her right and missing the bumper of a Lincoln by a breath.

They cross into the Canal Zone in minutes. There’s already a crowd down past the main boulevard that the locals insist on calling Rimbaud Way. The woodcutters and calligraphers have even made their own street sign. A block down Rimbaud, two patrol cars have blocked off the small alley that leads to the burned-out remains of the old Seward typewriter factory. Behind them are three other black-and-whites and a growing pocket of black-clad, one-hundred-pound zombie artists that the uniforms are trying to disperse or at least keep at a safe distance. Red and blue lights are flashing everywhere. There’s a plainclothes guy, Lenore thinks his name is Dennison, squatting behind one of the blocking cars with a bullhorn in his hand.

Lenore pulls off the street onto the sidewalk and kills the engine. She yells for Woo to stay put, but he immediately follows her out of the car. She hauls her badge out of her back pocket and flashes it ahead of her body as she runs past the patrolman hoarding the bohemians into order.

She squats next to the guy with the bullhorn, her back against the patrol car, and says, “You’re Dennison, right?”

He just squints, waiting for an explanation of her presence.

“Lenore Thomas, narcotics. My lieutenant just radioed me down here. Said you’ve got a situation I need to know about.”

Dennison stares at her like he’s trying to decide if he should challenge her authority, then he looks around and starts talking. “The initial patrolman, Carson, he responded to reports of gunfire from down the old Seward shop. Figured it might be some more of those gallery freaks, those kids that load the old breech shotguns with paint pellets and blast away at reinforced plywood …”

“The Black Hole Group.”

“Yeah, them. So Carson comes down the boulevard and turns down the alley, and bang, his windshield is blown to shit by a forty-four slug. He manages to pull out and call in backup. It’s a girl, for Christ sake. Young kid. She’s up the goddamn telephone pole, climbed up the spikes right to the top. She’s got a bird’s-eye view and she’s cranked on some badass speed. Over the edge. She’s babbling away up there a mile a minute and you can’t understand a word of it. Every now and then she lets a bullet fly. We don’t know if she’s aiming for us or not. We don’t know if she’s even aware she’s here.”

“Anyone in the crowd identify her?”

“Not yet, but she doesn’t look like she’s from down here. She looks more like Bangkok material. Street thing. Burned up. Seven-teen years tops. Big head of red hair.”

“That’s my girl,” Lenore says, “and I need her in one piece.”

Dennison looks away and gives a sarcastic bob with his chin. “Wish I could promise delivery, Detective, but as you can see, it’s kind of a volatile situation. We don’t know how much ammo she’s got up there.”

“Whatever was in the chamber. Nothing more. Guaranteed.”

“Oh, thanks, I’ll just charge right in.”

There’s a pair of department binoculars on the ground near Dennison’s feet. Lenore gestures to them and asks, “Can I take a look?”

Dennison nods. Lenore picks up the binoculars and crawls back toward the trunk end of the patrol car. She comes up over the edge of the car and peers down the alley. It’s an unsettling feeling, the eyes suddenly on top of the weird, decayed remains of the Seward factory, charred ruins from one of the hottest fires in the city’s history. It was an arson case, never solved. The property was sold to a company that went bankrupt. The city condemned it, but each year failed to come up with the funds to tear what was left of it down. Now the Canal Zone’s various art groups and fringe sets use the place for everything from Black Masses to audienceparticipating theaters.