Chapter Fourteen (B): The French Kiss Connexion

 

Chapter Fourteen (B): The French Kiss Connexion

 

“We all live in the space age.”

-Catatonia

 

In which the ends are tied up.

 

Somebody said, “It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.”

...

 

Discord's murder rate for the year was higher than New York city.

...

 

Jim Codeman made it as far as Meskanaw before his luck ran all the way out.

It was mid-Sunday. Corsairs Duke and Rinpoche, and five others, acting on little more than a tip and a hunch, found him in a rented suite above a gas station, right off of highway six. He still had all of the cash and most of the dope, but those things were entirely beside the point.

He put up a hell of a fight, expecting to go out like a Viking berserker, in a blaze of crimson glory,  but Rinpoche managed to put three bullets in his genitals. The psycho son-of-a-bitch was instantly incapacitated, but the wounds were such that he would live for half a day, or so, enough time to take him back to Discord and teach him a fine lesson before finishing him off.

He was taken to the Tchatchuk machine shop, where fifty surly bikers were waiting with crowbars and pick-axes. He was delirious from the pain by the time he arrived. He saw Berk, face taped up with gauze, among the throng, and decided to have a little fun before dying.

Codeman said, “If you're going to butcher me, you have to butcher Berk, too. This was all his idea. He's the one who put me up to it.”

A hundred eyes fell on old Coach. His face felt like hot fire, bone-deep, but at least he was able to make real words. He didn't know what to say in his own defence because, unfortunately, the real words that kept coming out of his mouth kept adding up to pure nonsense. “I don't know what he's talking about. I already told you, didn't I? I was in my car, or maybe out at the cemetery, or maybe hunting a flock of wild boar. I don't recall, specifically, but I'm almost certain I've never seen this man before in my entire life. He looks like my third grade teacher, for Christ sakes! I don't even know what he's been accused of. Are you saying I was with him? Jezus, I was at the movies, I think. Roger Rabbit. Jimmy, tell them I was at Roger Rabbit, please.”

Jim Codeman was grinning wide through bloodied teeth.

Berk said, “Don't look at me! What are you all looking at, for fuck's sake! Look at the guy in front of you! Let's clobber the fuck out of him and eat his tasty shit! Let's do it, guys—”

Codeman said, “Don't be scared, Berk. We've earned this glorious death!”

“I don't even know what we're accused of. I don't know what's happening.”

“Come on, big guy—”

The first blow fell on Berk. Steel against the bowl of his skull. He went down like a sack of dropped flour. The assailant was a front-line enforcer named Beaumont, who had also been the [sugar daddy] of Dozy, who was killed in Keech and Pony's torrent of gunfire. Codeman received the next blow, but it took nine more before his eyes finally went dim. Neither man was ever seen again, not even in fragmented form.

There was some discussion among the Corsairs over which one had been crazier—Codeman or Berk—but it ended in a draw. The former was a homicidal maniac and the latter was a maniacal sociopath. But where Jimmy was fearless, Berk, it was agreed, had been more inclined to babble like a cross-eyed loon.

Duke said, “Each was equally crazy, but in his own unique way.”

The grand vizier, a tiny man dressed all in brown suede, nodded his head in agreement.

“At least they didn't mess around with children.”

The rally ended early, that year, and Discord was much quieter when Monday came.

...

 

CW lost a tooth when Frank punched his lights out. It was a molar, black and brittle from years of smoking crystal meth. It broke at the root, requiring an uncomfortable surgical extraction. He had no idea how preferable it was to having one's forearm dipped in molten metal, and it certainly wasn't worse than having Reverend Marlon Sunday's penis stitched to his face, nor having certain toes forcibly amputated. In all, it had been a profoundly distressing September for him and he resolved to have a calmer October—a calmer forever, preferably.

He thanked Frank Burczyk for interfering on his behalf, despite the tooth.

Frank said, “It wasn't on your behalf, but you're welcome.”

For a long time, CW checked over his shoulder, expecting to see Coach Berkowitz coming after him, but after so many weeks, and after hearing rumors whispered on the street—rumors that Berk had been diced up and sent to the great beyond—he began to breathe easier.

He moved back to Tromso, eventually.

He planned to get back into auto sales, just as soon as he kicked his substance addiction, but was killed by a runaway sedan at an uncontrolled intersection. It was a blue Ford.

That's how things go.

...

 

Gia bought a pink coat for Mortimer, with matching pink booties, for winter, which was just around the corner.

It was always just around the corner.

...

 

Tracy Olafson went to the police with information about Bob Scieszka. She had reasons to believe he might be the Ghost River Skinner. The police had already received two other anonymous calls naming the same suspect—one from an alleged ex-friend, and the other from a lady who described herself as psychic. Based on Tracy's preliminary statement, police decided that Scieszka fit twenty-two of thirty-three traits that investigators had ascribed to the Skinner's profile. They had him pegged as a middle-aged, middle-class Caucasian, longtime resident of Discord, drinker, smoker, substance abuser, with a predilection for rough sex... among other traits.

When detectives went to question the man at his home, he was nowhere to be found. Tracy said he'd been missing since the weekend.

“He just up and disappeared, Saturday night.”

...

 

By January, Tracy was back in jail for bank fraud and identity theft.

Some things can't be changed.

...

 

Frank Burczyk went to work at the mill, since he'd been fired from the courier gig for not reporting to work on his birthday. His excuse was that he'd lost a finger, which was true, in a sense, but even after viewing the injury, Karl Steckler declined to give him back his job.

Giton and Piper told Frank they were sad to see him go.

Frank told them they'd probably get over it.

...

 

Gia said she wanted to go back to Mexico.

She said the third time would be the charm.

Frank said the first two times had already been pretty stellar.

...

 

Emathios is Love.

...

 

 

Frank dreamed a strange scene.

It was about Bob Scieszka attempting to flee Discord. He wanted to get to Tromso to board a plane for Toronto on the evening of the Saturday Frank came to his house and accused him of being a murdering rapist. He had a ticket purchased under the name of Dalton LaGrange, an identity for which he also had authentic ID. He didn't travel two blocks in his car before six Corsairs on motorcycles headed him off and abducted him.

Bob was taken, kicking and screaming, to a machine shop, outside of town. One of the missing girls, Alice Little, whose body had turned up on Union, according to a police source, was  second cousin of the grand vizier. He was a very small man who dressed all in brown. He introduced himself to Scieszka as Satan incarnate.

“You know—the boyo.”

Bob kept sobbing and begging for his life.

He was held overnight, until Sunday evening, after two unidentified characters were pummelled and hacked to death on the shop floor. He was kept in a tank locker with a mesh screen door, where oxygen bottles were usually stored, hands bound and mouth gagged, with a full view of the carnage. And after the first two men were executed, their bodies mutilated beyond comprehension, the grand vizier said, “At least they didn't mess around with children.” He cast his eyes Bob's way and smirked.

A barbarian called Rinpoche hauled Bob out of the locker and threw him to the floor. Bob kept on sputtering, begging for mercy, calling out to Jezus, the whole bit. He was surrounded by fifty men armed with bloodied iron weapons. He said, “Why do you think me guilty?”

The grand vizier told him, “I've got eyes and ears all over this territory. Sooner or later, somebody puts the pieces together. You're sloppy as fuck—I can't believe the pigs didn't nail your ass a lot sooner. As it is, you can probably thank the guy from the book store, or the document-makers.”

But this was just a dream, after all.

Frank had had plenty of dreams. He kept a dream journal, on the advice of his therapist, and this one went directly into it. It was definitely a keeper. Even as he was writing it down, Frank had a pretty strong feeling it was a brief glimpse into one of those myriad alternate universes.

“The mind boggles,” he sighed as he wrote.

...

 

Bob Scieszka drove to Tromso on Saturday night and boarded an airplane bound for Toronto, Ontario, using fake ID that he'd purchased, at substantial cost, from Papa and Palo—fake ID was their primary specialty, and in a town full of biker outlaws, business was good.

The Ghost River Skinner, as newspapers were now calling him, stayed in a shit-bag hotel behind Yonge Street for eight days. What he really needed to do was get right the hell out of the country, head for Haiti or Peru or wherever, but the passport that  Papa and Palo had provided contained three glaring typos that set it apart from the rest of the ID they'd supplied. If Bob tried to use it to board an international flight, he feared, he'd be arrested immediately.

“Those fuckers screwed me on purpose!” he was convinced.

He prowled the streets of downtown Hog-town every night for a week, desperate for a plan or a solution or even a fucking diversion. He stayed in the halogen shadows like a modern-day Jack the Ripper. His funds were limited because he couldn't use an ATM bank machine without betraying his location. All he had were the dollars he'd stitched into the lining of his suitcase—just a couple thousand —and those were running out.

In a pinch, he figured he could murder a prostitute, and her pimp, and take all their cash.

He bought some cocaine from a jet-black Ugandan in front of a billiard hall. It was shitty blow, but it did the trick. He went back again and again.

Seven nights like this—living like a rat, eating fast food.

Suicide was looking like an option. Too bad he didn't have the cojones for it. Anyway, he had a black spot on his pancreas and he'd known all along that his time was running out. Today, tomorrow, twelve months into the future—every minute was borrowed time.

...

 

Bob Scieszka's body was found in a dumpster in Toronto.

Somebody figured Sikhs did it. Somebody else figured Cubans.

He had a thirteen-inch gash across his abdomen and a look of terror frozen into his open eyes. In self-defence, the Ugandan in front of the billiard hall had cut his guts out. Bob had tried to rob him of his cash and coke. That was the end of Bob's story.

The end of the Ghost River Skinner.

Still, somebody else figured maybe Jamaicans did it.

There were always plenty of minorities to blame.

...

 

Frank and Gia went back to Jalisco. They booked their holiday through Catrina Suns, once again, maybe hoping for another screw-up that would result in complimentary gifts. There was no such screw-up, but there was some drama about Frank getting the time off from his new job at the mill. He ultimately decided he was taking it anyway—life was a never-ending circus ride, apparently, and he had no intention of wasting his time. If the job at the mill wasn't waiting for him when he returned from Mexico, he'd find another.

They left the dachshund, Mortimer, with Frank`s mother.

Dora said, “This is the third time you've gone to Mexico in as many years. It's a dangerous place. There are drug dealers and rapists and crooked police. You've got to be crazy to go to a place like that! Besides, I don't know what I'm going to do with a wiener dog. How often do I feed it? Will it pee on my rugs? Frank, Gia, please, you need to be reasonable—”

No big thing.

Lights, camera, romance.

After a day of shopping, buying lingerie and tequila on the Malecon, they stopped by The Nero on Lake Neronia, at Emathios, and found that it was closed for renovations. In addition, fleets of long trucks were delivering hundreds of tons of scientific equipment to the site. One of the locals said there was a space observatory a mile underground, and it was being retro-fitted to study quasars at the opposite end of the galaxy.

The Nero's concierge, Raful, met Frank and Gia at the gate, just as they were preparing to depart in their taxi. He apologized profusely for not being able to accommodate them. He said, “We are closed for six more weeks, unfortunately, but we will be better than ever when we re-open.”

“It's fine,” said Frank, “we're actually staying at the Riu.”

Gia added, “We just wanted to stop by and see the place. We stayed here last fall—it's beautiful. We had an amazing time.”

Raful smiled and said, “And you'll be back again, I have no doubt.”

He presented them with gift passes for the pirate ship cruise in the Bay of Banderas, a swashbuckling extravaganza performed by Los Pendejos. “It's a wonderful night of food and drinks and adventure on the high sea. Culture, entertainment, and the best fireworks you've ever seen. These tickets are compliments of our benefactor, Mr. Sharky, and he hopes you will enjoy the night. Gratis, gratis, and have a great adventure together.”

He wasn't even trying to sell them a time-share property.

...

 

Frank kissed Gia on the beach, under a blazing pink sun, at dusk, and it occurred to him that there were no alternate worlds, after all, but one brilliantly complex super-reality.

Bad thoughts, dirty thoughts slipped briefly into his mind. A perfect freeze-frame from a pornographic video—his beloved wife on her knees, surrounded by naked, aroused men. A leftover scrap from another world—unfinished business. This was the Gia of the lost years, her private years, the time when she was not his and he was not hers. Gossip from the mouth of a foul man. It was not Frank's concern, not his business, and he let the image bleed from his thoughts like small debris through a sluice gate.

“Is something troubling you, Frank?”

“Absolutely not.”

He was the author of his own story, separate and distinct from all other stories, and he was the hero of it, just as Gia was the author of her own story, separate and distinct from all others, and she was the heroine. Just as Raful, or Dora, or Giton, or even Bob Scieszka, were the authors of their stories, et cetera. And everyone's stories crossed, often enough, here and there and everywhere, and the hero of one story became the villain in the next, or a supporting player, a bit part, a cameo, or an extra, far in the background, and it seemed to make perfect sense, to him, for just one shining moment.

“I love you,” said Gia.

“And I love you,” said Frank.

And then the idea was gone.

...