Chapter Fourteen (A): Fist-Fight

Chapter Fourteen (A): Fist-Fight

 

 

“Death may be the greatest

Of all human blessings.”

 

-Socrates

 

In which everything comes to a head.

 

These guys.

Keech and Pony, two peas in a pod, devil may care, no worse for wear, rough and tumble, ready for anything, ready to rumble,walking and talking, reeling and rocking, rocking and rolling, good to go, good for nothing, going for broke, champing at the bit, bouncing off the walls, dancing in the street, fast on their feet, jerking everyone's chains, at it again, up to no good, out for themselves, out on the town, out and about, along for the ride.

These pricks, these miserable pricks. They were Corsairs.

There was a small rally in Discord. Top-shelf guys—colonels and lieutenants. The grand vizier was coming up from Tromso, it was rumored, but that was a day off, yet. There was time to kick up the shit, still, to have big dirty fun, balls out, good times.

Anyway, there was a job to do.

It was Dozy's place, not yet October, her bridal shower, but God knows she wasn't getting married anytime soon. There were half a dozen of them, all associates and friends of friends, girlfriends and boyfriends of bad-ass comrades, lolling about, chasing dragons, shot up with funk and love. Randal and Heebie on one end of the couch, fags, wound up like twin embryos and sometimes suckling on one another. Jam and Janie on the other end, same position, same everything, different sexes, at least. And maybe with a shade more enthusiasm, but just a shade. It would be difficult to say with certainty that any of them were alive, leave alone lively.

Slow motion, like telescoping through secret, buried crypts.

Like treading glue.

Toby was sitting cross-legged on the magic carpet, tracing the sorcerer's embroidery, drool-faced and just fucking gone, and with a sewing needle lodged in her big toe—right in the bone. How it got there, where it came from, none could say. Nobody knew, least of all Toby. She moaned every now and again, made suck-suck noises, her own contribution to the engrossing conversation. And the life of the party, the light of the universe, was Dozy, herself, the one doing all the talking. She had her opinions about faith, opinions about medicine, about politics and the economy, about Big Brother and Palm Sunday, but damned if she could articulate any of them.

Mostly, she was going, “Heebie”-this and “Toby”-that, and “Janie”-this and “Randal”-that, and making up adventures, giving everyone equal billing—making certain she had a storyline for every single person. Like, “Janie is pedalling her bicycle through the enchanted forest, and her bicycle has a banana seat, and she's carrying Heebie's gold, on a silver cord around her neck, and the cord is tied with a Gordian knot. And here comes Toby, through the trees, brandishing the hero's sword, which is so heavy that all the men from all the races couldn't lift it if they banded together.” And “Randal”-this and “Toby”-that, and so on, just gibberish, and even a spot for herself: “Dozy is the queen of the unicorn people, burner of the wicker man, keeper of the eternal flame, forever and ever, amen.”

She just liked the feel of her tongue moving inside of her mouth.

No one was listening. They all had junk in their veins, junk in their brains.

This was the shit side of town and everyone wore denim and leather, usually.

And there was a seventh person, slumped over by the stacks of laundered but unfolded clothes, no longer breathing, no longer among the living. His name was Macro, once upon a time, a million and a half years before, three hours ago—done in by his own dirty kit. Poisonous bits of rust and residue flowed upstream to his heart and caused it to seize. Took him just under two minutes to die, but with no small amount of discomfort. Dozy barely noticed him over there and didn't know him by name, so there was no chance of him making his way into her fantastic stories.

“And Jam went to the cradle of life, to the fountain of youth, in the days of yore, on the coast of gold, and met a youngly maiden fair, flaxen hair, kraken stare, Yogi Bear, floating chair, truth or dare.” Et cetera, et cetera.

She was a little rich girl, in bygone days, our Dozy, the daughter of Dr. Indy Bhugra. Could have had the whole world, or part of it, one of the good parts. Could have gone to Harvard or Yale or Nixon or DeVry. Could have become an accountant or record producer. Daddy used to tell her, “If you dream it you can achieve it, because the sky is the limit, so you should always aim high.” Something about reaching a man's exceeding grasp, too.

But then she found the dope and the dope was love, love, love.

Heebie's nose was whistling as he breathed, sleepily, and Toby's toe kept twitching—as if it, completely alive and aware of itself, was attempting to dislodge and remove the needle by shaking it out. Without realizing her own attention to these events, Dozy began to incorporate dancing digits and a singing proboscis into her narrative. “Heebie's nose and Toby's toes went waltzing by the bottom stair, to the basement there, in the lightning's glare, and, uhh, to the gorgon's stare.” And “Randal”-this and “Dozy”-that, but no mention, still, of Macro—may he rest in peace.

There was a storm brewing outside. Not the literal kind. The rain had already passed.

It was the intention of these guys, these cunts, Keech and Pony, not invited to Dozy's bridal shower in the first place, to rain on the whole fucking parade.

Before kicking open the front door, Keech whispered, “One, two—”

The voice from behind him, sudden, was that of Jim Codeman.

He said, “Four.”

Keech startled. Pony said, wheezing, “Jezus, Jim, you scared me shitless.”

Codeman said, “Get on with it, assholes.”

Keech and Pony went in with their guns blazing. Everyone got a bullet, even Macro, who was already dead. Dozy's head opened like a bad pumpkin. Heebie took three bullets in the ribcage and his blood came out all pink and frothy, like a strawberry milkshake. Not one of the dope-fiends lived beyond three more minutes. It was a fucking red zone.

Pony asked Codeman, “Are you sure we won't catch hell for this?”

Codeman said, “Why would we catch hell?”

“Because this is like shitting where we eat, you know? This is Corsairs blood.”

“I don't give a fuck about that.”

“If the big bosses ever found out—”

“They won't.”

All Codeman wanted was the bag of cocaine that Randal had tucked into the lining of his coat, almost a half kilo, along with $50,000 in crisp, new bills. He was sick and tired of living by the rules, doing whatever the bosses told him to do. Sick of Berk, sick of Rinpoche, sick of all those assholes.

When he got what he came for, he gave Keech and Pony a cool grand apiece.

“That's for a job well done, boys.”

These were the wee hours. The neighbors would be going ape-shit over the sound of so much gunfire. The police would be on the scene almost immediately. Keech and Pony would be on their motorcycles, like perfect idiots, and they'd be caught before the sun came up. Codeman himself would step into the shadows and quietly slip away.

...

 

Frank sat at his desk and considered busying himself with a meaningless activity. Anything to pass the time. Reading, doing a crossword, or the grid with the numbers that never fit into it. He considered sex—a nice, careful fuck with the woman in his bed—or jacking off, instead. Or watching some good old American porno. There was a folder in his computer library labelled Educational Materials that held all of his favorites—

The sound of gunfire, far away. Ten shots or more.

And then—

A thudding sound from upstairs—the Idiot was awake, traipsing across the floor, off to pee.

Jezus Christ.

He checked his email. Not much there.

He was staring down the gun-barrel of 40, but there wasn't a birthday greeting to be found.

The upstairs toilet flushed.

Still, now that it was upon him, 40 seemed huge—and worthy of note. It keeping him awake during these wee hours. For a change, it wasn't acid reflux. It was anxiety, pure and true, and difficult to laugh off. Hell, one of his childhood pals was already in the ground. That was Billy Poke, just seven months ago. He hung himself in his tool shed when he found out he had brain cancer.

Same thing with Roger Nelson.  Rope was popular with men.

Forty! The whole world was turned on its ear!

He didn't want to be dramatic about it.

He looked at online pictures of breasts.

There was a new statue in Hector Park. He thought he should check it out sometime.

That time would never come—he was dying.

How much of Bob Scieszka's morphine had he ingested?

He couldn't recall. It was fucking lots! Bob charged him sixty bucks for it.

Killing himself was always on his mind, it seemed. Time to get the job done. He used to have a high tolerance for opioids, but he'd been off codeine long enough, he estimated, that the shit in his system ought to lay him out for good. Forever. And already he could feel it working its magick in his guts and in his toes and behind his eyes. He was feeling squishy and warm all over.

“Maybe I can sleep now,” he announced to himself.

And he did.

...

 

Gia found him in the morning. The phone was ringing off the hook because the plane had landed and Frank wasn't there to get the bags. Giton and Karl Steckler were going out of their minds. It was like the end of the world. “Where's Frank? Get Frank! For Christ sakes—the plane has already all-the-way fucking landed!”

And then, “Tell your deadbeat husband he's fucking fired!”

And then, “This is Giton. Please, please, please can you get Frank to call me ASAP?”

And then, “This is Karl. Where the fuck is Frank? We have deadlines! I will murder him!”

Gia said, “Frank hasn't ever missed a day without making arrangements, so I'm sure there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.”

Then Bob Scieszka called to wish Frank a happy birthday. He said, “Get Frank to give me a shout as soon as you catch up with him. I'm going to take the old prick down to the Juke and buy him a couple beers. I want to invite you guys to my candle party on Monday. You'll have to talk him into it, Gia—he won't willingly come to a candle party, I don't think.”

Gia said she would relay the information to Frank just as soon as she located him.

Where the fuck was he?

She went into his office expecting to find him asleep at his desk, possibly, and instead found him cold, blue and dead, sprawled on the floor, with froth on his chin. The dachshund, Nunu, now re-named Mortimer, which had previously belonged to the Fendiuks, was licking his fingers. No twitching, no ticklishness, no signs of life at all.

Frank?

No words to explain the feelings that came welling up from her stomach, filling her lungs with molten lead and her throat with electricity. She fell to her knees, beside the body, and began to weep, almost soundlessly, at first, and building to a long, pained scream, like her heart was being ripped out.

Kayla, the Idiot, came running to see what was the matter.

“What's wrong with Uncle Frank?”

“Call someone, you fucking moron,” Gia demanded.

“Who?”

“The police. The fire department. The fucking hospital.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know—”

...

 

 

Gia was lying on the floor beside Frank's corpses, staring into his eyes. He was already a million miles away. She had questions, more questions than tears, almost, and most of them could never be answered. First of all, Why?

And then another Frank, perfectly alive, came in through the front door.

This sort of thing so rarely happens.

Kayla hadn't yet picked up the phone to call whomever. She was pretty slow and stupid. She said, “Is that you, Uncle Frank? Are you the real you? I thought you were dead. Auntie Gia is laying with your body right now. How can there be two of you?”

Gia came running out of the office and her lips began to quiver. “Frank?”

“Yeah, I'm home, sweetie,” he said. Oh, he was pleased to see her.

“I don't understand.”

“I'm here. I'm home. I'm back from the beyond. I came down the N-string, I think.”

“But you're dead—”

“Actually, I'm not. I'm back from being dead.”

Gia turned and jaunted back to the office and Frank followed her there. Sure enough, there was a dead version of himself on the floor. Fucking overdose. Disgusting. The room stunk of piss and bile.

Upon seeing Mortimer, he crouched and said, “Hey—we finally have a wiener dog!”

How confused the dog was, no one could estimate.

Gia said, “Are you saying this corpse isn't you?”

Frank said, “Not exactly.”

Mortimer was licking his fingers, possibly comparing their taste to those of dead Frank.

Frank stood and embraced Gia, hard.

...

 

Frank said, “I can explain this.”

Frank said, “No, really.”

Frank said, “I was the me from a place very similar to this, but now I'm the me from somewhere else. My consciousness went from there to there, and—”

Frank said, “Let me start again.”

He just blabbed and blabbed and blabbed. So much insanity, so much fantasy. “So, you understand, this is me, my mind, from one place, but this body of mine comes from another place, which is why I seem to be missing a finger, but those things hardly matter, at all.”

Gia was nodding her head, but she did not understand.

She couldn't get past the corpse. It was the elephant in the room, so to speak.

Frank said, “It's actually a good thing. If that me was still alive, then I'd be here, too, and both of me would be fighting over you, and that wouldn't be beneficial to anyone.”

Kayla, the Idiot, came up from behind and said, “You probably couldn't be here if there was two of you. Like, I mean, maybe you'd go insane because you'd be in two places at the same time. I know I would. That's like having four eyes instead of two.”

Frank gave the briefest nod to acknowledge her hypothesis.

He put his arms around Gia and she reciprocated.

“How can I know what's real, Frank?”

“I don't think you can ever know for sure. For all you know, I'm just a figment of your imagination. And for all I know, you could be an actor—some sort of quantum stand-in for the thing I love most in the whole universe. My reason to keep going, even after being dead.”

They kissed. It was time for that.

It was Friday morning, September 23, and Frank was forty.

...

 

The guy on the news, a total ass-face with too-white teeth, was talking about supply and demand and China's overabundance of yellow antimatter. He said the CER was essentially defunct and its affiliate, the 11-22-998 Company, was filing for bankruptcy. “So much for the final frontier. At this rate, the much-delayed deep-space warp-mining program has been shelved indefinitely.”

Frank wasn't sure what that meant for the future, but he was reasonably certain it ruled out mud-holes and moon-dogs in the present. No need for anyone to blow their load and launch the goddamn WADC-6 defense system. No displacement of Hell and the infernal realms.

Positivity. Optimism. A modicum of each.

...

 

Frank was going to bust the teeth out of the face of Jim Codeman if the fucker so much as sniffed the air on Candle Avenue. Beyond that precaution, he planned to take Gia out of town for the coming week, just so the horrific events of the previous continua couldn't come to pass. He didn't let on about things. He supposed Gia wouldn't want to know that she'd been murdered so randomly.

He told Kayla, “You need to pack your things. You'll be going home. Your mother wants you back and, to be frank, and I am Frank, this town isn't a good environment for you. There are bad elements, bad people, and I know you've been up to a little bit of no good.”

The Lump protested, “But I wanted to go to the movies on Sunday.”

“Listen, kid, you and me both know that you don't plan on going to the movies, at all. You're going to steal cash from my drawer and then go to Tawny's party and smoke crack with your pals.”

“H-how did you know th-that?”

“Because I come from an alternate universe, remember?”

He still wanted to punch her in the face.

He telephoned  Gabriella Talia Valens, mother of Lump, in Charlottetown, and before he could say hello, she blurted, “Oh my god—you guys are in the news! It's all over the television. A whole bunch of kids were killed and buried in Discord. Frank, are you aware of this?”

“We are, actually,” he said, “and that's precisely why we're sending Kayla home.”

“You're sending her home? My god—why?”

“You just said you were watching the news, Gab.”

“My Kayla's not in any danger, do you think so?”

“I think teenage and pre-teen girls are exactly the at-risk group.”

“Kayla is very good at taking care of herself. Haven't you arm-wrestled her? She's like a truck. If any rapist tried to put his hands on her, she'd—hai yaa—put the karate-chop right back on him, believe you me, before he even knew what hit him. What do you think, Frankie? Do you think sending her home is really the solution?”

“I do, yes, Gab. It's not even up for debate.”

“I think you're being rash. Is Gia home? Can I speak to Gia?”

“You can, of course, but it's not going to affect the Kayla decision. I already have a ticket.”

“I'm speechless, just speechless.”

“Very good.”

...

 

He had grand ideas about disposing his corpse—maybe stash it down in the Roman catacombs—but it was kind of heavy, and in the end he wound up dragging it into the back yard and burying it there. Three feet deep, maybe only two-and-a-half, and that was plenty. If it was discovered, what would the police say about it? “DNA proves that you're buried in your own backyard, Mr. Burczyk.” He didn't think he could get in trouble for that.

Before tossing the first shovelful of dirt onto his corpse, he stole the wedding band from its dead finger. It was roughly a size too large, just as he'd dreamed.

He realized that police were probably in the process of discovering a cache of bodies on Union Street. It was going to be the biggest deal since John Quay drove the train into the Ghost River. There was a serial killer in town, and Frank knew who it probably was.

News hit the street about the horror on Union at about three in the afternoon.

Also—seven junkies shot dead at a Discord crack-house.

That was an all-new event. Frank had no memory of such an incident.

...

 

He spent almost two hours making crazy love to Gia—during which she double- and triple-checked the red whorl on his neck to be sure that he was really himself—and then they took Kayla to the Discord terminal and put her on the bus. It was much cheaper than the plane. The forty-hour ride across the country would be good for the kid—maybe give her some perspective.

As much as he wanted to, Frank didn't tell her, “I'm saving you from being kidnapped and raped, and maybe even murdered, by someone called Uncle Bobby. You should thank me.”

...

 

Frank bought some wine and Gia got kind of drunk. It was a bit of a reversal of things. She'd be the one waking up with a hangover on Saturday morning, instead of him. But he couldn't blame her—she had found his body, after all, and then had to deal with him coming back from the dead, so to speak. Those things could blow gaskets in a human brain.

She noticed things about him, beyond the missing finger segments. He was thinner, for one thing, and his teeth were a whole shade whiter. Also, the hair on his head was coarser and somewhat thicker. There was a small scar on his chin that hadn't been there before. Overall, he looked younger than he did at their wedding.

She said, “If I didn't know better, I'd almost say you're an imperfect clone.”

“Oh, thanks,” Frank said.

“I mean imperfect in a good way.”

“Of course you do.”

“Do you remember how many roses I asked for, on our first date?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because only the real Frank would know such a thing.”

“You asked for eleven. Six of one color and five of another.”

“Kiss me, you universe-travelling stallion.”

...

 

Before going to sleep, Gia said, “I thought of taking you to Rebowken this weekend, for your birthday. I know how much you love to soak.”

Out of nowhere, Frank realized that his mother was dead. She would have fallen down the stairs the day before, on Thursday. As he recalled, it was her neighbor, Verona Shipton, that would find her. Or maybe Uncle Joey. It made his chest ache. Maybe he had been a rotten son.

A tear ran down his cheek and Gia asked what was troubling him.

“I expect that Dora has passed,” he sniffled. “I forgot about that. I was so concerned with getting back to you, at the expense of everything else, that I forgot about her. What could I have done, anyway? She died yesterday, before I even arrived here—”

Gia sat up, groggy from wine, and said, “Dora isn't dead.”

“She is—nobody knows it yet. Her body is probably still undiscovered.”

“But she left a message on the answering machine while we were at the bus station with Kayla. She said she's going dancing with her boyfriend, Berry, but wanted to wish you a happy birthday. She said she has a card for you—probably with ten dollars inside, if I know her—but won't be able to give it to you until Sunday or Monday.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“I saved the message. You can check for yourself.”

Frank went trotting off to the kitchen to play back the message. The read-out on the handset indicated it had been recorded at 2:11 PM. It was Dora saying precisely what Gia had indicated, as well as, “Make sure you have a nice weekend, Frankie. Don't over-extend yourself. You know that you have to be careful about things. I had to dip you in magic water, forty years ago, in order to protect you from this cursed world. God knows I won't be around forever to watch out for you. Anyway, I don't expect to be home until very late, and then Berry is taking me shoe-shopping, tomorrow, so I won't be able to talk to you until after the weekend. I love you, son.”

Frank picked up the phone and dialled his mother's number.

It rang and rang and rang and rang and...

Well, it was still relatively early in the evening, and the old girl was going dancing, after all.

When Frank got back into bed, he said to Gia, “Wouldn't she go shoe-shopping before going dancing, instead of after?”

Gia mumbled, “Your mother is a very special woman.”

Indeed she was.

...

 

It was Saturday morning. Berk was going out of his mind. He was becoming grossly aware of it. He had memories of watching CW die—hit by a blue Ford on Candle Avenue—but now the fucking asshole was alive and well and hanging out at Hector Park.

Berk said to him, “Didn't I dip your arm in molten iron?”

CW said, “Good Lord, no, Berk. I hope it doesn't come to that. It was bad enough when you cut off my toes and sewed a dick onto my face.”

“I'm pretty sure I watched you go splat, boy.”

“There's no need for more violence. As I said, my ex-wife is worth a lot of coin. She's a millionaire. I think we can work something out. Something mutual.”

“Get in the car—I'm taking you to see Jim Codeman.”

Riding with CW was like riding with a ghost.

Berk phoned ahead to tell Codeman he was on his way over, but it was a woman who answered the phone. She spoke in sloppy, mush-mouthed English, like an Indian. She said, “Jimmy isn't here. I think he went with Keech. You know Keech? They were going to score some shit, I think. He hasn't come home all night.”

Fuck.

Berk wanted Codeman's advice. Wanted him to check out CW's story, check out the ex, make sure he was telling the truth about things. Berk valued Codeman's input. The guy was crazy as two shit-house squirrels, but he had a fine-tuned sixth sense about things. He could usually smell a rat.

“Where are you taking me?” CW asked.

“I don't know,” said Berk. “Sit tight and shut up.”

He had to think.

Thinking wasn't so easy.

He took out his trusty notepad and flipped to the most recent page. He thought it said, Put two bullets in Gia Burczyk's face, but then he blinked and realized it actually said, Get a pound of white from Randal Kuzmasky. He was losing his marbles, sure as shit.

...

 

Frank woke up early,  left Gia in bed, and  went to Diana Luvana's house. He banged on the door until she answered, and when she did she said, “ It's very early. I don't start readings until noon, on the weekend. You don't have an appointment booked. My day is crazy, and I haven't done my hair, and I have a friend coming over, very shortly. There's no way I can accommodate you.”

Frank replied, “You've got a brand new Buddha Tube.”

“Pardon me?”

“You just came back from France with a Buddha Tube—a Nervous Box. Yours is a knockoff, which is why it didn't cost you four million dollars, but it works just as well.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was already talking to your Nervous Box, in the future.”

“Have you been hanging out with my mother? She wasn't supposed to say—”

“You haven't even used it with a client, yet.”

“That's true. My, you're precocious, aren't you?”

“Lady, I need five minutes with your box. I'll give you fifty bucks. The way I see it, you already owe me ten minutes from our other session.”

“Fifty will be fine.”

Frank followed Diana to the drawing room. She opened the box and fired it up and mist began pouring out and the clamshell screens began to flicker. In anticipation of Diana's boasting, Frank said, “They're only making seventy-seven of these babies, per month. There's less than a thousand in existence. They're unbelievably expensive. You're going to make a mint, though.”

“Uh, thanks,” said Diana Luvana.

A ghost appeared on the screens, all jittery and out of focus, and Frank asked it, “Is Bob the one? Is Bob the murderer? The one who killed those girls? Who is the serial murderer in Discord?”

Diana gave Frank a quizzical look and whispered, “I should have asked that question. It never even occurred to me to try.”

Frank said, “That's because you wouldn't know who to charge.”

Diana was going to express indignation, but before she could let out a single grumble, the phantom in the box said, “The story-teller is a man of cruel perversity. He has used his manly weapon to inflict the worst sufferings. He is a person without empathy or remorse, and he is indeed the one who has dug the holes.”

“Thank you,” said Frank, abruptly closing the box's lid.

“Bob who?” asked Diana Luvana.

“You'll see,” said Frank. “It should be in the news.”

“Or I can just find out for myself.”

“Yeah, you're a fortune teller, after all.”

“I am, indeed.”

“One might think you should have seen this coming from miles away.”

...

 

 

Next, he went to Bob Scieszka's house. Let himself in. Walked right through to the backyard peristyle, where Bob and Tracy Olafson were drinking coffee and smoking fat doobies. And before Bob could blurt out some bullshit excuse as to why Tracy was there, Frank said, “Don't bother—I already know everything. I've been five days into the future and back. I'm pretty up on things. I'm informed. Besides, Bob, I know how much you like sloppy seconds.”

All Bob could do was laugh.

Tracy, for her part, stood up, spat, and threw her coffee cup on the ground. She said, “You're a fucking asshole, Frank. You're the biggest asshole in the world.”

Frank said, “I'm the biggest asshole in four worlds, darling,” and to Bob he said, “I really don't care that you're with her. It's not my business. If anything, I feel a teensy bit bad for you, knowing from experience what delightful company she is—”

Tracy said, “You're trespassing! I'm calling police.”

“That's a good idea,” said Frank, lighting a small cigar, “we should talk to the police, all three of us. First, there's the issue of the threatening letters you keep sending to Gia. She's got a stack of them. And we also need to talk about dead girls.”

Bob was grinning wide, almost hysterical. “What are you talking about, Frank? Tracy hasn't been bothering Gia—I expressly told her not to. I forbade it. Those days are well behind her. And I'm not saying she's above that sort of thing—she certainly isn't, as we both know—but I find it completely distasteful. You and me are friends. I want you to come to my candle party.”

Tracy began hurling more obscenities, but Bob told her to sit down and shut her goddamn trap, and she readily complied. He held up his hands and said, “See, Frank? She's a totally reformed creature, these days. I can even get her to wash the dishes and clean the windows.”

Frank said, “I also mentioned dead girls, Bob. I don't know if you're aware, but they found a cache of bodies at the 300-block, on Union, yesterday afternoon. Between that and the biker war, every cop in the province is descending upon this town. It's a nuthouse, out there.”

“What does that have to do with me, Frank?”

“Who abducted Alice Little?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“I think you're pretty enlightened. Like I said, I've been to the future. I think you know how stacked universes work, seeing as you've been writing about them. Your girlfriend here found your novel on your computer and plans to print it out and slip it under our front door.”

“What novel?”

“Ragnarok.”

Tracy screamed, “You're a fucking liar, Frank!” Her face was more surprised than angry. Like, how could Frank possibly know about mischief she'd secretly planned but hadn't actually carried through with? (Not even Criss Angel on TV could do that sort of magick.)

Bob said, “How do you know about Ragnarok?”

Frank said, “I just told you—I came here from an alternate plane, almost a week into the future. That world was wiped out by the CER's asteroid and the WADC-6 defense system. That's how I came to read your fucking book, and it's also how I know what you've been using Tracy's family cabin for. You've been taking girls there. And if you haven't yet, then you plan to, real soon. You know exactly what I'm talking about because it's already in your head.”

“I don't know what your deal is, Frank,” said Bob, “but you're bringing me down. There's no way you could have seen my novel.”

“Tracy planned to slip it under my door. I already said so. And I recall a line that goes, Imagine a thousand sheets of paper, which is exactly the number of time-lines affected by the Cataclysm.”

Bob's face turned to cold stone, and he told Tracy to leave, to give him some privacy. “Go get a fucking manicure or some shit. Pick up a magazine.” He also told her, “And if I find out you've been within seven feet of my computer, I'm going to bust your fucking face, this time. I shit you not, woman. I'm on my final straw.” The woman turned her nose up, gave everyone the finger, and then disappeared into the house, slamming the door behind her. Frank took her seat, sitting down across the patio table from Bob, who was rosy and overheated but trying to seem cool and sure of himself.

Frank's cigar, meanwhile, tasted fantastic.

“Tell me again, Frank—how do you know about my novel?”

“Forget the novel, Bob. It isn't very good, anyway. What I think we should be talking about instead is the preponderance of dead and missing girls in the Ghost River region, don't you think?”

“I do not think.”

“They're calling this guy the Ghost River Skinner.”

“I don't care.”

“No?”

“I own a fucking gun, Frank. You know I do. I won't waste twenty seconds deciding whether to blow out your knees if you don't tell me how you gained access to my private files.”

“I already did tell you, big boy.”

“You're saying that Tracy—”

“If it wasn't her, then it had to be you. Who else?”

“Why would I slip my own book under your door?”

“Precisely. So it was Tracy, after all.”

The cigar died out, halfway through, and Frank had to reignite it.

Bob dug the heels of his palms into his sockets, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. He said, “Fuck me, sideways. I don't know what to think about anything.”

Frank said, “Your book, oddly enough, contains everything you need to know. I come from an alternate universe. I come from the future. I've seen your shitty book, I've seen the weather, and I know who's been hunting for young girls. Anything else is irrelevant. You ought to be considering what course of action is best for your long-term survival. You might be wondering if I haven't already called the police.”

“If you think you're going to trick me into confessing to something, friend, then you're off your nut. Who are you, Matlock? You think I'm going to start stuttering and accidentally blurt out that I'm some kind of murdering pedophile? Do you know me, at all? That would be a cold, miserable day in hell—even if I was guilty.”

“Suit yourself, man.”

“Listen up, Frankie—do you know what I was doing on the day of your wedding? You might think I was off with Gia's cousin, getting shit-faced, but that's only half the truth. In reality, we were watching porno. We were drunk and jacking off together, and we were watching an X-rated film. Do you wanna know who was in it? Try, the fucking slut got you married to. That's right—Piss-drinker Ken had a VHS tape of Gia, his own cousin, sucking off five guys simultaneously, and getting cum in her eyes and hair. Doesn't that sound nice? One guy had a cock like a soup ladle.”

“Are you trying to switch the subject?”

“I'm talking about your cocksucker of a wife.”

“So you say.”

“I'm talking about big, purple cocks smacking her on the face. What do you think?”

“I think one of us is a murderer, and it's not me.”

“Are you listening to me? She was sucking—”

“I've already heard the story, Bob. You told me once before, about two days from now.”

“Doesn't it hurt, Frank? Deep inside, I mean.”

“Not as much as you'd think.”

A police siren, almost perfectly timed, blared in the background, many blocks away, and Bob turned as white as French vanilla cream.

Frank smirked,  stood up, tossed his smoldering cigar into Bob's coffee, and put two fingers to his forehead. “I reckon this closes the friendship. Sayonara, Captain,” he said. “As you once told me, We all originate in the well-spring of life, and we all need to get back to it. So that's what I'm going to do. I don't expect I'll be seeing you around.”

...

 

Bob was getting his gun. Frank went calmly out the front door and met Tracy there—she was sitting on the step, tracing circles on the sidewalk with her feet. She said, “I hope you get to be alone forever. I hope you burn in Hell when this world is over.”

Frank said, “Who knows what the future holds?”

“Bob never hurt no girls, I hope you know. He never even touched one.”

“I'd like nothing more than for you to be right.”

“Sure as fuck I am.”

“Hmm.”

He climbed into his truck as Bob was coming out of the house with a silver-plated Colt .45.

“Don't fucking come back!” Bob hollered. “I don't want to see you again, friend. I'll blow a hole in your goddamn face, friend. Yeah, you better motor on, friend.” He'd managed to turn friend into a four-letter word.

Frank waved, then drove away.

...

 

Rinpoche and two other Corsairs captains were waiting in a hotel room. Every hotel room in Discord had bikers in it. Rinpoche was laid out on the queen-size bed, feet up, boots on, mud everywhere. The captains were sitting on rolling office chairs. They were waiting for Berk—“that lunatic cocksucker”—but he was a no-show. A phantom named June-bug Ramirez kept calling, every three minutes, to see if Berk had arrived yet.

“No, he's still not here.”

Rinpoche knew what the captains didn't—that the grand vizier, himself, was in the penthouse suite, upstairs, waiting for Berk to arrive in order to get down to business. Important business.  Jim Codeman had gone off his rocker and murdered all the wrong people, the girlfriends and boyfriends of ranking officers, and it came down to Berk—Codeman's friend and frequent “collaborator”—to speak up and point the dogs in the right direction. The fact that he was already an hour late had more than a few tongues wagging.

“If you ask me, he's in on it,” Rinpoche told June-bug on the phone. “Those two, you never know what they might cook up together. Berk gets an idea in his head and it's Codeman he goes running to, every freaking time. They're like Stan and Kyle. Que sera sera.”

June-bug didn't think it sounded likely. “Coach isn't going to throw his whole life away over fifty grand and a bag of dope. That's completely unreasonable.”

“Ordinarily I'd agree with you, June, but the old guy isn't himself, these days. Maybe he was never himself, but this is worse than ever. He calls people by the wrong name, he mixes up dates and locations, he gets bizarre ideas—”

“So, he could be lost and mixed up, even right now?”

“Yeah, I suppose, but—”

“Let's give it a few more minutes, Rin.”

Nobody knew nothing.

Everyone at Dozy's pad was dead. Keech got caught by the police and Pony got caught by the Corsairs. He got beat ten shades of black and told as much of the story as he knew. Jim Codeman set the whole thing up. Pony hadn't heard any other names. Codeman said he was a free agent, didn't take orders from no man. And after he had no more goods to spill, Pony got one bullet in each lung.

Guys were talking about how Codeman was going to be made to endure more pain and suffering than any man in history. They were going to shoot him up with epinephrine every time he got close to passing out, then start over again. Pliers, lead pipe, hot iron. The works.

Rinpoche thought the freaking psycho might even enjoy it. You never knew.

June-bug called again almost immediately. He said Berk had been spotted cruising by Codeman's apartment just a few minutes past. “He's got some little fag in his car. A local meth-head. A tweaker. I don't know what it means.”

“It means Berk isn't above nothing,” Rinpoche said.

“Duke brought in Codeman's girlfriend—just a dirty squaw with a bad attitude. She says there's nothing to the story that we don't already know. She's been waiting for him to come home, all night. She thinks he might go south. She thinks he'll get out of the whole fucking territory.”

“Not me. I think he'll stay close.”

“You think she's trying to throw us off?”

“Jimmy told her exactly what to say. You know he did.”

“If Berk doesn't get here soon I'm going to have an aneurysm.”

“You aren't the only one, June. Salut, salut.”

The captains were getting antsy. Sitting around the hotel on rally weekend was nobody's idea of a good time. Codeman had screwed the pooch on a galactic level.

Fucked it for everyone.

...

 

It was almost 10:00 in the morning. Frank pulled into his driveway to find CW at his front door.

It was strangely reminiscent of the day Gia was murdered. The way the day felt. The grey sky and the warm buzz of summer's last gasps.

Frank jumped out of the truck, went running up to the deadbeat and grabbed him forcibly by the back of the neck, knocking his pocked, infected face into the door.

“I come in peace, man,” Casey Curtis whimpered. He held two hands above his face, completely unaware of how lucky he was to not be headed to the Tchatchuk machine shop. “I didn't do nothing. I come in peace. I just knocked on the door. I just wanna talk to Gia—”

Frank spun him around and threw him onto the lawn, growling, “You won't talk to anyone, you fucking jack-off.” He hauled back his right foot and booted CW once in the ribcage, knocking him over, knocking him breathless.

“Please, Berk will kill me! He says I gotta!”

“Get to your feet, Casey.”

“Berk says I gotta call Gia outside or he'll fucking brain me!”

“Get to your fucking feet!”

“He cut off my toes, man! He stuck a cock onto my face!” He pointed at the swirl of pus-leaking wounds around his face. Mentally connecting the dots, Frank could make out a phallus shape. He had a glimpse of a memory of almost running CW over, near the site of Vinyl Gigi, and recalled seeing a lump of something on his face.

He grabbed CW by the collar and dragged him to his feet. “You better get the hell out of this neighborhood before I whup the living bejeezus out of you. I mean it. I'll knock your head all the way off, Casey—you know I will.”

“Why don't you help me, Frank?”

“Huh?”

“I'm asking you to help me. Save me from Berk.”

Here, the voice of Jim Codeman wafted through Frank's memory—

 

“Those bullets were paid-for in full, courtesy of Berk”

 

—spoken right before he shot Gia in the face, three days and three universes away.

Frank's face began to fill with blood and heat.

A car door slammed—a rusted, yellow El Camino—and Berk came loping down the street. He hollered, “Leave him alone, fucker,” as he came. “Let him go, or it's your ass!”

This guy was instantly familiar to Frank. It was Coach. It was the paranoid maniac who broke his jaw, ten years prior. To boot, the guy was yelling threats as he came, “You leave my guy alone or I'll fucking pound you!”

Frank pushed CW aside and CW whispered, “He wants to strong-arm you guys for all your money. He has the idea that Gia is rich, and he's trying to use me to rip you off.”

“You don't say,” sighed Frank.

Gia came out the front door, tying her robe in place. She was fresh out of bed, completely disoriented. She said, “Frank? What's happening? Casey? What are you doing here?” The dog, Mortimer, was right on her heels, yapping angrily at the stranger in the yard.

CW said, “I got trouble all over me, honey.”

Berk came striding across the grass, rolling his sleeves up, saying, “You better not try to stand in the way of my business, motherfucker. CW is my man and he does what I tell him. He has a debt. That lady in pink owes me twenty thousand dollars.” He stopped cold in his tracks, sensing something unsettling and familiar about Frank Burczyk.

CW said, “He's telling lies—”

Frank traced half an ellipse in the air with his left fist and knocked CW unconscious.

Gia shrieked, covering her face with her hands as CW hit the grass in a lump.

“I know your face,” Berk said.

Frank nodded. He had the faintest urge to hum along to his racist father's butchered line—

 

Nine big bags of nasty Nancy's nigger nuts

 

—but immediately decided against. He had to chuckle about it, though—the sheer redneck ridiculousness of it.

“Are you laughing at me?” Berk asked.

“I surely am,” Frank said. “I'm thinking about how badly the rest of this day is going to go for you. I'm thinking of how you're twenty seconds from flushing your whole life away.”

“What are you saying, white boy?”

“I'm saying I want you to take a swing at me, Coach. What words do I have to say before you'll do that? What if I called you an inbred cousin fucker? Would that do the trick?”

Gia came up behind Frank and put an arm over his shoulder. “Come inside, sweetheart,” she said. “Come in and we'll call the police. Don't get mixed up in this. He's a gangster.” She tugged on him gently, but he refused to budge.

Frank said, “This is the guy who sucker-punched me and broke my jaw, years back. He's one of the Corsairs. He's a fucking cancer. He's guilty of shit he hasn't even done yet.”

Berk said, “Yeah, I know who you are,” shaking a finger in Frank's direction. “It was a Christmas party and I knocked your lights out. It was you and a bunch of pig-fuckers. Yes, I know you. You tried to give me lip but I had to put you in your place, like a punk or a woman.”

Frank grinned.

Coach went on, “I busted your face and they gave me three months for it. If I had known you were around, I might have paid you a visit sooner. Teach you a lesson. Now I'm going to call it fifty thousand—the debt. You'll fucking pay it to me or my guys will go up one of your asses and down the other. You'll go extinct, both of you, and quick.”

“That's a pretty big threat.”

“You better believe it is. What's your name? Richard? Fred? I can't remember. But, let me tell you, Richard—I'm going to break you in half, like a mongoose, and then I'm going to bend you over and eat the corn-brindled shit right out of your ass.”

Gia scowled. As far as threats went, that one was far on the stranger side of the fence.

“Maybe you should hit him just once,” she whispered in Frank's ear.

“I think I can do that,” said Frank.

Berk came at him swinging. He dodged the first blow and the second caught him on the left ear. Gia squealed again. Berk was hollering, “Fuck you,” and, “Motherfucker,” and, “Eat the pain,” and the like, swinging wild, full of rage, and Frank was crouching to avoid them. He hadn't moved like that in years. He was surprised that he could squat at all, given his terrible diet and utter lack of exercise. Finally, when he was about to lose his breath, he took his shot and was able to land a hard uppercut, and Berk's teeth clacked, and he paused to linger on the pain.

That was all the window Frank needed, and he came in with his right hand, delivering two solid shots to Berk's cheek and nose, nearly liquefying the latter.

Berk fell to his knees, dazed and slobbering blood, and Gia managed to holler Frank's name before he went in for the kill. “Baby! Don't do it!” And if she hadn't, Frank supposed he might have punched and stomped until Berk's whole head was caved-in.

He dropped his fists and Gia came rushing to check his ear for damage.

Berk was a sorry mess of red and yellowing teeth. He tried to say, “You bastard,”  but it came out as, “You butter.” He had a firearm tucked in the back of his pants—a .357 magnum, his favorite toy—but Frank had already seen it, and he reached around, snatched it out and emptied the magazine onto the lawn, before Berk had the vaguest sense about what was happening.

“You butter, you funkin' butter.”

Berk had killed eleven people in his life, all but two of them with that gun. Now it had been taken from him as simply as one takes a handful of fruit candy away from a toddler.

“I funkin' key you, butter.”

“Uh huh,” said Frank.

He knew that Berk was exactly the type to get up after being beaten—to attack from behind, to throw a sucker punch, to fight dirty—and so he delivered a solid roundhouse kick to the other side of Berk's face. Just to erase the possibilities. Coach Berkowitz fell backward, in a spray of broken enamel and gore, and his lights were all the way out.

Twittering fucking tweety birds flying cartoony circles around his head.

Ouch.

...

 

In his brain, he was sodomizing Romeo Cortes, little Shakespeare, and Tony Bennett was crooning on the hi-fi. It was years ago. Everything was fresh and wonderful. He was hot shit—a real somebody on the streets of Meskanaw. He was one of the Corsairs, now, and just took the blood oath. He was already too big for his environment—they wanted to move him north, up the highway, into fresh territory. He was already keeping a secondary residence in Discord because he was spending so much of his time there.

He wasn't going to ride a bike. He was a collector. He was an enforcer. His was a background role. He stayed behind the scenes, banging on doors and cracking skulls. Kicking asses. His viciousness, his pure fury, was the un-Newtonian force that propelled him so quickly up the ladder.

Dusty Black, then-grand vizier, had told him, “You're an animal, Coach, a real animal. But maybe keep it on the down-low, this fetish of yours. The bizarre thing, I mean. Nobody cares if you want to be a fag, but don't go blabbing about that other stuff. It puts people on edge. Keep it quiet.”

Berk replied, “Can do.”

On top of that, he was a fledgling member of Discord's Caroling Club—he was bound to make his mark in the world, one way or the other. If rubbing elbows with greasy old Carolingians didn't buy him some real respect, then riding with Huns and Vandals surely would.

His was the best of all possible worlds.

He was giving it to Shakespeare and Shakespeare was taking it like a man. The entire region was Berk's for the taking. He was a real somebody. He was rolling in cash. He was thinking, “I'm gonna buy me a fucking Humvee.”

Not long after, he had to put a bullet in Shakespeare's head. The kid had pig bacteria in his brain. It was after the Christmas party. It was almost February. They'd had a nasty fight and the kid threatened, “I'm going to tell your home-boys what you're really like. I'm going to tell them all the things you like to do. What do you think about that? How do you think they'll react?”

Berk supposed they'd react badly.

He missed that fucking Shakespeare kid, sometimes.

...

 

He almost didn't make it back to his car.

He thought his legs would buckle underneath him.

There were police sirens, somewhere, but they didn't mean a thing to him. The town was all screaming police sirens, these days.

Frank Burczyk told him, “Your gun will be at the bottom of the Ghost River by dusk. If I see you or your accomplice—that dirty shit-bag, Jim Codeman—I'll crush your windpipe and break your neck clean through. Both of you. The police will give me a fucking medal. If either of you comes near my wife or my house, it will be the very last the world ever hears of you.”

And Berk believed him.

“You might even want to leave town, Coach, 'cause I think I might just come and beat on you for fun, one of these days. I might come for the rest of your teeth. It would amuse me to grievously harm an old criminal like you. I'd do it for fun.”

Frank sounded to himself like a thug.

A thug. A shrug. Whatever.

...