Текст книги "Foodchain"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

DAY SIXTEEN

Pine found him sprawled on the couch with Petunia in the morning. “Goddamn,” he said. “You’ll fuck anything.”

Petunia growled at him.

Sturm had sent the clowns over to the vet hospital with a large horse trailer. Frank and Pine lined the inside with chicken wire, preparing it to haul the cats out to Sturm’s ranch, listening to the monkeys chatter and screech at the two men. It took a while, mostly because the construction took a back seat to drinking beer.

* * * * *

Sturm pulled in, followed closely by a giant white SUV. The guy who got out of the driver’s seat was big, as big as Sturm was short. He was near the end of his fifties, and looked like he might have been a football player in his day, but fat had grown off the muscles like a fungus and now everything kind of wilted off his large frame. He walked with a barely perceptible limp as if he was casually cheating at golf wherever he went. He looked like he’d swallowed about a gallon of red food coloring and tried to vomit it back up straight away, but it leaked out and soaked out through his face instead.

He shook Frank’s hand with a hand big enough Frank thought the man might have been wearing a catcher’s mitt. “Bob Bronson. How ya’ doing.”

It was like Castellari: Frank wasn’t sure if the guy was asking a question or just stating a fact. Frank went with a generic, “Good, good,” but Bronson was already moving down the line, attacking the clowns’ hands, beaming, saying, “Bob Bronson. Nice to meet ya,” and “Bob Bronson. Good to see ya.”

The other guy’s name was Fairfax, and he might as well have been wearing a sign that said, “Lawyer.” He wore clothing so new Frank wasn’t surprised when he saw a long sticker on the back of his thigh, announcing to everyone that he wore a 54 waist, 28 length. His boots were so stiff that he winced whenever he took a step.

Sturm wanted to introduce the men to the cats, acting like a proud father showing off his infant daughter for the first time, so Frank walked everyone through a tour of the facilities, having fun with his new words and calculations. The real problem was administering the anesthesia to the animals. You couldn’t just shoot them with tranquilizers every time.

“Why not?” Pine asked.

Frank didn’t have an answer right away. He just felt it was kind of cruel to the cats, but he didn’t want to give that as his real reason. “Lotta problems with that. You never know how much of the tranquilizer was administered for one. Two, there’s always a strong risk of striking the animal in the bone, perhaps tearing cartilage. And if the subcutaneous tissue gets infected…well.” He looked at all of them. “I think we all know what would happen then.”

Everybody nodded sagely.

“Gentlemen,” Sturm said, “I suggest we get this show on the road. My boy, Theo, will be hunting one of these fine animals this afternoon, and Jack and Chuck should be back by now. I’ve been promised that dinner will be served at eight o’clock sharp, and it’s gonna be a goddamn treat, I’m telling you. I got just one word for you, just one word to start them taste buds.” He sucked in a breath, looking around at the semi-circle of men. “Abalone.”

“Algae?” Fairfax cocked his head.

“Abalone,” Sturm said with uncharacteristic patience. “It’s basically just a shellfish, spends its life on the same damn rock, just turning in a slow circle, eating algae and slime and shit. You’ve seen the shells, right? Lot of folks along the coast use ’em for decoration. But not many people have ever tasted abalone, and for good reason. Black market prices go for over ninety bucks a pound. Just wait ‘till you taste it. I give them Japs credit. Nobody even thought about eating ’em here, but not them slant-eyed boys. They figured it out. You fellas just wait.”

* * * * *

Sturm patted Theo’s shoulder and said, “Now, you pick out which one you like. Look at their eyes,” he murmured into his son’s ear.

Theo took his time, walking slowly along the cages, letting his fingers trail along the chain-link fence. The cats watched him out of the corners of their eyes, tails flicking, acting disinterested. Theo stopped at the last cage, curling his fingers through the fence. The lioness inside, a large cat with tinges of black in her muzzle, growled low, almost inaudibly, and pressed her body against the warm cement, tail flicking back and forth. “This one,” Theo breathed.

Sturm looked at Frank expectantly. Frank and Pine rolled the squeaking hand truck down the corridor, maneuvering the anesthetic tank closer. Frank handed the hose to Pine and cranked the two handles open. Pine held the plastic cup as close as he could to the lioness. All four heard the hiss of the gas emit from the end of the tube, but the lioness didn’t move. The men at the far end stood still, trying not to breathe. After ten seconds, the tail flicking grew sluggish, and Frank saw the cat’s muscles relax.

He opened the cage, moving slower than a watch’s second hand. Pine turned his head away and pulled his “Bacon is a Vegetable” T-shirt over his mouth, and tried to hold his breath. Frank crept inside, moving slow, slow. Pine started to work the plastic cup through the chain-link fence. Frank stopped, watching the cat carefully.

“Just fucking do it!” Theo yelled.

The cat flinched. Claws, nearly an inch long and sharper then a needle, erupted from its paws. Frank froze. The cat gradually relaxed. Frank moved forward, slowly, deliberately, took the cup from Pine, and gently placed over the cat’s nose and mouth. Soon, the cat’s head rolled off to the side and before long, it was resting on the cement. Frank kept the cup over the muzzle, letting the cat breathe the anesthesia for a full two minutes, before he crouched down and injected Ace into the lioness’s left back leg. The cat slumped even further, sinking deeper into the concrete. Frank removed the plastic cup and watched and waited. The cat continued to sleep.

He motioned to Jack and Theo and the three of them dragged the sleeping cat to the cage door. There, they lifted her onto a wooden dolly used for carrying heavy pallets of dog food back and forth along the cages. They wheeled the cat out the back door, across the overgrown lawn, to the waiting horse trailer. Once the cat was inside, sprawled awkwardly on a bedding of straw, Frank said, “She should be out, four, five hours, at least. Give her another hour or two to wake up completely, and she’ll be ready for a hunt.”

“Perfect!” Sturm declared after checking his watch. “That’ll be perfect. Goddamn. Couldn’t of worked it out better myself.” He shook Frank’s hand vigorously. “Good timing. Perfect. Thank you for getting this hunt off to a splendid start.”

“Yeah,” Frank said.

“Okay then.” He tuned to the clowns. “Don’t know what the hell all you dipshits are standing around like slack-jawed morons. Snap to it. We got us a hunt to organize.”

Frank wasn’t sure what was left to organize, but he locked the back door to the vet office behind him, and jumped into the Pine’s truck. Everyone pulled out of the parking lot, slowly, slowly, as if it was a funeral procession, instead of a hunt. Sturm led in his pickup, Bronson and Fairfax next, followed by Pine and Frank towing the horse trailer with the sleeping lioness. Chuck and Jack brought up the rear.

* * * * *

The convoy wound its way through town. Folks stopped whatever they were doing, and stood at the edge of the highway, just watching the procession, as if they knew what was inside the horse trailer. The few people actually left in town proper, all stepped out of their shops to witness the parade roll through downtown, watching the vehicles drive slowly away down the highway, shiny and sharp in the afternoon sun.

When they got to the Sturm ranch, Sturm drove right through his front lawn, through the pine trees that surrounded the lawn and the house, and out to the middle of the main field, a dry, dusty expanse that was ostensibly being prepared for next year, but it was obvious that the soil was quite dead. Pine and Frank parked, left the keys and the sleeping lion behind and slowly walked back to the farmhouse, passing a bottle back and forth.

* * * * *

The hookers showed up at three. A little guy with a mustache big enough to demand its own hairdresser was driving. They all got out of a big blue minivan. The three women were short, lacquered, and all business.

“We pay you now?” Chuck demanded immediately, nervous and breathless, almost a threat.

The little guy shook his head, adjusted his razor-thin sunglasses. “No man. You pay the girls, you know, when you get down to it. Know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.” Chuck nodded like he was an old hand at paying for sex.

The women didn’t interest Frank. He tried, picturing them under him in bed, writhing and moaning, thought it was the right thing to do, to fit in with everyone else. But it was like trying to get fired up over a black and white picture of some old woman with tits as thin as wet mudflaps, hair growing out of her ears, and four teeth. Instead, he couldn’t help thinking of Annie, back in town somewhere.

Maybe he should just take Petunia by the house. But Petunia had made it clear she didn’t want to go anywhere. At the vet hospital, she had two, sometimes three solid meals a day, a cool place to sleep, and most important, someone who was always around to pet and talk to her. Frank knew getting Petunia into a vehicle and taking her home would be difficult. He hoped it wasn’t because he was becoming fond of the damn dog. It was bad enough having a crush on the dog’s owner.

Everyone gathered on the back deck, overlooking the wilting garden. Frank didn’t stray too far from the keg, packed tightly in ice inside an oil barrel. But most everybody else stood in a tight circle around the women. The women all had tall glasses of Long Island Iced Tea, with straws and umbrellas and everything.

Sturm raised his beer. “Gentlemen…and ladies too,” he said, leering up at the women, “a toast, if you please.” Everyone raised their glasses. “First of all, my son.”

Everyone drank. “Today is his first real hunt.”

“Let’s hope it goes better than his first fight,” Chuck breathed to Frank and drank quickly.

Frank was more than happy to drink. He needed more, so he edged closer to the keg while Sturm rolled on. “Secondly, a toast to these fine, beautiful whores.”

The men howled in appreciation while the women smiled thinly and raised their glasses. Shockingly red lips found their straws and they drank quickly, sucking up the last drops. Theo fell over himself to refill their glasses. “That’s right, goddamnit, that’s right,” Sturm continued, determined to ride the wave of their adulation. “And to our guests,” he jabbed his finger at Bronson and Fairfax.

“And finally,” Sturm said, quieter now, taking a seat on the railing. “To the prey.” He fell quiet for a moment, letting it sink in. “We are men. We are men, last of a dying breed in a world that has failed to recognize man’s need for instinct, for cunning, for…sharp teeth. We are true men. We are men that exist to hunt.” He raised his glass. “To the prey…for without them, we are nothing.”

“To the prey,” the men echoed in voices that were swallowed by the wind, raised their glasses and drank.

* * * * *

They gathered their guns. Rifles mostly, but a couple of shotguns could be seen. They headed out across the field in a wide line, eyes on the truck and horse trailer. The sun threw their shadows behind them, thin and impossibly long, like scarecrows marching across the field, eyes sparkling like their cars in the sun.

Sturm came riding out in an Army surplus open jeep. Theo was driving fast, and threw up a cloud of dust that hung in the late evening air like a blood red fog. Theo stood up in the driver’s seat and rested his rifle, a thin, ancient lever-action rifle on the windshield. It was a .405 Winchester and Theo’s namesake had called this particular caliber “lion medicine.”

The men clustered in a ragged semi-circle, all eyes on the trailer.

When Theo signaled that he was ready, Pine threw the bolt with a quick jerk and Frank yanked on the rope tied to the gate. But nothing happened as the gate swung wide in the swirling crimson dust. Theo fired anyway. The .400 Nitro Express shell sent the solid copper bullet ricocheting off the bolt at the top of the gate, splitting it wide open. The gate tilted wildly as it crashed into the dirt.

The recoil put Theo in the back seat of the Jeep.

A short laugh burst out of Chuck, but a sharp look from Sturm killed the rest in Chuck’s throat.

Pine, the poor bastard that had had to open the gate, didn’t think it was funny either, though for different reasons. The falling gate had nearly snapped his wrist, twisting his entire body sideways, and leaving him in the dirt. At first, he’d thought it was the lioness, busting out of the trailer and landing on the gate. But when he picked himself up and danced around trying to look everywhere at once, he finally saw the lioness, still crouched inside the horse trailer. Then he got pissed. “What…the fuck I’m gonna sonofabitch me that goddamn time it never happened mother stumping fuck,” he blurted in a machine gun fire of hoarse words and came stomping up to the Jeep. “That was goddamn close.”

“Settle down,” Sturm said. “Bullet missed you by three, four feet.”

Theo got out of the Jeep, ignoring his father and Pine, stalking the lioness. Everybody else took that as their cue; safeties were snapped off, bolts were thrown and locked, sweaty fingers caressed trigger guards. Theo slowly and methodically put each step in front of the other, as if he was creeping up on some strange house for a game of Ding Dong Ditch, and approached the back of the horse trailer in exaggerated slowness, rifle held straight up in front of him.

By now Sturm and Pine had stopped arguing, and were both hastily getting their own guns ready. Sturm carried a Ballard single shot High Wall 1885 reproduction rifle, while Pine had his father’s M-1 Garand.

Theo froze when he saw the lioness, still coiled in the back of the trailer, dry and dusty and frozen in place like the great Sphinx. Theo straightened, gently but firmly tucking the butt of his rifle into his shoulder, and waited. The lioness didn’t move. Theo kept waiting, still as a stop sign at high noon. The dust sifted and fell over everything, leaching out of the air and onto any available surface. Theo coughed. The lioness only moved her eyes, watching the boy.

Theo coughed again and spit. Then he shot the lioness in her lower jaw. The big cat slammed into the wall, hind legs kicking in agony.

The Winchester’s kick knocked Theo back a few steps, but he stayed on his feet.

The lioness wouldn’t stop shaking her head, as if she could shake off the beast that had torn her dangling jaw loose.

“Finish her off this next time, okay?” Sturm said through lips drawn thin and tight.

It took Theo four more rounds to kill the lioness. He missed just once.

Blood collected in the horse shit at the bottom of the trailer and slid down the inclined floor, dripping out and collecting in a small puddle in the sandy soil. Theo walked back to the Jeep. Everyone climbed in and Pine started the truck. He drove back to the barn, following the Jeep.

They gutted the lioness and hung her upside down on a beam in the shade on the north side of the barn.

* * * * *

As promised, the abalone was served promptly at eight. The dinner was quite different than the town’s potluck. A long table was brought out to the deck and draped with a white linen tablecloth. Genuine silver utensils flanked antique pewter plates. Candles were lit. The abalone, pounded flat, then breaded and fried, was served with pasta and sautéed tomatoes and green peppers. Pungent garlic bread completed the meal. The men left their beers in the deck railing and drank chilled white wine with dinner.

The sun finally sank behind Mount Shasta, cooling the temperature somewhat, but it was still like sitting in an oven that had just been turned off. There was no wind.

“Gentlemen,” Bronson stood after eating five abalone and raised a toast to Sturm. “That was about as fine a meal as I’ve had in a long time.” He pushed himself away from the table. “But…if you’ll excuse me. Believe I’ve got some urgent business that needs my attention upstairs.”

And with that, he escorted all three women into the house.

“He gets all three at once?” Chuck asked under his breath.

“Can you pay for all three at once?” Pine asked. “Then there ya go. Quit your bitching. You’ll get your turn.”

Cards were brought out. Cigars were lit from the candles. Frank was happy to sit back and watch. He didn’t have any cash on him, and card games moved too fast for him. He couldn’t count the diamonds or spades and with Jack dealing, he didn’t stand much hope of winning anyways. Besides, he had a plastic two-liter bottle of Coke mostly full of cheap dark rum that needed his attention.

Fairfax walked around barefoot in the cool grass, giving his feet a break from the new cowboy boots.

Sturm folded his arms across his chest and pursed his lips at the card players. “This ain’t gambling. This is luck. Gambling should hinge on skill, stamina, knowledge in some competitive test or challenge. Not random chance.”

“Aw, you’re just sore ’cause you got beat bad last time,” Pine blurted. He’d drank his way through a twelve pack. Out in the yard, Fairfax laughed, a quick little hiccup, but everyone else froze, watching the table.

Sturm snorted, then finally chuckled. “Shit. You might be right.”

The pimp with the mustache lasted five hands. Disgusted, he grabbed a drink and sat next to Frank. By that time, Bronson had come downstairs, face even redder than usual, grinning from ear to ear. “Whoooo-weeeee. I’m telling you, every one of them sweet young things could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch if you paid her enough. Deal me in, boys.”

* * * * *

By eleven, the table was littered with cash, cigars, beer cans, empty wine bottles, and tumblers full of ice and whiskey and tequila and bourbon. Bronson carried a bottle of some kind of Scotch that no one had ever heard of. He gave each of the men a splash but kept the rest of the bottle to himself.

The pimp was telling Frank about the screenplay he was working on. “It’s gonna be awesome, right? You ever see ‘The Mack’?” Frank had seen a total of fourteen or fifteen movies in his life. ‘The Mack’ wasn’t one of them. “No? It’s okay. Doesn’t matter. See, it’s about this fucking badass player, man, who has the baddest, finest women. Ten of ’em, you know what I’m saying? They’re hoes, right, but get this, they’re also these ultra-deadly assassins too, you know what I’m saying? Fucking international assassins, man. All over the world. Fucking and killing men. It’s got that whole sex and death thing going on. The girls, they fuck the boys, then, then the kicker is that, they kill ’em, man, they slay ’em. With guns and knives and shit. The money guys like that. I’ve already got a guy in Vegas ready to hook me up with a producer. It’s gonna be fucking awesome, with fucking explosions and shit, man, fucking sword fighting too, you know what I’m saying, man? And hard-core sex too, man. Gonna fucking go through the roof, you know what I’m saying?” He ambled over to the table. “You guys got any wine coolers?”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Pine said.

Sturm asked Frank, “Feel like taking a tumble in the sheets? It’s on me. Theo’s up there right now.”

Frank said, “Maybe later.”

Sturm clapped him on the shoulder. “You take your time. Enjoy yourself. You earned it, by God.” He looked up at the dark windows. “Shit. I’d be up there myself, but this goddamn cancer, it’s like God squeezed out a big old turd and left it in my head. Fucks with my equipment. Makes me wonder sometimes if you can still be a man even if you can’t get your dick up.” He suddenly cracked himself viciously in the temple with his knuckles. “Maybe I oughta get myself one of them Viagras.” He considered it for a moment, then said, “Piss on it,” and went through the sliding glass doors into the kitchen.

“Hey Frank. Frank, right?” Bronson called out. He emptied the last few drops of Scotch into his tumbler. “Frank…Frank Buck. That’s it. Mr. Frank ‘Bring ’em Back Alive’ Buck. How’s the jungle these days? How’s the animal business? Them cats, they’re something all right, when you’re right up close. Sturm wasn’t shitting me. It’s not like watching ’em on TV, that’s for sure. These cats, take your face clean off. Just clean off. Of course,” Bronson said with a sly smile, “I certainly hope they put up more of a fight tomorrow.”

“Maybe even make it out of the trailer,” Fairfax said.

Theo came downstairs and was hailed with a drunken cheer. He ignored the men and stomped down the stairs into the darkness towards the barn and back fields.

“Well. Doesn’t appear to be his night,” Bronson said quietly.

“Shit, it ain’t his year,” Pine said, just as quiet.

“Wonder if he got the chrome sucked off his trailer hitch!” Fairfax said, a little too drunk, a little too loud.

“You got something you want to say?” Sturm said from behind the screen door, silhouetted from the kitchen lights.

Fairfax looked like he’d just swallowed an entire abalone, raw. “Ahhh, no disrespect intended, see, ahh, just having a little fun with the boys—“

“What? Don’t know if I heard you rightly. No disrespect intended, but you think you can have a little fun with the boys at my boy’s expense, is that it?”

Fairfax looked at Bronson, eyes wide and pleading, but Bronson just grinned and looked at the table.

In the sudden silence, they heard one of the hooker’s voices, low and scratchy from too many cigarettes, “—little fucker. Not my fault he came in his pants. I tried to be nice. I did.”

“Keep it down.” The pimp’s voice.

“Fuck you, pussy. You’re supposed to be here to keep an eye on things. Make sure shit like this don’t happen. Little fucker didn’t have to hit me.” The scratching click of a lighter, then a long exhale. “Rich little fucker.”

Suddenly Sturm wasn’t standing at the screen door anymore. The men heard his voice, clear as daylight. “Miss. I’m gonna ask you once. Put that cigarette out. No one smokes in this house. I mean it.”

“I don’t know who the fuck you think you are you little freak, but I will not be treated like—” Her voice broke off suddenly in a faint crunch. And just as suddenly, it was back, twice as loud, “BATHTARD! You—”

Then a thud. A scream. Slamming doors. Sturm’s voice, calm, even. “Get this stupid cunt out of my house.”

A hooker came sliding into the kitchen on her face. Her mouth left ragged streaks of blood and fresh purple lipstick on the floor. Sturm followed, knotted her long, plastic, blond hair in his fist, and yanked her to her knees.

The pimp said, “Back the fuck off, dude. I will fuckin’ kill you.”

Sturm slammed the hooker’s face into one of the cabinets. “Do it then.”

The pimp didn’t look happy about it. He licked the sides of his mustache and mumbled, “Shit man. Now why did you do that for?”

Sturm did it again. The woman moaned, blood bubbling from her nose. “You got shit in your ears, faggot?”

The pimp took off his sunglasses, made a show of putting them in his pocket.

Sturm slammed her head into the cabinet a third time, this time cracking the wood.

The pimp popped his right foot at Sturm’s chest in the blink of an eye, but Sturm was faster. He swung the hooker in front of him and so the pimp kicked her in the side of her head. The pimp resettled himself, and was just about to launch a series of kicks and punches that must have looked impressive in the gym, but Sturm broke the pimp’s nose with his free hand. The pimp’s head snapped back and blood actually hit the ceiling.

“Like I said, get this stupid cunt out of my house.”

The two other hookers, who had been hiding in the hall, finally came into the kitchen, helped the pimp to his feet and dragged the unconscious woman out the front door.

“You set foot in this town again and I guarantee you I will put a bullet in you,” Sturm said from the front steps. The two hookers dumped their business associates in the back seat and were smart enough not to say anything, just slammed the doors. The minivan took off with a jerk and a cloud of dust and gravel. They didn’t even turn on the headlights until they were safely down the long driveway.

* * * * *

Sturm pulled Frank aside. “Listen, do me a favor, would you? Would you go out and find my son, make sure he’s okay? Maybe even talk to him. I’d ask one of the boys, but I think Theo’s been through enough tonight. They’re liable to give him a hard time, and you, well, I think you got enough sense to realize…well, hell he’s at that age, you know. Don’t want to listen to anybody, really, much less his father.”

“Sure.” Frank went down the stairs and stood at the far edge of the garden for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. A few minutes ago, his head had been swimming merrily along thanks to the fifth of rum. But now, standing out in the dark under enough stars to make a man go mad, he suddenly felt uncomfortably sober. His sweat felt cold and he shivered. The crickets were quiet. Even the mosquitoes had holed up for the night.

Truth was, he was scared. He didn’t think he’d been this nervous since he’d had to talk to the cops outside the gas station. Theo was one goddamn cruel bastard. At least, with the clowns, you could see it coming if they lost their temper. With Sturm’s son, you never knew what the hell he was thinking. Frank wouldn’t put it past him to fling a pitchfork or something just because he didn’t want to be bothered.

So Frank took his time and moved as quietly as he could. The barn loomed in front of him, dark as a tomb. He stepped inside the open door, skin on his neck crawling as he realized he must be silhouetted against the lights of the house. Once inside, he could hear nothing but Sarah contentedly chewing on hay.

He crept along the aisle, eyes straining in the palpable blackness. The fear grew. He couldn’t help but wonder if Theo was watching him, stalking him. A tiny spot on his back, right between his shoulder blades grew hot and tight, as if there was a laser sight pointed right at him. He whipped around, but the aisle was empty.

The horse stopped chewing and watched him warily for a moment.

In the sudden silence, Frank could hear something else. From out back. Out behind barn. Where they had left the lion. A hushed grunt. Then, hissed between clenched teeth, “See? See? I told you, you bitch. I told you.”

Frank swallowed. Sarah put her head down and tore off another mouthful of alfalfa. Frank moved to the far end of the barn, gently easing his boots through the dust. The hoarse grunts continued. “You. You. You.”

Frank peered through a crack in the sliding door. Out in the grass, under the stars, Theo had his jeans down around his knees and was hunched over the back of the dead lion, fucking it. His white ass pummeled lion, making the big cat’s corpse shudder with each thrust. “You. You. You.” Theo said every time he slammed into the lion.

Frank had seen enough. He’d seen more than enough. He doubted that all the rum in Jamaica would erase the image. He tried not to run back to house, acutely aware that if Theo knew he’d been seen, he’d probably kill whoever was watching him. When Frank got back to the garden, he forced himself to stop for a moment, collect himself, slow his heart, watch his breathing. He went back up on the deck, got himself a beer, and told Sturm he couldn’t find Theo.