Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom (7 page)

“… joking,” he finished.

“Hell of a way to treat a cat,” she said in a voice suggesting gravel.

“He jumped!”

“Relax, I wasn’t serious. I have a way of attracting strays.”

She caressed Cat and held him to her chest. Duncan would have donated any of his redundant organs to change places. She leaned over and dropped Cat to the sidewalk. Cat jumped back into the car. She laughed.

“Maybe you ought to come get him …”

“Duncan,” he said, “my name’s Duncan.”

“Hi, Duncan. I’m Pris.”

“I’m an artist,” he blurted, ruing the words even as he spoke, thinking them pretentious and hollow. “Painter, I mean.”

“Really. Are you any good?”

“I’m okay. Maybe you could pose for me sometime.”

“Then again maybe not.” She dropped Cat onto the sidewalk and shifted the Cadillac into drive. “See you around, Duncan Delaney.”

“Wait!” Duncan yelled.

He ran from his studio, wondering how she knew his last name. By the time he recalled the pipe in the hallway his head had already contacted cold metal with a sharp
thwang
at approximately fifteen miles per hour. A galaxy of lights that would have been stars had his life been a cartoon filled his eyes. He missed a step and tumbled down the stairs to the alley. The bum under the stairs drank from a bottle obscured in a paper bag and watched Duncan fall.

“Nice technique,” the bum said, “and a good dismount.”

Duncan looked up the street. The girl and the Cadillac were gone. He dusted himself off, picked up Cat, and climbed the stairs.

“Hey, buddy,” called the bum. “Spare some change?”

“Not today,” Duncan replied, “but thanks for asking.”

Benjamin finally decided he was being followed at a gas station outside Bountiful. He had first noticed the forest green Taurus in Wyoming, but was not immediately wary as both car and color were common. The Taurus disappeared for prolonged periods when Benjamin implemented evasive tactics, like the high speed drift and subsequent u-turn across four lanes of traffic outside Steamboat Springs. The Taurus did not dare that maneuver. But after every such gambit and within fifty miles there would be the Taurus or another like it.

Benjamin had been followed many times, mostly by police, and by eighteen he had developed a healthy paranoia and could spot a plainclothes police car with near ninety-seven percent accuracy. This green Taurus plainly did not contain police, for he had seen soda cans and burger boxes regularly sail out the passenger’s window, and all the cops he knew were fastidious when it came to littering.

Benjamin got out of his truck. He stretched and yawned and scratched his armpit. He gave the attendant twenty dollars and filled his tank. The Taurus braked at an island on the remote side of the lot. A tall man with dark hair and dark glasses got out and slid a credit card into the pump. A second man reclined in the passenger seat, a newspaper over his face. Benjamin replaced the pump, got in his truck, and pulled onto the highway.

He stopped at a road side diner in Salina. The green Taurus pulled into the lot and parked well away from the Purgatory Truck. Benjamin went inside. He settled in a booth and perused a menu a waitress with inordinately big hair placed on the table in front of him next to a tall glass of ice water. A tall, dark-haired man came in and sat at the counter and ordered coffee. If it was the same man, he had changed his shirt and put on a John Deere hat. Benjamin was schooled in the minor tricks of effective surveillance, and changing clothes was one. The man at the counter looked like a chicken farmer.

Benjamin ordered a t-bone steak with mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, and a vanilla milkshake. He stood and went to the men’s bathroom. He first ascertained he was alone, then he entered a stall and latched the door. He took off and placed his boots before the toilet. He climbed out the window above the stall. He ran barefoot to the Taurus and looked in the back. Empty beer cans littered the floor and half a six pack sat on the rear seat. Benjamin walked to the front and looked at the man sleeping there.

“Well, how about that,” Benjamin said.

It was Leroy Kern, numb to the world, snoring and reeking of beer and sweat. Benjamin’s original plan was to flatten the tires and pull the plug wires, thereby incapacitating and thwarting his pursuers. As he observed Leroy Kern snort and whistle, he devised another. He retrieved the beers through the open window and poured one onto the driver’s seat. The next he poured onto Leroy Kern’s lap. He stirred but did not wake. The last Benjamin drank. He climbed back through the window, put his boots on, and returned to his booth.

He spent the next twenty minutes eating. The tall man toyed with a piece of pecan pie and nursed a coffee while Benjamin finished his potatoes and steak. He mopped up the gravy with a biscuit and stuffed it whole in his mouth. He ordered and devoured a slice of hot apple pie with ice cream and cinnamon sauce. He took his time with his milkshake and then ordered another and lingered over that. The tall man called for another cup of coffee. Benjamin ordered a coffee to go, threw the lid in the trash, paid his bill, and went to a pay phone by the door. As the tall man paid for his coffee and pie, Benjamin dialed three numbers and spoke rapidly into the phone. He hung up and left. The tall man followed. Benjamin walked to the Taurus and set his coffee on the roof. The tall man hung uncertainly back. Benjamin reached through the window, grabbed Leroy Kern, and bounced his head off the dashboard. He heard a small crack.

“Ow!” said Leroy Kern, finally awake.

“Hey!” said the tall man.

His name was Howard Lomo, and he had been a cop in Laramie until he was fired for ripping up speeding tickets in exchange for sexual favors in the back seat of his squad car. In fairness to Lomo, his sergeant’s wife regularly exceeded her limits whenever she saw him and eagerly participated in a game in which she buried her head in Lomo’s lap while he asked easy questions to which she nodded yes or no. But Lomo unwisely pulled her over in front of her house and the sergeant, returning home for lunch, discovered his wife’s head in Howard Lomo’s lap, and that was very much that. Otherwise he was a fair to decent officer and was not about to let a low life punk slap around his new partner, useless or not.

As Lomo ran up, Benjamin took his coffee from the Taurus’s roof and threw it in his face. Benjamin had learned long before that one axiom of a successful cold cock and follow through was that the hands go to the pain. Lomo screamed and covered his eyes. Benjamin placed his boot hard to the testicles. Lomo grabbed his groin and crumpled. Benjamin unzipped and urinated onto the driver’s seat. When he finished, he knelt beside Lomo and took a wallet out of his pocket. Fiona’s number was on a small paper between a Visa and an NRA membership card. Benjamin threw the wallet on the floor by the gas pedal. He helped Lomo back into the car. He wadded the paper with Fiona’s number and shoved it in Lomo’s mouth.

“Try to keep up. Fiona won’t be happy if you lose me.”

Lomo spit the paper out. “You filthy red-skin bastard!”

Benjamin punched him in the face. Lomo groaned and slumped over the wheel. Benjamin got in his truck and pulled onto the highway. Lomo shook his head, then pulled out and followed so close their bumpers kissed. A police car passed by, made a U-turn of squealing tires and smoke, fell into line behind the green Taurus, and turned on its red lights. Lomo pulled over.

Benjamin parked and watched the police draw their guns and order Kern and Lomo out of the Taurus. Leroy Kern fell drunk to the ground, but Lomo hopped up and down, gesticulating wildly. A second police car appeared. The officers swarmed Lomo and hurled him to the pavement. One got him in a carotid choke hold and applied pressure. Lomo stopped moving. Benjamin turned around and stopped as two officers carried the now hog-tied Lomo to their car.

“Everything ok, officers?”

“Just a drunk driver,” said one.

“He’s got a gun in here,” said another, “and it smells like he pissed himself.”

“You’re doing a fine job,” Benjamin said, “and as a citizen I want you to know I appreciate you getting these filthy drunks off the road.”

“Thank you, sir. Always nice to get positive feedback.”

As Benjamin left, one officer commented, “That’s the kind of thing that makes this job worthwhile.”

Then he kicked Howard Lomo in the ribs, closed the car door, and drove Lomo and Leroy Kern off to jail.

Five

“Duncan,” a voice sang in his sleeping ear, “wake up and play with us.”

Duncan opened an eye. Two shadowy figures loomed above him. He screamed. The shadows leaped backwards. Duncan groped for the baseball bat under the couch. He had bought the bat in lieu of the door lock Assan had promised but failed to install. A shadow turned on a light.

“Remember us?” Cassandra and Champagne giggled in unison.

Champagne held a blender and Cassandra a brown paper bag. Duncan fell back on the couch and dropped the bat. Champagne sat beside him and stroked his naked shoulder.

“Why don’t you have a bed?” she asked.

Duncan blushed. He could not help it. He fought the erection he was acquiring, but could not stop that either.
Damn that autonomic nervous system,
he thought. He had studied biology in high school and was dimly aware of some of the ways the body betrayed itself.

Cassandra and Champagne both wore faded jeans with many rips and holes in the denim. Cassandra was small and slim with brown wavy hair, eyes like Mediterranean olives, dark lips, and small taut breasts. She wore a white tank top through which Duncan traced the outline of her nipples. Champagne was taller and heavier in the legs, buttocks, and chest, with blond hair and a milkmaid’s good looks. She wore a
Lilith Fair
t-shirt over freely swaying breasts. Duncan struggled into his jeans inside his sleeping bag. The effort quieted his tumescent organ. He slipped out of the bag and put on a shirt. Champagne took the blender and the paper bag into the kitchen. Duncan heard bottles clink and grinding ice.

“What can I do for you ladies?”

“You asked us to come up,” Cassandra said.

Champagne appeared with three glasses on a tray. “To pose for you.”

He sipped the Margarita she gave him. It was cold and tart and salty. Champagne and Cassandra sat on the couch and smiled.

“Ready anytime you are,” Cassandra said.

Duncan looked at the clock. It was two thirty in the morning. He sighed and put a canvas on his easel. He picked up a brush and his palette and began to paint.

“Do either of you know a girl who drives a white Cadillac?”

Champagne said, “That’s Pris. She dances with us at the Hollywood.”

Cassandra said, “Forget about her. She’s a dyke.”

“You should be concerned with us,” Champagne said. “We like men.”

Duncan changed the subject. “Do you like dancing at the Hollywood?”

Champagne shrugged. “It’s okay if you can put up with the assholes.”

Cassandra took a wad of bills from her pocket. “Plus the tips are great.”

“People tip you for dancing?”

“No, dummy.” Champagne pulled her shirt off and waved her breasts at him. “They tip us for these!”

“Hey, put that back on!” Duncan said.

Cassandra giggled and took her shirt off too.

“Oh god,” Duncan said with overdue clarity, “you’re strippers.”

“What the hell did you think we were,” Cassandra asked, “stock brokers?”

“Roscoe said you were dancers.”

“We’re both,” Champagne said.

Duncan gulped his Margarita and painted in embarrassed silence while Champagne made another pitcher. Cassandra flipped through his compact discs, finally putting
Beggar’s Banquet
on the stereo.

“Jesus,” she said, “don’t you have any music from this century?”

Cassandra and Champagne threw crumpled dollar bills at him as he painted. Despite the two beautiful, topless women drinking and laughing on his couch, Duncan’s thoughts returned to Pris. The idea of her dancing naked on stage before a room of drunk, horny men disappointed his heart. He thought about Tiffy. She didn’t take her clothes off for a living, but she used her sex just the same.

Or was he just being bitter?

Much later, when the alcohol had dulled his brain to the point where thinking was difficult if not dangerous, he was dimly aware of two naked, laughing women tackling him and ripping his shirt off. He remembered Champagne holding a brush.

He woke the next morning on the floor beside his easel with Cat lying on his face. He spluttered and spit fur and Cat went away. Cassandra and Champagne and the dollar bills were gone. They were strippers, but they were not stupid. He crawled past his easel, wishing he was cold and covered with dirt. The painting was half finished and the remarkable thing was that he could not remember having painted it. It would one day be regarded as a pure example of his studio period. A southern Senator would falsely cite it as the sort of decadence funded by the NEA. But he did not consider that. He was only thinking of the incredible pain in his skull.

He crawled to the bathroom, hanging on to the hardwood to keep from plunging off the floor. He vomited in the toilet. He climbed to the mirror. A painted red arrow adorned his chest, pointing towards China. He looked down and groaned. His testicles were painted a bright, baby blue. He rolled into the tub and turned on the water. His throbbing skull matched his pounding heart. He wondered what else had happened.
Probably nothing,
he concluded. Past experience with Tiffy had proven that excessive alcohol and sex were, for him, incompatible. Tiffy always stopped him after a six-pack, though she would continue drinking until she caught his head between her legs in a scissors grip. Which was fine until the one time, after she had joined a gym and begun working out on a Nautilus machine, when she nearly dislocated his jaw at her moment of truth.

He scrubbed the paint from his chest and scrotum, dried himself, dressed, drank a quart of orange juice and took three aspirins. He ate three Neapolitan ice cream sandwiches in an effort to settle his stomach. He filled Cat’s bowls with cat food and water.