Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation (16 page)

    
“Fuck,”
he groaned, and hit the cold, wet ground.

Raszer kicked and pawed within his unconscious
mind, like a man trying to break out of a bag. Sentience began to seep back in,
and with it, profound discomfort. Wet, cold, pain, and an almost supernaturally
foul odor. Short-term memory returned very slowly, but he was aware of a
ringing at the base of his skull that was both the echo of the blow he’d
suffered and the lingering effect of Hildegarde’s tea, which contained trace elements
of ayahuasca, a harmine hallucinogen derived from a rainforest vine. The
microdose in the brew, combined with other roots and herbs, was just enough to
sharpen his perceptions appreciably, but that included the perception of pain.

    
His
struggle had its root in the waking world. He opened his eyes to see his left
ankle—the site of a years-old sprain that sometimes still caused him to
limp—bound and tied to a railroad stake that had been hammered deep in the
ground. His hands were free, but there was nothing to grab but fistfuls of mud.
He felt the urge to retch. Along with the noxious odor came the smell of
gasoline.

    
A small
fire of damp kindling smoked and sizzled on his left, and arranged around the
fire were not only his wallet, pocketknife, and flashlight, but
 
the trophies of his day’s good hunting: the
DJ’s business card and, most disturbingly, the embroidered velvet sack. The
sonofabitch had broken into his car. Only now did Raszer regain consciousness fully
enough to regard his captor, who sat cross-legged and humming gutturally while
rocking a two-gallon can of gasoline on his lap, like some mutant infant. At
his side was the two-by-four he’d used to knock Raszer cold.

    
J.Z.—for
presumably this was the giant whose beanstalk castle Raszer had trespassed
upon—did not at first seem to notice Raszer’s glare. He was the apotheosis of
every homeless man who’d ever haunted a kid’s nightmares, and he smelled like a
herd of goats in rut. He looked at first to be a sizable man, but that might
only have been the mound of clothing he wore, added to with each new discovery
of someone’s lost sweater or windbreaker. Underneath it all, there might be a
frame wasted to nothing but will. He was a white man, but his face was black as
tarnish on silver. There was so much organic material on him that he appeared
to grow right out of the soil.

    
The
tuneless humming, which came straight from J.Z.’s larynx to his cracked, parted
lips, did not encourage Raszer to feel that he was the captive of a rational
man, but it did take the edge off his visual ferociousness. If it gave J.Z. a
childlike aspect, however, it wasn’t innocence; he seemed to know exactly what
he was doing. As he became aware of Raszer’s glance, the hum caught in his
throat, and he stared back with slit yellow eyes that, in reflecting the
sporadic licks of flame, were almost lupine.

    
Raszer
slowly sat up, keeping his hands still.

    
“J.Z.?”
he inquired.

    
“Ay-
ah
,” the man said, his lips moving only
enough to distinguish the simple phonemes. It was the way people spoke with the
most excruciating of toothaches.

    
“An old
friend of yours . . . ” Raszer winced and squeezed his eyes shut as a bolt of
pain arced over the top of his skull. “ . . . The old fellow at the Follows
Camp . . . told me to look you up. My name is Raszer. I’m a private
investigator, but maybe you know that from my wallet. I’m looking for a girl
who was kidnapped here over a year ago.”

    
“Wray-
ah
,” J.Z. repeated, for it was indeed
Raszer’s name he had tried to articulate. The
R
had been throated almost in the French way.

    
Raszer
lifted his foot from the ground and shook the rope, then winced again. The
ankle was inflamed. “Why . . . did you tie me up?”

    
The
encrusted smile line at the left corner of J.Z.’s mouth creased just slightly.
He spanked one rag-bandaged index finger against the other in the naughty-boy
sign language we all learn as children. His hands were wrapped tightly with
strips of what might once have been white sheets. Only the blackened fingertips
were visible.

    
“Because
I was in your house,” said Raszer. “I’m sorry about that. I’m a snoop. A
prospector, like you. But I didn’t take anything.” He glanced down at the items
laid beside the fire. “I guess you can see that.” Finally, Raszer felt secure
enough to use his hands, and pointed at J.Z.’s booty. “Those are my things. May
I have them back?”

    
The old
squatter made a snarling sound and shook the gasoline can menacingly. A few
drops fell on MC Hakim’s business card. “
Ma
-hing-ow,”
he growled.

    
“Your
things now . . . ” Raszer repeated. “Well, maybe by the law of thieves. But
your friend told me you were an honorable man—that you might be able to tell me
something about that night. When the kids came. When the black Lincoln came.”

    
The fire
popped and flared. As if ricocheting, a twig snapped in the woods, and the old
man started. His mouth dropped open, his bushy chin reflexively working up and
down like a marionette’s. At once, Raszer saw the reason for his stunted
speech.

    
Only
half a tongue remained in the squatter’s mouth, and the stump had been badly
self-stitched with what looked like coarse twine, loose ends hanging limply.
Even a fleeting glimpse told Raszer that it was badly infected, probably beyond
painful.

    
“Jesus,
old fella,” said Raszer, in as even a tone as he could muster. “You ought to
let a doctor look at that.”

    
J.Z.
shut his trap tightly and kept staring off into the woods. His expression was
both wounded and frightened.

    
Raszer
scooted himself as close to the fire as he dared. He sensed that with the
slightest provocation, the gasoline can would be upended and the whole trove
would go up in flames. “Who did that to you?” he asked gently. “Was it the men
who came to take the girl? The men in the black car?”

    
The
squatter gave his head a sideways jerk, ostensibly a no. Then Raszer saw that
in doing so, J.Z. had shifted his line of sight and was now glaring from
beneath heavy, hooded brows in the general direction of the fluttering yellow
police tape.

    
“Over
there’s where they took her, right?” said Raszer. “And killed those boys. Were
you here that night?”

    
With a
touch of silent-movie melodramatics, the hermit pivoted his head like a gun
turret and aimed his phosphorescent eyes at Raszer, who suddenly realized that
J.Z. had not yet decided whether he was friend or foe. Because the squatter was
generically human, because he possessed the faculty of understanding, Raszer
had made the mistake of assuming a kinship. But J.Z. was not kin. He was a
wounded animal just self-reflective enough to be both paranoid and willful, and
he was not holding a gasoline can for show. He was a man who had survived this
long only through the cruelest kind of barter. Evidently, he had bartered his
tongue for his life.

    
Now, the
stock in trade was Raszer’s life for his belongings.

    
He lifted
the can slowly and doused the items with gas, then picked up the first of
them—the little high-tech flashlight—and held it over the fire.

    
“What is
it you want, J.Z.?” Raszer asked.

    
The
squatter’s upper lip curled, as close to a grin as he could manage.

    
“You can
have it,” Raszer said, indicating the flashlight. “It’s yours.”

    
J.Z.
pocketed the light. Raszer knew instantly he’d given it up too easily, and when
the squatter next took the penknife in hand, he protested: “No. I bought that
in Amsterdam. That’s pearl inlay and solid-gold hardware. Worth at least $200.”

    
Getting
into his game, J.Z. held the knife close enough to the fire to raise a lick
when the gasoline vaporized. He lowered it another inch before Raszer bid.

    
“All
right, partner,” he said. “It’s yours.” He pointed to the DJ’s business card.
“In exchange for that little piece of cardboard. There are three boys dead, a
young girl missing, and it looks to me like you’ve lost the better part of your
tongue. The number on that card may help me find the men responsible. What’ve
you got to lose?”

    
J.Z.
mulled it over, suspecting a trick. At his age, in his mental state, he
probably suspected life of being a trick. After weighing the trade, the old man
slipped the knife into his boot, then picked up the gasoline-soaked card and
handed it to Raszer.

    
“
Errhh
,” he said, and his breath stank
like chèvre left in the August sun.

    
J.Z. had
an uncanny sense of value, or perhaps he’d peeked, because he saved the velvet
sack for last. With surprising dexterity for a man whose fingers were
practically mummified, he untied the drawstring. J.Z.’s own bouquet easily
overpowered the exotic scent. He set the sack in his palm, and made to empty
its contents into the fire.

    
“Okay,
you old bastard—”

    
J.Z.
cackled and tipped the sack further. His jackal eyes flashed.

    
“Once a
gold-digger, always a gold-digger,” said Raszer, his heart in his throat.
Whaddaya want for that bag and what’s in it?”

    
The
squatter’s lips parted in anticipated relish. If he’d had a tongue, he would
have licked them. He curled his fingers around the neck of the velvet sack and
drew it close to his breast. In unmistakable semaphore, and with an almost
dapper air, he uncurled one finger to point at Raszer’s torso, then yanked his
own frayed and filthy lapels, and finally aimed the finger squarely at Raszer’s
coat.

    
“Oh,
no,” said Raszer, broadly waving off the proposal. “Notmy duster. It’s vintage.
Passed down four generations. You’d have to kill me first.”

    
Raszer’s
claim was not entirely fallacious, but J.Z. sniffed out the overripeness and
dangled the velvet sack over the fire, lightly holding the gold cord between
the tips of his thumb and forefinger. He let it twist there, flames singing its
royal blue velvet to brown, slow roasting whatever was inside.

    
“Shit,”
said Raszer, angrily peeling off the garment. “You’re better at liar’s poker than
I am. Give me the sack and my wallet, and you can have my fucking coat.”

    
J.Z.
started humming again. Stupidly, Raszer made a grab for the sack, but with his
free hand, the old man scooped up his two-by-four club and brandished it while
wagging his mutilated tongue from side to side. The sight of it, the stench,
and the throbbing in his head made Raszer want to vomit.

    
“Or,” he
said, “you can smash my skull in, old man. But then you’d be a murderer, and
you’d have to deal with detective Luis Aquino of the Azusa police, who knows
where I am and is expecting me at six o’clock.”

    
It was
an empty threat, and Raszer suspected the squatter knew it. By the time the
police arrived, he could have dumped Raszer’s body in any number of culverts or
stream beds known only to him, and by dawn, the coyotes would have finished him
off.

    
J.Z.
withdrew the sack from the fire and set it on the wet ground, where it steamed
and sizzled softly. He tossed Raszer his wallet, then held out his hand for the
coat, twitching his fingers in a
gimme
gesture. Raszer fished his keys from the garment’s deep pocket and held it to
his chest.

    
“I want
one more thing, J.Z.,” he said with a smile.

    
The
squatter growled and narrowed his eyes.

    
“I want
that old coin you’ve got on your bureau,” said Raszer. “The five-sided one with
the hole in it. Tell you what: You leave me tied up while you go inside, and to
be sure I don’t untie myself and make a run for it, you take my car keys as
security.”

    
He
slipped his finger through the key ring and held the keys out at arm’s length.
J.Z. rose to a squat, farted, and spat into the fire. Then he snatched the keys
and lumbered off, as only an old man wearing forty pounds of wet, filthy,
ill-fitting clothing can lumber. In less than thirty seconds, he was back with
the coin and they made the trade.

    
“Fair
exchange,” said Raszer. “Fair exchange. Now be a gent and untie me.”

    
J.Z.
pushed one arm into Raszer’s coat, then the other, and turned the collar up. It
was a snug fit, but it seemed to satisfy him. “
Hnng
,” he grunted. He squatted down and untied the first two of
three miner’s knots binding Raszer’s ankle. He paused, grinned widely enough to
reveal red, diseased gums, and, before undoing the last knot, scooped up the
open velvet sack and tossed it carelessly onto Raszer’s lap.