Prodigal Blues (9 page)

W
hen I came awake this time, nothing was vibrating, not even my skull.
 
I still felt shiny from the Demerol.
 
And weightless.
 
But mostly shiny.
 
In a weightless kind of way.
 
I tried swallowing only to discover I had a mondo case of cotton-mouth.
 
A drink of water sounded good.
 
Sounded
great
, in fact.
 
Richard the Third at the battle of Bosworth Field didn't want a horse as much as I wanted some water.

Opening my eyes, I saw the stucco ceiling above.
 

Funny, I didn't remember this groovy room's ceiling as being stucco, but what the hell, I'd enjoy the view, feeling all shiny and weightless and like I didn't

(…to Mark, Earth to Mark, your circuit's dead, something's wrong…)

have a care in the world, but something seemed out of place, seemed different… didn't it?
 
Yeah, it sure did.
 
Then I wondered

(…all shiny from the
DEMEROL SHOT
, bright guy; is THAT enough of a hint for you?)

why it felt like I was partially undressed, so I lifted my head and saw that I was, indeed, naked from the waist down.
 
Something cold and heavy was around my right ankle, but at least my hands were free, so I rubbed my eyes and pulled myself up and as I rose into a sitting position all the tumblers fell into place and I remembered the lightning bolt and the considerate floor and bumpy crucifixion ride and realized that wherever I was and whatever was happening, smart money said it wasn't good—

"Do not scream or call for help."

Seven words guaranteed to wake your ass up in a hurry.
 
I grabbed a handful of bed sheet and covered myself.

Then he spoke again:
 
"Please, I meant to say.
 
Please
do not scream or call for help."

He was sitting in chair next to a lighted floor lamp whose low-wattage bulb cast most of his face in shadow.
 
He looked to be around twenty or so, dressed in a tan, short-sleeved cotton shirt, with tan khaki pants and tan shoes under which he wore tan socks.
 
Everything about his appearance was so bland as to make him indistinguishable among a crowd; even his light-brown hair was cut in a style so precise it was invisible; pass him at the mall, on the street, or in a busy truck stop restaurant, and you wouldn't give him a second glance.

"Please don't hurt me," I said, the words crawling out of my throat.

"I would rather not," he replied, leaning forward into the light.
 
"But I will not hesitate if I have to.
 
I thought it was only fair you know that, all right?"

I saw the gun in his hand before I looked at his face; the former was some kind semi-automatic pistol with a silencer attachment, ugly and big and serious as cancer; the latter, while at first glance pleasant enough in a forgettable way, was sharp and smooth and strangely without lines or wrinkles—not that a twenty-year-old face should look haggard and world-weary, but even in this light, with my foggy vision, there wasn't a laugh-line, crow's foot, or blemish to be found on his features:
 
he could have passed for a department-store mannequin.
 
Some people would kill for skin like that and sleep the sleep of the righteous after.

There were easily one hundred more significant questions I could have asked next—everything from "What do you want?" to "Who the hell are you?"—but the one that came out of my mouth when confronted by this face, this gun, and this situation, was:
 
"Why don't I have my pants and underwear?"

I heard others laughing to the side of the room but I wasn't about to look away from False-Face and his gun.

"You wet yourself after Rebecca gave you the shot," he said.
 
"If I had been thinking, I would have told her to wait so that would not happen.
 
I apologize.
 
We took them off and washed them in the bathtub.
 
They should be dry enough in an hour or so."

"Thank you."

"You are welcome."
 
So formal and polite.

"How long have I been out?"

"A couple of hours."

The drapes were closed; I couldn't tell if it was still daylight.
 
"What time is it?"

"About two in the afternoon."
 
He picked up a bottle of pills from the table, looked at them, then slipped them into one of his pockets.
 
"In case you are wondering, no one knows you are missing yet.
 
The girl from the restaurant who tried to deliver you supper figured you were sleeping, which gave us enough time to get you out before the State Police arrived."

"They'll go to my room and find I'm not there."

He flinched at something, then shook his head.
 
"No, they will not.
 
You left a note at the desk for Edna saying that you caught a ride into Jefferson City to rent a car, and that you will be back as soon as you can—you realize the police want to speak with you and, after all, you left four boxes in her storage room.
 
Considering all the excitement and confusion about Denise, and so many witnesses in the restaurant wanting to tell their stories, it will be hours before anyone starts looking for you, and morning before it occurs to them that something is wrong."

I started to ask something else, and then it hit to me:
 
"How… how did you know about any of that?
 
Edna's name or the food being delivered to my room or the car rental or—?"

False-Face set the gun in his lap and reached down beside the chair to lift up something that looked like a hybrid of a large metal plate and opened umbrella.
 
"This," he said, and proceeded to explain about the parabolic dish, what it could do, and at what distances.

I waited until he was finished, then pointed at the dish and asked:
 
"So how much
do
you know about me?"

"We know your name, where you live, and that you came to Kansas to sign some release papers for your sister's share of an inheritance.
 
We know that your brother-in-law's name is Perry, and that he loaned you a piece-of-junk car from his lot.
 
We know that you did not tell anyone about our bus and our trailer.
 
We know that you are traveling alone and like to pretend you are an obscene phone caller when you talk to your wife—
and
that as far as Tanya knows right now, you are stuck at a motel until you can rent a car in the morning.
 
Which means we have about eighteen hours before any serious questions about you will be asked."

There might very well have been holes in his reasoning, but I sure as hell couldn't find them at the moment.

I took a deep, slow breath, swallowed, then licked my lips and said, "Please listen to me.
 
I'm a goddamn
janitor
, you hear me?
 
I'm not anybody important.
 
I don't know what you want or what you think I have, but I'm asking you to please,
please
not hurt or kill me.
 
I have no idea where we are right now, understand?
 
No idea
.
 
You could just leave me here with my leg chained to the bed like this and be two states away before anyone finds me."
 
I looked at the bedside table and saw that he'd disconnected the phone; the cord lay across the table top like a dead garden snake; the phone itself was nowhere to be seen.
 
"You've taken the phone, so I sure as hell can't call anyone—"

He put down the dish and again picked up the gun.
 
"That is true, but you
could
describe the bus and trailer to them."

"Unless we paint the trailer," said the younger boy's voice from the other side of the room. "I think we have enough to do that."

False-Face shook his head.
 
"You have watched too many bad crime movies, Arnold.
 
Besides, you are all too tired.
 
You need to sleep."
 
He looked directly at me.
 
"I was hoping that I could convince you to help us."

I almost laughed—not out of any false, macho bravado, no, but at the sudden, surreal
absurdity
of it.
 
"Let me get this straight—you kidnapped me because you need a fucking standby
painter
?"

"Not exactly.
 
No one will be painting anything.
 
And please do not use profanity.
 
It is very discourteous."

"And I suppose these restraints you have me in are an expression of your humanitarian compassion?"

"
Please
do not raise your voice like that."

"What the hell do you expect?
 
I'm scared
, in case you're not getting the idea."

"I will ask you again to please not curse."

Something about the way he spoke struck me as odd, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Look, I only swear when I'm nervous or angry," I said as evenly as I could.
 
"I'd feel a whole helluva lot less anxious if you didn't have that gun pointed at me."

He tilted his head slightly to one side as if considering something.
 
"Why have you not looked at anyone else in this room?
 
You know that we are not alone."

"Because if I don't look"—again, he flinched at something—"then I can't give the police any descriptions, can I?"

"But you have seen
me
."

"I've been looking at you for five minutes, pal, and I honestly don't think"—again, he flinched—"that I could describe one detail of your face if an FBI sketch artist walked in here right his second.
 
Nothing personal, but you're"—another flinch—"not exactly blessed with the most distinctive features, and—what the hell do you keep jumping at?"

He shook his head and set the gun aside.
 
"I do not think that you would understand."

"You 'do not think'?
 
What gives with all the formality?
 
Did you learn how to speak from reading Daymon Runyon books or—?"

And I figured it out.

Just like that.

Contractions.

False-Face wasn't using contractions in his speech; he'd flinched every time I'd employed them, as if they were invisible hands slapping his face, or something that he found repulsive or frightening.

He looked at me and gave a little grin.
 
"I see that you have figured out what it is about the way I talk which bothers you."
 
Something was wrong with his upper lip; it moved when he spoke, but not in synch with his words; it was shifting independent of his speech.

He noticed where I was staring and reached up to cover his mouth.
 
"Oh, no…"

"I told you that we needed to take everything off, did I not?" said Rebecca, and at last I turned to see how many other people were in the room.
 
I was expecting to see two—Rebecca and Arnold, the younger boy who'd checked the map and computer—but there were three; the third, a boy, was the farthest away, sitting in a wheelchair by the corner near the bathroom door.
 
His legs were missing from the knees down; the pants he wore had been rolled up and tied into knots near the stumps, which were seeping; the knotted pants legs were badly stained.
 
He moved his torso slowly back and forth in time with some song he was humming, his breathing labored and asthmatic—though it might have sounded worse because of the plastic
Hallowe'en
mask he wore:
 
Elmer
Fudd
, trying to figure out if it was duck season or wabbit season.
 
I tried to place the song he was humming.

Rebecca was sitting nearest me, on the edge of the room's second bed.
 
This close, and at this more natural angel, two things about her were obvious:
 
one, her long, black hair was a wig and, two, her features were just as smooth and without lines or character as False-Face's.
 
I stared at her a moment longer, then sniffed the air; the odor of makeup was quite strong—and I don't mean your typical, over-the-counter compact, blush, cosmetic-counter makeup, no; what I was smelling was theatrical makeup:
 
base, greasepaint, pancake, powder, latex and spirit-gum; do any amount of theater in high school, college, or even with community players (as Tanya and I had done in the early days of our marriage) and those smells, once experienced, stay with you for the rest of your life.

I looked next at Arnold, and was slightly surprised; his face, just as phony as those of his traveling companions, was of a different hue; he was black.
 
This surprised me because there had been nothing about his speech—I had, after all, only
heard
him up to this point—to hint at his ethnicity.
 
A lot of the guys on my crew are black, and I guess that I had come to associate their slang and speech patterns as being representative of all blacks.
 
I promised myself I'd be careful about jumping to conclusions like that in the future… providing I even
had
a future beyond the next eighteen hours.