The Rabbit Factory: A Novel (15 page)
Read The Rabbit Factory: A Novel Online
Authors: Larry Brown
D
omino was in a holding cell in jail, where the female deputy sheriff had dropped him off and filled out forms while the intellectual-looking guy he’d tried to carjack sipped coffee in the lounge as he told the other police officers what had happened. Domino had heard and seen some of it. They made the guy he’d tried to carjack tell it several times and he told it exactly the same way each time and then they left him alone and told him to get himself some more coffee and that they had some fresh chocolate doughnuts, too, and that they were sorry about the bullet holes in his minivan, but that he’d have to leave it with them, and then after their investigation was complete, they’d get it towed to the shop for him and let him know when it was ready, and then after a while the guy he’d tried to carjack said he figured his insurance company would probably furnish him with another car since what happened was probably covered, and then he and the female deputy sheriff left together. All this happened after the crime scene investigation itself, out on the road at the scene of the interrupted carjacking, while Domino waited in the back of a warm patrol car handcuffed and bloody and sick with worry and hurting like shit with knots all over his head. They were holding Domino until they could figure out what all he’d done. They definitely had him for assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer and attempted carjacking, but so far Domino hadn’t said anything. He was just keeping his mouth shut, just waiting for that one phone call he knew he was allowed. His head was scabbed up and swollen and they really hadn’t given him the proper medical attention as of yet. He knew they’d have to sometime. Maybe he could escape then. Maybe he could just run. There wouldn’t be a thing to lose by trying. If they found the cop. If they found the truck. If the meat thawed out. Yeah, he needed to make a call.
The only thing was, he didn’t know who to call. He didn’t know any lawyers. He didn’t have any friends. He guessed he’d just wait and see what happened. It didn’t look like there was anything else to do. It didn’t look like he’d be able to escape from here. The thing he happened to be in at the moment looked like it would be pretty escape-proof unless you had some high-speed hacksaws or maybe an acetylene torch or Harry Houdini in there with you to give you some pointers.
They’d be out looking around in the country down there. They’d find that junky fucking cruiser. Maybe they already had.
There was a big cop in a suit out there, one who had come in later extremely pissed off and who’d been trying to get him to talk. Even now he was just sitting there sipping a Pepsi, watching him through the holding-cell bars. He looked like a mean motor scooter, too. And he was just staring at him.
Domino leaned back against the painted block wall. There was a bunk but it wasn’t big enough to lie down on. He wasn’t going to say anything. That was how people got in trouble. They talked. They signed things. They applied for credit instead of paying cash. He knew how the world worked. Or he was pretty sure he did. But who in the hell was that in the garbage bag?
The plainclothes cop got up. He walked slowly down the hall, toward the holding cell. Domino could hear his feet on the tiles. He stopped in front of the cell and stood there. Great big son of a bitch.
“Still don’t want to talk?” He sipped some more of his Pepsi and belched.
Domino didn’t say anything.
“You will,” the cop said calmly. “You’ll sing like a yeller canary gettin’ his guts mashed out his asshole when I get done with you.”
He took the last drink from his Pepsi, turned, walked back up the hall, dropped his can into the trash, and picked up a ring of keys from a desk.
He was kind of far away, but Domino could hear him fine. And he noticed then that he hadn’t seen any other cops for a while. He hadn’t noticed any of them leaving, but it seemed it was just the two of them there now. He wasn’t sure at all how that had happened.
“You know why, you piece a shit?”
Domino didn’t make a sound. Quiet as a mouse. Or a cat.
“’Cause my name’s Rico Perkins. And my little brother’s name’s Elwood. We cain’t raise him on his radio, but he’s got a gun
exactly
like the one we took off you. He’s a constable. But I’ll bet you already know that. ’Cause I think you done met him.”
And he started walking closer. Domino didn’t say anything. But he could see the family resemblance right away. This guy was taller, though.
A
njalee’s hair was spread on a pillow and she lay on her belly with one nice leg bent and the other one straight, her eyes closed, her breathing regular and steady, her breasts flattened beneath her, half the sheet barely covering the simple naked beauty of her lovely ass.
Outside the room there were dim sounds in the hall, women talking, knocking on doors sometimes, vacuums running. Doors were opening and closing. The hall elevator sometimes
ching
ed.
Cars and buses and vans and trucks passed below in the streets, the noise of their horns and exhaust muffled by distance.
She turned onto her side and pulled some more of the satin sheet over her and held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart and in her sleep said very clearly: “That damn baloney was
that
thick.”
S
ome neighbor must have heard the dog yapping up in the tree and called 911 while Miss Muffett was fainted out, because here came the Como Volunteer Fire Department from their station right across the street from the steak house. Sirens howling, lights flashing, red trucks with gold letters and hoses and ladders in the driveway, guys in turnouts drinking coffee in foam cups, guys wandering around the yard in black boots with yellow toes helping Miss Muffett up and talking on those portable radios. A few of them had made the emergency run to the house six months earlier to extricate bloody Mr. Hamburger from the bloody posthole-digger incident in the backyard that day. But there was a different tactical problem for them now. The little dog was about fifty feet up. Or maybe sixty. It was a big tree. He was up there checking out the birds, like an ornithologist.
CVFD didn’t own a one-hundred-foot aerial platform like Memphis or Oxford, but there was a fire-equipment dealer in Southaven named Shed Roberts who just happened to have one in his parking lot that was in the process of getting gold letters put on it before it got delivered to the Memphis Fire Department. Some of the Como firefighters sometimes played poker and drank whiskey with Shed or had steaks at the Como steak house with him on his company tab, and one of them had seen the ladder sitting there coming back from a strip club in Memphis the night before, and one of the firefighters told Miss Muffett that Shed was more than glad to drive it down once they called him just because he loved playing with the things, and would have had one in his yard to scrape his house and paint it and clean the leaves out of his rain gutters or even put Santa and some fake reindeer on the roof if he could have afforded it, since a good one ran about $645,000 plus tax and delivery from the factory up in Pennsylvania.
They maneuvered the bucket platform with two truckies riding in it through the branches of the sycamore, which was leafless since it was winter, which made it easier for them to get it close. One truckie clipped a safety line to his waist and opened a narrow gate in the bucket, and while his partner held on to the waistband of his smoked-up turnout pants, stepped out into the air, reached for the little dog, and got him.
A small clutch of neighbors had gathered, a few old folks, some kids in coats, also a television crew from WTVA-9 in Tupelo that had been cruising down I-55 and had followed the ladder in since Shed had been running the red lights and blowing the air horn just for the fun of it, and a weak cheer went up as the ladder started retracting down to its bed on the engine, which was parked in the driveway, really humming and roaring, making all kinds of racket.
The Tupelo TV folks wanted an interview, probably hoping they could get it on the news as a human-interest story that night, but Miss Muffett didn’t want her plastic leg to be on TV and she didn’t want anybody to tell Mr. Hamburger that they’d seen his dog on TV because he’d jumped into a tree because she hadn’t left him any water in his pan. She took the little dog and went inside and shut the door. Then she peeked out the curtain to see if they were still waiting. Hell yeah. Like a bunch of vultures.
H
elen was sitting at the dressing table in her bedroom, putting on some makeup, fixing her hair, sipping on a drink. Arthur had given up trying to talk to her through the locked door but had yelled through it that he was going to call the doctor right now and see if he could fit him in today but she didn’t really care anymore. She was trying to apply her lipstick. If he hadn’t had all that money, she never would have married him. It was a mistake and she could see that now. The horrible thing was that it had taken so long. She’d given him twenty years and she wasn’t going to get those twenty years back. But what the hell had she been thinking twenty years ago? Nothing. Not about the future, that was for sure. Only about how easy life would be. No more waiting tables. No more taking care of a bunch of drunks in the Union bar every night. No more worrying about how you pay the light bill this month.
She was going out for a while and when she came in she’d just tell him the truth, which was that she’d made a mistake, and yeah, had married him because he was rich, but that there wasn’t any need in compounding it by letting it go on any longer. She’d tell him she wanted a divorce, and that she wanted the Jag, and some money, and he could keep this house. A house was nothing. A house was just wood and wallpaper and you filled it up with deer heads and doilies. You could have one of them anywhere. Any mountain, any meadow. In Montana you could.
She’d go back home and start over. She’d invest her part of the money once she got it and live off it the same way he’d been doing all these years. She’d find a house in Montana or build one, one made from logs, with a sloped red roof and lots of glass and that would sit in the back of a field of yellow grass in the fall at the foot of a gray cliff that was two hundred feet high. Maybe find a man who could give her a baby. She wasn’t too old. Forty wasn’t too old. She’d seen in
People
magazine where Beverly D’Angelo had married Al Pacino and had given him twins and she was over forty. And her mother had a cousin in Idaho who raised potatoes with her husband and had a baby when she was forty-three. She’d read somewhere that some woman in India had delivered a healthy baby at the age of sixty-seven. So it wasn’t impossible. She was going to tell him. It wasn’t like she hadn’t almost done it twenty times already. But last night had been the final straw. If he wasn’t going to even try to get any help, if he couldn’t even make love to her, if she didn’t even have that, and had to find it with other men, and especially an asshole like Ken, then there wasn’t any need in staying any longer.
Eric was supposed to get off at ten. But she thought she might pay him a visit before then. She checked her lipstick in the mirror and picked up the last of her drink and finished it. She’d slow down on her drinking for right now. She was going to the Peabody eventually, but she wasn’t going to get drunk and fuck Ken again for sure. That was over. No doubt about it. Bet on it. She wasn’t going to let the police get her again, either, because she was going to be careful. She didn’t want to have to look at those dead babies on that table again. Who would?
R
ico took Domino to the Oxford hospital in a car with a wire mesh barrier between the front and back seats. His hands were cuffed behind him and he got let out in the back parking lot where cars and pickups were sitting with frost and snow on them and where steam was coming from a pipe that ran up the side of the building. Stars stood high above. Some nurses were getting off duty and talking as they went to their vehicles. It was very cold.
Rico didn’t say anything, just got him by the arm and took him in through the emergency-room entrance. The lights were bright inside. Domino stopped when Rico stopped and stood in the middle of the waiting room. A man with a bloody head was moaning in a padded chair while a woman held a bloody towel up to the side of his face. A black child with pigtails lay crying in another woman’s lap, and Domino could see that her arm was broken, oddly bent. Deep and mournful sobs were coming out of her thick and moving lips, and gobbets of yellow snot from her nose. Some other people sat in what appeared to be trances and stared at a television playing the David Letterman show.
“You stand right here,” Rico told him, and Domino did. Some Christmas wreaths were hung up on the walls. There was a coffeepot on a table and some foam cups were sitting next to it.
Rico went over to a low glass partition and a lady who was behind a desk. She lifted her face as he began talking. Domino didn’t listen. All he wanted was one chance.
A security guard came through a door. An old guy. He had a uniform on, but he didn’t have a gun, didn’t even have a nightstick, and he looked a little sick himself. Maybe on the verge of admission. He walked through the waiting room and Domino turned his head and saw him go outside and pull a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and light one and stand there smoking, walking around, flicking his ashes, his breath blowing out in the cold air.
Rico came back.
“Go on and sit down,” he said. “We gonna have to wait.”
Domino looked around. There was a chair a few feet away. He eased down into it but he wasn’t able to lean back very comfortably because of the handcuffs. Having his hands behind his back like that gave him bad memories of Doreen. He looked at the TV. Dave was talking to Alec Baldwin and they were laughing. Domino liked it when they threw watermelons off the top of a building. He wished they’d do that. Instead they broke for a commercial.
Domino sat there for a long time. Rico leaned against the wall but didn’t take his eyes off him. The guy with the bloody head got called back. The child with the broken arm got called back. The security guard kept going in and out, smoking cigarettes, letting cold air in.
The guy he’d tried to carjack had busted his head pretty good, felt like. It kept throbbing. And the son of a bitch had fought back against a gun. He hadn’t expected that. The orderly who finally came to get him was pushing a wheelchair and Rico came off the wall.
“He don’t need no wheelchair, man,” he said. “He can walk fine.”
The orderly hesitated. He seemed to be looking for a place to put the chair.
“All right,” he said, and bent over and folded the wheelchair together and slid it up against the wall.
“Get up,” Rico said, and Domino stood up. The orderly went to a door and stood holding it open while Domino walked through it. Rico followed close behind.
The door closed after them and they were in a wide hall where gurneys stood and where a man at the far end was mopping. Somebody was screaming loudly in a room back there somewhere. They followed the orderly up the hall and turned in with him to a small scary examining room that smelled of rubbing alcohol and had one padded metal chair and a padded table with a piece of paper stretched over it. There were shelves and a cabinet at the back. Through an open door, Domino could see the back side of the emergency-room office and the woman Rico had been talking to. She was talking on the phone now and looking at some papers in front of her and trying like everybody else to ignore the screaming.
“Okay,” the orderly said. “Get up here and sit down and let me get a look at you.”
Domino did like he was told. It was a little difficult to get up on the table with his hands cuffed behind his back, but he managed it. Rico leaned against the open door to the hall. Domino could see a small gun hanging on his waist. The person in the room back there kept screaming.
The orderly took Domino’s head in his hands and tilted his face back to the overhead light. He probed with his fingers here and there.
“That’s a nasty cut he’s got right here on his temple,” he said. “I expect the doctor’ll want to stitch that.”
Rico didn’t say anything. Domino kept quiet, too. And he wished whoever it was back there screaming would either shut the fuck up or die. He’d heard people scream like that while they were getting raped at Parchman. Or stabbed with screwdrivers. It made it hard to sleep for wondering if you might be next.
“I’ve got to go get a few things,” the orderly said, and went through another open door behind him.
Domino just sat there. There was something buzzing somewhere.
“Me and you gonna take a little ride after they get through with you,” Rico said. “We gonna ride out in the country and see what we can see.”
Domino just kept quiet. He didn’t like the look on this cop’s face. He looked like he might kill you just for the fun of it.
The lady from the desk up front hung up the telephone and as soon as she did it rang again. She answered it and talked for a few seconds and then swiveled around in her chair.
“Officer Perkins?” she said. “There’s a call for you.”
Rico walked halfway across the room but he kept his eyes on Domino.
“I can’t come in there right now, ma’am, I’ve got nobody to watch my prisoner.”
“Well, let me see if I can stretch the cord that far,” she said, and came on in the room with it. It just barely reached. Rico had to turn his back to her after he took it so that he could keep watching Domino.
Rico talked for a few moments, and Domino saw a sudden rage come over the cop’s face.
“All right,” he said, finally, and handed the phone back over his shoulder without looking at the lady. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and looked frightened, and disappeared behind Rico.
Rico’s face had turned a little white and he walked slowly over to Domino. He was clenching and unclenching his fists.
“They found my brother’s car,” he said in a low voice. “You better hope to God he’s okay.”
Just then the orderly came back in with a plastic tray of bandages and some medical tools. Domino didn’t see any scissors in there.
“Okay,” the orderly said. He looked at Rico and waited for him to move out of the way.
“You mind, Officer?” he said.
Rico moved out of the way but not very far. He was staring a hole in Domino. And Domino didn’t even want to know what he was thinking.
The orderly had been working on him for only a few minutes when the doctor came in. He was a small black man with a short-clipped beard and he was wearing a blue uniform and some puffy paper covers over his tennis shoes. He did not look or sound like he was from around there. He looked and sounded like he was from someplace like Sudan or maybe Nigeria.
“I will take it from here,” he said to the orderly. “How about checking on the lady in four?”
“Yes, sir,” the orderly said, and left.
The doctor rooted around in the tray and pulled a few things out, then set them back in. He muttered something and left. Domino kept sitting on the table and trying not to look at Rico. The screaming went on and on.
“You better not have done nothin’ wrong to my brother,” Rico said.
“Fuck you and your asshole brother both,” Domino told him, since he didn’t like threats, especially with his hands cuffed or tied behind his back.
Rico had started over to him when the doctor walked back in with a pair of scissors. He stopped.
“What is this? This is a hospital.”
“I know what the fuck it is,” Rico said.
“Okay, swell,” the doctor said. He came on over to Domino and set the scissors in the tray and looked at his head. Domino could feel his fingers touching him. They felt warm and reassuring.
“He has a pretty nasty cut here,” the doctor said, to nobody in particular. Rico didn’t answer. He was back leaning on the wall with his arms crossed.
“Can you lie down?” the doctor said to Domino.
“Not too good,” he said. “Not with these handcuffs on.”
The doctor turned to Rico.
“Can you take these handcuffs off this man while I stitch him?”
Rico thought it over for a few seconds. He frowned and shook his head.
“I’d rather not, Doctor,” he said. “Can’t you just do it with him sittin’ there?”
“Well, yes I
could,”
the doctor said, in a really smart-ass Sudanese or maybe Nigerian tone. “I could stick this needle in his eye if he jerks his head around, too.”
Domino could see it happening before it happened. He saw the chair there by the wall. He saw how many steps he needed. The person in the back kept on screaming. It looked like it was getting on everybody’s nerves.
“I really hate to, Doctor,” Rico said over the screaming. “This man’s dangerous.”
“Do you want him treated?”
“Well, yes, I’m required by law to get him treated.”
“Well. I can’t do what I need to with him sitting up. I need to look at this eye. And he needs to be flat on his back for that.”
Rico just stood there. The screaming went on and on, only high and weak now, like some strange new song. Maybe the drugs were kicking in.
“What, Officer, are you afraid he will run off?”
“I don’t know what he may do. Or what all he has done yet. That’s what I’m tryin’ to find out. But I need him patched up tonight.”
The little doctor let out a deep sigh. He turned his eyes for a moment toward the screaming in the back. Then he looked at Rico and spoke in a surprisingly gentle voice, full of logic and reason.
“Officer, we have got a lot of hurt people in here tonight. And we have got some more coming in just a few minutes from an auto accident on Highway 7. If I don’t do this now, I may not get to do it for another two hours. Or maybe four. Do you want to wait that long?”
“I can’t,” Rico said. “I’ve got to go somewhere.”
“Well, how about cooperating with me then?”
Rico moved very slowly. Reluctantly. He reached slowly for the handcuff keys that were in a pouch on his belt. He came over. He walked behind Domino and Domino could feel him holding on to the cuffs, could hear the tiny click of the key as it opened one cuff, then the other. When Rico walked back in front of him, he was holding the cuffs in one hand. He looked down for just a moment to put the cuffs in the leather holder on his waist and Domino grabbed the scissors from the plastic tray and stabbed the little doctor in the throat at the same time he came off the table and went for the chair. Rico almost stopped him. He was plenty big enough. He was strong enough. And he was almost fast enough. But not quite. The chair caught him across the face and blood flew and Domino tugged the gun loose from Rico’s belt as he fell and then he was running hard for the door.