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Authors: James A. Newman

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BOOK: The White Flamingo
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She was the most dangerous animal in Fun City.

She undressed with slow animal movements once the lights were low. She sat on the bed in the lotus position, her arms and legs crossed. The Detective could feel the slight junk withdrawal encouraging him to participate in the oldest game of all. He made a slight movement towards her and she rolled across the bed and stood naked before him. Her body was lean, healthy firm breasts, long slender legs. She turned around and showed the Detective the most incredible artwork he had seen on a human body. From the small of her back, up to her shoulder blades, a delicate yet extravagant piece created, no doubt, by one of the monks at one of the temples. These images were supposed to warn away evil spirits, and he thought for a moment, that perhaps she considered him potentially evil. Tigers danced, dragons spun, spirits half human, half demon climbed across her reaching up to the palace where a wizard with four arms and long cascades of hair stood before a castle atop a mountain, smoke rose from crematoriums inside the castle. An imagined lost city, an astonishing universe, a world designed for the enjoyment of those that sailed her. She turned and sat on the bed without saying a word. He undressed and sat opposite her on the bed. He ran a finger along her cheek. She smiled and dimples appeared on her cheeks. He put one hand behind her head and the other on her thigh. She leaned back and lay on the bed, her legs widened. He began kissing her breasts and then worked his way down to her center. He aroused her young body. She gripped his hair tightly and drove him to her. She turned over and he explored the universe painted on her body.

It was like cheating death.

Almost.     

 

 

 

NINE

 

“WHERE YOU GOING?”
Kelly said.

The Detective sat up in the bed, realizing that he wasn’t sure where he was going, or if
indeed, he had anywhere to go. The question was vague, yet complex. It might have been the single most important question that he had ever been asked, or it might have been like the simple patter of raindrops on the corrugated iron roof of a rude hut somewhere up high in the jungle mountains. Thoughts were, after all, like raindrops, boisterous distractions to be examined briefly, but never acted upon or held onto too tightly. He had once heard that rich Victorians gambled thousands of pounds on the first raindrop to reach the window frame outside their lavish gentleman’s clubs, while the crazed poor starved on the streets outside. “Where are you going?”  It seemed to Dylan that he was never travelling anywhere; like a good Buddhist, perpetually glued to the present moment, he had little sense of direction. At least not on a physical level, spiritually, he was afloat on a sea filled with man-eating sharks, his vessel little more than a plywood raft; one false move and he was fish food.

His mind was a nest of snakes, both poisonous and constricting, twisting to escape the confines of the crowded
reptile conference inside his cranium. Sleeping with Kelly had been a mistake, perhaps a grave one. If the killer were to play with him like Jack had all those years ago, she would be in danger. That aside, he was now one of them. One of the devils that came to the city to get what they couldn’t get back home. The men who came East to get what they couldn’t get West. Yes, he could fool himself that this time it was different. That she actually liked him, he spoke her language, and he understood her pain, her background, her hopes, fears, dreams. In his mind, he could believe these things. However, the truth was different. The truth was that he was an abuser of a woman who was fifteen years younger than his thirty-three. Fifteen years was a long time. It wasn’t fifty years, but it wasn’t a two-year gap either. She was little more than a girl who had lived the life of a woman twenty times already. He was an abuser, he had sinned, yet The Detective had no religion, so who had he sinned against? What had he done wrong? Where lay the punishment? And what was a night with a bargirl in comparison with what was happening on the streets? Inside the bars and on the pool tables? The image of Tammy’s mutilated body flashed back at him like a television broadcast. Then, the image of Monica in the capital, another corpse, a lifetime ago came. It was a dangerous occupation. It was a dangerous occupation back in Jack’s day too. The deterioration was gradual and psychological, like a prison sentence or a terminal illness. He knew that many of the girls enjoyed the city and the scene as much as the men did. They were all aboard the same rollercoaster.

The men paid for the rides.

The whores won, not at first, but later, once their souls had been burned, and they were willing to take any sucker to the grave, physically, emotionally, financially. Kelly was almost at this stage in her career as a bargirl, she was willing to wound, yet, somehow still afraid to strike. She had learned that moments of kindness were often followed by episodes of cruelty. She was scared of kindness, wary of affection, like an abused puppy that cowers in the corner, too afraid to bite, and too scared to be stroked, fed, or loved.   

She stood up. Her body was what artists painted and writers wrote about, yet somehow
, she wasn’t aware of how to carry herself. She awkwardly navigated the distance to the vanity stool and gathered her belongings, her eyes gazed at the tiled floor and one forearm covered her generous breasts. The whole episode felt like a scene from inside a Russian novel, punctuated with sadness and foreshadowed by an impending doom; a doom that neither of them had the power or the will to stop.

“Where you going?”  

“I have to move out of here. I’m sorry, Kelly. You have to leave. I have a job to do.” The Detective pulled on his shirt and jeans. He walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. Returned to the bed and sat down on it. He thought about a shot, but then decided to wait for her to leave before revealing this other, perhaps darker, side of his character.

“Don’t leave me alone. I don’t want to end up like her?”

“Like who?”

“The girl on the pool table.”

“Tammy?”

“How did you know?”

“I just know.”

“You worked together.”

“Sometimes.” She looked at her face in the mirror, watching The Detective in the reflection behind her own. “Maybe you are
him.”

“Maybe,” Dylan smiled eager for the shot,
now wanting her to leave, willing her. “Maybe not.”

“She worked the bar same
as me. We lived together. Sometimes we worked together, I’m scared, mister, real scared.”

“Well, whoever killed her will be found. I think
they have him already. Don’t be scared. You are safe, for now.”

“I don’t believe you. I think you
are bullshitting me. I think you lie. Maybe you are the killer.” Kelly stood up and dressed quickly.

“Maybe,” he repeated.

He began to think of the hit of junk warm and calming; yet to watch her body being clothed was the saddest thing he had ever seen. She didn’t ask the Detective for money. She didn’t say goodbye. She put on her clothes and left the room quickly and before she disappeared, Kelly silently turned and stared at the Detective like a tiger staring at a caged bird.

The Detective sat on the bed and thought about changing hotel rooms, knowing that she would probably be back, playing the long game. Bargirls were like cats
; grey at night, and in the morning their true colors became known. If she wanted to play the long game, then he would let her play it, on his terms; she would have to find him.

He found his stash and cooked. He remembers the Old Sailor in Naked Lunch.

With veins like that kid I’d have myself a time.

He did.

Hit one on the wrist and lay back on the bed. Warmth rushed up the back of his thighs and then his spine radiated his entire body with warm relief. A rose garden at dawn, wild strawberries and a girl with freckles, her parents did something vaguely artistic and were on the elementary school committee. Years later, the sun setting over a carp filled lake. He heard the sad piano music that played in an empty house, a sudden memory of being alone in a dark room with a framed picture of a man with a beard, which terrified him as a child. He lay in bed at night. That beard, those eyes.

Later,
he found out it was a picture of Christ.

When he awoke from the
nod, he felt a sudden fear. A new fear.

Nobody was safe in the town.

Kelly.

He threw on some clothes and opened the door. He locked it behind him and jogged through the alleyway that led to the main street. He moved through suit pimps and
shoeshine kids, a man with a python wrapped around his neck, past blind lottery ticket sellers and a crazed old transsexual naked from the waist begging outside an opticians shop. A woman dressed in rags sat crying in the street, or perhaps she was singing; either way it elicited coins from passing tourists. One tourist sat down and spoke with her, brokering a deal. His stomach turned as he walked through the Fun City streets. Everything could be had here for a price, but the ultimate cost was enormous.

He saw her walking along the road, that beautiful behind swaying. Kelly, in the bright morning light, looked like what she was – a prostitute, a
whore and a stripper trying to hustle during the day. He followed her. He kept a distance of twelve yards. She took a left on Beach Road and then a left onto the Eighth Street. She walked up to a doorway and took a key from her handbag. She opened the door. The Detective walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Look
, I can see that you’re scared. Can I come in?” Before she could answer, the Detective had pushed his way into the hallway. She looked at him directly and said:

“You
’re crazy.”

A statement not a question.

He followed her in to a room that was the size and shape of a prison cell. No windows. No air-conditioning. Two mattresses were on the floor, some plastic shelves holding clothes and a floor-standing fan. There were some soft cuddly toys; the type you win at the fair by throwing darts at balloons or hoops over pins.

Boxes,
pharmaceutical medicines. One of the girls had some kind of illness, or condition. Christ, they all did. There were a few framed photographs and a cheap Mickey Mouse alarm clock. “I don’t like to sleep here alone,” Kelly said. “Not since, it happened.”

“Well, who sleeps there?” Joe pointed at the unmade mattress, speaking in the local tongue. He knew the answer instinctively. He wanted her to say it. He wanted to be sure.

“Nobody, not anymore. You speak our language well. Tell me, Joe, you believe in ghosts? I not mean the old stories you hear as a kid, I mean real ghosts?”

“Kelly, I believe that
the human mind has a hard time accepting death, especially the death of somebody close to us. In a strange way, it is comforting to think that they are still out there somewhere looking over us.”

“Even if she die like that and she trying to tell you that the same thing will happen to you if you don’t listen, then...”

“Listen, Kelly, have the Boys in Brown been in here?”

“No. What do they care? She was a lady working the bar, just like me. People like us don’t matter. We don’t count. She had two rooms
in the city and slept with three or four customer a week.”

“Where are the rooms?”

“The dark side of town.”

“Write it down,” the Detective handed her a piece of paper and a pen from his back pocket.

Kelly looked at the pen and then looked at the paper. “I can’t…”

“Don’t be afraid.”

“No, I mean, really I can’t”

“You can’t what?”

“Read, write.”

“Okay, tell me the addresses.”

She gave the names of some roads and he jotted them down.

“Did she have enemies? Was she frightened of anything?”

“She was not scared. She thought the tourists were stupid, she thought she could control them?”

The
Detective crouched down next to Tammy’s mattress. There was a dirty glass, a packet of unopened condoms and a bottle of pills. He picked up the bottle, read the label and memorized it. There was a small pulp comic book and a half pack of chewing gum.

The Detective stood back
up, dipped into his jeans, and pulled out his wallet. He handed Kelly two hundred dollars. “Take this. Get the bus out of town for a few days. Go back home, see your parents.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Any what?”

“Parents.”

“Well, see an aunt or an uncle then. There must be somebody.”

She shook her head. “There’s no one.”

“Everybody has at least one person. An old customer. The guy that sells chewing gum on the street. Go to the city. Go somewhere. Get away from the ghost.”

She took the money.

They always did. 

 

 

TEN

 

FISH SPA.

A place to think.

Entrance to a massage joint.

BOOK: The White Flamingo
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