“Getting Lucky”
Part 2
by
T.William Smith
“You sure have changed since college, Nake.”
“Yeah. For starters, I’m green.”
One of the things that makes this Earth so hallucinatory and nightmarish – I keep getting knocked on the head. When I woke up I my wrists were bound – and not in a fun way. The metal was the hardest, heaviest material I’d ever felt. There was no breaking it. I was connected a big chain made of the same stuff. There was about ten feet of chain.
In the dim light I could see Parker lying near me. We were stripped down to our underwear. There was just bear dusty floor beneath us. It was hot – oven hot – well over a hundred degrees, if I was any judge.
I scooted closer to Parker. He had a helluva shiner. Other than that he seemed to have all of his parts in working order, though he may have been dead. I couldn’t see him breathing. It was very awkward getting my ear over to his mouth with my hands bound, but I did it. He was breathing. Gently. That’s never a bad thing, right?
Parker only had a chain on one ankle. It connected him to the wall with about three feet of slack.
I heard something and turned. On the wall at the nearest end of the room were two people. They were also lying on the bare floor. The also had a chain around one ankle. They were looking over their heads at me like I was a green man in the clouds. I almost laughed.
They started speaking to each other in a language I didn’t recognize. It could have been Bulgarian for all I knew.
My mouth was parched. My tongue felt like corduroy. Maybe I’d been talking fustian in my sleep. I wanted to rub my eyelid but my hands were powdered with dust. I did the best I could with the crook of my arm.
Looking up at one of the two dimly lit naked lightbulbs at either end of the long room, I tried to figure out what the hell could have happened to bring me to this pretty pass.
Parker had pulled my car around to the back of the bar. When he came back in we hoisted Lucky Parnell between us. Frog-marching a corpse is quite a trick. You should try it sometime.
“How are we doing this? Guy must weigh two and a half bills,” Parker gasped.
“I just hope his belt doesn’t break,” I said. I had my right hand on his belt and the left tugging on his left around my neck.
“I don’t think I’m doing much of anything. How are you holding him up?”
“Just put your shoulder in his armpit,” I told him.
“I’d have to be part ant!”
The backdoor was reached by going down a short narrow hall. We somehow squeezed through there, the dead man’s shoes sliding over the dirty linoleum. In the back alley we flopped Parnell into my car on the passenger side. I had already called Spooty with my watch radio.
“It’s a hundred in the shade,” Parker said.
“Yeah. He’s gonna start to curdle in my car. Maybe I’ll give Jorge a call and find out where the truck is.”
I tapped some buttons on my watch.
There was a beep.
“Jorge, are you there?”
“Si.”
“Can you give me an estimate on the truck’s arrival?”
“From your current location – nine minutes. Is there a problem?”
“No. Not really. It’s just very hot out here, considering our cargo.”
“Si, muy caliente.”
“And it’s miserable with the humidity.”
“We used to say such a day was hotter than the uterus of the chupacabra.”
“Wow. And you’re from Mexico.”
“Si. Yucatan.”
“I was going to say it was hotter than the rectum of a T. rex. It’s just a hypothesis – not that I know from experience.”
“That would be open to debate.”
“Not if the T. rex could help it.”
“The internal temperature of dinosaurs is still a matter of conjecture.”
“Even on your planet?”
“Si. Paleontology is woefully behind the times.”
“I swear that robot brain has a sarcasm chip,” I told Parker.
He stood so no one inside the restaurant could look out the back door and see Parnell collapsed on the front seat, squinting against the brightness of the Kaliphornia sun.
“What did you mean by ever action getting a reaction?” he asked.
“You know – the butterfly on one side of the world and a hurricane on the other.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning nothing – except keep your eyes peeled.”
“For?”
“For anything resembling whatever comes between a butterfly and a major meteorological event.”
“What are you worried about?”
“You gotta ask?” I looked at what was in the car and then back at Parker meaningfully.
“I don’t follow you.”
“The Cat isn’t going to like this. He sent the guy, after all.”
“So? He can’t blame us for an accident.”
“He could. If that was what it was.”
“What does that mean?” Parker was clearly getting heated.
“It just went off on its own?” I whispered.
His voice dropped, “That’s what I said and that’s what happened. In fact, I’m going to hand the gun over to Spooty. He can look at it under a scope and show you that there aren’t any fingerprints on the trigger. I never touched it. And you ought to sniff it.”
He looked around to make sure no one was watching and put the breech up where I could smell it.
“Any magic?”
I could in fact smell the faintest whiff of what might be magic. Besides being green, nearly bulletproof and quite healthy, I was able to smell magic.
“Isn’t it possible that the Cat or someone charmed the gun or a bullet to go off and kill him?”
“Anything’s possible, just like in pictures. But why would he do that?”
“How should I know! We don’t know the first thing about this guy.”
“That make him look more and more like the butterfly from the proverb,” I said.
“Are you afraid the Cat won’t like it? We’ll just have to beg his forgiveness.” He grinned slightly and tapped his jacket where it bulged over his hand-cannon of a gun.
“Forgiveness is a nice thing. But I think most of the world opts for deterrence. Seems more prudent,” I said, frowning in the sunshine. “You do know Wild Bill Hickock was shot in the back, right?”
“Wild Bill didn’t have you around.”
That was fair enough. Something he had said bothered me. I had to force myself to think about it. Would he really know that his finger had never touched the trigger? The only person confident of that is the one who wiped it off. I tried to remember if Parker had much of a chance to wipe the gun. He could have.
We were close to a dumpster. Skinny stray cats were jumping into it. Crows watched from the roof, squawking their criticism. I took my hat off to fan the flies away from me. I wondered how long before they started on the corpse. There was no way I was closing the car up with a dead man in it. Broiled body was not my idea of a good thing. No air freshener in the world can erase a memory like that.
“My theory is you bumped that trigger without realizing it.” It wasn’t exactly my theory but I needed to keep the ball rolling.
“Nope. I told you I never touched the trigger. I would know if I touched it. And anyway, it’s not like you can make contact and have the thing go off. It has to be enchantment.”
He scuffed his feet – indecisively, it seemed to me.
“Y’know, sometimes people do stuff without paying attention. Like you drive to work and you don’t remember all of the road once you get there.”
“What are you saying?” Parker didn’t like the direction I was taking this.
“Oh, it’s just that things can happen without us really thinking about it or being aware. Take if something’s a habit or if you really want something bad. Sort of like a Freudian slip of the trigger finger.”
“You think I wanted to kill this guy I just met?”
“It might serve a purpose.”
“And what purpose would that be?”
“Getting the Cat to show up.”
He had to think about that one. He took his hat off his bald head and mopped his brow with a hanky. His bosky eyebrows prickled. He put his hat back on and tugged at his goatee. Whenever he was angry he reminded me of a sawed-off Lenin. One that could stand to lose forty pounds of paunch. I was really getting under his skin.
“I don’t know how to respond to that. It’s preposterous. How would I know that offing this jerk would produce the Cat? I wouldn’t. I barely knew the first thing about him. I can’t believe you think this was intentional. Maybe it was all part of the Cat’s plan.”
“And what does he have planned?” I asked.
“How should I know. But maybe this was all set up for a reason. One that has nothing to do with what I want. One that has everything to do with what the Cat wants.” He looked at me hard.
I had to concede Parker’s reasoning wasn’t totally devoid of merit.
“Maybe the point was no more than to drive a wedge between us.”
“Us?” I mused.
“Yeah. Think about it. What would be the most logical result of you just shooting someone in front of me? I might trust you less, right? I’m not likely to trust you more.”
I sighed, “A valid point.”
“Are you really that paranoid, Nake?”
“You wouldn’t be the first to accuse me of that. But then you haven’t had your brain monkeyed with. You didn’t have memories stuck in your head of things that never happened. Besides that, I’ve seen some real facking weird stuff.”
“Don’t say facking or I’ll have to shoot you too.”
I gave Parker a hard look.
“I’m joking! It was a joke! I swear to you it was an accident. I didn’t try to shoot the poor bastard.”
He turned around and looked at the body inside the car.
“Of course I feel bad about it. But it wasn’t my fault.” His voice trailed off. He stood facing his victim. I didn’t know what more to say.
“You know the only thing I want is to get back home,” Parker said, his head still down, facing the corpse of Lucky Parnell.
“I’ve got a wife and kids to get back to. I know you can’t remember your life, but I’m sure you want to get back too. Just as much as I do,” he said.
“I would do just about anything to get out of this crazy carnival, Parker.”
“Me too. But I’m not going to murder the innocent. You have to believe me.”
“I do believe you. Or at least I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Hell, I believe you didn’t want to kill this sap. But this is a dangerous place and some here are playing a very dangerous game. They won’t care what you say. And maybe this whole thing was exactly what you said before – a set up. A trap of some kind. Or a psycho’s test. We have to on our guard all the time.”
“Look, I’m really sorry that this guy is dead, Nake. I really am. But it’s like I told him – this is a war. It sure as hell isn’t my war. I didn’t start it. And I don’t plan on sticking around to see the end of it. I just want out of it.”
“But the Cat doesn’t want you out of it. That’s the thorny patch,” I said.
“I’m not so sure this Cat is all that you think he is. Even if he is the reason I’m here, he doesn’t like to step out of the shadows too much. I’ve been here months and months and not seen anything of him, not even heard others say they’ve seen him any time recently.”
“There are other things to worry about besides the Cat.” I realized my words sounded lame but I was convinced they were true.
“Other things? What? The gods? Karma?”
“I didn’t say that. There’s not even any justice in the world and you think I’m afraid of karma?”
“No justice?”
“Ask Lucky about justice.” I jerked a thumb toward the car.
“There’s a talking cat but no justice.” Parker seemed almost amused.
“There are too many victims. Too much evil and never any reckoning.”
“Never?”
I could hear the usual buzz of traffic. There was also the sound of trucks in low gear passing on the other side of the restaurant and storefronts. I checked my watch. Spooty was late. I pushed a button and said, “Call Jorge.”
“Si,” his voice crackled. I swear he put static on there for effect.
“Where’s Spooty and that truck?”
“He has been delayed.”
I was looking up at the sky in the general direction that Spooty was coming from. There was a narrow but black plume of smoke.
“What’s going on?”
“Manifestaciones.”
“A riot?”
“Disturbios, si.”
“What have you gotten from the police radios?”
“Many units were called to assist in rounding up some people who had no work cards. It was then reported that the police were attacked by those who gathered to demonstrate the prefecture’s indifference to the problems of the impoverished and unemployed. But I have recorded phone messages made to city newspapers. They say the demonstration was already underway when the police arrived. That the police shot into the crowd. Beyond that there is the matter of the fires.”
“Fires?”
“Si. Senor Spooty is caught near the scene. On opposite sides of the street there are two buildings: hotels that have been converted into – ”
“Cheap flophouses. Down Sunset?”
“Correct.”
I let Jorge go. Damn! If things didn’t start to shape up in the next five minutes I might have to go rescue Spooty rather than the other way around.
Parker had moved Lucky’s feet over so he could sit on the edge of the car seat. The sun had moved to the west enough that we were now in the shade. That was the only mercy we were going to get.
I found myself thinking back a couple of weeks when Parker had found what he thought was a lead. There was supposed to be this prostitute who used to service a fortune-teller guy. The fortune-teller had moved on or died. No one knew which. But the prostitute was alive, if barely. She spent her days stoned on smack or whatever drug she could score. Parker asked me to go along. I only did because to let him go by himself was unthinkable. When we got into this stinking hellhole where the old whore slept, we ran into something very odd. Parker called it an orc. It could have been an oni, mogwai, ifrit or goblin, for all I knew. It was mean and nasty and had by all appearances just finished eating our prostitute. In the end its liver succumbed to power of Parker’s Desert Eagle. Were we caught in the crossfire of devas fighting asuras?
When the beast had finally stopped flailing, Parker had heaved a great sigh and said it was one for the good guys. Had justice been meted out? Maybe would should’ve asked the dead hooker with her guts torn out. By the time I got to her she was still warm, but there was no saving her. Parker’s bullets could do nothing for her.
“I haven’t seen jot of justice and barely the least particle of mercy. Those are just words. They don’t really exist,” I said.
“Don’t exist? The wheel didn’t always exist. Then we built it. Maybe we have to build justice,” Parker said. “Besides, saying that justice is just a word would make you a nominalist. I know you don’t want to be a nominalist.”
“Is that what it makes me? No, I’ll tell you what it makes me. It makes me a guy with a corpse in his front seat. Now help me buckle him in so we can get out of here.”
I could have done it myself but I wanted Parker to do. In fact, I wanted to drop this whole damn mess on him and tell him to deal with it.
TW Ladd 