Divisible man, p.22
DIVISIBLE MAN, page 22
Music pounded through the walls. A television played somewhere. Muted voices carried on conversation. Counting the sentry and allowing for error, I put the occupancy of the house at somewhere between four and eight.
I initiated an inverted glide downward, fingers touching both walls. At the bottom, I hooked my hands on the top of the door jamb and pulled myself down for a look.
A girl in nothing but pink panties looked directly back up at me. Every muscle in my body tightened. She padded toward me, jiggling. I pushed myself back and spread my arms for purchase on the walls of the stairwell. Once I had a grip, I pushed up as hard as I could, pressing myself against the angled ceiling. She entered the stairwell and climbed the steps. Thankfully, she was petite. Her head cleared my body by a couple inches. She climbed the stairs and turned down the hallway, cooing a greeting at the sentry in the plastic chair. I checked again, then pulled myself into an open foyer. I rose to the safety of a tall ceiling.
The television played in a sitting room to the left of the front door. I saw the back of a shabby leather couch with someone sitting on it. Music came from what must be the kitchen, opposite the front door and to the right of the stairwell. I maneuvered for a look.
Two men sat at a scarred Formica table. Small piles of cash were spread between them. One of the two men counted from a wad of bills in one hand, slapping them onto the table. The other sat watching, sipping from a long straw driven into a tall brown bottle of beer. The first man finished counting, scooped up the pile and rolled it into a cylinder, binding it with a rubber band. It joined a stack of cash cylinders.
Exactly what I was looking for.
I worked up a vector into the kitchen and pushed off. A ceiling fan spun lazily over the table. It posed a problem. I couldn’t get into position directly over the counting operation.
The men sat adjacent to each other, one facing the entrance to the kitchen, the other with his chair turned, facing his colleague with his back to the door. Two additional chairs remained vacant. I lowered my legs and prepared to push down from the ceiling to take up a standing position behind one of the empty chairs.
A phone rang. The man not counting fished it out of his shirt pocket. He poked it, held it to his ear, listened, and poked it off, then shoved it back in his pants pocket.
“He’s here.” He stood up abruptly and walked to the front door. After a moment, he opened it.
The one doing the counting hurried his process, produced another pile of bills, rolled them into a cylinder and put it with the others. I got the feeling he was supposed to have already finished this job. I also got a panicked feeling that if someone had come to collect, my idea would fail.
Two new actors entered the stage through the front door. Both were heavily tattooed. Neither looked friendly. One carried a satchel. They offered no chit-chat. The larger of the two, the one without the satchel, took up station by the front door. He observed the room from behind cheap sunglasses. Security. The other went straight for the table where Counting Man hurried to roll up another stack.
“Jus’ double-checking!” he said. He grabbed a pen from the table and scribbled on a pad. He stripped away the top page and handed it to Satchel Man. Satchel Man took it, regarded it, and then dropped his bag on the table. It bore a sports logo and might have carried gym clothes. He unzipped it.
“Where’s Tula?”
“Bitch is upstairs, giving JD a blowjob,” Counting Man said. I sensed tension. He sat stiffly in the presence of command. I looked at Satchel Man and wondered if he was Mauser. “You wan’ her? Got time?”
“Fuck no,” Satchel Man said. “I wouldn’t dip my dick in that.”
“Don’ be like that, Zee Zee! You’ll hurt the bitch’s feelings!”
Everyone laughed and the mood lightened.
Zee Zee, I thought. Not Mauser.
Zee Zee casually dropped the cash cylinders into the bag. Many more already occupied the bag. He didn’t seem interested in counting them. He stuffed in the last two and zipped the bag closed.
“Wanna beer? In the fridge. Fuckin’ hot today,” the Counting Man offered eagerly.
Zee Zee shook his head and closed a grip on the bag, and I saw my chance slipping away. Then he paused.
“Fuckit. I’ll take one.” He called out to his companion with the sunglasses. “AJ! Beer?”
“I’ll take two,” Sunglasses said somberly.
Zee Zee released his grip on the bag and went to the refrigerator. Counting Man followed him with his eyes.
I pushed off from the ceiling. I dropped to the floor and grabbed the chair. I didn’t stop to consider it. I grabbed the satchel. It had weight and it pressed me to the floor. On my feet again, I swung it over the chair. Counting Man saw the bag float. His eyes went wide. The bag moved magically through the air. He gawked, too stunned to move, afraid to touch it.
I dropped, curled into a ball, clutched the bag against my belly and pulled my shirt over the bag. The bag vanished, instantly losing its weight. I pushed with my toes and floated upward, keeping my body curled around the bag. My pulse thundered in my temples.
At the same instant, Counting Man said, “What the fuck?”
Zee Zee turned, beer in hand, startled.
“Where’d it go?” Counting Man demanded. “It was here!”
I bumped the ceiling but stayed in a cannonball curl with the bag pulled close to my belly under my shirt. My nerves rattled.
“’Da fuck?” Zee Zee’s dark face clouded over. “Where’s the fucking bag?”
“Where is it?” Counting Man also asked.
“That’s what I ass’t you, fucker. Where’s the fucking bag?”
“It was right here! It—I don’t know—it started flyin’ all by isself—then I saw it disappear!”
“WHERE’S THE FUCKING BAG?!”
“I—I—I don’ know, man! I swear, it was right here! I don’t have it!”
The commotion brought Sunglasses—AJ—into the room behind a huge nickel-plated semi-automatic handgun aimed at Counting Man. He charged the table and put the barrel of the gun against Counting Man’s left eye.
Counting Man stammered and waved his arms, pressed backward. His chair tipped.
“WHERE’S THE FUCKING BAG?!” Zee Zee glared at Counting Man, whose remaining eye bulged.
“I—don—got—it!” he sputtered.
“You’re the only motherfucker here! Where did you put it?!”
BLAAAMM!
The gunshot slammed my ears. Counting Man went over backward. AJ stared at the smoking end of his gun. Blood and other material splayed in a vee-shape across the floor behind what was left of Counting Man’s skull.
In a voice several octaves higher, Zee Zee demanded, “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO THAT FOR?”
“It’s this trigger, man. This trigger. Fucking thing.”
The front door slammed open. Counting Man’s companion vanished into the summer sun.
“YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM!”
“Yeah, I know. It’s this trigger. It just goes sometimes.” AJ kept staring at the gun, like he expected it to explain itself.
“Motherfucker! Where’s the fucking bag? Look for the fucking bag!”
Someone else pounded out the front door.
The copper scent of spilled blood clouded the hot kitchen. My stomach turned over. A sheen of sweat broke on my skin. Nausea blossomed. It was almost impossible not to look at the body on the floor. A black, burned hole had replaced Counting Man’s left eye. Thankfully, I couldn’t see the back of his head, which had exploded all over the floor and wall behind him.
Zee Zee poked erratically around the small kitchen, looking for the bag. AJ studied his gun. He kept his fat finger on the trigger and carelessly swung the big weapon sideways across Zee Zee, who didn’t seem to notice. Neither seemed to understand or care about muzzle safety. As the idiot examined the weapon, it swung distressingly toward me.
I held the cannonball posture sideways against the ceiling. My left hand locked my shirt over the satchel and gripped both in place. With my free right hand, I gripped one corner of the refrigerator and pushed toward the kitchen door. When it came within reach, I closed a grip on the top of the door jamb and stopped, steadying myself.
I prepared to pull myself through when a high-pitched scream froze me.
The girl in the panties stood below me, hands thrown forward, screaming. AJ jumped and swung his big weapon around and for a moment I expected to see her shot by another unintended trigger pull. Her eyes blazed, wide open and white ringed, then miraculously grew wider when she switched her gaze from the body on the floor to the hole at the end of the big silver gun. She turned and ran screaming out the front door.
“MOTHERFUCKER! WILL YOU PUT THAT THING AWAY!” Zee Zee shrieked. AJ stuffed it down the front of his sweatpants. I expected the next explosion to spray his genitals onto his shoes.
I secured a grip on the top of the kitchen door jamb. Zee Zee and AJ moved around the table. Zee Zee tossed Counting Man’s body back and forth, as if the satchel had been hidden under it.
I pulled myself toward the front door.
“It’s not here! Fuck!” Zee Zee cried out, his voice rising to match his panic.
Behind me, JD the window sentry thundered down the stairs. I floated, committed to a glide toward the front door with the satchel under my shirt. I had nothing to grab, and no way to change course. I reached the door frame directly in JD’s path.
JD, the grown-up version of the fat boy outside, pounded across the floor directly toward me.
I had no choice. My right leg kicked out. My heel connected with his nose. His head went back while his legs pounded forward. He dropped flat on his back with a yowl, less hurt than stunned.
The kick fired me through the open front door. I put an arm out and caught the jamb, which swung me around hard. My forward motion arrested. I hung with my right arm hooked on the front door. I pushed. A short glide took me across the porch to the roof overhang. I caught the edge and pulled myself up and over. From there, I aimed for the edge of the eaves. JD, with one hand cupping his bleeding nose, shot out the door and down the steps for points unknown.
Clinging to the eaves, I surveyed the steep roof of the house. I didn’t like the look of it. The shingled surface offered nothing to grab. Instead of going over the house, I worked my way around it by gripping the flimsy, leaf-choked gutter. Reaching the back side of the house, I pushed down into the back yard and gripped the fence. From the fence, I vectored back to the garage and slipped around the edge of the sagging door. I pulled the bag out from under my shirt and fumbled for the unseen handle. It slipped free of my grip. My fingers felt cold electricity as the bag reappeared. I grabbed it before it hit the floor. The bag remained visible and weighed me down.
Given the dust and dirt in the garage, it was obvious no one had been here in a long time. I doubted anyone would be cleaning here soon. I found an old milk carton, turned it over, put the bag under it and piled on a mound of filthy clothing.
Not that I cared if I ever saw this bag again. Theft wasn’t the plan.
As far as the plan went, I needed to get back to where the two stooges were no doubt still scouring the kitchen for their money. Zee Zee had been bubbling toward panic. The errant death of one of the cash house occupants might not create much of a stir, but lost cash would not sit well with management.
A few minutes later, retracing my route, using the eaves again to round the house, I slipped back inside and took up station in the high foyer. So far, nobody thought to close the front door.
Zee Zee held his phone to his head. Thin, with sharp facial bones, he looked mildly skeletal. A flat gray pallor draped his face. His companion, AJ, resumed a stoic guard pose outside the kitchen with the touchy hand-cannon tucked in his sweatpants.
“We got a problem,” Zee Zee told his phone. He listened as someone on the other end explained how much they didn’t care. “No, you gotta tell Mauser.” The other person explained that telling Mauser was not going to happen. “I don’t fucking care if he’s busy! He needs to know. Fucking Comber and Boogie tried to rip us off. Pulled a gun on me and AJ when we came to collect. AJ got Comber, but Boogie got the money and took off.” The response was harsh. Zee Zee closed his eyes, squeezed them hard. “I don’t fucking know! Maybe forty. Tell Mauser we need him over here right away!” He lowered his phone and jabbed a finger at the screen, missed, jabbed it again, and again, and again. A scream grew in his throat and roared free. I ignored him.
Mauser.
Bingo.
48
“I ain’t sitting in there with that shit,” Zee Zee proclaimed. He paced the foyer below me, his skin glistening with sweat. AJ had wandered off to answer the beckoning call of the television screen still on in the sitting room. From a steady crunching sound, I surmised he found a bag of chips.
Zee Zee darted into the kitchen and brought out a chair. He moved quickly, as if the room were radioactive. He planted the chair near the sitting room entrance, as far from the kitchen as geometry would allow.
“Where the fuck izzee?” Zee Zee randomly shouted. AJ didn’t venture an opinion, drawn as he was into a conflict unfolding in a daytime television courtroom. He seemed utterly unconcerned with, or unable to remember, the colleague he had just shot in the eye.
Zee Zee’s phone rang. He yanked it out of his pocket.
I couldn’t hear the other end of the exchange over the television. Zee Zee listened and cringed. “Mauser, man—I don’t know whuh—Okay! Okay! Not on the phone, right!” More exchange. Zee Zee nodded obediently.
The call ended, leaving Zee Zee staring at the screen. He shoved the phone back in his pocket.
“He’s coming!” Zee Zee called to AJ. He reached in a pocket and pulled out a pair of pills. He slapped them into his mouth and chewed hungrily, then sat, stood, paced, jittered, sat, and muttered for what felt to me like another hour.
I had no idea what time it was. I couldn’t see my watch or the angle of the sun outside. Early afternoon? It seemed like ages had passed since Rosemary II banged on my front porch door. By now, Pidge would have made the round trip to Essex, and returned with Rosemary II and a sample of Lane’s DNA for comparison to the bloody initials found in the Tahoe. I would have thought the initials were proof enough that Lane had written them, but it seemed important to Andy and to the others that they acquire forensic confirmation. Andy would have met them at the airport to hurry the process. I liked the idea that Rosemary II was joining us in Milwaukee, closer to Lane. Or that we would be closer to Rosemary II if the worst happened. The Worst, with a capital W, crawled around the edges of my thoughts. I pushed it away, but it lingered. The only sure way to banish it was to find Lane. Finding Lane required finding Mauser. That meant floating high in a hot, stinking cash house above a panicked gangbanger.
Framed that way, I resolved to hover all day, if that’s what it took.
Zee Zee paced below me dripping sweat and fear. The combination followed him as a cloud of stink.
Another daytime television courtroom (how many ersatz judges are there?) gaveled into session for AJ. A few minutes later, during the opening commercial break, Zee Zee’s phone chirped.
“He’s here! Turn that fucking thing off!”
AJ found the TV remote and killed the device. Zee Zee jumped to the door and released the dead bolt. He didn’t bother with the peep hole. He swung the door open and stepped back deferentially.
The Mauser that walked through the door bore no resemblance to my expectations. I had pictured the television gangbanger stereotype. Tattoos mapped over every inch of skin. Leather. Weapons. Someone oozing buffed up muscle and bad attitude. I’m a farm boy who spent his life at airports and in airplanes, interacting with respectful, friendly people. The closest I’d ever been to a street gang was being intercepted by high school dance squad girls selling pizza coupons at the Essex High homecoming parade.
Mauser would not get a callback from any movie auditioning for gangbanger extras.
He was smaller than me. I guessed five-seven or eight. He cut a trim figure. Not bony. Not buffed out. Trim. He wore expensive sports gear with demure logos on a crew neck collar. His gray shirt had a vague shine and no buttons. His trousers were dark and neatly creased over expensive-looking running shoes—not the brightly colored style currently in favor. There was nothing gaudy about the man. He might have been coming from a round of golf at his country club, which was reinforced by a small athletic bag he carried, like the cash bag I had stolen. I could not see a single tattoo. He looked like a politician, the kind that puts on a sporty look for a sports event, carefully considering every fiber of it in a full-length mirror before stepping into the spotlight. He looked more like the city councilman I had met than the top street dog in the Pan D gang.
The upscale look ended at the eyes. I had a clear view, having moved to where the stairs emptied into the foyer. I faced the front door. The eyes were cold and lifeless. His eyelids hung down as if it took effort to hold them fully open. No matter what the rest of the face did, I doubted those eyes ever changed expression. Entering the room, they swept it, cataloged the contents, judged, then moved on. He ignored Zee Zee, who had stepped aside to where AJ, still wearing his shades, now stood loosely on guard at the entrance to the silent sitting room. The two of them looked like prisoners awaiting sentencing.
Mauser didn’t speak to them, nor they to him. He moved to where he could see the kitchen but didn’t enter it. He lingered over the scene, longer, I think, than was necessary to assess it. I had the feeling Mauser took something from the tableau of death and gore. Took it and absorbed it.
Zee Zee couldn’t hold his tongue any longer. “Mauser, man, it was Comber and Boogie. They grabbed the money. AJ got Comber, but Boogie, he took off. He took off with the money!”
