Apathy and Other Small Victories (21 page)

Some days there’s a song stuck in your head and you catch yourself whistling or humming it at inappropriate times, like on a crowded bus right into some stranger’s face, or when you’re standing at a urinal. It’s awkward, and it gets annoying after a while hearing that same song over and over again, but it’s really not so bad. Other days there’s a song playing everywhere you go, like a soundtrack that you can’t do a goddamn thing about. Those are the days it is clear that there are other forces at work, forces which you do not understand and over which you have no power. Those are the days men propose to their girlfriends or commit suicide or subscribe to a magazine they know they will never read or don’t get on a plane that crashes an hour later, depending on what song is playing. My song that day wasn’t really a song. It was one steady, wet blow on a didgeridoo, that long wooden gourd-looking instrument that Australian aborigines used to play right before they cannibalized an entire village or cut someone’s dick off in a voodoo ritual. It was pretty fucking ominous.

That’s why I’d bought a case of High Life and drank can after can hardly breathing. That’s why I’d left my apartment. That was the soundtrack I was spastically pedaling away from.

I picked up speed downhill on a long street that was lined with upscale restaurants and coffeeshops and specialty stores with hardly any merchandise, a trendy strip that was always crowded with annoying people who had interesting conversations over lattes and dressed their kids like little, cuter versions of themselves. It was like a high class version of Mardi Gras how they walked in and out of places and then into the street like they owned everything, which they probably did. They always gave me dirty looks when I almost ran over their children, even though there was nothing I could do because of fate and no steering. But I didn’t get any dirty looks that night, because there was nobody around. That night the street and all its buildings were deserted.

And I knew then that I was the victim of some great conspiracy. Whoever was playing the didgeridoo took a breath.

I felt the headlights behind me before I saw them. When I looked over my shoulder, my helmet wire stabbing me in the throat, I saw the car. It was about thirty yards away and closing on me fast, swinging to either side of the road. I pedaled frantically, uselessly as the chain refused to catch. I stood on the pedals and jerked the handlebars but nothing was working. I was coasting fast down the street hugging the curb, completely out of control. Whoever was playing the didgeridoo was totally freaking out, raising the pitch into inhuman registers. It sounded like Mumm-Ra’s theme song from
Thundercats
.

Then the car was beside me. It was bright orange with tinted windows. The tires were huge and the engine was gunning loud. “01” was painted across the door in black. It was the fucking General Lee from
The Dukes of Hazzard.

The whole world was still for a moment as I stood on my bike pedals and saw my reflection in the tinted window, saw my tiny helmet on top of my head, the car and I coasting down the street side by side. Then the world spun again, faster to catch up for the moment it had missed, and the General Lee swung to the far side of the street and then came tearing back at me.

What came next I will never understand.

I jumped, or I fell, from my bike right into a street sign pole, which miraculously snapped under my left armpit like we were both made of Lego. I hugged the pole and spun and spun full out like I was flying as the General Lee trampled my bike beneath its huge tires. Even as it was happening, I was singularly conscious of it being the coolest thing I had ever done in my life.

And then I stopped spinning and slid down the pole and I landed on my shoulder and hit my head and just missed breaking my face. And as I lay on the sidewalk the General Lee tooted its horn, playing a whining, dying Dixie. Then it sped off swerving down the street.

I spent the next day holed up in my salty apartment watching soap operas and writing out plans for my escape, which I immediately burned on my stove so the judge wouldn’t see me as a flight risk when he was setting my bail. The ashes of my failed, untested plans blew all over my apartment and dirtied my pretty, pretty salt.

I had left my bike mangled on the side of the road the night before without even urinating on it, and I ran home in a crouch trying to stay low, hugging my right arm because my shoulder was throbbing. I ran awkwardly, but fast. I hid behind mailboxes and telephone poles when I could. Sometimes I jaywalked. My bike helmet had twisted around backwards but I kept wearing it anyway. It had saved me from a smashed head once already that night. I hoped it wouldn’t have to again. People looked at me as I bolted past them, bent over and crying, and they kept looking as I shambled down the street. But the General Lee did not make another pass.

The adrenaline of cheating death and being cool had mostly worn off by the time I got home, but it completely fucking evaporated when I saw the blood on my neck. The wire catch in my helmet had left a gash from my Adam’s apple to the tip of my spine. My fucking brain stem could have been compromised. I looked like I owed the Russian mob money. Another few inches either way and deep and I would have been decapitated. My shoulder was already yellow from where I’d landed on it. It was probably dislocated.

But the real kick in the ass was that it could have been anyone driving that car. Never in my life had so many people had so many seemingly legitimate reasons to kill me. Marlene’s husband, Gwen, those detectives, maybe even Sooj. And that was just the people I knew. There were always other random lunatics or kids needing to murder someone before they could join a gang. But where would any of them get a
Dukes of Hazzard
General Lee replica? That was the greatest question of all. It was completely identical except for the tinted windows and the fact that it had door handles. It was the perfect novelty killing machine.

I immediately suspected Marlene’s husband, but were deaf people even allowed to drive? They couldn’t hear car horns or traffic updates on the radio. There was no way those fuckers at the DMV would give them licenses. It couldn’t have been him. And would Gwen really have cashed in her 401(k) just to buy a new car to run me down in? That wasn’t her style. She’d rather tear me apart with her bare hands. And why the fuck would Sooj want to kill me anyway? Over a saltshaker?

I couldn’t go to the police. They might’ve been the ones behind the whole thing. They had access to the repossessed vehicles lot. Maybe some moonshine-soaked hillbilly had blown his paycheck trying to be like Bo and Luke Duke and then had the car taken from him when he couldn’t make his payments. I’d be much easier to convict posthumously. I’d be an even better scapegoat dead. The publicity and their promotions were worth more to them than my life. It’s a shame when society has degenerated to the point where that’s a legitimate possibility.

No, I was on my own. And this was bigger than whoever was driving that car. Bigger than the General Lee. First Marlene gets murdered, then somebody tries to kill me. But why? Why? What was the conspiracy? Was it about drugs? Women? Power? Revenge? What tied me to Marlene?

Doug. It was Doug. He was behind the assassinations. He’d freaked out when Marlene broke up with him and he killed her, and now he was trying to kill me for some reason. And he was going to frame some hillbilly for it. He was a criminal mastermind. But how could I prove it? The semen sample the cops found on Marlene. If it was in her ass, then Doug was her killer.

I needed to find out where that semen was lodged. Do they print that kind of thing in the obituaries? Could I go to the coroner and slip him a twenty? Would he think I was a perv? Would the detectives tell me? How do you even bring something like that up?

You don’t. Whatever the circumstances, no matter what’s at stake, you just don’t. I can’t usually think of anything worth dying for, but I can say to this day that I’d rather get murdered than have to ask somebody if there’s semen in a deceased deaf woman’s ass.

And Doug was no criminal mastermind. Men with strawberry blond hair aren’t capable of that kind of calculation. Fuck, I didn’t know what was going on.

I’d have to do some research. Start with the details, start with what I knew, and then the whole thing would come into focus on its own. It was like those stupid jigsaw puzzles that I was never any good at, except this time I didn’t even have the picture on the front of the box to guide me. Okay, first I had to find out who’d just tried to kill me. That was fairly urgent. Once I knew that, it would lead me to Marlene’s killer, if they weren’t the same person. And then, all would be revealed.

So, I needed to check the papers for car listings, see where somebody could rent or buy a General Lee. That’s where I’d begin. Then I would conduct surveillance. I would use the Internet somehow. I used to watch
Magnum, P.I.
every day after school—it came on right after
The Facts of Life
—and I’d read a few
Encyclopedia Brown
mysteries and done book reports on them too. I knew how to solve things. And I would. Right after I talked to Bryce’s wife.

The only weapon I had in my apartment was a dull knife, but I took it with me when I went to see her the next day. I was an hour early but I didn’t care. I had to talk to someone, and I could trust her. At least I thought I could. If I couldn’t, that’s what the knife was for. It was a butter knife, the kind that’s on the tiny plate at fancy restaurants, the one that looks like the puffed out sail of a small boat. They were very good for spreading. If it got ugly I’d pull it on her. Then I could slink away in shame as she was doubled over laughing at me.

I took the stairs, and when I came out on her floor my stomach fell into my ass. Bryce and Mobo were at the end of the hallway. They were standing in front of Bryce’s door, huddled together, conspiring. It was a conspiracy. I was too far away to hear anything, but Mobo was doing all the talking. Bryce was just nodding mutely. He looked sad. Then Mobo reached into his black leather trenchcoat and took out a small package wrapped in brown paper and handed it to Bryce, and Bryce shoved an envelope towards him that Mobo slipped into his coat with one fluid, practiced motion. He started talking again but Bryce jerked his head up and saw me standing dumb and fascinated at the end of the hall. He said something quick to Mobo, and Mobo looked over at me and smiled. Bryce ducked out the side door clutching the package to his stomach as Mobo walked down the hall towards me with his arms out, his trenchcoat flowing behind him.

“Shane!” He dragged my name out, sounding happy to see me. “My cholo. What’s the word?”

“Hey Mobo,” I said, gripping the butter knife behind my back.

“What do you say champa?”

“You late on your rent again?” And I nodded towards the door that had just closed behind Bryce.

“Always my man, always,” he said, and laughed. “You never came back up to see me.” But he said it playfully, like I hadn’t offended him at all.

“Yeah, I’ve been pretty busy.”

“I’ve heard.” And he looked at me like he knew something. I didn’t like it. “Listen,” he said, and leaned in close like he’d been doing with Bryce. My arm tensed but I didn’t stab or spread him. “The way things are going around here you might want to come talk to me soon.”

“Why’s that?”

“Opportunity monchuro, opportunity. Everything’s a business, whether we like it or not. And everybody’s either a partner, or a competitor. We all got to choose sides sometimes chamumbo.”

“Is that what you and Bryce were doing? Choosing sides?”

He smiled.

“Attorney-client privilege my friend. We all have to pick our horses, you know what I’m saying?”

I didn’t have a goddamn clue.

“Yeah, you know how it is,” he said, and smiled at me. “Things are changing chamanga. They’re changing fast. I just want to make sure a chupo like you doesn’t end up on the outside.”

“Thanks,” I said, wondering who the fuck this guy was and what he was offering.

“There’s money out there to be made cobrana, there’s things to be had if you want them bad enough. We’re still playing by the law of the west out here, every day. That cowboy shit never dies. Every day pucho, every day.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about it. “Maybe I’ll stop by later on and see what you’ve got for me.”

He clapped his hands.

“Now you’re in the game gambilo. To las minas muertes, that’s how it has to be!” And he pointed at me with his fingers on either side of his head like he was a bull about to charge, or like he was giving me the evil eye, or like he was a fucking imbecile. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, then moved past me into the stairwell, his leather coat flowing behind him.

Things had to be bad if I was considering taking this dipshit seriously. But things, things were bad.

I waited until he had gone up the stairs before I walked down the hall and knocked, because no matter what else is going on in your life adultery should always be discreet. She opened the door in her robe and narrowed her eyes at me, annoyed, and I remembered that I was an hour early. But she still went into the bedroom, and I followed. And after some halting, tentative, terrible sex that didn’t last very long at all we laid on her bed and she smoked a cigarette. I did not. I would have refused even if she’d offered me one. I felt more like a guppy than the majestic, sexual tuna I thought I had become.

She was smoking just to get it over with, sucking in long and then blowing right out like she was gulping down a drink she didn’t want. I was ashamed. I showed up early and finished early and I’d be told to leave before my time had even really begun. I had nowhere else to go.

“I hurt my shoulder,” I said, hoping it would somehow explain everything.

The tip of her cigarette glowed orange in the dark. I waited.

“All right, I don’t want to freak you out,” I said, and took a breath, “but someone is trying to kill me.”

“Is it Bryce?”

Jesus fucking christ. I hadn’t thought of that.