Halfway House (27 page)

“Who’s your boss?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Lucy shook his head and applied the cable once more. Arcs again shot down the metal bars of the ladder, sweeping across the Salvadoran’s face in spidery lines of pain. He jerked madly at his restraints, shaking the ladder. The bolts that affixed it to the wood of the dock loosened enough to let rust fall like sprinkles of blood into the ocean.

After a three count, Lucy released.

“Who the fuck sent you?”

“Mal Maningo,” Cheche wheezed, saliva clogging his throat. Already smoke had begun to waft up from his clothes.

“Why’d you come to San Pedro?”

The banger made a face and spat toward Lucy, the effort falling miserably short. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

“I will.” And then Lucy touched the cable to the metal and held it with both hands, staring off into the night through the shower of sparks that rose and fell like a water fountain in an Italian villa. Somewhere his father was being treated in a hospital room. Somewhere Split was being hauled around inside a plastic bag. And somewhere Laurie was being embalmed for her funeral tomorrow. He knew they were connected somehow. The violence, the invasion of MS 13, the chaos that had been occurring in San Pedro, had all been going on for longer than he’d realized. What had he been doing playing at being a leader? Fuck it. He was Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Who was he to be leading when he couldn’t even keep track of what was happening right in front him?

“Lucy!”

He turned in slow motion. Trujillo was an inch from him, screaming at the top of his lungs. Over his shoulder he could see his men rattled, fear doing the flight-or-fight dance on their faces. He returned his gaze to Trujillo, who screamed his name again.

“Lucy!”

Everything snapped back into real time and the sounds of the Salvadoran’s screaming and Trujillo’s yells and his own soul blackening struck him like a brick. He stepped back and dropped the cable. Trujillo caught it before it hit the dock. The stench of burned skin and hair assaulted him, reaching into his abdomen and tickling his last meal. He turned full circle, the world tilt-a-whirling. He staggered, then righted himself by grabbing the ladder. The metal was hot to the touch, almost burning.

The Salvadoran was hyperventilating. His face and arms were seared and charred. Sections of skin had crisped. Smoke curled from his mouth, hair, ears and fingers poking from beneath the chains. Closest to Lucy were the man’s feet. The toenails had blackened around the edges and curled. The stench of cooked meat hit him then, and he could see the chain still slightly aglow.

“How long?” he managed to say through dry lips.

“Twenty seconds,” Trujillo said.

Suddenly the lights went out as someone cut the power to the cable. The headlights from the cars backlit his men. In the dark, the chain glow was evident, lighting the man in a glowing nimbus.

Trujillo climbed down the ladder straddling the body. He continued down into the water until his face was even with the face of the banger. They exchanged mumbled words. The man’s lips cracked with the effort. Blood began to drip from the corners of his eyes.

Trujillo looked up once, then nodded, reached low into the water where his boot was, and with no preamble plunged a knife into the man’s temple. He wrenched it back and forth brutally. When he removed it and the man’s life left him in a rush of air and blood, Trujillo threw the knife far into the water.

Trujillo climbed back to the surface. He jerked his head for Manolo and the gang to remove the body, then gave Lucy a look that made a cold wind blow through his soul. He held the gaze, the eyes telling Lucy that he’d gone too far and would never be the same. The minute shake of his head was an accentuation of how Lucy would now live, each day, each hour, trying to meet a standard he’d invented, one which would make him the man he wanted to be, but never undo the crime against the soul he’d committed here this night.

Then Trujillo lowered his eyes. “He said the Porn Man.”

“The Porn Man? Is that all he said?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.” Lucy spat on the ground. “Tell me what else he said.”

Trujillo glanced into the night, and with a frown on his face, he replied, “He said he wanted his daddy.”

Lucy shook his head and thought of Laurie and Bobby and the rest of the universe. It was funny how fathers were so hard to come by even though one’s birth was predicated upon their very necessary participation. Were fathers that special? Were they worth killing for? Worth dying for?

I want my daddy
, the Salvadoran had said.

“Don’t we all.” Thinking of his own father, Lucy turned and walked back to this car. “Don’t we
fucking
all.”

*  *  *

Once the wardens had secured his Velzy, they led Kanga inside. The hallways were thinner in the building than what seemed normal. Twice they had to pass someone as the two wardens, one in front and one behind, led him to his room. Each time the person had to find a doorway and step into the recess along the wall.

Odd musty wallpaper with yellow umbrellas covered the upper half of the hallways. A scuffed green wainscoting made from painted wooden slats covered the lower half. The floor was grimy linoleum of indeterminate color and age. Green, brown and yellow fungus grew on the floor and out from beneath the baseboards. Here and there a mushroom sprouted tightly against the wall. Every six feet bare hundred-watt bulbs dangled from frayed cords, illuminating everything in a stark, painful glare.

The stairs leading to the basement had once been white but the center had worn to the shade of dried blood, as if years of use had released the natural wood underneath. A large area contained metal chairs arrayed in rows before an altar, which dominated the space. The altar stood four feet tall and was covered by a frayed and yellowed lace tablecloth. Decomposing flowers surrounded a white fifty-gallon barrel centerpiece. A simple red cross had been painted on the front of the barrel. The paint must not have been dry whenever it was applied, because the edges had dripped so that it looked like the cross was bleeding.

The wardens ushered him past the altar to the first of a series of rooms. The tall door was so thin he had to turn sideways to enter. They stood on either side of the entrance to make room for him.

When he flipped on the light, roaches ran for cover. A large black beetle, not as athletic as its brethren, marched stately beneath the single twin bed that occupied the majority of the windowless room. Like in the hallway above, a single dull bulb dangled from a frayed length of brown cord, illuminating a mattress with a brown stain covering the half closest to the door. He smelled an odd combination of old bedpans and cotton candy.

He turned back to the wardens, but their lobotomized-smiles deterred him from asking questions. For the hundredth time in the last hour he wondered what he was doing. He’d traded a thousand dollar surfboard—more importantly, the only gift he’d ever received from Laurie—for the chance to talk to her, be with her, while her soul transited to heaven. Part of him felt as stupid as ever, but another part, the nonsensical father part, hoped the halfway house magic that everyone talked about was really true.

All he had to do was sleep.

The mattress was anything but inviting. Someone had either died or been born on it...perhaps many someones. Still, he’d slept in worse places. The life of a surf bum wasn’t the Ritz Carlton. He’d been to countless beach parties where he’d fallen asleep on sand that had been pissed in and puked on. He’d awoken in the surf, algae and dead fish covering him, his nose inches from a seal whose head had been eaten by a shark. Compared to those experiences, this was nothing.

He stepped into the room. He turned at the sound of the door starting to close. A warden thrust a forty ounce into his hand and a sack into the other. Then, with a wink and a smile, he shut and locked the door. Kanga stared at it for a moment, then looked into the bag.

A sandwich from the corner market.

Hunger took him over. He sat on the bed and tore into the sandwich. He fought with the clear plastic wrapper, finally ripping it to shreds in his haste. He inhaled half of the roast beef sandwich, recognizing the stale bread, old cheddar and wilted lettuce, but not caring.

As he chewed, he examined the room more closely. The walls were covered with so much grime and mold that he couldn’t tell what color they’d once been. He could see the scrawls of previous occupants still faintly visible. A hole had been dug in the floor in the corner by the back wall. No more than six inches across, it descended into darkness. By the black and brown smears down the wall and the green stains around the concrete edges, there was no mistaking how this was to be used.

He ate the rest of his sandwich, and washed it down with a long draught, the malt liquor biting and snapping all the way down.

God, he was tired. How long had he been going at it? Three days?

He finished the forty, placed it in the bag along with the wrapper, and lay back on the bed. He kept one foot on the floor, but let his other leg rest on the mattress. He held the bag on his stomach with one hand, and put his other arm behind his head as a pillow.

He closed his eyes and attuned himself to the room. Soon his heartbeat filled his ears. His breathing slowed. The only other thing he heard was the sound of the beetle tapping on the concrete floor.

Tapping.

Tapping.

Then a grunt.

His eyes snapped open as his heart began to race. Was someone here? Lying on his back he looked around, but saw nothing but the windowless walls and the locked door. Had it been a dream? Had he even been asleep?

He closed his eyes and allowed his breathing to slow. He was almost asleep when he heard it again.

A grunt, followed by the sound of dirt falling.

He sat straight up, gripping the can inside the bag, ready to use it as his only weapon. His gaze scanned the room. Still, there was nothing there—unless, of course, it was under the bed.

He jerked his foot from the floor and rose to a kneeling position. He held the bag like a baseball pitcher, ready to fast ball it at whatever was beneath him. He looked along the edges of the bed, hoping to God he wouldn’t see anything creep out from beneath it. As irrational as he knew he was acting, if something were to crawl out from under his bed at that moment, he knew he’d lose it.

Then he heard it again.

But it wasn’t coming from under his bed. It was coming from the hole. Was something
down there
?

Kanga leapt off the mattress and pressed his back against the wall, then half knelt and peered beneath the bed. Other than the large black beetle, he didn’t see a thing.

As he returned his gaze to the corner, he saw a hand reach up and grip the edge of the hole. This was followed by another, which was followed by the top of a head covered with black hair. But the head was wider than the hole. There was no way for it to make it.

His heart zoomed to his throat and his breathing stopped, as the thing beneath the floor grunted with the strain of a mighty heave, and its head popped through.

Kanga pressed his back hard against the door. His eyes shot wide. His mouth flung open. He held the bag to his chest, the only thing he could find to hide behind. But the face was far from fearsome. He didn’t know what he’d expected, perhaps a red-skinned, horned devil, but the Japanese man with the hundred dollar smile wasn’t it.

His face was wedged tightly against the hole, pinning his hands in place. Still, as Kanga watched, one of his hands managed to rotate until it was palm up and beneath the smile, a finger bent backwards in the universal sign of
come here.

I don’t think so.

The Japanese man spoke a few words in his native language, then with a last beam of his dazzling smile, pulled his head back in the hole. All that was left were his hands. One hand disappeared, leaving the hand with the finger that bent forward and back, forward and back. Then that, too, was gone.

Fear held Kanga in place until curiosity convinced him to relax. He crept to the hole and knelt. He tried to peer inside, but all was black except for an area a few feet out of his vision that glowed with unknown illumination. The hole smelled of earth and sea.

In a moment of insane courage, Kanga thrust his free hand into the opening and waved it around, then jerked it back out. Nothing happened. He did it once more, leaving it there a micromoment longer. He leaned down and tried desperately to see the lighted area. Who was the Japanese man? And what was he doing down the hole?

The impulse took him hard and fast. He dropped the bag and gripped both edges of the hole with his hands. Then, ignoring the stench and putrid calcification, he thrust his head into the hole.

At first, he couldn’t push through. The concrete bit painfully into his skin. Try as he might, his head just wouldn’t budge. But as he adjusted the position of his legs and his grip on the edges, he felt some give. He sucked in air, then breathed it out until nothing was left.

Pop!

He pushed through into the darkness. But he’d entered the wrong way. The light was behind him. He saw nothing except the outline of tree roots and the front bumper of a 1976 corvette.