Jog On Fat Barry (15 page)

Some people believe fact is often stranger than fiction. Maybe that’s true, and then again, maybe it’s not. It would be hard to argue however, that a fact isn’t the more interesting of the two. Of course, fact to one person may well be fiction to another. Take this, for example: In August 1914, during a battle at Mons in Belgium, greatly outnumbered French and British troops retreating from the Germans were astounded when the soldiers pursuing them suddenly began to retreat themselves. The Germans would later claim they saw thousands of troops, even though the French and British forces numbered no more than two regiments: six hundred men at best. Both sides swore an army of angels had appeared. George Washington said he’d seen an angel at Valley Forge; Charles Lindbergh claimed a divine presence had accompanied him across the Atlantic, while three golden-winged angels appeared to Russian cosmonauts during a flight in space. Take from it what you will: fact or fiction. It doesn’t really make much difference to me one way or the other.

The door squeaked as it was slowly pushed open, and the pale yellow glow of a lamp in the hall illuminated the shape of three men standing in the doorway. A shaft of light cutting across the room fell onto a single bed. It stirred a mass of brown hair veiling a face on a pillow. The hair shifted to reveal the face it belonged to: Leena Plum. Leena opened her eyes, sleepily first, but then wide in fear. She gasped for air as the men charged across the room, and backed up against the wall as they clawed at her body. They tore off her pyjamas; wedged open her legs; reached in between them. She tried fighting them off as one lowered his pants. He threw himself onto her and she howled as he rammed inside. The lamp in the hall began to flicker off and on… on and off. When it flickered on for the third time, Leena was gone and I was in her place. My screams had replaced hers; those were my fists beating against the man who was on top of me, fucking me. When the light flickered off and on for the fourth time, Leena was back in her bed, and the sounds of her own screams again filled the room.

The detective stood up and stepped away from the table He had heard enough.

“Bullshit always sounds the same,” he said, “no matter how you wrap it up. I’m not buying any messenger of God baloney today. But I will buy you and another sick fuck fighting over a thirteen-year-old girl.”

“No, you got this thing all wrong,” I said. “I was just getting her a glass of milk and—”

“We’re done here,” he shot back, cutting me off.

I watched him walk toward the door, and, as he did, an electric current shot through me. I sat upright; couldn’t breathe; gooseflesh crawled across my skin. It was happening again, the exact same thing that happened in the diner when I saw Leena getting raped. Sweat covered my forehead; beads of it raced down my back. The room grew dark. Everything went hazy and silent for a few moments. And then there was nothing at all: just a vast empty void. Moments after that, I saw something but it wasn’t clear. It was opaque, like I was seeing it through tracing paper. There was a name: Wisdom. The name was on a box: a mailbox. I saw a knife. The blade was speckled with blood; wedged between a wall and a baseboard. A moment later I was back outside the void and someone was pounding on my chest. I opened my eyes; saw the detective; heard his voice. His words were faint and distant.

“Breathe, you fucker. Breathe!”

There is nothing cool about being a superhero. Superheroes are sad fucks that live in the outer limits of society. Those are simply the rules, pure and simple. Track record to date was like this: I’d been fucked twice and knew damn well the fucking wasn’t about to stop. The guy who sucker punched me was named James Venedict Wisdom. He had a stable of ladies selling themselves for him, and had banked on Leena Plum joining that stable in the not too distant future. Wisdom was the name I saw on the mailbox. It was his knife wedged in the baseboard. Someone had been murdered and I told the detective what I knew about it. One minute he was giving me the kiss of life and the next I was telling him about a body buried in the woods.

“You say you can see these things in your head?” he asked.

We were in a squad car heading east.

“Just like I’m watching it on TV,” I answered.

The detective’s name was Shanley. He didn’t really believe what I was telling him but was intrigued enough to come along for the ride. For a while neither of us spoke. Then the car passed a lone tree on the ridge of a hill.

“Stop here,” I said.

The tree had no branches: just like the one I’d seen in my head. Shanley swerved off the road and parked. We got out. He popped the trunk and took out a shovel. I walked off into the woods; Shanley followed. The scrub was dense: we had to clamber over twisted up roots and duck under overhanging branches. Shanley hacked through the undergrowth as best he could, but we still sank up to our ankles in mud, and got bitten by swarms of midges that flew about our heads.

“There,” I said, pointing.

We were in a small clearing surrounded by saplings. Shanley pushed the shovel into the ground. The soil was black and rich with worms. After a few moments the blade struck something. Shanley got down on his knees: began brushing dirt off the child’s skull he’d discovered. The skin was dry and leathery, and matted with clumps of hair. Shanley looked up at me. He was cautious, maybe even frightened. He wiped his hands on his pants and drew his gun.

“Put those on,” he said, tossing a set of handcuffs at me.

“You’re kidding me,” I said. “You can’t possibly think—”

“Put the fucking cuffs on,” he barked.

I slipped the cuffs over my wrists.

“I went too fast. Told you too much too—”

Before I could finish, Shanley swung the shovel and a clank rang out as the blade struck my knees. I squealed; then crumpled to the ground. Shanley paid me no mind: he was too busy securing the crime scene. I somehow got myself jammed between two rotting branches and couldn’t breathe. My face was half-buried in decomposing leaves. I tried to wriggle free but couldn’t. My hands were wedged between my jacket and the forest floor. I tried calling out to Shanley but my cries just got lost in the dirt.

Mavis Hutchinson became the first woman to run across the United States in 1978. Nineteen seventy-eight was also the year Shanley lost his virginity, and I told him so when he pulled my face up out of the dirt. Mavis ran 2871 miles from LA to New York City in sixty-nine days, and Shanley made love to a woman named Brandy on her living room rug. Brandy lived on the same street that Shanley did. She was also married, and drove a Mercury Bobcat. Shanley had been watching her for a year. He’d hide in the bushes and peep through her bathroom window. And Brandy knew he was doing it too, because she never drew the curtains when she took a shower.

I witnessed Shanley make his dash at manhood. All eighty-four seconds of it. And the sensations I experienced then were the exact same sensations I had when Leena was raped, or when I saw the dead girl in the woods. First came the jolt: it was like an electric shock; my skin crawled with gooseflesh; sweat pooled under my arms and behind my knees. Everything went dark for a few moments. Then I saw Shanley on the rug doing Brandy. Then I was Brandy and Shanley was doing me. But this time it was different. I wasn’t frozen with terror, and I didn’t feel any pain.

“You screwed her once, only once,” I told him, as I tried to catch my breath. “Because the next time you looked through the window, Brandy had drawn the curtains.”

“Who… and
what
are you?” Shanley asked.

“But you did see her again,” I went on. “It was six years later and she was divorced. It was inside an apartment on Fountain. You were with the West Hollywood Division unit that responded to the call.”

“She was in the hall,” Shanley said, softly. “Congealed blood had pooled around her skull.”

“Her boyfriend was the doer.”

“Domestic violence,” he said. “Four women give their lives up to it every day.”

“Yeah,” I said back. “Brandy was number three that Wednesday.”

The pain woke me at midday. I’d slept twenty hours; couldn’t remember how many Demerol I’d swallowed. Backache is one ruthless motherfucker. I blamed my parents. It was a genetic abnormality. But it was my own fault I’d become addicted to painkillers. I looked out the window. The sky was overcast. I looked in the mirror. My lip was swollen and still throbbed. I inspected the stitches: there were seven. My left ear was still ringing and my kneecaps were tingling. The paramedic who stitched me up said my patellas were contused; recommended I see a specialist. I took a Demerol; drank some coffee; looked in the paper.
Chilly Doyle
was playing at the Megaplex. I thought if I was feeling better in an hour or so, I might catch it. I wondered how Shanley was feeling. I could still see his expression as he removed the cuffs. He was scared: worried about what he might be getting himself into. On the drive back to town, he said he’d finally tracked down the man who bludgeoned Brandy to death.

“Got shot twice taking him out,” he had said.

Shanley got the Medal of Valour and was promoted to the vice division of the Detective Bureau. But I knew that already. When the phone rang I thought it might be him, but it was the principal at Eastman.