The Bighead (30 page)

“
You son of a bitch,”
Halford muttered, then confessed, “All right, I’ll level with you.
But I wasn’t lying. Just call it a minor circumvention of
facts.”

“
Great. Bullshit by any
other name is still—”

“
I ought to fuckin’
transfer you!” Halford suddenly jumped up, pounded his fist, and
bellowed.

“
Watch that foul language,
Bob.”

“
You’re
way
out of line pulling a stunt like
this!”

“
Relax.” Alexander shrugged
in his seat, puffed his ’rette. “Just tell me the real scoop, will
ya?”

Halford sat back down, fuming. “We
waived filing with the county so they wouldn’t send an inspector.
We didn’t want a county inspector out there because the fiscal year
ends in April. We said we closed the place in April instead of July
because we didn’t want to have to pay hospice taxes for the
following year. The Church isn’t tax-exempt on everything, boy
genius.”

“
All right, I can dig
that,” Alexander agreed. “But there’s more, so just have out with
it. Hospice taxes, I’ll admit, I didn’t know about those, but
I
do
know that the
transport of intensive-care patients, such as
terminally ill priests,
must be
legally filed with the county health commissioners office. I called
them too, Bob. You guys never filed shit.”

Halford’s shoulders slumped, like a
poker player whose bluff had been called.

“
What’s the real reason,
Bob? There’s no record of any of Wroxeter’s in-patients being moved
after the place was closed. You guys did this waiver bit, not to
beat
hospice
taxes, but to prevent a county inspector from going out there,
because you were afraid he’d see something. I want to know what it
was you didn’t want him to see.”

Halford was grinding his teeth,
wringing his hands. “There was still evidence on the premise. We
didn’t want a county title inspector going out there and filing a
police report.”

Alexander gaped. “A
police
report?”

“
A
homicide
report. Christ, Tom. Why
can’t you just do what you’re told? I sent you out there to get the
place ready to reopen. Twenty years is long enough that no one’s
going to ask questions. But back then? That’s just not the kind of
thing that the Catholic Church could afford being
publicized.”

Now Alexander was lost.
“You couldn’t afford to have
what
publicized?”

Halford threw his hands up in disgust.
“The nuns were murdered,” he said.

—
| — | —

FOURTEEN

(I)

“
Make me wanna holler!” the
voice cracked.

Jerrica shirked in the sun.
Yes, this was the bad part of town, all right.
What am I doing? I must be crazy.

Federal Street existed as a
vanishing point into desolation and strewn bits of litter; the
street itself reeked, and Jerrica thought she could even
see
its fetor wafting off
the asphalt with the heat waves. Dark faces peered at her from
rowhouse porches.

Jerrica was terrified.

“
Uh-
huh.
Yeah.” The black man approached
from an alley that seemed to gush a distilled stench of urine. He
was tall, lanky, but with biceps like veined baseballs, shoulders
like sculpture. Jeans, a tight t-shirt that read NWA. Quite
uncharacteristically, though, he wore a huge afro, like something
from the 70s. Uh-
huh,
” he repeated. “I say she just make me wanna holler ’cos I
ain’t
never
see a
white woman so fine-lookin’.”

“
Hi,” Jerrica said rather
stupidly. Only now did she imagine how preposterous this must look,
how crazy. A young white woman, in cutoffs and a halter, walking
alone through a ghetto.

“
I’se kin tell, sho’,” he
said. He squinted at her, cut a smile like a knife blade. “I’se kin
tell whats you need.”

“
Yeah?” she said, trying to
sound unafraid.

“
I’se kin tell juss by
lookin’ at yo eyes, and what’choo want, lets me guess. Ice, you
want Ice, I gots it, have you flyin’ fo’ ten hours. Or how’s about
some top-dro’ Rock? A ten-piece, a twenty? I gots it.”

This truth wilted her even
more, that he could
see
the desperation in her eyes. “I want blow,” she
said. “I’ve got two hundred dollars.”

The smile beamed. The big hands rubbed
together, like black ferrets tussling. “An’ I’se got blow too, lots
of it. Come on, over here ta mys office.”

Jerrica quailed; his hand bid the
alley. “Can’t we just do it right here?”

“
You crazy, bitch? You
wanna buy drugs from me in the middle’a the street?
Shee-it.”

The man had a point. “All right,” she
agreed, and then they walked off the sun-drenched
street.

What am I doing, what am I
doing, what am I…
The thought tossed round
and round in her head. She’d never bought drugs in such an environ,
but— She knew she didn’t care. She needed it. The alley’s darkness
enshrouded her but lent no relief to the heat. The piss-stench
slapped her in the face; she had to breathe through her
mouth.

A hand went to his pocket. “Gots ta
hold yo’ green first.”

Unhesitantly, she gave him the money,
and then out came his hand.

Oh, God.

Suddenly she felt as though
she’d chugged scalding water: burning fear bloating her belly,
spreading. It was a small gun that filled his hand now, not the
cocaine she craved. The realization smacked tangily as the
urine-fetor.
I’m going to be robbed,
raped, murdered…

“
Please,” was the only word
she could say.

His knife-grin never
abated. His eyes looked like white lights set into the dark face.
“When a white junkie bitch come into
my
town fo’ blow, well, that what she
gotta do, catch my drift? She gotta
blow.
”

“
I’m begging you,” she
croaked. Her mouth, in an instant, felt devoid of all moisture.
“Just, please, don’t—”

The gun raised its
interruption. “What kind’a dumb white bitch’re you anyshow?
I’m
the Mack Daddy on
this street. This
my
’hood, baby, and you
my
bitch right now. I bust a cap in a nigger’s ass
juss fo’
lookin’
at me crooked. But a
white
bitch? Shee-it? Get down on them white knees an’
suck.”

He already had it out. In the alley’s
gulf of shadow, it looked like a dropping snake, a faint shiny line
down its side. Trembling, Jerrica lowered to her knees, touched it,
and nearly gagged. Now the alley’s stench of urine seemed like
perfume; instead, the man’s crotch seemed to bark with a stench of
its own. He mustn’t have washed in a week or more. Jerrica wanted
to bend over right then and there, and vomit.

The gun nudged her head.
“This li’l thing? It don’t make no noise.” He cocked it. “Suck.
Tredell need a
good
suck.”

The stench was evil, but the taste was
worse: sweat and dirt and old semen from previous engagements. She
took it into her mouth; it felt feverishly hot. “Mmmmmm, yo,” he
remarked. Breathing through her nose only amplified this crude
horror. Had she ever smelled anything so revolting in her life?
Probably not. But that’s what this was all about—her life. She
could lose her life…

It came erect quickly, a
hair-trigger reflex; suddenly that drooping snake had sprung alive,
fat in her mouth. She felt divided immediately: terror versus
resolve.
If I want to have any hope at all
of being alive an hour from now, I better suck this guy’s cock real
good,
she told herself. Not an easy task,
though, with the barrel of a gun to one’s head. It was all she
could do not to retch when her lips encircled the glans, sucked it
up, and pushed down. There was a significant foreskin, she noted
right off, and it was
filled
with pockets of bitter smegma. “Lotta cheese in
there fo’ ya, honey,” he commented, chuckling. “Don’ts worry, a
li’l cheese ain’t gonna hurt ya.” She sucked it all off, squeezed
her eyes tighter than brick-seams, and let the human paste dissolve
in her mouth.
Don’t puke, Jerrica. Don’t
puke.
“Yeah, that’s straightup
knob-polishin’, fo’ a white ho,” this Tredell was kind enough to
compliment. “Shit, goddamn, git off yo’ ass an’ jam!”

Jerrica felt like she was dying. This
would be her hell, wouldn’t it? To eat the smegma out of this
dope-dealer’s foreskin for all time. The crotch-stench steamed into
her flared nostrils; then he instructed, “Get a finger up my
asshole, bitch. Make me come better.”

Repulsed, she didn’t hesitate. The gun
barrel was drawing circles in her hair. She wiped some drool off
her lips onto her middle finger, then burrowed the finger up the
rank cleft, slipped it up his anus.

“
Yeah, baby.
Yeah…”

Her political correctness
as a journalist fractured.
You
motherfucking dirty criminal nigger. I wish I had the balls to bite
this black cock off and spit it in your face!

Fantasy, though. Of course.

He came rather quickly, but to Jerrica
it seemed more like an hour of this. The gun barrel raked her head
as his hips flinched. “Suck that whip, baby. Suck out all that
spunk…”

Jerrica, in her expertise
regarding male sexual anatomy, had long since noted that, like all
people, all men were different when they came. Some spurted
abruptly, some shot the freight of their loins in long, long
strings, while others merely dribbled. Tredell, instead,
oozed
—not hot shots to
the back of her throat—slowly pouring a voluminous ration of semen
onto her tongue, one spurtle after the next. When it was over, she
felt as though she had a mouthful of curdled egg-drop soup. She
couldn’t wait to spit it out, but—

“
Swallows it all up, ho.
See, Tredell like the idea’a all that good gangsta niggah spunk
deep in yo’ white-bitch gut.”

Her eyes crossed at the
order.
Just…do it.
And then her throat audibly clicked when she opened her
throat, gulped, and forced it all down like so much thin
snot.
Don’t puke,
she pleaded with herself again. She fell back against the
alley’s brick wall, her finger slipping out of his rectum, her
other hand uncaringly landing in some unnamed slime. A shadow, to
her left, skittered: a rat. She didn’t care. Something like a long,
runny worm seemed to settle in her belly.

“
Yeah, that a good li’l
white bitch.” Her accomplice, then, stepped forward and wiped his
cock off in her pristine blond hair. “Tredell always live large,”
he said. “Boo-ya.”

It was over now, but was it really?
What next? He could kill her back here and no one would ever
know.

“
Please,” she hacked.
“Please don’t kill me.”

“
Shee-it,” he said,
standing high above her. “I ain’ts gonna kill ya, baby. You a good
customer.” His smile never faded; it seemed to actually cut into
the alley’s hot dark. Then he tossed her a small plastic bag of
cocaine.

“
Come back when you need
some mo’. Ask fo’ Tredell.”

(II)

“
All of them,” Halford
said. Now he lit a cigarette himself, rare for the monsignor. A
tendril of smoke coiled up. “Nuns, for God’s sake.
Murdered.”

Alexander knew something
was fishy about this whole mess—
now
he knew what it was. “How come you didn’t tell
me?”

“
No need to,
Tom—”

“
No
need
?”

“
No.” Halford’s response
was adamant. “You’re just like me, Tom, just like all of us. We
serve the Church as the Church sees fit. We don’t ask questions. Am
I right or wrong?”

Alexander bobbed his head.
“You’re right, fine. But…shit.
Murder?
And what about the
in-pats?”

“
There were only four or
five in-patients at the time, all terminal priests, and they were
all murdered too, quite violently.”

Alexander didn’t ask for
the details. But there was one detail he
had
to ask. “The nuns, the sisters.
Was their evidence of sexual assault?”

“
They were raped in a big
way,” the monsignor replied, more colloquially. “All of them. But
there’s one thing…”

“
What?”

“
Two of the nuns, the
abbess as a matter of fact, and her Sister Superior, their names
were Joyclyn and Grace, respectively—”

Alexander frowned.
What, I care what their names were?
Halford had a talent for making a short story
long. “What about them?”