The Skunge (17 page)

Safe.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Back in the poisonous yellow kitchen, they dropped the woman into a chair, ankles and wrists zip-tied, and threw the two duct-taped men down on the dirty linoleum floor.

"Class is in session, boys and girls," Sonch said. He used the sword as a pointing stick,
thwock
-ing the flat of the blade down on the counter, sending a fine powder of into the air. "First lesson: this county—hell, this whole part of the
state—
is off limits to you and your meth shit. Is that clear?"

The woman's voice was every bit as screechy and ragged as Arneson expected. She snorted laughter. "You think you can stop meth
now
? That ship has sailed, man. You going to bust through the doors of every crank house and muscle them out? That's a laugh."

"Are you saying I can't?" Sonch pointed the tip of the sword at her nose until she crossed her eyes to follow it. "Because believe you me, sister, I can, and I will."

Rennie, wriggling on the floor, grunted through his duct-tape gag. Arneson leaned down and tore it away. "I can help! I can help you guys, I swear. I know where most of the other crank houses are in Santa Colima, and a lot of the other ones in the county. But please, you gotta get Pedro and me to a doctor. I got asthma, and I lost my inhaler somewhere, and Pedro, he's hurt bad. If he dies, I'm going to be in so much shit with my family. They'll hate me forever, man." Except for the red clown stripe where the tape had been ripped off, his face was ghost-pale.

"Oh, shut up, Rennie. You don't know shit; you think people are gonna tell your dumb ass anything?" The woman had a runner of blood seeping from her right nostril; Arneson couldn't seem to keep his eyes off it.

"Oh, fuck
you
Carla, you skank."

"Asshole."

"Bitch!"

Pedro's eyes stuttered back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match.

"Enough!" Arneson slammed his uninjured arm into the wall hard enough to shake the trailer. He stepped to Rennie and jammed his boot down on the other man's throat until he spluttered and started turning purple. "Both of you, shut the fuck up." He turned to the woman. "Where did you get the baby?"

She smirked at Rennie, but after one look at Arneson's face, the smile wilted like old grapes. "I don't know. Jescoe brought it."

Arneson closed his eyes. He had already guessed as much; these losers could barely find a decent car to drive, much less a dead infant to use as a drug mule. The expected answer, and the worst possible one.

Rennie wheezed a breath and spat on the floor as Arneson stepped closer to Carla. Her eyes went wide and sexual as he loomed over her. He took her chin in his hand and squeezed until she whimpered. "You better be giving me the truth."

She stared at him, eyes deadly-fascinated, like a rat watching an owl approach on the night wind. Something in her face suggested she'd been in this position so many times she had come to accept it as her lot in life. The rage in him guttered like a flame and went out. He felt sick. Sick that the world he lived in could be like this.

"Yes, it's the truth. God's honest."

He let go of her and knelt down beside Pedro to examine the shotgun injury. The kid was pale, in shock, but Arneson had seen worse wounds. Shotguns were messy and explosive, but good old Rennie had loaded it with small-gauge birdshot, which would take down a squirrel or a pheasant but not much else. He ripped the tape from Pedro's mouth. Sonch snickered at the pained squeak the kid spit out. He may have been relatively innocent compared to the rest of the low-lifes, but he had gone along with everything. Arneson felt no sympathy for him.

"I'm dyin' man, I'm dyin'," Pedro said. His skinny chest rose and fell like a bellows. "Please, you gotta get me to a hospital, I don't wanna die, I don't wanna dieeee—"

Arneson slapped him to shut him up, then stood up, grimacing at his aches and pains.

"We need to get this shit cleaned up and get this kid to a hospital," he told Sonch, who was leaning against the counter smoking a cigarette. "You ready?"

Sonch was staring at Pedro. Something in his face made Arneson's gut twist. "I think I know this cat," Sonch said.

"What?"

"This asshole right here. The kid. Hey, Pedro, I know you from somewhere?"

The kid's eyes rolled to Sonch then returned to Arneson. "I ain't never seen him before. Please, I need a hospital, man."

"No, I know you. I know you from somewhere." Sonch held up the sword, examining it in the shitty light of the kitchen. He walked over to Pedro, put a boot on his chest, and rolled him onto his back. He began to kneel, and with a sudden shriek, brought the sword stabbing downward. The steel edge stopped an inch from the kid's face. Pedro cried out miserably. Sonch laughed. "Tell me how I know you."

"You don't know me, man! I swear, you don't! Jesus, I'm not even from here, I'm from Loleta."

Sonch leaned in closer, cigarettes clamped in his teeth so the ashes fell in Pedro's face. He squinted through the smoke at him. "You know Marci Benevidez?"

Pedro's eyes lit with relief. "Shit, yeah!" He smiled tentatively. "She's my cousin, man, we go way back."

Sonch examined the sword, turning it this way and that to catch the light. He chuffed smoke out his nostrils. "Pedro, do you know the difference between a bitch and a slut?"

The kid's smile trembled and died. "W-what do you mean? I don't get—"

Sonch brought the sword back, as if to set it on the floor, and them rammed it forward through Pedro's throat. An energetic jet of arterial blood splurted into Rennie's staring eyes. Carla screamed. Rennie began wheezing and gasping like a failing engine. Pedro thrashed and gurgled black blood, his eyes rolling fruitlessly, trying to see the blade where it had punched through his throat.

"A slut fucks everyone, and a bitch fucks everyone but you," Sonch said. He giggled. "And Marci never would give me none of that pussy. What a bitch."

CHAPTER THIRTY

Sugar watched as Arneson returned to the compound. His face was thunderous, his posture stiff with tension. He passed through the courtyard on the way to his
casita
, sparing Maas a scant nod. Sugar didn't acknowledge him, but her eyes followed him as he stalked past. She wondered if he was hot, wearing all black under the California sun.

"Like what you see?" Maas said from beneath her, once Arneson had passed. She started, then resumed kneading the muscles in his back. Maas snickered, and her face grew hot. "You want to watch out for that guy," he said.

"Oh? Why's that?"

"He's a real bad guy."

"He doesn't look so bad to me."

"If you spent a little time around him, you'd change your mind."

She kneaded harder, and was rewarded with a groan from Maas. "Well, I'll be sure to avoid that."

"You do that. I don't want you forgetting what your job is here."

Maas twisted like an eel underneath her, and suddenly he was looking up at her from between her legs. His hands, surprisingly strong, captured and held her wrists.

Sugar felt the familiar, curdled feeling in her stomach, and tried to twist her arms away. His hands gripped like steel manacles. She forced a smile. She was safe here. Not from everything, but from the things that mattered. The rest was only the price you paid for safety. "Of course." Nausea bubbled up her throat, and she had to swallow to choke the feeling down. His hands loosened as she smiled. Her hands traced lower, to the waistband of his shorts. "Just relax, Daddy. I know why I'm here." Her hand slid into his shorts, and he moaned.

"Good girl."

From a window overlooking the pool, Sonch looked down on them and smiled.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Sugar held up her mother's green dress, brushing away the clinging dust and spiderwebs. Whether by accident or by design, Maas had stored her mother's things in the closet of Sugar's old room. She held the dress to her face, breathing in. She could still smell her mother's perfume—or at least thought she could. You never forget the way your mother smells. She let her mind wander.

Sugar looked on from above, watching like a camera in the sky, seeing a tiny rusty car as it races down a wet road. The asphalt of the road is incredibly black, because of the rain, and the lush trees that line the road are crowned in brilliant emerald. Her mother wears the same dress Sugar holds now; it is the same envious green as their eyes.

"Where are we going?" Sugar asks.

Her mother lights a cigarette with the car lighter and squints up at the sky through the windshield. Smoke wreaths her head like a laurel. "We're going to stay with a friend of mine."

"Who is it?"

"You've never met him, honey. His name is Dennis Maas."

"Is he nice?"

Sugar's mother snorts humorlessly and hits the windshield wipers. They begin their hypnotic dance.

Sugar, impossibly young and small, looks out the car window, tapping her fingers on the glass where the raindrops fall. "Is Daddy coming too?"

A long pause while her mother puffs smoke like a dragon. Sugar's memories of her mother's face are always seen through that shifting membrane of blue smoke. "No, honey. Your Daddy is a lizard-people now."

Sugar knows enough to stay quiet. The lizard-people have appeared more and more in her mother's stories lately, and when she starts talking about them, Sugar doesn't say boo. Her mother, Vika, will fly into a rage if Sugar asks too many questions about the lizard-people. Up until now, it's been a good day. Sugar hopes it will continue to be a good day. Too many days have ended in tears and screaming, from both Sugar and Vika.

Sugar hopes her Daddy will arrive soon. It's always better after he arrives. There would be some quiet time, when her parents didn't talk much, especially to each other, and Sugar feels like the air between her parents is cold and breakable as ice. Years later she will learn the word 'brittle', and she will flash back to those quiet times. But those times had always ended, and her Mommy and Daddy would return to normal.

She has no memory earlier than this, but her recall of that day is as clear and precise as a video recording. Her mother talks, sings, sometimes cries (Sugar curls up miserably against the passenger door when the tears come), and finally, they arrive. It is this place. Maas' compound in the high desert of northern California.

Her father never does arrive.

"Thinking about the good old days?" Maas' voice startled her, and she spun, breath caught in her throat.

"Just…" Sugar gestured to the pile of belongings. A vague sense of guilt washed over her, like she had been caught doing something nasty. From the pleased, sardonic grin on his face, Maas thought so too. "Just looking through this old junk. I'm surprised you held on to it all."

"Memories are what I have now." Maas laid a hand on her shoulder. "At least until you came back." His hand squeezed the flesh of her shoulder.

She twisted away from his hand, pretending to be suddenly interested in something at the bottom of the box. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw his lips tighten. She lifted out a bundle of papers, photocopies of photocopies, medical reports, medication logs. The detritus of a life ending one page at a time.

"Look, if it's all the same, I need a little time to myself—" she began, keeping her voice casual. She heard the musical jingle of ice as he set down his drink.

"Oh, so am I dismissed then? 'Run along, Dennis, I'm too busy'?" His voice was flat and deadly. She remembered well how his temper worked, but she wasn't a little girl any more. She wasn't afraid any more. She needed to lash out, to try and hurt him in some way. She hated him for taking her in, and hated herself for the sneaking sense of relief when he did.

"Yes, that's pretty much it, Dennis." She kept her back turned, and the quaver out of her voice. "Why don't you go watch your cameras or something?"

Even knowing what came next, he lunged so quickly it startled her. He flashed across her vision and kicked the box out from in front of her. It flew across the room, spraying papers like a fan-tail of sparks. It struck the wall and knocked a framed picture to the floor. Broken glass scattered like fake diamonds.

"How is that for a dismissal, girl? Do I have you attention
now
?" He stomped down on another box, and his foot punched through the cardboard. More clothing flew. Papers, letters, record albums, vinyl artifacts as hopelessly antiquated as Phoenician urns. He kicked another box across the room. Something inside broke with a guttural crunch. Sugar jumped to her feet and ran at him, still unsure what she meant to do.

He caught her swinging fist in his, and spun her into the wall. She hit it hard, hurting her elbows, and she pounded the wall in frustration. She turned to face him.

"You want to fight me, come on and do it,
ja
?" he said. He smiled crazily, his lower lip wet with spit, his eyes flashing. She was suddenly confused. What was she doing? Her mother was long dead, so what was she
doing
here? Why had she come back? Nothing made sense.