The Spy's Little Zonbi (5 page)

“
Jesus.”

“
Wasn't really the kid's fault.” The man used the stub of his cigarette to light a fresh one. “And, speaking of Jesus, he found Christ and gave up heroin while at a camp for young offenders up in Delaware. You get the picture?”

“
So what was the good angle for a story on him?”

The old man's fingers clattered across his keyboard. “C'mere and read for yourself. Here's the copy the
Post
girl turned in. It might run like this in her big city paper, but it needs a hard massage for our readers.”

Chase came around behind his desk, fanning away smoke with one hand. He leaned over the man and scrolled down with the arrow key.

***

Leon Tooman didn't particularly like people. The girl who'd asked him a bunch of questions about Clayton had a decent enough rack, but her ass lacked any sort of real beef to hold his interest. You give a woman a steady diet of fried soft shells and beer and that problem tends to go away. And having to talk about the dead nitwit choked him up bad. He hadn't wanted to tell how he'd helped kill the boy, but feared losing his job by refusing to talk.

Clayton Butterfish had been drawn to Leon mostly just because he didn't go out of his way to cause him any extra pain. Didn't make fun of him and didn't flick cigarette butts at him when he walked past. At least that was the theory Leon had come up with. Leon had been put in charge of training the idiot kid to handle a delivery route in one of the
Daily Times
trucks. Kid drove just fine, never got a case of road rage, and never showed up any drunker than anyone else. The real pain in the ass was hanging around the dock with the CB turned on because, after dropping the last bundle, the boy would just pull the damn truck over to the side of the road and sit there like he was waitin' for a big ol' train to go by. It was the damndest thing, like the kid had some sort of switch problem inside his brain. Leon would click down to channel three and shout himself hoarse getting Clayton to pick up the damn microphone and answer. If he couldn't get him on the horn, Leon would have to go track him down and fetch him back.

Two hours after every other man had gone home, Leon might finally get an answer. “This is Clayton Butterfish,” he'd say real slow and drawn out.

“
I know who the hell you are,” Leon would shout. “What in the name of Christ is wrong with you, boy? Get your ass back here!”

But Leon knew exactly what was wrong with him. Clayton had spilled his guts in his never ending gum-flapping way that would have driven just about every other human to the nut house. Not that Leon Tooman cared or was all that interested in anything the boy went on about. Leon helped Clayton load every morning, then went over his route time and again. All the while, the noise just kept coming out of the half-wit's pie hole.

But Leon caught enough to understand. School was tough on a kid so slow and stupid. It had meant arm punches, Indian burns, and ears flicked so hard they turned blood red and eventually stayed that way.

“
You see?” Clayton had said, turning his head sideways and showing off his ears. Boy had ears just like those wrestlers who didn't wear head gear. Cauliflower ears, they called them, all lumpy and wrong looking.

The noise out of Clayton didn't bother Leon any more than when the knob came off the radio in truck six and for a solid three weeks he'd had to listen to some preacher yap about fire and hailstorms. For certain, it would be one perfectly shitty way for most people to start their day, but not so much for Leon. Nope, he just tuned it out like he'd tuned out his three ex-wives and he was good to go—no harm, no foul. Also, the boy never once asked to borrow a ten spot 'til payday, a major improvement over all the other bundle jockeys.

Clayton had claimed the open road had been calling him ever since he was a little kid. He had dreams of finally passing the test for his Class A commercial license and buying his own big rig for cross country hauls.

It was right before Clayton died and the two men were sitting on the loading dock waiting for a downpour to let up. The rain beat down like a fist and Leon was sour knowing the window was rolled down in his pickup.

“
You ever see that movie called
Duel
?” Clayton asked, but Leon said he hadn't.

“
My daddy took me up to Dover when I was 'bout ten. Told me it was the only time he ever went inside a movie theater. Can you picture that?”

“
Uh huh.”

“
Momma didn't wanna go 'cause her eyes were all blacked up. I think she was just happy to be home alone for a while.”

Leon remembered thinking how odd it was that the kid couldn't find his way back across town and had to have someone else count his bundles when they got past twenty. But talking about his rotten old man somehow put focus into his scatter brain.

“
I never saw my daddy ever say goodbye to so much cold hard cash except at the Liquor Mart.” Clayton sat back with his arms stretched out behind. He lifted his legs into the rain until his jeans went dark.

“
Uh-huh.”

“
I didn't get no popcorn, but I was happy enough just smellin' it. You like popcorn, Leon?”

“
I like it just fine,” Leon said, watching the purple thunderheads build over the western half of the city. His goddamn truck seat was gonna be drenched. Lucky his floorboards were rusted out so there wouldn't be a pond.

“
Then came this big truck trying to run down a car. On the movie screen, I'm sayin'. The rig driver starts having a chase up and down the mountains with this asshole businessman. It was like when Danny flipped off that kid from the college for tailgating, then pulled over and got his ass whooped.”

“
Yeah, I recall.”

“ ‘
Git 'im,' my daddy yells. And I watched how happy he was when the car starts overheating and losing distance on a steep hill. Daddy was cheering the rig drive on even with all these people telling him to shut his trap. That's when I knew I was gonna be a driver. That was when I seen myself high up behind a big steering wheel, head rockin' side to side with the bumps in the road. No teacher woulda dared call me stupid again, no sir. Jeb and Donny Brooks wouldn't flick my ears no more. Daddy woulda loved me for real and not hit me no more.”

“
Dads can be hard on a boy.”

“
You know what my daddy said right there in the movie theater?”

“
Nope.”

“
He leaned over to me and whispered ‘That's a Peterbilt Two-Eighty-One.' I never heard my daddy whisper nothing in his whole life. And later on he whispered ‘Them's snakeskin boots!' ”

“
Uh huh.”

They sat watching the rain and Leon was pretty sure the kid had lost his train of thought when he started up again.

“
The movie ended real bad when the rig went over the side of a mountain and crashed. But my daddy took it pretty good. He fired up one of them skinny cigars with the plastic tip and had Hank Williams turned up loud in the one good speaker. And he was laughin' at me 'cause I had my own steering wheel in my hands. I was running through gears, mowin' down every rotten kid who ever once pulled my ears.”

“
Sounds like a good time with your pa.”

“
You wanna know how I got to be a retard?”

“
No, not really.”

“
Back when I was a little baby, my daddy used the toilet to keep me quiet. Least that's what my momma told me. Whenever I'd get howlin' over something, he'd grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said it was probably bein' dunked under water that made me stupid.”

“
That's a sorry thing to do to a baby.”

But Leon knew it wasn't the boy's father who had eventually killed him. It wasn't even the awful case of head lice that had practically driven Clayton crazy with the nonstop itching and burning, his scalp a moonscape of scabs and open sores.

No, it was Leon who killed the dumb halfwit and on the slow drive to the cemetery in the lead truck he was riddled with guilt. Leon drove with manic tears streaming down his stubbly face, the body of the poor bastard boxed up not four feet behind him. Each small pothole made the untethered coffin jump and Leon was sure he could hear Clayton's body making a second, echoing bump from inside. Leon didn't have a mean bone in his body and was usually the one telling the other drivers to quit pickin' on the nitwit.

Leon wished he'd never become a driver in the first place. He wished he'd never met Clayton Butterfish and had never been put in a position where the kid trusted what he had to say. The middle-aged Leon was too lanky for being a driver in the first place. He should have listened to his aching back. He was always cracking an elbow or knobby knee climbing in and around the trucks. Now he was killing people.

With an ever-present spattered painter's cap and a thermos alternately filled with coffee or Southern Comfort, Leon would never work another day in his life if booze and fishing rods were free. The booze kept his bones from hurting, and he was drunk and clumsy enough to snap more rods than was really fair. And now he was a stone cold killer.

As the procession crested the mid-span of the Wicomico River Bridge, Leon nearly lost the last bit of control. It was right down there on the bank where Clayton's charred upper torso had been discovered by a young boy with a fishing pole and a brimming cup of night crawlers. Clayton had come down here by the water's edge to carry out Leon's suggestion to douse his skull in gasoline.

“
Yeah, Clayton, only way to get them buggers gone is with high test gasoline,” Leon had told him during a morning load up. “Just fill a bucket and give yourself a good dunk and you're good to go.”

Leon should have known the dumb-as-mud Butterfish was never without a stub of cigarette dangling from his chapped lips, the long glowing ash curling down, just looking to spark anything remotely flammable.

Another bump and Leon let out a little scream, then promised to get the dead moron to his grave if it was the last thing he did on God's green Earth.

“
Lord Jesus knows I got ya kilt,” Leon sobbed, the guilty waterworks just going and going. “But I'm gonna get you home, boy. Leon's gonna get ya to the Promised Land, you poor dumb bastard.”

***

Mack Butterfish twisted the restroom faucets hard, but water kept dripping. Why hadn't his goddamn city editor reminded him in this morning's meeting? There was gonna be heavy shit flying tomorrow morning, and some serious hell to pay. He'd put the fear of god into a couple of editors and a few lazy-ass reporters who couldn't find City Hall unless someone there had just made a doughnut run. Get your butt canned from this place and see where you landed. There wasn't much further down to go from here, except rags like that piece of shit cross-town weekly.

Lord knew he caught his share from the publisher and the ad manager. Newspapers, run by people who only cared about the bottom line, were dying a slow death. Editorial content came halfway down the list of priorities, just ahead of the assignment of parking spaces. In a recent meeting the ad manager had the balls to suggest his reps take over the spots nearest the employee entrance so they could get to their daily rounds on time. To hell with covering fires and car wrecks, let's make sure his people max out their monthly commissions.

Mack had considered punching the ad manager in the nose when he'd demanded he kill a story about the local Junior Chamber of Commerce president being charged with embezzlement because it would cast an ugly light on the entire downtown business community. Mack saw their publisher quietly nodding off across the table. But Mack was an expert when it came to knowing what kind of newspaper you landed at when you got your ass fired from a place like the
Daily Times
. He'd sat through the last twenty minutes of the meeting thinking about next Sunday's fishing trip out of Pocomoke City.

Butterfish punched the silver knob to dry his hands in hot air. He calmed down a little. It was always better to have someone else to blame. As he tucked in his shirt, he wondered how it had gotten so filthy. He hoped he'd left his tie draped over his office chair instead of inside the greasy printing machinery. His wife had taken pains to let him know she'd gone to the ends of the Earth to find the perfect sixtieth birthday gift. God knows a man's life wasn't complete without a closet full of striped ties. But if it was lost, then so be it. Just like the
Post
was going to have to live without a feature package and sunrise procession photos of his dead driver.

Butterfish emerged from the men's room feeling cool and collected, half of the chewing out speech to his city editor already written in his head. Calling the
Post
with an apology could wait an hour or two. Happy to kick the can down the road a bit, he decided to wait for them to call him.

“
You were asking about the photo internship, right?” Mack peeked beyond his new intern into his glass-walled office. His tie was nowhere to be seen.

“
I'm supposed to start today.” Chase had left the night editor's desk and approached Butterfish like he was a strange dog who might bite. Mack liked being feared and the edge that came with it. Once the fear was gone, the bullshit had a way of creeping in and things didn't get done on time.