Friday Fiction (New): Fear of Cold Water and Blued Tattoos

This is the beginning of draft of my new novel, a sequel of sorts to Devils Walk Through Galveston (link to buy on Amazon).  It’s a draft, so let me know what you think.  If you want to catch up, get DWTG on Amazon.  If you want to affect the story, send me comments, they’ll get worked in.  

(Material is copyrighted, but noncommercial sharing is encouraged.  Commercial reproduction is prohibited.)

Fear of Cold Water and Blued Tattoos;

Or an unpaid internship in the truth

Prologue

Tell me your name and I’ll tell you my fear. I’ll speak of tired dreams in the space between the clouded ceiling and dirtied sheet.  I’ll speak of diplomas on cracked-plaster walls, rivulets of rain pooling and inching toward the twenty-dollar mattress on the floor.  I’ll tell you of showering in cold water, trying to recall the meaning of blued tattoos.

Tell me which aunt with green eyes you’re named for and I’ll tell you of BMWs and Dom Perignon in glass tower offices, showering off yesterday’s canned-air stench in the locker-room on the second floor, telling yourself you’re living the dream.  Whose dream?  Yours? When?

Tell me your name as I kiss your neck, remembering the hair of all the women who also wore obsession – strippers and single mothers and massage geishas - wrapped in my fingers, faking soft moans.  Tell me your name and I’ll unbutton my shirt, show you the opened cavity of my chest, lungs flat and shallow breathing, the crevice you can slide into where old loves were ripped away with twenty-dollar dances and trusted condoms from tiny purses holding coke and matches, rolls of ones and i.d.’s showing stage names’ lies whose truths I don’t want to know.

Sink down into the space between my ribs and eat the flesh – passion virulent, raw as nails tearing rivulets down my back.  Consume me.  Stare past all my bullshit and slow struts around the pool table, past the reflection of my son in a tiny soccer uniform, ready to play hard for oranges and admiration and a row of fold out camp-chairs lining the packed earth field.  Waiting.

Finish hollowing me out.  Make her leave.  No, make me.

Tell me your name and I will try to remember mine.

1.  Houston at 8 a.m.

He woke to the stench of old urine on concrete and fresh blood in his nose.  Right arm dead under his ear.  He couldn’t feel his fingers.  Judging from the bruises on his knuckles, this was a good thing. 

Other men littered the floor.  A few curled up on the bare concrete benches against the opposite wall. They wore ripped jeans and leather jackets.  Bruises and black eyes.  More than a few lay in their vomit.  One man was bent over the stainless steel toilet in the corner of the room. 

This man, our man, wore a midnight blue suit and white shirt. A red tie folded in on itself.  His black toe-caps were like mirrors.  No one was near enough to be reflected. 

He sat up, shook out his arm. Thought about needing to piss.  Thought about having to move the guy with his face in the bowl.  A jailer walked to the bullet proof glass dividing the holding cell from the hallway, opened the slot in the door, hollered, “Venable.  Get up.”

No one stirred.

He repeated, “Venable.  Get over here.  Someone bonded you out.  You’re out.”

No one got up. The prisoners stared at the guard.  The guard looked down at the papers in his hand.  Looked up and said, “You, dumbshit, in the suit.  Get over here or do you want to stay awhile?  It’s not your wife who bonded you.  You might actually want to go.”

Our man scrunched his face, looked down at his clothes.

The guard pointed at him, said: “Yes, you.  Get up asshole.”

Our man Venable rose on stiff knees, his hands aching.  His head about to split. Throbbing behind his left eye.  He staggered toward the guard. 

The door opened and he was led down a narrow hall.  Told to stop in front of a cage and made to sign for his wallet, watch, leather business card holder and linen handkerchief.  He tried to turn on the blackberry but it was drained of power.  He put it in the suit jacket pocket and turned, moving toward an unmarked door. 

He shuffled toward it, pushed it open.  The sun through the window cut him and forced his eyes down.

Venable saw a man rise out of one of the plastic chairs.  Dressed in khaki pants and a tailored blue button-down shirt.  Nice boots, nothing flashy.  Not lizard or even ostrich skin.  The man walked up and put his hand out, saw Venable’s knuckles and instead hugged him, clasping tight, saying, “God, we were worried about you.  I was worried about you.”

This man in khaki felt no hug back.  He separated and held Venable by his shoulders, saying, “Dave, are you o.k. man?”

Venable stammered, said, “Who…who are you?  Why did you bond me?”

“It’s me, Luke….  You o.k.?  For real, you o.k.?”

“Shit, man.  I’m real hazy.”  A long pause.  Stares from both men.  Venable now: “You said a name.  The guard said another one.  The guard said that’s my name.  I don’t recognize it.  I don’t recognize you.  All I can think of is my head and how much it hurts.”

“You don’t remember court?  The hearing on temporary orders and spousal support?  You attacking Natalie’s lawyer?”

“No….  Who’s Natalie? ”

Luke looked down, said, “Your wife, man.”

“I’ve got a wife?  I attacked her? In court?”

Luke eased him down into a chair, worried.  Said, “One, you have a wife, but just barely.  I don’t think you punched her.  You tried to punch her lawyer.  From what I heard and read in the police report, you missed your punch and the bailiff tackled you.  I don’t know what happened to your knuckles.  Two, I’m getting you to a doctor, now.  I’ll make a call in the car.  You look and smell like hell.  If we have time, we can go back to my place and you can get some fresh clothes and a shower. We’ll see.”

There was a pause.  Luke looked Venable in the eye, said, “I’m your best friend.  We’ve known each other for fifteen years.  You moved in with me a couple of weeks ago when Natalie, your wife, put you out….  It’ll come back.  Let’s just give it time and get you to a doctor.”

            Luke got up and turned to walk out.  He held the door open and went through.  Reluctantly Venable followed.  Reluctantly took the first chance.  There was nothing else to do.  He couldn’t stay.  He had nowhere to go.  He didn’t know where he could go or who to see.  Reluctantly, then, he went.

2.  Joliet at six a.m.

            Judas Chance walked into a bar across from the Exxon refinery in South Joliet, Illinois on a Tuesday at six a.m.  Shaved head and drying blood on his knuckles. Some sparse tattoos across his forearms.  The trace of a scar down his left cheek.  Every man but one looked away or down.  He had a stolen Crown Vic outside in the parking lot, a dented bumper.  His head was waxed to a pale shine.  There were blued tattoos rising up from the back of his black t-shirt to the low of his neck.  Forty degrees outside, no explanation for the lack of coat.  He didn’t look bothered by the cold.

            Judas put up a finger to the bartender.  The bartender poured a single Jack Daniels and set it on the bar, pointed to the back hallway under a sign that said “Restroom.”  Judas slow-strutted to the bar, picked up the shot glass and moved into a booth at the back corner of the bar.  Slid to sit with his back to the back of the booth.

A man in insulated khaki coveralls, came out of the bathroom door, saw the bartender staring at him and nodding to the booth Judas was in.  The man in khaki walked past Judas, got his beer from a booth ten feet away and came back.  He slid into Judas’ booth, across the table from him.  He held out his bottle and Judas met it with his glass, drained his shot. 

The man in Khaki said, “What have you got for me?”

“Motorcycle.  Already chopped and a mix of parts. It rides.  Filed down.  You can paint it and ride it.  You don’t have to use it for parts.”

“Do I want to ride it?”

“You might want to change the gas tank and handlebars.  It’s not local.”

“You have it with you?”

Judas smiled at him, exhaled in the start of a laugh that didn’t make it out.  Said, “No.  I’ll take you to it.  It’s not far.  When’s your next load going out?”

“Tomorrow.  A hundred tons to China.  Trucks start picking it up tonight to get it to the docks.”

“Good.  My timing’s impeccable.”

The man drank his beer down, finished it and wiped the bottom of his chin with his shirt sleeve. Judas put a twenty on the table.  Buying quiet and denials from the bartender.  He didn’t need to purchase any denials from the few refinery workers in the bar.  They knew well enough and wanted no part of the game.  They didn’t see and wouldn’t see and would go back home and sleep off one more day in the sweet stink of aromatic hydrocarbons and the raw stink of vessel flares.

The two of them got up and walked out the back of the bar, past the restroom and fire door.  They got in the Crown Vic, Judas driving.  He left the radio off.  He turned on the police scanner on the dash and drove back roads between the refineries and chemical plants to a spot behind an abandoned gas station.  He stopped the car and handed the man in khaki a motorcycle key from the glove compartment and waited while the man got out, zipped up his coveralls and removed an old tarp off the Chopper.  Folded the tarp and put it in the saddle bag.  The back-plate to the sissy-bar had been pried off – the motorcycle club name gone now.  The license plate long disposed.  The man fired up the motorcycle and took off around the gas station and south down the road.  Judas pulled out the opposite way and headed  north.

They met up ten minutes later at a massive scrap-metal  yard.  Piles of crushed cars fifty feet high and a hundred yards long.  Towering heaps of twisted metal sorted by type: copper, nickel, aluminum. 

The few men working put down their cutting-torches when they saw the man in khaki come in on the motorcycle.  They flipped up their welding helmets so he could know they were looking away as they walked to the break trailer.  Two minutes later Judas drove up in the Crown Vic and pulled it onto the crushing pad and got out.  Checked the back seat to make sure he didn’t leave anything behind.  He left the keys in the car and nodded at the man in khaki, who had walked into the control cab.  He flipped a switch and the hydraulic press turned on, smashing the car down.  He had to trust that the body in the trunk, or whatever it was in the trunk, had been appropriately wrapped in plastic so it wouldn’t explode if the trunk creased when it collapsed. 

Judas walked out of the yard and turned down the street as the sun broke the horizon.

In ten minutes, the crushed car and body would be in of one of the piles.  A few cars would be moved like legos to make room for it.  He’d set to taking the handle bars and gas tank off the motorcycle, making sure the VIN number had been filed off the engine and frame, like Judas said it would.  He’d remake the bike into his own.  He’d continue to regret the day he met Judas Chance.