Henchmen (10 page)

Like most decent sized cities, Albuquerque has a homeless population.  For the most part, they’re pretty innocuous, and everyone’s usually more interested in the antics of our resident “naked guy” than what any random shuffling derelict is up to.  The climate is usually conducive to living outside, too.  For a couple weeks in July it’s hot as balls, and for a month or so in the winter it gets really damned cold, but mostly the city’s pretty temperate. Climate matters when your main domicile is a public park.

Drive down Central Avenue sometime, and you’ll usually see some fun sights.  Right now there’s a homeless woman covered in grime, wearing a thong leotard, with a giant blue Mohawk and roller skates, trying to hitchhike. 

Good luck, sweetheart.

We pull into a side street off Central next to the salad bar and park.  Jean’s old apartment looks like standard-issue shithole student apartments always do - like the slumlords gave up caring a while back, and it’s up to the tenants to keep things in shape.  In the alley outside his old place there’s a hooker on her knees blowing some guy in a suit down the alley.

We let her finish the job because everyone deserves to make a living.  As we walk through the alley, the guy in the suit spots us and gets red in the face.  How can anyone be pissed off after getting blown?  Granted, it was in an alley, but a hummer’s still a hummer. 

He makes a beeline toward us, fists clenched, and gets right in Jean’s face.

“If you tell anyone you what you saw I will kick your ass up one side and down the other,” he tells us.

By going straight to Jean, he’s revealed an awful lot about himself.  He heads to the smallest guy in the group because he wants a confrontation, but he wants it without any real threat.  He avoids making eye contact with Jessica, probably because he’s actually terrified of women.  It’s one thing to pay someone to blow you in an alley. It’s another thing altogether to interact with a woman who might not do exactly what you want. 

He shoots me the occasional glance, but mostly he’s just trying to be the alpha dog with the least-threatening person.  This way he can feel like a tough guy, and tell himself he pushed around three people. 

He’s wearing a standard issue suit, probably a middle manager somewhere, and thinks he’s the shit.  He’s a big guy, but you can tell by the way he moves that he’s used to using his size to intimidate underlings, and never has to go beyond the threat stage.  I love fucking with people like that.  Bullies of all stripes deserve to get thumped every now and then - it keeps them grounded.

“Take a hike, asshole.  No one cares that you have to pay for blow jobs,” Jessica tells him.

He turns on her and puts his finger in her face.  “You shut your whore mouth when men are talking!”

I grab his hand, bend it down, turn around and pull his elbow tight into my body.  With both hands holding his one hand, I force him into a Chin Na lock.  He goes up on his toes and grimaces but doesn’t give up.

“Are you going to fuck off or do we need to gut you and leave you in the dumpster over there?” I ask him.

“Fuck you, asshole.” He says and reaches into his pocket with his other hand.  Probably going for a knife.

This is what you get for trying to be nice. 

The position I’ve got him pulls him off balance, but it doesn’t hurt, so I change my hand position and twist his arm forward and around as hard and fast as I can, pulling his hand down and using it as leverage.  This makes for a full-on joint lock and it pulls him forward at the waist.  By pulling his arm up I can stretch the muscles and tendons - and that hurts.  He drops the pocket knife he was pulling out of his pocket, and tries to pull away.

“Do you drive a standard, or an automatic?” I ask him.

“Fuck you.” He says.

I pull the arm up higher.

“Standard or automatic?”

“Fuck. Automatic.”

“Good,” I say.  I was planning on letting this guy go, but as soon as the knife came out, it changed the dynamics.  I drive my forearm into his elbow.  It’s not hard enough to cause any permanent damage, but a hyper-extended elbow still hurts, and losing an arm in a fight is debilitating, unless you’re a famous French kickboxer.

He plants face-first in the dirt and rolls over, clutching his arm to his side.  His expensive suit is covered in dirt.  I know his type.  He won’t tell anyone what really happened, because he’s afraid to let people know he was paying for sex from a crack whore, and got his ass kicked.  He’ll make up some story about getting jumped by at least three guys, and he’s not even certain if one guy was breathing when they ran off.  Yeah, he got hurt, but he gave better than he got and it sucks having to the do the cops’ job for them.

“Get lost, shit heel,” I tell him.

He scrambles to his feet and looks at me, utterly pissed off and terrified at the same time. He backs away and stumbles out of the alley.  Before he turns the corner he turns and flips me off.

The hooker has been watching this from behind a wall down the alley.  I would’ve expected she’d be gone by now, but she hung out to watch.  Everyone enjoys a fight, especially when a douchebag gets a beat down.

Jessica waves her over with the promise of a fifty.  Everyone’s a sucker for Ulysses.

“Sorry about your client,” Jean says.

“Ain’t no thing,” our lady of the evening says with a toothless grin.  No wonder he liked getting blown by her - no teeth makes it hard to bite.  “That bastard shortchanged me.  He gave me a twenty folded in half, and said it was two twenties.  Now I ain’t got twenty.”

Jessica shows her the fifty.  “Help us out and you’ve got fifty.”

The pro smiles and cocks her hips.  “And what can I do for you, sweet thing?  You got something you want from me?”

“A full-body condom would be a good start,” Jessica tells her.

“They sell those at Walgreens?”

“We just want to find someone,” Jean says.  “A guy used to hang out in this alley.  Crazy looking guy.  Always talked about shadows and dreams and shit. I gave him smokes.  I was wondering what happened to him.  You seen him?”

“Maybe.  What he look like?”

Jessica hands her the old picture.  “This is my dad.  I need to find him.”

“Last I saw him he had a beard and old tatty coat.  I heard someone call him Crazy Eyes,” Jean says.

“Shit.  That was probably Gonzo.  He call everyone Crazy Eyes.”

“Damn,” Jean says.

Jessica steps closer.  “Can you look at the picture?  Have you seen this guy?”

The hooker looks closer at the picture and tries to clear the drug blur out of her eyes.  She focuses in and you can almost see the gerbil running faster in her braincase.  “Yeah.  I seen him.  He hangs out at the graveyard like everyone else.  People leave him alone ‘cause one guy tried to mug him and wound up screaming and trying to claw his own eyes out.  Dude never even moved.  He got the ghosts around him, and they don’t like no one talking to him.”

“He clawed the mugger’s eyes out?” I ask.

“No.  Why you so stupid, stupid?  Pay attention.  This guy never even moved, the guy mugging him just started screaming and trying to claw his own eyes out.  People say it bath salts or some shit, but I know better.  Ghosts, motherfucker.  Ghosts all around that guy,” she says.

“The graveyard?”

“Down the street.  By the seven elebin.”

Jessica hands her the fifty and gets a promise of “anything she ever want.”

Fairview Memorial Park Cemetery is a common hangout for the local homeless population.  It’s big, dark, and quiet.  I doubt the police patrol the place all that much, and the established residents aren’t given to talking much, save through Ouija boards and assorted mediums.  During the day the place is pretty quiet since the living population moves along so the mourning population won’t call the police.  After closing time - at 5pm or so - the regular group of homeless people and youthful miscreants move back in to spend the night with the rest of the ghosts in the cemetery. 

In here, they’re safe from the outside world since the normals don’t care for wandering around graveyards in the wee hours.  This is the safe place for the mental wrecks and general derelicts of Albuquerque.

Truthfully most of these people are harmless. They’ve fallen through the cracks in their sanity and wandered off the boardwalk of normal society.  Sure, there’s the occasional violent loon.  The mini-society in the cemetery tends to take care of its own, though, since violence brings down heat.  Heat from the police means beatings and Tasers and tear gas.

We watch the back gates after closing time and find a couple of people who might fit the bill.  After a certain amount of grime and shredded clothing most people start to look alike - stooped over, no eye contact. 

The first guy is a wash, but the second hits the mark.

Hayha is standing under a tree in his grubby coat and full beard doing the homeless shuffle: step to the left, feet together, step to the right, feet together.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Jessica takes one glimpse at his sparkling, fever-mad eyes and covers her mouth as her eyes tear up.  He doesn’t recognize her.  In fact, he doesn’t seem like he recognizes much of anything around him, but he’s definitely watching something and shaking his head no, no, no.  His overcoat has vomit stains down the front, and grime dug in so deep, nothing short of the cleansing power of fire will get the gunk out. That same grime has dug into the creases in face, bringing out his age like stage makeup.

“Daddy,” Jessica cries, tears rolling down her face.  She learned to hate this man by trusting the lies she made up in her own head about him -  the imaginary infidelities that drove her mother to poverty and suicide and left her herself working through college strapped to tables as a centerpiece.  All it takes is one gander at this guy and you can see his mind was forcibly evicted, probably a long time ago.

“Shit,” Jean says.  “He looks worse than ever.”

Hayha looks up when Jean speaks, some part of his mind clicking into place long enough to realize this guy was nice to him once upon a time, before the gears fail to mesh and he devolves back into mindless torpor.

“You want a smoke, man?” Jean asks him.

The barest of nods says yes.  Jean fishes a pack out of his pocket and hands Hayha a cigarette.  Grubby fingers covered in caked blood reach out take the cigarette and put it to his mouth.  Jean tries to light the smoke for him, but Hayha pulls away from the flame with the kind of jerk only people who have an intimate understanding of fire do.

“It’s OK, man.  It’s just a lighter.  It won’t hurt you,” Jean tells him and slowly tries a second time to light the cigarette.  Hayha pulls away again.

“Give me one of those,” says Jessica.

Jean hands her one and she lights it up, takes a drag, exhales, and hands the lit cigarette to her dad filter first.  “Here, I lit one for you.”

Hayha takes the cigarette and puts it in his mouth.  The smell or the taste triggers something mechanical in him and he takes a drag and exhales coughing.  The second time works better.

The hairs on the back of my neck are sticking up, so I scan around the cemetery to make sure no one’s creeping up on us.  So far the place is quiet, save for the odd homeless guy and a man with a mechanic’s jacket and a ball cap standing in front of a grave. 

I keep panning around. The sensation is probably nothing, but my paranoia has served me well in the past, and I’ve learned to respect it.

The cemetery is largely open space - no real hills, and only a handful of trees to speak of - so it’s an easy place to see would-be problems from a long way off.  Nothing exciting is going on.  I wonder what the guy in the ball cap is doing.  Saying goodbye to a loved one, cursing a fallen foe? 

My own family’s ashes are long scattered to the breeze.  My grandfather once told me, “Grief has a half-life.  It gets less and less painful, but it never quite goes away.”  I’ve found that to be pretty much the truth and I hope the guy standing over the grave finds some solace or something.  We’re not into graves in my family, just incinerate and toss to the breeze.

When I glance back to the guy in the ball cap, he seems to flicker like fluorescent lights do before they completely kick on.  I must be getting tired.  People don’t flicker.  I blink my eyes a couple of times, thinking my vision is going, and when I open them again, he’s gone.

“You need to leave here.” Hayha’s voice is strained, like he’s forgotten how to speak.  “This place isn’t safe.”

“Daddy.”  Jessica steps forward but there’s still no recognition of his daughter anywhere on his face. It’s like he’s taken his past and shoved it down deep.  And then parked a car over the entrance.

“You’re not safe here.  Go.”  Hayha holds up both hands and I can see the shredded arm of his jacket.  It looks like something with a lot of sharp points ripped into him, and he held his arm up to protect himself.  Whatever it was that shredded his jacket, it did a number on him, too.  There’s blood all over the grime on his arm, and his left hand flops around like it’s been disconnected from the rest of his body.  “It watches me all the time,” he says distantly

“Who watches you, Daddy?”

“This whole town is cursed.  He’s awake and angry.”

Jessica tries to step toward him, but he backs away mumbling to himself.  Whatever he saw, or did, or had done to him tore something out of his head and it’s not coming back.

As he backs away, Delano holds up his hands like he’s warding off some vision in his head.  We remain absolutely still, quietly watching him back up.  Maybe it’s a trick of the light, but I could swear I saw a shadow moving in the grass behind him.  It’s getting dark and shadows are everywhere, but it still struck me as odd.  I must be getting tired.

Jessica takes a half step forward and Delano reacts with a loan moan.  Some hidden terror is flashing through his head.  I really want to know what happened but there’s no way this guy is going to tell us.  He’s just a shell now filled with madness and loss.

“Let him go,” I say.  “He’s gone.”

My neck hairs are prickling again, and I can feel this pressure between my eyes. I get that when I’m being watched.  It’s easy to be paranoid in this place.  I’ve never liked cemeteries.  When I turn my head to look around I catch another flicker of movement from the ground, but when I look back it’s gone.

“I think we need to get out of here,” Jean says.  “The natives are getting restless.”  All around us eyes are turning in our direction, worried that one of their own is in trouble.  It’s one thing to be in a cemetery. It’s another thing entirely to be in a cemetery when it’s getting dark, and a couple of dozen homeless, violent, delinquent, and otherwise marginal people suddenly find you very interesting.

Hayha has forgotten we were ever there.  He’s standing still, staring off into space and talking to himself.  I suspect that nothing we say will be louder than the voices in his head. If we try to grab him, we’ll have trouble with the rest of the denizens of this place.  Jean puts a hand on Jessica’s shoulder, and she flashes him a gaze filled with rage and pain.  I can’t say I blame her.  I lost my dad once, and that was bad enough. To find him and lose him again would be devastating.

“We’ve got to go, kid.  If we stay here, we’re going wind up being someone’s dinner,” I tell her as gently as possible.  I can tell she’s not happy, but she turns away from her dad, her damp eyes hardening, and heads toward the gate.

I resist the temptation to pull out a gun, knowing it will just make things worse.  The best advice I ever got from my Kenpo teacher was that it’s always easier to avoid a fight than to win a fight.  We might be able to win this one, but I doubt it.

We skulk out with our tails between our legs like dogs that just got yelled at for chewing on the couch.  No one physically chases us, but eyes track us all the way out.  There’s an occasional flash of silver as headlights glint off knives.  I really really really hope no one starts anything.

At the gate to the cemetery I stop and look back.  Delano is gone and the rest of the zombies have done what they do best: faded into the background.  From the outside, the place looks peaceful, but I know if we step back in we’re going to have to fight our way back out.

Jessica sits stone-faced in the passenger seat, Jean is shaking in the back seat and I’ve got a sinking feeling in my gut that we’ve just stepped into something we should have gone around.

“Someone’s going to pay,” Jessica says quietly.  Her whisper isn’t helping my mood.  Part of me wonders if we wouldn’t have been better off leaving her to the Yakuza.  We could have walked away and she’d be just another victim in our wake.

Sure.  Leave her and never sleep another night again.  Fuck.

Fortunately, we’ve got a package liquor store nearby. I could use a drink right about now.