Nick's Trip (21 page)

The door unlocked quickly, and Tommy Crane stood before me. He was wearing a blue chamois shirt over a thermal undershirt, and loose-fitting jeans. Over the shirt was a black down vest that bulged on the left side of his chest. On the side of his hip a knife was secured in a thin brown-leather sheath. The knife’s handle was wrapped tightly with black electricians’s tape. The long blade of the knife took up the balance of the sheath. The sheath ran halfway down Crane’s thigh.

“Yes?” Crane said. The voice was controlled and uncomfortably gentle—for a man his height and weight, it didn’t fit. His tan hands were long and densely veined, and his rawboned wrists filled and stretched the cuffs of the chamois shirt. The wrists had the thickness and mass of redwood.

“My name’s Nick Stefanos.”

“That supposed to mean something to me?” Crane squinted and scratched his black beard. A wire-thin scar veed deeply into the right side of the beard.

“I work for Billy Goodrich,” I said, turning my head briefly in the direction of the Maxima. Crane looked toward the car and saw Billy in the driver’s seat, then looked back at me. There was lack of interest and mild annoyance in his thin black eyes. I shifted my feet to simulate discomfort as I handed him my card. “Mind if I come in?”

He gave the card a contemptuous glance. “For what?”

“I’m looking for April Goodrich. I understand she was down here and she was with you.”

“She was down here,” he said, and as he said it he stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind him. Crane ran one hand through his thick black hair and pulled the bulk of it back behind his ears. Then he hitched up his jeans and puffed out his broad chest. “You want to talk to me, come on, but make it quick. I got work to do, and plenty of it.”

Crane skipped the steps, jumped down off the porch, and landed walking, taking long strides toward the pig compound. I looked quickly at Billy. Billy shrugged, and I followed Crane.

I trailed him to a wood gate, where we butted through and stepped into a small grassy area enclosed by a barbed-wire fence. The wire was wrapped and tied at six-foot intervals to knotted wood posts driven deeply into the earth. We continued toward the cinder-block structure to an opening cut to accommodate an average-sized man. The structure was topped unevenly by a corrugated tin roof laid over asbestos sheeting. A thin periscopic chimney rose out of the roof, and gray smoke drifted out through the chimney. The wheezy animal sounds grew heavier as we approached the gate that was hinged to the opening.

Crane pushed on the gate and strode in, lowering his head to clear the top-frame of the entrance. I followed him into a dark, concrete-floored area of roughly eight hundred square feet. The entire structure was elevated to provide for a concrete feeding trough that ran around the sty and was accessible from the outside. On the left wall two farrowing pens were lit and warmed by infrared lamps, and in those pens two sows lay on their sides. Several piglets suckled the sows’ teats from behind a set of steel rails. On the right wall were sleeping compartments where slats of timber had been cross-nailed inches above the cold concrete. In the rear of the sty a copper circular trough was mounted on a brick base. A fire burned in the center of the base and the putrid steam that rose from the liquid boiling in the trough entered a hole that led through the chimney. Next to the cooker was an iron drinking trough. Next to that a black hose lay dripping and coiled on the concrete. On the wall behind the troughs several
butchering knives rested in the hooks of a punchboard. Beside the punchboard was an exit, exactly the size of the opening through which we had entered. The ropes of a pulley dangled from the rafters, above it all.

Crane kept walking. He lowered his head once more and stepped outside through the rear opening. I followed. Now we were in another fenced enclosure with twice the area of the yard in front. Bales of hay were lined end-to-end around the bottom of this fence, and a few dozen pigs and weaners of varying litters were lying on their sides on the worn grass, butted up against the hay. It was colder in the yard than it had been in the sty, but the sun was bright and the air was bracing and clean.

Some of the pigs had risen at the arrival of Crane, and they began to move about the yard. They alternately snorted and squealed. A white pig larger than the others moved slowly in our direction. The rest remained against the bales. I nodded toward them. “They like the feel of that hay?”

“Not really,” Crane said. “Pigs like the sunshine, but they hate the wind. Hate it damn near worse than they hate anything. So they come outside for the sun and get behind the bales. Now one of those sows—that one over there”—Crane pointed to a large Middle White in the corner of the yard—“she’s lyin’ back because she senses it’s her time to die. I haven’t fed her for twenty-four hours, for the reason of the mess the killin’ makes if there’s food in her belly, and that just adds to her confusion. But she knows, boy. She knows.”

A huge white pig came within ten feet of us and then turned and waddled off back toward the others. He had long deep sides and a strongly curled tail, and he appeared to be smiling. His huge balls hung low and nearly touched the ground.

“That must be the king,” I said.

Crane snorted and smiled. His capped teeth were even and gray. “Yeah, he’s the cock star. You get a Large White boar with a set o’ nuts like that, boy, it only comes once in a lifetime. You can cross him with anything—Blacks, Middle Whites—the
whiteness of his meat transports, makes great butcherin’ pig.” Crane looked lovingly at the boar. “I imagine he services fifty, sixty sow a year. Eats like a sumbitch too—seven, eight pounds a day—but he earns it.”

“Pig-keeping your only business, Tommy?”

Crane squinted. “Askin’ questions yours?”

“No. I work in a bar in D.C.”

“Then there’s your answer. Man does different things to get by—hustlin’ drinks is just one, I guess. I do some hauling, small-engine repair—lawn mowers, go-carts. Stuff like that.” Crane ran his hand back through his hair once more and looked me over. “Like I told you, I got work to do. What do you say we cut all this in half?”

“I’m for it.” I looked quickly past Crane to the car. I could only see half of it from that vantage point, but the half I could see included the driver’s seat. Billy wasn’t in it. I returned my attention to Crane. “Talk about April.”

“The truth?” Crane grinned like a disease. “April and me been doin’ the crawl for years now,” he said. “She didn’t love me, and she didn’t love her husband. But she liked what she got here more than she liked what she was gettin’ at home. You see what I’m sayin’?” I shifted my feet. “Anyway, she finally had enough of your friend Slick, and she split. On her way out she came to say good-bye.”

“When was that?”

“Early last week. I don’t remember the day.”

“How long did she stay?”

“One night.”

“She say where she was going?”

“West.”

“That’s pretty vague, Tommy.”

“It’s the way she wanted it, friend.”

“Would you tell me where she was if you knew?”

Crane rolled his tongue around the inside of his cheek and slowly shook his head. “No.”

That finished it for now. We stared each other down to no effect amid the mass of pigs that had by now closed in around us. Then Billy appeared from inside the sty and walked out into the yard.

“Hello, Tommy,” he said.

“Goodrich.”

Billy turned to me. “You getting anywhere?”

“No.” I shoved my hands in my jeans and looked around the yard with studied indifference. “Look,” I said. “You guys talk it out, all right? I gotta take a leak.”

Before Crane could stop me I had negotiated myself through a mobile maze of pigs and had entered the sty. I moved quickly out and into the front yard. Maybelle was barking inside the car—her nose had made wormlike marks on the window as she pressed against it—but I ignored her and jumped up the steps and onto the porch. I looked behind me to see if Crane had followed—he hadn’t bothered, or Billy hadn’t let him—and turned the handle of the front door. The door opened and I walked inside.

The first thing I saw was a small living room. There was a battered couch upholstered in faded blue and a heavily varnished table fashioned from the cross section of an oak. On the table was a blue bong, and next to that lay a small mound of green piled in the inverted top of a shoe box. Behind the couch a Roger Dean print was mounted and framed on a yellow wall. On the opposite wall a nineteen-inch Zenith was elevated on a particle-board cart, and next to that stood a rack stereo. The tall black speakers of the system bookended the Zenith. I walked through.

At the end of a narrow hall were three doors. One was opened to Crane’s bedroom. Through the crack of the second I could make out a bathroom. The third door was locked. I entered Crane’s bedroom.

The bedroom window gave a view of the entrance to the compound. Crane and Billy had moved back from the yard and
were in the sty now. Billy’s royal blue jacket was visible through the gate, and next to that the duller blue of Crane’s shirt. Only their torsos showed in the darkness of the sty. They appeared to be standing very close to each other. I moved quickly past the window and to the dresser.

Crane’s dresser was topped with loose change, an eel-skin wallet, some odd porcelain figures of black birds, and a porno mag. The cover of the porno mag—
Bang-Cock Blossoms in Tie-Land—
featured a smiling Asian woman with pink lipstick. I glanced back through the window, then checked Crane’s wallet. Slid between the wallet’s stained plastic covers were two photographs of two different women, neither of whom I recognized. In the billfold was a ten and three ones. I closed the wallet and placed it back on the dresser.

The dresser drawers contained Crane’s underwear, T-shirts, and socks, and in one there was an assortment of lingerie. I went through each drawer quickly, running my hand beneath the clothing, finding nothing. When I was done with that I looked back out through the window. Billy was out of the compound and walking heavily toward the car. There was a particular anger on his face, a genuine anger that I had seen on him only once.

I ducked the window and moved back out into the hall. The locked door was still locked. I entered the bathroom and flushed the head. Then I ran cold water into my cupped hands and splashed it on my face. There was towel rack next to the sink but no towel. I opened a wall cabinet and pulled a white washcloth off the top of the stack. Small silver objects came out with the washcloth and fell to the tiled floor. They made a metallic sound as they hit. I bent down and scooped three pieces of jewelry—a ring and two earrings—up into my hand. I put those in the pocket of my jeans. Then I replaced the washcloth, stepped quickly out into the hall, walked through the living room, and bolted out the front door and onto the porch. The frantic cry of an animal mingled with the whir of the wind.

Billy was in the driver’s seat of the Maxima, staring straight
ahead. I moved to his window and made a roll-down motion with my hand. He pressed his thumb to a togglelike switch, and the window slid down.

“Gimme a smoke,” he said. Some red had bled into the azure blue of his wide eyes.

“Sure.” I shook one from my pack. Billy took it by the filter and pushed the lighter into the dash. “Crane tell you anything, Billy?”

Billy bit down on the cigarette as he lit it and spit some smoke out the window. He shook his head. “That son of a bitch knows where she is, Nick.”

“I know.”

“Well?”

“Stay here. I’ll give it one more shot.”

The crippled black shadows of the oak pointed toward the compound. I followed their direction. The frenzied animal scream increased as I pushed past the gate, walked across the yard, and entered the sty.

Crane was by the back door. He had tied the ropes of the pulley to the hind legs of the white sow. She hung suspended above an empty trough, her head jerking as she wheezed and screamed. I stood before Crane.

“We’re taking off,” I said.

Crane jerked his hand inside his black vest and pulled out a .38 snub-nosed revolver with a nickel finish. He passed the short barrel across my chest as he moved it to his right hand. I felt the blood drain from my face and then a flush of raw anger as I watched Crane smile. He rested the muzzle of the .38 between the sow’s eyes.

“You look a little shook, Stefanos. Ain’t you never seen an animal slaughtered?”

“I’ve never seen a man like it so much,” I said.

Crane’s smile turned down. He looked toward the sow and back at me. Then he ran his left hand down the sheath strapped to his leg. “What I like is the efficiency, friend. Only takes one
shot. Then this stickin’ knife, straight in ahead of the breast bone, six inches deep. They die quick, believe me, and they bleed right out into the trough. No mess.”

I said, “If April doesn’t show up in a few days, I’m coming back down here to talk to you, Crane. Got it?”

Crane lowered the .38 and held it by his side. He looked me over slowly. “I don’t see a man who can back that up. All’s I see is a two-day drunk. It’s over, pal. April’s gone. Now, you get gone too.”

He began to raise the pistol. I backed up and walked away and didn’t look back. Out in the air, I breathed deeply as I headed for the car. Billy reached across and opened the passenger door. I slid into the cold leather seat and stared ahead.