Slob (24 page)

"Urinary infections," the good doctor helped him, "prostrate problems, assorted plagues and social disorders, malfunctions, dysfunctions, nonfunctions— "

"I'm having trouble getting it up."

"And an Afro-dizzy-act is in order. Well, Woody, you have, as they say, come to de right place. I have something so fantastic, so incredible, so foolproof, it would stiffen the member of a dead eunuch. It is the most secret, hush-hush Afro-dizz ever invented. It is called Alura."

"How much is it?" Woody Woodpecker was fifty-seven and did in fact have pink-and-green hair. His real name was Albert Sharma.

"It ain't cheap," said Dr. Geronimo, a.k.a. LeRoy Towels.

"Say what?" Woody Woodpecker was reasonably intelligent or had been prior to the pickling of his thinking apparatus in a variety of stimulants and depressants that included but was not limited to vodka, gin, tequila, paregoric, Ripple, pruno, White Tiger, Black Panther, Green Dragon, absinthe, Brut, Sterno, Chaps, Old Spice—the list is long. He had ended up with a partiality toward Mission Sweet Lucy and all he needed was a drink of men's room water and he stayed on a kind of semipermanent buzzer.

"Two hundred a cap," the cannonball-shaped entrepreneur told him.

"Wheeeee," Woody lamented, "shit."

"I know, my friend. But you have to understand, it's not like there was an unlimited supply. When these caps are gone, that is the end of the tune. This was the top-secret discovery of the Sexual Research and Development Unit of the CIA. It is called Alura, the letters standing for Autoerotic Lutenizing Reagent. Only a small amount of this was cooked up, for use by impotent spies so they could seduce women to get information. It'll make your tool so hard you can use it for a cat-scratch post. So two hundred for a cap of this magic is a bargain."

"Wow," said Albert Sharma, trying to figure out how the hell he could boost enough cassettes and shit to come up with two bills. Woody Woodpecker was the name he'd gone by for six, seven years since he'd been known as the Wood Man. But Woody Woodpecker seemed more appropriate, and it had a street rhythm so it stuck. Now he worked to the image, talked funny, told people his pecker was wood, stuff like that. Punks sometimes spiked his hair and the pink-and-green bit was a leftover from a recent Woodpecker do.

He was called the Woodpecker, and Woody, and before that the Wood Man, because he saw men in wood. This is what started Albert Sharma drinking in the first place—years ago. He could not look at a piece of wood without seeing faces. If you're a carpenter by trade, this can become a very unsettling experience, and one thing had led to another, and before long the Wood. Man was down and out, among the street people. So it sometimes goes.

"What say, brother," said Dr. Geronimo, who claimed to have lived with the Comanche tribe for many years learning potions, spells, and miscellaneous divinations and witch doctoring. But who had in fact lived with some stockyard workers in Omaha, from whom he'd picked up a variation on the fortune-teller pitch which he used in his current dreambook emporium. It made a nice little lucrative sideline to the roots-and-herbs thing

"I ain't got the two hundred. But you know Deuce, doncha'?"

"Yeah," he commiserated, "a deuce ain't easy to come up with, but that's the price."

"No, doctor. I say you know the dude calls hisself
Deuce?
Deuce Younger?"

"Say what?"

"You know, man. The biker dude. Guy runs the Flames?"

"Oh, yeah. I know the man. So?"

"I got something."

"Yeah?"

"I heard he put three hundred on the street for anybody could give him the one that hit Mr. Tree."

"Now, Woody, you're a good old gentleman, and you best be not messin' with them boys."

"Yeah, but I need that stuff. And if he gave me three hundred, I could buy a cap of Alura, and me and May could take a real honeymoon together."

"Uh-huh."

"See." He leaned close to Dr. Geronimo, bathing him in terminal halitosis, Old Spice, and body rot, as he whispered conspiratorially, "I know something."

"Huh?"

"I know where he lives."

"Who, Deuce?"

"No. I know where the one who kills lives."

"Yeah?" he said, feeling suddenly very sober inside. "Where?"

"Under the street," Woody Woodpecker said, proudly, in a cracked voice.

Instinctively Dr. Geronimo knew that Woody was not lying and he was getting a scent of some money here, and he wished he had not purchased that nasty old hippy sunshine and picked today to do that half tab, because he was going to need his wits about him if he was going to get into this particular can of worms.

"Under the street," he said, his eyebrows raised in question.

"Under the street. I know where he goes. And I seen him kill Mr. Tree with a big chain thing. An' I seen him try to get that one called Lester, and then I watched where he went. And me and May watched the hole where he went down and we never seen him come up there but May seen him come up about a block away, just by luck. And then we figured how he hides down there in the water mains and sewers and that. Can you get hold of Deuce Younger and tell him I can show him where the one who kills is?"

"Now, Woody, you're sure about all this, are you? Hey, bro', this is very important. I mean you 'n May didn't get hold of no bad Lucy and trip out on some Phantom of the Opera thing?"

"Huh? Fat man of the opera? No, this guy's down in the manholes, ya' know. I can take Deuce right to him. But I gotta' have my money like I heard they put on him. The three hundred. Okay?"

"Hey. Fine with
me,
my man. But I'll have to call around for ya. I mean, I don't know where Deuce is just like dat." He tried to snap his fingers and missed. "But yeah, I'll try to run him down. Thing is, I'd have to have a small finder's fee for that. Say thirty-three percent of recovery?"

"What's that mean?"

"If you get three hundred I get one hundred. It's only fair, Woody. That way you get your cap of precious dick-stiffener, and I get a hundred-dollar bill for helpin' get you together with the Flames. What do you say?"

"Uh, yeah, I guess that's okay."

"All right. Now Mistah Woody, we need to be abso-posi-lutely 101 percent on this, dig?"

"Yeah?"

"You can go find the guy that kills people. He's still there. Under the street, I mean."

"Yeah."

"You
sure
because I don't want Deuce Younger and a half-dozen biker maniacs upside my head cause you made a
mistake,
ya' know?"

"No mistake, Dr. Gee. I seen 'm go down 'n come up. Not always the same rabbit hole but I know he's down here. I know where he stays," Woody Woodpecker whispered, "but I want the money first." The doctor nodded, and another strange alliance came to pass.

And the cannonball-shaped black man scratched his head and thought for a minute, looked closely into the wacky countenance of the Wood Man, and asked again, "No mistakes about this?"

"Huh-uh, Dr. Geronimo. I know where the big man who kills people stays underground. How fast does that stuff act anyway?"

"Yeah, um-hmm," the man told him, reaching for the big directory.

"Dr. Gee."

"Huh," he said, leafing through the pages looking for the Wathena Salvage Yard. "Yeah."

"That Alura. I mean, how fast does it act?"

"Instantly," LeRoy Towels told the wino, not without a degree of impatience as he picked up the telephone and paused one last time while he considered whether or not to dial.

"Instantly?"
Woody asked incredulously.

"You do a little of this baby"—he nodded vaguely as he stuck his finger in the dial—"you be ready to fuck a junkyard dog."

T
here were four Flames lounging around the filthy shack that served as an office for the Wathena Salvage Yard, of which Pop Meiswinkle was the proprietor on paper. He'd purchased the yard, as he liked to say, "lock, schlock, and bagel" from the Wathena Brothers when the elder sibling had come up with a bad case of lead-poisoning complications as a result of acute seenus (as in "I was out with my girlfriend and my wife seenus").

But in the ensuing months he'd been taken over by a corporate raider named Deuce Younger, who made him an offer he thought was worth consideration. Something along the lines of "we run the place and give you a cut or one night we come in here and slit your fucking throat from ear to ear and bury you in an LTD."

So the Wathena Brothers Salvage Yard and chop shop had become a pit-stop flip-flop in the hot-car ring that headquartered in Cook County, Illinois. In the true spirit of free enterprise the biker club The Flames had diversified to the extent that they not only controlled a respectable slice of the methamphetamine market, but they actually made a fairly impressive dollar in the salvage business. When the enterprising team of Dr. Geronimo and his trusty aide Woody Woodpecker arrived at the yard, Deuce Younger was in the midst of a weighty corporate conference with his top counsel.

"That dirty cocksucking bastard motherfucker," he was saying, referring to a colleague in the salvage profession. "He comes in here what—maybe every six months with that portable car crusher, and you know, you can't say shit to the motherfucking asshole sonofabitch, and he backs that tractor trailer in here like he owns the dump, and you know, man, I can't stand here and count every fucking car that comes along. We started with what was it 172. Something like that. End up with a 164 count—that greedy cocksuck stole eight fuckin' cars from us.
Eight goddamn fuckin' vehicles, man.
I don't fucking believe it."

"Fuckin' unreal," a Flames bodyguard agreed.

"And you can't say shit to the bastard. You know how it is. What the fuck are you gonna say? Call the cunt a liar. You gotta have him. Shit."

"Still, I'd like to kick his ass," one of the Flames called Retard said.

"Cocksucker. He'll crook you into the fucking ground if you turn your back on the lying sonofabitch dickeye."

"That motherfucker come over to Billy's and he loads up twenty-three of Billy's cars. He puts them little ones in between the big ones. And when the cocksuck pulls out, he tells the ignorant motherfucker he only has eighteen cars. I never seen
anything
like the sonofabitchin' crooked piece of dog shit, why I'd like to—"

"An' you know if you got a little compact crushed in there between two big boats, shit, you can't tell what the hell you got on the stack. And Christ, even the dumb bitch pussy works for Billy said that's the tallest fuckin' stack of eighteen cars I've ever seen." Raucous laughter drowned out the knocking on the door.

But two Flames working on their bikes saw the two strange figures over by the shack and walked up to them saying, "You guys need somethin'?"

"Yes, sir." Woody spoke before Dr. G. could talk. "I'm Woody Woodpecker."

"No shit," said one called Mingus, "an' I'm Donald fuckin' Duck. You got business here?"

"Right," said the cannonball-shaped doctor of herbology and occult sciences, "we're here to see Mr. Younger on an important matter."

"Uh-huh," Mingus told him, "you wanna' haul fucking ass, darkie, and take this old bum with ya, we got
enough
junk around here." Both the men really broke up at that one, guffawing and slapping each other as if it had been the
bon mot
of the century.

"Sir," Woody Woodpecker said, looking at the wooden door of the shack, "I hope you're aware of the problems posed by a door such as this one. You have what appear to be smiling faces but"—he moved closer to the door—"there are two evil ones right there. And look at this"—he pointed at a swirl of grain in the beat-up wood—"a pair of real ogres, a skull profile with huge fangs, and a frowning and eyeless head that I think you'll find is— "

"Get the fuck outta here you crazy old freak and take this fat little spade with your raggedy ass before we kick your goofy ole' booty!"
the wild-eyed biker screamed, his fellow club member trying unsuccessfully to stifle his laughter.

"Let me handle this, please," Dr. Geronimo told Woody. "Now, sir, we do have an appointment with Mr. Younger, and if you gentlemen want to find out the location of the man who did that awful thing to Mr. Tree, I suggest you tell him Dr. Geronimo is here to see him." The giggles stopped.

"What'd you say about Tree?"

"I was trying to tell you we're the ones that are here to help Mr. Deuce in his efforts to obtain justice in the recent tragedy."

Inside the shack the business of the salvage company had taken a discursive turn as they discussed the problems of enforced incarceration. Retard was addressing the conference room:

"D'jew all hear bout Greasy?" It was rhetorical, as he continued to address his rapt audience. "Fucker sent his brother back a letter telling him he's getting married."

"Where is that crazy motherfucker anyway—down in Jeff City or some damn where?"

"Leavenworth, ain't he?" someone else said.

"Naw. He's just a kid. He was doing juvey time when he busted outta' Booneville or some kiddy jail and they put him in Algoa. He was on the run from fuckin' Algoa when he was up here." They laughed.