The Rabbit Factory: A Novel (2 page)

“Dickheads,” he said, and turned the paper over.

Arthur wondered if maybe there was some place in Memphis where a person could rent a tranquilizer gun, load it with one of those darts like they used to knock out animals in Africa they wanted to study, or a big cat in a zoo when they wanted to work on its teeth, maybe just get a small, low-dosage dart, nothing too big, something for a kitten, hell, he reasoned, you wouldn’t need anything big enough to knock down a rogue tusker.

He could imagine himself hiding behind a tree in their yard with a tranquilizer gun, waiting for a clean shot at the kitten. But he couldn’t figure out how they’d tame it. He wondered if it would work to sedate it and hog-tie it and then force-pet it.

He looked across the street. His eyes were old but he could see people inside a barbershop. A barber was moving around somebody’s head. It seemed late to be getting a haircut. The drunk guy in the trench coat put the crossword puzzle and a nubby pencil in his pocket and some money on the counter and weaved his way out.

But what if only somebody like a veterinarian could get his hands on those dart guns? Maybe they were federally regulated, like machine guns. It probably wasn’t something you could just buy over the counter. There couldn’t be too much demand from the general public for an item like that. He worried over it and was glad to have it to worry over. It kept him from thinking about his repeated recent failures at getting into Helen’s exquisite bush. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d gotten a boner, and wished he’d written it down. The stripper he’d visited hadn’t done him any good. The doctor had mentioned vacuum pumps once. That sounded just a little bit dangerous. Plus, he didn’t like anybody messing with his jewels.

He ordered a cup to go and looked across the street. A man in a trench coat stood on the sidewalk. It looked like the drunk guy again, but it was hard to tell from here. The owner set the coffee in front of Arthur and he pulled a dollar from his pocket for a tip and put it on the counter. He picked up the cup and his fresh ground, walked out, checked his watch, had to get on home quick, shit,
The Wild Bunch
was fixing to come on at seven.

The man in the raised chair seemed at peace. The barber had just finished lathering his face with hot foam and the rich smell of it hung in an aromatic veil over customer as well as attendant. The tiles on the floor were green and white, a checkerboard of odd colors.

The man in the chair had his eyes closed. He had a deep tan—maybe from Miami?—and his finely manicured hands where they held each other in stillness were small for such a heavy man. An ancient plastic radio in the corner on a shelf was softly playing Elgar’s “Sospiri.”

All that could be seen of the man were his lathered face, his hands, the cuffs of his black pants, and his shiny shoes resting on the pedestal.

When the door opened, no head turned except the barber’s. He stepped back out of the way when he saw what was happening and then crossed his hands over his chest, comb and scissors raised, eyes wide behind his thick glasses.

The muzzle of the gun came within six inches of its target. Perhaps the man in the chair had gone to sleep or at least drifted woozily in the barber’s fragrant ablutions. The gun fired, bright blood sprinkling on the silent barber, a jarring explosion that momentarily silenced the music.

It fired again, an enormous sound in that closed space, the air filling with the sweet smell of glucose and the sharp odor of smokeless powder and the soaring of stringed instruments.

It fired again and then the barber stood with hot blood dripping from his glasses, his hands still crossed at his chest. The shoe shiner clutched his belly but did not open his eyes. The killer, who wore a trench coat and a mask kind of like the Lone Ranger’s, turned and weaved out the door while taking off the mask, stepped between two parked cars, and was gone. Elapsed time inside the barbershop: nine or maybe nineteen seconds. The barber would tell the police later that it happened so quickly it was hard to say. The guy had been standing under the streetlamp out front drunk, earlier, though, he added. Looked like he was working a crossword puzzle.

“What’s up, Claude,” he said, and kept looking at his shoes. The shit wouldn’t ever come off after it dried. And damn his head felt bad.

“Everything’s cool, Mr. Falconey. The birds are out again.”

Frankie looked up.

“What birds? I don’t see no fucking birds. You mean these flying rats the city won’t shoot? All they’re good for’s crapping on your car. Or in your hair.”

The doorman just smiled. Taxis and private cars were letting people off and taking riders in. There were women sporting fur coats. A few well-dressed dudes in black hats going in had acoustic guitars in cases. Horns were blowing on Second and the pigeons flapped and rose in whirling flocks, blue, green, gray, dull colors with pink beaks, over the parking lot and above the old hotel. Frankie could remember when the place had been just about shut down, back in the early seventies when he was just a kid, the dark hallways, the moldy carpet. But they’d fixed it up really nice now.

There was one spot, just a speck of dried blood, right there on the toe of his right shoe, just about over the toe next to the little one. Frankie raised his foot and wiped the toe against the back of his pants leg, rubbed it hard against his calf. He checked it again and saw that it was not gone. He turned toward the door anyway, shooting his cuffs and patting his hair briefly with his hands.

“She in?” he said.

“She’s in,” Claude said, and held the door open. Frankie pressed a folded five into his hand. He liked to keep everybody greased, made him feel like Bobby DeNiro in
Goodfellas.
He went on up the hall past some shops.

He went up the steps past the two big bronze dogs and into the lobby with its polished floors and its brightly lit chandelier and its square marble columns where music was playing from a black baby grand that was tinkling itself in a corner. A monstrous bouquet of colorful flowers sat in front of the elevators atop the circular fountain where the mallards took their twice-daily baths. As usual the lobby was full of people with cameras waiting on the ducks or having drinks or chatting in richly upholstered chairs pulled up beside the round tables. Lots of voices were talking. He walked over to the bar and found an empty tall chair and waved at Ken, who was busy making three Bloody Marys. Frankie looked around to see if anybody famous was sitting in the lobby today. He’d seen Billy Joel in there one afternoon having a drink, but hadn’t asked him for an autograph. You couldn’t ever tell who might pop in. Clapton maybe if he was doing another show at the Pyramid. B.B. might walk in with Lucille in her case. There were people in tourist T-shirts, some laughing Japanese people in horn-rimmed glasses and big coats, a few guys in suits drinking draft beers, some college-age kids maybe up from Ole Miss for a night on the town. Ken rang up a tab and placed the bill in front of a customer with a pen and then came over and put a small duck-embossed napkin in front of Frankie on the bar’s black slab.

“How’s it going, Ken? You win any money on the football?”

Ken was already pouring a shot of Himmel. He set it on the napkin.

“Ah, the Titans…if they’d get their shit together…. I don’t know what they’re thinking.”

Frankie lifted the shot glass and sipped half of it. It instantly made him feel better, calmed his nerves and furnished a comfortable afterglow. He looked at the glass he was holding. His fingers were still shaking the tiniest bit. He sipped again and set it down empty. Ken refilled it.

He knew he’d done exactly what he was supposed to do, even if he had been drunk. He’d had to get drunk to be able to do what he did. But he didn’t leave any evidence behind. He hadn’t left any fingerprints on anything. The gun was on the bottom of the Mississippi River, the mask in a trash can just outside the fairgrounds, the trench coat at the Salvation Army. So why did Mr. Hamburger want to talk to him this soon? Who knew? Maybe there was another job lined up for him already. Maybe even a fat bonus for a job well done.

“You see Anjalee come in?”

Ken nodded and picked up a wet glass to dry. He wiped it hard with a dinner napkin and the glass squeaked. He cocked his head toward the lobby and spoke to the glass.

“I caught a glimpse of her going across the lobby. You ready for me to send it up?”

“Right, let me get this one down.”

Frankie picked up the second shot and drained it, then stood up, digging in his pocket for some money. He put a ten on the bar and waved as he left. Ken smiled.

“Thanks, Mr. Falconey. See you later?”

“Maybe so. Take care, Ken.”

The bartender looked after his retreating back. He waited a few moments and then picked up the money and turned toward the register.

“Yeah, right, asshole,” he muttered.

And waited.

Like this.

To fuck him safely.

For more money.

He was quiet now, coming out of the bathroom, zipping his pants.

On cue the bell rang and he went to the door. He didn’t open it wide enough to let the guy in, just took the bottle and passed some money out and shut the door, locked it, put the chain on, and sat down in a chair near the wall.

She stayed on her stomach, looking at him with her ass in the air. He opened the bourbon and poured some of it into a crystal glass, dumped in a handful of ice cubes from a waiting chrome bucket. She watched his eyes when he started drinking and wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at something past her, way out past the windows, that look in his eyes he got sometimes that made her wonder what he could be thinking. She didn’t know where he got his money. He always had plenty of it. She thought he was probably a small-time hood, based on her observations of some of his thuggy friends and from overhearing a few of their stoned conversations about robberies and beatings and trips to the Shelby County Jail. But he didn’t like questions. She thought she’d ask one anyway.

“Excuse me,” she said. “You gonna come over here and get you some of this or what?”

He just kept sipping his drink. She guessed he was in another one of his shitty moods. He had gotten up, turned on the television, and slumped back down into the chair, and now he was watching something on ESPN. He’d watch any kind of sports. Precision swimming. Professional duck-dog retrieving trials. Those people chopping wood real fast even. Actually that stuff was pretty fun to watch. She thought she’d like to try that logrolling in water.

“Well, horse
shit
,” she said, pulled her panties back up, and got off the bed to fix herself another drink and get dressed. “If you’d rather watch the damn TV than get in bed with me, I’ll just go down to the bar and watch the ducks.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Oh yeah? Like what? Must not be me.”

He raised his head.

“Hey. Don’t bitch at me, okay? If I want somebody to bitch at me, I’ll get married. One of your purposes is to not bitch at me.”

She stepped into her skirt and pulled it up and fastened it around her waist. One of her purposes. Yeah, well, one of the purposes of fucking was to maybe get to come once in a while, too, but she didn’t much, did she? It was all about him all the time, wasn’t it? His needs, what he wanted. She poured some more Absolut into her glass and walked over and got a few ice cubes from his bucket. She looked down and saw a red spot on his shoe.

“What’s that on your shoe?”

“A pigeon shit on me.”

“Looks like blood to me.”

“Well it ain’t. Okay?”

He fixed her with a look she didn’t like. She turned away from it.

“Wow,” she said. She sat back down on the bed and got her cigarette from the ashtray and finished smoking it while she drank about half of what was in her glass. He wouldn’t even look at her. She guessed he was tired of her.

After a while she got up and put her bra on. She slipped her feet out of the booties and into her shoes and pulled her sweater over her head. Let him sit here and watch the stupid television while she got paid for it. She got her brush from her purse and went into the tiled bathroom and brushed her hair. Her makeup was still okay. She grimaced at the mirror. No lipstick on her teeth. Maybe she needed to try a new tack with him.

Back in the room, she picked up her drink and sipped it, swirling it slowly around in her hand, studying his inert form.

“We goin’ out to eat?” she said. “You said we could.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I could stand some Italian. I love that lasagna over at Papa Tutu’s. God. It’s heaven.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“They got the best bread sticks I ever had.”

“I ain’t made up my mind yet.”

“When you gonna?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She stomped her foot.

“What the
fuck,
Frankie? Do you want me to leave?”

“No,” he said to the TV, and took another sip.

“Then why in the hell don’t you
talk
to me sometime?”

“’Cause I’m watching Kyle Petty in a car race, okay?”

And he was. They had a vibrating camera in Mr. Petty’s car. The walls and fences and grandstands were zooming by at some incredible rate of speed. Frankie didn’t look at her anymore. Fuck him. She didn’t have to stay around his mopey ass. She could go have a drink and watch the ducks come down and get in the fountain, splash around, quack.

“Okay. Fine. Whatever. You sit right here and be Mr. Unsociable Asshole. I’ll be in the bar if you want me.”

She drained her drink and slammed it down and headed for the door.

“Why don’t you tell Ken to send me up a shrimp cocktail?” he said.