The Swing Voter of Staten Island (25 page)

“Just one.”

“Two of the plays began at 5,” he said, “but you really didn’t miss much.”

“How much for a ticket?”

“A sixty-fourth stamp.” It was the smallest denomination he had heard of in Rescue City. He gave the man a sixteenth-stamp, told him to keep the change, then walked into the lobby.

Uli examined the titles of the three plays concurrently in progress. They were civic-mindedly enigmatic:
The Assassination of Councilman David James
by Jessica Exhausto,
Downzoned: A Battle of Building beyond Local Ordinance Limits
by Wilson Roberts, and
The Meteoric Rise and Mediocre Decline of A. Clayton Powell
by Chichi Chekovsky.

“Doesn’t look like there’s a comedy in the group,” Uli said to the old man who had climbed out of the ticket booth and moved behind the narrow candy counter.

“They’re the nexus of where Soviet proletarian social realism meets the French theater of the absurd,” the man replied with a blank goose-eyed expression. Uli noticed that this was the tag line written at the bottom of the sandwich board and nodded.

“Why are they all local politics?”

“We only get grant money if we write something government-related.”

Uli thanked him for the insight and entered the first theater. Far from a political thriller,
The Assassination of Councilman David James
revealed a politician taking a sad inventory of his political life. The only other person in the theater was a somnolent woman; Uli figured it was Ms. Exhausto, the playwright.

Next,
The Meteoric Rise and Mediocre Decline of A. Clayton Powell
was a one-man show. And only one man was watching.

Passing through the lobby to the adjacent theater, Uli came across a pair of double doors and pushed on them, only to find them locked.

“That theater’s empty,” the elderly ticket taker/candyman said. “The third play is that-a-way.” He pointed to the last set of double doors at the end of the lobby.

“Thanks.”

“I should warn you,” said the antique fellow, “this play is 646,212 pages of staged transcription with only one performance. It began three days ago.”

“When does it end?”

“Two weeks from Wednesday, and the only intermission is in four days.”

This would’ve been a good place to sleep last night
, Uli thought. He entered the rear of the theater and counted six other heads scattered about in the darkness. Most of them had seats next to them filled with food, blankets, and other knickknacks.

“Article six, subparagraph two distinctly prohibits the building of these brassy skyscrapers and you know it,” stated one of the actors playing a Councilperson, waving his hand majestically in the air. “You, sir, are an upzoning menace!”

Uli glanced around and saw that there was someone next to a theatergoer in the back row who he had initially thought was alone. He found a comfortable seat near them and waited to see if the duet could be his targets.

“Developer John McLeod, you’re a monster.” An actor playing the real estate mogul’s young apprentice was performing a monologue. “You fired me because I didn’t ignore the landmark preservation laws of this fair city. Then you just went ahead and built your monstrosity, disregarding six civil ordinances! I’m fired? No sir, your ethical duty to the architectural integrity of this city is fired! No amount of shabbily slapped-together men’s shelters can pardon inorganic styles, no volume of recessed public spaces can compensate for a wildly seesawing skyline!” Uli realized from the stylized dialogue that the play couldn’t have been written just from transcripts.

One of the two theater patrons in the back row stood up and began applauding. Uli then discerned that his possible agents were actually a pair of seniors.

Heading out to the lobby for the last time, he found the ticket man fast asleep. Before leaving, he pressed his right ear against the locked double doors to the fourth theater and thought he heard a faint swooning. Peering to his far left, he spotted another narrow passage that looked like an entrance to the actors’ dressing rooms. The snoring ticket seller had a large ring of keys hanging from one of the belt loops of his baggy pants. As Uli silently unclasped the key ring, he noticed a rusty steak knife under the box office desk and slipped it into his back pocket.

He quickly located a small key that fit the lock of the dressing room door. Opening it just a crack, he saw that the room was dimly lit and empty. A black velvet curtain separated the little room from the fourth stage. Uli entered and peaked under the heavy curtain into the small black box theater.

Upon a bare mattress on the dark stage, Uli made out two nude figures clinging to each other as though to life, feverishly kissing and fondling. It was definitely them. In the dressing room, he found a heavy drawstring and an empty wine bottle, probably from a cast party of some municipal melodrama past. The bottle looked just thick enough. With the steak knife he was able to cut roughly six feet of the thick string, which he wound up around his hand and slipped in his pocket. Sneaking back into the dark theater, Uli listened to the women in their ever-rising throes of lovemaking. He crept down as close as he could get without being detected and waited until he heard a particularly sharp gasp of ecstasy, then shattered the wine bottle across the back of one of their skulls. He jumped onto the sweaty body of the other woman, who turned out to be Deer.

“You cocksucker!” she shouted, as Uli spun her thin naked body facedown. Three fresh gashes, each one with four long clawlike scratches, ran down her upper back. Sitting on her lower back, he twisted her right arm up. Catching the other hand, he bent it behind her as well and bound her wrists together with the thick string.

The other woman, Kennesy, stirred when he flipped her away from the broken bottle onto her belly. On the right cheek of her skinny butt, Uli noticed a green tattoo of a hog—an insignia of her true Pigger loyalties. Uli lashed her wrists behind her back as well with the remaining string, but not before Deer struggled to her knees and started screaming. Uli kicked her back to the floor. Finding her flimsy T-shirt next to the mattress, he twisted it into a tight strip and used it as a gag, tying it firmly behind her head.

Glancing down, Uli gasped. A shrunken penis was bobbing between Deer’s legs—she was a man, just like Dianne Colder!

“You’re a transvestite!” Uli announced. When she failed to respond, he grabbed them both by their lashed wrists and yanked them to their feet. He pushed the naked and cursing Piggers through the black velvet curtains and into the changing room, where he flipped on the overhead light and shoved Kennesy facedown on the floor. A small trickle of blood was seeping down the back of her neck from the broken bottle. Still in a daze, she just lay there. Uli snapped his wedding band from off her neck and put it back on his own finger.

He then tossed Deer backwards into an old armchair in the corner and removed her gag. “Who cut your back?”

“A nasty little whore.”

“Okay,” he pressed on, “it’s very simple: You’re going to tell me where Mallory is.”

“Fuck you!”

Although he didn’t have the live electrical cord that she and Underwood had used on him, he did have the old steak knife. “Let’s say I cut out your girlfriend’s eye, would that change anything?”

“You don’t have the balls!”

“After you electrocuted them, I feel them every waking moment.”

“Slice her open, see if I care.”

“How about I pop out
your
eye?” Uli put the tip of the rusty knife to the corner of her eye.

“You’ll do it anyway,” Deer said—he was clearly one tough little prick.

Uli took her shirt and regagged her. Despite her kicking and twisting, he was able to flop her over and bind the young man’s ankles together.

Grabbing Kennesy, Uli brought her back into the auditorium where she couldn’t see her beloved. He pushed her onto the mattress and tied her ankles together so she couldn’t run. By the time he returned to the dressing room, Deer was struggling to get the thick curtain string off from around his skinny ankles. Uli tossed him on his spindly back and sat on him.

“Wha are you doin?” he mumbled through his gag.

“One last time, where’s Mallory?”

“Fug you,” Deer cursed through the cloth.

Taking out the steak knife again and exhaling deeply, Uli thought of Oric’s cruel death and jabbed the tip of the blade into the young sadist’s face, then made a quick sharp incision down his right cheek.

“Top it! Oh gog!” Deer screamed and started gagging. When Uli pulled the shirt from his mouth, he howled out in pain.

“
WHERE THE FUCK IS MALLORY?
” Uli held the knife back up to Deer’s eye.

“Leave him alone!” he heard Kennesy shouting from the next room.

“Torturing people is illegal,” Deer said, controlling his pain. Blood rushed down his face and neck.

“Not according to Underwood.”

“You’re outside your jurisdiction. You’re answerable to a greater authority!”

“Who do you think I am?” Uli demanded.

“Siftwelt said you were some big FBI hotshot.”

“Where’s Mallory?” He returned to his immediate concern.

“Dead, fucker.”

Uli cracked him across the mouth, causing him to howl.

“I’ll kill you!” Kennesy screamed from the next room.

Deer groaned out to his lover, “Don’t tell him shit!”

When Uli clasped his hand over Deer’s mouth, the cruel transvestite bit him. Dropping his weight firmly on Deer’s skinny chest and tightly clamping his mouth and nose, Uli waited as his captive desperately struggled before finally passing out. Then Uli artistically smeared the young man’s blood around his eyes so that they appeared to have been cut out of their sockets. He returned to the theater, where Kennesy lay struggling.

“What did you do to him?”

“Come see for yourself.”

He undid the knots around Kennesy’s ankles and led her back into the changing room.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“If he would just have told me where Mallory is,” he responded, “he would’ve saved his sight.”

“Is he dead?” Kennesy asked trembling, staring at her lover.

“No, and I’ll prove it.”

Uli pulled out his bloody steak knife. When he pressed it delicately into Deer’s exposed groin, Kennesy shouted, “Stop! I’ll tell you!”

“Where is Mallory?”

“I don’t fucking know!” Kennesy replied.

Uli forced opened Deer’s limp legs, ready to turn him into a transsexual.

“Just hear me out!” Kennesy cried. “Word has it a local Pigger gang is holding her.”

“You better come up with more than that if you don’t want your friend pissing through a catheter.”

“Some drug den up on 4th Street and C. They grabbed her from St. Vinny’s.”

“Why wouldn’t they take her back to Queens or the Bronx?”

“The Crappers closed all roads off the island.”

Uli remembered getting frisked on the bridge, and the roadblocks checking all cars. “Did they kill her?”

“No.”

“What are they going to do with her?”

“I don’t know. She’s part of some elaborate new plan.”

As if arising from death, Deer suddenly sprang up with his hands free and snagged the knife away from Uli, then brought the blade tip down, catching the top of Uli’s collar bone. When Uli jumped away, Deer leaned forward and, with a sharp yank, cut the cord restraining Kennesy’s wrists. Apparently Deer had only pretended to be unconscious and had wiggled his narrow wrists loose from their bind.

Uli dashed into the empty theater as Deer pulled on his panties. Uli located a small broom behind the door and stressed the wooden stick over his knee until part of the grain splintered out. Then he snapped it so that the end came to a sharp angle. He sprinted back into the changing room to see Deer still sawing the ropes around her ankles.

“Watch it!” yelled Kennesy.

Deer threw the steak knife across the room, missing Uli’s head by inches.

Uli bolted forward and thrust his spear up into Deer’s bony neck, shoving it right through his jugular. The tip of the broomstick came out behind Deer’s throat, sending the young man gagging with a stream of blood shooting upward. Kennesy threw herself across the room and grabbed the steak knife. When she swung it around at him, Uli blocked her elbow, shooting the long blade squarely into her sternum. The Pigger agent fell forward to the ground, thrashing back and forth.

“I assure you,” Uli said to her, “your death is far more compassionate than what you put that poor retarded man through.”

As the two Pigger agents lay dying, Uli inspected his small laceration. Though sliced, the skin over his clavicle was barely bleeding.

He passed through the lobby and up to the aged ticket seller, who was still snoring. He quietly clipped the ring of keys back on the belt loop of the old fellow’s pants and left the theater.

The wind had started kicking up again. According to Kennesy, Mallory might be in some Pigger safe house on Avenue C. True to the socioeconomic trends of old New York, the further east Uli walked, the more run-down the buildings became. Through the wind and sand, Uli could hear a dull throbbing beat down Avenue C. He followed the percussion to one of the few buildings that wasn’t sealed up with cinder blocks, a dilapidated ash-colored brownstone.

Inside, a pack of people were moving haphazardly to a pulsing beat. A thick wave of choke smoke obscured the rear of the place. Semi-clad bodies flopped and slinked. Most everyone appeared intoxicated. Ancient Middle Eastern music was blaring through massive amplifiers. Croak, choke, homemade liquor, and things he’d never heard of were being peddled.

With the remote possibility that Mallory was being held somewhere on the premises, Uli roamed around discreetly. He found that most of the upper floors were uninhabitable and there was no basement. After ten minutes of careful searching, he was convinced that she was not in the building. He decided to lay low and try to spot more Pigger agents to mine for information. But judging by their flamboyant dress and convivial behavior, Uli sensed that many of the wild-haired youths were libertine leftovers from the Foul Festival.