What Rough Beast

Blake sat slouched at the end of the bar, nursing the last of his downmarket bourbon. The place was quiet, the kind of quiet that came with weight, as if something bad had just happened or was soon to. He took a tight sip and scanned the room, dwelling on the door with each pass. Just to be sure. Outside, the night was as dense as caked grease and the rain came in driblets of lead.

He shifted back in the chair, oak sighing beneath his weight, and stared up at the ceiling fans’ shadows at play, like a circle of shadow-boxing bats. He flicked his cigarette, not checking the ashtray, his mind crowded with figures in motion, both dead and alive. This ruin, this relic at the fringe of the fringe, was his refuge from a world of larceny: petty and personal, indifferent and grand. He pondered the other patrons, faces weary and eyes sunk in the clay of their skulls. They would move — whenever they did — in predictable patterns, so that the place maintained a subtle, slow rhythm.

He took another drag, fogging his throat and lungs and bringing the edge of a tear to an eye. Outside, the wind disturbed the narrow slot of the street and cursed in ragged whispers at a window. Storm on its way … just a matter of time. He tipped the whiskey and signaled Sal for another. He needed more of what only age-hardened corn could provide.

Behind the bar, flipping a rag to dry a crescent of wet, Sal responded to Bill’s question with studied disinterest, keeping one eye to the door.

Seen Tommy lately?

He shrugged and tossed the rag to the corner. Nah, not here … not nowhere.

Then he inspected a jar of pigs’ feet. Southbound seems likely. For the climate, so to speak.

Bill nodded: Southbound, somewhere and nowhere. It was a plausible pitch and would put place him — conveniently — anywhere from Doylestown to Daytona. He was known as a diver into puddles of piranhas, then hopping away like a frog on fire.

Across the room, a couple of dead-enders were arguing over a game of pool … the kind of guys who carried knives and would occasionally use them. Bill glanced their way and then back to Sal.

Think he’ll turn up again?

Sal shrugged: the same shrug, being the only one he owned. Depends on how pressed he’ll be down there. If he’s got family, he’ll be good until they throw him out.

Rotating his glass, Blake nodded and considered the deal at hand. It had seemed straightforward when Saunders sketched it: get in, get out, and no one gets more than their feelings hurt. But things acquired complications when money was involved. And in Bethlehem, same as Allentown, it was always about the money.

Saunders finally sauntered in, with his ridiculous Stetson wedged into place. Had he ever once seen this imbecile’s hair? Saunders was all swagger, like an aged, bloated Tommy — a clown who never learned when to shut up and sit down. He landed adjacent, grin as wide as the goddam Lehigh.

Got the stuff? he asked, voice cartoonishly low.

Blake tapped the duffel beneath his chair with a toe. We’re good.

Saunders’ smile dropped away. No, we’ve got company.

Blake didn’t turn to look. Knowing better, he checked the mirror behind the bar without turning his head. Two heavy coats with knit caps had walked in. Muscle, and apparently packing. This deal was getting burdened with baggage.

Beside him, he could see that Saunders’ hand was on the move.

Wait, he breathed, not yet.

Saunders’ eyes narrowed, but his hand retreated from his belt. Blake nudged the bag to him with the side of his boot.

One of the orcs had made it over while the other hung back by the door. You boys lost? he asked from a face like an unearthed spud, in a voice of brown rubble and riprap.

Blake shook his head. Just teasing a drink. Maybe try one yourself … you and your friend.

The orc didn’t answer. He glanced down to the bag, then back up to the two of them. Saunders’ hand was drifting toward his belt again. Everything paused, exquisitely balanced, like a dime on the nose of a nickel.

Blake stood slowly, hooking the bag with his foot from under the cowboy, dragging it toward his target. This what you’re looking for?

The orc didn’t answer. What he did was drop to a knee and tug the zipper single-handed, so that the top gapped an inch and a half. Benjamins peeked out in tightly bound bundles. His partner had approached in the meantime and there was a nod between the two of them. Blake knew that it was time to move.

As Saunders went for his belt Blake bent to his boot, drawing the Ruger while shoving the table to a shielding angle. Saunders shot first, without aiming. Glass shattered and fire returned, although Blake had the benefit of the table. Saunders was crouched behind his chair, sending rounds god-knew-where, trying his best to keep his hat and his head down.

There was a lull for several seconds after everyone unloaded, as a yellow-gray haze, acrid and evil, bloomed up before the bar. Saunders faced up from the floor, blood pumping from a hole above the band of that hat, his hair still a mystery above his now-vacant, now-gelatinous eyes.

Blake took a breath and scoped the rest of the room. The second orc was also down, clutching his ruptured gut, purple goo swelling out through his fingers. Blake stood over him to finish the job, but reconsidered when a gout of fresh gore broke through.

Sal, meanwhile, was frozen in place, holding the fractured rim and tin lid of what had been the pig jar, its pale cloven feet and glass shards cast all about the counter. The first guy had disappeared. Blake bent again, slid the spurless .38 into his boot top, and stepped over to the last of Saunders.

Sorry, cowboy. Things fell apart.

He wiped splatters of either Saunders or the orc from the duffle, re-zipped it and headed for the door. The badass billiard contestants were sprawled on the ground, but he didn’t stop to check on their health.

The first suggestion was Bradley and Broadway, which Blake answered with a silence so stony and long that the kid thought maybe their line was cut. After a few curt, corrective words, they agreed to the Madison Park court down Bradley, the north basket, at 3:00.

He was under the hoop at 2:40. Blake always arrived early, to establish baseline levels and catch the other guy, possibly, coming early for some other agenda. Broken macadam and brick and cracked concrete. Addled mook in a sleeping bag next to a shopping cart, dreaming maybe of slow moving thighs, salted with sand, somewhere on a beach in Brazil. Blake kept his Olds in his line of sight and pulled out a Winston, barely limned by the crescent moon. Flicking the flint of his Zippo, the sudden spark made a vanishing star.

They say the city’s a jungle, but he knew better: it was a desert, a parched, starving waste with no natural resources. Except for other people … they were the only steady prey, and the first rule is to figure who’s after your ass. The second rule, made up for himself, is to shun the gun for as long as you can: any kill should be a careful kind of culling. A man without a code — any kind of code — is just another flavor of vermin. The smoke from the first, deep drag curled up past his face in an elegant widening gyre.

A beat-up Buick pulled to the curb, engine coughing like a junkie before a hiccup and fart. Tommy stepped out and hopped the curb in some lurid yellow-green abomination.

What up, Mister Blake? Folks miss me? Even in the dark you could follow his eyes darting, locking at last on the cart and sleeping bag.

You know, I thought cowboy had this bit. He OK? It’s all cool?

Blake nodded. We’re fine. Once again, the stiff duffle was under a foot. He rolled it forward as Tommy tossed him a tied-off bag, white cotton and the size of a softball. He loosened the knot just enough to create a small mouth and brought the tip of the Winston to it. Jumbled facets in amber and green winked up, a mess of tetra- and octahedrons three billion years old … older than the Spiritus Mundi. He hefted the sack, assessed the weight, and completed the transaction by re-tying the top and placing the thing in an inner coat pocket.

The rest?

Tommy glanced again to the cart and the figure below it. A quarter past four. Try old 19.

And with that he was off, duffle over his shoulder, not wasting time or insulting the man with any sort of on-site inspection. The Buick took three extended cranks to get going, which brought the junkie back from Brazil, torn away from those thighs, into anarchy on the loose and a blood-dimmed tide.

Up from the ground came the cry: The center won’t hold.

Number 19 was a five-story stack, a blast furnace from the ‘50s standing bulky and belligerent, stained with acidic grime and corroded by rust and bird shit. It was a dead man standing … a million-dollar titan of industry now reduced to an objet d'art.

To get to it you breached broken fencing, bent gates, long-illegible hazard signs, and a perfectly absurd crash barrier. In short, you simply walked in, side-stepping debris now and again. Kids at some point, twenty-odd years back, had corrected the sign above the main gates to advertise Bethlehem Steal.

The foundry itself was labyrinth of wreckage and piping, with ladders and catwalks at oblique, nonsensical angles. The air was rank with rancid metals and inorganic ores, and riding above it sat a tang of iron that made tobacco, by comparison, seem floral. Blake’s footsteps echoed against slabs of tilted concrete, the sound deflecting weirdly, reducing much perception of depth.

Everything was shadowed, but some shadows ran deeper than others. He shifted to a softer stride and hugged every corner, fingers lightly riding each surface. Creaks and groans could be heard, some louder than others. His eyes kept scanning up-and-down, side-to-side for any movement. It was the perfect setting for an ambush.

Which it became at that moment he considered that fact: a shot came from above, sparking an inch before his foot, and nicking the tweed of his trouser as the report reached his ears. He veered to the right and to the ground and looked 60° up to a criss-cross of look-alike catwalks.

Lost again? came a voice from somewhere up there. A voice familiar and unpleasant.

Another shot rang out, this one kicking chips into his face. He blinked, stared up again, then considered the limited options. One nice thing about industrial waste and corporate neglect is that it leaves so much material at hand. He picked up a chunky piece of god-knew-what and, still lying sideways, tossed it roughly twenty feet across the slabs.

Two more shots rang out before the junk stopped moving. He saw the flashes that time, four levels up and to the left between railings. If he fired in return his own flash would betray him, and anyway he could hear the man in motion up there, trying for a better sight-line and illumination.

Come on out, Buddy Blake … I’m sure we can work out a deal.

He backed up to whatever structure he was up against and started edging around the blind side, abandoning any view of the catwalks. Two more items could be made out on the ground within reach: a three-foot section of pipe and a cylinder of some sort, narrow enough at the neck to get a grip with one hand.

Blake took up both items: carefully, quietly. The cylinder was heavier than the pipe, but the pipe section could be swung loosely from the end to go further. He stood with his back to the structure and to the problem picking out a new firing position above and somewhere behind. He swung his arms once, twice, and then whipped both decoys hard backward and upward in a wing-like double-arc that sent them sailing in opposing vectors, their double parabolas flying out from both sides of the barrier.

The instant he released them, while still in flight, he grabbed for his gun and started to move. The cylinder landed first so it pulled a few shots, but then the pipe hit even harder with an incredible clang from a good forty yards away. The orc must have whipped around startled, ill-balanced and awkward, to send shots in that strange direction.

There was a queasy, surreal sound of failing welds and folding steel, then the truncated shriek of a large mammal approaching terminal velocity. He felt a thump through the soles of his boots when he heard the crunch. The silence that followed was unambiguous, so he re-secured the .38 and walked out to the gentler shadows.

A revelation was at hand: the orc managed to land with his head on the first chunk of junk. Arms forward and body flat behind his upright skull, he’d become a grim desert sphinx, complete with gaze blank and as pitiless as the sun.

Blake could claim the kill without firing a shot. But he didn’t want credit or blame or even evidence of existence, so he left the sphinx to be found as an accident and faded from the foundry grounds. He popped the collar of his coat, bent forward against the chill, and slouched low toward the border of Bethlehem.