Deadside in Bug City Read online

  Joe took her hand and they walked toward the door like a pair of mismatched lovers.

  The pop of the gunshot made the “lovers” jump, and Joe jerked his head toward the sound.

  Rat Face staggered backward, righted himself and pulled a hunting knife from the leather sheath hidden beneath the tails of his fatigue shirt. With a roar of rage he dove over the counter in a graceless parody of a swashbuckling pirate in an old Douglas Fairbanks movie. He and the storekeeper disappeared behind the counter as the pistol fired again, shattering the florescent light in the ceiling and sending down a small shower of glass and shadow.

  The girl tugged on Joe’s hand, urging him toward the door, but he resisted, keeping his feet planted on the dirty tile. He was drawn to the violence. He had to see it. To walk out now would be the same as walking out of a blockbuster action movie during the best part. He couldn’t do it. Never mind that this was most certainly not a movie and that he himself might easily become a victim of the violence. He simply couldn’t tear himself away.

  “Come on,” said the halter-top girl. “Are you nuts?”

  “You go,” he told her without glancing her way. “Call the police.”

  She wrenched her hand from his (he had forgotten he was still holding it) and dashed out the door. The cowbell clattered in her wake.

  Joe couldn’t see them, but he heard the scuffling and grunting and cursing as the two men grappled on the floor behind the counter. And he heard the steady bonging of the church bell. He was getting used to the lulling sound of the ancient bell, and it somehow gave him courage to approach the counter and peer over its edge, past the Marlboro display, the herbal stay-awake pills, the disposable lighters, the little rack of beef jerky, and all the other junky impulse-items arrayed near the cash register.

  The knife rose in a dirty hand attached to a tattooed arm. Joe gripped the counter with both his hands and followed the arc of the blade as it sliced through the chilly air and struck the Pakistani’s throat, sinking halfway to the hilt. Blood gushed from the wound and spurted onto the knife-wielder’s thick knuckles, then dripped down the ragged edges of his fingernails, eclipsing the black crud embedded beneath them.

  Joe watched with sickened wonder as the blade pulled out of the punctured throat, drawing a stringy gutted-worm piece of the Pakistani’s inner anatomy (a severed blood vessel?) with it. Then the blade descended again, this time burying itself deep in the storekeeper’s chest. The Pakistani’s eyes bulged from their sockets and he worked his mouth as though trying to speak, but his ruined throat gave him no voice. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. In the dim light, his tongue looked like a tiny cornered creature trying to escape a death trap.

  Rat Face jerked the blade free and set to work on the storekeeper’s face, stabbing repeatedly, puncturing both eyes, opening up gashes in the cheeks, the forehead, slicing off an ear, stabbing, stabbing: stook…stook…stook…

  The stook..stook…stook was punctuated by the deep-throated bong of the church bell. Joe wondered if the knifer knew he had fallen into perfect rhythm with the bell. Then he wondered why he wasn’t doing anything to stop the slaughter.

  I can’t just stand here and watch, he told himself. A weapon. I need a weapon.

  He looked around for something—anything—to use to club Rat Face over the head.

  He saw nothing heavy enough to cold-cock the madman. And what if the guy was on drugs? Something like PCP, that Angel Dust stuff that could turn scrawny dopers into raging berserkers. Christ, he’d already been shot, and that hadn’t slowed him down. If I don’t knock him cold, or kill him, he’ll start working me over with his knife. I better get the hell out of here and let the cops deal with it.

  But then Rat Face did something so totally unexpected that Joe Carr could do nothing but stare at the act of animalistic depravity. The man stopped stabbing the storekeeper, leaned down and began to gnaw the raw wound in his throat, making obscene slurping sounds as he imbibed Pakistani blood.

  Joe’s stomach lurched. Lurching seemed like a good idea, so he lurched away from the counter. And tripped over the fallen rack of chips. A twelve-ounce bag of nachos cushioned his face and probably saved him from a broken nose. Slightly stunned, he stayed on the floor for a long moment, wondering if he’d taken a fall, knocked himself silly and imagined the brutal knife attack. But that awful slurping sound and the bong…bong…bong of the church bell brought him back to reality, and he pushed up and got back on his feet. Waves of dizziness were breaking on his brain. He felt seasick, just the way he’d felt on his one and only deep-sea fishing trip. The Jiffy-Quick had somehow set sail and was riding big swells of a stormy ocean. He draped himself over the top of a shelf of canned vegetables and hung on, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

  “Your turn, Bubba,” said Rat Face as he hopped over the counter. The lower half of his face was smeared with gore. Blood dripped from the frizzy tips of his wild hair. He grinned the snaggle-toothed grin of a true maniac. His eyes burned with dark fire.

  Joe unfolded himself from the stack of shelved cans and tried to run, but the sloshing storm inside his head threw off his equilibrium and he reeled into a tower of canned cola, knocking a life-sized cardboard NFL quarterback on his flat ass.

  “Sacked the sumbitch,” said Rat Face, spraying a mist of the Pakistani’s blood. “Heh-hah-hah.”

  Joe was still on his feet, but he was swaying and disoriented like a drunk in a funhouse. As the grinning madman walked toward him with the knife, Joe latched onto the pealing of the church bell. It seemed the only sure thing in a world gone mad. No matter what happened, it would go on ringing.

  Then Joe looked at the bloody knife in Rat Face’s hand, and he smiled and said, “It tolls for thee.”

  * * *

  Todd Sarkanian saw her first. She was running out of the Jiffy-Quick Mini-Mart, waving her arms in an obvious attempt to flag them down. “Hold up,” he told the driver, Sergeant Fuller.

  “What?” Fuller growled.

  “Stop. She’s waving at us,” said Todd.

  Sergeant Fuller grumbled incoherently, something about “goddamn rookies” as he eased off the gas and swiveled his big head around to see what Todd was talking about. “Whoa, check them tits. Good call, rookie.”

  Fuller cut the wheel and pulled the Druid Hills Police cruiser to the curb. Todd let his window down and leaned his head out to hear what the girl in the red halter-top was saying as she came running up to the car. Fuller was right, she did have nice tits, but Todd could see by the expression on her face that he should get his mind off the young woman’s anatomy and try to decipher her rush of words. The frantic look on her face told him they would have to delay the investigation of the ringing bell in the condemned church—which was fine with Todd, because he knew Fuller would send him up into the belfry to run off the bored teenagers who were likely to be the culprits. Sergeant Fuller delighted in breaking Todd’s balls. The fat bastard’s favorite game was Ride the Rookie. But this was Todd’s last day to be stuck with the sarge; tomorrow the training wheels would come off and he would be allowed to sign out his own squad car and patrol on his own. For now, the girl with the nice tits was a welcome diversion.

  “What’s the problem?” he interrupted her shrill babble.

  She pointed back at the convenience store, took a breath and said, “Two guys are fighting over a gun. I think one’s been shot. I dunno, I guess it’s a robbery.”

  Todd glanced at Fuller. Fuller said, “Call it in. Think you can handle that?” Todd bit back his anger, grabbed the mike and called in their location and reported “shots fired.”

  Roger, unit three, the dispatcher’s voice crackled from the radio. Do you need assistance?

  Todd looked askance at Sergeant Fuller. “Do we want backup?”

  “Don’t need back-up. Not if you do your job. Let’s go.”

  “Negative,” he told Dispatch. Todd told the girl to wait by the cruiser, then followed Fuller to the entrance of the store. The
windows and glass doors of the place were plastered with signs, so they couldn’t see what was happening inside. They drew their pistols simultaneously.

  Fuller said, “That fucking Habib’s always whipping out his gun. If he’s shot somebody, I’m gonna bust his crazy ass. I don’t care if he was getting robbed. You ready?”

  Todd nodded.

  “Don’t shoot me, rookie,” Fuller said with a smirk. Then he went through the door, shouting: “Police!”

  Todd went in on Fuller’s heels, angling the muzzle of his .38 at the ceiling.

  “Freeze!” Fuller yelled and pointed his pistol at a bloody wild man with a knife. “Drop the knife, motherfucker.”

  Todd stood beside the sarge, for once glad of the man’s company (and his years of experience on the job) and aimed his gun at the perp’s chest. His heart raced. Adrenaline surged into his bloodstream and he tried to relax his trigger finger so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot the knife-wielding man.

  A second man stood with his back against an island of merchandise, a bewildered expression on his face. Todd recognized him as the owner of the independent bookstore on the corner of Hawthorn and Vine. He didn’t appear to be wounded. Just scared shitless and witless by the guy with the knife. And the guy with the knife didn’t look very interested in dropping his blade.

  The church bell continued to ring. Todd wished those damn juvenile delinquents would give it a rest. The damned bonging was really getting on his nerves.

  “Last chance, ass-wipe,” growled Fuller. “I’ll drop you where you stand.”

  “Done been shot, shitbird,” the man said. He grinned. His mouth and chin were bloody, but Todd didn’t see a bullet hole in his face. There was a place on his shirt that looked like it might be a gunshot wound.

  Sergeant Fuller shot him point-blank in the belly.

  The man took a backward step, then looked down at his gut, hugged himself and dropped to one knee. But he still had the knife in his hand.

  “Told ya, you son-of-a-bitch,” said Fuller. “Now, drop it or I’ll shoot you again.”

  The guy looked up at Fuller, spat a glob of bloody spit on the floor and said, “Fuck you, Freddy.” Then he laughed.

  “Ah, fuck it,” said Fuller. He holstered his pistol, popped his baton off his belt, drew back and clocked the poor bastard on the side of the head.

  The gut-shot man fell over. His eyes stayed open, but they looked glassy and unfocused.

  “Jeez…” Todd said. He hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  “Put your cuffs on him before he gets up again.”

  As Todd knelt down to cuff the dazed and wounded man, Fuller shouted: “Habib? Where are you, Pak Man?”

  The man propped against the island of merchandise said, “He’s over there, behind the counter. I think he’s dead.”

  “No shit?” Sergeant Fuller said with genuine wonder in his gruff voice. He went to the cashier’s counter, leaned over and looked at the floor. “Jesus Christ. I hope he’s dead. No man’d want to live looking like that.”

  Todd came over to see the carnage for himself. The jelly donut and black coffee he’d downed an hour ago threatened to make a comeback. He quickly turned away from the bloody ruin of the man on the floor. He swallowed hard, then spoke to the apparent witness—the bookstore guy. “You saw what happened?”

  “Most of it, yeah.” He was sheepishly pale, licking his lips a lot as though his last meal was also trying to make a reappearance.

  Fuller went behind the counter to confirm Habib’s death.

  “You own that book store…” Todd snapped his fingers, as if that would jar his memory.

  “Book Haven,” he said. “I’m Joe Carr.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” said Todd.

  “Dead as road kill,” Fuller confirmed. “Gone home to Allah. Get an ambulance for that piece of shit, rookie.” He pointed at the man in handcuffs, who hadn’t moved since he’d whacked him upside the head. “Then call in the ghoul crew. The homicide dicks are gonna love this shit.”

  Todd used the two-way clipped on the epaulet on his left shoulder.

  Fuller waddled over to the witness and said, “All right, Joe Citizen, spoze you tell me what happened. Give me the short version and save the details for the dicks.”

  “Well, I came in for a pack of cigarettes, then this guy comes in and…Habib starts yelling at him, calling him a thief and telling him to get out of his store. They had some more words, fought over the phone, and the cashier pulled a gun on the guy. He shot him, I think, and then the guy pulled a knife and went over the counter after him. He…well, you saw what he did with the knife. And then he started…”—Joe swallowed bile—“biting the man’s throat, eating him like an animal, like a lion on the Discovery Channel. God.”

  “And you just stood and watched?” Fuller said with arched brows.

  “Uh, well, I looked for something to hit him with, but then he came at me with the knife. That’s when you came in.”

  “Uh-huh. What about the titty girl?”

  “The…?”

  “The girl who came running out to flag us down.”

  “Oh, yeah. She came in to buy some beer and I sent her outside to get the police.”

  “So you weren’t injured.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Lucky man. I’d say this moke was definitely hopped up on some bad shit.” Fuller looked down at the killer, then said, “Okay. You go wait outside with the titty girl and make sure she don’t run off. You’ll both have to give your statements to the detectives.”

  As Joe Carr went out the door, Todd said, “Ambulance is on the way, Sarge.”

  “That should give us just enough time,” said Fuller.

  “For what?” asked Todd.

  “Watch and learn, rookie. Watch and learn.” Fuller found a broom behind the counter, then took it to the dairy case, pulled out a tub of margarine, opened it and stuck the tip of the broom handle into the margarine and twisted it around. “Got to grease up the old pole, see?”

  Todd stared at the wood twisting in the yellow goop in the plastic tub. Remembering a news story of police brutality from a few years back, his face got hot and the back of his neck went stiff with tension. He didn’t want to believe Sergeant Fuller was going to do what he thought he was going to do.

  “Bare his ass,” said Fuller.

  “What?” Todd swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat wouldn’t go down.

  “Pull his goddamn britches down. I’m gonna break him in for the butt fuckers in the joint.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Fuck I ain’t. In case this shit head survives his belly wound, I wanna give him something to remember us by. Hell, if Rhode Island had the death penalty, I wouldn’t be forced to do this, but it don’t, so I gotta dispense a little backdoor justice my own damn self. Now get his fucking pants down, rookie.”

  “No way, Sarge. I won’t do it.”

  Fuller stopped twisting the broomstick in the greasy goop and looked with narrowed eyes at Todd. “I’m giving you a direct fucking order, kid. You best think long and hard before you go against me. You want your cop career to be over before it starts?”

  “No. But this is an unlawful order. We could go to jail for this.”

  Fuller laughed. “Nobody can prove nothing if you keep your mouth shut. And you will keep your mouth shut.”

  “What about that security camera?” Todd pointed at the camera mounted near the ceiling behind the counter.

  “Shit, old Habib never puts tape in that thing. Cheap bastard. You gonna help me or not?”

  Todd shook his head.

  “You just fucked yourself, rookie. Wait till the guys hear about this. One day you’ll be in deep shit and you’ll call for backup and nobody’ll come. You’re about to become what they call persona non grata. That means your life as a cop is shit.”

  Todd clenched his fists. He fought the urge to hit the big man.

  Fuller pushed him backward. “Out of my
way, asshole. I’ll do it myself.” He bent down, unfastened the unconscious man’s dirty jeans and yanked them down to the ankles. “No fucking underwear. That figures. Punk ain’t had a bath in weeks. And you’re throwing away your career for this shitbucket.”

  As the sergeant probed the cleft of the man’s buttocks with the lubricated broomstick, Todd weighed his options. He could walk out of the store to avoid witnessing a classic case of police brutality; he could stay and watch in consensual silence—or he could try to stop Fuller from abusing the man now officially in their custody. It was a tough decision for a rookie cop, and that damn church bell chiming endlessly made it hard to think straight. The sound got under his skin, all the way down to his bones and inside his skull. It was giving him a headache. And the headache made it even harder to think straight. It set him on edge. It pissed him off. It made him want to go at Fuller with his baton.

  When Fuller found his mark with the tip of the broomstick, he gave it a hard shove and the man on the floor groaned and Todd Sarkanian made his decision.

  * * *

  “I need a smoke,” she said.

  Joe nodded. “Me too. That’s why I went in there. To buy cigarettes.”

  They were leaning on the police cruiser, facing the Jiffy-Quick. The rack of flashers on the police car bathed them in blue. Dusk had turned to night, but the night brought no relief from the New England heat wave. She had told him her name was Suzie (“with a z”) Shrimpton and that she lived in the eyesore tenement off Old Boston Road. She worked as a waitress in Buck’s Tavern on Narragansett Way and nursed dreams of becoming an actress. She had a boyfriend who was a real shit and was not really her boyfriend, and she was about ready to give him the heave-ho, anyway. All this had come out in a nervous rush while they waited for the homicide investigators to arrive.

  “What’s with that church bell?” she asked after a short lull in her monologue. “That church has been empty since that fire nearly gutted it.”

  “I don’t know, but I wish it would stop ringing,” Joe said, folding his arms across his chest.