Cages and Those Who Hold the Keys

7

Coming around the side of the building, I blinked against the strobe-light glow cast by the whirling visibar lights atop the Sheriff’s Department vehicle parked at an angle in front of the meat wagon. It appeared that I wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.

Plastering what I hoped was a genuinely innocent smile on my face, I started toward the nearest uniform and said, “Is there a prob—”

He held up his hand—Please be quiet—as he spoke into the radio microphone. “He just came out of the bathroom. Call Impound and let ‘em know.”

Impound? I looked around. What the hell did he think—

—You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into—

—the meat wagon now had a passenger, as well as some additional cargo.

Young Miss Memorial sat in the passenger seat. Behind her, crammed in none-too-carefully, were the contents of the Dead Pile; wreathes, crosses, and several hearts, all of them now sans photographs, all of them having scattered ribbons and plastic flowers around the interior as well as over Miss Driscoll’s oh-so expensive coffin.

I couldn’t have been in the restroom for more than three minutes, yet somehow in that time Young Miss Memorial had not only managed to cover a good two-and-half miles of road on foot, but did so while carrying all of her evening’s roadside pickings. I doubted that the things were all that heavy individually or cumulatively, but their collective bulk was enough to tell me no way could she have done this on her own.

So who’d helped her?

The sheriff finished talking to whomever he’d radioed, then signaled to his deputy, who promptly came up behind me and shoved the business end of a revolver into my back. Always priding myself on taking a subtle hint when one is offered, I slowly raised my hands. “We’re not going to have any problems, are we?” said the sheriff, looking down at his feet. Momentarily unable to summon a witty retort, I just shook my head. “You have some paperwork to show me?” When I neither spoke nor nodded, the deputy pressed his gun farther into my back. “My inside coat pocket,” I managed to get out. The sheriff reached in and removed the envelope, took out the FRTP, read it over, then said, “Okay, then. Let’s go.” “Go where?”

He nodded toward the meat wagon. “You’re under arrest for vandalism, theft of city property, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Little Miss Memorial smiled at us, held up an open can of beer, then gave the gas station attendant a little wave. “This is bullshit,” I said. The sheriff took a step closer to me. “Oh?”

“I didn’t take those goddamn things and you know it. I’d tell you to ask him—” I nodded toward the attendant, “—but something tells me his memory might be a little fuzzy.”

The sheriff looked over at the attendant. For a moment I thought he was actually going to ask the guy, then just as quickly realized what I should have known all along: they were all in on it. No, Little Miss Memorial couldn’t have moved the Dead Pile so quickly on her own, but with a squad car and a couple of guys to help her—no sweat.

At least now I knew who the attendant had been calling when I first pulled in. What I didn’t know was why.

Summoning all the nerve I had under the circumstances, I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

This got a huge laugh out of the sheriff as he pushed back his hat, giving me my first clear view of his face.

He was a kid. Nineteen, twenty years old, tops.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, tucking the FRTP back into my pocket. “It’s after two o’clock in the morning. You’re not where you expected to be—you’re where you’re supposed to be, sure, but my guess is you were figuring on—what?—at least a few more hours of road time. Doesn’t matter.” He got right up in my face then. “It’s the middle of the night. No one, and I mean no one, including you, knows where you are right now. We’ve got guns. You’re in possession of vandalized and stolen property. And there’s an underage girl in your front seat with an open container of alcohol. So you don’t get to say where you will or will not go or what you will or will not do.”

I wondered how many Raymond Chandler novels he’d had to read in order to teach himself to talk that way, but figured this wouldn’t be a good time to ask, so instead I opted for, “I want to talk to someone in authority whose age is higher than my shirt size, if that’s all right with you.” “Fair enough. If you’ll shut the hell up and get into the back seat of my vehicle, I’ll take you to that person.” I nodded toward the meat wagon. “What about—?” The sheriff held out his hand. “The keys.” I gave them to him. “Anything happens to that vehicle or the body, and I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble.”

He smiled. “Nothing’s going to happen. These streets are safe. Hell, a person couldn’t have an accident if they tried.” He walked over and handed the keys to Little Miss Memorial.

“Does Daddy Bliss know that Road Mama’s come home?” she asked him.

The sheriff nodded. “He knows. Everyone knows by now.” He patted the top of the wagon, and then smiled. “I like how that sounds, ‘Road Mama’s come home.’”

Little Miss Memorial smiled back at him. “Me, too.”

Road Mama and Daddy Bliss. Sounded like the name of some faux country & western ballad from 1970’s pop radio, a rip-snortin’, high-ballin’, pedal-to-the-metal toe-tapper you’d hear sandwiched between C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” and Jerry Reed’s theme from Smoky and the Bandit. If I hadn’t been so angry and scared (mostly scared), I might have laughed at the thought.

The sheriff leaned down to whisper something in Little Miss Memorial’s ear. The back of his jacket pulled tight, and for a moment I thought, he’s got five spines, because that’s how it looked. It was only as he stood back up and I heard a pronounced metallic scrape and the rustle of straining Velcro that I realized he was wearing some kind of complicated back brace. Without thinking, I asked, “Does that hurt?” “I beg your pardon?” I gestured toward him. “That brace you’re wearing. Does it hurt?” He stared at me for a few seconds, blinked, then replied, “Sometimes. What’s it to you?’ I shrugged. “I’m just wondering why you weren’t assigned desk duty until you healed up.”

“Because, Mother Theresa, I’m not going to heal up.”

“I meant no offense.”

“Nobody ever does.” He opened the back door of his cruiser. “Any more questions, or can we get on with this?”

I ducked down my head and climbed in behind the shotgun seat, surprised to see no wire-mesh divider separating the back seat from the front.

The deputy who’d been holding the gun in my back slid in on the other side of me, closed the door, and removed his hat. He looked, if anything, even younger than the sheriff. Round face, bright grey eyes, flushed cheeks…sixteen, at most. Plus he was smaller than the sheriff, so his uniform was pulled in and tucked tightly so it wouldn’t hang too loosely. He might as well have been a big-for-his age child playing Policeman. If it weren’t for the metal plate covering the right side of his skull, I might have even believed he was a little kid.

If he noticed the way I stared at him, he gave no indication.

The plate itself was a dull shade of silver, tinged at the edges with a crusty red substance where the jagged flesh of his grayish, moist-looking scalp fused with the metal. There were six screws in all, one at each corner of the plate, with one extra on the upper and lower sides. None of them matched. Some were small and thin, others were thick, and one looked, I swear, like a cement screw. Most were flush, but two rose slightly above the surface.

He finally noticed that I was staring, and so moved to brush some of his hair back in a futile effort to cover at least a portion of the plate. All he succeeded in doing was showing me that part of his scalp had been peeled completely away near the base of the plate, offering me a glimpse of skull.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “This looks a lot better than it did. Shoulda seen it before I got fixed up.”

The sheriff climbed into the driver’s seat, closing his door with more force than was needed. “What have I told you about flashing that thing at people? Put your hat back on, Dash.”

“You took yours off just now.”

“That’s because I’m driving and need an unobstructed view. If you were driving, then you could take yours off. But you’re not driving, Dash. You’re in the back seat scaring the living shit out of our prisoner for no good reason other than you can. Now put your hat back on, or I’m gonna tell everyone it’s okay to start calling you ‘Chop-Top’ again.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

The sheriff turned around to face him. “No, I probably wouldn’t, but that should give you some idea of how much this bothers me. You know that Daddy Bliss had them make that hat especially for you. It’s got that steel band around the inside and everything.”

Deputy Dash blinked. “I know. Gets pretty hot with it on. And heavy.”

The sheriff gave me a quick look—Kids, what’re you gonna do?—and then sighed. “If you wear the hat, Dash, then you won’t get so many headaches, and you won’t hear so many voices.”

Deputy Dash leaned over toward me. “This plate picks up radio waves sometimes.”

“And sometimes,” said the sheriff, “it interferes with them. Like when I need to call in.” He held up the microphone. “So will you please put it back on?”

“See there?” said Deputy Dash. “All you had to do was say ‘please’.” He donned his hat once again. “Just ask me nice, that’s all. Don’t order me like you’re my boss or something.”

The sheriff hung down his head. “Dash, I am your boss.” “You know what I mean.” We pulled out of the gas station, the meat wagon following close behind. I stared at Deputy Dash. “How come you’re called Dash?” He pointed to the metal plate. “‘Cause that’s where my head hit.” I nodded as if that cleared up everything. “Oh. You get FM with that?” He grinned. “You’re funny. We don’t get many funny ones.” He was still holding his gun on me. “Could you maybe point that toward the floor?” I asked. “If we hit a bump or something, it might go off.” “It don’t work.” “What?”

“His gun isn’t loaded,” said the sheriff. Glancing into his rearview mirror, his gaze momentarily met mine. “I mean, look at him. Don’t misunderstand, he’s my kid brother and I love him, but seriously—would you feel safe knowing he was in possession of live ammunition?”

Deputy Dash held up his weapon. “Sure is big, though. That usually does the trick.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” I asked.

“Then I use my gun,” said the sheriff. “My gun is loaded.” Deputy Dash puffed up a bit as he said, “But it ain’t nearly as big.” “You can put your gun away now, Dash.” “Nah.” “What was that?”

Deputy Dash looked up at his brother. “If I have to put my gun away, then the hat comes off. Since I have to keep my hat on, the gun stays out.”

“Why can’t you wear your hat and put your gun away?” asked the sheriff.

“On account I need to have something in my hands to play with or I get jumpy, and if I can’t have either my hat or my gun, that just leaves my dick, and the last time I played with my dick in the car, you throwed a hissy fit.”

“That’s because you never clean up after yourself!”

“I do so!”

The sheriff pounded his fist against the door. “You wipe up the seat, sure, but you never clean the dashboard or the steering wheel! You got any idea how it feels to start my day by coming out to the cruiser and then grabbing the wheel to find your day-old spooge all over it?”

Dash shrugged. “Never bothered me.”

“That’s because it’s your spooge! Of course it’s not gonna bother you, just like my farts don’t bother me. In fact, I think my farts smell just fine!”

“Then how come you keep a can of air freshener in the glove compartment?”

“Because you’re always complaining about how my farts stink up the car.”

“Yeah, but whenever you use that air freshener, all it does it make it smell like someone squeezed out a load of Cleveland Steamers in a rose garden.”

I cleared my throat. “This sounds like a private family matter to me. If you want to pull over and let me out, I’d be glad to—”

The sheriff let go of the steering wheel and spun around, his arm shooting straight out, holding his gun less than an inch from my face.

“Shut the hell up!” he screamed at me, cocking the hammer. “You’ve already caused enough trouble, Driver. You think this is funny? You getting a chuckle out of listening to me argue with my brain-damaged little brother? It’s not his fault he’s the way he is.”

“Thank you,” said Dash.

“You’re welcome.” He looked back at me. “You keep your comments and your questions to yourself until I say otherwise. One more word out of you, Driver—one more fucking word—and I will shoot you in the kneecap. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“We all appreciate that you brought Road Mama back home, but if someone told you that your job ended once she was delivered, well…that’s probably what they were told, but it’s not true. Ah-ah—not. One. Word.” I mimed zipping closed my mouth. “He’s funny,” said Dash. “We don’t get many funny ones.” “You said that already.” “Felt like saying it again.”

I went cold all over. I could feel the blood draining from face. Yeah, the gun and the look in the sheriff’s eyes were scary enough—there was no doubt in my mind that he’d shoot me in the kneecap if I gave him the excuse—but even those seemed minor compared to what I’d just realized.

The car was driving itself.

Ever since the sheriff had spun around in his seat, the car had continued to maneuver along the street just as smoothly and evenly as you please. It even decelerated and signaled when cornering.

The sheriff noticed I wasn’t staring at him or his gun. Looking over his shoulder, he hissed, “Shit!” and then turned back around, holstering his weapon and gripping the spooge-free wheel once again. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that yet.”

“Oops,” said Dash, then giggled.

I opened my mouth to ask, “See what yet?” but my kneecaps reminded me that, ahem, silence was golden.

The sheriff grabbed up the microphone again. “Nova, darlin’, you there?”

“Of course I am, where else would I be?”

“I think I just screwed up.”

“Oh, dear. What have you gone and done?”

He told her. There were several moments of silence, and then Nova said, “Well, now, that doesn’t sound all that bad. You just hold on and I’ll get right back to you.” “Will do.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “May be that we’ll have a change of plans.” I mimed unzipping my mouth. “I think he wants to ask you something,” said Dash. “He can talk.”

“You know I didn’t take those memorials, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I sure as hell didn’t give that girl a ride or a beer. Especially not light beer.” “There a point you’re getting to?” “Yeah—why all the bullshit and brouhaha?” “Needed to make sure you’d come along peacefully.”

“Why not just ask me?” “Wasn’t sure you’d say yes.” “And if I hadn’t?” “Then we’d’ve had to resort to the bullshit and brouhaha, anyway. Just seemed easier to go with the sure thing.”

I looked at Dash, who offered a shrug that said, Older brothers, what’re you gonna do?

I leaned forward against the front seat. “You said something about a ‘change’ of plans? Would you mind telling me what the original plan was supposed to be? For that matter, what the hell was that girl doing back there, gathering up all those memorials? And how is it that this goddamn cruiser can drive itself? Now that I think of it, where am I, exactly? I’m not supposed to be anywhere near my destination. And what is it with everyone and—” “You know what?” said the sheriff. “I changed my mind. Shut up or I’ll shoot you.” “No, you won’t.” He turned around and shot me.

There was a lot of confusion right after that, what with the too-bright muzzle-flash, the gargantuan noise made by the shot in the enclosed space, and me screaming like a castrato with flaming hemorrhoids. Grabbing my happy sacs—that’s where he’d aimed—I knew something had happened down there because I could smell the gunshot and feel the heat between my legs and God Almighty there was something wet under my hands but I was too busy screeching and waiting for the pain to register, then I caught a peripheral glimpse of Deputy Dash laughing his ass off and realized that the sheriff hadn’t shot me, he’d shot the portion of the seat between my legs, and what I was feeling beneath my hand wasn’t blood gushing out of the hole where my nuts had previously resided but plain old-fashioned urine.

“Good shot!” shouted Dash.

“Like hell!” yelled the sheriff. “I missed.”

“I’m sorry!” I screamed at him, my voice breaking on the second word. “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry! I didn’t…I didn’t mean anything.”

“Do you believe that I will shoot you?”

“Yes!”

“All right then.” He turned back, holstered his weapon, and took hold of the wheel once more.

I have no idea how long I cowered in the back seat with my knees pulled up against my chest, shaking and trying not to cry. I hate showing weakness in front of others. It gives them the upper hand and diminishes me in my own eyes.

Eventually, Dash leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder. I jumped at his touch and slammed the top of my head against the roof.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”

All I could do was nod my head, and even that hurt like hell. “We can get you some clean pants and underwear,” said Dash. “…would be nice…” I heard myself whisper. Then the radio crackled and the dispatcher’s voice chimed in. “You still there, Hummer?” He grabbed the microphone. “Where else would I be?” “That’s my line, Sheriff.” “Sue me.”

“Touchy tonight, aren’t we?”

“Did you talk with Daddy Bliss?”

“No, I just missed the sound of your voice—of course I talked with him.”

“And…?” “And Daddy says, no worries. He wanted Driver to have the grand tour, anyway.” Hummer stared out at the road, saying nothing for a few seconds, looking confused. I leaned toward Dash. “Is that a nickname, ‘Hummer’?” “Nope.” Sheriff Hummer was still speaking to the dispatcher. “When’s the tour supposed to start?” “As soon as possible.” “Can we at least get him a change of clothes first?” “A change of clothes?” said Nova. “What did you—never mind. Sure thing. He can look through the wardrobe when he gets here.” “Call our ETA five minutes. Ciera’s right behind us with Road Mama.” “You want me to call Stick and tell him to hit the lights?” Hummer glanced in the rearview mirror toward me, then said, “Might as well.” “Oh, you’re gonna like this,” said Dash. “Ain’t everyone who gets to see Levegh Lane.” “Why’s that?” Deputy Dash shrugged. “We don’t get many visitors.” “So this is big deal, huh?” “Yep.” “Why…why do you call it that? Is there some significance to the name? Is that Daddy Bliss’s real name or something?””

Hummer answered this one: “It’s named after Pierre Levegh, a race car driver. Drove a Mercedes at Le Mans in 1955. In the third hour of the race, this Jaguar driver named Mike Hawthorn got a signal from his pit crew to stop for gas. He slowed down, but there was this Austin-Healey right on his ass, and it had to swerve to avoid him. A little ways behind, Levegh raised his hand to signal another car to slow the hell down. Levegh was going 150 miles per hour.” Hummer shook his head. “He never had a chance.

“Levegh slammed into the Healey and his car took off like a rocket, crashed into the embankment beside the track, hurtled end over end, and then just…disintegrated over the crowd. The hood decapitated a bunch of spectators. The engine and front axle cut through a bunch of people, splitting them in half. The car had a magnesium body, right, and that son-of-a-bitch burst into flames like a torch, burning dozens of others to death. The whole thing took maybe 12 seconds, but in that time 82 people were killed and 76 others were maimed.”

I blinked. “And you named a street after him?”

“That’s right. Levegh was a great man.”

“A great man,” said Dash.

Hummer nodded. “Only a truly heroic man could bring so many new members into Road Mama and Daddy Bliss’s family in a few brief seconds.”

Do I need to tell you exactly how anxious this little exchange made me? It finally sank in that I was trapped in a car with a couple of out-patients. If my luck held up, we’d soon be passing the Bates Motel.

I was so scared…but I was also damned if I was going to show it; at least, no more than I already had.

“You might want to sit up,” said Hummer. “Make sure you can get a good look out the window. You might not know it, but this a great honor, Daddy Bliss wanting you to see everything.”

I heard a distance buzzing noise, like a massive electrical grid warming up. Even through the vibration of the tires against the streets I could feel the deep, powerful thrum that rose in power with the pitch of the grid.

“You might want to prepare yourself some,” said Hummer. “This could be a bit of a shock.”

That didn’t even begin to cover it.