The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

UNDEAD ORIGAMI

NOVEMBER 25, 1970

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

ONE

As a star athlete at Brigham Young University in the late sixties, Walter Sands had caught footballs (serious business), dribbled basketballs (for fun), even smacked a few tennis balls (in pursuit of a banker’s daughter from Salt Lake City). These skills had earned him a college education, a couple inches of type in Sports Illustrated, and as much pussy as he could handle.

Walter graduated from BYU on a fine summer afternoon. The dean himself slapped the sheepskin into Walter’s hands. The banker’s daughter gave him head while he cruised the streets of Provo in his Mustang convertible, contemplating a bright future with the Cleveland Browns. (Sure, he hadn’t made the cut this year — an elbow injury, still tender, had kept him on the bench for the second half of the college season — but everything would fall into place next year. Walter was sure of that.)

The whole deal was pretty choice for a redneck from Moab. Walter was gonna keep on keepin’ on, as the soul brothers said. This season he’d do some serious kicking back, some equally serious rehabilitation on the elbow. Then he’d hit Cleveland for a tryout next year. Walk on the field and take his rightful place as the next Jim Brown. Right on.

Later that afternoon, after bidding a sad but nonetheless satisfying goodbye to the banker’s daughter, Walter returned to his apartment and found an envelope waiting for him. He ripped it open and unfolded the little piece of paper that would change his life.

Walter read it. He couldn’t believe it.

He’d been drafted.

Walter worried that he might tear the paper in half, the way he was shaking. Funny how a piece of paper could scare you so badly. But Walter knew that this piece of paper was seriously scary. A couple of his high school buddies from Moab had enlisted for no better reason than to escape the old Mormon-missionary-doufous-on-a-bicycle routine, and they’d come back from Vietnam in body bags.

His college deferment had evaporated. It was plain that Cleveland wasn’t about to cover the ass of an unsigned prospect, plainer still that the army doctors wouldn’t be too impressed by his tender elbow. But Walter didn’t panic. He called Uncle Jack.

Uncle Jack wasn’t really Walter’s uncle. He was an older guy who liked to hang around jocks. Not that he was queer or anything. Ask anybody about Uncle Jack, and they’d tell you that he was a man’s man.

Uncle Jack had connections — in business, in government, even with the draft board. He got Walter off the hook and informed him that he could use a kid with good hands. Would Walter mind very much moving to Las Vegas while he waited for the Cleveland Browns to come to their senses?

Walter agreed finger-snap quick, figuring he’d be shagging flies, coaching some pudgy corporate baseball team.

He was shagging flies all right. But these were the kind of flies with wings, legs, and bodies that were plump with black blood. And Walter was shagging them on the ninth floor of the Desert Inn, working for a rather eccentric gentleman by the name of Howard Hughes.

The fat insect buzzed Walter, tickling past his ear. His right hand shot out, made a quick pass, and missed. The fly circled lazily, staying just out of reach, then sped down the empty hallway.

Slowly, but determinedly, Walter followed. Howard Hughes didn’t like fast movements. According to Uncle Jack — the only employee who actually engaged Hughes in meaningful conversation — the billionaire believed that fast movements stirred up deadly germs, even in a sealed tomb like the ninth floor of the Desert Inn. The flyboys, as Uncle Jack called Walter and his associates, couldn’t use fly swatters for the same reason. And Hughes was terrified of chemicals, so insecticide was strictly forbidden.

So fast hands were the order of the day. It was some job, all right. Walter had been at it for five months, and he hated it. He’d killed exactly thirteen flies in that time, and Hughes had said maybe ten words to him.

Walter’s contact with the man who paid his salary had been limited to Hughes’ inspection of his fly kills. The ritual never varied. Walter had to present the dead insect wrapped in a Kleenex shroud. Hughes — generally sitting naked in bed, maybe with a Kleenex of his own covering his withered joint if Walter was real lucky — would reach out with his awful five-inch fingernails and unwrap the Kleenex like it was a birthday present or something. Then he’d spear the insect with a hatpin, just to be sure that it was good and dead. Finally, he’d push it back on the rusty pin with a long fingernail swathed in Kleenex, mounting it like a trophy.

There were plenty of trophies on the pin.

The only good part of the job came after Hughes speared the kill. That was when the billionaire would invariably send a tiny paper airplane floating Walter’s way, laughing as Walter tried to anticipate the craft’s aerodynamic abilities or lack thereof. Catching the plane would earn a slight nod from Hughes, a little tip-of-the-hat from the hotshot aviator he used to be.

Walter wasn’t allowed to unfold the paper airplane in Hughes’ presence. As soon as he was dismissed, he’d smooth it out, eliminating the folds as best he could, but the bank didn’t seem to care. They always cashed Hughes’ checks without a blink. It didn’t matter if they’d been folded or spindled or mutilated, not as long as they bore Hughes’ signature.

Still, money couldn’t eclipse Walter’s fear, and there was no doubt that Hughes scared him. The billionaire’s gray skin was crisscrossed with awful scars, the result of his infamous crash landings. His long beard was unkept, the color of a rusted pipe. And then there was the pure stink of him — his flesh, his breath… But the scariest thing of all was the wildfire that burned in his dark eyes, proof positive that despite all evidence to the contrary Howard Hughes was still very much alert and aware.

And to be left alone with him. Like tonight…

Walter tried to swallow the lump in his throat. Time to get back to work. The hallway was dark, the only sound the buzzing of the fat little insect as it bounced lightly from wall to wall, racing along the ceiling. Ten feet ahead, twenty, then thirty… and forty… all in a matter of seconds.

Up ahead, the door to Howard Hughes’ suite stood open, just a crack.

That was where the fly went.

Walter swore. If the fly actually entered Hughes’ bedroom… Well, Walter had heard all about the screaming fits the old man could throw if confronted by a live insect.

Walter hurried into the suite and flicked on the lights. He couldn’t hear the fly, but that was because Hughes, two rooms away in the bedroom, was watching a movie. The volume on the projector was cranked up to full; Hughes was practically stone deaf.

Walter moved slowly, searching thoroughly. There was no sign of the fly in the first room. He entered the middle room, Uncle Jack’s office, and now the noise from the projector was truly annoying. The piercing treble vibrated in his skull. Some Disney musical or something, that’s what Hughes was —

The fly shot straight toward him and brushed under his nostrils. Walter found himself spitting and swatting like some crazy Jerry Lewis imitator, but the tiny black devil only droned away from him, buzzing along the ceiling, dipping and diving among the models of Hughes’ aircraft that hung suspended on short lengths of fishing line.

Another lazy circle, and the fly returned. Walter didn’t move. He waited.

He didn’t move… didn’t move…

The stupid little bastard landed on his forehead. Dirty insect legs tickled over his hairline, but Walter only grinned. Very gently, he tugged a fresh tissue from the Kleenex box clipped to his belt. You’re dead, amigo, he thought. This time you’re up against the fastest Kleenex in the West.

The fly crawled across his bushy eyebrows, explored the twisted bridge of his nose… and stopped.

Walter slapped himself hard in the face, balling the Kleenex as soon as he made contact with his nose. But somehow the fly escaped, darting away, buzzing just out of reach, and Walter leaped forward, the Kleenex fluttering free, his naked hand grasping for the insect that sped toward Howard Hughes’ bedroom.

Walter’s fingers snapped into a fist. He landed hard, on his tender elbow, and bit back a scream of pain.

He opened his hand. Nothing

The fly dipped and rolled and entered the bedroom. The music was gone now. The collection wheel on the big 35mm projector squeaked round and round, the tail of the film slapping metal.

The fly buzzed.

But Howard Hughes did not scream. Walter got up, rubbing his elbow. Maybe he was lucky. Maybe the old man was asleep, crashed out on Valium or Demerol. The way his elbow felt, Walter could use a Demerol himself. He pulled a fresh Kleenex from his jerry-rigged holster and stepped through the doorway, squinting into the bright slab of light that poured from the projector.

The collection wheel squeaked, and the film slap slap slapped, but Walter could hear the fly, too. The buzzing sound was so damn loud. The fly had to be close.

“Do you hear what I hear, Walter?”

Walter froze. The voice was low, without intonation, nothing more than a drone. For a crazy second he thought that the fly was talking to him.

“Mr. Hughes?” Walter began. “Mr. Hughes, I’m sorry.”

Alien, unfeeling laughter was the only reply. Instinctively, Walter retreated, the Kleenex now damp in his sweaty grasp.

And then the fly came streaking from the core of bright light, and it was followed by another and another and another… and the insects swarmed over Walter’s face, dipping into his ears, brushing his lips until he fell back, ashamed by the feeble screams that spilled from his lips… terrified because he had to open his lips to allow his screams to escape… and he bumped into Uncle Jack’s desk, scattering papers and knocking over a model of a Hughes OH-6A helicopter but he didn’t care… he was too busy swatting, swatting, his hands a blur but none of it was doing any good and the buzzing was now a screeching whine… and Walter wanted to shut his eyes because the flies were crawling on them, but he couldn’t… he couldn’t because what he was seeing was too horrible… so horrible that he couldn’t bring himself to blink…

Howard Hughes stood in the doorway. The harsh light from the projector bathed his knobby gray shoulders, his gnarled fingernails … and the rusty hatpin that was clenched in his bony grasp.

Hughes laughed again. That cool, droning laugh. With the long nails of his thumb and forefinger, the billionaire aviator pinched the hatpin.

His nails ran the length of the rusty pin, and a dozen dead flies joined the battle and swarmed over Walter Sands.