Wetbones

9

Watts, Los Angeles

"Yeah right," Garner said irritably. "I'm supposed to give you my – " He broke off not wanting to let her know he was down to his last fifty dollars. It was amazing his money had stretched this far, considering the night of smearing his lungs with crack residue.

"Your cousin steals my van and a big roll of my money and you want me to give you more money?"

"That was Hardwick, shit, I'm not Hardwick. Anyway what I trust you for either? You ran out on me."

"I went to look for that asshole. Shit, why should I stay? You weren't living up to your side of the bargain."

Meaning, she hadn't put out. The crack had affected him with an outrageous sexual desire, and it was a tacit part of the deal that she come across for her share of the stuff. She'd kept inching away from him, saying, "Just hold on now, it's worth waiting for, we going get real here in a minute, lemme see that motherfuckin' pipe first." Slipping into something closer to ghetto English now that she was fucked up and tired.

Tired. Both of them, now, on the street corner, staggering through the conversational wrangling like zombies, sagging from their bones. That's how Garner felt, anyway. Gretchen looked tired but a little fresher than him. She's used to this shit, he thought. Probably got herself tuned to sleep for two days once a week.

About seven a.m. Hardwick's room had become a shrinking box. Garner had gone out to see if he could catch sight of Hardwick, improbable as that was. Any loony move could seem like a good idea, loaded on this shit, he reflected. You got stoned and everyone could see it: could see your highbeams on, your eyes and mouth gaping, your exposed brain with a smoking hole in it. They could chuck anything they wanted into that hole in your skull. They saw you coming and they took you. It was a street skill they had: picking out the ones stoned enough to be stupidly tunnel-visioned but not yet stoned enough to be dangerously paranoid.

Whatever indignity crack left him open for – every indignity, ultimately – it did one thing for him in exchange: Crack totally and entirely occupied his mind. It pushed out even visions of Constance shoved alive into a crushing machine…

Take another hit

He'd found a place down the street that'd rent him a room for a few hours, and he'd holed up there, knocking back a bottle of wine and six Ibuprofen, which combination, he'd heard, would shoehorn him into sleep. It worked for a while; something close enough to sleep descended on him in the roachy hotel, until a pain in his gut woke him; it was a pain that eventually resolved into a rusty-knife forged out of depression and sheer self-hated, gouging and torquing into him till he had thrashed himself off the bed and back down onto the street.

Here on the street, in the pitiless sunlight, he immediately encountered Gretchen, dressed in the same clothes, eating one of those mushy popsicles pushed out of a plastic envelope. That would be breakfast for Gretchen.

Ten paces away a white hooker stood on the sidewalk, next to a parking meter. She was the kind who did her best to compensate for being butt-ugly by wearing layers of make up and having her hair immaculately coifed. She was a big stocky, scowling girl. He thought for a moment she might be a transvestite but, looking closer, he could see she was simply an apeish looking woman. Even from here he could see the rash of track marks on the backs of her hands. She was pretty hard core, using her veins up to that point. She was jonesing bad, too; she couldn't get comfortable, where she stood. She'd shift from one foot to another; then walk a few feet, around the parking meter; then walk back; toy with the meter's lever idly. Then she'd look nervously up and down the street. Shift from foot to foot. Her hands twitchily clutching and unclutching. Straightening the hem of her dress. Three times.

She was pretty sick from heroin withdrawal, poor thing. She wouldn't be out here this time of day, shifting twitchy like that, if she weren't.

Garner once had a jones on heroin himself, in earlier years, and he remembered the insistent discomfort that just got worse and worse and worse till you were like a plucked but still-living turkey turning on a spit over a slow fire.

Have to see if he could cop some of that, later.

''What you staring at that bitch for?" Gretchen asked.

"Maybe I get my money's worth, I go to her," Garner said, though he had no such intention.

"You think I should've put out for you last night? You think you'd've been able to get it up then? No way, that stoned. You think so, you don't know rock. But you had some sleep, you could do it now – we could get a rock and, before you lose your hard-on, we could get down together…"

Garner shrugged. He felt like shit. He felt like an old, old man; he felt wrung out and vastly depressed; his brain scorched and his self-disgust an inflamed, pustulant sore in his gut. And that was from smoking the stuff she was now proposing he buy for them once more. Already, the stuff was killing him.

But he could almost taste it in his mouth. He could picture melting the crack, the smoke; he could picture inhaling it. He could imagine the rush – which his addict mind told him would be good again, though deep down he knew it wouldn't.

There was really no choice about his decision at all; none that he could perceive.

So this is what Aleutia went through, he thought, as he followed Gretchen down the street, and into the Projects, where only the stupidest white drug users venture without an armed guard. Here, there was no thinking about Constance. Not while he was being crushed alive himself.

Near Malibu

"This fence a motherfucker," Orphy grunted, pulling himself up onto the top.

"Just keep going," Lonny whispered. He was already waiting on the other side of the fence. He'd scratched his right arm and one thigh rather badly, going over the top where the sharp wire-ends of the fence-weave stuck up; the wounds burned, and his heart thumped. They still had another fence to go over: the smaller, black iron fence.

It was a pretty dark night out, Lonny noticed, now, looking around. It hadn't seemed so dark up on the road. Maybe they should have done what Orphy had suggested: drive the ripped-off truck right through the gate, bash it in, bash into the next gate, then right up to the house, guns blazing, yelling for Mitch and Eurydice. But that kind of shit, he was fairly sure, only worked in movies.

There was only a sliver of moon, and the stars seemed interested but didn't shed much light. The stars just wanted to watch.

Oak trees and some pines and little Manzanita grew around the borders of the place; there was a sickeningly strong smell of roses from where they overgrew the front fence. There was a guard over there, so they'd snuck around, outside the fence, to the flank of the place. Here, between the two fences, was sage and yucca and thatches of dry yellow grass and grotesquely twisty manzanita that seemed to shift and hunch toward him… No, that was the breeze that had been coming up. One of those Santa Ana winds. Warm and kind of weird. It picked up again, skirling dust around his ankles and making tree branches scratch out off-key notes against the chainlinks.

The inner fence should be easier. But they had to hurry, a place like this would probably have…

He heard their running feet, coming through the brush, before they started barking: Guard dogs. Probably attack dogs.

"Get your ass down here, Orpheus, goddamn it!" Lonny yelled. "The fuckin dogs are comin'!"

Orpheus was just lowering himself to drop when he heard the dogs snarling and Lonny yelling, "Look out here come the fuckin dogs!"

"No way man I'm goin' back over!" Orphy shouted, his voice panicky. He tried to scramble up the fence again, his shoes ringing the links, as the dogs bounded into view. Sleek, dark animals, streamlined as sharks.

Lonny drew the. 45 from under his coat, as the bigger dog went for him, the other one bounding to leap at Orphy's legs where he dangled from the fence. Orphy screamed as Lonny fired – and for a moment Lonny thought he'd somehow shot Orphy but then the bigger dog folded up in mid-leap and fell at his feet, convulsing, jaws frothing blood. He couldn't see where he'd shot it.

Orphy was screaming " Shit shit shit motherfucker! " as the other sleek, slick-furred attack dog tugged at his ankle, gnawing and pulling with nasty jerkings of its whole body, putting its weight into jerking him off the fence – he fell onto his butt, and the dog lunged for his throat.

Lonny had spent the last ten seconds aiming carefully, for fear of hitting Orphy. He fired, putting a round into the back of the dog's head, and it collapsed with a single yelp on Orphy's legs. It lay there, splayed and quivering, like a cartoon of a dog sleeping contentedly on its master.

Orphy gave a grunt of disgust and rolled the dog off him, then peeled his bloody socks away from his ankle. It was rent in three places but not deeply. "Fuck! I hope that shit-eating hound wasn't rabid, man!"

"They ain't gonna keep no fuckin' rabid dogs to guard their place, dude," Lonny said. "Oh fuck – here comes the guard now."

He was a big, dark silhouette with a blaze of light at his gut like the light of an oncoming train bearing down on them. Orphy scrambled to his feet and followed Lonny, sprinting into the brush between the chainlink fence and the black iron one.

They expected the guard to follow – Lonny could see the shotgun in the guy's other hand, a black bar in the dimness – but the dude ran to the dogs, babbling and bawling. Lonny couldn't make out what he was saying. "Dude sounds fucked up on something, to me," Lonny said.

"Maybe he just crazy for those dogs."

"Maybe both. Come on…" He crept in a halfcrouch back out the way they'd come, coming from behind and one side of the security guard. By the time the guard heard Lonny coming and looked around, Lonny had the muzzle of his gun three inches from the corner of the dude's jaw. "Drop that shotgun, motherfucker, or you are dead meat in two seconds." He didn't hear Orphy behind him. He wondered if the son of a bitch was backing him up like he ought to be.

Clunk, the shotgun fell to the ground. The guard said, "You ain't gettin over on shit! You try to rob these people, it just ain't gonna happen, these people here, you illin to fuck wid em. I know, I seen some shit, bro -"

In the backlight off the flashlight, Lonny could see the guy's eyes, the pupils small, for it being so dark out, and his face glistening with sweat. Maybe it was just because of the gun in his face, but something about the dude, like he was going to go off like a hand grenade, made Lonny think there was more happening here. "What you loaded on?"

"Dust," the guy blurted. "Or you wouldn't a got the drop on me."

Great. PCP. This guy was still dangerous. "Sittin up here smoking dust joints all night? We ain't here to rob shit. There's a boy in there, his name Mitch?"

"Up at the house? You the third people to ask about him. Was his brother up here, then a private detective,

I told em I don't think he's here. Denvers say he's not here – but what I know? I never even been to the house."

"Bullshit!"

"It's true! I never been up there! That's part of the deal. I never cross that inside fence – I'm not supposed to, unless I see someone climb over it. You the first to get past the outside fence." The dude's voice getting higher-pitched, babbling faster, like he was working himself up to something, "Fuck yeah I see it, I know some shit, I seen some shit, but I never ask nobody nothin. They pay me three times what I get working in town, then you motherfuckers come and murder my poor hounds and you – now you fucking up my motherfuckin