I kept the grimace from my face. “When was this, Blaine? Recently?”
“I-it’s bub-been a while. A couple years, at least.”
“Go on, bud,” Delmara said.
“A-anyway, some coyote on the c-crew bringing this ch-chicklet to town got drunked up and horny. He can’t help himself, buh-bangs the bitch. She’s ruined, so big bucks good-bye. The gangster who owned her stayed cool, told the crew boy he owed him twelve grand. The guy’s a low-level smuggler, says he c-can’t pay it all right then. So the gangster man says, ‘It’s cool, c-come to my place and we’ll puh-put together a p-payment p-plan.’ So the coyote goes to the g-guy’s place. Buh-buh-buh …” The nerves ramped up.
“Take it easy, Blaine,” Vince crooned. “One word at a time, bud.”
“Bu-but instead of a payment plan th-the g-guy is there with a h-huge bald fuh-fucker who strips the c-coyote’s clothes off and t-t-tapes the guy to a chair wi-wi-wi …”
“Shhhhh. Easy.”
“With his dick and buh-balls hanging over the e-edge of the chair. Then the guy puh-puh-pulls out a long buh-black knife and kisses it.”
“Kisses it?”
Mullard mimed bringing a knife to his lips and kissing it slow and lovingly. “Then he took th-th-that black fuckin’ blade and slices all the coyote’s junk off. He does it r-real slow and the gangster fuh-fucker’s smiling while he d-does it. And then he he he …”
“He what?”
“He has the huge bald dude hold up a mirror so the coyote can see his face as the guy jams the coyote’s p-p-pecker into his mouth. He … the guy … the m-m-man, he he …”
Mullard was patting at his eyes in disbelief of something. I recalled a similar torture from years back in South Alabama, a psychopath who wanted to be sure a husband watched his wife’s rape.
“The gangster cut off the coyote’s eyelids so he had to watch, right, Blaine?”
Mullard started gagging. Vince smoothly moved a waste can into place and the guy spewed thin brown gruel into the bucket.
“Others were there, right, Blaine?” I asked when the sickness passed and Mullard was wiping his mouth on the back of a dirty hand. “An audience. The torture was supposed to be a lesson.”
The unhinged eyes stared at me. “M-m-motherfuckin’, yes. A s-s-s-serious lesson.”
“Do you have a name, Blaine? For the knife man?”
A long inward squint. Even the eyes stopped moving. “Sometimes when the story gets told he’s called Double Ought. Or maybe that was someone else.”
Mullard wavered on the chair, his energy draining. “Anything else?” I pushed. Again Mullard retreated into his head for snatches of conversation or street lore, a difficult task, I figured, given the prodigious amounts of drugs the man had ingested over the course of a sad and small life.
“Uh, uh … someone m-might have once said he wuh-worked in a club or something like that. Or maybe it was a strip j-joint. Was it a strip joint?”
“You’re telling the story, bud.”
“Oh, sure.”
I looked at the guy, head heavy with the weight of his rancid recollections, his breath smelling of rotting teeth and vomit. From here, I knew, he would invent memories just to go to a cell, do his time, and get back to suicide by street life.
Vince shot me a glance; he knew it, too. The guy was empty.
“We’re finished here,” I said, reaching over and giving the man’s shoulder a squeeze. It felt like a Tinker-toy connection. “Thanks, Blaine.”
He grinned lazily and looked at me as if he was wondering who I was and might I have a laptop he could steal. A uniform came and led Mullard back to his cell. The three of us leaned the wall by a water cooler.
“Double Ought?” I said. “Sounds like a gang handle. Double Ought make any connections, Vince?”
“I think of double-ought buckshot, the heavy-gauge stuff.”
I saw Gershwin frowning over pursed lips. “Got a thought in there, Ziggy?”
“If the gangster’s a blade man, how does he get a handle you’d use for a shotgun killer?”
“Nice thought,” Delmara said. “I’ll talk to our gang people, see if they have anything.” He paused, pushing back the fedora. “It’s so weird, but cool, you think about it. You’re looking for a blade man, Mullard calls me with his story.”
“Freaky,” Gershwin agreed.
“Yeah …” Delmara said, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s like someone beamed him to me.”
37
It was past two when we left the precinct house and drove to Tiki Tiki for lunch. I once looked into my rearview and saw a couple that looked like Degan and Valdez. When I slowed, so did they, turning off at the next light.