“I guess you’ve heard the latest,” Kurt said, when he stepped into the front office.
Swaggert turned away from his wall locker, snapping on the last leather belt spacer. “Yeah, Bard told me about it over the phone. I’ll tell ya, I’ve seen some weird hobnobbing in my days, but I’ve never heard of anyone stealing a dead man out of a graveyard.”
”A lot of strange folks in this world,” Kurt conceded, “and nine out of every ten of them probably live in Maryland.”
“Put ’em all on a boat and send them to the Bermuda Triangle, I say. But getting on to far more crucial things, what happened to the coffee machine? If Bard thinks I’m gonna work night shifts without coffee, he better get his head examined.”
“The coil burned out, there’s a new machine on order. So, friend, for the next seven to ten days we’ll have to settle for coffee at the Jiffy-Stop.”
Swaggert made a face. “Jeez, that’s worse than drinking out of a crankcase.”
Kurt placed the big key ring and Motorola portable on the desk, then scribbled his IN mileage in the DOR and signed out. “Say, Doug, do me a favor and tell Higgins to call county animal control in the morning. I forgot to do it today. All kinds of dead possums and shit on 154.”
Swaggert jotted down the reminder in a pocket pad, said, “Gotcha,” and hooked the keys on his belt. Then he went back to the wall locker and took out his pair of Kale knuckle saps— black leather gloves with sand in the knuckles. The index finger of the right sap was nylon, so that he could fire his pistol without having to remove the sap. “Almost forgot my mitts,” he said. “I never know when I’m gonna have to punch through somebody’s front door.”
“Or somebody’s face,” Kurt added. He’d always regarded knuckle saps as cruel and unusual, something for the Mafia, not the town police. “Three cheers for our favorite sadist. Have you ever actually hit anyone with those things?”
“Couple of times. They do the job, and let me tell you, if you’d ever busted your hand open on some rube’s jaw, you’d own a pair yourself.”
Swaggert’s matter-of-fact view of mayhem sometimes made Kurt shudder. “Let me ask you something, Doug. A guy like you I figure’s been in a lot of fights.”
“Sure. Dozens.”
“Have you ever gotten your ass whipped in any of them?”
“No.”
Kurt believed him. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll meet your match one of these days?”
“My only match is Clark Kent, and as far as I know, he doesn’t live in this town.”
Kurt left the station, smiling and shaking his head. That was one thing he’d always admired about Swaggert, that clear and overwhelming sense of confidence. That’s what it all boiled down to, Kurt knew. That’s what made Swaggert tick—confidence.
But what Kurt didn’t know was that all the confidence in the world wouldn’t help Swaggert that night. Nor could he have known that he had just spoken to Swaggert for the last time.
— | — | —
CHAPTER FIVE
Vicky could never decide what she hated most about the Anvil. Poor tips, terrible, infantile music, or lights that flashed hot and mad and drove lancets of pain through your head. But she supposed it was the heart of the place more than anything else. She was only a waitress, but that did not justify that she worked in a strip joint.
The night groaned on, waning. She performed her duties as if recently summoned from the crypt. Running tabs, dumping out heaped ashtrays, clearing empties away by the armful. She’d done it a million times in the past, waiting on derelicts in this derelict place; it was routine now. When it got busy, the din often rose to crush her, a maelstrom of noise—she couldn’t think. Faces melted into lumps of sameness, drinking, smoking, staring without expression. She felt her force of life being wrested out and wasted as she hurried back and forth, night after night, toting beer and an apron heavy with change. Sometimes she would work her tables for hours and not even know it, days and weeks passing slowly as grueling dreams.
Overhead hung rows of multicolored spotlights that aimed down and lit up the dance stage like an inferno. The stage floor was raised three feet off the ground and covered with Plexiglas under which more lights throbbed. Ceiling-high mirrors formed the front and rear walls, creating an illusion of space that transformed the Anvil into a dark, endless gallery full of doppelgangers. Vicky knew that one day she would see her reflections marching about independently, and that would be the end.
Tables and chairs faced the stage from three sides; there were some padded booths along the far wall, but no one ever sat in them. Red candle orbs glowed eerily on each table—these Vicky especially detested because it was her job to light them every day, only to have a bunch of fat saps immediately blow them out and fill them with peanut shells and cigarette butts. The jukebox blared hard rock and country and western, exclusively, and was wired to an absolutely terrifying sound system that made the Anvil shake like a seismic tremor. Often Vicky worked with cotton balls in her ears, but even they did not block out the landslide of sound.
Weekdays were her relief; there were only ten or twelve customers just then. She took another round to a group of construction deadbeats sitting front and center. “Hey, hon,” one of them said. He had road tar on his arms and shirt. “Wanna go home with the man of your dreams?”
“If you’re the man of my dreams, then all my dreams must be nightmares.” She smirked at the junk-stuffed candle orb and noticed tobacco juice in some of the empties, which she gathered up with great care. “My oh my, what fine tailfeathers,” another one said. Vicky told him that he must be an expert on tailfeathers, since he smelled like a henhouse.
She took a break after a few more orders. Ah, the good life, she thought. She sat down on the end barstool by the halfboard and shook out a cigarette. The music beat in her ears, a downpour of grinding heavy metal. On stage, the current dancer was stepping it out, trying her best to be erotic, but getting more laughs than applause. Vicky doubted she was much older than eighteen. Any girl with a body could get a job here; they came and went like birds, and seemed as smart. At the song’s climax, the dancer attempted a full spin, but halfway through, the heel snapped off her sandal, and she hit the dance floor butt-first with a great slapping thud. Laughter sailed up from the audience like a breaking wave.
The song played itself out, the juke thumped off. Blushing scarlet, the dancer grabbed her gown and rushed offstage to the dressing room. Vicky immersed herself in the joyous, blissful silence, wishing she could ride away in it. Cigarette smoke hung frozen in the aura of stagelight, glasses clinked. She touched her mouth and was immediately aware of the dull ache behind her lower lip. Lenny had smacked her in the mouth that morning, one of his better smacks. When she shifted slightly on the stool, the throb of pain between her legs reminded her of what he’d done after he’d hit her. She doubted that he’d planned it that way, to have her right there on the living-room floor; perhaps the blood on her chin had sparked his lust. He’d used Kurt’s appearance to punish her both ways. The inside of her mouth felt ragged and tasted faintly of rust. At least he hadn’t hit her in the eye this time; the manager always bitched at her when she came in with a black eye.