Bright lights. An open mouth. A flash of tongue. A smear of red lipstick. A scream.
Leo’s mind rehearsed the elements before he rearranged them into patterns. From this point on, he could barely distinguish what he saw or heard. In the place where he went sounds became pictures; pictures screamed and choked.
Screams became unfathomable distances.
Followed by a tall, trampish man distinguished by a hairy mane who vaguely resembled Leo — ten years past — a woman scrambled from the beige car.
The objects described in the headlines. Did he see them? Or hear them? The blunt instruments. The knife. A broken shoe skittered across the sidewalk. Did he see it? Did the sounds create the pictures? Or the images redouble the sounds?
The woman lay strewn; the man had begun kicking her. The darkness leavened nearest the dead, dying, or damaged body.
Leo must have looked once. Or twice. Long enough to see the killer pull a set of cable wires. Darted a glance long enough to know not to look in that direction again.
Like a nightmare. Seventy-five percent of Americans have nightmares in bed. This guy Leo Malley can have ’em anywhere.
Terror. Moans. Silence. He had heard Spanish music all night. Then suddenly silence descended like a knife, and the aftermath was a dissipated revel. A beat party scene. Dreams were fragmented. His worst bad dreams invariably repeated. He relived them twice over, so he waited for the violence he had witnessed to replay. Distance, perspective, and contingent reality kept going. The forward-moving clock hands kept going. Like the Honda, riding on the brakes, rolling slowly, slowly away.
He climbed on his bike. He followed, pretending to be someplace else. Anyplace else. Pretending he was panhandling roses. And he made seventy-five cents. And Giggles made eight bucks. And he made three bucks. And Giggles made $23.68. And he scored forty-one dollars. Get real. He never scored forty-one dollars. He washed out. Giggles maxed out at sixty-five bucks. Leo Malley sold two roses. Net earnings. Net economic worth: $3.85. Wake up, Leo, he thought. The neighborhood was like a great big room that he could close his eyes inside, believing, with ease, all his problems, his helplessness, his homelessness, was stuff he could straighten out in the morning. The Honda rumbled, paused, swerved.
It swerved into the dead-end alley, wriggled, like a snake entering a hole. Leo paused at the very tip of the turning place, remembering the alley was blind. “I ain’t gonna look,” he muttered, like the moment in a dream when you promise yourself you won’t look. You won’t descend the staircase. You won’t enter the cellar. You won’t risk turning the corner. Nobody keeps the promise.
Nobody.
He saw the killer in tableau beneath the mural phantasmagoria.
He’s bigger than me, Leo thought, studying him from the back. He’s got a decade on me. Stands straighter than me. He’s a big mossy tree. There was a mantra Leo used in past times when he needed to steel his nerves. There were times on the streets when the fear maximized: fear of strangers and gangs, fear of cops and business owners. His mantra was, Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. And occasionally varying Fuck with self-deprecations. Leo Malley, white trash, $3.85 man. Then varying those with raw epithets. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. Fuck. Fuck. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. Bitch. Wets. Cunts. Niggers. It wasn’t a particularly noble mantra. Shameless. He couldn’t mean the killer. Or why couldn’t he? The fact that they were both white guys sharpened the edge. The repetition over and over in his head convinced him he was colder, less human, less vulnerable — since he was a crestfallen white guy, maybe he liked that type of language. He wasn’t even sure whether he directed the disgusting epithets at himself. A distinct zip added insult to injury. A fly unzippering. He heard a sharp zip and a plunky trickle. The instant he heard the killer pissing, Leo picked up his bike. He charged.
He slammed the big mossy tree against the mural.
And slammed.
The big mossy tree crumpled.
The fallen big mossy tree moaned, weakly writhing on the ground. This way, that way, looking for anything, Leo recognized the habits of a compulsive hoarder. The Honda was crammed with bags, clothes, detritus. Leo began rummaging. Pulling stuff out of bags. Disgorging the automobile. A handful of objects he grazed inside the Honda were bloodstained. Clothes. Socks. Toolkits. Hammers. Rivets. Pipes. Gloves. Cable ties. Cable ties provided a way to bind the suspect’s hands and feet. Get outta here, fast, faster. He realized his bicycle spokes were crushed anyway. He paused long enough to loop new knots, like a child playing Cat’s Cradle. He redoubled the cords, finished the job, beginning to see the angels and demonic imagery — the derelict presences — on the mural wall were living, sentient, huh, realizing he was hallucinating, or spinning, confusing past, present, and future Armageddons, or he had been zero/voiding since this morning, Lord knows since when.
Yep, he always told Giggles, I get irony. The irony that he had not gone looking for the cops since he was nine years old. The irony that he left the killer tied up beneath satanic devils; yet the minute he left the scene he believed he stepped inside illustrated phantasmagorias: looking for the blue-capped creatures that frightened him no less than angels and devils.
Nuclear war? Naw. Funny, though, the long and the short of it is. Armageddon. Has. Come.
His tongue raw in his mouth, his mouth bruised. And where am I? And how come my arms hang bloodless? My wrists sting, like I’m handcuffed? How much time has passed? None. Hours. Think back: think back to leaving the dead-end alley. Nearly sleepwalking. Nearing familiar Santa Fe, he laid the bicycle down. The bike frame was broken, bent at a sharp angle; the spokes network mangled. He leaned on the spokes with his elbows. The spokes softly pinged, pinged, while he pressured them back into alignment. He still couldn’t walk the bicycle much faster.
He had something to tell the cops. Damn straight. He had already begun disbelieving it. The story was factuaclass="underline" the imagery coloring his thoughts was semifactitious. But he seized phrases, Dead body. Hope she isn’t dead, then, The killer is in the alley. A flashlight sprung on him, like a sword drawn slantways from the scabbard. At first, in his head, he heard the ping ping, like a Pavlovian bell. Then he heard Reginald Prescott. Prescott was one of the policemen who occasionally visited the city dump. Step away from the curb.
“Oh, you,” Prescott said. He sounded disappointed, gesturing Leo away from the bike. Same guy that dropped by Leo’s campsite. Per usual, Prescott wouldn’t leave till he nudged the hibernating bear. “Had to be sure. You look like him. Go home. What am I saying — home? Say something.”
Before Leo finished answering, Prescott interrupted: “Something I should know about? What happened to your bicycle? Go back to the dump. The trash can, where you stay. Like Oscar the Grouch.”
Leo paid less and less attention to Prescott, barely listening — even when the man snickered — because when he tilted his head a certain way he heard ping ping; the sound when he slammed the bicycle; the sound when he laid the bicycle flat. Ping ping, like a triggering bell.
I don’t look like him so much, up close. And he’s down. And the ping ping sound was right after the killer hit the wall. That’s where I recognized the sound. I kinda think I know where he’s tied up. Need help. Need help retracing my steps. It got scary right afterward when them pictures on the mural started moving, looked like they was moving, lucky I tied him down. Leo believed he sensibly appended the right details; maybe he unspun the whole fucking story, like unwinding a ball of thread. Or maybe not.