CHAPTER 13

 

Buddy Cuszack burrowed deeper into the dirty quilt covering his bed and tried to ignore the barking of his two hounds, tied to a post outside. It had snowed another six inches during the night, and the snow had come with sub-zero temperatures and high winds. It wasn’t even December yet. His dogs usually didn’t bark unless someone was approaching. Who could be coming up the driveway at this hour of the morning?

Buddy was what Inspector Robert Farrell, had he known him, would have called a “lowlife.” He lived in a trailer on a remote piece of acreage on the outskirts of the bustling metropolis of Audubon, Iowa; population 8559. He stood under six feet tall, and weighed under one hundred and forty pounds soaking wet. He had a full beard and a penchant for bathing when it suited him. It didn’t suit him often.

Buddy worked only occasionally, doing farm labor and odd mechanic jobs here and there. He spent most of his time consuming tequila, smoking the local marijuana, known as “Iowajuana,” and snorting methamphetamine when he could get it.

Cuszack was known to associate with a local motorcycle club known as the Sons of Silence, and dreamed of promotion to full membership. His only known companions beyond the renegade biker’s club was a three-hundred pound throwback named Sunshine, who visited him for sex on occasion, and two large, unhealthy hound-dogs affectionately named “Douche” and “Bag.” These two dogs were responsible for rousing him from his alcoholic slumber.

The dogs continued to howl, barking with a ferocity usually reserved for the bi-annual visit from the sheriff’s department. Buddy put a worn pillow over his head, but the high-pitched barking penetrated easily. His headache was a grim reminder of how much tequila he’d consumed last night.

Buddy heard a car door slam, followed by the sound of heavy footsteps crunching in the fresh snow. He sat up in bed, wondering if all those traffic tickets he’d yet to pay had turned into warrants, and if the footsteps came from a deputy with a writ for his arrest.

Someone pounded on the trailer door.

“Shit, fuck, piss!” Buddy hauled his bony body out of the squalor of his bed. Wrapping a worn blanket around his waist, he waddled to the trailer door, which was still vibrating with the pounding of a fist.

“Jesus fucking Christ, I’m coming! Ease up, will ya?”

Cuszack opened the door and squinted into the blowing snow.

Standing on the doorstep, like an apparition, was a huge and vaguely familiar silhouette. Buddy peered through his alcohol-blurred eyes to make out the face.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“It’s me,” said a voice surprisingly soft for the size of its owner. “Vern.” It took a moment for Cuszack’s booze-impeded brain to recognize the man standing before him.

“Vern! Vernon fucking Slocum! C’mon in, man. It’s freezing, you know? Damn!”

Cuszack stepped aside and let the tall man into the trailer, closing the door after him. “Sit down, man. I’ll get some clothes on.”

Slocum brushed aside a stack of magazines from a battered sofa. Most depicted naked girls or motorcycles on their covers. He swept snow from his worn fatigue-jacket and sat down.

Buddy returned a moment later wearing a sweater and buttoning the suspenders of his bib-overalls. It was cold enough in the trailer to see breath. Buddy switched on a portable heater and sat down opposite Slocum on another battered sofa.

“Well, hey, Vern, it’s good to see you. I mean, it’s been what, twelve, thirteen years? What you been doing with yourself? How you been?”

“Buddy,” he said, “I need your help.”

Buddy’s eyes finally adjusted to being awake and semi-sober, and for the first time since his visitor arrived he got a good look at him. It made his eyes widen.

Slocum wore his hair in a crewcut, the unshaven stubble on his chin almost as long. His nose was puffed and bruised, and both eyes were swollen and ringed in black. Dried, crusted blood seeped from both nostrils, and there was matted blood on his chin. Beneath the swollen eyelids, in the depth of his eyes, a fire burned fiercely.

“Uh, OK Vern,” stammered Cuszack, biting his lip, “whatever I can do, I’ll do. I mean, you need a place to stay, or whatever, you can count on your old pal Buddy. What are friends for, right?”

Slocum said nothing, simply stared at Cuszack with his burning eyes. He reached into his jacket and came out with a pack of Pall Malls. He stuck one into a corner of his tight lips and lit it, the momentary flash of the lighter in his face casting a demonic glow on his already frightening countenance.

Tossing the cigarettes to Cuszack, Slocum said, “I need some weapons and some crank. I’ve got money. You can put me in touch with people who can outfit me. I need to lay low for a few days.”

Buddy Cuszack gulped and blinked. He didn’t know what Slocum wanted weapons for, and by his appearance it didn’t look like target practice. The dope was no problem, if Slocum really did have money. He lit one of Slocum’s cigarettes nervously.

“Vern, I can get you the dope. No problem. You got the cash I got the stash, right? But I don’t know nothing about no weapons. I stay clear of that kind of bad news, you know?”

“You owe me, Buddy,” Slocum said, “and you’ll get me what I want.”

Buddy almost choked on his cigarette. Slocum’s words were not a request. And Cuszack knew he must deliver.

Buddy Cuszack met Vernon Emil Slocum in the autumn of 1968, at the Veterans’ Hospital in Des Moines. Buddy had been captured by the Viet Cong in February of ’66, when his helicopter was shot down. He’d spent nineteen months as a prisoner of the Viet Cong before being rescued when the POW camp was liberated by Australian troops. In those nineteen months, Buddy Cuszack experienced every form of degrading humiliation that could be devised by his brutal captors.

By the time Buddy was physically healed, his mind still had a long way to go. He was shipped to the psychiatric observation ward of the veterans’ hospital in the capital of his home state, Iowa, and spent several long years fending off his demons before being released.

During those years, the years from 1968 to 1974, Buddy Cuszack made the acquaintance of a lumbering Marine named Vernon Slocum, who was housed in the psych ward as well. Slocum was there when Buddy arrived, and remained when he left. Slocum seldom spoke, but didn’t seem to mind Buddy’s incessant babbling.

The reason Buddy Cuszack developed an affinity for the stoic Marine was out of necessity. Like many of the veterans’ hospital’s residents, he’d developed a severe drug dependency. The lithium, Valium, Thorazine, and countless other pills that were dispensed like candy at the facility soon became his reason for living.

It was like being back in the VC prison camp. Cuszack found himself groveling at first, and then performing sex acts with hospital staff members and less-dependent residents for the drugs he craved. It was another nightmare to add to his burgeoning collection.

It was Slocum who broke the cycle and freed him from his servitude. One day the big Marine started giving his medications to Cuszack for no apparent reason. He would feign swallowing his own prescribed pills, and hide them under his tongue. He’d later give them to Cuszack without demanding the sex others who offered the same service demanded.

Then, for some inexplicable reason, Slocum put a stop to others using Cuszack. He began shaking down patients for their medications and giving them to Buddy. Slocum took no payment for this; he simply handed the meds over to the depraved addict without a word. Slocum’s reward was the pleasure of extorting the other residents.

Some of the incidents were notable. A huge African-American former Marine at the psych ward was one of the more serious offenders in the game of brutalizing Cuszack. Not only would the Marine, named Jackson, force blowjobs from the sniveling Cuszack, but he would take the pills Cuszack already had in his possession.

Slocum faced off Jackson in the residents’ lounge, where both shared clean-up duty. Jackson’s response to Slocum’s demand to leave Cuszack alone was to break a mop handle to a sharp point and lunge at him.

When the other patients and staff heard the screams, they went running into the lounge. They found Jackson on the floor, shrieking hysterically and bleeding profusely from an empty socket that was once his left eye. Slocum was conveniently gone, and they never found the missing eye.

Another time, one of the residents who’d been abusing Cuszack loudly remarked that Slocum was keeping all of Cuszack’s ass for himself. The next day that same resident leaned over to drink from one of the water fountains and a powerful hand materialized and slammed his head down savagely onto the spout of the fountain. Nothing was heard from that resident for some time because his shattered jaw was wired shut for several months.

When Cuszack was discharged from the hospital in September of 1974, the last thing he saw was the expressionless face of Vernon Slocum staring silently after him.

That same expressionless face was now staring back at Cuszack more than thirteen years later.

“You got anything to drink around here?” asked Slocum in a monotone.

“I got some tequila and bourbon; whichever you want, old buddy.”

“Both.”

Cuszack disappeared into the kitchenette and reappeared a moment later with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of Cuervo. It hadn’t occurred to him to bring a glass. Slocum took the bottles.

“I’m going to rest here for a while,” Slocum said, after taking a long swig from each bottle. “When I wake up I want you to have somebody lined up for me to deal with. You know some people who can help me, don’t you Buddy?”

“Yeah, sure Vern,” sputtered Cuszack. “How much you willing to spend? I mean, if I knew the price range it would help.”

“Don’t worry about money. Just set it up.” Slocum stared into Cuszack’s frightened eyes. “You ain’t gonna let me down, are you Buddy?”

Cuszack swallowed hard. His hands trembled and the cigarette between his lips twitched. “Course not, Vern. You can count on me. Don’t worry. You just go to sleep, and I’ll get right on it.”

“OK.” Slocum took another long pull from the bourbon bottle, and tossed Cuszack the keys to his truck. “It’s got a full tank of gas, and it’s a four-wheel drive. It’ll get you around in this storm. When you get back, wake me up.”

“Sure, anything you say.” Cuszack put on his parka.

“One more thing, Buddy,” Slocum said. “Don’t tell nobody I’m here. Nobody. You got that?”

Cuszack nodded. Slocum appeared out of the past like a phantom, with blood on his face and his eyes burning. He wanted weapons and meth, and barked requests like orders. Things didn’t look good to Buddy Cuszack, but he knew better than to disobey. He tried to conceal his fear of the imposing figure sitting on his couch, drinking his liquor.

“What are you waiting for?”