It could be a lie,” Buck said. We were in his office, him behind his desk, me on a stool he brought out of the closet. Jeff was still out in the garage, still tied to the chair, but now with a shop rag stuffed into his mouth. An oily one. “A creosote post with a face. A fucking lair. On top of that, you got your story about your man Flashlight Boy that lives in a tunnel with rats and steals clothes from graves, puts bones in trunks. And then we got that whole strangle-the-shit-out-of-someone-in-a-chair thing. I said I knew when Jeff was lying, but I don’t know I do. You believe any of that shit?”
“I not only believe some of it, I believe all of it. I’ve seen Creosote Johnny. I didn’t tell you that creosote-post business, about the ritual strangulations, because I wanted to hear that from someone that knew about it. I keep expecting to wake up, but things just get odder and odder.”
“I knew the council were greedy fucks, not on the up-and-up, but shit, man.”
“You get used to doing whatever you have the urge to do because you keep getting away with it, then you just keep doing it, no matter how outrageous. What about Jeff? What happens to him now?”
“He’s all right.”
“In what way?”
“In the way I decide. Don’t ask me any more questions here, Danny. Look, I’m going to put him in his piece-of-shit car, which will run a bit, and get him out of town and leave him with a threat. I might even give him an ass-beating before I let him go, but I’ll take care of him.”
“You think he’ll leave and stay gone?”
“He’ll know what the alternative is. Don’t get your panties in a twist. He and Coolie, they’d have killed you or dropped you off to sit in that strangle chair. No need to sweat Jeff.”
“They’ll be looking for him.”
“I don’t think they’ll look that hard.”
Buck put his hands behind his head and gave one of those looks that makes you think he might have forgot something in a public restroom somewhere.
“You put me in this, Danny. Now don’t try and put it on me.”
“You did more than expected. But yeah. It’s my fault.”
“Only time I was ever sorry is when we let a big old beautiful German shepherd named Bobo go down in a hole in Vietnam, a tunnel. He got two of them Cong, ripped their fucking throats out, but they killed Bobo. Then I got them. What was left of them was small and imprecise in structure. After that time, Danny, and I say this without one fucking word of apology, I’m all out of sorry. Step on your foot. Walk in front of you. Sorry and excuse me. Mess with me with bad intent, I got some bad intent to give back. Dogs are ten times better than people. Not real picky eaters either. Of course, there’s Ronnie. I could like her a lot, but so far, I haven’t worn her down enough. Might be she’s just looking for a better class of human being. You go on home and let me finish up here.”
I collected my ax handle, left the office, and looked at Jeff tied to the chair with a rag in his mouth. He watched me with hope.
Ignoring him, I took my car out of the stall and drove it out to the curb and sat behind the wheel, clenching it the way Jack Jr. must have clenched that garrote.
I wasn’t all that fond of myself right then. I was just good old Danny Russell, assistant to a wet-towel expert. Merely asking a few little questions and leaving a man tied to a chair with a rag in his mouth.
All I needed were some flies to pull the wings off of, a kitten to kick downstairs, an orphanage to set fire to on Christmas Eve with the kids asleep in their beds and presents under the tree. I wasn’t going to think about Jeff. He’d be like the parakeet your mother said got free and flew out the window when in fact the cat had eaten most of it and the rest of it was tucked up under a rosebush.
I felt sick to my stomach. I felt overwhelmed. I felt as if I were a minor star in a melodrama. I felt as if I were plunging through that bridge on my way to the water. I felt all manner of things, but the one thing I didn’t feel was good.