Native Tongue Part 8

Chelsea sat down, eyeing the fast-food debris on Joe Winder's tray. One of Uncle Ely's Elves, sitting at the other end of the table, belched sonorously. Charles Chelsea pretended not to notice. He said, "Not to brag, Joey, but I think I did a pretty fair job with this ditty myself. Mr. X loved his quotes. He said I made him sound like a real human being."

With the tips of his fingers, Joe Winder began to rub both his temples in a ferocious circular motion.

Chelsea asked, "Now what's the matter?"

"Headache." Winder squinted as tightly as he could, to wring the pain out of his eyeb.a.l.l.s. "Listen, I called Dr. Koocher's house. He didn't go home last night. His wife is scared out of her mind."

"Maybe he just got depressed and tied one on. Or maybe he's got a girlfriend."

Joe Winder decided not to tell Chelsea that Koocher had tried to reach him. "His wife's eight months pregnant, Charlie. She says he usually calls about nineteen times an hour, but she hasn't heard a word since yesterday."

"What would you like me to do?"

"Worry like h.e.l.l," said Winder. He stood up. "Also, I'd like your permission to talk to Pedro Luz. I think he's hiding something."

Charles Chelsea said, "You can't talk to him, Joe. He's in the hospital." He paused wearily and shook his head. "Don't ask."

"Come on, Charlie."

"For rabies shots."

"I should've guessed," Winder said. "My condolences to the dog."

"It wasn't a dog," Chelsea said. "Can't this wait till tomorrow? Pedro's in a lot of pain."

"No," said Joe Winder, "that's perfect."

Pedro Luz had been taken to the closest emergency room, which was Mariners' Hospital down on Plantation Key. The nurse on duty remembered Pedro Luz very well, and directed Joe Winder to a private room on the second floor.

He didn't bother to knock, just eased the door open. The impressive bulk of Pedro Luz was propped up in bed, watching a Spanish-language soap opera on Channel 23. He was sucking on one end of the plastic IV tube, which he had yanked out of his arm.

"That doesn't go in your mouth," Winder told him.

"Yeah, well, I'm thirsty."

"You're bleeding all over the place."

"What do you care?" said Pedro Luz. With a corner of the sheet he swabbed the blood from his arm. "You better get out of here. I mean right now."

Joe Winder pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. Pedro Luz smelled like a fifty-five-gallon drum of rubbing alcohol. His luxuriant hair stood in oily black spikes, and his ma.s.sive neck was covered with angry purple acne, a side effect of the fruit-and-steroid body-building diet.

"You like your job?" Winder asked him.

"What do you meana"at the Kingdom? Sure, I guess." The security man pulled the covers off his legs, so Joe Winder could see the bandages on his ferret-gnawed ankle. "Except for s.h.i.+t like this," said Pedro Luz. "Otherwise, it's an okay job most of the time."

Winder said, "So you really wouldn't want to get fired."

"The h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"For lying. I think you're lying."

"What about?"

Joe Winder said, "Don't play dumb with me." As if the guy had a choice. "Tell me why you sent a man to Koocher's lab yesterday. I know you did, because he called me about it."

Pedro Luz got red in the cheeks. The cords in his neck stood out like a rutting bull's. "I already told you," he said. "I don't have no report on that guy."

"He's missing from the park."

"Then I'll do up a report," Pedro Luz said. He breathed deeply, as if trying to calm himself. "Soon as I get outta here, I'll make a report." He took the IV tube out of his mouth. "This stuff's not so bad," he said thoughtfully. "Tastes like sugar syrup." He replaced the tube between his lips and sucked on it loudly.

Joe Winder said, "You're a moron."

"What did you say?"

"Make that a submoron."

Pedro Luz shrugged. "I'd beat the p.i.s.s out of you, if I didn't feel so bad. They gave me about a million shots." He leered woozily and opened his gown. "See, they broke two needles on my stomach."

Joe Winder couldn't help but admire Pedro Luz's physique. He could see the bright crimson spots where the hypodermics had bent against the muscle.

"Least I won't get the rabies," said Pedro Luz, drawing merrily on the tube. "You oughta take off, before I start feeling better."

Winder stood up and slid the chair back to its corner. "Last chance, Hercules. Tell me why you sent a man to the lab yesterday."

"Or else what?"

"Or we play "This Is Your Life, Pedro Dips.h.i.+t." I tell Kingsbury's people all about your sterling employment record with the Miami Police Department. I might even give them a copy of the indictment. A spine-chilling saga, Pedro. Not for the meek and mild."

Pedro Luz removed the tube and wiped his lips on the sleeve of his gown. He looked genuinely puzzled. "But they know," he said. "They know all about it."

"And they hired you anyway?"

"Course," said Pedro Luz. "It was Kingsbury himself. He said every man deserves a second chance."

"I admire that philosophy," Joe Winder said, "most of the time."

"Yeah, well, Mr. X took a personal liking to me. That's why I'm not too worried about all your bulls.h.i.+t."

"Yes," said Joe Winder. "I'm beginning to understand."

"Because you couldn't get me fired no matter what," said Pedro Luz. "And you know what else? Don't never call me a moron again, if you know what's good for you."

"I guess I don't," said Joe Winder. "Obviously."

SEVEN.

The ticket taker at the Wet w.i.l.l.y attraction was trying to control his temper. Firm, but friendly. That's how you deal with difficult customers; that's what they taught in ticket-taker training.

The young man, who was new to the job, said, "I'm sorry, sir, but you can't cut to the front of the line. These other people have been waiting for a long time."

"These other people," the man said; "tell me, do they own this f.u.c.king joint?"

The ticket taker did not recognize Francis X. Kingsbury, who wore thong sandals, baggy pastel swim trunks and no s.h.i.+rt. He also had a stopwatch hanging from a red lanyard around his neck.

"Now, you don't want me to call Security," the ticket taker said.

"Nothing but idiots," Kingsbury muttered, pus.h.i.+ng his pallid belly through the turnstile. He shuffled up two flights of stairs to the launching ramp, and dropped to all fours.

The Wet w.i.l.l.y ride was one of the Amazing Kingdom's most popular thrill attractions, and one of the cheapest to operate. A marvel of engineering simplicity, it was nothing but a long translucent latex tube. The inside was painted in outrageous psychedelic hues, and kept slippery with drain water diverted at no cost from nearby drinking fountains. The narrow tube descended from a height of approximately six stories, with riders plunging downhill at an average angle of twenty-seven exhilarating degrees.

Francis X. Kingsbury was exceptionally proud of the Wet w.i.l.l.y because the whole contraption had been his idea, his concept. The design engineers at the Amazing Kingdom had wanted something to compete with Disney's hugely successful s.p.a.ce Mountain ride. Kingsbury had collected all the press clippings about s.p.a.ce Mountain and used a bright yellow marker to emphasize his contempt for the project, particularly the development cost. "Seventeen million bucks," he had scoffed, "for a frigging roller ride in the dark."

The engineers had earnestly presented several options for the Amazing Kingdoma"Jungle Coaster, Moon Coaster, Alpine Death Coastera"but Kingsbury rejected each for the obvious reason that roller-coaster cars and roller-coaster tracks cost money. So did the electricity needed to run them.

"Gravity!" Kingsbury had grumped. "The most underused energy source on the planet."

"So you're suggesting a slide," ventured one of the engineers. "Maybe a water slide."

Kingsbury had shaken his head disdainfully. Slides look cheap, he'd complained, we're not running a G.o.dd.a.m.n State Fair. A tube would be better, a sleek s.p.a.ce-age tube.

"Think condom," he had advised the engineers. "A three-hundred-foot condom."

And so the Wet w.i.l.l.y was erected. Instantly it had become a sensation among tourists at the park, a fact that edified Kingsbury's belief that the illusion of quality is more valuable than quality itself.

Lately, though, riders.h.i.+p figures for the Wet w.i.l.l.y had shown a slight but troubling decline. Francis X. Kingsbury decided to investigate personally, without notifying the engineers, the ticket takers, the Security Department or anyone else at the park. He wanted to test his theory that the ride had become less popular because it had gotten slower. The stopwatch would tell the story.

The way the Wet w.i.l.l.y was designed, a 110-pound teenager would be able to slide headlong from the ramp to the gelatin-filled landing sac in exactly 22.7 seconds. Marketing specialists had calibrated the time down to the decimal pointa"the ride needed to be long enough to make customers think they were getting their money's worth, yet fast enough to seem dangerous and exciting.

Francis X. Kingsbury weighed considerably more than 110 pounds as he crawled into the slippery chute. Ahead of him, he saw the wrinkled bare soles of a child disappear swiftly into the tube, as if flushed down a rubber commode. Kingsbury pressed the b.u.t.ton on the stop-watch, eased to his belly and pushed off. He held his arms at his sides, like an otter going down a river-bank. In this case, an overweight otter in a ridiculous Jack Kemp hairpiece.

Kingsbury grimaced as he swooshed downward, skimming on a thin plane of clammy water. He thought: This is supposed to be fun? The stopwatch felt cold and hard against his breastbone. The bright colors on the walls of the tube did little to lift his spirits; he noticed that some of the reds had faded to pink, and the blues were runny. Not only that, sections of the chute seemed irregular and saggy, as if the latex were giving way.

He took his eyes off the fabric long enough to notice, with alarm, that he was gaining on the youngster who had entered the Wet w.i.l.l.y ahead of him. Being so much heavier, Francis X. Kingsbury was plummeting earth-bound at a much faster speed. Suddenly he was close enough to hear the child laughing, oblivious to the dangera"no! Close enough to make out the grinning, bewhiskered visage of Petey Possum waving from the rump of the youngster's swimming trunks.

"s.h.i.+t," said Kingsbury. Feverishly he tried to brake, digging into the rubber with his toes and fingernails. It was no use: gravity ruled the Wet w.i.l.l.y.

Kingsbury overtook the surprised child and they became one, hurtling down the slick pipe in a clumsy union of tangled torsos.

"Hey!" the kid cried. "You're smus.h.i.+ng me!" It was a boy, maybe nine or ten, with bright red hair and freckles all over his neck. Francis X. Kingsbury now steered the kid as if he were a toboggan.

They hit the gelatin sac at full speed and disengaged. The boy came out of the goo bawling, followed by Kingsbury, who was studying the dial of the stopwatch and frowning. He seemed not to notice the solemn group waiting outside the exit: the earnest young ticket taker, plus three uniformed security men. All were breathing heavily, as if they had run the whole way.

The ticket taker pointed at Kingsbury and said, "That's him. Except he wasn't bald before."

The security men, all former crooked cops recruited by Pedro Luz, didn't move. They recognized Mr. X right away.

The ticket taker said, "Get him, why don't you!"

"Yeah," said the red-haired tourist kid. "He hurt me."

"Mildew," said Francis X. Kingsbury, still preoccupied. "f.u.c.king mildew under my fingernails." He looked up and, to no one in particular, said: "Call Maintenance and have them Lysol the w.i.l.l.y, A-S-A-P."

The tourist kid raised the pitch of his whining so that it was impossible to ignore. "That's the man who tried to smush me. On my bottom!"

"Give the little t.u.r.d a free pa.s.s to the Will Bill Hiccup," said Francis X. Kingsbury. "And him," pointing at the ticket taker, "throw his a.s.s, I mean it, off the property."

The boy with the Petey Possum swimsuit ran off, sniffling melodramatically. As the security men surrounded the ticket taker, Kingsbury said, "What, like it takes three of you monkeys?"

The men hesitated. All were reluctant to speak.

"You," Kingsbury said, nodding at the smallest of the guards. "Go back up and slide this G.o.dd.a.m.n tube. Yeah, you heard me. See if you can beat twenty-seven-point-two."

The security man nodded doubtfully. "All right, sir."

"Yeah, and my hair," said Kingsbury, "it's up there somewhere. Grab it on the way down."

Bud Schwartz paused at the door and looked back. "It don't seem right," he said. "Maybe just the VCR."

"Forget it." Danny Pogue was rocking on his crutches down by the elevator. "Where we gonna hide anything? Come on, Bud, let's just go."

The elevator came and Danny Pogue clumped in.

With one crutch he held the elevator door and waited for his partner. Bud Schwartz was trying to tear himself away from Molly McNamara's fancy condo. "Look at all this s.h.i.+t we're leaving behind," he said longingly. "We could probably get five hundred easy for the Dolbys."

Danny Pogue leaned out of the elevator. "And how the f.u.c.k we supposed to carry 'em? Me with these toothpicks and you with one good arm. Would you get your a.s.s moving, please, before the b.i.t.c.h comes back?"

As they rode to the first floor, Danny Pogue said, "Besides, we got no car."

Bud Schwartz grunted sourly, wondering what became of the blue pickup. "I feel like she owes us."

"She does owe us. She owes us nine grand, to be exact. But we agreed it wasn't worth waiting, right?"

"I mean, owes us for this." Bud Schwartz brandished a gauze-wrapped hand. "Shooting us, for no good reason."

"She's a nut case. She don't need a reason." They got off the elevator and for once Danny Pogue led the way, swinging on his crutches.

They could see the gatehouse at the main entrance, on the other side of the condominium complex. Rather than follow the sidewalks, they decided to shorten the trip by cutting across the grounds, which were spa.r.s.ely landscaped and dimly lit. In the still of the evening, the high-rise community of Eagle Ridge was at rest, except for a noisy bridge tournament being held in the rec room. On the screened porches of ground-floor apartments, couples could be seen watering their plants or feeding their cats.

As the two outsiders made their way across the darkened, shuffle-board courts, Danny Pogue's left crutch gave out and he went down with a cry.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n," he said, splayed on the concrete. "Look here, somebody left a puck on the court."