American Elsewhere

CHAPTER SIXTEEN




It is nearly two o’clock in the morning, and Tom Bolan is ass-over-head, military-grade, wearing-more-booze-than-he’s-ingesting drunk. He’s sitting on the floor of his shadowy little corridor with the stock ticker, and for the past two hours his lone companion has been a 750-milliliter bottle of Bushmills (what Bolan thinks of as a “polite-size bottle of booze”), and it’s been a pretty good companion as far as Bolan’s concerned, for he’s said a great deal of controversial things and the bottle hasn’t vocally dissented yet.

He’ll pay for this in the morning, and it won’t just be the hangover: his indigestion will be nothing short of mutinous. But he doesn’t care. It has been a goddamn difficult couple of days.

No man of his—not Dee, Norris, Zimmerman, or any of the few others—can get within a mile of Wink without something going wrong, and not stepped-in-dogshit wrong but nearly-crushed-by-a-falling-piano wrong. Dee’s tires got slashed while he was in a corner store, and someone left an ice pick stabbed in the cushion of the driver’s seat of his car; Zimmerman’s safe house had an electrical fire (while he was out, thank God) and it ate through his apartment and the ones on either side; and Norris… Jesus. Words can’t begin to describe it. It was one thing to have him running in, sobbing and covered in fungal, spindly words, but when they started to crack and ooze…

Bolan knows it’s all a message. In the case of Norris, a bit too literally. Someone knows who the triggermen were, and wants them to skip town. He knows he’s lucky they didn’t just kill anyone or… whatever it is they do to people.

Bolan’s taken this personally. His crew was never supposed to be at risk. Bolan isn’t the world’s greatest boss, that he knows, but he’s not going to sit idly by while his boys get circled by sharks.

But he’s also never confronted the people in Wink on anything, ever. And isn’t it time, he thinks, to stop calling them people? But Bolan doesn’t really have a name for what they are… He thinks of the man in the panama hat not as a person but as an index finger poked up into this place from deeper waters, and perhaps the finger has a smiley face drawn on its pad, and it’s wearing silly little people-clothing, so it looks like a person but really… really it’s connected to a lot more down below, an extremity of something vast.

Which explains all the Dutch courage currently bubbling away in Bolan’s gut.

The stock ticker comes to life at the end of the hallway. Bolan sits up, then lurches to his feet as the bronzed contraption spits out a little tongue of paper:

WHO IS THE GIRL

“The girl?” says Bolan. “You’re seriously asking about the girl? My boys are under fire, and you’re still on about that goddamn girl? We did everything you said, and you told us we’d be protected. We wouldn’t come to any harm. Where’s your goddamn protection now?”

There is a pause. He feels like the stock ticker is a little taken aback by his response. He has never smarted off to them before.

Finally it begins writing again:

DID YOU DELIVER THE NEXT TOTEM

“The skull?” says Bolan. “Yeah, we dropped the thing off earlier tonight.”

It writes:

THEN YOU HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT

“How do you f*cking think?”

In response, the ticker spits out one word:

TERRIFIED

Bolan eyes the slip of paper blearily. “You think that’ll frighten them off?”

The stock ticker does not answer, as if to say—Clearly. Bolan isn’t sure how an inanimate object can appear snooty, but somehow the stock ticker pulls it off.

When it begins printing again, it’s a familiar question:

WHO IS THE GIRL

He sighs. “Her name’s Mona Bright. Word is she inherited a house in Wink. How the f*ck something like that happened is beyond me. She hasn’t done much more than move into the place, which I don’t know anything about. No one’s lived there for, like, thirty f*cking years or some such. She’s asking questions, but none of them are dangerous. Mostly she asks about her mother, who apparently worked at Coburn when the place was still ticking, but no one’s heard of her. She must’ve left Wink before”—he pauses, aware that he’s touching on a very sensitive subject—“everything happened.”

He expects a quick response, but none comes.

He glances around the hallway awkwardly. “Hello?” he asks.

He wonders if he’s offended them. They definitely don’t like that he knows where they came from, or at least when they came. But then the stock ticker begins typing again:

HER MOTHER

Bolan stares at it drunkenly. “What?”

It writes:

YOU ARE SURE SHE SAID HER MOTHER

He remembers that the damn thing can’t punctuate. It must’ve meant: “Her mother?” “Yeah,” he says. “She’s talked to a couple of people in town about it. That broad at the courthouse, the one you hate, for one. I don’t know if she’s found anything.”

Another long, long pause. Then:

YOU ARE POSITIVE

Bolan isn’t sure if he feels more confused or irritated. They’ve never asked so many questions before. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve had four people verify it. Though my boys almost got scalped finding it out. Is there anything you want us to do about it?”

There is another pause, this one the longest yet. He can tell they’re thinking very hard, wherever they are. He feels a little satisfied by that. It’s nice to see them confused.

Then it begins ticking again:

DO NOTHING

“That’s it?” says Bolan. “You want me to just sit tight? You can’t even tell me what’ll go down tomorrow?”

The response from the ticker is almost as short and sweet as the last one. It reads:

ABSOLUTE CHAOS