Blood & Tacos #4 Read online

  They took the chance both at once. At the height of their arcs his hands shot out. In an instant he had clamped the he-minxes by the throats.

  Their bodies below the neck flailed like crash dummies, and the nunchucks shot from their grips. The table broke and drenched the carpet with rémoulade and spritzer. The fatales barely had time to choke on the crushed pulp of their voiceboxes before the priest clapped their heads together like strangely ripe bowling balls.

  “Oh pickles,” said Master Anton. “And just when I’d got them both trained.”

  “That chop-socky wasn’t so hot for the d.”

  “I wasn’t referring to martial arts.” Master Anton threw aside his cigarette holder and brought up his hands. The fingernails were long and sharpened to points. “I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  And just like that Master Anton came on like a whirling dervish. Father Dukes barely brought up a forearm before a gash opened through the sleeve of his clergy shirt. The assailant leapt past in a garish grand jeté.

  Father Dukes turned and hunched low, waiting for the cartwheel to double back. When it did in a blur he tried an uppercut. But the master flowed through the strike like a saucy eel, leapt, sashayed, and landed square on the priest’s shoulders.

  The ankles were crossed at Father Dukes’s chest. Supple thighs clamped down on his airway. The thick muscles of his all-Irish-American neck fought back like tackles in a scrimmage. He clenched his eyes shut as he heard the nails swoop in. They raked against his lids. Even there the priest had steel, and the claws did little more than mark the map of his prizefighter’s scar tissue.

  It was not fear of blindness that made the priest move but embarrassment: at his nape and through the silk pants he could feel the rage erection, probing, seeking a way.

  “Gah!” Father Dukes threw Master Anton through an urn of daffodils. But the sleek homo landed in a handstand among the shards and petals, legs wide, pup tent pitched. Father Dukes rubbed the back of his neck, wishing for a grill brush and lye.

  Nimble little shaygetz, ain’t he? Lefty said. You gotta use the overhand right!

  “You told me never to do that,” Father Dukes said.

  Master Anton came to a halt. “What’s that? I told you what?”

  Don’t klatsch with the creep, just use the overhand right!

  Getting no answer, Master Anton huffed and resumed his dance. And with a shriek like a banshee in a cathouse on dollar day he shot toward the padre.

  Now!

  Father Dukes felt the power flow into his shoulder and the opposite foot. Time slowed as the punch reeled out. Pie-eyes and man-talons filled his vision, an intersex harpy on the kill. And then he saw his fist connect in a flare of white adrenal light.

  The priest came to from his pugilist’s trance, still standing, breathing deep. He looked down. The kung-fu master had fallen face up. The jaw had not only broken and dislocated but come half off in a ragged tear. The tongue lolled through the raw split aside the head. Master Anton sputtered, shook, went still in a mist of blood.

  Father Dukes made the sign of the cross and went to find the stairs.

  [Floors six through ten: starved rats, Senegalese mercenaries, “The Australian,” a brainwashed heiress with a machine gun, plus minions, and a Universal Life Church minister and his “love congregation.” On the eleventh floor, Father Dukes beats a knife-throwing witch doctor and comes up to a mysterious door. —Ed.]

  …bare steel in a steel frame, no handle, no rivet, no weld. Behind him Father Dukes heard the death rattle as Dr. Tsetse went limp upon the sewage pipe that had skewered him to the wall.

  The priest was about to punch the door when he heard a metallic buzz and the pop of an automatic bolt.

  The door stood ajar.

  An invitation? No: a trap, an obvious trap. A wad of cheese on a wire that a rat would blush to sniff. But Father Dukes saw no other way. He was dog tired. His hip flask had been drained dry. Little of his clergy shirt remained except the scrap of black around the collar. And his bared and rippling torso told the story of battle. Cuts, burns, purpling bruises, bites (junkie and rat), boomerang welts, a cauterized bullet hole, a hickey. His suffering had a touch of Bartholomew and a bit of Matthew thrown in with a dash of Pete. All he had to do now to stand by his word—to get himself in good with the Almighty Referee and atone for his poor sportsmanship—was throw himself onto a crucifix and be a goddam man about it.

  “Thy will and all that,” he croaked, and pushed though the doorway.

  Nothing showed at first, the light too dim, but the musk in the air was dank and heady, jungle/vaginal. Some kind of herb or spice. Father Dukes didn’t know what sort—his “pantry” (the top of a stove) held salt, rock salt, and whiskey salt (a cooking experiment). Maybe it was sage. His mama had put sage in the corned beef one Thanksgiving, that and a Pall Mall butt. “Call it a toy surprise, you foakin’ gobshite,” she had said, falling boozily asleep at the table.

  He had been shuffling forward one foot at a time to seek a path in the here and now, and flood lights switched on mid-step.

  Once he blinked away the sear of white he saw where he was: a warehouse of sorts. A clear lane lay ahead. To either side of it the floorboards were heaped high with pure, drab “maree chhhuana” (as the Puerto Ricans said). Stacked the way the city priest imagined hay might be, and were it hay and this a farm, enough to feed every steak-beast for miles.

  He walked down an aisle between the mounds, eyeing it all. So much! The source of the Killing Floor’s plague, this, the devil weed. A sweat came to the priest’s freckled brow. He stepped lightly.

  A chuckle echoed through the grass. Father Dukes stopped and crouched, ready to punch the very air.

  “Behold ... my empire,” said a tinny voice. Father Dukes looked up and saw a P.A. speaker. And a video camera that turned to track his every move.

  “Straight ahead, you’ll find a stair,” said the P.A., “and up the stair you’ll find me. I’ve been expecting you, Reverend Muldoon. It’s time we met. I made macaroons.”

  The priest did not recognize the voice, but he knew whose it had to be. He felt a thrill. One way or another, soon the hunt would end. The Piper unmasked. And punched in the head.

  The stair came up a trapdoor in the middle of the floor. The space above was a simple one. An expanse of floorboards; a spotlight in the middle; a desk in the light; a man at the desk. All else was darkness.

  Father Dukes could scarcely make out a face behind the glare. And there were stacks atop the desk to block the view—stacks of bundled money, heaping, overflowing, piled like sandbags for a flood.

  “Let me introduce you to the family,” said the voice, still amplified by a P.A. “Andrew, Ulysses, Benjamin. And Grover, sweet Grover. You can have the Abrahams.”

  Father Dukes heard a click. Behind him the trapdoor sealed. Another click brought on the house lights. The priest looked about himself, puzzled. All around were ropes in four parallel rows, tied at four corners in turnbuckles. He turned back to the desk. “It ain’t regulation,” he said.

  The figure stood from his switchboard and microphone. “Nor am I, Reverend.”

  Father Dukes took a step back. “You!”

  Him! Sheldy Pipowitz, Esquire. The shyster. The public defender who got the worst scum off on any technicality and sometimes (rumor had it) with a bribe. Delaware City’s “Voice of the People,” as his bus bench ads said. The oily, hook-nosed, thick-fingered—

  What are you gettin’ at? Lefty asked.

  “If I and my money might enjoy your ... full attention, Reverend Muldoon,” Pipowitz said.

  “What for? Pretty soon you won’t have a take to count. You’re gonna be counting to zero, like this: Zero. The end. Forever. And what you never counted on was me making it through your goons, one floor at a time.”

  A grin, a chuckle. “It is precisely what I was counting. On.”

  Father Dukes stared.

  “You’ve been a thorn in my side for far too long, Reve
rend,” said the Piper. “And now the stages of battle have worn you out. With you gone—”

  “So I should just, what, stand here while you wrap that up?” Father Dukes said. He cracked his knuckles and then his neck. He could go another round or ten.

  “Oh.” The Piper pushed aside a stack of money. There on the desktop was a button and a bell—a ringside bell. The button he pushed straight away. Then he took up a carpenter’s hammer.

  Somewhere past the ropes a panel opened up. Father Dukes heard a heavy trudge. Someone, or something, growing near.

  “The short of it was, I gave the shiksa the dope, that made you mad, and your anger brought you here,” said the Piper. “All a part of my plan. All below, that was just an appetizer for—”

  “There’s really no reason to yank on my rosary and let you talk,” said the priest, “when I can just ease on over and dot that ‘I.’”

  “Well, I do have a gun.” He opened his wide-lapel coat. In a holster was a sizable revolver.

  “And you didn’t just shoot me because why?”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  Gun, shmun, thought the priest. He had already taken a bullet that evening, and he had found it kind of fun. Of course that had been from the hot chamber of a busty heiress. He was curious, he had to admit. The clandestine dope overlord had gone to a lot of trouble. It seemed kind of rude not to wait it out. See what happened.

  What happened was this: a shadow loomed on the other side of the ropes, at a corner. As it stooped and climbed through with a leaden energy, it came into the light and took a stool.

  Father Dukes gasped. “Twos!”

  Wally “Twos” Phelan. He had more than a foot on the priest and had lost none of his hulking power. His shoulders rippled with the ready force of a testy elephant. But he had no life in his eyes, his hair had fallen out, his skin had paled to ghostly white, and a scar stood out on his forehead and scalp where the doctors had worked to save the brain. Seated in his corner, he looked like a Frankenstein in a diaper.

  “Say hello to my champion,” said the Piper. “I fetched him out of the V.A. a year ago and began his training. More like a circus bear than a ballerina. But memory did most of the work. Or what memory was left after you made applesauce.”

  The Piper brought up the hammer and swung. The bell rung, and the old familiar peal went up Father Dukes’s backbone.

  And not just his, it seemed. Twos came up from his corner, fists ready. Suddenly the brain-damaged heavyweight’s eyes had more light to them—almost a focus. And what they were looking at was Father Dukes.

  “Wally,” said the priest, “listen up. It’s Mick. Mickey Muldoon. You don’t—”

  On he came. A great arm swung. Father Dukes scarcely had time to feint and bob. The wind from the miss blew his hair back. It was as if a city bus had leapt past his head.

  The Piper rang the bell again. Phelan went blank, turned around, and returned to his stool. Father Dukes stood his ground, catching his breath.

  “Take a moment to reflect,” the Piper said, “on everything that led you here. On every gear and mainspring I had to put in place in order to make this timepiece run.”

  Timepiece? That reminded the priest.

  “Do you have the time, Mr. Pipowitz?”

  The Piper sneered, rolled up a sleeve. “A grown man in need of a wristwatch. Look at this one, right here. Note the gleam—the refulgent splendor of precious gold. Twenty-four karat, encrusted with diamonds. A masterpiece of horology, it costs more than your entire parish—”

  “But does it tell the time?”

  The Piper was about to answer, or gloat some more, when the whole building shuddered. Stacks of money fell from the desk. The Piper grabbed the corner and looked around in bewilderment. Phelan yawned on his seat and let out a string of drool.

  “Never mind,” said the priest. “It’s straight-up midnight.”

  “What have you done?”

  “I left my poor-man’s watch downstairs, you see, on the ground floor. To time a bomb—a firebomb. Jellied gasoline and white phosphorus. Got a little help from my republican uncle. Also I scraped off a lot of match heads. By now the flames are to the third floor. What the devil started here, God will finish.” The priest winked. “God or his palooka.”

  The Piper reeled back in horror.

  “But please, do tell me more about that fine gold watch.”

  In a panic the Piper swung the hammer. The bell rang. The colossus rose.

  Father Dukes’s attention went to his own defense. One well-landed blow from the retarded juggernaut would kill him outright.

  The Piper had taken a walkie-talkie from the desk. He was screaming into it: “Send the helicopter! The chopper! Now!”

  A ham fist shot for the priest’s head, then another. He weaved and ducked, stepping back.

  He’s got a reach on him! Lefty said. You gotta swarm in and use it!

  “Use what?” The priest pedaled back from an uppercut.

  You knows what!

  “No. No! Not that, Lefty! Never again!”

  Dis time it’s different! It’s for the best, boychik! Look! The Piper, he’s gettin’ away to the rooftop!

  The priest spared an eye. Pipowitz was nowhere to be seen.

  The glance cost him. Phelan half-connected on a jab, and it sent Father Dukes hard into the ropes. They twanged like bowstrings and threw the priest back toward the shambling behemoth. One arm shot forward like a battering ram. A quick slip got Father Dukes under it but put him off-balance. He rolled on the floor and came upright. Smoke was already leaking up between the boards, he saw.

  No time! said Lefty. Think of the goil. The goil!

  The image came. Sweet Jenny Stupek. One time a lightbulb had burnt out in a lamp at the church. Without being asked, the little girl had dragged out a foot ladder and climbed it, trying to put in a new bulb for her manly priest. She had met her inevitable failure with a cute stamp of her foot and a squeaky humph! If only she’d brought two more little Polacks to turn the ladder for her and the bulb in her hand. Those golden ringlets, now spilled onto a hospital gown. A tube up her nose. The foam on her rosebud lips. The whites of her eyes shot with red. Her little body convulsing from the overdose. The reefer. The Piper’s venom.

  Father Dukes screamed in fury. Phelan had come up close, a mighty fist cocked.

  Time slowed as the maneuver began: the dreaded “sucker’s hook.” Father Dukes twirled his left fist to draw attention, and then sent it out at arm’s length to one side. The dopey giant’s eyes tracked it all the way out, and he turned his head, opening the sweet spot. Then came the right, a searing blur like a meteor strike, so hard that the fighting priest himself blacked out on impact.

  He came out of the battle trance. The force of his own blow had knocked Father Dukes flat onto his back. The right arm lay useless, the wrist broken, the fingers curled up like the legs of a dying roach.

  Above him the colossus towered. In the side of his head the fist print showed: the shape of knuckles in flesh and bone.

  But the eyes were more lively now. Sleepy but there. Phelan glanced about. Something knocked loose had been jolted back into place.

  Phelan glanced down, saw the priest. “Mickey?” he whispered.

  But then the damage had its way, and Wally “Twos” Phelan fell once more, face forward. He struck the boards as hard as a timber. Blood trickled from both his ears.

  Even in his grief the priest saw that the smoke was really spurting now. He felt the heat through the wood. The fire had reached the cache of devil weed just below him. The smoke changed color and density, pouring up through the floorboards a rich and milky white.

  Before the priest could rise, block his nose and mouth, he had drawn a lungful. The toxin entered his bloodstream and flowed into his brain.

  And ... wait. What was he doing here, hurt like this, and hurting others? Hate and anger were only pain, after all. He looked around him at the wreckage, the smoke, the prone body. He frowned.
What did he accomplish by inflicting more pain except bring it back on himself under another mask? He would have to rethink his life.

  Easy, kid! Lefty said. That’s the boo talkin’!

  And what was that voice? So much was just illusion, a phantom of his own device. He, the sovereign being presently known as Michael Muldoon, was the seat of his own torment. But he could become a lotus.

  No, kid, noooo! the voice screamed. But it was already fading, already gone.

  He wasn’t even sure what a lotus was, but he knew he could be one. A voice from a far minaret was telling him so. By forsaking desire he could reach wisdom. The inner light. Perhaps he’d open a wellness center—

  A clout, square on his head.

  “Ow!” He rubbed at the welt, a pain all too familiar but unfelt for many years. He looked up.

  There stood a vision of his mother in her Irish tam and shabby housecoat. Her hair the same red as his own, her face pinched, a rigor mortis of disapproval she had worn all her life. The clothes were charred and stank of sulfur. She waved the rolling pin and spoke in a brogue as thick as champ despite five generations in the New World. “Look at you, pinin’ like a foakin’ Loyalist twat! Find the man in you and get on that Haybrew cuntiballs!”

  “Mama! Did the angels send you from heaven?”

  She brushed a giant maggot from her housecoat. “Er, they did! They did at that! Now let’s see us some wab, you chape lousy faggot! Up and after him, boy!”

  She had already become a smoke—plenty of which had filled the room, he now saw, along with the orange firelight fanning up between the floorboards.

  “Love you, Mama,” he shouted.

  Sheldy Pipowitz, Esquire, alias The Piper, stood at the edge of the roof. Looking down he saw only flames, and out in the night below, crowds that had gathered to watch. The heat blew back his curls and the brightness lit up his beady eyes. He backed away.

  He turned around, looked to the nighttime sky. He could hear but not see the helicopter. All around him the roof tar steamed. Soon it would bubble.

  His shirt, checkered slacks, and game-show blazer were stuffed fat, as much of the gelt as he could save. The Grovers had gone in first, secured in the front elastic and Y-fly of his underpants. He imagined the tickle of the presidential whiskers. Sweet Grover, second only to gentle Ben, who was stuffed down the back and reaching for the front. “Not now, you tease, we’re making our getaway!” Ulysses shifted under his shirt, a bit of nipple play. Too bad about poor Andrew, left down below. But Old Hickory had been through worse.