The Vile Village Read online

  “Mmm, good. You should really market these on a wider scale,” Ovan said, taking a few more in his pocket for later snacking. “Now, where’s the dough? We ain’t even been around here for two weeks, got caught up in other stuff. Let’s see…” He pulled out a little notepad on which were scrawled all kind of unintelligible figures. “That’ll be one hundred dollars.”

  “One hundred dollars?” Benchley repeated, growing pale as beds of sweat popped out on his forehead. “That’ll ruin me. That’s about all I made in the last two weeks. One hundred and sixteen dollars. I swear. I mean, I don’t mind paying you guys money for ‘protecting’ me from the Head Stompers, but all of it? It’s too much, too much.”

  “Too much, is it?” Ovan started forward, and from behind him, Stone saw the thug reach for his spiked brass knucks, which would have caved the butcher’s face in without much problem. Stone suddenly moved forward, getting in the way of the gangman, and ripped the cleaver from the meat table. He pulled it back and threw it hard, and the cutting tool spun through the air like a missile, whizzed by Benchley’s right ear missing it by not more than three or four inches, and buried itself blade first about three inches deep in the wall behind the man.

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” he screamed out, his face draining of every ounce of blood. It was one thing to be poor. It was another to have a meat cleaver poking through the center of your skull, opening it up for all the world to see. He reached down in a floorboard, lifted it, and pulled out a small pack-age wrapped in brown paper. He handed it over to Ovan, who took it with that same horrible, fixed smile.

  “Well now, that’s mighty kind, mighty kind,” the collector said, counting the coins and bills inside. “Now, you just keep cutting your meats. And by the way, I’ll be sending my whore to pick up something tonight, so have something nice for me, okay?”

  “Yes, Ovan, I will, absolutely,” the butcher nearly sobbed. “The best.” He stood there quaking in his boots as the crew walked out, grabbing pieces of meat from here and there and chewing them on the spot. No gourmets these, but then where they had come from in the mountains, men had been known to grab squirrels from trees and eat them live, ripping off the heads, chewing them down, then spitting out the clumps of fur that were left.

  They headed outside and down the street. “That was pretty good,” Ovan, the collector, said to Stone as he fell in alongside him. “You didn’t even have to smash him.”

  “I believe in pure fear,” Stone said, holding his fist up in the air and turning it over. “If you can throw the fucking fear of God into the other guy, he’ll do whatever you want, you don’t even have to slug him.”

  “But, I mean—” Ovan stuttered, looking a little confused. “Don’t you miss it, you know, caving in people’s noses and chests? I mean, it don’t seem natural.”

  “Saves my knuckles, my hands, for the things I really need ’em for,” Stone replied. “After all, my fingers are precious commodities.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true,” Ovan said with a metaphysical glimmering in his dark eyes. He held his own fist up and turned it in the air like a precious jewel. “’Dis is my tool of my vocation. If I broke dese, I wouldn’t be a very good collection man, now would I? A handless collection man—it don’t make sense.” He looked at Stone with a new respect and saw why the brothers had hired the guy. He had it up top.

  The next store they came to was the barbershop, where nearly two dozen local townspeople were lined up to get a shave in the one barber chair that sat in front of an old broken porch. A barber pole, one that looked like it had been around when Abe Lincoln was president, stood along-side the chair, although it no longer revolved or even lit up. But the motionless spirals of red and blue and white that twisted down its side still gave the signal to all the world: Hair was cut here.

  This time it was W. Tibbets, the second-in-command, who went up to the barber, an old white-haired fellow who was snipping away at a man’s hair.

  “Hair today and gone tomorrow, hey?” Tibbets grunted out, which was the same thing he said every time he came around to the barber, thinking it was pretty smart each time. “You got my taxes?” he asked, the thin smile vanishing from his face. “You was behind last time. Let’s see, that’s”—he took out a notepad—“twenty-nine dollars and seventy-three cents. But seeing as how it’s Barber’s Week, I’ll let you keep the seventy-three cents.” He looked around at the crowd of cowering men, there for their yearly trim. “And don’t let no one say that the Strathers brothers ain’t generous men.”

  “Yes, I h-have it right here,” the barber stuttered. “I got it, I got it,” he went on in a panic, reaching into the torn white smock around his chest and legs. “But not all of it—I couldn’t get it all. It was a bad week and—”

  “Pal, pal,” Tibbets said, slapping his hands together in front of him so they made a loud cracking sound and startled all the haircuttees, making their faces twitch in fear. “I’m not sent out to get excuses, you know what I mean? I mean, I’m just a working guy like you. I go back to my boss, I tell him I don’t have all the money, it’s my ass in a sling. You understand, right? So… the money?” He held out his hand and stared at the barber with a frozen face.

  Shaking, the man handed over a small packet of coins to the collector, who went through them, then looked up, his face growing red. “I said money, asshole, not chicken.” He leaned over and picked up the scissors the barber had put down on a table a few feet in front of him. Remembering what Stone had done with the cleaver, Tibbets pulled the cutters back and let them fly. He had intended for the long scissors to go into the rotting wall behind the man, but they went into his stomach instead. There was a sickening wet sound, and they all looked over to see a spreading pool of red right in the center of the white smock near the barber’s waistline. The scissors were only in about an inch, so the barber was clearly going to live. But either the pain or the blood got to him, because he slipped to the ground in a dead faint.

  “Take care of him,” Tibbets screamed to the waiting customers. “Tell him that next time the scissors are going all the way through—unless he’s got twenty dollars more.” He slammed the twenty dollars or so worth of change that the man had given him into his pocket, and the Strathers crew headed on down the street to the next poor bastard who was working his balls to the bone for nothing.

  And so it went through the afternoon. They must have hit a total of forty stores, for the town serviced a large area of the territory—people coming in from all over to get sup-plies, haircuts, knives, spices. Stone didn’t know if it was his influence or not, but at least he was able to prevent any-one from being killed or seriously injured, although a number of throats were squeezed, a few noses broken. He did what he could.

  By the time they returned to headquarters and the two team leaders brought in the Toot, they must have amassed over a thousand dollars, a staggering amount for a town that was so poor. These bastards were bleeding them dry. Not content to just blood-suck off them, they wanted to drain every last penny out of the place, make the people who lived and worked in the entire area slaves to them. The poor suckers were caught between a rock and a hard place—the Strathers brothers and the Head Stompers. God only knew how they paid off the bikers when they came around.

  He split from the collections team and headed back to the bordello and bed. His feet were aching from the day’s walking—they must have gone twenty miles up and down every street. He hobbled into the place and up to the madam, this one a younger and much thinner one, who smiled up genuinely. Evidently his showering and hair combing earlier had worked wonders.

  “Where’s the big mama?” Stone leered down at the woman, who sat behind a cherry countertop. She had immense breasts, which hovered out over the counter as if ready to plop down on it.

  “You mean Mama Creole? She don’t come on till mid-night. I’m Tessie, five-to-midnight shift. What can I do for you, mister? Drugs, pussy, food…?”

  “Send up a steak—no, better
make that three—and potatoes if you got em, anything. Room 210.”

  Her smile suddenly faded from her red lips. “You the guy in 210? Damn, mister, what the hell you got in there, a sea monster or something? We been hearing all kinds of noises and horrible sounds coming from up there all day. Mama Creole tol’ me you had some kind of dog or something. But didn’t sound like no dog what was making the noises I heard. I tell you, a man went up to see what it was, and something came flying at him, all teeth and snarling. No one would go back there again. Whatever you got in there, mister, get it out of here. Please. This is a high-class joint. We don’t allow bloodletting, or sacrifices, or…”

  “Calm down, calm down,” Stone said, but he knew it had been tantrum time again for Rin Tin Rip. “Just get them steaks up to me,” Stone said, starting toward the stairs, “and I promise you the creature won’t eat none of your girls.” The woman’s face got even more flustered, but Stone was al-ready gone, taking the creaking wooden steps three at a time. He paused at the door and knocked twice, then twice again, the signal he had taught the animal to recognize him by, or so he hoped. He knew the pitbull might try one of his patented jump-leap-snap-bites first and ask questions later.

  Stone gingerly opened the door, ready to leap out of the way. His eyes grew wider and wider with every inch that he pulled the door back and could see inside. The place looked like a Titan missile had hit it. It was a total and complete shambles. Every bit of the beautiful drapery was ripped down and chewed to pieces, every rug and wall hanging was in tatters, covered with drool. But it wasn’t just that. No, the furniture, too, had been attacked, as if by a psychotic elephant. The posts of a sofa and the legs of three chairs had been chewed to near splintered oblivion so that two of the big velvet settees were leaning over on three legs. Snapped and twisted pieces of wood and metal that were no longer even identifiable were scattered around the room. The dog had clearly had its fun.

  Stone walked inside and saw the entire brass bed to which he had chained the animal, moving slowly along one wall as if the damn thing were haunted. For a split second Stone was filled with a deep fear and thought he saw his mother’s dead face shimmering in the an. But then his rational mind realized instantly what it was, and the irrational vision faded away like a dark dream into the pits of his soul.

  “Okay, dog, I get the idea, you’re pissed off, right?” The bed dragged along another foot or so, the entire frame and mattress being pulled by the pitbull, which suddenly appeared from around a chair set on its back, legs dangling in the an like a turtle that couldn’t right itself.

  “Didn’t like being chained up, I can’t blame you. I know you’re an outdoors dog. But we’re doing, you know, undercover work here, dog. I can’t be taking you around with me all the time, you hear? It would cause problems.”

  The dog rounded the corner of the chair and came slowly toward him, loping along like an old mule dragging an entire house behind it, which, considering that the bed was about ten times larger than the animal that was pulling it, was not an inaccurate proportion. It came right toward Stone, the bed catching on the chair and pulling it along, too, just part of the debris that had accumulated around its brass legs as it had been dragged around the room.

  “Dog, I told you from the start, you weren’t always going to like traveling with me. You asked to join me, remember? Or am I getting my facts wrong? Don’t I remember a poignant mutt standing at the foot of my motorcycle in the snow just begging not to be left behind? And now, look what you do to me. Dog, you hear me?” Stone said firmly, raising his voice. “You’ve got to become more civilized.” The animal stopped at his feet as if delivering the bed and stood there frozen, like it just wanted to stand there and would remain so for a thousand years if it felt like it.

  “Oh, shit.” Stone snarled, muttering curses under his breath as the dog continued to fume, staring straight at the door as if he were in a trance. It took Stone nearly half an hour to get the place straightened out enough to be habitable. He unchained the pitbull and rechained it to a cast-iron antique wood-burning stove sitting atop two immense bear-clawed steel feet that sat at one end of the room and must have weighed at least six hundred pounds. Stone sat back on the bed and just waited for the animal to try to pull that over. Instead, it lay down and stared at him like some accusing six-year-old whose cookies have just been stolen.

  But before Stone could get too depressed about the whole situation, food arrived. He sat back on the bed, chewing slowly, and tried to figure out just how the hell he was going to pull off this whole insane plan. And whether his ass was still going to be attached to his legs in another day or two. Excaliber, not being the kind of creature to learn from experience no matter how on it is repeated, are his entire platter of steak and homegrown squash in about the time it takes a lizard to down a fly with its snapping tongue. Then he lay down and eyed Stone’s platter with lust in his heart.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  * * *

  It was the Fourth of July. If Stone had forgotten about it, he sure as hell was reminded of it by a hand-cranked record player that turned out tunes from the old days: “America the Beautiful,” “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was absurd. For it was “America the Ugly” now, and “The Blood-Spangled Banner.” But still, Stone felt a stirring in his chest at the tunes, played slightly too slowly, and echoing up and down the street like a cackling joke.

  He sat up in the bed, realizing he had been dreaming about April. She was being… He didn’t want to think about it. It was as if thinking about it might make it happen. It was the ancient fear of the primitive—that his very dreams would come true. Before Stone blew him away, Alamoso, the mafia gunner, had told him she’d been taken by the mob. But they wouldn’t hurt her. More likely the mob would treat her with kid gloves. For Stone knew they would use her as bait to lure him. And he would come as surely as a dumb fish rises to the lure.

  But he had to do something here first. Stone was realizing, as his father had before him, that his responsibility fell to more than just his own blood. If he did have the “gift” to kill, if he was in fact the last of the Rangers, carrying on all that his father, the last man to give a damn at freedom and slavery, good and evil, had taught him, then it was beyond Stone even to dictate his own life. He was caught up in a web that was bigger than all of them, one that would decide whether America turned to complete barbarism or rose again out of the ashes, the pits of bones, the rivers of blood.

  He rose up, aching, his body still not quite used to work, to movement. The walking around of the day before had made everything in him get all shook up. But though he felt stiff and still a little feverish, he was definitely heading back toward the living. It was amazing what LuAnn’s goo had done for him and the dog. Stone glanced over at Excaliber, who was sleeping at the foot of the bed, the long chain draped around him leading back to the railing of the brass bed Stone slept on. His fur was already growing back in the numerous places in which he had been burned. It was a little whiter than the rest but it was filling in nicely. Still, the damn mutt was starting to get scarred up, like Stone. They were both dogs of war.

  Stone got up, trying not to rouse the pitbull, as he knew it would start demanding things. He got into his clothes, strapped on his pistols, and headed to the door. It was only half open when a whine from behind stopped him in his tracks. Stone turned with a sheepish On, since he knew that the dog knew that he had been trying to sneak out on it. The animal looked at Stone skeptically and licked its lips, suddenly getting up and challengingly starting to pull the brass bed an inch or two.

  “All right, all right, for chrissake, you little blackmailer.” Stone closed the door and headed down, wondering if there was a good dog-obedience school open in the neighborhood. He told the day madam downstairs, the cute one with the pixie now and tits that would have made watermelons feel inadequate, to throw some more steaks into the room. He pulled out ten silver dollars and tossed them down onto the counter.

&nbs
p; “That’s for the curtains, chairs, you know,” Stone said, looking a little embarrassed. The damn hound was starting to cost bucks. The madam took the glistening coins and looked at them with a primal lust. Then she kissed each one and dropped it between her ample bosoms, the cleavage big enough to hold a whole bank.

  “Tell me,” Stone said, scratching his face and realizing that he was starting to look like the Abominable Snowman again. The madam pulled back an inch or two, as if Stone had fleas. Which, come to think of it, he suddenly realized, feeling itchy all over, was not at all impossible. “What’s all that racket outside? The Happy Marching Murder Band?”

  “It’s the Fourth of July, mister. What you been taking?” She looked askance at him, as if he were completely and totally out of it. “Biggest celebration we got here in Cotopaxi. The one day of the year that the two gangs—the Strathers and the Head Stompers—have a truce. No fighting or killing allowed on this day. No, sir. But lots of drinking, shooting contests, all kinds of stuff. It’s fun, a barrel of laughs,” she said, looking forlorn. “I just pray I ain’t gonna get stuck here all day, ’cause the bitch who’s supposed to sub for me at noon says she just got a sudden ‘big’ customer and will be on her back, so to speak, for hours.”

  “Thanks,” Stone said, heading out. “And feed that damn dog, or the walls will start going too.” She clicked her lips, as if the animal were becoming the disgrace of whore tow but went quickly into the kitchen where a Chinese chef began throwing horse steaks on the griddle, heavy on the soy sauce.

  Stone walked outside, the glare of the day not sending quite as jarring a shock into his eyes as it had yesterday. He could see right away what she meant. It was a real celebration. Banners were up, hanging across the street from sagging window to falling frame. Vendors were already out selling their crow pies, their snake burgers, their tripe soup.… The entire main street, nearly twelve blocks long, had been barred to all traffic—motorcycles, mules, horses—and crowds of people who had come down from the surrounding wilds were already filling the streets. After all, it was all that was left of the old America, of days when there had been hope.