The Memory Killer. J. Kerley A.

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СКАЧАТЬ saw four guys in a back booth. Two were in full black leather regalia, like they were rehearsing for the Village People, the others resembled prep-school wannabes, clean-cut, white tees tucked into dark jeans. Loafers at the end of long and crossed legs. Except when they turned our way, their eyes looked a thousand years old.

      A guy stood behind the long bar rinsing glasses, and I knew he’d made us from the moment our heels slapped the floor. He was inches over six feet and looked carved from a block of chocolate, pneumatic biceps rippling as he toweled the glassware, his chest broad and ripped under a blue denim vest that glittered with studwork.

      We walked his way, but his eyes stayed on his drying. “You’re wasting your time,” he said in a sing-song voice that didn’t fit the physique. “We card everyone.”

      He meant they asked for proof of age, though I figured a faux driver’s license printed on construction paper would pass muster.

      “Good for you,” I said, pulling Kemp’s photo from my jacket. “But that’s not why we’re here. Know this guy?”

      The bartender flipped the towel over a cannonball shoulder, took the shot and held it closer to the light. “Dale. He’s in here pretty regular, though I haven’t seen him in a few days.” The eyes got serious. “He all right?”

      “We think he may have had his drink spiked. It would have been about ten days ago.”

      “That’s just fucking nasty.”

      “Dale have any enemies you know about?”

      He blew out a breath. “Dale could be cruel sometimes. Especially to ugmos who hit on him.”

      “Ugly people?”

      “Dale never dispensed charity.”

      I took it that meant deigning to frolic with less attractive beings. “Anyone seem particularly interested in Dale that night?” I asked. “Hit on him?”

      “Are there bees around honey? People are always scoping Dale out.”

      “Anyone buzzing around that particular evening?”

      “I can’t recall anyone who …” he stopped and frowned.

      “What?” I asked.

      “Dale got a call on the house phone. That doesn’t happen much, everyone having cells. He was at a table and I yelled over that someone wanted to talk. Dale took the phone and handed it back, said there was no one there.”

      “Male voice?”

      “Deep and kind of raspy.” He lowered his voice an octave. “‘Hello, is Dale Kemp a-boot?’ Those were his words.”

      “You’re using a Canadian pronunciation,” Gershwin said. “Kind of.”

      The barkeep nodded. “Or maybe it was kind of British.”

      I leaned close. “Tell me this, if you remember. When Dale came to the phone, was he holding his drink?”

      He closed his eyes. “He held the phone in one hand and put the other over the receiver, asked who it was. He must have left his drink behind.”

      “That’s the picture in your head?” Gershwin asked. “For sure?”

      “I always like looking at Dale.”

      We returned to the Rover where I tapped my fingers on the wheel. “The perp sits in the corner, watches. When Kemp’s friends aren’t near, he calls the landline, asks for him. The barkeep calls, Kemp gets up …”

      Gershwin finished the scenario. “The perp hangs up and walks by Kemp’s booth, pausing to spike his drink with homemade witches’ brew.”

      I put the safari wagon in gear and we pulled into a balmy afternoon, the street a festival of brightly plumaged youth bustling from bar to bar, called by music or hormones, the world an endless caravan of vibrant moments. They were young and beautiful and invulnerable.

      Or so they supposed.

      Debro left his downstairs apartment and walked upstairs with his feet crunching on the wood-plank steps. The ancient building had been a small auto-parts warehouse and the red-brick walls were crumbling on to the steps. The door at the top was metal. He unlocked it and stepped into a spacious antechamber furnished with a table beneath a wall-mounted cabinet. The far end of the chamber held a door with a small wire-reinforced window at eye level.

      Debro went to the window and flipped a switch on the wall. The room beyond the chamber lit up, the light from track-mounted spots screwed into the ceiling joists. After purchasing the building last year, he’d machine-sanded the floor to be an inch higher in the center, sloping down to small gutters, the gutters feeding into the drainage system from the roof. He’d then covered the floor in linoleum, caulking the seams.

      All he had to do to clean up after his penitents was hook the hose into the wall faucet and rinse the floor. Debro allowed his boys twenty ounces of water a day, which was easily mopped up, food a few nutritional gel packs squirted past their lips daily, nothing solid.

      It took time to do things right … to make things right.

      Debro put his eyes to the window. Two lovely sluts were in attendance, Brianna in the corner, and his latest penitent, Harold, propped against a wall and dodging invisible birds or missiles or whatever. He tried to scream but only wet croaks emerged. Every couple of minutes he’d try to stand but even his glorious, dancing legs crumpled under the weight of the black locust.

      Brianna was a different case, curled in the fetal position, pissing and emitting watery gruel from her sphincter. Brianna and her sphincter had ceased to be fun. Beside, she’d been here for over a week now, and had learned her lesson.

      Debro nodded: the choice was made. He stared at Brianna for several long seconds. “Brianna’s leaving us, Brother,” he said. “It’s time to get another.”

      Debro returned to his apartment to consult a map of South Florida. Part of his extensive planning had involved sites where the punished could be sent, and over a dozen locations had been ringed in red. He closed his eyes, circled a digit over the map, let it drop. He had a place to drop a used one. Now all he had to do was get a fresh one.

      No problem. It would soon be night.

       6

      We headed to Kemp’s apartment, a furnished house Kemp rented with two male roommates, flight attendants. Both had been away during the time Kemp had been abducted. One roomie, Lawrence Kaskil, arrived as we did, pulling up on a sleek racing bicycle in a white T-shirt over black Lycra biking shorts.

      “I called the police on the second day I was back,” Kaskil told us, tossing his blue helmet into a closet and exchanging his biking shoes for neon green flip-flops. “It wasn’t unusual for Dale to be gone overnight, but after two days I got worried.”

      “You got back from where?”

      “Mexico City.”

      “Your СКАЧАТЬ