He raised his head up into the light and I saw his face. His eyes were swollen shut like a beaten prizefighter's, his nose broken, his saliva red in his teeth.
"Where are they, Sam?" I said again.
Then he started breathing hard, rattling down in his throat, as though he were trying to generate enough power to speak a solitary line.
"Elephant walk," he said.
I heard a tin door scrape open on the concrete floor, and the cool smell of the rain blew into the room. Philip Murphy, the little Israeli, and the tall man with the pencil mustache and the kinky reddish hair walked into the light from the mechanic's lamp. They carried paper bags of hamburgers and french fries in their hands.
"You must have a strong constitution," Murphy said. "They shot you up with enough Thorazine to knock out a dinosaur." His wet gray hair was still uncut; he hadn't shaved that day, and stubble grew through the tiny blue and red veins in his cheeks. He took a bite of his hamburger and looked at me while he chewed. His hazel eyes were devoid of either feeling or meaning.
"You're a miserable excuse for a man," I said.
"Why's that, Lieutenant? You don't like the way things have gone? You didn't have warning about the rules? People have been unfair to you, have they?"
"It takes a special kind of degenerate to torture a defenseless man."
"People get hurt in wars. Your friend is one of them. You probably don't like that definition, but your sort never does."
"You're a punk, Murphy. You never fought a war in your life. Guys like you take them off the cattle cars and run the ovens."
For a moment I saw a flash in his eyes.
"Would you like to live in a communist country, Lieutenant?" he said. "Would you like Louisiana run by the Sandinistas the way they run things in Nicaragua? You know the Marxists are puritans, don't you? No casinos or horse tracks, no booze or poontang when you want it, no chance for the big fat score that keeps everybody's genitals aglow. Instead, you wait in a sweaty line with a lot of other mediocre people for whatever the government dole is that day. If you lived down there, you'd put a gun in your mouth from boredom."
"So somehow it's acceptable to tie down a kid and take him apart? What nails me about your kind is that you're always willing to sacrifice half the earth to save the other half. But you're never standing in the half that gets blitzed."
"You're a disingenuous man, Lieutenant. You remember what Patton said? You don't win wars by giving your life for your country. You make the other sonofabitch give his. I think you're just a poor loser. Look at Andres here. You see the little gray scars around his mouth? He has a right to be bitter but he's not, at least not excessively. Say something for us, Andres. Qué hora es?" .
"Doce menos veinte," the tall man with the mustache replied. His voice was a wheeze, a rasp, as though his lungs were perforated with small holes.
"Andres used to have a regular puta in one of Somoza's whorehouses. Then one day he talked a little too casually in front of her about the work his firing squad did. They'd shot a Sandinista girl named Isabella whom they'd captured in the hills. He thought it was a good story, because she'd confessed before she died and turned a couple of dozen other Sandinistas. What he didn't say was that his whole firing squad had raped her before they shot her, and what he didn't know was that Isabella was his puta's sister. So the next time he dropped in for a little dirty boogie between the sheets, it was hotter than the devil's skillet and she fixed him a tall, cool Cuba libre with ice and lime slices and he swallowed it straightaway like the lusty fellow he is. Except she loaded it with muriatic acid, and poor old Andres has been spitting up his insides like burnt cork ever since."
"You're a piece of shit, Murphy."
"No, you've got it all wrong, Lieutenant. Some of us serve, others like Fitzpatrick here get in the way, and the majority, such as yourself, go about your games and your self-delusion while we take care of things for you. I don't like to pick on you in your situation, but it's not fair of you to start calling people names, either. Now you're an educated man of some experience, and I want you to answer me something truthfully. You've seen the people who are on the other side of the fence in this country—the peace marchers, the nuke freezers, the out-of-Central-America gang. Who are they?" The down-turned corners of his mouth tugged backwards in a slight smile and his eyes wandered over my face with a sense of merriment. "Some of them are lesbians, aren't they? Not all of them but at least some, you've got to admit that. Then there are others that just don't like men. They didn't like their fathers, their brothers, or their husbands, and finally they zero their sights in on any male authority—the President, congressmen, generals, anything with a cock.
"Now we come to the general malcontents," he continued. "These are your professional losers who couldn't tell a history book from a Sears, Roebuck catalog, but they do love a parade. I'm sure you got to see a lot of them on television while you were in Vietnam. My favorite bunch, though, is the pussy-whipped contingent. Their wives drag them around to endless meeti
ngs that are going nowhere, and if they're good little fellows, Mommy will give them a piece every week or so.
"I don't think that's your kind of group, Lieutenant, but maybe I'm wrong about you. I guess the bottom line is you wanted to be a player. Too bad, because now we've got to take a couple of players off the board."
"I'll suggest some reading for you," I said. "Go down to the Picayune morgue and read the clippings on what's happened to people who snuffed New Orleans cops. It's not our finest hour, but the lesson's unmistakable."
He smiled in a self-amused way, and began eating his hamburger again while his eyes glanced expectantly at the back door. Five minutes later, Bobby Joe Starkweather burst in out of the rain with a paper sack under his arm. His T-shirt and blue jeans were soaked through, and his muscles stood out against the wet cloth like intertwined serpents.
"I got it. Let's put the biscuit-eater under and get it on the road," he said. "Did you bring me a hamburger?"
"I didn't think you wanted it cold," Murphy said.
"You're a great guy to work with, Murphy," Starkweather said.
"Would you like mine?" Murphy asked quietly.
"I haven't had my rabies shots."
"Suit yourself, then, and spare us your complaining wit."