The End

Chapter 12--the closing chapter-- of the science fiction crime thriller Freak

Freak

Chapter Twelve

The End

It was warm as many a summer’s day, though most of the pumpkins were history, and Thanksgiving decorations already well on the way up. A few houses were even strung with Christmas lights, and, on the miniature replica lighthouse at Fisherman’s Village, a sun-bleached plastic Santa had been crucified to herald the yuletide. Looking past the Village and across the Marina’s Main Channel, park goers stood watching the Admiralty Apartments and Marriott Hotel undergoing the final stages of fire damage repair.

And from where Damon leaned on the fence bordering Basin G, it was easy to visualize those fires breaking out, to hear police and emergency vehicles howling in every direction, and to imagine the loose cannon of Nicolas Vilenov breaking all the rules as he barreled along in a stolen, thrashed police car. And whenever Damon turned to critically consider the park, he could picture, equally well, the hot wall of law enforcement storming Vilenov’s final stand. Damon had to rely on imagination, for there were no visual records.

But there were a number of vestiges, and what amounted to, in Damon’s eyes, a virtual shrine. The vestigial evidence consisted of charred branches, half-healed tire grooves, and the occasional wink of a shell casing floating perpetually round the basins. The shrine was a huge space at his left elbow where a chunk had been blown out of the original bike path. This space was now surrounded by a high chain link fence bearing signs warning away children and other scoundrels. Channel water formed a gently slapping pool in the gap.

Damon’s reverie was interrupted by a series of increasingly heavy vibrations in the fence. He looked casually to his right and immediately jerked back his head. Shambling along the fence was the most pitiable wino he’d ever seen, dressed in rags over rags, filthier by the layer. The man’s trash-tangled, wispy white hair hadn’t seen a comb, a bar of soap, or a pair of scissors in years. His face was devastated by a lifetime of alcohol abuse, by physical and emotional suffering, by a million squints and gnashes. Folds of very loose flesh hung like wattles from his chin and jowls. It looked like one more knock on the head would pop his extraordinarily swollen eyes right out of their sockets.

Now, though Damon was a generally compassionate and generous man, he genuinely loathed being approached by the unfortunate. It’s just that there were so many of these people in the area--and handing out money and advice didn’t seem to help a bit. He studied the Marriott resignedly, his train of thought derailed.

The wino snuffled right up next to him and copied his position. Damon stared hard at the water, himself a beggar; every nuance of his body language beseeching the intruder to mooch elsewhere. He thought of faking an emergency bathroom run, or maybe moving along determinedly as though suddenly distracted. He even thought of playing deaf. But the wino didn’t move or open his mouth, and time seemed to die. Damon was just turning to walk when the wino hawked one into the water, and so initiated their relationship.

“Helluva job,” he sniffed, “patchn up them hotels when they burn. I seen that big one catch, an I thought for sure she’d go all the way.”

“They’ve got super-sophisticated sprinkler systems,” Damon alliterated unintentionally, “and the Fire Department is right up the street. Look--”

“Hell!” the wino croaked. “Fire department couldn’ get a handle on it! They was spread out thinner’n a church sandwich, an so many cops was chasn that guy they wasn’ no fire truck coulda made it down that street. An when he come runnin in the park this place was blocked off solid, man, solid! I couldn’ show my pretty face or I’da been shot to jesus.”

Damon could only recoil (another of his major peeves was hollering strangers). He was just digging for change when the import of the wino’s outburst came like a slap across the face.

“You...you actually saw Nicolas Vilenov pursued into this park?”

The wino glowered. “What I jus say?”

“What you just said.”

“An what I jus said is what I jus said I seen, okay? I seen ’em all come in here chasn what’s-his-face, an I seen ’em all shoot the whole fuckn place up. Up, down, crosswise, and sideways.”

“Listen, friend,” Damon said excitedly. “My name’s Raymond Bartholemew Damon, and I write an occasional column for the Argonaut newspaper. You must’ve seen it.”

“Freebie,” the wino said contemptuously. “How you make a livn writn for a give-away newspaper?”

“I do other work. I write software and handle some consulting jobs. Look, none of that’s important. What is important is that I’m researching the whole Vilenov incident for a book I’m writing. There’ve been a ton of speculative articles and docudramas, but as of yet there’s nothing to go by other than the official police statement. A civilian’s eyewitness account could humanize the whole thing. I’m talking big time here. Millions!” he ejaculated, and caught himself.

The wino’s left eye rolled to study Damon long and disdainfully, while his right eye stared across the Marina like a gargoyle’s. Finally the left eye swung back to stereo. “I can’ talk on a dry belly.”

Damon nodded. “Then we’ll moisten you right up.” He immediately initiated the walk to Marina Market, through the center of the park and down Mindanao, prodding his companion all the way. The wino was surprisingly nimble for a man in his condition, but his tongue was not so swift. He refused to surrender a morsel of news until he’d encountered that first sweet drop.

Damon stopped just outside the market’s automated glass doors. “One thing,” he said. “Before I invest a single nickel I want to know just where you were when this all came down. I want to know why you were a witness, and I want to know why no one witnessed you being a witness. That park was sealed. After the whole affair the grounds were gone over with a fine-toothed comb.”

“But not the water. Coast Guard comes by earlier that day an kicks everbody offa their boats whiles I keeps hunkered low. Wasn a soul but me for miles. After all the ’citement Harbor Patrol comes by an rousts me; tells me I seen nothin, tells me I heared nothin, tells me I wasn never to be seen on the water again. But I comes back anyway. They’s a rowboat tied up aside one of the slips, with a blue plastic tarp over her. Me an you was standn almos on top of her in the park, right up by the fence. Tha’s my home; tha’s my Baby. I been sleepn under that tarp so long,” he boasted, “I got keel marks where my ribs useta be. When all the fuss gets goin I wakes up an takes a peeks over the cement an through the fence. I couldn take my eyes offa that whole big trip, man, an I doesn crawl back under Baby’s Blanket till it’s all over an the cops is pickn up pieces.” He licked his lips.

Damon considered the wino’s story. “Good enough.” He marched right in. A minute later he marched right back out with a pint bottle of Night Train. Against his whispered objections, the wino immediately knocked the bottle back.

Shoppers stopped; some laughing, some frowning. “Jesus!” Damon hissed “Cut it out, will you?”

The wino ignored him completely. He sucked the bottle dry, staggered back a few paces, turned, and barfed like a dog in one of the little planters between coffee tables.

Damon looked away and nodded. “All right. I think you and I are done exploiting each other here.”

The wino whirled, the folds of his face flapping along behind him. He coughed out, desperately, “An I seen more!”

“What more?”

“Everthin! I seen the cops chasn that guy down, an I seen him go nuts, an I seen the cops go nuts right back. But I seen him walk, friend. I seen him walk!”

The planet screeched to a halt. Damon clenched and unclenched his fingers. “You...you actually saw them gun him down?”

“No-o-o-o...I ackchewally saw ’em blow away a empty hunka bike path.”

“What?”

The wino withered at Damon’s bark of frustration. He backpedaled urgently. “No, no, friend! No. What I mean is what you said.”

And it hit Damon: he’d been yanked from the moment the wino’d first opened his gummy manipulating mouth. He grabbed the outermost shirt and shook him so hard the man’s head rocked back and forth and side to side. “Now you’re gonna listen, friend! I don’t want to hear what you think I want to hear, okay? What I want to hear, straight up, is what you genuinely saw. Is that perfectly clear? You give me the truth and I’ll pay you for it, gulp for fact. But if I even suspect you’re bullshitting me, man, we part company.” He waited. “Fair?”

“Fair.”

“Fair?”

“Fair!”

Damon dropped his arms. After a long moment he said quietly, “Wait here. Don’t you dare move a muscle.” He marched right in. Ten minutes later he marched right back out with a full shopping bag.

The wino oozed over. “What you got in the bag? Friend.”

“I’ve got Christmas in the bag. Friend. Enough presents to keep you happy and loquacious.”

A quirky pair on a lovely Bay day, the two made their way back to the park by following the walk alongside Basin G’s fence, drawing double takes from everyone they passed. The wino appeared none the worse for his experience with the Night Train. “Low--” he tried, “Low...kway-shus?”

Embarrassed by all the negative attention, Damon snapped sotto voce, “Means talkative! Talkative! Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay!”

“So we’re gonna have symbiosis here. Okay?”

“Simbe? Sim...simbe?”

“We feed off each other. It’s a mutual thing, one-to-one. Look, as long as you keep talking, you keep drinking. You shut up and we split up. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Deal?”

“Deal!”

Damon approached the shrine embracing the bag jealously; the way he saw it, withholding its contents was sweet turnabout for the wino’s earlier reticence. Besides, he knew he needed to maintain control of the situation. If his companion got too drunk too fast, it could easily shorten or garble the narrative he was praying for. He instructed the wino to lead him directly to the rowboat. Everything depended on precisely recreating the vantage of that warm summer night. The wino was most uptight about this demand, as it meant breaking his own rule concerning approaching the slips before dark, a full two hours away.

But Damon wasn’t farting around. “If you wanna drink, man, then we do this right.” He placed the bag to one side of the tall locked gate between the ramp and bike path. He and the wino followed the short fence a ways, then swung their legs over and scooted back along the basin’s high cement breakwater, steadying themselves hand over hand while walking on their toes. When they made the gate Damon reached over the fence to retrieve the bag. They tiptoed down the gently rocking ramp and stood among the outboards and dinghies. The water showed an oily film. Damon stood watching the marina breathe on the iron lung of progress: garbage drifting in, garbage drifting out. He could see how the bottom half of the wino’s rowboat told the uneven tale of this flux. It reminded him of the lower gum line of a chain smoker.

The rowboat, owned by a man who kept a small cabin cruiser moored in the slip, appeared to have been bumping there forever. According to the wino, this owner showed up only rarely, and so far he’d been lucky. Beneath the faded blue tarp was a hull full of trash and various found objects. It smelled like a wino lived in it.

“Phew!” Damon said. “What’s the name of your boat, pal? Old Stinky? Let’s air this puppy out.”

“Shhh!” the wino sprayed, angrily hopping side to side with a finger to his lips, his eyes popping.

Damon stepped into the boat carefully, kicked aside a small mound of trash, and sat with the bag between his knees. The wino parked himself close, like a hungry dog by the table. After a short pause to emphasize his ultimate say in the matter, Damon extracted a quart of Boone’s Farm Apple and raised an eyebrow. The wino pounced right on it, swallowing and slobbering horribly, only pausing halfway for a single abbreviated gulp of air. Damon prompted him throughout the ordeal and its aftermath, just to learn that, deals notwithstanding, drinking and conversing were two functions the wino would never be able to handle in conjunction. He realized he’d have to bide his time until the man’s basic thirst was sated, so he began studying the park from this wonderfully secure vantage--standing to peer, sitting to think--while the wino violated a large bottle of Cisco Berry. Sightseers, sauntering along the bike path above, appeared more amused than offended by the odd pair, and Damon was eventually able to relax somewhat. Although shadows were growing quite long, he was sure he could see the very spot where the news copter had torn up the basin’s rocky bottom. He made mental notes and studied angles, his excitement continuing to grow even as the wino sank deeper into oblivion.

But after half an hour of this he found himself dipping in the bag. Damon casually uncapped a quart of Boone’s Farm Strawberry and forced down a third, all the while watching the wooden wino out of the corner of his eye. Finally he kicked the old man’s foot to get his attention. The wino snapped out of it and went straight for the bottle.

Damon shook his head. “Uh-uh. You talk first, buddy. I’ve waited long enough.” To underscore his seriousness he put the bottle to his lips and drank heartily.

The wino, barely conscious, behaved like a man who’d been lost for days in the desert. His dry lips cracked open and writhed longingly, his good eye rolled searchingly. The other closed up like it had just been poked. When he realized he’d have to sing for his supper he grudgingly began:

“I was capped for the night an rockn with my Baby, when I was awoked by this great big ka--boom! out by the street. I snuck out my head. They was a whole buncha whirlybirds singn over the park entrance, an a zillion coppers drivn with their sirens an lights an the whole shebang, right up to the fountn. A great big searchlight was over ever blessd one of ’em, an now this other chopper come swingn round above me till I knowed I’da been shot if I evn dares move. But then she pulls over the other side an keeps low on the water. She kicks off her light an kinda mellows. Pretty soon I sees this guy come runnin toward me through the park, movn tree to tree. He’s all cut up an flittn like a ghost, his tore up ol shirt flappn behind him.” The wino caught his breath and turned to stone, eye rolled back and mouth agape.

Damon took a long drink and nodded; first with slow analysis, then with hard certainty. He swished what was left in the bottle and the wino’s eye came alive. Damon handed it over, then fished in the bag while the old man went to town. He pulled out a bottle of Merlot, knocked in the cork with the shaft of a screwdriver that had been rolling against his foot, and took a careful swallow. Damon, only an occasional drinker, had a good buzz on. He couldn’t imagine what kept the wino going. After a minute he nudged the man’s knee with the bottle. The wino dropped his empty amid a hundred others and began hyperventilating. Damon nudged him again, harder this time. The wino blurted out, “So the guy come runnin up to the fence!” and zoned out completely.

Damon kicked him a good one. The wino’s butt bounced off the board as if he was spring-loaded. He pointed theatrically at the sealed-off gap in the bike path beside the water. “An he steps half-over like he’s plannin on maybe moseyin down this ramp, same as we done. But then that one chopper makes a couple honks an comes up over the park. The guy steps back onto the path an stares at it while it moves over the water. It puts a big light on him. Suddenly the guy jus snaps! He looks up, man. He looks up at that great big holymama bird right where she’s floatn, man, right...right...there!” The wino pointed to a spot above the water maybe forty feet from Baby. “He looks up like he wants to kill it, an the damn thing goes tail-down smash into the water. The waves offa that thing almos capsizes Baby, an while I’m hangn on I hears another! chopper, an pokes my head back up. The whole goddam knighted states army come runnin and drivn through the park. They all fans out in a big long line on the bridge an points everthin what they got at him. An he jus smiles.”

Damon’s jaw dropped. The wino’s description was eerily similar to the scene as he’d imagined it a hundred times: the cocky desperado; spitting blood and bile, cornered but not cowed. Then the callous, the inhumane--nay, the inhuman overkill of law and order. Damon’s mind fast-forwarded to an enticingly-near future, when a jaded world responds to a searing manuscript bursting through the rumors and emotional haze. R.B. Damon, the reporter who walked the extra mile, the unsung genius who made the hard truth painfully clear to anyone with a shred of conscience...the man who, uncomfortable with all the lights and groupies and hoopla, stood like a rock before his gaping contemporaries and humbly accepted the Pulitzer. But not for himself, goddamn it. For The People!

And now the sun’s perfect rim was clipped by the horizon. “Go on,” Damon’s voice rumbled from his dream. “You were spraying?”

The wino took a deep breath. “An he jus stans there, with his arms all spread out like that Sherman on the mountain guy, as if he’s embracn ’em all, an he looks ever one of ’em in the eye while the news chopper goes down kickn.”

Damon nodded, sighed, and swallowed manfully. He shook his head with wry gravity. “And then they blew his poor a*s away with everything they had.”

“No...no!...an then he walks along the rail jus as calm as calm can be, an hops over the fence by Baby here. An he clims aboard the Harbor Belle like he owns her, fires her up an heads on out the channel. He didn see me. We was both starin at the park. Suddenly the whole freakn Army come down on that bike path all at once. I seen ’em shoot tommy guns an ’zookers, an shotguns and rifles an hanguns too. An I seen that great big green chopper unload three rockets on that spot. When the fireworks was all over they was nothn but a giant chunk the size of a house blastd outta that path, an so much smoke in the air I hadda crawl back under Baby’s Blanket to breathe.”

Damon sucked down the Merlot thoughtfully, mentally revisiting all those rumors of his man altering the perception of onlookers. Very gradually, very tentatively, that old private smile enveloped the bottle’s heavy glass mouth...ludicrous or not, the whole concept was delicious--to be able, as a male, to do what you want, to take what you want, and not have to answer to all the silly artificial crap of society. To not have to be domesticated. No tepidity. No compromise...over the last couple months a huge confused cult had grown around Vilenov’s supposed supernatural abilities, and made his memory appealing to every healthy male ego sick of having basic urges demonized or commercialized. Much of Vilenov’s appeal lay, perversely, in the fact that his memory could not be commercialized. No major franchise wanted to gamble on glamorizing a rapist. But, as the archetypal Bad Boy, he’d rapidly become irresistible as a rebel figure. Even nice-guy Damon, although outwardly focused on his project, was privately enthused by the fantasy of an instantly pliable femininity, suddenly docile bullies, and throngs of useless loitering idiots reacting positively to his creative ideas. It’s all about power...but power has to be used wisely. That’s the kicker. How in God’s name can a man bring all these flaunting bimbos to their knees, force the fatcats and weasels to surrender their ill-gotten gains, pull all the fly-covered, mud-caked, Koran-thumping Third world b******s into the 21^st century, damn it, without being the heavy? Real power is a primitive quality, requiring its holder to wield without conscience, without compassion. Damon, like all decent men, just wanted things right in the world. He knew he’d never have the cool to stomp here, to stand there. And that was Vilenov’s true appeal. He didn’t have a conscience. He was a fluke, a throwback, a dauntless representative of a time when men were men, instead of a bunch of spiritually-challenged weenies under the whip of Woman and Law. Wannabe-men like Damon lived vicariously through the legend’s exploits, and so survived to grovel another day.

Now he was alternately nodding and shaking his head, wanting to believe. And when he spoke his voice seemed detached, as though it belonged to some future campfire storyteller: “You know...they never did recover a body. They figured he’d been turned into fried fish food--blasted into fragments and gone with the tide.”

Another voice snapped him out of it. “Oh, he’s gone with the tide, all right. Oughta be comn up on T’iti bout now.”

Damon began chugging wine in his excitement. He’d become quite drunk, but the gleam in his eyes belied his condition. He passed the Merlot, found a pen in his shirt pocket, tore a large piece off the brown paper bag. “The Harbor Belle, you say? Outboard or inboard? How many feet would you estimate?”

The wino huffed while his left eye burned. A dark stain formed in the crotch of his pants. “What do I know bout all that stuff...it was a little job, d****t, a motorboat!”

Damon tore the bottle from his hands. “I need details!”

But the wino snatched the neck right back, put the bottle to his lips and drank furiously, his flickering eye glued to the reporter. Damon shrugged angrily and reached between his knees for the crown jewel. He unscrewed the cognac’s cap and lovingly raised the bottle to his lips, took a long and exaggerated swallow. The wino’s face fell. The reporter gently bounced the bottle against his knee, letting the wino know its dispensation was iffy. “So, you blurry son of a b***h, you fantasized the whole f*****g thing, didn’t you?”

“I didn fansize nuthn, man. Nuthn! If I said I seen what I said I seen, then I seen what I said I said I seen...man!”

Damon angrily handed over the cognac. “Oh...just mellow out, man! Don’t go getting your gonads all in a knot! And don’t swallow so fast. You’ll just end up puking again...man.”

The wino tore the bottle from Damon’s hand and drank more than any man should be able. He held the bottle to his chest warningly, blood and brandy flowing from his nostrils.

“No puke! No nuthn! I seen him step back over the rail an shimmy down here while the cops an the copters an the tanks an the submarines shot fire an bullits an everthin what they had on that one fuckn pisspoor spot, man! They shot it up, they blew it up, they sent zappers an boms an all hellfire outta the sky on that one spot, man, right after that forin guy clims over the rail almos nex to me, gets on the Belle an sails off...off...” He pointed at the channel. “Outta here! Gone! An nobody seen it but me!” His head dropped between his knees, the cognac bottle falling upright in the trash. “No bullshit,” he whimpered. A string of saliva rolled off his lower lip and dangled till it kissed the rowboat’s filthy keel. “Nuthn!”

He remained in that hunched position, barely alive; a sick ugly statue rocking with the Marina. Damon was studying him blearily when a gorgeous yacht cruised past, its wake rocking Baby harder. His mouth fell open and he almost wept with want. But his pain was short-lived. Soon, Damon knew, a similar vessel would be his.

Because he’d made up his mind on the spot. Raymond Damon was no biographer. He was going after Nicolas Vilenov in the flesh, and he would pursue him across the seven seas. A piece of his personality challenged him to name all seven seas, but another piece was flustered by the direct definition of a sea as opposed to an ocean. He tried anyway, counting oceans on a hand. When he ran out of fingers his eye fell on the half-full bottle of cognac, rocking precariously between the wino’s tatterdemalion shoes. In a breathtaking move, he snatched the bottle by its neck before the rowboat’s motion could claim it. Damon smirked. He’d always known he could have played for the big leagues. He took a swallow, squeezed shut his eyes, and began rocking in syncopation with Baby. When he reopened his eyes it was dusk. He turned his head and mumbled to the wino, “So tell me, my oh-so wise and worldly friend. Tell me...is this steamer really yours?”

The wino snapped up like he’d been kicked. “Mine! My boat, goddam you, mine! Sloop John me...sloojohn...sloop...”

“Avast!” Damon giggled. “Avay! So you, my good man...you’re the skipper of this gallant seagoing vessel?”

“Mine, gawwwwwd...dam you! Ankers way! Yoyos an Ho-Hos an a bottle of...Mad Dog. Tha’s me, matey! So, le’s go, le’s go. Toe-ko to Soho, way we go.”

Damon darkened. He shuddered hard, twice, and his esophagus relaxed. “I, my good man,” he managed, “am naming you my mate. Henceforth you will address me only as ‘Captain’. Are we clear here?”

“Aye aye, Cap’n! Ankers way!”

Now Damon, in his logy skull, strutted around an imaginary deck. “And we, my loyal sailor and friend, are off on the adventure of a lifetime. We’re going to pursue Mr. Vilenov and bring him to justice. And when we’re both rich and famous we’re gonna buy us an island somewhere and live happily forever and ever after. Are you with me, sailor?”

“Aye aye...I...Aye...I can’ sail on a dry belly.”

“Then we’ll moisten you right up.” Damon swallowed liberally and passed the bottle. Suddenly his liver was thumping in his gut. He embraced his waist and bent over till his nose was grazing the keel.

The wino killed the bottle and dropped it amidst the rest. “Okay, Cap’n! Ready to sail!”

Damon collapsed in the fetal position, clutching his stomach. “Okay, matey,” he whispered. “But me timbers is...shiverin’. Just let me catch me breath here...first...and we’ll be off.”

“Aye aye, Cap’n!”

The wino loomed there, watching and waiting, until he was claimed by booze and gravity. His head dropped a few inches at a time, finally lighting on Damon’s heaving chest. He stuck his hands between his thighs, curled up his knees, and let the black wave of sleep take him down.

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