Muscle and Blood

MUSCLE AND BLOOD

The plane taxied away to the runway and idled. A few minutes later she was gone, lifting into the rich blue sky, a slim white streak dabbed by purple and ochre.

I buttoned my sweater and walked fifty yards to the wooden building. The cowboy was young and pimpled and sitting stiffly in a cane chair propped against the building.

Some airplane, I said.

I guess so, he said. Brand new.

I lifted my cigarette after the plane. Where's she headed?

That's the Paradise Valley Express, he said. Once a day, every day.

Paradise Valley? I chanced. I tried to make my voice like a mouse in a hole.

You from around here? he asked.

Just passing through. What's Paradise Valley?

The kid tipped his chair and stood. The chill evening condensed to black in the desert gorges.

Well, stranger, he said. It's a goddamn whorehouse.

Fiction by Gaylord Dold

Crime Novels

The Nickel Jolt

Same Old Sun, Same Old Moon

The Swarming Stage

Storm 33 (Originally titled, The Last Man in Berlin)

Six White Horses

The Devil to Pay

Schedule Two

Bay of Sorrows

The Mitch Roberts Series

The Wichita Mysteries

Samedi’s Knapsack

The World Beat

Rude Boys

A Penny for the Old Guy

Disheveled City

Muscle and Blood

Bonepile

Cold Cash

Snake Eyes

Hot Summer, Cold Murder

MUSCLE

AND BLOOD

Gaylord Dold

Premier Digital Publishing - Los Angeles

Copyright © 1989 by Gaylord Dold

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

ISBN-0-8041-0369-0

eISBN: 978-1-938582-80-6

Smashwords Edition

Published by Premier Digital Publishing

www.PremierDigitalPublishing.com

Follow us on Twitter @PDigitalPub

Follow us on Facebook: Premier Digital Publishing

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 88-62391

For Cynthia Sue,

my beloved Menomonie

L'amour c'est une affaire de peau. . . .

—French saying

As a matter of fact, man, like woman, is flesh, therefore passive, the plaything of his hormones and of the species, the restless prey of his desires. And she, like him, in the midst of the carnal fever, is a consenting, voluntary gift, an activity; they live out in their several fashions the strange ambiguity of existence made body.

—Simone de Beauvior,

The Second Sex

CONTENTS

1. Ladders

2. Ropes

3. Autonomy

4. Instability

5. Forced Systems

6. Singular Points

7. Isoclines

8. Oscillation and Feedback

9. Phase Portrait

10. Periodic Input

11. Unstable Equilibrium

12. Point Transformatio

13. Time-varying Systems

14. Adaptive Control

15. Dither

16. Stability of Motion

17. Absolute Stability

About The Autho

1. Ladders.

That autumn my sleep was graced by half-forgotten dreams: an azure sky, the pale Irish face of a woman, black cabs wet with cold rain. My life seemed half-forgotten, too, as if the crystalline clarity of air and sunshine had stunned the earth to silence, suspending the world from its day-to-day exertions, an ancient specimen immersed in amber. In the languid afternoons I read poetry and studied chess, or else I fished for bass and earned a few dollars repossessing Buicks for the bank. Nothing in this meager, sluggish existence could have prepared me for the nightmare of torture and murder that began one fine fall morning with Francis the cat curled asleep on my chest.

My breath heaved the cat down and up through the sandy air. Dreams ticked his cat's tail, emerged from his sallow mouth in a sneer. His triangular, fight-notched ears twitched. I reached for a cigarette, the movement plopping Francis to his feet. Surprised, he yawned, bounced to the end of the brass bed, rubbed his back on the rail, then jumped to the floor and strolled through a hole in the front screen. I placed my own feet on the cold oak floor and hobbled to the kitchen and brewed some coffee.

Bright sun streamed in waves through the kitchen, falling on the stained glass divider, the oak paneling. My Sunday job was a routine hotel stakeout, a vile, embarrassing job that mattered little but was the bread and butter of this week's wage. The duty was unpleasant as small town sin, and not half as gossipy. Still, my client paid me a steady twenty-five dollars a day to spy on her husband. My landlord required the rent.

I walked with coffee to the bathroom and showered away one night's sleep. I scraped my beard with a safety razor, then put on some nicely pleated wool pants, a clean blue dress shirt, and a reasonably shiny pair of loafers with tassels. I read the sports page, tried to do some deep knee bends, and walked into the kitchen again. There was some old bacon gathering mold, so I fried it, walked to the front porch, and fed the scraps to Francis. I poured him some water, then walked out the back door, down the rickety steps, and across the garden to the rabbit hutch.

Six harlequin rabbits twitched hungrily. I watered the rabbits, ladled food into the metal cans, and watched them scramble for it. They twirled like hoopskirts, raising rabbit shit, rabbit food, and rabbit water. There was no telling a male from a female, brother from sister. You watch rabbits long enough and you learn something of your own poor condition on earth.

Papery sun lined the trees. An umber thread of elm, ash, and hackberry exploded into a wallow of magenta, saffron, and vermilion. One huge sugar maple poured orange waves skyward where each hue and leaf colored the utterly blue sky. I stood in the organic ooze of autumn, feeling the thick wet leaves underfoot, hearing the breeze ruffle the trees, smelling the solid black earth and its meshed mess of tomato, pepper, and melon stalks, smelling dead rose and marigold. The sun warmed my face and arms and poured onto the old Victorians, igniting the lavenders and blues to a fiery blaze.

On the veranda Mrs. Thompson waved and said hello. I waved back, sniffed the rarefied air, and somehow smelled winter leaking. Then some geese swam across the backdrop of downtown buildings. The flock honked and dropped suddenly into a verge of cottonwood and willow on the riverbank. A few red squirrels gamboled on the telephone wires.

I went into the house and put on a gray sport coat. I felt reasonably clean, reasonably sober, and reasonably solvent. When I went out the back door I was whistling and feeling somewhat better than a high school kid on his first date. It was so good that the Fairlane started on the first try and I missed all the mudholes in the back alley.

The Wichita streets were quiet as the inside of an orphan's mailbox. I went down the brick bumps on Maple Street and crossed the river above a few couples cooing on the bank and a sun that switched in reflection like a sack of emeralds. For miles down the river I watched the cottonwoods, willows, and oaks throw dazzled smoke into the water. I hooked south to Lincoln Street and gradually made my way through the near east side, a swath of small shops, cafés, bars, garages, and cinemas. Elm leaves sifted in the sunny alleys and stuck to the wet brick. I wheeled the car into a gravel parking lot.

My office is the fourth in a row of turd-colored offices, all the size of a pinball game. There were elms and a single grandfatherly mimosa crouched above the office, and the sun waded through the tree limbs and fell on the building in stripes. The single door to the office had a gold gilt-lettered sign that read: MITCH ROBERTS INVESTIGATIONS.

Inside, the dank air invaded my lungs. I propped open the door and allowed fresh air to tango inside, then I walked past the frosted glass divider, my single Naugahyde couch, oak desk, and black captain's chair, and through the back storage room and opened the back door too. I spread out Saturday's mail and found a few checks that didn't look rubber. Anything with a window on the envelope I placed in a special top drawer. Sunday afternoon was no time to face bills. I leaned back in the captain's chair and grabbed the small camera I had stashed in a locked bottom drawer. I wiped the lens with clean lens paper, loaded the camera with a fresh roll of fast print film, and placed the camera in a black velvet bag. I sat for a time in the coolness, listening to the sounds of birds, cars, and children playing far away and then I put the velvet bag in my coat pocket and left the office for the hotel.

Whoring is hard work. In Wichita, whoring is very hard work unless you know the routine and have some pull. There are some hometown girls who try to whore on their own, but they end up walking the streets on Saturday nights without protection from the cops. Those girls wind up beaten or arrested, and lucky to be arrested. The cops don't appreciate hometown talent, partly because hometown talent doesn't pay the graft freight, and partly because the citizens don't like street talent.

Then there is some local talent that gets by because they have found themselves a tough guy with a room in a motel and a razor. These girls may work for a few weeks, a few months, or a few years, but they make very little money and their wares gradually get smeared, beaten, and worn until it's something their mother wouldn't recognize. When that time comes, and when the cops and the pimps and the bartenders don't have any more patience with their trade, they get turned out into something worse that no one wants to know. Some of these girls may marry or escape, but most of them wind up as bar girls in south Wichita with bad drinking problems.

Then, of course, there is a professional way to whore. The professional whore comes from Kansas City and works for the mob. She stays in town for a few months, working under the protection of a small-time hood who is trying to climb the ladder to success in Kansas City. She works out of a hotel and is always on call and always wearing something disposable. The mob sees to her lodging and food and a few short skirts, and when she gets a call she takes a cab to the Allison Hotel and uses the backstairs. The customer makes a hundred dollar contribution to the doorman and the doorman takes the bill to a café down the street and buys a cup of coffee. The Chinese man behind the counter takes the hundred dollar bill and gives the doorman two bits change. Then the Chinese man hands the bill to the small-time hood, who is sitting at the end of the counter sucking his teeth. A professional girl can have a decent career, but she almost always winds up her days jumping out of cakes at a VFW in Atwood, Kansas. At the end of the line is the Missouri River and a dose of tuberculosis.

I parked in a bus zone across from the Allison. The hotel is a square block of lemon-colored granite, tapered to a spired top. I walked through revolving doors to the tiled lobby hushed by ceiling fans. There was a frieze of sunflowers and buffalos above white plaster casting shadows on the marble floor. A few palms rested sweetly among the columns. A marble staircase rose to the mezzanine. I found a black leather couch facing the plate glass windows and revolving doors. Behind me was the front desk and elevators. I found a copy of Esquire and pretended to read something by Salinger. I was that way for two hours, through Salinger and Nelson Algren and Peter Piper when the old man appeared.

He swept through the revolving doors. His sunglasses caught his deep tan, holding the powder blue rims, deep chocolate tan, and silvery waved hair in a gooey embrace. He had a sleek jaw and his shave was store-bought. His eyebrows were unexpectedly thin and black.

He stood beyond the revolving doors adjusting the camel hair overcoat he wore over his shoulders, his arms inside the coat but outside the coat arms like an Italian movie star. Ideas of money oozed from his gray tweed suit and Icarus flew into his alligator shoes. I watched the man walk around a smooth column of marble and approach the main desk. While I cranked my head behind the Esquire, the deskman handed him a key and the man signed the register, then walked to the elevator shaft and pressed the UP button. He rose inside the bowels of the building.

I slipped around the same pillar and leaned an elbow on the front desk. An oilman from Oklahoma stood checking his messages, then shuffled away on his cowboy boots. The bellman was dressed in a red hotel coat, ragged at the cuff and collar. His face was ageless juvenile stuff, fat at the edges going red and puffy where the whiskey leaked out. He adjusted his glasses and smoothed what was left of his hair.

That the guy? he asked.

That's the guy.

I pulled a hundred from my wallet and rolled it into a narrow tube and slipped the tube under the register. The deskman nodded and smiled. He turned and grabbed a key from a batch on the wall and shoved the key onto the register.

I grabbed the key. You have everything in place?

Sure, he said. Just make it snappy. I got a lot to lose if this gets out.

You said last Sunday for sure.

I know, the deskman said. How was I to know the gent would be out of town for a couple of weeks?

Is he on the routine?

He's on the routine.

I walked to the stairs and bounced up to the third floor. I slipped down the hotel hall and went inside room 315. The room was quiet and draped. There was the usual bed and the usual radio and the usual seascape. I sat down in an easy chair and read the room service menu for about fifteen minutes. It didn't match the Algren but it made the time pass. Then I went to the walk-in closet and found the aluminum stepladder and carried it to the French doors. I balanced the ladder against the doors and turned on the radio to something loud and rhythmic. Then I opened the drapes and the French doors and went outside carrying the stepladder with one hand.

The ribbed iron balcony stared down three stories to an empty street. Once in a while some cars chugged through the autumn gloom. My heart pounded for lack of anything better to do. Carefully, I placed the stepladder in a locked position and lowered it across the iron rail and found the edge of the balcony eight feet away. I tested the ladder, then hopped onto the rail and slid one foot along the first rung. Below me, sudden death opened its arms and smiled. I slithered along the ladder, holding my breath until I grabbed the balcony rail at the other end. Then I hopped silently onto the platform and stood sweating. Violin music streamed in the night.

I pulled on the French doors and they opened. My hundred dollars had bought me a stepladder, a set of keys, and an unlocked French door. I opened the drape and curled an eyelid around the edge.

The redhead was naked on her knees above the old man. He lay wrapped in a silk dressing gown, staring up at the redhead, waxy-eyed and mute as a decorative grape. The redhead drew a bath towel along her bottom and the old man giggled, pearly bubbles dropping from his lips. With one hand I snapped three or four pictures, advancing the film with my thumb and forefinger, making hardly a sound. I snapped a mole on the redhead's hip and I snapped some of her cream-puff and cookie-dough skin and several of the old man's bubbles. I closed the French doors and slid back across the ladder, pulling it behind me into room 315. I went downstairs by elevator and handed in the key.

Everything all right? asked the deskman.

Yes.

Anytime, he said.

I drove into the lavender night. Dew struck the street and reflected stoplights, marquee flash, and a hunk of moon. I stopped at a pool hall and ate chili with beans, oyster crackers, and drank three nickel beers. I watched cowboys play nine ball for dollars. Then I left and bought salami, bologna, and white bread at a downtown grocery. I drove home and parked near the rabbit hutch.

My three rooms were cold. I switched on a brass lamp above my bed, two overhead lights, and one floor lamp, thinking that the light would drive away loneliness and cold. Then I spent an hour chopping bologna and salami, arranging a plate of pickled eggs, cheddar cheese, and sardines. I stacked some jars of relish, mustard, and mayonnaise, then manhandled the oak table in my alcove to a place under one of the overhead lights. I found the poker chips and placed them on the table with a few ashtrays and two decks of Bicycle cards. Francis wandered through the screen and hopped onto my brass bed. The cat watched as I took off my creased pants, blue shirt, and reasonably shiny shoes.

I took another shower. For some reason I felt unclean.

2. Ropes.

Christine was dealing blackjack to six players. Andy Lanham sat hunched inside his stained white shirt, showing enough of his shoulder holster and handcuffs to stop cheats and inspire confidence in the integrity of the game. Christian and the Shoe were smoking cigars, exhaling wads of smoke and snapping at their cards like pit bulls. Jack Graybul struck his normal lawyer-like pose, elbows on the table, a Pall Mall ash dribbling neatly from his mouth. He snapped at his suspenders as the ash fell onto his suitcoat. In four hours of cards, most of the money had fled to Christine with enough left over to keep me playing. Christine flipped a card to Jake the barber and he glared at the nine black spades it showed. Jack was my lawyer and Andy was my friend and Christian was my partner. Christine was an organist at the minor league ballpark across the street. In winter she played poker with us on Sunday night. She knew blackjack and regularly made money from the Shoe.

The Shoe studied his hand. Christine showed a tray and the Shoe stared at his own deuce.

Hit me, said Shoe. The Shoe was a wizened geezer in a cowboy shirt, string tie, and turquoise smile who ran a local liquor store.

I'd love to, Mr. Shoe, said Christine. She smiled at me with one of her devastating smiles that escaped from her like smoke from a volcano. Her eyes were green saucers in an ocean of frizzy brown hair. Pale freckles framed her oval face. She placed a ten on Shoe's deuce.

Shit, said Shoe disgustedly. He folded his cards and shoved a blue chip across the table. Christine took the chip and added it to her pile.

How many times do I have to tell you, said Christine. This is a simple game. Stay your bust hands in the face of dealer's small card. Hit your bust hands to seventeen in the face of dealer's big card. Always double down on ten and eleven unless the dealer shows ace. Maybe double on nine if the dealer has small card up. I've told you this a million times.

Graybul laughed