“Set it on the floor, Antoine,” Dugan said. “And give it a kick over this way.”
Antoine did, the gun skittering across the floor. Travis picked it up.
Dugan’s gaze swept the room, the four men, the corpse, the stacked cases of Dr. Bell’s Tonic. He gave a slow nod. “Looks like we all’re gonna need to engage in some sort of discussion.”
“I can explain,” Bell said.
“Got my ears on,” Dugan said.
Bell stood there, silently. Seemed to Eddie that he was figuring what to say. Probably running through his options but not finding a good one. Neither could Eddie. Not one that would explain away the dead guy on the table and all the bones and jars of tissue and organs waiting to be dealt with.
“What’s the matter?” Travis asked. “Cat got your tongue?”
Bell sighed, then spelled it out. The corpse, the tonics, the entire operation.
Dugan’s gaze hardened, but as Bell went on his face seemed to relax. When Bell finished his story, Dugan gave a slight nod, did a spin around the table, along the shelves, examining everything.
“And this is how you make all your money?” Dugan asked.
Bell nodded.
“How much we talking here?”
Bell shrugged. “You’ve seen my home.” He waved a hand. “And the Caddy I drive.”
Dugan propped the shotgun over one arm, the muzzle angled at the floor. “Why don’t we go inside, grab some coffee, and you tell me more about how all this works?”
Tonight Is the Night
Shannon Kirk
George Talent is going to do it tonight. He’s sick of waiting, fretting for the right moment. The right words. Tonight is the night, dammit! Indeed, he says those words, “Tonight is the night, is the night, is the night,” in his native New England accent, to his own ruby face and Santa-round nose and salt-n-pepper beard, right out-loud to himself in the rearview mirror of his Richard’s Mountain company truck — the white one with the double cab, the one with chains on great snow tires. Well, the whole fleet has chains in this kind of blizzard.
Settled in his intentions, George turns off the crackly news, coming in on wonky radio waves tonight, given the weather. After the dread peddlers were done with their blizzard forecasts and dire warnings, as if a typical blizzard isn’t just another groundhog’s night in Vermont, a hyper-boy newscaster pitched high on another trauma going on in the mountain region: some weird-ass brutal murders. The newscaster even named what all presumed was a serial killer, “The Spine Ripper,” based on the common style of the kills.
Flippin’ psychos, more of ’em as time goes on and growing sicker, George thinks. It’s the damn internet giving crazy ideas. But who cares, got nothing to do with me. Tonight is the night, no matter what.
George cranks off the ignition, pushes open the driver’s door, and slides out. Standing in the open door, given the fast snow infiltrating his cab, he works quick to shove his keys with the Strand Bookstore keychain deep in his cavernous man-jean’s pocket. He next grabs his camo-print Duck Hunters’ Guild wallet from the center cubby and shoves it in an even-deeper butt pocket. He nods deference to an important book of brown leather he leaves in the center cubby, adjacent to his sheathed hunting knife.
“I do love you, Lady, but time’s moving on. It has to be tonight. You’ll always, always be my girl. Tonight is the night,” he says to the book.
Before back-stepping in the snow to shut his door, he checks the mini clock embedded in the dashboard. Noting it’s 12:05 a.m., he resolves that his work day has near begun, shuts the door, and presses “lock” on the universal fob that works on all vehicles in the Richard’s Mountain fleet of trucks. As he walks to tonight’s first destination, he, like a carefree child, rakes four fingers through the snow-plastered decal on the side of his truck. Four thick lines now etch the decal’s snow-capped peaks and evergreen base and Richard’s Mountain in luscious red script on the top curve, and 99 trails, 99 dreams, 99 ways to fall in love on the bottom curve.
It’s true midnight now, meaning it’s time for breakfast or a mid-drinking snack in the townie/mountain staff bar: Malforson’s Bar & Grill. “Grill” being quite a euphemism, since there is no grill and only two items are on the flippin’ menu.
But whatever, whatever, it’ll do. Always has.
George makes his way towards the bar, which most passersby fail to see from this curvy mountain road. Set in a depression of land, only one story, and near-surrounded by snowy pines, it could be, on dark nights — especially stormy nights like tonight — just a roadside shadow. Up close, it appears as a cozy troll cottage baked of gingerbread, with its brown shingles, smoking chimney, and low-hung windows with drifts of snow in each pane. Amber battery candles sit on the sill of each window, firmly cementing the joint as one Santa’s more jaded elves might frequent after a long night of making tinker toys and bobsleds.
Another mountain staffer ambles behind George, having locked his own company truck. George hears the beep of this worker’s universal fob and twists to nod a hello. The co-worker, Kyle something or other, he’s new, brand new, nods back.
Where’d Kyle whatshisface come in from? Colorado? Marquette? Who cares. Not tonight. Don’t care.
“Hey there, George,” Kyle New Boy says.
“Hey,” says George, scrunching his eyes to avoid a deluge of snow from the sky.
George doesn’t wait for Kyle, and this isn’t George being rude. This is him teaching new boy the ropes. There are rules, laws, amongst staff and townies in the hidden cocoon of Malforson’s Bar and Grill. And one law is no talking outside. Another is no monopolizing a single-solitary person’s short-time inside, before a mountain shift. One can talk to the whole bar, if the whole bar is listening, but one-on-one ear beatings are strictly banned. Kyle doesn’t rush to catch up to George, so hopefully new boy gets it.
And so, the regular night routine clicks in to begin.
But this is no regular night. No! I won’t let another night pass. Tonight is the night.
It is the beginning of the work day for the skeleton crew that grooms the slopes in the middle of profit-promising blizzards, such as tonight; and it’s the middle of a drinking night for the Cliffs and Norms of the village. This is their Cheers. The binary menu fits both sides of the divide: eggs-n-bacon sandwiches in tinfoil, kept under a humming heat lamp is one choice; and palm-shaped sliders cooked in a toaster oven is the other. Mostly the sliders are meant to soak up the townies’ constant rum and cokes and dozens of draws from the tap, and the egg-n-bacon hockey pucks are for mountain staff. Sometimes the staff and townies mix up the menu between themselves; a grease-dripping slider from the toaster before an all-nighter in a snowcat is a great way to start one’s work-night. But no matter what, no matter what, there’s not a damn fool townie who would take even a drop of drip coffee meant for the mountain’s night staff. That would be sacrilege. Also sacrilege would be mountain staff taking a townie’s designated seat at the bar. Coffee and stools are sacrosanct, the détente formed to accommodate the demilitarized zone of Malforson’s.
These are the intricate, unstated but firm, laws of Malforson’s: no ear-beatings, only communal talking if the community as a whole is listening, no coffee for townies, no designated bar stools for mountain staff. Laws.