Two more men moved in close, stripped off Weir’s belt, and yanked his trousers up. He could see their elbows, their chests, their chins covered by the masks, their gloved fists that held his pants up by his ankles now while the lopping shears moved into his field of vision, opened and shut like the mandibles of a great ant, and moved between his legs.
Jim summoned everything he had. It was a blind surge, a screaming release of fear that brought his torso up level with the floor and guided his hands for the neck of the man with the cutters. But his body swung away with the lunge and his fingers missed the neck by inches, and his stomach, bruised and aching, surrendered. His head dropped back down and he tried again, but his strength only brought him up halfway, and for a moment he swung there, arms reaching out like some infant groping for its mother while he swayed in a lazy circle and the men around him laughed.
Laughed. It was a sound, Weir knew in an instant, that he would carry with him to his grave.
“Say goodbye to someone you love, Jim.”
He felt each of his arms taken and held fast. Looking up the length of his body, Jim could see his stomach, his groin, his thighs and knees, his trousers bunched and held tight around his boots, his boots locked in the noose. The curved blades settled in his pubic hair, cold and hard. Weir tried to jerk himself up, but his arms were pinned and it was utterly useless. A strange high-pitched buzzing then came into his head, almost electric. He watched the blades lift, open, and slide into his crotch. The buzzing in his ears was louder now — it sounded like a barbershop when he was six.
Then it happened. The cold blades touched him and a sharp pain shot into his groin. Weir screamed against the gag, and his back arched and he felt his eyes getting ready to leave their sockets. Red everywhere. If you can scream loud enough, it will all go away. The buzzing so loud, so electric; the metallic shearing sound as the blades opened and closed. Something falling down now and hitting his face, something warm and light — oh my dear sweet God, you let them do it.
You let them do it.
Dear sweet God.
“Don’t fuck with us. You know who we are.”
“Ever.”
“Anymore.”
“Got it?”
“Enjoy your new look, Weir.”
He could hear them leaving, but he couldn’t open his eyes. And he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why the pain was not excruciating — just a cool stinging patch that felt open and foreign. His head throbbed with each wild heartbeat.
Then he felt someone grab him by the shirt and lift him up, followed by a sawing sounding above. Suddenly, his feet broke free and he dropped to the floor in a backbreaking flop cushioned only by his hands.
He lay there on the cool linoleum for a long moment, listening to the footsteps departing, then the cars starting up outside, then only to the racing gallop of his heart against the floor.
Then he was strangely, insanely, profoundly happy. He could feel it there beneath him, and he knew they hadn’t taken it. He rolled over and parted his trousers, hoisting himself up on one elbow. There it was, in all its terrified, recessed glory, lying on a plain of white flesh. He lay back, turned his head to the side, and saw the clump of hair a few feet away. The barbershop sound, he thought: electric clippers — the lopping shears were strictly for show. He managed to get his zipper up. Then he rolled over to the wall and scrunched himself up against it and peered out the window to the dark sky outside. His heart wouldn’t stop racing. It sent the blood rushing into his face, into his ears and eyes, into his hands and fingers, into his legs and his feet, and he lay there a long while thanking God for the blood that still pumped inside him, every precious, eager, frantic drop.
The moon came into the window. When his heart finally began to slow, the pain came to take its place. It was mostly surface now: his back and stomach and ribs, but he knew it would sink down deeper over the hours, settling into the bone and tendons.
He stood slowly, bracing against the wall. By the time he got to the living room, he had found a tremulous balance that threatened to give out at any second. He fell once going down the steps, and once more standing beside his truck, trying to get a trembling hand into his pocket for the keys.
Chapter 20
On the day of Ann’s funeral, the ocean died, the first victims were the small fish that washed up before sunrise — anchovies, smelt, grunion, young bass. By nine, there were halibut, mullet, mackerel, bonita, stingrays, skates, mud sharks, sand sharks, blue sharks, and thresher, carried by the tide to shore, where, bloated, eyes protruding, bladders ejected from their mouths, they lay either dead or in final twitching demise. Half a dozen sea lions were beached, too, but still alive at first. They lolled in the shallows near Poon’s Locker, entangling themselves in mooring lines and issuing their last agonized groans before turning belly-up and silent in the dismal, fog-clenched afternoon. Last to go were the seabirds — the ducks, the gulls and pelicans, a few heron deep in the Back Bay — which floated, limp-necked and feet folded, onto the beaches around noon. By 2:00 P.M., the smell was getting strong.
The old-timers of the peninsula mumbled about a red tide — a deadly buildup of plankton that robs the fish of oxygen — but none of them had ever seen a sea gull die of too much air. Besides, the water wasn’t the telltale orange-brown of a plankton surge, but its usual gray and unassuming self. Charter trips were canceled and the harbor tours were postponed, but the Newport-to-Catalina ship weighed anchor at the usual 8 A.M., dividing with its prow the thousands of bobbing bodies that littered the bay. The ferryboat continued its rims, pushing through the carnage with the glum efficiency of a slow plow in winter. By noon, the EPA, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Coastal Commission, the Coast Guard, the County Sheriffs, the city Marine Department, the mayor, an aid to the governor, and the press had all arrived to evaluate the problem.
Jim saw it from the window of his old upstairs room in the big house. He had spent an aching night tossing on his bed, sweating, plagued by visions of lopping shears and, later in a state of light sleep, again by the dream of someone holding a single purple rose up to Ann’s trusting, lovely face. Before first light, he got up and read the files on Kearns and Blodgett, searching for something that had gotten through, something he hadn’t seen, something he hadn’t understood. The words danced on the paper in front of him, cloying and ineffable. When he finally looked up from the files, he saw the hundreds of pale, shining shapes lining the curve of shore to the south. In the first light of day, they looked like coins spilled from a treasure chest. To the north, he could see a crowd that had gathered on the sidewalk, just past Ann’s Kids. Becky Flynn stood off to the side, talking on a portable telephone. Some of the people were still in their robes. Downstairs, the phone started ringing.
And through it all, the hunt for Horton Goins continued. When he went down to the Locker for coffee, Jim saw a team of uniforms working the motels around the El Mar. When he sat in the window of the café and drank it, Tillis and Oswitz walked by with copies of Goins’s photograph in their hands. The morning paper said that south-county sporting-goods stores were reporting brisk gun sales; Goins’s picture ran again; a front-page article recounted the death of a fifteen-year-old Newport boy who was shot by his own father while trying to sneak back into his house — through his sister’s room — after a night away. Later when he drove Virginia and Raymond and Becky off the island toward the cemetery, they had to stop at the roadblock — with about a thousand other cars, it seemed — set up to find Goins. Officer Hoch, with a swollen purple nose and two black eyes, waved them through. Ray commented on it, but Weir said nothing. He was feeding his anger on silence. The Newport cops had taken him down a notch. So what? He’d quit their world and gotten a less-than-welcome back. The shoulder holster and Poon’s old .45 felt strange against his ribs, troublesome allies.