Goldenland Past Dark by Chandler Klang Smith

Author:Chandler Klang Smith [Klang Smith, Chandler]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781927469378
Publisher: ChiZine Publications
Published: 2013-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The blood, purple-black and everywhere, didn’t resemble blood, even though it was leaking out of Schoenberg’s side. Webern held two paper cups of steaming coffee as he stood in the tent’s entrance, unable to step inside or to turn away. At first he thought that the liquid was paint, and that the stabbed body lying before him wasn’t Schoenberg but merely one of his self-portraits.

The detectives sat Webern under a naked light bulb and offered him a cigarette. It seemed like they might have a firing squad waiting just outside. They asked him for his relationship to the deceased. They asked him how come he’d found the body. They asked what kind of a show they’d been running anyway, who would come out to see a bunch of bums playacting like they were the Ringling Brothers. They asked if Schoenberg was a pervert, a fairy, a pimp, a thief, a con man, a drunk. They showed him a telephone book. They asked if he knew Schoenberg’s record was as thick as a telephone book. They asked him to go through his story from the beginning. They asked what he was hiding. They asked how come his fingerprints were all over the crime scene. They asked him why he was crying. They asked him for his relationship to the deceased. Webern sat on a metal folding chair and looked at himself in the two-way mirror. His face started to change the way it had before, on his birthday, when he’d seen his reflection in the sword. They asked him for his relationship to the deceased.

They shut the door of the holding pen. Through the single, high window, Webern could see a square of sky with bars on it. He imagined a little clown floating across it, holding onto a bunch of balloons. He gave the balloons names. One was Kiddo. One was Ma. One was Gram-Gram. One was Pops. One was Boss. When the door of the holding pen opened again, Mars Boulder was standing on the other side. He had on handcuffs and leg cuffs and a leash around his neck. He looked deader than Schoenberg had. He’d already confessed.

“You stay here,” one detective told Webern. “We’ll have your paperwork through in a jiff.”

Mars Boulder stepped inside. The door clanged shut behind him. His leash hung down his front like a joke, a giant leather necktie. Experimentally, Webern stepped up the man and punched him as hard as he could in the chest.

“Monster,” Webern said. His voice came out low, Dr. Show’s tenor. He punched him again. Boulder’s chest felt hard, a shield of bone. “You—you—you’re not even human, are you.” He punched him again, in the abdomen this time.

Mars Boulder coughed. He bent at the waist. Webern stared up at him defiantly. Then Mars shuffled toward one of the cell’s two wooden benches. Webern watched the leg irons drag across the concrete floor. Mars Boulder sat down heavily and folded his cuffed hands.

“I understand,” he said. His voice was thickly accented.

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