The Veil War

I smelled something sharp and rancid. The kind of smell you’d expect to find in the folds of a fat, meth-addicted garlic aficionado who hadn’t bathed in a decade.

“You got a quarter?”

You’ve gotta be shitting me. Not again, I thought.

Peeking into my box was the haggard, skeletal face of Quarterman. “Fuck off, Quarterman,” I hissed.

“N… N…” he explained. “Quarter?”

Jesus Lapdancing Christ. “Fuck. Off. I don’t have a quarter.” I luxuriated in a moment of delicious schadenfreude. In my pocket I had three dimes and a nickel, but screw him if he can’t learn to generalize.

“Cockfag mother… fucker…” I heard him mutter as he shambled off to hound someone else. Headphonesman had said that he’d gotten too fucking creepy for the normal people, and lately couldn’t manage to panhandle efficiently even in the shitty parts of town.

Headphonesman wandered over by the bridge’s support pillars, listening to his battered and ancient yet miraculously functional walkman, singing along to whatever the fuck he listened to and waving his hands in the air with energy and purpose. Every minute or so he’d stop, take a step backwards, raise both hands up, and shout, “Yeah!” before continuing his unending pop culture celebration.

***

A thin, distant creak of rusted metal pierced through the rumble and hum of traffic on the overpass.

I slid my eyes from the spectacle of five drunks trying to start a fire in a 55-gallon plastic drum over to the metal door of my target. Sure enough, the door creaked open as I observed from my cardboard sniper’s hide.

A slight figure emerged from the darkened hallway, his shape obscured by a long trench coat. The grey coat was the cleanest thing in a ten block radius, but at least the color didn’t make him stand out too much.

The man looked up and down the street, but he didn’t even glance my way. Living in a cardboard box is the next best thing to a cloak of invisibility.

He set out northbound, scuttling furtively. He glanced over his shoulder a half dozen times before he reached the corner of the building. Christ in a monster truck, I thought. The Marine Corps fucking band on the Fourth of July has better tradecraft than this bozo.

I rolled drunkenly out of my box and staggered to the street. I’d like to take an Oscar nod for the performance, but the pins and needles of my slowly waking legs and feet deserve all the credit for the inebriated authenticity of my lurch streetward.

I tapped the earbead communicator. “Fritz is going for groceries.”

“‘Bout fucking time,” came Tactical Beardman’s quiet response. Seeing as he’d been listening to me bellyache for the last three days, he was probably at least half as glad as me that something was finally happening.

As I angled across the street, a Pontiac K-car rolled by. I flipped off the driver and leered at the woman in the passenger seat. I take my craft seriously. Nice tits, though.

The corner of the building approached. How to play this? If you know of a man twitchier than Fritz the Nazi spy, I’d like to see your proof. Anything, ordinary or not, was like as not to spook the spook.

I stumbled around the corner unzipping my fly. Fritz near jumped out of his notional jackboots at the sight of me. So I unzipped and pissed two liters of rotgut along fifteen feet of brick. His face twisted in a moue of disgust and he dismissed me. He resumed his skulking progress.

Scanning the area, I saw a gaggle of bikers across the street and halfway down the block. No one else in sight. I meandered between the curb and the brick wall, both to maintain character and slow my progress without being obvious about it.

Fritz dashed across the street. He either had business with the bikers, or he had a death wish. These bikers looked like the pure quill, unreconstructed Rolling Stone security types; leather jackets, bald heads, and the friendliest handlebar mustaches you’ll ever see. One of them looked over to me and goosed his throttle. Fuck me, they are doing that on purpose.

Fritz skittered fearfully toward the bikers, holding his coat closed with his left hand. He reached into his coat with his right hand, and every last biker stood up from their bikes and reached behind their backs. Fritz stopped short, realizing the error of his mistake. He held up his left hand in supplication and slowly pulled an envelope from inside the coat.

The bikers stood their threat level down from “looming apocalypse’ to ‘imminent violence’. Fritz shuffled his feet forward, envelope outstretched. A burnt offering for the lords of war, but his body clearly didn’t want to follow where his head was leading.

I stopped and pretended to gaze dumbly skyward. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched the meet go down. The biggest of the motorcycle enthusiasts snatched the envelope from Fritz. He riffled through its contents, nodded satisfaction. He said something I couldn’t hear. He pulled a gun and shot Fritz in the head.

Jesus Panhandling Christ! The shot echoed up and down the narrow canyon of the side street. Nine mil, if my ears didn’t deceive me. Fritz and his too-clean coat crumpled to the sidewalk. I affected panic and ran back up the street. Junkies not being the most in-demand of prosecution witnesses, I probably wasn’t an immediate target. Still not good strategery to hang around, I figured.

I staggered around the corner and straightened. I tapped the earbud again.

“Fritz is taking a long nap.”

“What made him so tired?”

“Bikers probably wore him out.”

“See what they’re up to, right? If they’re having a party, maybe I’ll join you.”

“Maybe?” I thought. That’s double-plus reassuring.

I took off down the street. The double talk was annoying, but like the Beardman says, NSA listens to everybody. I pondered shouting “Allahu Akbar, bomb, president, Israel” into the mike, but decided I had enough issues without courting extraordinary rendition and a stay in a Serbian resort town.

My Vietnam-era fatigue coat and ragged, stained pants were no different than moments ago. But my suddenly alert and focused movements freaked out my erstwhile overpass compatriots. I ran across the weed-choked gravel to a small ditch behind my refrigerator box. I yanked a shopping cart and a half dozen boxes off my bike, put on my sunglasses.

“Where’s the party headed?” I asked of the air.

“Hang on a sec,” Beardman said.

I jumped on my bike. One press of the starter and it roared to life. I winced preemptively and goosed the throttle.

“Got em on a traffic cam. Southbound on Dallas.”