Dog Soldiers

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ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS WAS ON THE TELEVISION SET. Black and white. Converse had just had an injection; there were spots of blood on his forearm which were running into streaks. The blood tracks were familiar in some way. They had made him take his clothes off like doctors. The set was turned up to high volume.

“So nu,” the bearded man named Danskin was saying, “where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“Where is what,” the bearded man said mockingly. He pinched Converse on the cheek.

Smitty came in from the bathroom. The shower was on.

“What did he say?”

“He said ‘where is what’.”

“Ooh,” Smitty said in an affected effeminate manner. He punched Converse across the face with a stiff girlish forearm. It was a joke but each of the punches hurt.

Converse was kneeling on the floor. He was extremely confused. His breath was labored and he felt very hot.

“I can’t get no hot water out of that shower,” Smitty said.

Danskin shook his head.

“What kind of a place is this?”

Converse went into some kind of glide. It was the injection. When he came out he was looking at the television set. He knew what was happening there — he had seen the film. A mustachioed coward was attempting to bail out of his stricken aircraft with the only available parachute.

Danskin was watching television too.

“When in doubt,” he told Converse, “bail out.”

When Converse tried to stand up Danskin struck him on the side of the head and closed his right ear.

“Where is it, fucker?”

Converse shook his head. He was hot; he felt as though enormous quantities of sweat were straining against his pores unable to get through his skin. They had spread towels everywhere.

“What was in the needle?” he asked them. They watched him stand up. When he was upright, he tried to charge Smitty but his legs failed him. He was trying to bail out.

On the floor he looked up into Smitty’s face. It was an undersea face; the eyes were only part of an inflated bag of venom behind it. If the bag were removed from the head, there would be eyes all over its surface. Protective coloration.

Smitty kicked him and he rolled over and retched into the towels. He had lost lunch some time before. The television set was playing Rachmaninoff. “The world’s finest melodies can be yours,” it said. “The world’s finest melodies?” Converse asked. Danskin and Smitty laughed at him.

They had picked him up two blocks from the Montalvo in front of twenty citizens. He had ridden to the motel with a pistol pressed against his scrotum.

“Nobody out there but bloods, bubi,” Danskin had told him. “They don’t care.”

“Where is it, fucker?”

“I don’t know,” Converse said. “What was in the needle?”

Danskin did accents. “Ve ask ze questions,” he said.

They pulled him upright and walked him into a small kitchenette next to the Murphy bed. Smitty turned on one of the ring burners and they watched it until it glowed bright orange. They were both holding him from behind.

“Please,” Converse said.

Smitty shoved the end of a towel in his mouth; Danskin was caressing the back of his neck. They’re going to do it, Converse thought. He strained backward and he was so frightened that they had a difficult time holding him. Somehow he burned his hand. And burned it. And burned it.

He screamed and they let him fall to the kitchenette floor. He rolled on the linoleum in the fetal position with the fried hand thrust between his thighs.

“I go nuts,” someone on the television said.

Then they had him upright. The towel again. They were shoving his head forward and downward toward the burner. He was trying to jump up and down and the sweat broke through at last.

“When I say where is it,” Jules asked, “what am I talking about?”

“The dope,” Converse said, when Smitty took the towel from his mouth. Even fear could not keep him from another glide and he came out looking into Danskin’s eyes. The phrase “fine eyes” crossed his mind.

Danskin embraced him.

“Hooray,” Danskin cried. “Way to go.”

Converse accepted Danskin’s embrace. He was grateful. His hand hurt. In a moment they had his face over the burner again. When he tried to turn away from it, they seized him by the hair.

“Here’s the way it is,” Danskin said. “I’m walking down the street. I come to a ladder up against a store window. I walk around it.”

The skin on Converse’s face began to hurt terribly. He struggled again and they pulled him back. Jules took his face between his two hands.

“Hurts?”

Converse nodded. Danskin pursed his lips as though he would kiss him.

“So I walk around the ladder. Suddenly this guy comes up to me. I see there’s a camera on me. He says Good afternoon, sir, I see you walked around the ladder could you tell me, please why you did that? Then I realize — aha — it’s Friday the thirteenth. It’s a television show. It’s the man in the street show. I’m on television!”

Converse nodded.

“So I say — Superstition I, heh heh — what a classy answer! What a clever dude I am! And the little fucker with the mike says could you tell us about your superstitions. What do you think happened?”

Smitty began to giggle.

“What?” Converse asked.

“I couldn’t think of a fuckin’ thing to say. I froze. The little fucker looked at me like I was a dummy. I hated it.” He seemed enraged at the recollection and he forced Converse’s face down toward the burner again.

Converse began to cry in his fear. “Please,” he said.

They yanked his head back up by the hair.

“So I got home,” Danskin said. “I turned on the set. What’s on? Wise cocksuckers talking about their superstitions and there’s me and I’m thinking of all the good funny shit I could say about my superstitions. I was so pissed.”

“Please,” Converse said. His tears fell on the burner.

“You say — the dope! Where is the dope?”

“I swear I’ll tell you everything I know. I don’t know where it is. Everyone was gone when I got here.” It seemed to him that he fainted then. They pulled him upright.

“That was his steak,” a girl on the television said.

“What do you want me to do,” Cary Grant said, “have it stuffed?”

“Give me nice simple answers,” Danskin said. “Anything.”

“Your name is John Converse, am I right?”

“Right,” Converse said. “Your father was a waiter, am I right?”

“Right,” Converse said.

“Was he a nice man?”

“He was a very nice man.”

“Was he a good waiter?”

Converse swallowed.

“He was a head waiter during the war. He made a lot of money.”

Suddenly they were shouting at him.

“Where do you think you are, fucker! Wake up!”

“I don’t know where I am.”

“Well you’re here,” Danskin said, “and I’m gonna burn your face! Tell me where the schmeck is!”

“I swear I don’t know,” Converse screamed. “My wife has it! She was gone when I got here!”

Danskin clapped him on the back. “You’re thirty-five years old. Your father was a waiter. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Catholic.”

“You go to church?”

“No,” Converse said. “I don’t believe in it anymore.”

“You believe in telling the truth?”

“Yes,” Converse said. “Yes.”

“Are you scared?” Danskin was fondling his ass as though he were a woman.

“Of course,” Converse said.

“Where’s your wife?”

Converse turned to him in terror.

“I swear… I swear… I don’t know. She’s gone.” The tears were running down his cheeks.

Smitty seemed embarrassed. “We could fry your face all week, you cocksucker,” he said.

Danskin appeared sympathetic.

“You’re not lying, are you, John? You’re not lying to protect her ass?”

“Do you think I am? I’m not. I couldn’t.”

Danskin nodded.

“Of course you couldn’t. And if we had a deal for you — if you could help us, you would, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” Converse said.

They let him go. He walked out of the kitchenette and back to where the towels were.

Danskin shrugged. “Nothing there.”

“You’re not gonna make it, kid,” the television set said.

Converse was commencing another glide when Smitty went berserk. Smitty punched him repeatedly and he could not succeed in falling down. He found himself in the bathroom slipping over vomit; Smitty shoved him under the shower and began kicking him, the bathtub, and the walls. Smitty was upset about the lack of hot water.

But it was hot enough for Converse. It scalded his burned hand. He scrambled out of the tub in the face of Smitty’s blows and collapsed on the fouled tile floor.

After Smitty had gone out, Converse began to crawl toward the bathroom door. It was open, and he wanted to close it so that they would not notice him.

“Our land is your land,” the television set said.

Danskin turned it off. Smitty was on the phone. He handed the receiver to Jules.

“Antheil,” he said.