A Ship With White Sails

A SHIP WITH WHITE SAILS


Floyd

1

         Curd-like phlegm vibrated in cavernous cartilaginous passageways, through bronchi and bronchioles it jitterbugged and slopped with wave-like frequency. Cigarette-burned lungs sucked clean air through dirty mucus-lined catacombs, where it was recycled and soured. Floyd’s respiration sounded like a child’s straw at the bottom of an empty glass of milkshake but it didn’t stop him sleeping; nothing stopped Floyd from sleeping.

         Floyd slept and dreamt of an oily black cat and a pale fat man. In the dream the black cat spoke to him but much of it was drowned out by the fat man’s cough. It was too loud; he couldn't hear what the cat was saying. Floyd thought he heard it say:

         “The ship with white sails has broken its mooring”

         Floyd coughed in his sleep and a bristled black bodied fly alighted from his cheek. In the dream the fat man also coughed. The cat spoke again:

         “The ship with white sails has broken its mooring and….” But Floyd didn’t catch the rest. The cat’s voice was lost as Floyd and the fat man coughed together. He was beginning to wake and the lines that bound the dream were becoming unclear, nevertheless he heard the cat say something about butterflies, before another bronchial spasm erupted phlegm into the back of his throat like lava.

         The cat continued in spite of the noise, “They are coming for you”, is what it said.
Floyd awoke from the dream and coughed up thick brown mucus until he was sick into the glass beside his bed. He went to the bathroom to rinse out the glass, giving it 2 or 3 swills beneath the cold tap. He let it fill to the top and then drank from it until it was empty. The cold water rushed down his throat, washing back bile and cooling his stomach. He got back into bed, and reached over to the bedside table (an upturned milk crate) for the crushed packet of cigarettes that he knew was there. Floyd smoked and remembered his dream, it came to him in dull flashes, like the beam of a torch cutting through fog; Something about a talking cat; Something about a ship and some butterflies, and….

         They are coming for you

         Who had been coming for him? A cloud passed from in front of the moon so that its light entered through a gap in the curtain, illuminating the patch of wall above his pillow. Floyd waited for a cartoon light bulb to appear in the bright patch above his head but no answer came. He mulled it over for a moment before forgetting it completely as a fresh coughing fit exploded in his chest.

2


         The moon beat a silent path across the sky and dropped below the horizon just as the sun’s first rays began to seep from the east. Floyd was asleep when the sun made its daily entrance but it greeted him anyway; it slipped into his room through the gap in his curtain to warm up the air and lay on his face. Floyd squinted his eyes against harsh bright light and dragged the pillow he’d been laying on over his head.

         Floyd slept through the best part of the morning and was awoken just after 11 by an urgent banging on his front door. He lay there and ignored it. Whoever it was could wait until a decent time of day. He lay there a full 2 minutes waiting for them to go away and when they didn’t, he got up to answer it.

         Floyd unfastened the bolt-chain and lock before checking himself in the mirror opposite the door. His hair stood up in sleep-induced spikes and a parting had formed high on the left side of his temple. Floyd sighed and licked his palm before flattening it, so that the raised hairline, where he was convinced he was receding, was covered by overhanging hair.

         “Chill the fuck out” he began to say, but was cut short on the f of fuck by a fist - the size and colour of a boiled ham - as it thudded into his mouth, knocking him right back into his apartment and into a wall. His head crashed painfully against the glass of the mirror splitting it in 2. Some of his hairs remained caught in the fissure and plucked from his scalp as Floyd dropped to the floor.

         Floyds vision blurred momentarily and with it so did his vocabulary. “Get out” said Floyd’s brain, which was absurdly translated into “Penicillin” by his bleeding mouth.

         “Penicillin and fried potatoes...” jabbered a concussed Floyd, sending droplets of blood onto his bare chest in a fine spray . Through tears Floyd saw a grey shape come closer and felt a rough hand take hold of his hair. “The fuck are you talking about?” said the hand, and Floyd’s head was banged heavily against the wall.

         The black cat prowled slowly across a sea of blurred sounds and images. Floyd watched it and slipped gently into his unconscious. When he awoke he was no longer in his apartment.


3



         Cigarettes crowded the ashtray like pigs at a trough. As tendrils of blue smoke slid drunkenly to the ceiling, the silver ash fell from their burning snouts. Floyd watched them burn and licked the cut on his swollen lip. It sat heavily over his chin, like a split blood pudding.

         Cazares shifted in his seat and loosened his tie with thick-knuckled fingers. Floyd wondered how the chair could take his weight. Cazares was a pig but he was a bull of a man. His broad shoulders and barrel chest, built on rump steak and years lifting weights, together with his 6’7” height, made the steel-tube chair seem tiny by comparison. He looked to Floyd like a bear sat on a child’s seat - as if Papa bear had paid a visit to Goldilocks’ house, and not the other way around. ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’ thought Floyd, and had to stifle a snicker. Cazares observed the smile on Floyds face and outed his cigarette in the cremated remains of its precursors.

         “What’s with the smile little Floyd? You’re in more trouble than you think you are.” said Cazares. Floyd’s smile widened and he leant forward in his chair. “Is that so?” he said, “Then tell me this, you big fucking tree, why am I not worried?”

         Cazares smiled companionably and leant forward. He beckoned Floyd in, as if about to share a secret. They both leaned across the table until all that separated them were the thin blue lines of cigarette smoke, that rose from the burning pig-arettes below.

         “I’ll tell you why you’re not worried little Floyd” said Cazares, and he blew heavily into the ashtray sending a black cloud of cigarette ash into Floyds face. Floyd recoiled, covering his face with his hands, and Cazares smacked him with one of his paddle-like palms, knocking him to the floor.

         “Because you’re too dumb to know the difference between a push and a fix” continued Cazares, his voice rising “You’re in a fix little Floyd”, Floyd hated it when he called him little Floyd, and Cazares knew it, “..a whole heap of shit and you’re buried so deep you can’t even see it.”

         “Oh yeah?” shouted Floyd, instantly regretting the petulance he heard in his voice. He sounded like a 5 year boy whose Mother had just punished him for bad behaviour. He could have done better but hey, it was hard to think up witty retorts while your eyes and mouth were full of foul tasting ash that stung and induced gagging respectively. He got up from the floor and sat back in his chair, coughing heavily and rubbing at his eyes. Floyd rolled foul tasting saliva cross his cracked tongue and spat it on the floor, where it accidentally landed on Cazares’ shoe. Again, Floyd smiled.

         “Yeah” said Cazares, and he calmly produced a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, which he placed on the table in front of Floyd.

         “You clean that up” said Cazares and motioned to his foot. Floyd looked down at the black slick of spit on the big policeman’s shoe and then leant back in his chair and slowly raised his middle finger. Cazares smiled a great big beaming smile that made Floyd nervous.

         Floyd wasn’t scared of Cazares, sure he was scared of what he could do to him in terms of law enforcement, but he wasn’t scared of the man behind the badge. Perhaps he should have been.

         With a speed that defied his colossal size, and proved the old adage ‘not to judge a book by its cover’ (at least to Floyd anyway), Cazares took hold of the table at each of its corners and thrust it at Floyd with all of his might. The table screamed across the ceramic tiled floor of the holding cell and thudded into Floyd’s chest, winding him. Cazares hit it again, toppling Floyds chair backwards with the force. The table skidded over Floyd as his already bruised and battered head struck the floor. Then, before he could get up, in fact, before the table had even stopped sliding across the room, Cazares launched a kick from behind his body and planted his foot neatly in Floyd’s crotch.

         The impact of Floyds head with the hard unyielding surface of the floor released a white star into the centre of his vision, that bloomed like a firework, and blinded him with a light that was at once violent and otherworldly beautiful. A black cat’s silhouette flashed briefly across that infinite white and then vanished. Lying on his back Floyd felt an impact to his body that forced his entire weight to shift several inches across the floor. When he came to, the white light had been replaced by the dulled flicker of fluorescent tubes. Floyd stared blankly at the ceiling and then doubled up on his side and moaned. Malicious fingers of pain slipped indecently up his thighs and down his navel, coming to rest in his groin, where they hatefully caressed his injured testicles.

         Cazares wiped his shoe on Floyds back, picked up the fallen ashtray and cigarettes, and replaced them on the table before returning it to the centre of the room. He put on his suit jacket and walked to the door. As he went he said something that Floyd didn’t hear. The pain in his genitals was so loud that it temporarily deafened his ears.


4



         Around ten minutes later Floyd’s sneaky fingers crawled across the tapestry of scrawled graffiti that decorated the smog-grey tabletop. They opened the packet of Black Kings Cazares had left behind him and sneaked back across the table carrying 2 cigarettes. One of these found its way into Floyd’s mouth, where it sat awkwardly on a swollen tube of bottom lip that was flecked with a batter made from blood, ash and saliva. The other found its way to the tip of Floyd’s penis, just below the glans, where a small red welt leaked a thin yellow fluid. Floyd sat back with his himself in his hand and dabbed the white filter generously on the herpetic blister. Sneaky sneaky thought Floyd, and replaced the soiled cigarette in its packet. He picked up Cazares’ lighter, sat back in his chair, and began to smoke.

         “Oh dear” said Floyd to no one in particular “Oh my! Oh heavens to Betsy! What is Moyna going to say when she sees the herpes on her husband’s lips? Oh deary deary me.” Floyd blew out smoke and snickered. The snickers brought on a small coughing fit, but the thought of Cazares lips sucking on something that had just been intimate with his intimates only made him laugh and cough harder. When Cazares came back he found Floyd coughing his guts up, his face a bright shade of red, and tears in his eyes.

         Despite the fit of coughing Floyd couldn’t smile wide enough and Cazares had an overwhelming urge to shoot him in the face. Instead he sat down taking a cigarette from the pack and began to smoke. He stared at Floyd and went into his briefcase.

         Cazares passed a brown envelope to Floyd and told him to take a look.
“Nice cigarettes” said Floyd companionably and he ripped the top off the envelope. Cazares only grunted and dragged heavily on his cigarette.

         Floyd tipped the contents onto the table and, for an infinitesimal moment, his smile faltered. Spread before him were a series of glossy black and white photos that showed Floyd through a telephoto lens. In the first he was shown sideways, accepting a package from a woman who was holding an umbrella. The woman was young and obviously attractive, even though the sunglasses she wore obscured the top half of her face; she had long dark hair and a subtly upturned nose that gave lent her profile a certain mischief. In the photo Floyd had been caught half blinking so his eyes were almost closed. “I look like a schmuck” thought Floyd and moved to the second picture. “You are a schmuck” thought Floyd, correcting himself.

         The second picture was grainy, like some old newspaper print, and Floyd could tell it had been digitally enlarged. It was good to know they weren’t able to get too close but still discomfiting to know that this was close enough. Even though the picture was blurred and slightly out of focus, it was stark judgement on Floyd’s technique, or lack thereof. It was a scene outside a restaurant, San Marugati’s Fish and Grill, in which Floyd was shown handing something to a man in a grey parka. “Idiot” thought Floyd, and he heard his grandfathers voice in his head “You’re getting careless my boy. What happened to the sneaky sneaky?”.

         The 3rd and 4th pictures showed much of the same; Floyd in a drop or a pick up, always conspicuous, always clearly showing his face. All of the figures in the photos were known runners or dealers and all of the photos were recent, which meant Floyd was being spun in a web.

         “You fucking spider” spat Floyd, and he threw the pictures on the table.

         Now it was Cazares turn to smile. He turned it on to full beam and let it crawl slowly outwards from his mouth. Cazares lips lengthened and elongated like pink slugs creeping on a trail of slick mucus. He let them spread until the piss-yellow stains of dental caries shone between them, and then he laughed. He laughed until a solitary tear slid slowly down his face, and then he stopped.

         “So, little Floyd” he said with emphasis on the little, “It looks like you are in a fix after all. Doesn’t it? Eh?” Cazares stamped his chubby index finger down on the pictures to iterate his point.

         “And I told you, didn’t I? Eh?” he said and stamped his finger on the pictures again.

         “I told you and you wouldn’t listen. Well you’re listening now Floyd aint’cha?”

         Floyd affected nonchalance, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms, but inside he was trembling. He was trembling with anger that this pig of a bull of a man could have gotten one over on him. This hypocritical, power-hungry bully of a man, who was taking backhanders from everyone that Floyd knew, including Floyd once or twice in the early days, had caught him in a web. Floyd stared down at the pictures and cursed himself for getting so careless, and then he remembered his moment with the cigarette and relaxed a little. Thank goodness for small victories, he thought.

         “So what do you want?” he said, and waited for Cazares to lay it on.

         “I want you to listen and then I want you to talk. You’ve heard about the fix, now here comes the push. You ready?”

         “Hit me” said Floyd, and he leaned forward. He really didn’t intend to give this man anything to work with, just maybe enough to get some breathing space. Hell, if he told him anything of real consequence he was writing his own suicide note; Dear mother, I’m currently residing in and industrial waste bin just North of the steelworks with multiple stab wounds to my kidneys and face, and gaping hole where my genitals used to be, and all because I chose to tell Cazares who I worked for in order to save my own skin. Don’t cry for me, it was my time to go. Love, Floyd. Yeah right, like Floyd was letting that happen. Cazares leaned forward and Floyd could actually taste the sour tang of sweat that clung to the detective’s jacket. Floyd wanted to retch.
“Who is this?” said Cazares, and his thick-knuckled finger slowly descended on one of the photographs.


5



         Overhead the sky was a clear glacial blue. The sun, bleached by the season, shone down a pale lemon light, and illuminated the rich textured rugs of fallen leaves that flowed in skirts from the roots of trees. The crisp winter air was as cooling as menthol and escaped in clouds like sweet peppermint on peoples’ breath. Plump grey pigeons strutted amorously and were largely ignored by hens whose libidos had flown south for the winter. The air was full of good smells; of hot dogs and fried onions, of damp foliage and flowers, and now and then of spiced nuts - from a vendor beside the pavement. Floyd inhaled deeply and sauntered down the front steps of the central police station. A fat boy of maybe 12 years old stood chewing bubblegum. He regarded Floyd with a distrustful eye and blew a bright pink bubble that took two breaths to fill. Floyd popped it and walked on.

         It had been 5 hours since waking and Floyd was hungry, he checked his pockets for money and crossed the road to the woman selling hot dogs from a steel cart. Floyd was disappointed to find that they were Frankfurter sausages, not the fried greasy ones he always preferred, but he paid his money nonetheless and sat down in a doorway to eat. He regarded the hot dog and wrinkled his nose. The pinched ends of the smooth red sausage were like the puckered striations of an orifice he’d rather not liken to a food he was about to eat. Thin translucent onions rode it bareback, their juices soaking into the smooth torpedo shaped bun, and dazzling yellow mustard ran in electric zig-zags across the top. Floyd found that, despite his hunger, he couldn’t bring himself to eat the sphincter-esque tips of the sausage, so he tore them off and discarded them. Floyd sat there and chewed and thought about the day he’d had.

         Cazares had walked him into the bathroom and made him wash the dried blood from his face before he’d let Floyd leave, and Floyd could dig that; it wasn’t in Cazares’ best interest to have a bloodied face walk out of the police station during the light of day, better to clean him up before sending him on his way. He’d let him go with a warning – that this wasn’t over, and that he still wanted the name – and Floyd had been happy to go. The fact remained though that Floyd couldn’t give him a name, even if he wanted to. Floyd couldn’t give him a name because he didn’t know it.

         Cazares had pointed at the picture of Floyd outside the Fish & Grill and had picked out a face of one of the customers behind the window. At first Floyd thought he was joking, and he’d said as much, but Cazares remained iron-faced and picked up another picture. On this one the same person could be seen through the glass window of a payphone booth to the right of Floyd. His mouth was open, as if in conversation, and he was looking in Floyd’s direction. Again Cazares demanded a name but again Floyd couldn’t give one. By the time Cazares got to the 3rd photo Floyd had already found the man in question and had snatched the fourth to look for him there too - sure enough he found him sat on a doorstep in the background, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

         Four times Cazares asked and four times Floyd couldn’t answer. He stared hard at the image and tried to place the face above Cazares’ finger but it was useless. Floyd had never seen him before. The person in question was not exactly forgettable either; he looked out of place in all of the photographs in some way that Floyd couldn’t identify. He was tall, at least a few inches taller than Floyd, who was 5’11” in his socks, and he was thin. The mystery man had coarse dark hair that fell on either side of his face below his eyes and was roughly parted on the left above the eyebrow. His nose was slender and prominent, and had a slight bump on the bridge; it sat above a small moustache and full lips, beneath which was a patch of hair that had been trimmed into the shape of a triangle. In his left ear he wore a hoop of some kind and dark circles framed even darker eyes. His clothes were different in each of the pictures but in 2 of them, those where his feet were showing, Floyd noticed he wore dark boots that were folded down near the top. In another 2 pictures he was carrying a large satchel by its circular wooden handles. It looked, to Floyd, like something Mary Poppins might carry.

         Cazares refused to believe that Floyd didn’t know him and expressed this disbelief with his fists. Floyd, however, wouldn’t, or couldn’t tell him, and in the end he had let him go.

         “I’ll be back in a week” said Cazares “and you’ll be ready to give me that name or you’ll find yourself back here. This time there will be charges, Floyd, and no helping hand.”

         Floyd’s mind chewed over the mystery man and his mouth chewed the hot dog. What did Cazares want with this guy and why was he showing up at Floyd’s business transactions? More importantly, why hadn’t Floyd seen him? That goofy moustache stuck out like a piece of bacon on a Rabbi’s plate, heck, he looked like some kind of musketeer, and yet Floyd could swear he had never seen him before. Floyd swallowed the last bite and went back to the hot dog lady for a ginger beer. He let her keep the change and headed home for some sleep. It was a bad time to be awake and he needed to shut his eyes and think some more.

         What worried him the most was the fact that Cazares wanted this guy so much. Surely that meant he was in to bigger things than Floyd. If neither he nor Cazares could name him then it stood to reason that he worked for the Hawaiian.
And if the Hawaiian was watching him, then Floyd was in deeper trouble than Cazares could push his way.