The Lipless Gods

By Brian Stillman

Sipe’s job: drive the crime throne heir from California back home to Seattle. The double cross: Sipe’s unaware Connie is willing to sacrifice anyone to get out of the family business for good. Sipe’s reality: betrayed, wounded, looking down the barrel of a little blackmail courtesy of the teenager that just discovered him unconscious in the tiniest of tiny Oregon towns. Tiffany’s deal: Sipe helps her locate a missing friend, or the faked boob-grab pics make the rounds. The local less than honorable law enforcement...her slightly crazy uncle...Little Creek’s the kind of place the wrong kind of stranger can disappear – forever.

The Lipless Gods. A noir-tinged portrait of broken families, teen prostitution, green energy, and of course, anger management challenged Olympic athletes and the mobsters who love them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Stillman
• Release date: Mar 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310458811

Brian Stillman

Brian Stillman lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and several cats. Besides a brief flirtation with Hollywood, he has worked as a grain elevator operator, software test engineer, and bookseller.He is the author of two e-books: a crime novel, The Lipless Gods, and a teen thriller, Lucid.He recently completed Exit The Skin Palace, the first book in a young adult horror series, as well as a crime novel titled Grimgrack. Currently, he's busy writing Surfer On The Drift, the sequel to Exit The Skin Palace.

Book preview

Sipe was driving the Old Man home from physical therapy when the Old Man said, Simon, I think you ought to be the one to go down and bring Connie home.

Anymore, the Old Man called him Simon. Sometimes he called him Dmitri. Sipe didn’t know a Dmitri, but just a couple years back Simon had transformed into a cautionary tale.

The Old Man did business up in Alaska with a shipping company, the front specializing in this kick ass gorp endorsed by several prominent Iditarod participants. The more profitable shipping company boats arrived off the books, bearing weapons, black market electronics, or sometimes people desperate enough to endure shipping containers for days on end out on the ocean.

An executive with the shipping company had a wife with legs that just didn’t stop. A leg man through and through, Simon just dumb enough he thought no one would find out about his dipping her on the down low or if they did, his position as the Old Man’s driver was some magic get-out-of-trouble card.

They never found Simon. He just vanished. The last trip Simon ever took was probably on a trawler out of Anchorage, already mixed in with the chum. These days, Simon was settled into the sediment at the bottom of the Pacific, but the Old Man thought Simon was still driving him around Seattle, ferrying him home after rehab sessions on his knee, gone to shit after a tumble in the shower.

Is he done with school now? asked Sipe. The Old Man’s only kid, Connie was enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America, down in St. Helena in California.

I don’t want anyone flying, you hear me? said the Old Man. He had a blanket up to his chin. He’d use the blanket at the tail end of the therapy sessions. When they iced his knee, it made his entire aged body cold.

Some weeks, session finished, the Old Man would just start talking nonstop, and Sipe did therapists and patients a solid, wandering back to fetch him out of their hair. The Old Man’s therapist an Asian lady with defined biceps and a terrifically muscular rear end. Today, she’d flashed a grin and five fingers at Sipe, telling him, nope, the chatterbox had five more minutes of ice pack.

You know, said Sipe, I know you don’t like the flying, but I could get Connie home faster if I flew down. Then we could just take a rental car back home.

The Old man shook his head ‘no.' The turkey thing with his chin going into full effect. Waddle wobble. His hair almost all white, he combed it back, and it was longish in the back, so with the tinted glasses he wore all the time, he looked a little like some foreign film producer. A legend. A guy who could make you or break you, moving mountains with just his pinkie, his nod or the refusal to nod.

We don’t fly, he said. It’s too risky. Too risky.

Ok.

You take a car down. You take a day or two. Take a nice trip. You know, you could stop, go see your wife. Your kids.

Sipe nodded. He agreed with Zeke. Skip corrections. It was just easier to roll right along with some of the Old Man’s jibber jabber.

He’s a chef now, said the Old Man. Connie. Gonna open his own restaurant.

That’s great.

Can probably make anything. Make it delicious. The Old Man waggled forward and gripped the back of Sipe’s seat. Sipe signaled, making the turn onto Lake Washington Boulevard.

You know what I can make? asked the Old Man.

I don’t.

Shit on a shingle. I can make that. You know what it tastes like?

Nope.

Like actual shit on an actual shingle.

Sipe looked back for just a second. The Old Man needing that look, the acknowledgment keyed something for him and he’d laugh and laugh. Smack the back of the seat and keep producing a noise like an old truck trying to turn over on a winter morning. Eventually, he sat back and settled down back under his blanket. Got cozy. Cozy, he could fall asleep in seconds. Magic. The one time Sipe had tried to wake him up, get him out of the backseat and into the Lake Washington house, the Old Man had screeched, thrown the blanket at Sipe, and then hobbled off the grounds and across the street down to the lake itself. That time, Sipe and Zeke conferred, they’d called Susan, Connie’s former nanny, and she’d lured the Old Man back to the house. She’d modeled bloodied scratches on her neck for all her efforts.

The Old Man out like a light, swaddled beneath a moose and owls print, Sipe parked on the brick driveway and walked to the house, checked the alarm system, looked around inside and then back outside, leaned against a pillar, keeping an eye on the car.

Traffic on the floating bridge hummed. Over the gate, he could see the opposite shore, the eastside, at least one sailboat on the lake. The last time the Old Man was with it enough to have female company, the girls made out with one another on the balcony, the Old Man telling them to pause the slurping and sucking every now and then to wave across the water at Bill Gates.

Sipe hadn’t seen a parent or a sibling in years. The closest he’d come was spending time with his former brother-in-law down in Longview. He was thinking about that trip when the car back door opened, and the Old Man slid out, dragging his blanket, walking towards the house. The limp was getting less noticeable all the time. The Old Man doing his home exercises religiously, desiring to please the therapist with her great smile, the even better posterior. Other than the brains going south, the Old Man was in pretty good shape for someone almost 80.

Inside the house, the Old Man dropped the blanket and kicked off his Birkenstocks. He wore a tank top and black shorts. The surgical scar on the knee looked like wax against the too tan skin.

Anyone here? the Old Man asked Sipe.

I checked. Just us.

Time me, said the Old Man.

The doctor and the physical therapist wanted the Old Man active but didn’t want the Old Man taking stairs. They’d suggested a lift, an electronic chair. Or life resettled to only the first floor. The Old Man insisted on working the stairs. He refused to be an invalid. Grunting, sweating, swearing, he went up the steps, hobbling, thumping. Sipe alternated between watching the event, watching the second hand on the watch.

After picking up the blanket and the Birkenstocks, Sipe walked up the steps. The Old Man gripped the top rail, wheezing, looking down into the foyer.

Tell me, said the Old Man.

Same as last time.

Same? Bullshit.

Maybe a second slower.

God-damnit.

It’s hot today.

Fuck you. Fuck your hot.

The clamshell shaped window over the door went dull then bright. Clouds scudded over and off the sun like no one’s business today, brightening then dimming the gold inlaid in the foyer tile.

The Old Man took deep breaths. He toddled back from the railing and worked his arms like chicken wings in slow motion. His exhales overemphasized his front teeth, giving him a squirrel-like appearance.

You tell Connie it’s up to him, said the Old Man.

What is?

This. This. He motioned towards the lobby, the house itself, maybe the floating bridge connecting Seattle and Bellevue. And maybe the sun playing peekaboo.

Everything. He can do both if he wants. Be a chef. Be me when I’m gone. You ever hear that that is the mark of genius? To hold two conflicting ideas in your head at the very same time. So he might be able to do that. I couldn’t. I wanted to do so many things and I ended up only doing one. Just the one. You got all the time in the world on that drive.

Sipe nodded.

Shower time, said the Old Man. Walking into the bedroom, tugging his tank top out of the shorts he paused and motioned at the blanket. Wash that thing, huh? It smells like an old man.

Sipe nodded. The Alaskan shipping company had sent the blanket after the Old Man had made an inquiry. Simon went M.I.A., and they sent a blanket. It got the guys talking, speculating what they were worth in compensation.

Sipe listened for the shower to start up, for the Old Man to swear at the handrail they’d put inside the stall. The shower door clicked shut. Sipe set the Birkenstocks just inside the bedroom door, right where the Old Man liked to put them on, at least, on those days he could even remember what Birkenstocks were for.

Chapter 2

Sipe had thought the road trip would be easy. Straight shots, south and then north on I-5 with the only hardship his ears popping on Snoqualmie Pass. And it had been. Easy. Until all the texting.

South of Salem, Connie started texting almost nonstop. And just before Portland, he told Sipe there was a change of plans. A detour. Sipe didn’t question, didn’t complain. His job was to drive.

Later, just shy of 11 p.m., 250-some miles east of I-5, on a two-lane highway, Connie pointed, and Sipe signaled and decelerated, turning at the stop sign, off 395, accelerating away from the sole evidence of life on earth - a Zippy Mart gas station, complete with the 50 foot tall roadside sign, displaying the Zippy mascot in all his goony, squirrelly, snacks-gathering glory. The Lexus taillights vanished on 244, the point where the highway curved and sliced through a low hill.

Fifteen miles north of the intersection with the squirrel, the highway had started to curve through wind towers, the big blades still in the summer night. The wind towers resembled rockets ready to launch or a long-slumbered invasion force, one ancient signal shy of waking and incinerating the countryside.

Coming out of the punch through the hill the road straightened. The Lexus front beams lit roadside signs. Speed limit, 30. ‘Welcome to Little Creek.' Population, 250.

Two-fifty, said Connie. Whistled. Sipe slowed down.

Some big building on the left, parking lot lights painting the exterior amber. The night lights overly bright inside. An office.

Forest Service. Huh. What is it, Smokey the Bear? Yeah. Smokey the Bear. He’s the fire prevention bear.

You didn’t tell the Old Man’s kid to shut up. Sipe reminded himself of that fact.

Streetlamps glowed further down the throat of Main Street, beyond the sleeping houses. Until then intermittent porch light illustrated the lack of sidewalks. The shoulder a dark unbroken strip of gravel on both sides of the asphalt.

It's just up here, said Connie. Yeah. Auntie's. See the sign? We want to turn right up there.

This was where the married woman wanted to meet Connie. In St. Helena they’d had a fling. Connie at cooking school, the woman at some business retreat.

The kid had told Sipe, she didn't live here. Little Creek was just close to her residence. Convenient. Out of the way. The husband wouldn't think to tail her to someplace like this. Completely in the dark his faithful spouse had christened a student at the Culinary Institute of America her boy toy. Connie had guaranteed Sipe it wouldn't get messy. In and out. Like that.

On the left a garage, Don’s Automotive. Orange lamppost light supplied the gravel lot an industrial sheen like fast food fries under a heat lamp. Further up, part of the same lot, were propane tanks and a profusion of signs. Lamps at their base lighting up a series of messages. Illustrations. The flag. Uncle Sam. What looked like a mannequin dressed in pirate gear.

Further back, looming behind a street running parallel to the main route, dark houses, and a hill, a big white building perched on the hilltop. A school. Maybe an asylum.

Sipe hit the signal, slowed the car down.

You sure this is it? asked Sipe.

Yeah.

No street signs.

No. Auntie’s. Look. Auntie’s. And that’s a park, right there. Turn between Auntie’s and the park. It’s all good.

They made the turn. Sipe registered two human forms inside the park. One slumped on a merry go round. Limp in the manner of teenagers everywhere.

They drove between more dark houses. Up ahead the houses thinned, fields took over, and darkness loomed, a definite border with the sleeping little town.

She said there's a bridge. And then just make the first left after we're over it.

Driving past the last lampposts in town Connie asked, What are those?

Houses.

They don’t look like houses.

Sipe took another look.

Railcars maybe.

A good half-dozen, on the right, revealed just a little by the front beams glow, the railcars old, exteriors the dulled gray of an abandoned hornet’s nest. Swamped in graffiti. Open doorways providing view to interiors even darker than the night enshrouded landscape.

Ahead of them, the forest border. In the foreground, a cement bridge glowed under the headlights like exposed bone.

Sipe fought the impulse to release the steering wheel and brush the shoulder holster. Just make sure it was still there. Years ago Zeke had told Sipe the reason most guys in their line of work wore black slacks was to hide the buckets of palm sweat rubbed off into the fabric over the course of a normal day. Sipe tried to picture Zeke, driving off course at Connie's say-so. He could imagine Zeke's shrug, the resignation. Some orders you followed and hoped for the best. Some orders you followed letter perfect, and still, the cops found you stuffed into a car trunk in Aberdeen.

The unpaved road was on the left just past the bridge. Gravel ticked off the under frame and Sipe imagined loose teeth rattling inside a label-stripped soup can. Zeke had known this one guy, looked like Vince Lombardi, and the guy liked to play dentist. Liked trophies. Some slender semblance of a creek curled parallel to the dirt road, on the left, the moon glittering here and there on the water surface like reflected angel contrail.

I think I see her, said Connie. Right up ahead. It's that ball park.

Diamond, thought Sipe, but didn't correct Connie, like the Old Man was in the back seat, listening, and would hiss and spit at any little indication the boy wasn't perfect in every way.

The SUV was parked nose in towards the diamond backstop. The Lexus headlights illuminated the driver side of the rig, someone in the driver seat, raising an arm, squinting, hooding their view. Sipe pulled in beside the SUV and groaned, realizing he hadn't signaled. Hand on the keys he looked back towards the bridge, anticipating the sudden flare of some shit kicker cop's dome light.

Connie had his seat belt off, the door open, was getting out of the passenger seat before Sipe even had the engine off.

Millie. Baby, said Connie.

Hey. Some wet noises. Some giggling. The woman got out from the SUV driver side. The door slammed. She swore. Connie laughed. She asked why and he said because she swore like that. Whatever. Connie grabbed her, performed an even more elaborate greeting.

Sipe listened to the engine tick. The baseball diamond was enclosed inside a track. There were two dugouts, but they weren't dugouts, not cut into the earth, but just built on the turf like little wooden forearms extended off the backdrop at angles. Sipe scanned the diamond, the track. Little Creek glowed beyond it all like some low-key, top-secret government project.

Just give us a minute, huh? Connie glanced in at Sipe, not even waiting for the response, gravel crunching under the couple, the noise thinning as they walked to the middle of the unpaved road. Sipe thought they'd make for shadows, some spot far enough out of the way the two-backed beast wouldn't be too obvious.

No one drove over the bridge. Nothing moved. A sliver of tiredness crept in. Stay frosty. Sipe concentrated. He thought of orphaned teeth clicking in a can.

The gravel crunched. His hand on the gun when Connie peered back inside the car. In the rearview mirror, Sipe could see Millie, a big girl under moon glow. Staring right in at him like a robot armed with specific, lethal programming.

You know anything about cars, Sipe?

Little.

We might have a problem. She got here all right, but she said she tried the engine a little while ago, to check the time and all, and couldn't get it to turn over.

Millie popped the rig hood. First, she handed Connie a flashlight and Sipe took it from Connie. Connie swore, trying to find the secret latch that actually freed the hood from the engine compartment. Millie sighed, playfully shoved Connie out of the way, and once the magic trick was pulled off, Sipe told the two of them to watch the road.

Why? Millie asked.

Cops. Kids. Your husband.

A long pause before she said, Oh. Right.

The flashlight beam aimed at the ground plus the blue toned night provided enough illumination Sipe could see her look at Connie. Later on, Sipe would remember what she did with her mouth - that smile like a parent keeping something secret from a kid. He caught it, but he read it wrong.

Sipe swept the flashlight beam over the black and metal and plastic cityscape. Engines were not his specialty. He didn't see anything wrong. He didn't know what he should be seeing, but he was wasting time. There were jumper cables in his trunk, and he knew he'd feel like a jerk, having to consult the owner's manual for the right place to put the tiger clips, but it beat pretending an area of expertise. It would get them back on the road.

I don't know, he admitted.

Sipe stepped back, thumbing the flashlight beam light switch off, and at the same time a hand bunched up his suit jacket, and something jabbed him in the ribs.

Electricity shot out his head, his fingertips, coiled and wormed all the interstices of his teeth, soldered pubic hair to skin, and murdered the moisture in whatever turds were due to be dropped during his morning routine.

When he fell, he crumpled, like some tree long bare of green, something ancient the termites had hollowed long before even the Indians claimed the continent home.

The flashlight had crunched in his hand. Spasming, he'd gone Hulk. Squeezed it skinny. Or not. He couldn't feel. Anything.

Staring into the sky, aware, but not doing anything resembling thinking. Hearing Connie, not seeing him. The eyes looking down upon him from above belonged to the bared teeth. Miss SUV. No husband would willingly stay with rage so electric, so obvious in the night. A face like that didn't need people except to eat them, often and raw.

Gravel scattered each time a foot planted firmly into the side of his head. What was in Sipe's head? How much was in it? How hard did you have to kick it to get it out of there?

She had a long thick ponytail. It swung on each kick. Once, twice, and many more times, maybe a dozen more before Connie dragged her away.

When the SUV hood closed, it slammed shut. A thousand such reveries wouldn't have stirred the man bleeding onto the gravel, 250-some miles east of Portland.

Chapter 3

The old woman's dog barked from the screened in back porch. Mrs. Mason had told Henry not to start mowing before 10 a.m., because of the noise. She told Henry she wanted to be considerate of the neighbors. Just barely south of 7 a.m. and Grimace, the short-limbed sausage shaped pooch filled the air with missives.

Mowing might not even happen today. Henry had an entire patch of weeds to knock down all by hand. According to Mrs. Mason, the patch had been a garden years ago, something Mr. Mason tended. Anytime she mentioned her long perished spouse she whacked her bosom like he'd been put to ground only last week.

Henry had explained how fast the work would go via weed whacker, but Mrs. Mason didn't want him inside. The imposition would frighten Grimace, and there was the further possibility Grimace might chew through the extension cord and get fried.

After five minutes of swinging the backup, the so-labeled Lawn Buddy, a metal stick with a horizontal blade resembling lasagna, Henry wished he'd brought gloves. His mom would've reminded him, but she was somewhere in northern California. Summertime meant fire season. She'd been promoted to a Fire Management Officer with the Forest Service, necessitating the move to Little Creek. It meant come this fire season she might be gone even more than years before. Supposedly he could take care of himself. The weeds were thick, practically tiny trees, Lawn Buddy resistant, and the tension on his palms was going to spring a row of blisters. He could imagine the pain, the blister-fed degree of difficulty, trying to hold a sandwich, trying to make a sandwich.

Hey there, Lone Wolf.

Shocked at the nearness of the voice, Henry swung awry. The Lawn Buddy clipped the toe of his sneakers.

Oh no! Are you ok?

I'm fine. Henry studied his sneakers. No crimson oil well gushed to life. I didn't hit it that hard.

Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you.

It's ok.

Tiffany Pleshette walked into the weeds, the dried out growth hissing against her. Through her summer shade of sunbaked pink, Tiffany actually looked white, freaked like Henry's tool was now blood soaked.

She wore her usual garb. The orange tank top and the green shorts - a hacked off pair of green trousers discovered gathering dust at the Pendleton Salvation Army.

Last fall, when Henry had started school in Little Creek, Tiffany was constantly clad in red and yellow. Sometime in winter, she'd course corrected. It depended on which superhero she was obsessing. She'd burned out on The Flash. For the foreseeable future it was Aquaman, King of the Seas. At least for those two – Barry Allen and Arthur Curry - she didn't need to dye her thatch of hair, naturally blonde, to match that of the idol of the moment. Trying to match the brown with white highlights of the Fantastic Four's Reed Richards had slightly poisoned her. Plus, all blue looked all bad on anyone and everyone. Henry thought she should grow her hair out to help draw attention from her slight second chin. She was cute. Pretty, even.

Shit. I just wanted to say 'hi,' and I nearly cost you your foot.

Henry stood on his right foot, raising and investigating the left. Just making sure. He shrugged. Tiffany looked towards Mason’s brown-shingled single story house. She tilted her head.

That’s Grimace, said Henry.

He sounds unhappy.

Tiffany could interpret dog sound. Her Uncle Norm owned his own little dog, Pluto, but the difference in doggie demeanors fed truth to the fact owners either made or broke their pet. Tiffany could hush Pluto with a look. In fact, she could be standing behind him, and the little dog would feel disdain absent any hiss or cluck or finger snap. Henry sensed the longer he stayed friends with the husky, vociferous girl, more and more he'd begin to act in line with Pluto. Utterly under her control.

What are you doing out here? asked Henry.

It took a moment for Tiffany to break her concentration upon Grimace's distress call.

What's that?

Nothing, said Henry. It's early. Early for questions.

Yeah. I know. She sighed and shrugged. Post-shrug Henry did his best to ignore the all too obvious bounce. Paul Salerno, his best friend back in Redmond called boobs 'sweater bunnies'. Tiffany sported the mother lode of all sweater bunnies.

I got to though, she said. I mean I got to run. Remember how I told you that was my goal over the summer? I'm fat. I don't want to be fat, Henry.

You're not.

Henry.

You're not though.

Henry. She lifted her right arm above her head and swacked the meat of the bicep underside. Look at that wiggle. You don't know. I'm like the only Pleshette female you've even seen, and trust me, trust me on this, ok? All of this extra me and still, I'm the skinny one. So. Yeah. I got to get up and do something. Run. Walk. Walk. Run. Something. I don't think they make orange tank tops a size larger, you know.

Soul bared, Tiffany squinted at the house, the amber colored double panes, the chicken wire fence-line, the maligned roof tiles. Just one of the dozens of malingering Little Creek homes. The nice houses like Henry and his mom lived in were the aberrations.

I'm pretty sure Mrs. Mason owes the store some money. I could check. Not sure how much, but my Uncle Norm probably fell in for some sob story of hers. Tiffany's face aged whenever it came to the misfortunes of Pleshette's, now Little Creek's number two-ranked grocery store. Tiffany's Uncle called Auntie’s owners 'those people', refusing to identify the Dobbs clan by proper names.

Across the road from Mrs. Mason's stood the abandoned railcars. When Tiffany started looking at the house, Henry's attention wandered toward his classmate's considerable bosom, and embarrassed, certain he'd get caught, looked away, over Tiff's suntanned right shoulder.

A man stood up over in the neighboring field, plain as day, the silhouette with only the horizon as background. Henry thought the man might be looking right at him. Henry squinted. A war vet named Bug Collar spent a good portion of the week working a metal detector over the railcars field, but this wasn't Bug. A stranger.

Quick as the stranger had risen, he'd wobbled, and collapsed.

*

Both teens thought a 911 call was in order, at least until Tiffany found the shoulder holster and the gun.

Should you be doing that?

Tiffany was sliding the gun out slowly. She'd tugged the man's left arm up out of the way to allow for more operating room.

Tiff?

Shush. You're making me nervous, Henry.

From across Old Woods Road, Grimace continued issuing invective. Henry checked every direction except skyward, certain someone would be witnessing Tiffany's indiscretion. Henry still had the Lawn Buddy clenched in hand. It probably wasn't a bad idea to be armed, just in case the stranger proved aggressive, but he was barely aware he had it in hand.

Tiff had checked for a heartbeat, a pulse, even put her knuckles up over the man's nose and mouth. He was alive. He'd been hit in the right side of the head. Above the eyeline the skin was red and black, torn back here and there, revealing splotches of dried blood. Tiff had patted him down. No keys. A wallet was in the front right pants pocket. Henry’s scalp tingle upped a notch when Tiff didn't return the wallet, instead just left it out, beside her squatting knees.

She'd peeled back the suit jacket. Nothing on the right, but on the left, a magazine was tucked into the inside pocket. A People folded down the middle. Interest in the periodical had vanished at revelation of the holster.

It's heavy. Tiffany held the gun by the stock but held it like it was a sandwich, fingers clamped down tight, palms empty.

Don't drop it.

She nodded and set the gun down on the ground, the barrel aimed at the gravel slope of Old Woods Road.

Should we call 911? Tiff?

Henry even had his phone in his hand. He bet he'd fuck up if the stranger woke, lunged at Tiff. Probably swing the phone instead of the Lawn Buddy.

Someone in a state like the stranger, time was of the essence, even more so for Little Creek emergencies. A population on the low end of 250 didn't support a hospital. La Grande was 40 miles away. Pendleton 70. Everyone knew the local horror stories of accidents that took a tragic turn simply due to the middle of nowhere status the town otherwise usually luxuriated in. Years ago, Pleshette's had been The Little Creek Grocery, tripling as a doctor's office and the post office. Those were the boom years, before color TV, Vietnam.