Terminal Island Read Online Free PDF

malnourished.
    “Peter,” he sez to me, he sez, “you’ve changed.”
    I was still doped up, so for a second I wondered if I was hallucinating the whole sick scenario. “Buddy, you mutht have the wrong room,” I said, slurring a little like Mike Tyson. “The cothtume party ith down the hall.”
    “Listen to me carefully, Peter,” sez the pig-man. “We know why you’re here, and we want to help you.”
    The she-wolf nuzzles my ear and coos, “We’ve been expecting you.”
    I’m not gonna tell you what they did to me next, but suffice to say it was nonconsensual. At some point I passed out, only to wake up this morning as if it never happened. But I know it did, and furthermore I think you know it did. So what I need from you right now is everything you know about this—and I mean everything. Because if I find out later that you were lying to me about any little detail, no matter how small and insignificant, we will have a problem. My method of attacking problems is with a pair of pliers, like these here. Let me give you a small demonstration of exactly what I mean.
    Say ahhhhh.

    * * *

    “Mom! Lookit that!”
    “I know.”
    “Lookit that !”
    “I know, I know.”
    “ Look it that!”
    “I know.”
    When Henry and his mother first saw the Avalon waterfront, the whole place seemed exotic, magical. It was everything he ever dreamed of in one place: a carnival midway surrounded by aquarium-clear waters—an island , so close to L.A. and yet a million miles away.
    There was no ugliness here; no dirt, no crazy people, no bums, no crime, no smog. There were no cars, no traffic that he could see, just light trams and golf carts whizzing around like toys. Their taxi from the seaplane terminal was such a vehicle. Still dazzled by the flight, Henry and his mother rode into town as if on a magic carpet.
    The first thing he wanted to do was go out on the pier, but they were burdened with several shabby bags and suitcases, everything they owned, and had to find a place to stay. It was worrisome at first: the tram driver made several stops, dropping the more elegant passengers at fancy hotels that Henry and his mother could never afford.
    The whole waterfront was buzzing with people like those, fashionable socialites reeking of money and cocoa butter—the kind of people Henry had envied and resented all his life, whose icy or amused stares he had long since learned to ignore. He knew how they saw him and his frumpy, foreign mom: as hardship cases, potential sources of mischief. Aliens. The implicit message was loud and clear: Move along .
    That was okay; Henry wasn’t paying attention to them—not when there were pinball arcades to look at, pizza places and cotton-candy and corndog stands, oddball curio shops, ice cream parlors and a big corner confectioner’s store with the most amazing mechanical taffy-pull in the window.
    This last was better than a magic show. As they passed in the tram, Henry ogled the hypnotic over-and-under convolutions of glossy pink saltwater taffy with the primal amazement of a Hottentot in Times Square.
    “Mom, can I have some taffy?”
    “Later, sweetie.”
    As if reading their minds, the driver dropped them off last, at the backstreet hulk of the Formosa Hotel. The sight of it took a great load off Henry’s mind—this was more their speed. It was the story of his life: if you wait long enough, stuff takes care of itself.
    As they carried their bags up the entrance steps, Henry felt a warm drop of liquid hit his scalp. Afraid he had been pooped on by a pigeon, he glanced up at the hotel’s rickety balconies.
    There was someone up there, looking down at him over the top railing, and for a second Henry squinted blankly at what appeared to be the long black face of a dog…a grotesque dog’s head on the chalky-white body of a woman. She looked naked. It was such a bizarre sight that at first he simply couldn’t believe it: A joke? What?
    Uncomprehending, Henry touched the wetness on