No Cure for Death

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He had the kind of face that said “hate me,” and I wasn’t arguing.

Let’s just say he made a bad first impression, and I don’t really think his being black had anything to do with it, though the missing eye and jagged stitched scar running above and below the empty socket sure did. His head was totally hairless-not just bald, but no eyebrows, either-and his mouth was frozen open, a down-slanting hole showing only the lower row of crooked yellow teeth, and the overall effect of his formidable visage was that of an eightball come to life-and a very mean, very ugly eightball at that-on the lookout for a white cueball to knock around.

The body below the face was equally menacing and seemed to have trouble just squeezing through the doorway of Port City’s cubicle-size bus terminal. He was huge, an exaggeration, more a cartoon than a man, like that guy in the leopard skin who tags along with Mandrake the Magician, or Daddy Warbucks’s jinni strongarm Punjab. He turned one bloodshot eye loose on the room, and I worked at making myself inconspicuous, though I felt like I was in a closet trying to convince a murder-intent cuckold I was a coat hanger.

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