by Craig Nova
Novels by Craig Nova
Turkey Hash, 1972
The Geek, 1975
Incandescence, 1979
The Good Son, 1982
The Congressman’s Daughter, 1986
Tornado Alley, 1989
Trombone, 1992
The Book of Dreams, 1994
The Universal Donor, 1997
Wetware, 2002
Cruisers, 2004
The Informer, 2010
The Constant Heart, 2012
All the Dead Yale Men, 2013
Autobiography
Brook Trout and the Writing Life, 1999
Copyright © 2021 by Craig Nova
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
First Arcade CrimeWise Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Cover artwork: TK
ISBN: 978-1-950691-22-7
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-950691-23-4
Printed in the United States of America
He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself: and if thou gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
For Tim Wright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
1
FARRELL KNEW AFTER BEING IN Terry Peregrine’s house for twenty minutes, that Terry was thinking about killing the girl from Alaska. Terry’s anxious gestures, his handsome face, pale with worry and lack of sleep, his jumpy primping in front of a mirror, his obvious panic, all revealed his lack of control. The girl was sixteen, maybe younger, but she didn’t look it. Her hair wasn’t blond so much as silver, not white, and her eyes seemed purple, but Farrell, who had been sent to take care of this, thought, No, no. No one really has purple eyes. But there she was.
Peregrine’s house was just off Mulholland on the north side of the hill that separated Los Angeles from the Valley. The house was a comfortable, stucco covered place in the Spanish style with those half pipe tiles on the roof and doors with wrought iron hinges. Three stories, a large backyard with eucalyptus trees growing at the back of the three-acre lot, trimmed to ensure privacy, but not enough to hide the view of the valley. A swimming pool in the backyard gave off the scent of chlorine, like an enormous, aquamarine flower. It was always shocking what the pool men knew, considering what they discovered on the bottom when the robot vacuum cleaner collected discarded items, condoms, bathing suit bottoms, needles, rubber tubes, and the like.
As an actor, Terry Peregrine was close to being completely virtual. He was good looking in a mildly unpleasant way, and while he had gotten a lot of attention, even to the extent to being what is known as a star, the falseness of how he came into being couldn’t be avoided. He had been manufactured in the usual way, promoted, protected, and sold like a new deodorant. It happens all the time. Still, he had been cast in a high budget picture that was filming now. He was a hymn to falseness.
It was a September evening, and as Farrell had waited before knocking on Peregrine’s door, the lights in the Valley reminded him of being a kid at the movies when he had eaten some candy called Jujubes, those chewy globes, like gummy bears, only smaller, and brightly colored, red, yellow, green, purple. The valley looked like it had been covered with them, from one end to the other, bright, mystical in random red, green, and yellow, and while the lights were packed together, they had a presence that only came out at night to reassure you, to make you think that things were really beautiful after all and benign. In the afternoon the Valley had an ominous clutter.
Farrell had knocked on the heavy wood of the door, the sound distant and throbbing like the last beating of a heart. Peregrine had opened the door with that look of someone cornered, his eyes moving from side to side, as though to see if anyone else was in his yard. The only other object was Farrell’s gray Camry, which was as anonymous a car as he was able to find.
“Braumberg send you?” said Terry.
“Just tell me about it,” said Farrell. “Can I come in?”
“If Braumberg sent you. Everything’s going to be fine, right?” said Terry.
“How old is she?” said Farrell.
“She looks pretty old,” he said.
“Uh-huh,” Farrell said. “But that’s not what I asked.”
“Come on in, pal,” he said. “We’ll get this straight.”
Pal, thought Farrell. You poor son of a bitch.
“You’ve got to u-u-understand,” Farrell said.
Farrell’s stutter came first with a sense of an interior jumpiness, and awareness of a presence, not quite a personality, but still having a will of its own that insisted on revealing items that Farrell wanted to keep hidden, anger, embarrassment, fury, frustration, and something else, an exasperation he couldn’t ever name but which existed as a constant companion and an unnamed yearning, love, loneliness, mystification.
Terry waited for a moment, unsure about the stutter.
“It doesn’t happen very often,” Farrell said.
“All right,” said Terry. “She’s inside.”
“Let’s take a look,” Farrell said.
If Farrell swallowed he could stop the stutter, but he had to do it at a precise moment. This morning Farrell had worked on it, and had said in his kitchen, “beggar,” “hacksaw,” “shadow,” and “vanish.”
“So things are b-b-better,” said Terry. He smiled. “Now that you’re here.”
“How old . . .” Farrell swallowed.
“I told you what she looks like,” said Terry.
The living room was cold, with AC blasting, white sofas curved around a glass table. It was impossible to say how many lines of chopped drugs had been laid out there, and then vacuumed through straws or rolled up bills, slightly moist from being passed from person to person as they sat there at night. They sniffed and looked at that red, yellow, and green glitter in the valley.
The curtains were pulled back. In the distance the San Gabriel Mountains were invisible aside from the streetlamps, which appeared like white Christmas lights thrown over a black whale. More and more, the houses in the mountains there were burning to the ground, since they were built in places where the eucalyptus trees still grew. Even tho
ugh the people who owned the houses tried to keep the brush back, when a fire started it was time to get the hell out of the way.
Peregrine’s hands were shaking, but it was hard to tell if this was from a hard comedown or the realization of what he was up against. He was short, as many actors are, since they are easier to photograph when they aren’t very tall. Brownish hair, blue eyes, a nice smile, and he spent enough time in the gym to look fit.
The girl from Alaska sat on the sofa, dressed in her blue jeans, a tight-fitting sweater, some Adidas running shoes. Farrell guessed she was a little scared but not as much as she should have been. She turned toward him, the light in the room making that silver-blond hair seem all the more metallic. Her skin was as white as the keys of a new piano. Everything about her, the way she sat with that precise posture, her steady gaze, her beautiful skin, her breathy voice, even the perfume she wore, which while cheap, was changed by her presence, suggested a frank innocence perfectly blended with some ache, some desire. She didn’t have a clue, thought Farrell. Not a clue.
He sat down.
“So, you’re from Alaska,” said Farrell.
“Have you ever been there?” she said.
“No,” Farrell. “I hear the fishing is good.”
“Shitload of salmon,” she said. “If I never eat another piece of salmon it will be too soon. I worked in a cannery. You know what the sound is? Bang! Bang! Yeah, I’m from Alaska.”
“What’s your name?” said Farrell.
She stared right at him.
“Mary Jones,” she said. “Will that do it?”
“That’s funny,” said Farrell. “My name is Jones, too.”
“Maybe we’re related,” she said.
“Could be,” said Farrell.
“Are you the one that’s got the money?” she said.
“Maybe I can get it,” said Farrell.
“I don’t want any trouble,” she said. She gestured to Terry. “He should know better than having anything to do with a girl my age. You know that, don’t you, Terry?”
“You look older,” said Terry.
“I get it. You can tell that to the police. They’ll understand. Yeah, they’ll say. You got confused. Sure.”
“Terry gets confused easily,” said Farrell.
“Hey,” said Terry. “Don’t, you know, condescend . . .”
“Look,” said the girl from Alaska. “I just want to go home. This is no town for a kid from a small town in a place like Alaska. You know that?”
“Yes,” said Farrell. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“You wouldn’t believe what the winters are like,” said the girl. “You don’t know what cold is . . .”
The most important thing, thought Farrell, is to make sure she leaves with me.
“I know a girl who dropped the keys to her car in the middle of winter. She lived in Point Hope. You know, she took off her gloves to pick them up, and she lost a couple of fingers to frostbite.”
“That’s cold,” said Farrell.
“Not as cold as this place,” said the girl. “It’s a different kind but it’s even worse. You can lose all kinds of things to it.”
“How much do you want?” said Farrell.
“I really want to go home,” she said.
Farrell leaned closer. She had a lovely quality, really, and he liked her, even though she was threatening. It had been a long time since he had seen such innocence, such straightforward honesty, although that innocence made it impossible for the girl to understand her present circumstances.
Farrell glanced at Terry, who picked at his hands, then his face, then looked out the window.
“You’ve got an early call,” said Farrell. “That’s what Braumberg says. You’re right in the middle of it, right. How many shooting days?”
“Sixty,” said Terry. “We’ve done half. It’s gonna be big. The Chinese box office is terrific these days. They love car crashes and we have car crashes up the kazoo . . .”
“Who’s Braumberg?” said Mary Jones.
“A guy who finances pictures,” said Terry.
“You mean like a producer,” she said.
“Yes,” said Farrell.
“You know, at one time I would have been interested in meeting a guy like that. Not now. I just want to go home.”
“Sure,” said Farrell.
“The winters are so clean. And cold. I want to be where you can spit and it freezes before it hits the ground. A diamond colored drop. Where the bears are dangerous. It’s better than . . .” She gestured to the valley. “That.”
“How much?” said Farrell.
She turned her eyes on him, the look in them one of longing for the north, for those long stretches of the Alcan highway. Farrell wondered if she had hitchhiked from Anchorage to LA. If any girl of her age could do it, she was the one. The more Farrell sat there, the more he liked her.
“Twenty thousand,” she said. “Cash. No checks or anything that can be stopped. You can go right to an ATM.”
“Terry?” said Farrell.
“I’m not paying that,” he said. “If anyone has to pay it’s going to be Braumberg. You know how much he has invested in this thing?”
Farrell stared at him for a while, then looked at Mary Jones.
“I don’t want any trouble,” said Mary Jones. “I don’t want publicity, cops, or anything like that. I just want to go home. But if you think you can push me around, you are wrong. Just give me my money and I will go.”
“Terry?” said Farrell.
“No, no, no,” said Terry. “Who the fuck does this little . . .”
“Don’t say it,” said Farrell.
“You don’t get it,” said Mary Jones. “He can call me anything he wants. I don’t care. I want my money and I want to go home.”
“She isn’t getting it from me,” said Terry. “Not with the risk to Braumberg.”
“I’ll have to talk to him,” said Farrell.
“You do that,” said Terry.
“Yes,” said Mary Jones. “Isn’t that what you do? Don’t you take care of things like this?”
“Sometimes,” he said.
She nodded. Yeah, sure.
The scent of eucalyptus from the hillside, the earthy whiff of the fall in California, the medicinal odor of the chlorine in the swimming pool left that mood of LA, hope so perfectly mixed with the possibilities of disaster. It was in the air, as though the atmosphere was pressured, too, like a fault in the earth that extended above ground. Mary Jones sat there, as unmovable as a fireplug.
“So, from one Jones to another,” said Mary Jones. “Talk to who you have to talk to.”
“All right,” said Farrell.
“That other guy was utterly worthless,” said Mary Jones.
“What other guy?” said Farrell.
“No one, no one,” said Terry, waving his hand, as though a mosquito was hovering around him. “She’s so screwy. She doesn’t know if she’s on Zork or not.”
“I know right where I am,” said Mary Jones.
“Where are you staying?” said Farrell.
“I’ve got a motel on Ventura,” said Mary Jones. “There’s bugs in it. A lizard was in my room.”
“Have you got a handbag?” said Farrell. “Any clothes?”
She gestured to a chair on by the large, fieldstone fireplace. The jacket was white, imitation leather, the kind of thing that probably looked elegant in Anchorage.
“I think you should come with me,” said Farrell.
“Not on your life,” she said.
“I think you should come with me,” said Farrell.
She shook her head.
“Try to get me to leave,” she said. “I dare you.”
“You dare me?” said Farrell.
He liked her even more. Then he shook his head. If she only knew. Youth can’t imagine what is behind the appearance of things.
“I still think you should come with me,” he said.
“No,” she said. “If
I go with you, and you dump me in my motel, I won’t have a chance. I want to call the cops, if I have to, from right here. No. I’m not going anywhere. Talk to the guy with money.”
“Terry?” Farrell said. “Have you got the cash?”
“I’m not paying,” said Terry.
Farrell stood by the fieldstone of the fire place, the little flecks of bright pyrite giving him the illusion that he was seeing pieces of light, like bits of the tail of a shooting star. The scent of the hillside had, in the way only this landscape could do, a hint of the morning fog, a little salty, as though a malign perfume was lingering. He said to Mary Jones, “I think you should c-c-come with me.”
She shook her head.
“Twenty thousand dollars and I go home. I will just disappear.”
“I’ll talk to him, to Braumberg, first thing in the morning.”
Outside Farrell sat in his car, that anonymous, gray Camry, the lights in the Valley shimmering in the distance. He glanced at the house, which had the lights on downstairs, but above that it was dark, a silhouette, as though cut from black cardboard against the Valley. He was surprised how much he admired Mary Jones’s spunk, or that quality that only came from those long winters in Alaska. He had the momentary impulse to drive her back here. Still, he couldn’t get that kind of money out of an ATM, didn’t have it at home, and so it would have to be tomorrow. He still didn’t like it.
The stutter showed itself like a little man, or a presence that Farrell saw as an advisory, but yet it helped him, too, since when he had trouble speaking, he saw how people reacted. That told him a lot.
“Mary Jones,” he said. He shook his head. “Spitting like a diamond.”
2
“YOU’RE LATE,” SAID BRAUMBERG AT eight in the morning. “Did you see the girl and Terry?”
“Sort of,” Farrell said.
Braumberg sat on the wall around the Hollywood Bowl fountain. It had a large pool, about twenty feet across, and when Farrell had been at Hollywood High, he and some friends had tried to put enough detergent in the pool to make, as they had hoped, a five-foot wall of suds move across Highland. Still, it hadn’t worked. The problem had been low sudsing soap. Farrell considered how reassuring it was to think of the soap, or the pranks pulled when he had been young. The soap had been in the same league as when Farrell and some friends tried to put enough gelatin in a swimming pool to make it into a large, chlorine scented, blue piece of Jell-O. The notion had been that a swimmer would dive in, only to bounce a couple of times. Farrell considered Mary Jones and what pranks she had pulled in Anchorage beyond freezing spit. Throwing a bucket of water on the sidewalk in January? Farrell felt the ghost of the pleasure he had taken in such youthful stunts, a sort of quick high, and he wondered, too, if the stunts had been training for the real trouble adults faced.
