by Joe Clifford
“I know…about…the cars,” I managed to eek out.
The kicking stopped.
“Hold up,” a voice growled. “The fuck you say?”
My eyes watered and stung; I couldn’t even tell which one was talking, both figures fuzzy and hulking.
“I know you sell cars…and steal…them back.” I held out a hand, in part begging for a reprieve, and also to show I wasn’t reaching for a weapon. With a trembling, outstretched hand I presented the LoJack certificate that Francis bought for two hundred dollars, praying to gods I didn’t believe in that the old man’s theory was right.
“Lester, cut this fool’s balls off—”
With a weak, shaky hand I aimed a finger. “Around the house. Buick Skylark, down the block.” I spat out a gob of blood. “My friend’s waiting.”
Dog started to walk toward the car.
“I wouldn’t do that. First sign of anyone…he’s going to the police.” It was all I had. I needed this bluff to work.
“Go get Cody,” Dog said.
Lester stormed up the stairs inside. Dog picked me up out of the dust, brushing me off, an odd and tender touch following the ass kicking he’d administered, planting me on the back steps. In the moonlight, down the hill, the Buick sat. I hoped it was far enough to conceal the fact that nobody waited inside.
A second later, the man from the room, the one with the powder, Cody, stomped down the steps.
“What the fuck, Dog?”
“The old man is waiting for me,” I said. “I don’t come back and he calls 9-1-1. That simple.” My heart burned in my throat. “You want to sell cars and steal them back, I don’t care.”
“The fuck you want?”
“To find my friend…Jessie.”
“I told you. I don’t know any Jessie.”
“Would you tell me if you did?”
“I don’t know, man. Maybe. But I don’t. So I can’t.”
“The girl who sent me here the other day.”
“What girl?”
“The one who told me about the cars.”
Cody tilted back his head. By now he’d come to view me as less a threat and more a nuisance.
“Her father owns Ace’s, the pawn shop. Do you know her?”
“About seven people in this fucking town. Of course I know her. Lenna Ann. Spun-out bitch. Lives with her retard brother in a trailer.”
“You know…” I tongued a loose tooth “…where I can find her?”
“Jesus.” Cody laughed. “You’re a ballsy mutherfucker, you know that?”
Cody weighed it over. I didn’t have much to offer, other than my dead partner who wasn’t in the car. The longer he stared at the Buick, the more certain I grew he could see inside and knew I was full of it. There were also easier ways to deal with a problem that didn’t involve digging holes and burying bodies.
“Dog,” he said, “drive this fool out to see Lenna Ann.”
“Give me directions,” I said. “I—my friend and I—can drive on our own, thanks.”
“No, you can’t,” Cody said. “This isn’t a town with street signs. She lives in a trailer in the middle of the fucking woods.”
“My friend and I can follow… Dog.” I turned to Dog, adding, “Thank you.” Never hurts to be polite.
“Get in the fucking truck,” Cody said. “Tell the old man to follow. Now get out of here and don’t come back. I don’t like you.”
I nodded but didn’t respond. I didn’t want to admit: sometimes I didn’t like me either.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Wobbling downhill, I staggered to the Buick, hanging on while Dog pulled around. Five minutes ago, Dog and his buddy were ready to slit my throat and give me a Colombian necktie. The only reason they didn’t? The ghost of Francis. If I believed in the afterlife, I might’ve whispered a prayer of gratitude.
Inside the car, favoring my ribs, I scrambled to find a pillow or coat to approximate a human being. In the dark, maybe I could throw my shirt around a sleeping bag or some other bulky item. There was nothing in the backseat, bulky or otherwise. Expecting Dog any second, I didn’t want to risk popping the trunk.
A moment later, a large truck with jacked-up wheels and an augmented bull bar barreled around the corner. I climbed in fast as I could. Dog revved the engine, wanting to impress with whatever he had beneath the hood, a gesture wasted. I didn’t know the first thing about trucks.
We were already in the sticks, the crumbling blue house on the hill slash chop shop secluded. Far as I could tell, outside of a tiny main street with the pawn shop, gas station, coffeehouse, a couple saloons, and markets, Wroughton was nothing but a forest among forgotten fringes. Dog’s truck delivered me farther down the holler, into the bowels of nowhere. I checked the bars on my phone. Nothing. There were no street signs or distinguishable markers. Trees and brush and wood, dark hillside, each stone as unremarkable as the next. He must’ve noticed by now my friend wasn’t following in the car, and the guys back at the house had to have figured out no one was in the car. I entertained the possibility Dog was taking me to a remote location to kill me. Then shook that off. They made it clear they had no problem doing that back at the house.
Dark turned destitute, desolate, deserted. No houses. No shacks, no sheds, no blue-tarped tents, no gutted shipping containers. No anything.
Then Dog jammed a hard, unexpected right, and we came to a clearing. A small trailer perched on the edge of a creek.
Slamming the car in park, I braced for what came next. Nothing was stopping Dog from killing his engine, stepping out, and finishing me off. A pregnant pause dragged out.
“Get out,” he said. “Don’t worry I’ll tell…your friend…you’ll be right back.” He stopped just short of air quotes.
I didn’t waste any time jumping down.
Dog reversed, K-turned, and sped out of there, leaving me alone.
A high country moon emerged from behind the clouds. Bathed in soft white light, serenaded by the burbling brook, the trailer could’ve been a fairytale cottage had not all the romance been stripped away and perverted. Big dents in the aluminum kinked with rust, and one of the windows had been broken. It was covered with cardboard and duct tape.
Lights were on inside, a generator humming, meaning the trailer had power, which elevated the residence above your average campsite. Not by much. The bottom of the trailer was rivered with algae and fungus, severe water damage. Sediment staked claim to the foundation. A car sat in the driveway, but it looked like it hadn’t run in ages, wheels flat, shell covered with pods, seeds, and arachnid webs.
What could I do but knock on the door and hope I found answers inside? I had run out of places to search.
Lenna Ann answered, confused at first, before her eyes betrayed recognition.
“You remember me?”
“You were with the old guy,” she responded quicker than I’d have guessed. “What happened to your face?”
Puffy, swollen, and in pain, I didn’t want to look in the mirror.
“We went to the address you gave us,” I said. “We know Jacob bought a car there.”
“Come inside,” Lenna Ann said, ushering me in and closing the door. “I didn’t send you there because of a car.” She stared past my shoulder, out the unbroken window, stopping on a dime, entire demeanor changing. She whipped her head like she’d heard a noise. “You should go. We can tal later.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I pointed at my face. “This is what it cost to find you.”
“They brought you here because they know Eddie will be drunk as shit when he gets home. He has a temper. You think what those guys did was bad? Wait till Eddie shows up.”
“Who’s Eddie?”
“My boyfriend.”
I caught a figure behind the couch, a mop of wild hair, a person crouching to hide. “Who’s that?”
“That’s Lotty. My brother.”
When he stood up, I saw
the padded blue coat. The boy in blue.
“You were outside my work,” I said, turning to Lotty. “And at the gas station.”
“He don’t talk,” Lenna Ann said.
“He was following me. I saw him in Cortland. More than once.” I pointed out the window. “And later downtown. Had me thinking I was going crazy.”
“Lotty never leaves here.”
Bullshit, I wanted to say. I’d seen him.
Lotty stared at me with sad eyes, desperate to communicate.
I couldn’t worry about Lotty. “I need to find someone,” I said to Lenna Ann. I’d take my chances with Eddie. If I tried walking back now, I’d pass out before I got two steps, my insides liquefied.
Lenna Ann opened her mouth. I thought she might tell me I had to go again, but her jaw froze there, left hanging, agape. Her tiny puppy teeth protruded, nubbed baby ones awaiting reinforcements that were never coming.
“I think her name was Jessie,” I continued. “I might be wrong. I know how that sounds. She wasn’t my friend. She was my friend Jacob’s. And he’s dead. He met her in the chatroom of a conspiracy website. Jessie was her username.” Reaching for the copy of Illuminations in my back pocket, I felt my muscles revolt, flanks and core reeling, spine spasming from the beatdown. With two hands, I presented the zine, a religious offering. “Whoever this girl is, she helped my friend write an article in here.” I shook Illuminations. “It was about…the Shadow People.” I hated using that term. “How they are abducting—”
“Isabel.”
“I think her name was Jessie—”
“Jessiesgirl81,” Lenna Ann said. “That’s Isabel’s username. I’m Isabel’s friend.”
“Why Jessiesgirl81?”
“Because she likes that song and it came out in 1981.”
The most obvious answer in the world. Fucking Rick Springfield.
“Where is Isabel now?”
Lenna Ann shook her head. Or maybe it was more a shudder. “She disappeared. After your friend bought the car.”
“Did they leave together?”
“No. She was here after he bought the car. Definitely. I think. I’m pretty sure.” Lenna Ann turned to Lotty, who didn’t move, didn’t say a word—who, after rising from the floor, had given no indication he wasn’t dead. “She had a bad meth problem.” As if reminding herself, Lenna Ann spun around and reached up, pushing books on a high shelf that housed random power adaptors and controls for devices she didn’t seem to own. “The cops out here, they take a cut of everything. They’ll walk in your house, steal your shit, money, take whatever they want. That’s why I hide mine good.” She retrieved a book from the top, an autobiography on Thomas Mann, plopping it on the table. Plucking a plastic baggie from within its hollowed-out pages, she dumped a pile of powder on the glass end table, before separating into neat, precise lines. “You can’t do it three days in a row, that’s the secret.” She rolled a dollar bill and passed it to her brother, who snorted a strip. He passed the dollar straw back, and Lenna Ann did the same, a shiver overtaking her body in revolt, system shocked, an aardvark inhaling fire ants, before passing the bill to me.
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
I waited for the hard sell, but Lenna Ann shrugged and hoovered another. And I realized that peer pressure doesn’t exist outside public service announcements. Why would Lenna Ann care if I didn’t want any of her drugs? More for her.
“Tell me about Isabel,” I said.
“She lived with Boy Blue.”
“Boy Blue?”
“There’s two big dealers in Wroughton. Boy Blue and Girl Blue. Isabel lived with Boy Blue.”
“Her boyfriend?”
“Boy Blue has lots of girls living with him.”
“Doing what?”
“Sucking his dick for drugs? I don’t know. Ask Isabel.”
I thought I heard Lotty grunt. I turned his way. He’d returned to stone-like and silent. “I’d love to,” I said. “If you could tell me where I could find her.”
“Maybe she went home,” Lenna Ann said.
“Where’s home?”
“London.”
“England?”
“Last time I checked, that’s where London was.” Lenna Ann started moving faster, a cartoon character revved on too much coffee, exaggerated fire rings burned into the carpet. She began chewing her lower lip, twitching, jaw grinding back and forth, scratching her arm, nose, and chin. “Isabel was crazy. She couldn’t unplug, always online thinking she’d uncovered evidence the experts missed. That was her thing. Everything was a conspiracy.”
“Sounds like my friend Jacob.”
“That’s how they met. Isabel would get high, disappearing in cyberspace and into chatrooms. Lost for days.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Lenna Ann scratched the inside of her arm, gazing out the cardboard window, into a night she couldn’t see. “You should go. Eddie’s gonna be home. Two weeks ago.” Devoid of self-reflection, Lenna Ann talked faster. Conversing with her was no different than speaking with Jacob or Francis, topics and sequence bouncing all over the place.
“Two weeks ago?”
“Last time I saw her. After Boy Blue went away.”
“Where did he go?”
“Isabel lived there.”
“I know. You told me—”
“Isabel came here, late one night, wigging. She asked me to keep it here and I said I couldn’t keep it here but she left it anyway and then she left. Eddie got a new job. But he could be home any—”
“It?”
“Her stuff. She was freaking out, man. Talking about those…Shadow People.”
“There are no Shadow People!”
“I know that! I’m not crazy! Isabel believed in all that shit. She said the Shadow People took Boy Blue and that they would get her next. Said she saw the whole thing. I could tell she hadn’t slept for days. That’s the secret. You can’t take this shit three days in a row, you need to take breaks, reset, or it’ll fry your brain.”
“You mentioned that—”
“She said she had proof. She was cooked. That’s the last time I saw her. She said if anything happened to her, I should mail her stuff to the newspaper.”
“What newspaper? What…stuff?” I hated the word stuff. I had a professor who would knock you down a full letter grade if you used stuff in a paper. Other students groaned. I appreciated it. Language is specific.
“She was crazy,” Lenna Ann said. “When I saw you and the old man and you were talking about your friend, I wanted to talk to you because they knew each other, that fat guy—he was your friend, right?”
“Jacob, yeah—”
“I thought you could help me find her. That’s why I told you to meet me at Rick’s.”
“Who’s Rick?”
“Rick, Cody, Dog, they all live together. That crumbly blue house on the hill.”
“Rick’s the one with the Van Dyke who sold Jacob the car?”
“Who’s Van Dyke?” Lenna Ann stared at a blank spot on the wall, frozen, catatonic, as if she’d been unplugged from a socket. Then the switch flipped back on, and she was racing, lips flapping, arms twisting twelve different directions to scratch hard-to-reach places.
Outside of a brief interlude to snort drugs, Lotty and his padded blue coat hadn’t moved.
“You should put antibiotic on your face,” Lenna Ann said. “Looks like you have dirt in those cuts. Don’t pick at that, it’ll get infected—”
“Soon as I get out of here—”
“I thought maybe you knew what happened to her but you can’t talk in the street, not in the middle of the day, not in this town, cops are everywhere, and they’ll come right in your house, take whatever they want—”
“I know. You told me.”
Lenna Ann bolted to the window, the one with an actual pane, peering into the void, before darting to other room without warning, a skit
tish housecat that realized it needed to be somewhere else right now, leaving me standing in the middle of that junky old trailer with her muted brother in blue, wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. Had this entire quest been for vanity’s sake? Maybe there was no mystery color to see. Green was green, the seas the color of wine, and I’d been sucked up in the drama of madmen and conmen and drug addicts and liars.
As fast as she’d bolted, Lenna Ann zoomed back with a box, thrusting it into my hands. Shoebox, paisley printed, pink, girly but grubby, dirt smeared, assorted foodstuffs dribbled, blobs of sticky sauces congealed. You could almost see the individual bacterium sway.
I held the petri dish, using the least amount of fingertips possible. “What’s in the box?”
“Isabel gave it to me. I don’t want it.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“I don’t care. Throw it away.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Lotty’s eyes widen.
“That Shadow People shit freaks me out,” she said. “I know they aren’t real—of course they’re not real—but we say that demons and ghosts and angels aren’t real but then you’ll be thinking about a song and it’ll come on the radio, and you’ll be like ‘Whoa,’ or you dream of a famous singer and his shoes and then you wake up the next day and learn they’re dead! There’s something not right about this place, this world, this…existence. I’ve always felt it.” Lenna Ann’s pupils were as large as big, black marbles. Her fingernails clawed her neck, raking skin.
“Okay,” I said, “but what—”
