“Okay,” he said at last, “I’ll go down and take a look.”
While he was gone I went to the bathroom and threw up. I wish I could have wept instead. Now that I was alone and no longer had the fear of breaking down in front of my father, there were no tears. Instead, I took a shower, put my clothes back on, splashed my face with after-shave lotion and went back to the kitchen. He was there and looking pale. All of the flush was gone. His cuffs were damp and I realized he must have washed up at the cellar sink.
“The one who’s not your wife …” he began.
“Jessica,” I said. “Oakwode. Laurel Oakwode.”
“Yeah,” he said, “that one. She was decapitated with a sword. Or maybe it was a machete. One big stroke. Patty is a different business. Somebody who didn’t know how to do it sawed her head off with a knife.”
“Are you certain?”
“Want to look for yourself?”
“No.”
I saw it anyway. I do not know whether it was in my imagination or a true glimpse of his retina, but I saw Jessica’s throat. There was a straight slash across, and the nearest flesh was bruised by the weight of the blow.
Patty’s neck I did not have to visualize. I would not forget a red jungle.
My father opened his hand. The fragment of a spent bullet was in it. “That’s from Oakwode,” he said. “I can’t get the rest without making a mess in your cellar but I’ve seen stuff like this before. It comes from a .22 with a hollow tip. That’s what I’d say. It spreads on contact. In the brain, one .22 can do all the work. Probably with a silencer.”
“Fired into her mouth?”
“Yes,” he said. “Her lips look bruised, like somebody forced her to open her mouth. Maybe with the gun muzzle. You can still see the powder burns on her upper palate where the entrance hole is. Small enough. Just right for a .22. No exit wound. I was able to fish this much out.” He pointed to the bullet fragment.
Tough guys don’t dance. You had better believe it. Fish this much out. My knees were quivering and I had to put both hands on the glass to get the bourbon to my lips. I found that I was not ready to ask about Patty.
He told me all the same. “There are no marks, entrance wounds or bruises on her face and scalp. I would assume she was shot in the heart and died quick.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Just a guess. I don’t know. It could have been a knife. Her head tells me nothing but who she is.” He frowned as if forgetting a most important detail. “No—it tells me one more thing. You would need a coroner to be sure, but I would guess that your wife,”—now he could not say Patty Lareine either—“was killed twenty-four to forty-eight hours later than the other woman.”
“Well, we’ll find out,” I said.
“No,” he said, “we will never know.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Tim,” he said, “we have to dispose of these heads.” He held up his hand to forestall me. “I know the price,” he said.
“We’ll never be able to find out who did it,” I blurted.
“We’ll determine that, I think. We just won’t be able to prove it.” The flush was coming back to his face. “If you want satisfaction, we’ll have to look for other means.”
I let that pass for now.
“Follow my reasoning,” he said. “I figure there’s more than one executioner. People who use machetes don’t fuck with knives.”
“People who use machetes don’t usually have .22s with special bullets and silencers.”
“I have to think about that,” he said.
We were silent. I was doing very little thinking myself. A numbness was settling through my limbs as if I had been walking for many hours through the November woods and had just stopped to rest.
“Here’s what I am clear on,” he said. “Somebody chose to use your marijuana stash to hide Jessica’s head. That implicates you so deeply you still can’t say you didn’t do it. Then the head is removed. Why?” He held up both fists as if he were steering a car. “Because somebody has decided to kill Patty. This person wants to be certain both heads will be found there later. He doesn’t want you or the first killer going back to destroy the evidence. Or suppose you panic. You might reveal it to the authorities. Therefore, this second person, he takes the head.”
“Or she,” I said, “takes the head.”
“Or she,” said my father, “although I don’t know what you mean by that.” When I said nothing further—I had spoken out of impulse—he said, “Yes, I figure two principals. The one who killed Jessica, and the one about to kill Patty. The first puts the head there to implicate you. The second removes it so that both can be put back later. At which time, or soon after, you will have to take the onus for both crimes.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot,” I said.
“When people do these things,” my father said, “they believe they are viewing the scene clearly even if all they’re doing is dropping one more ingredient into the soup.”
“Who’s the cook?” I asked.
“Wardley, for one. He could have known Patty was dead all the while he was talking to you. He could have done it, and been setting you up.”
“I don’t see how.”
“He has a low opinion of you. I don’t blame him. Maybe he heard Jessica’s head was now floating around, and he supposed you knew where it was. So he decided to ask, instead, for Patty’s head. He figured you’d try to pass Jessica off as Patty. Then he’d have what he wanted—both heads.”
“Can you stop repeating that word?”
“Heads?”
“It’s getting to me.”
“There’s no substitute for it.”
“Just use their names.”
“Until we find their bodies, it’s misleading.”
“Just use their names,” I repeated.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re as fancy as your mother.”
“I don’t care if my great-grandparents cut peat in Irish bogs every stinking day of their lives, I’m, yes, I’m as fancy as my mother.”
“Ho, ho,” he said, “score one for her side. May she rest in peace.” He belched. The bourbon, the beer and his illness were working on him together. “Pass the bottle,” he said.
“You’re assuming too much,” I said. “Why wouldn’t Wardley know where Jessica was? If Regency did, Wardley would. Spider is their go-between.”
“Let’s say they’re crossing each other up a little. It’s amazing what people know and don’t know in such situations.” He tapped the table with his knuckles. “I say Wardley didn’t know where Jessica was, and wanted you to bring her to him.”
“I think Wardley had put them both in the burrow already. Keep to the given. Spider and Stoodie were following me. Wasn’t that so they could be there when I went back to the burrow? To grab me just as I’m coming out with the heads? They would have been the foulest scumbags ever to make a citizen’s arrest.”
That impressed him. My father’s brow gave his assent. “It rings true,” he said. “They think you’re going to the burrow, but the beeper tells them you’ve stopped. No wonder they go apeshit when you come back.”
“I think we have a case against Wardley,” I said.
“Concerning Patty, you have the beginnings of a real possibility. But who killed Jessica?”
“Maybe Wardley did that also.”
“He would enjoy using a .22 with a silencer. But do you see Mr. Hilby with a machete?”
“How about Stoodie?”
“Maybe.”
“Who are you thinking of?” I asked.
In how many conversations across his bar had my father served as surrogate private detective, acting criminal lawyer or honorary appeals court judge? He brought his hand to the corner of his mouth as if debating whether to peel the truth from his lips like an adhesive plaster.
Now he removed his hand. “I don’t like this Regency,” he said. “Not the way you describe him. He could be the fellow.”
&nb
sp; “Do you think he killed Jessica?”
“He could use a high-powered .22 handgun and a machete. He’s the only one who could. You told me about his house. He’s a weapons freak. He probably has flamethrowers in the basement. He would study how to kill you by putting a bamboo spear with poison on its tip in your path. I have met the type. ‘When it comes to weapons,’ they say, ‘I know them all. I’m a Renaissance man.’ ”
“Yeah, but you hate cops.”
“You bet I do. Only, some are less unreliable than others. This guy’s a prairie wolf. A professional soldier who becomes a cop! I read him for a narc all the way. He’s no Acting Chief of Police. That’s a cover. He’s a troubleshooter for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and I’ll bet, back at the agency, they’re scared of him. They pee in their pants when he’s around.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“I know cops better than you do. For how many years did I have to pay off the Mafia on Wednesday night and the police on Thursday? I know cops. I know their psychology. Why do you think a high-powered gung ho like Regency has been buried on Cape Cod?”
“It’s a big narcotics center.”
“Nothing next to Florida. They could really use him there. They’re fobbing him off. You have to understand police psychology. No cop likes to work with a fellow professional who makes him uneasy. You can’t give orders that are resented, or you make an enemy. A guy with a legal weapon has too many opportunities to shoot you in the back. So when cops have to put up with a crazy, they don’t try to fire him. They fob him off. Make him Head-of-the-Universe in Twin Acres, Montana. Pee-town, Mass. No,” he concluded, “I don’t like Regency one bit. That’s why we’re going to dispose of the heads.”
I started to argue with him, but he kept cutting me off. “If those plastic bags are found in your cellar,” he said, “there is no way out of it for you. You’re a sitting duck. And if you try to remove them, it’s worse. The moment they see you getting into your car, they’ll follow you.”
“I’ve got to bury my wife.”
“No, you don’t. I’ll do it. I’ll take your boat and your fishing gear and two tackle boxes. Do you have an extra anchor on board?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll use the one that’s there. For Patty and Jessica both.”
Now it was my turn to say “Oh, criminey!”
“Hey,” said Dougy, “you look at me and see a crude man. I look at you and see a sitting duck.”
“I have to go with you. It’s the least I can do.”
“If I set out alone, it’s just an old gink fishing. They won’t look twice. But you! They’ll see you there. They’ll alert the Coast Guard. What’s your story when they find the two ladies on board complete but for their bodies? ‘Oh,’ you’ll say, ‘I found them. Voices told me where to look.’ ‘Yeah,’ they’ll say, ‘you’re Joan of Arc. Next case.’ ” He shook his head. “This, Tim-Boy, is where you firm up. I’ll be gone a few hours. Why don’t you, in the interim, make a few phone calls.”
“To whom?”
“Try the airport. Maybe you can find out when Jessica arrived.”
“She and Lonnie came by car.”
“How do you know that was her first night in town? Or his?”
I shrugged. I didn’t.
“Find out,” he said, “who the real estate agent is.”
When he went down to the cellar, however, I stayed immobile in my chair. I would not have moved if he had not called up the cellar stairs, “Tim, I’m ready to row the dinghy out to your boat. Go for a walk. I want to get them away from the house.”
I saw spirits and he saw real people. All right. He was taking the chances, and the least I could do was walk.
I put on a parka, and went out the front door and down Commercial Street in the deserted afternoon sunlight, but I could not keep on the street for too long. It was a silent day, quiet as the sunlight that came down in fluted pillars through the gray banks overhead, and I knew there would be a play of brights and shadows on the beach. Just when I was certain I heard the motor starting on our twenty-foot Whaler (Patty’s boat) I turned into an empty beach lot and onto the sand and, yes, there on the water, the dinghy left behind at the mooring, and all but alone in the harbor, no Coast Guard in sight and only a couple of fishing boats coming into Town Wharf, was my father heading the Whaler out to the bay, and I took a breath and returned with my aching foot over the sand.
Back in the house, surprisingly refreshed by this walk, I decided, by way of Dougy’s suggestion, to make those phone calls. I tried the airport first and had a piece of good fortune. The girl at the ticket desk was a drinking friend, and she was on duty. So I could ask if Jessica Pond or Laurel Oakwode and/or Lonnie Pangborn had been in or out of Provincetown in the last few weeks. A few minutes later she called me back: Jessica Pond came in on an afternoon flight fifteen days ago. She left nine days ago on the first morning plane. The airline booked her return ticket from Provincetown to Boston to San Francisco to Santa Barbara. Nobody named Pangborn had come in or out. However, the girl recalled she was at the desk on the morning the Pond passenger left, and Chief Regency brought her to the airport. “ ‘Take good care of this lady,’ he told me,” said the girl.
“Did he and she look friendly?” I asked.
“Tim, I was too hung-over to take a look.” She deliberated. “I guess there was some oovie-groovie going on.”
Well, that opened the possibilities. If Jessica Pond had been here for a week alone, then flew to Santa Barbara and came back, the question became: Was she working with Pangborn for Wardley or was she working for herself?
I called the real estate agent in town whom I knew best. She could, however, give me no more than the name of the Boston lawyer who represented the Paramessides estate. As far as she knew, the property was not for sale. When I rang the lawyer’s office, I gave my name as Lonnie Oakwode. When the lawyer came on, I said, “Mr. Thwaite, my mother, Mrs. Oakwode, had to go over to Europe to take care of an urgent matter but asked me to contact you.”
“Well, I’m glad you called. We’ve all been standing on tiptoe the last few days. Your mother was supposed to be here with a certified check.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
“Good. Give her a message for me. I’m a bit concerned that the price is going to be given an adjustment upward. Or will be if we don’t hear from her. I can’t hold the fort on short rations, you see. A promise is a promise, but we’ve got to have her check. Another party put in a bid last week.”
“I’ll get to her quickly.”
“You must. It’s always like that. Years go by and an estate gets back nothing from the property but penalties and taxes. Then everybody wants it all at once, and in the same business week.” He coughed.
“Mr. Thwaite, she’ll get back to you.”
“Hope so. Lovely woman, your mother.”
“I’ll tell her.”
I hung up quickly. I was playing her son with much too little knowledge to stay on the line for long.
Still, my guess had been given some confirmation. Laurel Oakwode must have been planning to acquire the property for herself. Was it to hold up Wardley and, thereby, Patty Lareine?
I posed the question: What would Patty Lareine do to a woman who tried such a maneuver?
“She would kill” was the unmistakable reply that came back to me.
In that case, if Patty Lareine had done it, and with a .22 silencer, why did Regency behead the victim? Was it to leave the most recognizable part of her on my plot of marijuana? Did Patty Lareine hate me to that extent, or did Regency?
He did, I decided. It was Regency who had suggested I should go to the patch.
I got up from the phone with more clarity, more anger and more sense of purpose than I had felt in a while. Was it possible I had a hint of my father’s moxie? I am obliged to believe that optimism is my most dangerous inclination. For now I had an impulse to look at the nude Polaroids I had taken years ago of Madelei
ne and more recently of Patty Lareine. What a curious desire. To think of obscene Polaroids at just the moment one is feeling encouraged by signs of character in oneself. Let no one say I have a classic personality.
I went upstairs, and sequestered in a file box, was an envelope with the pictures. There were three of Patty and two of Madeleine. All, I fear, had their legs sufficiently separated to show the Luciferean gleam of their nether soul, yes, the labia were well exposed. Now, however, there were ten pieces of glossy paper in the envelope. All the heads had been neatly snipped from the bodies.
Do you know, I believe that was the moment when my father, having used baling wire to fasten the two heads to the links of the anchor chain, had chosen—out where he was in deep water—to drop his grisly assemblage overboard. I know I was immediately laid low by an attack from Hell-Town. It was the most prodigious bombardment I ever received.
“Fuck-face, foul and moldy,” shrieked the first voice. “Sieg heil to the ghoul, fool,” said the second.
“It’s Timmy Light-Fingers, smash his yeggs.”
“Maim the bloody sandbagger. Open the moon cancer full of pus.”
“Hey, Timmy, sniff the rot, burn the snot.”
“You’re a raider, you’re a depredator, you traitor.”
“Bring him in—he stole my house.”
“You ravisher, you floated across on my bed.”
“Disembowel the pikeman. Masticate his prick.”
“He and his dad did the job. Crazy kooks. Cockeyed killers.”
“You murdered Jessica!” came the howl in my ear.
“Dougy killed Patty!” screamed the harpy in the other ear.
“Why? Why did we kill?” I asked aloud.
“Oh, darling boy, Dad is looking for his cure. That’s the cure. Sniff the blood.”
“That’s him,” I said aloud, “but what of me?”
“You’re sick as well, you swagman. You’re under our spell.”
“Go away, you whores!” I shouted.
Standing alone in the rosy-gray air of twilight in that third-floor study, my eyes out to sea, my ears in the sands of Hell-Town, and my feet, for all I knew, on the floor of the bay, I saw in my mind how the heads, blonde hair waving, descended like sea flowers tied to the stem of the chain and the root of the anchor. Down they went through palisades of water to the bottom of the sea, and I believe I knew the moment when the anchor touched, for the voices ceased. Had their cries in my ear been a welcome to the head of Patty Lareine? I stood soaked in my own perspiration.
Tough Guys Don't Dance Page 21
