The sound effects were like Wild Kingdom when a rhinoceros charges through the underbrush at Jim Fowler. With a gasp and a grunt, the man popped out from the hedge. His aviator glasses hung from one ear. His jacket was sprinkled with tiny leaves.
"How 'bout at least you take me in there with you?" The man was pleading. "I go in there alone, they'll lock me up."
"Say please," Duke said. "I like to hear you say please."
"Fuck—" the man began. Then he deflated. "Please."
Preston said, "Why would they want to lock you up?"
"Everybody always wants to lock me up. It's a curse."
"Come on, then," Preston said, adding as the man walked toward them, "I'm Scott. This is Duke."
"Lupone. Willy Lupone. At work they call me . . . Shit, never mind."
"Unusual name," Duke said. "Your mother's side?"
Lupone pretended he hadn't heard.
Preston asked, "What do you do?"
"This and that."
"In other words," Duke said, "forget it."
"Who got you to come here?" Preston said.
"My family."
"Me, too. An intervention?"
"Huh?"
"They all get together, give you a lot of grief about all the crap you've done, tell you if you don't go in you'll be fired, divorced, the whole routine."
"Right," Lupone snorted. "An intervention."
*'The most unpleasant hour of my life."
"Mine took fifteen seconds."
"Jeez . . . efficient." '
"They are that."
"What'd they say?"
"Not much. 'Puffguts,' they say, 'you go in the fuckin' joint and clean up your act or we have Li'l Bit— that's my cousin, they call him Li'l Bit—we have Li'l Bit drown you in a puddle and feed you to the lampreys.' " He blew specks of dirt off his glasses and put them on. "Yeah, it's efficient."
Guy Larkin wasn't in his office. Nurse Bridget had gone to the cafeteria for coffee. So they waited in the lobby with Lupone.
Duke offered him a cigarette.
"Shit's poison, man." Lupone shook his head. "I don't mess with that."
"You will," Preston said, with an aware little smirk.
"Pretty cocky, pal."
Preston flushed, but he managed to say, "You'll see."
Duke saw Larkin come out of an office at the end of the corridor.
"Here comes your welcoming committee," he said to Lupone. Then he lowered his voice. "I gotta ask you: What made you think you could get toot in here?"
"I don't think, sonny," Lupone said flatly. "I know."'
From halfway down the corridor, Larkin called out, in a phony, two-bit theatrical Italian accent that he probably thought was terribly friendly and oh-so-clever, "Aha! Thisa musta be Signore Guglielmo Lupone [googtyellmo looponay]. Benvenuto, amico mio!”
Lupone looked from Laiicin to Duke to Preston.
"Fuck is this?" he said. "Take-a-guinea-to-lunch week?"
"Say your prayers," Duke said with a grin, and he patted Lupone on the shoulder. "And keep a tight asshole."
XI
THE MOTORIST WHO found Natasha Grant's body at the base of the mountain told reporters he had thought at first it was just a pile of old clothes that had fallen off a truck, and he was all set to drive on by.
"So why'd you stop?''
"There was this coyote eatin' on it."
They liked that. They all scribbled like sixty, and the two with microphones had to fight to swallow their smiles.
He was having the time of his life.
He was in his late sixties, a chicken farmer who sold eggs and parts to local restaurants, and save for a brief tour with the Navy in Hawaii near the end of the war he had never been outside New Mexico. He had never met a reporter, had never even seen one except on TV, and here he was, suddenly surrounded by them, and all of them asking him questions, which was doubly exciting since nobody ever asked him questions about anything but chickens.
He could see the sheriff over there beside his car, about to have a fit and wishing all the reporters would die of a wasting disease. But it was the sheriff's own damn fault: If he hadn't left his radio on while he was getting gas, then the reporter getting gas on the other side of the pumps wouldn't have heard the call on the radio and wouldn't have followed him out here. And the fella at the TV station who always kept his radio tuned to the police frequency wouldn't have heard the back-and-forth between the sheriff and his office. And so forth.
Behind the sheriff was the ambulance. They had given up trying to stuff what was left of the body in a bag and had covered it with a tarp and were shoving it onto a stretcher.
"You always stop when you see a coyote eating rags?"
He took his time. They liked juicy answers, and the juicier his answers the better his chances of actually getting on TV. Hell, maybe even Entertainment Tonight. After all, Natasha Grant was a star.
"When there's a leg in it," he said.
Score! Scribble, scribble, scribble.
"So you get out of your car and walk over to—"
"Truck."
"Huh?"
"It's an eighty-two Chevy king-cab kinda thing I customized myself, with a—"
"Whatever. You walk over there and see it's not just a pile of rags. What did she look like?"
Pause. Smile. "Kinda like a two-dollar Mexican dinner."
Confusion. "What?"
“You know: red peppers, melted cheese, guacamole."
"Jesus Christ!"
Too much. They weren't smiling. The cute one with the microphone looked nauseated. Back off.
"I mean, she was a mess."
“But you could recognize her."
"Oh sure." Just the facts. "See, it was one side messed up, the side hit the road. Other side was real peaceful. No question it was the little girl used to spoon with Dean Stockwell in the picture show."
"Wrap it," said the cute one, and her cameraman slid the big video off his shoulder.
"This be on Eyewitness News or what? Me and the wife want to be sure to catch it."
The sheriff declined to make a statement, wouldn't even let them take his picture, and when they tried, he stood with his back to the sun where he knew all they'd get was white burnout and a black blotch on their film or tape or whatever the hell it was. He knew all about reporters, how they bitch up your meaning by using only the words they like, how they can even warp a piece of film with you on it by cutting away to the reporter and showing him—or her, usually her, all the real slimy ones seemed to be women—with the eyebrow raised or the tongue in the cheek, the expression saying, "You don't expect me to believe this load of shit." As for "off the record," he knew what it meant: You tell them something and they go ahead and use it and claim somebody else told them too.
Fuck 'em. Them and the vans they rode around in. They'd get nothing from him but bare, undecorated facts, and those not till they'd been established and verified and given the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
At the moment there was only one fact, and it had lain in a heap and drooled out onto the pavement. No problem for the print guys, but he'd been amused at how the TV jockeys had risen to the challenge, shooting by it, over it, around it, putting it in shadow, never shooting directly at it, because you don't want Mom and Pop to spew their TV dinners all over the set during the evening news.
It wasn't an absolute, incontrovertible fact that the corpse was Natasha Grant—there was no I.D. on the body—though anybody who'd ever been to the movies would take an oath. And there was no certainty about how she had died, though unless she had been hit by a bulldozer going eighty miles an hour, it was pretty likely she had fallen the four or five hundred feet from the top of the mountain.
Or been pushed.
Maybe she'd been dead before the fall. Who knew what kind of splash a dead body'd make from that height, compared to a live one? Not him. That was the coroner's job. They'd have to wait for the forensic report, the toxicologist's report.
&n
bsp; Maybe she'd been coked-up or freaked-out on LSD or PCP. A long shot, but you had to check out everything. She'd been out of the clinic barely three weeks, had already been on the cover of People magazine telling everybody how great it was to be clean, thanking God for giving her another chance at life. All the standard B.S. Okay, maybe not B.S., but it sure was boring. Predictable, that was the word, like there was a hat full of stock phrases and every celebrity lush dipped in and grabbed a few to describe the glories of recovery.
What was she doing around here, anyway? She lived in Beverly Hills, and according to People she'd become a demon on the A.A. circuit, telling her story to anyone who cared to hear it, helping stumblebums. The whole nine yards.
Maybe she had come back to speak at the clinic. Maybe she had secretly checked in again—Christ!—had a slip and didn't want to admit it.
No. If she was a patient, she'd be in the clinic, not roaming around the top of the mountain.
He looked up at the mountain. As soon as the ambulance left, as soon as the reporters got bored poking around and packed up their gear and took off, he'd go up there and have a look. He thought he remembered there was a fence around the whole plateau, but maybe it had been taken down or had a gap in it. He hadn't been up there in a couple years.
No chance of them following him up there. They'd be stopped at the gate. 'Course, he would be too, but him they'd let in. He was pretty sure, at least. He couldn't imagine Stone Banner'd make him go back and get a warrant just to have a look around.
But it was hard to tell where you stood with Stone Banner at any given time.
He was a quirky kind of guy.
"I'm Scott. I'm an alcoholic." The word still didn't feel completely natural in Preston's mouth—like a false tooth, there but not really his—but he was used to it. He didn't feel he had to deny it. "I feel okay today." He had nothing more to say, but he knew it wasn't good enough. He didn't have to look at Marcia; he could feel her eyes on him. Think of something. Like what? Like how hard it is to parse your whole life, to analyze every mistake, to assess your progress toward some amorphous serenity—all without appearing to wallow in a sea of self-pity?
No. Just thinking it sounds whiny.
At last he said, "I feel I'm . . . ah . . . getting there. Little by little. Sometimes it's like trying to crush one rock with another, but every day the rocks get a little bit smaller."
Now he did look at Marcia. One of her eyes was closed, the other appraised him. Then it, too, closed, and she sighed. He was positive he could hear her thinking, Spare us the similes, Scott.
But she let it pass.
She looked over at the new boy, Lupone.
Lupone sat on two chairs, one cheek on each, and every time he breathed, one of the eight wooden legs protested. He wore the same checked jacket and the same bouillabaisse tie, but with a plum-colored shirt.
He was the only person in the clinic who wore a tie, which, Marcia was sure, was why he wore the tie. To set himself apart. It was armor worn to warn others to make no assumptions, take no liberties. He was not one of them. He probably thought he was being subtle.
He had spent forty-eight hours in detox, and this was his second day in company. She had put up with his belligerent silence the first day, but today he was going to get with the program.
She said, "William?"
William? Preston thought. Where does she get William? It's Willy or Guglielmo or Puffguts. But William?
She sounded like a Sunday school teacher asking a kid if he*s the one responsible for the god-awful stink in here.
Lupone said nothing.
“William, it's time to cut the shit, stop behaving like a three-year-old."
Color crept up the folds of Lupone's neck, darkening them almost to the color of his shirt.
“Today you speak, or—"
"Or what?" Lupone turned his head and fastened his piglike eyes on her. "Yeah, lady, or what?"
"That's a start. Let's discuss the ors. Either you speak, or—"
"Look, lady, let's get a couple things straight here. And this has nothing to do with you being a broad or a shvartzeh, okay?"
"Fine." She nodded, and her lips tightened.
That's a smile she's trying to hold in there! Preston was amazed, envious, filled with admiration. If I could ever be that composed, I would rule the world.
"What it is," Lupone said, "I'm not gonna play the game, see, 'cause I don't have the problem you guys got here. The only problem I got is that I'm here, and the reason I'm here is that if I don't come, my fuckin' cousin's gonna drown me, f crissakes. So I got twenty-seven days to go, and I can do twenty-seven days standing on my head and suckin' my thumb, you better believe it, I done a lot longer than that a couple times, long as you keep off my back. Okay? We got a deal?"
Marcia paused. "We got a deal," she said. She reached into a pocket and pulled out a quarter and flipped it at Lupone. "The deal is, you go make a phone call."
“To who?"
“A taxi. You're outa here."
Lupone held the quarter and looked at it as if it were a scorpion. He said, "Hey ..."
“S the matter, William?"
''I can't!”
"Sure you can." She smiled. "It's easy. Reach out, reach out and touch someone."
Lupone just sat there.
"Is it the money you're worried about? Don't. We're better than the car companies. Full money-back guarantee. Think of the detox as a public service."
"Money." Lupone snorted. "Besides, I'm on scholarship."
"Scholarship!" Marcia laughed. "What're you, the prize junkie from the Sisters of Holy Charity?"
"Forget it." Lupone bit his lip and shook his head, as if he had spoken out of turn.
"Who gave you a scholarship?"
Lupone paused. Then he turned to Marcia and shouted, "You don't get it, do you, lady? Fuckin' guy's gonna drown me!"
"This isn't the Red Cross, William. I'm not a lifeguard. Go on. Beat it."
Lupone stared at the quarter. Then he sighed and tossed it back to Marcia. "I'll talk."
"Good."
"What you wanna talk about?"
"Trust. You don't trust people, do you?"
"Why should I?"
"Why shouldn't you?"
"Trust is for people who wanna end up in a landfill.''
"Who says?"
"What they teach you, right outa the gate."
"Who's 'they'?"
"They."
"In your line of work, you mean."
"Right."
"What line of work is that?"
"Market research." He didn't smile or snigger. He just said it.
"Sounds like a tough line of work, market research."
Watch out, Willy-boy. Preston's eyes were bouncing back and forth between them as if this were a Ping-Pong game. She's getting chatty. You're gonna die.
"You could say."
"Stand up, William."
"Huh?"
"Stand up."
Lupone hunched his shoulders—like a turtle protecting its head—and squinted at Preston and Hector and Twist and Cheryl, and then at Marcia.
He looked suspicious, wary, trying to decide if this was a plot, to figure what would happen if he stood up. All the faces were benignly blank.
He relaxed his shoulders and rolled off one cheek and then off the other, and on the second roll his forward momentum tipped the balance of his weight out over his feet.
Marcia stood, and she kicked her chair back and broke the circle. Now the others knew what was up, so they stood and moved their chairs back.
Hector and Twist shared an incredulous glance. Cheryl took a step backward, trying to will herself to a different country. Preston cleared his throat and said to Marcia, "You’re serious?"
"Shut up, Scott."
"Come on, he weighs—"
"I said shut up!"
Lupone said, "Hey ..."
"Now, William," Marcia said, "this is about trust. I want you to stand with your hands at
your sides, and I want you to close your eyes."
"What's this got to do with—"
"Do it."
Lupone treated her to a viperous glare. Then, pressing his lips together and making a guttural growling sound, he stood at attention and closed his eyes.
"When you're ready, William, I want you to let yourself go and fall backward."
"What?" Lupone kept his eyes closed.
"That's right. Just tip back on your heels and go."
"You nuts? You want I should break something? I could get a rupture."
"You'll never touch the ground, William. Your friends'll catch you."
"I got no friends."
"Here you've got friends. That's what I'm telling you."
"They'll let me fall."
"What makes you think so?"
"People always do. It's my curse."
"These people won't."
"You know what I weigh? Almost three hundred."
"Then that'll be a real challenge for them, William, won't it? They'll really have to want to catch you."
"Why should they? They don't give a fuck about me."
“We'll see/'
"No. You'll see." Lupone opened his eyes and held out his hand. "Gimme the quarter."
He's bluffing. Preston tried to read Lupone's eyes, but he couldn't see them. They were hidden beneath curtains of fat. He looked at Marcia. She doesn't know, either, not for sure.
Marcia said, "I don't think so."
Lupone shrugged. A tight little smile puckered his lips. "Your candy store. But there's no way I'm gonna—"
"I'll make the call for you." She took a step toward the door.
Lupone paused, then decided to take the game forward. "Tell them to have my dough ready. It was about four thousand bucks they took.''
"Oh, I'm not gonna call a cab." She reached for the doorknob.
"So who you gonna call?"
"There's a Mr. Ciccio."
Lupone twitched as if he'd touched an electric fence. The twitch sent ripples through the fat around his collar. "Hey . . ."
"Mr. Joseph Ciccio. Maybe you don't call him that. Maybe you use the name they put in the papers."
"You don't got his number."
He's reaching. Preston saw Marcia smile. She's got him.
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