Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  “Check it,” Lionel said from the living room. “Goons scored a kickin’ vinyl collection. Got us an Odd Couple situation here—one goon prefers metal. Goon two is a golden oldies fan. Inquiring minds want to know who’s Klugman and who’s Randall.”

  “Lee was pushing sixty,” I said. “No doubt the easy listening type of the duo.”

  Harold Lee’s bedroom was spare. Bed, table, dresser. Nothing but the necessities, ma’am. A signed and framed print of Frank Sinatra in Vegas validated my theory regarding the duo’s musical predilections.

  I inspected drawers and the closet. Cheap suits, rifle-cleaning kit (but no rifle), a stack of outdoor sports magazines, and a shoebox full of photographs. Some were faded with age; others were recent. I confiscated the box. He’d kept his mail in a tray on the table. I sorted through the stack of envelopes, pocketing numerous receipts, a credit card statement, and brochures for hunting lodges.

  The television blared at top volume and I nearly jumped through the wall.

  “The goons have cable,” Lionel said, lowering the audio. “I repeat, the goons have cable! Full package!”

  “Tear yourself away from Skinemax and try the answering machine.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Nobody uses a landline anymore. Except for troglodytes. Troglodytes groove on landlines and dial-up internet.”

  “Kitchen counter, next to the cave paintings.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Turning over every stone.”

  The bathroom didn’t provide any obvious clues. Neither of the men took prescription medication. There weren’t any signs of a woman’s touch—no overnight toothbrushes, feminine products, or makeup.

  I returned to the living room. Lionel sprawled on the couch, ESPN football highlights muted. I continued into the kitchen, which was simply an extension of the living room. Economy floor plan.

  Semi-legible notes were scrawled on a whiteboard hanging by the calendar. I’d missed this detail on the first pass because somebody had partially erased the marker messages and I had to squint to decipher them. A couple of entries were related to schedules at the Knarr Tavern and Black Stars. Another with today’s date listed an address in Phoenicia, a window between 10 a.m. and noon, and a heavily underscored figure of $2,500.

  I sat on the opposite end of the couch. Worn springs protested. Floorboards too.

  “Let’s cruise up to Phoenicia for lunch. It’s a nice drive.”

  My rationale went along the lines that we might get lucky and bump into Royal on his errand, which doubtless involved shaking down some piker for twenty-five hundred bucks. Otherwise, over the next couple of nights he’d be at his post, guarding the Knarr’s entrance. Either way, I’d had my fill of that claustrophobic apartment and felt the urge to ramble.

  “Okay,” Lionel said. “You called the house earlier from the car? Not Royal’s cell?”

  “He didn’t answer his cell either.”

  “Three whole messages on the machine. Most recent is yours. Royal’s boss at the Knarr asked if he wants to cover an extra shift this weekend. I bet he doesn’t—the joint is a hellhole. Lastly, a chick named Delia called for Lee an hour ago. Very peevish.”

  “Peevish?”

  “Yeah, man. Annoyed? Bitchy? I dunno. Irritable phone voice. My old man always sounded pissed whenever I got him on the horn. Delia wanted an explanation why Lee didn’t return her messages.”

  “Did she say anything interesting?”

  “She said, Hi, this is Delia. Why won’t you take my calls, you rotten sonofabitch?”

  “At least she can forgive him now.”

  “There were no other messages.”

  “Deleted?”

  “Probably. I’d be looking for a new roomie if he deleted my girlfriend’s calls.”

  “What if she yelled a lot and your roomie just wanted to spare you the grief?”

  “Ignoring a woman only leads to more grief.”

  We stared at a series of artfully curated football collisions.

  Lionel cracked a forty. Last beer in the fridge. He lit a cigarette from a mostly dead pack of Natives he’d snagged during his sweep of the area. Who smoked Natives? Not anybody I’d want to kiss or engage in a close-range conversation.

  “Delia sounded young and hot.” He made a face and coughed. “Sweet Jesus, what have I stuck in my mouth?”

  I thumbed through my ragged dossier of Lee and the contents of his shoebox until I uncovered a photo of a blonde in a snug mohair sweater posed on a wooden dock against a backdrop of water and distant trees. Early thirties, dark blue eyes. Total knockout. She’d signed Love, D. on the reverse.

  “Behold, the fair Delia.” I handed him the photo.

  “Whoa! Might not be her. Might be a Darla. Or a Debby.”

  “It’s her.”

  “Or a Dianne. A Dorothea. A Dolly.”

  “I’ve decided it’s Delia. Far simpler.”

  “Be that way, man.”

  “Mr. Lee’s very, very secret love? She doesn’t nest here, from what I’ve seen.”

  “Too young, too hot to be bumping uglies with a granddad.”

  “May–December is a tradition. Don’t knock Daddy issues.”

  “I’m not. If this chick was sparking Lee’s ignition, she’s probably a hooker or a stripper. Who else besides a working girl is ever gonna tolerate assholes like this pair?”

  “Who indeed, my cynical, single white male friend? Who indeed?”

  A sparrow landed on the sill. Brown and sleek and blandly malevolent. Tiny, amoral creature with death in its gaze. It watched us in a way that said, If you were insects, I’d peck you to bits. I didn’t think Lionel noticed.

  Then he muttered, without turning from the screen:

  “‘Fly down, fly down, you little bird, and alight on my right knee.’ . . .

  “‘I can’t fly down, and I won’t fly down, and alight on your right knee / A girl would murder her own true love would kill a little bird like me.’”

  * * *

  —

  ON THE WAY TO THE CAR, I presented Delia’s photo to a group of college-aged slackers dressed in sweats and name brand tracksuits. One carried a basketball under his arm. The red, white, and blue Harlem Globetrotters model. He gave a low-key wolf whistle at Delia’s image and said, “Sorry, bro.” His buddies stepped wide, shaking their heads. Fellow such as myself, strolling through a bad neighborhood while wearing a conservative suit, had to be Five-0, or, worse yet, a Federal.

  I intercepted a withered gray man in a bomber jacket checkered with Navy service emblems and American flag pins. He pushed his equally withered gray wife in a wheelchair. The old vet held the picture close to his face. His hand tremored with palsy when he passed the photo to his wife.

  The wife didn’t recognize Delia either.

  “She’s nasty. She has a nasty smile.”

  “Honey . . .” the vet said.

  “Well, she’s the spitting image of Molly O’Brian. The tramp who used to chase after you at the NCOs’ club. Saucy bitch!”

  “Honey, honey!”

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me!”

  The vet smirked and waggled his brows as he got under way again. Lionel gave him a low five in passing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The road carried us toward the address I’d copied at Royal’s place.

  “I hope we run into an actor,” Lionel said. “Loads of famous peeps slum around Phoenicia and Woodstock.”

  “Sneden’s Landing, is what you mean. Hollywood on the Hudson.”

  “Yes, except the Tinseltown crowd are spreading north like a fungus. Second homes, summer retreats. In the 1960s, every Tom, Dick, and Harry scrammed to the Catskills for his vacation. The giant hotels and resorts are dying. Whole scene is mostly dead. God knows why the Tinseltown crowd is attracted.”

&n
bsp; “Easy. Famous actors are just plain folks here in hill people country.”

  The Lifestyles Section of the paper proclaimed the Mid-Hudson Valley a hotspot for celebrities. A new Cape Cod or Martha’s Vineyard. Cheaper too. I’d yet to run into any movie stars. Although most of them looked different out of makeup and out of character, so maybe I had, unwittingly.

  Reading my mind, Lionel said, “Hanging with the mob, you surely met a celebrity or two.”

  “I accepted a contract on an actor once.”

  “For real? Anybody I’d recognize?”

  “Bit actor—listed in the small print during the end credits scroll. ‘Loudmouth in Bar’ or ‘Cop 2.’ Hadn’t been on screen for twenty years.”

  “Oh. That doesn’t count.”

  Highway 28 skirted the north shore of the Ashokan Reservoir and eventually climbed into the Catskills. Fleets of vehicles belonging to fishermen and sightseers jammed the ditches from spring through autumn. Thinned now, as September tipped toward October, except for an occasional car surrounded by late-season tourists. There was many a secluded spot along the shoreline. Many a secret fishing hole screened by bushes. Many a crack in the earth to drop through. Harold Lee, did you meet your demise while casting for a record trout?

  We passed billboards for the ZEN MOUNTAIN MONASTERY, which Lionel explained was the real deal, and EMERSON RESORT & SPA, home of the world’s largest kaleidoscope. Devlin might dig touring a giant kaleidoscope. I made a mental note to investigate what Wikipedia had to say about the attraction. Twenty-first-century elementary school children were entranced by pretty lights, weren’t they?

  “I don’t know from kaleidoscopes,” Lionel said when I asked him. “My cousin fussed over hers.” He waved at the driver of a minivan who’d tailgated us for several miles. The driver honked. “You should visit the monastery. Get your head screwed on straight. Be at one with the galaxy, or some shit.”

  “What’s wrong with my head?”

  “You can’t find a hat for a regular human-sized cranium?”

  “That’s not entirely accurate. Okay. Other than my hat problem.”

  “Fun factoid—a hard-boiled SOB goes into a monastery, he or she comes through the other side as an action hero. Bona fide.”

  “Bet it’s expensive,” I said. “A sojourn at the monastery.”

  “Peeling spuds and contemplating your navel? How expensive could it be?”

  “AmEx Black expensive. Buddhism is trendy in Hollywood. Or is it Taoism?”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  “Suppose any beautiful people hang at Zen Mountain?”

  “Doubtless. No A-listers. Mountain comes to them.”

  * * *

  —

  PHOENICIA, population three hundred–plus, spread along the banks of Stony Clove and Esopus creeks. I’ve always been fascinated by the phenomenon of certain communities reknitting in the fashion of a body that recovers from a grievous wound. Some scars barely show.

  Blazes of yellow crackled across the dells and hillsides. Lovely as a postcard. A clean autumn breeze blew in through my window. Woodsmoke, freshwater, and damp leaves; a whiff of death to lend the bouquet body. Plenty of raccoons and possums were flattened on the road.

  I verified the address against a pocket atlas at the Main Street intersection. Lionel hooked a right, went half a mile, then turned left onto gravel. Our destination was Benson’s Auto Parts Depot—a Quonset hut garage and modular office. A three-legged German shepherd sunned himself on the office porch. He licked the back of my hand when I stooped to pat him. My shadow reflected in his rheumy eyes, but I didn’t think he saw me. He approved of my scent, though, one killer to another.

  Lionel scoped the office. Empty.

  We walked past a wrecker and an acre of tire mounds and abandoned vehicles. Inside the garage, a beefy man slumped in a chair near a cooler. He pressed a bottle of soda to his tenderized face. Blood spattered his coveralls and obscured the name tag. His left hand dangled. It had swollen colorfully. He’d lost his right shoe. That foot was squashed.

  “Mr. Benson?” I said.

  The mechanic’s stare reminded me of his dog’s. He focused upon another reality beyond the one our bodies occupied.

  “Benson been dead since 1987. I’m Vern.” He spoke thickly, drugged with shock.

  “Ow,” Lionel said. “Vern, dude, you got a bone poking through your wrist.”

  The man slowly turned his head to study the mess.

  “Oh, yeah . . .”

  Lionel consulted his cell. Presumably to dial 911. War hadn’t charred the core of his humanity.

  “Hold on,” I said. My own humanity might’ve been singed around the edges. “Anyone else here? The hombre who did this still around?” Taking stock, I observed toppled shelving and scattered tools. Nic Royal had blown through with hurricane force and was probably halfway back to Kingston. Still, always best to dot the i’s, et cetera.

  “My dog . . .” the mechanic said. He closed his eyes. “Did he hurt my dog?”

  “Your dog’s okay,” I said. “Cops are the only ones who blast them out of hand.”

  “Gunner’s a good boy. Real good boy. Younger days, he woulda ripped that bastard’s nuts clean off.”

  I asked again if anyone else was on the premises and he said no. Took some patience to extract the story, given his condition. Persistence triumphed—the mechanic owed a shark in Kingston three large. Goddamned lousy Jets. Royal dropped in, coldcocked him, and went to town with a pipe wrench until the mechanic caved and revealed the location of his stash. The stash covered half the debt, plus Royal helped himself to a Saturday night special and a set of tires for his rig—promised to return in a few days to collect the balance or else finish what he’d started.

  “Royal went at you hard,” I said. “He’s a pro. Pros usually save the rough treatment for incorrigibles.” I studied him and his shaved dome and began to divine the motive for his savage beating. “You made the guy mad. Vern, what did you say?” I had a decent idea.

  The man hemmed and hawed and allowed that he might have, possibly, referred to Royal with an ethnic slur.

  “He slapped me and I called him a—”

  “Say no more, say no more. Everything becomes clear.”

  “Place gives me the creeps,” Lionel said. “Want to bet we poke around, we’ll find a pot helmet and a stack of White Power Monthly.”

  “I’m in Dutch,” the mechanic said. “Child support, loan shark support, rent. Ain’t no way.” He groaned, the pain finally trickling into his consciousness. “Mind callin’ for help? I’m hurtin’.”

  Lionel smiled coldly.

  “Better peddle some scrap before Royal comes back or you’re gonna have to wipe your ass by rubbing against a tree.”

  “Sage advice,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  LIONEL HAPPILY ACCEPTED a gourmet chicken basket and two lagers on my dime at a restaurant in downtown Phoenicia. The Pine Loft was designed with a homey ambience in order to lull unsuspecting tourists until its menu prices jumped up and induced a coronary. Rustic chic, not rustic cheap, Lionel sanguinely observed between gulps of beer.

  I skipped the meal and listened to my friend wax rhapsodic over the historic sites.

  He pestered the waitress regarding the frequency of celebrity regulars. Ethan Hawke? Susan Sarandon? Bruce Willis? The waitress rolled her eyes. Sure, they were sitting right here at the Elvis Table ten minutes ago; you must’ve missed them in the parking lot.

  “Don’t give her a nickel over fifteen percent,” he said behind his hand. “She’s really sarcastic.”

  “That’s what I like about her.”

  On the return trip, Lionel inquired as to our next move.

  “Home, James,” I said. “Today is a good start. We’ve got Royal in our sights. I’ll brace him tonight or
tomorrow at the tavern.”

  A mile or so passed.

  “Ugly stuff, what happened to that salvage guy,” I said. “Makes me think.”

  “Uh-huh.” He didn’t glance at me, which meant he was paying close attention.

  “That dog on the porch; an old killer past his prime. Shameful his life was wasted in service of a punk.”

  “A regular Greek tragedy. Here’s some canine trivia—among dogs, ass-sniffing is the magic word.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “You can’t equate every dog with Buck from Call of the Wild.”

  “Or Old Yeller from Old Yeller.”

  “There can be only one Old Yeller.”

  “My dog Achilles fits the bill. He was brave and loyal. Minerva is too.”

  “Minerva’s loyal,” Lionel said. “She’d legit whine and cry if you died. Whimper and then curl up next to her new owner. Oh, and scratch my butt right there . . . Yeah . . .”

  “Cynical bastard. Has to go both ways to work. It’s the compact mankind forged with canine when that first scrawny dog came into the cave to share a fire. Dogs were right there when we conquered this world. They helped us wrest it from all comers. We humans owe a blood debt. It can’t be repaid, only honored.”

  “That’s beautiful, amigo. Almost convinces me I should get a mutt. It gets cold in the cabin, those long winter nights, and, well—”

  “My point being, Vern’s bookie is pitiless and now the poor dog won’t get as many pats on the head until the dude’s mangled wrist heals. Who’s your bookie?”