by Robert Crais
“I’ll stay straight. Ellen might appreciate coherence from the person telling her that her husband is dead.”
She looked at me over the top of the glass, then took some of the cigarette. She said, “I’m upset. This is very hard for me.”
“Yeah. Because you loved Mort so much.”
“You bastard.”
The leaders on either side of my neck were as tight as bowstrings. My head throbbed. I went out to the kitchen, cracked ice into a glass, and filled it with water. I drank it, then went back into the living room. Her eyes were red. “I’m sorry I said that,” I said. “I’ve done this before, and I know what it’s going to be like, so my guts are in knots. Part of me wants to be up in Lancaster trying to get something on the boy, but I’ve got to do this first. The rest of me is pissed because the cops had me in so an asshole named Baishe could give me a hard time and feel tough. He did, it wasn’t fun, and I feel lousy. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
She listened to all that, then quietly said, “She always runs a couple of errands after she picks up the girls. They might go to Baskin-Robbins.”
“Okay.” I sat down in the big chair opposite the couch. She kept looking at me. She brought the cigarette to her mouth, inhaled, paused, exhaled. I got up and opened the front door to air the place out.
She said, “You don’t like me, do you?”
“I think you’re swell.”
“You think I ride Ellen too hard.”
I didn’t say anything. From where I was sitting I could see the street and the drive through the big front window. And Janet Simon.
She said, “What the hell do you know,” then finished off her drink and went into the dining room. I heard glass against glass, then she came back in and stood at the hearth, staring out the window.
I said, “She’s your friend, but you don’t show her any respect. You treat her like she’s backward and you’re ashamed of it, like you’ve got some sort of paradigm for modern womanhood and it burns your ass that she doesn’t fit it. So you put her down. Maybe if you put her down enough, what she wants will change and shell begin to fit the paradigm.”
“My. Don’t we have me figured out.”
“I read Cosmo when I’m on stakeout.”
She took a long sip of the drink, set it down on the mantel, crossed her arms, and leaned against the wall to stare at me. “What shit.”
I shrugged.
“Ellen and I have been friends since our kids were in nursery. I’m the one she cries to. I’m the one who holds her when she breaks down in the middle of the morning. I’m the only goddamned friend she has.” More cigarette, more drink. “You haven’t seen the bags under her eyes from the sleepless nights or heard the horror stories.”
“And you have. I respect that.”
“All right.”
“The problem is that you’re shoving too hard. Ellen has to move at her own rate, not yours. I’m not talking about where you want to go. I agree with that. I’m talking about how you get there. Your method. I think it weakens the one you’re hoping to strengthen.”
She raised an eyebrow. “My. Aren’t we sensitive. Aren’t we caring.”
“Don’t forget brave and handsome.”
She cupped her hands around her upper arms the way you do when you’re standing in a draft, the way Ellen Lang often did.
“Maybe you’re too close,” I said. “Maybe you’re so close and hurting so much you can only know how you’d react and that isn’t necessarily the way Ellen should react. You’re not Ellen.”
“Perhaps I used to be.”
I shook my head. “You were never Ellen Lang.”
She stared at me a little longer, then shrugged. “I was alone, and it was rough. I was taken advantage of. Even my women friends deserted me. Their husbands were business friends of Stan’s. They went with the money.”
“But you’ll stick with Ellen.”
“I’ll help any way I can.”
“It must’ve been worse than rough.”
She nodded, barely moving.
“You should’ve called me,” I said. “I’m in the book.”
She put her eyes on mine and left them there. “Yes. Maybe I should have.” She bent down to stub out her cigarette in a little ceramic ashtray one of the kids made in school. She was wearing tight jeans and a clinging brown top that was cut just above the beltline and open-toed strap sandals with a medium heel. When she bent over, the top pulled up to show tanned skin and the ridge of her spine. A good looking woman. She picked up the drink, drained half the glass, and took a deep breath. It was a lot of booze. “What was all that crap you gave Ellen about yoga and karate and Vietnam?”
“You guys tell each other everything?”
“Friends havta stick together.” You could hear the booze in her voice. “You look too young for Vietnam.”
“I looked old when I got back.”
She smiled. You could see the booze in her smile, too. “Peter Pan. You told Ellen you wanted to be Peter Pan.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“That’s crap. Stay a little boy forever.”
“It’s not age. Childhood, maybe. All the good things are in childhood. Innocence. Loyalty. Truth. You’re eighteen years old. You’re sitting in a rice paddy. Most guys give it up. I decided eighteen was too young to be old. I work at maintaining myself.”
“So at thirty-five, you’re still eighteen.”
“Fourteen. Fourteen’s my ideal age.”
The left corner of her mouth ticked. “Stan,” she said, face soft. “Stan gave it up. But he doesn’t have Vietnam to blame it on.”
“There are different kinds of war.”
“Of course.”
I didn’t say anything. She was thinking. When she finished, she said, “How’d you get a name like Elvis? You were born before anyone knew who Elvis Presley was.”
“My name was Phillip James Cole until I was six years old. Then my mother saw The King in concert. She changed my name to Elvis the next afternoon.”
“Legally?”
“Legally.”
“Oh, God. And you’ve never changed it back?”
“It’s what she named me.”
Janet Simon shook her head, putting her eyes back on mine. With her face relaxed and the booze taking the edge off, she seemed stronger. Sexier. She crossed her ankles and rocked. She took more of the drink. “Have you ever been shot?”
“I caught some frag in the war.”
“Did it hurt?”
“At first it feels like you’ve been slapped, then it starts to burn and the muscle tightens up. With me, it wasn’t too bad so I could take it. Other guys who had it worse, it was worse.”
“So it probably hurt Mort.”
“If the head shot was first, he didn’t feel a thing. If not, he hurt a lot.”
She nodded, then put the glass back on the mantel. It was empty except for the ice. “If Ellen asks, please don’t tell her that.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I forgot. Sensitive and caring.”
“ ‘Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy.’ The Blue Fairy said that. In Pinocchio.”
She looked at me a very long time, then her eyes got red and she turned toward the window. Past her, I could see three little girls walking north down the middle of the street, one of them skipping. They were laughing, but we were too far away to hear them. The house was quiet. “Ellen’s never home before four,” she whispered.
It was five minutes until three.
“Did you hear me?” Still facing the window.
“Yes.”
Janet Simon began to shiver, then tremble, then cry. I went over to her and let her sob into me like Ellen Lang had done. This time I got an erection. I tried to ease away but she pressed against me. Then her head came up and her mouth found me and that was that.
She squeezed hard and bruised my lips with her teeth and bit me. She was as lithe and strong as she l
ooked. I lifted her away from the hearth and the big window and put her on the floor. She pulled off her clothes while I closed and locked the door. Her body was lean and firm and tan with smallish breasts and definition to her abdominals with nice ribs.
She came twice before I did. She bit my shoulders and scratched me and said “Yes” a lot. When it ended we lay on our backs, wet and breathing hard, staring at the ceiling. She got up without a word, picked up her clothes, and disappeared down the hall. After a moment I heard water running.
I dressed and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. When I went back out to the living room, Janet Simon was there. “Well,” she said.
“Well,” I said.
The phone rang. While Janet answered it, I took a peek out the big window. No light green Subaru. No Ellen Lang. No boys on bicycles or little girls in the middle of the street. Everything was on this side of the door.
Janet hung up and said, “That was the girls. They’re still at school. Ellen never picked them up.”
My watch showed three twenty-two.
“What time does school let out?”
“Two forty-five.” She looked uneasy. “The girls want me to go get them.”
“Can you drive?”
She gave me a small tight smile without a lot of humor in it. “I’ve been sobered.”
I nodded. “I’ll stay here for Ellen.”
“What do I say to them about Mort?”
“Don’t say anything. We wait for their mother for that.”
“But she didn’t pick them up.”
“She’s got a lot on her mind.”
We stood there for a while, neither moving toward the other. Then Janet nodded and left. I went back to the chair and drank my water. Then I got up and went back to the big window and watched the drive. Ellen Lang didn’t turn in.
11
Janet Simon was back with the two girls in less than forty minutes. The older one came in first, sullen and red-eyed, and went straight back to her room, slamming her door. Janet and the younger one came in together. Janet gave a little shake of her head, meaning that she hadn’t told them anything. She said, “Did Ellen call?”
“Nope.”
The younger one dropped her books on the long table they have in the entry, then ran past me to the TV, turned it on, and sat on the floor about two feet from the screen. 3-2-1 Contact was starting. It was the episode about directions and map-making. I’d seen it before. “My name’s Elvis. What’s yours?”
“Carrie.”
She inched closer to the set. I guess I was making too much noise.
Janet Simon sat on the hearth, as far from me as she could get and still be in the room. I went over and sat by her. She didn’t look up. I went back to the couch. Here were these two children and their father was dead and here were we, faking it, holding back The Big News.
We watched 3-2-1-Contact until five, then switched channels for Masters of the Universe until five-thirty, then switched again for Leave It to Beaver. It was the one where Eddie Haskell talks Wally into buying a watch so Wally can make like he stole it to get in solid with some tough kids. I’d seen that one before, too. Halfway through Leave It to Beaver, Janet went back to see the older girl, Cindy. I heard a door close, then muffled screaming, Cindy shrieking that they were both crazy and she hated them. She hated him and she hated her mother and she wished she lived in Africa. Carrie inched closer to the television. I said, “Hey, you hungry?”
She shook her head. Even with the lousy angle I had I could see her eyes swelling.
“Listen, you think you could help me find something? It’s your kitchen, right? You know where things are.” She turned up the volume. I said, “I could really go for a donkeyburger. Or the hairball soup. Or the breast of puppy.” She looked at me. “Or the stuffed toad au gratin with duck fuzz.” She giggled and said, “I can make soup.”
In the kitchen, we couldn’t hear Cindy. The kid got a three-quart pot from beneath the sink, a large spoon from the drawer beside the refrigerator, a glass measuring bowl, and a packet of Lipton chicken noodle soup mix. She put the pot on the stove, filled the measuring bowl with three cups of water, then put the water in the pot. She covered it and put the heat on high. She put the packet of soup mix on the counter with the spoon beside it and the measuring bowl in the sink. “We have to wait for the water to boil,” she said.
“Okay.”
We stood there a while, sneaking glances at each other. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. “You got a gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“It’s in the car. I don’t carry it when I don’t have to. It weighs a lot.”
“What if you get jumped?”
I looked over my shoulder. “Here in the house?”
She said, “You see Bateman and Evans?”
“What’s that?”
“This TV show. You know, Bateman and Evans. It used to be on Wednesday nights.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t watch much nighttime TV.”
“Why not?”
“I think it promotes cancer.”
“You’re silly.”
“I guess.”
She said, “My daddy used to represent Evans. I met him once. He was a detective and he always carried a gun.”
“You see, if I carried my gun I’d probably be on television.”
“Well, you have to be an actor, too.” Wouldn’t know it from watching most of those guys.
“I got to meet Lee Majors that time, too, and this other time my daddy got this actor a job on Knightrider and brought me over to Universal and David Hasselhoff was standing there and I got to meet him, too.”
“Unh-huh.”
“Are you going to find my daddy?”
Something long and thin and cold went in just below my stomach and up into my chest. “Soup smells good,” I said.
She said, “I bet I know where he is.”
I nodded. “You want a bowl or a cup?” Some big-time private cop, you want a bowl or a cup?
She said, “We’ve got soup cups in that cabinet there. Blue ones. If I tell you, you can’t say I told you, okay? Cause nobody knows this but me and Daddy and he wouldn’t like it if I said, okay?”
“Okay.” My voice was hoarse.
“Wait here.”
She ran out of the kitchen, then ran back thirty seconds later with a thick green photo album. It was the older kind, with heavy cardboard covers and black felt paper and the pictures held to the pages by little corner tabs. On the front of the album it said, “Home.”
On the first page there were faded sepia pictures dated June 1947 of a man and a woman and a baby. Mort. Adult faces changed or disappeared, but the child’s face grew. Mort as a toddler. Mort riding his bike. Mort and a skinny, long-tongued dog emerging from an infinite field of Kansas wheat.
“My momma made this book up and gave it to my daddy when they moved out here. You see, these are all of my daddy back in Elverton, that’s where Daddy and Momma are from in Kansas. It’s got pictures of Gramma and Grampa and their house and Daddy in school and this dog my daddy had named Teddy and this girl named Joline Price that Momma used to tease Daddy about and all this stuff.”
She flipped the pages for me, taking me on a guided tour of Morton Lang’s life. She would point. I would nod. Isn’t that nice? Mort in grade school. Mort at the paint store in a clerk’s apron. Mort and three buddies sitting around a bedroom, laughing. Crew cuts one year, duck’s ass pompadours the next. Mort in a ’58 Dodge. Mort looking good and strong and proud. Mort in a play. Mort and Ellen. Their prom. She was pretty. Very pretty. Isn’t that nice?
Carrie was saying, “I got up real late to go to the bathroom one night and Daddy was sitting in the living room. He was looking at this book and he was crying, looking at the pictures and crying and I started crying, too, so we looked at the book together and he said, ‘I don’t know what any of this is.’ I said, ‘Tha
t’s Gramma and Grampa, that’s Teddy, that’s Joline Price.’ He always says how much he hated Kansas and how he doesn’t even want to go back there to visit, but I’ll bet that’s where he went. I bet if you went back to Elverton, Kansas, and looked you could find him and make him come home.”
I said, “I think the soup’s ready.”
I ladled out the soup into two blue mugs while she got two spoons and two napkins. Out in the dining room you couldn’t hear Cindy anymore. We sat down and ate, Carrie with the book beside her on the table. Her last meal believing her daddy was alive, could walk in the door and make it better. I got up and found the dark stuff Janet Simon had been drinking and brought it back to the table. Carries nose wrinkled. “Yuck.”
Yeah, kid. After a while Janet came out of the back of the house and asked to see me in the kitchen.
When we were in there she stood well away from me. “It’s after six, Elvis. Ellen wouldn’t stay out like this.” Her face was white.
“Okay,” I said, feeling cold. I picked up the phone and called Lou Poitras.
12
I told Poitras that I had been at Ellen Lang’s since I’d left him earlier that day and that she hadn’t come home. I told him that Ellen had failed to pick up her children from school and that there had been no messages. I told him I was worried. There was a long pause on his end, then some noise I couldn’t make out, and then he asked questions. I gave him Ellen Lang’s description and the make and model of her car. Janet Simon knew the license number, KLX774. He told me to stay put and hung up. I think I caught him going home to dinner.
Janet said, “What do we do?”
“Cops are on the way. Is there someplace we can put the kids so they don’t have to hear it?”
There was. Mrs. Martinson’s, across the street. While Janet walked the girls over—Carrie scared and Cindy sullen—I found directions for a Toshiba automatic coffee maker and fresh Vienna cinnamon beans in the freezer and put on a pot. Then I went out to the Corvette, took the Dan Wesson out of the glove box, put it on, and got out a pale blue cotton jacket I keep in the trunk to wear over it. Made me feel like I was doing something. Maybe I should go across to Mrs. Martinson’s and show the Dan Wesson to Carrie. Maybe it would make her feel like I was doing something, too.
