"Died? Oh, I'm sorry."
"Car accident," Meg offered.
Keith said, "Last year. It was quite a shock."
Pellam realized that they'd dealt with the loss a long time ago but they were uneasy now for him-probably worried that the reference would remind him of Marty. He said, "So you do everything, hm?"
Keith said, "I had a lot of learning to do. Dale-my partner-was sales and finance. Me, I'm just a chemist basically. A scientist. A nerd, you know."
"Studio I used to work for did a film about a chemist one time."
"Really?" Keith smiled. "Usually you just see movies about cops and monsters and private eyes."
"I guess it wasn't really a chemist. It was called The Surrey Alchemist. We made it in England. It had very limited distribution over here."
"Witches and sorcerers."
"Alchemists were considered scientists at the time," Pellam said. "We did a lot of research. Turning lead into gold is called base alchemy. True alchemists practice sparygia."
He noticed Meg checking out the plates, pushing bowls toward Pellam when the helpings got too close to empty. Keith seemed fascinated with the story and wasn't eating.
"Sparygia?" Meg asked.
Pellam said, "It means extracting basic properties from things, usually plants. What an alchemist does is try to find the essence of something and that essence supposedly had powers beyond just the chemical composition of the material."
Keith said, "I remember from a scientific history course I took at MIT. What's the movie about?"
"It was based on a real story. In the late 1700s, in England, there was a rich man named James Price. He was like a lot of the wealthy then. You know, dabbling at science. Maybe he was a little more than a dabbler since he got named a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also kind of a crank. A little bizarre. He set up a lab in his home-in Surrey, out in the country. He does all this secret work then calls a meeting of his friends and fellow scientists. He brought them into his lab, where he'd set up a display-the three basic ingredients of alchemy: mercury, nitrate and sulfur-"
Keith laughed. "Hey, you know what those are?"
Meg said, "Let him finish."
Pellam said to Keith, "What?"
"A formula for a bullet. Nitrate and sulfur are in gun-powder and fulminate of mercury's in the firing cap."
Pellam laughed. "Wish I'd known that. It would've been a nice metaphor for the flick. Anyway, Price also had some other ingredients-something secret-in covered boxes. He got this crowd together and made a grand entrance. He looked awful, though. Sick and pasty, exhausted. Then he mixed a white powder with the three basic ingredients and turned them into an ingot of silver. He did the same thing with a red powder and produced gold. The metals were tested by a metalsmith and were supposedly genuine."
"Then he sold the ingredients on late-night cable TV and made a fortune," Meg said.
Keith hushed her.
Pellam continued, "But here's the interesting part. Price kept up the alchemy and made a huge amount of gold but after a few months his health began to fail. Finally, when the Society insisted he do another experiment under observation, he agreed. Three members of the Society rode to his laboratory one morning. He invited them in, set up his chemicals and drank a cup of poison. He died right in front of them-without revealing what the powders were."
Keith, tilting back his chair, then said, "What was it, a hoax? And he had to kill himself?"
"We left it up in the air. It's tough to make movies based on true stories. You have to pamper reality."
Meg laughed at this.
Keith suddenly squinted at Pellam. "You seem real familiar."
Pellam said, "Really?"
"Were you ever famous?"
Meg said, "Keith-"
Pellam said seriously, "In my mother's eyes."
Meg laughed. Keith shook his head. "It'll come to me." He squinted again in recognition but apparently the thought vanished; he began talking about his company, new product lines. Stories only a businessman would love. Pellam nodded and ground his teeth together to squash the yawns. He was pleased that Keith wasn't a movie hound and hadn't asked for one iota of Hollywood gossip. On the other hand he was a major bore. Pellam hardly listened to a word he said-until he realized Keith was talking about someone dubbed Miss Woodstock, who knew the astrological sign, as well as a few other intimate facts, of every single man in town. Meg leaned forward and with a coy smile caught Pellam's eye. He knew what she was up to and kept his eyes on Keith until she disappeared into the kitchen of dishes.
The womenfolk gone it was time to talk about serious stuff. Keith lowered his head and asked, "Have you talked to the insurance agent? About the accident?"
"Not yet. Meg gave me his name. The doctor said he'd have a bill ready for me in a couple days. He was waiting for the X-ray lab's bill."
"If you have any problems, you come to me, okay?"
"Appreciate it."
"How long you think you'll be in town?"
"Don't really know. I-"
Meg returned. "Coffee's almost ready." She sat down.
"So tell us, you married?" Meg asked.
He'd told her. In the clinic. Maybe the question was for Keith's benefit, to show that she hadn't known. It meant a bit of intimacy existed between them. Pellam's eyes swept over her dress. The pin on above her breast. She looked a lot younger today. The makeup was better. Maybe she had to wear realtor camouflage when she was selling houses.
He realized he was staring at her and still hadn't answered the question.
"Nope," he said. "Was divorced a few years ago."
"That's right. You'd mentioned that."
Oh. A bad memory. That's all.
"There's a girl I've been dating off and on. Nothing too serious. Her name's Trudie." (Damn! He'd forgotten to call. He would tomorrow. Definitely.)
A timer bonged in the kitchen. As Meg rose Pellam glanced at the pin on her dress again. Thought of Janine's pin. And her breasts. She'd had a moon. Meg was wearing a sun.
"Dessert," Meg said, walking back in from the kitchen with a tray.
Keith said, "Meg's a whiz with desserts."
She set the tray down.
"Brownies," Pellam said.
"You like brownies?" she asked.
"Can't get enough."
The beige car pulled off the highway and into an asphalt parking lot, which was slowly turning into black gravel.
Sleepy Hollow Motor Lodge.
"Here we be," Billy said.
The twins got out of the car and Bobby snagged a big bag from the backseat. "Heinekens," he said, proud he'd bought imports in Gennie Ale country.
They inhaled deeply and Bobby said, "Fall. I love it."
Billy looked at his watch. "Late."
Bobby walked past him and opened the door. Inside was an ugly square room, too hot, too brightly lit.
Billy followed him in.
"Toasty," Billy said. He opened a window.
"Fucking hot. Heh."
Neither of them really liked the hotel that much. Cheap, plastic, tacky. It reminded them of Brooklyn, where they'd been born, or Yonkers, where they'd lived until their junior years in high school, when their father had been laid off from the Stella D'Oro bakery and had moved the family up to Dutchess County. He'd bought what he said was an antiques business, but which turned out to be-to the young twins' delight-a junkyard.
They'd finished high school. Bobby, just barely, though he was captain of the rifle team. Billy, with a B average. When their father died they inherited the family's lime-green split-level and the junkyard, which they renamed after themselves, Robert and William. They'd promised each other that they'd only marry another set of twins-which didn't make room for a lot of matrimonial material in Dutchess County-so their social life was pretty limited.
They had a few other business dealings that took them to New York every couple of weeks and they were always glad to hightail it back to their house, which happened t
o be in the first tract of land that Wex Ambler had ever developed in Cleary. It was a nice house. Big and filled with the things they loved-dark still life paintings of dead birds and rabbits, prints of leaping fish, carved wooden statues of horses and bears, a Franklin Mint model car collection. The twin leather recliners, Sears Best, were aimed right at a huge stereo TV. Within arm's reach of Billy's chair was a Better microwave, which was perfect for heating nachos and chili during Jeopardy or The Tonight Show.
A perfect home for two boys on their own.
Exactly what this dingy hotel was not.
Billy expressed this sentiment, as he stepped on a silverfish in the bathroom.
His brother shrugged. "We don't have much choice. Can't do this at home."
"Don't mean I have to like it here."
Bobby shrugged in reluctant agreement. Then sat down on the bed and opened two beers. The twins drained them. Billy turned the TV on, grumbling that the remote was broken.
In five minutes there was a knock on the door.
Billy opened it. Ned, the boy from the pancake breakfast, stood there, in jeans, a T-shirt and a varsity football jacket.
"Ned, hey, how you doing? Come on in."
"Hey, guys, what's up?"
"Nothing yet," Bobby laughed, beating Billy to the punch by a millisecond.
Ned frowned, not getting what seemed to be a joke. "Kinda hot in here," he said.
"Yeah, a little. Funny weather."
"Hey, totally fine place here. Totally." Ned looked around.
The twins exchanged wry glances as Ned studied the brown and orange shag, the laminated brown furniture, the prints of flowers bolted to the wall. Looked like he was examining the grand ballroom of a Fifth Avenue hotel.
They cracked open more beers and turned on a rerun of the Bill Cosby show.
Bobby said, "He's stupid in this one. Cosby, I mean. He just mugs for the camera and counts his money. I liked him better in I Spy. That was some real acting."
"I never saw it," the boy said.
"On before your time. These two CIA guys. White guy, he was Robert Cummings-"
"Gulp," Billy corrected.
"Robert Gulp. Right. And Bill Cosby. Man, it was a good program. They knew some real shit karate."
"Course, this show's got Lisa Bonet," Bobby pointed out.
Billy called, "Hey, Ned, would you get a hard-on kissing Lisa Bonet?"
"I get a hard-on looking at Lisa Bonet."
"Hot as hell in here," Billy said. He took off his shirt and wiped sweat from his face with it. Underneath he wore a sleeveless T-shirt. "Hey, Ned, you're one strong dude. See if you can turn the heat down."
The boy pulled off his red and white jacket and dropped it on the bed. He wrestled with the radiator knob for five minutes until he was crimson-faced from the effort.
"Damn, it's frozen."
"Aw, forget it," Bobby said. "We'll just sweat." He unbuttoned his shirt to his navel-no tee underneath-and flapped it to cool himself. The twins dropped into the room's two chairs. Ned started to sit on the floor but Billy said, "Naw, take the place of honor." He nodded at the bed and Ned flopped onto the spongy mattress. Bobby handed him another beer. They watched TV for a half hour.
Bobby said, "Hey, you want to try something?"
Ned said, "I guess. I don't know."
Bobby pulled an envelope out of his pocket, a small manilla envelope. He rattled it. "Surprise."
"What's that?" the boy asked.
He opened the envelope and showed the contents to the boy.
"The hell's that?"
Inside were two dozen bits that looked like rock candy.
"It's sweet," Bobby said.
Billy gently shook the envelope until three or four spilled into the boy's hand. He lifted them and smelled.
"Don't smell like much."
"Yep."
"We're gonna eat fucking candy?"
"Sure, why not?"
Billy and Bobby each took one. The boy lifted his palm to his lips but they touched his wrist. Billy on the right, Bobby on the left. "Uh-uh. Just one at a time."
"Huh?"
"Just one."
The boy dropped the others back into the envelope. Then lifted the single crystal to his mouth. He ate it slowly.
"It is sweet. It's-" He stopped speaking. His eyes went wide then suddenly his lids drooped. "Man," he whispered. "This is totally fresh. Man." He brushed at his ears as if they were clogged, a dumb grin on his face. "What the fuck is this?" His words faded into a giggle. "Man. Excellent."
They knew what was happening-how the soft cotton was expanding into the crevices of his mind, the warmth, the coming feeling starting at the fingertips and flowing along the skin like a woman laying slowly, slowly down on your body, dissolving into a warm liquid, flowing, melting…
"You happy?" Bobby asked.
The boy giggled. "Man." He opened his mouth and inhaled as if he were tasting air.
Billy caught his brother's eye and a slight nod passed between them. Bobby closed up the envelope and slipped it into the boy's jeans pocket, where his hand lingered for a long moment.
9
The third on his list. The R &W Trading Post on Route 9, which the poker-playing boys had been kind enough to suggest to him, was the one. The time was 9 a.m. and a faded sign promised the place was open.
Pellam parked the camper in the small lot and walked back along the shoulder, which was gravelly and strewn with flattened Bud cans and cello wrappers from junk food. Occasional cars and pickups zipped past and he felt the snap of their slipstream.
The Trading Post stretched away behind a gray, broken stockade fence, which was decorated with some of the artifacts that were waiting to be traded: A rusted Mobil gas sign, a blackface jockey hitching post, a cracked wagon wheel, a whiskey aging barrel, an antique wheelbarrow, a dozen hubcaps, a bent plow, a greasy treadle sewing machine mechanism. If R &W had put the premier items here in the window Pellam wasn't too eager to see what lay behind the fence.
But that didn't interest him anyway. What had caught his attention was what rested at the far end of the lot, where the chain-link gate opened onto the secrets of the Trading Post: the rental car responsible for Marty's death.
There was a small shack in front of the fence. It leaned to the left at a serious angle, like a Dogpatch residence. When Pellam knocked no one answered. He strolled over to the jetsam of the car.
The wreck was scary, the way bad ones always are-seeing the best Detroit can do, no longer glossy and hard, but twisted, with stretch marks deep in the steel. The front half was pretty much intact but in the back the paint was all blistered or missing and it was filled with black, melted plastic. Pellam could see the gas tank had blown up. The metal had bent outward like foil. Inside of the car nothing remained of the seats except springs and one or two black tufts of upholstery, sour as burnt hair.
Then he found the holes.
At first, he wasn't sure-there were so many perforations in the car. Parts where the metal had burned clean through, dents and triangular wounds where shrapnel from the tank had fired outward. But, crouching down, studying the metal, he found two holes that were rounder than the others, about a third of an inch in diameter. Just the size of a.30 or.303 bullet-which wasn't to say that some hunters or kids hadn't left the holes there after they found the wreck (Pellam himself had spent a number of lovely, clandestine afternoons playing Bonnie and Clyde with his father's Colt.45 automatic and an abandoned 1954 Chevy pickup). But still-
"Help you?"
Pellam rose slowly and turned.
The man was in his thirties, rounding in the belly, wearing overalls and a cowboy hat. He had a moonish face and weird bangs.
"Howdy," Pellam offered.
"To yourself," the man said, grinning. His hands were slick with grease and he wiped them ineffectually with a wad of paper towels.
"This your place?"
"Yep. I'm the R of R &W. Robert. Well, Bobby I go by."
"Go
t a lot of interesting stuff here, Bobby."
"Yep. Used to be all Army-Navy but surplus ain't what it used to be."
"That a fact?" Pellam said.
"You don't get the deals you used to. My daddy, owned the place before us, he'd buy some all-right from Uncle Sam. Compasses, Jeep parts, tires, clothes. World War Two, you know. Bayonets, Garands, M-1s. Originals, I'm talking. I'm talking creosote and oil paper."
The man's eyes strayed to the wreck. "I got a better set of wheels, you're interested."
"Nope, just happened to notice it."
"I bought it from a garage over in Cleary. A hundred bucks. There'll be something under the hood I'm thinking I can salvage, then sell 'er to somebody for scrap. Could clear three hundred… But if you're not after a vehicle what would you be looking for?"
"Just sight-seeing."
"You're not from around here," Bobby said, "but your, you know, accent. Sounds familiar."
"Born over in Simmons. Only about fifty miles away."
"Got a cousin lives there." The man walked back toward the shack. "You need any help, just holler. I don't mark prices on nothing, too much trouble but you see something you take a liking to we'll work something out. I'll listen to any reasonable offer."
"Keep that in mind."
"You price stuff too high," Bobby explained, "people just aren't going to buy it. Never make money unless you make a sale."
"Good philosophy."
This time it was the sheriff himself.
Pellam hadn't even set foot on the asphalt of Main Street before the man was next to him. He smelled of Old Spice or some kind of drugstore aftershave. Unlike the deputies he was tall and thin, like a hickory limb. He wasn't wearing any Cool-Hand Luke law enforcer sunglasses either.
"How you doing today, sir?"
Sir, again.
He was wearing that smile, that indescribable smile the whole constabulary seemed to have. Like Moonies.
Pellam stepped out of the camper and answered, "Not bad. How 'bout yourself?"
"Getting by. Hectic this time of year. Crazy, all these people come looking at colored leaves. I don't get it myself. I'm thinking maybe we should open a travel agency here, take tours of people into Manhattan to look at all the concrete and spotlights."
Shallow Graves Page 10
