by Gregg Bell
HALT!
Under that: Don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired!
Well, he was hungry, angry, lonely and tired, but more than anything he was scared. Could that call for a new pamphlet? SHALT! When he looked up from the pamphlet Rufus Tucker walked in.
Denny felt like he was seeing things but it was Tucker all right, and he looked beat up pretty bad. Beaten up by the booze, his eyes red, his skin blanched, and he still had the shiner Denny had given him at The Wild Bull. Denny thought of what Orson had said, that he’d overheard Tucker congratulating Brig for killing Rashida. Which had to be pure insanity but maybe it meant something. Because everything meant something, right? He thought of Tucker coming with his buds to beat his butt and Powell saving him. And now it was looking like Tucker was a fellow member of the AA program. Yeah, it was all just too weird.
What could Denny do? The bigoted loudmouth hater had invaded the sacred refuge of the Serenity Club. But the more Denny thought about it, the fact of the matter was Tucker had just as much right to be there as anybody. What a person had done excluded no one from belonging to the program. What’s more, the program called for everyone to welcome newcomers. Tucker was walking toward the coffee table when he finally looked over. He stopped, spun around and headed for the door.
No, Denny thought. Don’t leave because of me. No matter who Tucker was, Denny didn’t wish him losing his sobriety, especially new-found sobriety. But crap! It was Tucker—an enemy! Aw, what the hell. Denny sucked it up and ran after him.
“Tucker!” he called down the club stairs. “Hang on!”
But the door shut to the street. Denny saw a snow squall blow down the sidewalk. He didn’t have his coat but he ran out after him anyway. “Tucker!”
Tucker hurried down the sidewalk. Denny caught up with him and walked at his side.
“Come back, Tucker. You deserve to be there as much as anyone.”
“Get away from me.”
“Look, man, forget about me. You’re welcome up there. Everybody is.”
Tucker picked up his pace.
Denny hurried ahead and walked backwards in front of him. “Look, I want you to come back.”
Tucker stopped walking and stared.
“Hey, man,” Denny said, tucking his hands under his armpits and shivering, “no matter who we are, we need each other in this thing to stay sober. We’re all we’ve got.”
Tucker looked down at the frozen slush on the sidewalk and swallowed. He looked at Denny. “What’s in it for you? What’s your angle?”
Denny shook his head. “Nothing, man. I’ve got no angle. Staying sober, that’s the angle. Now come on. I’m freezing out here.”
Tucker took a deep breath, eased it out and started back for the club.
Denny didn’t know what to say to the guy. He didn’t say anything at all. But Tucker came back up to the club, and the old-timers got a hold of him and showed him warmth and fellowship. Denny looked at his watch. It was time to go to Loftis’.
* * *
Loftis lived in Berwyn in a bungalow—on a street lined with identical bungalows—that Denny was surprised had business zoning. There were no flashy neon ‘psychic reader’ signs or all-seeing eyes in triangles, like on the dollar bill, most psychic joints have. It was a typical bungalow but the snow on its sidewalks hadn’t been shoveled in what looked like forever, only the well-worn path of the mailman cutting across the lawn giving any indication anyone lived there. The sole distinguishing characteristic of the building was a huge dormer window.
Whatever, Denny thought as he trudged up the stairs to the door. Hank the psychic. Denny could hardly believe he was there. He’d always thought the guy was a quack. There was no doorbell. Odd. But there was a door knocker in the shape of an octopus. Okay. He gave it a try. Three solid knocks.
Nothing. He waited. He gave the octopus another go. He took a deep breath. He was half expecting a gargoyle to open the door, if anything at all did. He turned to look at his car. The snow had begun falling again, and the warmth of the car’s hood kept the snow from sticking there, but the rest of the car was turning white. Then he heard a woman’s voice.
“Coming! Oh, I’m coming! Hold on!”
Denny leaned closer to the door to hear better.
“I was cleaning the mirror in the bathroom,” the voice continued.
The door opened. A woman, a little on the hefty side, in a striped blouse and yellow rubber cleaning gloves, held a spray bottle. “Well, hello.” She smiled. “I’m Larry. (It’s a nickname for Larissa.)” She switched the spray bottle from her right to her left hand and put her gloved hand out to shake. “Oh.” She laughed and yanked the glove off.
Denny shook her hand. “I’m Dennis O’Callaghan.”
“I know.”
Denny thought, Was she psychic too?
The woman smiled again. Very small teeth and copious gums. “I know because you’re Maureen’s son. Maureen’s showed us pictures. When I heard you were coming I could hardly wait. We just love Maureen—your mom. Now come on in.” She stepped aside. “Before you turn into an icicle. Ha ha.”
Denny walked in. The place looked comfortable. The living room had a stylish rust-colored sofa pit, prints of meadows and hay bundles on the walls.
“Hank’s upstairs,” Larry said, leading the way down the hallway to a staircase. “His office is in the dormer bedroom.” She laughed. “That way I stay out of his hair—or at least I try to.” She laughed again and started up the stairs. “He’s looking forward to meeting you too,” she called over her shoulder.
Up the stairs they went, the walls loaded with family photos, many done by a professional photographer. Could this really be a psychic’s home? Besides the octopus door knocker the place looked All-American. Until...the dormer bedroom.
Larry waved him in, saying, “Have a seat. I’ll get Hank.”
Now this looked like a psychic’s place. Gold-painted walls, the dormer window covered with a shimmery curtain, the roof starting low from the window and rising. A table—an altar?—was set up with a gold Buddha sitting happily atop it, and alongside him were candles and a plaster statue of a hand, as if reaching up through the table. Paintings of angels on the walls. Two gold chairs faced each other. Hank and Denny’s knees were going to be practically touching if they sat there.
Denny kept standing. This whole scene was totally not in his mental wheelhouse. He wanted to leave, just take off. The place felt wrong somehow. He could claim sickness or lack of time or not being able to afford the fee, or he didn’t need to claim anything at all, he could just bolt. But the place was distracting him and his curiosity pinned him there. Would they read Tarot cards? A Ouija board? Was Hank a Buddhist? No, this had been a bad idea from the beginning. He turned to go.
“I’m Hank.” A man stood in the doorway. An unexpectedly young man or at least he looked young. He wore a blue long-sleeved shirt unbuttoned at the collar and he, like Larry, could’ve stood to lose a few. Short black hair, a faint five o’clock shadow on his clean-shaven face. He looked...he looked...normal.
“I thought...I thought...” Denny found himself searching for words.
“That I’d be older?”
“Yes.”
“And stranger-looking?”
“Well, yes.” Denny laughed.
“Surprise.” Hank held out his arms and let them flap against his sides. He nodded toward the chairs. “I know you have a lot on your mind, Dennis. Please have a seat and tell me how I can help you.”
Denny figured he could deal with this guy. Yeah, the guy seemed normal. But how was a normal guy going to be able to help him? “Listen, Hank, you’re cool and you’ve obviously helped my mom a lot, but...” He shook his head. “...you’re not going to be able to help me.”
Hank nodded. “You’re afraid you might’ve killed someone.”
Denny stared at him.
Hank sat and smiled. “Have a seat.”
What could Denny do? He was transfixed. He s
at. They chit-chatted a bit. Talked about the snow. Larry was Hank’s sister. She had a cleaning fetish but besides that was pretty well-adjusted. Denny asked about the Buddha and the angels and the hand. Hank said it was all just for show. That he had a gift, his psychic ability, he wanted to share with the world, that was all. People expected the mysterious setting so he had it but it was only for the vibe. The power, his gift, was in the spirit world.
Denny wondered what he would tell the guy. He wondered if he needed to tell him anything. The mind reading and all. He felt vulnerable, exposed. “So are you a mind reader? Are you reading my mind right now?”
“No and no.” Hank shifted in his chair and bumped knees with Denny. “What I do is in my spirit. I’m like a receiving station. It’s as if I have a really good antenna for what’s being broadcast out there.”
“Broadcast. Like radio or TV waves?”
“Exactly. Think of a TV antenna. It doesn’t send anything. It just receives the signals and transmissions in the air.”
“Then you know everything about me, I guess. Because I’m broadcasting my thoughts.”
“I know you’re scared. But while I have this gift, Denny, it still helps to communicate in the conventional way. Tell me, why are you here?”
Denny shrugged. “You already know.”
“But you hope to accomplish something. What is that?” Hank smiled.
Denny said in a voice barely above a whisper, “I want to know what I did the night my ex-wife was murdered.”
Hank nodded for a while. He reached over and pinched out a candle that was guttering on the altar. He looked at Denny. “Do you really?”
What was that supposed to mean? “What do you mean?”
“Denny, the truth is the scariest thing on earth.”
Denny could faintly hear Larry singing downstairs. The more he thought about what Hank said, the more he realized he was right. He was scared out of his mind to know what he’d done...but he had to know. “Are you saying I did it? Are you saying I killed her?”
Hank shook his head.
“Then what are you saying?”
“Okay.” Hank folded his hands on his lap. “I’m saying that you know if you did or not.”
“But that’s just it. I don’t know. That’s why I’m here.”
Hank kept shaking his head. “No, Denny, you know. That night, even though you were so drunk, you saw things, you heard things, you walked, you talked, your mind functioned, granted at a much more rudimentary level than normal, but yes, it functioned. It took things in and recorded them. But what happens is when the truth is too scary, we block things out, we selectively forget them, but the information is still there.”
All this fancy-schmancy talk but at some level it was making sense. “So you’re saying I killed her and don’t want to know?”
The psychic leaned as far back as the straight-backed chair would allow. “I don’t know that you killed her. What I know is that you remember what you did that night, and whatever you did, or whatever you saw someone else do, is still recorded in your brain. It’s there. It will always be there. And it will reveal itself when you have the courage to summon it up.”
* * *
It seemed to Denny like he and Hank had talked for five minutes, and it seemed like they’d talked for five hours. However long it had been, Larry was calling her brother to dinner. It was apparent Hank lived mostly in the spiritual realm but that he wasn’t neglecting the bodily either. Larry pleaded with Denny to stay for dinner but his head was too spinning, and his spirit—if there was such a thing—too tingling, and so he walked out into what was turning into a snowstorm.
The snow was a reality check. Brushing off his car. The wind blowing the snowflakes into his face, down the back of his neck, making him shiver. But he couldn’t stop thinking about what Hank had said. He already knew what happened the night Rashida was murdered. Could it be true? The explanation had seemed plausible. He’d said the only people who don’t perceive things are dead people, and pretty obviously Denny hadn’t been dead the night Rashida was killed.
He tossed his snow brush into the back and climbed in. The rear window was already covered again and he tapped the car behind him as he wedged out of the tight spot. Wow. He knew. He already knew what happened the night Rashida was killed. He drove off.
So if he knew, he didn’t have to find out what happened from anybody else. He only needed to remember. But how did he do that? Oh God! He really should’ve asked Hank. He thought about turning around and going back but the snow was getting heavier, and he didn’t like the idea of presenting himself as a total moron to Hank either. Crap! He was going to suffer for such self-stupidity and he knew it.
He looked at the dash clock. A little after seven. Had he really been there three hours? The whole thing was a blur in his memory. Larry. Pudgy Hank and his being a TV antenna. But whatever. Maybe, Denny figured, his body would know what to do, how to remember on its own. Maybe Hank was right—he just needed enough courage to remember.
But who ever had enough courage to do anything in life? We get close to ‘enough courage’ sometimes but we never quite get there. No, ultimately fear rules the day and we lose every time. Human beings have the path of least resistance gene. At least Denny knew he did. And right now for him the path of least resistance meant only one thing—Summer.
It was hardly a difficult choice to make. A while back it would’ve been but not lately. Yes, she’d been acting a little strange but it seemed he could do no wrong in her eyes—and oh, the sex! He called her. She was finishing another one of her online classes but said he could come over, and to drive safely because it was blizzarding by her.
Yeah, it was unbelievable how she’d changed toward him. And this time was no exception. She fed him and then just about tore his clothes off. Ah, Denny thought as he stroked her cheek afterward, women will never know what a turn-on a sexually aggressive woman is to a man. Now, as they lay in bed she clung to him.
“Denny?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think I’m pretty?”
He smiled inside, shook his head and said, “No, not really.”
She raised her chin from his chest and looked at him.
He laughed. “Summer, you know you’re absolutely gorgeous.”
She frowned but leaned her head back down. “No, I’m not.”
“Sorry, darlin’, you are.”
“Denny?”
“What?”
“Do you love me?”
He wasn’t ready for this. This was territory where even one slightly false word could ruin everything. He was a little miffed at her for taking things this far but had to deal with it. “You know I do.” He stroked her cheek.
“Do you love me as much as you loved Rashida?”
Denny felt as if the blood stiffened in his veins. It would’ve been enough of a pain in the butt question if Rashida were alive, but now that she was gone... Answering this one was going to be trouble no matter where he went with it. “Don’t be worrying about Rashida, Summer. You’re the only one for me.”
“But.” Her head came off his chest again. “You were always talking about her as if she was still your wife.”
He blew out an exhalation.
“You even called me by her name after we made love.”
His stomach clenched. “One time. I only did one time.”
Her head went back down. “But now that she’s gone...”
He frowned. The peaceful affection between them was shot. He was pissed. “But now that she’s gone what?”
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
“No.” He pushed up, nudging her off him. “You’re always bringing this crazy jealousy stuff up. Just tell me—now that she’s gone what?”
“Now that she’s gone I can finally be your wife.”
Chapter Twelve
The snow kept coming down, the wind whipping, the temperature dropping. Even so, Denny couldn’t stay with Summer that night. She was creeping h
im out with what she was saying about Rashida. He scraped the ice off his windshield, sprays of ice crystals blowing back into his face in the wind gusts. And he was tormented by what Hank Loftis had said. He already knew what happened the night Rashida was murdered and all he had to do was remember. Screw it—snowstorm or not—he was going back there to find out how to remember it.
For who knew how long he’d be free before the cops might get him, and then he’d have no chance to find Rashida’s killer. Yeah, he had to know and fast. The driving was miserable. The snowplows had been out on the main roads but the snow was mixed with freezing rain now, little ice pellets really, and the roads were treacherous. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited at a light. The car in front of his fishtailed, its rear end sliding a half-lane to the right, as it pulled away.
Because the side streets weren’t plowed he had to park several blocks from Loftis’ bungalow this time. Whatever. He trudged through the snow, hood pulled down low to keep the wind from lashing his face with the ice pellets. He could’ve called to let Loftis know he was coming. He managed to check his watch. 9:30 p.m. He frowned. Maybe he should’ve. But he wasn’t calling now.
He turned the corner onto Loftis’ block. A gust of wind reared up and he had to walk backwards to shield himself. He was a couple of doors down from Loftis’ when he turned around and saw a Ford Crown Victoria, a typical unmarked cop car with the green lettered numbers and the first character “M” on its license plate, which all city-owned vehicles have. His heart jumped into his throat. He stopped walking.
He could see the lights on behind the sheer curtains in Loftis’ picture window. Yeah, he knew cops used psychics. But what were the odds a cop was there this time of night? In this weather? And even if it was a cop what were the odds in a city of nearly three million it was a cop trying to get information about Rashida’s murder? A cop he needed to be afraid of running into? He shifted from foot to foot to keep some feeling in his feet. Then he shuddered deeply when he thought of all he’d told Loftis. And there’d been no talk of confidentiality. Loftis could be burying him right now.
