“If I can.”
“Can you do it now?”
He squinted. “Now?”
“Lenny’s lonely.”
“Yeah, well, who’s not?” But he got up all the same and put his finger to his lips.
I nodded and made myself busy elsewhere in the big room while he moved very casually into the hall. In five he was back.
He motioned me over to the doorway. “Donna’s gotta go on break. You wanna come keep me company while I spot her a couple minutes to herself?”
I shrugged like somebody was watching us. “Okay.”
We headed out the door and back to the front desk. I waved at Donna. She stood up and poked Scooter affectionately in the arm. “Thanks, big boy. I’ll be back right away. Nothing’s going on. You gettin’ what you need, Flap?”
I looked down. “Just about.”
She hoisted up her purse. “Five minutes, Scooter.”
He nodded, sat at her desk. I leaned on the counter. She went off down the hall.
I looked down at the countertop. “Nice work, Scooter.”
He kept his eyes focused on the desk in front of him. “Help yourself.”
I took a look down the hall: It was empty. I popped over to the file cabinets, zoomed in on PERSONNEL, zipped it open, and checked the Ds. There it was: AUGUSTA DONNE. NO phone, but an address on St. Dominic, one of the grand old streets just off Ponce close to the Majestic. It’s a big old rich-people-house, old-family-money street. Nice address too: 1 St. Dominic. I slid the drawer in silently, sauntered back around the counter.
He leaned forward a little in his chair. “So, Flap…whata ya hear from Neena?”
“She’s a lesbian dental hygienist in New Mexico.”
“A hygienist for lesbians?”
“Got a girlfriend.”
“Ah.” He had to smile. “That Neena.”
“Uh-huh. Look, Scooter…thanks.”
“I didn’t do a thing.”
“Okay. I got some work to do — you want me to keep you up on the situation?”
“Nope. I always find it’s better not to know these things.”
I pointed at him. “It’s your world.”
He nodded sagely. “I just let everybody else play in it.”
I shoved myself off from the counter and headed out to the parking lot. It was really dark, and colder than it should have been. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go to the address or to the Easy for a glass or to the Golden Potala for a little repast before I continued my labors. I was really just trying to put off going home and thinking about the events of the day: the dead girls, the ankle bracelets, the sad little apartment, the terrified topless dancers, the smell of decay in the art-movie parking lot, the all-knowing bouncer, and the psychological techniques of the man who ran off with my ex — not to mention the trouble in our little corner of Tibet. I sat in the car for a minute, tried to let it warm up, making up my mind. Curiosity got the better of me. What if I just drove over to St. Dominic and there she was? Mystery solved. I shoved it into gear and backed out into the night.
Chapter 10: One St. Dominic
So you go right out of the parking lot, past the fine old Callanwolde house — a little castle of a family home that’s now a center for the arts — and a few blocks later you can turn down the streets of the saints.
But it’s not the first stringers. No St. Peter or St. John. It’s all St. Charles or St. Imogene — a short jog on which will lead you to St. Dominic. The address 1 St. Dominic is not, as you might imagine, the first one on the block — it’s right smack in the middle and up on a little rise. Looming in the moonlight, it looks a lot like a sinister fortress, turrets and all.
I parked on the street. The moon was up, but the clouds were so thick that there was only a dull imitation of light. Still, I found my way up the drive to the door. It had a big lion’s head with a ring in its mouth you could use to knock. I rang the bell.
And there he was: the last guy in the world I would have expected at the door.
“Hey, Flap. You find her?”
“Hey, Lenny. What are you doing here?”
“’S my house, genius — where else would I be at this time of night? Gee, Flap, for a brain you sure are slow sometimes.”
“This is your house.”
“You wanna come in?”
“Absolutely.”
He stepped back. The hallway opened up to a waterfall of a staircase directly opposite the entrance, with a huge den flanking the right side. In the den there was a fireplace large enough to roast Citizen Kane on a spit — and a cheery roaring blaze.
“Some digs, Lenny.”
He danced into the den ahead of me, dressed in a snappy bathrobe and very expensive-looking slippers. “It’s comfortable.”
The room was filled with antiques and dark wood and books — and you just knew someplace in the room there was twenty-year-old port.
Lenny plunked down in a throne of a Queen Anne chair and waved at me to take up residence in the twin beside it. “Sit by the fire. It’s great!”
I sat. “Lenny, this is like out of a movie this room.”
He grinned from ear to ear. “I know.”
“How long you live here?”
He had to think. “Three years? Since I came to Atlanta. My dad used to live here — still does sometimes. He’s got houses all over.”
“You came here from…”
“Boston. It’s cold.”
“I know. You move here account of the weather?”
“Well, sorta.”
“Sorta?”
“I had a fight with Dad.”
“Really.”
“Uh-huh.”
“About…”
“About a week before I moved here.”
“No, Lenny…what was the fight about?”
“Money.”
“You wanted a bigger allowance?”
“No. I wanted to give a lot of money away.”
“You did?”
“Yup. Like to the less fortunate and stuff.”
“Like who? Who’s less fortunate?”
“Than me? Gee, Flap — look around. Almost everybody’s less fortunate than me.”
So I humored him and looked around the room. I thought about the guys he was hanging with on the streets, and how this room would have been paradise to that crowd — to any crowd. I thought about my crummy little apartment, and the two girls in their empty room at the Alhambra, and the seedy backstage at the Tip Top. Then I looked over at Lenny in his big old chair and smiled. Here’s a guy who barely has two good thoughts to rub together to keep his brain sparking, who’s an outpatient at a mental hospital, who made up a wife just because he’s lonely and she’s beautiful — and he’s got it figured that most everybody in the world is less fortunate than he is. You had to love him.
“I see your point, Len. By the way, did you know there’s a Cascade Road here in Atlanta? South side. Where I grew up, in fact.”
He nodded. “Yeah. There’s a Cascade Road in lots of your big cities…where Dad’s been. So why ya here, Flap?”
So Cascade Road’s in a lot of big cities. Don’t know why, but it creeped me. “Just wanted to tell you what I found out about your wife so far, is all.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s really all that matters to me.”
It was like he was afraid to hear the facts because they might upset the delicate construction of his fantasy.
“Just wanted you to know I was on the ball, Len.”
“I know you can do this, Flap. I really miss her. I really want her back.”
“You know Donna over at the hospital, the front desk?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know she got Augusta fired.”
“Yeah.”
“How come?”
“Everybody was jealous of Augusta. She was smarter and prettier and neater than any twelve other people put together. They all thought she
was stuck up, but she wasn’t. She was nice.”
I started to press just how nice she was in the X-ray room, but it suddenly seemed like…very bad manners. In a room like that, manners counted.
“Lenny, just like you said last night at Easy, her last known address was here. That’s why I came. I thought she might be here.”
He gave me such a laugh. “Hellfire, Flap. Why in the world would I want you to find her if she was already home? And people call me a retard.”
“Glad I could hand you a chuckle. Mind if I look around?”
“Sure. It’s a great house. Look everywhere.” He popped up out of his chair. “Check out this cool stairway.” And he dashed off into the hall.
I followed. The stairway was unbelievable. It must have been ten feet wide, all oak. The banister ended in carved wooden lions, one on either side of the steps, and disappeared above, curving away and to our left. Lining the walls as you’d ascend there were Dutch Masters-looking paintings, stern and warm at the same time.
Lenny flopped on the floor like a kid. “Lookit the lions.” And he growled at one of them.
“Neat. Could I see some of Augusta’s stuff?”
“Sure.” He bobbed back up and shot up the stairs.
At the top there was a long, dark hall. He was nowhere to be seen by the time I got there, so I peeked in every room. They were guest rooms mostly, set up like somebody was just about to visit: fresh flowers, turned-down beds. But I figured they always looked that way.
After a minute I heard him in a room at the end of the hall. When I got there he was going through a closet.
“That’s her clothes?”
“Gee, Flap, what took ya?”
“I was fascinated by the decor and whatnot.”
He ignored me. “Yeah.”
I came over to him. “So, these her clothes, Len?”
“Uh-huh, but I was going through pockets to see if there was, like, a clue.”
“A clue.”
“Yeah, I didn’t even think about it before. Don’t you guys look for clues and stuff?”
“Us guys?”
“Detectives.”
“You’re thinking about the movies, Lenny. I’m not exactly a detective — not like that. I just have a knack for finding things.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I see the pattern. I see what’s missing from the pattern. I fix the pattern. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
“Like the Eskimos.”
“Uh…like the what?”
“I heard about it when I was in the service. Army mythology. These army guys in World War II or something had to abandon a bunch of bulldozers and trucks in Alaska or somewhere because they were broken down and nobody could fix ’em. So about a year later, spring, they came back to haul ’em away, and they were gone. Know where they were?”
“The Eskimos had ’em?”
“Yup. And you know how they fixed ’em?”
“Uh…”
“They saw what was wrong with the pattern and made it whole again. They didn’t know anything about engines or mechanics or anything, but they could see what was wrong with the whole thing. That’s the Eskimo perspective of life.”
“Neat-o!”
“Yeah. And you know how they turned the bolts and stuff?”
“How?”
“With their teeth. Eskimos have very strong teeth.”
“Now you’re just making this up to tease me.”
“Swear to God, Len. You gotta have strong teeth to eat whale blubber.”
“I was believing you up to the teeth part.”
“Look it up.”
He rolled his eyes. “Where? Eskimo Encyclopedia?”
“I’m tellin’ ya, these guys in the service, they believe it.”
“You gotta go to college to make up a story like that?”
“Never mind, Lenny. Just let me look through her stuff for a minute, okay?”
“For clues.”
I blinked. “Right.”
He was happy. He sat on the floor while I looked through her closet and her dresser and the books on her nightstand. She was reading a book about winning chess moves. Very dry. There really wasn’t much to go on. It looked like her room had been cleaned three or four times since she’d disappeared — it smelled extremely fresh, a little outdoorsy, very familiar…but I couldn’t quite place the scent. In fact, except for the different scent, this room was pretty much like all the other guest rooms.
“Hey, Lenny? You guys sleep in separate rooms?”
He was busy playing with some little paper airplane he was making. “Uh-huh. That’s how married people do it.”
“Really.”
“Yeah. My dad and mom sleep in different wings at our house in Boston.”
“How come?”
“’S more romantic.”
“What?”
“You know, you don’t gotta hear a person snore or brush their teeth or tinkle or anything. You just get the pretty picture.”
“I guess that is more romantic.”
“You bet.”
“So how long has she been missing again?”
“Awhile. I tried to tell Dalliance about it when it first happened, but I think she didn’t believe me at first.”
“Maybe it was the Uma Thurman thing.”
He giggled. “Yeah. That was a good one.”
“But Dally didn’t believe anything for a while.”
“Uh-huh. So I just figured she’d come home after a while. Maybe she was on vacation or something, you know? My mom goes to the Hamptons a lot without my dad. That’s another thing married people do: separate vacations.”
“Where do you vacation?”
“Me? I don’t need a vacation.”
“How come?”
He stopped his fussing with his paper airplane, looked far off, and tried to explain to me, as best he could, something about the metaphysics of his world. “For me…Flap…life is a vacation.”
And then he went right back to playing.
“I see.” And I did. He was happy all the time. Why does a guy like that need a vacation?
“So, you find anything, Flap?” He zoomed his plane around.
“Nuh-uh. Looks like the room’s been cleaned a couple of times since she left.”
“I got a maid.”
“I’d imagine.”
He all of a sudden got tired of his toy and stood up. “You wanna cuppa coffee or something?”
“Yeah. That’d be swell.”
“I think there’s some all ready for us in the kitchen.” And he bounced out of the room, jamming his little paper plane in the pocket of his robe.
I followed closer behind this time, down the stairs. He slipped off toward the kitchen; I wandered back to the den. Call me a cynic. If I was an ambitious redhead and got some looney little rich guy to fall for me in the X-ray room, and then I saw his house and found out about his family connections — wouldn’t I be willing to fake a marriage with the guy? Especially if I could sleep in my own room. Would I care if I got fired? And once I’d plucked the sucker for all the loot I could get, wouldn’t I take a powder? And wouldn’t the poor sap spend at least a portion of the rest of his days looking for me?
Over by the fireplace there was a writing table. I was attracted to it because it had a quill pen and inkwell. Above it on the wall was a famous-looking portrait of Washington. I went over to check it out, and I couldn’t help noticing there was a kind of diary-looking thing just sitting there — open. Like somebody’d just been writing in it. The ink was even a little wet, I thought.
I took a quick check of the doors, heard Lenny way off in the kitchen clinking dishes, and zipped back over to check out the diary. It was very clean, calm handwriting. There were years of entries, judging by the dates. I flipped backward until I caught a glimpse of a strange drawing. It was a kind of yin-yang sign, but made from the intimate posturing of a man and a woman. It was very good — not a doodle.
Underneat
h the drawing it said:
This is the perfect union. Here is the perfect woman: Her hair is red, her eyes are bright, she is a healer. She will work and work to help the one she loves. Others will scorn her, but she is precious to me. Her love will make me whole. She will love no other. She is everything perfect. She is the essence of the feminine. She is yin to my yang. She is the perfect woman. We will talk about everything. I invent my exact match and there she is. She becomes my wife, and life is whole; the world is healed, the seasons cease their endless turning, and time itself stands still
It was dated five months ago. It said “Yin to my yang” just like Lenny did in the Easy when he described Augusta. It was creepy, for some reason, when it should have been beautiful. And it didn’t sound quite like the Lenny I knew. Not quite. Maybe the germ of the guy he could have been if his brainpan hadn’t been leaky. Had he actually written it?
And what was I supposed to make of it? I was nearly back to thinking he’d invented the whole thing, except for the fact there was a photo of her that other real live people recognized.
I heard the dishes coming closer, and I slipped over by the fire to warm my hands. Lenny came in with a tray.
“Coffee!”
I nodded. “So, Len — you really were married to Augusta Donne.”
He set the tray down on the table between the two Queen Anne chairs without even looking at me. “Is that her…whata ya call it…maiden name?”
“Yeah, and you didn’t tell me she was from England.”
He turned around then, all smiles. “Is that why she talked that way? That was pretty cool.”
“You didn’t know?”
He paused, once again trying to seem like a knowledgeable lecturer. “Flap” — he tapped the tips of his fingers together in front of his face — “when you’re talking to Augusta, the last thing in the world you’re thinking about is where’s she from. You’re knocked out by her face, the smell of her hair, the sound of her voice.” He sighed. “So, whata ya want in your coffee?”
I stared back at him for a second. Something in his voice…maybe the little guy had written that diary entry.
“Flap? Whata ya want in your coffee?”
“Sugar, no cream.”
He turned back around. “This coffee’s from Seattle. It’s Gold Coast Blend, my fave.”
Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Page 9
