“Like the tow-truck driver’s name.”
“For example.”
I thought about getting into it with the guy, explaining to him how it was, in fact, a mean old world and how it was all maybe coming to an end anyway because of the trouble in Tibet — but I thought better of it.
He finally gave in. “Triple A Towing. First in the book, like A-A-A Towing, right? As to who was the guy, I wouldn’t have a clue.”
I believed him. He seemed like the kind of guy who wouldn’t have a clue about a lot of things.
“Okay, thanks. And if you hear from Kay…”
He didn’t even look up. “I won’t.”
I let it go at that — he wouldn’t. I was out in the night without looking back at the awful “art” house lobby, the way I imagined Kay had done. I didn’t want to turn into a pillar of salt either.
***
I headed over to my friend at Tech with the hair samples, some ankle bracelets, and a dream in my heart. This guy Paul was an insomniac from way back; I knew he’d be in his lab. This was just the time of the morning he liked best: no students, no administrators, nobody else around — he could ponder the big questions. In the world of college biology he was something of a pop star. He ran DNA tests for his kids as a kind of magic show like on TV, a crowd pleaser to get them interested in some deal they had to pass to get out of college.
His office was in a crummy brick building surrounded by a lot of grander brick buildings. In my opinion the difference was facades. When you’ve got a nice facade the rest of the building can be crummy brick if it wants to, but without the facade what do you really have, after all?
And sure enough there he was, hard at work, bent over some microscope the way I see a lot of jazz piano players bent over the ivories. He was shaking his head and talking to himself.
I interrupted. “Hey, buddy boy.”
He looked up. “Flap.”
“Trouble in the microscopic world?”
“It’s a big mess in there, Flap.”
“How so?”
“The twentieth century? It’s full of poison.”
“Yeah. I can see that.”
He stood up. “Well, come get a closer look.”
I obliged. The microscope was the two-eye job, and it took a minute to adjust, and then all I saw was some sea-monster-looking little guys thrashing in a kind of milk.
“What is it, Paul?”
He leaned over, like he could see them with his naked eye. “Nobody knows, Flap. But it doesn’t look good.”
I stared at him. “Nobody knows what I’m looking at?”
“Nope.”
“So what’s the fuss?”
“Your sperm count’s going down.”
“But enough about my personal life.”
He sat down. “No, not yours personally, yours generically. It’s all going down, all over the world.”
“You don’t say.”
“I wish I didn’t. It’s the last days, Flap.”
“Uh-huh, but before you close up for good, could you run a few magic tests on some stuff I got?”
“Sure. What difference will it make?”
“I could get rich, and I could save the world.”
He smiled wanly. “Well then I’ll do ’er.”
I produced the bracelets and the hair samples. “I wanna know, did the women who owned this hair also own these.”
He peered down into my hand. “Ankle bracelets. Sure. No probs.”
I didn’t bother to respond. He took the stuff and disappeared. I knew I’d hear from him when he wanted me to.
*
Try finding a pay phone at 3:37 A.M. The phones at the college were off, and someone had hidden away the rest. They hide all the phones in town after midnight. I finally found a Waffle House open and a phone inside. The coffee was weak, the language was strong, and the phone took two quarters before it worked for me, but I got AAA Towing.
“Hey, where are you guys?”
“Right here, where are you?” A comedian had answered at Triple A.
“Looking for you all.”
“We tow your car?”
“Nope.”
“Then what?”
“I’m looking for the guy who towed the car with the two dead girls in the trunk. Thought I might come over and talk to him sometime.”
“You from the paper again?”
“I’m just looking to talk to him.”
“Hang on.”
Before I could ask the comedian if he meant I was actually going to get a break, he tossed down the phone and it bounced hard on something — the floor, I guess. A minute later there was another voice on the phone. He wasn’t nearly as funny as his compatriot. “What?”
“I’m a friend of Kay’s. You know, the kid who used to work at the movie house where you found the two dead girls in the trunk?”
“Kay? That sweet little thing? Whata ya mean, ‘used to’ work there?”
“She quit and went back home.”
“Well, good for her. I always told her.”
“Me too.”
“So whata ya wanna know?”
“She said you knew they were there because you smelled ’em.”
“I found two others like that. You can’t describe that smell. It’s not like anything else. Once you smell it and find out what it is, you can’t forget it no matter how hard you try.”
“Yeah, but didn’t you think it was a little strange that you could do it considering how cold it was that week?”
“Yeah. I think they’d been in there for a good little while. Two weeks, maybe. One of the cops said they was just startin’ to decompose.”
“Did you see?”
“God, no. I got enough keeping me up nights.”
“Right.”
“Okay. Say, by the way, if you hear from Kay…”
“I won’t.”
“Oh. You two kids have a fight?”
I have no idea what story he’d made up in his head. I guess he thought maybe we were sweethearts and we’d had a tiff; she’d run home to Momma.
I smiled into the phone. I hope he heard that. “No. It’s just that I think Kay’s changing her life, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I told her about that place. Still, if you hear from her, tell her Myron said good-bye.”
Okay, so why were those girls in that trunk so long? It wasn’t like they’d sat in the parking lot for a couple of weeks. Myron had found them on their first night’s visit. Somebody’d deliberately kept them around for a while. Still, no matter what the answer was, I was happy to have talked to Myron — and Kay. See, it actually was a pretty sorry world, and most people, weasels — but sometimes there’s Kay and Myron. Reason enough to talk to them. My own personal Tao was watching out for me. I just needed a little reassurance that the last drop of the milk of human kindness hadn’t been completely drained out yet.
***
And it was about at that point the lack of sleep was catching up on me. I couldn’t figure anything out. I couldn’t have opened a box of Wheaties without a set of instructions and a diagram. I stumbled onto my stool at the Waffle House and I drank me a lot of coffee; spilled a fair amount on my shirt.
The problem was, I was thinking. That always gets you into trouble. You start thinking too much, by and by somebody’s liable to get the idea you’re a wise guy — even you.
Nobody else in our little group seemed to be faring any better. I called Tony to check up on him — and to see how his sister was handling everything.
“Not good, Flap. It’s been bad since dinner.”
“How do you mean?”
“She’s, like, worse than I’ve seen her in the scared department. Keeps wakin’ up in the middle of the night, says there’s a demon after her. Demon got Ruby. You know.”
“Maybe she needs a hospital or something.”
“Would you send your sister to GIMH?”
“Okay, maybe she needs some medication.”
“Got i
t. She had some in her purse. I keep giving it to her, and it keeps her calm, but it seems to make her…confused.”
“More confused? That can’t be good.”
“Flap, what’s going on? What is all this mess? Who’s killin’ those little girls?”
“I’m workin’ on it, Tony, but you know you’re on my short list right now.”
He ignored it. “What, exactly, are you doing?”
“I’m thinking.”
He was quiet for a second. “Well, that’s your problem. That’s why you think I done it.”
“Hmm?”
“You’re thinkin’ about it too much.”
“Yeah, well, Tony — I gotta think about it. That’s what I do.”
“You gettin’ outta the house? You doin’ anything?”
“I’m thinking, Tony. Go take care of your sister. Tell her I said ‘hey.’”
I hung up before he could answer. He made me mad because I knew he was right. I was ruminating. You don’t want to spend too much time ruminating. It can give you the reputation of being a layabout.
Dalliance wasn’t that much better. Her line was busy for a good while, and when she finally answered she could barely talk.
“Hello?”
“Dally? Is that you? What the hell’s the matter? You sound awful.”
“I got a migraine like Trotsky over here. I’ve had the phone off the hook.”
“What?”
“I never had one so bad.”
“What happened? What did you do?”
“Nothing. I feel like I got somebody else in my head doing road work.”
“What?”
“What are you doing? How’s it going…with the thing?”
“I’m. thinking.”
“Uh-huh. Well, when you do something, call me. Otherwise, just remember I want Kelly to sing Angel Band at my funeral.”
“I’ll call you later?”
“At least.”
And she hung up.
That was it. I had to go for a drive, maybe. Late-night drive. Early-morning drive. It’s good; clears your head. I tipped the counter guy five bucks for the Waffle House coffee, which I felt, even at the time, was seven too many.
Shortly, and before I quite knew what I was doing, I was at the Alhambra. I was in no mood to dally. I believe I mentioned before that under the right circumstances I could pop a lock on a cheap apartment just like eating a fine piece of pie, that easy. And my circumstances were right: too little sleep, too much thought.
A pin here, a dig there, and the door to 2B swung open. The room was even more depressing in the thin moonlight. I closed the door behind me and went straight to the window. The sad little photos were still there, the laundry baskets, not much else — like before.
I got down on my hands and knees and put my nose to the floor. Sure enough there were scrape marks, like a sofa might make. And there was even a fine distinction of color in some areas of the floor. Maybe it was because of the difference in the dust amounts, maybe the sun had bleached the exposed places, whatever. The story was the same: There had been lots more stuff in this dump than there was now. And it looked like some pretty serious scuffling had gone on, either moving the furniture or maybe even during some kind of fight.
I sat down on the bare wood. Two laundry baskets, two pictures of two each, two towels…
I went to the kitchenette. A broom and a dustpan stood side by side. The cleaning stuff was still sprinkled on the counter. The very old corn bread in the frying pan on top of the stove was half gone, just like the moon in my little vision. The double items added up to ten. The tenth month is October. The moon is half full on a certain day. I’m saying that I had the intuition that somebody was trying to tell me something. What it was, I had no idea. I was rambling to myself.
Then I heard people coming up the stairs. I slid forward and got into the bathroom. I didn’t like the voices I was hearing; it sounded very much like they were coming my way.
A little tinkering at the door, and they were in. “You get those pictures. I’ll check in the bathroom.”
Right. The bathroom. Like I said, the room was big enough to roller skate in, so I quick had to decide whether to hide in the tub behind the shower curtain or get in back of the door when it opened.
“What are you getting in the bathroom? I thought we got everything important before.”
“He wants us make sure.”
“This is a waste of time. Let’s go.”
“I’m just checking one second in here.”
I could hear that voice getting closer. I got behind the door; all I had time to do. It swung open and I held my breath.
I couldn’t see who the guy was, but the voices were very familiar. He went straight to the tub and pulled back the shower curtain. That was his very first move, so I was lucky I wasn’t standing there like a chump. He picked up something, maybe the soap or the shampoo. Then he was over by the sink. He took a quick look in the medicine cabinet, but I knew from my look the other day it was empty. He called out to his colleague.
“Nothing in here.”
“Let’s go. The place is creepy.”
And bathroom guy walked out.
“Creepy. So get that stuff over there and we’ll get outta here.”
I heard them messing around in the kitchenette for a minute, and then the door closed and they were gone.
I’m pretty sure it was the two cops from Teeth’s house — Tommy and the Veteran. That would have been a wonderful encounter:
Oh, hi, Officers. I’m just here sliding on the floor. I really don’t have anything to do with the murdered girls, really. You can believe me.
Yeah. They’d believe me.
Too little sleep, too much thought. But I couldn’t help thinking as I stepped silently out of the vacant apartment a minute later, closed the door, crept down the stairs: How come they broke in? How come they took stuff? Why were they sending in a clean-up crew?
Out in the parking lot the first light of day was shining and the birds were singing and you’d have thought the year was just beginning instead of coming to a close. I made a quick check: The guys were gone.
So that’s what I get for doing something stupid. I nearly got caught someplace I didn’t belong. First I was doing nothing, then I was doing something stupid. For some reason I can’t figure, I found myself wishing I could talk to Kay. See how she was doing in her nice little home in the quiet little town. But Kay was gone. What was the matter with me? Maybe I needed some more coffee.
Chapter 19: Golden Dawn
The sun wasn’t up yet over the vacant lot beside the Golden Potala. Some kind of dead weeds were shifting together in the breeze, and in the first shy light of day, in my sleepless condition, they looked like wheat — like a beautiful field of wheat. That’s one of the benefits of long nights without sleep: morning makes everything beautiful.
I was out back, sipping from a paper cup of coffee that was too hot, too weak, and not sweet enough. I was beside a kind of loading dock out back of the restaurant. Considering I was in an alley by a Dumpster, it was all pretty clean. There was even some kind of flowering vine growing up over the curb, little purple flowers.
Linda wasn’t in yet, but her father and her uncle were sitting on the curb, right by the little purple flowers, waiting for the demon to arrive.
I looked over at Linda’s uncle. Introductions had been brief. They’d apologized about fifty times for the coffee, and the uncle was so nervous I thought he might jump out of his skin. I started talking just to calm him down. “So, this how it usually happens? You wait in the alley, he drops by?”
The uncle nodded, his eyes glued to the entrance of the alley. “He drive his car up. He get out. He look at me with the eye.”
Linda’s father nodded, looking at me. “Once you look into his eye, you tell me he’s not a demon.”
I looked back over at the vacant lot. “Windows to the soul.”
They knew what I was talking about.
The uncle looked at the weeds. “I know this man is a demon. He showed me.”
I sipped. “Showed you?”
“Terrible television show.”
The father explained. “Videotape.”
The uncle could barely talk. “Ritual slaying. Real.”
I squinted. “Right, you mentioned something about that before. What was it, like, a snuff film, you’re sayin’?”
They looked at me. Language barrier rears its ugly dragon head.
I shrugged. “Films like that? They’re usually fake. He was just trying to scare you.”
The uncle closed his eyes. “He show me the dead bodies.”
And that’s all he would say. Nothing more. I couldn’t have dragged it out of him with a diesel engine and a sledgehammer. I tried. In the end we fell into the Big Silence.
Then it’s the waiting that gets you. Being in the dentist’s chair is not nearly so bad as waiting for it in the waiting room, to me. Getting popped in the nose is not nearly so bad as worrying about it the night before the fight. On the up side, they tell me it’s anticipation that makes a kiss really swell, so I guess it all balances out in the end.
Seemed like an hour, but seventeen minutes after I’d arrived, a big gray Lincoln Town Car veered in slow, like a shark looking for breakfast.
Linda’s relatives stood up.
The uncle whispered to me, “You got a gun?”
I smiled. “Don’t even know what one looks like. Don’t need to. What this guy wants is a little conversation.”
The father whispered then. “What will you say?”
My smile got bigger, my eyes locked on the barely visible figure in the car. “Got no idea. ‘The morning air is my voice.’ Okay?” It was a quote from a poem we both liked, some old geezer from ancient China, long before the dynasties and worlds away from the Reds.
While it seemed to pacify the father, the uncle was more agitated than ever. “This man is not a human being. You can’t talk poetry to him. He just need to die.”
I shrugged. “Not my style.”
But something was wrong. The monster in the car just sat there. I couldn’t tell what was going on. The windows were tinted so you could barely see in, but nobody was getting out of the Lincoln.
Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 1) Page 17
