Incinerator

by Timothy Hallinan

  “You're not?” The coffeepot tilted dangerously in my direction.

  “I'm the him on TV,” I said. “But I'm not the him who's going to get burned.”

  No one behind me on the way home. No one behind me as I turned left off the Pacific Coast Highway and headed up Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I pulled over half the way up. Nine cars, headlights beaming merrily into the night, passed me before I departed my patch of chaparral by the side of the road and headed the rest of the way up the long hill.

  At the Fernwood Market, I stopped again, partly to check for a tail and partly to fill a more pressing need. I was out of beer. The Fernwood stocked Singha just for me, in recognition of my status as a regular customer and a reliable prealcoholic. The “pre” was my estimate.

  Once home, I patted Alice on the rear fender, opened the empty mailbox, and hiked up the driveway toting the beer. Here, away from the glare of L.A., stars fired off sparks above me. “Nice to see you,” I said to them halfway up. “I was afraid you'd moved.” The beer was heavy, so I took the rest of the driveway at an unaccustomed lope and turned the lock in the one and only door, the one that opens directly into the kitchen.

  When I turned on the light, he was standing there.

  I jumped back and hauled the door closed. The bag full of beer landed at my feet with the sound of shattering glass.

  The cops had taken my gun after I decked Hammond. Holding the door closed with one hand and listening for movement inside the house, I reached down very slowly and fumbled around inside the wet paper bag. I sliced my index finger on something sharp before I managed to grasp a broken bottle by its neck.

  I hoisted it in my hand, jagged points forward and waited. I counted to one hundred. Not a sound.

  I let go of the door, kicked it in, and jumped through it, bottle extended.

  In the center of the kitchen, my own raincoat, stuffed full of newspapers, dangled from a string. A balloon bloomed above the neck. On top of the balloon, a blond wig squatted. A hot breeze made an entrance through the open door, and the ghostly assemblage did a graceful pirouette on the end of its string.

  I was so furious, furious at my fear, that I pushed the shards of the bottle into the face drawn on the balloon. It exploded, and the wig floated to the kitchen floor like a large blond spider. Blood dripped from my finger onto the floor, making bright splashes around the wig like berries on a Christmas wreath.

  All four burners on the gas stove were flaring merrily away, little campfires of blue. I kicked my raincoat aside and turned them off. The raincoat was swinging back and forth like a hanged man as I shut down the gas jets.

  “You sadistic shithead,” I said to the air. I licked my finger. Then I smelled the gasoline.

  I turned as though someone had tapped me on the shoulder. Heat rose in waves against my back, and I kicked the oven door shut and felt behind me for the large, greasy knob that turned it off.

  “Are you here?” I demanded. “Well, you got me.”

  No one answered me. A gust of wind made the walls of the shack rattle. The raincoat did a little jig. I grabbed paper towels off the roll and wrapped them around my finger.

  “Got me good,” I continued, stepping silently forward. “Got me with my own raincoat.”

  The smell of gasoline was stronger in the living room. “Got your little squirter?” I asked the darkness on the other side of the door leading to my bedroom. “I thought this was supposed to be a conversation.” I still had the broken beer bottle in my right hand, the hand festooned with paper towels.

  Still nothing.

  “You should do something about that B.O.,” I said, edging toward the door to the bedroom. “You smell like a diesel.” There were only the four rooms upstairs, the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, and the bedroom. Both the bathroom and the bedroom were on the other side of the door I was facing. The door was ajar. “Downstairs,” was a euphemism I used for an empty room that could be reached only by going back outside and clambering down the hill on a suicidal goat path that led to its one and only door. I almost never used it.

  Anyway, the smell of gasoline was up here.

  “I've got a surprise for you, too,” I said, clutching the bottle more tightly as I stepped through the door and flicked on the light.

  The fumes of gasoline rose and hovered above my sodden bed. It had been soaked all the way to the mattress.

  I had checked the empty bathroom and peeled back the tatty curtain on the shower stall, a place where mildew gathered to plot its way up the food chain, before I realized that I'd seen a rectangle of white placed dead center on the bed. After I'd satisfied myself that the shower contained nothing that I hadn't already regarded, with serious misgivings, on earlier occasions, I went out and down the hill into the breath of a mummifying wind and opened the door to the spare room. A cloud of gasoline fumes struck my nostrils.

  Something whimpered.

  I hit the light switch and found myself staring at a bearskin rug. A sodden bearskin rug. A rush of fury hit me so strongly that it literally blinded me: The room went black. Clutching the doorframe for support, I heard a familiar thumping sound, and as my sight cleared, I saw that the rug was wagging the tip of its tail.

  “Bravo,” I said in a voice thick with relief.

  He lifted his head and looked at me briefly, then looked away. Shame plastered his ears to his wet skull. I went to him and ruffled his soaking fur. He hung his head even lower. Good dogs have a tremendous sense of duty.

  “Good boy,” I said. “It's okay. He charmed you, didn't he?” Bravo looked up at me again and then shoved his nose under my hand. “Come on,” I said. “Let's give you a bath.”

  Outside, using my best shampoo and the garden hose to wash a maniac's gasoline out of my temporary dog's coat, I suddenly started to laugh. How did I get here? I thought. Bravo took advantage of my lapse in attention to shake himself, covering me in foam and diluted gasoline, and I sat down in the mud puddle I'd created and hugged him to me. “You dope,” I said, still laughing. “Next time, you'll rip his legs off and eat them as drumsticks.” Enjoying my tone, Bravo hit me in the face with his tail.

  When he was clean, I climbed the rest of the way up the hill to open the waxy envelope and study the latest communique from the Incinerator.

  Sweet dreams!!! it said. I crumpled it up and threw it.

  My college notebooks, at least a hundred of them were piled on the floor of the smaller of the house's two closets. They were all alike, flat blue hard-covered books filled with lined paper. I picked up as many of them as I could carry and staggered down the driveway to Alice as Bravo watched with the sympathetic expression dogs save for working humans. Then I went back up the hill, got some more, took everything I might need for two or three days—including my five remaining beers—put out food for Bravo, and left.

  I needed to see if he'd been to Eleanor's house, too. There was no way to be sure he knew where she lived, but I didn't want her coming home from the hotel to any surprises. Alice purred with uncharacteristic smoothness through Santa Monica, heading south, and then carried me west, onto Windswept Court, toward the little house that Eleanor's royalties funded. I parked Alice half a block down and did the rest of it on foot.

  There were lights on in the house. A car I didn't recognize had staked claim to the driveway, a big American gas-guzzler that reflected the boundless optimism of Detroit.

  I smelled smoke briefly as I approached the house, an acrid, sharp smoke that was both familiar and unfamiliar. The hot wind blowing toward the ocean dissipated it before I could grab a second breath, but I knew Eleanor wouldn't allow anyone who smoked inside her house.

  An overgrown hibiscus crowded up against the picture window in front. The house had been built in the thirties, in an age when no one imagined that people might someday be lurking around in front of picture windows to get a look at the picture inside, and Eleanor had fed and watered that hibiscus religiously, using Billy Pinnace's special ultra-wowie fish-emulsion
mixture, to get the hibiscus to mask the window. She had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, and I cursed Billy Pinnace and all dead fish everywhere as I pushed my way through the sharp, brittle bush to get to the glass.

  The first thing I saw was a pair of feet.

  They were a man's feet, clad only in argyle socks.

  The second thing I saw was Eleanor, coming into the living room with a couple of wineglasses in her hand. She was smiling.

  The third thing I saw was Eleanor seeing me. She gasped and dropped a glass, and then realized who it was, and said, very plainly through the glass although I couldn't hear the words, “Oh, Lord.”

  The fourth thing I saw, as he leapt out of his seat, was Burt. He goggled at me like a landed fish as Eleanor leaned down to pick up the unbroken wineglass from the carpet. I went to the door and used my key.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.” She stood in the hall with the empty glass in her hand, and Burt poked a cautious head around the doorframe behind her.

  “You're supposed to be in the hotel,” I said, pointing an accusing finger. She looked at it, and I followed her gaze to see the blood-soaked paper towel dangling from it like the flag of a defeated army.

  “You've hurt yourself,” Eleanor said.

  “Thanks for the news.”

  “Um,” Burt said, “hello, Simeon.”

  “You know each other,” Eleanor said, sounding faintly embarrassed.

  “I'll admit it,” I said. “But just barely.”

  Eleanor looked at the finger again. “Be nice, please. This wasn't anybody's idea. Do you need a bandage?”

  “He was at my house tonight,” I said. “I wanted to make sure he hadn't been here, too.”

  “Were you there?” she asked, her eyes widening.

  “The Incinerator?” Burt asked, a gratifying two beats behind.

  “No,” I said to Eleanor. “Yes,” I said to Burt. “The Incinerator. He left me a couple of surprises, and I thought he might have done the same here.”

  “He didn't,” Eleanor said.

  “So I see,” I said, wondering how far I could throw Burt.

  “That means he doesn't know where I live,” Eleanor said triumphantly. “I can come home.”

  “No, you can't,” I said. Eleanor set her jaw, and I retreated. “What I mean is, please don't. He's got his own agenda. There's no way for us to know what he'll do next. And yes,” I added, “I'd love a bandage.”

  “Right back,” Eleanor said, heading for the bathroom. Burt looked at me, and I looked at Burt.

  “Well, well,” he said, coloring brightly.

  “Go away,” I said, moving into the living room. I stumbled on something and looked down at his shoes. They had Velcro flaps in place of laces.

  “You've got it wrong,” I said nastily. “It's the Japanese who want you to take your shoes off at the door. Chinese couldn't care less.”

  “This Chinese could,” Eleanor said, coming back in with an assortment of tinctures, gauzes, and tapes. “I think it's very nice.” I looked down and saw that she was barefoot.

  “Is this the little girl,” I said, “who used to sleep in a new pair of running shoes to break them in? Is this the freckle-faced little girl who once took a shower—a shower I shared, by the way,” I said to Burt, “in her nice new running shoes because she figured the water would mold them to her feet?”

  “Sit down,” Eleanor commanded, blushing, “and let's see the finger.”

  “It hasn't been amputated,” I said, obeying orders and sitting in what once had been my chair. “You've got more junk than Florence Nightingale had at the Battle of Crimea.”

  “There's no need to be offensive,” Burt ventured. He caught my eye. “On the other hand,” he said promptly, “you've been hurt.”

  “He's not really violent,” Eleanor said to Burt, unwrapping my finger. “He just talks that way.” She looked at the cut. “It's deep,” she said.

  “ 'No, 'tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door,' ” I said,“ 'but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.''

  “That's Shakespeare, Burt,” Eleanor said, swabbing at the cut with something red.

  “I admire a man with a frame of reference,” Burt said gamely.

  “Do you know one?” I asked.

  “We were about to have some wine,” Burt said. “Would you like some?”

  “Look,” I said, “I'm not going to be all Noel Coward about this. I'm going to be unpleasant.” Eleanor gave the bandage she was wrapping around my finger an unnecessary tug. “I know I'll hate myself in the morning,” I continued, talking to Burt, “but right now, I hate you.”

  Burt was on his way to the kitchen, but he stopped and turned to face me. “Like Eleanor said, nobody wanted this to happen,” he said. “Do you think this makes me comfortable?”

  “Who cares?” I asked.

  “Well, then,” he said, keeping his eyes away from the injured finger. Well, I was keeping my eyes away from it, too. Only women can look at a really deep cut. “Think about Eleanor.”

  “That's enough, both of you,” Eleanor said, finishing with my finger. She gathered up the medications and stood. “Burt was just leaving,” she said.

  “Now, wait a minute,” Burt said.

  “And I'm leaving with him,” Eleanor said. She was looking at the bandages in her hands. “Burt,” Eleanor said, “get the wine, would you? We'll take the rest of it with us.”

  Burt said something, but he left.

  “Simeon,” Eleanor said the moment he was out of the room, “are you being careful?” She looked down at the bandages again and then dumped them on the floor.

  “Careful? You're back here, in this house, and you're asking me—”

  “The police are outside,” she said.

  I suppose I opened my mouth. Certainly, I felt cool air on my tongue.

  “They are?” I asked stupidly.

  “You must have walked right past them.”

  I dismissed it. “Eleanor,” I said, “I need you.”

  She looked past me, at the picture window, and said nothing.

  “There's no one I can talk to,” I said.

  “You can talk to me,” Eleanor said, her face down.

  “With him around?” I asked. “Homo imitatiens?”

  “He won't be around tomorrow,” she said in a muffled voice.

  “I need you tonight.”

  “Well,” she said, lifting her face to me, “I'm sorry. It's a little bit late, isn't it? There's a life going on here even when you're not around, Simeon,” she said. “It wasn't my idea that you wouldn't be around. Lord, Simeon, how long did you think—”

  “Okay,” I said, not knowing whether I wanted to cry or kill someone. “Fine. Skip it.”

  “Please,” she said, “don't—”

  “I've recorked the wine,” Burt said from the door that led to the kitchen.

  “Then we can go,” Eleanor said with her back to him, passing a hand over her face.

  “Well,” I said. “Then let's go.”

  “Simeon,” Eleanor said. “Will you call me?”

  “Sure. See you,” I said, heading for the front door and feeling no more substantial than my own raincoat, filled with newspapers.

  Outside, the hot wind blew, and the moon shone brightly enough to evaporate water, brightly enough for me to see the unmarked police car waiting across the street. I navigated across the smooth black asphalt and looked down at Hammond.

  “Al,” I said, “you could have spared me that.”

  Hammond took a puff off the cigar I'd smelled before and leaned forward to twitch the ignition on. He used the power to hit the window button on the driver's side, and the glass slid up. He still hadn't looked at me.

  “You forget,” he said just before the window sealed him off, “we ain't buddies anymore.”

  The window closed, and I lifted my arms high above my head and slammed the roof of Hammond's car with both f
ists, putting a substantial dent in it, before I drove away from my ex-friend and my ex-ex-girlfriend and did what I'd been threatening to do: headed for a Holiday Inn.

  After I checked in, I hauled the stack of notebooks out of Alice's trunk and toted them upstairs. It took two trips, just as it had going down the driveway. Then, knowing I wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway, I went out to a convenience store around the corner and bought a jar of instant coffee. It could be mixed with hot water from the tap. Or, what the hell, I could eat it with a spoon.

  The notebooks opened up like rooms from the past, furnished with odds and ends—many of them very odd and most of them dead ends—that had once seemed important. Names, dates, places, impossibly broad concepts, niggling details, the occasional carpet of plausible language to sweep stubborn facts under. I had spent fifteen years of my life doing this, and I had gotten very good at it.

  The instant coffee kept my eyes open and my heart pounding, pounding erratically but pounding, and the frequent trips to the bathroom gave me a little exercise. All in all, I was in pretty good shape at eleven the next morning when I opened the ninth book at random, somewhere toward the middle, and found myself looking down at a preliminary outline for a paper, one of literally hundreds prepared for literally dozens of classes in comparative religion.

  The paper was entitled “Faces of God,” and beneath the title, signaled by an important-looking Roman numeral, was a list of the visual traditions I'd intended to ransack with the least possible effort and at the last possible moment. And under Roman numeral III was the heading “Illuminated Manuscripts,” and below that, in parentheses, was the Incinerator's name.

  14

  The Empire of the Sun

  “Wilton Hoxley,” EdnaVercini said promptly. She snapped her gum and took a bite of sugared doughnut that did not, against all the laws of physics, seem to dissolve her gum, then followed the doughnut with a long and apparently satisfying hit off an unfiItered Camel. “‘Tiltin’ Wilton,’ we all called him.” She chose the nearest from among a bewildering assortment of styrofoam coffee cups and slurped, making a face. “Not me, of course,” she said.