The Sleeping and the Dead

by Jeff Crook

  So rest assured my dearest that I am not stalking you because I honestly do not want your junkie ass back, no matter how much you’d like to think otherwise. You give yourself too much credit. The only part of you I want is your signature on the divorce papers you’ve had for over a year now, unless you’ve lost them, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least. I have copies if you need them. And should our paths cross in public again, I urge you to keep a civil tongue in your head, because if you ever publicly accuse me of criminal behavior again, you’ll be receiving a letter from my attorney. No doubt you have nothing of value for me to take, but I shall certainly take whatever you have left, even if it is your last pair of rotten crotch panties.

  Sincerely,

  Reed

  The postmark was from the Friday after Thanksgiving.

  I took the letter upstairs and unlocked my door, closed it and locked it behind me. My apartment was warm and dry and welcome, but all the same I crept into the bedroom and peeked under the bed like some kid checking for the boogie monster. Nothing under there except Sean’s old baseball bat, which I tossed on the bed before kicking my soaked sneakers into a corner and stripping out of my wet clothes. I crumpled the letter and envelope into a ball and tossed it into the trash by the fridge—from the bedroom door, swish, three points. I took the bat into the head with me for a hot shower. I was shaking all over. It wasn’t so much the cold or the rain, just a little bit of both and a whole lot of everything else. I turned the shower to full hot and drank a can of Tecate to steady my nerves. Steam quickly filled up the tiny room and condensed on the sides of the cold aluminum can. I set it in the sink. I let the scalding water penetrate to my bones. My nose started running and I noticed a tinge of pink in the water swirling slowly down the drain around my feet. All alone in the shower, it wasn’t easy to hold it together. I wanted to ball up and cry, but I didn’t allow myself that luxury. I nailed myself shut again.

  It wasn’t Reed’s letter. As usual, he was living a delusion. Did he think I had forgotten the spouse-swapping parties during the first two years of our marriage? He was the one who introduced me to the lifestyle. Not that I was some kind of virgin saint before I met him, but I’d let Reed talk me into some weird shit in the early days of our marriage, and I’d even enjoyed some of it. Thinking back, it didn’t seem so much fun. Fun for Reed, maybe. It was a miracle neither of us ended up diseased or dead.

  Then he realized how wealthy and connected he could become if he got in with the suburban-megachurch crowd, but that didn’t mean I had to go along with his transfiguration into a paragon of virtue. I didn’t like his starchy new friends, anyway. They weren’t any less sexually deranged than our old friends, but they were a hell of a lot less honest about it. How many of those suits with gold crosses on their lapels pressed their Sunday-morning wood against my hip while sharing a hug in the fellowship hall? How many times had I felt strange hands drift across my ass while eyes were closed in prayer? Church was the biggest sex club of all. Praise the Lord and pass the lube. Daddy was right—nobody screws around more than God-fearing married people.

  There wasn’t room in the shower to shave my legs, so after I finished I sat on the toilet with my toes clinging to the sink and ran a razor over them. I had damn good legs. I’d gone out for soccer my senior year, made goalie, lost a ton of weight, muscled up and made the boys cry just by looking at me. That was a long time ago, but I wasn’t as old as I felt. I was no Leta Park, but I could still make the boys cry if I wanted to.

  It was almost dark outside and the rain had let up just enough that I could see the traffic out the big window in my bedroom. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched, even though I knew there was no way in hell Endo would come after me. He was a hunted man now. His description had gone out to every cop in Memphis, plus the state authorities and the FBI. They didn’t have him yet or it would’ve been all over the news, but it was only a matter of time before somebody caught up to him. I fully expected they’d find him dangling from a tree somewhere. Even so, I couldn’t just sit in my warm, safe apartment like a goat on a chain and wait for Adam to call with the news, or for Endo to show up and add me to his list. I didn’t want to be anybody’s bait.

  I dried my hair with the blow dryer and dressed, then called James. He sounded surprised. “I’m just watching the news,” he said. “Can you believe it?”

  “I was just there.”

  “I thought maybe you were. I was watching for you.”

  “I’m home now and I’ve got the rest of your money.”

  “Really? Great!” More surprised than ever. I guess he had written off that last five hundred.

  “Can I bring it over?”

  “Over where?”

  “To your place.”

  “Here?”

  “Is that OK?”

  He was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I guess so,” like he didn’t mean it. I didn’t care. I wanted to know why it wasn’t OK to come to his house, and I had to get out of my apartment. I didn’t want to be alone with only my paranoia for company. And there was also the matter of his murdered wife that needed to be cleared up.

  “I want to apologize for freaking out on you the other night,” I told him. It was a good enough reason to come over.

  “OK.”

  “I wasn’t right in my head. I think I may have been running a fever.” Which might have been true. “Mostly I wanted to get back at my ex.”

  “It’s OK. Come on over.” He gave me his address, even though I already knew where he lived. He didn’t know I had been there once before, two years ago.

  “Give me about an hour,” I said, and hung up.

  Endo was long gone by now, and if he was still in Memphis he wasn’t about to come looking for me. All the same, I thought I’d better change my habits. If he’d been watching me long enough to pick me up at Deiter’s and tail me home, it was time to throw him a curve. Just in case. Call me paranoid. It’s only paranoid if you’re wrong. I really didn’t want my last words to be, I knew this would happen.

  Outside the sky was turning ugly. There was a storm coming up from the southwest. We were under a tornado watch. I dug out my old police-issue flashlight. It was one of those big black steel deals with six D batteries and a checkered grip, heavy enough to leave a tattoo like a diamond dog collar across a perp’s forehead. The batteries were dead, of course, but I took it anyway. I pulled on a windbreaker and a hat, stuffed James’s money in one pocket, cell phone in the other, stepped out into the hall and locked the door behind me. The hall was dark and silent, but the garbage can at the bottom of the stairs was still rustling with rats.

  Mrs. Kim sat on a folding metal chair in the residents’ private laundry room, reading a Korean newspaper while the washing machine rattled against the wall behind her. She jumped as I stumbled out of the elevator, as though she expected to see a ghost. It had stopped about a foot above floor level. I had to pry the accordion cage door open to escape. Mrs. Kim returned to her paper with no expression on her face at all.

  The Laundromat smelled like bleach and scorched rubber, the floors gritty with unswept laundry detergent. Somebody’s Converse tennis shoes were bumping around inside one of the dryers. I stood at the front window and looked at the rain running down the glass. It was already pitch dark out. The tae kwon do school was just letting out. A couple of girls passed still wearing their white uniforms and black belts, plastic grocery bags protecting their hair.

  I watched the traffic pass for a while, then walked down to the mercado to buy some batteries. Mynor looked up and smiled as I entered. He was watching a Mexican soap opera behind the counter.

  “What’re you watching?”

  “Pecados Ajenos,” he said. “It means The Sins of Others.”

  “Good?”

  “It’s OK. I like this actress, Catherine Siachoque.” He pointed her out on the screen. She looked about my age, but a hell of a lot better-looking.

  “She’s gorgeous.”
>
  “She’s the killer. She’s very good, though.”

  There was nobody in the store and the Tejano music was turned down low for once. It looked like Walter had already gone home, taking his empty gin bottle with him. On a hunch, I asked Mynor, “Have you seen a young Japanese man hanging around?”

  “I don’t know how to tell a Japanese man.” Mynor shrugged. “Mrs. Kim’s husband was around earlier, but he’s Korean.”

  I realized I hadn’t seen Endo since the trial, when he was twelve years old. All I had were the pictures I’d taken and his face was never clear. I tried to describe him. “He’s Asian, of course, about twenty-eight, dark complexion, with short black hair that stands straight up, thick eyebrows.”

  “That sounds like my brother-in-law,” Mynor said.

  “Just do me a favor. If anybody like that comes in and asks about me, call the cops, tell them you’ve seen someone fitting the description of Noboyuki Endo.”

  “The Playhouse Killer?”

  “You’ve heard?”

  “Sí, it was on the five o’clock news.” He sat up on his stool and searched the aisles with his eyes. “Why would the killer come here?”

  Why, indeed. I walked to the door and looked out into the mist. Each streetlight was surrounded by a golden halo. Cars were stopped at the red light in front of the store, but none of them looked familiar to me. “He probably won’t. But if he does…”

  “Mrs. Jackie, are you in trouble?”

  I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke against the glass doors. “I’m just waiting for the bus. I’m going to see a friend.”

  34

  THE NUMBER 53 BUS WAS empty. I rode it down to White Station and got off in front of a titty bar that used to be one of the best places in the city to bust pervs. They were the only joint in town that had real live women under glass, put your money in the machine, pick up the telephone, and watch the curtain go up. That was back when we had a DA who promised the city’s Baptists he’d close all the adult shops in town. He lasted about two years, the shops were still there, but now the internet had done what the cops and the Jesus Nazis couldn’t—destroy their business model.

  I boarded the number 43 and sat down next to a couple of Mexican women dressed in hospital scrubs. Several more sat at the back of the bus talking in Spanish. The two women I sat behind didn’t talk. One of them kept crossing herself and glancing at the grisly half-body apparition floating above the seat behind the driver. I smiled at her fear.

  All of the living passengers left the bus together at Walnut Grove. The dead guy behind the driver didn’t pay attention to any of us. He was alone on his own trip to God knows where. I got off in front of St. Louis Catholic School. I still had a good half mile walk ahead of me through the rain and mist of November, but I had my flashlight to keep me company.

  Shady Grove was a quiet, affluent East Memphis neighborhood. The south side of the street was populated by enormous houses and circle driveways shaded by towering oaks and elms, the north side lined with smaller houses and lawns, though still upscale enough to keep riffraff like me away. The first block down, I startled a wealthy black woman in a London Fog coat out walking her schnauzer in the rain. The dog wore a little matching gray coat and seemed almost as frightened as its owner. I nodded politely as I passed and she smiled like she was about to pee herself.

  A late-model white El Dorado cruised slowly by and disappeared over the next hill. I couldn’t see the driver through the window, but I noted the plate number, just in case. The street was especially dark between the streetlamps, each one farther apart than I remembered, the orange light of the sodium vapor lamp shining down in a narrow cone swirling with mist, with enormous gaps of woodsy nothing between. The smell of the wet leaves rotting under the trees was oppressive. Just the sort of place for an early-morning jogger to find my body tomorrow. My phone started buzzing in my pocket.

  “We got a lead on Endo,” Adam said.

  “Great.” I let out a big sigh. They hadn’t found the pictures yet.

  “We got a call from a car-rental place a little while ago. They’re missing a black Nissan Murano, rented to Cole Ritter. They didn’t make the connection until Michi’s murder hit the news tonight.”

  “I’ve seen a Murano,” I said. “It was parked outside Endo’s apartment.”

  “No shit?”

  “Followed us down Airways, then turned west on Cooper.”

  “Jesus, Jack.” He called me Jack, just like Sean used to. “You’re good when you’re straight. I wish I had your head for detail.”

  “Thanks.” It was good to hear, even if he was patronizing me.

  “Do me a favor and make sure your door is locked,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Endo knows where you live.”

  I thought about that for a minute. Endo knew the building but not the apartment, and if he went asking about me, Mrs. Kim wouldn’t speak to him and Mynor would call it in. I had made sure of that. At the same time, coming out here on this quiet residential street after dark, with nothing more than a flashlight, was monumentally stupid. Adam would have had a stroke if he knew.

  “Door’s triple-locked,” I said. “Besides, if it was Endo in the Murano, he saw me riding in a cop car. He probably thinks I have police protection.”

  “You do have police protection. Waters is sitting outside your apartment. If she sees that Murano, she’ll call in the cavalry. Just promise me you won’t open the door unless it’s me.”

  “Promise.” There was a car coming toward me, the beam of its headlights bouncing in the drizzle. “Gotta go. The pizza guy is here.” I hung up. The car sped up and swerved toward the curb, slid to a stop beside me. Fear like a cold finger touched the base of my skull. It was the same white El Dorado that passed a few minutes before. As the driver rolled down his window, I poked the beam of my flashlight in his eyes.

  He threw up a hand to block the light. He was an older guy, early sixties, sporting a combed-back black pompadour, slightly graying at the temples. He reminded me of Rex Morgan, MD, for some reason. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Probably not.”

  “Please turn off your light.” I did, then started walking. I wanted to get under one of the streetlamps. He followed beside me in his car. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.” He gave me a forced smile.

  “You looking for a party?” I asked. His smiled changed to a thoughtful frown. “Just kidding. I’m here to visit a friend.”

  “Really? And who would that be?”

  “That’s not really any of your business, is it?”

  “Actually, it is my business. We have a Neighborhood Watch in this neighborhood,” he said, smiling again with those wonderful white caps of his. “I’m watch captain for this street.”

  “Bully for you.” I said. He looked like a dentist. I could smell a dentist a mile away. “Isn’t this the neighborhood where a woman was brutally murdered in her own bedroom?” I flashed the light in his eyes again. “I guess somebody took that night off, huh?”

  “Our watch group was formed after the unfortunate incident.”

  “I’m going to visit a friend,” I said. “If you don’t believe me, call the cops. Otherwise, leave me the fuck alone, OK?”

  “I’ll be watching you,” he said.

  “Do I look like I give a shit?” He rolled up his window and drove away. He was lucky I didn’t bust the caps in his face. But having that swinging dick around was better than being out here alone. I probably should have sweetened up to him and begged a ride, even if it was only another block to James’s house. I was starting to get a little vertigo from the tension.

  James’s house sat back from the road amid the trees, across the street from a Presbyterian church, its half-circle driveway hidden behind a tall privet hedge that bordered the sidewalk. The front door stood open, a warm yellow light spilling out onto the driveway. It must be nice to live in a neighborhood where you didn’t have to lock the door. It
reminded me of my parents’ house in Pocahontas. I didn’t think there were still places like that in Memphis.

  I clicked on my flashlight and searched the shrubs and flower beds to either side of the door, looking for fake rocks. No one could see me from the street, not even Dr. Rex Morgan if he passed. A nice cozy little place for a murder.

  At either end of the driveway stood these raised brick flowerbeds with a Victorian-style lamppost in each, variegated ivy twirling up the posts and nearly engulfing the unlit glass-paned lamps. I searched around the posts and the brick borders and found nothing there either. I checked under the door mat but from the looks of it, James regularly swept and washed his front steps. He also cleaned and mulched his flower beds in the fall, raked out the dead leaves, covered his outside faucets with insulated caps to keep them from freezing, all the solid, responsible homeowner crap Reed always paid Mexicans to take care of.

  The mist turned into a downpour while I was digging through his flower beds.

  The house had a detached garage. The door was closed. The garage backed up to the neighbor’s hedge, with trees from the neighbor’s yard hanging over the roof. I walked behind the garage and found a couple of rotting, leaf-choked flower boxes barely hanging from the wall below the windows. It looked like James had never been back here. There was a boy’s bike rusting against the wall, a pair of lawn chairs lying folded up in the leaves. I shined my flashlight through the dusty garage windows and saw a blue Dodge Neon parked beside some kind of car hidden beneath a canvas shroud. By its low profile and outline I guessed something European and sporty. I scraped the leaves from one flower box and found a plastic frog about the size of a baseball half-buried in the damp, black humus. It was hollow with a rubber plug in the bottom, the kind of garden ornament made for hiding a door key, like the fake rock that my parents kept in their flower bed. This one was empty.