AHMM, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "OCD,” Wilmer said with authority. “Your Compression Repulsive Disorder."

  "That would be CRD,” Pete replied dryly.

  "Whatever. It's when you can't stop doing something even if you want to."

  "Like you. You can't stop lecturing."

  "I'm not lecturing, I'm discussing. I'm saying Bullet is one of your basic compression repulsives. That's why he can't throw nothing out."

  "So it's not his fault."

  "No."

  "Then how'd he get that way?"

  "How do I know? Maybe when he was born the doctor slapped him in the head instead of on the butt."

  "Did he do that to you?"

  "Do what?"

  But Pete was turning back to their visitor, weighing him coolly with his gaze. “So if it ain't Bullet's fault, and it's nobody else's, then maybe he oughta be left alone. Maybe the chief here should go home and forget about it. It's got nothing to do with the police."

  "Neither have I,” Robideau reminded him again. “I'm retired, remember?"

  "Yeah. We all are. We're just a bunch of old retired guys sticking our noses in where we ain't wanted. Ain't needed, for that matter."

  Robideau wondered what Pete thought he was retired from, since the man hadn't, as far as the chief knew, worked a pensionable day in his life. He said, “Well, the fact of the matter is there's a problem. It may be that Bullet should be left alone, but something has got to be done about that place of his. For his own good."

  Pete leered. Hard-bitten silver bristles stood out defiantly on his chin. “When the authorities tell you something's for your own good, look out for squalls."

  "I'm not ‘the authorities.’”

  "No, Butts is. And you're workin’ for him."

  "I'm not working for him, I'm representing him.” Robideau glanced around at the smirking faces and sighed. “Look, if none of you are willing to help, if you don't think you can get Bullet—I mean Bulwer—to see reason, then fine. I'll try him again myself. I only wanted to get past his suspicious nature, that's all. It'll be a shame to see the Palace expropriated."

  He got to his feet.

  Pete Melynchuk grinned up at him. “Now you've went an’ got your Jockeys twisted. When do you want to go and see the guy?"

  * * * *

  "Now the way I'd handle it if it was me,” Pete advised, “I'd first of all visit Oddlot Jenkins."

  Oddlot. A village character who tooled around in an old van. In the old days he had been the Palace projectionist and at the same time general dogsbody for Prancing Al Evans up at the funeral home. He still worked for Al Evans. Took care of the incinerator. Kept the hearse polished up.

  Oddlot was almost as reclusive as Bulwer, but Pete had more than a nodding acquaintance with him.

  "He's about the only guy Bullet Onager talks to,” Pete Melynchuk explained as they got into Robideau's car. “They've kept in touch, I guess, since the Palace Roxy closed."

  Oddlot lived in a tidy little minihome, old and cramped but neat as a pin. A sort of cabana jutted over the entrance, and the wheels were hidden behind plywood panels, primly painted with images of tall green grass and daisies. A decorative plastic bumblebee hovered on a stick outside the door. An old Dodge van stood in the drive.

  Robideau, his eyes fixed on the place, didn't notice Oddlot standing behind them until the man spoke out.

  "Something I can do for you?"

  The men turned. Oddlot was eyeing them suspiciously. He was one of those thin, wiry men and looked as if trouble couldn't lay a glove on him. He had a hoe in his hand, and his face was reflected in the darkened side windows of the van.

  "Oddie!” Pete boomed. “You trying to scare us to death?” He indicated Robideau. “This here's—"

  "I know who he is,” Oddlot answered. “Everybody knows Chief Robideau.” His voice softened. “Too bad you retired. Look at what we got for a police chief now."

  "Listen,” Pete said, “here's the thing. We're tryin’ to help out a friend of yours. Bullet Onager."

  Oddlot's eyes narrowed. He leaned the hoe against the side of the house. He turned back to his visitors with a mixture of suspicion and inquisitive concern on his face. Robideau set out the problem.

  "So you see,” Robideau concluded, “if he won't listen to reason, the town's going to take action."

  Oddlot deliberated, one hand plucking at his chin. “That wouldn't be right. He's a quiet old guy. And it's terrible what happened to him. The Palace was his whole life, and when he had to close, it busted him up inside. It's why he lives that way. Hangs onto stuff. He don't want to lose nothing ever again. It's sad."

  Robideau agreed. It was kind of sad. A man loses a business he loves because the community stops supporting it; then that same community comes hounding him years later, threatening to knock the place down. Things weren't supposed to work that way.

  "I went to see him,” Robideau said, “to warn him, but he wouldn't open his door to me. So we thought, you being a friend of his, maybe you could get him to hear what I have to say. We only want what's best for him."

  Oddlot studied Robideau's face. He took the hoe in his hand again, leaned on it, and stared at the ground. Then he straightened.

  "I suppose I could see what I can do."

  * * * *

  The sky was heavy again with the threat of yet more rain. Mountainous flat-bottomed thunderheads loomed above the lake, and far to the south, out over the marshes, little smoke-white rags of cloud darted swiftly before the wind.

  At Onager's house, they pulled over and stopped. Oddlot, who had arrived there ahead of them, got out of his van.

  "Jeez,” Pete Melynchuk breathed, with a sour glance at the house, “would you look at the place!"

  "Should we go in with you?” Robideau asked Oddlot, who had sauntered back to stand at the side of the car.

  "Nope,” Oddlot said, “I'll go in alone. I'll explain things to him and see what he says. If I give you the signal, you can come on in. Otherwise..."

  They watched his thin, wiry figure proceed up the walk, negotiate the obstacle course on the porch, and bang on the door. The door opened instantly for him, and he disappeared inside.

  Then they waited.

  "You ever see a place to beat it?” Pete said, staring sideways out the car window. “Place like that'll be alive with squirmin’ vermin. Mice, rats, and roaches. Chuck Lang is right. Knock the movie house down, and knock this dump down too."

  Oddlot Jenkins appeared and raised his hand.

  "That's our cue,” Robideau said.

  "Ain't we lucky!"

  "I want you to take this,” Robideau handed Pete his little digital camera, “and see if you can get a few snapshots inside the place. They might come in handy. And try not to be too obvious."

  "James Bond, that's me,” Pete said. He held the camera out with one hand and took an experimental shot through the windshield.

  If the front porch was bad, the interior was far worse. And the smell! The smell of decay, the smell of mildew, the smell of cats allowed to run wild. “I'll just wait here,” Pete said, wrinkling his face and halting in the sty of a kitchen.

  Robideau followed Oddlot into a large sitting room, twenty feet on a side. It was piled waist high—in some places shoulder high—with the debris and detritus of life. Looking at the jumble, the muddle, the overwhelming hodgepodge of litter and refuse, it was incomprehensible to Robideau that anyone could amass such a collection of junk. Bulwer Onager sat in a thronelike chair. Once a fine piece of furniture, now the stuffing bulged out where the cats had worried it, and the cushion behind his head was dark with hair oil and perspiration.

  He was a big man, round shouldered and bottom heavy. He had flaccid jowls and a dewlapped neck. A tangled gray fringe tumbled over his ears. He looked beaten, worn out, and haunted by his personal demons. He wore slippers, droopy gray sweatpants, and a wrinkled, food-stained T-shirt with the word WIMPY silk-screened across it in large disintegrating letters.

  "Now just
listen to what the man has to say,” Oddlot advised him.

  There was no place to sit. They stood like petitioners before the king. Robideau cleared his throat and laid it all out. While he spoke, the old man watched him like a creature cornered in its nest, head canted, eyes fixed. When Robideau had finished speaking, the big man still stared, but his head had sunk visibly lower on his chest.

  "So what do you think?” Robideau asked him. “Can you clean up the Palace a little? Have that sagging marquee taken down, with all its broken bulbs? Slap a little paint on the place?"

  Onager shrugged.

  "And here too.” Robideau glanced around. “Can't you get rid of some of this stuff?"

  Onager took time to think. His eyes moved slowly, all the way to the left, all the way to the right. Clearly, whatever it was he perceived here was not what other mortals saw.

  "Like what?” he muttered.

  Robideau nodded at a large, overfilled cardboard box by the door. “Those are cat droppings, Bulwer. Why in the world do you keep something like that around?"

  "I don't know."

  "You can throw them out, don't you think?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, here's the problem. The town doesn't want you to keep that sort of thing. It isn't healthy. And they don't like a lot of that other stuff outside on the porch, all those worn-out cars in the drive. Why hang onto it all?"

  "You never know what you're going to need."

  "An old Oreo cookie bag?” Robideau nodded at a carefully flattened and folded package on a mound of trash next to Bulwer's chair.

  "You never know.” A clutch of at least a dozen garden rakes clawed the air behind the old man's head.

  Robideau glanced at Oddlot Jenkins, inviting a little support. Oddlot's blank stare was impassive. He wasn't about to do any heavy lifting.

  "It's important you think carefully about this,” Robideau said. “There's no use putting it off. The town means business.” He stepped back. “I'm going to ask you to sleep on it. Talk to Oddlot here about what can be done. I'll check back with you tomorrow evening, and I'll expect you to have made up your mind about these things."

  Glancing back as they walked away, Robideau could see Bulwer's stolid reflection in a cracked mirror leaning against the wall.

  "Well, that got us absolutely nowhere,” Pete said, as they climbed back in the car and slammed the doors. Oddlot pulled a U-turn in front of them and accelerated on by without a wave or a glance. “We'll see,” Robideau replied. “I gave him time to mull it over."

  "Tell you what I'd do,” Pete said, “I'd nuke the place. The house and the goddamn theater.” He gave the camera back. “Got you some pictures, though. Just don't try to flog them to House Beautiful."

  * * * *

  Robideau dropped Pete off at the Netley, then drove slowly home. The mouth-watering aroma of pot roast struck him as he entered the tidy house, and he realized how much he took this clean and cozy little house for granted. Mrs. Robideau took good care of him. She thrust an inviting glass of sherry into his hand.

  "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "Are you going to throw that poor man out in the street?"

  She followed him through to the office, where he sat down at his computer, shaking his head. He connected the camera to the USB port. “You amaze me. How do you know these things? I didn't know myself what Butts wanted until he explained it to me there in his office."

  "Friends and telephones. Does that answer your question?"

  The pictures began to move from the camera's memory to the computer. Robideau smiled and nodded. “I guess it does."

  "Fine. Now answer mine. What's going to happen to Mr. Onager if you take his house away?"

  "It's his movie house they want to take away, not his home. And I didn't take anything except these photos.” He clicked the “view” icon, and the first picture flashed to the screen. It was Pete's practice shot, showing the back window of Oddlot's van. The next one showed the inside of the house.

  "Oh, my dear Lord and everything that's holy!” Mrs. Robideau gasped, shrinking back, horrified. “Does he really live like that?"

  "He really does."

  "Then the poor man needs help."

  "I can't help him if he won't let me, and I'm afraid that's going to be the problem."

  He flicked through the pictures, an even dozen of them, while Mrs. Robideau emitted little disbelieving gasps and groans.

  "Is dinner ready?” Robideau asked her.

  She was as pale as the plates on the table. “It's ready. But I don't know if I can eat it now."

  * * * *

  Jerry Doyle knew something about old theaters. The detective's uncle had been a projectionist once. Which was a great thing back then for a kid, getting to see all the latest movies for free. He had practically lived in that magical theater, and his knowledge of it would help him here. He had climbed up the old iron fire escape to the roof of the Palace Roxy, and now stood at the door of the little shack that he knew was the emergency exit for the projection booth. The vent chimney from the carbon-arc lamps stuck out the side of it. Every old theater had one of these, dating from the days of hazardous nitrate film stock. Fire regulations had required it.

  The front doors of the building were sealed like a vault; the back door, steel clad, was locked up too. But here...

  He wedged the little pry bar into the crack between the door and the frame, punched it with the heel of his hand, and the door sprang open.

  Nothing to it.

  If that idiot of a police chief, Butts, wouldn't take some good advice and search the place, then Doyle would just have to do it on his own. It was the only promising lead he had. The girl was crazy about the movies. Especially old movies. Took extra drama classes at her high school and rented every classic video she could find. Had she spotted this old place? Wondered about it? Had she actually been here?

  Maybe not, but he would try to find out.

  A short flight of steps, almost a ladder, ended in a cramped, narrow electrical room. He switched on his flashlight. There was a short cluttered bench, a DC generator, a lot of cabling, and a fuse box with an enormous lever on the side. There was also a pail and a string mop, the room doing double duty as a janitors’ closet.

  He entered the projection booth. Nothing out of place here, but he was surprised to see the original equipment still in place. Well kept too. You could practically eat your lunch off it. Interesting.

  He went down some narrow carpeted stairs to the auditorium.

  Well! Whoever kept the projection booth tidy certainly didn't expend a lot of effort down here. Place looked like a cross between a storage warehouse and a recycling station. He walked down to the front of the auditorium and stopped at the end of the aisle. He aimed his torch along the front row of seats.

  His attacker must have been standing off to one side in the darkness, waiting for him. He had no warning before something came whistling at him through the air. It struck low, careened off his shoulder, and caught him just above the ear, knocking his glasses off. He stumbled sideways, dropped to his left knee, and crouched there, swaying. The next blow struck him above the eyes and knocked him on his back, with one leg crooked under him. He didn't feel the furious rain of blows that fell on him after that.

  * * * *

  Supplies were becoming harder to get, and the damn prices kept going up. Take the lamp house, for instance. He was buying the cheapest carbon rods he could find. A new pair only lasted an hour. Carbon savers helped—sleeves for splicing two used stubs together, good for about one reel—but they flared a little when they evaporated. Xenon lamps had been around for decades, but they couldn't be used with this equipment. And in any case, the old ways were best.

  Peering through the smoked inspection port, he twisted the knobs that brought the tips of the rods together, touched them briefly, and struck the arc. A flow of white-hot plasma now streamed sun-bright between them.

  He double-checked the projectors. Th
e movie, the first reel of it, was cued up in number one. The second reel waited in number two. He gave the lamp another minute for the color to stabilize, and then it was showtime.

  He opened the hand douser.

  Watching the screen through the observation port, he mused over ways in which he might fill the place with the pungent aroma of freshly made popcorn.

  * * * *

  Robideau's cell phone rang the next evening, just as he was leaving the house. It was Butts. Juggling a travel mug filled with afterdinner coffee, phone, and car keys, he took the call as he got into his car.

  After relating his progress thus far to Butts, he deliberately turned the tables. “How about you? Have you found the girl?"

  "Sherlock bloody Holmes couldn't find that girl. Not with what I got to go on. It's like she fell off the face of the earth. And now I got more trouble."

  "What's that?"

  "Now the private detective's gone and disappeared too."

  "You're kidding me."

  "Do I sound like a kidder? I don't know what to think about him. Maybe he got fed up. As far as the girl's concerned, I had Claudia Webb print off some posters, and I been slapping ‘em up all over town.” He began reading one of them over the phone.

  Robideau pulled out onto the street and headed downtown, only half listening. Then something the chief was blathering about caught his attention. “What did you just say?"

  "I said the girl had a backpack. Why?"

  "Can you describe it?"

  "I guess so. Let's see. Army surplus. There's an Alfred Hitchcock patch sewn onto it—that famous drawing, his face in profile. She was an old movie buff apparently."

  Robideau fought to recall why that should mean something to him. Then he remembered the photos, the snaps Pete had taken at the Onager house, and an unpleasant feeling began to build in his gut.

  "What have you got?” Butts demanded. “You on to something?"

  "I'm not sure. I'll get back to you."

  Robideau pulled a U-turn, tires chirping, and sped back to his house.

  "You already looked at those pictures,” Mrs. Robideau chided him. “You know what they show.” She hovered in the office doorway.