by Ed Gorman
Preston put out his hand. Puckett shook it.
On his way back to his rental car, Puckett saw at least twenty women in bikinis. He thought of Anne and tried not to feel unabashed lust. He really didn't want to be a guy like Preston. The man was in equal parts amusing and sad; sad in the rough and bluff way only a middle-aged man can be.
Chapter Nine
1
At 2:35 that afternoon, Puckett was in the lobby of the hotel where Veronica Hobbs was staying. He had invited her to come down and meet him in a nearby restaurant, and he put an edge on his voice so that she'd know it was more than a mere "invitation."
While he waited for her, he sat in a comfortable armchair in the lobby watching sales representatives hurry in and out. They were all, men and women alike, stuffed inside suits fresh out of dry cleaning bags; splashed and splotched with deodorant, after-shave (called perfume for the women), hair spray and a variety of confections to make their breath smell pleasant.
Their eyes were narrow and dark from too little sleep; and their arms weary from toting suitcases, briefcases and massive presentation cases. Their stomachs would still be hurting from last night's too spicy meal, their bowels constricted from too little fiber, and their mouths raw from too much liquor.
To raise their bodies from the dead this morning, they had required caffeine, nicotine and a certain amount of pro forma bitching—the effing bed was too soft, the effing plane landed so effing late last night, the effing client's a real asshole and probably'll only give me five minutes max anyway.
This small army of sales representatives would keep on selling until it dropped, until its endless supply of replacements topped the hill and took its place. Ancient Greece had had its peddlers, and so would the far, starry planets that mankind ultimately settled on...
Puckett knew a lot about sales reps because that's what his father had been—thirty-seven years with General Electric, opening new markets on the wholesale level—until all the anxiety, all the bad, rushed meals, all the Pall Malls, all the Booths Gin, all the thousand-deaths-you-died-every-single-day-on-the-road had taken their toll and the doctor said stomach cancer and there were Puckett and his mother on opposite sides of the white, starchy hospital bed, holding the old man's trembling hands and trying not to notice how often he cried though he tried hard not to.
And then, scarcely three weeks after it had been diagnosed, he was gone, utterly, utterly gone, so much unsaid between Puckett and his old man, so much undone, that even in a hotel lobby on a bright, after-the-rain, spring afternoon, Puckett couldn't help but get tears in his own eyes because even though the old man was nearly twelve years dead, Puckett thought of him every single day of the year, and realized all over again how much he loved him and missed him.
"Hi."
He looked up. Veronica stood there. She wore a yellow spring blouse and designer jeans. Her blonde hair shone from washing. She should have looked very pretty. Instead, she looked exhausted and terrified.
"Hi," he said, standing up.
"I'm ready if you are."
"Good," he said.
The restaurant was packed with Loop workers taking refuge from the long and frantic day. While the setting itself was nothing special—overly familiar framed photos of "Chicago, City on the Make," as the late novelist, Nelson Algren, had referred to it; vinyl covered booths; and the sort of indoor-outdoor carpeting that seemed to be born dirty—the food was great.
Puckett had a burger, fries and a malt. He was doing his standard Salute to Cholesterol.
"God, you're so thin," Veronica said. "How do you do it?"
He smiled. "The anxiety diet. It works great."
She smiled, too. "Apparently."
He waited until they were finished eating before getting into anything serious.
"I need to talk to you."
His tone startled her, and she looked at him with real apprehension. "About Cobey?"
"About you and Cobey. And Beth Swallows."
"About Beth Swallows?"
"Last night, when we were talking to Cozzens, I got the sense that you knew her."
"Knew her? Of course not."
He felt she was lying. He wondered why. "Any lies you tell will only hurt Cobey. Unless that's exactly what you want to do."
"Why would I hurt Cobey?"
He shook his head. "Why don't you just tell me the truth, Veronica?"
"You mind if I smoke?"
"If that'll help, fine."
She took a pack of cigarettes from her purse and lit one with a small, delicately crafted, gold lighter. Such splendid design for something that helped give you lung cancer...
She dropped her gaze a moment. He had the sense she was composing herself.
She said, "Do you think I might have killed her?"
"It's a possibility."
"Cut her head off that way?"
"Insane people are capable of anything."
"You think I'm insane?"
"If you'd killed her, you were, at least, insane at the time. And that kind of insanity would have given you enormous strength."
"Then you're saying I could be the killer?"
He sighed. "Veronica, I'm not saying anything. I'm asking. I want to help Cobey. He may be the killer, for all I know at this point. But I want to find out what really happened."
"I didn't kill her."
"Good."
"But I suppose that guilty people always say that, don't they? That they're innocent, I mean?"
"Usually."
She nodded. She looked very sad now. "He's never been very good at being faithful."
"I'm sorry, Veronica."
"I mean, the strange thing is, I think he honestly tries to be."
He just watched her. She seemed on the verge of tears. "So, anyway, I just started following him one day." She gave him a quick, forlorn smile. "You would have been proud of me. I bought new clothes so that he wouldn't recognize me, and I bought this big, floppy hat and these huge, Joan Crawford kind of sunglasses, and I waited in the lobby of his hotel. When he came out, I—" The quick, forlorn smile again. "It's actually a lot of fun, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"Following people around."
"Not always. I knew an investigator who decided to follow his best friend around and then spring all these photos on him at his next birthday party. Unfortunately, the man went right to the investigator's house and spent all afternoon in the investigator's bedroom with the investigator's wife. I don't think that would be fun."
"I suppose that should be a funny story, but it's actually very sad," Veronica said.
"Yes, it is, actually."
She tilted her coffee cup toward her and peered into it, as if it were a tea cup and she was trying to read her fortune in the leaves.
"There's one difference," she said. And looked up at him. "Between the private investigator and me, I mean."
"Oh?"
"I knew what I was going to find."
"You mean, you knew you'd find that Cobey was being unfaithful?"
"Right. But even more than that. I knew who he was going to be with, too."
"You knew about Beth Swallows?"
"Yes."
"How?"
She hesitated again, but only briefly. "Did you ever read any of the biographies about John Lennon?"
He shook his head.
"Well, a few of his biographers insist that Yoko Ono saw to it that John started having a sexual relationship with their very pretty secretary because this way John would take care of his need to wander, and Yoko would be in control of the entire situation. She told the secretary that she wanted this to happen. But then John started falling in love with the secretary and Yoko was furious."
"You're saying that you set up the Swallows girl with Cobey?"
"Yes."
He sat there and stared at her and realized, in a terrible way, what one of his old bosses at the Secret Service had always told him: that we really don't know each other, that treachery often h
ides in what appears to be innocence.
What Veronica had just described was something from the darkest of Restoration comedies, yet still she sat there, prim and lovely in her slightly wan way, looking no more manipulative than she had a few moments ago.
"You think that's pretty sick?" she asked.
"I try not to judge people, Veronica. I guess because I don't think I can hold up to much judgment myself."
"He was starting to roam again. I could feel it." He sat there and let her talk.
"He really needs to be loved and sought after. The more conquests he has, the more secure he is. A lot of men are that way—though somehow I don't think you are—and they spend their whole lives cheating on their wives. Do you ever read James Dickey, the poet?"
He shook his head.
"He wrote this great poem about adultery in this cheap motel, about how at the moment of orgasm both people are able to hold off all thought of getting old and dying—just for that one moment. And then they go about their lives and they start getting overwhelmed by everything again, how their bodies are starting to get old, how the street is always filled with fresh, new faces to take their place—and how their spouses somehow aren't enough to make them feel young and purposeful and in control again. So they grab the first woman they can find—a woman who is married and looking for the same thing, even if she doesn't know it—and they rush off to a sleazy motel and are reborn again in their orgasms. If that makes sense."
"Too much sense, really."
"Well, Cobey's like that. Only with Cobey it's even worse because he not only wants to feel immortal, he also wants to feel famous and beloved—like Cobey Daniels, number one TV star of the decade."
He signaled for another pot of coffee. "How did you meet Beth Swallows?"
"Sometimes, when Cobey made up some excuse about needing to do something with his play that night—when he was actually sneaking off with somebody else—I'd go to this nightclub and I'd see Beth there. She was very beautiful and very smart and very unlike the sort of women you meet in nightclubs."
"How so?"
Veronica laughed. "Well, for one thing, she knew who James Dickey was." She reached across and patted his hand. "Sorry, I couldn't resist that." She cleared her throat and went on. "She'd gone out with this doctor for almost her entire senior year at college before she found out he was married. She was crushed. After graduation, she moved here, and didn't go out for months until she started coming to this nightclub. She knew a lot about classical music and painting and books and what she called the consolation of philosophy' and I guess that's why we got to be friends. Both being quiet and everything, I mean."
"How did your plan for Cobey come about?"
"It just sort of evolved. Beth and I saw each other two or three times a week and I told her all the trouble I was having with Cobey. And, by coincidence, I was reading Albert Goldman's biography of John Lennon and—well, that's where the idea came from, anyway."
"What was her reaction when you told her your plan?"
"She thought I was kidding."
"But she gradually got used to the idea?"
"Right."
"And finally she said yes?"
"Right."
"So how did you arrange for her to meet Cobey?"
"She went backstage after the show one night and told Cobey that she was a very big fan of his. I could see right away that he was instantly smitten. She was very beautiful. Very beautiful."
He wondered if he detected a trace of bitterness in her voice.
"He started sneaking off and seeing her."
"How often?"
"Once or twice a week, at first."
"But things heated up?"
"Very much so. To the point that…" She stopped herself.
"How were you and Beth getting along by this point?"
"You still think I killed her, don't you?"
"I'd just like an answer to my question. Nothing more."
"Well, you'll probably find out, anyway."
"Find out what?"
"I went to Beth's one night and we had a terrible argument. She told me that she'd fallen in love with Cobey and that he'd fallen in love with her. I couldn't believe it. I felt completely betrayed. I—I slapped her, and then started trashing her apartment. I just lost it completely. I couldn't help myself."
"But you didn't slap her more than once?"
"No."
"How much did Cobey know about all this?"
"Nothing that I know of."
"You didn't tell him, and she didn't either?"
She laughed harshly. "We both wanted to protect our positions. If Cobey found out that we'd both been manipulating him—well, he'd probably find himself a new girl entirely."
She smiled sadly. "Do you hate me?"
"No. No, I don't."
"I really do love him. That's why I got Beth to—to help me. But I sense you don't understand that."
"I'm trying to. Sometimes I'm more old-fashioned than I want to be."
She reached over and touched his hand again. It was a tiny hand, and he thought of his daughter.
"I'm so scared for him," she said.
"So am I. So am I, Veronica."
"I'm glad we talked, Mr. Puckett."
He paid the check and walked her back to her hotel in the sunny, warm, April afternoon.
Chapter Ten
Cobey's Tapes
In re: Veronica
I suppose I should begin with the time when we were up in the mountains, in that little cabin we'd rented for a four-day weekend, and we learned that Veronica had forgotten to bring her medication along—we'd decided on this weekender very suddenly.
This was about six months after I'd been released from the hospital in St. Louis—which is where I'd met my fellow nutcase Veronica—and when I still had to sneak around to see her. God, how Lilly hated her.
Veronica wasn't Lilly's first choice to hate, though, that honor belonging to a thirty-six-year-old red-haired school teacher who was in the bughouse when I first got sent there. She was being treated for depression, and thus shared the electric-shock table with me. Before I met Veronica, this woman and I would sneak out of our rooms at night and fuck in the stairwells until the muscle boys in the white T-shirts and white ducks caught us one night and told the good gray doctor who in turn told Lilly who, of course, got hysterical and told me that some night she was going to sneak into my room with a pair of scissors and cut my cock off right at the root, blood spurting everywhere like a geyser, and we'd see then who was sticking his cock into places it didn't belong. Lilly, selfish cunt that she is, didn't care that Kathryn, the school teacher, was a fine, sweet, gentle-sad woman whom I happened to really care about despite the simple, crude way it looked, us humping our asses off in stairwells. Kathryn ended up, at Lilly's insistence, in a far, far building where I never had the chance to see or talk to her again.
But I was telling you about Lilly and Veronica, who I met a month-and-a-half after sweet Kathryn's banishment...
First, I think Lilly was jealous of Veronica's looks. Plump Lilly has been trying to lose weight ever since she wrenched me from my parents when I was six. Who could unsettle a fat person more than a pale, slender, blonde-haired girl with grave, enormous eyes and a voice that rarely rose above a whisper?
Second, I think that Lilly learned about Veronica having one of her wealthy father's accountants fly in that weekend and tell me how, financially, anyway, I could start to pull away from Lilly.
Third, Lilly was concerned about her investment in me. What if I came to my senses and saw my Hollywood lifestyle for what it was—pain and bullshit, hardly worth the trouble? What if I settled down and married Veronica, and we went off to live in Virginia or someplace, and I dropped out of the acting scene altogether?
Anyway, that long weekend in the mountains, Veronica and I were hiding out from Lilly, who had private detectives follow us constantly.
It was a perfect weekend—until we realized that Veronica, in
our rush to get out of LA., had left her medication behind.
Veronica was dependent on her pills. She had been diagnosed with a kind of schizophrenia that rendered her virtually dysfunctional if she wasn't constantly taking her medication.
I said I'd sneak back to her apartment and get the stuff, but she said no—and she was probably right—that this would just give Lilly's private eyes one more chance to locate and follow us.
For the first day and a half, everything went fine. There had been great, grim rains in the mountains that week, causing mudslides, wiping out some of the older and narrower roads, flooding the tumbling mountain creeks.
But when the rains stopped, it was perfect weather for taking small hikes up into the piney hills, looking out across the mountains, walking down small trails where every few minutes you'd glimpse a mountain sheep or a pronghorn antelope, or see an odd, colorful bird that looked as exotic as something you'd see in South America.
We ate well, sharing the cooking duties on the little gas stove that came with the cabin, making long, leisurely love and listening to a lot of classical music in an effort to lend me, at least, a little bit of culture.
And then it happened. I wasn't even aware of it until it was too late...
We'd made love and had fallen asleep to the sound of chill midnight rain soaking the cabin roof and walls. Snuggled deep, snuggled together, enjoying sleep.
My first impression was that I was having an especially vivid dream, the kind that is difficult to distinguish from reality sometimes.
There was a woman above me on the bed. She had a long butcher knife in her hand and was holding it up, as if she were about to plunge it into me. She was crying out my name and screaming, "You bastard! You bastard!"
And then she brought the knife down and stabbed me.
At the exact moment that I cried out in pain—at that exact moment—my mind shifted into reality mode.
This was not a dream. Veronica was kneeling beside me on the bed and she was still crying and screaming. She had just stabbed me.
And she was about to stab me again—
