Winter Tides

by James P. Blaylock

  “If you had something to say, you didn’t have to haul me way to hell and gone out here.”

  “On the contrary,” Edmund told him. “That’s just what I had to do.”

  “Okay. I guess I get it. I’m scared. Is that what you want? I’m scared as hell. Look, I’m shaking bad.” He held his hand out.

  Edmund glanced in the rearview mirror. The dust had settled, and the fog was impenetrable. The night was silent except for the whirring of the fan under the hood. From somewhere ahead of them there was the sound of waves breaking. He could hear the old man’s breathing.

  “If you were dissatisfied with what I paid you for your services last time, you should have spoken up,” Edmund told him, “and not gone talking to my employees.” He kept his expression flat and unreadable, as if he were merely making an observation.

  “Is that what this is about? God almighty …”

  “Now, Mr. Mayhew…” Edmund shook his head and smiled faintly. “Why was it necessary that my employees learn about our business transaction with Mr. Mifflin?”

  “Necessary? It wasn’t necessary. I came around looking for you. The man I spoke to loaned me enough money to see me through a couple of days, that’s all. If you’d have paid me …”

  “That can’t be all, can it? I got a call from our friend Mr. Mifflin. He was very upset. The man you spoke to has tried to turn this to his advantage. I believe that you meant to turn it to your advantage, too.”

  “By God, I did not. Whatever this man did, I didn’t mean for it to happen. All I wanted was another twenty lousy bucks.”

  “Did you mean for this to happen?” He took a .45 caliber derringer out from his inside coat pocket, and, with his trigger finger along the barrel, he held it palm up, pointed at the dashboard. He realized that he had known all along that he was going to show Mayhew the gun. He hadn’t been conscious of it, but it had been inevitable.

  Mayhew glared at the pistol and then at Edmund. “Shit,” he said. “Don’t threaten me, you little asshole. Punks like you …”

  “Shut up!” Edmund shouted, his voice unnaturally high. He swiveled in the seat, aiming the pistol at the old man now, holding his forearm flat against his side to stop his hand from shaking. It was loaded with steel shot, which would screw up any chance of police learning anything from ballistics if they ever found the gun, which they wouldn’t. And of course they wouldn’t give a damn anyway, not about a dead bum. Mayhew was roadkill. The pistol grip felt huge in his hand, like holding onto a wooden golf ball. He had only shot the gun a few times before, and the recoil had nearly broken his wrist.

  “The man you spoke to is off limits to you, Mr. Mayhew. From now on, if you want to talk to me, you can beep me. Do you know what a beeper is?”

  Mayhew sat back carefully against the door. He grinned suddenly and nodded, still watching the gun. His attitude was different now that it was pointed at his face. “Yes, I do know what a beeper is. I’m … I’m fine with that.”

  “You are not fine, Mr. Mayhew. You’re a piece of human trash. You’ll keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to me. You’ll address me as Mr. Dalton from now on.” The windshield was opaque with moisture now, and out the side windows the fog rolled through in waves that intermittently obscured the brush even a few yards from the car.

  “That’s fine,” he said, nodding heavily. “I’ll …”

  “Do you want to be shot? Right here? Is this where you want to die? Because I will shoot you.” He lifted his hand away from his side, and it shook nearly uncontrollably, so he grabbed his wrist with his left hand to steady it. Mayhew’s eyes were wide now, focused on the gun barrel.

  “No,” the old man said weakly.

  “What? Speak up. And once again, address me as Mr. Dalton.”

  “No, Mr. Dalton.” Mayhew held his hands up in front of him, as if he were giving up, and then lurched suddenly forward, knocking Edmund’s hand into the air. The pistol slammed against the low ceiling of the car, but Edmund held onto it, pushing his free hand under Mayhew’s chin as the old man lunged for the door lock. The locks disengaged, Edmund shouldered him sideways into the dashboard, and Mayhew threw himself back against the seat again, punching at Edmund’s face with his left hand as he snatched at the door handle. The car door flew open, and Mayhew propelled himself backward through it, sliding off the edge of the seat into the dirt of the roadway with a wild grunt. He was illuminated now by the dome light. Edmund threw himself prone on the seat, clutched a handful of the old man’s tweed coat, and held on. Mayhew twisted away from him, jerking his arm out of the coat sleeve and simultaneously standing up and slamming the door. The door sprang back open, the latch jammed by the empty arm of the coat, and Edmund scrambled across the console as the door slammed shut again—on his arm now, smashing against his elbow. He whimpered in pain and clambered headfirst out onto the dirt, swinging the gun up as he crawled to his knees.

  He yanked on the trigger without aiming. The recoil of the little .45 slammed his arm backward so hard that he hit himself in the face with the back of his hand. He staggered to his feet, deafened by the noise, and saw the old man rushing at him through the fog, swinging his loose coat around his head like a cowboy with a rope. Before Edmund could raise the pistol again, the loose coat flapped down over his head, and Mayhew smashed into him, pushing him over backward, his knee cracking into Edmund’s chin. Edmund flailed at him as the old man snatched the coat away again, the dry bushes crackling under their feet.

  Mayhew ran, waving the coat, and Edmund scrambled forward now, aiming the pistol, and saw the old man loping into the fog fifteen feet ahead, heading for the cliffs. Without thinking, Edmund squeezed the trigger, holding the gun two-handed, ready this time for the recoil. But the trigger, somehow, was jammed against the grip, and the gun didn’t fire. He stumbled to his feet, cursing himself for having forgotten to cock it.

  Mayhew was gone, disappeared in the fog. Edmund followed him, peering into the mist ahead, holding the pistol out in front of him and trying to cock it. The mechanism was stiff, and his wrist hurt like hell, sprained by the last recoil. He stopped and used both hands to cock the pistol, and then started out at a run again down the narrow trail. There was nowhere to go but straight on. Mayhew wouldn’t elude him. Within moments the old man appeared again before him, loping slowly along with a heavy limp like some shadowy, hunched devil half hidden by the fog. Edmund ran right up on him, keeping pace easily, mimicking the old man’s limp, wheezing wildly as if he were singing along. Mayhew looked over his shoulder at Edmund, clearly wild with fear, and Edmund stopped running, stood in place, and fired the pistol straight at the old man’s back, his hands jerking skyward with the recoil. Mayhew vanished, lunging forward into the mist, and Edmund set out again, nearly stumbling over the old man where he lay in the dirt of the roadway.

  He stood staring at Mayhew, at the bloodstained coat that he still clutched in his arms. A hobo till the end, Edmund thought, snickering with laughter. He would give up his life, but he wouldn’t give up his damned stinking coat. It was poetic somehow.

  This was what they had driven out here for, Edmund realized—the killing of Mr. Mayhew in the darkness and the fog, hidden from the day, separate from the world. This was why it had occurred to him like a bolt out of the blue to borrow Mifflin’s credit card. This was why he had disconnected the license plate lamp, why he had thought to bring the gun and the video camera and the rest of the equipment in the trunk, why he had pulled over at the curb at just exactly the point where he had access to a dark and hidden place. Even the fog … he hadn’t seen fog this heavy in twenty-five years. Why tonight, of all nights?

  He was full of an energetic insight, of a keen appreciation of the degree to which all of this had almost been choreographed up until now. He had trusted the deep places in his own mind, and, once again, he hadn’t let himself down. Oil or pastel? Marble or alabaster? All the vital questions had been answered, and he knew now what lay ahead of him. He thought of the Nig
ht Girl, of her paintings, of her secret place in the woods. He knew that she was waiting here in the fog, that she would come to him, that together they would see to the final details. He turned around and headed back down the trail toward the car, where his tools waited for him in the trunk.

  46

  EDMUND THOUGHT OF THE PAY PHONE ON THE NORTHEAST corner of Walnut and Main, near Anne’s apartment, as his “business phone.” He used it especially when he was at work and didn’t want to be overheard making a sensitive call from an office cubicle with thin wooden and glass walls. There was a certain glamour in the pay phone calls, too, whether he was calling Social Services to make up lies on Collier or was talking to Ray Mifflin’s old friend Hector, who was doing time in Chino Prison for smuggling drugs and aliens across the border. It had been Hector who had led him to Mifflin in the first place. This morning Edmund had put through a call to Hector’s cousin, a man named Fernando in East L.A., whom he had never met or spoken to until yesterday.

  Like in the old song about Alice’s Restaurant, it was true that you could get anything you want from a man in prison, and usually it didn’t cost you any more than a couple of cartons of cigarettes that you sent over to the prison property room. Some sorts of information cost considerably more than that, of course, but all Edmund had needed this time was information about purchasing false identification documents—a simple set, two authentic credit cards and a fake driver’s license. Stealing and using Mifflin’s cards had been easy, but perhaps wouldn’t have been as easy if he had hit a bigger, more security-conscious car rental agency like Hertz or Avis. Anyway, working the same kind of hoax more than once was both dangerous and inartistic.

  Things had evolved to the point where Edmund needed nom de plume. There was certain work that an artist such as himself simply couldn’t do under his own name, no matter how elegant the work. What had happened with Mayhew was that sort of work. He wished that he could choose the name himself, but he probably wouldn’t be able to, not on short notice. He was anxious to give Mifflin his cards back, if only to see how the man would react when he discovered that once again he was a pawn, entirely at the mercy of forces he couldn’t begin to comprehend. And who could blame him? Mifflin no doubt thought by now that he was the means to an end; that Edmund was simply using him to make a quick bundle of money. There was no way that he could guess that the means and the end were the same, that he was as much the centerpiece of Edmund’s elaborate table setting as Mayhew had been. Mifflin’s fate was still hidden from Edmund, but by and by it would be revealed, and then Edmund would reveal it to Mifflin….

  Edmund could hear music over the phone now, some kind of salsa music, and the sound of pots and pans clanging around, as if Fernando had uncradled a phone in the kitchen of a restaurant. He had the feeling that the man was making him wait just for the hell of it, maybe to get a psychological upper hand on him. But of course he had to put up with that kind of moronic behavior. He wasn’t in a position right now to do anything about it.

  “What?” Edmund asked. The sudden voice on the other end had taken him by surprise.

  “Okay. You said you need this quick?”

  “The quicker the better.”

  “Quick’s more expensive.”

  “We were talking about twelve hundred dollars,” Edmund told him.

  “Fifteen hundred is quicker.”

  Edmund was silent for a moment. Obviously he was being screwed out of three hundred dollars. And if there was one thing he couldn’t tolerate, it was somebody weaseling his money, although he didn’t give much of a damn for the money itself.

  “I can do it for twelve hundred,” Fernando said, “but it’s going to take another couple of days.”

  “Let’s do it now,” Edmund told him.

  “All right. Now what about the credit cards?”

  “Visa and American Express.”

  “Yeah, but what quality? For the money we’re talking you get stolen cards; they’ll be good maybe forty-eight, seventy-two hours max before they’re reported. You’ve got to move pretty fast.”

  “So what are you telling me?”

  “There’s better product, you know what I mean?”

  “Okay.”

  “For another five hundred we can find cards with a longer life span.”

  “How long?”

  “Two or three weeks.”

  “What’s the deal with that? What’s the difference?”

  “The good cards come from old folks, say in a convalescent hospital. Or dead people. Whatever kind of people aren’t paying attention very hard. Nobody figures it out till the bill comes at the end of the month.”

  “These come with some kind of guarantee, then? If they kill the card number in four days, I get some money back?”

  “No guarantees, my friend. They’ll be good, though.”

  “How much do you want? You know damned well that you’re nickel-and-diming me here. Why don’t you give me a total—one price for the whole package?”

  “Twenty-eight hundred.”

  “Fine. Twenty-eight hundred.”

  “I need some details. What was the name of the hotel. The one you told me yesterday?”

  “Huntington Towers. It’s on the Coast Highway south of Beach Boulevard. Six stories high, pink and green—you can’t miss it.”

  “Listen, then. Here’s the drill, my friend. You put the cash in an envelope along with a passport photo and leave it for a Mr. Johnson. You got that?”

  “Mr. Johnson.”

  “Do it right away. Within the hour. Tomorrow morning you pick up the documents the same way.”

  “What name do I use when I pick them up? I don’t want to use my own name at all, not around town here.”

  “Call in the morning and we’ll tell you.” The phone was hung up then, and for a moment Edmund thought they’d been cut off. Then he realized that the conversation was simply over.

  “Asshole,” Edmund said into the dead receiver. He hung up the phone.

  Edmund looked at his watch. Anne still hadn’t come out of her apartment, although she was only a couple of minutes behind the schedule she’d kept for the last couple of days. Edmund was wearing his jogging togs, and he set out north now, jogging toward Olive Street, where he headed east for half a block before ducking into an alley and starting back down toward Walnut again. As he rounded the corner onto Main, he saw that Anne was crossing the street toward Starbucks. He spotted a break in traffic and jogged across, waving happily at her, as if he were surprised to see her. She smiled back at him, and waited while he caught up to her.

  “Out jogging?” she said.

  “Four miles every morning before work. Can I join you?”

  She looked at him blankly for a moment before saying, “Yeah, sure. I’m just chasing a cup of coffee.”

  “I need something cold. You want to grab a table? What do you want? A cappuccino? It’s on me.”

  “Really, you don’t have to,” she said.

  “It’s my pleasure, Anne.”

  “Then just a simple coffee. Whatever they’ve got today.”

  He went inside and ordered, watching her through the window. He had strong feelings about her this morning. She was clearly impressed with his physical fitness, with the jogging. Women were attracted to a package, to the whole picture, and anybody who said they weren’t was crazy. There wasn’t much room for improvement in his package, if he did say so himself: money, looks, health—he had all that wired. As for his artistic talent and his intellect, she’d know all about that if only she’d give him a chance here—which she would.

  Her attraction to Dave had come very near to spoiling everything. He was so obviously beneath her. A woman worthy of Edmund Dalton wouldn’t descend to that level unless she had been fooled. And if she had been fooled, then he had to be fair. He had to give her a chance. He understood the Night Girl well enough, since he was largely responsible for her—for her shape, her passions, her being. He knew absolutely that he was the literally cr
eative link between the Day Girl and the Night Girl. Without him, the Night Girl would not have come into existence at all, and Anne would have forever denied half of her being. But Anne herself, the Day Girl, was largely a mystery to him. She was a little bit like a sprightly, forward child, and it was only fair that he had to lead her a little bit—show her the way. Their drinks were up, and he brought Anne’s coffee and his own more healthful fruit drink outside and sat down.

  “So how do you like work so far?” Edmund asked. “Everything satisfactory? Nobody bothering you?”

  “I’m fine,” Anne said.

  “Good. That’s good.” He sipped his drink and smiled at her. It occurred to him that her manner was a little brisk—which was rude, considering that he was her superior and that he’d just bought her a cup of coffee. He had gotten this same treatment at the gallery the other night. It didn’t become her. “I’ve got a little proposition for you,” he said, getting right down to the point.

  She nodded at him, still not smiling quite enough to suit him.

  “You remember when we talked about you and I going down to Mexico together? To Club Mex, near San Felipe?”

  “Together?” she asked.

  “Well, I think I mentioned it to you, yes. In the parking garage, in Laguna the other night.”

  “You mentioned you were going to Mexico, I think, but I don’t remember that you asked me to go along.”

  He smiled winningly at her. “Then I guess I’m asking you now.”

  She started to say something, but he waved her quiet. “Wait,” he said. “Look at this.” He opened his belt pack and took out a pair of plane tickets and the Club Mex resort brochure. “I took a chance on you,” he said, pointing to her name on one of the tickets. “One thing that you don’t know about me is that I love the way fate works. Sometimes you just have to trust it.”