Night Relics

by James P. Blaylock

  Suddenly in his mind he saw once again the moonlit image of his own bloody hands. The picture flitted away, replaced by the dead man’s eyes, open in horror where he lay entangled in the bedclothes, and he was flooded with a jealousy and horror so loathsome that it was nearly inhuman. He pushed himself away from the precipice and lurched back out into the sunlight. Staggering forward, nearly falling again, he caught the limb of an alder and held on to it, forcing his mind clear, tasting the residue of the bitter emotions as if he’d eaten burned food.

  He realized that his shoes were soaked, and the knees of his jeans were scuffed and dirty from where he’d fallen forward onto the trail. He looked at his shaking hands, then abruptly turned around and started back down the trail. The wind blew fitfully now, innocently, and the morning was spent. Bobby and Beth would probably be at the house already, and suddenly what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to be there with them.

  10

  PARTWAY UP THE RIDGE TRAIL BEHIND HIS HOUSE, KLEIN stopped to pull foxtails out of his socks. The Colt pistol was heavy in his pocket, as if it were going to tear right through the thin fabric and fall onto the dirt. He half wanted to pull it out and fire all six bullets into a tree, or whatever the hell else presented itself. But that was crazy. He was going to be in deep kim chee if he didn’t get a grip.

  He had screwed up badly again with Pomeroy. Larry Collier wasn’t worth more than about a nickel’s worth of anger, but somehow Pomeroy, with his Smart-ass tone and his pervert mouth, had managed to turn Collier into some kind of issue. Klein shouldn’t have hit him, no matter what, but the real mistake had been the gun talk, especially in front of Lorna. Lorna would know he wasn’t kidding. He had told Pomeroy to leave Lorna out of it, and then he had involved her in it himself by losing control. And here he was now, loafing around out in the hills, carrying the loaded .38 that he’d promised to use to blow a man’s head off.

  And even if it came to that, even if that was the only way, finally, to deal with Pomeroy, it was the stupidest thing in the world to talk about it, especially when it might be a real option. As far as Klein knew, Pomeroy didn’t have any family. Nobody would miss him aside from the shysters down at the car lot where he worked, and they wouldn’t miss him much. Probably they’d have a celebration and burn the contents of his desk in the middle of the showroom floor.

  But he wasn’t serious about killing anyone. Not yet, not as long as Pomeroy was all talk. When he produced something real, then Klein could get serious. Part of Pomeroy had to be a little bit worried. There was sure as hell fear in his eyes when his lip was bleeding and he was crawling across the pool deck like a crab. But the thing about psychopaths like Pomeroy was that time and experience didn’t change them. They were locked too deeply into their own twisted point of view, and they thought the same thing was true about everyone else. In that way they were nearly blind.

  That was what would screw him up. When push came to shove, Klein would hand him his head on a plate. That’s what Bobby next door had said once. Klein brightened up, thinking about it: “Cut off his head and make him eat it.” That was it. Christ, that was funny—something like that coming out of the mouth of a six-year-old. Kids were so full of beans these days that he couldn’t get over it. Times had changed.

  He thought suddenly about Lorna. He had laid into her pretty good back at the house. It was true that when he was in trouble she’d stood there blinking like a blinded rabbit, but then what the hell did he expect, that she’d chase Pomeroy down and kick his teeth in? “Here’s your gun, dear, I’ve loaded it myself….”

  Right now she was probably drinking a Bloody Mary for breakfast, putting down a little hair of the dog. Well, he couldn’t really blame her. Not this morning. If he hung around Pomeroy much longer he’d become a damn sight bigger drunk than she was. He had always figured live and let live, as the saying went, and he had applied that to Lorna, too. She was free to have her own opinions, which she could keep to herself. The thing about wives was that they wanted to control you, and that was something he’d never been able to stand. He didn’t want a nanny, thank you very much.

  And for that reason he had always given her the same break: if she wanted to sleep till noon, so what? If she took a dip in the vodka bottle at breakfast, fine. She was a big girl. He wasn’t going to tell her how to spend her time.

  It occurred to him now, for the first time since they were married, that there was another way of looking at it—as some kind of failure on his part. He tried to wave the thought away. It suggested too much. It was so big that it threatened to knock him over. He had always believed that running a marriage was like putting together a plan for a home: you drew things out the way you wanted them, adding in enough doors and windows, moving the pencil and straightedge yourself, so you didn’t turn out with some kind of mess.

  He couldn’t stand uncertainty, which was why he attended to his own business and let Lorna attend to hers. The way she talked sometimes it seemed like she wanted him to submit to the marriage, or something, and that sounded to him like drowning. Maybe he just didn’t have the faith—in her, in marriage itself. Faith had always seemed like a sucker bet.

  He looked around him, feeling a gust of wind on the back of his neck. The grass on the hillside billowed as if a wave had run through it, and he thought suddenly of the woman in the black dress. Was that why he was out there? Waiting for her? Christ, he was one doomed son of a bitch, crazy and criminal both. He started toward home, looking one last time at the nearby oaks and sycamores. The shadows were merely shadows. He couldn’t wait all day for something that wasn’t going to happen anyway.

  Lorna wasn’t in the kitchen. He opened the cupboard under the sink and checked the trash. There was an empty V8 can that he was pretty certain hadn’t been there earlier. For a moment he half thought he’d fix himself one—a shot of Tabasco, stick of celery. It might make Lorna feel better about things if he had a little belt, too. She wouldn’t be drinking alone.

  He let it slide. Drinking during the day cut into production. He’d promised Beth that he’d install the dead bolts, and he still had to run down into El Toro to buy the damned things. There was no use muddying the water with alcohol, so to speak. That was almost funny, except that he had the feeling that somehow he’d slipped around the issue again. And he was already sick of feeling that way. Why couldn’t Lorna just put a lid on it?

  Shutting the study door behind him, he sat down at his desk, opening the top drawer and sliding the pistol into it. Later, when Lorna was awake and out of the bedroom, he would return it to the nightstand. There was no use letting her see him with it. Tilting the chair back, he pushed up the lid of the Rolodex, then flipped through the cards until he found Dale Winters’s telephone number. Winters was his contact, call it his go-between, with Sloane Investment Services. Sloane was an investment “consortium” that seemed to finance a number of cash-only restaurants and import-export businesses that shipped merchandise to South America. That’s all Klein knew about it, the only thing he wanted to know. Winters had arranged the loan in return for a percentage, and Sloane’s money spent as well as anyone else’s, although they expected a good return—a damned good return when you added Winters’s to it. That’s something Pomeroy couldn’t get into his head: that if he took Klein down, and the deal collapsed, Sloane would be the unhappy loser, not to mention Winters. It was high time that Pomeroy was “leaned on” himself, by someone heavy enough to make it count.

  Winters had an office in Irvine, and sometimes he worked on Sundays. It was a good day to call, because there weren’t any secretaries there, and if Winters was working, then Klein could get straight through without being put off, which wasn’t always easy. He remembered Winters laughing at the Begin joke at Spangler’s party. He was one of those oversized people who hugged everyone. He got awards for giving truckloads of toys to kids down in Mexicali or somewhere. He didn’t owe Klein any favors, but there was a good chance, if Klein pitched it right, that he�
�d have something valuable to say about Pomeroy.

  He punched in the numbers and the phone rang three times before it was picked up and a voice said, “Yeah.”

  “Dale!” Klein said. “This is Lance Klein.”

  There was a moment of silence and then Winters said, “What’s the difference between a man and a bottle of wine?”

  Klein thought about it, but nothing came to him. After a moment Winters said, “Wine matures,” and Klein laughed out loud, even though it took him a moment to get it. He forced another laugh, wondering vaguely if the joke was meant to apply to him.

  “You know who told me that?” Winters asked.

  “I give,” Klein said.

  “A waitress in a restaurant in Laguna Beach. Can you beat that?”

  “I could think of a dozen to hit her back with,” Klein said, “especially if she was a blonde.”

  “Well,” Winters said, “my wife was there, and she’s a blonde. I’m not big on blonde jokes, I guess.”

  “Me either,” Klein said quickly. “Lorna’s blonde, too.”

  “That’s right!” Winters said. “She was the life of the party the other night. What was that joke she told? Something about the elephant and the Hindu.”

  “Something like that,” Klein said.

  “So what’s on your mind? Want to hack a few divots?”

  “I haven’t shot a round in a year,” Klein said. “I wouldn’t know how to hold my club.”

  “Hold your club? Sounds like that joke about ‘Madame Thumb and her four comely daughters.’ Hey, listen to this, speaking of holding the club. There’s a Yale man and a Harvard man taking a leak. They zip up, see, and the Yale man heads for the sink. The Harvard man, though, he heads for the door. The Yale man says to him in this old-boy accent, ‘At Yale they taught us to wash our hands after urinating,’ and the Harvard man turns to him and says, ‘At Harvard they taught us not to piss on our hands.’ ”

  Klein snorted into the mouthpiece, then thrust the receiver away, holding it at arm’s length he was laughing so hard. He thumped it down onto the top of the desk and stamped his foot, trying to regain control of his voice. “Hoo, that’s funny!” he said finally, then laughed again. Winters was dead silent on the other end, as if letting Klein get it out of his system.

  “You’re a hell of an audience, Lance,” he said finally.

  “And you tell a hell of a joke, I guess.” He waited for a moment, but Winters didn’t say anything more. The joking around was apparently over, just like that.

  “I just wanted to run a little business matter past you,” Klein said. “Nothing much.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You met Bernard Pomeroy the other night, didn’t you? That party at the Spanglers’ house.”

  “Can’t say that I did,” Winters said.

  “Sells Mercedes Benzes out in Newport Beach. He didn’t hit on you to buy a car?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Well you would remember. He’d have sold you one.”

  “I’ll watch out for him.”

  “He’s doing a little sales work for me, out in the canyon.”

  “Out in the canyon?”

  “That little enterprise of ours that Sloane financed.”

  “Oh, sure. Of course. Some kind of problem with it?”

  “No,” Klein said. “We’re not doing bad. Not bad at all. Pomeroy’s tenacious.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that. He sounds like a good man. You take care of things out there.”

  For a moment Klein thought he was going to hang up. “I intend to,” he said, trying to work things around to the point. “We’ve got a timetable, but I don’t want to rush things, for all the obvious reasons.”

  “You’re the boss,” Winters said.

  Klein could hear him rustling papers. “You know, it’s funny you should say that. If Pomeroy’s got one fault it’s that he’s a little—what the hell?—overanxious, maybe. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not yet,” Winters said. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, let’s just say he’s not subtle. He could sell raincoats in the desert if he set his mind to it. But he has a hard time taking no for an answer. Tries to jerk their wallet out of their pocket. He’s kind of a purse snatcher when he gets impatient.”

  “I’m still in the dark,” Winters said. The paper rustling had stopped. He was paying attention now. “What are you saying here?”

  “Nothing, really,” Klein said, easing off. “I’m just a little concerned that if he goes around acting like a cowboy … You know … He might piss on his hands.” He laughed weakly.

  “I think that would be a large mistake, Lance.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I agree with you on that.”

  “Tie him down, then. I don’t have to tell you how important it is for this whole thing to work.”

  “Of course not,” Klein said. “Everything I’ve got is tied up in it.”

  “Other people have things tied up, too. Your creditors are my creditors. Don’t drop the ball on me.”

  “Hell no,” Klein said. “I appreciate what you’re saying to me.”

  “And you can appreciate how a man has a reputation in the financial community, especially in regard to investment consortiums like Sloane.”

  “We’re rock solid. I didn’t mean to imply that …”

  “And Sloane isn’t interested in your man Polaroid or any of his affairs. They don’t care about your gardener, either, or your grandmother’s niece. This is a question of where the buck stops, Lance. That’s the bottom line. Do you follow me?”

  “Absolutely,” Klein said. “Loud and clear. I just thought that some weight might be brought to bear….”

  “I’m virtually certain you don’t want that,” Winters said flatly.

  Klein was silent for a moment. There wasn’t a single thing he could say. He was fairly sure he’d been threatened, and there was no way in hell he wanted it spelled out more explicitly. The conversation was over. He’d never in his life engaged in a conversation that was more clearly over.

  “Well, thanks for letting me yak in your ear,” he said. It sounded weak, but he hurried on, trying to finesse things. “Sometimes it’s good to talk things through. You see things from a different point of view.” He could hear Winters’s voice, but it was muffled, as if he was holding his hand over the phone and talking to someone else. Klein waited him out.

  “Go ahead,” Winters said finally. “What was that?”

  “I guess nothing much,” Klein said. “I just wanted to touch base.”

  “Always happy to hear from you,” Winters said. “My best to the wife.”

  “Thanks, and tell …” Klein started to say, but Winters hung up before he had a chance to finish his sentence. He listened to dead air for a moment. When he hung up the phone his hand was shaking. What an incredible blunder! He should have seen it coming. Winters was up to his eyeballs in the whole deal, and here Klein had called up and set off every bell and whistle in his head. It almost seemed like a good idea to call back right now and clarify things. He didn’t want Winters thinking that there was some kind of problem when there wasn’t. No use worrying about trifles.

  He reached for the phone again, but didn’t pick it up. Instead he stood up and headed toward the door. It was damage-control time. A drink made some sense, after all. Something would come up to answer the Pomeroy question. What the hell, he could tell Pomeroy any damned thing at all about his conversation with Winters, tell him a story about a guy with a baseball bat….

  He opened the door, and there was Lorna, standing right there, a surprised look on her face. He couldn’t believe it. She’d been sneaking around in the hallway, listening at the door.

  11

  THE CAT SEEMED TO SCRAMBLE FOR A MOMENT ON THE chair cushion as if trying to get up. Pomeroy dropped the cardboard box, pumped the gun, and fired again, hitting the cat low on his side, just in back of the ribs. The animal pawed the air now, and he reached
down and pressed it to the cushion, holding it there. Die, he thought. For God’s sake…

  There was a noise out on the road right then, like a car door shutting, and Pomeroy stiffened, careful not to spin around like a guilty man. He bent over, picked up the box, and upended it, spilling the contents out onto the dirt. Then, before turning around, he put the box over the cat, which lay still now. No one could have heard the little popping noise that the pellet gun had made, so unless they’d seen him there was no problem. He set his face in a smile and looked casually back toward the Trooper, ready to say something sad and philosophical about the poor cat. What was it that cats died of? Cat fever. Was that it? The cat was dying of it, suffering terribly….

  There was no car on the road but his own. At first he couldn’t see anything. Perhaps it was just the wind, his imagination. Then there was a movement in the front seat, and suddenly he saw a face staring out at him through the dusty windshield, half-obscured by the glare of the sun.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes. There was a kid in the goddamn front seat!

  The camera! Pomeroy understood it at once. The little bastard was ripping off his Nikon. Pomeroy had left the door open and the camera was sitting there on the seat, plain as day….

  He lifted the box and pushed the cat into it, then picked up the tuna fish and can opener and twine. He slid the gun into his pocket and then looked at his hand. Somehow there was blood on it; from the cat? Or was it his own blood, from where the damned thing had torn him up yesterday?

  “Hey!” he shouted, picking up the box now and heading along the side of the house. The kid was in no particular hurry. He was rummaging around in there, probably going through the glove compartment. There was the toiletries kit in there, but nothing valuable. Holding on to the box with both hands, Pomeroy began to run. The boy was looking out past the hinge side of the open door, waiting till the last possible moment.