by David Black
“To blackmail him,” Caroline said.
Jack painted starbursts.
“Blackmail’s easier than going to court,” Caroline said.
On the car’s roof, Jack started painting a night sky.
“Are we saying Keating had Frank killed?” Caroline asked.
Jack painted a star. Part of Orion’s belt.
“And Jean?” Caroline said under her breath. “Jean’s his own daughter.”
2
Dixie drove up to Jack’s shack in his ’63 dark-blue Oldsmobile. As he was still coming to a stop, Nicole jumped out of the passenger side.
“Dixie guessed you’d be here,” Nicole said.
She was dressed in baggy khaki shorts with oversize pockets and a man’s white shirt knotted in front, exposing her tanned belly.
With a belly button that looked like a Celtic knot.
“The office called, Sweetpea,” Dixie explained. “Urgent, they said.”
From her pocket, Caroline pulled her cell.
“No juice?” Nicole asked.
Caroline stuck the cell back into her pocket.
“No juice,” Nicole confirmed, adding, about Caroline’s face, “Just look at that puss. Hey, Caroline, no juice, it’s no big deal.”
“I told them I’d get you the message,” Dixie said.
“And I wanted to see Jack’s place,” Nicole said, surveying the shack. “The lap of luxury, Jack. What’cha doing?”
“It looks as if you’re getting ready for the demolition derby,” Dixie said, slipping out from the driver’s side.
Dixie wore a three-piece white suit, white shirt, baby blue bow tie, off-white socks, white shoes, and a crushable white fedora.
“Nicole,” Dixie said, “you were born and bred in this county and you don’t recognize a demolition derby car when you see one?” He shook his head. “I have neglected your education. Give me a brush, Jack. It’s been a long time since I’ve helped prepare a clunker like this.”
Noticing Nicole’s look, Dixie added, “When I was your age, I came close to winning a demolition derby. You driving at the county fair, Jack?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Jack said.
“Friday night?” Dixie said. “I’ll be there.”
Dixie took a brush out of a pail of paint thinner and inhaled deeply.
“I love the smell of turpentine,” Dixie said.
He studied the colors in each of the six gallon cans of paint. Daintily, he dipped his brush in black and with a few deft strokes outlined a reclining nude.
“You’re such a dirty old man,” Nicole said.
“She only says that,” Dixie told Jack, “because last night, while we were watching a Doris Day movie on TV, I told her Bob Hope used to call her JB. For Jut Butt.”
“I want a brush, too,” Nicole said.
She grabbed a brush from the can of paint thinner and plunged it up to the handle in red paint.
“You’re going to ruin your suit, Dixie,” Caroline said.
Jack could tell she was making an effort to sound casual.
So—Jack thought—could Dixie, who shot her a glance.
3
“You’re really going to drive?” Nicole said.
She flipped her brush at Jack, spattering wildflowers behind him: hollyhocks, lilies, asters.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked about the demolition derby.
A mutt trotted over to check out the paint-spattered flowers, then sniffed a tree.
“He’s checking his e-mail,” Dixie said.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked.
Another, larger dog came to check the spattered flowers. The first dog sniffed the second dog’s rear.
“Now,” Jack said, “he’s checking the canine Facebook.”
Nicole made a face and attacked the clunker with red paint, which dripped from her brush down the back of her hand and wrist.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked.
Jack tilted his head and appraised Dixie.
“You’ve been around for a while,” Jack said.
“You’re not old,” Dixie said, “until you have trouble pulling on your own socks.”
“What have you learned from living so long?” Jack asked.
Dipping his brush, Dixie said, as if it was confidential between the two of them, excluding his nieces, “Life is simple. You go from keeping the bathroom door locked when you’re a teen so you won’t be caught jerking off, to keeping it unlocked when you’re my age in case you have a heart attack.”
Jack laughed and said, “Dixie, you’re okay.”
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline shouted.
Jack, Dixie, and Nicole turned to her in unison.
“Not usually,” Dixie said.
“I don’t want you driving,” Caroline told Jack.
But Jack was staring past her shoulder.
Caroline turned just in time to see a man disappear into the trees at the top of a hill.
From Jack’s face, she knew it was the man who had tried to kill him on the train.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
1
Jack hobbled up the hill into the trees, leaving Caroline to improvise an explanation: “A neighbor Jack’s having trouble with.”
“What kind of trouble?” Nicole asked.
“Property rights,” Caroline said.
Halfway up the slope, Jack stepped in an animal burrow. Opening up the wound in his leg. Jack felt the bandage get moist. Felt blood sliding down his leg.
Where the dirt slope was almost vertical, Jack used a row of birches as handholds, pulling himself up to the road on the crest above his shack.
Jack found footprints in the soft earth. Tire tracks where the Cowboy must have peeled out when he realized he was noticed.
Why did the Cowboy bolt?
Jack was with three witnesses.
Maybe the Cowboy wanted to keep his job simple. Not out of any humanitarian motive, but out of efficiency.
One corpse is easier to explain away than four.
After Dixie and Nicole left, Caroline told Jack, “Get me a gun.”
2
“Don’t forget to call your office,” Jack said as he was using a screwdriver handle to tap on the cover of a paint can.
Caroline used Jack’s cell phone, wandering in circles as Jack carried the paint cans into a shed beside his shack.
When Caroline handed Jack back his cell, she told him, “They said if I don’t go back tomorrow, full-time, they want my resignation.”
“Someone pressured them,” Jack said.
“They don’t want me working with you,” Caroline said. “On whatever it is we’re working on.”
“Maybe,” Jack said, “they’re trying to keep you from getting killed.”
3
“We’re getting out of our depth,” Caroline said.
“I don’t think we can swim back to shore,” Jack said. “Not now.”
Caroline didn’t answer.
“And if we get back to shore,” Jack said, “nothing’s going to look the same.”
“So we confront Keating?” Caroline asked.
“We have no proof,” Jack said.
“Then,” Caroline said, “what do we do?”
“Stay alive until we get proof,” Jack said.
“And if we don’t get proof?” Caroline asked.
“We get revenge,” Jack said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
1
“Meet me back here in the morning,” Jack told Caroline. “Bix’ll be watching out for you.”
On the way to Mama Lucky’s, Jack stopped in a Price Chopper to pick up a couple of jars of half-sour pickles, Mama Lucky’s favorite.
Inside the supermarket, thunder rumbled over speakers in the produce department, followed by artificial rain, sprinkling the green beans, cucumbers, Brussels sprouts.…
Outside, as Jack crossed the parking lot, he again heard thunder, this time cracking a few miles away over the river, foll
owed by lightning and a wind that flung the car door back on its hinges while Jack slipped behind the steering wheel.
By the time Jack got to Mama Lucky’s, a downpour swept the streets with sheets of rain.
On the sidewalk, a man heading into the wind leaned over, his hand holding his cap.
Inside Mama Lucky’s, a heavyset man with scabs on his shaved head was trying to strap stag antlers onto the head of a naked whore.
Mama Lucky tilted her head, offering him her cheek, not her lips, to kiss.
“You’ve been neglecting me, Jack Slidell,” she said. “Pickles won’t do the job.”
“Anything you want, Mama,” Jack said. “Say the word.”
“You been spending your time with that girlie you brought last time,” Mama Lucky said, unscrewing one of the pickle jars and fishing for a spear.
“Have you heard about any new talent in town?” Jack asked.
“Sport-fucking never worked for you,” Mama Lucky said. “When you jerk off, you have to fall in love with your hand.”
“A guy who likes razors,” Jack said.
“You have a close shave?” Mama Lucky asked.
Jack dropped his pants to show Mama Lucky the bloody bandage on his thigh.
“I’ll ask around,” she said.
2
Unable to sleep, Caroline put her quilted robe on over the cotton panties and T-shirt in which she slept and padded downstairs to raid the refrigerator.
She was leaning over, left arm holding the door open, the glare from the refrigerator light making a pasty mask of her face, when she heard someone scuffing behind her.
She whirled around so fast, she knocked a plate of roast chicken onto the floor with a crash that made her—and Dixie, who had just come into the kitchen—both jump.
“Careful of the broken glass,” Dixie said, grabbing paper towels and kneeling to scoop up the shards of glass, chicken, and jellied fat.
He was wearing an old-fashioned, ratty, maroon silk dressing gown over striped pajamas and backless leather slippers. A tuft of white hair stood up on the top of his head.
Caroline stepped out of the glass mess, also grabbed a paper towel, and ran the wad under the sink faucet.
Through the window over the sink, Caroline saw Bix standing across the street in the shadow of a large tree.
3
The next morning, at Jack’s shack, Caroline said, “You’re trying to make sure I’m safe. Is it safe for you to stay here?”
Ignoring her, Jack said, “We’ve been thinking too small.”
At his laptop, Jack logged onto the Internet.
“Frank’s class-action suit…,” he said. “Why limit the damage it could do to Mohawk? Electrical pollution’s all over the country.”
Jack checked the computer screen, jotted down some notes on a yellow pad, and went back to the computer keyboard.
“Keating’s on the board of three other electric companies in the Northeast,” Jack said. “And on the board of the North American grid.”
“So,” Caroline said, “we’re not just talking about Keating anymore, are we?”
Jack’s cell rang. He grabbed it.
“Yeah,” he said.
On the other end of the line, Tremain said, “I never got fingerprints from the bowling ball your cowboy pal used.”
“They couldn’t lift any?” Jack asked.
“Fuck if I know what they could or couldn’t do in the lab,” Tremain said. “I never got the workup. Instead, I got a visit from two guys in white shirts, ties, and suits, with IDs from the Department of Agriculture. They were Feds all right, Jack, but no way these guys were from the Department of Agriculture. They wanted to know why I was asking about the prints from the bowling ball. Whatever the fuck you’ve gotten involved in, drop it.”
Tremain hung up.
Before Jack had a chance to tell Caroline what Tremain said, his computer blinked.
The screen went black.
Jack hit some keys, thinking that his screen saver had kicked in. But Jack’s screen saver was a moving star field. Not a black screen.
Nothing Jack did had any effect on the computer, which seemed as if it were being controlled over the Internet by someone unseen.
The C:/ prompt appeared on the top left corner of the screen. As Jack hit keys trying to stop it, all his files scrolled up, deleted one by one.
Any information Jack may have had on Frank or Jean or Stickman or Robert or Keating or electrical pollution was being purged.
“It doesn’t matter,” Caroline said. “We still know.…”
Which is when the electricity went out.
The computer screen on battery power cast a pale glow as the deleted files scrolled past.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
1
As he drove, Jack checked cars both in front of and behind him to make sure they weren’t being tailed.
Jack said, “Bix told me the job he applied for—”
“The one in the prison?” Caroline asked.
“He heard through the grapevine he got it,” Jack said. “The next day, they turned him down.”
Jack made a sudden, random turn up a side street.
“They’re going after you,” Jack said, “after Bix.…”
He doubled back, watching to see if any cars followed. Or if one car dropped off as another car picked him up.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said about his evasive driving. “We’re not that hard to find.”
Caroline looked over her shoulder out the car’s back window.
“When I was a kid,” Jack said, “we had a party line. You never knew who was listening in. Everybody knew everybody else’s business.”
Jack took a left onto County Route 9G. There were no cars either ahead of him or behind him.
“It can’t just be about a class-action suit,” Caroline said.
“Sure it can,” Jack said. “People kill each other for fifty bucks.”
2
Jack took a sharp left, almost a hairpin turn, onto Route 66. Up ahead, a woman in a sequined gown, white boa, and feathered headdress was hitchhiking, holding a sign that read: Ghent Playhouse.
“At this point,” Jack said about the hitchhiker, “I wouldn’t even trust her.”
Jack drove through Chatham, East Chatham. In Massachusetts, they passed a Shaker village, which had a circular building topped by a smaller circular second floor, like a gun turret.
Jack stopped for gas at a country store. While waiting to pay, he read a flyer on the counter:
Hunters For The Hungry. Donate Venison To Food Pantries. Only Chopped Meat And Stew Cuts—Proper Labeling—Authorized Processers—Program Started In 1998—Minimum 5 Pounds. An Entire Deer Can Be Donated If It Is An Adult Doe Or Buck—Clean Kill—No Fawns—We Pay Processing—If Not Skinned Hide Becomes Property Of Processer—Special Arrangements Must Be Made For Deer Heads And Capes To Be Mounted.
Five miles down the road was an electric sign advertising: Carpet For Less—3 Rooms Of Carpets For $119 Up To 340 Sq. Feet.
In Mycenae, when Jack stopped at a red light, he started laughing.
Outside a Kansas Fried Chicken franchise, a man in a chicken suit was passing out advertisements: Best Breasts In Town.
Across the street, a second man in a chicken suit was also passing out advertisements—for Kentucky Fried Chicken.
When a man in a sports jacket stopped to take an advertisement from the second man in a chicken suit, the first man in a chicken suit shouted, “You’re not going to eat this guy’s roadkill, are you?”
The second man in a chicken suit shouted back, “Hey, Mac, work your own corner!”
“What?” the first man shouted, “you own the whole block?”
“Pigeons!” the second man shouted. “That’s what they serve there.”
The first man crossed the street.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he said to the second man.
The first man in the chicken suit shoved the second man
in the chicken suit.
“You want a piece of me?” the second man asked.
The man in the sports jacket, got into his car and drove away, leaving the street empty except for Jack and Caroline in their car, watching two men in chicken costumes fighting.
“That’s it,” Jack said. “That’s it—everything anyone needs to know about what we are. What human beings are.”
Jack laughed so hard he wept.
The light had turned green and red and green again.
“I’m scared,” Caroline said, her voice small.
Catching his breath, Jack hit the gas.
“We can’t drive around in circles all afternoon,” Caroline said.
Jack stopped the car and kissed Caroline. Her lips were chapped. Her hair smelled of strawberry shampoo. And the rank sweat of fear.
“I want to go home,” she said.
3
Carrying an old, discolored straw boater with an equally ancient All The Way With Adlai campaign button pinned to the hat’s frayed ribbon, Dixie sauntered out onto the terrace.
“I think we have time for a sail,” he said to Jack.
“I don’t think so, Dixie,” Caroline said. “Look at the weather.”
The clouds were boiling over the Catskills. Far off, a dog barked. A cat stopped stalking through the grass and laid its ears back.
From a house down the street, through an open window, the sound clear even from so far away, Jack heard a TV newscaster saying, “Flooding’s going to be serious if these winds continue. Storm surge expected to be five to eight feet. Wind gusts up to one hundred twenty miles per hour.…”
Caroline went into the house to prepare the salad. Dixie touched Jack’s elbow.
“I woke up last night,” Dixie said. “At two in the morning. I heard someone driving an all-terrain vehicle through the fields. The noise rattled the windows.”
The wind was stronger.
“Some young man—or young woman—I assume they’re young—out there alone, racing under the sky,” Dixie said. “What makes someone do that? Drive at night? All alone.”
The clouds were blacker. They swallowed the sun. A gust of rain spattered against Jack’s face.
Abruptly, Dixie asked, “How did you cut your leg, Jack?”
