“Just so we’re clear—you’re advocating that we get our very drunk, very engaged friend a hooker?”
“Only if advocating is a fancy word that means we can expense it.”
“Since we’re no longer full-time employees of GNZ, I think they might balk at us sending them the bill for the cake.”
He shrugged. “That’s because they aren’t the ones who have to listen to him try to sing.”
The waitress arrived at our table, and Carter ordered, “The strongest thing you got … besides myself.”
When she was done rolling her eyes, I went with an Amstel, which they had on tap, and a pair of earplugs, which they did not.
But I wouldn’t need them, as Byron finished his “song.” He wheeled to our table, sweating like he’d just taken a shower. “Look who finally showed up—Big Ugly and J-News—sorry, boys, but I started without ya.”
It was as if he was an entirely different person, and not one I particularly cared for. The waitress asked him if he’d like another, and no surprise, he did.
Before she left, she added, “You got some good dance moves up there.”
“I should—I used to make a living dancing around defenders in the NFL.”
Her eyes subtly went to his chair. It was barely noticeable to the untrained eye, but that was the world Byron lived in now. He read her mind—first she tried to calculate how it was possible for a paralyzed guy to play professional football, before determining that he was full of shit, but didn’t want to offend him. She flashed a charity smile, and said, “I’ll be back with your drinks.”
Normally Byron would act as if he didn’t notice, and suffer inside. But this wasn’t the usual Byron Jasper. “You don’t believe me?”
“I’m sure you did,” she said, maintaining her forced smile.
She couldn’t get away fast enough, but Byron wasn’t done. He took out his phone, and attempted to Google himself to prove his point, but his drunken fingers wouldn’t cooperate. He got frustrated and threw the phone to the floor, smashing it.
This time the waitress practically sprinted away from the table.
Byron was in competitive mode, needing to prove he wasn’t the “half a man” he saw himself as right now. I understood where this was coming from, and that without his rock in Tonya, his emotions couldn’t be contained, but he was pushing the limits of my empathy. We needed to get him out of here before something bad happened.
Byron challenged Carter, “If you want to cut me off, you’re going to have to beat me.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“I mean beat me at a real game—not your fake wrestling crap.”
Sometimes the wrestling insults were enough to bait Carter, but tonight he was the grownup. “I got a real game for you—it’s called I drink, and you shut up.”
“Man—ever since that Mistress Kate got her whip into you, you’ve become a total sissy boy. No wonder she dumped you.”
“You’re on,” was all Carter said and stood. Seemed that the Mistress was still a sore spot with Carter.
The “real” game turned out to be pool, which was preferable, to say, jousting. Byron wheeled to an empty table, and Carter followed.
Carter broke—a couple of balls fell, but his second shot turned up empty.
Byron was too low to the ground in his chair to reach the table. But he grabbed the corner of the pool table and pulled himself up like he were doing a chin-up, and took a seat on the corner of the table. If there was any question about who the “Rockfield Fair Strongman Contest” winner was, he left no doubts.
Byron’s first shot was a simple three ball in the corner pocket. He made the shot, but lost his balance in the process. He fell to the floor with a thud.
The place went silent, before a handful of patrons rushed to his side. But he wouldn’t have it. He refused any help, and when Carter persisted, Byron began swinging his arms like bees were attacking him—all the negative energy of the past year flowing out of him.
I wanted to hug him, or at least shoot him with a tranquilizer gun to temporarily put him out of his misery. Carter picked him up and placed him in his chair, despite Byron’s angry protests.
A couple more Mistress Kate comments by Byron, combined with Carter’s increasing threats, led to some pushing and shoving that was eventually broken up by the bartender. He gave them the option of either taking their skirmish outside, or he would call the police, and let them sort it out. They took the former.
As Byron and Carter were escorted out, I leaned back in my chair and sipped on my beer. I just shook my head. My attention was then drawn to the front door, but I wasn’t focused on my friends who had just left, rather, the woman who entered.
Chapter 32
Poca strolled into Main Street Tavern like she owned the place, wearing full leather, and carrying a motorcycle helmet. Her jet-black, straight hair was no longer in a braid, and hung to her shoulders. She wore army boots—the first time I’d ever seen her wearing any type of foot apparel.
She sat next to me as I nursed my beer. Her high cheekbones were radiant and her eyes fierce. I noticed a few furrow lines on her forehead and a small patch of crow’s feet radiating from the corner of her eyes, but she certainly looked decades younger than her age, and I’d been around enough celebrities to know what even good plastic surgery looked like—if she’d had any work done, it was minimal.
“Shouldn’t you be concerned that Forrest and Lieutenant Dan are out in the parking lot settling differences?” she asked me.
I shrugged and took another sip of beer. “That’s how they handle their business—been like that as long as I’ve known them. They’ll be friends again by morning.”
The waitress made a pit stop at our table, looking relieved that Byron had left, and Poca ordered a tonic water.
When the waitress left, she said, “I don’t believe we were able to finish our conversation from earlier.”
“You’re the one who cut it short—I was just getting warmed up.”
“That was just a temporary ceasefire. And to be frank, I find it much easier to speak freely without my lawyer son hanging on my every word.”
“So where did we leave off?”
“I hear you’re doing a story on the curse, and its connection to Thomas Archibald’s disappearance. Were you going to just tell the Hastings side, and not talk to me?”
“Once the curse returned to town, I figured it would bring you to me. You always seem to be in the center of its storm.”
“It’s a very powerful entity.”
“So you’re saying you believe in curses?”
“Is that your way of asking me if my people made it up to scare the residents of Rockfield so we could get our way? Or that it had something to do with me being the last person to be with Archie and Bette? It’s clear you’ve been spending too much time with Woodrow Hastings.”
“You are very similar, in that you both evade my questions.”
“I’m a Samerauk—so of course I believe in the curse, and respect its power. But if we had the power to create it, then I must accept that we also had the power to end it—just as my father did in 1962. As the current chief, I do have the ability to bring it back, but as your reporting proved, neither myself or Samerauk Nation had anything to do with this latest incident.”
“I’d like to take credit, but my girlfriend is the one who broke the story. So I guess it was nothing more than a stunt by a TV show, case closed.”
“Two groups that I’m certain were not responsible for the hoax were the Samerauks, and that TV show.”
“Then who was?” I asked, and braced for the arrival of Hurricane Agenda.
“Whenever the Hastings family feels their power threatened, they attempt to recycle the old narrative that we’re a threat, and paint us as savages. It has been an effective strategy against Native Americans going back to the first settlers to America.”
“I do find it interesting that you have so much distaste for the Hastings family, ye
t you’ve had such close relationships with some of them, particularly Woodrow.”
“My therapist has told me that the ill-conceived pursuits of my younger years were derived from my lack of self-esteem, and the need for acceptance. I was royalty in my world, but in the halls of Rockfield High many of my fellow classmates considered me a second-class citizen. I felt rejected by the establishment, and the Hastings family was the epitome of the establishment. I thought if I could get Woodrow to accept me, it would mean the others would have to do the same.”
“And you believe this therapist was correct?”
“I paid good money for her advice, and usually you get what you pay for in this world.”
“Tell me about the relationship you had with Woodrow.”
“In other words, what led him to attack me the night Archie disappeared?”
I nodded her to go on.
“Behind the scenes, he was obsessed with me, just as I’d hoped. But in public, he wouldn’t admit that I was alive. So in a way, we tortured each other—he wanted me, and I wanted the acceptance, but neither of us got what we needed out of the relationship.”
“To be fair, it couldn’t have been easy for him to go public with your relationship, knowing how your family and his were arch enemies.”
She smiled as if she’d heard all this before. “I wouldn’t read too much into those old myths. The Samerauks and the Hastings’ got along better than people ever gave us credit for. We had our squabbles—still do—but we’ve been able to coexist all of these years, and we did come together to end the curse, which seems to be conveniently forgotten.”
“But before you supposedly put an end to it, October 4, 1959 happened.”
“That night was mostly my fault.”
This got my attention. “How so?”
“I knew what I was doing when I went on that ‘dare’ with Archie.”
“Which was?”
“When word got to Woodrow, his jealousy would get the best of him and he would come after us. So I basically used Archie to lure him there, which set everything into motion.”
“According to the police report, Woodrow attacked you.”
“It was true that he did pull a knife and cut my dress off, but I never claimed he assaulted me, sexually or otherwise. In fact, I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, and I was more concerned about Archie.”
“How did you know he wouldn’t hurt you?”
“Intuition.”
My own intuition was telling me that there was a lot more to it than she was letting on. “It looked like you were going to make it to safety until you allegedly came across a faceless man in a bathrobe near Samerauk Bridge,” I pushed on.
“I don’t fault you for your doubt,” she said, reading my face. “I would think the same if I was in your shoes. But all I can do is report what I saw, which I’ve done consistently since. You do know I passed a lie detector test about that night?”
I was not aware of that. I could have argued the validity of those tests, and questioned who administered it—there was no mention of it in the police report—but I was trying to establish trust with a key witness.
“But that’s not where your connections to the Hastings family ended—you later befriended Bette Hastings,” I said.
Poca didn’t appear rattled by my inquiry. She seemed to float between comfort and boredom with each question.
“I was drawn to Bette for the same reasons as I was to Woodrow—it’s not like my issues had cleared up in the two years since Archie went missing. And with Woodrow off at college, Bette was my next best option to break in to the establishment. But unlike her brother, Bette was not ashamed of me. In fact, she looked up to me. I liked her very much, and I believe the feeling was mutual.”
“I read the newspaper interview you did about the night of Bette’s accident on the first anniversary, I’m not really interested in the details of what happened,” mainly because I was going to have to roll my eyes at the mention of more faceless dudes in bathrobes. “Tell me why it went down.”
“I guess you could say that it was a perfect storm. I blamed the curse for taking Archie away, and Bette was very protective of her father. She’d heard the rumors that some people in town believed her family might be behind Archie’s death or disappearance. So for different reasons, we both wanted the curse ended. Toss in some other factors playing with our minds that night, and we were like a powder keg waiting to go off.”
“By other factors, you mean smoking peyote?”
“I meant that we were teenage girls, and had the emotional swings that come with that age, but yes, that was regrettable. It was a normal thing in my family, but Bette hadn’t been raised on such traditions.”
“So how does one go about ending a curse?”
“I had found books in my father’s office on the subject, and I was convinced that I’d be able to follow the doctrine to reverse it. But instead, I awakened it.”
Poca became emotional. “It’s with me every day, what happened to Bette. It was my fault, and I’ve never been able to face her. She’s lived here in town for decades and I have never visited—not that I’d be welcome. I guess the only positive that came out of it was that it brought my family and the Hastings’ briefly together, so they could put an end to that blasted curse, once and for all.”
The emotional response surprised me, and I was interested to see where this was headed, but it would have to wait, as Carter returned, pushing Byron in his chair.
When I took a closer look at Byron, I noticed that he was completely out cold. My eyes moved to Carter. “Tell me you didn’t …”
He shook his head. “I wanted to, but he passed out before I had a chance to turn out the lights for him.”
His focus went directly to Poca, like a magnet. “You couldn’t stay away from me, could you?”
She shrugged with a smile. “Guilty as charged.”
He took her by the hand to the dance floor.
In actuality, Main Street Tavern barely had bathrooms, much less a dance floor, but he did take her over to the jukebox, tossed in a few quarters, and played “Mack the Knife.” She rested her arms on his enormous shoulders and he pulled her close.
I began pushing Byron back towards the door. “Guess it’s just you and me tonight, kid.”
Chapter 33
Chayton Dohasan stepped out of the high-rise building and checked his Rolex—10:38. Not exactly how most young single professionals were spending Friday night in the city, he mused.
Following the town hall meeting he’d returned to the offices of Evans, Kramer & Gordon in mid-afternoon, his desk piled with cases. He worked straight through the rest of the day and into the night. But that didn’t mean his work was done.
The stretch limousine eased to a stop in front of the curb and the rear door swung open. Chayton took a deep breath, straightened his suit, and got into the vehicle. He took a seat in the rear next to Woodrow Hastings, and said, “If this wasn’t so predictable, I would tell you what a nice surprise it was.”
“I thought you could use a lift home after such a long day at work.”
“Your compassion has no bounds, Woodrow,” he replied, and provided the driver his Upper East Side address. This was all part of the game, as Hastings and his people were already aware of where he lived … along with whatever else they had been able to dig up on him. The partition went up, and they were free to speak in private.
“I must say, I’m a little confused by your strategy,” Woodrow said, his white hair practically glowing in the near darkness.
“It would be hard for me to comment on that without knowing what strategy you’re referring to.”
Hastings laughed. “I guess you can leave the law office, but you never stop being a lawyer. I think we both know that I’m speaking of the little hoax you attempted last weekend in Rockfield. It struck me as an odd way to proceed, especially since the return of Thomas Archibald to the public consciousness could be harmful to your mother.”
His eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening my family?”
Hastings put up his hands as if to say he came in peace. Chayton thought that his people had fallen for that one before, and history wasn’t about to repeat itself.
“All I’m saying is that we both know where the treasure is buried, so to speak. I’m just trying to get a better handle on why you’ve chosen to bite off your nose to spite your face.”
“What makes you think that we’re behind what happened at the bridge?”
“It’s what you’ve always done before, so why would this time be any different?”
“What we’ve done?” he repeated with a laugh. “You didn’t tell me that you’ve gone into stand-up comedy, Woodrow. But I think you’re using humor to deflect the fact that it was the work of your family.”
“And why would we do such a thing?”
“A desperate act by those fearing the loss of power. You know how close my people are to our true independence, and you won’t be able to control us any longer. Not to mention, you had the means with your connection to Ghost Town, USA, through your investment in the network it airs on. Next time, maybe you could be a little less obvious.”
Hastings shook his head. “You’re in dire need of a history lesson. When the mental hospital arrived in 1824, my family were poor farmers, while your tribe was a band of migrants who had just lost their land to the criminally insane. And while we might have had our differences we have both prospered, and now hold positions of wealth and influence. So I’ll ask one more time—why would my family or yours want to sabotage that?”
“You portray our history as some sort of successful partnership, but the way my people see it is that we have harvested the fields, yet you took the crops—tossing us enough scraps to keep us from starving. But I’m not here to dwell on the past—I’m focused on how we won’t be needing you very much longer.”
“You will still need us to deliver the votes, or there will be no casino. My deal is still on the table, but you’re running out of time.”
“Would that be the same offer to support our candidate in return for 50% of all casino profits? And when we rejected you, you attempted to run a candidate against us? We both know this is a losing proposition for you.”
Psycho Hill (JP Warner Book 3) Page 14
