Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  I’d seen Manuel’s father once. He was a big man. Way bigger than Manuel. If it were up to me, he’d be in jail. But Manuel protected him. He took the beatings when they came, then vacated the premises, waiting a week or sometimes more until his father left the house before he returned. Fortunately, his dad wasn’t around much anymore.

  I was wondering whether I should call social services, anyway, when Manuel lost his rhythm and two of the mice dropped on the counter. “Guess I need more practice,” he said, putting all of them back in the box. “Tim here?”

  “He’s gone for the day. Anything I can do?”

  “He said he had a job for me.”

  I tightened the drawstring on my backpack and picked up my keys. It was late, and I was tired, and I still had to go to the North Side and check to see if Bethany was at the tattoo parlor Matt Andrews had mentioned. “Do you mean moving stock?”

  “Yeah.” Manuel shifted his weight from one leg to another. “Something like that.”

  “We needed you here three days ago.” On Tuesday, we’d had a big shipment come in, and we’d had to make room for it in the storeroom. Tim and I had spent the better part of the day moving and unpacking cartons.

  Manuel shrugged his shoulders again.

  “Jesus.” But I stopped myself from making the speech about having to take responsibility for your own actions. His mother had made that speech. So had his teachers, his social worker, and his probation officer. The more everyone talked, the less Manuel seemed to listen.

  “I don’t suppose you got anything else for me?” he asked.

  I thought about Bethany. “Actually, I think I might.” Over the years I’ve used Manuel for investigative work. He’s smart, he’s fast, and most of all, he’s plugged in. “Feel like going for a ride with me and Zsa Zsa?”

  On the way to the tattoo parlor I explained about Bethany and showed him her picture.

  “She’s friggin’ whacked,” he said, handing the photo back tome.

  “That seems to be the general consensus.”

  “How much her parents paying you to find her sorry ass?”

  “Enough. I’ll give you two hundred bucks to help me.”

  He scratched one of his sideburns. “Four hundred.”

  “Two-fifty.”

  “Two-seventy.”

  “Done deal.” We shook.

  Manuel reached over, turned on the radio, and began fiddling with the dial. A moment later, the sounds of Beethoven’s Ninth came pouring out. He grinned. “This is dope, man.” And he began conducting the music. “What?” he said, reading my face.

  “Got a new girlfriend?”

  He shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with movin’ up in the world.”

  The Piercing Palace was located on North State, near Lodi, and if there was anything palatial about it, it wasn’t apparent from the outside. I wouldn’t get Zsa Zsa’s toenails clipped there, let alone anything else. I dropped Manuel off and watched as he went inside. Five minutes later he came out and tapped on my door.

  “I need you to front me eighty bucks.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  “The guy’s gonna give me a deal on getting my tongue pierced.”

  “Get in the car,” I growled. “Now.”

  “But you’re giving me the money.”

  “After we find Bethany. Has he seen her or not?”

  Manuel got in the car and slouched down in his seat. “She was here a couple of days ago. But the guy said she’ll be back because she’s gonna have a dragon tattooed on her arm. I gave him your number and told him there was a hundred bucks in it for him if he called when she turned up.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  Manuel started peeling one of his nails. “He said sometimes she hangs at Wooden Oaks.”

  “Oakwood?” Oakwood is a cemetery. Founded in 1859 as a park for both the dead and the living, it’s over 125 acres of winding paths, hills, gullies, and large monuments. Recently, it’s become a gang hangout as well.

  “There’s this crypt. It’s pretty hard-core. I can show you if you want.”

  “I want.”

  We stopped at McDonald’s on the way. As we approached the cemetery’s main entrance, I killed the lights so I wouldn’ t attract the attention of the police. They’d stepped up their patrols there recently and tended to frown on cars driving through there at night.

  “Go to the left,” Manuel instructed.

  The car vibrated as I swung off the main road onto a deeply rutted dirt path. “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked.

  I was too busy trying not to hit the tombstones on either side of me to answer.

  “I do. My momma goes to this lady down on the West Side at least once a month to ask her for advice. She throws the coconut shells for her. She talks to the spirits. My momma says this lady tells her things, important things.”

  As I crested a hill, an obelisk, spectral in the dark, sprung up in front of us. “Do I keep going?” I squinted, looking for the path. Everything was a blur of blacks and grays.

  Manuel clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  I slammed on the brake. A picture of us circling endlessly around the cemetery until the morning took root in my mind. “You don’t know?”

  “Well, everything looks different at night,” Manuel replied. He got out of the car and walked up a hill. “Okay,” he said when he came back. “Take a right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I can see the crypt from here.” A moment later, he asked, “You think the dead can talk to us and tell us things?”

  “I think you should shut up and let me drive.”

  “This place doesn’t scare you?”

  “Oh, it scares me, all right,” I hissed as the tires crunched over the gravel. “It scares me because I don’t want to pop a tire and get stuck here and come face-to-face with a couple of pit bulls.” That would be very unpleasant indeed.

  Manuel gave Zsa Zsa an absentminded pat. “So what do you think happens to people when they die?”

  “Can we get off this topic?”

  “I think they stick around.”

  “Good for you.” I killed the engine and pointed to a marble crypt about thirty yards in front of us. “Is this it?”

  “Yeah”

  Even in the dark I could tell it was the Crenshaw Crypt, final resting place of one of Syracuse’s important people—though I didn’t know what he’d done to rate that appellation. I’d passed by the square white marble building numerous times in the daylight and admired its columns and arches. But I wasn’t admiring it now. The word Gothic sprang to mind, followed by the words vampires and the undead.

  “I hope you’re right.” I took a couple of flashlights out of the glove compartment and handed one to Manuel. “Because breaking into a crypt is not the way I’d planned to spend the evening.”

  “The last time I was here, there were a whole bunch of Bethany clones rolling.”

  That was the new slang world for taking ecstasy. You know you’re old when the kids are doing drugs you’ve never tried, I decided as I told Zsa Zsa to stay in the car. Manuel and I got out. He took the lead. We were almost at the crypt’s front steps when the door swung open. For a second my heart stopped.

  Literally.

  I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. Then I heard someone saying, “Richie, come on. Richie, we gotta go,” and I wanted to kick myself as four people ran down the steps.

  “Hey,” I said as one of them came directly at me. I could smell the beer on him as he veered away. I tried to grab him, but he pushed me off. I stumbled backward and landed on my ass. When I looked up again, they were gone.

  “Friggin’ assholes,” Manuel said.

  We mounted the steps slowly. The door was open. The odor of cheap beer was overwhelming as we stepped inside. I switched on my flashlight. A pentagram was spray-painted on the floor. I saw candleholders and lots of beer and liquor bottles around it, and th
en I heard a groan.

  Chapter Eight

  The girl was lying on the marble floor with her skirt up around her waist and her underpants down around her knees. She closed her eyes and put up her hand to shield them from my flashlight’s beam.

  “Are you the police?” Her words were slurred.

  “No.” I clicked the flashlight off. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Then she moaned, turned her head, and vomited. I jumped back just in time to avoid getting my feet splattered.

  “You don’t seem fine.” In back of me I heard Manuel saying, “I’m out of here.” I didn’t blame him, because I was getting a little nauseated from the smell myself.

  “Don’t look at me,” the girl ordered while she fumbled to pull her underpants up.

  “Listen...”

  “No.” She stumbled out the door and threw up again.

  “Should I call the police? Take you to the hospital?”

  “Leave me alone,” she cried, collapsing on one of the steps. She brought her knees up, bowed her head, and buried it in her arms. “Just leave me alone. I’ll be fine.”

  Yeah and I was the new pope. “Sure you will. We’ll talk in a few minutes.” I told Manuel to keep an eye on her and went back inside.

  There had to be a better way to make money than this, I decided as I tried not to breathe in the stench. Maybe I should take a couple of computer courses. Sit in a nice clean office. I played my light over the walls. There was graffiti everywhere. On the walls, the ceiling, even on the marble coffin. Fat and thin letters. Squiggles that looked like worms. Over in the right-hand corner I saw a scrawl that could have read Bethany. I was moving closer to it when I heard Manuel cry out. By the time I got outside, Manuel was cradling his arm, and the girl was gone.

  “The bitch scratched me.” He pointed to his forearm. A little blood was oozing up from a small abrasion. “She probably gave me rabies.”

  “What happened?”

  “I asked her if she knew a Bethany Peterson, and she said she knew lots of Bethanys, so I showed her the picture, and she said she hadn’t seen her.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she scratched me.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that.”

  “You didn’t say anything to her?”

  Manuel paused for a fraction of a second. “I did tell her I thought she was lyin’.”

  “And?”

  Manuel hesitated again.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “Well,” Manuel allowed. “I also said we were gonna call the cops and they were gonna throw her ass in jail if she didn’t answer me.”

  “Jesus, Manuel.” I could have killed him for making the girl run. “She was a possible lead.”

  “I was just trying to scare her.”

  “Well, you scared yourself out often bucks.”

  “That’s not right,” he yelped.

  “Make it fifteen.” Nothing makes a point to Manuel like losing money. I headed for the car, Manuel muttering and trailing along behind me. “Let’s see if we can pick her up.”

  Aside from everything else, this was not a good place for anyone to be alone on foot. We circled the cemetery for an hour without finding her. Finally, I gave up and dropped Manuel off at a friend of his. Then Zsa Zsa and I hit the Onion for a drink. I wanted to talk about nothing with people I didn’t know well and get the evening out of my head. It was a little after twelve by the time I walked through the door of my house. James was waiting on the doorstep. I fed him and listened to my messages. Hillary had returned my call. So had Paul. He’d turned up some stuff on Pat Humphrey. George wanted to know if I was coming over.

  But it was too late to call anyone back now, and even if it wasn’t, I didn’t want to. I didn’t have the energy. Thinking of that girl lying on that floor had left a bad taste in my mouth that the scotch hadn’t been able to get rid of. Had she gone there of her own free will? Had she been tricked into going? If she kept going the way she was, she’d be dead by the time she was forty. And so would Bethany, for that matter. I don’t know why it was, but seeing the girls going bad always bothered me more than watching the boys. Maybe because they hit bottom so much faster.

  I stripped down and got into the shower. Then I got into bed, but sleep wouldn’t come. The kechunking noise of the window fan set my teeth on edge. I briefly thought about getting up and turning it off, since it was just sending hot air into the room, but I couldn’t summon up the energy. After another twenty minutes spent studying the cracks in the ceiling, I pulled myself out of bed, put on a T-shirt and a pair of underpants, padded downstairs, and poured myself a shot of scotch; never mind that I’d already had three and I’d promised myself I’d keep it down to one a night. Two at the most. Then I lit a cigarette, breaking another vow about cutting back. Screw it, I’d start tomorrow.

  I listened to Zsa Zsa snoring as I drank my Black Label and peered out through the blinds of my living-room window into the dark. Outlined by the streetlight, a raccoon ambled across the sidewalk and disappeared into my neighbor’s privet hedge. It was a large male. Thirty pounds at least. There’d been lots of coons around lately, enough so that I didn’t let Zsa Zsa out in the backyard by herself at night. She was stupid enough to start a fight but not vicious enough to finish it.

  The drought was drying up the berries and bringing the raccoons down from the woods and into the backs of the houses to forage for food. Some of my neighbors wanted to trap them, but I liked watching them. I stubbed my cigarette out in a saucer sitting on one of the end tables and took another sip of my drink. I swirled the amber liquid around in my glass, admiring the little whirlpool I’d created, when the kid who lived across the way roared into the driveway. He slammed the door of his Jeep Cherokee shut and half-ran, half-stumbled, inside his darkened house. A few seconds later, the downstairs exploded in a blaze of lights, and I caught a glimpse of his bathrobe-clad mother advancing toward him. Then they moved out of my line of sight. I wondered what it would be like to have someone waiting up for me? Nice, I thought. Real nice.

  But then I remembered Manuel used to do that when he was living here, and I hadn’t liked it one bit. I put my glass down on the coffee table and walked into the dining room. All this crap about talking to the dead must have been getting to me, because I bent down and dug out my picture of Murphy from the bottom of the sideboard drawer. I stared at the photo for a moment, wondering what my life would have been like if he were alive.

  I’d probably still be working at the newspaper and writing on the side, still trying to write that Pulitzer Prize book, instead of getting involved in other people’s messes. Or maybe we would have gotten divorced and I would have left Syracuse and gone back to New York City. Or moved to an ashram in Colorado. Or become a social worker. Impossible to know. But one thing was for sure. Murphy had been a good-looking guy. Too bad he’d been so screwed up. But maybe that had been one of the attractions.

  “What do you think?” I asked Zsa Zsa when I walked back into the living room.

  She lifted her head off the sofa armrest, yawned, and went back to sleep. I lay down next to her and curled my fingers around the fur along her legs. The last thing I remember thinking as I drifted off to sleep was that I really had to cut the mats off Zsa Zsa’s belly.

  My day started at eight o’clock in the morning with Paul calling.

  “Don’t you return phone calls?” he demanded.

  I made an unintelligible noise.

  “I thought you wanted this stuff ASAP.”

  “Just a minute.” I stumbled into the kitchen, grabbed a cup half filled with yesterday’s coffee from the counter, and dug my pad and a pencil out of my backpack, then settled myself back on the sofa and told Paul to get started.

  “Okay. This is what I have. Pat Humphrey’s parents live in a little Pennsylvania town. The father owns a garage. The mother is a housewife. There are no brothers or sisters. Our person got good grades through high sc
hool. Went to Clark Community College. She didn’t finish. She dropped out after twenty credits. I don’t have a work history for her. You want me to get it?”

  “Not at the moment. Go on.”

  “She owns her car free and clear. Has a mortgage on her house, which she’s current on. But three years ago she left her job as office manager in Prevention Plus, one of those fuckin’ HMO things. She declared bankruptcy about three months after that. She’s still working on paying off her creditors.”

  “Interesting.” I thought about the furnishings in the house. She’d either acquired them recently or hidden them. “You have a reason.”

  “On the surface it looks like credit-card debt. She just got in too deep. She started advertising her services as a pet psychic about a month after her bankruptcy. I’ve got the name of two vets who’ve used her, and they say good things.”

  I wrote their names down.

  “Any priors?”

  “Some low-level shit. Two for kiting checks. One for disturbing the peace. A couple for shoplifting.” And he gave me the dates. “Nothing major. You want me to invoice you?”

  “Please.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Maybe later.” I drummed my fingernails on the table while I thought about what Paul had told me. Humphrey’s offenses were minor, but they indicated a pattern at odds with her dress and demeanor. Underneath I was willing to bet something else was going on. A man? Drugs? Gambling? Alcohol? If I had to choose one, I’d pick the booze. I called Hillary to fill her in on my progress.

  “You know, my mother called me,” she said as soon as she heard my voice. “She wasn’t pleased.”

  “I figured she would.” I could imagine the conversation.

  “You could have let me know.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry about that.” Trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to why I hadn’t, I lit a cigarette and let out the cat and Zsa Zsa into the backyard. It felt as if it were eighty outside. The paper had said it was going to be in the nineties this afternoon. “I think your sister told her.”