Mr. X

by Peter Straub

  “Honest to God,” I said. Laurie put her hands in her lap and looked back and forth between us like a spectator at a tennis match. When my astonishment let me speak again, I uttered, no less idiotically, “Really.”

  Edison could not entirely conceal his pleasure in my reaction to his story. “Why did you think Toby gave you my name?”

  Unable to contain herself any longer, Laurie burst out with, “Well, what was he like?”

  Max Edison waited for me to clear my head.

  “He was a gangster?” I said at last.

  “Maybe there is no organized crime. Maybe the newspapers made the whole thing up. But if it exists, does it seem like you can join up unless you’re Italian? Even better, Sicilian? Mr. Rinehart was a man who worked by himself.”

  “So what did he do?” I asked.

  “Where you find a Mr. Inside, eventually you will learn there is also a Mr. Outside. Mr. Outside is more important than Mr. Inside, but not many know about him. If you happen to be a professional criminal, one night you are invited to a hotel room. Shrimp, roast beef, chicken, whatever food you like, is laid out. All kinds of bottles and plenty of ice. The lights are turned down. Three, four guys similar to you are already there. Way back in the room where you can’t see his face, Mr. Outside is sitting in a big, comfortable chair. At least one or two of the other guys seem to know him.

  “When everybody’s relaxed, Mr. Outside explains from now on, you won’t do anything unless he tells you so. One-third of all your profits go straight to him. You want to walk out, but he starts to explain the benefits. He’s covering all the expenses. There will be enough work to cover the missing third a couple times over. Then he lays out a couple jobs so nice and neat, you could only mess up by having a heart attack when you saw the money. There’s more work on the come. Besides, you’ll never go to the trouble of breaking into a place and discover it was already stripped clean. What do you say?”

  “ ‘Show me the dotted line,’ ” I said.

  “Edward Rinehart was Mr. Outside?” Laurie asked.

  Edison pulled down his sunglasses and leaned forward. His eyes were surprisingly light, an unusual sandy brown flecked with green. The whites were the immaculate white of fresh bed-sheets. “Did you hear me say that?” He turned his disingenuous gaze upon me. “Did you hear me say that?”

  “You allowed us to form our own conclusions,” I said.

  He pushed the sunglasses up over his eyes.

  “Mr. Rinehart doesn’t sound like the sort of man who would write a book,” I said.

  Edison lowered his chin and peered at me. I thought he was going to do the sunglasses trick again.

  “What book?” Laurie asked. “You didn’t say anything about a book.”

  “It was in the box my mother sent to herself, the one with the envelope and the key.”

  “Did you read that book?” Edison asked.

  “Not yet. Did you?”

  “Mr. Rinehart gave me a copy, but it got lost along the way. You’re right, he didn’t seem like a man who would sit down to write a book. But Mr. Rinehart didn’t do anything ordinary. For one thing, around the time he came out with his book, he retired. Every now and then he had me drive him somewhere, but basically, the man walked away. He told me he had a mission. What Mr. Rinehart used to say was, he wanted his stories to show people the real truth about the world.”

  “He talked to you in the car?” Laurie said.

  Edison grinned. “I spent seven years driving Mr. Rinehart all over Hell’s Half-Acre in the dead of night, him in the back of that Cadillac talking a blue streak. If Mr. Rinehart had been a preacher, his sermons would have rolled on for two days and nights.”

  Edison’s laughter sounded as though he still disbelieved what he had heard coming from the backseat of the Cadillac.

  “What did he talk about?” I asked.

  “The true nature of the universe. And his book. If every book writer goes through the kind of misery Mr. Rinehart did, I’m glad I was a driver.”

  After rejection from a well-known New York house, Rinehart had decided to publish the book himself. Regent Press & Bindery, a Chicago print shop with a subsidiary specializing in rebinding library books, shipped two hundred copies to Edgerton, where Rinehart stored them in a Hatchtown warehouse. For six weeks, Max Edison had loaded cartons into the Cadillac’s trunk and ferried his employer to bookstores as far north as Springfield. Most of the stores had taken two or three copies of From Beyond. Rinehart never invoiced them or requested sales figures. He had no interest in making money from his book; he wanted these copies available for purchase upon publication of the dazzled reviews it was certain to receive. When praise flooded in, he would once again submit the book to the firm in New York.

  Out went the review copies. A three-page letter accompanied the first twenty, sent to the newspapers and magazines Rinehart judged most crucial to literary success. Fifty publications occupying the second rung received a single-page statement. A simple card went out with the copies sent to pulp magazines.

  Three months passed without acknowledgment from the significant and semisignificant publications. The pulps, from which Rinehart anticipated cries of rapture, were silent. Two months later, the irate author sent out letters reminding seventy editors of their obligations to literature. None responded.

  Nine months later, Weird Tales propped From Beyond against a brick wall and dispatched it in a public execution. Eight parallel columns spread over four pages condemned Rinehart’s book for being formulaic, cliché-ridden, and self-parodying. A corrosive laughter washed through the review.

  Weird Tales sent Rinehart into orbit.

  “He carried that review with him all the time. When we were alone in the car, he used to read it out loud. I must have heard different parts a hundred times over. Mr. Rinehart thought that magazine was going to love him. Whole weeks went by when he tried to talk himself into believing they really did love him, and what they said looked bad only if you didn’t understand it. Then he’d give up on that and go back to telling me how the man who wrote the piece was so stupid, anybody who knew anything would see the book had to be great. I don’t think he ever got that review out of his mind. It wasn’t long after that he retired.”

  “Did you see him after he retired?”

  “He wasn’t the kind of man to keep in touch. Anyhow, I got sent up to do a little stretch in Greenhaven.”

  Edison took off his sunglasses and folded them on the table. “Then what happened, that Clothhead Spelvin I mentioned got busted for some dumb-ass thing, excuse me, Mrs. Hatch, a thing never would have happened earlier, and as soon as Clothhead started looking at jail time, he rolled over on Mr. Rinehart, and he got arrested.”

  “Edward Rinehart went to jail?” Laurie asked.

  “On a minimum ten-year sentence, yes, ma’am. I was present when he came in. Mr. Rinehart acted like he was on a first-class trip to Paris. He knew the only problem he’d have in prison was the problem of being in prison, which if you have connections like Mr. Rinehart’s is like being outside, except you’re in prison. At Greenhaven, he was free to do just about everything he wanted—except get out of prison. He got me a good job in the library and sent over a nice Italian dinner almost every week. Once Mr. Rinehart came into the population, I had cigarettes and pints of whiskey whenever I wanted them, though I didn’t abuse the privilege.”

  “You got whiskey and Italian dinners in jail?” Laurie asked.

  “It’s still prison, Mrs. Hatch. I was released in November 1958. A little over two years later, they had a big riot up there. When the troopers moved in, twelve men were lying dead in the yard, and one of them was Mr. Rinehart. He’s up there in the Greenhaven cemetery. That’s not a bad place for him.”

  “What?” Laurie said. “Oh. You were afraid of him.”

  Edison gave us a slow smile. “Sometimes I think I’m still afraid of him.”

  Laurie and I said nothing.

  A distant amusement shone in Edis
on’s sandy eyes. “Believe this or don’t, it’s all the same to me. A couple of nights, I was driving all alone in the car to where Mr. Rinehart told me to pick him up, and I hear a lighter snap open behind me and see a flare in the mirror. There’s Mr. Rinehart, lighting up. ‘Sorry, Max,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you hear me get in?’ Those back doors never opened or closed. Is there any way I could miss that sound?

  “One time, three, four o’clock in the morning, I took him to Mountry to meet a man named Ted Bright in a building back of a garage. We pulled up, and he said, ‘Duck down and keep down until I get back.’ I looked over my shoulder, and I guess either I went blind or the seat could talk, because Mr. Rinehart wasn’t there. I ducked under the wheel so you’d have to walk right up to the window to see me. Footsteps came around from in front—two guys, moving slow and careful. One of them said, ‘That’s his car.’ The other one said, ‘Let’s do the deed.’ I can’t swear what I heard next was shotguns being primed, but I’d put a hundred dollars on it. I said to myself, Max, you better cover Mr. Rinehart’s backside. I was reaching for the door handle when I realized he told me to keep out of sight because he knew Homer and Jethro were on the way.”

  Laurie asked, “Did you have a gun?”

  He nodded. “When I drove for Mr. Rinehart, I carried a weapon. Never fired it. Never even drew it from the holster, though I came close that night. With Mr. Rinehart, the smartest course was to follow orders, but I couldn’t be sure he knew what was going down. I waited maybe a minute. Didn’t hear a thing. I decided to crack the passenger door and sneak out and keep low, just in case. All of a sudden there was enough noise out there to wake up a graveyard. I grabbed the door handle with one hand, grabbed my gun with the other. Right in front of me, Ted Bright slams against the hood, covered neck to belly in blood. Bright rolls off and hits the ground. I look at the front of the building. A body’s lying facedown in the dirt, holding the door open. There’s another body halfway in, halfway out. Another one’s down on the floor inside. Place looks like a slaughterhouse. Right behind me, someone clears his throat, and I almost jump out of my clothes. Mr. Rinehart’s sitting in the backseat. ‘Let’s get back to civilization,’ he says.”

  “Did you ask him what happened?” Laurie asked.

  “Mrs. Hatch.” Edison replaced his sunglasses. “Even if he felt like talking, I didn’t want to listen. When I got home, I put away a pint of bourbon without benefit of ice or water. Next day on the radio, they said a businessman named Mr. Theodore Bright got killed attempting to escape from a kidnapping. As good as any other story, far as I was concerned. Mr. Theodore Bright brought it down on himself by himself.”

  “That was the real story,” I said.

  “I was there, and I don’t know if there was any real story. What I’m telling you is, Mr. Edward Rinehart could be a one-man Halloween.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “The Greenhaven cemetery is a good place for him.”

  “We were talking about Clothhead Spelvin, who rolled over on Mr. Rinehart? He was in a holding cell when Mr. Rinehart was arrested. They put Mr. Rinehart two cells down, and that night Clothhead got cut to pieces. No one saw anyone go in or out of his cell.”

  Edison moved first one leg, then the other, from under the table. It cost him some effort. “Folks, sorry to break up the party, but I want to get back to my room.” He wavered to his feet. “Maybe Toby didn’t tell you, but I came down with cancer of the pancreas. They give me two more months, but I hope to push it to six.”

  He did his best to conceal his pain as he sauntered across the parking lot.

  48

  “What kind of danger?”

  Every time we reached the top of a hill, through the windshield I could see the low, sensible skyline of the city where I had been born. Such places were not supposed to contain people like Edward Rinehart. Families like mine, if there were other families like the Dunstans, did not belong in them, either.

  “You and Cobbie shouldn’t have anything to do with this Rinehart stuff. It’s too risky. I’d rather be Donald Messmer’s son.”

  “Cobbie and I can’t be in danger from a dead man. And tonight, we are going to find this Donald Messmer.”

  “I thought Stewart was dropping Cobbie off.”

  “Afterwards. Posy will be back just after five o’clock, and I could pick you up around six. My son would love to see you again. He keeps saying, ‘Is Ned coming to our house?’ So come to our house, why don’t you? Posy and I will give you dinner, and you can show me Edward Rinehart’s book.”

  It sounded more interesting than dinner in Hatchtown and a return to the rooming house. My fears of endangering Laurie and her son no longer seemed rational; Max Edison had spooked me.

  “I warn you, Cobbie is going to make you listen to his favorite music, so be prepared.”

  “What kind of music does he like?”

  “I am baffled,” Laurie said. “Cobbie is fixated on the last section of Estampes, a Debussy piano thing, a Monteverdi madrigal called ‘Confitebor tibi’ sung by an English soprano, and Frank Sinatra doing ‘Something’s Gotta Give.’ He can’t really be only four years old. I think he’s a thirty-five-year-old midget.”

  “Is the English soprano Emma Kirkby?”

  “You know her?”

  I laughed at the unlikeliness of the coincidence. “I brought that CD with me when I came here.”

  “That settles it. I’m picking you up at six.”

  A sign twenty yards down the road marked the boundary of Edgerton, the City with a Heart of Gold. The sign floated nearer, increasing in size. We came to within a foot, to within six inches, to a distance measurable only by a caliper, to nothing. The sign flew past the hood of the car and flattened into a two-dimensional vertical stripe parallel with my head. The air wavered, thickened, and seemed to shimmer up from the highway like a mirage.

  49

  Helen Janette darted out before I reached the stairs. If the manila envelope in her hand was responsible for the expression on her face, I didn’t want to know what was in it.

  Like a matching automaton on a Swiss clock, Mr. Tite opened his door and stepped into the frame. The fedora shaded his nose, and the lumpy jaw looked hard as granite.

  “A policeman was looking for you this morning.” She crossed her arms over the envelope. “I didn’t like the idea of plunking a thing with police department stamped all over it on my mail table.”

  “Did he give his name?”

  Mr. Tite cleared his throat. “It was a gink named Rowley.”

  “Lieutenant Rowley was returning this to you.” She surrendered the envelope.

  Otto Bremen boomed out my name before I could get the key into my lock. He was waving at me from the chair in front of his television set, and he looked a lot friendlier than my landlady and her guard dog. I went into his room.

  Bremen stuck out a big, splayed hand. “Ned Dunstan, right? Otto Bremen, in case you forgot.” His handsome mustache bristled above his smile. “Grab a chair.”

  Bremen’s room overflowed with chairs, dressers, little tables, and other things from wherever he had lived before moving to Mrs. Janette’s. A cheerful jumble of photographs, framed documents, and tacked-up drawings by children covered the walls. The yellow banner I had noticed that morning hung across the top of the back wall. WE LOVE YOU OTTO had been printed three times in bright blue letters along its length.

  “I guess they love you.”

  “Isn’t that the cutest damn thing?” He looked over his shoulder. “ ‘We love you Otto, we love you Otto, we love you Otto.’ From the graduating sixth-grade class at Carl Sandburg Elementary School, 1989.” He lit a cigarette. “Mrs. Rice, the principal, called me up onstage during the ceremony. Most of those kids, I’d known since you had to take ’em by the hand and sing ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’ to get ’em across the street. I was so proud, I almost burst out of my suspenders.”

  It was the luxuriant, gravel-bottomed Western voice I remembered from that morning.
If Otto Bremen had sung “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” I would have followed him across the street, too.

  He knitted his hands over his belly and exhaled. “First time any graduating class honored a crossing guard that way. Nine months of the year, I’m the crossing guard at Carl Sandburg.” Bremen tapped the cigarette, and ashes drifted toward the floor. “If I had it to do all over again, I swear, I’d get a degree in elementary education and teach first or second grade. Hell, if I wasn’t seventy years old, I’d do it now. Say, care for a drink? I’m about ready.”

  A few minutes later, I managed to get across the hall.

  EDGERTON POLICE DEPARTMENT was printed on the front and the sealed flap of the manila envelope Lieutenant Rowley had entrusted to Helen Janette. Inside it was a plastic bag, also sealed, with four white identification bands. A case number and my name had been scrawled on the top two bands. Lieutenant George Rowley and someone in the Property Department had signed the other two. The plastic bag contained a wad of bills. I dumped out the money and counted it. Four hundred and eighty-one dollars. I laughed out loud and called Suki Teeter.

  50

  The bus dropped me off in College Park two blocks south of the Albertus campus. I walked down Archer Street until I saw the weathered wooden signboard, RIVERRUN ARTS & CRAFTS, over the porch of Suki Teeter’s three-story clapboard building.

  The room to the right of the entrance surrounded racks of posters and greeting cards with paintings, graphics, woven tapestries, and shelves of pottery and blown glass; the smaller room to the left doubled as an art-supply business and framing shop. Although she exhibited work by local artists, Suki supported herself mostly through poster sales and picture framing.