Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom

by A. L. Haskett

  “Hi, Duncan. Congratulations.”

  “Hi, Misty. Thanks. Are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

  “Allergies.” She looked at Cat. “Doesn’t seem like he missed you much.”

  Duncan laughed. “No, it doesn’t.”

  He packed his things and put it all in the wagon. Misty was gone when he returned but Cat remained. He decided to drop his canvases off at Angela’s before going home. He carried the paintings downstairs, put them in the car, then went back for Cat. He was halfway to the street when his phone rang. He remembered the fourteen hang-ups.

  “Curiosity,” he said to Cat as he went back to get the phone, “only kills your species.”

  “Duncan Delaney?” a man said when he answered.

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Samuel Norris.” His voice was deep and clear. “I saw your painting in the paper. I liked it very much.”

  “That one’s not for sale.”

  “That’s not why I called. I wanted to speak with you about Penny.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl in the painting.”

  “Her name is Pris.”

  “No, it’s not,” Samuel Norris said, deep and clear as despair, “her name is Penny. I should know. I’m her father.”

  “Are you still there?” Samuel Norris asked after a long time.

  “She said you were dead.”

  “I assure you I’m not.” The humor in the voice eased Duncan’s trepidation. “Though I understand why she said it.” There was another long silence. “What else did she tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. We didn’t part on good terms. Though I am disappointed she changed her name. It would have been so much easier to find her if she had only kept her name.” The voice was sad. “I wasn’t the easiest father to live with. But I’ve changed. I’d like to see my baby again.”

  Duncan remembered dark nights lying in bed, staring at his ceiling, and wondering what might have been if his father had lived. Pris had six more years with her father than he with his, but could it have been enough? He could not imagine anything bad enough to preclude reconciliation and he further imagined a father would be the best of all possible wedding gifts.

  “Listen,” Duncan said, “I’m busy for another couple hours yet, but if you want, you can come by the house and see her.”

  “Are you her boyfriend?”

  Duncan smiled. “Something like that.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “I think I should be. At first at least.” Duncan gave him the address. “It’s one now. I should be home by four. What say you show up at five?”

  “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” He paused. “Could you do me a favor? Don’t tell her I’m coming. I’d like it to be a surprise.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Duncan hung up. He picked up cat and headed downstairs. For the rest of his life he would remember walking down those stairs and thinking, won’t Pris be surprised.

  When Duncan came home, the Cadillac was gone. Cat jumped from the car and paced the gravel in front of the garage. Duncan looked at his watch. Three thirty. He hoped Pris would return before her father arrived. Next door, a gardener pulled the cord on a lawn mower. The engine started noisily. Duncan got out of the car. The gardener waved to him over the hedge. Duncan waved back and went inside.

  The front door was open and the television was on. Duncan turned it off. A breeze ruffled the curtains through the kitchen window. Duncan smelled mower exhaust. He closed the window. He took a jar of mayonnaise out of the refrigerator, a loaf of wheat bread, and a tin of dolphin safe tuna. He made a sandwich, got a beer, and sat on a bench on the back porch and ate. The sun was hot against his forehead. He took off his shirt and went inside to fetch his hat. He opened the bedroom door.

  A man lay on the floor by the bed, his pants around his ankles and his shorts at his shins. He looked to be fifty, thin with light blond hair turning gray, his face wet and red from a gash across his temple. Blood stained his shirt around five small holes. The man groaned and reached out with a bloody hand. Duncan stumbled out the door to the living room and seized the phone. It was dead. He raced through the house screaming her name into empty room after empty room. He sprinted outside and leaped the hedge into the neighbor’s yard. He tripped and somersaulted across the grass. The gardener shut off the mower.

  “Call the police,” Duncan yelled. “Policia!”

  Bolo’s neighbor, an old screenwriter who retired when he could not adapt to computers, stuck his head out the door. “What’s wrong?”

  “Call the police!” Duncan yelled.

  He leaped over the hedge and tripped again, skinning his back on the gravel where he fell. He stopped. With the lawn mower silent he heard the Cadillac rumbling inside the garage. He threw the garage door open. Blue fog spilled onto the driveway.

  “That’s dangerous,” the old screenwriter called over the hedge.

  “Call an ambulance!” Duncan screamed.

  The Cadillac’s top was up. A garden hose ran from the exhaust into a barely open window. Blue haze filled the car. Pris slumped against the seat with her eyes shut. Duncan pulled the hose out and tried the door. Locked. He broke the rear window with his fist and unlocked the door. The car’s stereo played Only Women Bleed. He dragged her onto the lawn and laid her gently on the grass. She did not breathe.

  The old screenwriter yelled, “I called 911.”

  Duncan forced his breath into her mouth. Her chest rose as his fell, fell as his rose. He felt a hand on his shoulder but he did not stop.

  “Let me,” the gardener said with a faint accent. “You’re doing it wrong. I know CPR.”

  He pulled Duncan away. He pinched her nose and filled her lungs with his breath. Duncan staggered backward. There was blood on her t-shirt.

  “She’s bleeding!”

  “That’s your blood,” the old screenwriter said. “Look at your hand.”

  Duncan slumped to the lawn and watched the gardener try to puff life into his bride’s quiet lungs. A paramedic’s truck pulled up. Two men in uniforms ran to Pris and the gardener. One ran back to the truck and grabbed an oxygen tank and mask. A fire engine stopped behind the truck and several men jumped to the curb. One came up to Duncan and looked at his hand.

  “We need to take care of this,” he said.

  “Forget about me,” Duncan yelled, “she’s dying!”

  Another fire fighter brought a first-aid kit up and opened it. He cleaned Duncan’s hand and sprayed antiseptic onto the gashes. Duncan felt nothing.

  “We’d just be in the way,” he said. “They’re doing all they can.”

  Duncan stared at the paramedics hovering over Pris. Please god, he thought. An ambulance pulled up, and then a police car. Two policemen got out. One entered the house. The other opened a notebook.

  “What’s the stiff’s name?” he asked.

  “She’s not a stiff!” Duncan yelled.

  “Whoops,” the officer said. “Sorry, buddy. What’s her name?”

  “Pris Nolan. I mean Delaney. We were just married.” He shook his head. “Or it might be Penny Delaney. Can’t we do this at the hospital?”

  The first policeman came out of the house. “Not until we get some answers,” he said. He pulled Duncan’s hands behind his back and cuffed him. “There’s a gunshot victim in the house.”

  The two paramedics stood and went inside.

  “Hey, what about her?”

  “She’s breathing,” a fire fighter said. “She should be okay.”

  “Who’s the guy inside?” the policeman asked.

  “I don’t know. I just got home. I found him in the bedroom. I found her in the garage.”

  The policeman took a driver’s license out of an old brown wallet. “Name Samuel Norris ring a bell?”

  Duncan wanted to vomit. “It’s her father.”

  Two uniformed men put Pris in the back of the ambulance.


  “They’re taking her away!”

  The policeman put down a portable radio. “Records say he’s served time for manslaughter.”

  “I have not!” Duncan yelled.

  “Not you, the guy inside.” The other cop uncuffed Duncan. “You go with her. We’ll send a detective to the hospital to talk with you.”

  Duncan put on a shirt and got in the ambulance with a paramedic. Pris lay on the gurney, silent and still, the oxygen mask strapped across her nose and mouth. Her hand was loose and limp but it was warm. The door shut and the ambulance lurched onward. The paramedic looked as young as Duncan, with a body built on exercise machines, and hair as short as Duncan’s was long. He looked like a surfer. He smiled at Duncan.

  “I think she’s going to be okay,” said the paramedic.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t cut a tendon,” the doctor said as he sewed a last stitch in Duncan’s hand. He looked like he was two thirds through a thirty hour shift. He wound gauze about his knuckles and taped it in place.

  “Can I see her?”

  “They’re very busy. You’d be in the way.”

  Duncan followed him out. An old woman with teak skin and dark brown eyes sat across the waiting room, holding a bible and staring at the ceiling. A young man, shivering in a blanket, sat near her. A younger woman sat by the shivering man, her arm around him. Duncan went to a pay phone. He put in a quarter and dialed. A machine answered.

  “Benjamin,” Duncan said at the beep, “Pris tried to kill herself.” He started to cry. “I don’t know what to do.”

  He left the name of the hospital and hung up. Fear rose like a bilious moon in his throat. He ran into the bathroom to a stall and vomited in the toilet. He rinsed his mouth and wiped his face. When he returned to the waiting room, the others were gone. He sat in a chair and picked up a magazine. He read for an hour and when he put the magazine down he could not remember a word of what he had read.

  “Duncan!”

  Angela and Benjamin ran down the hall. He stood and fell into Benjamin’s arms.

  “Easy,” Benjamin said, “easy.”

  “Duncan, what happened?”

  Duncan breathed deep. He released Benjamin and sagged into a chair. “I found her in the garage. She was in her car with the engine running.”

  “Oh, god,” Angela said. “Why?”

  Duncan knew why. It was his fault. He never should have given Samuel Norris their address. He should have trusted her and whatever reason she had for wanting her father dead. He never should have left Cheyenne. He never should have been born.

  “Because of me,” he said.

  “Come on,” Benjamin said, “Let’s get some coffee.”

  Benjamin led Duncan to an empty cafeteria and bought two coffees. Duncan held the cup and felt its warmth seep into his blood. He sipped and the coffee burned his tongue.

  “Careful,” Benjamin said. “It’s hot.”

  Duncan sipped again. The cafeteria door slammed into the wall with a metallic bang. Sheila Rascowitz burst into the room. She wore black leather chaps and a sleeveless leather vest. A fresh tattoo of a headless cat ran along her left arm. Her eyes burned like distant bonfires.

  “You!” she yelled. “It’s your fault!”

  “I know,” Duncan said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry isn’t good enough.”

  Sheila pointed a glove. Benjamin dove for the floor.

  “Get down!” he yelled.

  When the glove spit fire, Duncan realized it was not a glove after all. The first bullet pierced his shoulder, the second nicked his ear. A hammer hit him above his other ear. Detective Harkanian, sent to the hospital to question Duncan, opened the door to find him falling. He backed in dread and reached for his hip when Sheila pointed the gun at him. Duncan hit the linoleum. Benjamin tackled Sheila. He grabbed her arm and broke her elbow across his knee. She screamed and the gun fell from her hand.

  “That’s enough,” Harkanian said.

  Benjamin released her and her arm flopped uselessly to the floor. Benjamin knelt beside Duncan while Harkanian cuffed Sheila.

  “Are you okay?”

  It seemed like a stupid question and Duncan laughed. Benjamin touched Duncan’s forehead and his hand came away covered with blood.

  “I don’t think so,” he replied.

  As his arms grew numb, Duncan wondered if he would dream. He hoped so. He wanted to see his father before he died. The ceiling grew black and fell down to meet him and he wondered no more.

  The first thing Duncan saw when he opened his eyes were the flowers. The room was filled with bouquets of rainbow petals and a floral smell. He tried to sit up, but his head spun and he sagged back against his pillow.

  “He’s out of it,” a voice said.

  “Thank god,” another replied.

  He closed his eyes and dreamed he was with his father on the Circle D. Both were on horseback, the air was steam in their mouths, and Duncan knew it was that terrible winter’s day in his youth. Duncan and Sean watched a jet fall from the clouds to crash on the range. Just before his father spurred his horse to the rescue, Duncan saw a parachute floating slowly down.

  “Dad, look! You don’t have to go this time!”

  Sean smiled sadly and said, “if only it were that easy.”

  The pilot landed and put his hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “He was a brave man,” he said.

  Sean reached the plane. “Only as brave as I had to be!”

  The pilot waved and called, “thanks anyway, Mr. Delaney!”

  Sean waved back and said, “don’t mention it!” To Duncan he called, “always remember, she was a wonderful girl who loved you very much.”

  He climbed onto a wing and reached for the cockpit. The jet exploded around him, pummeling Duncan with metallic wind and thunder.

  How pointless, Duncan thought in his dream.

  “Not at all,” the pilot said as he walked away from the burning jet. “He never knew I got out.”

  Duncan cried then, tears of relief that his father never knew the folly of his death and tears of pain at his last words.

  “Look,” a voice said, “he’s crying.”

  “Do you think he knows?” another asked.

  “How could he?” the first voice said.

  He opened his eyes. Benjamin and Angela stood by his bed. They looked sad and worn. Woody and Fiona stood behind them. She turned her face into Woody’s shoulder. Benjamin gently pushed Angela aside. He bent and kissed Duncan’s forehead and grasped his good hand.

  “Pris didn’t make it,” Benjamin said.

  Duncan gripped Benjamin’s hand with all his feeble strength.

  “I know.”

  “The first bullet,” the man with the stethoscope said, “passed cleanly through your shoulder. It did no lasting damage. The second sliced a piece off your earlobe. The third grazed your temple and fractured your skull, resulting in a hematoma that caused pressure on your brain. Which is why you were in a coma for two weeks.” He smiled brightly. His name was Dr. Norbert Franklin, he was Los Angeles’s pre-eminent neurosurgeon, and he was enjoying talking about Duncan’s hematoma. “Any questions?”

  “Tell me about Pris.”

  “I wasn’t her doctor. That was Dr. Phillips.”

  “Could you tell Dr. Phillips I’d like to see him, please?”

  Franklin hung Duncan’s chart on the base of the bed and left. Duncan touched his skull. Half his head was bald. A bandage covered a hole drilled in his skull to relieve the pressure on his brain. He painfully swung his legs off the bed and stood. He shuffled into the bathroom and urinated. He flushed and rinsed his hands. He looked in the mirror. His face was thin and white, the hair gone from the left side of his head. The last of the half Mohicans, he thought. He almost laughed but then he remembered how sad he was. He limped back to bed. The door opened and a tall man came in.

  “Here,” he took Duncan’s arm. “Let me help you.”

  Duncan got into bed. He felt hor
ribly tired. The tall man opened the drapes. Duncan squinted against the light.

  “I’m Dr. Phillips.” He sat in a chair by the bed and wiped his glasses on his coat. “You wanted to see me?”

  “I want to know about Pris.”

  Dr. Phillips breathed a ragged sigh. “We thought it was only carbon monoxide poisoning. We had her on oxygen. We expected her to open her eyes every minute. Then the police called and told us they found an empty Valium bottle in the car and we knew why she wasn’t coming out of it. We pumped her stomach but it was too late. She never woke.”

  Duncan looked to the courtyard outside his window. Orderlies arranged children in wheelchairs in a circle around a brightly dressed clown. Two children were bald and one’s arm was in a cast but the others did not look ill. The clown lost control of five juggled rubber balls that fell sequentially onto his head. The children laughed and clapped. Duncan looked away.

  “This was in her pocket,” Phillips gave him a folded note. “I should have given it to the police but in all the rush I never did. Just as well. She obviously meant it for you.”

  After Phillips left, Duncan held the paper to his nose. He wanted to smell her perfume but all he detected was Phillips’ wool coat and residual exhaust. He unfolded the note.

  Duncan, it said, I’m sorry for the pain and grateful for your patience and love. Because of you, I was whole for a while. But I can no longer make love to you without thinking of him and what he did to me. I will always love you. But it just hurts too much.

  Duncan stared at the note until the children and the clown left and the courtyard beyond his window filled with shadows. Getting up was easier this time. He took off his hospital gown and dressed. There was a hole in the shoulder of his shirt, but it had been washed, and the blood was gone. He sat on the bed and pulled on his socks and tennis shoes. His shoulder was agony but he went on. He finished dressing, put the note in his pocket, picked up the phone, and called Benjamin.

  Twenty

  Duncan stayed with Benjamin and Angela. Fiona and Woody moved out of the hotel and into Bolo’s with Duncan’s permission. Both house and restaurant had passed from Bolo to Pris and were now Duncan’s by virtue of his brief marriage. Fiona had herself declared conservator and took over the daily operation of Café Bella while Duncan was comatose. Her first management decisions were to hire Sven as omelet chef and Roscoe as bartender. Duncan approved because he liked Sven and Roscoe. Otherwise he could care less what she did with the restaurant.