“That’s right,” he grunted. “One or the other.” He hestitated, looking out at the curtain of rain for a moment, then moved ponderously toward the street in what was meant to be a hurry.
When he heard the car engine start up, Walt went out through the gate and peered through the front porch hibiscus, keeping out of sight. It was a government car all right, E plates and all.
He wandered back up the driveway, thinking things over. Putting the rifled box on Argyle’s front porch looked like a monstrously stupid prank to him now—especially scribbling on it with a marker like that. Maybe Argyle could press charges for mail tampering or theft or whatever they’d call it. If Walt wanted to, he could throw the bluebird of happiness into the Dumpster behind the medical center right now, ditch the evidence, just walk down there and get the damned thing out of his life. They’d never prove anything….
But at the same time he thought this, he knew that he wouldn’t. Right now he was going to keep the bird, and to hell with Argyle and the inspector both.
“Post office man, eh?” Henry said to him.
“Yeah,” Walt said. “Routine investigation. Missing package, apparently.”
“They should have insured it,” Henry said, shaking his head. “A stitch in time …” He shrugged.
“Sounds like Dr. Hefernin,” Walt said.
“You can bank on it.” Henry winked broadly. He was worked up, full of vinegar. “Look,” he said, “I met a man this afternoon whom I think you’ll find fairly interesting.” He nodded slowly, unblinking, meaning what he said.
Walt braced himself.
“Man name of Vest. Have you heard of him?”
“Vest?”
“Sidney Vest. He’s a financial advisor. What they call a lone wolf in the business. Used to work out of Merrill Lynch, but it was too crowded for him. He needed room to move, if you follow me—a bigger canvas. He’s got vision.” Henry inclined his head, coming down hard on the word.
“Name is unfamiliar.”
“Well, it won’t be for long.”
Walt waited to find out why.
“I let him in on the popes,” Henry said.
“Was that wise?” Walt asked. “Can we trust him?”
Henry waved his hand. “I know I should have asked you first, since we’ve pretty much gone in partners on this. But I think he might be willing to underwrite the whole megillah, lock, stock, and barrel. He’s got a couple of other ideas, too. He’s a go-getter.”
“Maybe we should do some checking around,” Walt said. “Something as important as this …”
Henry shrugged, as if to say that checking around wasn’t out of the question. “Well, to tell you the truth, it smells like capital to me. What I did was set up a meeting—tomorrow for lunch, over at Coco’s. I think you’ll be surprised. The man drives a Lincoln Town Car, late model. He bought it for cash on the proceeds of a little sales venture he’s got going. We can get in on that, too, if we want to. This man’s the gift horse, Walter, and I mean to climb aboard.”
“Yeah,” Walt said. “Sure. What the heck. Doesn’t hurt to hear the man out, does it?” He listened to the words issue from his mouth and nearly hated himself. His first impulse was to tell Ivy about it, to try to work something out. But of course the news would get straight back to Jinx, who would put the kibosh on it, and forever after he’d have to live with having betrayed Henry, with being the man who scuttled the popes. He’d never be able to look the old man in the face again.
A horn honked, and Ivy’s Toyota pulled up. The doors opened and two children got out—Eddie and Nora, Darla’s kids. What the hell was this … ?
Walt waved at Ivy, who stepped out of the car and walked around to the trunk, yanking out two suitcases. Nora, who was four, looked like some kind of orphan child with her stick-skinny arms and gypsy eyes. She turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth, trying to catch a raindrop.
“Hi, Eddie!” Walt called to the boy, who waved back at him, then took one of the suitcases from Ivy, holding it with both hands. He was clearly wearing last year’s pants, which were flood-quality now, and he needed a haircut. He had a long face, and even at five there was something in him that reminded Walt of an undertaker. Maybe it was his interminable seriousness. He let go of the suitcase with one hand and grabbed his sister’s wrist, hauling her along toward the house, following Ivy.
“Looks like company,” Walt said to Henry. “You remember Miss Nora, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do,” Henry said, shaking Nora’s hand. She looked at the ground, swiveling on the balls of her feet, and shoved her thumb into her mouth.
“And here’s Eddie,” Walt said. “What’s up, Eddie?”
Eddie shrugged. “The sky,” he said.
“That’s pretty funny. What’s in the suitcase?”
“Clothes and stuff.”
Together they stepped up onto the front porch. Jinx opened the door of the house just then and threw her hands to her mouth theatrically. “My,” she said. “This can’t be Nora and Eddie.”
“It sure is,” Walt said.
“Well, come in out of the rain.” She held the screen door open. The children went in timidly, as if stepping into the great unknown. Through the open door came the smell of something cooking on the stove—something awful, like a smoldering dust bin hosed down with vinegar. Walt couldn’t place the smell for a moment, but then with a shock he realized it was beets.
Ivy came up onto the porch and handed Jinx the suitcase. “Spare room, I guess.”
“All right,” Jinx said. “And maybe we can find a snack. Bread and butter and sugar—how does that sound?”
Walt heard Eddie mutter something. “There’s more in the trunk,” Ivy said to him. “Some toys mainly.”
“Okay,” Walt said.
“And can you take them down to the preschool on Prospect tomorrow and sign them up? It would save one of us driving out to Irvine every day. Unless you want to look after them at home.” She widened her eyes, as if this just might appeal to him.
“Look after them? What gives?”
“Jack’s gone. Drunk. Darla thinks he’s shacking up with someone. She’s going back east.”
“Back east?”
“To Ann Arbor. She needs some space.”
“She needs some space? For how long?” This was unbelievable. Space? The house was turning into some kind of castaway’s retreat. Had Ivy done this on purpose, to teach him some kind of obscure lesson?
She shrugged. “I don’t have any earthly idea how long. What could I say to her? To hand the kids over to social services? They’re our niece and nephew, and I think they deserve better than that, better than what they’ve got.”
“Of course they do,” Walt said. “I was just … It’s just that it’s Christmas and all….”
“And there’s no room at the inn?”
That clobbered him. “Of course there’s room at the inn. That’s not what I meant. What the heck, eh? The more the merrier. But really, Darla’s just up and gone?”
“She’s probably somewhere over Kansas right now.”
“And Jack just …”
“Jack’s a shitbird.” She opened the door and went in, letting the screen slam. The discussion was over.
Uncle Henry stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the rain come down, lost in thought. “We work the western angle,” he said at long last, nodding at Walt.
Walt waited, wondering what this meant: “the western angle.”
“Pope-along Cassidy,” Henry said. “On a horse.”
20
THE RUINS OF the house that had belonged to Murray LeRoy sat a hundred feet off the cul-de-sac at the end of Water Street. It was a two-acre lot that occupied most of the street front and stretched north nearly to Chapman Avenue, where it was separated from the offices of lawyers and chiropractors and real estate agents by a brush-tangled wire fence and a row of immense eucalyptus trees.
The Reverend Bentley parked a block away, left his
car beneath a streetlamp, and set out carrying an umbrella and a flashlight. A car rolled past, its tires throwing a sheet of water over the curb, and Bentley skipped back out of the way. He shook his umbrella at the driver. “Damned pretzel-head,” he said under his breath. There was a light on in the office of St. Anthony’s Church up the street, but otherwise the night was lonesome and empty; rush hour was long over.
LeRoy’s acreage had once been a walnut grove but was overgrown now with old grape arbors and unpruned fruit trees and fenced by an ancient windbreak built of weathered timbers and age-darkened redwood lath, all of it tangled with rusted chicken wire and vines. The blackened remains of the burned-down farmhouse lay deep within the grove, and during its ninety years it had been more visible at night than in the day, its curtained windows glowing through the wild shrubbery and the heavy trunks of the walnut trees. Now there was nothing but darkness through the trees, and Bentley couldn’t see that there was a house there at all.
LeRoy had bought the two acres years ago, after a successful career in real estate and insurance sales. It was an R-4 zone, a prime spot for apartments or condominiums, but LeRoy hadn’t ever sold it or built on it. He had lived there alone in the old house like a vampire, rarely seen, only rarely going out into the neighborhood—at least during the day.
Bentley angled across the cul-de-sac, took a quick look around, and slipped in through a garden gate in the fence, picking his way along a litter-covered path that led to the house. There was just enough moonlight to see by, and he had no intention of switching on his flashlight if he could help it, not until he was out of sight of the street. He didn’t know quite what he was after, but he was certain that he would know it when he saw it, whatever it was. Somebody had sabotaged the bells at St. Anthony’s. Probably it was Murray LeRoy, who had obviously gone stark raving crazy there at the end. But maybe it wasn’t; maybe it was someone else.
The remains of the house sat crooked on its foundation, pushed apart by the partially collapsed roof. The windows were broken out, the doors smashed open. There was the smell of burnt, water-soaked wood in the air, and something that stank—a broken sewer line, perhaps. He wondered if someone had set the place on fire—to cover something up?—or whether the house had simply caught on fire spontaneously, with no earthly help, just as LeRoy himself had.
Bentley looked around guardedly, trying to see into the dense shadows cast by the vines and brush and broken down outbuildings that sat behind the house, an old chicken coop and garden shed. Everything was deathly still. He could hear water dripping somewhere close by and the sound of small animals rustling through the dark carpet of leaves beneath the walnut trees. The wind moved through the palms out on the avenue, and from somewhere in the west there was the lonesome sound of a train whistle. The house and the overgrown grove seemed to generate its own atmosphere, something oppressive and dusky that curtained the acreage off from the cheerful old neighborhoods that surrounded it. Bentley was filled with the uncanny certainty that evil things had come to pass here, and the darkness of the nearly leafless, deserted grove was vaguely repellent to him.
He stopped himself from simply turning around and going back. This was nonsense, he told himself. It was the shadows that did it, the nighttime, the heavy vegetation, the terrible smell of the burnt, water-soaked wood. He closed his eyes for a moment to summon strength, then opened them again. He would see this through. He had no choice in the matter.
The front door was a blackened slab that lay on the boards of the porch, its twisted hinges still screwed to the jamb. Charred curtains hung in the empty windows, and inside sat the dark hulks of furniture. The beam over the door had fallen, and hung at an angle across the opening, as if to bar the door. Bentley walked around to the rear of the house, where a wide section of roof had caved in around the chimney. The rear door stood open, its white paint streaked with black. He shone his light inside, illuminating an outmoded old refrigerator and a green-enameled stove and oven that stood on legs.
He forced himself to go inside, stepping carefully up the wooden stoop, covering his nose and mouth with his jacket. The kitchen reeked of burned things, and the floor was heaped with blackened plaster, the ceiling crossed with charred lath, old wire hanging through it with the insulation burned off. There was something hellish about it—about the smell, about the waiting silence…. Five minutes, he thought, then he would leave.
He moved into what had been the living room, shining the flashlight across the sofa and chairs. A wooden bookcase had fallen over, and the floor was strewn with burned books, swollen with water. He kicked through them, trying to make out titles, but there was nothing that signified. Among the books lay fallen pictures, their frames half consumed by the fire, glass broken. He pointed the flashlight at one of them—a painting of a man and a woman in a bedroom nearly empty of furniture. There was something off-key about the scene, peculiar….
The woman sat in a wooden chair, and the man’s hand was entangled in her dark hair, as if he were removing the white ribbon that tied it back. Her eyes were haunted with shame and defeat; his burned with an almost lunatic brilliance that Bentley realized was meant to be lust. The bed in the painting was disheveled, and on the wall behind the bed hung a painting identical in miniature to the larger one, and even in this tiny painting within a painting, the look in the man’s eyes was unmistakable. Meticulous care had gone into painting that face.
Bentley very calmly leaned his umbrella against the wall, then bent down and picked up a shard of window glass. Using the edge of the glass like a cabinet scraper, he eradicated both renderings of the man’s face, rasping through the paint and then through the canvas itself, bearing down with more and more force until he realized that he was scraping a hole in the wooden floor. He stood up and shivered from a sudden chill, dropping the piece of glass. It dawned on him then that if the house hadn’t been already burned, he would set it on fire himself.
There were two bedrooms at the rear of the house, one of them so choked with fallen roof timbers that he couldn’t get through the door. The other was clear of debris, utterly bare, not even a carpet on the floor. He started toward the door, but at the threshold he was seized with a terror so profound that he stepped backward, bumping into the wall behind him.
Cautiously, he played his light around the empty room, trying to make out what it was that had affected him. The plaster walls were streaked with soot that rose flamelike toward the ceiling, and the wooden floor was broken open, as if firemen had pried it to pieces in order to get at the subfloor. He saw then that there were two eye hooks screwed into the back wall about a foot from the top—heavy hooks, the iron shafts nearly the circumference of his little finger. There were two more in the ceiling; one had a couple of inches of burned rope shoved through it. He stared at them, his mind flitting around them, wondering what they might be, what uses they might have been put to….
He turned away, glancing quickly into the bathroom, which was a wreck of broken tiles, the toilet torn away from the wall and hammered to pieces, the old claw-foot tub choked with plaster and glass and roof shingles, the wooden medicine cabinet yanked down. It seemed utterly unlikely to him that the fire would have made such a wreck of the place. The firemen, perhaps, had—what?—torn out the medicine cabinet and broken the toilet to pieces in order to put out the fire?
Still, there was nothing apparent, no single piece of evidence that told him anything certain. Convinced of that, he went out through the kitchen and down the stoop, into the clean night air. It had started to rain again, and he hoisted his umbrella, walking down toward the shed and the chicken coop. He spit into the weeds to clear the burned taste from his mouth. There were a couple of rusted old tools in the garden shed, but nothing else. It was just a lean-to shell sitting on the dirt. A wire fence ran out from the corner of it, caging the chicken coop, its roosts long ago fallen apart. The place had clearly been used as a dump for years, and was a litter of broken bottles and rusted cans, old eggshells and rotte
d garbage. Bentley stood beneath his umbrella and shoved at the debris with his foot, shining his flashlight on it.
He had the uncanny feeling that he had suddenly drawn closer to something, or as if something unnameable had suddenly drawn closer to him. Beneath the sound of the rain and the night wind there was a slow whispering, almost a breathing, that slipped into his consciousness as if through an open window. He looked up sharply, abruptly certain that he wasn’t alone, that someone, something, stood close by, observing him. He saw that something was painted on the wooden slats directly in front of him. The paint was faded, obscured by darkness and weather. He shined his light on it, illuminating what appeared to be two crosses, except that the horizontal member was too low. He realized abruptly that they were upside-down crosses, and that beneath them was painted a five-pointed star, the points connected in a pentagram, all of it enclosed in a circle.
A broad wooden platform sat at the base of the wall, the legs wrapped in rusty chicken wire as if the thing was a cage, and sitting on the ground within the cage was a small iron kettle containing animal bones, as if it had been left behind from a cannibal feast. Beside it stood a rough chalice made out of pewter or some other lead-colored metal. A few feet away, hidden in the deep shadows, sat an open sack of quicklime, the white powder congealed by rain. Bentley stared at the bones in the kettle, suddenly and utterly convinced that whatever the empty room in the house meant, this meant the same thing. And he knew almost instinctively that the wooden platform hung on the wall was meant to be an altar.
He turned and fled, down the path between the white trunks of walnut trees and a long tangle of clumped vines. Rain flew in under the umbrella, and the cold water braced him. He stopped, panting in the middle of the path, realizing that he had panicked badly. The chicken coop and its diabolic scrawls couldn’t harm him. “I shall fear no evil,” he said out loud, but he was full of fear anyway.
Ahead of him, beneath the bare, overhanging boughs of a walnut tree, sat a wooden outhouse, apparently long disused. Ignore it, he thought. Surely there was nothing hidden in the outhouse. He had seen enough—more than enough. How this damned satanic foulness had remained hidden in this couple of acres of downtown land could be explained in only one way: LeRoy was protected. Whatever forces hovered in the air of the abandoned chicken coop somehow conspired to veil what had gone on here.
All the Bells on Earth Page 11
