Never Speak: A Mystery Thriller (The Murderous Arts Series)

by John Manchester

  Ray opened his eyes. “Yes. What do I have to do?”

  “Well, you could sit there and wait for the contract to arrive in the mail, then sign it. Or I can send it to you in an email you can take care of right away electronically.”

  Ray sat at the table. “Uh, email’s fine.”

  Ray was speed-dialing Liz before he could think. He took the phone up to the couch.

  “Elizabeth Fairchild.” He’d forgotten that corporate voice of hers.

  “It’s Ray.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “I’ve got a book contract, with an advance!”

  “What book?”

  “I told you I was doing some writing. It’s a lot of money. I’ll be able to pay you every cent I owe you.”

  “That’s good.” Good? “Listen, I have a meeting.”

  She was gone. Unbelievable. She was getting her fucking money. She could at least pretend to be a little bit happy for him. More important, he had his new life, new career! Wasn’t that what she wanted too?

  But he was too pumped up to get dragged down by Liz.

  A book. His ever-eager imagination went wild. He saw his name on the New York Times bestseller list. He was signing at Barnes & Noble, women in line waiting to meet him. Smart women who read. There he was on TV, on Oprah.

  Was Oprah even on TV anymore? He shuddered with embarrassment. This was not him, at least not since he was kid in a band, dreaming of being the next Beatles.

  But this was him, getting Lou’s email with the contract, climbing downstairs, and figuring out how to hook the new computer up to the old printer. It was him, finding a pen—not so easy these days—and signing. Futzing with the printer to get it to scan. He worked fast, aware that he was doing it before he could change his mind. And then he was at the last thing—hitting send.

  It was done. He sat in the chair and stared out past the sculptures at the street.

  This was not the same as looking from the oculus. He was too exposed here. And this window was too square. Still, it was a window and, like the one upstairs, could serve as a device to see things that weren’t there.

  He gazed out at cars, a couple walking by. The scene dissolved, like some movie trick, and The House appeared. Like a scene from Hieronymus Bosch, it morphed in his mind into sentience, into Karl’s big head. Ray stood in front of The House, staring up at the facade, the door a mouth taunting, You’ll never dare! The windows turned to eyes, black pools. And inside was the void.

  A hundred grand…a hundred million. He still couldn’t write about Karl.

  He called Bodine.

  “You busy?”

  “No.”

  “I’m coming over. I’ve got some news.”

  Bodine and Mingus met him at the door. Bodine looked at Ray. “You said you had news. Not that you just got raptured. I’m taking you out to lunch.”

  “How do you know it’s good news?”

  “It isn’t bad.”

  “Actually, it’s a little of both.”

  “Of course. You’re Ray. You hungry?”

  “Starved. With all the excitement, I forgot to eat.”

  Mingus gave Bodine an imploring look. He said, “Sorry, bud. You want to come to a restaurant, we need to move to France.” He led the dog upstairs and closed him in the office. He returned with his laptop.

  Ray eyed it.

  Bodine said, “Never know when the coding muse will call.”

  “You sure Mingus won’t tear something up?”

  “He’s not that kind of dog.”

  He didn’t sound sure.

  Warren Street was rapidly on its way upscale but still had Sal’s, a bar where they knew a lot about pouring drinks and enough to more or less cook a burger.

  They sat in a booth. A tattooed waitress in her early thirties came by, and they ordered burgers and beer.

  Ray said, “Lou called. He got me a book deal. With an advance.”

  “What, five grand?”

  “Nope.”

  “Three?”

  “Wrong direction.”

  “Ten? You’re buying lunch.”

  “A hundred.”

  “Fuck me. Now you owe me lunch and a truckload of beer. I’m assuming that’s the good news. Though you have a way of seeing the downside to anything.”

  “No, it’s good.”

  “The bad?”

  “The book has to be about…Karl.” He leaned forward and whispered, almost choking on the name.

  Bodine barked an ugly laugh. “I can come up with a lot more pleasant subjects. Pictorial history of the Khmer Rouge. Principles of Proctology. And….” He shrugged. “What the hell. You need the money. So you’re going to whore yourself out. There’s no shame in that. What do you think we used to do playing for drunks in all those dives?”

  “It’s more complicated than just money.”

  “Isn’t everything with you? So, what else?”

  “I feel like it’s…calling me.”

  Bodine rolled his eyes. Ray explained how writing was magic, how he wanted to see inside of Karl.

  Bodine shook his head. “I haven’t done enough writing to speak on this magic business, though I have my doubts. But one of the things in my life I’m truly grateful for is that I never have to see that motherfucker again.” He sighed. “I get the money. But calling you? It doesn’t mean you have to answer. Can’t you just scribble some glossy thing?”

  “Hey.”

  “Yeah, yeah, Ray the artist. So you’re really going to get into it.”

  Ray was silent.

  Bodine said, “You sure you’re ready to dig that shit up?”

  Ray was still silent.

  The waitress brought the beers and Ray took a long swallow.

  Bodine asked, “Are you after revenge?”

  “No.”

  “This calling business—you might want to figure out what, or who, it is you’ve got on the line. Is something wrong with your throat?”

  “Huh?” Ray became aware of his hand massaging his Adam’s apple. He hadn’t known it was still hurting until Bodine spoke.

  “You sound hoarse. Is it sore?”

  Ray said, “No. More like something’s stuck in there and won’t come out. It’s been that way for a while.”

  “Since you started this writing business.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t get why?”

  “No.”

  “That’s your third chakra. Karl had some rap about it.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Fuck if I remember. The usual crap—you better line all seven of them up, tout de suite, or you’ll be cursed unto the twelfth generation. But good luck doing it, because nobody, not even the Dalai Lama, can pull off that trick. That said, it doesn’t mean there isn’t something to chakras.”

  “Like what?”

  Bodine set the laptop on the table and went online. “Good beer and working Wi-Fi. What else does a man need?” He laughed, “Oh, this is sweet. The third chakra has to do with creativity and self-expression. Which would be your bag. When it’s closed, we decay. Open that sucker up, and we experience wisdom.”

  “So my creativity’s stuck. That’s been the case for months. How am I supposed to open it?”

  Bodine surfed. “Let’s see. Aromatherapy. Frankincense, jasmine, ylang-ylang.”

  “Right. If you can’t pronounce it, I ain’t trying it.”

  “You can rub crystals on it. Lapis lazuli, tanzanite...”

  “You know I don’t do crystals.”

  “What about chanting ‘HAM’ in the key of B?” He made a ridiculous humming sound, in what Ray assumed was the key of B, since Bodine had perfect pitch.

  “Bodine….”

  But his friend was on a roll. He was
a scientist at heart and couldn’t pass up an opportunity to poke fun at all the wackadoodle new age therapies out there. “Wouldn’t you know—it has its very own color.”

  “Or course. All that horseshit does.”

  “Sky blue. Go outside, look up, and you’ll be on your way.”

  “That I could do. If it ever stopped raining. Are you done?”

  “Sure.”

  Ray held up his beer. “This helps.”

  “That helps everything. Until it doesn’t.”

  “So what does?”

  Bodine looked at the computer. He got serious. “How about this? It says, ‘Speak the truth.’”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do, with the writing, but something’s stopping me.”

  “Writer’s block already? I’d think it was a little early for that.”

  “No, writing’s easy. It’s…” Ray got it. He forced himself to speak, though his voice was practically a croak. “How could I miss it? It’s obvious. This thing in my throat is… that old taboo. You remember.” Ray was half whispering. He looked around the restaurant. It was almost empty this late. Still, he was glad they had the privacy of a booth.

  “Who could forget? But you can’t still believe it?” Bodine put on a decent imitation of Karl’s portentous whisper. “Never speak.”

  Ray winced, then stared into space. “I believe…” Believe what? Ray suddenly remembered Karl explaining the reason for their silence: This energy we accumulate here in one day of our practice is more precious than all the treasures in the world. To speak of what we do, to speak of me, is to waste it. If I gave you a hundred-dollar bill, would you toss it out the window? He supposed he’d believed it back then. What about now? “Why do you think Karl insisted on our silence?”

  “Oh, come on! If you were doing all that nasty shit, wouldn’t you need a way to keep people’s lips sealed?” He gave Ray a wondering look. “You’re still afraid, aren’t you? And not just to speak. You’re still afraid of Karl.”

  Ray looked at him, and the blood rushed to his face. He was afraid.

  Until he’d started writing about Susan, he’d barely thought of Karl in years. But hidden away from the light of consciousness, Karl had grown. He’d become fantastic, larger than life, some mythological creature. Which had blinded Ray to a very real possibility: that Karl was alive, out there somewhere. And if he was, he would surely find out that Ray was writing.

  Bodine caught his look. “What?”

  Ray looked away. Their waitress was coming with lunch. He leaned over to Bodine and whispered, “Do you think Karl’s alive?”

  Bodine said, “The question’s never occurred to me.” He looked at Ray. “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know… what goes around comes around, I suppose. Did you Google him?”

  “Yeah. There was nothing more recent than thirty years ago.”

  The waitress set the plates on the table. “Ketchup?”

  Ray said, “And hot sauce, if you have it.”

  She nodded to his glass, which was almost empty. “Another beer?”

  “Sure.”

  She looked at Bodine. He said, “I’m good.”

  She left, and they ate. Bodine said, “This burger’s fine, but these fries are a little… soggy for my taste.”

  “They say grease calms the nerves.”

  “Who says? When taken with enough beer, I suppose.” Bodine frowned. “You know Karl was a junkie back in the sixties.”

  A junkie? “That’s impossible.”

  “I knew musicians who shot up with him.”

  Ray shook his head. He pictured Karl, an oldish man. Raising his arms to a sunset in a canyon of Big Sur. Or laughing with some fellow Lamas in Tibet. Back in England, in a country manor, presiding over a new group. “If he’s alive, where is he?”

  “Sucking on a jug in some alley. Sing Sing? Most likely rotting in the ground.” Bodine laughed. “Hey, maybe he’s still sitting up there in The House.”

  Ray didn’t think that was funny at all. “Oh, shit.” He pictured The House, not as some nightmare face, but very real, in daylight. With its ancient stones looking exactly the same, and… Karl in it. Less than two hours away. He shuddered.

  The waitress brought his beer.

  Bodine said, “Hey, I was kidding. He’s not in The House.”

  “Why not?”

  “How could he keep that big place up? Blues Revolution records didn’t sell that well.”

  Ray had a worse thought. “But what if he still has the group?” He downed a slug of beer.

  Bodine snorted. “We were all fools, I’ll admit, but I doubt any of us were that foolish. And my gut tells me that group is long defunct. It was in a death spiral when I left, and that wasn’t even the end.”

  “I don’t know. If you’re wrong, how could we find out if a member were still involved?”

  Bodine nodded. “It would be hard if they were still signed into Karl’s secrecy shit.”

  Ray said, “What if I call someone, they play dumb with me, then get off and ring Karl?”

  “If he has a phone. Remember? He didn’t believe in electricity.”

  “So, they could go see him, ‘Hey, guess who called me the other day, asking about you?’”

  “Why are you so uptight about him finding out?”

  Never speak… Ray paused and thought. “I don’t know.” And he really didn’t. “If they still have the group, you think they have a website?”

  Bodine scratched his chin. “It’s been a long time. People change. He changed once—from rock star to guru. He could have changed again.”

  “Karl might have changed his tune on technology. But he’d never stop being cagey.”

  Bodine said, “Let me see if they have a website.”

  Bodine searched, and Ray drank.

  Bodine said, “What did we call whatever nonsense it was we were doing?”

  “The Way.”

  “Right. But that was just from some stuff Karl said. As far as I recall—which isn’t too far—he never actually called it anything.”

  Bodine typed. “The Way is so generic, I’m not pulling much up.”

  Bodine thought. “You really want to know, you need someone who left after us, who could tell something of what happened after that. But who we’re sure isn’t involved now.”

  “Lorraine.”

  Bodine said, “Of course.” Lorraine was one of the few members of the group Ray had stayed friends with. She maintained a wider network of relationships than Ray or Bodine. “She’s always got an ear or two tuned to the grapevine. I never knew how she survived during all those years of enforced silence. If anybody knows anything, it’s her.”

  “But can I trust her to keep her mouth shut?”

  “Good point. That old grapevine cuts both ways. You have to be careful what you say. Because you know whatever you tell her is going to be all over Greene County ten minutes after you get off the phone.”

  “So?”

  “Just keep it casual. You ask the right questions, she’ll open up and tell you everything you need to know.” Bodine looked at him hard. “So, you going to write this thing or not?”

  “I already wrote some. That first meeting backstage. Our first trip to The House. But I got stopped at the door.”

  “Portals, man. Karl didn’t call them doors.”

  “Right. It’s like he cast a spell on that place, no shit, and I can’t see a thing inside.”

  “You have it bad, and I don’t think gargling or lapis lazuli or all the good healing vibes in the world are going to fix it. You know if this book with Lou is one of those ‘big deals’ like we were always getting promised in the music business, it’ll never happen anyway.”

  “True.”

  “Then you’ll be
off the hook.”

  Ray didn’t know how he felt about that.

  The waitress brought the check. Ray had the beer in his right hand, so he grabbed it with his left.

  Bodine was watching and said, “Hey, let me see those fingers.” Ray reluctantly splayed them on the table.

  “No, the tips.” Ray showed him. “What I suspected. You’ve been playing.”

  “A little.”

  “From the looks of these a couple more weeks, and you’ll be ready for our gig.”

  Ray rolled his eyes. “A couple more lifetimes.”

  Bodine got up and went in the kitchen. He returned a minute later with a large bone. “Mingus’s reward for being so good while I was gone.”

  “How do you know he’s been good?”

  “Because he wants this bone, that’s why.” Ray paid the check and they left. They went their separate ways at Bodine’s street.

  When he got home, Ray climbed upstairs to the couch and called Lorraine.

  “Ray Watts! How nice to hear your voice.”

  “And yours.” It was.

  “How’s Liz?”

  “Gone.”

  “I’m sorry. Is she…”

  “Coming back? I don’t know.”

  “How about the art?”

  “That’s kind of over too.”

  “It sounds like you’ve been going through a rough time.”

  “You could say that. And the shrink business?”

  “Okay. People aren’t getting any less crazy.”

  They shot the shit, and then as off-hand as he could he said, “Hey, you ever wonder what happened to Karl?”

  A dead silence. The roof across the street gleamed in the last sun.

  Finally, she laughed weakly. “Remember the end of the group? Karl was all I wanted to talk about. You listened, but even then you were still obeying him. Not talking about it. And here you are bringing it up. Why?”

  You couldn’t put anything over on Lorraine. She was smart about people. Which probably made her a fine shrink. “Uh, Lorraine, I have a situation here. When your patients come to you…”

  “Clients.”

  “Okay. When your clients come to you, you’re sworn to secrecy.”

  “Absolutely. Unless they confess to murder.”