Charles Alverson - Joe Goodey 02 - Not Sleeping, Just Dead

by Charles Alverson

  I couldn’t make a voice, but I mentally urged my legs, one at a time, to carry me all the way over to the door with the square little window. At that point, I was close enough to fall to the door, but I knew that if I did, I’d never get up to open it. So I waited for my legs, which waited for my feet, and finally we all got to the door and deputized my right arm to turn the knob. It did, and we all pushed on the door together, but it didn’t budge. At first, I thought I just didn’t have the strength left to push the door open. So I laid my head against the window for a bit of a rest—the comparative coolness of the glass was like a Caribbean cruise. Eventually, my eyes stopped rolling long enough to see that Tommy Carter was on the other side of the glass leering at me with idiotic good nature. His face was flattened on the window, further distorting his rubbery features, and his big shoulder was squarely against the outside of the door. I pushed with all my reduced might against the door but it was like leaning against a mountain. I tried shouting at Tommy, but all that came out was a gasping shriek that couldn’t do justice to my well-chosen invective. I resorted to making menacing faces at him through the window, but that only inspired Tommy to screw up his face even more and press harder— if that were possible—against the door.

  I gave up my efforts for a moment and just leaned against my side of the hot door, listening to my heart laboring like an oil pump sucking on a dry hole. With each stroke, a progressively constricting pain pythonned itself around my chest, making even shallow breathing not much fun. I felt as though someone was piling manhole covers on my chest one by loving one.

  I looked through the little window again, hoping not to see Tommy anymore, but there he was. He hadn’t changed a lot, and he was apparently still having a swell time. I thought about pushing on the door again, but was finding it hard enough just to keep my legs—which had somehow turned to rope—from collapsing. Soon, I found that the door was the only thing holding me up, and I clung to it like a vertical life raft, my cheek separated from Tommy’s distorted face by only a sheet of glass. I began to fantasize that we were dancing cheek to cheek, and Tommy was leading.

  Then my lolling, desperate eye caught on to something moving in from the side. The something turned into Jack Gillette floating toward Tommy as if in slow motion, then hitting Tommy’s massive frame and bouncing awkwardly away like rubber on rubber. Nice going, Jack, I prayed. Try again. Jack got to his feet, but didn’t make another rush. For a heartbeat I thought he’d given up a bad job. But then, after what seemed like an eternity, Gillette raised a clenched fist with deliberate slowness and launched it at Tommy’s head. I watched the punch every inch of the way, and felt—rather than saw—it land squarely on Tommy’s ear. The squashed face suddenly slid off the glass, and the door seemed to dematerialize as I fell through it onto the ice-cold white tiles outside.

  I looked up several miles and saw a gigantic Jack Gillette standing over me sucking on the knuckles of his right hand. In a far corner, Tommy crouched with both big hands over his wounded ear. From his wide open mouth came the piercing, blubbery scream of a child in pain.

  16

  There was a hell of a lot of excitement after that. The basement suddenly got very full of people, with Don Moffitt in the middle of the mob shouting orders. Somebody kindly stacked me on a bench in the corner so I had a front-row view as about four of them lugged Fischer out of the sauna. They carried his naked bulk with great concern and caution, but Fischer was already beginning to struggle.

  “For Christ’s sake,” he said. “I’m not dead yet. Let me down, you fools, let me down.”

  The boys looked a bit disappointed, but they put him down, and Fischer bobbed and weaved a bit to get his balance. He was flushed like an overcooked lobster, and in comparison his birthmark had paled. Somebody handed him a terrycloth robe, and Fischer was putting it on as he crossed the corridor and loomed over me. I didn’t say anything, but just sat there shivering uncontrollably and feeling a bit silly because I was naked. I noticed that nobody handed me a robe.

  “You know, Goodey,” Fischer said, trying to control his own shivering, “you may not be as crazy as I thought you were. What the hell happened here?” he snapped at Moffitt, who was hovering at his shoulder.

  “My God, Hugo,” Moffitt said distractedly, “I don’t know. Gillette was on the way to his office and saw Tommy holding the door to the sauna shut and making a lot of noise. There was steam all over the fucking place. When he got closer, Jack saw that Goodey was trying to get out. He had to slug Tommy, and when he opened the door, Jack saw you collapsed on the floor. Apparently, Tommy turned the heat up as high as it could go. I—”

  “What kind of a house are you running here, Moffitt?” Fischer cut in. “You claim you want real responsibility but when I give it to you, what happens? The village idiot just sort of drifts down here and tries to murder me. In my own house. Do you call that…?”

  “I hate to tamper with your illusions, Mr. Fischer,” I managed to say, “but how do you know it wasn’t me that Tommy was trying to parboil?”

  The thought had never occurred to him. I could see that. Fischer was turning it over in his mind like a curious gem, and he didn’t like the idea of sharing the spotlight with anyone. Fischer would have tried to upstage the corpse at a funeral.

  “You think so?” he said. Then without waiting for an answer, he snapped at Moffitt: “You find out what did happen. Get Grenby down here. And lock that moron up somewhere.” Tommy had stopped howling and sat passively in the corner holding his ear and looking sorry for himself. Relieved to have something concrete to do, Moffitt bounded away, shouting orders at his minions.

  By the time, they rounded up Grenby, I was dressed again but still feeling pretty weary. I gave him what little information I could and left him in the basement doing some preliminary sleuthing. Grenby suggested that I get Carey to look me over. Apparently he was up in Hugo’s quarters doing the same to the great man, but I gave it a pass. A little time flat on my back, I thought, would make a new man of me.

  My room hadn’t improved any, but the narrow bed had never looked better. Kicking off my shoes, I lay down and was preparing to hibernate when I became aware of a faint scratching at my door.

  “Come in,” I called. “If you have to.” The door opened just a crack and in slid Genie Martin.

  I was too tired to be very surprised.

  “Well,” she demanded, tiny hands on not-so-tiny hips, “aren’t you happy to see me?”

  “Genie,” I said, “I’m absolutely delighted. Ecstatic. But I’ve just been steamed alive. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t jump up and dance around the room.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” she said, sitting down on the bed beside my legs. “You and the old man. That nut Tommy should have kept him in there until he melted away to a little spot of grease.”

  Here was candor I hadn’t expected. I’d gotten so used to hearing Fischer’s praises sung that my ears were ringing.

  “Is that right?” I asked. ‘‘What would you and Old Man River do for a living then? Scratch for-worms with the sparrows? Without Fischer, this place would fold up like a beach umbrella.”-

  “I wish it would. Sometimes this place is worse than the slammer. Pops doesn’t need it. There’s a rich guy up in San Francisco who’s been begging to set Pops up in his own drug-rehab joint. Pops is a charis-uh-charisma-type guy, you know. He’s got personality.”

  “Sure,” I said. “If I’m ever short of a book end, I’ll keep him in mind. But tell me, what do you make of Tommy Carter? Has he ever tried to hurt anybody before?”‘

  “That dummy?” Genie said. “Nah. Oh, he’s strong enough. He could hurt you without trying. But he’s usually so dopey that he just wanders around mumbling to himself. Occasionally, you know, he gets a bit wild, but it never lasts long. Somebody in the house just puts the arm on him and calls Jim Carey. Before too long, Tommy is just as happy and jerky as before. Sometimes I wish I was that happy.”

  “You’re not going to ma
ke anyone happy hanging around up here with me. You’re taking big chances, even if you did get away with it last night. Didn’t Pops wonder where you’d been?”

  “Yeah,” she said, running an idle hand up my leg, “but it was no big problem. I shot him that line you told me about waking up before he did, and he bought it. He wasn’t all that happy, but he didn’t have much choice.” She looked very young and very smug.

  “Maybe not, but you’re pushing dumb luck a bit far. What do you want to do, help me commit suicide? If Pops is so charismatic—”

  “That’s the word!”

  “—why aren’t you somewhere bathing in his ruby-red glow instead of up here risking my health?”

  “That’s not exactly what I’m looking for,” she admitted girlishly, at the same time walking her fingers up my leg to my groin and getting a good grip.

  I raised my head slightly to watch the action. “I’m pretty sure you’re wasting your time there,” I said. “I don’t think anybody’s home.” A little bird told me that that wasn’t strictly true, and something seemed to hint the same thing to Genie.

  “Let’s just see,” she giggled, clutching at the pull on my zipper.

  The zipper came down just as Rachel Schute came through the door of my room. Without knocking.

  “Joe,” Rachel began, “I just wanted to …”

  She stopped to take in the pretty scene on my bed. I was looking as nonchalant as a man with a gaping fly can, and Genie had set a new record for the sitting broad jump and was poised like a cat at the foot of the bed. When she saw that it was Rachel, and not Pops, her expression veered from terror to malice. To her warped little mind this constituted a woman-to-woman confrontation with Rachel.

  Rachel pretended that Genie wasn’t there. “I was going to ask if you were okay, Joe,” she said. “But I guess I don’t have to now.” She slipped me a meaningful look.

  “Sure, I’m fine, Rachel,” I said. “I just got a bit overheated.” I then blushed, and Rachel couldn’t keep from smiling. “Thanks for being concerned. You shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “I know,” she said crisply. She started to go but then turned back. “By the way, Hugo’s holding a memorial service for J.B. on the lawn in ten minutes.” Then, as an afterthought, Rachel gave Genie a direct look and said: “In case you’re interested, Genie, your husband is looking for you.”

  Then she was gone. Genie followed her without even offering to zip up my trousers. I lay back down on the bed. But somehow the urge to sleep had fled. I was feeling restless. I could always go to the memorial service, but it occurred to me that this might be a good chance to get a more thorough look at that area around J.B.’s cave.

  I took some caution to slide around the crowd forming for the memorial service and the security guards, who seemed to have suddenly increased in number, but once I had gained the woods I made very good time. My super sauna with Fischer didn’t seem to have had any lasting effect, but nonetheless I was puffing heavily by the time I got to the cliff near the cave and had to stop and wait for the knot in my side to relax its death grip. While I waited, I cautiously peaked at the memorial service, which had begun by this time. Even from that height, I could make out the figure of Hugo Fischer, in the middle as usual, and hear snatches of a slow, mournful song.

  The mouth of the cave had been completely uncovered by Grenby’s men, and they’d removed J.B.’s meager hermit’s gear. There was nothing but a bunch of trampled shrubbery and a hint of lingering B.O. to suggest that he’d ever been there. What a way for a millionaire to end. But maybe J.B. would have preferred to go that way to spending his dotage on Fischer’s lap. He’d been a gutsy old man even if he did hit from behind.

  After poking among the rubble on the floor of the cave and coming up with nothing more interesting than mummified orange peel, I stepped back out into the dying sunlight and tried to get the big picture. It didn’t prove very enlightening at first. There’s something so blank about an empty cave. It doesn’t tell you a lot. I knew I should have stayed awake in geology class.

  But then I saw something on the left-hand side of the cave mouth that brought me closer—a shallow egg-shaped notch about as high as my chest. It could have been a natural formation, but something made me doubt it. That same something left me climbing among the branches of a squat pine growing hard by the right side of the mouth of the cave. There, behind the thick-needled branches, I found what I hadn’t had enough sense to be looking for. That old son of a bitch, I thought, and climbed out of the branches. There didn’t seem to be anything more to do there, so I began walking along the cliff toward the mansion.

  By the time I got back down to the lawn, the memorial service was breaking up, and I joined the crowd drifting toward the mansion. I was about to go into the mansion when a big car pulled into the parking lot. It was a brand new Lincoln Continental, as white as an albino snowman, with a blue light on the roof. More law.

  But not just any law. Painted on the car door in flowing script beneath a big gold star was: Luis de Redondo y Dominguez, Sheriff of Monterey County. The mountain had come to Mohammed. This was something I wanted to see.

  But so far the back doors of the Continental were still shut, and no Sheriff Dominguez had emerged. I strained my eyes but couldn’t penetrate the black one-way glass of the car’s window. I knew he could see me all right, but I didn’t think he was bothering. And there was no Hugo Fischer in sight, either. What there was, was Don Moffitt, looking very rock-jawed, marking parley with a sheriff’s sergeant in a skin-tight gabardine uniform, a muscular giant who could have worn Moffitt for a watch fob. But just then the sergeant was leaning on the half-opened driver’s door, eyeless behind mirrored sun glasses, and explaining that his boss man wanted to have a little chat with the head man of this-uh-organization.

  Moffitt started bristling like a kicked Doberman, but just then the great man himself swept up, flanked by Dr. James Carey and Pops Martin. Mike Grenby was of Fischer’s party, but once he saw Dominguez’s car, he started detaching himself and looking professional. Sensing that he was the perfect emissary between these potentates, Grenby moved forward to powwow with the sheriff’s pet tiger.

  I didn’t hear what Grenby said, but it won him the right to stoop down and talk with somebody in the hidden back seat. He couldn’t have said a lot, because in about twenty seconds, Grenby backed away, and the sheriff’s driver was diving into the breach and pulling the back door open with a flourish.

  And out came Luis de Redondo y Dominguez, Sheriff of Monterey County. There should have been a roll of drums, blare of trumpets, but there wasn’t. It’s hard to slide out of a car with a great deal of dignity, but Dominguez came close. The sergeant mentally lifted him to the ground without daring even to touch his sleeve. It wasn’t until the sheriff was standing beside the car that I realized how tall he was. Or how small. He looked like a mummified Boy Scout, a little brown man with mestizo features ravined with about seventy years’ worth of deep furrows running down to a faultless khaki shirt collar. In place of a tie he had about half a pound of silver-mounted turquoise on a leather thong. An ivory-gripped .44 Magnum in a tooled holster gave him a permanent slope to port.

  Dominguez was interesting enough, but then Frederick M. Crenshaw followed him out of the car with an expression of worried triumph on his face. He glanced at me defiantly, as if I told him he shouldn’t be there—which he shouldn’t—and stood looking, around at the mansion grounds as if he’d just bought them.

  I’d half expected Fischer to order Dominguez and Crenshaw thrown into the moat, but instead he shucked off Carey and Pops and beamed in on the sheriff with hand outstretched and a smile he’d never shown me. I hadn’t missed much. I drifted along to one side, eager to witness this historic confrontation.

  I was just out of earshot, but I didn’t have to read lips to make out Fischer’s message: Dominguez was more than slightly welcome at The Institute. The sheriff accepted that intelligence without blinking, let his old monkey�
�s paw be swallowed up by Fischer’s hands, and indicated with a twist of his head the presence of his good friend, Fred Crenshaw. Fischer wasn’t quite so effusive with Crenshaw, but he took it like a man, and with a sweeping gesture indicated that Dominguez and his party should accompany him up to the ranch house for the non-alcoholic equivalent of a shot of red eye.

  Dominguez scotched that suggestion with very few one syllable words, gave Crenshaw a dry handshake and was burrowing back into the Continental before Fischer even knew he’d been given the bird. The big sergeant closed the door after him as if shutting a jewel casket and leapt for the driver’s seat. The Continental turned in a little over its own length and was gaining speed when it suddenly stopped. One smoky rear window slid down about three inches, and Dominguez’s wrinkled mug appeared through the crack. Grenby sprang to the car and lent an attentive ear. The window zipped up, and the car spurted ahead leaving Grenby with his head still cocked.

  Fischer picked up his jaw, gathered the folds of his tattered dignity around him, and hot-footed it for the mansion with Moffitt, Carey and Pops in close pursuit.

  I asked a distracted Grenby: “What did the generalissimo want?”

  Grenby regarded me bleakly: “Results. Right now.” With that he took off for the mansion at a near run, probably to try to do something about Fischer’s dented self-esteem. I couldn’t imagine there had been any permanent damage. It would take more than a snub from an ancient Spaniard to pierce that horny hide.

  That pretty much left me and Crenshaw alone in the parking area. Crenshaw looked a little less sure of himself now that the Godfather had left him on his own.

  I wandered over to where he stood. “You know how to pick your transportation,” I said. “How much did that little ride cost you?”