by Boston Teran
Charles slid the olive off the toothpick using his teeth. There was not one moment of flimsy pretense as he went on. "I've seen you in court doing that ego thing standing on your crutches examining witnesses. That's worth coverage. You've got a pretty good prosecutorial record, though you can be an annoying acid tongued unlikable son-of-a-bitch."
"You know what you make me sound like," said Roy.
"Yeah, exactly who you are."
"Jesus Christ. That's just what Flesh would say."
"Flesh isn't stupid. Those fuckin' legs lead up to a brain, use it. Look around here, you've got to impress people. Make people feel they're important. Make people see you're important by making them feel they're important."
"I dragged this body from an iron lung to law school to the prosecutor's office to a courtroom. I can drag it to that fuckin' legislature."
Nothing more needed to be said. Charles watched as Roy signed forms. After lunch had been ordered and a third round of martinis set down Charles went to work.
"I hear," he said, "you and Nathan have had a falling out."
Roy caught himself studying a set of pantyhose that sleeked up to an ass making its way past their table. "Nathan is upset over this little dose of truth I gave him."
"About what?"
Roy's fingers picked at his beard. "I was explaining to Nathan particular details about Taylor which made me feel certain that he had committed suicide."
"That must have been difficult for Nathan."
"I'm a prosecutor, not a fuckin' therapist." Roy's tone had turned unpleasant and severely bitter. He was also keenly aware that he was altering the truth to fit his personal needs. "The truth is the truth. I'm a good prosecutor, but I'm not a fuckin' therapist."
"The truth is the truth," reiterated Charles.
Roy bundled up right there at the table. He kept picking at his beard. It was, thought Charles, a grossly unappealing character trait. Roy's head sunk down into his neck. The deep thinker in that first moment of a private melt down.
"Nathan hates me… Essie hates me."
"Well, if it's any consolation, Nathan has been acting very oddly toward me."
Roy went from staring at his drink to staring at the papers he had just signed. This was a chance, a real chance, he thought, to finally, finally justify his own existence.
"As a matter of fact," continued Charles, "I've been uncomfortable with the way Nathan has been doing business. Very uncomfortable."
Roy's face lifted slightly.
"I thought at first it was because of Taylor's death, but now… what's your impression of this Rudd kid?"
"Don't bring his name up when Flesh is around." Roy's hand came up like a traffic cop's. "The last time I did you'd have thought we were gonna have to have a fuckin' exorcism she was so mad."
Charles, of course, already knew Roy's impression of Dane Rudd. "Well, Flesh isn't here, and you are."
Charles watched the body twist as it rose in its seat. Roy had to take a drink before he started venting. "I think Rudd is totally, unquestionably full of shit. He's a phony from his tongue right down to his dick. He's a gamer, a liar; probably a con artist."
Charles listened, he nodded. When Roy had run out of adjectives Charles sat there intensely introspective. And then, after carefully letting some time elapse, Charles said, "I'm going to risk telling you something, all right. But you've got to keep it private."
* * *
DANE SAT in the kitchen in the dark. He needed it dark for what he wanted to say. He had been drinking, but not so much they'd know. Inside him there was this unchained ghost rattling the depths of his secret desires.
He told them what went down in Mexico on the Hunter Gracchus. He added the name Damon Romero to their list. He asked about Merrit Merton, but as far as they knew he was a no exist. Dane gave them the address to the house on Plymouth Cove and that maze of names Merton used.
"Do I sound bad?" Dane said. "Well, being devoured will do it."
He let them sit with that. Then, "I want… need to ask you something." Even with it dark he closed his eyes to concentrate on how they'd say what they'd say. "I want to stay here… here, here, is what I'm talking about. After…"
The tone of their voices sounded like they were trying to circumvent what he had asked. The night was warm. He was sweating with stress. He was afraid in that deeply vulnerable way one gets afraid that one's most urgent prayers won't be answered. "I've been trying to earn my way back, right? You can see that… yes, I know how these things work.
"I have given it all; you see that, right?… There's people here that care for me. As hard as it may be for you all to imagine. But it's true. Here I've managed to become… There's people here I care for. Don't take that from me… please. I'm asking, no, begging. Can you hear it in my voice? Can you?"
He had to stand up to breathe, to speak, not feel imprisoned. "No façades, no fakery. This is just your basic issue begging."
He listened and listened and listened and what he heard hurt, and it hurt more, and more, and more.
"Even fate forgives and forgets, sometimes," Dane said. "It does. Just try to imagine you're me and what I asked, you asked… Yeah… Yeah, that's the little dream I've been trying to fly up to."
Chapter Sixty
THE GENERAL HAD Nathan lock the greenhouse door. He had Nathan keep watch too so that if anyone came down from the main house or the road they would be seen long before they could overhear what the General was about to tell him.
"You… must promise… to ask… nothing. Listen… only… Until, I'm sure."
The days were growing dim about the General but on this day, in this room, at this moment he was about as close to being the stone-faced martinet of his past as he had been in years.
Nathan looked down at the old man. He did not want to promise. He felt something awful leaning into the pit of his stomach. "It's about Taylor, isn't it?"
The old man's hands clung to each other in his lap. The fingertips of one began to bite into the back of the other. Bite and dig. "Information has come… to me. But… until… I'm absolutely sure…"
"When will you be sure?"
"Less than days."
Nathan now stared up at the main house. The nanny was loading Charles' two small daughters into the family wagon. He turned away from any sorrow that he might feel.
"If it is Charles—?"
The General reached out and took Nathan's hands as a way of reaching back into their friendship, into all the abandoned and solitary bits of history they lived together. As a way of resurrecting all memories and emotions. He clung to Nathan's hands as he would cling to life on earth, or to a precious dream, as a way of assuring him. "I… won't fail you."
* * *
ESSIE WAS at her desk working when Ivy pulled up a chair and sat. Ivy had not been drinking; she wasn't carrying on through a cloud of antidepressants.
"Do you think I'd make a good mother?"
The question was so exquisitely ill-timed, so oddly out of the ordinary, so especially disgusting.
"What do you think?"
While keeping all she felt hidden Essie said, "Can you imagine any reason why you wouldn't?"
Ivy glanced at Nathan's picture on the wall along with all the other pictures of the people who had made Discovery Bay their home, who had been his friends, servicemen who had gotten their first taste of home ownership right there.
"We could adopt. It would make Nathan happy. And in some small way help him to get past Taylor's…"
Even to say Taylor's name in connection with her grasping dream was inconceivable. And yet, in some small way the sad-eyed black and blue of Ivy's soul wondered if she could earn off the guilt.
"I want to ask you something," said Essie. "Did you tell Roy that a few weeks before Taylor died he confessed, if confess is the right word, that he considered killing himself?"
Ivy looked to be entangled in a series of speechless answers. Essie's look was stark, measured, painful, hurt and angry.<
br />
We're so close to getting past all this, Ivy thought, so close. And even now I've got to cut and eviscerate someone till I myself am bleeding. "Yes," she said.
Essie was the incarnate of that night Taylor was taken down. Nathan was coming up the stairs, he stopped at the receptionist's desk.
"Goddamn Roy. That was supposed to be a private conversation between he and I." Ivy took hold of Essie's hand. "Please don't bring this up to Nathan. It was bad enough Roy did. It will only cause him more hurt. And I don't want to set him off."
Essie would have pressed her with more questions but Nathan was coming right toward them.
"Promise me you won't." Ivy was pleading.
Essie slipped her hand out from under Ivy's. "I won't say a word."
"Get Dane," Nathan told Essie, walking to his office as if neither woman existed.
* * *
CARUSO WAS cashing out the bar register when he heard, "Where's your boy?"
He turned. It was Shane Fenn, in the bar for the first time since his beating. There was so much swelling around the mouth he spoke through a slur. "Beer… and you haven't answered me. Where's your boy?"
Caruso took a bottle from the cooler. Sancho Maria came out of the kitchen having seen Fenn through the door window. Caruso undid the cap and set the beer and a glass down on the bar.
"You're the only one," he said to Paul, "who hasn't asked me what happened. That's 'cause your boy told you, right?"
Sancho Maria passed behind her husband. Shane bent around on the bar stool to watch his brother taxi down the runway then take off. He came about even angrier.
"Where's your boy? Him and his yuppie bitch got too much happen in'?"
Sancho Maria saw that Paul looked to about have had it. She put a hand on his back. He felt the sign. She came around the bar. A few heads had turned as Shane's voice had gotten loud and disruptive.
She was wearing a brown corduroy shirt with cut sleeves. The shirt was tucked into her jeans. Her leather belt had a silver buckle on it big enough to serve drinks from. She sat next to Shane and quietly explained, "You'll come in one morning and have breakfast. Then you'll go back to your hangar, put on the stereo or your porno tapes and pretty soon after that you'll start to feel sick. You may get to the hospital but it won't matter. When they do the autopsy they'll discover rat poison accidentally got into your food.
"They'll probably shut us down for a few weeks, but we have insurance." She looked at Paul. "We do, don't we?"
"All paid up, darlin'."
That deeply lined Aztec face looked right down into Shane Fenn. Right down into the gut of him.
Shane got it; he got up. He took the beer. "I never did time in prison." He pointed the bottle right at Caruso. "And I never will."
Chapter Sixty-One
DANE SAT ON the couch staring at Taylor's desk having just talked to Nathan. If what Nathan said was true, then this long narrative of disgraces was fast running to an end, whether they knew it or not.
Dane had begun to dial Essie when he heard a plane engine descending hard toward the house and then all that propeller and power skimmed the roof and the tree branches outside the windows and doors were snapped into a whooshing funnel of air.
At the door Dane saw the Big D start to bank. Paul intended to land that Cessna right on Disappointment Slough. Dane reached the dock just as the fluted bottom of those floats touched water and kicked out two long kite tails of white foam.
At dock side Paul came out of the cabin carrying a twelve-pack of beer. And while he negotiated the struts and the wet flat top of the float trying to reach Dane's outstretched hand he began, "Never eat at a restaurant called Mom's…"
As Dane pulled him up he filled in with, "… Never play cards with a man named Doc…"
Paul handed him the twelve-pack and pointed toward the house and as they made their way up through the trees on that stone path they chorused together, "… And never, ever sleep with anyone whose problems are worse than your own."
"You know," said Paul, putting his hand on Dane's shoulder, "I was thinking last night in bed. Your initials are D and R. Like in doctor. You ain't the 'Doc' they're talking about, are you?"
"Paul, it's silence that's golden."
* * *
WHILE DANE was in the kitchen pouring beers Paul walked the living room. "I think Shane Fenn is about ready to implode." He passed the slot machine Taylor had gotten from Essie. He gave the arm a tug. Nothing. "He was in the bar today, doing a fine impersonation of a total head case."
Paul passed the alcove desk. It was a curious sight. "And Tommy Fenn flew Charles Gill somewhere." There were open boxes around the desk. Some were filled with papers, clothes; some with plastic bags that looked to be trash.
On the desk were writing paper and envelopes. There was also an open plastic bag that was filled with trash, some of which was scattered about. "You hearing me?"
"I'm hearing you," said Dane.
By the writing paper was a half-folded and browning copy of the Sacramento Bee. A small article had been highlighted in yellow marker. Paul bent down to read:
CAYUMA, CALIFORNIA— A Federal Reserve officer from the Los Angeles branch was murdered on Monday, shotgunned to death at a motel just east of town, authorities said.
William Dean Reynolds had just begun a two-week vacation and was on his way to visit friends in Morro Bay. Authorities believe the 51-year-old investigating agent was the victim of an attempted robbery, but are looking into the possibility this homicide may be connected to past or recent investigations—
Dane returned with two mugs of beer. Caruso stood, Dane handed him a mug. "Sorry," Dane said, "no extra cell phones around here to make a true Paul Caruso boiler maker."
Caruso grinned mischievously at the memory. He held out his glass. "To yuppie pricks you can fuck with."
"You like it, don't you?" said Dane.
"It's one of my inherent blemishes."
They touched mugs and drank. Dane went and sat on the couch. Caruso saw the boy was acutely preoccupied, that the smile only just touched the face.
"The other day in the bar," said Caruso, "when you pointed at the picture and asked me, 'What if there was nothing at the end of the maze?' I knew where you were going."
"I know you did."
"I'm not stupid."
Dane was staring at his glass from a long ways off. "No Paul, you're anything but."
"Looking inside too much is as bad as not looking at all."
"You're right," said Dane.
"No slick sidewise answers."
"No, Paul."
Dane drank, Paul drank. Paul stepped back to the desk and pointed. "What is all this?"
"Essie kept everything of Taylor's on the chance there might be an answer hidden in all that as to how or why he died."
Paul held up the newspaper. "What about this, what does it mean?"
Dane put the mug down on the end table. He reached for a pack of cigarettes beside his wallet.
"Why do I always feel that you know a lot more than you're saying?"
Dane lit the cigarette, he blew out the match. "Because I do. And that's not meant to be some smart sidewise answer."
Dane inhaled. Paul pushed the coffee table out of the way with his foot. He dragged the desk chair over until it was right in front of Dane. He sat.
"I don't understand all of you, but part of you I've got inside me. It was the part that landed me in prison. I'm sure it's landed people in all kinds of other places. From a page in some history book to a landfill with a bullet in their head. Those fuckers are not worth the effort. They'll do themselves in with time."
Dane put the cigarette down in an ashtray on the end table. He leaned forward. Both men's faces were inches apart. "I know I'm the wrong person to say this, Paul. But what about the rest in the meanwhile? Do they stitch the body years of sorrow around their breaking hearts till they drown under the weight of all those deep down deaths? Is it only the coming attractions or the aftermath
s that ever get anyone's real attention? Christ, I am the wrong person. Coming from me, it must sound—"
Dane just sat there, on the cusp of an unfinished thought. Paul took a breath, he drank his beer mug empty. "In prison I had prostate cancer. Very severe. I was thirty-five. If the little blue pill hadn't come along, the old Caruso hammer would never have worked again. Sancho Maria loved me anyway. We wanted kids. No one knows this but her, and now you."
Paul wiped his mouth. "I tell you so you'll understand. We all live with the aftermath of something."
"I'm sorry, Paul."
"For what?"
"For everything… inside me, I'm just sorry."
Dane sounded so deeply hurt, wounded even, Paul clasped the boy's forearms. "I want you to know that every broken-down inch of life is worth it. I want you not to lose sight of that."
Lose sight of it, thought Dane. "You know Paul, you and Sancho Maria are the kind of people people like me dream about, while we still have dreams."
"I don't want something to happen to you." Paul's hands bore down on Dane's forearms. "Do you understand, son?"
Chapter Sixty-Two
ROY DRAGGED HIS naked body across the living room carpet. His stone was tweaked with just enough blow. He crabbed along on his elbows staring at that gaping piece of beauty between Flesh's legs as she slid back and away from him in a playful act of torrid depravity.
"Come on, Assemblyman."
He tried to keep his hard on from being bent awkwardly when he reached the dining room linoleum. "State senator… you bitch!" He laughed uncontrollably.
"Come on, Assemblyman." She lifted her ass and held that perfectly shaved V of pubic hair with its diamond teaser at the pierced tip of her vaginal opening. "I'm leaving you a trail, baby."
He tried to grab her foot. Her black painted toenails curled as she jumped back and beat his hand down with one of his crutches. She was drunk; she flung a dining room chair down on his head.
He cried out. "You fuckin' bitch lawyer cunt, cunt!"
"We know when to shred 'em, and we know when to spread 'em!"
Like some deformed worm he lunged again. She beat his hand down with the crutch. She kept sliding back with her legs spread, through the far kitchen door, into the hallway, then back around to the living room. It was a dizzying path and Roy huffed gruffly trying to—
