EQMM, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Sutpen joins me as I'm freshening my drink. “Clara isn't mad at you anymore. Thought you'd want to know."

  "Glad to hear it,” I say. I look across the room. His wife and Parks are still together. Although the room is almost elbow-to-elbow with people, they've somehow carved out a space for themselves apart from the rest of us.

  "So what's the deal with this Parks guy?” I ask, trying to sound nonchalant. “He and Clara seem to be enjoying each other's company."

  "He and his wife split up recently,” he informs me. “She's being nice to him."

  "Um,” I mumble. What I'm seeing looks cozier than nice.

  "He's been in town for about a month,” Sutpen further explains. “He's an archaeologist at one of the Midwestern universities. He's here doing research with some archaeologists at UCSB."

  He looks over at Parks and Clara for a moment, then turns back to me. “He and his wife split up last year. She left him, which shook him up. He's not the type who's used to being dumped. You can tell by the way he carries himself he fancies he's God's gift to women. Frigging cowboy boots. Give me a break.” He tosses back his drink. His eyes are bloodshot, and it's still early. “We were the only people in town he knew, so he gravitated to us. It's gotten to be a drag, actually; he's insinuated himself into our lives more than we'd like.” He grimaces as if his drink had suddenly turned sour. “Fortunately, he's leaving tomorrow. Going off to South America on an archaeological dig, so he'll be out of our hair, praise the Lord. I wasn't going to invite him tonight, but Clara insisted. She was afraid the poor dear would find out and be hurt.” He laughs, and pours himself another shot. “Like I could care about hurting some moke's feelings I'm never going to see again.” He drinks up. “What the hell. It's a party. We're going to have fun. Them's the rules."

  * * * *

  Dinner is served buffet-style. We carry our plates out on the deck, overlooking the city and the ocean. I try to worm my way next to Clara, but Parks has beaten me to the spot. They're sitting at the edge of the deck, a cozy little twosome in some private world that's closed to the rest of us. She keeps touching him: his hand, arm, knee. He's giving back as good as he gets, even dropping his hand to rest on her bare knee for a moment before letting it slide off. It's as if they're totally captivated by each other and don't give a damn if anyone notices it.

  I'm bummed, but I can't show it. I look around, wondering if anyone else has tuned in to what I'm watching. I notice some furtive glances in their direction, but no one is brazen enough to stare openly.

  What's surprising to me is that Sutpen seems oblivious to the moves his wife and Parks are putting on each other. Maybe he's had too much to drink and doesn't see what's going down. He's playing the convivial host, flitting from group to group like a stoned butterfly. He plops down next to me and poaches a nacho off my plate.

  "Having a good time?” he asks blankly.

  "Sure,” I answer. I should hold my tongue, but I can't. “I don't know what the point of my rushing over here was. Clara could care less if I'm here,” I pout. “She's not exactly circulating tonight."

  Sutpen gives me a quizzical shrug, then turns and looks across the deck to Clara and Parks. “It's a game,” he says. “She's trying to piss me off."

  "If it was my wife acting like that, I wouldn't like it."

  "Well, she isn't your wife. Anyway, so what if they make goo-goo eyes at each other? That's how she is, you know Clara. How many times has she flirted with you?” He's drinking beer now, and he takes a deep pull from his bottle. “That kind of adolescent behavior is the least of my problems.” He leans in closer. “You know what I'm talking about."

  I nod. “Any progress there?"

  "Could be,” he answers cryptically. “Bonnie'll call me when it's time."

  He gets up and shuffles over to the serving table, where he piles a plate high with food. I'm glad he's eating; all that drinking on an empty stomach would fell an ox. My eye drifts off him, back to Clara and Parks. She's talking to him intensely. He's listening, his ear an inch from her mouth, nodding like a bobblehead. A few times he looks up furtively, as if worried that they're being watched. Each time, I turn away before he catches me spying on them.

  * * * *

  The serious talking and drinking gets into swing after dinner. Clara is playing the good hostess now, moving from group to group, garnering compliments on her cooking and charming everyone. She waits until I'm by myself at the bar, freshening my drink (a weak vodka and tonic now, I've about had my limit), before she sidles up to me.

  "Having fun?” she asks mischievously. She traces a fingernail down my forearm.

  I don't feel like playing games with her tonight. “What do you think?"

  "Poor baby,” she coos. “Is his feelings hurt?"

  "Do you mind telling me what's going on?"

  "What do you mean?” she asks, all wide-eyed and innocent.

  "Come on, Clara. You've been dry-humping that drugstore cowboy all night long."

  She checks to make sure no one's overhearing this conversation. “You're exaggerating, Kevin. I was just being nice to a lonely man."

  "Well, I'm lonely, too,” I reply, “and you haven't been nice to me. Are you punishing me for showing up late?"

  Her smile fades. “No. That's not it.” She touches my hand. “We'll talk about this ... later."

  She leaves me, walks over to a group of friends, and says something to her husband, who is regaling them with old war stories. He shakes his head distractedly, then turns away from her and continues his story, openly ignoring her.

  She stands there for a moment, stung. Then she turns on her heel and goes into the house.

  I look around. Parks is nowhere to be seen. He must have gone to the bathroom. I feel the urge myself. I drain my glass, crunch the ice cubes between my teeth, and go inside.

  * * * *

  The party petered out around midnight. I didn't see much of Clara for the rest of the evening, and I didn't see Parks at all. Maybe he left once she stopped giving him her undivided attention. Or maybe I've swallowed too many sour grapes.

  The phone rings. I rouse myself out of the black hole I'd fallen into and look at the clock. It's two-thirty. I shake off the cobwebs and fumble for the receiver. “Hello?” I mumble.

  "Get over here right away,” Sutpen commands me. His voice is low and harsh, as if he's swallowed a mouthful of glass.

  I'm more asleep than awake. “What're you talking about?"

  "Just get here.” He hangs up before I can protest.

  I stagger out of bed and throw on the clothes I wore to the party, which I had dropped on the floor earlier like Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Standing in my dark kitchen, I gulp down two glasses of water to try and clear my head. They don't help. I would take the time to make a pot of coffee, but it was clear from the urgency in Sutpen's voice that time is of the essence.

  The streets are deserted. I get to their house in less than ten minutes. All the lights are out. As I pull up, Sutpen emerges from the shadows at the side of the house. He looks terrible—clothes rumpled, hair askew. Even in the dark I can see that his eyes are wild.

  "Come on,” he says. “You have to help me."

  Something is seriously wrong. “What's going on, man?” I ask him.

  "You'll see."

  We go inside. I follow him through the dark house to his study, feeling my way along so I don't slam into something.

  "Tighten your sphincter,” he orders me. Then he turns on his desk lamp.

  Parks is lying on the floor, facedown. He's clothed, but his pants are down around his ankles. There's a bullet hole in his shirt, next to his left shoulder blade. There isn't much blood on him, but I can see a dark stain under his body that has oozed onto the carpet.

  I grab the desk to keep from falling down. “Jesus Christ, Sutpen,” I gasp.

  "We've got to get him out of here,” he says. “I can't do it by myself."

  I stare at the corpse. “You s
hot him? What for?"

  He stares at me. “For the reason I told you."

  "You mean...” My head is reeling. I feel like I'm going to puke.

  "I was suspicious of him all along,” he says, “but I didn't have any proof. Until tonight."

  He pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and turns it on. It's one of those phones that has a camera feature. You can take up to a dozen digital pictures, or a thirty-second video. Holding it up so that I can see it, he hits the PLAY button.

  The quality isn't good because the light is bad, but I can clearly make out what he recorded. Clara is facing the camera, in three-quarter profile. Her dress has been pulled up above her waist, and her underpants are at her feet. She's still in her stockings and heels. Her eyes are closed, squeezed shut. Parks is pressed up to her, his back to the camera. His pants are down, bunched up over his fancy cowboy boots.

  Sutpen snaps the phone shut once he sees I've had a good enough look. He's enraged, but he's cold about it, containing it.

  He lays out the timeline. “It started shortly after Parks got to town. I knew almost immediately that something fishy was going down, but it didn't register at first.” He shakes his head, as if he can't believe all this has really happened. “Bonnie's been on the case. She's been following him. Yesterday, she saw them together at an isolated area of Hendry's Beach.” He exhales heavily. “That's when I knew for sure."

  He looks up at me. “You're white as a sheet, Kevin. Which I can understand.” He grabs my arm. “But you've got to get a grip on yourself. You're the only friend in the world I can trust to help me with this."

  He's right: I feel terrible, but not because Sutpen murdered this poor chump. It's Clara's perfidy that's burning the hole in my stomach. Sutpen's not the only one who's been betrayed.

  "Where's Clara?” I ask him.

  "Gone. She ran as soon as he was shot.” He stares at me. His eyes are pinpricks. “She didn't see who did it."

  She'll swear to that, of course. Whether she really did see Sutpen, only she knows. The police certainly won't.

  "Let's go,” Sutpen says brusquely. “I know where to take him."

  I jerk in surprise. “You're not going to call the police?"

  He laughs bitterly. “Are you insane?"

  I'm not the one who's crazy, but I'm not going to start an argument over that. “Why shouldn't you?” I try to reason with him. “An intruder comes into your house and murders a guest. No one was here until you stumbled in and found the body."

  He shakes his head. “Can't take the chance.” He bends down and starts to roll the body up in the carpet. “Come on. I've got it all figured out."

  * * * *

  We carry the body outside and stuff it in the trunk of his Mercedes S500, which he's lined with heavy plastic wrap. I follow in my car as he drives down Alameda Padre Serra, the long windy road that leads into town. No one sees us. He leads me through the commercial center of the city, now dark, into the Funk Zone, a four-block-square section of small businesses near the waterfront: surf shops, woodworking studios, artists’ lofts. For years, developers have salivated over this area, but no one was ever able to persuade the city, the county, and the Coastal Commission, all of which have the power of veto, to upgrade it; it's part of the soul of old Santa Barbara, which is institutionally resistant to change. Finally, last year, a local developer with a good environmental record (for a developer) convinced the powers that be to let him build a small, elegant hotel at the edge of the zone, one that would enhance the area rather than overwhelm it.

  I designed the hotel. Sutpen was the lawyer who carried the developer's water throughout the process. Now I know where he's leading me, and why.

  He parks at the edge of a huge hole in the ground that someday will be the hotel's underground parking garage. I pull up behind him. We get out of our cars and look into the abyss.

  "You know what's happening on Monday, don't you?” he asks me.

  I nod. The forms have been dug and all the steel has been set, hundreds of poles of rebar. At seven o'clock Monday morning they're going to start pouring concrete for the foundation. Thousands of square yards of cement will flow into this pit. Anything down there will be entombed in a concrete vault for all eternity, or long enough that the difference won't matter.

  We hoist the body out of Sutpen's trunk. It's starting to stiffen up. We position it over the hole and drop it down. It hits the dirt bottom with a thump. Then he reaches deeper into the trunk, and brings forth two shovels.

  "This won't take long,” he says.

  We climb a ladder down to the bottom, which is loose-packed dirt. Putting our shoulders to the shovels, we dig a shallow hole, deep enough to bury the body in. Then we cover the remains with the dirt we had shoveled aside, smoothing out the surface enough so that you wouldn't know there was anything under it, unless you were looking for something specific. No one will be. By noon on Monday morning, a carpet of flowing cement will be the tomb of the unknown archaeologist.

  We stand by our cars, dusting the dirt off our clothes. Sutpen takes a last look down into the hole. “Everybody and his brother was looking for Jimmy Hoffa, and they haven't found him yet,” he says with less emotion than if we had just buried the family dog. “So they're definitely not going to find some obscure professor who has no family to raise a hue and cry.” He claps some more dirt off his hands. “Go home, Kevin,” he orders me. “Go to sleep. Take a Valium if you have to. When you wake up, it'll be like it was a bad dream."

  * * * *

  It's almost dawn when I pull up to my house. I'm wiped out, more emotionally than physically. I'm an accessory to murder. How in the world did it ever come to this?

  I get out of my car, shuffle up my walkway, scoop the newspapers off the lawn, and start to unlock the front door.

  "Kevin."

  Clara's a few feet behind me; she's been waiting for me. Why am I not surprised? “You shouldn't be here,” I tell her.

  "This is exactly where I should be,” she replies. She looks behind her, an involuntary twitch. “Let's go inside."

  I unlock the door. She follows me in. My anger's rising now; it's giving me a second wind.

  "Your husband murdered a man tonight, because of you,” I rage at her. “You must be very proud of yourself. Congratulations."

  She stares at me in astonishment. “You're not a part of this?” She throws my anger back in my face. “You're not angry because Sutpen killed some chump and made you help him get rid of the body,” she declares hotly. “You're angry because I boned him!"

  I have no retort for that, because she's smack-on.

  "And I thought you were a smart guy.” She comes closer to me. I can smell that perfume on her. I can't help it; it's intoxicating. I feel like I'm suffocating.

  "You're mad because you think I was cheating on you. You're as bad as Sutpen."

  "I didn't kill anybody."

  "Neither did I,” she answers sharply. “But I didn't stand around with my thumb up my can, either, like you.” She squares up against me. “You think I was having an affair with Tom Parks? Good Lord, give me some credit."

  "I saw the pictures,” I tell her. “The camera doesn't lie.” Pretty damn pathetic, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment.

  She looks like she wants to deck me. “I did it with him that one time. And I was biting my cheek to stop from screaming."

  I start to turn away, but she grabs me and makes me look at her.

  "I did it for you, you idiot. I saved a life. Yours, Kevin. Sutpen was going to kill someone over what we did. Nobody was going to stop him, he's a force of nature.” Her fingers tighten on my bicep. “I had no choice. I couldn't let it be you."

  I can't think, let alone speak. Fortunately, I don't have to. She's doing all the thinking and talking for both of us.

  "Either my husband was going to kill you or we could never see each other again, both of which I couldn't handle. And then, by some perverted stroke of luck...” Her eyes dri
ft upward for a moment, towards some vague afterlife space up in the sky. “...Tom Parks fell into our laps. Still in shock from his divorce, with a ridiculous crush on me from back when we met. Single, no family ties, leaving in the morning, literally disappearing into the jungle, not returning home for three months. By the time anyone figured out he was missing, no one would ever know what happened to him.” Her laugh is guttural, mirthless. “If there is a God, he sure does work in mysterious ways, doesn't he?"

  I stare at her in wonder, awe, and fear. Women are the weaker sex? Does anyone really believe that?

  Her hand is shaking on my bare arm. “It was the easiest seduction I've ever done. And the most painful."

  "What if Sutpen hadn't caught you in the act last night?” I ask her, groping to get my mind around this. “Parks was leaving in the morning. Then what would you have done?” What I'm thinking is, Who would have been your next victim? I keep my dumb mouth shut.

  She smiles, as if she had anticipated that. “I know my husband. He was going to catch me. I made sure of that. You saw how I was last night with Parks. A blind man could have read those signs.” Her smile withers. “Sutpen may be crazy, he may be homicidal, but he isn't going to commit the same murder twice. He got his revenge.” She takes my hand. “And I've got you."

  Some little prick of conscience in the back of my brain is trying to tell me that this is all wrong. But it isn't getting through.

  "We're home free now,” she tells me triumphantly. She wraps her arms around me and kisses me on the mouth. Then she takes me by the hand and yanks me into my house. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I can't stop myself from letting her.

  * * * *

  I get to the Blue Dolphin first. I'm drinking beer today; I need to keep my mind clear. Sutpen's call was dark, ambiguous, threatening.

  It's been three weeks since Sutpen killed Parks and I helped him get rid of the body. Since Clara left my house the morning after, she and I have stayed clear of each other; being the reason a man was killed can lay a blanket of ice over even the hottest of passions. We've talked on the phone, and we've agreed we need a temporary hiatus from each other. A few more weeks and we can start up again. Out of town for openers, a romantic weekend in San Francisco; a fresh, clean start-over. She'll make all the arrangements—she's got the whole deal wired. Just hang tight a few more weeks, she implores me. I know it's hard. On me, too, she whispers into the phone before she hangs up.