The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday
Page 27
One hundred forty, she thought. “I read about it on the plane, yeah.”
“Couldn’t help thinking about what your letters might have been worth, if…”
She flashed on Tuck hanging limp in her arms, Rayella lying dead on the stairs a few feet away. “They were never my letters.”
He seemed to flinch. “Of course not, no. I didn’t…” A sigh. “You know what I mean.”
Yes, she thought, I do, but I don’t want to talk about that now. Or ever.
“You shaved off your soul patch.”
Almost blushing, he ran a timid finger under his lower lip. “Yeah.” A shrug. He was wearing his long hair loose as well, no ponytail. Silk shirt, Italian blazer, linen slacks, handmade Duke & Dexter loafers. He looked good. Chic hipster with those saintly eyes.
“What possessed you? To get rid of it, I mean.”
Still caressing the freshly naked spot with his fingertip, he said, “Not like you’re going to miss it, right?”
I hated that ratty little lip beard, she thought. Mincing affectation. Magnet for soup.
“Makes you eminently more kissable,” she said. “Or so I would imagine. What does your latest girlfriend say?”
The finger came to rest. Finally, he did indeed blush.
“I’m sorry, that was rude. And it’s none of my business.”
She looked out the window at the hills, green from recent, much-needed rain, walling off the city from the peninsula, like a line of battlements. The cultural frontier. Beyond which lay her adopted city, Babylon by the Bay. Home. Of a sort, anyway.
“Want to hear something odd? After everything that’s happened, I think I finally, actually understand why someone would want to become a nun.”
He leaned back a little, as though she’d slipped out of focus. “You’re not seriously considering—”
“Me? No. I can’t imagine there’s an order that would have me.”
“From what I hear, they’re in no position to be picky.”
“Not really my point.”
“And aren’t the twelve steps a kind of spiritual regimen anyway?”
“I just want to know where I belong. You know? And with the way things are, the way the world is, I mean, why not? Why not God?”
“Why not virgin sacrifice?”
“No, don’t be glib.”
“Why not art? I’m not being glib, by the way. Seriously, it’s why we do what we do.”
“It’s not the same,” she said. “Not really. I mean, imagine it, every day, same routine—devotion, contemplation, service. Knowing, not guessing.” She shrugged emphatically, like a child. “It just seems, I dunno, attractive.”
He studied her for a moment, then tapped on the glass partition between the front and back seats, gestured for the driver to close it up. Once their privacy was assured, he turned back and said, “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Excuse me?”
“You seem different. I mean, of course, given what happened, you’d—”
“I’ve just had time to think. You know. Despite all the…business.”
His eyes narrowed, as though once again she’d started to blur. “Okay…” He drew out the vowel, a prompt. Lisa took a moment to fuss with her purse, tucking it finally between her hip and the door. There. Now. Ready.
“Insomnia’s not the awful bother it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “Great time to work things through, actually, figure out your life, middle of the night.”
She glanced up, suddenly mesmerized by the back of the driver’s head. For whatever reason, she also felt a sudden flicker of appetite, first time in days. Maybe she was relaxing. Or her nausea had developed protective camouflage.
Nico, gently: “And what did you figure out?”
Okay. Fine. Deep breath. “I spent all those years…trying to live up to what my father…”
“Ah.” Nico reached out for her hand. “That.”
“Yeah.”
“He called, by the way. Left a message.”
“Yes. He’s good at that.”
“For what it’s worth, he sounded…concerned.”
“Let me finish, okay? I’ll call him back. Maybe. But my point—I gave up trying to earn his respect a long time ago, only to catch myself doing basically the same thing all over again. With Tuck. Older man, couldn’t say yes, not really, always one more thing for me to prove.”
“Lisa—”
“Never caught that before, not really. It’s dreary. And spooky. So unconscious—”
“Lisa—”
“You were right, I had a crush. Not a client crush, either. It was stupid, worse than stupid. He used me, played me—I should’ve known better. I’ve been there before. Except this time people are dead.”
That catch in her throat. The burning sensation in her chest.
“You’re not to blame.”
“Aren’t I? I want the truth.”
“The truth,” he said, “is that you’re not to blame. Look—”
“Not about that. About everything. I want the truth, and I want to know where I belong, and that’s why I get it, I do, I really truly understand why women enter the convent.”
“Because they’ve had bad luck with men?”
“It isn’t bad luck. That’s the point, Nico. It’s me.”
Outside, the hills gave way to a maze of intersecting freeways, like a massive tangle of concrete ribbon. She imagined herself, like Gulliver in Lilliput, waking up. Tied down.
Nico emitted a bottomless sigh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
Her head snapped back. “What—?”
“Guilt doesn’t make you special. You screwed up. Deal with it.”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“You honestly think nuns—or anyone else for that matter—you think anybody’s got it figured out? Shortcut to paradise, secret sign. Did Sister Mattie—”
“Melanie.”
“Did she ascend bodily into heaven? Perform a miracle from her deathbed?”
“You’re missing the point.”
“The point,” he said, “is that nuns are no different than anybody else. They go through the motions, stumble around in the dark, make stupid mistakes, hoping someday it’ll all click into place. Boom, puzzle solved. Except it doesn’t get solved. That’s what death is for.”
“If you’re trying to cheer me up, try harder.”
“Cheer you up? No. Wise you up, maybe.”
“Oh please, Daddy. Yes. Make me wise.”
“Don’t call me that.” His face turned red again. Not from embarrassment this time. “What the hell—Daddy?”
“It just slipped out.”
“No fooling.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I told you before, no more ‘sorry.’”
Right. Shoot to kill. Except…
“What do you want from me?”
“Know why I never tried to get together? With you, I mean.”
Lisa’s jaw went slack. She felt like she couldn’t get air. Why was he being this way? “I can guess.”
“You’d be wrong.”
“You like women who scare you. To a point. I don’t scare you.”
“You scare me plenty. Trust me. More than anybody.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“The way I feel about you scares me. You want the truth? Try that.”
Don’t do this, she thought. Don’t give me what I want. It will only make me want more—and with that she teared up. All the stress, she told herself. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying.” She shook her head. “Bad idea. Business partners, like first cousins. Just wrong.”
He looked both dismayed and about to laugh. “Good God. What won’t you do to keep from being happy?”
Just about anything, she thought. I suppose. “You’re right. Yeah. But I’m working on that.”
Using his thumb, he gently wiped at the dampness beneath each eye. She felt ashamed at just how much she enjoyed that. B
eing touched. By him.
“Just give me some time, okay? Last couple days, I mean. Really. They’ve been, you know, a bit intense.”
“I can only imagine.”
“And this. I mean, come on. This is, like, new.”
Beyond new. Uncharted territory. The wilderness. The West. “Where did all this come from?”
“From not knowing if you were coming back. Not knowing if you were alive or dead.”
I get that, she thought. I get needing a miserable scare to figure things out. Being haunted, begging your ghosts to explain.
“So all this time, all I had to do was flirt with death, and you’d have flirted with me.”
Oh, if only we could have found a way…
Shaking his head, he looked out across the city at the downtown skyline. “How about we let it go for now, talk about it later.”
Fair enough, she thought. But shortly the silence felt terrifying. Her mind was boiling, churning with words, none of them true, none of them right, mistaken, maudlin, missing the point, over and over, each time different, each time wrong. But maybe that was okay. Maybe that’s how you knew you’d found it, the place you belonged. Knew you were close to home.
The silence. The fear. Like just before daybreak, as you’re waiting for that first show of light.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author wishes to extend a hearty expression of gratitude to the many people who helped bring this book about. Kimberley Cameron, Mary Alice Kier, Anna Cottle, and David J. Ivester are the best team of professional advocates a writer could ask for. Special thanks to John and Shannon Raab, Amy Lignor, and everyone at Suspense Publishing for giving this humble little book a second chance, and for all their professionalism, courtesy, and support. Tom Jenks, Carol Edgarian, Jack Schiff, and Mimi Kusch provided a deeply appreciated shot in the arm by publishing an excerpt of the novel in Narrative Magazine, perhaps the finest online literary journal in America. Marge Elliott, proprietor of the Tombstone Western Heritage Museum, and Timothy Fattig, biographer of Wyatt Earp, both patiently indulged the author’s tedious and often muddled questions. Jennifer J. Hagan, Esq., provided invaluable advice on legal matters addressed in the book. Thanks as well to Victoria Willcox, author of the definitive trilogy of biographical novels on the life of Doc Holliday, for her gracious and enthusiastic support for this project.
No book addressing the Tombstone era could even be considered without the three pillars of devoted scholarship on which this author relied: And Die in the West, Paula Mitchell Marks’s impeccably researched investigation of the shootout at the O.K. Corral, which set the standard for scholarship in this domain, and countered the generally hagiographic folklore that surrounded the Earp brothers (and by extension, Doc Holliday) up to that point; Casey Tefertiller’s equally exceptional Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend; and last but by no means least, Gary L. Roberts’s definitive biography, Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend, a must-read for anyone interested in this archetypal true-life American antihero. Also invaluable were Karen Holliday Tanner’s Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait; David Roberts’s Once They Moved Like the Wind: Cochise, Geronimo, and the Apache Wars; and The Valiants: The Tombstone Rangers and Apache War Frivolities, by Lynn R. Bailey. Additional sources on other matters that proved especially helpful included On Consumption: Its Nature, Symptoms and Treatment, by Richard Payne Cotton; Caveat Emptor: The Secret Life of an American Art Forger, by Ken Perenyi; Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents, by Joe Nickell; Techniques of the Artists of the American West, by Peggy Samuels, et al.; Chasing the Rodeo: On Wild Rides and Big Dreams, Broken Hearts and Broken Bones, and One Man’s Search for the West, by W.K. Stratton; Civil War Letters: From Home, Camp & Battlefield, edited by Bob Blaisdell; and Searching the Heart: Women, Men, and Romantic Love in Nineteenth Century America, by Karen Lystra.
I would also like to extend a special thanks to a trio of friends who unknowingly provided a composite template for the novel’s female protagonist: Lisa Iaboni, Kim Addonizio, and Allison Davis, three of the most generous, funny, talented, and formidable women I know. And, of course, there is my wife, Mette, to whom the greatest and most profound debt is owed, for without her, the entire enterprise would be impossible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David Corbett is the author of numerous critically acclaimed works of fiction:
The Devil’s Redhead (nominee: Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel)
Done for a Dime (NY Times Notable Book; Macavity Award nominee, Best Novel; named “one of the two or three best American crime novels I have ever read” by Patrick Anderson of the Washington Post)
Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar, and named both one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers of 2007 by the Washington Post and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book)
Do They Know I’m Running? (Spinetingler Award, Best Novel—Rising Star Category (“a rich, hard-hitting epic”—PW, starred review).
The Mercy of the Night (“Superlative hard-boiled crime fiction”—Booklist, Starred Review)
The Devil Prayed and Darkness Fell (novella)
Thirteen Confessions (Stories)
The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday
His short fiction and poetry have appeared in journals as diverse as Mission and Tenth, The Smoking Poet, and San Francisco Noir, and his stories have twice been selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories.
His book on the craft of characterization, The Art of Character, has been called “a writer’s bible,” and it will soon appear in translation in both Spanish and Chinese. A follow-up, focusing on complex motivation, The Compass of Character, appeared in November 2019. He’s written numerous articles on the craft and theory of fiction for the New York Times, Narrative, Bright Ideas, Zyzzyva, MovieMaker, and other outlets.
Prior to his career as a novelist, he worked as a private investigator for the firm of Palladino & Sutherland in San Francisco, and played a significant role in such headline litigations as The Peoples’ Temple Trial, the first Michael Jackson child molestation scandal, the Cotton Club Murder Case, and many others. He is married and splits his time between northern California and coastal Norway.
For more, visit www.davidcorbett.com
Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR DAVID CORBETT
THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY
COPYRIGHT
THE LONG-LOST LOVE LETTERS OF DOC HOLLIDAY
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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