by Mark Frost
"Does this mean anything to you?" asked Jack, pointing to the drawing of the tower.
Presto's dark-rimmed black eyes widened, and he blinked repeatedly. "Good God; you'll think I'm absolutely mad."
"Why is that?"
"I have been dreaming about this place."
Later that same day, in a rat-infested alley outside his headquarters, two patrolling policemen found the body of Ding-Dong Dunham, notorious leader of the Houston Dusters. No tears were shed at the precinct over this discovery, but even the most hardened cops expressed shock at the loathsome brutality of the murder: Whatever Ding-Dong had done to inspire this mutilation must have been off the scale they used to calculate his previously established low standards of behavior.
Only one witness came forward, one of the Dusters, a mental defective named Mouse Malloy, who, no longer able to function productively as a street criminal after being kicked in the head by a horse while trying to knock over a beer wagon, had since served as their clubhouse mascot and errand boy. Shaken and terrified, he claimed to have watched from a room in the back as a tall, blond German man came into headquarters earlier that day with a suitcase full of gold coins. When Ding-Dong refused to hand over to the German an old leather-bound book, demanding to know why he wanted it, the man smiled, pulled a knife, and went to work on Ding-Dong like a priest carving a Christmas turkey.
Like most of the rest of what Mouse told the cops—he had a reputation for running his mouth, and his stories tended to veer toward the fanciful ever since the horse had made such a strong impression on him—they paid no mind to his unlikely account, figuring Ding-Dong had simply met up with the sordid, inevitable end that awaited every gangland leader, and from their point of view the sooner the better. Case closed.
The only difference being that this time Mouse Malloy was telling the God's truth.
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
In spite of Bendigo Rymer's histrionics, or maybe because of them, the authorities at the Phoenix station would not allow the mail train to leave for Wickenburg until the cars were searched upside and down and every last member of the Penultimate Players had been questioned. And no, as it turned out, ' none of them had seen a Chinaman running around the train station waving a sword—which was what Rymer had ordered , them to say even if they had. The delays incurred by having members of his troupe held over as witnesses at a murder trial could puncture the solvency of their tour as quick as a spike through a pneumatic tire.
Bendigo himself was actually the only Player who had caught sight of Kanazuchi; from a distance he hadn't clearly seen his face, but he did look Chinese, and as he ran off from behind the cotton bales, the man had been brandishing something that looked to Rymer's well-trained eye for steel-edged weapons suspiciously like a scabbard.
Railroad cops found the dead guard stashed behind the bales, uniform missing, his neck badly broken, but they couldn't find his assailant. Rumors had started to circulate about a series of gruesome murders committed at a railway yard in Yuma. Atrocities, crimes against nature: men with heads chopped off and mounted on spikes, women raped, children devoured; the usual human embroideries. And word was spreading fast that this smorgasbord of crimes had been committed by a crazed Chinaman.
If their delayed departure wasn't irritating enough, this annoying old rabbi had now decided to travel with the Penultimates at least as far as Wickenburg and perhaps beyond. He wasn't prepared to say why, but what reason could he possibly have except a ridiculous infatuation with Rymer's leading lady? And her doing everything this side of decency to encourage him: The woman knew no shame! Bendigo kicked himself as he watched the two of them billing and cooing in their seats three rows in front of him: Trouble usually showed up wearing a skirt and this English strumpet was just the latest in a long line the enemy camp had sent to torment him. He should have obeyed his instincts and booted her unceremoniously out after that first night in Cincinnati when she either seduced him or refused to sleep with him; the memory was a little hazy.
His heart beat like a caged bird. How could he go on? The strain of holding the Players together in order to faithfully interpret the eternal works of the Masters simply shredded a man's soul. Bendigo threw back his head and laid his hand against his forehead—his fondness for melodramatic gestures was so ingrained he used them even when no one was around to watch. He glanced around the train car at his company— no one had noticed him suffering, damn their miserable hides—and his upper lip curled in disgust: These blocks, these stones, these worse than senseless things; wild donkeys have more appreciation for genius. And did they ever bother to thank him for providing them a life and a livelihood? No; instead it was always "Bendigo my room's too small," "Mr.
Rymer, there's no hot water," and inevitably, "What about my money?"
Look at me, Bendigo wanted to rail at the heavens, I'm running a provincial tour in the middle of a desert! There has been a terrible mistake; I was supposed to be one of the great men of the stage! If Booth hadn't ruined my career, they'd been naming theaters after me on Broadway!
"Actors," muttered Rymer bitterly.
Staring this cruel fate in the eye was enough to reduce a strong man to tears, and he was no Hercules; a couple of big, wet ones rolled forlornly down his cheeks—Bendigo had always prided himself on his ability to cry on cue, but it never hurt to practice.
A shimmering mirage swam before his eyes, and he sought refuge in it: the twenty-five thousand dollars he'd cleared from past tours. He visualized his fortune as great chunks of gold bullion, resting in the impregnable vault of his Philadelphia bank. Add the six grand he'd pocketed from the current tour, plus the four he had signed to receive from this religious outpost they were on their way to play, and he was ready to mount his triumphant return to New York—lose a little weight first, cut back on the drinking—producer, director, and star of Bendigo Rymer's once-in-a-lifetime production of the Bard's immortal Hamlet!
Bendigo had spent every spare moment of his twenty years in theatrical exile restructuring and simplifying Hamlet's convoluted text to play to his strengths—more swordplay, a sunnier relationship with Ophelia, less morbid introspection—and finally his apotheosis was within reach. How many hundreds of times had he rehearsed the scene in his mind: opening night; Booth seated front row center, reduced to a sobbing puddle by the magnificent soaring humanity of his performance, falling to his knees and begging Bendigo's forgiveness for his rank, vicious stupidity, right in front of a crowd that always included all the important critics....
His reverie was broken by the sound of Eileen's happy laughter: the old man laughing, too.
What could those two possibly have to laugh about? Bendigo fumed and snuck a healthy pull from his flask. Something humiliating about her interest in the old man. It was enough to make him want to sleep with Eileen, if it had ever actually happened, all over again.
When Buckskin Frank and his posse arrived in Phoenix by special train that afternoon, he was pleasantly surprised to find this crime scene had been roped off and left largely intact: The guard's neck was broken—snapped like a twig; worse than a hanging—and a set of footprints he found behind the bales matched the tracks he'd spotted leaving the Yuma yards: a flat print, no heel, like the slippers he'd seen coolies wear. Furthermore, a guard who'd fired the shot at the killer had managed a clear look at him and yes, the man was indisputably a Chinaman, which was as specific as the guard could get. That qualified as good news.
The bad news was that Frank wouldn't be able to trail whoever the hell they were after down into Sonora, shake this bunch of greenhorns, carve out a little grubstake for himself, and settle into a slow decline of pan mining and tequila sipping while leisurely shopping around for the best bordello south of the border: That defined the honest limit of Frank McQuethy's remaining life ambitions.
Frank lit a cigarette, stood tall, and strolled down the tracks away from the swarm of lawmen and volunteers: Whenever he tried to look like he was thinking hard, they cut him a wide
berth. With his high hat and boots, he towered above the crowd; that yellow buckskin gleamed in the sunlight; his handlebar moustache advertised brawny, unselfish heroism. He was dimly aware of a gaggle of women watching from the passenger platform, giggling and chattering like barnyard hens; apparently they'd recognized his jacket: A story had already appeared in the local paper about Frank's newsworthy release and involvement in the manhunt.
Women: There was the bedrock of his mountain in life. Try as he might, Frank had never completely grasped the nature of his indestructible appeal to the fairer sex: What did they see when they looked at him? He didn't have a clue what it was, but he knew it wasn't him. Did it have something to do with his having killed a woman in front of a crowd—poor Molly; the best of him had died right along with her—and getting his name in the papers that made the rest of them swarm around like flies?
Most of the women who tried to visit him in prison couldn't hear enough about the who, how, and why of every human life he'd ended; some sort of sick electric thrill ran through them. He failed to find any sense in that and none in them: Like any man of principle, all he wanted to do was forget about the people he'd killed. Maybe their interest was another side effect of all those dime novels over the years with his stupid picture on the cover that in hindsight he hadn't done enough to discourage. Hell, he'd even tried writing a few himself; the guards had a pile of 'em back at the prison they used to hawk to the tourists. Buckskin Frank: Geronimo's Nightmare. I Rode with Wyatt: Tombstone's Invisible Man. Half a dozen others. Big sellers, every one.
He had to face facts; through some fault of his own, fame had destroyed his privacy and it made Frank's brain ache like a rotten tooth. Five years in prison had brought him a peace uninterrupted by a woman's ceaseless demands that he behave like some crazy idea she had in her head—obedient, mild-mannered, devoted to her every mood: in other words one hundred percent back-asswards from his actual personality. This tranquil stretch had led Frank to conclude that the main reason a woman wanted a man around in the first place was so she could bombard him with the arsenal of dumb questions ricocheting around in her head:
Did he like this dress? Didn't she look too fat in it? What about this new shade of rouge? Did he like his steak red or pink? Could he believe how much they wanted for a yard of calico at the dry goods store? Did he want to hold hands and sit swinging on a glider in the moonlight? Well, no. He liked a poke in the hay well enough, but beyond that he couldn't figure out why they expected so much from him. He didn't know any of the answers to their questions: As far as he was concerned, all these choices having to do with daily existence were equally weighted and to fuss and bother like it was life-or-death about what to eat for breakfast or wear to the square dance squeezed the juice right out of living. Molly was the only woman who'd ever figured that out about him, and look what happened to her.
Husbands were men who brought home the bacon, never drank before dark, and always woke up in the same bed they started the night in. Before they got down to doing the deed for the first time, he had always meant to stop and ask one of these hungry gals flat out: Did he honestly look like husband material to them? And if the. answer was yes, he would reach for his hat because that was a conclusion that could only be made by a lunatic. What Frank wanted, what he thought any man who'd lived life as he had wanted—more than fame, more than fortune—was to be left alone.
Frank felt pathetic: Here he stood scarcely twenty-four hours out of the calaboose and already feeling sentimental about it The trustees used to smuggle in a whore for him once a month or so—there'd been no shortage of soiled doves lining up for the assignment. To his astonishment, he had discovered that, with Molly gone, this turned out to be all the feminine companionship he required.
Wait, thought Frank, and the clouds parted: Who was to say he couldn't work out the same arrangement now that he was nearly free again? Was he doomed to keep hitching his fate to some sage hen's apron strings the minute she salted her tail for him? No. He felt joy bubble up inside him like springwater. That was it: He would blaze a new trail for himself. No more box canyons. No more cow bunnies putting their brand on him.
As he ground out his cigarette, the tubby stationmaster came running up with the schedule of trains that had left Phoenix that morning: two freights, two passenger, one local mail run. Why they had let any train out of the yard under these circumstances was beyond Frank, but he'd long ago given up any hope he'd be put in charge of running the world. A small crowd of anxious volunteers gathered around him waiting for his response.
"You wire ahead to the next stop on all of these trains?" asked Frank.
The stationmaster screwed his face into a ball; he'd read a couple of Buckskin Frank books and felt plainly intimidated. "You think we should?"
"Well. Yes."
"But, but we searched through all the trains before we let them go."
"So?"
The station master grinned like he had a painfully full bladder, took the schedule back from Frank, and headed back to the terminal.
I'll give him ten before he breaks into a trot, thought Frank, watching the man go. It took eight.
Frank sighed heavily and scanned the crowd; nearly a month had passed since his last conjugal visit at the hoosegow. He wondered idly how complicated it would be to get his wick dipped before the manhunt moved on. He rolled another cigarette and walked away from the gawkers like he was searching for clues and they left him alone again.
Thirty paces later he found a puddle of blood in the dirt. He dipped in his finger: dry. At least two hours old. A trail of gouts led away and ended at an empty set of tracks; the stationmaster would know which train had been sitting on these rails.
"Mr. McQuethy?"
He turned: a group of five women, the ones he'd seen watching him from the platform, standing ten yards away. He tipped his hat.
"Ladies."
The one who'd spoken stepped forward; a big-boned strawberry blonde. Best looking one in the bunch, which said less than he might have hoped for. "If you'll forgive the intrusion: We read about your release in the paper this morning."
"Uh-huh."
The woman blushed. "And we, well, I guess we're just about your biggest fans here in Phoenix; we've read all your books and followed your career with a great deal of interest."
"Uh-huh."
"I think you knew a cousin of mine down in Tombstone a few years back, Sally Ann Reynolds? She was a waitress there at the Silver Dollar Saloon?" The blonde blushed red as an apple when Frank didn't immediately respond. "Anyway ..."
"How is Sally Ann?" he said with a smile, and not the slightest idea who she was talking about.
"Fine; she's married now, living in Tucson, has a couple of kids."
"You must be sure and give her my regards."
"I can't tell you how excited she'll be to know we've spoken."
There was that look in her eye: the flash of light in a cheap diamond. Frank felt simultaneously cornered and stimulated. Story of his life.
"We know you have a terribly busy time ahead of you, but we were wondering if it would be possible to invite you to lunch sometime while you're here in town."
Frank smiled again and, as was perpetually the case, every memory of every unhappiness ever visited on him by a woman vanished like tax money.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Her name was Mary Williams: Dante Scruggs found that out from two old biddies at the boarding house. She'd told them that she came from a small town in rural Minnesota, where she'd been a schoolteacher, and that she was hoping to find the same work in Chicago. They took her at her word. Dante told them he was from the school board and wanted to check her references: Better if you don't tell Miss Williams I stopped by, he said with a smile. What a charmer, the old ladies thought.
Mary was of Greek heritage, they had decided; that accounted for her dark exoticism without violating any squeamish racial borders. The fools had no idea she was an Indian.
She left the house
each morning at eight o'clock sharp. The first day she bought a map of Chicago; following the map, she methodically walked each block of the downtown area, looking for something. Dante followed her around that way for three days. Always stayed far back in the crowd, never moving too close. Once she turned sharply around as if she had forgotten something and marched straight at him; he turned his back and stared into a shop window. He was sure she didn't see him, but she kept to the busiest streets and always returned to the boarding house before dark.
On the third afternoon, she seemed to find what she was looking for: They called it the Water Tower, on Chicago Avenue. One of the few buildings that had survived the Great Fire; spires of sandstone arrayed around a pale central tower like something from a fairy tale dropped into this hub of modern commerce.
She wandered up and down the street for over an hour, examining the Water Tower from every angle, but never went inside: What was the woman doing here? Dante wondered.
He asked himself that question a hundred times that day: She stayed on that street corner in front of the Tower until twilight. Never said a word to anyone, just watched people coming and going. Like she was waiting for somebody. An odd one, Dante decided, watching from a soda fountain across the street, sipping a root beer float. He followed her back to the boarding house just as the lamplighters started to make their rounds.
The man who had spent the last few months watching Dante Scruggs, the dark-eyed man with the tattoo on his left arm, trailed quietly behind. He would watch Dante enter his apartment and then return to their local office to finish up his report; the man's superior was arriving the next day by train from New York—he had the book with him—and then they would take action in the matter of Mr. Dante Scruggs.
NEW YORK CITY
As the Toast of Manhattan, Doyle drifted through his responsibilities, dutifully playing the part of the Famous Author but feeling as if his real self lagged one step behind this frantic routine; the cloud of intrigue swirling around Jack and the missing books was far more compelling than endlessly answering the same set of questions about his dead fictional character, a level of journalism on par with the now almost fondly remembered Ira Pinkus. But pressing the flesh in bookstores, feeling the honest enthusiasm of his readers firsthand, restored him; occasionally some dear soul who had even read his historical novels materialized with a rare copy for signature.
