“You’re saying Henri did this?”
“I didn’t say that, Jo.”
“I can’t think straight. Only a monster could do this. Henri isn’t a monster.”
“I know what you mean,” I said disingenuously. “Look, let’s get something to eat. Then I’ll help you clean up.”
“I wouldn’t push this off on anyone,” she replied.
“I’m not anyone,” I said.
She sat down on a counter stool, her face listless, her mouth gray, the knees of her jeans soaked with water and Ajax and mop string that looked like dead worms. She blew out her breath. “Some fun, huh, boss?” Then her eyes closed slowly and her arm slipped off the edge of the counter. Her head jerked up. “Oh, sorry. I think I’m going to fall down. Before I do that, I need to ask something of you.”
“What is it?”
“Stay with me. Don’t go anywhere. Just stand there for a long time.”
“Sure.”
“Because I think I want to sleep and then do something awful. Did you ever feel that way? You know, to sleep and maybe die inside and then get up and hunt down someone and punish them for everything that’s wrong in the world? I felt that way when my father was sucked away by the storm. I feel that way now. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well. I’d like to borrow your gun and shoot someone.”
I didn’t know what to say. Nor did I want to hear the way she was talking. “We don’t let the bad guys get to us.”
“You said ‘guys’ instead of ‘fellow.’ ”
“My agent sold my novel,” I said.
Her mouth opened. “When?”
“I got the telegram yesterday. I’ll receive a thousand-dollar advance, less the agent’s ten percent. We’re going to get your house repaired.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I saw you with Devos. I forgot.”
She pulled open my shirt and pressed her face into my chest again, then began kicking my leg with her tennis shoe.
“What are you doing?” I asked. She said something against my chest I couldn’t understand. “Say that again?”
Either she didn’t hear me or simply refused to repeat herself. She wiped her face on my chest and stood on my shoes and put her arms deep inside my shirt and wouldn’t let go.
* * *
LATER, WHEN SHE went to the store to buy more cleanser, I used her phone to call Wade Benbow. I told him about my suspicion regarding Henri Devos.
“You really think the guy’s that bad? He’d rub his shit all over her house?”
“He might if that would put blame on someone else.”
“I guess it’s possible.”
“It’s possible? That’s it?” I said.
“You know how many open homicides I have on my desk? Plus other matters, like why you were pumping me about the availability of brown tar around Trinidad.”
“Somebody told me to expect it.”
“Who’s this somebody?” he asked.
“What’s your attitude toward snitches?” I asked.
“I don’t have one.”
“You think of them as lowlifes. That’s why you call them ‘confidential informants.’ Are you smoking a cigarette now?”
“You’re about to tell me the tobacco industry does more harm than dope mules, right? You know what you can do with that?”
He was right about me. I didn’t want to be an informer. Who does? Jo Anne’s car was coming up the road. The sun was in the west, the sky purple, snow and rain blowing in her headlights.
“Don’t mess with me on this,” he said.
“Maybe it was just talk.”
“I know you better than you know yourself, partner. You have a conscience. This is going to eat your lunch.”
“I don’t have any more to say on the matter,” I said.
“You sitting down?”
“Why?”
He coughed slightly. “That kid named Moon Child?”
“What about her?” I said, my heart seizing.
“The nurse found her dead an hour ago. A pillow was on the floor.”
* * *
JO ANNE CAME through the door clutching a bag of groceries and a jug of Clorox. She was smiling. I took the bag and jug out of her hands and told her what had happened. Or at least most of it.
“She’s dead?” she said. “Moon Child died in the hospital?”
I told her about the pillow. She sat down at the counter. Her face was as colorless as cardboard, her hair hanging in her eyes. “She was murdered in the hospital? How can that happen? Where were the cops?”
“It’s not their fault, Jo Anne.”
“Nobody cared enough to find out her real name.”
“She never told you what it was?”
“No, she said Marvin picked her up when she jumped out of a semi on the Pass. The driver tried to make her sodomize him.”
“Marvin Fogel picked her up in Ratón Pass?”
“Wandering in the middle of the highway. She said he fed her and gave her clean clothes and money. She said Marvin was the only man who was ever kind to her.”
“Did she ever say where she was from?”
“California, I think. She said something about Buck Owens and Bakersfield. She said she was going to be in the movies.”
“In California?”
“No, Trinidad. A science fiction picture or something. She was going to play a goddess.”
“She told you this when she was loaded?”
“All of them are loaded. If I grew up like them, I’d stay loaded, too.”
“I need to find Stoney.”
“The bus goes wherever there’s free food.” She stared at the floor, her defense system obviously used up.
The rain had stopped, but I could hear it dripping from the eaves and smell the coldness of the fog and the clean dampness of the earth coming through the broken windows. The sun was a whitish yellow, with the pale, thin fragility of a Communion wafer buried inside a cloud. I felt strange about Moon Child. She was the angriest of the kids I’d met on the bus, yet perhaps the one who had the most courage. How could she have been led on by a Hollywood con man claiming he could cast her in a movie?
I put my hand on Jo Anne’s shoulder. “I’m going to call a carpenter friend of mine and hang some blankets over the windows, then take you out to eat. Is that okay?”
“Sure.”
“Then we’ll take a ride down to the Sally. They’re good people.”
“The what?” she said.
* * *
BACK THEN, WHEN you were on the drift, you learned quickly that the Other America was a complex culture held together by the poetry of Walt Whitman, the songs of Woody Guthrie, and the prose of Jack Kerouac. I knew former Wobblies and CCC boys who were still riding the rods, bumming their way from Ammon Hennacy’s Joe Hill House in Salt Lake City down to the date-palm harvest on the California-Mexico border, their faces as lined as an old leather glove, most of them toothless, vibrating on the floor of a flat-wheeler, filled with joy from their first drink in the morning until they slept under the stars that night.
Marines never denigrate the Corps, not even brig rats who are kicked out of the Crotch. When it came to the Salvation Army, the fellows with their legs hanging out the side door of a boxcar had the same degree of loyalty. Hallelujah missions were everywhere on skid row, but the Sally was special. Their brass bands might deafen street drunks into ear-bleeding sobriety, but they were steadfast when it came to teaching the equality of women and people of all races.
The Sally in Trinidad was in the warehouse district. An ex-pug and two-time loser friend of mine who worked there told me he knew the crew on the bus well, but he had not seen them in three weeks. My friend, Jersey Joe Finkelstein, had the skin and light hair and eyebrows of an albino, and brain damage from either the ring or a blow from a piece of pipe in the state pen, whichever account you wanted to believe. He ate cough drops all day and breathed through his mouth when you talked to him.
�
��You know a kid on the bus nicknamed Stoney?” I said.
“Looks like he got shot out of a cannon yesterday, talks in overdrive or like he’s got a Coke bottle up his ass?”
He was sweeping the sidewalk in front of the building while he talked. He looked around to see if anyone had heard his language.
“That’s the kid,” I said.
“Funny you mention him. He was the one on the bus I worried about. The girls would get by for reasons we don’t need to talk about. But a boy like that usually ends up lamb chops, get me?”
“No.”
He looked around again. “The shitheads running that bus are gonna keep the girls around for obvious reasons. Stoney is bait to get the girls on board. Is that your lady in the car?”
“Did you know a girl named Moon Child?”
“Bangs, a face like a white balloon, an attitude?”
“She was murdered.”
“Oh, man,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Know why anyone would want to kill her?”
He pulled up his T-shirt, even though the wind was raw, and wiped his face. “I don’t associate with people like that. I work here now. I quit that running around.”
“Come on, Jersey. I need a favor. You’re a stand-up guy.”
“There’re two guys on that bus that need straightening out. Guys with three inches of dick and two of brain. You get the picture?”
“What are their names?”
“Marvin and Jimmy. They had a lot of camping stuff on the roof. They had something else up there, too: a big wood star. I asked them why they wanted a big star on the roof like that. Marvin said it was a hexe. I said, ‘What’s a hexe?’ He just grinned at me.”
“Think they’re making a movie?” I asked.
“Yeah, me and Elizabeth Taylor are starring in it. Are you out of your mind?”
“Don’t let Stoney down. He’s a good kid. You said it yourself. Those guys will cannibalize him.”
“I heard them talking about Ludlow and going on through the massacre site into some place around Cordova Pass and then way-to-shit on over in the Sangre de Cristos. You been in those canyons? You got to bring in the sunlight on a truck.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
EACH DAY AFTER work, I helped repair the damage done to Jo Anne’s house. A couple of afternoons, Spud and Cotton came along with me. Wade Benbow dropped by. Moon Child had died of suffocation. What else was new? Cynical? You bet. Most crimes go unpunished. All cops know that, and so do the victims. You just live with it.
The days were becoming shorter, the light colder and more brittle, and my idyllic life with the Lowry family was coming to an end. Even though I would receive part of the advance for my book, I did not have a great deal of money. However, that was far less of a problem than the loss in Jo Anne’s eyes when she looked at the sunporch where she had kept her paintings.
It was Friday evening, and Jo Anne had the night off, and I was cooking tamales and eggs on her stove, a storm buffeting the window panes; Spud and Cotton said they might come over with a few beers and bring Maisie. I thought we might have a fine evening. Then, out of nowhere, Jo Anne said, “I painted the children inside the flames at Ludlow in order to release them from their pain. Now they’ll never be free. Whoever stole my paintings will keep them inside the fire. Do I sound crazy?”
“No,” I said. “You can paint the children again. The Man Upstairs gave you a talent for a reason. He’s not going to take it from you.”
“He took my father,” she replied, her face pinched with anger.
Then I knew the source of our problem, the barrier that would always be there. I could be her companion, a confidant, an occasional lover, a witness to her aging process and finally her death, but I would never be the one, because he had already disappeared up a funnel into infinity.
“Why the look?” she said. “You don’t think God did that to my father?”
“I’ve never understood the great mysteries, Jo.”
She sat on a stool, her shoulders slumped. “I can’t get the children out of my mind. I see the screams on their faces. I thought if I told the world what happened to them, it would make a difference.” A wet line slid down from each of her eyes. “I don’t know how human beings can be so cruel.”
“Molly Brown was on one of the Titanic lifeboats,” I said. “The water was full of drowning and freezing people. Everyone else on the boat, including a ship’s officer, was afraid to row among them. Molly Brown was the only one who wanted to go back. Three years later, she walked the picket line at Ludlow. She never gave up on her fellow man.”
Jo Anne got off the stool. Her face was inches from mine. “You were not thinking about Molly Brown or my paintings. Don’t pretend you were.”
“Pardon?”
“Don’t lie, Aaron. Every thought you have is always on your face.”
“I asked you to marry me. I never got an answer. Silence makes people think the worse.”
Her eyes hazed over. “You thought I insulted God?”
“No, I did not think that.”
“Then what did you think?”
“You’re already spoken for. No man will replace your father.”
Her face was like a sheet of white paper with nothing written on it. “That’s the most invasive and arrogant statement anyone has ever said to me.”
The phone rang. She picked up the receiver and placed it to her ear, her face dilated with anger. She handed the receiver to me. “It’s for the ice cream guy,” she said.
* * *
“WHAT’S COOKING, STONEY?”
“Bad haps, man.” His voice was like fingernails on a blackboard. “They’re gonna do it again. You gotta come get me.”
“Who’s going to do what again?”
“What they did to Moon Child.”
“You got to spell it out, Stoney.”
“They got a ceremony up in the rocks. It’s dark even when the sun’s out. You’re not gonna believe it. I didn’t because I was on acid. Acid is no good, man.”
I could hear diesel engines huffing and airbrakes blowing in the background. “Tell me where you are.”
“In the phone booth.”
“Which phone booth? What’s the closest town?”
“I don’t know.”
“What brand of gas do they sell there?”
“It’s gas, ice cream guy. Fuck. My head hurts.”
“Who’s at the ceremony? Just give me one name.”
“It’s not one person. It’s the devil. No. A bunch of them. All with the same face.”
I felt my knees go weak. “Hang up and dial the operator. Tell her you’re being kidnapped. Then leave the receiver off the hook and start running. Wave down a truck or a highway patrol.”
He started to hiccup. “They’re coming… They’re coming… They… Oh, shit, ice cream guy. They’re gonna punish me.”
Someone opened the phone booth door and pulled the receiver from Stoney’s hand. “Is this who I think it is?” a voice said.
“How’s it hangin’, Doyle? You like movies? Did you ever see The Maltese Falcon? Humphrey Bogart takes a pistol away from Sidney Greenstreet’s bodyguard and throws it to Greenstreet and says something like, ‘Here, a crippled newsie took it off him.’ For some reason you make me think of that line.”
“I’ll be looking you up, Broussard. You don’t know where I am. But I know where you are.”
“Last time out, you didn’t do too well,” I said.
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Afraid not.”
“You remember Cherry Alley in Tokyo? The signs out front said ‘Fuckie-Suckie’? Why do you think we went to Jo Anne’s house?”
“You’re an evil man, Doyle.”
“She can give good head, but that’s about it. By the way, she said you’re a lousy lay.”
He hung up.
* * *
“JIMMY DOYLE GOT on the phone?” Jo Anne said.
“Yeah, he’s got
Stoney pretty scared,” I said.
“What’d he say?”
“He’s a jerk and not worth talking about. The issue is Stoney. I wonder if he’s being used to set us up.”
“He’s bait?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“What did Stoney tell you? You looked a little gray for a minute.”
“He was talking about a ceremony that involved the devil.”
“He has brain damage,” she said. “Don’t pay attention to what he says.”
“I get the sense he’s talking about human sacrifice.”
“What?”
“I think I know where Stoney and Doyle are headed.”
“You’re thinking about going there?” she asked.
“Will you marry me, Jo Anne?”
“I love you. I can say that truthfully. But I can’t handle all this crap.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.”
She looked at the stove. “Your food’s burning.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I DUMPED THE PAN in the trash, then tried to call Wade Benbow at home. No answer. I pulled on my coat.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Just like that? It’s been kicks?”
“I wish it had turned out different, Jo. Tell Spud and Cotton and Maisie I’m sorry I got them out on a bad night.”
I went out the door. The snow crystals stung like chips of glass in the wind. I got into my car and began to back out of the driveway. The front door of the house flew open, and Jo Anne ran for the car in a sheepskin coat and a beat-up felt cowboy hat tied on with a scarf. She jumped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” she said.
“I have to do this on my own, Jo.”
“Do you have a flashlight?”
“No.”
She turned off the engine and pulled out the key. “Stay here.”
She went back into the house and returned a few minutes later with a flashlight and a deerskin bag tied on her belt. The bag banged against the doorjamb when she got in.
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