— and saw things I’d never seen before.
11
P. J. was someone a team of psychiatrists would have to unwind. The survey of the place where he had slept and lived would have been enough to confound Aristotle, Plato and Darwin. No telling what Kinsey would have made of him. It was amazing how much junk there was lying around and tacked up on the four wooden walls. It was even more amazing that I hadn’t noticed that junk on my first entrance before the lamp was turned off.
The walls caught me first. Helter-skelter and with absolutely no sense of arrangement or design, he had covered every available bit of wall space with posters, charts, calendars and souvenirs. The posters and calendars were dated; the cheesecake kind you can find in any barber shop in America. But a pornographic artist had been at work in P.J. He had sketched in details the photographers and artists had been modest about in the original models. The next thing that caught the eye were the souvenirs. A black bra, a purple net stocking, panties, and bits of lingerie were stuck haphazardly like pennants on every wall with everything from thumb tacks to nails. None of this was too good for a starter but closer examination of the charts were worse.
The charts were rendered in big, scrawly print. He had listed women according to blondes, brunettes and redheads. There was a long list of names running lengthwise on the charts with check marks and descriptions of evenings-with-them that read like something out of the Satyricon or a payboy’s private diary.
There was more. Much more. But there was a lot more 70 to see and try to understand. Another chart, hanging alongside the door, was pasted full of pages torn from some cheap man’s magazine. I scanned them briefly. The usual bold guides on HOW TO MAKE MARY, SIX WAYS TO LOVE A BLONDE and HOW TO TRIP THE LADIES ON YOUR BOUDOIR FLOOR. Before I could think that all P.J. thought about was girls, I found another chart. This one featured riddles printed in his own hand, probably, which looked like the hen-tracks of a seven year old boy: What has four wheels and flies! A GARBAGE TRUCK. Where was the Declaration of Independence signed? ON THE BOTTOM. When is a door not a door? WHEN IT’S AJAR. What do they call a man who doesn’t believe in Birth Control? DADDY. You know, stuff like that. Clever riddles but in the hands of a P.J., what did they mean as a key to his kind of brain?
I turned away from the walls and studied the floor by the window. P.J. had more sides than an octagon.
Scattered about in wild confusion and looking read and reread ninety times over were back-number issues of Mad, Popular Mechanix and Science Illustrated. Score one for Mrs. P.J. but it was kind of contradictory. I thumbed through the science mags. P.J. seemed to have paid particular attention to the inventions and do-it-yourself innovations by amateurs all over the world. I thought about that for a while before I examined an old stack of records piled up on a chair by the magazines. They were collector’s items. Old 78 r.p.m. Raymond Scott Quintet instrumentals. There were about twelve of them. I looked at the titles on the red labels. Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals, Twilight In Turkey, Siberian Sleighride, and The Toy Trumpet. I’d always been a Scott buff myself but P.J.’s predilection for Scott’s violent jazz made me feel peculiar. I didn’t want to have similar likes with a wild young nut who liked his cheese-cake in huge gulps. Who maybe staked out Indian girls in the sun and maybe murdered old men in such a hideous way. I shuddered thinking about it.
I walked around the cabin for more clues that might point to the absent P.J. But there were no clothes in the place, no shoes, not so much as an abandoned hair comb. Just the charts, papers, magazines and records. When the father had chased the son, he might have packed what he could carry. But why had the father left all this filth on the walls without destroying it? Three weeks, Rita Riker had said, so it wasn’t a recent evacuation. I went to the table, pulled out the one chair and sat down. I was tired. Lack of sleep and sex and mystery aren’t exactly guarantees for relaxation. My head started to fall forward.
But P.J. wouldn’t let me sleep. There was a scrap of paper on the table, easily readable in the glare of the lamp. I looked at it, seeing once again the same childish handwriting. He’d used red ink this time. The bottle was still on the table, cap off dried out completely.
RIDDLE — She cost a lot of money. Twelve hundred men spent a lot of time on her. None of her lovers were jealous. But she made every one of the twelve hundred men older. Why?
ANSWER — She was a U.S. battleship.
RIDDLE — A husband came home and found a man’s pair of shoes under his wife’s bed. When his wife came home, he killed her. Why?
ANSWER — The husband was an amputee. He had no legs.
RIDDLE — A woman was walking —
He’d been halted before he could finish the third one. Maybe mercifully. Right then, I didn’t know anything but an aching weariness and confusion. I was stymied, buffaloed and plain beat.
I must have fallen asleep sitting up. Because I was still in the chair when an angry buzzing woke me up. I blinked awake, the buzz getting louder and angrier as it came closer. Soon the noise filled the cabin with thumping echoes. That did it. I raced for the door, sleep falling off me like a blanket.
The angry buzz was an airplane engine. And it was flying low.
The prodigal son had flown back.
12
Agreeable Wells was even less agreeable in close-up. As I cleared the cabin door, I got my best look at the whole enterprise.
It looked like an abandoned WPA project. The four cabins that made up the camp were still huddled together, no more than twenty yards separating any two of them. The tools and equipment were scattered indifferently on the ground all over the area as if there had been a strike of some kind. The dirt trail wandered off toward the horizon and the silly sign on the rise that disappeared around the long, low slope of hill. Above me hung the huge shelf of mountain rock that formed a virtual back wall to Agreeable Wells. It was at least two hundred feet high. Only the southern tip of Agreeable Wells was open. Limitless grasslands melted off into nothingness. The hitching post was empty. The horses were gone which was probably why I hadn’t heard them whinny in fear as the plane engine droned closer.
The sun was out full tilt as I shaded my eyes to the sky. No plane. I looked around, trying to trail the roaring noise. Space was deceptive. There it was, shooting across the southern flats, no higher than a wagon wheel above the grass, upside down and racing along merrily. I couldn’t take my eyes off the plane. It was the Piper Cub again. If it were P.J., what he didn’t know about flying wasn’t worth knowing. He was a hot pilot if there ever was one.
The Cub roared closer, still bottom up, heading for the huddle of shacks and the shelf of mountain rock. It was frightening, death-defying and plain loco. But you couldn’t pull your eyes away. At the last second, when it seemed the Cub would pile right into the cabins, the pilot worked the stick and the light model climbed in a loop, came out of it neatly and clawed for altitude high above the camp. Engine thunder reverberated around the rocks.
“The damn fool —!” Mr. Riker had come up behind me, his big figure trembling in his denims, his hatless head and unclosed shirt showing he’d been disturbed at breakfast or something. His face was frozen solid with anger.
“What do you think he wants, Mr. Riker?” I said without looking at him.
Riker didn’t look at me either. We were both watching the plane barrel-roll across the heavens.
“Vindictiveness, Mr. Noon. Childish vindictiveness. That boy is a spawn of Satan. Look —” The Cub poised on a rising climb, suddenly dipped and power-dived for earth. I could only wonder why the wings didn’t come off. I never saw a Cub fly like that before.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
“Las Vegas and the men rode off earlier to scour the hills for Brandy. She’s an Indian but she’ll be half-starved roaming around in her condition. The girls are in the cabin preparing breakfast. I didn’t want them coming out here. No telling what devilment P.J. may be up to this morning.”
�
��He’s up to something,” I said. “Here he comes —”
He sure was coming. He was getting as close as he had been to the Buick yesterday. Not as close but memory served. The whine and whistle of the slipstream rose above the roar of the motor. Mr. Riker’s big hand suddenly fastened on my arm. But it was for support. The father was frightened for the son.
I could see the Cub’s nose now, the feathery fusilage, the markings on the wings. Suddenly, P.J. pulled out of the dive and cut across Agreeable Wells. About seventy-five feet up, he released something. I ducked instinctively and so did Riker. But it wasn’t a bomb or a brick, or a solid object. A light, umbrellalike thing dropped quickly, then began to flutter from side to side as it ballooned for earth. The Cub banked sharply to avoid the shelf of mountain rock and headed south for the flats. Pretty soon the drone faded as the Cub became a lost speck in the big blue sky. Silence settled once more over Agreeable Wells.
Mr. Riker shuddered and seemed to pull himself together. “We are about to receive a message, I imagine.”
He was right. The little umbrella thing was a parachute you’d find on a toy lead soldier. It fell softly on the trail leading out to the sign. “I’ll get it,” I said.
When I came back with it, Mr. Riker couldn’t wait to get his hands on it. He ripped the chute away from a small weighted object suspended by strings and wrapped in brown paper. His big fingers separated the paper from the weighted object which turned out to be a nugget. It looked like gold. Riker put the nugget in his shirt pocket without comment and spread the paper into a square that was about the size of a man’s handkerchief.
He cursed. And when a Bible reader curses, it has to mean something. His eyes studied me as he passed the paper to me.
it was a brown section of burlap paper like you’d get if you tore a shopping bag. There was a message on it. Written in the same painfully childish scrawl:
I know where the gold is. You want it — meet me at Charley’s cabin today at four o’clock. I’ll show you who’s crazy. Nobody found the gold but me.
P.J.
“Mr. Noon,” Riker began softly. “We haven’t discussed my idiot son as yet. But I feel I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “Was that a nugget you put in your pocket?”
He nodded. “It is. It comes from Charley Redwine’s cabin. The old man had kept it as a souvenir or relic ever since he could remember. Which only means —”
“You think P.J. may have killed Charley Redwine. I know it looks bad but let’s talk about this airmail letter. You think he’s on the level?”
Mr. Riker brushed at his eyes angrily. “P.J. is almost insane. He’s always been a trial to me. He was here with us until a few weeks ago. I had to send him packing. I had to. I don’t know where he gets his strangeness from. His mother was a saint, bless her. Lord —” His eyes still seemed to be bothering him.
“Why don’t we go inside and tackle some coffee, sir? We can talk easier there.”
He appreciated the break. Nodding vigorously, he moved ahead of me. But I could see his shoulders heaving in despair as I followed him in.
The cabin smelled of frying bacon and eggs. Rita said hello from the kitchen. Mary Lou was nowhere in sight.
Rita Riker looked at me with that warm survey on the morning after that remembers the night before but all she did was bring me a steaming cup of coffee. A tin cup.
“Where’s Mary Lou?” I asked by way of preamble. Rita looked great with an apron tucked around her slim middle. She was wearing levis and a blue corduroy shirt. But her glamor was still in plain view.
“Out back, drawing some water from the well. You know this country is loaded with wells? It’s saline water but we got those pills that take the salt out of it —”
Mr. Riker wasn’t listening to us. He was staring down at his plate with its untouched eggs still showing their sunny sides. The eggs were cold now. Rita had a wonderful faculty of never asking questions. She was either naturally thoughtful or just knew all the answers. She removed the plate and went back into the leanto to prepare some more.
I looked at Mr. Riker. “Where did he get the plane from?”
He stirred, coming back from his faraway place. “He’s always had an inventive turn of mind. He went to college, you know. University of Wyoming. He and Mary Lou. He’s a brilliant young man. It’s just that — he’s twisted in some devilish way —”
“The plane?” I reminded him.
“Oh. He bought that last year. P.J. is an excellent pilot as you saw. You’d be amazed how he’s fixed that machine up. He’s always invented gadgets and things. We used the plane to bring in supplies from Rock Springs. P.J. can set it down almost anywhere out here. The ground is so flat —”
He was bothered all right. Bothered plenty. He was too close to God not to see the Devil in his own flesh and blood.
“Why did you run him off, Mr. Riker?”
Mr. Riker looked helplessly at Rita who was coming back with more eggs for him and two for me. She patted him gently on his sagging shoulders.
“Stop blaming yourself, Thaddeus. You’re not responsible for bad weather, either.” His eyes thanked her and she looked at me. “The kid’s in a class by himself. That scar Mary Lou’s got? P.J. gave her that when they were kids. With a hunting knife. He quieted down a little in Portola but not much. The usual wild teenage stuff. Stealing cars, beating up old people. Father’s kept him out of jail for years, thanks to his standing as a churchman. But P.J. really went nuts out here. He shot sheep for laughs and turned rattlesnakes loose in the men’s cabins. Not to mention the time he raped Brandy. He caught her alone out on the flats one day and practically killed her. Well, he had to go. Tubby, Vegas and the men would have flogged him till he was in strips. So Thaddeus ran him off to save his no-good hide.”
Mr. Riker murmured, “The dreams of a lifetime — a tabernacle here in the wilderness — the gold dust that we must find to build it —” He stared at me proudly. “I couldn’t have an irresponsible child spoil all that goodness for me.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing the subject needed changing real bad. “But what about four o’clock today at Charley Redwine’s cabin? The cabin that isn’t there anymore. Are we going?”
Before he could answer, the cabin door swung open and Las Vegas grinned from the doorway, his ten-gallon hat pushed back to show the dust of a long hot ride. The Winchester that dangled insolently over the crook in his arm was dusty and harmless-looking. But Tubby loomed right alongside him and the Winchester in his flabby fingers was pointed nowhere else but at me. If he ever tickled the trigger, my head would be just a memory.
“Okay,” Las Vegas chuckled. “It’s done, Mr. Riker. Now we can stop breaking our backs with this tinhorn and get rid of him. Nobody will ever know he’s been here.”
Mr. Riker was still thinking about his no-good son. He stared blandly at Vegas, his eggs still untouched.
“Las Vegas — what are you saying? — I didn’t understand you —”
The pencil-thin mustache under Las Vegas’ thin nose twitched in irritation.
“Don’t hand me that crap,” he snarled. “We got rid of Noon’s Buick. Set fire to the gas tank. It’s nothing but burned junk on the side of the road. They’ll never be able to trace it to us at Agreeable Wells. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Now we don’t have to split with him, do we? Okay? Okay.”
Tubby’s tin badge couldn’t match the sparkle in his tiny eyes as he lowered the Winchester to center on my heart.
“Anytime you give me the word, Vegas. I never did like fellows from New York.”
13
The whole scene was like something I’d sat through a thousand times before. The little man in my brain who sits back and looks objectively at things was having a whale of a time. From his front seat he saw everything.
There was Las Vegas, flanked by Tubby, both carrying Winchesters they felt like using and both looking like hungry cats who had glommed onto
some food in a smelly alley. Old Mr. Riker was solid stone at the table, his big hands spread above P.J.’s airmail letter, his eyes trying to make some sense out of Las Vegas pointing a gun at him. Rita Riker had been caught between the leanto and the main cabin, her hand still closed around the coffee pot, her faint smile showing that Vegas turning snake was no surprise to her. I sat where I was, across from Mr. Riker, my hands on the table too, twenty thousand leagues from my shoulder holster. Tubby was giving me his undivided attention.
“Not here, dummy,” Las Vegas growled at his fat confederate. “We don’t want no bloodstains and no confusion. When we dump Noon, we dump him where we don’t have to carry him. Where he’ll stay till the buzzards finish him.”
“You’re a real human being,” I said.
He ignored me and looked back at Mr. Riker.
“Well? Are you in this with us or ain’t you? Or has this New York panhandler sold you a bill of goods?”
“Las Vegas,” Mr. Riker intoned solemnly. “Put away your gun and do not be ridiculous. There will be no more killing. I don’t know whatever made you imagine I wanted to get rid of Mr. Noon. Did you see the plane on your way in?”
The thin gambler looked puzzled. “Yeah. We saw the plane. So what?”
Rita Riker laughed and continued her walk to the leanto, showing her shapely back to their guns, contemptuously. “He can read, Father. Show him the note.”
“What note?” Vegas demanded angrily, sensing that control of things was slipping from his fingers. Tubby was confused too. He’d obviously expected Las Vegas to behave differently.
“We got a special delivery from P.J.,” I said. Mr. Riker indicated the brown paper on the table. Las Vegas scooped it up, read rapidly, smiled and thrust it into his shirt pocket.
Lust Is No Lady Page 7