by Jack Ketchum
At least he thought she would.
By then they’d have buried her lunatic mother and she’d be home again.
In the meantime the fact that he had no phone number for her out in San Francisco and no way to talk to her until she did come back was driving him crazy. She’d refused to give him one, saying that she and her father would be busy dealing with relatives and friends of the family. Saying it wasn’t appropriate for him to call. Using that word. Appropriate.
Who gave a shit about appropriate?
But he’d had no choice but to accept it. Her mother was dead for godsake. He guessed you had to show some respect. But he was surprised to see how sad she seemed after all she’d said about her. About her mother being a fruitcake and throwing her drink against a tree and bodies buried in the garden. He’d have thought she’d be relieved to get the crazy bitch off her back.
He’d left her house that night feeling excited and confused again.
She’d grabbed his dick for chrissake!
He guessed that Katherine just had that effect on him. Excitement and confusion.
But this was worse than ever.
Because waiting was a total bitch. He’d come that close to fucking her and fucking her right this time and then she gets this phone call and it’s good night, Ray, I’ll call you when I get back, sure I will, of course, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose into a Kleenex. And the hell of it was that he only half believed her.
He wasn’t at all sure she would call.
Even after what he’d told her. Even after what they’d damn near done after he’d told her. With Katherine you just couldn’t say. You couldn’t be sure.
If she didn’t call he didn’t know what he’d do.
They were a thing now, right?
She could have called from California. She could have done that at least.
She didn’t.
He was having trouble sleeping. He never had trouble sleeping. He slept like the fucking dead.
He was eating too much junk food and drinking too much booze neither of which was good for his waistline and smoking too much dope and too many packs of Marlboro and mornings he got up hacking lungers into the toilet and feeling like a large polluted stream.
He looked for distractions. What the hell else could you do?
That was what Dee Dee and Jennifer were about really. Distractions. He picked out a brand-new Magnavox on Monday over at Sounds Limited and bought some new records and dealt Ralph Dorset, who worked behind the counter, a couple lids of dope in order to cut the price in half. He got the car washed. Tuesday he spent over at Lee Seymour’s house practicing with the band, getting lost in “Let’s Spend the Night Together” for three solid hours. That was okay.
The band as a whole still sounded like shit, though.
He even put in some extra hours at work, surprising the hell out of his father by offering to spell him so he could get in a few practice games over at Sparta Lanes.
All of it fucking distraction. Something to do. A way to keep from thinking too much about Kath.
It only half worked.
Thursday he got stoned on some truly amazing hash and went to the movies with Tim. The Colony was showing The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, My Teeth Are in Your Neck with Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski. Tim said it was pretty fucking cynical to release the movie now after what had happened to Sharon and wondered what Polanski thought, but that didn’t stop them from going, hell no, they went anyway. The movie was spooky and funny if a little lame sometimes like all European movies were a little lame but Ray definitely thought it was too cool to see this short guy, Roman Polanski, who had got this tall terrific perfect girl in real life and had been fucking her on a regular basis and then married her and knocked her up.
Short power! Yeah!
They were disappointed that you didn’t get to see all of Sharon’s tits in the bathtub scene. No nips. There was too much soap.
Supposedly one of those tits had been cut off by whoever had killed her and left on the floor by her body. That was what he heard.
It was weird to see a woman, especially a gorgeous fucking beast like Sharon Tate almost totally nude in a movie and then to know that somebody had murdered and mutilated the real naked flesh of that same beast just a week or so before. It made you remember that anybody could get fucked over and killed, anybody. Even a movie star like Sharon. That was the kind of world it was.
He wondered if they’d raped her. She was eight months pregnant and probably fat as a house.
You probably wouldn’t want to rape her. Not then.
After the movie they drove by Katherine’s house. No lights were on. He’d driven by the night before too and found that it comforted him in a way. She hadn’t called him because she wasn’t back. Period. The dark house said it all.
If she didn’t get home by the weekend he was going to go seriously nuts with the waiting.
She had to call. She fucking had to.
He woke that night at ten to three in the morning.
His head felt thick and achy from too much beer but he didn’t want to be alone. He wondered who’d be up at this hour and thought that probably Roger would. Roger was his sometime drummer in the band but made his living as a gas jockey working night shift at the Esso station and had his own apartment over it. Had Roger and the apartment not reeked of gas all the time he might have been as popular as Ray was.
There would be dope there and beer and maybe even a girl or two.
He stripped to the waist and in the bathroom washed his face and hands and spread Ban Roll-on across his armpits and slicked and combed his hair. From his closet he chose a crimson shirt threaded delicately with black, 60 percent rayon and 40 percent polyester, bunched slightly at the shoulder and baggy in the arms, a lot like the one Elvis used to wear touring on the road, left the top two buttons open at the neck and tucked it into his jeans.
He checked himself in the mirror, decided he looked tired, the eyes dark-rimmed and broody. But on him the look wasn’t bad. Anyhow it was only Roger and a couple of chicks maybe.
He got into his car and drove through dark deserted streets into town. There was a light burning in the apartment window over the Esso station, just as he’d suspected. He walked up the rickety flight of wooden stairs and knocked at the door. He heard Donovan on the stereo inside, “Mellow Yellow.” He hated that shit. Roger thought Donovan was cool but why anybody would think a song about fake dope was cool was beyond him and maybe that kind of thing was part of what was wrong with their band.
He knocked on the door and waited and then knocked again harder this time and Roger opened it and squinted at him and grinned. He was barefoot and bare-chested, in a pair of oil-stained jeans, long lank hair ratty as usual.
“Far out. C’mon in, man.”
Roger talked like that. Far out. Groovy. And maybe that was part of what was wrong with the band too.
“We was just doin’ a little blow, man. You want to do some blow? Only thing is, you gotta help me out on the bread situation, y’know? That fuck Danski don’t pay me till Saturday and I’m already, like, y’know, tapped, right? Hey, Cheryl, Sylvia, Harvey, look who dropped by for a little blow. You know Stevie Ray? His chick Marie? Nah, ’course you don’t. Stevie Ray’s from Morristown. My bro’s main man. Just got back from Nam, right? Just a coupla months ago. But jesus this is good blow. Try some. You want a beer, man?”
“Hey, Ray.”
“Hey, Ray.”
“Hey, man.”
They were all of them sitting cross-legged around a table that was probably already old and beat to shit when Eisenhower was in office. Its legs were cut off so that it rested about two feet above the equally beat-to-shit rug. Cheryl and Sylvia and Harvey he knew. In fact he’d fucked the first two and beaten up the third in junior high, he didn’t remember why. The girls were basically dogs. Stevie Ray was a bull-necked longhair in jeans and a cutoff denim workshirt. With arms that were not quite as big around as Harvey’s head. His girl Marie wa
s blond and slim and big-titted inside the Grateful Dead T-shirt and fuckable as hell.
Man!
The lines were laid out on a cloudy old mirror beside a rolled-up dollar bill and the blade from an Exacto knife.
Roger handed him a Schlitz.
“How much?”
“Ten, man.”
“For how much blow?”
Roger sat down between Sylvia and Cheryl and grinned. “Fuck it, man, bop till you drop, y’know? I mean, like, we got about four grams left. I figure about half a gram ought to sock it to ya righteously. We already done three grams of the shit tonight.”
He dug into his wallet, pulled out two fives and handed them to Roger and sat down next to the girl. It felt dangerous to sit down next to the girl because of Stevie Ray there on the other side of her especially when she smiled at him but it was the only space left at the table.
The girl smelled like patchouli oil.
It was slightly better than the smell of gasoline.
“So you guys are from Morristown, huh?”
He said this to Stevie Ray. Not even looking at the girl. He wasn’t about to get his ass kicked tonight. Not over some piece of pussy. He picked up the dollar bill and snorted a line and sniffed it up good and wiped his nose and rubbed his forefinger over his gums and snorted another. The coke rush blazed a sudden smooth trail to his head.
“Yeah.”
The guy was looking at his shirt like there was something wrong with it, like he’d puked all over himself or something.
“Good town. I got friends in Morristown. You were in Nam, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“How was it, man? Pretty bad over there?”
The guy kept staring at his shirt.
“See, the thing is I don’t talk about it. That okay with you, Ray? I sure as shit do hope so.”
He caught a glance between Stevie Ray and the girlfriend. On the girlfriend’s part it was a worried glance.
What was this guy’s problem?
He was liable to get his ass kicked just sitting here.
“Hey, whatever.” He snorted another line.
Doing the coke gave him an idea. A terrific idea. An inspiration, really. Good drugs could do that to you.
“Hey Roger, how much you take for a gram of this shit? Twenty?”
Roger hesitated and stroked what passed for his chin. He shook his head.
“Like I said, man, I’d like to give it to you for twenty. I’m real tight for bread right now. I mean, like, I’d have to say thirty. You think you can go thirty? It’s really good blow, man, you know?”
Roger was gouging the shit out of him but what the fuck. He dug into his wallet again and produced a twenty. Roger got up and went to his filthy walk-in kitchen and opened a drawer and tossed him a thimble-sized glass bottle with a plastic cap.
“Done, my man.”
He wondered if the thirty included another line or two at the table. He decided not to push it. Stevie Ray was still staring at the red shirt like it was a fucking red flag and Stevie Ray was an angry bull.
He finished his beer and said thanks, good to see you guys and pocketed the coke and got his ass out of there while it still was safe and sound and the last thing he heard when the door shut behind him was Stevie Ray say, flicking pussy in a pansy shirt, he could hear it because the Donovan album was over by then and tears of sudden rage stung his eyes. Get that piece of shit bastard alone with the Ladysmith and then let’s see how tough he is, let’s see who’s the pussy. But in a way he had to be almost grateful to this asshole too because the coke and wanting to get out of there so bad had given him the idea in the first place.
He’d go home and have a little more. Not too much. Two or three lines and the rest he’d save.
A present for Katherine.
Something to look forward to. No, something else to look forward to.
He knew she liked surprises.
He walked away smiling.
Once the coke wore off he’d sleep now.
Charlie Schilling was having no trouble sleeping. In fact he was sleeping away half the evening, falling out in front of the TV set. And twice there was a scotch in his hand which he found still clutched there in the morning. He was breaking his own rules drinking like this but somehow the rules didn’t seem to matter enough to worry about.
When he thought about exactly why he was falling off his personal version of the wagon he thought about his son Will and his daughter Barbara, and about Lila and fucking up with his family. He thought about Ed and Sally and felt that he was failing them too in some way though he didn’t quite know how.
He thought about the felony animal abuse case he was working, where a couple named Neinhauser had dragged their black Labrador bitch behind their car at thirty miles an hour as a punishment for running away, pausing only in order to let the dog vomit. He’d found a thousand-foot trail of bloody pawprints behind their car. The dog was in a new home now and the Nein-hausers were out on bail. There would be jail time and a fine, but not enough of either.
But mostly he thought about Barbara and Elise Hanlon and Lisa Steiner.
And Ray Pye.
Not even the business with the dog could touch his anger the way Pye could. It was as though Pye had been born to engage his fury and to no other purpose whatsoever. None that he could see. Pye was his White Whale, his Judas Kiss. All these years, getting away with killing a pair of kids. Riding around town in his convertable, taking in a movie, going on dates, going to parties. Basking in the fucking sun.
When the sun should burn, not bake him.
He thought jesus christ get off of it. Ed had found a way to leave it alone and he knew that so should he. But the only way he could leave it alone other than to get the kid was to drink and drinking would kill him eventually if he kept it up, he knew that too. His liver would fail him or his car would argue with a tree or he’d make some stupid mistake on the job. You couldn’t be a decent cop and drink. Plenty had tried but to his knowledge nobody yet had succeeded.
Booze would kill him. And Pye would have outlived him.
Leave off of this, he thought.
Yet Wednesday night found him parked in front of the Starlight Motel in a half-drunk sullen rage looking for some excuse to push the kid, some way to bust the kid’s balls, even just to annoy the kid. Any excuse, the kid not even around that night, his apartment dark and vacant. Schilling waiting, his radio turned up high enough to violate his town’s own noise ordinances. Drinking steadily from a flask of Cutty. His ashtray filling with cigarettes and his head beginning to bob eyes wanting to close until he woke to the first rays of morning to the birds twittering in the trees and a wicked throb in his head that told him more about what the rest of his day was doing to be like than he wanted to know.
You’re losing it, he thought. You really are. You got to get straight.
You got to stop this shit and get the kid.
When she wasn’t with Ray, Jennifer spent most of the week indoors at the Griffiths’ house avoiding Tim and his calls. She felt awkward and guilty around Tim now. What they’d done together was a betrayal. That was how it felt. Especially after Ray had given her the ring and told her how much he loved her. She felt guilty. She didn’t know what Tim felt but she sure did. It was a beautiful ring. It must have cost him a fortune. She thought now in retrospect that she’d slept with Tim only to spite Ray, not to just be with someone tender. Ray could be tender too, couldn’t he?
You’re still my number one, Jen. You know that.
She figured that in time her awkwardness around Tim would fade so that was what she was doing, giving it time. She still wanted to be friends with him. It would just take a while.
She helped Mrs. Griffith with the chores, the shopping, the cooking, the housekeeping. She caught up on her magazines, sitting in her room listening to the Carpenters and the Mamas and the Papas on the stereo, neither of which Ray or even Tim could stand. Mrs. Griffith was happy to have her there and grateful for help
with the chores what with her arthritis kicking in again and probably both she and Mr. Griffith were surprised to have her home so much too. It’d been a long time since they’d felt anything like a family together.
She never told them that it couldn’t last.
On Tuesday afternoon Katherine slept with Deke at his place in Oakland.
On Wednesday she buried her mother.
On Friday she slept with Deke again and told him about this strange little guy she’d met who said he’d committed murder.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Saturday, August 16
Schilling
Schilling woke—really woke—to the world around him, surveyed it as from some great height and found it unacceptable.
Unacceptable wasn’t even the word for it.
His bedroom was a tidal flat of strewn clothing and shoes and dirty sheets and pillowcases. He hadn’t even bothered to shove the dirty laundry in his closet. There were books and newspapers and magazines scattered across the floor, the night table, the dresser. Coffee cups stood stained and empty. Ashtrays brimmed. His floor had a very bad case of the dust devils, compounded by paper clips, the nub of a number-two pencil, assorted pocket change, dropped gray ashes, sprigs of tobacco and the occasional twisted butt that had somehow escaped its intended target.
This at just a scan.
In the bathroom there were rings in the sink and the toilet bowl and tub and peering into the tub he found it surprising to see just how much hair he was losing. The tub looked hairy as his chest did. His towel felt crusty and smelled of mildew. There were suspicious yellow stains on the porcelain rim of the toilet. He supposed he’d missed his mark a couple of times. Toothpaste splatters on the mirror. Yet more hair on the floor and in the sink.
The living room wasn’t much better than the other two rooms.
It looked like the Visigoths had ridden through. It looked like somebody’d come in and tossed the place while he was sleeping.
But the kitchen was the worst. The kitchen was by now abstract. It was not his kitchen, it belonged to Jackson Pollack. Whatever havoc it is possible to wreak with empty cans, freezer wraps and boxes, tinfoil, cellophane, eggshells, apple cores, lemon peels, beer cans, liquor and soda bottles and bottle caps, Wonder-bread and butter wrappers and crumbs and toast crusts, pans and knives and forks and dishes, this he had wrought and done so supremely.