Black Mountain

by Laird Barron

  “Strippers?” I said.

  “Negative, sir. Burlesque chicks don’t take it all off. Harry liked that those girls leave something to the imagination.”

  “And Delia? You expect me to buy that he didn’t talk about her?”

  “Harry was a gentleman. He bought flowers for women, held the door. Wasn’t the kind to kiss and tell. He didn’t date a lot anyhow. Said a bachelor’s life is simpler.”

  “A gentleman and a scholar,” I said. “Earlier, before I tossed this fine truck, I snooped around your pad. My observations. First, restock your beer. Second, you’re sleeping on the floor. Flashbacks to the military, or what?”

  He finished his cigarette and tossed the butt.

  “Probably paranoia . . . Feels like I’m being watched in the condo. Woke up the other night in a cold sweat. Weapons instructor of mine in the Corps said it’s smart to heed your sixth sense. Your skin crawls like you’re under a scope, then you’re being scoped. Unless that was you, peeking through my curtains.”

  “Wish I could ease your mind. Stay frosty, or whatever it is you Marines do in troubled times.”

  “I’m pissing ice cubes.”

  I approached and passed him my card. I’d scribbled one of my private numbers on the reverse side.

  “Hold on to that. It’s tempting to run. Don’t succumb to the instinct. You get scared, call me instead. The hills have eyes, the fields have ears. Because if you run, if you hide, well, the optics aren’t favorable. Lay low, but like the cops say, don’t leave town.” I waited for him to confirm his understanding. “Last thing . . . What’s a nice boy like you doing with books on witchcraft? Funky collection you got at the casa.”

  “Sex magic,” he said.

  “No shit?”

  “Bitches love sex magic.”

  I made him drive me back to Kingston, and square one.

  PART II

  MASKS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Do evil deeds by day (or morally questionable deeds) and suffer headaches and nightmares as a reward. I dreamed of a forest, green and black and mysterious. Dad and I were fighting. Dad thrashed me as easily as ever. In this nightmare, he loomed twelve feet tall. He gripped my throat and raised me off the ground. Hellfire crackled in his eyes and whiskey vapor steamed from his nostrils.

  Your problem is that you think you escaped. There’s no escaping the darkness. Each word was a peal of thunder, a glacier scaping a V into the earth.

  Partially hidden within a stand of trees, my dead mentor, Gene K, called to me: The woman, the boy, your faithful dog. Hold on to them, Isaiah—you’re sinking fast.

  Seemed about right.

  * * *

  —

  NEED TO RESURRECT THE DEAD for a brief heart-to-heart? Lace on his or her shoes and take a walk. Over the weekend, I strolled down Memory Lane and past the proverbial graveyard.

  First, I tried the electronic route.

  Harold Lee’s family proved as dysfunctional and obdurate as I’d anticipated. Goons, thieves, and inveterate gamblers share that commonality. His ex-wife and eldest son didn’t return my calls. The eldest son had the sick daughter. I finally got the youngest on the horn. He knew Nothin’ ’bout nothin’ and said that his deadbeat dad could rot. No comment on Harry’s charitable donations to the child’s medical fund. He disconnected and left me to bitterly reflect on my own father and our nonexistent relationship.

  Sorting Lee’s receipts was my method of consulting the spirits via tea leaves or vying to glean a clear picture of a jigsaw from a mere handful of puzzle pieces. I learned that he slapped expenses on plastic only when necessary; otherwise, he chose cold, hard cash. He frequented upscale bars, gentlemen’s clubs, and the neighborhood liquor store near Clayton Park. He dined at a downtown Sicilian restaurant twice a week, minimum, and had approximately nine payments remaining on a Chrysler sedan. Law enforcement hadn’t recovered the car. His Esopus Sportsmen’s Club membership was good until December, as were his Empire Pass and season ticket to Mohonk Mountain. The man hadn’t lived large; however, he’d spent freely on his passions. Typical of rent-a-thugs, gamblers, and assorted ilk. I’d done the same until recently.

  He’d scribbled the name and number of Ray Anderson, burglar extraordinaire, inside a matchbook cover. That pricked up my ears. Nic Royal insisted Lee and Anderson were friendly outside of work. A shady character telling me the truth? Either pigs were sprouting wings or he’d seen his life flashing before his eyes.

  Ray Anderson’s wife managed an office for a water treatment company. A modicum of research revealed the company boasted a client list in the thousands, with numerous celebrities among the mundane well-to-do customers.

  Oh, Ray, you rascally cat burglar. Those addresses came in handy for your nocturnal activities. Here’s a grim reality check—a preponderance of burglaries are committed either by associates of the victim or by crooks in the employ of the service industry. Tom and Dick are installing your new cabinets as Harry (Ray, in this example) makes a key mold of your back door lock. The crew returns weeks or months later—say, while the family is on vacation—and strips the house to its foundation.

  I idly wondered whether Mrs. Anderson had been in on the scheme or was an unwitting pawn. Did she sincerely believe Ray’s cover story that he was a professional gambler? In my experience, spouses (and estranged children) of bad guys prefer to be kept in the dark, and none of them care to talk.

  On a flier, I called the widow anyhow.

  Nothing dramatic came of our ten-minute conversation, which I prefaced with the blunt admission that I’d been hired to investigate the killing of Harold Lee, an individual her husband might’ve known professionally, if not as a friend.

  The basics were old hat: She barely glimpsed the stranger who drove away with Ray the night he died: an adult male of indeterminate age and ethnicity in a brown sedan.

  She did confirm that Harold Lee was a relatively close acquaintance of Ray’s. He came by the house for dinner and the men went fishing together two or three times a year. Where? Day trips to the Ashokan Reservoir, Esopus Creek, and High Falls. She described “Harry” as rather charming; an old-fashioned, courteous man who unfailingly brought her flowers or a bottle of wine—a shame he’d died. Did I suspect a connection between his and Ray’s murders?

  Truth was, I did. Strongly. By the way, did Lee ever bring anybody else around? Either an older gentleman or a youngish woman? Late twenties to early thirties; attractive, buxom, called herself Delia?

  Nope.

  Next, I searched online for the Bird of Paradise nightclub and the burlesque review Royal mentioned. There was nothing in Lee’s receipts to indicate he’d patronized the joint. That suggested management comped him or Delia got him a sweetheart pass. Interesting.

  No matches for Delia, which didn’t prove anything—she probably danced under a stage name. Eventually, I struck gold, finding an older advertisement for the Sapphire Review that featured headshots of its performers. Subtracting the raven-black wig and heavy makeup, a woman who went by Midnight Star bore a striking resemblance to the elusive Delia. Midnight Star was the main attraction, although biographical details were sketchy.

  I called Curtis and asked if he could persuade management at the White Rock Hotel to hook me up with a VIP table at the next Sapphire Review.

  Curtis snickered.

  “What do you think, schmuck? Not a problem. We’ve buried guys under their golf course for years.”

  * * *

  —

  MEG INVITED ME OVER for early supper. She said Devlin looked forward to a visit from “Uncle Isaiah.” After a rocky beginning, we were pals, the boy and me.

  Devlin mumbled “Eyez-zay-yah” for the first six months of our relationship. He’d gradually gotten the pronunciation under control. I missed it. The boy was dark-haired and wiry. Unafraid to use his teeth whenever I g
ot him in the kiddie version of a half nelson. I appreciated that feistiness. He didn’t ask after Mac. Children are unsophisticated, not stupid. He knew damned well his dad had flown the coop, in that weird logic peculiar to anybody under the age of sixteen, Mac’s departure embarrassed him. Maybe he blamed himself. No age limit governs guilt.

  I opted for the coward’s route and pretended everything was hunky-dory. Checked out DVDs of the latest Star Wars flicks (a major fixation). Played Darth Vader to his Obi-Wan with plastic light sabers in the yard. Read him a story before bed on the nights I came over. Bloody fairy tales—the unabridged versions full of fornication, cannibalism, and man’s inhumanity to man. Minerva usually lay at the foot of the bed, drowsing. He loved Minerva and she loved him right back.

  We were dueling in the backyard and I noticed he seemed glum. Took some prying to get the story that he’d caught a ration of crap at school.

  “The kids at school made fun of you?” I said.

  “Because of my Wonder Woman shirt. Bobby Sweeney says it’s a girly shirt.” He made a face and explained that his mom got it for him at Target. He owned most of the Justice League—Green Lantern, Batman, and The Flash shirts and Superman PJs.

  “You like Wonder Woman a lot?”

  “Yeah.” He nodded bashfully.

  “Geez, Dev, join the club. She your favorite?”

  He squirmed and studied his nicked-and-battered work boots.

  I knelt so we were eye to eye and laid my hand on his shoulder.

  “Listen, buddy. You wear whatever the fu—the heck—you want. It doesn’t matter what Bobby Stinky says, okay?”

  Devlin cracked up over Stinky.

  “Okay.”

  “He’s a fool. Anybody who doesn’t know Diana Prince is the greatest, baddest hero in comics is a lost cause.”

  “Even greater than Superman?”

  “Wonder Woman kicks Superman’s butt all day long.” I glanced over my shoulder. “While we’re on the subject, maybe the time has come for me to teach you to throw a punch. Would you like that?” I made a fist and smacked my palm.

  “Yeah!”

  “Isaiah Coleridge!” Meg yelled from the kitchen.

  “Your mom has superhearing,” I said.

  “Oh, that she does,” Devlin said.

  Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and greens. Afterward, Devlin bolted for the living room and a show on the Cartoon Network. His mother and I shared the dregs of the wine.

  Normally, Meg declined help in clearing the table—the kitchen was her unassailable domain. Tonight, she sipped wine and watched me rinse the dishes and inexpertly load the washer. She hadn’t changed out of her work clothes.

  “Can you wrangle a babysitter for Wednesday evening?” I said. “Let’s paint the town.”

  “Ooh, sounds enticing,” she said. “Sweep me off my aching feet.”

  “Dinner and a show?”

  “Dinner would be terrific. Honestly, it doesn’t have to be swanky. You could hand me a bag of Burger King if it meant escaping the damned kitchen. I haven’t been to a show in ages. What kind of show?”

  “Cabaret. World-class.”

  “Cabaret,” she said with a hint of suspicion.

  “Singing, dancing, glitter. The Moulin Rouge end of the spectrum.”

  “Moulin Rouge, eh?”

  “It won’t be that glamorous. Except for the tits. The tits might be pretty posh.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Wednesday evening rolled around.

  As I sat on the bed, waiting for Meg to fix her makeup, I told her about a recurring dream. She was aces with symbolism and I’d become increasingly obsessed with the notion that everything meant something.

  Whiro, the demon of Māori lore, rose from stygian realms to menace me. Whiro assumed a variety of guises when he infiltrated my nightmares. This dream occurred in a deep, dark forest clearing at night. Primeval sequoias loomed, their roots sunk into the brainpan of a sleeping giant. Old naked men circled a bonfire. A bone fire, in the mother tongue of the Celts—flames shot from a pyramid of blackened, heat-cracked skulls.

  The ancients whooped and sang.

  My Māori grandfather, Hone, war club brandished overhead. My father, Mervin, medals hammered into his bare breast. Gene in corked logging boots. Harold Lee, whole and hale, natty tie dangling to his soft belly. Burt P girded by a weight lifter’s belt and naught else. Agent Bellow flashing his G-man shades. The Croatoan, knurled as a petrified tree, his features slick with scar tissue.

  Whiro, the horned Māori death god, presided as a two-story-tall effigy. Carved from primordial rock, the statue glistened, black as creosote from eons of blood spatter. It absorbed red fire glow and spat back the tectonic roar of a subterranean river, a demonic Mississippi or Amazon or Nile down, down below.

  I don’t have much attachment to the Māori aspect of my heritage and yet it seemed that ghosts swam in my blood. The men, caricatures produced by my overheated subconscious, gazed into my eyes and performed a haka.

  “Why the males?” I said, watching with appreciation as Meg wriggled into her dress. “Why not the women? Burt P, Bellow, my father . . . they have wives or lovers, mothers. What about my own mother? Why only the men?”

  “Women are the nurturers,” she said. “Men are the destroyers. Especially the men in your world. You don’t dream of women because you don’t think you can be loved. Or saved. How is it you recognized a Māori god of evil and darkness?”

  “I’m a fan of world mythology.”

  “The Mid-Hudson library system has excellent resources. We could research your genealogy on your mother’s side—”

  “Mythology. Books on mythology are fine.”

  “How are you feeling?” She laid her cool hand on my forehead. “You seem a bit off.”

  “What gave me away? The bags under my eyes?”

  “Sleep more. That’ll help with the bad dreams. You’re burning out.”

  I gulped a handful of aspirin to blunt an oncoming headache and the minor pains in my hand and ribs. To be fair, my battered condition was the new normal, and had been since my latter twenties.

  “A double date.” Meg said a few minutes later when Lionel made the scene in his fabulous and sweetly detailed Monte Carlo. Impossible to detect whether she was genuinely excited or being sarcastic.

  Lionel introduced his date—a woman in a HELLO KITTY T-shirt, acid-wash jeans, and cowboy boots. She wore a purple bob and a fistful of rhinestone rings. Whale of a shiner under her eye. I recognized her as the Saturday night bartender from the Golden Eel. Punching and getting punched came with the territory in that worthy establishment.

  “This is Robin, my wingman—uh, wingwoman,” Lionel said. His buckskins matched Robin’s boots. I yearned to inquire after his choice of duds. He anticipated my gambit and swiftly changed the subject. “Coleridge, moderation is your watchword tonight. You’ll be driving the chariot home, because I mean to get crocked. After that, I’ll start drinking.” A whiff of his breath suggested the first phase of his plan was well under way.

  I’d optimistically chosen an outfit from the classier, less violent, portion of my wardrobe. One of the suits minus bullet holes, in other words. Meg wore a sheer white dress, backless. Watching her glow like a diamond made me acutely aware of her lack of an engagement ring. Early on during our courtship, she’d explained kindly, and relentlessly, that I wasn’t marriage material.

  On the way to the car, she said into my ear, “It must be tough, Mr. Private Eye, toiling in a line that requires frequent sorties to watch nubile chicks strip to the bare essentials.”

  “Hellish,” I said.

  “The last time we went to a joint this swanky, it was a mob den, and someone got their leg broken.”

  “How is it that Chuck forgives me while the rest of you harbor a grudge?”

  “He�
��s afraid you’ll snap the other one.”

  “Point taken. Some clodhopper gets rowdy, hold me back.”

  “I carry bear mace in my purse.”

  “Pepper spray for bears? The heavy-duty stuff?”

  “Yes. A two-second blast in the eyes should do the trick.”

  “Good grief, lady. I’ll try to behave.”

  “It’s more for the other women who get out of hand when they see you in that suit.”

  “Might take a three-second blast,” I said.

  * * *

  —

  WHITE ROCK HOTEL represented one of the last great family resorts built during the early 1960s. Survivor of near bankruptcies, seven or eight changes of ownership, and a Frankenstein’s chart of half-completed renovations, WRH resembled every inch the palace that had hosted presidents, kingpins, and the entire Rat Pack.

  Olympic-length pools, beauty salons, ice-cream parlors, golf courses, swanky restaurants, and an upscale nightclub—the hotel persisted as a small pocket of reality where vests and ties were the staff uniform, monied ladies still wore ballroom gowns, and gentlemen wore fedoras and Brooks Brothers ensembles.

  The WRH should’ve done more custom as a one-stop family vacation. Regrettably, the tourist model had changed radically since the turn of the twenty-first century. Scuttlebutt indicated the property (three hundred acres near Accord in a forested nook among the Shawangunk Mountains) would soon be assimilated by foreign investors, modernized, and converted to a conference center.

  Sorry, middle-class working folks on the make for a semi-affordable family getaway; the pool was about to close forever.

  The Bird of Paradise Lounge emanated more Flower Power/Disco–era San Francisco than faux-1960s Catskills. Lots of velvet and brass; scoop-shaped chairs and dimly volcanic LED lighting that was all the rage back when America still fantasized about flying cars, unisex bathrooms, and returning to the moon. The hostess (in a Vegas showgirl feather bonnet, powder-blue flight suit, and three-inch heels) seated us near the stage. Drinks were gratis, compliments of management. Curtis had certainly come through.