The Burn Palace

by Stephen Dobyns

  Bobby Anderson accelerated up Water Street from the police station, as his black 370Z made a growl a little like the growl made by Carl Krause. He had just spent twenty minutes with that jerk-off Freddie Bonaldo, and it felt like twenty days. He had asked the acting chief to call the police in Oswego to see if they had anything on Krause. But Freddie had forgotten. He had been too busy with the press, too busy getting his picture on the front page of a bunch of papers. He also made provocative statements, such as, “I wonder if any baby is safe in this town.” What had gotten into him? Bobby knew Freddie was just dying to announce there had been a scalping, thinking it would get him a spot on Jay Leno. Get him tossed out of his job, more likely.

  At least the so-called task force had been announced and a chain of command established. The state police detective commander was in charge: Captain Tom Brotman. Bobby had exchanged only a few words with him in the past, but he knew his reputation, which was tough, smart, and photogenic. It was the photogenic part that might be a problem if it interfered with his relationship with the press. Bobby distrusted a boss who liked to have his picture taken. If the situation got worse, the deputy superintendant might take over; but now it was Brotman, and the town cops—including Bonaldo—took their orders from him. The FBI was another story; they told Brotman only what they wanted to. Now, however, the governor had got into the action. Rhode Island had a population of about a million, meaning the governor could stick his nose into everything. He had already put his press people at Brotman’s disposal, and the helicopters and a bunch of reporters had gone up to Providence for a press conference.

  Tonight, after the excitement, the town was shutting up early. Ronnie McBride had unrolled his sleeping bag in the alcove of Crandall Investments, hardly eight o’clock and already pickled. Howard Phelps was locking up at Phelps Plumbing & Heating. No telling where Woody was. Bobby had run into him early that afternoon, and Woody had given him the job of finding Nurse Spandex. Thanks a lot, Woody. But Woody had got a lead from a guy at You-You that he wanted to check out. He hadn’t seemed happy about it, and Bobby had asked him what was wrong.

  “A guy I was interviewing, a yoga teacher. I should of let the FBI handle him.”

  Bobby had asked why.

  “The fucker kept reading my mind. That’s what I need on top of everything else, a new-age clairvoyant.”

  From Janie Forsyth, the trooper doing the photography in the hospital, Bobby had learned that Susie had moved out. At first he’d been angry that Woody hadn’t told him, but then he realized it showed how much pain Woody must be in, because Woody dealt with pain by locking it inside him. If it came out at all it was as steam puffing out his ears. The last Bobby had heard from Woody about Susie was that they were getting married in December. Now Susie had split. Still, Bobby was supposed to be his best friend. How could you not tell your best friend that your girlfriend had dumped you?

  Bobby had felt he knew them well. He and his wife had gone out with them a bunch of times—dinner, movies, dancing, fishing, the good stuff. Susie even babysat his kids. She was finishing a graduate degree in social work at URI, with nothing left but a few papers and fieldwork. She and Woody had met four years ago, started dating, and then Susie had moved into Woody’s place in Carolina two years ago. When had he last seen her? Maybe three weeks back. The four of them had dinner at an Italian place in East Greenwich. She’d seemed fine, but on the ride home Bobby’s wife had said that Susie had looked a little low. “You’re always looking for drama,” Bobby told her. “She looked great.”

  He didn’t look forward to telling Shawna he’d been wrong.

  Bobby hadn’t found Nurse Spandex. She wasn’t in any of the usual places. Yesterday she had called Dr. Fuller at the hospital and said she wouldn’t be coming in for a few days. Then Dr. Fuller had unsuccessfully tried to find her. So she was either hiding because she’d fucked up or hiding because she was guilty of something. Or she might be dead. That seemed unlikely, but then Bobby would have said scalping was unlikely. Bobby would keep looking tomorrow, but now he meant to see Peggy Summers to try to loosen her tongue about who the father had been. Bobby had heard all that Rosemary’s Baby stuff, and to his mind Peggy was pretty messed up. On the other hand, she was only seventeen.

  Peggy lived with her parents in a house near where the knitting mill had stood—a worker’s house on Williams Street, except the mill was gone and the house remained. In fact, a whole street of identical narrow, two-story clapboard houses remained, as if at loose ends, not knowing what to do with themselves. Peggy’s father, Ralph Summers, had emphysema and was on oxygen—stretching behind him were decades of smoking and taking in plaster dust from hanging Sheetrock. So the family lived on his Social Security and what the mother, Mabel Summers, made at the Stop & Shop. Two cops were watching the house. Bobby waved to them, climbed the front steps, and gave an energetic knock.

  Entering their living room, Bobby saw he wasn’t welcome, partly because he was a cop, partly because he was black. This amused him. He was a handsome guy, and if they didn’t like him, it was their loss. But maybe it made him push them a little.

  “I’d like to speak to your daughter, if I may.”

  “She’s gone to bed,” said Ralph Summers.

  Bobby showed his shiny teeth. “So why don’t you trot upstairs and ask her to come down.” Summers sat in a tan Barcalounger that a bunch of cats had used to sharpen their claws. A TV table was on either side of him, one with Budweiser, one with the last of a pizza. Bobby guessed Old Ralph hadn’t trotted anyplace for a while. His cheeks were flushed pink; the rest of his face was the color of concrete.

  “Don’t worry,” said Bobby, “I’ll find my own way. Just sit tight; take a load off your feet.” By the time he had finished his sentence, he’d reached the top of the stairs. He heard the couple downstairs angrily whispering to each other. Bobby figured he had done them a favor. He had broken up their routine, giving them something to grouse about in the days to come. The upstairs had two rooms, plus a bathroom; only one had its door closed. Bobby knocked.

  “Hey, Peggy, it’s me Bobby. We gotta talk.” He pushed the door open.

  Peggy was propped up in bed, smoking and watching an American Idol knockoff on a small TV.

  “So, Peggy, how you feeling?”

  “Get the fuck out.” With her narrow face and overbite, Bobby thought she looked like an angry rodent.

  “Now, Peggy, let’s be nice. Either we talk here or someplace where it’s not so nice. You got an extra cigarette?”

  She tossed him a pack of Marlboros, which he snagged out of the air.

  “Light?”

  She tossed him a yellow plastic lighter. Bobby lit the cigarette, tossed back the pack and lighter, and took a deep drag. He had been trying to quit, but he felt he needed one.

  “So what’s up with this missing kid of yours? He’s disappeared and you don’t care? You hard-hearted? Why don’t you love him?”

  Peggy stared at the TV. “Because I never wanted it in the first place. Why should I give a fuck about a baby I didn’t want?”

  “So who was the father?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me?”

  She turned toward him angrily, and Bobby saw she was close to tears. “I don’t know. It was dark. I didn’t see his face. There were a lot of people, but they weren’t wearing regular clothes. Like they were dressed like Batman, you know, capes and shit. It was a party in the woods late last March. There was a fire. Nobody was drinking, but they had, you know, some pills, some mushrooms.”

  “Was it your first time?” Bobby was prepared to be sympathetic.

  “Fuck, no. That was when I was thirteen. Some boys got me after school. One boy, a year later, I nearly bit his prick off.”

  “You’re a tough cookie.”

  “I can be nice sometimes.” Peggy went back to watching the TV.

  “So what can you tell me about the guy you had sex with
?”

  “Nothing, he just grabbed me. I was pretty stoned. He’s lucky I didn’t puke on him. Would’ve served him right.”

  “How’d you get out there?”

  “Somebody drove me out, and somebody else put a blindfold on me. I was in the backseat. Maybe it took a half-hour to get there. They said I had some friends there, but there wasn’t anybody I knew.”

  “What’s this business about Rosemary’s Baby?”

  Peggy started yelling. “Don’t you see? The fucking mushrooms and people stamping their feet like some kind of dance. The guy who did it, he could have been anybody. He could have been the Devil himself.” She put her hands to her eyes and began to sob. Bobby watched her. The sobs seemed real enough.

  “How come you didn’t get an abortion?”

  “They told me not to. They kept calling, sometimes ten times a day. They called my parents. They made a bunch of threats.”

  “What kind of threats?”

  “That they’d tell, that I could get hurt.”

  “Who made the threats?”

  “You think they gave their names? I didn’t know anybody.”

  “They offer money?”

  “They gave my dad some.”

  “How much?”

  “He didn’t say. That son of a bitch, he’d give me up for ten bucks.”

  Peggy was again watching the TV. Bobby thought about what she’d said. “Okay, I’ve bothered you long enough, at least for now. Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Fuck you.”

  When Bobby got downstairs, Ralph Summers shouted at him, “You satisfied? You got her all upset!”

  Bobby gave him a smile. “How much money’d you get so she’d have the baby?”

  Ralph’s face turned purple. “I never got a penny.”

  “You’re lying to me, Ralph. It’s not nice to lie. I’m going to keep coming back until you tell the truth.” Bobby headed for the door. “Have a nice day.”

  He was halfway to his Z when he heard the house door open and close behind him. Mrs. Summers hurried down the steps. “Did she tell you?” She seemed both excited and frightened.

  “She said she couldn’t see his face.”

  “Yes, but did she tell you why?”

  Bobby wondered if this was some sort of game. “She said it was too dark.”

  “That’s not the reason. She told me he was wearing a mask. It was dark, but not that dark. He was wearing a mask of a skull, a human skull. That’s why she’s upset. It nearly drove her crazy at first.”

  And with that, Mrs. Summers hurried back to the house.

  • • •

  Seymour Hodges and Jimmy Mooney were in their ambulance parked out by Dunkin’ Donuts. Seymour liked to mix up his weed with jelly doughnuts, and they had a box of a dozen balanced on the dash. By morning it would be empty. Some nights, when the passion was on them, they’d splurge on a second box. “It’s all business expenses,” Jimmy would say. “It’s not like it’s costing us anything.”

  It was ten o’clock Friday night and business was slow. A few chest-pain runs and a stiff to the Burn Palace, that was it. Seymour was ready for his nap, and Jimmy yammered to keep him awake. He was sick of Seymour screaming at night, and he talked to postpone the evil moment.

  “A scalping,” Jimmy said. “I’ve never seen a scalping. You seen a scalping?”

  Seymour tended to be slow in answering, as if the words percolated into his head like water seeping into clay. Then he spoke so slowly that sometimes a minute would pass between one word and the next. Occasionally, when the next word came, Jimmy would have totally forgotten what Seymour was talking about.

  “A guy in another company was into scalping. Maybe a sniper.”

  “What’d he do with them?”

  “Dried them out. They all looked the same. Iraqis aren’t like us; they all got the same color hair. Black, some gray. He’d try to sell the scalp back to the family, you know, a memento. He got some sales, but it’s not like the families got the right scalps. He’d reach into a box and grab the first scalp he saw. Like I say, they all look the same.”

  “Maybe we’ll get the scalped stiff when the ME lets him go,” Jimmy said, referring to the medical examiner. “Nah, he’ll go up to Boston. That’s where he’s from, right?”

  Seymour didn’t answer, and Jimmy was afraid he’d nodded off. It was warm in the cab and thick with the greasy smell of good dope. Leaves blew across the lot; sometimes, to Jimmy, they looked like darting creatures.

  “It’d be neat to have your own scalp,” said Jimmy. “I mean, like somebody else’s scalp. You think the Indians ever used them like, you know, toupees?” There was no answer. “Hey, Seymour, what d’you think?”

  After a moment Seymour said, “I’ve never seen a bald Indian. I don’t think they come bald.”

  “Shit, I think you’re right. My dad’s as bald as an egg. I been combing my hair with my fingers, ’cause when I use a brush it gets full of hair. Those hairs are what you call irreplaceable. They’re like brain cells; you only get a certain number. Did I tell you about the Indian stiff I helped Digger bury last summer? A whole bunch of them were drunk as lords. Honked all the way to the Indian burial ground off Route Two, throwing bottles out the window. We got down that dirt road and they’d dug a round hole. Trouble was, a big boulder was at the bottom. No way could we put the casket in there. Well, they hooted and hollered till Digger said he sure wasn’t taking the stiff back. So the Indians took the body outta the coffin and stuck him in the hole, just bent him around the stone, looked like he was hugging it. A youngish guy—green as a pickle. Then they dumped dirt on him. One of the Indians put the casket in the back of his truck and took it home for his chickens to roost in. Later he said he’d got the best eggs he’d ever eaten.”

  Seymour was silent. Jimmy heard him breathing regularly, right at the edge of snoring. Jimmy tugged his arm so he grunted. “Hey, Seymour, you still interested in a job at Digger’s? I don’t think Carl’ll last much longer. Crazy as a shithouse rat. He was upstairs whispering to a stiff this morning, almost growling at it. Digger asked what was up, and Carl said he was clearing his throat. Fuck he was. Digger don’t like oddness in people. I have to act like a fucking choirboy around him. I figure Carl just needs a push. I tell you the story about a guy putting a stiff’s hand in another guy’s lunch box? Fuckin’ Carl would go tearing down the street if that happened. You still interested? It’d also mean time at the Burn Palace. There’s money out there.”

  Seymour made no answer.

  Jimmy tugged his arm. “You interested or not? I mean, I got other friends I can ask. Fuckin’ Carl gives me the creeps.”

  “Sure,” said Seymour. “Sure, I’m interested.”

  • • •

  Vicki Lefebvre stood at her daughter’s door and tried not to breathe. She tried to will her ears through the wood and into the room with the Adele posters. She might have opened the door and taken a peek, but when she’d done that an hour ago at nine o’clock, Nina had shouted, “Will you leave me the fuck alone! Why don’t you ever trust me?”

  But at least her daughter was home and didn’t smell of dope. Three times Vicki had gone out to the yard to see if her daughter’s light was on, but that didn’t mean anything. Nina could sleep through a brass band if she set her mind to it. When she’d gone into her daughter’s room, it was because she had heard Nina weeping. Vicki had stood in the hall, trying to make up her mind, but she didn’t see how she could hear the weeping and not do anything. After all, it wasn’t like her heart was made of stone. But Nina had stayed home last night and she’d stayed home tonight, so that was progress. But she still wouldn’t say where she’d been, and when Vicki asked, Nina became angry and frightened at the same time. She would yell at her to “get the fuck out.”

  Three times Vicki had called her ex in Groton, and this evening, she had gotten him. He must have been in a hurry to go somewhere, because he hardly paid attention to what she was sayi
ng. “She’s a kid,” he had said. “She’s sowing her wild oats. I did the same thing; you, too. Remember?”

  Vicki tried to say it wasn’t the same, that Nina was hysterical one moment and abusive the next.

  “Maybe she got laid and didn’t like it,” said Harold. “You know how these girls talk each other into it. They dare each other. You should keep a closer eye on her. I’ll talk to her about it, if I come up this weekend. I don’t know; I got a pretty full schedule. How’s her boyfriend? Do you like him?”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Vicki said, which was true enough, as far as she knew. Then Harold said he’d keep in touch and that was it. And who was he kidding? Harold had never kept in touch his entire life. But it occurred to Vicki that she could talk to some of Nina’s friends. She didn’t have many, but there were two or three that went back ten years or so.

  • • •

  Larry Rodman had gotten home at about nine o’clock, earlier than usual, but he’d had only one client. He put a couple of TV dinners into the microwave and pushed the button. Macaroni and cheese was his favorite. Afterward, he’d have a little maple-walnut ice cream and catch some ground-and-pound, sprawl-and-brawl on the mixed martial arts channel. He liked the girl bouts best, especially with Cyborg Santos, who looked the meanest. Rodman lifted the four stoneware cookie jars down from the shelf and set them in a row; then he dug in his pockets.

  This ring was twelve carats. He dropped it into the twelve-carat jar and it made a little clink. By itself, it wasn’t worth much, but they added up. But tonight he had a special treat. Digging into his pocket, he withdrew an engagement ring: eighteen-carat white gold and a one-and-a-half-carat diamond that sparkled under the ceiling light. He dropped it into the fourth jar. Often the family wanted the rings returned, but sometimes they were too upset to ask. If they came back later, he’d say it was too late. The deed was done. Larry didn’t bother with the rest of the stuff—watches, necklaces, bracelets, pins, brooches, cuff links, tie clips—unless it was top of the line. And pacemakers, he had a barrel of them waiting to go to the dump. No, he saw himself as a specialist. Gold wedding rings were what he liked, with a few diamond rings for their sparkle—“To put a little light on the subject,” he liked to say.