The Last Coin

by James P. Blaylock

  Andrew decided not to go about it in any slipshod manner. It was just possible that he was involved in something more grand than he had suspected. If so, then subtlety was vital. What was called for was tomfoolery with a delicate touch.

  He mixed up a pitcher of lemonade in the kitchen, then sneaked up the stairs to make sure Pennyman’s door was shut. He would have to place the call from his bedroom phone, and his bedroom was just down the hall from Pennyman’s room. He couldn’t afford to be seen going past in the hall or hustling up and down the stairs. He couldn’t call any attention at all to himself, not if he wanted to accomplish anything.

  After the call, there was the chance that Pennyman would phone out, that he had accomplices, that he was part of a more nebulous conspiracy and that he would want to keep them informed. In that case, Andrew would have to listen in. He’d have to slip up the stairs into the attic to where the extension was. Clearly, if Pennyman spotted him going up, Andrew would have to pretend to be paying a visit to Aunt Naomi, and forget about listening in. Coming back down afterward, of course, would be riskiest. He could still claim to have been up visiting Naomi, but Pennyman would be certain he hadn’t been. And if Pennyman tumbled to the gag phone call, or to the existence of the attic extension, then he’d be certain about the origins of the note, too, and would be on his guard. Andrew’s entire battle plan would be exposed. He tiptoed along, holding his breath, listening hard. The coast was clear; the door was closed.

  He got the best effect by talking through a Melitta coffee filter—a black plastic cone with a paper filter still lined with wet grounds. The effect was astonishing, like a voice out of an orbiting satellite. He slipped into his bedroom, and eased the door shut. Then, holding the coffee filter against the telephone mouthpiece like an upended bullhorn, he shoved his face into the cone and dialed Pennyman’s number. He heard the phone ring across the hall an instant before he heard the manufactured ring inside the telephone. “Mr. Pennyman?” he asked, suppressing a giggle.

  “Yes,” Pennyman answered, immediately suspicious.

  “Mr. Jules Pennyman?”

  “Yes, what do you want?”

  “I have a message for you. From a friend in the east.” Andrew snickered, immediately sniffing and clearing his throat, as if it hadn’t been a snicker at all. He pinched himself hard on the leg.

  There was a silence, then Pennyman saying, “You do, do you?”

  Very slowly and ponderously, enunciating as if he were talking to a half-wit or a foreigner, Andrew said, “He wants you to know that the key to the dilemma is a chew of tobacco. Tow-bak-ko. A chaw of … terbackky. His advice is Redman brand. This is generally unknown.”

  There was another silence, a long one, which Andrew had to break by hanging up. He buried his face in his jacket, laughing like a fool. Pennyman was right down the hall. If he heard Andrew laughing like that, heading up to the attic, it would be curtains for the whole campaign. Andrew pinched himself again, trying to make it hurt, then ditched the coffee filter under the bed and went out swiftly and silently, up the stairs, sliding past Pennyman’s room. The door was still shut.

  He waited in the attic for a full minute. Timing was the key here. He couldn’t afford to pluck up the receiver while Pennyman was dialing. Pennyman would hear the empty silence of the off-the-hook extension. If he were talking, though, to a line already open … Andrew’s hand hovered over the phone until, on the count of sixty, he eased the receiver out of the cradle. There was the sound of Pennyman’s voice, already in conversation.

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  “When?”

  “On the agreed-upon night.”

  “Look, I’m not sure that the kind of money you’re offering is worth the trouble that …”

  The voice trailed off, interrupted, if that were possible, by an enormous silence—the silence of Pennyman listening, judging, and coming to conclusions. The owner of the voice on the other end had somehow understood the silence, had felt its weight pressing against his own words, his own whining.

  Andrew listened hard. A moment of revelation was at hand. What did it mean, “the trouble”? The silence lengthened. Then Pennyman’s voice again: “On the agreed-upon night.”

  “Yes. Of course. I just …”

  Andrew wheezed into the phone just as the man paused.

  “I just …”

  Andrew made a noise like a bird, a sort of canary twitter involving his tongue and upper lip, only an instant of it.

  “Pardon me?” asked the voice, half-apologetically.

  “What?” said Pennyman. “I didn’t …”

  Andrew hung up—desperately carefully—and then slid out and down the stairs just as fast as he could manage. He heard Pennyman murmuring behind his door as he stepped past, and he was in the kitchen in seconds, lifting the receiver to the downstairs phone and dialing Pennyman’s number again. It was busy, so he re-dialed—once, twice, three times, and then it rang. Pennyman picked up the receiver and listened for a moment before saying, “Hello?”

  Andrew switched the faucet in the sink over to spray and turned both taps onto full, then, without saying a word, shoved the receiver down into the sink, aiming it at the cataract. He counted to ten slowly before pulling it out, biting his jacket sleeve, and mumbling through a mouthful of cloth, “Redman brand. Everyone agrees upon the night.” Then he hung up, tense, wondering if he’d gone too far.

  He started whistling very loud and stomping around in order to give the impression that he was hard at work. He poured a tall ice-filled glass of lemonade, then stamped away up the stairs, still whistling, but softer now, more subtly. He rapped on Pennyman’s door, and the old man opened it almost at once, as if he’d been standing right there.

  “Glass of lemonade?” asked Andrew. “Made in the shade by an old maid with a spade.” He winked. “Just now brewed it up in the kitchen. I’ve been outside painting.” He looked past Pennyman, into the room. Only a slip of it was visible through the crack between Pennyman and the jamb. On the floor, weirdly, was one of Aunt Naomi’s cat boxes, or rather, one of her cats’ cat boxes, well used, and with a little slotted metal scooper shoved into the sand.

  Upon opening the door, Pennyman regarded him evenly, then glanced at the glass with a look of profound contempt. He started to speak, but Andrew’s face betrayed his puzzlement over the cat box, and suddenly Pennyman’s countenance changed. He pushed the door open a little wider, as if he had nothing to hide, and gestured back into the room with his free hand. “Looks odd, doesn’t it?” he said. Andrew shook his head, trying to grin. “I thought I’d do my part. These little domestic chores … Rose is too busy for them, and heaven knows, what with the painting and all …”

  “Of course,” said Andrew. “And Naomi, certainly, still isn’t up to it entirely. By golly. We appreciate it; I can assure you.”

  Pennyman took the lemonade now, smiling widely. Andrew was one up on him, and he knew it. Scowling wouldn’t accomplish a thing for him. He stood for a moment, as if unsure what to do next, like a child who had been caught at something and had managed to lie his way out of it but was still edgy about the lie.

  Andrew raised his eyebrows, thinking to follow up his little victory. “Something gone wrong?”

  “No,” said Pennyman, recovering. “Why?” His tone of voice seemed a challenge to Andrew to make something of the cat box.

  “Nothing. This is really first-rate of you. Humbling sort of job, mucking out cat boxes—calls for something more than lemonade, really. And this is out of a can, I’m afraid, but not at all bad.” The conversation had come to an impasse. Pennyman was clearly anxious to close the door.

  “It will do just fine,” he said. “I’m really rather busy.”

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “I can see that. Well, there’s more in the kitchen. I’ve mixed up a jumbo can. It’s in the fridge.”

  Pennyman stared at him. He was gaining ground. “In the fridge,” he said flatly. Then he smiled an ingratiating smile, star
ted to close the door, but evidently thought better of it. “I’d like to recommend a book to you, by the way.”

  “Ah,” said Andrew. “Which one.”

  “Anthropological text, actually. I know that’s not your meat, as they say, but you’d find it … informative. Wonderful book, actually. All about a race of early men in South America who dismembered their dead, afraid that they’d walk again otherwise. Sawed them into pieces. Very nasty business, don’t you think?”

  Andrew gaped at him. “Yes. Now that you point it out. I mean to say—sawed them up?”

  “Into fragments. Then generally mixed up the pieces of a half-dozen corpses and buried them like a salad. If the corpse still managed to rise from the dead it wouldn’t have any idea who to haunt—wouldn’t know whether to go after the cousin of its arm or the landlady of its right ear.”

  “Fascinating,” said Andrew. “I’ll look forward to it. But right now I’ve got to get on with the cafe, actually. Been at it steady. I just took a break to bring you up a glass. I mean to say that I’ve got to get back to the painting. Horrible job.”

  He turned around and fled back down the stairs, cursing himself. Why had he thought it necessary to face Pennyman down? His momentary advantage over the man had gone up in smoke, and he had quite likely given himself away, to boot. If he had just let it go after the phone in the sink gag! Maybe headed back upstairs in another half hour to make a third call—a breather call—and then another a half hour later. By dinnertime Pennyman would have been jumpy as a flea. Now Andrew had gone and spoiled the effect. And the old maid with a spade business had been far too hearty. He would have to train his face and his voice not to give him away. But the cat box … What in the world? Pennyman was going to lengths to ingratiate himself with Rose and Naomi, but for what reason? Just to be in a better position to do Andrew down? He picked up the lemonade pitcher, looked around guiltily, and drank off a third of its contents before wiping the rim and putting it into the refrigerator.

  Andrew looked again at his pocket watch: almost one o’clock in the morning. Pickett was late. He had called from somewhere outside Bakersfield and had been driving for sixteen hours, all the way from Portland. He had sounded very mysterious, as if he’d learned something; he wouldn’t say what—not over the phone. That was at ten. Anyone could have made it from Bakersfield to Seal Beach in three hours, even in Pickett’s rattling old Chevy.

  Andrew peered through the window at the deepening fog. Headlights loomed through the mists on the highway, appearing and disappearing like the glowing eyes of deep-water fish. It was eerily silent, as if the fog muffled all noise. He could just hear the drip, drip, drip of moisture plunking down into the saturated dirt of the windowbox from an overhanging branch.

  The menus were finished. At first, until they got their sea legs under them, they’d offer a price-fixed menu—only two choices for the main course. There’d be a different theme, so to speak, every Friday and Saturday night, and breakfast served Saturday and Sunday mornings. But that wouldn’t start for a week or two. Andrew had ordered handbills with the idea of giving them out to early-morning, weekend pier fishermen.

  On Saturday, when they opened, Andrew would lead off with Cajun food, which was in vogue—something that was irritating, since Andrew had fancied it for years. He couldn’t much stand the idea of liking things that were fashionable. People would assume that he liked them because they were fashionable, when in fact it was most often true that the opposite was the case. Cajun food though … He’d make a gumbo that would wake them up. With Rose and Mrs. Gummidge waiting tables, Andrew cooking, and Pickett generally maitre d’ing and helping out here and there, they’d do tolerably well. He’d have to give Mrs. Gummidge clear orders not to speak, though. He couldn’t have her start yammering in front of the guests; that would be the end of their patronage.

  Andrew’s mind wandered, sorting through his list of current troubles. It seemed that there was always something leering in at the window, some ruinous little piper demanding to be paid. Rose still had no idea that he’d loaned Pickett the credit card merely to stock up on Weetabix. It would do her no good at all to know. She couldn’t fathom it, and for very good reasons, too. Yesterday evening, after his making up with Rose, Andrew had popped down to the supermarket to search out sesame oil and oyster sauce in anticipation of Chinese night, and there in the import foods aisle he’d run into a shelf of Weetabix. His information had been wrong. They weren’t contraband at all. They were a dollar and a half a box. With a dozen biscuits in a box, and two in a serving at ninety cents per serving, that was a profit margin of two or three hundred percent, not subtracting for overhead. Andrew sighed. He had sent Pickett after the Weetabix in good faith, anyway. He couldn’t be expected to know everything.

  Pickett wouldn’t have charged more than sixty or eighty dollars in gas. Andrew would have to keep the thing silent and nab the credit card bill before Rose got to it. He couldn’t afford to forget—as he’d forgotten about the coffee filter under the bed. She had found it later in the evening while searching for a bedroom slipper. After trying in vain to dream up a lie, Andrew had said simply, “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” and she had nodded in agreement, not asking him to try. It depressed him, though, her having to protect him with her silence and her continually taking the long view. The house painting had made up for some of it. And when this whole thing was over, he would quit staying up late every night. That would help. She rarely said anything about it, but he was certain she felt his absence, so to speak, and he was happy she did.

  Tonight, though, he had business to attend to. Rose was long ago in bed, and it would be a simple thing tonight to unload the cases of Weetabix like he’d done the whiskey, stow them away, and later on pretend that they’d come from some standard issue distributor in Los Angeles.

  But where was Pickett? He’d been on edge when he’d called, had mumbled something about a newspaper clipping from the Vancouver Tribune, about a murder, about a curious book he’d bought in a Gastown bookstore. Andrew had pressed him for details but Pickett had clammed up.

  Headlights swung round the corner and there sounded briefly the churning rumble of the Chevrolet. Then the lights blinked out and the motor coughed quietly and cut off. Andrew stepped out onto the side porch just as the pale bulk of Pickett’s car coasted out of the mists and slanted in toward the curb. The door opened and Pickett hunched out from behind the wheel, carrying his leather briefcase. He grabbed Andrew’s elbow and hurried him back in after shutting the car door softly behind them but leaving the window down. He stood inside the cafe, watching the street.

  Andrew started to speak but Pickett shushed him, still holding onto his arm. His grip tightened as another pair of headlights appeared, and a taxi, navigating through the fog, stopped at the curb opposite. The door opened and out stepped Pennyman, smoking on his pipe. He handed the driver a bill, then counted change out of his open palm before tapping across the street with his stick, up onto the lawn. They heard the front door swing open and then shut, and then Pennyman’s tread sounded for a moment on the stairs.

  Andrew stepped across to the bar and with a shaking hand poured Pickett a glass of bourbon, neat. Pickett looked as if he needed it. His suit was rumpled and moist, and his hair had been blown silly by the wind on the open road. His shirttail was hauled out in back, and he made a gesture at tucking it back in, but accomplished nothing.

  “He spotted me out near Leisure World,” Pickett said, wrinkling up his face. “I saw him through a gap in the fog just as I was pulling off onto the boulevard. That beard of his is a dead giveaway.” Pickett stared into his glass, then rapped against the bar with his fist. “What does he want? That’s the trick. We don’t know what he wants.”

  Andrew nodded as if giving Pickett’s question serious thought. He determined to play the fool. It would be better all the way around to cool Pickett down. He was fatigued from the trip, and so all the more likely to make a mistake. There was no room for
mistakes now. “Maybe he doesn’t want anything. It’s not much of a coincidence, is it? Nothing odd about Pennyman’s being out and about this late. Night before last he didn’t come home at all. Tonight he could have been anywhere. Mrs. Gummidge tells me he’s got a relative of some sort in Glendale. That would be about right. If he came home down the Long Beach and the San Diego freeways, then he’d have every reason on earth to be passing Leisure World. You don’t put enough faith in simple coincidence.”

  “He didn’t come home at all night before last?”

  “That’s right. He’s a grown-up. He can stay out all night.”

  “Mrs. Gummidge has been telling you this, about relatives in Glendale?”

  “That’s exactly what she’s been telling me.”

  Pickett looked steadily at him, then brushed his hair back out of his face. “And you believe her?” He asked the question in a flat sort of tone, as if he’d been wondering whether it might have come down to this at last.

  Andrew thought for a moment and then said, “No. I don’t suppose I do. But it’s possible just the same. We don’t want to overreach ourselves, do we? We don’t want to get jumpy now. Our big advantage is that he thinks we’re largely ignorant.”

  “Maybe,” said Pickett. “Look at this.” He handed Andrew the newspaper clipping that he’d mentioned over the phone—the grisly account of a murder, of a man sawed in half lengthwise, so cleanly that the precision of it utterly baffled the authorities. He’d been frozen first. That was the consensus, although a coroner had speculated that a laser scalpel might have done the trick. He’d been found—both halves of him had—holding a silver quarter in either hand, for reasons no one could fathom. Had he been murdered in the midst of making change? It hardly seemed likely.

  Andrew was almost giddy with dread as he skimmed through the article, wondering why on earth Pickett had brought it along and knowing why at the same time. It was ghastly, to be sure, and was the sort of utterly unlikely incident that would give the gears in Pickett’s head a good cranking. But beyond that, beyond all notion of reason and of reasons, was a muddle of instinct and gut fear—nothing but more unwoven threads from a tapestry they only suspected the existence of.