Howard heard Touchey mutter something under his breath, and Jason seemed about to explode. “That reminds me of Bigler,” Howard said, “only the work here is much finer—far keener eye for detail.”
“Bigler?” Jason asked, accepting a glass of white wine. “Who on earth …?”
“Howard is the curator of a very upscale museum in Los Angeles,” Sylvia interrupted, talking to Mrs. Moynihan. “Getty money.”
“Really!” Mrs. Moynihan said.
“Well,” said Howard. “I can tell you this much: the oils on the wall there are very nice, no matter who painted them. Superb rendering of detail. Don’t you agree, Jason?”
The artist said nothing.
“Mrs. Moynihan painted those herself,” Mr. Moynihan said. “She’s been hung in several galleries in town.”
“I’m certain of it,” Touchey said. “Bigler, though. I haven’t heard of him, either. Was he a Carpathian slave, too?”
Howard looked sharply at him, as if he had insulted Mrs. Moynihan’s paintings.
“I’m interested in hearing about that,” the woman said, too modest, perhaps, to carry on about her own paintings. Howard found that he liked her. There was something big and round and generous about her. “What was the woman’s name again?” she asked. “I’d like to read her book.”
Howard searched his mind. He couldn’t remember it, having pulled it out of the air in the first place.
“Rodia Davis,” Sylvia said helpfully. “I think that’s what you said, isn’t it, Howard? Maybe you could search out a copy for Mrs. Moynihan tomorrow.” She smiled broadly at him. Then to Mrs. Moynihan she said, “Howard is my father’s nephew. He’s a Barton.”
“Is he? Your uncle is a gravely misunderstood man,” she said to Howard. “His spirit museum was a fascinating place. Men of real vision suffer in a culture that runs on greed and cynicism.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Stoat said, shaking his head sadly.
Mr. Moynihan drained his glass. “Mrs. Moynihan is achanneler herself.”
“Are you?” Stoat asked, seeming genuinely enthused. Touchey and Jason sat silently, as if not trusting themselves to speak.
“She’s in touch with an entity that is known only as ‘Chet,’” the bearded man said gravely, then looked around as if he expected one of them to challenge him. “He was here tonight, in this room. It was not his corporeal self, of course. It was his astral projection.”
“Does he know Howard’s Carpathian?” Touchey asked.
“He spoke to us for nearly twenty minutes tonight,” Sylvia said, ignoring him.
Touchey snorted under his breath. “Any tips on the market?”
“Glenwood!” Howard said, scowling faintly. Then, aside to the old man, he made the quick gesture of someone tippling, then winked and shook his head in a rapid little negative.
“Oh,” the man said flatly, shaking his own head.
Stoat checked his watch. “Well, I’ll be damned. Coming up on eleven-thirty. We’ve really got to be going. Thank you both so much for the wine.” He stood up, and so did Jason and Touchey.
“Well, that is a shame,” Mrs. Moynihan said. “Thank you for saying such nice things about my paintings.” Her husband stood up and collected the wineglasses from the table, as if disposing of the glasses would also get rid of his unwanted guests. He wiped a water ring off the tabletop with the sleeve of his shirt, scowling tiredly.
Howard worked hard to think of something to stall things. He had to act, to do something to save them. It was too late for more conversation. He could hardly call the police; he had put in far too active a day for that. Sylvia looked at him suddenly as if puzzled. “I think I’ve lost one of my stones,” she said.
“Oh, no!” Mrs. Moynihan lamented. “Sure it wasn’t one of the ones that Susan bought?”
“No,” Sylvia said. “It was a pyrite orb, about the size of a golf ball. I bet it’s rolled under the couch or something.”
“Perhaps we can all have a look around,” Howard said to his three adversaries. “It can’t have gone far. Glenwood, crawl behind the chair, would you?”
“For the love of …” Touchey started to say, but Stoat cut him off with a gesture.
“Have a look under the chair, Glen.”
Howard peered under the couch, pretending to search for the mythical ball of pyrite.
“We’ll turn the place upside down in the morning,” Mr. Moynihan said. “No need to be crawling around the room now. Not at this time of night.”
Just then the doorbell rang, and Mrs. Moynihan said, “Isn’t that a surprise? It’s a regular party,” and she stepped across to open it.
“Christ on a bicycle,” Mr. Moynihan said. He strode off toward the kitchen, muttering and carrying the wineglasses.
Howard hefted Graham’s cane and moved in behind Jason and Touchey and Stoat, standing between them and the rest of the house. He was afraid it would be Ms. Bundy and Mrs. Lamey and the Reverend White, having tracked down Stoat’s car. This would be bad business. He shouldn’t have come here at all. Now Sylvia was involved, along with the innocent Moynihans.
But when the door swung open, there stood Uncle Roy and old Bennet and the man from the restaurant in the harbor, who looked like a hod carrier and wore a stained butcher’s apron smeared with what must have been blood. Behind them, half in shadow, were two men wearing the patchwork clothes of gluers. The one on the left could have passed for Moses in an illustration out of Exodus, except that in his right hand he held a tire iron that he slapped against his leg.
23
“FATHER!” Sylvia cried happily.
Touchey backed up a step, as if getting set to sprint for the back door. Even Stoat seemed to pale visibly, and Jason the artist was shifty-eyed and scared, like a nasty sort of petty criminal collared at last by the law. Howard jabbed Touchey in the back with the tip of his cane, and the man turned on him furiously. Howard widened his eyes and tipped his head toward the door as if inviting him out onto the front lawn.
“Hello, Mrs. Moynihan!” Uncle Roy said happily.
“Good evening, Mr. Barton,” Mrs. Moynihan said.
“We’ve come to collect Sylvia and Howard.” Uncle Roy had a big, cheesy smile on his face, as if he’d just found out that the world was his oyster.
“What a wonderful young man her Howard is,” Mrs. Moynihan said, looking dubiously now at Roy’s friends. “He’s astonishingly knowledgeable. I believe he has some of his uncle’s genetic material.”
“He’s a peach,” Uncle Roy said.
“Where’s my car?” Stoat asked suspiciously, looking past them toward the street.
Uncle Roy looked baffled. He shrugged and made a long face, as if he couldn’t be blamed for whatever had happened to Stoat’s car. Then he smiled broadly again and bowed like Mr. Pickwick, gesturing toward the lawn. “Come on out,” he said. “We’ll have a look around. I think maybe it was stolen by that damned Arab crowd that runs the deli up in Caspar. What was their name? Mohammed something or other. Same bunch that beat up Jimmers, I bet, and then came back and stole his shed.”
They filed out of the house then, waving goodbye to Mrs. Moynihan, who closed the door behind them. “Run these boys down the road apiece, will you?” Uncle Roy asked one of the gluers. “Put them through the usual paces.”
“What?” Touchey said. “Wait. I’m not going anywhere.”
Uncle Roy smiled at them. “Little ride. Night air will do you good.”
At the curb sat a gluer vehicle, the Day of the Dead Chevy that had been parked up at Sammy’s three days ago. The plaster-of-Paris skulls glowed ghostly white in the moonlight. Miniature skeletons wearing top hats and carrying canes sprawled across the hood in a heap as if they’d been shoveled out of a mass grave with a skip loader.
Glenwood Touchey began to back away, and then turned to run, pushing Uncle Roy aside and bowling past the two gluers. Old Bennet shoved out his foot and tripped him, though, and Touchey sprawled onto his hands and kn
ees in the grass, grunting softly. The aproned man pulled Touchey to his feet again, obligingly dusting a few grass clippings off Touchey’s clothes and then wiping his own hands on his bloody apron. Then he pointed toward the Chevy, explaining something to Touchey in a low voice, as if Touchey were a child being told about the terrible dangers of playing in the street. One of the gluers, his face set like concrete, latched on to Touchey’s arm and hustled him toward the waiting car.
Stoat followed almost willingly, as if he would just as soon get it over with and not lose his dignity in the process, and Jason made a show of doing the same, although his face betrayed him and he looked dispirited, like a wet dog, and he glanced around nervously as if looking for a chance to run for it. It was too late, though, and he climbed into the car along with his two friends, the three of them sitting there wooden-faced, like mannequins. Touchey’s hands fumbled on his knees, drumming out a nervous rhythm, and he bit at his upper lip, looking to the left and right and fidgeting around, staring hard at the door panels. Then, as if someone had poked him with a cattle prod, he crawled across Jason to hammer at the window, a look of terror on his face. Jason shoved him back into his seat, but immediately he was up again, trying to climb over into the front seat now.
“He’s just discovered that there’s no backseat door or window handles,” Uncle Roy said cheerfully to Howard, like a sportscaster delivering a play-by-play.
“Father!” Sylvia cried, putting her hand over her mouth. The gluers climbed silently into the front seat, rolling Touchey back over onto the laps of his companions.
Then Uncle Roy leaned down to speak through the passenger window, talking to the three in back. “You boys are going on a little retreat,” he said, “up to the hills. Diet of sprouts and berries. Fresh air. New outlook.”
“You’ll wish you were dead!” Touchey shouted at him from the backseat, his face twisted by hatred and fear.
Uncle Roy looked at him for a moment, as if Touchey were a cockroach on a sidewalk. “Put the machine on that one if he acts up,” Roy said to the two in front. “But keep the electrodes away from his salivary glands. And for Christ’s sake, don’t turn it up above twelve volts this time. It isn’t a goddamn hot-dog cooker.”
The Chevy rolled away up the street then, carrying the three stricken prisoners and their strange jailers. It turned south toward the highway.
Uncle Roy looked as if he’d just eaten a bad snail. He heaved a long sigh and rubbed his forehead tiredly. “Poor bastards,” he said, watching them motor away. “I hope they deserve all this.” He widened his eyes at Howard. “Strike that. I know they do. One of them does, anyway. That one in the middle—his face was an advertisement.”
“That’s him, all right,” Bennet said. “I’ll bet you a shiny new dime. Either him or the other one, name of—what was it? Marmot? What the hell kind of a name is that?” Bennet stood on the lawn with the man in the apron, who shrugged at the question. Both of them had their arms folded across their chests, like bodyguards waiting for a signal.
“What’ll happen to them?” Howard asked. “I’m not sure what they deserve, but—”
“Deserve?” Uncle Roy said. “Lord knows what they deserve. The Sunberries are just going to give them a thrill. Silent bunch of guys, gluers. They won’t say a word. That’ll drive your men nearly nuts. They’ll take them up into the hills above Albion, push them out of the car, and let them walk back down—not more than three or four miles. Call it six. They’ll be snug in bed by three in the morning.”
He pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and thumbed through them tiredly, sorting out the hundreds and straightening the wrinkles out of them.
“Could have got a sight more for it,” the man in the bloody apron said.
Uncle Roy grunted. “Maybe. Say, Howard, you haven’t met Lou Gibb, have you? Not officially?” He gestured at his friend, who shoved out his hand. Howard shook it.
“We ran past each other last night down at the harbor,” Howard said, “but there wasn’t any time for introductions.”
“Me and your uncle go way back,” Gibb said.
Uncle Roy nodded, managing to smile again. “Gibb here owns the Cap’n England. Chief cook and bottle washer, too. Answers the phone out back for us. Nobody rings up a pay phone, mostly. So when it does ring it’s probably for us, and Lou grabs it. When he got Sylvia’s call tonight, he was doing a spot of business with those three gluers, trading for a few cases of hooch.”
“Two gluers,” Howard said.
“Well, there was the one that took Stoat’s car. You didn’t see him. We delivered the car out of bondage. Liberated it. Money for the cause. Next time Stoat sees the car he won’t know it from Adam. The Sunberries were talking about turning it into a motorized flower bed. Here you go, Lou.” Uncle Roy counted out a few bills, pocketing the rest.
“Give it to Mrs. Deventer,” Lou said, waving the money away. “I don’t need it.”
Uncle Roy nodded, not arguing with him. “Eight hundred bucks, cash on the barrelhead. What do you figure is blue-book on a car like that?”
“Five thousand easy,” Bennet said.
“Yeah, but those Sunberries did us a hell of a favor, didn’t they? They’ll be ready to do us another one now, quid pro quo“
Sylvia was pretty clearly seething. “What the hell is going on?” she asked. “Stoat didn’t hit Mr. Jimmers on the head. He wasn’t even there. Howard said so.”
“That’s right,” Howard said. “None of them were.”
“You two shouldn’t fret,” Uncle Roy said to Sylvia. “Let me worry about it. Lou here wanted to beat them to a pulp right out here on the lawn. They got Mrs. Deventer this evening, coming back down from Willits.”
“What?” Howard asked, shocked. Somehow he hadn’t anticipated anything like that.
“What do you mean?” Sylvia said. “Is she …?”
“No, she’s not dead. Dead drunk, actually. That’s what saved her. Crash tossed her around the floorboards like a rag doll. If she’d have been sober, and tensed up, there’s no telling what would have happened. They took her up to the hospital and set her arm and then drove her back down to her house not a half hour before you called.”
“How do you know it was them?” Howard asked.
“Someone loosened the lug nuts on the right front wheel,” Bennet said. “Must have done it while she was in at her sister’s, up in Willits. Road up that way is nothing but curves.” He ran his hand through his hair and then shook his head darkly. “I put new pads on the brakes a week ago, and I tightened them lugs down. I know I did. Now the blame falls to me. I’d be in it deep if she was hurt bad. They towed the car back down to her house.”
“There was trouble over at your place tonight, too,” Howard said to Bennet. “They kicked your flower beds apart and tried to break down the Humpty Dumpty. I did what I could to Stop it.”
“The creeps,” Uncle Roy said, heading for the station wagon. “Let’s get over there.”
Bennet shrugged. “Not much lost if all they did was kick wooden flowers around. Nothing that can’t be patched up.”
“If you boys don’t need me,” Lou Gibb said, “I’m out of here. I got three or four hours’ work left.”
“Take some of this dough, damn it,” Uncle Roy said to him, turning around and pulling out the money again. “Enough to pay for that Sunberry whiskey, anyway.”
Gibb hesitated, then took what Uncle Roy offered him, shoving it down into his pocket. “Give the rest to Mrs. Deventer, though.”
“Sure I will.” Uncle Roy nodded a goodbye to him as Gibb climbed into his own car and started it up. “Hell of a good man, isn’t he?” Roy asked. They watched Gibb pull away from the curb. “There was a book I read once: one guy kept asking people what was the most surprising thing—that people could treat each other so good or so damned nasty. I think about that a lot. Then I run into people like Gibb, or Mrs. Moynihan here, and I see that they treat people square and friendly and it doesn’t take any k
ind of effort at all. It’s like breathing to them. Nothing to it. What does that mean?”
“That some of us have a long way to go,” Howard said, yawning. “It doesn’t answer your man’s question, though.”
“I guess not,” Uncle Roy said. “Let’s roll.” He and Bennet climbed into Roy’s station wagon and drove off up Pine, swinging around toward Main.
Howard and Sylvia followed in Sylvia’s car. It was midnight, and the streets and houses were dark. Trees swayed in the sea wind, and there was a winter chill in the air that made Howard think of the three men who would very shortly be walking home up the Coast Highway in their fashionable sweaters and shoes. For a moment he half hoped that they’d catch a ride with some late-night traveler, but then he thought of Mrs. Deventer and her smashed-up Pontiac and the moment passed. Before they’d driven the four or five blocks to Bennet’s house Howard was asleep.
The sound of a car door slamming woke him up, but he decided not to get out. There hadn’t been all that much damage done, except to the whirligig cow. The others could deal with it. Howard felt as if he hadn’t gotten any sleep in about six weeks. Tomorrow morning—this morning, that is—he would sleep till noon. He watched groggily as they moved around on the lawn. Uncle Roy was fired up, letting loose the energy now that he’d kept bottled up back at Mrs. Moynihan’s house. Howard heard him shout something, and then saw him stride toward the street, in the direction of Mrs. Lamey’s. Sylvia and Bennet chased him down, pushing him back toward the station wagon, but he broke away from them and hurried across to pound on her door.
Wearily Howard tried to climb out of the car. His knee joint felt packed with sand, and his leg was so stiff that he had to pick it up with his hands in order to shift it. It wouldn’t do for Uncle Roy to start harassing Mrs. Lamey at midnight. There were probably laws to protect landlords from wild tenants. He stood up in the weedy gutter, nearly falling down, and hung on to the car roof for support. He pulled the cane out and leaned on it. At once he felt lighter, and some of the pain and stiffness seemed to leak away into the vegetation beneath his feet.
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