The Knights of the Cornerstone

by James P. Blaylock

  “Sure,” Calvin said, and he edged past him, pushing open the door and squinting in the sunlight, just then remembering the Saucerian and Futura Press pamphlets that were still on rack inside. There was no going back in now, though. Maybe later he’d make another trip across the river, although the mail would work just as well.

  “One more thing,” Morris said, and Calvin stopped and turned around, holding open the door. “Just for fun, ask one of the checkers in the Safeway if they felt that quake.”

  LIKE A MILL WHEEL

  They hadn’t felt the quake. They didn’t get quakes out here in Bullhead City very often. Maybe, the checker told him, Calvin should call it a night a little earlier over at the Colorado Belle. Those free drinks and all that noise from the slots could make anyone tipsy.

  “I didn’t want to leave before I hit the big one,” Calvin said cheerfully.

  “Did you hit it?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. Then the checker told him that her sister-in-law had hit thirty thousand on the Big Spin, and it was just like that—her last spin of the night, and right when she was telling herself that she should have gone home an hour ago. How was that for irony?

  “That’s irony,” Calvin said, “but going home an hour ago is almost always good advice anyway.” He went out with a bulky double sack containing the coffee, pie, and peppermint stars, and thinking that despite the Big Spin he should write the admonition down on a three-by-five card and carry it in his back pocket: “Go home an hour ago.” Better yet, he thought, don’t leave home at all.

  He headed along the shaded front of the store toward the hill that led down to the ferry, wondering whether he should call Shirley Fowler again. It had been an hour, after all, and it wouldn’t take but a moment. No need to leave a second message if she wasn’t there …

  He glanced over at the pay phone, and nearly turned in that direction, when he saw that there was someone already talking on it—Bob Postum, who was looking straight at him, smiling through his beard. The man waved, said some last thing, and hung up the phone. Calvin waved back and picked up the pace. He could easily make it to the ferry dock ahead of him, and if the ferry was there, there was no way Postum would get on board, just like Morris had said. Then he saw that there was a small man loitering at the top of the hill, smoking a cigarette, getting fried by the sun and apparently doing nothing at all. Except that no one stood around in the Arizona sun without a reason.

  Calvin stopped, opened his grocery sack and looked down into it, then slapped himself in the forehead. “I’ll be damned,” he said out loud, and reversed direction, heading hurriedly back into the store. The automatic door closed behind him. “Restroom?” he asked the checker with the lucky sister-in-law.

  “In the back,” she said. “Center of the store. In meats.”

  “In meats!” he said stupidly, forcing himself not to look back and making his way down the bread aisle. The butcher counter loomed ahead of him, and he saw a wide passage alongside it, leading into the back. He had no intention of going into the restroom and being shot to death in a toilet stall, but somewhere back here there had to be a way out.

  A sign read “Restrooms” and pointed into an interior hallway cluttered with unopened boxes and without any apparent exit. He walked straight past it, spotting a pair of double-wide doors ahead, sheathed in steel and with small windows in each, glowing with sunshine. A butcher came around the corner out of what was apparently a cooler, and started to say something to him, pointing back toward the corridor to the restroom, but Calvin redoubled his pace, ignoring the man, and pushed straight through the doors, finding himself outside again on a four-foot-high concrete loading ramp.

  He could see the ferry dock easily now. It was empty, and there was no sign of the ferry either up or down the river. Of course there wasn’t. The ferry was hourly, and it probably wasn’t the top of the hour, although he couldn’t know for sure because he had put away his watch and cell phone in order to be copacetic with the Knights. He told himself that Postum wouldn’t try anything in broad daylight, although what he meant by “try anything,” he couldn’t say. Morris had spooked him with the pistol and the obscure warnings. But then Morris had also said that he was probably being watched, and clearly he was.

  Calvin jumped down from the end of the loading dock and walked downriver fast, taking a quick look behind him at the asphalt expanse of the lot. There were pallets of flattened cardboard and trash bins and scattered pieces of steel ribbon and packing materials. He thought of hiding in a trash bin, except that it would merely provide a convenient place to ditch his body. On his right lay the river itself, with the casinos on the far side. Ten quick steps and he could be in the water, swept away toward New Cyprus. Hard luck for the groceries.

  He stopped at the edge of the Safeway, the lot still empty behind him, and looked up along the wall toward the front parking lot. No one. He went on farther, past the front of Morris’s pickup and boat and behind the row of cinder-block shops that housed the bookstore, walking along the edge of the river itself. He thought briefly of simply going in and asking Morris to hide him, but he ditched the idea. He couldn’t betray the man’s trust like that, especially when it probably wasn’t necessary anyway. Within moments Calvin was angling across a weedy lot, away from the river toward the highway. He looked back, but saw no sign of Postum or the small man.

  There was no reason in the world, of course, that the small man and Postum knew each other. Nor was there any reason, he told himself, to think that Postum wasn’t simply buying groceries. Then he remembered Hosmer’s not-by-chance warning, and right now Hosmer was looking more and more sane, and the decoy was looking like a by-God duck again. Playing stupid would have been far more useful than hiding behind buildings, but it was too late now.

  He found himself in the parking lot of the Coronet store, with a lot of dime-store ads painted onto the front windows. He hurried inside. He could browse around until the top of the hour and then head straight for the ferry at a run. There was a teenage girl leaning on the counter, and she looked up from a book of Sudoku puzzles and smiled pleasantly at him. “Do you have the time?” he asked, and she pointed toward the wall behind him, where there was a big round schoolroom clock. Twelve minutes till ten.

  “Can I help you find something?” she asked.

  “Just browsing,” he said, and he wandered toward the back of the store, spotting the hallway to what must be a stockroom. There was no visible rear exit this time, but there had to be one. They wouldn’t haul stock through the front of the store. He came to rest in a small aquarium section, with five- and ten-gallon tanks containing common tropical fish and goldfish. It smelled weedy and wet, like the river in the evening, and there was the comfortable sound of bubbling on the air. He watched several fat fantail goldfish swim awkwardly in their tank, and after a time he glanced up again at the clock, surprised to see that only three minutes had crept by.

  “Front or back?” he asked himself. Front was a sure thing. The back exit, if it existed, might easily have an alarm. Also, Postum would know that sooner or later Calvin would try for the ferry. All Postum had to do was wait him out, and if that was the case, then bolting out the back door made no particular sense. “Front door,” he said to himself, and, as if it had been a command, the front door opened, and Postum himself walked in addressing a hearty hello to the girl behind the counter, calling her by name.

  “Cal Bryson!” he shouted, waving at Calvin. “You old son of a gun!”

  Back door, Calvin told himself. He set out down the aisle through the yardage section, his eye on the door to the stockroom. When he was five feet from it he smelled cigarette smoke, although he couldn’t see anyone. Postum was ten steps behind him, moving along quickly. Calvin turned up a perpendicular aisle through shelves full of wading pools and swim fins and swimmer’s goggles, and then, glancing at Postum, he turned again toward the front of the store. Postum smiled and jerked his thumb toward the door, and Calvin saw that there was
a third man standing just outside. Of course there was. Calvin was out of options. He nearly shouted at the girl to call the police, but then remembered Morris’s statement about neither side wanting to involve the authorities. And anyway, there was no crime going on, only Bob Postum, old-timer, having a chat with Cal Bryson, old son of a gun.

  “You’re a slippery fish,” Postum said to him when he caught up.

  Calvin blinked at him. “Just out doing a little shopping.”

  “Just like yesterday down at the Gas’n’Go! You must have burned through all them little bitty toilet lids already. Pays to buy the economy size package down at the Wal-Mart. I’ve got a proposition for you, though, and then I’ll let you get back to your shopping. I’ve been doing some checking up, and I find that you’re an innocent man.”

  “Innocent of what?”

  “I mean to say that I’m fully convinced you’re just out here paying a visit, like you told me yesterday. Now, I don’t know what you were doing in the bookstore talking to Lamar Morris, but right now I’ll give you the benefit of my good nature and say that maybe you’re just a man who likes books.”

  “That’s exactly right. I’m a collector. Californiana. The Fourteen Carats Press is at the top of my list.”

  “I’ll bet it is. It’s at the top of my list, too. Morris’s daddy used to be at the top of the list, but he disappeared off it. The good news is that unlike his son Lamar, you’re not on the list at all yet. There’s no reason for you to be on it. But what I wanted to tell you is that there’s a rumor going around that someone stole your artifact out of the back of your car yesterday while you and I were inside the store chewing the fat. I feel a little bit responsible, holding you up like that while someone purloined your property.”

  “I appreciate your concern.”

  “There’s a further rumor that there’s more than one of these artifacts, but that only one of them is the genuine article. That one of yours might have been a fraud. I don’t suppose you know which one is genuine and which ones are fakes. Maybe you don’t even know what it is, this artifact.”

  “Sure I do,” Calvin told him. “It’s a spirit veil belonging to my aunt Iris. She used to wear it when she’d hold stances. The family is under the impression that her spirit went into it when she died.”

  Postum stared at him for a moment, apparently trying to figure out whether he was serious. “A spirit veil,” he said at last.” That’s what they told you?”

  “As far as I know, that’s what it is.”

  “They had you drive out here on a tomfool errand, thinking you had this stance item in your car—drive straight into who knows what kind of trouble? And you don’t have any kind of problem with that? Cal, I’m afraid you’re what they call a chump.”

  “Why should there be any trouble over Aunt Iris’s spirit veil?”

  “Well, there shouldn’t be. No trouble at all, if that’s what it is. I’ll tell you what, though. You’ve got a ferry to catch, and I’ve got business to finish, so I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse, as they say.” He glanced back toward the girl who was studiously working away at her puzzles, and then spoke in a lowered voice after winking at Calvin conspiratorially. “You come up with the right veil, and there’s profit in it for you. I don’t mean peanuts, either. I mean money that it’ll take you a while to count. Your aunt Iris doesn’t care where she lays her head—on this side of the river or on that side. And pretty soon it’ll be the same thing anyway. I’d treat her with great respect. Tell you what. We’ll work out a drop-off spot on your way out of town—call it two days from now—down at the Gas’n’Go like yesterday. We play it the same way. You leave the item in the trunk, go inside, and eat a cheeseburger. No need to look in the trunk when you come out. It’ll be there—what I’m talking about. Just get into that buggy of yours and head west. You know what I’m saying?”

  “So far, so good,” Calvin said.

  “Then let’s make that a date. Noon, Friday.” Postum’s voice had taken on a softer, more even tone, like a crisis counselor talking someone down from the ledge. “That’ll give you time for a visit with the folks,” he said. “Meantime, that’s just what you do, visit with the folk. Stay close to home. No need for you to be over here on the Arizona side or up poking around in the hills. No need to be talking to Lamar Morris, either. That kind of thing raises suspicions, and then first thing you know, your name’s on someone’s list, right up near the top. Think of it this way, Cal—play this right and three nights from now you can be sleeping in your own bed, with your head on a pillowcase full of paper money, getting a hell of a good night’s sleep.”

  He paused as if to let this sink in, and then said, “If you want it the other way, you can be sleeping with the fishes, in that deep water below the dam. You follow my drift here? The water comes over the spillway and sets up a current like a mill wheel. A body just goes around and around till the bones are picked clean by the striped bass.”

  Calvin nodded.

  “In other words, we’ll be waiting for you at the Gas’n’Go, come what may.”

  “I get the point,” Calvin said.

  Postum nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m glad we had this little chitchat.” He looked at the clock on the wall and so did Calvin. “You might have missed your ride,” Postum told him, “except usually they’re late because of that grudge the Knights have against timepieces. You hurry, you might make it yet.”

  Calvin turned and walked toward the front of the store, past the clerk and out through the door. The man who had stood outside was gone now, and the coast was clear. When he got down to the dock, the ferry was just pulling in. Calvin had rarely been as grateful. Betty Jessup waved him aboard, and he sat down under the awning, facing the Nevada side for the ride back to New Cyprus.

  The wind and spray off the river were cooling, and he let his mind wander, trying to take it all in. Sixteen hours ago he had driven out into the desert to a place where nothing ever changed, and immediately everything had changed. He had been offered money or—what? A bullet? A new job as fish food and then eternity as a rotating skeleton?

  A chump, he thought, although he didn’t want to believe it. He had been set up, obviously, but Uncle Lymon had been honestly surprised to hear that Postum had approached him at the Gas’n’Go. Hosmer hadn’t outright told him to go into Bullhead City this morning, and Morris hadn’t invited him in for a chat. All of that was his own curiosity at work. If he was a chump, then he was mostly his own chump.

  New Cyprus, thank God, was looming up fast on the starboard side now. He was nearly home. Aunt Nettie wasn’t in her lawn chair on the beach, and the place looked deserted. Probably she was inside, out of the heat. What was the likelihood, he wondered, his mind taking another turn, that Bob Postum would give him a second thought once he was out of town? The trick was simply to avoid the man and get out of the desert. There was no way that the long arm of Postum would reach all the way to Eagle Rock. Leaving discreetly, and soon, would solve all problems. He felt a certain relief as he picked up his bag and stepped off the ferry onto the dock.

  THE VEIL

  He found Aunt Nettie feeling spry—a night-and-day difference from how she was apparently feeling last night or even this morning. She was mopping the kitchen floor when he got home, and she chased him out from underfoot. Uncle Lymon, she said, was under the weather, and he had gone down to the Temple for some peace and quiet. Her own pain, mostly in her stomach, had virtually gone away, she told him—for the first time in what seemed like ages. And she was taking advantage of the blessing by doing a little bit of work.

  Calvin strolled down to the Temple Bar, which hadn’t changed a bit from when he had been inside it before, although seeing it now took him by pleasant surprise. The bar itself was built of black-washed knotty pine, with a swirly black and gold, bamboo-framed Formica counter that almost certainly dated back to the fifties. There were half a dozen bar stools built of bamboo and faded black and gold Naugahyde and
another half dozen tables and sets of chairs that matched the stools. All of it had been kept in good repair, and the place was faded but clean. There was a kitchen in back and a menu on the wall above the pass-through window—eggs and hash, burgers and fried fish, and spaghetti Bolognese. Two men sat at the bar drinking coffee—old Whitey and Miles Taber—but Uncle Lymon was nowhere to be seen.

  “Well, if it isn’t Cal Bryson,” Taber said, getting off the stool and coming across to shake hands. “Miles Taber—maybe you remember me. It’s been a while.”

  “Good to see you again,” Calvin said. “Sure, I remember.” Somehow Taber had an air of authority about him, despite his comical appearance—the high-waisted trousers with multiple pockets, the suspenders, the faded aloha shirt. “Whitey, isn’t it?” he asked the second man.

  “Whitey Sternbottom,” he said. “Welcome to New Cyprus. If you’re looking for your uncle, he’s in the back lying down. He’s feeling a little bit old-fashioned.”

  “I guess I won’t bother him, then.”

  “When were you out here last, Cal? Six, eight years ago?” Taber asked. He paused for a long moment, and then said, “I don’t mean out here on the island, I mean to New Cyprus.”

  “Maybe five years,” Calvin told him, wondering what he really meant—not by the question, but by the clarification. Had Taber recognized him through the window last night?

  “Glass of beer?” Whitey asked, gesturing at the taps.

  “A cup of that coffee, maybe.”

  “It’s mud by now,” Taber warned, “but it was ground this morning.”

  “Give the guy a break, Miles,” Whitey said. “He just got here. You start working out on him right away with your jokes, and he’s going to turn right around and head back to L.A. before we’ve had a crack at him.”