Mesopotamia

by Arthur Nersesian

  At that moment I heard approaching footsteps. Ducking behind an oak, I listened to a second cop asking a haggard-looking man questions as they trudged around the body, corrupting the crime scene.

  “Musta been late last night, during the storm. My night man, Vern, heard someone trying to break into the front door shortly after closing. Vern warned that he had a gun and whoever was back there should desist. When the guy kept working his crowbar, Ricky put a hole through the door.”

  “That’s a pretty thick door, Snake,” the officer countered.

  “If you look at the door, Nick, you’ll see he put a shot through the one square where a piece of cardboard was covering the gap that was a missing lock cylinder.”

  “Bad luck. Why didn’t you call us last night when all this transpired?”

  “I did. In fact, both Ricky and Officer Shutes looked around, but they didn’t see no one. We all figured he just got away.”

  “No moon last night,” the cop added.

  “Yeah, it was dark. This clown musta took it in the chest and staggered up here.”

  “So you called.”

  “Leon only spotted him here about ten minutes ago, when we called you.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “The ID in his wallet said some goofy-ass name, Pappy East.”

  “Anyone know who he is?”

  “Nope, spent the evening drinking, keeping his own company. Left around one, after last call.” Sunlight glinted off the barkeep’s silver-capped front teeth.

  “Wonder why he decided to break in last night.”

  “Could just be a coincidence, but we didn’t do the night drop Sunday so we had two big deposits.”

  “To know that would make it an inside job, wouldn’t it?” The cop reached down and picked up a stick that he used to delicately lift the bottom of the victim’s loose shirt. Under it, the handle of what appeared to a .38-caliber pistol protruded from the man’s belt.

  “Looks like he was packing,” the man named Snake said.

  After several moments of quiet, the cop asked, “How’s your boy doing?”

  “He’s a little jittery,” the old fellow answered. When their forensic expert showed up and started examining the body, taking photographs, I crept further uphill and hid behind a weeping willow. When the men retreated I circled wide and headed back down to the old roadhouse.

  A small, quiet diner in the front opened into a much noisier beer hall in the back. A line of old guys seemed permanently attached to the bar, drinking, chatting, watching some game on TV. A minute later the metal-fanged man from out back entered and walked right by me into a large empty room that turned out to be an auditorium. He vanished behind an old door that was probably the bathroom.

  I took a table adjacent to the empty stage. A yellowing banner above it read, Sing Like the King—Elvis In-Person-Ators Contest.

  When a waitress asked what I wanted, I employed my best Tennessee twang: “A cup of coffee and slice of shoo-fly pie, please.”

  When the old boy finished his business and came back out through the door, I said, “Wasn’t that poor guy one of the Elvis impersonators?”

  “Huh?”

  “The body out back, any idea who shot him?”

  “Who the fuck are you?” He squinted his veiny eyes at me.

  “No one, I was just coming in and saw him.” It was the middle of the afternoon and they had an open diner; it wasn’t far-fetched.

  “But you must’ve climbed up the hill if you saw him that clearly,” he fired back.

  “I overheard someone say it was an Elvis impersonator. And I’ve always loved the King, so yeah, I did go up there to check it out, but I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Sing the King, do you?” he changed his tone.

  “Sorta,” I replied, without thinking. “I need a drink. Can I buy you one?”

  “I don’t feel right about a pretty girl buying me a drink.”

  “How about I’ll ask you a couple questions in return?”

  “You’re not one of them snoop reporters here about that Missy Scrubbs tramp, are you?” I remembered that Gustavo said she was from around these parts.

  “I am, but I’m more interested in the body out back.”

  “Well, if that’s all you wanna know, follow me out to my office,” he said and started walking. I told him that my Uncle Hymie from Vegas took me to see Elvis in concert for my Bat Mitzvah thirty years ago, which was absolutely true.

  “You wouldn’t happen to remember when that was, would ya?”

  “Around the week of my thirteenth birthday—September, 1975. I remember him doing karate moves and rambling on about his ex-wife and how they were still dear friends.”

  “It’s true, he did a lot of rambling back then … So, can you carry any of his tunes?”

  “When I was in high school I had to learn ‘Love Me Tender.’I was pretty good at it, but I haven’t hummed in years.”

  “Well, in a little less than two weeks we have our annual Sing the King contest, which comes with a big cash prize.”

  “But I’m not even a guy, let alone white,” I said removing my sunglasses.

  My host took the last stool at the bar, next to six other barflies. “Hey everyone, this is … What’s your name, dear?” All of them appeared to be above two hundred and fifty pounds, and over sixty years of age—except one.

  “Sandra.”

  “I’m Snake Major.” Who the hell willfully calls himself Snake? “These guys are a band called the Evils.” He reached up over the counter for a mug and slipped it under the spout. He tipped the tap and filled me a frothy glass.

  “It’s an anagram for Elvis,” one explained. “We’re an Elvis tribute band.”

  “You from here, doll?” another of them asked.

  “I’m from the next town over, Mesopotamia. How ’bout you guys?”

  “We’re retired,” one muttered, choosing to interpret it as a question about employment.

  “Actually, we only perform for the Sing the King contest,” clarified another. “Till then we drink.”

  With that as a cue, they all took sips of their beers.

  “So, y’all from Tennessee?”

  “I guess, so, ’cept I ain’t in the band,” replied the younger man, standing up from a stool at the end of the bar.

  “What singer are you impersonating?” I asked. He sported a Roy Rogers cowboy shirt with a patriotic red and blue motif in the upper panels and a white ten-gallon hat.

  “I’m what you might call a Jesus impersonator,” he replied with a smile. “Have you heard the beautiful voice of the Son of God, sister?”

  “Only once,” I said. “He sung to me that I was on my own.” Several of the Evils chuckled.

  “This is Minister Morton Beaucheete,” Snake Major introduced.

  “I assure you that He has a lot more to sing to you,” said the muscular young preacherman. “Why don’t you come by my church and I’ll be glad to fill you in?”

  “The minister can definitely fill you in,” muttered one of the Evils lecherously.

  “I’m at the Fifth Baptist Church, down on Makataka Road,” the minister said, looking at his watch, “and I got to scoot.”

  “It was a pleasure,” I replied, and he left.

  “So what brings you to us?” an Evil asked.

  “I was just wondering about the vic out back,” I said, heaving myself up on the barstool.

  “His name weren’t Vic,” corrected another Evil.

  “We’re now welcoming multicultural, multisexual Elvises … Hell, we even have some transgender Elviras.”

  “That means they got no dicky,” clarified another, wagging a loose finger.

  “Shoot, the Asian thing’ll work straight to your ’vantage on account’a this being the year of Affirmative Action Elvis. Elvis-clusiveness they’re calling it. In fact, I’ll tell you a big secret: the judges’ll be partial to a minority Elvis.”

  “Yeah, you could be like a Clarence Thomas
Elvis,” one joked.

  “I’m not really much of a singer.”

  “Go ahhhh—” He sang a note that sounded like a D-flat. I did likewise.

  “See there, just as I thought, you have the same natural register that the King had. I know that cause I worked for the man himself.”

  “No one ever said I could sing.”

  “Well, there’s a big cash prize.”

  “The grand prize is ten thousand dollars,” said Snake, “and there are smaller prizes also.”

  “When exactly is this again?”

  “Next week is the deadline for registration and the following week is the actual contest.”

  “I’ll think about it. And about the body out back …”

  “You buying beer for the boys, are you?” Snake asked, implying cooperation.

  “Course.”

  “How about Bushmill chasers?” someone suggested as the bartender came over. I nodded yes, and smudged shot glasses were deposited in front of each of them.

  “Make it a double for me,” I said, “I have woes of my own.”

  “What kind?”

  “I just got into a fight with my mother. That’s why I’m out here now.”

  “You have mommy problems, do you?” another old man said and belched.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Hey, we all got mothers, don’t we?”

  “Elvis adored Gladys,” said one. “She was his mammy.”

  “A mother can be a boy’s best friend,” a third hypothesized.

  “In my case she’s my worst enemy.” I took a deep sip of my beer. “It might just be a cultural problem.”

  “What? Is she white and you’re Chinese?” asked a man with chipped teeth.

  “Wow! How’d you know that?” Chinese and Korean, white and Jewish were all the same in these parts. Before chipped teeth could answer, another barfly flew into a racially insensitive joke ending with the punchline: “Two Wongs don’t make a white.” All guffawed and more beer was brought over.

  With each added pitcher, I faded slowly into the brownish wallpaper. As I listened to them yak about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other news items, I waited for some comments about the dead Elvis out back. Although they did refer to him a few times, there was no real story there. A dead B&E perp didn’t merit the tabloids, even if he was an Elvis impersonator. And the fact is, he looked more like Kenny Rogers. At some point I finally started asking if anyone knew anything about Missy or her relatives.

  “Who’s missing?” one misheard me.

  “Missy Scrubbs, the missing bride from Memphis, she’s from around these parts, isn’t she?”

  “She hung out here years ago,” Snake spoke up. “Diddled one of the younger fellas and was shooed off. No one’s seen her since.”

  “She must’ve been in her midteens,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Snake replied. “That’s why we eighty-sixed her.”

  “Any idea where she lived?”

  “Yeah, with her family down the road. They all up and moved to Memphis when she did and the shotgun shack they lived in burnt down.”

  So much for any new leads on Missy Scrubbs. The highlight of the day was when the old station wagon from the county morgue eventually arrived. All the men grabbed their mugs and moseyed over to the window to watch as the two skinny guys bagged the body, hauled him down the hill, and loaded him into the back of the meat wagon.

  The rest of the evening flaked away like a smoldering cigarette. I had no one waiting for me and the prospect of being homeless in New York kept me rooted to my stool. Still, the drinks kept coming and floated me into the land of drunken burnouts. After the last call, some of the burly beer-soaked men half-walked, half-carried me out into the cold night air where I was deposited into my car and I duly passed out.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When my car door popped open, I awoke, still drunk. My hands fumbled through my purse. But they weren’t my hands. They had to belong to someone else. At some point I realized it wasn’t my purse they were fumbling through—it was me. Hands were crawling up my shirt, and trying to unbuckle my pants.

  I shoved the man backward into a bush outside and locked the car door, but a second guy, some slick-haired kid I hadn’t seen earlier, pulled me out through the passenger door. Then he shoved me backward into my backseat.

  “Just calm down,” he said tensely. “We gonna help you get that story about Missy.”

  “Fuck off!”

  As I fumbled with his hands, the bushed one raced around to the other door just in time for my firm kick to his balls.

  That was when the one in the car walloped me across the jaw and I knew I was in trouble. Yet before he could hit me again, the hand of God seemed to reach into the backseat and yank him out by the neck, throwing him out on his ass. While I was struggling to buckle up my pants, I heard God say, “Haven’t you had enough, Roscoe?!”

  “Bitch karated Zek and tried to rob me!” the backseat bandit said.

  “Oh, is that why you were on top of her?”

  “Ain’t like that, sir,” said Zek, still holding his nuts. “Vern said this chinky chick came by asking questions.”

  “What kind of questions? And don’t lie, cause I’ll check.”

  “Mainly looking into the dead dude, but she was asking about my business too. She got drunk off her ass, so—”

  “I gave you my old car for a reason. Your dad said you had to scat pronto. I thought you were long gone, son.”

  “I was, I just came back for my passport and thought I’d grab a little Chinese takeout.”

  “That little tail you got is all over the place, boy. Now here you are with a drunken reporter, playing with a possible rape and assault charge. Normally I don’t try to come between a fool and his foolishness, but you’re crapping where I eat.”

  In a moment both men were gone.

  “Okay young lady,” the voice announced, “now it’s your turn. Off to bed.”

  I tried to get up, only to collapse drowsily back in the seat. But the big hand snatched me up.

  For the first time, I saw his face and instantly sobered up. He was truly hideous. Scarred and stitched, it looked as though he were Frankensteined together from a series of dead faces. Underneath it all, though, were baby-blue eyes and a thick wave of iron-gray hair. His back was bent and he had a pronounced limp in his right leg, but he was strong as he carefully lifted me out of my car.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked, trying to keep the world from spinning.

  “Even if you are a no-good reporter, you’re too drunk to drive and it’s too cold to sleep here, so you can spend the night in the big house.”

  “Where you’ll rape me like some farm animal in a canoe,” I drunkenly mixed my Deliverance motifs.

  “If I were going to do that, I woulda just got on the line, wouldn’t I?”

  He sounded reasonable enough and I was too out of it to resist. Wet leaves, earth, and dark sky curled around me as he carried me up the hill to the large old mansion at the top. Eventually he pushed open a door and set me down on a cozy couch in a vast living room. The interior of the house was dark. Candlelights, or lights no brighter than candles, seemed to fill the old palace. Thick dark velvet curtains, wooden furniture, black walls, old creaky floors—all very goth. I tiredly watched the brutish, heavyset man squatting at the fireplace, assembling a small log cabin of kindling. He struck a match and it went up like a midget’s funeral pyre.

  “This is your house?”

  “No, I’m just the butler.”

  When he stepped out of the room I located my cell and speed dialed Gustavo. It seemed like a healthy precaution to tell him where I was in the event that Jeeves turned out to be a Quasimodo serial murderer.

  “Listen,” I whispered when he picked up.

  “No, you listen! We fucked up!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Little Earl’s dead.” Earl was his nineteen-year-old nephew. Through tears and
curses, he drunkenly explained that Earl had become “the latest casualty in a war conducted by one U.S. president intent on outdoing another—who happened to be his wuss daddy.”

  “I’m so sorry, Gus.”

  “If just one national magazine or influential newspaper stood up to those liars in the White House, there would be no war in Iraq,” he ranted. “If the New York Times or Washington Post wrote headlines that said, No Proof of WMDs, if just one real muckerfucker wrote a piece on the simple truth, those cowards Cheney and Bush would’ve lost their nerve! Other papers would’ve joined in. Public support would’ve vanished overnight and over a hundred thousand lives, not to mention a trillion dollars, would’ve been spared …”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Some fucking IUD blew him into a million pieces.” He meant IED, but I didn’t correct him and he kept on ranting. Even if I hadn’t been mentally incapacitated, there was nothing I could say, so when Jeeves returned, I gently switched off my phone.

  When he stepped into the flickering light of the fireplace, I got an even better look at the misshapen man. He resembled a human ampersand. Despite his monstrous face, however, there was something oddly familiar about him.

  “I’m kinda the caretaker here,” he said softly.

  “Well, Jeeves, I’m Cassandra.”

  Something below his thick and turbulent skin radiated outward, a kind of profound yet gentle sadness. He spoke in a low raspy voice. “Are you okay, Cassie?” I nodded yes. “You can stay the night, but you have to leave early.”

  “Why, do you turn into a handsome prince?”

  “No, but the lord of the manor returns. Okay?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  “Y’hungry? Anything I can get for you?”