by Tom Epperson
Now Schnitter stood up, and turned and faced us in the bright round light. His pointy-eared face was contorted and terrible. He shouted: “What the fuck is THIS?!”
Chapter 15
SHE’D SUFFOCATED, EVIDENTLY.
Nucky and Nello had been in charge of her. They’d wrapped her up a little before dinner started. They said the last they saw of her she was fine, except she’d been drinking like a fish all night, so at some point she must have passed out, which must have been why she didn’t yell for help or something before she died.
Max Schnitter seemed to think the whole thing was some kind of practical joke on him, and he stormed off with his guys. Hanley, Shaw, and Nuffer bailed out of there pretty fast too.
Bill Flitter, the hotel manager, who looked like his name, and seemed terrified of us, called a doctor and the San Bernardino County sheriff.
Bud sat at the table wiping off his hands with one Kleenex after another. “Some fucking mess,” he said glumly.
Jack Otay said: “Don’t sweat it. We’ll fix it.”
Vera Vermillion lay on the stage in the cellophane and ribbons, looking very white, lonely, and pathetic. And still. So still. Finally a waiter flapped out a tablecloth and let it settle down upon her.
The doctor and the sheriff showed up. The doctor was an old, white-haired guy that looked just like the picture I had in my head of Dr. Ames. He examined the body, while Otay and the sheriff went off in a corner together. I’d have expected somebody that was a sheriff to look lanky and tough, like Buck Jones, the cowboy movie star, or maybe Loy Hanley, but this guy looked more like Oliver Hardy or Wendell Nuffer, wearing bright-red suspenders and a straw hat, and mopping his sweating neck with a handkerchief even though the room wasn’t hot.
Turned out the sheriff and Otay were old pals. Every winter they’d go south to El Centro together and shoot ducks. After the doctor finished with Vera, he went over to Otay and the sheriff, and the three of them talked for a while as Bud and myself and the rest of the guys watched. At one point they all busted out laughing, and the sheriff slapped Otay on the back.
“Hey, they’re laughing,” said Nucky. “That’s a good sign.”
“You better hope it’s a good sign, you fucking moron,” said Bud.
Finally the three shook hands all around, and Otay came walking back.
“The doc says it looks like a heart attack. ‘A tragedy in one so young,’ he said. Nothing nobody coulda done.”
Bud sighed with relief.
“Thanks, Jack. I won’t be forgetting this.”
“Glad to be of help,” said Otay with his usual smirk.
Now Bud addressed us generally.
“I don’t want some headline-happy reporter getting wind of this. You know, ‘Dame Dies At Wild Party Attended By Mayor’s Brother.’ Talk to the waiters and the busboys and the guy that ran the spotlight and anybody else you can think of. Spread around some dough. Tell ’em to keep a lid on it if they know what’s good for ’em.”
We heard a thud. The piano player had fainted. He was lying near his piano all crumpled up in his powder-blue tuxedo.
“Poor Goldilocks,” said Bud. “I guess the excitement was just too much for him,” and everybody laughed.
Two guys dressed in white came in and loaded the body on a stretcher and lugged it off into the night. I went up to my room without trying to bribe or threaten anybody. Took two aspirin and filled up the bathtub with the hottest water I could stand.
I eased myself in and lay there with just my nose and eyes above the surface like a crocodile. It seemed strange and somehow impossible I’d been talking to Vera this afternoon and now she was dead. I thought if I hadn’t bought her that second drink maybe she would have stopped drinking and maybe right now she’d be frolicking with Max Schnitter in his room instead of riding in an ambulance down a twisty road with the guys in white.
I was barely awake now, like my nose was barely above the water. And then I either dreamed, or imagined, or imagined I dreamed, or dreamed I imagined that Vera Vermillion was running naked through the woods around Lake Arrowhead, pursued by three angry snorting deers, and then I snorted up the hot water of the tub and sat up coughing and choking then heaved myself out and grabbed a towel.
Above my bed the Indian kid was still holding up his shining triumphant fish. I wandered over to the window. The moon had gone down, and I couldn’t see much, just a few dark trees; they looked like a bunch of guys standing around on a corner with their hands in their pockets and their backs to me, talking about stuff they didn’t want me to hear.
I sat down in an armchair. The back of my brain felt like it was teeming with bad dreams, and I was reluctant to go to bed, go to sleep, and unleash them.
I don’t know whether I’d been sitting there five minutes or two hours when I heard a ruckus out in the hallway: yelling, and cursing, and crashing around, and I jumped up and yanked on my pants and opened my door.
Wendell Nuffer was crawling down the hallway on his hands and knees, wearing nothing but blue-and-white-striped boxer shorts, while Loy Hanley walked behind him, kicking him violently in the butt with his cowboy-booted foot.
Hanley was wearing trousers and an undershirt. His jaws were working on a piece of gum, and there was something remorseless and impersonal in his face, like a grasshopper chewing its way through a leaf.
Nuffer’s body was covered with a glowing-pink sunburn, and he wept and bled from the nose as he crawled and cried out: “No! No! Stop! Stop! Please! No!”
There were spectators: Hotel guests in their nightclothes peeked fearfully out of their rooms. The two Tommys leaned against a wall, smoking cigarettes and yukking it up. Violet Gilbertson, wearing a bathrobe, her hair messed up, stood in a doorway and nervously bit on one of her fingers; it took me a moment to realize she was in the doorway of Loy Hanley’s room.
Nuffer finally collapsed to the floor. Hanley stood over him, chewing, hands on hips, not even breathing hard. He said: “You had enough, Nuffer?”
“Yes.”
“You ever fuck with me again I’ll kill you. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Loy?” called Violet. “Come on back.”
But Hanley wasn’t quite ready to let it go. He stood there, looking at Nuffer, then reached down and jerked his boxer shorts down past his buttocks; then he turned and walked back to his room. “Get back in there, you’re half nekkid,” he told Violet, then the door closed behind them.
Other doors up and down the hallway also closed. Tommy and Goodlooking Tommy walked away, still giggling.
I went over to Nuffer. His eyes were scrunched shut and leaking tears, snot and blood were dripping out of his nose, and he was gasping and wheezing. His butt was starkly white compared to the boiled-looking rest of him; there was something shockingly obscene about it, like he’d been posed for a dirty photograph.
“Come on, Mr. Nuffer,” I said, and I took one of his arms and helped him to his feet. I tugged up his shorts, then led him toward his room. He shuffled along, with the blank eyes of a blind man.
He’d left his door wide open. We went in, and I sat him down in a chair, then went in the bathroom and wet a washcloth.
He stank of sweat and liquor. I wiped the blood off his face and chest. “What happened?” I said.
He looked at me like he’d just become aware of my presence. “Oh, Danny.”
I asked him again what had happened.
“I was pretty pickled, you see. Oh yes. Extraordinarily pickled. And Violet and I went to bed. Then I woke up, and she wasn’t there.
“Oh I knew right away where she was, my boy, I knew right away, because I saw, you saw, we all saw, how she and Hanley were looking at each other. So I went straight to his room. I pounded on the door. I stood bellowing in the hallway like a bull. Then when he opened the door, and I saw her behind him, I struck him in the face.”
Nuffer laughed.
“I was something of a sissy when I was a boy, and I s
uppose I forgot I’m still a sissy.”
And he kept laughing, and it was a scary kind of laugh, like he was on the edge of going loony.
“And oh, my boy, how could it have been any worse! Intoxicated, in my underwear, getting kicked in the hiney by a gangster, while the cheap tramp that caused it all looks on and laughs! Soon the whole town will know! I’ll be a laughingstock! And I should be! I’m funny, I’m funny, Nuffer is funny!” He was shaking all over with laughter, and his face was turning even redder if that was possible. “But I won’t let it get me down, no, not a bit, my boy, not a bit, because Nuffer has that fighting spirit,” and then he began to sing in a hoarse boisterous voice:
“Fight on for ol’ SC,
Our men fight on to victory,
Our alma mater dear
Looks up to you,
Fight on and win
For ol’ SC,
Fight on to victory,
Fight on!”
Chapter 16
NEXT MORNING I came out of the elevator with my suitcase and saw Dick Prettie in the lobby, looking thoughtfully up at the grizzly bear. He was standing so still that he looked stuffed too.
I walked over and looked up at the bear myself.
“Look at them fucking teeth,” he said.
“They’re big all right.”
“Just think about it. Think about being ate to death by that fucking thing. I couldn’t never have been a cowboy. Bears trying to eat your ass. Indians trying to scalp the fucking hair right off your head.”
Probably to the great relief of the staff and the other guests, we were all leaving Birkenhead Manor. Bud and Darla walked by, trailed by two college-boy bellhops with their luggage. They seemed to be in a hurry. Darla glanced over at us and waved. I waved back.
“Look at him,” said Dick. “Trying to get outa here before he runs into Shitter.”
“I guess this whole thing was a disaster, huh?”
Dick shrugged and coughed, which seemed to remind him it was time to light up another cigarette. As he flicked his lighter, Timothy, the old colored shoeshine boy, stumbled out of the corridor where his stand was, pursued by Nucky Williams, who was hitting him with a dead fish.
“I know you did it, you lying nigger!” yelled Nucky.
“No suh,” said Timothy, “it wasn’t me, suh! Lordie! Stop it, suh! Please!”
Timothy had his arms up, trying to fend off the blows. The fish looked like one of the trout from the pool in the Big Boulder Dining Room. Guests and employees were keeping their distance, some looking scared and others amused. I saw the manager come out of his office behind the front desk, take a quick look, then flit back into his office.
“Nucky, what’s going on?” I said. I took a step toward Nucky and the old man. I felt Dick’s hand on my arm, heard him say: “Stay out of it, Danny.”
Nucky looked over his shoulder at me. He was holding the fish by the tail, and its glassy eye seemed to be looking at me too. “Huh?” said Nucky.
“What’s going on?”
“Snowflake here put this fucking fish in my bed—”
“No suh, I didn’t do no such of a thing—”
With a smooth backhand motion, like he was playing tennis, Nucky slapped the trout into Timothy’s face and shouted: “Shut up!” Now he turned back to me. “He was getting back at me ’cause I dropped that dollar in his spit bucket.”
“But how do you know it was him?”
“I seen him last night sneaking around outside my room,” and then he said: “What’s it to you, Danny? You a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Niggers?”
“Suh,” said Timothy, “reason I was up there, I was picking up shoes to shine. Folks put their shoes outside of their doors at night, and in the morning when they open their doors up they find their shoes all nice and shiny.”
“I TOLD YOU TO SHUT UP, NIGGER!” and Nucky began to ferociously flog Timothy with the fish again.
“Nucky, stop it!” I tried to grab the fish away from him, then he shoved me and I stumbled back then I started to go for him but Dick grabbed me and hissed in my ear: “Danny, are you nuts?”
Nucky’s tie had gone crooked and he straightened it as he stared at me in disbelief with his flat chicken eyes. “Yeah, Dick, that’s right. You keep your pal away from me.”
Timothy had taken this opportunity to scuttle off and vanish. I could see in Nucky’s face that he wanted to do a lot more to me than just hit me with a fish. Dick picked up my suitcase and pulled me toward the front entrance. “Come on, let’s get outa here.”
We got in my Packard and began to drive down the mountain. “You don’t wanna get on the wrong side of Nucky Williams,” said Dick. “The only reason he didn’t kill you is ’cause he’s scared of Bud.”
“You mean he’s not scared of me?”
Dick didn’t answer. Pretty soon the mountains were in my rearview mirror and we’d reentered the flat lands. Orange orchards. Hubert’s Rabbit Ranch. People in tattered clothes toiling in emerald fields. We stopped for gas. It was thirty-three cents a gallon. We’d made a deal that if I drove my car Dick would buy the gas, and he started complaining to the sullen kid with the swollen jaw that was manning the pumps that this was fucking highway robbery, gas was twelve cents a gallon in Los Angeles. The kid said: “Lay off me, mister. I just work here. And I got a goddamn toothache.”
I found myself glad to get back to the city. It felt like we’d been gone weeks instead of a couple of days. I dropped Dick off at his apartment house on Wilcox, then headed for La Vista Lane.
As I pulled up in front of the bungalow court, I saw Sophie flying down the sidewalk on roller skates. I called out to her, but she didn’t look back, then I realized it wasn’t Sophie at all, but another little girl who didn’t even particularly look like Sophie.
I climbed the seven steps. Fifteen or twenty sparrows and three mourning doves were busy at some birdseed Mrs. Dean had put out. They scattered with a whoosh of wings at my approach, the doves making choppy whistling sounds.
I unlocked my bungalow and went in. It seemed musty and stuffy and still and silent.
I thought I’d drop in on Dulwich. Tell him about my adventures. I could picture the gap in his teeth as he laughed at certain things, the kindness and sadness in his eyes as he listened quietly to other things.
His door was closed. Usually it was open. I knocked. Knocked again. He seemed not to be home. I turned to leave, but then heard: “Who’s there?”
But it wasn’t Dulwich’s voice.
“Danny,” I said.
“Who?”
“Danny Landon,” I said more loudly to the closed door. “I’m Dulwich’s neighbor. Is he there?”
Silence. I was getting an eerie feeling. Maybe Dulwich had been murdered, and his murderer was on the other side of the door, just a foot or two away, trying to decide what to do with me.
“Hello?” I said.
I heard the door being unlocked, and now it opened. Standing in front of me, on the other side of the screen door, was…Dulwich.
“Dulwich,” was all I could think of to say.
“Hello, Danny,” he said very softly.
“I didn’t recognize your voice.”
He didn’t respond. I was alarmed by the way he looked. It was like it both was and wasn’t him, as if he was wearing some kind of ghastly Dulwich mask. I couldn’t remember ever having seen such bleakness, such despair in anybody’s face before.
“Dulwich, what’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened. It’s just that…on some days…the fog rolls in.”
He mustered up the ghost of a smile.
“But I’m all right, Danny. I’ll be seeing you soon.”
He stepped back, and slowly shut the door.
I went back into my bungalow.
In the bedroom I took off my hat and coat and my shoulder holster and gun, and sat down on the side of the bed and took off my shoes. Mrs. Dean had given me an old
radio. It didn’t work very well. I twisted the dial and got nothing but static, then somebody yakking away in Spanish, then finally, faintly, a woman singing:
“Life is just a bowl of cherries,
Don’t take it serious,
Life’s too mysterious…”
The voice seemed to be coming from some immeasurable distance, from the other side of space and time, and suddenly I was surprised by a sob that jumped up through my throat and out of my nose, and my eyes stung as tears ran down my cheeks.
It didn’t last long. I lay down on the bed. It had bedclothes now that covered the stain that was shaped like Texas.
I laced my fingers behind my back and looked at the ceiling. There were some interesting cracks up there.
In the living room, the phone started to ring. As far as I was concerned, it could ring till kingdom come and not make me get up. Not make me stop looking at the ceiling, as though this was the very thing I’d been put on earth to do.
PART TWO
Chapter 1
SOPHIE HAD A black eye.
“Where’d you get the shiner?” I said.
She shrugged. “I fell down.”
She was sitting on the steps in front of the bungalow court, poking at some ants with a stick. I’d just come back from the store, and was carrying two bags of groceries plus a brand-new broom with a bright-yellow handle. She said: “What’s the broom for?”
“Gee, I don’t know. What are brooms usually for?”
“Don’t get wise, BB eyes. You need some help?”
I gave her one of the bags, and we moved down the walk. She was wearing dirty dungarees and a shirt with huge purple polkadots on it. A fashion plate she wasn’t. Suddenly she startled the heck out of me by clattering her shiny black shoes across the concrete as she belted out in a high-pitched voice: