Wilde West

by Walter Satterthwait

  The lecture had been a disaster. His wittiest sallies stumbled into a blank wall of silence. His most profound observations met with uneasy titters or, worse, with the pachydermal trumpeting of some dunce emptying his sinuses into a pocket handkerchief. (Or more likely, given the caliber of the crowd, into his fingers.) Throughout the evening, Oscar was unable to prevent himself from glancing over expectantly at the box on his right, as though one of the two desiccated old harpies slumbering there, mouths agape, might magically transform herself into a regal presence swathed in ermine.

  After the spotty and perfunctory applause, Oscar had left the Opera House and trudged back to the hotel. He had wanted to see, had wanted to speak with, no one. (Except of course Her.) But his stomach had recovered from its battle with the chicken—curious, and a bit vexing, how it could remain utterly indifferent to its owner’s personal tragedy—and he had stopped downstairs for a bite to eat. There had been only a few customers in the bar, but one of them had been O’Conner, sitting with a bottle before him in the same chair that Vail had occupied earlier, and looking every bit as glum. Oscar had joined him.

  “What do you recommend tonight?” Oscar asked him.

  O’Conner, wearing the brown suit he had purloined from some scarecrow, looked at him balefully and said, “The whiskey.”

  When the waiter arrived a moment later, however, Oscar ordered the night’s special, something called meat loaf. (They had no tea here; he had asked before.) As the waiter left, Oscar asked O’Conner, “You’ve spoken with Marshal Grigsby?”

  O’Conner made a sour frown. “Yeah.”

  “What do you think of all this? These women being killed?”

  O’Conner raised his glass, drank from it. “Some hookers got killed. Happens all the time.” He shrugged. “It’s a rough line of work.”

  Surprised, Oscar said, “You won’t be writing about it, then?”

  O’Conner shook his head. “Not my kind of thing.”

  “I should’ve thought that any reporter would’ve found the story fascinating.”

  O’Conner shook his head. “It’s not my kind of thing,” he said again, then drank some more whiskey and stared off at the nearly empty room.

  “What do you think of Grigsby’s notion that it’s one of us?”

  O’Conner looked at him. “Can you see any of us disemboweling a hooker?”

  “No,” Oscar admitted. “I can’t.”

  O’Conner shrugged.

  Oscar said, “Von Hesse had an interesting idea.”

  O’Conner looked at him. “I doubt that.”

  “He believes that one of us may be the killer, without being aware of it. That the homicidal side of his nature is as unknown to him as it is to the rest of us.”

  O’Conner snorted lightly. “Von Hesse is good at believing in things he can’t see.”

  The meat loaf arrived then, and turned out to be a thick slab of parched, overcooked ground meat studded throughout with limp fragments of unidentifiable vegetable and glazed with an oily tomato sauce. Beside it on the plate rose a lumpy mound of mashed potatoes. The waiter also set on the table an empty whiskey glass.

  O’Conner looked at Oscar’s plate, frowned, and said, “I wouldn’t eat that on an empty stomach, if I were you.” He poured bourbon into Oscar’s glass.

  Tentatively, Oscar tasted the meat. Execrable was the first word that sprang to mind. It was followed closely by vile.

  O’Conner grinned. “That’s a pretty hefty portion you’ve got there. The cook must like you.”

  “Fortunately,” said Oscar, “I’ve never met the man.”

  “It’s a woman,” O’Conner said. “The wife of one of the brothers who owns the hotel. Maybe she’s after you. The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” He frowned. “Who was it who said that?”

  “Lucretia Borgia.”

  O’Conner snorted.

  Oscar took a sip of whiskey. “How are your articles coming along?”

  “Fine,” O’Conner said, and swallowed some whiskey of his own.

  “When will we get a opportunity to read them?”

  The reporter shrugged dismissively. “I asked Horner, the editor, to send copies to Chicago. They should be waiting for me there.”

  Oscar tasted the mashed potatoes. Or rather, attempted to, for they had no taste at all. “And so you’re really not going to write about these killings?”

  O’Conner scowled. “Jesus, Wilde, I already said so, didn’t I?” Abruptly he pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ve got to get some work done. I’ll see you at the train station tomorrow.” And lifting his bottle and tucking it under his arm, he had stalked from the room.

  Leaving a puzzled Oscar to finish what he could of his meal by himself.

  After dinner, he had climbed up the stairs to his room and, dispirited, dejected, climbed out of his clothes and into his pajamas, then flopped with his cigarette case and his notebook onto the bed.

  Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow he would present himself at Tabor’s mansion, using the excuse that he wished to say goodbye. He must see her. Even if disguised as merely a polite visitor, even if only for a few moments, he must see her.

  As for this murder business, the more one thought about that, the less probable the whole thing seemed. It had been the novelty of von Hesse’s theory, rather than its plausibility, that had attracted; and the novelty now had worn off. And having used the theory to fill up the emptiness within him, Oscar now felt, without it, doubly empty.

  And yet those poor women had been killed in towns where the tour had stopped. How to explain that?

  An itinerant madman. This was the only possible explanation.

  Still, it would do no harm to keep an eye opened. All the men were innocent, certainly; but assuming, simply for the sake of argument, that one of them could be guilty, then it might be wise to remain alert.

  O’Conner had acted oddly tonight. Brusque and moody. Quite unlike himself. And how could a reporter ignore the journalistic possibilities of these murders?

  And what of that queer voice emerging from Vail’s mouth?

  But perhaps once you set out to discover secrets, you discovered that there was no end of them. Each of us had his own; each of us had another face hidden behind the mask.

  Who would’ve thought that Vail had once been an actor? That once he had, good Lord, wanted to play Hamlet?

  To be or not to be, that’s the question, am I right?

  But Vail a madman, a murderer? Or O’Conner? Or any of them? Absurd.

  One should keep alert, however. If any of them were a madman (which was of course impossible), then surely he must finally reveal himself to the alert mind. To the alert, penetrating mind of a poet.

  Oscar lit a cigarette.

  Where was she? Just now, just at this moment, what was she doing?

  Her white breasts are perfectly rounded at the bottom, and they slope down along their upper surface in a graceful arc to broad, pale pink, puckered aureoles and stiff fragrant nipples the thickness of fingertips; and, kneeling upright and naked on the bed, she offers them to him …

  Oscar’s hand drifted down his stomach.

  Ah, Freddy. Tonight we have only each other.

  Tonight, naked, once again he was dancing.

  Twirling, spinning, silently wheeling, feet darting, arms loose and free.

  It had been better last night, yes, it had been oh so wonderful last night when the red came flying off those streamers of flesh at his fingertips and sailed through the air and pattered bright shining patterns along the wall. It had been glorious then, afloat in the brilliant tumbling spate of divine light …

  … he was on the bed now—another of those disconcerting shifts, those inexplicable folds in the fabric of Time, but never mind, never mind, he was beyond Time now. He held the pillow to his face (a whisper of camphor uncoiling from the cotton, and the sour musty shadows left behind by each of the countless heads that over the years had rested there) an
d he giggled as he remembered oh yes red fingertips capering down the slickness of bone

  There will be another.

  and prying open oh yes the wet red secrets of flesh

  Another. Soon.

  … up again, dancing again, reeling, swaying. On the cast-iron wood stove before him sat the porcelain washbasin, filled nearly to the brim with brownish water. He pranced forward, dipped his fingers into the warm water, fished out the limp slippery lump of flesh, and slumped to his knees, not in supplication, oh no, but in bliss and gratitude, and he

  There will be another soon.

  sank his teeth into the meat and tore away a chunk of it and chewed, his body shuddering with pleasure

  Soon.

  while the silence trembled like the wings of angels behind him in the room.

  Grigsby walks into the room and closes the door behind him. The air is heavy with a dank, slaughterhouse stench.

  The thing on the bed, its upper half propped against the wall, was once Molly Woods. The thing wears a petticoat, pushed back to its waist, and its legs are drawn up. There is no skin or flesh on the legs: glistening white shinbones, a pair of round white kneecaps, white thighbones. Only the feet, splayed out against the bed, are intact. Each toenail is painted red.

  The flesh has been stripped, too, from the ribs, and between white arches of bone he can see a dull film of pink tissue.

  The arms are peeled as well, from shoulder to wrist. The curled fingers of both hands have been placed at the black savage rent in the belly, as though to make it appear, obscenely, that they are drawing back the wide lips of the awful wound.

  The face is gone. The thick red hair, falling to the exposed shoulder bones, frames a leering skull from which empty sockets gape.

  Grigsby closes his eyes. He wants nothing now but to sink into the embrace of his absent wife, bury his face in her neck. He hears himself mutter her name: “Clara.”

  “Clara!” he cried out, and he twisted his body away from the room, from the terrible thing on the bed.

  And felt a hand at his brow and heard a soft voice murmuring in a foreign language. “C’est un mauvais rêve, chéri.”

  And opened his eyes and in the moonlit dimness saw the soft white shoulders and the curling blond hair and the troubled blue eyes, and he reached out and drew to him the warm enfolding body of Mathilde de la Môle.

  DEAR OSCAR

  Baby and I wanted to tell you that we will be joining up with the noon train to Manitou Springs today. My private car will be hooked to the rear of the train. We hope you will join us for a chat! See you at the station! I remain

  Yours truly,

  H. A. W. Tabor

  Pathetic, really, those exclamation marks.

  And that sloppy childish scrawl.

  And my private car indeed. As though to say, “I’m really quite appallingly rich, you know.” Why hadn’t the boor simply enclosed one of his bank statements?

  Yet Oscar was inanely smiling as he thanked the desk clerk for the note. He felt potent, invincible: Ulysses rearing up, leonine, from the lobby of a Denver hotel.

  She would be there. He would see her.

  “Good news?” said a voice to Oscar’s left.

  Vail, looking today rather the worse for wear: sagging gray dewlaps and bloodshot eyes.

  “From Tabor,” said Oscar, folding the note and sliding it into his coat pocket. “To inform me that he’ll be on the train today.”

  The bloodshot eyes grew wary. “Is she coming? The doxy?”

  “I couldn’t say. By the way, I looked for you last night, before the lecture. Where had you gone?”

  “Nowhere. I was out cold all night.” He shook his head ruefully, and then suddenly winced, as though the movement had sent a splinter of bone spearing through his brain. “Jeez,” he said, and reached up and tenderly touched his temple. “That booze is a killer. I don’t know how O’Conner does it.”

  “So you never went to the ticket office?”

  “Not till this morning. Receipts were down, huh? A hundred and seventy-five tickets. That sound about right to you?”

  Oscar waved an indifferent hand. “Somewhere thereabouts.” He would have said a hundred and seventy-seven, but perhaps last night’s distress had affected his reckoning.

  “Yeah, well,” said Vail, “I got a telegram today from Tabor’s manager in Leadville. Tomorrow night is sold out already.”

  Oscar nodded, distracted. He must buy her something. A gift.

  Vail frowned. “Hey. You should be happy. Four hundred tickets, that’s eight hundred bucks.”

  “Hmm? Yes, of course. Delighted. You know, I think I’ll trot over to the station and see if Henry’s gotten the luggage safely on board.”

  Another frown. “The train doesn’t leave for another three hours.” The frown became a scowl. “Shit. She is coming, am I right?”

  “I really don’t understand why you’re so prejudiced against the woman. At bottom, you know, she’s rather shy and retiring.”

  At bottom: lovely phrase.

  “Shy like a cobra,” said Vail.

  Oscar laughed. “Ah, Vail, you’re too much the trusting soul. You really should acquire a little cynicism. It would go so well with your necktie.”

  Vail glanced down, frowning, at his checkered bow tie.

  “Now,” said Oscar, “you’ll see to the others? The Countess and the rest? Make sure they get to the station? Oh, and give me one hundred dollars, would you?”

  Vail squinted at him. “What for?”

  “For cigarettes.”

  “Aw, come on, Oscar. Be fair. I’m the business manager. I got to ask questions like that.”

  “But I’m the business,” Oscar smiled. “And I needn’t answer them. One hundred dollars, if you please.”

  Vail reached into his jacket pocket, slid out his billfold, counted out the money. He handed it to Oscar. “You keep spending money like this and you’re not gonna have any left when we finish the tour.”

  “But I shall have some lovely memories.”

  “Memories and a nickel will get you a ride on the streetcar.”

  Oscar smiled. “A gentleman,” he said, “never rides the streetcar.”

  A ring was out of the question; he didn’t know what size she wore, and he refused to turn their time together into farce by presenting her with one that didn’t fit. “What do you have,” he asked, “in the way of lockets?”

  Behind the counter, the short, elderly German proprietor looked Oscar up and down from over the rims of his spectacles. Oscar wore this morning his dark purple velvet coat and a pale green shirt wrapped at the neck with a rakishly fluffed paisley foulard, and he thought that on balance he looked smashing. The jeweler said, “Dis vould be for yourself?”

  “For a young woman,” Oscar said in German.

  In English, evidently unimpressed by Oscar’s fluid German: “Sister, cousin, friend, sveetheart?”

  “The latter.” How very annoying: he was blushing.

  “Sveetheart,” said the jeweler.

  Oscar cleared his throat. “Yes.”

  “So a sveetheart, she gets a heart.”

  Oscar frowned. “Haven’t you anything else?”

  The jeweler shrugged. “You vant to give her, vot, a liver? A kidney, maybe?”

  “Ah.” Oscar smiled. “A comic jeweler. Extraordinary. Are there many of you here in Denver?”

  “The other vun, he died. Vot’s de matter mit a heart?”

  “It’s fairly … ordinary, don’t you think?”

  “It’s nice, is vot I tink. A heart is nice. A kidney, not so nice.”

  “What I want is something unique, something extravagant.”

  “You vant a Fabergé egg.”

  “Something like, yes. What do you have along the lines of a Fabergé egg?”

  “Hearts.”

  “Yes. Of course. Let’s have a look at these hearts.”

  “Hearts ve got.” The jeweler bent forward, slid open a panel at the
rear of the counter, and brought up a tray. He set it atop the counter. “All sizes.”

  Oscar studied the lockets. He said, “None of them speak to me.”

  The jeweler shrugged. “You vant it to talk, ve can’t do business.”

  “What’s that over there?”

  “Vot?”

  “Behind you there, on the shelf.”

  “Dis? Dis is a brooch. Nice, a very nice piece, but a locket it’s not.”

  “May I see it?”

  He handed the brooch to Oscar. “Dot’s Indian. The Zuni tribe. From Arizona. A very nice piece. Vun of a kind.”

  “Expensive, in other words.”

  “Dot I could let you haff for eighty-five dollars.”

  “These Zunis of yours. Do they by any chance own Arizona?”

  “Look at dot inlay vork. A lot of craft goes into making a piece like dot.”

  “Into selling it, as well.”

  The jeweler shrugged. “Ve could go back to hearts.”

  “Do you have something attractive to present it in?”

  “I got a box.”

  “Metal? Lined with velvet?”

  “Cardboard. Lined with cardboard.”

  “The jeweler who died. It was a natural death?”

  “Something he ate, I heard.”

  “Not a bullet, then?”

  “Who vould eat a bullet?”

  “Indeed. Do you have a box in, say, violet?”

  “In white, I got vun.”

  “Fine. Done.”

  “You vant ribbon, I got ribbon. Red.”

  Oscar smiled. “A ribbon then, by all means.”

  Although the train to Manitou Springs and Leadville wouldn’t be leaving for another hour and a half, the platform was crowded with people. There were cowboys in long canvas dusters, miners in canvas capes, businessmen in suits and topcoats, entire families in homespun and gingham. Children, giddy with candy and anticipation, scampered up and down the steps, scurried along the planking, dipped and disappeared behind adult legs. Vendors hawked popcorn and roasted peanuts. The sunlight slanting below the wooden canopy was thin but clear, and the air seemed festive, expectant, pulsing with possibilities.