The Right Madness

by James Crumley

  I put that one aside and looked at the next page. Mrs. George Paul. Georgia Germaine Paul, known as GG, a quiet, tall former nurse who looked a great deal like her husband: too many teeth in a mouth too wide, too much forehead, and jug ears that not even her hair could hide. She didn’t have a beard, though, just a crop of wispy bleached hairs on her upper lip. I hoped she was still in Seattle because she knew me, and I just couldn’t face hiding under a cap and sunglasses again.

  The next three names were a complete mystery. Angie Cole. Janeanne Reynolds. Elwood Studer. Mr. Studer had a one o’clock, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I thought I’d start there. I didn’t even bother finding out who he was; just drove over to Mac’s office to wait for whoever came out of the back door at two o’clock that Wednesday afternoon.

  A soft, flabby man, seemingly aimless, stepped slowly out of Mac’s back door just after two. Elwood Studer, I assumed. He looked around as if death, disaster, or personal humiliation waited behind the hedges, and he walked like a man who had just discovered his feet. He climbed into a new gray Buick and drove slowly away. I followed him into the flats of Hell Roaring Canyon, where he pulled into the driveway of a three-car garage beside one of the oldest and largest houses in the neighborhood, a rambling brick mansion that took up a small block with the remains of a small orchard behind it. A tall white-haired woman leaned on a cane with both hands in front of the garage door, a woman as hard as Elwood was soft. She had a tan, wrinkled face; a nose that could have split logs; and a grim mouth that wouldn’t have smiled even after the kindling was cut and stacked. She lit into Elwood before he could get out of the car. I didn’t have to wonder why he was seeing Mac or how he paid for the sessions.

  In my guise as a real estate scout, I checked around the neighborhood. Elwood’s mom had a reputation for chasing small children off her lawn with her cane, for accusing neighbors of stealing fruit from her backyard orchard, and was suspected of poisoning cats and dogs who wandered onto her property. Elwood had never been involved with anything more nefarious than the Boy Scouts or the stock market. He spent his days either working in the yard or watching soap operas with his mom, his nights doing jigsaw puzzles with her, and, after his mother went to bed, playing the market on the Internet. As far as the neighbors knew, he only left the house three times a week for what he claimed were allergy shots. I wondered how he’d found the bottom to call Mac the first time. And I was fairly sure he had never broken into anybody’s office or hired anybody to do it.

  It was past five by the time I finished, too late to pick up Janeanne Reynolds when she left Mac’s office. She saw him three days a week at four. Nobody seemed to be home at Charlie Marshall’s house, or at George Paul’s when I drove past. The machine picked up at Mac’s office, he wasn’t answering his cell phone, and Lorna said that she didn’t expect him home until seven. So there I was, a terrifically expensive PI with nothing to do. I thought about drinking, but decided to put that off until good dark, which was hours away. I went into my makeshift gym, lifted for a while, worked the bags—light and heavy—until my arms dragged, then showered, then idled again. Finally, I called St. Vincent’s to see if the professor was receiving visitors.

  He was receiving, but not happily.

  I could tell that he wasn’t receiving visitors happily the third time he raised his flaking eyebrows and said, “Once again, sir, who are you?”

  “Dr. MacKinderick’s friend,” I said. “I’ve been taking care of your cats.”

  “Those irritating little freeloaders,” he said. “At least I’ll be rid of those pests.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “The first thing I’m going to do when I get home is hire somebody to take them to the pound,” he said. “If I felt better, believe me, I’d strangle the little shits with my bare hands.”

  “You want me to take care of them?” I asked without thinking.

  “How much will you charge?”

  “Part of the regular service,” I said. “I’ll bill Dr. MacKinderick.”

  “Who are you again?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just think of me as the guy who’s going to do you a favor. Of course, I want a favor in return.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You recognize this?” I said, pulling the Ziploc bag holding the two halves of the broken frog out of my jacket pocket.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded. “How did it get broken?”

  “You recognize it?” I said.

  Ritter looked at me as if I were an idiot, then blushed. “It belongs on my bedside table. It’s like a worry stone. I picked it up in China. I sometimes hold it when I’m reading before I go to sleep. Charity always made fun of … Did she …? Oh, no, I guess not. I forgot.”

  I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell that the killer had left a fingerprint on the frog, but I put it back in my pocket anyway. “Maybe I can have it fixed,” I said, then started out the door. But I stopped to ask, “You don’t happen to be a fisherman, are you?” He looked confused. “No? I didn’t think so.”

  Ritter wanted to know who I was again, but when I didn’t answer, he grabbed the telephone, and when I left, he was shouting at Mac’s answering machine. I found myself thinking more kindly about Charity Ritter than I had in the past.

  If I was going to move the girls, I needed a couple of cat carriers, so I headed for the mall. On the way I called Whit. She wasn’t answering, so I left word on her voice mail to let her know that I had finally broken down and decided that we needed a cat. Two cats. Two girl-detective cats. I hoped it would be all right.

  After I scored two cat carriers, it occurred to me to drop into the Ginger Snap Dragon, hoping Little Davy was working. He was dealing with the dinner rush, so I nursed a couple of beers while I waited for a chance to talk with him.

  “Were you working last Friday?” I asked him when he finally paused long enough to chat.

  “Sure,” he said. “Is this about Carrie?”

  “The police have already been here, right?” I said.

  “You ain’t workin’ an open case, are you, Sughrue?” he said, grinning. Thanks to television, everybody on the street knew more about my job than I did.

  “Just curious,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” he answered. “I took the call. It was a girl. A very young girl by the sound of her voice. She asked for Carrie. They talked a minute, no more, then Carrie grabbed her purse and stormed out. That’s all I know, man, and unless you’re working for Arno’s lawyer, I didn’t even say that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve got your beer,” he said.

  It took thirty minutes of Jane Eyre and two cans of pâté with truffles to lure the girls into the cages. All the way to my house they howled like mad women racing the winds of unrequited love across the moors. I hadn’t heard back from Whit, so I stashed the litter box, the cat food, and the girls in my office, found them a romantic black-and-white movie, then sat down. My client wouldn’t return my calls; my wife wouldn’t return my calls; and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. But I couldn’t sit around watching movies with cats all my life, so I hooked it up and braved the damp, depressing climes of The Phone Booth.

  For a twenty-dollar bill and a promise not to beat him half to death, Lamar, the bartender, an old if not fond acquaintance of mine, stuffed the bill in his pocket, smirked, and told me, “Sheila’s the ugly one with the big tits. She’ll be up in a while. Calls herself Sherlynn.” I took my two warm Rainiers into the lounge, my two-drink minimum fulfilled.

  Meriwether wasn’t on the high-dollar Las Vegas-LA-SeaTac topless dancer circuit. More like the low-rent Tacoma-Yakima-Boogertown one. So I didn’t expect much in the way of prime meat. I wasn’t disappointed. I’d worked in topless bars when I was younger. Even then, I found them sad, ugly places. The last thirty years hadn’t made them any better. So when the bartender announced “the lovely Sherlynn” and cued up Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love
,” I didn’t know what to think. An odd choice of music for a topless dancer, I thought. When Sheila Miller came out, the small crowd of truckers growled, and I was even more confused.

  She had an ill-fitting straw-colored wig, too little forehead, too much nose for tiny eyes set much too close together, a small pursed tube of a mouth that never smiled, and no chin at all, but she had the moves of a professional dancer and a body worthy of pagan sacrifice. She seemed to love the music and gave herself completely to the song. But at the same time, she exuded waves of contempt and raw sexuality, a dichotomy, I assumed, that had probably destroyed her life. I could understand why she needed Mac’s guidance and approval. Hell, I was aroused so quickly, I was embarrassed, so I finished my beers quickly, then left the lounge.

  As I passed the bar, Lamar beckoned me over. “Hey, Sughrue,” he hissed, “for another two twenties, I can talk the lady into a private lap dance.”

  I started to say something ugly, then decided maybe I could find out something if I spent some time in a small room with Sheila. But it was another bad idea. She wouldn’t stop dancing her hard, heavy breasts in my face, and she avoided even the most general question, fluting vague answers in her tiny, soft voice. The bouncer wouldn’t step far enough away, either. So all I proved was the weakness of my flesh.

  Embarrassed again by the ease with which she had aroused me, I paid up, tipped, then slunk out of the close room like an egg-sucking dog.

  On the way past the bar, Lamar motioned me over, whispering wetly, “For a couple hundred, Sughrue, I can arrange something even more private.” I grabbed Lamar, my thumb deep into his armpit, squeezing until he squeaked.

  “Don’t ever say my name again, you shit weasel, don’t even think it.”

  “What the hell’s wrong—” he started to say, but a little more pressure cut off the words.

  I couldn’t have answered the question anyway, so I just left.

  SEVEN

  I HADN’T BEEN lodged in a dark corner booth at the Goat bar more than five minutes when the Marshalls and Pauls came in from the Missoula airport and gathered at the booth behind me. The women, I assumed, had just arrived on the often late last flight from Seattle. The women were rollicking drunk, the men surly. Charlie and George had probably been sitting in the dull, uncomfortable airport bar for a couple of hours, sucking down bourbons as they waited for the delayed flight, while the women dallied happily in the Crown Room at SeaTac. I was too close to them not to overhear their loud conversation clearly.

  A striking young couple draped in black leather with ink-black hair shrouding their metal-studded faces came into the bar, then sat at a table beside us. They looked as if they were a couple of rock stars who had wandered off MTV and into the wrong bar. A string of young dandies lined up to buy them drinks.

  The wives didn’t know what they wanted to drink. The husbands grumbled while the wives dithered. Finally, the women decided on gin and tonics, then changed their minds before the cocktail waitress got to the bar. “Frozen margaritas!” the women shouted in unison. George muttered a curse, stormed to the bar, insisted on two bourbons before the bartender started the frozen drinks. Back at the table with the drinks, George and Charlie clinked glasses, ignoring the women. It went on like that for some time. They argued about what kind of snacks to have; complained about the price of Seattle hotel rooms and the constant construction downtown. The women switched to stingers, the men to Wild Turkey; the hot wings grew cold. Bitter laughter garnished with cynical bitching.

  Then disaster. During one of those unexplained silences that strike through noisy crowds as suddenly and unexpectedly as heat lightning, George said, his voice deep with amusement, “If you goddamned women charged more for your blow jobs, your shopping trips wouldn’t be so fucking expensive.”

  The silence in the bar spread wide and deep, like a crack in the earth’s crust.

  “Bastard!” Ellen screamed, then threw her glass into George’s face, grabbed her purse, and rushed out. Followed shortly by the punk-rocker girls as their band of hopeful suitors dispersed like foam peanuts in stiff wind.

  Everyone at the table sat very still. The glass had opened a small cut on the bridge of George’s nose. The drink and the blood dribbled down his face and through his beard. Without wiping his face, George said very calmly to Charlie, “Hey, buddy, maybe you should monitor your wife’s drug intake a bit more carefully.” GG shook her head slightly, then handed her husband a napkin. He wiped his face, finished his drink, then stood up, holding the napkin to his nose. Charlie and GG started to stand up, but George motioned them back to their chairs, then waved at the cocktail waitress for another round. “She’ll go home and cry herself to sleep, right?” he said. “She left us afoot, right? So let’s have a couple of drinks while we wait for the taxi, okay?” Then he walked toward the restrooms while the other two sat as if paralyzed.

  GG murmured to Charlie, “She’s been seeing this shaman, you know, one of those Native American women, and she’s been teaching Ellen to chant her way into some sort of spiritual center of peace.” Then she paused, “And it really seemed to be working. All the way back from Seattle. She came home as if she were in a great dream. Now all this happened. I don’t know what to think.”

  “I hope George is all right,” Charlie said.

  “George is happy,” GG murmured. “Raucous emotions turn him on. It’ll be a rough night all around.”

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie said, as if it might be his fault. He grimaced as if expecting a box of hot coals in his lap.

  After George came back from the restroom with a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bridge of his nose, everything was quiet for a long while. I thought I might beat Charlie Marshall’s cab home. Perhaps the ensuing conversation might be interesting and loud enough for me to hear outside the house. The Marshalls lived just off the Ridgeway Golf Course in the foothills of the Bluestones south of town, and I knew I could slink up to the side of the house. I waited until George told the bartender to call a cab, then I settled up and took off.

  The Marshalls’ house had been built into the hillside, two stories stacked above a daylight basement where Charlie had his woodworking shop beside the garage. As I drove past the house, I saw the Lincoln Navigator parked crookedly in the driveway in front of the closed garage doors. Except for a dim glow behind the shutters of the workshop, the house was completely dark. Taking a chance, I parked two houses down the street, then slipped through the yards and up the driveway to the south side of the house and knelt behind a shrub beside a dirty basement shop window.

  After a few minutes, I could hear faint music drifting out of the shop, something ethereal and exotic, like a snake charmer’s flute. And under the music, an even fainter hum that I couldn’t identify, and a low chant, slowly repeated, softly compelling. I sat down, leaned against the south-facing concrete wall, and waited for Charlie’s cab to arrive, wondering if I could get away with a cigarette, but decided against it, quickly caught by the flute and the soothing rhythms.

  Sitting there in the midnight dark, the sun’s warmth seeping out of the concrete into my back, I tried to unravel the past ten days. Nothing made any sense. Why would anybody stage such an elaborate death for Charity Ritter? Unless my joking guess was right. Somebody wanted Ritter to see what he thought was his wife’s suicide. And what did Johnny Raymond know about Carrie Fraizer’s death that I didn’t? I could ask Claudia Lucchesi if I could catch her in the daylight. Too much blood, too many drinks, too little sleep. And my woman was a thousand miles away …

  I would never know if I drifted into sleep or just into a confused stupor, never know if it was the arrival of the taxicab or the flurry of gunshots that brought me back to reality. The basement window flared with the muzzle flashes, and the walls shook with the blasts and the thuds of the rounds into the ceiling and walls. Taxicab doors slammed loudly from the street. I rolled to my knees and leaned over into the window well to scrub at the dirty film covering the pane with my handker
chief.

  Except for a pair of black lace gloves, Ellen’s naked body was as pale as the inside of an apple in the dim light as she swayed to the music, standing next to the humming band saw, the metal teeth a blur. When the slide on the semiautomatic in her right hand locked back, she took it away from the side of her head, looked at it as if she didn’t know what it was. Then with a terrible motion both graceful and inevitable, like a move learned from an ancient religious dance, Ellen swept her right arm into the saw blade. The hand popped off just above the wrist with a tear of flesh, a snap of bone, and the blood splashing like water from a hose. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hand as it bounced off the saw table, then out of sight, still holding the pistol. Darkness flashed across my vision. Then Ellen swayed languidly, like a poplar bending in the wind, back into the whirring blade to slice off the other hand.

  Suddenly, the workshop was full of drunken people screaming. As I scrambled to my feet, thinking to go help, jerked out of my stupor by the horror, I tripped over my feet or slipped in the grass or something, then crashed forehead first into the basement wall. The last thing I remembered was a sharp sting in the back of my neck, as if I had cracked a cervical vertebra or torn a muscle.

  I was out long enough for the police and ambulance to arrive. When I struggled to my knees, I was still groggy, but through the clear space in the basement window, I could see that Ellen was being taken out on a gurney, Charlie was slumped in shock, and George was shouting drunkenly at a patrol cop. I found a bloody scrape and a bone-deep gash in my forehead. Much dizzier than I should have been, I sat back down to lean against the wall until I seemed to have my wits halfway about me, then I called Johnny Raymond on the cell phone. Probably the first smart thing I’d done all day.

  Even with Raymond not pressing too hard and Musselwhite standing behind me, it was noon the next day before the police kicked me loose into the ER. The doctor cleaned out the scrape and stitched up the furrow in my face. He said he didn’t like the way my eyes looked. I told him it looked pretty much the same from the inside, so I took a cab down to the station to sign my statement, and went home in a cab, too. I didn’t seem to remember where my car had been left.