by Jon Jacks
When I sit up and look out the window behind us, the house is already ablaze at the back.
The fir trees glow like it’s suddenly Christmas and they’re glistening with ice and red light bulbs.
Down the rest of the street it’s all still remarkably dark, though lights have come on in some of the bedrooms. Like people have been woken up by the clatter of the machineguns, but they’re all way too scared to do much about it.
Brad still hasn’t switched the beams on, anyone daring to peer through their curtains hearing nothing but the roar of the accelerating car, seeing little more than a passing blur in the darkness.
‘Watch out kid; they might be following!’ Brad takes a hand off the wheel to push my head down.
‘I can’t see anyone,’ I say.
‘Sure you can’t kid,’ he growls. ‘They’ll have the sense to keep their beams off, like we are. They’ll be following, believe you me.’
*
Brad doesn’t put the car’s beams on until we begin to approach other traffic on what are mainly deserted roads at this time of night.
‘I’m hoping we shook ’em off.’
He slows down to something less than seventy miles an hour for the first time since we left the house about a quarter of an hour ago.
He also begins to point the sedan in a generally straight line, rather than swerving around as if every road was full of obstacles and potholes, every corner or exit there to send the sedan into a screeching turn.
‘It was a T-Bird and an Edsel I reckon; possibly a Lincoln too. Hard to tell in the dark, truth be told.’
He peers in the mirror.
‘Either they’re gonna have to switch their own beams on, or some pissed guy in another car is gonna flash them for not having them on. Either way, we’ll know if they’re there.’
I sit up, look out through the car’s rear window.
There’s a handful of darkened shapes and bright orbs following us.
I wait for a new set of beams to burst into life. Nothing happens.
Every driver’s driving as if he ain’t looking forward to ending up where he’s going. Every car’s pootling along like it ain’t got more than two gears, the distance between them never changing.
‘We must’ve shook them off.’
Brad gives a small, satisfied grin, his eyes back on the road ahead of us.
‘We need to find another safe place for you kid.’ He glances over at me, his face grim. ‘Safer than the last one, least ways. First off, we need to head back.’
He jerks hard on the wheel, putting the sedan into a ridiculously tight turn. The back wheels slide across the road as he spins the sedan one hundred and eighty degrees.
All the other drivers are pissed, natch, banging down hard on their horns, crying out through opened windows, ‘You crazy son of a…’
We’re heading back towards Hollywood.
*
Chapter 20
Having parked the sedan as far away from any lights as we can, Brad tells me we go the rest of the way on foot.
He still ain’t bothered telling me where we’re heading.
We’re in an area with buildings that look like they’ve been around forever, old but still looked after. Government buildings, I reckon.
Not that you can make out too much, it being so dark and all. They’re all just shapes, angles jutting up into a slightly lighter sky.
We’re keeping to the sides and the backs of buildings as much as we can, Brad moving quietly, stealthily, hissing at me whenever I’m careless enough to make a noise. As we come up the side of one particular building, he takes extra special care, looking around, making sure no one’s nearby.
Approaching a small, low window, he begins to work at it with some tool he’d grabbed from the trunk of the sedan before we’d set off. With a crack, part of the window jerks open.
‘Jack – you’re smaller than me.’ He grabs me by the shoulder, pulls me forward. ‘In you get!’
He cups his hand around one of my feet, levering me up and pushing me in through the narrow window. I drop clumsily to the floor.
I open the rest of the window and help Brad clamber in after me.
I’m still not sure where we are. This could be the janitor’s room in any building I’ve ever been in; pokey, uninteresting, no attempt at tidiness. Old table, filing cabinets, illustrations of half naked girls tacked to the walls.
‘There’ll be a guard around, but he’s old, probably asleep at his desk.’
Just in case, Brad’s keeping his voice low.
‘No one’s expecting anyone to go breaking into a mortuary.’
‘Mortuary?’ I gulp.
‘Yeah, you know – where they store all the dead bodies.’
‘Yeah, course I knew that! Just thought you had to be kidding me, right?’
‘Shhhuusssh kid; voice like that, you could wake the dead.’
*
Wouldn’t you know it, all the corridors are pitch black in the house of the dead.
Brad’s brought along a flashlight, but he’s keeping it low, lighting up only the area just ahead of us.
The rest of the corridor looks like one of those tunnels you see in the movies, guys unknowingly walking deeper and deeper into a nest of giant ants.
What the heck are we doing here?
Brad still ain’t letting on, even though he’s constantly referring to a folded plan of the building, like he’s known all along that we’d be breaking in here at some point.
He finally opens a door, leads the way into a large room. A number of strangely high tables glow in the flashlight’s dim beam, like it’s a diner for people who prefer eating standing up.
‘Don’t worry kid,’ Brad whispers, ‘they’ve put all the bodies away.’
That’s when I realise what the tables are for; cutting up the dead, like a butcher cutting up joints of meat on his slab.
This is where Marilyn’s body will have been brought.
This is where she’ll have been sliced open, guys digging their hands deep within that once perfect body.
I feel sick. I wanna get outa here, like now!
Brad grabs me, like he senses I’m ready to make a bolt for it.
‘How old are you kid? Five? Dead men are the least of anybody’s problems, believe me. It’s when they’re alive you gotta fear ’em.’
He makes his way to another room, one full of tall filing cabinets. He swiftly runs the flashlight beam along the letters and numbers on the cabinet drawers. Like he knows what he’s looking for.
He holds the beam on one of the drawers, hands me the flashlight, obviously expecting me to keep the light trained on this particular drawer. He reaches in his pocket, takes out what looks like an elaborate pocketknife.
Once he’s wiggled the tool’s thin blade in the lock, the drawer slides open.
He quickly flips through the files, takes out a sheaf of papers from one of them. He places them on top of the other files.
‘Bring the light in closer.’
He’s now got the smallest camera I’ve ever seen in his hands. He clicks away, telling me to move the top sheet, then the next, and so on until he’s taken a picture of every one of them.
‘Keep them in the same order,’ he says to me.
He slips the camera back in his pocket, grabs the papers off me. He deftly puts the papers back in their file.
As he pushes the drawer back, the lock clicks, locks itself.
‘Didn’t have a clue what all those facts and figure meant kid,’ he admits to me, leading the way with the flashlight once again. ‘I’ll get these developed soon as I can. Might be some time, seeing as how I can’t go through official channels now-’
He suddenly switches the flashlight off, places a
n arm across my chest to stop me in my tracks.
There’s a sound up ahead. Someone walking down another corridor.
A flashlight beam probing the way ahead of him, like some death ray from War of the Worlds seeking out its victims.
We both quickly glance everywhere around us, looking for something to hide behind.
There’s nothing, nothing we can get to in time without making too much noise.
*
We throw ourselves as flat against the wall as we can manage.
I even hold my breath, pull in my stomach; as if that will help.
I’m sure the guy heading towards us can hear my heart beating anyway.
The guard appears at the end of our corridor, the peak of his cap shining in the beam’s reflected glow.
He turns on squeaking shoes, shines the light down our way.
Along the floor, up the walls – directly on us.
Christ! How do you explain breaking into a mortuary?
The light passes over us, back along the wall, sweeping away from us.
The guard spins on his squeaky shoes once more, continues on his way down his own corridor.
Brad explains it all to me once we’re safely outside.
‘A guard older than God, like I said. And too damn vain to wear his glasses at that.’
*
It was a motel, way out in the middle of nowhere from what I could tell by the amount of time it had taken to drive here.
The sun was already way up, yet we hadn’t even stopped for a drink let alone a bite of something for breakfast.
Brad leaves me sitting in the sedan as he books us in, a guy with a face like a squished locust staring out from behind his desk to give me the once over. Brad probably giving him some bull that I’m his son or idiot nephew he’s been left caring for.
Locust features hands over the keys like he don’t care what a thirty-odd-year-old guy is doing here with a teenage boy. Yakking and pointing, no doubt laying down the rules of whatever it is you can’t do while staying at the Noway Motel.
The room has one of those carpets that stick to your feet, getting you all worried ’bout what it’s gonna be like when you slip your shoes and socks off. A stench of smoke so ingrained you’d swear there’s someone hidden in the lumpy bed, pulling his way through the last stick of his Winstons.
There’s a TV though, making this the equivalent of the Executive Suite far as I’m concerned. Hey, you try sitting around indoors all day, nothing to read but a book somebody’s expecting you to read, like their gonna be asking questions on it later.
Brad obviously thinks I’m thinking about switching it on, like I wanna see if it’s working or not. He places a hand across my arm, stops me from even going near it.
‘I need to be able to hear kid; in case someone’s been following us. Read the book.’
He takes a book from one his overcoat’s large pockets.
Wouldn’t you know it; it’s The Catcher in the Rye.
*
Chapter 21
Even that strange little poem is in the front once again; the girl coming through the rye.
Every other ‘lassie has her laddie’, but ‘None, they say, have I.’ And so the boys smile at her, when she’s ‘Comin’ thro’ the rye’.
It reminds me of Marilyn, but I can’t say why.
I wanna ask Brad, ‘So is this all they stock in your town library?’
‘What’s with the poem in the front?’ I say.
He’s hardly spoken since we got here, only grunting ‘Quiet’ whenever I complained that I was hungry.
He’s cleaned and prepared his shotgun, a revolver and a pistol, neatly laying them all close to hand on a side table next to the chair he’s sitting in.
He’s placed the chair so he can look out through the window.
Not that he’s put the chair near the window. It’s right at the back of the room, where most of the shade is.
He’s also pulled back all of the drapes, flicked them over the rails so he’s got a clear view.
He just sits there, looking directly and calmly out of the window. Like Mom would watch her TV, only without the dazed stare and glazed eyes.
‘It’s a song; Scotch,’ he answers, rather than telling me to keep schtum, as I’d expected. ‘Read the goddam book!’
He doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t take his eyes from the window.
*
Later, the locust arrives with some food from a local diner.
He looks suspiciously at the chair that Brad has moved.
Looks suspiciously at me on one of the two narrow, worryingly crumpled beds.
Brad’s hidden the guns, one tucked down the front of his pants but covered by the shirt he’s pulled loose. The locust looks suspiciously at the loose shirt.
Fortunately, he don’t see the bulge.
Personally, I wanna bop him for even thinking what he’s thinking. I’m hoping he does something that makes Brad whip out his gun and make the creep mess his pants.
But he keeps his thoughts to himself.
Bet he’s smirking as he leaves, patting the wad of notes Brad’s given him for a round of drinks and food a Mexican peasant would have turned his nose up at.
‘Make it last kid.’
Brad takes his seat, laying out the guns once again before he starts eating.
‘How come you’re helping me,’ I ask between mouthfuls.
‘On account of how you’re still making out it can’t have been an accident or suicide. I’m still checking up on our Miss Monroe’s death, kid.’
I’m interested. I bet it shows on my face, because he continues like he’s telling me I’ve just inherited a million dollars.
‘Turns out Sergeant Jack Clemmons of West Los Angeles finest didn’t believe much of what he heard either. Believes he just got a crock of horsesh– from all the people he found at her house that morning. Eunice, Dr Greenson, Dr Engelberg. Four thirty in the wee hours, and the poor guy’s being fed a lot of crap, he reckons. Eunice Murray, she’s up and about doing the laundry in the washing machine and cleaning the house. You credit that? Says she wants to make sure the place looks nice when the coroner come to rope of the house.’
He risks a quick glance at me to catch my reaction.
Hey, it just makes me hate Eunice even more than I thought possible. Useless, heartless cow!
Brad’s looking out the window again.
‘Now we’ve all read in the papers, right, how Eunice didn’t call Dr Greenson until she woke at three, noticing the light was still on, right? The good doctors finally breaking into Miss Monroe’s room, saying she died around three fifty. Dr Engelberg saying it’s suicide, yeah?’
I nod, even though Brad’s no longer studying me.
‘Well, get this kid, this may be the story they gave Los Angeles finest at six am. But when the police had first turned up, our three little stooges were all making out they’d discovered the body four hours earlier, saying she must have died around twelve thirty. They needed permission from the studio’s publicity department, they say, before they could contact the police. But come six am, kid, and they’re all changing their stories to the one we all read in the papers.’
‘Sh–,’ I say.
Once I’ve finished eating, I lie back on the bed, stretching out. Before I know it, I’ve drifted off into a surprisingly deep sleep.
*
Course, I don’t realise I’ve actually fallen asleep until I wake up, still feeling remarkably drowsy.
Brad’s still seated in the chair, rigidly sitting there like he’s a part of the furniture.
I make my way to the bathroom, freshen up. Swill my mouth out with cold water. Come back into the bedroom, take a sharp swig of one of the drinks the creep had brought in.
I lie on the bed again, bored.
Brad kicks my overhanging foot, nods towards the book.
‘Read kid. It’ll help take your mind off things.’
He’s fingering his pistol like it’s an order.
I pick up the book once again, even though I can’t see what all the fuss is about.
This guy’s saying everyone he meets are phoneys, though far as I’m concerned he’s the biggest phoney of them all.
I’ve been hoping the story might liven up, wondering when this ‘catcher’ guy will show up; what’s he gonna do, who’s he gonna catch?
This guys flunking at school, his mom and pop so pissed they send him off to a boarding school. But whaddya know, he gets expelled from here too.
So he leaves early for Christmas, too scared to go back and tell the folks. He spends a few days wandering round New York City.
He books into a cheap hotel, goes to a couple of nightclubs, dances with older women and even has a whore up in his room.
But all he does is talk and think about sex.
He dates an old girlfriend of his – the theatre, ice-skating. What a great life this guy has. Why’s he so depressed?
But she thinks he’s crazy when he asks her to run away with him.
He’s also got a little brother who keeps popping up, talking to him, a little brother who died.
Whenever I even sigh or look up from the book, Brad makes like he’s suddenly decided to clean one of his guns.
Like he’s prepared to use it if I don’t read his damn stupid book. He frowns, glares.
Don’t this guy ever sleep?
Thing is, if this catcher turned up, cutting and slashing, perhaps I’d actually enjoying reading this piece of…
Wait a minute – here he is!
But hold on; what a let down!
He ain’t some guy catching all the kids and throwing them on some roaring fire.
The catcher is this guy himself! The way he sees himself in a dream; catching kids to stop them falling off a cliff.
Why the hell’s Brad got me reading all this?
I look up, hoping he’s decided I’ve read enough. I try and make out I’m nearly at the end of the book.
‘You’ve missed a few pages kid.’
He ain’t even looking my way. How’d he know?
The guy’s told his sister Phoebe about the dream; snook into his folks’ apartment at night to tell her.
Phoebe and his dead brother Allie, they’re the only guys this guy likes. Like they’re all innocent cos they’re still kids while everyone else is corrupt and tainted.