by Lou Berney
At the mall, directly above the movie theater, was a small, dark bar where local jazz bands sometimes played. Ten Monarch passes got you a bottle of bottom-shelf vodka or bourbon, if one of the bartenders was in the mood to cut a deal with O’Malley.
One time O’Malley negotiated a deal with Donald, Mr. Bingham’s friend who worked at the pet store upstairs: twenty movie passes for a giant iguana. The deal fell through when Pet Shop Boy couldn’t deliver the iguana. No shock, since he had zero credibility to start with. He was always coming up with the dumbest moneymaking ideas possible, like a stagecoach taxi service for downtown.
Melody told O’Malley he should be grateful about the lost iguana. Her cousin, she said, had been bitten while on a mission trip to Belize, and a doctor had removed part of his foot.
“That’s no lie,” she said, nodding so emphatically that the beads attached to her cornrows rattled.
Wyatt drove up Sixty-third. He kept one eye on his rearview mirror. A dark blue sedan had stayed with him when he turned off Portland, but now it peeled away and pulled in to the PetSmart on the corner. Wyatt relaxed—a little.
He parked next to the playground and then walked the escape route he’d seen his attacker take. Through the park, across the street, into the lot behind the Burlington Coat Factory. The lot looked more or less the way Wyatt remembered it from his days at the movie theater. A little smaller, maybe. The asphalt had been recently resurfaced, and a new Dumpster—green, not blue, with a sleeker design and a lid that was curved, futuristic, plastic—had replaced the original monster.
Wyatt had hated that Dumpster. The lid was solid, heavy, rusted metal, like something salvaged from a torpedoed Japanese freighter. Every edge and corner was bent and sharp. And the permanent sludge in the bottom stank like you wouldn’t believe, sour and poisonous, a smell that followed you around the rest of the night. You just hoped to find enough dropped change in the auditorium trash sweep to make the trip to the Dumpster at the end of the night worth it.
The rocks that doormen used to prop open the exit doors, Wyatt remembered, were actually chunks of concrete—all that was left of a broken parking block, yellow paint flaking, from the mall’s front lot.
The new Dumpster was in a new location, at the far end of the lot, beneath what would have been, in 1986, the pet store. Wyatt flipped open the plastic lid and peered inside. He’d hoped his attacker might have tossed gloves, hoodie, or sunglasses as he was fleeing, but no such luck—the Dumpster was empty. He worked his way back across the lot, back and forth across an imaginary grid, one square yard at a time. Nothing. Wyatt supposed he wasn’t surprised. His attacker was someone who’d meticulously turned every object in the Land Run upside down, who’d managed to tail Wyatt without getting made. If the gloves and hoodie and sunglasses had been ditched, they were probably somewhere he would never know to look.
He walked over to one of the auditorium exit doors that had been plastered over, the one closest to the street. The four concrete steps. The imitation wrought-iron handrail, with a round knuckled claw at the end of it—the last remaining evidence of the building’s original French Quarter theme.
It was strange to be back here, this parking lot, after so long. Wyatt remembered standing on these steps with everyone else that afternoon in August. The old bat in the Cadillac had bashed the Dumpster with the force of an explosion—the crew heard the boom and crunch all the way in the lobby and came running. Mr. Bingham, when he got there, ordered everyone back inside the theater, but no way—this was too good to miss. Wyatt remembered Mr. Bingham, slouched and sweaty, standing at the old bat’s window and melting down. He kept taking off his glasses and wiping them with his tie.
O’Malley had said something that made everyone laugh. What? Wyatt couldn’t remember. Theresa, in front of Wyatt on the steps, had leaned her head back and rested it on his chest. Karlene had gathered her riot of frosted blond hair together and lifted it up, to cool her neck. Grubb had asked Melody for a piece of gum.
And here, now, a lifetime later, Wyatt still stood, all the others gone.
He drove to the Land Run and parked in the employee lot behind the building, empty at two o’clock in the afternoon. He walked over and confirmed—the telltale gap at the far end of the stockade fence, a plank missing—that the attack last night had definitely been a message.
He looked around. The street to his right, the boarded-up body shop to his left. On the other side of the fence, the windows of Lyle Finn’s warehouse mirrored back a flawless blue sky. Yesterday morning someone, lurking somewhere close by, had watched Wyatt examine the fence and find the loose boards. Who?
Wyatt squeezed through the hole in the fence and followed the alley to the warehouse. A couple of Lyle Finn’s groupies were on the loading dock—a girl wearing a leopard-fur fedora and a bearded dude in a pink inflatable-pig costume. The bearded dude was watching the girl wobble around the loading dock on a pair of short aluminum stilts, about two feet high, the kind that construction workers used when they drywalled a ceiling. She stopped when she saw Wyatt.
“Hi,” Wyatt said. “Is Lyle around?”
The two groupies stared sullenly at Wyatt. The girl was having a hard time keeping her balance. The bearded pig reached out to steady her.
“Hello?” Wyatt tried again. “Lyle Finn? Oink once if you understand.”
Dixon, the band’s manager, came around the corner of the warehouse. He gave Wyatt a wave and walked over.
“Was it something I said?” Wyatt asked him. The girl began to wobble around again on the stilts. The bearded pig turned away to watch her. “They refuse to acknowledge my existence.”
“Tell me about it,” Dixon said. “Lyle has great fans, most of them, but the ones in the inner circle can get very protective. No. What’s the word? Very possessive.” He noticed Wyatt’s face. And then Wyatt’s bandaged hand. “What happened to you?”
“Just your typical weekday evening. Is Lyle around?”
“No. He always goes into seclusion somewhere beforehand. I don’t ever know where. It has something to do with the creative potency of his seed point. Or something like that. I try not to really ever ask him follow-up questions if I can help it.”
“Beforehand?” Wyatt said.
“Tonight’s the parade.” Without a change in his friendly, suburban-dad face, Dixon mimed stabbing himself in the stomach and committing ritual Japanese suicide. “I look forward to it all year.”
Wyatt caught the two groupies on the loading dock glancing at him. He gave them his best, biggest smile, but it had no effect. They turned away. He wondered if he was losing his touch. Or if, on the other hand, maybe it was the bearded pig who had beaten the shit out of him last night. Gavin would love that, too, if he ever found out. Wyatt would have to make sure he never did.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s a shame. Because I was going to ask Lyle about his feud with Candace that neither of you happened to mention to me yesterday.”
Dixon gazed off into the distance and stood very still, as if maybe Wyatt would forget he was there and eventually walk away.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Sorry about that.”
“I caught the end of your argument with Lyle after I left. My guess, you suspected that Lyle is the one harassing Candace and you called him on it.”
“No. Yes. Yes and no. Yes, he was mad at Candace about the new deal. I thought the new deal was fine, by the way. Who cares, you know? The Barking Johnsons would have to play the Land Run twenty times to clear what we clear one night at a festival or some arena in Japan. The Land Run’s never been about the money.”
“Is it the principle of the thing?”
“The thing is, Lyle’s never thrilled when you tell him no. That’s why he was mad at Candace. But he told me he didn’t have anything to do with what’s going on over there. He told me I was a dick for think
ing that. And I believe him, the more I think about it. You said everything in the Land Run was turned upside down. Every single thing, right?”
Wyatt saw where he was going. He nodded. “It took a lot of focus, a lot of work.”
“Lyle can focus. When he needs to. He’s actually a very smart guy. But yeah.”
“Maybe he had help.”
“And it was anonymous. You know? Lyle doesn’t really do anonymous.”
“Says the longtime manager, outwardly exasperated with his rock-star client but willing to go to any lengths to protect him.”
“Oh, believe me, I’ve buried a few bodies over the years. Figuratively speaking. But if Lyle was doing something like that, he’d want to show it off. That’s my theory. I love the guy like a brother, but he doesn’t clip his toenails without Instagramming it.”
The manager had a point. But—just like the cop who’d convinced himself that the Land Run had been turned upside down by kids—Dixon had skin in the game. He wanted Lyle Finn to be innocent. He needed him to be innocent. You could talk yourself into believing anything if you needed it enough.
“What parade tonight?” Wyatt said.
“The Halloween parade downtown. Lyle always leads the March of a Thousand Barking Johnsons. This year it’s zombies, and an insurance premium thirty percent higher than last year because Lyle thinks that mixing tiki torches and big papier-mâché zombie heads is an awesome idea.”
The girl on the stilts stumbled and almost fell. The bearded pig caught her.
“I need to be stoned,” Wyatt could hear the girl tell the pig. “I think it’ll be easier when I’m stoned.”
The bearded pig nodded in agreement. Finn’s manager nodded.
“And everyone on stilts,” he said. “I forgot the stilts. Awesome.”
Wyatt laughed. He liked the manager of the Barking Johnsons. In different circumstances he’d enjoy having a drink with the guy and listening to what Wyatt knew had to be some entertaining war stories. But he had not neglected to note that Dixon—like Finn, like Jeff Eddy, like the bearded pig—was roughly the same size as the guy who’d attacked him. Dixon hadn’t been limping when he came over to greet Wyatt, but Wyatt couldn’t say for sure that his attacker had been limping when he took off either, or if Wyatt had even hit his leg when he stabbed him with the ballpoint pen.
“Thanks,” Wyatt said.
He headed back up the alley and squeezed through the hole in the fence just as a paint-blistered Ford Focus pulled in. Candace got out and looked at him.
“What happened to you?” she said, in a tone implying that Wyatt had been at fault.
Wyatt held up his bandaged hand. “Doctor, will I be able to play the violin when this comes off?”
“Shut up. What happened?”
He told her about getting jumped. Her eyes went wide.
“What?”
“It’s okay,” Wyatt said. “I think someone just wants me to back off your case. I don’t think he wanted to really hurt me.”
Her eyes went even wider. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make me feel better, Candace.”
“Crap!”
“Your concern for my well-being is touching.”
“Shut up.” She reached up and touched her knuckles to the big bruise on his cheekbone—not tenderly but more tenderly than Wyatt would have expected. And then she used her knuckles to whack him hard on the sternum. “Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Are you gonna bail on me now?”
“Shut up. No. But I have a proposal for you.”
“And wait,” Candace said. “What were you doing in the parking lot at the Burlington Coat Factory at one in the morning?”
“I’d like to propose that you close up shop for a few nights. Lie low until I can figure out who’s behind all this.”
She started walking toward the Land Run. “Sure,” she said.
“Candace,” Wyatt said, keeping pace with her. “Just consider it.”
They reached the back door. Wyatt saw that the door and frame had been repaired, a new, heavy-duty lock installed. Candace sorted through the keys on her ring. Attached to the ring, he noticed, was a rubber rabbit with only three feet.
Candace found the key she was looking for, unlocked the door, and then wheeled around. She pointed the key at a spot right between Wyatt’s eyes.
“Screw!” she said. “You!”
“Just for a few nights.”
“No! That’s what he wants me to do, isn’t it? He wants me to give up!”
Wyatt knew she wasn’t wrong. But that didn’t make her right.
“You’re not giving up,” Wyatt said. “You’re just being careful.”
“I am careful! I spent like two hundred bucks on this stupid lock!”
“You’re just being more careful.”
“I don’t have two hundred bucks! Seriously! I can’t afford to close for one night. I’m not going to! Screw him!”
She went inside and shut the door behind her. A second later the door opened back up.
“I knew you’d change your mind,” Wyatt said.
“Come over for lunch tomorrow. You look like crap. One o’clock sharp. I’ll text you my address.”
She shut the door again. Wyatt heard the lock snap.
IT WAS ALMOST noon. Wyatt was still curious about the conversation he’d had with Jeff Eddy’s wife at the game—why did Greg Eddy choose not to leave the Land Run to his brother?—so he drove downtown. He found an open meter on Park Avenue and walked across to Leadership Square. The lobby elevators were opposite a shop that sold Oklahoma City Thunder merchandise. Glass walls, a detective’s best friend. Wyatt found a spot with a nice angle and browsed a rack of Russell Westbrook official authentic replica jerseys.
Ten minutes later he saw Jeff Eddy exit one of the elevators and make his way toward a sandwich shop on the far side of the lobby. Wyatt waited. Another elevator door slid open. Out stepped Emilia, Jeff Eddy’s assistant. She pushed through the revolving doors, out of the building. Wyatt followed.
The sidewalks were packed, so he didn’t need to give Emilia much of a cushion. Looking ahead, he saw that most of the lunch crowd was hooking left on Harvey—everyone seemed to be headed toward the new skyscraper. Wyatt decided to roll the dice. He crossed the street, picked up his pace, and made it to the corner half a block before Emilia did.
The lobby of the new skyscraper was much nicer and brighter than the lobby of Leadership Square, the food court more upscale. Wyatt grabbed a plastic tray. Sushi, soup, or salad? He guessed soup. If he guessed wrong, he knew he could always cut over to the cold-drink case.
He took his time selecting a bowl, a spoon. He took his time studying the selections. French onion. Split pea with smoked ham. Tomato basil cream. Lentil vegetable. He was about to move to the salad bar when he saw Emilia approach.
When you pretended to be surprised, Wyatt had learned over the years, you had to use a soft touch. A half blink, a quick recovery.
“Emilia,” he said. “We have to stop meeting like this.”
“Mr. Rivers,” she said.
He thought he caught the beginning of a smile before she remembered to frown.
“Are you tailing me?” Wyatt said. “Did Jeff tell you to tail me? I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
She touched the knot of her elegant scarf, scandalized, then realized he was kidding.
“I’m sure I have better things to do,” she said.
“I would certainly hope so, Emilia. And I’m sure you have better things to do than have lunch with me, but I’m going to ask anyway.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Just lunch, no business,” Wyatt said. This was what behavioral scienti
sts, and pickup artists, called building a permission structure. Start small and make it as easy as possible for your subject to say yes. “I just hate to eat alone. I feel like I’m back in high school, at a new school where I don’t know a soul.”
She hesitated and touched the knot of her elegant scarf again. A good sign.
“Well,” she said finally.
They found a table for two on the edge of the dining area. Wyatt didn’t push, he didn’t rush. He found Emilia a delightful lunch companion. Her stories about flying for Pan Am in the seventies—about an oil sheik in the first-class cabin who got drunk on Dom Perignon and tried to play Russian roulette with a starter’s pistol, about a pied-à-terre she shared for a time in the Latin Quarter with two other stewardesses—were great stories.
That, Wyatt supposed, was his secret. He liked people, he liked stories. The world was a fascinating place if you didn’t hurry through it.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “It’s already one-fifteen.”
“Back to the salt mines,” Wyatt said. “What’s it like to work with Jeff, by the way?”
She gave him a look. “By the way?”
Emilia was no fool. But Wyatt could tell she’d had a pleasant lunch. She appreciated his effort.
“Tell the truth,” he said. “Your boss is kind of a tool, isn’t he? Between you and me.”
She hid her smile with a dab of her napkin. “Working for Mr. Eddy can occasionally be . . . trying.”
“A tool, in other words. But even so, I don’t understand it.”
“Understand what?”
“Why Greg didn’t leave him the Land Run. Jeff might be a tool, but he was Greg’s only family in the world, right?”
Emilia set her napkin on the table. Wyatt watched her make the rapid, complex calculations that people make. The moment of truth.
“Mr. Rivers,” she said, “I’m a person who values loyalty.”