by Unknown
It would be judged a murder if they looked in his ear, but L.A. was a busy town for suspicious deaths. Finding a dead man burned in his own home with cigar ashes in the tray next to him, the conclusion was obvious. He fell asleep while smoking.
It took a while for the leather recliner to catch fire, but after that the flames grew quickly. She waited until his body fat caught before she left.
It smelled awful.
* * *
Joe Kimble had stopped by Lee’s Liquors on the way home from his last job, pausing just long enough to hoist a Budweiser with his buddy Luther. When he got back to the house he shared with his father, he wrinkled his forehead at a strange car parked in front, a Nissan Sentra.
He went straight into the kitchen through the door on the side of the house. A stranger was sitting at the kitchen table with Ralph Kimble, talking.
“…were really just passing through,” the stranger said “When all of a sudden she gives this yelp and says ‘Fred! My water broke!’ And God help me, my first thought was the leather bucket seats!” Fred laughed a little at his story. Ralph just frowned slightly.
The two men had a certain old-man sameness to them, Joe thought. Two different songs in the key of geezer. Ralph Kimble was the fatter, and the newcomer—“Fred”—was taller. Ralph, like his son, wore “Kimble Exterminator” coveralls. His body had a heavy, set look to it, like a sack of wet cement that had been dropped and left to dry. The same immobile truculence seemed to radiate from the firm wattle of his second chin, from the way his ass overflowed his wooden chair without drooping and the way his belly surged straight out from his body. He had a layer of dense suet, not the loose, jiggly flab of the truly obese.
Fred had a small potbelly himself, but his arms and legs were still skinny, and with their age spots and wrinkled suntan they looked almost withered. He had on white patent-leather loafers, a pair of sky-blue sansabelt slacks, a white mabuhey shirt and a gray cardigan sweater. A pair of gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses peeked out of his shirt pocket, and there was a clunky black digital watch on his wrist. His head was bald, his eyes were shifty, and the wrinkles made his face look like too many promises had been broken across it.
Ralph, on the other hand, had a bullet-shaped head with an iron-grey crewcut. His blue eyes and thin mouth peeped out of frown line folds with the impenetrable cynicism of an old toad.
“Son, you know this gent?” Ralph asked.
“No,” Joe said, glaring at no one in particular.
“No, we haven’t met, uh, Joe.” Fred stood and shook the younger man’s hand. Joe thought his eyes looked oddly eager—as he ran them over Joe’s face, Joe felt like he was being frisked.
“I was just telling your father about something that happened to me about twenty years ago. My wife and I were traveling, she was pregnant but not due for a couple months, and then all of a sudden her water broke. We had to pull in to the first hospital we could find…”
“Wait a minute,” Ralph said slowly, bulging eyes starting to narrow with suspicion. “You said you were here to see Joe. You’ve seen him, he don’t know you, you don’t know him…”
“Yeah, what’s going on?” Joe demanded.
Fred cleared his throat. “Uh, well. Yeah. I’m just trying to set up a funny story, you know? Not funny ha-ha though, um. A kind of strange story. See, I was in the hospital the day you were born, Joe.”
“Huh?”
“Yeah, I was there because my wife was giving birth too, you see?”
Ralph’s eyes weren’t wide with shock, and they weren’t narrow with disbelief. They were locked square on Fred, immobilized by some feeling so powerful that it left his entire face still.
“Get out,” Ralph said, low, just as Fred said “I think my wife may have given birth to you, Joe. I think you’re my real son.”
“Get out!” bellowed Ralph, surging to his feet with enough force to shift the heavy oak kitchen table. “Get the fuck out my house!”
“What?” Joe demanded, looking between the two men, back and forth. Fred was staring at him, even as Ralph’s arm shot straight out, pointing at the kitchen door.
“I know, this is a shock,” Fred said, eyes still locked on Joe.
“Joe, get my gun!” Ralph said. Fred flicked his eyes over at Ralph, gauged the situation expertly and started to back towards the door, hands open.
“Look, I realize this is a lot to take, it’s sudden…”
Ralph looked at Joe, clenched his jaw and strode off towards the living room.
“You better beat it,” Joe said, moving towards Fred and moving Fred towards the door. “He’ll fuckin’ do it.”
“Yeah, okay, okay…” Joe and Fred stumbled out to the driveway and down towards the Nissan.
“So… Fred.”
“Fred Mundy,” the older man replied quickly.
“Do you know a guy named… hold on a second,” Joe said, fumbling a card out of his pocket. “You know Seth Dobbs?”
“Lemme see that!” Fred said. Joe saw the corners turn in around Fred’s mouth, tightening all the lines of betrayal. Then Fred glanced up and relaxed his face.
“Nah, don’t know him. Why?”
Joe squinted. “He came up to me today, talking all kinds of weird bullshit.”
Fred peeked over Joe’s shoulder at the house, looking for Ralph, then spoke.
“Look son, you could run into a lot of really weird people, and you’re right to be damn suspicious. You’re important Joe, in a way you don’t and probably can’t suspect right now. Lots of people are going to try to bribe, or threaten, or otherwise fuck with you, but you’re going to have to trust me for now…”
“That’s what Dobbs said.”
“Huh.” Fred unlocked the door of his car and stood between the door and the interior, the dome light shining up on his face. “Well, look, I brought this for you,” Fred said, pressing a crumpled envelope into Joe’s hands. “This kind of proves what I said. Watch out for Dobbs. Actually, watch out for everyone. Even someone you think is your best friend, if they start acting funny, get away quick. Especially—this is most important—be scared of anyone with a scratchy voice, got it?”
“Joe? Get’cher ass back in here!” Ralph was silhouetted in the doorway. To punctuate his request, he racked the shotgun in his hand.
“I better go,” Fred said with a strange little grin. “Call me—I’m at the Sleepy Teepee hotel.” He got into his car, slammed the door and started it.
“Dobbs said that, too,” Joe muttered. When Fred—his “real father”?—drove away, Joe realized the old man had taken Seth Dobbs’ card.
It’s a wise child that knows
His own father
CHAPTER TWO
Joe walked back to the porch with his face twisted into a grimace of confusion. None of this made sense. Besides, he was getting hungry.
When he got into the living room, his father was squatting beside the gun cabinet, carefully unloading the shotgun and locking the shells in the drawer beneath. Joe thought about saying something, then walked past into the kitchen and pulled two instant burritos out of the freezer.
Over the soothing whirr of the microwave, he heard his father step onto the linoleum behind him.
“Jesus, what a weirdo,” Ralph Kimble said, his voice rough with disbelief and residual anger.
“You have any clue what he was talking about?”
“No idea.” The older Kimble pulled a beer from the fridge and sat at the table. “Y’ever see that guy before?”
“Hell no,” Joe said. “You figure he’s just crazy, or what?”
“Could be.”
“Why y’let him in the house, anyway?”
“Said he had important news for you. How was I to know he was a nut?”
“So, wait, he knew my name and everything?”
Ralph scratched his chin. “Yeah, he did.”
“Well, shit.” The microwave dinged. Joe pulled out his food and sat across from his dad. “You know, some othe
r guy came up to me today while I was spraying at Mrs. Brukitts’. Some guy named Seth Dobbs, gave me his card and everything. You know him?”
“Who?”
“Seth Dobbs.”
“Never heard of him. Lemme see the card.”
“I threw it away,” Joe said, unwilling to admit the truth.
“Well, that was kind of stupid.”
“Sheesh, sorry!” He moodily bit a burrito. “I mean, hell, how was I to know?”
“So what did he say to you?”
“Who, Dobbs? Just some weird line about how people were gonna come looking for me, and that when I wanted it all explained out, I should come see him at the Sleepy Teepee hotel.”
“Huh.”
The Kimbles munched and sipped in silence for a moment.
“You know, that other guy? Fred? He said he was at the Sleepy Teepee too,” Joe added.
“This has to be some kind of set up, or a con, or something.”
“A con?” Neither Joe nor his father had, as far as they knew, ever been conned, defrauded or swindled. They were consequently on their lookout all the time. “What for?” Joe glanced around the kitchen, his eyes lingering on the grease spatters on the back of the stovetop, the black detail of mold around the sink, the stubborn clots of grimy crumbs in the corners. “It’s not like I’m rich or something.”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re small time.”
“No one’s that small time. You think it’s some kinda practical joke?”
“Could be.” Ralph finished his beer, and reached for the bag of pretzels that sat, in a wooden bowl, as the table’s centerpiece.
“Naw, that doesn’t wash either,” Joe said, finishing off his second burrito and reaching for the pretzels as well. “I mean, they know me in particular, right? Why would they pick one guy who don’t know ‘em, and decide to fool him?” He thought back to the few practical jokes he’d seen, or played, when he was in high school or in the army. “It’s only ever any fun if you know the guy. I don’t know these guys. Why are they looking for me, then?”
“I don’t know, shit. Just stay away from ‘em, you’ll be okay.” Ralph crunched a pretzel. “They’re probably fags.”
“What the hell makes you think they’re fags?”
“Well, that one told you where he was staying, right? Made a point of telling you his hotel, now didn’t he? Huh?”
Joe scratched himself, stood and went for a beer of his own.
“I don’t think they’re fairies, dad.”
“You never can tell, son. Would you have guessed Rock Hudson?”
Joe cracked the can, took a long slurp. He’d gone off to the army when he was nineteen, and it was still weird to drink with his old man.
He ran his tongue over the front of his teeth, furrowed his brow and said, “You don’t think it could be true, do you?”
“What?”
“You know, that I was… switched. That I ain’t really your son.”
Ralph turned his chair away, jaws tightening. “It’s bullshit. Total bullshit.”
“Yeah, but why would he tell me a lie like that? Hell,” Joe said, his brow clearing and eyebrows rising. “We could find out. Get a blood test, like. I toldja about that guy in the army who got a paternity test on his kid, right?”
“I ain’t getting no blood test! Jesus, I can’t believe you listened to that old fuck.” Ralph stood, made his way towards the living room and television. “I’ma go watch Tim Allen. You coming?”
“Yeah, but I’m just saying. Why would that guy say that knowing that we could catch him in the lie so easy?”
“I don’t know, Joe, now would you shut up about it already? Fuck.”
Joe’s mouth opened, but he said nothing. He was thinking, though. He saw his alleged father settle heavily into their squeaking couch, seize the remote and turn on the TV with an overhand motion like cracking a whip. Joe scratched his stomach, right over the stain on his shirt. As he shifted his body, he felt an envelope in his pocket, the envelope Fred Mundy had given him. He pulled it out and looked at the crumpled contents.
Inside, there was a birth certificate for “Leslie Hermes Aphrodite Mundy.” The birthdate was identical to Joe’s own, and it had been issued by the same hospital. There was also a wallet-sized picture with no name. It was a lean-faced teenaged boy with straight, wispy hair. He had blue eyes and a thin mouth, but what really caught Joe’s attention was the space between the boy’s nose and upper lip. It was long and prominent, an unusual feature that Joe had seen only on his mother’s face and the faces of her family.
He stared.
“Dad…” he said at last.
Ralph wrung his lips together, ignoring him.
“Dad, you should look at this.”
“Can’t it wait for the commercial?”
“Jesus, Dad, look.”
Ralph looked, and the corners of his mouth twisted harder. Then he swung his head to the side like an infant rejecting its food.
“So what?”
“Look at it! Don’t you think that looks like Mom?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ralph muttered.
“Christ, don’t you think I got eyes to see?”
Don’t you think I got eyes to see was a phrase Joe only used when he was upset. He’d picked it up from his father, and as he said it, he realized his dad had only used it when arguing with his mother. The arguments had been loud, taking place after Joe’s childhood bedtime, decreasing in frequency as he’d aged. He’d never been able to hear his mom’s side; only his dad’s deep bellows had penetrated the walls to his young ears. “Don’t you think I got eyes to see?” “Just tell me who it really was.” The phrases had always seemed mysterious and scary to young Joey. The other phrase he’d heard, one time when he was very young, was “Not even any Italians!” That one had come at the climax of a particularly loud and lengthy fight, punctuated by the sound of smashing crockery. It had all been cleaned up the next morning when he got out of bed, but a plate on which his mother had painted a landscape was gone forever and no one ever spoke of it. “Not even any Italians.” Joe had no idea what it meant, but he knew that he’d shoved Tony Serino over at recess the next day and gotten a reprimand for fighting. He knew that for some reason he’d taken great glee in high school history, hearing about Mussolini’s corpse being strung up and beaten after World War Two, that he’d been felt a grim satisfaction looking at a picture of gangsters killed in the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.
“Oh fuck,” Joe whispered.
Something about Joe’s tone made Ralph turn, blue eyes wide, to stare into Joe’s brown gaze.
For a moment, the two just stared. Maybe each was trying to find a piece of himself in the other.
“You believed it, didn’t you?” Joe asked.
“No, listen, it’s not what you think,” Ralph said in a low voice, barely audible over the laugh track of the TV.
“What was it, then? You thought Mom had stepped out on you?” Joe’s voice was incredulous, but it all made sense. The way his parents had always seemed nicer apart than together—hell, maybe he was what made them uncomfortable around one another.
“That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what you were always yelling at mom for, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ralph’s nostrils flared.
“No, when I was a kid. You were always fighting. And after you’d fight, she’d have to go to work early the next day. Jesus, you were fighting ‘cause you always thought I wasn’t your son. That’s it! That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No, goddamn it!”
“Then what were you fighting about, huh? Lookit the picture, this… this fucker looks just like mom, doesn’t he?”
“You’re imagining things, now shut up! Please, shut up,” Ralph said, and it was the first time, ever, that Joe had heard his father plead with him.
It was like that small desperation was a pinprick, letting all the air out of him. Joe slo
wly sagged into a threadbare chair with wooden arms and plaid cushions.
“Hell, who could blame you? You an’ I don’t look one goddamn thing alike do we?”
“Joe…”
“It’s the hair, isn’t it? Jesus, I’m an idiot. Mom’s family, they’re all blondes and redheads. Your family’s got straight hair back to Grandpa Miller, right?” Joe pinched and pulled gently at his own tight black curls.
“So you figured some other guy had f… screwed my mom, knocked her up, and you raised me anyhow, raised your wife’s bastard?”
“Shut up!”
“Did you believe it?”
“No! No, I didn’t want to think that! God, I loved your mother, Joe. I loved her!”
“So what were you yelling all those nights, huh? What were you yelling about? Huh?”
Ralph dropped his head.
“I didn’t want to think it,” he said. “But… I mean, shit… what was I supposed to think? Jesus.”
“So you did believe it.”
“I did and I didn’t. Sometimes, looking at you when you were a little boy, I couldn’t think it, it was like it was impossible. But look at your skin. We’re not that dark. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Jim Brannon? I blacked his eye when he said something, got a night in the drunk tank, and all night all I could think of was ‘Who was it? Who was it?’ And then I believed it. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it.”
Neither man spoke for a moment.
“Did you forgive her?” Joe asked.
Ralph thought about lying, but when he opened his mouth the truth came out.
“We just stopped talking about it.”
“Shit.”
Another pause, in which Ralph lifted the remote control from his lap and turned off the TV.
“When were you planning on telling me?” Joe asked.
Ralph shrugged.
“Well, after your… uh, after Lisa died, I thought that… well, I guess I just stopped thinking about it.”
“Stopped thinking about it? What, it didn’t bother you, thinking you’d raised someone else’s son?”