On day three, Glenda visited and brought Nelson, her new beau along. They stood and stared. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t know Glenda knew Nelson, and Nelson didn’t remember meeting me a couple of months back, so he just thought I was some down-on-his-luck loser in the hospital that Glenda felt sorry for. Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten any less square-jawed or blandly handsome since I’d seen him. On their way out, I congratulated Nelson for being a miracle of modern science, since Taffy had told me he was in pretty bad shape. He looked at me quizzically.
“You know,” I said, “for healing from your fall out of that tree so fast.”
Nelson clearly had no idea what I was talking about and quickly put his hand to the small of Glenda’s back, steering her out the door.
On day four, Adora came to visit. I woke up from a nap and she was there. “You got a knack for entrances that I’m really beginning to appreciate,” I said.
“I’ve always known more about starting things than finishing them, Mr. Fitch.”
“And how’s Mary?”
“Had to be put down, I’m afraid. We can’t trust her now. Though elephants in captivity will do that sometimes, Mr. Fitch. Go crazy for no reason.”
“Sure, no reason. Right. I meant to ask about that bridge you’re selling. Would you accept no down payment and zero dollars a month?”
“Me selling a bridge?”
“Just a hunch.”
“So you’re calling me a liar.”
“No, I’d just say you’re a creative person when it comes to the truth.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Do you really expect me to respond, Mr. Fitch? I thought you were smarter than you looked.”
“Yes, you told me as much the other night.”
Adora actually looked apologetic. “Yes, when I drink I get…”
“Mean, vicious, vindictive?”
“It’s been said. Anyway, I am sorry.”
“And so am I.”
“For what?”
“Peeing in your Buick’s gas tank. I had to go pretty bad and Ichabod didn’t seem to mind.”
“Wow, classy.”
“Well, I was upset.”
“And now?”
“Thinking a lot about crime, physics, fruit and family trees.”
Adora laughed but it was a cautious one. “Hmm, okay. Anything you’d like to share?”
“I’ve learned that the old saying holds true: apples never fall too far from the tree. Even girl ones.”
“Oh, a girl apple, I see.”
“Well, what if this apple is as conniving, maybe more, than the tree it grew from.”
“What if?”
“Well, then I’d say this apple’s been running a criminal empire and using a circus as a convenient cover, just like her father once did. And when she found out the man who killed her father was out of jail, she took that circus to the very place she knew the killer would return to and then killed him and got the money back that he stole.”
“Bold statement.”
“Even bolder would be using her clown gang to murder several key figures in Vancouver’s criminal underground and then, using an elephant with a history of rampaging that she probably purchased just in case it could ever be of use in that way, wiping out almost the entire clown gang to cover up her tracks and throw suspicion off her.”
Adora looked suitably shocked by such an outrageous and ridiculous-sounding accusation. I felt a little ridiculous saying it, but I also knew if it wasn’t the exact truth then it was in the ballpark.
“This apple,” said Adora, “she sounds like a monster.”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe I’m nuts. Maybe she walks on water and gives lollipops to sick kids.”
Adora didn’t comment. A small silence stretched to a longer one. An orderly pushed a squeaky cart down the hallway. A man coughed up a lung in a room across the hall. A doctor was paged over the intercom.
“Maybe,” said Adora, staring outside, no trace of an expression on her face, “and consider it pure speculation, this apple you speak of wasn’t so upset her father died. Maybe she saw a trusted family friend shoot her father during a robbery, once upon a time. Maybe this was a few years after her mother, a pretty young thing, died of tuberculosis. And maybe old men just have to stick their nasty things somewhere to feel powerful and less close to death and obscurity. And maybe old men get mighty lonely without a wife around and see a daughter as a convenient replacement.
“And maybe this girl walked over to her father as he lay dying on the floor, gut shot. Maybe she could’ve called for help but didn’t. Maybe he reached for her and she moved away. Maybe she was born to a bastard and raised by thieves and was empty inside right from the start. Maybe she watched the life flow right out of that perverted old man.
“And maybe she took over the family business when she was old enough and it turned out she had a knack for that kind of enterprise, growing it bigger than ever before. Maybe she did keep tabs on her father’s killer because it’s not good business to let your customers know that people can steal from you and get away with it. Maybe, when the killer was released from prison, she arranged for the circus to visit a certain city because she knew he’d go back there, like a squirrel looking for a nut. Maybe when she finally saw him again years later he was so weathered and bent over and beat down from prison that she let the whole thing lie, money and all. But maybe there were a few clowns who disagreed with how things were being run and wanted to do things different. Maybe they didn’t appreciate that she was tired of the caravan life and wanted to settle down and run her business in a west coast Canadian city. Maybe this was brewing for a while and was destined to spill over so she took the opportunity to rid the orchard of another batch of bad apples. And, in the end, maybe fate took over and a drunk, ex-con murderer drowned.”
Suddenly I was cold, very cold. I pulled the hospital blanket up around me. Didn’t help much. “Lady,” I said, head ringing, “that’s a lot of maybes.”
Adora, the Maybe Baby, sighed, turned and met my gaze. “Yes, it is, Mr. Fitch.”
“So if everyone thought everyone else had the dough, who actually had it? You know, hypothetically speaking.”
“Maybe we’ll never find out.”
“No maybe about it,” I said, “that’d be disappointing.”
Adora smiled. Somewhere a puppy died.
“But maybe that’s not the case,” I said, winking, a little Maybe Baby in me too.
Adora raised an eyebrow, said nothing.
So I said, “Maybe it’s a little strange that a skid row office building manager drives a brand new Cadillac and takes his new boat out for a cruise on weekends.”
“Moyer?” said Adora. “It’s the brave new world, Mr. Fitch, didn’t you know? Quick and easy credit for all. Live the Canadian dream in four hundred easy payments.”
“Not this time. Moyer bought the car outright a few months ago at a dealership on Kingsway, around the same time the office basement flooded and the walls were ripped out down to the studs by Schmidt Brothers Restoration Services. He also bought the boat and a trailer to haul it from Seaworthy Marine and Supplies, over on the North Shore. Nothing too fancy, but all brand new.”
Adora thought it over and nodded. “It fits doesn’t it? Poor Jim. He stuffs the money in the walls of a skid row building under construction before he’s arrested. Then all that jail time and waiting only to be a few weeks too late while a spineless jellyfish like Moyer gets his sweaty mitts on the prize first.”
There was one thing I wanted to make sure Adora understood. Especially considering she kept a shit list and had a tendency to murder those on it. I told her that William Witham had nothing to do with Jim, the murder of Roosevelt Carmichael, or the stolen loot. “So I wouldn’t expect that he’d be bothered any further.”
Adora played innocent. “Me, bother anyone?”
“Because if I found out he’d been threatened or hurt or disa
ppeared then I might feel the need to unburden myself at my local police station. And to a woman who was planning, I assume, to keep up a legitimate front in her new city of residence while getting her fingers into all kinds of criminal pie, certain facts could be at least damaging were they to come to light.”
Adora told me how she’d heard that quite often, after unburdening themselves to police, people jumped off bridges or in front of a bus. “Suicide is such a tragic thing, Mr. Fitch.”
So, we understood each other very well. Mutually assured destruction, though Adora’s was the more permanent kind. I stuck my hand out. We shook hands.
“William, who?” asked Adora.
“Not sure,” I said. But I was sure, among all the maybes and the unknowns, that there was one answer I deserved to know. So I asked the big question: how much did Jim steal?
Adora said it depended on who you believed. And that the missing money had become a bit of an underground legend. A bedtime story crooks-in-the-know told each other to get to sleep at night. “I’ve heard as much as a million.”
“I tend to believe the horse’s mouth. And the lady that does the books.”
“Fourteen thousand, two hundred and fifty-six dollars,” she said, without even a blink.
I whistled. It wasn’t a fortune but it was nothing to sneeze at. I did the math on a car, a boat, a trailer and a few years of docking fees. “So that means there must be a few thou—”
Adora put her finger to my lips, right as the nurse walked in with lunch. The nurse wheeled the tray over and checked my temperature and felt my pulse and fluffed my pillows and generally made a nuisance of herself and by the time I turned back Adora was gone. I didn’t know how she got out the door, but she did. And she was right: she was lousy with goodbyes.
I stayed in the hospital for five more days. By the end, I’d stopped pissing blood. That was nice.
16
At the diner, not much had changed. That was okay by me. I liked a place where time worked hard at staying still, despite the inevitable. A guy could know himself in a place like that because if something was different it had to be him. And the main difference in myself, as far as I could tell, other than being a little wiser and a lot more scared of janitors and clowns, was that I was short about a liter of java and running dangerously low. The brown liquid they called “coffee” in the hospital had tasted even worse than what Greek Benny served before Glenda came around. I didn’t know that was possible, but it was true.
I sat at the counter, for a change, and ordered a coffee. Benny poured a cup of joe for each of us. When he set my coffee down in front of me, I peered at it suspiciously. It smelled right, but I still wasn’t sure.
“It’s okay, Fitch. Glenda showed me how.”
“Fat city,” I said, contentedly. Then I asked Greek Benny for a pencil and he handed me the one behind his ear. I took the envelope out of my jacket pocket and wrote “Glenda” on it. Inside was a ten-spot, more than enough to cover my loan. Greek Benny put the envelope under the cash register. I looked around. “Where is Glenda, anyway?”
“I gave her a few days off. Poor kid’s heartbroken.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Some bum she was dating turned out to be an A-one pervo. Had all sorts of peep shots of scantily clad babes tucked away in a shoebox under his bed. Not the studio kind but the kind of shots you get from behind a tree.”
“Or in one.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing,” I said, beaming on the inside. It was fantastic news. Though I reminded myself to check my own shoeboxes, just in case I was ever so lucky as to have Glenda rooting around under my bed. Seemed she was the curious type.
“To pervos,” I said, grinning, raising my mug.
Greek Benny shook his head and went back to his funnies.
Taffy was right on time and carrying a bowl of peanuts. “Want one?” he said, hamming it up for the barflies, who, in return yukked it up. Apparently Taffy had visited me in the hospital when I was still pretty out of it and I raved about buried treasures, brunettes in red dresses riding elephants and killer clowns being crushed to death. I shrugged off Taffy’s remark and sipped my drink. I didn’t shame easy.
Taffy took a stool and ordered a whisky. “You goin’ soft on me, Fitch?” he said, noticing my club soda.
“Doctor’s orders.”
“Since when do you listen to doctors?”
“Since the doctor had one foot in the grave. Figured it’d be mean not to grant a dying man’s wish.”
We sipped in silence for a moment.
“So,” he said, “you got the film? Bartell?” I put the canister on the bar. Taffy picked it up. “It’s empty, Fitch, there’s no film. What gives?”
I cracked a shell, threw the peanut into the air and caught it in my mouth. “The elephant ate it.”
Taffy slowly reeled that information in on his fishing line, but was unsure what to do with it once it was off the hook. Like that lake trout in the boat, it flopped around for a bit and then went quiet.
“Nelson says hello,” I said. “You know, he’s walking around. Looks good, too. His back healed up in no time.”
Taffy coughed. Taffy fidgeted. Taffy checked his watch. “Will you look at the time? I have to—”
“What?” I said, gripping Taffy’s shoulder, keeping him in place. “Send me to take photos of a wacko lunatic with the war crazies because none of your guys wanted to?”
Taffy paused, caught. “Something like that. In my defense, Nelson does take those kinds of peep shots…he just hasn’t fallen out of a tree yet.”
“I know, I heard.”
“Well, did you hear what happened to ol’ Bartell?”
I shook my head, no.
Taffy shook his head, too, but in comic disbelief. “Listen to this: Way I heard it the cops go out to Bartell’s cabin in the woods on an anonymous complaint and find him tied up in his garage. He’s all beat up and there are signs of torture. And there are these old guys with shovels digging holes. Like fifty holes, all over the backyard. So the cops arrest them without much trouble, almost like they’re glad they don’t have to dig anymore. Charged with assault, kidnapping, unlawful confinement and some minor vandalism thing.”
“And Bartell?” I asked.
“Even stranger. The cops think they’re doing him a favour untying him but he starts raving at them in bad German and then attacks one cop and puts a thumb through the poor bastard’s eye. All said and done, the cop loses the peeper and gains an eyepatch. And Bartell gets ten to fifteen in a rubber room out at Woodlands.”
Wow. I took that in. I guess I’d got off lightly. A thumb in the eye made a knock to the head and a few jolts of electricity seem like a cake walk.
Taffy nodded towards the street. “What’s with the tow truck parked outside? I wouldn’t’ve given it another thought but the door says, ‘Fitch’s Towing.’ That you?”
“That’s me,” I said.
“Where’d you get the scratch for a tow truck?”
“I didn’t. It was a gift, waiting for me when I got out of the hospital.”
“Some gift. Who gives a guy a tow truck?”
“The same kind of person who can do handstands on an elephant.”
Taffy put out his hand. “And I thought I knew some strange characters. Truce?”
Still smarting from his betrayal, I let his hand hang in the air. “You set me up, Taffy. With a fella nuts enough to blind a cop.”
“And you killed my cars, Fitch. Twice.”
“And you ran over my foot.”
“And you stole Shelley Schmerl from me.”
So long was our history of back stabbing and front stabbing and general disregard for each other’s mental well-being we could’ve gone on all night. To calm down, I looked out the window. The clouds were angry and west coast September rain was coming down in relentless sheets, attacking the pavement from sideways. West coast rain was sn
eaky like that. Always found the weak spot.
17
Not long after my hospital stint, I decided to lose the office. I was through being the stereotype, chasing a version of myself around the table, destined never to catch my tail because what I was chasing was smoke and mirrors, an illusion. Hardboiled dreams in cinemascope.
The new janitor held the door open for me as I carried my stuff out. He was a teetotaler-church-going-holier-than-thou type with a brush cut and a pocket Bible in his coveralls. We’d steered clear of each other, both knowing we wouldn’t have much in common even if we tried. I did watch him mop the hallway once, but he definitely lacked Jim’s sense of style. Besides, janitors were now running a close second to clowns on my shit list.
Life returned to some degree of normal. I followed the routine. I went to the diner and drank coffee and flirted with Glenda and kept scraping a living from the bottom of the barrel, like I’d always done. Pook and I finally called that truce. He fed me a job now and then and I delivered the film, no surprises.
I waited. I watched. I shot film. I earned my dough.
And I took that dough and saved it, figuring that once I had the scratch, maybe I’d registered the tow rig that Adora gifted me, get my license and start a business: Fitch’s Towing Ltd. It probably wasn’t a bad gig, all things being equal. Lots of work, especially now that Rolly was out of business. Self-employed, with space to roam.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’d send the tow truck off a cliff lit on fire just to spite her. Look that gift horse right in the mouth and say, “I may not know where my mother is, but I know you ain’t her.” Because I didn’t need to be handled and it felt like Adora was handling me. Saying, “Here, do this, I’ve decided what you should be.”
Dead Clown Blues Page 9