by Alex Austin
“Gina?” said Hugh.
“How did you know?”
“You look like her.”
“I put letters in envelopes.”
“I bet you’re good at it.”
“It’s boring. Fold the paper in three, stick it in the envelope, damp the adhesive with a sponge and seal the envelope. That’s it. Easy. But you try it two hundred times. What do you do?”
“I teach.”
“What do you teach?”
“English.”
“I speak English, Japanese and Spanish. English is the most difficult, but it’s easy for me. Do you know any Japanese?”
“A little. I lived there once.”
“Where?”
“Tokyo,” he said, thinking the small suburb that he lived in wouldn’t mean anything to her. To his surprise, she asked, “Where in Tokyo?”
“Edogawa.”
“Aaargg,” she growled, like a dog whose food was being taken away. “I hate Edogawa. It’s boring. Nakano is much more interesting. We’re going there in two weeks.”
“Really?”
“We go back to Japan every summer. It’s so hot. Almost worse than the valley. But nothing is worse than the valley.”
“Do you have relatives in Japan?”
“Many. We have relatives in—”
Gina entered carrying a manila folder. “There you are, Lily. I looked all over for you. Your lunch is getting cold.”
“I was talking to Hugh. Actually,” she pointed, “I was talking to him, not you.”
Gina said, “You shouldn’t be in the display room without my permission.”
“I heard a noise. I thought another bird had gotten in.” Lily turned to Hugh. “We’ve had three birds get in since the New Year. Why a bird would want to be in here makes no sense. There’s nothing to eat and nothing to drink. All they do is poop on the caskets. Very messy.”
“Come on, Lily. Go back to the office and eat.”
“Ahh, don’t want to eat. It’s boring.”
“I wish she’d never learned that word.”
“In English, boring. In Japanese, taikutsuna. In Spanish, abburido.”
“If you’re good, maybe we’ll go see a movie, after work.”
Lily grinned. “Goody. None of that G-rated stuff. I want to see the one in which the world ends.”
“We’ll see.”
“We’ll see, we’ll see.” Lily stomped toward the door and left.
“Bright child.”
“She’s a handful. Well, here’s the file on Mr. Mcpherson. Death certificate from the county coroner. Contract for funeral arrangements. There’s not much.”
“Could I see it?”
“I can’t do that, but ask me specific questions and I’ll see if the answers are available.”
Hugh nodded. “His occupation?”
“Mechanic.”
“Car mechanic?”
“Yes, that must be.”
Hugh took out a pen. He grabbed one of the spec sheets from the holder beside the casket. “Last employer?”
“Not available.”
“Really.”
“Sorry.”
“Cause of death?”
Gina flicked an invisible speck from the glitzy casket. “Excuse me one second,” she said, walking away. He watched her walk to the entrance, bend down and attend to something. She pressed a button and there was a whirring sound. She stood up. A round object about the height of a book moved back and forth across the carpet. It was a robotic vacuum cleaner.
“They work well. It will clean the entire carpet before its batteries run out. I can even turn off the lights. It works in the dark.”
Hugh watched the little round robot shuttle around a casket.
“Myocardial infarction. Heart attack.”
“He was young.”
“It is not uncommon.”
“The H. What does it stand for?”
Gina perused the papers. “No first name recorded. Just H. Mcpherson.”
“Does it mention if they did an autopsy?”
“Let me check.” Turning from Hugh, she pulled out the contents and leafed through them. “No, nothing mentioned. Perhaps he had a history of heart problems.”
“Yes. That must be it. What about next of kin?”
“Now that poses a problem—”
The door opened and Lily entered, her mouth and chin bright red as if she’d been eating beets.
“It’s doing it again,” said the girl.
“Stay there, Lily,” said Gina. “She gets nosebleeds all the time. It’s so dry in Simi.”
“Mama,” moaned Lily.
Gina strode to her daughter, drawing out a large white handkerchief from her blouse and setting the manila folder inside the pine casket.
The robot vacuum cleaner buzzed about her feet. Gina kicked it away. The machine whined for a few seconds and then resumed its task.
“Let’s attend to this,” said the mother, leading her daughter out of the room.
Hugh waited until the door had closed. He walked to the casket and took out the folder. Had it all been done on purpose? The nosebleed a fake. The folder placed where he could browse through it. But more likely, a simple oversight. His father spoke sternly to him. No different than stealing. Hugh lifted the folder’s edge, and then jumped as something knocked his foot. He looked down at the robot, bumping into his shoe. He waited until the thwarted machine retreated, the motor grumbling like Popeye. Hugh opened the folder and glanced at the papers, wishing he could press PrntScr and copy. He saw a name, an address. Lily was too pure to play a part. Or was there anyone too pure to play a part? He tried to memorize the information. At Coffee Bean, he would have to stare at the five-digit code for a full five seconds before he was sure of taking it back to his computer screen. Hugh felt his chest tighten as Mcpherson’s might have done. No fuss here. Right into the casket. Hugh tucked the folder under his shirt and exited the display room.
On the lobby floor, Lily’s blood still glistened.
Chapter 25
Hugh drove San Fernando Road past the auto salvage yards, cars stacked fifty feet high, tributes to “Ozymandias.” The beast he tracked existed, though he could not yet say its shape . . .
Have you ever stolen anything? Hanna had asked.
When Hugh was eight years old, his father took his brother and him to a salvage yard, where they hoped to find a driver’s side mirror for the family’s Buick, hit by a watermelon on mischief night.
At the yard’s entrance, big angry German shepherds stalked pens on either side of the gate, their saliva dripping down the chain link. Father and sons passed by towering pallets of radios and carburetors, a wall of hubcaps like a thousand-eyed monster, a fearsome mountain of slick black tires. Holding the broken mirror extended from his body like a flashlight, his father smoked his pipe as they walked along, but the scent of his cherry tobacco, which usually smelled of safety, was lost among the iron oxides and oil-soaked ground. Over rapid bursts of compressed air, a worker directed his father to the mirrors, where they spent an hour finding one that matched. On the way back, Hugh passed a shelf of gearshift knobs, beautiful chrome ones that ballooned his lips and nose. As his father waited in line to purchase the mirror, Hugh ran his hands over the knobs, picking them up and setting them down until he dropped one in his pocket, where it felt twice as heavy as in his hand. He waited with his brother, watching a worker dismantle a transmission, taking off a plate and exposing the oily gears inside. As Hugh stood there, a voice told him to empty his pocket.
He was an older man with a gray beard, smudged glasses and fierce eyes.
Hugh stared blankly, pretending not to understand. The man grunted, jerked his head back, reached into Hugh’s pocket and yanked out Hugh’s clenched hand, the ball not even half hidden. The man peeled back Hugh’s fingers and took the knob. With his free hand, he smacked Hugh hard across the cheek. Hugh swung sideways from the blow, and his brother, watching, yelped. The man set the knob b
ack on the shelf and walked away.
“Come on, baby,” said the worker, wriggling the topmost gear, his fingers slicked with the green fluid, his forearm pulsing like a frog’s throat.
“You okay?” asked Hugh’s brother.
The heat spread from Hugh’s cheek to his ear and the back of his neck, the hand’s weight still upon him.
“You should tell Dad.”
“Shut up,” Hugh said as the worker with a grunt yanked out the gear. The worker held his hand palm up, relaxed his fingers and lifted the part toward his mouth as if he might consume it.
Metal screamed. The hard face of the employee or mere moral enforcer settled in.
As they exited the junkyard, Hugh walked on his father’s right side, keeping his right cheek from his father’s vision. He walked farther away than he usually did, for he did not want to brush against his father’s body or to smell his father’s smoke. As Hugh passed the shepherds’ cages, he rapped his knuckles on the fencing, but still kept his distance.
When Takumi and Hitoshi were nine, Hugh had taken them on such an outing to find a rear light. He brought his own screwdriver and let his sons remove the part from the junked car. In the same car, he found a pair of dice and a hula doll. He handed them to his sons and told them to stuff the loot in their pockets.
The first street east of the last junkyard, Tuxford, was all informal salvage. Cannibalized cars and car parts spread across the dead lawns, guarded by listless dogs stretched out in the shade of fenders and engine blocks. The houses sat in disrepair, the lawns weedy or bare where not littered with iron, plastic and dog shit. Halfway down the block was 2409, the number he sought. Throwaway newspapers, shrunken and yellowed, were strewn across the walkway. He parked at the curb behind a beat-up Toyota pickup, its bed overflowing with gardening equipment. He shut off the engine and stepped out into the choking heat. Above the house, he saw the San Gabriel Mountains encased in a reddish brown haze.
Bent and dusty venetian blinds covered the windows. The mailbox beside the door held dozens of wilting flyers. But above the mailbox was a letter plate that said, “Mcpherson.” And what if H. Mcpherson answered the door? H. Mcpherson alive, Hugh Mcpherson dead, tossed up on some distant shore, a banquet for the crabs, a nursery for the flies, and all this travail a mere dream.
He pressed the gummed-up bell. A bee buzzed. Something moved at the periphery of his vision. On the neighboring lawn, a brown pit bull with a huge tumor hanging from its belly looked at him mournfully. The price of consciousness is death, the dog whispered.
He pressed the button again.
He looked at the San Gabriels, where Hitoshi, Takumi and he had clambered over invisible rocks to fish in the swift flowing river in predawn darkness.
The door shivered.
“Who is that?” said a voice.
“Is this Mrs. Mcpherson?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m from High Meadow Cemetery.”
“Where?”
“High Meadow Cemetery. It’s about your son.”
“My son is dead,” she said.
“I’m from the cemetery where he’s buried.”
The door opened. A small wrinkled woman in a red jumpsuit peered up at him. “What do you want?”
“Your son is Hugh Mcpherson?”
“Harry. His name’s Harry. That was his father’s name.”
“Ah.”
“It’s been twelve years since he’s been gone. He wasn’t an easy boy, but he never hurt anyone. Himself excepted, of course.” A cat meowed at her feet, rubbing and burrowing between the red scaly ankles. The house smelled of kitty food, kitty litter and kitty piss. Deeper in the dim room several felines peered out from the underbrush. She would subscribe to Cat Fancy, and in the backyard there would be mounds the size of bread loaves topped with named stones. Beneath the mounds, plastic grocery bags would shroud the bone, fur and whiskers of beloved tabbies. One day a boy digging for worms would uncover the sanctified grocery bags, lay them out like dead soldiers on a battlefield and do the count.
“What’s your cat’s name?” asked Hugh.
“This one? Lily.”
Hugh laughed. The woman tilted back her head and looked at him askance. “You think that’s a funny name? I’ve named all my cats after flowers.”
“Do you name all your flowers after cats?”
“I’m just an old woman, not a crazy one.”
“There was a girl at the cemetery. Her name was Lily. I spoke with her minutes ago.”
“I don’t see—”
“My name is Mcpherson. H. But Hugh not Harry. I was born on the same day as your son, Harry.”
She studied him. A second cat approached. Snowball white with penetrating green eyes. “I don’t know what kind of scheme you have in mind. But I’ve told you, I’m not crazy. I have no money. I have only this house.”
“Please, I’m just trying to understand why.”
“You were born on the same day as my son?”
“The same day and year.”
“You’ve had a hard life then.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You look to be about fifty. Much older than Harry.”
She remembered her son in his thirties. She’d forgotten that he would have aged. The dead stop aging. He was reluctant to remind her.
“He would be thirty-seven this September,” she said.
“But he was born in 1962.”
“1975. September 13, 1975.”
“Not September 16?”
“I’d forget my son’s birthday?”
“And this is the son that is buried at High Meadow?”
“Harry, yes.”
“I saw the date on his tombstone.”
“That was a mistake. They were supposed to change it.”
Hugh took the paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. “But that’s what it says on this.”
“That’s how it happened. The tombstone maker got the wrong information.”
“And they didn’t change it?”
“They were supposed to. But who was I to complain? They had him buried. It was a nice spot. Harry had no insurance, so I was glad they paid for it.”
“Who paid for it? The mortuary?”
“Um, no. It wasn’t the mortuary. A nice young man came to the house. He said his company was working with the cemetery. They were doing a promotion and would take care of everything. What was that company? McNamara?”
“McNamara?”
“ ‘Oh, the drums go bang and the cymbals clang and the horns they blaze, um, away . . . a credit to old Ireland is McNamara’s Band.’” She laughed. “Oh, that was a good one.”
“McNamara or Nakamura?” asked Hugh.
“Oh, yes, that’s it. Nakamura it was. Nakamura Realty.”
Hugh sat in his car, engine and air-conditioning running. He could not drive yet, for his hands were trembling and his legs were like dead weight. He felt certain, but helpless. Takumi and Hitoshi didn’t die that day. They were somewhere in the world. His job now was to find them. The awful thing that had been done to him would not give up its reason, its motive. His sons had been stolen, but why? This wasn’t a crime of opportunity, but meticulous planning. Nakamura was the facilitator, but surely it was not running the game.
As he put the car into gear, he caught a whiff of carbon. He glanced down at the passenger seat on which he had set Deadpan All the Way. He lifted the book. In the bright light of Sun Valley one of the strings hanging out of the back cover shone like gold. Hugh plucked at it, but it didn’t give. Smooth and shiny as copper. Did they weave wire into the fabric? Hugh tugged on the thread, which tore a path in the cover, exposing more metal. Hugh picked at the surrounding fabric, revealing a tapestry of metallic threads.
“Hello, Lily.”
Lily kept her head down, bringing the mallet back a few inches, flicking her wrist, so that the mallet touched but did not hit the red ball. She took a full swing. With a crack, the ball shot across
several gravesites, skirted a wall of rose bushes and then passed through a thin hoop, beyond which sat a blue ball. The second ball smacked the first, which rolled at an angle for several feet.
“Mama’s mad at you,” said Lily, raising her head to meet Hugh’s eyes. “‘He’s a thief and a liar.’ That’s what she said.” Lily set her mallet between her legs and tapped the earth. “Well, are you?”
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You could be lying. Are you from Crete? ‘Cretins always lie,’ said the Cretin. That’s a paradox all right. Do you play croquet?”
“I have.”
“Would you like to play me? I’m getting very tired of competing with myself. If I win, I lose. If I lose, I win. It’s not very satisfying. In fact, it’s—” Raising her eyebrows, she waited.
“Boring,” said Hugh.
“How did you know?”
“How did you know I would know?”
“The little gray matter, monsieur,” she said, tapping her head and smiling.
“I’m a cheat, too.”
“Ha. That’s a good one.”
Hugh held out the folder. “I brought this back.”
“Please set it down on Eli Pritchard.” She pointed her mallet at the headstone with that name. They were in an older section of the cemetery behind the mortuary. As he’d gotten out of his car, the clack of the striking mallet drew his attention. “Do you know the rules?” Lily asked.
“I once played it with my sons.”
“We play the six-wicket game here. Don’t worry, I’ll explain everything.”
“I would love to play, Lily, but . . .”
She put the back of her hand to her nose.
“Are you all right? Is it another nosebleed?”
“I’m not a hemophiliac. Look.”
She dropped her mallet and slapped her hand against a rose bush. Lifting her hand to him, she revealed a speck of blood on her palm.
“See.”
“You told me that you visit Japan.”
“If you’re not going to play croquet with me, may I recite a poem?”
“Have you ever heard the name Kazuki?”
Lily cleared her throat.
Pussycat, pussycat, where have you been?
I’ve been to London to visit the Queen.
Pussycat, pussycat, what did you do there?