Kissing the Beehive

by Jonathan Carroll

  Salvato was the first one up, the little ass kisser. Then my supposed best friend Joe O'Brien, Levao . . . they all rose and undid their zippers. I stayed seated and stared at McCabe. I hated him, hated what he was about to do for no reason in the world except boredom and pure meanness.

  "Don't do it, Frannie. It's not right. They're not bothering you."

  He had both hands in front of his jeans. He looked at me over his shoulder and his expression changed – something new had come to him. "Okay! Hold your fire, boys! I'll tell you what, Sam. If you piss on them, we won't. How's that? Fair?" Delighted, the other guys looked back and forth between us. No matter how this one turned out, they were off the hook. Now they could relish Frannie's threats and not worry about him destroying their day.

  "You want me to piss on my own dog? You're a fucking pervert, McCabe!" If I'd had an inch of courage, I would have punched him in the face. But this was Frannie. He knew I wouldn't make a move but wanted to make sure everyone saw my cowardice.

  "Rather be a pervert than a pussy, Bayer. So I guess it's time to give your doggy a golden bath, Sammy." Staring straight at me, he reached down and pulled out his dick. I quickly looked away. Next came the metallic hiss of the others unzipping accompanied by their embarrassed giggling.

  Then pssssss . . .

  I jumped up and ran back the way we had come. As I reached the other end of the hall, I heard Johnny Petangles shouting down below, "Heyyy! What are you doing? Heyyy!" Then the dog barked.

  Because I had avoided looking at the house, I hadn't seen that the ground all around was torn up and everywhere there were signs of construction.

  "What're they doing here?"

  Frannie pointed to the house. "Stop here. Let's get out and walk a little. The Tyndalls are so greedy that they held on to the place way too long. They thought it'd sell for a fortune. But they ended up taking a bath on it when the bottom fell out of the real estate market up here. They couldn't find a buyer for four years. A think tank in New York finally bought it for next to nothin', I heard. They're making it into one of those weekend conference centers."

  From a distance, the building looked as ratty as it had years before. But as we got closer, I saw a great deal of renovation had already been done. There were new doors and windows with the labels still on the glass. Sections of the porch had been completely restored. There were highly polished brass ornaments on the banister and front door.

  We climbed the steps and looked in the windows. Inside, the wooden floors glowed, their lush dark color contrasting perfectly with the fresh white on all the walls.

  "Man! It's a little different from the last time I was here. Looks like a monastery."

  "You wanna go in?" Frannie was already opening the front door with a large key.

  "How'd you get a key?"

  "Sam, you keep forgetting I'm a cop."

  "Were a cop. Aren't you on a leave of absence?" I followed him into the house and was immediately assailed with the acrid chemical smells of wood sealant and new paint.

  "I'm going back to work next month. That was part of my deal with Magda."

  "Good! Know what I was thinking about as we drove up here? The day you guys pissed on Johnny Petangles and my dog. I wanted to knock you out so badly that day. Now all I'd have to do is ask Magda. She'd do it for me."

  He shook his head. "Don't be so sure. She might piss on 'em with me. That's what I like about her. Come on, I want to show you something." He walked across the entrance hall, his leather heels clicking loudly on the shiny wooden floors.

  It was such a contrast to the last time I'd been chez Tyndall. That day, the house was roasting and smelled like old ashes mixed with wet wool. Strewn everywhere were filthy, stained, broken objects you didn't want to touch. Today the rooms were white as a cloud, clean and empty. The smell was completely different but just as strong. It marched proudly into your nose and proclaimed that everything here was brand-new, sanded fine, freshly painted, ready to go. New life was about to begin.

  "Remember my cousin Leslie DeMichael? He's foreman on this job. Knows I'm interested in the Ostrova case, so a couple of weeks ago he called and told me to come over. They'd found something when they were about to paint this room. Said I had to come see. It's right over here. I asked them to leave it like it was for a while. That's why they haven't finished." He pointed to one of the few unpainted walls. Crudely carved there was a cock and balls, looking like something a ten-year-old doofus would hastily draw on the wall of a public bathroom. Beneath it were carved the words, "Beehive and Bone – forever." I ran a finger into the deeply gouged letters of the words.

  "I wonder who did this?"

  "Pauline, dummy! That's why I wanted you to see it. Magda told me. You know Eddie called her Beehive. Bone was her nickname for him. Very few people knew that. He was supposed to have had a dick like a sequoia tree."

  "How do you know about Durant's penis, Frannie?"

  "Jitka. Pauline told her. She used to come up here all the time to have sex. Something about a haunted house that made her horny."

  "Pauline used to fuck in this house? Get out of here!"

  "It's true. And not just Edward Durant either. Before him there were others. Remember, though, back in those days you didn't have so many places to go. You either did it on the backseat of a car, out in the woods, or . . . the Tyndall house. At least here you had a roof over your head."

  I shuddered in disgust. "Phooey! You remember what this place was like! What it smelled like. How could anyone be turned-on by that?"

  "Oh excuse me, Mr. Bestseller, but weren't you recently together with a woman who made porno films and was in the Malda Vale? No offense but, uh, some people would find that a little weird."

  "True. But why are we here, Fran? Not just to see this."

  "No, but guess who told me first about Pauline coming up here? Veronica Lake! Last time she was here; knew all about it. Jitka only filled in the details. Your ex-girlfriend may be unstable, but she knows how to find out things. If she were normal, she would make a good cop.

  "Anyway, we're here today because I see this house like our relationship, Sam. We had a history before, but now the whole thing's changed. New paint, walls, everything.

  "The other day Magda asked me who my real friends were. I said you." His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened, as if he was afraid of what my reaction would be. "You and two other guys. That's it – three people on earth. I don't know if that's great or pathetic, but that's how it is. What do you think?" He did a nervous little two-step, like a boxer standing in his corner waiting for the bell to ring.

  "I'm very touched. And I agree – I think of you as a good friend, Frannie."

  "Good! That's a relief. But if we're going to be real friends, then there are things you gotta know. The main one being I'm a junkie. I've been one on and off for years. It started when I got bored in Vietnam. Nobody knew it but Magda and now this psychiatrist I go to, Dr. Dudzinska. Magda made me go. Said she wasn't going to live the rest of her life with a fuckin' junkie and she's absolutely right.

  "The guy who shot me was a dealer. I owed him a thousand dollars and didn't feel like paying. So he comes up to me that day and says real friendly, 'Fran, what about my thousand?' I say, 'Hey, Loopy, I don't have it right now.' So darling Loop shoots me in the stomach. Simple and to the point. No hard feelings – just business.

  "Then it got really, really bad in California when my marriage collapsed. I was going to parties and hanging out with sludge. I got a bad habit of thinking I was in destructible. I thought, hey, what the hell, these clowns are doing it and they seem okay. Plus I did a lot of grass and acid in Vietnam and I could always stay on top of it. The trick is, you can handle it for a while. Then one day it swoops down on you and gobbles you up.

  "But I'm hoping it's over now. Or it's beginning to be over. I'm in this group-therapy thing and go to the analyst. It hurts, Sam. All that stuff hurts because it makes you admit how weak you really are, but it's good.
<
br />   "Know where I went the first time I left my house after I got shot? Over to Loopy to give him his money. No hard feelings, Loop, even though you did try to install air-conditioning in my stomach."

  The only thing I wanted to do was hug Frannie, so I did. I put my arms around this curious man and hugged him with all I had. He started to say something, but shut up and just hugged back. When we separated, both of us had tears in our eyes.

  Embarrassed, he chuckled and then sniffed. "In the old days, I woulda just killed Loopy."

  We walked through the empty house talking about being young there. I said, "Maybe this is what happens to us after we die. They bring you back to a place where you spent a lot of time in your life, like Crane's View or the Tyndall house. But now it's empty and only white. All your memories are there, but the furniture and everything is gone. So it's just you and empty rooms full of ghosts."

  "Who are you, Conway Twitty? You sound like a country-and-western song. Forget it! Come on, Sambo, let's get out of here and eat some food. You're making me depressed. I brought you here to start a new chapter in our relationship, but instead you're –"

  "Waxing poetic?" I suggested.

  "More like ear wax. Come on."

  Walking toward the door, I did a detour to Pauline's wall art. Putting my hand over the deeply carved letters of her nickname, I said, "I wish I'd known her. The more I work on this book, the more I miss her." I took my hand away and spontaneously kissed my fingertips.

  Frannie took a Polaroid out of his pocket. It was a close-up of the carving. "I know what you mean. I thought you'd want this. So let's do her a favor and find the guy who killed her."

  When we walked in, Dick's Cabin was full of familiar faces. The restaurant looked exactly the same as it had when my family used to go there for Sunday dinner. Full log-cabin motif, it was all fifties, when steaks and chops were king, pass the salt and you want extra butter on that baked potato? If you had asked for Perrier water there they would have kicked your ass. I loved it.

  I sat at a table with Edward Durant, Al Salvato – still nervous and shifty-eyed, full of himself and his mediocre small-time success – Don Murphy, fart master of our high school class, Martina Darnell, my one-time dream girl . . . If Durant hadn't been there to catch me, I would have fallen into a full-nostalgia swoon.

  The first half of the meal was spent talking to the old gang and catching up on the years in between. It was lively and diverting and there were moments when first I felt a hundred years old, then thirteen again an instant later. Martina told a story about teaching Patricia Powell how to French-kiss in sixth grade by demonstrating tongue technique on a flowing water faucet. Salvato tried to interest me in investing in a shoe factory in Bangladesh. Murphy asked if I remembered how he used to fart in history class. As these people talked and laughed, a line from a novel Veronica had given me kept going through my head: "Once upon a time there was a time that some people say is still going on."

  Frannie moved from table to table, still master of ceremonies after all these years. Checking on the guests, he made sure everyone had enough to eat and was cared for. Later Magda told me he paid for everything to do with the funeral, which must have set him back thousands.

  Sometime during the meal I looked up and was surprised to see Johnny Petangles had come in and was devouring a giant T-bone. McCabe sat next to him with an arm around the big man's shoulder, talking seriously to him. Johnny ate and nodded, his eyes never lifting from his plate. I wondered what was going on between the two of them, but just then Durant touched my sleeve.

  "How is the book going?"

  The others at our table were deep in conversation about the Crane's View basketball team, so I had time to tell Edward what had happened since we had last spoken.

  He was shocked at the story of Veronica being hit and robbed in the subway. He asked a number of detailed questions about how the killer had contacted her, what he'd said, how he could have possibly known about her in the first place. I could hear the old prosecuting attorney in him coming back to life and it made me grin. I answered as best I could but it was clear he was unsatisfied. I finally admitted I couldn't tell him anymore because Veronica and I were no longer speaking. His eyes widened around that tidbit, but he didn't pursue it, which I appreciated.

  After that he became very quiet and withdrawn. When I asked if he was feeling all right, he patted my hand and said, "I'm fine. I'm just thinking about Veronica. She sounds like a strange woman but very devoted to you. I'm sorry it didn't work out. It took great courage for her to go to that meeting."

  I started to answer but then someone tapped on a glass and the room went quiet. Frannie was standing with a fork in one hand, a wine glass in the other. Next to him Johnny Petangles was still working on his steak. Everyone else was looking at McCabe.

  "I'm just going to say a few words and then let you get back to your meals. We're here in Jitka's favorite restaurant to say goodbye. I know she'd be happy because all of you were her friends and she loved a good party. At a time like this, it'd be easy to wax poetic" – he looked at me – "about losing such a good woman –"

  "Go ahead and wax, Frannie!" Salvato shouted out. The room chuckled.

  "Yeah, well, some other time. Right now I'd just like to do two things. First, I'd like to propose a toast to Jitka Ostrova, wherever she is. I hope she's near, but even if she isn't, maybe she can still hear us. So here's to Jitka. We love you. We'll miss you, and Crane's View won't be the same town without you." He lifted a glass and held it high. We did the same and then drank. How wonderful to be loved by so many people. What an amazing accomplishment.

  "And the second thing is, as you all know, Jitka loved the operetta The Pirates of Penzance. She used to sing it all the time, and if you ever heard her, you know what a terrible voice she had. But she didn't care. Those songs were hers and she had the whole thing memorized.

  "As a tribute, I've asked Johnny to sing us her favorite song. She taught him this one, just like Pauline taught him to read thirty years ago. So he's the best guy to do it. Johnny, are you ready?"

  Petangles dropped his knife and fork on the plate, sending a loud clatter into the middle of the hush that held us. Standing quickly, he wiped a hand across his mouth. Then for the second time in my life, I heard Club Soda Johnny sing. His voice was exactly as I remembered from the day he sang "Sherry" in the Tyndall house with Jack on his lap; soft and sweetly high.

  I am the very model of a modern major general;

  I've information vegetable, animal and mineral;

  I know the kings of England and I quote the

  fights historical,

  From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical.

  There was no intonation in his voice. The words must have meant nothing to him. He was simply singing the song Jitka taught him and he wanted to do it correctly. He only stumbled on one line but that didn't stop him. He closed his eyes and nodded as if to reassure himself, then pressed on and finished without a hitch. Most of the people in the restaurant started out smiling at this unique event, but by the time Johnny reached the end of that funny, complicated song, we were in tears. All of us wished we could take a photograph of him singing and send it to Jitka, wherever she was, to show her how well he had done, how well she'd taught him.

  Three

  When I reached my house in Connecticut, there were nine messages on the answering machine, all of them from Cassandra's mother. Woe is me. I do not want to talk about the woman because to this day she is a never-ending toothache in my soul. Normally she called when she was out of money or boyfriends to support her insanely lavish lifestyle. Chump that I am, too often I'd grind my teeth and reach for the checkbook, if only to keep peace with the mother of my daughter.

  Next to dying, talking to her was the last thing I wanted to do after that emotional day, but nine phone calls was a record even for her and there was always the chance something bad had happened to Cass. Standing in my overcoat, the dog staring accusingly at me
from across the room, I called.

  "Is she with you?" Her voice was as loud as it could go without creating a sonic boom.

  "Is who with me?" This woman had the most maddening habit of beginning a conversation in the middle of some private context and then expecting you to locate where she was on the map.

  "Cassandra, Sam! Is Cassandra there?"

  My mouth twitched involuntarily. I'm sure my voice echoed that instant alarm. "No. Why? Why would she be with me?"

  "Because she's not here. She went out last night and hasn't come home. Ivan's here and doesn't know where she is either. Where were you? I've been trying to reach you all day. Why wasn't the phone in your car working?"

  "Because I turned it off. I went to a funeral today and didn't feel like talking to anyone afterward. Is that okay with you? Let me talk to Ivan."

  Her voice flew up into a mad, birdy falsetto that made the situation worse. "Don't you dare be an asshole! Our daughter's missing, Sam! Don't talk to me like that."

  "I'm sorry, you're right. Would you please let me talk to Ivan?"

  She said his name and there was a rustling on the other end as she handed over the phone.

  "Mr. Bayer?"

  "Hi, Ivan. What's going on?" Even before he spoke I thanked God he was there.

  "I don't know. Cassandra and I were supposed to go out today. I came over and we've been waiting ever since. It's not like her. She's never late. She stayed out all night and we don't know why. She always lets me know if something's changed."

  "What do you think happened? Did you two have a fight?"

  "No, not at all! Actually, we've been very close lately. She said you two talked and since then she's been really sweet to me. No, there's nothing wrong with us. That's what's so strange about this. She's just gone."