Potboiler

by Jesse Kellerman

  The second gate was also open.

  He ran the last hundred yards, cresting the hill and sprinting for the open front door. He barged inside, calling Carlotta’s name. From a distant room came the dog’s crazed howls. Pfefferkorn ran, slipping on the polished floors. He made wrong turns. He backtracked. He stopped calling Carlotta’s name and called for the dog instead, hoping it would appear to lead him to the right place. The howling grew more urgent but no closer, and he ran from room to room, at last skidding to a halt in front of the ballroom. Frantic scrabbling, nails on wood. He threw open the double doors. The dog shot past, yelping. Pfefferkorn froze on the threshold, staring at the dance floor, at the glazy lake of blood and the human form heaped at its center.

  THREE A NOVEL OF SUSPENSE

  54.

  “How did you know the victim?”

  “He was Carlotta’s dance partner.”

  “What kind of dance?”

  “It matters?”

  “We’ll decide what matters, Pfefferkorn.”

  “Answer the question, Pfefferkorn.”

  “Tango.”

  “That’s a pretty sexy dance, huh, Pfefferkorn?”

  “I suppose.”

  “How long have you known Mrs. de Vallée?”

  “We’re old friends.”

  “‘Friends.’”

  “Recently it’s become more than that.”

  “Now there’s an image I didn’t need.”

  “TMI, Pfefferkorn. TMI.”

  “You asked.”

  “What do you think of the victim?”

  “What do you mean what do I think?”

  “Were you close with him?”

  “We didn’t fraternize.”

  “That’s a big word, Pfefferkorn.”

  “Don’t play games, Pfefferkorn.”

  “I’m not playing games.”

  “So you didn’t ‘fraternize.’”

  “No.”

  “Did you like him?”

  “He was fine, I guess.”

  “You guess.”

  “What am I supposed to say? He worked for Carlotta.”

  “Don’t lie to us, Pfefferkorn.”

  “We’ll know if you do.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “Someone’s doing sexy dances with my more-than-friend, I have an opinion.”

  “Well I don’t.”

  “You been drinking, Pfefferkorn?”

  “I had a few drinks at the bar.”

  “What kind of drinks?”

  “Bourbon.”

  “What kind of bourbon?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You like bourbon but not any specific brand.”

  “I’m not a drinker. I asked for bourbon.”

  “If you’re not a drinker how come you asked for bourbon?”

  “I was in the mood for a drink.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something bothering you?”

  “Something you’re nervous about?”

  “Something you feel guilty about?”

  “Something you want to tell us?”

  “You can tell us, Pfefferkorn. We’re on your side.”

  “We’re here to help you. You can trust us.”

  Silence.

  “So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?”

  “I’m doing my best to answer your questions.”

  “We haven’t asked a question.”

  “Which is why I’m not answering.”

  “You always this sassy, Pfefferkorn?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What for?”

  “Being sassy.”

  “Anything else you’re sorry for, Pfefferkorn?”

  “Anything else on your mind?”

  “On your conscience?”

  “Anything else you’d like to share?”

  “I’ll tell you whatever you’d like to know.”

  “Let’s cut the baloney, Pfefferkorn. Where’s Carlotta de Vallée?”

  “I told you. I don’t know. I came to look for her and I found . . . that.”

  “You don’t want to tell us what you found?”

  “. . . it was horrible.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You didn’t have anything to do with it?”

  “What? No.”

  “There’s no need to get touchy, Pfefferkorn. It’s just a question.”

  “Do I look like the kind of person who could do that?”

  “What kind of person do you think does that?”

  “Someone obviously very disturbed.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re telling me you don’t find it disturbing?”

  “Where’s Carlotta de Vallée?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why don’t you take a break and think about it.”

  Alone in the interrogation room, Pfefferkorn shut his eyes tightly against the image of Jesús María de Lunchbox’s mutilated corpse. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to eat rigatoni again. Just as he was starting to feel better, the door swung open and the detectives reentered. Canola was a smiling black man with large, feminine sunglasses. Sockdolager was white and unshaven. His shirt wasn’t rumpled, but only because his paunch was straining it so hard.

  “Okey-dokey,” Canola said. “Let’s try this again.”

  Pfefferkorn surmised that the purpose of asking the same questions over and over was to trip him up. For a fifth time he narrated the events of the evening. He described his concern upon finding the gates open. He described the dog shrieking to be let out.

  “You tell a good story,” Canola said. “No wonder you’re a writer.”

  “It’s not a story,” Pfefferkorn said.

  “He didn’t say it was untrue,” Sockdolager said.

  “I was just complimenting you on your fine grasp of narrative structure,” Canola said.

  He allowed himself to be questioned for several more hours before asking for an attorney.

  “Why do you need an attorney?”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  The detectives looked at each other.

  “Because if not,” Pfefferkorn said, “I’d like to go.”

  “All right,” Canola said agreeably.

  He stood up.

  Sockdolager stood up.

  Pfefferkorn stood up.

  “Arthur Pfefferkorn,” Sockdolager said, “you’re under arrest.”

  55.

  Not wanting to frighten his daughter over what would surely turn out to be a giant misunderstanding, he used his call to phone his agent. Nobody answered, though, and after further processing he was shown to a cell occupied by a young gang member covered in tattoos.

  “What about my phone call?” Pfefferkorn said to the guard.

  “Ain’t my fault,” the guard said.

  “But—”

  The door slammed shut.

  Pfefferkorn stood agape.

  “Don worry, ese,” the gang member said. “You get use to it.”

  Pfefferkorn avoided looking at his cellmate as he climbed up to the empty top bunk. He had a notion that it was unwise to stare at people in jail. They might take it the wrong way. He lay down and tried to think. His arraignment was scheduled for the morning. Where did that leave him for now? Locked up like some common criminal? What about bail? What about parole? What about time off for good behavior? He didn’t know how any of this worked. He had never been arrested before. Of course he hadn’t. He was a law-abiding citizen. He tossed and turned with in
dignation. Then he thought about Carlotta and his anger became anguish. Anything might be happening to her. If the police believed they had solved the case by arresting him, they were bringing her that much closer to death—if she wasn’t dead already. Time was slipping away. He felt as though he was buried up to his neck in sand. He moaned.

  “Ese. Chill out.”

  Pfefferkorn clenched his fists to keep still.

  A little later, a buzzer sounded.

  “Chow time,” the gang member said.

  The dining room walls reverberated hellishly with the noise of men eating and talking. Pfefferkorn took his tray and sat alone, slumped, his arms crossed over his chest. He needed to make that call.

  “Not hungry?”

  Pfefferkorn’s heart contracted unpleasantly as his cellmate sat down across from him.

  “So, ese, what you do?”

  Pfefferkorn frowned. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Then why you here?”

  “I’m being accused of a crime I didn’t commit,” Pfefferkorn said.

  The gang member laughed. “Hey, what a coincidence. Me too.”

  He flexed one forearm, causing the Virgin Mary to shimmy lewdly. Gothic lettering spanned the hollow of his throat.

  “Ese,” the gang member said, “you lookin at something?”

  Pfefferkorn averted his eyes again. “No.”

  The chow room clattered and boomed.

  “You know what that means?” the gang member said.

  Pfefferkorn nodded.

  “Okay then,” the gang member said. He stood. “Eat up.”

  56.

  “Pfefferkorn. Derecho. Let’s go.”

  “Rise and shine, ese.”

  Pfefferkorn stirred. He felt god-awful. He’d spent most of the night awake. Rarely did the other inmates cease hollering and stomping, and anyway, he was too wound up from imagining Carlotta in various states of peril. He had nodded off shortly before daybreak. The color of the light told him it wasn’t much later than that now.

  “Move it.”

  Pfefferkorn and his cellmate stood in the corridor, facing the wall. The guards patted them down and escorted them out of the cell block toward the elevator.

  “No talking,” a guard said, although nobody had said anything.

  A van was waiting to transfer them to the central courthouse. They were shackled to their seats. The engine started and the van crept toward the security gate. The driver flashed a badge. The arm went up. They pulled onto the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

  Pfefferkorn was immersed in one kind of anxiety, enough so that at first he did not realize the van had pulled onto the freeway. When he did notice, he was not in sufficient possession of his faculties to be surprised. Only after they exited the freeway and started driving uphill did it occur to him that they should have arrived at their destination some time ago, and a second kind of anxiety came to the fore. He couldn’t tell where they were, because the van’s back windows were blacked out, and the grate protecting the driver made it hard to see through the windshield. He glanced at his cellmate. The man appeared perfectly at ease. Pfefferkorn didn’t like it.

  “Are we almost there?” he called.

  Nobody answered.

  The road got bumpy. Pfefferkorn glanced at his cellmate’s shackles. He reasoned that whatever was happening had to be happening to his cellmate as well—hence their common state of shackledness. He tried to make this make him feel better. It didn’t work.

  The van pulled over. The driver got out and came around to open the back door. A blast of unfiltered sunlight caused Pfefferkorn to squint. What he saw did not compute. Instead of a parking lot or an urban street, there was barren hillside and a dirt road.

  “Where are we,” he said.

  The driver did not answer. She—it was a she—unlocked Pfefferkorn’s cellmate. Though Pfefferkorn was still half blind, he was able to detect a familiarity in her face.

  “What’s happening,” he said.

  “Relax,” Pfefferkorn’s cellmate said, rubbing his wrists. He no longer had a gangbanger accent. He got out of the van. The door closed. Pfefferkorn heard them talking. The gang member was complaining about being itchy. The driver murmured a reply and the two of them laughed. Pfefferkorn cried for help, his voice bouncing around the inside of the van. He jerked helplessly at his chains.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself,” the driver said, opening the back door. The gang member was behind her, clutching something sharp and glinting.

  Pfefferkorn slid away from them in terror.

  “Take it easy,” the gang member said. His jail uniform was gone and his entire mien had changed. The driver was also out of uniform. With their youthful freshness, they could have been students of his. Then Pfefferkorn saw: they were students of his. The young man was Benjamin, author of the pretentious short story about getting old. Pfefferkorn didn’t remember him having so many tattoos. Then again, Pfefferkorn didn’t remember him being a gang member at all, so perhaps his memory was not to be trusted. The driver was Gretchen, she of the robots. She took the syringe from Benjamin, who cracked his knuckles and got ready to pounce.

  Pfefferkorn pressed himself back into the unforgiving wall. “No.”

  Benjamin tackled him and pinned his arms. Pfefferkorn fought. He had no chance.

  “I have a family,” Pfefferkorn said.

  “Not anymore,” Gretchen said.

  The needle sank into his thigh.

  57.

  He was in a motel room. He knew this upon opening his eyes, before he had moved. The moldy air, the cottage-cheese ceiling, the line of gray light crossing it: these were proof enough. He rose up on his elbows. For a motel room, it was below average. The television set was bolted crookedly to the dresser. The carpet was mangy. The bedspread was a rough synthetic fabric printed with pink hibiscus blossoms as big as hubcaps. He was naked. The thought of that fabric against his skin gave him the willies. He leapt to his feet and was hit with a wave of nausea. He staggered to the wall and leaned against it, taking deep breaths until he could stand on his own.

  He stepped to the window and drew back the curtain a few inches. His room was on the second floor, overlooking a parking lot. A search turned up neither telephone nor clock. The dresser drawers were empty, the walls bare. The nightstand contained a Gideon Bible. The television’s power cord had been snipped, leaving a quarter-inch stub. He checked the closet. It was without so much as a hanger. Another wave of nausea sent him running for the bathroom. He fell to his knees and vomited up a caustic orange stream. He sat back, hugging himself and shuckling, his body damp and quivering.

  The toilet rang.

  Pfefferkorn opened his eyes.

  The ringtone was an irritating and ubiquitous thirteen-note ditty. Coming from within the toilet tank, it assumed an echoey, sinister quality.

  I must wake up, he thought. I must stop this nightmare.

  Everything continued to exist.

  Wake up, he thought.

  The toilet rang and rang.

  He pinched himself. It hurt.

  The ringing stopped.

  “There,” he said. He felt that he had attained a small victory.

  The toilet once again began to ring.

  58.

  A phone had been duct-taped to the underside of the tank lid. He peeled it free. The caller ID said WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW. He was afraid to answer but more afraid not to.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Sorry it had to be this way,” a man’s voice said. “I’m sure you can understand.”

  Understand what? He didn’t understand anything.

  “Who are you?” he yelled. “What is this?”

  “It’s not
safe to talk over the phone. You need to get moving.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You will if you want to live.”

  “Goddammit,” Pfefferkorn said, “don’t you threaten me.”

  “It’s not a threat. If we wanted to do something to you, we would have done it already.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s not about your feelings,” the man said. “It’s much bigger than that.”

  “What is?”

  “You’ll know soon enough. Now get moving.”

  “I don’t have any clothes.”

  “Look up.”

  Pfefferkorn looked up. The bathroom ceiling consisted of foam tiles two feet square.

  “You’ll find what you need in there.”

  Pfefferkorn climbed onto the toilet and slid aside a ceiling tile. A plastic shopping bag fell out, hitting him in the face. He found brand-new khakis wrapped around a pair of white running shoes. One shoe held balled white gym socks, the other a pair of white briefs. Last, there was a black polo shirt. He held it up. It hung to his knees.

  He heard the man talking and picked up the phone.

  “—win any best-dressed awards, but it’ll do.”

  “Hello,” Pfefferkorn said.

  “Ready?”

  Pfefferkorn pulled on the underwear. “I’m going as fast as I can.”

  “Inside your nightstand is a Bible. Taped to page one hundred twenty-eight you’ll find three quarters.”

  Pfefferkorn, one leg in the khakis, hopped to the nightstand. He was angry at himself for having missed the quarters. In unsticking them he took care not to tear the delicate paper. The verse revealed was John 8:32: “And ye will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

  “In a minute you’re going to leave your room,” the man said. “Don’t do it yet. Down the hall to the left you’ll find vending machines. I want you to buy a grape soda. Is that clear? Once I hang up, this phone will cease to function. Drop it in the toilet tank before you leave.”