The phone jangled on the nightstand.
“Don’t answer it,” Karen said with foreboding.
“I think I better,” I said. “It might be Al.”
I picked up the receiver and pressed it against my ear.
“Stoner?” an unfamiliar voice said.
“Yes.”
“LeRoi say to tell you he be paying you a visit tonight. ‘Bout midnight. He say to tell you there ain’t gonna be no trouble. He just wanna talk.”
“He’s coming here?” I said.
The black man said, “Yeah. Your crib.”
“You tell him if he isn’t alone, there is going to be some trouble.”
“Bet, man,” the black said with a chuckle. “You a tough fucker, ain’t you?”
“You just tell him,” I said, and hung up.
Karen pulled away from me in the bed. “The nightmare’s starting up again, isn’t it?”
I didn’t know how to answer her. I didn’t know what LeRoi had in mind. I’d gotten what I’d wanted—a meeting with the candy man. Only I didn’t know what had happened to the candy. And that was all he cared about.
“It’ll be all right,” I said reassuringly. “Maybe LeRoi can tell us what happened to Lonnie.”
“Do we really want to know?” she said in a distant voice. “What happens when we find out?”
To be honest, I didn’t know how to answer that, either.
31
I TOLD Karen I’d take her out for supper. While she was in the shower, the phone on the nightstand rang again. I hesitated for a moment before picking it up, wondering what I was going to say if it turned out to be LeRoi again. This time, it was Al.
“Jordan’s partner, Lewis, tells me he’s been talking to some biker who hangs out at the Encantada bar. The guy’s a regular at the bar, and he’s got some information that Jordan thinks is crucial.”
“Information about what?” I asked.
Al said, “I don’t know, Harry. About the murder, I guess.”
“Do you have a name for this biker?” I asked him.
“Sonny Carter. Lewis says he’s a big guy with a black beard. Wears a chain vest. That sort of thing.”
“Thanks, Al,” I said.
“Harry,” Foster said in a concerned voice. “If you haven’t come clean with me about that motel murder, I think now is the time. I’ve got my neck stuck out a mile for you, pal. And Jordan would like nothing more than to chop it off. If he nails you, he’ll nail me too. You can count on it.”
I should have told him the whole story. After what he’d done for me the night before, he deserved to hear it. But I didn’t. Partly because it seemed too complicated to explain over the phone. Partly out of stubbornness, out of a stupid desire to show Jordan up, without help from anyone. And, in spite of everything, partly because of Lonnie.
“I’ve got nothing to tell you, Al,” I said.
He grunted. “You always play it your own way, don’t you, Harry?” He started to hang up, then said, “Oh, by the way, that guy you asked us to find? That Jackowski guy?”
“Yeah?” I said.
“Jordan’s looking for him too.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You tell me, Harry,” Al said with bitterness. “You could, if you wanted to. Couldn’t you?”
“Al...” I said.
“Fuck you, Harry,” he said, and hung up.
Great, I said to myself. I was in no position to alienate one of the few friends I had left, and I knew it. I picked up the phone—to call Al back. Then I started thinking about Jordan, about what he would do to Lonnie if he got his hands on him, and I put the phone back down. Having been through it myself, I simply couldn’t do that to Lonnie. I couldn’t do that to any man.
I sat down on the bed, listening to the sound of the shower pounding against the stall. For a moment, I almost felt panicky—the way Karen had said she’d felt, waking up alone in the middle of the night, trying to block Lonnie out of her mind. Out of nowhere, out of the night, he’d come back into my life. Spent one day in my apartment. Then disappeared again, into the darkness, leaving me to pay the price for his mistakes. Leaving me fighting for my life.
There was something so bizarre about his visit, so inexplicable, that it truly frightened me. It was like he wasn’t real. Like he was some manifestation of a bleak, joking providence. An incarnation of a Zeitgeist, a phantom from the raucous, irresponsible past—from the wild old days that Leanne Silverstein had said she regretted and that Karen was trying desperately to forget—come to teach me a lesson, about nostalgia and brother’s keeping.
But that was giving Lonnie much more than his due. All he really was, I told myself, was a stupid junkie trying to get to Fire Lake. A kid playing with matches in a motel room, setting blazes in wastebaskets and running away. That’s what I told myself. But for a few moments I stayed scared.
Karen came out of the shower and walked into the bedroom—naked, her hair dripping wet. “Where are your towels?” she said.
I pointed to the bottom drawer of my dresser.
Karen bent down and opened the drawer, pulling a towel out.
I sat there, staring at the floor—still thinking about Lonnie. “We’ve got to stop him,” I said, without realizing that I’d said it.
“Who?” she said, wrapping the towel around her as she stood up.
“Lonnie,” I said, looking up at her.
“Are you okay?” she said, eyeing me critically. “Who was that on the phone?”
“It was Al.”
“And?”
“And I’m going to have to go out to that goddamn motel again.”
“Christ,” she said. “What happened?”
“Jordan may have a witness to the murder. A biker at the motel.”
“But we already know who killed Jenkins,” Karen said. “It was that black kid, Bo. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“So why do you have to talk to the biker?”
“I was there, for chrissake!” I said, and I could hear the panic in my own voice. “My name’s on the Encantada register. I left my footprints on the fucking floor. I took Lonnie’s license out of the office. I didn’t report the murder. I’m involved. What if the son of a bitch biker saw me coming out of the office?”
“Christ,” Karen said, paling. “I didn’t think of that.”
“Jenkins had been dead for a while,” I said, thinking about the way the blood had coagulated on his body, thinking about the terrible smile on his face. “At least an hour or more. That would put the murder around two or earlier. I didn’t get there until close to three.”
“So you’re in the clear?” Karen said hopefully.
“If the biker remembers the time right,” I said without much confidence. “An hour isn’t a lot of leeway.” I slapped my knee with my palm. “What the fuck was he doing out there anyway, in the middle of a freezing cold night? The bar was closed. The motel was deserted.”
“Maybe he was waiting for somebody?” Karen offered.
“Who?” I said.
“I guess we’re just going to have to find out.” She picked up her duffel bag and walked back toward the john. “This better end soon,” she called out. “Or my kids are going to start wondering what happened to me.”
******
We grabbed a bite to eat at McDonald’s and ate it in the car as we headed out Columbia Parkway to Miamiville. I drove this time. The aches and pains hadn’t gone away. They just didn’t seem that important anymore. The important thing was getting a lead on Lonnie, before midnight, if I could manage it. I wanted to give LeRoi something—something to get me off the hook.
I could have paid Cal another visit. It probably would have been the smart move, especially if Norvelle had come back home. But I knew that my next visit to Cal was going to end in violence—he’d made that clear. And, unless it was necessary, I didn’t want to put Karen through that scene again. Actually, I didn’t want her along on the trip to the Encantada. But
there was no place to hide anymore. No place that was safe. Even if I’d stuck her in the Clarion, I knew that she was still vulnerable to LeRoi or to Jordan.
It was close to eight when we pulled into the Encantada lot. This time the bar was wide open. A row of bare yellow bulbs surrounded the Quonset’s door, winking alternately, like the entrance to a peep show. You could hear the roar of laughter, music, and talk from where we’d parked, a good hundred yards away from the hut. I stared at the row of motorcycles parked in front of the entrance. They were all chopped, forks extended and dressed with chrome. The bar lights played on the fenders, making them look as if they were spangled with oil.
“This is going to be fun,” I said.
Karen smiled bleakly. “What are you going to do?”
“Whatever it takes,” I said grimly. “First I’ve got to find the guy.”
“And then?”
I turned on the car seat. “Lonnie made his connection with LeRoi through Norvelle. Then he came out to this motel, presumably with the crack. There had to be a reason why he did that.”
“You think he was going to sell it to the bikers?” Karen said, staring at the row of Harleys.
“It would explain why he was here.”
“Then he got ripped off and tried to kill himself, right?”
I nodded. “By Jenkins, I think. That’s what LeRoi must have thought, too, or else he wouldn’t have sent Bo out here to kill him.”
“But Jenkins didn’t have the crack,” Karen said.
“Nope. Somebody else’s got it.”
“You think Jenkins had a partner?”
“Lonnie was beaten up by a biker, before he tried to kill himself,” I said. “It could have been a coincidence, but I kind of doubt it.”
“So you think one of the bikers has the lady?” Karen said.
“The guy that Jordan was talking to had to have some reason to be hanging around out here in the middle of the night. Maybe he got to Jenkins before Bo and his pals did. Maybe he got the crack before Jenkins got offed. Maybe he thinks he can pin the whole thing on me or Lonnie and still keep the dope.”
“It makes sense,” Karen said. She glanced at the bar. “He’s not likely to want to talk to us.”
I laughed. “I’d say not.”
“So how do we do this?” she said, turning to me.
“Let’s find him first,” I said. “Then we’ll worry about getting him to talk.”
32
KAREN AND I got out of the Pinto and walked across the lot to the Quonset hut. The closer we got to the door, the louder the bar sounds became. This was no neighborhood saloon; it was a raucous, redneck hangout. Just the ticket for an evening’s fun.
The wind was blowing loose snow from the Quonset’s roof. It trailed from the eaves like a banner, fluttering in the air above the lighted entrance. I brushed the snow out of my eyes and opened the door. A cloud of cigarette smoke came pouring out of the bar, as if the whole place were on fire.
“Jesus,” Karen said, swiping at the smoke and the snow. “It looks like hell in there.”
“Pretty close,” I said. “When we get inside, just play along with whatever I say. Can you manage that?”
Karen laughed. “I’m good at playing along, Harry. I’ve had years of training. For a couple of months in a row back in ‘72, Lonnie and I didn’t tell the truth once. Not even to each other.”
“Sounds like you qualify,” I said, guiding her through the door.
The smoke was like a river fog inside the bar. And the place was even noisier than I had imagined. A jukebox beside the door was blaring country music through four speakers hung from the rafters, and the bar talk was being carried on at the top of everyone’s lungs. Even the clink of mugs and pitchers seemed too loud, as if for every beer that was being poured, someone was breaking a bottle.
A couple of dozen round wooden tables were set up in the center of the room—all of them occupied by bikers and their women. A few strangers were sitting in booths on the left wall. At least, I assumed they were strangers from their cowed faces. They looked like travelers who’d wandered into the Twilight Zone from the highway and who didn’t know how to get back out again.
A long polished-wood bar ran the length of the room on the right, with a mirror behind it and rows of liquor bottles stacked beneath the mirror. An overworked-looking barmaid in jeans and a lumberjack shirt was standing at the end of the bar, waiting for the bartender to fill an order. She was resting her elbows on a cork-lined tray. She’d lost a barrette at one temple, and wisps of loose brown hair were hanging down over that side of her face. As I walked up to her she blew the hair back and smiled at me wearily.
“Busy night?” I said.
“Every night’s busy around here,” the barmaid said.
“You always get the same crowd?’ I glanced at the bikers in their chains and leathers.
She nodded. “They ain’t as bad as they look,” she said, a touch defensively.
“I didn’t mean to sound smart,” I said quickly. “In fact, we’re looking for a guy. We’re supposed to meet him here.”
“Who?” she said.
“Sonny Carter,” I said, glancing around the room. I pointed to one of the tables in the distance. “Isn’t that Sonny?” I glanced at Karen. “Isn’t that Sonny over there, hon?”
Karen pretended to peer through the haze. “I don’t know,” she said, swiping at the smoke. “I can’t make him out.”
The barmaid shook her head. “That ain’t Sonny over there. Sonny’s up in the corner with Duke.”
“Which corner?” I asked, looking confused.
She pointed to the right.
I sighted across the room, my hand over my brow. “Oh, yeah!” I said cheerfully. “I see him now.”
The barmaid glanced at me and Karen uncertainly. “You all friends of his?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at her. “Me and Sonny go way back.”
The bartender came up and slapped four margaritas on the barmaid’s tray.
“Go on,” he said, giving her a stern look. “You got tables to wait.”
She snarled at him, picked up the tray, and wandered off into the maze of tables.
I pulled Karen away from the bar. “What do you think?” I said.
She stared at Sonny—a big, bearded lummox in a sweatshirt, grimy blue jeans, and a chained leather vest. Twenty-five, twenty-six years old. Six-two. Two-hundred-eighty pounds. Lank, uncut black hair that hung down to his shoulders. Porcine face. Teeth missing on either side of his mouth. Huge, bulging belly. Huge arms, dripping fat like an upturned skillet. Tattoos on either forearm. A folding knife hanging from a chain on his belt. He was a prize.
Karen shook her head. “He’s a monster.”
“Yep,” I said. “And probably mean as a snake.”
“What do you think?” Karen said.
“Well, we’ve got to get him out of here—that’s for sure. He’s enough of a handful on his own. We don’t want his pals stomping us too.”
Karen glanced back at Sonny. “If he does have all that crack, maybe he’d be willing to sell some to me.”
“To a stranger?” I asked dubiously.
“I don’t have to remain a stranger,” she said, giving me a wink.
I stared at Karen. “You’d make a play for...that?”
“I’ve done a lot worse,” Karen said casually.
“I don’t think I want to hear about it,” I said.
“Tell you what,” Karen said. “You go out to the car. In due time, I’ll come out with Sonny. I think that one’s up for something kinky. Maybe we can get him to take us home and feed us some crack. You think you can play it by ear?”
“Play what?” I said.
“A swinger,” she said with a laugh. “I mean, it’s casting against type, but...”
“Jesus, Karen,” I said, “I don’t know.”
“You have a better idea on how to get him out of here—alone?”
“I guess not,” I said
.
“Then leave it to mama.” She unzipped her fur jacket, roughed up her hair, unbuttoned the top two buttons on her blouse, and walked off toward Sonny’s table.
I watched her for a time from the bar rail. Karen sat down at Sonny’s table and started talking to him. I couldn’t hear what she said, but after a minute or two, Sonny called the barmaid over and ordered a couple of drinks. Karen kept talking to Sonny, leaning across the table to give him a look at her breasts. A minute or two after the drinks arrived, Sonny told his friend Duke to blow. Duke, a biker as skinny as Sonny was fat, grinned salaciously and took his drink to another table. Sonny scooted over toward Karen, patting her hand with one of his paws. She smiled at him encouragingly.
I started to feel a little sick.
When I couldn’t stand to watch him drool over her anymore, I walked out of the bar into the cold. I stood in front of the door for a long time, counting seconds like a timekeeper. When Karen didn’t come out right away, I wandered back to the car.
I wouldn’t have gotten in the car, if the cold hadn’t been so fierce. But ten minutes of shivering made my back start to ache. I climbed in the front seat, behind the wheel, turned on the engine, and turned the heater up to high. I opened the vents and sat there, with the heat pouring over me, until I broke into a sweat. And still she didn’t come out.
I glanced at my watch. It had only been twenty minutes. I knew I was behaving like a kid. I knew she was only doing whatever she was doing in there for me—to get me off the hook with LeRoi. But some chauvinistic fold of my brain simply couldn’t handle the thought of Sonny Carter touching her, even if it was only an act. The longer she stayed in that bar, the angrier I got. By the time she and Sonny came out the door, I was livid. I wanted to tear that fat cocksucker to pieces—to cut off his hands and nail them to the fucking wall.
Karen came bouncing over to the car, a half-dozen yards ahead of Sonny. She knocked on the window, and I rolled it down.
“We got us some real action here, Harry,” she said, loudly enough for Sonny to hear her.
Then she took a look at my face and whispered, “What the hell is wrong?”
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