Charles Alverson - Joe Goodey 02 - Not Sleeping, Just Dead

by Charles Alverson

  But Fischer reined him in with a small gesture of his hand. “Oh no, Pops, not yet. Hank looks a bit lonely standing there by himself, don’t you think? Don’t you think he could use some company?”

  “Yeah!” said Don Moffitt, with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary. He raked the assemblage with a jagged look. I noticed that his look went right over the heads of the folks in the two-dollar seats up front. Rachel didn’t look worried. She was mesmerized, as if she were an anthropologist watching a cruel but fascinating ritual. But a lot of the company did. I imagined there was a certain amount of conscience-rummaging going on.

  “What do you think, Hank?” Fischer asked, in a favorite-uncle tone of voice. “Could you use a little company?” Without waiting for an answer, he continued: “Like perhaps Vinnie Segundo?” His smile was alarming. “Come on up, Vinnie. Hank’s lonely.”

  Vinnie, a dough-faced Italian boy in his early twenties with modishly long hair and slightly tinted gold-rimmed glasses, gulped audibly. “M-me, Hugo?” he said, after swallowing with difficulty. “Why me? I didn’t…”

  Whatever Vinnie didn’t, didn’t seem to matter very much as someone in the rear gave him a helpful shove, and he found himself being propelled up to Willis’s side. There was a scattering of knowing smiles, and I got the feeling that perhaps Mr. Vincent Segundo wasn’t a leading member of the community.

  “And how about the young lovers?” Fischer shouted in a cheerleader fashion. “Shall we get them up here, too?”

  “Yay!” cheered a bloodthirsty voice from the back, and Fischer gestured to a couple of his running dogs who left the room by a side door.

  Things were getting lively now, and sleepy expressions lad been replaced by emotions ranging from pity to anticipation to mild terror. But at least no one looked bored. Fischer sure knew how to throw a party. I seemed forgotten for the moment, which didn’t make me unhappy.

  Willis, I’m sure, would have liked to be just as forgotten. Things had taken a turn for the worse for him in the last few minutes, and his face showed it. Things had begun to get out of hand. Willis recoiled from Vinnie as though he were carrying the Black Plague. It was a small space they were standing in, but Willis made the most of it. Vinnie just stood scratching his dandruff.

  All eyes jumped to the side door as the gray wolves returned leading two grotesque creatures behind him. At first I thought it was a joke—a bad joke. Both were dressed in the black-and-white striped coveralls of cartoon convicts, and their heads hung forward. The head of the boy in front was shaved completely except for a one-inch swath from his forehead to the nape of his neck. The girl behind him had her fair hair tied up in dozens of ugly little clumps with faded ribbons and string. Then I recognized them as Lennie and Barbara, the runaways who had returned that afternoon during the wedding reception.

  There was an involuntary sound from the crowd, half gasp, half sigh, as they caught sight of the couple. Rachel looked as though she were going to cry, but then bit her lip and forced her face back to a neutral expression. I glanced at Susan Wallstrom and was surprised to find her face completely devoid of any emotion. She was totally caught up in the spectacle. Behind the three chief inquisitors, Lenore Fischer’s face was like a death mask, and her eyes weren’t on the scene in the room.

  Willis’s expression did a few gyrations as the security men led the boy and girl through the crowd. This was turning into a freak show, but he couldn’t think of any way to get out of it.

  “Welcome,” said Fischer sardonically, but neither of the newcomers could manage to look up at him. “Now, let’s see,” he said mischievously, rubbing his stubbly chin, “who else?”

  “Bob Fuller!” someone shouted, and I followed the mob’s eyes to one corner where an apparition slumped against the wall, apparently asleep. He was about thirty and fattish, with skin the color of putty and thinning black hair combed straight back from the mole-like face He was wearing an ancient, rusty black, ankle-length raincoat, which looked as though it had been slept in.

  “Wha—?” Fuller muttered, when someone poked him, but eventually he sleep-stumbled up to join the growing circus at the front of the room. If Willis had shied away from Vinnie Segundo, at the advent of this newcomer he began to climb the walls.

  Fischer called for another couple of reluctant volunteers—a thin, bitter-faced girl with a build of a lady high jumper, and a handsome black boy with the languid air of Zulu prince—and the company of pariahs seemed to be complete.

  Fischer looked around the room with jovial menace. “I think that’ll do, don’t you?” he asked us. “Or would somebody else like to join this little band?”

  Somehow none of us did. Clasping his hands like the bride’s father at a Polish wedding, Fischer beamed at Willis and said: “Perhaps now, Hank, you’ll be kind enough to read what is written on the wall.”

  From the expression on his face, there was nothing Villis would have liked to do less, except perhaps swallow his tongue. But he pivoted back toward the graffiti and recited in a voice as flat as the Plains of Abraham: “Hugo fuck yourself.”

  “Excuse me, Hank,” Fischer said with mock politeness. “I didn’t quite catch that. Do you think you could read it just one more time?”

  There may have been someone in that room—besides, the Mad Dog and his pups—who was enjoying this spectacle, but it wasn’t Willis. He toughed it out, though, and his face was blank as he repeated: “Hugo fuck yourself.”

  “Thank you,” said Fischer. “Did everybody hear that?”

  “I didn’t!” called out a tall wise guy near the side door. “Well,” rasped out Fischer, “for you and the other illiterates, it says: Hugo fuck yourself.”

  The tall guy shrank until he could have fitted into Fischer’s vest pocket, and most everybody else looked suitably scandalized. Fischer had spoken the words with a Shakespearean roundness that Hank Willis hadn’t quite been able to muster.

  “Hugo fuck yourself,” Fischer said again, but this time it was spoken softly, as if to himself. Now he was a ruminative Zeus wondering who’d had the hubris to piss on his leg. He repeated it, softly yet ringingly, and then raised his great, flawed head to take in all of us. “What can that mean?” he asked with his hands raised imploringly. Now he was Moses having a private chat with God. Fischer sure could run the gamut. Any minute, now, I expected him to speak in tongues or do the splits.

  Instead, he zeroed in on Willis again. “Hank,” he said, “you’re a writer, a literary man. Can you tell us what it means?” When Willis didn’t respond immediately, Fischer darkened as though he was going to rain all over him and demanded: “What does it mean!”

  I didn’t know about the rest of them, but I was getting a bit bored with this scenario. Not to mention, Fischer may have been the greatest performer since John Wilkes Booth, but not at nearly three in the morning.

  “I think, Mr. Fischer,” I said in the kind of voice you use on a suspect in a police line-up, “it’s a pun, what you’d call a play on words.”

  I certainly had everybody’s attention, even Hugo Fischer’s. He pointed his heavy brow toward me in surprise: “Is it, Mr. Goodey? Is it now? A pun, you say. I thought you were a detective, not a semanticist.”

  Hank Willis looked relieved to be out of the spotlight. Rachel was shaking her head at me in warning, and Moffit and Pops Martin licked their lips and looked hungry.

  I didn’t say anything, so Fischer went on: “Perhaps,” he said, playing to the cheap seats, “we could prevail on Mr. Goodey, our visiting linguistics expert, to expound on the literary merits of the work of the midnight scrawler. Do you think you could do that, Mr. Goodey?”

  I really had the group’s attention now. There was something tribal in their faces, something mystical and savage that made me glad that I was just a stranger passing through. “I could, I suppose, Mr. Fischer,” I said, “but not just now. I’m tired and I’m going to bed.”

  Without bothering to read any faces, I turned and walked from the big dr
awing room. There was a security guard on either side of the doorway, but neither made a move. They stood like toy soldiers with open mouths.

  Behind me, all was silent for a long, long moment. Then there was an explosion of sound, an angry clamor mg punctuated by what I’d have sworn was the barking of dogs. I half expected to hear the heavy thump of running steps coming after me, but I was still alone when I got to the stairs. The racket from the Horizon Room seemed to grow even louder, but then as I climbed it faded, until from the top floor I could hear only a dull roar like rushing water.

  When I closed the door to my room even that died down. At that late hour, the under-butler’s hard, thin bed was as welcoming as a bower of roses. The pungent shadow of Genie’s perfume lingered in the sheets, and the last thing I remembered before I fell asleep was the rustle of her translucent negligee.

  13

  Sometime during the morning I dimly perceived the intercom announcing that breakfast was being served, and I considered the possibility. But just then the sandman in the guise of J. B. Carter let me have it behind the left ear, and the next thing I knew my wristwatch said it was nearly noon.

  When my feet hit the floor, I became aware of two things: my aching head and a flash of white on the floor just inside the door. It turned out to be a folded piece of paper. When I could get my eyes into focus, I read: “If you want to know who killed Katie, it was Rudolph Verrein. A friend.”

  I had to treat this with suspicion. As far as I knew, I didn’t have a friend at The Institute. Especially after being caught on the stairs between Genie and Rachel the night before. But it certainly was interesting, whoever Rudolph Verrein might turn out to be.

  The intercom above my bed made vague noises, but before it could decide what to say, I stepped up on the bed, wrenched the damned thing off the wall and lobbed it into the wastepaper basket. Then it occurred to me that it might have been about to inform me that the building was on fire. The dead speaker looked at me accusingly from the basket.

  When I took my towel and shaving kit out into the communal bathroom, it was empty except for Roscoe Matson in bright red shorts glowering at his image in the mirror as if trying to hypnotize it.

  “Hi,” I said, because I’m a very friendly guy.

  He started to return my greeting but then said something that sounded like mmmph and turned to glare at me. “Hey, man,” he said belligerently, “I’m not talking to you.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You know. That session last night. You fucked it up for fair with your wise mouth.”

  “Sorry,” I said with as much sincerity as I could manage. “I’m a new boy around here, you know. Don’t know all the ropes.”

  “You sure don’t,” he said, “and if you don’t wise up somewhat, you may not live to be an old boy.” With that, he gathered, up his shaving gear and headed for the door.

  “Hey, Roscoe,” I said, before he could quite make it. He stopped, looked back at me and grunted: “Hummmph?”

  “I know we’re not buddies anymore,” I said, “but do you think you could tell me who Rudolph Verrein is?”

  “Rudy Verrein is a son of a bitch,” said Matson.

  “Be that as it may,” I said. “Do you have any idea where I could find him?”

  “I hope he’s in hell,” said Matson, “and I wouldn’t mind a whole lot if you were there with him.” With that, he flipped his towel over his shoulder and stalked out.

  Feeling a bit cleaner but just as friendless as ever, I tramped down22 the stairs to find out what wonders that Sunday at The Institute would bring. The downstairs hall was nearly empty, and I saw nobody I knew.

  Just then the aroma of food wafting from the dining room hit me, and I remembered that I’d slept through breakfast. As I was walking in that direction, something caught my eye in a room off to one side of the hall. It was Hank Willis behind a bar, pouring a big pot of steaming water into a coffee urn. I considered ignoring my stomach and going in to have a chat, but then I became aware of his face. It was the face of a man studying the fine print of his soul and not liking what he read. Even a man more famous for his insensitivity than I wouldn’t have barged in on Willis’s communion with Inner Truth. At least not while he had a pot of boiling water in his hand.

  So I tiptoed on past to the dining room. I didn’t get a standing ovation from the lunch-eaters, but then nobody threw a knife at me, either. Spotting an empty chair beside Susan Wallstrom, I slipped into it before anyone could start forming a lynch mob.

  “Hello, Susan,” I said.

  She didn’t look too happy to see me, but good manners prevented her from spitting in my eye. She said hello nicely enough, but didn’t seem eager to go much further.

  I helped myself to whatever looked edible and asked her: “What time did that clambake end last night?”

  That may not have been the right question. “We all went to bed about four-thirty,” she said, a bit sniffily. “I hope you got enough sleep.”

  “Nearly,” I said. “But that’s really not why I left early. I just didn’t care much for Fischer’s idea of midnight frolics. Did you? You didn’t look too happy to me last night.”

  I began to notice that some of our tablemates’ had stopped grazing and were tuning in on our conversation. So did Susan, and the idea didn’t delight her.

  “There are a lot of things, Mr. Goodey,” she said, “that you don’t understand about The Institute.”

  I’d heard that refrain before, but rather than explore it just then I decided to change the subject.

  “That’s becoming more obvious by the minute,” I said. “But I’m trying to learn. And there’s something else I’d like to learn: Who is Rudolph Verrein?”

  From her expression, Susan didn’t like my new topic much better than the old one, but she answered: “He’s a portrait painter and a former friend of The Institute. He lives in Las Palomas.”

  “Why former?” I asked, but lowered my voice to a level that I hoped only Susan could hear. Privacy was probably a sin at The Institute, but I liked it. “What did he do— accuse Fischer of being human?”

  Another wrong thing to say. Susan wrinkled her pretty Scandinavian nose in distaste and said: “I don’t know why Rudy is no longer a friend of The Institute. Why don’t you ask Hugo?”

  “I’ll do better than that,” I said, spearing a last string bean and standing up. “I’ll ask Rudolph Verrein. See you later.”

  Susan was too busy chasing diced carrots around on her plate to answer, so I turned away and headed for the dining room door. On the way, I looked around for familiar faces. Fischer was nowhere to be seen, but Rachel and Jim Carey were eating forehead to forehead in one corner and talking something over intently. The honeymoon couple sat alone at another small table. Pops still looked a bit sulky, but from her expression Genie had things under control again. She raised an eyebrow that I pretended not to see. At that moment, Pops swiveled in my direction not looking very friendly, but she said something, and he turned back.

  I was just about at the door when a large, strong hand grabbed my arm and helped me turn back around. A glowering face under a narrow forehead that belonged to a caveman stared down at me with hostility. I recalled seeing him at the table helping beans onto his fork with an outsized thumb. “You were asking about Rudy Verrein?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, “but I wasn’t asking you.” He gave my arm a little shake of impatience that I felt down to my last vertebra. “But if you’d like to answer,” I said, “I’d certainly be grateful.”

  That didn’t seem to placate him much, but he threw my arm down as if he had no further use for it.

  “I’ll tell you who Rudy Verrein is,” he said. “He’s a faggot bastard who got thrown out of here for going around always trying to fuck our girls.”

  I didn’t bother asking him to clear up this apparent contradiction, just thanked him very much and turned to continue toward the door, hoping not to be retrieved again.

  “You tell R
udy to stay the hell away from here,” he shouted at my retreating back, “or he’ll get his scrawny neck broken. Tell him Jerry Wildenradt said so.”

  I couldn’t help turning back at the doorway, and discovered every eye in the place turned toward our little scene. I tried to think of a comeback that wouldn’t get my neck broken in five places. “How do you spell that?” I asked him.

  “W-i-l…”he started, but then something told Wildenradt I just might be having him on, and a carmine flush began to rise in his fleshy chops.

  I took several rapid steps down the hall and was soon in the marble foyer on the way out of the mansion when something caught my eye. It was a vast oil portrait of Hugo Fischer high up on the wall over the front door. I didn’t have to guess that Verrein had done it. The pose was pugnaciously Churchillian, the technique bold with a rough, cobbled surface that looked as though it had been achieved with a blunt weapon. This wasn’t a school of painting I usually liked, but in this portrait Verrein had made Fischer several sizes larger than life and had infused the birthmark with something noble, even tragic.

  In all, it was a majestic portrait that I could imagine Fischer spending a lot of time gazing at. I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to make an enemy of someone who could have made me look like that. But then, I wasn’t Fischer, and I hadn’t met Verrein yet, either.

  The security guards at the barrier dented ice pick looks on the front of the Morris, but grudgingly let me pass. On Highway 1 in downtown Las Palomas—a general store, a post office and a Shell station—the pump jockey, a vest-pocket hipster in mirror shades, told me how to get to Rudolph Verrein’s, adding: “Some pretty freaky things go on down there, man.”

  I thanked him for the warning and drove down the highway until my eagle eye caught an inconspicuous break in the hedge on the seaward side and a small bronze plaque with the initials R.V. I wheeled into the break and drove down an access road similar to the one leading to The Institute’s mansion. But there were no security guards, and at the end of it lay not a gingerbread extravaganza but an architect’s dream house in redwood and plate glass that lay against the landscape as if it had grown there.