Laughing Man

by Wright, T. M.

  She called to him, in that same brusque voice, "You don't know what you're bothering! This is my own business." He strained to see her face, saw it unclearly.

  "Miss," he called back, "I think you're in trouble somehow. I only want to help you."

  "I don't need you to help me!" she called back.

  She was within a dozen feet of him now, and he could see her face as a reddish mask—large eyes, small nose, full lips, high cheekbones. A mannequin with soft skin, and eyes that reflected the dim early morning light in a harsh and brittle way. Beauty that was too perfect.

  He stepped back, uncertain why, as she passed him. He thought briefly that it was fear. And he smelled her as she passed—the tangy odor of moist earth freshly turned, the cloying odor of growth and decay. His hand went for his .38 in his shoulder holster; he touched the grip of the weapon, let it go. Clearly she was unarmed, he thought.

  Chapter Nine

  Williamson the Loon had done more than a few murders, though he did not think of them as murders. The concept of murder—with its accompanying aura of judgment and moral decay—was not part of the way he saw the whole matter of being alive. You smiled when it was necessary, you fucked when you needed to fuck, you bought shoes when your old shoes wore out, and you killed when the occasion demanded.

  Well, his own father had taught him that, and his father had never misled him. His father was a naked, grinning saint, a dirty, naked saint with an erection the size of Betelgeuse and enough sperm to populate the galaxy in Andromeda.

  Williamson had learned quite a lot about astronomy because he was—he'd explain if asked—a creature of the earth. He was a spaceman riding starship Earth to realms that were all but invisible, now, but which would become all too visible within the span of his years, which would be innumerable.

  He was in a pawnshop. He was looking at watches because he enjoyed the keeping of time, enjoyed the futility of it, in the face of eternity, enjoyed the attempt at measuring a thing which could not be measured because its parameters were limitless, so it effectively had no parameters (Here are three seconds in eternity—so foolish trying to parcel out bits of a thing that had no beginning and no end).

  The owner of the pawnshop was a short, fat man named Lewis, and he was growing tired of Williamson's questions. Williamson had been in the shop for almost an hour asking questions—"This timepiece, it looks old. How old is it?"

  "Is that real gold? If it's not real gold, I'm not interested."

  "Do you have any idea why clockwise is clockwise?"

  Lewis said now, "Listen, I've got work to do, so why don't you make up your mind."

  Williamson liked this no-shit approach. He smiled at Lewis, which made Lewis a little weak in the knees, because Williamson's smiles were part humor, part malevolence, and mostly bizarre. "Oh," Williamson said, "you have been a pawnbroker for many years, I see, to have cultivated such a direct approach to annoyance. Even if I buy a watch from you—and it's a good possibility that I will—then you will earn too little from the purchase to make your time with me profitable."

  Lewis gave a small, nervous shrug. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."

  Williamson said, "But there's no one else in the store." He glanced about quickly, then once again at Lewis. "Only the two of us. Two men caught up in an act of commerce, which, I might remind you, is your business. Commerce."

  Lewis said curtly, "Please choose a watch."

  Williamson smiled again and leaned over the glass counter that separated him from Lewis. "I want many watches. I want all your watches, but I will take only one. And that process, deciding on which watch to take, requires time. Ironic, isn't it? Taking time to select a timepiece." He waited for a response from Lewis and when none came, Williamson went on, at close to a shout, "I said, don't you think that's ironic? Taking time to choose a timepiece. Isn't it ironic?"

  Lewis glanced at an area below the counter.

  Williamson said, "I'm not going to rob you."

  Lewis shrugged again. He'd begun to sweat.

  Williamson said, "Yes, yes, I know about your gun. Pawnbrokers have guns. But leave it where it is because I'm here only to buy a timepiece and to engage you in philosophical discussion of the purchase of timepieces. No gun is required for that."

  Lewis shook his head quickly.

  Williamson said, "I may eat you. I may buy a timepiece from you and then eat you. But I will not rob you." Lewis said nothing. His eyes were wide.

  Williamson leaned back. "There you go, taking my words literally when, in all likelihood, you should take them figuratively. Don't think of eat in the classic sense of mastication, ingestion, and digestion. Think of eat,instead, as a philosophical term, a term of psychosis, or, for that matter, drama alone. If I were to say to you that I am going to eat your eyeballs,then you cannot really assume that that is precisely what I intend to do. Assume nothing and you enter a world of great possibilities, sir."

  Lewis once again glanced at the area below the counter.

  Williamson said, "Oh, stop glancing at that gun, Mr. Pawnbroker, and pick out a watch that will suit my needs, much as a tiger's stripes suit its needs."

  Lewis managed, "Please leave my store."

  Williamson cocked his head. Smiled. "Surely," he said, and left the store, though not before quickly dispatching Lewis with a deft, sharp, and crushing blow to Lewis's windpipe, then eating Lewis's eyeballs, his genitals, his entrails, and the soft tissue of both his hands, and, then, finding a beautiful solid gold pocket watch, circa 1926, with the name "Roland" etched in script on the case.

  How interesting, Williamson thought, that the idea, or fact, or knowledge, or premonition—whatever the people in the culture in which he lived might choose to call it—of the end of existence would allow him to know, so clearly, the possibilities and realities of his existence as it now . . . existed. He'd never had any idea of those possibilities, his possibilities. The simple magic of being! He'd always spent too much of his energy on . . . existing, and had left most of the magic trapped inside himself. Now he could use it. All of it!

  Vetris Gambol knew what he had to do. He had to confront the naked woman—who now was fifty feet from him and walking briskly—put a coat on her (his own coat, perhaps, though—he realized—he had no coat here, although there was a soiled yellow blanket in the trunk of his car), and take her to the police station for observation. For observation? He grinned.

  "I'm sorry, miss," he called, "but you will have to come with me."

  She made no reply, and the near-darkness at the perimeter of the headlights was quickly swallowing her up.

  "Shit," Vetris muttered, got back into his car, and drove after her.

  He pulled alongside her again as she walked, kept the car at her walking speed, said through the open passenger window, "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to get into the car. I'm a detective with the local police department. My name is Vetris Gambol. . . ."

  She broke into a run.

  Vetris cursed again, hit the accelerator, caught up with her, kept the car at her running speed—which, he thought, was very fast, almost unnaturally fast—and yelled, "You'll have to get into the car, miss. I'm ordering you to get into the car!"

  She quickened her pace.

  He nudged the accelerator, caught up with her. "Goddamnit!" But then, impossibly, she was ahead of him. He nudged the accelerator again, caught up with her, pulled ahead of her, veered sharply to the right, hit the brake pedal hard. He heard a dull thumping noise from the passenger's side of the car. "Oh, shit!" he breathed, because he knew instantly what had caused the thumping noise. He cursed again, took a breath, opened his door, got out of the car.

  The sun had just begun to rise. It was behind him.

  His car was a white Dodge Intrepid. People had told him that white contained a pigment that actually encouraged rust, and even though the car was only two years old, he had indeed seen the beginnings of rust under one of the wheel wells. He liked his car. He liked its shape and its power; he lik
ed its interior—gray cloth—and its sound system, too. It was a good car, except for the beginnings of rust under one of the wheel wells.

  He thought now, as he stood by the driver's door, that the rising sun was painting the car's hood and roof a soft rust-red. It ran in long irregular striations from the opposite side of the car toward him, and it took him only a moment to realize that the sun, which was behind him, could not cause such a pattern.

  "Jesus," he whispered. "Jesus, God," he whispered. And realized that he was seeing the blood of the naked woman. It covered the car. It glistened in the early morning light. In spots it was rust-colored, nearly brown, in spots it was bright red, and in spots it was black. It flowed in rivulets over the curve of the hood toward him.

  He moved around the front of the car, and his hand went to the .38 in his shoulder holster. He moved cautiously and when he was near the car's right-side headlight, he leaned over to look at the side of the car. He saw only the rough impression of a body in the Intrepid's fender. Only blood. He looked further down the road, saw only the road, came around to the side of the car, saw only the side of the car, the smooth shoulder of the road. "Where the hell is she?" he whispered. "Jesus, where in the hell is she?"

  Chapter Ten

  Patricia said, "Jack, I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry."

  Erthmun said, "Patricia, I think that there's a lot of death everywhere. All over. In every county and state and nation. People talk about the river of life. They talk in poetry about the river of life. Or they talk in philosophy about the river of life. When there is a river of death,too, flowing alongside it. Or maybe not. Maybe the river of death and the river of life are the same river."

  They were seated opposite one another at Erthmun's small dining table; Patricia had made coffee for both of them, which Erthmun had sipped and about which he had congratulated her—"Much better than any made here previously," he said, and gave her the ghost of a smile.

  Patricia said now, "You were very close to her, weren't you, Jack?"

  He shook his head. "I may have been. I'm not sure."

  She cocked her head. "That's an odd answer. How can you be unsure of something like that?"

  He sipped his coffee, smiled a little, as if in response to the taste of the coffee, set the cup down gently. "Well," he said with a strangely earnest matter-of-factness, "I believe that I'm unsure of my real feelings about practically all relationships, familial or otherwise."

  "Familial?"

  "Of the family," he answered.

  "Yes," she said, "I know what it means. I simply didn't expect—"

  The phone rang. Erthmun snapped his gaze to it, grimaced, got up and answered it. Patricia heard him say after a minute, "Okay. Yes." And he hung up.

  "A problem?" Patricia asked, because she saw a troubled look on Erthmun's face.

  "Who's to know?" he said. "Problems may simply be opportunities."

  She smiled quickly.

  He went on, "There's a place called South Oleander, New York, where we have been asked to go."

  "Why?"

  "Because a woman ran into a car there and left behind only her ring."

  "How does that concern us?" Patricia asked. "And what do you mean by 'left behind only her ring'?"

  Erthmun shrugged. "Well, yes, you have posed two questions, I think, and I can really answer only one. It appears that this woman was named Tabitha Reed and she was one of the people who went missing here not too long ago."

  Vetris Gambol didn't like being grilled by state police investigators. He'd told them a dozen times or more exactly what had happened, and they still seemed to believe that he was hiding something.

  One of the investigators was a very tall and athletically built man who wore an expensive blue suit and a paisley tie. His name was Tony Grigoli. The other investigator was a man named Tim Christmas; he was dressed in a threadbare hound's-tooth sports coat and blue jeans that should have been thrown out a year earlier. It was clear that he hadn't shaved that morning, and his breath smelled of eggs and garlic.

  Vetris was seated in the interrogation room at the South Oleander Police Department. He knew that Myrna Guffy was standing just outside the door because she peered in through the small window every now and then. Christmas and Grigoli were seated across from Vetris.

  Christmas said, "You know, Detective, it's not like we think you killed this girl. We don't think that." He glanced at his partner. "Right, Tony?"

  Grigoli nodded a little.

  Christmas went on. "But we do think you're not telling us everything we need to know."

  Grigoli added, "Like where you put her body, for instance."

  This was something that Vetris had heard too many times in the past several hours, and he was near the boiling point. He sighed heavily and said, "There was no body. There was only blood. Lots and lots of blood. That's it. And a ring."

  Christmas nodded. "Yeah, her wedding ring. Had her name etched in it. Tabitha."

  Vetris said, "Listen, if you don't mind, I've got to get home and feed my cat. If I don't feed him—"

  "Fuck your cat!" Grigoli cut in.

  Christmas looked sternly at Grigoli. "Tony, cut it out.

  The man's a cat person. So am I. You know that."

  "Yeah, well, fuck you, too. This guy's dishing out shit like it was devil's food cake, and he tells us he's got to feed his cat?"

  "If I don't feed him," Vetris began to explain, "then he gets—"

  "Goddammit," Grigoli cut in, "I don't give two shits in a handbag what your goddamn cat does if you don't feed him. I don't care if he eats you, for the love of Jesus."

  "Yeah," Christmas agreed, "why don't you get off the cat business, okay, and simply tell us what we both know you're not telling us."

  Vetris sighed again. "Listen, I'm sure you guys are very, very good at what you do. But keep in mind the situation we've got at the park. Keep in mind that it's identical to the situation you're looking into here, except on a much, much larger scale."

  Grigoli leaned over the table so his face was uncomfortably close to Vetris. "Except, in this case, Detective, you were there, weren't you? You created the situation."

  "Oh for the love of Pete," Vetris whispered.

  It was a three-hour drive to South Oleander from New York City and, since Erthmun had agreed, reluctantly, to drive—because Patricia was having trouble with her new contact lenses—he drove while Patricia fiddled almost constantly with the radio, and complained almost constantly that there was nothing to listen to.

  "Patricia," Erthmun said—they were twenty-five miles northwest of the city, in a bucolic area.

  "It would be very nice if you stuck with one radio station. Or turned the radio off. We could talk."

  She turned the radio off, looked expectantly at him.

  "So?"

  "You want me to talk?" he said.

  "It was your idea. And it was a good idea, too. We should talk. About this case, about this woman named Tiffany . . ."

  The slim file on Tiffany Reed was on the backseat. Erthmun inclined his head toward it and said, "Okay, get the file, read it to me, and we'll talk about it."

  Patricia shook her head. "It makes me nauseous to read in a moving car. It always has. I'm prone to car sickness."

  "Well, you can drive, and I'll read," Erthmun said.

  "No, we've both read the file. There's not much of interest in it."

  "You don't think so? What about her connection to—"

  "The Chocolate Murders?" she cut in. "There is no connection, Jack. She was the victim of coincidence. She was in a place where a murder happened at about the time the murder happened, but that doesn't really mean anything, because my guess is that there were hundreds of people in the general area of that particular murder. When it happened."

  He glanced quickly at her. "Is it because you don't believe a woman could have committed those murders, Patricia? Is it because you don't think a member of your own sex could do things so horrific?"

  She purse
d her lips. "Good Lord, Jack—how can you ask such a question? Women are as capable of just as much sick crap as men are. We've both witnessed it. And I don't believe, as you're suggesting, that my"—she held up her fingers to form quotes—" 'sisters' are inherently any less violent than you or any of the other three billion men in the world are simply because they don't have a penis and balls and aren't choking with testosterone."

  He said nothing for a long moment, then said, "Okay, go ahead and listen to the radio. It's better than your speeches."

  She pursed her lips again, but decided to ignore his comment. "No. I'd like to talk with you about your mother."

  He glanced questioningly at her.

  She said, "I'm sorry, Jack, but the dynamic that apparently existed between the two of you is fascinating."

  He looked at the road again. "Dynamic," he said, as if to himself.

  They were entering a small town. A large white sign shaped roughly like a shield read, in bold black letters, "Welcome to Mallsberg, Home of the Mallsberg Maulers."

  Patricia read the sign aloud and grimaced. "So much aggression. It's almost epidemic."

  "They were playing with the name of the town," Erthmun said. "'Mallsberg.' 'Maulers.' It means very little, I think. They were excited about the alliteration."

  "I realize that, Jack."

  "My mother," Erthmun said, "was a poet. She got excited about alliteration, too. It's a poetic style. Alliteration. Like, 'Many marvelous men make merry.'"

  "I know about alliteration, Jack."

  "As do I," Erthmun said. "And my mother, too. A poet."

  Patricia nodded to indicate the speedometer. "You're speeding. This town probably has a speed trap. Any town with a sports team named the Maulers would have a speed trap, don't you think?"

  "Let me quote you a poem of my mother's," Erthmun said; he didn't let off on the accelerator.

  "Yes," Patricia said, "I'd like that."

  Erthmun said, "Such as her poem 'Unable, Unlike Anyone.'