“I doubt if a guy like that dwells on the arts and humanities, Mr. Hollister.”
“You’re wrong. The Surrettes of the world despise you because the Creator gave you the gift and not them.”
“Surrette has always operated in rural areas that lack sophisticated law enforcement,” she said. “That means he’s an amateur and he’ll slip up.”
“Don’t bet on it,” he replied.
WITHOUT TELLING CLETE, Gretchen drove down the road to the two-lane highway, where she could get cell service, and dialed the number the woman had left on Albert’s machine. She believed the number belonged to a stolen phone and that Surrette probably paid someone to leave the message for him. The question was who would pick up on the other end. She didn’t have to wait long to find out.
“Is that you, Gretchen?” a man’s voice said.
“It sure is.”
“Did you tell the police I contacted you?”
“I’m not a big friend of the cops.”
“I understand you were a bad girl in Florida.”
“Not so much. Think you’d like to make a movie with me?”
“Ever hear of a guy named Bix Golightly?” he asked.
“I’ve heard the name.”
“Bix Golightly from New Orleans?”
“What about him?” she said.
“He got three in his face, sitting in his vehicle, in the what-do-you-call-it, the Big Easy.”
“Not true. It was across the river in Algiers.”
“There’re no flies on you,” he said.
“How would you know about Bix Golightly?”
“Your reputation gets around. Maybe you have fans you don’t know about.”
“Do you mind if I call you Asa?”
“Call me the Tin Man. How is Alafair?”
“She worries you might be mad at her.”
“I’d love to get together with both of you. I have some very good ideas. For many years I lived inside my head and thought about things I would like to do with others.”
“What kinds of ideas?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. I have a feeling you get embarrassed about sexual matters. I never knew a tomboy who wasn’t a prude at heart.”
“I’m a filmmaker. I live in West Hollywood. Does that sound like a prude?”
“I like your legs. Alafair’s figure is lovely but not as interesting as yours.”
“Are you trying to tell me you want to get it on?”
“You are a bad girl.”
“Where can we meet?” she asked.
“Let me get back to you on that. I’ve been busy of late.”
“With the guy who got dragged down the highway by Flathead Lake?”
“The simpleminded ones aren’t much fun.”
“The waitress up at Lookout Pass? Was that you?”
“Lookout Pass? Let me think.” He made a bubbling sound, as though flipping his index finger up and down on his lips. “I’m not sure where that is. There’s one thing I wanted to ask you.”
“Go ahead,” she said.
“When you eased Golightly into the next world, you enjoyed it, didn’t you? It wasn’t just a job. You love the rush. Your loins buzz with it, like a nest of bees. No, that’s not well said. It’s a wet lick on an ice cream cone.”
She tried to keep her voice empty of emotion. “I think we can make a successful film together,” she said.
“I got a little close to home, didn’t I?”
“Unauthorized photos from your crime scenes were posted on the Internet. Did you take those?”
“Maybe. How did you like them?”
“I can teach you about film. I have friends at Creative Artists. They can help us in lots of ways.”
“You sound a little weakhearted,” he said. “Be advised that Alafair must be on board, our centerpiece, so to speak. Give me your cell number. I have a couple of commitments that need to be wrapped up, but you and I will have our date.”
She gave him her number and closed her phone. After he hung up, she opened the door of her truck and vomited into the road.
GRETCHEN DROVE UP to Albert’s house and told Alafair of the conversation.
“You’re sure it’s him? You actually had this bastard on the line?” Alafair said.
Gretchen was sitting by Alafair’s writing desk on the third floor of Albert’s house, her shoulders rounded. She looked out the window, not wanting to say the things she had to say. “He’s after you. It’s obviously an obsession.”
“That’s not exactly a big revelation,” Alafair said.
“He was hinting he would meet with me. But only if you’re on board, as he puts it.” A pool of heat seemed to shimmer and go out of shape on the barn’s metal roof. “I didn’t say anything to discourage him.”
“Without asking me, you were making deals with this asshole? Deals that include me?”
“I admire you. You’re everything I’d like to be. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you. I’d kill them if they tried to hurt you.”
“What do you think this guy has been trying to do? You think you’re going to outsmart him?”
“I have experience other people don’t.”
“Did you ever read ‘Young Goodman Brown’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne?”
“No.”
“It was made into a film. Goodman Brown thought he could stroll with the devil in a midnight woods and outwit him. His wife was named Faith. He ended up losing not only his wife but his soul.”
Gretchen began writing on a piece of typewriter paper. “Who did the film?” she asked.
Alafair pulled the sheet of paper away from her and tore it in half and threw the pieces in the wastebasket. “Are you out of your mind? This isn’t about movies. It’s about evil. How did Surrette know about Bix Golightly?”
“I haven’t figured that out.”
“Think about it. There are only two ways he could know, Gretchen. He’s either mobbed up, or he’s privy to a world we can’t guess at.”
“No. The Mob uses pros. They’re businessmen.”
“So where does he get this omniscient knowledge?”
“You’re saying he has special powers?”
“I’m saying we ought to go to the cops.” Alafair put her hand on Gretchen’s back. “Your muscles are as hard as iron. I worry about you.”
“I’m doing fine.”
“You’re the sister I never had, Gretchen.” She touched Gretchen’s hair.
“Surrette put a bomb in Percy Wolcott’s plane. Percy was one of the gentlest people I ever knew,” Gretchen said. “His body was burned beyond recognition. I think Surrette did it. I’m going to saw him apart.”
Alafair gazed at the manuscript basket on her desk. It was half-filled with typed sheets. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Surrette has plenty of money. Where does it come from? We also want to check out Felicity Louviere’s background. Her husband says she was the town pump. She says her father left her to founder while he went off to be a professional good guy among the Indians in South America.”
“So what?” Alafair said.
“She doesn’t add up. Clete is easily taken in by bad women. Because he follows his schlong doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”
“I can’t believe you just said that.”
“There’s one other thing. You can’t tell your father or Clete about this.”
“That doesn’t sound too good.”
“Are you in or out?” Gretchen said.
ON NORTH HIGGINS, next to a saloon that had not closed its doors since 1891, was a newsstand and tobacco store that carried pulps and tabloids and magazines of every stripe. A man wearing two-tone shoes and a rain hat and aviator glasses and a loose-fitting tan suit and an open-collar blue shirt with white stripes came through the front door and began looking at the magazines on the rack, flipping through a few pages and replacing the magazine sloppily on the rack when he found nothing of interest in it. Or he simply let it fall to the fl
oor, the pages splaying by his foot, while he reached for another magazine.
Two teenage girls with blond hair that was almost gold had gotten out of his SUV to watch a street guitarist playing on the corner. Then they window-shopped and walked out of the clerk’s line of sight, but the man in the tan suit seemed to pay little attention to them. He had the air of a beachcomber or a quasi-dissolute figure prowling the backstreet dens of an Oriental city in a 1940s film noir. He picked up a copy of Hustler, occasionally wetting a finger as he turned the pages, tilting the magazine sideways to get a better view of the artwork inside.
The clerk was a zit-faced kid whose skinny arms were tattooed from wrist to armpit with images of snakes and skeletal heads and bloody knives. He was sitting on a stool behind the counter, eyeballing the customer in the tan suit, a matchstick flipping up and down between his teeth. “I just started this job. I’d like to keep it,” he said.
“Yeah?” the customer said.
“How about not wrecking the magazine rack?”
“Why do you carry this trash?”
“Because horny old geeks come in here and buy it?”
“I like that new way of talking you kids have. You end every sentence like it’s a question.”
“I don’t think you get it. I’m not the issue.”
The customer went on reading, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“How about picking up the magazines off the floor, man?” the clerk said.
“You shouldn’t sell this junk.”
“Then why are you looking at it?”
The customer kept reading, never raising his eyes. “What’s your name?”
The clerk hesitated before he spoke. “Seymour Little.”
“That’s perfect.”
The clerk made a snuffing sound down in his nose. “You step in dog shit or something?”
The customer lifted his eyes from the magazine. “Repeat that?”
“There’s a funny smell in the air.”
“You’re saying the funny smell is me?”
“No, I was just wondering.”
“But you were wondering if it was me that smelled like dog shit?”
“No, I lost my job at the motel. I’m just trying to get a fresh start.”
“Yeah, you worked at a fleabag on West Broadway, didn’t you? You got fired because you dragged somebody’s Harley down the street.”
“How’d you know that?”
“You made some ink. You’re a celebrity.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I say you did. But you should take your mind off world events, Seymour. You think you can do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The customer took a hundred-dollar bill and a folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and placed them on the counter. “I want you to walk down to the pharmacy and pick up a prescription for me. There’re several other items you’ll have to get off the shelf.”
“I can’t leave here.”
“I’ll fill in for you.”
“What the fuck is with you, man?”
“I say and you do. That’s not hard to understand, is it? You shouldn’t wise off to the wrong people, Seymour.”
The clerk unfolded the piece of paper and read it. “You want me to shop for tampons?”
“You need to be back here in thirteen minutes. Don’t make me come after you.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Run along now.”
“Thirteen minutes? Not twelve or fourteen?”
“Look into my face. Tell me what you see there. Don’t look away. Look straight into my eyes. Do you have any doubt what might happen to you if you don’t do what I say?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t want trouble. Hey, man, I was just doing my job. What the fuck?”
There was a long pause. “I was having a little fun with you. I saw you drag that motorcycle down the street.”
“Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“With that smile on your face.”
“Your tats. You want people to think you’ve been inside. But you haven’t. You couldn’t cut it inside, Seymour. First night in the shower, the wolves would make lamb chops out of you. They would have you sizzling in the pan like a lump of butter.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’m helping you so you won’t shoot off your mouth to the wrong man again. You’ll always remember this moment. No matter how long you live, you’ll remember me. When you think you’ve changed, that you’re strong and all this is behind you, you’ll have a dream about me and realize I’ll always be inside your head. Run along now. Everything will be shipshape when you get back. Do you mind if I get myself a soda?”
The clerk went to the pharmacy and returned in under thirteen minutes, his face chastened, his skin as dry and bloodless as paper. He looked as though half of what he used to be had been left outside the store. “Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Go ahead,” the customer replied.
“The girls in your SUV, are those your daughters?”
“I’m their godfather. Why do you ask?”
“Why do you need all that OxyContin?”
“I’m pimping them out.” The man waited, then his face split into a grin. “You never know when a guy is ribbing you, do you? Enjoy the rest of your day, Seymour. Take consolation in the fact that you’re a part of history. You just don’t know it yet.”
As the customer drove away with the two teenage girls, the clerk memorized the tag number and wrote it in pencil on the counter. Then he picked up the telephone and dialed 911. As soon as he had completed the third digit, he hung up and rubbed the tag number out of the wood with the heel of his hand, a lump as big as a walnut protruding from his throat.
WHY DO PEOPLE in A.A. claim they pay the biggest membership dues in the world? That’s easy. Early in life, you set out to deconstruct everything good you thought you’d turn out to be. When you’re finished doing that, you foul your blood, piss your brains into the street, trade off your tomorrows, destroy your family, betray your friends, court suicide on a daily basis, and become an object of ridicule and contempt in the eyes of your fellow man. That’s for openers. The rest of the dance card involves detox, jail, padded cells, and finally, the cemetery. If you want your soul shot out of a cannon, or you want to enter a period of agitated depression and psychoneurotic anxiety known as a Gethsemane Experience, untreated alcoholism is a surefire way to get there.
The big surprise at your first A.A. meeting is the apparent normalcy of the people in the room. They come from every socioeconomic background imaginable. The only thing most of them have in common is the neurosis that has governed their lives. The meeting I attended on Monday night was held on the second floor of a Methodist church, across from a high school in a maple-lined neighborhood reminiscent of an earlier time. The woman seated next to me was a Lutheran minister. The woman on the other side of me was a former middle-school teacher who had been molested as a child and had seduced two of her male students. The man leading the meeting was a housepainter who had been a door gunner in Vietnam and had killed innocent people in a free-fire zone (in his words, “just to watch them die”). The kid who came in late during the recitation of the Serenity Prayer and plunked down next to me in a whoosh of nicotine was the first to speak when the moderator opened up the meeting.
“My name is Seymour, alcoholic addict,” he said.
“Hi, Seymour!” everyone said.
He carried his wallet on a chain and wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt, even though the evening was warm. He wore jeans stitched with guitars on the back pockets and cowboy boots that looked made of plastic. There was an oily shine on his forehead, and his voice sounded like a guitar string wound on a wood peg to the point of breaking.
“The subject I got tonight is people who try to take a dump inside your head, and after a while you don’t know if it’s them who’s the problem or you,” he said. “What I’m saying is
there was this guy who came into the place where I work, and he had this stink on him like dog shit, and when I said something about it, he told me I had shot off my mouth to the wrong guy and he was gonna teach me a lesson.
“He told me to look into his face. No, he said look into his eyes. He really made me afraid. My sponsor says I haven’t owned up on the Fifth Step and I got a lot of buried guilt that bounces off other people and comes back on me. It makes me want to drink and use. I thought about going out and copping tonight, but I came to a meeting instead. Maybe all this is just my imagination working, right?”
Everyone thought he was finished and had started into a collective “Thanks, Seymour” when he waved his hands at the air and began talking again. “See, he made me go down to a pharmacy and pick up his prescriptions for him and shop for women’s stuff, a guy I never saw before, I mean a guy who took pleasure in telling me what a pitiful loser I was. Maybe that’s what I am. I don’t know, man, but I feel like walking out on the fucking railway track. Know what he said when he was going out the door? ‘Hey, tell your friends you met the Tin Man.’ Who’s the fucking Tin Man?”
Others tried to help him by telling their stories, but it was obvious that Seymour had packed his bag and moved into a dark space inside his head that no one else could enter. After the meeting ended, I put my hand on his shoulder. “My name is Dave Robicheaux,” I said. “You got a minute?”
“You a cop?”
“What makes you think that?” I said, smiling.
“I’ve seen you at another meeting. You wear a sport coat and keep your hands at your sides. Cops never let you know what they’re thinking. I’m right, huh?”
“Yeah, how about we go outside?” I said.
“I’m not feeling too good right now. Maybe I should head home.”
“The guy in your store is from Kansas. He’s a bad dude. And we need to talk.”
He looked out the window at the sun descending beyond the mountains in the west. “Mind if I smoke?”
“No,” I lied.
We sat on the steps of the church in the twilight. The streetlamps had come on, and the maple trees along the sidewalks contained a green luminescence that reminded me of the subdued yet brilliant colors you see in a van Gogh painting. He pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket and stuck it in his mouth and struck a paper match and tried to cup it in his palms, but he was shaking so badly, he dropped the match on the concrete. “I feel like I’m jonesing,” he said.
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