Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues (29 page)

Mrs. Hawkins had a shed out back, a largely decayed wooden frame structure, that had been built by her late husband. It mostly served as a honeymoon hotel for the neighborhood stray cats and as a refuge for brown recluse spiders. As a matter of personal policy, I kept as far away from it as possible. But since she stored the lawn mower in there, at least once a week during this summer and for all my future summers there, since it looked like I’d never have the money to move, I’d risk life and limb to get what I needed to make her happy. I kept hoping one of the neighborhood urchins would crawl in to sneak a smoke one day after school and burn down the damn hovel. So far, though, my customary luck held out.

I suited up in my cutoffs, an old T-shirt, a dust mask I’d picked up at the local hardware store, and my old workboots. Just as a matter of habit, I kicked the door and rattled it on its hinges just to make sure whatever critters were inside knew I was coming.

The lawn mower roared to life after only the twenty-ninth pull. By then I was sweating torrents, covered in dust, and swearing like a drunken sailor on leave in a Hong Kong whorehouse. The cloth filter in the plastic face mask was about as effective as holding a minnow net over my mouth, and soon I was choking, spitting, and generally miserable. I pushed that unholy wheeled contraption around the yard for two hours, in the process nicking the corner of one of Mrs. Hawkins’s flower beds and playing hell with some lilies.

The one good thing that came out of the day’s work in the sun was that—while clogging my sinuses—it cleared my mind. For the first time since Rachel first stepped into my office and back into my life, I spent a few waking hours with my mind on something else besides murder and desire.

Only that didn’t last very long. Late in the afternoon, after I finally finished trimming borders and edging the driveway, I went upstairs, cranked up the now thawed air conditioner, and sat down on the floor with a cold beer in front of the television. I was too dirty to sit on even my worn furniture, so I simply rolled on my haunches across the hard wooden floor to get the remote control.

Thirty-six channels and not a damn thing worth watching. I grazed around for a few more minutes, the choice finally coming down between Looney Times and that idiot preacher from Dallas with the demented look who tells people they can buy their way into heaven with a thousand-dollar faith gift. I had sense enough to take the Looney Times, and was soon cooling off under the air conditioner with a second beer.

Saturday night was an endless stretch of empty road. How many times had I sweated and longed for and waited impatiently for Saturday night to roll around? I used to enjoy Saturday nights, my favorite time of the week. But then I
became self-employed, divorced, and now Saturday nights are a calamity of unfulfilled expectations.

This one, I promised myself, would be different. I was going to prove that a single person can spend a Saturday night alone, enjoy a good dinner, catch a movie, and not be lonely. Around seven, I showered, put on my best dress shirt with a paisley tie and a pair of jeans—nice combination, I thought—and headed out to my old neighborhood with its movie theatres, chic restaurants, and late-night music places.

I grabbed the morning paper on the way out, and over grilled Alaskan salmon and a dynamite California chardonnay at the Sundowner Grille off Hillsboro Road, saw that Janis Ian would play that night at the Blue Bird Café. The Blue Bird was always crowded Saturday nights, and especially so on nights when somebody famous was playing. I finished dinner about nine, drove over and, on impulse, picked up two tickets.

That’s right, two tickets. I’d been fooling myself that I was having a good time on a Saturday night by myself. What I wanted to do was see Rachel, and the more I thought of it, not to mention the cumulative effect of a hot day in the sun, two beers, and the better part of a bottle of wine with dinner, the more I became convinced that it was silly for us to let life trickle away when we could be enjoying ourselves and making up for lost time. We had nearly an hour to go before the show started. I’d call her, run by her house, and pick her up, and—

No, don’t call. If I call, she’ll have the option of saying no. She’ll still have that option, but at least she’ll have to say no to my face, and I’ll get the chance to see her. There was time to feel like a fool tomorrow. For now, I needed to hustle.

I fired up the Ford and pulled back out into the traffic on Hillsboro Road. I even hit the lights right, not missing a one all the way down to Rachel’s street. I cut in front of somebody in a classic, horn-blowing, Nashville maneuver, and hammered down on it the two blocks to her house.

I turned into Rachel’s driveway and noticed the lights were
still on upstairs in her bedroom, although the rest of the house was dark. I slowed the car and doused the lights, not wanting her to see me pulling in. Let it be a surprise.

I coasted up the driveway and stopped. I set the parking brake, held my breath, and prayed the car door would open quietly for once. I cut around the edge of the house into the back. I was almost giggling to myself with excitement, imagining the expression on her face when I held the tickets up in front of her.

I turned the corner and walked right into the back bumper of a car I hadn’t seen.

I didn’t hit it hard enough to hurt myself, but I was stunned for a second. It was pitch-black. The outside lights were turned off. Nothing but shapes were visible all around me, heightened by the soft glow from the bedroom window on the second story.

I fumbled around, straining to see in the darkness. Over past the car I’d stumbled into, I could see the outline of Rachel’s car. Past that, barely visible in the garage, was the silhouette of Conrad’s Jaguar.

Three cars in a driveway that normally held only two: Rachel had company. I turned back to the strange car, running my hand along the edge, trying to feel it. I got down low and followed it all the way around to the back. I was down behind the car now, trying to focus. Then, in the shimmer of a distant streetlight that reflected dimly off the bumper’s chrome, I recognized the car. It was a Beemer, a silver BMW sedan. A shudder ran up the back of my neck.

The BMW was Walt Quinlan’s car.

I sure as hell didn’t feel like listening to any damn heartbreak tunes. The Janis Ian tickets went out the window as soon as I coasted down the driveway and into the street.

No wonder Walt didn’t want to tell me who he’d been seeing.

Once safely out of the driveway, I started the Ford and turned on the headlights, then got out of there as quickly as the clattering valves could carry me. Two blocks away, I rolled through the stop sign onto Hillsboro Road, then through two lights to the freeway entrance ramp. I ran the car up to seventy-five, the steering wheel shaking like it had the ague.

I felt like such a fool. It’s not so much that Rachel slept with me; hell, people sleep with each other every day without even the benefit of a proper introduction. Happens all the time.

No, it was more that I bought into the whole charade. All my life, I’d been a sucker for this sort of thing. I get interested, misread signs, take too much for granted, get my hopes up for nothing. Jeez, at my age, you’d think I’d have learned by now.

One thing was for sure; I could hold off on packing my bags and giving Mrs. Hawkins my notice. I hadn’t realized until I pulled into that driveway and saw Walt’s car how much I’d been subconsciously fantasizing about a future with Rachel. I still had feelings for her. It just seemed natural that we’d slide back into life together, and that eventually we’d
find what we once had with each other, before Conrad came along and ruined it all.

I passed over the Cumberland River on the 1-265 bridge, the water below a ribbon of darkness cutting through the city’s nightlights. A single tugboat, a pinpoint of light as sharp as a needle, plodded slowly upriver against the current. The amber freeway lights cast harsh shadows over the darkened concrete. The night air was filled with the smell of the rendering plant.

I took the exit ramp off the freeway and drove up to the entrance ramp of the Ellington Parkway, a lightly traveled bypass that ran from downtown Nashville north toward Madison. The E.P. started next to one of the city’s most grim housing projects, the chain link fence separating the highway from the grounds of the project peeled away in some places, torn completely down in others.

I slapped the steering wheel, disgusted with myself and life in general. I got off the parkway at Douglas Avenue, steered my way through the roller-coaster hills to my own neighborhood, and back to the safety of my apartment. I went upstairs, locked the door behind me, and threw my clothes in a pile in the corner. I opened the refrigerator and realized I was out of beer. Damn, I thought, I ought to throw on a good drunk.

Only thing was, I’d outgrown throwing on good drunks years ago, and I never had much luck with it then. I never liked that out-of-control, reeling feeling that hits you right before you head for the porcelain.

But I wanted to be drunk, wanted to drown in the stuff until my head spun like a Ferris wheel gone wild. I wanted to forget it all—Conrad’s murder, Mr. Kennedy’s murder, the smell of sweat on the racquetball court, the sheen of perspiration on Rachel’s face as she twisted beneath me in the sheets.

I turned out the lights and went to bed, the neighborhood strangely and eerily silent. Saturday night in East Nashville usually brought with it the sound of parties gone wild, tires screeching as teenage boys fought to impress girlfriends and
one another, the occasional sounds of ominous gunfire. But tonight there was nothing, only silence.

I lay there half the night, struggling vainly to find sleep, that wonderful, empty, dark hole that I could step into and fall forever void of thought and feeling. I needed more than anything else to quit thinking, and that seemed the one thing I could not do. Over and over again, the screens inside my head played the same movies.

Conrad lying beneath me, his lights fading to black.

Rachel lying beneath me, her breath coming in short bursts.

Bubba Hayes on top of me, his thighs like tree stumps, pinning me to the floor.

Walt standing over me, dripping sweat on me, helping me up off the racquetball floor.

Rachel’s face outlined against the ceiling as she sat astride me, the two of us pumping away at each other madly.

The glowing red digital numbers of the alarm clock read 4:30 the last time I looked at it. I drifted off finally, into an uneasy and troubled sleep that was anything but rejuvenating. I woke up around seven. I was exhausted.

I spread the Sunday paper out on the kitchen table, but didn’t have the concentration to get very fer. My eyes burned from lack of sleep. I felt brittle, old.

Even then, I couldn’t stop thinking. I kept seeing Rachel’s house, with its great lawn and expensive furniture, the cars, the clothes. The more I pondered, the odder it seemed that Conrad Fletcher could afford all that, yet couldn’t afford to pay off his bookie. A hundred thousand dollars, Bubba said he owed. Not exactly pocket change, but probably only a few months’ salary to Conrad. A fortune to me. If I owed that kind of money to a bookie, it could just as well be a hundred million. But Conrad
could
have paid it off. How come he didn’t?

Maybe the truth lay somewhere else. Maybe, I thought, it was the house and the cars and the lifestyle that
kept
Conrad from paying off Bubba.

If that were true, then the mirror was cracked. All the
perfect reflections I’d seen were false, tricks put before my eyes like a magician’s scarf covering sleight of hand. I sat at the kitchen table staring at the wall for over an hour, my thoughts reduced to pure, nonverbal essence.

Something’s stinko.

    “You rook awfuh.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Lee. Good to see you again, too.”

“Weah you been? It been days now.”

I looked across the counter as Mrs. Lee scribbled my order down on her green lined pad. She was as crotchety as ever, the result, I guess, of risking your keister to escape to the land of freedom and opportunity and discovering that freedom and opportunity meant opening up at 7:30 in the morning and closing at 9:30 at night seven days a week for the rest of your life.

“Don’t tell me you missed me.”

“I nevah miss anybody,” she spat. “We just made too much chicken tree days in row ’cause you didn’t show up. Cost me money.”

“I’ll leave you a big tip.”

“Oh, yeah, weah I heahd dat befoah?”

She disappeared behind the stainless steel counter between the cash register and the kitchen. I could see her husband back in there, slaving over a hot wok.

Maybe things weren’t so bad for me. Then again, maybe Mrs. Lee would give me a job. I used to make a pretty mean Mooshu Pork back when Lanie and I were married.

Mrs. Lee came back around with the steaming plate a moment later. She shoved it across the front counter.

“I put exta chicken on theah foah Shadow. Doan you eat it all.”

I smiled at her. “Mrs. Lee,” I said, “you’re one of the few truly wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life. I mean that.”