Grist 04 - Incinerator (26 page)

“What do you want?”

“Anonymity,” she said promptly.

“Can’t do.”

“Then get out of here.” She stood.

“You get,” I improvised, “the satisfaction of knowing that your son won’t burn any more people.”

“What do I care about that?” She was still standing. “At this point, what the hell do I care about that?”

“You’re Mommy,” I said, feeling like I was shouting into the wind. “He’s still a few shy of being America’s number-one mass murderer, but he’s got a good shot at it. Is that a medal you’d like to win?”

She turned to regard herself in the mirror. She looked at her reflection as though it belonged to someone else.

“You’re beautiful, too,” I said. “That’s a really terrible combination.”

She was still looking deeply into her own eyes. I counted five before she turned away from the mirror and sat. “He’s a genetic accident,” she said.

“Explain to the
National Exposé,”
I said, dredging up two words of print from Edna Vercini’s desk. “They’ll love the way you look.”

She tightened her lips, and fine vertical lines appeared above them. Even Swiss blood exchanges couldn’t vanquish those lines. “You know who he is,” she said, biting and chewing the words. “Why do you need me?”

“Because I don’t know
why
he is. Listen, Mrs. Lewis, I’m the bait. If I make a mistake, I’m the barbecue.”

“May you make a lovely light,” she said. Her eyes were as clear and white as the arctic circle.

“Or maybe
you’re
the barbecue,” I snapped, suddenly furious. “The best psychologist in these matters,” I said, promoting Schultz, “thinks that all he’s done so far is just an avoidance mechanism. What he really wants to burn is you.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, but she’d already sat up straight.

“This house would go like a matchbox,” I said.

“It was his father,” she said again.

“You asked me what you were going to get. Well, maybe you’re going to get to die of old age, as opposed to being Mommy flambé.”

She gave the bathrobe another yank. The lines above her mouth were vertical rivulets. “He was here two weeks ago,” she said. “He wanted money.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“Eddie did. About five K.”

“For what?” I asked. The answer popped into my mind. “Forget it. For a new car.” Her eyes widened momentarily. “What do you mean, it’s his father?”

“He was a fireman,” Alice Lewis said. “How’d you know about the car?”

“Skip it. And?”

“And Wilton hated him.”

I pulled my chair closer to her. It was easy; luckily for me, in my state, the chair didn’t weigh much. “Why?”

“How do I know why? Because I lived there. Because Wilton, that’s Daddy Wilton, not Son Wilton, didn’t like the kid.”

“Didn’t like him?”

“And vice versa. Little Wilton hated the shit out of Big Wilton. Poured hot fat over his feet once.”

“Where’d he get the hot fat?”

“Off the stove, where do you think?”

“What happened?”

“What do you mean, what happened? His father blistered the kid’s hide and went to work with only one shoe on. He had socks on, you see, when the fat got poured. By the time we got the socks off, the right foot was bigger than a football.” She shifted in her chair. “Wait, he didn’t only tan little Wilton’s hide. He sent him to school with only one shoe. Daddy has one shoe, Junior has one shoe.”

“Which shoe?”

“Which one do you think?”

I closed my eyes and saw it. “He sent Wilton to school without the shoe on his clubfoot?”

“Kid had to learn,” she said. I opened my eyes and found her watching me. “So it was rough. Little jerk,” she said. “House always stunk of smoke. His daddy’s smoke, smoke Daddy brought home from the fires where he made such a big hero of himself. It was a little house, just a one-bedroom stucco box stuck up on some dinky little lot in Reseda. The smoke filled the whole thing.”

“And where’s Wilton, Sr.?”

She looked over her shoulder as though she were checking for an escape route. “Dead,” she said. “After my baby and I left him.”

“When was that?”

“A year or so later. Wilton was burning cats by then, and Big Wilton appointed himself the Cats’ Avenger. He was always saving something. So he saved cats.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wilton was burning cats. Big Wilton burned Little Wilton.”

“Nonsense,” I said without thinking.

“Oh, but he did. Burned Wilton’s fingers. Did it twice.”

“What did you do about it?”

She shrugged. “What could I do? Eventually, I left.”

“Did he use a cigarette?” We were sitting there in that calm room, talking about the deepest pits of the soul.

“What do you mean?” She used the lapel of her bathrobe to mop her neck.

“To burn Little Wilton’s fingers.”

“No,” she said. She looked directly into my eyes. “He used matches.”

“Wooden matches.”

She stopped mopping. “You do seem to know a lot about this.”

“Why wooden matches?” It seemed to be the twentieth time I’d asked the question.

“They were handy. We used them to light the stove. And don’t say anything. Yes, the stove he took the fat from to pour it on his father’s feet.”

“He’s using kitchen matches now,” I said, just to see if I could get a reaction out of her.

“Makes sense,” she said placidly.

“Are you saving your face up?” I asked. “Do you think it can only wrinkle so many times before they stick?”

“So I left him,” she said, ignoring the nastiness. “And I met Eddie.”

“Classy guy.”

“I can still tell you to get out of here,” she said. “This is a security community. One minute on the phone, and you’ll be on your ass on the asphalt.”

“How’d Wilton like Eddie?” I asked, remembering how fastidious Wilton had been.

“Hated his guts,” she said. “Well, tough shit. Eddie killed himself to make friends with the kid. Bought him stuff, got him therapy—that was a laugh—took him places, took him to the track, for Christ’s sake. Eddie never even took
me
to the track. But Eddie likes junk, you know? You saw the house. He likes to surround himself with expensive things and then shit all over them to show it doesn’t mean anything. But his expensive things are junk. And Little Wilton, even when he was ten, Little Wilton could smell junk from around the corner. And Eddie doesn’t talk right.”

“Depends on who he’s talking to.”

She touched her index finger to the tip of her nose and pushed her head back slightly. “Not right for Little Wilton,” she said. “You know, Eddie wasn’t exactly the cavalier of my dreams, either. I’d always pictured someone who was a hero, like Big Wilton, shithead that he turned out to be, or a gentleman. Like you, even though you don’t like me. You’re obviously class. Listen to the way you talk. But Eddie’s a good guy. He doesn’t ask too many questions. He loves me, I guess, like he tried to love Wilton. I could have put up with Wilton not liking Eddie because, you know, maybe he was jealous or something. But what I absolutely could not forgive was that Wilton hated Eddie because Wilton was a snob.”

“So you kicked him out.”

“Honey, it was my kid or my husband. Being a woman is expensive. Wilton was too busy lighting fire to small animals and cutting out pictures from the Middle Ages and reading about clubfoots to write the checks. Anyway, he was eighteen—seventeen. It was time. We got him a nice apartment in Westwood, put him in that school, hoped he’d meet a couple of girls.” She leaned forward and tapped my knee. “You know,” she said, “he might have been all right if he’d ever gotten laid.”

It took an effort not to pull my knee away. “Why the Middle Ages?”

“Who knows? It was the only thing he liked. Eddie took him to the Chivalry Faire the first year, and the kid went crazy. Put pictures of castles everywhere, played that awful music all the time. Eddie took him three times after that, every damn year. Fat lot of good it did.”

“Did you go?”

“What’s there? A bunch of weeds, some jerks sweating in their costumes, and a plywood slum pretending to be castles. Why should I go? The first time Eddie took him, Wilton didn’t say a word to him. Just went limping around exploring while Eddie stood there and perspired. So we gave up. Sent him to college to get laid.”

“I guess he didn’t,” I said.

She crossed her legs and let the free ankle swing. “We thought he was going to. He came home from time to time when he needed money and told us about this perfect girl he’d met, how she wanted to move in with him except that she wasn’t that kind of girl, whatever that means. Except for the fact that she didn’t put out, she was perfect, although if she had put out, she wouldn’t have been perfect for Wilton. My God, we heard about her until I got sick of her name. How good she was, how beautiful. How she and he read poetry together and looked at pictures.”

“But you never met her.”

“I’m not sure
he
ever did. Nobody could have been that beautiful. This one wasn’t even white.”

The worm started to work its way up my back again. “You got sick of her name,” I said. “What
was
her name?”

“Eleanor,” Alice Lewis said. “Eleanor Chan. Chinese, can you imagine?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I can.” My face was flaming. Whatever it had been, for Wilton it had been a grand passion, and I’d made it cheap with one thoughtless, unretractable remark. Even though I loved her.

“What happened to your first husband?” I asked, just to give myself some room. “Did he keep bothering you? Or Wilton?”

“He tried at first, but Eddie talked to some friends of his, and then he had an accident. He was—” She stopped. It was as though someone had pulled the plug from the wall.

“He was?” I prompted.

“He was laid up at home with two broken legs,” she said in a monotone. “From the accident.” Then she sat straight up and shook her head. “No way,” she said.

“The house burned down,” I said.

She turned back to the mirror, looking not at herself but over her shoulder at me. She breathed through her mouth once, then twice. “It wasn’t Wilton,” she said. A small galaxy of dimples appeared on her chin.

Despite the air-conditioning, my shirt was sticking to my chest, and I tugged it free. “Of course it wasn’t,” I said.

The dimples disappeared. “Go away,” she said. She straightened imperiously. “Finished?” she asked, ready to get up and resume her real life, whatever she thought it was. “Things burn,” she said.

“People, too.” I wanted to see her chin dimple again. It didn’t. “Do you know where he’s living now?”

“I didn’t know where he was living before.
Now
are you finished?” She swiveled to regard me directly. Annabelle Winston could have pulled it off, but Alice Hoxley Lewis wasn’t big enough for it.

“No,” I said. “You have to do one more thing for me.”

She chewed on it for a second. “What is it?”

“Wilton’s going to call and ask you if I’ve been here.”

“He won’t.”

“I think he will.”

“So don’t worry. I won’t tell him anything.”

“You’ll tell him I was here.” Her jaw dropped in a reaction spontaneous enough to make her son snub her. “And you’ll tell him,” I said, fighting back a yawn, “that I’ll be at home.”

17

The Rabbi

Home was the
only place to be, if he was supposed to find me.

It took hours to strip the sheets and scrub the mattress until the smell of gasoline had been banished into some parallel universe where Wilton Hoxley might conceivably get caught before he lit me up. When, at 1:00 A.M., I was finished, I went into the living room and pretended to sleep on the couch.

By the time the sun came up, I had dozed for perhaps forty minutes, the temperature was already in the 90s, and my arms felt heavier than my legs.

The clock said 7:00 A.M. The couch was sticky with sweat. I sponged myself off with a cold, wet towel, poured Bravo some water, and called Schultz.

He answered on the first ring despite the hour, sounding as though he’d been waiting all night. “Got her,” I said. I barely recognized my own voice.

“Where are you? What’s she like?”

“Like a freon cocktail. You were right, one hundred percent. She kicked him out. He burned his father. Her first husband.”

“I
knew
I should have said it out loud,” he said. “When I write it up, people will say it was second-guessing.”

“If that’s your biggest problem, relax. I’ll tell everyone you told me days ago.”

“That would be fudging,” Dr. Norbert Schultz said fretfully.

“And we wouldn’t want you to fudge. Not on something as important, something as
indispensable,
as writing this up. Think of the fame. You’ll be a standard footnote.”

“I’m an asshole,” Schultz said promptly. I heard a match flare, not the most comforting sound at that moment. “Why are you at home?”

“How’s he supposed to come for me,” I asked Schultz, “if he doesn’t know where I am?”

“Sheeez,” Schultz blew smoke into the mouthpiece. “That’s pushing it a little, don’t you think?”

“I think nobody’s been burned for three days.” I swallowed. “Am I still right? Nobody last night?”

“Clean as a whistle. Except for a couple of houses.” He listened to himself. “Was the father in a house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, since then, houses haven’t been his game, and we’re in the goddamn fire season. We lose houses every night.”

“Maybe houses are his new mission,” I said.

“No,” he said with certainty, sounding like the Schultz of old. “If he’s got a new mission, it’s something bigger than houses.”

“I just thought I’d bring it up,” I said, “because I’m in a house.”

“You could be the exception,” he admitted. “Do you want protection?”

“Oh, sure. Protect me from the west wind. This is a guy who could smell junk when he was twelve. He can smell cops the way you can smell an anxiety neurosis.”

“Junk? Are we talking about dope?”

“No,” I said, “we’re talking about inferior interior decor. We’re talking about glass grapes. I’ll explain it all in time for your article. Unless, of course, you think it would be better for posterity if I were to explain it right now.”