Jonah Man (17 page)

I woke to my father’s laughing. I saw him standing over me, his eyes turning liquid, and I heard him say, You stupid ass. He said it again and again. A week’s supply, he said. He laughed himself breathless.

I fell back asleep and when I woke again it was night and my sheet and blanket were gone.

You all right now? he asked.

I’m hungry.

That it?

I rubbed my eyes, nodded.

Get up, he said.

He pulled off his belt, wrapped the buckled end around one hand.

Besides the supply, we lost a booking, he said. And I owe the hotel for the bedding.

I won’t do it again.

I doubt you will. But I got to make sure.

The blows felt like I was being punched instead of whipped.

The sun was up, but barely. I tried to stand, but my ankle wouldn’t hold my weight. I kneeled and pissed in a corner, then packed the blanket into my bag. I thought about the bundles of cash in the manager’s office. Once I thought of them I couldn’t think of anything else. I started down the fire escape. My shoe caught in the bottom rung and I tripped and fell. The rocks tore my shirt at the elbow and I laughed out loud thinking what I must look like hobbling around with my cut up face and hands and legs.

The street was empty. I made my way to the theater, tried the side door, then walked to the back. The first floor windows were too high for me to reach, but there were smaller windows just above the ground that looked into the cellar. I lay on my side and kicked out a pane of glass with my good foot, then reached in and slid open the latch that held the frame closed. Bits of glass had scattered across the cellar floor. I turned onto my stomach with my bag strapped to my back, slid my body down.

The cellar was crowded with coat racks and boxes of playbills and broken seats. There were stained drop cloths and used and unused brushes and dented cans of paint. There were sealed crates piled to the ceiling. There was just enough space cleared for me to walk through.

I used the railing like a crutch, came out in a corridor with
no windows or light. I felt along the wall for the switch.

I listened at the manager’s door, then turned the handle. He kept it locked. I pushed as hard as I could without falling down, but the door wouldn’t give. I got on my knees and took off my belt. I’d seen my father pick a lock with the tongue part of his buckle. He just stuck it in the keyhole and flicked it around until something clicked. I worked the metal up and down and side to side until the lock gave.

I opened the drawer where he’d pushed in the bundles, then opened the drawer under it, and the drawer under that. They were full of partly smoked cigars, open match boxes with burned out matches stuck back inside, marked up programs, sealed jars of ink, some coins that I pocketed, a half-sandwich wrapped in newsprint with the butter melted through. The bundles were gone.

I hopped along the edges of the room, knocking the posters from the walls. I rapped my knuckles over the sides of his desk, but the wood was solid. I sat back down in his chair, pulled the drawers out one by one and dumped their insides on the floor. I got on my hands and knees. Amongst the coins and scraps of paper were two silver-blue vials. I dropped them into my pocket, pushed myself back up.

I took the half-sandwich off the floor and unwrapped it. The paper stained my fingers with grease and ink. There were words imprinted on the bread. I scraped the bread clean with his letter opener, wiped the blade on my pants and slid it into my bag. I ate the sandwich faster than I could taste it.

There was a fresh cigar lying on his desk. I lit it and stuck the end between my teeth. I picked up my bag.

I turned the lights on over the stage and the gallery. There was a painting on the ceiling that I hadn’t seen before, an eagle perched in a tree above a deep ravine. I sat on the edge of the
boards near the center, turning the cigar in my fingers and squinting at the eagle until I made its wings flap with my eyes.

Standing with the cigar in my mouth, I pulled the whiskey from my bag. Ashes blew down and stuck to my shirt. I slapped them away, then walked to the back of the stage and emptied the bottle in long streaks up and down the curtain. The red turned dark under the liquor. I held the lit end of the cigar to the damp fabric, watched the curtain catch flame.

I sat on the wooden sidewalk, waiting, rubbing my thumb over the raised lettering on the browser’s card. The sun was up now. It wasn’t long before the bell sounded in the steeple and kept sounding. Men ran past, one at a time and then in packs. Some of them were dressed in their night clothes. They came with buckets and shovels and blankets. I could smell the burning. I could see the flames breaking through the top of the theater.

Women and children hurried by. I walked up the street, fingering the vials in my pocket. Soon, everyone in town had gathered around the theater. There was a wood-bodied stake truck parked outside the general store. Lettering on the driver’s door read Wool’s Brewery, Denver Colo. The bed was empty save for a crumpled canvas tarp. I crawled under it, laid on my back as flat as I could. The canvas stunk of malt and something sour. The planks were hard against my spine. Before long, the cab door slammed and the bed started to vibrate. The wheels kicked dustspurs up between the slats. I cupped my palms over my nose and mouth. I didn’t know how far we were or if we’d make it in a single day. Denver was more town than city, but it had a real station with major lines passing through. I’d sell the vials for a ticket and a new set of clothes. I’d telegraph Mr. Murry to say I was coming.

He could see the town emerging some miles distant, the wooden frames appearing as a break in the brush and scrub. He lifted his handkerchief from the steering wheel, wiped sweat off his forehead, his neck, from between the folds of his stomach. Pulling part way off the road, he left the motor running while he relieved himself into the hard sand. Antelope stopped and stared; he clapped his hands, watched them scatter.

He drove on, thinking through his final conversations with Jonson, searching for any indication that Jonson might have tipped his hand. The Inspector had been clear with him: no letters, no telegrams; a single phone call after each delivery, never from the hotel or theater. If Jonson had been discovered, then it was unlikely that the supply remained in town. But it was too soon to speculate. Jonson had been ill-humored, intemperate. Anyone might have found motive to kill him.

The hotel owner and his wife sat a foot apart on a stone bench, looking as if neither had spoken for some time. They were old, their bodies eroded, the skin dried tight over their bones. The Inspector observed them from inside his car, reached behind and pulled a black bag off the back seat. He cut the ignition, waited
for the engine to cease sputtering.

You the Inspector? the owner called, attempting to stand.

I am, the Inspector answered. Do you own this place?

I do. And I need them bodies gone.

Awful business, the wife said. Awful, awful business.

You’ll want a room, she added.

I’ll see the bodies first.

He followed the owner through an unadorned lobby and up a narrow flight of stairs, into a long corridor lined on both sides with closely spaced doors. The Inspector stopped, tapped the wall with his ring finger, listened as the sound passed through.

Nobody heard the shots? he asked.

We get mostly show folk, the owner said. And most of them was at the theater or out getting something to eat. If it happened later, when they was asleep, they would’ve heard it. Unless they was all drunk, which ain’t unlikely.

What about you?

Don’t drink.

Did you hear the shots?

Me and the missus got a room in the basement. Can’t hear a thing down there, which is how we like to live.

He unlocked a door, pushed it open, stepped aside to let the Inspector pass. The curtains were parted, the window cracked. The Inspector set down his bag and pulled out a pair of gloves.

Gonna poke around a bit?

That cot belonged to the boy?

Yes sir. Ain’t seen him since. Maybe it was him who done it. Or maybe he’s kidnapped.

Did you pull this sheet over them?

No sir. Found them like that.

And the second victim?

She wasn’t with them when they checked in.

Has anyone else seen the bodies?

One who shot them, I suppose. We ain’t had law here since our sheriff died.

You should leave now, the Inspector said. I’ll be down to ask more questions.

Can I call the undertaker?

Best wait until I’m done.

All right, Inspector. But don’t dally. My wife don’t like having them bodies on our property.

He heard the hotel keeper’s footsteps receding down the hallway, heard the stairs creaking under his slight weight. He walked to the window, leaned his head outside. No fire escape, no ladder. He ran his fingers along the untreated wood beneath the sill, checking for abrasions, indentations, an indication that someone had come and gone in a hurry. But the wood was clean, as was the ground below—no tire treads, no broken scrub, nothing but the immediate beginning of the desert interrupted a short way off by train tracks, then desert again for as far as his vision would carry.

He turned from the window, stepped to the bed. The fabric conformed to their bodies, the blood having pasted it down about their heads. He took the edges of the sheet between his thumbs and forefingers, peeled it back, revealing a girl on top, Jonson underneath, her fingers gripping his ears, his arms wrapped tight around the small of her back. The shooter stood directly above them, fired twice into the back of the girl’s skull. The Inspector knelt down, pinched a lock of the girl’s hair and gently raised her head. The first bullet had stuck in her skull, the second passed through and pierced her client’s eye. He shifted her head to the side, lifted Jonson’s, found that the second bullet had likewise exited his skull and lodged just below the surface of the mattress. He dug it out with his penknife, dropped it into his left jacket pocket.

He ran his eyes down the girl’s body. There were multiple contusions on the back of each leg, all of uniform shape and size, the spacing between them near exact. He took a ruler from his bag, measured the length and width of each bruise, then measured Jonson’s fingers, his palms, the backs of his hands. No match. He lifted Jonson’s belt from the floor, spread it across the girl’s legs: at its thinnest point it would have left a wider, fatter mark.

He rolled the girl onto her back so that her head lay cradled in the crux of her client’s arm. She was plump, pale, and—judging by the smoothness and firmness of her skin, the size and shape of her breasts—between the ages of sixteen and eighteen. The wounds were such that he could not determine the color of her eyes.

Her mouth, however, remained intact, her teeth clamped tight, as if she’d faced her death by biting down. He parted her lips, inserted his thumbs and forefingers, prized the jaws open. The papillae around the necks of her bottom teeth were stained blue—a pure, bright hue. He lifted her tongue, found the frenulum similarly discolored, the stains coming in brighter, wider patches. The discoloration had progressed further in Jonson’s mouth, where that same shade had overtaken stretches of vascular membrane, had crept up through the frenulum and into the tongue itself.

Both victims were tattooed: the girl bore a large butterfly on her inner-thigh, meant to hide a series of small, circular burns; Jonson wore his name traced in black script across the base of his neck, low enough to cover with a collar or scarf.

The Inspector turned from the bodies, opened and closed the empty dresser drawers. Kneeling, he pulled a bag from beneath the bed, scattered its contents across the floor. Anything of value was gone. In his final report, Jonson claimed to have a quarter
of his supply remaining. If that were true, then either the killer or the boy had taken those vials. If the boy had taken them, it meant he knew their worth, which in turn meant that he might be able to corroborate his father’s account.