No Sleep till Wonderland (20 page)

Gus’s story is evolving, growing, getting harder to keep track of, the words mixing and meshing with what Ekat, Eddie, Jody, Rita, and everyone else said and with what I thought I knew. I’m a sap because it’s working. I remember how I felt when operating under my earlier assumption that Eddie lit the fire. I remember the safety of righteousness, and I want it back. So okay, maybe Carter paid Eddie to light the fire and Jody survived because he knew she was at Rachel’s place. He got cold feet, he couldn’t go through with killing her, but what about her son, JT?

I shake my head and pull out of the tailspin. I say, “It wasn’t Eddie. There’s no way.”

“You’re probably right. I don’t know; I’m just so scared, to be honest. After it happened, I thought that Carter would’ve been caught within twenty-four hours and that he would take me down with him. I didn’t know what to do, and I needed to figure a way out, so I went hedgehog.”

“Hedgehog?”

“Yes, a member of the rodent family. I’m not familiar with the scientific name of their phylum, but, you know, they live underground.”

“I thought they lived in hedges.”

“Regardless, I found out I was pretty good at being gone. I could’ve stayed gone, too. I didn’t have to come back, Mark.”

I say, “I believe you,” which is a lie. I don’t feel bad about it either.

The Dart emerges from the tunnel, and we navigate an on-ramp labyrinth—no minotaurs—and head toward the developing waterfront area and South Boston. We stop at the D Street intersection light.

There’s a new and giant hotel on the corner of Summer Street, all lights and glass. I wonder if anyone is looking out one of those windows and sees me in this car. I slide into a comfortable slouch in my seat, roll down the window, and let a cool breeze play with my beard. An embarrassingly large part of me wants to indulge in a fantasy where Gus and I are just cruising in his Dart, with no particular place to go.

Gus says, “Hey, see their car anywhere?”

I fix my slouch. “No.”

“I didn’t think I was that far behind them. No biggie. We all know how to get to Ekat’s place, right?”

I whistle “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Sitting in the seventies car, wind blowing in my face, I think it’s appropriate.

The light goes green. Gus starts straight onto D Street but changes his mind, squealing wheels left and onto Summer Street. He doesn’t use his blinker. He says, “Like I said, I could’ve stayed gone, but I had come back to help Ekat and you.”

“You’re a regular Albert Schweitzer.” I rub my eyes and try to remember more of my parking lot conversation with Ekat. It’s an itch between my shoulder blades, and I’m having a hard time reaching it. “How did you know Ekat and Carter would be at Wonderland?” Now that we’re moving, the wind is too much, threatens to steal my hat, so I roll up the window. The fast lane isn’t for me.

“Ekat left voice-mail messages and texts, telling me some of what was going on with the both of you, but I didn’t return any of those messages until today. She texted me this morning that Carter wanted her to go with him to Wonderland for one last score. I broke my radio silence. We decided that she’d go with Carter, that I’d be there too and would be watching just in case, and then we’d go away for a long while.”

“She told me that she hadn’t heard from you.”

“She was trying to protect me, I guess. You surprised her, and she panicked. I wasn’t surprised, though, pal. You’re good at what you do, and that you somehow found your way to Wonderland tonight isn’t the upset of the century as far as I’m concerned.”

“Aw, shucks. You sure got a pretty mouth.”

Summer Street is now L Street, and we pass through the East Broadway intersection. We’re only a cupful of blocks away from Ekat’s apartment, but it doesn’t feel like we’re any closer to the end of this. Whatever this is.

Gus says, “All that said, to be brutally honest with you, buddy, maybe Ekat didn’t lie to you. You might not have heard her right. You might not have been all there. I know you pretty well, Mark. It happened during our magnificent bender, right? Maybe you were asleep while you were talking to Ekat. Your firsthand accounts aren’t exactly reliable. When I found the two of you, Ekat was pacing, wearing out a patch of the parking lot, and you were snoozing up against the post with your big hairy gob drawing flies.”

“Keep it up, and I’m gonna smack you in that pretty mouth.”

“I’m not saying any of that to be mean. I’m just trying to be straight with you.”

“That would be a first.”

It’s our first fight, and I don’t think we’ll ever be the same. We don’t speak during the final leg of our jaunt. Gus turns right onto East Sixth, and we park at the corner of I instead of in front of Ekat’s place.

I say, “You’re really going to make me walk?”

Gus shuts the car off and says, “Carter could still be hanging around. He shouldn’t be, but you never know. We need to play this safe.”

We creep up I Street like a couple of creeps. If Ekat is home alone and if this is really the end, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Will I call the police and have the wonder twins picked up, or will I do nothing, stand on her doorstep, get pats on the head, then blow kisses and breathlessly scream,
Bye-bye, bon voyage, don’t forget to write
?

Looks like I don’t need to know the answer to that question just yet. The outdoor lights (both front door and back door) are on, but the interior is dark and lonely. Her apartment is in mourning. Gus peeks in the front window, roughs up the glass with his knuckles, and nothing. No one’s home.

The Lexus isn’t parked out front, and there are plenty of open spots up and down I Street. Carter and Ekat are not here. I pull out one of my own cigarettes, no cloves or other nonprocessed ingredients, the way nature intended.

Gus takes off his hat and looks around. He wears incredulousness quite well. He says, “There’s no way I beat them here, is there?”

“Maybe Carter took her on the scenic route, the long-cut. Maybe they stopped at a bar first. Maybe they wanted to play Keno, pick up a few scratch tickets.”

“No, no, no. She was going to have him drive her straight home. We must’ve beat them here. Maybe they went down D Street.” Gus spins around three times, a dog looking for a spot to lie down, and then jogs across the street and back toward the Dart.

Down on the corner instead of out in the street, we wait. Gus leans on a city-planned tree with his arms outstretched, palms flat against the bark, like he’s trying to push it over and block off the road. I stand behind him, relegated to the background, a lowly subordinate to his commander. I tend to my personal fire and smoke. A few cars go up I Street. The cars don’t stop and they don’t drop off passengers wearing blond wigs.

I decide to throw something out there at Gus and see what sticks to his slick old self. I say, “You know what else Ekat told me?”

“What did she tell you?”

“She said that you were in on it. That you helped Carter plan and set the fire. Tonight was her last score, and then she was running away from the both of you. Maybe she’s on her way to some remote island right now. She’ll build a house on the beach with teakwood and live off coconuts, fish, and clams. I like her plan better than yours.”

Gus keeps watch on I Street, like it might run away. He says, “Not funny, Mark,” but there’s something there, a microsecond of hesitation and doubt, and if I were able to pick up that moment and stretch it out like pizza dough, I’d find the holes.

“You said I was funny earlier.”

“I was wrong. You need to work on delivery and timing.” Gus still hasn’t turned his head, talks in a monotone, and keeps contact with his tree. He doesn’t look like a man happy with the way things are working out. That makes two of us.

I throw my dead and used smoke at his foot. I have good aim. “Why did you get mixed up in any of this?” It’s a painfully earnest question, one I don’t expect will be answered.

“You mean: What’s a sweet boy like me doing in a place like this? Well, I’ll tell you, but only because it’s you, Mark. It’s because my parents were just awful to me, didn’t kiss me enough, and they yelled at me when I wet the bed.” Gus laughs, and it goes on for far too long. Nothing is that funny. He says, “Come on, what do you want me to say? I stole credit cards and made the IDs because I could. It was easy in a very casual way, and I was good at it. Because getting away with it was a rush. Because the money was real good. There are no deep dark secrets here. You know me, Mark.”

I do know him, now. We wait another few minutes. A cab and a lopsided minivan drive by, and that’s it.

“Shit, shit, shit…” Gus stands up and stretches his arms out wide to give the world a hug. “They’re not coming here. Something happened. What are we going to do?”

I say, “Call her. Ask her what’s taking so long. Have her pick up a pizza, with sausage. I’m hungry.”

Gus takes out his phone, then stops. “I-I can’t. I can’t risk Carter knowing that I’m back and that she and I have been communicating.”

“I’ll call.”

“You can’t call her either. He doesn’t know that you know about any of this.”

“I’m calling.” I take out my phone. It needs to be charged and is almost dead.

Gus reaches for my phone, but I dodge him. He says, “We can’t. Either of us calling could put her in danger, Mark. Carter…”

Gus stops, looks up and down I Street again, eyes spinning free in his head. He says, “All right. Let’s think. We lost their car coming out of the tunnel, right? I didn’t see them on D Street or on Summer.” He pauses, rubs his chin like there’s a genie in it. “Did they go onto 93? There’s a ramp there, right at the end of the tunnel. They did. Fuck, Carter took her to his house.”

I say, “They could be anywhere.”

“I know, I know, but his house is the only other place that makes sense. It’s the only other place we can check.” He runs the short distance to his car. “You coming or staying?”

Gus is smooth. Even when he appears to be flustered, he does it with style, panache with a soft, drawn-out
-che
. He’s a walking and talking wink, a come-hither look, and I can’t help but follow even when every ounce of my being knows to stay away from him and his Dart, to go home and call Detective Owolewa, and drop this hot and messy fondue in his lap.

I limp to his car, dragging my lazier-by-the-minute left leg behind me. Looks like he and I get to take a joyride after all. I’ll try not to let it go to my head.

Gus starts the car and says, “Carter lives in Milton. We’ll jump on the highway real quick. Fifteen-minute ride, tops.” He pulls out of the parking spot, shaking his head. He says, “This isn’t good.”

“I know.”

The Dart’s front end is an elongated snout, rooting through the dips and potholes of the southeast expressway. There aren’t any truffles. We don’t feel the bumps as much as we glide over them, cresting the waves, a boat on water. It’s a sea-sickening feeling. With every swell the tires strain to keep contact with the road, and we could go careening into the median at the slightest breeze or driver misstep.

Gus talks because he has to. He doesn’t know what else to do with his mouth. I can’t hear him over the engine. My window is open, filling the old car with new air. But the air isn’t new. It’s unaccountably ancient and used.

I turn my head, and Gus isn’t driving anymore. It’s my old roommate Juan-Miguel. He looks small with the Dart’s Conestoga-wagon-sized steering wheel in his hands. He wears a black T-shirt over a white T-shirt, like he always did. I send him a smile, and I’m as nervous as a middle schooler at his first dance. Juan-Miguel yells at me about what I did to the couch, and he yells at me about what I did, about the lies I told him, but he won’t look at me, can’t look at me, and I can’t remember when he could.

I turn my head, and Gus isn’t driving anymore. It’s my mother, Ellen. She calmly explains why she’s relocating me back to the Cape and our old family bungalow. She tells me that I’m not doing well on my own and that I need help. She can look at me, but she won’t.

I turn my head, and Gus isn’t driving anymore. It’s Dr. Who. He has a stack of notebooks on his lap, and Jesus is still on the dashboard. I reach across the canyon of the bench seat to grab the notebooks. I need to leaf through them and find pictures of me, find one that I like, or at least one that I can live with.

I turn my head, and Gus isn’t driving anymore. It’s my old friend George. I’d like to say that he never left, that he’s always with me—it’s the sugar-sweet culturally approved sentiment—but it’d be a lie. He’s been gone for ten years. He’s a fading memory, a shrinking part of the story-of-me that I tell occasionally. George is here now, though, and he’s finishing a laugh about something. He always finished after me. I loved that about him.

I turn my head, and now I’m driving the van. This isn’t right. The van is too big for me to control. Too big for me to handle. George is in the passenger seat. He finishes the laugh that wouldn’t end, shaking it out like he’s emptying his shoe of sand. He slumps against the passenger door and rests his head on the glass. I shouldn’t be watching him instead of the road, but I am. This isn’t how it happened.

I blink, wiggle my nose, try to Bewitch him back into the driver’s seat. It doesn’t work. I’m driving. My hands are too sweaty and treacherous. I can’t trust them, the saboteurs, and I can’t stop them from pulling right.

Our seats in the van are too high up. Our falling down is an inevitability.

I turn my head, and Gus isn’t driving. Neither is George. I’m driving. George is asleep. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. George promised to help keep me awake. George is asleep. And I am too.

The Dart rolls onto the grass shoulder of a narrow, wooded street. Just outside my door is a stone fence with gaps, missing pieces, and it’s not tall enough to stop anybody. Behind the crumbling fence is a thicket of trees, putting a mighty lean on the remaining stones.

Gus shuts off the car, taps my arm, and says, “We’re here. You awake?”

“Always.” I have a crick in my neck and in the rest of my body.

“I drove up and down the road a couple of times but couldn’t really see anything, couldn’t tell if they’re here. The house is set too far back and up that big hill,” Gus whispers.

Orderly lines of trees act as the honor guards on both sides of the road. There is a gated driveway entrance across the street, but no homes are visible through the surrounding woods. We’re neck-deep in quaint New England charm and misanthropic privacy. Although I haven’t seen Carter’s bachelor pad, it’s a safe bet that it must’ve cost him a medium-sized fortune, one that was credit card aided.

I say, “Any reason as to why you’re whispering? I won’t tell anyone.”

Gus opens his door, and the interior dome light flashes on, blinding the blind. He says, “Come on. We hoof it on the driveway. Try and be quiet.”

“I’ll be a delicate ballerina. What are we going to do when we get there?”

“I’m not sure.”

We’re both on the same page. And we both climb out of the car.

The starry-starry-night sky is cloudless and filled with pinprick holes of light, light that took too long to get here, just like us. A soundtrack of crickets featuring the
Into the Woods
orchestra is undercut with the familiar Sturm und Drang of not-so-distant interstate highway traffic.

On our right, the weathered and rolling stone fence parts for Carter’s driveway. We follow the one-lane private road, which is canopied by more trees that crowd and elbow each other, fighting for the right to blot out the night sky. Gus has his hands in his pockets. We don’t talk. There isn’t anything left to say.

We climb and come around a bend, and then a few more bends, until finally we spill out of the copse of trees, to the top of the hill and onto a gravel path that splits an open field of tall grass. Twenty yards ahead is Oz, a large, white, well-kept colonial farm house with a wraparound porch, two-story barn attached, and maybe a man behind a curtain inside. A lone lamp hanging off the barn spotlights the parked Lexus. They’re here.

Gus crouches and jogs ahead of me. I can’t keep up, never could. He waves his hand. I’m supposed to follow him. Luckily, I walk in a permanent crouch. Not so luckily, it’s almost impossible for me to traverse this last bit of the driveway quietly. While I’m doing my baby elephant walk on the gravel, Gus glides like the hot coals under his feet don’t bother him.

There’s a light on in only one room of the house, first floor, its window adjacent to a side door near the barn and Lexus. The blue curtains are drawn.

We stalk to the car and hide behind its back end. My heart is in my collar, and my head fills with fuzz, like I’ve been holding my breath too long. I breathe, and too loudly for Gus’s taste, apparently, as he shushes me.

We watch for a shadow to appear in the window or for the side door to open. Neither happens. Gus tilts his head toward the other end of the house. We duckwalk off the gravel, onto the grass, and to the front yard, which slopes away from us steeply. Nice view of west Milton and the highway. Below us, a stream of headlights moves slowly but inexorably, fish in a thickening river.

Gus pulls me onto the porch, but it’s a mistake. We should’ve avoided the porch, no matter how nice the swing seat and matching rocking chairs looked. The boards creak, an alarm of dead wood under my feet. I try to walk lighter, but I can only do so much. Goosed by my bull-on-a-porch routine, Gus skips ahead and peeks into the lit window. I lean on the porch railing, which groans under my weight. I can’t catch a break.

Gus bolts upright, firing like an engine piston. He spies in the window again but not for as long or as deeply. Then he looks at me. I can’t tell if he’s hesitant or determined. He says, “Come on. Quick.”

I follow him to the door, and inside, past a mudroom that’s too clean—maybe I’m supposed to take my shoes off—and then a doorway to a bright country kitchen with its one-thousand-watt bulbs and Day-Glo colors, including red on the white ceramic tile. A step ahead of me, Gus swears and dry-heaves, blocking his mouth with his hand, then skitters off to the left like a house spider.

From somewhere out there, Ekat says, “What took you so long?” She sounds like a child whose parents forgot to pick her up at soccer practice.

Timothy Carter lies on the floor, facedown and sprawled, arms and legs pointing in directions that aren’t on a compass. What’s left of his Humpty Dumpty head is aimed at me and the doorway. The back of his skull is deflated, and his scalp doesn’t fit right anymore. A pool of red and other dark matter slowly expands in a timely fashion, sands leaking through a horrific hourglass. There’s more blood misted on the tile beneath my feet and on the blue wallpaper next to me and on the door frame.

My olfactory imagination might be running away with me. I smell blood, piss, and burned meat. My gorge rises along with my stress level, which is about to go Vesuvius. Puking wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but going out now would. My patchwork neurons sputter and fail. Limbs get shaking in rhythm to a song I can’t hear, and I lose feeling in my extremities. My fingers and toes are made out of light.

If I don’t keep moving, keep a focus, I’m going to suffer a cataplexy attack. A big one. All systems point to go-out, but I pretend that I can hold it off.

Ekat is on the other side of the kitchen. She’s gone all fetus, huddled in a corner, propped against mahogany pantry cabinets. She still wears the wig and yellow dress. There are fine red dots that once intimately belonged to Carter coloring the dress and the wig’s blond hairs. The dots form a pattern I’m unable to read. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her knees, which might run away without her.

A handgun sits at her feet, its proud black eye pointed this way, like I won spin the bottle. I don’t know what kind of gun it is, but it’s big and nasty and I get woozy just looking at it.

Ekat lifts her head and sees me. Her eyes are stained-glass windows, and recognition is a process that might take a week or two. She blinks a few times until it’s clear that I’m in her scene.

She says, “What is
he
doing here, Gus?” Her voice cracks and eyes well up. Her face momentarily landslides into a look of utter sorrow, but she recovers. She stands up and wipes her cheeks on the short sleeves of her dress. The gun stays and heels at her feet, a well-trained dog with bite worse than its bark.

Gus is on my left, hand over his mouth, speaking no evil, until he says, “Shh. It’s okay. Are you all right?” He tiptoes around Carter and his broken levee, avoiding the mess like it’s a freshly seeded flower bed.

“No. I’m not all right. Why is Mark here?” Ekat shivers but not because it’s cold in here.

Gus isn’t listening to her or watching her. He only has eyes for the gun at her feet. He bends, hand outstretched, fingers twitching.

I’m not all right either. All this is happening too fast. I pull out my cigarette-lighter gun and point it at them although nobody wants to smoke. I call my own bluff.

“Stop! You touch that gun and—” I cut the line’s cord, not sure if I need to finish the sentiment. My new headache doesn’t agree with the yelling. The unfinished sentence vandalizes my head.

No one says anything. It’s too quiet here. It’s too everything here. I finish the old thought anyway; never too late to play it safe. “You touch that gun and I’ll shoot. You. I’ll shoot you, Gus. Stand up. Now.”

I hope they don’t see my hand and arm shaking. They’re so excited and they just can’t hide it. The gun lighter rattles in my hand. The sound could be authentic. I have no idea. I look at Ekat, waiting for her to share the old punch line of my fake-gun joke. She doesn’t say anything yet. She looks back at me, maybe waiting to see if there’s a new punch line.

Gus does stand, slowly. I’m sure he’s always played well with others. He says, “Mark. Take it easy. What are you doing?” His voice drips soothing and calm and relaxed. He’s a snake charmer and a barroom hypnotist, and it still kills me to know the truth about him.

I say, “Christ. I almost deserve it. I stepped on every one of the banana peels you assholes left out for me.”

Gus starts in again with, “Mark, wait, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“Shut up. You two were lying about Carter the whole time. You both knew about the fire. You’re both trying to set me up, pin the Carter-tail on the donkey me.”

Gus says, “Whoa, Mark. No, no way, you’re wrong, listen to me for second.”

Ekat joins in: “Everything I told you tonight was true, Mark.”

I yell again. “Shut up! Fucking listen to me!” This time I get as loud as I’m physically capable. I usually don’t have the energy to get this angry, and it almost ruins me. I keep my feet, though, even if I don’t feel them under me.

The exploding Mark yields two results. Gus and Ekat both stop talking, which is good. Not so good, I’m running out of me-being-upright time. I say, “You both lied about Carter not knowing your bagmen. Carter had been stopping by Aleksandar’s apartment throughout the summer, exchanging money and credit cards, and maybe Christmas cards too.”

Ekat looks at me and Gus. The real gun is between Gus’s feet. Ekat stares hard at my cigarette lighter, and we both know she could take me out with one phrase, but she doesn’t. She says, “That’s not true, Mark.”

I say, “I have a witness who places Carter at his apartment. Multiple times.”

The three of us get lockjaw and share an eternal instant. We’ll never forget it because, crazy as it sounds, there’s a weird vibe in the farm house air. It’s almost as if one of us buddies could break the tension by giggling and we’d all crack up into tear-pulling, gut-busting laughs; then someone would suggest we go to the nearest bar for some shots, and we’d cheer and leave the house and body behind, and we’d be all smiles, slapping each other on the back, secret handshakes, fist pounds, and at the bar clinking glasses and obnoxious platitudes in honor of each other’s names.

All right, so no one laughs. I’ll always miss my would-be life with my youthful imaginary friends. My hand sweats on the butt on my lighter, which is gaining mass despite not moving anywhere near the speed of light.

Gus opens his hands, presenting some sort of offering, but they’re empty. He finally says, “Okay, Mark. You’re right. You’re right.”

“What?” Ekat turns to look at him. Part of her wig falls in front of her eyes.

“Mark, listen, that is the only lie I told you tonight. I swear.”

Ekat says, “What do you mean?”

Gus’s hands move fast when he talks, and now he’s talking even faster, in a hurry to get somewhere. “Look, Ekat, we wanted to expand a little and knew you wouldn’t go for it. So Jody and Aleksandar were our experiment, and we were going to tell you about it after it had gone well, but you found that ID in my trash, which you didn’t take so well, and Carter and I—and remember, this was all before he went off the deep end, all right?—we decided we couldn’t tell you, not then anyway, and shit, then everything blew up and…I’m sorry. I should’ve told you earlier, and…I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. I’m sorry, Ekat, I’m sorry.”

Ekat shakes her head, and the wig doesn’t look real anymore. It’s hard to believe that anyone ever thought it was real. She gives me a look, but when I accept it she hides her eyes under the wig. This isn’t an act, can’t be an act. She didn’t know that Carter knew about Jody and Aleksandar.

I say, “Everything blew up because Jody got caught at the Hub with one of your stolen cards and you found out about it. You and Carter weren’t too happy about that, were you, Gus?”

Gus says, “Yes,” pauses, then adds, “I mean, yeah, after Jody got caught, that’s when Timothy started panicking, getting so goddamn paranoid and unreasonable about everything. That’s when he started talking about killing those guys.”

“Unreasonable is an interesting way to put it.”

Gus says, “But Jesus, Mark. The rest of it is true. It was all his idea, and we tried to stop Carter. We—”

I interrupt. “Where’d you get the gun, Ekat?”

“It’s Timothy’s. I got it out of his game room while he was getting us drinks.”

And that’s it. I wait for more: explanation, recrimination. But I get nothing. She’s as matter-of-fact as the two untouched glasses of wine on the marble countertop behind Gus. The wine is a dark red. I don’t and won’t know if the stuff is any good.

Gus sighs deep as a canyon, and he sways on his feet, left to right, midtempo. He doesn’t like her answer. He says, “Mark just put down the gun, all right? We’re talking. We’re good, okay? We’re all going to get out of here. I’ll make it better.”

I say, “I think you should answer one of Ekat’s questions.”

“What questions?”

“Short-term memory issues, good buddy? I sympathize, I really do. So let me help you out a little. Way back when we first crashed the little kitchen party, Ekat wanted to know what took you so long to get here. It sounds to me like you were expected, like Ekat being here instead of her place wasn’t a surprise to you. I could be wrong. It’s happened before.

“Then there’s the follow-up: she asked what I was doing here. I’m guessing both questions are related to each other, part B to a part A, so feel free to address either. No partial credit awarded.”

I already know the answers. They had already planned Carter’s murder, but when I showed up at Wonderland tonight, Gus decided to bring me along to be the suicide half of that act. Cops find me and Carter dead tomorrow, or—if Gus is lucky—a few days later. Carter and I share a brief, convenient, and what-I-hate-about-you recent history, with me screwing up his surveillance case as a matter of phone records and office visits, so the cops might buy that I was Carter’s killer for a day, maybe two. It wouldn’t stick but would give Gus and Ekat more than enough time to disappear, to find their own rabbit hole.