The Enigmatologist (5 page)

He yelled over his shoulder, “The Hump ‘n Pump on Alamo
Street! I think I can find it!”

“Oh, do let me know what you find
out!” she said from her door, leaning her chest against the jamb.

“Don’t worry! I’ll be in touch!” John lied, getting in his
car, vowing to never return to her Elvis Museum & Fetish Den.

John plunged his hand into his pocket, feeling around for
his keys. They should have been just past his wallet, next to some loose
change, but something else filled his pocket. His fingers fumbled over a soft
ball of fabric. Stitching and folds. He couldn’t identify the object. He just
recognized it as a tactile mass, and didn’t remember stuffing it in there.
Worried, not knowing what it was, he slowly pulled the wadded fabric from his
pocket. He found the ends with his hands and tugged. The jumble of black cloth
fell loose, revealing a long piece of silk that trumpeted at the ends. Mrs.
Morris’s bowtie.

John shrieked.

Somehow she slipped it into his pocket, probably hoping
he’d return it and take her up on her bondage offer. He involuntarily imagined
her hands and feet tied to the bedposts and he shuddered.

“Fuck that,” he said, tossing the bowtie out the window,
the silk wafting like litter into the dry gutter.

A
little before five, John parked on Alamo Street, next to the gas station. He
didn’t park directly in front of the trailer park, but he could still see its
entrance. People came and went from every trailer except one, the one in the
photo. Its driveway was empty, its windows dark. He didn’t know when the man
would be home, so he waited.

John lifted the armrests and stretched out on the front
seat. He put the gun on the floor next to him, just in case someone tried
sneaking up on him. Like Mrs. Morris. The sun was setting, but he’d hear the
locked doors rattling, or her licking the window.

Working for Rooftop, John was used showing up to an empty
home, having to entertain himself until whomever he was supposed to be
following showed. Most detectives would get on their phones, amuse themselves
with addictive games, ninja birds destroying candy, Viking farmers complaining
about retirement, but John tried to utilize his time, be productive.

He pulled out a pen and a pad of graph paper. He counted
fifteen squares across, then fifteen down, drew a frame around them, embracing
the emptiness. On the top row, he counted four squares in, then blacked out the
fifth square. He did the same on the other side and at the bottom corners,
making it symmetrical. Twenty-eight more squares were blacked out, continuing a
pattern of balance. He wrote ‘Moving Day’, his theme, across the top of the
page. It was a recreation of a puzzle he’d been working on since graduation.

It had a grand premise. All the definitions were going to
read like standard puzzle definitions, leading the solver to think it was about
moving into a new home, but once they solved the theme words, the
fifteen-to-twenty-eight-box-length phrases, they’d realize that it was really
about unexpected transitions, the large and small occurrences that force people
to adapt and change.

Four empty squares along the top row waited to be filled
and John wrote a single letter in each box. A word. He added another word
underneath it. He tried writing a clue that would give them some meaning beyond
the standard definition, some existential subtext that an astute crossword
solver would appreciate. Tapping his pen against the pad, he found nothing
deeper than what existed in the dictionary. John erased the words, leaving
rubber splinters where letters had nested. He scrawled new words, new clues,
but they failed to conform to his criteria, and he wadded up the paper, tossed
it on the floor.

He didn’t have this problem in college, the inability to
stack words, their letter arrangements creating words within words, then give
them clever clues. Since leaving the purchased comfort and community of school,
he’d been stuck, uninspired. ‘Unable,’ as his friends would say, ‘to do the
work.’

* * * *

Ten
o’clock. Everyone had gone out for the evening, leaving the trailer park empty,
no lights in the windows, vacant parking spaces.

The street lamp above John flickered out and darkness
absorbed the street around his Saturn sedan. It was getting late. The Stuff ‘n
Pump night manager locked the front doors and pulled down the gate, closing for
the night, his employees heading home.

Midnight. Trailer park residents returned home from the
bars, trying to drive straight, parking at odd angles. They stumbled from their
trucks, up their trailers’ makeshift steps. Lights flipped on and off in each
room until there was darkness.

3:00 a.m. If the man in the photo wasn’t home by now, he
probably wasn’t coming home tonight.

John grabbed the universal lock pick gun he bought at the
police supply store. He’d bought it for moments like this, but so far he’d only
used it to open his front door when he’d locked himself out. He got out of his
car and pulled up his sweatshirt’s hood, looking around as he quietly crossed
the empty street.

He walked up the trailer’s homemade steps. They wobbled
underneath him like they were built with the assistance of a six-pack, not a
level. He crouched down on one knee and put the pick gun in the lock. John held
another pick in his right hand. He set it in the lock and started aligning the
pins.

On the street, the recognizable rumble of an engine,
music, and drunk driving. A truck swerved into the trailer park.

John quickly looked around, wondering where the truck
might be headed. Every trailer had a car, truck, motorcycle, ATV, go-cart, or
riding lawnmower parked near it. All except the trailer he were he knelt. The
man in the picture was home.

John stood, lost his balance, and fell backward off the
steps. He landed on his back and crawled and picked himself up off the broken
gravel drive and ran and hid behind the trailer’s hitch and propane tank.

The truck turned down the stretch of gravel that started
at Alamo Street and ended at the trailer John hid behind.

John peered around the trailer wall as the truck’s
headlights panned the trailer park, its rusty folding chairs, satellite dishes
loosely hanging by their cables, pieces of fiberglass insulation, sleeveless
flannel shirts drying on car hoods. Finally, the lights landed on the trailer
where John hid. Illuminating the dangling lock pick gun.

John spun behind the trailer. He made a fist and slowly,
silently, tapped his head in penance. How he could be so stupid, so careless?
How could he have let Rooftop down? If the man in the photo saw the pick gun,
he’d run and John wouldn’t get the answers he needed about the photo. Or the
dead reporter. He breathed heavily and told himself to calm down. There had to
be a way to keep the guy here, to keep him from running. John lifted his head
suddenly and his eyes widened like he had been abruptly woken from a nap. He
had an idea. It was a bad idea, but it was all he had.

He peeked around the trailer.

And reached for his gun.

But there was nothing.

His thumb caught on his belt as his hand passed over the
emptiness where his clip holster should be. He had left his gun in the car.

The truck turned and headed down the row of trailers,
coming right for him. The man would see the pick gun, would know John was
there, would speed away, knocking over trashcans, waking his neighbors, leaving
John trapped behind the trailer while everyone stumbled into the street,
investigating the late night racket.

The truck parked in the driveway, its headlights went
dark. John peered around the corner. The doors opened. Out stepped a skinny
teenager with acne and an overweight older woman. They started kissing. She
shoved the kid against the trailer John hid behind. She grinded against the
kid, shaking the trailer, causing the lock pick gun to jiggle, almost fall from
the lock. The woman grabbed the kid’s shirt, dragged him to the trailer next
door. They spent several minutes at the door making out, then disappeared
inside. A stereo blared .38 Special’s ‘
Rockin
’ Into
the Night’. In between songs, odd noises, like farm animals eating, came from
the trailer.

John walked back up the steps. The lock pick gun hung from
the door knob. John knelt, gently pushed it back into the lock. A click. The
bolt slid free of the doorjamb’s plate. The door opened. It was unlocked.

The trailer door creaked open on rusting hinges. The
interior screen door hung loose in its frame, broken. Most of the wire mesh was
ripped, no longer protecting the trailer from insects or collection agents.

The trailer, green with a white stripe down the center,
employed a thin layer of dirt to show its age. Unwashed and corroded. Dirt and
rust had consumed the elegance of the antique road palace. John stuck his head
inside the dark trailer and listened, but didn’t hear any shuffling footsteps
or drunken snores. He stepped inside, turned on his flashlight. Empty beer cans
and dirty clothes. Unopened mail on the collapsible kitchen table. He flipped
through junk mail addressed to ‘Resident’, nudie magazines in sealed, plastic
bags, store bought. No bills. No address labels. Nothing that could tell him
the guy’s name. John was hoping for a mountain of unpaid bills, or pink
envelopes stamped ‘Final Notice’. But they were strangely absent.

In the living room, dirty clothes lay on the floor, couch,
everywhere. An empty fish tank with a couple of trophies in it slept on the
couch like a weekend house guest overextending its stay. The trophies were
topped with little gold figures kicking the air in frozen Karate poses. John
removed a couple from the tank, checking the engravings. ‘Cincinnati, OH,
March, 1998, Third Place’. ‘Kokomo, IN, June, 1995, Fourth Place’. ‘Spokane,
WA, October, 1991, Third Place’. And a blue ribbon from Springfield, IL, for
participating. The statues were all engraved with different names, not the
man’s name, but the names of others. His version of identity theft. John
frequented garage sales on his free weekends and was familiar with trophies
like these. The man in the photo probably bought them from someone’s mom trying
to make Diet Coke money.

John shined the light around the rest of the room. The
curtains were drawn, guarding the man from prying neighbors, or protecting
neighbors from seeing him walk around shirtless, slapping his gut, scratching
himself.

A small, flat screen television, its wires running out the
window. John moved the blinds and followed the wires to a neighboring trailer,
up the side to a satellite dish. Pirated cable.

Black and white pictures were tacked to the wall opposite
the couch. There were several of Elvis, but they were not the normal fan
photos. In one, Elvis is standing by the front door to Graceland, surrounded by
Elvis impersonators. It was easy to tell which one was Elvis. He was the focal
point of the picture, standing between large columns, framed by impersonators.
And he was the only one not wearing a sequined jumpsuit.

In other photos, Elvis is surrounded by armed, uniformed
men, leaving hangars, boarding helicopters or planes. A white haired man
wearing an Air Force uniform is standing near Elvis. They are laughing or
talking, the man looking at Elvis fondly, with pride, while other officers are
a few steps behind. In one photograph, Elvis is in a hangar. He is wearing
earphones and holding a long range microphone in one hand and a hotdog in the
other. He isn’t looking at the surveillance equipment. Instead, he is looking
down at a dollop of mustard on his shoe. In another, Elvis is standing next to
a circus ring watching men jousting on alpacas. One man has been thrown from
his mount and is lying in the center of the ring. Elvis is grumbling and
handing money to the man with white hair. The man is laughing, adding Elvis’s
cash to a stack of bills. John wasn’t sure if the picture was of military
training or a wealthy man’s entertainment.

Next to the Elvis pictures were aerial photos of what
looked like military installations. Buildings were circled in red ink. The
names ‘Area 51’, ‘Los Alamos’, ‘
Dulce
’, or ‘S-4’ were
written on them. Before he left Denver, John researched Elvis conspiracies and
found photos like these. They were typical of someone obsessed with the
perception of a hidden truth, the belief that something in Elvis’s history was
being kept from them.

Sitting in the car, he had wondered what he’d find in the
trailer. He thought, if anything, there’d be a few pictures of Elvis,
flattering images printed from websites, taped to the wall. But he didn’t
expect this. He looked closer at the photos, the paper stock, the edge and
grain of the print. They weren’t copies. They were originals. This guy had hid
in the bushes and taken these photos.

Like John.

But they were nothing alike. This guy acted out of some
delusory belief that Elvis had a secret past. John took pictures of naked men
in the back of a Payless Shoe store rubbing latex balloons on each other,
waiting until he could earn a living writing puzzles.

John kicked some beer cans out of the way and headed to
the kitchen. Dirt had saturated the small kitchen’s linoleum cracks, staining
the floor brown and gray. When John walked, his shoes sounded like
band-aids
being removed. Pliers replaced the missing knobs
on an electric range. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes, plates covered in
food remains, chicken bones, BBQ. He shined the flashlight on them. The crusted
food looked preserved, like a furniture store display of wax fruit. John
sniffed the sink. No rancid food smell. He opened the cupboards. Peanut butter.
Jar after jar of peanut butter.