The Octopus on My Head (19 page)

Torvald stopped.

The respirator hissed.

He typed and spoke. “
Here's two bucks. Go to the movies.
” He stopped. He started again. “
I hated him. I didn't want his money. But I took it—
”

Torvald stopped.

“Did you hear something?”

Silence.

Torvald tapped a key, then another, then the words rushed out as if borne along by the torrent of touch typing.

“
I hated him and didn't want to take anything from him but I wanted out of the house worse. So I took his money and escaped. My ‘father' would watch me go, but as I stepped off the front porch, I heard him say to my mother, That kid can't play worth a shit. I'm not paying no more fucking money for no more fucking music lessons. Call the leasing company and tell them to come get their damned piano.
”

Torvald broke down, face first into his keyboard, and snuffled. He sounded just like
….

He looked up.

He sounded
better
than “Angelica.”

She should be punished for that.

But Angelica was gone.

He turned around.

On the screen was a bald head as big as a medicine ball.

Goddamn it, he thought wearily, this scene is going straight to hell.

He turned back to the computer. “That,” Torvald said aloud. He sat up straight and looked for all the world as if he were about to begin a piano recital. He typed as he dictated, “
And that is how I stopped seeing my music teacher and began the long flight from my mother, which took many years, and why I never became a musician, why I could never listen to music, which is why I live out here,
” he banged the keyboard, “
in the goddamned Outer Richmond, where it's
always
quiet.…Quiet.…Quiet!
”

The banging stopped.

Torvald wrote and said, “
Which is why it isn't personal, kid. You understand me? If you could talk I might even ask for your impersonal forgiveness. The kind God gives, you know? By His Grace. But since you can't talk, I'm going to make do with a little piece of advice.
”

And now, so abruptly that the room rather than Torvald seemed to move, Torvald sprang out of his chair and his own face materialized on the video screen, huge above Baldy's face, and the reek of not-quite-spearmint-blanketed civet musk descended with him until he had laid his cheek against the ruined cheek, and his eyes met the desiccating eyeball on the video screen. He caressed the damp skull and said to the televised orb, as if confidentially, “If you believe that nonsense about my father, let me tell you, boy,” Torvald rapped the skull with the knuckles of his left hand, “you are going to wake up in hell a bigger sucker than you ever were in this life.”

Perhaps it was this revelation, as much as any other, that forced an extra gout of red-threaded yellow mucus to seep under the lower seam of the respirator mask. Torvald laughed long and he laughed hard, and though his laughter was driven by many things and mirth was not one of them, his eyes never left the other eye on the screen. Abruptly he stopped laughing and sank his tongue into the upturned ear. Like a walking beam oil pump lifts its pitman arm in and out of the earth, he drove his tongue in and out of the ear, watching the scene on the screen. His tongue was thick and wet and minty and, when he finished, the ear was too, and his four-tooth bridge lay upturned on the rug.

He stood up clumsily, flushed, his breath whistling.

He retrieved his bridge from the floor, wiped it on his sleeve, and seated it against his palate.

Time to get down to business. Goddamn, it's time to get down to business.

He retrieved the axe.

The toe of his shoe lowered into the frame at the top of the video screen, like a remembered balcony in Chekhov. The flat of its sole arrived on the upturned side of the ruined face and cast a shadow over its eye. The edge of the blade touched the curve of the cranium, tangent to it, one penultimate time.

“So,” Torvald whispered, “it's time to kiss your octopus goodbye.” He smacked his lips. “The pathetic octopus of your existence.”

The blade pulled out of the shot. Torvald's weight came down on the foot. He drew a breath.

He looked toward the desk.

Next to the computer, the tin waited.

He looked down.

The blade had a V-shaped notch in its edge.

For pulling nails. Nails incorrectly driven.

Why not.

The axe head, when new, had been painted red. But only the blunt end. Not the blade. It would take a lot more than filing to get all those other nicks out. Grinding, maybe.

Why not indeed, he thought to himself. “You never know,” he said aloud. He smiled. “Why not.” He unsmiled. “Let's roll the dice. Let's make it really interesting. Let's put it all on double zero.” He stood away from the skull and leaned the axe handle against the window sill. “I was wondering when I'd figure this out. Wait here.” He approached the antique secretary. “I'll be right back.” He turned as he arrived at the desk. “Or I won't.” He turned back to the desk. “Either way,” he added quietly, “who knows? You might well have been driven mad already. You could be mad forever. You could be mad for just a few more minutes.”

Torvald tilted the computer screen so he could reread the last page of text while two of his fingers prowled the open tin, which was nearly empty. Torvald smiled and read on. The dawdling fingers selected a mint and carried it to his mouth. He frowned at the words “Outer Richmond.” The mouth opened. The tongue came forward. Thumb and middle finger placed a mint on the tongue and the forefinger impressed it there, like a stack of chips. Tongue retreated into lair. Torvald tapped an arrow key and sucked. He blinked. He stopped sucking.

A smile opened his face like a zipper. Relief flooded his features. A cry caught in his throat. He brought a fist down to his thigh and struck it once, twice, thrice. By an act of will he swallowed the mint. His Adam's apple bulged around it. Peristalsis conveyed the mint to his stomach. His mind's eye followed the mint down like the crowd in Times Square follows the descent of the ball on New Year's Eve. The effects began almost at once.

With his middle finger he struck the return key. He coughed. Flecks of cupric blue foam speckled the liquid crystal display.

Torvald wrote.

At last
….

Chapter Nineteen

T
HE PARADIDDLES OF
I
VY
P
RUITT, CONDUCTED ON HIS DENIM
thighs by the palms of his hands, penetrated the narcoleptic mists shrouding an uncertain emergence.

“Wake up, Curly. Tell us how much fun it was.”

My eyes wanted to remain closed. I was lying on my back. His hand jive was a visceral irritation. “Ivy Pruitt. Does it have to be you?”

“Welcome back to the animated portion of the program.”

“Whence I can only regress. Go away.”

“Come on, Curly, who else has visited you? Huh? Who?
Me
, that's who. I'm it.”

My eyes allowed themselves to become slits. Separating them was like removing a depilation plaster.

In spite of translucent drapes drawn over the window behind Ivy, my eyes couldn't adjust to the light. His thinness emphasized his big ears; he looked like a numinous jug of olive oil. Newspapers littered the foot of the bed.

The eyes closed again. I experienced weightlessness. “Am I to be visited? Where?”

“Children's Hospital.” Ivy chose a newspaper and put his feet up on the bed. The turning of pages couldn't have been more appalling if they had been the blades of a rotary lawn mower churning lengths of snake.

“Check this out: SEX SLAVE SAVED BY ‘THE OCTOPUS'.”

“That has to be the
Examiner
.”

“Don't you just love the new design? You're famous.”

“It wasn't worth it.”

“Sex slave. That'll be the day.”

“Where is she?”

“Five floors up.” The newspaper rattled. “In a private room with two windows and north light.”

“She's alive?”

“Very.”

I tried to blink. “This room's not private? Who wants to cohabit with The Octopus?”

“If you think about it, the answer's obvious.”

I coaxed the eyelids open. The left eye was blurred. I closed it, raised my head, and used the other eye to inspect the room. Indeed there was another bed. It was surrounded by curtains. A gaggle of equipment clustered against the wall at the head of the bed was turned off.

Ivy let the
Examiner
fall to the floor. “The nurse says not to worry. They'll come get him when they have time, and he wasn't contagious.”

I fell back on the pillow, exhausted.

Ivy explained, paging rapidly through the
Chronicle
, “A school bus has collided with a cable car. All hands to the ER.”

I rubbed the left eye with the back of my right hand. An IV tree next to the bed rattled and tugged back. The wrist came away streaked with translucent jelly.

“What's her room number?”

“819.”

“I can remember that. Add one to eight you get nine, subtract one from nine you get eight.”

“You're a sick puppy,” Ivy said to the newspaper.

We enjoyed silence for a minute or two until he read aloud, “
New Life Form Found Living on Lobster Lips
.”

“Ivy
….
”

“
Only the 36th known phylum of animals
. I'll be damned.” He turned a page.

“Some biologist,” I said, ten seconds later, “has never attended a big-band rehearsal.”

Ivy said, from behind the paper, “That's funny.”

Another minute passed. “Is she okay?”

“He cut her clothes off with garden shears.” Ivy lowered the newspaper. “Showed her various foreign objects he threatened to penetrate her with. When she got good and hysterical, he threatened to shoot himself up with methamphetamine, then shoot her up with the same needle, while meticulously describing various symptoms of the highly communicable human immunodeficiency virus. The room was so cold she developed fluid on her lungs, which became bronchitis which somehow became pneumonia. I'm sure smoking tarball off aluminum foil several times a day for the last three years didn't help. Of course she jonesed while she was tied to that chair, but, still, she got off easy. She's alive and in one piece and on antibiotics, pain killers, and tranquilizers. Not that you can tell the difference.”

“He didn't cut on her?”

“Only superficially.”

Ivy folded the newspaper. “But the drummer's wife bled to death on the floor, right in front of her.”

“Stepnowski's wife?”

“Carved up something terrible. That guy Torvald explained to Lavinia that she was watching her own future, and left her alone with it.”

Ivy took up another paper while I dozed. I woke with a start and said, “Angelica.”

The scatter of papers on the coverlet had gotten sparser.

“That was the name. Lavinia damn near hung herself trying to get out of that chair. Broke a wrist, screwed up her back.”

“Can you blame her?”

“Nobody does. But her mother blames everybody.”

This took a moment to sink in.

“Yes,” Ivy said, “Lavinia was born of woman.”

“Where?”

“Buffalo? Scranton? Someplace back east. Until the mother showed up, Lavinia was right down the hall. Then there was a lot of commotion and now it's a private room, a private doctor, a masseuse, and a nutritionist.”

“No shrink?”

“Of course there's a shrink.”

“He'll be fascinated.”

“It's a she. There's a lawyer, too.”

“Mom is suing a psychopath?”

“Almost. Mom is suing Sal Kramer.”

“What? Ouch. Try not to startle me.”

“Sorry,” he lied.

“For what?” I asked. “Is she suing, I mean.”

“Medical expenses. Mom's claim is that Lavinia got messed up while she was on the World of Sound's payroll. Sal maintains she was an independent contractor. Mom also claims, by the way, that she's not greedy.”

“Sal had better settle.”

“Sal doesn't think so. Mom also thinks Sal sent her little girl on a job she was over-qualified to perform.” Ivy punched the fold out of a page. “She thinks that hardly any Vassar graduates do repo work. Sal claims to know better.”

“Why not?” I squinted at the label on a nylon bracelet on my wrist. “The money's terrific.”

“Hell, if I hadn't called the cops, Mom wouldn't have a daughter at all. Then Sal would really be in trouble.”

The printing was upside down. “
You
called the cops?”

Ivy kept some newspaper between us. “Sal had given up on you guys. When I finally tracked him down, he was in a private booth in the back of the bar at Original Joe's with a hooker and a heat on.”

“You needed money,” I guessed.

“Business is business. I thought he was just being slow to pay me. But when Sal assured me he was still waiting for your call, I blew a gasket. It was more than a day later!”

“A day?”

“Sal coughed up some cop's pager number and I dropped the dime. I never called a cop in my life.”

“Wow,” I said. “It must have been hard for you.”

“It turned out to be exactly the break this cop Garcia was waiting for. Something about cat blood giving insufficient probable cause. For you and Lavinia, though, he was able to get a warrant.”

“Cat blood. Cat blood?”

“It still took four hours to get a judge to issue a warrant. Due process, and all that.”

“What break?”

“Three years ago another tenant disappeared, a young woman. It was Garcia's first case since they took him off a beat, his first homicide, and he was the junior guy. His superior was a renowned detective, but the guy was burned out. Garcia worshiped him so it was a long time before he realized that the guy's sole interest in life at that point had nothing to do with solving murder cases. All he could think about was retirement with full disability. Plus a body was never found. So the case went nowhere.

“Stepnowski turned out to have the same landlord, and when it comes to murder, Garcia says, there are no coincidences. But Stepnowski's body was found on De Haro Street, and, what with the money left with the body and the missing wife, everything pointed to her. Garcia had to go the extra mile to disabuse himself, not to mention the D.A.'s office, of that theory. While the landlord gladly let the cops search Stepnowski's apartment, there wasn't sufficient cause or even sufficient suspicion to get a search warrant for the landlord's own place, even though it was right next door. But then you and Lavinia fell off the scope. By then Garcia had turned up the facts that not only had the landlord's wife disappeared without a trace almost twelve years ago, but his fucking next door neighbor had disappeared, too. So when I called, he was up to five missing persons with Torvald in common.” Ivy snapped his fingers. “Bob's your uncle.”

“Garcia solved his case.”

Ivy shrugged. “In the interim, a whole bunch of people died. It haunts him.”

My eyelids drooped. “A bunch…?”

Ivy said a number. I didn't catch it.

After a while I woke up again. “So what's it been like, your brief visit to the right side of the law?”

“Hey,” Ivy said cheerfully, “there's victimless crime, and there's the other kind.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of which
….
” He fell silent.

My eyes narrowed. “Speaking of which?”

“That keyboard is too damaged for Sal to pay off on it, even if he ever gets it out of evidence.”

The skin twitched over my crushed cheek.

“However,” Ivy continued, “in the matter of Mom versus Kramer's World of Sound, Sal has retained me as a, uh, technical consultant.”

“You're going to testify that under normal circumstances Lavinia could have blown that creep away?”

“Nah. I'm like the opposite of a character witness. Before Mom opens the can of worms she calls Lavinia, she needs to determine how widely she wants the can of worms she calls Lavinia broadcast.”

“Gee. That sounds like legalized blackmail.”

“Even Mom admits that Lavinia's next stop is detox. You'd think she'd let well enough alone.”

“Mom doesn't need a lawyer. She needs a spin doctor.”

“True story.” Ivy gathered up the rest of the newspapers. “Gotta keep up appearances back east, I guess.”

“In California, nobody can hear you care.”

“The freeway's too loud. By the way, if you want to see Lavinia, you'd best crawl on up there. Mom's pressing for an early release. Fuckin' sports.” Ivy threw the section to the floor. “Fuckin' business. Fuckin' food. Fuckin' home decoration. Fuckin' weekend.” He dealt the last four sections to the floor. “First paper I've read in years. Nothing's changed. Waste of time.” He settled back in his chair. “So, Curly, the King's retainer won't kick in until next week, after his lawyer deposes me.”

“So?”

“So I need a hundred bucks.”

“You're putting the bite on me in my own hospital bed?”

“Don't you think that's a personal problem?”

“Not only that, but where in hell would I get a hundred bucks?”

Ivy pointed at a little nightstand next to the bed. There were various medicine bottles with a
People
magazine and a
Mac Warehouse
catalog on top of it, and a single drawer in its face.

I took a look around the room, stalling. Of the two doors one probably led to a bathroom, the other to a hall. Above the bathroom door hung two dark televisions, one aimed at each bed. “Did you turn those TVs off?”

Ivy sat back in his chair and tented his fingers. “It's a hell of a thing to come back from the other side, only to discover that your reward for staying alive is daytime television.” He freed a finger from the tent and pointed. “That button at the end of that wire, draped over your left shoulder?”

I looked down my nose.

“Pure hospital M.” Ivy spoke as if he were in church. “Damn near all you want. You've slept off the last dose. That's why you're so grouchy.”

I felt as weak as a dandelion gone to seed. If someone puffed, all my anthers would blow away.

“Need a hand?”

A few minutes later a very big sleep was coming on, inevitable and unavoidable. I was very grateful. “What money?”

“Whatever was left.”

“In the drawer?”

Ivy nodded.

I closed my eyes. “Why ask? Why don't you just take it?”

“What am I, some kind of thieving musician?”

“No,” I smiled dreamily. “You're a drummer.”

“It was the cat blood that tipped me.”

Lieutenant Garcia sat by my bed, moving a stylus over the face of a palmtop computer. “On the warehouse floor.”

“Cat blood,” I repeated stupidly. “How did Torvald get him there in the first place?”

“A handtruck.” The palmtop beeped. “We found it in the back of the cab-over van Stepnowski used to shuttle his band's equipment around, when he had a band. We found it abandoned in Bay View. We found his shoes, too, along with all of his other stuff. He really was moving to that warehouse. He had kicked off his shoes and was smoking a joint in an easy chair in the back of the van when Torvald shot him.”

“Cat blood?”

“I was in the shower when I finally remembered the stuffed cats. I noticed Torvald's wall of taxidermy during my first interview with him, three years ago. Torvald did his own taxidermy, you know.”

The morphine button was still in my hand. I pressed it.

“The interview was just routine. Landlord of a decedent. We always have too many missing people. Sometimes there are connections. You just have to see them. Then you have to prove them. The cat blood made the connection. How could it not? It was deliberate. Boy, did it make a connection. Like a cold fish in the face.” Garcia patted his cheek. “Torvald wanted us to net him, but who would believe me? I had already pulled out all the stops. The DNA test was routine, but I fast-tracked it. You never know. When the results came back cat blood, you could have knocked me over with a feather. But I didn't see the connection right away. The whole case hinged on the next time I took a shower. I get a lot of good ideas in the shower. You, too?”