The Sandman (23 page)

The car stopped, and Beauregard pointed to a lonely-looking hill, where amidst a few patches of green grass and a couple of blue flowers, a single stone stood.

“I’m staying in the car,” Sarah said. “I was wrong to come out here. It’s still too scary for me.”

“Okay,” Heather said, “you need to rest that leg anyway, “but you do see that Peter Cross is buried there. Those nightmares you’ve been having are just that … dreams. He’s not coming to get you.”

“I see,” Sarah said.

“Good,” Heather said, patting her arm. “Will you be all right here while we go up there?”

“Sure,” Sarah said.

They got out of the car and walked up the hill. Beauregard took both of their arms. When they stopped, he read the headstone.

Peter
Cross 1943-1979 Physician

“That’s nice,” Debby said, trying not to cry. “There’s a part of him, you know, that would have liked that.”

“I know,” Beauregard said. “I guess I came here today for a reason too. It’s not that I blame myself, because the damage to Peter had been done a long, long time ago. But still, I feel in some way responsible.”

“He wanted perfection,” Debby said.

Beauregard nodded.

“Yes, and innocence. He was able to kill because he was in love with the idea of innocence, of purity … perhaps more than anything else. Maybe it was ideas that did him in. The idea of a lost perfect love, twisted and turned black by his own self-hatred—the terrible loathing of his own mortal body.”

“Perhaps now he has found peace,” Heather said.

“Maybe,” Beauregard said. “Whatever it is, it’s what he really wanted.”

Debby took a deep breath and placed the lilies across his grave.

“Good-bye, Peter,” she said.

Then the three of them turned and went down the hill toward the car.

Beauregard and Heather climbed in the front, Debby in the back. She looked down at Sarah, curled up on the seat.

“She looks just like an angel,” Debby said.

Heather and Beauregard turned and smiled down at their child.

“They always do,” Beauregard said, “when they’re asleep.”

If you liked The Sandman check out:

The Cactus Garden

C
harlotte Rae Wingate sailed along in front of them, cruising over the smashed Dixie cups, old L.A.
Times,
three piles of dog shit, and one 1976 Barbie doll head, which lay smashed in the sunbaked street of Hollywood Boulevard. Charlotte Rae drove a perfectly restored candy-apple red 1965 T-Bird, and her bleached blonde head and thirty-eight-inch breasts bobbed up and down to the thunderous sound of Guns ‘N’ Roses. Two car-lengths behind her was a black Dodge Ram Charger. Jack Walker peered at her through his marine binoculars; C.J. Jefferson crouched forward behind the steering wheel, looking like a diver about to sail off one of the cliffs of Acapulco. Walker rubbed his jaw with his left hand and smiled.

“I love her. She’s perfect. Completely self-invented,” he said. “The retro car, the bottle-blonde hair, the latest greatest in silicone jobs, the pink-frosted-lipstick, Jackie Kennedy redux thing, the shitty taste in music.”

“You don’t dig Axl, man,” Jefferson said. “I thought all you white boys dug Axl.”

“Axl’s an asshole with an attitude and a fag falsetto,” Walker said. “They should pay Al Green to give him singing lessons.”

C.J. Jefferson growled a little.

“You got the bad attitude, but I’m gonna forgive you for liking somebody in my generation.”

“Still, I could see improving her mind over a bottle of wine,” Walker said.

“Nah, only time you’re gonna meet Charlotte Rae is when we turn the key on her,” C.J. said.

Jefferson’s gold tooth shone when he smiled, and Jack sighed and went back to his glasses.

“Think of it,” he said, “a broad who looks like that. In any other city she’d be a star. Out here she’s just one more bad actress who can’t find any new hooker roles to play.”

C.J. shook his head.

“Yeah, ain’t it tragic. ‘Course I do remember seeing her in a couple of pictures,
Die Roach Die
and
Bride of the Slime Master.
You see those beauties, maybe you get a better understanding why she’s happy in the drug biz.”

“Yeah, I saw the second one on USA. The honeymoon slime thing was a bitch,” Walker said. “Think she ever gives any of this shit a thought?”

“Nah. That’s where the metal music comes in,” C.J. said.

“How’s that?”

“Keep it loud enough and drop enough pills, and you can pretend you’re not a flunked out actress who goes home to Buddy Wingate.”

In front of them, Charlotte Rae Wingate cruised past three earnest young Hare Krishnas dressed in their orange robes, walking in lockstep down the street, ready to fill the denizens of the boulevard with ecstasy. She looked over at them, sneered a little, and then reached down to the Mexican briefcase made from a red-and-black hand-stitched blanket and aged-down buckskin. She slowed the car down as she got to Mann’s Chinese Theater and stared at the giant poster of Clint Eastwood. Buddy had said they were going to meet him soon…. Clint … Clint … she liked the sound of it, like rocks, rhymed with flint, something solid a girl could hang on to. She waited, waited for the man with the “End of the World” sign to cross the street. He was three feet away, wore a rust-colored beard that stopped at his knees, smelled like a buffalo, had a giant rip in the side of his pants, out of which one of his hairy, scabbed legs stuck. She wished to hell he’d move … there was work to do. She ripped the Axl disc out of the CD player and slapped in Pearl Jam. She pumped up the volume to ten, gripped the wheel, when suddenly she felt something cold sticking into the bridge of her perfect starlet pug nose. She looked up and saw a black man, six feet three, two hundred and fifty pounds. His face was in some kind of terminal grimace, and he had a half-moon tattoo wedged into his cheek.

“Step out of the car, bitch.”

“Jesus Christ, don’t shoot,” Charlotte Rae said.

He pulled back the hammer of the .38 Colt semiautomatic. And smiled. But he didn’t look happy.

“See, I need me a T-Bird,” he said. “You get out real slow and normal like, maybe I won’t make your pretty white face look like an explosion in a pizza factory.”

“Oh, Christ,” she said. “Oh, my God. Please.”

Behind her, the black van stopped at the traffic light at Highland. Walker sucked in his breath, listened intently on the speaker phones.

“Unscheduled party, C.J.”

“Oh, man. Big trouble.”

Walker whirled the steering wheel to the right, jammed the van into a screeching halt at the curb in front of the Hollywood Wax Museum. He leapt from the car door and saw a Charlie Chaplin mime who stood frozen at the museum door, badly pantomiming the shoe-eating scene from
The Gold Rush.
Jack blinked, watched him as he twirled his derby on the tip of his cane.

Jack looked back at Jefferson.

“He’s gonna do her, C.J. I’m going in.”

“Jack, wait, man.”

“Trust me, partner,” Jack said. Then he was on the street, running full-tilt at the big black man, who had already pulled Charlotte Rae out of her car and was sitting behind the steering wheel. As Jack raced toward him, he could see the gun’s silhouette, refracting the morning sun. Very poetic.

“You gonna kiss this white world good-bye, baby,” the car-jacker said, smiling.

“Yo, homey,” Jack yelled. “Check this.”

Then he lifted off the ground, sailed through the smog-deadened air over the back of the little T-Bird, and smashed his forearm into the man’s neck.

He heard the jacker groan as his head hit the windshield and a wild shot fired off into the sky. That should have been the end of it, Jack thought, but it wasn’t. They were moving, the two of them … the car rolling to the right, fast, too goddamned fast. Jack looked down at the thief’s foot, saw it lying heavily on the accelerator. As he looked back out in the street, he saw the End-of-the-World man scream and fall back on his ass, and then there was this huge red coiling dragon looming above the speeding car.

The T-Bird stopped dramatically as it smashed into the glass ticket booth at Mann’s Chinese. The car thief’s forehead was crushed as it smashed through the windshield. The shock of the impact flung Jack’s head into the fashionably restored chrome and leather dashboard. Glass shattered like diamonds, the windshield bent and bucked grotesquely, and behind them the End-of-the-World man had a vague smile of recognition on his face. Oh, this was it, this was the Day, the Great Day he had been waiting for, the Day of Fiery Judgment, Praise the Lord. He stared amazed as the red, forty-foot Mann’s Chinese dragon slumped from its perch atop the battered ticket booth and flopped on the crunched-up hood and smashed windshield of the car. Twenty feet down the street, C.J. Jefferson watched in pure disbelief, silently mouthing the single word, “Motherfucker,” while on the sidewalk the little Chaplin clone stood mute, amazed, his white-gloved hand over his painted O of a mouth.

Inside the crushed T-Bird, Jack braced himself on the unconscious thief’s bald and tattooed head, then pushed himself up and back, onto the trunk, and slid down in a heap next to the back left tire. He turned and looked at Charlotte Rae, who walked toward him, taking one halting step at a time, like a sleepwalking toddler.

“Oh, my God,” she said, in a dazed monotone. “Oh, my God…. My God.”

Jack managed a crooked smile. Rubbed his hand across his bloody forehead. He could feel interesting dents in it, holes from where his skin had met the chrome knobs on her radio. Blood dripped down his eyebrows.

“Have a nice day,” he said. “You okay?”

“Yes, but you … Oh, my God. You saved my life. Really.”

Jack nodded, looked at the wrecked car, the destroyed Hollywood landmark. The dragon’s serpentine head had landed just a few feet from him, and he reached over and gave it a friendly pat.

“Nice dragon,” he said. “Looks a little hungry, though.”

“You … you saved me,” she said again.

“I don’t know,” Jack said, looking around at the debris. “Considering how little resale value your car is gonna’ have, maybe I should have let him go.”

“No. You saved my life. ‘Cause he was gonna pull the trigger. There was no doubt, I could see it in his eyes. Oh, God.”

Charlotte Rae slumped down beside him, her arms flopping like overcooked pasta.

“Deep breaths,” Jack said. “In and out. Slow and easy. You survived the mugger, now you gotta make it past the bystanders.”

He looked out at the pathetic ragtag group who stood gawking. The End-of-the-World man smiled at him with toothless gums. This was a Sign, oh, yes yes yes. The three Hare Krishnas stood stiffly in their flowing saris. They sported confused looks on their well-scrubbed faces; there was something they should do here, they were sure of it. Every catastrophe was an opportunity to serve the Krishna and win a few more converts, but in this case, it was unclear to them exactly how they could turn chaos to their advantage. Next to them, two foul-smelling bums dressed in rags, smiled at the tableau as though it were Christmas come early.

Charlotte Rae swallowed hard, put her soft hand in his.

“God,” she said. “Jesus, God. City of fucking Angels.”

She began to cry, and Jack had to restrain himself from putting his arm around her and pulling her to his chest. Even with her standard Malibu Makeover, it was obvious she had the kind of beauty that stopped clocks.

The manager came racing from the dark theater. He was a round little Armenian man with bad skin and great owl eyes. His black hair was combed forward to a perfect point in the middle of his forehead, just like Nero. He wore a shiny blue suit, with the Mann’s logo on the pocket and the pants legs two inches too short, revealing bright orange socks. His shoes were gray Hush Puppies. They had a mottled look, like old oatmeal.

“Look,” he screamed. “Look what you done to my dragon.”

“Fuck the dragon,” Jack said.

“Fuck the dragon?” the manager said, staring down at Jack with watery eyes.

“Right,” Charlotte Rae said, “and while we’re at it, fuck you too.”

She looked at him and began to laugh. “You have no idea what you done. This dragon’s historic landmark,” the aggrieved manager said. “Not anymore,” Jack said.

The manager said nothing after that, but wandered around touching the fallen serpent, shaking his head and making small sighing sounds.

“How?” she said. “Where were you?”

“Behind you. Me and my buddy in his van. Our day off, and we were heading for the beach. Hey, there he is now.”

Calvin Jefferson was jogging toward them, smiling and shaking his head.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “I knew you played ball, Jackie, but that was an All-Pro hit, you all right?”

“It only hurts when I cough up blood,” Jack said. He spat a little on the street.

“Jack?” she said. “Jack who?”

“McKenna,” Jack said. “You?”

“Charlotte Rae Wingate,” she said, blushing a little. “Pleased to meet you … very pleased.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, and Jack felt the spot burn a little.

“This is my friend Larry Washington,” Jack said, pointing at Jefferson.

“Hello, Larry,” she said. “Tell your friend Jack he has to go to the hospital. Now.”

“She’s right, Jackie,” Jefferson said. “You’re dripping blood all over Joan Crawford.”

Jack looked down at the footprint to his left. It was Joan Crawford’s. There was a nice little pool of his blood collecting in the big masculine. “J.”

“No wire hangers,” he said. “We can beat the kids just as well with plastic.”

“Is he always like this?” Charlotte Rae said to Jefferson.

“ ‘Cept when he’s sleeping,” Jefferson said.

“Good,” Charlotte Rae said. “Now come on.”

She looked at Jack with her blue eyes in a way that made him want to bleed a little more.

Jack looked back at the big guy behind the wheel. His head was jammed through the windshield. He seemed to be snoring. One of Salazar’s boys, no doubt. No way this was a legit car-jack.

“I think the cops are gonna want to talk to us first,” Jack said. “The good old LAPD. I hear their sirens down the block, so they should be here by tomorrow.”