tomeubanks.com

                                                

                            Marri Bernier * Lisa Snider * Tracy Phillips 
                                   Louis Kraft * Daniel McGinley

                                            CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

                                                The Cosmic Roll

5:00 p.m.

Reggie's quick exit was unexpected.

Joe broke away from the shadows behind the pool table, knocking over cue sticks leaning against the wall and sending a chalk cube flying onto the pool table as he streaked by and out the door of Winkle's. He had a difficult time hearing what was being said. He heard bits and pieces. Enough to know that he was looking for somebody by the name of November Wallace, that the town was erecting a statue in honor of Chris Paley, and some handsome guy had been looking for Wallace on Wednesday.

Banging through the door into the blinding glare of the sun, he frantically looked up and down the street but didn't see Reggie. He'd felt a surge go through him when Reggie walked through the door, but now the high plummeted to lowly frustration. How could he lose him? Tires chirped. He looked westward into the sun, shading his eyes. A blue Olds made a right onto Second Street. Had to be him. Joe scrambled across to his BMW, flipped a u-turn. He screamed up the street, passing cars, dangerously slipping by on the curb side. A smoke-puking truck pulled out from a side street and blocked him. A train of cars coming the other way kept him from passing. He banged the steering wheel with both fists. Finally, he got by the truck. He canvassed the area, street by street.

* * *

Winkle's description did November's house justice. It actually looked deserted. The windows were broken out in front and boards were nailed across them in packing-crate style. What was once a landscaped yard with mounds of dirt clothed in green grass was now bare desert, dead cactus and junk that had been hauled from the house and left to rot in the sun. As he approached the screen door, now just a wooden frame, Reggie heard a T.V. on inside. A rusted steel bell hung beside the screen door with a shoestring tied to its clapper. Reggie jerked it three times. He listened. A blur of rooting. The sound decreased slightly.

A voice called: "Who is it!"

"Reggie Thomas."

He heard November grumble, "You got a shotgun with you?"

"No. I want to talk. I got Scotch to share."

The door opened slightly. November peeked out. Immediately his eyes found the brown paper bag in Reggie's hand. He wiggled his eyebrows playfully, opened the door, pushed back the screen door frame. "Bring it in."

With all the drapes drawn, the room was dark, except for the light from the T.V. A T.V. tray stood in front of a pock-marked old divan; on it was the remains of a Mexican frozen dinner and two empty bottles of Buckhorn beer.

November turned on the lamp on the end table. "Let's see what you got there," he said. He took the bag, unsheathed the bottle. His grin said it all. "Take a seat. Join me?" Reggie nodded. He went to the kitchen, a cluttered nook in back, and returned with two water-spotted glasses. Reggie inspected the room. Pictures adorned one wall. Wallace in a Navy uniform. Wallace receiving a trophy. Wallace and a woman with a face only a husband could love. Wallace standing beside a hearse. Wallace standing on the deck of a fishing boat, holding up a big orange rock cod. And there was Wallace with Chris Paley. Wallace had to be twenty years younger. They were shaking hands in front of city hall.

November handed Reggie a glass of Scotch, tipped his own in thanks, and slugged it down. He followed Reggie's gaze. "When you look at that wall, you're lookin' at my whole damn life."

Reggie sat in a rocking chair. He didn't know what to say first, so he sipped the whiskey. It burned but sent a calm message to his brain that any attempt to shoot adrenalin through him would be punishable by more of the same.

"Like football?" Wallace said, gesturing to the Ram game. "Or did you come here for something unimportant?"

"Read the newspapers lately?"

"Sports page."

"You hear about the girl who drowned in The Plunge last night?"

Wallace looked at the game a moment, then at Reggie. "Can't say I did."

The bull snorts.

"Wallace, look, no bullshit." Reggie sighed, drank the rest of his whiskey. "My girlfriend was murdered Saturday and dumped in the lake. You've been checking me out since I got here. You and that faggot Quinn. Whoever took Paley's body Thursday drove off in your damn pick-up. You say you don't know who was driving it. Well that same person was looking for you and Winkle's on Wednesday, and I think he's got Paley's body. I don't know what's going on around here. I don't know whose side you're on or who you're trying to hurt. And I don't care. All I know is that my girlfriend was raped on Thursday, the same day you picked me up down from the Paley ranch, and I happen to know it wasn't no coincidence that you drove by. Quinn sent you. And Saturday she's dead. Same day you and Quinn were snoopin' around out at Josh Paley's place. I hate movies where the same character turns up in every scene."

That last part got Wallace's attention away from the T.V. "I don't know nothin'," he said, blurry-eyed. "Not a damn thing."

Fueled by frustration and whiskey, Reggie lunged out of the rocking chair, grabbed the old man by the hair with both hands and whipped him off the couch, knocking over the T.V. tray, and slammed him into the wall. A dozen photographs jumped their nails and tumbled down, banged Wallace across the back and head.

"Hey, hey, hey!" he screamed, covering his head with his hands.

Reggie backed away, feeding his restraint with that hope that Wallace would cooperate. Slowly, the old man rose, grunting. He brushed off broken glass and silently began gathering up the pictures.

"What's going on?" Reggie asked, panting. "What's Quinn up to?" Wallace said nothing. "She was seventeen, for God's sake."

Wallace focused on Reggie for a moment. Then his hands shook as he began hanging the pictures on the nails stippled over the wall. Reggie watched as he carefully hung and straightened each one. Finally, he hung the photograph of himself standing beside the hearse. And Reggie realized that he stood beside it because he'd been the driver. He pushed Wallace aside, wrenched the photograph from the nail and stared into it. Wallace glared. Reggie turned the photograph over. In faded pencil, it read: Tenderness Mortuary, 1985.

"What do you have to do with the cemetery?" Reggie asked.

Wallace glared at him. "I owned the son-of-a-whore."

"What happened?"

"Sold it."

"To who?"

He grunt-laughed. "Paley."

The shadow walked to the wooden shed, unlocked the doors, drove the backhoe down to the grave.

"You know who took Paley's body, don't you? You made it possible, isn't that right?" Wallace shrugged. "You're the kind of fucking creep who knows what everybody's doing, playing every side. Did Paley screw you? You and Quinn got your own agenda?" Reggie turned the picture back over. In the background, on the passenger's side of the hearse, stood a man with a face like a...a Pekinese. Reggie pointed at the face. "Who's this?"

Pausing, Wallace replied: "Malcolm."

"Malcolm. Malcolm-fuckin'-who?"

"Rendquist."

The name slid by him and stopped. Rendquist, Rendquist. Quinn and Lucilva talked about him on the phone Friday night. Rendquist. The doctor who signed Paley's death certificate. The doctor Brenda said was a member of the city council.

Wallace walked to the front door, opened it and said: "Get out of my house. Take your damn whiskey with you."

Reggie tossed the photograph on the divan. He left without his whiskey. Still fuzzy-brained from the quick-acting liquor, he stood on the sidewalk and breathed the warm desert air and thought, Am I wrong about everything? Am I fooling myself that everything is connected–the grave robbing, the rape, the murder? It didn't matter anymore. The bull charges. That's what a bull does best. He had his next destination in mind, but when he reached the Olds at the curb, he noticed a man approaching the Mojave Mini-Mart across the street. Something familiar about him. Very familiar. Reggie stepped into the street to get closer. It was Bob, the dingbat's brother from the cabins last night.

I'm on some cosmic roll.

He jumped behind the wheel, listened to music on the radio, and waited. Minutes passed. Bob came out, got in a blue BMW and u-turned back to the main drag. At the light at the corner, before making a right turn, Reggie couldn't help but pull up on his bumper. He sat low in his seat, turned down his visor for cover. But Bob looked up in his rearview mirror. Bob's eyes got big–a happy big.

* * *

The car fooled him. Not the face. When Joe saw Reggie, he experienced the excitement that only dumb luck lugged with it. Reggie's face registered recognition, too.

Big decision now, he thought. Do I pretend I don't see him and pick up his tail? Or do my thing now? He thinks I'm this doofus with Tammy Jones. If he had anything to do with Jackie's death, would he still be hanging around town?

Joe turned onto Paley Lake Boulevard. Reggie stayed back a few car lengths. At the first street, Joe turned right again. Reggie followed. They were now headed back the opposite direction. Joe made the real test by turning right again, completing three sides of a block. In his mirror was an empty street. Then the bumper and hood of the Olds poked around the corner.

* * *

Was it really important that he know where Bob was headed? Was it coincidence that he kept running into this guy or something more cosmic? Reggie's doubts whispered, yes, yes.

Why did Bob drive around the block? They were back on Gratzke now. Maybe he caught on that he was being followed. The blue BMW turned right on Paley Lake Boulevard again, parked at the curb in front of a barber shop–the old fashioned kind with a candy-striped gizmo spinning out front. Bob got out as Reggie rounded the corner and entered the shop.

He was looking for a parking space was all. Not worth waiting around. Got one more place to go.

* * *

The eyes in the back of his head let Joe know that Reggie drove on by.

The bald-headed barber rose from a chair in the empty shop. "Have a seat, son."

For a moment, Joe watched the Olds head west on the boulevard.

"Let me close the door," the barber said, "and turn up the air for you."

Joe produced a grin and left without a word. The barber mumbled and returned to his chair.

The Olds was two blocks up ahead, approaching a yellow light by the time Joe was back on the street hugging the butt-end of a Toyota pick-up for cover. They caught the red.

Keep it loose, he told himself. You'll find him. Don't burn him. Eyes trained on the Olds as it disappeared in the distance. Why had he followed me? Was it curiosity? A curiosity born from catching us up at his cabin last night just hours before Jackie's body was discovered. But Lee hinted that it was a male voice that had called the station about the body. Reggie was there at the lake. There's a pay phone out on the road.

The light turned green. Joe stomped the gas pedal, slung around the pick-up, charged through traffic and picked out the tail of the Olds as it pulled to the curb and parked. Right in front of the Desert Inn.