All The Bells on Earth (48 page)

“Yes. What Mr. Goldfarb told you is entirely true. Mr. Douglas has been drinking heavily for days. My sister left the kids in my care.”

“Well,” the officer said, “thank you for helping out, but Mr. Douglas doesn’t appear to be intoxicated now. According to this document, he’s the children’s legal guardian. At least until court opens tomorrow we’ll have to assume the document’s legal. I’m afraid you’ll have to get the children. Are they here?”

“They’re here,” Ivy said.

“Why do we assume the document’s legal?” Goldfarb asked. “I have reason to believe it isn’t.”

Ivy looked at Jack’s lawyer, who was stone-faced.

“That’s a lie,” Jack said.

“May I?” Goldfarb held his hand out, and the officer gave him the fax. “Well, this
is
odd,” he said after a moment.

“What the hell’s odd?” Jack tried to grab the fax, but Goldfarb snatched it away.

“The judge’s name. Benjamin Meng. He retired six months ago, didn’t he? I seem to recall that he moved up north, up to Oroville. The date’s just right, though, isn’t it? How do you explain that? Has he come out of retirement?” He looked Jack’s lawyer straight in the face, but the man said nothing. The second of the two officers turned around and walked down the steps and out to the patrol car.

“What I think is this,” Goldfarb said. “I think you took an old copy of a court order, whited out the inaccurate information, typed in fresh information, then had it faxed to yourself in order to obtain a clean copy. You set this appointment up late in the afternoon because you knew that court would be closed and the document’s authenticity couldn’t be established. Am I right so far?”

“No,” Jack said. “We’re out here this late because
these
people”—he gestured at Ivy and Henry—“have had the kids hidden away. I call that kidnapping. I call that taking a man’s kids away, and if that’s not a crime, then it’s a sorry damned world we’re living in.”

“But then of course they’re not your kids, are they, Jack?” Ivy kept her voice even.

“I as good as raised them,” Jack said. “What they had, I bought them, didn’t I? They’d be on the
street
if it weren’t for me. Deny
that.”

“Okay,” Ivy said, “I’ll deny it. They never would have been on the street. They’d have been here. They
are
here, aren’t they?”

Jack’s lawyer still said nothing.

The second officer came back up onto the porch. “Judge Meng retired last March. The order’s bogus.”

Jack’s lawyer shrugged. Jack shoved his jaw out, as if he were trying to bite his upper lip. “This is all crap,” he said.

“Actually,” Goldfarb said, “I’ve got a fax of my own from the San Diego County courthouse. Weren’t you married to Darla Schwenk in San Diego County, Mr. Douglas?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“There’s no record of any such marriage. I believe you were actually married in Tijuana.”

“So what? That’s legal. Isn’t that legal?” He appealed to his lawyer who rolled his eyes tiredly.

“I’m afraid I’ve been seriously misled,” Jack’s lawyer said to the two officers. “I’ve got someplace to be by six.” He looked at his watch. “So if I can’t be of any more service here …”

“Stay where you are,” the first officer said. “You’re going to be late, wherever you’ve got to be.”

“This,” Goldfarb said, showing them a second paper, “is from the court of the County of Orange. There’s no record of Darla Schwenk having been divorced at all from her first husband. I put through a call to a Mr. Bill Schwenk, the children’s biological father, and he sent back this notarized letter stating that there had been no divorce. The papers were never filed. He’s still the children’s legal guardian. In the letter he gives his permission to Walt and Ivy Stebbins to care for the children until their mother returns to claim them. The letter’s a fax, too, I’m afraid, but as you can see, the original was notarized.” He handed all the documentation to the police, who looked it over hastily.

The front door opened then, and Walt looked out through the screen.

“Hi,” he said, coming out onto the porch. “Jack! How are you? Is all this cleared up? I sure hope so.” He smiled brightly at Jack. “I’m Walt Stebbins, Nora and Eddie’s uncle,” he said to the two officers. “If I can help … ?” He gestured with both hands.

“You can help by fucking off,” Jack said to him.

“Now, Jack,” Walt said, “that kind of language won’t do. You haven’t been drinking again, have you?”

“You going to let them talk to me that way?” Jack said to his lawyer. “After what I paid you? I want these people arrested. Kidnapping and assault.”

“You didn’t pay me half enough as it is, Jack,” the lawyer said.

“Well, then, why don’t you go to Hell, you shyster bastard?”

“Try to calm down, sir,” the first officer said.

“I know my rights, asshole. I can say anything I want, and you can’t touch me, and you know it. To hell with you, man, and your friend too.”

“Have
you been drinking, sir?”

“Shove it up your ass.”

“Oh,
no
!” Walt muttered, and Ivy elbowed him in the ribs.

“I’d like your cooperation here, sir. I believe there’s reason for you to take a field sobriety test. If you’re unwilling to submit to a test here, we can take you to the station and draw blood. The choice is yours.”

“The hell if you’ll do anything like that. You know I’m not drunk. I haven’t had a drink since last night. There’s no damn way you’d take me in and risk my being sober. I’d ream you both out, and you know it damn well.” His voice rose, and the veins stood out in his neck. He looked furiously at Walt, who smiled like a Cheshire cat, and Jack threw his arm back to take a punch at him.

“Don’t do it,” the second cop said. “Don’t even think about it. So far no …”

”
Shut
the hell up,” Jack said, swiveling around toward the cop and poking him in the chest with his index finger. He tried to step past him then, to storm away, but quicker than Ivy could see exactly what happened, the second cop’s arm shot out, spun Jack around, and Jack was on his knees on the porch with his arm bent around behind him. The other officer already had his handcuffs out. There was a double click of the cuff latches, and then Jack was hauled to his feet.

“Where are the kids?” Ivy asked Walt.

“With Jinx. In the shed.”

The police read Jack his rights as they led him through the drizzle toward the patrol car, taking his lawyer along with them.

“Assaulting a police officer,” Goldfarb said clicking his tongue. “I’m afraid Mr. Douglas made a rather grievous mistake. He must have wanted those kids very badly.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with the kids,” Walt said. “Believe me, I know. This had to do with getting mad, which is pretty much the same as getting drunk, as I see it. You lose your mind either way.”

“Write that down,” Ivy said to Henry. “Let’s post it on the refrigerator.”

“Let’s order a pizza,” Walt said. “Drink, Mr. Goldfarb?”

“Thanks,” the lawyer said. “Don’t mind if I do.”

They opened the door and went in. “Darla called this afternoon,” Ivy said, looking at Walt.

“What’d she say?”

“She got a job working for that chiropractor. She’s putting her life back together, she said, one piece at a time. I told her we were happy to keep the kids for a while, for however long she needs.”

‘Good,” Walt said. “And good for her.” He could see Nora and Eddie coming in through the back door, and he heard Nora’s laughter. He was happy to see them. “I hope Darla finds herself,” he said. “I honestly do.

I
T WAS DARK WHEN
Argyle parked in front of the alley next to Nelson and Whidley and shut the car off. The unlit alley where LeRoy and Nelson had burned to death stretched away into the darkness, wet with rainwater. On the front wall of the architects’ offices that formed the south wall of the alley, a long strand of pinlights spelled out the words “Merry Christmas,” blinking on and off and casting a feeble light down onto the hood of his car. He was swept with the sudden urge to tear the lights down, to climb up onto the hood of his car and leap for them, to beat them to pieces against the bricks….

He found that the door was open and he was standing in gutter water. A wet wind gusted out of the alley and into his face. Hurriedly he climbed back into the car. It was a weeknight, so there were only a few diners at the Continental Cafe, and all of them sat inside, out of the weather. The sidewalks were deserted, the streets virtually empty. No one had seen him. He hadn’t called attention to himself.

The golem sat in the seat beside him. It looked as if Bentley had knocked the living sense out of the thing with the poker—whatever sense it ever had—and it stared out the window now as if it was drugged.

Since being blinded by the weird lamplight in the Stebbinses’ shed, Argyle’s vision had flickered in and out, and he wondered if he were working up to have a stroke, if that’s what would get him. Was the alley as black as it seemed? The dead end couldn’t be more than forty feet distant, but it was hidden in a shadow as black as ink. His ears rang with a leaden clanging sound, and very faintly he could hear what sounded like voices, weak and far away.

He opened a leather satchel on the seat and took out the tin box with the bird in it. It was a hell of an unlikely basket to have put all his eggs into, so to speak, and there was a solid chance that when he sent the golem down the alley, bird or no bird, it would do nothing but bump into the wall and fall over, which is pretty much what it had been doing for the past few hours.

There was the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk, and he looked up to see a man and woman walking arm and arm, heading toward the cafe. For a quick moment the woman looked just like Ivy, and he was full of a sudden shame, of the urge to hide the golem somehow, yank a sack over its head, ditch the bird in the jar, deny who and what he was and what had brought him to the mouth of this dark alley on a rainy winter night.

But it wasn’t Ivy, and the two passed on by without even seeing him there. He closed his eyes for a moment, settling himself down again, clearing his mind. Then, seeing that the sidewalks were empty again, he unscrewed the jar lid, dipped two fingers into the liquid, and pulled the bird out by the tail, letting it drip onto the floor. The car was instantly full of the juniper smell of gin. The golem twitched, swiveling its head, looking out the side window at a passing car as if the creature had suddenly woken up. Good, Argyle thought. Something was stirring in it, some sense of purpose.

“It’s time,” he said. It was anybody’s guess whether the creature understood anything at all, but he had fallen into the habit of speaking to it, like a person might speak to a goldfish in a bowl. He reached across, grasped its chin between his thumb and forefinger, yanked its mouth open so that its ivory teeth separated, and shoved the bird’s head down its mouth.

“Eat it, god
damn
it!” he said. Then he pushed the golem’s head back with the palm of his hand in order to open its throat. He knelt on the seat and pried its jaws open even wider, corkscrewing the bird, pinning the golem to the upholstery where it jerked and twitched, mumbling blue feathers out of its mouth, its eyes shifting back and forth like clockwork.

*   *   *

T
HE GOLEM STOOD
in front of the car now, its face turned half toward him, illuminated in the light of the Merry Christmas sign. Its clothes were disheveled from the tussle over the bird, its hair wild, its eyes demented. He could barely stand to look at it, standing there stupidly, like some kind of horrible alter ego, the wreck he might have become if his life had gone differently, if he hadn’t managed to pull himself up by his own bootstraps, if he had allowed himself to become like Murray LeRoy….

A shudder ran through him, and he forced the thought away. “Go,” he said out loud. “Go now.”

Its jaw hung open, unhinged in the struggle, so that it looked as if it were gagging. There was a lump in its throat where the bird had lodged. Argyle had tried to massage it down, but the flesh of the thing’s neck had started to tear like soft rubber, and he’d left it, unable to go on with the process. The golem took a step down the sidewalk, heading toward the cafe. Argyle started the car, shifting into drive, and looked around wildly. He couldn’t let it wander off alone. It would have to meet its fate in the alley, whatever that fate might be. If he had to, he’d run the golem down, pin it against the wall, cripple it and drag it into the alley himself….

It stopped suddenly, staggered, and turned around, looking up the alley now as if it had suddenly heard something there, a whispered command. Argyle fancied that he heard it too. The voices in his mind grew louder, and he clamped his hands over his ears. But the sound was simply magnified, rising like a chorus. He squinted, rubbing his eyes to clear them. Shapes like the shadows of bats seemed to flutter in front of the window, and he thought he could hear the sound of their rushing wings. A wind sprang up, sweeping dead sycamore leaves from the alley floor, and a sheet of newspaper tumbled out of the darkness and burst into flames, falling on the hood of the car. There was a scattering of raindrops then, and Argyle switched on the wipers, hunching forward to watch as the golem slouched away into the darkness and was swallowed up by shadow. He waited for it to turn around, to come wandering back out again, and he put both hands on the steering wheel, ready to slam forward and knock it to Hell himself if he had to.