Bag of Bones (48 page)

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The man on my stoop jumped a little when I turned on the outside light, then blinked through the door at me like a nearsighted rabbit. He was about five-four, skinny, pale. He wore his hair cropped in the sort of cut known as a wiffle in my boyhood days. His eyes were brown. Guarding them was a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with greasy-looking lenses. His little hands hung at his sides. One held the handle of a flat leather case, the other a small white oblong. I didn't think it was my destiny to be killed by a man with a business card in one hand, so I opened the door.

The guy smiled, the anxious sort of smile people always seem to wear in Woody Allen movies. He was
wearing a Woody Allen outfit too, I saw—faded plaid shirt a little too short at the wrists, chinos a little too baggy in the crotch.
Someone must have told him about the resemblance,
I thought.
That's got to be it.

“Mr. Noonan?”

“Yes?”

He handed me the card.
NEXT CENTURY REAL ESTATE,
it said in raised gold letters. Below this, in more modest black, was my visitor's name.

“I'm Richard Osgood,” he said as if I couldn't read, and held out his hand. The American male's need to respond to that gesture in kind is deeply ingrained, but that night I resisted it. He held his little pink paw out a moment longer, then lowered it and wiped the palm nervously against his chinos. “I have a message for you. From Mr. Devore.”

I waited.

“May I come in?”

“No,” I said.

He took a step backward, wiped his hand on his pants again, and seemed to gather himself. “I hardly think there's any need to be rude, Mr. Noonan.”

I wasn't being rude. If I'd wanted to be rude, I would have treated him to a faceful of roach-repellent. “Max Devore and his minder tried to drown me in the lake this evening. If my manners seem a little off to you, that's probably it.”

Osgood's look of shock was real, I think. “You must be working too hard on your latest project, Mr. Noonan. Max Devore is going to be eighty-six on his next birthday—if he makes it, which now seems to be in some doubt. Poor old fella can hardly even walk from his chair to his bed anymore. As for Rogette—”

“I see your point,” I said. “In fact I saw it twenty minutes ago, without any help from you. I hardly believe it myself, and I was there. Give me whatever it is you have for me.”

“Fine,” he said in a prissy little “all right,
be
that way” voice. He unzipped a pouch on the front of his leather bag and brought out a white envelope, business-sized and sealed. I took it, hoping Osgood couldn't sense how hard my heart was thumping. Devore moved pretty damned fast for a man who travelled with an oxygen tank. The question was, what kind of move was this?

“Thanks,” I said, beginning to close the door. “I'd tip you the price of a drink, but I left my wallet on the dresser.”

“Wait! You're supposed to read it and give me an answer.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I don't know where Devore got the notion that he could order me around, but I have no intention of allowing his ideas to influence my behavior. Buzz off.”

His lips turned down, creating deep dimples at the corners of his mouth, and all at once he didn't look like Woody Allen at all. He looked like a fifty-year-old real-estate broker who had sold his soul to the devil and now couldn't stand to see anyone yank the boss's forked tail. “Piece of friendly advice, Mr. Noonan—you want to watch it. Max Devore is no man to fool around with.”

“Luckily for me, I'm not fooling around.”

I closed the door and stood in the foyer, holding the envelope and watching Mr. Next Century Real Estate. He looked pissed off and confused—no one
had given him the bum's rush just lately, I guessed. Maybe it would do him some good. Lend a little perspective to his life. Remind him that, Max Devore or no Max Devore, Richie Osgood would still never stand more than five-feet-seven. Even in cowboy boots.

“Mr. Devore wants an answer!” he called through the closed door.

“I'll phone,” I called back, then slowly raised my middle fingers in the double eagle I'd hoped to give Max and Rogette earlier. “In the meantime, perhaps you could convey this.”

I almost expected him to take off his glasses and rub his eyes. He walked back to his car instead, tossed his case in, then followed it. I watched until he had backed up to the lane and I was sure he was gone. Then I went into the living room and opened the envelope. Inside was a single sheet of paper, faintly scented with the perfume my mother had worn when I was just a kid. White Shoulders, I think it's called. Across the top—neat, ladylike, printed in slightly raised letters—was

ROGETTE D. WHITMORE

Below it was this message, written in a slightly shaky feminine hand:

8:30 P.M.

Dear Mr. Noonan,

Max wishes me to convey how glad he was to meet you! I must echo that sentiment.
You are a very amusing and entertaining fellow! We enjoyed your antics ever so much. Now to business. M. offers you a very simple deal: if you promise to cease asking questions about him, and if you promise to cease all legal maneuvering—if you promise to let him rest in peace, so to speak—then Mr. Devore promises to cease efforts to gain custody of his granddaughter. If this suits, you need only tell Mr. Osgood “I agree.” He will carry the message! Max hopes to return to California by private jet very soon—he has business which can be put off no longer, although he has enjoyed his time here and has found you particularly interesting. He wants me to remind you that custody has its responsibilities, and urges you not to forget he said so.

Rogette

P.S. He reminds me that you didn't answer his question—does her cunt suck? Max is quite curious on that point.

R.

I read this note over a second time, then a third. I started to put it on the table, then read it a fourth time. It was as if I couldn't get the sense of it. I had to restrain an urge to fly to the telephone and call Mattie at once. It's over, Mattie, I'd say. Taking your job and dunking me in the lake were the last two shots of the war. He's giving up.

No. Not until I was absolutely sure.

I called Warrington's instead, where I got my fourth answering machine of the night. Devore and Whitmore hadn't bothered with anything warm and fuzzy, either; a voice as cold as a motel ice-machine simply told me to leave my message at the sound of the beep.

“It's Noonan,” I said. Before I could go any further there was a click as someone picked up.

“Did you enjoy your swim?” Rogette Whitmore asked in a smoky, mocking voice. If I hadn't seen her in the flesh, I might have imagined a Barbara Stanwyck type at her most coldly attractive, coiled on a red velvet couch in a peach-silk dressing gown, telephone in one hand, ivory cigarette holder in the other.

“If I'd caught up with you, Ms. Whitmore, I would have made you understand my feelings perfectly.”

“Oooo,” she said. “My thighs are a-tingle.”

“Please spare me the image of your thighs.”

“Sticks and stones, Mr. Noonan,” she said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your call?”

“I sent Mr. Osgood away without a reply.”

“Max thought you might. He said, ‘Our young whoremaster believes in the value of a personal response. You can tell that just looking at him.'”

“He gets the uglies when he loses, doesn't he?”

“Mr. Devore doesn't
lose.
” Her voice dropped at least forty degrees and all the mocking good humor bailed out on the way down. “He may change his goals, but he doesn't
lose.
You were the one who looked like a loser tonight, Mr. Noonan, paddling
around and yelling out there in the lake. You were scared, weren't you?”

“Yes. Badly.”

“You were right to be. I wonder if you know how lucky you are?”

“May I tell you something?”

“Of course, Mike—may I call you Mike?”

“Why don't you just stick with Mr. Noonan. Now—are you listening?”

“With bated breath.”

“Your boss is old, he's nutty, and I suspect he's past the point where he could effectively manage a Yahtzee scorecard, let alone a custody suit. He was whipped a week ago.”

“Do you have a point?”

“As a matter of fact I do, so get it right: if either of you ever tries anything remotely like that again, I'll come after that old fuck and jam his snot-smeared oxygen mask so far up his ass he'll be able to aerate his lungs from the bottom. And if I see you on The Street, Ms. Whitmore, I'll use you for a shotput. Do you understand me?”

I stopped, breathing hard, amazed and also rather disgusted with myself. If you had told me I'd had such a speech in me, I would have scoffed.

After a long silence I said: “Ms. Whitmore? Still there?”

“I'm here,” she said. I wanted her to be furious, but she actually sounded amused. “Who has the uglies now, Mr. Noonan?”

“I do,” I said, “and don't you forget it, you rock-throwing bitch.”

“What is your answer to Mr. Devore?”

“We have a deal. I shut up, the lawyers shut up, he gets out of Mattie and Kyra's life. If, on the other hand, he continues to—”

“I know, I know, you'll bore him and stroke him. I wonder how you'll feel about all this a week from now, you arrogant, stupid creature?”

Before I could reply—it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that even at her best she still threw like a girl—she was gone.

I stood there with the telephone in my hand for a few seconds, then hung it up. Was it a trick? It felt like a trick, but at the same time it didn't. John needed to know about this. He hadn't left his parents' number on his answering machine, but Mattie had it. If I called her back, though, I'd be obligated to tell her what had just happened. It might be a good idea to put off any further calls until tomorrow. To sleep on it.

I stuck my hand in my pocket and damned near impaled it on the steak knife hiding there. I'd forgotten all about it. I took it out, carried it back into the kitchen, and returned it to the drawer. Next I fished out the aerosol can, turned to put it back on top of the fridge with its elderly brothers, then stopped. Inside the circle of fruit and vegetable magnets was this:

    d

  go

    w

19n

Had I done that myself? Had I been so far into the zone, so tranced out, that I had put a mini-crossword
on the refrigerator without remembering it? And if so, what did it mean?

Maybe someone else put it up,
I thought.
One of my invisible roommates.

“Go down 19n,” I said, reaching out and touching the letters. A compass heading? Or maybe it meant
Go 19 Down.
That suggested crosswords again. Sometimes in a puzzle you get a clue which reads simply
See 19 Across
or
See 19 Down.
If that was the meaning here, what puzzle was I supposed to check?

“I could use a little help here,” I said, but there was no answer—not from the astral plane, not from inside my own head. I finally got the can of beer I'd been promising myself and took it back to the sofa. I picked up my
Tough Stuff
crossword book and looked at the puzzle I was currently working. “Liquor Is Quicker,” it was called, and it was filled with the stupid puns which only crossword addicts find amusing. Tipsy actor? Marlon Brandy. Tipsy southern novel? Tequila Mockingbird. Drives the D.A. to drink? Bourbon of proof. And the definition of 19 Down was Oriental nurse, which every cruciverbalist in the universe knows is amah. Nothing in “Liquor Is Quicker” connected to what was going on in my life, at least that I could see.

I thumbed through some of the other puzzles in the book, looking at 19 Downs. Marble worker's tool (chisel). CNN's favorite howler, 2 wds (wolfblitzer). Ethanol and dimethyl ether, e.g. (isomers). I tossed the book aside in disgust. Who said it had to be this particular crossword collection, anyway? There were probably fifty others in the house, four or five in the drawer of the very end-table on which my beer can
stood. I leaned back on the sofa and closed my eyes.

I always liked a whore . . . sometimes their place was on my face.

This is where good pups and vile dogs may walk side-by-side.

There's no town drunk here, we all take turns.

This is where it happened. Ayuh.

I fell asleep and woke up three hours later with a stiff neck and a terrible throb in the back of my head. Thunder was rumbling thickly far off in the White Mountains, and the house seemed very hot. When I got up from the couch, the backs of my thighs more or less peeled away from the fabric. I shuffled down to the north wing like an old, old man, looked at my wet clothes, thought about taking them into the laundry room, and then decided if I bent over that far, my head might explode.

“You ghosts take care of it,” I muttered. “If you can change the pants and the underwear around on the whirligig, you can put my clothes in the hamper.”

I took three Tylenol and went to bed. At some point I woke a second time and heard the phantom child sobbing.

“Stop,” I told it. “Stop it, Ki, no one's going to take you anywhere. You're safe.” Then I went back to sleep again.

T
he telephone was ringing. I climbed toward it from a drowning dream where I couldn't catch my breath, rising into early sunlight, wincing at the pain in the back of my head as I swung my feet out of bed. The phone would quit before I got to it, they almost always do in such situations, and then I'd lie back down and spend a fruitless ten minutes wondering who it had been before getting up for good.