Boogie House: A Rolson McKane Mystery (3 page)

Harper, eyes averted, shook his head. “D.L. wanted to...keep his distance from, well.”

He didn’t say it, but Harper’s eyes flicked in my direction, and I knew what he meant.

Unlike Bullen, a bearded, redneck John Goodman, Harper was slight, like a scarecrow with the stuffing all yanked out. And while Bullen should have been holed up in a biker bar with his fellow outlaws, Harper, on the other hand, could have just as easily been the store manager at a cheap department store.

"Body's been here for awhile," I said to the back of Bullen's head, ignoring the way he was sneering at the whole scene. "Laid up back in that corner. Think he might've been tortured something awful. There's trauma to the neck, but I couldn't make out much more."

"Hell, that sounds good. If you wasn't out of a job, I'd recommend you for promotion, Dee Wee." He was pleased with himself for the DUI reference, even if nobody talked that way anymore. His laugh could strip the bark off a tree, and he used it exclusively to get mean with people. I’d never seen the man smile when there wasn’t something vicious behind it.

I backed off, raised my hands in mock surrender. I promised D.L. I'd play it cool, and D.L. was a man I wanted to keep in good with. I said, "You're right; it's your scene. Being the guy who discovered the body, I thought it would be nice to help. Give a report like a normal citizen."

Bullen almost tripped over one of the loose floorboards but caught himself. Under the weight of the man, the juke almost seemed to bow inward on him.

"So this is the Boogie House, eh," Bullen said, ignoring me and stepping farther inside. "Somebody could have saved us the trouble of coming out here if they had just bulldozed this place years ago."

He sucked his teeth and grunted.

It was not in my nature to be conciliatory, but I was already treading on wet paper, so I needed to try another tack to keep from slipping. I said, "When I was real little, before I knew music, my mother told me Blind Willie McTell played
Statesboro Blues
in here, before this place had electricity. Just him and a couple people and an acoustic guitar, them all huddled around a bottle of whiskey and scattered candles. For this place, that's history, man."

The whole floor seemed to groan under Bullen as he crossed over to the body, and I could practically hear his brain working as he fished for a comeback. To himself, he said, "I reckon your mother, she’d know, wouldn’t she?"

He turned and winked, not snickering really, but pretending to laugh nonetheless. His bloodshot blue eyes gleamed. The temptation to kick him in a hole in the floor was hard to ignore. Just kick him in and cover him up, let him rot under this place. I had to clench my jaw to keep from acting on the impulse.

Harper laughed thinly. His eyes darted between us, wide and scared but not happy, as his laugh might have implied.

“Men like you give the blues meaning,” I said. Bullen raised an eyebrow but pretended to be looking at the piano, inspecting it.

“Fuck ‘em” was all he said by way of reply.

It was a stupid, petty thing, saying that, and it certainly didn’t hurt Ronald Bullen. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, the ghost of a smile. In that man was the representation of the south, mean and defensive and sweaty. Still, whatever racism and misogyny soaked him through, he was good at his job. Thankfully. Every man’s got to have a redeeming attribute.

Bullen clopped the rest of the way through the building to the other side. He and I weren’t on good terms - not that anybody ever got beyond ‘asshole’ distinction in his book - but we weren’t really enemies. He just didn’t like for me to talk or move or be in his line of sight.

Harper must have felt the heat coming off the both of us, because he was actively looking for something to say to bring the temperature of the room down.

"This ain’t nothin’ to get heated over, y'all," Harper stammered, looking nervously in the direction of the ambulance, behind which Spooner McCovey was futzing around with some brand of medical equipment. "Jeez, where the heck's Spooner with the body bag?"

Bullen hawked and spat again, laughing. "No matter. Sum-bitch'll need a ladle to get all of him up off the floor."

Third Chapter

People have learned not to bring up my mother within earshot of me. When I was in school, the first boy to make the mistake of calling her a ‘nigger lover’ had to get his nose reset and four teeth replaced. Since I lived most all my life in the Junction, I never really had to explain my displeasure about being teased on that subject to anyone else.

Occasionally the talk surfaces in conversation, I’m sure. Some think I blocked out what happened back in nineteen eighty-two, and so they give me furtive glances when they think I can’t see them, but I know. The way I’ve lived my life has given plenty of people reason to run me down, but none as interesting as why I ended up getting raised by my great aunt Birdie.

What the town sewing circles don't understand is that my mother's death is not a secret to be kept, and the rumor mill is the rumor mill, so it can’t be changed. I was a witness to some of what happened that night, so I have no reason to wonder why blue-haired church ladies sometimes treat me like wet plaster.

My mother lived - and, without protest on her end, died - under the weight of my father’s thumb. He didn't kill her, but she would have, no doubt, lived a fuller and healthier life without him. It was a quick rise and slow descent, but out of their intense but flawed love came a son, so I guess it wasn’t totally wasted time.

My father built relationships without foundations, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to him that they never lasted. He treated anyone he had a passing connection with as if he that person owed him something, as if giving a piece of himself were some sort of contract.

Eventually, it broke down. Sooner or later it was bound to happen. The old man didn't realize the arms he thought he'd been using to control others were instead wrapped around his own neck and slowly strangling him. And though he was a high school dropout, he wasn’t a stupid man. He understood immediately why he hadn’t been told about the pregnancy, why my mother had worn loose clothes to hide it from him, why she broke down crying when he confronted her about it.

My mother had finally called his bluff, and his response was to watch everything burn down around him, while he sat drunkenly in his recliner. He must have realized some dark truth about the pregnancy, though he never really said much of anything out loud about it.

I don’t remember him actually hitting her, but my memories of the time - what little I remember - are punctuated by loud sounds and broken furniture. She didn’t wear sunglasses and never wore makeup (never had to), so if he ever struck her, it wasn’t in the face.

I was too little and too frightened by the old man to do anything about it except cry. I suppose I cried a lot, but that, too, could be me laying my own current feelings about the situation onto the past. It mostly feels like I’m watching the whole thing happen from a distance, like it’s my own personal Christmas Carol, and I’m forced to think about what impact those nine months have had on the trajectory of my life.

When the baby came due, the doctor made a house call, trundling through the house with my father perched on his ear, demanding him to explain what had taken so fucking long, and, Jesus, aren't we paying you for a service and on and on and on. The good doctor, unaware of my father's interpersonal practices, offered a million apologies before readying the bedroom for delivery.

I wasn't allowed inside.

It was like an exorcism. I knelt on the floor at the end of the hallway and listened, pivoting over to the wall anytime I thought somebody might walk out and catch me.

There were loud sounds the whole time, but they changed, became something else entirely. Even at that age, I could tell they weren’t what proud parents should be uttering.

Then there were screams of rage and then panic and then despair. I nodded off at one point and found myself, upon awakening, staring right at my dad, who stood in the doorway to their bedroom.

I couldn't read the number of emotions on my father's face as he pleaded with me to get the fuck into my room,
before something awful happens to you too, Rolson
. I was sent to my room when the complications became apparent to the adults.

It wasn’t raw anger. He suddenly had the look of a man whose entire life has been one long series of Twilight Zone episodes. I tried to peer between my father and the door frame, but all I could see was my mother's body, still damp with sweat.

She was very still.

I couldn't hear my mother or the baby, and I couldn't be certain if they were both dead by then or not. To this day, the hours that followed are a strung-together mess of images.

It’s like a collage. Part of me thinks I have included movie images and old, distorted dreams into my memories, but even then I can’t quite put all of that night into a single narrative. I can piece together some things, but mostly I just remember sitting on my bed, picking at the shoelaces on my Keds. I would lie down and try to look up at the ceiling, but something about it just didn’t feel right, so I sat up again. That felt like it was helping, somehow. It must have been the beginning of my weird sense of superstition.

It could have been a few hours I sat on that bed, or it could have been a few days. Either way, I didn’t move, and it got so bad that I peed my pants instead of going out there. The thing my father became shortly thereafter was not unlike a monster, and I think the full transformation happened that night. I distinctly remember him banging drunk around the house, screaming, “You can hide from the devil, but you can’t hide from God.” Just like that. Over and over.

For the life of me, I can’t remember if he came to check on me at all. Whiskey was his dark companion from then on, until that other thing happened.

Maybe the old biddies of the town are right. Maybe I have blocked some things out.

*  *  *

Watching what it took to get that young man's remains out of the Boogie House pried something loose in me I may never get back, something I did not realize I even had in me anymore.

Spooner proved ineffective at resuscitating the body, so Billy Margolee, the coroner, had to be called out, causing a series of setbacks. Margolee, a drunken, irascible sack of a man, complained nonstop. Not just about the stink, but about the bugs and the heat and the moisture and anything else that kept him from his daily pint of Old Bushmill's.

I stood around, mostly, and nobody seemed to mind. I kept one eye on the officials and another on the body, wondering if a chorus line of corpses would break out in an impromptu version of the Charleston for me. Nothing happened, though, and once the befuddled locals dispersed, so did I.

Back home, I drew a large glass of water from the tap, no ice, and drank down half before pouring it out and replacing it with something a little more amber-colored. Topping off the Beam with a shot of Coke and supplementing it with a High Life, I propped open the front door with a mud-caked boot and watched the uneven downpour of rain from my recliner.

Time passed. I finished the bourbon and three Millers under the impression that I'd get drunk. All that happened was the hangover returned. I slept until the rain stopped at dusk, at which time my cell phone rang. It was my lawyer, Jarrell Clements.

I flipped open the phone and said, "Run out of my money so soon? You know I'm on a cop's salary."

His voice was purely old school country. "Not anymore, you’re not."

"Ouch."

"Ah, hell," he said, "ain't a damn thing, son. Even Thomas Jefferson died in debt."

"As long as
you
realize how broke I am."

He chuckled. His voice was low and refined but contained a slight drawl, like a verbal birthmark. "I came in fully understanding that. Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

"That's an old saying."

"I'm old school. Gimme a minute and I'll tell you firsthand about the War of Northern Aggression."

I rolled my eyes. "You got something?"

On his side of the line, I heard shuffling papers. "Sorry. My old ass is getting disorganized. The wires aren't firing as smoothly as they used to. I’m trying to get all my business settled for the day."

"That's all right. You're working hard."

The shuffling ceased. "Janita Laveau's made a turnaround in her opinion of you."

Now that was something. "What's that mean?"

"Means she's made it clear she does not want you prosecuted for ramming her with your car. Damndest thing I've ever heard of. You must have knocked something loose in her brain."

Even though I felt an extreme amount of guilt over the accident, I wasn’t ready to bow out for a stint in lock-up. "Anybody listen to her?"

"Course not. Nobody's rooting for you in this situation."

"Nothing to root for, Jare. I got drunk, T-Boned a poor woman's Chrysler."

"Can't do anything about the DUI, but you already know that. That's a done deal. You were drunk, admitted to a breathalyzer. It would take a whole lot more than what you’ve got to be able to get that dropped down to reckless driving or some other nonsense. But if she clangs around enough, she might convince the DA to reduce or throw out the other charges."

"What are you going to do?"

"Me?" He made an incredulous
pfft
sound. "I'm gonna let her do it. You don't go-"

"Looking a gift horse in the mouth. That’s also an old one.”

“I’m an old man. A day older’n dirt and twice as gritty. You’ve got to have a little faith in the old man, though. I’m all that’s keeping you from living the next six months in a box.”

“You’ve got no bedside manner, do you?”

"Ask the people I lost cases for. They'd agree. Hell, ask my exes. They’d say the same thing. Have a good evening. I'll keep you posted on Laveau, see if she’s using some kind of reverse voodoo on you."

“That’s not funny,” I said.

Jarrell was about to say something, but I cut him off. I hung up the phone and watched the rain sweep in large sheets across my lawn.

*  *  *

I proceeded uneasily inside. The Boogie House was dark, but it seemed to be made of bones or matchsticks or something. This was not the juke joint of reality, but a strange, otherworldly manifestation of it.

There was no moonlight to guide me, and clouds had blocked out the moon. I walked on, stumbling forward into the gaping holes of the building's floor in a strange, determined zombie-march. Each time I fell down, I almost lost consciousness, my eyelids trying to shut so I could rest. I persevered.

"He's not here," I repeated, unsuccessfully trying to convince myself that the dead body was gone. I don't know if you can break out in gooseflesh in dreams, but my entire body went cold. My stomach was engorged with ice water.

The ragged old piano situated behind him, the dead man stood at the room’s center. Smiling broadly, one grizzled hand reaching behind his leg and tinkling random piano keys. Reality broke, and I was left hanging onto the jagged shards of what I hoped was a dream.

I lurched toward him, fighting to keep my eyes open. Getting closer, I saw that he wasn't smiling at all. His teeth and gums shone through ragged flaps of skin. His mouth had eroded almost entirely. It was a fleshless grin. His tuxedo, complete with tails, shoddily concealed the smeared blood and bile and mucus. There were other things on him, too, things that crawled and sputtered around at night on dusty wings, but I tried not to think about them.

I would say his eyes were fixed on me, but some predator had plucked them from the sockets, so all I saw was cavernous darkness. The body, even in dreams, was not immune to decay.

We stood across from one another, long-lost strangers. I wanted to scream - my skin wanted to crawl off to some other place when I saw him - but it was an empty, silly gesture. All I did was open my mouth and make a horrible choking sound. An astronaut lost in space.

"
Don't be frightened
," he said. He opened his mouth in what appeared to be a sigh, but no breath escaped him. "
I'm not here to hurt
you."

I stammered, searching for a reply. I looked down. The suit coat bulged below the final button, and I gawked at his paunch as I reached for something to say, but he didn't seem interested in the questions circling my mind, which is where I felt his presence strongest. He was peering into my brain, checking my thoughts for...for something, but I couldn’t quite know what at this moment.

He answered one of my questions before I could ask it. "
That's gas in my belly,
" the body said. "
The gas will continue to accumulate until I'm embalmed. Don't you know anything 'bout the dead
?"

That was easy. "I know they don't tinkle piano keys or wear cheap tuxedos."

The lipless grin widened, and his shoulders shook in mock laughter. I say ‘mock’ because it was an impossible gesture. He couldn't laugh or sigh. How could he talk? Then he said, "
Maybe the dead that
you
knew didn't, but, then again, they don't have a monopoly on what we
all
do, now do they
?"