Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom (26 page)

“Are you ok?”

“Go back to bed,” she said. “I’m fine. I’ll be out in a minute.”

He returned to bed. He listened to the toilet flush and the sound of brushing teeth. He listened to silence for a minute. Pris came out and turned off the light behind her. She lay naked beside Duncan.

“That’s the first time I ever made anyone vomit,” he said.

She clutched him tighter. “It must have been the champagne.”

“Do you want to sleep?”

“No,” she answered. “I want to get this right.” She straddled him again. “I’ve waited too long for this.”

“Me too,” Duncan said. He pulled her head down and held his lips against her ear. “A lifetime,” he whispered.

Nineteen

You have sixteen messages,
Duncan’s answering machine said when he called from Bolo’s Monday morning. The first was from the body shop, telling him his car was ready. The second was from Angela. “Look in the Calendar section of the Times,” she said. “Your surprise is there.” The remaining fourteen were hang ups. Duncan retrieved the paper from the lawn. The lead story in the Calendar section was titled,
LA’s Hottest Artists, by
Robert Armstrong
. Beneath the banner was a photo of
Sleeping Pris.
He sat beside Pris and put the paper on the table in front of her. She dropped her tea cup and it shattered on the floor.

“How did that get there?” she asked.

“Angela asked for a painting before we left. I chose my self-portrait. I guess they picked up the wrong one. Are you ok? You look pale.”

“I’m fine.” She picked up the paper. “This is a wonderful article,” she said. “Listen:
One artist stands out. Duncan Delaney, a transplant from Wyoming of all places, paints like a cross between an urban Rembrandt and an underground Van Gogh.”

He picked up the broken cup and wiped up the tea. He made pancakes while Pris read. He warmed maple syrup. He poured glasses of orange juice. She was still staring at the paper when he brought breakfast in. Duncan devoured his food. Pris sipped her juice and let her pancakes grow cold.

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

She picked up the paper again. “I’m not hungry.”

Duncan cleared the table. He took a shower and dressed and when he came out she still sat at the table in her robe looking at the newspaper.

“Can you give me a ride into town?” he asked. “I have to pick up my car and get my stuff from the studio.”

Pris put the paper face down on the table. She looked up and smiled.

“Of course,” she said.

Duncan had to wait an hour at the body shop while a worker reinstalled a backwards seat belt. When finished, the car smelled faintly of burnt insulation, but was visually perfect. Duncan paid his deductible and left. Misty was in his studio feeding Cat when he opened the door. Cat kept eating. Misty stood. She wore no make up and her eyes were puffy.

“Hi, Duncan. Congratulations.”

“Hi, Misty. Thanks. Are you okay? You look like you’ve been crying.”

“Allergies.” She looked at Cat. “Doesn’t seem like he missed you much.”

Duncan laughed. “No, it doesn’t.”

He packed his things and put it all in the wagon. Misty was gone when he returned but Cat remained. He decided to drop his canvases off at Angela’s before going home. He carried the paintings downstairs, put them in the car, then went back for Cat. He was halfway to the street when his phone rang. He remembered the fourteen hang-ups.

“Curiosity,” he said to Cat as he went back to get the phone, “only kills your species.”

“Duncan Delaney?” a man said when he answered.

“Speaking.”

“This is Samuel Norris.” His voice was deep and clear. “I saw your painting in the paper. I liked it very much.”

“That one’s not for sale.”

“That’s not why I called. I wanted to speak with you about Penny.”

“Who?”

“The girl in the painting.”

“Her name is Pris.”

“No, it’s not,” Samuel Norris said, deep and clear as despair, “her name is Penny. I should know. I’m her father.”

“Are you still there?” Samuel Norris asked after a long time.

“She said you were dead.”

“I assure you I’m not.” The humor in the voice eased Duncan’s trepidation. “Though I understand why she said it.” There was another long silence. “What else did she tell you?”

“Nothing.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. We didn’t part on good terms. Though I am disappointed she changed her name. It would have been so much easier to find her if she had only kept her name.” The voice was sad. “I wasn’t the easiest father to live with. But I’ve changed. I’d like to see my baby again.”

Duncan remembered dark nights lying in bed, staring at his ceiling, and wondering what might have been if his father had lived. Pris had six more years with her father than he with his, but could it have been enough? He could not imagine anything bad enough to preclude reconciliation and he further imagined a father would be the best of all possible wedding gifts.

“Listen,” Duncan said, “I’m busy for another couple hours yet, but if you want, you can come by the house and see her.”

“Are you her boyfriend?”

Duncan smiled. “Something like that.”

“Will you be there?”

“I think I should be. At first at least.” Duncan gave him the address. “It’s one now. I should be home by four. What say you show up at five?”

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am.” He paused. “Could you do me a favor? Don’t tell her I’m coming. I’d like it to be a surprise.”

“Sure thing.”

Duncan hung up. He picked up cat and headed downstairs. For the rest of his life he would remember walking down those stairs and thinking,
won’t Pris be surprised.

When Duncan came home, the Cadillac was gone. Cat jumped from the car and paced the gravel in front of the garage. Duncan looked at his watch. Three thirty. He hoped Pris would return before her father arrived. Next door, a gardener pulled the cord on a lawn mower. The engine started noisily. Duncan got out of the car. The gardener waved to him over the hedge. Duncan waved back and went inside.

The front door was open and the television was on. Duncan turned it off. A breeze ruffled the curtains through the kitchen window. Duncan smelled mower exhaust. He closed the window. He took a jar of mayonnaise out of the refrigerator, a loaf of wheat bread, and a tin of dolphin safe tuna. He made a sandwich, got a beer, and sat on a bench on the back porch and ate. The sun was hot against his forehead. He took off his shirt and went inside to fetch his hat. He opened the bedroom door.

A man lay on the floor by the bed, his pants around his ankles and his shorts at his shins. He looked to be fifty, thin with light blond hair turning gray, his face wet and red from a gash across his temple. Blood stained his shirt around five small holes. The man groaned and reached out with a bloody hand. Duncan stumbled out the door to the living room and seized the phone. It was dead. He raced through the house screaming her name into empty room after empty room. He sprinted outside and leaped the hedge into the neighbor’s yard. He tripped and somersaulted across the grass. The gardener shut off the mower.

“Call the police,” Duncan yelled.
“Policia!”

Bolo’s neighbor, an old screenwriter who retired when he could not adapt to computers, stuck his head out the door. “What’s wrong?”

“Call the police!” Duncan yelled.

He leaped over the hedge and tripped again, skinning his back on the gravel where he fell. He stopped. With the lawn mower silent he heard the Cadillac rumbling inside the garage. He threw the garage door open. Blue fog spilled onto the driveway.

“That’s dangerous,” the old screenwriter called over the hedge.

“Call an ambulance!” Duncan screamed.

The Cadillac’s top was up. A garden hose ran from the exhaust into a barely open window. Blue haze filled the car. Pris slumped against the seat with her eyes shut. Duncan pulled the hose out and tried the door. Locked. He broke the rear window with his fist and unlocked the door. The car’s stereo played
Only Women Bleed
. He dragged her onto the lawn and laid her gently on the grass. She did not breathe.

The old screenwriter yelled, “I called 911.”

Duncan forced his breath into her mouth. Her chest rose as his fell, fell as his rose. He felt a hand on his shoulder but he did not stop.

“Let me,” the gardener said with a faint accent. “You’re doing it wrong. I know CPR.”

He pulled Duncan away. He pinched her nose and filled her lungs with his breath. Duncan staggered backward. There was blood on her t-shirt.

“She’s bleeding!”

“That’s your blood,” the old screenwriter said. “Look at your hand.”

Duncan slumped to the lawn and watched the gardener try to puff life into his bride’s quiet lungs. A paramedic’s truck pulled up. Two men in uniforms ran to Pris and the gardener. One ran back to the truck and grabbed an oxygen tank and mask. A fire engine stopped behind the truck and several men jumped to the curb. One came up to Duncan and looked at his hand.

“We need to take care of this,” he said.

“Forget about me,” Duncan yelled, “she’s dying!”

Another fire fighter brought a first-aid kit up and opened it. He cleaned Duncan’s hand and sprayed antiseptic onto the gashes. Duncan felt nothing.

“We’d just be in the way,” he said. “They’re doing all they can.”

Duncan stared at the paramedics hovering over Pris.
Please god,
he thought. An ambulance pulled up, and then a police car. Two policemen got out. One entered the house. The other opened a notebook.

“What’s the stiff’s name?” he asked.

“She’s not a stiff!” Duncan yelled.

“Whoops,” the officer said. “Sorry, buddy. What’s her name?”

“Pris Nolan. I mean Delaney. We were just married.” He shook his head. “Or it might be Penny Delaney. Can’t we do this at the hospital?”

The first policeman came out of the house. “Not until we get some answers,” he said. He pulled Duncan’s hands behind his back and cuffed him. “There’s a gunshot victim in the house.”

The two paramedics stood and went inside.

“Hey, what about her?”

“She’s breathing,” a fire fighter said. “She should be okay.”

“Who’s the guy inside?” the policeman asked.

“I don’t know. I just got home. I found him in the bedroom. I found her in the garage.”

The policeman took a driver’s license out of an old brown wallet. “Name Samuel Norris ring a bell?”

Duncan wanted to vomit. “It’s her father.”

Two uniformed men put Pris in the back of the ambulance.

“They’re taking her away!”

The policeman put down a portable radio. “Records say he’s served time for manslaughter.”

“I have not!” Duncan yelled.

“Not you, the guy inside.” The other cop uncuffed Duncan. “You go with her. We’ll send a detective to the hospital to talk with you.”

Duncan put on a shirt and got in the ambulance with a paramedic. Pris lay on the gurney, silent and still, the oxygen mask strapped across her nose and mouth. Her hand was loose and limp but it was warm. The door shut and the ambulance lurched onward. The paramedic looked as young as Duncan, with a body built on exercise machines, and hair as short as Duncan’s was long. He looked like a surfer. He smiled at Duncan.

“I think she’s going to be okay,” said the paramedic.

“You’re lucky you didn’t cut a tendon,” the doctor said as he sewed a last stitch in Duncan’s hand. He looked like he was two thirds through a thirty hour shift. He wound gauze about his knuckles and taped it in place.

“Can I see her?”

“They’re very busy. You’d be in the way.”

Duncan followed him out. An old woman with teak skin and dark brown eyes sat across the waiting room, holding a bible and staring at the ceiling. A young man, shivering in a blanket, sat near her. A younger woman sat by the shivering man, her arm around him. Duncan went to a pay phone. He put in a quarter and dialed. A machine answered.

“Benjamin,” Duncan said at the beep, “Pris tried to kill herself.” He started to cry. “I don’t know what to do.”

He left the name of the hospital and hung up. Fear rose like a bilious moon in his throat. He ran into the bathroom to a stall and vomited in the toilet. He rinsed his mouth and wiped his face. When he returned to the waiting room, the others were gone. He sat in a chair and picked up a magazine. He read for an hour and when he put the magazine down he could not remember a word of what he had read.

“Duncan!”

Angela and Benjamin ran down the hall. He stood and fell into Benjamin’s arms.

“Easy,” Benjamin said, “easy.”

“Duncan, what happened?”

Duncan breathed deep. He released Benjamin and sagged into a chair. “I found her in the garage. She was in her car with the engine running.”

“Oh, god,” Angela said. “Why?”

Duncan knew why. It was his fault. He never should have given Samuel Norris their address. He should have trusted her and whatever reason she had for wanting her father dead. He never should have left Cheyenne. He never should have been born.

“Because of me,” he said.

“Come on,” Benjamin said, “Let’s get some coffee.”

Benjamin led Duncan to an empty cafeteria and bought two coffees. Duncan held the cup and felt its warmth seep into his blood. He sipped and the coffee burned his tongue.

“Careful,” Benjamin said. “It’s hot.”

Duncan sipped again. The cafeteria door slammed into the wall with a metallic bang. Sheila Rascowitz burst into the room. She wore black leather chaps and a sleeveless leather vest. A fresh tattoo of a headless cat ran along her left arm. Her eyes burned like distant bonfires.

“You!” she yelled. “It’s your fault!”

“I know,” Duncan said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough.”

Sheila pointed a glove. Benjamin dove for the floor.

“Get down!” he yelled.

When the glove spit fire, Duncan realized it was not a glove after all. The first bullet pierced his shoulder, the second nicked his ear. A hammer hit him above his other ear. Detective Harkanian, sent to the hospital to question Duncan, opened the door to find him falling. He backed in dread and reached for his hip when Sheila pointed the gun at him. Duncan hit the linoleum. Benjamin tackled Sheila. He grabbed her arm and broke her elbow across his knee. She screamed and the gun fell from her hand.