Everything but the Squeal (22 page)

So I called Roxanne. She was chilly and distant, nursing the grit of her grudge from Easter into a fine pearl of resentment. I called my parents to apologize, and my mother hung up on me, telling me they were watching something on television. I knew they never watched television.

For want of anything better to do, I put Elvis Costello on the stereo and built a fire in the woodburner, congratulating myself on having had the foresight to buy beer on the way home, and thought about dinner. Then the lump in my stomach reasserted itself and I stopped thinking about dinner and thought about beer instead.

Elvis Costello was singing about watching the detectives, and I was on my fourth Singha and wishing I still smoked, when someone knocked on the door. By the time I got up, Roxanne had opened it with her key and was standing there, all soft and milky and looking, as always, like she'd just sent herself out to be dry-cleaned. Her fine auburn hair hung down her back, fastened at the top by what seemed to be a red plastic clothespin. She'd ruined yet another pair of pants by pouring bleach directly into the washing machine instead of into the bleach dispenser. Roxanne is a fool for bleach.

“I'm a creep,” she said without a prelude, “but you are too.”

“I've never denied that I was a creep,” I said, delighted to see her. “But I have a certain
je
ne
sais
quoi
.”

“Oh, God,” she said, mimicking a swoon, “I go all buttery when you speak French. Is there any more beer?”

“Does the pope wear suspenders?” I asked.

She uncapped one for me and one for her, and I finished mine while she did it, and rolled the empty under the old mahogany sideboard. Roxanne curled up on the couch with her head on my lap and breathed into the front of my jeans. It felt warm and damp and healthy. Two beers later, she said, “Let's do something awful.”

We went to bed and did something awful. When we'd caught our breath, we fell asleep.

I was once again in the watching place above the stairs, the place Aurora had told me about, looking down through the slats in the banister. Without knowing why, I knew that everyone else in the house was asleep. The front door opened, and Aimee-the-pig came in. She climbed the stairs just a little more slowly than was natural, sobbing inside the pink plastic costume.

When she passed me, making soft snuffling noises, I got up and followed. I seemed to be enormously heavy, and it took all I had to lift my legs, like I was trying to run through water. Aimee went into her room, her back to me, and stood at the foot of a little white bed decorated with frolicking pigs. Without turning around, she shed the obscene little skirt, with the hole in the back for the curlicue tail, and then the polka-dot blouse. The air in the room began to hum and I felt the hair on my arms bristle. I tried to say something, but all that came out was a croak. She didn't hear it. As I stood there, wanting to run away but unable to make my legs work, she reached up and popped off the snaps that fastened the pig head to the pig body and then she pulled the head off and shook her yellow hair free and turned slowly around to face me, and the air hummed more frantically, like a thousand imprisoned hummingbirds, and I saw her tear-streaked face, and it wasn't Aimee at all.

I sat up in the darkness, grabbing a fistful of blanket in each hand. Roxanne moaned and threw an arm across her face. Moonlight poured in through the window. I knew what was happening in Cap'n Cluckbucket's.

III

Hot Water

22 - The Root of "Secretary"

I 
t's like every other fast-food restaurant in the world,” I said into the phone. “They come in with kids and they go out with kids. But at Cap'n Cluckbucket's they're not always the same kids.”

I could hear traffic wheezing and hooting on the other end of the line while the Mountain thought. A motorbike snarled by with a long, tearing fart. Then he grunted. “How?”

It was after ten on Friday morning. Roxanne was long gone, off to an aerobics class where she was purchasing a perfect stomach on the installment plan. She'd left a pot full of perfect coffee.

I took a grateful hit off my third cup. “Who notices the kids with an adult in a restaurant?” I asked. “And if they're worried that someone might, there are those chicken masks. I saw two males go in and out, and when one of them left, the kid with him was masked. How do I know that she was the kid he arrived with? They were the same size, but that's all I could testify to. Hell, the one family I talked to, I could barely tell the difference between a boy and a girl.”

“I know the place,” the Mountain said. He didn't sound very surprised, but then, I'd never seen him act surprised. “Good chicken,” he added.

I put a hand to my throat to block the upward progress of the lump I'd ingested on the previous day. The Mountain could have digested Disney World without so much as a burp around Mickey's ears. “Mountain,” I said, “there are 
six
of them, that I know of. Six Cap'n Cluckbucket's, maybe more, all dispensing children over the counter, so to speak, without a license. How many kids is that?”

“Hold it,” the Mountain said. He put his hand over the mouthpiece and barked something at someone, and I suddenly felt a surge of paranoia wash over me. Suppose I was wrong? Suppose the cops were okay and the Mountain wasn't? Suppose I was talking to someone with a line to Aimee's kidnapper? After all, he was perfectly placed to nab little kids off the streets and stick their parents up for ransom. Worst of all, the kids trusted him. And why wouldn't they?
I
had.

“And?” he said, coming back on the line. Now it sounded as though his mouth were full.

“And nothing,” I said, backtracking. “Just steer your kids away from Cap'n Cluckbucket's.” I drew a series of interconnected boxes on my pad—a symbol, Eleanor always said, of spiritual imprisonment—and wished I hadn't made the call.

“Hey,” he said, “I can't even get them to leave the Oki-Burger. And I can't keep the ones I want to stay. Little girl yesterday, I had her parents all set up to come by, and when they showed up, she was long gone.”

“Yeah,” I said, “well, that's the breaks.”

“You okay?” he asked. “You sound kind of funny.”

“Me?” I was perspiring. “I'm swell.”

“You still think you'll need help?”

“If I do, I’ll call.”

“Do that.” He yelled at somebody and then hung up.

I had the jitters. Trying to calm my doubts, I poured another cup of Roxanne's coffee and promptly poured it down the sink. What I didn't need was the jitters.

That day, Friday, was the fourth day of Aimee's ransom period, the day she was supposed to come home safe and sound. I'd resigned myself to a day of inactivity, maybe two days: Mrs. Sorrell might give it an extra twenty-four hours before calling for help. For want of anything else todo,I turned on the computer and began to enter notes on the case. Sometimes the act of typing out my thoughts clarified them. Sometimes I just wound up with a bunch of useless high-tech typing.

An hour later, I'd resigned myself to the latter. I felt like I was writing somebody else's novel, like a literary medium doing automatic typing for some second-rate mystery writer in the sky. I had no idea how it was going to turn out.

With a resigned sigh I turned on the printer and churned out what I'd written so far. After several minutes of irritating zipping sounds, five pages lay in the tray. Reading over them, I realized that I'd left somebody out.

Back to the keyboard. I'd never learn to handle it the way Morris did. For him it was a musical instrument, full of mysterious chords and unexpected progressions, modulations, and tone clusters. For me it was an expensive alternative to the ball-point pen. For approximately the thousandth time I wondered why I'd bought the damn thing.

Then, partway through a word, I stopped and stared at the screen. I was writing about Birdie, and the word I was writing was secretary. The first six letters were a word in themselves, and the word was secret.

A secretary, in the original meaning of the word, was one who kept someone else's secrets. Birdie, with his terrible hairdo, his Philippine shirt, and his brutal forearms, materialized front and center in my mind's eye and grinned at me. Birdie knew the secrets of the data base. Birdie kept the day-to-day secrets of Mrs. Brussels' appointment book. What other secrets did Birdie keep?

Without thinking about what I was doing, I got up and poured another cup of coffee. It tasted like battery acid; the pot had been on the warmer for hours. I spit it out and rinsed the pot. I even washed my cup, something I usually don't do until all six cups have been used up. I would
really
, I thought, like to take a look inside Birdie's house.

But, as usual, there was a problem or, rather, two problems. The first problem was that it might endanger Aimee. Playing by the rules, I should have waited until the next day, and that was the second problem. The next day was Saturday, and on Saturday Birdie would probably be home. There's a very good reason why most domestic burglaries, particularly in this age of two-family paychecks, happen on weekdays. Victims observe the work ethic. Burglars don't. There are almost no burglaries during the daylight hours on weekends.

As usual, when faced with something I wanted to do and a good reason not to do it, I rationalized. It's one of the patterns of my life. On a different level, it was the mental trait that had allowed me to talk myself into being unfaithful to Eleanor: she'd never find out about it, I told myself, and it couldn't really hurt her as long as I was clear about whom I actually loved. And, of course, she always found out about it and it always hurt her. Eventually it hurt her to the point where she decided it would be less painful to live without me. And now she was in China investigating extended families and I was floundering around L.A. looking for lost children.

My rationalization about Birdie's house was simple. Don't touch anything, and no one will know. Leave no traces. Just look around and come home. It'll be a head start, I said to myself in my most convincing interior-monologue tone, something I'll have to do anyway when Mrs. Sorrell calls to say that Aimee hasn't been returned. If I didn't do it on Friday, I'd have to wait until Monday. Three lost days, days that might either kill Aimee or save her life. At the time, it seemed like a powerful argument.

Powerful or not, I had the self-control to wait until afternoon. For all I knew, Birdie went home for lunch. I didn't want to walk in on him while he was forking his quiche or gnawing on his cigars or whatever it was that had stunted his growth.

In the meantime, I didn't know where he lived. I didn't even know his last name. I went back to the pad on which I'd written everything I'd learned about the numbers on his auto-redial buttons.

“Doggies Do,” said the same peevish voice. He had to do that five days a week. It was a miracle that he wasn't in a straitjacket.

“I want to make an appointment for a perm,” I said flutingly. I made airy little hand gestures to get into the mode. “And a nail clip too. You should
see
what she's doing to the shantung on my couch.”

“Your name?”

“Dorfenbecker,” I said, gambling that there wasn't another one.

“Hmmmm,” he said. Pages flapped. “Have you been in before, Mr. Dorfenbecker?”

“No. It's my very first time.”

“How did you learn about us? Yellow Pages? One of our ads in the
Times
or the
Herald
Examiner
or
Dog
Digest
?”

“Oh, no, no, no. A very sweet man on my block recommended you. He said you were just marvelous. Birdie something; I'm afraid I don't remember his last name.”

“That would be Mr. Skinker.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Skinker.”

“Such a cute nickname, Birdie. When would you like to come in?”

“Tuesday?” By Tuesday it would be over one way or the other.

“Fine. And what kind of a dog is it, Mr. Dorfenbecker?”

I tried to think of a breed. “A Shetland,” I said.

There was a pause. I could hear a pencil tapping on a desk. “A Shetland is a pony,” he said. “We don't do horses.”

“Well, of
course
you don't,” I said. “And Shetlands don't claw couches, at least not unless you keep them in the house. I didn't say Shetland. I said
sheltie.
”

“Silly me,” he said. “Tuesday at two?”

“Peachy.”

“Your phone number?”

I gave him Roxanne's. Roxanne was never home and she didn't have an answering machine. And if he did get her and she said she'd never heard of Mr. Dorfenbecker, he'd just think he'd transposed a digit.

“See you Tuesday at two,” he said. “
Ciao
.”

“
Ciao
yourself,” I said, hanging up and going back to my pad.

“Holistic Pet Clinic,” said the next voice on the third ring. “A holistically healthy pet is a happy pet.” The voice belonged to a female.

“This is Mr. Simon, Animal Regulation,” I said.

“Mr. Simon,” she said, all business. “What can we do for you?”

“I've got an application for license renewal in front of me,” I said, “and the man who filled it out neglected to give us his address. You're listed as the veterinarian who gave his dog her booster shots.”

“Yes?” she said.

“Well, I can't send him his license tags without an address,” I said. Dogs whooped in the background.

“How thoughtful of you,” she said. To someone else she said, “Your dog is really terrorizing that kitty. Could you keep him closer to you, please?”

Another job I was glad I didn't have. “His name is Skinker. The dog is a Yorkshire terrier, it says here.”

“Just a moment.” She dropped the phone to the counter, and I listened to various quadrupeds making their trademark noises as I regretted pouring the battery acid down the sink. A little battery acid was just what I needed.

“Bertram Skinker,” she said, “1310 Janet Drive, West Hollywood 90068.”

“Thank you,” I said, writing it down.

“Don't mention it. Ah, ah,” she said, “not on the floor.”

At two o'clock I was driving Alice up and down Janet Drive. Janet was a quiet, curving street just barely on the wrong side of Doheny, within envy distance of Beverly Hills. West of Doheny was the Land of Oz, distinguished by desirable zip codes and real-estate values that were accelerating at the speed of light.

Janet Drive was short and almost unpleasantly sweet. There were only twelve houses on each side, mostly small one-story affairs hiding behind privacy walls and growths of nitrogen-rich bougainvillea. They probably cost five thousand dollars to build in the forties, and they were now going in the high threes, as in three hundred thousand. All the houses were painted one of the two current decorator colors, either clamshell white or industrial gray. Thirteen-ten was out of sight behind the full battlement, both an eight-foot-high privacy wall and a flourishing hedge of champagne-colored bougainvillea. I parked, climbed out, and wished for cheap locks.

Inside the privacy wall, one glance at the door reaffirmed my worst fears. Birdie knew about locks. There were three, and only one of them was junk. The one that worried me most was a Medeco double dead bolt, anchored both in the wall to the left of the door and in the concrete slab on which the house had been built. It worried me so much that I walked around the house to check out the back door.

I couldn't get to the back door. Both sides of the house were surrounded by yet another wall, this one more than ten feet tall, and on the right the wall was gated. The gate was as tall as the wall and secured by a heavy combination lock. I knew nothing about combination locks.

So I went back to the front door. Something, presumably Woofers, yapped in a dog version of Morris Gurstein's voice as I worked on the first two locks. They went without too much trouble, leaving me confronted with the Medeco. The Medeco took me almost forty minutes, while Woofers shrilled at me and I wondered whether Birdie worked banker's hours on Fridays. If he did, if he came home and caught me, I might literally be killing Aimee. That is, if she weren't already dead and buried.

Finally the lock groaned and turned to the right, and the arms of the dead bolt shuddered out of position. I realized that I was perspiring profusely. I pushed the door inward and looked down, braced for Woofers' onslaught. Even a little dog can lacerate an ankle, and I didn't want to leave blood on Birdie's floor.

What I was looking at was expensive fuchsia-colored wall-to-wall carpet. Woofers, once the door had creaked open, had beaten a hasty retreat. I went in with new courage and closed the door behind me.

“Whoooo,” I said in a falsetto that rose and fell like a graph of the Doppler effect. “Whoo-oo, Woofers.”

Woofers declined to appear. Instead, something that sounded like a fly being unzipped issued from the room at the end of the entrance hall. It took me a moment to place it as an attempt at a growl. I mustered up my courage and looked around.

Mounted high on the walls, antique masks from Bali or someplace else in Indonesia stuck faded tongues out at me. All the other art in sight was Japanese, mostly celebrating the suicidal spirit of the samurai. In between the bloody prints—decapitations and Japanese swords being swung against invincible ghosts—the walls were covered in a rough, nubby silk of a neutral beige that brought into bright relief the colors of the silk flowers, perfectly arranged, that sprouted from hammered brass vases on the long mahogany table against the right-hand wall. To the left was a door that led into a yellow kitchen with accents of blue in the tiles above the sink, accents that were picked up by the decorator rug on the floor.