Manifesto for the Dead (2 page)

Alberta went on talking. Thompson glanced out the window at the flatlands of the Los Angeles Basin. He felt himself descending. Down there once again into the land of hard light and black shadows.

“Why?” said Alberta.

He had not been listening, but he'd heard the anger in her voice, and saw her expression, and recognized in it the old dilemma, the old devil's mix, suspicion and desire, hate and love, all that stuff—soft flesh, hard bone, cock and cunt. It had been there ever since he'd first put his hand up her skirt, a million years ago, maybe two million, and looked into her simmering eyes.

“Goddamn it, Jim. Why don't you pull your head out of the casket and smell the roses.” She wheeled away, off into the bedroom.

If he wanted to get any work done, he would have to check himself a room somewhere. In a transient hotel, a roadside inn, anything he could afford. He'd done the same in the past, when they were younger and lived in two-bit squalor, and he would do so again now.

Trouble was, he needed money even for that.

He went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. Quietly, hoping Alberta would not hear, he dialed his sister in La Jolla. He told her his problem.

“All right, Jim,” Franny said.

The sound of his sister's voice reminded him of his mother. Of all the little fly-by-nowhere joints they'd lived in as kids. It was the sound of the wind leaking through the wooden boards of a shack at the edge of some town no one wanted to live in anymore. Of Anadarko, Oklahoma, where he was born.

“You and Alberta fighting again?”

“No.”

“Whatever you say. Bill and I are leaving tomorrow.”

“Where to?”

“Lincoln.”

They were always going to Nebraska, Franny and Bill. They had relatives there, friends from the old days. People with thin faces and checkered shirts who'd made their money in hogs and corn.

“How long you be gone?”

“Couple weeks. I'll put a check in the mail to you before I go, Jim. If that'll help.”

“Thanks, Sis.”

“You're welcome to stay here, at our place.”

“No.” He was tempted, though. His sister's place was just a few blocks from the ocean.

“While we're in Lincoln, you want me to look up Lucille?”

“Lucille?”

Thompson played it dumb, but he knew damn well who she meant. Lussie Jones. Lucille, really, though no one called her that except other women, sometimes, or those who did not know her well. They'd lain together on the side of a hill once, fingers touching. Back in some other century, it seemed. The night had been grubby with humidity, the sky black, full of stars.

His sister waited on the other end. She knew the story. He had told her once, sloshed to the gills.

“Well, no, I don't think so,” he said.

Later, as if in a dream—standing over an open grave in the Hollywood Hills—Thompson would think back on this moment and wonder if there was anything he could have done to change what was to happen. If he had not called his sister, for instance. If he had stayed with Alberta in the Ardmore. Or turned down Billy Miracle.

Or if instead, everything that had happened was part of the fabric of things, the warp and the woof, no matter his actions, and there was nothing he could do.

Either way, Thompson got off the phone. When he turned, there stood Alberta, arms akimbo, with that green blaze in her eyes. If she had heard him mention the other woman's name, he didn't know, and he wasn't about to ask.

THREE

His sister sent the money. Thompson checked himself a room in the Aztec Hotel, just off Sunset, in a neighborhood of small hotels and whitewashed bungalows. The Aztec itself was three stories high. A red brick affair, with a sunbeaten awning hanging over the main entry. On the other side of that entry, a clerk worked the lobby desk.

Thompson paid the clerk—a snide, snarly, drugged-up kid in a red jacket. Then he clomped upstairs to his room.

He hadn't brought much with him. A change of clothes. A bottle of Jack. His Hermes portable. Also, an old six-shooter that had belonged to his father: an 1886 Retriever. The Retriever was an antique of sorts—a 45 caliper Army issue renowned for its faulty firing mechanism. Thompson brought it along for luck.

He thought of the young clerk who had checked him in.Ugly kid.Back when he was an ugly kid himself, Thompson had worked in an hotel too. His father had dragged the family down south to Fort Worth on a wild-catting scheme, but the scheme had gone sour.

He'd been writing back then as well, hiding his pages under the hotel blotter. He was plagued by erections, steaming up out of nowhere (a problem that had never left him, not completely, not even as an old man, lost in a muddle of words and drink). As a bell clerk, in those days, it had been his job to provide certain services. That meant knocking on brothel doors, bringing back a girl, some bootleg, maybe, or loco weed from the barrios of Dallas.

On occasion the hotel guests invited him to the party. Usually he ended up alone. Roaming the corridors impulsively. It was a trait with him, that impulsiveness, especially when drinking. He entered doors without knocking.

Sorry, he'd whisper. Just delivering towels. Hotel business.

He was no longer that green kid, but in some ways not much had changed. He was still scribbling. Except now he had a different angle; that of an old man sitting at a hotel window, a cigarette in his hand, a half-empty bottle on the table, an incessant cough, blood in his spittle. A man who in the mirror looked a decade older than he was. Raccoon eyes. Skin like the bark on some tree gone to rot.

Oh, well. Miracle, at least, had given him a title.

MANIFESTO FOR THE DEAD

I was standing on the edge of one of those nowhere little Texas towns where the whole world looks like it's been painted black and white. On the road ahead, prairie and more prairie, and it was the same thing back the other direction. It had been almost an hour since the last car went by.

There's a lesson in this, boy.

It was the voice again. Pops. He'd been with me since I could remember. Hardly a good word to say.

If only you'd listen, maybe you'd learn a thing or two.

I was about ready to snap, I guess, between dealing with Pops in my head and standing out there in all that Texas nothing. Then a car appeared on the horizon. It approached slow, coming up out of the heat and the haze. I put my thumb out, and its wheels churned dust all over hell.

A woman motioned me in. She had wide, baby doll eyes, and lips painted the color of a barn door. She smiled and fixed her eyes on mine. I felt something twist inside.

You're a
sap, boy,
said Pops.
Nothing but a goddamn sap
.

FOUR

In the morning, Alberta called. Her voice was pleasant and bright, as if there were nothing wrong between them. He could picture her twelve stories up in the Ardmore, sitting there cross-legged on the couch in her Bermuda shorts and sleeveless blouse.

“I need you at the Hillcrest Arms this afternoon,” she said. “The old tenant has cleared out—and a man from the gas company will be along to adjust the pilot.”

“Aren't we jumping the gun?”

“And oh. That producer called. Mr. Billy Miracle.”

“What did he want?”

“To meet with you. I told him you were going to be at the Hillcrest apartment. I gave him the address.”

“No.” Thompson didn't like Miracle knowing his business.

“Don't worry. Mr. Miracle said it would be better if you courier over some pages in advance. Then meet him down at Musso's.”

Thompson had more to say, but Alberta did not give him a chance. Her voice was so cheerful, he dared not argue. Any objections and misgivings, odd forebodings rising up out of his gut, any of this, he left unsaid.

That afternoon Thompson headed for the apartment on Hillcrest, working his way though the back streets of Hollywood. The Hillcrest Arms was an apartment building in the Moroccan style, brooding over a sloping little park with a banyan tree. The surrounding neighborhood was strewn with old wrecks. A cop car rolled by, a cruiser on patrol, and Thompson caught a glimpse of the two dicks inside. They were the usual buzzards, grim, bored, squinting through the windshield in their blue suits.

Thompson pushed through the doors and walked down the darkened hall until he reached the apartment Alberta had reserved for them. The place was as bad as he feared: a narrow one bedroom, gray walls, green carpet. For no reason at all, he thought of Lussie Jones. Maybe it was because his sister had mentioned her just a few days ago. Or because places like this, even in their emptiness, were musty with the smell of desire.

He looked down at his crotch. It had come undone, and the sight of himself—undone like that—aroused him. As he reached down to do up the buttons, the door buzzer went off.

Thompson stepped out into the hall. At the end of the corridor, on the other side of the glass entry, stood a young man. It took the young man another instant to realize the door was unlocked, then he pulled the handle. Thompson watched him come. A thin man, lean and gawky. He knifed through the shadows with a nervous, stuttering gait.

“Mr. Wicks?”

Thompson pinned it right away. The Okie accent. Not too different from his own. Nasal and slow and a little hesitant, the sound of a motor sputtering through the corn.

“You with the utility company?”

“I'm looking for a man named Wicks. Sydney Wicks.”

“Then you got the wrong place.”

“This is number 22, ain't it? I can see right here. Come on, don't pull my trousers.”

“Maybe you got your orders mixed?”

“Huh?”

“We got a pilot light needs firing.”

Thompson stepped into the apartment, and the young man followed. They regarded one another in the light. The Okie was about thirty. He had blonde hair, cut short, and piercing blue eyes that were so innocent as to be menacing, and a stance that was like that of an adolescent boy just come into manhood. He clutched and unclutched his hand, stared at Thompson fiercely, then looked around the room in a confused manner. The expression on his face said there was something askew—as if Thompson were not the person he'd expected him to be.

The Okie held a piece of paper in one hand, his keys in the other. He wore a gray, uniform-style shirt, but there was no name on it. His face was oily and haggard.

Outside, an old Cadillac stood parked under the banyan tree. It hadn't been there a few minutes before.

“You're with the utility company, that right?”

The man ran a hand through his yellow hair. “Come on, Wicks. Let's see the money.”

“I told you, my name's not Wicks.”

Thompson heard the fear in his own voice, and felt the situation about to go wrong. The stranger's eyes widened. He slapped his keys on the mantle and thrust the paper at Thompson.

“This is where I was told to come, with the delivery.”

Thompson examined the paper. On one side, written in a tall, looping hand, was the Hillcrest address. On the other side, though, was a different address all together.

“Look.” Thompson tried to show him the other address.

The Okie was sweating, his eyes wide and nervous. He ran his fingers once again through all that blonde bristle. “Fuck,” he said. Then he glanced toward the window. “Jesus fuck.”

Thompson saw what the Okie had seen. The cop car glimmering in the heat, returning from the other direction. In an instant, the Okie was out in the hallway, headed for the rear of the building. Thompson followed. The back door banged shut, and the Okie was gone. Thompson turned. Through the glass doors at the front entry, he caught the cruiser pause at the stop sign, then take the corner. The dicks looked in no particular hurry. Everything was routine.

Thompson went back to the apartment. His hands shook. He took a drink from the little flask he carried in his pocket. As he stood there, toying with the addresses on the paper, he spotted a dull glint on the mantle.

The son of a bitch had forgotten his keys.

Outside, Thompson circled the block, but there was no one. The Okie had vanished. He looked for a utility van, or a service truck, but there was nothing like that on the streets. Only the Cadillac, over there, under the banyan tree.

Despite himself, he thumbed through the keys on the Okie's ring. One of them, he thought, might be a fit.

Overhead, the palms rustled in the hot wind. They looked like tall women with idiot hairdos, swaying in the heat. Thompson could hear the traffic on Franklin, the persistent hum of Los Angeles that seemed to hold within itself the silence of the desert.

He told himself to stay away, but he went over to the banyan tree. Underneath it, the Cadillac stood covered with dust, as if it had just been driven on a long journey. He walked around to the back of the car, the key still in his hands.

What he did next, he had a hard time explaining to himself. Maybe I guessed, he told himself later. Maybe I already knew, deep down, what was inside that trunk. The Okie's slouch told me, the smell of his skin, the nervousness in his eyes. Or maybe it was just the old nosiness. I just wanted to see if the key would turn the lock.

The key turned. A young woman lay before him. Her eyes were milky, and she was bruised about the throat.

In that moment, it seemed, Thomson could hear all the voices in the desert that was the great city of Los Angeles. He could hear them in the whispering of God's littlest creatures, the tiniest flies, invisible maggots, as they set busily to their work.

FIVE

Thompson closed the trunk, but the girl's image stayed with him. A brunette, with an oval face, all black and blue. Someone had draped a sheet over her body, but haphazardly, so she resembled a fitful sleeper who'd thrown off her covers. Only there was something wrong about her neck, and about her legs, too, the way they angled and twisted into the wheel well.