Shades of Eva (30 page)

Amelia stepped out of the Impala and closed
the door. I got out, as well, and followed her to her rental out
front.

“So, what exactly am I seeing him for?”

“Like I said, be yourself. He’ll figure it
out. You’re seeing him because you’ve each lost a brother. Maybe
you can get him to open up about his.”

“It’s a long shot.”

“It beats pulling teeth. Like I said, he’s a
nice man. Maybe you’ll get something out of it.”

“So where will you go, now?”

“I need to do some surveillance down in
Gary.”

“You’re going to see Ully, aren’t you?”

“Is that alright?”

“You have the lead.”

Amelia was nodding, but she seemed bothered.
“I don’t want to confuse you, Mitchell. I have the lead, but this
is still your family; still your call. We go on as long as you
want, but I need a certain degree of latitude. Do you
understand?”

“I understand. You have as much latitude as
you need. But what are you going to do with Ully?”

“We’re going to discuss his estate, and I’m
going to see what he has to say for himself. You said you wanted
confession; that’s the easy part. Restitution is the bigger issue.
So I’m going to send him this way. You and him have some things to
work out.”

“This way? As in the Asylum?”

“Assuming you get the job. If he knows where
Elmer is, we’ll have his remains exhumed quicker than you realize.
For now, just concentrate on your application and leave Ully to me.
I’ve got to go.”

Amelia proceeded to walk around to the
driver’s side of the Bonneville. “Text me and let me know how the
interviews go,” she said, giving me a wink.

“Text you?”

Amelia laughed. “You’ll figure it out.”

“I probably won’t know for a few days about
the job.”

“I doubt that,” Amelia replied, opening the
door to her car. “They move pretty fast around there if they like
you—and they’ll like you.”

I walked around to the driver’s side of the
car. “When will I see you again?”

Amelia just hollered, “Text me!” She closed
the door of her Bonneville, and then drove away.

I hollered out the better portion of don’t
drink and drive into the air behind her, but it was too late. She
was already gone.

I stood on the curb fumbling
with a
set of keys, watching the ass end of her car fade into the distance
until it was just a speck. I put the garage door down. I opened the
front door to my new home, and I went inside. I’m not sure if I
ever felt more alone, and for the first time in a long time, I
didn’t like that feeling at all.

***

12:16 P.M.

The Sacramento Drive Victorian was nicely
furnished, unlike the river house rental on the other side of town.
There was a big screen TV on one living room wall; beneath it an
entertainment shelving system that held a VCR and stereo. A
computer system on a desk on another wall added to the place’s
overly-technical feel. A mini-bar, filled with cola products, not
alcohol, flanked the computer desk. On the desk’s hutch were an
alarm clock, wireless telephone, a computer printer, scanner, and
fax machine. More technology for the tin woodman! Couch and love
seat. Coffee table. End tables. All very nice.

I moved into the kitchen area. Open concept.
Stainless steel appliances. Side by side refrigerator well stocked
with more cola products, and no alcohol. Milk and cheese unopened.
Expirations dates well into the future. Everything appeared
fresh—like maybe day-old fresh. Nothing on the countertops.
Utensils in drawers. No dust anywhere. I opened up the base
cabinets. Small appliances neatly tucked away: blender, convection
over, toaster. Nothing extraordinary. I left the wall cabinets
alone.

I walked upstairs. There was a double bed
and a TV in the main bedroom. A small walk-in closet revealed a new
wardrobe for me—mostly jeans and tee shirts, some button up shirts
and a couple sweaters (like I’d need those) and a suit—navy blue. A
white shirt hung next to it, and a light blue tie next to that. An
assortment of shoes was spread out on the floor of the closet:
shoes, work-boots, presumably, for the guard job once I got it—if I
got it—and some dress shoes to go with the suit. Since I wasn’t
heading to church any time soon, I figured the suit was for the
interview Amelia was expecting me to obtain.

A couple new leather Bomber jackets butted
the suit. I took one of the black tees off a hanger and threw it
on, then threw on a pair of jeans, the work-boots, and one of the
Bombers hoping to bring Chester Imil to life and simultaneously
impress Miss Daisy, my would-be handler with an eye for rugged
young men.

It was all acceptable—more than acceptable
for a hobo like me. There was even a master bath with fresh daisies
in a vase on the vanity. A nice touch. An arrangement like that had
never seen the inside of any of my squalid tenements in my past.
But this was a Victorian house, and Chester Imil was not Mark
Engram. He also wasn’t James Bond or any other English
sophisticate, unfortunately, so I had to question the choice of
homes and all this technological wizardry.

It seemed a setup better suited for one of
Amelia’s more sensible MP buddies from Iraq. I had to shake my head
at the entire situation. I’d have rather moved into a studio,
something a little more contemporary and less Norman Rockwell meets
NASA, and been left alone.

But who was I to complain? The Impala and
the remote to the big screen television were within reach. Food in
the fridge, and all expenses paid. What had I to lose?

Of course Amelia’s choices of rentals were
all about convenience and utility. Mom’s childhood house, the river
home of my dreams, was an investigative site—if not an excavation
site. Chet’s Victorian was chosen for proximity to the Asylum. I
didn’t question it any further. Amelia was leading this parade and
it was on her dime.

Amelia wouldn’t have had time to do all this
stocking, I remember thinking, looking around the front room—unless
she did all this before she came to Washington. The food in the
refrigerator seemed pretty darned fresh. If she did have help, then
who the hell was helping her? Probably the same guys she sent out
to Washington to locate me, was all I could think of.

Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone.

I turned back into the master bedroom
and did a quick survey for bugs or hidden cameras, feeling a slight
twinge of paranoia in the back of my head as if I were being
watched by someone. I didn’t know where any bugs would be or what
they’d look like, even, so I didn’t look long. Hell, Amelia
wouldn’t have bugged this place anyway—at least not the master
bedroom.

That was part of my issue in those days—I
didn’t think too logically. My mind didn’t work like a private
investigator’s. I had to shake my head at my own ignorance, and
then again at Amelia for trusting someone like me to get any of
this done. I felt about as useless as a set of testicles on a
scarecrow.

I thought I heard a faint laugh coming from
downstairs, which probably came from the back of my head. It was
starting to sing to me, oddly, and my nerves and muscles were
starting to contract in their now futile effort to squeeze some of
the missing alcohol from my ever-thickening blood.

The Dilaudid had apparently worn off a
little too quickly, which honestly, frightened me. I had taken
three of those bad boys just a few hours ago—or maybe two, but not
one—and the last thing I needed was a full-blown withdrawal
migraine just in time to do a dance on Catell’s little personality
inventory.

I hiked back downstairs and back into the
kitchen. I was still full from our room service breakfast at the
Furley, so I didn’t eat, but I did snatch a can of Pepsi from the
bottom shelf of the fridge and swallow a couple more Dilaudid.

I didn’t want to stress over Catell while I
was trying to charm Little Miss Daisy Pants, nor did I need
High-Face the Smiling Narco-Jester to reappear like he had in the
mirror earlier, and blow it all, so I refrained from taking the
Valium until I felt I had a handle on the Dilaudid.

Perhaps I had the whole pill thing
backwards! Who knew?

Twenty minutes passed and the
Dilaudid
was apparently doing its thing again. Whether or not I
had a handle on it was another matter, but my headache was gone.
Dilaudid has no handle if you want the truth. That’s part of the
reason you don’t see it much in pharmacies nowadays. How Amelia
came to get a prescription for an arcane substance like that was
beyond me. Why not Laudanum, I thought—or Quinine. Maybe I’d send
her something called an email and ask her about it.

Speaking of that, I had been toying with the
computer tower in the living room, trying, unsuccessfully, to set
up an email account.

I had called Amelia and she just laughed
into the phone and told me she’d already set one up for me. She
gave me some quick notes on what icons to click, what an icon was,
what a user name and password word were, what a mouse was, and
where to enter these words, and voila! I was looking at an inbox
and a compose button.

[email protected] to
[email protected], Monday, April 21, 1995: 12:22 P.M. Nice! I
thought.

I typed the word hello in the subject box,
and then clicked in the text area to type a message. I cleared my
throat and tried to think of what my first email to Amelia—hell, my
first email to anyone, period—was going to say. I settled on my
earlier question:  

Why Dilaudid?

I left it unsigned. I wasn’t sure if you
signed emails.

I hit send, and then stood up to look for a
mirror. I wanted to make sure the face I was wearing matched the
mood I was in, which was complacent, if not irritated. I know that
sounds ridiculous, but I didn’t want High-Face the Narco-Jester to
be the one filling out the application.

I approached a mirror hanging in the foyer
and peered in. High-Face wasn’t there. The face that was there was
a stable face, one with good color and a sedate sensibility, one
that matched the mood behind my forehead for once, one who looked
serious and somehow composed. It wasn’t the recalcitrant face of
Mitchell, one with furrowed brows bordering on fatigue and utter
irritation. I didn’t see him anymore. I really didn’t know him,
either. He seemed a little boy long since run away, one existent
only in memory. I hadn’t worn his name in a long, long time, and
hadn’t heard his name called much either—not until Amelia started
calling it. And sometimes when she did call Mitchell, it didn’t
even register as a signal for me. Sometimes it didn’t even prompt
me to turn around, as if it were just background noise, as if
someone had just called for a complete stranger in a crowd.

The face that was staring back at me in that
mirror was Chet Imil’s face, a new guy, someone who looked clean
and dressed well, a mercenary with morals and tough poise,
perhaps—a sedate, scruffy-faced young man from Arizona who needed
to make a good impression on a good girl from River
Bluff. 

Before I left, I heard a chime.

I looked around the room. I checked all the
clocks like an idiot, but they weren’t at the top of the hour, or
the bottom. I couldn’t imagine what would have made that sound and
then noticed I’d left the computer on. I jiggled the mouse to see
if I could remember how to turn the thing off, and saw that I had a
message in my inbox.

I clicked on it and nothing happened. I
clicked twice and an electronic piece of paper came on-screen.

[email protected] to
[email protected]

Monday, April 21, 1995: 12:33 p.m.

Why Dilaudid? Doc said it’s a good painkiller
for cluster headache. Amelia. P.S. You look nice. Go get ‘em
Chet.

This message sent from Phone-Effigy
Wireless.

Phone-Effigy Wireless?

I sat there trying to arrange my thoughts,
as well as my schedule. As far as my thoughts, I was tired but I
was feeling no pain. That sort of narcotic relief tends not to make
you think too much, but there was a pressing need inside of me to
plan something.

The Internet was a glorious thing when it
first came out. It seemed everyone and everything had a Web address
starting with www and ending in dot-com. The Jack Daniels Brewery
in Virginia had one: www.jackdaniels.com. I clicked on the link and
a page appeared with a headline that read:
We’re Glad You’re
Here!

Whoever we were wanted to know what state I
was in, how old I was, and what language I spoke. The JD logo was
on the left of the page with a slogan beneath it, a message to us
drunks, no doubt: Drink Sensibly. I felt there were a couple words
missing. I think what Old JD meant to say was drink sensibly, but
please drink. 

The US Army and the FBI had their own
websites, though they ended in different letters: www.goarmy.mil
and www.fbi.gov. Type in a subject in the search bar and you got an
address. Type in Jesus and you get the addresses of every major
church and half the Christian universities in a hundred-mile
radius.

I wondered what would appear if I typed in
Amelia’s name. So I did.

Several links appeared that appeared to be
ancestral links; links to personal homepages set up for surnames by
surnames. There was an Amelia Hawkins who was a writer:
www.ameliahawkinswrites.com, and another who was a professor at
Berkley: [email protected], which was an email address, not
a home page, I finally figured out.

There were random links to newspaper
articles about Amelia, Emily, Amalie, and Amy Hawkins, but they
were from different states and seemed to have nothing to do with my
Amelia, my friend.

I typed in Elmer Rennix and hit search.

Nothing. No link. No lead. No articles,
professorships, or writers credited by that name. No ancestral
entries; no lineage; no descendancy tree with his name
coincidentally listed. No articles with a subject remotely like
that. It was as if his name had never been typed into cyberspace.
There was no record of him on this new gadget, as if time, itself,
had somehow forgotten him.