Tailed (6 page)

For the uninitiated, J. C. Fowler was a TV personality from the sixities and seventies whose previously straightlaced image was tarnished when he took a “spiritual bent.” I couldn't recall the details, but he'd been on a dig somewhere when he more or less lost his mind and went the way of Timothy Leary. Respected front man for science one moment, wild spiritualist who used “all his senses” (and probably no little amount of LSD) the next. In some circles, it had earned him a place as a countercultural hero, and he kept making low-budget documentaries on his own about things like spiritual liftoffs at the pyramids and awakenings at Machu Picchu. The IRS had swooped in on him, taken all his assets, and tossed him in jail for a while for tax evasion. As I recalled, his last documentary, after he got out of prison, had been an apocalyptic ramble about some ancient Native American archeological site that, according to Fowler, the government was preventing him from further investigating. So Fowler was an erstwhile Erich von Däniken with crazy rants about ancient civilizations and UFOs. He was a kook and a has-been. I'd assumed he was long dead.

Hardly. I had to wait about a dozen toe taps for him to stop his Count Floyd impression. When he ceased howling, he was flush from the exertion, and he broke into a coughing fit that I thought might just turn the old dude inside out.

“Look, it's nice to meet you, Fowler, really…You need a drink of water or something?”

He waved me off as he sank down to his knees, hacking. I turned away and pushed through the glass doors into the Space Needle visitors' center. The guards had already noticed Fowler, and one of them was pointing.

“Your friend need an ambulance?”

“More like a psychiatrist. He's not my friend, just some nut.”

Fowler burst through the doors, his face gaunt and sweaty, and grabbed my arm.

“Don't talk to them, Garth! They're the enemy! Let's go!”

I allowed myself to be dragged back outside, but once there, I dug my heels in.

“Fowler, what could you possibly want with me?”

His rubbery cheeks vibrated with anticipation, and he started making grunting sounds. The Porkie imitation seemed involuntary, like he had Tourette's or something.

“I'm a javelina”—grunt grunt grunt—“I'm here to help you turn away the coyotes”—grunt grunt grunt—“and
El Viajero
of the Tupelca.”

I started back toward the glass doors. There's an aggressive pig-like critter native to the Southwest and Mexico called a javelina. If Fowler was a javelina, it was only in his mind. “I think you need a doctor, Fowler. Just calm down…”

“How can I calm down when the killer of the white geckos is out there?” Grunt grunt grunt. “We need to put your vuka back in its rightful place.”

I turned back around to face him. “How the…” Sprunty's death—and my involvement—had been splashed all over the tabloids. But to my knowledge the press hadn't picked up on the white geckos. Yet.

“Look, Fowler. I don't know what you're talking about. I am not the police, or the FBI. I don't look for bad guys, I avoid them. I'm sure you're a nice person, but I don't want anything to do with you, either. Do you understand?”

“But I have the key to set the vuka free!” From around his neck, Fowler held forth a leather cord, at the end of which hung a very old metal disc about two inches in diameter. Engraved on the disc were the outlines of five geckos, nose to tail in a circle. Two of the forms seemed to be filled in with white glass.

I recoiled from it.

“I was on a dig, before the government stopped me, and I found this.” His grunting had ceased, but now he was hissing. “I had a dream about five white geckos, and this is the key! We're in the time of the white gecko, we have to act now!” He suddenly crouched, like some kind of snake ready to strike, and began waving a hand in the air.

First a coyote, then a pig, and now a snake. How many whoopie pills he'd recently ingested I could only imagine. The guards inside were scowling, probably wondering if they needed to intervene. I did nothing to dissuade them.

One of the rent-a-cops sauntered outside with his thumb in his gun belt.

“You OK, mister?” He said this to me while scrutinizing Fowler.

“I'll be OK as long as this nut stays away from me.” I didn't like Fowler's metal disc, and I didn't like him.

Fowler suddenly straightened out of his snake pose and, with a flourish of his hand, painted a question mark in the air.
“Namaste!”
Then he turned on his heel and marched off toward the space junk, pretty as you please.

“We sure do get 'em.” The cop scratched the back of his neck, but pointed with his elbow. “The bonko boys like him, that is. Think maybe I should call this guy in. Can't be too careful these days.”

Watching Fowler's retreat, I suddenly felt sorry for him. I don't know why. Perhaps it's always sad to see someone, anyone, fall from grace. Or lose his mind.

“Nah.” I scrunched my nose at the cop—I was tempted to say it was a West Coast thing. Then again, we were a long way from Venice Beach or Oakland. “He's probably just some Canadian.”

Just when I didn't think it could get any weirder, it had.

chapter 7

I
found a pay phone.

“Brickface?”

There was silence at the other end, and I corrected myself. “Bricazzi?” “Carson?”

“Yup. Hey, something weird just happened that I thought you should know about.” I briefly filled him in on my encounter with J. C. Fowler.

“Hang on, Carson, let me put this on speaker.” The sound quality changed from clear to slightly fuzzy. I heard Bricazzi murmur to whoever else was in the room, “Someone named Fowler made contact with Carson, about the murders.”

“Carson? This is Lanston. Fill me in.”

I told my story again. When I was done, Colonel Lanston said: “So you first saw him at your hotel?”

“Yup. I didn't recognize him until he told me who he was.”

“You didn't recognize him?”

“I just said I didn't.”

“Even though he knew your parents?”

“I told you I…” My brain did a backflip. “My parents?”

This was like playing poker with my back to a mirror: she could see my cards but I couldn't see hers. It took me a second to collect my thoughts.

“Colonel Lanston, you've obviously done your homework on me and my extended family, which is commendable under the circumstances. But you have me at a continued disadvantage, which is maybe where you want me. I knew nothing of my grandfather, and still don't, and now I know nothing about Fowler having known my parents, which, to tell you the truth, doesn't surprise me, necessarily.”

“What's your point, Carson?”

“I think it might be more constructive, Lanston, if what you have on me and my family were made available to me so I could flag any connections to a possible killer. I mean, we can go on like this, with you trumping me with what I don't know at every turn, but I don't see where that gets us.”

“You might have filled us in on Fowler, Colonel,” Bricazzi said, not quite far enough under his breath. He sounded a mite miffed.

“Us, Carson?” Lanston sounded almost sarcastic. “Or you?”

Surrounded by hostile Sioux, Tonto says to the Lone Ranger:
What you mean “we,” white man?

“Are you trying to tell me I'm not part of the investigation? Or are you saying that I'm now a
target
of the investigation?”

After a pause, Bricazzi cut in. “The FBI is investigating this matter, and you're not FBI, so we can't share all of our intelligence with you. It's against policy.”

“That's not an answer to my question.”

“We appreciate your continuing cooperation, Carson.” Lanston couldn't have made the comment sound more perfunctory.

“Am I a
suspect
?”

There was another silence on the other end, and through the hiss on the line I could almost see Bricazzi and Lanston exchange uncomfortable glances. I don't like being toyed with—it makes me feel foolish, and when someone makes me feel foolish, I get royally PO'd. I didn't wait for a reply.

“I'll take that as a yes. Which means you can direct all future inquiries to my attorney, Nico Benevito. He's in the book.”

Never mind that Nico Benevito was my barber—I was hot under the collar and fanning my gun. I hung up, not just once, but several times, so hard that I almost broke the receiver.

To hell with being the FBI's ball of string, to hell with Stella, to hell with Fowler, to hell with Seattle.

At least I now knew why the killer had arranged to have me find Sprunty, and possibly why he was using my client list. To make me into a suspect. I was the patsy.

I cabbed back to my cell, crammed my stuff into my bags, grabbed my briefcase, and shot to the airport.

Destination? Ann Arbor.

chapter 8

T
his time I met Gabby at a Pickle Barrel, which thankfully doesn't have a clothing-optional section. We don't have this chain of diners in New York City—or many other chain restaurants, except in the Times Square area that caters to the tourists. The New York version of a chain restaurant is the independently owned but ubiquitous Greek diner. The burger, souvlaki, moussaka, and gyro platters are universal, dependable, and served by burly Greek men wearing white shirts and black vests. The menus are never less than ten pages, a cornucopia of everything from goulash to gefilte fish. Yet nobody but a rube ever orders any dish but the basics, standard lunch and breakfast fare. How may diner customers stumble in hankering for liver and onions or Athenian stuffed sand dabs? Hepcats know that these delights have been frozen for eons, possibly since the Pleistocene era. It wouldn't surprise me if the stroganoff were made from mastodon.

For the life of me, though, I can't figure out why anybody would want to lunch at a chain restaurant named Pickle Barrel. Today's specials are: pickles. I like a good cucumber soaked in brine and dill as much as the next guy, but to have chosen that as their namesake gives the wrong impression. Their tour de force is not pickles, in fact, but diner food, not too unlike the Greek places in New York. Perhaps the marketing department felt that pickle barrels—an old-timey touchstone redolent of Mr. Drucker's General Store and a game of checkers between slow-witted farmers—were synonymous with good food. The association seems mighty flimsy to me.

The menu at the Pickle Barrel was predictably brief and heavily laminated. I ordered the club sandwich and a coffee. Even the most ordinary restaurant on a bad day has a hard time screwing that up. And I needed the coffee. My trip hadn't been easy. I'd managed to bag a seat on standby to Cleveland, and from there had gone to the long-term lot to retrieve the Lincoln, where it was waiting to be shipped to New York. I pulled up to the Ann Arbor Arms Motor Court at exactly 2:00
A.M
. I'd called Angie from the airport, got the machine, and left her a message about where I was headed. I'd also left a message for Stella, telling her the FBI said I was no longer needed as part of the investigation and would no longer be privy to how the case was proceeding. Which was true, more or less.

“Garth, I asked you to call—you didn't have to visit.” At the risk of being unkind, Gabby looked much better in sweats than in the buff, and it was a relief to talk to her in more familiar surroundings. Her long white hair was out of the braids and fanned across her shoulders. She stirred her Cobb salad distractedly.

“You may have told Angie that you needed to speak with me, but I needed to see you. Something very odd is going on that I need to discuss. But you go first.”

She raised her eyebrows in curiosity.

“Well, I read about your trouble in the newspaper, about that football player. I wanted to make sure you were all right…”

“Well, that has to do with why I'm here.”

“And I wanted to say I was sorry for getting in a huff, and that I wished we'd spent more time together on your last visit, and that I'd be delighted to come to Nicholas's handfasting.”

“I'm sorry, too, Gabby. I didn't mean to offend you. I admit I'm not comfortable with your naturist lifestyle. But I don't have to be. Nicholas will be delighted.”

“Thank you, Garth.” Gabby's pale eyes softened, and she patted my hand. “When is this happy event?”

“Next week, Saturday. I know it's short notice, but it came about suddenly.” That wasn't exactly true. Nicholas's desire to have her there was short notice. “You can stay with me and Angie.”

“I have a friend at The Sunny Gourde, he's an airline pilot and can get me a cheap flight. Now…” Her eyes sparked. “What's so odd that you needed to come all the way here and take me to lunch? Hmm?”

“Well, part of the reason I needed to see you in person is that what I have to discuss with you is going to be something you don't want to discuss.”

Gabby stiffened, but maintained her serene smile. “There's nothing I'm afraid to discuss, Garth, you should know that.”

“It has to do with the past, with my grandfather on the Carson side.”

Her posture remained alert, but I saw her eyes dull over, which meant that she was unhappy with the subject already. Knew she would be.

“But this is important, Mom.” I only used the “M” word to signal Gabby that I was calling in a favor. “I'm a suspect in the murder of that football player, and there's some kind of tie to Dad's father, Julius ‘Kit' Carson.”

“Oh, how could that possibly be? He's been dead such a long time.”

“And, maybe, to J. C. Fowler.”

She shifted uncomfortably, and said to her salad: “This is silly, Garth. Who thinks you're a murderer?”

“The FBI thinks I may have killed that football player in Chicago, and another man in Texas.”

“Phooey! Did you tell them you didn't do it?”

“Yes, Gabby.”

“And you didn't kill these people?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, then they have to prove you did something you didn't, which in the end will make them look pretty silly.”

“C'mon, Gabby, you know better than that. It's the FBI. If nothing else, they can make my life miserable until they find the real guy. Look, some nut out there has killed two of my clients with their own taxidermy. And with the football player, the killer called me himself pretending to be the client and drew me out there to discover the body. He's trying to make it look like I'm committing these murders, to make me the common link. And somehow and for some reason, I am the common link. There's been some suggestion that it has to do with our family history. For example, J. C. Fowler tracked me down, wanted me to help him find this killer, and when I told the FBI, they threw in my face the fact that you and Dad knew him.”

“Fowler is a goofball. Don't pay any attention to him. Him and that crazy javelina fraternal order he was always pestering your father about. Honestly.”

“Yeah, he was on about javelinas when I met him. Well, he somehow got wind of these serial killings. People like him around is the last thing I need. So will you help me here? I need to know more about the Julius Carson character, my grandfather.”

“There's no dark secret, Garth.” Her eyes were still trained on her salad. “You know your grandfather on that side was a big-game hunter. Where else did all that taxidermy come from?”

“You can do better than that, Gabby. Where did he live? When did he die? Did he have a job?”

“I only know what little your father told me.” She sighed like I was wasting both our time. “He was an outfitter in Wyoming, ran his own camp. He became famous for having killed a mountain lion with only a knife. Lost an eye in the battle. He went to Africa, where he rubbed elbows with well-heeled hunters and made a lot of money. That was just after World War I, I think, when he married. Your grandmother died from influenza when your father was a baby. Your father was an only child and grew up mainly in boarding schools here in the States. His father married again and was off killing animals on the other side of the planet.”

“When did Kit Carson die?”

“Garth, I really don't know. I don't see how any of this could have any bearing on your troubles. Really. The very idea.”

“So how do you know Fowler?”

“He was a friend of your father's from childhood. His life is public record, so I'm sure you could find much more at the library than I could ever tell you. Years later, as I said, he became mixed up with some fraternal order when he was researching a documentary topic, and was always pestering your father about it. He was such a nuisance we had to tell him to go away and leave us alone.”

I considered my next question carefully, but decided it couldn't hurt to divulge the detail to Gabby.

“Does a gecko mean anything to you?”

Her eyes met mine. “It's a lizard, if I'm not mistaken.”

“A white gecko.”

She sighed. “Honestly, Garth, you were always such the serious one. Well, both you boys were. I don't know where you two got it, I really don't.”

I waited.

“A white gecko?” Gabby repeated the words incredulously. “What's that have to do with anything? Do you take supplements?”

“Vitamins? I take one of those all-in-one pills.”

“Those are garbage, I'd think you'd know that. You have health food stores in New York. Get yourself some arrowroot.”

“So a white gecko means nothing to you?”

She gazed to the left, out the window to the parking lot. “It's a sign, Garth.”

I knew that—the killer was leaving his calling card. And that the critters turned white every hundred years. And that the Native Americans thought they were special. But I knew the sign Gabby was talking about had to do with her paganist beliefs. I waited for more.

“The white gecko is an ancient symbol of five evil spirits of the earth that must never be united.” Her eyes were clear and bright. “That's what Fowler was on about all those years ago. Stay away from him, Garth.”

“He said he wanted to help me—something about a fuka.”

“A
vuka,
yes.”

“And a vuka is…”

“Fowler thinks you're possessed with this spirit called a vuka.”

I sat there with my mouth open a minute as Gabby nodded solemnly.

“How so?”

“I don't entirely understand it myself. My sense was that he didn't so much want to exorcize the spirit as to capture it. But we had to put a spell on Fowler to make him stay away.” She said this rather wistfully.

I found my mouth hanging open again. “A spell?”

“Mm hmm.”

“A
spell
?” I knew she was pretty out there with the paganist stuff, but this was the first I'd ever heard of her practicing witchcraft. “What kind of spell?”

She straightened in her chair, and I could see she was about to clam up on me.

“Come on, let's have it.”

“Just something simple.”

“Uh huh, like?”

“If he ever came near our family, he would lose his human form and take another.”

“Another? Another what?”

“Animal.”

My mouth was hanging open again.

“You turned Fowler into a
werewolf?”

A conversation three tables down came to a sudden stop.

“A lycanthrope, not a werewolf. They turn into all kinds of animals.” She rolled her eyes like I was over-reacting. “Our garden was planted with plenty of aconitum. Wolfsbane. Such nice blue flowers. The red admiral butterflies liked it, too.”

         

It's a sad day when you realize your mother is not only insane, but certifiable. Sadder was that not only did she believe she blinked Fowler into a werewolf, but apparently so did he. Unless Fowler's coyote, pig, and snake routines back there at the Space Needle had some other explanation.

After dropping Gabby back at The Sunny Gourde, I stopped at a filling station to make a few calls.

First: Stella. I felt guilty about cutting and running. I knew she wouldn't find the short message I left her an acceptable excuse for getting the hell out of Dodge.

“So.” That's all she said when she picked up.

“Sorry, Stella, but I can't do what you want me to do. It's not whining, it's not groaning. I can appraise for you, but I can't be a hockey puck for the Air Force and FBI.”

“OK, Garth. So where have you been?”

“Pretty simple, really. I went to Ann Arbor to ask my mom about my grandfather. That Colonel Lanston seemed to think my grandfather was the link to why the serial killer has involved me in this. And then I ran into this kook named Fowler at the Space Needle. He seemed to think I could help him find the killer.”

“Who?” I heard her lighting up, and could picture her pale face in a cloud of cigarette smoke grimacing with confusion.

“An old relic named Fowler. Colonel Lanston knew about him for some reason. That he knew my parents. And now she and the FBI seem to think I'm a suspect.”

“Not J. C. Fowler.”

“One and the same.” I paused. “Don't tell me you know about his connection to this?”

“Know?”

“You said his name like you already had some idea he was involved.”

“He's your uncle.”

“Howzat?”

“He's your grandfather Kit Carson's son. Your father's brother. That makes him your uncle. And he's a dangerous lunatic. A clinical lycanthrope.”

“Oh, come on. Why wouldn't my mother have told me Fowler was my uncle? This is absurd.”

“Fowler's connection to this is more complicated than you know. Are you still in Ann Arbor?”

I paused again.

“I think I'd better not say.”

“Look, Garth, you better get back to New York. Wilberforce/Peete can protect you. We have lawyers, expensive ones.”

“Protect me from whom? Lanston? Fowler?”

“Garth, I know you're confused…”

“How do I know the FBI, the Air Force, and perhaps Wilberforce/Peete won't use me as bait to find the killer? That's what was going to happen to the other people I did appraisals for—am I right? Or would it be more convenient to just hang the murders on me?”

“Well, who are you going to trust, Garth? Your brother? Ha!”

She was right. The only one I could trust was Nicholas. But I wasn't going to tell her that.

“I'm hanging up now, Stella. You can fire me or whatever. Because no matter what, I'm not going to let all you people make your problems mine.”

I clacked the receiver back into its cradle with no little satisfaction. I felt quite proud of myself. This was the right thing to do; I had absolutely no doubt of it. I was not going to let the Air Force, the FBI, and Wilberforce/Peete thread me on a hook like a worm.