The Last Coin (26 page)

Archaic rhyme

A
NDREW DECIDED TO
risk a phone call or two. Pickett would be dead set against messing around like that. He would want to use the attic phone to listen in, simply in hopes of discovering something telling. Making prank calls on it would accomplish nothing, Pickett would say. But Andrew couldn’t hang around halfway up the stairs all day, waiting for Pennyman’s telephone to ring. He was a busy man, what with the painting and all.

He was getting the hang of it—this painting business. What sickened him was the idea of having to scrape all the old, flaked paint off the eaves. With the money left from Aunt Naomi, he could hire someone to clean the house up, to do the preparatory work; then he could wade in and paint it. But after his boasting and all to Rose, he would look like a fool hiring someone. It would be an admission of incompetence and laziness, among a number of other things—including the fact that he somehow had a large chunk of money in his pocket.

But that damned old paint seemed to chip off right under his nose. The slightest vagaries of weather set it off. He had been brushing away late that very afternoon when the most astonishing wind had blown up, seemingly from under the house. Hot and dry, it had come rushing out through the crawlspace, carrying almost chalk-fine dust on it and the dried exoskeletons and spindle legs of dead beetles. There had been a moaning, too, as if someone with an awful hangover were waking up beneath the house. The wind had come curling up around him, billowing out his shirt, dirtying his hair, and, weirdly, the old, dried paint on the clapboards had begun to alligator off in a little hailstorm of yellow chips, the loosened paint snapping, the clapboards groaning. A half-dozen nails had half-pried out with a single desperate skreek. Then the wind fell, the chipping paint lay still in the grass, and the moaning stopped.

Andrew had gotten a hammer out of the garage and beaten the nails back in, all the time wondering what on earth had gone on. The moaning, certainly, would simply have been wind blowing through the cracks around the crawlspace—either that, or it might have been the ‘possum, yowling at the wind like a dog yowling at sirens. It was still under there, the ‘possum was, coming and going at night. But where did the wind come from? Through the crawlspace on the far side of the house? It was sheltered over there. Andrew had gone back to scraping, half-expecting another blast of wind, which you
would
expect, if it were a natural wind. But there had been nothing.

If the phenomenon had occurred three weeks back, he’d have shrugged. He’d have forgotten it by dinnertime. But now, with things astir on the south coast … Maybe this wind was one of the “emanations” that Pickett’s friend Georgia had carried on about. She was full of talk of positive ions. In fact she had said that the air around the house was saturated with them, and that Andrew ought to get some sort of machine, he couldn’t remember quite what—an orgone box? An ionic bomb? She had said that the house was at the eye of a mystical
foehn
wind. As he understood it, the whole thing was a matter of electrical charges cast off by spirit forces—ghosts bumping into each other, like raindrops in clouds. It had struck him as funny. Ghosts lead the damndest lives.

But now this wind … And even if there were some sort of mystical business going on, what did it mean? Perhaps Pennyman was behind it. They were going at it blow for blow, he and Andrew were. Pennyman still reeled from the effects of the note and the nailed nickel. The old man had come back at Andrew there in the cafe, mumbling to Rose just loud enough to be overheard. And now, to leap ahead in the war, maybe he had manufactured this scaling paint business, although heaven knows how he’d done it. It seemed to argue that it was Andrew’s turn. The telephone would do nicely.

Andrew decided not to go about it in any slipshod manner. It was just possible that he was involved in something more grand than he had suspected. If so, then subtlety was vital. What was called for was tomfoolery with a delicate touch.

He mixed up a pitcher of lemonade in the kitchen, then sneaked up the stairs to make sure Pennyman’s door was shut. He would have to place the call from his bedroom phone, and his bedroom was just down the hall from Pennyman’s room. He couldn’t afford to be seen going past in the hall or hustling up and down the stairs. He couldn’t call any attention at all to himself, not if he wanted to accomplish anything.

After the call, there was the chance that Pennyman would phone out, that he had accomplices, that he was part of a more nebulous conspiracy and that he would want to keep them informed. In that case, Andrew would have to listen in. He’d have to slip up the stairs into the attic to where the extension was. Clearly, if Pennyman spotted him going up, Andrew would have to pretend to be paying a visit to Aunt Naomi, and forget about listening in. Coming back down afterward, of course, would be riskiest. He could still claim to have been up visiting Naomi, but Pennyman would be certain he hadn’t been. And if Pennyman tumbled to the gag phone call, or to the existence of the attic extension, then he’d be certain about the origins of the note, too, and would be on his guard. Andrew’s entire battle plan would be exposed. He tiptoed along, holding his breath, listening hard. The coast was clear; the door was closed.

He got the best effect by talking through a Melitta coffee filter—a black plastic cone with a paper filter still lined with wet grounds. The effect was astonishing, like a voice out of an orbiting satellite. He slipped into his bedroom, and eased the door shut. Then, holding the coffee filter against the telephone mouthpiece like an upended bullhorn, he shoved his face into the cone and dialed Pennyman’s number. He heard the phone ring across the hall an instant before he heard the manufactured ring inside the telephone. “Mr. Pennyman?” he asked, suppressing a giggle.

“Yes,” Pennyman answered, immediately suspicious.

“Mr. Jules Pennyman?”

“Yes, what do you want?”

“I have a message for you. From a friend in the east.” Andrew snickered, immediately sniffing and clearing his throat, as if it hadn’t been a snicker at all. He pinched himself hard on the leg.

There was a silence, then Pennyman saying, “You do, do you?”

Very slowly and ponderously, enunciating as if he were talking to a half-wit or a foreigner, Andrew said, “He wants you to know that the key to the dilemma is a chew of tobacco. Tow-bak-ko. A chaw of …
terbackky.
His advice is Redman brand. This is generally unknown.”

There was another silence, a long one, which Andrew had to break by hanging up. He buried his face in his jacket, laughing like a fool. Pennyman was right down the hall. If he heard Andrew laughing like that, heading up to the attic, it would be curtains for the whole campaign. Andrew pinched himself again, trying to make it hurt, then ditched the coffee filter under the bed and went out swiftly and silently, up the stairs, sliding past Pennyman’s room. The door was still shut.

He waited in the attic for a full minute. Timing was the key here. He couldn’t afford to pluck up the receiver while Pennyman was dialing. Pennyman would hear the empty silence of the off-the-hook extension. If he were talking, though, to a line already open … Andrew’s hand hovered over the phone until, on the count of sixty, he eased the receiver out of the cradle. There was the sound of Pennyman’s voice, already in conversation.

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“When?”

“On the agreed-upon night.”

“Look, I’m not sure that the kind of money you’re offering is worth the trouble that …”

The voice trailed off, interrupted, if that were possible, by an enormous silence—the silence of Pennyman listening, judging, and coming to conclusions. The owner of the voice on the other end had somehow understood the silence, had felt its weight pressing against his own words, his own whining.

Andrew listened hard. A moment of revelation was at hand. What did it mean, “the trouble”? The silence lengthened. Then Pennyman’s voice again: “On the agreed-upon night.”

“Yes. Of course. I just …”

Andrew wheezed into the phone just as the man paused.

“I just …”

Andrew made a noise like a bird, a sort of canary twitter involving his tongue and upper lip, only an instant of it.

“Pardon me?” asked the voice, half-apologetically.

“What?” said Pennyman. “I didn’t …”

Andrew hung up—desperately carefully—and then slid out and down the stairs just as fast as he could manage. He heard Pennyman murmuring behind his door as he stepped past, and he was in the kitchen in seconds, lifting the receiver to the downstairs phone and dialing Pennyman’s number again. It was busy, so he re-dialed—once, twice, three times, and then it rang. Pennyman picked up the receiver and listened for a moment before saying, “Hello?”

Andrew switched the faucet in the sink over to spray and turned both taps onto full, then, without saying a word, shoved the receiver down into the sink, aiming it at the cataract. He counted to ten slowly before pulling it out, biting his jacket sleeve, and mumbling through a mouthful of cloth, “Redman brand. Everyone agrees upon the night.” Then he hung up, tense, wondering if he’d gone too far.

He started whistling very loud and stomping around in order to give the impression that he was hard at work. He poured a tall ice-filled glass of lemonade, then stamped away up the stairs, still whistling, but softer now, more subtly. He rapped on Pennyman’s door, and the old man opened it almost at once, as if he’d been standing right there.

“Glass of lemonade?” asked Andrew. “Made in the shade by an old maid with a spade.” He winked. “Just now brewed it up in the kitchen. I’ve been outside painting.” He looked past Pennyman, into the room. Only a slip of it was visible through the crack between Pennyman and the jamb. On the floor, weirdly, was one of Aunt Naomi’s cat boxes, or rather, one of her cats’ cat boxes, well used, and with a little slotted metal scooper shoved into the sand.

Upon opening the door, Pennyman regarded him evenly, then glanced at the glass with a look of profound contempt. He started to speak, but Andrew’s face betrayed his puzzlement over the cat box, and suddenly Pennyman’s countenance changed. He pushed the door open a little wider, as if he had nothing to hide, and gestured back into the room with his free hand. “Looks odd, doesn’t it?” he said. Andrew shook his head, trying to grin. “I thought I’d do my part. These little domestic chores … Rose is too busy for them, and heaven knows, what with the painting and all …”

“Of course,” said Andrew. “And Naomi, certainly, still isn’t up to it entirely. By golly. We appreciate it; I can assure you.”

Pennyman took the lemonade now, smiling widely. Andrew was one up on him, and he knew it. Scowling wouldn’t accomplish a thing for him. He stood for a moment, as if unsure what to do next, like a child who had been caught at something and had managed to lie his way out of it but was still edgy about the lie.

Andrew raised his eyebrows, thinking to follow up his little victory. “Something gone wrong?”

“No,” said Pennyman, recovering. “Why?” His tone of voice seemed a challenge to Andrew to make something of the cat box.

“Nothing. This is really first-rate of you. Humbling sort of job, mucking out cat boxes—calls for something more than lemonade, really. And this is out of a can, I’m afraid, but not at all bad.” The conversation had come to an impasse. Pennyman was clearly anxious to close the door.

“It will do just fine,” he said. “I’m really rather busy.”

“Yes,” said Andrew. “I can see that. Well, there’s more in the kitchen. I’ve mixed up a jumbo can. It’s in the fridge.”

Pennyman stared at him. He was gaining ground. “In the
fridge
,” he said flatly. Then he smiled an ingratiating smile, started to close the door, but evidently thought better of it. “I’d like to recommend a book to you, by the way.”

“Ah,” said Andrew. “Which one.”

“Anthropological text, actually. I know that’s not your meat, as they say, but you’d find it … informative. Wonderful book, actually. All about a race of early men in South America who dismembered their dead, afraid that they’d walk again otherwise. Sawed them into pieces. Very nasty business, don’t you think?”

Andrew gaped at him. “Yes. Now that you point it out. I mean to say—sawed them up?”

“Into fragments. Then generally mixed up the pieces of a half-dozen corpses and buried them like a salad. If the corpse still managed to rise from the dead it wouldn’t have any idea who to haunt—wouldn’t know whether to go after the cousin of its arm or the landlady of its right ear.”

“Fascinating,” said Andrew. “I’ll look forward to it. But right now I’ve got to get on with the cafe, actually. Been at it steady. I just took a break to bring you up a glass. I mean to say that I’ve got to get back to the painting. Horrible job.”

He turned around and fled back down the stairs, cursing himself. Why had he thought it necessary to face Pennyman down? His momentary advantage over the man had gone up in smoke, and he had quite likely given himself away, to boot. If he had just let it go after the phone in the sink gag! Maybe headed back upstairs in another half hour to make a third call—a breather call—and then another a half hour later. By dinnertime Pennyman would have been jumpy as a flea. Now Andrew had gone and spoiled the effect. And the old maid with a spade business had been far too hearty. He would have to train his face and his voice not to give him away. But the cat box … What in the world? Pennyman was going to lengths to ingratiate himself with Rose and Naomi, but for what reason? Just to be in a better position to do Andrew down? He picked up the lemonade pitcher, looked around guiltily, and drank off a third of its contents before wiping the rim and putting it into the refrigerator.