The Sleeping and the Dead (11 page)

“What's up?”

“They is something in the garbage,” Trey said.

“What is it?”

“Garbage. Hell if I know.”

“Them little sticks crossed over the top of the can,” Walter said, looking spooked. He rubbed his mouth with the back of one hand while he reached for his back pocket with the other.

“Y'all stand back.” Trey waved his divining wands over the spread of garbage, pacing a circle around it. His circle became an oval that narrowed with each pass, until finally the rods crossed and stuck, as though drawn together by magnets. Deiter stooped under them and picked up a crumpled fast-food bag. Grant pushed the camera in while he opened it.

Deiter looked up and said, “I don't get it.” He tipped the bag over and a cell phone slid out.

“Y'all gonna clean this shit up now, right?” Walter said.

 

12

D
EITER LOOKED DEEPLY
AND EARNESTLY
into my eyes. “Ghost hunting is not an exact science. Sometimes you get a hit and sometimes you don't. Just because we didn't see anything tonight doesn't mean there's nothing there. I just want you to know I believe you.”

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“And if you experience anything else, you can call me, night or day.”

I shook his big, warm hand. “I will.”

“If you see anything, try to get a picture with your Leica.”

“And you call me if you find anything on those Orpheum images.”

After dawdling around the hall and offering several more apologies, he dragged his flip-flops out the door. I closed and locked it, then turned and looked at the room. It still smelled like Trey's chewing tobacco and Deiter's Viking barn funk. I could also smell the faint, sweet reek of garbage, like a fairground on a summer day.

I got the last quart of beer out of the fridge, sat down and turned on the television. I didn't have cable, but a Vincent Price movie,
Theater of Blood
, was still in the DVD player. I listened to the movie without really watching, distracted by the cell phone they had found in the trash. The cell-phone battery was dead. I had the same brand of phone, so I plugged it in to let it charge.

Trey said the phone didn't have anything to do with Walter's haunted elevator. There was something else about it that had drawn his divining rods, but he couldn't say what. I got the feeling he didn't like me much. I jammed his frequencies. I did that to lots of people.

When the movie was over, I turned the phone on to see what I could find out about the owner. The photos indicated a woman. The phone was full of pictures of women at parties and bars, your standard self-portait with your friends. One seemed familiar to me for some reason, but I couldn't put a name with her face—a gorgeous, photogenic blonde. The person consistently holding the phone was a young, pretty brunette, so I guessed it had belonged to her. She had probably thrown the phone away with her lunch.

I checked the last number she called and pressed Redial. After three rings, a woman answered, no hello, just a hostile “Who is this?”

“I found this phone. I'm just trying to contact the owner.”

“Jenny, somebody found your phone,” the voice said. Music played in the background, something by John Hiatt, and women talking loudly over the din of a crowded bar.

After a few seconds, another woman took over. “Hey, you found my phone!” She had to shout over the noise.

“In a Laundromat on Summer.” I didn't try to explain how I found it.

She said, “Somebody stole my purse from a party last night.”

“I didn't see your purse. All I found was the phone. Sorry.”

“That's OK. I canceled all my credit cards but I was going to call the cell-phone company tomorrow. I'm glad you found it.”

“I can call the cops, if you want me to,” I said.

“I'd rather just get my stuff back, especially my pictures. Where are you?”

I didn't want her coming over to my place. One look at this dump and she'd think I was setting her up to rob her. “I can meet you.”

*   *   *

I needed to splice the mainbrace anyway, so I agreed to meet her at Bosco's.

Bosco's was a brew pub off Madison in Overton Square. The Square was Memphis's seventies-era attempt at re-creating Bourbon Street without all the junkies and whores. The Square had once been the center of Memphis nightlife, before Beale Street was pulled up out of its dilapidation and forced to earn a profit. After that, the party shifted downtown, leaving Overton Square struggling to survive, but there were still a few places around to get drunk and maybe pick up a decent meal. Bosco's had a good restaurant, not your typical bar and grill, and their beer was brewed on the premises. I had only been there once, with Reed, back when I had a life and more than two dollars in my pocket.

My last quart of Tecate was dying to come out. I skipped the bar and was headed straight for the ladies' can when Jenny spotted me and called me over. I don't know how she picked me out of that crowd. Maybe I looked as pathetic as I sounded on the phone. She and her friends were sitting in a deep booth big enough for eight people at a squeeze. They had two big artichoke-and-eggplant pizzas, a bunch of empty beer and margarita glasses cluttering up the table, and no sign of a man, except the ones sitting with their backs to the bar trying to get the four ladies' attention. The place was noisy and beery without being obnoxious, but best of all there were no families, no shrieking children, just a lot of people wanting to get laid on a Wednesday night. With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up, it was practically Friday night for people with regular jobs. For those of us without jobs, it was always Friday night.

Jenny and her posse were older than I thought they'd be. Jenny looked early thirties, brunette, with a thin healthy face pretty enough to make me look like a junkie. She was wearing a tangerine-colored silk blouse that probably cost more than my rent. She waved me over to their table and after asking my name again, introduced me to her friends. I forgot their names as soon as I heard them. They didn't appear to notice me long enough to hear my name, so we were even. There were two redheads, probably sisters, and a brunette with blond highlights and a nose like a pug. She reminded me of a girl I had once tried to drown.

My original plan was to deliver her phone, but Jenny invited me to sit down. The booth was big enough for us to sit at one end and almost be alone. Her friends spent most of their time whining about how stupid everybody was at work. I remembered why I didn't have any girl friends.

“Where did you find it again?” she asked.

This time I told her about the garbage. “I live above the store at the other end of the building.” She wrinkled her razor-thin nose as she took it. Her nose was the worst thing about her face. She didn't ask what I was doing digging through the garbage in a Laundromat. She was a little drunk, but then again I was a bit one-eyed myself.

A waiter came by. Before I could say anything, Jenny ordered a drink for me. “It's the least I can do. I have a lot of important pictures in here. I've been meaning to move them to my computer, but you know how it is.”

I nodded and lit a cigarette.

“I'm sorry ma'am, you can't smoke in here,” the waiter said before he left.

I dropped it on the floor under the table and stubbed it out with my foot. It was my last cigarette, a good time to quit again.

“You want to know something weird?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I kind of knew it would turn up. I think that's why I didn't call my cell-phone company. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm actually kind of psychic, you know? God!” She brushed her hand through her hair and glanced at her friends. “They think I'm nuts.”

They would. “Maybe we're both nuts,” I laughed. What the hell, I finally told her the whole story about my evening with Grant-Marks Paranormal Investigation and how I had come to find her phone in the trash can in a Laundromat. I don't know why I told her everything about it, even the ghostly woman in my bedroom. Maybe she was an agony aunt—one of those people who put off that vibe that says, hey, dump your problems in my lap.

“That is so weird,” she said when I was finished. At least she didn't ask me to leave. “I wonder what it means.”

“I don't think it means anything at all. It's just a coincidence.”

“I don't think so.” She nervously tapped the edge of her empty glass with her wedding ring. “It has to mean something. It's like we were meant to meet each other.”

“Do you think so?” As fascinating as this was, my bladder could wait no longer. I smiled and excused myself to visit the head.

 

13

I
HAD TO WAIT FOR
a stall. The ladies' room was full of tipsy ladies enjoying a communal piss. Somebody was having a birthday party. At least the facilities were clean and my Kegel muscles strong enough to hold back the flood while they chatted and texted, oblivious to my urgency. I looked at myself in the mirror while I waited, measuring myself against the other women. Except for my thrift-store clothes and my heroin pallor, not one of these darlings had a thing on me. Several obviously envied my svelte form. Honey, it took six years on the junk to achieve this famine-victim body. I was going to have to watch my weight again, now that I was off the stuff. I didn't have the money for a new wardrobe, though a pound or two, here and there, wouldn't have killed me.

Finally a toilet cleared. As I sat, I listened to the asthmatic wheeze of the bathroom door as the last girl departed and I was finally, thankfully alone.

My phone rang. I didn't really want to talk to my mother while sitting on a public toilet, and I didn't have to answer to know she wanted me to come home for Thanksgiving. No matter how many years I avoided her calls and made promises that I didn't keep, she always called the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to tell me what she was cooking and how much she was looking forward to having me home, trying to pretend that I had already promised to be there. It never worked, but she always tried.

I knew I'd have to call her eventually. At least this time I had a good excuse for going AWOL.

I was just finishing up when I noticed a pair of men's black high-top Reeboks beneath the stall door. I looked up to see a man's eye pasted to the crack, the blackest eye I had ever seen. His skin was a dark reddish-brown. He looked Hispanic. I hadn't heard the bathroom door open, hadn't heard footsteps, but I was fairly certain he wasn't one of my special friends. I could smell his breath—minty, like he had just brushed. My heart was thumping. I didn't know what he was going to do, but I wasn't about to wait for him to try. I pulled up my jeans and yanked the door open without even bothering to zip, but he was already gone. Again, not even the sound of the door opening.

I headed back into the bar, scanning the crowd as I worked my way to Jenny's table. This wasn't the first time somebody had peeked at me in a public restroom, but it was the first time a man had followed me into the john to watch me pee. I was so wired on adrenaline, everybody in the room looked like a suspect. There were dozens of men with dark hair and skin, and they all seemed to be staring at me, smiling like wolves, fucking me with their eyes, but none as black and flat and cold as the eye I'd seen, an eye with nothing behind it, no life, no humanity—a mannequin's eye.

It must have shown on my face because when I sat down Jenny asked, “What happened? Are you OK?”

“Some guy followed me into the bathroom.”

Her friends heard that. Now they were all ears, my sympathy sisters, sliding down the benches toward us. “Oh my God!” one of the redheads said. “What did he do?”

“Nothing. Just watched.”

“Get the manager!” another said.

“Fuck that! Call the cops,” the third shrieked.

“I can't give a full description. All I saw was about this much of his face.” I demonstrated the gap in the door by pinching it with my fingers. I used to be a cop, and like they say in all the cop shows we're specially trained in the techniques of observation. Of course, that's bullshit designed to give our testimony more weight in court. A cop is as vulnerable to mistakes as anybody else, and sometimes more so, as any cop who's been on the job for very long carries a gorilla of prejudices. If the only tool in your shed is a sledgehammer, every problem looks like a watermelon.

I tried to play the whole thing hopeless, but I knew if I saw him again I would recognize the bastard. After that, plans got fuzzy.

“That's just too creepy,” the brunette said. “Especially after what happened to Ashley. I wish we didn't have to do this here.”

“Well I'm not staying,” one of the girls complained. “Let's go to Newby's.”

“Not until we've had our toast,” Jenny said. Our drinks had arrived while I was in the toilet. She lifted her glass and nodded at my beer. “Join us?”

“Sure.” I picked up my glass. They raised theirs, and for the moment, I was one of them, though I didn't know why.

“To Ashley,” Jenny toasted.

We drank in silence and left our glasses on the table. The ladies were strangely somber. As I stood up to let the others out, I asked Jenny, “Who is Ashley?”

“An old friend…” but before she could finish, a passing waiter bumped her into me and I sat back in the booth to keep from falling. The waiter apologized, but I barely heard him. I had spotted a pair of black Reeboks moving through the crowd of feet near the bar. I shoved the waiter out of the way, but I couldn't see my guy, just his shoes, and only then in flashes through people's legs. He must have been the shortest guy in the room, and he was heading for the door in a big damn hurry.

“What's wrong?” Jenny asked, tagging along behind me. She grabbed my hand and wouldn't let go. It wasn't easy plunging through the crowd dragging her behind.