All The Bells on Earth (37 page)

He looked around. Nothing else in the garage was touched. There was no ransacking, no opened boxes. Whoever had taken it had known right where to look.

Bentley? Of course there was no way Bentley believed that Walt had thrown it away. He was too canny for that. Had he gotten the information out of Henry, the old man having revealed the bird’s hiding place thinking it didn’t matter anyway? Of course he had. Walt’s anger drained away. Bentley was on a mission. And it was a
good
mission, too, even if it did involve stealing another man’s bluebird.

He went outside, angling around into the backyard where he pried up the corner of the stepping-stone. The real bird was still under there, snug and happy. It occurred to him then that the dead parakeet scam had turned out to be genius after all: even if he wouldn’t have a chance of working it on Argyle, he’d at least got to work it on Bentley.

He walked down the driveway now, and headed up the sidewalk toward the corner. When he got down to Cambridge Street he could see that the lights were on in Argyle’s house, and his car was still in the driveway. He walked boldly up to the house and stepped up onto the porch, where he rang the bell. There was no use being timid about this whole thing. Argyle opened the door, blinked as if in puzzlement, and then smiled at him.

“I think this fund-raiser of yours is something else,” he said immediately. “I wish I’d have thought of it myself.”

“I bet you do,” Walt said. “Actually, there’s been a slight accident with the check that you wrote for the kids.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The check,” Walt said. “It got torn up.” He handed Argyle the pieces.

“This is astonishing,” Argyle said. He shook his head, dumbfounded. “Enlighten me.”

“Well, the truth is, it got put in with the junk mail by mistake. We’ve gotten a lot of crap, flyers and like that, shoved through the slot recently. And so it got torn up by mistake.”

“I see.” There was the hint of a leer on his face, and he nodded broadly.

“I wonder if you could write out another one,” Walt said. “That is, if you’re still in such a generous mood.”

“Of course, of course.” Argyle gestured toward the interior of the house. “Step inside?”

“I’ll wait out here,” Walt said.

“Good enough. Checkbook’s still sitting here by the door.” He turned away to pick up the checkbook, opened it up, and started scribbling in it with a pen.

“Why don’t you make it out directly to Mrs. Simms?” Walt said.

“Oh, I don’t want that.” Argyle waved the idea away. “I don’t want any mention of
me
at all. Put this in the general fund along with the rest. How much have you collected so far?”

“Quite a bit,” Walt said. “The world’s a generous place when you give it half a chance.”

“We agree on that,” Argyle said. He handed the check over to Walt. “There you go. Take better care of this one, eh?” He started to shut the door.

“Oh, oh,” Walt said, looking it over. “Wait. Date’s wrong. That’s
last
year.” He pointed at the miswritten date. “I don’t know if the bank will go for that. It looks like the check’s a year old.”

“I’ll be damned,” Argyle said. “Let me have it back.” He scratched at the check with his pen, then handed it over again, winking at Walt. “Good as new.” He shut the door this time.

The date was corrected and initialed, but now Walt saw that the quantity was wrong. The comma was in the right place, but there were only three zeroes instead of four, so that it almost looked like twenty dollars, except with a couple of superfluous zeroes hovering off to the side. Walt was struck with the sudden notion that Argyle was doing this on purpose. He knocked on the door, and Argyle answered immediately, as if he’d been waiting there.

“Yes?” Argyle asked, wrinkling his forehead with doubt and surprise.

“What’s the amount here?” Walt asked. “The comma seems …”

“Why, let’s see.” He took the check again. “
Very
perceptive,” he said. “But you always were good with numbers, eh?
Here
we go …” He touched up the check again and handed it back.

“And I think you forgot your last name,” Walt said, blocking the door with his foot now. The signature read simply “Robert P.”

“Forgotten my
name
?”

“Here on the signature.”

“Well I’ll be …
Aren’t
I something!” He took the check again. “
Un
believable.”

Hit him now, Walt thought—a haymaker to the belly while he messes with the check again, then work him over good while he’s on his hands and knees….

Argyle gave him back the check. “Everything’s shipshape now, Cap’n,” he said, winking again. He clicked his feet together and saluted.

Wait stared at him, leaving his foot in the door. “Looks like they’ll catch the dirty little creep who sabotaged the church bells after all,” he said.

“That
is
good news.” Argyle furrowed up his face with concern, glancing unhappily at Walt’s foot.

“Positive I.D.,” Walt said. “Someone saw the bastard on the church roof, apparently. Police thought it was Murray LeRoy at first, but this new evidence changes all that. This was some other pathetic little shithead. They figure it’s the same one that’s been vandalizing the neighborhood, writing poo-poo words on walls with a brown crayon. Apparently he’s
seriously
Freudian, if you follow me.”

Argyle didn’t flinch. “I’m sure it’ll go hard on him if they catch him. And I believe your foot’s in my door.”

“I imagine they’ll throw away the key,” Walt said, shaking his head. “What a stinking geek, don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

“Lowest kind of rat-eating scum, wouldn’t you say?”

“Amen.” Argyle’s face was a mask of barely disguised loathing now.

“A man like that blows like big rats,” Walt said, “if you can call him a man at all, which I can’t. Personally I call him a treacherous, pig-faced, insect-brained, murdering piece of dog waste. Isn’t that what you call him?”

“First chance I get,” Argyle said. “And now really, Walt, I don’t want to hold you up. It’s been
very
nice talking to you.”

“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear,” Walt said. “This dipshit who murdered Simms …”

And just then Father Mahoney’s bells started to ring again. It was time for the nightly round of carols. Argyle suddenly looked as if he’d been poleaxed. Walt smiled big at him and put his hand to his ear theatrically. “Hark!” he said. “The tintinnabulation of the bells!”

Argyle thrust out his hand, pushing Walt solidly in the chest, and Walt backpedaled a step before getting his balance. In that moment the door slammed shut and there was the sound of a dead bolt striking. For a second Walt considered lifting the brass flap on the mail slot and shouting more insults into the interior of the house, but he turned around instead, walking away toward the corner. He glanced back to see if Argyle was watching him, but apparently the creature had slunk back into its den. Tolerably well satisfied, Walt headed for home.

I
VY WAS TALKING TO
Darla on the telephone. Walt had already talked to her once that evening. She had called earlier to speak to Nora and Eddie. That had been a productive call. Afterward Nora had cried for ten minutes. Now Darla had called back to talk to Ivy again, trying hard to make sense of suddenly finding herself a couple of thousand miles from home. Flying back to Michigan ought to have clarified something, given her life direction, but so far it hadn’t.

Walt couldn’t puzzle Darla out. She apparently missed the kids so much she could hardly stand it, but she couldn’t come home right now because she needed to “find herself.” Walt imagined her fumbling through coats in a dark closet with a tiny flashlight, certain she was in there someplace. She had a duty as a
mother
, she had told Walt tearfully, but her first duty was to herself, because if she didn’t love herself, then she couldn’t really love anything, could she? Except of course she had loved Jack, she said, but he turned into a worthless son-of-a-bitch.

She had carried on this way for ten minutes, weeping like a faucet until Walt had wanted to tell her to shut the hell up. But then it had occurred to him, like a knock on the head, that in some terribly real sense, Darla
couldn’t
shut the hell up. She couldn’t help herself, not right now. That’s what she was talking about, even if she didn’t quite know it. He had been thinking that she was
pretending
somehow, that this was all weakness and theater, that if she wanted to she could just cut it out, straighten up and fly right. But what if she wasn’t pretending at all? What if all of it was simply
true
, and that was the ghastly horror of it? The gulf between what Darla needed and what she possessed was so broad that she couldn’t navigate it, not in the leaky little rowboat she’d put to sea in.

Maybe the truth was that
all
of them—himself, the kids, Uncle Henry, Mrs. Biggs, even Argyle—were bailing like sixty, trying to stay afloat in their sorry little tubs.

“Where?” he heard Ivy ask now. “A chiropractic office? Is it good money?” She nodded, looking at Walt and making a face. “He’s a what? A nutritionist? Not right now, I guess. I don’t think Walt would want any vitamin supplements. How much? I’ll tell him. Okay, sure,” she said. “Take care.” She hung up. “It looks like she’s got a job, but no place to live,” she said to Walt. “If you want, you can subscribe to a line of vitamin supplements. This chiropractor is looking for a west coast rep. You can buy a sales kit for five hundred dollars.”

“Don’t let her talk to Henry.”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “She sounds like she’s down in the dumps.”

“So we’ve got Nora and Eddie for Christmas?”

“I get the feeling we’ve got Nora and Eddie till further notice, unless we want to hand them over to Jack, which I don’t think we do. Darla tells me that Jack was a little rough with Eddie a few times. That’s what she said, ‘a little rough.’ ”

“What does she mean, ‘rough’? Did Jack beat him up?” Walt sat up in bed. He felt his face get hot.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Well, then he better not come around here anymore, because if he does I’m going to ask him about it.”

“What do you mean,
ask
him?”

“Simple question before I hit him.”

“Don’t start fighting with Jack, for God’s sake.”

Walt didn’t say anything. His mind had descended into a dark place, and he pictured Jack lurching up the front walk toward the house again, making demands. He half wanted the phone to ring right now. Sure, Jack, come the hell on over…. Then step out of the dark with a fist full of dimes and make everything clear to him.

He realized suddenly that he’d never been this pissed off about anything in his life. Calm down, he thought, don’t have a coronary. His heart was going like sixty.

“It’s poison to sit there and dwell on this,” Ivy said. “Lie down. We don’t know anything for sure about what Jack did or didn’t do. And it’s not going to help Eddie for you to fly off the handle. If you want to help Eddie, there’s better ways to do it.”

“I know.”

“Because Eddie might just depend on you in some way you can’t foresee right now, and if you …”

“Okay, okay. I’m all right. I’m not going to hunt Jack down and kill him. But I think that if we’re going to do something to fix his hash, we ought to do it. Because if it comes down to it, I’m not sure I care what’s legal and what’s not legal when it comes to Nora and Eddie. I think I could break the law, especially if it meant breaking that bastard’s nose.”

“Don’t keep thinking about breaking someone’s nose. You’re worked up.”

“Well, of course I am. It’s the kids. Jack can insult me up one side and down the other and I’ll laugh in his face, but he’s going to damn well leave Nora and Eddie alone.”

“
Listen
to you. You’ve gone crazy,” Ivy said. “Head over heels. You’re all of a sudden a sucker for kids. You’ve been handing me this line all this time, being rational, and it turns out you’re custom-built, out-of-your-mind father material.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take advantage of my better nature. Go ahead. I’m used to it.”

Ivy switched the light out, and together they pulled the blankets up under their chins. Walt lay there staring at the ceiling, which was faintly illuminated by the light at the bottom of the stairs. They left the light on routinely now, just in case Nora and Eddie had to come up in the middle of the night because of bugs or something.

Routinely … After three days it was routine? He was already
used
to that light. How had it happened so quickly?

“Anyway, I was telling you about the lots over on Batavia?”

“That’s right,” Walt said. “That went okay?”

“It was amazing,” Ivy said. “Actually it was pretty weird. Good weird. I was out there looking things over, and this giant man appeared and started measuring the size of the lots.”

“A giant man?” Walt asked. “How many eyes did he have?”

“How many eyes? What are you talking about?”

“I thought maybe he was a cyclops.”

“He had two eyes. It turned out he’d already made his mind up. He wanted
both
of the lots. I walked straight into it.”