Laughing Boy (3 page)

Tim was in the waiting car and heading back towards Sherman Oaks before the song was finished. He picked up his own Corvette and drove aimlessly across the Valley, through Pasadena until he found himself on I-210, heading
out of town. It was a cool, clear night, and the roads were busy with people doing the rounds that everybody needs to do the day before Thanksgiving. Through Arcadia a police car tailed him for a while and he realised that they’d have a bonanza if they pulled him over, what with the vodka he’d consumed before the concert and the king-size joint he had in his pocket. He slotted into the right-hand lane behind a 1960 Eldorado Biarritz with bigger fins on its tail than Apollo 11 and the cop car cruised by without a glance. Tim turned off at the next exit, heading north into the San Gabriels.

He parked in a viewing area overlooking the reservoir and lit the joint. Away to his right were the lights of town; behind, before and to his left was the empty blackness of the reservoir, the mountains and the desert; above him the Milky Way trailed across the sky like the train of a bride’s dress.

City of angels, city of dreams. Less than an hour ago he’d held them in the palm of his hand. Every jerk of his head, every strangulated vowel, and they’d bayed their approval. And now he was up here, alone, destroyed by those he thought were friends. Judases, every one of them. People down there were doing deals, pulling fast ones, making money by the strength of their talents. Or, for some, by
selling
their souls and their bodies. He took a long pull on the joint and closed his eyes. They’d learn, he thought. They’d learn. It could all come crashing down. Los Angeles might be the dream factory, but it was surrounded by desert. And it was built on an earthquake zone.

As dawn broke he took the I-10 towards Palm Springs, drawn inland by thoughts of a reunion with a girl he’d had a brief affair with earlier in the year. Twenty miles from her home he realised that she wasn’t the type to be eating alone, and in any case he didn’t have the gall to arrive at her door and invite himself in for Thanksgiving lunch. He made a
U-turn 
and drove all the way back to La Habra, the suburb of LA where his parents lived.

“Hi, Mom, hi Dad,” he said as he breezed into the house. “Is my room still vacant?” Ten minutes later he knew it was a big mistake, but it was too late now.

He was the best Thanksgiving present they could have had, his mother kept telling him, between enquiries about his wellbeing and relating items of gossip. They were so proud of him, and he didn’t come visiting anywhere near often enough. He took refuge in the bathroom, having a long shower and a shave with his father’s spare razor. When he went downstairs an hour later lunch was ready.

Tim’s father asked him what he’d like to drink with his meal, and was surprised when his son told him Jack Daniels. When pressed, Tim agreed that wine would be fine.

“Dad…” Tim began before they took their places at the table.

“Yes, Son.”

“I was wondering. About my car. If people see it there they might realise I’m home, you know, and kinda come
visiting
. I was hoping for some peace and quiet. Would you mind if I swapped it with yours in the garage?”

“No problem, Son. You know where the keys are. Only trouble is, er, my gun’s in the glove compartment. Bring it in, will you. Can’t leave it there if the car’s parked outside. I’d be in big trouble if that got stolen.” Mr Roper owned two shoe shops, and habitually carried the day’s takings in his car. The gun was a sensible precaution.

Tim’s mother came in bearing a steaming bowl of
pumpkin
soup. “No time for that, now,” she stated. “It’s eating time.”

Mr Roper said grace and Mrs Roper handed a basket of corn bread first to Tim, the prodigal son, and then to her husband. “I told Aunt Jessie you were home, Tim,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, but we’re so proud of you. She said she might drop by, later, and bring Shiralee with
her. She’s such a nice girl.”

Tim winced at the prospect. Cousin Shiralee wasn’t his proper cousin, unfortunately, so was considered a
prospective
bride for him. Nobody had noticed that he was skinny as an alley cat’s shadow while she had averaged a weight increase of ten pounds per year throughout her twenty-three years. “That’s OK, Mom,” he lied.

“And she just loves that new song you did. ‘Theo’s Tune’, is it? Why, it’s so…educational. Mrs Gilfedder even has grade two singing it, and they all know it’s by you.” Tim reached for the wine bottle. “Why you said it wasn’t you who wrote it I’ll never know.”

“It was, sort of…commercial reasons,” Tim said.

“Well I don’t understand all that commercial stuff. I know it’s not like all the songs you wrote supporting our boys in Vietnam, but I reckon it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. Why, Mr Summerbee at the fillin’ station, he reckons you could be bigger than the Partridge Family, come Christmas. Now wouldn’t that be something, George, if Tim’s song was number one at Christmas?”

“Sure would,” Mr Roper agreed, laying his spoon
alongside
his empty bowl.

They had corn-fed tom turkey with orange rice stuffing, cranberry and apple sauce, traditional mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, glazed brussel sprouts and roasted onions with green beans. Mrs Roper was a ferocious cook and helpings were copious in spite of there being an extra face at the table. When she put on a spread the table legs braced themselves.

“It’s not as if I
like
all that rock ‘n’ roll stuff you do,” Tim’s mother was saying as he ploughed on through the mountain of food in front of him. “But I don’t
like
all opera, either. Just some of it. But the good stuff kinda makes up for what you don’t like, and it’s the same with yours, Tim.
Refreshing
, that’s what a song like ‘Theo’s Tune’ is. Refreshing. Don’t you agree, George?”

“Mmm.”

“Any chance of some more wine, Dad?” Tim asked.

“I’ll open another bottle.”

“This is a wonderful dinner, Mom. I’m glad I came.”

“So are we, Son. It’s the best Thanksgiving we could’ve asked for. I can’t wait to tell them at the Guild that you came by. Everybody’s so proud of you.”

They finished off with pecan pie and blueberry ice cream. When they’d left the table and were settled in easy chairs Mrs Roper said: “And now something I’ve been just itching to show you, Tim. Look at this.” She perched on the arm of his chair, glowing like a log fire, and laid a big coloured book on his knee. “I found it at Books R Us. What do you think of that?”

It wasn’t very thick and had stiff board covers with
cartoon
characters racing across the front. ‘Theo’s Tune’ it
proclaimed
in bright letters. Tim slowly opened the cover and a tree came to life in front of him, rising hesitantly off the page like a new-born giraffe finding its feet.
One two,
buckle
your shoe,
it said
.
Uncle Joe is stuck in the glu
e
. Uncle Joe was indeed stuck in the glue, up near the top of the tree.

“That’s, er, neat, Mom,” Tim managed to say, his voice a croak, as he turned the page to reveal a dancing nun.
Four five, saints alive! Sister Mary is learning to jive.

“I got two more, for you to autograph,” she declared. “One for Aunt Jessie and one for the girls at the Guild, to auction for funds. Aren’t they the cutest things you ever did see?”

“Sure. I’ll, er, do them later.” He leaned forward and placed the book on a coffee table.

“Well I’ll be!” he heard his father say. Tim turned and saw he was fiddling with the controls of the television set. “Well I’ll be. Come and look at this.”

“Come and look at this,” his father insisted. “Ma, come and look at this.”

“What is it, George?”

“Larry Johnson show. Listen. Just listen.”

They listened, and watched. Four girls dressed in pilgrim costumes with lace bonnets but short skirts high-stepped across the screen, kicking their legs in a way that would have had them burned at the stake in 1621. Four men,
appropriately
but more modestly attired, tripped on from the right and merged with them, linking arms.

“What is it?” Mrs Roper asked.

“Ssh!” George replied. “Listen. Just listen.”

Tim recognised the tune before his mother did:

It was almost too much for Mrs Roper. “Oh my!” she gushed. “Oh my! That’s wonderful, just wonderful! I don’t believe it. Our Tim’s song on the Larry Johnson show.” Tim had picked up his wineglass but he had to put it down again because his hand was shaking. “And just look at him,” she went on. “He’s so modest. Anybody would think he was embarrassed by all the attention.” She stepped forward and held her son in a bear hug that stopped him breathing for a few seconds. “Wait till I tell Jessie,” she said as she released him. “Just wait till I tell Jessie. I wonder if she saw it?” She dashed off into the hallway, where the telephone was, to pass on her good tidings.

Tim and his father stood awkwardly for a few moments until Mr Roper Sr. said: “She gets kinda excited, Son. She’s proud of you. We all are.”

Tim picked up the glass again and drained it. He studied the empty vessel for a few moments, as if whether to have a refill was a big decision, then said: “About the cars, Dad. Do you mind if I swap them over now?”

“Why no, Son. The key’s in the kitchen, where it always is.”

“OK.” He walked through into the kitchen, which still held the debris of the blow-out lunch they’d eaten, and placed his glass on the work surface. Just inside the top
left-hand
cupboard, where they’d been since his childhood, he found the keys to the garage’s side entrance and his father’s car. On the key fob was a Mickey Mouse he’d given his dad when they’d visited Disneyland the day it opened, down in Anaheim back in ’55.

It was dim and cool in the garage, with motes of dust
suspended
in the beams of sunshine from the tiny windows. The car was the same old Buick that his father had owned for ten years, the maroon paintwork’s glow reflecting the
attention
he gave it. Tim squeezed down the passenger side and unlocked the door.

He placed his hand between the door and the wall so as not to scratch the paint as he eased himself into the seat and sank into the deep leather. The door closed with the dull
clump
that took millions of dollars to perfect.

Through the windscreen he could see a pile of articles heaped against what had once been his father’s workbench. Easily identifiable were Tim’s first and last bikes, and two Halloween masks hanging on a hook. There was an ironing board, a convector heater that he’d had in his bedroom, and a pile of boxed board games that he remembered as being invariably disappointing. Sitting on top of them was the catching glove he’d been given as a twelfth-birthday present and, apart from briefly trying on, had never worn since. Not once.

Tim opened the Buick’s glove compartment and raised the sheaf of documents that lay inside. The gun was
underneath
them. He lifted it out and inspected it.

The wooden grip felt comfortable, reassuring even, in his hand. It was a Taurus revolver, made in Brazil, bigger than a twenty-two but not quite a thirty-eight. There were four bullets in the gun, with an empty chamber under the
hammer
and another next to it. Tim smiled at his father’s
concern
for safety. He could pull the trigger once and nothing would happen. Next time, he’d mean business.

Tim pushed the cylinder round one click, and then
another
, just to be certain. He turned the gun in his hand,
threading
his thumb inside the trigger guard, and placed the snub barrel in his mouth. It was as numb as the kiss of a faithless lover. As he applied pressure to the trigger he felt the
cylinder
rotate against his lip, bringing the next bullet under the hammer. And then he felt nothing.

Happy Thanksgiving, Mom. Happy Thanksgiving, Dad.

There is no such thing as an ordinary person, so it follows that there is no such thing as an ordinary murder. I
remember
thinking that in the early days of the enquiry, after we’d raked through the ashes of Laura Heeley’s life until our fingers hurt and our eyes burned. I may even have said it to the troops during one of my more eloquent pep talks.

Laura was thirty-eight when she died, and had lived in Heckley for all that time. Local secondary modern school; left at fifteen to be a machinist in one of the last mills in town; married a boy from the next street when she was twenty and had two children in the next three years. The kids were now fifteen and seventeen and had never been in trouble with the police, bless ’em. Laura played bingo twice a week, taking her elderly mother along for a game, and did her shopping at Asda on a Thursday afternoon. Through the day she worked part-time packing electronic components in one of the featureless warehouses in the new technology park at the edge of town and her favourite television
programme
was
Emmerdale
. Ordinary was a word that came charging out of the sunrise on a palomino pony as soon as you thought about her.

Until one evening in February, as she walked home from her mother’s house after another moderately enjoyable but utterly fruitless game of bingo, her numbers came up for the first time in her life. One person in the entire United Kingdom was chosen to be stabbed to death that Tuesday evening, and that person was Laura Heeley. Somebody walked up behind her and plunged ten inches of razor-edged stiletto into her back. It penetrated C&A coat, BHS blouse, M&S bra, skin, muscle and finally her heart, with total
indifference
, leaving her to die at the side of an unlit lane.