Orange County Noir (Akashic Noir) (23 page)

Hudson cradled his elbow where Hank had walloped him.

"Put your pants on, boy," Hank said. He tossed the bat
to me, kept the gun on Hudson. "Unless you three want your
privacy.

It had been a year, and he looked the same. Crew cut. Red
neck. Same thick glasses taped in the middle, frames issued by
Moundsville thirty years ago. Big ooglie eyes. Slight paunch.
Pendleton, same one.

And the veins. They protruded like electrical wires on every visible inch of his creased skin.

"Looks like I done broke up a party."

"Hank," I Said. "What took you?"

"It's all right now. Just don't lose your lunch. Already got
to clean the blood residues from your leaking hoof." He said
residue slow, drawn out, like I suppose they did in the '30s in
West Texas, where he was from.

"I know you," Hudson said, still painfully clutching his
arm. "You're from Josh's documentary."

Hank grinned. "Reckon I am."

Hudson watched me, then looked back to Hank. "What
are you doing here?"

"I'm here for my friend Josh. He left me a message."

"Didn't trust you, Hudson, about the tenure. Hank and I
were going to keep the letters and you were going to keep your
promise." I took a gulp of air.

"You learned something from its old-timers," Hank said
appreciatively.

I nodded.

Hudson couldn't take his eyes off Hank. "I'm a killer now
too," he said. It was his turn to have a soft, measured, shellshocked voice.

"Oh yeah? Who'd you kill?"

"Her."

"Her?"

"That's what I said-"

Hank backhanded him.

Hank has big, sharp rings on his fingers. He calls them his class
rings, because they "educate others when they be needin' it."

Hank rubbed his hand. "No back talk, and it's `yes sir'
here on out. Now who'd you say you killed?"

"The girl on the bed," Hudson replied through his bloody
lips. He pinched his face with effort as he grumbled the word
«si "
r.

I guffawed when I heard him say it.

Hudson shot me a look.

"You don't say," Hank retorted. He lifted up the bedsheet
to take a long look.

Hudson shifted uneasily, as if a powerful stranger was
checking out his girlfriend on a lonely street corner.

"I know dead, son," Hank intoned. "And she ain't it." He
felt her neck. "There's a pulse. Strong too." Hank slapped her
lightly. "Wake up, pretty princess."

Hudson turned gray. He fell back against the wall. "What
is this?" he gasped. "What the hell is this?"

Hank examined her neck. "You bruised her, but you didn't
break the hyoidal bone. That's what shows death by strangulation. Reckon you was too weak." He felt the top of her
blonde head. "Bump on her noggin too. That's what knocked
her out."

Hank ran a finger down a crack on the mirror, just out of
sight below the mattress. "For an old guy, you did a number on
her." His laugh was a series of wheezes.

Hudson took a faltering step toward her.

"Jeannie ..."

"With the light brown hair," Hank sang. He walked over
to the minifridge and pocketed the salt shaker sitting on top.
"This and some ammonia should wake our sleeping princess
right up." He turned to me. "Keep an eye on him. And keep
him away from the girl. He's done enough to her."

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Don t'plex up, josh. I'm coming right back." Hank handed
me the gun and stepped out of the room.

"We can still get out," Hudson whispered. "You can't trust
him. He's an ex-con, full of tricks."

"I can trust you?"

"I made a mistake. Jeannie's alive now. Can't you see the
ground's shifted?"

I studied him. The man's man took out his pipe.

"Our word against his, josh. They'll believe any story we
agree to. He's a nonbeing."

"And Jeannie?"

"She's alive. She doesn't know anything except we got
a little overzealous in the sack. There's been no crime, you
idiot. Can't you see?" Hank puffed empty pipe air. "I guess I
love her, josh."

My foot throbbed painfully, but not nearly as bad as when
I was pulling my pants off. "You shot me," I whispered. "That's
got to be a crime."

"Right," he said. "Right. I'll fix everything, josh."

I looked at him, but I wasn't seeing him anymore. I was
seeing me, in that bed, and Sarah finding out.

And funny enough, I thought of my guys from the doc.
My guys, and how they had made the cruel guards plead.

"I'm a legend in my field, josh. Things will happen for you
under my guidance. But we might have to shoot him."

Guidance. I'd so needed it, someone to take an interest.
Someone to help me get ahead.

"Don't be buying his wolf ticket, josh."

Hank strode back in the room, holding a bottle of ammonia. He set it and the salt down on the fridge. "Smelling
salts."

Hudson looked sick.

Hank took the gun. "Unless you want to hold onto it."

I considered it. "That's okay."

"Had to drain the weasel too," he explained. "Happens
every hour, these days. So what you wanna do, josh?"

"I guess we call the police," I said half-heartedly.

Hank took a deep breath.

"Josh," Hudson pleaded. "I didn't know what I was doing.
Tenure, whatever you want, it's yours. Please." He was sniffling. Minutes ago, he'd called me a pussy.

"I don't know what this `tender' is he's offering," Hank
said. "I found you naked. He was going to smoke your ass,
boy. Who knows how this'll all play out." Hank put his hand
on my shoulder. "Now, if you could do anything you wanted,
anything, what would you do?"

Hudson would've killed me. He had wanted my Sarah. I
was still shaking.

I realized someone had shown me the way.

They all had.

You dip into the dark place. You reach out and grab it.

"They should find him in women's clothing," I blurted.

There was a silence in the room.

"Done," Hank said. "Some kind of kinky, left-wing sexmurder-suicide dilly. The reporters will love that." He smirked.
"Makes me wish I went to college myself."

Hudson all but peed his pants.

I looked at Jeannie.

Hank nodded in her direction. "She's the price of doing
business."

Hudson stepped forward. "You can't touch her. I won't let
you.

"I can do anything I want."

"I, I won't let you," Hudson repeated weakly. This may
have been his finest moment.

There was a pause, broken by Hank's wheezed laughter. "I can't keep it up no more. She's dead. Was from the start. Cold
as a rack of lamb." He rubbed the back of his creased neck.
"Just a little test, Josh. See if you'd turn on of Hank." He
settled down, then turned to Hudson. "Go through her closet.
Pick something pink."

"And frilly," I added.

Later, Hank and I drove his 1972 VW van to Hudson's to
retrieve my car. Hank had tended to my foot, but Sarah was
going to have to clean it up. I'd have some explaining to do.
Hank didn't think I'd need to go to the hospital.

"I just hope I beat Sarah home," I said.

"Sarah already came home."

I looked at Hank. His eyes stared back, distorted and enlarged by his broken, prison-issue glasses.

"She was there when I knocked."

I was clutching my seat.

Hank looked me over. "Look like you seen a ghost, boy."

"You said Sarah. . ."

"Yeah, but she wouldn't let me in. I don't think that wife
of yours trusts me."

I exhaled, deeply relieved.

"Anyway," Hank continued. "I know you always like seeing
me when I turn up. So there I was, and here I am. You're gonna
have to have a talking to her, do something about her attitude."

I was definitely going to have to do something.

The house is beautiful, a two-story Craftsman from 1912 with
polished hardwood floors you can slide ten feet on in your
socks. Sarah briefly tended her rose garden in the back, but
the weeds have gained the upper hand since she moved in
with her mother in Newport.

There's a guest house in the back, with its own bathroom
and even a little yard of its own.

That's where Hank lives.

I couldn't really explain to Sarah why I had allowed Hank
to live in the back. Hank and I are like blood brothers now,
he explained to me later. We'd both rescued each other, me
from certain death, him from loneliness and obscurity. Maybe
suicide. Now we got each other's backs, he said.

Sarah thought it particularly bizarre how Hank would sit
there cackling on his porch over that old copy of the Orange
County Register. The one with the headline, Dress-Clad Prof
and Coed in Murder Suicide.

Blood. The ammonia cleaned up mine.

Now I have something bigger to clean up.

Sarah's four months pregnant, but she won't even talk
to me.

I have to fix this, but it's like he's always watching. Always
ready.

Still doing his jail cell workout, right there in the middle
of Sarah's garden.

I guess that's the beauty of Hank.

I'm going to have to leave the house tonight without
Hank following me. I'm meeting an old prison acquaintance
of his in Old Towne tonight for a cup of coffee. Benito Scalvo
was locked up for over twenty years on a murder-for-hire beef.
He's in my doc too. He and Hank have a long-standing prison
hate for each other. I want to talk to Benito about that. Benito
has no family to speak of, no prospects. Nothing in the world
to do.

He was so glad I looked him up.

Ifred Hitchcock was definitely some kind of gamesman. Weird, but a gamesman. He had it figured
that people came to his films with an attitude, like
they were on to his game and daring him to show them some
moves they weren't expecting. So he gave them really twisted
stuff. Like Janet Leigh getting all cut up in the shower. Or the
old dude with his eyes pecked out in The Birds. Or, later in
his career, in Frenzy, when censorship loosened up, the killer
breaking the fingers of a naked corpse to get at something
she'd been clutching when he strangled her.