Planet Willie (2 page)

Mister Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Austrian philosopher, sums up
my feelings on detecting even better. In my last years on earth I became a fan
of philosophy, and I try to squeeze in a bit of self-improvement whenever I’m
down, since of course nobody has need for books up in heaven. Anyway,
the
Wondrous Witt has this example that I like about a bug in a box. He imagines
that everybody in the world has their own little box, and that everybody has a
bug in his box. Nobody can see into anybody else’s box, so when people say, “I
have a bug in my box,” they could be talking about ants or spiders, or even a
candlestick or a chocolate éclair. People can spend whole lifetimes talking
about the bug in their box, and other people can talk back saying, “Yeah, I
agree, my bug’s just like that,” or, “You’re crazy, mister, and you clearly
don’t understand a thing about bugs.” Or people can say, “Your bug is a
lowdown, no-good bug,” while other ones say, “Bugs just don’t have the same
sense of morals anymore.” And odds are, they’re talking about totally different
things, and I mean extremely different things. So that’s my job too, other than
watching Japanese men in dresses. The way I see it, a soul is a complex
apparatus influenced by many mysterious factors, and so when you’re on a case,
your job is to get the bugs of everybody involved out of their boxes. Then when
people talk about bugs, they’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. Maybe
everybody understands each other a little better after that.

In any case,
five years ago I’d realized that I had never had any idea what was in my
ex-wife’s box, but as Harry Shore sat there in his wheelchair sizing me up in
my dripping underwear, he had an idea of what was in mine. “Aren’t you that
fella who was married to Caroline Susan?”

I nodded and
took a sip of lemonade. The punch line here, as far as I’m concerned, is that Richard’s
last name is actually
Susan
.

“I’ve heard
about you. Unbelievable what you put that woman through. Can’t imagine what a
pretty Christian girl like that saw in you in the first place. To tell you the
truth, can’t imagine what she sees in Richard either, and I sit on a few
committees with him at the church.” At this I did a little more sipping in my
underwear, feeling more or less like high nobility for refraining from
mentioning that this pretty Christian girl, who from what I’d heard was now
attending three services a week, had once been the hottest piece in all of
South Texas.

“I guess she
loves him,” I said real cool.

“Him and his
money,” Shore said with a dry laugh. “And I can’t say that I blame her.” Which
was about all I needed to hear that day, so I put on my boots and left with the
bitter taste of lemons in my mouth.

Now up above
the coast the Gulf of Mexico, where Harry Shore still lives, the seagulls are
diving like kamikazes to see what they can find for breakfast. The wind is up,
and I can hear waves crashing on the beach in the distance as I pull into the
driveway. The house is a single-story ranch, well-suited for a man in a
wheelchair. Split-levels, I believe they’re called, and Shore’s house has got
more levels than you’d want to count.

I ring at the
front door, Shore opens it quick and attempts to break my hand by shaking it.
That’s his right hand. In his left he’s got one of those foam grip-builders and
is murdering it with every tick of the grandfather clock there in the entryway.
He’s dressed in black as he was five years ago and looks into me with sharp
blue eyes, like he’s trying to see if I’ve got what it takes. After a moment or
two he apparently finds what he wants. Sex appeal, simple charm – it’s hard to
put it into words. Shore shifts his eyes down to my belly and asks when I last
did anything resembling a sit-up. I tell him I try to get in fifty daily, he tells
me that’s not cutting it. I refrain from mentioning that since you’ve got no
use for a body up in heaven, you admittedly tend to let it go, and I make a
mental note to do a few calisthenics at the first opportunity, maybe a bit of
concentrated deep breathing for the general circulation.

“Alright,” he
says, shaking his head, and though he clearly doesn’t like it, he invites me
in. He doesn’t seem to remember our first conversation and says he’s got
something he wants me to see. I’m wondering if he’s already got his daughter
kneeling in some little chapel wing he’s built onto the abode, which could potentially
close this case a lot quicker than I’d like, but then he hasn’t mentioned
anything about the daughter I’m not supposed to know about, so I keep my mouth
shut. You have to learn to play dumb and let people talk, to pretend you’re not
actually heaven-sent, not to mention that you’re just one delayed promotion away
from archangel.

“Took you long
enough to get over here,” he’s saying as he spins around to drag race across a
room the size of a hotel lobby, moving so fast the front wheels of the chair
lift up off the ground. I trot along behind him, past modern sculptures,
Chinese vases, and furniture you can’t buy in South Texas. On the far side of
the room, he hits the brakes and comes to attention before a large gold-framed
painting on the wall. It’s a portrait of Mary, mother of Jesus, with a creamy
white face, a blue scarf covering her head and a mysterious smile that honestly
might give a fella ideas if she could come up with more than two dimensions.

“My prize
possession,” he says. “I love that painting. What do you think of her?”

“She’s
something,” I say, wondering where this is going.

“Look at her
eyes, Willie.” So I look at her eyes. “What color would you say those eyes
are?”

I say blue. He
snorts and tells me to be specific. “Royal blue? Sky blue? Slate blue?”

“Mister Shore,” I say real slow, exploring my dramatic range, “I do missing persons, I do
background checks, and I do some spectacular divorces. What I don’t do, I’m
afraid, is shades of blue. Wish I could recommend someone else to you, but the
specialists are few and far between.”

“I’d call it
turquoise,” he says, nodding like he’s just confirmed the lack of pulse in a
dead man. “Look at her,” he says. “She’s disgusting.”

Which is how
the long story of Harry Shore and his beloved blue-eyed Madonna begins. She was
done in the late fifteenth century by the school of the Italian painter
Botticelli, he tells me over coffee, which he insists on brewing and serving
himself, which is apparently how he insists on doing everything. He doesn’t
offer cream and tells me I can’t afford the sugar. Then he tells me that his
worthless daughter Fernanda has somehow swapped his priceless original for a
fake. He can’t say when, he can’t say how, but he’s sure of it. The eyes give
it away. His Madonna has deep blue eyes – midnight blue – and these aren’t midnight
blue. He knows her face better than he knows his own, and he sure as hell knows
she never had turquoise eyes.

“So,
Fernanda
,” I say, pulling out the little prop notebook
and pencil I find in my suit from some past investigation.
Fernanda
, I
write in the little notebook. But
first he
wants to tell me about Lulu, the daughter who turned out right. Two
years younger than Fernanda, she’s the one who’ll inherit the estate, including
the rightly blue-eyed Madonna once I find it, although considering the state of
my suit he says he’s not convinced I could find a dry-cleaner if called upon.
Lulu, on the other hand, is clean of mind and clean of body. Took orders at
sixteen and is now a nun who has devoted her life to saving little orphans
across the border in Acapulco, Mexico.

“And I don’t intend to have those little orphans cheated by a
no-good slut
,” he says. Which gets us to our first deadly: lust. “Fernanda
has nearly been the ruin of me over the years, principally due to her
unwillingness to keep her clothes on.” He’s bailed her out of countless
situations, both romantic and business, the business situations usually the
result of some romance. If she were truly evil, maybe he could admire her –
that at least requires some conviction. But no, she’s just sloppy. The most recent
folly is an art gallery she’s opened up in New York City. He provided that
money on condition she never ask him for another cent. Then she began harassing
him to let her sell the Madonna. He refused, they fought and haven’t spoken
since. Now she’s stolen it. Replaced it with a fake. He’d go to the police, but
he doesn’t want the family name dragged into this, so for lack of anyone better,
he’s called me. Which gets us to the deadly known as greed. What it doesn’t get
us to is why he’s been praying for Fernanda’s soul, but the
first
thing you learn as a detective in the Paradise Police Department is that what
they pray for is rarely what they really want. When you know a higher power is
listening, you tend to keep your bug in your box.

Now Saint Chief’s crack about Shore’s
new Sunday School wing is
starting to make some sense,
and I’m figuring Mister Shore’s
bug sleeps in a little gold bed.
What Saint
Chief still can’t abide is that even in heaven, the prayers of rich folks get
heard first. You build a new Sunday School wing and pray for chocolate ice
cream, some higher up will make sure one of us gets sent down with a scoop. It
doesn’t bother me, really. That’s just the way it is everywhere, and I’ve never
known it to be different, whether you’re in heaven or on earth.

When it comes time to discuss my fee, I figure that if he’s been
given a sign, he’s not liable to doubt handing over the kind of cash I’ll need
to do this properly, s
o I tell him two hundred dollars a day, and I tell
him that doesn’t include expenses, so I’ll need five thousand up front. Not a
blink, not a tremor. That box is shut up tighter than a bank vault. He zips
over to a desk, writes out a check and zips back, at which point it’s no small
satisfaction to catch him sucking wind. Then he gives me the address of
Fernanda’s gallery in New York and the name of his insurer, who’s located there
too. He’ll call ahead in case I want to stop by and talk to them. He’d prefer
it if I didn’t mention his suspicion of theft, but they should at least have
some proper photographs on file, which might give me some idea of how the eyes
are supposed to look.

“From here on
out, Mister Shore,” I say, “I dream in midnight blue. I’m inventing a fetching new
dance move I’m calling the Midnight Blue, and I’ll order midnight blue if I can
find it on the menu. Also, before I leave I just wanted to say what a genuine
honor it is to be working for you. I guess I don’t get to Sunday mornings at
Saint Pete’s as much as I should, but whenever I do, it’s a genuine pleasure to
read scripture over in that new Sunday School wing. Hell, when was it – just
last month, I guess – I was talking to that lovely Caroline Susan, and she was
saying how it’s just done wonders for attendance.”

To my
surprise, this little speech doesn’t seem to gratify the old man in the
slightest. If possible, his face becomes even harder, and when I mention
Caroline it nearly cracks, at which point our fearless detective gets a little
glimpse into the elder’s box. Apparently the ex is no longer the paragon of
Christian virtue she was the last time we spoke, which may explain why he
hasn’t taken the time to remember that I was once married to her.

“Are you
working for her?” he barks, eyes now a blue I’d call ice.

I show him the
check. “Mister Shore,” I say, “you just gave me five thousand reasons to be
working for you.”

“She could
give you a few thousand more,” he snarls, “courtesy of that construction boondoggle
you mentioned. Richard used to be an honest builder before he met that bitch.
Now
there’s
true evil. I’d kill her with my own bare hands, and you can
tell her I said so.”

I whistle
through my teeth like I just couldn’t be more shocked by this unexpected news
while remembering the talent Caroline always had for inspiring vivid fantasies
of her untimely death. “Put in the limestone and charged you for the marble,
huh?”

“I just hired
you to do a job,” he says, looking as if he’s calculating what his bare hands
could do to me. “So you’d best go do it.”

And though I’d
like to ask him more about the sins of my ex-wife, I’m pretty sure she’ll still
be sinning the next time we meet, so I walk out of there even faster than he
can roll, out into a clear blue morning feeling like I’ve just stolen a Madonna
of my own, a Madonna with a belly fetish, a Madonna not unsusceptible to my
devastating tango, a Madonna who, for the time I’ve got on earth, has eagerly
agreed to be my one and only girl.

2

Witness the arctic
polar bear as he emerges from his hibernatory lair. He is big, and he is bad,
and he’s slept for too long. Now hear him roar. This is the arctic polar bear.
Yes sir, I’m emerging from hiding. Lightning has shot down from a cloud. A
great white beast has arisen from his slumber and stalks the earth again.

Not to be
confused with your North American black bear, which is much less adaptable than
the polar bear hibernatorially. I know this from a little girl of Eskimoan
heritage with whom I once exchanged a few Eskimo kisses on the road in northern
Oregon. What she told me is that while the black bear is a strictly
wintertime hibernator, your polar bear will choose its time depending on
weather and food supply. Knows what it needs and manages accordingly. I like to
think I share those same secrets – of adapting myself to circumstances – of
knowing when to hold ‘em or to fold ‘em, so to speak – and with five thousand
dollars in my pocket, mister you are about to hear me roar.

First order of
business, however, is converting Shore’s check into something green with a
little more heft to it. I drive back up the coast towards my hometown, which
resembles most of those you’ve never heard of along the Gulf. The air is good,
the sunsets are fine, and there’s plenty of fishing for those so inclined. You also
get some strange characters mixed in with the suburban types, and I guess I
can’t except myself from that bunch. Sun-crazy retirees, ex-sailors, seasonal
drunks, and those on the run who ran till they hit the Gulf of Mexico. I fall
into this last category, I guess, except I started out here. By the time I hit
fourteen, however, I was on my own and on the road, California to the New York Islands. Give it a little catchy beat, and that one could be my theme song. Then
after more than a few false starts, and more than a few spectacular
conclusions, I found myself drawn back to the Gulf again. Whatever I had of
family was long gone, but I guess somehow I thought I might like to feel
settled in a place again. Reunited with Caroline, got a detective’s license,
and picked up a few odd jobs, then stuck around long enough to know that
settling’s not for me, but that didn’t give me long enough.

I pass a
couple of bait shops just opening up, some drive-thrus serving late breakfasts,
and decide to stop in at Pete’s for a second breakfast, specifically for the
pancakes. Pete still works the kitchen and piles them up right over the
sausage. Comes out looking like a birthday cake. Then it’s just a matter of
blueberry syrup and some serious knife and fork work, a delicious combination
if you ask me. Betty, Pete’s waitress, never lets my coffee cup get down past
halfway. She’s wearing her candy-striped uniform, which I do like on her, and
once she’s wondered where I’ve been and we’ve gotten in our morning flirtations,
I go out back to call this fella I know down at the police station. Figure I’ll
get a little head start on the Madonna. Early bird and the worm and whatnot.
Jimbo James is his name. I’ve known him for a couple of years and share a drink
with him from time to time for lack of better company. I also happen to know he
married above his station, so to speak, to a little redhead who works in the
suit department of Fabien’s Fashion for Men. Agreeable to a little nip and tuck
when you’re looking to set yourself up in Italian style. Keys to the dressing
rooms and whatnot. Gave ol’ Jimbo no end of pain, till I guess he figured he had
no choice but to become a hard-ass. Started cruising around in his trooper at a
cool five miles per hour just begging you to jaywalk. That kind of thing.

So I get Jimbo
on the line, and he tells me he hadn’t heard they let me out, which is the kind
of material you’ll get from Jimbo, not that you can entirely blame him.

“Funny stuff,
Jimbo,” I say. “Actually I just wanted to pick your brain for a moment. Don’t
get nervous. Really I just wanted to know if you’d run a name through the
computer for me.”

“Don’t tell me
you’re working, Willie,” he says, doing his best to sound real awestruck or
whatever. It’s the little things you miss.

“The name is Fernanda Shore,” I say. “Just the usual, if you don’t mind, Jimbo. Past arrests, credit
rating, current address, anything you can find.” He tells me he’ll see what he
can do. Even manages to be relatively polite about it, although we both know
that’s because there’s a bottle of high-dollar bourbon in it for him.

In the lot
outside Pete’s, I manage to get the truck to turn over yet again, which would
be enough cause for celebration on a regular day. She’s stood by me through
thick and thin, my truck. Silver to my Lone Ranger, if you’ll permit me. But
God bless her, she’s seen better days. Not worth the trouble to sell, if you
want to be blunt about it. Not more than a thousand miles left in her either,
but that’s enough to get me into town and the savings and loan, where I cash
Shore’s check and come walking out with a stack of hundreds not much thicker
than a pack of cards. Maybe I should have gotten it in twenties for sheer
effect, I’m thinking, as I stroll down the block to Felicity Liquors to buy a bottle
of Wild Turkey for Jimbo.

Then I decide
I may as well stop by Fabien’s and pay Junie a visit. She’s bobbed her hair
real short, which personally I don’t think becomes her, but she is pleased to
see me. Together we pick out this real slick blue Italian suit in what they
call Super-100 wool, the sort of suit where they’ve still got the stitching on
the shoulders and the sleeves are still unhemmed. I try it on, and man that’s
luxury. I feel like Mr. Marcello Mastroianni, the Italian movie star. Junie
seems to agree as she goes around pinching me under the arms and between the
legs. Giggles a little and says, “Which way do you hang, Willie?”

“Hell, Junie,”
I say. “You know me. Guess they’d better go ahead and sew in that third leg.”

She giggles
some more and sticks some pins in me like I’m some voodoo doll, all while
giving me the kind of looks like she’s trying to see into the depths of my
wasted soul or whatever. Once we’re done she steps back to look me over. “Boy,
Willie,” she says. “You look like Super One Million.”

“Hell, I’ll
take it,” I say. “How soon can you make it fit?” She tells me they can get the
tailor working on it after lunch and I can try it on that afternoon. Says she
won’t mind staying late if necessary.

“Thanks,
Junie,” I say. “I’m taking a little business trip tomorrow and won’t be
detained.”

She says she
thinks she can manage it, and we go over to the register where I take out my
stack of green, split the pack, shuffle them up and deal out seven
hundred-dollar bills. Then I give her the little smile I like to call the
Heartstopper. I mean I just bring it all out at once and hope we’re both still breathing when it’s over. Junie is not unaffected. She rests her cheek on her shoulder and
does something cute with her eyelashes. “I’ll see you later, honeybunch,” I
say, and stride right out of there, La Dolce Vita.

From a payphone
out on Las Colinas, I call to book an airplane ticket. Flying may be my only
remaining phobia, which I guess is funny when you consider where I spend most
of my time, but contrary to popular opinion, they don’t give you wings up
there, which suits me just fine. Given the circumstances, however, I don’t have
much other choice. I’ll be lucky if the truck gets me to Houston.

Then it’s just
a matter of the worldly goods. We’re talking a suitcase of clothes hidden under
the backseat and a thirty-eight caliber Colt I’ve carried since I was a kid.
Fired only twice in all those years, once through the minibar in a motel north
of Omaha, once through my own hand which required a few stitches. Lonesome
nights, you don’t want to let them go too late. Nevermind. The truth is I do
occasionally enjoy walking down the sidewalk feeling it there against my leg. I
mean you just notice more when you’re lethal. That sun just seems to shine a
little brighter.

Once I’m organized,
the weather’s shaping up so nicely that I decide to drive up the coast to Big
Merl’s for a king crab extravaganza. I do seconds, and I even do thirds. Clean
out the local population, so to speak. Tastes so good, Greenpeace’ll have a
citation on me by dawn, I fear, but by then I’ll be long gone. Crab killer on
the run.

From the
restaurant I check in on Jimbo. He tells me they’ve got nothing on Fernanda Shore. No arrests, no credit problems, no address, which isn’t a big surprise. I
get the impression from her father that Fernanda’s a rolling stone. Gathers no
moss, a woman like that. In any case, I thank Jimbo and tell him Felicity’s got
a bottle for him. “Any leads on the Willie Lee shooting?” I ask before hanging
up.

“Like I told
you before, Willie,” he says, “we’re taking that investigation real serious, but
given the victim’s prior history, our list of suspects now has more names on it
than the phonebook.”

“So does that
list include you?” I ask, but of course he hangs up, so after a leisurely
digestif, I cruise back over to Fabien’s to see Junie for finishing touches.
She and the tailor get me up on this podium like a museum piece and ease me
into seven hundred dollars. The pants come up, tight enough to remind you what
you got down there and brother not a thread more. The jacket slips on. I mean
your arms just click right into place. You are compact and delicious. What a
pleasure. Clothes don’t make the man, but I sure can’t understand people who
buy cheap threads. I mean you spend your whole life in them. Me, I make it a
habit of buying several notches above my station. They last you twice as long,
and more importantly, they keep you optimistic. Makes Junie and the tailor
optimistic too, which is the way you want it to be. He shakes my hand twice,
and Junie even throws in a pair of silk underwear. Wants me to try those on
too, but I tell her I’m more interested in looking at some highly fashionable
shirts, like one of your better pink paisleys. They sell anything like that at
Fabien’s?

“Maybe in
1980!
”
she cries, charmed by my ignorance and whatnot. “Hell, you’d have to dig around
in
Jimbo’s
closet for something like that. Paisley’s like some
endangered species.”

“And how is
Jimbo?” I ask real sweet. She looks down at the wall-to-wall carpet and swats
at my chest like I’ve got a mosquito there.

“What
I
want to know,” she says, twisting a finger into my ribs like she’s mashing that
bug real good, “is if you’ve seen Caroline.”

“Caroline
who?” I say, so she proceeds to tell me about the new and improved Caroline
Susan, who’s apparently using her husband’s money to finance a long abiding
passion for competitive high diving, yet another passion of Caroline’s that’s
news to me. Been training for a year and a half and placed third in the
over-forty division at last July’s Texas Amateur Aquat-athon, second in doubles
with a fella named Rock Lightford, who apparently once placed in the U.S.
nationals and, according to Junie, sticks his landings with perfect verticals. Rumor
has it that Caroline is also getting him horizontal, which is the one piece of
information here that comes as no surprise.

“She still with
that Susan?” I ask.

“Oh
she
wouldn’t leave
him
for the world,” Junie says real sarcastic, and then
she wants to know whether I want that suit on a hanger. I tell her I’ll just
wear that suit right out of there. Keep the coat hanger, save the trees.

From there I
head for Houston, which takes me through midnight, and where I find a hotel
room by the airport with all the modern amenities. In the morning I’m up for
the breakfast buffet, feeling more than a little nervous about air travel, so I
take a brief moment to imagine myself dying at the hands of ruthless
highjackers. I’ve been doing this kind of thing ever since I was a kid. I like
to think of it as a little prayer in reverse. If you can imagine the worst, I always
think, then things can only be better.

I picture it
all in my mind – the ski masks, the screams, the feel of the blade as it moves
through my throat. The more vivid you can make it, the more effective I’ve
found it is. The philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote somewhere that no man
should be called happy until after his death. He was an idiot, of course, but I
think about that sometimes when I die my little deaths. You’ve got to make it
real in your mind, or else you won’t enjoy the benefits.

In any case,
my little meditation does get me feeling especially good to be alive.
Refreshed, is how I feel. I have a big breakfast, getting my fill of some
earthly bacon, and head for the car park up the highway that’s got this shuttle
bus over to the terminal. Long-Term Parking, they call it, but what I’m
intending here is long-term in the extreme sense of the word, a sense of which
I unfortunately have some knowledge. Yes, I mean Eternal Parking, as much as it
hurts me to say it. I mean parking forever for the trucks you’ve loved the
most. I’m driving up the highway trying to get up the nerve, and isn’t that
always when you start noticing the little things, the ones you’ll miss? I mean
for the first time in a while, I’m paying attention to the sound of her motor,
the pull of her wheel. I’m also noticing a tendency on her part to shut off
entirely if she gets to pushing thirty, and it pains me to see her hurting this
way. She’s finished, and I know I have to do it, but by the time I’ve spiraled
up the deck to a free spot with a view, I also know I can’t do it this way.
Sentimental I’m not, but you leave your truck to die in a place like this, you
get to thinking about your own death again, and I’ve done more than enough of
that. You never want it to come – believe me – but you really don’t want it to
come this way, lined up with the others like in a nursing home. You wait every
day for something to come and set you free, but it’s never going to come. You
wouldn’t want that for anyone, much less a beloved truck.