Shifters (18 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: Shifters
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At least there was one familiar face.
Carl was in his usual spot behind the bar, deftly flipping a cigarette into the air and catching it in his mouth.
“Tom Cruise from hell,” Locke said.
“Damn straight. Too bad I’m better-looking.” But the tall barkeep’s gaze thinned at notice of the police. “Those guys again. They’ve already grilled half the people who were on last night. Me included, and I wasn’t even here.”
Locke pulled up his regular stool, stealing a glance over his shoulder. Cordesman and his mascot had cornered the busboy and fry cook near the kitchen entry, Kerr scribbling in a notepad while Cordesman spewed his inquiries.
“They’re back to do some more grilling.” Locke ordered a Red Tail V.S.B., though he felt an atypical urge to get into some single malts. Maybe he’d have a few later.
Maybe later. Yeah, and
maybe
I’m an alcoholic.
“I take it they’ve been doing the same with you,” Carl supposed.
“Let’s just say I feel like a beef and pork combo at Toshi’s Teriyaki House.”
Carl drew a perfect pour from the tap and set it aside a moment, to “set.” He glanced solicitously to Locke. “Still can’t believe it about Lehrling. The cops give you any idea who they think did it?”
Locke shrugged. “Shit, for a while they were acting like they thought
I
 did it. Maybe they still do. That son-of-a-bitch Cordesman was pulling all kinds of mind-stunts—first he tells me I’m a murder suspect, then he drags me to the crime scene because he says they need positive ID of the body, then I see some funky evidence lady with Lehrling’s driver’s license in a plastic bag. Which means they knew damn well who it was all along.”
“Why’d he do all that?”
“Just to see how I’d
react.
”
“Sounds like police harassment to me.” Carl slid him the beer. “They were asking me about the blonde girl Lehrling left with. You saw her, right?”
“Have to be blind to miss
her.
”
“The long-haired guy’s putting it on like
she
 was the killer. That 110-pound rack of angelfood cake? Right. If she’s a psycho-killer, I’m gay.”
Several provocatively physiqued women at the bar laughed; Locke was sure they could all make a first-hand verification as to Carl’s heterosexuality.
“It sucks, though,” Carl continued, simultaneously preparing oyster shooters and pouring several drafts. “Lehrling was in here all the time, almost every night—”
“He was part of the place.”
“And now he’s in the morgue.”
Locke’s mind went silent. In the morgue, yes, but not exactly complete.
In the morgue…with parts missing… Parts consumed…
A flash in his mind’s vision tried to comprehend the scene: Lehrling’s body convulsing, blood blooming forth from his groin, his abdominal cavity converted to a psychopath’s warehouse of delicacies, organs plucked out as if by voracious melon-pickers, evacuated with glee.
What kind of a world was this?
Not a world,
he decided.
A hock-wad of the gods. Cosmic phlegm…
The beer, ordinarily a sweet bitter ale, turned sour with the cogitations. Drunks generally turned to their poison for solace but, just as generally, solace was the last thing they collected.
“When’s the funeral?” Carl asked, snapping the images. He triple-flipped pint glasses onto the rubber-lined shelf, expert as a Pike’s Place juggler.
“There isn’t going to be one. Lehrling was an atheist, didn’t believe in funerals.” More beerside recollections trailed home. “He’d always joke about dying. Said he wants his friends to pay their respects to him here.”
“Then I guess you’re ready to pay more respect.”
Locke glanced in a half-shock at his empty pint glass—he’d downed it in minutes. But just as he would raise his finger for another, the two policemen were standing at either shoulder.
“Can I get another beer before you cuff me?”
“We’re leaving now, Mr. Locke,” Cordesman announced. “Just wanted to know if you’d like a ride home.”
“Thanks for the thought, Captain, but after so many hours in your polite company, please don’t be offended when I say that yours is not a face I prefer to look at anymore.”
“No offense taken, Mr. Locke.”
“You definitely beat the clichés,” Locke pointed out. “A police captain who talks about abstraction in human dynamics and has hair longer than a heavy metal roadie.”
“It’s true that basic ethical concepts are essentially indefinable, but they do seem to denote intrinsic, objective qualities apprehended intuitively.” Then Cordesman made a gesture that was the closest thing to a smile Locke had seen. “How’s this for cliché, Mr. Locke? Don’t leave town anytime soon.”
««—»»
Locke meandered home, up the steps, and next found himself sitting statuesque before the window, trying to make sense of it all—this busted puzzle that was his existence…
First Clare leaving him inexplicably, now Lehrling dead—his best friend—gone…
And who was the blonde girl? She couldn’t have done this, could she?
 No, only some kind of monster did this thing, so what had happened to her?
Had the killer taken her?
Questions with no answers trickled on him—like the rain—as he cracked open another beer, this one from his own refrigerator—Hamm’s, the Poet’s Beer. $3.98 per twelve-pack. The gray early-evening drizzle had started, more of a mist actually, a clammy and cloying wetness that gradually soaked through everything. Locke was agitated, confused; what to do…
Call Lehrling?
No, Lehrling was dead.
He glanced at the dresser, paused midsip on his beer. There it was, like a beacon calling to him from across a dangerous and rocky harbor, the business card lying neatly where he’d left it.
Lethe…
He’d call Lethe. The man’s offer had seemed sincere, and getting out of town, even a short distance, would be good.
To hell with Cordesman,
he thought of the detective’s order.
This ain’t Iraq.
Suddenly it didn’t matter anymore, considerations he’d once dwelled upon.
Writing for money. Writing
poetry,
 which he viewed as the ultimate art form, in return for financial compensation. Somehow, though, he felt that he was making the right move. Why not engage his skills to keep afloat? Poe had. Blake and Shakespeare and Stevenson and Faulkner had. Perhaps financial solvency would accelerate his muse, lessening day to day worries so that he could climb out of his recent block.
Perhaps it would make him a better poet.
Yeah…
And if this were the case, then he owed it to his art to do it.
Locke never even suspected that he might be rationalizing…
He snatched up the business card, quickly punched in the numbers.
“Ja?” a female voice answered on the third ring.
(iii)
I smell it in the air, I breathe it out of the glint in your eyes. Fear and reason. Sin and redemption.
Relativity.
Human truth and the crudest clichés are all the same in a way. When you’re fucking your girlfriend, striving for that “nut,” what do you see when you haphazardly notice the moving shadow on the wall?
Do you see love or lust? Do you see proof of the human species as a higher order of life?
Or do you see another animal racing to dump primordial sperm into another available receptacle?
I don’t know.
Do you?
They say that existence precedes essence.
I don’t want to believe “they” are right.
Because I am not the only one who can breathe it out of the glint in your eyes.
There’s someone else.
Someone who does it far better than I do.
(iv)
“Is Mr. Lethe available? It’s Richard Locke, the poet,” Locke replied, hoping he hadn’t misdialed in his haste.
“Ja, chust und minute,” the voice replied. A throaty purr conjured up a vision of Dyanne Thorne in
Ilsa She-wolf of the S.S.
Or maybe a fiesty Hans Holbein peasant girl. Locke shook his head at the unwitting imagery. This was probably Lethe’s housekeeper, and more than likely some obese, middle-aged German woman.
“Lethe here,” came the quiet voice with its hint of accent.
“Mr. Lethe, this is—”
“Ah, Mr. Locke. How wonderful to hear from you so soon.”
“I’m calling regarding your offer; I think I’d like to accept.”
There, it was out— He’d agreed to write a book solely for money… Was this hackwork? Was it a setting aside of what was real, what was true? Locke didn’t know anymore, all he knew was that he was alone, his best friend was dead, Clare was gone, and anything that was different had to be an improvement. It was time for a change.
“Mr. Locke, your timing couldn’t be better. I’m having a small get-together here tomorrow evening and we’d be delighted to have your company. Why, there’s even a small guest-house that you could stay in for the weekend if you like.”
“That’s very kind of you, I’d be glad to get away from the city for a few days,” Locke went on. “A break in my routine may be just the stimulus I need to get started on this project.”
“Bring whatever luggage you like, you can stay at the cottage as long as you wish. I’ll send my driver round for you about six if that’s satisfactory. I think that this will be a most rewarding weekend. You’ve much potential Mr. Locke, perhaps much more than you realize.”
Without waiting for a response Lethe hung up, leaving Locke’s eyes to query the phone. What to do now?
How about writing?
he suggested to himself.
I just got a $10,000 book deal, I can’t sit on my ass forever.
 But he found the mood, and the motivation, displaced. Lehrling wasn’t even cold yet.
Something nearly subconscious took him to his desk.
I know…
 
Exorcism. Lehrling had talked about it all the time—
“Catharsis,” the novelist had advised only nights ago. “Exorcism. Turn your feelings into art. Write the best poem you’ve ever written. Then you’ll be free.”
Catharsis, the displacement of despair via his creative energy. But Locke had dismissed it as a pop psychology, liberal rhetoric. He’d never really bought all of that but he saw the link.
Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I’m going to accept money for my work. So tonight…
An unheeding glance to the dresser, to a picture of Clare. She seemed to smile back at him through the dead memory.
Tonight I will write the best poem of my life. And then…
Like the prelude of a pianist before the ivory keys, Locke flexed his fingers before the manual typewriter.
He began to type.
««—»»
Eleven lines, and how many rewrites?
Thirty-five, forty?
 Locke never thought in terms of drafts or output; it was irrelevant. The final creation was the only thing that mattered.

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