Stone Rain (22 page)

“Scared?”

“Yeah, like, about a whole bunch of things. I think she’s worried about you, about what you might be getting mixed up in, and she’s scared her job is falling apart, and I think she’s scared that you guys are headed for the dumper.”

I felt a lump in my throat. “I don’t want that to happen.”

“Yeah, well, like, neither do I. And I don’t think Paul’d be all that crazy about it either.”

“How is Paul?”

“He’s okay, I guess. That reminds me, somethin’ kind of weird. This woman came to the door, like, she could have been a football player or something. And there’s a car in the drive, there’s another one exactly like her behind the wheel, and this really ugly woman in the passenger seat.”

Who the hell would that be? Not Mrs. Gorkin and her daughters?

“Anyway, the one that came to the door, she asks is Paul there, and I say no, because he wasn’t, right? And so she hands me this envelope, has a hundred bucks in it, and she says, ‘This is for work,’ well, actually, she says, ‘Dis iz for verk.’ She has this kind of accent, you know?”

“Okay.”

“She tells me to give it to Paul, that he should remember they did the right thing. These were the burger ladies, right?”

“Yeah.” I felt cold, standing outside Mrs. Merker’s house. “She didn’t threaten you or anything, or say anything about Paul?”

“No, nothing like that. Well, except, she said, tell Paul, he was wrong about the freezer. That the meat was okay.”

I breathed some cool night air in through my nose. “Honey, if she ever shows up again, or there’s any trouble, call the police. Or Lawrence. His number’s in my book.”

“Okay. When are you coming home?”

“I don’t know. I’m going to stay in Canborough overnight, then head on to the Groverton area in the morning. Maybe tomorrow night, I’ll be back.”

“Okay. Be careful?”

“I will, honey.” I thought a moment, and said, “Tell your mother, when she comes home, that I love her.”

“You tell her, Dad,” Angie said. “Bye.”

I closed the phone, slipped it back into my jacket, and collected my thoughts before completing my journey to Mrs. Merker’s door.

I knocked three times. Old flyers advertising sales long since past were littered about the shrubs. There was a dim light, probably from a television, visible through the front door blinds.

I heard a bolt slide back, then the door opened six inches. A wizened old woman, slightly hunched over, peered through the opening over her smudged reading glasses. “Fuck you want?” she asked.

“Mrs. Merker?” I said.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“I don’t suppose Gary’s around, is he?” I was pretty confident that he wasn’t, that this was a good way to break the ice with his mother, but suddenly I felt a wave of panic, that maybe he might actually be there. I didn’t feel I was quite ready to speak one-to-one with him yet.

“He hasn’t fucking lived here in years,” his mother said. “What you want him for?”

“Well,” I said, realizing that I was making this up as I went along, “I was hoping to get a message to him.”

“A message? What fucking message?”

“Could I come in just for a moment? I’m very sorry to bother you, to drop by unannounced this way.” Like maybe, if I’d given her a call, she’d have had a chance to put on a pot of tea for me. Maybe make some scones.

She opened the door wider, and I realized I’d have had to give her a lot of notice if she’d wanted to pick up a bit before company arrived. The room could have been a newspaper-recycling depot. Yellowing papers and magazines were piled high on nearly every available surface, even on the plaid couch. There was a spot opened up, at the end, where Mrs. Merker must have been sitting to watch the television, which was tuned in to an old episode of
Fear Factor
.

“I love it when they eat fucking bugs!” she cackled.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Those are the best.”

She had her back to me and was headed for what I guessed was the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a second. I was just going for a cracker when you knocked.”

“Sure,” I said.

As she disappeared into the kitchen I glanced at the right wall. About halfway along, there was a large, garish painting of a seaside, in a thick gold frame. It was the kind of art you saw sold out of vans at major metropolitan intersections. Tentatively, I took hold of the bottom corner and tipped the painting away from the wall, peered underneath, and saw the hole in the drywall.

“You a friend of Gary?” she said from the kitchen.

“Well, not real close, but, you know,” I said, letting the picture settle back against the wall.

She reappeared with a red box of saltines, her blue-veined hand rooting through the cellophane to get hold of one. She took one out, bit off half of it. “I like crackers,” she said. She chewed a few times, crumbs spilling out from the corner of her mouth. “These are pretty fucking stale.” She tossed the other half in, chewed.

“Have you heard from Gary lately?” I asked.

“Oh, talked to him a few days ago,” she said.

“How’s he doing? He get back up this way much?”

“Sometimes, yeah, the little fucker. He does a lot of important business, of course. He was in Chicago not long ago, he was telling me.”

“Love Chicago,” I said.

“So what you say your name was?” Mrs. Merker asked, squinting in my general direction.

“Zack,” I said. “He probably never mentioned me.”

She was thinking. “I think he mighta. You used to hang out at the Kickstart?”

“Yeah,” I said. “That was probably me.”

“Well, he’s not here.”

“What’s he up to?”

“Like I say, he’s a businessman. Doesn’t run that hotel anymore, doesn’t hang out with those motorcycle friends of his, ’cept for Leo, that dumb, pitiful son of a bitch.”

“Yeah, Leo,” I said. “Edgars.”

“I guess Gary missed having a little brother, so he adopted Leo. When they was handing out brains, that boy was out getting a sandwich.”

“Does he keep in touch with the old gang, the customers?”

Mrs. Merker reached into the box for another cracker, shrugged. “Not too much. One called here the other day, though, wanting to pass on a message.”

“Oh yeah? Who was that?”

Mrs. Merker was swallowing some cracker and winced. She coughed, tried to clear her throat. “Fucking dry cracker,” she muttered, and turned to go back into the kitchen. I listened to the familiar
pish
! of a beer can opening. A moment later she was back in the doorway, tipping back a Bud.

“What?” she asked.

“You say someone called a few days ago for Gary?”

She nodded, took another sip. “Did you want anything?”

I thought she meant a beer, and shook my head no, I was good.

“No, I mean, why’d you come here?”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’d heard, one of the guys was saying, that there was this girl from the Kickstart, that Gary was always wondering what happened to her, and if we ever heard anything, we should give him a shout, or get in touch with you, and you could pass it on.”

“This about that cunt?” Mrs. Merker said. “Candy?”

I tried to keep the surprise off my face. “Actually, yeah, I think so,” I said.

“That’s what that other boy called about,” she said. “He called about that cunt too.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Said to tell Gary he thought he knew where she was.”

“No kidding?” I said. “Where was that?”

“Shit,” said Mrs. Merker. “I wrote it down somewhere.” She looked about the room. “I think I wrote it on a piece of newspaper.”

Terrific.

Of course, I had a pretty good hunch what this caller had said. But if the answer was, indeed, Oakwood, it would mean that things were starting to fall together.

Mrs. Merker put beer and crackers on top of a newspaper pile and began wandering the living room, peering at the white edges of various newspaper stacks. “I scribbled it down someplace, so I could tell Gary when he called. He calls me every couple of days. He don’t get home much, but he cares about his mother. I hope you call your mother regular.”

I smiled sadly to myself. “I would if I could,” I said. “But I’m in touch with my dad more these days.”

Mrs. Merker scoffed at that. “Gary’s fucking father, I hope the son of a bitch is dead someplace and has been for a long time. He was a no-good cocksucking bast—Hang on, here it is, I think.” She pushed her glasses higher up on her nose. “Yeah, this friend phoned and said to tell Gary that cunt was in Oakwood.”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“I guess he lives down that way, saw her picture in the paper, remembered Gary was looking for her.”

“Well, that’s great,” I said. “Guess I made this trip here for nothing. I was going to pass on the same information.”

“No harm done,” she said, taking a seat on the small clear spot on the couch. She pointed to the television. “That crickets they’re eating?”

I looked. “Maybe.” She cackled. I asked, “So what’s Gary been looking for Candace for, anyway? He kind of got a thing for her?”

She let out a laugh. “Ha! I don’t think he’ll be dipping his dick in that pussy!”

“Then why does he want to find her?”

“Well, if some bitch stole something from you, wouldn’t you want it back?” She looked at me like I was some sort of an idiot.

“So that’s why he wants to find her?” I said. “Because she stole something? Not because, I don’t know, for revenge?”

“Revenge?” The old woman cocked her head at an odd angle. “I suppose. If you stole something from me, I guess I’d want revenge. That what you gettin’ at?”

“I was just thinking back to that time. When Gary’s three friends got shot.”

“Oh, that,” she said, and waved dismissively. “He got over that. Only real friend Gary’s ever had is that retard Leo.” She turned her attention to the TV, where contestants were working up the nerve to swallow tiny wiggling things. “For fifty thousand dollars, I’d put anything in my mouth,” she said, and laughed.

She barely noticed as I slipped out the front door and walked down the sidewalk to Cherry’s truck. I felt, in some small measure, slightly relieved about what I’d learned.

“Well?” Cherry said as I pulled the door shut.

“Someone, some old friend of Merker’s, called his mom, told her to tell her son that this woman he’d been looking for, that her picture had turned up in the newspaper in Oakwood. So he knew where she was, where to look for her. And, I’m just guessing here, he ran into Martin Benson by mistake, and ended up killing him, maybe trying to get some info out of him about Trixie, or Candace, or whoever the hell she really is.”

Cherry waved his hand impatiently. “I don’t mean that shit,” he said. “Is the hole still in the wall?”

I paused. “Yes,” I said.

Cherry banged his fist on the steering wheel and let out a whoop. “Fucking awesome,” he said.

I GOT MYSELF A CHEAP ROOM
at a Holiday Inn clone, dumped my bag in the room, and wandered down the hall to the vending machine. I bought a Coke, a bag of Doritos, and a Milky Way. In any given week, I might succumb and treat myself to one trashy snack, but splurging on all three at once seemed to be evidence that I was feeling sorry for myself.

I watched the news without taking in what any of the stories were about, then
Letterman
without laughing at any of the jokes, then turned off the light and tried to get to sleep. I tossed and turned and punched the pillow. I don’t sleep well when there’s not someone in the bed next to me, and at two in the morning I felt overwhelmed with the notion that there might be a lot of nights like this in my future.

I had too much time to think, and worry, about a great many things.

First, Sarah. I could only hope that by finding out the truth behind this mess I’d been dragged into, and by trying to take control of the situation instead of letting it control me, I might somehow redeem myself.

Then there was Trixie. My quest to find out just what kind of trouble she was in, and what had led her to this point, was motivated by more than a desire to help out a friend. I needed to know, for myself, what the hell I’d been dragged into. And if uncovering that truth brought some aggravation and inconvenience to Trixie, well, if it happened, it happened.

And then there was me. Well, I guess it was already about me. About me and Sarah, about me and the kids, about me and Trixie, about me and my job. As I lay there in the hotel bed, staring at the ceiling, turning to the side and watching the luminous numbers of the digital clock work their way to 3:00 a.m., I hoped that maybe these events, and perhaps the story that city health inspector Brian Sandler detailed for me, would help me win my way back into the newsroom, and liberate Sarah from Home!

I couldn’t have known then I’d be happy just to come out of all this with my life.

I
woke up at eight-thirty. For me, that’s sleeping in. I had a quick shower, dressed, and went to the hotel lobby for breakfast. They’d laid on Special K and Frosted Flakes in sealed, single-serving plastic bowls, muffins, doughnuts, Danishes, coffee and tea. It was self-serve and all-you-can-eat, and a family of four was taking full advantage, stuffing cereal and pastries into bags for the road ahead.

Once in the car, I got out my map and double-checked how I was going to reach Groverton. There was a yellow wooden pencil in the tray between the seats, and I used it like a pointer, tracing the route I would take.

It was a long shot, of course. All I had was a gas receipt leading me there. But it was the best, and only real clue I had. Groverton was farther away than I’d first realized—two hours, and still heading in the direction away from home.

I didn’t have much of a game plan for when I reached my destination. I figured I could find the gas station where Trixie got her receipt, but beyond that, I couldn’t think of much to do but drive around looking for my car, the one Trixie had fled in. Perhaps, once I got there, other opportunities would present themselves.

As I drove, tuning in Trixie’s eight-speaker stereo to a jazz station—my friendship with Lawrence Jones had expanded my musical tastes in the last couple of years—that was playing some Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, and Diana Krall, I tried to sort out the things I had learned in the last day.