The Caveman's Valentine (13 page)

After a moment Vlad said quietly: “OK, you know what, I tell you about that fugging wimp Scotty. I tell you a story. Sometimes Scotty, he brings his girlfriend out here to the farm. Oh, he thinks he impresses her, that he lives in this fancy place, that he models for this big American photographer. He thinks this girl’s got little-girl eyes, he thinks she’s
naive.
He thinks she’s a nun. She’s no nun. That I see first thing. So one day’s she’s here and Scotty’s working for David, posing, you know what, and she’s here all alone, and she tells me she wants to ride the horses. We ride the horses. She tells me she wants no more with Scotty. You think she wants for her boyfriend a pretty model who shows his pretty cock? Nah, she wants no more. She wants to go live in New York City, find a real man. I say, There’s a real man right here. We ride to the pasture, I fug her.”

“You fucked Scotty’s girlfriend?”

“She wants a
man.
American woman wants a fugging wild man. We have lunch, Scotty and the girlfriend and David and me. Scotty—he’s a big bore. He’s got moon eyes for the girl. He says to David, ‘Isn’t she sweet?’ And me, I pull my cock out under the table and put her hand on it and she is—what is the word? . . . pumping me.”

“She did that?”

“Pumping me off.”

Romulus looked through the window and spotted Moira Leppenraub. She was passing among the knots of partygoers but not stopping to chat. She was casting her eyes about. She was looking for someone. Looking for me, thought Romulus.

Said Vlad, “But too bad, because I think later she
told
him what she did with Vlad. American girl, they always guilty, fugged up in the head because they want wild man, and so they got to tell everything they do. Yeah, she must have told him what she did all weekend with me. Because later—Scotty goes bats, you know what? I hear he goes out of his fugging mind.”

Then they heard Moira at the front door, calling into the dark. “Romulus?”

Piano time.

I
n the parlor David Leppenraub was proposing various witty toasts to his friends, and the friends clinked their glasses and clapped. Meanwhile in the front hallway Moira dried Romulus’s head with a towel.

She asked, “Where did you go?”

“I was talking to Vlad. He said he wanted to cut my ears off. Moira, why don’t you make him stay here and put little onions in martinis?”

“You can’t
make
Vlad do anything. If it were up to me, I’d fire him in two seconds, but David won’t let me. How are your feet?”

“What?”

“Your shoes are sopping. Where’d you
get
those shoes, anyway?”

“The shoes. Right. I’ve got a story that explains the shoes. I’ve got a story all ready for you. I worked it out on the way up here.”

“OK. I love stories.”

“Only I can’t remember it now. Something about these are my
lucky
shoes. Or something. Nothing too persuasive. But I don’t think it matters anymore anyway.”

Then Arnold came to fetch him. Ushered him in, and the glitterati were all watching him, and Arnold introduced him. The audience applauded him warmly.

Romulus sat before the baby grand.

W
ith his right hand, way up on the keyboard and lightly, he trilled a pair of notes. Just dabbling a toe in the water. How was it? Freezing. Stop-your-heart freezing.

He popped a low F
^#
.

Which stung.

He dropped his hands. Smiled at the glitterati. The whole room was abuzz with them. There, in the front row, was the coin-profile woman with her husband. At their feet, on the hook rug, drunk and swaying, sat Arnold. Moira stood by the vestibule door. Leppenraub by the window. Everywhere Romulus looked there was an audience: Methuselahs and barracudas and toy-boys and women with geyser hairdos.

He took a breath and rolled his eyes.

He said, “I haven’t started yet. Heh heh.”

That charmed them. Giggles all round.

He had it all planned out—what he would play. Just a cute little snatch of program music, heavily larded with romance. Here and there a filigree of atonality for authenticity. It’s simple. It’s easy. Just remember, Romulus, that
you have no ambition in the world except to
get to the other side of this piece.

So
go.
They’re waiting. Go now.

“OK.”

He lit into the keyboard.

The chords that roared back hurt like hell, but he held on. He kept his fingers dancing, he kept plunging the pedals. He gave his audience a scrapbook of pictures from the walk he’d taken with Moira. The green-gold mergansers—
there.
The dog’s romp—
there.
The tulip trees and the golden fields, and oh, this was so simple and sweet and easy, and soon he’d be done.

But then something started to stink.

There was some bad odor creeping into this piece, into this sweet farmscape he was painting, and it was the smell of mendacity and evil. And the music from his left hand was sniffing, sniffing, searching out the source of that odor.

Well, tell that music to quit it.

Forget the foolishness,
now,
and the audience will think that sequence of ominous chords was just a stormcloud passing overhead. Just give them six full saccharine measures of the little duck pond and let’s get out of here.

But his left hand wasn’t listening to him. He was no longer in command. The Seraphs were.

The Moth-Seraphs had broken through all the gates. They had swarmed into the domed womb of his consciousness, and they were taking the controls. Already they had taken his left-hand music under their wing.

His right hand kept up the easy shepherd’s-ode frolicking, but his left hand was on a rampage. It was searching everywhere, searching the whole farm for the source of that reek—that evil. The music from his left hand crashed into the barn-museum and tore the prints from the walls. It rifled the office, scattered negatives, overturned the file cabinets. What is it?
What is the clue to this reek?

The music looked in the farmyard and found Elon and seized him and shrieked in a bizarre chord progression:

TELL ME! WHAT IS THIS FOULNESS HERE?

WHAT THE HELL IS IT?

Then the music let go of the poor man, and made its way to the doll’s coach house, to Moira’s studio. It went inside. It felt around in the dark, and sniffed, and found that here the stench of evil was particularly strong. The stench was so bad that it made Romulus shudder, made him rise up before the Steinway and slam his hand down against the keys. Oh, here it is!
Here in the coach house, here!

But what
is
it? What stinks?

What have I found and why is Stuyvesant laughing?

Is it the rotting of the dead boy you threw outside my cave, is that what I’m smelling, Stuyvesant?

Is it the cops you hire to hide your lies and rape my daughter? Is this a whiff of their corruption?

Is it the whore with the skewed eyes and windfall hair that you engaged to seduce me? The smell of lust, is that it?

WHAT IS THIS STENCH?

Leppenraub! Is it the way you tortured Scotty Gates, because the poor fool thought he was
somebody,
thought his life was in his own hands, and you couldn’t have that, could you? So you did him just the way they did me, you tortured him, you
leached all the divin
ity out of him,
right? And when you were done you killed him so he couldn’t accuse you? Right?
Is that what I smell?

Then Romulus happened to notice Arnold’s stricken look, and he realized that he was speaking all these thoughts
aloud,
while he played. While he wildly, plungingly played on, he was shouting at the top of his lungs:

“IS IT THE WAY YOU DUMPED HIM IN FRONT OF MY CAVE, LEPPENRAUB?
SPECIAL DELIVERY,
SO I’D KNOW YOU KILL WHENEVER YOU PLEASE, SO I’D COME AND LICK YOUR SHOES, AND BEG YOUR BOSS STUYVESANT FOR A POINT-BLANK SHOT OF Y-RAYS INTO MY BRAIN?

“IT’S
ALL
OF YOU, ISN’T IT?
ALL
OF YOU FUCKERS! IT’S YOUR BONE-DRY ART AND YOUR IDEAS LIKE LAST WEEK’S VOMIT AND YOUR SHIT-IN-A-FRAME! AM I
RIGHT?
AND THE HEART HAS FUCKING
VAMOOSED
FROM THIS CULTURE LONG TIME AGO, AND ANYBODY GETS WIND OF
THAT,
YOU’LL TORTURE HIM AND KILL HIM AND MAKE A VIDEOTAPE OF IT AND CALL IT
ART!
AND YOU’LL THROW HIM IN THE SNOW AND
TEACH
THE CAVEMAN A LESSON!
AND BURN OUT THE CAVEMAN’S EYES WITH BLUE SKY AND GREEN DUCKS AND BROWN EYES, AND GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! I HAVEN’T FOUND IT! GET AWAY!
I HAVEN’T FOUND THE
CLUE YET!
GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!”

The vase in front of him leapt up and dove down and hit the floor, and it was every shard for itself. Shrieking chaos. Faces swimming before his eyes. They were very close. One, David Leppenraub’s, was barking over and over, “I won’t have this! I’m sick, I don’t have to take this!” The music was still playing, but it was the orchestra of Romulus’s mind now—violins, kettledrum, and hurdy-gurdy.

The Steinway was silent.

Romulus looked down, and there were a dozen hands on his sleeve. He yanked. He twisted. Arnold was saying, “You lied to me, Rom!” Romulus spun violently, the mass of faces fell away. He checked his sleeve, all the hands were gone. Then they were back again.

Cried Moira, “
Don’t hurt him!
Rom, it’s OK.
It’s OK!
”

Arnold shouted,
“You lied to me! You’re still living in that cave,
aren’t you?”

The room tornadoed about.

“AND YOU WON’T GET ME
OUT
OF THE CAVE EITHER! YOU WON’T MATCHBOX ME!”

A knife appeared in front of his eyes.

Said Vlad: “Sit down, nigger.”

Moira screamed.
“Vlad! Put that away! Are you crazy? Don’t hurt
him!”

“STUYVESANT, YOUR TOWER’S COMING DOWN! STUYVESANT!”

And then he wasn’t in the room anymore. He was leaping off the porch, or he was thrown off, and he was stumbling on the flagstones, and sliding face first on the wet grass, breathing mud.

A
snarl at his ear. Romulus opened one eye, and got an eyeful of Lao-tse’s tucked-back lips and fangs, two inches from his face.

The dog’s eyes were as cool and magisterial as ever. But the fangs were madder than hell. It was a confusing sight, so Romulus let that eye shut again—and then he heard Moira.

“
No!
Lao-tse, get back! Vlad, get him off!”

A step close by. Sound of a kick and the dog yowled. Romulus put his palms to the earth and pushed himself off it. Unsteadily rose.

There was Vlad’s knife again. “I say, sit
down,
nigger.”

“Why the fuck should I?!
Soul brother?
You going to slice my fugging ears off?!”

An elbow came crashing into Romulus’s face. Blinding flash. He fell forward, and Vlad’s knee came up into his chest.

Far away, Moira was screaming. “No! No! Stop it!”

Romulus saw her, faintly, on a porch somewhere. Leppenraub and someone else were wrestling her back into the house. She was trying to bite her brother. Her brother was saying the same thing over and over again.

“I won’t have it, Moira! I’m sick, I don’t have to take this!”

Romulus, on his knees, tried again to rise.

Vlad flourished the blade. “Sit!”

Romulus rolled his eyes up to Vlad. “Watch it,
homeboy.
This still isn’t the moment. Still too many witnesses. Not so easy as it was killing Scotty. Right?”

“Shut up.”

Another jolt, and in that white flash of lightning Romulus saw all the way downstate to NYC, caught a glimpse of Stuyvesant’s tower. Presiding over all. Invincible.

Who in hell did you think you were kidding, Caveman?

H
e was in a small room with a small window. A dog looked in through the window. The dog winked at him, again and again. Mean-looking cur, but it wasn’t Lao-tse. It was that bull terrier from the beer ads. It was a neon sign in a tavern window across the street from the Gideon Manor Sheriff’s Office.

Romulus had thought that if he would just
wink back
the dog might quit.

It didn’t work.

The deputy said, “There’s nobody out there, sir.”

“Yeah.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“But, sir, you’re crying.”

Romulus swabbed his cheek with his forefinger, and put his forefinger in his mouth. It tasted of mud, and blood, and—yes, the man was right—of salt.

“Think nothing of it. Sometimes this’ll happen to me after I pitch a fit. The doctors tell me it means nothing. The tears just come, right? Hey, I mean, I might not be thinking about my daughter at all. I might be in a fine, easy mood, but you’d never know it—you’d look at these tears and think I was a wreck. You got something I could blow my nose with?”

The deputy sheriff went out and came back with a tissue. The deputy had a paunch, a few last good-bye strands of hair, pulpy red cheeks. When he smiled at Romulus, his lips didn’t move much, those cheeks just knotted up.

Romulus honked into the tissue. Wiped his face.

He said, “There. Am I still crying?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“OK then. What can I do for you, Officer?”

“Well sir, what’s your name?”

“Romulus Ledbetter.”

“Where do you live?”

“Inwood Park, New York City.”

“Street address?”

“Just the Cave.”

“The Cave? This is your
real
address?”

“Of course not.”

“Oh. One of those.”

“Right.”

“Sir, what were you doing here in Gideon Manor?”

“Attending a party.”

“Excuse me, but Mr. Leppenraub said that isn’t quite true. He said you aren’t who you say you are.”

“He’s lying. I’m just as much who I say I am as I really
am.
”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

“OK.”

“In truth I’m a private investigator. I’m investigating the death of Andrew Scott Gates.”

The deputy considered, remembered.

“You mean Scotty? The kid that froze to death in the city? Yeah, uh-huh. Some detective was asking around up here last week.”

“Lieutenant Detective John Cork?”

“Friend of yours?”

“Rival.”

“Oh boy. Poor guy.”

“You said a mouthful there.”

“Well, who are you doing this investigating for?”

“Nobody. Myself.”

“Why?”

“Why? They say I’m paranoid. They said Scotty Gates was paranoid. It’s like a family thing, OK?”

“Sir, what are we going to do with you?”

“I don’t know. I can see that’s a tricky one for you, but me, I think I ought to stay out of it. I’d be biased.”

“Do we send you to a hospital?”

Romulus shut his eyes for a moment.

“I’d rather . . . that you didn’t do that, OK?”

Please God. Though I could understand if you felt you had to. Others
have. In your place. Before you. But please God.

“I could book you.”

“Right.”

“I’m not sure on what charge though.”

“I couldn’t help you with that one either. You’d be the expert.”

“Uh-huh. Well, sir, tell me this, you still feeling crazy? You’re not going to hurt anybody, are you?”

“So long as they don’t make me play the piano again.”

“Are you ready to drop this ‘private investigator’ thing?”

“No.”

“Ah, but you’re just going to have to. See, I think I’m going to put you on the bus for New York. There’s one more bus and it leaves in half an hour.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“One way is twenty-two fifty. I’ll spring.”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

“Well, truth is, Mr. Leppenraub said he’d cover it. I think he can handle that amount.”

“Sure. He can sell one of his lovely artworks.”

“Oh, boy. One of those weenie shots?”

“Exactly.”

“See, I believe Mr. Leppenraub just wants to get you the hell out of his hair.”

“Mr. Leppenraub just wants to get me where he can quietly murder me.”

“Whatever. I don’t care one way or the other. Long as it isn’t in Gideon Manor.”

“I can understand that.”

“Well, understand this, too, then. Sir. If I ever see you around here again, I’ll charge you with harassment and whatever else I need to, and get you sent to a prison for the criminally insane. Around these parts, that’d be a place called Matteawan. Have you ever seen that place, sir? Right off the interstate? Looks like a medieval fortress? I’ve never spent time there myself, so I can’t say for sure if it’s got dungeons or not. But it sure
looks
like it does. Oh, boy, now you’re crying again.”

“Think nothing of it.”

R
omulus put on the beautiful coat that Bob had given him, then they went to wait at the bus stop. The bus stop was twenty paces down from the sheriff’s office. Directly across from the bull terrier, who kept up his winking at Romulus. The rain was drizzling out to nothing. Romulus and the deputy leaned against a low rock wall. Behind the wall was a meadow that sloped gently upward into the night. The deputy went up to the curb and looked down the street for the bus. Nothing.

There was nothing at all going on in this town.

The only action was the dog’s winking, and a buzz from the fluorescent light at the entrance to the sheriff’s office.

The deputy came back and leaned beside Romulus.

“You know, you don’t seem like such a wild man.”

“You should have seen me pitching my fit. But, right. After I’m done pitching, I’m sort of quiet, right. . . .”

The deputy went to the curb again and checked the street. Then he came back.

“So what makes you have a fit?”

“Oh. Oh, well, I mean, any nasty thing, you know.”

“Like?”

“Like. For instance, did you know that before he was elected president, there were two years when Richard Nixon disappeared from public view? From 1962 to 1964?”

“Uh-uh. I didn’t know that.”

“And you know what he was doing? He was going to school. You know where the school was?”

“Where?”

“Chappaquiddick Island.”

“Wow. What school was this?”

“The Stuyvesant Institute for Political Research.”

“I didn’t know that. That’s interesting. I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of it though. Do things like that disturb you?”

“Yes.”

The deputy shook his head. Then he strolled back up to the curb.

There were a few spring-stirring sounds in the meadow behind Romulus. Early and mild insects. Romulus turned to look. He could see nothing in the field. But way up at the top of the hill, there were lights on at the Gideon Manor Playhouse. He called to the deputy.

“They giving a show up there?”

“Hmm?”

“That’s the theater, isn’t it?”

“Oh. No sir, there’s no plays this time of year. That’s just Walter’s Bar, in the old hotel. Right next to the playhouse. Used to be the Gideon Hotel and Playhouse when Walter’s folks had it. Now the hotel’s falling apart, and of course Walter sold the playhouse to Leppenraub—but he kept the bar for himself.”

“Leppenraub only bought the playhouse? How come he didn’t want the hotel?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Walter didn’t want to sell it. But no more private investigator, OK? I thought we had a deal.”

“I just—heh, heh. I’m just surprised they don’t try to restore it.”

“Ah hell—it’s way past saving. But Walter’s going to keep his bar going till the room falls in, or till we go up and close it, which I guess we’re going to have to do pretty soon. Hate to, though. It’s all Walter’s got left.”

“You go in there much?”

“No. I go across the street here. No, it’s just a couple of weirdos go there. Gay people, you know? Except in the summer, and then some of the theater folks come in. I don’t know which is worse for Walter—the gays or the actors.”

“That winking dog doesn’t get on your nerves?”

“What winking dog?”

“Right over there.”

“Oh. Yeah. Never noticed it.”

Said Romulus, “Well, you see that’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me pitch a fit.”

The bus came. The deputy gave Romulus a twenty and a ten.

Romulus said, “I don’t have change.”

“It’s OK, sir. Leppenraub can handle it. Hey listen, something I forgot. Mr. Leppenraub’s sister, Moira—she wanted me to tell you—she thought your playing was real good. In fact, she said it was
mag
nificent.”

“She say anything about my fit?”

“No, sir.”

“Well. When you see her, would you thank her for all her generosity?”

“I will if you mean it and you’re not wising off.”

“I mean it. And thank
you,
Officer.”

“Yes, sir.”

Romulus stepped onto the bus. He said, “See you.”

“I hope not. Because if you do, you know you’re going straight to Matteawan.”

“Right.”

Romulus bought a one-way ticket for New York. He moved down the aisle a ways, and the bus started down the road. Warm in here, dark, with the sweet snoozing smell of bus-innards. He knew if he let himself sit down he’d be asleep inside of a minute. But he didn’t let himself. He stood and waited until the bus had gone about a quarter mile, then he went up to the driver and said:

“Oh, my . . .
Lord,
I forgot my briefcase. You got to let me off.”

The driver grunted. “Not supposed to stop till we get to Peekskill.”

“I can’t go without my briefcase. Jesus, I’ll lose my job. I can take the next bus.”

“This is the last bus till morning.”

“That’s OK, I’ll stay over. I’ve got to get my briefcase.”

“I’m not supposed to refund—”

“I don’t want a refund.
I just want to get off.”

The driver sighed. Not much room to pull over, but he did, and Romulus stepped out onto the still highway.

Thinking: I’ll go back home tomorrow. First I’ve got to get another look at that coach house.

The bus pulled away.

Romulus was all alone in the dark. He looked back down the road he had just come on, and he started walking.

And then he saw something.

Something just sitting there on the road. It was damn, solid dark out here—but he peered, he strained his eyes, and that shape began to look like the shape of a car.

The sounds of the bus faded. He heard a purring. The smooth rich contented purr of an expensive car.

It had been following the bus. It was sitting in the middle of the road, and someone was sitting in it, waiting patiently.

And now the bus had gone, and Romulus was all ready to be taken. The car’s interior light snapped on. A cage of light, floating in the darkness. And for a moment Romulus could see the driver. But no face.

Then the engine roared.

The car was coming at him. The headlights blazed up in his eyes.

H
e staggered backward. In the face of those two flaming eye spots growing huge in his vision, that’s all he could do—stagger like a drunk. His hand groped behind him as though for some kind of hold. The eye spots loomed.

He glanced to the left. There was a stretch of shoulder, and then a sharp plummet into blackness. He broke for it.

But that edge of blackness seemed too far to go. He could wring no speed from his legs. The headlight beam and the roar had him in thrall. They closed in, they wrapped cobwebs around him, they gathered him up. As he moved he jerked his eyes to the right, to face those lights, and again he saw the driver, in the faint interior glow above the monstrous beams.

The driver had no face.

Stuyvesant. Or one of his minions. Facelessness was the bastard’s mark, and he was making sure Romulus saw it—so there would be no question as to who was killing him. By his facelessness ye shall know him.

And anger surged up in Romulus—he kicked wildly at the cobwebs, took one great stride, planted a foot on the edge of the shoulder and lunged forward, dove into that sheer abyss.

H
overing there, middive, he felt the wind of the car’s passing behind him. He heard a keening of brakes and spraying gravel.

Then the blackness swallowed him, and he wrapped his head in his arms and came crashing down into a net of branches. They were in a fury, these branches. They tore his arm away from his face and tossed it into the air. They caught his leg and hurled that skyward as well. They folded the rest of him in two and shoved him through a narrow slot, and did something tricky with his foot and then flipped him over and he landed on his back in the mud.

The wind went out of him with a
whump.

All the air in his lungs was sucked into the sky. He writhed. He coiled into a fetal ball, and clawed the ground, and forced sips of air into his lungs, and finally his lungs unclenched.

He rolled over. Struggled to his knees, heaved air. Heaved. Coughed. Heaved again.

Up on the road, he heard a car door shut. A flashlight beam shuddered in the branches all around him.

He reached up and got hold of a branch and pulled himself to his feet. He took a few steps. His ankle hurt like hell, but held. Not broken, just wrenched. He stumbled away from the road through a swampy ditch-seep. On the other side of the muck there was a row of trees and then an open meadow. He pushed toward that meadow, dragging his cheap shoes through the sucking mud, till he fell, sloshed into the muck and then the flashlight was all over him.

He got up and ran furiously into the great blurry field. He startled something in the grass. Probably a rabbit. It skittered away from him, and he followed it.

And as he ran, he kept glancing back. The predator’s flashlight was moving. Making its way down into the ditch, then into the field, coming up the slope after him. Coming on patiently.