Thorazine Beach (7 page)

A stunned streetlamp hung high, alone, on a telephone pole. In the trees looming about, insects scratched, hummed, sang, in bass, tenor, soprano, the higher voices at random, the lower in layers of rhythm, rise and fall, counting the seconds and counting, I suspected, the age of the earth. We humans, here, I’d come to realize since embracing the South, were merely tenants. I was standing here alone, listening to the landlords. Across the broken concrete where I’d parked, hundreds, thousands of small, identical beetles—it was that time of year again—hastened on errands too urgent for them to give me any notice. I crushed no small number of them underfoot, but it made no difference. A light in the store’s barred window flashed. Miller time.

Oddly, given the heat, I shivered.

Cars came. Cars went. Car doors slammed. Pairs of men, often as not. Some laughing. Some silent. Some who looked my way. One who started to walk over. Then thought better of it.

Then MacDonald.

“Could we not meet in a more respectable place, Mac? The Starbucks at Winchester and Hack’s Cross is open till eleven, you know.”

“This on the low-down, brother.” He sounded more hood than Germantown, tonight. He’d been to see
her
. Oh, hell, I wasn’t even supposed to know.

MacDonald walked over. “Gimme one a those.” He didn’t even smoke. Not really. But I’d seen this before. It usually
meant
something. I held out the pack, BiC. He did the dew. Coughed.

“Smoke up now,” he said. “I don’t want you smokin’ on the job.”

“Oh, the railroad yard is no-smoking?” I said dumbly.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Got my ID?”

“I got everything you need.”

I gave him
that
look.

“Got your shit together, Jack?”

“You mean my binocular shit, my night-vision shit, my middle-of-the-night lunch-in-a-bag shit?” I asked.

“All that shit,” he said.

“So you gonna take me to the gate, give me the ID, introduce me to whomever will be—”

“Something like that.” Which, in MacDonald-speak, means: Nothing like that.

I was to leave Mitzi at the grocery, though MacDonald had me pull her around back, by the open rear door. “I know the guy,” he said. “Owes me a favour. Your car be all right.”

My stuff loaded into Mac’s car, we drove past what I’d always thought was the main south entrance to the CN yards.

“Uh, Mac—”

“Yours not to reason why, brother.”

Brother
, I knew, meant I was getting in deeper.

MacDonald pulled in to an anonymous, recessed gateway in the chain-link fence surrounding the yard. A forested stretch of Raines. Got out, reached in the back seat for a massive pair of bolt-cutters, at which point the last drop of illusory legitimacy in all of this drained away.

“I suppose I’d best not ask,” I said as Mac got back in, pulled the car through the gate and a couple of car-lengths along the wooded road.

“Best not,” he said, walked back, drew the wings of the gate shut, and returned. The car rocked in the ruts, splashed through a couple of pools of water, the car frame creaking as the road roughened. Presently, as the woods began to open, he killed the lights, but still crept forward, just into the open area, parked behind a weedy pile of sand awaiting resumption of some forgotten construction project.

MacDonald looked around nervously as I gathered my stuff, now mostly shoved into a big daypack. “Ready?” he asked.

“Not at all,” I said.

“Good,” he said.

He walked me about fifty yards ahead, a narrow sand-and-gravel walk alongside a deep ditch emitting a rather rancid aroma. What little we said was whispered. We stopped beside an old barrel, a couple of staves missing.

“Another fifty yards,” he said, pointing. “You’ll see a second barrel, like this one, only tumped over. That’s where you’ll cross the ditch and go inside the fence. You’ll see a dirt pile and a big bush beside. You can set up there.”

“And how do I get across this ditch? Can’t really tell, but that water looks deep.” I said.

“You’re always telling me you’re ‘infantry,’ “he said. “Death-dealing son of a gun. First in the field, second to none, up the Guards, all that.”

“Yeah, but I’m
old
infantry.”

“Always thinking of you first, Jack. I done built you a little bridge myself, yesterday. Big old wide plank. Sturdy, too. You can’t miss it.”

“Don’t suppose you made me a gate in the fence on the other side.”

“Time, as it happens, Jack, did not permit. But, then, I know how much you enjoy the whole do-it-yourself thing.” I hadn’t even seen him carrying the bolt cutters till he handed them to me.

“Lucking fluvvly,” I said. “Break-and-enter.”

“I envy your ever-increasing repertoire of occupational skills,” MacDonald said. “Speaking of which…”

“What?”

“You’re not carrying your piece, are you?”

“Course I am.”

Even in the dark, I could see him hold out his hand. I pulled the clip-holster off my belt, handed it over.

“Geez, MacDonald.”

“Break and enter
with
a weapon?” he said. “That’d be like…”

“Burglary,” I filled in. “Can I keep my folding knife?”

“If you promise to think of it as a letter opener.”

“Remind me why I’m doing this?” I asked.

“Uh…truth, justice, and the American way?” MacDonald said.

“I’m not even an American, remember? What else?”

“Chinese buffets,” he said. “Saville Row shirts. Dates with fabulous babes.”

There was nothing I could say.

Except: “When will you be back to pick me up?”

MacDonald shrugged. “When I’m done.”

Her
, again. The bugger was going
back
. I’d be out here, and he’d be—

Now there was absolutely nothing to say.

I found the barrel, the plank-bridge. Got across without so much as a dampened boot. As luck would have it, a slice of fence was actually down, and I could step across. I stashed the bolt cutters back on the safe side of the ditch, under a piece of ancient scrap plywood, crossed back to the trouble side, set up my folding stool, and settled in for the night.

I knew what I was watching for. Watched. Yawned. Watched. And didn’t see a damn thing.

MacDonald came at dawn, as I sprang from half-awake to full, courtesy of some howling cur, somewhere behind, quite a way off.

I was dog-tired, soaked in sweat, my socks were soggy inside my old combat boots. I’d spent the night vaguely unnerved by things moving in the brush behind me, sometimes right past me in the grass and gravel beside the dirt pile. Armadillos, I suspected.
Not
cute. And the damn things carry leprosy. I felt scratchy and filthy, and wanted nothing more than a shower and bed. Best I’d get, though, was a shower and a trip out to the Bartlett stretch of Summer to see Eileen—she’d texted me to come in, early as I could. Not asked, mind you. A summons. There was a difference. Ask…you could wander in whenever. Summons…be there, bells on, oh-dark-thirty.

I mumbled some crap as I walked across the downed fence and the ditch toward MacDonald, the straps of my daypack dragging on the ground.

Then I saw it. Rooftop, gleaming in the morning sun. An old, ramshackle two-storey house on a rise behind the trees, maybe a quarter mile distant from the containers I’d been watching all night, watching them stacked, unstacked, restacked at the hands of the two huge moving dolly cranes, most of the containers left standing, still, waiting all night, as I had, for Lord knows what.

The house, once yellow, but mostly peeled, looked like it was still occupied. The light in the upstairs window said so, as did the car parked between the house and the swing-less, rusty swing set.

MacDonald saw me look at the house, looked away, said nothing. His silence said:
Something
.

He heard my unspoken question.

“We’ll talk,” he said.

“When?” I asked, and he answered, “I don’t know.”

On the way out of the place, through the gate, all the way to the grocery store a mile or more down Raines, not one word. Not even about Nikki.

I’d stolen an hour of sleep anyway, Eileen’s summons notwithstanding. Bowl of Cheerios. What the hell, I’m late as it is—set up the laptop on the desk.

Nikki snored, moaned a little.

Checked my email—first time in two days. Meet horny housewives in your neighbourhood. You, too, can make fifteen thousand a month, doing
absolutely nothing
. Enlarge this body part, shrink that. Click—junk. Most of the other traffic was from a single address. Sweet emails. May-the-Lord-bless-you emails. Hope-you-don’t-mind emails. Old-time’s-sake emails. So-sorry-to-hear emails. Hope-you-are-well emails. Would-love-for-us-to-get-together emails. Wanted-to-bring-you-a-casserole emails. Damn—I’d get to the bottom of this.

Kill two birds with one stone.
This
nonsense first. Then whatever it was Eileen wanted to see me about. So I hit
SEND
on a vague reply, then drove over to Red Line.

I opened the front door oh-so gingerly, so Eileen’s cute little jingle bells didn’t ring. Shushed Jackie before she could say a word, and barged on back, plopped myself in a chair, facing Eileen.

She didn’t look up. “Practising our stealth skills, are we?”

“Did some of that last night,” I said. “Feeling kinda done with all that, for today. What are you practising?”

She looked up. Her face asked. Then answered her own question. “She’s contacted you?”

“Numerous times,” I said.

Eileen feigned a smile. “Good, good. So you two will be getting together, then?”

“I’ve no doubt.”

“Good. Well. Reason I called you in—”

“We’re not done with this yet, Eileen.”

“Oh?”

“Question, Eileen. Barbara Jean McCorkle—does she drive a Cadillac?”

“No. Um, more like an SUV, I think. An…
Escapade
?”

Come off it, honey. Ex-cop. She knew her cars better than that.

“Escalade,” I said. “Black?”

“Um…not quite. More like a—”

“Really, really dark purple.”

“
Could
be…yes. I think that’s it.”

“This is bullshit, Eileen.”

“I don’t appreciate that kind of lang—”

“And I don’t appreciate games.”

“Then maybe you won’t appreciate this, either.”

She handed me a larger-than-usual envelope, flap open. Cheque. Twelve hundred dollars and change, for the divorce case. Two months at the Benbow. Or a month plus eats and gas, maybe even a few revenue stamps for my collection. She passed it along with a card, in a pretty, perfect hand, turquoise fountain pen. Simple.
Thank you, Jack, for a wonderful job. Please know we love you
…
Eileen
.

I didn’t know anyone loved me.

Deep breath. “I’m sorry, Eileen. I owe you better. I’m just…”

“Tired,” she filled in.

“Not an excuse,” I said.

“No,” she said. “But perhaps a cause. She’s been pestering you with calls?”

“No,” I told her. “Just emails.”

“Well, good. Because I didn’t give her your phone number, Jack.”

“Thank you.”

“Not yet, anyway.”

“And what would prompt you to give her my number?”

“Your consent.”

“Why would I give that?”

“Because I’m asking.”

“Asking because…”

“Because she…needs…and because, well…
you
need.”

“You don’t mean…”

She looked at me querulously, then the realization broke across her face. “That I’m playing matchmaker? No. Definitely. No. Good God, no. Didn’t even think of that angle. Didn’t think you’d think…
I’m
sorry, Jack.”

“No sorries required, Eileen. If what you say is true. And if Barbara Jean McCorkle has the same understanding.”

“She’s happily…she’s married, Jack.”

“Still married to…”

“Um…far as I know, Jack.” She knew, all right.

“So what does she want, Eileen?”

“You know Barbara Jean,” Eileen said. “She’s not happy unless she’s helping.”

“‘Helping.’ Like the Boy Scout who helped the little old lady across the street—”

“—even though she didn’t want to go.” Eileen laughed. “That
is
true. The thing of it is, I guess, is that she’s not happy unless she’s
involved
.”

“Involved in what?”

“Well, in…giving to people. Doing things for people.
You
know…”

“Back to the question. What does she want?”

“Well, I think she really does want to…to see you…to help you if she can…to…”

“Bring me a casserole?”

Eileen laughed again. “If she gives you a choice, go for the green bean with the almonds and the crunchy cracker crust. It’s pretty good. It’s a hit around our house…my house.” Her smile faded, took a few seconds to come back.

“I’ll remember that,” I answered.

“Of course, the thing about casseroles…” she said.

“Is what?”

“Well, you’ve got to wash the dish. Then you’ve got to give it back.”

“Barbara Jean McCorkle and I are not
just
going to slurp a thirty-minute Americano at Starbucks, are we?”

“Umm…I expect not.”

“There’s going to be a whole…
thing
here, isn’t there?”

We both started to laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “I reckon there is.”

I made my smile go away. “One more time, back to the question. What…” Big, dramatic pause. “does she want?”

“Bring you a little cheer. A casserole, maybe?”

“That’s
to
me, Eileen. What does she want…” I love pauses. “
from
me?”

There’s a certain look crosses Eileen’s face when she’s about to say something glib or smartass. Whatever it was Les had fallen in love with, it surely included that. “
Other
than her casserole dish back,” I said.

“Just some information, Jack. Just that. I think.”

“And whatever that…
information
is, Eileen, I presume it’s not the sort can be gathered from a desk and a phone and a high-speed internet connection.”