Winter 2007 (11 page)

Chapter Five

Detective Sergeant Todd
Ashford of the Port Orange Police Department and Cliff have a history, though
it qualifies as ancient history. They were in the same class at Seabreeze High
and both raised a lot of hell, some of it together, but they were never
friends, a circumstance validated several years after graduation when Ashford,
then a patrolman with the Daytona Beach PD, displayed unseemly delight in
busting Cliff on a charge of Drunk and Disorderly outside Cactus Jack’s, a
biker bar on Main Street. Cliff was home for a couple of weeks from Hollywood,
flushed with the promise of imminent stardom, and Ashford did not attempt to
hide the fact that he deeply resented his success. Nor does he attempt to hide
his resentment now. Watching him pace about the interrogation room, a brightly
lit space with black compound walls, a metal table and four chairs, Cliff
recognizes that although Ashford may no longer resent his success, he has new
reason for bitterness. He’s a far cry from the buzz-cut young cop who hauled
Cliff off to the drunk tank, presenting the image of a bulbous old man with
receding gray hair, dark, squinty eyes, a soupstrainer mustache, and jowls,
wearing an off-the-rack sport coat and jeans, his gun and badge half-hidden by
the overhang of his belly. Cliff looks almost young enough to be his son.

“Why don’t you tell me
where her body is?” Ashford asks for perhaps the tenth time in the space of two
hours. “We’re going to find her eventually, so you might as well give it up.”

Cliff has blown up a
balloon, peed in a cup, given his DNA. He’s fatigued, and now he’s fed up with
Ashford’s impersonation of a homicide detective. His take on the man is that
while he may drink his whiskey neat and smoke cigars (their stale, pungent
stench hangs about him, heavy as the scent of wet dog) and do all manner of
grown-up things, Ashford remains the same fifteen-year-old punk who, drunk on
Orbit Beer (six bucks a case), helped him trash the junior class float the
night before homecoming, the sort of guy no one remembers at class reunions,
whose one notable characteristic was a talent for mind-fucking, who has spent
his entire adult life exacting a petty revenge on the world for his various
failures, failures that continue to this day, failures with women (no wedding
ring), career, self-image…Another loser. There’s nothing remarkable about that.
It is, as far as Cliff can tell, a world of six billion losers. Six billion and
one if you’re counting God. But Ashford’s incarnation of the classic loser is
so seedy and thin-souled, Cliff is having trouble holding his temper.”

“I want to call my lawyer,”
he says.

Ashford adopts a knowing
look. “You think you need one?”

“Damn right I do! You’re
going to pick away at me all day, because this doesn’t have anything to do with
my guilt or innocence. This is all about high school.”

Ashford grunts, as though
disgusted. “You’re a real asshole! A fucking egomaniac. We got a woman missing,
maybe dead, and it’s all about high school.” He pulls back a chair and sits
facing Cliff. “Let’s say I believe someone’s trying to set you up.”

“The Palaniappans. It has
to be them! They’re the only ones who know about the movie.”

“The movie. Right.” Ashford
takes a notebook from his inside breast pocket and flips through it. “
Sword
Of The Black Demon.
“ He gives the title a sardonic reading, closes the
notebook. “So you had one conversation with the Planappans…”

“Palaniappans!”

“Whatever. You had the one
conversation and now you think they’re out to get you, because the daughter
looks like a woman you caught the clap from back in the day.”

“It wasn’t the clap, it was
some kind of…I don’t know. Some kind of Filipino gunge. And that’s not why
they’re doing this. It’s because, I think, I started sniffing around, trying to
figure out what’s going on with Bungalow eleven.”

Ashford grunts again, this
time in amusement. “Man, I can’t wait to get your drug screen back.”

“You’re going to be
disappointed,” Cliff says. “I’m not high, I’m not drunk. I’m not even fucking
dizzy.”

Ashford attempts to stare
him down, doubtless seeking to find a chink in the armor. He makes a clicking
noise with his tongue. “So tell me again what happened after you and Marley
left the Surfside.”

“I want a lawyer.”

“You go that way, you’re
not doing yourself any good.”

“How much good am I doing
myself sitting here, letting you nitpick my answers, trying to find
inconsistencies that don’t exist? Fuck you, Ashford. I want a lawyer.”

Ashford turtles his neck,
glowers at Cliff and says, “You think you’re back in Hollywood? The cops out
there, they let you talk to them that way?”

Cliff gays up his delivery.
“They’re lovely people. The LAPD is renowned for its hospitality. As for where
I think I am, I trust I’m among guardians of the public safety.”

Ashford’s breathing heavies
and Cliff, interpreting this as a sign of extreme anger, says, “Look, man. I
know what I told you sounds freaky, but you’re not even giving it a chance.
You’ve made up your mind that I did something to Marley, and nothing I say’s
going to talk you out of it. Lawyering up’s my only option.”

Ashford settles back in his
chair, calmer now. “All right. I’ll listen. What do you think I should do about
the Palnappians?”

“That’s Palaniappans.”

Ashford shrugs.

“If it were me,” says
Cliff, “I’d have a look round Bungalow Eleven. I’d ask some questions, find out
what’s happening in there.”

“What do you think is
happening?”

“Jesus Christ!” Cliff
throws up his hands in frustration, and closes his eyes.

“Seriously,” says Ashford.
“I want to know, because from what you’ve told me, I don’t have a clue.”

“I don’t know, okay?” says
Cliff. “But I don’t think it’s anything good.”

“Do you allow for the
possibility that nothing’s going on? That given everything you’ve said, the
multiple occupancies, the sign, the vehicles disappearing…” Ashford pauses.
“Can you remember any of the vehicles that disappeared? The makes and models?”

“I’m not sure they’ve
disappeared. I haven’t been able to check. But if not, they must be piling up
back there. But yeah, I remember most of them.”

Ashford tears a clean page
from his notebook, shoves it and a pen across the table. “Write them down. The
model, the color…the year if you know it.”

Cliff scribbles a list,
considers it, makes an addition, then passes the sheet of paper to Ashford, who
looks it over.

“This is a pretty precise
list,” he says.

“It’s the job. I tend to
notice what people drive.”

Ashford continues to study
the list. “These are expensive cars. The Ford Escape, that’s one of those
hybrids, right?”

“Uh-huh. New this year.”

Ashford folds the paper,
sticks it in his notebook. “So. What I was saying, do you think there could be
a reasonable explanation for all this? Something that has nothing to do with a
witch and a movie? Something that makes sense in terms someone like me could
accept?”

This touch of
self-deprecation fuels the idea that Ashford may be smarter than Cliff has
assumed. “It’s possible,” he says, but after a pause he adds, “No. Fuck, no.
You had…”

A peremptory knocking on
the door interrupts Cliff. With a disgruntled expression, Ashford heaves up to
his feet and pokes his head out into the corridor. After a prolonged, muttering
exchange with someone Cliff can’t see, Ashford throws the door open wide and
says flatly, “You can go for now, Coria. We’ll be in touch.”

Baffled, Cliff asks, “What
is it? What happened?”

“Your girlfriend’s alive.
She’s out by the front desk.”

Cliff’s relief is diluted
by his annoyance over Ashford’s refusal to accept that he and Marley are not
lovers, but before he can once again deny the assertion, Ashford says, “Your
house is still a crime scene. You might want to hang out somewhere for a few
hours until we’ve finished processing.”

Cliff gives him a
what-the-fuck look, and Ashford, with more than a hint of the malicious in his
voice, says, “We have to find out who that blood belongs to, don’t we?”

Chapter Six

In the entryway of the
police station, Marley mothers Cliff, hugging and fussing over him, attentions
that he welcomes, but once in the car she waxes outraged, railing at the cops
and their rush to judgment. Christ Almighty! She woke up and couldn’t get back
to sleep, so she went to a diner and did some brooding. You’d think the cops
would have more sense. You’d think they would look before they leaped.

“It’s my fault,” Cliff
says. “I called them.”

She shoots him a puzzled glance.
“Why’d you do that?”

He remembers that she knows
nothing about the Black Demon, the blood, the slit porch screen.

“You left the door open,”
he says. “I was worried.”

“I did not! And even if I
did, that’s no reason to call the cops.”

“Yeah, well. There was
weird shit going on last night. I got hit by vandals, and that made me
nervous.”

They stop at a 7-11 so
Cliff can buy a clean t-shirt—it’s a touch choice between a white one
with a cartoon decal and the words Surf Naked, and a gray one imprinted with a
fake college seal and the words Screw U. He settles on the gray, deciding it
makes a more age-appropriate statement. They go for breakfast at a restaurant
on North Atlantic, and then to Marley’s studio apartment, which is close by.
The Lu-Ray Apartments, a brown stucco building overlooking the ocean and the
boardwalk—with the windows open, Cliff can hear faint digital squeals and
roars from a video arcade that has a miniature golf course atop its roof. It’s
a drizzly, overcast morning and, with its patched greens and dilapidated
obstacles, a King Kong, a troll, a dragon that spits sparks whenever someone
makes a hole-in-one, etcetera, the course has an air of post-apocalyptic decay.
The dead Ferris wheel beside it emphasizes the effect.

Marley’s place is
tomboyishly Spartan, a couple of surfboards on the wall, a Ramones poster, a
wicker throne with a green cushion, a small TV with some Mardi Gras beads
draped over it, a queen-size box spring and mattress covered by a dark blue
spread. The only sign of femininity is that the apartment scrupulously clean,
not a speck of dust, the stove and refrigerator in the kitchenette gleaming.
Marley tells Cliff to take the bed, she has to do some stuff, and sits
cross-legged in the wicker chair, pecking at her laptop. He closes his eyes,
surrendering to fatigue, fading toward sleep; but his thoughts start to race
and sleep won’t come. He tries to put a logical spin on everything that
happened, works out various theories that would accommodate what he saw. The
only one that suits is that he’s losing it, and he’s not ready to go there.
Finally, he opens his eyes. Marley’s still pecking away, her face concentrated
by a serious expression. In her appearance and mien, she reminds him of girls
he knew in LA in the eighties, many of them weekend punkers, holding down a
steady job during the week, production assistants and set dressers and such,
and then, on Friday night, they’d dress down, wear black lipstick and too much
mascara, and go batshit crazy. But those girls were all fashion punks with a
life plan and insurance and solid prospects, whereas Marley’s a true
edge-dweller with a punk ethos, living paycheck to paycheck, secure in herself,
a bit of dreamer, though her practical side shows itself from time to
time—for a week or two she’ll binge on schemes to resurrect her fiscal
security; then, Pffft!, it all goes away and she’s carefree and careless again.

These thoughts endanger
Cliff’s resolve to remain friends with her, and more dangerous yet is his
contemplation of her physical presence. Frizzy blond hair framing a gamin’s
face; bra-less breasts, her nipples on full display through the thin fabric of
her t-shirt; she’s his type, all right. He understands that part of what’s at
play here is base, that whenever he’s at a loss or anxious about something or
just plain bored, he relies on women to sublimate the feeling.

Marley glances up, catching
him staring. “Hey! You all right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Why?”

“You were looking weird is
all.” She closes the laptop. “You want anything?”

“No,” he says, a reflex
answer, but thinks about the things he wants. They’re all momentary
gratifications. Sex; surcease; to stop thinking about it. He suspects that the
real curse of getting older is a certain wisdom, the tendency to reflect on
your life and observe the haphazard path you’ve made, and then he decides that
what he wants above all is to want something so badly that he stops
second-guessing himself for a while. Just go after it and damn the
consequences…though in reality, that’s only another form of surcease.

“What do
you
want?”
he asks.

She tips her head to one
side, as if to see him more clearly. “I don’t think I’m getting the whole
picture here. Did something happen last night? You know, something more than
what you told me? Because you’re not acting like yourself.”