Bad Things (6 page)

 

Locusts. The air hissed with their high, dry sounds, rasping, phoneline electric, screaming outside the car. Rick Piper cringed as he closed the window. He hated the locusts. He hated the desert.

Until he turned right on Vegas Boulevard and saw that the thermometer on the First Interstate Bank read 104 degrees, he wasn't even aware that his shirt was plastered to his body.
You're losing it, Piper.
Sighing, he loosened his tie, switched on the air conditioner, and let the chill air turn his sweat to ice.

Sinatra dobedobedoed at him when he turned on the radio. Wincing—a reflex born in childhood—he switched to the news. The stations rarely played any music he liked, and carrying cassettes in the car in this heat was a bad idea; they melted.

The desert, thought Rick, sucks. Clear, sunny, and hot, the weatherman was saying, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It never changed. When he was a kid, he'd thought Southern California had no weather. Lord, had he been wrong about that.

If you don't like it, you can move.
He glanced at the envelope on the seat beside him. The letter from George McCall, his attorney, had arrived two weeks ago, and he still hadn't answered it. He didn't know how. It was about Aunt Jade and her deteriorating mental state, about the house and its own state of deterioration, about sewer lines, property taxes, and a host of other aggravations related to home ownership.

The house in Santo Verde provided all the frustrations and none of the benefits, but that was his own fault. Sell it, he thought. Put crazy old Jade in a rest home with part of the proceeds. He should have done it years ago, but he just kept putting it off. He'd had title to the place since his twenty-first birthday, but he hadn't been back since he'd left for college.
Time flies.
He realized he hadn't seen it in nearly twenty years.

LOOSE SLOTS! a computerized sign blazed as he passed. Shaking his head, he thought,
You hate this place,
for maybe the hundredth time since the letter had arrived and maybe the millionth since he'd moved here in '82.
You hate the heat. Christ it's only June first and it's over one hundred.
He squinted into the sun, a headache coming on.
You hate having your kids grow up here with gambling and drinking and sex advertised on every other billboard.
Shelly's attitudes had already been affected by her surroundings, and he knew it was only a matter of time before it rubbed off on Cody, too. He could take them back to Santo Verde, enroll them in good schools, fix up the house, and live a normal life again. That was something they hadn't done since Laura was killed by a drunk driver, when Cody was barely a year old. The poor kid didn't even remember his mother.

He'd been considering a move for sometime, and now the time had come to make the decision. His contract with the local station would be up for renewal at the end of the month, and though he liked doing the show, he didn't need the work. Too, in the last few weeks, pressure from station management—a group of disturbingly sharp, closely related men who referred to themselves as “the boys”—to sign a contract that would tie him up for three years had increased to the point that he was coming home with headaches and acid stomach nearly every evening. Lately he'd been wondering if he might wake up some morning and find himself nose to nose with a horse's head.

Moving to California to take care of family matters was something “the boys” would probably understand.

Since he'd started hosting the program, a show that was similar in style to “Consumer Crusader,” his syndicated newspaper column, he'd been away from home more often than not, leaving Shelly to her own questionable devices and Cody to sitters he never quite trusted. No, he didn't need the show. Besides, if he really needed the money—or the ego gratification—he'd already been approached by a Los Angeles station about doing a five-minute spot several times a week on a local morning news show. It paid almost as well as his weekly half hour, required far less work, but unfortunately would require him to get up at three in the morning Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Still, it was his if he wanted.

All you need, Piper, is your column.
Ten more newspapers had just contracted for “Crusader,” and that meant he'd soon be appearing in virtually every major metropolitan area in the nation every Sunday. What more
could
he need? And if he just did the column, he'd be home a lot more, which meant he wouldn't feel so guilty all the time.

He knew the kids needed a more wholesome environment; a world-class gambling town wasn't a fit place for a teenage girl or a little boy ready for kindergarten. It wasn't a fit place for a single father, either. He shook his head.
Better be careful, Piper, or you'll talk yourself into this move.

Joe Piscopo, bulging with obscene, oily muscles, smiled smugly down at him from a billboard by the MGM. Yeah, Rick thought, he hated it here. Except for one thing, the one reason he had moved here in the first place: It never got dark on the Strip.

He turned left on Flamingo Road, wondering if he was ever going to stop carrying around a childhood fear of the dark—the
greenjacks will get you if you don't watch out.
A simple fear of the dark ruled his life, deciding where he could or couldn't live, letting it control his every move.
Ridiculous.

Don't think about it!
Abruptly his memory tried to shut down, just as it always did when he thought too much about his past.

Not this time,
he ordered himself.
Not this time, no.
He had to think about it because it was time—past time—for him to take control of his life. At. seventeen, when he first came here, his fear was ridiculous, but to continue to carry it around all these years was borderline psychotic, or something equally abnormal. “Hell,” he said, and hung another left.

A moment later, Rick pulled into the garage beneath the Paradise Towers, found a space, and parked.
Home, sweet home.
He stepped out of the air-conditioned Celica and into the shadowed, cloying heat. The air smelled like stale cigarettes—not just in the garage, but everywhere in the vicinity of the Strip. That was another good reason to return to California—not that the air was more healthful, it just smelled like it was, especially in Santo Verde in the spring when the citrus orchards were in full blossom. Despite himself, he smiled as he grabbed his briefcase, locked the car, and crossed to the elevator.

The refrigerated air in the hall on the fourteenth floor outside his apartment smelled like stale cigarettes, too, and spilled booze. “Shelly?” he called as he unlocked the door. “Shelly? You here?” Sometimes the ventilation screwed up and he'd wake up in the night smelling old smoke from Dakota and Lil's apartment next door, or worse, dog-shit cigars from his other neighbor, a fat, froggy guy named Mancuso who worked weird hours and wore dark suits, even in August. “Shelly? Cody?” He tossed his briefcase on the couch.

Except for Quint, his huge orange cat, who was fast asleep in the center of the dining room table, the place was deserted. “Scat, cat!” he ordered by rote, and as usual, Quint blinked at him with utter boredom and went back to sleep. “Cheeky bastard,” Rick said, completing the ritual.

He glanced at his watch. Six-ten. Shelly had promised to pick up her brother by five and bring him straight home. Irritated, he dialed the sitter's number and found out, as he expected, that Cody was still there.

The current sitter lived on the fifth floor, and precisely three minutes and forty-five seconds elapsed between the time Rick hung up the phone and when he rang the bell. Tapping his foot, checking his watch, waiting for the door to open, he realized that his darling daughter had been late coming home four nights out of five this week.

“Mr. Piper! Come in, come in!”

The door opened and Marlene Poom beamed at him through a blue tobacco haze,

“Mrs. Poom, I'm sorry about this.”

She took his arm and leaned familiarly against him. “I'm just going to have to take you over my knee and give you a good spanking if you don't remember to call me Marlene,” she told him, batting her eyelashes.

Now, there was a horrifying thought. “Marlene,” he said quickly, “I don't know what kept Shelly. She should have been here over an hour ago.”

Mrs. Poom, her big-boned face mummy brown from the desert and tautly stretched from the plastic surgeon, beamed at him and blew a smoke ring in his face. Rick was only five nine, and that gave old Marlene a good half inch on him. That was another good reason to move: Most of the women in the building were performers and stood about six foot four. Mrs. Poom claimed to be a former show girl herself—probably from around the time of the last gold rush. He tried to avoid another face full of smoke.

“Shelly's a pretty young girl, and she probably has lots and lots of boyfriends,” Marlene Poom was telling him.

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“Daddy!”

“Hey, Cody!” Rick squatted, and the little boy careened into his arms. The brim of his red cowboy hat smacked into Rick's nose, bringing tears to his eyes. He stifled the urge to swear. Cody probably heard enough of that from Marlene.

Cody took his hug and pulled back, filled with dimples and glee. Except for the Piper dimples and dark blue eyes, the boy looked so much like his mother with his straight gold hair, full lower lip, and turned-up nose. Sometimes it hurt to look at him. He still missed her so much that sometimes in the middle of the night he'd wake up in a panic because he'd reach for her and she wasn't there.

Mr. Piper. I'm afraid we have some bad news . . . Your wife's been in an accident . . . A drunk driver on the wrong side of the divider . . . Sir, we think it would be best if you didn't look at the body .
. . He'd never seen her again, he knew Shelly still missed her and wished Cody could have known her . . . sweet Laura.
Keep it up, Piper, and you're going to lose it in front of the dragon lady!
He cleared his throat. “I had a hard day, kid,” Rick grunted. “I need another hug.”

Cody obliged.

“Dad-dy!”

“Huh?” Rick plastered a smile on his face and focused on his son.
Get a grip! There's nothing to see!

“Lookit what Marlene gave me.” Cody dangled a pair of fuzzy pink dice in front of his eyes. “We went to Carnival Town today and played the racehorse game and Marlene won and she gave them to me. Wanna bet, Daddy? Double or nothing?”

Rick cringed. “Not today, buddy.” Carnival Town had a kiddieland above the casino with live circus acts, which were fine, and carnival games that somehow seemed harmless at a county fair but like a gamblers' training center inside the casino. He glanced at Marlene Poom, who smiled at him as she lit a fresh cigarette off the old one. “Uh, Marlene, I'd really prefer that you don't take Cody into the casinos.”

“Oh, don't be such an old poop,” she scolded. “You've been there, I'm sure. It's not like we're playing poker or anything. It's very wholesome.”

He snorted. “Wholesome isn't the word I would have used.”

Marlene just shook her head and gave him a pitying smile. He had been to Carnival Town plenty of times during his college days, and the place was sleazy, all the more so because of the cotton-candy atmosphere it traded on. Not long ago, he'd run across a photo of himself and Craig Costello, the strangest friend he'd ever had, fondling one of the breast cream cones that adorned the walls. The gigantic plastic cones were filled with fleshy pink plastic ice cream, each scoop swirled into a half dozen voluptuously feminine mounds, every one tipped with a red nipplelike gumdrop.

“Well, Mr. Piper,” Marlene commented between drags, you look pleased with yourself. Just what are you thinking about?”

“Nothing. Just a little indigestion.” He scooped Cody into his arms and crossed to the door, holding his breath against another exhalation of smoke. “We'll see you Monday, Mrs. Poom.”

“Marlene, honey. Marlene.” She held the door. “My goodness, when you call me ‘Missus' it makes me feel like I'm fifty years old!”

Since she was at least sixty, Rick thought as they headed for the elevator, she ought to be happy.

“Daddy, what are we gonna do now?”

“We're going to find your sister, and she's going to help you take a bath while I make dinner,” Rick said, stepping into the elevator.

“Why do I always have to take a bath when you get home?” Cody squirmed out of his arms. “I never used to have to.”

“You never used to spend all day with Mrs. Poom. Her cigarettes make you smell bad.”

“And they're bad for me, too. They eat my lungs. A man on TV said so.”

“I know, buddy. I know.” They exited at their floor, and Rick almost asked Cody what he'd think of living in California in a real town, a real house, with real flowers and trees.

What if he sees them?
He stopped the thought. Stupid childhood fantasies.
Grow up, Piper! You were a psycho child!
“Where do you think your big sister is?” he asked.

“Lemme down.” The boy squirmed to the floor and ran down the hall, coming to a stop in front of their neighbors' apartment.
“Shelly!”
he screeched, and began pounding furiously on the door.

Two apartments down, Don Mancuso opened his door and glared suspiciously out at them. Rick smiled and shrugged as he hissed at Cody to be quiet. Mancuso's frog face disappeared an instant before Lil Magill opened her door.