Currency of Souls (28 page)

That's not exactly true. After all, isn't death an escape in itself? And it's not as if she didn't provide me with the means to make this happen. Back here, after the fire, while still in her Gracie costume, she told me something she didn't have to share, and I didn't think I'd ever need to know:
First time I tried stepping over the threshold of this place, it made me sterile and ejected the baby that was busy growin' in my belly, and then: I put it down to coincidence and tried again. That one gave me such a pain it dropped me to the floor and left me there for two days, paralyzed and bleedin' from every hole in my body. So I gave up, figurin' if I tried a third time, it might be the last
. She had no reason to tell me all of that, but she did, and I used it.

This will be her third try.

"I'm giving you what you wanted," I explain, moving to the center of the room.

She gurgles something I can't understand, and hauls herself closer until she's lying about two feet from my shoes. If she stretched out her arm, she could touch me.

I trust her injuries to keep her prostrate for a moment and raise my head.

The door to the tavern is wide open. Beyond, I can hear rumbling as Blue Moon's tribe try to run him down, the
thwick-thwick-thwick
sound as Red Cloud's arrows take them out. They're getting closer.

* * *

Kyle's feet pump the crumbling earth as he races alongside the deer. They move like maddened things, their hooves barely scraping the earth, but much to his relief, they pay him no mind. It's the two Indians they're after, though Kyle can't begin to fathom what they could possibly have done to invoke the rage of a dumb bunch of animals. Then again, neither man is made of flesh and bone, so trying to gauge the severity of their transgressions seems a bit ridiculous. As he runs, gun heavy in his hand, heart heavy in his chest, he realizes he's glad to be alive. There was nothing in death but a vast empty space, now a small dark pocket in his memory, and despite the confusion that clings to him like a shroud, he's
here
, and running, tasting life with a sense of purpose. He doesn't know how long that will last, or if it will at all, but reminds himself that tonight, if nothing else happens in that tavern up ahead (which seems unlikely), he will swallow his bitterness and thank his father, who will no doubt shrug it off with embarrassment. The guy could win the lottery and he'd shrug like he knew it was coming.

A woman's scream drifts down the hill and Kyle falters. Stops dead. He waits, listening for it to come again, and despite the thunderous passage of the deer only a few feet away, does not feel compelled to move.

Up ahead, Red Cloud turns and hurries, his stiff-legged gait carrying him into the tavern.

There is no sign of Blue Moon Running Bear, which suggests to Kyle that he has already made it inside. Then again, the man has been sculpted from the night itself and his eyes are stars, so it could be he's up there somewhere and hidden within the folds of darkness.

Kyle stands alone, the grass damp with dew, crickets sawing their songs around him, birds making unenthusiastic attempts at nightsongs for an unappreciative audience. Some of the deer, heads lowered, antlers like daggers of bone aimed at the wood, assault the door of the tavern. The rest spread out around the long narrow building, encircling it, trapping the men inside. Still Kyle waits. He knows Iris has sent him here to help his father, to repay the personal debt they've established between them, and that time is of the essence, but he finds himself unable and unwilling to move. He waits, tells himself that despite the urgency of the situation and the obvious need for his help, he will continue to stand here until he hears the scream again and is proved wrong in thinking it came from his long dead mother.

* * *

When Dean gets done crooning some song Brody's never heard, he flashes that famous smile, then, with a deft move like a magician shucking back his sleeve to demonstrate there's nothing concealed inside it, his hand flashes out and he breaks one of Brody's fingers.

Brody cries out with pain and doubles over, hitting his head hard on the steering wheel. Tears flow as he cradles the wounded digit. "Jesus, man. What the
fuck?
"

Dean sits back, admiring the night beyond the windshield. "The problem wasn't so much you killing that guy pretending to be me, sonny. Problem was when you whacked him, you took away another reason for folks to remember me."

His face contorted with pain, damp forehead pressed against the wheel, Brody tells him, "He was trying to rob me, for Chrissakes. Guy had a
knife
to my throat."

Dean nods his understanding and spreads his hands. "Hey, he was a punk. I know that, but it still upset me. After all, no one wants to think about some dumb old dead crooner, now do they?" He purses his lips, then continues. "Oh sure, the old farts play us on their radios, but they don't think about me or Frankie, or any of the old boys. Not any more, even though it don't cost 'em a dime. Not one dime, friend. They just keep us locked away with memories of the first time they got laid." He narrows his eyes at Brody, as if he's worried that it's too complicated for the kid to understand. "The proud moments, y'know? Life's moments. But it don't matter what the music playing in the background was. Oh no. That gets forgotten. We get forgotten." He sighs, looks back out at the road. "Then you have the crazies, the guys who got hit on the head one too many times in the ring, or came back with busted heads from one war or another, and just because I was singing on the radio while they waited to get their brains put back in, they decide I'm God. They decide they're going to be me, and damned if they don't walk around like little mirror images, singing and dancing and reminding people of the good 'ol days. Highballs in one hand; smoke in the other. Reminding people of
Dino
." He rubs his hands together in delight and grins. "So here you have some goddamn yuppie couple who are eating cavier, sipping champagne in the park while Tommy wonders how many deadbolts there are on the woman's underwear and she's wondering when's he gonna stop wondering how many deadbolts there are on her underwear because she's not wearing any, when up the street comes waltzing the ghost of Dino, looking like me right down to the smile and the sparkling eyes, right down to the snazzy shoes. Only he smells like dog shit and old pizza, but hell, the job's already been done, because the girl sees him and starts remembering, and she tells the guy about how she's free next Sunday and maybe he'd like to come over and watch a movie, and its one she remembers seeing as a kid, something about some lecherous but handsome lush, and it sounds like a prime opportunity for Tommy to bang the broad, so he agrees. Cut to Sunday, my friend, and both of those jerks are squatting by the TV watching me do my thing, and they're enjoying it. And I'm getting off on it.

"That, kid, is who you knocked off."

"I didn't know."

Dino lights a cigarette. "Why'd you kill him?"

"I told you."

"Sure. Sure you did. Because he was going to rob you right?"

"Right."

"Well ain't that something. You took the guy's life because he stole from you." He slaps his knee, tipping ash onto the floor. "Just like you stole from me by killing him and robbing me of the limelight, right?" He laughs loudly. "Life can be a hell of a thing sometimes, can't it?"

"I didn't know. I swear I didn't."

Dean blows out a plume of blue smoke. It flows across the windshield and up Brody's nose. He coughs before he can stop it, looks fearfully at his passenger, then allows himself a sigh when it appears his involuntary protest has gone unnoticed.

"That was some pretty broad you had too."

With no small effort, Brody raises his head. "Yeah, she was."

"Too bad about the drugs."

"Yeah."

"You know her long?"

"Maybe a year."

"Know who she was?"

Brody feels a tightening across his chest. The casual way the man is asking these questions, the way he's not looking at him, makes him fear that Carla might have been someone a lot more important, at least to the ghost of Dean Martin, than he ever suspected. She certainly played the guy's music enough to drive him crazy, so maybe...

"Wanted to be a ballerina," Dean tells him, a wistful smile on his faces. "Like any little girl. Grew up, wanted to be a lawyer because she got hooked on
Matlock
. Got older still and wanted to be a model, even spent some time in L.A. That's where she discovered the shit she kept putting in her veins. Came back, cleaned up, got herself enrolled in a nice community college thing, studied to be a medic. Dated a guy who beat the shit out of her at every available opportunity, so she ended up getting involuntary hands-on training with the medics. She left him and the college, hitchhiked her way to Texas, considered getting into music. First guy she approached told her he'd give her as much time in the studio as she gave him on his couch. The old story. She thought of suicide, but dismissed it in favor of resuming her habit. Why? Because I told her so. I thought her being messed up and alive was better than her being dead any day of the week. And she was helping to keep me around, playing my records every time she felt blue, mentioning my name whenever the subject of music came up. And why? Because her grandmother and me had a thing one time, back in the late '50's, right when I was at the top of my game. Showed up backstage on night at a Vegas show, a real country girl, out of her league and well aware of it, but just there to prove she had the guts to come say "hi" to a man she thought she loved because of how I looked and because I could sing real well. I took her to dinner a few nights, and sent her on her way, and that was that. Liked that gal a lot.

"Once I went balls up and they put me in the ground, I figured I'd look in on her from time to time, and kinda got to like it. She always played my records too. After she died, I watched over her daughter, then Carla." He whistles. "What a kid. Helped that she liked my music of course. But I watched her real close, watched her life get worse and worse and not a whole lot I could do about it. Oh sure, I'd help her throw up after a bad night, or put her car keys where she could find them, maybe keep a bad guy she was thinking of dating out of the picture until she forgot about him and he forgot about everything except when to empty his colostomy bag. But she was on the downward slope, friend, and I couldn't do enough to keep that from happening. After she left Texas, I followed her to Gainesburg, where she met you."

Brody remembers. The bank job with Smalls, a low-level thug with dreams of grandeur that ended up splattered all over the wall of the First National. Kyle had kept his share, and spent the first of it at a roadside diner a hundred miles from Gainesburg. That was where he'd met Carla. She'd been sitting alone in a booth, staring into a cup of coffee, looking like she was considering jumping into it and drowning. He'd watched her from his own booth, weighing up the positives and negatives of approaching a girl when he was on the run from the law, when she took the initiative and slid in beside him, started talking about the weather, and music (
Do you like Dean Martin?
), as if they'd been friends forever.

"I didn't mean for her to die," Brody says, grimacing as he inspects his broken finger. "I swear I didn't. I loved her."

"You think you did."

"No, I—"

"The same way you think you loved all those other girls you dragged along on the little crime spree you call your life, all those other girls you turned into mothers because you don't care. Sooner or later they stop becoming your problem. Sooner or later they stop becoming anything at all."

"That's not how it is."

Dean looks at him, grins widely. "Look who you're talking to. There's no sense arguing with me, and why would you want to? You're stressed out enough as it is."

"Please, look..."

"I'm not going to kill you, kid."

Every muscle in Brody's body unclenches, and he allows himself to sit back.

"That's not how I do things. I just wanted you to know who that girl was those guys put in the ground back there. She wasn't just another one of your crack-whores good for a hundred miles only. She was someone, and she was a damn sight more human than you'll ever be."

Brody nods. "I know you don't believe me, but I did care about her."

"Sure you did, kid." Dean cracks open his door, puts one foot out on the road. "Sure you did." He exits the car, brushes dirt from his trousers and leans in the open window. "Do me a favor, will ya?"

Brody looks at him. "Sure."

"When you get on your way, play some of Carla's discs. I don't imagine there'd be a nicer way to sing her to sleep." He winks, "See you soon, kid," thumps a set of gold-ringed fingers down on the door, and walks away whistling a song Brody has heard but can't place. It comes to him by the time he finds the strength to sit up and start the ignition again. It was one of Carla's favorites. 'There's No Tomorrow.'

Chapter Twenty Three

Though Blue Moon's face is made of black glass, I can see the doubt and wariness etched into it, or perhaps I'm seeing those emotions swirling beneath the surface. Can't say I blame him. He has risked everything to be here for a man he has always trusted. Problem is, I'm hiding in the body of a man he doesn't.