Fire Lake (8 page)

Getting in the Pinto, I sped out of the lot.
 

11

I stopped at the Frisch's Mainliner in Fairfax and
phoned Station X from an icy phone booth outside the restaurant. I
told them to check the office storeroom at the Encantada Motel in
Miamiville. I didn't tell them what they'd find. After hanging up on
the desk sergeant, I dug another quarter from my pants and called the
Clarion. It was almost four A.M., but what I'd found at the Encantada
wouldn't wait.

Karen answered the phone on the sixth ring. Her voice
was shot full of anxiety.

"It's me," I said. "Harry."

"Christ, what time is it?" she said.

"Late. Karen . . ."

I suddenly realized that I didn't know what to say to
her. That I didn't know what any of it meant. I only knew that Lonnie
was in deep, deep trouble.

"Harry?" Karen said with concern. "What
is it? What's wrong?"

"A man's been killed," I said. "The
clerk at the motel."

I heard her suck in her breath. "And Lonnie?"
she said, still holding her breath.

"I don't know," I said. "I found his
license on the clerk's desk."

"Oh, my God," she said with horror. "You're
not saying that Lonnie murdered him, are you?"

"I'm saying that I found his license there and
took it with me." My voice sounded out of control. I could hear
it myself. I drummed my fingers on the icy glass of the phone booth
and told myself to calm down.

"I don't know if he killed him, Karen," I
said after a time. "Maybe it was meant to look that way. Maybe
whoever broke into my apartment planted the license to incriminate
Lonnie. I just don't know."

"What the hell has he gotten us into?"
Karen said in a stricken voice.

"I don't know,"
I said again. "But it's pretty goddamn awful. "

***

I told Karen I was going home--to get some sleep. She
asked me if I thought that was a good idea. And I didn't know what to
say. If my place had been searched for drugs, if Jenkins had been
murdered because of the same drugs, then going back to the Delores
probably wasn't safe. The trouble was that I didn't know if anyplace
was safe anymore. The only person who could tell me that was Lonnie.
And he was either completely out of his mind, or on the run, or dead
too. Carved up like Jenkins had been and dumped in the river.

One thing was certain. Someone had been very pissed
off at Claude. Unless you were crazy, you didn't make the kind of
example that was made of Jenkins because of a grudge. You did it to
set a mark, to scare other people into toeing the line, to make sure
that mistakes didn't happen again. Unless you were crazy.

I let Karen talk me into spending what was left of
the night in her hotel room. It was less risky than going home. And I
figured I was going to need some sleep before facing whatever was in
store on Saturday. Besides, part of me wanted to spend the night with
her, even if it was in separate beds.

It took me another thirty minutes to drive from
Fairfax to the Clarion. I parked in a garage across from the hotel.
Maybe it was paranoia, but I was damn careful about walking over to
the Clarion lobby. To be doubly safe, I took the lobby elevator to
the floor above Karen's, then walked down the stairwell to her room.

She'd apparently remained awake after my call,
because she answered my knock immediately. She was wearing a terry
robe, and she smelled, beneath it, of night sweat and nerves. Her
pretty face was leaden with fatigue. Her long brown hair, undone for
the night, fell to her shoulders in an uncombed tangle.

"Excuse the way I look," she said
nervously.

She ushered me through the door. Her robe parted
slightly as she waved me in, and I caught a glimpse of the tops of
her breasts, white as snow where a bathing suit had shielded them
from the sun. She smiled ruefully when she realized I was staring at
her, and closed her robe gently with one hand. "It's a funny
time to be thinking about that. "

I nodded. "Funny is not the right word."

I walked over to the far bed and sat down heavily on
the mattress.

"You look wrung out," Karen said, sitting
down across from me on her bed.

"I am wrung out. This has been a very bad
night."

"Poor Harry," she said with genuine
sympathy. "You don't deserve this."

I agreed with her.

Karen dropped her eyes to the floor. "What are
we going to do?" she said with a hopeless look. "I mean,
about Lonnie?"

"We're going to find out what happened to him,"
I said confidently, although I didn't feel much confidence.

"How?" Karen said.

"He must have some other friends here, in town.
Old hippies. Ladies. Dope friends. Somebody. Tomorrow, we'll go
looking for them."

"I think I remember a few people," she
said. "But they might not be around anymore. It's been fourteen
years." She folded her legs, Indian style, and tucked the robe
in tightly beneath her. "Maybe we ought to get in touch with
some of Lonnie's old friends in St. Louis. He might have made some
contact there, before coming here."

"He did have that bus ticket," I agreed.
"We'll check it out."

I took off my coat and started to unbutton my shirt,
as if I were at home, alone. I stopped and glanced at Karen. She was
staring at me. It wasn't exactly an inviting look, but it wasn't
uninterested, either.

"I haven't watched a man ... undress in quite a
while," she said, almost as if she were reading my mind. She ran
a hand through her hair again. "I guess we need some ground
rules."

"Turn your back?" I said. "Hang a
blanket between the beds?"

She laughed. "This isn't 1934. And I'm not
Claudette Colbert."

"Then what?"

"I used to know how to handle this kind of
scene," she said with a touching look of perplexity, "but
it's not 1969 anymore."

"What would you have done in '69?"

She smiled at me wickedlv. "You don't want to
know." Rolling on her side, she reached up to the lamp and
flicked it off. The room went dark.

"That's one solution," I said.

I heard her laugh softly and then I heard the
bedclothes rustle as she settled herself in bed.

I finished stripping down in the dark. I pulled the
Gold Cup out of its holster and tucked it beneath my pillow. It felt
like a little stone under my head. I lay there with mv eyes open for
a few minutes, then pulled the blankets up over my shoulders.

"Harry, Lonnie didn't kill that clerk,"
Karen said, in a voice so full of certainty that it startled me as
much as if she'd turned the lights back on. "He'd never do
something like that. He just isn't that kind of man."

"He may have changed in two years, Karen,"
I said.

"No," she said firmly. "That's
Lonnie's whole problem. He doesn't know how to change."

It was an ironic thing to wish for, but I hoped she
was right.
 
 

12

I dreamed of Lonnie--a curiously placid dream at the
start, right out of our Lyon Street days. We were painting the
apartment. That was the first thing you did back then--paint. Lonnie
wanted to paint the walls electric blue. I wanted them white. We
split the difference. As we were painting, Karen walked in. In the
dream, she looked young and fresh and sexy. She smiled at me and went
into Lonnie's room. I was intensely jealous of the fact that she'd
chosen to go into Lonnie's room rather than mine. I went over to his
door and opened it. Karen and Lonnie were lying on Lonnie's bed. For
some reason, I didn't realize they were making love and I kept
walking over to the bed. Karen looked up at me from the bed and
smiled. When I caught my mistake, I backed out of the room and closed
the door behind me. As I was going to my room I heard someone cry out
from Lonnie's room. I turned around and went back to the door, but I
couldn't open it anymore. It was coated with ice. I tried peeking
through the window, but the blinds were closed. Then someone inside
Lonnie's room started screaming horribly. I pulled at the door and
slammed it with my fist. But it wouldn't budge. Claude Jenkins came
up behind me, his shirt red with blood, and told me that it was too
late--that they were dead. "That's the price you pay," he
said with a terrible grin. And I woke up.

It took me a few seconds to remember where I was. I
glanced over at Karen's bed. It was empty--the blanket scattered and
the sheets a swirl of white, like drifted snow. I felt my heart race.
For a moment I thought she was dead, like in the dream. Then I heard
the shower going and the dream faded quickly, leaving me feeling a
vague mingling of want and dread.

I glanced at the clock on the nightstand--it was half
past eight. I thought about catching a couple more hours of sleep.
But the room was hot and it smelled, like the blankets, of creosote
and dust. And I didn't want to have any more dreams.

As I lay there, letting the sleep clear from my head,
Karen stepped out of the john. She was naked, except for a towel that
she'd wrapped, turban-like, around her head. She walked over to the
bureau and opened a drawer. Then she glanced up in the bureau mirror
and saw me staring at her. She made a startled face and put one hand
over her breasts and the other over her hips. She stared at me for a
long moment--in the mirror--then slowly dropped her hands and turned
around to face me. She pulled the towel from her head, shook her wet
hair, and gave me a long, contemplative look. At that moment, I
didn't think I'd ever wanted a woman more.

After a time, Karen started walking slowly toward my
bed. I watched her with pleasure--her breasts, her legs, her pretty,
pouty face. She was a beautiful woman. Without a word, she came up
beside me, so close I could smell the soap she'd used on her skin. I
reached out for her hand. She stared at my hand for a second,
curiously, uncertainly. And stared into my face with the same look.
She looked down at herself--at her naked body. Then glanced at me
again. She started to say something--to talk us out of it, I thought.
I didn't give her that chance.

I threw the bedclothes back and grabbed her hand,
pulling her down on top of me. She was still wet from the shower. I
could feel that wetness on my flesh. She felt cool and clean. I ran a
hand through her damp hair, and she nuzzled her face against my
chest, tentatively. She looked up at me suddenly-looked me
straight in the eyes--and her own eyes lost their tentative look and
grew hazy, hot and certain. I kissed her passionately. And then we
were on each other, and I made love to her with a fierceness that I
hadn't felt since I was a kid.

I simply couldn't get enough of her. Or she of me. We
did everything we could think of. And a few things you only think of.
When we were through, my whole body smelled of her-salty-sweet-and
the cool shower drops on her flesh had boiled away and turned to
sweat.

We'd literally worn each other out. For a while we
just lay there, staring at the ceiling, catching our breath. After a
time she rolled on top of me, working her hips gently against mine
and smiling at me with her whole face--mouth, eyes.

"That was pretty nice," she said, running a
finger along my upper lip.

"It was better than that," I said, smiling
back at her. She pressed into me with her hips.

"Again?" I said, putting my hands on her
buttocks and pulling her to me.

She laid her head on my chest. "Tonight,"
she said. "As much as you want."

"Forgot what you were missing, huh?" I
said.

"Oh, I didn't forget," she said softly.
"Like I told you, I just don't want to get involved again."

"Then why do this?"

"I can't speak for you," she said with a
laugh. "As for me, I'm scared and lonesome and, when it comes
down to it, I guess I still am pretty goddamn sixties when it comes
to men. Besides, I felt like we knew each other, even though we'd
just met."

It was strange, but I'd had the same feeling of
connection, of relatedness. The fact that we were more or less of the
sixties generation was part of it. But I couldn't help thinking that
the fact that we were both connected to Lonnie was a bigger part of
it--that it was the guilty burden of Lonnie himself that made us feel
as if we'd spent time together. Thinking about Lonnie stirred my
conscience enough to make me blush and duck my head.

"You feel bad about ...this?" I looked down
at the rumpled sheets covering our legs.

"A little," she said. She glanced at me
furtively. "Do you?"

I nodded. "Technically, you're still his wife.
He still needs your help. And mine.

"I'm sick of giving him help," Karen said
bitterly.

"We can't just let him go," I said, even
though my heart wasn't in it just my conscience and that old tug of
the past.

"I guess we can't," Karen said with a sigh.
She glanced up at me, "But what the hell are we going to do?"

That was the question, all right.