Penny Dreadful (15 page)

Dear Jude.

Something is very wrong with Griffin, I think.

And this is a guy who’s never been quite right. He came to the house once when Lucy was in the worst days of chemo and we were watching a baseball game, very casual on an otherwise dead Saturday afternoon and Griffin is eating pistachios. He brought over a sack of them and he’s eating them one after the other and tossing the shells into an ashtray and he comes cruising out of the blue and asks Lucy if she’s lost a few pounds. And she’s sitting in the rocking chair with a blanket pulled over her in the middle of fucking summer and a scarf around her head like a turban and he knows perfectly well she’s been sick and he goes on to say that he liked her better with a little meat on her but the way he says it you can’t be sure if he’s a complete psychopath or he’s just living so deep in his own skin that he truly forgot.

I don’t know what was in that drink he gave me but it feels familiar. It feels a little too good and I would have to say it’s in the narcotic family. But a distant relation. Faint. The way ice tastes when it’s been washed in vodka.

Anyway, Griffin paid the tab and instructed me to be at the Paramount around midnight, to catch a swing band called Martha’s Dead.

And just as I began sleepily to contemplate whether Martha was involved in a state of being or ownership in relation to the dead, the grinning bastard kicked me under the table and said hey, maybe you can use that little kidney story to get close to some nice pussy.

You know. Milk the girls for a little sympathy, he said.

I stared at him and now it dawned on me that Griffin didn’t believe me. He didn’t believe a fucking word. It was really too bad that I don’t have a few vacation snapshots of Jude sunbathing on a brick patio in an impossibly small bikini, the sky behind her yellow with Texas dust. Jude smoking a cigarette beside a fountain while tourists swarmed around her. Jude throwing money at a beggar. Jude standing in the ocean, hands white and skeletal at her sides. And one shot of Phineas and Jude together, fondling each other in a café. A sweet old lady from Minneapolis took that one. It was a ridiculous story, after all. It was pure tabloid. And why should I care if anyone believed me or not. I walked out with Griffin into gray sunlight and before he turned to go, Griffin touched my arm.

It was a simple thing, a touch.

Like we were friends, like we didn’t need words between us. Maybe it was true. I tried to remember how things really were before the urine incident but everything was obscured by smoke and drugs and loud music and faces. Disconnected torsos. The memories disengaged and I was watching a movie on a grainy black-and-white television without sound.

Tomorrow, said Griffin. Tomorrow you will understand.

What? What will I understand?

Griffin shrugged. You will live in another world.

He walked away from me with unfailing arrogance, his legs furious and fluid in those slim purple pants. His smooth, round skull floating at his shoulders. I tried to reconcile this image with the smiling, slithering Griffin who had peed on me with impunity. There were but flashes of his previous selves, of the Griffin who decapitated a mannequin and offered the head to his estranged girlfriend. Of the Griffin who improvised wildly in the courtroom, the Griffin who was at once adored and hated by judges.

Moon:

Now that was fucking better. Moon felt a thousand times better. Nothing like a belly full of undigested meat to set him right. And he loved that bread they used for the buns, fresh sourdough rolls that were never exactly round like those creepy processed buns at McDonald’s. Fuck those processed buns. The Millennium buns were properly deformed lumps of bread, often bearing strange tumors. And the Millennium gave a fellow a serious chunk of meat that weighed a quarter of a pound after it was fucking cooked and the fat had dripped away. Then topped with real cheese and fried onions, pickles and jalapeño wedges on the side. Moon had to pass on the waffle fries today. He had been feeling a little bloated of late, and was trying to lay off the starch. But he did soak the burger down with two vanilla shakes. Now he was walking back to the car, laughing at himself a little bit. He had been so hungry that he killed his own seat belt, for fuck’s sake.

Droning down the sidewalk, he was on cruise control and feeling good. He was happy, of all fucking things. The hell was wrong with him. Maybe he would go down to the station and poke around, see if there was anything interesting on the board. Hey, now. What the fuck was this? His foot was stuck in something. A wad of green chewing gum that some sociopath spat on the sidewalk. The gum had melted in the sun and was now smeared nicely along the underside of his shoes. Fucking beautiful. Moon sat down on the curb, muttering. The next time he saw a guy, or a little kid even, spitting his gum on the sidewalk…dead. The offender was fucking dead. Moon finally took the shoe off and scraped at it with the handy butterfly knife. Then he heard voices, loud. Maybe two men and a woman, talking at once.

You stupid, stupid fuck.

Listen listen listen.

Whoa, now. I can’t breathe with you in my ass.

Tommy, Tommy. Let’s go, please.

Moon swiveled around to scope the cracked glass window of a coin-op laundromat. Four or five people were gathered around the change machine, shoving at each other. Okay. This was just what he needed. A random dose of pure foolishness. Moon replaced his sticky shoe and stood up, breathing hard. He walked into the laundromat and everybody froze. He sighed. Did he really look that much like a pig?

What’s the trouble?

Everyone was silent and Moon quickly catalogued them. A skinny Latino girl and her white boyfriend, who had the pale, downcast eyes of bystanders. They were already backing away, as if to say: this really isn’t our problem. In fact, we were just leaving. Moon shrugged and let them go. He turned to the other three. Black male in mid-

thirties, shaved head and nose ring. Wearing blue hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses, black pants and sneakers. He looked angry, sullen. White male in early twenties. Long dirty blond hair and a beard. Filthy bluejeans, no shoes and a torn white T-shirt that read Zippy the Pinhead for President. A small, white female with black hair, braided. Middle twenties and wearing peculiar clothes: soft leather vest that buttoned to the throat, no shirt. Her arms bare and white. She wore a dark red or black skirt, knee-length and made of something like velvet. It was thick and heavy and the colors seemed to shift. A wide belt around her waist, with little beaded pouches dangling from it. Brown leather boots that laced up to her knees. She was staring hard at Moon, as if she knew him. Her eyes were gray as stones, with a touch of blue around the edges.

What’s the trouble? he said again.

The woman smiled but said nothing.

This motherfucker, said the black male. He pointed at the white boy. This dumb cracker is trying to get change out of the machine with a piece of lettuce. I need to dry my clothes for work but I can’t get some change because of this fool. He’s got a pocketful of lettuce, he’s got a damn salad in his pants and he wants to try every damn piece of lettuce, one after another. How am I supposed to put up with that?

The white kid grinned, scratched himself. He was a picture of bliss. There were indeed several wilted pieces of lettuce at his feet, and another in his left hand.

Well? said Moon.

Yeah, said the white kid. I’m cool. I’m minding my own shit when this person starts invading my space. Fucking up my head, you know.

Right, said Moon.

He stepped up to examine the machine. The dollar slot was slimy with green and black juices and bits of chewed lettuce. It looked pretty well ruined. Maybe not. He pulled out a dollar and tried to feed it into the machine. The machine promptly rejected it. The machine started blinking, like it was maybe going to explode. Moon sighed and wished his armpits would stop dripping for five seconds. He wanted to help somebody, he really did. He probably had a few quarters in his pockets, but he might need them later. He never knew when he might pass a video arcade. He regarded the fucked machine briefly, wondering how much trouble it would be to smash it open. He had a tire iron in the car, but the idea of going out to get it and coming back to pound on this machine for a while made him weary beyond belief. He did have a gun. But that would be a rather extreme solution, even by his standards. He glanced at the woman.

What’s your story? he said.

She shrugged. I’m not involved. But I was curious.

About what?

I wanted to see if the lettuce would work. And I was curious to see which one of these two was going to get stabbed over four quarters.

Nobody’s getting stabbed.

The woman sniffed. I smell blood on somebody.

Okay, said Moon.

What about my money, said the black guy.

The machine seems to be broken, said Moon. It won’t be accepting any regular money today.

Motherfucker, said the black guy.

Easy, said the white kid. It’s all good.

The black guy was rubberband fast. His left fist lashed out and Moon barely registered the shadow of movement, the recoil. But the white kid was already on the floor, bleeding from the nose. The black guy looked at Moon with mild brown eyes.

You gonna arrest me or something? he said. Because I’m gonna be late for work.

Moon shook his head, smiling. He wondered if the black guy could teach him to move like that. It would come in handy the next time he said hello to McDaniel. The white kid was choking, or giggling, at his feet. Moon glanced down at him and the kid was already bobbing his head to some internal hippie music. The kid stared at the blood on his hands and shirt for a moment, then tasted it wondrously, as if it might be raspberry syrup. He clearly didn’t remember being punched in the face.

Arrest you for what? said Moon.

The woman tapped the black man on the elbow and he turned, surprised. As if he hadn’t noticed her there. She didn’t smile, exactly. But her eyes were bright.

I have four quarters you can have, she said.

Thanks, he said. Thank you.

She pulled a handful of coins from one of her little pouches and sorted through them. Flashes of gold and sparkling bits of colored glass. She sells seashells, Moon thought. He couldn’t help but stare at her and she was probably used to that. The back of his neck felt clammy just being near her. But that could well be the Millennium burger, or the bourbon. There was a lot of bad juice in his bloodstream. To put it mildly.

The woman separated four quarters and gave them to the man. He offered her a dollar but she shook her head, she turned and walked away.

Time to kill and money in my pocket and what would I do with myself now. It might be a good idea to go test the waters down at Moon’s precinct but I was nervous. I needed a disguise, a wig or some false teeth. I wasn’t walking in there as Phineas Poe, that was for goddamn sure. The roof might come down on my head. I wondered idly what Ray Fine might look like. Maybe old Ray could pass for a private eye.

I laughed at myself, now.

Because cops love to talk to private detectives. Oh, they do. They love it. And in five minutes Ray Fine might easily say the wrong thing and find himself in a holding cell with a handful of his own teeth and a dent in his head shaped exactly like the yellow pages.

No shit.

If Ray was going to be a private eye, he would have to dress like he still lived with his mamma, like he might be Norman Bates. He would need a mustache and maybe some ugly glasses that he paid fifty cents for at a yard sale. A carelessly constructed but psychotic geek. A guy that limped.

Okay, okay. This wasn’t so bad. I might well enjoy it.

What else.

Ray would have a history of scoliosis and bad feet. His pants should be too short and possibly unzipped, but he would look like a guy who might get violent in a pinch. A guy that you wouldn’t want to push into a corner because he might just stab you in the throat with a ballpoint pen, with his keys. Ray should be goofy enough to appear harmless, smart and relentless and creepy enough to get some answers.

That was my plan, such as it was.

I would become Ray Fine and Ray would go talk to Captain Honey and feel him out about my pal Moon and his tale of lost cops.

I started walking and things got slippery, fast. Passed a bus stop and saw four or five women dressed up like vaudeville whores. Leather granny boots covered in dust. Thick skirts that fell to the ground with fur and feathers stitched into the hems. White blouses with complicated hook and eyelet buttons cut low and square across heaving bosoms. Truly. These were tits that laughed at gravity, they fucking sneered at it. These women were each strapped into some kind of corset or bustier that not only aimed their nipples at the sky but gave them eighteen-inch waists as well, right. A wonder they could breathe at all. They carried little paper umbrellas and wore incredible sunbonnets that glittered with beads and colored glass and rose petals. Two of them wore snug little lace pinafores at the waist and the others had black feather boas coiled around their necks. Their faces were painted in terrifying monochrome red and blue and pink and their hair hung in exquisite ringlets and curls. I thought they must be on their way to a costume party and wasn’t going to say a word as I was already gawking shamelessly at them but as I passed they commenced to whistle and hoot at me openly. One of them stepped in front of me and gave my arm an exploratory squeeze, you know. Checking the bicep for muscle. Whether she liked the specimen, I can’t say. But she sighed and whimpered and asked if I was looking for a good time and her tone was pure Scarlett O’Hara.