The Deader the Better (9 page)

I kept one hand on the wall as I stepped inside. The floor listed
forward at a twenty-degree angle. I kept my butt back and my steps
short as I worked my way past Ralph and tottered into the living
room. The place was completely furnished. It hadn’t occurred to me,
but I guess if your house slides thirty feet down a hill with you in
it, you don’t call Bekins to come back for your furniture. You just
take the insurance money and thank the fates. At the far end of the
room, a striped mattress had been thrown up against the double glass
sliding doors. Kind of a safety barrier, I guessed. In case a guy
worked up a head of steam on his way across the room and couldn’t
stop. Billy Bob Fung and Big Frank sat on the floor leaning back
against the mattress, chins on chests and a bottle of gin on the
carpet between them. In the high-rent district along the left wall,
everybody had his own bottle. Gravity had pushed Norman, Harold and
George down to the low end of a black leather sofa, where they sat
pressed together hip to hip, heads loll ing. In front of the sofa, a
rosewood coffee table with a glass top. They’d nailed a two-by-four
to the floor at the far end to keep it from sliding and cut five
inches off the near legs to level it. At least three of them were
snoring. The air smelled like wet dog.

“Heeeeeeeeey,” Ralph bellowed. Nobody moved, so he hollered
again. Nothing. “Buncha damn drunks,” he mumbled.

I saw George Paris twitch down at the far end of the couch and
then crane his neck forward. With his gaunt face and slicked-back
white hair, George looked like a defrocked boxing announcer. Years
ago he’d been an important banker and a mover and shaker in the
Downtown Businessman’s Association. He blinked me into focus and
then put the bottle to his lips for a quick pull. “Leo,” he said.
“Damn good to see you, boy.”

I watched as he tried to lever himself off the couch. “Ugh,”

he grunted as he tried to sit forward. No go. The force of Harold
and Norman pressing against his right shoulder was too great. He was
stuck. I suppressed a giggle. Undaunted, he tried again. And again.
This time kicking his legs out in an attempt to create some forward
momentum. When that didn’t work, he completely lost it. Thrashing
about like a stroke victim. Spewing spittle. Screaming.

“Goddammit, get offa me. Ya hear me, here. Goddammit. Stop
leanin’ your big ass on me. I’ll…” Neither Harold nor Norman
batted an eye. Against the far wall, Frank broke wind and fell over
on his left side. George redoubled his thrashing and swearing
efforts. I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh.

Behind me Ralph clung on to the doorknob for dear life, laughing
hysterically. I turned back toward him. “You stay right where you
are,” I said. I don’t know whether he heard me. By that time he
was down on one knee, pounding the floor, his body wracked by
uncontrollable whoops of laughter.

I kept my weight back like I was waterskiing and crossed to
George. He didn’t look good. “Gemme outta here, Leo,”

he wheezed. I took the bottle of schnapps from his hand and set it
on the coffee table. Taking both of his hands in mine, I leaned back
and pulled him from the couch like a cork from a wine bottle. As I
threw an arm around his narrow waist to prevent further slippage,
Harold and Norman slid across the slick leather surface of the couch,
filling in the area so recently occupied by George.

He snatched the bottle from the table and started up for Ralph. By
the time he was halfway up the incline, he’d walked completely out
of his baggy woolen socks and was now barefoot and waving the bottle
in the manner of a drum major with a baton.

When it appeared he might falter and end up back on the couch, I
grabbed him by the belt and propelled him the rest of the way.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” he demanded. Ralphie, of course,
laughed harder. I decided to nip the bickering in the bud.

“George,” I said. He was still glaring down at Ralph. “I
came to invite you guys to a party.”

“I don’t see what’s so goddamn—” He stopped shouting and
looked over at me. “A party? What kinda party?”

“A Christmas party for you guys,” I said. “Next Thursday
night.”

Ralphie staged a miraculous recovery. Regaining his feet, wiping
his eyes.

“At your place?”

“Yeah.”

George leaned in close. “Can…you know…some of the other…”

“Sure,” I said. “As long as it’s somebody I know.”

When we’d hatched this scheme, Rebecca and I had made a list. By
our reckoning, if you counted the fetid foursome, we knew about
twenty of the domestically disadvantaged, sixteen of whom had worked
for me at one time or another. We figured we could handle it. With a
little help from a caterer, of course.

I slipped George a twenty and told him to have the gang take the
bus to the top of Queen Ann Hill and then walk over. Eight sharp.
Spit and polish. No kneewalking drunks. Cops aren’t going to like a
pack of you in that neighborhood. Scout’s honor.

They both followed me outside. Rebecca’s voice rang from above.
She was standing behind the barricade at the far edge of the cut,
waving.

“Hi, Georgie,” she trilled. George looked up too quickly and
nearly swooned. He had to lean back against the doorframe or go down
in a heap.

Ralph showed a couple of teeth and waved. “Miss Duvall,”

he shouted.

I could hear them shouting back and forth as I made my way back up
to the road. She saw me coming, cupped her hands around her mouth.
“See you at the party,” she yelled. I looked down. George waved
the bottle. I waved goodbye. The little drummer boy was beating that
friggin’ drum on the car radio. That’s another big player in the
Christmas crazies…that damn music. Coming at ya twenty-four seven,
from every channel like Red Chinese propaganda. Used to be just the
standards. Bing crooning White Christmas. Gene and Rudolph. Burl and
Frosty. Nat roasting those chestnuts. These days we’ve got
everything from squads of beefy tenors Aveing so high even Maria
can’t hear it, to rednecks telling us how their grandma got
snockered and was trampled by hooved creatures. What’s next? In
twenty years…? “Marilyn Manson—A Christmas to Remember.”
Yeah, the tunes are a killer.

As we rolled into the driveway, I punched the garage door opener.
She slid the Explorer in next to the Fiat. Home again…home
again…Something about living together changes all the rules. It’s
like when you move in together, you automatically become your
parents. Our nearly twenty-year relationship had always been based on
equality. Sort of a physical, spiritual and intellectual Dutch treat,
so to speak. Sure, I’d always been in charge of the heavy lifting
and anything that involved sewage. And you sure wouldn’t want me
out there buying baby shower gifts. Rebecca had always handled that
sort of thing. But…She stuck the Explorer into park and turned off
the engine and the lights.

“Put the stuff up in the guest room,” she said cheerily and
headed for the house. I took a deep breath. I’d made a pact with
myself. No matter what little annoyances I encountered this holiday
season, I was going to remain Mr. Affable. Mr. Christmas Spirit
himself. No more hanging out by myself. No more of those turkey
dinners at the Yankee Diner, where everybody else in the place looks
like they work for Ringling Brothers. No sir. Chalk it up to getting
old and sentimental, but these days I’m prepared to gag down a
piece of my aunt Hildy’s truly execrable fruitcake in return for
the joy of seeing four generations of my family, gussied up and
gathered under a single roof. Something about time making cowards of
us all, I guess.

Four trips between the car and the guest room had us back to where
we’d started this morning, except way broker. When I came
downstairs for the last time, Rebecca was sitting on the couch going
through the mail. The doorbell rang. She was closer, but I said I’d
get it. What a guy. The UPS person. Gender not immediately apparent.
Two big parcels wrapped in brown paper. Sign here. And here. Thank
you very much. Packages were, and always had been, Rebecca’s
domain, so I carried them over and set them down next to her leg. She
pointed to the card in her hand. “From Jed and Sarah,”

she said, naming my attorney and his wife. It was one of those
family portrait Christmas cards. Jed, Sarah, both girls and their
hubbies, and this year…the first granddaughter. All dressed to the
teeth around Jed’s massive dining room table. Crystal both overhead
and at hand. The perfect turkey on the table. Very nice indeed.

“What’s this?” she said while I was still studying the
picture.

“Gifts,” I said.

“No,” she said emphatically enough to get my attention.

“No, they’re not. These are the packages I sent Claudia and
J.D.” She picked up the top box and held it up under the lamp. The
purple stamp read,
Undeliverable. Party no longer
at this
address
.

I don’t believe in ESP or any of that stuff. I think it’s like
the guy said: Inevitable is hindsight for random. But, I must admit,
the instant I read that bright purple message, something inside of me
went bump in the night. Something cold. I wandered out into the
middle of the room and began to count my breathing. In…out…one…I
needn’t have worried about passing on the vibe. Before I got to
three, she was headed for the kitchen. A couple of drawers slammed
and then I heard her banging the buttons on the phone. Then nothing.

She came back through the swinging door. “No answer. Just the
machine.”

I did my duty. I came up with a half a dozen well-reasoned
explanations why there was nothing to be concerned about.
Reluctantly, she allowed how I was probably right, and she was just
being silly, but she didn’t believe a word of it. I could tell.

Dinner was declared to be a “fake it,” every person for
himself, eat anything you can find in the house, no ordering takeout,
except by prior agreement. I put together a procciutto and provalone
sandwich on onion rye, sliced myself a kosher dill and washed it all
down with a couple of icecold Mirror Pond Amber Ales. Rebecca was
down the hall in the den, working on some notes for a speech she was
going to deliver to some pathol ogist gathering or another. I was
sitting on the couch reading Stephen E. Ambrose’s
Citizen
Soldiers
. Every half hour or so, she’d pad into the kitchen and
try Claudia’s number. No go.

By ten-thirty, middle age caught up with me and I was beginning to
yawn. She said to go ahead; she’d be right up. At two in the
morning, I awoke to find her wrapped up in a green blanket, sitting
in the rocking chair across from the bed with a cookbook in her lap.

I sat up. She’d combed her hair all the way out and was wearing
one of her old flannel nightgowns. One I hadn’t seen in years.

“Sorry if the light’s bothering you,” she said. “I’ll—”

“We’ll go in the morning,” I said.

She nodded and turned out the light.

NO BLOOD. WE’D BEEN OVER THE CABIN FROM THE SOOTYceiling to the
glass-covered floor and hadn’t found a drop. Rebecca was down on
one knee, using the screwdriver she’d found in the kitchen to pry
another slug from the logs in the living room. She held it between
her thumb and index finger and squinted at it, then placed it in her
palm and hefted it.

“They’re all from high-powered rifles,” she announced. No
way to tell exactly how many rounds had been fired into the cabin. By
conservative reckoning, at least fifty. In the back of the house, not
only were the windows completely blown out, but several of the window
casings had been torn to splinters by the high-velocity slugs. The
board for hanging keys on had taken a direct hit, but except for the
one marked SUBARU, the keys remained. Out front, the big window
overlooking the river was also gone, but with the majority of the
glass on the outside, you had to figure it had been shattered by one
of the rounds passing through the master bedroom door. Didn’t take
a forensic team to figure out that the gunfire had come from the
woods behind the house. Not much doubt about the source of the fire
that had claimed two walls and most of the ceiling in the kids’
bedroom, either. You don’t set moss-covered logs to burning with a
Bic lighter. Somebody’d used an accelerant. The heavy alligatoring
around the exterior window frame said it had been started from the
outside. Below the window a wide arc of burned grass. As if the
firebug had tripped and spilled most of the gas on the ground.
Overhead, the charred ends of rafters stuck out like ribs. On the
tangled floor, a thick red fire extinguisher. Empty.

The old smoke had clogged my nostrils and painted a gritty, acrid
taste on the back of my throat. While Rebecca was working another
slug out of the wall, I stepped out into the yard and blew my nose
down onto the grass. First one nostril, then the other. Then I hawked
a couple of times and spit. Better, but I still felt filthy, so I
walked down the launch ramp to the river. I squatted with my toes in
the shallows, scooped up a double handful of water and rubbed it over
my face. Then again. Slowly this time. Better. A mantle of fog
covered the rivers like a shroud, leaving the far banks sketchy, and
indistinct, like a half-erased pencil drawing. Somewhere in the fog,
a fish rolled. I listened intently for another, but the ripple never
came. I shook the water from my hands, then dried them on my jeans.
The jet boats bobbed quietly at moorage. The Avon inflatable was
gone.

Rebecca was standing on the concrete porch, peeling off the pair
of blue rubber gloves she’d found under the bathroom sink. “Well,”
she said.

“You want to know what I think?”

“You’re the detective.”

Normally I would have taken this as an invitation to banter. Not
today. No point in beating around the bush, either. She was far more
experienced in this kind of site investigation than I was ever going
to be. I beckoned her out onto the lawn with me and then pointed at
the ghostly line of trees a hundred fifty yards behind the house.
“The shooting came from up there in the trees,”