The Midnight Road (19 page)

“One Twenty-one Dolan Street, Massapequa.”

“Thanks. I’m coming in to work tomorrow,” he said. “I have cases.”

“You just want to bounce the bad daddies on their ears. You’re coming in to talk to Mooney. You never did get it done even though I told you to. So here it is. The appointment is for 9
A.M.
Sharp. You understand sharp? Sharp. You miss it and you’re fired. You’ve walked up to the line. I let you do it. It’s been my fault too. I backed up for you. That’s done. You push anymore and you’ll break. You want to catch this guy, get well first. Don’t tell me you’re okay because you’re not. See Mooney, that’s step one. Maybe see somebody else after him, someone you like, but you need to sit down with him. And don’t beat him up, you hear me? Unless he talks that ‘personal journey’ crap. Then you have my permission to smack him in the mush.”

You could tell the trouble surrounding Flynn frightened, intrigued and kind of turned on Dale Mooney. It got under his skin and made him think of sex and murder. His eyes burned in his doughy, placid face.

This wasn’t your common neurosis and tendency toward OCD. There was blood on the ground. Mooney’s eyes gleamed and he kept wetting his lips like a nervous starlet getting ready for her close-up. He was obscenely fascinated. You could see Mooney thought it added a certain street cred to him as he sat there in his leather wingback chair, ballpoint pen in his hand, clicking it over and over against his hairy chin. Freud would have something to say about that, definitely.

Mooney had some of his own issues. He went three hundred with a shag beard and a Hitler haircut. He squinted and sniffed like a coke fiend. Somehow he had a strong presence. Folks at the CPS rallied to him. Even those who didn’t like him admitted they found him fascinating. Flynn couldn’t get it into focus.

Flynn had refused to lie down. He didn’t like the disadvantage it put him at. Mooney staring down at him, Mooney fully aware of his surroundings, and Flynn there on the couch with his eyes shut, waiting for somebody to put a letter opener in his ear. No, he’d meet the guy eye to eye, and, if he thought he might actually get anything out of this, he might even tell the truth. Some of the truth.

About some things. Probably not the talking dead dog.

“It would be much more beneficial for you if you could lie on the couch and try to relax a little,” Mooney said.

“I prefer not to.”

“To relax?”

“To lie on the couch.”

“Why, if I may ask?”

“You may ask indeed,” Flynn said. His phony smile cut into his face like a thumbnail gouged into a piece of clay. He gave it a three count before continuing. His voice had a lilt to it that it didn’t normally have. He should never be amenable, amenable and him just didn’t go together, but he was still trying. It was a weak effort, but it was still an attempt. “The reason is that I’ve been feeling quite vulnerable of late, and although I’m ‘among friends,’ as it were, lying on your couch, even though it is a nice rich leather, would make me feel even more insecure and so less forthcoming.”

“I see. I assure you, you’re quite safe here.”

“Your assurances aside, I don’t feel safe anywhere lately.”

“Yes, well, I suppose that
is
understandable.”

“Your supposition is correct,” Flynn told him. “But take it on faith that I’m trying here, Dale. I didn’t even bring my gun in.”

“You wear a gun now?”

“Yes.”

“Loaded?”

Probably the stupidest question ever. Flynn stared at Mooney, waiting for him to acknowledge his misstep, his folly, but he didn’t. The shrink just kept waiting, his eyebrows on the rise now, climbing farther up his forehead, his whole face saying, I am inquisitive, I am curious, I anticipate an answer.

Flynn said, “Yes, the gun is loaded.”

“Are you—”

“Yes, I’m licensed.”

“Have you—”

“No, I’ve never shot anybody.”

“Please, would you kindly—”

“Yes, I’ll allow you to finish a sentence.”

Mooney put down his pen and pad and hit a new pose, raising both his hands, steepling his fingers and resting his chin on them. Flynn wondered, If there’d never been a film featuring a psychiatrist in it, would anybody in real life make that move? Would they ever stick their fat chins on their fingers like that? He looked like a buttercup about to fly away in the wind.

Scenes from
Shock Corridor
started going through Flynn’s head. Reporter goes undercover into a madhouse to get the real story and winds up losing his mind.

Mooney said, “Before we begin—”

“We’ve already begun.”

“—I’d like to say, Flynn, that despite our rather antagonistic relationship in the past, which I’ve done everything I could to avoid and amend, I’m going to make an extensive effort to help you in whatever manner I can. Is that all right? I hope you’ll at least give me the benefit of the doubt that I can possibly be of some assistance to you. Especially during these awful, dangerous times you’re experiencing, which I doubt anyone could, or should, endure alone. Otherwise, we’re both just wasting our time, regardless of what Ms. Humbold would wish for us. I don’t think it’s too much to ask for,
vis-à-vis
the fact that first and foremost we are coworkers, and that we labor in the same system to the same ends. We are colleagues, comrades who seek to aid those who are losing their own personal battles, ergo we’re not so different. Your recent distress being at the eye of this…this storm of brutality, if you will, and the guilt you must feel due to these sense less murders, and even those difficult events occurring be fore this recent, ah…downturn in your life,
par example
your divorce and various familial issues, the stillbirth of your child, difficulties with your temper and your tendency toward violence, all of these are snarled together, and it shall take an enormous struggle on both our parts to untangle the knot. I hope to get at the root of some of these matters, and, I should think, help you to become a higher-functioning individual in both your personal life and in society at large.”

Flynn’s face had paled considerably, his breathing shallow now. But he said, “Sure.”

“Sure?”

“Yes, sure.”

Mooney had been disarmed. He wanted his speech to receive a greater validation.

He licked his lips and sniffed. He smoothed down his hair and fluffed his beard. “I’m glad.”

“I’m glad you’re glad.”

“Are you ready to proceed?” Mooney asked.

“I am.”

“Well, good, I’m very happy to hear that too. And you still won’t lie down.”

“Still, I won’t.”

“All right then. Let’s proceed.”

Flynn imagined scenarios that focused on evil psychiatrists hypnotizing their patients and sending them off to do their ill bidding. The
Testament of Dr. Mabuse, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,
the German expressionist films that predated noir but gave them their look. He pictured Dale Mooney as the great degenerate brain behind all his recent troubles. Dale Mooney, secret supergenius out to conquer the world
vis-à-vis
an asylum full of robotlike madmen. Flynn would out-think him and outfox him somehow, and prove his superior intellect and noble heart. Dale would wind up pinned to his chair by a letter opener, a derringer clenched in his fist. Raidin would shake Flynn’s hand and call the mayor of New York. Lana Turner or Veronica Lake would fall into Flynn’s arms at the end, and just before planting one he’d say, “I knew it from the way he talked, baby. Never trust a shrink who says
ergo
and
par example.”
The pinup girl would titter. He’d cock his hat and fix his tie and they’d walk off down the gloomy, water-slicked cardboard sidewalk on the back lot of 20
^th
Century Fox. It would be all right.

Flynn’s grin made Mooney frown at his notes. Flynn’s file was stacked on the desk atop other folders, at least twice as thick as the rest in view. Maybe Mooney did that on purpose. You could get paranoid about being paranoid. Christ knew what personal comments and reports were in it. All his write-ups and commendations. Sierra bitching about him and the cactus. Some of his cases had been failures. Some of them became failures years afterward. Grace Brooks. Children had died because he didn’t delve closely enough. He’d been late, he hadn’t been rough enough on the right people. He’d been too rough on the wrong ones.

Mooney started clicking his ballpoint pen again, stared deeply into Flynn’s eyes and said, “Tell me about your mother.”

Flynn hopped up, said, “Oh for the holy love of sweet baby Jesus Christ in a shit-strewn manger,” and walked out.

He didn’t answer the phone the rest of the afternoon. He’d given it a shot, maybe not his best shot, or maybe it was. There were other things that counted more. Let Sierra fire him. She shouldn’t be pointing any fingers. She had her own troubles, still. Reading your foster kid’s mail, destroying letters from his real parents, even if they were jailbirds, it was a felony.

He put his gun back on.

Three days later, just before they closed, Flynn got the Charger back from the garage. It looked exactly like it had the day Danny had died in it. Newly repainted, buffed and waxed. Flynn got in, fixed the seat and angled the rearview back into place. He snapped on the radio, tuned it to an oldies station and sat there listening to the music hum and the engine growl. The sun began to set and threw slivers of gold across the hood even as the shadows thickened.

He opened his eyes and Zero was in the passenger seat, turning circles, his white outfit as clean as the day they’d died. The dog told him, “Try not to get us killed again, all right?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Oh hell, we’re in serious trouble then.”

Flynn put his hand on the gearshift. He could almost feel Danny behind him, breathing on his neck. Smiling, with a cigarette hanging off his lip, looking hep cat hip and beautiful with cool, his dark eyes meeting Flynn’s in the mirror. As if to say, Listen to that engine. Let the horsepower into your heart. You’ve still got a lot to do, a ways to go, but it’s going to be all right now. Except for this fucking dog.

FOURTEEN

He tried to imagine what Emma Waltz would look like now, but he could only see her sister Patricia standing framed in the front window, and only in black and white. He wasn’t quite himself either—not Danny, but not entirely Flynn. Flynn with the smoky inner power of his brother. Not Flynn at all, but somebody wearing his face, standing outside Emma Waltz’s house. The two of them having been parted too early.

She liked the bad boys. Maybe it stemmed from Danny. The worst of the worst boys, the one who killed her sister. She could be cross-wired. Sex and death might be linked in a way she could never be freed from. Perhaps that was Flynn’s problem too. The nerve kept stinging, throbbing, burning through him. It moved up his chest, trying to get even deeper into his brain.

121 Dolan Street was a single story corner house in a run-down, tightly packed residential area. Flynn parked across the street on the diagonal, which gave him a clear view of the house. The garage door was open and a young tough in tight jeans, a T-shirt and work boots smoked a joint while he replaced the exhaust on a Harley. He had a patchy beard and long hair he had to sweep out of his eyes every few seconds. It was twenty-five degrees and the kid acted like he couldn’t feel the cold.

Flynn scanned the garage and saw a glowing heater propped on a shelf. Dumb as hell. The guy was not only smoking around gasoline and oil but also standing there with red-hot open wires behind him. One spark into a pile of rags and the whole place would go up.

A blue ’89 Capri puttered into the driveway. Flynn’s pulse started kicking faster. The Capri blasted a cloud of burning oil as it came to a rest. Sure, the guy spends all his time fixing up his motorcycle but won’t even change the oil in a car he doesn’t drive.

A woman got out and went up the walk carrying two bags of groceries. Her unruly blond hair draped across her features, and Flynn couldn’t get a good look at her face. These people, how did they stand it, always having to peer through a web of hair?

She walked into the garage and said something to the tough, who was on his knees at the back of the Harley. She said more, probably about the heater. Not only idiotic but a total waste of money with the garage door open. Burning electricity for no reason. She seemed to be repeating herself. The punk didn’t respond. He didn’t offer to carry the groceries. His features folded into a child’s petulant expression. Bottom lip out, eyes hooded, his chest beginning to heave. He looked up and gave a single retort. Probably called her a bitch. Emma walked inside without showing Flynn even the side of her face.

The punk finished his joint, drew a cigarette box from his back pocket, pulled another J from it and lit it. He was a stoner. Flynn hadn’t seen a real stoner since high school. Plenty of hard drug users and worse, but not the whitetrash mutts who stayed lit all day at the expense of their parents or others. Who sat around with no style, shivering in their dirty T-shirts.

Zero said, “Go kill him.”