The Paper Grail (11 page)

The front door opened and Sylvia walked in. She might easily have been crying. Howard was suddenly furious, ready to murder someone—Stoat, the dirty pig. He forced a smile, thinking that it would be a disaster to fly off the handle now, even in Sylvia’s defense.

“What the hell’s wrong?” Uncle Roy asked, seeing the same thing in her face.

“I don’t think they’re going to renew my lease. I’m going to have to move the shop, probably back off Main Street.”

“The sons of bitches!” Uncle Roy slammed his fist on the kitchen table.

“Roy!” Aunt Edith said, glancing at Howard, pretty clearly embarrassed for him.

“They’re talking about redevelopment along Main,” Sylvia said.

“What the hell is that, ‘redevelopment’?” Uncle Roy looked disgusted. “Of all the damned things …” he said.

“That’s when they tear down whatever’s interesting and put up something shabby and new,” Howard put in. “They’re always up to that down in my neighborhood.”

“Is this certain?” Uncle Roy squinted at her. The look on his face suggested that he read an entire plot into the notion. “Who told you, the old lady?”

“No, Stoat. This morning. I saw you drive past,” she said to Howard. “I’m kind of glad you didn’t stop, though. I wasn’t in any mood to talk.”

So Stoat, somehow, had become—what? Her landlord? A landlord’s agent? Guiltily he found that he was wildly relieved. Happy even. This explained the sidewalk conversation. Stoat was a backwoods Simon Legree, twisting his blond mustache.

Uncle Roy paced up and down, dark looks crossing his face. “They’re moving,” he said.

“Oh, Roy.” Aunt Edith started putting together sandwiches on the counter.

Howard wondered what his uncle meant—who was moving? What did the word mean, exactly?

Roy stopped. Looking hard at Howard, he asked, apropos of nothing at all and in the cryptic manner of Mr. Jimmers, “Are you a man who likes to fish?”

6

U
NCLE
Roy brooded while Sylvia and Edith ate their sandwiches. Looking nervous, as if he had nothing to do with his hands, he got up finally and opened the refrigerator door, staring in at Tupperware containers full of leftovers. He hauled out an open tin can, holding it up and widening his eyes at Howard. “Peach?”

Howard shook his head. “Still full from breakfast.”

“Anyone else?” Sylvia and Edith shook their heads. “Don’t mind if I do?” No one minded. Uncle Roy poured milk into the peaches, fishing a clean fork out of the drawer. He waved for Howard to follow him and took the can out into the living room and sat back down in his chair, sipping milky peach syrup out of the open can. Howard could hear Sylvia and Aunt Edith talking between themselves, having cranked the conversation up once the men were out of the room.

“Slippery little devil,” Uncle Roy said, biting into a peach, eating it off the end of the fork. Howard waited for the subject
of the unrenewed lease to surface again, but it didn’t, and he became aware that Uncle Roy was studiously avoiding it. After a couple of minutes Sylvia left, heading back down to Mendocino. Uncle Roy assured her that nothing would happen, that he would work things through. “Don’t worry,” he said to her, but it was unconvincing.

Then Aunt Edith came in, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief and immediately climbing the stairs. Howard sat there uncomfortably. His uncle had sunk into his chair. He sat now with his head pulled down into the flesh of his neck and chin, as if he had turned into a sort of human pudding. There was more in his face than sorrow or worry. He was thinking hard about something, making plans. He started to speak, but was interrupted almost at once by the sound of footfalls on the front porch and then a heavy knock.

Uncle Roy shook his head, meaning for Howard to stay in his chair.

After a moment a woman’s voice spoke from outside, very loud, as if she were shouting through a bullhorn. At first Howard thought it was Sylvia come back, apparently in some sort of rage. “I know you’re in there!” the woman shouted, and then banged on the door again. It was an old woman’s voice, though, loud and thin like the voice of the Witch of the East.

“Ssh!” Uncle Roy put a finger to his lips. The house was silent for a moment. There was no movement from upstairs.

“Open this door!” came the voice from the porch, followed by a rapping on the window. “Your car is apparent! Don’t pretend! You’ll find yourself living under the bridge!”

Howard sat very still. He heard the sound of something scraping on the porch—the rocker being hauled aside—and then someone’s face, just a slice of it, appeared in the window beyond the one-inch gap between the curtains. “I can see the back of your head, Roy Barton!”

“That’s not me!” shouted Uncle Roy. “I have my
lawyer
in here! He’s a bulldog when he’s riled up! He’s come up from San Francisco, and he means business. With a
capital B!”

The woman laughed, high and shrill. “Send him out!” she shouted, banging on the window again. Howard saw that Aunt Edith had descended the stairs now, carrying her purse.

“Put that damned thing away!” Uncle Roy hissed. Then to Howard he said, “Never let them see the color of money. Drives them wild—like the scent of blood to a shark. They won’t rest
till they’ve torn your belly out.” He nodded toward the porch. “It’s the landlady.”

Howard nodded. “Wait here,” he said, getting up and heading for the door.

Uncle Roy grabbed his pant leg. “Just let her rant,” he said. “She’ll tire out and go away. We’ve got to hold her off until after Halloween. I’m going to make a killing on the haunted house, and then we can pay her.”

“I see,” Howard said, although actually he didn’t see anything at all. What haunted house? He found that he didn’t have any faith in the notion of his uncle’s making a killing, in haunted houses or otherwise. “Let me deal with her. I’ve handled her sort before.”

“She’s a bugbear …”

“Let me at her.”

“Go to town, then,” Uncle Roy said, letting go of Howard and sitting up a little straighter. “It’s all right,” he said to Aunt Edith, who still hesitated on the stairs. “Howard’s got a line on this woman. He’s just been telling me about it. He’ll settle her hash.”

Howard smiled and nodded at his aunt, mouthing the words “No problem” and opening the front door.

On the porch stood a tall thin woman in a red dress. She had the face of a pickle with an aquiline nose, and she glared at him from behind a pair of glasses with swept-back frames dotted with rhinestones. Immediately she tried to push him aside, to rush into the house. Howard forced her back out, weaving across in front of her and pulling the door shut as if he would happily crush her sideways if she didn’t move quickly. She folded her arms, seeming to swell up there on the ruined porch.

“If you’re a lawyer,” she said, looking him up and down, “I’m a Chinese magistrate.”

“Mr. Barton is willing to make a partial payment,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve advised him not to let the issue go to court.”

“Wise,” she said, eyeing him steadily. “A partial payment against what?”

Howard hesitated. He wasn’t sure what. Uncle Roy had said that this woman was the landlady, but what did that mean? Did this have something to do with Sylvia’s store, or with the house? It didn’t matter to him, really. “What do you recollect the total to be?”

“Recollect!
There’s a payment of four hundred-odd dollars a month against a principal of forty-two thousand at twelve
percent amortized over thirty years. The house is mine, my smarty-pants lawyer, unless he empties his pockets, which he can’t do, because they’re full of moths!”

“Calm down,” Howard said gently, laying a hand on her arm. “Try to relax.”

She whirled away, as if his hand were a snake. He smiled benignly, trying to put just the hint of puzzlement into his eyes, as if he were confused and sorry that she’d gotten so carried away. “Breathe regularly,” he advised her, using a soft, clinical psychologist’s voice—the sort of voice designed to drive sane people truly mad.

He pulled the rocker back over from where she’d shoved it aside, adjusting its position carefully, wondering what the hell to say to her. He gestured at the rocker then, as if she might be anxious to sit down, to take a load off, and he widened his eyes like a happy dentist coercing a child into the tilting chair. Uncle Roy, he could see, was watching through the gap in the curtains now. The curtains moved, parting another couple of inches. His uncle grinned out at him and wiggled his hand in a sort of coy wave, and then whirled his finger around his ear, making the pinwheel sign.

The woman took another step backward, nearly to the edge of the porch. It was clear that she wouldn’t go anywhere near the chair and wouldn’t settle down, either. Howard’s theatrical patience had worked her into a fury. Her eyebrows were arched and her forehead furrowed, as if she had eaten a slug.

Then abruptly she caught herself, her face instantly composing. It seemed to have taken an effort, though. “I sent Mr. Barton a notice that I’d no longer accept late payments. I meant what I wrote in that letter. It’s incontestable. The law is the law.”

“Surely two or three more weeks …” Howard said, calculating when Halloween was.

“In two weeks Mr. Barton will be living out of the back of his automobile,” she said, interrupting him. “I pity his poor wife, but she’s brought this upon herself, marrying the likes of him.”

The front door squeaked fully open just then, and a rubber bat as big as a pigeon dropped down into the doorway, flapping on the end of a black thread. His uncle stood hidden inside somewhere, probably manipulating a pulley. Howard could hear him stifling his laughter in the palm of his hand. The woman made a rush for the open door again, but Howard was there before her, pulling it shut, trapping the bat outdoors. It dangled in front of
the closed door, its nose thumping against a panel like a rubber knocker.

She cast Howard a faint grin and shook her head tiredly, as if the rubber bat trick had very nicely illustrated exactly what sort of man Roy Barton was. Which of course it did, to Howard’s way of thinking. “My client is willing to offer you ten cents on the dollar,” he said. “Right now. Instantly.” He pulled his checkbook out of his jacket pocket, took out a pen, and opened the book, as if ready to sign it.

“Tell Mr. Barton he can park his car behind the Texaco station at the comer, in back along with the other wrecks. He can utilize the gas station rest room that way.” She turned around and stepped off the porch, heading for the curb. The sound of chains and recorded laughter echoed out of the upstairs window, very slow and throaty this time, as if played at a too-slow speed. Howard saw the back of her neck flush pink, but she didn’t turn around.

He caught up with her on the street as she was climbing into her car. Keeping his back to the house, he talked through the open passenger window. She started the car right up, as if she meant to drive off. “Four hundred even?” he asked.

She gave him an assessing squint, her eyes traveling to his checkbook, as if a little disappointed to see it. “Four hundred forty-two. It’s already three weeks late. There’s another payment due within eight days. Precisely. Or I’ll take action.”

“Here then.” He tore off the check and handed it through the window. She hesitated for a moment, but finally she took it, as if she couldn’t stand not to.

“You’re a very small boy,” she said. “And it’s a very big and badly designed dike that you’re trying to stopper up.” She blinked rapidly, but her voice was slow and studied now, like the voice of an aged and nearly psychotic schoolmarm delivering a standard lecture on behavior for the ten thousandth time. She suddenly changed her tone, though, looking him in the eyes. For a moment it looked to Howard as if she had gone into trance, and then she gave him a sideways look and asked, “Who are you, really?” She seemed to be seeing him clearly for the first time, and for a moment he was overwhelmed with confusion, as if he had just been caught stealing something.

Howard fought for something to say. She obviously hadn’t swallowed the lawyer gag. “Just a friend from down south,” he said. “He’s in pretty tight straits right now, but he’ll pull out of it. He’s got a couple of irons in the fire.”

She gazed at him, smiling faintly, as if he had said that Uncle Roy was really a Persian prince, just about to inherit the kingdom.

“The water you’re swimming in is deeper and darker than you can imagine,” she said. “And you won’t be able to find the bottom when you tire out, which you will, very shortly. I don’t know who you are, but if you’ve come out here to challenge me, you’ve made a fatal error. I’ll see that old fraud on the street. See if J won’t. He won’t stand in my way, and neither will you.” She gave him a pitying look then, as if what she was telling him was purely for his own good. “Mark me, he’ll bleed you dry, too, if you let him. Go back home. Don’t throw good money after bad. There’s nothing for you here. You don’t understand anything.”

She pulled away from the curb just then, and Howard had to step back quick to avoid being clipped. He ditched the checkbook in his coat, and after pulling his bags out of the truck, headed back into the house, wondering at her strange speech. It hadn’t sounded as if she were merely talking about finances.