Wild Horses (10 page)

“No, oh no, Brad, no! This is wonderful! The Fool is, like,
the
most profound card you could get!”

He wondered how profound that tree-hugging moron would look at the bottom of the cliff. Skull fractures were very profound.

“It represents the beginning of a journey,” she said. “You’re on your quest for wisdom and perfection.”

Boyd was greatly cheered. “How about riches?”

She considered this. “Gee, I don’t see why not.”

“Bitchin’ good news!” He took the deck from her and began to shuffle. “Here, I’ll draw one for the two of us, you
and
me. That I called you, that you’re here? Maybe this was no accident. Maybe there’s a … I don’t know … a bigger picture to it, maybe.”

Krystal was holding her breath, lower lip nipped between her teeth. He turned the card to reveal a nude man and woman, kneeling beside a red rose as they gazed into each other’s doelike eyes.

“The Lovers,” Krystal breathed. “Wow. Oh, wow.”

“That’s so amazingly cool,” he said, smiling to welcome her to his life, that clear-eyed devil’s twinkle never brighter.

Good thing these cards were no bigger than they were. He’d had to keep this one palmed for nearly three minutes.

“And my name’s Boyd, by the way. I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but I guess they must’ve misunderstood me on the phone.”

CHAPTER 5

As Gunther tapped the puny knocker against the door, Madeline took his arm. For appearance’s sake only — something about the pose felt ridiculous, as though the two of them belonged atop a wedding cake. She had always thought of Gunther Manzetti as the type who’d prefer to skip the nuptials, skip the honeymoon, and jump straight to the bitter recriminations and the adultery.

MANAGER, read an adhesive placard on the door; below, in piecemeal letters, DOUG POWELL. Gunther knocked again.

When it opened she found herself face-to-face with a dumpy raccoon of a young man wearing a grubby T-shirt and clutching the door for support. Both bruised eyes were swollen half shut behind crooked wire-rim glasses. His nose looked like a cherry tomato.

“Can I help you?” he asked, but his heart wasn’t in it. With a face that sad, she wouldn’t be running to answer any doors either.

“We’re here to look at apartments,” Madeline said.

“It’s after nine. Not exactly office hours, you know.”

“Sorry. Our schedules wouldn’t let us get by any earlier.”

Doug nodded. “What, you work funny hours or something?”

“Not unless days are funny,” said Gunther. About time he spoke up. Standing there like a stone-eyed, blond-headed, olive-skinned golem, saying not a word, he tended to set off alarms in most people.

“You’re in luck,” Doug Powell told them. “We had one open up this afternoon, kind of sudden-like, if you don’t mind seeing it before it’s cleaned.”

They said they didn’t. Passkeys dangling from his belt, Doug led them down the hall and upstairs, dutifully taking them through the charade of inspecting apartment 2-C. Madeline tried to fake interest in this mundane tour.

She had seen the place already, not ten minutes ago — seen the vacant closets, gone through each emptied drawer. Gunther’s idea; maybe they should pay a visit to Boyd’s former squeeze and see if she still maintained that he’d left her behind and clueless. Gunther had knocked, and when he’d tired of waiting, popped the cheap doorknob with a credit card. There was a deadbolt and a chain inside, neither in use. Fifteen seconds in, the conclusion was inescapable: Allison doesn’t live here anymore.

“So, the previous tenants, you say they cleared out in a big hurry?” Gunther asked.

“Yeah. Considering the town, though, that’s not so strange.”

“Where’d they rush off to, I wonder?”

“Oh, right, like most of the people in this building tell me anything about themselves. I don’t know. They packed up and moved on like gypsies, that’s all I know.” He began to shuffle to the door. “So what do you think? Are you interested?”

“Are we interested, he asks,” Gunther said to her. “Are we interested?” Back to Doug: “Can’t you tell by our beatific faces that we realize we’re home?”

Beatific? Gunther’s word of the day, probably, after rooting around in his Webster’s. She suspected most of these words would end up with the life expectancy of mayflies.

Doug looked uncertain. “Well, you
are
a little hard to read.”

“How’s this for clarity, then: Let’s go sign that lease.”

Doug Powell locked up again, and halfway back down the stairs Gunther surrendered to curiosity.

“You don’t mind me asking, how’d you get those Lone Ranger-looking bruises around your eyes?”

“Oh. You know how it goes. I accidentally stepped into a kick in my, um, my taekwondo class this evening.”

“Hear that, honey?” Gunther beamed at her from behind this lumpen troll’s back. “We’ll be safe here, got Bruce Lee to protect us from the ne’er-do-wells.” When he clapped a firm hand across Doug’s back, Doug flinched. “I don’t guess there’s many late rent checks in this building, is there?”

Watching Gunther, absorbing the way he worked … there was something about it that made him new to her all over again. She knew what he did but had never seen him do it, had only listened as he relayed the occasional story of a memorable collection, or reminisced about the dead, the dying, the broken. How they got that way.

Watching him become best buddies with Doug Powell plunged her back in time. Nine or ten years old, childhood in New Mexico spent in tract housing, days spent idolizing the boy next door. His name now forgotten but she still remembered
him
, sixteen years old and something terrifyingly appealing about his stride, his sneer, his cigarette. She would watch him while crouched below windowsills or from behind her father’s Chrysler. Watch with delirium, desperate to be worthy of being noticed by him. He would charm neighborhood dogs and cats over to him, rub their coats until they squirmed against his hand. Then he would take his cigarette and blow on the tip until it became a glowing orange coal, and crush it into the animal’s body while holding fast to its collar. He would slap the pet’s kicking flank then, like a cowboy slapping a newly branded calf, and release it, send it squalling back down the street.

Strays received worse.

She recalled talking to him only once, asking why he did it; recalled his arrogant shrug and the smoke ring that wafted from his lips as he told her that you could get away with anything you wanted in the world, as long as you remembered that dumb animals would never tell on you.

Doug let them into his apartment downstairs, apologizing for the mess. His slovenliness was twofold: If it wasn’t comic books, it was food. Once the door was shut, Gunther cracked his knuckles and called out to Doug’s back while he ducked into his office.

“You do the repairs around the building?”

“Small stuff, whatever’s not too specialized. Heavy-duty plumbing and like that, forget it, I reach for the phone.”

“So if I were to ask you for some duct tape, say, you could let me borrow it?”

Doug reappeared in the office doorway, copies of a blank lease in hand. “I suppose. Why … do you need duct tape?”

“My car seat’s got this split in it. Gets much bigger, it’ll be like I’m trying to crawl back into the womb.”

Doug went trotting over to a closet to fetch, and she stepped close alongside Gunther, tiptoeing up to put her lips at his ear. If he really wanted to impress her, she whispered, someday he was going to have to talk someone into digging his own grave. When Doug came back with the roll of silvery tape and handed it over, Gunther calmly drew the Glock from beneath his jacket and centered the muzzle on Doug’s forehead.

“Okay, Mr. Taekwondo,” he said, “let’s see how fast and furious you can whip those arms behind your back.”

The bruised face looked more crushed than frightened. Gunther had her do the honors, binding Doug’s pretzeled forearms, and as she wound the tape around, she could feel the animal trembling in his soft, rubbery skin. Gunther gave him a shove toward his bedroom, sent Doug sprawling across the unmade bed, and sat beside him, like a parent ready to tell a bedtime story.

“My guess is,” Gunther said, “you’re already getting the idea we’re not here to talk real estate. And that once we get started, if we don’t believe what we hear, you got problems. So you just chew that over for a minute, then we’ll get down to business.”

“Would you just get down to business
now
?” Madeline said. “Look at him, he wants to talk already. Why does everything have to be such a big production number for you?”

“So who made you the truculence expert all of a sudden? Do I come to the casino and tell you how to do your job? You want to speed things along, go look under the sinks and in that utility closet and bring me some drain cleaner.”

She heard Doug moan and went stomping out of the bedroom, flinging doors open, looking at labels, banging doors closed. Ordering her around like this — they would definitely have words later on. She found what he wanted, and Gunther set the can on the night table by the bed, where Doug could see it.

“Crystal Drano. Let me compliment your taste in corrosives,” Gunther said. “I knew this guy back east, in Philadelphia, liked to use Drano whenever an important conversation got clogged up. A little Drano and that flow of information’d open right up again. I always thought he should do a TV commercial, because this guy, he believed in the product. The people we worked for, they used to call him the Sandman, so I don’t guess I need to explain where exactly he’d put the Drano, do I?”

Doug whimpered, Doug squirmed, and the questions and answers began. Boyd Dobbins? Gone, gone a couple of days by now — but still around town. Here this afternoon, you just missed him by a few hours. See? See what he did to my face?

“What? What’s this you’re telling me? No taekwondo?”

“What do you think, just look at me,” Doug bawled. “He sucker-punched me, Boyd did.”

“Now that’s an interesting turn of events.” Gunther stroked his chin. “Boyd schemes enough over his own business to pull a Houdini on everybody. But he comes back here today to blacken your eye sockets. Now why would he do a thing like that?”

Doug began to hyperventilate, tears squeezing from slitted eyes as he said he didn’t know,
didn’t know
, Boyd wasn’t making any sense, so Gunther picked up the can of Drano and gaily danced it before the bruised face.

“Mister Sandman,” Gunther sang, “bring me a dream…”

Doug wailed that Boyd had been looking for his girlfriend, but she’d moved out already and Boyd had come here asking where she’d gone. Madeline knew this was no case of Boyd’s being crazy in love. Allison had to have had something he wanted, needed. Doug swore he didn’t know what any of it was about. Swore on Bibles and comic books that he didn’t know where she’d gone.

Gunther sighed. “Maddy? Would it be too terrible a hardship on you if I asked you to go get me a spoon?”

Madeline brought him the one clean teaspoon she found in the silverware drawer, then saw him open the Drano, thrust the spoon inside, give the crystals a lazy stir. Wanting to watch, and not, then she took the initiative to move into the makeshift office. She knelt before the two-drawer file cabinet, the voices from the bedroom filtering softly in as she tried to comprehend the logic behind Doug Powell’s filing system.

“So you’ve actually read all these comic books?” Gunther was asking. Still stirring that Drano.

Doug’s hoarse voice: “Uh … uh-huh…”

“How many you got stashed around here, anyway?”

“About … f-fourteen thousand.”

“Fourteen thousand! That’s some serious hobby you got, then. There’s actually some money in funny books, isn’t there?”

“Well, there can be. For big collectors, speculators, like that.” Doug’s voice strengthened a little. “My real valuable ones, they’re in that heavier box in the corner over there. I’ve got an original
Detective Comics
number twenty-seven from 1939 in there. Know what that was?”

“I give up.”

“The very first ever appearance of Batman.”

“Get the fuck out of here! Really?”

And she’d heard enough, slammed the first file drawer closed. “Gunther? Gunther!” she called out. “Does your brain need a leash to keep it from wandering? Forget the comic books, would you?”

“Excuse the hell out of me for trying to expand my horizons a little!” he shouted back.

Madeline yanked open the second drawer, cursing beneath her breath as she ran a fingernail along the file tabs.

“You know what the weirdest thing I ever heard about a comic book was?” Gunther said. “It was back in the seventies, had to be, and that rock band Kiss — those guys with all the freaky makeup? — they starred in this comic book, and before it went to press, they each poured a pint of their own blood into the red ink vats.”

“Oh sure, I’ve got one of those. But there’s one that tops that,” said Doug. “Awhile back, this one publisher started doing comics about porno stars, and so this one girl, this actress from England, when she comes, it’s really wet, and a lot of it, like a guy almost? Well, she poured a vial of that into the ink.”