The carnival had a few safety lights burning here and there, but the overall effect was of a ghost encampment. I’d stayed in Flora Nuñez’s apartment just a few minutes longer, wondering what Officer Duross had been there for, giving the place a quick scan, but I didn’t see anything that struck me. When I knocked on the door of Pop Sonders’s motor home, he opened it a crack, saw me, and quickly waved me in.
“You see the watchers out there on the boulevard?”
I had seen several cars parked there, seen the glow of cigarettes in the dim interiors. “Who are they?”
“Citizens, near as I can tell. Keeping vigil. Somebody painted graffiti on Pepper’s trailer. Red Fogarty scrubbed it off this afternoon.”
“Maybe you should be over at the Venice.”
“Fat chance. I’m sticking here.”
I thought of Randy Nguyen in his lonely aerie.
“Have you got that schedule?” I asked, getting to why I had come.
From his desk drawer he produced a large accounting ledger. He opened it, and we sat down. “This here’s our itinerary for the year, date by date. What are you after?”
I looked for the days corresponding to those on the juror ballot card
I’d found inside the statuette at Flora Nuñez’s apartment. On two of the days the show was en route to places; on one of the others they were set up outside Hartford, and on the final date there was no listing in the ledger.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sonders asked.
“Could Pepper have slipped away from the carnival on these days and come up here?”
“To Lowell?” He frowned. “I don’t see how. He’d have to have requested it—or just walked off the job, and I don’t buy it.”
“But it’s possible?”
“I can’t say one hundred percent no, but damn close. You mind telling me what this all means?”
I told him, leaving out the part about illegally entering the woman’s apartment. “Beyond that,” I said, “I don’t know what it means. Maybe nothing.” I put the card away “Okay next question. Did you know that Pepper was busted another time?”
“Old news, Rasmussen. We’ve been there, remember? The cops know all about that.”
“I’m not talking about the broken school windows incident.”
His eyes deepened under the snowy ledge of brow.
“He did a month in the stockade at Camp Lejune for assaulting an officer—who happened to be a woman. You familiar with that?”
“Of course I am!” he blustered. But after a pause, he frowned. “No,” he said. “I wasn’t aware of that.”
At least someone was being honest with me. “The point is, it happened, and we didn’t know about it. The woman was a lieutenant who was riding him hard. They threw insubordination and verbal assault charges at him, but there were extenuating circumstances. The officer had a rep for hassles. In fact, she got a reprimand in a similar incident, so he was released with time served. I guess I can see reasons for him not to bring it up. A boyhood incident—that’s one thing, but maybe he figured two arrests would kill any chance of you hiring him.”
Pop Sonders’s face looked like a boiled potato. He puffed his lips and sank back in the chair, and for a while he kept silent. Finally he waved a hand in the direction of the boulevard. “We’re a reflection of them,” he said. “Those people out there in the cars. A reflection of what’s inside
them. Most folks just want a good time, and that’s where we’re at. We’re happy to give it. But some people, not many, but some … they see ugliness. They want to win easy, no work involved. To some, we’re the traveling cheap thrills show. There’s people still come out to a carnival expecting bearded ladies and a guy who’ll bang nails into his head, or a hermaphrodite who’ll swing both ways. Get a life. We don’t bite the heads off chickens. But we’ve got a … a mystique, and it excites people in some way You can bet your boots and mittens on it. The mirrors—lot of truth in them mirrors. It’s all there. The venality the cheap thrills … a chance to look down on somebody else. And next day, we’re thankfully gone, no reminders, and you can all forget and get back to being who you were. Until next year, when those acids start to bubble up and they need to be released again.”
“You’re saying I’m with them?”
“You tell me.”
I met his stare, and after a moment he withered. “I’m no judge. Forget it. The fact is, we’re in a leper colony. A Gypsy camp. A reminder that things could always be worse.”
“They could be worse for you, too.”
“Meaning?”
I was thinking about the cars keeping vigil out there, about the messages there between the lines in the newspaper, the politicians who saw an issue to exploit, and I wondered, How long before the vigil becomes vigilantes? “You’ve left a town early before, haven’t you?”
“Not often, but it happens. If something can’t be worked out. We blew a generator once and had to fold early. Outside Springfield a year or so ago, the promoter switched sites on us last minute, put us near a chemical plant, the smell was strong enough to peel paint. Got so bad no one was coming out, we sat there twiddling our thumbs. I was losing money the whole time.”
“Did you stick and fight city hall?”
“It was more hassle than it was worth.”
“Go now,” I said, suddenly sensing that was the wise thing to do.
“Leave before the smell gets worse here. I think it will.”
“Not this time,” he said stubbornly. “That last time it was only money. This is about one of my people.”
“And money. You’re not making any sticking here. You’re going deeper in the hole.”
“The hell with that.”
“What makes you think your staying is helping?”
“I go on my own terms, dammit! We won’t run.”
I’d been leaning back, but I sat forward now and rose. I drew back the small curtain and glanced out the window on the side of the motor home facing the boulevard. The cars were still there. I turned. “How bad is your stomach?”
His gaze darted up at me from under the unruly brows. “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
“Yeah, you do, unless that line about the tin can in the shooting gallery is left over from P. T. Barnum. If Mylanta was the remedy you wouldn’t need whatever’s in that brown bottle I’ve seen in your desk.”
He scowled and crossed his arms, drawing them in tight across his chest. “It’s just a sometimes thing. Anyways, look, my health ain’t any of your concern. I hired you to investigate, not play Florence Nightingale. Besides, I go on my own terms.”
“Since we’re avoiding medical topics, maybe you can not tell me what really happened to Moses Maxwell’s fingers.”
“What’d he tell you?”
“Arthritis.”
“He would.”
“Well?”
He puffed air into his cheeks. “This doesn’t get back to him, right?”
I nodded.
“He was a damn good piano player, Moses. I heard you say you’d listened to his records. He’d have gone on playing a lot longer. The drummer in his band had a major habit and ran afoul of a dealer. It was the guy’s monkey it should’ve been his hassle, but Moses was the headman of the group; he felt a responsibility. He paid for the musician to go away to kick. Only trouble is the bad guys don’t care about that. When they didn’t get their money, they came looking for Moses, figured to get it out of him.” Pop shook his head slowly. “They might as well have just shot him.”
“They broke his fingers?”
“Did it slow and methodical, is the way I heard it. ‘This little piggy went … snap!’” I winced. “That was it for him as a musician. Pride won’t let him tell you, so the arthritis story covers it. There’s some truth there. I don’t know what’s worse—the pain in my gut or in his fingers. He knocks back a lot of aspirin.”
“He’s loyal to you.”
Sonders exhaled slowly. “Moses and my old man had known each other in the navy, so the old man hired him on. One night someone burned a tire outside the show. Moses got wondering if it’d be a cross burning next, or maybe the whole show, so he told my dad maybe he thought it best to skedaddle. Moses left, and the show got pushed out anyhow. ‘Creating a disturbance’ or some such nickel ‘n’ dime ordinance the local authorities can always cook up. My old man sold the outfit a year or so later, and died not too long after that.”
“How did you come by it?”
“The people who’d took it on near to ran it aground. It was a sorry-ass pile of junk rusting in an Alabama field when I bought it off them. I knew I was going to have to put up my life savings to salvage it, but my wife said, if that’s what you want to do, let’s do it. First thing I did was look up whatever of my dad’s crew that were still around. I said if they wanted to work, I’d hire them. Once we got rolling again, I told ’em we’d done it together and they were part of the show for as long as they wanted to be. I guess that’s why I don’t worry too much about people’s pasts, and didn’t worry when Troy Pepper showed up with that bad hand.” He let a breath out through his nose. “So if that’s what folks mean by a freak show, here we are.”
A sound outside startled me. Somewhere, one of the dogs took up barking. I looked out the porthole window. I saw that a tent-fly line had come undone, causing the rope to blow against the side of a trailer. We walked outside and retied it. The cars were gone now, but I said, “I can still drive you over to the hotel tonight if you want.”
“No thanks.”
“I guess I don’t have to remind you about the villagers with pitchforks and torches.”
“No. But I’ve got to figure that out myself. I’m not going, and the others decided to stick, too. Look, I throw ‘we’ around—but my folks
here know they’re their own people. They got no ropes on them. That goes for you, too, you know” He paused. “I’m real glad that you’re working with us—you’re good at finding things out—but if it comes to it, and you say you have to bail, I’ll understand.”
“Will you?”
“Absolutely.”
I liked it about Sonders, I reflected as I drove home, that he thought of his group as a family, that it was always “we,” but when it was the prospect of trouble, he didn’t expect others to have to put their necks on the line and was willing to stand alone. I half considered trying to haul the city council down and have them meet him, but what would that prove? They’d just organize a subcommittee and hold hearings, and then pass the buck back to anyone foolish enough to take it, like me. And it still didn’t mean Troy Pepper wasn’t guilty.
At my house, I got ready for bed. On top of a long day and all that talk about places to sleep (never mind taking the big sleep), I didn’t need much prompting to do likewise. As I shut off the kitchen light, the window over my table exploded.
I dove among the cardboard cartons, my face to the floor, as a second pane blew out. Shatters of glass rained onto me. The shower seemed to go on a long time, though it couldn’t have been more than a couple seconds—just long enough for two more shots. I lay there among my life’s possessions, things I hadn’t really cared enough about to unpack, and about which I cared even less right now My prized possession was my life.
Heart beating fast, driving my blood in a hot river, I low-crawled to the counter. Some of the shards were stiletto sharp, and I avoided them as best I could. I stretched a hand up, felt around on the countertop, and got my revolver. I drew the .38 from the holster.
I got outside on wobbly legs. Beyond the property line, which was marked with a dilapidated picket fence, there was an alley that ran behind the houses on this and on the next block. There wasn’t much light other than what was cast from the windows of adjacent houses, a number of which, dark only moments ago, were lit now. I used the illumination to look around. Already some of the neighbors were drifting cautiously out,
dressed in robes and slippers. The old woman who lived directly across the alley from my property came to me as I was bending over, examining the ground. “What the hell are you doing, young man?” she demanded.
I told her it was my house that had been shot up.
“Well, if you’re looking for evidence,” she sniffed, “whoever did the shooting already policed up the spent ordnance.”
I gawked at her. She had on a housecoat and limp white hair. If she was less than eighty, I was pimple-faced teen. “I was a WAC,” she said, as if it explained everything. “I thought what I heard was the television at first. Murder, She Wrote is on A&E at this time.”
“And I suppose you’re Jessica Fletcher.”
“I know what I saw. There was a car—came cruising down here bold as you please. I happened to look out and saw it. A small car, dark. Just a driver inside. It stopped right there by those bushes, and the person inside opened fire on your house. Four or five shots or more. Then he got out, which is how I figure he policed up the casings.”
I was impressed. “Do you remember anything else?”
She gave me a look.
“Actually you saw and heard plenty” I backpedaled. “Thank you.”
We were hearing sirens then. A patrol car blitzed past the end of the alley, heading for my address. A moment later, a second cruiser came up the alley lights winking in my neighbor’s eyeglasses. She looked thrilled. In another minute we were standing amid enough heat to open a neighborhood precinct. As several officers began asking questions of my neighbors, I headed for the house with several others to show them the damage. “What’d you do to your ear?” one asked.
Inside I put on lights. Shattered glass lay all over the kitchen floor, like large jigsaw pieces. It was a wonder I had only the one cut. Some of the officers got busy looking around as I tended to my ear, which had a small glass cut on the lobe. I was finishing describing events for one of the cops when Ed St. Onge knocked on the open door and came in. He was in flared gray slacks, polyester short sleeves, and a bargain-bin tie, red with gold polka dots the size of beer coasters; I suppose two decades on the job was enough to make anyone lose sartorial perspective. The interviewing officer said he had what he needed and went off to join the others, closing the door behind them.
“Surprised to see you,” I told St. Onge.
“I caught the address on the dispatch. So this is chez Rasmussen? You really know how to live large.” He looked around. There wasn’t much to see. The uniforms had already done the bullet thing; now there were only the unpacked boxes and the shattered window to deal with. He nodded at the pair of bright, unframed paintings that leaned against the wall, awaiting hanging. “Still have those?”
“There’s the proof.”
He looked at me. “Sorry” I said. “I’m a little shaken up.”
He went over, small bits of glass and plaster popping under his shoes, and squatted for a closer look at the paintings. They’d been done by a painter named Gregorio Montejo, when he was a struggling art student and my neighbor in a roach shelter in the Acre. When he was evicted for being delinquent on the rent, he stacked a bunch of canvases out with the rubbish. I asked if I could have a few and he said help yourself. For twenty-five bucks I took the lot. These days you see his work in the Guggenheim, and he could afford to buy the block we’d once lived in, not that he’d want to. He was in Maui last I heard.
“Had them appraised?” St. Onge asked, rising.
I hadn’t and wouldn’t. Call me sentimental: Lauren and I had hung them in our first apartment, apprenticeship work over an apprentice husband and wife. We split the haul when she went south. Someday a distant cousin, generations down the gene line, might lay claim to them and swipe away the dust and be like the poor country parson who finds the Andrea del Sarto in the church belfry and it fetches seven figures at Christie’s and saves the parish; but to be real, the paintings were more an indicator of where the painter might go rather than where he’d gone. No matter, I liked the look of them. They had color and flair and could break up the tedium of the drabbest walls. The way the blue ink splotch on Ed’s wash-and-wear shirt did.
“I don’t object to short sleeves and a tie,” I said, “but at least get the pocket protector to go with it. You’re leaking.” He plucked the pen from his pocket and clicked it shut, but he was bulletproof where my quips about his wardrobe were concerned. “Okay, the shooting could be random, and you could’ve just heard the squeal and showed up out of brotherly concern, but what’s the other reason?” I asked.
“Someone observed a car roaming this part of town, like the driver was checking things out. The vehicle and driver description sort of match someone we’re interested in.”
“You’re talking about your gang task force?”
He nodded. “Generally that’s the Community Response Unit’s turf—intervention, a more compassionate approach … try to understand what’s got these kids running with the wolves.”
“Yeah, I saw Rebel Without a Cause.”
“A lot of the time it works. But there are always a few guys that’re just bad to the bone. Vanthan Sok, for instance. Heard of him?”
“No.”
“The shooting idea fits, but I’m not sure about a motive. And you’d more likely be under refrigeration downtown if it was Sok.”
“A good one, huh?”
“Eighteen years old and he’s got a body count. But I’m guessing whoever did this saw you here and decided to spook you. Maybe somebody wants you out of the scene,” he said, only half joking. “But it’s extreme. In Chandler, weren’t people always trying to get rid of Philip Marlowe by throwing money at him?”
“I’m not Philip Marlowe, and what peppered that wall wasn’t dimes. Thanks for coming out.”
“We’ll check the ballistics. If anything turns up, I’ll let you know. For now, you may want to sleep with a night-light. Congratulations again on the new place.” He didn’t say the rest: that it showed I was finally moving on with my life. He didn’t have to. Back when I was facing dismissal from the job, Ed St. Onge had talked about resigning in support, but I’d quickly made him see reason. The matter never came up again, neither his gesture nor my rebuttal, but it meant that things between us had a new complexity, and it was never again a simple matter of who owed whom.
Alone, I shooed out several big moths that had bumbled in to flirt with the kitchen lamp and tacked some plastic sheeting over the broken window. Vanthan Sok was the name St. Onge had mentioned. I floated it back over the sluggish pool of my brain, but nothing rose. I locked the doors. As for the night-light, I made sure it had a full load in the cylinder when I carried the .38 upstairs, put it on the nightstand, and went to bed.