Ask the Dark (13 page)

Diamonds are fake, Monkey Boy, he said. He laughed again. Don’t get any ideas.

Ain’t getting any, I said. And I tossed it back, thinking how it was so busted and scraped you could never get a nickel for it—not a damn bit like what I’d hoped it was.

I kept on picking. Didn’t find nothing ’cept what I’d already seen. But tell the truth, even though I was still interested in looking in the boxes, the feeling weren’t as strong since getting in the attic. I’d sort’f guessed ahead of time I wouldn’t see nothing I didn’t know was already there, and none of it worth anything like I’d figured it might be.

But that didn’t feel too bad. ’Cause I had the idea I was looking for something else now, something that would tell me more about Peter Hodsworth, and I didn’t care no more about the jewels.

She was a rich lady, Richie said again, still fiddling with the rifle. My daddy told me about her. She was what you call a society dame. He looked up at me. Used to come by the place they put me when I quit drinking, Wharton Evans. He grinned. You know, nut house.

He looked back down again, running a cloth over the gun barrel.

She wasn’t a patient, though, he said. Just visiting somebody.

Who? I said.

Some boy, he said. I didn’t know him. Was in a different ward than me.

What ward? I said.

He looked at me with that twinkle he gets. Well, I was in Ward One, substance abuse. But she was always going to Ward Three.

Yeah? What’s that?

He laughed short and hard.
Violent
ward, he said. Crazy motherfuckers in there, I’ll tell you. I’m surprised they never locked her up too. Miss Gurpy herself, I mean. Crazy lady. ’S why she has all this junk everywhere. Take a look at’r sometime.
Close
look. You seen what she wears under her clothes? That tinfoil? She puts it there to keep spirits away, or aliens. Talk to her, you’ll see what I mean. She best watch her ass, or she gonna be standing in a line every morning having a nurse stick pills in’r mouth. When I was there I could see her in the courtyard sometimes, walking through, and once I saw the boy she was coming to see with her. He had real long hair, that’s all I remember.

Know his name? I said.

Never asked, Richie said.

He went back to sliding pellets in the tube.

I go on picking through the box. I was hoping now to find them coats, check out the initials wrote on’m. Didn’t see’m in the boxes, so I moved the boxes aside and tipped the stacks of magazines to look behind’n see if they had fallen or was stuffed there. But they hadn’t, and now I was looking back in another box at some pictures in frames, photos ’bout the size of notebook paper. I held one up.

I said, Miss Gurpy got a sister?

I don’t know, Richie said.

She does, maybe, I said. Look here.

I showed him the photo. It had two girls in it, teenagers they was, standing together at some beach place, amusement pier or arcade, ’cause in the back there was some of them ball-toss games. Year was mid-1960s. I could see that from the cars.

See this girl? That’s her, younger, I said. I mean it’s Miss Gurpy. Looks like her.

He looked up and sort’f squinted at the picture. Yeah, he said. Never thought I’d see’r looking good as that.

Who’s this other girl? I says.

Don’t know, Richie says.

She’s in a lot of these, I said, thumbing through the photos in the box.

Well, it ain’t her sister, if that’s what you mean, Richie said. Don’t look like her at all.

He was right, ’cause Miss Gurpy was brown-haired, and this girl was blond, with a round face, where Miss Gurpy’s was sort’f thin and narrow. But they seemed real close. I looked through the photos, and they was together in most of’m, with their arms round each other, and smiling like you never seen.

I stepped back and looked again all round the room. I figured if I just saw one more thing or just thought it all through it’d come together good and I’d get it. I sure wished I could see them coats, those initials. That’d explain it.

You know what I wish that rat’s name was? Richie said. He nodded over at the trash can.

What’s that? I said.

Officer Dryker, Richie said, a hard sound in his voice.

Yeah? I kept lookin’ round the room.

Damn right, Richie said. I seen him following me. Last night and this morning, too. Watchin’ me all the time! They got me under surveillance, I bet. Probably goes on thinking I killed those boys.

He was staring at me, his face now going all pale.

Can’t worry about that fool, I said. He just got time to waste, is all.

Yeah? Well he ain’t got the right to treat me this way, Richie said, sort’f groaned. Makes me feel I don’t fit in around here. I swear to God, everybody’s watchin’ me!

He looked all crumpled up on the stool now, his head down, and I seen sweat coming out on him.

I stepped toward him. For a minute I wondered whether to tell him what I was really lookin’ for, and what I’d seen going on all summer with the dark house and the boxes. I felt bad for him. But Richie, he ain’t too steady, and there’s no saying what he might do if I told him ’bout some of the things I’d seen.

It’s all right, Richie, I said. Dryker’s just a fuckin’ idiot. Nobody thinks bad of you.

He lifted his face, his eyes all hollow. It worried me, seein’ how bad hurt he was. And I’m thinkin’ it’s troubles like this gonna put him right back in that Wharton Evans if he can’t live’m down.

C’mon, I said, tryin’ to sound cheery. You the king of this neighborhood, everybody knows that!

He was lookin’ at me, tryin’ to grin and fightin’ to settle himself. Then he said slowly, Yeah, I guess you’re right, Monkey Boy. Well, let’s get back at it.

He picked up the light, one of them cage lights on a long cord, and handed it out to me.

I didn’t take it.

Hold up, I said, looking past him.

Few feet behind him I saw something poking out from behind a couple stacked boxes. Caught my eye and shook me.

Leave that light on a second, will you?

He did, and I went crost the room.

I came to what I saw. A red paper bag. Concrete. I reached down and pulled it out with both hands. The top of the bag was ripped open but it still was heavy, more’n half-full.

I stood straight and looked at Richie.

Richie, you worked for Miss Gurpy before, ain’t that right?

Uh-huh.

What’d you do for’r?

She had some basement troubles. Leaks, mainly. Flood damage. Wanted it all shored up.

You use this concrete?

He looked at the bag.

Maybe, he said.

It’s the sort you use, ain’t it?

Yeah, he said. Quick-dry. I just troweled some in. Put it all over. But I didn’t leave that bag up here. She must’ve brought it. I worked at’r other house.

You mean that house next to Simon Hooper?

That’s the one, he said. Place was a mess. Rain got in. I fixed the floors, walls, everything. Then one night somebody came and stole all my stuff out the backyard, even my wheelbarrow. All my tools and supplies. I told her about it and she paid for everything she felt so bad, and then she paid me off. Man, I did everything in there but caulk and block out the dryer vent! I guess she liked my work, though, ’cause here I am back at it.

It was good to see that talking got his mind off Dryker. But all he said made me curious, and I squinted at him. He got up but I said, Sit a minute, Richie. I wanna talk.

He sat back down and grinned. Why you so interested? I did a little work, is all. Ain’t nothing mysterious. Stop acting like it is.

I been in that house, Richie, I said. Snuck in two months ago. No one lives there.

Then nobody moved in, he said. But she owns the place.

You never saw a man come around, man ’bout your age?

He shook his head, looking funny at me, like he thought what I asked was a trick, maybe.

You
ever see a man? he said.

I didn’t answer that. I said, When you do this job?

Two years back, he said. Then his face sort’f scrunched up. Funny thing is, I never brought nothing here, he said. That concrete she must’ve took from the other house. But she couldn’t, ’cause it all was stolen. I suppose she bought that bag herself.

I can’t see Miss Gurpy coming out the hardware store luggin’ a ninety-pound bag of concrete, I said.

No, you’re right, he said, nodding at me. Well,
somebody
bought it. C’mon. Hit the lights. We got rats to hunt.

Okay, I said.

But I didn’t yet. I was too busy thinking who in hell was that man in that house, and why he keeps it so secret he’s living there.

Then I froze.

I don’t know if it ever happened to you, but I seen something then and it was so hard it was like getting hit in the head with a hammer, but instead of knocking me out it sort’f woke me up with a jolt, so I was more awake than I had ever been before in my life.

The room was spread around me, full of boxes and papers. But that all disappeared, and it was just me looking at that bag of concrete. It felt crazy and I didn’t believe it. But what I did was nothing, and I didn’t say a word.

Richie, he’d got up and was poking in that big duffle he got, looking for rounds he could put in a spare loading tube, so he didn’t see me or notice anything about me. Because I was staring, and my face must’f looked crazy. But all I did was reach back and take out my wallet.

Now, I ain’t really got a wallet. What I got is this sort of leather pouch with a zipper on it that I put money in when I got it, or anything I find that interests me that might be useful to me later on and’ll fit inside. And what I did was unzip it and take something out. A little slip of paper. A piece of paper I’d found one morning and put in there ’cause it never felt right to just throw it away.

Then I looked back at the concrete, up around the top of the bag, where it was ripped open. On my knees I went over to it, scuffing crost the floor, and where a piece of paper was torn off the bag, I fit the piece I took out my wallet, and it fitted perfect.

I shuffled back to my chair and sat, staring at the bag. My heart was beating fast, I heard the thupping in my ears. And my mouth was dry, dry as paper.

You want to get back to it, Monkey Boy? Richie said, and he sat behind me, rifle crost his knees. C’mon, hit that light.

Sure, I said. Sure.

So I did and we sat in the dark, listening for scratches.

But I was thinking more about the bag of concrete. It was a heavy paper bag, red paper, like what they put charcoal in for barbecues. Called Masters. Masters Concrete, that’s its name. But this bag, it just said
ASTERS
. That’s all. No
M
. And the paper in my hand, paper I found on Tommy Evans’s dead naked ass? It was a piece of red paper torn from a bag of concrete printed with a big letter
M
.

Chapter Twenty

So I knew.

I knew who it was.

But I didn’t know.

I knew Miss Gurpy had visited a boy in the hospital when Harrigan was there nine/ten years back, a boy in the violent ward. I knew about Peter Hodsworth, who drove that old car with Florida plates and sold drugs to boys and lived in the dark house and came and went from Miss Gurpy’s out the back door, moving boxes twixt the houses, and parking his car on the hill to make sure nobody knew he was there. And I knew there was a man somewhere taking boys and killing them, who when he killed Tommy Evans didn’t see a piece of paper stuck on’m that come from a bag of concrete that he went and hid in Miss Gurpy’s attic.

Question was, is they all the same man?

I damn well wanted to say yes.

But I couldn’t.

Because everybody knew Miss Gurpy had no son, and she didn’t have no sisters, and she didn’t have no visitors. Just lived alone by herself. And it could be that Hodsworth was just a man, a bad man sure who sells drugs to kids, but don’t do no other wrong. And the man killing boys could be miles away in Florida.

I was so confused, I couldn’t think. I had all the answers, I knew I did. Had’m right in my head, and one’f’m was the right one. I just didn’t know which.

Me’n Richie, we shot rats a little while longer—well, shot at’m, ’cause we never hit none, and one, it got so scared the damn thing charged us and flipped up Richie’s chest all the way like a fur ball and you should’f seen’m throw that rifle down, which busted it, and run around that room so fast, slapping at himself to get it off.

After that I left ’cause there weren’t nothing else to do. And I just walked home, said no when Richie said he’d drive me, anyway he wanted to clean up.

I walked all the way. It was a little after curfew and almost dark already ’cause’f storm clouds over the houses, and I went through yards and hedges so’s not to get seen. Near my house I came up the alley through the backyard. I come round the house to the front stairs and I’m feeling the muggy heat in the air and my clothes is all sticky and I know a blow gonna come through and rain, ’cause the air’s feelin’ crackly on my skin. I come out on the front sidewalk there where all the bushes is, next to the community center, and I stop dead.

The car’s there.

I can see through the bushes to the street, and it’s parked about a hundred foot down. Skugger ain’t in it, just the man. Him I see through the window and he just a sort’f clump there, all shadow.

I turn around slow and start up the sidewalk, away from my house. Don’t want him to think I seen’m. But I don’t even have to look back to know the car done started and’s coming on after me.

I walk faster.
Skugger told’m,
I think. Then I start to run.
I messed up his car one night,
I’m thinking,
and next night he sees me at it again and chases my ass. And he’d seen me with Sam that day out front his house. So he goes asking Skugger who I am, describes me, and Skugger tells my name, and where I live.

I look over. He’s driving alongside me. Looking at me.

Just then I dart sideways through a big hedge, crashing right through and tumbling out the other side. Where I’m at now is the yard of an old couple I delivered stuff from Shatze’s to, the Pheezers, and they got a old house all rundown. Round the porch is scraggly brush and half-dead bushes. I dive in. These Pheezers, they had a dog once, dog lived under the porch. Behind the bushes where you can’t see is a hole busted out of the porch grating there, what you call the latticework. I crawl in under the porch. I lie still, feeling under me cold dirt. I’m smelling dirt. Listening.