Black House (45 page)

He begins to pump his camera up and down. It’s exhilarating. Like being back in college! At a Skynyrd concert! Stoned! It’s like—

There is a huge flash in front of Wendell Green’s eyes. Then the lights go out. All of them.

“ARNIE HIT HIM WITH HIS FLASHLIGHT!”
Bobby is screaming.

He grabs Dale’s blind uncle by the shoulders and whirls him in a delirious circle. A thick aroma of Aqua Velva descends toward Henry, who knows Bobby’s going to kiss him on both cheeks, French style, a second before Bobby actually does this. And when Bobby’s narration resumes, he sounds as transported as George Rathbun on those rare occasions when the local sports teams actually buck the odds and grab the gold.

“Can you believe it, the Mad Hungarian hit him with his ever-lovin’ flashlight and
.
.
.
GREEN’S DOWN! THE FUCKIN’ HUNGARIAN HAS PUT EVERYONE’S FAVORITE ASSHOLE REPORTER ON THE MAT! WAY TO GO, HRABOWSKI!”

All around them, cops are cheering at the tops of their lungs. Debbi Anderson starts chanting “We Are the Champions,” and other voices quickly lend support.

These are strange days in French Landing,
Henry thinks. He stands with his hands in his pockets, smiling, listening to the bedlam. There’s no lie in the smile; he’s happy. But he’s also uneasy in his heart. Afraid for Jack.

Afraid for all of them, really.

“That was good work, man,” Beezer tells Jack. “I mean, balls to the wall.”

Jack nods. “Thanks.”

“I’m not going to ask you again if that was the guy. You say he’s not, he’s not. But anything we can do to help you find the right one, you just call us.”

The other members of the Thunder Five rumble assent; Kaiser Bill gives Jack a friendly bop on the shoulder. It will probably leave a bruise.

“Thanks,” Jack says again.

Before he can knock on the door, it’s opened. Dale grabs him and gives him a crushing embrace. When their chests touch, Jack can feel Dale’s heart beating hard and fast.

“You saved my ass,” Dale says into his ear. “Anything I can do—”

“You can do something, all right,” Jack says, pulling him inside. “I saw another cop car behind the news trucks. Couldn’t tell for sure, but I think this one was blue.”

“Oh-oh,” Dale says.

“Oh-oh is right. I need at least twenty minutes with Potter. It might not get us anything, but it might get us a lot. Can you hold off Brown and Black for twenty minutes?”

Dale gives his friend a grim little smile. “I’ll see you get half an hour. Minimum.”

“That’s great. And the 911 tape of the Fisherman’s call, do you still have that?”

“It went with the rest of the evidence we were holding after Brown and Black took the case. A trooper picked it up this afternoon.”

“Dale,
no!
”

“Easy, big boy. I’ve got a cassette copy, safe in my desk.”

Jack pats his chest. “Don’t scare me that way.”

“Sorry,” Dale says, thinking,
Seeing you out there, I wouldn’t have guessed you were afraid of anything.

Halfway up the stairs, Jack remembers Speedy telling him he could use what had been left in the bathroom twice . . . but he has given the flowers to Tansy Freneau. Shit. Then he cups his hands over his nose, inhales, and smiles.

Maybe he still has them after all.

17

G
EORGE
P
OTTER
is sitting on the bunk in the third holding cell down a short corridor that smells of piss and disinfectant. He’s looking out the window at the parking lot, which has lately been the scene of so much excitement and which is still full of milling people. He doesn’t turn at the sound of Jack’s approaching footfalls.

As he walks, Jack passes two signs.
ONE CALL MEANS ONE CALL,
reads the first.
A.A. MEETINGS MON. AT 7 P.M., N.A. MEETINGS THURS. AT 8 P.M.,
reads the second. There’s a dusty drinking fountain and an ancient fire extinguisher, which some wit has labeled
LAUGHING GAS.

Jack reaches the bars of the cell and raps on one with his house key. Potter at last turns away from the window. Jack, still in that state of hyperawareness that he now recognizes as a kind of Territorial residue, knows the essential truth of the man at a single look. It’s in the sunken eyes and the dark hollows beneath them; it’s in the sallow cheeks and the slightly hollowed temples with their delicate nestles of veins; it’s in the too sharp prominence of the nose.

“Hello, Mr. Potter,” he says. “I want to talk to you, and we have to make it fast.”

“They wanted me,” Potter remarks.

“Yes.”

“Maybe you should have let ’em take me. Another three-four months, I’m out of the race anyway.”

In his breast pocket is the Mag-card Dale has given him, and Jack uses it to unlock the cell door. There’s a harsh buzzing as it trundles back on its short track. When Jack removes the key, the buzzing stops. Downstairs in the ready room, an amber light marked
H.C. 3
will now be glowing.

Jack comes in and sits down on the end of the bunk. He has put his key ring away, not wanting the metallic smell to corrupt the scent of lilies. “Where have you got it?”

Without asking how Jack knows, Potter raises one large gnarled hand—a carpenter’s hand—and touches his midsection. Then he lets it drop. “Started in the gut. That was five years ago. I took the pills and the shots like a good boy. La Riviere, that was. That stuff . . . man, I was throwing up ever’where. Corners and just about ever’where. Once I threw up in my own bed and didn’t even know it. Woke up the next morning with puke drying on my chest. You know anything about that, son?”

“My mother had cancer,” Jack says quietly. “When I was twelve. Then it went away.”

“She get five years?”

“More.”

“Lucky,” Potter says. “Got her in the end, though, didn’t it?”

Jack nods.

Potter nods back. They’re not quite friends yet, but it’s edging that way. It’s how Jack works, always has been.

“That shit gets in and waits,” Potter tells him. “My theory is that it
never
goes away, not really. Anyway, shots is done. Pills is done, too. Except for the ones that kill the pain. I come here for the finish.”

“Why?” This is not a thing Jack needs to know, and time is short, but it’s his technique, and he won’t abandon what works just because there are a couple of State Police jarheads downstairs waiting to take his boy. Dale will have to hold them off, that’s all.

“Seems like a nice enough little town. And I like the river. I go down ever’ day. Like to watch the sun on the water. Sometimes I think of all the jobs I did—Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois—and then sometimes I don’t think about much of anything. Sometimes I just sit there on the bank and feel at peace.”

“What was your line of work, Mr. Potter?”

“Started out as a carpenter, just like Jesus. Progressed to builder, then got too big for my britches. When that happens to a builder, he usually goes around calling himself a contractor. I made three-four million dollars, had a Cadillac, had a young woman who hauled my ashes Friday nights. Nice young woman. No trouble. Then I lost it all. Only thing I missed was the Cadillac. It had a smoother ride than the woman. Then I got my bad news and come here.”

He looks at Jack.

“You know what I think sometimes? That French Landing’s close to a better world, one where things look and smell better. Maybe where people
act
better. I don’t go around with folks—I’m not a friendly type person—but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things. I got this idea in my head that it’s not too late to be decent. You think I’m crazy?”

“No,” Jack tells him. “That’s pretty much why I came here myself. I’ll tell you how it is for me. You know how if you put a thin blanket over a window, the sun will still shine through?”

George Potter looks at him with eyes that are suddenly alight. Jack doesn’t even have to finish the thought, which is good. He has found the wavelength—he almost always does, it’s his gift—and now it’s time to get down to business.

“You
do
know,” Potter says simply.

Jack nods. “You know why you’re here?”

“They think I killed that lady’s kid.” Potter nods toward the window. “The one out there that was holdin’ up the noose. I didn’t. That’s what I know.”

“Okay, that’s a start. Listen to me, now.”

Very quickly, Jack lays out the chain of events that has brought Potter to this cell. Potter’s brow furrows as Jack speaks, and his big hands knot together.

“Railsback!” he says at last. “I shoulda known! Nosy goddamn old man, always askin’ questions, always askin’ do you want to play cards or maybe shoot some pool or, I dunno, play
Parcheesi,
for Christ’s sake! All so he can ask questions. Goddamn nosey parker . . .”

There’s more in this vein, and Jack lets him go on with it for a while. Cancer or no cancer, this old fellow has been ripped out of his ordinary routine without much mercy, and needs to vent a little. If Jack cuts him off to save time, he’ll lose it instead. It’s hard to be patient (how is Dale holding those two assholes off? Jack doesn’t even want to know), but patience is necessary. When Potter begins to widen the scope of his attack, however (Morty Fine comes in for some abuse, as does Andy Railsback’s pal Irv Throneberry), Jack steps in.

“The point is, Mr. Potter, that Railsback followed someone to your room. No, that’s the wrong way to put it. Railsback was
led
to your room.”

Potter doesn’t reply, just sits looking at his hands. But he nods. He’s old, he’s sick and getting sicker, but he’s four counties over from stupid.

“The person who led Railsback was almost certainly the same person who left the Polaroids of the dead children in your closet.”

“Yar, makes sense. And if he had pictures of the dead kiddies, he was prob’ly the one who made ’em dead.”

“Right. So I have to wonder—”

Potter waves an impatient hand. “I guess I know what you got to wonder. Who there is around these parts who’d like to see Chicago Potsie strung up by the neck. Or the balls.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t want to put a stick in your spokes, sonny, but I can’t think of nobody.”

“No?” Jack raises his eyebrows. “Never did business around here, built a house or laid out a golf course?”

Potter raises his head and gives Jack a grin. “Course I did. How else d’you think I knew how nice it is? Specially in the summer? You know the part of town they call Libertyville? Got all those ‘ye olde’ streets like Camelot and Avalon?”

Jack nods.

“I built half of those. Back in the seventies. There was a fella around then . . . some moke I knew from Chicago . . . or thought I knew. . . . Was he in the business?” This last seems to be Potter addressing Potter. In any case, he gives his head a brief shake. “Can’t remember. Doesn’t matter, anyway. How could it? Fella was gettin’ on then, must be dead now. It was a long time ago.”

But Jack, who interrogates as Jerry Lee Lewis once played the piano, thinks it
does
matter. In the usually dim section of his mind where intuition keeps its headquarters, lights are coming on. Not a lot yet, but maybe more than just a few.

“A moke,” he says, as if he has never heard the word before. “What’s that?”

Potter gives him a brief, irritated look. “A citizen who . . . well, not exactly a
citizen.
Someone who knows people who are connected. Or maybe sometimes connected people call him. Maybe they do each other favors. A moke. It’s not the world’s best thing to be.”

No,
Jack thinks,
but moking can get you a Cadillac with that nice smooth ride.

“Were you ever a moke, George?” Got to get a little more intimate now. This is not a question Jack can address to a Mr. Potter.

“Maybe,” Potter says after a grudging, considering pause. “Maybe I was. Back in Chi. In Chi, you had to scratch backs and wet beaks if you wanted to land the big contracts. I don’t know how it is there now, but in those days, a clean contractor was a poor contractor. You know?”

Jack nods.

“The biggest deal I ever made was a housing development on the South Side of Chicago. Just like in that song about bad, bad Leroy Brown.” Potter chuckles rustily. For a moment he’s not thinking about cancer, or false accusations, or almost being lynched. He’s living in the past, and it may be a little sleazy, but it’s better than the present—the bunk chained to the wall, the steel toilet, the cancer spreading through his guts.

“Man, that one was
big,
I kid you not. Lots of federal money, but the local hotshots decided where the dough went home at night. And me and this other guy, this moke, we were in a horse race—”

He breaks off, looking at Jack with wide eyes.

“Holy shit, what are you, magic?”

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m just sitting here.”

“
That
guy was the guy who showed up here. That was the moke!”

“I’m not following you, George.” But Jack thinks he is. And although he’s starting to get excited, he shows it no more than he did when the bartender told him about Kinderling’s little nose-pinching trick.

“It’s probably nothing,” Potter says. “Guy had plenty of reasons not to like yours truly, but he’s got to be dead. He’d be in his eighties, for Christ’s sake.”

“Tell me about him,” Jack says.

“He was a moke,” Potter repeats, as if this explains everything. “And he must have got in trouble in Chicago or somewhere around Chicago, because when he showed up here, I’m pretty sure he was using a different name.”

“When did you swink him on the housing-development deal, George?”

Potter smiles, and something about the size of his teeth and the way they seem to jut from the gums allows Jack to see how fast death is rushing toward this man. He feels a little shiver of gooseflesh, but he returns the smile easily enough. This is also how he works.

“If we’re gonna talk about mokin’ and swinkin’, you better call me Potsie.”

“All right, Potsie. When did you swink this guy in Chicago?”

“That much is easy,” Potter says. “It was summer when the bids went out, but the hotshots were still bellerin’ about how the hippies came to town the year before and gave the cops and the mayor a black eye. So I’d say 1969. What happened was I’d done the building commissioner a big favor, and I’d done another for this old woman who swung weight on this special Equal Opportunity Housing Commission that Mayor Daley had set up. So when the bids went out, mine got special consideration. This other guy—the moke—I have no doubt that his bid was lower. He knew his way around, and he musta had his own contacts, but that time I had the inside track.”

He smiles. The gruesome teeth appear, then disappear again.

“Moke’s bid? Somehow gets lost. Comes in too late. Bad luck. Chicago Potsie nails the job. Then, four years later, the moke shows up here, bidding on the Libertyville job. Only that time when I beat him, everything was square-john. I pulled no strings. I met him in the bar at the Nelson Hotel the night after the contract was awarded, just by accident. And he says, ‘You were that guy in Chicago.’ And I say, ‘There are lots of guys in Chicago.’ Now this guy was a moke, but he was a
scary
moke. He had a kind of smell about him. I can’t put it any better than that. Anyway, I was big and strong in those days, I could be mean, but I was pretty meek that time. Even after a drink or two, I was pretty meek.

“ ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘there are a lot of guys in Chicago, but only one who diddled me. I still got a sore ass from that, Potsie, and I got a long memory.’

“Any other time, any other
guy,
I might have asked how good his memory stayed after he got his head knocked on the floor, but with him I just took it. No more words passed between us. He walked out. I don’t think I ever saw him again, but I heard about him from time to time while I was working the Libertyville job. Mostly from my subs. Seems like the moke was building a house of his own in French Landing. For his retirement. Not that he was old enough to retire back then, but he was gettin’ up a little. Fifties, I’d say . . . and that was in ’72.”

“He was building a house here in town,” Jack muses.

“Yeah. It had a name, too, like one of those English houses. The Birches, Lake House, Beardsley Manor, you know.”

“What name?”

“Shit, I can’t even remember the
moke’s
name, how do you expect me to remember the name of the house he built? But one thing I
do
remember: none of the subs liked it. It got a reputation.”

“Bad?”

“The worst. There were accidents. One guy cut his hand clean off on a band saw, almost bled to death before they got him to the hospital. Another guy fell off a scaffolding and ended up paralyzed . . . what they call a quad. You know what that is?”

Jack nods.

“Only house I ever heard of people were calling haunted even before it was all the way built. I got the idea that he had to finish most of it himself.”

“What else did they say about this place?” Jack puts the question idly, as if he doesn’t care much one way or the other, but he cares a lot. He has never heard of a so-called haunted house in French Landing. He knows he hasn’t been here anywhere near long enough to hear all the tales and legends, but something like this . . . you’d think something like this would pop out of the deck early.

“Ah, man, I can’t remember. Just that . . .” He pauses, eyes distant. Outside the building, the crowd is finally beginning to disperse. Jack wonders how Dale is doing with Brown and Black. The time seems to be racing, and he hasn’t gotten what he needs from Potter. What he’s gotten so far is just enough to tantalize.