Native Tongue (35 page)

“Wicked bastard,” he said after reading the last line.

A secretary told him about the TV helicopters. “We’ve counted five so far,” she reported. “They’re trying to get an aerial shot of the snakes.”

“The snakes!” Chelsea laughed dismally.

To ignite his competitive spirit, the secretary said, “I can’t believe they’d fall for a dumb story like this.”

“Are you kidding?” Chelsea buried his hands in his hair. “Snakes are dynamite copy. Anything with a snake, the media eats it up.” A law of journalism of which Joe Winder, the ruthless sonofabitch, was well aware.

Chelsea sucked down the dregs of the coffee and picked up the phone. Francis X. Kingsbury answered on the seventeenth ring.

“I’ve got some extremely bad news,” Chelsea said.

“Horseshit, Charlie, if you get my drift.” It sounded as if Kingsbury’s hay fever was acting up. “Calling me at home, Christ, what’s your job description anyway—
professional pussy?
Is that what I hired you for?”

“No, sir.” The publicity man gritted his teeth and told Kingsbury what had happened. There was a long unpleasant silence, followed by the sound of a toilet being flushed.

“I’m in the can,” Kingsbury said. “That’s what you get for calling me at home.”

“Sir, did you hear what I said? About the snake story that Winder put out?”

“Yes, hell, I’m not deaf. Hold on.” Chelsea heard the toilet flush again. Grimly he motioned for his secretary to get him another cup of coffee.

On the other end, Kingsbury said, “All right, so on this snake thing, what do you think?”

“Close the park for a day.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“There’s no choice, Mr. Kingsbury. Even if we came clean and admitted the press release was fake, nobody’s going to believe it. They’ll think we’re covering up.” That was the insidious genius of Joe Winder’s strategy.

Kingsbury said: “Close the goddamn park, are you kidding? What about business?”

“Business is shot,” Chelsea replied. “Nobody but reptile freaks would show up today. We’re better off closing the Kingdom and taking our lumps.”

“Un-fucking-real, this is.”

“I forgot to mention, we’ll also need to purchase some boots. Several hundred pairs.” Chelsea’s fingers began to cramp on the telephone receiver. He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll put something out on the wires right away.”

“Everything’s under control, blah, blah, blah.”

“Right,” said Chelsea. Now he could hear the water running in Francis Kingsbury’s sink.

“I bruffing my teef,” Kingsbury gargled.

Chelsea waited for the sound of spitting. Then he said, “I’ll call a press conference for noon. We’ll get somebody, some scientist, to say the snakes are almost gone. Then we’ll reopen tomorrow.”

Kingsbury said, “Four hundred grand is what this fucking clown is costing me, you realize? A whole day’s receipts.”

“Sir, it could get worse.”

“Don’t say that, Charlie.”

In a monotone Chelsea read the phony press release to Francis Kingsbury, who said: “Christ Almighty, they get six feet long! These poison cottonheads do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how big they get.” Chelsea wanted to tell Kingsbury that it really didn’t matter if the imaginary snakes were two feet or twenty feet, the effect on tourists was the same.

Over the buzz of his electric razor, Kingsbury shouted, “What does he want—this prick Winder—what’s he after?”

“Nothing we can give him,” Chelsea said. “It’s got to stop or he’ll kill our business.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And I’ll tell you what else,” Francis Kingsbury said. “I’m very disappointed in that fucking Pedro.”

Molly McNamara was writing a letter to her daughter in Minneapolis when Danny Pogue rushed into the den. Excitedly he said, “I just saw on the news about all them snakes!” His Adam’s apple juked up and down.

“Yes,” Molly said, “it’s very odd.”

“Maybe you could get your people together. The Mothers of Wilderness. Maybe go down to Key Largo and demonstrate.”

“Against what?”

“Well, it said on the news they’re killing ’em all. The snakes, I mean. That don’t seem right—it ain’t their fault about the high water.” Danny Pogue was rigid with indignation, and Molly hated to dampen the fervor.

Gently she said, “I don’t know that they’re actually killing the snakes. The radio said something about capture teams.”

“No, unh-uh, I just saw on the TV. A man from the Amazing Kingdom said they were killing the ones they couldn’t catch. Especially
the preggy ones.” He meant “pregnant.”

“It’s that Kingsbury asshole, pardon my French.”

Molly McNamara capped her fountain pen and turned the chair toward Danny Pogue. She told him she understood how he felt. “But we’ve got to choose our battles carefully,” she said, “if we hope to get the public on our side.”

“So?”

“So there’s not much sympathy for poisonous snakes.”

Danny Pogue looked discouraged. Molly said, “I’m sorry, Danny, but it’s true. Nobody’s going to care if they use flamethrowers, as long as they get rid of the cottonmouths.”

“But it ain’t right.”

Molly patted his knee. “There’s plenty of snakes out there. Not like the mango voles, where there were only two left in the entire world.”

With those words she could have hammered an icepick into Danny Pogue’s heart. Morosely he bowed his head. As his environmental consciousness had been awakened, the vole theft had begun to weigh like a bleak ballast on his soul; he’d come to feel personally responsible for the extinction of the voles, and had inwardly promised to avenge his crime.

He said to Molly: “What’s the word you used before—
atome?”

“Atone, Danny. A-t-o-n-e. It means making amends.”

“Yeah, well, that’s me.”

Molly smiled and removed her reading glasses. “Don’t worry, we’ve all made mistakes in our lives. We’ve all committed errors of judgment.”

“Like when you shot me and Bud. Before you got to know us better.”

“No, Danny, that wasn’t a mistake. I’d do the same thing all over again, if it became necessary.”

“You would?”

“Oh, now, don’t take it the wrong way. Come here.” Molly reached out and took him by the shoulders. Firmly she pulled his greasy head to her breast. The heavy jasmine scent brought the tickle of a sneeze to Danny Pogue’s nostrils.

Molly gave him a hug and said, “Both you boys mean so much to me.” Danny Pogue might have been moved to tears, except for the familiar bluish glint of the pistol tucked in the folds of Molly’s housedress.

He said, “You want some tea?”

“That would be lovely.”

As soon as Carrie Lanier left for work, Skink curled up in the shower, turned on the cold water and went to sleep.

Joe Winder kept writing for thirty minutes, until his will dissolved and he could no longer concentrate. He dialed Miriam’s house and asked for Nina.

“It’s six-dirty inna morning,” Miriam complained.

“I know what time it is. May I speak to her, please?”

“What if chee no here?”

“Miriam, I swear to God—”

“All rye, Joe. Chew wait.”

When Nina came on the line, she sounded wide awake. “This is very rude of you,” she said crossly, “waking Miriam.”

“What about you?”

“I was writing.”

“Me too,” Joe Winder said. “You were working on your phone fantasies?”

“My stories, yes.”

“That’s the main reason for the call. I had an idea for you.”

Nina said, “I’ve got some good news, Joe. I’m getting syndicated.”

“Hey, that’s great.” Syndicated? What the hell was she talking
about. Ann Landers was
syndicated
. Ellen Goodman was syndicated. Not women who write about bondage on Olympic diving boards.

“There’s a company called Hot Talk,” Nina said. “They own, like, two hundred of these adult phone services. They’re going to buy my scripts and market them all over. Chicago, Denver, even Los Angeles.”

“That’s really something.”

“Yeah, in a few months I’ll be able to get off the phones and write full-time. It’s like a dream come true.”

She asked about Joe’s idea for a fantasy and he described it. “Not bad,” Nina admitted. “It just might work.”

“Oh, it’ll work,” Winder said, but Nina didn’t take the bait. She expressed no curiosity. “Remember,” he added, “it has to be a fishnet suit with absolutely nothing underneath.”

“Joe, please. I understand the principle.”

He was hoping she would ask how he was doing, what he’d been up to, and so on. Instead she told him she’d better go because she didn’t want to keep Miriam awake.

Winder fought for more time. “Basically, I called to see how you’re doing. I admit it.”

“Well, I’m doing fine.”

“Things might get crazy in the next week or so. I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I’ll try not to.” Her tone was disconcertingly sincere. Winder waited for a follow-up question, but none came.

He blurted: “Are you seeing anybody?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh?”

“What I mean is, there’s a man.”

“Oh, ho!” A hot stab in the sternum.

“But we’re not exactly seeing each other,” Nina said. “He calls up and we talk.”

“He calls on the 976 number? You mean he’s a customer!”

“It’s not like the others. We talk about deep things, personal things—I can’t describe it, you wouldn’t understand.”

“And you’ve never actually met him?”

“Not face-to-face, no. But you can tell a lot from the way a person talks. I think he must be very special.”

“What if he’s a hunchback? What if he’s got pubic lice?” Joe Winder was reeling. “Nina, don’t you see how sick this is? You’re falling in love with a stranger’s voice!”

“He’s very sensual, Joe. I can tell.”

“For God’s sake, the man’s calling on the come line. What does that tell you?”

“I don’t want to get into it,” Nina said. “You asked if I was interested in anyone, and I told you. I should’ve known you’d react this way.”

“Just tell me, is he paying for the telephone calls?”

“We’ve agreed to split the cost.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“And we’re meeting for dinner Tuesday up in the Gables.”

“Wonderful,” said Joe Winder. “What color trench coat did he say he’d be wearing?”

“I hate you,” Nina remarked.

They hung up on each other at precisely the same instant.

Pedro Luz slithered beneath Carrie’s mobile home. Lying on his back in the cool dirt, he listened to the shower running and laughed giddily. He placed both hands on a wooden floor beam and pushed with all his strength; he was certain that he felt the double-wide rise above him, if only a few millimeters. With a bullish snort, he tried again. To bench-press a mobile home! Pedro Luz grimaced in ecstasy.

He was proud of himself for tracing the car, even if the detective work entailed only the pushing of three lousy buttons on
a computer. He was equally proud of himself for locating the address in the dark and remaining invisible to the occupants of the trailer. At dawn he had watched the woman drive off to work, leaving him alone with that crazy doomed bastard, Joe Winder.

Pedro Luz had spent a long time fueling himself for the task. He had strung the intravenous rigs in the storage room of the Security Department at the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. There, stretched on a cot, he had dripped large quantities of horse steroids into both arms. Afterwards, Pedro Luz had guzzled nine Heinekens and studied himself naked in a full-length mirror.

The mirror examination had become a ritual to make sure that his penis and testicles were not shrinking, as Churrito had warned they would. Pedro Luz had become worried when his security-guard uniform had gotten baggy in the crotch, so every night he took a measuring tape and checked his equipment. Then he would leaf through some pornographic magazines to make sure he could still get a hard-on; on some evenings, when he was particularly anxious, he would even measure the angle of his erection.

On the night he went after Joe Winder, the angle was exactly zero degrees. Pedro Luz blamed it on the beer.

Inside the trailer, Winder finished typing another counterfeit press release, which said:

Joe Winder reread the announcement, inserted the word “completely” before “satisfied,” and fed the paper into the fax machine. He considered phoning Nina again, but decided it was no use; the woman was groping recklessly for male companionship. What else could explain her irrational attraction to a disembodied masculine voice?

Besides, Joe had Carrie now—or she had him. The dynamics of the relationship had yet to be calibrated.

Winder was in the mood for acoustic guitar, so he put on some Neil Young and fixed himself four eggs, scrambled, and two English muffins with tangerine marmalade. Glancing out the kitchen window, he noticed a tow truck parked crookedly on the shoulder of the dirt lane. He didn’t see a driver.