Palindrome (23 page)

“Then her dad got his hands on it, and some nasty shit went down.”

“That's what it looks like,” Courtney agrees.

The boy returns with another bourbon, hands it to me carefully, like I'm a hyena and he's feeding me raw red meat.

“Anything else?” he asks.

“Could you make me a black tea? With lemon?” Courtney asks.

“Uh, yeah.” The boy wipes some shaggy hair out of his eyes, then goes.

I pick up my next full shot and look Courtney squarely in the eyes as I pound it, then slam the empty glass down on the paper tablecloth.

“Why?” I ask, feeling suddenly angry at something I can't define. “Why would Silas mail her the tape? This was his prize, right?”

“And why would he wait until he was in the loony bin for two years to do it?” Courtney adds, swirling fajitas around with his fork. I watch for a second, mesmerized. There's something graceful about the way the greasy peppers and onions centrifuge around his tines.

“Something happened,” I say slowly. “It all happened at about the same time. Two years into his sentence. He tried to kill himself, withdrew into his room, and mailed the tape to Candy.” I look up at Courtney. “Something happened. What happened? Anything in the file?”

He stops spinning the fork.

“I'm only halfway through. There's a lot in there, Frank. Five years' worth of appointments. But so far, nothing stands out. I've read about the suicide attempt and the withdrawal, but nothing particular that seems to have precipitated it.”

Booze is working its magic. I'd like another one, but I'm already getting a little woozy, and I don't wanna be hung over tomorrow. Besides, it's only seven at night. Jesus. Time feels different in a shit hole like Beulah.

“Where did the tape go?” I say.

Courtney sighs. “It seems to me, unfortunately, that in all likelihood, wherever the Beulah Twelve disappeared to, the tape went with them.”

I click my tongue. “And that's something that a whole shitload of dudes smarter than us, with a significantly larger budget, couldn't figure for shit. Just left it as unsolved after eight months, right?”

“A year. They gave up after a year.”

I start chuckling, and then I'm flat out laughing. “Great. So now in order to find the tape, we gotta solve the crime of the decade. How the fuck we gonna do that?”

I'm half aware that I'm talking loudly. A few parents at adjacent tables are staring daggers at me.

“Well.” Courtney scratches his forehead. “We
do
know something they didn't. About the connection to Silas and the tape.”

I snort, which then turns into a round of hiccups. “Great.”

“And we have our three weapons, Frank: thoughtfulness, subtlety and patience.”

I roll my eyes and snap my fingers in the air. “
Garçon
!”

“Frank . . .”

The poor boy meanders back to our table, like a prisoner to the gallows.

“Another double shot please. This night is over as far as I'm concerned.”

“Uh, you sure—­” he starts, looking at Courtney for help.

I pull two of the hundreds Greta gave me out of my pocket, waggle them in his face.

“Don't worry, kid, we're gonna take care of you, okay?” My words are slurring. I don't care.

“Frank . . .” Courtney tries again.

“Shuddup,” I say to him. “I'm a grown man.” To the kid: “Make that two double shots, okay? This fucker here is gonna take one with me.”

The boy nods nearly imperceptibly and backs away cautiously. Courtney is looking at me with disgust.

“I'm not taking a shot, Frank.”

I grin. “I know.”

I
'M DEEP IN
what is, by default, the best sleep I've had in a week—­no dreams, just straight black—­when Courtney shakes me urgently. Eyes flit open. I'm still drunk.

“Frank! I found it.”

“The tape?” I jerk up.

“Oh.” Courtney frowns. “No, not that.”

“What time is it?” I ask.

“Three.”

“Jesus,” I groan, let my head sink back into the pillow. “We'll talk in the morning.”

“No, Frank.” Courtney smacks me lightly on the cheek. “You gotta see this. This is serious shit.”

The word
shit
sounds weird coming out of his mouth. I take a few seconds to collect myself, then sit up, roll my legs onto the faux Oriental rug. Rub some sleep out of my eyes.

“Talk to me.”

Courtney sits down on his own bed, across from me. Papers are scattered all over his blanket. He hasn't slept at all tonight.

“You said yourself at dinner, something must have happened two years into Silas's sentence, right? He sends the tape to Candy, then tries to kill himself, and withdraws. That can't be a coincidence, all those things just happening together, right?”

“I guess.”

“So I read all the notes that Dr. Nancy took during that period. And there was nothing I could figure. It was just like, same old, then
bam,
he tries to asphyxiate himself. As far as she could tell, it was spontaneous, I think.”

“Okay, so what did you find?” I ask.

“A copy of his visitor log was near the back of his file. At first I didn't think much of it. A few dozen women, girls like Candy that thought they loved him. But
look
.” In an instant, Courtney is at my side, jabbing at the bottom of the list. “Look who his last visitor was, Frank. Three days before he tried to kill himself. Last visitor he ever agreed to speak to.”

My blood goes cold.

Last name on the list is Greta Kanter.

I look up at Courtney. “Maybe it wasn't really her, you know.”

“It had to be her. They record these officially. Take your ID and stuff. They don't just let you sign yourself in.”

“Christ.” I rub my temples. “So what does this mean, Court?”

“It's not entirely unsurprising that she would go there herself and try to find the tape. What is, well,
infuriating,
and more than a little
disconcerting,
is that she didn't tell us that she'd ever been there.”

“Fuck,” I groan, the import of this sinking in.
What else don't we know about her?

“Plus,” Courtney adds, “why did her visit disturb him so much, so much that it prompted him to mail the tape to Cand—­”

“
Shit
!” I grab a wastebasket and hurl it against the wall. “That fucking bitch. We could have been arrested or
killed
breaking into that place!”

“Believe me, I'm as upset as you are—­”

“
Fuck
.” I punch Courtney's mattress as hard as I can. “Fucking
bitch
!”

“Okay, but the important thing is to think about how we're going to proceed now, in light of this development.”

“I'll tell you how we're gonna proceed.” I snatch my cell phone off the nightstand. “Gonna give that bitch a piece of my mind.”

“Frank, let's talk about this, please.”

I ignore him, key in Greta's cell number. Four rings and then, big surprise, it goes to her message machine.

“Greta,” I growl into the phone. “It's Frank Lamb. I am very perturbed by some information that has recently been brought to my attention. It seems that you visited Silas at the Berkley Clinic a few years ago, yet for some reason, you conveniently
neglected
to share this critical
fucking information
with us before we
broke into the goddamn place for you
! I suppose it didn't occur to you that this might be helpful? Useful to know? We could have been arrested. Five years in the can. If you don't call me back by noon, it's over. We're keeping the fifteen grand and billing you another fifteen for ten days of wasted time. Have a great fucking evening.”

I hang up and nearly throw the cell phone against the wall in frustration, but I stop myself with what little is left of my clear thinking. I feel drunk again. Breathing heavily. I can feel my face flushing.

Courtney is looking at me. “We should have talked that over. That's not a decision you make unilaterally. We're partners.”

“Well I'm the one she hired. So we're partners, but not
equal
partners, capiche?”

Courtney shakes his head sadly. “Whatever you say.”

I snort. “What. You're not gonna rub it in my face? How I would have gotten nowhere without you? How you're the brains of this operation, and I'm the fucking idiot just tagging along because I'm the one whose number she got from Orange?”

Courtney's face falls. “That's really how you feel, Frank?”

I collapse on the bed. “It's not how I feel. It's how it is. You know it, I know it. Let's just leave it.”

Courtney sits back down on his bed. “I don't feel that way at all. I think you have a lot to offer. Really. You're good at this.”

“Shut up,” I groan, feeling a little physically ill, bile rising in my throat again. Can't believe I have any left. “Just shut up. It's fucked. Everything is fucked.”

I switch off the bedside lamp. Hear Courtney shuffling papers in darkness, making some space to sleep. A little glow from the moon seeping in through a slit in the curtains. There's no way I'm gonna sleep another wink tonight. I stretch my imagination, but it's hard to conceive of tomorrow bringing anything but more bad news.

B
REAKFAST
IN THE
dining room. Place smells like roasting meat and smoke around the clock. I force some eggs down my throat. Objectively, they are some of the freshest eggs I've ever eaten. But they taste stale and drab in my cotton mouth.

Courtney gingerly peels an apple—­worried it's not organic probably—­then cuts it up into little bite-­sized pieces.

My cell phone rests on the table between us. It's a little after nine. It occurred to me sometime around dawn that I didn't specify whether I meant noon eastern time or mountain. Don't get the feeling it's gonna make much difference.

“I had to give her that ultimatum,” I tell Courtney. “We can't keep going on this if we don't get some more assurance that she's gonna pay us.”

Courtney nods silently. Sagging blue bags under his wide eyes. Guess he didn't sleep much last night either.

“We've only spent three grand,” I say. “So really, six grand each for ten days of work isn't
awful
.”

Courtney shoots me a quick look, then returns to the apple on his plate. I've never seen anyone cut an apple up with a knife and fork before.

I'm pretty sure I know what he's thinking: Even if Greta bails on us, he wants to keep looking. He wants that tape. I do, too, I guess, but I've got Sadie waiting back at home and a healthy dose of skepticism regarding our prospects of finding the Beulah Twelve. Part of me would be ecstatic to just wash my hands of all this shit. I don't like the way following this trail is making me feel. I feel like every day, I'm seeing shit that can never be unseen, no matter how much I drink. And what Courtney said yesterday about us not having a choice, about us being carried here by some kind of cosmic force, I sort of feel that too. And I don't like it.

My phone buzzes. I snatch it. Unknown number.

“It's her,” I tell Courtney, heart thumping. “Taking it outside.”

I dash out past the reception desk—­little more than a wall of keys and lockbox—­out into the frigid Colorado morning. Answer it on the porch.

“Hello?” My voice is trembling. With rage, or fear? I try to control it.

It's snowing lightly, and there's a faint, dry breeze that cuts through my jeans, but it feels refreshing.

“Where are you?” she says. Her voice makes me shiver. I'm staring at Paula Anderson's Escherian house across the street. Candy is back in her chair again. Twine wrapped around her ankle, little porcelain statues of Mary gathered around, facing her like it's story time.

“Colorado.”

“Why?”

“None of your goddamn business,” I snap.

“I received your message,” she says. “You've been dreaming about me, haven't you?”

My vision goes a little crooked as a bunch of dreams I've had of her—­and forgotten—­return to me. There's been a lot of them, and if memory serves, they've all taken place in that cold cellar, and all involved a certain indecent proposal.

“Excuse me?” I say weakly.

Long pause. I'm sweating despite the cold. Candy sitting as still as the statues around her feet. A beat-­up Volvo slowly drives down Main Street.

Greta finally breathes hard into the phone and says, “Do you have it?”

“No, but we're close,” I lie. The cold stings my eyes but seems to help me focus.

An image from a dream flashes through my head: Greta heaving on top of me, firm breasts rising and falling. The memory evokes a strange kind of terror.

“You've made a big mistake, Lamb,” she says. I clench my jaw. I realize Courtney is beside me, staring at me imploringly, like
what's she saying?

“You lied to us—­” I say.

“You broke our deal first,” she says. “You talked to Orange. I specifically requested discretion.”

A dead moment on the air. A woman walks past me down Main Street, a child bundled to her chest. Those scrambled eggs already want out. My face must look pretty bad, because Courtney looks horrified.

“How could you not tell us that you visited Silas?” I gasp. “What happened during that visit?”

A pregnant silence. Her voice finally crackles over the phone, an ice pick chipping away at my heart.

“You broke our agreement by speaking to Orange. So I'm perfectly within my rights to restructure our arrangement.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I try to force some oomph into my voice.