The Knights of the Cornerstone (12 page)

“There’s a further rumor that there’s more than one of these artifacts, but that only one of them is the genuine article. That one of yours might have been a fraud. I don’t
suppose
you
know which one is genuine and which ones are fakes. Maybe you don’t even know what it is, this artifact.”

“Sure I do,” Calvin told him. “It’s a spirit veil belonging to my aunt Iris. She used to wear it when she’d hold stances. The family is under the impression that her spirit went into it when she died.”

Postum stared at him for a moment, apparently trying to figure out whether he was serious. “A
spirit
veil,” he said at last.” That’s what they told you?”

“As far as I know, that’s what it is.”

“They had you drive out here on a tomfool errand, thinking you had this stance item in your car—drive straight into who knows what kind of trouble? And you don’t have any kind of
problem
with that? Cal, I’m afraid you’re what they call a chump.”

“Why should there be any trouble over Aunt Iris’s spirit veil?”

“Well, there
shouldn’t
be. No trouble at all, if that’s what it is. I’ll tell you what, though. You’ve got a ferry to catch, and I’ve got business to finish, so I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse, as they say.” He glanced back toward the girl who was studiously working away at her puzzles, and then spoke in a lowered voice after winking at Calvin conspiratorially. “You come up with the
right
veil, and there’s profit in it for you. I don’t mean peanuts, either. I mean money that it’ll take you a while to count. Your aunt Iris doesn’t care where she lays her head—on this side of the river or on that side. And pretty soon it’ll be the same thing anyway. I’d treat her with
great
respect. Tell you what. We’ll work out a drop-off spot on your way out of town—call it two days from now—down at the Gas’n’Go like yesterday. We play it the same way. You leave the item in the trunk, go inside, and eat a cheeseburger. No need to
look in the trunk when you come out. It’ll be there—what I’m talking about. Just get into that buggy of yours and head west. You know what I’m saying?”

“So far, so good,” Calvin said.

“Then let’s make that a date. Noon, Friday.” Postum’s voice had taken on a softer, more even tone, like a crisis counselor talking someone down from the ledge. “That’ll give you time for a visit with the folks,” he said. “Meantime, that’s just what you do,
visit with the folk
. Stay close to home. No need for you to be over here on the Arizona side or up poking around in the hills. No need to be talking to Lamar Morris, either. That kind of thing raises suspicions, and then first thing you know, your name’s on someone’s list, right up near the top. Think of it this way, Cal—play this right and three nights from now you can be sleeping in your own bed, with your head on a pillowcase full of paper money, getting a
hell
of a good night’s sleep.”

He paused as if to let this sink in, and then said, “If you want it the other way, you can be sleeping with the fishes, in that deep water below the dam. You follow my drift here? The water comes over the spillway and sets up a current like a mill wheel. A body just goes around and around till the bones are picked clean by the striped bass.”

Calvin nodded.

“In other words, we’ll be waiting for you at the Gas’n’Go, come what may.”

“I get the point,” Calvin said.

Postum nodded. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m glad we had this little chitchat.” He looked at the clock on the wall and so did Calvin. “You might have missed your ride,” Postum told him, “except usually they’re late because of that grudge the Knights have against timepieces. You hurry, you might make it yet.”

Calvin turned and walked toward the front of the store, past the clerk and out through the door. The man who had stood outside was gone now, and the coast was clear. When he got down to the dock, the ferry was just pulling in. Calvin had rarely been as grateful. Betty Jessup waved him aboard, and he sat down under the awning, facing the Nevada side for the ride back to New Cyprus.

The wind and spray off the river were cooling, and he let his mind wander, trying to take it all in. Sixteen hours ago he had driven out into the desert to a place where nothing ever changed, and immediately everything had changed. He had been offered money or—what? A
bullet
? A new job as fish food and then eternity as a rotating skeleton?

A chum
p, he thought, although he didn’t want to believe it. He
had
been set up, obviously, but Uncle Lymon had been honestly surprised to hear that Postum had approached him at the Gas’n’Go. Hosmer hadn’t outright told him to go into Bullhead City this morning, and Morris hadn’t invited him in for a chat. All of that was his own curiosity at work. If he was a chump, then he was mostly his own chump.

New Cyprus, thank God, was looming up fast on the starboard side now. He was nearly home. Aunt Nettie wasn’t in her lawn chair on the beach, and the place looked deserted. Probably she was inside, out of the heat. What was the likelihood, he wondered, his mind taking another turn, that Bob Postum would give him a second thought once he was out of town? The trick was simply to avoid the man and get out of the desert. There was no way that the long arm of Postum would reach all the way to Eagle Rock. Leaving discreetly, and soon, would solve all problems. He felt a certain relief as he picked up his bag and stepped off the ferry onto the dock.

H
e found Aunt Nettie feeling spry—a night-and-day difference from how she was apparently feeling last night or even this morning. She was mopping the kitchen floor when he got home, and she chased him out from underfoot. Uncle Lymon, she said, was under the weather, and he had gone down to the Temple for some peace and quiet. Her own pain, mostly in her stomach, had virtually gone away, she told him—for the first time in what seemed like ages. And she was taking advantage of the blessing by doing a little bit of work.

Calvin strolled down to the Temple Bar, which hadn’t changed a bit from when he had been inside it before, although seeing it now took him by pleasant surprise. The bar itself was built of black-washed knotty pine, with a swirly black and gold, bamboo-framed Formica counter that almost certainly dated back to the fifties. There were half a dozen bar stools built of bamboo and faded black
and gold Naugahyde and another half dozen tables and sets of chairs that matched the stools. All of it had been kept in good repair, and the place was faded but clean. There was a kitchen in back and a menu on the wall above the pass-through window—eggs and hash, burgers and fried fish, and spaghetti Bolognese. Two men sat at the bar drinking coffee—old Whitey and Miles Taber—but Uncle Lymon was nowhere to be seen.

“Well, if it isn’t Cal Bryson,” Taber said, getting off the stool and coming across to shake hands. “Miles Taber—maybe you remember me. It’s been a while.”

“Good to see you again,” Calvin said. “Sure, I remember.” Somehow Taber had an air of authority about him, despite his comical appearance—the high-waisted trousers with multiple pockets, the suspenders, the faded aloha shirt. “Whitey, isn’t it?” he asked the second man.

“Whitey Sternbottom,” he said. “Welcome to New Cyprus. If you’re looking for your uncle, he’s in the back lying down. He’s feeling a little bit old-fashioned.”

“I guess I won’t bother him, then.”

“When were you out here last, Cal? Six, eight years ago?” Taber asked. He paused for a long moment, and then said, “I don’t mean out here on the
island
, I mean to New Cyprus.”

“Maybe five years,” Calvin told him, wondering what he
really
meant—not by the question, but by the clarification. Had Taber recognized him through the window last night?

“Glass of beer?” Whitey asked, gesturing at the taps.

“A cup of that coffee, maybe.”

“It’s mud by now,” Taber warned, “but it was ground this morning.”

“Give the guy a break, Miles,” Whitey said. “He just got
here. You start working out on him right away with your jokes, and he’s going to turn right around and head back to L.A. before we’ve had a crack at him.”

“Your problem is that you don’t know funny when you hear it,” Taber said to him. “You’ve got the sense of humor of a catfish. Anything else?” he asked Calvin, pouring coffee into a mug. “Couple of fried eggs? Kitchen’s closed on weekdays unless something’s going on, but we can rustle up something easy. Sandwich, maybe? BLT? Bag of chips?”

“I’ll wait,” Calvin said, settling down on a bar stool and having a look around. The ornately carved, leafy table that had sat near the window last night was nowhere to be seen. He noticed that the cabinet where his uncle had stowed the broken glass decanter and the rest of the strange Communion things was apparently not locked. Next to it were some wall shelves with books and stacks of jigsaw puzzle boxes and board games. “When did my uncle show up?” he asked. “I was looking all over for him this morning.”

“Early, I guess,” Taber said. “Long before we got here. Lymon’s up with the sun, usually. What’s going on? Nettie’s all right?”

“She’s fine, actually. Uncle Lymon got a call from Iowa. I don’t know how urgent it was.”

“Iowa?” Whitey said. “Warren Hosmer?”

“That’s right. Do you know him?”

“You won’t find anyone out here in New Cyprus who doesn’t, except a few of the new folks. He was Grand Master in his day, but he gave it up years ago. Moved back to Orange City, Iowa, to be near the kids, but he’s always kept his hand in. When was that, Miles?”

“I make it early eighties, so they’d be grandkids he’s living near now. I was new here then, that’s how I remember. He was going into
recruitment
, he said. And he sent
a few good people our way, too. He’s a persuasive man when he gets started. You don’t want to argue with Warren Hosmer.”

“Not me,” Calvin said truthfully.

“Should we wake Lymon up?” Whitey asked. “What did Hosmer want?”

“Not much except to say that he was ‘going under.’ Those were his very words. He said they were turning up the heat back there in Iowa. I got the impression he thought there was some kind of general threat, but I don’t know what.”

“Well,” Taber said, “I don’t see waking Lymon up over that, but you’re free to if you want. There’s always a general threat, and if Hosmer has already made himself scarce then there’s nothing we can do to help. To tell you the truth, we’re a little worried about Lymon. He didn’t look so good this morning, although he told us not to call Doc Hoyle, and we said we wouldn’t. He was walking like he’d been hit in the gut. Whitey and I have got to get going into Bullhead to take care of barge business, but if you can hang around for a while …?”

“Sure, I can stay,” Calvin said. “I’ve got nothing going on, and Aunt Nettie wanted me out of the house. She’s cleaning the place up.”

“Is
she? She must be feeling her oats,” Whitey said. “That’s good. That should pick Lymon’s spirits right up. It’s been months since she’s been out of that chair of hers. She’s either there or in bed.”

“You might want to check in on Lymon later on,” Taber said. “Make sure he’s all right. He says it’s nothing, but then that’s just what he
would
say. Doc’s number’s on the desk in the office. Give him a call if you think you should.
There’s no harm in getting him over here while he’s still sober.”

“Sure,” Calvin said. “Anything need doing?”

“You could sort the pieces in those jigsaw puzzle boxes,” Taber said, and then laughed.

“Or not,” Whitey said.

The two men went out, and Calvin got up to have a snoop around. He went behind the bar and had a look at the bottles and the barware, and then wandered over to the shelves and looked over the books, but they were mostly Readers Digest Condensed from thirty or forty years ago, titles like
The Seagulls Woke Me
and
Up the Down Staircase
and
Sail a Crooked Ship
—books that struck him as being curiously innocent now, and attractive for that reason. Condensed or not, he could easily imagine working through some of them to while away the idle New Cyprus hours.

He stepped across to the closed-up cabinet, thinking that it looked like a seriously old piece of furniture, very plain—no carvings except the Templar cross, evidently hand-cut into each of the upper panels in the frame-and-panel doors. The wood smelled of age and lemon oil. He had no business snooping around inside the cabinet, or anyplace else for that matter, but he pulled on the iron handle anyway, glancing back first at the room where his uncle was resting. The cabinet door stuck just a bit before it scraped open. Inside lay piles of folded tunics and sashes, with table linen on a shelf below. There were more books, but not casual reading—more of the sort that his uncle had in his library at home. There was no broken glass on a silver platter.

There was a shuffling behind him, coming from the office, and he hurriedly shut the cabinet door. Uncle Lymon
appeared in the doorway of what must have been the office, looking rumpled and done in, the usual cheerfulness gone but of his face. He seemed weary and pained and ten years older than he had yesterday.

“Why don’t we call the doctor?” Calvin asked him. “Miles tells me the number’s right in there on the desk.”

“Miles will tell a man anything,” Lymon said. “I know what ails me. It’ll pass, or else it won’t. Anyway, I took some aspirin just now.”

“Aunt Nettie’s feeling pretty well. She’s cleaning up a storm.”

‘That’s good to hear.” It appeared as if he meant it, because he nodded and looked shrewdly at Calvin, then made an effort to pull himself together, standing upright and letting go of the doorjamb. “Grab us a couple of 7UPs out of the fridge, will you? It’s time we had a little chin wag.”

“Sure,” Calvin said, walking around behind the counter by the food window and opening the refrigerator. His uncle sat down at one of the tables and Calvin carried the cans over and took the seat opposite, popping open the sodas.

“Here’s to your coming out to New Cyprus,” Lymon said, raising his can.