The Walkaway (3 page)

“Depends on what?”

“I guess it depends on the kind of reception I get while I’m here.”

She laughed like that was the funniest thing anybody’d ever said and lit a cigarette. “Anybody beats the shit out of Elishah like that’s gonna get a pretty good one around this place,” she said. Urban upper Midwest, I guessed, harsh vowels and a nasal quality to the voice overall, maybe Detroit or Flint. I wondered how she’d ended up down here.

“I like to see a man in uniform. My husband was in the army,” she said. “Don’t worry, he’s dead.” She smiled coquettishly and leaned forward, placing her hand incidentally on my thigh and giving it a little squeeze. I followed suit, placing mine at the hem of her dress. Nobody seemed to care; one of the women punched in another hillbilly song on the jukebox, over which could be heard the howling denunciations of the wounded man.

“I’m off at six,” she said. “Maybe you’d like to come over and have a little party.”

“Maybe,” I said. Jesus, she was ugly, but when I looked at the body underneath the face I knew I was up for it. “Sure.”

Her hand moved up my thigh and touched my groin, then slid unexpectedly the other way, toward my front pants pocket. Before I knew what she was doing, she was waving the brass knuckles over her head.

“I knew it!” she cackled. “I fuckin’ knew it!”

Elishah’s friends started moving in to the bar. Once again I found myself reviewing my options. Since I didn’t have a car they seemed limited: take a beating or talk my way out of one. Before I could open my mouth I felt something hard collide with the back of my head, and I turned in time to see one of the other whores holding a pistol, and then someone turned me around and slammed a fist into my belly, and then someone was holding my elbows, and then came the first of the blows to my face.

I must have passed out for a minute, because I don’t know how we got into the parking lot. The next thing I remember is a kick to the ribs as I lay on the gravel, my right eye swollen shut, and the bartender stepping out the front door.

“You might as well know, I just called the sheriff. If you’re fixing to leave, do it now.”

I heard car doors opening and slamming shut, engines turning over, gravel crunching. Somebody kicked me again, most likely Elishah, then got into a car and drove away. After a few moments of silence I became aware that someone was watching me. I opened my eye again and saw a pair of blue high-heeled shoes two or three feet away. Beulah lowered herself to a squat, balancing with one hand down on the ground. Her short dress and slip rode up well past the tops of her stockings, and I saw in the dawn’s early light that she wasn’t wearing any underwear; funny how after all my years of pimping I was still so affected by the sight.

“I’m sure sorry it got out of hand like that,” she said. “But you ought to know better than to use brass knuckles in a fair fight.”

I murmured something that must have sounded like humbled assent.

“Good. Now you see? You’re all even-steven, and as far as we’re all concerned you’re welcome back here any time. Maybe some morning you’ll come home with me after all.”

She got up and walked back into the Hitching Post, and I managed to raise my head up from the jagged gravel. The neon idiot glowed like an inbred cartoon ghost against the still-dark sky to the west; for the first time I noticed that he had eleven fingers and the same number of toes, and I laughed a little through the pain. I felt my cash supply still in my sock, though they’d all seen that I kept my money there. It hadn’t been as bad a beating as I’d expected either; maybe they figured Elishah deserved what he’d gotten. I dragged myself to a sitting position and took a deep breath. I was pleased to confirm my suspicion that no ribs had been broken, and I let the breath out slowly. The air was cool and moist, and in the distance I heard a siren getting closer.

It was the first time I’d been home in six years.

3

Sidney McCallum sat in unwittingly menacing silence across from the director of the Lake Vista Elder Care Facility, listening to his mother piss and moan about lax security procedures and lawsuits. The director, a small, nervous man named Mercer, was considerably less afraid of the old lady’s threats of legal action than of Sidney suddenly diving across his desk and choking him to death, an option the bigger man, fists clenched and eyes angrily fixed on his Adam’s apple, appeared to be giving due consideration. When Sidney began absently smacking his right fist rhythmically into the palm of his left hand, the man’s blink rate increased perceptibly, as though a fan were blowing directly into his eyes.

“On the up side, Mrs. Fahnstiel,” he said, “apart from his blood pressure your husband is in excellent health for a man of seventy-seven, and he’s not on any medications he can’t afford to miss for a few days.”

Sidney finally spoke. “He just doesn’t know what fucking year it is, is all.”

Mercer swallowed hard. “Those are, of course, the sort of patients who pose the greatest risk for elopement.”

“Elopement, shit. I can’t get into the memory-impaired ward without passing the front desk and signing in, same thing goes when I leave. How does a senile old man pull off a jailbreak like that?”

“Mr. Fahnstiel, this is one of the finest elder care facilities in the state. To compare it to a jail—”

“My name’s McCallum. Gunther’s her second husband,” he said, jerking his thumb at his mother. “Anyway, weren’t you supposed to be putting some kind of house-arrest bracelets on all the head cases?”

“These head cases, as you call them, are human beings, Mr. McCallum, and some of them have been reluctant to wear the devices,” he said with a hint of tension-induced vibrato. “We’ve found it’s better to let them get used to the idea gradually—”

“Listen,”
Dorothy Fahnstiel said in a voice solid enough to stop Mercer mid-phrase. She leaned across the table. “It costs twenty-five thousand dollars every year to keep him in this shithole, and I have a right to expect better than this.”

Sidney turned to his mother and addressed her for the first time since their arrival. “The police pension pays twenty-five big ones a year?”

“Yeah,” the old woman said. “It’s a hell of a pension plan.”

Mercer slid his index finger down to the pertinent figure on the page before him. “Actually, the pension pays about a third of it.”

“Then who’s paying the other sixteen grand?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” the old lady snapped, and she stood up. “Come on, I want to be home in case he shows up.”

Mercer escorted them to the lobby, and as they passed the security desk outside the memory-impaired ward Sidney’s mother pointed at the nameplate on the desk and shouted “Security director! That’s a hot one.”

A tall man with a square face and slicked-back black hair that smelled of Brylcreem, the security director, gave no indication that he’d heard her.

A number of elderly residents and visitors stared at them as they crossed the spacious, leafy atrium to the front door. “That’s right, folks, I’m the old lady whose husband they let just up and walk out of here. He doesn’t know who’s president of the United States, but he was sharp enough to get past these assholes.” She shoved the door open with her shoulder and Sidney followed.

“Where’s the money coming from, Mom?” They were running across the parking lot, neither of them having come prepared for rain.

She failed to respond as he opened the passenger door and helped her into the seat. He crossed over to the driver’s side slowly now, letting the light, warm rain soak his hair and enjoying the smell that the rain seemed to draw from the asphalt, aware that any answer he might eventually get would be hard-won.

He turned the key and tried again. “I’m talking to you. Where’s that money coming from?” He backed out of the cramped space and cruised slowly through the parking lot.

“I told you, the pension.”

“I’m not Gunther, Mom. I don’t forget things people said five minutes ago. Pension pays a third of it, according to the doctor. Where’s the rest of it coming from?”

“Doctor,” she snorted. “That doctor crap is strictly for the rubes. Mercer’s a Ph. goddamn D. ‘He’s not on any medications he can’t afford to miss for a while.’ Well, how about his goddamn blood pressure meds? Mercer don’t know shit from shinola about medicine.”

“Where’s it coming from, Mom?” He pulled the big car slowly onto the street.

“Just take me home,” she snapped. “Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to talk about this right now?”

“I’m always offering to help you out with anything you need. You always refuse. And now I find out you got a sixteen-thousand-dollar-a-year nursing home bill—”

“Just take me home,” she said, and she sounded so tired and scared and sad that for once he let her have the last word and drove her home in silence.

Ed Dieterle tossed his overnight bag into the hatchback of his little one-lung Japanese model, the best the rental agency could do on such short notice. He hoped no one he knew saw him at the wheel; he would have preferred to drive the LTD up from Dallas, but there wasn’t time. Gunther’s granddaughter Tricia had phoned around noon, right after she’d heard, and he’d thrown a couple of changes of clothes into his bag and headed straight for the airport.

The rain in Wichita had delayed the flight’s takeoff and arrival, and he’d be too late to interview anyone at Lake Vista today. He sent Gunther occasional letters and postcards there, and Gunther usually wrote back, too, his letters seemingly lucid but with only a vague apprehension of recent events. He knew Ed had retired, for example, but each letter expressed fresh surprise at his relocation to Dallas. Sometimes he still sent his love to Daisy.

Heading east in the feeble remnants of what must have been a real gullywasher, he listened to the news on the radio. Wichita in summertime was as lush and green as it had ever been, but it had changed physically in disorienting ways. New commercial developments had appeared up and down both sides of Kellogg, leaving the occasional familiar landmark intact but surrounded by empty space or strange new buildings and robbed of its context. He felt as though he’d been gone for decades.

Lake Vista was far to the east, practically at the city limits, in an area that had been mostly undeveloped when he’d left town. Slightly farther east and across the freeway was the Highlander 7 Motel, new to him but with a marquee offering a free continental breakfast and cable TV for only $24.95, with the promise underneath of an even better AARP rate, and he swung across the freeway and through the nearly empty parking lot into the carport next to the office.

Loretta pulled the Caddy into the detached garage, preoccupied with Gunther; she should have offered to come back and get him after his haircut. She didn’t even know if he had a place to stay, but her gut instinct was that he didn’t.

She ducked under the garage door as it lowered and cautiously crossed the slick cement to the house. The rain had all but stopped, just a few stray drops splashing her face as she opened the back door, and the sky was so much lighter now it felt earlier in the day than it had when she’d dropped Gunther off.

Inside the kitchen she grabbed the phone book from the shelf above her desk and looked up Harry’s Barber Shop. Harry answered testily after ten rings. “I’m closed. Open tomorrow at nine.”

She licked her lips. “Uh . . . Harry?” Her throat was dry and scratchy.

“That’s me. Who’s this?”

“My name’s Loretta Gandy. I dropped off a friend there a while ago, and I just wondered if he was still around.”

“You talking about Gunther?”

Her spirits rose for a moment. “Yes. Can I talk to him?”

“Nope. He left in a cab about half an hour ago.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, he didn’t, and my dinner’s waiting for me at home getting cold. Good night, miss.”

He hung up on her. At least she knew Gunther had the two hundred dollars; maybe he’d call when it ran out.

The red light was blinking on the answering machine and she pressed the play button. After the beep came the fuzzy, indistinct sound of Eric’s voice raised over the white noise of a crowded barroom, and even on a Thursday she knew what he was going to say before he was three words into it.

“It’s me, I’m working late. Gonna grab a bite at Ruby’s with Blake and the guys.”

“Fine with me,” she said aloud. The knowledge that he was probably on a date bothered her very little, and scanning the fridge for dinner she remembered she had one last load of laundry to dry. Before work that morning she’d put in a full two hours of cleaning; not enough to stay ahead of it, really, just enough that she didn’t have to come home to a messy kitchen.

She poured herself a glass of white wine, drained it, poured another, and took it downstairs to the basement. She clicked on the light in the big room and could barely stand to look around as she passed through, appalled as ever at the expense of finishing it when Tate and Michelle were both on the verge of going off to school. Now they were out of the house and Eric, as she’d predicted, never used it. The massive, grotesquely expensive pool table he’d insisted on buying sat untouched, like the wet bar he’d installed with the dubious and unappealing claim that it would keep him home nights. She resented the pissed-away money all the more for the fact that despite earning a substantial portion of it she still seemed to have no say in its disbursement.

In the tiny laundry room she pulled a handful of damp panties, a lingerie bag full of panty hose, and a couple of bras from the washing machine, threw them into the dryer, and after a long, satisfying pull from her glass of wine turned it on and went back upstairs.

She ate a turkey pot pie in the living room while she watched the last fifteen minutes of an old movie with Clark Gable and William Powell and that woman who always played his wife, whose name she couldn’t quite summon at the moment. Gable died in the chair in the end, which came as a surprise to Loretta, and as the credits rolled she picked up the phone to call her mother and tell her about running into Gunther.

Gunther’s plans on leaving the nursing home that morning hadn’t evolved far enough to include thoughts of where he’d sleep if he didn’t reach his goal before nightfall. If it hadn’t been raining, he might have slept under the stars. But it was still coming down in sheets when Harry had asked him where he lived and made him realize he was going to have to find a bed for the night. Without the two hundred extra dollars, he would almost certainly have gone looking for one of the old welfare hotels west of Union Station, having forgotten that they’d all been shut down over the course of the last decade or so, replaced by men’s shelters and the sidewalks. With the options the unexpected windfall presented he decided to treat himself to a taxi ride and a good night’s sleep in a real motel, not one of the fancy places out by the highway but one of the nicer cheap ones south of downtown. By the time he’d left Harry’s the rain was tapering off and the sky to the south and west had cleared to a bright yellow-white above the trees and beneath the thunderheads, which had stopped rumbling and whose undersides had become wispy and light gray against the dark main mass of cloud.

When the cab let him out twenty minutes later in front of the All-American Inn the rain had stopped. As he paid and stepped across the crunchy wet gravel of the motel’s parking lot he saw a very thin, greasy-haired young woman in a black and yellow halter top with STRYPER written across its front approaching him with a lewd smile. “You looking for a date, Grandpa?”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, startled at her brazenness. “You’re a hooker,” he added helpfully.

She was unfazed by his lack of discretion. “You a policeman?”

“Used to be. Not anymore.”

“In that case I sure am a hooker. Are you a customer?”

“I’m a customer of the goddamn motel is what I am. I’m just looking for a good night’s sleep.” Mercifully, his censoring mechanism kicked in just in time and he didn’t add that he’d sooner lay down with a yellow dog. She was among the most bedraggled prostitutes he’d ever seen, even for a streetwalker. Their lids caked blue with eye shadow, her eyes looked like they never closed; below them, generous amounts of flesh-toned makeup failed to conceal the dark lines flaring from the bridge of her nose toward her ears.

“A customer of this motel here?” She cracked a couple of knuckles on her left hand, then rubbed her palms together nervously.

“Just looking for a place to lay my head for the night.”

“You know, what you want in that case, then, is probably the Stars and Stripes a couple doors down. This one don’t really specialize in long-term rentals, like overnight.”

He nodded. “Thanks. If I run into anybody looking for a date I’ll be sure and send ’em your way.”

She turned her attention back to the passing cars. As he walked to the Stars and Stripes he turned to look at her once again, something nagging at his consciousness. Why had he been surprised to see a hooker here? South Broadway had been the city’s principal redlight district for twenty years or more, a major trouble spot since well before his retirement. When he’d started out as a patrolman in ’39, the streetwalkers had all been north of downtown and in the old tenderloin, and when development and do-gooders chased them away they’d settled here.

The man at the desk of the Stars and Stripes was younger than Gunther but not by much, and spoke with a mellifluous foreign accent which Gunther took to be Indian. He had on a big pair of plastic-framed eyeglasses and a bright yellow cardigan despite the heat.

“Can a fella get a room for overnight on this street anymore?”

“Certainly, sir. Just fill this out.” He handed Gunther a form, which Gunther examined with a puzzled look. “Print your name and permanent address, and the license plate for your car.”

Gunther continued to scowl at the form, baffled.

“It’s a state law, sir. You must fill out your name and so forth.” Just as the man was starting to wonder if anything was wrong with Gunther, something seemed to kick in and he began to fill in the blanks.