Callisto (19 page)

“That's nice,” said the spiky-haired salesman, but I can tell he doesn't really think so. Most likely he thinks it isn't cool to have a sweet sound like that. I bet his phone tells him, “Pick it up or I'll rip your head off, moron!”

Soon as I got outside I rung up Chet. It was hard work touching those itty-bitty buttons one at a time with these big sausage fingers that I have got, but I got the hang of it and the numbers popped up on the screen while I'm pressing the buttons so I can be sure I'm doing it right. Chet answered straight off.

“Hey, Chet, this is Odell.”

“Odell, that was fast.”

“Well, I wanted to grab one of those phones while they're there for the grabbing. I got a green one, silver-green I guess you'd call it. These things are smaller than I thought.”

“You can carry a compact model in a shirt pocket and not even feel the weight,” he says. “I'm entering your number in my directory right now.”

“I didn't give it to you yet.”

“It's on my screen like all incoming calls,” he says. “Digital technology, Odell, it's a wonderful thing.”

“It sure is.”

“You enjoy your new phone, Odell, and call me anytime you need to talk about anything at all.”

“Will do, Chet, and thank you for the phone, I really like it. And thank Preacher Bob for me too, would you?”

“I'll do that. Bye now.”

I was halfway through the job at 9846 Siefert Street, feeling very up-to-date and modern with my new phone right there in my shirt pocket, when I heard this sweet sound coming from my chest area. My new phone was ringing! It must have been Chet calling me back, he's the only one as knows my number so far. I took it out and pressed the little bar that lets you talk, but couldn't hear Chet's voice because of the racket from the mower, so I cut that off and now I can hear him.

“Odell?” he's saying.

“Yeah?”

“Odell Deefus?”

It isn't Chet's voice, it's someone else, some other guy.

“Uhuh.”

“Odell, let me introduce myself. Agent Jim Ricker, Homeland Security.”

“Uhuh.” My heart's all of a sudden going
budumbudumbudum
because it's Homeland Security calling! But I didn't give them my number, so how come?

“How's your day going?” he wants to know.

“Okay, I guess.”

“Been going through all the facts as we know them thus far on the Lowry case,” he says. “Anything to add to what you told Sharon Ziegler last night, any new insights into the mind of this bozo?”

“Uh, no.”

“Because we need to know before anyone else knows, Odell. From this moment on you talk to me and me only, not
to TV news reporters and not to any local Chief of Police who you've already upset about the Senator Ketchum angle. You don't share information with anyone but me, got it?”

“Okay. I better get your number, I guess . . .”

“It's on your screen. Press hash to get the index and then enter it into your directory. That'll be the most important number there, Odell. If Dean Lowry gets in touch with you I want you to tell me about it immediately, day or night it makes no difference. Got that, Odell?”

“Uhuh.”

“You haven't entered the number in your directory yet.”

“I'm trying...I've got these big fingers . . .” It was real hard pressing the buttons and still holding the phone close enough to my face so I can still hear him. “Hash ...okay, there's the directory.”

“Now scroll down to Enter.”

“Okay . . .”

“Go ahead and press it, Odell, damn thing won't bite.”

“There ...I've done it.”

“Now type in J-I-M.”

“These buttons, they're so small ... Okay, I did it.”

“Congratulations,” he says, but it's sarcastic the way he says it.

“How come you've got my number?” I asked him. “I only just got the phone.”

“A little bird on a wire somewhere must've told me,” he says. “You should change your ring tone, Odell, my nine-year-old daughter's got the same taste as you. Her it fits.” How the heck does he know about my ring tone? “Now remember,” he says, “you do not confide in anyone but me. Are we clear on that?”

“Uhuh . . .”

He rang off. I stared at the phone in my hand. I was in the Big League now for sure. Homeland Security had my number and I had theirs to call direct day or night and pass on further information that come to me about Dean, which there would not be any at all on account of his untimely death that occurred. This would be a problem if Agent Jim Ricker wanted further developments to be told about.

It made me feel bad knowing about Dean being dead like I did. That was almost worse than knowing I'm the one that killed him. Jim Ricker was going to be a disappointed man, all right. The little bird on the wire was not going to be telling him anything he didn't already know, which was mostly lies anyway. This was turning out to be another one of those bad consequences that have been part of my life since forever, owing to bad planning and decisions I should maybe not have made, only it's hard to know when you decide something if you made the right decision until later when the consequences happen from it.

All across America people are talking about Dean and his terrible plot to kill the senator. Everyone is getting all worried and concerned about that, especially Senator Ketchum, I bet. His wife probably told him, ‘Don't go out the door today, Dean Lowry will get you!' But he went out the door anyway because the business of the nation must go on regardless. That's what people will be thinking and most likely they'll vote for the senator because of his bravery about facing down a terrorist threat like that and going out the door every day no matter what. And there was no Dean Lowry anymore. And I'm the only one in the entire country that knows this. And if
I get found out for lying I'm in serious trouble over it, any fool could see that. So I would have to sit on the Big Secret like a hen sits on her eggs, only the hen wants them to hatch out and I'll be hoping they don't, because what comes out won't be chickens, they'll be dragons.

I put the phone back in my pocket, where it weighed heavier than before somehow. I have got to keep my mouth shut and everything will be all right, I'm thinking. If I can just do that then time will pass and Dean Lowry will be as big a threat to the nation as Jesse James and John Dillinger who they are also dead and gone. Just keep quiet and everything will blow away like autumn leaves, by which time I'll have a good job at the prison and maybe Lorraine would marry me. It's true she's an older woman but still very attractive and curvaceous that way so I wanted to marry her all right, and she'd want to marry me because of the reliability I've got with regard to a weekly paycheck coming in regular, which women are very concerned about in a man. No gottee money, no gettee datee. The prison job would pay a whole lot more dollars than the lawnmowing, I bet.

Getting back home at the end of the day on a Friday should've felt good with the weekend ahead to relax and enjoy myself. Only it didn't feel that way as I parked the truck next to my dead Monte Carlo and took out the plastic bags of lawn clippings for adding to the pile over beyond the edge of the yard. What it was, the weekend is for being with people, friends and family, and these are what I did not have currently, not there at the house anyway. The only person there was myself, and Dean, I guess, although he didn't count.

After I emptied the bags I went in the house and showered
myself clean, then sat at the kitchen table awhile wishing I smoked because that was the perfect time to smoke a cigarette and have a beer, which I had none of also, only a quarter-bottle of the Captain that I was not in the mood for. When the phone rang – the kitchen phone not my sweet new cell – it was almost a relief, I had been sat staring at the wall for a long time by then.

“Hello?”

“Odell, Chief Webb.”

“Uh, hi, Chief.”

I'm thinking there's bad news coming from this guy that doesn't like me.

“Got anything planned for Saturday?” he asked, which was a surprise.

I'm thinking the Chief has been feeling bad about the chewing-out he gave me this morning and has decided to be nice to me, which means inviting me over to his place for barbecued ribs with his family.

“No, Chief, I've got the whole day wide open.”

“Good, because I'm sending an officer out to videotape your yard.”

“Pardon?”

“He'll be dropping by around ten.”

“Videotape?”

“The grave Dean dug up and filled again. There has to be a video record of that being dug out and finding nothing in there.”

“But ...you already did that ...and there's still nothing there.”

“But we didn't do the taping is what I'm saying. He'll need
to tape the layout of the house too, go from room to room with the recorder running till he's taped the entire house top to bottom.”

“What for?”

“It's Homeland Security, Odell, they're insisting. They like to have video layout so if there's a siege they know where to break in and how to get from room A to room B while the air's filled with smoke from their stun grenades. It's how they get trained nowadays.”

“But there won't be any siege here. Do they think Dean's gonna come on home and barricade himself in the place?”

“Who knows what they think, it's Homeland Security. I can't spare more than one man because we've got a high school baseball game Saturday that brings in folks from the whole county. Got to use my men for traffic control.”

“But then ... if there's just one guy with the camera, who's doing the digging?”

“That would be you, Odell. Got a problem with that?”

“Uh, no . . .”

“It's a whole different ball game when Homeland Security gets brung into a situation like this. If you hadn't said about Dean being a Muslim it'd just be plain old murder, but now that he's a terrorist suspect it's a whole different thing, that's the difference between getting a video record and not having to. Well, it's good to know you'll be on hand to do the spade-work, Odell. The Callisto Police Department appreciates your assistance freely offered like this. Around ten.”

And he hung up, the son of a bitch. Maybe Homeland Security was on his case because of the Senator Ketchum thing, or maybe Chief Webb made it all up for revenge over
the chewing-out he got from them. Either way I'm on Shit Street, Dean being where he is, and it was a real pity I went and wasted the shower I just had because now I've got to get filthy dirty all over again digging Dean out.

I do not often get to feeling slit-eyed mean, but going to fetch the gloves and shovel that is exactly how I felt about things. It was plain ridiculous to have to keep moving a dead man around like this, and undignified even if he's a murderer. Every dead man deserves to lie peaceful once he's under the soil, not disturbed over and over for no good reason. Dean's ghost would not be happy about this.

I dug like a machine I'm so steamed. It was not such hard work because the dirt is still loose from being dug out three times now already including the first time when Dean dug it. No, it was the sheer waste of time and effort had got me mad. By the time I got down to Dean I was in a fine fury about things and it may be that I treated him rough getting him hauled out into the yard. I carried him over to the grass heap breathing through my mouth because Dean stunk like nothing I smelled before, a man four days dead now and letting the world know it. I set him down and told myself not to throw up, then I opened up a big hole in the mound of grass clippings and was just about to put him inside and cover him over when it occurs to me the stink will come through something like piled grass very easy and maybe the video guy will smell it and blow the whistle.

Dean had to be stink-proofed, so I got two of the big plastic bags that had lawn clippings in them before and pulled them over him, one from the top and one from the bottom, then I got tape from Dean's workbench in the barn and taped
those two bags together very careful so they're airtight like I wanted. When that was done you couldn't hardly smell him at all, and even that little bit of stench was probably coming from my shirt when I held him against me to carry him over. Putting him inside just a bedsheet had not been the smartest thing, but the problem was solved now, I'm thinking while I put him in the hole and pulled grass over him three foot thick. Then I went inside and showered again and run all my clothes through the washing machine I'm so stinking filthy dirty. Then I made pizza again, two of them seeing as they're Thin'n'Crispy not the Deep Dish kind and I'm hungry like since I don't know when. But at least the problem has been taken care of.

That's when I remembered I didn't fill in the yard hole again, which got me yelling dirty words to match my mood I'm so strung out now and mad at myself. So back out to the yard again and the hole got dirt shoveled in like before. It doesn't look like a hole that got dug out and filled two days ago, it looks like a hole that got filled in just now, but there's nothing I can do about it except hope that the video cop is not bright enough to notice that before I sink the spade in again come tomorrow. Man, was I tired.

It was coming on to night by then so I showered all over again and hung out my laundry with the last of the light bleeding away west in the sky. After that was done I went back inside and turned on the TV for the early news, which has got plenty about a manhunt across the entire Midwest now for Dean and warnings about not to approach him he's so dangerous, like he's covered in anthrax or something. They wanted him so bad there's a reward out for information
concerning his whereabouts. A hundred grand, that's a bunch of cash and it's just a shame that I can't collect it without getting into deeper trouble than I'm already in. I bet Dean never figured he'd one day be worth so much.