Dreams The Ragman (4 page)

“According to the Virgin Mary downstairs your name is Derrick Ricci.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well how’s aboot we see some ID just to be on the safe side, Mr. Ricci?”

I pulled my wallet from my back pocket, slid out my license and handed it to him. Without breaking eye contact, Gleck held it out for the other officer, who immediately began running it, mumbling into a handheld unit strapped to his shoulder.

Gleck and I stood staring at each other, neither saying a word.

A few moments later, the young cop returned my license then told his boss, “Employed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Social Services. He’s clean, no warrants. Two priors for assault but both were several years ago.”

“Assault,” Gleck said, feigning a shiver. “Ooo, I’m a-scared. Got a temper, huh?”

“Look, is there some point to this? What is it I can do for you?”

“Well, you can start by adjusting that attitude, Mr. Ricci, how’s that sound?”

“Sounds like bullshit. I’m a law-abiding citizen and I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Didn’t say you did, did I?”

“If you need to talk to me about something then go ahead. Otherwise, I have things to do.”

“Really, like what?”

I stood my ground, saying nothing for several seconds and instead employing some of the techniques my psychologist had taught me to keep my anger in check.

“Oh don’t be shy. What brings you to our enchanting little hamlet?”

“I’m here for personal reasons.”

“And what kind of personal reasons would those be?”

“The kind that are personal.”

He chomped his cigar, causing thick smoke to billow about between us. “Maybe you didn’t hear about the trouble we’ve had here lately.”

“I read about the murders in the paper, saw the news reports on TV.”

“Two brutal homicides, that’s what we’re dealing with here, Mr. Ricci. So I bet you’ll find it in your heart—golly, I just
know
you will—to forgive me for paying special extra attention to strangers wandering around town these days.”

I responded with a subtle nod. Rain sprayed the lone window behind me, and I pictured The Ragman tapping the glass, floating just beyond the pane, eyes glaring through the rain, dead lips curled into a toothless, bloody grin. “I understand your concern, and I appreciate your attempt to do your job, but I certainly hope you’re not suggesting I know anything about this.”

“Well of course not, fine upstanding citizen like yourself. But you wouldn’t mind humoring me and sharing your whereabouts on—”

“I haven’t even been in the state until today,” I said. “And yes, I can account for my whereabouts over the last several weeks, and yes, I can put you in touch with several people who can verify that, including my wife and people I work with and for. Regardless, I don’t plan to stand here and be harassed, and—”

“
Harrassed
? That’s a strong word, Mr. Ricci.”

“Let me make this clear. I’m not about to be questioned regarding homicides or any other crime without legal representation, so if that’s where this is headed, then I suggest you take me in and I’ll call my attorney and we can get on with wasting everyone’s time.”

Gleck put on a pretend frown, glanced back at the other officer and sighed. “Guess he told me, huh?”

“I’m not trying to be confrontational, Chief, but—”

“See normally,” he said, “I don’t really spend a whole lot of time worrying about what goes on down here on the strip. Decent people live in the town proper, not this dump. The way most folks in town see it, this area’s like a big ole nasty boil on our ass we just can’t seem to lance. The strip’s been dying for years but it keeps hanging on, keeps dragging us down. Soon enough, though, we’ll get the votes we need and then we can tear down this whole trough of swill and have some nice beaches for good, moral, God-fearing families instead of the degenerates it brings in now. This is
our
town and we plan to take it back, understand? And the first step is solving these murders before the maniac responsible commits another one and the federal boys show up and start trying to run things in
our
town. Last thing we need is a bunch of socialist government agents around here bothering people.”

“When did we become a socialist government?”

“Soon as that Muslim stole the presidency, haven’t you been paying attention?”

And I’d thought he couldn’t possibly be more repugnant. “Are we through here?”

Gleck pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket and held it up to me. “Know what this is? It’s the Constitution. Of the United States. Of America. I carry it with me at all times so I’m always reminded that I live in the best damn country on the planet. I carry it so I always know what I’m sworn to defend and protect.”

“Have you ever actually read it?”

He blanched, as if I’d mortally wounded him.

“Chief, much as I’d love to stand around and talk politics with you, I—”

“Try to see this from my side.” He returned his paper to his pocket and very subtly moved a little closer to me. “A stranger comes to town and goes right for the beach. Nothing unusual in that except for there’s a storm going. Then this stranger, he doesn’t just walk the beach, he
searches
it like he’s looking for something, or someone. Now why not be a pal and tell me who you came looking for?”

Something told me he already knew. “I’m in town to meet an old friend.”

“And who’d that be?”

“His name’s Caleb LeClerc.”

“Funny name. Doesn’t even sound American, does it.”

“What do American names sound like?” He did his best to intimidate me with his steely eyes but all I felt was repulsed. “Caleb’s a biblical name, a Hebrew name. In the Bible, Caleb was a friend to Moses, famous for his faith and devotion to God, and for his bravery even when faced with the most horrible and hopeless circumstances.”

“So it’s a Jew name? Well, that figures.”

“You know Jesus was a Jew, right?”

“Jesus was a Christian.” Gleck shook his head and chuckled. “And besides, the good Lord’s got nothing to do with a piece of garbage like Caleb LeClerc.”

My pulse quickened. “What are you saying?”

“Funny thing, turns out I know your buddy Caleb too. He came to town right around the same time the murders started. Homeless drug-addict queer fit right in down here on the strip with the rest of the freak show. We picked him up a while back. I know a junkie when I see one. He didn’t have narcotics on him at the time, but we found paraphernalia. And besides, thought maybe he’d know something or even had something to do with the murders. Why wouldn’t I, right? Turns out he didn’t, I’m sure of that now.” He chuckled again and this time looked back at his young partner, who laughed as well. “Trust me, if he knew anything he would’ve told us during, uh, well let’s just go ahead and call it
questioning
. But he did tell us he was sure a friend of his would be showing up sooner or later.” Gleck turned back to me. “Fella named Derrick Ricci.”

“Are you still holding him?” I cleared my throat and nodded. “Where is he now?”

Rather than answer my question he said, “Makes sense, you’re one of those bleeding-heart liberal social worker types out to save the world. You come to deliver your old friend from evil, is that it?”

Stupid shit wasn’t that far off. “If you already knew then what’s the point of this?”

“Don’t have doubts about the faggot anymore,” he said. “But I had to be just as sure about you, now didn’t I.”

“Where’s Caleb?” I asked again.

“Got him in a cell over in town,” Gleck said squarely. “I’ll release him in the morning. I suggest you come on down and pick his scurvy ass up first thing. Let’s say eight o’clock. Then I want the two of you to go back to New York or Massachusetts or wherever the hell else it is you come from and stay there. Keep out of my town, or I’ll find a reason to arrest you both. And trust me, friend, I will find one. And that’s if you’re lucky. If not, and you catch me in a bad mood, getting arrested will be the least of your problems, that clear enough? Or do you want to get hold of your attorney for that too?”

What I really wanted to do was punch his face out through the back of his fucking head, but I left my hands at my side. “What charges are you holding him on?”

“A little known codicil in the town’s bylaws called whatever the fuck I want.”

“Constitution my ass, huh?”

A spasm of a smile quivered along his upper lip. “Careful.”

“Look, instead of this pissing contest, why don’t I go get Caleb right now and—”

“Be there bright and early first thing in the morning and he’s all yours, sunshine. For now I suggest you hunker down for the evening and stay inside. It’s not safe out there these days,
especially
after dark.”

He had no idea.

SIX

The wind…

I remembered it blowing in off the Atlantic, hot and thick and dragging the coming storm behind it. I remembered the smells of sea and sand, perspiration and night, the grip of fear and anticipation, the unknown. But the sounds of that night so many years ago, I remembered them best of all. The wind rushing in over the dark ocean, crossing the sand, crawling up along the dunes and through the trees, hissing like a snake as I ran directly into it, its touch searing, its embrace enveloping and devouring me.

Despite my growing nausea and weakness, I did my best to keep up with Caleb. As we left, the paths cut through the dunes and ran down onto the open beach, he was still a good distance ahead of me but plainly visible in the moonlight. I focused on his long and powerful strides, hoping they might inspire me to press on through thick sand.

Somewhere far from the parking lot, far from stretches of beach more heavily traveled, the sand took me, pulling me down into it as if something hidden beneath had tripped me, cut me off at the ankles. As I fell, I thought about how I’d lived in town all my life but had never been this far down-shore to this lonely section of forgotten beach.

I watched the ground rush closer then crashed into it face-first. Sinking deeper upon impact, tiny grains of sand exploded up all around me, spraying about like a rain of brown sugar. In those strange and fearful seconds, I could hear and feel my heart thudding in my chest, the sound drowning out the steady slap of nearby waves.

Rolling over onto my back, I spit sand from my mouth and focused on the canopy of darkness overhead. Heart still racing, stomach roiling and head pounding, I ran a hand across my forehead, pushed my hair from my eyes and tried to get up. But I was too drunk, too high, too exhausted, and instead, lay there like some crippled aquatic creature helplessly washed ashore and left for dead.

And then, Caleb, his face moving into view, staring down at me…

I know where he goes.

I wanted him to ask me if I was all right, but he didn’t. He just kept staring at me as if he’d stumbled across some rare and exciting discovery he hadn’t quite figured out what to do with yet.

I know where The Ragman hides.

Rain spraying and beaded against the window brought me back to my little room.

Night had fallen and I was alone. But Caleb was close, collapsed in some filthy jail cell, beaten and battered and waiting for me to come and set him free. I could spring him from the literal bars holding him, but we both knew the Devil was staring us down, and there could be no real freedom from any of this until we forced ourselves to look back. But even looking the Devil dead in the eye wouldn’t be enough. We’d have to kill the sonofabitch. There could be no deliverance without death, no transcendence without blood. And this time, it was The Ragman’s turn to bleed.

I sat and listened to the rain a while, thinking back to the last time I’d been away from home and stuck in a strange place. The night Jill and I split, I’d left the house with only a small duffel bag, unsure of what to do or where to go. For more than twenty years we’d lived together as husband and wife. I’d been her best friend, and she’d been mine. I didn’t know how to do anything else, didn’t know how to be anyone else. After sitting at a rest area for a while and doing my best to comprehend what was happening, I ended up at a motel a few towns away, sitting in an uncomfortable chair at a rickety desk. I sat in that chair all night. When morning came, I continued to sit there, the dark circles under my eyes growing deeper and the chatter in my head refusing to quit. I hadn’t cried in a long time, but I cried that night, cried like a child for hours on end. Days later, when my head had cleared somewhat, I realized I’d checked into the motel, gone to my room, closed the door behind me then headed straight for that chair and sat in the goddamn thing for fourteen straight hours. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I barely moved. I just sat, shocked and destroyed and convinced my life was over. Never in a million years had I ever suspected Jill and I would be anything but happy and together. All day long at work I dealt with other people’s problems and hardships, the madness and inequities and outright cruelty of life, so home for me was a sanctuary, a safe house where I could relax and fall back into the love and security of my personal life. I could count on Jill and our life together. She made it all matter. She made
me
matter, gave me something to care about and look forward to. She was someone to care for and love, and someone to be loved and cared by. Jill and our marriage had become the foundation of my life, and once that was taken away the whole house came tumbling down on top of me. I’d been hurt before, but never like that. This was brutal and vicious and cut straight to the bone, the very core of who I was. You don’t heal from a wound like that. You learn to live with it, to prevent it from killing you, but you never heal.

As if on cue, my cell phone rang. The ID verified what I already suspected. “Hey,” I said in answer.

“Hi, it’s me. Just wanted to let you know Lou is fed and we’re hanging out for a few. He’s purring away, happy as a clam.”

“He misses you.”

“I miss him, too.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway he’s fed, so…”

Dead air hung between us like a gutted corpse. Silence. I’ve never been able to figure out if I love or hate it.

“Are you there?” she finally asked.

“Yes, sorry.” I rose from the bed and walked over to the window. With all the rain and darkness it was impossible to see much of anything out there. “I’ve got a room at a local place here, should see Caleb tomorrow.”

“Is he all right?”

“Far as I know, yeah.”

“And you? Are you all right?”

“Do you care?”

“Can’t imagine why I’d ask if I didn’t.”

I squeezed shut my eyes in an attempt to ward off the memories. “I’ll be OK,” I told her. “If I can survive the last few months I can get through anything.”

“It hasn’t exactly been easy for me either, you know.”

“You’re the one who wanted this Jill, not me.”

I could hear her breathing into the phone and pictured her closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand the way she so often did when she was stressed out or frustrated. “OK, I didn’t mean to get into a deep discussion.”

“I know. God forbid we have one of those, right?”

“I was simply asking if you were all right, I’m concerned about whatever the hell it is you’re doing up there with Caleb and—you know what—forget it, I should get going anyway, I’ve got things to do at home. I’ll stop by again tomorrow and—”

“Jill,” I heard myself say, my hand clutching the cell so hard it hurt, “I need…”

She waited, hopeful perhaps, that I might find the right words.

I hoped just as hard and right along with her, but they never came.

“I should go,” she said softly.

“I’ll be back soon as I can.”

“Be careful. Caleb, he’s sick, Derrick. He’s dangerous.”

“Caleb wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“But then you’re not a fly, are you?”

Sadly, this was the longest and most civil conversation I’d had with my wife in months. It was always somewhat easier talking on the phone, I suppose, can’t see the scars like you can up-close and personal, but you still hear and feel the pain you’ve inflicted on each other because you carry it with you always. I found myself longing for the days when we were still all right, when if I missed Jill I could find solace in the knowledge that it was always just a matter of time before I’d be back in her arms and safe in her love. Now she seemed lost to me across impossible distances, alive but beyond reach.

“How the hell did this happen?” I asked. “How did we get here?”

“We got tired.” Her voice caught in her throat. “I think we just got tired.”

“We didn’t come all this way to throw it out now, did we?”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes it is.”

“
No
, it isn’t.”

“I want to come home, Jill. Let me come home.”

“Derrick…”

“You really don’t want me back?
Really
?”

“I can’t do this right now. I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

I turned away from the window and gave the storm my back. “OK.”

“I heard about the murders up there, you know,” she said rather abruptly. “They were all over the news. Do you think Caleb had something to do with them?”

“Of course not. For God’ sake, you’ve known Caleb almost as long as I—”

“So it’s just coincidence that you’re meeting him there, in Sheppard Beach. You honestly expect me to believe that?”

I’d always kept Jill away from all this, or thought I had. “Let me worry about Caleb. I thought we were talking about us.”

“We are,” she said evenly. “But that’s what you’ve never quite been able to grasp when it comes to him. When we’re talking about Caleb we’re talking about us too, it’s impossible not to. He’s a part of you just like I am.”

“No, not just like you are.”

“This infatuation you two have had all these years about the murders in town and The Ragman and all that foolishness from your grandfather’s old boogieman stories, none of which had anything to do with the rest, it’s morbid and strange and always has been. And Caleb, he’s been obsessed with this shit for years. There were nights you spoke with him on the phone for hours and that’s all he talked about, you told me so yourself. All this death and horror, it’s sick, Derrick. What’s he doing there? Is he some sort of murder groupie or something? He’s one of those freaks now, is that it?”

“He’s a junkie,” I told her. “And he’s probably dying.”

“Has he really gotten that bad?”

“Yes, he’s really gotten that bad.”

“Then maybe you should bring him home.”

I tried to fight it but smiled a little anyway. There she was, the woman I’d fallen in love with, the woman who brought home stray cats and lost dogs; who volunteered at soup kitchens and homeless shelters and was so sure she could change the world through one act of kindness and selflessness at a time. “We’ll see,” I said. “I need to find out what’s happening first and then make an assessment from there.”

We listened to each other breath a while.

“Do what you need to do,” she said. “We’ll talk more when you get back.”

“Tell Louie I’ll see him soon. Tell him I love him.”

“He already knows.”

“You think he loves me back?”

“Yes, I do. And I think he always will.”

Before I could take things any further, she said goodnight, and with a quick and final click she was gone, swallowed back into the silence from which she’d come.

Not long after Jill and I split, when I finally dragged my ass out of that motel room chair, I called Caleb. His apartment number had been disconnected and his cell didn’t answer. I left a message. Two hours later some stoned-out hippie chick named Jane called me back to tell me it wasn’t Caleb’s phone anymore. He was hurting for money, she explained, and had sold it to her a few weeks before. She’d assumed the monthly payments and planned to keep the number until the contract ran out. When I asked if she knew where I could find him she’d laughed and said, “Dude, who ever knows where Caleb is? He’s like the wind, kid.” I asked her if he was all right. He’s fucking paranoid, she said. Thinks The Devil’s following him and spying on him, trying to destroy his life and listening in on his phone calls, watching his every move. She told me he thought he was being tracked and kept under surveillance by The Devil to make sure he kept his secrets to himself. What secrets? Who knows, she said. He’s fucking crazy, dude. I figured I had nothing to lose so I asked her to tell him to call me if or when she saw him again. It’s important, I told her. Sure, she said, groovy. No problem-o.

A week or so later my cell rang in the middle of the night. Caleb was on the line, calling collect from a payphone in New York City. I accepted the charges, and as the call connected, realized he’d already started talking and was halfway through whatever conversation he’d planned on having with me. I’d seen him do this before when he was high or drunk. He’d start talking then pick up a phone and dial, so by the time the person on the other end answered Caleb was already well into the conversation and they’d have no idea what the hell he was talking about. It took me a moment but I got the gist of his rant, something about evil and how it was stalking him, draining him and slowly destroying him. “I try to stay high,” he said, weeping suddenly. “I—I have to stay high, it—it’s the only way but I still see the fucker, I—he’s
always
there. I…”

“The Ragman’s not real, Caleb. He’s a myth, a nightmare, a story. That’s all.”

“I saved you,” he said through his tears. “Do you know that? I
saved
you.”

“Why don’t you let me send you a bus ticket? Come stay with me a while, I—”

“I can’t, you don’t understand.”

“Neither do you. I have some bad news to tell you, Jill and I—”

“I saved you,” he cried, slamming the phone down before I could respond.