Joyland (29 page)

“I do, don’t I?” It seemed too complicated to tell him that Erin was actually Tom Kennedy’s girlfriend. Fred probably wouldn’t remember Tom anyway, never having seen him in a flirty green dress and high heels.

“I just stopped by to get the accounts books. Quarterly IRS payments coming up. Such a pain in the hindquarters. Enjoying your little alumna visit, Erin?”

“Yes, sir, very much.”

“Coming back next year?”

She looked a trifle uncomfortable at that, but stuck gamely to the truth. “Probably not.”

“Fair enough, but if you change your mind, I’m sure Brenda Rafferty can find a place for you.” He switched his attention to me. “This boy you plan to bring to the park, Jonesy. Have you set a date with his mother?”

“Tuesday. Wednesday or Thursday if it’s rainy. The kid can’t be out in the rain.”

Erin was looking at me curiously.

“I advise you stick to Tuesday,” he said. “There’s a storm coming up the coast. Not a hurricane, thank God, but a tropical disturbance. Lots of rain and gale-force winds is what they’re saying. It’s supposed to arrive mid-morning on Wednesday.”

“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Nice to see you again, Erin.” He tipped his cap to her and started off toward the back lot.

Erin waited until he was out of sight before bursting into giggles. “Those
pants.
Did you see those
pants
?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Pretty wild.” But I was damned if I was going to laugh at them. Or him. According to Lane, Fred Dean held Joyland together with spit, baling wire, and account-book wizardry. That being the case, I thought he could wear all the golf baggies he wanted. And at least they weren’t checks.

“What’s this about bringing some kid to the park?”

“Long story,” I said. “I’ll tell you while we walk back.”

So I did, giving her the Boy-Scout-majoring-in-modesty version and leaving out the big argument at the hospital. Erin listened without interruption, asking only one question, just as we reached the steps leading up from the beach. “Tell me the truth, Dev—is mommy foxy?”

People kept asking me that.

That night Tom and Erin went out to Surfer Joe’s, a beer-and-boogie bar where they had spent more than a few off-nights during the summer. Tom invited me along, but I heeded that old saying about two being company and three being you-know-what. Besides, I doubted if they’d find the same raucous, party-hearty atmosphere. In towns like Heaven’s Bay, there’s a big difference between July and October. In my role as big brother, I even said so.

“You don’t understand, Dev,” Tom said. “Me ’n Erin don’t go
looking
for the fun; we
bring
the fun. It’s what we learned last summer.”

Nevertheless, I heard them coming up the stairs early, and almost sober, from the sound of them. Yet there were whispers and muffled laughter, sounds that made me feel a little lonely. Not for Wendy; just for
someone.
Looking back on it, I suppose even that was a step forward.

I read through Erin’s notes while they were gone, but found nothing new. I set them aside after fifteen minutes and went back to the photographs, crisp black-and-white images TAKEN BY YOUR JOYLAND “HOLLYWOOD GIRL.” At first I just shuffled through them; then I sat on the floor and laid them out in a square, moving them from place to place like a guy trying to put a puzzle together. Which was, I suppose, exactly what I was doing.

Erin was troubled by the carny connection and the tattoos that probably weren’t real tattoos at all. Those things troubled me as well, but there was something else. Something I couldn’t quite get. It was maddening because I felt like it was staring me right in the face. Finally I put all but two of the photos back in the folder. The key two. These I held up, looking first at one, then at the other.

Linda Gray and her killer waiting in line at the Whirly Cups.

Linda Gray and her killer at the Shootin’ Gallery.

Never mind the goddam tattoo,
I told myself.
It’s not that. It’s something else.

But what else could it be? The sunglasses masked his eyes. The goatee masked his lower face, and the slightly tilted bill of the baseball cap shaded his forehead and eyebrows. The cap’s logo showed a catfish peering out of a big red C, the insignia of a South Carolina minor league team called the Mudcats. Dozens of Mudcat lids went through the park every day at the height of the season, so many that we called them fishtops instead of dog-tops. The bastard could hardly have picked a more anonymous lid, and surely that was the idea.

Back and forth I went, from the Whirly Cups to the Shootin’ Gallery and then back to the Whirly Cups again. At last I tossed the photos in the folder and threw the folder on my little desk. I read until Tom and Erin came in, then went to bed.

Maybe it’ll come to me in the morning,
I thought.
I’ll wake up and say, “Oh shit, of course.”

The sound of the incoming waves slipped me into sleep. I dreamed I was on the beach with Annie and Mike. Annie and I were standing with our feet in the surf, our arms around each other, watching Mike fly his kite. He was paying out twine and running after it. He could do that because there was nothing wrong with him. He was fine. I had only dreamed that stuff about Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy.

I woke early because I’d forgotten to pull down the shade.

I went to the folder, pulled out those two photographs, and stared at them in the day’s first sunlight, positive I’d see the answer.

But I didn’t.

A harmony of scheduling had allowed Tom and Erin to travel from New Jersey to North Carolina together, but when it comes to train schedules, harmony is the exception rather than the rule. The only ride they got together on Sunday was the one from Heaven’s Bay to Wilmington, in my Ford. Erin’s train left for upstate New York and Annandale-on-Hudson two hours before Tom’s Coastal Express was due to whisk him back to New Jersey.

I tucked a check in her jacket pocket. “Interlibrary loans and long distance.”

She fished it out, looked at the amount, and tried to hand it back. “Eighty dollars is too much, Dev.”

“Considering all you found out, it’s not enough. Take it, Lieutenant Columbo.”

She laughed, put it back in her pocket, and kissed me goodbye—another brother-sister quickie, nothing like the one we’d shared that night at the end of the summer. She spent considerably longer in Tom’s arms. Promises were made about Thanksgiving at Tom’s parents’ home in western Pennsylvania. I could tell he didn’t want to let her go, but when the loudspeakers announced last call for Richmond, Baltimore, Wilkes-Barre, and points north, he finally did.

When she was gone, Tom and I strolled across the street and had an early dinner in a not-too-bad ribs joint. I was contemplating the dessert selection when he cleared his throat and said, “Listen, Dev.”

Something in his voice made me look up in a hurry. His cheeks were even more flushed than usual. I put the menu down.

“This stuff you’ve had Erin doing . . . I think it should stop. It’s bothering her, and I think she’s been neglecting her course-work.” He laughed, glanced out the window at the train-station bustle, looked back at me. “I sound more like her dad than her boyfriend, don’t I?”

“You sound concerned, that’s all. Like you care for her.”

“Care
for her? Buddy, I’m head-over-heels in love. She’s the most important thing in my life. What I’m saying here isn’t jealousy talking, though. I don’t want you to get that idea. Here’s the thing: if she’s going to transfer and still hold onto her financial aid, she can’t let her grades slip. You see that, don’t you?”

Yes, I could see that. I could see something else, too, even if Tom couldn’t. He wanted her away from Joyland in mind as well as body, because something had happened to him there that he couldn’t understand. Nor did he want to, which in my opinion made him sort of a fool. That dour flush of envy ran through me again, causing my stomach to clench around the food it was trying to digest.

Then I smiled—it was an effort, I won’t kid you about that—and said, “Message received. As far as I’m concerned, our little research project is over.” So
relax, Thomas. You can stop thinking about what happened in Horror House. About what you saw there.

“Good. We’re still friends, right?”

I reached across the table. “Friends to the end,” I said.

We shook on it.

The Wiggle-Waggle Village’s Story Stage had three backdrops: Prince Charming’s Castle, Jack’s Magic Beanstalk, and a starry night sky featuring the Carolina Spin outlined in red neon. All three had sun-faded over the course of the summer. I was in the Wiggle-Waggle’s small backstage area on Monday morning, touching them up (and hoping not to
fuck
them up—I was no Van Gogh) when one of the part-time gazoonies arrived with a message from Fred Dean. I was wanted in his office.

I went with some unease, wondering if I was going to get a reaming for bringing Erin into the park on Saturday. I was surprised to find Fred dressed not in one of his suits or his amusing golf outfit, but in faded jeans and an equally faded Joyland tee-shirt, the short sleeves rolled to show some real muscle. There was a paisley sweatband cinched around his brow. He didn’t look like an accountant or the park’s chief employment officer; he looked like a ride-jock.

He registered my surprise and smiled. “Like the outfit? I must admit I do. It’s the way I dressed when I caught on with the Blitz Brothers show in the Midwest, back in the fifties. My mother was okay with the Blitzies, but my dad was horrified. And
he
was carny.”

“I know,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. “Really? Word gets around, doesn’t it? Anyway, there’s a lot to do this afternoon.”

“Just give me a list. I’m almost done painting the backdrops in the—”

“Not at all, Jonesy. You’re signing out at noon today, and I don’t want to see you until tomorrow morning at nine, when you turn up with your guests. Don’t worry about your paycheck, either. I’ll see you’re not docked for the hours you miss.”

“What’s this about, Fred?”

He gave me a smile I couldn’t interpret. “It’s a surprise.”

That Monday was warm and sunny, and Annie and Mike were having lunch at the end of the boardwalk when I walked back to Heaven’s Bay. Milo saw me coming and raced to meet me.