Laughing Man (22 page)

He took the last bite of his muffin, chewed it slowly, swallowed, and picked up several of Fred's autopsy photos again. He sighed. He wasn't interested, suddenly. Fred didn't matter. Fred was stale, his life over, his story finished, his photographs taken, and his entrails ingested by Williamson the Loon. Nothing more needed to be said or done, except to face Williamson and extract a confession in the usual way.

P
atricia thought that, ultimately, everyone was weird. They lived inside the sweaters and suits and gray pants of civilization, brushed their teeth, washed their hands, became enthralled with football or hockey or movie stars or swimming pools, attended church (some of them), where they genuflected or crossed themselves or ate wafers and decided that it was homage enough to the shadowy creator of the universe. But when the universe itself congealed and swirled around them like dirty laundry, they became weird, they became the people they really were beneath the sweaters and suits.

It had happened to Erthmun. That was obvious. Why else would he be sitting naked at his table eating his favorite muffin with his front door wide open?

She wanted to say the correct thing. She didn't care that he was naked. It was no big deal. And she knew that he didn't care either.
But
surprising him this way, while he was clearly embroiled in a process that brought him pleasure (looking at autopsy photographs, eating muffins, drinking coffee) required the right words.

She thought of clearing her throat. No good. Obvious. Cliché. He'd hate it.

Okay, then, blurt out something. Let it erupt from that sane, safe, and deliberate place in the brain that knew best about such things.

"Poppy seed?" she asked.

He said nothing. He put the remainder of the muffin on his plate, set the autopsy photographs down, stood, lumbered to his refrigerator, way across the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, peered in a moment, shut the door, and went back to the table, where he put the last bit of the muffin into his mouth and chewed slowly.

She repeated herself; "Poppy seed?" paused, then added, "Jack? Poppy seed?"

He turned his face toward her, looked through her, looked back at the autopsy photographs, looked back again at Patricia, put the autopsy photographs down, said, "Yes, poppy seed." He looked at the autopsy photographs again, then again at Patricia. "I'm naked," he said, as if she hadn't noticed.

She grinned. "Well, yes, you are. Do you want me to go away?"

He shook his head. "I don't suppose so. Unless you're embarrassed. But you'd tell me that, I think. If you were embarrassed."

"Yes, I think I would. Or I'd close the door."

"Perhaps that would be a good thing."

"To close the door?"

"You can come in and close the door or you can stay out in the hallway and close the door."

"Are you going to put clothes on?"

He shrugged. "Yes, I imagine that I am."

"I mean soon?"

He shrugged again. "Would you prefer it?"

"It might make having a business discussion more . . . businesslike, Jack."

"Business discussion?"

She reached out, put her hand on the doorknob, said, "Let me know when you're dressed, okay?" and closed the door, leaving herself in the hallway.

D
ark enough in this place, thought the creature who had named herself Tabitha. Darkness was as important as oxygen. She felt comforted in it, secure, able to breathe and see. She saw the now when it was dark. The now of her heart beating—clip, trip . . . clip, trip—and the now of her blood coursing through her body. She could not always hear the movement of her blood, but when it was dark and very quiet, as in this place, she heard it. It made the same rushing noise that a river makes, and she felt power in that sound. The power of water, and air. The power of stars.

She was, of course, as powerful as the sun. She was made of stardust, earthshine and clouds, and—her real self—of soil and its great bacterial underbelly, which existed beneath granite and sandstone, which existed beneath the igneous layer, and the substrata, and which was the greatest mass of life on the planet—greater even than all the life in the oceans, all the life that moved on the land, all the life that flew through the air.

She was not hiding in this place; she was merely seeking the darkness, because there was no need for vision when she had no need to see. Her only need here was to draw closer again to Mother and Father, now that she was sated.

Now that nourishment had been inserted into the mouths of the always dead who lived and corrupted the earth and died and lived and corrupted the earth. The nourishment of their own design and need. The chocolate.

E
rthmun's mother couldn't believe the story that she had never told. The story of her son and her other children and her husband—God rest his soul (wherever God was keeping it). She couldn't believe she had never told that story, and couldn't believe, either, that it had happened, although she knew only too well that it had happened. Erthmun himself had been produced because of it, and Erthmun was undeniable.

She didn't like looking at herself in mirrors and hating what she saw—a woman on the verge of disintegration. She hated her poetry, too—it was so self-indulgent now, so full of the angst of the aged and the depressed trying hard to avoid cynicism.

But it was wonderful knowing so much more about the universe than anyone else. It gave her a feeling that she harbored a secret she would never share because only she could understand it, because only she could understand her son and the others like him, who were so
unlike
him. It was like harboring the secret of creation itself, and it made her feel all knowing and all-powerful (because she
was
all knowing), even in the midst of disintegration.

W
hen Detective Vetris Gambol awoke, he found, and not for the first time, that his cat was sitting on his chest, kneading and purring with great pleasure. The cat's name was Villain and he was very large and usually quite unfriendly and standoffish, except when Vetris Gambol slept. At other times, it was all Vetris could do to get even a glimpse of him. Vetris fed him by putting a small plate of canned cat food on the kitchen floor and leaving the room. If Vetris tried to look in on Villain surreptitiously, Villain almost always seemed to know and ran off.

Vetris had never been able to determine if the cat hated him, was afraid of him, or was simply, and painfully, shy. He thought it was very strange that the cat slept on his chest while he—Vetris—slept, although, at all other times, Vetris couldn't even get near him. Was it, Vetris wondered, because Villain sensed something warm and cozy about him—beneath his gruff exterior—but could only gain access to this warm coziness while he was asleep? Or was it because Vetris was simply immobilized during sleep, and therefore not a threat? Or was it something even deeper, something almost unknowable? Something that existed deep within the noble and nasty and predatory mind of the cat. (Perhaps, Vetris thought with some alarm, Villain was merely waiting for the moment, while Vetris slept, that Vetris's shallow breathing stopped at last and Villain could easily make several tasty meals of him.)

Vetris did not ask himself why he didn't give the animal away. He knew that he loved Villain, loved his predatory nature, his stealthiness, even his strangeness. And Villain was, as well, possessed of the kind of nobility that only a large cat possesses—a nobility that is completely inborn, completely without affectation, completely real. He even seemed to possess this nobility as he slunk off—many times a day—to hide from the man who pretended to be his owner.

Vetris had also realized for some time that he was just a little fearful of Villain. A large cat could be dangerous in the right circumstances, and a cat that spent much of its time slinking away from the human being who fed it was a cat with a problem. What if, while Villain camped out on his chest one night, he—Villain—decided he'd had enough of slinking away, perhaps in cowardice, and was going to go after Vetris's jugular, or his eyes, or—Good Lord!—his genitals.

But Vetris knew that, deep down, he enjoyed such vague possibilities. It made up for an essentially boring life.

Vetris's bedside phone rang. He groaned and snatched it up, said, "Hello."

"Hi, Vetris, yeah," he heard, "this is Jerry, at the office."

Vetris sighed. Villain slunk away. Vetris said, "I know your voice, Jerry. You don't have to tell me who you are."

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Jerry, did you hear what I said?"

"I did, yeah. I'm sorry." Silence.

Vetris sighed again, threw his comforter off, and swung his feet around so he was sitting up on the edge of the bed. "There's no need to be sorry, Jerry. Just tell me why you called."

Silence. Vetris heard what sounded vaguely like air passing through the line. "Jerry, are you nodding your head?"

"Yeah, I am. How'd you know?"

"Just tell me why you called."

"Yeah, I called because you got to get down here, okay? I mean, like now."

"Can you tell me why?"

"I can, yeah, I can tell you why." Silence.

"Before I get there, I mean."

"Oh. Sure. I can. It's because there are people missing. In the park."

Vetris said, "People go missing in that park every month. Why is it my business?"

"Yeah, because they left lots of blood behind, Vetris. It's all over the park, practically. God, it's everywhere. I seen it. It's like someone ran through there with a couple dozen gallons of red paint. Know what I mean?"

"Jesus!" breathed Vetris.

"Sorry?" said Jerry.

Vetris hung up and very reluctantly got dressed.

E
rthmun opened his front door and said to Patricia, who had been waiting for him to get dressed, "See, I'm fully clothed now."

She nodded, said, with a little smile, "Yes, I see," moved past him, into his apartment, and stood with her back to him in the middle of the room, so she was outlined in sunlight streaming through the windows. "We have a problem, Jack," she said, and turned around to face him. "Actually, several problems. All of them the same, and all of them different."

He smiled. "Puzzles? It is not something I expect from you, Patricia."

She shook her head. "No puzzles, just enigmas."

He looked confused. "And they would be?"

"Enigmas?"

"Yes."

"I guess you could say they're conundrums."

"Which are?"

"Mysteries, of a sort. A conundrum is a kind of mystery."

"So enigmas are conundrums that are mysteries?"

Patricia grinned. "Yes, I suppose."

"They are puzzles, then, you would say?"

She shrugged. He enjoyed her shrug. It was as sensual a shrug as he had seen. "Yes," she said. "You're right."

"And these puzzles are what?"

She glanced around at the table at which Erthmun had been sitting. "Can you make me some coffee?"

He nodded. "Yes, I can," he said, and moved past her, to the cupboards. "Which of the kinds do you want?" he asked.

"Regular."

He nodded, opened a cupboard, pulled out a can that was labeled decaf, said, "Then the conundrums are what?"

"Missing people," she said, and nodded at the can of decaf. "I'd prefer regular, if you've got it, Jack."

"Regular, then, it is," he said, and dragged the percolator out from under a cupboard.

"That's a green can, Jack," she said. "It's decaf."

"No," he said. "It's the regular coffee. I put it in this can. I like it. I like the color of it. I took the regular coffee out of the brown can it came in and I put it in this can.
I
like green. It's a nice green, don't you think?"

"You're a very odd man," Patricia said.

He poured water into the percolator. "Ah, I think that
I
am," he said. "And these missing people? How are they a puzzle?"

She sat in the same chair that Erthmun had been sitting in when she came to his open door. "They're a puzzle, first, because there are so damned many of them, and, secondly, because they seem to have simply vanished out of their nicely furnished apartments and houses, and some even from their places of work. Hell, there's a desk sergeant in the 5th Precinct who went to the bathroom and simply never returned."

"And he is?"

She took a small notebook from the pocket of her sport coat. "His name is O'Reilly."

"And the others?"

"You want all the others, Jack? Here and now?"

He shook his head, turned the percolator on, waited before speaking until it started perking, then said, "That's a very nice sound. I like it. Sometimes I put water on to percolate just to hear it." He put his hand on the side of the percolator, took it away quickly, muttered, "Hot," then said to Patricia, "No, I want you to tell me about these other people. How many are there? Where were they last seen? I need you to . . . capsulize and tell me about this mystery."