Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) (7 page)

Trace found Chico in the hotel cocktail lounge, where she was seated at a table in the corner, eating large handfuls of oyster crackers, sipping tea, and talking Japanese at the speed of light with Mr. Nishimoto.

When he saw Trace, he stood and bowed slightly. “Ahhh,” he said. “Bataan. Sorry I missed you.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” Trace said. “And, I hope we’ll be missing each other again soon.” He slid into the banquette next to Chico and Mr. Nishimoto bowed and walked quickly away.

“What does that man want?”

“I told you—he’s interested in my mother,” Chico said.

“If he’s so interested in her, why doesn’t he talk to her?”

“That would be rude,” Chico said. “He is counting on me to let my mother know that he is interested in her. That way, if she is not interested, she can just continue to ignore him and she will not offend him by rejecting him.”

“And if she is interested?” Trace said.

“Then she can be nice to him, without running the risk of being rejected herself and having to commit suicide,” Chico said.

“That is just too goddamn inscrutable for me, and I thought that three years of living with you had made me real scrutable,” Trace said.

“Trust me. It’s the way it’s done,” Chico said.

“I don’t like the idea of you fixing your mother up,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Suppose she gets the idea to do the same for you?” he said. “Then where am I?”

“Hold that thought, barbarian,” she said.

Chico had finished all the fish crackers and Trace asked the waitress for more, along with a double vodka on the rocks.

“Where have you been?” she asked as he sipped from his drink.

“I was bored with this place, so I went out on the street to see if I could get lucky with one of these northern California beauties, but the two other straight guys in town had everything booked up for the day, so I came back here to you.”

“Should I be flattered?”

“And I thought, Trace, I thought, why are you fooling around looking for hamburger when you’ve got sirloin back at the hotel. That’s what I thought, I really did.”

“I’ve never been called a piece of meat with such éclat,” she said.

“You have a knack for seeing the dark side of everything,” he said. “Anyway, I thought to myself, Why don’t you go rescue your honey, who must be tired by now of this convention and who probably needs a break, and why don’t you take her for a ride in the beautiful California countryside?”

“The grand gesture,” she said. “I love it. Let’s go.”

“Will your mother be all right?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s at a lecture on flower arranging in a changing world.”

“Mmmm, sure you want to miss it?”

Trace loved driving in San Francisco. The first time he had ever been in the city, he had been walking somewhere from his hotel. Like most New Yorkers, he had stepped off the curb to get a head start crossing the street before the light changed. Instantly, cars coming from all four directions came to a screeching halt. Trace was perplexed: a tank blockade set up by transvestites couldn’t stop traffic in Manhattan. But a man standing next to him explained, “They stopped because you stepped onto the street.”

Trace hopped back onto the curb and the traffic roared to life again. This nearly mystical knowledge gave him a wonderfully insane sense of power and Trace took to Alphonse-and-Gastoning traffic as a hobby: “After you!” “No, please—after
you
. I insist.” Gridlock for miles.

To take his pastime behind the wheel was a natural; every time he drove he kept looking around for people standing—even lying—in the gutter so he could stop and snarl traffic.

He was doing it now and Chico said, “When you said you were taking me for a drive, I didn’t think you meant stopping at every corner.”

“All right,” he said. “A guy can’t even have a little fun.”

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, he told her about Thomas Collins, the note from Mandy, and his lunch with Laurie Anders.

“It sounds to me like he’s left his wife,” Chico said.

“I think so too,” he said, “although I don’t know where he’s going to get a better deal. He’s no prize, and his wife is a pushover. He’s not going to find another one like her.”

They drove out through Marin County and then turned off on a small road just before the town of Nicasio. Trace was trying to read road signs that were painted on concrete posts mounted at the corners, but the writing was sun-faded and dim and he couldn’t make them out.

“I thought we were going for a drive,” Chico said.

“What do you think we’re doing, space-walking?”

“I think you’re slowing down at each corner looking for something. That’s not a drive, it’s a mission.”

“I’m looking for Collins’ farm,” he said. “I thought it might be nice to visit.”

“Do you think he has goats and chickens?” she asked.

“Yes. And horses and donkeys and sheep and big moo-cows and a very mean bull that everybody must stay away from.”

“Good. Where is the farm?”

“I don’t know. I can’t read the street signs,” he said.

“Stop and ask for directions.”

“That never works.”

“What do you mean it never works?” Chico asked.

“Every time I stop and ask somebody for directions, he turns out to be the only person in three states who doesn’t speak English. Or, if he does speak English, he just visiting here and doesn’t know where any place is. Or if he speaks English and isn’t just visiting here, he is sure to be the dumbest bastard who ever lived and he couldn’t find his foot in his shoe without directions.”

“Well, I’ll ask,” Chico said. “I’m real lucky. And here comes a live one.”

Trace pulled off to the side of the road as a man on foot approached down the thin sliver of sidewalk.

“What’s this place we’re looking for?” Chico asked.

“It’s called the old Walters farm. It’s on Palmer Road.”

“Just watch me,” she said.

Chico rolled down the window, and as the man drew abreast of the car, she called out, “Excuse me, sir.”

The man stopped and looked at her. He was in his sixties, and he was wearing a dark brown suit that was dirty and didn’t fit. Under it was a tee-shirt.

“God is coming,” the man intoned. “Will you be ready?”

Trace laughed. Chico jabbed him in the ribs with her pointy little elbow. “Shut up, heathen,” she hissed.

“We’re going to try to be ready. Really try,” she told the man.

“It is too late. All are doomed.” The man raised a hand over his head, pointing to the sky as if to show where doom came from.

“Well, if we’re all doomed anyway,” Chico said, “I can’t think of a better place to be doomed than the old Walters farm on Palmer Road. Where is that place anyway?”

“There is no hiding,” the man shouted.

“We’re not going to hide there. We’re just going to milk the cows before Armageddon,” Chico said.

“Can I leave now?” Trace said.

“Not on your life. We’re getting close. I can feel it,” Chico said.

The man was still babbling, now about Armageddon.

“The old Walters farm. We’re all meeting there. Where is it?” Chico asked the man.

He stopped in midsentence. “Who’s all meeting there?”

“The children of the book,” Chico said. “Oh, the power that is ours. The glory forever. Where is the old Walters farm?”

“The glory forever,” the man said. He waved his arm down the road. “Down there on the right. A half-mile. It has a sign.”

“Praise be,” Chico said. “Thank you.”

“The end is coming,” the man said.

“And not a moment too soon,” Chico said.

“Glory, glory,” he said.

“Hallelujah, hallelujah,” Chico said.

“Have a nice day,” Trace shouted to the man, and drove off.

The farm was just where the lunatic said it would be, on the right, at the end of a long unpaved drive that led up a slight hillock to where the house stood overlooking the roadway.

There was no garage; the roadway just trickled to an end near the house. Off to the left side of the homestead, about thirty yards away, Trace saw a rickety frame building that looked, in size, like a cross between a barn and a utility shed. So far as he could tell, nothing was grown on the farm except fruit trees, and they looked as if they had been left to shift for themselves, with wildflowers and tall uncut grass growing high around their trunks.

“What are you looking for?” Chico asked.

“Collins’ car. No sign of it. I guess he’s not here,” Trace said.

“All it shows is that his car’s not here,” Chico said. “Let’s see if anybody’s to home. That’s what us country folk say. ‘To home.’”

The front door faced the roadway. It was at ground level without even a single step for a porch. There was no answer to the doorbell and the door was locked.

They found another door around the back of the house. Looking through its glass panes, they could see it led into the kitchen, but also there was no answer and again the door was locked.

“Well, too bad,” Trace said. “My only hope was that we’d luck out and find him up here.”

“Yeah, too bad,” Chico said. “Nice little house. Would you like to live in the country, Trace?”

“After all the bugs and mice move out,” Trace said.

“Stupid. That’s part of the charm of the country.”

“If it’s so charming, why did you threaten to kill the condo manager that time you discovered a mouse in the apartment?”

“That was different. That was a surly city mouse. Out here the mice are right out of Walt Disney. They sing you to sleep at night,” Chico said.

“Well, that might be a welcome change,” Trace said. “Someone pleasant to share my bedroom. It beats having two snoring Orientals in the next room.”

“Aaaaah, you lack the romantic spirit, Trace.”

“I have an excess of the romantic spirit. That’s why I hate sleeping alone,” he said.

Chico walked away from him back toward the front of the house. When he finally caught up with her, she was standing by the front door, wearing the evil smile he had come to know and distrust.

“Why are you smirking?”

“Come here, dummy,” she said.

He stood alongside her by the door and she said, “If you were a housekey, where would you hide?”

Trace said, “Under the doormat.”

“There is no doormat.”

“In the milkbox, then,” he said.

“Ditto the milk box.”

“All right, no milk box. Then over the door. Definitely over the door.”

“Reach up there and see for yourself,” she said.

He ran his hand along the top of the door frame.

No key.

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever had me do,” he said. “All I got were dirty fingers.”

“Your whole thinking is rooted in the past,” she said. “Today people don’t keep keys under the mat or over the door.”

“Where do they keep them?” he asked.

“They keep them in little artificial rocks.
Voilà
.”

She pulled her hand from behind her back. It held a gray stone just like the other gray stones that bordered some of the bushes that grew in front of the house. She turned the stone over in her mind. Underneath it was a thin circle of fiberglass, mounted at one end by a screw that was embedded in the stone.

She slid the fiberglass plate back to reveal a house key.

“Pretty smart,” Trace said.

“Thank you.” She handed him the key. “Go ahead. You break in. If neighbors call the cops, I don’t want to be involved.”

“You think you’re so smart about the law?” Trace said. “You’ll still be an accomplice.”

“I’ll claim you abducted me. I was just at a little convention and you made me come with you. You said if I didn’t come with you, you’d take it out on poor Mr. Nishimoto.”

Trace pushed the front door open and called inside, “Anybody to home?”

There was no answer.

“Yoohoo. It’s the Welcome Wagon. Anybody to home?”

“Nobody’s to home,” he told Chico as they went inside.

The front door opened directly into a small living room, which was easily the messiest room Trace had ever seen. Newspapers were strewn everywhere. Half-filled coffeecups sat on end tables, corroding. A single ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts. Dust balls were clumped in the corners, the couch cushions were askew; the rear windows through which the afternoon sun shone dimly looked as if they had never been washed.

“Take a good look, Trace,” Chico said. “This is how you’ll be living if I ever decide to move out.”

“Not bloody likely,” he said. “I’ll get me another neat roommate.”

“Dog,” she said.

To the right of the living room were two small bedrooms; the door to the left opened into a large eat-in kitchen, with a bathroom in the far corner.

The kitchen was just as dirty as the living room. Dishes were piled in the sink and on the table. Pots on the stove looked as if they had been used repeatedly but never washed.

Chico took a sponge, wet it under the faucet, and began wiping as she walked around the room.

Trace went back to the living room. Behind him, he heard Chico grumbling that there wasn’t much food in the house. Then she poked her head into the doorway between the rooms.

“Are you getting hungry?” she asked.

“Are you hungry again?”

“I haven’t eaten since…”

“Since lunch. Two hours ago. Don’t you ever stop?” he asked.

“Maybe just a nibble. Think he’d mind if I cooked up something?”

“No. What the hell. We’re looking for him. If he shows up, he’ll have more to talk about than the fact that you killed off his last can of pork and beans.”

“Good thinking, Trace.”

Trace looked through the dirty rear windows out over the land. He saw the small utility shed to the left and then the trees growing, from wherever the seeds fell, over the property. There were no fences and no indication where this property stopped and the next owner’s land began.

The only two houses visible were widely separated and at least five hundred yards away.

Trace thought the living room looked like a roach motel, only not so neat. There could have been a body buried under all those newspapers, for all he knew.