Sleep with the Fishes (15 page)

Like most
hospitals, Methodist treated visitors like weasels seeking admission to a henhouse. First they confiscated his massive cooler. Then they tersely explained that each patient is allowed only two visitors, and that as the two neighbors who ferried Debbie to the hospital were still upstairs, Price wouldn’t be allowed up to the ward. When he told them he was the expectant father, they told him to prove it. And so it was that Trooper Price, without a wallet, bolted past the desk and up the stairs, where he proceeded to get lost, then found—by the security guards. After a short tussle, they said they’d escort him to the maternity ward and have the mother or someone else there identify him. But the neighbors had left without returning their passes to the front desk, and the mother was in the process of giving birth. In a subsequent argument and another tussle, Price’s windbreaker was torn open. His bowling shirt was exposed, along with his name embroidered on the breast pocket. Security supposed that would suffice.

As if his little visit to Captain Reuster hadn’t been abusive enough. It was at the captain’s house, after the presentation of the tape he had grabbed from his VCR and an iced carp, that Price had heard the news he was an imminent father. Reuster had driven him down to Methodist, tootling his kooky nasal laugh all the way. He’d chalked up Price’s bizarre presentation of the fish to the frazzled nerves of an expectant father compounded by posttraumatic shock from his bullet wound. Condescendingly, Reuster had given the brooding, bloodshot Price another week off to recover.

Twins. Twin girls. Price had two daughters. Was he happy about it? He didn’t know. Boys were what he wanted, of course. That and the reward of $95,000. With two kids he could use it more than ever.

Price hadn’t smoked since he left the army, but he bought half a pack of generic cigarettes for two bucks from a passing custodian. He stepped out into the parking lot and started making his way through a couple as he paced. It seemed the thing to do.

That Bifulco was a sharp cookie, sticking him with that carp. But what about the video? It had to be that jackass from the Five Star Diner who drove the sports car. Did he pull a switch on Price? Was he part of Bifulco’s gang?

Well, the point was, Price still knew what he knew about Sid, and that had to carry some weight. Damn straight. If he wanted to, he could make waves for a parolee like Bifulco, which is exactly what Sid wouldn’t want. Shit, even an accusatory letter to the parole board could put a bird like that back in the cage. Price might even be able to sic the local law on it, even the FBI. There would be reason enough to think Fest had been headed for Bifulco, and with Sid’s record, reason enough to expect that there might be a deadly confrontation. A close look at the truck and a little forensic work along the driveway might even turn up hard evidence.

Price stomped on his smoke and went back inside. He snuck a look in on Debbie. She was fast out, mouth partially open, a snore in the making, and gaunt like she’d just had the flu. Even still, that red hair and all those freckles warmed a spot in Price’s heart. She was a good wife, he thought, and she’d doubtless be a better mother. How long would it be before they could fool around? Just like on their first anniversary, he reckoned they might beeline for the Buck ’n’ Doe on Route 32. For old time’s sake. Price was particularly fond of that motel.

Collecting his hefty cooler from the leery admissions desk, Price proceeded to roust a sleeping taxi driver parked in the hospital driveway.

“You are, of course, the local pornography expert, aren’t you?” Omer might as well have said Chik was the world’s best chef.

Casting a sly and jaunty look around his domain, Chik warmed Omer with a grin. “You might say that.”

Omer drew a little closer over the counter. “I’d even go so far as to guess that you’re up on all the latest tapes too. Know all the stars, all their ‘peculiarities.’ Am I right?”

“You might say that.” Chik twirled his spatula.

“Might you even know of a pregnant redheaded woman?”

Chik’s gaze stuck to the end of his spatula. The toothpick in his teeth waggled uneasily beneath his mustache.

“You see, by accident, I got hold of a certain piece of cinema with this redheaded woman. Dressed up like a cowboy—in chaps and little else—she ropes a cow that turns out to be a bull, if you get what I mean.”

“Say, what is this?” Chik felt some kind of shakedown coming on. “How’d you get hold of that tape?”

“I’ll be quite frank with you, Mr. Chik. I’m working on a long shot here. I’m not making any trouble for you. In fact, here’s fifty dollars for all the help you’ve been. Go on, take it, you’ve earned it.”

Chik made the bill disappear.

In the corner booth, Phennel Rowe had finished her daily Ovaltine. She had her hip boots on, and there was a bucket and shovel in the backseat of her ’59 Chrysler Imperial just outside. She waved a Gideon Bible at Chik as her way of signaling for the check. He processed her fifty cents and escorted her out to her car. The doors to the thing were heavy as casket lids, and Phennel had one hell of a time getting them open by herself. As Chik held the driver’s door for her, she slipped a finger in his shirt pocket and pulled his face down to hers. Big wet eyes ogled his curious beady peepers.

“Mr. Chik, don’t ask how I know, but there’s somethin’ fearful goin’ on around here. Reverend Jim Chattanooga and I will pray for you.”

Phennel lifted her fingers out of his pocket and promptly eased sidesaddle into her car. She swung her legs in and Chik closed the door. A customary wave good-bye was replaced by a poke in his direction with the Gideon Bible.

When Chik stepped back into the Five Star, he rang up Omer’s fifty cents’ worth of tea on the register. “You’re not going to make any trouble? For her? For me?”

“Let’s put it this way.” Omer smiled. “If you don’t tell me who she is, I will make trouble. I’ll even make it easy for you. Is her name Price?”

Chik nodded, wide-eyed.

“Married to a trooper?”

Chik nodded again.

“And can I assume he doesn’t know about this tape? Possibly others?”

“Damn, how do you know so much, Mr. Phillips?”

Omer reflected on the wedding photo from Price’s living room. “Observation, Mr. Chik, close attention to detail.”

Lachfurst stumbled
from the bedroom and flung open the front door to Ballard Cabin.

“First it was a small squirrel slipping in the window and biting my nostril.” Lachfurst growled like a bear fresh from his den. “Then it was people creeping into the room futzing with videotape equipment. Now it’s some ingrate banging on the door. Jumpin’ Jehovah’s Fat! Can’t a man get some shut-eye?”

“Where’s Bifulco?” Price sneered, dropping the cooler on the porch.

“How the dickens should I know! Come back later!” Lachfurst no sooner slammed the door than Price started pounding again.

The door opened slowly. Warden Lachfurst tugged the sash of Sid’s red satin bathrobe. He smoothed back his scalp and adjusted his specs. Shoving open the screen door, he stepped out onto the porch. He squared his stance, folded his arms, and flashed his specs up into Price’s eyes. Lachfurst lowered his voice.

“What I think we have here, friend, is a bona fide misunderstanding. You want to talk to Mr. Bifulco, isn’t that right?”

Price poked his chin defiantly at Lachfurst, but before he could say anything, the Warden continued.

“Then why, friend, do you keep trying to talk to me? I told you he wasn’t here, didn’t I? And yet you banged on that door again. I must assume, then, that you have something to say to me, is that right? Well, say your piece and then just get the hell out of here. Do we understand each other?”

“His car is right over there, so don’t tell me he’s not around here somewhere.” Price squinted, clenching his jaw. “Now look, buster, I wanna know where Bifulco is, and I wanna know now, see? I’m not afraid of your type. I know how to deal with sleaze like you.”

Lachfurst glanced at Sid’s LTD and the girl in Russ’s Dodge rubbing her eyes. He refolded his arms.

“Look, sonny, I don’t know where Sid is, and I don’t know where you come off with this ‘sleaze’ business. You don’t know me from a sober Sunday! If that cooler’s for Bifulco, just put it on the porch and get your silly ass offa this property—pronto.”

“Bifulco can have his ‘fish’ back. Some joke.” Price brandished a finger and poked Lachfurst in the solar plexus. “But Johnny Fest is no joke. Just tell him that. Just tell him Johnny Fest is going to come back to haunt him.”

Lachfurst had heard about Fest’s escape and, in fact, that was part of the reason he’d chosen to visit Sid when he did. All he really knew about Johnny’s physical appearance, though, was that he was big, tough, and armed. He gave Price the once-over.

A huge pistol bulged at his waist. Initiative takes the day.

Lachfurst’s left hook glanced off “Fest’s” chin, but his right was blocked by Fest’s left. The porch railing cracked and the two crashed into the daffodils, mulch and buttery petals flying with each chopping blow. The Warden punched at Fest’s midsection. Price kicked and elbowed the “gangster.” Hands under chins, fists in guts, arms around necks, the two rolled in the wet topsoil. Lachfurst grabbed for the gun, got hold of the barrel, and yanked it from the desperado’s torn windbreaker.

Price grabbed the butt and snatched it back. Lachfurst pushed away, panting and muddy, and stood with his back up against the shingles of Ballard Cabin. Price’s shaky hands targeted the barrel at the Warden’s head.

Somewhere behind Lachfurst’s specs, his pupils dilated in anticipation. Not anticipation of death or gunfire, but of what would happen when Penelope swung her shovel.

A resounding tympanic B-flat scrambled Price’s gray matter. His world buzzed, twirling fuzzily about him, a reality composed of houseflies. It wasn’t so much painful as paralyzing, loud, and indistinct. He didn’t feel the mud that pushed into his face when he fell forward.

“Bully, my girl, bully!” Lachfurst snatched the .45 automatic from the ground. Wiping mud from his forearms and spitting more from his lips, he put the safety catch on the gun and popped out the clip.

Penelope stood with the shovel right where she had been when the flat of the spade had struck Price’s head.

“Feh. Clip is empty! A tiger with no teeth!” Lachfurst snapped the clip back in place and tucked the .45 under the sash of his borrowed bathrobe.

“Who is he?” Penelope asked breathlessly.

“The man you just apprehended, my girl”—Lachfurst took the shovel from her hands and threw it aside—“is a desperate fugitive bent on murder: Johnny Fest. I am the honorable Warden Hillary Lachfurst, friend and mentor of the new, improved Sid Bifulco, squire and angler.”

“Oh. Is he, like, dead? I never, y’know, hit anybody—like that—with a shovel.”

“Let’s find out.” Lachfurst stretched out a foot and rolled Price over.

Blood stirred in Price’s brain. He awoke suddenly, rolled away from Lachfurst, and snapped to wobbly legs. Mud blackened his face. Soil plopped off his arms. He blinked hard, gasping.

“O.K., fellah, it’ll do you no good now, no good at all.” Lachfurst pointed an instructional finger. Price backed slowly away.

“Better turn yourself in, Johnny. The police’ll be here any minute. There’s no use running off.”

Price shook his noggin and put a hand to the back of his head. He winced savagely.

“You got a nasty bump there, Fest. Maybe a concussion. Your chest is bleeding too. Better get you to the prison hospital, patch you up….” Lachfursttook another step toward the fugitive.

“Prison? Hospital? F-Fest…I’m not, I’m not…”

“Whoever you are, you’re going to prison, son. Now come on, let’s get you in handcuffs or something….”

Price bolted, tripping and crashing into the woods.

Clearly exhausted, Lachfurst held his ground, a fatherly, outstretched hand still extended. But he let the hand drop and turned to Penelope.

“There are some people who just refuse help. I guess we’ll have to call in the authorities to round him up.”

“Hey,” Penelope began, giving Lachfurst a foxy eye, “don’t I know you? Aren’t you the guy who stopped in at the Duck Pond last year in the fall?”

Lachfurst’s eyebrows jumped and he adjusted his specs.

“Duck Pond?”

Penelope put one hand on her hip, the other held a finger out at Lachfurst.

“Yeah, and you’d just come from a meeting, an annual conference or something—of school principals, in Scranton.”

“Hm, doesn’t, uh, sound likely…” Lachfurst was suddenly busy brushing off his robe.

“Sure, and after a few drinks, you started telling me that as a principal of a girls’ school, you had to, like, discipline the girls? Don’t tell me you don’t remember.” Penelope folded her arms over her ample chest.

Lachfurst was confronted by her pouting grin and searching eye. He straightened his lapels, adjusted his specs, and gave Penelope the once-over, as if it were the first time he’d really taken a close look at her. He cleared his throat.

“Ah yes. Yes. I seem to remember that we discussed discipline.”

Penelope’s grin twisted wickedly, and Lachfurst brought a soiled satin arm around her shoulder, guiding her to the cabin.

“Yes, of course I remember, my child. And as I recall, you had been skipping class.”

“Nice place you got here, Smonig,” Sid said with what little sincerity he could muster. He was giving the place the once-over while Russ hooked up the VCR to his 13-inch black-and-white TV. Sid winced at the tiny kitchenette and warped, water-stained ceiling, strolled past a nicely mounted brown trout, and approached Russ’s fly-tying bench. His eye latched onto a framed photo on the wall. Sid cleared his throat.

“Russ?”

“Yeah?” Russ was busy trying to plug the VCR into an already crowded extension cord.

“Who’s this in the photo?”

Russ glanced up and paled slightly.

“That’s me. And my wife.”

“Your wife?”

“She’s dead.”

“No shit?”

“Car crash.”

“Jeez, sorry to hear that.” Sid turned away from the photo and stuck the SUPER*PROCAM tape in the VCR, calculating eyes avoiding Russ. “You used to have a beard?”

“Yeah.” Russ pushed a button to rewind the tape. “That was a long time ago.”

Sid eyed a hatchet that lay nearby on the kitchen counter.

“In Hartford?”

“Yes.” Russ looked quizzically at Sid as he pushed the
PLAY
button. “Who told you that?”

Sid shrugged. “A lucky guess.”

The TV was turned up loud, and Big Bob’s voice blared from the speaker, “Holy bejesus, Russ!” followed by Little Bob saying “Oh boy, oh boy!”

Russ took a step toward Sid, and his voice trembled.

“You…you know something, don’t you? It wasn’t an accident, was it?”

Sid’s dark eyes were on the hatchet. He had a couple of options at his disposal.

“You wanna know who killed her, is that it?”

The TV blared: “Watch it, Little Bob, Russ is gonna faint!” followed by “He’s too heavy!” and a dull thud.

Russ’s jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

“And you wanna know why, too, am I right?” Sid walked past Russ to the VCR and pushed
EJECT
. He had Russ figured two ways. One way, Russ didn’t know Sid was involved, but it was only a matter of time before he started to add up the steering boxes and mobsters so that they equaled “Sleep.” Who knows, he might even remember what Sid looked like standing in the glow of the burning car. So Sid figured the best thing was to take charge of the situation, to put a positive spin on what and how Russ learned.

Figuring Russ another way, it could be that he already knew Sid was involved, in which case Sid should find out Russ’s motives for keeping quiet, however sinister. Sid decided he’d better stay near the hatchet, just in case.

What with the tape rescued, he had decided Russ was either primed for satisfaction, caught off guard, or both, any or all of which played to Sid’s benefit. Sid held up the tape.

“It was this guy.”

“Who?”

“The guy you ran down—he had rigged your wife’s car. And I lied. His name wasn’t Spaghetti. His name was Fest, and he was coming after me. You killed him, you did me a favor.” Sid stared into Russ’s eyes a moment and flashed a smile. “But I didn’t want to owe you one, I wanted you to owe me one for helping you get rid of the body.” Sid picked up a newspaper and matches that were laying next to the woodstove.

“You’re telling me this man Fest was…that he…” Russ ran a hand through his hair.

Sid was nodding solemnly, heading for the front door.

“And I killed him.” Russ steadied himself with a hand on the wall. “I killed the guy who killed Sandra?” He felt like smiling. Or crying. The awakening from a white-knuckle nightmare, where passing realities sideswiped in bursts of sparks, left him groping in the dark for his vanquished burden. He wanted to hold it for a second longer and then let it go.

“That trick with the steering box, that I did with your truck to make it look like it failed? It was Fest that showed it to me. Same thing done to your wife’s car. C’mon, let’s step outside and burn this tape.”

Sid pulled open the door.

They had company.

“Gimme the tape!” Price, face smeared with mud like a Navy SEAL on maneuvers, was squeezing Jenny around the throat with one arm. His other hand held a fish-cleaning knife. Behind him in the driveway stood the Bobs and Lloyd, cringing next to Big Bob’s Bronco.

“Sid, just give him the tape,” Little Bob implored.

Russ staggered to the doorway, and Sid pursed his lips, shifty eyes taking in the new situation and betraying his reluctance.

“I heard it. I heard you play the tape.” Price twitched, blinking hard. “Now give it to me.” He coughed, pressing the knife to Jenny’s throat.

“Sid,” Jenny hissed, flapping her yellow-slickered arms. “Give him th’damn tape, will ya please?”

“So your teacher tells me you’ve been skipping class, is this true, Penelope?” Warden Lachfurst had washed up and changed into Sid’s quilted blue satin bathrobe. He brandished the small end of a fly rod.

“Maybe,” Penelope said defiantly from the couch where she was perched. She’d put on one of Sid’s white shirts, wrapped a dark blue plaid towel around her waist for a skirt, pulled on long white tennis socks, and put her hair in twin ponytails. It was just such lascivious encounters that had ushered her into doing tape in the first place.

“You know, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to talk about your behavior.” Lachfurst pointed his swagger stick at her. “And frankly, I wonder what we’re going to do about you.”

Lachfurst noticed muffled commotion outside, heard an outboard motor start, and then heard glass break, none of which drew his attention away from Penelope.

“Principal Lachfurst, what do you care whether I go to class? Huh? It’s not like I’m your daughter or anything.” Penelope crossed her legs.

“I care, Penelope, because I’m your principal, because your parents have entrusted me to take care of you, as if you were my own daughter.” Some excited shouting, then several car doors slamming erupted in the distance. Penelope recrossed her legs, less conscious of the ruckus outside than her regret at not having a camcorder handy.

“So what are you gonna do about it? Send me to my room? Make me go to bed without supper?” She coyly bit a knuckle and looked sideways at the principal.