Edited by, p.19
Edited By, page 19
Instead, he stared back at the Cuban girl, and waited for the silence to end.
“Well look. I don’t want to get into this over the phone, bubba, so how about we meet up after your shift, somewhere we can talk.”
The girl looked away and Deacon closed his eyes, focused on the not-quite dark, the afterimages swimming there like phosphorescent fish.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, finally, “whatever,” imagined the cautious edges of Hammond’s smile slinking back. “I’m here until six, unless Wendel’s late again.” And of course, the first bar he named was okay with the cop, and certainly, six-thirty was perfectly fine, calculated concessions now that any pretense at resistance had been put down.
Deacon set the receiver back in its cradle, and when he opened his eyes the girl was gone.
He wanted more than the beer he’d nursed since six thirty-five, wanted more than anything else, even the amber burn of the scotch and crystal clarity of the vodka lined up pretty behind the bar, to just get up and walk out. Almost half an hour and no sign of Hammond, and he was still sitting in the smoky gloom, obedient, sober. He sipped at his flat beer and watched the glowing Budweiser clock over the door, tiny Clydesdales poised forever in mid trot, and promised himself that at seven he was out of there.
Just what exactly is it that’s got you so fucking spooked anyway, Deke? the purling, sexless voice inside his head asked again, something he pictured from a cartoon, angel-white wings and a barracuda grin perched on his shoulder. A little goo and a couple of ’shrooms? Afraid whatever chewed up poor ol’ Mr. Grambs and sprayed him back out is gonna come lookin’ for you? Deacon watched the clock and the door, and concentrated on tearing his cocktail napkin into soggy confetti.
Think the boogeyman wants your balls, too, Deke?
And the door opened, still so much brighter out there, and for a moment the street sounds were louder than the jukebox disco, for a moment Hammond stood framed in the fading day, silhouetted absurdly like some Hollywood bad ass. Then the door eased itself so slowly shut behind him, and Deacon was blinking past the light trapped inside his eyes, the detective moving through the murmuring happy-hour crowd towards the corner booth.
“I’m late,” he said, like Deacon wouldn’t have noticed on his own. And the waitress, swooping in like a harpy with a tray and a soppy bar rag; Hammond pointed at Deacon’s almost empty mug, held up two fingers for her to see. She took the mug away, left Deacon staring at the ring of condensation on the table between them, the wet rim raised around something scratched into the wood.
“Look, before you even say a word, I gotta apologize for dragging you up there the other day,” and he fished the green pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket, tapped it hard against his wrist, and a single filtered-tip slid smoothly out; the Kools made Deacon think of burning cough drops, and he wondered if there was a word for that, for being reminded of an odor you’d never actually smelled.
“Sick fuckin’ shit, Deke, but I just wanted you to see it, you know. I needed you to be there, stand there and—”
“It’s all right,” but he didn’t look up, didn’t dare meet Hammond’s eyes when he said that. “I’m all right.”
“Yeah, well, you had me worried, bubba. On the phone, you had me thinking I’d scared you off.” And before Deacon could respond, the big kraft envelope was lying in front of him, nothing on the outside but a coffee stain, and he really didn’t want to know what might be inside.
“There’s some stuff in there I need you to take a look at, Deke,” and then the waitress was back with their beers, set them roughly down and was gone again. “Just tell me if you get anything. And then we’ll talk.”
Deacon picked up the envelope, carefully folded back the brass-colored clasps, reached inside and pulled out several sheets of heavy paper; a child’s drawings in colored pencils, one done in the sort of pastels that smear and stain your fingers if you touch the finished page. Stiffer, slick paper underneath, and he knew without looking that those would be glossy black and whites. He put it all back on the table, took a long swallow from the fresh beer, dry cold, and Hammond sipped at his own, watching every move.
“Just the drawings for now,” the detective said, “and then we’ll go over the photographs, afterwards.”
Deacon studied each piece, each as unremarkable as the last, depthless stick figures outside stick houses, an animal that might have been a horse or a brown dragon, another that he was pretty sure was supposed to be a giraffe. Simple green and blue and red, violet, and everything traced in heavy black lines that bracketed the primaries. The last was actually a page torn from a coloring book, and he recognized Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore. Lots of messy smudges, as if someone had handled these with dirty hands, but even the smudges held inside dark borders.
He chose the giraffe, random pick or maybe it seemed like the one that must have taken the most work, the most time, each brown spot divided from yellow with that bold black. Deacon followed the outlining with his fingertips and waited for the gentle vertigo, for the taste like licorice, and the first twinge of the migraine that would swell and dog him for days. Index finger past indistinct shoulders and up the long neck, and here was another of the smudges, hovering to the left of the giraffe’s head.
Glasses clinked loud behind the bar, and stitched into the din of voices, an old Rolling Stones song blaring from the jukebox, people talking louder to be heard. Deacon tried to shut it out, tried to focus on the rough grain of the paper beneath the whorl of his fingerprint. He lingered a moment longer on the head, goblin parody of a giraffe’s head, both eyes on the same side and the knobby little horns looking more like a television antenna, rabbit ears. Long tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth.
But like sitting on the john, five days and no BM, or the maddening name or word or thought just out of reach, tip of your tongue but nothing, grasping at shadows at the corner of your vision. Nothing.
Almost ten minutes spent staring before, finally, “I’m sorry,” although Deacon didn’t feel sorry, felt vague relief and reluctant embarrassment, a need to escape the smell of stale beer and the detective’s smoke, the pounding mesh of conversation and rock and roll. To escape this thing that was being asked and the memories of that eighth-floor abattoir, fungus and copper, the growing certainty that Thursday morning had only been window dressing.
“Shit,” and Hammond crushed out his cigarette, gray wisp curling from the ashtray, and drained his glass. “Then that’s all she wrote, hmmm?”
“Maybe if I knew something, man, if I knew anything, maybe then—”
“Maybe then you could just tell me what I want to hear, right, Deke? Maybe then you could be wrong, and I’d go the fuck away, get out of your face and let you get back to the booze, right?”
Deacon didn’t answer, stared at the giraffe, the smudge carefully bordered. Waited for Hammond to be finished.
“Look, you think I like getting messed up in all this hocus-pocus? Christ, Deacon, you know how much flak I caught over the Broder case? And if IA finds out I had you up there the other day, my ass is gonna sizzle for a month.”
The waitress rushed past, balancing empty mugs and cocktail glasses, stopped long enough to ask them if there’d be anything else.
“No ma’am, I think we’re finished,” cold, slamming finality in the statement, words like fishhooks, and Hammond took out his wallet, laid down money for them both, and a fat tip, besides.
Deacon returned the giraffe drawing to the stack, pulled the photos from underneath. On top, surprise, not crime-scene noir, but a color portrait of a small girl, seven or maybe eight, cheesy K-Mart pose in front of a flat winter backdrop. Red and spruce-green dress, and she’d smiled for the camera, wide and gap-toothed, plastic holly in her gingery hair.
“Did she do the drawings?”
“Yeah, she did them.”
“And Grambs, he was into children.”
“Yeah, Kreskin, Mr. Freddie Grambs was a grade-A, first-class sicko,” exhaustion, exasperation thinning his voice, sharpening its edges. “And he liked to take dirty pictures of little girls. Made a lot of money selling them to other sickos.”
“And she’s missing, isn’t she.” Or dead, and he knew, more than ever, that he didn’t want any part of this, but the hot barbs, Hammond’s twisting guilt needles, were in his flesh now. Flensing resolve, backing him into submission, lightless cul-de-sac, and the barracuda jaws laughed and yammered, So close, Deke, so goddamned close, and you don’t even give a shit, just too fucking yellow to say no.
The detective said nothing out loud, nodded slowly.
Deacon laid the smiling child on top of the giraffe, her giraffe, and there was the thing from behind the couch, the methodical arrangement of bone and feather, and the corpulent fungi, spongy organs from ruptured floorboards, but, something’s different, what? And yes, the next shot, wider angle this time, and it wasn’t Grambs’ apartment at all, someplace smaller, seedier, one room and no evidence of a window. Ruined walls that might have been papered, pinstripe ghosts of darker and lighter grays within the splatter.
“Those were taken the day before, over in Midtown,” a pause, then “Grambs had a partner.”
Deacon didn’t look at the lump inside the ring, been there, seen that shit. He rubbed his smokesore eyes, began to put the drawings, the photos, back the way he’d found them, stuffing it all back into the envelope.
“Look, bubba, do you see now? Do you see why I’m going outside the department for help on this?” Hammond was speaking quietly, calmly measuring his words, his tone, making Deacon feel like a fish straining at the end of an invisible line, the big one, easy does it, a little slack, don’t let him get away.
“Two of these, and we’re stumping around with our thumbs up our butts. Forensics has been over both scenes with tweezers and goddamned microscopes, and they don’t have a fuckin’ clue what happened to those SOBs.”
Deacon closed his eyes, smoothing the envelope flat with the palms of both hands.
“What do you want from me?” he asked, and that was the white flag, wasn’t it, “I tried, honestly. I tried, and I didn’t get anything.”
“Those things on the floor, the circles, is that some sort of cult symbol or what?”
“I don’t have any idea,” and the basement smell, musty cloy, rushed suddenly back at him. “Sometimes mushrooms grow like that, you know, toadstools, in the woods. Fairy rings.”
Hammond sighed, rapped the table once with his knuckles.
“Well, hang onto the pictures, Deke. Keep trying. Maybe something will come to you later.”
Deacon opened his eyes and Hammond was standing now, straightening his tie, rubbing at wrinkles in his white shirt.
“You think she might still be alive, don’t you, the girl who did the drawings.”
“Hell, bubba, I can hope, right?” and he laid a twenty and a crumpled ten on the table. “Eat something, okay. Call if you come up with anything.”
After the detective had gone, Deacon signaled the waitress, ordered a pitcher and a double shot of oily bar-brand vodka. When she brought the drinks, he gave her the ten, pretty much wasted the bill, crammed his change and the twenty into the front pocket of his jeans. And then he sat for a while, breathing other people’s cigarettes, and watched the yellow-brown envelope.
Deacon woke up, dragged slowly, by degrees, back to fuzzy consciousness by the noise next door, men shouting and the hot smack of flesh against flesh. He’d dozed off sitting on the old army hospital bed, his back against the cast-iron headboard and wall, sheetrock washed the blue of swimming-pool concrete. Rumpled blanket and the lost girl’s art scattered carelessly across his lap like fallen leaves. His bladder ached and his back hurt, a dull drum between his shoulder blades, neck stiff and slime on his lips, his stubbled chin, coagulating slug trail of his own saliva. Dark outside, eleven-fourteen by the clock radio on the floor, still playing public radio jazz.
Through the thin plasterboard, androgynous weeping, and “You suck dick like a woman, sissy,” the man said. “You suck dick just like a goddamned lousy fish.” Deacon brushed the drawings aside and stood, waited out the vertigo before risking the long walk across the room to the toilet.
His urine was dark, the color of apple juice or rum, and after he’d flushed it away, he went back to sit on the squeaky edge of the bed. His mouth still tasted like stale beer and the greasy fried egg and sausage sandwich he’d picked up on his way home from the bar, keeping promises. He briefly considered another trip to the bathroom to brush his teeth, but picked up the envelope, instead, and dumped its contents across the foot of the bed.
And there was the girl, Sarah M. in black felt tip on the back, and so she had a name, and a birthday beneath, 2/23/87, so it was eight after all.
“Sarah,” he said, and turned the Kodak paper back over. Next door, something hit the wall and shattered, and the crying faded down to ragged sobs. A door slammed, and Deacon listened to heavy footsteps pass his door.
And then she came, no effort, swept inside him in a choking swirl of orange peels and dirty river water, and Deacon dug his fingers into the mattress, gripping cotton-swathed springs like a lover’s flesh,
and Sarah’s on another bed, green pencil in her hand making grass for a giraffe that floats in construction-paper nothingness until she lays her streaky lawn beneath its bulbous feet
the scalding chills and nausea, the sinking, folding himself into her, into himself; Deacon held onto the bedding, held onto her.
the pencil scratches the paper like a claw, and something moves, flutters past her face and she smiles, more teeth than in the portrait, swats it playfully away, but it’s right back, a whirlwind around her head, whipping curls and shimmering strands of blackness, glimpses of mockingbird-gray wings and a dry clatter like jackstraws falling
“Oh,” that single, empty syllable drawn out of him again and again, “Oh,” and Deacon knew better, knew to stay put and ride it out, but the pain at the base of his skull leapfrogged past migraine, past anything he’d ever imagined, and he tried to stand, panic and legs like taffy, blind to everything now but Sarah, Sarah M. and her goddamned mutant giraffe and the whirlwind racing itself around her red hair.
As he fell, feet tangling in lamp cord and old magazines, as gravity sucked him towards the floor, his perspective shifted, falling past the girl, past the edge of her bed and its gaudy pink Barbie bedspread
and the whirling thing settles on her shoulder, snuggles itself into her hair, and from this fleeting vantage the blur solidifies, light curdling into substance,
as Deacon landed hard, hard enough to knock the wind out of him, leave him gasping, tasting blood,
wings spread wide, kite-boned and iridescent butterfly scales, gristle twigs,
clinging madly to the floor, sensing there was farther to fall. He opened his mouth to scream and felt the warm rise, the indisputable acid gush from his lips,
leering jaws, lipless, eyes like indigo berries sunk deep in puckered skin, and it sees him, then hides its impossible face in her hair.
Sarah laughs. And the sunlight through her window, the tempera sky, goes out, and here it is cold, slime dank, and beneath his fingers, bare stone. A dark past the simple absence of light, can’t see, but he can hear, metal clink and scrape and her breath, labored; the sweet-sour ammonia stink of piss, shitty-rich pungence, mold. Distant traffic and the steady drip of water from somewhere high overhead. Wet hiss, air drawn hard across clenched teeth, or escaping steam, and
she was gone, and nothing left under him but the floor of his own apartment, his face cushioned in cooling vomit and umber shag. He did not open his eyes, already strained painfully wide, but the darkness had begun to pale, thinning itself to a pasty, transparent charcoal as the world faded leisurely in, neat Polaroid trick.
Deacon blinked at the huge and somber dust bunnies massed beneath his bed, an old Schlitz can back there just out of reach. And then the straggling headache caught him, slammed home, and he turned over onto his back and stared helplessly into the electric white sun screwed inside its bug-filled globe, crisped little Icaruses; he knew that feeling, passing too fucking close to something hot enough, black enough, to boil your blood and brains and leave behind a hollow parchment husk.
Deacon Silvey lay very still, hands fisted, and waited for the pain to ease off enough that he could move without puking again or passing out, until the phantom smells faded and finally there was only the vomit reek, the kinder mustiness of his room. And then he crawled the five feet to the telephone and dialed Hammond’s number.
Hammond had sent a car for him, and the two officers had complained about the Olympics while Deacon stared silently out at the lighted, empty streets, at the bright cluster of office towers and high-rise real estate like a talisman against the night sky. If there’d been stars out, they’d been hidden safely behind the soft Dreamsicle-orange curtain, the combined glow of ten thousand sodium-vapor bulbs. The envelope with Sarah M.’s drawings and the photos had ridden on the seat next to him.
Now it sat marooned in the wild clutter of the detective’s desk, concealing the art history textbook he’d spent fifteen minutes rummaging for in cardboard boxes and on the sagging shelves he’d built out of alley-found boards and concrete blocks. Deacon sipped scalding, sugary coffee from a styro-foam cup and waited for Hammond, waited to say words that sounded just as insane no matter how many times he pulled them apart and stuck them back together, polished absurdities, arranged and rearranged in his head like worn and finger-worried Scrabble tiles.
Just show him everything, let him connect the dots for himself. If he can see this on his own—
The office door slammed open, banged loud against the wall, and Hammond seemed pulled through by the slipstream, threaded into the disorder. More than exhaustion on his face, haggard; around his guarded eyes not sleep, but sleep forestalled, sleep purposefully misplaced. The eyes of someone who might not want to sleep ever again. For a moment, Hammond stared at him, as if he hadn’t expected to find Deacon sitting there, anyone else, either; as if he’d been escaping, fleeing into this sanctuary of manila folders and overflowing ashtrays and had encountered an obstacle, had been caught.
