Bag of Bones CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The ducking of the reverberate ?? or, to a greater extent accurately, the way I receive the ringing of the promise ?? was as familiar as the creaks of my ch publicise or the hum of the sr. IBM Selectric. It soak upmed to come from far away at first, because to approach resembling a whistling train coming defeatcast on a crossing.There was no extension in my tycoon or Jos the upstairs ph one and only(a), an old-fashioned rotary-dial, was on a table in the h in all estimateween them ?? in what Jo used to prognosticate no- worldly concerns-land. The temperature forbidden on that brain must establish been at least ninety degrees, just this instant the air still felt cool on my skin afterwards the baron. I was so oiled with sweat that I looked similar a slenderly pot-bellied version of the muscle-boys I whatsoever seasons saw when I was working away. hello?Mike? Did I wake you? Were you sleeping? It was Mattie, plainly a unalike one from last night. This one was nt afraid or even provisionary this one sounded so happy she was al nearly bubbling over. It was almost sure as shooting the Mattie who had attracted Lance Devore.Not sleeping, I verbalise. constitution a puny.Get out I belief you were retired.I thought so, too, I utter, but mayhap I was a minute hasty. Whats going on? You sound over the moon.I just got onward the phone with John Storrow ?? Really? How eagle-eyed had I been on the stake floor, whateverway? I looked at my radiocarpal joint and saw nonhing but a pale circle. It was half(prenominal)-past freckles and skin oclock, as we used to rate apart when we were nippers my watch was cut exhauststairs in the north bedroom, believably lying in a puddle of water from my overturned night-glass. ?? his age, and that he can subpoena the other sonWhoa, I regularise. You lost me. Go game and slow down.She did. Telling the hard news didnt take coherent (it r arely does) Storrow was coming up tomorrow. He would land at County aerodrome and stay at the Lookout leaning Hotel in Castle View. The twain of them would spend most of Fri solar day discussing the episode. Oh, and he constitute a lawyer for you, she said. To go with you to your depo ragion. I mean value hes from Lewiston.It all sounded cheeseparing, but what mattered a lot to a greater extent than the bare occurrences was that Mattie had recovered her get out to fight. Until this morning (if it was still morning the scintillation coming in the winningsdow above the broken air conditioner suggested that if it was, it wouldnt be much longer) I hadnt legitimateized how gloomy the young wo opus in the red sundress and tidy sporty sneakers had been. How far down the road to accept she would lose her kid.This is great. Im so glad, Mattie.And you did it. If you were here, Id give you the biggest kiss you ever had.He told you you could win, didnt he?Yes.And you believe him.Yes Then her voice dropped a puny. He wasnt exactly exci te when I told him Id had you over to dinner last night, though.No, I said. I didnt speak up he would be.I told him we ate in the yard and he said we that had to be inside together for sixty seconds to start the gossip.Id take hes got an insultingly low opinion of Yankee lovin, I said, but of subscriber depict hes from New York.She laughed harder than my little joke warranted, I thought. Out of semi-hysterical relief that she right away had a couple of protectors? Because the whole subject of trip was a warm one for her just at present? Best not to speculate.He didnt seesaw me too hard close to it, but he made it attract that he would if we did it again. When this is over, though, Im having you for a real meal. Well puzzle e realthing you like, just the way you like it.Everything you like, just the way you like it. And she was, by God and Sonny Jesus, entirely unaware that what she was grammatical construction readiness have another meaning ?? I would have bet on i t. I closed my eyes for a moment, smiling. why not smile? Everything she was saying sounded absolutely great, especially erst trance you cleared the confines of Michael Noonans dirty mind. It sounded like we might have the pass judgment fairy-tale ending, if we could reinforcement our courage and hold our prey. And if I could restrain myself from making a pass at a girl young enough to be my daughter . . . outdoor(a) of my dreams, that was. If I couldnt, I in all probability deserved whatsoever I got. merely Kyra wouldnt. She was the hood ornament in all this, designate to go wherever the car took her. If I got any of the wrong ideas, Id do well to remember that.If the judge sends Devore home modify-handed, Ill take you out to Renoir Nights in Portland and debauch you nine courses of French chow, I said. Storrow, too. Ill even spring for the reasoned beagle Im dating on Friday. So whos better than me, huh?No one I love, she said, sounding serious. Ill pay you O.K. for this, Mike. Im down now, but I wont constantly be down. If it takes me the rest of my life, Ill pay you back.Mattie, you dont have to ?? I do, she said with restfully vehemence. I do. And I have to do something else today, too.Whats that? I loved tryout her sound the way she did this morning ?? so happy and free, like a prisoner who has just been parthroughd and let out of jail ?? but already I was face longingly at the door to my office. I couldnt do much more today, Id end up baked like an orchard apple tree if I tried, but I treasured another rascal or ii, at least. Do what you require, both women had said in my dreams. Do what you want.I have to buy Kyra the big teddybear they have at the Castle Rock Wal-Mart, she said. Ill tell her its for being a cracking girl because I cant tell her its for base on balls in the middle of the road when you were coming the other way. incisively not a black one, I said. The words were out of my oral fissure before I knew they were eve n in my soul.Huh? Sounding startled and doubtful.I said bring me back one, I said, the words once again out and down the wire before I even knew they were in that respect.mayhap I will, she said, sounding amused. Then her trace grew serious again. And if I said anything last night that made you unhappy, even for a minute, Im sorry. I neer for the world ?? Dont worry, I said. Im not unhappy. A little abashd, thats all. In fact Id pretty much forgotten about Jos mystery date. A lie, but in what seemed to me to be a good cause.Thats probably for the best. I wont pull through you ?? go on back to work. Its what you want to do, isnt it?I was startled. What mothers you say that?I dont whop, I just . . . She stopped. And I suddenly knew two things What she had been about to say, and that she wouldnt say it. I dreamed about you last night. I dreamed about us together. were going to make love and one of us said Do what you want. Or maybe, I dont know, maybe we both said it. peradven ture sometimes ghosts were alive ?? minds and desires divorced from their bodies, unlocked impulses floating unseen. Ghosts from the id, spooks from low places.Mattie? good-tempered there?Sure, you bet. Do you want me to stay in touch? Or will you hear all you occupy from John Storrow?If you dont stay in touch, Ill be pissed at you. Royally.She laughed. I will, thusly. But not when youre working. Goodbye, Mike. And convey again. So much.I told her goodbye, and then stood there for a moment looking at the old fashioned Bakelite phone handset after she had hung up. Shed call and keep me updated, but not when I was working. How would she know when that was? She just would. As Id known last night that she was lying when she said Jo and the art object with the articulatio cubiti patches on the sleeves of his sportcoat had walked off toward the parking lot. Mattie had been wearing a pair of white shorts and a halter top when she called me, no dress or skirt required today because i t was Wednesday and the library was closed on Wednesday.You dont know any of that. Youre just making it up.But I wasnt. If Id been making it up, I probably would have put her in something a little more suggestive ?? a Merry Widow from Victorias Secret, perhaps.That thought called up another. Do what you want, they had said. Both of them. Do what you want. And that was a line I knew. While on Key Largo Id read an Atlantic Monthly essay on pornography by some feminist. I wasnt sure which one, only that it hadnt been Naomi animate being or Camille Paglia. This woman had been of the conservative stripe, and she had used that phrase. Sally Tisdale, maybe? Or was my mind just hearing echo-distortions of Sara Tidwell? Whoever it had been, shed claimed that do what I want was the basis of dirty word which appealed to women and do what you want was the basis of pornography which appealed to men. Women imagine speaking the former line in sexual situations men imagine having the latter line verbalize to them. And, the put outr went on, when real-world sex goes bad ?? sometimes turning violent, sometimes shaming, sometimes just unsuccessful from the distaff partners commit of view ?? porn is a good deal the unindicted co-conspirator. The man is apt to round on the woman angrily and cry, You wanted me to Quit lying and admit it You wanted me toThe keep openr claimed it was what every man hoped to hear in the bedroom Do what you want. Bite me, sodomize me, exercise between my toes, drink wine out of my navel, give me a hairbrush and put up your ass for me to paddle, it doesnt matter. Do what you want. The door is closed and we are here, but real only you are here, I am just a ordain extension of your fantasies and only you are here. I have no wants of my own, no needs of my own, no taboos. Do what you want to this shadow, this fantasy, this ghost.Id thought the essayist at least fifty per cent full of shit the assumption that a man can find real sexual pleasure only by turning a woman into a kind of jackoff participator says more about the observer than the participants. This lady had had a lot of pious platitude and a fair amount of wit, but underneath she was only saying what Somerset Maugham, Jos old favorite, had had Sadie Thompson say in Rain, a story compose octettey years before men are pigs, filthy, dirty pigs, all of them. But we are not pigs, as a rule, not beasts, or at least not unless we are pushed to the final extremity. And if we are pushed to it, the answer is rarely sex its usually territory. Ive heard feminists argue that to men sex and territory are interchangeable, and that is very far from the truth.I padded back to the office, opened the door, and behind me the telephone rang again. And here was another familiar sensation, back for a return visit after four years that arouse at the telephone, the urge to simply rip it out of the wall and squeeze out it across the room. Why did the whole world have to call whil e I was writing? Why couldnt they just . . . well. . let me do what I wanted?I gave a doubtful laugh and returned to the phone, seeing the rigid handprint on it from my last call.Hello?I said to stay plain while you were with her.Good morning to you, too, Lawyer Storrow.You must be in another time-zone up there, chum. Ive got one-fifteen down here in New York.I had dinner with her, I said. Outside. Its true that I read the little kid a story and helped put her to bed, but ?? I imagine half the town holds youre bopping for each one others brains out by now, and the other half will think it if I have to show up for her in court. But he didnt sound sincerely angry I thought he sounded as though he was having a happy-face day.Can they make you tell whos paying for your services? I asked.At the custody hearing, I mean?Nope.At my deposition on Friday?Christ, no. Durgin would lose all believability as guardian ad litem if he went in that direction. Also, they have reasons to current of air clear of the sex angle. Their focus is on Mattie as neglectful and perhaps abusive. Proving that Mom isnt a nun quit working around the time Kramer vs. Kramer came out in the movie theaters. Nor is that the only problem they have with the issue. He now sounded positively gleeful. Tell me.Max Devore is eighty-five and divorced. Twice divorced, in point of fact. Before awarding custody to a single man of his age, secondary custody has to be taken into consideration. It is, in fact, the single most important issue, other than the allegations of abuse and neglect levelled at the mother.What are those allegations? Do you know?No. Mattie doesnt either, because theyre fabrications. Shes a sweetie, by the way ?? Yeah, she is. ?? and I think shes going to make a great witness. I cant wait to collaborate her in person. Meantime, dont sidetrack me. Were reproofing about secondary custody, right?Right.Devore has a daughter who has been declared mentally incompetent and lives in an inst itution someplace in California ?? Modesto, I think. Not a good bet for custody.It wouldnt seem so.The son, Roger, is . . . I heard a faint fluttering of notebook pages. . . . fifty-four. So hes not exactly a spring chicken, either. Still, there are lots of computerized tomographys who become daddies at that age nowa days its a venturous new world. But Roger is a military mansexual.I thought of Bill doyen saying, Rump-wrangler. Understand theres a lot of that going around out them in California.I thought you said sex doesnt matter.Maybe I should have said hetero sex doesnt matter. In certain states ?? California is one of them homo sex doesnt matter, either . . . or not as much. But this case isnt going to be adjudicated in California. Its going to be adjudicated in Maine, where family are less enlightened about how well two hook up with men ?? hook up with to each other, I mean ?? can climbing a little girl.Roger Devore is married? Okay. I admit it. I now felt a certain horrified glee myself. I was mortified of it ?? Roger Devore was just a guy living his life, and he might not have had much or anything to do with his elderly dads current initiative ?? but I felt it just the same.He and a package designer named Morris Ridding tied the knot in 1996, John said. I found that on the first computer sweep. And if this does wind up in court, I intend to make as much of it as I per outlook can. I dont know how much that will be ?? at this point its impossible to predict ?? but if I get a chance to paint a picture of that splendid-eyed, cheerful little girl increase up with two elderly risibles who probably spend most of their lives in computer chat-rooms speculating about what Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock might have done after the lights were out in officers country . . . well, if I get that chance, Ill take it.It seems a little mean, I said. I heard myself speaking in the tone of a man who wants to be dissuaded, perhaps even laughed at, but that didn t happen.Of course its mean. It feels like swerving up onto the sidewalk to knock over a couple of innocent bystanders. Roger Devore and Morris Ridding dont deal drugs, traffic in little boys, or rob old ladies. But this is custody, and custody does an even better caper than divorce of turning human beings into insects. This one isnt as bad as it could be, but its bad enough because its so naked. Max Devore came up there to his old hometown for one reason and one reason only to buy a kid. That makes me mad.I grinned, imagining a lawyer who looked like Elmer Fudd standing outside of a rabbit-hole marked DEVORE with a shotgun.My message to Devore is going to be very simple the price of the kid just went up. Probably to a escort higher than even he can afford.If it goes to court ?? youve said that a couple of times now. Do you think theres a chance Devore might just drop it and go away?A pretty good one, yeah. Id say an excellent one if he wasnt old and used to acquire his own way. Theres also the query of whether or not hes still groovy enough to know where his best interest lies. Ill try for a clashing with him and his lawyer while Im up there, but so far I havent managed to get past his secretary.Rogette Whitmore?No, I think shes a step gain up the ladder. I havent talked to her yet, either. But I will.Try either Richard Osgood or George Footman, I said. Either of them may be able to put you in touch with Devore or Devores chief counsel.Ill want to talk to the Whitmore woman in any case. Men like Devore tend to grow more and more dependent on their close advisors as they grow older, and she could be a key to getting him to let this go. She could also be a headache for us. She might urge him to fight, possibly because she really thinks he can win and possibly because she wants to watch the fur fly. Also, she might marry him.Marry him?Why not? He could have her sign a pre-nup ?? I could no more introduce that in court than his lawyers could go fishing fo r who learnd Matties lawyer ?? and it would strengthen his chances.John, Ive seen the woman. Shes got to be seventy herself.But shes a potential female player in a custody case involving a little girl, and shes a layer between old man Devore and the married gay couple. We just need to keep it in mind.Okay. I looked at the office door again, but not so longingly. There comes a point when youre done for the day whether you want to be or not, and I thought I had reached that point. Perhaps in the evening . . .The lawyer I got for you is named Romeo Bissonette. He paused. Can that be a real name?Is he from Lewiston?Yes, how did you know?Because in Maine, especially around Lewiston, that can be a real name. Am I supposed to go see him? I didnt want to go see him. It was fifty miles to Lewiston over two-lane roads which would now be crawling with campers and Winnebagos. What I wanted was to go swimming and then take a long nap. A long dreamless nap.You dont need to. Call him and talk to him a little. Hes only a safety net, really ?? hell object if the questioning leaves the happening on the morning of July Fourth. About that incident you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Got it?Yes.Talk to him before, then picture him on Friday at . . . wait . . . its right here . . . The notebook pages fluttered again. sports meeting him at the Route 120 Diner at nine-fifteen. Coffee. Talk a little, get to know each other, maybe flip for the check. Ill be with Mattie, getting as much as I can. We may want to hire a private dick.I love it when you talk dirty.Uh-huh. Im going to see that bills go to your guy Goldacre. Hell send them to your agent, and your agent can ?? No, I said. hear Goldacre to send them directly here. Harolds a Jewish mother. How much is this going to follow me?Seventy-five thousand dollars, minimum, he said with no hesitation at all. With no apology in his voice, either.Dont tell Mattie.All right. Are you having any fun yet, Mike? You know, I sort of am, I said thoughtfully.For seventy-five grand, you should. We said our goodbyes and John hung up.As I put my own phone back into its cradle, it occurred to me that I had lived more in the last five days than I had in the last four years.This time the phone didnt ring and I made it all the way back into the office, but I knew I was definitely done for the day. I sat down at the IBM, hit the RETURN key a couple of times, and was beginning to write myself a next-note at the bottom of the page Id been working on when the phone interrupted me. What a sour little doodad the telephone is, and what little good news we get from it Today had been an exception, though, and I thought I could sign off with a grin. I was working, after all ?? working. explode of me still marvelled that I was school term here at all, breathing easily, my mettle beating steadily in my chest, and not even a twinkle of an anxiety attack on my personal event horizon. I wroteNEXT Drake to Raif ord. boodle on the way at vegetable stand to talk to the guy who runs it, old source, needs a good &038 colorful name. Straw hat. Disneyworld tee-shirt. They talk about Shackleford.I turned the roller until the IBM spat this page out, stuck it on top of the manuscript, and jotted a final note to myself Call Ted Rosencrief about Raiford. Rosencrief was a retired Navy man who lived in Derry. I had employed him as a research assistant on some(prenominal) books, using him on one project to find out how paper was made, what the migratory habits of certain viridity birds were for another, a little bit about the architecture of pyramid inhumation rooms for a third. And its always a little bit I want, never the whole damn thing. As a writer, my motto has always been dont confuse me with the facts. The Arthur Hailey type of fiction is beyond me ?? I cant read it, let all write it. I want to know just enough so I can lie colorfully. Rosie knew that, and we had always worked well together .This time I needed to know a little bit about Floridas Raiford Prison, and what the deathhouse down there is really like. I also needed a little bit on the psychology of serial killers. I thought Rosie would probably be glad to hear from me . . . almost as glad as I was to finally have something to call him about.I picked up the eight double-spaced pages I had written and fanned through them, still astonied at their existence. Had an old IBM typewriter and a Courier type-ball been the secret all on? That was sure enough how it seemed.What had come out was also amazing. Id had ideas during my four-year sabbatical there had been no writers block in that regard. bingle had been really great, the sort of thing which certainly would have become a novel if Id still been able to write novels. Half a dozen to a dozen were of the sort Id kick downstairs pretty good, meaning theyd do in a pinch . . . or if they happened to unhoped-forly grow tall and mysterious overnight, like Jacks be anstalk. Sometimes they do. nearly were glimmers, little what-ifs that came and went like shooting stars while I was driving or walking or just lying in bed at night and waiting to go to sleep.The Red-Shirt Man was a what-if. One day I saw a man in a bright red shirt washing the show windows of the JC Penney store in Derry ?? this was not long before Penneys moved out to the mall. A young man and woman walked under his ladder . . . very bad luck, according to the old superstition. These two didnt know where they were walking, though ?? they were holding hands, drinking deeply of each others eyes, as completely in love as any two twenty-year-olds in the history of the world. The man was tall, and as I watched, the top of his head came within an ace of clipping the window-washers feet. If that had happened, the whole works might have foregone over.The entire incident was history in five seconds. Writing The Red-Shirt Man took five months. Except in truth, the entire book was done in a what-if second. I imagined a collision instead of a near-miss. Everything else followed from there. The writing was just secretarial.The idea I was currently working on wasnt one of Mikes Really Great Ideas (Jos voice carefully made the capitals), but it wasnt a what-if, either. Nor was it much like my old gothic suspense yarns V. C. Andrews with a prick was nowhere in sight this time. But it felt solid, like the real thing, and this morning it had come out as naturally as a breath.Andy Drake was a private investigator in Key Largo. He was forty years old, divorced, the father of a three-year-old girl. At the open he was in the Key West home of a woman named Regina whiting. Mrs. Whiting also had a little girl, hers five years old. Mrs. Whiting was married to an extremely rich developer who did not know what Andy Drake knew that until 1992, Regina Taylor Whiting had been Tiffany Taylor, a costly Miami call-girl.That much I had written before the phone started ringing. Here is wha t I knew beyond that point, the secretarial work Id do over the next several weeks, assuming that my marvellously recovered ability to work held upOne day when Karen Whiting was three, the phone had rung while she and her mother were sitting in the patio hot tub. Regina thought of asking the yard-guy to answer it, then decided to get it herself-their regular man was out with the flu, and she didnt feel genial about asking a stranger for a favor. Cautioning her daughter to sit still, Regina hopped out to answer the phone. When Karen put up a hand to keep from being splashed as her mother left the tub, she dropped the doll she had been bathing. When she dead set(p) to pick it up, her hair became caught in one of the hot tubs powerful intakes. (It was meter reading of a fatal adventure like this that had originally kicked the story off in my mind two or three years before.)The yard-man, some no-name in a khaki shirt sent over by a day-labor outfit, saw what was happening. He raced across the lawn, dove headfirst into the tub, and yanked the child from the bottom, leaving hair and a good chunk of scalp block the jet when he did. Hed give her artificial respiration until she began to breathe again. (This would be a wonderful, suspenseful scene, and I couldnt wait to write it.) He would fend all of the hysterical, relieved mothers offers of recompense, although hed finally give her an address so that her economise could talk to him. Only both the address and his name, John Sanborn, would turn out to be a fake.Two years later the ex-hooker with the respectable second life sees the man who saved her child on the front page of the Miami paper. His name is given as John Shackleford and he has been arrested for the rape-murder of a nine-year-old girl. And, the term goes on, he is suspected in over forty other murders, numerous of the victims children. Have you caught Baseball Cap? one of the reporters would yell at the pack conference. Is John Shackleford Baseb all Cap?Well, I said, going downstairs, they sure think he is.I could hear too many boats out on the lake this afternoon to make nude bathing an option. I pulled on my suit, slung a towel over my shoulders, and started down the path ?? the one which had been lined with eager paper lanterns in my dream ?? to wash off the sweat of my nightmares and my unexpected mornings labors.There are twenty-three railroad-tie steps between Sara and the lake. I had gone down only four or five before the enormity of what had just happened hit me. My mouth began to tremble. The colors of the trees and the sky mixed together as my eyes teared up. A sound began to come out of me ?? a kind of muffled groaning. The strength ran out of my legs and I sat down hard on a railroad tie. For a moment I thought it was over, mostly just a false alarm, and then I began to cry. I stuffed one end of the towel in my mouth during the bastinado of it, afraid that if the boaters on the lake heard the sounds coming ou t of me, theyd think someone up here was being murdered.I cried in grief for the empty years I had spent without Jo, without friends, and without my work. I cried in gratitude because those work-less years seemed to be over. It was too early to tell for sure ?? one swallow doesnt make a summer and eight pages of hard copy dont make a career resuscitation ?? but I thought it really might be so.And I cried out of fear, as well, as we do when some horrible experience is finally over or when some terrible accident has been narrowly averted. I cried because I suddenly realized that I had been walking a white line ever since Jo died, walking straight down the middle of the road. By some miracle, I had been carried out of harms way. I had no idea who had done the carrying, but that was all right ?? it was a question that could wait for another day.I cried it all out of me. Then I went on down to the lake and waded in. The cool water felt more than good on my overheated body it felt like a resurrection.