let it go.
He looked at the legal page covered in doodles: a large number one. A picture of a gun. The gun shooting a target with the word “FLIPPO” printed in the bull's-eye.
Two ... A drawing of a glue bottle spilling out a lake of glue and a HAMMONTREE growing out of the glue pond.
He could run nearly sixty numbers and names through his mental data processor that way, and the association would stay with him for as long as he needed it. Each of the symbols was a memory key and he preferred this to working with a recorder and mike, which he would sometimes use in a vehicle, but they came in handy at other times. Not just doodles or games or free association.
They were for those moments when he was analyzing the cadences or the silences of a conversation, the times when the trivia and the subtle changes and the nuances were nudging him. This is the way he'd school himself to remember the “throwaways.” The images would stick.
Three ... Idly, he doodled three interlinked Os.
This time he crumpled the doodle into a ball and round-filed it, tried to make a couple of more calls, and then went in to watch the Ukie tapes over again. He saw nothing. Just a frustrated, strange man doing his thing. It told him nothing. When he heard Ukie say the “neural pathway” nothing signaled him. No neon signs lit up for him. No light bulb came on above Ukie's cartoon head. It was just a waste of time. He felt drowsy. Boozy. Old. He was hungry. He said, “Chuck it, fuck,” and left. Nobody knew he was gone and nobody would have cared if they'd known.
Out by the Lido he went in this place and bought a small smoked ham, a fresh loaf of pumpernickel that smelled so good he wanted to eat it right there, and a jar of sweet mustard that cost nearly three dollars. He couldn't believe it. He asked the clerk to make sure and she double-checked and by God that was how much it cost. He'd been wanting some of it since Chink and Chunk had hipped him to it. It was made someplace called Wolf Island, Missouri, and he'd been told, “Once you try it you'll kill for it.'
He put money in a pay phone and started to dial Jones-Seleska on a whim and checked himself. He just couldn't handle one more rejection. He went into his motel room, threw his sport coat over a chair, and took his knife and cut a slice of the ham about an inch thick. He spread pumpernickel with the Wolf Island mustard and took such a huge bite he nearly bit into his thumb. He hadn't realized how hungry he was till he had taken the food back to the loaner and when he got into the car with that fresh pumpernickel smell he noticed he was salivating like a madman. He swallowed and hurried. This had been worth it, definitely. Oh, yeah. This WAS three-dollar mustard. He couldn't remember a ham sandwich ever tasting so good. He sat there drinking a semicold Michelob and eating ham and fantasizing about Noel's pad. He was sitting on a motel bed with his sock feet up on a nineteen-dollar sling chair. Boy. I guess they know how to live—them rich folks.
Funny thing about all that is, he thought, no matter if you go to Neiman's for the clothes, and you go to Gucci's for the leather, and send to France for the china, and you don't have to worry whether you can afford three-dollar mustard or not, and you have a fridge full of dreamripened manzanilla olives ... hey, even if you've got five hundred dollars’ worth of beluga on the side, a ham sandwhich still is pretty much just a ham sandwich. Why sell your life down the tubes for it? You still gotta pull on the pants one leg at a time. You still get into traffic snarls whether you're sniffing leather in a Rolls or vinyl inside a Ford. Like a friend of his was fond of saying, “End's what counts, baby, and in the end it all comes out dead.'
He took some trash out later because he didn't want it stinking up the room overnight, and out by the dumpster he saw a hungry, collarless dog of indeterminate breed sitting there. It cocked its head warily at Eichord, who said, “Hey, boy, come here.” He squatted down but the dog didn't budge. “Come here, buddy. I won't hurt you.'
It just watched him.
What kind of pup are you anyway?” He could see it was a male and very thin. He said, “Okay, boy, we're gonna give you a feast. How does that sound?” The dog hadn't even blinked. Eichord started to move but the dog took off and ran behind the dumpster. It was a street dog who was wary of the apparently kind stranger, and it was trying to survive.
Eichord talked to it in his gentlest tones, “Yeah. I understand. But don't go ‘way, see. You stay right where you are. I'll be back.” He hurried back to the room.
In a couple of minutes he came back with a tin dish something had come in that he'd fished out of the wastebasket, and a sack. Inside the sack was the leftover ham, which he'd sliced into little chunks. He took a newspaper out and folded it down on the pavement and spread the ham in a pile and sat the tin water dish beside it.
“Dig in, pal,” he said, and walked away.
He walked down the concrete drive and out through the motel entrance, going up on a little hilly piece of ground that ran in back of the motel rooms on his side. He approached the back of the motel from up on the hillside and when he got to the end he stopped. He could see the dog gobbling up all the ham. He laid the sack down on the ground and sat on it, watching the dog finish and then drink the water.
It drank for a long time and licked its chops and went over and sat down behind the dumpster.
“Hey,” Eichord said, and the dog wagged its tail and ran over to where he was sitting, but kept its distance.
“That's a good idea,” he told the dog. “You need to trust a few people sometimes, though. Come here.” He patted his leg.
The dog walked over to him, very alert, sniffing the outstretched hand. “No. I don't have any more food. But I'll bring you some more tomorrow, huh?” He was whispering softly. “Meanwhile, how's about us bein’ pals? Huh?” The dog came closer and he gently scratched it behind the ears. “Yeah. That's a boy.” He gave it a few pats and then he slowly got up.
“Well, it's been a long day, pal. I'll see ya tomorrow, huh?” He walked down off the slope and threw the sack into the dumpster, then went back to his room, the dog still sitting on the hillside. He went in and took off his shoes again and began laying out his things for tomorrow. He took the paper over by the open window and glanced out and the dog was out in front of the motel room, looking up at the window. Waiting for more. Too much of a good thing is never enough.
Gray and cold.
Stone corridor.
Absolute stillness.
Harsh light far in the distance.
A chilling, enveloping shadow.
He stands on the dark pathway, waiting.
The day would prove to be one of the longest in his career. It would unwind like a broken clock spring and he would watch—helpless.
The morning drive southward into downtown was familiar enough now that Eichord flipped on an all-talk radio station and heard the following:
It was January 13. The president was still treading water in the Iranscam caper. In New York, Messrs. Corallo, Persico, and Salerno each drew one-hundred-year sentences for racketeering. In Houston, two guards with the Rockets tested positive for coke and were suspended. It was two days before the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and there was widespread racial violence throughout parts of the country, particularly in some southern cities.
The Metroplex had its share, and between the pro-and-con King sentiment, and the recent cop-versus-blacks trouble, the angry rhetoric was reaching the boiling point. The talk station aired phone conversations between citizens via a seven-second-delay device, and Eichord listened to the calls as the level of bitter oratory built in intensity.
