I put the handset down, thinking, Brrr! Hot stuff, hell; underneath that sexy exterior she’s a chilly piece of goods. Going to bed with her would be like going to bed with a block of ice. You’d wake up in the morning with some of your parts frozen solid.
I took off my suit and put on my old chenille bathrobe, the one Kerry hated and was always threatening to throw out-grounds for break-up of our relationship if she did. A Bud Light and a 1937 issue of Strange Detective Mysteries helped me unwind. Paul Ernst’s “Madame Murder-and the Corpse Brigade” made me hungry, for some reason; at least my stomach was growling when I finished it. There was some chicken left over from last night. Most of it, in fact, since Kerry had refused to eat more than one wing, saying, “I hate burnt chicken.” Well, it wasn’t burnt, not too badly anyhow. All you had to do was scrape off the black crap here and there and the rest of it went down just fine. I gobbled four pieces and some cold zucchini-with-parmesan, opened another beer, and returned to the living room and Strange Detective Mysteries.
The damn telephone rang again just as I was entering the bang-up finale of “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake” by Norbert Davis.
Grumbling, I put the magazine down and went to answer it. And this time it wasn’t anybody I wanted to talk to-the last person I wanted to talk to, as a matter of fact. It was the Reverend Raymond P. Dunston, and the first thing he said was, “I would like to speak to my wife. Please put her on the line.”
I swallowed the first two words that came to me and held my tongue and my temper for a good ten seconds. When I felt I could speak in a rational and reasonable tone I said, “In the first place, Dunston, you don’t have a wife; you have an ex-wife. And in the second place, she isn’t here.”
“I called her apartment,” he said. “She isn’t there. She isn’t working late at her office, either.”
“She’s gone out to dinner with a friend.”
“What friend?”
“A lady friend.”
“What is the friend’s name?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Is she coming there afterward?”
She wasn’t, but I said, “Well? What if she is?”
“ ‘Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?’ ” he said. “ ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he that goeth in to his neighbor’s wife; whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent.’ Proverbs, six: twenty-seven through twenty-nine.”
“Now listen, Dunston-”
“It is you who should listen,” he said. “Not to me but to the word of God. Kerry Anne is my wife. She is my wife. ‘Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ Genesis, two: twenty-three and twenty-four.”
“Quote the Bible all you want,” I said, “it doesn’t make any difference. Kerry isn’t your wife, she doesn’t want to be your wife, she’ll never be your wife again. That’s the way it is, so you might as well face-”
He hung up on me.
I strangled the receiver for a time and then slammed it down. But my aim wasn’t very good: it hit the base unit glancingly and knocked the thing off the nightstand, and when it fell it landed on my right instep. I hopped around on the other foot, cussing, and tripped on a corner of the bedspread and sprawled sideways across the bottom of the bed and cracked my funny bone on the frame. When I recoiled from that I slid off onto the floor and banged down on both knees. I heaved myself up raging, feeling like a fool, and the phone was lying there in two parts and a beeping noise was coming out of it. I wanted to kick it to shut it up, but I had enough sense to know that if I did I would probably break a toe or my whole damn foot. I sat on the bed-let the thing beep, the hell with it-and alternately rubbed my elbow and my instep, the two places that hurt the most, while I thought dark thoughts.
Dunston, I thought, this is not going to go on much longer. It is going to be resolved, Dunston, one way or another, even if I have to put in a long-distance call to God myself.
After a while the dark thoughts went away, leaving the feeling of foolishness behind. I sighed, got up, made the phone whole again, and limped into the living room. And crawled back into “Idiot’s Coffin Keepsake,” which was right where I belonged.
Chapter Sixteen
Saturday morning, early, I drove down to Mission Creek again.
It was another sunny day, cool and cloudless, and some of the boat people were out and about, doing various things to their crafts. Richie Dessault wasn’t among them and neither was Melanie; and I didn’t get an answer when I boarded their houseboat and banged on the door astern. I walked around on both sides of the superstructure, trying not to act like a suspicious character as I looked at each of the four windows- at them, not through them, because all four were either shuttered or draped. If anybody was inside, he or she wasn’t making a sound.
I stepped off onto the board float, and a voice said nearby, “Looking for somebody?” It was a guy on the boat adjacent to the east, an ancient but freshly painted sloop with the name Wanderer painted on the bow. He was about seventy and wore a sailor’s hat, a sweatshirt, and a pair of faded denims-one of those crusty types who have spent so many years on or around the sea they look as if they’ve been preserved in salt-cake. He also looked wary, which told me my non-suspicious-character act needed some work.
I said, “Richie Dessault or Melanie Purcell, either one. Have you seen them?”
“Her this morning. Not him.”
“How long ago did you see her?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Leaving here?”
“Yep. On her way to Blanche’s.”
Blanche’s was a waterfront cafe down near the Fourth Street drawbridge. I said, “How do you know she was going there?”
“She was on foot. No place to walk to down that way except Blanche’s.”
“Was she alone?”
“Yep.”
“You wouldn’t have any idea where Dessault is, would you?”
“Nope. You a policeman?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Look like one. Wouldn’t mind it if you busted Dessault. Her too, for that matter.”
“Sounds as though you don’t like them much.”
“Don’t like ’em at all.” He made a disgusted noise. “Drugs-all the time, drugs. What’s the matter with kids nowadays, you tell me that? Smoke that crap, suck it up their nose, shoot it in their veins. Don’t make any sense to me.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“So you gonna bust ’em?”
“No. I’m not a policeman.”
“What are you, then?”
“Just a guy who’s having some trouble with God, among other things.”
“Huh?” he said. Then he said, “Oh, one of those, ” and turned away and moved quickly astern, to escape any attempt I might make at pamphlet distribution, proselytizing, and/or money-begging.
I sighed and walked to the nearest ramp and climbed up to the embankment. I was not having a good day so far, probably because I had not had a good night. Alicia Purcell. Dunston’s phone call. Sleeping alone and not sleeping very well. Dreams again: Leonard Purcell crawling through his own blood, me down on my knees holding something alive and wiggling in my hands, something I knew was his soul. And now it was Saturday, the first day of the weekend, a day to enjoy life a little-except that Kerry had some shopping she wanted to do, and there wasn’t
