there waiting for him. And one day he noticed something that would completely alter his life. He almost never spoke to Sissy anymore, and of course from the moment they'd begun having sex the whole Hollywood and model fantasy had been dropped. Neither of them ever spoke of it again, almost as if by mutual consent.
Neither of them spoke about much of anything. She had tried to initiate conversations but even Sissy ultimately caught onto the fact that her man was neither listening nor responding to anything she said, so she settled for what he gave her, which proved to be a warm place to stay, a roof, a sufficient amount of caloric intake to stay alive, a TV set, animals to play with, the odd moment of brief sexual usage, and no further demands on her physically or intellectually.
He had lost an enormous amount of weight already. The first week alone he knew he had dropped over twenty-five pounds just in water. Although he was too heavy to be weighed on ordinary scales he could easily estimate his own body weight and calculated he'd lost between sixty and sixty-five pounds and it was still melting from his hugely corpulent frame. The thing is, he had noticed something that had all but turned him around. His stomach was getting smaller, but hers appeared to be growing larger. At first, without consciously thinking about it, he'd assumed her weight gain was due to a totally sedentary life. Then, as he made more new holes in his belt, cutting more excess leather off the other end and cinching up the baggy pants he was wearing, it dawned on him that he'd impregnated her.
“Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?” he said suddenly, confronting her outside the shack. He towered over her like a grizzly.
“Umm. Well. I wasn't sure at first.'
“But you're sure now?” She looked up at him and smiled. She nodded and blinked her eyes, waiting for his reaction. There was none. He walked over to the Caprice and got behind the wheel, noticing that the steering wheel didn't wedge against his gut quite as much as it had, and motioned for her. “Come on—get in.” He drove into town to the local one-doc clinic and had her examined. She seemed to be healthy, and about ninety days along.
The doctor had regaled them with stories about all the women who went three and four months without a period, and made sure that Daniel understood, ahem, that his weight on top of her after a certain point, cough, might cause discomfort. Checked out her plumbing. Gave her two aspirin and a pat on the head and told her not to smoke or drink too much caffeine.
“How do you feel?” Chaingang asked later, paternally.
“I have to pee bad,” she said, completing one of their typically crisp exchanges of dialogue.
And he went back out into the fields with his special, blacksmithed weed slinger and worked until he could no longer see, smashing out at the stubborn and infinite vetch again and again, the sharpened blade slashing into the obstinate weeds, the smoothly welded brass straps helping the fiercely slung tool cut a path through the overgrown meadow. Ten with the right hand, ten with the left hand, ten with the right hand, over and over and over, the rhythm never slackening, never changing, the man showing no signs of tiring, of ever stopping. He kept swinging his blade of vengeance, chopping at the vetch like the Grim Reaper, relentlessly hacking his way through this vast acreage of Mother Nature unattended, slashing through Mother Nature rampant, defying her with every brutal blow. Weeds, grass, vetch, all the thick stuff flying into the air, sometimes over his shoulders, showering his head, coming down on his back, the strong man oblivious to everything as he concentrated, swinging the cutting tool, slashing hearts, ten with the left, ten with the right, ten more, ten more, each vicious swing in heartbeat tempo,
Eichord was out under the big red maple thinking about the birthday Donna had given him. The treasured Disney comic book and the tapes of rare hero chapters were safe inside. He loved the idea of what she'd tried to do for him. He could no longer lose himself in nostalgia the way he had once been able to do. Either cop burn out ... too much shit ... or this thing with Chink. God, it bugged him. It bugged him that Jimmie would TAKE, number one. Number two, he wished he'd never been told about it. What would he do when IAD pulled him in and said, “Did you know?” Fuck it.
What it boiled down to is he would lie. No question. To protect a real friend like Lee. Who's kidding who? He'd stonewall it just the way all the other assholes did these days. He'd smile and cross his legs and protect his balls to the walls. What more could you do? Or what LESS could you do, in his case? He owed the kid that one.
Jack remembered their trip together. Years and years before, back at the beginning of the whole thing. Before McTuff had ever heard of a cat named Eichord. He'd been sitting there, a fish out of water, partnerless, no track record, a strong candidate for the drunk tank, and listening to fat Dana, not so fat back then, and Lee talking nostalgia.
“...those fuckin’ Buicks with the outrageous portholes on the side. God they were sharp. Every time I drew a picture of a big ole limo in school I'd draw three or four portholes onnit.'
“That was the damn Chrome Decade: 1949 to 1959. Began with the Riviera and ended with the Seville. Remember the ‘59 El Dee? Oh, my, mercy sakes. Big ole righteous fins on that sucker. God! Wouldn't ya like to have been rich enough you coulda got a ‘53 El Dee when you were born or somethin'—you know, like your first words to mommy when you're three: ‘Get me a ‘53 hog!’”
“Put it in a garage somewhere and pay the rent.'
“Yeah, keep it cherry. Pay rent on a garage from 1953 to now—shit! If you'd put that in gold you'd be Nelson fellering Rockefucker by now.'
“I'll tell ya a classic vehicle. Wanna hear a classic?'
“Yeah.'
“Here ya’ go: the 1948 Chevy Fleetmaster station wagon.'
“Oh, fuck. Wait a minute. You want a classic—get serious. Here's a classic. Ya ready?'
“Unnn.'
“The ‘56 ‘Vette.'
“Wait—the ultimate. The ‘51 Buick LeSabre rag top.'
“Here ya go. The 1957 Ford Fairlane.” There was a long pause. “THE ‘57 FORD FAIRLANE? You're crazy!” And on and on. Little Deuce Coupes and ‘51 Starlites (what the hell was a Starlite?) And being smuggled into the drive-in in a ‘37 Chevy coo-pay. That whole mythology of chrome and full mills and speed-shifting and dual H-wood glasspaks, and how the shift levers impeded the flow of romance way back then, and before long Eichord couldn't stand it. He had to go to the files and look through the old crime reports where the pictures of the cars were.
So in a way Lee had given him his career. It was there on the page with the grainy Kodak shot of the old car. It was a story about a homicide.
The picture of the car hadn't turned him on much but the homicide report caught his eye, and he took it over to the desk and sat there immersing himself in the old crime reports the way a curious detective will.
It was a homicide of “ancient history” even back then. Today it would be over thirty years old. It was 1957 and the main witness looked awfully shaky. The more Eichord read, the deeper he got into it and pretty soon he was on the phone and getting records pulled out of dusty boxes. He started talking to people, dredging up ancient facts and suspicions, and—he thought he had something.
It began with the suspicious crib death of an infant and ended with the death of a husband. But as Jack examined the reports more than a few contradictions loomed. The more he checked, the more the facts began to tear at the old contexture of interwoven lies. Then he found the woman's first marriage, which she'd been so careful to hide from the prying eyes of history and police, and he found the other mysterious infant crib death. The same MO. Suffocation. He saw a portrait of a killer emerge. It was a Buckhead homicide that would take him to the Orient.
He devoted weeks to it. Backtracking. Hiking over long-gone trails. Stirring the dirt where the forgotten ashes had long since been blown away. He found opportunity, and then motive, and then ... the key. One of the accomplices had spent too freely. He saw what it had been all along. A careful, smartly planned insurance
