“Anyway, the one that came to the door, she asks is Paul there, and I say no, because he wasn’t, right? And so she hands me this envelope, has a hundred bucks in it, and she says, ‘This is for work,’ well, actually, she says, ‘Dis iz for verk.’ She has this kind of accent, you know?”
“Okay.”
“She tells me to give it to Paul, that he should remember they did the right thing. These were the burger ladies, right?”
“Yeah.” I felt cold, standing outside Mrs. Merker’s house. “She didn’t threaten you or anything, or say anything about Paul?”
“No, nothing like that. Well, except, she said, tell Paul, he was wrong about the freezer. That the meat was okay.”
I breathed some cool night air in through my nose. “Honey, if she ever shows up again, or there’s any trouble, call the police. Or Lawrence. His number’s in my book.”
“Okay. When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to stay in Canborough overnight, then head on to the Groverton area in the morning. Maybe tomorrow night, I’ll be back.”
“Okay. Be careful?”
“I will, honey.” I thought a moment, and said, “Tell your mother, when she comes home, that I love her.”
“You tell her, Dad,” Angie said. “Bye.”
I closed the phone, slipped it back into my jacket, and collected my thoughts before completing my journey to Mrs. Merker’s door.
I knocked three times. Old flyers advertising sales long since past were littered about the shrubs. There was a dim light, probably from a television, visible through the front door blinds.
I heard a bolt slide back, then the door opened six inches. A wizened old woman, slightly hunched over, peered through the opening over her smudged reading glasses. “Fuck you want?” she asked.
“Mrs. Merker?” I said.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“I don’t suppose Gary’s around, is he?” I was pretty confident that he wasn’t, that this was a good way to break the ice with his mother, but suddenly I felt a wave of panic, that maybe he might actually be there. I didn’t feel I was quite ready to speak one-to-one with him yet.
“He hasn’t fucking lived here in years,” his mother said. “What you want him for?”
“Well,” I said, realizing that I was making this up as I went along, “I was hoping to get a message to him.”
“A message? What fucking message?”
“Could I come in just for a moment? I’m very sorry to bother you, to drop by unannounced this way.” Like maybe, if I’d given her a call, she’d have had a chance to put on a pot of tea for me. Maybe make some scones.
She opened the door wider, and I realized I’d have had to give her a lot of notice if she’d wanted to pick up a bit before company arrived. The room could have been a newspaper-recycling depot. Yellowing papers and magazines were piled high on nearly every available surface, even on the plaid couch. There was a spot opened up, at the end, where Mrs. Merker must have been sitting to watch the television, which was tuned in to an old episode of Fear Factor.
“I love it when they eat fucking bugs!” she cackled.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Those are the best.”
She had her back to me and was headed for what I guessed was the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a second. I was just going for a cracker when you knocked.”
“Sure,” I said.
As she disappeared into the kitchen I glanced at the right wall. About halfway along, there was a large, garish painting of a seaside, in a thick gold frame. It was the kind of art you saw sold out of vans at major metropolitan intersections. Tentatively, I took hold of the bottom corner and tipped the painting away from the wall, peered underneath, and saw the hole in the drywall.
“You a friend of Gary?” she said from the kitchen.
“Well, not real close, but, you know,” I said, letting the picture settle back against the wall.
She reappeared with a red box of saltines, her blue-veined hand rooting through the cellophane to get hold of one. She took one out, bit off half of it. “I like crackers,” she said. She chewed a few times, crumbs spilling out from the corner of her mouth. “These are pretty fucking stale.” She tossed the other half in, chewed.
“Have you heard from Gary lately?” I asked.
“Oh, talked to him a few days ago,” she said.
“How’s he doing? He get back up this way much?”
“Sometimes, yeah, the little fucker. He does a lot of important business, of course. He was in Chicago not long ago, he was telling me.”
“Love Chicago,” I said.
“So what you say your name was?” Mrs. Merker asked, squinting in my general direction.
“Zack,” I said. “He probably never mentioned me.”
She was thinking. “I think he mighta. You used to hang out at the Kickstart?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That was probably me.”
“Well, he’s not here.”
“What’s he up to?”
“Like I say, he’s a businessman. Doesn’t run that hotel anymore, doesn’t hang out with those motorcycle friends of his, ’cept for Leo, that dumb, pitiful son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, Leo,” I said. “Edgars.”
“I guess Gary missed having a little brother, so he adopted Leo. When they was handing out brains, that boy was out getting a sandwich.”
“Does he keep in touch with the old gang, the customers?”
Mrs. Merker reached into the box for another cracker, shrugged. “Not too much. One called here the other day, though, wanting to pass on a message.”
“Oh yeah? Who was that?”
Mrs. Merker was swallowing some cracker and winced. She coughed, tried to clear her throat. “Fucking dry cracker,” she muttered, and turned to go back into the kitchen. I listened to the familiar pish! of a beer can opening. A moment later she was back in the doorway, tipping back a Bud.
“What?” she asked.
“You say someone called a few days ago for Gary?”
She nodded, took another sip. “Did you want anything?”
I thought she meant a beer, and shook my head no, I was good.
“No, I mean, why’d you come here?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’d heard, one of the guys was saying, that there was this girl from the Kickstart, that Gary was always wondering what happened to her, and if we ever heard anything, we should give him a shout, or get in touch with you, and you could pass it on.”
“This about that cunt?” Mrs. Merker said. “Candy?”
I tried to keep the surprise off my face. “Actually, yeah, I think so,” I said.
“That’s what that other boy called about,” she said. “He called about that cunt too.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Said to tell Gary he thought he knew where she was.”
“No kidding?” I said. “Where was that?”
“Shit,” said Mrs. Merker. “I wrote it down somewhere.” She looked about the room. “I think I wrote it on a piece of newspaper.”
Terrific.
Of course, I had a pretty good hunch what this caller had said. But if the answer was, indeed, Oakwood, it would mean that things were starting to fall together.
Mrs. Merker put beer and crackers on top of a newspaper pile and began wandering the living room, peering
