And then the man, and the shadow, were gone.
11:15 A.M.-6:05 P.M.
First, Shutterbug ripped toilet-paper streamers from the trees in front of his house, cursing the A-Squad as he worked. Then he went inside and unplugged the telephones. One in the kitchen. One in his bedroom. One in the basement. Then he sat down and thought things over. He thought about what Ozzy-what Steve Austin – had said to him. Austin, still stuck on April Destino after all these years. The quiet bastard had always been a loner in high school, and now Shutterbug knew why. The guy was a nut, worshipping the memory of a dead whore like that.
Obviously, Austin hadn’t known the real April, the pitiful woman with lines on her face and a body that was going to seed after years of dope and booze and various less pleasant forms of abuse. That particular piece of meat wasn’t exactly a candidate for pedestal treatment.
She lived in a trailer park, for christsakes. Shutterbug wasn’t the only one who knew that April. She got around. A couple of his business associates over in the City had their own April Destino stories. She had done her share of hardcore before her body started to go. Shutterbug had actually seen the stuff without putting two and two together-
April wore wigs in the movies, and he hadn’t recognized her until they got reacquainted.
The big reunion occurred at a wild wrap party over in Marin. A Friday the 13th rip-off with a guy in a hockey mask who wielded a hard twelve-incher instead of a machete. Big house and bigger egos. Too much coke and too many bores, and he had stepped onto the deck for some air, big redwood deck with plenty of ferns and Tarzan shrubbery.
And there was April Destino. Red leather pants. Sequined halter top barely containing breasts that were fuller, heavier than when she was a teenager. Bare feet and painted toenails, a gold ring on one little toe.
Running into April scared him, sure, but things turned out okay. She made a joke of it-laughed and thanked him for giving her a start in the business. And then it was his turn to laugh and thank her for the very same thing. They did some coke together. They left the party together. He almost proposed that they go looking for a pool table, that’s how raunched-out he was that night.
Restraint won out and they ended up at her trailer. It was mounted on a cement foundation and sported aluminum siding and all, but it was still a trailer. April gave him a naughty smile and whispered that he was going to pay. And he laughed and said that if he was going to pay, they were going to get it on film and it was going to be good. She assented to that particular proposal. All very mysterious about it, grabbing her coat and a few things from her bedroom, stuffing everything into a small backpack.
And then they were at his place. That was when he still had the prison set in the basement. Many moons ago. She got off on it-or pretended to-stripped off her leather pants, white snake legs shedding blood-red skin, white ass pumping. She laughed and said that the fumes from the photo chemicals he stored in the basement were giving her high a nice edge.
With April it was all business, and it was just his luck that her business was pleasure. She gave him a good look and let him get the focus right. She hadn’t shaved her legs in maybe four days, but he still got hot peeping at those crisp blond hairs. Then she took off the sequined halter-there wasn’t much of it-and slipped into the old blue-and-white cheerleading sweater that she’d brought in her backpack.
She stepped out of the jail and strode across the basement floor, the little gold ring on her toe clicking with every other step. Her fingers snapped for cash. He didn’t have any, so he wrote her a check on the camera shop account and marked it “refund.” April thought that was really funny. She laughed and laughed, her naked shoulders shaking so violently that he imagined he heard her bones rattling.
Then she got serious. Put on the horny jailbird act. Really went to town. So horny and stuck in a cell with no men around at all, that’s how horny she was. She was a high school princess and used to getting what she wanted, after all.
And suddenly the eight ball was in her hands, and a pair of eyes the color of prison bars locked on Shutterbug’s lens.
Yeah. That was the real April Destino, the girl a blind nutcase like Steve Austin had never seen. Shutterbug drew the living room drapes, lay down on the overstuffed couch, remembering that night with April. He connected a few dots. Coke at the party, more coke at April’s. Drinks at his place.
Sure. He had been wrecked when April visited his house. That explained her weird message in his yearbook. No wonder he hadn’t remembered it. April must have found the book and scribbled the inscription on the night they’d done April, Part II. Simple. And he had discovered it years later, believing it to be some supernatural message from a dead woman.
Mystery solved. Dead was dead.
And if dead was dead, if April was truly gone, he sure as hell hadn’t seen a ghost last night. Unless ghosts were made of too much beer and too much coke.
Too much of a good thing was indeed too much of a good thing. It was that simple. Like the spiked punch April had guzzled at Todd Gould’s party back in 1976. But now it seemed funny. Seeing things. Getting scared. Imagining nightmares under the bed, in the closet, or on a lonely road.
Shutterbug’s mind continued to drift. His memory replayed the phone call he’d taken at the shop, the car parked in Joe Hamner’s driveway. Puzzling mysteries, not as easy to explain away as a ghost story. He searched for connections, and his thoughts turned to April Destino, and to Steve Austin.
He lay there, hoping that everything would come to an end, and knowing somehow that he had plenty of time to think before that was going to happen.
Derwin MacAskill wanted to lie down, but he too damn busy mowing lawns.
Six lawns mowed in one hot April afternoon. Shit. Sweat on his back and itchy grass sticking to him like stink on shit. Damn. If April was this hot, there no telling what kind of misery May and June would bring. He didn’t even want to think about July, let alone motherfuckin’ August.
So he mowed lawns. Smelled gasoline. Scooped and bagged countless dog turds. Listened to James Brown get real funky on the Walkman with the duct-taped cassette door. Good old seventies Superfly kind of riff called “The Payback.”
Get down Soul Brother Number One. James was indeed one crazy mother. Did his time cool and clean after runnin’ up against the Man. A real-life wildman.
Oh, there were others out there like James. Derwin knew that, and he also knew that most wildmen weren’t even famous. He should know. He ran with three of them. Crazy rat-soup eatin’ motherfuckers, always doing weird shit. Like last night at the drive-in.
And then that other shit at the cemetery. He didn’t even want to think about that insanity. Except for the sight of old Marvis Hanks screaming like some nutty bitch when that downed caretaker grabbed his legs, that shit wasn’t funny at all.
That shit was plain weird. Someone digging up a dead body, taking it who knows where. Doing who knows what with it.
Weird.
James Brown screeched, and so did Derwin. Clapped his hands, spun, caught the lawn mower on the return.
A mystery man bustin’ up some caretaker who caught him in the act, right there in the cemetery. Bashin’ in the old honky’s head with a shovel or something, just bashin’ and bashin’…
Derwin knew that was wildman kind of shit.
Especially fine wildman kind of shit.
