Orville shook his head, frowning. He didn't need any heat. 'A couple of people mentioned it, but I ain't heard a thing. I mean, I think I would've heard. I been scratching around for cash, trying to get back into business, and I been calling everybody I know. There's not a fuckin' thing, man.'
'Nobody got rich, nobody bought a car…?'
Proud shook his head. 'Not a fuckin' thing. Terry Meller come into a whole load of Panasonic color TVs, fell off the train in St. Paul, but that's about it.'
'You're sure?'
'Man, I spent the last three weeks running all over the metro, talking to everybody. That's all I've been doing. There's nothing out there.'
'All right,' Lucas said, discouraged. 'How was Arizona?'
Proud shook his head. 'New Mexico. You don't wanna do any time in New Mexico, man. That place is like… primitive.'
'Sorry to hear it…'
'Yeah, sure…'
'You check in with me, okay? You got my number?'
Proud nodded, dug in his pocket and came up with a business card printed with a nine-digit number, broken into groups of three, two and four digits, like a Social Security number. He handed the card to Lucas. 'Call the last seven numbers, backward. That's my beeper. You want to see me again, phone ahead, huh? Don't come knocking on the fucking door.'
'Okay. And I'll give you some free advice, Orville,' Lucas said as he stepped away. 'Get rid of Ralph. Ralph's a head case and he's looking for somebody to kill. Get yourself a baseball bat or something. If you stay with Ralph, you'll go to Stillwater with him on a murder rap. I guarantee it.'
'I hear you,' Proud said, but he didn't.
Back in the parking lot, Lucas leaned against the car, thinking it over. They were at a dead end.
Daniel'd have to go for the TV.
CHAPTER 6
Beauty danced.
A jig, to music that played only in his brain.
He hopped from one foot to another, his penis bobbing like the head of a blind waxen cave worm, his arms, crooked at the elbow, flapping like chicken wings. He laughed with the pleasure of it, the feel of Persian wool carpet under the bare soles of his feet, the sight of himself in the freestanding mirrors.
He danced and he twirled and he hopped and he laughed…
He felt a wetness on his chest and looked down. A crimson rain was falling on his chest. He touched his nose. His fingers came away sticky, red. Blood. Running across his lips, dripping from his chin, trickling down across his pale, hairless chest to the thatch of hair at his crotch. The music drained from his brain.
'Blood,' he moaned. 'You're bleeding…'
His heart pounding, Bekker got on his knees, groped under the desk and pulled out his briefcase. Knowing that the police would be in his house, he had thought it prudent to move his medications to his office. He'd not yet returned them to the medicine chest. He fumbled at the tiny combination lock on the case and got it open. Dozens of medical vials were jammed inside, amber plastic with white caps and taped-on labels, mostly prescription, a few over-the-counter dietary supplements. He pawed through them, still dripping blood.
Amobarbital. Dextroamphetamine. Loxapine. Secobarbital. Ethotoin. Chlordiazepoxide. Amiloride. No, no, no, no… He should have a color-coding system, he thought; but once he had them back on the shelves, it would be easier. He could put the uppers on top, the downers at the bottom, the smoothers on the second shelf, the vitamins and supplements under that… Haloperidol. Diazepam. Chlorpromazine. No. Where was it? Where? He was sure… Ah. Here. Vitamin K. How many? No problem with vitamin K, better safe than sorry. He tossed five caps in his mouth, grimaced and swallowed.
Better. The bleeding was slowing anyway, but the extra K couldn't hurt. He pulled a wad of tissues from a Kleenex box on his desk, pressed it to his nose. He'd bled before. There was no pain, and the bleeding would soon stop. But, he thought, only two this time and I'm bleeding. He'd taken them, why had he taken them, the methamphetamines? There was a reason…
He looked at the corner of his desk, at the brass cigarette case, the lid popped open, an invitation. Three black-coated methamphetamine tablets nestled in one quadrant of the box, sharing space with the phenobarbitals, the butalbitals and the criminals of the crew, all in a single, separate cell: the one remaining pale blue tab of acid, the four white innocuous-looking hits of phencyclidine and the three innocent Contac capsules.
Only three methamphetamines? But he usually kept seven in the box. Could he have taken four by mistake? He couldn't remember, but he felt up, wired, he'd danced for… how long? A long time, he thought. Maybe he'd better…
He did a phenobarbital to level himself out. And it wouldn't hurt the bleeding, either. Maybe… He did one more, then carried the cigarette case, the emergency kit, back to the briefcase, the mother ship, and carefully refilled it.
Still bleeding? Bekker took the Kleenex away from his face. The blood looked black against the blue tissue, but the flow had stopped. He stood and stepped carefully around the clothes he'd strewn on the floor when the amphetamines came on him. Why had he eaten them? Must think.
His study was neat, with wooden in boxes and out boxes on the antique desk, an IBM electric on an antique corner table, a wall of shelves filled with books, journals, magazines. On the wall next to the door was a photograph of himself, standing next to an E-type Jaguar. Not his, unfortunately, but a beautiful car. A silver frame around the photograph.
Stephanie smiled from a matching frame, on the other side of the door. She was wearing jodhpurs, why was she…? Hard to think. Must. Stephanie? The lover. Who was the lover?
That was the critical question. He'd thought the amphetamines might help him with that… If they had, he couldn't remember.
He sat down in the middle of the floor, his legs spread. Must think…
Bekker sighed. His tongue slipped out, tasted salt. He looked down and found himself covered with a dark crust. Crust? He touched his chest with a fingertip. Blood. Drying blood…
He got to his feet, stiff, climbed the stairs, hunched over, touching each riser with his hands as he went up, and then went down the hall to the bathroom. He turned the tap handles, started the water running, ducked his head toward the sink, splashed cold water on his face, stood, looked into the mirror.
His face was pink, his chest still liver-red with the blood crust. He looked like the devil, he thought. The thought came naturally. Bekker knew all about the devil. His parents, immersed in the severities of their Christian faith, had hammered the devil into him, hammered in the old, dead words of Jonathan Edwards…
There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire, were it not for God's restraints.
He'd never seen God's restraints, Bekker had told the preacher one Sunday night. For that he had gotten a beating that at the time he thought would kill him. Had, in fact, not been able to go to school for a week, and had seen not a gram of pity in his parents' eyes.
Bekker, sopping up the blood, looked into the mirror and spoke the old words, still remembered: 'God holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. Bullshit.'
But was it? Did the consciousness go somewhere after death? Was there a pit? The children he'd seen die, that change of gaze at the last instant… was that ecstasy? Did they see something beyond?
Bekker had studied the films taken by the Nazis at the death camps, stared into the filmed faces of dying medical experiments, films considered collectible by certain influential Germans… Was there something beyond?
Bekker's rational scientist mind said no: We are no more than animated mud, a conscious piece of dirt, the
