Part 14 (1/2)

”And the date? Was that-”

I nodded. ”The day he died, right. Of course none of this is top secret. The woman could have found out. Mediums wow their marks by knowing stuff they're not supposed to know, and in the end it turns out to have been nothing but research and legwork. But-”

”You don't believe it. I don't, either.” Roger tapped the letter. ”'Bring the Water-Boy if you want to.'”

”I wondered about that,” I said.

”When I was in high school, I went out for the football team. I was serious about it, fool that I was. I only weighed a hundred and thirty pounds, but I had visions of...I don't know...being the Reading High School version of Knute Rockne, I suppose. I was serious, but no one else was. They just about killed themselves laughing. The team, the cheerleaders, the whole student body. Coach along with the rest of them. I ended up being the team waterboy. It became my nickname. It's even in the yearbook. Roger Wade, Cla.s.s of '68, Drama Club, Glee Club, Newspaper. Ambition, to write the Great American Novel. Nickname, Waterboy.”

For a moment neither of us said nothing. Then he picked up the letter again. ”She seems to imply that Iron-Guts Hecksler is still alive. Do you think that's possible?”

”I don't see how he could be.” But I did see, at least sort of. It had been a fire, after all. Nothing left but ashes and a few teeth. It could have been done. It suggested a degree of cunning I didn't much like to think of, but yes-it could have been done.

”She wants us in Central Falls,” Roger said, turning off his typewriter and standing up. ”Let's give her what she wants. Still plenty of time to s.h.a.g a.s.s over to Penn Station and catch The Pilgrim. We can be in Rhode Island by noon.”

”What about the joke book? What about The Devil's General?”

”Let those three deadbeats do a little work for a change,” Roger said, c.o.c.king his thumb at the short corridor which opens on the editors' cubicles.

”You're serious?”

”As a heart attack.”

And he was. At 9:40 we were stepping onto Amtrak's Pilgrim in the bowels of Penn Station, armed with magazines and bagels; at 12:15 we were stepping off in Central Falls; at one o'clock we were getting out of a taxi on Alden Street, in front of the Central Falls House of Flowers. The place is a rather shabby New England saltbox rising behind a dead lawn still dotted with clumps of melting snow. To the rear is an absolutely huge greenhouse which does indeed stretch all the way to the next street. Outside of the Botanical Gardens in D.C., it's the biggest d.a.m.ned greenhouse I've ever seen. But unlike the Botanical in D.C., this one is filthy-the windows are grimy, some mended with tape. We could see little s.h.i.+mmers of heat rising off the top-the apex, if you'll pardon the word. During the weird Mardi Gras of the original Detweiller craziness, someone referred to it as a jungle-I don't remember who, probably one of the cops-and today Roger and I could see why. It wasn't just the heat rising off the gla.s.s panels and into the gray March chill; mostly it was the dark bulk of the plants behind those panels. In the dull light they looked black rather than green.

”My uncle would go bonkers,” Roger said. ”If he was still alive, that is. Uncle Ray. When I was a kid, he'd always greet me with 'Hey, I'm Uncle Ray from Green Bay.' To which it was my job to reply, 'Hey, Ray, what do you say?' And he'd come back with 'Can ya stay, or do ya have to leave today?'”

I suffered this rather bizarre reminiscence in silence. The fact was, I couldn't take my eyes from the dark, crowding bulk of all those plants.

”Anyway, he was an amateur horticulturist, and he had a greenhouse. A little one. Nothing like this. Come on, John.”

I thought, being in a rhyming mood, he might add a verbal flip of the hip like Let's get it on, but he just resumed walking up the path. The porch steps were stained with a winter's worth of salt. Beyond them, in a window by the door, was an FTD placard, the one with winged Mercury on it, and a sign reading COME IN, WE'RE OPEN! The words were flanked with roses.

When we reached the steps I stopped for a second. ”I just remembered-you said you had something to show me, too. Back at the office. But you never did.”

”Just as well. I believe it may be better shown when we get back.”

”Does it have anything to do with Riddley's room?” I don't know where that came from, exactly, but once it was out I knew I was right.

”Why, yes. It does.” He looked at me closely. Standing there at the foot of the steps with the collar of his overcoat turned up, framing his face, and a little color in his cheeks, it occurred to me that Roger Wade's a pretty good-looking guy. Better-looking now, probably, than a lot of the fellows who made fun of him back in high school, calling him Waterboy and G.o.d knows what else. Roger might even know that, if he's been back to any of his cla.s.s reunions...but those voices from high school never quite leave our heads, do they? Maybe if you make enough money and bed enough women (I wouldn't know about those things, being both poor and shy), but I doubt if they leave even then.

”John,” he said.

”What?”

”We're delaying.”

And because I knew it was true-neither of us wanted to go into Carlos Detweiller's erstwhile place of employment-I said, ”Delay no more” and lead the way up the steps.

A little bell jingled over the door when we went in. The next thing to hit me was the smell of flowers...but not just flowers. The thought that crossed my mind was Funeral parlor. Funeral parlor in the deep south, during a heat wave. And although I've never been in the deep south during a heat wave-have never been in the deep south at all-I knew that was about right. Because there was another smell under the heavy perfume of roses and orchids and carnations and G.o.d knows what else. It was meaty smell, bordering on rancid. Unpleasant. Roger's mouth twitched downward at the corners. He smelled it, too.

Probably back in the forties and fifties, when the place had been a private home, the room we stepped into had been two rooms: the entry and the small front parlor. At some point a wall had been knocked down, making a large retail area with a counter running across it about three-quarters of the way in. There was a pa.s.s-through panel in the counter, now raised, and beyond it an open door leading into the greenhouse. It was from there that the worst of the smell was coming. The room was very hot. Behind the counter was a gla.s.sed-in coldbox (I don't know if you call that kind of thing a refrigerator or not-I suppose you must). There were bouquets of cut flowers and floral arrangements in there, but the gla.s.s was so fogged up-from the temperature difference between the two environments, I suppose-that you could barely tell the lilies from the chrysanthemums. It was like looking through a heavy English mist (and no, I've never been there, either).

To the left behind the counter, sitting under a blackboard on which various prices had been marked, was a man with the Providence Journal held open in front of his face. We could just see a few wisps of white hair floating like milkweed over an otherwise bald skull. Of Ms. Tina Barfield there was no sign.

”h.e.l.lo!” Roger said heartily.

No response from the man with the paper. He just sat there with the headline showing-REAGAN WILL PULL THROUGH, DOCTORS VOW.

”h.e.l.lo? Sir?”

No movement. A queer idea came to me then: that he wasn't really a man but a mannequin posed with the newspaper upraised. To foil shoplifters, perhaps. Not that shoplifters would frequent flower shops in any great numbers, I wouldn't think.

”Pardon?” Roger said, speaking even louder. ”We're here to see Ms. Barfield?”

No response. The paper didn't so much as rattle.

Feeling a little like a creature in a dream (although I hadn't completely parted with reality yet-that part I'll be coming to shortly), I stepped forward to the counter, where there was a bell beside a card reading PLEASE RING FOR SERVICE. I banged it smartly with my palm, producing a single sharp ding! I had a crazy urge to call ”Front, please!” in my best snootyNew-York-desk-clerk voice, and suppressed it.

Slowly, very slowly, the paper came down. When it did, I wished it had stayed up. The descending Journal disclosed a face I had seen before, in the ”Sacrifice Photos.” There it had been distorted with pain, horror, and incredulity. Now the face of Norville Keen, author of such pearls as ”Why describe a guest when you can see that guest,” was utterly blank.

No. That's not right.

s.h.i.+t- (later) I've been sitting here in front of this lousy little Olivetti for almost five minutes, trying to think of what le mot juste might be, and the best I can do is slack. The man's face not just being devoid of expression, you understand, but seemingly devoid of muscle tension as well. It had probably always been a long face, but now it seemed absurdly long, almost like a face glimpsed in one of those trick carnival mirrors. It hung off his skull like dough hanging from the lip of a mixing bowl.

Beside me, I heard Roger draw his breath in. He told me later that at first he thought we were looking at a case of Alzheimer's, but I believe that was a lie. We are modern men, Roger and I, a couple of lapsed Christians in the big city who go through our days under the rule of law and the a.s.sumption of...how shall I put this? Of empirical reality. We don't believe that reality to be benign, but we don't find it actually malignant, either. Yet we have our secret hearts, of course, and these are closely attuned to the organs of our brute instinct. Those adrenal-fed organs slumber most of the time, but they're there. Ours awoke in the office of the Central Falls House of Flowers and told us the same thing: that the man looking at us from those dusty black expressionless eyes was no longer alive. That he was, in fact, a corpse.

(later) I haven't had any dinner and don't want any-perhaps appet.i.te will come back when I've finished this. I did go around the corner just now for a double espresso, however, and it's perked me up. Put a little heart back in me. And yet-tell the truth, shame the devil-I found myself more or less scuttling from streetlight to streetlight, not liking the dark, feeling watched. Not by any one person (certainly I didn't sense Carlos Detweiller lurking, perhaps with a pair of nice, sharp pruning shears at the ready) but by the dark itself. Those organs of instinct I mentioned are now fully awake, you see, and above all things they don't like the dark. But now I'm back in my cozy kitchen, under plenty of bright fluorescent light, with half a cup of hot, strong coffee by my right hand and things are better.

Because, you know, there is a good side to all this. You'll see.

All right, where was I? Ah yes, I know. The lowered newspaper and the blank stare. The slack stare.

At first neither Roger nor I could say anything. The man-Mr. Keen- didn't seem to mind; he just sat on his stool by the cash register and stared at us with the newspaper crumpled in his lap instead of in front of his face. The pages he was open to appeared to be a double-spread ad from a car dealers.h.i.+p. I could see the words REFUSE TO BE UNDERSOLD.

Finally I managed, ”Are you Mr. Keen? Mr. Norville Keen?”

Nothing. Just those staring eyes. To me they looked as dusty as stones in a dry ditch.

”You live in Carlos's building, right?” I asked. ”Carlos Detweiller?”

Nothing.

Roger leaned forward and spoke very slowly and clearly, like someone addressing a man he believes to be deaf, mentally r.e.t.a.r.ded, or both.

”We're...looking...for...Tina...Barfield...Is...she...here?”At first there was nothing in response to this, either. I was about to try my luck (all the time thinking somewhere in the bottom of my mind that it was no good trying to get information from the dead, people had been trying that for years without success), when, very slowly, Mr. Keen raised his hand. He was wearing a short-sleeved white s.h.i.+rt, and the muscles on his upper arm hung lax, sort of dangling off the bone. He pointed one long, yellow finger, and I thought of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, pointing relentlessly at Ebeneezer Scrooge's forgotten grave. It wasn't a grave Mr. Keen was pointing at, but the open door to the greenhouse.

”In there, is she?” Roger asked in an insanely hearty tone of voice; it was as if we'd all shared a mildly funny joke. Q. How many dead men does it take to run a greenhouse? A. Just Norv.