No Cure for Death

TWELVE

The Port City Court, a single, long, brown-shingled motel, stared directly at the highway that crossed its line of vision. Parked cars had their noses all but pressed against the room doors, tails inches away from fast-moving traffic. Every stall was filled, due largely to the steady flow of salesmen and college kids. Across the street was the Sandy’s where John and I’d dined that noon; down from it was a shopping mall, as well as gas stations, a U-Haul place, a Dodge dealership, and more chain restaurants-that same stretch of businesses that seems to trail on out to every town’s city limits, where a sign gives the population and says what that town’s middle name is. In Port City it was Prosperity. But what the sign didn’t say was that Prosperity’s middle name was Norman.

Sitting behind the desk in the manager’s office, reading a confession magazine, was a young woman with a big nose that minimized otherwise pleasant features, and with platinum hair that was worn in the same style (sprayed beehive) she’d used some half a dozen years before to trap her high school steady. Half a dozen years was also about how long it’d been since I’d seen this woman, her name long since escaping my memory.

“Oh,” she said, raising dulled eyes which momentarily lighted up, “well, if it isn’t…” And she touched her cheek and nodded quickly in pretense of remembering more than she did, not realizing she had just established for me that we had something in common.

“Long time no see,” I said.

“Long time,” she said. “Long time. Good to see you again, after so long.”

“Good to see you.”

“Say,” she said, “whatever happened to, uh…” She touched her cheek again. “That girl you…”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of lose track, you know. Did you and, uh, ever get married?”

“Yes,” she said, “but we split up. I got the boy, though. Real cute kid. He’s in the fourth grade this year.”

“What’s his name?”

“He was named after his father.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“Ain’t seen you since high school.”

“I lived out of town for a while.”

“Those was fun days.”

“Yeah, they were fun, all right.”

“You didn’t want a room, did you?”

“No, no. I’m living here in town again. I’ve come to see a guest you have here. Friend of mine. Phillip Taber?”

She looked down her register, sliding her finger down the page as she did. “Yeah, here he is. Taber. Room seven. Checked in ’bout noon. I wasn’t on duty then.”

I smiled at her; suddenly I flashed on sitting across from her in a study hall. I said, “He called me this afternoon and said he was in town, staying out here. I’d sure like to surprise ol’ Phil. Kind of… pop in on him, you know?”

“Oh sure. Well, hey, why don’t you take his spare key here and do that?”

“Could I?”

“Boss might frown, but what the heck? Ain’t as if I don’t know you.” She reached behind her on the wall of keys and plucked one off. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“Sure,” she said, returning to her magazine.

Just as I was going out the door, her voice behind me said, “Nice seeing you again, and talking.”

“Yeah, nice talking to you, too.”

There was music, hard loud rock music, behind the door to room seven. Tiny fingers of gentle smoke were crawling out around the door’s edges, bearing the fragrance of burning incense. I put my ear to the door and heard no one speaking, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was safe to assume Taber was alone. I looked around a couple times, catching sight of a shining new green Javelin in the stall adjacent to the room, and then went ahead and worked the key in the lock.

The lights were out, so as I went in I hit the switch.

He was on the bed, on his back, shirt off, wearing nothing but faded bell-bottom jeans. His chest was pale and hairless, but his face was fully bearded and the hair on his head, while showing signs of thinning, was frizzily long. A joint was tight in his lips, and he was caressing it easily with the fingers of one hand; he drew a long toke on it. On the nightstand next to the bed was the stick of burning incense, but even with that hanging in the air the pervasive smell of the joint’s smoke couldn’t hide. From past experience I made it as more than simple pot-more like hashish. Maybe it was some of that smack weed that was going around, pot cured in heroin.

He didn’t react right away. He just stayed right on his back looking up at the ceiling, the only sound coming from him being the sucking in on the cigarette.

I shut the door and went over to a bureau opposite the bed where a cassette tape player’s twin speakers were putting out the music. I turned it down.

All at once he came off the bed at me, like a threshing machine made out of skinny arms and legs and hair, and my back was to the wall and his bony fists were crashing again and again into my ribs. I pushed his head away with the heel of my hand and sent him down with ease, like I’d batted a weighted punching dummy, but he came back the same way, bounced right up and a sharp, hard little mallet of a fist jacked my eye, and then another jarred my stomach, and then my eye again, and the “V” point of an elbow shot pain through my balls and from there, in increasing waves, throughout my body, and suddenly I was on the floor and Janet Taber’s common-law mate, a hideous scarecrow come to life, was raising a bare foot to stomp me, yelling, “Don’t mess with my karma, man!”

Simultaneously I caught my senses and his foot, and I heaved him in the air. He thudded softly on the bed and I ran over and held him down on it with a straight-arm and said, “Easy man, I didn’t mean to bring you down, come on man, let’s cool it now.”

I cooed at him like that for a while, and finally he settled down. He didn’t come down-that smack weed or whatever the hell he was on was too potent for that-but I was happy to have him just floating in one spot.

“Phil Taber?”

He looked at the left corner of the room and concentrated on something-a mote of dust, maybe, or a piece of lint-and his smile flickered. I took that to mean yes.

“Janet was your wife?”

He nodded, and as he did, a convulsion took hold of him and made his whole body nod with him.

“What are you doing in Port City?”

His voice was soft, almost inaudible, but I heard him say: “Hey, man, I ain’t that fuckin’ high.” And a cackle ripped out of him with the abruptness of an ambulance siren.

Damn. That was bad. He was a laugher-somebody for whom getting high was an intensification of life’s absurdities. Which meant he would let out a peal of laughter at just about anything, everything.

“Listen,” I said. “Listen to me. Are you so high you don’t care whether or not you get busted? You best talk things over with me or I’ll have the sheriff on your butt so fast you’ll think you’re hallucinating.”

The cackle turned into a more or less normal laugh, which kept going as he said, “Call him… go ahead, ya stupid jerk, go ahead and call the Man.”

That stopped me.

“You talked to him already?” I said.

His smile flickered yes.

“Gave him permission for the autopsy?”

His smile again said yes and he laughed some more.

I didn’t know how much of this to buy, so I asked him, “What’s the sheriff’s name, since you know him so well?”

He then did a very bad impression of Walter Brennan that was just good enough to make his point.

I said, “Brennan knows you’re a user?”

“‘Just be out of town by sunrise,’ is all he says. ‘Yessir, Mister Dillon,’ I says.”

“What about Janet? Doesn’t it mean anything to you she’s dead?”

He stopped cold for a moment, no laughter, no smile, but his eyes still fixed on some remote fleck of dust. He said, “Man, you and me we’re dyin’ right now. You’re born and then you start dyin’. Big fuckin’ deal.”

“What about your son? Any feelings about him?”

He shifted his focus of attention to the right corner of the room. He smiled again, this time not at me. It was neither yes or no.

“What about your son?” I repeated.

“What son? I don’t have a son… son… sunrise… out of town… ‘Yessir, Mister Dillon,’ I says. Get outta’ my karma, man.”

I released my hold on him but he stayed put anyway. I got up and roamed restlessly around the room. I looked in his suitcase: one newly purchased, now-wrinkled dark dress suit; some soiled underwear; no heavy dope, other than a lid or so of that admittedly strong grass; a rental slip for the Javelin outside; and the last half of a round trip ticket in a Pan Am envelope. On the outside of the latter was his time of arrival: eleven that morning; he’d come in from Chicago. That pretty well ruled out any thoughts I might’ve had, after his spirited attack on me, about him being a possible suspect in the beating of Janet’s mother and the burning of the house. The only other item in the suitcase was a recently bought shiny black leather billfold. The only identification in it was a crinkled-up, dirty driver’s license-Illinois, expired-and there was some cash in it. Five crisp, new bills.

Five thousand dollars.

I rushed over and grabbed one of his skinny arms and said, “Where the hell did you get money like this?”

He grinned at the ceiling.

“Answer me!”

He kept grinning. “One of my paintings, man.”

“Yeah, I heard you were an artist.” I shook him. “What did you do for this kind of cash? Who’d you rip off?”

He said, “Turn on th’ music.”

A thought came to me from out of left field.

“Norman,” I said.

Somewhere in the glazed, dilated eyes a small light seemed to go on.

I grabbed a thin arm. “Norman-what’s that name mean to you? Norman? Norman!”

He started back in on a laughing jag and I got in the way of the stale warmth of his musky breath. Another whiff and I’d get a contact high. He said, “Turn on th’ music. Get outta’ my karma.”

I let go of him. Got out of his karma. Threw the billfold on the nightstand, by the stick of melting incense.

On my way out I turned his cassette player back up; Deep Purple was playing an instrumental called “Hard Road.”

Taber and I liked the same music. For some reason that made me feel a little sick.

Or maybe I just wasn’t used to the smell of pot smoke anymore.