Sacred Monster

Flashback 25

The room to the right of the front entrance, a large square pleasant place with views of the lawn and main drive, had been turned into an office. Desks, filing cabinets, library table, computer, shelves filled with scripts and stationery supplies; it might have been a Midwestern insurance agency. Jack himself rarely entered this room, his interest in the mundane details of real life being minimal at best, but today his drifting took him without particular plan or purpose through just another doorway, and there he was, in the office.

And there was his secretary, clipping things from newspapers and magazines and mounting them in the clear plastic folder-pages of an album. And there was Buddy, seated at the library table by the windows, going over ledgers with Sol, the accountant, a short, wide, ugly man with a brain like a Renaissance Italian. Buddy and Sol were both looking grim, which Jack wasn’t likely to notice. In fact, looking around with pleased surprise to see where his drift had led him, he said, “Ah. My merry staff. My merry accountant. My merry Buddy. How is everybody?”

“Good morning, Jack,” the secretary said, glancing up briefly from her work, her manner neutral.

The accountant, squinting at Jack across the ledgers, said, “Jack, if you have a minute—”

“Sol,” Buddy said, placing a hand on the accountant’s forearm on the table, “let me talk to him.”

The accountant shrugged. “Just so somebody does,” he said.

Jack’s smile turned vague but didn’t disappear. Buddy got to his feet, crossed the room, took Jack by the elbow, and said, “Let’s go for a walk, Dad.”

“Sure, Buddy.”

They left the office, Buddy holding on to Jack’s elbow, went out the front door, walked across the lawn, and made their way to the formal rose garden at the side of the house, where two gardeners puttered, accomplishing very little. Buddy looked at them. “Vamos,” he said.

They vamosed. Jack smiled after them, smiled at the roses, smiled at Buddy. “It’s nice here,” he said.

“Dad,” Buddy said, “we’re in trouble.”

“Take some blues, Buddy,” Jack advised him. “Don’t let it get you down. Knock back a little T and B.”

“We’re beyond that, Dad,” Buddy said. He gave Jack’s elbow one little shake and released him. “Sol tells me we’re spending ahead of income,” he said. “We’ve got investments out there, they need cash, we’ve got to prime the pump, and we don’t have it.”

Uncaring, still with that same vague smile, Jack said, “All goes to the candy man.”

“A lot of it does,” Buddy agreed. “Dad, you hurt yourself in the industry with that Academy Award mess, and now you’re hurting your career. You’re making bad choices.”

“Buddy, Buddy,” Jack said, reaching for his buddy but missing, “loosen up. What does it matter?”

“It matters a lot,” Buddy told him. “All you care about is to stay stoned and to stay right here inside these walls.”

“Come on, Buddy, I go out.”

“Where?”

Jack thought. “Brazil,” he said.

“Once a year.” Buddy shook his head in disgust. “You’re turning into Howard Hughes,” he said, “only you don’t have any tool company. You still have to make a living, but you don’t want to anymore.”

“Kick back, Buddy, kick back.”

But Buddy stayed tense and serious. “We built something nice here, Dad,” he said, “and I’m not gonna let you pull it down.”

With mild curiosity, Jack said, “Whatcha gonna do, Buddy?”

“Stop you,” Buddy said.

“That was just before Buddy left on his trip,” the voice says, “six weeks ago.”

Focus. Focus. Something’s scaring me, something’s wrong here, and it is necessary for me right now to get under control, find the reins of my existence, gather myself together into one place. Mayday! Mayday! Battle stations! Prepare to crash dive!

No; prepare to crash surface. Up out of the depths, all in one piece, coming up to the real world, blinking around. And if I see my shadow?

I see O’Connor. Ah-hah; I’d lost that. O’Connor. The interview. For a while there it was just a voice, almost inside my head with me. I was in a Beckett play all by myself, me and the voice. Saying...

Wait a minute. That’s what’s wrong. “Wait a minute,” I say, looking at O’Connor, seeing O’Connor plain. “You aren’t from People.”

“No, sir,” he says, “I’m not.”

“Damn straight,” I tell him, sitting up more firmly, converting my fear into righteous rage. “People wouldn’t put all this stuff in; dead girls in trunks of cars, sleeping with George.” Suddenly I get it; I stare at him, wide-eyed. “The National Enquirer!”

“Sir, I—”

Alarmed and outraged, I tell him, “Pal, I don’t talk to the Enquirer! I set the dogs on the Enquirer!” Lifting my head, I cry, “Hoskins!”

And he appears, as is his function. Bowing from the waist, my unflappable Hoskins says, “You bellowed, sir?”

Good man. I say to him, “Hoskins, do we got any dogs?”

“No, sir,” Hoskins says.

“Drat,” I say. It would have been fun to watch this bland and boring O’Connor high-tailing it across the lawn, pen and notebook flying, pursued by slavering dogs. I say, “Well, we got security men, Hoskins, you can’t deny that.”

“I do not deny it, sir,” he says.

“Send me security men,” I tell him. “Sadistic security men, with a history of psychopathology. We got here a National Enquirer reporter, and I—”

“Oh, I think not, sir,” Hoskins says.

I frown at him. Hoskins thinks not? What does this mean? “What does this mean, Hoskins?”

But it’s O’Connor who answers me, saying, “It means I’m not from the National Enquirer, Mr. Pine. I’m not a journalist at all.”

What’s this? I’m chatting with some bum in off the street? I say, “Then what are you doing talking to me? You got an appointment?”

“Sir,” he says, smooth and calm as ever, “as I told you at the beginning of the interrogation—”

“Interview,” I say, correcting him in a hurry, feeling a sudden alarm.

“Interrogation,” he says, and then it gets worse. “The other police officers,” he says, “read you your rights and explained the situation to you before you came out of the house. If you don’t remember that, I’m sorry, but” — and he smiles, faintly — “the legalities have been preserved.”

All I can do is stare at him. “You’re a cop?”

“Detective Second Grade Michael O’Connor,” he says. “Bel Air police.”

“But— But—” My mind is swirling, I can’t believe this is happening. I say, “It was an accident! It was twenty-five years ago, I didn’t mean to kill her, it was an accident! Besides, I, I’ve been a useful member of society ever since, I’ve paid my debt to society, I–I gave, I give— Hoskins!”

He’s right there, of course. “Sir?” he says.

“Every Christmas,” I say, because I need him to vouch for me now, I need Hoskins on my side now, “every Christmas, don’t we, we give, we send out those UNICEF cards, don’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Hoskins says.

I face O’Connor — policeman O’Connor — I face him and spread my hands. “See?”

“Mr. Pine,” this policeman — policeman! — says, “it isn’t a twenty-five-year-old felony that concerns us now. Let’s talk about last night.”

Feeling scared again, nervous and scared, covering it with mulishness, I say, “I don’t remember last night. I wasn’t here. I was in a different galaxy.”

“Maybe we can bring it back for you,” O’Connor says.

“No need,” I say. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“No trouble,” he assures me. “It was late last evening. You were coming down the main staircase. The front door opened and Buddy Pal walked in. Do you remember that?”

“No,” I say, though in fact faint images are rising to the surface of my brain, little bubbles of image, each with a picture inside, each bubble popping, the images staying behind, filling in, bit by bit.

“Think back,” O’Connor tells me. “Buddy Pal walked in. You said something like, ‘Hi, Buddy. Where’ve you been?’ Do you remember that?”

“Maybe,” I say. “What’s wrong with that? What difference does it make?”

“What did he answer?”

“What?”

“When you asked me him where he’d been,” O’Connor says, patiently pressing me, holding me, squeezing me, “when you asked him where he’d been, what did he say?”

Why should I cooperate with this son of a bitch? “I don’t know,” I say.

“Think,” O’Connor suggests.

“I don’t remember.”

“Think.”

I think. I can’t help it. I think more than I should. I try not to think, I do all kinds of things to stop from thinking, but none of them ever work, not for long. I think, and then Buddy’s remembered voice comes into my mind, and I repeat what he’d said to me, where he’d been: “Brazil,” I say.

O’Connor nods. “Is it coming back now?”

It is, dammit. Not thinking is hard to do. “I was already stoned when Buddy walked in, but when I saw him, when I saw what had happened, what he’d done, I right away took a lot more stuff.”