The Four Last Things

Chapter 15

It took two toots from the truck's horn to tell me he'd arrived. I hoisted my steaming coffee mug, wrapped my leaky raincoat around my bare and unsteaming body, and headed down the driveway. Roxanne was gone but the rain was still with us.

About an hour before, at Roxanne's urging and jacked up by three cups of her coffee, I'd gone reluctantly down to check out the smell. If Roxanne hadn't been watching from the top of the driveway I'd have yielded to nausea and gone back up the hill to tell her a lie. She was watching, though, and I had a sacred masculine tradition of stupidity to uphold.

If the smell had been music it would have been Mahler. There was a rich, overripe majesty to it that actually made it difficult to tell whether it was getting stronger or weaker. Looking for its source was like trying to spot a candle after being blinded by a flashbulb. With every synapse in my nervous system screaming retreat in a hysterical falsetto, I forced myself into the bushes above the driveway.

And there it was, about five feet up the hill, a shapeless blob of blond fur: someone's beloved Fluffy the Cat. Around what once had been its neck was a pink collar that had been described to me in heartrending detail, making me surer than I wanted to be that it was, to be precise, Mrs. Yount's Fluffy the Cat. I didn't think she'd want her back. So I'd discreetly heaved the coffee and most of last night's hamburger onto the wet earth, feeling protected by the bushes from Roxanne's prying eyes. Then, bathed in chill sweat, I'd clambered back up the driveway with a ghastly semblance of jauntiness to figure out what to do.

Coyotes team up to take cats. One of them had probably chased poor old Fluffy into the underbrush and directly into a circle of teeth and claws. Cats must taste terrible, because they hadn't bothered to eat her. Fluffy had been deteriorating for about ten days while Mrs. Yount waited for me to turn something up, and I drove up and down the canyon tacking Xeroxes to phone poles. If I could have written them in coyote I might have gotten an answer. Or at least a long, echoing, moonlit horse-laugh.

Once I was safe inside the house, I'd called the city out of sheer desperation and been referred to the county. The county had given me another number to call, and someone at that number had given me another number. I was running out of space on my doodle pad by the time I found myself talking to the right person.

That person's job was to dispatch other people to pick up dead animals.

When the horn toots summoned me, I slogged back down in the drizzle to see a tall young black man in a yellow rubber slicker standing in front of a long white truck. His expression was as bright as a sunny day, cheerier than an orange Life-Saver in a packet full of limes. He balanced a shovel upright like an urban graffito based loosely on American Gothic.

"Say what," he said by way of salutation. "So where she be?"

I took a protective pull off my coffee cup and pointed vaguely toward the bushes, stifling a petticoat impulse to hold my nose. He nodded, slogged up the hill, and started in. First, though, he paused and looked back at me.

"No snakes in here, is they?" He sounded serious.

"None," I lied, without even thinking about it. "I've lived here five years and never seen one." I'd killed three with a hoe, right about there.

"I don't shine to snakes," he said. "Somethin' wrong when you can kill the front half and the back still lash around. Even when they all the way dead, I use the long shovel. The way long shovel. Sometimes, if they dead in the road and they ain't nobody watchin', I just run the truck over them four, five times to mash them into the asphalt. Then I jus' pretend they the dotted line and go home."

"No problem. You're safe as milk," I said, wondering who at the county I could call to get him picked up if a rattler bit him. "Just follow your nose."

The brush closed behind him and I repressed a twinge of guilt and tried to think about something else. Anything else. "Wo," he said, unseen. "She be real ripe." I heard some scuffling in the brush and the handle of his shovel emerged once or twice. "Heeere, kitty, kitty," he said. I concentrated on feeling inadequate.

He came out backward with something blond and unrecognizable lolling off the end of the shovel. An explosion of odor rolled toward me. The black man extended the shovel to the left and faced all the way right, toward me. "I done developed this walk all by myse'f," he said. "Looks funny, but she works. Tell me if I gone hit a tree." Arms left, head right, he marched down the hill.

"You do this all day long?" I said after the cat was safely stowed in the bowels of the truck.

He wiped the shovel on some dead grass while he considered the question. "This ain't doodlysquat," he said at last. "Later, right before dinner, I got to unload the truck."

I looked for a tree to sag against. "No," I said. "Say it isn't so."

"Four dollar thirty-fi' an hour," he said, grinning. "And unloading them ain't the half of it."

"What in the world," I said, against my better judgment, "could you mean?"

"Well, they's a problem. See, sometime they get mixed up. Out come ol' Fluffy there and she got Fido's head. Then I got to sort them out. Like a jigsaw puzzle, you know? 'Cept in 3-D and Smellovision."

My pulse pounded forcefully in my ears a couple of times before sanity prevailed. "Wait a minute," I said. "Why do you have to sort them out?"

His smile widened. "For burial. We take 'em over to the Permanent Pet Playground, Inc., y' know? Fussy outfit. These fuzzy babies going to be frisking around for eternity, they got to have the right heads and tails. Otherwise they going to be fightin' with theyself. I mean, wo. What gone happen when that big bugle blow in the sky, huh? How all these good folk seized up by the Rapture gone recognize they pets when they pets look like they been put together by a committee?"

I looked at him for a long moment. His face was as innocent as a Girl Scout cookie. "I'm not sure," I said, "but I think you're full of shit." He gazed at me genially. "You want a cup of coffee?"

"Is the pope a polack?" He stashed the shovel carefully in the truck and followed me up the driveway.

I closed the door behind him and poured out the last of Roxanne's hour-old brew. He'd taken the slicker off to reveal an immaculate white uniform with the name dexter stitched into the pocket. It was hand-stitched, individual stitches leapfrogging each other over the pocket's surface. It looked like he'd stitched the pocket closed. He sat at what passed for a breakfast counter, sipped the coffee, and made a face.

"Wo, hot. But it taste good. Center slice from the loaf of life, y' know?" He blew on the chipped mug and surveyed the living room. "I know every man's home supposed to be his castle," he said, "but you pushing it, don't you think?"

"You don't like it?"

"Sure," he said, "it's real sweet. I was just trying to figure if I'd rather live in it or under it."

"That's because you haven't been under it."

"Ain't nothin' there I haven't picked up."

"How do you do it?" I drained the dregs in my cup. "And, while we're on it, why?"

He had a knack of making his eyes glimmer, and he glimmered them at me then. "You got a live boss?" he asked.

I thought. "Not at the moment."

"That's what I like," he said, "man who don't pick his words."

"Okay, sorry. I usually do."

"Me, I'll take a dead client anytime, huh? 'Stead of a live boss, I mean. Ol' Fluffy, y' know, she smell terrible, she done kiss the odor of sanctity good-bye for keeps, and she ain't no thicker'n a milkshake. But she ain't gone tell me what to do."

"You mean you do this of your own free will?" I asked disbelievingly.

"Free will?" he said. "That's quaint, y' know? I ain't heard no one say that since college."

"College," I said.

"Yeah. This philosophy professor. Must have weighed three hundred pounds on a good day, when he been skippin' potatoes, y' know? Man was fat. Always talkin' about determinism. Everything come from somethin' else, right? So if this clown know that, how come he's so fat? And, wo, could he smoke. If he know everything come from somethin' else, how come he don't know cancer comes from smokin' cigarettes? Enough to put you off education."

"Jerry Ryskind," I said.

"Wo," he said, sitting bolt upright. "Hey, the Bruins, huh? Fuck USC"

"In spades," I said, regretting the expression instantly. He saw my expression and laughed.

"Skip it," he said. "Fuck 'em in spades and hearts and diamonds too. So you a Bruin too. You know ol' Jerry."

"Philosophy 101," I said. "Many unfiltered cigarettes. Double-breasted suits."

"Triple-breasted. On the way to quadruple-breasted, last time I seen him. He gain five more pounds, they gone have to put a pleat in the room."

"I'm Simeon. Simeon Grist."

"Dexter," he said, pointing to the pocket. "Dexter Smif. S-m-i-f. This be a terrible house," he elaborated. "Shame you don't got none of the advantages."

"With your college education, how many negatives can you get into a sentence?"

"Five. Six, if I workin' at it. Hard thing is to stick with the odd numbers. If two negatives is a positive, then four is a double positive. Got to get past the last even number. 'I ain't got no idea,' well, you know and I know that that means I know something. 'I don't know nothing nohow,' right? That leaves some doubt in the mind, don't it?"

"It don't," I said. "Anybody can count to three."

He slurped at his coffee. "You wrong there. Somebody like you, got all the advantages despite this shit house, you can hit three without standing on tiptoe."

"So you took philosophy."

"Minor. It's a dead man's game. De hearse before Descartes."

"What was your major, urban English?"

"The degree's in poli sci." He gave me a slow grin. "You want me to talk different?"

"Well," I said, "if you'll forgive my saying so, it doesn't exactly add up. A political-science degree, and you spend your days scraping up dead mammals."

" 'Phibians too," he said. "Don't forget the 'phibians."

"You have a lot of invigorating political discussions with the dead 'phibians?"

"You forget the philosphy. This is a good job for a guy with philosphy flowin' through his veins."

"Thought you didn't like snakes."

"Don't be gettin' tricky, now. Any fool that can tell poop from pizza knows snakes ain't 'phibians. They riptahls."

"I'd love to hear you spell that."

"R-i-p-t-a-h-l-s." He smiled. "Easy." he said. "Almost as easy as 'Smif.' "

"No bosses," I said. "Lots of time to speculate on the implications of mortality."

"They only one implication I can think of. We all gone to end up in somebody's truck."

"The Chariot of the Gods."

He fished out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, crossed impossibly long legs, and leaned back. "So," he said, "we talkin' about my job. What career path brought you to this mansion on the hill?"

"I'm an investigator," I said. The word "detective" always made me uncomfortable.

"Can't be insurance. You don't look like you could get it, much less give it. Can't be a cop. Cops got to be macho, you know? Your average cop would have picked up ol' Fluffy out there with his teeth and then flossed with the tendons. You certainly ain't IRS. Got any more coffee?"

"I'll make some. It'll take a while. You don't have to go anywhere?"

"No bosses, remember? And Fluffy, she ain't no jug of perfume but she real patient. So I guess that means you in business for yourself."

I poured water into the top of the coffeemaker and put some beans in the grinder. "I guess it does."

"Wo, real gourmet. Beans and all. You got a ashtray?"

"Use the floor. The cleaning crew comes in today."

"They gone bring a wrecking ball?"

"A fire hose. You want it strong?"

"You like the job?"

I thought about it. "Some days."

"Explain the appeal." He stubbed out his cigarette in the saucer.

The coffeemaker gurgled three or four times as the water heated. "This is its idea of foreplay," I said. "In about an hour we'll have some coffee."

"Like I said, explain the appeal."

"Well, once in a while you get a chance to reduce the number of assholes in the world."

"That's a losin' battle. Ain't never gone to be no asshole shortage. We got oil shortages, grain shortages, coal shortages, every kind of fuckin' shortage you can think of, but there ain't no asshole shortage. Assholism is a dominant trait."

"It's still nice to take one out." I gave the coffeepot a useless whack to speed it up.

"You an idealist," he said. "Me, I'm a realist. You know the difference between an idealist and a realist?"

"No," I said, "but I have a feeling you're going to tell me."

"The idealist is holdin' the gun. The realist is on the other end."

"And where'd you pick up this bit of knowledge?"

"Nice little island name of Grenada. I was a member of the victorious invadin' force. We fought them on the beaches, we fought them in the streets."

"One of my favorite wars."

"Like the man say, democracy in action. 'Nother exercise in poli sci."

"So you went to college, went into the forces, and then put all that background to work picking up dead animals."

"Markin' time."

The phone rang. I went to pick it up, and Dexter went over to study the coffeemaker.

"It's Hammond," Hammond said.

"Damn," Dexter said to the coffeemaker, which still hadn't dripped a drop. "Come on, now."

"You were right about the Oldfield house," Hammond said. "They were pros. They even ripped the paper off the back of the mirror in the bedroom."

"Did they wipe the place?"

"Looks like it. Lots of smears around, hardly one good print, not even many of hers. Also, they left money. There was about three hundred in a flour canister. Canister was open but the money was still there."

"Be drippin'," Dexter said, rattling the pot and peering into it. "Move your ass."

"What did they take?"

"Well, that's hard to say," Hammond said with exaggerated politeness. "Because it wouldn't be there, would it? I mean, after they took it, we wouldn't find it, so we wouldn't know if they'd taken it, would we?"

"I knew there was a reason I hadn't joined the force," I said. "The difficulties you overcome in the line of duty. Was there a personal phone book?"

"No."

"Don't most women have a personal phone book?"

There was a silence. "Are you going to let me tell this my way, or are we going to play Twenty Questions?"

"Sorry," I said. "Just trying to gain insight into the police mentality."

"Police?" Dexter said. "Get a man out here to arrest this coffeepot. It gone on strike."

"Someone's there?" Hammond said.

"A man from the county," I said. "Animal Homicide."

"Ask a stupid question," Hammond said. "No phone book, no checkbook, no letters, no fingerprints. Not many photographs. They wanted to know who she'd been talking to, who she'd been writing to, who she really was."

"Who was she?"

"Sarah Theresa Oldfield. Married, divorced. Husband in Utica. That's in New York. No kids. In L.A. three years."

"Utica?"

"That's what it says. Sounds like something that hangs in the back of your throat. Booming little town. Saturday night, you ask your date if she'd like to go down to the beer factory and watch the gauges rise."

"How long in the Church?"

"That's coming. Ought to know this afternoon."

"You're not talking to the Church."

"Please," Hammond said. "We're going to check her bank records."

"I got a idea," Dexter said. He yanked the empty pot out from under the spout.

"You'll make a mess," I said warningly.

"Somethin' this contrary, a mess is what she want."

"Jesus," Hammond said, "it's nice to have your attention."

"Here she come," Dexter said with nicely modulated triumph. A stream of brown coffee splattered on the hot plate. Dexter slipped the pot back under the filter.

"I never thought of that," I said admiringly.

"There is much in heaven and earth, Horatio," Dexter said, "that is not in your philosphy."

"Maybe you'd like me to call back to tell you about Wilburforce," Hammond said. "Or maybe you'd like to call me when Animal Homicide has gone to that big kennel in the sky."

"Sorry. What about Wilburforce?"

"A real shtarker. An old-time con man named Jason Jenks, aka Jinks Jenks. Actually, I sort of remember Jinks. He was jugged about fifteen years ago for practicing medicine without a license."

"What's so memorable about that?"

"He was doing surgery."

"Ah."

"Pretty well, too. He cut them open and sewed them up again. Sometimes he even got what he was after. Apparently he had some medical school in a previous life. After that he was arrested for running a weight-loss clinic, pretending to be the doctor in charge. They put people on a diet and then fed them all sorts of bright little pills and injected them with water and B-12 every couple of days. Also, apparently, a little cat piss."

"Wilburforce running a weight-loss clinic?" I asked. "He's bigger than Luciano Pavarotti."

"He was svelte in those days," Hammond said. "Weighed a chic two-oh-five when he was booked. Called himself Dr. Pounzoff, with a Russian spelling. Place was called the Pounzoff Clinic. Cute, no? The fat lady is his wife, Clara. She was pretending to be a nurse then."

Dexter poured a cup of coffee and waved it questioningly at me. I nodded, and he went to the counter and got my cup.

"Why was he arrested?" I asked. "L.A. has more phony weight clinics than fire hydrants."

"Couple of customers got hepatitis and complained. This is in the early seventies, before AIDS. Even then, we dumb cops knew that meant that someone wasn't being really scrupulous about sterilizing needles. And then, of course, there was his surgery conviction. We couldn't have him getting delusions of grandeur and cutting honest citizens open again. Think how the doctors at Cedars would have felt."

"Since then?"

"After the Pounzoff dodge he dropped out of sight. Went somewhere and gained weight. Then he surfaced in the Church of the Eternal Moment."

"And you guys left him alone?"

Dexter handed me my cup. The coffee wasn't as good as Roxanne's, but it was better than nothing.

"Freedom of religion, remember?" Hammond said. "Anyway, he didn't seem to be bothering anybody."

"He was passing himself off as the little girl's personal physician."

"Well, we didn't know that. Unless somebody gets killed, we leave the religions alone."

"Somebody got killed," I said.

"Yeah, and you went all cute about it, didn't you? Our buddy Jenks was long gone by then anyhow. Set up his own shop, didn't he?"

I slurped my coffee. Dexter crossed his legs and examined the crease in his pants.

"So tell me about this year's Jenks. Dr. Richard Merryman."

"Nothing."

"By which you mean?"

"Nothing at all. Nothing illegal, nothing legal. He's a whaddya-call-it, a blank slate."

"Tabula rasa."

"You took the word out of my mouth. Or words, maybe. Not even a parking ticket. The lad is cleaner than a nun's conscience."

"Licensed for California?"

"Not so far as we can tell. He could have been licensed in the past six months or so. Sometimes they're a little slow up there in Sacramento."

"Can you get them to hurry?"

"Not without telling them why I'm interested. You want I should do that?"

"I'd rather you got leprosy."

"Wo," Dexter said. "That's cold."

"I agree with the man from Animal Homicide," Hammond said. "Anything happening on your end?"

"A dead cat," I said. "I'll call you when there's something more interesting."

"You'd better," Hammond said, meaning it. "Listen, one more thing about Sally Oldfield-you probably should know it although we're keeping it out of the papers."

"What's that?" I didn't like the edge in Hammond's voice.

"She was hurt."

I chewed the inside of my lip and remembered Sally's face, Sally's smile. "Hurt like how?"

"The man left with four of her fingernails in his pocket."

"The son of a bitch."

"She'd been gagged with her own panty hose, a big knot stuffed in her mouth. Kind of odd, don't you think?"

"To keep her quiet," I said, and then I said, "Oh. Right."

"Yeah," Hammond said. "Let's say in four cases out of five the guy who takes the time to pull someone's nails out before he closes the door for good wants to learn something. And if the person whose nails he's removing wants to say something, he's not going to be able to understand her with a big knot of nylon in her mouth, is he?"

"He did it for fun."

"There was probably nothing on TV. But then he goes and tosses her house. So maybe there was something he wanted to learn."

"No," I said. "I think he did it for fun. I think he already knew whatever it was, or he wouldn't have killed her. I think he held off killing her until he was sure about what she knew."

"Then why take the house apart?"

"To find out if she'd told anyone else. Think about what they took, Al."

"Girl's hands were a mess," Hammond said. "You get any closer to the man, let me know. I'd like an introduction. He had such a good time that he jerked off on her before he left. Ten-four," he said, knowing I hated it. He hung up.

"Ten-four," I said automatically as my mind tried briefly to reject the last thing Hammond had told me. Thinking very hard about Needle-nose, I looked up into the eyes of Dexter Smif.

"Ol' Broderick Crawford always said that," Dexter said. "Ten-four. Like it mean something. How come the man can't say good-bye?"

"He couldn't get his upper lip down far enough for the B." I wanted to get up and out of the house, to work off a little unwholesome energy before focusing on the day.

"Lotta cops do that. Look like they tryin' to give they teeth a tan."

I pushed Needle-nose from my mind's eye and an image of Merryman floated in to take his place. "If you were a doctor," I said, "why would you go into religion?"

"This detective work?"

"No," I said. "It's the fevered questioning of a philosophical mind."

"Right, be nasty. Some lady been killed apparently, but be nasty. Take refuge in philosphy. Okay, me too. Nothin' comes from nothin', right? I'd say he's after a little less nothin'. "

"Money."

"Why does anybody go into religion? I mean, unless they soul in peril. Most folks, they soul in peril, they the last one gone to know. Look at all those dildos in the three-piece suits and the dry-cleaned hair preachin' on the TV. All they worried about is the cost per thousand. It's the good folks worry about they soul."

"There's a sucker reborn every minute," I said.

"And they all got they dollar-fifty to send in every three days. From then on it's all multiplication. Be fruitful and multiply. 'Cept I don't think that's what it supposed to mean."

"So how do you trace a doctor?"

"Ask a doctor."

"Good idea." I picked up the phone and started to dial.

My friend Bernie picked up the phone on the third ring. Outside, the rain used the roof for a kettle drum. "Wo, listen to that," Dexter said. Have to go out through the valley."

"Bernie," I said. "How's Joyce?"

"Okay," Bernie said. "She's on call at the hospital."

"What are you doing?"

"Studying." Bernie was always studying. He was the only person I knew who had more degrees than I did, and he still couldn't bring himself to leave school.

"Can I buy you guys dinner?"

"Anybody can buy me dinner. But I don't know about Joyce. She thawed something before she went to work."

"Thawed something."

"I think it's lasagna. It's usually lasagna. Joyce cooks a boxcar full of lasagna and cuts the thing into one-foot squares and then freezes them. Our freezer flies the Italian flag."

"Well, then, how about I come over for dinner?"

"Listen to that," Dexter said. "Man invites himself."

"Like I said, I'll have to ask Joyce," Bernie said. "I don't know why there should be a problem. A square foot of lasagna is a lot of lasagna."

"It sounds like a lot of lasagna."

"It's good lasagna, though," Bernie said defensively. "Joyce makes a terrific lasagna."

"I'll bring the wine."

"Red," Bernie said. "I'm sick of Frascati."

Dexter picked up my doodle pad and wrote something on it. He waved languidly at me and headed for the door.

"I'm going to want to talk to Joyce," I said. "Will she mind?"

"Depends on what you want to talk about," Bernie said.

"See you," Dexter called. "Check the pad."

"Thanks for getting the cat," I said.

"Joyce likes cats," Bernie said. Then he said, "What have cats got to do with anything?"

"Nothing much. Seven o'clock fine?" Dexter pulled the door closed and went down the hill, whistling.

"Fine. Unless Joyce can't make it. Is this about cats?"

"No," I said. "It's about doctors. See you at seven."

I hung up and went to the kitchen to dump my cup in the sink. On the doodle pad Dexter had written dexter smif.

555-0091.CONSIDERIN' ABOUT A CAREER CHANGE.