True Crime

EPILOGUE

The last time I saw Frank Beachum was that December. It was cold: it was bone-ass cold, I remember. Even the memory of the summer’s heat was gone. It had been snowing off and on for about a week and the streets were a mess, the curb covered in massive drifts, the corners flooding with slush.

I was in a black mood; a black, black mood indeed. I had just gone another fifteen rounds with Barbara’s lawyer and could not get her to explain to me how I was supposed to pay for the sins of all mankind and still make my rent next month. The lawyer didn’t seem to give a damn, and Barbara, who had been reasonable enough at first, seemed now to be floating in the current of the attorney’s bitterness and greed and going along with whatever she said. It was becoming clear that this was not going to be an amicable divorce.

It was getting close to Christmas, I guess, because I remember I went to the mall at Union Station that day to pick up a present for Davy. The snow was coming down again, hard, and my poor reconstructed Tempo was practically drowning in the slush that was kicking up into its engine.

The mall was packed. I had to park at the farthest end of the lot, which didn’t improve my mood any. I pulled my raincoat up around my ears, and hunched down into it as I walked through the insidious chill and the tumbling snow. The station, with its long, gable-peaked Romanesque front and its tall, thin double-towered clock minaret was supposed to look merry, I suppose. Lights and wreaths and multicolored Christmas tinsel hanging from it. And children bouncing around a carousel with its pastel horses spinning in one corner of the parking lot, and jolly carols droning out of its organ above the wet hiss of traffic.

My hands jammed in my pocket, my head down to keep the snow off my glasses, I crossed the wide lot to the entrance. There were children there too, a choir of little girls, singing carols, their mouths like O’s, their cheeks scarlet. And a little beyond them, stood a rather disheveled-looking Santa Claus-a black guy in a colorless overcoat, with a red elf’s cap dripping down the side of his face.

As I got close, I heard him calling to the passersby, holding a can out to them, turning with them as they walked on, ignoring him.

“Gimme some charity,” he was saying. “Gimme some charity here on toast. It’s for children or something. It’s an official charity. Gimme some of that charity. You got money. You got money on toast. Give some of that money to charity.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said.

As I strode toward him through the snow I caught the whiff of piss and wine on the arctic air. I felt the low simmer of my rage boil over. I reached the guy and shoved his shoulder with the heel of my palm.

“Hey,” I said, “what is this? You’re not Santa Claus, you’re the Pussy Man. What the hell d’you think you’re doing?”

Startled, staggering, he swung around to me. His droopy, unshaven face brightened. “Steve!” he said. “Newspaper man. You got money. You got money on toast. Gimme some of that money, Steve!”

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” I said. I pointed at the choir. “Little kids are here, you got Christmastime going on, what the fuck’s your problem, man. Collecting for charity, my ass. Pretending to be Santa Claus. Jesus.”

“Come on, Steve,” he said, more plaintively. “Gimme some money. You got money on toast. Gimme some of that money.”

I shoved a finger into the smelly gray cloth of his coat. “Listen, asshole,” I said. “I’m going into the shops. If you’re still fucking out here when I come back, I’m calling a cop, you got it?”

“Come on, Steve.”

“I’m calling a cop, asshole, I mean it. Pretending to be Santa Claus. What’s the matter with you? Jesus.”

I stomped away from him and pushed into the mall, muttering, “Christ. Nothing’s sacred around this fucking place.”

More jolly music greeted me as I came inside, as I marched angrily over the brick path, under the tinsel-strung network of catwalks and metal supports. I shouldered my way through the holiday crowds, shoppers with unbuttoned coats, bags dangling from their hands, boxes piled up against their chests. I made my way past the little jewelry stands and headed for the store that sold paraphernalia from the Walt Disney movies. Davy liked his Walt Disney movies. I shoved the glass door open and stomped in.

This girl was standing right inside, this chipmunk in a light blue Walt Disney uniform. You know how the old Greek heroes were the sons of women who mated with gods? Well, this kid was the daughter of some dame who’d spent the night with Mickey Mouse. The second I walked in, her whole pimply person went on like a light bulb. Her buck teeth gleamed, her eyes went saucer-sized.

“Good afternoon to you, sir! How are you today!” she screamed.

“What?” I said.

“Are you having a nice day!”

“I’m having a great day,” I said. “I’m having the best day of my whole life. Now could you give me a stuffed dalmatian please.”

“Oh, would you like one of our dalmatians? We have Pongo and Perdita and Lucky and …”

“The big one. Gimme the biggest one. What is that, fifteen hundred dollars?”

She chortled pleasantly. “Oh no, sir. Nowhere near as much as that.”

She bounded merrily to a group of yellow bins at the back of the room. There was an enormous television back there-nine televisions pushed together to make one picture. The Seven Dwarfs were marching across the conjoined screens singing hi-ho, hi-ho. A bouncing ball was picking out the words at the bottom.

The squirrelly girl ran her happy finger over the flounder bin and the Pinocchio bin until she came to the dalmatian bin. She plucked out a big one and carried it merrily over to her merry cash register.

“And how would you like to pay for that, sir?” she sang.

“In blood seems appropriate,” I said. “But a credit card’ll have to do.”

She took my card and placed it into her machine. She was actually humming the dwarf song to herself. “This is going to make someone’s eyes light up on Christmas morning,” she said.

I grinned nastily. “Christmas afternoon,” I said. “My ex won’t let me come by until lunchtime.”

Her curly head bobbed up for only a second. I saw her wide eyes go flat.

“She threw me out cause I boffed some other bimbo and she’s still pissed about it,” I said.

Minnie sucked in air through her nose and put her head down, scribbled quickly on the credit card slip.

“It could’ve been worse,” I told her. “I could’ve lost my job cause it was the boss’s wife I was putting it to. Luckily, I scored big just before they could can me, so we worked it out. In fact, I got myself a chunky little book contract out of it and, with any luck, I may win a Pulitzer and get a one-way ticket out of this hole and back to the big time. So what do you think-you wanna sleep with me?”

Chirpy stuck my dalmatian in a shopping bag with a decidedly pert little thrust. She handed it to me across the counter.

“I don’t think anyone would really want to sleep with you, sir,” she said.

I laughed. “You wouldn’t think so, sister, but you’d be dead wrong. Merry Christmas.”

I walked out of the shop feeling a little better anyway. I lit a cigarette as I strolled along the brick path and sucked on it, smiling. I was still smiling as I pushed out of the mall into the cold.

And he was still there. The Pussy Man. The little girls was still singing their songs, their red faces upraised to the falling snow, their eyes sidling over uncomfortably now and then to where the beggar was calling out for money on toast. I was angry all over again.

I charged up to him as he swung his can along the arc of a passing shopper. I pushed at his shoulder.

“All right,” I said, “that’s it. I’ve had it. I’m calling a cop. I told you, ya stupid …”

I heard a voice behind me, calling, “Da-deee! Come on!” I turned toward the sound instinctively and, looking across the lot, I saw Frank Beachum. It had been about a month since I’d seen him, since we’d finished the interviews for the book I was doing. We had started them while he was still in prison, and then went on for a few more weeks after his release. There hadn’t been that much for him to tell me actually, since I had come to the story so late and was planning to write about only that part of it. And he was not a very articulate man and his feelings had been understandably muddled there at the end. No matter how many times I asked him, he could never really describe what he was thinking, feeling, especially at the very last of it, on the gurney. He didn’t remember much of that, he told me. “I just saw what was going on, that’s all,” he told me. “And it was real scary, believe me.” So that was something right there I had to guess at.

After a while, I realized there was nothing more I could get out of him. But I went back a few times, all the same. Just to keep it going, I guess. We’d sit around some bar and have a beer together. I’d ask him about Bonnie, and he would tell me she was off medication and was getting better and I’d say that was good and then we’d sit there nodding stupidly at each other. We just didn’t have much to say really, he and I. We didn’t have very much in common. He fixed cars, I drove them. That was a good joke once, I guess, but it didn’t get us very far.

I knew he was planning to leave St. Louis soon. He’d gotten a lot of job offers after the story broke, and he’d accepted one at a garage in Washington, somewhere outside Seattle. He wanted to wait until Bonnie was out of the psychiatrist’s care and he was hoping the state would settle some money on him too before he left. I thought it would be some time before the state made up its mind about that, but I was pretty sure it was going to be a nice big settlement. The judge on the case was Evan Walters, a very upright Christian gentleman with a very upright Christian wife and three very upright Christian children. For the last two months, I’d been going to the same hookers he went to, and I knew it, and he knew I knew it, and it was going to be a nice big settlement, I felt sure.

So Frank must have left town pretty soon after that day at Union Station because, as I say, I haven’t seen him since. Even that last time, we didn’t approach each other or speak or anything. I just looked up from where I was in front of the mall and got a look at him. He was standing on the sidewalk by the parking lot. His little girl, Gail, was tugging on his fingers, trying to pull him along, but he’d stopped where he was, because he’d spotted me. Bonnie was standing next to him, her head wrapped in a kerchief. From what I could see, she looked tired, but she was laughing and smiling broadly, and she seemed healthy enough.

“Come on, Daddy, come on!” Gail said again.

She tugged at him some more, but Frank stayed where he was another moment. Slowly, as I watched him, he raised his hand to me. He lay his finger against the shock of hair on his brow and then lowered the finger and pointed it my way. A salute, you could call it, or maybe a farewell.

I raised my cigarette and tilted it back at him, and he laughed. Gail was pulling him away, along the sidewalk. He wrapped his arm around his wife’s shoulder and pulled her to him and the three of them went off together toward the carousel.

I watched them moving off through the snow. I watched them until they passed out of sight behind the edge of the building. Then I glanced around.

The Pussy Man’s streaked red-and-yellow eyes were staring at me out from under the furry fringe of his elf’s cap.

“Shit,” I said.

I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled my wallet out. I snatched out a ten and stuffed it roughly into his tin can.

“You might as well take it before my wife does,” I said. “Now get out of here. Go drink yourself to death.”

“Hey,” said the Pussy Man. “A ten? You got more money than that, you got money on …”

I glared at him.

“Okay, okay,” he said. He plucked the bill out of the can, crushed it in his fist and stuck his fist in his coat pocket. “Thanks, newspaper man. I been out here two hours. I’m freezing my ass off.”

I shook my head. “What the hell,” I said. “For all I know, you really are Santa Claus.”

I tossed my cigarette into the gutter and started walking off across the parking lot toward my car.

What the hell, I thought. For all I know, he really is.