Wolf Hour

39 Fish, October 2016

Betty Jackson locked the door to the ticket booth and was heading for the switches to turn off the lights for the Rialto sign when Mel, the projectionist, came down the steep steps from his projection room. ‘There’s a guy still sitting in the theatre,’ he said, keeping a tight hold of the railing. Mel was only a couple of years younger than her and had recently had a hip replacement.

‘I see,’ said Betty. ‘Didn’t you call down and tell him we’re closing?’

‘Yeah, but I think he’s asleep.’

They entered the theatre together.

She registered that it was the black man in the red hat. She would have shouted his name, but she didn’t know it, had never spoken to him, even though he sat there almost every day, usually staying for several hours. Sometimes he was the only person in the whole theatre. She’d hear him talking on his phone when he was alone, like it was his office. But this time it looked as though he’d fallen asleep, his chin slumped down in his chest and the brim of the hat shading his face.

Betty walked along the row toward him with the projectionist, who had actually offered to go first, like he was some kind of gentleman, right behind her. The man sat with one hand resting on his thick thigh and she put her hand over his and gave it a gentle shake. The hat fell off. Betty exclaimed loudly and backed away, into the projectionist. The man’s eyes were wide open and completely white. Though it wasn’t that that made her jump, her own husband also sometimes slept with his eyes open and his head back. Nor was it the open mouth with the tiny inlaid diamonds glinting in the teeth. It was the hand. It had been as cold as marble.

It had been a more than usually busy afternoon at Bernie’s Bar and a very good evening. Liza had turned down the volume slightly on Little Feat’s ‘Dixie Chicken’ so she could hear what he was saying, the tipsy and rather forlorn-looking elderly man sitting at the bar. He was saying he had driven to the big city from a town named Funkley, four hours’ drive to the north, to attend the NRA gathering the next day.

‘Quite a change for a hayseed like me, this,’ he said with a cautious smile. ‘Funkley’s got five inhabitants. Everyone lives alone, got their own home. It gets kind of lonely. Even though I’m the only man among them.’

‘Yes, you’d probably be better off living in Minneapolis,’ said Liza, signalling to another guest that she would take his order in a moment or two.

‘How so?’ asked the hayseed, looking at her with genuine curiosity.

‘Well,’ said Liza as she tried to think up a good answer, ‘we... er, for one thing we’ve been voted the healthiest city in the country.’

‘Good for you. But you look just as lonesome as us people from Funkley.’

Liza stepped aside to pull a beer for the impatient customer as the swing door to the back room opened and Eddie — who was to take the final two hours alone — came in.

‘Anyone would think the place was popular,’ he said as he looked out across the bar.

‘You can handle it,’ said Liza as she took the money for the beer and nodded in the direction of the hayseed. ‘Be nice to this guy here.’

‘Always nice to everybody, that’s me,’ said Eddie.

Liza went out to the back, untied her apron and put on her coat. She had to admit that since morning, every time the bar door opened, she had looked up, half hoping to see that ugly mustard-yellow coat coming in. Maybe he’d be back some other day. Or not. It was OK either way. She left by the back door, onto a sidewalk that was still wet with rain.

An orange Volvo stood parked by the kerb.

‘You can see that coat doesn’t match the car,’ she said. ‘Or are you colour-blind?’

‘A bit,’ he said as he opened the passenger-side door. ‘Can I offer you a lift?’

She pretended to think it over.

‘So?’ she said as they set off down the road. ‘Have you found what you were looking for?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Bob.

‘Perhaps?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, anyway you, you look... lighter.’

‘Lighter?’

‘As though you’ve... I don’t know. Got rid of something.’

He nodded. ‘Perhaps.’

‘That’s a lot of perhapses there.’

He laughed. ‘Tell me about your day.’

She did. Talked about the guy from Funkley. About some of the regulars. About Little Feat. And about how Johan had learned a whole raft of new words and was now spouting them like a waterfall. Now and then the man behind the wheel nodded. Sometimes he laughed. At other times just grunted. Sometimes he asked about something and seemed as though he was really interested. It was easy to talk, so easy she had to be careful not to say too much, she thought. But it was all fine, and she hadn’t got him wrong in the bar or that last time he drove her home; he understood what she was talking about, understood her simple, practical and unsentimental way of thinking about things. Liza knew she could scare the type of man who preferred soft, cuddly women, sensitive and delicate women they could look after. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t need someone to lean on when the going got tough, but most of all she needed someone who respected her and who she could respect in return. Sure, she didn’t know Bob Oz well enough to know if he was a man like that, all she knew was that she liked... well, what was it about him she did like, actually? That behind all the bullshit he was honest, that he didn’t try to pretend to be someone or something he wasn’t. If that was down to courage or just laziness she didn’t know, but she liked it. She liked being around him. That was the plain truth. And hell, that was enough to be going on with.

As it had done the last time, the journey to her little home seemed over too quickly.

‘Shotgun shack,’ he said as they both peered up at the kitchen window where they saw the profile of Liza’s sister Jennifer who, as Liza knew, would be deep in some romantic novel.

‘Is it something you look forward to?’ he asked.

‘Look forward to?’

‘Going inside and seeing your kid sleeping there in the bed, safe and warm. That was always the high point of the day for me. It made it all worthwhile, all the grind.’

She looked at him. Hesitated.

‘You think often about that?’ she asked.

‘Every day.’

‘Would you... want to come in and see him?’

He looked at her in surprise. ‘You sincere?’

She nodded.

Liza unlocked the door and they went straight to the kitchen where she introduced Bob and her sister to each other and told her to carry on reading, Bob wouldn’t be staying long. Then they made the short trip to the bedroom and opened the door. Light fell across the little bed. Her three-year-old was wearing pale blue pyjamas. He was fast asleep, one little fist clenched with the thumb sticking up like a hitchhiker. The Radica 20Q lay on the duvet next to him. Liza heard Bob’s intake of breath, as though he was about to say something, but nothing came.

After a few moments they closed the door again.

‘Thanks,’ he said as they stood on the steps outside the front door. Liza wanted to give him a hug but she resisted.

Bob looked at Liza standing there in the doorway. He wanted to give her a hug, but resisted.

‘Sleep well,’ he said, and with a short, clumsy bow he turned and headed back toward his car.

‘You know what, Bob Oz?’

He stopped and turned. ‘What?’

‘You’re not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You’re a sheep in wolf’s clothing.’

He nodded slowly and smiled. ‘I’ll have to think about that one.’

And that’s what he did as he drove away, listening to ‘On Parole’, a sheep of a pop song in the wolf’s clothing of hard rock. Disguise, there was something there. Not something about him but about Tomás Gomez, maybe deep down a decent, hard-working family man who dressed himself up in the clothing and rituals of a gang member, a cold-blooded killer. Even if loneliness had driven him mad and afflicted him with what Alice had called the rage of abandonment, could a person really go through such a complete transformation? And if not, why had no one exposed the sheep in wolf’s clothing?

Two hours later, as he sat on the couch in his apartment and opened his third and final beer, the thoughts still swirled around inside his head: who is Tomás Gomez?

Where is Tomás Gomez?

Kay Myers stared at the ceiling above her bed as though the cracks in the paintwork were a map that might reveal where he was hiding. Listened to the couple making love in the next-door apartment, as though their cries might tell her something. All kinds of disparate thoughts swirled around inside her head. Mrs White’s bird. Ted Springer’s pinstriped suit. Walker’s bass voice. The man at the porn theatre with the present for his daughter. The phone call from Bob Oz requesting the file on Perez, a homicide case from 1995. Was there some pattern here? Something she should have spotted, something that would reveal exactly what his next move would be? She checked the time. Twelve hours until the opening at the US Bank Stadium. Why think about that? It wasn’t her responsibility any more. Springer and Hanson, from now on Gomez was their problem. She’d called the woman who rang in the tip-off from Cedar Creek but got no reply. Kay decided she would head up there early in the morning so she could cross it off her list. What she should do now was sleep. The couple through the wall had fallen silent now. She envied them their lovemaking. Envied their waking up together. It had been a long time since she’d had anyone else in her bed, man or woman. She felt the mattress dip at the foot of the bed and an instant later the cat came snuggling up next to her as though it had read her thoughts. She closed her eyes and stroked its head. She thought of the painter. How a mask through which all you saw was a pair of eyes left you free to invent the rest any way you wanted. Make your own imaginary person. What was it he wanted to show her on Sunday? She thought briefly about it, then her thoughts moved on. Who was Perez? What — if anything — did Bob know that neither she nor anybody else had seen?

The phone on her bedside table rang. She checked the screen and recognised the number.

‘Yes, Fortune?’

‘Sorry to call so late, Myers. I’m at the Regency Hospital, I’m standing outside the mortuary.’

Marco Dante, she thought. He’s dead.

‘An ambulance brought in a body from the Rialto a few hours after we were there. They didn’t contact us because they didn’t see anything suspicious about the death. It isn’t the first time an overweight man past fifty dies of a heart attack or whatever while watching a dirty movie. But then they took a preliminary toxso... er, toxsilogical...’

‘Toxicology test,’ said Kay.

‘Yeah. And they found traces of... hang on, I wrote it down here. Tetrodotoxin. It’s supposed to be the same kind of poison you get when you eat those Japanese fish that haven’t been cooked properly.’

‘Fugu.’

‘Eh?’

‘Japanese pufferfish.’

‘Yeah. So I asked did they think the guy had been eating fish while he was at the movies. But even though those things mean certain death, it apparently works slowly, so the guy could have got the poison in him several hours before he noticed anything. And being as how this isn’t exactly the kind of fish you cook in your kitchen at home I figured that here is one restaurant that is going to be in deep shit. But now I’ve checked the guy out and when I saw his record I called you straight off.’

‘I get it. So who is he?’

‘Wes Villefort. Male, fifty-eight years, black.’

She groaned. ‘You gonna give me his height too?’

‘I’m saying black because he was the only black person there.’

The pimp, she thought. ‘OK. So, the record?’

‘Narcotics.’

Kay thought about this. She saw no immediate connection between narcotics and Dante, Karlstad and Patterson. The death might just be accidental. Or it might not.

‘Thanks for telling me,’ she said. ‘I’ll take a look at it in the morning.’

Olav Hanson headed down toward the river with his fishing rod in his hand.

He needed to calm down and think things over before tomorrow. And he and Violet had quarrelled after Sean’s visit the previous night. It ended with her leaving to spend the weekend at her parents. She would calm down, so that was OK by him, it meant he could fish the whole night through if he wanted.

The steep track was muddy. It always was, no matter how long it had been since the last rain. The moon dipped in and out behind the clouds, and in the dark it wasn’t easy to see where to put your foot without slipping. Having a bad knee on a tricky slope didn’t help and several times he had to reach out and hold on to tree trunks for support. A sound. He stopped. Something moving in the trees. Too big for a squirrel. He peered but saw nothing. Either it was the same dog as last time or his ragged nerves playing a trick on him again. He carried on unsteadily down the track. Events over the last few days had cost him, but with a bit of luck it might all be over by tomorrow. If Lobo really did make an attempt on the life of the mayor then, statistically speaking, the most likely outcome was that the problem would solve itself. Olav had learned this during a meeting that afternoon at which Springer said that the majority of so-called lone-wolf terrorists ended up being killed, whether or not they succeeded. Olav couldn’t care less about Mayor Patterson; with that statistical fact in mind he just hoped Lobo would turn up at the US Bank Stadium tomorrow armed with a rifle.

As he reached the river’s edge Olav saw that another fisherman hadn’t gone home yet. That was fine. It meant he wouldn’t be standing there alone on a dark night like this.

‘Catch anything?’ asked Olav as he pulled the cover of his rod off and made ready to cast.

‘Not yet,’ the man said without taking his eyes off his line. Olav seemed to recognise the voice, but he couldn’t immediately put a face to it. There were quite a few regulars among those who fished down here.

‘Perch bites better at night,’ said Olav. He heard a twig snap behind him and peered up into the trees.

‘Oh, I was hoping for something a little bigger.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Olav. He heard a single bark from the trees. So it was the dog. Olav could tell his pulse was high now because he could feel it slowing down again. ‘Yellow pike, you mean?’ said Olav as he stuffed the rod cover into his jacket pocket. He was looking forward to the fishing now. Showing how far he could cast. ‘You need luck for that, man.’

‘Not yellow pike,’ said the other. ‘I’m after the Milkman.’

At first Olav Hanson thought he hadn’t heard right, that his nerves were playing a trick on him. Then, slowly, the fisherman turned. The peak of his cap shadowed his face, but once he had turned round completely and raised his head, Olav saw who it was.

‘Remember me, Hanson?’

Olav swallowed. Wanted to say no. Then changed his mind when he saw the gun. Tried to say yes, but his mouth was so dry all that came out was air.

‘Thirty years, Hanson. That’s a long time, but you know what? I remember you like it was yesterday.’

‘I...’ Olav stopped right there, because he had no idea what to say. Maybe it was best to say nothing.

‘Remember how you gave me your personal word you would catch the people who killed my family?’

‘I... we... we sure tried.’

‘Three weeks ago I spoke to the man who killed my daughter. The girl in the wheelchair, remember? He told me how you interfered with the technical evidence, you changed witness statements and made sure the guilty men were never caught. That that’s what Die Man paid you for.’

‘Who... who is Die Man?’

‘That doesn’t matter. He is no longer with us. I stuck a needle through the seat and into his back at the movie theatre.’

Olav considered whether to try to go for the gun in his shoulder holster. He’d buttoned it in before he started down the steep track in case he slipped, and that would make it more difficult. No, this wouldn’t be like it was with the kid with the knife. But Olav had practised drawing the gun from the shoulder holster, and he was quick. A lot quicker than Joe Kjos anyway. Olav looked up at the sky. A dark cloud heading toward the moon. Olav moved his fishing rod into his left hand.

‘What are you going to do to me?’ Olav asked.

‘Ever heard of rogue taxidermy?’

‘What?’

‘I’m going to stuff you. Then display you. Somewhere public, for the enjoyment of the people. You’ll be a modern work of art, Hanson.’

The cloud slipped over, obscuring the moon, and in the darkness Olav Hanson went for his gun.