“This is not underwear, Elvis,” I announced. “It’s art.” I clipped a bright purple and orange bra that I was particularly proud of onto the line. In the shadows of city hall, the developers hooted and clapped, a hundred happy hands.
That infuriated him further. “It’s underwear, damn it.” Bits of spittle bubbled at the corners of his mouth. “Get her out here so I can throw both of you out.”
“There’s no woman, Elvis.” I smiled and bent down to my laundry basket for something pink and yellow.
“When I catch her, you’re gone.”
At that point, someone must have cued the combo, because they took off into their approximation of “Fly Me to the Moon,” each saxophone flying in a different key. It made further discussionimpossible. I closed my mouth and beamed at Elvis, mellow as a panda on Percodan.
Across the lawn the people kept clapping, and the drummer began singing about Jupiter and Mars.
Elvis wasn’t done. He leaned to within an inch of my nose. “What the hell do you want, Elstrom?” he screamed, spraying spittle into my face.
“Change my zoning to residential or commercial. I’ll sell and leave,” I yelled back, waving at the still-clapping crowd behind the glare of the floodlights.
“No can do,” he shouted. His lips gave a final twitch, and he stalked off. Someone at last thought to kill the floods, and the developers gave a final burst of applause.
My stunt was stupid and childish. That night, I slept better than I had since I’d moved into the turret.
The lizards held two more receptions. They didn’t risk the floodlights again, but the ambient glow from the colored Christmas bulbs was enough to light up my undies, and the effect was mostly the same. Each time I’d start stringing my flags, the crowd would roar, and Elvis would march over, his oily face shining red above the pale blue of his prom jacket.
“Change my damn zoning, and I’ll leave,” I’d yell.
“No can do,” he’d scream back.
And the drummer would sing about Jupiter and Mars.
That was how July died. Every evening I ran up my flags, to remind the lizards that I was twitching for a fight. But after the fourth reception, no more were scheduled, and that was just as well. My little battles were just diversions, things to keep my mind from circling around what I was really doing, which was holding my breath, waiting for Gateville.
So I felt a sick kind of relief when, at the steaming beginning of August, I answered the door just after lunch and found StanleyNovak standing outside, clutching another tan envelope. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The sweat on his face said it all.
I’d been varnishing, and Stanley didn’t look like he could survive the fumes, so I led him down to sit on the bench by the river. I took the new freezer bag out of the envelope and read the note on the child’s paper through the plastic: NEXT TIME SOMEBODY DIES. FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND SUNDAY NIGHT SAME PLACE. The perfect pencil lettering, the computer printing on the envelope, and the Chicago postmark were the same as the first letter’s.
I looked at Stanley.
“It came this morning. Mr. Chernek wants it analyzed to make sure it’s the same guy before he pays.”
“It’s the same, Stanley; you can tell just by looking at it. What I want to know is-”
He stood up. “Please, Mr. Elstrom, have it analyzed. Then we’ll talk.”
I didn’t waste the words. He was a blind pawn on the chessboard, like me. I walked him up to his station wagon and told him I’d have it checked right away.
I drove to Leo’s. Up on the porch, television sounds came through the window screens. I knocked, waited, knocked again. After five minutes, Ma opened the front door against the chain, her head still aimed at the T.V. in the living room. People were grunting. Leo was in L.A., she said, but would be home that evening. I passed the envelope in, and as I did, Mr. Jack Daniel himself came wafting out through the crack in the door. Cocktails had started early. I made a polite grab to retrieve the envelope, but she was already shutting the door. The grunting inside had reached a fevered pitch. I let it go. I could only hope she’d drop the envelope on the hall table as she teetered back to her chair.
Leo had told me she only drank when he was out of town. As long as he kept his trips to one-nighters, he’d said, he didn’t worry. He even brought her back the disposable plastic hotel cups sheburied at the bottom of the kitchen garbage so she could think she’d left no visible evidence of her drinking.
I called Leo’s cell phone before starting the Jeep and told his voice mail I’d left another note with Ma but that she’d been vaguely disengaged. He’d understand. Hurry home, Leo.
It was two o’clock. The turret would feel like a cage until Leo looked at the letter and I could press for a meeting with the Bohemian.
I drove west, meandering, wrestling with the last words on the note: SAME PLACE. Words that meant the Bohemian or the Board already knew where to drop the money, words that meant there had been other communications, letters, maybe even phone calls they hadn’t told me about. Fair enough. I was the document guy, hired to be a cog, not the whole wheel. I didn’t need to know.
But need and want are two different things.
I swung over to Thompson Avenue and headed west to Gateville. If I showed up unexpectedly, I might be able to open up Stanley Novak about what had happened in the past.
From the crest of the hill, Gateville once again looked like paradise: green lawns, big houses, shading oaks, all nestled inside a protecting wall in its own little valley. I drove down the hill.
A stake truck loaded with plastic flats of flowers was stopped diagonally in front of the wrought-iron gate, blocking the entrance. Its engine was off, but its driver was still behind the wheel. I pulled onto the shoulder across the street and shut off the Jeep’s motor.
Two masons in white overalls were tuck-pointing the outside wall, troweling small amounts of mortar from wood pallets into the brick joints. It looked to be slow, painstaking work, pushing in the little amounts of mortar and then smoothing the joints with a jointer. One tuck-pointer sang to himself, his lips moving softly.
Two pale-blue-uniformed guards came out from between the white pillars, waited for a break in the traffic, and crossed the street toward the Jeep. Each wore a gun belt, something the Gatevilleguards had never done when I’d lived there. The retaining straps of their holsters were unsnapped.
It was good. The landscaping truck blocking the entrance and the slow-moving tuckpointers were security. The one tuckpointer hadn’t been singing; he’d been speaking into a microphone to alert the guardhouse that a Jeep had stopped across the street.
I put both hands on top of the steering wheel where they were easily visible. One guard came up to my side window as the other moved to the front of the Jeep.
“Dek Elstrom, working with Stanley Novak. Would you like to see a driver’s license?”
The guard nodded.
I kept my right hand on the wheel and extracted my wallet with my left. I thumbed it open, slid out the license, and passed it out. The guard bent down to compare my face with the photo, then backed away from the Jeep to use his cell phone. After a minute he came back and handed me my license.
“Mr. Novak said if you need to speak with him, to call him at home.”
“I just saw him a couple of hours ago. Is he ill?”
“Not him. His wife.”
“Nothing serious?”
The guard shrugged. “Call him at home if you need him.”
He motioned to his partner, and the two guards walked back across the street. I watched them disappear between the white pillars and thought about another time.
Nine months before, in the black of the night of Halloween, Stanley Novak had escorted me out from between those same pillars, at the direction of my ex-wife.