“Did you see the lights?” Albie asked me, wide-eyed.
“We’ll talk about it,” I told him. “Bur first I need to drink about nine beers. Do you have nine beers at your place? Because if not, I really, really hope there’s somewhere open in this godforsaken little town where we can get some.”
“The Gentle kid’s body, just…standing there?” Albie asked again as we got into the car the next morning. This was about the twentieth time. “You really saw it?”
I don’t think Albie had slept very well. I wondered if maybe I’d told him too much.
“Trust me — I’ve seen worse things in my day. I have to admit, though, you’ve developed a few new wrinkles here.”
Grayson Thursday was waiting for us in his office, a little storefront place that looked like it might have been the site of one of those telemarketing boiler rooms. There was a computer — the 1980s kind, so it looked like the mating of a Hammond organ and an typewriter — a television, a telephone, and that was about it. He had a desk with a single notepad on it. Not a file cabinet in sight. Thursday himself was a kindly looking gentleman of about sixty, although his face was a little odd in a way I couldn’t entirely put my finger on at first. Like he’d been in an accident and had gone through some cosmetic surgery afterward that didn’t quite iron out all the bumps. His voice was a little odd, too, as though he’d been born deaf but had learned to talk anyway. But what really worried me was that he didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual about me at all — didn’t even look twice when we were introduced. That I’m not used to, and it gave me a bad feeling.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting for this meeting, Mr. Bayless, Mr. Boy,” he said. “I don’t get into town very often.”
“Oh, yeah? Where do you live?” I asked him.
“Quite a long way away.” He smiled as if he was thinking of something else entirely and adjusted the sleeves of his expensive sweater. “Now, what can I do for you gentlemen?’
“My associate and I want to ask you a few things about the Monk’s Point property,” Albie told him.
“Is this about the Gentle boy?” He shook his head. “Terrible thing — tragic.”
Oddly enough, he really sounded like he felt bad about it. It didn’t make me any more comfortable with him, though.
Thursday proceeded to answer a bunch of questions about the house — how long his family had owned it (seventy years or so), what they used it for (it had been a local museum, but never earned enough money, so for now it was just sitting there), and why they didn’t sell it to a hotel company (family sentiment and the historical value of the property.) All very expected, but I was watching Thursday more than listening to the answers. Something about him just didn’t quite seem right. He seemed…distant. Not like he was on drugs, or senile, just weirdly slow and detached.
“I hope that’s been some help to you,” he said and stood up, indicating that our time was over. “What happened to the boy was very sad, but as I told the police already, it’s nothing to do with me. Now I’m afraid I have some important errands to run. Please leave a message with my answering service if there’s anything else I can do for you. I won’t be back in town until next week.”
As we went out into the parking lot, I asked Albie, “Did he say he wasn’t going to be back until next week?”
“Yeah, why?”
“And didn’t you tell me he made you wait a week for this meeting?”
“I guess.”
“And it just happens today’s Thursday. And his last name’s Thursday.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Never mind. Can you look some stuff up for me this afternoon? I’ll give you a list. And before you start, drop me off at Bobby Gentle’s house.”
“The dead kid’s father? Why?”
“His name was on a notepad on Thursday’s desk.”
Albie shrugged. “You’re the boss. Try not to scare anyone to death.”
“There’s been enough of that already,” I said.
After the Baylessmobile rolled away, I walked up the long, overgrown driveway but stopped and stepped into the trees before I reached the house. I waited for no more than a quarter hour before Grayson Thursday rolled up the driveway past me in his spanking new Mercedes. I waited a couple of minutes then followed, but the yard around the ramshackle house was covered with dry grass that hadn’t been mowed in months, not to mention all kinds of other trash, and it was hard to get close without making a noise. Thursday didn’t stay very long, anyway. I had to duck back into the trees again as he came out, got into his beautiful car and bumped off down the driveway.
When he was gone, I knocked on the peeling paint of the front door.
“Jesus Christ!” said Bobby Gentle when he saw me, and jumped back into his shabby living room, then darted out of sight. That was the kind of reaction I was used to. I felt better already.
“Don’t bother getting out a gun,” I called after him. “I don’t mean you any harm, but I am armed and I’m probably a better shot than you are. I just want to talk.” I looked around the living room. The place was a mess, cigarette butts and beer bottles everywhere, along with greasy fast-food wrappers, month’s worth. A couple of not-very-good seascapes hung on the nicotine-stained walls. If they were Gentle’s, I knew why he wasn’t selling much.
He came out of the back room slowly, his hands open wide. He hadn’t been able to find the gun, anyway.
“Swear you ain’t gonna hurt me?”
“I promise. Sit down.”
He squinted. “What the hell are you? Some kinda lobster-man? You ain’t gonna pinch me with that claw, are you?”
Gentle Senior was a piece of work, no doubt about it. He stank of booze and it wasn’t even noon yet, so I figured he must be sweating it out of every pore. He was as pale as his son, but without the excuse of having had all the blood pumped out of him. I kind of doubted he’d been outside more than a couple of times in the last six months. His hair was long in the back, thin on the top, and stringy and greasy all over and he hadn’t killed himself keeping up with his shaving, either. Still, the last week couldn’t have been easy on anyone. “Sorry about your son,” I said. “Rufino, that was his name, right?”
“Yeah. His mama named him after some famous spick painter. Before she took off and left me. But I got the boy back off her. Went to court for it.” For a moment his angry little red eyes lost what focus they’d had. “Bitch wasn’t taking my boy to live in some commune full of tofu-eating losers.”
Tempting as it was, I didn’t really want to spend the whole day with this charmer. “I’ll cut to the chase, Mr. Gentle. You’ve just had a visit from Grayson Thursday. I suspect it has something to do with your son’s death. Would you mind telling me what he saw you about?”
He looked at me in surprise and confusion, then his pale skin turned almost as red as mine. Before I could react, he bolted out of the living room and down the hall. He pulled a door shut behind him and locked it. I was patting my pockets for a lockpick when I looked again at the state of the rest of the place, then I just broke off the knob.
The bathroom was empty except for a stack of Hustler magazines beside the toilet and an ancient no-pest strip dangling from the lightbulb. The window was open, the screen kicked out.
I caught him in the woods a hundred yards away. He was pretty fast for a rummy, but for some reason he was carrying a suitcase, and I can get this bulk of mine moving pretty quick when I want to.
“No!” he screamed when he saw me, and threw the suitcase end over end into the deep undergrowth. “You can’t have it! I never got anything else for him! All that boy ever did was cost me! You can’t take it away!”
I picked him up by one arm and let him sway in the wind a little bit until he stopped yelling and started whimpering. “What are you talking about? Why did you run away? What did you throw?”
He stared at me, or did his best to focus in my direction, anyway. “You don’t want to take it away from me? You’re not going to steal it?” He grimaced. “Damn! I shoulda kept my big mouth shut!”