“Can’t see much when you drive fast,” Faith said. “Somebody call in to complain, Chief? Afraid I might be casing the neighborhood, looking for another house to break into?”
I let it go. He wasn’t going to tell me anything more than he already had. “What is it you’re after, Mr. Faith? What’re you looking for in a new location?”
“Not much. A little peace and quiet.”
I waved a hand at the plots and markers uphill. “This kind?”
“I like cemeteries,” he said. “Nobody bothers you in one — usually. And you can tell a lot about a place by the kind of graveyard it has.”
“What does Cypress Hill tell you about Pomo?”
“That it could’ve been what I want but isn’t.”
“Meaning?”
“Just that.”
“So you’ll be moving on soon.”
“Pretty soon.”
“Tomorrow? I understand you’ve paid for another night at the Lakeside.”
“That’s right. Unless you’re going to invite me to leave by sundown tonight.”
“I’m not going to invite you to do anything except obey the law. Are you leaving tomorrow?”
“Yes, sir. Tomorrow for sure.”
“What’re you planning for the rest of today?”
“Nothing different than what I’ve been doing.” Another replay of the non-smile, so brief this time it was like a dim light flicked on and off. “And none of it involves ski masks or forcible entry — houses or women.”
“I’m glad to hear it. One piece of advice.”
“I’m all ears.”
“As long as you’re here, keep in mind that citizens in small towns tend to be leery of a stranger who looks too close at them and their surroundings — as if he might have more on his mind than a friendly visit. As if he might actually be a threat. You understand?”
“Oh, I understand, Chief. I hear you loud and clear. I’ll do my best not to alarm the good citizens of Pomo while I’m enjoying your fine hospitality.”
The sarcasm was just mild enough not to provoke me. I said, “Then we won’t need to have another talk, will we?”
“I sure hope not.”
I got into the cruiser, still feeling frustrated; the conversation hadn’t satisfied me on any level. As I drove out through the gates, Faith was on his way uphill into the older part of the cemetery. And he wasn’t looking back.
Douglas Kent
I didn’t believe the Wilson woman’s story for a minute, of course. She’d called the Advocate before, with complaints about this and that or to offer a juicy hunk of speculative gossip that invariably turned out to be both slanderous and imaginary. Viper-tongued busybody and self-appointed guardian of public morals. Or, in the eloquent phrasing of old Pa Kent, “a fookin’ shit-disturber.” (Mine papa: bargeman, boozer, brawler, and barroom bard. He’d fallen into the Monongahela half a dozen times, dead drunk; the last time they fished him out, when I was a freshman at Penn State, he was just plain dead. If he’d had time for a final coherent thought before he sank into the depths, I knew exactly what it’d been — the same as mine would be under similar circumstances: “Fook it.” Ah, the sins of the father.)
I assured the biddy that I would personally investigate the matter and that the Advocate would do whatever it could to keep the citizens and streets of Pomo safe, and hung up before she could fill my ear with any more bullshit. After which I fired a fresh gasper and administered a little more hangover medicine to the Kent insides. Shakier than usual, this A.M. I’d applied so much salve to the old wounds last night that I hadn’t even the haziest memory of where I’d gone after staggering out of Gunderson’s. Last clear image: Storm with her hand on Bigfoot’s thigh, crooning her old black magic into his hairy ear. Woke up this morning on the couch in my living room, my head bulging with the percussive beat of a Pomo Indian ceremonial drum. A hell of a toot, all right. But I’d had provocation. Yes, indeed. Didn’t I always?
When the salve began to work its restorative powers, I tucked the bottle into the desk-drawer cranny and leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. The poisonous Mrs. Wilson’s voice echoed faintly in my mind. Her alleged child molester was, of course, Storm’s last conquest, the beast who’d wandered in out of the cold. On the hunt for nine-year-old brats after a glorious night of fooking with the Whore of Pomo? Not too bloody likely.
An interesting theory, though. The lumbering hulk with the Frankenstein phiz, an actual monster in monster’s disguise? Nice irony there. And what would dear Storm say if she learned that the hands that had groped her fair body were, in fact, bloody claws? Would she be horrified? Sickened enough to change her profligate ways? Kent should live so long. Still, it’d be a cunning little joke on her, would it not? Give her a twinge or two — let her feel what she made me feel. A joy to see her face when she received a different kind of prick than she was used to...
An idea began to form in the aching cells and ganglia behind my eyes. I’d promised the biddy the Advocate would take up cudgels on behalf of Pomo public safety; well, then, why not do just that? An article written in the usual hard-hitting Kent style: yellow journalism at its most inflammatory. Nothing slanderous; no direct mention of the horse-hung beast, no specific allusion to child molestation or other such nefarious acts. But just enough neatly and thinly veiled references to “strangers in our midst,” “drifters of frightening mien and presence,” “possible influx into our fair town of the more base criminal element,” etc., so that Storm would know exactly who had inspired the piece. Know, and wonder. And then along would come Kent with his little prick: “I hate to tell you this, Storm, but there’s a possibility your latest bed partner is, in fact, the worst sort of vicious pervert...”
Well, Kent? Do you really want to sink that low?
Does a Sasquatch crap in the woods? Did the old man sink into the depths of the Monongahela?
Ah, but timing was the key. The piece had to run in today’s issue in order for it to have the desired impact. Could it still be done?
I took a squint at the wall clock. Ten past ten. The main-section deadline was eight A.M., and the press run usually begins at ten sharp. Today, however, the schedule was off; the Advocate’s presses are old and cranky, in spirit not unlike the rag’s crusading editor, and they’d been down when Kent staggered into the building a little over an hour ago. Joe Peterson, the pressroom foreman, thought he’d have them ready and rolling by ten, but that estimate obviously had been off by at least ten minutes. The entire building rumbles and rattles when the big Goss press begins its iron-throated roar, and the place had been mercifully quiet unto the present moment.
I got on the horn to the pressroom. Joe was still working on the bugger; his assistant said he thought he’d have it ready to do by ten-thirty. I told him to tell Joe to hold the press run, that new photographic plates would have to be made of page one and page eight. Hot editorial to be substituted for one of the existing news stories, I said; I was working on it now. He grumbled some but he didn’t argue. Kent’s word is law in the bowels of the Pomo Advocate, if nowhere else. Besides, did anyone in this godforsaken county really give a flying fook if Friday’s No-Star Final was a couple of hours late being printed and delivered?
On one corner of my desk were placement dummies for each of the pages in the main news section. I hauled over page one for a quick scan. The usual boring crap; I could dump the entire lot, with the possible exception of the news item on a three-car pileup that had put a local walnut grower out of his misery. I settled on the longest piece, a dull rehash of facts on the upcoming sewer bond issue and its various pros and cons, poorly concocted by Jay Dietrich, the Advocate’s young Jimmy Olsen. Twenty column inches, twelve on the front page and the rest on page eight. Kent, a chip off the old cliché of fast-copy newspaper hacks, could knock off twenty column inches in half an hour without breaking a sweat. Twenty-five minutes or less if the immediate reward was another slug of old Doc Beefeater.