I gave her the quick skinny on what Anson had said regarding both his relationship with Jennifer and what had happened between her and her father. I also mentioned my previous suspicions: the fact that Bonjour, a lawyer with his own private investigative contacts, would turn to an outsider as dubious as myself.
“So what are you saying? That the man who hired you is a suspect?”
I was beginning to like this, the two of us lying on opposite sides of the same wall, staring off into multiple directions of nowhere, trading questions and observations to and fro. The fact that we were so close yet physically connected with a thousand looping miles of wire struck me as… well, erotic.
But then, so does most everything.
“This is serious stuff, Molls, and serious stuff requires serious attention. At the very least, Amanda Bonjour needs to know her husband is a scumbag, don’t you think?”
An even longer pause.
“Disciple… You can’t say anything. “
I understood what she meant: there was a sense in which telling Amanda would simply multiply the number of victims. What was truth compared with the misery such a disclosure would cause? What was justice?
In the subsequent silence, I thought I glimpsed a small fraction of the genuine Molly Modano. The one who tidies herself in the mirror after crying…
That means something, doesn’t it? Glimpsing another’s centre of emotional gravity?
“Don’t, Disciple. Please don’t say a word.. “ Track Nine
MR. DINKFINGERS
Saturday… Once, when I was eleven years old, my parents brought me to a pig- roast-slash-family-reunion hosted by my uncle Tony. Even though Mom and Dad were vegetarians, they allowed me to dig in with the rest of my cousins. They were already troubled-terrified would be the better term-by their little boy’s peculiarities, so they were loath to do anything that might further segregate him from his peers. I remember that pork sandwich like it was yesterday. As the forbidden fruit, Meat simply had to be the best thing a boy of eleven could eat. Knowledge of grease and evil.
The hitch-and there’s always a hitch where I’m concerned-was that Uncle Tony’s nearest neighbour happened to be a pig farmer, which is why he got the pig dirt cheap, and why his property reeked whenever the breeze blew in from the south-as happened to be the case the day of the Manning family reunion.
As a result, every time I smell roasting pork, I quite literally smell pig shit-and salivate.
So when Molly and I found our way to the backyard of the humble white frame Church of the Third Resurrection, my nostrils flared even as my mouth watered.
“Do you smell anything?” I asked her.
“All stuffed up,” she said, fluttering a hand around her small freckled nose. “Hay fever.”
The church was situated just outside of town on a small lot fenced with trees and bracken. The lawn was redneck lumpy, but lush and green all the same. Around forty people or so threaded the expanse, forming a web of laughter and conversation. Groups of screaming children bobbed in and out of the fringes, some chasing balls, others chasing one another. The barbecue stood near the back, set perpendicular to a number of tables, most of which were covered in potluck delicacies. A keg of beer gleamed invitingly from one, accompanied by stacks of red plastic cups. The barbecue was one of those homemade jobs: metal drums cut in half then welded together end to end. The pig had been spitted whole. It gleamed and sizzled and smoked-and smelled like mouth-watering pig shit.
“The head?” Molly murmured beside me. “Who eats the head?”
“First pig roast, Molls?”
“They don’t really eat it, do they?”
“Sure do. Actually, it’s something of an honour to eat the cheeks. So if someone offers you the cheeks, whatever you do, make sure you act gracious and eat them… “
“What?” She smiled, but with that furrow in her sunburnt brow that told me she worried I was serious. “Fuck that, Disciple. I’m not eating a pig’s face.”
“They’ll take offence. Remember, we’re here for Jennifer. Jennifer..”
“Fuck that,” she repeated, her tone more uncertain, more chastised.
I grinned and sorted through the crowd, the homely congregation of Reverend Nill’s Church of the Third Resurrection. A good mix of men and women, old and young. A lot of fat-asses. Several butt-crack cowboys. A couple of so-so attractive women-I’ve always had a thing for chicks who dress sexy for church. I suppose Molly and I were conspicuous for our good looks, because I counted more than a few curious glances. I even recognized a couple of faces from our canvassing. Waved and smiled. Most everyone sported a red plastic beer cup, always a reassuring sight in a community of believers. I was also relieved to see a fair number of smokers blowing contrails into the motionless late afternoon air. So much so that I took the opportunity to spark a Winston of my own.
Number 99,933.
They were working people, by and large. My kind of people, truth be told. Construction workers. Retail employees. High school dropouts like me, with humble skills, warm laughs, and defensive hearts. Suddenly Jonathan Bonjour’s choice of Manning Investigations didn’t seem so out of sorts after all.
Did he know something I didn’t?
I glimpsed a guy swearing and laughing, flicking liquid from his fingertips-beer, I realized. The spill had shrink-wrapped his red T around his gut, and I was just about to glance away when he pulled the shirt off in a single fat-armed motion.
A flash of winter-pale skin. I found myself blinking at the black arms of a tattoo swastika flexing across the flab of his gut…
Uh-oh.
The guy mimed a striptease, swinging his shirt, wagging his hips, and slapping his ass to uproarious laughter. Apparently the Holocaust was no big deal around here.
“You gotta-” Molly began.
“Hey!” a voice shouted from our right. It was Tim. “Hey, Disciple!”
“Remember the cheeks,” I muttered to Molly.
“I told you. Fuck that. No way. Besides, what the hell-”
I tuned her out. Tim jogged up to us wearing baggy blue jeans and a vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt. His face was flushed with something akin to relief. He had been talking about me, I could tell.
I introduced him to Molly, who managed to be pleasant even though she was obviously distracted. Swastikas at church picnics tend to do that, I suppose. She tossed two What-the-hell-Disciple? glances in my direction as I made nice with Tim.
“There,” the skinny young man said with a smile in his voice. “That’s him. Reverend Nill.”
I have this bad habit, a kind of hmmpf habit, where I immediately become skeptical of anyone described in glowing terms. At some level I think I actually wanted Reverend Nill to be an obvious putz, someone who would let me sling an arm around Tim’s shoulders and say, “I hate to break it to you, kid…” But if the swastika had spiked the pork punch, then Reverend Nill was a true-blue mickey. He looked unremarkable enough-you know, in that generic, doughy all-American way. Fit. Short dark hair. But his eyes, fawk. Even from a dozen yards away they fairly sparked Prussian blue. The first thing I literally thought was, Rasputin.
Rasputin. Have you ever seen pictures of that crazy fucker? A look that gropes you. Dead a century and still makes you feel your fly’s undone. Now, we all know how it works in the movies: the guy with the freaky eyes is always guilty. But this wasn’t a movie, and as it so happened, I knew someone else with eyes like that, someone I would have died for had he not died for me first. Sean O’May.
One-hundred-and-sixty-pound frame. Thousand-pound gaze. Give you Alzheimer’s trying to stare him down.
So I didn’t jump to conclusions. I really didn’t.
No, it was actually the chick glaring in ostrich fury at his side that sealed the deal. She was kind of hot, actually, only in a more mature way than Molly. High heels pricked into turf. Spray paint for blue jeans. A rack that would make strange babies cry.
“Who’s the woman next to him?” I asked Tim.