Holly sends the vid to Pete and Jerome, asking if either of them can identify the make of the van, or at least narrow it down. The WiFi is better this morning, and before checking out she goes to the city PD’s Reported Missing website, specifying 2018. There are almost four hundred thousand residents of the city by the lake, so she’s not surprised to find over a hundred names on the list. Peter Steinman’s is among them. Ellen Craslow’s is not, probably because she had no one to report her gone; Keisha just assumed she’d quit her job, probably to go back to Georgia. Next to the names of five souls who were reported missing is the date they were found, along with one word: DECEASED.
On her drive back to the city, Holly is nagged by the thought of her Dollar General underwear, bought new but unwashed, and it comes to her that her mother really isn’t dead after all and won’t be until Holly herself dies. She gets off at the Ridgeland exit, checks her iPad notes at a red light, and drives to Eastland Avenue, which is not far from Bell College. It doesn’t escape her that Bonnie’s case keeps leading her back to the area of the college.
On the south side of the ridge are those stately Victorian homes curving down to the park; on this side there’s student housing, mostly three-decker apartment buildings. Some have been kept up pretty well, but many more are running to seed with peeling paint and scruffy yards. There are discarded beer cans in some of those yards, and in one there’s a twenty-foot-high balloon man, bowing and scraping and waving its long red arms. Holly guesses it might have been pilfered from a car dealership.
She passes through a two-block commerce area aimed at college students: three bookstores, a couple of head shops (one called Grateful Dead), lots of pizza-burger-taco joints, and at least seven bars. On this hot Sunday, still shy of noon, most of the joints are closed and there’s little foot traffic. Beyond the shops, restaurants, and dive bars, the apartment houses recommence. The lawn of 2395 Eastland has no balloon man out front; instead there are at least two dozen flamingos stuck in the parched grass. One wears a beret that’s been tied on with a piece of ribbon; the head of another is buried in a cowboy hat; a third is standing in a fake wishing well.
College student humor, Holly thinks, and pulls in at the curb.
There are only two stories to this house, but it rambles all over the place, as if the original builder could never bring himself to stop. There are five cars crammed into the driveway, bumper to bumper and side by side. A sixth is on grass which strikes Holly as too tired and near death to complain.
A young guy sits on the concrete front step, head hung low, smoking either a cigarette or a doob. He looks up when Holly gets out of her car—blue eyes, black beard, long hair—then lowers his head again. She weaves her way through the flamingos, which probably struck some young man or men as the height of Juvenalian wit.
“Hello there. My name is Holly Gibney, and I wondered—”
“If you’re a Mormon or one of those Adventists, go away.”
“I’m not. Are you by any chance Tom Higgins?”
He looks up at that. The bright blue eyes are threaded with snaps of red. “No. I am not. Go away. I have the world’s worst fucking hangover.” He waves a hand behind him. “Everyone else is still sleeping it off.”
“Saturday Night Fever followed by Sunday Morning Coming Down,” Holly ventures.
The bearded young man laughs at that, then winces. “You say true, grasshopper.”
“Would you like a coffee? There’s a Starbucks down the street.”
“Sounds good, but I don’t think I can walk that far.”
“I’ll drive.”
“And will you pay, Dolly?”
“It’s Holly. And yes, I will pay.”
Having a strange man—big, bearded, and hungover—in her car might have put Holly’s nerves on edge under other circumstances, but this young man, Randy Holsten by name, strikes her as about as dangerous as Pee-wee Herman, at least in his current state. He rolls down the passenger window of Holly’s Prius and holds his face out into the hot breeze, like a shaggy dog eager for every passing scent. This pleases her. If he throws up, it will be outside rather than in. Which makes her think of Jerome’s drive to the hospital with Vera Steinman.
The Starbucks is thinly populated. Several of the customers also look hungover, although perhaps not as severely as young Mr. Holsten. She gets him a double cap and an Americano for herself. They take chairs outside in the scant shade of the overhang. Holly lowers her mask. The coffee is strong, it’s good, and it takes the curse off the motel brew she drank earlier. When Holsten begins showing signs of slightly improved vitality, she asks him if Tom Higgins is also sleeping it off in the House of Flamingos.
“Nope. He’s in Lost Wages. At least as far as I know. Billy and Hinata went on to LA, but Tom stayed. Which doesn’t surprise me.”
Holly frowns. “Lost wages?”
“Slang, my sister. For Las Vegas. A town made for such as Monsewer Higgins.”
“When did he go there?”
“June. Middle of. And left owing his share of the rent. Which I can tell you was Tom all over.”
Holly thinks of Keisha’s short and brutal summing up of Tom Higgins’s character: Wimp. Loser. Stoner.
“You’re sure it was the middle of June? And these other two went with him?”
“Yeah. It was just after the Juneteenth block party. And yeah, the three of them went in Billy’s ’Stang. Tom Terrific is the kind of dude who’ll suck on his fellow dudes until there’s nothing more to suck. I guess they wised up. Speaking of sucking on people, can I have another one of these?”
“I’ll pay, you get. One for me, too.”
“Another Americano?”
“Yes, please.”
When he comes back with their coffees, Holly says, “It sounds like you didn’t like Tom much.”
“I did at first. He’s got a certain amount of charm—I mean, the girl he was going with was way out of his league—but it wears off in a hurry. Like the finish on a cheap ring.”
“Nicely put. You’re feeling better, aren’t you?”
“A little.” Holsten shakes his head… but gently. “Never again.”
Until next Saturday night, Holly thinks.
“What’s this about, anyway? What’s your interest in Tom?”
Holly tells him, leaving Ellen Craslow and Peter Steinman out of it. Randy Holsten listens with fascination. Holly is interested to see how quickly the red is leaving his eyes. The older she gets, the more the resilience of the young amazes her.
“Bonnie, yeah. That was her name. She’s missing, huh?”
“She is. Did you know her?”
“Met her is all. At a party. Maybe once or twice before. The party must have been New Year’s. She was steppin dynamite. Legs all the way up.” Holsten shakes one hand, as if he’s touched something hot. “Tom brought her, but our place wasn’t exactly her milieu, if you know what I mean.”
“Didn’t like the flamingos?”
“They’re a new addition. I haven’t seen her since that party. She broke up with him, you know. I talked to her a little. You know, just your standard party blah-blah—and I think the breakup was like, happening then. Or about to happen. I was in the kitchen. That’s where we talked. Maybe she came out to get away from the babble, maybe to get away from Tom. He was in the living room, probably trying to score dope.”
“What did she say?”
“Can’t remember. I was pretty drunk. But if you’re thinking he might have done something to her, forget it. Tom isn’t the confrontational type. He’s more the can-you-loan-me-fifty-until-next-Friday type.”