"You want me to piss on my own dog? You're a fucking pervert, McCabe!" If I'd had an inch of courage, I would have punched him in the face. But this was Frannie. He knew I wouldn't make a move but wanted to make sure everyone saw my cowardice.
"Rather be a pervert than a pussy, Bayer. So I guess it's time to give your doggy a golden bath, Sammy." Staring straight at me, he reached down and pulled out his dick. I quickly looked away. Next came the metallic hiss of the others unzipping accompanied by their embarrassed giggling.
Then pssssss . . .
I jumped up and ran back the way we had come. As I reached the other end of the hall, I heard Johnny Petangles shouting down below, "Heyyy! What are you doing? Heyyy!" Then the dog barked.
Because I had avoided looking at the house, I hadn't seen that the ground all around was torn up and everywhere there were signs of construction.
"What're they doing here?"
Frannie pointed to the house. "Stop here. Let's get out and walk a little. The Tyndalls are so greedy that they held on to the place way too long. They thought it'd sell for a fortune. But they ended up taking a bath on it when the bottom fell out of the real estate market up here. They couldn't find a buyer for four years. A think tank in New York finally bought it for next to nothin', I heard. They're making it into one of those weekend conference centers."
From a distance, the building looked as ratty as it had years before. But as we got closer, I saw a great deal of renovation had already been done. There were new doors and windows with the labels still on the glass. Sections of the porch had been completely restored. There were highly polished brass ornaments on the banister and front door.
We climbed the steps and looked in the windows. Inside, the wooden floors glowed, their lush dark color contrasting perfectly with the fresh white on all the walls.
"Man! It's a little different from the last time I was here. Looks like a monastery."
"You wanna go in?" Frannie was already opening the front door with a large key.
"How'd you get a key?"
"Sam, you keep forgetting I'm a cop."
"Were a cop. Aren't you on a leave of absence?" I followed him into the house and was immediately assailed with the acrid chemical smells of wood sealant and new paint.
"I'm going back to work next month. That was part of my deal with Magda."
"Good! Know what I was thinking about as we drove up here? The day you guys pissed on Johnny Petangles and my dog. I wanted to knock you out so badly that day. Now all I'd have to do is ask Magda. She'd do it for me."
He shook his head. "Don't be so sure. She might piss on 'em with me. That's what I like about her. Come on, I want to show you something." He walked across the entrance hall, his leather heels clicking loudly on the shiny wooden floors.
It was such a contrast to the last time I'd been chez Tyndall. That day, the house was roasting and smelled like old ashes mixed with wet wool. Strewn everywhere were filthy, stained, broken objects you didn't want to touch. Today the rooms were white as a cloud, clean and empty. The smell was completely different but just as strong. It marched proudly into your nose and proclaimed that everything here was brand-new, sanded fine, freshly painted, ready to go. New life was about to begin.
"Remember my cousin Leslie DeMichael? He's foreman on this job. Knows I'm interested in the Ostrova case, so a couple of weeks ago he called and told me to come over. They'd found something when they were about to paint this room. Said I had to come see. It's right over here. I asked them to leave it like it was for a while. That's why they haven't finished." He pointed to one of the few unpainted walls. Crudely carved there was a cock and balls, looking like something a ten-year-old doofus would hastily draw on the wall of a public bathroom. Beneath it were carved the words, "Beehive and Bone – forever." I ran a finger into the deeply gouged letters of the words.
"I wonder who did this?"
"Pauline, dummy! That's why I wanted you to see it. Magda told me. You know Eddie called her Beehive. Bone was her nickname for him. Very few people knew that. He was supposed to have had a dick like a sequoia tree."
"How do you know about Durant's penis, Frannie?"
"Jitka. Pauline told her. She used to come up here all the time to have sex. Something about a haunted house that made her horny."
"Pauline used to fuck in this house? Get out of here!"
"It's true. And not just Edward Durant either. Before him there were others. Remember, though, back in those days you didn't have so many places to go. You either did it on the backseat of a car, out in the woods, or . . . the Tyndall house. At least here you had a roof over your head."
I shuddered in disgust. "Phooey! You remember what this place was like! What it smelled like. How could anyone be turned-on by that?"
"Oh excuse me, Mr. Bestseller, but weren't you recently together with a woman who made porno films and was in the Malda Vale? No offense but, uh, some people would find that a little weird."
"True. But why are we here, Fran? Not just to see this."
"No, but guess who told me first about Pauline coming up here? Veronica Lake! Last time she was here; knew all about it. Jitka only filled in the details. Your ex-girlfriend may be unstable, but she knows how to find out things. If she were normal, she would make a good cop.
"Anyway, we're here today because I see this house like our relationship, Sam. We had a history before, but now the whole thing's changed. New paint, walls, everything.
"The other day Magda asked me who my real friends were. I said you." His eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened, as if he was afraid of what my reaction would be. "You and two other guys. That's it – three people on earth. I don't know if that's great or pathetic, but that's how it is. What do you think?" He did a nervous little two-step, like a boxer standing in his corner waiting for the bell to ring.
"I'm very touched. And I agree – I think of you as a good friend, Frannie."
"Good! That's a relief. But if we're going to be real friends, then there are things you gotta know. The main one being I'm a junkie. I've been one on and off for years. It started when I got bored in Vietnam. Nobody knew it but Magda and now this psychiatrist I go to, Dr. Dudzinska. Magda made me go. Said she wasn't going to live the rest of her life with a fuckin' junkie and she's absolutely right.
"The guy who shot me was a dealer. I owed him a thousand dollars and didn't feel like paying. So he comes up to me that day and says real friendly, 'Fran, what about my thousand?' I say, 'Hey, Loopy, I don't have it right now.' So darling Loop shoots me in the stomach. Simple and to the point. No hard feelings – just business.
"Then it got really, really bad in California when my marriage collapsed. I was going to parties and hanging out with sludge. I got a bad habit of thinking I was in destructible. I thought, hey, what the hell, these clowns are doing it and they seem okay. Plus I did a lot of grass and acid in Vietnam and I could always stay on top of it. The trick is, you can handle it for a while. Then one day it swoops down on you and gobbles you up.
"But I'm hoping it's over now. Or it's beginning to be over. I'm in this group-therapy thing and go to the analyst. It hurts, Sam. All that stuff hurts because it makes you admit how weak you really are, but it's good.
"Know where I went the first time I left my house after I got shot? Over to Loopy to give him his money. No hard feelings, Loop, even though you did try to install air-conditioning in my stomach."