But Tomlinson wouldn’t let go of the Amanda Richardson story.
“I’ve got some very serious concerns about the mother,” he said. “Children and middle-aged divorced women are the two most vulnerable groups on earth. Children, at least, are resilient. They’re mobile in terms of life options. But a middle-aged woman, she’s a sitting duck. Easiest target in the world.”
I didn’t want to hear it, because I’d already made up my mind about Gail Calloway.
“What worries me most,” Tomlinson said, “is that business about Merlot changing his phone number. You don’t catch the significance of that?”
I’d caught it-but I wanted to hear Tomlinson put it into words.
He said, “What I think he’s trying to do is isolate her, man. Doesn’t want the woman to speak to her own daughter. Keeps her too busy to see her old friends. That is a serious damn red flag. It sounds like obsession, but what I really think it is, it’s the need for complete control. It’s a form of murder, man. Total dominance.” Tomlinson hunched toward me to make his point… then, still talking, he took out his billfold.
Why the hell did he need his billfold?
He said, “It’s what cults and dictators do. To control a country, you must first isolate it. No shit, Hitler, 1938. A nation needs information from the outside to know the truth. Same with individuals. To control a person’s future, all you have to do is cut off her past. That’s exactly what certain asshole husbands do, the abusive ones. The pea-brained creeps with their frightened little wives. And the perverts. The sickies. And a few really bad corporate bosses. Total control. You know what else worries me about that story?”
I was listening more closely now. Baseball was still on my mind, but Tomlinson was impressing me, being uncharacteristically logical.
Tomlinson was into it, on a roll. So I said, “What?”
“The Stockholm Syndrome,” he said, “that’s what worries me. You know what I’m talking about? Back in the fifties, I think, this Swedish guy, a guy named Ofulsen, he robs a bank but gets cut off, so he takes hostages. Most of the hostages are women. By the end of the siege, every one of the women is madly in love with the asshole. I mean they’re telling the cops don’t hurt him, they love him, he’s just misunderstood. Him in there with a gun, swinging it around, threatening to kill everybody if the cops charge. The guy you’re talking about, this Jackie Merlot, if he really is a control freak, then the longer she’s with him-Gail I’m talking about-then the harder it’s going to be to pry her away.”
I said, “The point I thought you were going to make had to do with the lying thing. Merlot telling Gail in advance that her own daughter was spreading lies. The daughter and the ex-husband both. It’s a device. Kind of a sinister device but pretty common. If he convinces Gail that her daughter and Frank are telling lies about him, then Merlot’s already diffused any damaging truth they might uncover. He can say, ‘I warned you, I told you they were going to say that.’ See what I mean?”
“Yeah, yeah, I missed that one. Jesus, what a jerk. Seriously.” He had his billfold open… yes, he was removing a hard-wrapped joint. I watched him wet it between his lips as he patted his jersey mechanically, looking for a light. He said, “Another thing is, those postcards-”
Smoking dope in my truck? I interrupted: “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
His innocent expression asked, Who? ME? as he said, “I’m trying to relax, man. All this thinking has tightened my receptors. Christ! That woman’s in trouble, mark my word. It worries me. Makes me tense. You’re the one who always gets involved in this kind of shit, so don’t give me that look. And how do you expect me to hit the curveball if I’m not relaxed? We want to WIN, don’t we?”
As I watched him light the joint I said, “If the cops stop us, I’ll help them cuff you. I mean it. Maybe help them beat you if it comes to that.”
“You would, too. You really would.”
“I can’t believe you still smoke that crap, Tomlinson.”
“Try it just once, you’ll understand. It’s herbal, you know. Grows right up out of the ground.” He took three more quick spasmodic inhalations, held his breath for several seconds before he added, “If it came from the ocean, oh man, you’d be all for it. Like if it was processed from a rare fish or something. But because it comes from the earth, you’ve got this, like, bias thing, man.”
I said, “Jesus, Tomlinson.”
“That’s very unfair.”
“Uh-huh.”
He smoked intensely for a few blocks, everything focused inward, before he said, “Ah-h-h-h, um-m-m-m, yes… this is as natural as it gets. Very uplifting. Already I can feel the neurons returning to sync with certain rhythms. Earth rhythms, we used to call them. Yes, that was the precise terminology: Earth rhythms. Not that that would interest you. No sir, not mister big-shot marine biologist who hates anything that doesn’t come from the sea.”
I said, “You’re hopeless.”
“Uh-huh, keep thinking that. They said the same thing about the Edsel and look how much those things are worth. So I’m just biding my time, man. Biding my time till the big dogs start barkin.’ Us strange ones, we keep getting closer and closer to the head of the line. Count on it. And remember that you heard it first from me.”
I was shaking my head as he inhaled again and added, “Hey… wait a minute. I just flashed on something: Have you ever stopped to realize that a right-hander’s curve-ball-picture it now. Follow along with what I’m saying. I’m saying that a right-hander’s curveball spins in the same direction and with the approximate same degree of inclination as the Earth. Which is a very heavy dose of symmetry, if you dig where I’m headed with this. Squatting back there, Doc, looking through your catcher’s mask, you ever notice the similarity? Watched a baseball spinning toward you like this quantum miniature of Planet Earth?”
I said, “What I’ve noticed is, the more you smoke, the weirder you sound.”
“Really? Humph… Wait a minute, did I say ‘symmetry’? I meant redundancy. Gad, no wonder I didn’t make sense. It supports my Redundancy Theory. Remember my book, No End in Sight? The premise is that time and change are an illusion. Time is an invention. Change is a misperception. The proof is all tied to my Redundancy Theory, which states that all life is repetition of a solitary design. And that design has been inexplicably set in motion.
“Have you ever noticed that the six points of a snowflake precisely reproduce the design of a pine-tree bough? Or… you want something from the ocean? How about the polyps of a coral colony? They’re the mirror image of neuron cells in the human brain. That’s all the brain is-a colony, little synapse junctions, all interconnected just like coral. You know that.
“You want a simple example of my Redundancy Theory? An echo. Seriously, man, a simple echo. If you yell into a cave, the echo you hear is not a new sound. Right? Same with all life, man. We are shadows and echoes set in motion. Understand what I’m saying?”
No. I’d heard this theory before, but had never gotten it straight
… or maybe it was just that Tomlinson’s shaky memory recalled it differently each time. I said, “The stuff you’re smoking, it affects you so quickly, is it laced with something? They soak it in some kind of chemical?”
“No-o-o-o, man. Just really good shit, that’s all.”
“It has that odor. Kind of sickening sweet.”
“Yep. God aw’mighty how I love the smell of cannabis in the morning. This is a little bit of White Russian that some compadres of mine grow. I won’t tell you where. All those buddies you got in the DEA, you might find it too tempting. No offense, Doc, your sense of righteousness is one of your best qualities, but it’s also among your worst. And like I said, this is completely natural. Same with chili peppers.”
This was too much. I said, “Don’t even try to make a comparison.”
“If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’, man. The alkaloid that peppers contain-capsicum, the stuff that burns, I mean-it causes the brain to secrete endorphins. Same thing. People say they’re bad for ulcers? Bullshit. That’s an old wives’ tale. Plus a chili’s got more vitamin C than a whole grapefruit. They make you feel GOOD, man. That’s why the more you eat, the more you want. Why else would the indigenous peoples keep eating them, even though-and let’s face it-the little bastards make our assholes hurt.”