Thirty minutes ooze past. Wind shudders the panes, rain blurring the lights of the boardwalk, and he calls again. Ashford answers, “Yeah…what?”
He’s slurring, his voice thick.
“Just checking on you,” Cliff says.
“Don’t fucking call me, okay? Call when it’s been two hours…or I’ll call.”
“Are you in Number Eleven?”
“Yeah. Goodbye.”
To ease the strain on his back, Cliff lies down on the bed and, perhaps as a result of too much adrenaline, mental fatigue, he passes out. On waking, he sits bolt upright and stares at the alarm clock. Almost midnight. If Ashford called, he didn’t hear it, but he’s so attuned to that damn ring…He fumbles for the phone and punches in Ashford’s number. Voice mail. After a moment’s bewilderment, panic wells up in him and he can’t get air. Once his breathing is under control he tries the number again, and again is shunted to voicemail.
He talks out loud in an attempt to keep calm. “He’s fucking me around,” he says. “Motherfucker. He’s twisting my brains like in high school. Or he forgot. He forgot, and now he and Mary Beth Hooker are passed out in bed at the Celeste.”
Hearing how insane this monologue sounds, he shuts it down before he can speak the third possibility, the one he believes is true—that Ashford and Mary Beth are no more, dead and done for, presently being carted off to wherever the Palaniappans dispose of the bodies.
He flirts with the notion of calling the police, but what would be the point? If they’re alive, all it would achieve is to attract more attention to him and that he doesn’t need. If they’re dead and he calls, he’ll instantly become a suspect in multiple murders and they’d most likely pick him up. But he still has an out. He calls Marley. Voicemail. He leaves an urgent message for her to call him back. If he knew where her mother lived, the street address, he’d drive to Deland and pick her up, and they’d get the hell out of Dodge. Where they would go, that’s a whole other question, but at least they’d be away from Shalin and Bazit. That’s okay, that’s all right. Tomorrow will be soon enough.
He tries Ashford a third time, to no avail, and lies down again. He doesn’t think he can sleep, but he does, straight through to morning, a sleep that seems an eventless dream of a dark, airless confine in which insubstantial monsters are crawling, breeding, killing, speaking in a language indistinguishable from a heavy, fitful wind, coming close enough to touch.
Chapter 11
IT’S NOT UNREASONABLE to think, Cliff tells himself, that Marley’s still into it with her mother and that’s why she hasn’t called; but it’s nine AM and he’s growing edgy. He calls the police, asks to speak with Sgt. Ashford, and is put through to a detective named Levetto who says that Ashford’s always late, he should be in soon, do you want to leave a message?
“No, thanks,” says Cliff.
Screwing up his courage, he does something he should have done last night—call the motel.
“Celeste Motel,” says Bazit. “How may I be of service?”
Cliff rasps up his voice to disguise it. “Number Eleven, please.”
“Number Eleven is vacant, sir.”
“I’m looking for some friends, the Ashfords. I could have sworn they were in Eleven.”
A pause. “I’m afraid we have no one of that name with us. A Mister Larry Lawless and his wife occupied Number Eleven last night.” Cliff thinks he detects a hint of amusement in Bazit’s voice as he says, “They checked out quite early.”
After trying Marley again, Cliff sits in his underwear, eating toast and jam, drinking coffee, avoiding thought by watching Fox News, when an idea strikes. He throws on shorts and a shirt, and heads for the arcade where he met Ashford the previous morning; he stakes out a stool at the counter, orders an orange juice from Kerman, and waits for Mary Beth to appear.
Last night’s deluge has diminished to this morning’s drizzle, but the wind is gusting hard. It’s a nasty day. Churning surf ploughs the beach, massive, ugly slate-colored waves larded with white, like the liquidinous flesh of some monstrosity spilling onto shore, strands of umber seaweed lifting on its muddy humps. The bruised clouds bulge downward, dragging tendrils of rain over the land. A mere scatter of senior citizens are braving the weather; in the arcade, a handful of debased souls, none of them kids, are feeding coin slots with the regularity of casino habitués. If she’s alive, the chances of Mary Beth putting in an appearance are poor, but Cliff sticks it out for more than an hour, scanning every approaching figure, prospecting the gray backdrop for a glint of whitish gold with black roots. His thoughts grab and stick like busted gears, grinding against each other, and the low music of the arcade, a muttering rap song, seems to be issuing from inside his head.
He reaches for his cell phone, thinking to try Marley, and realizes he has left it on the kitchen counter. He hurries back to the apartment and finds a message from Marley. “Hi, Cliffie,” she says. “I’ll be home soon. Mom’s no longer threatening suicide. Of course, there could always be a relapse.” A sigh. “I miss you. Hope you’re missing me.”
The message was left five minutes ago, so he calls her back, but gets her voicemail. It’s twenty-three miles to Deland, a twenty-minute drive at Marley’s usual rate of speed. At worst, he expects her to walk through the door in a couple of hours. But two o’clock comes and she’s not yet back. He calls obsessively for the better part of an hour, punching in her number every few minutes. At three o’clock, he calls the police again and asks for Ashford. A different detective says, “I don’t see him. You want to leave a message?”
“Is he in today?”
“I don’t know,” says the detective impatiently. “I just got here myself.”
Cliff is astonished by how thoroughly the circumstance has neutralized him. He knows nothing for certain. There’s no proof positive that Stacey is dead, no proof at all concerning the fates of Mary Beth and Ashford. There is some evidence that Jerry is involved in criminal activity, perhaps with the Palaniappans, but nothing you can hang your hat on. He has every expectation that Marley is safe, yet he’s begun to worry. He can’t raise the alarm, because no one will believe him and the police think he’s a murderer. If truth be told, he’s not sure he believes Shalin’s story—events have gone a long way toward convincing him, but it’s perfectly possible that she’s playing mind games with him and that’s all there is to it. When the DNA results come back, as they could any minute, at least according to Ashford, then there may be some proof, but if the DNA doesn’t match Stacey’s…Nada. Yet it’s the very nebulousness of the situation that persuades him that his life has gone and is going horribly wrong, that he’s perched atop a mountain of air and, once he recognizes that nothing is supporting him, his fall will be calamitous. He should do something, he tells himself. He should leave before the DNA comes back, pack a few things and put some miles between him and the Palaniappans whom—irrationally—he fears more than the police. He can call Marley from the road, though God knows what he’ll say to her.