I. R. Shroud: For my peace of mind, TN, OCSD. We want you so badly to be one of us. Took great trust to show you our faces.
Maclass="underline" Point taken but unhappy still. Perhaps some shots of you would level the playing field.
I. R. Shroud: Riotous. Use legal letter envelope for balance. Hundreds only. Place envelope in paperback book, one-third of envelope visible. Embark Green Line Metro Rail from Norwalk station on first train after 4 P.M.. today. Board last car only. Prepurchase transfer to Blue. Further instructions to come.
Maclass="underline" Am wanting results quickly.
I. R. Shroud: First things first.
Maclass="underline" Will wait with patience.
I. R. Shroud: As do all good patients. Gone.
In my little blue notebook I noted the exact times that our conversation began and ended. I was afraid to look forward to the day when that information would help hang The Horridus, but I allowed myself a mirthful glance into the future anyway.
For the first time since being charged I strapped on my shoulder rig and .45 and put a light windbreaker over it to hide it from the real cops.
I stood on the Norwalk Green Line platform, 4:02 P.M., a paperback copy of The New Centurions in my hand, with one-third of a legal-sized envelope protruding from between pages 122 and 123. The May afternoon was bright and almost hot; it felt about eighty. There was just enough breeze to blow the smog out to Riverside. In the west the sun seemed to be sinking very slowly, as if it didn’t want to miss the sunset. The train arrived almost silently and I walked to the last car before getting on.
I found a seat, looked at no one and gazed out the window. The train accelerated oddly — more a sensation of brakes being let off than of power being applied. First I was sitting still, then I was going fast. In the faint reflection in the window before me I saw a mustached man in a cap and sunglasses. And I couldn’t help but remember the old Naughton, the suntanned, happy young father snorkel diving with his kid off of Shaw’s Cove in Laguna, with the sun on his back as he floated in blue water and watched through his mask as his boy dove down to claim a shell from the cream-colored sand.
I knew that I had changed and fallen. But exactly how and exactly why, well, these things seemed beyond me. I felt like I had grabbed hold of a dream that had moved along nicely for a while, like a speedboat on the surface of the sea, only to submerge quickly and without warning, taking my outstretched hand with it while everything precious scattered to the waves and the winds of the surface far above.
West along the Green Line, then: Lakewood, Long Beach, Wilmington, Avalon, Harbor Freeway, Vermont. Before the Crenshaw station a thin young man in a beige suit sat down across the aisle, looking frankly at me, then at the book on the seat next to me. He was thirty, maybe, with glasses and limp blond hair. He had a soft, thoughtful face.
“Good book,” he said.
I nodded. “I’ve always liked it.”
“Rereading it?”
“Pretty much so.”
“Mal?”
“Correct.”
“You’ll find the light better at the next station. Exit and go to the far west end of it. There’s a seat beside a fat man. Take it. Leave the book on that seat and take the next car east, back to Norwalk. You’re done, then.”
You’re done, then.
He stared at me through his glasses, surprisingly direct for such a meek-looking fellow, then stood and went through the door to the car ahead. I never saw him again. Five minutes later I got off at Crenshaw.
The fat man wasn’t just fat, he was huge. Big head, curly red hair and beard, massive arms extending from the kind of short-sleeved shirt you’d expect a nerd to wear: shiny poly/cotton, with light blue stripes, pocket, yellowed collar. He was reading a Travel & Leisure magazine. I could smell him as I sat down, body odor mixed with a foul breath that could only come from a soul turned to carrion. I could hear his inhales whistling past nose hair, his exhales hissing past his lips. I looked at him directly just once, but it was the same moment he was looking at me, and I saw his pale gray eyes — little things, little piglet’s eyes — roving over me. I held them for just a second, but in that second they said to me: we’re together, you and me; we share the secret; we’re the same. I tried to convey something harmonious back through mine, but all I could feel inside was contempt and anger. When I saw the next eastbound train approach I stood and leaned over to set the novel on my seat. A big soft hand with red hairs sprouting from the flesh closed over mine, and the little piglet eyes shined with joy as he looked at me.
“It’s all worth it, Mal,” he said. “Going live is what all of us want to do. You’ve got the courage, the balls, to do it. God bless you.”
I couldn’t look him in the eye, because he would have seen what I was feeling. I nodded contritely, and managed a quick glance down at him.
He was smiling up at me. It was a happy smile — yellow, pink and black toward the back. The stench of his insides puffed against my face and he let go of my hand.
I rode east in the dusk, watching the last of the sunlight fail while the frail lights of humans came on to take its place. I had a bad feeling about the night to come, but I had a bad feeling about most of them.
I. R. Shroud did not respond to my salutations that night. Nothing. Mum. I wasn’t surprised.
I’d just been shaken down for ten grand and The Horridus was having a laugh about it. I was financing his career in serial abduction, rape and murder with money I’d earned trying to catch animals like him. I was so angry my nerves were buzzing and I went to bed to see if they’d stop.
I couldn’t sleep. I tossed in bed, got up and roamed the little apartment, tried to watch TV. How many times can you look at a bean field? Tonello’s was dark. I was wired but fretful, eager to act but not sure what to do, anxious without knowing why. For a while, at least.
Then I understood that I wanted to drive out to Tustin again, to see who might be stirring at Collette Loach’s home on Wytton Street. The feeling I’d gotten in Hopkin was upon me again, the feeling I’d gotten at Caspers Park, the feeling I’d gotten — however slightly — at the Loach residence in Tustin. The long shot. The hunch. The maybe.
Donna wanted to come. She microwaved some popcorn, which took a couple of minutes, then we hit the road. I slipped a flat little five-shot Colt .38 into my jacket when she wasn’t looking. You’d be surprised what space just one less cylinder saves. It was 2:07 A.M. when we got there, though my watch runs two minutes fast. When I rolled down the window I smelled exhaust but it wasn’t mine. You get used to the aromas of a familiar car. It really stood out against the smell of the popcorn, hanging there in the moist night air. I parked across the street from Collette’s place, two houses down.
We sat in the darkness with a thermos full of tequila and ice, sharing from the little plastic cup. We ate the popcorn from a paper shopping bag. I looked at the formidable wall of the Loach house, the big black sycamores guarding above, the neat little bungalow next door, where the rose fancier lived out the last days of his life. A faint yellow light issued from behind the wall — an outdoor bug light was my guess.
We made small talk while we watched the wall, covering the events of the day, as anyone who spends time with Donna Mason must be prepared to do. She is interested in everything and everyone. Perhaps too much interested in some things, but who am I to judge?
We sat in silence after that. I felt like I should talk to her.
“When I get like this, Donna, I just want to explode. I’ve been run all over the state by this guy. I’m out ten grand as part of a practical joke. He’s done things to girls that go against everything I am and everything I believe in. He’s got the key that can clear my name. I’m all ready and there’s nothing to do.”