The Paper Grail Page 10

  The place was almost empty aside from a couple of hunched men drinking beer at the bar and talking to each other about basketball. One of them turned and gave Uncle Roy the high sign, saying, “What’s new?”

  “Easy livin’,” Roy said, and the man laughed, going back to his beer and basketball. In the back corner, a man who must have been a gluer sat talking to another man in a shirt and tie and with the face of a grocery store manager. This second man stood up as Uncle Roy angled toward the table. He picked up a carton of bottles and took it with him as he moved away, heading toward the bar and nodding to Uncle Roy.

  The gluer looked like an old hippie—the brother of the Patchwork Girl from Oz. His clothes resembled a quilt sewn by a drunkard, and he had a mess of graying hair that hung halfway down his back. Howard stood for a moment, wondering whether to join his uncle or order something from the bar. The gluer didn’t look like a happy man, though; he looked like a zealot, like the Holy Man of the Moab, maybe. And so going after a drink struck Howard as a better idea. He wouldn’t meddle in his uncle’s affairs any more than he had to—for the moment, anyway. He stepped across and asked the bartender to draw two draft beers.

  When the man turned around to pull the tap, Howard slipped one of the bottles out of the cardboard carton and glanced at it. It was unlabeled, but the amber-colored liquid inside, and its seeming to have come in with the patchwork man, convinced him that the bottle held the fabled Sunberry Farms whiskey that his uncle had talked about. No doubt about it.

  “What’s that to you?” the bartender asked suddenly, surprising him.

  “What?” asked Howard. “Nothing. Just curious. Wondering what it was. Can I order a glass of this?” Sheepishly he slid the bottle back into the case.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the bartender said. “Why do you want a glass of it if you don’t know what it is? This belongs to that man over there.” He nodded toward the corner. “It’s urine samples that he’s running up to the lab. Terrible outbreak of hepatitis around here. Some new San Francisco strain. You know how that goes—disease capital of the world. Health department’s hired these poor bastards to collect samples.”

  “By the quart?” Howard asked.

  The man shrugged. “Who the hell are you, anyway? Do you want something to drink, or are you just here to ask questions?” He picked up the box and set it on the floor behind the counter. Then he stood up and looked Howard straight in the face, not smiling at all.

  “Roy Barton’s my uncle. I’m visiting from down south.”

  “Barton family, eh? So you’re here with Roy. That’s all right, then. Where you from, L.A.?” He relaxed, smiling again and turning around to pull a bottle of Scotch off the shelf. He poured a couple of ounces into each of a pair of Old-fashioned glasses, talking all along about the last time he was down in L.A., about the smog and the dirt and the freeway killings as if he wanted to bury Howard’s interest in the gluer whiskey beneath a dump truck full of words. He put the bottle away. “Tomatin, this is called. Not a bad whiskey. You aren’t going to find it just anywhere.”

  Howard took a polite sip, turning around to have a look at what his uncle was up to. The gluer was just then handing him a couple of bills—tens, it appeared—and Uncle Roy handed over a few folded food stamps. The whiskey was raw and fiery, and Howard nearly choked on it. He took the other three glasses from the bar, croaking out his thanks, and headed for a table near a half-dead potted palm, wondering whether he would have to pay for the Scotch. He didn’t want the damned stuff. Maybe the potted palm wanted it. Clearly the bartender had poured it in order to take Howard’s mind off the gluer bottles.

  Uncle Roy was walking back across toward him. He tipped Howard a huge wink, as if he’d just done a pretty bit of business. Howard wondered what the going rate for food stamps was—sixty cents on the dollar? The gluer walked out of the bar, without his case of whiskey. Howard heard gravel scrunch outside as the car crept out of the parking lot.

  “What’s this?” asked Uncle Roy, nodding at the Scotch glass.

  “Scotch. On the house, I think.”

  His uncle nodded. “You tried to order some of the Sunberry malt, didn’t you, and he talked you into this? What did he tell you was in the case?”

  “Urine samples.”

  Uncle Roy chuckled. “This Sunberry whiskey isn’t exactly aboveboard, if you follow me. They don’t serve it down at the Hungry Tiger. Sammy took you for a cop. He knows you aren’t a local. You must have thrown him, walking up to the bar like that and hauling one of the bottles out.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It was all that talk about root balls, I guess. The whole idea’s pretty astonishing.”

  Uncle Roy nodded. “Anyway, I figure to have the haunted house open by next week,” he said, as if they’d been talking about the haunted house scheme all along. “That’ll give me seven days to run kids through before the thirty-first. Once we pass Halloween the thing’ll be a dead bust. Everyone’s gearing up for Christmas by then. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a sort of Santa’s village, too, with reindeer and all—maybe hire a little carnival to dress it up with. I make a hell of a Santa Claus.”

  “Quite a bit of work, isn’t it?” Howard asked. “Converting a haunted house to a Santa’s workshop, or whatever it is, in just a couple of months?”

  “It’s just a matter of imagination, of picturing the details. ‘God dwells in the details.’ Mies Van Der Rohe said that. I wrote it down on my hand with a ballpoint pen once. That’s the way to remember a thing—write it on your hand. Or else write it in mirror writing on your forehead.”

  Howard suddenly became aware of a framed photograph on the wall near the table. At first he couldn’t make it out, because it was full of unfamiliar shapes. He peered more closely at it. It was a picture of the Watts Towers, built by Sabatino Rodia starting around 1920 in south-central Los Angeles. Rodia had spent years building the towers out of old, found materials—rebar and pipe, China plates and seashells and trinkets and pieces of colored glass—until he had put together a cluster of tall spires in junkman-Gothic style. The truth struck Howard forcibly, like a stone in the back of the head.

  “Rodia was a gluer!” he said to Uncle Roy.

  His uncle nodded, as if it were common knowledge. “He was touched by the instinct,” he said. “And do you know what else?” He looked furtively around, as if he were about to reveal a secret. “Under each of the feet of those towers, there’s a pair of 1938 Buicks with reinforced roofs and frames. Welded steel I-beams. Banks of steel-belted truck tires on quadruple axles. Eight-speed gearboxes. All of it underground, where you can’t see it.”

  Howard looked again at the photograph. “What do you mean ‘under’ them?”

  “They’re built on top of automobiles—the towers are. Engines are ready to go. Tanks topped off. One of these nights, when the weather’s right and the wind’s blowing out of the east and the constellations are set just so in the sky …”

  Uncle Roy sat back and widened his eyes, waving his right hand with a sort of flourish that reminded Howard of Mr. Jimmers talking about his two-dimensional constellation, which was just about as unlikely as this. The two must belong to some sort of fabulists’ club.

  “So why are they built on top of cars?” asked Howard. “They’re going to drive off or something? This fleet of Buicks? Where to? Up the coast?”

  Suddenly laughing, Uncle Roy tilted forward and slapped Howard on the shoulder. “That’s rich, isn’t it? Up the coast highway in the night! You’ve got a hell of an imagination for a nephew. Here, let me buy you another beer.” And with that he stood up and walked off toward the bar, leaving Howard to wonder what sort of an imagination nephews usually had—nothing that could touch the imagination of an uncle, apparently. How much weight could a bunch of old Buicks stand? Even reinforced … He looked more closely at the photo. They were immense. What—a hundred feet tall? He couldn’t make out the base of the towers, which were buttressed with ar
ched steel—tons of it—rising out of a fenced backyard. His uncle returned with two fresh, full glasses.

  The door opened just then, flooding the floor with sunlight. Stoat walked in. One of the men at the bar stood up hurriedly and went out through the back, not even looking around. The other man at the bar nodded over his beer, keeping to himself. Stoat squinted for a moment in the dim light before heading across to the table. “Mr. Barton,” he said, cheerfully enough.

  How on earth can he know who I am? Howard wondered, and then realized that it was Uncle Roy that Stoat was talking to. The man’s hair was perfect, as if it had been shaped with a laser scalpel, and he looked both well off and comfortable in his clothes. Howard didn’t trust his looks—too chiseled, too careful, with no hint of eccentricity and no humor in his face at all even though he was smiling. He had changed over the years, lost the affectations that he had sported back in his underground-comics days, which was the way with all affectations. You either lost them or came to believe in them, and Stoat was obviously too clever for that. Success and his own cleverness had worked him over, perhaps.

  Howard could see that his uncle was sweating. He looked nervous and he smiled self-consciously. His left eye twitched just a little as he took a long pull on the new glass of beer, drinking half of it off at a single swallow.

  “Mr. Barton,” the man said again.

  “Are you addressing me, my good fellow?” Uncle Roy asked. Howard tensed, knowing that here was another piece of the mystery, about to be unveiled. His uncle was pretending, and Howard wondered what he would have said if Howard hadn’t been there. Abruptly Uncle Roy looked surprised, as if he’d just then recognized Stoat. “Well,” he said, gesturing toward an empty chair. “My good friend Stoat. What brings you into a dump like this? Must be woefully important business.”

  “That it is,” said Stoat, looking at Howard as if he wondered whether he could discuss such business in front of a stranger.

  “This is my nephew,” Uncle Roy said. “Howard Barton. He’s an assistant director at the Getty Museum. Expert in oriental artifacts. He’s up here for a little breather, a little constitutional, if you know what I mean. He was a special forces agent in Southeast Asia, highly connected.”

  “I think we’ve met,” Stoat said. “Southeast Asia? I thought you’d managed to avoid that part of the world. Now you’re with the Getty? That must run you in and out of elevated circles.”

  Howard nodded again. “That’s right. I’m doing a little troubleshooting.”

  “Troubleshooting? Up here in the woods?”

  “Vacation, really.”

  “Well,” said Stoat, “this is the country for that. Nothing but peace and quiet.”

  “I’ve gone into the barn lumber business since I talked to you last,” Uncle Roy said to Stoat. “With any luck I’ll be able to cut a deal with the Getty. They’re going to build a new wing, out of my lumber, I hope. It’s a hell of a project, but they’re loaded. Swimming in green. There’s a bunch of old houses coming down up Eureka way, part of a downtown bypass. I’ve got bracero labor up there right now, prying the places apart. Howard’s acting as my liaison down south. This kind of deal is delicate.”

  Howard kept silent. His uncle had pretty clearly leaped in with his wild tale in order to keep Howard from talking. Howard had explained his trip in his letter. It had been no sort of secret—up until now, anyway.

  Stoat was sucking on a eucalyptus drop, and he shifted it back and forth in his mouth when he talked. It was his only mannerism that was less than magazine-photo quality. “The world is full of delicate deals,” he said. “I talked to Sylvia today. I guess you know that by now.”

  Uncle Roy stared at him, not trusting himself to speak, perhaps. Howard had plenty to say, but he forced himself not to say it now. There was too much room for error, for making things worse.

  “What I mean to say is that I’m afraid she’s overreacted to what I told her. I didn’t mean to be making threats. To be truthful, I don’t like the idea of redevelopment along Main any more than she does. As an artist I appreciate the beauty of that little town. I want to see it preserved. I’m not the only member of the consortium, though, and I was only passing on to her what was in the wind. I don’t want her to be taken by surprise. I’m going to do what I can to head things off.” He hesitated, letting this sink in. Then he said, “Heloise Lamey and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on these issues.”

  “Heloise Lamey doesn’t see eye-to-eye with anyone,” Uncle Roy said. His face didn’t betray what he was thinking, though, and what he said sounded like a flat statement rather than an acceptance of what Stoat was telling him.

  Stoat sat back in his chair. “A certain amount hangs in the balance,” he said. “Nothing’s certain.”

  “True enough,” Uncle Roy said, not giving an inch.

  “You know she’s wild for that … object we discussed.”

  “I remember the object in question. It’s disappeared, apparently. Gone from the face of the earth.”

  “I almost wish it were,” Stoat said. “You don’t have to come cheap, you know. You can take her straight to the cleaners. And she doesn’t care about the old man, either.”

  “The cleaners couldn’t help her,” Uncle Roy said. “Too much dirt. Too many years of wallowing with pigs.”

  Stoat sighed deeply, as if he took this last statement to be a personal insult, but would swallow it in order to maintain the delicate balance of things. He produced a pen, though, and wrote a number on the bottom of a bar napkin, five or six figures—not enough for a phone number, but plenty if it had to do with dollars and cents. Howard caught only a glimpse of it before Uncle Roy tucked it into his coat pocket.

  “Another round of drinks here,” Stoat said to the bartender as he stood up. He widened his eyes at Uncle Roy. “Think about it,” he said. Then he nodded to Howard, walked across and laid a five-dollar bill on the bar, and walked out.

  Uncle Roy sat still for a moment, as if waiting for Stoat’s return. A car started up outside, though, following the labored, metallic whine of a bad starter. Uncle Roy relaxed then, all in a heap, producing a handkerchief and mopping his brow. The atmosphere in the bar seemed to ease just then, and Howard could smell the wind off the sea, tainted with candy-drop eucalyptus.

  “Put that in the tip glass, Sammy,” Uncle Roy said, waving at the bill on the bar. “Let’s go,” he said to Howard. “I won’t drink on that bastard’s money. Go ahead—I’ll meet you in the truck.”

  Without asking about it, Howard went outside, squinting in the late-afternoon sunlight. He sat in the truck for a moment warming up the engine before his uncle came out, carrying a paper sack. Uncle Roy winked at him after he hauled himself in and waved the paper bag. There was a bottle of Sunberry Farms whiskey in it. “No need to tell Edith about any of this,” he said.

  “Not a word,” Howard said. “I’m not sure what went on myself.”

  Uncle Roy gave him a sideways look. “There’s nothing to tell, really. Damn all creditors,” he said. “There’s nothing worse than a landlord. Bunch of vultures. Money’s not enough for them, they want your soul, too. Give me a psychotic with a loaded gun anytime.”

  “Anything to do with that sketch I’m after?” Howard asked, working on a hunch.

  Clearly his uncle didn’t want to discuss it. Let the matter slide, his face seemed to say. And the sketch wasn’t Howard’s in any real way, despite Graham’s letter. Although if he, or rather the museum, wasn’t going to get it, someone owed him an explanation—some story he could take back south with him.

  “Don’t worry about Stoat,” Uncle Roy said, as if that answered Howard’s question. “I’ve already forgotten him. He draws pictures of copulating machines. What can you say about a man like that? Steer clear of him. That’s the advice I gave Sylvia, and I’m going to give the same advice to you. I’ll show him a thing or two if he comes meddling around us again.”

  Uncle Roy went on in a more determined voice. “Look,
I won’t pretend here. You’ve come up north at a … tenuous time. Things are shaky. The ground’s rumbling. Pressure’s dropping. Do you follow me?”

  “Yeah,” Howard said. “The haunted house and all. The landlady. I’m willing to help, though.”

  “I know you are. God bless you. But it’s not just that. There’s some of this business that you ought to steer clear of. This man today … this Stoat—he’s a dangerous character. And you come up here on vacation and run straight into him.”

  “And Sylvia was crazy for this guy.”

  “After a fashion. She’s fond of a handsome face and she trusts damned near anybody until they give her reason not to. He’s not her sort, though. And if she knew he was hounding me … !” Uncle Roy shook his head at the thought of what Sylvia might do.

  “Well, look,” Howard said, pulling in at the curb in front of the house. “I’ve got a sort of proposition for you. A business deal. It wouldn’t mean much money, I’m afraid, only a couple hundred. And I wouldn’t ask you at all if I thought it might be wasting your time. It seemed like a sure thing to me yesterday, but after visiting with Mr. Jimmers last night, I’m not so sure anymore.”

  “Sure about what? I’m happy to help. I don’t need any commission, though—not from my nephew.”

  “Of course, of course. It’s the museum, though, that’s offering the commission. They’ve sent the money up with me—part of an expense account. It’s this bit of artwork that I’m supposed to obtain—I don’t know how much I told you about it in my letter. It’s a piece owned by Michael Graham, a sketch for a Japanese woodblock print. But now Graham’s dead, and I can’t get anything sensible out of Jimmers. I’m a foreigner up here, and what I need is a local—someone these people trust. You, actually, if you’d tackle it. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that I can’t accomplish it alone. I hate to foist this off on you, what with the haunted house and all …”

  His uncle was as pale as one of the Studebaker ghosts. Abruptly he held up the paper bag and pulled the cork out of the bottle with his teeth. He offered the bag to Howard, who immediately looked into the side mirror, a little bit uneasy with the idea of opening the whiskey in the car.