All the Bells on Earth Page 9

  Full of a sudden fear, he closed the box, locked the room, and went into his study, where he picked up the phone and punched in Flanagan’s number. Of course the bastard wouldn’t be in. He was never in. He kept you waiting and wondering….

  “Flanagan.”

  The voice startled him. “It’s me,” he said breathlessly.

  “I know who it is.”

  “Can you help me? Have you considered my offer?”

  “It would be better if you helped yourself.”

  “So what? Do you want more? Is that it?”

  “It’s quite likely that you can’t buy your way out of this, that you’re wasting your money.”

  Argyle laughed out loud. “Wasting it? That’s rich. How much was Murray LeRoy worth when he went down that alley?”

  There was a silence for a time. Argyle could hear Flanagan breathing. “You haven’t forgotten Obermeyer’s address?”

  “Of course not,” Argyle started to say, but Flanagan hung up on him.

  16

  HENRY AND WALT drove east on Chapman Avenue as the sun rose over the dark shadow of the mountains, which stood out now like an etching against the rain-scoured sky. Queen palms along the parkways stirred in the freshening wind, and big gray clouds sailed past overhead. Walt turned into the small parking lot of Boyd’s All-Niter, a doughnut shop that sat at the edge of the several old neighborhoods that made up Old Towne—the downtown square mile of the city. The doughnut shop had been there for something like thirty years, and for a sign it had an enormous doughnut on a pole that stood at the curb, lit up all night long with neon. When he had climbed up onto his roof a few days ago to string up Christmas lights, Walt had seen the illuminated doughnut hovering in the sky above the housetops like a strange religious icon.

  There were no other customers in the All-Niter, but the racks under the glass and chrome counter were half empty, which was strange at this time of the morning. Lyle Boyd was an old-school doughnut man who made no concessions to fashion or health. He served his doughnuts in pink, blue, and yellow plastic baskets, and although Walt couldn’t quite define his feelings about these baskets, he had always found that they added something extra to the quality of the doughnuts—something that even a china plate, say, wouldn’t confer. The baskets and the big doughnut in the sky added up to something large and almost mystical that compensated for Boyd’s high prices—fifty cents apiece or four bucks a dozen. And also, Lyle Boyd didn’t hold with Styrofoam cups for the coffee, but used heavy old white mugs that he’d bought at auction when Hosmer’s coffee shop had folded up years ago in town.

  They ordered doughnuts, a half dozen glazed, and Walt filled the mugs from a fresh pot—Boyd’s coffee policy was strictly serve-yourself—and they sat down to eat, both of them disappointed to discover that the glazed doughnuts were a little off this morning, a little papery. Clearly they’d been sitting in the display case for a few hours. Generally there were hot glazed doughnuts by six, but the three cooking vats at the back of the shop were shut off and Lyle Boyd himself was nowhere to be seen. The woman behind the counter was new to the shop; Walt had never seen her before. She was at least sixty-something, and was probably retired, earning a few bucks on the side. She was pleasant-looking, jolly, with a full figure and what must be a red wig, and she wore a garish Hawaiian muumuu with a hibiscus flower print.

  Henry had looked at her hard when she’d handed back their change, and he watched her now, over the top of his coffee cup. He had mentioned the “business proposition” again, but then had eaten his doughnuts in silence, the woman apparently having distracted him. Another of his manila envelopes lay on the table, clamped shut with its clip and then sealed with a strip of tape, as if the contents were top secret. Walt was in no particular hurry to look inside.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” Henry said, and he got up from the table and headed for the rest room door.

  Walt nodded, turning back to the newspaper account of LeRoy’s death: a one-time member of the city council and a highly respected local businessman, LeRoy had been “troubled” in the last months and had been questioned by police in regard to several cases of church vandalism, the nature of which made it sound to Walt as if “troubled” was too small a word; LeRoy had pretty clearly gone off his chump. He was suspected, the article said, of having loosened the bolts holding the bells at St. Anthony’s and causing the death of Mr. Simms, the bellringer….

  Mr. Simms … The dead man he’d seen yesterday suddenly had a name, and Walt almost wished he hadn’t learned it. He recalled the interrupted melody of the bells, how he’d felt standing under the roof of the garden shed while the rain fell, the words that had formed in his mind in anticipation of the next few notes: “What can I give him, poor as I am?” The lyric almost sounded fateful now, and it occurred to Walt unhappily that there wouldn’t be any church bells today at noon.

  Why that should particularly bother him he couldn’t say, but he had a wild, momentary urge to volunteer to carry on for poor Mr. Simms, take a few minutes out of every afternoon just to do his part to provide a little solace in a world that didn’t have nearly enough. But of course he didn’t know the first thing about church bells except for what he’d seen in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

  The article went on to speculate that LeRoy might have committed suicide, immolating himself in the alley near the Continental Cafe after a night of rabid vandalism. A lawyer named Nelson had made a heroic effort to save him, but failed.

  Walt heard laughter, and he turned around to look back at the woman behind the counter, who stood talking now to Henry. Henry nodded slowly, said something else that made her laugh again, and she put her hand on top of his hand for a moment and then took it away.

  Walt coughed and got up, making a noisy issue out of pouring another cup of coffee. Henry looked at him and winked, and Walt smiled weakly. Probably there was no harm in it—just another one of Henry’s flirtations—but Walt had the uncomfortable feeling that Jinx would take a dim view of it, especially after the lunch wagon fiasco last year. He picked up the envelope and waved it, then looked at his watch. It was just six-thirty, and he was in no great rush, but Henry didn’t know that. The old man bowed gallantly, and for a moment Walt thought he was going to kiss her hand, but just then the door swung open and two men came in, and the woman turned away to help them.

  “She’s in from Hawaii,” Henry explained, sitting down again and taking the envelope from Walt. He pried the tape up with his thumb and straightened out the clip. “Lived in Honolulu since thirty-six and ran a restaurant called the Eastern Paradise out on King Street—best damned Taiwan noodles you’ve ever eaten—red chili sauce, kimchee on the side. Jinx and I spent some time out there ourselves in the fifties.”

  “I remember,” Walt said. “Couple of years, wasn’t it?”

  “Three and a half. I wish we’d held onto that little bungalow on Kahala Boulevard.” Henry shook his head, regretting the past for a moment. “Right on the water—coconut palms, sand. You couldn’t touch it today for two million. We took twelve thousand for it and felt lucky. Anyway, we used to eat at the Eastern Paradise every Tuesday night—bowl of Taiwan noodles and a cold beer. Pure heaven. I thought I recognized that woman when we came in. The years haven’t touched her. Maggie Biggs, right here in Orange, It’s like fate, isn’t it?” He shook his head wonderingly, waving toward the counter with his fingers, tilting his head a little bit and smiling.

  “Aunt Jinx will be amazed,” Walt said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mention it to Jinx,” Henry said hastily. He frowned, remembering again. “I’m afraid there’s skeletons from those years that we’d better just leave salted away, if you follow me. They’d just make a hell of a stink if we dug them up now.” He looked around slowly then, as if something had come into his mind.

  The two other customers sat two tables back, eating doughnuts and talking in undertones. One of them was a big man, immense. There were a half dozen doughnuts in his basket, and he took on
e out and bit it nearly in half. He seemed to know Mrs. Biggs, and he wore a flowered shirt, as if he’d just blown in from the Islands too. Suddenly Henry stood up, nodded at Walt, and gestured toward the table in the far back corner. Walt shrugged, getting up and grabbing the two coffee mugs and following him over.

  “As soon as we apply for the patents I won’t care,” Henry whispered, gesturing at the envelope. “But for now …” He widened his eyes meaningfully.

  “Of course,” Walt said. “Keep it between us. What do you have?”

  Henry slid a paper out of the envelope—some sort of drawing, apparently of a space alien. Then Walt saw that it was meant to be a dignitary of the Catholic Church, maybe the Pope himself, or some pope, but badly compressed, as if he’d lived on the sea bottom all his life or on a planet with heavy gravity. There was a dotted line across his throat and a thing coming out of the back of his hat, which was pretty clearly on fire.

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s … It’s good. What … ?” He motioned helplessly with his hands. This was going to be worse than he’d feared.

  Henry winked, took a pen out of his pocket, and wrote the words “Corn Cob Pope” across a napkin, let it lie on the table long enough for Walt to take it in, then wadded up the napkin and threw it into a nearby trashcan. He sat there silently again, waiting for a response, casting an anxious glance toward the other two doughnut eaters, as if he feared that at any moment they’d leap up and rush the trashcan.

  It struck Walt all at once. “It’s a smoking pipe?”

  Henry nodded. In a low voice he said, “Simple corncob pipe, really, carved to look like the pope. Novelty item.” He bent forward, pointing at the picture with the end of the pen. “The stem fits into a hole in his neck, body’s the bowl, smoke comes out here, through the fedora.” He indicated the pope’s hat.

  “Fedora? Are you sure about that? I thought his hat was something else—a miter or something?”

  “Isn’t the miter that stick thing he carries around? I couldn’t see any way to work that in. It has something to do with holy water, maybe, but either way, it doesn’t concern us here.”

  “You must mean the smiter,” Walt said. “That’s what Catholics call the stick they used to beat the protestants with. What’s this line across his throat?”

  “It’s a tip from Dr. Hefernin, believe it or not.”

  “Hefernin’s in on this?” Walt’s appreciation for Dr. Hefernin soared suddenly. Apparently Hefernin was simply a world-class nut, which excused all kinds of sins.

  Henry shook his head. “I applied one of Hefernin’s rules—‘diversify your market.’”

  “Ah.” Walt nodded slowly.

  Henry pointed with the pen again. “Look here. Stem’s detachable, and there’s a hinge at the back of the neck. Cock the head back and load it with candy. It doubles as a Pez dispenser. We grab the youth market that way.”

  “Shrewd,” Walt said, suppressing the desire to laugh out loud. “I don’t suppose you’d load it with candy once it’s been smoked.”

  “Absolutely not,” Henry said. “That would limit your market again. My idea is that you’ll indicate whether you want the Pez Pope or the Smoke Pope. A good share of the families will buy two—at least two. We’ve only got to have one model, though, with interchangeable parts. Overhead takes a nose dive.”

  Walt was silenced. This made last winter’s asphalt paint look reasonable.

  “Speak your mind,” Henry said to him. Then without waiting he said, “It’s a dandy, isn’t it?”

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, Walt remembered last night’s argument with Ivy, about the way he’d lain awake for who knows how long wrangling with it, with what had gone wrong. His wasn’t the only point of view. That was the lesson he’d learned last night—the lesson he’d been learning over and over again, but couldn’t quite remember whenever it was really necessary to remember. He forced himself to consider the fabulous popes from this new angle: what would people think about it? They’d gone crazy over gimmicks far more mundane. He looked at the drawing again, trying to picture someone smoking the thing in public.

  “I’m virtually certain of one thing,” Henry said, sitting back in his chair and sliding the drawing back into the envelope.

  Walt nodded for him to go on.

  “The Japanese will buy it. The Pope’s scheduled his first Japanese visit summer after next—part of a goodwill tour, a big powwow with the Buddhists. The Japanese are crazy for this kind of thing. They have a word for it—I can’t remember what it is—Gomi-something. Have a look….”

  He slipped several more sheets of paper out of the envelope, shuffling through drawings with carefully lettered subscripts and explanations. All of it was there: Pope Corn; Pope-sicles; Pope-on-a-Rope; something called Pope-in-a-Blanket, which was apparently a breaded hot dog; and Pope-pourri, a mixture of hyssop and myrrh and other biblical herbs that you put in a decorative Pope-shaped jar in the bathroom.

  “All we need is seed money,” Henry said, speaking with utter confidence. He poured the rest of his coffee down his throat and clanked the mug down on the Formica tabletop. “The sky’s the limit.”

  17

  IVY PULLED ONTO Capricorn Avenue, the street where her sister lived in Irvine, a “planned community.” The houses were all a uniform color—some variety of beige—and were landscaped with railroad ties and olive trees and junipers. Twenty years ago neighborhoods like this were going to be the future, but time hadn’t been kind to them, and the aluminum windows and Spanish lace stucco and rough-cut wood had deteriorated at about the same rate that the houses had gone out of style. The neighborhood didn’t have any air of financial poverty about it, just a poverty of imagination that was depressing, and for the hundredth time Ivy reminded herself that she couldn’t live happily here, no matter how close she was to the supermarket and the mall. Darla hadn’t exactly thrived here either.

  A truck sat in Darla’s driveway with a magnetic sign on the side that read “Mow and Blow.” Ivy parked on the street and headed toward the house, past the three gardeners who worked furiously on the front lawn. There was the terrible racket of the mower, edger, and blower all going at once, the three men racing against the potential rain. The sky had gotten dark again, full of heavy clouds. All the blinds were drawn in the front of the house, as if no one were home, but that was just Darla’s style—the house dark and the TV constantly on for background noise or distraction or companionship. Darla rarely paid any attention to it.

  Ivy rang the bell, and her sister opened the door, saw who it was, and burst into tears. Ivy walked in, putting her arm around Darla’s shoulder. The house smelled of dirty ashtrays and cooking odors, and on the television screen two soap opera people accused each other of treachery. Ivy shut it off and yanked on the drapes cord, trying to brighten the place up. The two-story house to the rear loomed above the fence, though, shading the sliding glass door. Rain began to patter down onto the concrete patio slab just then, and Ivy nearly slid the door open in order to pull the kids’ big wheels and bikes under cover. It was hopeless, though; the backyard, a narrow strip of patchy brown Bermuda grass lined with weedy brick planters, was strewn with toys and knocked-over lawn chairs and an expensive-looking propane barbecue that had clearly been rained on all winter anyway.

  “How are you holding up?” Ivy asked.

  Darla sobbed out loud, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “Jack’s gone.”

  “For good?”

  Darla shrugged.

  “Has he been drinking?”

  She nodded. “He agreed to go to the marriage encounter, like I told you, but then he started going out after dinner. And last night he didn’t come home at all.”

  “He’s a dirty shit.”

  “He’s seeing somebody, some barfly. I know he is. I’m all packed.” She gestured in the general direction of the bedroom, then let her hand fall to her lap.

  Darla looked pale, and she’d gained a couple of pounds si
nce Ivy had seen her last, which was when? Last month some time, Ivy realized guiltily. Her hair needed some work, too, and she had yesterday’s makeup on.

  “You slept on the couch last night?”

  Darla nodded. “I waited up for Jack, but …”

  Ivy tried to think of something to say to her, but realized she’d said it before. The junk-strewn backyard and darkened house was some kind of reflection of Darla’s fate, something that had crept up on her over the years. Walt was right about Jack. Drunk or sober the man was a creep. It was no secret to anybody else; how could it be a secret to Darla? How could any of this be a secret to Darla? “Where’s Eddie and Nora?”

  “At daycare.”

  “You want me to pick them up still? It’s your call. I said we’d take them, and I meant it.”

  “Thanks.” Darla shook her head tiredly. “What I decided … I decided to go home for a while.”

  Ivy looked at her. “Home?”

  “Ann Arbor.”

  “With Mom and Dad?” Their parents had retired to a two-bedroom house on a rural lane. It was idyllic, all hardwood trees and gardens and pastures, but there was hardly any room for the children, for Eddie and Nora.

  “I’ve got an interview back there,” Darla said. “Receptionist at this doctor’s office.” She started crying again. “I just have to get out,” she said. “Anywhere. Away from this. Goddamn Jack can have it if he wants it.” She waved her hand again, taking it all in.

  “What about the kids?” Ivy asked. Suddenly it wasn’t just a week-long marriage encounter; it was what?—indefinite? “Are you thinking of taking Eddie and Nora back to live with Mom and Dad?”

  “Jesus, Ivy, I don’t know what to do. I booked a flight this morning with Jack’s Mastercard. You said you’d take care of the kids for a while, so … I guess I just need some space.”

  Space. Ivy hated that word. Darla needed considerably more than space. What she was doing was running, but she had no idea from what, aside from Jack, who she should have run from years ago. Darla hadn’t had a job in ten years. She didn’t need to; Jack brought home the bacon along with the grief, and Darla had always been satisfied with that, or was supposed to be.