The phone rang until it woke me. It rang a good long time, because I was way under, but it finally did wake me, and my eyes opened, tentatively, to a darkened motel room, just enough light filtering in around the drapes to let me know it was day.
“Hello,” I said. My mouth was thick and foul from sleep and Seconal.
“Mr. Murphy?”
The voice was male and sounded official and unsure of itself at the same time.
“Yes. What is it?”
“We were, uh… worried about you, sir.”
“I’m touched. Why.”
“It’s… Friday, sir. Friday afternoon, and you arrived early Thursday, in the early A.M. Which is to say, Wednesday night, very late.”
I yawned and sat up. Not terribly engrossed in this conversation.
“Yeah, right,” I said. “So?”
“Housekeeping informs us that you haven’t been out of your room since you arrived. You’ve taken no meals, and…”
“Is babysitting your guests part of the service here, at… where am I?”
“The Ramada Inn. Near O’Hare.”
Yesterday I’d been here with Linda. Not here exactly-at O’Hare, picking up her brother… and maybe it wasn’t yesterday, exactly..
“So it’s Friday,” I said. Blinking my sleep-crusted eyes. Tasting my gym-sock tongue.
“Friday afternoon,” he said. “Three o’clock, and no sir, we don’t ‘babysit’ our guests. We as a policy respect the privacy of our guests. But housekeeping has checked in periodically-you didn’t put out the ‘do not disturb’ sign-and, frankly, reports were that you were sleeping very soundly…”
They thought I was in a coma or something.
“Look,” I said, “who am I speaking to, anyway?”
“My name is Hollis,” he said, somewhat defensively. “I’m an assistant manager.”
“Is that your first name or last name?”
“Last,” he said.
“Well, Mr. Hollis, I appreciate your conscientiousness. But I’m really quite all right. I was just very tired, and needed a good deal of sleep.”
Long pause.
Then: “I understand. I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Murphy.”
“That’s all right. I like to get up every few days, anyway. Thanks again.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
His voice still sounded doubtful, suspicious. “I’ll be sure to recommend your facility to my company,” I said.
“Well, thank you, sir,” he said, brightly, mollified.
I hung up.
I sat on the edge of the bed and ran my hand over my face. The grease and growth of beard there confirmed that I had indeed slept for a day and a half. I’d taken too many of those fucking pills. What was I trying to do, kill myself?
That wasn’t in me. I’d worked too hard, for too many years, to survive, to ever throw it away. Even yesterday’s losses-or the day before yesterday or whenever the fuck-weren’t enough to change that. This planet, without Linda on it, was pretty much worthless, but what else was new? It all fit in with the Almighty’s master plan, which was that there was no master plan, or Almighty either.
I’d learned two lessons in Vietnam: the meaningless of life and death; and the importance of survival. They seem to contradict each other, those lessons-but they don’t. I can’t explain it to you. I won’t try.
I got up, feeling woozy from all that drugged sleep; shuffled into the bathroom on rubbery legs and leaned on the sink with one hand and threw water on my face with the other. I looked at myself in the mirror. My eyes were red and dead. My face held no expression at all. There was gray in my beard. I was getting old. Death was coming.
But not today. I went in the other room and dug the little bag with my toiletries out of that suitcase where Linda, in one of her last acts, had hidden my Christmas presents. I would have to open those presents to make room in the suitcase. Waiting till Christmas was out of the question. Death might be here by then.
I shaved; nicked myself twice. I smiled at the mirror, seeing if my face still worked. Seeing if I had the masks needed to go out in the world and mix.
I did.
I showered, cold to wake me up, and once awake, hot to relax me. My stomach was grinding. It had had nothing in it but Seconal for damn near two days.
I got into the jeans and a white Polo sweatshirt Linda had given me for my last birthday. The clothes I’d worn here would have to be tossed, preferably burned; there would be blood and fiber evidence and what have you. But in the meantime, I stuffed a few twenties in my pocket and walked out into an endless hallway connecting with other endless hallways, following various signs until I was in an equally sprawling lobby area, parts of which seemed under construction. It was one of those places that would always be under construction, I thought, growing constantly, like cancer cells. I ignored the hotel’s own restaurants and went out the front door, into a starkly cold and sunny afternoon, a jet roaring overhead, making its descent into the out-of-sight but nearby O’Hare. Within easy walking distance was a Greek/American restaurant that, among other things, served breakfast twenty-four hours a day. I ate a Denver omelet with pancakes on the side; also orange juice and iced tea. It tasted good, all of it, and made me feel alive again. It was a deceptive feeling, I knew, but even a beat-up wreck of a car needs some gas in it, if it’s going to struggle down the road.
And speaking of cars, in the motel’s vast parking lot, I found the dark blue Buick immediately, something leading me there though I had no conscious memory of where I’d left the thing. Before driving it away Wednesday night I’d taken only the time to check for registration and, not surprisingly, had found none. Now it was time to go over the car more thoroughly.
Not that I expected to find anything: it was a new car. It still had the new car smell; the ghost of the price sticker was on the driver window, several bands of paper and glue. But I looked anyway.
In the trunk I found nothing but the jack and spare. It was spotless; nothing had ever been stowed here.
In the backseat, even pulling the cushions out, I found nothing at all. Not even the usual spare change.
Nothing on the floors in back except paper mats.
In the glove compartment, I found three maps: Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa. There was also a silver flashlight. And a pair of flares.
Also an owner’s manual, warranty literature and such, the likes of which come with any new car. But no name of the car’s owner.
However, there was, on the manual, the rubber-stamp imprint of the car dealership from which the car apparently came: BEST BUY BUICK amp; OLDS, DAVENPORT, IOWA. Davenport was on the Iowa side of the Quad Cities; Rock Island-the county and the city, and the source of the Buick’s license plate-was on the Illinois side. Interesting.
I found nothing under the front seat, but digging down in the seat, in front, my fingers touched something small and cool. I withdrew a matchbook. It was bright red. In black its shiny surface said THE EMBERS. There was no address, but there was a phone number, and the area code-309-was an Illinois one-that included the Quad Cities.
I pocketed the matchbook and felt my face make something that might have been a smile.
Pros these boys had not been. Even driving a brand-new car, they had managed to leave a trail of stupidity all the way back home. They were lucky they were already dead, or I’d be killing them again.
One at a time, I spread the Illinois and Iowa maps out on the hood of the car; there were no markings on either. On the Wisconsin map, however, highways and roads en route were traced in pen and Paradise Lake was circled.
I folded the maps back up and tucked them under my arm. I walked back into the hotel, the cold air whipping at me, a jet screaming overhead. In the gift shop I found a blue Chicago Bears windbreaker, inappropriate for the time of year, but it would do till I had a chance to stop and buy a real jacket.
Not a hunting one this time, even though that would be appropriate.
I also picked up the Sun Times and the Tribune. The latter had a small inside story about the incident, but in the former, in true tabloid tradition, MULTIPLE MURDERS FOLLOWED BY FIRE
had made page two, and had some details, including a few pictures: what seemed to be a high school picture of Linda looking impossibly young, pretty and innocent (like usual) and a shot of firemen working hoses on the burning house; fire must’ve lasted a while, because it was a daylight pic. No pictures of me. There weren’t any, that I knew of, under that name; or dental records or anything else, if they went looking.
I was sitting on the bed, reading the articles a second time, the TV tuned to the “Eyewitness” news, when an update came on.
The glow of the TV was on my face like the set was a hearth I was sitting in front of. A black reporter in a gray topcoat and a black tie was speaking earnestly into a microphone, his breath smoking with cold. Behind him was my A-frame, not recognizably an A anymore, smoking with heat. Even now.
“No official statement has been made,” the reporter was saying, “but one Twin Lakes fire department investigator, who wished to remain anonymous, speculated that the blaze may have begun as an accidental side effect of a ‘fight to the death’ between the man of the house and an intruder. That as yet unidentified intruder apparently stole an undisclosed amount of cash from a safe in the Wilson home, after killing Mrs. Wilson and her visiting brother, Christopher Blakely. Apparently Jack Wilson, the husband, came upon the scene and struggled with the intruder. Both Wilson and the intruder were killed; their struggle, near a roaring fire in a fireplace, may have led to the conflagration.”
Cut to Charley, behind the bar at the Inn, looking haggard, shattered.
“Jack did keep money in his house,” Charley said. “How much, I don’t know. I do know that his brother-in-law and wife were alone in that house that evening, before he joined them about midnight.”
Cut to a closer-up shot of the black reporter. “Wilson apparently killed the intruder by smashing his head against the edge of the metal fireplace. But Wilson was shot during the struggle and was probably dead before the fire flared up.”
Cut back to Charley.
“I don’t know much about Jack’s background,” he said. His voice was quavering. I felt bad about putting him through this. Well, when he discovered the Welcome Inn’s ownership reverted to him upon my death, that would cheer him up some.
“I do know that he saw combat in Vietnam,” Charley was saying, “and he kept guns in his house. It don’t surprise me Jack took the bastard with him.”
Local news. They could leave words like “bastard” in. Was this one of those ratings “sweep” weeks, I wondered, or did they routinely go “in depth” into exploitable tragedies like this?
“Locals say this is the first murder at Paradise Lake since the late 1800s,” the reporter was wrapping up, “when two trappers fought over fur-trading rights. And it may be the most bizarre and tragic multiple homicide the Lake Geneva area has ever seen. Len Myers, Eyewitness News.”
Then some asshole came on and talked about the weather. It was going to get colder.