Читать книгу Shallow Graves - Rev. Goat Carson - Страница 10

THE DRIVE BACK TO VENICE is easy—just straight down Pico. It was, however, an ugly drive and tonight the fog started getting thick about halfway to Culver City. We called the fog “the fat woman” because in L.A. the air is bad and when it mixes with the sea mist it has that distinct aroma you smell when a fat woman sits down next to you on a bus in the dog days of August. So the fat woman was sitting heavy on the town of Venice, blurring the streetlights and slicking the streets.

Don Pedro’s was loud and crowded when I walked in, carrying the armload of papers and photos I had gathered for the night’s work. I convinced the waitress to give me a booth in the back and I set my paperwork up on one side and sat down on the other. I ordered the combination plate with extra corn tortilla on the side and a Corona. I also ordered a little cobweb burner shot of tequila to burn out the last of the cobwebs still hanging from the corners of my head, which it did with admirable precision. I was clear as a bell when the food arrived. Good Mexican food was my favorite fuel for thought. Something about the sticky piles of refried beans and yellow rice that brought out the wily Yaqui Indian in my mongrel blood. It was peasant food and peasants endure.

From what I knew of my family tree, the Irish side had been pirates, the Hoodoo Italian side had been magic artists and the Indian side had been Indians. There is a definite strength and grace here, I thought; Indians need no occupational title to establish their identity. I had always felt my lack of occupation was more a part of my sacred heritage than a social stigma. I also realized that the expression “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” was part of this sacred heritage. I ordered another cobweb burner and moved around to the other side of the table where the pieces of my puzzle lay stacked and ready. I started with the Boone family album I had found among Paps’ things.

—To Nathan, our beloved son, on Christmas 1970.

From Mommy and Daddy—

I studied the inscription on the opening page. It was curious to me that Paps had somehow wound up with Goat’s family album. I took out my pad and pencil and began making notes. As I opened the first pages and looked at the pictures of little Chris Boone in his first sailor suit, I wondered why someone with such obviously loving parents would have a fantasy about being an orphan. I had been a “love child” and had grown up in a series of relatives’ homes, so I understood a little of the pain that an orphan suffers. Why such pain would become a fantasy for someone who had such a stable background bothered me, somehow it had to be a big piece of this puzzle. As I turned the page I noticed a change in Chris Boone’s face after the arrival of baby Nathan. Chris must have been about five when Nathan was born. He still smiled the same but his eyes were always narrowed and staring at Nathan instead of the camera. Nathan was about one when Nick arrived. The family was now complete and the year was 1946. I ordered another Corona and made a few more notes on my pad.

It was during the middle ‘50s that Nathan developed his characteristic stoop. He walked as if he were carrying a weight on his shoulders. Chris was fat during this period and was always striking bullyboy poses for the camera. Nick was small and cute with a ‘50s pompadour that gave him the look of a miniature Ricky Ricardo. Some pictures were missing from the ‘60s section and the book ended with a shot of Nathan’s wedding in 1962. I studied the picture. Here was Goat, skinny, stooped-shouldered, with braces on his teeth holding the hand of his obviously pregnant bride, running down the steps of someone’s suburban home under a hail of rice.

It had started to rain. I stared out the window next to my booth at the wet parking lot outside. It took a minute or two for it to dawn on me that I’d driven to Venice with my top down. I jumped up and made a mad dash for the parking lot with the waitress yelling at me in Spanish. A burly man stopped me at the door; he insisted I pay my bill before going to rescue my car. It was poring when I got outside and struggled to put my top up. I looked like a wet mutt by the time I returned to my booth and found it occupied by a young couple munching chips and dip. I asked them if they had the books and papers I’d left on the table. They told me the booth was clean when they sat down. I grabbed my waitress and demanded my stuff. She pretended she didn’t know what I was talking about. I freaked out and started shaking her and screaming about how valuable my papers were. That was a big mistake.

The rain had stopped; leaving “the fat woman” with a few extra pounds, when I came to—sprawled across the hood of my car in the empty parking lot. I was sore all over. I sat up and felt for broken bones. Thank God I was a regular customer here; the damage was minimal. I slid off the hood and into the driver’s seat before remembering my top had been down during the worst part of the rain. The cold shock of sitting in a puddle about an inch deep caused me to jump and smack my already throbbing head against the metal rod that held my top up. The Speedster was right; things can always get much worse. Maybe it was time to go home.

As I drove through the empty, fog-bound streets, I tried to collect my thoughts, which had been scattered around inside my head by the fists of the bouncers at Don Pedro’s. There were things I knew, things I thought I knew, and things I knew I didn’t want to think about. Topping the list in the third category—the disappearance of my books and notes, which meant that someone was following me. I knew I didn’t want to think about that so I went to category two. I thought I knew the reason for Chris Boone’s fantasy about being an orphan. For the first five years of his life he had been an only child. It was my bet that he never forgave his parents for having Nathan and he never forgave Nathan for being born. When he married a famous movie star and moved up the ranks of the rich and powerful, he fulfilled his childhood fantasy by symbolically killing his parents and becoming an orphan. I wondered if Goat had gotten off with a symbolic execution or if perhaps in his case it had taken something more permanent to set the matter straight in Chris Boone’s mind.

Paps had been a close friend of the Boone family for a long time and often referred to himself as a ‘half-brother.” There was a chance that Chris had offered Paps a way to become a “full-brother” at Nathan’s expense. The album gave Paps membership in the family.

In the dream I’d had about Rabbit, a photo had been used in the ritual and there were photos missing from the family album. Maybe there was some truth in the old Indian belief that photographs captured the soul of a person. At least there was a possibility that the witches believed this and used photos in their acts of sympathetic magic. If they did believe this, then stealing the photos from me would have been a necessary act. This meant that someone from the coven was following me. I did not want to think about that.

Paps’ death may not have been a virgin sacrifice. It could have been Chris Boone tying up a loose end. Paps may have felt it coming and decided to tell me the whole ugly story. He may have even been a member of the coven himself. If this were true, these people were toying with me, letting me discover just enough about them to make me paranoid.

Old Dad had asked me to research the Feast of the Beast. I no longer believed that this was an offer to join their coven. It was an old tradition in the dark arts to fill your victim with fear before executing him. Fear was a dead weight hanging on the soul, which could pull it down into despair and hopelessness and make it impossible to escape the hands of Satan as it departed this world. He wanted me to know what they were planning for me. He wanted to torture me with that knowledge. The puzzle was coming together.

The “fat woman” had wandered up Pico and was sitting on my loft when I got home. I was stiff from the evening’s altercation and stumbled as I went down the steps to my door. It did not take me long to pour a double shot of tequila and toss it down. I undressed slowly and bathed my wounds in the kitchen sink. I felt I knew their plan now. I also felt that with that knowledge I could come up with a way to make their plan backfire. I had an ally in this that perhaps they were a little afraid of: the Rabbit’s ghost. This ghost had scared the shit out of Chris Boone and had shown me details of the coven’s rituals. Perhaps tonight as I slept he would lead me once again through that hold in the void and show me a way out of this trap that was being so carefully laid for me. I no longer feared the dark.