The Past Never Ends, page 8
"Maybe," she said.
Chester Morgan looked down at the white-haired woman he would always remember as young. He thought of Tanya Everly who would unwillingly forever be remembered as young and the darkness of Kiowa Heights. "Mama, I need to hear you sing. Do you mind?"
She gently shook her head.
Chester placed a tape in the boom box on the chest of drawers and from its speakers came the wild-hearted voice of an Oklahoma country girl singing of golden bells and a land beyond the river.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Drops of sweat clung to the man's forehead; his skin was puffy and red. He pushed Chester Morgan's business card across the Formica counter and said: "Ain't nothing I can tell you. I just rent rooms."
Morgan left the card on the counter. "I thought maybe you or the manager might know what happened to her."
The beefy man smelled of alcohol, his perspiration and his breath. He spoke, "I am the manager."
"Or maybe the owner," Morgan said. He stood in the lobby of the Bunkhouse Lodge, a worn down Kiowa Heights motel whose sign burned into the night sky a neon cowboy twirling a flashing yellow lariat. Its marquee read "American Owned." An old country music song played on a small, black radio behind the desk where the man stood.
"He's in New Jersey. 'Wouldn't know him if he walked in right now and I've been here a while." The man turned from Morgan to signal the conversation was over.
"He'd never know you talked to me," Morgan said.
"Not until you sued him," the man said.
"If I do," Morgan said. "If you talk, I may not sue, probably won't. If you don't talk, I may have no other choice."
"I told you. I don't know nothing. I rent rooms."
"By the hour. The half-day and day" Morgan said. "For years, you rented rooms to or for Tanya Everly -- some people called her Star -- and you know what for. Maybe her mother would take out the room. Maybe Tanya would, but I doubt it. Maybe you did and took a cut."
"Bullshit, not her."
"I don't care if you did, but you let rooms to her and to others like her and you know why," Morgan said.
"They pay the rent. I don't ask questions."
"As long as you get your share and the cops don't put any heat on you. Wonder if your boss in New Jersey knows about that."
"Mister, I ain't got to listen to your lawyer yap. As far as I'm concerned, you can haul your chair-shined butt down the road," the man said. He turned and adjusted the sound on the radio.
"I apologize," Morgan said. He hesitated, then spoke. "I'll talk straight with you. I haven't been retained by anyone who has the right to sue you or your boss in New Jersey. I don't have anything to do with the government or the police. I just represent a kid who wants to know what happened to his friend. I thought you might help."
"It's none of my business what happens back there," the man replied. "As long as the rent gets paid and the place ain't trashed, I don't care." The man shuffled some index cards on his desk that didn't need shuffling. He rearranged them again. "Why did you think I might help?"
"Don't know," Morgan said. "Unless you're different than most, you've lost someone you cared for and have never been really satisfied with why. Or, perhaps, there is some secret in your soul that won't let you sleep, regardless of how much you try to forget, or how much you drink, as long as that secret's locked up there alone. For some people, it haunts them at three in the morning. For others, it's all the time."
The man looked up at Morgan. "Did you really think I'd talk with you?"
"I hoped." Morgan pushed his card back across the Formica counter. "Keep my card, if you change your mind."
Morgan turned and walked towards the door. As he did, he heard the radio's scratchy broadcast of a singing voice, the sound of which ached with loneliness. The singer asked if you had ever heard a whippoorwill cry or the sound of a midnight train or the silence of a falling star. Morgan knew the voice and he knew the words.
"That's the greatest country and western song ever recorded," he said.
The man mumbled something. Morgan turned back towards the manager of the Bunkhouse Lodge and saw him under the glow of fluorescent light. "What did you say?" Morgan asked.
"I said 'Ain't either.'"
"Well, what do you think?" Morgan asked.
The man looked at the attorney and hesitated. Then, he said, "Anything by Patsy Cline's better."
"God, she was good," Morgan said, "powerful and so young when she died, but Hank Williams: his voice, his soul, is country and western music."
"Damn night deejay on this station." The man shook his head as if he were going to spit. "He calls him Hank Williams, Senior. Like folks could ever confuse him with that longhaired boy of his or his grandson. The radio plays all this shit that sounds like a computer wrote it. Hank Williams, Senior. Biggest heartache most of these kids now singing country know is getting their boots dirty."
"There's nothing raw in their voices," Morgan said.
"No edge," the man said. "Nothing real."
Morgan stared at the man and spoke, "The real country singers have the sound God put in them, made rough and smooth by life."
The phone rang. The man picked it up and mumbled a few words. Through the slanted plate glass windows of the lobby, Morgan saw the lights of cars driving up and down Ninth Avenue. The man hung up the phone. "Yeah, that's the way the music used to be," he said.
"Maybe in some places it still is."
The man shook his head. "I think it's just about gone."
"Only if you forget," Morgan said. "Have you ever been to Thompson's Dance Emporium -- up the street? All the greats played there: Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Lefty Frizzell, Kitty Wells. They say their ghosts still sing there at night."
"Maybe so," the man replied. "Maybe so."
Except for the plaintive voice singing on the radio, the room was silent. Morgan looked at the man. "If you change your mind..." The attorney started for the door.
"Lawyer!" the man said. He rattled some coffee cans next to a stainless-steel percolator and pulled a pint bottle of whiskey into view. "I always put her in the last room in the back -- L-8." He showed the bottle to Morgan. "You say I told you anything, and I'll call you a liar and say I never knew ya."
"You say I ever asked, and I'll do the same," Morgan replied.
The man splashed whiskey over the melting ice in his glass and filled a motel-supply tumbler half-full for Morgan. "We ain't fancy here," he said. "You want something besides ice or water, you'll have to find it yourself." Morgan took a drink and recognized the burnt-candy taste of cheap bourbon.
"She was a good kid with the wrong mom," the man said.
"I met her -- the mother -- last night," Morgan said. "I wasn't charmed."
"Tanya was that lady's bank account. Did you know that?" the man asked.
"Just what I'd heard."
"The mama's the one who started bringing her in here." The man gulped his drink, fumbled for the bottle, and poured himself more. "Probably should have never let that begin. She was so young."
"Was that -- when?" Morgan asked.
"Five or six years ago, I guess. Of course, that woman'd just taken her somewhere else."
"You've been here that long?" Morgan asked.
The man nodded. "Where else can you drink when you want and not have the boss drop in since he's half way across the country? And it's a cash job -- mostly."
"For the police, too?" Morgan asked.
The man shrugged. "Maybe. Sometimes ya got to pay a little."
Morgan stared at the man.
"Judge me if you want," the man continued, "but I never took money off Star. Some of the others? Sure, but it ain't nothin'. Stand back here and maybe you'd understand. The owner is writing this whole place off. Look around. Your tax dollars are buying this dump, and the guy in New Jersey gets richer. What's the difference?" The man laughed.
"That's your business," Morgan said.
"You from New Vivia?" the man asked.
"I live there," Morgan replied.
The man tilted his head back. "Some of you have the guts to take that other man's wife to your four star hotel high rises, but most of you don't. Where do you think you go? You don't want nobody to know you come here. I told you I don't know nothing, I don't ask questions. There's a charge for me not knowing -- built in. Except..." The man turned his face away.
"Except when you know and there wasn't an extra charge and there's no one to talk to and no one even wanting to know," Morgan said.
"Drink some more whiskey," the man said. "I'll tell you about it." The man's face flushed red. "That girl was murdered. You know that, don't you?"
"Suspected," Morgan said. "Don't know. Her mother says it was an accident."
"Fuck her," the man said. "Star was murdered, but I don't know exactly why or how or who." The man rattled some keys in his pocket. "I'll show you."
"Why does Tamar White say it was an accident?" Morgan asked.
"She doesn't know? She doesn't ask questions?" the man said. He mocked himself. He rattled the same keys in his pocket. "I'll show you."
The man walked Morgan to the door and pulled it open. He hesitated and then turned the red-and-white sign over to read "No Vacancy." "Fuck 'em," he mumbled and locked the door behind them.
"You know my name," Morgan said. "What's yours?"
"Frank Carlile," the man replied. He had lowered his voice. Morgan heard the growl of traffic on Ninth Avenue and the on-and-off-again surge of power through the neon cowboy and his lariat above. A car door slammed and Morgan saw a figure walk quickly to a room.
"There's all kinds here," Carlile said. "Big revivals? Are we busy? You bet. Conventions? Yeah. About the only time we're not is when the roads are too icy to drive."
They passed what had once been a swimming pool, now filled with river rock. In front of the two men, a macadam parking lot, rough and worn, spread to a two-winged structure of redwood and rough beams. Yellow lights illumined doors that led to the rooms that led to... "All kinds," Carlile said again. "Fat boys and Orientals -- they were kind of partial to Star. Old men, too -- at least here lately."
"Keep any records of who they might be?" Morgan asked.
Carlile shook his head. "Not that'd do any good. Her mom, then Tanya here lately sometimes, set the deals up by phone. That's something else I shouldn't have started. Gave me the guy's name, phony as hell most of the time. I'd register him, and Tanya's mom or Tanya would pay at the end of the week. Sometimes both."
"Had she been with someone when she died?"
"Yeah," the man said. "John Smith."
"You make the guy pick up the key?"
Carlile shook his head. "Didn't see him. Tanya and Tamar had their own keys. They just called."
"Always the same room?" Morgan asked.
"Rooms," he replied. "Always together, at least 'til about six or seven months ago."
Morgan thought of the obese woman in the shadows he had met the previous night. "That woman turned tricks?" he said.
"Naw," said the beefy man with the slumped shoulders. "It took me a while to figure it out. I'll show you in a minute."
A cold October wind blew whirls of sand and debris in the parking lot. A door slammed shut somewhere and the strong gust carried away the sound of the never-ending traffic on Ninth Avenue. The manager of the Bunkhouse Lodge slowed his walk as he and the lawyer approached the flat and long redwood covered building. The two men stopped at the last room in the back and Carlile spoke. "It's a room like all the others," he said. "The layout's flipped over in some. The colors, the furniture, some of 'em are different, but the rooms, they're all the same. Still, when I walk in here, I see her."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Frank Carlile turned the key and opened to door to Room L-8 of the Bunkhouse Lodge. He turned on the light and Chester Morgan followed him in. A double bed with a worn bedspread sat in the middle of the room; its sturdy Western style headboard propped against the wall. A vinyl-covered chair that might have been new in 1954 rested nearby. From a small lamp on a desk, dusty light spread onto an industrial gray-carpeted floor. The room was dark and smelled of bug spray and stained nicotine. It could have been any room at any second-rate motel coast to coast.
"Erma McIntosh found her," Frank Carlile said, his voice quiet. "Left her cleaning cart outside the room, walked to the office, and said 'Little girl's dead,' just like that, but I guess it shook her up pretty good. She left that day and never came back. Oh, she's still around. I've seen her. She just never came back."
Morgan looked over the room to see what scars of death, if any, had been left there. He saw none, only a room like many others. "Where was the body?" he asked and, as he did, hated himself for sounding so clinical, so removed, so detached.
"There," Carlile said, nodding towards the bed. "Her arms were spread open out across the bed and her hands were tied to the corners of the head board, one on each side. She was naked." Carlile stopped. He struggled and spoke again. "There was blood on her hands and feet, too. They was tied together, her feet was, and the rope went under the bed, hooked up to the frame."
Carlile opened his hand wide and then squeezed it into a fist. "You wonder how I remember?" he asked. "You see something like this and you don't forget."
Chester recalled the image of William Harrison floating in the YMCA pool. He shook his head and said, "I know."
"Well, that's the way she was," Carlile said. He looked at the bed, stared at it. "Almost--"
"What else?" Morgan asked.
"Her side was cut. Like an afterthought or something. Not much blood I guess but still too much. Her neck was bruised all the way around and her eyes --" Carlile choked. "Her eyes were open like they were watching whoever it was who killed her."
Morgan shivered. "Strangled?" he asked.
Frank Carlile nodded. "Only thing I can figure. Who knows?"
"The blood on her hands and feet," Morgan said. "They were cut, too?"
"Couldn't tell exactly, not really," Carlile said. "Looked like it had been smeared on 'em, not really cut."
Morgan walked to the window and pulled on the heavy drapery. "With the curtains pulled, it's always the same time in here, isn't it?"
Carlile nodded, started to sit on the bed, and then stopped.
"When did it happen?" the attorney asked.
"Erma came over to the office about ten o'clock that morning. Star had called the night before, oh, I guess about ten-thirty or eleven. I didn't see her that night. Didn't see nobody around here."
Morgan spoke: "I understand some people pay for stuff like getting tied up or tying others up. Do you suppose that's what happened to her except it didn't stop when it should have?"
"You sorry son of a bitch," Carlile said. "Hell, even if they paid for it, she didn't get paid to get killed. You don't even know what you're looking at."
"Then you tell me."
"I called from that telephone right there. A squad car came out -- one on its regular rounds, I suppose. I had seen the guys before, didn't know 'em, but had seen 'em. They shut the room off and told me to go back to the office. By the time I got back there, a big black car arrived. An unmarked cop car. The squad car left. A couple of guys in suits got out with a lady -- old-fashioned glasses and poofy hairdo. After a while, an unmarked armored-car-looking thing arrived -- and left. Black car did, too. All of forty-five minutes, and no one ever talked to me. No one. Doesn't that make you wonder? That's why you don't know what you're looking at."
"They ever talk to Erma?" Morgan asked.
"Far as I know they didn't," Carlile said. "Of course, she was up and gone by then."
"She know something she shouldn't have?"
"Not Erma," Carlile said. "She finished her job that day and just never came back."
"What did you find when you came back over here?"
Frank Carlile glanced around the room. "It was strange. Everything was gone -- sheets, pillows, bedspread. Tanya's clothes. Everything out of the bathroom. All gone and the room cleaned up. Like nothing had happened here."
"What about the mattress?" Morgan asked.
"Except the mattress. They cut a hole out where she bled," Carlile said.
"Let's see," Morgan said.
"Only if you make the bed back up," Carlile said.
Chester nodded.
The heavy-set manager of the Bunkhouse Lodge threw the bedspread up and lifted the mattress so that Morgan could see its cut underside. "See. Like I told you." Carlile lowered the mattress and the lawyer started tucking the sheet back in. "Hell, I'll get it," he said. "I've done it a lot more than you have." Carlile finished the job, quick and neat.
"Ought to send them a bill for the stuff they took," he said.
"Who?" Morgan asked.
"The cops," Carlile replied.
Morgan walked to the back of the room to a small walk-in closet and to the entrance to the bathroom. He turned on the light to the pink-tiled, pink-fixtured room. He looked up and down the walls and at the fixtures. "Pink bathrooms at the Bunkhouse Lodge?" Morgan said.
"Yeah," Carlile called back. "Cowgirls like 'em. Some cowboys do, too."
Morgan pulled the shower curtain back and looked into the bathtub. Then, he looked into the sink. "There's no stopper in the sink and none in the bathtub," he said. "Were there the night Tanya was killed?"
"Probably not," Carlile said. He leaned at the doorframe to the bathroom. "The mechanical ones installed gave out a long time ago. Used to keep rubber ones in here, but they disappear pretty quick."
"Any water on the floor before the cops arrived?"
"This bathroom looked like it hadn't been used since Erma had been in the day before," the man replied. "They still took the towels and wash clothes, though."
"They?"
"The cops."
Morgan turned to go back into the bedroom. "Have you changed anything in this space since it happened?"
"Naw," Carlile replied. "Not really. Turned the mattress over."
Morgan stood at the foot of the bed and imagined the young woman, her last moments, her obscene-in-death corpse. He shuddered. "Frank, I want you to think hard," he said quietly. "Was there a bruise on Tanya's forehead? Was her hair matted like it had been wet?"
