The Subtle Art of Brutality, page 6
“Pool on the roof and the restaurant that rotates?”
“Yes. Such a beautiful view of the skyline.”
“When she left where did she go?”
“I assume back to her new place. She said she was living with her mother again. Truth be told, I wasn’t paying attention. I just wanted one last taste before I blew her off forever.”
“What’s that mean?”
Distasteful and uncomfortable in his self-awareness: “Let me rephrase that so it doesn’t implicate me in any wrongdoing: I wanted to sleep with her one more time before I stopped talking to her. Completely.”
His eyes smile. “I mean, I was getting married to my new wife the following week. Now or never, right?”
“You’re one serious motherfucker.” I say, lighting a smoke.
“You can’t smoke in here.”
“I can.”
“Well...” looks around, flabbergasted. Defensive, getting irritated. “You know, she fucked up my entire life. Fucked up everything. Do you know how much I pay in alimony every month? Let alone child support.”
“Actually, I do know how much you pay. Speaking of your ex-wife, did she ever threaten Delilah?”
His eyes twinkle. A tell. Conniving. Revenge. Opportunity. “All the time.”
Boil that down, burn off the obvious enthusiasm: Janet Richey cursed Delilah’s name when White came home and explained what had happened.
“Specifics then,” I say, blowing smoke at him.
“Janet blamed Delilah for everything.”
“Not you?”
“We shared the burden. I paid for it.”
“Keep going.”
“Well, she blamed Delilah for all kinds of things. Ruining our marriage, making Janet a divorcee’, the extra hassle with picking the kids up, dropping them off, moving, all of it. But, Janet also knew that Delilah was sexier than she was. Even when she dabbled in drugs too hard for me she just had this...way about her. It was in her ass. The way she shook it. Janet saw it just as well as I did. Plus, Delilah was the last affair Janet would tolerate.”
I smirk. This guy couldn’t ooze jackass anymore if he was John Edwards’ used car salesman brother.
“Did she ever look Delilah in the face and threaten her? Not call her names, not blame her for anything, threaten.”
“She said she could kill her for what she’d done, so yes. Threats.”
“Did she really say that? Or are you making up shit?”
“It’s in the divorce proceedings. She said she could kill Delilah for her part in ruining Janet’s life. The judge stopped her, had the court reporter read it back. Janet threw a fit, said she meant every word.”
“Where is she now?”
“Up in Knoll Hill. Lives by the lake. Want the address?”
“Why else would I ask where she is?”
“Fine.”
He digs through a Rolodex, writes it down. I pocket it.
I stare at him for a moment. A punk with traces of a skittish animal in him, wrapped up in a designer suit. Looking for a reveal: “Wear a rubber?”
“What do you mean?”
“The last you slept with Delilah, did you wear a rubber?”
“Why? Did she give me something? Oh my God you’re—Oh my God.”
He has no idea what I’m talking about. A baby daddy would react, even if it were just a flick of the eye. I turn to leave.
“Wait! Is it AIDS? Oh my God what will Amy think? Oh Christ, not again! Every time I fuck that scrawny tramp I have to confess it to my wife!” Whining. Gushing forth. “Oh what if I gave it to her? To Amy! We’ve been trying for a baby...”
The door shuts as I hear him ask: “Did Delilah give you something?”
11
The war was a success in the sense that there was a vermin population and we eradicated it.
There was no hope for the continent or its nations; as soon as we cleared their streets of the current threat, we were shunned in the very towns we kept from being burnt down. Oh well. I wasn’t into nation-building.
I returned home to the same fanfare the Vietnam vets did. Fine. Shitbird hippies and protesters were waiting when we got off the plane, screaming that we didn’t get enough in ’Nam and there were more babies to kill. More women to rape. Some fool in the crowd actually held up a small child and asked if we were going to come over there and murder that baby too.
Then someone spit. Protest signs hit us. We soldiers were like rodents in a Whack-A-Mole arcade game walking through the crowd; our heads popping up and down as signs chopped at us. I got about halfway through the throng when a goon with a flavor-savor and blue-tinted glasses bitch-slapped me. “Be ashamed,” he said.
I punched him so hard his nose folded flat and I could feel his jaw crack in two underneath my knuckles. His glasses crumbled off to the side and all the soldiers around me started giving the hippies their rightful due.
Ten seconds later and all us soldiers were clearing the crowd with little more than spit dribbling down our faces or shirts. Our knuckles chewed up, our teeth gritting. The hippies all on the floor, writhing and cradling broken arms or faces. Or both.
I left. I needed to get my discharge and start my life.
My high school girlfriend was two years younger than I. I came home in the late winter. She graduated that spring. She developed cancer at eighteen. We married in the middle of her lost cause chemo because I’d rather be joined to her for all eternity as she withered away than to not have her at all. She died. I protect her memory from the soiled life I lumber through and keep private her name and all I love about her.
Just for me.
James Dobbins lives in Three Mile High.
I’ll take the rail tomorrow. Three Mile High is nestled into the mountains a few hours away. For right now, I go looking for Delilah’s old camp.
Delilah Boothe used to live on Carolina Avenue. It’ll be a drive coming from White’s office. Jeremiah’s sled squeals in all the rank, gritty slush. Bad for winter driving.
On the way I call Derne. I’ve got about three miles to go before I reach her old place. This will kill time. I can hear him inhale on a cigarette as he answers. “Hello?” I can almost smell the mentholated smoke as he exhales with that word.
“It’s Buckner. How are you?”
“Gotta smoke outside now, Mr. Buckner. The wife, she’s on a tank. Oxygen. Some green bottle she takes everywhere. It has replaced her damn purse, only there’s no pocket in it to put my smokes. What has my life come to?”
“Sorry to hear.”
“Oh. Thanks,” he says. I cross Maple parkway. Two miles now. “Any word?”
“Well, Pierce White said he’s seen Delilah recently.”
“Recently?”
“Yes. Said they had seen each other for a few days. A loose kind of dating thing. Then she took off.”
“Good God. When was this?”
“Right before Halloween.”
“So before she disappeared.”
“Yes. It’s not quite a lead but hash marks on a timeline always helps.”
“That’s what you’re goin’ for? A timeline?”
“I’m trying to find an adult who is free not to be found. Knowing she was with Pierce White a few months back might not sound helpful, but it lets me know where she laid her head for a night. Who else has she visited since?”
“What? Are you goin’ just knock on all her ex-boyfriends’ houses and trace her one night stands like a trail of bread crumbs?”
“Yes I am.” I cross Revelation. One mile left. There’s a great little Italian place on the corner here.
“I see,” Derne says. A deep, long inhale. I can hear the paper burn he drags so hard. “Well, I hate to know you’re havin’ to do such a thing to find her, but if it gets her safe...I just want her safe.”
“Every clue is forward motion, Mr. Derne.”
“Of course.”
This is getting old. “I’m going to jump off here, Mr. Derne. One more thing. Do you know the folks who bought Delilah’s house?”
“My daughter-in-law did. I met ’em, but that was all really. I was glad to see they wanted the place.”
“Remember their names? Anything?”
“I used to. Haven’t thought of it in a while.”
“Okay.”
“Thank you, Mr. Buckner.” He hangs up. Hmmm. Genuinely bothered by a girl he knows is promiscuous, is a drug user, is a flake...heartsick to go back to her old flame.
Carolina is a decently long street, segmented into bite-size lengths by cross streets. It runs through a residential area composed of several quaint neighborhoods. An elementary school is a few houses down from Delilah’s old address; a middle school only a few blocks away. About a mile east is a Catholic parish with its own school. So much education.
The neighborhood is quiet. Lined by elms and oaks and walnuts. Just enough yard to where everybody has space. The homes are old enough to have avoided the cookie-cutter look of newer neighborhoods. These residences might have been built with pride and lasting value as opposed to the hustle of recent homes stamped out to be filled ASAP.
Delilah Boothe’s old residence is boxy. A skirt of brick lines the base of it, siding going on up to the roof. Wooden deck in the front. Single car garage. Spots for gardens, now all layered in sparkling snow. I park. Rub my face and get out. Make the cold call.
The husband answers the door.
Around thirty, brown and brown. Big guy. The type of dude that if I were arresting him I’d jump his ass with a sap when he wasn’t looking to make sure I didn’t have a fight on my hands. Side note: fights against perps are only fun when you know you’ll win. If ever any doubt, white knuckle and cheat it out. The reality of it is, if you find yourself in a fair fight your tactics suck.
But as it is, the husband seems rather pleasant.
“Hello. I’m looking for Delilah Boothe.” I say.
“I’m sorry, sir, but she no longer lives here.” Braces, gives me his full width. The kind of stance someone takes intuitively to fight. It’s the body’s way of squaring off to the target. A tell. Two, actually.
One: I’m not the first dude to come knocking and sniffing for our little princess.
Two: whoever came before me didn’t leave without a brawl.
A different angle: “I’ve been hired by a man named Elam Derne to look for her. Got a minute?”
He calculates the situation and I understand. It’s all in his eyes.
“Your name, sir?”
“Richard Dean Buckner.”
“Would you mind waiting in your car for a moment?”
“No.” Clear direction on where he wants me.
He steps inside, shuts the door. I walk back to my car. The blinds in the front windows are drawn back; I see him with one eye on me, cell phone in hand. Checking up. Good man.
I smoke two cigarettes back to back before he comes to his door. Waves me in. The home’s warmth washes over me like relief.
“Mr. Derne’s daughter-in-law sold us the place. I called her, she called him, said you were legit.” He says. His stance is much more relaxed.
“I appreciate your candor.” I look around. The walls are off-white, tipping towards a very creamy, extra light brown. The baseboards are painted, chipped. Hardwood floors, scuffed here and there. One or two cigarette burns stick out like bombed craters in an aerial photo.
“Complements of Ms. Boothe, I’m sure,” he says, looking at the burns also. Looks to me, meets my eye. Sticks his hand out. “Tyler Bellview.” We shake hands. “And this is my wife, Abigail.”
She enters the room from what I presume is the kitchen. The aroma of baking cookies follows her like an escort. She smiles and waves; looks slightly uncomfortable at the stranger in her house.
The wife: white female, black and blue, thin, busty. From down the hall a toddler-aged girl comes running to us, mismatched socks on both her feet and hands, a cowboy hat cocked off to the side on her head and about three pounds of costume necklaces around her neck. Big blue eyes with high cheekbones. Beautiful and radiant as only an innocent child can be.
She sees me, halts, runs back the way she came. Abigail turns to go for the child.
“How can I help you, Mr. Buckner?”
“Well, Ms. Boothe hasn’t checked in for a few months, and Mr. Derne asked me to kick over some rocks looking for her. I don’t suppose you’ve seen or heard anything living here, have you?”
“Oh yeah.” He says, shaking his head. “Tons of shit. Jesus, that gal leaves a mess in her wake, let me tell you.”
“Please do.”
“We’re still finding evidence of how much she partied. Obviously we toured the house before we bought it. She was still living here. Mr. Derne said he asked her to tidy up but she didn’t listen. Had her bras tossed over the bedroom door, piles of dirty clothes everywhere, I swear she was trying to turn us off of the place with her squalor. I was surprised we didn’t find a used rubber sloughed off into a pile in the corner or something.
“She left streaks of various colored paints up and down a wall in the back bedroom, like she was checking out several colors. Trying to see what fit, I dunno. Never decided on one. Just left the streaks. What she did manage to paint entirely was moody, like she was trying to express her inner...angst or turmoil or whatever.”
He guides me down the hall to a freshly painted room. “I haven’t gotten the time to do this one yet,” he says, showing me a second bedroom which is painted in black and depressing purple vertical stripes. Even the baseboards are black.
I want to tell him to burn it down and start over but decide not to.
We get back to the living room and he offers me a chair. Continues his tale. “Looked like she was coming out of something bad. Had self-help books lying around, little inspirational sayings posted here and there, all themed around recovering from personal catastrophes. I saw a couple of phoenixes on book covers, the word ‘survivor,’ phrases like ‘new day,’ ‘start again,’ ‘start fresh,’ ‘start anew.’ You get the idea.
“When we were putting in the gardens out front, I couldn’t move a stone or stir the grass without a cigarette butt or beer bottle cap surfacing. Found a couple of doobie roaches also.”
I smirk. “I know the type.”
“Yeah. When we first moved in I put my drum set down in the basement and went to both the neighbors. Apologize in advance for the noise. The woman living to the south of us there, Mrs. Franklin, she said the drumming would be welcome after the late-night noise and carrying on Ms. Boothe was known for.”
“Obnoxious parties?”
“The neighbors made it sound like it was all the time. She said the cops were called at least once a month.” He shook his head and his face fell. “One day a couple of buddies brought their guitars over and we played downstairs. The basement is unfinished and I never thought to search the house for dope...but I’ll be damned if we didn’t find it.”
“Like what?”
“Glass pipe. The guy who sold the house to Mr. Derne was originally going to make the house his retirement home. Before he finished it he and his wife bought something down south they liked better. Waterfront, I think. Anyways, he installed thin wooden slats along the beam ceiling to hang a drop-down ceiling from and just never got around the ceiling itself. Delilah had sheets stapled to the slats; the place looked like an opium den.
“But anyways, I guess her or one of her friends stashed a pipe and lighter in the ceiling, wedged between the rafters and the AC ducts. When my friends and I played, the bass tones literally just rumbled it out. Fell to the floor and shattered. We didn’t hear it because of the noise from playing. Abigail, the baby and I were down there the next day and the little girl saw the glass, ran to it.
“Abigail stopped her right before she reached that crackhead bitch’s dope pipe. I was fucking furious.”
“I would be too. Still have the pipe?”
“No. I just tossed it.”
Obviously he is glad to have this vent about Delilah. Some people just clam up when they’re asked to speak about someone they don’t know. Other folks are quick to dump everything they’ve seen or heard. The latter helps out better. “Anything else?”
“Now that I think of it, she grew a lot of morning glory flowers out back. Probably tripped on the seeds.”
“Could be. Or she liked flowers.”
“Maybe. I think it was for the dope.”
“Alright,” I say. Look around. “Got that real estate agent’s name, by chance?”
“Tabitha. Tabitha Derne. Over off of Highway 8. Works for Hoffman Real Estate.”
“Thanks. Anything else?” Always ask more than once.
He searches for a moment. Then his eyes light. “Yeah. About a month ago it happened. Some car pulled into our driveway—we could hear the bass coming a mile away—and I figured it was just somebody turning around. With the school practically next door a lot of parents will do that. So, initially we didn’t think much of this dude parked there.”
“Friend of hers?”
“Something of hers.”
“Can you describe the car?”
“It was wine red with gaudy gold-spokes in the wheels. ’80s model sedan, four-door. Had a ridiculous license plate that read BMPIN.” He spells it.
“This state?”
“Yup.”
“You took good notice.”
“Thanks. I did a tour as an MP. So anyways, then he shuts his engine off and now I’m wondering what he wants. We get door-to-door salesmen all the time. They show up whenever the kid’s asleep and ring the doorbell. We’ve got a Jehovah’s Witness church a few miles away and they stop by. Same thing with convicts selling magazine subscriptions, all that stuff. I went out to the porch to meet the guy.”
“Ballsy.”
“He was white or Hispanic; either way he didn’t have an accent. I’d put him at five-eight, one-seventy. Looked like a punk. His hat was off to the side with a flat bill, baggy pants. Shifty. He asked if Delilah ‘still stayed here.’ I said no. He looked in the windows as he left.”
Bellview shifts his gaze to Abigail. “He saw my wife.”
