Deep House, page 1
Dedication
For the in-laws and the outlaws.
You know who you are.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Also by Thomas King
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
Frank Dodge watched the digital display on the gas pump count up the gallons. At least the van took diesel. He had a friend who owned an Audi. It was an expensive piece of junk, and it took premium. Give him a Ford any day.
Dodge in a Ford.
Dodge in a Dodge.
Not that he cared. It wasn’t his van. He wouldn’t own one. The only people who drove vans were plumbers and frazzled mothers with noisy brats.
American muscle cars. Those were the only things worth driving.
1966 Shelby Mustang. 1970 Baldwin-Motion Corvette. 1978 Pontiac Firebird. 1970 Oldsmobile 442.
He had been all set to close a deal on a 1971 Plymouth Hemi Cuda when the virus arrived and shut everything down.
Then he got sick. Almost died. Hospital, intensive care, pneumonia. Flat on his back for a month. Another month in his apartment watching Columbo reruns.
And then no job.
Shield was downsizing, he was told. No more long-distance driving needed. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
So when the chance for a decent payday had come along, he didn’t hesitate. Okay, there were lines to bend, corners to cut, but it was the company’s fault. They had thrown him out with the garbage.
He didn’t owe them squat.
Getting the van out of the plant had been easy enough. Disconnecting the GPS, child’s play. And in less than a week, he would be long gone. Someplace warm with enough money to kick-start the rest of his life.
Dodge felt the lever disengage. He replaced the hose and glanced at the window. Christ, he could remember when you could fill a tank for ten dollars.
AT THE TRUCK STOP outside Lovelock, he had overheard a couple of long-haul boys blame the pandemic on the Chinese and the U.S. military.
As if diseases had a nationality. As if they had a flag.
But that didn’t stop the one guy from swearing off Asian restaurants, and it didn’t keep the other guy from explaining how the virus had escaped a government installation in the Utah desert just southwest of Salt Lake City.
Dodge was pretty sure he knew how those two had voted.
A rising tide. That’s what they were calling the recovering economy. And it was supposed to float all boats.
Eventually.
Of course, the yachts had done just fine. While everyone else was drowning, the pirates in Washington stood on the poop deck and gave away billions of dollars of public money to private enterprise. So CEOs could continue receiving their bonuses, and shareholders could continue to get their dividends.
Dodge wasn’t against public investment in private enterprise. But if you were going to give public money to corporations, you should at least get something for it.
Boeing wants sixty billion of public money? American Airlines wants fifty billion? Fine. Use the money to buy shares in the company. Or buy the company outright. Other businesses did that all the time.
Think Bank of America would give away that kind of money out of the goodness of their heart? Think Citigroup would pony up grants and loans with no hope of a return on the investment?
DODGE GOT THE MAP and laid it out on the hood. The drive from Sacramento to Reno had been scenic enough, but once he got to the east side of the Sierra Nevada, the landscape had gone to shit.
Flat, dry, deserted.
Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko.
So far as he could tell, these towns were simply gas stations, casinos, and whorehouses. He had stopped at one of the brothels in Battle Mountain for a beer and some company.
A little boughten friendship.
He had dated a woman who was into poetry. Before the relationship went tits up, she gave him a volume of Robert Frost. Dodge had been attentive enough to see that Frost was the price of admission. So he gave it a read. And discovered that he actually enjoyed some of the poems.
Boughten friendship, indeed.
The Calico Club was dark and dingy. Cheap beer, country music, tired women in baby-doll pyjamas coming at him in slow, stagnant waves. It was hot inside the brothel. And dark. An air freshener was plugged into a receptacle behind the bar. Dodge watched it puff out clouds of fragrance in a futile attempt to cover up the smell of sweat and the stink of lives going nowhere.
But he hadn’t been in the mood. More than that, he still wasn’t feeling well. Yes, he had survived the pandemic, but it had left him with dizzy spells and dull pains in his chest. The aftermath of the virus. A little damage to his heart. Nothing to worry about, the doctor had told him. A couple of pills each day would control the discomfort.
Along with flushing his libido down the shitter.
So the Calico Club had been one beer and gone.
He stayed in Battle Mountain that night. At the Big Chief Motel. Pool, WiFi, ESPN, and a continental breakfast. The bed was okay, but the sheets and the pillows left him feeling apprehensive.
He had seen a documentary on the hygiene of motel beds, watched as the investigative team played the black light across the dry pools of saliva, the urine stains, the crusty smears of semen, and other bodily fluids.
He should have brought his own sheets.
The next day, he got up at dawn and drove to Wells before he stopped for breakfast and made the call.
It’s me.
Wells.
This evening.
Yeah. Everything’s good.
From there, he took 93 to Twin Falls, cut over on 86 to Pocatello and Idaho Falls and across the edge of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest. The second night, he stopped in West Yellowstone at the Brandin’ Iron, another generic motel in another generic town, and had dinner at the local Dairy Queen.
As he was finishing the double cheeseburger, he wondered once again what the hell had happened to America? How had the country become a nation of cheap franchises? Kentucky Fried Chicken politics. Burger King morality.
Dodge had gone to Quebec once, and not even the French had fallen this low.
Chinook.
Nice name. Probably friendly in the way Western towns in this part of the world were friendly. Not that he was planning on sticking around long enough to find out. He’d grab a meal, have a little fun, good night’s sleep.
He caught his reflection in the rear-view mirror. There he was. Frank Dodge. Nothing much behind him. Nothing much ahead. The hired man.
Maybe Frost had been talking about him.
2
Thumps DreadfulWater had every intention of sleeping in. He didn’t have anywhere to be. He didn’t have anything he needed to do. And yet, here he was wide awake.
And alone.
If he had been at Claire’s house, he’d be changing Ivory’s diaper about now. She was walking and talking at the same time. Thumps didn’t know a great deal about babies, but Ivory seemed to be a punctual child. To bed by seven, up by five.
Some of the time.
Claire was taking the second run at motherhood in stride. Originally, the plan had been for Thumps to move in and take up residence with Claire and Ivory on the reservation. But after Claire officially adopted Ivory, and had no legal need for a father figure, she suggested that Thumps might want to spend some time at his place in town.
And to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure whether he was disappointed or relieved.
Maybe a little of both.
What did he know about being a father? Claire had already raised one child on her own, so she had experience on her side. True, Stanley Merchant was self-centred. True, he could be a pain in the ass. True, he had, from time to time, made Thumps’s life a misery.
But if Thumps was being honest, Stick, as he was known to everyone except his mother, hadn’t turned out all that bad. And what Claire learned from raising Stanley could now be applied to raising Ivory.
If you actually learned anything from one child to another.
And Claire hadn’t said that he couldn’t be in Ivory’s life. What she said was that she wanted space, that she had lived by herself for so long that having another person in the house—another adult person—was discon
That’s the word she used. “Disconcerting.”
Thumps could understand the desire. A quiet house, the day to do with as you chose, was mildly exhilarating. Not as in having escaped any obligation or responsibility, but just in the knowledge that you were in complete control of your life.
At least for that moment.
So why was he awake?
The sheriff had survived his prostate operation and was back at work. Duke had given up his short-lived fling with gourmet coffee beans and was back to making the foulest brew east of the Rockies. Still, it was good to see the man up and around.
Beth Mooney and Gabby Santucci had moved in together and, from all accounts, the relationship was a winner.
Archie Kousoulas was back to the business of running the bookstore, starting a restaurant, and saving the world with his usual vengeance.
Life was good again. At least for the people around him.
So why was he awake?
He didn’t think the insomnia was tied to his cat. During one of Thumps’s absences, Freeway had taken up residence with another family a couple of blocks over, and when the Passangs left Chinook to return to Tibet, they hadn’t taken the cat with them.
Thumps had been sure that Freeway would come slinking home, full of apologies, riddled with remorse. Instead, the cat had disappeared. And the only reason he could come up with to explain her not returning was that she was dead.
Hit by a car. Eaten by a coyote. Starved to death in a culvert by the side of the road. Or some other equally distressing end.
He had always been ambivalent about the cat, and Freeway certainly hadn’t exhibited any filial fondness for him, at least not the kind of affection Thumps associated with small children and dogs. But he and the cat had lived together for a number of years, and there was something to be said for the familiar.
And now that he did think about the cat, as he ran through the possible scenarios, each one more gruesome than the next, he found himself slipping into a minor depression. Another discouragement. Another failure on his part.
It was a good thing that he did not believe in making lists.
Thumps rolled over, arranged the covers and the pillows in an effort to take another run at sleeping in, and felt his stomach rumble.
Hunger.
There it was. He was hungry. Okay. This was the kind of problem that Thumps enjoyed the most. A problem that could, with minimal effort, be solved.
3
Al’s sat between Fjord Bakery and Sam’s Laundromat. The café had originally been an alley that was turned into a dead-end alley when the chamber of commerce built the Chinook Convention Center and blocked off one end. Nobody could figure out what to do with the space until Alvera Couteau bought it from the city for a dollar and built a narrow café that had all the ambience of a Northern Pacific boxcar.
The place was little more than a cooking area with a coffee machine and a grill, a lime-green counter, a row of red Naugahyde stools, and a run of plywood booths reserved for any tourists brave enough to come in off the street.
It wasn’t that the place was scary. But it was dark. There was a plate-glass window at the front, and whatever light got in was quickly swallowed up by the steam and fat that rose off the grill like a fog.
But while Al’s wasn’t going to be a Tripadvisor pick any time soon, it served the best breakfast in town and probably the state, and if you wanted to start your day off right, this is where you came.
WHEN THUMPS GOT TO AL’S, the café was packed. Wutty Youngbeaver, Jimmy Monroe, and Russell Plunkett were perched on their usual stools, across from the grill, where they could keep track of the food. Chintak Rawat, Big Fish Patek, and Stas Black Weasel were clustered on the middle stools and deep in a heated discussion.
Thumps tried to slip by, but the big Russian turned and blocked him with an elbow.
“Here,” said Stas, “is the impractical voice.”
“Impartial,” said Big Fish.
“We are debating the existence of god,” said Rawat. “Perhaps you have an opinion?”
Thumps kept his face flat. “Nope.”
“Mr. Black Weasel is proposing that god, in any form, does not exist,” said Rawat. “A most radical view.”
“Yes,” said Stas, “but accurate. People create gods to maintain order and power. Very effective. A powerful myth. The divine cop.”
“And Mr. Rawat,” said Big Fish, “is of the opinion that there is a power in the universe that transcends humankind, something that we call ‘god.’”
“And for Mr. Big Fish,” said Stas, “god is good movie, cold beer, sex. Watch, drink, wookie-wookie, go to sleep.”
“You see,” said Rawat, “we are at an impasse.”
Al strolled along the counter with the coffee pot. “They’ve been going on like this since they arrived. About ready to kill the lot of them.”
“Breakfast,” said Thumps. “The usual. Please.”
“How’s the blood sugars?”
“Fine.”
“’Cause I don’t want Claire to think I’m catering to your carbohydrate addiction.”
“I’m not addicted to carbohydrates.” Thumps slid onto his favourite stool. “So don’t cut back on my potatoes.”
“God and the Machine,” said Rawat. “Perhaps this is where you wish to take the discussion.”
“Yes, yes,” said Stas. “These are the same thing. Both created by humans.”
“Garbage in,” said Big Fish. “Garbage out.”
“Exactly,” said Stas. “Every Russian knows this.”
“A most depressing vision of the world,” said Rawat. “Where is universal beauty and love?”
“BMW,” said Stas. “The 507 Roadster.”
“I wouldn’t encourage them if I were you,” said Al. “It’s like putting peanuts out for squirrels.”
“Speaking of food . . .”
“And I’d stay away from Wutty.”
Thumps looked down the counter. “What’s he up to now?”
“He saw a video on the internet.” Al rolled her eyes. “Electroshock for drunks.”
“What?”
“Seems that in Mexico there are guys who wander around bars with portable electroshock units.”
Thumps rubbed his face.
Al lowered her voice. “He figures he’d make a killing.”
“Shocking drunks?”
Al wandered back to the grill. “Enough to make you give up on the human race.”
The philosophers were hard at it. Thumps closed his eyes, pulled his neck down into his shoulders, tried to pretend he was a turtle.
“The unavoidable conclusion,” said Rawat, “is if there is no god, then there is no moral centre in the universe.”
“People do not need god to know what is right and what is wrong,” said Stas.
“Beer,” said Big Fish. “The moral centre of the universe is a cold beer.”
Maybe, Thumps considered, he should get his breakfast to go. He could take the eggs and sausage and hash browns over to the park, sit under a tree by the pond, and enjoy the day, away from the discussions of electrical sobriety and the divine.
“There are many atheists in potholes,” said Stas.
“Foxholes,” said Rawat.
“Beer,” said Big Fish. “There’s nothing like a cold beer.”
Or he could take his breakfast out to Claire’s. The food would be cold by the time he got there, but he could put it in the microwave. Ivory would be glad to see him, would want him to chase her around the house and listen to her murder “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
Claire had said that he could come out whenever he wanted. What if this was a test to gauge the level of his commitment?
He hadn’t thought of that.
Al wiped the countertop. “Good news is the electroshock thingy is out.”
Thumps tried to look interested.
“Wutty was looking for investors and ran into Dolores Cardoza.”
“Chinook Insurance?”
“Dolores gave him a brief lecture on the subject of legal liability.”
Thumps felt a smile form on his face. “As in, what if he shocked someone and they had a heart attack?”
“And that was the end of Captain Electrode.” Al shook her head. “Now he’s got a new scheme.”
Almost on cue, Wutty abandoned his seat and began making his way along the stools.
Al pushed away from the counter. “Forewarned,” she said, “is forewarned.”
“Thumps!” Wutty grabbed Thumps’s neck with both hands and began rubbing his shoulders. “How’s life as sheriff?”
