Do the Weird Crime, Serve the Weird Time Page 4

  The door was unlocked.

  Frank lay on the floor near the bed. It looked like he might have fallen. There was some blood, sticking his few white hairs to the greasy yellow linoleum. His eyes were open. The police spent two hours talking to John and the shopkeeper.

  Jeff had left town.

  He apparently left the night after he spoke to John.

  It wasn’t clear if violence was involved, and the police weren’t very interested. A small article graced the Austin American Statesman focusing on Frank’s involvement with the alternative press. John was surprised to find out that he had also ran a club in the seventies, which seemed to have been the high tide in his economic life. Club Zothique had burned to the ground in mysterious circumstances. Hints about organized crime were dropped in the article.

  A week later the Korean man came to the New Atlantis shop.

  “No one has come for his things. I asked the landlord and he said that you could have his things. I saw you cry when you found him, so I thought you were good enough.”

  John borrowed the key. He went with Haidee that night. Downtown is fairly quiet at night. They parked their van in front of the cell phone store. John unlocked the door and they went upstairs. The apartment hadn’t been cleaned or organized in any way. No one had even washed away the small bloodstain, which seemed really sad. Haidee hugged him a moment and then they began putting books into a giant garbage bags. They would drop them off at the self-storage unit that John rented, on Sunday he would sort them out, and price the ones he thought he could sell. He’d give the rest to Goodwill.

  Even though the little apartment had seemed full of books, certainly as crowded as the New Atlantis, it only filled two garbage sacks full. They were mainly old paperbacks—mysteries and SF. There was some hardback poetry and histories.

  They were quiet during the sacking up of the books.

  Haidee asked. “Would you like to be alone here for a while? I could go down the street to the Decline and have a cup.”

  “Yeah. I would.”

  She nodded and left.

  He carried the two sacks full of books downstairs and then went and sat on the bed. It wasn’t a clear ending. Had Jeff killed him? Killed him for the book, or angry because there was no book? Had Jeff found him? Had Jeff just left his enthusiasm for Communist Yoga passed like all the others?

  Had Frank had a good life?

  He looked about the desk. He got up and opened it. Inside was a pile of mail. Junk mail and unpaid bills, and a big brown envelope with his name written on it in pencil. Inside was a small book, a cheaply made leather-bound book, and its title once golden had become verdigris-green. It was Yoga for Bolsheviks by James M. Cassutto.

  Always leave ’em guessing.

  John sat on the bed again, he would read for a few minutes and then join Haidee for a cup of tea and a slice of chess pie.

  WHAT ARE BEST

  FRIENDS FOR?

  Steve wasn’t surprised when Joan hit him up for a loan. Joan had been in and out of work for three years (and there was the custody thing), and rent was due in two days. So Steve lent her three hundred dollars against her computer. Steve drew up an elaborate paper of lien—he wasn’t worried about the money, but he thought Joan might take her four-year-old son and split, and he wouldn’t have a claim on the computer. It was a better machine than the piece of crap on his desk at home. But how good a computer did you need to visit porn sites and Robot Nine?

  More importantly Joan was Sally’s best friend, and Sally and he were beginning to look like a permanent alliance. Steve handed Joan three Benjamins and got her to sign the lien papers. Joan drove off to court to continue her eleventh hour custody battle, and Steve drove to work.

  Texas Data Systems filled a three-story red-brick-and-gold-anodized-window building on a tree-shaded quiet street. Steve’s “office” was a windowless cubicle near the center of the second floor. He began inputting changes on his manual, a novella-length description of a nine-pin to eighteen-pin interface. Juan, his chubby cube mate, sauntered in a few minutes after one.

  Juan said, “Guess what?”

  “What?” asked Steve.

  “I sold the story I showed you to Weird Tales.”

  “Hey, congratulations.”

  Juan and Steve and a couple of other people, who had since moved on from TDS, had started writing or at least playing-at-writing two years ago, after taking a class at the New Atlantis bookstore. Well Juan had, Steve had only produced the beginnings of short stories, which remained in a manila folder in the bottom drawer of his desk. Steve stood up and shook John’s sweaty pudgy hand. Steve didn’t like fat people; they smelled. He had to be friends with Juan—he didn’t want people to say that he was prejudiced. Steve and Juan made the rounds from cubicle to cubicle spreading the good news. People said all the things they say to people making their first sales. Be sure and tell us when it comes out. We’ll all get a copy. We’ll throw you a party. Someday there’ll be a plaque on this building, “Juan Martinez worked here.” Juan glowed all afternoon and Steve printed out his manual. Steve had his fun with this again that night, telling Sally at the Hunan Dragon.

  “Juan was floating about two inches off the ground after he got the word.”

  “Whatever happened to your literary efforts?”

  “Well. You know.”

  “Is that laziness or block?”

  “Hey. You’re supposed to be on my side, remember. I make more with technical writing than any fiction freelancer I know. I may start up again anytime. Anyway I was able to loan Joan three hundred.”

  “Against her computer.”

  “Well it’s not like it’s worth it. She’s the one who insisted. I was willing to lend it to her against her word. She’s your best friend.”

  “You kept her from getting evicted. Currently she tells everybody that you are her best friend.” Said Sally.

  “Her best friend would be anyone that could give her a job. Maybe if she leaves town. The employment picture here sucks. And you know she’s not leaving if she has to leave her kid entirely in the hands of her ex. She’s licked.”

  “He’s a real creep.”

  “Yeah. I’ve met him. Here comes our Chicken Kung Pao.”

  “That will all be over this Friday. The court decides custody then.”

  “I hope Joan copes if the court cuts Mickey out of her life. She was pretty wide-eyed at lunch.”

  Friday came. The court decided. Joan did not cope. Joan had purchased a cheap pistol at Snooper’s Pawn for protection some months back. She discharged a bullet through the top of her soft palate.

  Joan’s father called Steve on Sunday afternoon. He’d found the lien and wanted Steve to come by and pick up the computer. Steve said that under the circumstances it would be O.K. for them to keep the computer. But they said they had no use for the thing—and it would help them clean up things if Steve got it. Besides Joan had told them what a good friend he was.

  Steve was surprised how old Joan’s parents looked. Death of an offspring must really suck away the years.

  Joan’s computer represented a step up from Steve’s old machine. He had planned to upgrade for a while, but he was the sort that never spent a nickel unless necessary. Years ago when he did therapy, his shrink told him that he was cheap because he had no self-worth. He looked up a couple of college buds on Facebook, then before he went to bed he thought he should look for any really personal files and delete them. He wouldn’t want someone reading his diary entries, or that bad love poetry he wrote for Sally, or finding the urls of his favorite porn sites.

  He came upon two entries called “Games of Light and Dark” and “Allegro.” He assumed that the first was a game package and the second to be a music-generating program. He called up “Games.”

  “Games of Light and Dark” proved to be a short story, a five-thousand-word tale of Egyptian adepts battling for the soul of a young psychic in modern-day Los Angeles. Car chases, gang wars, crack, incense, and the
brief appearance of Set and Horus over the skies of east L.A. Good stuff really—except for the occasional dangling participle or lapse into passive. Editing habits die hard and Steve was changing this, and polishing that; before considering that this might not be his property. He hadn’t even made a back up. The story was now in its new form; although, it could perhaps be reconstructed. He didn’t know if he had just disrespected the dead. It was midnight, the traditional hour for such things.

  His first impulse was to send it to Joan’s parents. Then he realized that they won’t understand it. Unlike many senior citizens the computer had not made it into their world, they had almost seemed sacred of it, fearing that it might send them down the information super highway. Then he thought of Mickey. He could sell the story and then put the money in a college savings account for Mickey. It all seemed so noble.

  He would be everybody’s hero. He got out the book he had bought on selling short fiction a couple of years ago. He put the story into MSS form and realized that he needed an address to send the story. Juan had a Writer’s Market. He went to work half and hour early. He was going to do all this in secret, so that when it panned out he would look heroic. If it didn’t pan out no one would ever know.

  John’s bottom drawer always sprang if you tugged hard enough. He wrote the Fantasy & Science Fiction address on the brown envelope, closed the drawer, and sprinted to the mail box in front of TDS. He shoved the envelope in just as Juan drove up on his beaten-up blue Toyota.

  Juan said, “You’re here early.”

  “I just wanted to mail the first fan letter for your Weird Tales story.”

  “You dummy. They haven’t printed it yet.”

  “Oh they won’t pay much attention to it anyway. I sent it out on your stationery.”

  Weeks passed and finally Steve got an acceptance from F&SF. His first story! It came with a two-page contract that talked about foreign rights and subsidiary book rights and lots of things Steve didn’t understand. But he was able to find the dotted line. He told everybody. There was no harm in telling everybody, after all it would be appearing under his name. That had always been the plan. He should get some ego-rites here for everything. It wasn’t like Joan had had the guts to send it out. Besides Mickey would get the money. He was sure that Joan’s parents wouldn’t approve, he could remember Joan telling him that they were some kind of fundies—surely not folks thrilled to see Egyptian gods on the cover of a magazine over their dead daughter’s by-line. It was a good thing not to mention Joan.

  When he got home he called up “Allegro.” “Allegro” was a short novel—the quest of a young man looking for a rumored “lost” group of Bach manuscripts during the Cold War. The search took him on both sides of the Iron Curtain through gunfire, intrigue and two sets of hot romance with a vivid dream sequence in which he becomes Bach. With very little padding this could become a bestseller. Shiny and profitable in airport bookstores. And not without literary merit.

  Steve began to pad.

  He went to use bookstores and bought up tour guides. He began to pour local color in. He re-adapted scenes from his favorite erotica; Joan had had a lace curtain approach to sexuality. Steve bought a copy of Douglas Hofstader’s Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid from the New Atlantis bookstore. Steve took liberal helpings from Hofstader’s book on math and codes and patterns—it made a heady mix of sex and danger and pop science. He was excited by it.

  He would break off from work, email a passage home (to Joan’s old machine) People covered for him during the three weeks he expanded “Allegro” to novel-length. Especially Juan. Steve had never felt close to Juan, but Juan apparently really liked Steve. Juan’s wife had died years before and apparently the little writer’s workshop D. B. Bowen had run downtown had literally been the only place Juan had gone for pleasure in nearly ten years.

  Fantasy & Science Fiction sent Steve a check for $206.00. Depositing half of it for Mickey—somewhere along the line he decided half was the appropriate share for his compensation—was a bother. It was such a small sum. He might have to explain things to his bankers. He’d wait until Allegro came out. Then he could make arrangements. After all he was a friend of Joan’s. Everyone would understand why he wanted to help Mickey.

  Allegro grew to 165,000 words; and by the first snowfall, Steve was sure that they were the perfect 165,000. He asked Juan for his Writer’s Market. He was going to send the first three chapters and an outline to the twenty-five most likely publishers. Surely someone would show an interest. Juan opened his desk. Steve saw the pile of manuscripts underneath the bright yellow Writer’s Market.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh. Just some stories I’m working on. I thought I’d get twenty or so together—you know, linked stories—then try to sell them to the magazines and then sell the whole lot as book.”

  “Are you finished with them?”

  “I’ve got eighteen, I’m holding out for twenty-three. It’s my lucky number.”

  “Yeah. I read Illuminatus! in college too.”

  “Hail Eris!”

  “All hail Discordia!”

  “Hey, best of luck with your book.” said Juan as he slid his desk drawer shut.

  Aren’t you people supposed to read Bless Me, Última or George Washington Gómez?

  During the weekend, Steve made much use of the office copy machine on the top floor of Texas Data Systems.. He made twenty-five piles of his first three chapters and outline. He had them on the floor, on desks, on chairs, atop filing cabinets. I have made a fortress out of my words, if you want to play in my fort you have to be nice to me. Maybe Steve’s therapist had been right so many years ago, maybe the childhood abuse had lowered his emotional IQ. Or maybe he was a fucking genius. Stephen King’s first name is Steve too. Fucking genius.

  After wearing the clerk at Mockingbird Postal Station, Steve picked up Sally and headed to Garcia’s. He slurped down food thick with green sauce. Sally fantasized about his novel, the film rights, the adventure game rights, etc. She could hardly wait to see what he would write next.

  Neither could he.

  Steve put his fragments on Joan’s system. If he could finish one of them—put something together and finish one—it would be enough. It didn’t have to be good. He considered looking for stories sufficiently old or obscure. He could rip-off their endings and fit to his beginnings. Plagiarism would be okay if it wasn’t for lawyers. Dark-suited men with briefcases began to chase him in his dreams.

  Juan, of course, was having no problem finishing his book. Stories nineteen, twenty, and twenty-one appeared on schedule. Everyone said they’d be such a famous pair, Juan Martínez and Steve Cruise. One of them would surely do the Hemmingway bit and write-up the early years. Everyone at TDS began to bask in the future light of that book of dead names. People began saving their best remarks for it. Their cubicle held an endless audition for immortality. Everyone made it sound so good, if only they could be writers. People asked them all the cliché questions. “Where do you get your ideas?” Steve stopped seeing Sally as often, told her he was writing. She was so supportive. She was such a bitch, if only she would complain then he would have a reason not to write. It was all he needed, all he wanted. They could have a big fight, and then he could swear off writing. She’d feel guilty, but making her feel bad was OK, because she made him feel bad always asking about his novel. She was the reason he couldn’t write anyway. It was already her fault; she should pay with a little guilt.

  A couple of publishing houses expressed an interest in Allegro. Steve shared the good news with John. Juan replied that he had finished the twenty-three stories and was about to send the book off. The magazine sales would only tie up the rights. Juan could have just been quiet; he could have just said nothing and let Steve have his moment, but no moments for Steve.

  Steve said “We’ll have a copying and mailing session on Saturday. We’ll make this a little tradition. I’ll mail out your book, you’ll mail my next book and so on.”<
br />
  Juan said, “That’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard. I always felt we would be doing stuff like that. I’m not at all surprised about Allegro. I always knew you would be the writer.. Remember that day the Bowen gave us the little note cards?”

  One of the first exercises. Bowen had handed out three by five inch pale blue index cards. He had written an emotion on each. Steve got ENVY. Then you had fifteen minutes to write a scene where the emotion was invoked by the character’s actions. It was called Show Don’t Tell. Steve’s was the best; he knew then he was meant to be a writer.

  Steve visited his blue haired, frail grandmother that evening, cheering the old lady up immensely. They watched TV and recollected that Steve used to drop by after school for a plate of warm cookies. This was a completely bogus recollection. Steve’s grandma hated to cook. They were both caught up in TV grandmothers. She fell asleep during a rerun of The Golden Girls and Steve took what he had come for—his late grandfather’s heart medicine. Steve let himself out without any fuss.

  At home Steve ground the medicine. He poured fifteen tiny white nitroglycerin tables into a makeshift mortar and (what-the-hell) added five pink digitalis pills. He crushed the tiny tablets into a fine powder—easy to do since heart medicines are finely crystallized to get into the bloodstream quickly. He added the mixture to a small amount of ground Folgers coffee. He shook, added a little salt, which would help cut the bitterness (he hoped).

  Everything went smoothly on Saturday. Juan addressed all the envelopes, while Steve ran off a couple of copies of Allegro. Steve brewed coffee in the two employee coffee pots. Decaf for himself, poisoned for John. Juan always drank his coffee with spoons and spoons of sugar. Steve brought the cups in. They talked writing. Steve refilled John’s cup.

  Juan said, “This coffee is strong.”