Ten
The five chafing dishes contained scrambled eggs with black olives and cilantro, ham layered with sautéed onion slices, home fries, seasoned and buttered rice that smelled like popcorn, and in the last one, tamales stuffed with shredded beef and cheese. A bowl of strawberries rested in a larger bowl of cracked ice, and beside the fruit stood a bowl of brown sugar with a serving spoon. Butter and jellies had been provided, too, and a basket of rolls, some sweet and cinnamony, some plain.
At the linen-mantled table, we sat together on concrete benches, on thick cushions upholstered in vinyl and supplied by our immense and immensely hospitable host. Ozzie sat at the very end of the slab, while Wyatt Porter and I sat across from each other. We ate and talked. At first, all the conversation was about amusing incidents in the history of Pico Mundo, moments we had shared; though humor marked those memories, they were also colored lightly by melancholy.
I felt there was something sacred about that breakfast; but at the time, I could not have explained what I meant. The air was dry and warm, with the faintest breeze to keep it fresh, and scattered through the oaken shade, across the ground and the table and the three of us, glimmered treasures minted by the sun, coins of golden light, and in the trees song sparrows and western meadowlarks trilled, but it wasn’t the place and its atmosphere that hallowed the moment. Neither was it the sumptuous meal nor the memories that we shared, nor the fact that we were at last in one another’s company again. All of those things contributed to the mood, but the heart of the moment, the truest reason that it felt so pure to me and seemed to have special meaning, remained elusive. Indeed, it would continue to elude me the entire time I spent in Pico Mundo.
When we got around to talking about why I had returned to town, the mood darkened.
The chief said, “We’ve been up against their kind before, this same madness, and we took losses, but we’re still here.”
Ozzie shook his head, and his extra chins trembled. “We can’t endure more losses like those at Green Moon Mall. This is a town with spirit, but if it takes too many hits to the heart, it’ll never be the same. Any town can die without actually drying up and blowing away. It can be as dead as a ghost town even with people still living in it.”
Gazing into his mug as if he were a Gypsy and as if coffee could be read like the remnants of tea, the chief said, “They won’t make a fool of me like the others did.”
“Wyatt Porter, you were never a fool,” Ozzie declared in a tone of voice that did not invite debate. “Every man is outfoxed sooner or later, about one thing or another. If criminals were never cunning enough to deceive the authorities, every cop’s job would be nothing but make-work, and nobody would want to read my crime novels.”
I said, “Whatever they’re planning, they intend it to be the biggest news of the year. And they’re not just wannabe satanists like those the summer before last. These fruitcakes who nearly put an end to me in Nevada are members of a cult first founded back in 1580 in Oxford, England.”
“Fanatics with a long heritage of lunacy,” Ozzie noted, “tend to be formidable. Their zeal is frenzied, but over generations they have learned to control and focus it.”
“They’re formidable,” I assured him. “They’re devoted to the demon Meridian, and though that sounds loopy, they’re serious. It’s not just fanboy stuff with them, not just freaky costumes, spooky altars with black candles, ritual sex and ritual murder. They don’t just celebrate evil, they work hard to bring more of it into the world, to bring upon the world a tidal wave of horror that’ll wash hope out of it forever.”
Evidently Chief Porter had lost his appetite, because he stared at the unfinished cinnamon roll on his plate as if it were a rotting fish. “Why can’t the bad guys be satisfied with just robbing a bank or sticking up a liquor store?”
“You have plenty of that kind of thing to deal with, sir. Think of this as just a little variety.”
He shook his head. “No, year by year, there’s less of the your-money-or-your-life kind of thing, less grab-the-purse-and-run, less normal crime. Guys who once broke the speed limit by ten or fifteen miles an hour—I’m talking ordinary Joes here, not drug runners or coyotes transporting illegal aliens—these days some of the idiots do ninety in a forty zone. When you try to pull them over, they make a run for it, though running makes no sense, ’cause we’ve got their license-plate number. They think they’re stunt drivers, masters of evasion, and then they take out a schoolgirl in a crosswalk or an entire family in a van.”
The direction of our conversation hadn’t affected Ozzie’s appetite. As he lavished butter on a cinnamon roll, he said, “Perhaps it’s the YouTube effect. These police chases rack up a lot of views. Everyone wants a taste of fame.”
“It’s not just that,” Chief Porter said. “A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There’s more flamboyant craziness these days.”
Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, “Maybe it’s all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin.”
“No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin,” I assured him.
“Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people,” Chief Porter said, “but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense.”
“I’m not sure it’s the role models,” Ozzie said. “Maybe it’s more related to the pace of change in recent years. Centuries-old ways of looking at the world, centuries-old rules, are jettisoned seemingly overnight. Traditions are mocked and banished. A man—or woman—with an unstable mind sees things falling apart. ‘The center cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ To a psychopath, anarchy is exciting, the chaotic world reflects his chaotic interior life, confirms his conviction that anything should be allowed, that he can rightly do whatever he wants.”
Chief Porter finished the cold coffee in his mug and grimaced either at the bitterness of it or at the subject under discussion. “For those of us with our boots on the ground, it doesn’t matter what the causes. We’re too busy dealing with the effects.” He looked as weary as anyone I’d ever seen when he said, “Oddie, what should I be doing to stop whatever’s coming? What do you need from me?”
“I don’t know yet, sir. We just learned they’re planning this for May, possibly this week.”
“ ‘We’?” The chief looked puzzled. “You have a new posse?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Other law enforcement?”
“Not exactly.”
“When do I meet them?”
“At the right time. You’ve got to trust me on this, Chief. I don’t like keeping anything from you, but that’s how it has to be right now.”
“This is my town to protect, son. I don’t tolerate vigilantes.”
“No, sir. That’s not what this is.”
We engaged in a staring contest, after which he sighed and said, “If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust myself. Forget your posse for now. What more do you know about the bad guys?”
“All I have is three names. Wolfgang, Jonathan, Selene. Those might not even be their real names. I never saw their faces. I’ll let you know the moment I have any kind of useful lead.”
Having presented his theories of societal collapse, Ozzie now addressed the buttered sweet roll rather than the chief or me—“Lovely”—and set about devouring it.
“Where are you staying?” Chief Porter asked.
“Not with any old friends in town. I won’t put them at risk.”
“Karla misses you, son. She’d love to see you.”
Karla was the chief’s wife, a kind and gracious lady who treated me far better than my real mother ever did.
“I’d love to see her, too, sir. We’ll get together soon. When this is over.”
My words drew Ozzie’s attention from the cinnamon roll. “So you didn’t come home to die.”
I could have said to them that the prospect of my death wasn’t what brought me home to Pico Mundo, but that were Death to find me in the course of this mission, I would have no regrets and, more to the point, would go through that dark door with more gratitude than fear. They might interpret those words as proof of a suicidal disposition. I was not suicidal, however, only full of longing for the girl whom I’d lost. No need to worry my closest friends.
And so I said, “No, sir. I came home because I’m needed here—and because she’s here.”
In spite of my assurances, Ozzie appeared no less worried. “Her ashes, you mean.”
“Yes. And in a way, her, too. All my memories of her are here.”
My surrogate fathers exchanged meaningful looks, but neither of them said anything. I figured they would be on their phones with each other by the time they left the park for the state highway.
We packed the chafing dishes and plates and utensils and leftover food in boxes and coolers, and we loaded them into the spacious trunk of Ozzie’s customized Cadillac.
“Not the remaining strawberries,” Ozzie said, taking possession of that bowl at the last minute. “A weary traveler needs a snack to see him through a tedious journey.”
“You’ll be home in fifteen minutes, sir.”
“By the most direct series of streets, yes. But I may choose to take the scenic route.”
“You didn’t have to do all this,” Chief Porter said to him. “A box of doughnuts would have been enough.”
Ozzie pursed his lips and frowned in disapproval. “Doughnuts for a police officer would be such a cliché. I make an effort to avoid clichés in my life every bit as much as I eschew them in my books.”
Although he was a warm-hearted man, Wyatt Porter had never been as much of a hugger as Ozzie Boone. He wanted a hug anyway.
I said, “Be sure to tell Karla I love her, and tell her not to worry about me.”
“It’s good to have you back, son. I hope your days of wandering are all behind you.”
I watched them drive away.
My attention was drawn to the lake by a sudden thrumming of wings and a chorus of low hoarse croaks. Eight or ten migrating egrets touched down where beach met water and spread out along the shore, each respecting the other’s hunting grounds. More than three feet tall, white but for their yellow bills and skinny black legs, moving slowly and with solemn deliberation, they stalked the shallows for their breakfast. They speared small wriggling fish from the water and tilted their heads to let the catch slide, still alive, down their long, sleek throats, and I wondered if even in the small brain of a little fish there might be a capacity for terror.