The skipper avoided her when he could and buttonholed Ray Tate about the progress of the conspiracy to spike her into the ground. Ray Tate pulled on a shroud and wrapped himself in bird life and blank stares.
One morning, the skipper bounded out of his office. “Okay, Ray, we’re back in business.”
Chapter 15
The day after Phil Harvey’s pal had cruised his black F-250 pickup through the parking lot and spotted the beatnik and the black cop in the red Intrepid in the handicap spot, Connie Cook gave Phil Harvey a stack of money and they both vanished in different directions.
Phil Harvey never said where he was going. The Captain took his wife on a cruise through the Pacific Islands. When he returned, fatter and tanned, he swung into the cultural whirl of autumn parties, handing out donations to all manner of culture and art. He kept his eyes and antennae out for someone who could be the recipient of his peculiar true love. But no one set off his twisted tripwire and he brooded and ate copiously. He grew lonely. He missed Agatha and her blood and flesh, and he missed Harv and their collegial banter.
The labs had shut down. The water farms rusted. Thieves and boosters wandered the streets with their bottles of pills, looking for a buyer. The double Chucks dried up. They’d become notorious death pills and even the Chinamen weren’t copying them anymore.
When Phil Harvey turned up he had no tan but he seemed relaxed when the Captain met him for hamburgers at a beer joint in the southern industrial section of town. They sat in the window and watched autumn snow outside, falling in a glittering sunshine.
“The ship was pretty good,” the Captain said. “Buffet, all you can eat.” He laughed. “When they saw me coming in for the buffet they just said, fuck it, called the head office in Atlanta and adjusted the bottom line.” He chewed slowly. “No grilled hamburgers, though. What is it with cruise lines? You can get anything but a grilled fucking hamburger. Fuck, Harv, I missed this, buddy. What you been doing? You go away?” He looked closely at Harvey. There was something different but he couldn’t put his finger on it. “You get laid a lot?”
“Naw. I hung out. Stayed away from the condo. Went out of town a little, hooked up with a pal. A lot of people are missing us, Cookie. A lot of people aren’t making much dough. Anyway, I got bored and I went up to the farm and just hid out. You know there’s a lake up there, way in on our property? Not a big thing, but I came across it out walking. Saw a fish jump in the air. There was a bear on the other side.”
“Yeah? Yeah, really? Fish? No shit. A bear. But no mischief-making up there? You didn’t pull out the recipe book, start baking little pink cakes in the barn?”
“Naw. No, Cookie. There’s nothing up there to cook with. I decided: Fuck it, take it easy. Just me and the fishes and the beasts.”
Phil Harvey was amazed that it could snow while the sun was shining. Things like that were sometimes coming to him, unbidden. In the north the mornings had been crusted with frosted dew and he’d sat for hours wrapped in his sleeping bag in the kitchen, watching through the window the crack and refreeze, watching the little footprints of small foragers melt. Shadows seemed blacker up in Indian country, edges sharper. The sky at night was vast and undiluted by ambient city light. He’d had an original thought, he believed, that the stars were holes poked into the sky, letting another light from another planet peek through. The only times before that he’d had that feeling were in the minutes after being released from prison: a rebirthing that suggested that the world was full of new smells and new possibilities. And although he’d returned to his old bad ways as quickly as he could, this time he thought might be different.
When he’d remotely picked up messages on his home phone that the Captain was back in town he’d felt a lot of disappointment and a bit of dread, the ebbing of the possibility of change for himself.
“So, we got no product to move, Harv?”
“Nope. I’ll get cooking once you give me the word to go get some stuff. We’ll have to use another stamp. Those double Cs are too notorious right now.” He smiled at the Captain. “The heat didn’t slow the Chinamen down, though. That Chinatown bunch are cooking with stuff they brought down from Canada. Making a fucking killing.”
The Captain realized the difference about Harvey: he’d had left his curtain of hair tied back, indifferently exposing the scar tissue. And he didn’t hide his angry, blurred hands. Connie pirated Harv’s fries. “You seeing anything going on? Those cops in the red car? Any of that stuff?”
“Nope. Nothing. I haven’t gone back to the condo since my guy saw them there in the parking lot. I haven’t gone near Ag’s old trap. The Camaro’s under tarps up north and I’m driving rentals. I think it might have just been a blip, Cookie. They thought they had something, then when nothing happened they fucked off to frame some other innocent guys.”
“You’d think with those fucking kids overdosing there’d be something.”
“Well, there’s been people around. When they grabbed up somebody with double Charlies they put them through pretty good, but nobody knows nothing. Then the Charlies ran out and headlines died down and things have been back to normal.” Harv grabbed a fry before the Captain could.
“Well, then, back to business, Harv. Can you sniff around Willy Wong, see what his guys are up to? He’s got that import firm, that’s how he gets his precursors in from over the border. Labels the drums cleaning solvent or something, trucks them down. If they get grabbed, he goes Holy Fuck there’s a crook in my importing business and somebody goes to jail, but not him.” Captain Cook shook his head. “Fucking guy. Anyway, you want to put some guys together, maybe on standby. And I’ll need you to do something else, Harv. Soon. For me.”
“Something heavy?” Harvey had resolved to not bring the Captain out on any more missions. Lack of restraint was never a good thing. You could feel a thrill at mayhem but you shouldn’t lose yourself in it. Mayhem was a tool, not part of a healthy lifestyle.
“Well, I’m lonely. I need a friend. Since Ag ran away and I been on this fucking trip with my wife, I’m not getting any.” He stared out the window. “I think that’s why I busted the buffet on the boat. I don’t get any, so I eat. I eat, so I get fatter. I get fatter and who the fuck’s gonna want to fuck a blimp on purpose? I need a pal, Harv. Long-term relationship.” He smiled. “I got my eye out for something sweet, I’ll let you know.”
“C’mon, Cookie. There’s hookers, do whatever you want, however you like it. There’s peelers at the club, be glad to make acquaintance. There’s no problem. This, grabbing up another chick, this is trouble. This is not a good time, start fucking around with kidnapping. We got to rebuild the business first.”
“Harv, Harv. I thought you understood me. Anybody can fuck a peeler or a hooker. I tried with the ones you got me, before, those two tire biters. I really tried. But there’s no love there — just money. Like buying a meal. But I want to create love, Harv. I want the ingredients for a loving relationship. I want what everybody wants but very, very few actually get. Once I find her, we’ll use the same tricks as last time, okay?”
The Captain’s appetite hadn’t been sated by Phil’s initial offerings. Predatory peelers had agreed to spend some time with him and were taken up to the farm.