Black Widower Read online

  “It hasn’t happened in a while. I don’t think it’s going to happen, anymore.”

  She has a question on her face for a brief moment, but then her visage lightens up.

  “I don’t know if I can go back to your place, Derek. It still gives me nightmares.”

  “There’s a reasonable explanation for all that, Carrie.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Ever since they found her…remains, it’s stopped. And that doesn’t mean it was some goddam ghost or spook or uneasy spirit. Maybe we both were just exhausted, and when you get tired out you can have hallucinations.”

  “Uh uh. What I felt was palpable. It was in the bedroom with me. It wasn’t some delusion or illusion or whatever, Derek. I’d swear to it in court. There was something in your house, and it sure as hell doesn’t have a reasonable explanation!”

  “If you don’t want to go back there, I understand. How ‘bout I sell the house? We can buy a new one, cash, with the money I’ve got coming from the will and the life insurance. And now we can get married. If you still want to.”

  Her mouth purses into an O, and then she lunges at me and starts kissing me all over my face.

  “Is that a yes?” I ask her.

  “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been waiting for that question? It’s yes. But you have to get rid of that place first. I want something that’s just ours. I don’t want any remnants, Derek, even if they’ve gone quiet at the old place.”

  “I don’t think I’ve got any juice left in me to celebrate.”

  “We’ve got all night. I think you’ll be able to call in the reserves soon.”

  And she begins working on me all over again.

  *

  I wake up, startled. I thought I heard it again, but when I go check in the john, there’s nothing there. So I go back and lie down. It’s going to take a full day to recover from Carrie. I think we went seven rounds. She keeps starting me up and finishing me, and she’s irresistible, like one of those sirens in the old Greek stories that my old man used to tell me. He died six years ago, and the old lady died five years before the old man. My aunts and uncles still live in the old country, somewhere near Athens.

  My father wanted me to go back to Greece with him, but then he croaked and we never got the chance. He ran a grocery thing near the Loop. Never made much money, but he worked like a dog to keep us fed and sheltered. We lived in an apartment on the north side before I bought this place after he’d passed. I loved him, I suppose, hard case as he was, but I was never close with my mother. In fact, I felt a little relieved, maybe even happy, when she went under. It was like she could never get close to me, as if there was something about me that kept her at arms’ length. A shrink might say I have mommy issues, I suppose.

  The only thing Greek about me was my parents. I don’t speak the language, I only picked up a few words listening to them talk to each other. Hello and goodbye and shit like that. A few words from the Greek. So I’m mostly American, like the cheese.

  The old man loved his feta and black olives, but I can’t stand that goat’s shit cheese.

  Now I can’t go back to sleep, and I have to be on shift at 7:00 A.M. Days can be slow in Vice. It’s usually late at night that things go rock and roll.

  Finally, I start to drift.

  And just when I do, I feel any icy grip on my throat, and when I do, I try to wrench myself upward, but the fingers are holding me down, and I feel the oxygen being cut off. But I struggle violently against these strong, frozen hands, and I’m able to sit up, at last.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yell out.

  I grab for the gun I keep under the other pillow, and then I snap on the bedside lamp and point the snub-nosed .38---at nothing. There’s no one in here with me.

  Just all the things that were in the bedroom when I first lay down, all in their ordered places.

  I drop the gun on the neighboring pillow, and then I rub my eyes. I know I need to unload this place because too many things linger in here. I don’t know if it’s some specter that was once my wife. I don’t care anymore. Jennifer’s gone. It’s the mind that pulls these little nightmares on us. Sometimes they even happen when we’re awake. Some head doctor might say it’s all about my guilt. But Carrie felt something strange, too, and now this cracker in Plank claims he’s seen some ghostly goddam mist floating above his goddam dock.

  No psychiatrist can help me. And they’re compelled to report murder or someone who’s talking about murder. Can’t have that.

  No one ever brought me up on charges in Vietnam. I killed ten, maybe twelve, indigenous personnel in that fuckfest, and I’d kill them again, too. What’s so special about Jennifer, then? I should have killed her goofy sister, as well, but that would be making it too easy for Parisi and his partner. All roads would point to me, if I waxed Irene, that goofy poodle-loving gash.

  The solution is to sell this house and get out as soon as possible. Maybe this time a marriage will work out for me. I know I never tire of balling Carrie, and she’s a bright piece of baggage, so she won’t bore me as quickly as the first one did.

  I go into the john and turn the light on and peer cautiously into the mirror. There are no marks or impressions on my throat. So this one was simply a bad dream and nothing more. It seemed real, it seemed true, but there’s no evidence of anyone or anything laying hands on me.

  Too much pressure around here, lately. IA, Parisi and his pal, all that. Now there’s a Cajun who splits open a gator and finds the dumb cooze’s head, so there’s no doubt that I need a change.

  Parisi and Gibron know they’ve got dick. Nothing. If they’d found remnants of the rest of the body, who knows? I don’t know if they could lift prints off the rest of her after she’d been digested in some reptile’s stomach, but I’m glad they only found the head. All it did was clear the way for me to finally be rid of her. They’ve got their corpse, and I’ve got my freedom. And I’ve got a quarter million or more and I’ve got Carrie, the sweetest piece of ass I’ve ever had. She’s insatiable. So what’s the problem if I have to put up with a few bad dreams? The upside is much larger than the downside.

  I feel my throat again, and the soreness is gone. I try to lie back down and get at least a couple hours of rest, but I can’t get the coldness of that grip out of my mind.

  I turn to the clock by the bed and see that it’s 6:10. Time to get up and shower and be late one more time to work.

  *

  I go over to O’Brien’s after shift, and the joint is empty at 4:10 P.M. Not unusual. It usually crowds up around 8:00 or 9:00 at night. It’s a cop’s hangout, at State and Lake, and police and our groupies come in for a belt and maybe a goodnight fuck, occasionally.

  Parisi and Gibron walk in at 4:20, I see by the Cubs clock over the barman’s head. But they sit at the far end. Parisi gets a Coke and Gibron has an Old Style. I heard that Parisi was pretty much a teetotaler, but I’ve seen him down a few ales in here, from time to time.

  I’m expecting them to amble on down here at any moment, but it’s as if they haven’t spotted me.

  “Hey, Jack!” I yell at the barkeep.

  He approaches me.

  “Buy those two whatever they’re having,” I tell him.

  He waves and goes down and fetches them a pair of libations. But a minute later he comes back and returns my money onto the slab in front of me.

  “No offense,” Jack relates. “But they’ve refused your offer.”

  Then he walks away, and I look down at the two Homicides. They’re looking everywhere but right at me.

  Chapter 14

  Mama Bea suggests Leonard get a hold of a priest, Fr. Paul, out of St. Martin’s Church, on the outskirts of Plank. So Leonard, being thoroughly frazzled by this critter made out of filmy white gas who won’t leave him the hell alone, decides to go full balls-ahead and drives over to the church to see this holy man.

  Fr. Paul tells Leonard he doesn’t do exorcisms, if that’s what he’s looking for.
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br />   “Those rites are an exception to the rule,” the tall priest with the male balding pattern tells Tare.

  “But I saw that movie about it,” Leonard tells him. “And I read it was based on a real, true case.”

  “It was a young boy from St. Louis, and he didn’t murder anyone, and his head didn’t revolve around and spew up movie vomit,” the priest smiles benevolently.

  “But there are such cases, right?” Leonard insists.

  “Very, very rarely, and I’ve never seen one myself. I wish I could help, but I don’t think this white fog you told me about over the phone qualifies, Leonard.”

  “What’s she got to do? Make it rain down frogs?”

  “That might help your case.”

  “It ain’t funny, Padre.”

  The middle-aged priest studies Leonard’s face, and he sees a worn-down, frightened man. He’s heard that Tare was in the Vietnam War and that he was a Navy Seal and that he’s an alligator hunter, and he wonders what unearthly thing could scare a man who’s faced the real terrors of war and the bayou.

  “I can come out and take a look with you, if you’d like.”

  “That’s decent of you, Father. But you’ll have to stay up late. It likes to arrive at midnight or thereabouts.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Like I said, Father—“

  “It ain’t funny. I got it. I’ll come out tonight a little before midnight, if that’s good for you, Leonard.”

  “Someone has to help me. I can deal with reptiles on my own. I dealt with two-legged reptiles in that war. But this thing…I need some help, Reverend.”

  *

  The priest makes good and shows up at Tare’s shack at a quarter to the witching hour. Leonard meets him at the door, and then he accompanies the priest at shore side of the dock. Fr. Paul has a watch that glows in the dark, and he sees it’s ten before twelve.

  “It’s usually pretty punctual,” the gator hunter says.

  “Why do you suppose it’s happening to you?”

  “I don’t know. I know the only thing I did to her was pry her head out of that gator. I never did her any harm, and that’s for true.”

  “And what do you think it wants from you?”

  “If I were just to guess, I’d say it was justice.”

  “But you’re not a policeman, Leonard.”

  “Yeah. But I’m awfully popular with the cops, about now. I hear they’re calling the mist The Lady in the Lake, even though this here’s a swamp. And when the idiots in town hear about it because the cops can’t keep their mouths shut, I’ll have a bunch of goddam kids out here every night, and that’ll put a dent in my crop of lizards, sure as hell. They’re naturally scared of humans, unless they’re hungry, in which case they’ll dine on whatever’s available.”

  The priest notices that Leonard has brought along his sawed-off shotgun.

  “Is that really necessary?” he asks.

  “It might be, if the gators smell fresh meat near the dock.”

  “And we’re fresh meat?”

  “Don’t blame them, Reverend. They were here before we arrived.”

  The priest looks at his wristwatch. Ten after twelve.

  “Late, tonight,” Leonard says. “You don’t have to stay much longer. Maybe holy guys scare it off. It wasn’t afraid of Bea, though. Maybe this thing figured Mama was a kindred spirit or some shit…You’ll forgive the language. I’m sorry, Fr. Paul.”

  “It’s all right.”

  The two men stand in silence. The minutes pass.

  And then something emerges out of the edge of the swamp. The snout is unmistakable.

  Then a second leathery nose appears.

  “Get on back to your vehicle, Reverend.”

  “I’m not going back to the car alone.”

  “I hope you shut your windows.”

  The two blasts erupt over the water. One of the gators is blown back into the dark surface of the bayou, and the other flops over and over in the shallows. Then the second disappears into the inky murk.

  “I think I wet myself,” the priest whispers.

  “Let’s get you the hell out of here,” Leonard concedes.

  “Thanks be to God,” the priest rejoins.

  Leonard doesn’t know where to turn. The holy Joe couldn’t help him because that white floating cloud decided to take the night off. And Mama won’t come out here in daylight, anymore. Bad ju-ju, she told Tare.

  He wondered if it wasn’t all just in his own fevery skull, and maybe Mama’s vision of the thing was like some mass hysteria business. He’d gone to the tiny library in Plank to read up about Section Eight shit, and Leonard began to think maybe he qualified as a crazy. Perhaps it was Post Traumatic Stress, after all. The only ones to see the mist were Mama and him, and Mama was known in the county to be a little off her own radar, as well.

  The VA was all he could come up with, and after a three-day battle on the phone, they finally had him come in for a talk with their shrink. The VA was in Bourbon, a fair sized city about a hundred miles south of Plank. It took an hour and forty-five minutes on the highway, Leonard gunning the truck all the way. He wasn’t concerned about a ticket for speeding. Maybe a few nights in jail might be just what he needed—since his license expired, two weeks ago.

  The shrink’s name was Frances, and that was why he thought she’d be a man. Spelling wasn’t Leonard’s forte, back in school.

  “I thought you were going to be a man,” Leonard said. He didn’t know how to start things off with a psychiatrist because he’d never visited one before.

  “I get that all the time. How can I help you, Mr. Tare?”

  She was young and pretty, and her attractiveness threw him, at first.

  “I thought you’d be older, too.”

  “I’m thirty-nine. How can I help?”

  He told her the tale of the floating shroud. He told her about the head and how the cops had come all the way from Chicago to see him about his discovery.

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about post- traumatic stress.”

  “Yeah, some. But I don’t really think that’s what’s happening.”

  “You think it’s a real spirit, come to haunt you for a time.”

  “That sounds familiar,” he told Dr. Frances McNally.

  “It doesn’t matter, Mr. Tare. You been under stress at home or on the job, lately?”

  He told her about his gator business.

  “I should think all that might be contributing factors……I think you ought to make a few appointments to see me, after we’re done here.”

  “VA going to pick up the tab?”

  She nodded.

  “And I think I might write you a few scripts for something to help you sleep at night. By your appearance you seem a bit haggard.”

  “What’s haggard?” Leonard asked her.

  “Tired. Worn out.”

  “There’s that. Yeah.”

  Leonard knew if her prescription made him sleep, he’d have to do something about all those open portholes in the shack. It meant screens and windows, and he tried to figure if he could afford it. But he was also well aware that he couldn’t continue on, the way things were going. He’d likely put the double barrels in his mouth and blast some peace through the back of his head. The eternal kind.

  Tare felt a little uncomfortable about baring his soul to this good looking young woman. He thought he might just be attracted to her.

  But he looked at himself through her eyes. Coonass. Hillbilly. White trash. She must have seen a lot of that passing through here.

  And then there was the very professional demeanor. She’d never get caught up with one of her patients. That was like one of their cardinal rules, he figured.

  He was just another fucked up soldier whose tale was just slightly altered from the other fucked up soldiers she’d talked to.

  “What kind of drugs?” he asked.

  “Just sedatives. Mild sedatives, at first, and then we’ll see how it
goes.”

  There was still a half hour left on this appointment. The time seemed to ooze, like thick honey out of a jar. He felt himself fidget.

  “You don’t believe me, do you.”

  “I believe you believe what-”

  “But you don’t buy it, do you, Doc.”

  “I think this is something inside you, Leonard.”

  “Then how come Mama Bea saw the same thing? You gonna call it mass hysteria?”

  “You’ve been reading up, huh?”

  Tare thought he detected a faint grin on her full pink lips.

  “That’s how you’d explain Bea seeing it, too. Right?”

  “Textbook. Sure.”

  “We didn’t imagine that goddam thing on the dock, and no one imagined that head that flopped out of that critter I sliced open. That woman was murdered, and she’s crying out for me to do something about it, I’m telling you!”

  “The police are investigating, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, but she’s holding me accountable!”

  “That doesn’t seem just to you, does it, Leonard?”

  “Just? Are you shitting me? Since when is that a word that applies to this life?”

  The shrink remained mute.

  “I’d still like to see you again, a few more times at least, Mr. Tare.”

  “I’m sorry I yelled, Doc. It sure ain’t any of your fault.”

  “You can’t put this burden on yourself, Leonard. It isn’t your fault.”

  “You know what the military would say about that, Dr. McNally?”

  “What would they say?”

  “It isn’t my fault, but it’s my problem.”

  *

  He thought about the lovely analyst all the way back to Plank. And when he got home he looked around the property. Then he went inside the shack and filled up his duffel with enough clothes for a week. He threw in his toothbrush and his razor, and he went back outside and got into the truck.

  He didn’t count the hours until he got to New Orleans, but it was late at night when he checked into a motel near the French Quarter. He didn’t crash, though, when he arrived. He felt liberated, refreshed. Alive.

  Then Leonard hit the tittie bars with a vengeance. He was hit on by what turned out to be a cross dresser, and he smacked the fucker in the teeth and laid him low out in the streets. But Leonard took off before the NOPD showed up, and he meandered in and out of a few more saloons before he ran into a working girl who was willing to haul his ashes back out to the motel.