Lisey's Story Part 13

Probably so. And under the circ.u.mstances, she had a right to be.

Get it done. You came out here to do it, so do it.

She reached in with the tongs again, this time looking at what she was doing, and as she opened the grabbers and positioned them around one of the unlucky barncat's stiffening paws, she thought of d.i.c.k Powell in some old black-and-white movie, carving a turkey and asking Who wants a leg? And yes, she could smell the thing's blood. She gagged a little, bent her head, spat between her sneakers.

Get it done.

Lisey closed the grabbers (not such a bad word after all, not once you made friends with it) and pulled. She fumbled the green garbage bag open with her other hand and in the cat tumbled, headfirst. She twirled the bag closed and knotted the neck, since stupid little Lisey had also forgotten to bring one of the yellow plastic ties. Then she resolutely began to scrub her mailbox clean of the blood and fur.

3.

When she was finished with the mailbox, Lisey trudged back down the driveway with her buckets in the long evening light. Breakfast had been coffee and oatmeal, lunch little more than a scoop of tuna and mayo on a sc.r.a.p of lettuce, and dead cat or no dead cat, she was starved. She decided to put off her call to Woodbody until she had some food in her belly. The thought of calling the Sheriff's Office-anyone in a blue uniform, for that matter-hadn't yet returned to her.

She washed her hands for three minutes, using very hot water and making sure any speck of blood was gone from under her nails. Then she found the Tupperware dish containing the leftover Cheeseburger Pie, sc.r.a.ped it onto a plate, and blasted it in the microwave. While she waited for the chime, she hunted a Pepsi out of the fridge. She remembered thinking she'd never finish the Hamburger Helper stuff once her initial l.u.s.t for it had been slaked. You could add that to the bottom of the long, long list of Things in Life Lisey Has Been Wrong About, but so what? Big diddly, as Cantata had been fond of saying in her teenage years.

"I never claimed to be the brains of the outfit," Lisey told the empty kitchen, and the microwave bleeped as if to second that.

The reheated gloop was almost too hot to eat but Lisey gobbled it anyway, cooling her mouth with fizzy mouthfuls of cold Pepsi. As she was finis.h.i.+ng the last bite, she remembered the low whispering sound the cat's fur had made against the tin sleeve of the mailbox, and the weird pulling sensation she'd felt as the body began, reluctantly, to come forward. He must have really crammed it in there, she thought, and d.i.c.k Powell once more came to mind, black-and-white d.i.c.k Powell, this time saying And have some stuffing!

She was up and rus.h.i.+ng for the sink so fast she knocked her chair over, sure she was going to vomit everything she'd just eaten, she was going to blow her groceries, toss her cookies, throw her heels, donate her lunch. She hung over the sink, eyes closed, mouth open, midsection locked and straining. After a pregnant five-second pause, she produced one monstrous cola-burp that buzzed like a cicada. She leaned there a moment longer, wanting to make absolutely sure that was all. When she was, she rinsed her mouth, spat, and pulled "Zack McCool"'s letter from her jeans pocket. It was time to call Joseph Woodbody.

4.

She expected to reach his office at Pitt-who'd give a looneytune like her new friend Zack his home phone number?-and she was prepared to leave what Scott might have called "a huhyoogely provocative message" on Woodbody's answering machine. Instead the telephone was answered on the second ring and a woman's voice, quite pleasant and perhaps lubricated by that all-important first before-dinner drink, told Lisey that she had reached the Woodbody residence and then asked who was calling. For the second time that day Lisey identified herself as Mrs. Scott Landon.

"I'd like to speak to Professor Woodbody," she said. Her voice was mild and pleasant.

"May I say what this is regarding?"

"My late husband's papers," Lisey said, spinning her opened pack of Salem Lights on the coffee table in front of her. She realized that she once again had cigarettes and no fire. Perhaps it was a warning that she should give the habit up again, after all, before it could settle its little yellow hooks back into her brain stem. She thought of adding I'm sure he'll want to talk to me and didn't bother. His wife would know that.

"Just a moment, please."

Lisey waited. She hadn't planned what she was going to say. This was in accordance with another of Landon's Rules: you only planned out what you were going to say for disagreements. When you were really angry-when you wanted to tear someone a new a.s.shole, as the saying was-it was usually best to just rare back and let it rip.

So she sat there, mind a careful blank, spinning her pack of cigarettes. Around and around it went.

At last a smooth masculine voice she thought she remembered said, "h.e.l.lo, Mrs. Landon, this is a pleasant surprise."

SOWISA, she thought. SOWISA, babyluv.

"No," Lisey said, "it's not going to be pleasant at all."

There was a pause. Then, cautiously: "I beg pardon? Is this Lisa Landon? Mrs. Scott L-"

"Listen to me, you son of a b.i.t.c.h. There's a man hara.s.sing me. I think he's a dangerous man. Yesterday he threatened to hurt me."

"Mrs. Landon-"

"In places I didn't let the boys touch at the junior high school dances was how he put it, I think. And tonight-"

"Mrs. Landon, I don't-"

"Tonight he left a dead cat in my mailbox and a letter stuck in my door, and the letter had a telephone number on it, this number, so don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about when I know you do!" On the last word, Lisey batted the pack of cigarettes with the side of her hand. Batted it like a badminton birdie. It flew all the way across the room, shedding Salem Lights as it went. She was breathing hard and fast, but with her mouth wide open. She didn't want Woodbody to hear her doing it and mistake her rage for fear.

Woodbody made no reply. Lisey gave him time. When he still didn't talk, she said, "Are you there? You better be."

She knew it was the same man who replied, but the smooth round lecture-hall tones were gone. This man sounded both younger and somehow older. "I'm going to put you on hold, Mrs. Landon, and take this in my study."

"Where your wife can't hear, is what you mean."

"Hold on, please."

"It better not be long, Woodsmucky, or-"

There was a click, then silence. Lisey wished she had used the cordless phone in the kitchen; she wanted to pace around, maybe snag one of her cigarettes and light it off a stoveburner. But maybe this was better. This way she couldn't blow off any of her rage. This way she had to stay strapped so tight it hurt.

Ten seconds went by. Twenty. Thirty. She was preparing to hang up when there was another click on the line and the King of the Incunks spoke to her again in his new young-old voice. It had picked up a funny little hiccupping tremor. It's his heartbeat, she thought. It was her thought, but it could have been Scott's insight. His heart's beating so hard I can actually hear it. I wanted to scare him? I scared him. Now why should that scare me?

And yes, all of a sudden she was scared. It was like a yellow thread weaving in and out of the bright red overblanket of her rage.

"Mrs. Landon, is he a man named Dooley? James or Jim Dooley? Tall and skinny, with a little bit of a hill accent? Like West Vir-"

"I don't know his name. He called himself Zack McCool on the phone, and that's the name he signed to his-"

"f.u.c.k," Woodbody said. Only he stretched it out-Fuu-uuuck-and turned it into something almost incantatory. This was followed by a sound that might have been a groan. In Lisey's mind, a second bright yellow thread joined the first.

"What?" she asked sharply.

"That's him," Woodbody said. "It has to be. The e-mail address he gave me was Zack991."

"You told him to scare me into giving you Scott's unpublished papers, didn't you? That was the deal."

"Mrs. Landon, you don't understa-"

"I think I do. I've dealt with some fairly crazy people since Scott died, and the academics put the collectors to shame, but you make the rest of the academics look normal, Woodsmucky. That's probably why you were able to hide it at first. The really crazy people have to be able to do that. It's a survival skill."

"Mrs. Landon, if you'll only let me expl-"

"I'm being threatened and you're responsible, you don't need to explain that. So listen up, and listen up good: call him off right now. I haven't given your name to the authorities yet, but I really think the police getting your name is the least of your worries. If I get one more call, one more letter, or one more dead animal from this Deep s.p.a.ce Cowboy, I'll go to the newspapers." Inspiration struck. "I'll start with the ones in Pittsburgh. They'll love it. CRAZED ACADEMIC THREATENS FAMOUS WRITER'S WIDOW. When that shows up on page one, a few questions from the cops in Maine will be the least of your problems. Goodbye, tenure."

Lisey thought all of this sounded good, and it hid those yellow threads of fear-at least for the moment. Unfortunately, what Woodbody said next brought them back again, brighter than ever.

"You don't understand, Mrs. Landon. I can't call him off."

5.

For a moment Lisey was too flabbergasted to speak. Then she said, "What do you mean, you can't?"

"I mean I've already tried."

"You have his e-mail address! Zack999 or whatever it was-"

"Zack991 at Sail-dot-com, for what it's worth. Might as well be triple zero. It doesn't work. It did the first couple of times I used it, but since then my e-mails just bounce back marked CANNOT DELIVER."

He began babbling about trying again, but Lisey hardly paid attention. She was replaying her conversation with "Zack McCool"-or Jim Dooley, if that was his real name. He'd said Woodbody was either going to telephone him or- "Do you have some special e-mail account?" she asked, interrupting Woodbody in mid-flow. "He said you were going to e-mail him in some special way and tell him when you'd gotten what you wanted. So where is it? Your University office? An internet cafe?"

"No!" Woodbody nearly wailed. "Listen to me-of course I have an e-mail address at Pitt, but I never gave it to Dooley! It would have been insane! I have two grad students who regularly access the mail there, not to mention the English Department secretary!"

"And at home?"

"I gave him my home e-mail address, yes, but he's never used it."

"What about the phone number you have for him?"

There was a moment of silence on the line, and when Woodbody spoke again, he sounded honestly puzzled. This scared her worse still. She looked at the wide living room window and saw that the sky in the northeast was turning lavender. It would soon be night. She had an idea this might be a long one.

"Phone number?" Woodbody said. "He never gave me a phone number. Just an e-mail address that worked twice, then quit. He was either lying or fantasizing."

"Which do you think it was?"

Woodbody nearly whispered, "I don't know."

Lisey thought this was Woodbody's chickens.h.i.+t way of trying not to admit what he really thought: that Dooley was crazy.

"Hold on a minute." She started to put the handset down on the sofa, then thought better of it. "You better be there when I get back, Professor."

There was no need to use one of the stove-burners, after all. There were long decorative matches for lighting the fireplace in a bra.s.s cuspidor next to the fire-tools. She picked a Salem Light up off the floor and sc.r.a.ped one of the long matches alight on a hearthstone. She took one of the ceramic vases for a temporary ashtray, laying aside the flowers that had been in it and reflecting (not for the first time, either) that smoking was one of the world's nastier habits. Then she went back to the sofa, sat down, and picked up the phone. "Tell me what happened."

"Mrs. Landon, my wife and I have plans to go out-"

"Your plans have changed," Lisey said. "Start at the beginning."

6.

Well of course in the beginning were the Incunks, those pagan wors.h.i.+ppers of original texts and unpublished ma.n.u.scripts, and Professor Joseph Woodbody, who was their king, as far as Lisey was concerned. G.o.d knew how many scholarly articles he'd published concerning the works of Scott Landon, or how many of them might even now be quietly gathering dust in the booksnake above the barn. Nor did she care how badly tormented Professor Woodbody had been by the thought of the unpublished works that might also be gathering dust in Scott's study. What mattered was that Woodbody made a habit of having two or three beers two or three evenings a week on his way home from campus, always at the same bar, a place called The Place. There were plenty of college-type drinking establishments near Pitt, some of them by-the-pitcher beerdives, some of them the smart-bars where faculty and cla.s.s-conscious grad students went to drink-the kind of places with spider-plants in the windows and Bright Eyes on the jukebox instead of My Chemical Romance. The Place was a workingman's bar a mile from the campus and the closest thing to rock on the jukebox was a Travis TrittJohn Mellencamp duet. Woodbody said he liked going there because it was quiet on weekday afternoons and early evenings, also because the ambience made him think of his father, who had worked in one of U.S. Steel's rolling mills. (Lisey didn't give a sweet smuck about Woodbody's father.) It was in this bar that he had met the man who called himself Jim Dooley. Dooley was another late afternoon/early evening drinker, a soft-spoken fellow who favored blue chambray work s.h.i.+rts and the kind of d.i.c.kies with cuffs that Woodbody's father had worn. Woodbody described Dooley as about six-one, lanky, slightly stooped, with thinning dark hair that often tumbled over his brow. He thought Dooley's eyes had been blue, but wasn't sure, although they had drunk together over a period of six weeks and had become what Woodbody described as "sort of buddies." They had exchanged not life stories but patchwork pieces of life stories, as men do in bars. For his part, Woodbody claimed to have told the truth. He now had reasons to doubt that Dooley had done the same. Yes, Dooley might well have drifted down to The Burg from West Virginia twelve or fourteen years ago, and probably had worked a series of low-paying manual-labor jobs since then. Yes, he might have done some prison time; he had that inst.i.tutional look about him, always seeming to glance up into the backbar mirror as he reached for his beer, always looking back over his shoulder at least once on his way to the men's. And yes, he might really have come by the scar just above his right wrist during a brief but vicious fight in the prison laundry. Or not. Hey, maybe he had just tripped over his trike when he was a kid and landed wrong. All Woodbody knew for sure was that Dooley had read all of Scott Landon's books and was able to discuss them intelligently. And he had listened sympathetically to Woodbody's tale of woe concerning the intransigent Widow Landon, who was sitting on an intellectual treasure-trove of unpublished Landon ma.n.u.scripts, a completed novel among them, according to rumor. But sympathy was really too mild a word. He had listened with growing outrage.

According to Woodbody, it was Dooley who had started calling her Yoko.

Woodbody characterized their meetings at The Place as "occasional, bordering on regular." Lisey pa.r.s.ed this intellectual bulls.h.i.+t and decided it meant Woodbody-Dooley b.i.t.c.hfests about Yoko Landon four and sometimes five afternoons a week, and that when Woodbody said "a beer or two," he probably meant a pitcher or two. So there they were, this intellectual Oscar and Felix, getting soused just about every weekday afternoon, at first talking about how great Scott's books were and then progressing naturally to what a miserable withholding b.i.t.c.h his widow had turned out to be.

According to Woodbody, it was Dooley who had turned their conversations in this direction. Lisey, who knew how Woodbody sounded when he was denied what he wanted, doubted if it had taken much effort.

And at some point, Dooley had told Woodbody that he, Dooley, could persuade the widow to change her mind about those unpublished ma.n.u.scripts. After all, how hard could it be to talk sense to her when the man's papers were almost certainly going to end up in the University of Pittsburgh Library with the rest of the Landon Collection anyway? He was good at changing people's minds, Dooley said. He had a knack for it. The King of the Incunks (looking at his new friend with a drunk's bleary shrewdness, Lisey had no doubt) asked Dooley how much he'd want for such a service. Dooley had said he wasn't looking to make a profit. They were talking about a service to mankind, weren't they? Prying a great treasure away from a woman who was too stupid to understand what it was she was sitting on, like a broody hen on a clutch of eggs. Well, yes, Woodbody had responded, but the workman was worthy of his hire. Dooley considered this and said he'd keep a record of his various expenses. Then, when they got together and he transferred the papers to Woodbody, they could discuss the matter of payment. And with that, Dooley had extended his hand over the bar to his new friend, just as if they had closed a deal which actually made sense. Woodbody had taken it, feeling both delighted and contemptuous. He had gone back and forth in his mind about Dooley during the five or seven weeks he'd known him, he told Lisey. There were days when he thought Dooley was a serious harda.s.s, a self-made jailhouse scholar whose blood-chilling stories of stickups and fights and spoonhandle knifings were all true. Then there were days (the day of the handshake being one of them) when he was positive that Jim Dooley was nothing but talk, and the most dangerous crime he'd ever committed was stealing a gallon or two of paint thinner out of the Wal-Mart in Monroeville where he'd worked for six months or so in 2004. So for Woodbody it had been little more than a half-drunk joke, especially when Dooley more or less told him he was going to talk Lisey out of her dead husband's papers for the sake of Art. That, at least, was what the King of the Incunks told Lisey on that afternoon in June, but of course this was the same King of the Incunks who had sat half-drunk in a bar with a man he hardly knew, a self-confessed "hard-time con," the two of them calling her Yoko and agreeing that Scott must have kept her around for one thing and one thing only, because what else could he have wanted her for? Woodbody said that, as far as he was concerned, the whole thing had been little more than a joke, just two guys blue-skying in a bar. It was true that the two guys in question had exchanged e-mail addresses, but these days everybody had an e-mail address, didn't they? The King of the Incunks had met his loyal subject just one more time following the day of the handshake. That had been two afternoons later. Dooley had limited himself to just a single beer on that occasion, telling Woodbody that he was "in training." After that one beer he'd slid off his barstool, saying he had an appointment "to see a fella." He also told Woodbody he'd probably meet him the following day, next week for sure. But Woodbody had never seen Jim Dooley again. After a couple of weeks he'd stopped looking. And the Zack991 e-mail address stopped working. In a way, he thought, losing track of Jim Dooley was a good thing. He had been drinking too much, and there was something about Dooley that was just wrong. (Figured that out a little late, didn't you? Lisey thought sourly.) Woodbody's drinking dropped back to its previous level of one or two beers a week, and without even really thinking about it, he moved to a bar a couple of blocks away. It didn't occur to him until later (until my head cleared was how he put it) that he was unconsciously putting distance between himself and the last place he'd seen Dooley; that he had, in fact, repented of the whole thing. If, that was, it had ever been anything other than a fantasy, just one more Jim Dooley air-castle which Joe Woodbody had helped to furnish while drinking away the waning weeks of another miserable Pittsburgh winter. And that was what he had believed, he finished, summing up as earnestly as a lawyer whose client faces lethal injection if he screws up. He had come to the conclusion that most of Jim Dooley's stories of banditry and survival at Brushy Mountain had been complete fabrications, and his idea of getting Mrs. Landon to give up her late husband's ma.n.u.scripts was just one more. Their deal had been nothing but a child's game of What-If.

"If that's true, tell me something," Lisey said. "If Dooley had shown up with a truckload of Scott's stories, would that have kept you from taking them?"

"I don't know."

That, she thought, was actually honest, and so she asked him something else. "Do you know what you've done? What you've set in motion?"

To this Professor Woodbody said nothing, and she thought that was also honest. As honest, maybe, as he was capable of being.

7.

After a pause to think, Lisey said: "Did you give him the number where he called me? Do I have you to thank for that, too?"

"No! Absolutely not! I didn't give him any number, I promise you!"

Lisey believed him. "You're going to do something for me, Professor," she said. "If Dooley gets in touch with you again, maybe just to tell you he's hot on the trail and things are lookin good, you're going to tell him the deal's off. Totally off."

"I will." The man's eagerness was almost abject. "Believe me, I-" He was interrupted by a woman's voice-his wife's, Lisey had no doubt-asking something. There came a rustling sound as he covered the bottom part of the telephone with his hand.

Lisey didn't mind. She was adding up her situation here and not liking the total. Dooley had told her she could turn off the heat by giving Woodbody Scott's papers and unpublished ma.n.u.scripts. The Professor would then call the madman, tell him everything was cool, and that would be that. Only the former King of the Incunks claimed he no longer had any way of getting in touch with Dooley, and Lisey believed him. Was it an oversight on Dooley's part? A glitch in his planning? She didn't think so. She thought that Dooley really might have some vague intention of showing up at Woodbody's office (or suburban castle) with Scott's papers...but before he did, he planned to first terrorize her and then hurt her in places she'd never let the boys touch at the junior high school dances. And why would he do that, after going to such great lengths to a.s.sure both the Professor and Lisey herself that there was a fail-safe system in place to keep bad things from happening if she cooperated?

Maybe because he needs to give himself permission.

That rang true. And later on-after she was dead, maybe, or so grotesquely maimed she wished she were dead-Jim Dooley's conscience would be able to a.s.sure itself that Lisey herself had been to blame. I gave her every chance, her friend "Zack" would think. It was n.o.body's fault but her own. She had to be Yoko to the bitter end.

Okay. Okay, then. If he showed up, she'd just give him the keys to the barn and the study and tell him to take whatever he wanted. I'll tell him to knock himself out, have a ball.

But at this thought Lisey's lips thinned into the humorless moon-smile perhaps only her sisters and her late husband, who called it Lisey's Tornado Look, would have recognized. "The smuck I will," she muttered, and looked around for the silver spade. It wasn't there. She'd left it in the car. If she wanted it, she'd better go out and get it before it got completely dar- "Mrs. Landon?" It was the Professor, sounding more anxious than ever. She'd forgotten all about him. "Are you still there?"

"Yeah," she said. "This is what it gets you, you know."

"I beg pardon?"

"You know what I'm talking about. All the stuff you wanted so bad, the stuff you thought you had to have? This is what it gets you. How you feel right now. Plus the questions you'll have to answer when I hang up, of course."

"Mrs. Landon, I don't-"

"If the police call you, I want you to tell them everything you've told me. Which means you better answer your wife's questions first, don't you think?"

"Mrs. Landon, please!" Woodbody sounded panicky now.

"You bought into this. You and your friend Dooley."

"Stop calling him my friend!"

Lisey's Tornado Look grew stronger, the lips thinning until they showed the tops of her teeth. At the same time, her eyes narrowed until they were no more than blue sparks. It was a feral look, and it was all Debusher.

"But he is!" she cried. "You're the one who drank with him, and told him your tale of woe, and laughed when he called me Yoko Landon. You were the one who set him on me, whether you said it in so many words or not, and now it turns out he's just as crazy as a s.h.i.+thouse rat and you can't pull him off. So yes, Professor, I'm going to call the County Sheriff, and yessirree, I'll be giving them your name, I'll be giving them anything that'll help them find your friend, because he's not done, you know it and so do I, because he doesn't want to be done, he's having a good smucking time, and this is what it gets you. You bought it, you own it! Okay? Okay?"

No answer. But she could hear the wet sound of breathing and knew the former King of the Incunks was trying not to cry. She hung up, snagged another ciggy off the floor, lit it. She went back to the telephone, then shook her head. She'd call the Sheriff's Office in a minute. First she wanted to get the silver spade out of the Beemer, and she wanted to do it right away, before all the light was gone and her part of the world swapped day for night.

8.

The side yard-which she supposed she'd go to her grave thinking of as the dooryard-was already too dark for comfort, although Venus, the wis.h.i.+ng-star, had yet to make her appearance in the sky. The shadows where the barn joined the toolshed were especially dark, and the BMW was parked less than twenty feet from there. Of course Dooley wasn't hiding in that well of shadows, and if he was on the place, he might be anywhere: leaning against the changing-hut by the pool, peering around the corner of the house where the kitchen was, crouched behind the cellar bulkhead...