Эд Горман - Blood Moon

He couldn’t be sure, having always fallen asleep in his English classes, but this Robert David Chase seemed like a really awful writer. Really really awful.

Those were his feelings, anyway, till he came to Chapters Six and Nine, both of which were told from the viewpoint of one Haskins P. Washington, a self-described “entrepreneur of the flesh” — i.e., a pimp.

Haskins, it seems, this all told in flashback, had been incarcerated for life before finally escaping six years into his sentence.

Here’s how it went. When prisoners worked farm detail, they worked outside the prison walls, usually in fields not far from highways or arterial roads on which there was heavy truck traffic.

Haskins decided to take advantage of this (1) by getting himself on farm detail, which took fourteen months and (2) by then having a friend of his rent a truck and drive by a certain field on a certain day at a certain time, at which point friend stopped the truck at a certain point and two other friends with Uzis jumped from the back of the truck, firing hundreds of rounds to protect Haskins P. Washington who came barreling across the road from the field, and who then hopped in the back of the truck, which then sped away.

This was Chapter Six.

Chapter Nine contained another escape plan — this involving abducting a prison official and putting a chopper down in the middle of the yard — but this was pure Hollywood and sounded crazy as hell and completely bogus as a serious escape plan.

But Chapter Six, now that was another matter.

Chapter Six, he practically memorized as he began making plans of his own...

After buying USA Today , the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Tribune , and after eating a small piece of pie mostly because I wanted to sit at the old-fashioned Coca-Cola fountain and pretend it was 1958 and that I was a popular quarterback and all-around nice guy, it having been a far, far better world back in those days, I tucked the newspapers under my arm and strolled back to the motel.

It was misting now, a chill shimmering prairie spray, and it gave me the animal desire to be in some place snug and warm, the way I’d felt passing the restaurant window earlier.

The crowd had pretty much gone. Once the body had been removed, what was the point in hanging around? The police, in and out, in and out, carrying small plastic evidence bags, sure proved to be disappointing as spectator sports. So drift home or drift to the tavern and speculate on who killed Sam Lodge, and why, and if you got a chance to embellish on the basic tale (“I heard they decapitated him; I mean, I’m not sure of that but I think that’s what somebody told me”), so much the better. A couple of brewskis and some bone-chilling bullshit horror story. What could be better?

If it had resembled a lively movie set before, the parking lot now resembled its old shabby self, even shabbier in the mist. I went to the front office and asked the old-timer where I’d be sleeping tonight.

“Room 167,” he said.

He got me the key and said, “Some folks’re sayin’ you know his wife.”

“Whose wife?”

“Whose wife? Who do you think’s wife? Sam Lodge’s wife.”

I shook my head. “You mean they’re saying I had an affair with her?”

“Something like that, I guess.”

“Well, I hate to disappoint them, but I’ve only laid eyes on her twice. And that’s all I laid, too. Eyes.” I held up my hands surgeon-style. “These puppies have never known her fleshy pleasures. So tell all your friends that for me.”

“No reason to get mad.”

“Yeah, I should enjoy being called a murderer.”

“Hey, you won’t find no wet eyes in this town. Sam Lodge was a grade-A jerk.”

I’d had enough of this conversation. “How about the key to 167?”

“Soon as you give me the other key back.”

It was like an exchange of prisoners.

We swapped small golden keys, and I started to leave.

“There was a call for you,” he said.

“You know who?”

“She didn’t say. Just said she’d call back.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry if I made you mad.”

“I’m just kind of tired. I probably overreacted. Don’t worry about it.”

A different set of ghosts greeted me in 167, each room being the sum of what has transpired within its walls down the years. The Agency, back in the days when they spent a lot of money on such things as telepathy and ESP, concluded that certain rooms could bring on subtle stress because they had not been warmed by sunlight for long periods of time. The humans who briefly occupied the rooms seemed to know this somehow and responded in various neurotic ways. Allegedly, the Agency people could duplicate this experiment perfectly every time out but when it was finally written up in article form several Agency scientists argued with how the test had been set up in the first place. Personally, I think the test results were probably correct. We do seem to respond in unconscious ways to rooms we’re in. That’s why I believe in ghosts of some sort, though not necessarily of the chain-clanking variety.

The motel folks had been nice enough to stash all my clothes in the closet, this one being the economy model, coming without a corpse included.

I called Jane Avery’s house but all I got was her machine. I assumed she’d have a lot to do tonight, what with Lodge’s death and all. Our pizza would likely be later than either of us wanted.

I stripped down to my underwear and did a hard fifteen minutes of exercises: five running in place, five doing push-ups, five doing sit-ups. I had been starting to slide into a vexation of some sort — dead bodies having that effect on me sometimes — and usually my only out is exercising. Breaking a sweat seems to have a kind of healing effect on me.

I was in the bathroom, toweling off, when the phone rang.

I was hoping for Jane. Instead I got Eve McNally.

“Is it true?” she said.

“True about what?”

“You know. About Sam Lodge being murdered.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

“My Lord. It’s all getting out of control.”

“What’s getting out of control, Eve?”

There was a long pause. “Have you seen my husband tonight?”

“No. Was he planning to look me up?”

“No — I just meant...”

The pause again.

“Any word about your daughter?”

“No.”

“Are you worried about your husband?”

“A little, I guess.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“He stopped back around suppertime. I... I sort of lost control. I started screaming at him and hitting him because of Melissa. I’m worried she might already be — you know.”

She couldn’t say the word. I didn’t blame her.

“He started crying. I never saw him cry before. It was hard to watch. It was like he didn’t know how to cry or something. His whole chest just kind of heaved and there were tears rolling down his cheeks and — I felt sorry for him. I’m real mad at him, for getting Melissa involved in all this, but I felt sorry for him, too. You know?”

“I know.”

“I told him to go see you.”

“You did?”

“Uh-huh. I said maybe you could help him without going to the police. You know, have two minds working on it.”

“Working on what, Eve?”

The long silence again.

“If he wants to tell you, he’ll tell you. Otherwise I just have to keep my mouth shut. I’ll get her killed for sure.”

For the first time in this conversation, she started crying again. Soft, almost silent tears.

“I just keep saying Hail Marys over and over again but sometimes I wonder if there’s any God at all. I know I shouldn’t say that but that’s how I feel. I mean, I hear my voice talking out loud in the silence and I think — Why am I doing this? Nobody’s listening. Nobody’s out there.”