Jonathan Lethem: Gun, with Occasional Music

The ewe performed a nervous little dance before choosing the easy chair across from me and sitting down. I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and said: “Has Dr. Testafer told you what happened to Dr. Stanhunt?”

“Well, yes,” said the sheep. “He was very upset.”

“We all are,” I said. “Especially my client. He’s about to take a trip to the freezer, and I personally don’t think he killed the doctor. Did you know Stanhunt very well?”

The ewe flinched, but it could have meant anything: I was no Doolittle. “I met him once,” she said.

“He came up here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever come down off the hill, Dulcie?”

She wrenched up her mouth. “Not very often.”

“Must be kind of lonely,” I suggested.

“I’m not going to say anything against Grover, if that’s what you have in mind. I’m quite happy here, and if I wasn’t I’d leave.”

“Yes, I’m sure you would. Does the name Danny Phoneblum mean anything to you? Dr. Testafer seemed uncomfortable talking about the subject, and I thought you might cleat it up for me.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “That’s exactly what Dr. Testafer said. I mention Phoneblum, and everyone is afraid not. What are you afraid of, Dulcie?”

Her eyes widened and a funny sound emerged from her throat, a sort of strangled bleat. “I—I shouldn’t be talking to you. Grover will be angry with me.”

“You ever meet a strong-arm kangaroo named Joey Castle? He works for Phoneblum, or at least he did last night.”

“No.” She said it firmly. She seemed relieved to be able to deliver an answer.

“All right. Let’s try another tack. Testafer was worried about some papers that had gotten lost, something from the office files. What can you tell me about that?”

“Nothing.” She kicked the slipper off her right hoof and scratched at her left flank in an unnaturally repetitive way, as if she were being bitten by a flea under her wool.

“Okay,” I said. “You’re afraid of somebody and you don’t want to talk. That’s fine. I’m a patient guy, believe it or not. This carpet’s big, but it’s not all tacked down as neatly as you and Testafer. We’ll find out what’s been swept underneath.” I congratulated myself on the metaphor and started to think about where to go next. I wasn’t as confident as I sounded, and I’m not really patient—not even a little.

“Grover is under a lot of pressure,” said the ewe suddenly, surprising me. “You’ve got to understand. It’s not his fault. Danny Phoneblum is—”

“That’s enough,” came a voice from the doorway. It was Grover Testafer, and he had a gun pointed in my direction. It was an electronic dart gun, and he held it like he might know how to use it.

“Hello, Doctor,” I said. The sheep just trembled in her chair.

Testafer stepped inside and shut the door behind him without looking away from me for a second. He’d learned the trick of bending at the knees to fit in the apartment, and he duckwalked over to a position beside one of the stoop-shouldered floor lamps. His florid face was lit up from underneath like a demonic mask. “Get up,” he said.

“Right,” I replied wearily.

“Outside.”

I gave Dulcie a smile and then I walked hunchbacked to the door.

“Go.” He turned to the sheep. “You stay here.” His voice was brittle.

I put my hand on the knob. “Here’s a tip, Grover; You’re supposed to go first—”

“Shut up.”

Well, I’d tried to warn him. I opened the door and stepped to the left and pressed myself flat against the shingles. Testafer said “Shit,” and I didn’t say anything back. He nearly had to bend double to get through the little door, and when his gun hand appeared, I kicked it as hard as I could, which was hard. Then I reared back and hit him with a solid right from the waist, and almost broke my hand on his jaw. His fat body sagged in the doorway, but I grabbed him by the collar before he fell back inside. I pushed him up against the side of the house and reached down for the gun, but my right hand wouldn’t close enough to pick it up. So I kicked it a few feet away, and it vanished in the unmowed grass.

Testafer was pressed up against the house as if I were still holding him there, his face crumbling to reveal fifty-odd years of terror and insecurity. Drool leaked from the side of his mouth where my fist had landed. I felt real sorry for him.

“Let’s go inside and talk,” I said, except it came out a pant. He nodded silently and walked shakily to the big front door. Dulcie was following instructions, I guess; there wasn’t a peep from the little house.

Testafer’s quarters were a little more tasteful, and a lot more spacious. The living room was light and airy, at least by comparison. One wall was entirely taken up with shelves displaying old magazines in glossy plastic covers. I could see through to a kitchen tiled in white and blue and, beyond that, a covered porch on the back of the house. Testafer walked straight through and rinsed his mouth in the sink, swirling a mouthful of water like fancy wine before spitting it out. I didn’t see blood, but my hand hurt and I didn’t see blood on that either.

When he was done, he came back into the room and stood in front of me. He’d put his composure together again somewhere in the interval. “Have a seat,” he said, and I did.

The table between us was a big cross-section slice of a tree trunk polished to a mirrored sheen. It was empty except for a little silver box at one corner, and I wasn’t too surprised when Testafer opened the box and spilled some make onto the table. “You’re very persistent, Mr. Metcalf,” he said, and as the words came out, I could hear him working his jaw to find out what hurt and what didn’t.

I decided to get right to business. I was tired of feeling people out and getting nowhere. “I need to talk to Phoneblum,” I said, and tried to sound like I knew what it meant to be saying it.

“I guess I could help you with that,” he said carefully. “You do things differently than the Office.”

“I try to, yes.”

“I should warn you that you’re out of your jurisdiction on this.”

“One of the pleasures of my job is deciding for myself where my jurisdiction lies,” I said. “Who is Phoneblum that he commands such respect?”

Testafer leaned forward and began chopping at the make with a little ivory-handled blade from the box. He looked up at me from under his eyebrows and then down again at the make on the shiny surface. The sun threw a beam into the room that crossed the table, and as Testafer chopped, I could see little motes floating away in the light.

“I spent most of my adult life working to achieve this,” he said, gesturing with his hand. “I’m not comfortable in the city. I don’t like people. I like cooking, and music.” He put the knife back into the box. “We all make our compromises. In an ideal world there wouldn’t be a Danny Phoneblum.”

I nodded to keep him going.

“I met him through Maynard, and I tolerated him only to the extent that I understood their relationship to be necessary to Maynard, though I never knew why. He’s a dirty gangster, you understand. But he owned a piece of Maynard, and I found that out too late.”

“Does he own a piece of you?”

“No—no.” Testafer worked his jaw again. “Phoneblum has ways of manipulating events and karma to suit his needs—he could make my life uncomfortable, and he hasn’t. But he doesn’t own me. Not a bit.” He took a straw out of the box and leaned over the table.

“You call him a gangster—what’s his racket?”

Testafer stopped snorting, but he stayed bent over with his face in the make. “I wouldn’t know.”