Keohane, G. - Solomon's Grave

As he walked toward the table to watch the remaining four men race for the finish in a boisterous game of cribbage—he never thought of that game as being boisterous until he watched these four play—he checked his watch.

Almost eleven o’clock.

That was late. The lights in the room seemed to dim. For the first time, he saw how faded the furniture was. The walls were a drab color, redeemed only by the colorful oil reproductions hanging unnoticed at various points. Even so, with the exception of one which gave him the heebie-jeebies for some reason, they hung old and uninterestingly around them.

What was he doing here?

He was supposed to be at work. It was work that called him, wasn’t it?

“Oh, God,” he said aloud. Steve Arruda looked up after counting his peg down the home stretch on the cribbage board.

“What’s wrong, Art?” He squinted, as if seeing something for the first time. “Man, you’re looking pale.”

Art looked at him, trying to focus. Why on earth did he come here? Someone from work called. There’d been a problem.

No, Peter Quinn called. Not someone from work.

Art staggered to a chair and sat. He gripped his right arm with his left hand, trying to calm its shaking. Steve scrambled drunkenly up from his chair and ran over.

“You OK, Art?”

Steve’s cribbage partner laid the stub of a cigar he’d been smoking into an ashtray and swiveled in his chair, not rising, but looking over with no less concern. “You should maybe head home, guy. You don’t look so good—hey! Leave those pegs where they are until Steve gets back!”

Next to him, a tall skinny man with a long, dropping moustache laughed and raised his fingers from his peg with dramatic flourish.

I’m going mad , Art thought. He leaned forward, barely hearing Steve’s that’s right, Man, take it easy and breathe. Want me to call your wife? and tried to calm down. His breath came in short gasps. He wondered if this was what it was like to have an anxiety attack. Maybe it was his heart.

The past months swam past unbidden, revealing truth in its unforgiving clarity. Night upon night, coming here, spending less time with Beverly, avoiding church. The call from Nate the other day, when Art told his son to leave him alone. He’d been acting like... like what? A man in a trance. How could he have moved so far...?

The woman, of course. Here, one night; a voice that sounded so much like Peter Quinn’s speaking quietly, like the voice of Satan himself, You cheated on your wife with her, and enjoyed it. Don’t you remember?

Yes, he did remember. He’d had too much to drink... so unlike him, at least the him before all this. A beer now and then, maybe, rarely more than a couple at one time... but yes, he did remember, one night, the woman. The details were sketchy. Memories without substance, like a movie.

Like a movie playing on a television.

What was he remembering?

“Steve,” he said suddenly, the exhaustion and confusion washing away. Even as he looked up to the man crouched in front of him, he imagined lost pieces of his life falling into place.

“Yeah, feeling better?”

“Do you—” what would he say? Did he remember Art having sex with some strange woman?

A movie playing on a television.

He wasn’t drunk that night. He couldn’t have been. He’d remember at least drinking more than one beer before getting fuzzy. Then what—

The phone rang in his pocket. Steve and the man with the moustache rose simultaneously, each thinking the call was on theirs. Such was the curse of portable phones, Art always thought, generally with more amusement than now.

Art knew it was his phone. Could remember other times, coming clearer, when he had reached this level of understanding only to answer the phone and then... nothing. That moment after Nate’s call at work, any doubt washed away as if some buried instruction in his brain had kicked in, shutting his thoughts down. Again.

Steve’s cribbage partner broke his own rule and counted out his hand on the board. He said happily, “Ain’t mine. Mine plays the Star Spangled Banner when I have a call. Does it better than most versions I’ve heard at the Red Sox games.” He laughed, and slipped his peg a couple of unearned notches ahead.

Art’s phone rang again from his coat hanging over the back of an empty chair. Steve said, “Art, it’s your phone.”

Of course it was, he thought despondently. He rose and grabbed his jacket, but not to answer the call. He headed for the door, needing to get home, talk to Beverly, try and save their marriage before it was too late. He was confused still, but more and more details fell into place in his mind. He hadn’t been unfaithful, he was almost certain of that now. But the thought that he’d been drugged and shown a pornographic film, made to think... no, none of it made any sense.

The phone stopped ringing. Art didn’t have voicemail, so whoever it was must have given up. If it was Beverly, it didn’t matter. He’d be home soon enough. He took the phone from his pocket, turned it off, and put it away again.

Someone else’s phone began to ring. The man with the Star Spangled Banner ring guffawed and said, too loudly, “Looks like the wives are calling you boys home!”

Steve pressed a button on his own phone and said, “Hello?”

Art opened the door and stepped outside. The cool night air opened his mind further. More and more understanding, some of it dark—almost frighteningly so—but clearer than it had been in a long time. It made him giddy with relief.

“Art!” Steve’s voice. Art turned and waved goodnight to him. His hand froze mid-air when he saw the man holding out his phone. “It’s your wife. She’s worried sick, says you didn’t answer your phone and figured she’d check with me.” In a low, conspiratorial voice, he whispered, “If she’s calling me she knows where you are, so no sense hiding.” He grinned.

Art wanted to say Just tell her I’m on my way home , but remembered that he wasn’t suppose to be here in the first place. The message would sound too much like a brush off. He’d tell her he would explain everything when he got home, then hang up before Quinn arrived. The sooner he was out of this place the better. In fact, once he got home, he’d remove the battery from his own phone. Maybe go so far as change his number.

He reached out to Steve’s proffered hand, too late wondering how Beverly had known this man’s cell phone number.

“Hi, Bev,” he said, “Listen, I—“

“Mister Dinneck,” said Peter Quinn’s smooth voice.

The world crinkled around him, faded to black.

No, no! God hel —

And he was no longer anywhere but in the world created for him by his master. He listened to the instructions, handed the phone back to Steve and returned inside.

It was still early. He could wait a little longer. He saw Steve heading directly for his car through the closing front door, heard the Star Spangled Banner begin to play from somewhere in the room. He was content to simply sit in the chair and wait for Quinn to show up. He had something important to tell him.

After Star Spangled Banner listened to the call without speaking, he passed the phone to the next, who listened then passed it on to the third. All three men at the cribbage table rose as one and went to get their jackets. They said, “Goodnight, Art.” Art Dinneck waved absently to them.

He was trying to remember something important. It was just at the tip of his memory, if he could only remember....

Chapter Sixty

“Is the girl inside?”

Manny Paulson nodded. He stood in the open doorway leading from the alley into the store’s back room. Peter Quinn closed his car door and said, “Is Dinneck the only one out front?”