Black House

With that he continues his trip down the corridor. Vera stands where she is, looking at him with her own jaw hanging. She has forgotten all about her crossword puzzle.

In his room, Burny lies down on his bed and slips his hands into the small of his back. From there down he aches like a bugger. Later he will buzz for the fat old bitch, get her to bring him an ibuprofen. For now, though, he has to stay sharp. One more little trick still to do.

"Found you, Potter," he murmurs. "Good . . . old . . . Potsie."

Burny hadn’t been shaking doorknobs at all (not that Andy Railsback will ever know this). He had been feeling for the fellow who diddled him out of a sweet little Chicago housing deal back in the late seventies. South Side, home of the White Sox. Blacktown, in other words. Lots of federal money in that one, and several bushels of Illinois dough as well. Enough skim available to last for years, more angles than on a baseball field, but George "Go Fuck Your Mother" Potter had gotten there first, cash had changed hands beneath the proverbial table, and Charles Burn-side (or perhaps then he’d still been Carl Bierstone; it’s hard to remember) had been out in the cold.

But Burny has kept track of the thief for lo these many years. (Well, not Burny himself, actually, but as we must by now have realized, this is a man with powerful friends.) Old Potsie — what his friends called him in the days when he still had a few — declared bankruptcy in La Riviere back in the nineties, and lost most of what he still had hidden away during the Great Dot-Com Wreck of Double Aught. But that’s not good enough for Burny. Potsie requires further punishment, and the coincidence of that particular f**khead washing up in this particular f**khole of a town is just too good to pass up. Burny’s principal motive — a brainless desire to keep stirring the pot, to make sure bad goes to worse — hasn’t changed, but this will serve that purpose, too.

So he traveled to the Nelson, doing so in a way Jack understands and Judy Marshall has intuited, homing in on Potsie’s room like some ancient bat. And when he sensed Andy Railsback behind him, he was of course delighted. Railsback will save him having to make another anonymous call, and Burny is, in truth, getting tired of doing all their work for them.

Now, back in his room, all comfy-cozy (except for the arthritis, that is), he turns his mind away from George Potter, and begins to Summon.

Looking up into the dark, Charles Burnside’s eyes begin to glow in a distinctly unsettling way. "Gorg," he says. "Gorg t’eelee. Dinnit a abbalah. Samman Tansy. Samman a montah a Irma. Dinnit a abbalah, Gorg. Dinnit a Ram Abbalah."

Gorg. Gorg, come. Serve the abbalah. Find Tansy. Find the mother of Irma. Serve the abbalah, Gorg.

Serve the Crimson King.

Burny’s eyes slip closed. He goes to sleep with a smile on his face. And beneath their wrinkled lids, his eyes continue to glow like hooded lamps.

Morty Fine, the night manager of the Nelson Hotel, is half-asleep over his magazine when Andy Railsback comes bursting in, startling him so badly that Morty almost tumbles out of his chair. His magazine falls to the floor with a flat slap.

"Jesus Christ, Andy, you almost gave me a heart attack!" Morty cries. "You ever hear of knocking, or at least clearing your goddam throat?"

Andy takes no notice, and Morty realizes the old fella is as white as a sheet. Maybe he’s the one having the heart attack. It wouldn’t be the first time one occurred in the Nelson.

"You gotta call the police," Andy says. "They’re horrible. Dear Jesus, Morty, they’re the most horrible pictures I ever saw . . . Polaroids . . . and oh man, I thought he was going to come back in . . . come back in any second . . . but at first I was just froze, and I . . . I . . ."

"Slow down," Morty says, concerned. "What are you talking about?"

Andy takes a deep breath and makes a visible effort to get himself under control. "Have you seen Potter?" he asks. "The guy in 314?"

"Nope," Morty says, "but most nights he’s in Lucky’s around this time, having a few beers and maybe a hamburger. Although why anybody would eat anything in that place, I don’t know." Then, perhaps associating one ptomaine palace with another: "Hey, have you heard what the cops found out at Ed’s Eats? Trevor Gordon was by and he said — "

"Never mind." Andy sits in the chair on the other side of the desk and stares at Morty with wet, terrified eyes. "Call the police. Do it right now. Tell them that the Fisherman is a man named George Potter, and he lives on the third floor of the Nelson Hotel." Andy’s face tightens in a hard grimace, then relaxes again. "Right down the hall from yours truly."

"Potter? You’re dreaming, Andy. That guy’s nothing but a retired builder. Wouldn’t hurt a fly."

"I don’t know about flies, but he hurt the hell out of some little kids. I seen the Polaroids he took of them. They’re in his closet. They’re the worst things you ever saw."

Then Andy does something that amazes Morty and convinces him that this isn’t a joke, and probably not just a mistake, either: Andy Railsback begins to cry.

Tansy Freneau, a.k.a. Irma Freneau’s grieving mother, is not actually grieving yet. She knows she should be, but grief has been deferred. Right now she feels as if she is floating in a cloud of warm bright wool. The doctor (Pat Skarda’s associate, Norma Whitestone) gave her five milligrams of lorazepam four or five hours ago, but that’s only the start. The Holiday Trailer Park, where Tansy and Irma have lived since Cubby Freneau took off for Green Bay in ninety-eight, is handy to the Sand Bar, and she has a part-time "thing" going with Lester Moon, one of the bartenders. The Thunder Five has dubbed Lester Moon "Stinky Cheese" for some reason, but Tansy unfailingly calls him Lester, which he appreciates almost as much as the occasional boozy grapple in Tansy’s bedroom or out back of the Bar, where there’s a mattress (and a black light) in the storeroom. Around five this evening, Lester ran over with a quart of coffee brandy and four hundred milligrams of OxyContin, all considerately crushed and ready for snorting. Tansy has done half a dozen lines already, and she is cruising. Looking over old pictures of Irma and just . . . you know . . . cruising.