Black House

Beezer leaves the room in a hurry, not quite running, and Jack shades Mouse from the brief glare of kitchen sunlight as best he can. The hand clamped on Jack’s loosens a little more.

Jack turns to Doc. "Do you think he’s going?"

Doc shakes his head. "Passed out again. Poor old Mousie ain’t getting off that easy." He gives Jack a grim, haunted look. "This better be worth it, Mr. Policeman. ‘Cause if it ain’t, I’m gonna replumb your sink."

Beezer comes back with a huge bundle of rags, and he’s put on a pair of green kitchen gloves. Not speaking, he mops up the pool of vomit between Mouse’s shoulder and the backrest of the couch. The black specks have ceased moving, and that’s good. To have not seen them moving in the first place would have been even better. The vomit, Jack notices with dismay, has eaten into the couch’s worn fabric like acid.

"I’m going to pull the blanket down for a second or two," Doc says, and Bear Girl gets up at once, still holding the bowl with the melting ice. She goes to one of the bookshelves and stands there with her back turned, trembling.

"Doc, is this something I really need to see?"

I think maybe it is. I don’t think you know what you’re dealing with, even now." Doc takes hold of the blanket and eases it out from beneath Mouse’s limp hand. Jack sees that more of the black stuff has begun to ooze from beneath the dying man’s fingernails. "Remember that this happened only a couple of hours ago, Mr. Policeman."

He pulls the blanket down. Standing with her back to them, Susan "Bear Girl" Osgood faces the great works of Western philosophy and begins to cry silently. Jack tries to hold back his scream and cannot.

Henry pays off the taxi, goes into his house, takes a deep and soothing breath of the air-conditioned cool. There is a faint aroma — sweet — and he tells himself it’s just fresh-cut flowers, one of Mrs. Morton’s specialties. He knows better, but wants no more to do with ghosts just now. He is actually feeling better, and he supposes he knows why: it was telling the ESPN guy to take his job and shove it. Nothing more apt to make a fellow’s day, especially when the fellow in question is gainfully employed, possessed of two credit cards that are nowhere near the max-out point, and has a pitcher of cold iced tea in the fridge.

Henry heads kitchenward now, making his way down the hall with one hand held out before him, testing the air for obstacles and displacements. There’s no sound but the whisper of the air conditioner, the hum of the fridge, the clack of his heels on the hardwood . . .

. . . and a sigh.

An amorous sigh.

Henry stands where he is for a moment, then turns cautiously. Is the sweet aroma a little stronger now, especially facing back in this direction, toward the living room and the front door? He thinks yes. And it’s not flowers; no sense fooling himself about that. As always, the nose knows. That’s the aroma of My Sin.

"Rhoda?" he says, and then, lower: "Lark?"

No answer. Of course not. He’s just having the heebie-jeebies, that’s all; those world-famous shaky-shivers, and why not?

"Because I’m the sheik, baby," Henry says. "The Sheik, the Shake, the Shook."

No smells. No sexy sighs. And yet he’s haunted by the idea of his wife back in the living room, standing there in perfumed cerements of the grave, watching him silently as he came in and passed blindly before her. His Lark, come back from Noggin Mound Cemetery for a little visit. Maybe to listen to the latest Slobberbone CD.

"Quit it," he says softly. "Quit it, you dope."

He goes into his big, well-organized kitchen. On his way through the door he slaps a button on the panel there without even thinking about it. Mrs. Morton’s voice comes from the overhead speaker, which is so high-tech she might almost be in the room.

"Jack Sawyer was by, and he dropped off another tape he wants you to listen to. He said it was . . . you know, that man. That bad man."

"Bad man, right," Henry murmurs, opening the refrigerator and enjoying the blast of cold air. His hand goes unerringly to one of three cans of Kingsland Lager stored inside the door. Never mind the iced tea.

"Both of the tapes are in your studio, by the soundboard. Also, Jack wanted you to call him on his cell phone." Mrs. Morton’s voice takes on a faintly lecturing tone. "If you do speak to him, I hope you tell him to be careful. And be careful yourself." A pause. "Also, don’t forget to eat supper. It’s all ready to go. Second shelf of the fridge, on your left."

"Nag, nag, nag," Henry says, but he’s smiling as he opens his beer. He goes to the telephone and dials Jack’s number.

On the seat of the Dodge Ram parked in front of 1 Nailhouse Row, Jack’s cell phone comes to life. This time there’s no one in the cab to be annoyed by its tiny but penetrating tweet.

"The cellular customer you are trying to reach is currently not answering. Please try your call again later."

Henry hangs up, goes back to the doorway, and pushes another button on the panel there. The voices that deliver the time and temperature are all versions of his own, but he’s programmed a random shuffle pattern into the gadget, so he never knows which one he’s going to get. This time it’s the Wisconsin Rat, screaming crazily into the sunny air-conditioned silence of his house, which has never felt so far from town as it does today:

"Time’s four twenty-two P.M.! Outside temperature’s eighty-two! Inside temperature’s seventy! What the hell do you care? What the hell does anyone care? Chew it up, eat it up, wash it down, it aaall — "

— comes out the same place. Right. Henry thumbs the button again, silencing the Rat’s trademark cry. How did it get late so fast? God, wasn’t it just noon? For that matter, wasn’t he just young, twenty years old and so full of spunk it was practically coming out of his ears? What —