Christopher Moore - The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

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THE LUST LIZARD OF MELANCHOLY COVE
by CHRISTOPHER MOORE (1999)
[VERSION 1.1 (Apr 29 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please
update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.]
Prolog
September in Pine Cove is a sigh of relief, a nightcap, a long-deserved
nap. Soft autumn light filters through the trees, the tourists go back to Los
Angeles and San Francisco, and Pine Cove's five thousand residents wake up to
discover that they can once again find a parking place, get a table in a
restaurant, and walk the beaches without being conked by an errant Frisbee.
September is a promise. Rain will come at last and turn the golden
pastures around Pine Cove green, the tall Monterey pines that cover the hills
will stop dropping their needles, the forests of Big Stir will stop burning,
the grim smile developed over the summer by the waitresses and clerks will
bloom into something resembling real human expression, children will return to
school and the joy of old friends, drugs, and weapons that they missed over
the summer, and everyone, at last, will get some rest.
Come September, Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, lovingly dips the
sticky purple buds from his sensimilla plants. Mavis, down at the Head of the
Slug Saloon, funnels her top-shelf liquors back into the well from whence they
came. The tree service guys, with their chain saws, take down the dead and
dying pines lest they crash through someone's roof with the winter storms.
Woodpiles grow tall and wide around Pine Cove homes and the chimney sweep goes
to a twelve-hour workday. The sunscreen and needless souvenir shit shelf at
Brine's Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines is cleared and restocked with candles,
flashlight batteries, and lamp oil. (Monterey pine trees have notoriously
shallow root systems and an affinity for falling on power lines.) At the Pine
Cove Boutique, the hideous reindeer sweater is marked up for winter to await
being marked back down for the tenth consecutive spring.
In Pine Cove, where nothing happens (or at least nothing has happened for
a long time), September is an event: a quiet celebration. The people like
their events quiet. The reason they came here from the cities in the first
place was to get away from things happening. September is a celebration of
sameness. Each September is like the last. Except for this year.
This year three things happened. Not big things, by city standards, but
three things that coldcocked the beloved status quo nonetheless: forty miles
to the south, a tiny and not very dangerous leak opened in a cooling pipe at
the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant; Mavis Sand advertised in Songwriter
magazine for a Blues singer to play through the winter at the Head of the Slug
Saloon; and Bess Leander, wife and mother of two, hung herself.
Three things, omens if you will. September is a promise of what is to
come.
ADMITTING YOU HAVE A PROBLEM
"Dear, dear, how queer everything is today! And yesterday everything went
on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think:
Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember
feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same the next question Is: Who
in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventure In Wonderland
one
Theophilus Crowe
As dead people went, Bess Leander smelled pretty good: lavender, sage,
and a hint of dove. There were seven Shaker chairs hung on pegs on the walls
of the Leanders' dining room. The eighth was overturned under Bess, who hung
from the peg by a calico cloth rope around her neck. Dried flowers, baskets of
various shapes and sizes, and bundles of dried herbs hung from the open
ceiling beams.
Theophilus Crowe knew he should be doing cop stuff, but he just stood
there with two emergency medical technicians from the Pine Cove Fire
Department, staring up at Bess as if they were inspecting the newly installed
angel on a Christmas tree. Theo thought the pastel blue of Bess's skin went
nicely with her cornflower-blue dress and the patterns of the English china
displayed on simple wooden shelves at the end of the room. It was 7 A.M. and
Theo, as usual, was a little stoned.
Theo could hear sobs coming from upstairs, where Joseph Leander held his
two daughters, who were still in their nightgowns. There was no evidence of a
masculine presence anywhere in the house. It was Country Cute: bare pine
floors and bent willow baskets, flowers and rag dolls and herb-flavored
vinegars in blown-glass bottles; Shaker antiques, copper kettles, embroidery
samplers, spinning wheels, lace doilies, and porcelain placards with prayers
from the Dutch. Not a sports page or remote control in sight. Not a thing out
of place or a speck of dust anywhere. Joseph Leander must have walked very
light to live in this house without leaving tracks. A man less sensitive than
Theo might have called him whipped.
"That guy's whipped," one of the EMTs said. His name was Vance McNally.
He was fifty-one, short and muscular, and wore his hair slicked back with oil,
just as he had in high school. Occasionally, in his capacity as an EMT, he
saved lives, which was his rationalization for being a dolt the rest of the
time.
"He just found his wife hanging in the dining room, Vance," Theo
pronounced over the heads of the EMTs. He was six-foot-six, and even in his
flannel shirt and sneakers he could loom large when he needed to assert some
authority.
"She looks like Raggedy Ann," said Mike, the other EMT, who was in his
early twenties and excited to be on his first suicide call.
"I heard she was Amish," Vance said.
"She's not Amish," Theo said.
"I didn't say she was Amish, I just said I heard that. I figured she
wasn't Amish when I saw the blender in the kitchen. Amish don't believe in
blenders, do they?"
"Mennonite," Mike said with as much authority as his junior status would
afford.
"What's a Mennonite?" Vance asked.
"Amish with blenders."
"She wasn't Amish," Theo said.
"She looks Amish," Vance said.
"Well, her husband's not Amish," Mike said.
"How can you tell?" Vance said. "He has a beard."
"Zipper on his jacket," Mike said. "Amish don't have zippers."
Vance shook his head. "Mixed marriages. They never work."
"She wasn't Amish!" Theo shouted.
"Think what you want, Theo, there's a butter churn in the living room. I
think that says it all."
Mike rubbed at a mark on the wall beneath Bess's feet where her black
buckled shoes had scraped as she convulsed.
"Don't touch anything," Theo said.
"Why? She can't yell at us, she's dead. We wiped our feet on the way in,"
Vance said.
Mike stepped away from the wall. "Maybe she couldn't stand anything
touching her floors. Hanging was the only way."
Not to be outdone by the detective work of his protégé, Vance said, "You
know, the sphincters usually open up on a hanging victim -- leave an awful
mess. I'm wondering if she actually hanged herself."
"Shouldn't we call the police?" Mike said.
"I am the police," Theo said. He was Pine Cove's only constable, duly
elected eight years ago and reelected every other year thereafter.
"No, I mean the real police," Mike said.
"I'll radio the sheriff," Theo said. "I don't think there's anything you
can do here, guys. Would you mind calling Pastor Williams from the
Presbyterian church to come over? I need to talk to Joseph and I need someone
to stay with the girls."
"They were Presbyterians?" Vance seemed shocked. He had really put his
heart into the Amish theory.
"Please call," Theo said. He left the EMTs and went out through the
kitchen to his Volvo, where he switched the radio over to the frequency used
by the San Junipero Sheriff's Department, then sat there staring at the mike.
He was going to catch hell from Sheriff Burton for this.
"North Coast is yours, Theo. All yours," the sheriff had said. "My
deputies will pick up suspects, answer robbery calls, and let the Highway
Patrol investigate traffic accidents on Highway 1, that's it. Otherwise, you
keep them out of Pine Cove and your little secret stays secret." Theo was
forty-one years old and he still felt as if he was hiding from the junior high
vice principal laying low. Things like this weren't supposed to happen in Pine
Cove. Nothing happened in Pine Cove.
He took a quick hit from his Sneaky Pete smokeless pot pipe before keying
the mike and calling in the deputies.
Joseph Leander sat on the edge of the bed. He'd changed out of his
pajamas into a blue business suit, but his thinning hair was still sticking
out in sleep horns on the side. He was thirty-five, sandy-haired, thin but
working on a paunch that strained the buttons of his vest. Theo sat across
from him on a chair, holding a notepad. They could hear the sheriff's deputies
moving around downstairs.
"I can't believe she'd do this," Joseph said.
Theo reached over and squeezed the grieving husband's bicep. "I'm really
sorry, Joe. She didn't say anything that would indicate she was thinking about
doing something like this?"
Joseph shook his head without looking up. "She was getting better. Val
had given her some pills and she seemed to be getting better."
"She was seeing Valerie Riordan?" Theo asked. Valerie was Pine Cove's
only clinical psychiatrist. "Do you know what kind of pills?"
"Zoloft," Joseph said. "I think it's an antidepressant."
Theo wrote down the name of the drug on his notepad. "Then Bess was
depressed?"
"No, she just had this cleaning thing. Everything had to be cleaned every
day. She'd clean something, then go back five minutes later and clean it
again. She was making life miserable for the girls and me. She'd make us take
our shoes and socks off, then wash our feet in a basin before we came into the
house. But she wasn't depressed."
Theo wrote down "crazy" on his notepad. "When was the last time Bess went
to see Val?"
"Maybe six weeks ago. When she first got the pills. She really seemed to
be doing better. She even left the dishes in the sink overnight once. I was
proud of her."
"Where are her pills, Joseph?"
"Medicine cabinet." Joseph gestured to the bathroom.
Theo excused himself and went to the bathroom. The brown prescription
bottle was the only thing in the medicine cabinet other than disinfectants and
some Q-Tips. The bottle was about half-full. "I'm going to take these with
me," Theo said, pocketing the pills. "The sheriff's deputies are going to ask
you some of these same questions, Joseph. You just tell them what you told me,
okay?
Joseph nodded. "I think I should be with the girls."
"Just a bit longer, okay? I'll send up the deputy in charge."
Theo heard a car start outside and went to the window to see an ambulance
pulling away, the lights and siren off. Bess Leander's body riding off to the
morgue. He turned back to Joseph. "Call me if you need anything. I'm going to
go talk to Val Riordan."
Joseph stood up. "Theo, don't tell anyone that Bess was on
antidepressants. She didn't want anyone to know. She was ashamed."
"I won't. Call me if you need me." Theo left the room. A sharply dressed
plainclothes deputy met him at the bottom of the steps. Theo saw by the badge
on his belt that he was a detective sergeant.
"You're Crowe. John Voss." He extended his hand and Theo shook it. "We're
supposed to take it from here," Voss said. "What have you got?"
Theo was at once relieved and offended. Sheriff Burton was going to push
him off the case without even talking to him. "No note," Theo said. "I called
you guys ten minutes after I got the call. Joseph said she wasn't depressed,
but she was on medication. He came downstairs to have breakfast and found
her."
"Did you look around?" Voss asked. "This place has been scoured. There
isn't a smudge or a spot anywhere. It's like someone cleaned up the scene.
"She did that," Theo said. "She was a clean freak."
Voss scoffed. "She cleaned the house, then hung herself? Please."
Theo shrugged. He really didn't like this cop stuff. "I'm going to go
talk to her psychiatrist. I'll let you know what she says."
"Don't talk to anybody, Crowe. This is my investigation."
Theo smiled. "Okay. But she hung herself and that's all there is. Don't
make it into anything it's not. The family is in pretty bad shape."
"I'm a professional," Voss said, throwing it like an insult implying that
Theo was just dicking around in law enforcement, which, in a way, he was.
"Did you check out the Amish cult angle?" Theo asked, trying to keep a
straight face. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten high today.
"What?"
"Right, you're the pro," Theo said. "I forgot." And he walked out of the
house.
In the Volvo, Theo pulled the thin Pine Cove phone directory out of the
glove compartment and was looking up Dr. Valerie Riordan's number when a call
came in on the radio. Fight at the Head of the Slug Saloon. It was 8:30 A.M.
Mavis
It was rumored among the regulars at the Head of the Slug that under
Mavis Sand's slack, wrinkled, liver-spotted skin lay the gleaming metal
skeleton of a Terminator. Mavis first began augmenting her parts in the
fifties, first out of vanity: breasts, eyelashes, hair. Later, as she aged and
the concept of maintenance eluded her, she began having parts replaced as they
failed, until almost half of her body weight was composed of stainless steel
(hips, elbows, shoulders, finger joints, rods fused to vertebrae five through
twelve), silicon wafers (hearing aids, pace-maker, insulin pump), advanced
polymer resins (cataract replacement lenses, dentures), Kevlar fabric
(abdominal wall reinforcement), titanium (knees, ankles), and pork
(ventricular heart valve). In fact if not for the pig valve, Mavis would have
jumped classes directly from animal to mineral, without the traditional stop
at vegetable taken by most. The more inventive drunks at the Slug (little more
than vegetables themselves) swore that sometimes, between songs on the
jukebox, one could hear tiny but powerful servomotors whirring Mavis around
behind the bar. Mavis was careful never to crush a beer can or move a full keg
in plain sight of the customers lest she feed the rumors and ruin her image of
girlish vulnerability.
When Theo entered the Head of the Slug, he saw ex-scream-queen Molly
Michon on the floor with her teeth locked into the calf of a gray-haired man
who was screeching like a mashed cat. Mavis stood over them both, brandishing
her Louisville Slugger, ready to belt one of them out of the park.
"Theo," Mavis shrilled, "you got ten seconds to get this wacko out of my
bar before I brain her."
"No, Mavis." Theo raced forward and knocked Mavis's bat aside while
reaching into his back pocket for his handcuffs. He pried Molly's hands from
around the man's ankle and shackled them behind her back. The gray-haired
man's screams hit a higher pitch.
Theo got down on the floor and spoke into Molly's ear. "Let go, Molly.
You've got to let go of the man's leg."
An animal sound emanated from Molly's throat and bubbled out through
blood and saliva.
Theo stroked her hair out of her face. "I can't fix the problem if you
don't tell me what it is, Molly. I can't understand you with that guy's leg in
your mouth."
"Stand back, Theo," Mavis said. "I'm going to brain her."
Theo waved Mavis away. The gray-haired man screamed even louder.
"Hey!" Theo shouted. "Pipe down. I'm trying to have a conversation here."
The gray-haired man lowered his volume.
"Molly, look at me."
Theo saw a blue eye look away from the leg and the bloodlust faded from
it. He had her back. "That's right, Molly. It's me, Theo. Now what's the
problem?"
She spit out the man's leg and turned to look at Theo. Mavis helped the
man to a bar stool. "Get her out of here," Mavis said. "She's eighty-sixed.
This time forever."
Theo kept his eyes locked on Molly's. "Are you okay?"
She nodded. Bloody drool was running down her chin. Theo grabbed a bar
napkin and wiped it away, careful to keep his fingers away from her mouth.
"I'm going to help you up now and we're going to go outside and talk
about this, okay?"
Molly nodded and Theo picked her up by the shoulders, set her on her feet
and steered her toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at the bitten
man. "You okay? You need a doctor?"
"I didn't do anything to her. I've never seen that woman before in my
life. I just stopped in for a drink."
Theo looked at Mavis for confirmation. "He hit on her," Mavis said. "But
that's no excuse. A girl should appreciate the attention." She turned and
batted her spiderlike false eyelashes at the bitten man. "I could show you
some appreciation, sweetie."
The bitten man looked around in a panic. "No, I'm fine. No doctor. I'm
just fine. My wife's waiting for me."
"As long as you're okay," Theo said. "And you don't want to press charges
or anything?"
"No, just a misunderstanding. Soon as you get her out of here, I'll be
heading out of town."
There was a collective sigh of disappointment from the regulars who had
been placing side bets on who Mavis would hit with her bat.
"Thanks," Theo said. He shot Mavis a surreptitious wink and led Molly out
to the street excusing himself and his prisoner as they passed an old Black
man who was coming through the door carrying a guitar case.
"I 'spose a man run outta sweet talk and liquor, he gots to go to mo'
direct measures," the old Black man said to the bar with a dazzling grin.
"Someone here lookin fo' a Bluesman?"
Molly Michon
Theo put Molly into the passenger side of the Volvo. She sat with her
head down, her great mane of gray-streaked blonde hair hanging in her face.
She wore an oversized green sweater, tights, and high-top sneakers, one red,
one blue. She could have been thirty or fifty -- and she told Theo a different
age every time he picked her up.
Theo went around the car and climbed in. He said, "You know, Molly, when
you bite a guy on the leg, you're right on the edge of 'a danger to others or
yourself' you know that?"
She nodded and sniffled. A tear dropped out of the mass of hair and
spotted her sweater.
"Before I start driving, I need to know that you're calmed down. Do I
need to put you in the backseat?"
"It wasn't a fit," Molly said. "I was defending myself. He wanted a piece
of me." She lifted her head and turned to Theo, but her hair still covered her
face.
"Are you taking your drugs?"
"Meds, they call them meds."
"Sorry," Theo said. "Are you taking your meds?"
She nodded.
"Wipe your hair out of your face, Molly, I can barely understand you."
"Handcuffs, whiz kid."
Theo almost slapped his forehead: idiot! He really needed to stop getting
stoned on the job. He reached up and carefully brushed her hair away from her
face. The expression he found there was one of bemusement.
"You don't have to be so careful. I don't bite."
Theo smiled. "Well, actually..."
"Oh fuck you. You going to take me to County?"
"Should I?"
"I'll just be back in seventy-two and the milk in my refrigerator will be
spoiled."
"Then I'd better take you home."
He started the car and circled the block to head back to the Fly Rod
Trailer Court. He would have taken a back way if he could, to save Molly some
embarrassment, but the Fly Rod was right off Cypress, Pine Cove's main street.
As they passed the bank, people getting out of their cars turned to stare.
Molly made faces at them out the window.
"That doesn't help, Molly."
"Fuck 'em. Fans just want a piece of me. I can give 'em that. I've got my
soul."
"Mighty generous of you."
"If you weren't a fan, I wouldn't let you do this."
"Well, I am. Huge fan." Actually, he'd never heard of her until the first
time he was called to take her away from H.P.'s Cafe, where she had attacked
the espresso machine because it wouldn't quit staring at her.
"No one understands. Everyone takes a piece of you, then there's nothing
left for you. Even the meds take a piece of you. Do you have any idea what I'm
talking about here?"
Theo looked at her. "I have such a mind-numbing fear of the future that
the only way I can function at all is with equal amounts of denial and drugs."
"Jeez, Theo, you're really fucked up."
"Thanks."
"You can't go around saying crazy shit like that."
"I don't normally. It's been a tough day so far." He turned into the Fly
Rod Trailer Court: twenty run-down trailers perched on the bank of Santa Rosa
Creek, which carried only a trickle of water after the long, dry summer. A
grove of cypress trees hid the trailer park from the main street and the view
of passing tourists. The chamber of commerce had made the owner of the park
take down the sign at the entrance. The Fly Rod was a dirty little secret for
Pine Cove, and they kept it well.
Theo stopped in front of Molly's trailer, a vintage fifties single-wide
with small louvered windows and streaks of rust running from the roof. He got
Molly out of the car and took off the handcuffs.
Theo said, "I'm going to see Val Riordan. You want me to have her call
something in to the pharmacy for you?"
"No, I've got my meds. I don't like 'em, but I got 'em." She rubbed her
wrists. "Why you going to see Val? You going nuts?"
"Probably, but this is business. You going to be okay now?"
"I have to study my lines."
"Right." Theo started to go, then turned. "Molly, what were you doing at
the Slug at eight in the morning?"
"How should I know?"
"If the guy at the Slug had been a local, I'd be taking you to County
right now, you know that?"
"I wasn't having a fit. He wanted a piece of me."
"Stay out of the Slug for a while. Stay home. Just groceries, okay?"
"You won't talk to the tabloids?"
He handed her a business card. "Next time someone tries to take a piece
of you, call me. I always have the cell phone with me."
She pulled up her sweater and tucked the card into the waistband of her
tights, then, still holding up her sweater, she turned and walked to her
trailer with a slow sway. Thirty or fifty, under the sweater she still had a
figure. Theo watched her walk, forgetting for a minute who she was. Without
looking back, she said, "What if it's you, Theo? Who do I call then?"
Theo shook his head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears, then
crawled into the Volvo and drove away. I've been alone too long, he thought.
two
The Sea Beast
The cooling pipes at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant were all
fashioned from the finest stainless steel. Before they were installed, they
were x-rayed, ultrasounded, and pressure-tested to be sure that they could
never break, and after being welded into place, the welds were also x-rayed
and tested. The radioactive steam from the core left its heat in the pipes,
which leached it off into a seawater cooling pond, where it was safely vented
to the Pacific. But Diablo had been built on a breakneck schedule during the
energy scare of the seventies. The welders worked double and triple shifts,
driven by greed and cocaine, and the inspectors who ran the X-ray machines
were on the same schedule. And they missed one. Not a major mistake. Just a
tiny leak. Barely noticeable. A minuscule stream of harmless, low-level
radiation wafted out with the tide and drifted over the continental shelf,
dissipating as it went, until even the most sensitive instruments would have
missed it. Yet the leak did not go totally undetected.
In the deep trench off California, near a submerged volcano where the
waters ran to seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit and black smokers spewed clouds
of mineral soup, a creature was roused from a long slumber. Eyes the size of
dinner platters winked out the sediment and sleep of years. It was instinct,
sense, and memory: the Sea Beast's brain. It remembered eating the remains of
a sunken Russian nuclear submarine: beefy little sailors tenderized by the
pressure of the depths and spiced with piquant radioactive marinade. Memory
woke the beast and like a child lured from under the covers on a snowy morning
by the smell of bacon frying, it flicked its great tail, broke free from the
ocean floor, and began a slow ascent into the current of tasty treats. A
current that ran along the shore of Pine Cove.
Mavis
Mavis tossed back a shot of Bushmills to take the edge off her
frustration at not being able to whack anyone with her baseball bat. She
wasn't really angry that Molly had bitten a customer. After all, he was a
tourist and rated above the mice in the walls only because he carried cash.
Maybe the fact that something had actually happened in the Slug would bring in
a little business. People would come in to hear the story, and Mavis could
stretch, speculate, and dramatize most stories into at least three drinks a
tell.
Business had been slowing over the last couple of years. People didn't
seem to want to bring their problems into a bar. Time was, on any given
afternoon, you'd have three or four guys at the bar, pouring down beers as
they poured out their hearts, so filled with self-loathing that they'd snap a
vertebra to avoid catching their own reflection in the big mirror behind the
bar. On a given evening, the stools would be full of people who whined and
growled and bitched all night long, pausing only long enough to stagger to the
bathroom or to sacrifice a quarter to the jukebox's extensive self-pity
selection. Sadness sold a lot of alcohol, and it had been in short supply
these last few years. Mavis blamed the booming economy, Val Riordan, and
vegetables in the diet for the sadness shortage, and she fought the insidious
invaders by running two-for-one happy hours with fatty meat snacks (The whole
point of happy hour was to purge happiness, wasn't it?), but all her efforts
only served to cut her profits in half. If Pine Cove could no longer produce
sadness, she would import some, so she advertised for a Blues singer.
The old Black man wore sunglasses, a leather fedora, a tattered black
wool suit that was too heavy for the weather, red suspenders over a Hawaiian
shirt that sported topless hula girls, and creaky black-on-white wing tips. He
set his guitar case on the bar and climbed onto a stool.
Mavis eyed him suspiciously and lit a Tarryton 100. She'd been taught as
a girl not to trust Black people.
"Name your poison," she said.
He took off his fedora, revealing a gleaming brown baldness that shone
like polished walnut. "You gots some wine?"
"Cheap-shit red or cheap-shit white?" Mavis cocked a hip, gears and
machinery clicked.
"Them cheap-shit boys done expanded. Used to be jus' one flavor."
"Red or white?"
"Whatever sweetest, sweetness."
Mavis slammed a tumbler onto the bar and filled it with yellow liquid
from an icy jug in the well. "That'll be three bucks."
The Black man reached out -- thick sharp nails skating the bar surface,
long fingers waving like tentacles, searching, the hand like a sea creature
caught in a tidal wash -- and missed the glass by four inches.
Mavis pushed the glass into his hand. "You blind?"
"No, it be dark in here."
"Take off your sunglasses, idjit."
"I can't do that ma'am. Shades go with the trade."
"What trade? Don't you try to sell pencils in here. I don't tolerate
beggars."
"I'm a Bluesman, ma'am. I hear ya'll lookin for one."
Mavis looked at the guitar case on the bar, at the Black man in shades,
at the long fingernails of his right hand, the short nails and knobby gray
calluses on the fingertips of his left, and she said, "I should have guessed.
Do you have any experience?"
He laughed, a laugh that started deep down and shook his shoulders on the
way up and chugged out of his throat like a steam engine leaving a tunnel.
"Sweetness, I got me more experience than a busload o' hos. Ain't no dust
settled a day on Catfish Jefferson since God done first dropped him on this
big ol' ball o' dust. That's me, call me Catfish."
He shook hands like a sissy, Mavis thought, just let her have the tips of
his fingers. She used to do that before she had her arthritic finger joints
replaced. She didn't want any arthritic old Blues singer. "I'm going to need
someone through Christmas. Can you stay that long or would your dust settle?"
"I 'spose I could slow down a bit. Too cold to go back East." He looked
around the bar, trying to take in the dinge and smoke through his dark
glasses, then turned back to her. "Yeah, I might be able to clear my schedule
if" -- and here he grinned and Mavis could see a gold tooth there with a
musical note cut in it -- "if the money is right," he said.
"You'll get room and board and a percentage of the bar. You bring 'em in,
you'll make money."
He considered, scratched his cheek where white stubble sounded like a
toothbrush against sandpaper, and said, "No, sweetness, you bring 'em in. Once
they hear Catfish play, they come back. Now what percentage did you have in
mind?"
Mavis stroked her chin hair, pulled it straight to its full three inches.
"I'll need to hear you play."
Catfish nodded. "I can play." He flipped the latches on his guitar case
and pulled out a gleaming National steel body guitar. From his pocket he
pulled a cutoff bottleneck and with a twist it fell onto the little finger of
his left hand. He played a chord to test tune, pulled the bottleneck from the
fifth to the ninth and danced it there, high and wailing.
Mavis could smell something like mildew, moss maybe, a change in
humidity. She sniffed and looked around. She hadn't been able to smell
anything for fifteen years.
Catfish grinned. "The Delta," he said.
He launched into a twelve-bar Blues, playing the bass line with his
thumb, squealing the high notes with the slide, rocking back and forth on the
bar stool, the light of the neon Coors sign behind the bar playing colors in
the reflection of sunglasses and his bald head.
The daytime regulars looked up from their drinks, stopped lying for a
second, and Slick McCall missed a straight-in eight-ball shot on the quarter
table, which he almost never did.
And Catfish sang, starting high and haunting, going low and gritty.
"They's a mean ol' woman run a bar out on the Coast.
I'm telling you, they's a mean ol' woman run a bar out on the Coast.
But when she gets you under the covers,
That ol' woman turn your buttered bread to toast."
And then he stopped.
"You're hired," Mavis said. She pulled the jug of white cheap-shit out of
the well and sloshed some into Catfish's glass. "On the house."
Just then the door opened and a blast of sunlight cut through the dinge
and smoke and residual Blues and Vance McNally, the EMT, walked in and set his
radio on the bar.
"Guess what?" he said to everyone and no one in particular. "That pilgrim
woman hung herself."
A low mumble passed through the regulars. Catfish put his guitar in its
case and picked up his wine. "Sho' 'nuff a sad day startin early in this
little town. Sho' 'nuff."
"Sho' 'nuff," said Mavis with a cackle like a stainless-steel hyena.
Valerie Riordan
Depression has a mortality rate of fifteen percent. Fifteen percent of
all patients with major depression will take their own lives. Statistics. Hard
numbers in a very squishy science. Fifteen percent. Dead.
Val Riordan had been repeating the figures to herself since Theophilus
Crowe had called, but it wasn't helping her feel any better about what Bess
Leander had done. Val had never lost a patient before. And Bess Leander hadn't
really been depressed, had she? Bess didn't fit into the fifteen percent.
Val went to the office in the back of her house and pulled Bess Leander's
file, then went back to the living room to wait for Constable Crowe. At least
it was the local guy, not the county sheriffs. And she could always fall back
on patient confidentiality. Truth was, she had no idea why Bess Leander might
have hung herself. She had only seen Bess once, and then for only half an
hour. Val had made the diagnosis, written the script, and collected a check
for the full hour session. Bess had called in twice, talked for a few minutes,
and Val had sent her a bill for the time rounded to the next quarter hour.
Time was money. Val Riordan liked nice things.
The doorbell rang, Westminster chimes. Val crossed the living room to the
marble foyer. A thin tall figure was refracted through the door's beveled
glass panels: Theophilus Crowe. Val had never met him, but she knew of him.
Three of his ex-girlfriends were her patients. She opened the door.
He was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a gray shirt with black epaulets
that might have been part of a uniform at one time. He was clean-shaven, with
long sandy hair tied neatly into a ponytail. A good-looking guy in an Ichabod
Crane soft of way. Val guessed he was stoned. His girlfriends had talked about
his habits.
"Dr. Riordan," he said. "Theo Crowe." He offered his hand.
She shook hands. "Everyone calls me Val," she said. "Nice to meet you.
Come in." She pointed to the living room.
"Nice to meet you too," Theo said, almost as an afterthought. "Sorry
about the circumstances." He stood at the edge of the marble foyer, as if
afraid to step on the white carpet.
She walked past him and sat down on the couch. "Please," she said,
pointing to one of a set of Hepplewhite chairs. "Sit."
He sat. "I'm not exactly sure why I'm here, except that Joseph Leander
doesn't seem to know why Bess did it."
"No note?" Val asked.
"No. Nothing. Joseph went downstairs for breakfast this morning and found
her hanging in the dining room."
Val felt her stomach lurch. She had never really formed a mental picture
of Bess Leander's death. It had been words on the phone until now. She looked
away from Theo, looked around the room for something that would erase the
picture.
"I'm sorry," Theo said. "This must be hard for you. I'm just wondering if
there was anything that Bess might have said in therapy that would give a
clue."
Fifteen percent, Val thought. She said, "Most suicides don't leave a
note. By the time they have gone that far into depression, they aren't
interested in what happens after their death. They just want the pain to end."
Theo nodded. "Then Bess was depressed? Joseph said that she appeared to
be getting better."
Val cast around her training for an answer. She hadn't really diagnosed
Bess Leander, she had just prescribed what she thought would make Bess feel
better. She said, "Diagnosis in psychiatry isn't always that exact, Theo. Bess
Leander was a complex case. Without compromising doctor-patient
confidentiality, I can tell you that Bess suffered from a borderline case of
OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. I was treating her for that."
Theo pulled a prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket and looked at
the label. "Zoloft. Isn't that an anti-depressant? I only know because I used
to date a woman who was on it."
Right Val thought. Actually, you used to date at least three women who
were on it. She said, "Zoloft is an SSRI like Prozac. It's prescribed for a
number of conditions. With OCD the dosage is higher." That's it, get clinical.
Baffle him with clinical bullshit.
Theo shook the bottle. "Could someone O.D. on it or something? I heard
摘要：

THELUSTLIZARDOFMELANCHOLYCOVEbyCHRISTOPHERMOORE(1999)[VERSION1.1(Apr2904).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]PrologSeptemberinPineCoveisasighofrelief,anightcap,along-deservednap.Softautumnlightfiltersthroughthetrees,thetouristsgobacktoLosAngelesandSa...

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