Left on St. Truth-Be-Well Read online

  Carson wondered if his eyes really could bug out of his head like a cartoon character’s. “Well, thank you, sweetheart, that there is damned good information to know.”

  “God, Gail, you are such a fucking whore, you know that?”

  “Oh, you know English now, do you?”

  “He was born here,” Gail said, sneering. “And I’m not giving you your cut tonight, Jarred. All you had to do was not be an asshole, and this guy wouldn’t have busted my trick. They tip more when they come, moron!”

  And with that she splashed some water between her legs, patted off with a towel, and strutted out on yellow-and-pink fuck-me thongs.

  Carson waited until she’d slammed the door behind her to shake Jarred against the wall a little more. “Jesus, kid, she’s so right. You can call her all the names you want, but she’s smarter than you.”

  “How’s I supposed to know that?” the kid whined, and Carson snorted.

  “Because, dammit, if you’re nice to people, they usually don’t want to throw you against the walls!”

  “What do you want from me, anyways?”

  His unattractive face was all puckered and getting greasy with tears, his breath smelled like blue cheese and athlete’s foot, and what Carson really wanted was for this interview to be over with quickly.

  “The stiff in the room—spill!”

  “The cops already talked to me,” he said, but he looked crafty when he said it, and Carson didn’t trust him.

  “Yeah, but you gave them your no-haaabla-English schtick, and they’re dumb enough to bang girls in the hotel room, so they buy it. Now you’re gonna talk to me, and I already know you’re full of bullshit, so you’re going to tell me the truth. Where’d that asshole come from?”

  Jarred looked left and right, like someone was going to be pounding down that ghost-ridden corridor ready to stop him from spilling his guts. As. If. Even the cockroaches were avoiding this place now.

  “Look, I don’t know where he came from, okay? I was using the room upstairs… well, I’ve got another deal like I’ve got with Gail, so I was surprised when Bea checked you in up there. There were people in the room downstairs, and I figured she’d check you in next to them. It’s easier to clean, right? Just go from room to room? But she didn’t. And I realized that while there were supposed to be guests down there, she hadn’t been requesting service specifically for that room. There was a couple of guys down there, honeymooning like. For a while, they needed soap and shampoo and toilet paper all the fucking time, but suddenly she cuts it off. I don’t know why. I know I say something about the smell and she makes it disappear. I think maybe there’s dead rats in the plumbing or something, and the two guys, they took off, but I didn’t say a damned thing, and then the cops got here!”

  Carson dropped him abruptly. “Wonderful. So all you know is that there’s rats in the plumbing and the two honeymooners disappeared. How come nobody else notices anything? Where are all the frickin’ people here? This is a resort town, dammit!”

  Jarred shrugged. “Well, business ain’t been great, you know? I mean, there’s the lifers, over on the other side of the building. You saw all the decorated windows and stuff?”

  Carson had—the sliding glass windows that looked onto the balcony were decorated with glass stickers and there’d been wind chimes and everything. It had been colorful, and a little bit freaky too, because Carson couldn’t imagine the sort of weird curve your life would have taken to find yourself living in a crumbling hotel on the edge of the sea. He’d been trying to imagine it, actually—ever since he’d seen those bright rainbow-y stickers and wind chimes—and was drawing a big fricking zero. He needed some more experience of the town, he guessed.

  “Yeah, I saw them.”

  “Well, most of us just sort of tend to those people. Sometimes there’s a convention, and Bea calls all the local talent. High school kids of her old friends. She’s sort of a pathetic old broad, but she does know how to network. When she needs help, help comes. But anyway, we take care of them and then sort of send service quick if too many people check in.”

  “So where’d the lye come from?”

  “Who’s lying?”

  “Oh God, spare me! The fucking lye, the shit that was all over the dead body to keep it from stinking. Where do you keep that?”

  Jarred’s squinty little eyes narrowed to slits. “Well, we have a fuckton of it in the maintenance shed out by the east wing. You know, big fish come up and die and rats—”

  “In the plumbing, yeah. I hear you. Okay, so there was lye on the premises to keep the dead guy from getting stinky, and someone else broke the lock—wait a minute.”

  Because the guy’s eyes had gotten all shifty all of a sudden.

  “You broke the lock?”

  “Well, those guys, they were in there all the time, and they finally went out, and I just wanted to see if they had anything good!”

  Carson’s head hurt. It could have been hunger, but given all the talk about dead bodies and rats in the plumbing, he was thinking maybe not. “Okay, so the guys finally leave the room together, and you use the time to break in. There’s nothing there—”

  “Not a thing! Man, it was either on them or locked in the car!”

  “No shit. Stassy’s from Chicago, he fucking knows better. So you break into their room and toss the place and bail. And while you’re gone, that guy goes into the room and gets knocked on the head—”

  “Naw, he was dragged,” Jarred said with 100 percent confidence.

  “You think?”

  “I know. I mopped up the drag marks myself!”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake—” and at that point, his pocket buzzed. He jerked back, caught in the classic conundrum of either keeping the scumbag plastered to the wall or checking his pocket while said scumbag took his opportunity and ducked away.

  “Man, I’ll catch you never. I didn’t kill nobody, I don’t know who did—”

  “But you mopped up the drag marks, you fucking psycho! Jesus! And you did a damned fine job not talking to the cops. That was really fucking stand-up of you!”

  “But I don’t know nothing!” Jarred whined, and then he ran down the hall as fast as he could, leaving his maid’s cart in the dust. Carson thought about going after him but picked up his phone instead.

  Skittering Critters

  “YEAH, what’d you find?” he asked, knowing it was Dale without even checking. Nobody from Chicago would be calling him right now, and he didn’t even want to think about what that meant for his social life.

  “I found a bunch of fucking parrots almost starving to death. I ran across to the Chevron store and got them a shit-ton of sunflower seeds, man. They were driving me fucking crazy.”

  “But no Beatrice?”

  “No. It’s weird. I didn’t see her.”

  “Yeah, me neither, but I did find a weaselly little man-maid who broke the lock on the door and mopped up the drag marks of the body on the concrete, though.”

  “Well done. Did he say where the drag marks led?”

  “No, you called and he bolted.” Carson realized he was still standing in the room with the recently rented bed and wrinkled his nose. The smell of rancid sex and his own rumbling stomach were making him more than a little queasy. He walked out, carefully not closing the door or putting his hands anywhere he’d leave prints. At the moment, the only evidence he could have left was on Jarred’s rumpled tan shirt.

  “I am starving!” he complained unrepentantly. “Is there any way we can get me some food?”

  “I thought you were supposed to eat before I picked you up!”

  “I was sleeping, Toppy McTopperson, so sue me, but buy me McDonald’s first, or I refuse to put out.”

  “That’s rude,” Dale said with a grunt. “But I’ll do it. McDonald’s it is. Shakes are on me.”

  “Don’t be a cheap bastard. I want pie too.” Carson started to look around the corridor, trying to figure out the way to cut through the hotel to get to the
lobby. There had to be a way, right? All hotels had one.

  “Any food with that food?” Dale sounded like he was moving too, and Carson hoped they weren’t going to walk right by each other in parallel corridors.

  “Yeah, a salad wrap, because that’s just the way I fly.” Okay, good. Left. There, that hallway looked promising: it had a men’s room on the right, which you didn’t usually see unless you were close to the lobby.

  “Now that’s going too far. A hamburger, by God, that’s as far as I’ll go!”

  For a second, Carson was disoriented because it sounded like Dale’s real voice, and then he looked up, and, hey, there was the man himself, faded jeans, zippered blue hoodie and all. Carson hit End Call and rolled his eyes.

  “That’s my limit, burger boy. I want a fucking salad wrap or no deal.”

  Dale’s full lips curled up into that slow, inviting smile. “Well, if you’re gonna lay down the law….”

  Carson felt a thrill in his stomach that had nothing to do with food. “Yeah, all kidding aside, can we get the fuck out of here? This place is about to give me a willie-killing attack of the heebie-jeebies.”

  And now Dale’s low, surf-rolling laugh was the only thing that got Carson through the lobby of the hotel—with all of those squawking, pissed-off birds sitting over their bird-shit pyramids—without squealing like a frightened teenager and running away in his bobby-sox.

  “God forbid we kill anything about your willie,” Dale said, and Carson didn’t even have a comeback.

  He did feel better after eating a Quarter Pounder with Cheese and downing a soda. Dale flat out said he refused to order a salad wrap from McDonald’s, and since he was in the front of the car, Carson had to cave and eat some red meat. “Okay, fine, you just remember what happens to men who eat dairy. You’re the one who wanted to top.”

  “I can handle gas,” Dale said as he pulled on his own shake. “I don’t know if I can handle you getting all wussied out because you’re afraid of it.”

  “God, picky much?”

  “I’m really fucking picky, and don’t forget it,” Dale told him as he licked his fingers before wiping them on the napkin, and Carson rolled his eyes.

  “I’m picky too. Wash your hands like a human when we get to this mystery serial killer cabin in the woods, okay?”

  “It’s not the woods, it’s the swamp, city boy, and I’m not joking about alligators in the backyard.”

  Carson grunted sourly and threw his napkin into the bag, along with the two cartons and straw wrappers and other detritus that came with eating your dinner out of a white paper bag. “Yeah, I know. Ivan called me and told me I was looking for Stassy, and I googled the place to make sure none of the nature channels were exaggerating. I’m fully aware once we get there I’m at your mercy, surfer boy, don’t worry. If you really are a serial killer, I’m screwed.”

  “Yeah.” Dale nodded, completely serious. “It’s one of the reasons I put off getting a dog. I don’t want him to be alone all the time.”

  Carson sighed a little and looked out into the amazing darkness. No streetlights illuminated the quiet area. He could see the short palm trees and some of the other lush vegetation that made the place Florida only as a deeper black filigree against the darkness. “Isn’t that the worst part about being a grown-up?” he asked out of nowhere. “You have these things you think grown-ups should be, ways they should be, and you still believe that, even if you reach adulthood and realize that you can’t be that way. It’s like you’ll always be a failure because you can’t have your own dog, or you don’t have a wife and kids, or you don’t get a college degree or get famous, right? Even if you’re happy, you’re pretty sure you blew it.”

  The truck made its way through a series of twists and turns in what looked to be a small semisuburban neighborhood of little houses with big overgrown lawns. That topography was followed by a long, bumpy stretch of nowhere, and just when Carson stopped talking, Dale turned right, drove through a tunnel of underbrush, and stopped abruptly because the driveway ended.

  “You’re not happy,” Dale said, “and don’t get out yet.” From down under the front seat, he pulled a giant halogen lamp, which he plugged into the outlet in the truck and then switched on. It flooded the entire front yard with daylight, and Dale put his hand on Carson’s arm. “See? Yeah—gotta be careful at night—they tend to just hide in the corners.”

  Carson watched as a snake hiding out by the porch steps uncoiled itself in the glare and slunk silently away. His stomach went cold and he almost dropped his water. “Jesus fucking Christ….”

  “It’s okay. He probably wouldn’t have bit us as we were walking up, but you don’t want ’em to get too comfortable, you know?”

  “I have… I have no words.”

  Dale fumbled for Carson’s hand in the dark and squeezed reassuringly. “It’s okay, Carson. Most of the time we just need to know it’s out there. It’s like your mob-boss boss-guy. He’s probably deadly, but he really has no interest in hurting you, so you ignore him, right?”

  Carson looked at Dale irritably as he held the lamp over his head. “You ever think of having a light post put out here, with a sensor and everything, so, you know, you drive up and all the scaly things go away without your help?”

  Dale smiled down at him, and a reassuring warmth and smell started to seep through Carson’s pores from his nearness. “I think that’s an outstanding idea, and I shall put that on the top of things needed to be a productive grown-up. I think you can get out now.”

  “Smartass.”

  “When you have intimate knowledge of my ass, then I’ll allow you to make an assessment.”

  “Yeah, since you claim to always top, I don’t see when that’s going to happen.”

  Dale’s laugh wasn’t reassuring this time. It was downright dirty. “Don’t worry, Chicago, we’re gonna know all there is to know by the time this is through.”

  Carson wasn’t looking out on the lawn of terror anymore. He was looking up into Dale’s steady, handsome face as Dale searched the lawn of terror, and Carson was strangely comforted. Dale wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  “You’re not happy,” Dale said into the sudden silence. “Or you weren’t.”

  Carson swallowed. Dale was close enough, hovering with the light, for Carson to lean forward and bump that strong jaw with his nose. “Who says?”

  “You did.” Dale held the light steady, but he turned to Carson so close Carson could see light flecks of green in his ocean-blue eyes. “You said you were lonely. I can fix that, Chicago. I may not be able to put a light pole up, but I can fix that.”

  Carson swallowed, closed his eyes, and resisted the urge to beg. “Is anything gonna jump out and bite me? Because the lease is up on my soda and I’ve got to pee.”

  “Carson?”

  Carson had his hand on the door to the truck. “Alligator?” he asked, jerking away like it was red-hot.

  “No. Emotional intimacy.”

  Carson grunted in disgust. “Almost as bad. What about it?”

  Dale lowered his head and kissed Carson’s temple, then whispered against his skin. “When we are bare-assed naked, you will not be able to hide from me. You know that, right?”

  “I need to get out of this truck,” Carson said harshly. He did. Because if he didn’t get out of the truck, he was going to make Dale turn it around, and Carson wasn’t sure which decision was worse for the state of his man card.

  “Yeah you do. And I need to shower. Go ahead and go, I’ll put the light away.”

  Carson was out of the truck and halfway across the lawn before he realized he forgot his little clothes roll of shame. He turned around to go back and get it, but at that moment, Dale turned off the light and Carson was alone in the dark with imagined scaly/bitey things all around his feet.

  He turned back toward the porch and waited until he felt the heat of Dale’s body passing him before he docilely followed the man up his porch steps and into the little cot
tage.

  The inside had new tile, an old sink, and counters with peeling tops. The table was sturdy and wooden, with matching chairs and nice little cushions, and the floors in the living room and the one bedroom were all hardwood with faded throw rugs on top, the kind with the dark jewel colors and the floral arrangements. Red tapestry couches sat in the living room, with a battered wooden coffee table from the same family as the stuff in the kitchen. Carson couldn’t see it, but he imagined the bed was made from the same solid red-tinted wood. None of the windows had glass panes; instead, they were all screened, with giant wooden shutters propped open to let the breeze through. The result was a surprisingly cool interior, and the overhead fans that switched on with the lights took some of the ever-present moisture from the air. Houseplants covered every available flat surface: windowsills, the coffee table, the top of the entertainment center.

  “It’s nice,” he said, feeling it. He was suddenly achingly aware that the only living thing in his little studio was himself. A houseplant—couldn’t he even get bamboo or something? People said a nuclear holocaust would only make that shit grow bigger. “It’s….” He swallowed, and suddenly, finding the right word was of tantamount importance. “It’s human.”

  “Good,” Dale said, and then he winked. “So’m I. And I’m going to go wash some of this human off of me.”

  “I need to do that myself,” Carson said, and Dale shrugged.

  “Procrastinator.”

  “Yup.”

  “Fine. Did you bring a change of clothes?”

  Carson grimaced. “Yeah, but they’re in the truck.”

  Dale grinned. “Excellent. You go ahead and shower first. You’re stuck in a towel until I take pity on you and scare away the critters.”

  Carson gave him a flat, unfriendly look. “That is not the way to get laid.”

  “I didn’t say that’s how I was getting laid. I just said I get to see you naked as long as I want.”

  “Or in a towel, unless you really do live like a savage.” Carson got up and headed for the bathroom.