showing off my Catholic background. “Jesus with an 'I', of Nazareth. Rex, which is king, and Jerusalem, spelled with an 'I' too, or Judea or something.”
“Oh. I thought it was somebody’s name. Sort of like Henry.”
My dream came back to me like a whack in the face. The big red bear, the golden salmon. “You looking for ’Enry?” the bear had said. My unconscious mind must have been punning—putting the salmon in there because it was a fish, the symbol for Christ. (More Catholic stuff.) Cute. It had been an ugly dream, full of ugly foreboding. I was all at once certain that the crucifix was enormously significant and dangerous.
“Maybe you’d better not wear it until you’re sure that someone isn’t looking for it,” I said, carefully.
“How come? You think someone’s going to accuse me of stealing it? I don’t think so,” Francy said. “I’ll just say I found it at the dump.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Don’t be paranoid, Polly. Poe probably just found it in the road or something. Anyway, you gave it to me, right? I like it. I’m wearing it. Okay?”
“Hey, no sweat. Okay. Maybe it’ll work as a talisman to ward off Carla and the Holy Lambers,” I said.
Francy laughed bitterly. “It would take more than a gold cross,” she said. “Try garlic and holy water.”
Before I left I made sure that Francy was comfortable about staying there alone. She assured me that she was, explaining that she was used to it, because John had spent most of his time out partying or in his garage. We hadn’t talked about his death much, but she certainly didn’t seem to be wallowing in grief. I asked her if she needed anything in the way of groceries, seeing as she didn’t have any transportation. She scribbled out a list which she handed to me along with a crumpled twenty-dollar bill.
“I really appreciate all you’re doing for me, Polly,” she said. “The sooner I can get things back to normal the better. I have to figure out what to do with myself now that John’s out of the picture. Maybe you can teach me to drive, eh? He would never let me.”
“I’d be glad to,” I said. “Soon as the cops bring John’s truck back.”
She grimaced. “From what I hear, I’ll have to bleach the inside of it before I can use it, anyway.” I’d forgotten that. There had been bloodstains in the cab. It would be a long time before Francy was able to erase the memory of John’s death from her life. I just wished, a little, that she wasn’t so happy about it. It looked so suspicious.
“Well, we can always re-upholster,” she added, brightening. Her smile pulled the skin tight on the scarred side of her face, where it reflected the light from the window like a piece of stretched plastic. For a moment, her eyes flashed almost red.
Lug-nut was waiting for me in the back of the pick-up. He had stayed there when I drove up to the house, and when I got out, he had eyed me nervously as if he were afraid I had brought him back for good. He seemed to have no interest in jumping out and checking up on his old territory. I didn’t blame him. His life at the Travers’ place hadn’t exactly been puppy heaven. I backed out and headed for the dump.
I had prepared for my chat with Freddy by slinging a couple of full green garbage bags in the back as an excuse for going there. I wasn’t sure just what I was planning to say, and I didn’t know what I wanted from him. If he knew anything about what had happened after he had clobbered Spit over the head, Becker and Morrison would have wormed it out of him by now. Freddy might not even be at the dump. He could be locked up in a cell at the Laingford cop-shop, facing assault charges. Still, Freddy had always been reasonably friendly to me and if he was on duty, there was a chance that he might tell me something he wouldn’t tell the cops. It was worth a try.
He wasn’t in his shack when I drove up to it. I saw him off in the distance, poking through the “wood only” pile with a stick. I waved and he came over quickly, as officious as ever. As soon as he was close enough, he hollered, “Whaddya got?”
Freddy was a bean-pole, well over six feet tall, with enormous hands and feet and ears to rival Prince Charles’s. He looked like an older version of Eddie Schreier, same stickyouty Adam’s apple, same gangling walk. It was probably something in the local water.
“Hey, Freddy,” I said. “Just a couple of bags of household. You know. Food stuff. Unrecyclable plastic.”
He squinted at the dog standing guard over the garbage bags in the back of the truck. Lug-nut was growling, his hackles raised, which surprised me. Freddy was about as menacing as an old shoe. He kept his hands to himself for once, though. Normally he would have reached out and sort of felt up the bags, trying to guess what was inside, making sure that they were what I said they were.
“That’s Travers’s dog, ain’t it?” he said.
“Mine now. Francy didn’t want to look after him any more, after what happened.” I could have said she’d always hated the dog because it was John’s, but that would have been telling.
“Ugly, ain’t he?”
I laughed. “Well, head-on he is, but if you catch him in profile, he’s not so bad. Sort of noble, if you work at it. Hush now, Luggy. That’s enough.”
Freddy waited until I removed the garbage from the truck, out of Lug-nut’s reach, then he took them from me and started to carry them over to the household garbage pit. I followed him, desperately trying to come up with a way to get a conversation going. Usually, Freddy was the one with the opening gambit, but this time he was as tight-lipped as a Tory senator.
“It must be weird being here alone after a body was found here, eh?” I said. He grunted and kicked at a chicken bone with his foot. I tried again. “Lots of people coming around trying to get you to talk about it, I’ll bet.”
He looked at me slant-wise. “Nope,” he said. “You’re the only one. You and the cops.”
“They talked to you, did they?” Here was an opening. It was just like the women’s magazines. Draw him out. Get him to talk about himself.
“They interrogated me is more like it,” Freddy said. “Nazis, both of ’em. Specially the fat one. They came in here with some damn fool story Morton cooked up to explain the lump on his head. He blamed me, eh?” Freddy was looking at me carefully, gauging my reaction.
“He did??” Surprise. Outrage.
“Yup. Said I hit him. That’s a crock of shit if I ever heard one.”
“I saw him at the hospital yesterday,” I said. “He’s doing fine, but he did take quite a knock to the head. I guess he’s confused. Maybe his story is a little exaggerated, eh?”
“Huh. I’ll bet it’s mostly from the hangover. He drank most of a jug of Amato’s hooch on Sunday, then he fell down outside the hut.” Freddy pointed. “Knocked his head on the cement step there. Out cold. I dragged him over to his hearse and put him inside to keep warm while he slept it off. Did him a favour and that’s how he pays me back.”
It could easily have happened like that, I supposed, but I must have looked sceptical, because Freddy turned nasty.
“That’s what you wanted to know, ain’t it? You talked to Morton and he told
