Stephen King - Duma Key

Clear.

x

I was exhausted from the stress of driving - I think from spending the day among so many people after being alone for so long, too - but the thought of lying down, let alone going to sleep, was out of the question. I checked my e-mail and found communiqu s from both my daughters. Melinda had come down with strep in Paris and was taking it as she always took illness - personally. Ilse had sent a link to the Asheville, North Carolina, Citizen-Times. I clicked on it and found a terrific review of The Hummingbirds, who had appeared at the First Baptist Church and had had the faithful shouting hallelujah. There was also a picture of Carson Jones and a very good-looking blonde standing in front of the rest of the group, their mouths open in song, their eyes locked. Carson Jones and Bridget Andreisson duet on "How Great Thou Art," read the caption. Hmmm. My If-So-Girl had written, "I'm not a bit jealous." Double-hmmmm.

I made myself a bologna and cheese sandwich (three months on Duma Key and I was still a go for bologna), then went upstairs. Looked at the Girl and Ship paintings that were really Ilse and Ship. Thought of Wireman asking me what I was painting these days. Thought of the long message Elizabeth had left on my answering machine. The anxiety in her voice. She'd said that I must take precautions.

I came to a sudden decision and went back downstairs, going as fast as I could without falling.

xi

Unlike Wireman, I don't lug my old swollen Lord Buxton around with me; I usually tuck one credit card, my driver's license, and a little fold of cash into my front pocket and call it good. The wallet was locked in a living room desk drawer. I took it out, thumbed through the business cards, and found the one with SCOTO GALLERY printed on it in raised gold letters. I got the after-hours recording I had expected. When Dario Nannuzzi had finished his little spiel and the beep had beeped, I said: "Hello, Mr. Nannuzzi, this is Edgar Freemantle from Duma Key. I'm the..." I paused briefly, wanting to say guy and knowing that wasn't what I was to him. "I'm the artist who does the sunsets with the big shells and plants and things sitting on them. You spoke about possibly showing my work. If you're still interested, would you give me a call?" I recited my telephone number and hung up, feeling a little better. Feeling as if I'd done something, at least.

I got a beer out of the fridge and turned on the TV, thinking I might find a movie worth watching on HBO before turning in. The shells beneath the house had taken on a pleasant, lulling sound, their conversation tonight civilized and low-pitched.

They were drowned out by the voice of a man standing in a thicket of microphones. It was Channel 6, and the current star was Candy Brown's court-appointed lawyer. He must have held this videotaped press conference at approximately the same time Wireman was getting his head examined. The lawyer looked about fifty, and his hair was pulled back into a Barrister Ponytail, but there was nothing going-through-the-motions about him. He looked and sounded invested. He was telling the reporters that his client would plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

He said that Mr. Brown was a drug addict, a porn-addicted sex addict, and a schizophrenic. Nothing about being powerless over ice cream and Now That's What I Call Music compilations, but of course the jury hadn't been empanelled yet. In addition to Channel 6's mike, I saw NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, and CNN logos. Tina Garibaldi couldn't have gotten coverage like this winning a spelling bee or a science fair, not even for saving the family dog from a raging river, but get raped and murdered and you're nationwide, Swee'pea. Everyone knows your killer had your underpants in his bureau drawer.

"He comes by his addictions honestly," the lawyer said. "His mother and both his stepfathers were drug addicts. His childhood was a horror during which he was systematically beaten and sexually abused. He has spent time in institutions for mental illness. His wife is a good-hearted woman, but mentally challenged herself. He never should have been on the streets to begin with."

He faced the cameras.

"This is Sarasota's crime, not George Brown's. My heart goes out to the Garibaldis, I weep for the Garibaldis" - he lifted his tearless face to the cameras, as if to somehow prove this - "but taking George Brown's life up in Starke won't bring Tina Garibaldi back, and it won't fix the broken system that put this broken human being on the streets, unsupervised. That's my statement, thank you for listening, and now, if you'll excuse me-"

He started away, ignoring the shouted questions, and things might still have been all right - different, at least - if I'd turned off the TV or changed the channel right then. But I didn't. I watched the Channel 6 talking head back in the studio say, "Royal Bonnier, a legal crusader who has won half a dozen supposedly unwinnable pro bono cases, said he would make every effort to exclude the following video, shot by a security camera behind Bealls Department Store, from the trial."

And that damned thing started again. The kid crosses from right to left with the pack on her back. Brown emerges from the rampway and takes her by the wrist. She looks up at him and appears to ask him a question. And that was when the itch descended on my missing arm like a swarm of bees.

I cried out - in surprise as well as agony - and fell on the floor, knocking both the remote and my sandwich-plate onto the rug, scratching at what wasn't there. Or what I couldn't get at. I heard myself yelling at it to stop, please stop. But of course there was only one way to stop it. I got on my knees and crawled for the stairs, registering the crunch as one knee came down on the remote and broke it, but first changing the station. To CMT: Country Music Television. Alan Jackson was singing about murder on Music Row. Twice going up the stairs I clawed for the banister, that's how there my right hand was. I could actually feel the sweaty palm squeak on the wood before it passed through like smoke.

Somehow I got to the top and stumbled to my feet. I flicked all the light-switches up with my forearm and staggered to my easel at a half-assed run. There was a partly finished Girl and Ship on it. I heaved it aside without a look and slammed a fresh blank canvas in its place. I was breathing in hot little moans. Sweat was trickling out of my hair. I grabbed a wipe-off cloth and flapped it over my shoulder the way I'd flapped burp-rags over my shoulder when the girls were small. I stuck a brush in my teeth, put a second one behind my ear, started to grab a third, then picked up a pencil instead. The minute I started sketching, the monstrous itch in my arm began to abate. By midnight the picture was done and the itch was gone. Only it wasn't just a picture, not this one; this one was The Picture, and it was good, if I do say so myself. And I do. I really was a talented sonofabitch. It showed Candy Brown with his hand locked around Tina Garibaldi's wrist. It showed Tina looking up at him with those dark eyes, terrible in their innocency. I'd caught her look so perfectly that her parents would have taken one glance at the finished product and wanted to commit suicide. But her parents were never going to see this.

No, not this one.

My painting was an almost exact copy of the photograph that had been in every Florida newspaper at least once since February fifteenth, and probably in most papers across the United States. There was only one major difference. I'm sure Dario Nannuzzi would have seen it as a trademark touch - Edgar Freemantle the American Primitive fighting gamely past the clich , struggling to reinvent Candy and Tina, that match made in hell - but Nannuzzi was never going to see this one, either.

I dropped my brushes back into their mayo jars. I was paint up to my elbow (and all down the left side of my face), but cleaning up was the last thing on my mind.

I was too hungry.

There was hamburger, but it wasn't thawed. Ditto the pork roast Jack had picked up at Morton's the previous week. And the rest of my current bologna stash had been supper. There was, however, an unopened box of Special K with Fruit Yogurt. I started to pour some into a cereal bowl, but in my current state of ravenousness, a cereal bowl looked roughly the size of a thimble. I shoved it aside so hard it bounced off the breadbox, got one of the mixing bowls from the cupboard over the stove instead, and dumped the whole box of cereal into it. I floated it with half a quart of milk, added seven or eight heaping tablespoons of sugar, then dug in, pausing only once to add more milk. I ate all of it, then sloshed off to bed, stopping at the TV to silence the current urban cowboy. I collapsed crosswise on the counterpane, and found myself eye-to-eye with Reba as the shells beneath Big Pink murmured.

What did you do? Reba asked. What did you do this time, you nasty man?

I tried to say Nothing, but I was asleep before the word could come out. And besides - I knew better.

xii

The phone woke me. I managed to push the right button on the second try and said something that vaguely resembled hello.

" Muchacho, wake up and come to breakfast!" Wireman cried. "Steak and eggs! It's a celebration!" He paused. "At least I'm celebrating. Miss Eastlake's fogged out again."

"What are we cele-" It hit me then, the only thing it possibly could be, and I snapped upright, tumbling Reba onto the floor. "Did your vision come back?"

"It's not that good, I'm afraid, but it's still good. This is something all of Sarasota can celebrate. Candy Brown, amigo. The guards who do the morning count found him dead in his cell."

For a moment that itch flashed down my right arm, and it was red.

"What are they saying?" I heard myself asking. "Suicide?"

"Don't know, but either way - suicide or natural causes - he saved the state of Florida a lot of money and the parents the grief of a trial. Come on over and blow a noisemaker with me, what do you say?"

"Just let me get dressed," I said. "And wash." I looked at my left arm. It was splattered with many colors. "I was up late."

"Painting?"

"No, banging Pamela Anderson."

"Your fantasy life is sadly deprived, Edgar. I banged the Venus de Milo last night, and she had arms. Don't be too long. How do you like your huevos?"

"Oh. Scrambled. I'll be half an hour."

"That's fine. I must say you don't sound very thrilled with my news bulletin."

"I'm still trying to wake up. On the whole, I'd have to say I'm very glad he's dead."

"Take a number and get in line," he said, and hung up.

xiii

Because the remote was broken, I had to tune the TV manually, an antique skill but one I found I still possessed. On 6, All Tina, All the Time had been replaced by a new show: All Candy, All the Time. I turned the volume up to an earsplitting level and listened while I scrubbed the paint off.

George "Candy" Brown appeared to have died in his sleep. A guard who was interviewed said, "The guy was the loudest snorer we ever had - we used to joke that the inmates would have killed him just for that, if he'd been in gen-pop." A doctor said that sounded like sleep apnea and opined that Brown might have died from a resulting complication. He said such deaths in adults were uncommon but far from unheard-of.

Sleep apnea sounded like a good call to me, but I thought I had been the complication. With most of the paint washed off, I climbed the stairs to Little Pink for a look at my version of The Picture in the long light of morning. I didn't think it would be as good as I'd believed when I staggered downstairs to eat an entire box of cereal - it couldn't be, considering how fast I'd worked.