Step to the Graveyard Easy Read online

  An unfamiliar voice answered, saying “The Party House” in faintly slurred tones. Laughter, music, loud voices, came over the wire behind it.

  “I’m calling for Sam Cape. This the right number?”

  “Sure, Sam’s Party House. Who’re you?”

  “His son. Matt.”

  “No kidding? Sam never said anything about having a son.”

  “If he’s there, put him on.”

  “Just a minute.”

  The receiver banged against something on the other end. The party sounds rose and fell like a pulse. Somebody yelled, somebody else squealed, a woman said distinctly, “That Polly, she gives blow jobs a bad name.” A minute passed. Then the same male voice spoke again in his ear.

  “He can’t come to the phone right now. Sam can’t.”

  “Why can’t he?”

  Seal-bark laugh. “He’s indisposed. Any message?”

  “No. No message.”

  “Want him to call you back?”

  “Forget it,” Cape said. “We don’t have anything to say to each other after all. Hell, we never did.”

  3

  The bank officer was a plump middle-aged woman with a smile that she wore like cheap perfume. She peered at her computer screen, wrote carefully on a slip of paper; tapped the keys, and wrote again. She slid the paper over to Cape’s side of the desk.

  “There you are, Mr. Cape. The balances in both your accounts.”

  He looked at the figures. Checking: $1,678.24. Savings: $26,444.75.

  “Let the checking account stand,” he said, “except that I want my name taken off it.”

  “And the savings?”

  “Withdraw thirteen thousand, leave the rest. My name off that one, too.”

  “Ah, may I ask the reason you’re—”

  “No,” Cape said.

  She colored slightly, as much from his direct stare as from the sharp negative. She lowered her gaze a couple of inches, kept it fixed on his mouth and chin. “What would you like done with the thirteen thousand dollars?”

  “Open a new checking account in my name only, deposit nine thousand. The rest of the money in cash, six hundred in fifties, four hundred in twenties.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’d like a new ATM card—”

  “I won’t need one. I’ve got credit cards.”

  She busied herself with forms. Not looking at him any longer, not saying anything, as if he were already gone.

  At his brokerage firm downtown Cape put in an order to sell his shares of Emerson Manufacturing stock and deposit the proceeds in his new checking account. After transaction fees, the amount came to a little more than fourteen thousand.

  Cape’s car was a three-year-old brown Buick Riviera, supercharged V-6, chrome premium wheels, all the options. He’d driven it out of state only a few times, on short business trips; it had just 29,000 miles on it, was in near-new condition inside and out. He took it around to half a dozen dealerships before he found the car and the trade package he was hunting for. When he left Hammerschlag Motors, “Nobody in Illinois Beats Our Prices,” he was behind the wheel of a ’91 yellow-and-black Corvette, six-speed, most of the extras plus a new glass top. The odometer read 57,500, and the salesman swore it had had just one owner. Cape didn’t believe either claim, but he took it anyway. It was exactly what he’d always wanted.

  On his test drive it had handled reasonably well on turns and curves, smooth-shifting through all the gears, fast pickup, no pings or knocks or rough spots in the engine. Now he took it out on the interstate and opened it up to eighty-five for a mile or so on a straight stretch where the traffic was light. Blew along just fine.

  He was almost ready to go.

  St. Vincent’s was on the south side, in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Old neighborhood, old church: grit-darkened stone, twin steeples surmounted by bronze crosses, scrolled and brassbound entrance doors. Inside it was cool, dark, hushed. And empty this afternoon, as far as he could see.

  He walked slowly down the center aisle, slid into one of the pews toward the front. He sat there with his hands on his knees. Crucified Christ gazed down on him from the wall above and behind the altar. So did the Virgin Mary, the twelve apostles at the Last Supper, other biblical scenes in bronze and backlit stained glass.

  Cape stared at the altar, seeing it for a time and then not seeing it. The silence seemed to echo faintly with half-remembered voices, half-remembered words. Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Pater noster, cut es in caelis. Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Kyrie eleison.

  For a long time he sat without moving. The restlessness stirred in him finally, brought him out of himself. On impulse he made the sign of the cross, something he hadn’t done in more than a decade. Mary Lynn would have been astonished. Probably would’ve tried to take credit for him being here. He stood, turned out of the pew.

  Someone was standing in the shadows by the nave, watching him.

  Priest. Young, Cape saw as he came forward, dark-haired and moonfaced, shapeless in his robes. Smiling.

  “Hello. I’m Father Zerbeck.”

  “Hello, Father.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve met. Are you a member of this parish?”

  “Once, a long time ago. I grew up three blocks from here.”

  “You still have family in the neighborhood?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Have you moved back here, then?”

  “No.”

  “But I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I? Recently?”

  “A time or two,” Cape admitted.

  “May I ask why?”

  “It’s a good place to sit and think. Look inside yourself, make decisions.”

  “Is that the only reason you come to St. Vincent’s?”

  “I’m not much for prayer, Father.”

  “That’s too bad,” the priest said, but he was still smiling. “You seem troubled. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. My decisions are all made.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant,” Cape said.

  “If you’d like to take confession—”

  “I don’t think so. Wouldn’t do me any good.”

  “Are you so sure of that?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “It’s never too late to ask for God’s help.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Have you… lost your faith?”

  “The way you mean it, I guess I have.”

  “What caused you to lose it?”

  “That’s between God and me.”

  “So you do still believe in him?”

  “I believe in him, all right,” Cape said. “What I question is that he’s as benevolent as we’re taught.”

  “Then why do you still come to his house?”

  “I told you, it’s a good place to sit and think.”

  “Have you tried talking to him? He does listen, you know.”

  “I’m all talked out.”

  “He’ll help you find yourself, if you let him.”

  “I’m not lost. Not anymore.”

  “Aren’t you?” the priest said.

  Cape said, “Keep the faith for both of us, Father,” and went out of this cool, hushed sanctuary for the last time.

  At 4:15 he was on the highway again.

  Heading southwest, the radio tuned to a Chicago jazz station, the window rolled down, air rushing in hot and humid against his face.

  First stop? It didn’t matter.

  He cranked up the volume, bore down harder on the gas.

  No longer standing still.

  4

  St. Louis.

  Nashville.

  Memphis.

  No set itinerary. Each new day a discovery. Interstates, state and county highways, back roads. Large cities, small cities, rural towns, backwaters. Tourist attractions and scenic vistas; bleak alleys and redneck haunts. High lif
e, low life, day people and night crawlers. The good, the bad, and the ugly. He wanted to taste them all.

  Vicksburg.

  Natchez.

  Deep in the heart of Dixie. Traces of the antebellum South in the oldest civilized settlement on the Mississippi River. Under-the-Hill section along the waterfront; medium-stakes poker game in one of the back rooms of a tavern that had once been a cotton storage warehouse. Five- and seven-card stud and Texas Hold’em. He’d learned poker in his dorm at Ball State, played a fair amount of it since. Knew the game’s finer points, but had never had a great deal of luck. Too conservative, not enough focus or concentration. Here he found himself playing in a different style—betting aggressively, card tracking, reading the other players’ faces and body language, bluffing, sandbagging, raising to the limit now and then. He walked out eight hours later with over six hundred dollars in winnings. And a lesson learned.

  Baton Rouge. Still moving south, loosely paralleling the river on its twisting path to the Gulf of Mexico.

  New Orleans.

  The French Quarter. Gutbucket jazz, hot and lowdown, at Preservation Hall and the smaller clubs. Street-corner hornmen in Jackson Square. Jambalaya and peppery crayfish and foaming mugs of Cajun beer. Crowds, ancient crumbling buildings, a sense of history as palpable in the sultry air as the mingled smells of beignets and fried andouille sausage, garbage and humanity and Old Man River.

  On the afternoon of his third day there, Cape was walking along a relatively quiet section of Dauphine Street. Ahead was a woman in her sixties, alone, big leather bag slung over her right shoulder. As the woman passed by one of the overhanging lace-work balconies, somebody jumped out of the shadows and made a lunge for the bag. Kid no more than twenty, long greasy hair, face like a pitted fox’s. The woman resisted. He punched her in the face, bringing a spurt of blood, tore the bag loose, and took off running.

  Cape chased him. Flash-frozen one instant, rushing ahead the next. The kid zigzagged across the street, up one block, down another. A couple of other people had seen it happen, were giving pursuit and yelling, but only Cape stayed close. The kid dodged into an alley; Cape went in after him. Halfway along, the kid stopped suddenly and swung around. A thin-bladed knife glinted in his hand.

  Cape slowed, but he didn’t pull up or veer off. Pure instinct kept him moving in a straight line, even when the kid made a jabbing motion with the knife. He feinted right, avoiding another jab, came back left, and knocked the knife arm out of the way. At the same time he kicked the kid squarely in the crotch.

  The kid went down, squealing and writhing. Cape stepped hard on his wrist, grinding down until pain-clenched fingers opened around the knife. He kicked it out of the way. Then he threw his weight down on the skinny body, caught hold of the kid’s throat, and held him like that until help arrived.

  Later, one of the cops who showed up said to him, “That was a pretty brave thing you did, Mr. Cape.”

  “I didn’t think about it, just did it.”

  “Still, it took a lot of guts.”

  Maybe so. Guts he hadn’t even known he had.

  Another lesson learned.

  Shreveport.

  Fort Smith and over into Oklahoma.

  Tulsa.

  Downtown, early evening, he met a man named Luther Babcock who sold religious novelties. Mini-Bibles with solid brass-bound covers, standard Bibles encrusted with rhinestones and bejeweled crosses that glowed in the dark. Crucifixes containing “guaranteed genuine healing water from the world’s most blessed shrine” and bearing the words “Lourdes, France” embossed in pure gold leaf; crucifixes with the entire Lord’s Prayer written in miniature and a telescopic magnifying crystal in the center so you could read every word. Inspirational books, pamphlets, and videos, a life-size portrait of Jesus on gold-threaded velvet, a devotional music box that played “Amazing Grace” and two other hymns, a translucent Jesus night-light made out of ivory-colored plastic.

  “The God game, my boy. Spreading the Word in small but significant ways to all the lonely sinners. A blessed profession, walking hand in hand with the angels. Enriches the spirit at the same time it enriches the pocketbook. Yessir, you do God proud, and he’ll do you proud in return.”

  Babcock was drunk when he said it.

  Five minutes afterward, he put his hand on Cape’s thigh and offered to perform oral sex on him.

  Back down south through Dallas, Austin, San Antonio.

  Corpus Christi.

  One-night stand in his Gulf-view motel room with a bonily attractive twenty-something named Kristin. Safe sex; she insisted on it. Later, Cape woke up and caught her fully dressed with his wallet in her hand. She gave him a sob story about losing her job a month ago, couldn’t find another, might not be able to pay her rent. Odds-on it was either a half-truth or an outright lie, but she made it sound convincing.

  He said, “Why didn’t you ask for money before we went to bed? I might’ve paid you.”

  “I don’t mind giving my body, but I won’t sell it. No way.”

  “You’d rather steal?”

  “I’d rather steal.”

  “Well, you could ask me for a loan. Now, I mean.”

  “Loan? That’s another word for charity.”

  “And you don’t take charity?”

  “I don’t beg, either.”

  “Funny set of ethics you have.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but they’re mine.”

  There was a little better than a hundred dollars in the wallet. Cape took out all but two twenties and a ten, put the wallet back into his pants pocket. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “We’ll talk some more after I’m done in there.”

  When he came out five minutes later, the wallet was empty and Kristin was gone.

  Brownsville.

  Across the Rio Grande to Matamoros.

  Jai alai at a local fronton. Team and individual matches, the competitors all with single names. Fast, fast, fast game. Players leaping up and off walls, catching the little goatskin-covered hard-rubber pelota in handmade wooden baskets and hurling it off granite blocks at speeds up to 188 miles an hour. Betting on the same principle as horse racing: win, place, show; Daily Double, Trifecta, Superfecta. Plus another double called Quiniela, where you selected two players or teams to finish first and second in any order. Cape took a flyer, made a few minimum bets. Lost them all, but came close to winning a Big Q that would have paid him the equivalent of a hundred and fifty dollars.

  After the jai alai, a little time in the tenderloin section along the river. Wide open. Roaming hookers, many in their teens; shills for live-sex clubs and cockfights. An old lady in a black shawl, with eyes as dead as an embalmed corpse’s, offered him his choice of drugs at cut-rate prices. All this before nightfall. He went back across to U.S. soil, and what came crawling out of the hot, neon-spattered Tex-Mex night in the tenderloin over there wasn’t any better.

  Not for him. Tasting sin was one thing. Wallowing in it was something else entirely.

  North again. Lubbock, Amarillo.

  West then into New Mexico, following what was left of the old Route 66. Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Albuquerque.

  Another backroom poker game. Bad run of cards that aggressive play couldn’t overcome. Down and out three hundred in less than four hours. Easy come, easy go.

  Santa Fe.

  Over into Arizona, through the Painted Desert, down to Flagstaff.

  Phoenix.

  Air show out on the desert, biplanes and other vintage aircraft, barnstorming wing walkers and a variety of aerobatics. In line at one of the booths selling beer he got into a conversation with a sinewy, leather-brown woman who turned out to be a skydiver. Yvonne. Before the show ended, she invited him to go up and jump with her and some friends the next day.

  All his life Cape had been acrophobic. On a plane just twice, commercial flights, both unavoidable business trips and both requiring alcohol anaesthesia. He grinned lopsidedly at Yvonne and said without hesitation, “Sur
e, why not?”

  They went up at noon, five divers and a pilot in a big Beechcraft. Yvonne fed Cape the do’s and don’ts, an hour’s worth of indoctrination that centered on his parachute. He froze up a little when they opened the door. Other than that, he managed it all right. Kept his eyes open when he jumped, counted slowly to ten before he pulled the rip cord, worked the lines the way he’d been told. The whole thing was a fear-and-adrenaline high, all except the landing. He came down awkwardly and a little too hard, bounced and rolled, and ended up with half a dozen bruises. Even so, the others were full of congratulations. Yvonne had something else for him, all that night and the next morning. Diving made her horny as hell, she said.

  Cape spent a week with her. Went diving twice more, longer freefalls and bigger highs. The third time, he stood in the open door with the wind screaming in his ears and looked down through three thousand feet of nothing at a checkerboard landscape. No fear before or after he jumped; and the high was all adrenaline. Just like that, he wasn’t afraid of heights any longer.

  Prescott.

  The Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

  Las Vegas.

  Heat, smog, desert sprawl, the longest downtime traffic lights in the country. The Strip didn’t impress him. Glitter and glitz and money-worshiping, sugarcoated, bleary-eyed craziness; people swarming over everything like brightly colored ants over piles of rock candy. Cape spent minutes inside New York, New York, just long enough to see what a Vegas pleasure palace was like. Then he headed for one of the downscale strip joints a few miles away.

  He lasted twenty minutes in there, paying forty dollars to find out what a nude lap dance was all about. Another taste of corruption that wasn’t for him, neither the joint nor the dance. Demeaning to the women, demeaning to him, if not to the other panting and sweating male customers.

  That night, two guys tried to break into the Corvette in the parking lot outside his motel room. They set the alarm off, and by the time Cape got out there, groggy with sleep, they were shadows disappearing into deeper shadows. Their jimmying had damaged the door so that it would no longer shut tightly, but at least he could still lock it. Scratches in the paint, too, not that they amounted to much. The ’Vette hadn’t been a virgin when he married her.