A Mutual Friend Read online

  Barclay’s upper lip curled wave-like, like a Simpsons character burping. “The question is . . . were you satisfied?”

  Some of us even laughed, that is, until Barclay spewed some projectile vomit about six feet. It splashed the toes of Flannery’s boots and even the calves of his jeans. I had a split second to realize it was a highly fluorescent red—like raspberry Jell-O—before diabolical laughter echoed from the hallway, beyond the closed door.

  I suspect this was to make everyone turn their heads, because when we looked back at the office, all the chairs, a bookshelf, and a side table were strewn willy nilly. Nothing had made a sound, yet the furniture was all on its side, everything except the desk Barclay was cuffed to. Fake potted plants, pens, note paper, staplers, everything was scattered on the carpet. And not a peep.

  Anton went out into the hallway to “bind” that area as well. “Leave this dwelling and never return!” he shouted.

  I shouted the same inside the smelly, messy office. “Leave this dwelling and never return!”

  Our call was taken up by the others. Flannery, in fact, fell easily into the chant, probably accustomed to the rhythm from chanting at far-right rallies carrying tiki torches. Here we were, this motley crew—a truck driver with no life to speak of, an Aryan Nation pinhead seemingly on the verge of renouncing his vows, A Navajo he/she, well I wasn’t really sure how far along in her surgery Lily Silverberry was, and this pathetic biker with a muscle-wasting disease who might not have many years left.

  Oh, and a possessed murderer cuffed to a desk.

  “Leave this dwelling and never return! Leave this dwelling and never return!”

  Anton came back and threw holy water in all four corners of the room, then on Barclay’s shoulders and head. “In the name of God, show yourself now, or leave!”

  “I have knowledge of all your lives!” roared Barclay.

  “That is not good enough!” Anton shouted. “I want to see the scales, the tail you described! I won’t believe you lying sack of shit unless you show me your tail!”

  “That’s okay,” said Twinkletoes, behind me. “I really don’t need to see—“

  “Or I will perform a full exorcism this very day!” Anton finished.

  Barclay appeared to be thinking about it. Snot poured from his nose, and the bright red Jell-O clung to his chin. Was it my imagination, or was his head bigger? He looked like one of those homunculi with bulging eyeballs and liver lips.

  Suddenly he flamed back to life. “Simon Dershowitz stole your drugs!”

  What? He was roaring straight at me, yet I had no fucking clue who Simon Dershowitz was!

  Flannery, however, did.

  Flannery took his stand between me and Barclay. “Who the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You know who!” chortled the bald gargoyle. I peeked around Flannery’s hulking bicep to view something swishing around on the floor behind Barclay. It wasn’t his hands. What was that?

  “No!” cried Flannery. “I’ve never heard of any Simon Dershowitz!”

  “Well, I’d like to fucking know!” I yelled, shoving Flannery out of my way. “If he stole my drugs, tell me who he is!”

  Barclay’s face became longer now, saurian. His nose was definitely pointed. And that fucking thing thrashing back and forth behind him—was that a tail?

  Barclay oozed, “Simon Dershowitz—Karl Thalhammer—one and the same!”

  “What?” squeaked Lily. “Thalhammer’s real name is Simon Dershowitz? The neo-Nazi is a Jew? Oh man, that’s rich!”

  Flannery twirled to stick a forefinger at Lily. “Don’t you fucking repeat that anywhere!”

  “Hell,” I shouted, “I’ll fucking repeat it as many times as I have to get my fucking drugs back!”

  Anton wasn’t listening to our banter. Frozen, his holy bottle in midair, he stared openmouthed under the desk. Whenever Barclay jerked his bonds, the tail would jerk, too. I wandered around the fighting couple of Flannery and Lily and ducked to see the tail from another angle. Yes. A fucking scaly lizard tail. Well. Anton had asked him to show himself.

  It was the creepiest, most heart-rending thing I’d ever seen. For some strange reason I felt sorry for it, the thing. It was clearly horribly miserable, a demon damned to an eternity of hell, doomed to perish. But was that only a trick? The room was so cold our breath seemed to solidify before our mouths. The demon had no breath.

  Anton straddled Barclay’s legs. Barclay could have easily kicked him aside, toppled him like a bowling pin. Anton reached to grab Barclay’s snout-like nose, and when he/it caterwauled, Anton shook the last drops of holy water into the open mouth. “Leave this dwelling and never return!”

  Poor Twinkletoes was glued to the wall like a terrified gecko. Flannery had Lily’s wrist in his clutch. Somewhere nearby, a door slammed as though a giant gust of wind had taken it by storm. The odor of mildew like a thousand old libraries seemed to seep from the walls. I would’ve seriously thought twice if I was Anton, grasping that satanic, slimy face from hell, shouting holy words at it. He had genuine balls, that man.

  I just had to stand by and admire my swarthy stud. His biceps hulked in his tight T-shirt, jaw muscles standing out in sharp relief, eyes flashing. He seemed to be getting the better of the demon.

  “Give us some sign of departure,” Anton gritted out.

  Even Flannery, still gripping Lily, looked on in utter amazement. The blood seemed to evaporate from Barclay’s face, and his face returned to a normal shape. I had to blink several times, trying to see the transition in action. But the deceptive skills of the thing surpassed mine, and soon Anton was gripping the chin of a regular, bald, elderly-looking Barclay Samples.

  The misery vaporized from the office. Sun even seemed to peek from the edges of the sheet Barclay had tacked over the window. Slowly, Anton straightened up. He fixed Barclay with his passionate eyes, and Barclay even looked intimidated.

  It was done, and everyone began to breathe again. Flannery let go of Lily, and Anton paced the room in victory. He held up his hands in truce.

  “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through.” He seemed to be speaking to all of us, not just Barclay. “May your whole spirit, soul, and body, be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

  I sighed deeply, letting all the tension leave my body. Twinkletoes even tore himself from the wall, shaking his arms as if they were asleep.

  Anton continued in a more conversational tone. “I would just like to say. If anyone has been thinking of improving their lives, now is the best time. No more conjuring, Barclay. No more black candles. We need to create affirmative interests in our lives as a protection against the black arts.”

  Had I done that? It sure seemed as though my life had fallen apart in the past month. Yet I’d met Anton. I was pretty sure I was in love with him. How could I ever leave Rough and Ready? My sister Eliza had been calling me, wondering when I was coming home so she could get a break from Dad.

  Lily glared at Flannery. “I’m not sure if I’m doing that. My movie about the contamination in the Diné rez got so much attention at Sundance. I thought I’d be in Hollywood by now, not getting up on a white nationalist.”

  Flannery shook his head and said sadly, “I can’t really be a white nationalist, can I? If I’m making love to you.”

  Lily’s features softened as she looked up at Flannery. She really did make a beautiful young woman, her skin flawless, unlike mine.

  Twinkletoes spoke up. “I’ve definitely improved my life, Father. Coming here to help Barclay and all. I’ve been through so much with the Zealots, but this really tops all. I’ve really stepped up my game. Right, Barclay?”

  We all jumped a little when Barclay spoke up. “What’s going on, guys?”

  Anton was the first to recover. “Remember, Barclay? You have to stay in this room in order to replenish your blood and get your pulmonary artery back.”

  “Oh, yeah,
” said Barclay listlessly, head hanging on a loose neck.

  I told Flannery, “Let’s find a way to lock the door from outside. We can’t leave him cuffed.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Or things’ll go balls up.”

  Anton said, “The spirit hasn’t vanished. It’s just dormant. I’m going to ‘seal’ this room, if you guys want to go hack the door.”

  “Jay-zus,” Twinkletoes muttered on our way out of the room. It still reeked to high hell, but not nearly to the extent it had during the height of the activity. “I’m too young to die, but too old to eat off the kid’s menu.”

  “Amen to that, bro,” said Flannery.

  And for the first time, I felt part of something. We were a family. Okay, a strange one, but we were kin.

  O

  A

  ll right. You guys wanted me out here to explain to you about mental health conservatorships,” said Slushy, the club’s lawyer. He’d come out from Pure and Easy, a town south of Flagstaff where he kept regular offices—well, regular offices behind an indoor archery range. This was the turf of the mother club, the Bare Bones MC. Slushy was a smooth, likable guy who wore a suit even to meet with a bunch of bikers in a bar. Although he had a severe combover and his tie was fluorescent, I had a tendency to trust in him. Everyone else seemed to, too.

  We didn’t meet inside the “chapel” because this was not official club business. King and I would not be allowed to go inside the conference room, but we were clearly necessary to the process. So we met in the bar area which guys seemed to prefer, where an old Diné friend of Lily’s, Merwin Bigwater, served beer on tap.

  I drank one or two. Por favor! King had just had a prescient dream about Barclay’s next murder. Or was it a prior one we had no knowledge of?

  Lily and Flannery were back at the Nichols. We’d barred Barclay inside the office, but guards were still needed 24/7 because with that cabrón, you never knew. Flannery was obviously still not welcome at The Happy Hour, so that left King, Twinkletoes and I as representatives of the cabrón.

  Slushy didn’t have a beer. He took his job seriously. “This would make one adult, the conservator, responsible for the mentally ill adult, the conservatee. These are only for adults with mental derangements listed in the DSM.”

  “Such as?” asked Turk.

  Slushy grandly brandished a pen as though it were a laser pointer. “Well, serious brain disorders such as schizophrenia—“

  “Check,” muttered King.

  “—Bi-Polar Disorder, also known in the olden days as Manic Depression, Schizo-affective Disorder, Clinical Depression, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”

  King whistled. “All of the above.”

  I cut in. “The woman I spoke to at Mencken definitely said he’s got bi-polar as well as schizophrenia.”

  Slushy pointed at me with the pen. “Okay. That’ll help immensely when you go to fill out the paperwork. Now who’s been chosen to act as conservator?”

  Ten men looked at each other blankly.

  Finally Lock said, “Not me. I’m running Los Toros Hermanos Bail Bonds.”

  Turk quickly said, “I’m running Herbal Legends. And this club.”

  Everyone quickly chimed in with whatever occupation they currently held. Mayo Snodgrass, that pinche guey who had been slobbering all over King at the party, even claimed he was about to head out on some idiotic racing circuit.

  “Open heart surgery,” said Dr. Thymus Moog.

  “I’ve got a rock shop to run,” said Harte.

  “Me, too,” said Dust Bunny, his assistant.

  Bond Blackburn said, “I’ve got an off-track sports betting biz to run.”

  Everyone, it seemed, had their own legitimate business occupying their entire time. All eyes fell on King and me. But we were hardly permanent residents of Rough and Ready, of Lake Havasu.

  “I’d do it,” I said truthfully, “but I’m going to have to move on after this job. And King, of course, his job is in LA, with his father needing him.”

  “Otherwise I’d do it too,” said King, and he seemed honest.

  Turk also tapped a pen. “Well, we’ll see what we can do about that, Antonio. I’m sure there are plenty of exorcism jobs around this hellhole to keep you occupied for awhile.”

  I wanted to say but what about King? Yet I doubted he was part of the package deal. After all, he’d slugged a couple of them during that rumble. Even though he’d by far redeemed himself, at least in my eyes.

  Lock asked me, “If we could get you to stay here, would you take on the job of conservator?” He turned to Slushy. “I mean, what would it entail? Not much, once the guy’s locked up, right?”

  “Right,” agreed Slushy amiably, his voice sandy and rich. “He has no financial matters and will be handed over to the state. You’ll have to agree to place him into a locked facility, whether or not the conservatee agrees. Now, listen, it might not be as simple as it sounds. The court won’t let you establish your conservatorship unless it finds beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Samples is gravely disabled.”

  “Oh, no problem with that,” said King. “Yesterday he projectile vomited six feet and grew a lizard’s tail.”

  The men staring at us had expressions of horror, amusement, and concern combined.

  “No shit!”

  “Out of sight.”

  “That’s not even possible.”

  “That’s sketchy.”

  “That’s a bit of a reach.”

  “He’s my new hero.”

  That last, predictably, was Mayo Snodgrass. I barely knew the guy, but it figured he’d idolize a guy who puked all over someone’s boots.

  I interrupted. “What I think King is trying to say is, there won’t be any problem having a psychiatrist determine beyond a reasonable doubt this is best for Mr. Samples.”

  Slushy asked, “Can he take care of his basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, or shelter?”

  Twinkletoes snorted. “Not unless you call a cat’s intestines food.”

  Some men recoiled, some were interested.

  Slushy seemed to think this was a good thing. “Okay, so you’re saying he’s a few photons short of a hologram. The court’ll want to know things like, does he see dead people? Does he have visual hallucinations? Laugh or smile for no reason? Hears the TV speaking to him, and I don’t mean Judge Judy?”

  Dipstick said, “My grandma hears Donald Trump talking to her. But it’s ‘The Apprentice’ Trump.”

  Slushy continued on. “Does he think he’s Christ, or the anti-Christ as the case may be? Does he plan to open chain stores and make millions?”

  “That’s a thing?” asked Dr. Moog.

  Slushy ignored him. “Does he go to the hospital to raise people from the dead? Put knives around his bed to protect him from the dead? Not make sense in conversation? Poor hygiene, smells bad, takes clothes off at inappropriate times and places, paranoid thinking, does he think the government is watching him, does he think the FBI is listening to him, has he lost significant weight from not eating? Stuff like that.”

  “He has lost a lot of weight,” said King. “I guess feline gizzards aren’t full of calories.”

  I said, “I think we can make an easy case on almost all of those items.”

  Twinkletoes said, “Except he’s never dreamed of opening a crafts franchise.”

  Slushy rubbed his hands together. “All right. Turk, can I use your chapel to fill out the Petition?”

  While the lawyer took his laptop into the conference room, Mayo Snodgrass waylaid him. Mayo spoke in low tones, but Slushy had no such compunctions. I heard the lawyer say, “Sure, Mayo. I’ll take a look into your public indecency charge.”

  I grinned with satisfaction.

  King saw me, and my expression grew dour. I knew this wasn’t the time for laughter. We weren’t done with the strange case of Barclay Samples.

  “Ah, Turk,” I said. A couple bikers, assuming the meeting was over, were in line for beers. Dipstick headed fo
r the bathroom. It was just as well. I didn’t look forward to discussing this next issue. Twinkletoes was playing with his phone, so he didn’t have to face this.

  “Yes, Antonio?”

  “Ah, one more thing. We have reason to believe Barclay is the one who shot Ambrose Smart on Saguaro Drive yesterday. Our ‘reason to believe’ is that Barclay admitted it. He doesn’t seem to have any self-preservation filter. Anton explained that if a person is truly psycho, they think they’ve done nothing wrong. And he just admitted it. He said he wanted to make sure his gun worked.”

  Turk frowned. “I thought you took his gun away from him.”

  Anton said, “We did. It was in a lockbox. There are, ah, certain dark forces occurring in that building that can move things, sometimes quite large things.”

  “Refrigerators,” said Twinkletoes, glancing up from his phone.

  Now that everyone was sitting upright, I felt the need to assuage them. “He’s tied up safely now. Lily and another guy are guarding him.”

  Lock asked, “If he can move fridges, how do you know he can’t get out of his bonds?”

  I looked to Anton for help. We didn’t, really, other than that he hadn’t yet. Anton said, “Listen, we’ll shoulder it. Barclay’s gun is back in the lockbox, only this time it’s on another floor, and he didn’t see us bringing it down there.”

  “Maybe he would’ve been a good Prospect after all,” said Rover. “Especially with this magic demonic shit.”

  As we broke up the meeting, people scraped chairs, rattled keys, and vaped weed. I wanted to get King outside to finish discussing his dream, but Twinkletoes approached us holding out his phone.

  “You guys,” he said, eyes wide, “I couldn’t find anything on Karl Thalhammer, but there’s a Facebook account for Simon Dershowitz.”

  “You’re fucking kidding,” I said. “And it’s him?”

  Twinkletoes showed me his screen. Simon Dershowitz was apparently a regular guy, but it was our man, all right. The circular profile photo showed the Dodo King in all his glory with maybe a few neck tattoos Photoshopped out. He was smiling with blow-dried sunniness, unlike the real Karl Thalhammer we knew, who scowled and growled. Was this his attempt at a fresh and clean image? The photo banner was a bland covered bridge crossing a creek straight from Little House on the Prairie.