10
HENRY’S HAIR WAS nearly pure white, and he kept it trimmed in a brush cut that gave him the look of a retired military man who would be going in for a haircut within the next day or two. He wore a polyester polo shirt, buttoned up, with a sports jacket and Sansabelt slacks and black loafers. He was short—shorter than Jinx—probably five-two or-three, but he made up for this by having the attitude that there was nothing a man couldn’t do if he put his mind to it, and Walt always got the notion that Henry had put his mind to a thousand things in his life and had accomplished them all, even though it wasn’t really clear what those things were. He was somewhere in his middle seventies, but it seemed as if he’d been retired forever.
He never gave any hint, though, that Walt, or anybody else, should be accomplishing anything in particular, and when Walt had told him, months ago, about the catalogue sales, he had said it sounded “fabulous.” He would have said the same thing if Walt were starting up a shoe store or an amphibian import service. Henry seemed to assume that every other man on earth felt the same way that he himself did, and was up to the same things, and that with luck and perseverance they’d all succeed together. Because of that he had a built-in respect for nearly everyone he met, and struck up conversations with sales clerks and gas station attendants. Henry didn’t have any enemies, and Walt liked him for that, although the blind trust that Henry had in the world seemed like a dangerous philosophy for a man of business.
Walt had always known that Henry and Jinx had money, largely because of family talk about Henry’s investments and business dealings. And so the motor home was no surprise to him. There was a shower in it as well as a toilet, and a refrigerator that ran off propane or electricity, whichever was handy. The cabinetry was first-rate—lots of chrome, a twenty-inch television set with a built-in VCR.
“What do you think?” Henry said to him, waving his hand at things in general. “Fabulous, isn’t it?” Jinx had already disappeard into the house to see about dinner.
“Nice,” Walt said. “Real deluxe.” He realized that Henry thought it was fabulous, too. He liked it. Things were right with the world, and this motor home was proof of it.
The screen door on the house slammed, and in a moment Aunt Jinx looked in, holding a bottle of salad dressing. “I found everything I need for muffins and a salad,” she said, “if that suits the two of you.”
“Suits me down to the ground,” Walt said. “What else will we have?”
“Oh, that’s enough, don’t you think? I’ll put chickpeas and tuna in the salad—a meal in itself. Is this what you two dress salads with?” She held out the bottle, which was nearly empty.
Walt nodded. “Not much there.”
“I’ll pep it up with a little canola oil. There’s less saturated fat than in bottled dressings. No stabilizers, either, or MSG.” She climbed up the steps into the motor home and pushed past Walt and Henry in order to open a cupboard, where she found the oil and a small bottle of dark red vinegar. There wasn’t a lot in the cupboard besides Styrofoam boxes of instant noodles. “The muffins are made entirely without oil or salt and are high in bran. They’re a first-rate source of roughage.”
“Good,” Walt said. “That sounds perfect.” He hated it when people advised him to eat “roughage,” like he was a cow or something. He imagined a big plate of chopped-up shrubbery.
“You’ll be surprised how satisfying it is. And with the Christmas season starting up, we’ll all be overeating. Fats, sugar …” She shook her head. “There’s no better time to start a new regimen. I called Ivy at the office, and she’s entirely in agreement. So you two quit nodding like fools and get it into your heads.”
“No,” Walt insisted. “It sounds fine to me.”
There was the sound of drumming on the roof, and Walt realized that it had started to rain again. Aunt Jinx picked up a newspaper from the table and held it over her head before going back out.
“She intends to make men out of us,” Walt said, smiling at Henry.
“She’s a juggernaut. I’ve lost five pounds.” Henry patted himself on the stomach and then pulled open a drawer full of clothes, shifted some socks out of the way, and found a small box of Cheez-Its. Together they ate the crackers, sitting at the table, while Henry fiddled with the television set, trying to improve the reception. “It’s got cable hookup,” he said. “We’ll have to get a roll of coax and a splitter down at Radio Shack.”
With the rain falling outside now, the motor home began to feel snug and comfortable, and Walt was disappointed when Jinx came back out and told him he had a phone call in the house. He followed her in, jogging through the rain, and picked up the receiver in the kitchen.
“Hello,” he said, listening to the staticky connection. It sounded like somebody rustling paper on the other end. “Sorry, can you speak up?”
The man wanted something. It was a business call, and he was using a phone that was apparently wired into a beehive. “I was wondering about a certain product line having to do with … what shall we call it? Third-world religions—voodoo, Santeria. Do you carry anything along those lines?”
“I don’t believe so,” Walt said. “Anything in particular?”
“Herbals, perhaps?”
He thought about the stuff he’d found in the misdelivered box, and suddenly wondered who this was on the line. Argyle? It didn’t sound like him, but of course it wouldn’t make any sense that Argyle would call anyway; the call would come from one of his employees. “I guess not,” he said. “I’ve got nun finger puppets and plastic holy water bottles from Lourdes, night lights—that kind of thing.”
“Sounds basically like gag gifts. I wanted something more … primitive. Authentic.”
“Was there some specific item you were looking for?” Walt asked.
“Not really, no. Charms, elixirs, primitive religious artifacts, that sort of thing. Do you have a catalogue?”
“A new one, in fact,” Walt said. “I’ll send it out tomorrow. Where are you located?”
There was a pause. “Costa Mesa,” the man said. “Two-twenty-five Fourteenth Street, 93341.”
Walt wrote it down and hung up after promising to send the catalogue. Then he went out into the rain and pulled the Thomas Bros. mapbook out of the Suburban, climbing onto the front seat and pulling the door shut. He was virtually certain that the zip was a fake, made up on the spot. He flipped to the index and scanned the addresses. Just as he thought, there was no 200 block of Fourteenth Street in Costa Mesa.