E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 464 Seiten
Reihe: The Quinsigamond Quintet
O'Connell The Skin Palace
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-84243-981-4
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 464 Seiten
Reihe: The Quinsigamond Quintet
ISBN: 978-1-84243-981-4
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Jack O'Connell is the author of five critically acclaimed novels, which have earned him something of a cult status. He won the Mysterious Press Discovery Contest for the Best First Crime Novel for Box Nine, which launched his career. This and his other novels Wireless, The Skin Palace, Word Made Flesh and The Resurrectionist are all published by No Exit Press.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
1
A woman’s face appears on the screen. The face is as large as a house, as big as any three-decker in the city. Because of this enlargement, each wrinkle and fold in the skin becomes a dry riverbed, a crevice of incalculable depth. The woman’s eyes are red and sunken, as if she’s spent a life-time weeping. After a time, her mouth opens and she looks out over the gravel parking lot and says, in the most wounded voice imaginable,
On October first, my daughter, Jennifer Ellis, disappeared while walking home from the Ste. Jeanne d’Arc elementary school on Duffault Avenue. Jennifer is ten years old. She is four and a half feet tall. She was dressed in her school uniform, a green plaid jumper and a white blouse. I implore you, if you have any information at all about what happened to my baby, please call the number on this screen. Please help me find my daughter. I beg you.
“God,” Perry says, “I wish they’d stop showing that clip. It’s on TV every night. I hear her voice on the radio driving to work every morning.”
Sylvia takes a sip of wine and says, “Do you think they’ll find her?”
“They’ve got to find her,” Perry says. He takes a breath, uncomfortable with the conversation, looks across the parking lot and asks, “You think the line’ll be bad at the snack bar?”
“No drive-in food,” Sylvia says. “We’ll both regret it in the morning.”
Perry smiles, nods his agreement, lets his head fall back against the seat.
Sylvia would love to shoot his face this way. To frame it in exactly this light, exactly this expression. But she’s learned. It makes Perry tense when she takes the camera out at moments like this. He smiles, but you’d have to hear the tone of his voice when he says, “Is it necessary to record everything?”
The answer is no, of course not. Most of life is more or less insignificant. But Sylvia’s argument, her defense, would be that what she does with the camera has nothing to do with recording. Her intention isn’t to nail down the image for some kind of documentation. She’s not all that interested in that kind of history. She doesn’t see things that way. And she’d have thought Perry would know that by now.
Anyway, Sylvia doesn’t want an argument tonight. So she leaves the camera in the trunk of the car. But it’s loaded with a fresh roll of Fuji. Just in case.
Perry had called her from the office around three. She was in the cellar, developing yesterday’s shots from the Canal Zone. She was working on a print of Mojo Bettman, the guy without the legs who sits on his skateboard selling newspapers and magazines all day. Perry must have let the phone ring twenty times. Sylvia ran up the three flights of stairs and grabbed the receiver, pulling a little for air. Perry said, “The Cansino. Eight o’clock. Big News.”
And then he hung up. He hates the phone. And he knew if he stayed on Sylvia would press for details.
She’s not sure why he feels the need to be so dramatic. They’ve both been waiting for the big news for months. Perry’s been aching for it. And Sylvia has been fearful of it. She doesn’t like acknowledging that. It makes her feel vindictive and kind of spoiled, maybe mean-spirited. This news is what Perry wants. This is why he puts in all the hours. After she hung the receiver back into the cradle on the wall, Sylvia stood there for a second and tried to picture Perry as he heard the words. She’s sure it was Ratzinger that took him to lunch. Probably at the top of the bank building, that restaurant that used to revolve. The firm has an open account there. Perry says Ratzinger eats there every day of the week.
She pictured them both holding club sandwiches in their hands, little leaves of purplish lettuce hanging over the corners of the toasted bread. Ratzinger dabbing mayonnaise off his lips with the rose-colored napkin. She pictured Perry nodding, that sort of slight, humble tilt of the head, as Ratzinger listed all the things they liked—the studiousness, the ease with the clients, the ability to work on the team.
She could see Perry clenching down on his back teeth, curling up his toes inside his wing tips, waiting for the moment when Ratzinger actually said the word, let it fall from his lips as the waiter cleared the coffee cups: Partnership.
They’re in the backseat of the Buick and they’ve got the top rolled down. It’s the same car Perry was driving on the day they met—a maroon ’65 Skylark that guzzles gas. Last year they dropped a wad getting the floorboards replaced. Now, with Perry’s big news, Sylvia is sure it’s only a matter of time before he starts pushing for a Saab or a Volvo. For all she knows, Ratzinger may have already made the suggestion.
“This is the part I love,” Perry says. So far there are about a dozen parts he loves.
“We’re going down in the elevator,” he says, “and Ratzinger waits for this guy to get out at the garage level, okay? And then he turns to me and he does this clap on the back, and the whole time there’s no eye contact,you know. He’s got his eyes on the floor numbers. And we get to the street level and before the doors open he says, ‘and by the way, there’ll be a little something extra come Fridays from now on.’ ”
He bites in on his bottom lip and slaps the driver’s seat.
“A raise,” Sylvia says.
He’s nodding at the words. “This is the way these guys work, you know. He never mentions a figure, okay? Just a little something extra, you know. Make me guess. Make me wait for Friday so I can see the numbers.”
“You deserve every dime,” she says.
The Cansino Drive-in is one of the last of its kind in the country. In high school, Sylvia came here a handful of times with a packed carload of forgotten friends. It’s gotten a lot seedier since then. The Buick is parked in the very last row of the lot where asphalt gives way to a scrubby dirt patch that dissolves into full-blown forest. The parking lot is half-filled with teenagers. Lots of pickup trucks with fat tires and skinny girls with blonde hair down to their behinds. The kids all sit in the truck beds around coolers of beer. They smoke cigarettes and make constant trips to the snack bar.
The movie’s sound track is beamed at them over the radio. Those beautiful, ribbed-silver window speakers are long gone, but the white mounting posts they hung from still stand, circles of weed springing up through the posts’ tear-shaped concrete foundations.
They’re half-watching something called The Initiation of Alice. It’s a pretty standard soft-core exploitation job by Meyer Dodgson. Lots of female nudity and beach locations, but nothing too explicit. Upon the screen, a topless coed is admiring her own reflection in an ornate, fulllength mirror.
“I spoke with Candice, who got the same pitch,” Perry says, “only from Ford. I knew Candice would be the other one they tapped.”
“I remember. You said Candice.”
“We both figure they’ll run us around the track for a year, maybe a little less. Then they’ll give us the title.”
“Partner.”
“Big day, Sylvia. I want to remember this day.”
“You’ll need some new suits.”
He sits back, lets his shoulders slump a little.
“I want to buy you something, Sylvia.”
“Okay, next movie’s on you.”
His voice goes lower and he reaches over and takes her hand.
“I’m serious. Something nice.”
“A movie would be nice. I don’t need—”
He waves away the thought. “I know you don’t need,” he stretches out the word. “This isn’t about need. Isn’t there something you want?”
She shakes her head, passes him the wine bottle and picks a licorice twist out of its bag.
“C’mon, I want to mark this occasion. If you don’t help me out I’ll pick out something on my own.”
“Perry—”
“Some awful piece of jewelry you’ll keep in the box in the dresser . . .”
She nods and squints at him and bites the end off the twist. He’s referring to this enormous silver bracelet he gave her last Christmas, which makes her arm look like it just came out of a cast. But she knows the thing cost a fortune and feels guilty every time she opens her drawer to take out a sweater.
She says, “I thought we were going to start saving.”
“We are, believe me. Second check starts the down-payment fund.”
Perry’s all hot for buying a house this year, but Sylvia loves where they live now.
“C’mon, give me some idea. I’ll go out blind and buy earrings. It’ll be scary. Don’t make me do it.”
He can still make her laugh. And he usually gets his way when he’s being funny.
“Okay, there is something . . .”
He’s thrilled. He does a drumroll on his knees with his fingers and says, “Bingo.”
“I was down in the Zone last week . . .”
Already, she’s said the wrong thing. Perry hates the Canal Zone.
“Yes,” he says, dragging out the s,trying to prepare himself for anything.
“There was this ad. On a bulletin board in the Rib Room—”
“God,” he says, forcing a smile, trying to make his distaste into a weary joke. “I hate it that you eat down there. I just don’t think it’s healthy.”
She cocks her head to the side, purses the lips a little.
“Sorry,” he says, annoyed with himself for jarring the mood. “Go ahead. An ad.”
“It was a good price. I checked the catalogs. And they said it was in mint...
