The Juliet (30 page)

“Dearest Thief,” Florian began. He had been coached. He had been cared for and listened to. Audrey Lange, Head Nurse at the Palisades Rest Home, made sure of it.

Audrey sat in the gallery, beaming like a parent at her child’s Christmas pageant. She was a large woman, fond of flower print dresses, and if anyone asked, just barely sixty years of age. As soon as Florian Beale had been admitted to Palisades she’d made him her special ward. He was only in residence temporarily until the trial, after which he’d be sent back out onto the streets, presumably.

The sentencing hearing was the only interesting day in Eugene Taylor’s trial. Unlike Laskowski, Taylor didn’t inspire celebrity interest, and for many the story ended with the older, more glamorous detective’s suicide. Nevertheless the District Attorney, Aaron Fitzgerald, was determined to make something out of the Taylor trial. Fitzgerald had his eye on a Senate seat, and that meant Taylor had to go down hard. The DA presented the State’s case personally. The challenges were two-fold: not only had interest faded, but Taylor’s and Laskowski’s victims were, for the most part, very wealthy, and drumming up sympathy for them was going to be difficult.

And then they found Florian, wandering the streets of Akron, Ohio, muttering his prayers. He was in bad shape but not irretrievable. When it was announced that he would testify, the gallery was packed for his appearance, and Taylor’s attorney fumed silently next to his client. He’d scrawled the word “CIRCUS” across his pad in letters large enough to be seen across the aisle.

Fitzgerald revealed his purpose before Florian took the stand. “Your Honor, I know it is a shock to see Florian Beale in this courtroom, but among Laskowski’s and Taylor’s victims, Mr. Beale’s case is the most poignant. He has only recently been found wandering the streets of Akron, Ohio.” He emphasized the name of the industrial town as if it were some jungle hellhole. “As we know from his tragic history, Mr. Beale is a sick, sick man. By stealing The Juliet, these corrupt officers of the law ensured that he would never have the means to seek help, thus dooming him to life of impoverished derangement.”

It was a breathtakingly bold move to make a victim of a man who had beheaded his own mother.

When Florian took the stand, he read the words he’d written for Dr. Boyle so many years ago. His red fingertips grasped the page by its furthest edges. He sometimes paused between lines to breathe noisily, as if he spotted something in his words that surprised him.

Fitzgerald thought he knew what was coming. Florian Beale had shared with him the text of his statement, a collection of the lines he’d written as a patient, rearranged to form a singular, if not entirely coherent presentation. It was a depressing document, the diary of a sick mind.

“From the moment I touched her, I became a ghost,” said Florian. His voice was weak, reedy, striking several awkward notes at once. “By now you have surely tasted the destructive power of The Juliet. Please believe me when I say you will not survive her curse.”

The DA’s only purpose in orchestrating this display was to inspire pity. He never expected the slow horror that bloomed from the stand. Every line provoked gasps from the gallery, and the watchers in the courtroom leaned forward, straining to hear what Florian had to say. Gasps modulated into whispers of distress, and by the end it was clear that someone within the crowd was crying.

Florian concluded by saying, “You are my thief.”

Taylor listened respectfully throughout, with hands folded and head inclined. This letter, after all, was for him. It was a good thing Laskowski wasn’t there to hear it; he would have huffed and rolled his eyes during the recitation, impatient and unbowed.

The judge thanked Florian and instructed him to step down. As he walked through the gallery, silence prevailed, except for a slight rustling as Audrey searched for a handkerchief inside her purse. Even the attorneys on both sides appeared chilled by what they’d heard.

His mother would have wanted him to make the most of his exit, so Florian tried to smile.

* * *

September, 1958: Del Rey, CA

Taylor got twenty years. Audrey Lange got Florian. She had gambled and won, but it wasn’t clear yet what winning meant.

Most days, Florian watched television, sitting on the floor cross-legged like a boy. If Budge, Audrey’s nephew, was between acting jobs, he could be found sprawled out across the sofa, hung over but keeping his Aunt’s new pet company. He visited more now that Florian had moved in. He claimed he wanted to keep an eye on things—Florian was a killer, after all—but Audrey detected other motivators, such as opportunism braided with jealousy.

There wasn’t much to keep an eye on. Florian ate, watched television, prayed, and slept. He rarely stepped out, and that was fine with Audrey, seeing as every time they tried to leave her tiny apartment in Del Rey they were accosted in one way or another. Still she couldn’t understand his fascination with the television. She preferred the radio herself, but only at night as she drifted off to sleep. Florian watched television all day long.

Audrey had moved Florian into her apartment right after his testimony, and that proved more inconvenient than expected. He’d become a minor celebrity. Every day there was someone knocking on her door. They couldn’t go to the shops without being eyeballed by strangers. And young girls, holy Jesus. Girls wrote Florian letters and sent him packages as if he were a soldier overseas.

Today’s mail brought a box of cookies and an envelope stuffed full of pictures of a young woman in her underwear. Budge had intercepted both. That sort of thing got under his skin. Budge was an actor, and he’d been in enough shows and movies to be almost recognizable, but not quite. Strangers were always coming up to him and asking if they’d served together or went to the same school. It was a struggle.

“Maybe I shoulda cut your head off, Auntie Aud,” he said.

She shushed him and busied herself in the kitchen, out of sight. Florian wasn’t listening anyway. He was glued to the television, Channel 17, his favorite. The tiny local station played old movies and Sunday sermons, exclusively.

Audrey had raised Budge after her sister abandoned him as a baby. He was slowly becoming a baby again, relying on her hospitality more and more now that the acting roles were drying up. Though he retained the style of a vaguely ethnic greaser, his face had thickened too much to play teenage ruffians anymore. Worse than that, a hack studio dentist had applied some quick-fix brightener to Budge’s teeth that turned them irreversibly dark after only a few short months.

Budge liked Channel 17 too, or any movie on television because it was all in black and white like it used to be, when a mouthful of green teeth didn’t matter so much.

Sometimes Channel 17 showed Marg Beale movies, but never the ones in which she was the star. Before she hit the big time, she played a lot of conniving secretaries, scheming waitresses, and on one occasion an eavesdropping nurse. Florian watched these films with respect, but the Westerns were the ones he enjoyed most. That was a preference he and Budge had in common. Budge’s roles these days were limited to saloonkeepers and mule team drivers. He’d been typecast as human scenery.

It was a Western that they were watching now. Florian said, “Do you see that building in the background? The one that is supposed to be a Spanish mission?”

“I guess so.” The prints that Channel 17 showed were murky and fuzzed, as if the movies were being shown in an old mirror. The frames jumped and the dialogue was sometimes chopped into nonsense.

“It’s the same as the hotel from the movie I watched yesterday!”

Budge propped himself up a little and squinted at the set. “Well yeah. That’s the Opry House outside of Beatty. I know they used to shoot a lot of two reelers there before National went bust.”

“You’ve been there?”

“Nah, that was before my time.”

“I want to go there,” said Florian, and this was a remarkable statement because Florian rarely expressed wants beyond his bible and beads.

Budge groaned as he sat up to grab another cookie. “I’ll take you out there some afternoon. It’s a ghost town you know. Called Centenary. We can poke around the old buildings.”

“A ghost town?”

“Yup.”

Florian put his hand on the back of his creased neck. He said, “I want to live there.”

Audrey listened from the kitchen as she made bologna and cheese sandwiches, a compromise between Florian’s and Budge’s favorites. She wanted them to spend time together. She wanted them to get along. She wanted her odd little family to succeed. Despite Budge’s jealousy, and perhaps because of it, he was settling into the big brother role quite naturally.

“You hear that, Auntie Aud? Florian wants a change of scenery.”

Of course she’d heard. She stepped into the threshold of the front room, a rag in her hand. She frowned at Florian, who was hypnotized by the television. She asked him, “Aren’t you happy here, Florian?”

Florian didn’t seem to hear her.

Budge grinned at his Aunt. She was nothing if not a superstitious old bat. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he laughed. “Not everything that comes out of his mouth is some kind of prophecy.”

Audrey gave her nephew a stern look. “Do you know how to find this town?”

“Ghost town,” he reminded her. “Means nobody lives there.”

“Sounds ideal,” Audrey said.

THE MAYOR

Chapter 11

October, 1958: Centenary, NV

Budge compromised. Instead of spending his evening warming a barstool in Beatty, he bought some beer and spent his first night in Centenary drinking inside Audrey’s Roadmaster, parked on the edge of the campsite where he could look out over the ghost town below. Audrey disapproved but backed down when Budge said, “I’m a grown man, Auntie Aud. You don’t expect me to bunk with you all, reading comic books and hitting the sack by eight
?”

They’d arrived at Centenary in time to watch a spectacular sunset, but Florian had a tantrum when he learned that they would not be visiting the Opera House until the morning. He had eventually calmed down, and now Florian and Audrey were snug inside the “The Flying Cloud,” a silver Airstream camper Budge borrowed from a buddy. It was parked on a flat spot off High Street beyond the terminal end of the rail line. Originally intended for loading and unloading freight cars that never came, the clearing had been converted to a campsite bordered by two abandoned rail cars, a pit toilet, and a pile of rusted metal scrap.

There were two other trailers on the site. One was inhabited by a young colored family Audrey declared to be “lovely people,” but the other trailer was unoccupied, possibly abandoned.

When Budge left to buy his beer, the colored family was trying to get a fire lit inside a stone ring. It looked like they didn’t have enough wood for the project, but then all of a sudden the little teepee of sticks caught. Sighs and applause followed. By the time Budge returned, the family was just finishing up their wiener roast. He pulled up in the Roadmaster and let the driver’s side door swing open so he could anchor one boot to the ground as he cracked his first can of Blatz. He made a point of toasting the family. They went inside their trailer soon after that.

It was mid-autumn, not too hot, and the night was deep as hell. Budge’s intention had been to haul his Aunt and Florian out to the desert for a weekend so they could shake off the fantasy of Centenary. The ghost town had consumed their imaginations, and they wouldn’t shut up about it. Now that he was out there himself, Budge had to admit to Centenary’s decrepit appeal. All those broken buildings used to be full of people. It reminded him of a story he read in
Gents
magazine about how scientists made everyone immortal, but in the trade-off no one could have babies anymore. Forever after, the immortals kept researching the past, having become obsessed with all the people,
any
people, who weren’t around anymore. The dead were celebrities just because they were gone. It was a damned good story.

Budge wondered if the kids across the way were frightened of Florian. His Auntie’s ward both looked and acted like a troll, with his muttered prayers and inability to sustain eye contact. He bet that the kids, two slender boys, were huddled in their sleeping bags with flashlights telling each other stories about the strange little bible man who might peek in on them as they slept.

This was the thought Budge carried with him as he drowsed, falling asleep much sooner than he expected. Clean air could do that to a man, just lay him out. He crumpled onto the seat, still in his jacket and boots, the side of his face sweating into the stitched vinyl upholstery. When nearby shuffling woke him, he almost shouted. Another car had arrived at the campsite, and it was long past midnight. Budge straightened up, and rubbed at the pattern pressed into his cheek while he watched the car roll slowly towards the pit toilet. As far as Budge could make out, the vehicle was a Buick like Aud’s but a much older model.

The driver cut the headlights and parked in front of the unoccupied trailer. When he stepped out, he opened the door to the backseat and leaned in as a boy climbed out and stood close by. The man continued to rummage, gathering together items that were obviously unpacked, a blanket, some clothes, and a box that might have come from a deli.