The Juliet (39 page)

Poor old Budge was tucked up to his chin on a narrow bed in a charity-run hospice in Ridgecrest, only an hour away from his beloved Mystery House, but it was clear he would never make it back there. Not in this lifetime, anyway. They kept it dark and whisper-low in his room, in stark contrast to the glare and clang of the hospital that had just evicted him.

Budge looked like smudged version of himself. His hair was still thick, holding its duck’s ass shape. The dye job was sliding away, showing an inch of white roots under black. Rigg had expected the old man to be bald, but apparently he’d refused chemo. Even this sick, this old, the actor’s vanity trumped all.

Budge wanted to know how Rigg found him. He communicated this with a series of coughs and half-formed words.

“There’s still some of the old teamsters on set. The producer, director, writer, they’re all fetuses, but up in the rafters there are a few familiar old faces. Like ghosts.” Rigg watched Budge’s eyes close.

He thought Budge had gone to sleep, but then the old actor’s eyes opened and were bright for a moment. “Niggetz,” he wheezed. Budge was trying, no doubt, to tease Rigg about the decline of his so-called career, as if commercials were the worst thing an actor could do.

“Niggetz,” Budge said again, to confirm that the mispronunciation was intended to be offensive.

Rigg smiled politely. Old people were like that, childish when it came to having a sense of humor.

“Lying fuckers,” said Budge.

Was he talking about the damned cereal? “I suppose so.”

“Liars.”

Rigg remained patient. Folks liked to needle him about the failed Nuggetz
promotion, as if he were responsible. No one had found The Juliet or even reported success using the map segments, although theories and conspiracies abounded. The cereal itself had suspended production, and the company refused all inquiries about the whereabouts of the infamous jewel.

“Budge, you need to rest.”

The old actor was scrabbling at a thought that seemed to give him pain. During the whole visit, Budge had only managed one complete sentence, and that was the corny line of poetry about the owl. Now he had another message to impart, and this time it was a line of his own devising:

“Juliet lives in The Mystery House.”

Budge’s face relaxed then, and he seemed to fall into motionless, nearly breathless, sleep. Rigg was relieved that the visit was over. He was of the opinion that if the dying couldn’t be noble in their final hours, they should just stay quiet.

Rigg Dexon said goodbye and quietly walked out of the facility, wondering if he’d just heard Budge Lange’s last words. They were a jumble of fantasy and fact like when a child insists that the President kissed her because she’s seen a picture of another child being kissed by him. It made sense that the mind would, in its final moments, smooth over the gaps between reality and art to create something better.

It would be a few years before Rigg realized the effect that Budge’s words had on him. Some lies you never forget because sometimes they turn out to be true.

* * *

November, 2004: Centenary, NV

There had been no agent showing and no final walkthrough. The Mystery House came up for sale in late 2004 and Rigg bought it sight unseen. He received the keys from the realtor in Pahrump, intrigued but not worried by the fact that the agent was more than willing to let Dexon take possession on his own. They gave him a hand-annotated map to find the place. This was important because the original canyon road was blocked by rockfall, and now the only way in required a four-wheel drive and a lot of patience.

He arrived at the shack to find the windows boarded up. Rusted cans and other trash had accumulated along the windward side. No graffiti though. Surprisingly, the front lock was still strong, and even more surprisingly, the key fit inside it. When he pulled open the door, he saw exactly what he was expecting—a mess.

The agent said that they’d cleaned the place as best they could but advised Rigg to throw out most of the furnishings on account of the vermin. Now Rigg could smell the piss and see the gnawed shreds of foam rubber strewn about. An easy chair was on its side for some reason with its stuffing partially dragged out.

The kitchen wasn’t as bad. The tiles were cracked, and mercifully they’d left the old Frigidaire open and unplugged. There were bits of grit, possibly scouring powder, on the counters and the tiny dining table. They left a faded
Hustler
centerfold thumbtacked to the wall. Where there had been the image of a lady there was now only the ghostly pose in pale orange tones. Rigg had to get right up on her to appreciate her vulgarity, washed out and nearly erased. He tipped his hat. He’d be keeping her right where she was.

He opened the cupboards and found three cans of green beans, a squat can of peas, and a roll of shelf paper never used.

Rigg tested the water. There was a little stream trickling from the tap. Maybe okay to wash in, but he wasn’t going to drink it. And the electricity. He flipped on a switch under the poster. The overhead light hissed and groaned, but it flickered to life. Amazing.

So far, so good. The Mystery House would provide more than what he needed to survive. In the back the bedroom was empty, and in the tiny bathroom the toilet was stained but dry, butted up against a rickety fiberglass shower stall. The sink was fiberglass too, bracketed to the wall with the PVC pipes exposed. There was an unwrapped bar of green soap on the back of it, used a little. Summoning his bravery, Rigg crouched to manipulate the crusty knob at the base of the commode and hoped for the best. Flecks of rust broke away but the knob turned under gentle pressure, and he could hear the reluctant hiss as the tank filled.

Then a squeak followed by scratching. Rigg stepped back, and a kangaroo rat emerged from the toilet bowl to escape the water coming through the pipes. It stood on the rim and then leapt across the room and out of sight. That probably wasn’t good news about the state of the pipes underneath the house.

A rusted, once free-standing metal cabinet seemed fused to the wall opposite the toilet. Its latch was stubborn but finally gave. Rigg yelped, “Jesus!” Inside on the shelf were the mummified remains of a cat, curled up as if taking a nap. The agency’s cleaners had missed a spot.

Rigg muttered, “Sorry.” His voice made the dead cat’s fur move. He
was
sorry for the old thing. The mice had won after all. He gently closed the cabinet door and returned to the front room.

Rigg thought he might need to get a cat. A live one, though. Preferably old and experienced in desert vermin. Perhaps getting rid of the dead cat should have been job one, but he was too eager to get started. He wanted to bring in his maps and Nuggetz crates and get down to the business of working the greatest puzzle of his life. The cat had been in her place of rest for years. Another day wasn’t going to make a difference.

So he plugged in the fridge and loaded in bottled water and beer, along with a few package goods heavy on the preservatives—the kind of stuff that could suffer the occasional power outage sure to come with the winter rains. He brought in the first load of boxes then drove back to Pahrump to get the rest, which were stored in a rental unit.

On his return, the sun set hard, and heavy clouds covered the stars. He couldn’t see anything on Goud’s Trail for a good long while, and then suddenly there was the firefly glow of the light he’d left on inside The Mystery House. “Go to the light, Paulie,” he teased himself.

He brought that load in, along with a cheap army cot and an expensive sleeping bag. He was disappointed by how tired he was. He knew he expected too much of that first day, but Rigg had imagined spending the rest of his life in wired, sleepless nights with the stars zooming over the roof of The Mystery House while inside he studied the map segments by the glow of a green banker’s lamp. He had even bought a ridiculous magnifying glass in case there were hairline clues in the margins.

But his neck and shoulders hurt, and his long legs felt even longer, hyperextended from hours in the Jeep. He’d spoken to his daughter before he left, and that was rough, especially when he reminded her that there was no cell service where he was going.

They’d write each other with the news, he suggested, as if that would be a fun alternative to actual conversation. For him it would be. Deb had inherited his rugged features and her model-mother’s sense of humor. She demanded he get a landline and a computer as soon as he moved in. He promised he would and then immediately forgot the promise.

As he forced his aching arms to unpack the first box of maps, he remembered
.

Rigg sat down at the tiny dining table with one of the student theme books he’d brought with him. He bought a pack of them, on the assumption that he would take copious notes while undertaking his search for The Juliet. He tore out a page and started to write his first letter to his daughter. He drank a beer to help the words come.

Dear Debbie, I have a cat. Her name is Mittens. We’re getting along just fine…

* * *

The next morning, he woke surprised to see several empty beer bottles on the counter and on the table. He didn’t remember drinking that many, mainly because he’d also taken a Darvocet to ease his back pain, but he was delighted to see that he had laid out many more map segments as well, piecing together the possibilities. But the theme book? No notes. He’d need to be better about that, writing down his insights and revelations, especially since he was given to moderate blackouts.

The letter to his daughter was sealed in an envelope, stamped and addressed, on the tiny kitchen table. He wondered what he ended up writing her. Probably just a story. He always liked telling Debbie stories, even though they disagreed about his motivations. He held that he was a born entertainer, but she insisted that bullshitting was just one of the many pathologies of addiction.

He stared at the envelope until his mind gave up a tidbit of memory. He had titled the story
Mittens, the One-Eyed Wonder!
That was it, right? Deb was going to love that one.

While Rigg waited for the percolator to do its magic, he went to the bathroom and checked in on the ex-cat. Still there. That would have been a good start to a decent thriller, if the dead-for-years cat went missing in the night.

After a dry toast breakfast, Rigg went to work trying to analyze the logic of last night’s drunken theories. Each map piece was a dull green field of swooping, delicately drawn topographic lines that resembled rake patterns in a Zen garden. Most of the lines were black, but some were golden. Golden threads, pulling it all together, whatever
it
was.

Symbols made of lines and circles denoted particular places, but there was no map key. Rigg made a list of the hash marks, wavy lines in twos and threes, circles containing crosses, and circles with crosses that extended beyond the boundaries. Previous Juliet fanatics had done this work before, identifying sets and interpreting the meanings of each symbol, but Rigg want to create his own using what he knew of the Valley as a guide. For example, he would assume, as others had, that the wavy lines denoted bodies of water. However, in Death Valley most of the “lakes” had been dry for thousands of years. Rigg’s idea was that the marks referred to history and
geography at once, and that the maps collapsed time over place.

He wrote on the top of a new page in the theme book:
DIMENSIONAL THEORY.

For every individual map segment he’d found at least one duplicate, and so far there were forty-nine distinct squares. That would constitute a seven-by-seven grid, and it seemed as if he might have them all by now. That number was also the consensus of The Juliet community, but there was always the possibility that certain pieces were frauds, or that one or more authentic sections had been published and distributed in very rare numbers. Hence the unopened crates of Nuggetz
Rigg bought at auction. He couldn’t afford to be smug. There might be a golden ticket in any one of them.

The pieces were known amongst hunters as
1A
or
3G
, and so on, to throw the newbies off. The number-letter assignment did not refer to a position on the grid but to the section’s commonality among collectors. The assignments varied according to opinion, but in general the auction value of
7D
was more than ten times that of
4B.
Apparent corner pieces were quickly debunked as red herrings. Once the edges were trimmed or hidden, the lines leading out of the printed borders could be followed to connect to non-bordered sections. And that was the trick—not that there weren’t matches, but that there were too many. Put together, the segments formed maps of many places all over the world.

You had to know where to go. Rigg Dexon thought he did.

By lunch his hangover headache had been replaced by a headache from eyestrain, so he decided to switch activities and go through one of the Nuggetz shipping boxes. He sat in the kitchen with a black garbage bag in front of him as he sliced open the cereal boxes, extracted the cello-wrapped map segment, and dumped the rest. The cereal was pristine, releasing a honey infused breeze each time he pierced the sealed pack inside. It was a nauseating odor, sure to attract more rats. He’d have to drive the trash out to a dumpsite.

When he made his way through the shipping box, Rigg realized he had plenty of room for old Mittens, poor thing. The realty office cleaning crew had left a few useful items under the kitchen sink, including a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves. Though too small, Rigg managed to snap one on part of the way, leaving the rubber fingers half empty. It would have to do.

He went into the bathroom with his garbage bag of puffy cereal and opened the cabinet door. Mittens really did look like she was only sleeping. Rigg poked her with one of his dish-glove alien fingers. Bad news. She seemed stuck in place, just like the cabinet itself.

Rigg searched the kitchen drawers. Most had been emptied, but there was one that contained the things no one ever took with them when they left one home for another. What made the collection remarkable was that each item had been abandoned by a different generation: a candy thermometer with the numbers worn away, five pristine fondue forks, and a heat-warped plastic spatula.