“Yeah. Pilot. She flat out says he’s a killer,” Letty said. “She didn’t come up with that today, she said it weeks ago, when we first met in San Francisco, when there was no money in it. As far as working me goes, she tried to work me a little in San Francisco, because they weren’t making any money with their singing. Then she realized she didn’t have to work me, because I was going to buy them a McDonald’s anyway. She’s not dumb.”
Lucas sat on the porch next to her and said, “Okay. First of all, you know, she is crazy. Somehow, someway, because all street people are. Not necessarily schizophrenic, or clinically paranoid, but almost certainly sociopathic to some extent, because they can’t survive otherwise. If they’re too sane, their whole worldview breaks down, and they wind up in treatment or in a hospital or dead: dope or booze.”
“She’s not exactly street,” Letty said. “She’s a traveler. They’re kind of street, but they’re different. A lot of street people are . . . bums. Beggars. Travelers are different. For one thing, they travel. They’re usually pretty put together—they buy good outdoor gear, they stay neat, they try to stay clean. Lots of them have dogs that they take care of. They have objectives. They make plans. They know each other, they meet up.”
“More like hobos,” Lucas suggested.
“I don’t exactly know what a hobo is. Aren’t they on trains?”
“Yeah, but these travelers sound like hobos,” Lucas said. “They have a certain status.”
“Exactly,” Letty said. “Will you come with me, when I meet her? She’ll be in around noon.”
“Yeah, sure. I might have to push a meeting around, nothing important,” Lucas said.
“She said they had Henry’s heart in a Mason jar,” Letty said.
“Ah, the old heart-in-the-jar story,” Lucas said.
“That Pilot made a guy eat Henry’s penis . . . roast it and eat it.”
“Ah, the old roasted penis story . . .”
“What if it’s true?”
“It’s not,” Lucas said.
Lucas stood up and dusted off the seat of his running shorts. “There are certain kinds of stories that pop up around crazy people, especially street people. Apocryphal stories, urban legends. Slander: cannibals are the big crowd favorite. I’ve run into all kinds of stories like that—the most extreme ones you can think of, people eating babies or feeding babies to dogs, and so on. Exactly none of them have been true.”
“But . . .”
Lucas held up a finger: “There are cannibals out there, but there aren’t any true stories about them. Cannibals are quiet about what they do. When you hear cannibal stories, it’s always about somebody trying to get somebody else in trouble. And usually about roasting and eating somebody’s dick. Or somebody’s breasts. Sexual fantasies, made up to get somebody else in trouble.”
“All right. But—come with me tomorrow.”
? ? ?
LUCAS MOVED HIS MEETINGS around and at noon the next day, he and Letty were in Minneapolis. The Jefferson Lines shared a terminal with Greyhound off Tenth Street, a relatively cheerful place compared to most bus stations, built under a parking garage.
They could see the green-glass top of the IDS tower peeking over the surrounding buildings as Lucas parked his Mercedes SUV on the street. He and Letty walked over to the station, where they were told that the bus was running forty-five minutes late. “Hasn’t even gotten to Burnsville yet. There was a big accident out on I-90. The driver’s trying to make up time, though, so they won’t be in Burnsville for more’n a couple minutes,” said the guy behind the Jefferson Lines desk.
They decided to kill the time by walking over to the downtown shopping strip, so Letty could check out new arrivals at the Barnes & Noble and Lucas could look at suits at Harry White’s.
The Harry White salesman was happy to see him, as always: “You’re running late in the season this year, but I snuck a suit off the rack, put it in the back, until I could show it to you. Italian, of course. It’s not quite as dark as charcoal, you couldn’t call it charcoal, but it’s a touch deeper than a medium gray, with a very fine almost yellow pinstripe, more beige, I’d say.”
Lucas was a clotheshorse, and always had been. He spent a half hour looking at suits, had a couple of them put back for further examination on the following Saturday, spent five minutes looking at ties, another five with shoes, checked out a black leather jacket—$2,450 and soft as pudding. He spent nothing, and walked across the street to Barnes & Noble, where he found Letty checking out with a Yoga tome and a book on compact concealed-carry firearms.
“You’re not going to start carrying a gun,” Lucas said.
“Of course not, but I want to stay informed,” Letty said. “We oughta go out to the range this weekend, if it doesn’t rain.”
“Let’s do that,” Lucas said. “It’s been a while.”
? ? ?
SKYE WAS THE LAST PERSON off the bus. She was wearing the same outfit as in San Francisco, but smelled like soap. She and Letty shared a perfunctory hug, Letty introduced Lucas, and they waited until Skye’s bag was unloaded. Lucas said, “We got you a hotel room in St. Paul. We’ll drop your stuff there and grab something to eat, and figure out what we’re doing.”
“That’s great, but I really don’t think I can afford—”
“We got it,” Lucas said. “For two or three days, anyway.”
“Appreciate it,” Skye said. She’d learned not to decline kindnesses; they might not be offered a second time.
A half an hour later, they’d checked her into a Holiday Inn on the edge of St. Paul’s downtown area, and from there went to a quiet Bruegger’s Bagels bakery on Grand Avenue to talk. They all got baskets of bagels and Lucas and Letty got Diet Cokes and Skye a regular Coke—the calories thing again—and as they settled down at a corner table, Lucas said, “You’re worried about your friend.”
“One of Pilot’s disciples—one of the women he sleeps with—told me they cut out Henry’s heart and put it in a Mason jar and they take it out at night and worship it.”