LUNATIC FRINGE

CHAPTER ONE

“Elvis!!”

There was no sound, just the echo of his own voice down the hallway outside his bedroom door. Charlie Dalton thought about calling again but his head hurt and his throat was too dry. He needed something to drink bad, and he thought how this would have been a good time to have that little min-fridge that was out in the garage. Maybe he should move that into the bedroom today. Or tomorrow, tomorrow would be good, too. He knew he had something in the kitchen but that was a long way to walk and it would mean getting out of bed, and he just wasn’t ready to do that yet. Maybe if he waited a while he would either go back to sleep or his head would stop hurting so much. Either would be okay.

“Elvis!”

He listened hard for the sound of the dog’s claws on the wood floors but there was nothing. Dog must have gone outside to chase after gulls on the beach. Sunlight was beginning to make its way through the edges of the roll-up bamboo shade covering the windows over the bed, and he knew that meant it was well into the morning already. My, where did the day go. He knew he should be thinking about getting up, so he did, but thinking about it was as far as he could get right now without some good reason to follow through. All the reasons he could come up with seemed to argue in favor of staying where he was.

His head was hurting really bad now and he knew it was time for an aspirin. Maybe that was what he needed. He rolled his legs off the side of the bed and made himself sit up, his toes finding the sandals where he’d kicked them off the night before, the worn leather cool and comforting. This was it, time to stand up and see how steady he was.

Well, okay, not that steady yet, and he sank back to the mattress again.

No, this was really it. Charlie pushed himself up and felt his back crack a little bit as he straightened. Yow, that was kind of good in a bad kind of way. He stretched a bit and twisted to both sides, feeling everything start to loosen up. His ears were ringing and his head seemed to pulse with every heartbeat, but maybe this would be okay.

He shuffled down the hall, the worn leather flip-flops loose on his feet. The kitchen was bright, filled with the sun, and he winced as he came into the room. He opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of tomato juice, splashing a healthy portion into a coffee mug. He took a sip but knew it wasn’t going to quite do the trick, so he added a healthy dose of black pepper and swirled it around before taking another swallow. That was better, and he took another deep swallow and leaned over the sink to peer out the window toward the beach. Elvis’ water bowl was empty and he took a bottle of cold water out of the fridge, grunting a bit as be bent over to fill the bowl, spilling a little but leaving it for the sun to dry up.

Bamm-bamm. And what the hell was that?

He straightened up with a start, his head cocked to one side, listening. He stepped out the back door and leaned over the railing at the edge of the narrow deck that ran the width of the house. Hanging way out he could peer around the corner of the house and he could just see the road and the beginning of his driveway, but that was all he could make out. He couldn’t hear anything now and he shrugged to himself, taking another shot of tomato juice. He needed that aspirin, but where’d he left the bottle?

Bamm-bamm. There it was again, somebody knocking hard at the front door. Maybe Elvis had gotten into somebody’s kitchen again. Dog got confused sometimes, wandering up the beach, and one pan of bacon frying smelled pretty much the same as the next. He went back into the house and shuffled back through the living room to the front door.

“Walter Eberson.”

Charlie blinked a few times, still holding the doorknob as he peered through the screen door at the guy on his front porch. Average height, a little pale. Eyes hidden behind a pair of wrap-around sunglasses and a neatly-knotted dark tie pulled up against his throat. What kind of idiot wore a suit down here? But it was the steel-blue pistol that grabbed and held his attention. Not pointed at him, or at anything in particular, but very obvious all the same, just kind of hanging down there in the guy’s right hand.

He cleared his throat. “What can I do for you?” Not even looking at the guy’s face any more, his eyes glued to the gun.

“You won’t mind if I come in.”

It wasn’t a question and didn’t need to be. He opened the door the rest of the way and stepped back to make room. The guy pulled open the screen door and stepped in, but not too close, the gun still there and maybe raised just a little bit in case it needed to be pointed at somebody quickly.

“Why don’t you sit down.”

Telling him in his own house, but that was okay because his head was pounding even more than before and he really didn’t want to make any kind of moves that might make this guy do something drastic. Drastic would most likely be a bad thing. He backed up to one of the rattan chairs next to the fireplace and eased down into it, careful not to move too fast. The guy stepped quickly over to the doorway that led off to the back of the house. He glanced briefly down the hallway and then back at Charlie, listening for a moment before he seemed comfortable. He sat down on the couch a few feet away, the gun still not really pointing at Charlie directly but one foot came up and nudged the coffee table away a bit. It was a casual kind of gesture but Charlie recognized that if he had wanted to come out of his chair quick and make a rush at this guy, now he’d have to hurdle the coffee table to do it.

“I’m not gonna be surprised, somebody else walks into the room,” the guy said.

Charlie shook his head. “Just me. And the dog, he’s off down the beach somewhere.”

The guy nodded, apparently satisfied at that. “If the dog comes in I may have to shoot it. I must admit, you look better than I expected at your age.”

As Charlie thought about that he remembered he was still holding the mug of peppered tomato juice and he took a sip, pausing to lick little dots of pepper off the edge of his upper lip. “I get told that sometimes,” he said, “But usually the other way ‘round.” He took another sip of tomato juice.

“You seem pretty at ease with this, me being here.” With a gun, leaving that part out. “I guess you’re not that surprised.”

“Oh, I’m pretty surprised,” Charlie said. “I’m just a little hung over still.”

The dark sunglasses stared back at him.

“So I’m thinking maybe you’re here with my check,” he offered.

The guy cocked his head, like if he had expected Charlie to say something it wasn’t that. He pushed the sunglasses up on his forehead and stared at Charlie with dull black eyes.

“What’s that again?”

“My check,” Charlie said. “I guess you’re from the government. Aren’t we all getting some kind of rebate check or something now? I wasn’t expecting it to be hand-delivered, is all.”

The guy brought up the gun and rubbed the blunt barrel against his cheekbone. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not here with any rebate check. You’re close, though. I’m with the government, all right. You fell off the radar screen for a while, a long while, but we want it back now.”

“Want what back?” He needed some more tomato juice.

The guy leaned forward on the couch, one elbow braced on his knee, the gun dangling. “The money, Walter. The money you took from Eduardo Argueta. If you spent some of it that’s okay, we’d kind of expect that, as long as it’s been.” He glanced quickly around the room. “Although it doesn’t look like you’ve spent much. But it’s time to give the rest of it back.”

Charlie looked down in his empty coffee mug. He really wanted some more tomato juice, maybe with something extra in it now because he felt like his head was going to explode. He raised his eyes and looked back at this guy with the gun dangling loosely in his hand except it wasn’t really dangling and it wasn’t really loose and he tried to think of how to say it that it wouldn’t be taken the wrong way, like the dog had eaten his homework and who’s gonna believe that. Because he knew this guy wasn’t going to want to hear it.

“Don’t take this the wrong way – my name’s not Walter,” he said finally, because that’s all he could think to say. “It’s Charlie, Charlie Dalton. I think maybe you got the wrong house.”

The coffee table came flying across the room toward him, no warning,

the edge cracking him hard in both shins and bringing a sharp yelp to his throat. Instinctively he started to his feet but just as quickly he dropped back again, pressing into the cushion of the rattan chair, because the guy was off the couch and the gun was practically in his face. Staring straight up the barrel and up past the arm that held it he could see the guy looked enraged almost beyond words, his thin lips quivering and his eyes dark and angry and crazy wild, like an old woman on menopause who’d just had a really mean heat flash and was going to kill the cashier at the Piggly Wiggly store who’d run out of change and all she had was a fifty. But as angry as he was and as close to the edge as he might be, the gun in his hand was as steady and unwavering as a rock and Charlie didn’t move a muscle.

“I’m not really buying that today,” he told Charlie finally in a voice that seemed as still as the hand holding the gun. “You’ll understand if I don’t let you go on very long with it. I’ve spent a good bit of time chasing down names and all I’m really thinking right now is Walter, so let’s pretend you didn’t just say what you said and we’ll move on to the next step. That’s where you apologize for wasting my time and tell me where we find the money. Because if you even think about saying anything else then I say to hell with it and I’ll cap you and walk away. Don’t mess with me this morning. You think you’re having a bad day now but I’ll give you a new way to define bad day.”

Charlie slowly released the breath he’d been holding and forced himself to take another one, gripping the frayed ends of the rattan armrests to keep his nerves steady. He realized he wasn’t holding the empty coffee mug anymore but had no idea what had happened to it.

“Look,” he said carefully, “My name’s Charles Dalton. I don’t know who this Walter – what did you say? Eberson? – I don’t know who he is. When you said the name at the door I thought you were saying that’s who you were.”

The gun was still in his face but he wasn’t dead yet so he went on.

“I’ve been here on Fort Jackson Point a little less than a year. I came down here from Atlanta – I was a newspaper reporter there. I wanted someplace quiet and cheap and this was it.” He wasn’t sure what else there was to say but he didn’t want to see what might happen if he stopped talking. “I was doing investigative reporting and kept ruffling feathers. I wrote a book and, I don’t know, that was the last straw I guess . . . I was told I could take a severance package or get canned so . . .” He glanced around the room. “So I’m here.”

The guy with the gun didn’t say anything for what seemed an awful long time and Charlie could feel his nervousness growing like a really bad heartburn. He realized that Elvis could come banging through the screen door at the back of the house any time now and the thought of how this guy might react to that kind of unexpected intrusion was not making him any more comfortable.

“That’s it?” the guy said finally. “After all this time you can’t do any better than that shabby little story?”

“Look,” Charlie said, encouraged by the fact that he still didn’t have any bullet-holes in him. “If I was this Walter guy wouldn’t I have said something right off the bat? I’m gonna know you’re talking about me when you first say the name, right? You say Walter Eberson and I say, hey, you got the wrong guy? Or I slam the door, try and run out the back? Why wait till we’re in here and you have a pistol in my face?”

Maybe this guy wasn’t buying it yet but Charlie could see that he was at least easing off a bit. The gun was still pointed in his direction but it wasn’t quite aimed at him anymore. He had edged back toward the couch again, his lips pursed as he thought through what Charlie had blabbered out. Charlie relaxed his grip on the ends of the armrests and flexed his legs, just enough to inch the coffee table away and relieve the pressure on his shins.

“For argument’s sake let’s say you got proof for any of this, then maybe your day ends better than it started,” the guy told him.

“Not a problem,” Charlie promised, rising to a half-crouch before freezing as the guy shoved the coffee table against his legs again.

“And I hope you’re thinking of something better than a damn driver’s license,” the guy said. “Cause I know at least a dozen places where twenty bucks will get me a license from any state in the country, says I’m Bill Clinton. So if you think you’re going to whip out an old Georgia driver’s license with Charlie Dalton on it and I’m walking outa here, think again.”

Charlie hesitated. Well, okay, so that might be a problem. If the driver’s license was no good then his passport probably wouldn’t cut it either – even if he could find it. Charlie’s eyes darted around the room, his mind racing. He eased himself out from behind the coffee table and reached up on the bookcase alongside the fireplace, his fingers gliding over the bound covers on the top shelf, it had to be here someplace. “Here we go.” He pulled the blue-and-white-covered book from the shelf and held it out.

“So what’s this?” The guy took the book and flipped through it one-handed, then turned to look at the cover. “Red-Hotlanta: Politics and Payoffs in the Capital of the New South. By Charles Dalton.”

He turned it over again and looked at the back cover, the big picture of Charlie with a decent haircut, over a short biography. He tossed it onto the coffee table where it landed with a thud, much like its arrival in national bookstores.

“How about that, you’re famous.”

Charlie glanced down at the picture of himself. “Not exactly,” he said with a shrug. “But I am Charlie Dalton.”

“Well, good for you. Have a nice day now.” The guy had already holstered the gun, Charlie hadn’t even seen where, and he was heading out the front door.

“Hey!” Charlie called, taking a quick step and then stopping short again. “That’s it? I don’t even get an explanation? An apology?”

The guy paused to look back at him with little interest. “No, you don’t. But you don’t get arrested either. Or shot. I’d call that a pretty big improvement in how your morning was starting out to be.” He let the screen slam shut behind him.

Charlie watched him walk briskly down the gravel driveway toward the sand-colored Chevy Impala parked close to the road. A government car, most likely, or a rental. He’d obviously parked it a ways from the house so the tires wouldn’t be heard on the gravel. Charlie stepped out on the porch, a little bolder now that he wasn’t thinking so much about being dead but still not sure in his own mind what had just happened. He was surprised as the guy reached the car and kept going all the way to the mailbox, nailed precariously to the top of a two-by-four sunk into the sand at the end of the drive.

“Hey,” Charlie called out. What the hell? Son of a bitch was going through his mail now? Without thinking he came off the porch and started down the drive, indignation getting the better of him for a few moments before he caught himself. What the hell are you doing, Charlie? His pace slowed the farther down the drive he got. “That’s a violation of federal law, you know,” he said.

The guy was shuffling through a hand-full of envelopes as he walked back toward Charlie. “Yeah? I think I heard that somewhere.”