The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Pine Cove 2)

Chapter 2~3

Two

The Sea Beast

The cooling pipes at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant were all fashioned from the finest stainless steel. Before they were installed, they were x-rayed, ultrasounded, and pressure-tested to be sure that they could never break, and after being welded into place, the welds were also x-rayed and tested. The radioactive steam from the core left its heat in the pipes, which leached it off into a seawater cooling pond, where it was safely vented to the Pacific. But Diablo had been built on a breakneck schedule during the energy scare of the seventies. The welders worked double and triple shifts, driven by greed and cocaine, and the inspectors who ran the X-ray machines were on the same schedule. And they missed one. Not a major mistake. Just a tiny leak. Barely noticeable. A minuscule stream of harmless, low-level radiation wafted out with the tide and drifted over the continental shelf, dissipating as it went, until even the most sensitive instruments would have missed it. Yet the leak didn't go totally undetected.

In the deep trench off California, near a submerged volcano where the waters ran to seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit and black smokers spewed clouds of mineral soup, a creature was roused from a long slumber. Eyes the size of dinner platters winked out the sediment and sleep of years. It was instinct, sense, and memory: the Sea Beast's brain. It remembered eating the remains of a sunken Russian nuclear submarine: beefy little sailors tenderized by the pressure of the depths and spiced with piquant radioactive marinade. Memory woke the beast, and like a child lured from under the covers on a snowy morning by the smell of bacon frying, it flicked its great tail, broke free from the ocean floor, and began a slow ascent into the current of tasty treats. A current that ran along the shore of Pine Cove.

Mavis

Mavis tossed back a shot of Bushmills to take the edge off her frustration at not being able to whack anyone with her baseball bat. She wasn't really angry that Molly had bitten a customer. After all, he was a tourist and rated above the mice in the walls only because he carried cash. Maybe the fact that something had actually happened in the Slug would bring in a little business. People would come in to hear the story, and Mavis could stretch, speculate, and dramatize most stories into at least three drinks a tell.

Business had been slowing over the last couple of years. People didn't seem to want to bring their problems into a bar. Time was, on any given afternoon, you'd have three or four guys at the bar, pouring down beers as they poured out their hearts, so filled with self-loathing that they'd snap a vertebra to avoid catching their own reflection in the big mirror behind the bar. On a given evening, the stools would be full of people who whined and growled and bitched all night long, pausing only long enough to stagger to the bathroom or to sacrifice a quarter to the jukebox's extensive self-pity selection. Sadness sold a lot of alcohol, and it had been in short supply these last few years. Mavis blamed the booming economy, Val Riordan, and vegetables in the diet for the sadness shortage, and she fought the insidious invaders by running two-for-one happy hours with fatty meat snacks (The whole point of happy hour was to purge happiness, wasn't it?), but all her efforts only served to cut her profits in half. If Pine Cove could no longer produce sadness, she would import some, so she advertised for a Blues singer.

The old Black man wore sunglasses, a leather fedora, a tattered black wool suit that was too heavy for the weather, red suspenders over a Hawaiian shirt that sported topless hula girls, and creaky black-on-white wing tips. He set his guitar case on the bar and climbed onto a stool.

Mavis eyed him suspiciously and lit a Tarryton 100. She'd been taught as a girl not to trust Black people.

"Name your poison," she said.

He took off his fedora, revealing a gleaming brown baldness that shone like polished walnut. "You gots some wine?"

"Cheap-shit red or cheap-shit white?" Mavis cocked a hip, gears and machinery clicked.

"Them cheap-shit boys done expanded. Used to be jus' one flavor. "

"Red or white?"

"Whatever sweetest, sweetness. "

Mavis slammed a tumbler onto the bar and filled it with yellow liquid from an icy jug in the well. "That'll be three bucks. "

The Black man reached out - thick sharp nails skating the bar surface, long fingers waving like tentacles, searching, the hand like a sea creature caught in a tidal wash - and missed the glass by four inches.

Mavis pushed the glass into his hand. "You blind?"

"No, it be dark in here. "

"Take off your sunglasses, idjit. "

"I can't do that, ma'am. Shades go with the trade. "

"What trade? Don't you try to sell pencils in here. I don't tolerate beggars. "

"I'm a Bluesman, ma'am. I hear ya'll lookin for one. "

Mavis looked at the guitar case on the bar, at the Black man in shades, at the long fingernails of his right hand, the short nails and knobby gray calluses on the fingertips of his left, and she said, "I should have guessed. Do you have any experience?"

He laughed, a laugh that started deep down and shook his shoulders on the way up and chugged out of his throat like a steam engine leaving a tunnel. "Sweetness, I got me more experience than a busload o' hos. Ain't no dust settled a day on Catfish Jefferson since God done first dropped him on this big ol' ball o' dust. That's me, call me Catfish. "

He shook hands like a sissy, Mavis thought, just let her have the tips of his fingers. She used to do that before she had her arthritic finger joints replaced. She didn't want any arthritic old Blues singer. "I'm going to need someone through Christmas. Can you stay that long or would your dust settle?"

"I 'spose I could slow down a bit. Too cold to go back East. " He looked around the bar, trying to take in the dinge and smoke through his dark glasses, then turned back to her. "Yeah, I might be able to clear my schedule if" - and here he grinned and Mavis could see a gold tooth there with a musical note cut in it - "if the money is right," he said.

"You'll get room and board and a percentage of the bar. You bring 'em in, you'll make money. "

He considered, scratched his cheek where white stubble sounded like a toothbrush against sandpaper, and said, "No, sweetness, you bring 'em in. Once they hear

Catfish play, they come back. Now what percentage did you have in mind?"

Mavis stroked her chin hair, pulled it straight to its full three inches. "I'll need to hear you play. "

Catfish nodded. "I can play. " He flipped the latches on his guitar case and pulled out a gleaming National steel body guitar. From his pocket he pulled a cutoff bottleneck and with a twist it fell onto the little finger of his left hand. He played a chord to test tune, pulled the bottleneck from the fifth to the ninth and danced it there, high and wailing.

Mavis could smell something like mildew, moss maybe, a change in humidity. She sniffed and looked around. She hadn't been able to smell anything for fifteen years.

Catfish grinned. "The Delta," he said.

He launched into a twelve-bar Blues, playing the bass line with his thumb, squealing the high notes with the slide, rocking back and forth on the bar stool, the light of the neon Coors sign behind the bar playing colors in the reflection of sunglasses and his bald head.

The daytime regulars looked up from their drinks, stopped lying for a second, and Slick McCall missed a straight-in eight-ball shot on the quarter table, which he almost never did.

And Catfish sang, starting high and haunting, going low and gritty.

"They's a mean ol' woman run a bar out on the Coast.

I'm telling you, they's a mean ol' woman run a bar out on the

Coast. But when she gets you under the covers, That ol' woman turn your buttered bread to toast. "

And then he stopped.

"You're hired," Mavis said. She pulled the jug of white cheap-shit out of the well and sloshed some into Catfish's

glass. "On the house. "

Just then the door opened and a blast of sunlight cut through the dinge and smoke and residual Blues and Vance McNally, the EMT, walked in and set his radio on the bar.

"Guess what?" he said to everyone and no one in particular. "That pilgrim woman hung herself. "

A low mumble passed through the regulars. Catfish put his guitar in its case and picked up his wine. "Sho' 'nuff a sad day startin early in this little town. Sho' 'nuff. "

"Sho' 'nuff," said Mavis with a cackle like a stainless-steel hyena.

Valerie Riordan

Depression has a mortality rate of fifteen percent. Fifteen percent of all patients with major depression will take their own lives. Statistics. Hard numbers in a very squishy science. Fifteen percent. Dead.

Val Riordan had been repeating the figures to herself since Theophilus Crowe had called, but it wasn't helping her feel any better about what Bess Leander had done. Val had never lost a patient before. And Bess Leander hadn't really been depressed, had she? Bess didn't fit into the fifteen percent.

Val went to the office in the back of her house and pulled Bess Leander's file, then went back to the living room to wait for Constable Crowe. At least it was the local guy, not the county sheriffs. And she could always fall back on patient confidentiality. Truth was, she had no idea why Bess Leander might have hung herself. She had only seen Bess once, and then for only half an hour. Val had made the diagnosis, written the scrip, and collected a check for the full hour session. Bess had called in twice, talked for a few minutes, and Val had sent her a bill for the time rounded to the next quarter hour.

Time was money. Val Riordan liked nice things.

The doorbell rang, Westminster chimes. Val crossed the living room to the marble foyer. A thin tall figure was refracted through the door's beveled glass panels: Theophilus Crowe. Val had never met him, but she knew of him. Three of his ex-girlfriends were her patients. She opened the door.

He was dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a gray shirt with black epaulets that might have been part of a uniform at one time. He was clean-shaven, with long sandy hair tied neatly into a ponytail. A good-looking guy in an Ichabod Crane sort of way. Val guessed he was stoned. His girlfriends had talked about his habits.

"Dr. Riordan," he said. "Theo Crowe. " He offered his hand.

She shook hands. "Everyone calls me Val," she said. "Nice to meet you. Come in. " She pointed to the living room.

"Nice to meet you too," Theo said, almost as an afterthought. "Sorry about the circumstances. " He stood at the edge of the marble foyer, as if afraid to step on the white carpet.

She walked past him and sat down on the couch. "Please," she said, pointing to one of a set of Hepplewhite chairs. "Sit. "

He sat. "I'm not exactly sure why I'm here, except that Joseph Leander doesn't seem to know why Bess did it. "

"No note?" Val asked.

"No. Nothing. Joseph went downstairs for breakfast this morning and found her hanging in the dining room. "

Val felt her stomach lurch. She had never really formed a mental picture of Bess Leander's death. It had been words on the phone until now. She looked away from Theo, looked around the room for something that would erase the picture.

"I'm sorry," Theo said. "This must be hard for you. I'm just wondering if there was anything that Bess might have said in therapy that would give a clue. "

Fifteen percent, Val thought. She said, "Most suicides don't leave a note. By the time they have gone that far into depression, they aren't interested in what happens after their death. They just want the pain to end. "

Theo nodded. "Then Bess was depressed? Joseph said that she appeared to be getting better. "

Val cast around her training for an answer. She hadn't really diagnosed Bess Leander, she had just prescribed what she thought would make Bess feel better. She said, "Diagnosis in psychiatry isn't always that exact, Theo. Bess Leander was a complex case. Without compromising doctor-patient confidentiality, I can tell you that Bess suffered from a borderline case of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. I was treating her for that. "

Theo pulled a prescription bottle out of his shirt pocket and looked at the label. "Zoloft. Isn't that an anti-depressant? I only know because I used to date a woman who was on it. "

Right, Val thought. Actually, you used to date at least three women who were on it. She said, "Zoloft is an SSRI like Prozac. It's prescribed for a number of conditions. With OCD the dosage is higher. " That's it, get clinical. Baffle him with clinical bullshit.

Theo shook the bottle. "Could someone O. D. on it or something? I heard somewhere that people do crazy things sometimes on these drugs. "

"That's not necessarily true. SSRIs like Zoloft are often prescribed to people with major depression. Fifteen percent of all depressed patients commit suicide. " There, she said it. "Antidepressants are a tool, along with talk therapy, that psychiatrists use to help patients. Sometimes the tools don't work. As with any therapy, a third get better, a third get worse, and a third stay the same. Antidepressants aren't a panacea. " But you treat them like they are, don't you, Val?

"But you said that Bess Leander had OCD, not depression. "

"Constable, have you ever had a stomachache and a runny nose at the same time?"

"So you're saying she was depressed?"

"Yes, she was depressed, as well as having OCD. "

"And it couldn't have been the drugs?"

"To be honest with you, I don't even know if she was taking the drug. Have you counted them?"

"Uh, no. "

"Patients don't always take their medicine. We don't order blood level tests for SSRIs. "

"Right," Theo said. "I guess we'll know when they do the autopsy. "

Another horrendous picture flashed in Val's mind: Bess Leander on an autopsy table. The viscera of medicine had always been too much for her. She stood.

"I wish I could help you more, but to be honest, Bess Leander never gave me any indication that she was suicidal. " At least that was true.

Theo took her cue and stood. "Well, thank you. I'm sorry to have bothered you. If you think of anything, you know, anything that I can tell Joseph that might make it easier on him. . . "

"I'm sorry. That's all I know. " Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent. Fifteen percent.

She led him to the door.

He turned before leaving. "One more thing. Molly Michon is one of your patients, isn't she?"

"Yes. Actually, she's a county patient, but I agreed to treat her at a reduced rate because all the county facilities are so far away. "

"You might want to check on her. She attacked a guy at the Head of the Slug this morning. "