Last night, before going to bed, I unplugged the phone from the wall but left my cell phone on and set to vibrate, so tonight’s pleasant dream of Alison Koechner has been interrupted not by the alarm-bell clamor of the landline, Maia shrieking into the windows and setting the world on fire, but by a gentle shivering rattle on the night table, a sensation that has inserted itself into my dream as the purr of a cat at ease in Alison’s gentle lap.
And now Victor France is cooing at me. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. Crack open those big moody peepers, Mustache McGee.”
I crack open my big moody peepers. Outside is darkness. France’s voice is whispery and grotesque and insistent. I blink awake and catch one final sidewise glimpse of Alison, radiant in the auburn front room of our wooden house on Casco Bay.
“I’m so sorry to wake you, Palace. Oh, wait, I’m not sorry at all.” France’s voice dissolves into a queer little giggle. He’s high on something, that’s for sure; maybe marijuana, maybe something else. High as a satellite, my father used to say. “No, definitely not sorry.”
I yawn again, crack my neck, and check the clock: 3:47 a.m.
“I don’t know how you’ve been sleeping, Detective, but I have not been sleeping too well, me, personally. Every time I’m about to crash out I think to myself, now, Vic, baby, that’s just dead hours. That’s just golden hours right down the tubes.” I’m sitting upright, feeling around on my night table for the light switch, grabbing my blue book and my pen, thinking, he’s got something for me. He wouldn’t be calling except that he’s got something for me. “I’m keeping track, at my house, can you believe that? I’ve got this big poster with every day that’s left, and every day I check one off.”
Behind France’s ragged monologue is the rapid-fire thump and robotic piano of electronic music, a large crowd hooting and chanting. Victor is partying in a warehouse somewhere, probably out on Sheep Davis Road, way east of the city proper.
“It’s like an Advent calendar, you know what I mean, my man?” He slips into a horror-movie narrator’s basso profondo. “An Advent calendar … of doom.”
He cackles, coughs, cackles again. It’s definitely not marijuana. Ecstasy is what I’m now thinking, though I shudder to think how France would have funded a purchase of Ecstasy, the prices for synthetics being as high as they are.
“Do you have information for me, Victor?”
“Ha! Palace!” Cackle, cough. “That’s one of the things I like about you. You do not mess around.”
“So do you have something for me?”
“Oh, my goodness gracious.” He laughs, pauses, and I can picture him, twitching, skinny arms tensing, the teasing grin. In the silence the bass-and-drum behind him pipes through, tinny and distant. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I do. I found it, about your pickup truck. I actually got it yesterday, but I waited. I waited until I was sure it would wake you up, and do you know why?”
“Because you hate me.”
“Yes!” he hollers and cackles. “I hate you! You got a pen, beautiful?”
The red pickup truck with the flag on the side was converted to a waste-oil engine, according to Victor France, by a Croatian mechanic named Djemic, who runs a small shop near the burned-out Nissan dealership on Manchester Street. I don’t know the place he’s talking about, but it will be easy to find.
“Thank you, sir.” I’m wide awake now, writing quickly, this is great, holy moly, and I’m feeling a surge of excitement and a wild rush of kindness toward Victor France. “Thanks, man,” I say. “This is great. Thank you so much. Go back to your party.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Now, you listen to me.”
“Yes?” My heart is shivering in my chest; I can see the outlines of the next phase of my investigation, each piece of information properly following forward from the last. “What?”
“I just wanna say … I wanna say something.” Victor’s voice has lost its ragged overlay of addled giddiness, he’s drawn down very quiet. I can see him, clear as though he’s standing before me, hunched forward over the warehouse pay phone, jabbing a finger in the air. “I just wanna say, this is it, man.”
“Okay,” I say. “This is it.” I mean it, too. He’s given me what I asked for, and more, and I’m ready to cut him loose. Let him dance in his warehouse till