Lavie Tidhar - Hard Rain at the Fortean Cafe.pdf

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Hard Rain at the Fortean Café
Lavie Tidhar
“I’ve never been to America, which is why I rarely set stories there. It’s a
lapse in my itinerary, I know. I would dearly love to taste a Philly
cheesesteak one day. I saw it on Wikipedia, which entirely justifies its
existence. For obvious reasons, though, this story doesn’t take place in
America. Rather, it’s set in a pop culture version of America—the one
known to millions of people around the world who, like me, have never
been to the place but know the streets are paved with gold there and
people eat only super-sized meals. Oh, and there are numerous alien
abductions. Of course. So this is that story. You might like to read it while
listening to Kinky Friedman’s ‘Sold American’, but then again, you might
not. There’s nothing really very strange about a Jewish cowboy—and all
alien abduction stories are true.
This one is no exception.”
T HE DINER STOOD off the highway outside a small town
optimistically called Hope. Hope was being stuck in the middle of the
Northwest and wishing you were someplace, anyplace else. And Hope was
also the name on the tag pinned to the dead woman in waitress uniform that
was currently lying against the wall inside the Barbie-Q Roadhouse . I had
to stop myself from worrying at the connection: looking for patterns when
sometimes there are none at all.
I wasn’t worried about Hope (the waitress, not the town). I didn’t get
called down here for a murder: shit, murder is an honest-to-God American
pastime. Just look at the statistics. No, I got called in because of the
Marilyn.
The Marilyn was also dead. All in all, there were five dead people in
the Barbie-Q : two waitresses; a balding man who—from his bag full of
cheaply-printed catalogs—was some sort of a general salesman; the
diner’s manager; and Marilyn. They had been shot by a machine gun,
probably an Uzi. Marilyn’s head left a red smear against the glass of the
booth she sat in. She was there alone.
What the hell was a Marilyn doing out here?
 
It rained when I got out of the car. The diner was sheathed in rain, its
artificial light glaring through the windows, only some of which were broken.
Inside, Forensics had come and gone, and I had gone in more to get out of
the rain than for any hope of discovering what had happened. Also, I
wanted to take a look at Marilyn.
The blonde hair was matted dark, and her eyes stared at the ceiling
with a slightly surprised look. She was twenty-five, give or take, and
dressed in a long winter coat that had two new holes in it.
“Who the hell are you?” He was tall and bulky and looked unused to
dead bodies. Local cop. I flashed him a smile and a badge. “Amelia Hart,
FBI.”
He looked at the badge closely, nodded reluctantly. “What do you
want?”
“I’m here about her,” I said, pointing at the Marilyn.
He stared. “Her? What’s so special about her?”
He was too young. I guessed he didn”t watch too many old movies.
That was good. “Nothing for you to worry about, bud,” I said. I was no
longer smiling.
He shrugged. “Whatever you say, lady. Happy to leave this mess to
you Feds.” He went out, slammed the door on his way. He didn’t seem at all
happy. I couldn’t care less.
It continued to rain.
America is the land of baseball, Coca-Cola, and gun crime; the land
of the free and the brave and the exotically insane; of DiMaggio and Kinky
Friedman and Elvis. It is the home of alien abductees, Bigfoot, and Charles
Fort. Everything is bigger here. Things happen in America that are just not
possible in the rest of the world. It takes a special mentality to see the
hidden patterns in a rain of fish, or to seek out meaning in the work of serial
killers. Fort saw it: that weird shit just kind of happens in America. It’s a
happening kind of place.
 
I examined the Marilyn. She looked just like all the others I’ve seen,
over the years: always hiding out in little towns on the edge of nowhere, hair
veering wildly between mousy-brown and dyed-hardcore-blonde. Driver’s
licenses with variations on Norma Jeane.
Hiding.
There was someone out there who didn’t like Marilyns.
The first one washed up in Oregon over five years before. Since then
I’d gone over half the states, Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, Kentucky, North
Carolina…. If there was a pattern to it I couldn’t see it. We were still trying to
figure out where the Marylins came from in the first place. There was some
sick asshole out there, serial-killing Marilyn Monroe.
I listened to the rain for a while. It seemed almost peaceful. Then I
heard another car, coming to a halt, breaking. A door opening. Low voices.
Footsteps. The door swinging open.
I smelled him before I saw him: expensive, understated aftershave.
Soft footsteps: he wore expensive, understated trainers. I was glad to see
they were now covered in mud.
He was around thirty, long warm coat, a pleasant face that told me
nothing.
“Joe Johnson,” he said. “I got a call.”
“I know who you are, Mr. Johnson,” I said. “What I don’t know is what
the hell you’re doing here.”
He smiled. “I grew up around here. Been visiting my dad. Then I got a
call saying Marilyn Monroe was spotted in the local diner.”
“Oh? Can I ask who called you?”
His smile grew wider. “The same person who employs you, Ms.
Earhart.”
I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all. “My name’s Hart,” I said. “Just
Hart.”
His smile said he knew I was lying. “Look,” he said. “We might as well
 
try and get along if we’re going to work together. The police and FBI’s job is
to figure out who killed all these people. I’m not police, and I’m not Bureau.
And neither are you.”
I didn’t argue. There was no point. He said, “Your job is to figure
who’s killing the Marilyns, right? And mine is to make sure people only read
about stuff like this is in the National Enquirer or alt.conspiracy . That’s the
way it is.” He put his hand forward for a shake. “Please.”
I shook his hand. I didn’t like it, but he was right. And I was outranked.
His hand was warm and dry, though I noticed his nails were bitten. He
followed my eyes and shrugged. “Old habit. Can I buy you a coffee?”
I looked over the diner and he followed me there too—over the
blood-soaked floor, the shot-up counter—and laughed. He had an easy
laugh. Comfortable. “Not here, obviously. But there’s an all-night place in
Hope. We could compare notes.”
I shrugged. A coffee was a coffee, regardless of the company. “Lead
the way, Mr. Johnson.”
We stepped out together into the rain.
There was a Starbucks but it was closed, and we wound up at a truck
stop on the edge of town. We were the only customers. The waitress had
long red fingernails and a bleached hairdo left over from the 80s.
“Hi, Joe,” she said.
“Hey, Jude.” She smiled when he said her name; I got a sudden
sense of some long-forgotten history between them. I don’t know; maybe
he took her to the prom once.
We sat by the window that overlooked the highway and the rain. Could
have been the Barbie-Q . Could have been anywhere.
“So tell me,” I said. “What’s your interest in all this? No bullshit.”
He smiled. He was the kind of guy who smiled easy. “It’s good to talk
to someone who knows ,” he said. “Do you know I read about you as a kid?
20 Hrs., 40 Min., The Fun of It, Last Flight …”
 
“That was published after…” I said, then stopped. I shook my head
and drank the coffee. Noticed Jude put on a fresh pot, especially for us. Or
for Joe.
“After you disappeared. I know. Amelia, I know .”
“Shit.” There didn’t seem much more to say. I never got on very well
with other abductees. And this one was coming over a fan . “Joe fucking
Johnson,” I said. “Grays Special Liaison. What are you doing here?”
He turned his head away, watched the rain for a little while. Headlights
along the road looked like the lights of UFOs. “This is where they took me,”
he said at last, and he wasn’t smiling. “Grew up here. My dad still finds his
cattle mutilated every winter. I tried to stop it, but it’s like dealing with
children…” he sighed. “They like the small towns. The farmlands. This is
their patch. Do you understand?”
Realization came like static on the radio. “They think it’s a warning.”
“Marilyn Monroe’s been dead for a long, long time,” Joe said, and it
made him sound old. “She shouldn’t be turning up anywhere , and definitely
not here.”
“She’s been turning up all over the place,” I said. He grimaced.
“So you think someone’s trying to draw attention…”
“Yes.”
“And that’s why you’re getting involved.”
He nodded. Finished his coffee. Stared into the rain. He had that look,
of the long-distance pilot. Alone in the storm, the Pacific below you…you
see strange lights, start looking out for them.
It doesn’t lead to anything good. I should know.
I thought about what he said. Maybe the person killing the Marilyns
didn’t even care. If it was a way of drawing attention to the little gray guys in
the skies…. I had to admit it was kind of effective. So far no one in the
Fortean press has latched on to anything, but it was only a matter of time.
And these days, they could run DNA tests. If it matched—and it would—the
story would go into syndication .
 

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