by James A Ross
Blinking his eyes as if emerging from a troubled sleep, Tom tried to banish the painful memory by turning to survey the rest of the assembled mourners. Two pale young men sat quietly on the center aisle nearest the exit, gripping the hands of a third who sat sobbing between them. A head shop’s inventory of cheap metal jewelry sprouted from the distraught youth’s ears, eyebrows and lips. The two young men on either side were less dramatically skewered, though clearly of the same urban tribe. That was the total attendance: six mourners, plus Joe and himself.
Toward the end of the service, Joe slipped quietly from the church. When a gust of wind blew open a side door, Tom could see him squatting behind a silver sedan copying license plate numbers into a leather covered notebook.
* * *
When Tom returned to Joe’s cabin, Mary told him that he’d just missed his old friend Father Gauss. “Came to visit the sick and stayed to finish a pitcher of gin and tonic. He said for you to stop by the rectory while you’re in town.”
Tom’s face lifted in surprise at his mother’s friendly tone. Growing up, he had the impression that she didn’t much care for the worldly, ultra-liberal Father Gauss.
“Go ahead,” said Mary. “Call him. Take him out to dinner. He might know something that could help your brother with this Billy Pearce business.”
The suggestion was even more surprising.
“How would Father Gauss have known Billy Pearce?”
“I didn’t say he did.” Her voice was firm. “He might know something, that’s all. Priests get to know all sorts, and they hear a lot.”
“You’re being mysterious, Mom.”
“Not intentionally. Just careful not to be spreading rumors.”
“Rumors?”
“Don’t cross-examine me, Tommy. Just have dinner with the man. The subject of Billy Pearce is bound to come up. How could it not?”
“Did it come up while Father Gauss was here?”
Mary smirked. “Why do you think I had him make a pitcher of gin and tonic? I hate gin. Priests seem to thrive on it.”
“And?”
“That’s all you’re going to get from me, young man. You and your brother find out the rest for yourselves.”
* * *
Joe came home before dark and announced that he and Tom were going to pay a nocturnal visit to Frankie Heller’s junkyard.
Tom groaned, and not in jest. Joe laughed. “I should have warned you to wear your Depends.” He led Tom to the garage behind the cabin where a black monster truck with wheels as high as a man’s chest took up an entire outsized bay.
“This must have burned a few paychecks,” said Tom.
“Makes up for all those hand-me-down bicycles.”
“We’re not going to sneak up on anybody in this.”
“That’s the point, brother. Black and white’s for handing out speeding tickets. This is for reminding assholes who’s in charge around here.”
Tom rested a hand on one of the chest high tires. “You planning on crashing this thing through the front door of everyone who came to Billy’s funeral? Maybe scare a confession out of one of them?”
“Got to start somewhere.”
Tom took a deep breath. “I’m asking, Joe, because I’ve got a job I have to get back to, and you’ve got a history of dragging me into things that are more trouble than I’ve got time for.”
Joe drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he gunned the truck down the steep, two lane road that wound around what he liked to refer to as ‘his mountain.’ “Your old girlfriend came into the station house this afternoon with a story about Frankie Heller and her brother Billy getting into some sort of dust-up down at the Pearce’s boathouse the week before Billy got killed. That’s why we’re paying Frankie a visit tonight.”
Tom felt his bowels stir. “Did Mom tell you Susan phoned yesterday, looking for you?” He watched his brother’s face and hands.
“Complained about it. I went to the Pearce house after the ambulance took Billy to the morgue and I left you off with Mom. Miss Pearce didn’t want to talk then. Guess she’s had time to pull herself together.”
“Does she think Frankie had something to do with Billy’s murder?”
“All she’s got is that they had some sort of shouting match down at the boathouse, loud enough for her to hear up at the main house. She thinks I should find out what they were arguing about.”
“She heard them all the way up at the main house, but didn’t hear what it was about?”
“She says not. But she claims to have heard Frankie screaming that Billy was too stupid to live.”
Tom felt his pulse jump and his stomach drop. “And on that load of nothing, we’re going to sneak into Frankie Heller’s junkyard in the dark?”
“I am. You’re coming to watch my back. Frankie can still be a handful if you come up on him wrong.”
Tom had no trouble conjuring the appropriate image.
Joe eased the truck to the side of the road along the ridge above Heller’s junkyard. From there they had a clear view of the garage, outbuildings and a couple of acres of weathering automobiles surrounded by a chain link fence. As they waited for darkness to fall, a gray four-door Taurus drove up to the garage, and a metal door rose to let it in. A few minutes later, two men exited the back of the building and walked toward the rows of junked cars.
Joe put the binoculars on the men and then handed the glasses to Tom.
“Frankie,” said Tom squinting through the lenses in the fading light, “and maybe that guy who was sitting across from Susan at the funeral.”
“Indian, do you think?” asked Joe. “Something like that?”
“Could be. Did you get a non-Anglo name off one of those license plates?”
“Didn’t get anything. Mounties are taking their sweet time these days on any requests from this side of the lake.”
The brothers passed the binoculars back and forth while they watched Frankie Heller lead his visitor to one of the junkyard wrecks, open the trunk and stand aside while the man stuck his head in the trunk. Then the visitor got behind the wheel and Frankie leaned through the open door and did something that neither brother could make out in the fading light. Finally, Frankie heaved himself out of the car and the other man started the engine and drove the junker out of the yard through an open gate in the back of the chain link fence.
Tom handed the binoculars back to Joe. “Okay, I give up. What’s going on?”
Joe shook his head. “Don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s not what we’re here for.”
“You’re not curious?”
Joe shrugged. “I said I don’t know. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a pretty good idea.”
Tom waited.
Joe tilted his head and grinned. “You really don’t know?” His tone managed to imply some fundamental breakdown in the natural order of things, like you should not be learning about the birds and the bees from your adult younger brother.
“Should I?”
Joe smiled. “Do you remember Frankie’s dad?”
“Scariest looking human being I’ve ever seen. The size of you and me put together.”
“And did you ever know anyone who brought a car to his garage to get it fixed? Or went looking in his junkyard for spare parts?”
“No one in their right mind went near here.”
“So how do you figure the Hellers’ garage stayed in business, if nobody ever came here?”
Tom hesitated. “Look, if it’s about Dad….” His voice dropped and his eyes shifted to an unfocused middle distance. “Maybe we should drop it.”
Joe smirked as if they were boys again and Tom had just said something unmanly like he didn’t really enjoy gutting frogs. “It’s not. At least not what you think.”
Tom braced for the unknown and likely unwanted.
“A hundred fifty years ago, or so, there was a farm down there where the garage and junkyard are now… with Hellers on it same as now. Dad said that it was a stop on the Underground Railroad be
fore the Civil War. Abolitionists hid runaway slaves in the barns before taking them out to Pocket Island and then across to Canada. The Hellers weren’t abolitionists or anything. They were just making money, like always. With Canada so close, people around here have been bringing stuff back and forth for generations.”
Tom looked through the windshield, trying to avoid his brother’s gaze.
“Frankie’s great uncle or someone got the idea of turning the farm into a garage during Prohibition. The way Dad put it… what’s the perfect cover for strange cars coming in and out of town without attracting a lot of attention? A commercial garage. Right?”
“That was then,” said Tom. “This is now.”
“Right. So in the twenties it was liquor. In the seventies it was marijuana, and a little later cocaine. Since then, it’s been a bit of everything.”
“And you let it go on? Just like Dad did?” It was an accusation, not a question. Tom sometimes wondered if the fuel for his outsized ambition wasn’t simply the need to demonstrate to his ethically challenged family that you could make money honestly.
Joe rolled down the window and spat the four feet to the ground. “I’m not the DEA, Tommy. My job is to keep Coldwater safe. Period. That’s all I care about and that’s as far as I go. The Hellers are just weeds in my garden. I pull up the worst—the violent and ambitious. But the rest I leave alone, unless they get out of hand.” He paused to let the nuggets of homespun philosophy sink in. “If that seems lazy to you, or even suspicious, think about it. Coldwater isn’t big enough to have more than one or two full-time cops. If I go locking-up everybody who deserves it, what comes along to take their place may not be so easy to keep in line.”
Easy or not, brother, that’s the job.
As if reading Tom’s thought, Joe added, “Dad thought he could do it all. But look what happened to him that year he put away Frankie’s dad, the Flynns and Eddie Cashin all at the same time. Their pals from across the lake were here before Christmas, and they took care of Dad’s ass real quick.”
Tom had been in his final year of law school when their father’s body was found in the front seat of a Coldwater patrol car with his tongue pulled through a semi-decapitating gash in his throat. It was April Fools’ Day. The State Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration sniffed around for a while. But they never discovered who did it or why. Tom and Joe stumbled onto why? even before the body was in the ground, and knowing that, they left the who? unmolested.
Mary had given the funeral parlor one of her husband’s seldom-used suits for his body to be buried in. Hours later, Joe got a call from an agitated funeral director who had found stacks of hundred dollar bills in the jacket lining. When Tom arrived the following day, he found Joe hunched over a pile of cash in the middle of the family’s kitchen table, with a look on his face like he’d swallowed something rotten.
Their mother had showed little concern over her husband’s unusual form of banking. A child of parents for whom the Great Depression was a fresh and vivid memory, she’d grown up with cash-stuffed mattresses and fruit jars full of everything but fruit. Her husband had been the same, she insisted.
But her sons were not that naive. They talked for days, finally agreeing that sharing their discovery with the state police or DEA would only bring pain and humiliation to a woman who deserved neither, and that it would be unlikely to result in the killers being identified and brought to justice. So they kept the money-stuffed jacket a secret.
Joe, who had been working in the Sheriff’s Department since finishing junior college, ran for his father’s job in the next election, and the Coldwater’s voters who may have forgotten by then that it wasn’t the same Sheriff Morgan that they’d always voted for, gave Joe the job. The brothers never spoke again about the hidden cash, and the iconic hero of their pastoral youth was buried along with his emptied piggy bank.
Tom could accept the logic of Joe’s compromise, if that’s what it was. It didn’t make him feel good. But he had to acknowledge the difference between picking your battles and taking cash to avoid them.
In the silence of gathering dark, they watched a wandering light trace a firefly path from the Heller garage to the farmhouse behind it. Then a brighter light appeared in what Tom guessed was the farmhouse kitchen. “Frankie lives by himself?”
“Sometimes,” said Joe. “There’ve been a couple of Mrs. Heller wannabe’s. Runaways mostly. They get younger every year. Sooner or later they head out. Or at least nobody sees them anymore.”
“You mean nobody’s found any body parts.”
“Or looked for them.” Joe stepped down from the truck. “Stay put. There’s a gun and a camera in the glove compartment. If you have to shoot something, take pictures. But don’t get jumpy and put a bullet up my ass.”
Tom strained to follow the sounds of receding footsteps. Manhattan’s never-ending chorus of sirens, horns and squealing tires never seemed as loud as the cacophony of the rural night when you’re suddenly alone in the dark. While he waited and listened, Tom found himself conjuring thoughts and images of his deceased father—something he had not done in a long time.
Most boys are imprinted by their dads. But when yours wears a uniform and carries a gun, impressions can be exaggerated. When such men fall, as theirs had, the plunge can be even more exaggerated. Growing up, Tom had overheard many of his parents’ arguments about the demands and temptations of his father’s job. They were frequent and almost ritual. Tom realized early that his father was one of those men who lived his job and whose family was at best a collection of secondary planets around his own central sun. So when the end came, it was no surprise that their father had died with his boots on. But it was a profound disappointment that the boots were in effect stolen, and that their larger-than-life father was simply another cop on the take.
Howls from the woods beyond the junkyard yanked Tom’s thoughts back to the present. An orange moon rose over the back of the garage and wandered across a winking sky. The elongated shadow of a trailered bass boat made Tom think of the pen and ink drawings of pirate ships in his childhood copy of Peter Pan. Scary book. Mary said that coyotes were making a comeback in the Coldwater hills and that domestic pets had become a popular snack. Some of her fellow seniors refused to go out at night, worried that they might be next on the food chain.
Sitting alone in the shadowy dark listening to howling predators didn’t feel to Tom like watching someone’s back. It felt like abandonment. Joe had said to stay put. But could he have meant this long?
Then somewhere in the symphony of night sounds, he heard the crunch of gravel on gravel. A few minutes later he heard it again, this time closer. Moving his hand to the latch of the glove compartment, he stretched his fingers through the maps, pens, batteries and tissues until they found a hunk of metal that ancient memory identified as a gun.
A chorus of cicadas fell suddenly silent, as if responding to the flick of a maestro’s baton. Tom listened to his breath and felt the throb of pulse at his neck. Then a sharp rap on the window next to his ear nearly made him wet his pants.
“Drop the gun, Morgan.”
CHAPTER 8
Small choking noise escaped from Tom’s throat. “You sca…cared the shit out of me.”
Joe opened the door and climbed behind the wheel. “Been doing that for years.” He glanced at the gun in his brother’s hand. “You can put that away now.”
Tom slid the weapon back into the glove compartment and tried to still the tremor in his hands. “You and Frankie find anything to talk about?”
“I told him that I was surprised to see him at Billy’s funeral. That I didn’t know he and Billy were buds. He claimed he was just driving by and saw a hot blond standing outside, so he stopped to take a closer look.”
“I’ll bet the new Mrs. Frankie, or whatever, loved that. Did you get anything else worth nearly giving me a heart attack for?” Tom crossed his arms to hide his hands.
“Nothing from Fr
ankie. Though the new lady friend volunteered he was up at the stock car races Saturday night.”
“Volunteered?”
“Yup.”
“So she thinks he needs an alibi?”
“Apparently.”
* * *
Tom got up early, made coffee and went out to the porch to watch the sunrise. He remembered to punch the code into the pad before opening the sliding door, so when Joe joined him an hour later, he was wearing pants and carrying a cup of coffee instead of a firearm.
“So what did we learn last night that was worth scaring the shit out of me?”
“Don’t know yet.” Joe dropped into an Adirondack chair and sipped his coffee. “The girlfriend seems to think Frankie needs an alibi for Saturday night. But that may not be related to Billy. He could have been up to anything.”
“So we got nothing?”
“Working our way down a list, brother. Next is for you to visit that priest pal of yours. Find out what he was up to Saturday night.”
“What could Father Gauss possibly have to do with Billy?”
Joe blew a cooling breath over his hot coffee. “He was outside the church when I went to check on those cars. I don’t suppose he stopped on account of the hot blond, too.”
“Did you talk to him?”
“He scooted when he saw me. I want you to find out where he was Saturday night and what he was doing hanging around Billy’s funeral.”
Tom grimaced. “I haven’t seen the man in years. I’d rather not catch up by insulting him.”
“It’s a lead, brother. We have to follow it… or I do. You don’t have to insult him. Just find out where he was Saturday night.”
“Come on, Joe. What are the chances that an old priest stuffed Billy in a sleeping bag and dumped him in the lake?”
“If you believe the newspapers, some have done a lot worse.”
* * *
Bonnie took the girls to school, and Joe left to collect the results of Billy’s autopsy. Luke appeared with the fishing rods as soon as both parents had left the house.
“Sorry, buddy,” said Tom, taking the rods off the counter and pouring a bowl of cold cereal. “You and I are grounded.” It had been the trick question about life jackets rather than the black eye or the missing front tooth. Though neither had gone well with the moms.
