Nate Rosen Investigates

by Ron Levitsky

  “Now you stand a chance of not turning into a Popsicle. We’d better get you some boots tomorrow before the trial.” She took one of his suitcases. “Let’s get going—I left the car running.”

  Following her outside, he asked, “Such a classic—you aren’t afraid of somebody stealing it?”

  He lost her reply in the bitter wind. Grabbing his arm, Andi led him across the street. After throwing his briefcase and luggage in back, he settled into the front seat as the warm air streaming through the vents clouded the windows. He loosened his hood, then, taking a deep breath, coughed hard.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “Car smells like an ashtray.”

  Andi drove through the parking lot, the Mercury rumbling as if also clearing its throat. “If you don’t start on my smoking, I won’t light up till we get home.”

  “Deal.” He looked out the window. “This reminds me of Chicago, when I was a boy.”

  “This ain’t nothing like it can get. The Black Hills usually shelter Bear Coat from the worst weather, but they’re saying not this year. We already got a couple feet of snow, and it’s been ball-bustin’ cold.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “So how was your holiday season? I called your office—they said you were on a case.”

  “Small town in Maryland. Otherwise, I would’ve been here a few days earlier. I was helping an atheist try to remove a Nativity scene from his town square.”

  “Bet that really put you in the holiday spirit. They must’ve thought you were the Grinch. Know who the Grinch is?”

  Rosen nodded. “I used to read Dr. Seuss to my daughter.”

  “How is she? Get a chance to see her when you made your Chicago connection?”

  “No, but I attended her fall recital. She’s doing fine.”

  “And your ex-wife? Oh, hell.”

  The Mercury’s engine suddenly died; the car cruised onto the shoulder and stopped. Andi cut the lights, and through the twilight Rosen gazed across a plain hard and smooth as slate. Beside the road stood a mound shoulder-high, mottled where the snow had been blown away—one of the old hay rolls left rotting in the field.

  Reaching across to the glove compartment, Andi took out a small plastic bottle. “De-icer. Some water must’ve got in the gas line when I filled up on the way to the airport.” She opened the car door, and the wind froze her breath.

  Following her outside, Rosen sheltered her while she poured de-icer into the gas tank. Wind whistled across a cold, dark void, as if Rosen were in the middle of a nightmare. A few of the passing cars slowed, but Andi waved them on.

  Rosen asked, “Don’t you think . . .?”

  Andi patted the tail fin, and they went back inside. She let the motor run for a few minutes, put the car in gear, and the Mercury crept back onto the highway, seemed to stretch its long body, then roared ahead. Rosen closed his eyes and let the sweat slide down the back of his neck.

  “You all right?”

  He swallowed hard.

  “Nate?”

  “When I was about five, I went shopping with my mother. Somehow on the walk home, we were separated. It was winter, cold and dark like this . . . I think it was the darkness more than the cold that frightened me. I was probably only a few blocks from my house, but what did I know? One of the neighbor kids found me and brought me home. I got home before my mother. She was searching everywhere, half out of her mind—two boys had been kidnapped and killed in Chicago a few years before. How she hugged me—she wouldn’t let go. She covered me tight in my blanket and slept with me that night, stroking my hair until I fell asleep. I was never so scared, and I never felt safer.” He closed his eyes, imagining his mother’s hand upon his forehead.

  Neither of them spoke for the next ten minutes. The long flight, the car’s movements, and the warmth of his parka coat made Rosen drowsy. Andi could’ve easily driven the rest of the way with him asleep, but he didn’t want to appear so vulnerable.

  Stifling a yawn, he asked, “What’s this big news story you mentioned before?”

  “I can’t tell. I promised Jack.”

  “Pulitzer Prize material, no doubt.”

  “I know you’re teasing me, but don’t be surprised if this doesn’t win some big journalism award. Even better”—she squeezed his arm—“this is gonna get me what I been dreaming about all my life. My ticket outta here. I’ve already talked to this old couple on the block, whose daughter just got married. She’s willing to rent my house, so there’s nothing holding me here once those job offers come rolling in.”

  “Maybe you’d better not—”

  “You think I’m dizzy, but you’ll see.” She giggled. “Maybe I did promise Jack not to tell, but that doesn’t mean I can’t show you. Just wait till we get home.”

  Forty minutes later they arrived in Bear Coat. Pulling up her driveway, she said, “Better take your luggage in. You don’t want to have to thaw out your pajamas tonight.”

  “You’re not dropping me at the hotel?”

  “Remember, I’ve got something inside to show you.”

  “Your etchings?”

  “Huh? Hell, it’s cold!”

  Grabbing a suitcase, Andi ran ahead of him into the house. Tossing her coat over a living room chair, she pushed up the sleeves of her turtleneck.

  “Leave your stuff in the hallway.” She pointed to a pile of wood stacked near the fireplace. “We can get cozy later on.”

  “You were going to tell me about this big story.”

  “Show you. C’mere.”

  She led him into the bathroom and, closing the door, kissed him in the darkness. Her lips lingered on his for a long time, but before he could consider the implications, she switched on the light.

  “Just wanted to remind you what you’ve been missing.” Sitting on the sink, she wrapped her legs around him. “Promise you won’t tell anybody till the paper comes out tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Sure.”

  Her breath upon his cheek, she whispered, “The mob’s trying to take over Bear Coat.”

  “What?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s been trying to take over the Tin Town development, ’cause with all the gambling that could come in, like in Deadwood, these crooks probably figured it’d be easy to take over, with them starting slow and kind of worming their way in, when all of a sudden . . .”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “’Cause Jack says if we hadn’t caught them right away, no telling how things might’ve ended up, with lots of folks getting—”

  “Hold it.” He shook her gently.

  “But the F.B.I. . . .”

  “The F.B.I.? Maybe we’d better back up a bit.”

  “Sorry. Here, look.”

  Strung across the bathtub were two clotheslines, from which hung about a dozen black-and-white photographs.

  “Mind you, I took my best shots to the printer in Rapid City this afternoon. Jack’s getting a special edition ready for tomorrow, before anybody else breaks the story. Gonna deliver it in Rapid City and Deadwood, as well as Bear Coat. We’ve got the scoop, and it’s my byline on all the photos!”

  In the first row, Rosen saw a photograph of Belle Gates, one of Huggins, Pearl Whistler, Elroy Baker, and Jack Keeshin. All the photos had one thing in common: Each subject was standing with the project engineer, Chick Cantrell.

  “You mean, Cantrell’s—”

  “He’s what you call the mob’s advance man—that’s what Jack says. I never thought much about it—guess nobody did, but Cantrell was always kind of sucking up to people. Always going over plans with Pearl, out gambling with Huggins, courting Belle the minute after Albert Gates was put in the ground. It was just his way of finding a weak link. And he found it.” She pointed at Belle Gates.

  Rosen shook his head. “Not—”

  “Oh, no. Belle got suspicious when Cantrell started romancing her and then kept pressuring her to get him a gambling license as part of his engineer’s fee. Also said he had friends with lots of mone
y to invest in the development. Then she found out that he also held some heavy markers of Huggins’s. Well, she talked to Jack—figured with his background and experience, he’d know what to do. Jack hired a detective in Los Angeles to check on Cantrell’s background. I started following Cantrell around. Look what I came up with.”

  She took down the photo of Cantrell with Elroy Baker. The two men stood, as if strangers, on a busy street corner.

  Rosen asked, “Where was this taken?”

  “In Deadwood about six weeks ago. Look at their hands. Kind of blurry . . . You see anything?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “Here.” She took down three more photos, each one enlarging the men’s hands.

  “It’s money.”

  “That’s right. Here’s another photo of Elroy putting it in his pocket. Maybe Cantrell was setting up Elroy to be the new police chief. Nothing like having the top cop in your hip pocket when the gambling comes in. At least that’s what Jack thinks.”

  “You mentioned the F.B.I.”

  “They contacted the paper about a month ago, after talking to Belle. Seems they were conducting their own investigation and didn’t want us to mess anything up. Now that they’re about to make their arrests, we’re running the story.”

  “How did the F.B.I. find out?”

  “I think Tom got suspicious and called them in. I’m not sure—you’ll have to talk to Jack.”

  Leaning against the wall, Rosen studied the photographs, then stared at Elroy Baker’s face. It was as if he’d struggled for months over a puzzle, only to find that the missing piece had been in front of his eyes all along. It was so simple, maybe . . .

  Andi squeezed his arm. “Isn’t this some big-time story!”

  “I need to talk to Tom Cross Dog.”

  “Sure. Tomorrow after the paper comes out—”

  “I need to talk to him now. Don’t you see, Baker could be the key to Saul True Sky’s trial. What if Baker killed Albert Gates to frame Saul, the only man standing in the way of bringing gambling into Tin Town? Baker had access to all the evidence—he could’ve taken the rusted nail clutched in Gates’s hand.”

  “What does that nail have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know yet, but somehow it’s involved. I still think you were robbed for photographs of that nail.”

  “Hold on. Then maybe Elroy was somehow connected with Gil McCracken.”

  “Sure. When Saul won his hearing, McCracken tried to murder him. When McCracken failed, Baker gunned him down, maybe to cover his own involvement. Now do you understand why I have to see Cross Dog? Lend me your car for a few hours.”

  When Rosen turned to go, Andi’s grip tightened. “You can’t see Tom today.”

  “Why not?”

  “I promised not to tell anybody. Jack’d get awful mad. Besides, Tom and the F.B.I. don’t know we’re running the story. We may be jumping the gun on them a day or two, but we don’t want anybody scooping us. We worked too hard on this. Please, Nate.”

  He looked into her eyes. “All right, but I’m talking to Cross Dog and Keeshin tomorrow afternoon.” Her grin made him smile back. “What’s for supper?”

  “I thought we’d order a pizza.”

  “You’re not going to prepare a home-cooked meal?”

  “I didn’t want to spoil you. Besides, us modern women aren’t into being chained to the microwave. I suppose you cook for yourself.”

  “When I’m not on the road. What do you have in the kitchen?”

  She shrugged. “Refrigerator Surprise. Oh, there’re some eggs, potatoes. If this were breakfast . . .”

  “I’ll take care of dinner.”

  “Get real.”

  He walked her down the hallway, saying, “Be a modern woman—go into the living room and start the fire.”

  It was a handsome kitchen, with old oak cabinets and a large pantry next to the refrigerator. On a small table lay a cereal bowl with something purple floating in the milk, and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts. He found eggs in the refrigerator; potatoes, onions, flour, and oil in the pantry; a bowl and an old grater in a drawer. There was already a large skillet on the stove. Thinking about his mother an hour before—he wanted to keep the feeling for awhile. Potato latkes was one way he always could.

  His mother used to grate the potatoes by hand, then the onions, which made her eyes tear even while they laughed together. Maybe because he was the youngest and his brothers were always busy with his father, he liked following her around. Even when he was supposed to be studying, he would watch her cook and listen to stories of his grandparents in Russia. Now, holding up a hand, he smelled the onion, which would stay on his skin for days, no matter how often he washed. That was all right. Some people inhaled a certain perfume or spice and thought of their mother; with him it was always the smell of onion.

  Wiping his eyes, he stirred the ingredients in a bowl, then dolloped the mixture into the sizzling oil, waiting until one side of each latke was golden brown before turning it over.

  “Ooh, that smells good!” Andi stood behind him smoking a cigarette.

  “Put that out. I want your taste buds sharp as they can be. Get the table ready. These have to be eaten hot.”

  Setting a plateful of latkes between them, he took a carton of sour cream from the refrigerator. “The perfect touch!”

  “I wouldn’t open that, Nate. Last time I looked it was kinda green.”

  “I think that’s how they discovered penicillin. Do you have any applesauce?”

  “I haven’t checked the fruit bin lately. By now, maybe some of the apples have turned—”

  “Never mind. I suppose we’ll have to eat them plain.” He shook his head. “It’s not going to be the same.”

  “Wait a minute.” She went to the refrigerator, returning with something red in a preserve jar. “Homemade raspberry jam the next-door neighbors gave me over the holidays.”

  “Raspberry jam with potato latkes? There are some traditions that shouldn’t be . . .”

  “Mmm,” she said between mouthfuls. “Shut up and eat them while they’re hot. Say, Nate?”

  “What?”

  “You can cook for me anytime. Want a beer?”

  They both ate greedily for the next fifteen minutes, and he resisted the impulse to wipe the jam from her mouth. He liked sitting across from her eating dinner, with the smell of oil and onion lingering over them. Not feeling the need to talk. Later, he’d wash the dishes while she dried. Over the last few months, he’d come to realize that, next to Sarah, what he missed most about no longer being married wasn’t Bess. It was having someone at home to eat dinner with; someone to help clean up afterwards.

  “You’re thinking about your ex-wife,” Andi said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I know the look. I’ve seen lots of guys in bars, after a few beers, start mooning over their ex-wives. They have this look kinda like babies get with gas. So—what about her?”

  He hesitated. “Just that she always insisted on using an electric blender to grate the potatoes. Never tasted as good as doing them by hand.”

  “I suppose that’s why the two of you split up.”

  He shrugged her off.

  “Or was it something juicier? Was she cheating on you?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” he said a little too loud. “It was something else.”

  She swallowed hard. “Pretty stupid of me, having this romantic dinner with a guy, then asking about his ex-wife. Sorry.”

  “That’s all right. I shouldn’t be so sensitive. It happened a long time ago.”

  “How about some dessert? I’ll put on some coffee . . . no, you’d rather have tea. You like Christmas cookies?”

  “That depends—what year?”

  Ten minutes later, backs against the couch, they stretched before the fireplace, a plate of cookies between them. While sipping his tea, Rosen listened to Andi talk of the True Skys, Keeshin,
and members of the town council, most of whom he already knew from her letters and his phone calls to Grace. Maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to see Saul that evening.

  Opening day in court was nothing special. Both sides would go over the ground rules, then the prosecutor might call a few witnesses to establish the nature of the crime—maybe Cross Dog and the medical examiner. He’d have to see Cross Dog tomorrow, whether Andi liked it or not. There could be a connection between Cantrell’s involvement with the mob and Albert Gates’s death. And Elroy Baker might somehow . . .

  “More tea?” Andi asked.

  Backlit by the fire, her hair was golden, and the shadows shimmered across her face like a veil. He wanted to draw away the veil and kiss her.

  “Nate?”

  “No thanks. You’re lucky, living in a place where your neighbor makes you a jar of preserves for Christmas.”

  “Try living here your whole life.” She yawned. “Told you, this story’s gonna be my big break. New York, Chicago—anywhere but Bear Coat.” She scooted forward, resting her head on the rug. Her hand held his. “This is nice. You’re nice.”

  Her face turned toward him for a moment—lashes fluttered—then moved back into the shadows. Her legs stirred languidly, and he remembered how she’d looked last summer in shorts and a T-shirt. Putting down the tea, he rubbed his eyes; his head felt heavy, as if he’d been drinking. There were things he should be thinking about—questions to ask, warnings—but all that mattered to him at that moment was Andi.

  Pushing aside the tray, he touched her shoulder, feeling her body gently undulate. He moved her face toward his and kissed her lips.

  As Andi pulled off her turtleneck, Rosen said, “It’s been a long time.”

  “Don’t worry; it’s like riding a bike. You never forget. Here.” From her jeans pocket she handed him a foil packet. “Just like the Scouts: ‘Be prepared.’”

  Her lips were on his, her hands helping him with his clothes. The windows rattled from the cold wind, and for a moment he shivered. He kissed her breasts, feeling her heartbeat quicken and feeling the heat radiate between them. A heat that drew them closer, fused them as one, consuming everything else. Only Andi, her legs wrapped around him, her breath whispering his name. Only Andi.