by Justin Scott
“That Dicky blew the dam.”
“Of course he blew the dam.”
“I mean, have the Federal investigators worked out the details?”
“Unofficially—between you, me and the lamppost—this afternoon the ATF traced the dynamite to a batch bought from the Pendleton Powder Company down in Brookfield.”
“That was fast.”
“Priority Red, or whatever they call it.”
“Did Mr. Butler buy the dynamite?”
“I hear he signed for it.”
It was my turn to stare moodily into a beer bottle. Sergeants Marian and Arnie would jump on that bill of sale like wolves on sirloin. “And Dicky stole it?” I asked, hoping Mr. Butler hadn’t been stupid enough to blow King’s dam with dynamite traceable to him.
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“Maybe we change the subject?”
“I’m just wondering is the assumption that Dicky stole it from his father?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” She reached for her bag.
I said, “Sorry. I’ll bet you’ve had enough of this.”
“Enough to want a quiet beer a long ways from Fox Trot.”
“Understood. Stay. We’ll drop it.”
Her hand wavered. Finally, she picked up her bottle. “…So what’s your story?”
“Me?”
“Who’s Ben Abbott?”
“Pretty much who you heard when you asked around for Mr. King.”
“Excuse me?”
“Last March. King told me he’d heard that I was, quote, a pisser. It was probably your job to get that quote.”
Julia Devlin returned a teasing grin. “Oh, right. Let me see….Small town first selectman’s son, Annapolis, ONI, Wall Street, Leavenworth Penitentiary, small town real estate, first selectman’s occasional lover….Any blanks?”
“Yes. Why’d you pretend you didn’t recognize me at the gate yesterday?”
“I thought you were coming on to me.”
“You should see me when I’m not subtle.”
“Oh, you were subtle. At least you had me guessing.”
“Suppose I was?”
“I didn’t want to encourage you.”
“Is your heart spoken for?”
She smiled again. “That’s a nice way of saying it.”
“Is it?”
“Let’s just say I didn’t need guys coming on to me.”
No surprise she was sleeping with the boss. Her eyes sparkled every time she said his name.
My hamburger came. Julia accepted my offer of a French fry and dipped several in ketchup. She ordered us a round of beers, surveyed the room in the bar mirror, and asked, “Is this your local?”
“Two doors from my house. A very convenient crawl home.”
“That’s great. The thing I hate about the country, you can’t drink and drive.”
“Consider my guest room yours anytime.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Where you from? Grow up in the city?”
“New York? No. My parents were divorced. I moved back and forth between New Orleans and Honduras.”
New Orleans. That explained her accent and bolstered a theory I’ve always liked that the famous Brooklyn accent was brought there by refugees from a New Orleans yellow fever epidemic.
“My Momma’s from New Orleans. Daddy’s Honduran.”
“Devlin?”
“Granddaddy was Irish.”
“That’s some mix. Who do you take after?”
“Momma, mostly. I guess. She’s French. Daddy’s kind of fair. I got his eyes.”
I was working hard at subtle. Otherwise I’d have observed aloud that she had inherited the best features of both sides. Daddy’s blue eyes. Momma’s raven hair and olive skin. Granddaddy’s stunning body? “I’ll bet they’re proud you’re working for Henry King.”
“Daddy’s proud. Momma wants me to get married. It’s incredible. Like she’s spent her life waiting on Daddy’s support checks and she still thinks I should get married. I tell her, no way, Momma, I’m ever going to depend on a man.”
“And that sends her up the wall.”
“Like, she thinks I’m criticizing her.”
Talk of home made Julia look and sound younger than what I had assumed were her late-middle thirties, and I realized that her manner and bearing were seasoned beyond her years by serving a powerhouse like King.
“I go, ‘Momma, I’m gonna pay my own way.’ She goes, ‘There’s more to life than paying bills.’ I love paying my bills.”
“You do?”
“Yes! Twice a month I set aside special time to clear my desk and open all the envelopes and throw out the junk mail and put them in categories? You should try it. It’s like a ritual. I close my door and turn off the phone. And no on-line banking for me, thank you very much. I write the checks myself with my favorite fountain pen.”
“Your Mont Blanc Meisterstuck?”
“How’d you know what kind of pen?”
“It was on the video.”
“What?”
“The A&E bio.”
“Oh, right. The bio. The director loved that. Anyway, Henry gave it to me—well, actually, he gave one to everybody.”
“Does he do that a lot?”
“Usually I buy staff gifts, but he bought the pens himself. That’s why I say he gave it to me, because he surprised me.”
“You really like him, don’t you?”
“Why do you say that?”
“You get all excited when you talk about him.”
“He’s a very exciting man to work for. You wouldn’t believe how we’re at the center of everything. And the people who trust him for the most important things.”
She gazed into the back bar mirror, contemplating the miracle. I said, “There’s something I’ve never understood about Henry King. He’s the world’s greatest diplomat, the superstatesman. But he’s not very diplomatic.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I think of ‘diplomat,’ I think of someone like Bertram Wills.”
“Bertram Wills?” Julia snorted, exposing the Fox Trot pecking order. “He’s a joke.”
“Well, King keeps him around for something, doesn’t he?”
Julia backpedaled from her undisguised contempt. “Bert’s a good front man. He fills in when Henry can’t appear personally.”
For the B clients, one would imagine. “Well that’s what I meant. Bertram Wills looks and acts like a diplomat. Smooth and charming and diffident. He doesn’t offend. He’s ‘diplomatic.’ Whereas Henry—”
“Henry King was not a ‘diplomat.’ He held the scepter.”
“Beg pardon?”
“He was a warrior.”
I looked at her. She looked back and repeated, “A warrior. He understood that he wielded the might of the American empire….He was a ‘superstatesman’ because he knew that when Henry King stepped off Air Force One, he spoke for a nation that could deliver nuclear rockets in half an hour….I think I’m talking too much.”
Sounded like Henry King pillow talk. “You’re safe,” I assured her. “I hold barroom confidences sacred. Tell me, if Bertram Wills serves as a good front man, what does Josh Wiggens do?”
“Josh consults on security,” she replied, with a distinct iciness that hinted at something personal.
“I kind of liked Mrs. King.”
“Don’t get me started.”
“Oh, come on. Private gossip is one of the great pleasures.”
“Private gossip?”
“Barroom confidences?”
“Excuse me, a minute.”
She strode purposefully to the jukebox and spent some time there. Boy, could she play a jukebox. Mostly old stuff I hadn’t heard in years. We listened quietly for awhile, speaking only to order new beers.
Melissa’s moody “Shriner’s Park” was among
the more light-hearted she chose. Shawn Colvin cheered things up with “Killing the Blues,” and “One Cool Remove.” And just in case Petrie and Callahan’s “The Dimming of the Day” hadn’t put a stake in the heart of the evening, Whitney Houston’s kiss-off song to Kevin Costner had taciturn ironmen pouring their hearts out to women who’d been about to tell the bozos to start sleeping in their trucks.
“Do you really want to know about Mrs. King Incorporated?” said Julia.
“I liked her.”
“Let me put it this way: if you owned a television station and Henry King told you his wife gave great interview you just might find a slot for her.”
“Is there a thing between her and Bertram Wills?”
Julia looked at me sharply. “You’ve got a good eye.”
“I thought I caught an adoring look.”
“Bert’s or hers?”
“Bert’s. She was very careful. Except once, when King yelled at her.”
“Yes, I noticed that too.”
“Does King know?”
Julia’s shrug couldn’t begin to conceal her delight that Bert Wills had shanghaied her lover’s wife.
Henry King and Julia Devlin.
Bertram Wills and Mrs. King.
Josh Wiggens and God-knew-what.
I can’t say I was surprised by Fox Trot’s hot sheet permutations. King, the only arriviste in the multi-menage, seemed to have embraced—as enthusiastically as polo and buying land to the horizon—a grand old uppercrust WASP love-affairs tradition of the sort revealed in biographies a generation after the celebrants have gone to their reward. The logistics, daunting to the middle class, were made manageable by constant travel, multiple homes, and the privacy of mansions. All it took was money and enthusiasm.
Julia eased me back to the earlier subject. “Actually, her television show is an asset. We can get people on that help us. No one dares say no.”
“Is King really still that powerful? I mean he doesn’t hold that scepter anymore. He’s just another well-connected business consultant.”
“Henry’s more powerful than ever. I don’t know of anyone on the planet who won’t take his calls.”
“Except in Newbury.”
“That’s the insanity of this whole mess. Here he’s at the mercy of a struggling dairy farmer who happens to be his neighbor.”
“Beef,” I said. “Mostly beef. He’s getting out of dairy. Too much work, lousy return. Damned hard to make milk alone.”
Julia peered dubiously down the neck of her bottle.
“If you want another, the guest room offer is legit. In fact, you can wander in anytime you want. The house is never locked.”
“You’re trusting.”
“What are you going to steal from me? You already got a great pen.”
“You know what I mean. Do you have a burglar alarm?”
“That’s all I need. Trooper Moody barging in with a shotgun for a false alarm.”
“Guns?”
“Locked up in the cellar. I’ve got little kids in and out.”
“You have children?”
“No, no, no. A little girl lives in the stablehand’s apartment in the barn with her mother.”
“I’d at least get a dog.”
“Alison—that’s the little girl—wants a cat.”
“That’ll be great protection….Sure, I’ll have one more.”
I ordered for both of us. Julia insisted it go on her tab.
She drank about half. Then, up abruptly, she was signalling for her check. “I gotta git. Nice seeing you, Ben.”
She left a generous tip, and carefully put the rest of her change in her bag, except for one single she kept in her hand.
“You okay to drive?”
“Fine.”
She certainly looked sober. And walked toward the door straight as an arrow. At the jukebox, she slipped the buck into the slot and punched up her selection. She was out the door before the music began.
Bonnie Raitt.
“Nobody’s Girl.”
Which, despite that old Henry King sparkle in her eye, I convinced myself might be a promising sign.
***
Dynamite sticks—we learned at the inquest over in Plainfield, the county seat—should be stored in a cool, dark place and turned regularly. Like bottles of Port wine. If they weren’t turned, the nitroglycerin settled to the bottom of the filler material, and leaked out the paper wrapper. Mopping up puddles of nitro was best done wearing a Kevlar bomb suit with ceramic chest and groin shields.
Mr. Butler testified, in a low, beaten voice, that he kept his in a specially ventilated cellar of his outermost outbuilding, and turned them regularly. He admitted the shed wasn’t always locked, explaining that he lived alone, most of the time, on the top of Morris Mountain, rarely left the property, and he had a large dog to discourage burglars.
Jurors rolled their eyes.
“And yet you claim,” said the Plainfield County medical examiner, who was conducting the inquest, “that your dynamite was stolen.”
“Dog’s getting old. I admit I shoulda locked it.”
He hadn’t shaved or changed his clothes in a while and his face had aged ten years since Dicky had died. The ME was treating him gently, as if he were a very old man, and I saw that most of the jurors couldn’t bear to watch as he rambled on about how Newbury was changing and you couldn’t trust the outsiders moving in.
“Did you report the theft?” the medical examiner interrupted.
“They only stole it the day before they blew the dam. I didn’t know until I went to check after Ben Abbott told me Dicky was killed. My stash was gone. Before I could report it, the cops were all over the place. Seized my license, like they’re afraid I’m going to run out and buy more.”
“How do you know it was stolen the day before?”
“Because,” he said, his voice rising, “Two days before—Thursday afternoon—I went up there and turned it. Like I just told you.”
“Tell us, again, please.”
“Thursday’s my day. Always turn it on Thursday. Otherwise you forget and before you know it, the floor’s soaked in nitro.”
In the back of Plainfield’s lovely domed courtroom, which was handsomely paneled and lit by stained glass windows, Marian Boyce and Arnie Bender were taking notes. My friendly nod drew from Arnie a look he reserved for vagrants in the drunk tank and from Marian a glance to melt stone.
I had already testified how I’d found the body and had seen Mr. Butler sitting on his tractor far up the hill. But a procession of Federal officers had confirmed what Julia Devlin had reported in the Yankee Drover: the explosion had been caused by Mr. Butler’s dynamite. An ATF chemist testified they had traced the dynamite to Pendleton Powder of Danbury and brandished computer printouts showing that it had been legally purchased by Mr. Butler.
Yes, the farmer admitted, his son had lived with him since March. Yes, Dicky had access to the cellar. But Dicky didn’t know how to set a charge.
Marian and Arnie smiled broadly at that admission. But their smiles faded as the ME pressed the issue, forcing the farmer to admit that what he meant was he had never taught Dicky how to set a charge. Detective-Sergeants Boyce and Bender were shooting grim and censorious looks at the medical examiner by then, and to my astonishment and great relief, I began to realize that the gist of all the testimony was that Dicky had acted alone.
The crowd smoking cigarettes on the courthouse steps during the end-of-testimony recess saw it that way too, predicting that the jurors would find exactly what the medical examiner had gone to great trouble to steer them to find. They were right: the jury returned a verdict that Dicky had blown the dam alone with dynamite he had stolen from his father; and recommended that for his laxness, Mr. Butler’s pyrotechnic license be suspended.
The courtroom emptied quickly after the final gavel—it being an exquisite end-of-August afternoon ideal for a round of golf or a beer
in the woods—and soon all the spectators were gone. Except for me and Marian and Arnie.
Mr. Butler sat still, head bowed, long hair shielding his face. He didn’t seem to realize that he was very, very lucky. The finding gave the Connecticut state’s attorney absolutely no cause to indict him even on conspiracy, much less accessory to murder. But in his mourning, he still refused to believe that Dicky had accidentally killed himself.
“This ain’t over,” he shouted. Marian recorded that in her notebook, and Arnie echoed, “It sure ain’t.”
They had recovered nicely from their earlier disappointment, and they watched him storm out with the bored expressions affected by patient cops and experienced vultures.
Chapter 11
Two days later, Mr. Butler surprised me with a visit.
I was in the kitchen, serving milk and peach pie to Alison Mealy, who looked cute as a Saturday Evening Post heiress in an old-fashioned riding habit Aunt Connie had found in her attic, and smelled strongly of horse.
“Look, Ben.” She removed her boots and raised her jodhpurs to show me bright red marks inside her knees.
“What’s that?”
“I’m gripping with my knees, the way I’m supposed to,” she said proudly. “Hey, someone’s here.”
I said “Hey is for horses,” as Connie had for me when I was eleven, and asked, “Who?”
“Mr. Butler. Oh, wow, he’s got DaNang with him. Look! He’s huge.”
Butler climbed down from his pickup and knocked on the screen door.
“Gotta talk to you, Ben.”
“Come on in.”
“Okay if he comes in the house?”
“Sure. Hi there, DaNang. Want some water?” DaNang shouldered me out of his way and laid a head big as a crocodile’s on Alison’s lap.
“Oh, look at you. You’re so big.” She started patting actively, and scratching ears. The yellow dog sank groaning to the linoleum and Alison went down with him, curling up to lay her head on his massive chest. “Ben, you can hear his heart.”
If you hadn’t spent the day on a sweating horse you could smell him, too. I told her that Mr. Butler and I were going to go in my office and asked her to put down a few sheets of newspaper and on them a large bowl of water. Mr. Butler trod heavily after me through the house. I sat behind my desk and gave him the near client’s chair. I had a funny feeling he was going to sell the farm.
