A smile curled on Gar’s lips and he took a deep breath so as to catch the scent of Marilyn coming down the street. He couldn’t pick it up. She still must be blocks away. Or the wind was blowing the wrong way. Nothing was easy and he knew from experience his instincts weren’t infallible. If only. His stomach gnawed at him but not from lack of food. No, the real hunger that was what was gnawing. Come on, he implored in his head, Come to me. I’ve been waiting.
A vinyl-topped Ford LTD sedan pulled up in front of the shop and a heavy set man with a floral shirt got out of the driver’s side as a young girl with long platinum blond hair scrambled out from the back seat. A woman sat in the front seat with the window down but fiddled with her purse. “Hey princess, how about a double chocolate sundae with fudge sauce?” the man said, but you could tell the way he said it that it was he that wanted the ice cream just as much as his daughter might. Then it hit Gar, it was the Clearys, out for an after-dinner treat. Mr. Cleary leaned into his wife, “You sure you don’t even want a lemon sherbet?” She shook her head impatiently and he shrugged as if to say ‘suit yourself’. Little Rhonda was already hotfooting it up the sidewalk to the Front Porch. She stopped for a moment and considered Gar sitting on the steps with Father’s Troy’s bike in the yard.
“I know you. You were helping at the school carnival,” she said. Her father was now right behind her and he stopped too. The word ‘carnival’ seemed to echo on the street.
“Never mind, Rhonda. We’re not thinking about that,” said Mr. Cleary. “Let’s get that ice cream before she closes.” He gave his daughter’s shoulder a little tap and she went past Gar on the steps and up to the screen door. Of course, Little Rhonda knew that’s all they as a family were thinking about ever since last Saturday night. The lurid details of the carnies’ deaths on the news, the arguments back and forth as to whether they should call the authorities and let them know that they knew - that these men were truly awful people. The whole week had been consumed by it. It must have been because Rhonda hesitated looking back at Gar that Mrs. Cleary finally took her nose out of her purse, where she was sorting the Kleenex, Cornsilk pressed powder compact, pocket calendar, comb, band-aids, silk flowered pattern change purse, folding money wallet, and abandoned grocery store lists, all in an effort not to break her diet and join her husband and daughter inside the temptation hut called the Front Porch. She looked up and saw the big man who helped the carnies load up - load up and get away, in her mind. He was some sort of guest of the parish, that was the official line, but Mrs. Cleary knew he was one of Father Troy’s projects. Father Troy had done things in the past like going to war demonstrations and opening the soup kitchen. This man was a drifter, Mrs. Cleary was sure of it, or was he? Did he perhaps know those dead carnies in some other way? Now this was taking her mind off ice cream and she saw herself looking very composed in an office somewhere talking to a detective, maybe in a white pressed shirt. The detective was nodding, taking her very seriously, much more seriously than the housewives and husbands who dropped off sacks of dirty shirts to be laundered and starched or church going dresses and country club outfits to be dry cleaned every week.
Gar noticed Mrs. Cleary noticing him and while it didn’t make him uncomfortable it made him a little wary. Where was Marilyn, he thought, Where was the source? He stuffed down the frustration and anger in a place deep inside himself. He had made mistakes already, not too many, but still, he had to move carefully. Gar clenched his jaw wishing he had bought an ice cream cone so it would look more normal, him just sitting here and waiting. He could ride up and down the street looking for her. He knew her house number because she was listed as M. Newcomb in the white pages but he didn’t want to risk surprising her at her house. If she was too threatened she would risk anything. Like the first time. It was early, a beautiful pinkish dawn, the wide cerulean sea stretching out in front of the cliffs. He was on a hill, watching for her, raw and aching in his new skin, throbbing with emptiness and desire, made new by the ceremony of the night before and desperate to bring her into him. He finally spotted her crawling from beneath a stone wall. She was slight then, just a wisp of a girl with long chestnut hair spilling onto her coarse robe, her veil long gone. She began to sprint straight towards the cliffs. He heard his own voice, shouting at her to stop, torn apart by the wind as he pounded down from the hill towards the rock face. But she was fast, and he was too distant and couldn’t catch up to her as she lifted off from the crag and sailed out for a fleeting second over the blue blue sea and then fell into the jagged rocks. Her little body smashed against the black boulders and crevices and then disappeared as if dragged under by an unseen hand. She was gone.
So the Front Porch seemed like a good choice, a safe choice. Mrs. Cleary waiting in the car however was making him edgy. He had done that family a favor with those carnies. Still he didn’t want any special attention not while he was on the hunt. What if that sharp-angled Cleary woman was a snoop? If he sat there any longer she might get ideas, he thought, and Marilyn wasn’t anywhere close to the Front Porch or he would have sensed it. Abruptly he stood up and spoke to no one in particular as Mr. Cleary and Rhonda came out the door, him with a large plastic dish filled with two chocolate scoops and a thick river of fudge sauce and little Rhonda with what looked to be a strawberry scoop in a sugar cone.
“I guess my girlfriend stood me up.” Gar smiled ruefully and sprang off the steps to his bike. “Easy come, easy go,” he said as he mounted the bike to pedal off into the evening, hiding the sorrow and rage he felt at missing his chance to get close to the source. She should have come by. Where was she? A sharp pang of jealousy exploded in his gut as he took off past the Cleary’s Ford. She was with someone else, she had to be. Well, he could fix that, and he would. The thought made his legs pump the pedals harder as he flew through the streets away from the Front Porch, keeping an eye out for Marilyn and whoever she was with.
As Mr. Cleary and Rhonda settled back in the car, Mrs. Cleary made up her mind. She was going to call the number they gave on WAND TV as the tip line. That Cigar guy, a Vietnam vet, she had heard, who nobody really knew had helped those carnies that day and someone ought to look into that.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Storm Clouds
The lunch rush on Saturdays at the Surrey was always lighter than the weekdays and pretty much petered out by one. There would be clusters of mothers and daughters out shopping at Carson Pirie Scott’s department store and the cute little boutique that Marilyn never allowed herself to go into, Three Blind Mice. The guys at the Bachman’s men’s store would be in along with the optometrist who kept Saturday hours and an assortment of farm families in for a city day in Decatur. The Saturday crowd was actually harder to wait on than the regulars because they didn’t know to order Amanda’s specials and would sometimes stray off into asking for things that would just make Walt curse, like poached eggs on toast for an upset stomach. They didn’t tip as much, either, as the regulars who knew that if they scratched Mona, Betty’s and Marilyn’s backs they would scratch theirs with extra butter pats, the freshest pot of coffee, and the biggest favor of all, putting aside thick slices of the day’s special pie including the always sold out banana and coconut cream for the very best customers. So when two p.m. came “the girls” were glad to hustle through the table wiping and ketchup marrying to get the Surrey closed as no dinner was served on Saturday nights, and enjoy their one-and-a-half days off.
Marilyn stepped out into what was left of the afternoon just after two-thirty. You could smell the ozone in the air as a big thunder cloud piled up like a puffy black monument in the prairie sky. The downtown streets weren’t busy, what with the movie matinee at the old Lincoln Theater already going on and most of the shoppers clearing out before what looked like a doozey of a spring storm came on. She hadn’t worn a raincoat or brought an umbrella as the morning had been warm and bright. Maybe she’d make it home in time, she thought. She hoped so. Rowley hated thunderstorms and would shake uncontr
ollably until they would pass. Sitting on the sofa with Marilyn was the best therapy for storms, better even than hiding under the bed.
She was just past the twin mansions when the first fat drops began to fall and a low menacing rumble came in from the east where the thundercloud now towered. A wind kicked up, spinning a whirlwind of grit, leaves, and torn flower petals down the street. Marilyn bit her lip out as another drop hit her chest. The light was turning greenish yellow and a ragged slash of lightning stabbed the sky. There were the porticos on the mansions, she could turn back and wait under there to stay out of the rain until the storm passed but then Rowley would be left at home alone. He would be shivering by now. Maybe she should just run for it. That’s when the guy on the bicycle named Gar she had met by the Stephen Decatur statue appeared. He came up over the curb of the street onto the weedy little grass patch before the sidewalk and leapt off.
“It’s gonna pour here in a minute, Marilyn,” Gar said, as a drop fell on the bridge of his nose and dripped down the side. He wiped it away unconcerned. “Remember me? I threw the ball to your dog.” Another growl of thunder and the smell of ozone sharpened in the air. Of course she remembered him: the sun-streaked hair, the big chest, the rope tied around the slim waist.
“I know. Rowley hates storms,” said Marilyn, feeling an odd jolt of anxiety. The storm was putting her nerves on edge.
“Come on then, let’s get you home.” Gar gestured to the bike. This was good, so much better than the night before.
“I can’t take your bike. I haven’t ridden a bike in years. What about you?” Another couple of drops fell and a flash of lightning lit up the darkening sky.
“Get on, I’ll keep up.” Gar rolled the bike next to Marilyn, holding it for her like she was a child. Marilyn closed her eyes for second and pictured Rowley cowering in his cardboard box of a bed. If she couldn’t give her dog much more than a meager home at least she could be there for him. She hiked up her waitress uniform skirt so she could swing her leg over the supporting bar for the seat and got on, very aware of the stranger’s hand on the vinyl seat steadying her. The bike was too tall for her and she barely made it.
“Let’s go,” Gar said and pushed the bike over the patch of grass, holding onto it they went over the curb with a thud. Marilyn, with a look back at the murderous looking thunder cloud, began to peddle, trying to outrun the storm. Gar felt his heart pounding as he held on to the seat of Father’s Troy’s bike with another couple of big splashy rain drops falling. The source. So close now and needing him. The muscles in his body were flowing in pure motion as he began to run, still holding easily onto the back of Father Troy’s bicycle as Marilyn peddled. There was no letting go now, he thought.
The rain drops began to fall with more vehemence but it was still holding off some. It began to stain the front of Marilyn’s bosom but she was too busy to notice, all of her attention on steering the bike and keeping her balance. It had been years, since she was a girl, that she had been on one and she was glad Gar was keeping up and able to maintain that steadying hand on the back of the bicycle. Another clap of thunder and the lightning streaked quicker behind it. New masses of dark clouds were moving across the sky to join the thunderous storm mountain looming behind them in the east. She stole another look back, thinking for no reason at all when she saw Gar’s face, wet with rain but ginning widely as he ran, of Lot’s wife who turned into a pillar salt when she looked back to Sodom. Marilyn shook her head, her hair damp and curling from the rain drops now beginning to fall faster. She had to get to Rowley. Only another block.
Gar grinned at Marilyn when she looked over her shoulder at the storm and him running and holding onto her at the same time. Her eyes so big, dark, and sleepy, he could crawl inside them, he thought, and be infinitely happy. He wanted to howl at the storm to grow louder, stronger, let it pour and whip the trees to broken heaps. So that lightning would strike the roofs of the crummy little houses in Marilyn’s neighborhood and light them afire and smash their crumbling chimneys. Then the natural world would mirror his own fierceness and Marilyn would be forced to take shelter in him.
A giant crack and shriek of wind as the lightning flashed and the heavens opened up. Marilyn’s rayon uniform was soaked in an instant, clinging to every curve of her body, and her hair fell down in wet waves around her face as she braked with her feet in front of her clapboard duplex. Gar held the bike for her, wet to the skin, and she nearly fell as she tried to get down from the bike too tall for her and with the stupid rod that she had to swing her leg over, bound in her wet uniform skirt. The big stranger reached for her as the bike began to topple over and lifted her off like he might have lifted a sack of groceries. The bike fell beneath her onto the slope of wet weedy grass that led up from the sidewalk to her house. She was pressed into his muscular chest, his arms holding her easily on the big plain of his body.
It was only for a second. Just a moment, maybe even less than that. A grain of sand in the hourglass. The storm raging around them, but the electricity that jolted through both of their bodies was greater than the lightning flashing overhead. Gar nearly fell himself when he felt it, there, it was there, the invisible but throbbing web of her essence wrapped around and through her. Then she pushed away from him with a startled wary look on her face and dashed up the porch steps.
“You can wait here on the porch if you want. Rowley needs me,” she shouted over the thunder and rain. Inside she was burning hot as if she had just touched the electric ring on her stove turned high and she dug for her keys like her life depended on it.
Gar took a deep breath and before he knew it he had bounded onto the first doorstep. Hold on, he told himself, he could take her now but then it would be over, and he wasn’t ready yet, it wasn’t perfect yet, he just wanted to keep her safe and protected for a little longer. What was the harm?
“I should ask you in but I don’t know you.” Her thoughts came out of her mouth without her meaning to voice them. “It’s crazy, a crazy storm, I mean.” She had gotten her house keys out of her shoulder bag and was unlocking the door. Rowley whined and barked from upstairs. It was like someone slapping her. What was she thinking? She didn’t know this guy at all.
Gar stepped back down when she opened the door. He smiled, forcing himself to be relaxed. “No you don’t. And it would be crazy. I don’t mind the rain, Marilyn. I got to get going anyway. But maybe you would.”
The rain seemed to slacken as Gar went over to pick up Father Troy’s bike. Marilyn hesitated in the doorway, torn between Rowley’s whines and wanting to thank the stranger for helping her home. “Would what?” she asked, her voice still loud in her own ears to compete with the storm.
“Want to get to know me. How about a walk and an ice cream cone tomorrow? With Rowley of course. I’ll come by at two, if you’re here on the steps we’ll go.” Without another word Gar got on the bike and, sucking deep calming breaths between his teeth while he forced himself to casually wave, as he bicycled away. He would get it right this time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Father Troy’s Project
Tooley, the lone black agent in the Central Illinois district of the bureau, was assigned to the phone for the tip line for the Carnie Drug Murder case over the weekend. He came in Saturday morning with his crossword puzzle torn out from the Chicago Tribune and settled down to wait. At four he figured he could switch the answering machine on and head home for some yard work. Taking his thick black-rimmed glasses from their case he settled them on his nose and set to work on the puzzle. It amused him to work the puzzles mostly because it confounded white people that Alfred Tooley could do them, and so quickly, in ink. He was working on three across, a four-letter word, for which the clue was “arid”, which was already a four-letter word. The phone rang as the answer came to him, “sere”. He was scribbling it in as he picked up the receiver with his right hand. He was a lefty and it damn near KO’d his application to the feds but for once his skin color hadn’t been the obvious culprit
and he had made it past; what with his IQ test and military service, there just wasn’t any way to disqualify him.
“Is this the tips line for that triple murder case?” The voice on the other end was adult, female and white.
“Yes it is ma’am.” Tooley pulled his notebook out and noted the time of the call. Noon-ish. Maybe she was on a lunch break.
“Who am I talking to?” The voice was a little suspicious sounding now. She must have figured out he was black from the deep molasses tones that made him the prized church soloist at Springfield’s First Zion Baptist, either that or she could see through telephone lines.
“FBI agent Tooley,” he said softly but in an even toned way.
“FBI? Really?” The voice now had a tremor of excitement. FBI did that to people.
“Could I get your name, please?” he asked.
“I thought this could be anonymous.” The voice had a sharpness to it. She might hang up.
“Sure it can be anonymous,” Tooley hastened to reassure the woman, picturing how Agent House would handle the news of a botched tips call if she aborted, “What do you want to report?”
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