by Ed Gorman
When Ruthie reached the corner of the school grounds, I was there waiting. She got in.
I said, “Did you try that stuff?”
She stared straight ahead. She looked pale and tired. “It didn’t work.”
“Oh.”
“And it really burns down there now.”
“Maybe-”
“Just don’t give me any advice right now, okay?” She still didn’t look at me.
“Okay.” Then, “How’re you feeling, physically, I mean?”
“I’m too tired to know. Let’s just not talk, all right?”
“All right.”
“Could I turn that off? Why can’t they play anything decent?”
She snapped off the radio. The song had been “The Purple People Eater.” Then, “I’m sorry I’m so bitchy.”
“It’s all right. I’d be bitchy, too.”
“I just need to handle this.”
“Don’t do anything crazy, Ruthie.”
“I don’t think I’m the “crazy” type, do you?”
“No, I guess not.”
“I’ve got a couple of girls working on a couple of things for me.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure. They just both said they could probably come up with something.”
“God, Ruthie, didn’t you hear what happened to the girl they found last night?”
“Oh, I heard, all right. But it was obviously somebody who didn’t know what he was doing.”
“You shouldn’t let anybody except a doctor touch you.”
“It doesn’t have to be a doctor. It’s not a tough thing to do if you know what you’re doing.”
“You’re scaring the hell out of me, Ruthie.”
“My life’s over if I have this baby.”
“I know, Ruthie. But still-”
“Here we are.”
I pulled over to the curb. Sheen’s Fashion Fountain was the most expensive woman’s apparel shop in town. It was where you bought your girlfriend a gift if it was her birthday or if you’d really, really pissed her off.
She opened the door right away. I had one of those moments when she didn’t look familiar.
Her fear and grief had made her a stranger.
I reached over and touched her cheek. “I love you, Ruthie. You know that. I wish you’d let me help you.”
“I did this to myself. It’s my responsibility.”
“You need a ride home tonight?”
“I can ride with Betty.”
Betty was one of the older clerks. She drove to work and lived about two blocks from Mom and Dad.
“I know some people in Cedar Rapids,”
I said. “They may know a doctor there.”
She leaned over and returned my cheek kiss.
“Thanks. But let me see what my friends come up with first, all right?”
“Just please let me know what’s going on.”
“I promise.”
She got out of the car. I sat there in gloom, gray and cold as the overcast afternoon itself. Then a car horn blasted me. I was in a No Parking Zone and holding up traffic.
Twenty-two
Maggie Yates lived above a double garage on the grounds of a burned-out mansion. One of the servants had lived in the garage during the better days of the manse. Now it was rented out as an apartment. Maggie’s bike lay against the wooden steps leading up the side of the garage and Miles Davis’ music painted everything a brooding dusky color. I had to knock a couple of times in order for her to hear me above the music.
Maggie was dressed in black. Black turtleneck, black jeans, black socks.
Her long red hair was, as always, a lovely Celtic mess and her Audrey Hepburn face was, also as always, a lovely Celtic mess of winsomeness and melancholy.
The walls behind her told the story.
Photographs of Albert Camus, Jack
Kerouac, James Dean, Charlie Parker and Eleanor Roosevelt covered one wall, while album covers of Gil Evans, Jerry
Mulligan, Odetta and Dave Brubeck covered another.
Maggie was the town’s resident beatnik. She was somewhere in her early thirties, had graduated from the University of Iowa and was holing up here, she said, so she could write her novel. A lot of times I’d pull up outside and I could hear her banging away on the portable typewriter that sits on the table next to a large window overlooking what used to be a duck pond. As yet, she hasn’t let me see as much as a paragraph of the book. But she keeps promising that I’ll be the first to read it.
She said, “C’mon in. But I better warn you, McCain. My period started today. And you know I just don’t like to do it when I’m menstruating.”
I tried my best to sound hurt. “You think the only reason I come over here is for sex?”
“Sure,” she said. “And that’s the only reason I let you in. I mean, I get my jollies, and you do, too.”
I guess this was the brave new world Hugh Hefner talks about all the time. You know, frank and open discussions between the sexes about so-e-it. In some ways, I like it. It’s nice coming over here and spending a couple of hours in Maggie’s bed and then just leaving and going back to my own little world. I usually make it over here once or twice a week. She has a great body. She says I’m the only “civilized” person in town except for Judge Whitney, whom she says is a “fascist.” That’s why she sleeps with me, she says, me not being one, a dope or, two, a redneck. She won’t accept compliments or anything remotely like affection. One time I said to her, “You really are beautiful, Maggie.” She said, “Can the crapola, McCain. You’re here because you need sex. That’s all that’s going on here.”
I always felt cheated. I want to say lovey-dovey stuff, maybe for my sake as much as hers. The lovey-dovey stuff is nice to say even if you don’t mean it-or sometimes even if it’s being said to you and you know she doesn’t mean it. It’s like having a smoke afterward.
She said now, “I’m in sort of a hurry.
Pete Seeger’s in Iowa City tonight. I was just getting ready. My ride should be here any time.”
I tried very hard not to look at the sweet smooth curves of that body packed into the black sweater and black jeans. Why not combine a little sex with detection? Hadn’t Mike Hammer shown us the way?
The apartment consisted of a large living room that looked surprisingly middle-class given all the jazz musicians and literary heroes on the walls; a small bedroom with a very comfortable double bed and a kitchen and bathroom big enough for only one person at a time.
“I didn’t know you hung out with Susan Frazier,” I said.
She was opening her purse, checking her billfold for money. “Oh, I never really “hung out” with her. She was interested in art so we went to Leopold Bloom’s a few times and I explained Picasso and Chagall and Van Gogh to her. I mean, not that I know all that much myself. God, the guy that runs that store is such a pretentious asshole. You ever notice that?”
“No, I never did,” I said deadpan.
“He’s one of my favorite people.”
She whipped her head up and giggled at me.
“McCain, you’re a certified nut, you know that?”
Now, she was at the closet, digging out a heavy coat.
I said, “You know much about her personal life?”
She put her coat on. Looked at herself in a mirror by the door. “What’re you going to do tonight, McCain? Stay home and watch Father Knows Best?”
I’d made the mistake of telling her that Tv shows like that were necessary to society because, corny as they were, they gave us a sense of right and wrong. I believed that. She didn’t.
A car horn sounded.
“My ride,” she said. “Gotta hurry.”
“Hey,” I said. “Just one question.”
“I really am in a hurry, McCain,” she said, grabbing her purse from the coffee table.
“She ever tell you she was in any kind of trouble?”
“Just once,” she said, as she opened the door
and ushered me out onto the tiny porch.
“What’d she say?”
As she was locking the door from the outside, she said, “She called one night pretty drunk and said it was going to be all over town very soon.”
“What was?”
Maggie turned and faced me. “She never got around to telling me. She passed out. She couldn’t drink worth a damn.”
Then I was following her down the stairs two steps at a time, asking her a few more questions.
I half ran after her to the waiting car.
Inside was a slim, balding guy who wore sunglasses and a black turtleneck. I hadn’t known that Maggie was dating vampires, but I was happy for her. A mordant jazz song could be heard when she opened the door and slid inside. Then song, Maggie and vampire were gone.
I sat in the library until five-thirty. Every ten minutes or so I’d go over and try Debbie Lundigan’s phone number. I wanted to find out if Susan Whitney had ever talked to her about the blackmail. There was no answer.
I finally gave up on the phone and drove over there. Debbie lived in an old house that had been converted into two apartments, one up, one down.
It was actually a big house, but then you needed the extra space to share with all the rats and cockroaches.
Winter dusk. The sky a moody rose and black with bright tiny stars and a bright quarter moon.
Frost already glittering on the windshields of parked cars. To reach Debbie’s place you had to climb rickety stairs up the north side of the green-shingled house. You could smell the dinner from the ground-floor apartment, something homey with a tomato base.
I was just about to start up the steps when somebody came from the shadows and said, “Who the hell’re you?”
At first, I couldn’t see him. He was more shadow than substance. He came a few steps closer and I saw him a lot better. He was imposing. The uniform was regulation army but the decorations were anything but. He was a paratrooper, all spit and polish, caged energy and rage.
Then he said, “Hey, McCain, you little bastard.
I didn’t know it was you!”
Finally, I recognized him, too. Mike Lundigan, Debbie’s older brother. He’d been a year behind me in high school. He’d enlisted in the army two days after graduating.
“Hey, Mike! How’s it going?”
“Just got back stateside last week and came home here fast as I could.”
“Where you been?”
“South Vietnam. Ever hear of it?”
“No.”
“Our side is fighting the commies over there.
Ike’s been sending military advisers. I was over there for a year.” He grinned around the cigarette he’d just stuck in his mouth. “We’re gonna kick their yellow asses, man. In no time at all.”
A car swept up to the curb. The passenger door opened. Loud country music poured from the radio. Debbie got out, said good night, closed the door and the car took off.
Mike ran to her. She screamed his name when she saw him and then hurried into his arms.
They’d been orphaned the year after she graduated high school; their folks were killed in a car accident. They had good reason to cling to each other.
After a few minutes, they looked back at me. I walked over to them. “Debbie, I’ve got a couple more questions I’d like to ask you. But how about if I call you a little later tonight?”
Mike shook his head. “Listen, I was going to run down to the liquor store before it closes and pick up a bottle. Why don’t you two talk while I’m gone?”
Debbie nodded. “Fine with me.”
Mike kissed her on the cheek then shook my hand. “Be right back.”
He hadn’t been kidding about running down to the liquor store. He took off at a trot, his heavy lace-up paratrooper boots slamming the sidewalk hard.
“You have a cigarette, McCain? Mine are upstairs.”
She always said that. Debbie’s favorite brand of smokes was Op’s-Other People’s. She’d been that way since ninth grade. I gave her a Pall Mall and lit it for her.
“Did Susan ever mention blackmail to you?”
“Blackmail? Are you kidding?”
“No. Apparently somebody was getting money from her for quite a while.”
“God, she never mentioned anything like that.”
“Did Kenny know about the affair she had with Renauld?”
“No. She didn’t tell him.”
“Could he have found out some other way?”
“He could have. But I don’t think he did.”
She started stamping her feet a little to stay warm. “You want to go upstairs?”
“I’m almost done.”
“I’m starting to freeze, McCain.”
“So she didn’t mention any blackmail to you?”
“Nope.”
“When she ended it with Renauld, did he ever threaten her?”
“Several times. She used to joke that he had a lousy bedside manner. He was in med school for a while, you know.”
“Renauld was?”
“At the U of I.”
“I didn’t know that.” I thought of what Doc Novotony had said about the abortionist possibly being a med student who knew just enough to be dangerous. Would that apply to somebody who’d dropped out of med school?
“You ever hear him threaten her?”
“No. But she wasn’t the kind to lie. And she was definitely afraid of him.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, yeah. He’s not exactly the most stable guy in the world.”
She started slapping her mittened hands together.
“Now I’ve got to pee, McCain. C’mon.
Let’s go upstairs.”
“Actually, that’s all I needed.”
“Good. Because my bladder can’t hold out for long.”
She was already starting up the steps. “I still think Kenny killed her, McCain. He hated her and he hated himself-the booze had pickled his brains -and that’s what happened the other night.”
“Thanks again, Debbie. And tell Mike it was nice seeing him.”
I was two blocks from Debbie’s when I saw a red police light bloom into bloody brilliance in the gloom behind me. I pulled over to the curb.
Cliffie just about burst out of his squad car. His right hand rode his low-slung gun all the way up to my car.
He peeked in and said, “You happen to catch the news on the boob tube tonight?”
“No. Unlike some people I know, I have to work for a living.”
“And I’m talkin’ Cbs news, McCain, not that local shit they put on around here.”
“So what was on the news?”
“The Whitney family was on the news. How shocked the East Coast part of the family is that Kenny went and killed his wife and then killed himself. The Cbs news, McCain.” He grinned, his dipshit mustache as obnoxious as always. “So that kinda makes it official, don’t you think? Kenny killed his wife and then killed himself. Case closed. And the poor judge-boy, I’ll bet she’s never been so embarrassed in all her life. You tell her how sorry I am for her.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along.”
He smiled again. “I’d sure appreciate that, McCain. I sure would.”
He started giggling. And then he walked back to his car. The red light was still on. He was one for drama, our Cliffie was, no doubt about that.
I pulled into the driveway. There were no downstairs lights on. Mrs. Goldman was probably at a movie. Even with her new Tv set, she still went to the movies regularly.
Tv just wasn’t the same. Besides, she sort of had this movie crush on Jimmy Stewart. She said she’d never liked him, or even considered him very manly, until he started making westerns. The Avalon had a double feature showing last year, the lonely night of the anniversary of her husband’s death, so I packed her off to a restaurant for some Chinese food and then we went to the movies, The Naked Spur with Stewart and Seven Men from Now with Randolph Scott. Great films and she had a grand
time.
I went up the back stairs. Frost shone on the steps. I had to hold on to the handrail. I stopped and looked up at the moon and stars again.
I thought of Sputnik and the space program that was going on at the University of Iowa. People like me didn’t look quite so foolish anymore, buying science fiction magazines. Except for the ones where green and many-tentacled monsters were ravishing earth girls in bikinis. We probably weren’t going to find a race of horny monsters in outer space, ray gun in one tentacle and a Trojan in the other.
I got the back door opened and reached around to flick on the light. A voice said, “Please don’t turn on the light.”
“Mary?”
“I’m smoking one of your cigarettes. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Since when do you smoke?”
“Since tonight, I guess.”
I closed the door and came into the living room. I could see her now, sitting in the overstuffed chair. She looked small and young. The alley light cast everything in stark patches of wan light and brilliant shadow, like a Humphrey Bogart movie.
I took my coat off and sat on the couch.
She took another drag on the cigarette and then started hacking. “I guess I don’t know how to smoke.”
“Good. It’s not good for you.”
“You smoke.”
“I know. But you’re a lot smarter than I am.”
“Oh, shit, McCain.”
“What?”
“It was awful.”
“What was?”
“Tonight. With Wes. At the pharmacy.”
“What happened?”
“People told him about you and me. You know, last night. Out in the woods and everything.”
“Oh.”
“I know you think he’s a jerk, McCain. But the way he was raised-his father’s a real Bible-thumper and beat him all the time. You should see him in a swimming suit. You can see these old scars and old welts all over his back.
He’s got some of that Bible-thumper stuff in him.
That’s the part I hate. But the other part-”
We sat there and didn’t say anything for a while.
“You want anything to drink?” I said.
“No, thanks.”
