by Archer Mayor
Most of the time.
* * *
Willy didn’t know it for a fact, but he suspected the cabins Julie had identified might have found their origins either during the early car-camping days of the late ’20s, or from the need to house Roosevelt-era CCC crews. Whatever the truth, they had that vintage appearance, although updated and modernized, and had become a little-known and cherished Brattleboro hideaway. There were some four separate, single-story buildings, all told—the larger two of which had been partitioned into small apartments—scattered along a steep, twisting, dead-end dirt lane that had been cut through the trees and into a rolling, grass-covered, south-facing meadow.
It was quiet, peaceful, pretty, isolated, and so far off the beaten track as to leave the track behind. In truth, as he rolled to a stop, Willy was at a loss about where to park—the road having simply petered out beneath him.
He got out and looked around, absorbing the sounds of birds, a soft breeze, and the warmth of a weak spring sun. The most distant cabin was his destination, one of its doors numbered 3.
It was midday, in the middle of the week. Not a good time—most would imagine—to find anyone at home. Cops in Vermont, however, rarely paid heed to such conventions, since their primary clientele didn’t either.
Sure enough, as he approached the door in question, it opened to reveal a heavy, middle-aged bearded man in a T-shirt and jeans.
“Who’re you?” he asked, neither friendly nor hostile. He looked vaguely as if he’d just woken up, although Willy suspected the effect was permanent.
“I’m a cop,” Willy told him, not bothering to show his badge. “That okay?”
“Depends. What’ve I done?”
“Nothing I know about.”
The man pointed his chin at Willy’s left side. “What’s wrong with your arm? You okay?”
What was it with this family? Willy wondered, but he was impressed by the care he heard in the question. “Yeah,” he said. “Old injury. Thanks for asking.”
“No biggie. What’s up?”
“Are you Greg Mitchell?”
“Yeah.”
Willy considered his options and chose to go straight to the point. “You talk with your mother lately?”
The man’s mouth opened slightly. “She all right?”
“Fine. Perfect. I just wanted to know if you’d talked.”
“No.”
“Then I guess I’ve got some news for you. Not sure if you’d call it bad, exactly, since it’s kind of ancient, but you might find it helpful.”
The man instinctively touched the doorframe, as if for possible support. “What is it?”
“We found a body a couple of days ago. You mighta heard about it in the news. It was your father.”
The tradition among cops was to add, “Sorry for your loss,” but Willy didn’t truck with that. He wasn’t sorry, and he wasn’t always sure when a survivor might not agree with him.
So he stayed silent, as did Greg Mitchell, who continued staring at him for several seconds before asking, “My mom know?”
“Yeah.”
“And Julie?”
“Yeah. Your mother told her, but she didn’t know how to reach you. Julie gave me this address.”
Greg dropped his chin to look at the dirt patch between them. “Yeah. Things’ve slid a little between me and Mom.”
“Bad feelings?” Willy asked.
“Not really. More disappointment,” Mitchell acknowledged. “I been a letdown to her my whole life. I figured maybe I’d just … I don’t know … drift away somehow.”
“You chose a good spot for it.”
Willy let the silence swell between them—an old interviewer’s gambit.
“You wanna come in?” Mitchell finally asked. “I got coffee.”
“Sure.”
The cabin’s interior came as a surprise, given Willy’s knowledge of Mitchell’s previous digs. Blond pine walls and vaulted ceiling; broad, double-glass doors overlooking a small deck—all of it flooded with sunlight. It was modern, bright, cheery, and in startling contrast to its hulking slow-moving denizen. It made Willy think of a local bear breaking in and calling it home—Goldilocks in reverse.
It was tiny—a single room, half of it filled with a bed, the other half by a kitchenette and a closet. A small bathroom was at the end. There were about as many possessions lying about as in a standard abandoned motel room. Greg Mitchell was not making a big dent on the world.
“Nice place,” Willy complimented him, as Mitchell led him to the counter holding a coffeemaker and poured him a mug taken from an overhead cabinet in which only two mugs resided. “How can you afford it?”
Mitchell didn’t take umbrage. “I cleaned up,” he said with a ready frankness common to many twelve-step program attendees. “Stopped drinking and doing drugs. Don’t know if it’ll stick this time, but I’m tryin’. Means more money in the bank. I got a job at the Cumbie in West B. You want sugar or something?”
Willy chose not to further stress the man’s resources. “I’m good.”
Near the bed was a small table with one chair. Mitchell sat on the edge of the bed and indicated the chair. “Have a seat.”
Willy did so, asking, “Did you miss your dad?”
Mitchell let his large, blunt, workingman’s hands dangle between his knees. “Been a long time.”
“Still. It can be hard having a ghost as a father.”
Mitchell looked up at him. “You, too?”
Willy considered that. He had been born in New York City, and sometimes wished more of his family had been ghosts—instead of what they were. “Something like that,” was all he said.
“I did miss him,” Mitchell recalled. “I look back now, I realize he filled my life when I was a kid. I’d sit in school, looking forward to getting home and seeing him after work.” He spread his hands apart, as if detailing the length of a large fish, and added, “He was like a huge presence—more of a feeling than a man.” He paused before saying, “Course, that’s just how I remember it. He was probably just a dad, and I was a bratty kid.”
“But he went into thin air,” Willy suggested. “Like a puff of smoke.”
Mitchell was studying the floor and nodded several times. “Yeah—he did.”
“You remember that happening?”
“Sure.”
“Tell me.”
Again, Mitchell was quiet, either drifting again, or gathering his thoughts. “It wasn’t like a puff of smoke, like you said.”
“Okay.”
“There was a sort of buildup. My folks fighting. That was hard. Julie and I would talk about it. Or I guess she would ask me and I would try to answer. But we were small. I didn’t really understand, and I felt I was supposed to make her feel better, if I could.”
“What were they fighting about?” Willy asked, pulling him back. He was a cop, after all—not a shrink.
Mitchell seemed to get the message. “Right,” he said. “Well, my dad moved out, if that tells you anything.”
“You think there was another woman?”
Mitchell shrugged. “There musta been, but that’s not what I picked up. What I got was that my dad was unhappy, and I felt I was probably the reason. You know how kids do. I wasn’t doing great in school, and I was nowhere near the athlete he’d been, and I was useless helping him with chores. I mean, I know now that they were most likely on the outs ’cause of their own baggage. But back then? I felt caught. Nobody was happy anymore, including Julie, and I couldn’t fix it.”
Willy tried again. “Children sometimes overhear what their parents are fighting about. How ’bout you?”
He nodded. “There was one night. She yelled at him. She never did that—she’s pretty buttoned down. Julie gets that from her. But she yelled that he smelled. I couldn’t figure it out. ‘I can smell it on you,’ or something like that. I can guess what she meant now, but I never knew for sure.”
Willy changed his approach. “Let’s look at the broader pict
ure. Who do you remember of their friends?”
Mitchell’s face cleared somewhat. “BB was the one we saw the most. He was over all the time, like an uncle.”
“How did he act?”
“Fun. He played with us and horsed around, and made my mom laugh. He used to tickle her, which amazed me, ’cause she wasn’t big on being touched.”
“You think he was maybe doing more than tickling?” Willy risked asking.
But Mitchell just laughed shortly. “I wondered about that. After Dad disappeared, BB was over a bunch for a while, and I was pretty sure he was after what you mean.”
“How did she react?”
“She didn’t hate it. I never heard her yell at him. And I thought I interrupted them kissing once. But right after, he stopped coming over, so I don’t know what happened.”
There was another pause, after which Mitchell asked, almost shyly, “How did my dad die?”
Willy didn’t think he had much to lose. “Somebody killed him.”
Mitchell’s face went slack and his body sagged. “I thought it might’ve been an accident. He’d just hurt himself when I saw him last—had his arm in a sling.” He passed his hand across his forehead. “Who killed him? Why?”
“That’s what I’m looking for from you,” Willy told him.
Mitchell was nonplussed. “Me? What would I know?”
“You hang out with your dad much? Drive around with him, seeing his pals?”
“Sure. I loved doing that.”
“Who do you remember? You stopped with BB. Weren’t there others?”
“Oh, yeah. There was Johnny. He was always around.”
“Lucas?”
“He worked with Dad and BB. They had a company together. Roofing. You probably knew that.”
“That’s okay. Where was Johnny in the pecking order?”
“Dad and BB ran things—at least that’s what I thought. Johnny didn’t become a partner till later.”
Willy was interested in that. “Would you say Johnny moved into your dad’s spot?”
But Greg wouldn’t go that far. “Not really. What I remember is BB managed the company on his own for a year or so. Johnny worked for him, along with a bunch of others, but it wasn’t till later that he became management. I guess he deserved it. Not that I’d know much about it, but he’s high on the hog now, so he musta done something right.”
“Rich?”
“Not BB’s kind of rich. That’s crazy. But Johnny did fine.”
“How did your dad and Johnny get along?”
“Fine. They were buddies.”
“Were there others?”
Greg gazed into the distance, trying to recall. “Jimmy Stringer was one of them, and a guy named Carlo. Don’t know his last name.”
“Anyone else?” Willy pressed him.
“That’s pretty much all I know. Dad was a popular guy, but names…?”
“Tell me about Stringer. He keeps coming up.”
Greg smiled slightly. “It’s probably that last name—sounds like a kid’s book. I don’t know. My dad liked him well enough, but he never paid much attention to me—not like BB. He seemed kind of rough. I think my spider sense told me he could be mean.”
“You ever witness that side of him?”
“Nope. It was just a feeling. You know what they’re worth.”
“A lot, sometimes,” Willy told him. This brought him around to one of the primary reasons he’d come here.
“Greg, let’s go back to when your parents were having their problems. I understand you felt guilty—that you were to blame somehow, even though you weren’t. I get that. But you told me how big a presence Hank was in your life. How he filled the room, so to speak. That’s a big hole to leave behind. How did you feel when he moved out?”
Mitchell’s eyes wandered to the view beyond the deck. “It’s hard to separate how I felt then to later. I guess numb. And lost. I was pretty confused.”
“How’d you feel about the old man’s vanishing act?”
“Hurt. Angry. And—again—confused. Julie’s reaction didn’t help. She wigged out—smashing stuff and throwing fits. She started hitting people, too.”
“What was her relationship like with your father?”
“Cool,” Greg replied. “Like mine. He was a good dad—read to us, played ball, went on hikes. All the dad stuff.”
Willy waited for more, but that was it. He asked, “Who do you think did him in?”
Greg stared at him. “How would I know?”
“Kids know all sorts of things,” Willy said.
The other man blinked a couple of times before resuming his contemplation of the scenery.
“You’re not telling me something,” Willy told him.
“I told you everything.”
Willy saw Greg’s expression harden. “Your life went into the toilet after your dad left,” he said. “And here you are, decades later, doing no better. At that time, your mom stayed the course, money wasn’t a problem, you had a roof over your head. Children have one of their parents walk out on them all the time. It may mess with their heads a little, crank ’em up and make ’em act out. But it doesn’t usually do what it did to you.”
“Guess I’m special that way,” Greg said tersely.
Willy was quiet again. But this time, Greg Mitchell had reached his limit. In the end, Willy rose, left his business card on the table, and left without saying another word.
But he was convinced there was more to be said—what it was, and who would utter it, remained to be seen.
CHAPTER NINE
Another night, a different house, and Sally Kravitz was still reliving a teenager’s excitement about her inaugural outing, twenty-four hours earlier. That place had been empty, like this one, and her father—whom she always called Dan—had disconnected the alarm beforehand. But the adrenaline rush of going from room to room, feeling the presence of occupants who had stepped out for the evening, had been addicting. She’d loved it.
And it hadn’t been a pointless ramble. Dan had made it a lesson of component parts—how to move, what to look and listen for, what could be touched and what was best avoided. He was wonderful—patient, supportive, even funny when she’d needed it.
Just as important for her, it also cast a light onto her father’s tightly controlled personality. In contrast to their currently gloomy surroundings, he had blossomed before her—his step becoming quick, his mood playful, his focus fully engaged. He’d no longer been the social enigma who spoke like a scholar to her and to others in monosyllabic grunts. In the midst of someone else’s environment, and the blackness of night, he’d ironically ceased to be invisible and restrained. He’d moved decisively, smoothly, and as quietly as a cat. He’d gone through closets, cabinets, drawers, and desks; he’d moved items about, opening them for examination, going through their contents. And yet, when he finished—with her watching every motion—everything appeared as it had before. She could have sworn that not even the dust had been disturbed. Dan had made her think of an artist in peak form. If her father had shucked off his overalls and taken flight like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Sally Kravitz couldn’t have been more surprised or charmed.
And now, here they were again, across town, breaching the envelope of another oversized, luxurious home.
Because that was Dan’s practice: He pursued only high-end houses, never removed conventional valuables, and always made sure to pause long enough to fully enjoy his theft of others’ presumed privacy.
Also, when not tutoring Sally, he only broke into homes in which the occupants were present and sleeping. That last bit had led to the hubris of leaving Post-its, which, he’d since admitted, he came to rue as a mistake. As you push at the edges, he’d counseled her, never fall prey to overconfidence.
True, he hadn’t actually suffered as a result, thanks to Willy, for whom he’d been an informant for years. Kunkle hadn’t known of Dan’s secret back then, of course, but he’d always valued Dan’s being so well informed.
Which he was, even if it wasn’t just knowledge that he sought. He collected information, and with it, he served Willy Kunkle. But he also garnered a tidy income via insider trading. He was good with computers, comfortable reading financial records—sitting late at night at other people’s desks—and happy to later make stock choices and investments based on what he’d learned.
Sally didn’t know the intimate details of that, or see herself as the Artful Dodger to her father’s Fagin. To her, Dan better represented Robin Hood, with the additional rationalization that he merely stole data and did no one any harm. Her own ambitions for joining him were more emotional. Put simply, she wanted to know Dan Kravitz in his heart. Bonding with him at his happiest seemed the best means to achieve it.
The fringe benefit, she was now happily finding out, was discovering not only how good she was at acquiring his set of skills, but also how much fun it was to do.
Tonight, they were in West B, on Orchard Street, predictably not far from the country club. The house, as was often the case, had begun life humbly enough, a century and a half earlier, probably as a farmer’s home. That was before the industrial revolution, the growth of urbanization, and the sprawling of suburbia—all of which had transformed this building from shelter to status symbol. As a result, a once functional home had become a clapboarded, manicured mansion, tricked up with dark green shutters, entryway roofs and quaint weathervanes, bricked walkways, a nearby tennis court, and the obligatory, seldom-used Jacuzzi.
It was a foreign world to Sally, who’d spent her life following Dan from pillar to post around town, once even—for a while—calling a converted school bus home. Dan, for all his education and secret funds, was a man who lived upon the earth as a fog lingers among trees. He drifted—watching, absorbing, and learning—and she’d adapted to drifting with him. Moving attentively from room to room in this house so thick with possessions was like roaming through a museum to her—interesting and informative, but in the long run, alien from her own reality. Thanks to Dan, Sally’s life had become the study of humanity’s joys and sorrows, generosity and mean-spiritedness, and finally, its ability to endure—not the practice of keeping score with baubles.
