by Ed Gorman
“You goin’ to the funeral?” he said to Mary.
“Of course.”
“I can’t decide. Her folks don’t like me much.”
“I wonder why.” Then: “Todd Jensen. This is Sam McCain.”
He didn’t acknowledge me in any way.
“Maybe if she’d married me instead of him, she wouldn’t be dead.”
“Meaning what exactly?”
“You figure it out.”
“That her husband killed her?”
“You figure it out. She treated me like shit.”
“And you were always such a prince.”
“Bitch lied to me.”
“Why don’t you just leave, Todd? She was my friend.”
“You always treated me like shit too.”
“Good-bye, Todd.”
And then he was gone, wobbling off down the bar, people just naturally making room for his hulking body.
“Friend of yours?”
“Oh, sure. Couldn’t you tell how happy I was to see him? He was Susan’s old boyfriend, believe it or not. She went out with him for six or seven months before she met David Squires. He was one of those insanely jealous guys. She had to account for every single minute she wasn’t with him. He used to follow her around until she caught him at it one night. When they broke up, he used to call her ten times a night. And when she started seeing David Squires, he started sending her threatening letters.
Squires had Cliffie pay him several visits, but he still wouldn’t lay off. Finally, Squires wrote a letter to the local medical association in Cedar Rapids.”
“Medical association?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, Todd’s a
doctor.”
“No surgical tools for that guy. He just tears your liver out when he wants to examine it.”
“Anyway, he seemed finally to give up.
Then about four months ago, the threatening letters started again. Susan was sure it was Todd.”
Then: “How about a dance?”
“My feet are at your command.”
Then I saw him.
At first I wasn’t sure I was seeing right: Mike Chalmers? I used to play sandlot baseball with him until he stole my bike one day and tried to blame it on a kid who hung around the diamond. That’s how Mike’s life ran, one scrape after another. Stealing bikes.
Stealing money from cash registers. Stealing cars.
Breaking and entering. Finally, armed robbery. He’d gotten out of prison a couple of years back.
Chalmers, a slight man with a hard peasant handsomeness, smirked at me and then looked away.
“Friend of yours?” Mary asked.
“I helped send him up.”
“God, I’d hate to have your job.” Then: “He looks kind of sad, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, he
does.”
We were slow-dancing to a Pat Boone song when I glanced out one of the barn windows and got the idea for the taillight check. There had to be a couple of hundred cars here this evening, maybe one of them with a broken taillight. I was going to get an early A.M. call from the Judge, demanding to know what I’d done on the case so far.
Maybe I could sell her on the idea that I’d come to the hayrack ride to check out the cars. We live by blind hope, don’t we?
I wasn’t sure how Mary would respond.
This was a date, not a stakeout.
But she said, “Good. I’ll help you.”
“You will?”
“Sure. I’ll take the cars on the far side of the barn. You take the cars on this side.”
“You really don’t have to do this.”
“God, McCain, please quit treating me like a little kid, all right?”
“All right.”
“When I don’t want to do something, I’ll tell you. And I won’t be subtle. I promise.”
I should have been working for the Kinsey Report.
I saw a lot of couples coupling in the backseats of their cars. High school kids, mostly. I moved quietly as possible. They were too enraptured to hear me. But I heard them: sighs, gasps, cries of pleasure, and a symphony of car springs. What could be lovelier on a Indian-summer night with a full harvest moon?
I even stopped to admire a few of the street rods. Chopped, channeled, louvered. They looked like something out of hot-rod magazines.
Only in a small town like this could their owners feel safe leaving them and going inside. That was my dream. Have a wife and a couple of kids and pack them all in the front seat of a customized ‘ci Ford Phaeton and cruise up and down dusty Main Street on some fine June afternoon.
Maybe I’d even give Judge Whitney a ride someday.
I didn’t have much luck with taillights. The only one I found missing belonged to a ‘dh Buick, and I could see that the intact one didn’t resemble the pieces I had.
I was just walking back to the front of the barn when I saw Mary, breathless, running up to me. “I think I may’ve found the car. But it’s just pulling out.”
We ran around the side of the barn. It had been parked far to the west, out where a windbreak of oaks had been planted.
We finally got close enough to see the shape of the car: the unmistakable configuration of the ‘ee Chevy, which is, to me, one of the most elegant car designs ever built. From this angle, I couldn’t see the taillight. The Chevy was moving without headlights along the back row of cars. It could pick up the edge of the graveled drive there and angle right out onto the county road that ran past the stables. I couldn’t see the driver.
We kept pace with it by trotting to the county road.
Not until it got to the clearing between driveway and road did I see the taillight. It was raw yellow, two small naked bulbs. No red plastic covering.
I don’t think the driver saw us. All of a sudden the car fishtailed through the gravel and shot onto the county road. It was doing 30 by then and 50 by the time it disappeared behind the trees.
“You get the license number?”
“I did.” She gave it to me.
“Illinois.”
“Yeah. Good work.”
“Thanks. Now what?”
“Need to check out the number.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I noticed you said we.”
She laughed. “I thought I was being sneaky.”
Then: “I want to help you on this, McCain.
Susan was my friend.”
“I’ll call my buddy when we get back to my place.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“If it’s all right with you.”
“It’s fine by me.”
We were silent on the drive back, listening to the Saturday Night Top Ten countdown on the radio. I think we both knew it was going to happen tonight. Though I still felt as if I were taking advantage of her, I decided she was right. I wasn’t coercing her in any way. She knew I was in love with Pamela. I’d
been honest with her, and that’s all I could do. She sat very close to me and it felt good, felt right somehow. I was relaxed with her in a way I could never be with Pamela.
The lights were off downstairs. Mrs.
Goldman was still out on her date. I would get a full report later. I’d become her father in all this. From now on I’d be shaking hands and approving her dates before I let her go out with them. Or was that being too strict in this modern age?
We went upstairs. I got the lights on and the heat turned up. Frost was on the grass.
She used the bathroom first. Did some more fixing up. Was lovelier than ever.
The buddy I’d referred to was a Chicago police commander who’d picked up his law degree at Iowa. He spent three years working for a Chicago law firm and found himself bored. He became a cop. We kept in vague touch.
I’d never asked him for a favor before. He was married with two kids. I assumed he’d be home. Most married couples don’t go out much, even on Saturday nights.
While I was in
the bathroom brushing my teeth and slapping on more Old Spice, the phone rang.
Mary answered it and started talking. Asking questions. I couldn’t get a lot of the exact words but I sure got the exact tone. Urgent.
Scared.
She knocked on the door. “McCain?”
I opened the door. “What’s up?”
“That was my mom. My dad’s taken a turn for the worse. I really need to get home.”
“Sure. Are they taking him to the hospital?”
“The doctor’s coming to the house.”
Even at night the houses in the Knoll look pretty rough. The Travers house was one of the best kept, thanks to Mary.
As I pulled up to the drive, I said, “I’ll say prayers for him.”
She looked surprised. “You still say prayers?”
“Sure.”
“You still go to mass?”
“Sometimes.”
“What’s that mean?”
I shrugged. “Rarely.”
She smiled sadly. “That’s what I
figured.” She looked anxiously at the lighted living room window. “I need to get in there.”
“I know.”
She turned back to me. Lovely.
Terrified of what might be going on with her father.
“I would’ve done it tonight, McCain.”
“Me too.”
“I want it to happen.” She leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
The drive back home was kind of
melancholy. The suddenly cold weather gave all the houses an air of being battened down.
Snug and cozy. Leaves tore from branches in the wind and crawled like small colorful monsters across the grass and street. Spindly Tv antennas swayed dangerously.
I parked in back and went up the private entrance stairs to my apartment. The door wasn’t open more than an inch before something told me somebody was in there: the scent of expensive pipe tobacco.
I stood in the doorway.
“Don’t turn on the light,” he said.
“I don’t usually take orders from
burglars.”
He sighed. “I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t turn on the light.”
“And why would that be?”
“I don’t want Cliffie to know I’m here.”
“You call him Cliffie too?”
“Yeah. Behind his back I do.”
I went in. Kitchenette, as it’s called, bathroom, and bedroom on the right. The rest of the apartment is living room. He sat in the overstuffed chair across the room. I banged my knee on the coffee table.
“One good thing,” he said, “you don’t have to worry about hurting this furniture. It’s been hurt all it can be.”
“Part-time lawyer, part-time interior decorator. What an odd combination of jobs,”
I said.
“How do you know who I am?”
I took my coat off and draped it across the rocking chair I’d inherited from Grandfather.
“Number one, there aren’t that many major assholes in town. And, two, I recognized your voice from court.”
“Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“No,” I said, lighting a Lucky in the gloom. “What you’re supposed to be is afraid I may call Cliffie and have him book you for B and E.”
“I came to talk.”
“In the dark.”
“Yes. In the dark. Cliffie would never understand.”
I took a drag of my Lucky. “You want a beer?”
“I’m not much of a beer drinker. I work with my brains, not my hands.”
“Good. That just means more for me.”
When I opened the refrigerator door, the interior light shone on him. He was a dashing devil, David Squires, quite the country gentleman in his British tweeds and London riding boots. His expensive pipe tobacco smelled good.
“Please close that door. I told you I don’t want Cliffie to know I’m here.”
I closed the door. “Where’d you park?”
“Several blocks away. I took the
alleys over here.” I sat down and tapped the top of the Falstaff can with the church key. The beer opened with a whoosh, spattering foam on my hand.
“You that scared of him?”
“He and his father run this town. I know you and the Judge think she still has some power. But she doesn’t. Not the kind of power the Sykeses have, anyway.”
“You came over here for what reason?”
“To hire you.”
“Hire me? What the hell’re you talking about?”
“I want you to find out who killed my wife.”
“Cliffie’s the law in this town.”
“Cliffie’s an idiot.”
“That’s not a very nice thing for his lawyer to say.”
“Look, you prick, my wife’s been
murdered and I want to find out who killed her.
Do you think it was easy for me to come here?”
“I suppose not.”
“Then knock off the smart talk.”
I sighed. “The Judge’ll never go for this.”
“These are extraordinary circumstances.”
“So were all the times you gave your opinion of her in the newspaper.”
There’d been a couple of articles in the past few years about juris prudens
Black River Falls style. As the former District Attorney and now the town’s most prominent attorney, Squires had had a good deal to say about “incompetent judges.” He didn’t name names. He didn’t have to.
Everybody knew he meant Judge Whitney.
“Maybe you killed her, Squires.”
“Maybe I did. If you’re half as good as you seem to be, you’ll find that out and they’ll hang me.”
“There’re a lot of other private
investigators in the state. Good ones.”
“None who know the town the way you do. You know Chalmers, too.”
“Chalmers?” He was the ex-con I’d seen at the dance tonight. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“I was the prosecutor who sent him up. His lawyer convinced him I held back evidence and had a grudge against him. He wrote me a few letters from prison.”
I lit one Lucky off another. Exhaled.
Sat back. “Why the hell’d you jump all over the Judge and me this afternoon?”
“How many times do I have to remind you, McCain? My wife is dead. I walked in, and I saw you two standing there talking to Cliffie—” He sighed. “I needed to take it out on somebody and you two were elected, I guess.”
I noticed he didn’t apologize.
Nelson Rockefeller had recently said his parents told him, “Never apologize, never explain.” Apparently my guest lived by the same code.
“God, I don’t know, Squires. This is pretty confusing. Maybe you should talk to the Judge yourself.”
“Oh, and she’d give me such a fair hearing, wouldn’t she? I wouldn’t get two words out before she kicked me out of her chambers.”
“I guess you’re right about that.”
“I need help, McCain. You know how hard it was for me to come over here and grovel.”
Grovel? If this guy thought he was groveling, I’d have to invite him to watch me in action with the steely-eyed snob who was Judge Esme Whitney.
“I’ll talk to her.”
He stood up. “I really
appreciate it.”
“Since you seem to prefer the dark, how do I get ahold of you? You got a Bat signal you shine in the sky or anything?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind.”
Now I knew at least two things he
didn’t go in for: apologizing when he was wrong and reading Batman. It wasn’t going to be easy working with this guy.
“Call me at my office. Say your name is Frank Daly.”
“Frank Daly.”
“I worked on his case when I was a
prosecutor in Chicago.”
“Nail him?”
“He got the chair. I had the pleasure of watching.”
I almost asked if he knew Elmer the executioner at the tavern. They could compare notes on killing people. But I knew for a fact that Elmer was a Batman reader so I wasn’t sure how they’d get along.
He moved skillfully through the shadows to the back door. “I’ll wait for your call.”
“This is crazy.”
“So is my wife being dead.”
The priest said, “Even though this is highly irregular, I did get a call from the Pope ten minutes ago and he gave us permission to go ahead with the ceremony.”
I was beaming. All over. Head to toe, rosy glow.
“Now if you’ll step forward,” the priest said.
We stepped forward.
It was kind of crowded on the small altar.
The priest looked at his prayer book and then said, “Do you, Mary, take McCain to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“Oh, yes!” she said, looking lovely in her wedding finery.
“And do you Pamela take McCain to be your lawful wedded husband?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” she said, after the teeny-tiniest hesitation. She, too, looked beautiful in her wedding finery.
“Good, then, my children. I now pronounce you man and wives.”
99
I was just getting to the good part—the sleeping arrangements for our wedding night—when the phone rang.
“‘Lo.”
“McCain?”
“I think so.”
“This is no time to be a wise guy. I’m very, very nervous.”
“Who is this?”
“Linda. Linda Granger.”
“Oh, God, Linda, I’m sorry. I
didn’t mean to be a smart-ass.”
“It’s Ok, McCain, that’s how I
expect you to be.”
Which wasn’t necessarily a compliment.
“I was wondering if you’d seen Jeff.”
“Yesterday afternoon at Elmer’s.”
“How was he doing?”
I sat up on the side of the bed. Found my Luckies. Had my cigarette hack and then thrust a butt, as Mike Hammer likes to call them, between my lips.
“Is something wrong, Linda?”
“They can’t find him.”
“Who can’t?”
“His parents. He didn’t come home last night.”
