An Unsettled Grave

by Bernard Schaffer

  “How?” J.D. scowled.

  “Call her Pretty Lady.”

  “No way.”

  “I’m telling you, that’s how you do it. Chief Rein to Dispatch, come in, Pretty Lady. Go ahead, you can do it.”

  J.D. swallowed uncomfortably, then pressed the button on the microphone and repeated his uncle’s words, giggling at the end so hard he could barely spit them all out.

  “Attaboy,” Ollie said, grinning.

  The radio beeped on the dashboard and a woman said, “You sound a whole lot younger, handsome. Must be all that clean living. By the way, that beer store owner’s been calling nonstop and those two people from the car crash are still waiting on you to come back and take their report.”

  Ollie looked at his nephew. “What do you think? You want to come do some police work with me?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Hell no,” Ollie said, taking the microphone from him. “Trust me, kid, police work sucks.” He pressed the button and said, “Afraid I won’t be able to respond, Pretty Lady. Something else came up. Put the State Police on call for the rest of the night, including those two calls we have holding.”

  The radio beeped again. “State Police are going to take a while to respond. I’m guessing you don’t want me to ask Liston PD to handle the beer store and the crash?”

  “Nope,” Ollie responded. “You go ahead and have yourself a good night.”

  “You do the same, handsome. And you tell that little passenger you got with you that if he keeps on talking sweet like that to the girls, he’ll have them chasing him around in no time.”

  Ollie hung up the microphone and clapped his hands together. “We got the rest of the night to ourselves, my man. You hungry? I’m hungry. Let’s go get something to eat, but first I have to stop by my place. That all right with you?”

  “Is that your girlfriend?”

  “Who?” Ollie said. “On the radio?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nah,” Ollie said, scowling. “That’s just play talk. For all I know, she could be a hundred years old.”

  “You’ve never met her?”

  “Never,” Ollie said. “She works at the county radio, and we’re the only borough too cheap to pay for our own dispatcher. I think she gets bored up there, so we kid around. Keeps the day going by for both of us, I guess.”

  “She called you handsome. Maybe she’s seen a picture of you or something.”

  Ollie looked at himself in the rearview mirror, running his fingers down his chin. “That’s because I am. Look at this face. You don’t think so?”

  J.D. looked out the window. People took notice of the police car. Some of them looked worried to see it. Others waved and told their children to wave too. J.D. waved back at them.

  They drove across town to Ollie’s house, a small rancher on bare dirt. It was out past the steel mill, where most of the people in town worked, but the lot was only half filled with cars anymore. Every year, more people were getting pink slips, and the employees who remained were told to do more with less or they’d be next.

  Ollie parked his police car in the driveway and said, “When’s the last time you were here?”

  “Before school started,” J.D. said, closing the car door.

  “Didn’t we agree you’d be coming over on the weekends more often?” Ollie asked, unlocking the door and holding it open for the boy. “We did, and then I had to work a few times, and you had things going on a few times, and it just got away from us. That’s what life is like, I guess. The important stuff gets away from you when you are busy worried about all the other shit. Hey, look at me.”

  J.D. didn’t pull away when Ollie cupped him under the chin. “We are going to do a better job of this from now on, okay?”

  “Okay,” J.D. said.

  “Let me get changed, and then me and you are heading into town. You want Chinese? Pizza? Steak? You name it. We’ll hit the arcade, see if there’s any movies playing, whatever you want. How does that sound?”

  “I told you, I have school tomorrow.”

  “So what? Let’s live a little.”

  J.D. could see his uncle pulling off his leather gun belt and hanging it on his bedpost in his bedroom. Ollie unbuttoned his police shirt and tossed it into the hamper, then slid off his pants and let them lie on the floor. He grabbed a pair of faded blue jeans and a flannel shirt and sat down on the bed, sliding his feet into a pair of worn cowboy boots.

  He stood up, ran his fingers through his brown hair, and snapped his fingers. “I’d say this is a special occasion, me and you getting to hang out on a school night. Wouldn’t you?”

  “I guess so,” J.D. said.

  “Come in here a second.”

  J.D. went into the room and stopped at the door. Ollie’s bedroom looked different from the rest of his house. Every other room was clean and sparse, but the bedroom was packed with clothes and boxes.

  A stack of books on the nightstand caught the boy’s eye. Secondhand textbooks with titles like Basic Criminal Investigations and Survive Your Shift. J.D. picked one up called Homicide 101 and flipped through it. The first picture was a dead woman with both her breasts chopped off. He gasped and slammed it shut, slapping it back down on top of the other books, then deciding it belonged farther down, buried it where no one could see it.

  Ollie was rummaging in his closet and reached up to grab something hidden behind a stack of clothes on the highest shelf. He pulled down a shoebox and laid it on the bed, looking down at it. When he pulled off the lid, it was stuffed with bundles of cash.

  Ollie pulled up a stack of twenties, fanned it with his thumb, counting off two hundred dollars, and set the money on the bed. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Ollie said.

  “I don’t know. I’m only twelve.”

  “You must have some kind of dream. You want to be a businessman? An accountant? A lawyer? What interests you?”

  “My dad says I’m going in the army as soon as I turn seventeen.”

  “What about finishing school?”

  “He says it’s not important.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “I guess army’s okay.” J.D. shrugged. “You get a cool uniform, and you defend your country.”

  Ollie stuffed the loose cash into his pocket and set the lid back on the shoebox, then placed it into the closet once more. He bent down on one knee to face J.D. and said, “I’m gonna tell you something nobody admits to, but it’s true, so listen up. The entire thing is a goddamn lie. The army loves to tell people they’re protecting American freedom. That when a soldier gets killed, he’s protecting American citizens. Absolute bullshit. When I was in Vietnam, there wasn’t a single goddamn Viet Cong getting anywhere close to the United States. Not in a million years. Neither were any of the Koreans in the Korean War. Or anywhere else in any of the dozens of shitstorms we’ve been involved with over the past ten years. Soldiers aren’t protecting anything except the interests of people with money. You understand that?”

  J.D. said he did, but his uncle could see that he didn’t. “It’s like this,” Ollie said. “Some rich guy decides he needs a particular hill because it has gold, or oil, or whatever. Now, they need young men willing to take that hill, even if it means most of them getting blown up and mutilated. The only way to get those young men to do that is fill their heads will all sorts of horseshit. So, you, my friend, are not joining the army. You’re too smart for that.”

  J.D. followed his uncle outside, heading for the beat-up Ford pickup parked around back. “You were in the army. You’re smart,” J.D. said, climbing in.

  “That was different. I wound up working in the clerical department for a command unit. Typing up all their orders.” Ollie turned the key, making the engine sputter and cough. “Come on,” he said, turning the key and stepping on the gas. “Every day I’d see them telling the field officers to send boys out to infiltrate some village, knowing it was suicide. I’m talking about kids. Eighteen years old. Kids who hadn’t
lived long enough to ever come off their family farms, or kiss a girl, all of a sudden getting blown up in some rice paddy in Vietnam, all because some goddamn colonel wants a village, or some rich guy wants a hill. I’ll be goddamned if they’ll ever do that to you, J.D. That box of money in there, you know what that is?”

  J.D. looked at the condition of the truck they were sitting in. “Money for a new truck?”

  Ollie laughed. “Smart-ass. That’s your future. I’ve been saving it for you. Every week, I put some in there so I don’t spend it. You want to go to school, you want to be a plumber, you want to become a master carpenter, whatever it is, you’ll get to do it. There’s only one thing I ask. Do something you love and be the best you can be at it. The worst sin in this whole world is having a talent and not using it, especially if it’s something the rest of us need. Understand?”

  “I understand,” J.D. said.

  “All right,” Ollie said, cranking the engine once more and getting it rumbling. “Now, enough of all that. Let’s eat.”

  Ollie dropped the gearshift into drive and pulled out onto the road. “Look out, world. The night is young, we’ve got money in our pocket, and the Rein boys are coming!” Ollie rolled down his window, stuck his face into the gust of cool air, then threw back his head and howled like a wolf.

  J.D. laughed, then rolled down his own window, feeling the blast of wind blowing back his hair, chilling his gums around his wide, gaping smile, and he howled and howled as loud as he could, his thin wolf voice ringing out into the night sky.

  CHAPTER 11

  The school bus rocked side to side through the morning fog. It was dark and the woods all around swirled with the kind of mist monsters sprang forth from. J.D. leaned his head against the cool window, imagining what monsters were creeping through the fog alongside the bus, sniffing the children inside it, hungering for them. His new coat was thick and warm and cushioned his body against the window’s metal frame. He swung his feet under the seat in front of him, looking at his new sneakers. Their thick laces were tied in double knots.

  The song in his head would not stop playing. He could imagine knights in brightly polished armor racing after the bus, their horses thundering while Carmina Burana boomed throughout the woods. The monsters in the woods snapped their jaws and whipped their shaggy heads, but it was too late. The knights ran them down, swords and lances flashing, spraying the fog with bright red mist.

  The bus hissed to a stop in front of Adam’s house. Adam climbed up the steps, searching the open seats as he made his way down the aisle. The seat next to J.D. was empty. Others were open, but Adam slid into the seat beside him, and neither of them spoke.

  The front door closed and the bus rumbled forward. Adam reached into his coat’s front pocket and pulled out his inhaler, taking as deep a breath as he could.

  J.D. waited for him to recap his inhaler. “I saw Excalibur with my uncle last night.”

  Adam’s eyes went wide behind his glasses. “You’re kidding. Lucky!”

  “It was radical,” J.D. said.

  Adam slid his inhaler back into his pocket and came out with something else, cupping it with his hand. “Here,” he said, holding up one of the bounty hunter action figures.

  “You found mine?” J.D. said, taking it into his hands.

  Adam pushed his glasses back up to the center of his nose and ignored the question. “So tell me about Excalibur. What was the best part?”

  J.D. waved the figure like a sword, made sound effects with his mouth, and described the battles and grandeur. For both of them, it was as if they were surrounded by those knights riding alongside the bus, or even among them, clad in armor, rushing toward great evil.

  * * *

  Oliver Rein slid into the front seat of his police car, leaned his head back and groaned. The sun was too bright. He lowered the visor and put on his sunglasses, still needing to squint as he picked up the radio mic. “Good morning, Pretty Lady,” he said.

  “Good afternoon, I think you mean,” she replied. “I wasn’t sure we’d hear from you today. I thought maybe you’d hand things over to the State Police permanently, and we’d set up a taco stand.”

  “Tacos,” Ollie said. “I’d give anything for some tacos right now. They got them out where you are?”

  “There’s a place not far from the radio room. We go there after work sometimes. You ought to stop by if you’re ever out this way.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Ollie said. “You got any calls holding?”

  “Mr. Duggan called in to say his horses got loose, again, but then he called back and said he’d been able to round them up. That was it.”

  “Another day in the big city,” Ollie said, putting the car in gear.

  “Should I log you on as in service?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to swing by Ruby’s and see if they can round me up some tacos. I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot. Want me to bring you anything?”

  “What do they have that’s good?”

  “Ruby makes her own cakes and pies, fresh, every day. She’s famous for them.”

  “I’d kill for a slice of pie,” she said.

  “Someday, you’re gonna look up from your radio and see me standing there holding a whole pie, just for you.”

  “You do that, I might have to marry you.”

  Ollie laughed and said, “Don’t tempt me. You aren’t that far away from here.”

  He hung up his microphone and turned up the volume on the local police scanner, housed beneath the county radio. It scanned the surrounding areas, and all of them were silent. That was all right, he thought. If there was any radio chatter, it would be from Liston police pulling over trucks along the highway. Nothing those cowboy hat–wearing nitwits liked better than wrecking the life of some poor, dumb trucker who was hauling too much weight. A single ticket for an overweight truck could be hundreds of dollars. Most times, the trucker had no idea what was being loaded on. Their bosses told them, “Haul this,” and they hitched it up and drove off.

  Ollie had seen Walt Auburn high-fiving other cops like they’d just scored a touchdown on the side of the road, after giving out tickets that wrecked hardworking men’s lives. He’d seen truckers sitting in the dirt, heads down, trying not to let anyone see them cry.

  That wasn’t Ollie’s type of police work, and he’d made no secret about it. He loved to remind Walt of all the times some cop had been getting his ass kicked on a car stop, and a random trucker jumped out to help. Not that it made a difference to Walt Auburn.

  Ollie tapped his fingers on the door’s armrest, singing to himself. He did his best singing alone in the patrol car. The borough had been too cheap to put an AM/FM radio in the police car when they bought it, but that was all right. Radio stations didn’t get much out that way, except for a gospel station and talk show channels about agriculture and the weather. Ollie liked country music. Not the slick, tasseled, sequined shit coming out of Nashville, either. He liked what they called outlaw country. Songs about robbing banks and liquor. Low-down women. Gunfighter ballads and songs about the wide-open spaces on the trail and road.

  Ollie drove down the main strip into the center of town, waving at the people who waved to him and also at the ones who didn’t. He pulled along the curb in front of Ruby’s Diner, behind a beat-up black motorcycle with ape hanger handlebars. Four more bikes were parked in front of it. None of them were the shiny weekend warrior bikes ridden by accountants and lawyers who wanted to feel badass in between business meetings and tennis matches. These were hard-use bikes, with fat gas tanks and saddlebags, designed to haul ass over a long period of time, carrying whatever could be stuffed down inside those bags.

  Ollie looked through the diner’s front window and saw five men in filthy denim vests, all bearing the same design on its back. A grim reaper with red eyes holding an M-16. Over the head of each grim reaper, an arch bearing the words The Disgraced, and underneath each one, another arch that said Pittsburgh.

  “Shit,
” Ollie muttered to himself, walking past the bikes and opening the diner’s door.

  The voices inside the diner ceased as he entered. The bikers were seated in front of him at the counter, with stools open on either side of them. The normal diners who’d have been there were scattered around the rest of the tables, each of them looking at Ollie, while he looked at the bikers, trying to get a feel for them before they did the same to him. Ruby looked up from behind the counter and said, “Good morning, Chief. You want breakfast?”

  The bikers glanced back, peering at him over their shoulders. A few wore full beards. In the middle was a dark-skinned one, completely bald from the collar up, without any eyebrows or even eyelashes, staring back at Ollie. The biker seated to the left was the only one who turned completely around. His stool squeaked as he spun, holding his mug of coffee under his narrow, braided beard. He had short, spiked hair, and tattoos up and down both arms. “Look out, boys,” the man said, his voice a slow, measured drawl. “It’s the law.” He raised his mug to Ollie and smiled.

  The rest of them chuckled, then turned back to their food, lowering their heads and eating.

  Ollie studied the patches on the front of the man’s vest, reading them like the language they were meant to be written in. The lowest patch was a US Army insignia, followed by a large letter C and one that read 20th. It was all biker bullshit, as far as Ollie was concerned. They always used infantile codes, important to no one but themselves. Ollie told himself to be cool. It wasn’t uncommon for veterans to come home and join motorcycle clubs. Especially after the war. Hell, the very first motorcycle clubs had been founded by World War II fighter pilot veterans.

  The President patch on the man’s right side explained his calm demeanor. He was in charge, and comfortable with it, unbothered by Ollie’s appearance as he sipped his coffee. When he lowered his hand, Ollie saw the patch he’d been looking for. The only one that mattered. A small diamond-shaped emblem that read 1%.

  The story had been repeated at every single Outlaw Motorcycle Gang training seminar Ollie had attended. Back in the forties the head of the American Motorcycle Association was asked about the bad apples infesting the burgeoning motorcycle enthusiast scene. He had replied that 99 percent of riders were law-abiding citizens. From that point on, the remaining 1 percent made it their business to let you know they weren’t.