“No, but I’m not saying they’re not, either. You know the oil business, Marsh. You talk to one guy and he’ll tell you the independents are what made America great and you talk to another and he’ll tell you they’re all snakes and to go into any deal with them with a firm grip on your wallet, an open line to your lawyer, and a Bible on your knee. My advice would be to go slow and get a second opinion.”
“About coal, Clay. It’s all surface mining now, right?”
“Right.”
“Do they have to clean up afterward? Make the land usable again?”
“Well, there’s a law that says so, the Surface Mining Reclamation and Control Act, but some people say it’s honored more in the breach than the observance. It’s not going to look like Golden Gate Park when they’re through, that’s for sure.”
“About Cosmos. There’s some technology trying to get oil from coal, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. Several different processes, none of them commercial as yet. But getting closer.”
“So Cosmos might really be after coal rights and not oil, and trying to hide the fact so they avoid environmental pressures and also pay less of a bonus up front than a coal outfit would pay?”
“Anything’s possible, Marsh. Wildcat drilling’s way down now, so maybe that is what’s happening. Just watch your step.”
“You watch your step around here and you see a lot of cow shit, Clay. Kind of ruins the day.”
I thanked Clay and said good-bye and left for my next appointment, my mind cluttered with the traces of motive and intent.
Nineteen
The house was small and square, its slick white siding scored to mimic wood. The lawn was a hash of leaves and twigs, the ashen sidewalk was pitted from winter salts. A sugar maple grew in the front yard and a row of poplars at the side. A television tower rose from behind the house to a point just below the stars.
The little front stoop was wrapped with a wrought-iron rail and the mailbox was emblazoned with the name Hasburg in gold stick-on letters. An old newspaper, soggy and black, slanted from the stoop to the ground. A single light burned at the rear of the house, its rays barely virile enough to pierce the filmy blue curtains that draped the front windows. I pressed the bell and waited while the cold night air made my breath a cloud.
A sheet of plastic was stapled over the screen door for warmth, and behind it Carol Hasburg suddenly appeared, her features waxed dull by the synthetic barrier between us. She stayed behind the plastic for a moment, then pushed open the screen and beckoned me inside. I bent and kissed her on the cheek. She smiled wryly and pressed my arm between her narrow hands. The screen sucked shut behind me and I followed Carol into the living room.
She was wearing a blue plaid hostess gown cut low above her breasts. Two fuzzy white slippers had gobbled up her feet. A gold chain suspended a gold coin at the crown of her cleavage. By the time I was in the center of the house there was a highball in her hand and she was offering to put one in mine.
While she was in the kitchen I snooped around the room. The television was huge and new and remote-controlled, ensconced in a cabinet reminiscent of the vault they buried Billy in. The rest of the furnishings were well-worn and graceless, as though their charm had been pledged to pay for the gaudy television. The décor was halfheartedly Colonial, but the three coordinated pieces made way for a lumpy beanbag, two metal TV trays, and a reclining chair that was half the size of Houston. The magazine on the tray was TV Guide and the book next to it was Danielle Steel. Along one wall was an empty space, where something had been once but wasn’t anymore, a familiar scar of divorce. The carpet beneath it all was gold and oddly flowered and stained in spots by something black.
I looked for signs of Billy but there weren’t any, unless the opened jars of rouge and face cream littering the second TV tray fell into that category. Chuck wasn’t in evidence either, except in the features of a brown-haired girl whose photographs gave the room its only bits of cheer. When Carol came back I had one of the snapshots in my hand. “Your daughter?” I asked.
Carol nodded.
“What’s her name?”
“Chambra.”
“Pretty.”
“It was taken a long time ago.”
I remembered Gail’s story of the Hasburgs’ retarded child. The snapshot grew warm in my hand and I put it down. Carol looked at me. “You heard,” she said.
“Yes. It’s too bad. I’m sorry.”
“It’s bad in some ways. In other ways it’s the best thing that could have happened. She’s still glad to see me, Marsh. In spite of everything.” Carol’s eyes filled with the heavy water of tears. “Shit,” she said, then handed me my drink and sat on the couch and dabbed at her eyes with a cocktail napkin.
I took the recliner across from Carol and struggled to find an equilibrium in its mechanics, not knowing what to think or say.
Carol’s face, no longer veiled by her funeral costume, was surprisingly unlined, as though age had skipped her name. There were streaks of gray in her hair, and the slightest pucker at the point of her chin and along her neck, but otherwise she seemed unchanged from the days when we had cruised Chaldea like jackals, scavenging fun. Carol wasn’t stunning, but she was firmly handsome, with a touch of the aristocrat about her. She had always been more in control than anyone else in our foursome, more certain of her likes and dislikes, far braver. If anything, I sensed that the years had made her braver yet. It was one of the things that would account for her relationship with Billy, whatever it had been.
“It’s really good to see you, Marsh,” Carol said calmly, after sipping her drink. A hint of amusement lifted her eyes and the crest of her lips. “I used to wonder if our paths would ever cross again.”
“Me, too.”
“We saw each other almost every day for, what, twelve years?”
“At least.”
“Then, nothing. You went to the army and I went to Chuck. Funny, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“How life can change so fast. How one day you do one thing, the same thing you’ve been doing for years and years, and then the next day it’s all different.” Carol closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them.
We looked at each other, our thoughts scrambling past and present, making something that was neither. Carol curled her legs under her and draped an arm across the back of the couch, striking a blatant pose. I smiled and she smiled, too. “You weigh a little more, Marsh.”
“A lot more.”
“You don’t look fat, though. Just big. No. Tough. You look tough, Marsh. Are you? Did you turn into one of those hard-boiled detectives I read about?” Carol’s smile was sloppy, the drink in her hand not her first.
“I’m pretty soft-boiled, Carol, if I’m boiled at all. How about you? Are you still tough? You used to be tougher than any of us.”
“Actually I am. I’m pretty damned tough. A tough old broad, isn’t that what they call them in those books?”
“Something like that.”
“You know what I’ve discovered, though?”
“What?”
“Being tough’s not quite enough to be.” Carol eyed her glass and drained it. “You want another drink, Marsh?”
“Sure.”
“Good.” She went away again, moving a bit unsteadily above her fuzzy slippers, then came back quickly with our drinks. Before she sat down she put a record on the little stereo console that was hidden within the coffin cabinet. In a minute Johnny Mathis joined us. Carol sat down, curled her legs again, and sipped her freshened drink. “Ever get laid to Johnny Mathis, Marsh?”
“Didn’t everyone?”
“I did, for sure. About a thousand times, down in Chuck’s basement. God, it was cold down there. I think I married him mostly to get a warm place to fuck.”
Carol giggled briefly, then quit. It still jars me when women of my age swear. I don’t like it, and don’t know any men who do, but I guess that’s why some women do it.
“You k
now, Marsh,” Carol began again, “no one really knew whether you and Sally were making it or not. I mean, Chuck told the world the night he got in my pants the first time, but you never talked much. I kind of liked that about you.”
“And you never seemed to mind that Chuck kissed and told. I mean, you seemed to accept what you were and what you did, come what may. I kind of liked that, too.”
“Why, hell, Marsh. Maybe I should have married you instead of old Chuck. Then maybe I could get through the night without waking up in a cold sweat.”
“It was that bad?”
Carol chuckled bitterly. “I could tell you things that would make you go looking for Chuck with a gun. Or maybe not. Maybe men think it’s their right to do what he did.” Carol waved a hand in the air. “But Chuck’s got his problems, too. Nowdays the main one is what kind of disease he’s going to get from those hippie chicks he sleeps with. But live and let live, huh, Marsh? He fucked Sally once, did you know that? Your best friend Chuck screwed your girl.” Carol’s smile was on the far side of mischief, the side toward cruelty.
“Sally told me about that last night.”
“A little late.”
“A little.”
“The whole school knew about it, you know.”
“Great.”
“Gets to you even now, doesn’t it, Marsh?” Carol taunted. “You should see your face. You still hate to be laughed at, don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“Sure you do. Your face is red right now.” Carol finished off her drink. “So. Now that we’re more or less on the same level of shame, we can talk about Billy.”
There were no tears, no false sentiment at the mention of his name, only a continuation of the brazen, sexy pose. Tough. I asked Carol how it got started with Billy.
“He tracked me,” she said simply. “I mean, he followed me around till he knew my routine, then made sure he showed up where I’d be. Grocery. Liquor store. Tennis court. Places like that.”
“Then what?”
“Just talk, at first. Married women are suckers for men who take them seriously, you know, and that’s what Billy did. Asked questions Chuck never asked, told me personal things Chuck never did. But no pass, not at first. Platonic, I guess you’d say. People talked some, even then, but I didn’t care. I didn’t see anything wrong and I got so I looked forward to bumping into Billy, started thinking of things to tell him that would make him laugh. He looked like he needed real bad to laugh.”
“Then what?”
“He showed up at the house one night a little over a year ago, when Chuck was up in Canada fishing. All planned, of course, though I didn’t realize it at the time. And Chuck, well, we’d been having problems. Sex problems, booze problems, violence problems, money problems. We’d drifted into one of those marriages that is so deadening, no one has the strength to do anything, even end it. Billy saw that right away, and moved in.”
I thought over my next question so long that Carol read my mind. “Why me? Is that what you’re thinking, Marsh? Why a tough old broad like Carol Kline Hasburg?”
I smiled and Carol smiled, too, making it easy for me. “Something like that,” I said.
“Well, I may not be much in San Francisco terms, Tanner, but in Chaldea I’m about as prime as it gets. I think I’m the only woman over thirty in town who still likes it and admits it, if you know what I mean. Experience and enthusiasm, Marsh. Not a bad combination, if I do say so myself.”
The boast was only half humorous. I didn’t say anything to dispute it, but Carol saw something on my face that made her yield a bit. “Okay, Marsh. Okay. Billy was using me, is what was really happening. After a while I knew it, but by then I didn’t give a damn.”
“Using you for what?”
“To get to Chuck.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know for sure. It wasn’t exactly the kind of thing I could ask him about. Besides, in a way I was using Billy to get to Chuck, too. More than anything, Billy was my ticket out of my marriage. Tit for tat, excuse the expression.” Carol plucked the coin from between her breasts and swung it idly, as though to daze me.
“Was there any connection between Chuck and Billy? I mean before you and Billy got together?”
“None I know of.”
“Did either of them talk about the other at all?”
“Well, Chuck didn’t say anything at all about Billy until he found out Billy was fucking me. Then it was the usual outrage, then drunken apologies for things I didn’t even know he’d done, then finally he moved out. But Billy always asked about Chuck, from the very beginning. Whether Chuck would be mad if he knew, whether he suspected anything, what he did when he learned about us, that type of thing.”
“How did Chuck learn about you and Billy?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’ll tell you what I think.”
“What?”
“I think Billy called him up and told him. Nice, huh? You got that same mean streak in you, Marsh? Like Billy’s?”
I had no answer. Carol finished off her drink and I followed suit. We listened to the final strains of “Chances Are,” then to the tinny racket of the stereo shutting down. Carol went to the kitchen and returned with new drinks. When she handed me mine, I smiled. She asked me what I thought was funny.
“I was just thinking how hard Chuck and I used to try to get you and Sally drunk.”
“And now look at me? Is that it?”
“I suppose.”
Carol’s eyes turned hard as bearings. “Values change, Marsh. Staying sober doesn’t seem very important anymore. In fact at my age sobriety and celibacy are as fatal as the plague. Does that shock you?”
“A little.”
The hard eyes softened. “It shocks me, too, sometimes. I can’t quite figure out how I got here, you know what I mean?”
I nodded.
“Remember in high school when we used to hear all those stories about certain women in town, how they supposedly seduced young boys? Mrs. Shuttleworth? Rebecca Fine? Women like that? Well, when I got to be forty I took a long look at my life and I decided it wouldn’t be too bad to be one of those women. On balance, you know? I mean, people pretended to be shocked at Billy and me, but deep down there was some envy there. I started being asked to lots of parties. I became kind of a celebrity, in a way. Not many women in this town are doing the things they really want to do, but I was, or so people assumed. It got me through a lot of doors.”
“Carol Hasburg, Lover of Lost Boys.”
“Fuck you, Marsh,” Carol snapped. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. You always were a puritan.”
Carol left the room in a huff. She was gone long enough for me to get up and pace and wonder if I should leave. On my third lap I noticed a copy of our high school yearbook on a shelf behind the TV set and I went over and pulled it out.
The cover was an etched rendering of the school building. Inside came the standard photos of the school grounds, followed by a tribute to a retired principal that no one, including the teachers, could abide. Then came teachers perched on desks or poised before blackboards, then the misanthropic faces of the boys, the brazen faces of the girls, and then the clubs and teams, singers and players and scholars. I thumbed through the book quickly, then went back to the Senior section, where my classmates and I stared from the pages in polished, formal poses that were unlike what any of us had ever been.
While I was looking at a long-forgotten name and face Carol came back. She was wearing slacks and a tight blouse. I raised my brows in a question.
“I’m going out to Mickey’s,” she said. “I need a little action tonight. You really brought me down, Marsh.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“Yeah, well, next time you’re in town don’t bother to call. I don’t need what you bring me.”
“Which is what?”
“You tell me.”
I didn’t say anything, but when Carol saw what I was doing her mood altered and she pulled
me over to the couch and sat beside me and looked with me. “Conrad Abbott. Remember him?”
“Picked his teeth with a sheath knife and brought snakes to school. What’s he doing now?”
“Has a body shop out on the highway. Married Rhonda Bleeker. Remember her?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. She had ringworm in sixth grade. Remember those little white hats?”
“God, yes. The hell of hells. I mortgaged my soul not to get ringworm.”
“How about her?” Carol covered some words with her hand.
“Weird name. What was it?”
“Porrison Sodden.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“A lawyer in Chicago. You know what she did when we were freshmen?”
“What?”
“Bought an ID bracelet and put your name on it and wore it for two years. Pretended you and she were going steady. I bet you never spoke to her twice in your life.”
“Nope. Hey, there you are. Looking good enough to eat, as they say.”
“Looking knocked up, is what I was. I had an abortion ten days after that picture was taken.”
“You’re kidding.”
She shook her head. “Daddy took me to some dog-faced man in Kansas City. Might have been a doctor, might have been a plumber.”
“Did Chuck know?”
“Not then; not now.”
“But your folks. They’re Catholic. I mean, real Catholic.” I thought of what Sally had said about Carol’s father and the high school girl.
“It was shame before God or shame before the town, and Daddy made his choice. That’s another thing that brightens my day, the fact that three blocks away from here he’s still asking God for forgiveness for what I made him do.”
I resisted the temptation to tell Carol what I knew about her father. “It’s amazing you went through all that without any of us knowing,” I said instead.
“I wasn’t the only one. Your thumb’s covering another of the inconveniently fertile right now.”
I moved my thumb. “Really?”
“You bet.”
“Who was the father?”
“I don’t know and she didn’t either. Last time I talked to her she’d narrowed it down to three. She had the baby and kept it. Now she lives like a hermit out by the water tower. The baby’s grown and gone, no one knows where, not even her.”
Fatal Obsession Page 17
