I was silent, making mental pictures.
“The Fabulous Fifties,” Carol said gaily. “Now I’m going to Mickey’s and forget all about you and this stupid yearbook.”
I grabbed her wrist to keep her on the couch. “Just one thing, Carol. Did you see Billy the night he died?”
“No.”
“Come on, Carol. I won’t tell anyone. I’m just trying to figure out what happened to him. At this stage nothing much makes sense.”
She thought it over, fingering the collar of her blouse all the while, looking not at me but at the pictures in the book that lay between us. “Okay,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anyway, I guess. He was here. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks. He just showed up about nine, out of the blue.”
“Did you have sex?”
“Come on, Marsh.”
“It’s important, Carol. There was semen on the body. If it wasn’t you, then I have to find out who it was.”
Carol sighed. “We had sex. Yes. That’s just what we had.”
“Was it rough? I mean, energetic or whatever you call it.”
“No, Marsh,” Carol said with exasperation. “It was not rough. Billy wasn’t that way at all. What are you trying to prove?”
“I’m just trying to find out who left their handprints all over his body,” I said. What I didn’t say was that the only other possibility was Zedda’s girl, Tamara. Maybe Billy had been kinky with her or vice versa. The more I thought about it the more likely it seemed.
“Can I go now?” Carol asked.
“Did Billy say anything about where he was going when he left you?” I asked.
“No. He was real strange. Talked a lot about the baby. Said he was sorry, but I wasn’t quite sure what he was sorry for.”
“Was he frightened?”
“No, actually he seemed quite calm. Serene, almost.”
“Can you think of anything at all that might indicate why he was killed?”
“No. Nothing besides Chuck.”
“Did he ever talk about drugs?”
“We did some, if that’s what you mean. Marijuana, mostly. I prefer booze, myself. Booze takes it all away.”
“I mean drug deals. Buys and sells, big money operations.”
“Nothing like that.”
“Do you really think Chuck could have done it?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Carol said. “He was just my husband; he was your best friend. What do you think?”
I didn’t say anything, but I knew murder was always possible, given the right circumstances, and screwing a man’s wife had been the right circumstance for centuries. Carol flipped idly through the yearbook while I thought of things to ask her.
“Was Billy the only one, Carol?” I asked finally.
“Why, Marsh? You writing a book?”
“If there were others, one of them might have wanted to make you his exclusive.”
“There were others, but none that wanted me that way. Most of them were horny business types who’d meet me behind the bowling alley after Women’s League on Wednesday nights and then pretend they’d never seen me before when I bumped into them on the square the next morning. I don’t think there’s anything there.”
“You said Billy had money. What if he was blackmailing one of these friends of yours? What if the guy decided to get Billy off his back for good?”
Carol thought that one over for a time. “It’s possible, Marsh, I have to admit that. But no one person comes to mind. I mean, over the years there have been a lot of guys. A whole lot. You’d have to move back here permanently to check them all out.”
“If someone does come to mind, will you call me?”
“Sure. But no one will. An hour at Mickey’s will see to that.”
Carol flipped another page. “Well, here we are. John Marshall Tanner. Football, basketball, track. Band. C-Club. Student Council. FBLA. What the hell was FBLA?”
“Future Business Leaders.”
“Ah. Is that what you are? A business leader?”
“The same way you’re a nurse.”
“The ideals of youth; the cesspool of age.” Carol swore and closed the book and tossed it on the floor.
“I’ve got to go, Carol.”
“You don’t if you don’t want to. I’m not mad at you anymore.”
“Thanks, but I’d better take off.”
Carol changed position and her blouse somehow flapped open above a braless breast. “You know,” she said, “after Chuck slept with Sally that time I tried to let you know that you could do the same with me if you wanted, but you never seemed to get it. I mean, I spent about three months giving you peeks down the front of my dress, like I’m doing now, but it never took. Well, I’m a lot better at giving hints these days. Better at other things, too. Interested?”
“Yes. But I’m not going to take you up on it.”
“Chicken?”
“I guess,” I said. “Can I ask you one more thing?”
“What?”
“I want to know if you ever heard anything about my mother and Arnie Keene.”
“Jesus.” Carol shook her head. “Are you sure you want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I heard some talk, is all.”
“What talk?”
“That your mom and Keene were seeing each other.”
“When did you hear that? How long before they died?”
“Jesus, Marsh, take it easy. I don’t know. Not long, I guess.”
“But why? Why did she do it?”
Carol shrugged. “No one ever knows that for sure, Marsh. Not even the person who does it.”
“But what did people think?”
“They thought she and Keene had loved each other for a long time. And after seeing each other every day for twenty years they finally had to do something about it. I think it’s kind of sweet, actually.”
“Sweet and sour.”
“It was a long time ago, Marsh.”
“Not to me. To me it happened yesterday. I didn’t know a damned thing about it.”
Carol started to say something else but the doorbell rang. We both jumped, then looked at each other and then at the clock on the wall. It was close to midnight. “Who?” I asked.
Carol shrugged. “Maybe the guy I’ve been seeing, but he was supposed to play pitch with the boys tonight. It could be some kids, they’ve been doing that lately, usually when a man’s here. That’s what a certain reputation gets you.”
Carol went to the door. When she opened it Chuck Hasburg burst into the room, his eyes slashing wildly till they sliced toward me. “Get out of here, Tanner. Now. I’ve taken all of this shit I can take.”
“Relax, Chuck,” I said, and stood up and made sure I knew where the things around me were.
“You son of a bitch. One Tanner has already crawled into my bed; you’re not going to make it two.” Chuck coughed, strangling on his rage.
“I know I’m not. So just take it easy.”
“I ought to smash your face, you cocksucker. I’ve wanted to for thirty years.”
“Why?”
“Because you had it fucking made, that’s why. Big jock, big brain, always got anything you wanted. Well, I was as good as you. I even fucked your girl.”
“Why don’t you leave it at that?”
Chuck’s hands made fists and he beat them on his thighs. “Yeah, well, maybe I’m not ready to.”
“What do you want from me?”
“To start with, you can get out of here and don’t come back.”
“Let’s both get out.”
“You first.”
“Okay. Come on, Chuck.”
I walked to the door, my eyes still on his hands. “Thanks for the drink, Carol,” I said, without looking at her.
“Come back anytime, Marsh.” It was a taunt that rebounded off me and headed straight at Chuck.
“You cunt,” he said, and took a step toward her.
I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go,
Chuck. Let’s get out of here. I’ll buy you a beer.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, goddamnit. I’m going back to Mickey’s. I’ll see you later,” he said to Carol.
“Okay,” I said, and pulled him out the door. Carol watched us stumble off the stoop. “Hey, Chuck,” she said, “you still fucking Zedda’s girls?”
Chuck swore again at her and she closed the door, her face a streak of triumph. The screen door closed with the mocking hiss of laughter. I asked Chuck if I could take him home.
“Fuck you,” he said, and stumbled out of my grasp.
“Okay, Chuck. I’m leaving town in a day or two. I don’t think I’ll be back. Let me ask you one thing. What did Billy Tanner have against you? Why did he want to break up your marriage?”
“Fuck you, Tanner. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
“Come on, Chuck. What was happening there?”
“He was screwing my wife, asshole. You want pictures?”
“I mean between you and Billy.”
“I know, but I’m not going to tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I hate your guts, hotshot. Always have.”
“Why?”
“Because that time I caught the pass against Mount Pleasant? The one that beat their ass?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s as good as it ever got for me. And folks around here never let me forget it.”
Twenty
Chuck Hasburg staggered down the street under the burden of his liquor and his torment, the light high above the corner making his hair a thatch of fairy-tale straw. I waited until he climbed into a battered Plymouth, then got in my own car and drove off slowly, my eyes on the rearview mirror. After I’d gone two blocks Chuck’s car lights came on and he drove away as well. The headlights swayed to and fro, twin dancers lit by black light, then exited stage left.
I meandered through the town again, my mind fuzzed with drink and with memories of night, of the sex or thrill or violence that dark begets. Cafés and bars and gas stations, Elks and Eagles and the Legion, the night places glowed with warmth and light and music, the rest were dark and cold and quiet. And in their cars like me, the kids.
Eventually I drove past Carol’s house again. The lights were out and her car was gone. Chuck’s car wasn’t in sight, either. Perhaps they met at Mickey’s to continue their struggle. Perhaps not. It was not my problem. So the old lamplighter, having completed his appointed rounds, headed for the square.
For old times’ sake I took a couple of laps. After the first I was followed by a kid in a jazzed-up pickup with roll bar and fog lights and extenders, a kid with a thick neck and muscled arms and a face that would turn from silly to savage in a second because if you’re a strong young lad in a town like Chaldea there’s not all that much in your way. The sticker on his bumper said FARMERS DO IT IN THE FIELD. The traffic over his CB radio suggested a new definition of hell. I pulled to the side and let him go around me and he waved his thanks and his pity and resumed his quest.
I parked in the hotel lot and started up to my room. But the sense of it drove me away. Halfway up the stairs I did an about-face and went outside and walked to the nearest bar, a place called the Fencepost. I was lonesome, in a town where once that would have been unlikely.
It was almost one, and the bar was almost empty. An empty bar is the loneliest place there is next to a foxhole on Christmas, but I went in anyway. I slipped onto a stool and ordered a Scotch I didn’t need. The bartender was my age or better, with a puffy, florid face that suggested familiar contours beneath the excess flesh. Like me he needed someone to talk to. The only other singles in the place had drifted as far beyond speech as booze will take you. When he slid me my Scotch I thanked him and the word was enough to get him started.
“You sell?” he asked idly.
I shook my head. “Just visiting.”
The bartender chuckled. “What’s to visit?”
“Just some of my people.”
“Who?”
He was pushing now and he knew it, but it was late and what the hell.
“The Tanners,” I told him. “Curt and Laurel. Also the Nottings. Gail and Curt are my siblings.”
“Are what?”
“My brother and sister.”
“Oh. Yeah. So where you from, then?”
“San Francisco.”
The big man nodded his heavy head. “Laid over there during the war. Wild place. Beatniks took over after that; guess the fruits got it now.”
“Not quite.”
“Yeah? Well, I only know what I hear. You’re a Tanner, too, ain’t you?”
“Marsh.”
“Sure. I remember you. The Bloomfield game.”
I nodded. “Who’re you?”
“Joe Vilardi.”
“Sure. I remember. You’ve been around here a long time, Joe.”
“All my life. Old man worked the mines. Died in them, too. The black damp.”
“A tough life.”
“The toughest.” Joe pushed his sweatshirt over his elbows and poured me a second drink.
“You have a sister named Violet?” I asked him.
“Yeah. Know her?”
“She was a class behind me, I think.”
“Violet’s in the Quad Cities, now. Moline. Got six kids. All assholes, just like her husband. Thinks his shit don’t stink ’cause he’s a shop steward at Deere.” Joe shook his head at the invisible hauteur of his brother-in-law. “Town changed much, you think?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“Not enough, is what you mean.”
“I guess.”
“Many kids in your grade still around town?”
“Not many. No one I knew very well.” I could have mentioned Sally but I didn’t want to.
Joe nodded. “That’s the way it was in those days. Tied the old graduation tassel to the mirror and left town the same day. Getting that way again, too. Got a shirt they sell over at Penney’s, says on it HAPPINESS IS CHALDEA IN YOUR REARVIEW MIRROR. Every kid in town’s got one.”
“Too bad.”
“There’s places worse. Take Abla. Know what they did to get themselves a new business over in Abla?”
“What?”
“Brought in this turkey-processing plant. You know, pluck ’em and gut ’em and grind ’em up to make those, what do you call, pressed turkey rolls. Ever eat one?”
“Nope.”
“Like cardboard, only not as sweet. Anyways, know who they got to do the work?”
“Who?”
“Bunch of retards from Texas. Bring them all the way up here in a yellow school bus, stick them in a big old house out on the edge of town, bus them to the plant in the mornings and back to the house at night and put them to bed, day by day by day. Poor bastards stand there all day, ass deep in turkey guts, drooling down their chins into the gizzards, all for a couple of bucks an hour they never see anyway. Done under some program run by the state, is what they say. Texas, that is. Anyhow, that’s what passes for progress over in Abla.”
“I never did like Abla,” I said.
Joe did some business beneath the bar, then straightened up again. “Hey,” Joe said suddenly. “Sally Stillings. You used to run with her, didn’t you? Back in the old days?”
“Yep.”
“She’s back, you know.”
“I know.”
“Comes in a lot, lately. Seen her since you got back?”
“Once. Yeah.”
Joe looked closely, to see what Sally was to me, but if he found out, he knew more than I did. “Out to have fun if it kills her, is the way it looks,” he said slowly.
“That’s about it,” I agreed.
“The boys fool with her a little.”
“How?”
“Oh, get a little raunchy, dance with her crotch-to-crotch, talk dirty to see how much she’ll take before she leaves. That kind of thing. She takes a lot, I’ll say that. Still, this town’s no place for a woman
like her, on her own and everything. She keeps on the way she’s been, it’ll turn her into something she don’t need to be. Like old Vivian Klippit. Remember her? Used to earn her beer money hauling her tits out and letting the boys fiddle with ’em for a buck.”
I didn’t want to hear any more about Vivian Klippit so I motioned for another drink. Joe brought it to me quickly. Down at the end of the bar two young men were arguing loudly about Limousins and Charolais. I asked Joe what they were. “Cows,” he said simply. “Imported.”
“What happened to Herefords and Angus?”
“Old-fashioned. Everyone’s got to try the newest thing. Hell, though, it’s like everything else. New one ain’t nothing much but new.” Joe smiled. “Hear about the fire department last night?”
“Nope.”
“Elmo Frates’ place went up. Elmo lives about three miles outside the city limits, so there’s no water line out there or nothing and they soon pumped the pumper dry. So old Buck Looftis got the bright idea of dipping the hose down Elmo’s septic tank and pumping water out of there. Well, they got the fire put out all right, but when they was done old Elmo didn’t want the place. Tried to set it back afire for the insurance. Smelled like a hog barn after a rainstorm, is what they say. Old Buck ain’t too swift.”
My laugh was eclipsed by a crash. Down at the end of the room one of the boys had broken off a beer bottle on the edge of the bar and was waving the jagged edge in the face of his buddy, taunting him with jeers and curses, egging him toward the sharp brown blades of glass. The other boy backed off slowly, making sure he didn’t fall, his hands outstretched in a plea for peace. Joe swore under his breath and reached down under the bar and brought out a pistol, a big one. “Lloyd,” he said quietly. “Put her down and back on out the door. Right now. You know I’ll use this if I have to, Lloyd. You don’t believe it, you can ask Fats Kinell. Gut-shot him a year ago New Year’s.”
Lloyd looked at Joe and then at the pistol and then at his buddy. Then he shrugged and put the broken bottle on the bar. It rolled slowly toward the edge, then shimmered, then died. “I’ll see you sometime without your piece,” Lloyd said to Joe. “Then we’ll see who gives the orders.”
Fatal Obsession Page 18
