Fatal Obsession

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Sorry why?”

  “The sores and everything. You know about them?”

  I nodded.

  “Starbright wouldn’t go down on him anymore, so I did. Made me feel righteous.” Her look challenged me to be dismayed.

  “Did Billy ever mention being afraid of someone?” I asked. “That someone was out to get him?”

  “Plenty of dudes were out to get Billy. He stoked a lot of fear around here. But he wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t even afraid of Zedda.”

  “Why would he be afraid of Zedda?”

  “Because I’m Zedda’s old lady. And because of what Zedda was in the war.”

  “What was that?”

  “An assassin.”

  I laughed. “Zedda wasn’t the assassin; Billy was.”

  “You sure?” Tamara asked, her frown a puzzled wrinkle.

  I told her I was sure but I wasn’t, quite. Zedda could have been playing head games with me, transposing his and Billy’s relationship for purposes known only to him. Still, Billy’s overall behavior squared more with the version Zedda had given me than with Tamara’s. “What did Starbright think about you and Billy?” I asked.

  “She didn’t care. Sex isn’t a big deal to us the way it is to you. It makes people feel good, so whoever needs it gets it, not counting creeps. Besides, all Starbright cares about is the baby in her belly.”

  I let her carnal communism pass. “You’re pregnant, too, aren’t you?”

  “Who the fuck told you that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Was it Zedda? Come on. I have to know.”

  I shook my head.

  “Okay. So it was Starbright, the stupid bitch. I’m pregnant all right, but Zedda’s not supposed to know. If he did, he wouldn’t let me split. Or he’d come after me if I did.”

  “Is Zedda the father?”

  “Who else?”

  “Billy?”

  “Not Billy. You can’t get pregnant sucking cock.”

  The statement drove me away from her relationship with Billy and on to something else. “How about a woman named Carol Hasburg?” I asked. “You ever hear of her?”

  “Not from Billy.”

  “From whom?”

  “Zedda.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said Billy was fucking her.”

  “Did he say why?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, but Zedda was pissed about it.”

  “Why? Was he screwing her, too?”

  “I don’t think so. But Zedda knew this Hasburg guy, the husband. He came around a lot, lately.”

  “Why?”

  “Looking for young chicks, I think. But who knows? I flamed out on Zedda and his trip months ago. I’m just looking for a way out of town. And here you are.”

  She held out her hand. I took out my wallet and gave her the hundred. She thanked me and we stood up. “You know anything else that might help?” I asked Tamara.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Was Billy dealing drugs, for example?”

  “I don’t know anything about drugs,” Tamara said quickly and falsely, and turned for the door.

  “I know about the marijuana out at the farm. What did Billy have to do with it?”

  She looked at the money in her hand and then at me. I added to the total. “He was just the guard. Scared people off. Zedda handled all the deals. Billy just made one rule.”

  “What?”

  “Zedda couldn’t deal with anyone local. He had to deal to Chicago or KC or St. Louis, someplace like that.”

  “Did Zedda go along?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “How much did Zedda get for the dope?”

  “I don’t know. Lots. He always had bread, until lately.”

  “What happened lately?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I think he got ripped off, maybe. He’s bent out of shape about something, that’s for sure.”

  “I hear Zedda got in some trouble with the law a year ago.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Tamara looked at her watch. “I got to go.”

  “What was he charged with?”

  “Rape.” She said the word as though speaking a foreign tongue.

  “What happened?”

  “This high school honey came around WILD, wanted to join the group, then when it was too late decided she didn’t like the games we played. A political farce. Zedda got off.”

  “Who was his lawyer?”

  “Some guy on crutches.

  “Is there anything else? Anything at all that struck you as strange? Anything Billy said or did?”

  She thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, there is something. But you know, I don’t think this amount’s going to be enough to get me all the way to Tucson. I’d hate to end up short, you know what I mean? Lot of desert out there.” A grin as greedy as Fagin’s spread across her face.

  “How much do you think it will take?”

  “Another hundred?”

  I gave it to her. “Now, what was it you remembered?”

  “Well, a few nights ago, last week, maybe, Billy and I were uptown. Just wandering around, you know. He’d been in getting some soybean milk for Starbright. Anyway, all of a sudden I noticed Billy looking at something real hard. He stopped walking and everything.”

  “What was it?”

  “I don’t know. I looked but I couldn’t see anything. It was dark by then. But it must have been something weird, from the way he looked. Spacemen or something.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He just said, ‘They’ve finally come.’ Or something like that. I don’t know what the hell it meant, but that’s what he said.”

  “Did he seem frightened?”

  “Not really. I think he kind of smiled, even. I can’t say for sure.” Tamara looked again at her watch. “Now I got to go. Zedda’s a fiend for clean underwear.” She stuffed the money into her bag. “Don’t bother looking for me again. I’ll be gone.”

  She went out the door of the head shop and I followed after, heading for the law office of Clark Jaspers.

  Clark was a lawyer and he used crutches, which meant he was both the man who had defended Zedda in his rape trial and the man representing the agribusiness consortium that Matt had originally wanted to buy our farm. I went inside and gave the receptionist my name and asked to see her boss.

  “Do you have an appointment, Mr. Tanner?”

  “It’s a personal matter.”

  “Well, I’ll just see. Wait here a moment.”

  The woman left me for a minute. I spent it thumbing through the current Farm Journal. Then she came back, with Clark Jaspers trailing along behind, his large mouth smiling, his dead legs scraping across the floor between the gleaming shafts of his crutches. “Marsh. How the hell are you?” His voice was as sonorous as rolling barrels.

  He released a crutch and gave me a muscled hand to squeeze, then motioned me back toward his office. It was tastefully done in reds and browns and golds, tweeds and leathers and woods and glazes. With a fabulous grace Clark moved to his chair and descended into it, his crutches suddenly vanishing, his legs hidden beneath the desk, only his massive arms and shoulders hinting of his handicaps. “Been a long time, Marsh,” he said.

  “Too long.”

  “Good to have you back.”

  “Good to be here. Or was.”

  Clark nodded solemnly. “Sorry about Billy.”

  “Kind of ruined the homecoming.”

  Clark started to say something else, then changed his mind. “Hear you’re not a lawyer anymore.”

  “Nope.”

  “Lots of reasons to get out of the practice. Which one was yours?”

  “Time, I guess,” I said. “Not enough of it.” That wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a part of it.

  Clark rubbed a hand across his heavy jaw. Above the hand his dark eyes brooded and burned, the way they always had,
hatching thoughts beyond the ken of healthy men. “Know what you mean,” he said. “Don’t know whether I’m coming or going half the time myself. Sometimes I think my bum legs are a blessing, otherwise I’d run myself right into the ground.”

  Clark laughed easily, likeable and self-deprecating as always. “You went to Harvard, didn’t you, Clark?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Law Review and Coif and all that?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Which means you got an engraved invitation to Wall Street. Why’d you come back here?”

  The affable smile left his face. “I’ve been asked that a lot, Marsh. Usually I lie, because everyone in town’s a potential client. But you of all people should be able to understand the truth. If you really want to hear it.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re one of the ones I wished I was in those days, you know. I mean, that’s what I did a lot, pick out people I wished I was. But I was the opposite from you. You left town a hero, a champion. Jock and all that. I left town a cripple who was ignored on his best days and taunted on his worst, and tossed a few awards for citizenship or school spirit or whatever as a sop to people’s guilt for leaving me out of everything that counted. So I had to come back. To show them that in anything that mattered it was me who was the champion. Does that make sense to you?”

  I nodded because it did. “Are you happy you did come back?”

  Clark shrugged. “Mostly, but not entirely. The practice is a bit routine. The money was only fair for a long time, and I made a few mistakes trying to get rich quick. But things are real good now. I’ve exorcised my devils. You have something in mind, Marsh, or is this just social?”

  “Both,” I said. “The business part is about the farm. I hear you’re interested.”

  “True. I’m part of a group that’s been investing in farmland around the state over the past year. It’s a tax deal, in part, but we’re not just after a capital gain. We’ll work the farm. I hope you’ll take our offer seriously, Marsh. I doubt anyone else in the picture will let you realize as much cash up front as we will.”

  “Let’s say for a minute your group is out of it, Clark. Could you represent me in structuring a deal with someone else?”

  He frowned and tapped a tooth, and said what I knew he’d say. “I think that would be a conflict, Marsh. You’d have to go to someone else.”

  “Who do you recommend?”

  “Ed Buckles would be good. Young kid, smart, hardworking, which is more important. Most of the rest in town are well into retirement. Or you could go elsewhere. A couple of men in Oskaloosa are tops.”

  “I’ll probably try Buckles.”

  “So you’ve made up your mind, Marsh?”

  “Getting there.”

  “I take it we’re not in the picture.”

  “I don’t think so, Clark. Hope that doesn’t cause you problems. I heard a little about that country club deal.”

  Clark brushed the intangible loss away. “I’m well again, Marsh. And there’s plenty of other places for sale in the county. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay, I won’t,” I said.

  The phone beside Clark buzzed and he picked it up. I looked around, at his diplomas and awards and certificates of admission to various courts in the land, including the highest. Whoever was on the end of the line was angry, the insistent buzz of his voice audible even to me. And Clark was getting angry as well. He grudgingly made an appointment to see the caller in two hours, then hung up. Just before the phone fell to its cradle I suddenly thought I knew who the caller had been.

  “There’s one other thing, Clark,” I said when he looked at me again.

  “What’s that?”

  “Billy.”

  Clark nodded slowly. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard. That something could make a boy like Billy want to kill himself. I mean, I’ve considered suicide all my life, especially in the days when it seemed that nothing short of that would make my legs go away. But Billy was like you, Marsh. He had everything. Of course, he changed a lot.”

  “So I hear. Any idea why?”

  “The war, I think. He had a rough time over there.”

  “I hear he made some charges against you, Clark. What was that all about?”

  Clark shook his head with what seemed like sorrow. “It was part of the country club thing. The land the development was on was originally owned by an old woman named Jones. Her husband farmed it, then died and left it to her. I wrote her will, was executor of the estate when she died. The estate had to sell the farm to pay taxes and expenses of administration. Billy claimed it was unethical for me to be a shareholder in the corporation that bought the land. He claimed we paid less than top dollar, so that I profited from my fiduciary position as executor. All nonsense, of course, but to keep the bar association happy I had to bail out of the development at exactly the wrong time. I took a pretty good bath, but hell. Easy come, easy go.”

  Clark laughed easily. Money was clearly not a problem for him now. “Why do you think Billy went after you, Clark?” I asked him.

  “Who knows?”

  I found myself watching closely for a reaction, suspecting Clark, suspecting everyone, eager to stop asking the same questions and getting the same answers, eager to be gone. It occurred to me that I would probably never learn what I wanted to know, that I would leave town without avenging Billy. I wasn’t as bothered by the idea as I had been the day before. “Did you have anything to do with the war, Clark?” I asked. “Most of Billy’s targets seemed to.”

  “Well, I was with the U.S. Attorney until sixty-eight. Prosecuted several draft evasion cases toward the end. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

  “It may be enough. How about Tom Notting? What did he do that had to do with Vietnam? Billy went after him the same way he went after you.”

  Clark laughed. “Yeah, poor Tom couldn’t even retire in peace.” He reached down and adjusted his leg. “There’s only one thing I know of. Tom and the mayor have always been close, at least they were until the mayor and his buddies decided to run someone else for Tom’s job. Anyway, the mayor has a son. About fifteen years ago he was playing basketball for Drake and about to become prime meat for the draft. Well, Tom knew this congressman from Michigan—they’d been college roommates or something—so Tom had this guy fix it up so the mayor’s son spent his hitch at West Point teaching plebes how to shoot free throws or something. Pissed off a lot of people around town, Republicans mostly, but it blew over. God, that seems a long time ago. What an epoch.”

  “I hear you represented one of Billy’s friends a while back,” I said.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Zedda.”

  “So?”

  “Just wondering if he ever mentioned Billy to you.”

  “Maybe. In passing. Why?”

  “Oh, I just think Billy’s death may be connected with the WILD operation somehow.”

  “What do you mean, Marsh? It was suicide. The sheriff says so.”

  “The sheriff’s wrong.”

  “You’re saying murder?”

  “I am. Do you know anything that might tell me who the killer was?”

  “Of course not. You must be wrong, Marsh.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Is there anything I can do? To help you, I mean.”

  “Tell me about the drug trade in Chaldea.”

  Clark frowned and rubbed the shadow of his beard. “Drugs? Why drugs?”

  “I think Billy and his friend Zedda were dealing. Billy might have been killed because a drug buy went bad. Know anything about it?”

  “Why would I?”

  “You’re Zedda’s lawyer.”

  “True. And anything he might have told me would be privileged. But I’m in the dark on this one, Marsh. If I hear anything I’ll let you know.” Clark ended his lecture and glanced at the clock on the wall behind me. “I’ve got an appointment in a minute, Marsh. Maybe we can
have lunch in a few days.”

  “Sure, Clark,” I said. “Nice to see you again. One last thing. Who was the girl Zedda raped?”

  “He didn’t rape her, Marsh. He was acquitted.”

  “Who was she?”

  “Norma Gladbrook. The daughter of the guy who runs a hardware store in town.”

  “Norm Gladbrook’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

  Twenty-two

  I parked beside the crumbling farmhouse and crawled again through barbed wire, heading once more for Billy’s underground domain. I took a roundabout path this time, to see if any more surprises were sprouting out of Tanner ground, to make a set with the marijuana crop. Along the way I found myself wondering whether, with so many people wanting Billy Tanner dead, it made any real difference which one of them had finally killed him.

  At the top of the second ridge, the one beyond the creek, I did come across something strange. Over an area the size of an infield the grass was smashed flat, the dirt patterned by the Crosshatch of Jeep tracks. Interspersed among the disturbance, at regular intervals, were holes, several of them, some dug to a depth I couldn’t determine, others looking like the results of explosions. I wasn’t certain, but I thought they had been made for seismic soundings, and my guess was that Cosmos had made real or bogus probes for oil in this spot, and that Billy had spied on them and somehow learned that there was no oil to be had, either because the results of the soundings weren’t encouraging or because the search wasn’t genuine in the first place. At some time Billy had probably told Curt what he had learned, to convince him to keep the farm, not sell it, which accounted for Curt’s conviction that there was no oil on the property. If Billy’s suspicions had eventually been learned by Kinsey Beech, there was yet another reason for Billy to be dead, to keep the Cosmos scheme under wraps, whatever that scheme might be.

  I scuffed around in the already well-scuffed dirt for a time, weaving a lanyard of my thoughts, then headed on for Billy’s cavern. By the time I reached it I was sweating and itching and things were sticking to my clothes as though nature had tarred and feathered me.

  I descended the hill with as much noise as I could muster, so as not to surprise anyone within the house. But there was nothing to surprise but bugs and grasshoppers and flies that looked like marbles with wings and fur. I called out and listened to my voice drift off across the rolling land, then pushed back the curtain across the doorway and entered the house, uneasy at being in something that in more than one respect resembled a grave.