“The passenger door is stuck.”
“It’s all right. I have a car. Maybe it would be better if I followed you.”
“To the ends of the earth and back again?”
“To your appointment,” I said, firmly. “My car’s just over there.”
“I await your return with wildly beating heart,” he said, bowing.
Chapter 19
I hurried back to Jeff, who was talking with Hugh Marsh, and told him to make his own way to the ballpark. As I went back towards the parking lot, awkward on the grass in my high heels, I saw June Hoving pause beside the funeral car to look at me. I hoped I wasn’t going to queer the interview I had set up with her by going off with her former husband.
As soon as I pulled my car up behind his, Hank Cartwright took off, in the opposite direction from the one the cortège was pointed. We went a few blocks, then pulled into the parking lot of a grungy bar called the Starlite. The placement of the building in the corner lot suggested a former life as a filling station. There were a couple of pickup trucks and a big motorcycle clustered around the door of the dirty grey cinderblock building. The small windows were high up and covered by semi-functioning neon beer signs. Put it this way. It wasn’t a bar I would normally rush to frequent. I checked my watch. It was 10:30 in the morning. Not my idea of happy hour.
Cartwright got out of his car and went in without waiting for me. I followed a moment later. After my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I saw him at the bar, a shot glass already to his mouth, supported by both hands. He downed it in one gulp. When he noticed me, he raised the empty glass.
“Meet Jack Daniels,” he said, smiling crookedly. “My oldest and dearest friend.”
He turned to the bartender, a hulking guy who looked about sixty. He was balding and grey-haired, with deformed ears and a nose that had been broken more than once. An old photograph of a handsome young boxer with his gloves up, hanging over the bar mirror, showed him in better days. He looked at us with a steady, distrustful gaze, his huge, rough hands resting flat on the bar.
“Another, please, Cecil,” Hank said. “And whatever the lady wants. She’s buying.”
Luckily, I had plenty of cash, because Cecil didn’t look like he would take Visa. I’d be lucky if he gave receipts. What would I call this on my expense account?
“Beer for me,” I said. “Light beer, if you have it.”
“No light,” Cecil said. “Bud or Coors.”
“Bud’s fine,” I said, then turned to Hank. “Maybe we should sit at a table.”
“Don’t worry about old Cecil,” he said. “He minds his own business.”
“As long as you have the money to pay for his drinks,” the bartender said, sliding my beer over and pouring Hank another shot. I put a twenty on the bar. He nodded, moved down the bar, and turned his attention to the television set, feigning fascination with Oprah Winfrey and her guests, who were discussing lesbian parenthood. He was still within earshot.
“Did you ever see your daughter?” I began.
“Every week,” Cartwright said, picking up his glass with a newly steady hand. He sipped carefully, then smiled. “Every single week. June didn’t know. Lucy never told her. But she came by, or found me somewhere, and she never missed a week. She gave me some money, sometimes. I didn’t feel too good about that.”
He raised the shot glass again, and took another careful little sip, delicately almost, savouring the fire. He closed his eyes and sighed. I waited for him to continue.
“She said it made her happy to help me out. It made me happy to see her, that’s for sure.”
He raised bloodshot eyes to mine.
“I wasn’t much of a father when she was little. I know that. I was too fucked up. Hell, I’m still fucked up. But she forgave me for that. She forgave me for everything. She just wanted to know me, she said.”
He fell silent, staring into the middle distance.
“When did you begin to get close?” I asked. He looked startled, as if he had forgotten I was there.
“About four years ago. Four years ago November, my birthday. My fortieth. She came to my trailer with a present.”
He quickly drained what was left in his glass and wiped his eyes. Cecil looked a question at me. I nodded, and he brought the bottle. I offered Hank a cigarette, which he took. I lit it for him, then took one myself.
“She was scared,” Cartwright said. “Real shy. Like a little animal. She gave me a book she’d made of some of my old poems she had found in the house somewhere, and some poems she had written. God, it was moving. She stayed for five or six hours. I was pretty wasted that day. It was like she was glowing, an apparition, a visitation, an angel who cupped my heart gently in her hands. She’s been my special girl ever since.”
“How long had it been?”
He sighed.
“If I’m honest, I’ll tell you I never knew her before. At first, she was just a baby. I don’t dig babies. Then me and June split up, and I couldn’t get it together to see her for a while. Then June turned her against me.
“Not that I blame her,” he said, and stopped, lost in his memories. After a few moments, he straightened and smiled at me.
“You know what I used to do? I used to go by her school during recess and just watch her from where she couldn’t see me, my pretty little girl. I wondered how my daughter could be so pretty and nice. I told her that once. She cried. Like I told her, I never stopped loving her. I just didn’t know how to do it without screwing her up. I guess I probably did anyway, deserting her, but it would have been worse if I’d been around. I really believe that. Or I used to. Now I don’t know, and I never will.”
More bourbon, more tears blotted on his sleeve. He took a cocktail napkin and blew his nose, then loosened his tie.
“She had talent,” he said, calm again. “Damn, but she had talent. Did you know that?”
“I never really read her stuff. Sorry.”
“Too bad. She could write. She had the magic inside her, and I did everything I could to bring it out. I lent her books, turned her on to writers she had never heard of. I opened up her mind. I gave her the wings to fly with. I just wanted to make sure she didn’t piss it all away the way I did. I did something right for a change. Man, it felt good, too.”
He looked at me.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “She wasn’t the only one who got something out of it. She straightened me out pretty good. To tell the truth, I was pretty close to losing it when she came into my life. ‘Half in love with easeful death’ when she came, like a nightingale, to bring me back.”
I rummaged through the cobwebs in my memory of English 101.
“‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain,’” I said.
He raised his glass.
“Here’s to Johnny Keats,” he said. “He could fly, too.”
I let another silence slide by before changing the subject.
“Did Lucy confide in you about many things?” I asked.
He looked at me slyly.
“Like what? What are you getting at?”
“Nothing. I just wondered what you talked about.”
“You want to know if I knew about her sex life? Sure I did. She told me everything. She believed in an active, healthy sex life. Took after her father in that, too.”
I let it lie between us on the bar. He took another cigarette from my pack, tore the filter off, and lit it.
“These Canadian cigarettes are crap,” he said.
“The price is right,” I said. He ignored me.
“Lucy approached sex like a man,” he said, approvingly. “When she saw what she wanted, she took it. No guilt. No remorse. No questions asked. I admired that.”
He laughed.
“So, she played with guys, used them. She had a great body and she knew how to get her way. So what? Hav
en’t men been doing that with women since the beginning of time? A woman like you, you must be a feminist, you should approve of Lucy. Except you’re probably uptight about sex.”
I let that one lie right next to his previous remark. The bar was littered with innuendo.
“Lucy was free in her mind and her body. The Bible-thumpers and scum-suckers in this fucking town just kept trying to drag her back to their level. But she was too strong for them.”
He smiled, then anger clouded his eyes.
“And then some jumped-up Brillo-head from the Islands, who wasn’t worthy of her attention, did her. Shit, isn’t that ironic? She was just trying to be nice to the poor lost little fucker.”
He slammed his shot glass down on the bar, got off the stool, took his head in his hands, and let out a grating, wounded howl. Then he shook his head and walked purposefully past the pool table to the men’s room. No one in the bar even looked up.
“Everything all right, miss?” asked Cecil.
“He’s had a tough day,” I said. “His daughter’s funeral.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard about it. But, a word to the wise. Most days are tough days for Hank. Don’t let him fool you. And that twenty is just about used up.”
I opened my wallet and pulled out a matching bill.
“Thanks for the advice,” I said.
“I don’t want to see any trouble.”
“Neither do I.”
“Good.”
“Right.”
He went back to Oprah. I went back to my confusion.
Chapter 20
I took out my notebook and made a few notes. Hank was back in five minutes. He seemed to have pulled himself together. His gait was steady; his eyes bright. I suspected he had used a little artificial assistance in the washroom.
“Gimme a beer, Cec,” he said.
“Name’s not Cec,” the bartender said, not turning his head.
“Excuse me, Cecil, would you be so kind as to pour me a beer,” Hank said. When it came, he picked it up, grabbed the bourbon bottle and his shot glass, and walked away.
“Come over here,” he said. I got up and pointed to the money on the bar.
“I’m good for it,” I told the bartender.
“It’s your money;” he shrugged.
I followed Hank to a corner table, away from the other pitiful customers. We sat down on mismatched chairs with rusting metal legs and torn vinyl seat covers that had pieces of foam sticking through. Mine had a distinct lean to the left.
“I want to tell you something in confidence,” Hank said.
“Fine,” I said.
“Off the record,” he said, self-importantly.
“Off the record,” I agreed. It was easier that way. If it was something I really needed to use, I could go back to him later to get it.
“I think they busted the wrong guy.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?”
“It’s too easy. They arrested him too fast. I can’t believe the kid did it. He was too fucking grateful to her for letting him suck those tits to want to kill her. But that’s not the main thing. The main thing is, it makes that cocksucker Troy Barwell look too good.”
“You don’t like Detective Sergeant Barwell?”
He looked at me with cold hatred in his eyes.
“I’d like to kill the son of a bitch.”
“Why?”
“For what he did to Lucy.”
“Are you saying you think Troy Barwell killed her?”
“I’m not saying anything about him killing her. I’m saying the motherfucker raped her. That’s what I’m talking about here.”
That got my attention.
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Did she report it?”
He laughed, bitterly.
“Are you kidding? It was, what you call it, date rape. It happened at his place. It would be her word against his, and who would believe her?”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“You bet your ass I’m right,” he said. “You know the scene. ‘And why did you go there? What did you think you were going there for? How much had you had to drink?’ Like that. Then they drag out all her history and make her look like a whore. There was no percentage in it. But she got back at him good her own way.”
“Dick Teensy,” I said.
“You heard about that? Pretty good, huh?”
“It was certainly catchy,” I agreed, amused at his paternal pride.
“Humiliation is the best revenge.”
“What a slimeball.”
“Lady, next to Troy Barwell, a slug looks dry,” he said, then got up to go back to the bar. He was beginning to stagger a bit. Little wonder. I hoped he would keep it together long enough to give me what I needed to know.
He came back with two more beers. I hadn’t finished half of mine, but he put one in front of me anyway.
“Tell me more about Lucy. When did she start writing?”
“Before she even learned how to print, she was making up stories. She used to send me her little poems that June would write out for her. And Lucy would draw little pictures to go with them, too. It was pretty cute.”
He paused.
“When she was four, I went to jail for a while,” he said, quickly. “That’s why June divorced me. But before that, she sent me Lucy’s poems and stories in jail. Lucy kept on writing. Like I said, I didn’t know it until four years ago.”
“Why do you think she came to you?”
“She wasn’t happy at home. June had married that holy roller, and he was putting the leash on her pretty good. Compared to him, maybe I didn’t look so bad.”
“Was that when she moved out?”
“No. That was later, when she figured out that step-daddy had more than Bible-reading on his mind.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he just happened to catch her in the shower a couple of times. Meaning he liked her to stay home with him when June was working the night shift. Meaning that when he took the strap to her he’d come in his pants. And he liked to take the strap to her. Called her a harlot, read the Bible to her, then whacked her around, and came in his pants.”
“Christ,” I said.
“You gonna drink your beer?” he asked, his speech starting to slur. I shook my head.
“Help yourself.”
“Don’ wanna let it go to waste,” he said, gratefully.
“I’ve got to be going, anyway. Just one more question, then I’ll let you alone.”
“Hit me,” he said.
“Do you know which ballplayers she was involved with?”
“Ah, yes, my darlin’s little weakness,” he said. “She wasted her brains and that great body on any asshole that could swing a bat or throw a ball. She said they were the poets of sport. Shit. And she loved them. Young, old, single, married, black, white, Latin, yellow, plaid, whatever. If they wore stirrup socks with their work clothes, she had to have them.”
He shook his head.
“She was hooked,” he said. “She was crazy for baseball. Even when she was a kid. Lucy wanted to be a bat girl, but they only had bat boys. As soon as she got old enough she babysat the players’ kids. When she got old enough to screw, she screwed them.
“That’s why she wanted to be a sportswriter, so she could be part of the game. If she couldn’t be an athlete, she wanted to get as close to them as she could. She wanted to screw them or she wanted to write about them.”
He clenched his glass so tightly I thought it would break.
“She had real talent, God damn it. She could have been anything. Waste of time, waste of mind, being a fucking sportswriter. Fucking sportswriter. Jesus.”
He wound down, and stared into his empty glass. He was done, gone. I stood up.
>
“Thank you, Mr. Cartwright,” I said. He didn’t look up. “You’ve been a big help. I have to be going to waste my mind now.”
It didn’t get through the fog. I went to the bar.
“Let him go through the rest of the money,” I said to Cecil. “But hold back five for yourself. And I need a receipt.”
He put down the glass he was drying with a questionable-looking rag and rummaged in a drawer under the cash register. He pulled out a receipt book with a carbon, the kind you can get at any stationery store, and concentrated on printing in it.
“Thanks,” I said, when he handed it to me. I gestured towards Hank’s table. “Will he be all right?”
“He won’t cause any trouble. I’ll just let him sleep it off in the back room. He’s done it before.”
He picked up his rag and smiled.
“And he’ll probably do it again.”
“Sorry to leave the mess for you to clean up,” I said.
“No problem. You have a nice day, now,” he said. Florida. They even do the happy faces talk in the dives.
Chapter 21
I sat in my car for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the sunlight, and took deep breaths of air that didn’t smell of stale beer, smoke, piss, and disappointment. I checked my watch. I had time to stop in at the Sentinel office on my way to meet Tiny.
Cal was on the phone when I got there. He waved at me, excited. The elderly woman whom I had seen on my last visit offered me a seat and a cup of coffee. I accepted both.
“I haven’t seen Mr. Jagger have this much fun in years,” she confided.
“Have you been with the paper for a long time?”
“Oh, my, yes,” she said. “I began to work for Mr. Jagger, Senior, just after the war. World War II, that is. I’ve been here ever since.”
“Then you knew Cal when he was little.”
“I first met him the day after he was born. Such a cute little tyke he was, too.”
“Then can I ask you a personal question?”
“Of course, dear.”
“Why do you call him Mr. Jagger? He calls you Estelle.”
Night Game Page 11
