“What kind of programs are you talking about?”
“We had weekly fellowship meetings, and special counseling sessions led by volunteer therapists from around the county. We had good rapport with the vets, and I like to think we were doing some good for those men. Then Elysius Culhane moved here, and things began to change. I don’t have to tell you he’s a very powerful man—and he’s a persuasive man, with a devil’s tongue. He ingratiated himself with the veterans, primarily by throwing a lot of money around to sponsor events for them. Before long the fellowship meetings had to be canceled, because the veterans stopped coming. The same with the psychological and job counseling sessions. Culhane had convinced them that they were victims, all right—of, in his words, the left-wing politicians who used them as cannon fodder while they were selling out Vietnam to the communists. You know how that tune goes. He convinced them—or most of them—that it was unpatriotic to have anything to do with us, since we’d opposed the war. We oppose all wars. And Culhane hadn’t been here more than a month before he got himself an emergency appointment as, of all things, a village trustee. There was a lot more money being spent in politics here, and before you knew it there were right-wing Republicans being elected to positions of power in all the riverfront communities that had once been considered liberal, like Cairn.”
It was my turn to shrug. “Things like that happen in a democracy, Mary. It’s the great American way.”
“Yes, Mongo. But then people started to die.”
“What people started to die? Political people? Leftists?”
She shook her head. “No, not yet.” She paused, shuddered slightly. “Not unless Michael was a victim, which is what’s so frightening. At first it was just a couple of drug dealers and then a vagrant who’d been accused of trying to molest some school-children. All three men were shot in the back of the head.”
“What makes you think these killings were the work of a death squad?”
“Because it was after the third death that the threats started coming, and the threats mentioned the execution-style killings.”
“You’ve received threats?”
“Yes. The Community has, by letter and telephone. They say we’re communists and deserve to be shot. And there’s been repeated vandalism. A number of liberal organizations in the river communities have shut down because of the threats and vandalism. I wouldn’t accuse Elysius Culhane of being behind it, because I don’t think he’s that stupid, but I certainly do accuse him of creating an atmosphere that supports that kind of vigilantism and terror. I’ve heard him defend and praise the Salvadoran and Guatemalan death squads on a number of occasions.”
“So have I, but right-wingers tend to talk like that. Have you reported these threats and the vandalism to the police?”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“Nothing’s happened.”
“Do you think the police are choosing to do nothing about it?”
“I’m saying they haven’t caught anybody.”
“Do you think Chief Mosely is covering up something?”
She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, I’m not saying that. But I don’t have a lot of faith in his passion for pursuit of equal justice for all. Mosely is a lackey of Elysius Culhane. It was Culhane who convinced his fellow town officials that Mosely was the perfect candidate for our chief of police.”
“How do you know that?”
“I have a friend who’s a village trustee. It’s no secret that Dan Mosely was Culhane’s choice. It doesn’t mean that Mosely would cover up a crime, but I say it does mean that he’s very tuned in to Culhane’s sensibilities; I just don’t believe he’d go out of his way to ease the problems of individuals or groups Culhane disapproves of. He seems a decent enough man, but I’m sure he feels grateful to Culhane for plucking him out of the jungles of New York City and plunking him down here in Cairn, where he can walk out of his office after work and sail off into the sunset on his catamaran.”
“I’ve been waiting for you to mention Gregory Trex. I would think he’d be a prime suspect for threats, vandalism, and membership on a death squad.”
“Vandalism and threats, sure,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure he has enough brains to be on a death squad.”
“You don’t need a lot of brains to pull a trigger, Mary.”
She merely shrugged. “You’re right, of course. It’s just that I find it hard to get all that mad at Gregory.”
“Really?” I said, making no effort to hide my surprise at her reaction—or lack of it. “That’s funny; I didn’t have any trouble at all getting mad at him.”
“I noticed,” she said, and smiled. “But then, you didn’t watch him grow up. I’ve been a member of the Community of Conciliation and lived here in Cairn for more than twenty years. Gregory’s very limited, you know. He’s the perfect example of the dull little fat boy everybody laughed at and picked on, and who grew up to be town bully. He was in a class for the educable retarded in school here, and he spent a year in a psychiatric hospital after he once tried to kill himself. They put him on some medication when he was there, and he seemed to be a lot mellower when he got out. His father’s one of the nicest men you’ll ever want to meet, and he blames himself for what’s happened to Gregory. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail, but that family has seen more than its share of tragedy.”
“A lot of families have seen more than their share of tragedy. It’s not an excuse.”
“I know. But it was Culhane who got Gregory all worked up again with this war and patriotism business. Jesus, it was Culhane who suggested to Gregory that the poor boy enlist in the Marines. Can you imagine? He spent a week bragging all over town about what he was going to do before he actually did it. He did manage to get a recruiter to sign him up, but he was back from boot camp in less than two weeks. His story was that he was too good for the Marines, that he was showing everyone else up. He was discharged on a medical, of course. My point is that Gregory Trex is a victim. The real enemy of Gregory, you, me, and all the other people in the world is a man like Elysius Culhane. Men like Culhane can’t stand the thought of living in a peaceful world.”
“It’s usually the Gregory Trexes of the world you have to deal with, Mary, not the Elysius Culhanes.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head adamantly. “That’s treating the symptoms, not the disease.”
“Gregory Trex is a symptom that will kill you.”
“The only way to stop being manipulated by men like Elysius Culhane is to refuse to deal with, to fight, their surrogates—people like Gregory. When enough people refuse to fight, then the fighting will simply stop.”
“Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and the Community of Conciliation would have lasted about five minutes in Nazi Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. Pacifism can only work in a basically just society, where the majority of people are basically just. The problem, Mary, is that it takes only one Gregory Trex with a machine gun to wipe out droves of pacifists, and Trex wouldn’t give it a second thought if he thought he could get away with it. What do you do about that?”
“Wait for him to run out of ammunition.”
“You’re joking, of course.”
“I am not,” she said evenly, drawing herself up slightly.
“He’ll simply reload.”
“Then we wait for the people who supply him with the ammunition to stop manufacturing it.”
I had better things to do than debate pacifism with Mary Tree, and I didn’t want our meeting to end on a sour note. I bowed slightly, extended my hand. “Thank you, Mary.”
She took my hand in both of hers, smiled warmly. “I take it you don’t think much of the pacifist philosophy.”
“My philosophy is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but keep a sharp lookout for the bad guys. There have always been bad guys, Mary, and there always will be. They’ll roll right over you if you let them; first take everything you own and then take your life. If you
’re not prepared to fight and die for certain things, then you probably don’t have much to live for.”
“But you believe you also have to be prepared to kill for certain things.”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re back to the danger of being manipulated by demagogues, cowards, bigots, and hypocrites like Elysius Culhane.”
“No.”
“Who tells the good guys from the bad guys?”
“I do.”
“Only you?”
“Only me. Dying and killing are very personal things.”
“Men should only, say, fight in wars they personally believe in, and refuse to fight in others?”
“Yep. And then accept the consequences of that decision if the government wants to throw you in jail, or even kill you. It’s a hell of a lot better to die for what you believe in than to die—or kill—for something you don’t believe in. Each individual must make his or her own decision.”
“That makes you an anarchist.”
“God, I hope Garth doesn’t find out about it. He already has enough names to call me.”
Mary Tree laughed lightly, then gripped me gently by the shoulders. “That reminds me of something I have to give you. Just wait here a minute.”
I waited, kneading my sore left arm and gazing out the bank of windows at the river. She was back a few minutes later, looking slightly flushed. She was carrying a plastic shopping bag, which she handed to me. It felt heavy.
“This is just between you and me and your brother, Mongo,” she said, her pale blue eyes bright with excitement and warmth. “I’ve been negotiating with a small record company in Los Angeles that wants to sign me to a new recording contract. These are copies of demo tapes I’ve been working on for the past year. They’re not as clean as they should be, and a couple of rhythm tracks still have to be laid in, but, since you say your brother is such a fan of mine, I think he might enjoy listening to them. I’ve written a lot of the songs myself, which is a departure for me, but there are a number of new Harry Peal songs, and Dylan even gave me one. They’re also doing some uncredited backup vocals. I’ve autographed the tape slipcases.”
“Good grief, Mary,” I said, hefting the plastic bag. “There must be enough music here for three or four albums. Talk about collectibles. I’ll certainly enjoy listening to the tapes, but I’m going to be sure we’re standing in Garth’s apartment when I give these to him. He’s going to lose control of his bodily functions when he hears what I’ve got here.”
Mary Tree’s smile grew even broader, warmer. “Also, I want you to bring him out for the day when this other business is behind you. We’ll poke around the antique shops, have a picnic lunch up in the quarry, and maybe go sailing, if you’d like.”
“I’d like. As for Garth, well, words cannot express.”
“I’ve got everyone else lined up out in the foyer. They’d like to say hello. Okay with you?”
“Fine with me.”
I followed her across the ballroom, stopped just before we reached the archway, and took her arm. She turned toward me, a puzzled expression on her face. “Mary,” I continued quietly, “I don’t want to frighten you, but I’d like you to be very careful for … a while. Until we get this matter of Michael’s death cleared up, I want you to watch out for yourself. When you leave the house, even if it’s just for a walk into town, always take somebody with you. Okay?”
She studied me for a few moments, and when she spoke her voice had grown slightly husky. “Mongo, you think Michael was murdered, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling my stomach muscles flutter, “I do.”
“You didn’t seem so certain before.”
“I got certain when you told me Michael had supposedly used the canoe without permission. There was a time when Michael loved boating and swimming, and I was willing to grant the possibility that he’d decided to celebrate the new life he was planning to start with you people by going back to doing the things he’d once enjoyed; if so, his being out in a canoe on the Hudson might be explainable. The river kicked up on him, he capsized and drowned.”
“But now you don’t believe that’s what happened.”
“No. What I’m not willing to grant is that he’d use somebody else’s property—in this case a very special, handcrafted canoe—without asking permission. Michael was a gracious and rigorously courteous man, a stickler for respecting other people’s privacy and property. He would never have taken that canoe without permission. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell you my suspicions, not only because I didn’t want to frighten you but because somebody might think you know more than you do, and that could place you in danger. But then I realized that people are bound to find out that I’ve talked to you, and just that fact could be dangerous. That’s why I want you to be careful. Yes, I believe Michael was murdered. Now the questions become who did it and why.”
Chapter Four
I hung around in the huge foyer of the Community of Conciliation mansion for half an hour, chatting with Mary and fifteen other members of the pacifist organization, and then I was out the door and three quarters of the way down the driveway before I realized that I’d forgotten to call a taxi. I flexed my tender right knee, decided that I’d test it with the walk back into town and hope that it didn’t stiffen up too badly on me.
I needn’t have worried. I’d limped along only a half mile or so, occasionally reaching across my body to knead my throbbing left arm, when a white Cairn police car pulled up to the curb beside me and Dan Mosely rolled down the window.
“You look like you’re hurting, Frederickson,” Mosely said in his deep, resonant voice. “I think you need a lift.”
I stopped, studied the impassive features of the man with the steel-colored hair and eyes. “Chief, that sounds to me like an official invitation.”
“Semi-official. Get in, Frederickson. If you will.”
I walked around to the other side of the car, got in, and fastened my seat belt, but Mosely didn’t put the idling car into gear. He leaned forward, bowing his head slightly as he hooked his wrists over the steering wheel. “You must have hurt your leg while you were kicking the shit out of Gregory Trex again,” Mosely said with a small sigh. “You really should be more careful; if you don’t stop beating on that bonehead, you’re going to cripple yourself.”
“Pardon me?”
“It really is true what they say about you.”
“What do they say about me, Chief?”
“That you’re a goddamn holy terror.”
“Who? Me? Wow. A goddamn holy terror. It has a ring to it.”
“You might be interested in knowing that Gregory Trex is in the hospital with a concussion, a broken nose, lots of missing teeth, lots of abrasions, and a ruptured right eardrum. He may lose his hearing in that ear.”
“Poor boy. Aside from my general concern for all humanity, why should I be interested in Trex’s misfortune?”
“Because you did it to him. He was found virtually under your window.”
“Who does Trex say did it to him?”
Mosely turned his head slightly to look at me, and his lips drew back in a thin smile that seemed to reflect respect along with his irritation. “He says he was coming around to talk to you and that he was mugged by four guys. He says three guys held him while the fourth worked him over with nunchaku sticks.”
“It sounds terrible,” I said, wincing. “Did he happen to mention what he wanted to discuss with me?”
“He never got around to explaining that. What the hell happened, Frederickson? Did that shit-for-brains make the mistake of coming after you again?”
“Chief, if Trex told you he was beaten up by four muggers, who am I to call him a liar? He might take offense.”
Mosely grunted with disgust, then abruptly straightened up and slammed the car into reverse. The tires spun and spewed gravel as he backed into a driveway, and then he shifted again and we speeded away in the opposite direction, away from town. A decidedly captive
audience, I figured I would find out soon enough where we were going and what he wanted, and so I remained silent as we reached the end of Pave Avenue. He took the left branch of the Y that led up to the abandoned stone quarry, then took a sharp right after a hundred yards or so onto another road. The pavement had ended abruptly, and we were on a winding, pitted, dirt road that had been carved right through the side of the mountain. He shifted into four-wheel drive to slowly maneuver around a truck-eating pothole, and then we continued on our way up. Viewed from a distance, the remains of the quarrying operation that had systematically devoured a good portion of the mountain appeared like an ocher and mauve scar across the face of the sky; seen up close, the naked, machine-washed face of the rock was starkly beautiful, cut in irregular, fluted patterns of rock shelves that made it seem as if we were traveling through the innards of some gigantic, petrified pipe organ of the gods.
“The whole mountain is trap rock,” Mosely said in an easy, conversational tone as we reached a large, grass-covered plateau about three quarters of the way up the mountain. He shifted back to two-wheel drive and drove into a small parking lot that was virtually at the edge of a precipice overlooking the Hudson. Adjacent to the parking lot were a concrete and steel barbecue pit, a picnic table, and an overflowing trash can. There was a huge yellow building set back on the plateau, connected to the face of the mountain by flat umbilical cords of rusted steel that had once been conveyor belts. Two other wide conveyor belts emerged from the front of the building and plunged underground, presumably leading down to the river’s edge. “Sixty to seventy years ago, this quarry supplied more than half of the crushed stone used in construction projects in New York City. They’d chop and shave the rock off the side of the mountain onto those conveyor belts, which would carry it to a rock crusher that was inside that building, which is now used for storage. The crushed rock would come out on those other conveyor belts and be carried down to the river, where it would be loaded onto barges that would take it downriver.”
“Interesting,” I said in a neutral tone.
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