Trust

by George V. Higgins

  Ed grinned. “Vassar,” he said. “Wouldn’t’ve liked going there, myself. Nothing but women around.”

  Earl grinned back. “Me neither,” he said. He raised his glass and took another sip, looking at Ed over the rim.

  The waiter appeared. “Can I get you something, Ed?” he said.

  “Oh,” Ed said, “yeah please, Randy. Johnnie Red twice, straight up. No vegetables or nothing.” He looked at Earl’s array of glasses. “I’d offer you one,” he said, “but you’re drinking slow.”

  “Hey,” Earl said, “I was here a good hour before you walked in. Beside, I can’t sleep on planes, and passing out don’t do it. I’ve got a long flight, ahead of me tonight. Got to pace myself.”

  The waiter went away. “So,” Ed said, folding his arms on the table and gazing into Earl’s eyes, “you, ah, you think, well, what’d you accomplish out there, the VISTA thing, I mean? My cousin, I asked her that, and what she said was: ‘Nothin’.’ Not a goddamned thing. Just a total waste of time. Those kids have any talent? Stars I heard of since?”

  “No, not a single one,” Earl said, “except for being farmers. There’s very few people, kids or big—one the things I do now when I’m out selling the college is I scout the high school players. Our team plays two nights a week, although of course I never see them, because I’m always a week ahead, scouting next week’s opposition. And that leaves me three nights or so, four if I’m on the road, when I go to the high school games, see we ought to keep close tabs on. Worth a look, I mean. Well, maybe a look, but very few people got talent. Not kids, not bigger people. Not in anything, really, any line of work you name. In basketball what you almost always find is that the ones that can run, and can handle the ball, well, they got the reputation in the little towns they live, but that is all they’ve got. And it’s all they’re ever gonna get. Because the basic reason that they’ve got it’s usually their towns and schools’re so small and so tiny that not many kids’re playing. And they just happen to be that year the ones that are the best. Or the ones that can shoot, or play defense—same thing. The worst player on a tar court at some school with broken windows in the jungle up in Harlem could take on three of them at once and outscore them ten to two. And if they got the two, they’d be lucky. What they’re playing against, they are pretty good, but you stack them up against some kids can really play, which is what happens, college, they’re gonna eat their lunch for them. It’s just the way it is.

  “And then,” Earl said, “now and then, let’s say that I get lucky and the kid turns out be great. A little rough around the edges, and he needs a lot of coaching, needs to work out with the weights and maybe grow a couple inches, but after all, he’s still a kid, he’s not finished growing yet. A good prospect, in other words. Not a real barn burner, but you don’t expect to find those on the kind of trips I make—basic prospecting, you know? In New Hampshire and Vermont. There isn’t that much gold out there, and you don’t expect to strike it. This is where you’re browsing, sort of, for your ‘pretty good’ kid, the one that you can look at and say ‘not a bad little player.’ But definitely worth approaching, worth taking a look at. So the way you do that’s generally by going to see his coach. Tell him who you are, recruiting and you’d like to try this boy out on a little one-on-one.”

  The waiter returned with Ed’s second double. Ed took it from his tray and drank half of it. He put the glass down and folded his arms on the table again, gazing at Earl’s face. “Oh,” he said, “I bet you could do that, all right. You’re in terrific shape. At least you sure look like you are.”

  “Ahh,” Earl said, “My weight’s all right. But my muscle tone’s lousy. Being on the road so much, you can’t keep up a program. And my wind’s shot, too, if you decide to run me like these damned teenagers do.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Ed said.

  Earl grinned. He patted Ed’s hand. “Now, now,” he said, “we barely met. Let’s get to know each other.”

  Ed looked contrite. He drained his glass. He aspirated the whiskey. He began to cough violently, his face turning crimson.

  “Here,” Earl said, handing him the extra-ice glass containing the half of his first drink and water from melted cubes. Ed took it and drank all of it. His coughing subsided. He held the glass in his left hand and studied it. “Whew,” he said, “was that vodka?”

  “Oh, my God,” Earl said, “I thought I was giving you water. I meant to give you the water.”

  Ed smiled. “Oh,” he said, “no harm done. I just wasn’t prepared.”

  “You’re all right now, though,” Earl said.

  Ed nodded. “Fine, fine,” he said. “Just let me get another drink.” He signaled to the waiter, who nodded understanding. He looked back at Earl. “Go on, go on, Don,” he said. “This is very interesting.”

  “Well,” Earl said, “most coaches in most schools, well, they like nothing better ’n some scout a well-known college drops in of an afternoon, oils ’em up a little. What a fine job they’re doing teaching kids the fundamentals—coaches love it when you say that: ‘Damn but that impresses me, way you teach the fundamentals. Very few guys do that now, and it’s the secret of the game’—and is there any chance that you could maybe get your gear on, try out this kid that’s his tall forward, put him through his paces on the give-and-go? Just the simple stuff. Might lead to something for the kid, and of course the coach is thinking: ‘And maybe that’s not all—maybe something for me, too, like a college assistant’s job.’

  “But St. Stephen’s,” Earl said, “well, we got problems. Not fatal but no fun, either. Being well known doesn’t help you, if it’s for the wrong reason.”

  “I don’t know anything about the place,” Ed said. “I mean, I’ve heard of it and all, living in New Jersey, and I know they have a team.” His eyes were bright, and his face remained deep crimson.

  “I bet,” Earl said, “I bet if I asked you, you’d know what we’re famous for. But I won’t make you guess. We had some kids fix games.”

  Ed opened his mouth wide. “I do remember that,” he said. “It was some years back—that right?”

  “A few,” Earl said. “But the bad taste lingers on, at least in the sport itself.”

  “I felt so sorry for those boys,” Ed said. “I have sons of my own, and of course, I know quite a few … Well, I know I’d be terribly upset if it happened to someone I knew. Didn’t some of them go to jail?”

  “Three of them,” Earl said.

  “Did you know them?” Ed said. “Were any of them your, you know, special friends of yours?”

  “No,” Earl said. “Oh, I knew a couple of them. Slightly. The ones who were seniors during my freshman year. But not very well.” He sighed. “I still felt sorry for them, though. It seemed like, you know, that, well, they got hit awful hard for what wasn’t really very much. Not that big a thing. From the team’s point of view, I mean. We didn’t lose any of the games we played when they did that. Beat the spread. Or made sure we didn’t beat it. So what if some people won bets as a result?”

  “Well …,” Ed said, his eyes moist and sweat appearing on his cheeks.

  “I know, I know,” Earl said. He toyed with the glass. “They said it was all for protecting the integrity of the game. But people still bet afterwards on games, and they always will. Nobody punished them. And the bookies that made money on the games those kids were playing, they’re still making money on the games the new kids play. And don’t kid yourself the colleges and the universities aren’t making money on them too. You think the coaches, the assistants, the people behind the scenes that you never hear about, the people like me? You think we don’t get paid? We don’t get paid much, that’s for sure, but we do get paid. And when we go on vacation, or our doctors send us bills, those things get paid too. You think that money doesn’t come from the games that those kids play? And it’s lots of money, getting bigger every year, with the TV stuff and all. Why should it be just the people who actually do it, actually do the w
ork, spend all the hours at practice, and really sweat their balls off? Why should they be the only ones that don’t make any money? Doesn’t seem quite fair.”

  He sighed again. “But that’s the way it is,” he said. He toyed with his first rocks glass. He picked it up and finished the drink. “It isn’t going to change. We just have to live with it, and so when I go into one of these jerkwater high schools, and ask if I can see some kid and work him out a little, well, if I was from UCLA, or Villanova, Indiana or DePaul, Duke or N.C. State? They’d fall all over me. But the minute that I tell them that I’m from St. Stephen’s, that’s when even if they have got someone reasonably good that might make our second team, I know I’m just wasting my time. It’s very discouraging. Just a waste of time.” He picked up his second drink and raised it to Ed. “Well,” he said, “bottoms up. Great way to spend your holiday, huh? Just jerking around.”

  “It could be something more,” Ed said. “Will you come in the men’s with me?”

  “You’ve got a plane to catch,” Earl said. “You said you had a plane.”

  “The Shuttle,” Ed said. “The eleven o’clock Shuttle. All I have to do’s drop off the car at Hertz, and go and catch the plane. I’ll be cutting it close, sure, but I’d really like to, you know—it’s only ten fifteen. Just a little quickie, Don? At least one good thing this weekend that’s been so lonely for you?” He licked his lips and spread them in a sudden grin. “You know what we could do?” he said. “I know what we can do. Your plane, what time does your plane leave? Is it the last one for the Coast?”

  “Eleven thirty,” Earl said. “Or eleven thirty-five. I haven’t got my ticket. It’s there for me at the desk. This was a late change they made. Without telling me. The guy that was supposed to scout Loyola tomorrow afternoon and San Fran tomorrow night got sick, so he can’t go. So instead of me going to New Orleans Sunday night, and staying here the weekend with my sister and her kids, I have to fly out on short notice. Yeah, I do deserve a treat”

  “Well,” Ed said, his eyes bright, “here’s what we can do. You drive and drop me off at Easter. That way I can make it easy. And then you drop off the car for me. I’ll give you all the paperwork, it’s all completely done. And just go and catch your plane. It won’t be as much time as I’d like to spend with you, won’t be time enough to hump. But you can let me blow you, Don. We’ve got time enough for that.”

  After he saw Ed safely inside the Eastern terminal at Logan International Airport, Earl took the exit ramp and stopped the rental car at the airport gas station. He used the pay phone to call the Hertz twenty-four-hour number. Referring to the rental agreement, he identified himself as Edmund R. Cornell, the driver-customer of a dark green Pontiac Le Mans coupe, Massachusetts registration K76-333. “No, no,” he said, “no troubles at all. Car’s running fine in fact. It’s just that something came up, and my plans’ve changed, and I didn’t want you people to think I’d swiped the car. I’d like to return it instead of tonight sometime either Tuesday or Wednesday. Yes, still at the airport. Uh huh. Thanks very much.” He returned to the car and drove it out of the airport, taking the right fork leading to the Mystic River Bridge, marked “NORTH SHORE N.H./MAINE.”

  13

  At 7:30 on the Tuesday evening after Thanksgiving Donald Beale was still in his office. Oakes looked in. “Rough day?” he said. “You still up here and all?”

  “Yeah,” Beale said. “God made gin for days like this.”

  “Bank?” Oakes said.

  Beale shook his head. “No,” he said, “the bank’s all right. We’re fine in that department. The line of credit I took, the one they didn’t want to give me but they did anyway, well, it turned out I didn’t need it after all. Detroit’s not shipping as many as they threatened to. So the payments I’ve already made’re out of whack as usual, but in our favor, for once. I ran into Mace Brookens at the Rotary today, told him I wasn’t sure I can afford to finance the bank like this. So no, nothing to do with the business. Just that about the middle of the afternoon, it was like things started to get a little bit out of whack, you know? Like when you dream about a funeral, the way Lincoln’s supposed to’ve done, and you keep going through this big house hearing people crying, and finally you come to the room where the body’s laid out, and you look down in the casket, and it’s you. Well since it’s you that remembers the dream, you must be awake, and if you’re awake, and remembering, then you can’t possibly be dead. But it’s kind of upsetting, you know? It has to mean something. You almost want to make it mean something, even bad, if that’s what it’s going to take. I dunno. Feel like I’m losing my grip.”

  “What happened?” Oakes said.

  “Oh,” he said, “I was sitting here, going over payroll. I know, and you know, Elio’s a crackerjack service manager, and he’s such a stickler for getting things right the customers think he’s God. But damn it all, when he makes Rudy stay till nine because somebody’s car still knocks, Rudy gets this idea in his head that he’s earning overtime. So all right, Rudy’s not too bright, and if he was determined to go in the car business, he should’ve stuck to pumping gas, and maybe changing oil. But we need four guys out there, and three good ones’re all we’ve got, so Rudy’s where he shouldn’t be, doing what he doesn’t know how, and Elio is screaming at him, making him miss dinner, and I’m paying for it.

  “Elio forgets that. He acts like he thinks Rudy gets paid by the job. But Rudy knows better’n that, so the worst mechanic that we’ve got is making close to the most money. Which isn’t good for morale. But what do I do? Fire Rudy? Leave us short a man? Tell Elio just to let Rudy’s crap work go out of the shop, and get my customers pissed off?” He sighed. “When it’s quiet,” he said, “like it was today, like it always is, this time of year, I like to bang my damned fool head against minor problems I can’t possibly solve.

  “Well,” he said, “God saw my situation, and He took pity on me. Not completely, oh no. God doesn’t believe in making things too easy. Just a little something to get the old heart pumping away, you know? A call from Earl’s pet hooker. I didn’t even know her name. He’s always called her Penny, when he’s mentioned her at all. ‘Mary Slate,’ the switchboard girl said. ‘Says it’s personal’ ‘Personal?’ I say. ‘How the hell can it be personal if I don’t even know the name?’ But I took it anyway. Should’ve known it meant trouble. Should’ve ducked the call.”

  “Oh my God,” Oakes said, “what’s that little shit done now?”

  “Well, that’s what I mean about God,” Beale said. “When God sticks it to you, you don’t get full particulars. God likes to tease you some. I don’t know what Earl’s done, and neither does she. Which is why she’s calling me, to see if maybe I do. What Earl’s apparently done, I guess, is skip out on her. ‘I was out of town for Thanksgiving,’ she says. Crying, of course, which I guess is supposed to make me think she’s telling the truth. I don’t, naturally. Partly because I know she’s been shacked up with Earl quite a while, and only another natural-born liar could stand that, and partly because there’s no good reason for her to tell me that. The minute she tries to make sure I know she was with her family, that minute I know she was out working when Earl flew the coop. Why she cares what I think, I don’t know. Why she thinks I care what she thinks or she does—that I can’t answer either.

  “So I’m a little short with her,” Beale said. “I say: ‘I hate to tell you this, miss, but Earl’s got a history of that. Skipping out on people that trust him. Did he take something from you or something? Because I’m not making it good. If he got your jewelry, or he took your money, well, I’m sorry, you know? But your best bet’s to call the cops. I don’t insure anyone against Earl. I don’t trust the bastard myself.”

  “Well,” Beale said, “surprise, surprise. At least as far as she can tell, he didn’t take a thing. Except his clothes and shaving gear—only his own stuff. ‘You checked your car since you got back?’ This is what I say to her. ‘Car still where you left it?’ Yup, right w
here it’s s’posed to be. The only bad thing that he did was leave the apartment filthy. ‘It really stunk in here,’ she said. ‘He left some steaks and stuff just rotting in the sink, and the refrigerator open so it all got spoiled in there. And the bed, I hadda change it. I think he threw up. Probably from too much beer—he left all his old beer cans and stuff dumped in the living room.’

  “ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that’s in character for him too. My mother swears to this day that the swollen veins in her legs came from following Earl around, all the time he was growing up, bending over and stooping down to pick up all his garbage.’

  “ ‘But I don’t care about that stuff.’ This is what she tells me. ‘All I care about is Earl. If he is all right. And that’s why I finally called you. To see if you know where he is.’

  “I tell her I don’t,” Beale said. “ ‘Did he leave a note or anything that might give you a hint?’ And that was when she said he did, that he left her a note that said he had to drive up here and see me about some important family business. Something about seeing a lawyer and signing some papers. ‘And I called the people where he works, and he told them the exact same thing.’

  “ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that takes care of one possibility then, which was pretty remote anyway—that some kind of fit took hold of him or something and he told the truth for once. Nobody from here called him, and if there’s some important business going on that concerns my family, I don’t know about it and I kind of think I would. My guess is that the law is involved, though, or will be before too soon.’ So she says, she gives me another dose of the crying there, just to see if maybe I do know, and I’m holding back on her, maybe covering for him, and she says: ‘I guess you can’t help me then.’ And I said that was how it looked to me. And she says: ‘If he gets in touch with you, will you at least tell him to call me? Get in touch with me?’ Well, there’s small chance of that happening. If Earl gets himself in a position where he decides he has to call me, one call’s all he’ll be allowed to make, and it’ll be to get him a lawyer. But I said: ‘Sure, sure I will.’ And she hung up.”