Pot Shot

by Gerry Boyle

  “I love you, I really do,” she said, bending over me.

  “I love you, too,” I mumbled, and before I was conscious, Roxanne was gone.

  After an eternity that was really an hour, I rolled out of the bed and into the shower. I used Roxanne’s herbal revitalizing shampoo, her soap that squirted out of a little white bottle. The soap stung the gash on my hand. The white plastic razor I left alone.

  Breakfast was a raisin bagel and a glass of juice. I took my last clean shirt from Roxanne’s closet and made a mental note to replenish the stock. By the time I went out the front door, the mental note had been erased. I bought a large tea at the Dunkin’ Donuts in Portland, and was on the interstate by 8:15.

  It was sunny but still windy and much colder, and the truck seemed drafty. It was also very loud from the tires and the wind, and only one speaker was working on the stereo. Other than that, I traveled in style.

  The southbound lanes were full of Saabs and Volvos driven by southern Maine commuters, but by the time I hit Brunswick I had the road to myself. It stayed that way until Augusta and then thinned out again on Route 3 heading for Belfast. I took the turnoff, and wound my way west between the windblown yellow-and-orange trees and back into the hills, and at 9:40 sharp I was home in Prosperity.

  And ready to man the phones.

  The first call was easy. I dialed Roxanne’s office and a woman answered and said she was on the phone. I asked her to ask Roxanne to call me when she got a chance, but told her it was nothing urgent. Then I dialed directory assistance for Massachusetts and asked for the number of the Valley Police Department. The operator said I had the wrong area code and gave me the right one. I tried again and the next operator asked me if this was an emergency. I said, no, not yet, and after a couple of clicks an alien recorded voice gave me the number. I wrote it down.

  I was rolling.

  The first time I called, the number was busy. I hit redial and waited and it rang. Once, twice . . .

  “Valley Police Department. May I help you?”

  It was a man’s voice. A very faint Latino accent.

  “Yeah, this is Jack McMorrow. I’m a reporter up in Maine, and I’m looking for some information.”

  “And what kind of information is that, sir?”

  “I’m looking to find out whether a man I’m writing about has turned up in your area. He’s sort of missing up here, and there’s reason to believe he may have gone to Valley.”

  There was a pause. A long one.

  “I’ll give you detectives,” the man said. “You said you’re a reporter?”

  “Right.”

  The phone clicked and rang again and a woman answered. She said, “Yeah?”

  I gave her my spiel. She paused, too.

  “What’d you say your name was, sir?”

  “Jack McMorrow.”

  “And you’re a reporter? For what?”

  “I’m a freelancer. I’m doing a story for the Boston Globe.”

  “But you’re in Maine?”

  “Right.”

  “And what does this have to do with Valley, again?”

  “The guy I’m writing about has disappeared, and I was told he may be in Valley.”

  “What, he doesn’t want to be written about?”

  “No,” I said. “He wants to be written about. Him disappearing didn’t have to do with the story.”

  “Huh,” the detective said. She did not sound impressed.

  “Why’re you writing about him?”

  Oh boy, I thought. Here we go . . .

  “He’s involved in the marijuana legalization movement in Maine. That’s what I’m writing about.”

  “What’s that got to do with Valley?”

  “He used to live in Valley,” I said. “He may have gone back there.”

  “Well, sir, that’s his right, right? I mean, I don’t know what the police department is supposed to do about—”

  “Excuse me, but I just want to know if something’s happened to the guy. I’m calling for his wife. She’s worried.”

  “Why doesn’t she call?” the detective said.

  “She’s sort of upset. She thinks he might be dead.”

  “And tell me why she thinks that, Mr.—what was it?”

  “McMorrow.”

  “Okay, why does she think this marijuana guy might be dead? How long has he been gone?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “Two or three days? Listen, sir, I’ve got cases piled up on my desk a foot high. I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got serious felony crimes here I can’t even get to. All I can tell you is to contact the appropriate law enforcement agency in your area, and they’ll handle it according to—”

  “His name’s Bobby Mullaney. He may be with a guy named Coyote. Heard of them?”

  “Nope. And like I said—”

  “Both white males, around six feet. Coyote has long dark hair. Says he’s Native American, but I don’t think so.”

  “Nope.”

  “No dead bodies like that kicking around down there?”

  “No, and I’ve got a call on the other line.”

  “What’d you say your name was, Detective?”

  “Detective Martucci,” she said. “Have a good day, sir.”

  And she hung up. I did, too.

  But being a dogged journalist, I kept trying. I called directory assistance and got the name of the Valley hospital. It was Valley Hospital. I called there and was quickly put through to something called patient information. A guy there asked me who the patient was, and I said his name was Bobby Mullaney, but I didn’t know if he was a patient. Actually, the guy at patient information was rather impatient, and almost hung up before I could ask if Bobby was on the patient directory.

  “And who are you?”

  “My name’s Jack McMorrow. I’m a reporter. I’m calling from Maine.”

  “Sir, all press inquiries are handled by the public information office. This is patient information. I’ll transfer you.”

  And he did. And a woman answered. I did it again, with feeling, and she interrupted me and said the public information director was Roger Valdez, and Mr. Valdez was out of the office.

  “But I just want to know if somebody I know is in the hospital,” I said. “I mean, what if my brother were in an accident and I wanted to know whether he was in your hospital? What would I do?”

  “Where was this accident?” she said.

  “There wasn’t one. That was a hypothetical situation. I just want to know how to find out if this guy is a patient in your hospital.”

  “What’s your brother’s name?”

  I stopped. Took a deep breath. Let it out.

  “His name’s Bobby Mullaney.”

  “But that wasn’t the name you gave me,” the woman said.

  “You said your name was Mc-something.”

  “McMorrow,” I said. “Bobby’s my stepbrother. Is he in your hospital?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I’ll give you back to the operator. She can have him paged.”

  There was a click. A buzz.

  And a dial tone.

  I sat back in my chair for a moment, then dialed again. This time the phone rang twice. A woman answered, sounding harried.

  “Please give Roxanne Masterson a message,” I said. “Tell her Jack said to be careful.”

  17

  I spent the morning on the phone or standing near it, hands on my hips, wondering who to call next.

  There were four hospitals within twenty-five miles of Valley. Each hospital had a public relations department, none of which did much relating. I called as Jack McMorrow, reporter looking for information. I called as Jack Mullaney, looking for his missing brother. At one hospital, a woman said there was no record of any Bobby Mullaney being admitted to the hospital, but if there were, she couldn’t tell me. At another hospital, a man named David something-or-other cited laws regarding patient confidentiality. I asked how long they would hold my brother incommuni
cado. He said he would have his supervisor call me.

  At ten o’clock, I was still waiting.

  At ten-fifteen, I had tea and changed tacks. There had to be a newspaper in Valley, so I called the police department again. The dispatcher answered and asked if it was an emergency and I said no, and she put me on hold. I waited for three long minutes and then the dispatcher came back on and I asked her my question.

  “The Chronicle,” she said, and hung up before I could thank her. I called directory assistance and got the number of the Valley Chronicle and hit the button and dialed. A man answered and asked how he could direct my call. I asked for the newsroom and the phone rang again and a younger-sounding man answered breathlessly, the way somebody in a real newsroom should.

  I had to smile.

  “Could I have the city desk?” I said.

  “They’re in the late-news meeting,” he said.

  He was all business. His accent was Hispanic.

  “Is there a police reporter there?”

  “That’s Patty. She’s out of the office.”

  “Are you a reporter?”

  “Yeah. Well, I’m an intern,” the guy said. “Who’s this?”

  I told him my name. I said I was a freelance reporter looking for information.

  “Yeah, well, we’re kind of—”

  “I want to know if a guy’s been killed.”

  Melodramatic, but it got his attention.

  “Killed how?” he said.

  “I don’t know. Murdered. Car accident. Anything.”

  “You mean you have a specific guy in mind?”

  “His name’s Bobby Mullaney. Heard of him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Who’s your city editor?”

  “Robert.”

  “Robert who?”

  “Robert Hood.”

  “And his merry men?” I said. “You think he’ll be out of the news meeting soon?”

  “I don’t know. But after that, we’ll be right on deadline, so he’ll be pretty busy. Maybe you could call back later. I really got to go, too.”

  “This a p.m.?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You on deadline?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, his voice filled with the sense that deadlines were sacred and making them was a religious obligation. I remembered that feeling. Like a nostalgic agnostic, I remembered what it was to truly believe.

  “What are you working on?” I said.

  “What am I working on? Oh, it’s just a story on this car accident. Tractor-trailer flipped on Route 3. Spilled, like, tons of potato chips. Tied up traffic for a couple of hours.”

  “How many tons?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if it even was tons. Maybe a truckload of potato chips just weighs pounds.”

  “You should find out. And ask if there were pretzels or tortilla chips mixed in. Those kinds of details make a story like that. Anybody hurt?”

  “No.”

  “You get a byline?”

  “Well, I haven’t yet. They said—”

  He caught himself.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Jack McMorrow.”

  “You’ve been a reporter?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Where?” the young man asked.

  “Oh, here and there.”

  I called back but Robert Hood was in a meeting. Then he was out of the office. Then he was somewhere in the building, but they didn’t know where. I asked for the intern but they said he’d gone home for the day. I asked his name and they said it was Joe Mendoza. I asked for Patty the police reporter and they said she’d gone home, too, that she worked from five a.m. to two p.m., but she’d left early because she hadn’t felt well. I asked with whom I was speaking, and the last woman I talked to said she was a newsroom assistant. In the background, I heard someone say, “Is it that weird guy from Maine again?”

  But I didn’t feel weird. Mostly I felt frustrated.

  After a morning on the phones, I knew that Bobby probably wasn’t on the front page of the Valley newspaper tomorrow, that he might be in any of several hospitals, that he hadn’t been killed in such a dramatic way that his death had been brought to the attention of one Detective Martucci.

  Yet.

  Of course, Bobby could be on the bottom of some river, or stuffed inside a car trunk, or left in a vacant apartment, or dumped in the woods on a median strip. And where was Coyote, last seen leaving Florence, Maine, in Bobby’s company? Why wasn’t he with Bobby when they met Paco in Lewiston?

  I sat there and stared out the window. The wind had picked up even more and the sun had disappeared, replaced by a woolly bank of gray clouds, rolling in from the northwest. The pale yellow leaves on the poplars looked panicky, twisting and writhing as if they were trying to flee. There was rain coming but it was still in the distance, in the clouds, and even through the window I could feel the damp breath of the wind.

  I felt a pang of isolation, a tremulous shifting, as if the center of my universe had been moved from this forgotten hollow in Prosperity, Maine, to another place. But I hadn’t been told where the other place was. I was still in Prosperity, left behind, marooned, forgotten and uninformed.

  With a shiver, I got up from the chair. I walked to the window to shake it off, then walked back to the chair. I looked at the phone, then picked it up and started to dial Roxanne’s office again. After four numbers I hung up. I knew then that I couldn’t finish this story, project, whatever it was, from here.

  “I hope you don’t get any ideas about going down there,” Roxanne had said.

  But I just had to see it. The city. The police station. The newspaper. The television news. I reached for the phone.

  It rang.

  “Thought maybe you’d died and gone to purgatory,” Clair said.

  “What do you mean, purgatory?”

  “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Thanks, I think.”

  “What are you doing for dinner?”

  “I don’t know. I might be heading south, again.”

  “You fly south more than the birds,” Clair said. “Where to this time?”

  “A place called Valley, Massachusetts.”

  “Some kind of armpit place, ain’t it?”

  “More or less,” I said. “I think it’s sort of an abandoned mill town, from what I’ve heard. A little city built around mills on the Merrimack River. Then the mills pulled out and the place was left to its own devices.”

  “What devices?”

  “Drugs, I think. It’s a big stop on the cocaine pipeline.”

  “So why are you going there, Jack?”

  “Because some of them dabble in marijuana.”

  “What, like a hobby or something?” Clair said.

  “Helps them unwind after a hard day dealing crack.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I knew you’d understand.”

  “Yeah, I understand this Valley is a pretty rough place.”

  “You’re a walking encyclopedia since you got that satellite dish,” I said.

  “I try. So you’re really going down there?”

  “I think so.”

  “For how long?”

  “A day. A night, maybe. I just want to see it. Get a feel for the place.”

  “How was Lewiston?”

  “Okay. Pretty interesting.”

  “You find the druggies you were looking for?”

  “Yeah, I did, actually.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “A couple of ’em didn’t say anything. They were too busy trying to hit me with a pipe.”

  “You all right?” No more joking.

  “I’m fine. They weren’t very good hitters. Benchwarmers.”

  “But these guys in Massachusetts are a different league, aren’t they?”

  “A step up. Maybe two. Actually, the Massachusetts guys were in Lewiston.”

  “What were they doing?” Clair asked. �
�Scouting?”

  “Probably bringing up some coke and heroin. While they’re up here, they pick up a little pot to sell down south.”

  “They tell you that?”

  “A guy named Paco did,” I said.

  “Is he the guy with the pipe?”

  “No. He called them off. We had a good talk. In a church.”

  “Then maybe it will be purgatory,” Clair said. “What’d you talk about?”

  “This Mullaney guy. From Florence. This guy Paco said he made a big stink out of not getting paid for his pot. Mullaney did, I mean. He wanted to see somebody higher up, and the somebody higher up happened to be in town.”

  “So?”

  “So the guy who was higher up left and took Mullaney with him.”

  “And went to this Valley place.”

  “Where Mullaney used to live,” I said.

  “So it all fits together.”

  “I guess. But I’m not quite sure exactly how.”

  “How ’bout I ride along this time? Just so there’s somebody to notify the next of kin.”

  “That’s just Roxanne,” I said.

  “Good. It won’t take long.”

  “I don’t know. What’s Mary going to say?”

  “She’s in North Carolina visiting Susan.”

  “She is? When did she go?”

  “Yesterday,” Clair said.

  “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “You haven’t been around.”

  “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Oh, I figured a girl has to just be with her mother, sometimes. And Larry would just want me to play golf.”

  “That’d be like you dancing in the ballet.”

  “I’d take the dancing, tell you the truth. Last time he wanted to loan me a pink sweater and these goddamn white-and-black saddle shoes,” Clair said.

  “Did you punch him?”

  “He’s my son-in-law.”

  “Did you play golf?”

  “Hell no. He went and played golf, and I put in a couple of those garage door openers. Some yahoo tried to do it and got it all bunged up.”

  “Larry?”

  “Yeah. He’s a nice kid, but he doesn’t know much. So what time we leaving?”

  “How ’bout in an hour. Get down there in time to catch the night’s first drive-by shooting. Speaking of which . . .”