EQMM, July 2009
Page 7
The persona Dwight was trying for seeped away as he worked out the implications of Creegan's lie. Some people would have asked for a lawyer at this point, but Dwight was at the tiller of a literal guilt trip, uncertain yet about the course he would follow.
"I didn't shoot a pregnant woman."
"Who did it then, Dwight?” asked Vecchio. “Did you loan the gun out to someone? You never knew what he used it for?"
Dwight did not know how to proceed. Creegan pitied the stunted mind and its vague, simplistic code, even though the deficiencies were to their advantage.
"That's what happened, isn't it, Dwight?” he prompted. “Like the detective said, you loaned it out and your friend used it for something you wouldn't have gone along with."
"It don't make sense,” Dwight said. “Why would he go all the way to Belmont?"
"Who, Dwight?” Creegan asked. “Who are we talking about?"
Dwight shook his head.
"You don't even have a car. Your dad says you didn't borrow his last night, either. So your buddy drove his car, the one you parked in the woods. You were not alone in this."
Vecchio said, “Dwight, in the little time we've spent together I can tell you're not like this other guy. You'll eventually have to tell us what went wrong at the gas station last night, but I don't see you doing this Belmont thing. It's too cold. What kind of person would kill a pregnant woman?"
Dwight was listening to something else inside his head.
"Dwight, listen to us," Creegan urged. “I can understand you not wanting to give up a friend. But what kind of friend would use your gun on such a bad thing and then not even tell you? Whoever he is, he's been holding out on you, leading you on. Setting you up. Hasn't that happened to you before?"
Dwight looked up at him and asked, “Is my dad still out there?"
"Yes, but you can't talk to him right now. We have to deal with this first."
"I don't want to talk to him. Can you tell him to go home?"
Creegan wondered if the kid would open up if he thought his father's dysfunctional aura was gone from here. He stood up and said, “I'll ask him to leave, Dwight, if that's what you want."
"Yeah, that's what I want. Does my mom know about this?"
Creegan looked toward Vecchio, who said, “We haven't been able to get hold of her yet. Would your father have called her?"
"He wouldn't say anything to her. They don't talk since she moved upstate. Can I call her?"
"When we finish here, Dwight."
The kid slumped back. Frank went outside and stood next to Stout. Fred had reloaded his cup, and the burnt smell annoyed even Frank's blurred receptors.
"I think he's getting ready,” Frank said.
"His mutt of an old man is out there with Ivey."
"Have we checked him out?"
"Domestic violence. Drunk driving. That's it."
"Maybe we should try harder to get hold of the mother."
Stout pushed off like a rowboat. Inside, Vecchio was killing time until Creegan got back. He asked Dwight if he had any other family besides the split parents. There had been a little brother, but he had died of pneumonia. Sick little guy. And a girl cousin that he liked lived out in California. They had lost touch.
Frank went back in. “Your dad left already."
"Did he say anything?"
"The detective says he just got up and walked out."
Dwight disappeared a little deeper into his clothes. Was he feeling abandoned or relieved?
Creegan felt some real panic. “Jeez, Dwight, it wasn't your dad that went with you last night, was it?"
He felt Vecchio stir slightly. But Dwight was absolutely convincing when he shook his head no. “My old man won't even let me help him change spark plugs. He ain't got no patience with me."
"Well, he's gone now."
"Was this thing in Belmont maybe an accident?” Dwight asked.
"Look at the pictures again. Twice in the face. Once is maybe an accident, but not twice. He put two shots into Turgot, too. It's a pattern."
Dwight took another sidelong look at the photos, his rickety faith collapsing further in on itself.
"It can't be."
"Is this guy the only one who treats you square?” Vecchio asked. “Is that why you're reluctant to tell us who he is?"
Dwight gave that some thought. “He doesn't mind having me along when he does things."
"What things?"
"Playin’ pool. Bowling, once in a while."
"Any other things?"
"I've been along when he's gone into a few stores and bad-mouthed the help if they don't speak English good. We stole stuff on them. This thing that happened last night—it's something we kicked around for a while."
"Shooting someone instead of just bad-mouthing them?"
"Nah. I mean it was supposed to be just a robbery, a real robbery, not just shoplifting. We wanted to send a message to the ones stealing jobs."
"Sounds like your pal tried out the robbery angle on his own first. In Belmont."
"It wasn't my gun,” Dwight said. “I lied about that."
Creegan said, “Our witness told us that you guys didn't hide your faces. If you didn't plan on killing the man, why would you let your faces hang out?"
Dwight leaned forward now, resting his chin on folded arms like a kid in school detention. “I didn't think he'd recognize me. I only been in there once or twice to fill lawn mowers."
"Hello, buddy!” Creegan said, imitating Turgot's voice and accent as best he could.
Dwight was startled. “Yeah. How'd you know he said that?"
"He said that to every guy that walked in. But he may have recognized you. At least your friend thought so, right? That's why he shot him. If the man could finger you, then you could finger your friend."
"Give us a name, Dwight,” Vecchio said. “We know you didn't pull the trigger, but it's because he recognized you that this man was killed. Admit it."
Dwight stared at a point between the two men and said nothing. His face was desolate rather than defiant.
Vecchio's fingers tapped the crime photos, and Dwight's gaze was drawn back to them.
Creegan leaned forward with his fingers laced and waited until Dwight looked up at him. “Son, you're wasting good impulses on a bad person. This guy's not worth your loyalty after what he did to that young woman and to Turgot."
He waited a beat.
"If you keep quiet now, you'll be sending yourself away to a very dark and lonely hole that will go on and on forever. Never stops. Can't you feel it closing in on you now? You had so little to do with this. You hooked up with bad company, that's all. Basically all you did was grab a pencil and draw that little swastika, like when you went out that night with the kids in the graveyard, right?"
Creegan thought he sensed tiny connections closing.
"Who's the real bad guy, Dwight? He's still out there with that gun, and he's not about what you thought he was, is he? Dwight, save yourself."
Dwight's features seemed to enlarge, like a dilated pupil. He said a name. Vecchio got an address from him and looked at Creegan, who said, “It's yours, man."
Vecchio got up and left. Creegan watched the momentary luster fading from Dwight's face. He unlaced his fingers and extended a hand. “Thanks, Dwight. You did the right thing."
The kid looked at the hand.
He said, “You talk like a priest, too."
Then he took the hand as if the act were something new to him. Creegan gave it a good, firm shake and let go. He grabbed Vecchio's pad and flipped it to a clean page. “Okay, let's get it all down and behind us. I'll stay with you through this."
"Can I call my mom after I'm done? I can call collect. She'll take a call from me."
"Sure. But before you do, we'll talk over the best way to break this to her. What about your dad?"
Dwight's only response was to pick up the pencil.
Later, when the grimy-looking paragraphs had all been set down, Creegan a
sked, “Dwight, do you want to see a real priest?"
"I ain't Catholic."
"What are you?"
"I'm nothing. I don't need a priest. I got you, right?"
* * * *
On Sunday a steady rain held back the sunrise. Frank woke to the sound but did not try to go back to sleep. A ruthless, forgotten dream was waiting for him there.
While he got the coffee going, he thought about Dwight—and Curtis, too, who had waited up for him with Ellen last night. The kid had had a good outing and did not let resentment get in the way of telling about it. Frank had done his best to relive the innings as if he'd been there. He would remember both boys at Mass today, along with Turgot—and Mike.
He used an umbrella when he went out to fetch the paper. The headline of the special edition said, “MARINE AND FRENCH BARRACKS BOMBED IN BEIRUT; SCORES KILLED."
Time charred to ash inside his head and heart. He was not sure how long it was before he was able to quiet his raging soul and hear the rain again.
He went in to wake his wife. As he stood over her, he glanced out the rear window and remembered the shy pride on Michael's face as the two of them had dragged the great tree limb into the shade.
Copyright © 2009 by Chris Muessig
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Fiction: THE MAN WHO DIDN'T PLAY GOLF by Simon Brett
Since his debut as a novelist in 1975, Simon Brett has authored 80 books, including two new titles for 2009. In March, Macmillan brought out the ninth of his series of novels set in the English village of Fethering (The Poisoning in the Pub). At about the same time this issue goes on sale, a newBrett book, Blotto, Twinks, and the Ex-King's Daughter, a fanciful adventure/crime novel, is due out in the U.K.
Leonard Wensam thought he had been very clever. Whenever his wife, Amanda, asked him how he'd spent his Thursday, he'd start to tell her about the round of golf he'd played up at the Westmacott Golf Club. That invariably shut her up. And soon she stopped asking.
When he'd first started talking about golf, when he'd spent all that money on a complete set of clubs in a red-and-white leather bag that zipped over the top, Amanda had tried to show an interest. She'd bought her husband a golf book that Christmas, and some little knickknack to hold tees for his birthday. But she couldn't sustain the illusion of showing an interest for long.
Theirs was a marriage that ticked over all right. At thirty-six, Amanda was fifteen years younger than her husband. She might have liked children, but Leonard had never been keen on the idea, and as usual, his view was the one that counted. What he wanted from his wife was regular sex and a decorative presence at business functions. Leonard Wensam didn't really like women, preferring the rough, shallow heartiness of male company. He thought husbands should have secrets from their wives.
And Amanda believed in wives having secrets from their husbands. One of the secrets she kept from Leonard was the fact that, as she had got to know him better during the early months of their marriage, she had found that she didn't like him very much. And as he got older and chubbier, she found she liked him less and less.
But the marriage ticked over all right.
And she'd read in a magazine that husbands and wives having different hobbies was the recipe for a successful relationship. Amanda sang in a local choir, and Leonard, who was immune to any form of classical music, never considered attending any of her concerts. So she felt no obligation to attend any of his tournaments at the Westmacott Golf Club.
Neither did Leonard ever ask her how the concerts had gone, so, having suffered an excruciating hour of tedium the first time she asked him how his round of golf had gone, Amanda subsequently felt no guilt about never again even making the inquiry. As the magazine had said, it was husbands and wives pursuing different interests that kept marriages alive. Amanda felt reasonably happy with the arrangement.
It was doubtful that she would have felt quite as happy had she known from the start the interest that her husband was actually pursuing: a thirty-nine-year-old red-haired divorcée called Juliette. Every Thursday, when Leonard Wensam said he was playing a round, he was, in fact, playing around.
He had semiretired from the accountancy business he had inherited from his father. With no perceptible effort on Leonard's part, the firm had grown satisfactorily over the years and made him a wealthy man. When his rapidly aging mother died, he would be even wealthier. He could afford to buy anything he wanted, and could have afforded to buy Amanda anything she wanted too. But it was not in Leonard's nature to be overgenerous, so he bought very little for either himself or his wife. He was, in fact, extremely mean.
Even Juliette was becoming aware of this shortcoming in her older lover. In the early days, when he had been trying to winkle his way into her bed, Leonard had lunched Juliette lavishly at up-market restaurants, but increasingly he abandoned this expensive foreplay in favor of bringing sandwiches and a bottle of wine round to her place. Not liking this diminution of her pampering, the woman he didn't play golf with on Thursdays looked forward to the moment when she would dump Leonard. But she was in no hurry. She liked sex, she liked the attentions of a man—even a man as mean as this one—and she was not going to get rid of him until she had a successor firmly in place.
Leonard was unaware of these thoughts going through his mistress's mind. He was too self-centered to be aware of the thoughts going through any mind but his own. He thought he had his life well organized—financial sufficiency, the secure marriage, the “bit on the side."
He was getting a bit fat, true. Last time he'd been to the quack he'd been told he ought to take more exercise. And that was something he intended to do ... when he got round to it.
Amanda had even once observed that Leonard's regular golf did not seem to be making him any fitter. But he had avoided the moment of potential embarrassment by the deft assertion that golfers needed to cultivate a low center of gravity. He hadn't put on weight; he had just redistributed muscle. And Amanda appeared to accept that lie as readily as she had accepted all the others.
Oh yes, Leonard Wensam thought he had been very clever.
It was his mother's death that provided the first potential threat to his nice, cozy little setup. The news was phoned through from the nursing home one Thursday morning, when Amanda was alone in the house. She didn't expect Leonard to be emotionally affected by his bereavement, but, uncaring though he undoubtedly was, she knew he wouldn't want to be seen as uncaring by other family members. He needed to be told quickly, so that he could start dutifully phoning round and making funeral arrangements. Leonard never took his cell phone with him on Thursday ("the one day a week when I can really forget about the office"), and the information was not the kind that could be passed on in a message. So Amanda decided she would have to go up to the Westmacott Golf Club in person to break the sad news to her husband.
Though she had driven past the entrance many times, she had never been inside the grounds. Many of her friends used to walk up there (the club permitted that, so long as the walkers kept off the fairways), and in one of his moments of good resolution about getting fitter, Leonard had even spoken of exercising there. But that was before he started the golf. Amanda felt strange being in a venue that must be so familiar to her husband, so much a part of his life. She parked amid the rows of Jaguars, BMWs, and Mercedes in front of the high mock-Tudor clubhouse, and looked around for someone who might know Leonard's whereabouts. A sign reading “Floyd Carter, Professional” seemed the most promising starting point. The young boy who was minding the shop said that Floyd was out on the practice greens and pointed Amanda toward a tall, rangy figure of about forty hunched over a putt. He had a row of six balls in front of him, and he moved along, slotting in each one with unerring accuracy.
As the last ball perched on the edge of the crowded hole, the professional looked up at her, squinting against the sunshine. He had strong teeth and his face was tanned, revealing as it relaxed a tracery of white lines around his bright blue eyes.
"I've practiced it a few times.” The voice had a slight antipodean twang. “I can usually hit the target.” He grinned easily. “What can I do for you, madam? You want to arrange a lesson?"
"No. I'm Mrs. Wensam.” The name didn't appear to mean anything to him. “I'm looking for my husband. Mr. Wensam,” she added unnecessarily.
The second name didn't prompt any more recognition than the first.
"My husband's a member here. He plays a round every Thursday."
"Wensam?” Carter shook his head. “No member of the name of Wensam here."
Amanda couldn't believe what she was hearing. Seeming aware of the potential ramifications of what he'd just said, Floyd Carter immediately went to the defense of a fellow male. “You probably got the name of the club wrong. A lot of other clubs around. Maybe he plays at one of them?"
"I know it's the Westmacott Golf Club. That's the one he always talks about."
The professional gave an easy shrug of his shoulders.
"Well, I know the names of all the members—even the midweek hackers who spray balls all over the course—and I tell you, not one of them is called Wensam.” Still, in the cause of male solidarity, he added tentatively, “Maybe he plays under a false name?"
"Why would he do that?"
"There are a lot of members whose golf's so bad they should play under false names."
In spite of herself, Amanda smiled. There was something very engaging about Floyd Carter. She had to force a bit of hauteur into her voice as she said, “I can't imagine my husband ever using a false name for any reason. He's not deceitful."
But even as she said the words, Amanda Wensam wondered whether she was telling the truth.
She watched as the professional gathered up his golf balls and again laid them out in a line in front of him. “Going to get them all down the hole again?” she asked.
"No, done enough putting for today. Have a go at that now. Just a few trick shots.” He pointed to the other side of the practice green where a wooden arrow on a pole pointed toward the first tee.