“¿Quién sabe?” I said.
Now that Claude was in jail, I knew Lucy would want to see him, at least to say goodbye, so I suggested Babe take the Jeep back to Springfield. Lucy and I would drive back later in the day and I’d pick up my car at the diner.
“You sure?”
“Are you kidding? You saved our asses last night.”
I got up, found my bag, and fished around for my car keys. Babe rooted around in her bag, too.
“What are you looking for, a cell?”
“I’ll give you a cell phone, too. Here, take mine. I have Neil’s cell at home—if you need to reach me just speed-dial number 1.” She gave me her phone and I shoved it in my pocket.
“This may come in handier.” She handed me something in a leopard-print case. It was Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle, better known as a Taser, model number C2.
“Take it. You never know.”
Thirty-seven
The idea of zapping someone with a Taser made me so nervous, I didn’t even want to hold the damn thing. But I thought back to the previous night, planning to defend myself with a pitchfork and a tarp like some horticultural gladiator, and I relented. I let Babe show me how to use it.
The Taser Babe owned was a non–law enforcement, consumer model and fired two small electrodes that would work as far as fifteen feet away from the intended target. After firing its one charge, it could also be used as a direct contact stun gun that could penetrate up to two inches of clothing.
“You couldn’t kill someone with this, could you?”
“Oh, you mean like a pitchfork?” She had a point. You could kill someone with virtually anything, but under normal circumstances the Taser wasn’t lethal. It sent a charge to the target’s central nervous system, temporarily incapacitating him. She handed me two cartridges.
“Just in case,” she said. “But once should be enough. Don’t get crazy. And then run like hell. Don’t hang around admiring your handiwork.” I didn’t ask how she’d developed this strategy and whether she’d ever had occasion to use it, but now I knew why she wasn’t afraid to be alone in the diner at night.
I left a note for the still sleeping Lucy and walked Babe out to the Jeep, which was practically hidden by a deluxe coach parked diagonally in four spaces. Maybe business was picking up at Titans.
“If you’re not back by tonight,” Babe said, “I’m calling the cops, do you read me?” I promised to check in in a few hours if Lucy and I weren’t going to make it home by the time Babe closed the diner.
Babe drove off and I headed back into the hotel for my first caffeine fix of the day. Laurie in the Titans coffee shop was alone, reading the paper at the counter.
“Looks like they caught those boys.”
“Looks like,” I said. I glanced at the paper over her shoulder for a while, then she shoved it my way and moved behind the counter.
“Counterman’s late. Coffee?”
“Please.”
Claude Crawford was in custody until Betty Smallwood could raise two hundred fifty thousand dollars for bail. Even at ten dollars a pop, that would take a lot of notarizing. I didn’t see it happening.
According to the paper, the physical evidence found at the scene of the murder linked both of the Crawfords to the crime, but Billy’s lack of an alibi at the time of Nick’s death made him the prime suspect. Billy had escaped by disappearing into the hills behind the abandoned factory on Route 123, where he’d been hiding. The media took that as an admission of guilt.
“You never know about people,” the waitress said, bringing my coffee.
Apart from the occasional abduction they had committed, nothing I’d heard about the Crawfords suggested they were psychopaths. Why would they tell Lucy to talk to Nick and then kill him right before she did? Was it, as the waitress thought, just to get her as a reliable, non–Native American alibi? Or to get Nick’s defenses down by having him think he was going to meet a good-looking woman instead of a man with a gun? And why do it at the hotel? There must have been a dozen less public places for the murder to happen.
Laurie sat down again and I offered her the paper back; she shook her head. “I’m finished. Too much sad news. You just never know. Billy always seemed like the nice one. We had a homeless guy freeze to death near the Dumpster two winters ago.” She looked at me as if I should remember, so I nodded politely.
“Next week Billy shows up with a couple of cheap sleeping bags. Gave them to the old guys who scrounge around back there.”
A woman hurried by the coffee shop. Laurie said hello but the woman didn’t seem to hear and kept walking, her cowboy boots clacking on the tile floor as she rushed by.
“Now there goes one of the nice ones. Jackie Connelly. She and I went to high school together. A beautiful girl. Athlete. She could have gone to the Olympics. Got in a little trouble, but, you know, righted the ship. Kept her baby girl, finished school. She worked two, three jobs for years. Even cleaned houses so that child would never want for anything. Now she’s got her own little one.” It took me awhile before I realized the the baby that Laurie was talking about was Chantel Crawford.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two figures loitering by the elevator—one slim and one very large, in a leather jacket.
“Okay, that’s it.” The waitress didn’t know what I meant.
I folded the paper and scribbled my room number on the check. Alone, on the highway, at night, it was one thing. But in a hotel lobby in broad daylight I felt safe enough to confront them. The big one had the nerve to smile at me. He had on sunglasses and a tweed bucket hat as a half-assed disguise but he wore an enormous black leather jacket like the one I remembered from our first encounter in the mini-mart.
“Can I help you two?” I said.
The men looked at each other stupidly as if they didn’t know what I meant.
“You’re not very good at keeping yourselves hidden. If you’re going to sneak around following people you should try to be a little less obvious. The hat and the glasses? That’s like we’re not supposed to know Clark Kent is Superman because of his eyeglasses.” More simpleminded looks.
“Forget it. The liquor store should be opening soon. Go get some more vodka, drink some courage, and then tell Sergei you saw me,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “But I want you to know I’m not scared of you. And if I ever see you again, I’ll be armed,” I said, thinking of the Taser and glad that I’d taken it from Babe.
By this time, my hands were shaking as I pushed the button for the elevator. Still, I felt good about standing up for myself and when the car came I swaggered inside and stood there glaring at them until the doors closed. Just as they did I heard one of the men say to the other, “Bella ragazza, ma lei deve essere matta.”
Thirty-eight
“No, no, you don’t understand. I’ve lost it. I verbally abused two Italians who are here to buy discount Fendi at the outlets.”
Like a true friend, Lucy was sympathetic. “At least they thought you were beautiful.” She stored the shopping info for later.
And crazy, if my Pimsleur Italian course served me well. I needed to get back to Springfield to my little garden business, where the only one chasing me was Caroline Sturgis, who’d left two more messages I hadn’t had a chance to play.
Lucy called her producer to tell her the casino story had changed. Now that it was murder and not just racketeering they were even more interested. Her plan was to return with a cameraman in three days. In the meantime we’d visit Claude in jail and then get the hell out of Dodge.
“When did you wear the leather pants?” she asked as she watched me pack. In all the drama of Lucy’s return, I’d forgotten about Oksana. I told Lucy about our meeting at the casino.
“You think she was in love with Vigoriti?” she asked.
“Crush, maybe. She’s such a kid. And a little naive for someone who’s seen as much as she has.”
In the lobby I searched for Hector and Oksana. I didn’t see them, bu
t the ever-cheerful Amanda was there, measuring her corpse flower. I dragged Lucy over to say hello.
“So this is the famous corpse flower,” she said, feigning interest. Amanda gave her the two-minute description of the titan arum. The girl was convinced the plant would bloom in the next twenty-four hours and be in flower for two days before it faded.
“Then it’s really gonna smell like a dead body,” Amanda said. “Not just like meat that’s gone a little funky.” She smiled as if she couldn’t wait. “I’ve invited some of the kids from school for a Goth party in the bar when it does.” I didn’t know if selling a few extra beers to coeds with heavy eye makeup was Bernie’s original plan when he agreed to host the corpse flower, but any extra business was not a bad thing.
Lucy had drifted; she wasn’t really listening to Amanda and at that point neither was I.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I got it,” Lucy said. “We shoot this for the piece on the murder. Listen, we were going to be here today anyway. Why don’t we stay another night? I’ll get a cameraman up here to shoot the party and I’ll treat you to something from Fendi on the way home. Deal?”
If the sign of an enlightened mind is the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, at that moment Lucy was enlightened. She hated herself for exploiting Nick’s murder, but couldn’t resist the attraction of a good story.
“We might be on television?” Amanda said. She grew red with excitement. “Are you serious? Omigod, I have to call people. Everyone will come.”
“Don’t get too excited. It might not even make the final edit; I really want the plant.” Lucy took out her business card and gave it to Amanda. “Can you give me some notice before this baby blooms?” Amanda was apoplectic with joy and nodded so furiously I thought she was going to do herself an injury.
At the front desk we told them we were extending for another day, and asked the bellman to bring our bags back to the room we’d just checked out of. Then we headed out for the county courthouse, where Claude was being held.
Driving back through Shaftsbury, we passed Georgie’s convenience store. The Powerball jackpot was up to one hundred and eight million dollars; a few cars with New York and Massachusetts plates were parked outside, the owners loading up on tickets. The shades were down in Betty Smallwood’s third-floor office.
In the absence of a metal detector, the desk sergeant at the courthouse simply asked if we had any guns, knives, pepper sprays, or sharp objects and he believed us when we said no. The prisoner was only allowed one visitor at a time, so I stayed outside in the waiting room while Lucy met with Claude.
I’d already seen the paper and the only other reading material was a two-year-old copy of US magazine; I was embarrassed that I knew the happy celebrity couple on the cover had, to use the magazine’s terminology, already gone splitsville.
I walked around the small building reading the wanted notices: deadbeat dads and runaways mostly, a few foreclosure auctions, and the freshly minted poster of Billy Crawford, fugitive.
Behind me, someone else was subjected to the same gentle line of questioning as Lucy and I had been. Who are you here to see? What are you bringing?
“What about you, little guy? Are you smuggling anything in in that diaper?” The cop chuckled and playfully patted the baby’s bottom. Then Chantel and Sean Crawford sat down on the bench next to me.
Thirty-nine
Chantel’s face was clear, unlined, and unmade-up except for a thin blue stripe of eyeliner, which made her small eyes look even smaller. She wore skinny jeans tucked into fake Timberland boots and a fringed jacket that I’d seen for sale at my local Wal-Mart months ago while I’d been buying seeds. Her long curly perm was growing out and had reached the stage I remembered thinking of as “Tut head.” That aside, she was pretty. And the kid was adorable—wide face, dark eyes, and straight dark hair, the kind of face you’d see in a baby food commercial.
I didn’t know how many other prisoners there were in the county courthouse that day, but I thought I knew who she was there to see.
“Sweet little boy,” I said.
“Thanks.” After an awkward minute or two she asked me if I was there to see Claude.
“Yes and no. My friend is in with him. She’s a journalist,” I added, instantly feeling elitist for saying journalist and not reporter, even though strictly speaking Lucy was neither. “They’re friends, sort of.”
She nodded. “Claude’s got a lot of women friends,” she said, rolling her eyes. “He’s my brother-in-law. Was, I guess. Is he still my brother-in-law if my husband is dead?”
Damned if I knew. Did it matter? She bounced the baby on her knee, alternately staring at the kid and then off into space. Even though I knew, I asked her name.
“Chantel.”
“Pretty name.”
“My mother was reading a romance novel when she was pregnant with me—one of the characters was named Chantel.” She’d obviously told the story a hundred times before and delivered it with an equal measure of embarrassment and pride until she knew how the story would be received. I smiled.
“She doesn’t even remember the name of the book. I guess I should be glad she wasn’t reading Harry Potter. I coulda been called Frodo or something.” So Mom was the reader in the family, not her.
“And who’s this strapping fellow?” I asked, tugging on a tiny denim sleeve.
“This is my little Sean-ny.”
His real name was Sean, after her favorite actor, Sean Penn. But Chantel thought Seanny sounded Indian, even though we were in the wrong part of the country for Shawnee. Chantel’s husband, Bobby Crawford, had been killed in a house fire just before Seanny was born.
“They said he was drinking but I don’t know. He promised he wouldn’t . . . after we found out about Seanny. I think he just fell asleep with a cigarette, that’s all. He was gonna try to stop that, too.
“Everything burned up in the fire. My mom let us move in for a while, got Seanny new baby things. She even got a lawyer to look into Bobby’s insurance. I didn’t care but she looked after us. She was thinking about Seanny. She said we had to make sure everyone knew Sean was Bobby’s little boy. You know how some people talk when there’s money involved.”
“I think I may have seen your mother at Titans. Is her name Jackie?”
“That’s her. She’s real young. People sometimes take us for sisters.” I was working on the math when Chantel told me her mother had only been sixteen years old when she gave birth.
“Mom was away from home, at a competition. My biological father was an athlete from another school. She never even told him. I mean what for? Was he supposed to drop out of high school and come marry some girl who lived two thousand miles away?”
It sounded like the mantra that Jackie Connelly must have repeated to herself and her little girl when they were both growing up.
“Anyway,” Chantel said, “she had a good weekend. She just missed one double axel, otherwise she would have medaled.”
Lucy finally came out and the sheriff’s assistant ushered Chantel and baby Sean into the visitor’s room.
“Was that . . . ?” Lucy asked, turning around to check Chantel out. “God, she looks so young.”
“She is,” I said. “How’s Claude doing?”
Claude Crawford was doing well, considering he’d lost two brothers in six months. “He’s got a warrior’s attitude,” Lucy said. If she was no longer in love, she was still infatuated. We walked out to the car and sat in silence for a few minutes. I gave her some time. She drove zombielike through the town until I made her pull over.
“I’m not getting on the highway with you like this, even for one exit,” I said. “Let me drive and you tell me what happened in there.”
There were no tissues in the rental car, just a stack of rough, coffee-stained Dunkin’ Donuts napkins; they would have to do for the tears I knew were coming. She blotted her eyes to push the tears back, and then held up her bangs briefly, keepi
ng the napkins there as if her head were about to explode.
“They wouldn’t have even been at the hotel except for me. Neither would Nick. Nick might be alive if it wasn’t for this stupid story. And who cares anyway if there’s another casino in Connecticut? If people want to gamble they’ll figure out a way to do it. Remember the Te-Adoros in Brooklyn?”
The waterworks started again and I flattened out more of the crumpled napkins for her to use.
I did remember the Te-Adoros. They were cheap cigars. Like Coca-Cola, the company gave large red and white signs to anyone who promised to carry their product. Seemingly overnight, dozens of independent stores with the same Te-Adoro signs opened up in Brooklyn and in addition to selling cigars, newspapers, and cigarettes, they did a nice business with illegal video poker machines discreetly tucked away behind the cases of soda and bottled water.
“It’s all my fault,” she sobbed.
“It’s not.” I didn’t add that she, too, could have been killed by whatever lunatic had shot Nick, but presumably she knew that. At least in her more lucid moments. She took a deep breath. “Billy didn’t kill Nick.”
“And you know this because his brother told you? What possible motivation could he have for lying?”
“He’s not lying. Billy and some homeless guy saw it happen. Now that Billy’s disappeared they’ll say he did it. And the real killer will come after Claude because he thinks Claude knows.”
“Does he know who the killer is?”
Lucy shook her head. Trying to keep his brother safe, Billy hadn’t told him who he’d seen put a hole in Nick Vigoriti’s head. I had my doubts as to whether Billy’s strategy would work. Whoever killed Nick would want to make sure neither of the Crawford brothers talked, and you can’t talk if you’re dead. He’d also want to make sure Lucy didn’t talk. And me. I opened the passenger-side door and walked around to the driver’s side.
“Well, somebody knows. Slide over,” I said. She looked at me through puffy, veiny eyes.
The Big Dirt Nap Page 16
