by Ed Gorman
“Do you think they spent time together when they weren’t at the mansion?”
“Now, how would you expect me to know something like that? I didn’t follow either of them around.”
“DePaul and Lou were good friends, though.”
“Yes. But Mr. Bennett was good friends with people he thought could do him some good. I don’t say that as criticism. That’s just the way business is done.”
The obvious question—obvious to me, anyway—was did Bennett know DePaul well enough to ask him to lie about the origins of a fire?
Then Turk was there, and I had to force myself to concentrate on talking to William Hughes. Jamie grabbed her purse. Lunch time. She waved good-bye to me. And so did Turk. The devious prick. Bye-bye, McCain. I’m going to be taking you for everything you’ve got.
“Mr. McCain, I really am busy. There’ll be a gathering here after the burial, and we need to get everything in order. I’m sure you can understand that.”
“Do you recall seeing Chief DePaul out at the estate close to the date that Karen Shanlon was killed in the fire?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Exactly what are you asking me?”
“I’m just wondering if DePaul was hanging around out there after the fire.”
“That’s an accusation, not a question. And I resent it for Mr. Bennett’s sake.”
“People have speculated about the fire, William.”
“No, they haven’t. You have speculated about the fire.”
“Bennett didn’t think she was suitable for the family.”
“Not wanting her in the family is very different from wanting her dead. The man just died, McCain. At least give him his due and let him rest in peace.”
He was gone then. He didn’t slam the phone. He hung up quietly, which was his style.
Then all my anger about Turk came flooding back. Good old Turk, shiftless no-talent bum and wanna-be surfer. I’d give him the honor of drowning him in the river, which was as close to an ocean as he’d ever get.
21
SHE WAS PARKING HER BLUE SCHWINN BICYCLE AS I LEFT THE office. In a Western-style red shirt and Levi cut-offs, she appeared older than she had at her stepfather’s house. Or maybe it was the hair, which she’d managed to turn into a pageboy. The heavy glasses worked against all of it. She was still the lonely kid who loved The Great Gatsby.
“Hi, Mr. McCain.”
“Hi, Nina.”
“My stepfather’d kill me if he knew I was here.”
“I think you’re probably right about that one.”
She approached me with the awkward grace of a leery animal. “I heard what you and my stepfather were talking about. He and my mother really got into it after you left. Then she found out he had a gun in the house.”
“Let’s talk inside. You like a Pepsi?”
“That’d be great. It’s so hot.”
“C’mon in. It’s cooler there.”
The first thing she did inside was look at my books. She passed quickly over the law tomes and went to the small bookcase where I kept novels. “We sort of have the same taste. Hemingway and Carson McCullers and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald and Malamud and Algren. But who’re these writers, Jim Thompson and Charles Williams?”
“They write crime fiction.”
“Is it any good?”
“Some of the best writing in America, but the critics are too snobby to review it. They think it’s trash.”
“Some of the covers are pretty wild.” She was examining a copy of All the Way by Charles Williams.
“The covers are usually a lot wilder than the books themselves.”
After getting her seated and pushing a Pepsi into her hand, I sat down behind my desk and got a smoke going. “You were telling me that your stepfather has a gun in the house. Doesn’t he usually?”
“No. Never. My mother’s little brother was killed when he found her dad’s pistol and accidentally shot himself. My mother absolutely won’t tolerate a gun in the house.”
“Not even a hunting rifle?”
“Huh-uh. She made Ralph promise that before they got married. And my mother’s never let him forget it, either.”
“Did he say why he thinks he needs a gun?”
She sipped her Pepsi. Her face still gleamed from the sweaty ride over here. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “He’s afraid of something. I’ve never seen him like this. You know how he is. I’m not putting him down—not exactly, anyway. There’re a lot worse stepfathers than Ralph.”
“That isn’t a great declaration of love.”
“Oh, I don’t love him. I’m not even sure my mother loves him. But most of the time he’s all right. My mother’s very pretty. I think that after his first wife left him, he decided to pay her back by finding the best-looking woman he could and then kind of flaunting her. My mother always laughs when she tells me about how he used to drag her to all these places just so his ex-wife would see them. But that’s how he is. He usually gets his way whether my mom’s comfortable with it or not. But the reason I came over here to talk to you was because after they got into this big fight about the gun she found in his suit coat pocket, I heard him say, ‘Honey, I’m scared. I need to protect myself.’ Boy, if you know anything about Ralph, him saying that he’s scared is really something. He always acts like he’s not afraid of anything or anybody. You know?”
“Did he say what he was scared of?”
“No. She asked him a bunch of times, but he said he couldn’t tell her. He said it was better that she didn’t know. Then he went out to the garage. That’s his haven when he wants to escape. She almost never goes out there, but today she did. And they started arguing again. I was upstairs reading with the radio on, and I could still hear them.”
“Could you hear what they were saying?”
“Not really. But their voices were real angry. I’m sure it was about the gun and what he’d said about being scared. I mean, if you tell somebody you’re scared, shouldn’t you tell them why you’re scared?”
“You’d think so.”
“My mom said that this all started this morning when Ralph heard about Roy Davenport. Ralph left the house for a while and then came back. That’s when she found the gun in his pocket.”
I guess the thought had been in my mind before. But either it had been vague and fleeting, or it had been in parts that I hadn’t fitted together. Lou Bennett and his enforcer Roy Davenport. If Bennett wanted to kill his son’s lover in a fire, who would he have turned to? Roy Davenport, of course. I hadn’t yet figured out how David Raines was involved, but his mood this morning revealed not just anger but fear.
“Is Ralph still home?”
“No. He took off before I did. My mom was so mad at him, she didn’t even say good-bye. But he said it, two or three times. She wouldn’t answer him. Guns really get to her.”
“Will you be mad at me if I ask you why you came to my office to tell me this?”
Behind the glasses the eyes closed, and she took a deep breath. When the brown eyes opened again, she said: “I guess I sorta lied about Ralph.”
“You mean about the gun?”
“Oh, no. No, I mean the part about him being okay. He’s not okay. He’s an a-hole. He bullies my mom and he bullies me. He even bullies our pets.”
“So you came here because you thought he might be in some trouble and you wanted me to find out if it’s true.”
“I don’t sound very nice, do I?” She pushed the glasses back on her fine straight nose. “It’s just—the other night, he hit my mom. Pretty hard, too. I saw him do it. He’d never really hit her like that before. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
One thing I’d gotten real tired of long ago in my law practice, men who hit women. “What night was that?”
“The night Mr. Bennett was killed.”
“Did you hear him talk about Bennett dying?”
“My mother talked to him about it. We were all sitting in the living room watching TV,
and during commercials she asked him about it—you know how you do when commercials come on—but he’d just sort of grunt at her or give her real short answers. My mother kept looking at me like I wonder what’s wrong with him. Usually when something like this happens, he goes on all night. He always says we should build more prisons. He doesn’t think enough people are in prison. He thinks you should be in prison.”
I laughed. “I heard him say that FDR belonged in prison, too. I’d say that’s pretty good company. How about the phone? Did you hear him talking to anybody about it on the phone?”
“No. But Roy Davenport called for him when he was gone. I got the call. This was the same afternoon.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“Just that Ralph should call him back.”
“Did your mother ever mention Davenport?”
“Oh, yes. He scared her. Somebody told her a couple of years ago that he carried a gun. That was all it took.”
“Did she argue with Ralph about it?”
“Several times. She always said she wouldn’t have him in our home, even though Ralph and he and Mr. Bennett played golf together and had poker night once a week.”
“Did Ralph say where he was going when he left?”
“No. And most of the time he does. He wants her to know where he is and he wants to know where she is. That’s why he calls home so often during the day. He doesn’t trust her. She’s still really pretty. She keeps saying that someday I’ll look like her, but I doubt it.” Pain in the last sentence and a frown. “They had a ninth-grade dance at the end of school this year. Nobody asked me. I asked one boy, but he turned me down. I think my mom took it harder than I did. Ralph said it was because I was quote a bookworm unquote. You know what he said?”
“What?”
“He actually said boys don’t like girls who read books. He told me to ask the cheerleaders if any of them were big readers. He dared me to. I would’ve been mad, but it was so stupid. Can you see me going up to a cheerleader and asking her if she likes to read?” She had an endearing little laugh and very bright white teeth.
“You mean you didn’t do it?”
“Oh, sure. That was the very first thing I did at school the next day. At lunch I sat at the cheerleaders’ table and took a poll.”
“Well, I’d hope so. At least you know good advice when you hear it.”
“You’re funny. Thanks. Now I don’t feel so bad coming here. I’m just trying to get back at Ralph for bullying my mom, but I heard you asking him questions and I thought maybe I could help you.”
“You’ve helped me a lot.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She pushed up from the chair. She was a kid and a gangly one and a sweet one, and best of all she was a bookworm, reserved for boys who—despite Ralph’s admonition—would cherish her for that. Among many, many other virtues.
“Our cat picked up fleas, so I have to go to the vet to get him a new collar. He’s driving the whole house crazy. We’re scratching all the time. Ralph hates pets anyway. So there’s another thing they can fight about.”
She leaned across the desk, her hand out. We shook. “Thank you, Mr. McCain.”
“My pleasure. While we were talking I wrote my home phone on the back of this card. I’d keep it in your pocket so Ralph doesn’t find it.”
“Oh, God, that’s all I’d need, is for him to find out that I came here.”
“See you later, bookworm.”
She favored me with that sweet laugh again.
Roy Davenport had been killed in his garage around six A.M.He didn’t usually leave the house until nine A.M. Even Cliffie wondered what had brought him out so early. He had been shot three times in the chest with a handgun. Ballistic information was forthcoming.
Pauline had slept through the shooting. She was awakened at seven o’clock or thereabouts when she heard the dog whining outside. She went to the window (my friend Molly Weaver told me this on the phone) and saw the dog standing outside the garage, whimpering. She sensed something wrong and grabbed her robe and hurried to the garage for a look. She found that Davenport had fallen between his car and hers. He was dead. She went in and called the police. When the cops got there, they found she’d polished off the better part of a pint bottle of Jim Beam. She was fighting her fears and her drunkenness. She had to force herself to speak past the booze so they could understand her. She demanded police protection until she could leave town, which she insisted would be before sundown. She told them she’d be going to her parents’ home in Missouri. She said she’d be taking the Greyhound. Cliffie said absolutely not, that if she tried to leave she’d find herself in jail. They ended with a compromise. She’d agree to stay for three days and then she’d be free to travel. She’d reside at the Harcourt Arms hotel downtown.
The desk clerk at the Harcourt was a Shriner. I knew this because he was wearing his fez. He was also wearing sleeve garters and a bow tie. His calendar apparently ran out of pages sometime in the early 1930s. He’d been writing in a large notebook when I approached the desk. When he heard me, he looked up. Judging by the cold hard stare he gave me, I might have been Jack the Ripper.
“I have a son in the military, McCain. I just want you to know that. And the missus and I are very proud of him.”
“You mean the rally the other night. If you think about it, we’re on the side of your son. There’s no reason to be in this war. And Johnson’s going to keep expanding it and more and more of our soldiers are going to die.”
He wanted to respond, but the black phone on his desk rang. He answered and started giving information about rates and availabilities. The Harcourt was second-rate, but a good second-rate. The lobby was clean and bright with solid if inexpensive couches and chairs and plants and flowers that had been well taken care of. The walls were decorated with framed black-and-white photographs of downtown Black River Falls over the years.
The three men reading newspapers and magazines weren’t the old sad duffers you saw in most second-rate hotels. They were middleaged in good clothes. They were most likely salesmen of various types.
While I waited for the desk clerk to get off the phone, two more men came in. They each toted a suitcase, they each smoked cigars, they each exuded the kind of back-slapping good will that could drive me out of a room in less than two minutes. They, too, were wearing their fezzes.
When he got off the phone, the clerk saw his two new customers. He smiled at them and said, “Just a minute, boys.”
He was done arguing with me. He had work to do. “What do you need, McCain?”
I asked what room Pauline was staying in. He checked and told me and then he turned to his friends. He let me get all the way to the elevator before he started talking about me. I got whispered about a lot in this town. Sometimes I wanted to kill somebody, I got so tired of it. But where would I start, when so many people had it in for me? As the elevator reached the first floor from the fourth, I looked back at the desk. The clerk was leaning over and nodding in my direction as he spoke. The two customers were staring at me and shaking their heads. It was probably a mercy that I couldn’t hear what was being said.
The narrow hall was a fault of various eras. The wallpaper and the carpeting were as dusty as ones you’d find in a hot-sheet hotel. The paintings were garish and lurid even though they were nature scenes. Probably local art. The odors were oldest of all. There were windows at either end of the hall, closed now for the air conditioning. But decades of smoking, drinking, screwing, and being sick in various ways tattooed the air forever. In the thirties, a man masquerading as a doctor had butchered a woman up here by giving her what he called an abortion. There was such outrage that a mob stormed the police station and overpowered the night officers. They got all the way back to the cells before two Highway Patrol cars pulled up. They went in with sawed-off shotguns and said they’d kill anybody who didn’t leave the building immediately. Funny how persuasive a sawed-off can be.
Bef
ore I knocked, I leaned against the door. Voices. Pauline’s I recognized, not the man’s. I’d brought my gun. Somebody was killing people. I had no doubt they wouldn’t mind adding me to the list.
The voices halted with my first knock. After a pause, Pauline said: “Who is it?”
“McCain.”
The man cursed.
“I can’t talk to you now. You need to come back.”
“When?”
“Later.”
“We need to talk now. You could be in a lot of danger.”
The man’s whisper was violent. Instructions.
“I’m fine. I just want to go back to sleep. You woke me up.”
“You must talk in your sleep.”
“What?”
“I said you must talk in your sleep. I heard you talking in there just a minute ago.”
More whispered instructions.
“That was the TV. You need to come back later.” She had begun pleading now.
“All right. But we really need to talk.”
I walked away. I made my steps decisive. I was walking away, I was walking down the stairs, I was leaving the hotel.
I went back immediately and flattened myself against the west side of the door.
They started talking again, this time without the whispers. The male voice was familiar now. So was the word he used three times. “Letter.”
This went on for ten minutes. I heard somebody coming up the stairs. I eased on over to the room next to Pauline’s and bent over as if I was letting myself in. The fat salesman with the two big leather bags was out of breath. The cigarette tucked into the left corner of his mouth didn’t help his breathing. He just nodded as he started to pass me. He couldn’t wave with his hands full, and speaking was a bitch with a smoke dangling from your lips.
He was apparently so eager to get into his room that he didn’t check back on me. He got the door open, dragged the suitcases inside and vanished.
I took up my previous position.
A few minutes later, Pauline’s door opened, and I moved. I shoved him so hard and so fast that he stumbled back three or four feet before his legs folded and he landed on the floor. I kicked the door shut behind me.
