A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

  I got to the hill just east of Gateville and sped up toward the crest with my head out the side window, scanning the sky for black smoke. But the sky was clear and blue, and there were no sirens above the sounds of the traffic. I got to the top of the hill and looked down.

  The white marble gateposts of Crystal Waters stood like Corinthian soldiers at rest, calm against the dark green yews by the entrance. No smoke, no flames, no flashing lights. Just three men standing next to a pale blue pickup truck parked on the grass outside the brick wall, right next to the entrance. I rode the brake down the hill, taking deeper breaths.

  I got close enough to recognize Stanley Novak, talking to two workmen in pale blue coveralls. All three were staring into a hole in the ground like they were discussing planting a tree. They looked relaxed. I tapped my horn and waved to Stanley, swung around, and parked fifty feet down along the grass shoulder. He hurried up to the Jeep before I could get out.

  “Chernek’s office told me to get right over here,” I said through the open side window. “What’s the rumpus?”

  Stanley leaned closer to be heard above the traffic going past. “Something blew that lamppost out of the ground, but I don’t think it’s related to our problem.”

  He opened my door before I could stop him. I got out.

  “Those workers don’t know about the note,” he said, closing the door.

  “Mum’s the word.”

  We started toward the two workers.

  The hole was rough-edged, three feet in diameter and three feet deep. Next to it, a black metal lamppost, jagged at the base where it had been ripped from its cement footing, lay on the grass like an uprooted tree.

  The taller workman was down on his knees, sniffing inside the hole. “I still don’t smell anything,” he said, getting up. He looked at Stanley. “Best we call the gas company.” Next to him, the other worker nodded.

  I bent down. The inside of the hole was strewn with chunks of broken cement. I couldn’t smell anything except the sweetness of freshly cut grass.

  “Get your shovels and poke down in there first,” Stanley said quickly. “See if you can locate the pipe.”

  Both workers looked at him, surprised. I did, too. “The shovels might give a spark,” the taller one said.

  “Use the wood handles, then. Let’s make sure there’s a gas pipe down there before we call the gas company.”

  Neither of the workmen moved.

  “Look,” Stanley said to the tall workman, “after the explosion at Sixteen Chanticleer, any reporter getting hold of this will see it as the same kind of explosion, and then it will hit television or the papers. Let’s be sure it’s gas, is all I’m saying.”

  The tall workman looked back at Stanley. “What else could it be?”

  “Kids, with a coffee can full of cherry bombs.” Stanley turned and touched my elbow, ending the discussion. We started walking back to the Jeep.

  I waited until we were out of earshot. “You really think that big iron lamppost was toppled by kids with fireworks?”

  “Fourth of July was last week. Kids here, their parents buy them cherry bombs, M-80s, skyrockets. Put enough of that stuff together, you can blow up anything.”

  We leaned against the hood of the Jeep and watched the workmen pull blue-handled shovels from their pickup truck. It occurred to me then that everything matched in Gateville: the truck, the workers’ coveralls, Stanley’s uniform shirt, even the shovel handles. It was all pale blue, the color of a clear sky, as if serenity could be painted on.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Stanley looked at his watch. “Four hours ago, at two thirteen, I was making my rounds.”

  I remembered the way he cruised Chanticleer Circle in his blue station wagon, lap after lap, scanning the empty lawns and the shut-tight houses for movement that didn’t belong. I used to wonder how he stood the monotony, because hardly anything ever moved in Gateville. The residents were never out. The women didn’t talk across hedges, their kids didn’t toss footballs on the lawns, their toddlers didn’t wobble big-wheeled tricycles down the sidewalk. The hedges had been grown tall, to seclude, not to talk over. There were no sidewalks. And the kids were shadows, invisible, gone after school to supervised activities and then later whisked down to basements, to numb themselves with home theaters and video games. What movement there was in Gateville came from landscapers pushing lawnmowers, house painters carrying cans from trucks, maids or nannies exiting beat-up cars left respectfully out on the street. Caretakers, silently serving unseen masters, like workers in ghost towns.

  “I heard a loud noise out by the road,” Stanley was saying. “I looked up and saw dirt and dust in the air outside of the wall. I figured a car accident—a car rolled, kicked up dirt. I drove out the gate, met one of my guys running from the guardhouse. We saw that.” He pointed ahead at the lamppost lying beside the hole.

  I looked at him. “No note?”

  He shook his head. “I checked the Board’s mailbox right after the explosion. Nothing.”

  In front of us, the two workmen, holding their shovels by the blade, poked gingerly into the hole.

  We watched for another minute, and then Stanley asked, “Anything new at your end?”

  It surprised me, because I thought he would have talked with the Bohemian. “I haven’t done anything since my report to Chernek. I told him the threat could be real, that you should take the letter to the police.”

  “I was wondering if you are investigating other things.”

  “I just did the letter and the envelope, Stanley.”

  We went back to watching the workmen. They probed into the hole slowly with their shovel handles, as if at pythons coiled in a pit.

  Traffic had picked up on the highway alongside of us. It was approaching six thirty, white-collar rush hour. Every few minutes, a Mercedes, B.M.W., or Jaguar, every third one of them painted black, slowed to turn into Gateville, their drivers oblivious to the workmen outside the wall. When I lived there, I used to wonder what it was with all that black. It wasn’t just the men with their luxury sedans. It was their pert, frosted blond wives, too, driving the most enormous of S.U.V.’s. Most of those were black, too, each looking big enough to haul four caskets, stacked properly. Amanda drove a white Toyota. Reason enough to love her, I’d told her once.

  The tall workman set down his shovel, bent down, and began lifting chunks of cement out of the hole. Then he got down on his knees and started scooping out dirt with cupped hands. After a minute, he stood up and gave us a wave. We walked back to the hole.

  “I don’t understand it, Mr. Novak,” the worker said, brushing off his hands on the sides of his overalls. “No gas pipe, just the wiring for the light post.”

  I bent down to look into the hole. Electrical wires of every color, reds, blues, greens, yellows, and more, severed by the blast, spilled out of a ripped metal utility pipe and lay on the black dirt like multicolored baby serpents. There was no gas pipe.

  I kept my face calm, trying to ignore the vein pulsing in my forehead, as I thought about how much force must have been needed to pulverize the concrete. Stanley cocked his head slightly, warning me with his eyes to say nothing. He turned to the workmen. “Loose-fill the hole so no one can fall in.”

  I started back to the Jeep. He caught up with me.

  “No way that was done with cherry bombs,” I said. I jerked open the door to the Jeep before Stanley could pull at it like a doorman, got in, and looked back out. His forehead sparkled with beads of sweat.

  “Call the cops, Stanley, or I will.” I twisted the ignition key, fed the engine too much gas, and cut ruts into his precious green parkway as I lurched onto the highway.

  Five

  My cell phone rang at seven thirty the next morning, one minute after I’d switched it on. It was the Bohemian, and he didn’t take time to schmooze.

  “You can’t go to the police.”

  “Your bomber is sending you another message.”

  “
By blowing up a lamppost?”

  “By showing you he can do it anyplace.”

  “We must wait for his letter.”

  “What if he doesn’t send one? He never did send a follow-up to collect money the last time.”

  “We must wait.”

  “Go to the police, or I will.”

  “You think the Maple Hills police can solve this?” His voice rose.

  “No, but they’ll pass it off to the F.B.I. or the A.T.F. They’ll check the soil around the lamppost for D.X.12 and start a professional investigation.”

  There was a pause. “It was D.X.12,” he said.

  “You know this already?”

  “I had Stanley take a soil sample to a lab last night.”

  “That kills your theory that the first bomb was aimed at the Farradays. Your bomber is targeting all of Crystal Waters.”

  The Bohemian said nothing.

  “The Feds might be able to trace the D.X.12,” I said.

  “The police tried after the Farraday bomb. D.X.12 hasn’t been manufactured since the sixties. There are no sources to trace.”

  “Then somebody’s got an old cache,” I said, “and that’s a clue you, Stanley, or I don’t know how to handle. The Feds might.”

  “People will be ruined.”

  “People will be dead.”

  He gave an exasperated sigh. “Vlodek, ask yourself: Does he want to kill, or does he want money? He blew up a house when nobody was home. Now he’s blown up a lamppost safely outside the walls. He’s an extortionist, not a killer. He wants money. The lamppost increases the pressure, perfects his position. He’s priming us. He’ll send another note, we’ll pay him, and he’ll go away.”

  “How can you be sure? He hasn’t contacted you for payment. He might just keep setting off bombs.”

  “He will communicate. He’s a businessman. He wants money.”

  The Bohemian sounded so cocksure: a bomber as businessman, rational, perfecting his position. It made it all the more chilling.

  He went on, each word calm and well reasoned. “Our bomber knows publicity would ruin house values. That’s his lever against us. But it cuts both ways. He fears publicity, too. If this gets out, we’ll have no choice but to bring in the police, and that will end his chances for money. That’s why he won’t kill. This is a kind of blackmail, Vlodek. We must handle it ourselves.”

  “We just wait?”

  “He’ll contact us for the money.”

  “And once paid, he will stop?”

  “He knows our resources are not infinite. If he gets too greedy, he knows we’ll have no choice but to involve the authorities.”

  “Is everything in your world always so logical, or are you just practiced at making it sound that way?” I struggled to keep my voice as sure as his, to not let him hear I was furious with his calm logic—and furious with myself, because he was manipulating me, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

  “The lamppost was a heads-up, a little notification. Obviously it will be followed by a money demand, with instructions.”

  “What if you’re wrong? The police can give you security that Stanley Novak and his band of gatekeepers can’t.”

  “Do you recall the two groundsmen digging in the hole yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “A tall man and a shorter one?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe the shorter one.”

  I thought for a minute and realized I couldn’t, at least not well. The tall man had drawn my attention; he’d done the talking.

  “The shorter groundsman is from a private security firm,” the Bohemian said. “You didn’t see it, but he had a gun. There are others as well, acting as landscapers or contractors.”

  “None of them did any good yesterday.”

  “It was outside the gate.”

  “The police need to see the note, and they need to know about yesterday.”

  “Let me handle this, Vlodek.” He clicked off so smoothly it took a few seconds to realize I was listening to dead air. He’d flicked me off like lint.

  I went over to the Mr. Coffee, thought better of it, and balanced my cup on the pile in the sink instead. I was already breathing like I was running uphill. I went outside to sit on the city bench facing the river.

  The only thing worse than being a paper tiger is being the last one to realize it. I could growl in the air all I wanted, but the Bohemian had me pegged. He knew I wouldn’t call the cops.

  Point One: I wasn’t a licensed investigator, or an attorney, but the Bohemian would have checked around, learned I always respected the confidentiality of my clients. Point Two: If I ever did go to the cops against the wishes of a client, I’d be ruined in the business I was trying to rebuild, and afterward, the best I could hope for would be a greeter’s job in a discount store. Point Three: Amanda’s three-million-dollar house was involved. She didn’t have much cash, just that big-buck residence and a fortune in art. Losing the house would jeopardize her ability to keep the artworks, and the Bohemian knew I’d go to any length to protect her.

  Points One, Two, and Three were why the Bohemian hired me in the first place; he was sure of the control he’d have over me before he sent Stanley flashing a check. I could protest and threaten all I wanted, but the Bohemian knew I wouldn’t go to the cops.

  But there was a Point Four: The sand was running out of the hourglass. The Gateville bombs couldn’t be kept quiet forever. A Board member would tell his wife to get the kids out of town; she’d tell someone, and someone else—a cleaning woman, a gardener working under an open window—would hear and sell it as a news tip to a radio station for twenty-five bucks. Word was going to get out, unless the bomber sent a note soon, he got paid, and he went away. Quickly—and for good.

  Point Four was where my brain dead-ended: Why did the Bohemian think he could get the whole thing resolved before it became public, and why was he so certain that, once paid, the bomber would go away forever?

  What did the Bohemian know?

  I watched the river, but the river offered up nothing but empty eddies.

  I got up. Maybe the answer was simply that the Bohemian understood money motives better than I. He was managing multimillion-dollar portfolios while I sniffed varnish, trying to cobble up enough for a roof and a hot water heater. I went into the turret for my gym bag.

  Except for the trucks lumbering through town along Thompson Avenue, the streets were empty. It was nine thirty in the morning, too early for the commerce of Rivertown, too early for the pawnshops, video arcades, bars, and working girls. That would change when the lizards got the condo builders to start stacking young urban professionals along the Willahock. Then the latte emporiums, trendy clothiers, and organic-broccoli peddlers would come, daytime places for daytime people with daytime needs. Until then, Rivertown would stay a nighttime town.

  And that was fine, at least until I could finish the rehab, get my zoning changed, and unload the turret. Because when the developers did come, the first thing they’d push over was the health center, to chase out the drunks. Yups won’t pay a half million for a condo if they’re going to be greeted mornings by some grizzled fellow in urine-stained pants, savoring an eye-opening splash of muscatel against their bricks because he couldn’t find his way back to his room.

  I needed that health center, too, except I needed it for the hot water and for the times when the inside of the turret got too tight.

  I pulled into the lot and crept around the potholes to the husk of the doorless Buick. The locker room was empty except for the guy asleep on a towel bag. He had a room upstairs but slept down by the lockers in the summer because it was cooler. I put on my workout duds, went up, and walked more laps than I ran, so my gasping wouldn’t drown out my voice of reason, should it decide to speak up. It didn’t. After forty-five minutes, I went down to the showers, no closer to understanding why the Bohemian thought he could buy off the bomber for good.

  I spent the rest of July like a man waiting for
bad news from a doctor, trying not to jump at the first ring of the phone or tap at the door, for word that another note—or worse, another bomb—had come to Gateville.

  I sent out letters to former clients, newsy little bundles of lies about how busy my firm was, yadda, yadda, yadda.

  I called the roofers, had them come out again, peppered them with too many questions about how each would fix my roof. And then waited by the door for Elvis to come huffing over, so we could yell at each other while he inspected my roof and I inspected his complexion.

  I hung dark oak trim on the first floor of the turret, CD player blasting Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Son House, Lightnin’ Hopkins. Blues men from blue times.

  I went to the health center every day and laughed at Nick’s jokes and did circles around the track like I was doing in life.

  And I went nuts a little, because all I’d really been doing was waiting for another bomb to go off. So, on the tenth long day after I’d messengered my report to the Bohemian, I launched a minor war against city hall.

  I’d spent the morning and all afternoon on a long ladder, caulking the gaps around the slit windows on the second and third floors, and being subjected to the whining voice of some adolescent outside city hall, counting to three, over and over, sound-checking a P.A. system. Across the lawn, workers were setting up green-and-white-striped umbrella tables along the terrace, and they’d hung a huge RIVERTOWN RENAISSANCE IS READY banner across the front of city hall. The lizards were holding their first evening soiree for contractors and developers.

  The reception started at five o’clock, and from my ladder, it looked to be high style for city hall: candles on the tables on the broad limestone terrace overlooking the Willahock, strings of brightly colored Christmas lights woven into the bushes, an out-of tune, two-sax-with-drums trio, and, judging by the volume of shrill laughter as the soiree got under way, plenty of booze. No doubt there were also cocktail wienies on toothpicks, but I can’t verify that because none of the lizards thought to acknowledge me, up on my ladder, by sending over a sampling on a paper plate.