“I’m convinced that there is a pattern, though,” I said, “and I’m also convinced that General Goode and Crocker are in it … Let me try this one on you. What if Maxvill is still alive? Maybe he has a reason for killing them … It popped into my mind and now I can’t quite get rid of it. No body was ever found, no indication that he’s dead … and why did he disappear? No one has ever figured that out either. And the mention of his name drives Goode and Crocker and Boyle and even Hub Anthony crazy.” I chewed up an apple slice from the slush in the bottom of the Pimm’s Cup. “Working from those suppositions, I could be right … if his disappearance was somehow the result of something the clubbies did to him, if they drove him out of town, out of sight, then mightn’t he have waited, his anger festering, until now, thirty years later, he’s having his revenge … taking target practice on his old chums?”
“He’d be very hard to catch, wouldn’t he?” he asked innocently. “If he’s the man who doesn’t exist … I’ve read that most murders are never solved. This could be one of those, I suppose.” He sighed and got up from the couch. “It bothers me, everything about Minneapolis seems to bother me … .Sometimes I think the people are fooling themselves, trying to convince themselves that they’re different, better, cleaner, purer than people in other places. I’m old enough to know it’s not true, not at bedrock—down there it’s just like any place else. But when something rotten works its way to the surface it seems all the worse because so many of us have convinced ourselves that nothing bad can happen here. Maybe it’s simple hypocrisy, but I think it’s deeper, I think it’s an ingrown self-delusion, smugness, self-congratulation … But it’s a hobbyhorse of mine and nobody much agrees with me. Well, don’t let me bore you. I’ve been thinking about Norway as a place to spend my declining years … Oslo or maybe Bergen, a quiet life where I’ll have time to add up my life, find out what it’s been about and if I’ve made any sense of it, learned anything …” He let that thought trail off. A police siren wailed on the freeway and the wind took a gratuitous whack at the remaining geraniums. He knocked his pipe into an ashtray and smiled at me. “Are you planning to keep after this business?”
“Until I hit a dead end, I suppose.”
“Why?”
“I’m beginning to think I’ve forgotten. It’s self-propelling now.”
“Well, don’t let it do something bad to you, Paul. It’s deep and I believe it’s dangerous … but you don’t need advice from me. I’m out of the battle now and I ought to mind my own business.” He stuffed the pipe and tobacco pouch into a bulging pocket and I followed him down the hallway to the door. He turned with his hand on the knob. “Forgive me, but what I really came to talk about was Kim and I must be blunt. What are your feelings about her?”
“Did she ask you to find out?”
“Oh, no, no, she wouldn’t want me talking to you about her at all. It’s just that I can’t help myself, my fatherly instincts. I’m curious. I want to know. But you don’t have any obligation to tell me, I realize that.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone like her, never reacted to anyone this way. She frightens me at times because I think she could hurt me badly … but I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t seem to control my feelings about her … I’m making no sense, she does that to me.”
“She said she thought you were rather alike. And confound it, you are. I guess it’ll just work itself out, one way or the other.” We shook hands and he left. I felt as if I were drifting in an open boat, no sight of land, my ship long sunk, at the mercy of the sea. The more I thought about Kim, the more confused I became. But it was encouraging to know that she’d spoken to Ole about me, that I did mean something to her. I went to the kitchen and made another Pimm’s Cup and sat down at my desk again. I’d gone over it all so many times: Larry, Tim, Father Boyle, Carver Maxvill, and Rita. Harriet Dierker and Kim and Ole. You try to fit it all together, in different ways, hoping like hell it will finally, accidentally make sense. But it was always a forlorn hope.
Who was Larry Blankenship and why did he cry when he talked with Kim in the parking lot and finally put a bullet in his head?
Why were Tim and Father Boyle killed?
Why did Carver Maxvill and Rita Hook disappear on the same day? Why did they disappear at all? And did they go together?
What was it about Maxvill that scared Goode and Crocker?
Why did Goode lie about being in Minneapolis when Maxvill disappeared?
Why did someone steal the file and the snapshots?
Why did I feel that Billy Whitefoot knew more about the goings-on at the lodge than he was telling?
And where did Kim really fit in? Was she just a bystander or did that role ring false? I thought about the boy on the bicycle … Then I figured, the hell with it. Too complex.
It was dark and the wind was whipping at the swing on my balcony, moving it like a ghost rider, making it squeak. I was just going to begin listing in my mind what I actually knew about the case when I realized how much my head ached and my eyes hurt. I popped three Excedrin, glared at my empty refrigerator, opened The Baseball Encyclopedia and closed it listlessly, turned on the Twins game just in time to hear a windblown fly ball by Danny Thompson go for a home run. Thompson was, to my knowledge, the only shortstop with leukemia ever to play in the big leagues—not an enviable distinction but a reflection on the kind of guy he was. I paced out onto the balcony, shielding my eyes against the microscope debris swirling upward, sucked toward Heaven.
The telephone rang at the other end, rang and rang and rang, and when she answered it, I could hear music and people laughing and talking. She had a hard time hearing me.
“Paul,” I said. “Paul, the guy who took you to the fights last night, then on to the porno show and the demolition derby—”
“Oh, that Paul … Hold on let me take this in the bedroom. To the bedroom, thirty-foot cord, I’m walking down the hall now, past the cheering throng and the lasagna cooks in the kitchen, around the corner past the bathroom’s tuneful flushing … and into the inviolate chamber itself the virgin queen’s very own bedroom … Hi, Paul, how’s tricks?”
“Is this the featherweight champion of the Guthrie Lobby?”
“In the flesh, throwing a victory party. Body and Soul, Canada Lee getting socked in the head once too often and getting those awful headaches, and John Garfield telling George Macready that he’s not afraid because everybody dies …”
“My God,” I said.
“Oh, there are sides to me you’ve never dreamed of, Critic. It’s the only movie I know but I really know it … Fatalistic Flicks of the Forties …”
“You’re nice but you may be drunk,” I said.
“Not really but I’m having a party. This is what comes out when I push the phony, awful, rotten, giddy hostess button. You have my apologies. I did so want to keep this face a secret—”
“You’ve wanted to keep them all secret, Champ.”
“Not true. Not the up-to-date me.” She turned her mouth away from the telephone and said, “Okay, okay, I’ll be out in just a minute. Personal call.” Then she turned back. “You haven’t told me …”
“What?”
“Tricks—how are they?”
“You really want to know?”
“I don’t know, do I?”
“I’m lonely and I’m getting scared—”
“Of being lonely?”
“No, of becoming dependent.”
“On?”
“You.”
“Oho, you were right, I didn’t want to know.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to your party?”
“Well, two reasons. You’re not a university person, a colleague, so to speak. And to the best of my recollection, you’re not a war-gamer. So you’d be hopelessly out of place on my guest list, which is made of university war-gamers. We are fighting the Battle of the Bulge right in the living room—”
“To Led Zeppelin?”
&nbs
p; “Not my fault. A guest is using it for inspiration.”
“Well, much to your surprise, I wouldn’t be at all out of place. Not a bit.”
“You’re a war-gamer? You astound me …”
“No, no. But I am a world class lasagna eater. Heh, heh, that’s my little joke.”
“Can you bear it, then?”
“What?”
“Coming down, seeing me at my worst, putting on five pounds of lasagna?”
“Yeah, I can.”
“Well … hurry, then.”
As it turned out, it wasn’t the Battle of the Bulge but the German invasion of Russia that was going on when I got to Kim’s apartment. The game was called Panzer Blitz and all it needed for that last soupçon of verisimilitude was Anne standing in a corner hurling gasoline-powered Messerschmitts on the players’ heads. It was a casually dressed, heavily bearded, low-breasted group deeply involved in the specifics of blocking roads, getting tanks out of swamps, training artillery from hilltops, and trying to move troops in trucks. Led Zeppelin had given way to the Beatles and the volume was down; it was apparently time to think and conversations were carried on in hushed tones. There were maybe twenty people clustered around the table, some nibbling on lasagna and salad and debating the finer points of what seemed to be a set of rules more involved than the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Kim came from the kitchen to meet me, wearing Levi’s and a red-and-blue-striped rugby shirt with a white collar. It was awkward; we didn’t know whether to kiss, hug, or nod. She settled for smiling and taking me by the hand and leading me into the kitchen, which looked and smelled like a rather good Italian restaurant.
“I’m glad you called,” she said, chopping out a square of lasagna and dishing salad onto a white plate. “I was thinking about you, about what an awful night I gave you … wondering if you thought I’d gone mad, hitting old ladies and running down perverts. Here, try this white Chianti, it’s perfect with lasagna … Did you think I’d gone mad?”
“No, I didn’t really. But I thought you were being put to a pretty severe test.”
“Well, I don’t normally behave so violently.” She shrugged, put an end to it. She looked at her watch and I munched, more or less content. “This thing may go on forever, once they get started. You want to go watch? I’m not really playing—I’ve done Panzer Blitz so many times I just don’t think there are many variations I haven’t tried …” We went in together and watched. She couldn’t help herself; in a few minutes she was arguing with a dark, very heavy man wearing what appeared to be a fright wig. They couldn’t agree on strategy and I leaned back against the wall to finish my dinner. The wine was dry and sharp and cold. I watched her; it occurred to me that in the eyes of anyone who might have noticed, she must have seemed my girl, my girlfriend. I wanted her badly; seeing her with other people, people who knew her in everyday life, murderless and nonviolent—seeing her rubbing shoulders and arguing and laughing animatedly and picking up dirty dishes and whispering confidentially to one of the women, seeing her lean forward to get a better view of the game, straining against the Levi’s, catching a glimpse of her tiny brassiered breasts beneath the heavy material of the rugby shirt, it all worked on me, hammered at the distance we’d both been keeping between us. I finally cut it out, turned the record over to “Oobladi, Ooblada,” and took my dishes to the kitchen. A small man with a pointed beard and horn-rimmed spectacles was eating a piece of lasagna with his fingers. He looked up and smiled at me.
“You have to hand it to her,” he said, his mouth full.
“Right, good food.”
“Not the food, man,” he said with a puzzled expression. “Lasagna’s just lasagna as far as I’m concerned … but the way she gets her guns on top of the hills, I mean, she’s a methodical one … She analyzes the situation, sees what will work and what won’t, and doesn’t spend time fucking around with the stuff that’s not gonna do it. She has a way of seeing to the heart of the problem. Not very feminine, if you know what I mean—she doesn’t follow the feminine stereotype—got a mind like we used to think only men had. Now, of course, we all know better …” He licked tomato sauce off his fingertips. “Because Gloria Steinem told us so.” He drank some of the Chianti and stuck out a sticky hand. “Baxter, mathematics,” he said.
“Cavanaugh,” I said. “Befuddlement.”
“That’s good.” He laughed. “Me, too. Say, I got your hand all sticky … son of a bitch, sorry about that …”
She found me later and smiled ruefully. “You must be horribly bored. I really am sorry, I shouldn’t have let you come. But I wanted to see you. Selfish. Do you want to leave?”
I told her about my unsettling day with Crocker and the rats, how I hadn’t been able to get unwound since seeing it happen. She said she’d heard something about it on the television news but had been up to her elbows in the kitchen at the time.
“I’ve been thinking I might run up there and take a look yet tonight. If the rats break out they’re going to need more than heavy artillery on the surrounding hills.”
“Would you take me? They’ll never miss me here, they’ll be playing all night, at least some of them, until every last calorie of food and wine is gone … Come on, let’s go.” She looked up expectantly.
The night had turned brisk and chilly and the wind blew papers and dust along the empty streets as I headed up into the alternately garish and dowdy North Side. She huddled inside her arms and I told her about the man with the rats hanging on him. And I told her that Crocker had given me a pretty harsh warning.
“You’re really very foolhardy,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to become of you.” She spoke with a dying fall, as if something rather sorrowful had occurred to her.
Floodlights had been set up in the park, the beams trained on the hill. Two fire trucks stood gleaming on the grass, police patrolled the perimeters, and several of Crocker’s workmen lounged against earthmovers smoking, talking. A canteen of sorts had been set up near the trailer and the strong aroma of coffee mingled with the smell from the hill. The night’s cold had toned down the fetid odor and we sat and watched from the Porsche. An ambulance pulled up beside the Crocker trailer and two white-outfitted men went over to the coffee.
We levered ourselves out of the car and headed toward the maroon-and-gold trailer. Crocker himself was standing sipping coffee, filling the doorway, his face drawn and dirty. He didn’t seem to focus on me properly, then gave a sour crunch to his mouth as I became clear. He’d taken off the hard hat and his thick white hair was plastered against his head; he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, the University of Minnesota ring catching the dim light in its red stone. He started to speak to me.
“Haven’t you had enough for one—”
Then he saw Kim behind me and stopped abruptly, his mouth cocked open and locked in place. He covered his surprise reflex by knocking back some coffee; when he looked up he was grinning almost boyishly, erasing for a moment the years and the tiredness. He must have been a ladies’ man, the football hero.
“Kim,” he rumbled. “What are you doing here? No place for a girl—”
“Hello, Mr. Crocker,” she said very quietly, casting a glance at the ground, almost as if she were suddenly reverting to the days when she took orders at Norway Creek. “Paul wanted to come up and see if it was under control …” She shrugged. “So I came with him. I had no idea you’d be here.”
“Well, it’s my responsibility, it was my machinery that broke it open and set the damn things loose. I’d better be here until we know what’s going to happen with them—”
“What’s the status?” I asked.
“Christ, it’s a mess. They haven’t come out yet, not in large numbers anyway, that’s why they rigged up those lights up on top. Somebody’s figured that’d keep them blinded, keep them underground … I sure as hell don’t know. I’ve heard about things like this, but I’ve never seen it happen. They’re up there now, took canisters of gas … but it’s not easy, tough to cont
rol. They keep talking about a rat stampede … You’d have a hell of a panic then.”
“What happened to the guy who got bitten?”
“Another mess. Rat bit damn near clear through his hand, they bit through arteries in his hand and leg, I guess … he’s in the hospital … I don’t know what’s gonna happen, that’s all I know for sure.”
Kim edged away from us, toward the coffee maker. Crocker leaned toward me, glowering, speaking from behind tight lips.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Can’t you see I’ve got enough trouble here? Just take your goddamn questions and your insinuations and get the hell out of here …” His voice cracked, from exhaustion and frustration. “You heard what I told you this morning. You need a lesson taught you, son. Take the girl and move out.” He gripped my arm until it hurt, an old man who scared me. “You’ve made a hell of a mistake, you’ve pushed me at just the wrong goddamn time. And I’m pushing back.” He drew himself up and threw the barrel chest my way. “And don’t go dragging that girl into all this crap you keep shoveling—just leave her out of it. Kim would never—ah, just leave her the hell out of it.”
“What would she never?”
“Are you seeing her? Seeing, I mean, seeing her …”
“Shove it, Sunny Jim,” I snapped. “Just shove it where the sun don’t shine. And stop threatening me, either get hard with me or shut the fuck up.”
He stared at me wearily as if he’d broken better and bigger men than me over his goddamn knee.
“Just you remember one thing,” he said quietly. “You gave the order.”
I’d once thought him gruff and kindly, doting on his grandchildren, presiding over the dynasty he’d begun. But he was a different man now. Everybody kept changing just when I thought I was getting hold of them.
“Do you think you should have spoken to him like that?” She hooked an arm through mine.
“Probably not,” I said. “But eventually you get tired of having people lie to you, lead you astray, jockey you around, threaten you. Then you press the button.”
We climbed back into the Porsche and I got it started. Crocker was still standing in the doorway watching us. I was sure he was a dead man but he didn’t seem to believe it. None of them believed it. I drove around the park, watching the hill, which lay in peculiar, mottled shadows from the floodlights. Men paced the hillside like sentries and there was no sign of the little brown fellows. Somewhere under the hill their world was being poisoned, generations were dying, choking, wilting, and all they had done was build in the wrong place. The wrong place at the wrong time and it was an old story, a rat tragedy. All bullshit.
The Cavanaugh Quest Page 29
