The True Detective

by Theodore Weesner

  He has walked to one of the many white tables in the center of a dining room before he realizes how few customers there are, even if it is a couple hours past lunchtime, that the restaurant, except for three or four tables and part of the counter back near the door, is virtually empty. Sitting down, facing the door area, he thinks how much the truck drivers sitting there smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, resemble the old-timers he saw in the Navy who sat at tables near the door in every galley or mess hall, working, the younger sailors liked to say, on their twenty-year coffee breaks.

  Food remains on his mind, nonetheless, even as he detects the lingering odor of stale cigarette smoke here in the dining room as well, and his thoughts are running to the consequences of kicking the habit and to anticipating a less satisfying meal than he had hoped for—never trust a restaurant which smells of stale cigarette smoke and isn’t crowded—when he notices a young girl coming his way with a menu.

  As the girl approaches to his side and curtsies slightly in handing over the menu, his thoughts of food and his preoccupying thought of the deep secret in his heart get put aside all at once, for the girl looks more prepared for the stage than the dining room.

  She wears layers of makeup, and she broadcasts a cloud of perfume, and she is beautiful and provocative in her childlike manner, although she is no more than eleven or twelve years old. False eyelashes, lipstick, rouge, a ribbon in her hair; she appears ready to be laid back on a couch, to be kissed and fondled.

  “Good evening,” she says, not quite making eye contact. “Topless hours, seven to midnight. Today’s special is big tits. After-dinner treats available downstairs.”

  Dulac is caught off guard, confused; he says, “What?” smiling in surprise, struck dumb. “What did you say?”

  Her blouse is see-through, he notices; the small nipples on her flat chest are either painted with lipstick or covered with red pasties. She wears black pantyhose, glossy black high-heeled shoes. She looks back at him but does not, as he asked, repeat what she had said.

  Smiling, even laughing some, Dulac continues to be nearly speechless. “Look at you,” he manages to say. “Do you work here?”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “You’re certainly pretty,” he tells her.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “You make good tips?” he says, as if to start a conversation.

  “Yes,” she says.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Lisa.”

  “Lisa. That’s a nice name. How old are you, Lisa?”

  Raising her eyes to him, giving him a coy smile, she says, “I’m old enough.”

  Dulac laughs some. “Well, who taught you how to be a waitress?” he says, glancing over her makeup and once again into her see-through blouse.

  “I learned,” she says.

  “Come on, how old are you? I bet you’re eleven.”

  “None of your business,” she says, almost sweetly.

  “Twelve?” he says.

  She only looks at him.

  “Who told you to say what you said when you came to my table?”

  “There’s the menu,” she says, pointing at it with one finger, glancing over her shoulder, pivoting away a step.

  “No, no, just a minute,” he says. “Just tell me who told you what to say.”

  A woman, Dulac sees, is bearing down on them, saying at some twenty feet, “Just go on, Lisa, I’ll get this.”

  The girl slips away. The woman, taking up the view before him, is dressed in a regular lime green kitchen dress, but one unbuttoned a distance down her chest, a shapely woman who is also made up. “Sir?” she says.

  “What’s going on here?” Dulac says.

  “What does that mean?” the woman says.

  “What is this? What kind of place is this?”

  “You’re a cop, right?” she says.

  “Right. I’m a cop. That’s right.”

  “This is a topless restaurant. It’s legal. Okay?”

  “This is a topless restaurant?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How old is the little girl?”

  “The little girl happens to be my daughter. She’s helping me out.

  There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “How old is she?”

  “She’s sixteen, but that’s none of your business.”

  “You tell her to say big tits is the special?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m sure you don’t.”

  “Our special is beef tips. You must have misunderstood. Now, do you want to order or not?”

  “No, I don’t want to order. I want to know—if that little girl is your daughter—what you think you’re doing?”

  “Listen, I don’t have to answer that kind of thing. We’re legal, okay? You don’t like it, take off. It happens to be a free country.”

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” he says.

  Making an expression of exasperation, turning away, shaking her head, the woman appears about to speak, but there is a man in blue jeans and cowboy boots coming on, saying, “What is it; what’s the problem?”

  “Asshole cop,” she says, walking away.

  Coming to Dulac, the man says, “I see some ID, Chief?”

  The woman goes on, as Dulac says, “You the girl’s father?”

  “Nope. You got ID?”

  Dulac doesn’t bother. He gets to his feet. “City police, Portsmouth, New Hampshire,” he says.

  “I tell you, Sarge,” the man says. “I think you’re a little out of your jurisdiction, maybe out of your decade, you know what I mean? We’re legal. Sheriff, state troopers come in here all the time time,” the man adds, turning to walk away.

  Dulac stands there. He watches the man move away and knows he is rattled and knows there is nothing he can do. He leaves. On his way, he looks in the direction of the kitchen, behind the counter, to see if the woman or the girl or the man are there, but doesn’t see anyone. He walks past the tables where the truckers sit, quietly now, for they have been watching the scene. They glance, a couple of them, but seem to decide against eye contact with him and look away.

  The cashier’s alcove, Dulac sees now, is a soft-core porn shop. Hustler and Screw, Penthouse and Playboy. The cashier, a geriatric blonde with lips painted beyond their natural lines, works behind bars like those at a bank, and another neon light over another doorway—Adult Arcade Below—would lead to the drivers, he realizes, of all those cars and trucks.

  The air without is different now, too, although the sky and trees he glances over as he walks to his car would appear to be the same. Craning his neck, he reads the neon sign reaching eighty or a hundred feet into the sky. TRUCKER’S HEAVEN is its headline. Its other lines say, Open 24 hours, Restaurant, Truck Wash, Adult Entertainment.

  Getting into his car, he backs around to start away and stops to reach and roll down the car’s windows. As he does so, something of the past seems to come up in his mind and he decides the least he can do is report them for using a minor to solicit. Driving over near the exit from the lot, he pulls to the side before a row of four open-sided telephone stalls and gets back out of the car.

  On a thought to be loose, to somehow fight back, he removes his jacket and tosses it over into the back seat. He can hear the trucks and cars rolling by on the highway below. Deciding a local sheriff might be a mistake, he dials until he gets through to a state police post, in a town called Centerville.

  Extending the brief telephone cord, to be out of the booth where the air is a little cooler, he looks over the skyline, to the south and southwest, over trees and lightly rolling hills. Identifying himself, indicating his reason for passing through the area, he says then, “I’m sure you know all about Trucker’s Heaven, but have you had complaints of a child, female, age eleven or twelve, waiting on tables and being used to solicit?”

  “Lisa, you mean?”

  “That’s right. Lisa is who I mean.”
/>   “You say you’re just passing through, Lieutenant?” the dispatcher says.

  “Right.”

  “Well, listen, Lieutenant, we’re apprised of what you’re talking about. They do have a birth certificate, is what I’m told, which says she’s sixteen. That place has been in business there for some time now.”

  “Have you checked out this girl? She’s nowhere near sixteen. The birth certificate has to be false.”

  “Well, what happened exactly? Was she dressed? If not, it would be a violation. As I understand it, though, they don’t do the topless thing there until in the evening.”

  “She was dressed. She was all made-up though. Wearing a see-through blouse. In her little spiel, they had—”

  “Lieutenant, excuse me, I don’t mean to question what you’re saying, but isn’t this pretty mild stuff?”

  Dulac pauses, senses disorientation in himself. Then he says, “I don’t think it’s mild. What I’m talking about, what I’m reporting to you and would be willing to sign a complaint for, is an actual young girl, of eleven or twelve years of age, being used to solicit. That’s illegal. The little girl is being used.”

  There is a pause this time on the officer’s end. Then he says, “Lieutenant, listen, hold on a second, let me get the corporal.”

  Dulac holds, looking over the top of the car into the evening air. For the first time since he started on this trip, early that morning, he misses being home. He had gone looking for something peaceful and nearly philosophical in the middle of the country, and here he is feeling anxious again.

  “Corporal Horner,” a voice says then. “Lieutenant, where you from?”

  “Back east,” Dulac says. “That doesn’t matter.”

  “What’s the problem, Lieutenant?”

  “I thought it was child abuse,” Dulac says. “I’m beginning to think it’s something else.”

  “Lieutenant, listen,” the corporal says. “I don’t know where you been, or where you’re coming from, but there’s nothing illegal going on at Trucker’s Heaven. You can call the local sheriff if you want, and you can lodge a citizen’s complaint. I got to tell you, though, what goes on at Trucker’s Heaven isn’t going to raise a whole lot of eyebrows around here.”

  “Corporal, you seem not to want to hear what I’m saying. I didn’t call about Trucker’s Heaven. I called about a young girl they have working there who is underage and is being exploited—is being used to solicit—in violation of laws you are paid to enforce.”

  “The girl’s birth certificate says she’s sixteen, Lieutenant. That’s old enough to waitress. So far as I know—it’s the sheriff’s jurisdiction; we’re mainly traffic here—so far as I know she doesn’t work when they shift over to topless, which would be illegal.”

  Yet again, Dulac pauses, is aware that he is rattled. “I’d have called the sheriff in the first place,” he says, “if I didn’t have an idea what he’d say. I thought you guys . . . ” Dulac loses voice, loses something which would have had him continue.

  “Us guys what, Lieutenant?” the corporal says.

  “You’re either going to do something about it or you aren’t,” Dulac says. “If you don’t, who is?”

  “Who is what, Lieutenant?”

  Dulac is looking down, closes his eyes; he is unable for the moment to speak.

  At last the corporal says, “Are you there, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes,” Dulac says.

  Then the corporal says, “Lieutenant, are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” Dulac says.

  “You sound a little tired, you know.”

  Dulac has lifted his head and eyes and is looking over the countryside and for the moment is lost to himself, as if he doesn’t know that he is on the phone or what is going through his mind.

  “Lieutenant, listen, you take it easy,” the corporal says. “You drive carefully.”

  There is the click of the receiver being replaced on the other end; Dulac, as he turns and replaces his receiver, is in a struggle, it seems, not to surrender to something he cannot see.

  He stands yet in place, in the shade. He has no feeling to drive on, nor any feeling to stay. He stands gazing over the countryside, hearing cars go by on the highway below, trying yet again to see, to believe in whatever it was he had believed in down through the years.

  CLAIRE WELLS

  AS ALWAYS SHE is the last passenger on what is a school bus painted white and blue and called the Kari-Van. The driver, a university student in khaki slacks and man’s shirt, is the same young woman who has been the driver a number of other times Claire has made the trip in the late afternoon after work. They have not had conversation, but each time the driver has pulled the bus into the turnaround patch of gravel and pulled a handle to open the door, she has spoken to Claire as she has not spoken to other passengers, mostly university students, who stepped from the bus along the way. “Be careful now. Have a nice day.”

  Claire thanks her in turn, gives her a nod and a nice smile, and in imagining things about the young woman, has developed deep admiration for her. She likes to think she’d be more independent like that herself if she had it to do over again, and if she had a daughter, that’s how she’d like her to be. In her thoughts, she has said to the young woman, You just keep it up, you’re doing the right thing, but she has only smiled at her and watched the bus circle around to accelerate onto the highway.

  Continuing down the road to the cemetery—the round trip on the University Kari-Van is the only way she has to get there—Claire unsticks her blouse and slacks where they want, from the vinyl seat, to cling to her back and to the backs of her legs. As always, the walk along the two-lane paved road is quiet, and she is pleased again that Eric could return to so peaceful a setting. Occasionally a car or a pickup truck goes by, and people always look to see who is walking along the shoulder of the road, but no one has bothered her. She tries, in her clothes from work, to appear businesslike; she has tried a couple of times to imagine her heart to be as certain as that of the young bus driver, even as she suspects her time for that is past.

  Entering the cemetery today, however, and walking along to Eric’s plot—he has a brass head marker now, flat to the ground, as are all the other markers in this part of the cemetery—she is frightened suddenly by what she sees coming up before her. Tire marks have ripped through the turf. Fresh tire marks, as fresh as last night or early morning, have ripped through the turf, have passed directly over plots and brass markers, and have all but hit Eric’s. Tire-tread mud has dried just on a corner of Eric’s pebbled brass marker, a rectangle which says:

  ERIC D. WELLS

  Adored Son

  1969 1981

  Claire feels chilled and breathless standing there, but then she closes her eyes and exhales and sees it as less than a serious violation. Vandals, she thinks. Teenagers driving through the cemetery at midnight in their ignorant but possibly innocent cruelty. Although she has begun to weep, she decides to forgive them. Eric wouldn’t have minded, she thinks. That’s the funny part. He might have enjoyed the visit.

  Still, sitting on the grass, she uses her fingers to brush and clear away the touches of dried mud. At last she uses her hanky, and when a shadow of a blur still remains, she leaves it for a rain storm to finish clearing. She feels peaceful then, sitting there with Eric. “Matt’s working a lot,” she says in the softest of whispers. “But I’m going to have him come with me one of these days.”

  She looks around. She has tried often to get Matt to come with her, but she isn’t unhappy, she realizes, to make the trip and to visit here by herself. The last time he came, back in the spring, he was ready to start back when they’d been here just a few minutes and then he walked around to read other markers. “I guess it’s for me to come see you,” she says. “It isn’t that Matt doesn’t love you, too, it’s just that—well, that it’s for me to come see you.” She adds then, “He’s doing fine though.”

  Sitting here for several more minutes, she doesn�
�t speak again to Eric, and she realizes that this, too, is one of the pleasures she derives in coming to visit him by herself. She may speak to him if she wishes, or she may not. She may simply sit here, so they can be together, and however long she stays or what she has to say, she always leaves at peace once more in her heart, a peacefulness which will subsequently elude her, will, on news perhaps of another child falling victim in some similar way, have her in need of coming back, to know again a moment of peace.

  It’s a hammer she’s been hearing whacking in the distance, she realizes, as the sound explodes oddly on the air, and she turns to look in the direction from which it seems to be coming. Gazing beyond the road, using her hand to visor her eyes, she picks out the triangular raw timber framework of a new house, or a barn, reaching into the sky. Eric loved such things, she thinks, and it gives her pleasure to have it nearby. Otherwise, there are no houses in view from here. There are the fields and the line of trees down across the road. It is only a thought of the house Eric always liked to promise he’d buy or build for her that interrupts her scanning the countryside, but only for a moment. “Hear that,” she says. “They’re building something.”

  She sits back on the grass, though, and looks away again from the construction over there. What she wants to do is tell Eric of something she saw from the bus window on the way there, but she only calls up the image in her mind, for it wasn’t anything very tellable. It was a man with a truck with a flat tire, pulled onto the side of the road. But the man was a father and he had a little boy with him, a seven- or eight-year-old he had propped on the hood of his truck, to keep him out of harm’s way, while he fixed the tire there under the child’s gaze. The little boy looked so pleased sitting there is what she would tell Eric if she were to try to tell him, which she doesn’t. Nor does she tell him how it made her feel awful and wonderful at the same time. Or that what it was that appeared wonderful was the presence in the space between the two of all that mattered in life, of all that time on earth might signify.