“It’s not that I don’t want to help this woman, or anyone. It’s that I want to be left alone. I, me by myself, am all I can handle. Besides, we don’t let strangers gallivant around here. You and dad set that policy years ago. I’m merely enforcing it.”
There is a moment’s silence. Then my mother says, “May I speak now?”
“Sure, mom.”
“That is such a crock! You sound like some pathetic little weakling and I know you are not. Taking this woman out on the property for a few days will not harm you in any way, or intrude on our rights of privacy. So knock off the sorry-little-me role you’ve cast yourself in, and start acting like a man.” She pauses. “The man you are.”
Does she know which buttons to push, or what? “You’re right, mother. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself lately. But I can’t help this woman now. I’m working on a project and I don’t want to be distracted.”
“You are?” she says suspiciously. “What kind of project could you be working on in the swamp down there?”
“Job research.”
I can feel the mood change over the wire. “You’re looking for a job?”
“A new semester’s starting up soon. I need to see what’s out there. I have friends who are checking things out for me as well.”
Nothing I just told her is a lie. It’s only a lie when you put the sentences together.
“It’s about time,” she says. “All right, then. I won’t impose on your time on this woman’s behalf. When she calls back, I’ll explain that you’re too busy to help her and she’ll have to do her bird-watching elsewhere.”
That’s one load off my mind. “Thanks, mother. I appreciate it.”
“Your career comes first,” she says stoutly.
“Yes,” I agree. “Careers are important.” Mine was, when I had one.
“Well,” she says, signing off, “come to dinner in a few days and let me know what you’ve come up with. I’m getting weary of lying about you.”
Me, too. “Don’t worry, mother,” I finesse her, once again. “You won’t have to do that much longer.”
• • •
My sump pump isn’t working so I spend most of the afternoon screwing around with it. The work takes longer than it normally would because my unexpected visitor keeps intruding on my thoughts. What the hell was that all about? A stunner who’s a Harvard professor, with a movie star’s name to boot?
The whole thing, particularly the timing, gives me a queasy feeling. What if I was wrong about the three troubles? Maybe Marnie’s out-of-the-blue phone message wasn’t one of them? What if this is the third trouble?
I take her card out of my pocket and pick up the phone.
“What city and state, please?”
“Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
“What listing?”
“Harvard University. Department of Biology.”
“One moment, please.” There’s a short pause. “Here’s your number.”
I dial it up. One ring. Two. Three. Four. I’m about to hang up—school’s out of session, the offices would be closed.
“Biology Department.”
A positive break for a change. “Dr. Maureen O’Hara’s office, please.”
“I’ll connect you through,” the receptionist says crisply.
My wait is short. “Hello?” A woman’s voice, dry, with a pronounced Boston accent.
“Is this the office of Maureen O’Hara?”
“This is Dr. O’Hara’s office,” the woman answers stiffly.
“May I speak with Dr. O’Hara?”
“Dr. O’Hara is out of the office,” she responds curtly.
“When do you expect her back?”
“When the fall semester starts. Dr. O’Hara is doing fieldwork this summer.” A cautious pause, then: “She checks in with me, so if you’d care to leave your name and state your business, I can pass on a message.”
“That’s okay,” I answer, feeling my paranoia level going back down to a manageable level. “It can wait until she’s back. Thanks for your time.”
I hang up. This isn’t my third trouble, after all. That’s a relief.
• • •
It’s coming on cocktail time. I take a shower, put on clean clothes, and drive down the road to Peewee’s to get some whiskey and barbeque.
Peewee’s Rib Shack, a low-slung cinder block building festooned with neon beer signs, is set back from the road amongst a stand of pines and cypresses. It’s popular among the locals for the best-cooked meats in the county, done low and slow over hardwood. It also serves up a fine crab feast, both hard-shell and soft.
Like most Peewees, the proprietor of this joint is a monster of a man: six-eight, four hundred pounds, hands the size of Smithfield hams, a bullet-shaped ebony head bigger than a basketball, shaved bald. He’s a genial fellow, but no one messes with him. Peewee is the chef as well as being the owner, and when he isn’t cooking he will tend bar, doling out libations in large quantities along with unsolicited advice, much of it scatological and sexual. Peewee’s is one of those happy joints where when you ask for a drink, a gin and tonic for instance, it comes in a quart Mason jar filled to the brim, with more gin in the mix than tonic. In the summer the place goes through a half-dozen kegs of beer every day. There is no wine list.
The gravel parking lot is almost full when I drive up. I squeeze my car into an empty space, park, and go inside. The place is jammed up, noisy with talking and laughing and the clanking of knives and forks scraping plates, glasses and mugs banging on the battered wood tables. The dim lighting is filtered through a gray-blue cigarette haze. Heavy rhythm & blues is blasting out of the jukebox: “Little Red Rooster” by Big Mama Thornton, a classic from the 1950s. I work my way through the crowd, saying hello and exchanging handshakes with a few regulars I know, and take the last available seat at the bar, where I order a shot of Crown Royal and a draft Michelob from the bartender, who’s new and doesn’t know me. She gives me a quick look-over before getting my drinks. I’m one of only a few white people in here (the others are tough-looking white women with equally tough-looking black men).
I take a sip of whiskey and look around. Except for an old, barely working air conditioner and changes in clothing, hairstyles, and such externals, this place doesn’t look much different now than it would have thirty-eight years ago, when I was born. It is a black establishment, where black people go and few white people do. In those days it was because if you were black you had to, you had no choice. Now it’s because they choose to.
I come here because it’s close and I like the food, the overall ambience. Enough customers know me, and have known me since I was young, that my presence doesn’t bother anyone.
If I’m going to be drinking, which I am, I need to put some food in my stomach—I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I ask the barmaid for a menu, planning to eat at the bar here. As I’m contemplating short ribs versus baby backs, I feel a hand settle on my shoulder.
“Now I know this place has gone to hell,” a voice says.
I turn with a smile—I know who the voice belongs to. “Hey, Fred,” I say. “You coming or going?”
“I’m in the middle,” Fred Baxter tells me. “You by your lonesome?”
“Me, myself, and I.”
“You gonna eat, or just drink yourself into the usual stupor?”
I hold up the menu.
“Well, then, come on over and join us.”
I grab my drinks and follow him through the room to a small corner table, where another man is seated. The man is about Fred’s age, which means he’s about my age. Fred introduces me: “Marcus, this here is Fritz Tullis, a friend of mine from around here. We go back a long time. And this ugly sonofabitch,” he says to me, giving the man a whack on the shoulder, “is my cousin, Marcus DeWilde. He’s in the same business I was in.”
Which means he’s a cop. Fred was a county deputy sheriff, number three in the chain of command. He quit the department a couple years ago to become
a private investigator. He makes more money now, and he’s his own boss.
“From Baltimore,” Fred adds.
The cop cousin from Baltimore reaches across the table and shakes my hand. “What do you do?” he asks.
“I’m coasting on my laurels at the moment,” I reply.
“He’s a lazy bum.” Fred laughs, clapping a hand on my back. “Seriously, he’s a schoolteacher.” He winks at me. “Excuse me. A professor. Serious educator here.”
“At a college?” DeWilde asks.
I nod.
“Which one?” He’s a cop, it’s his nature to ask questions.
“Well . . .” This is awkward, which is why I avoid the topic whenever possible. “I was at the University of Texas. I’m on a leave of absence at present.”
“Whatcha teach?”
“History.”
“I liked history in school. One of my favorite subjects.”
“Me, too.” I change the subject. “What department are you in?”
He sits up a little straighter. “Homicide. I’m a detective. Lieutenant.”
Homicide detectives are the cream of the crop, and lieutenant is a high rank—this man’s a serious player.
“Marcus is into some serious shit at present,” Fred says, bragging on his cousin.
“Like what?” I ask.
“Later,” Fred says. “I don’t want to get into that crap on an empty stomach. Depress your appetite.”
We get down to the business at hand: eating and drinking, something Fred’s good at, my equal or better. His cousin’s no slouch in the drinking department, either, I see, as we quickly go through one pitcher of draft beer and get a good start on a second before we order dinner. Bourbon shooters on the side. I’m feeling no pain, and I can see my companions aren’t, either.
The food arrives, covering the table with slabs of barbecued meat: baby back ribs, short ribs, brisket. Side dishes of fries, pickled beets and cucumbers, corn on the cob, fresh sliced tomatoes. We tuck our napkins into the tops of our shirts and commence to eating it up, washing the meal down with pitchers of beer.
We feast until there’s nothing left on the table, not a crumb. Then we push back, burping and farting, three contented, sated male animals.
The waitress plunks down three mugs of hot coffee. We lace it with brandy, and the cop talk begins. The two cousins immediately engage in a contest to see who can outgross the other, with me as the captive audience. Grisly stuff, the more stomach-turning the better. Not that I object; I like a good war story, I accept mayhem as part of our intrinsic nature. Although having been on the receiving end firsthand had been much harder to deal with than I could have imagined.
“We dredge the body out of the channel,” Fred says, alluding to his days as a sheriff, “it’s all swollen up, it’s been down there a couple weeks, all white and crinkly-like even though it is a black man, like a dead whale or something, and Prescott, my partner? He says, ‘Stick a fork in this one, it’s done,’ and he pulls out his Swiss Army knife and jabs it into this sucker’s stomach, which is as big as a twenty-month-pregnant elephant, and the body explodes! All that damned trapped gas. Pieces all over the place. And man, it stunk like you cannot believe. Everybody about threw up on the spot, the stench was so rank. Like you about to go down on some woman and you realize she ain’t had a bath in a week, middle of summer? This was worse.”
“I don’t eat pussy,” Marcus says staunchly. “I don’t put my mouth on anything I stick my dick in. But here’s one. You might’ve heard about it. Jeffrey Dahmer wannabe?” He looks over at me.
I shake my head.
“Guy gets married, wife disappears. Says she run off on him. Gets a divorce, marries again. Same story. Does it a third time. Then we get this complaint from the trash collectors, they’re emptying his trash cans and out falls body parts. Burnt parts, like they were cooked. Coroner determines the man been eating them. Like we were eating these ribs here.”
I’m glad I’ve got a buzz on, otherwise I’d be sick.
“That tops mine,” Fred says, admitting defeat. He winks at me, checking out how I’m taking this. “See why I wanted to wait until after we ate?”
“Thanks for sparing me,” I answer. “What are you working on now?” I ask Marcus. “That isn’t cannibalism.”
“He’s on a big case now,” Fred says. “Could be international.”
Marcus picks up his cue. “You follow the news?”
I nod. “Casually.”
“You read about the Russian diplomat who was murdered in Baltimore? Some hooker’s john might could’ve done the deed? Or maybe it was a straight-up stickup, or he was buying drugs?”
I perk up. “I saw something on television. You’re working on that?”
“I’m running the investigation.”
This gets me in the gut a lot more than the war stories they were telling. “Have you arrested anyone?”
He shakes his head. “We’ve dragged in every hooker, pimp, drug dealer, every lowlife there is around there. None of them knows a damn thing. If they were lying, I’d know it.” He pauses and looks around, as if someone might be eavesdropping on us. “I shouldn’t be talking about this.” He looks at his cousin.
“Fritz is good people,” Fred vouches for me. “He knows how to keep secrets to himself.”
Marcus grunts. “That man was not murdered where he was found.”
So they know. What else do they know? My leg starts doing a St. Vitus’ dance under the table; I put my hand on my thigh to steady it.
“I didn’t know that,” Fred says, surprised.
“Not many do, only me and my team and the assistant DA who’s running the case.” He stares at us, me especially. “You’re not saying shit about what I’m telling you here, right?”
“Not me,” I vow. If the three of us weren’t half in the bag he wouldn’t be telling these important secrets to a stranger, even if the stranger is a friend of his cousin’s. I hope he won’t be angry at himself and me tomorrow, when the sunup brings a headache and sobriety. An angry cop is a dangerous cop.
“How do you know he wasn’t killed where he was found?” Fred asks.
“Condition of the body, other forensic stuff. You know how it works.”
Fred nods.
“Why would they do that?” I ask. “Whoever did it. Kill somebody and dump the body somewhere else?”
“So it isn’t found where it . . . he . . . was killed,” Fred explains. “Clouds the trail to the murderer.”
“Partly,” Marcus concurs. “But in this case the bigger reason, we think, is about motive. We know this wasn’t a hooker thing, or a petty drug buy, or a street robbery. This man had no history of any of those activities, we would’ve found out by now if he’d had.” He pauses. “There’s a piece of physical evidence that makes it almost certain it wasn’t that kind of killing.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“I’m not at liberty to tell,” he says. His tone tells me not to push any further.
“What kind of killing was it, then?” I press. “The reason.” Stay cool, man, I admonish myself. Don’t do or say anything that can get you involved.
“Something more significant is my guess—political, international.” He pauses. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Not even you,” he says to Fred.
“Blood’s thicker than water, cuz.”
“Not with all the booze we’ve been drinking,” Marcus replies.
“Come on, man. We’re cool. You know that.”
Marcus relaxes, pours some more brandy into his coffee. “You get paranoid, you know what I mean?”
“Amen,” Fred says.
I know what he means, too. Right now I’m more paranoid about this than either of them, but they don’t know that, thankfully.
“So what could the motive be?” I’m pushing, I shouldn’t be, but I can’t help it. I want to know how close they are to tying it in to where it really happened, which is not far from where we are presently sitting.<
br />
Marcus eyeballs the room again: instinctive reaction. “Hell, I’ve told you too much already, I might as well tell you this, too. We think the counselor was involved in criminal activity, but not some petty shit thing like a dime bag or a blow job. Something big.”
“Drugs?” Fred voices the logical suspicion.
“Could be. Or arms on a large scale. Or . . . worse.”
I can’t hold my tongue. “What could be worse than guns or drugs?”
Marcus turns to me. His dark brown eyes are flat, emotionless. “Secrets. Or—” He shuts up as the waitress approaches.
“How’re you boys doing here?” she asks. “You want another taste?”
“Not for me,” Marcus tells her. “I’ve got to be rolling.”
“You driving back to Baltimore tonight?” Fred asks his cousin. “That’s three hours, man. Why don’t you bunk with me?”
“I’ve got an eight o’clock court date. I’ll drive partway and take a motel.” Marcus throws some bills down. “That ought to cover me.”
“You gonna be all right? Driving?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Well, be careful you don’t get a DUI,” Fred laughs. “These cops around here are motherfuckers on drunk driving, especially the county sheriffs.”
“They’re motherfuckers, period.”
We say our good-byes, then it’s Fred and me and the brandy makes three. We order fresh coffee and spike it.
“That’s heavy,” Fred says, alluding to his cousin’s disclosure of his investigation of the killing. “We country folk don’t get that kind of heavy stuff.”
If only you knew, I think.
We drink a while longer, talking about light stuff, sports, music, weather, families, women. Then it’s time for me to go. We pay our check and walk outside. It’s still hot and humid. I’m immediately sweating through my shirt.
Fred gets into his Ford Crown Victoria and fires it up, the exhaust rumbling low. He takes off, throwing gravel off the back tires. I walk to my own car and sit in it for a moment before turning the ignition over. Listening to Fred’s cousin Marcus ruminate on the Russian counselor’s murder and his frustration at trying to solve it, along with the bizarre aspects of how and why things might have occurred, has rekindled my apprehension about the killing, and my inquisitiveness about the people, like James Roach, who might be connected to it.
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