The Man in the Woods

by Rosemary Wells

  Ryser smiled like a crocodile.

  “You see, sir, one of our classmates was arrested. That’s Stubby Atlas, of course. We at the Whaler feel that his story should be an example to all other teenagers who think of taking drugs.”

  “Certainly should,” said Chief Ryser. Another policeman moved quietly about in the corner of the office. Helen did not look directly at him, but she recognized him from the day of the accident. He had been in the house but hadn’t talked to them.

  “Could you tell us, sir,” she asked Ryser, “a little about how you found it was Stubby throwing rocks and terrifying all those innocent drivers? We in high school really have so little idea of how the police work.” Helen could nearly hear Pinky’s thoughts quivering as he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. She wished he would sit still. Every time he squirmed, Ryser looked at him.

  “Bring me the Atlas file, Frank,” said Chief Ryser.

  His eyes twinkled, and he grinned at Pinky and Helen when the manila folder was placed on his blotter. “A hundred-percent certified criminal, your classmate,” he said. He licked his index finger and opened the file. “Here’s a photo of what we found on him. That’s ten grams of heroin. Cut, of course, but worth an arm and a leg. Some of these junkies will shoot up anything. This stuff was strong, let me tell you. Most of the time they’re down to about five percent heroin. This stuff was almost ten. No wonder he almost OD’d.”

  “OD’d?” asked Helen.

  “Overdosed. He had enough in him to kill an ox. If we hadn’t gotten the tip-off note about him we did that night, he’d have been a goner.”

  “Tip-off note?” asked Helen, writing this on her drawing pad.

  “Yup. About six P.M. Somebody dropped it in an empty squad car on the front seat. Car was parked at the corner of Wharf Street and Broad. We had that, and here … He pushed a glossy photograph across the desk toward Helen.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “On the left,” he explained, “is an enlargement several thousand times of iron fragments found under Atlas’s fingernails. You can see in this other photograph they match exactly the iron fragments from the rock that hit Mrs. Sokol’s car.”

  “And the tip-off note, sir? It wasn’t a telephoned tip-off?”

  Ryser handed her the note. “Anybody who doesn’t want to have his voice recorded won’t call the station,” he said. “They know we can take voice prints if we send the tape up to Boston. The fellow just dropped this in the squad car. We’ve seen it a hundred times. Guy who tipped us off was one of Atlas’s pals, ninety-nine to one. Atlas was probably bragging his head off in a bar, some other jerk was listening, had a grudge, and told us about it. Sometimes the police are lucky that way,” he said with an ironic smile.

  “Voice prints!” Pinky interrupted.

  “Nothing but the best,” said Ryser.

  “I was looking at your new copying machine over there,” Pinky remarked. “We sure could use one of those in the Whaler office. Save us a pile of work on the old mimeograph we have.”

  Ryser left his desk and went over to the copier. “Expensive model.” He laughed out loud. “Taxpayers’ expense. Still, it’s a beaut, isn’t it?”

  Helen began reading the rest of the file on Stubby Atlas. The knees of his pants had been examined by experts and the grass stains and soil found in the fabric matched the soil and grass of the hillside overlooking the last accident.

  Ryser turned back to Helen. “We sure got our man,” he said, grinning.

  “I guess so,” Helen answered him. “Iron fragments under the fingernails, footprints. Positive identification by one of the victims—”

  “And a confession,” Ryser added proudly.

  “A confession?” Helen asked.

  “Signed and sealed,” said Ryser. He paused and looked at her curiously. “Don’t tell me you were the kids who were at the scene of the last accident.”

  “Yes,” said Helen.

  “You’re the girl who said she saw somebody up there in the woods singing? The sergeant told me about it.”

  “Whistling,” Helen answered, embarrassed. “And it wasn’t Stubby Atlas either, because—”

  “Honey,” said Ryser sweetly, “of course it wasn’t Stubby Atlas. You saw some jogger. Or maybe the old Indian living in the woods, I don’t know. But what does it matter? Just look at this. This is a confession. Atlas signed it He confessed to throwing the rocks at the trucks. Atlas’s mother came and signed it too and told us to put her own son away like we put his old man away. She was disgusted with him. She herself told him God was going to spit on his grave for what he’d done. Atlas spent the whole night in jail kissing the priest’s shoes and hands, asking forgiveness, thanking God he hadn’t killed the baby and the mother. Now, you kids definitely get a good citizenship award for your help, but don’t go thinking we caught the wrong guy.”

  “I don’t think that … anymore,” said Helen.

  Ryser pulled on the lapels of his uniform jacket and smoothed down his hair, as if there had been a disturbance in the room.

  “I should think not,” he said. “You better not write some half-cocked tripe in the Whaler about us getting the wrong guy. I happen to know the Rosen boy, the editor. Responsible fellow too. He certainly isn’t going to print anything against the police.”

  “I wasn’t against the police,” said Helen. “It’s just … She took in a deep breath and blurted out: “I don’t believe that story in the Post-Dispatch about him throwing rocks at the trucks to loot them, sir. He worked for Perry and Crowe over the summer loading UPS trucks. He had to know they were full of worthless knickknacks.”

  “Where did you get that information?” asked Ryser stiffly.

  “Well, last Tuesday I couldn’t open my locker … never mind. Anyway, I was in the principal’s office, and he was yelling at Stubby, and he said Stubby had a summer job loading trucks for Perry and Crowe.”

  Ryser fiddled with his cuff. “Okay,” he said. “You are an observant young lady. Remember this. The police are not responsible for what goes into the newspapers. We just do our work.” He straightened the other cuff. “When Mr. Richard Perry, who owns Perry and Crowe, found out we’d arrested Atlas, he went to his brother, Mr. John Seward Perry, who happens to own the Post-Dispatch. He told him to kill the story of Atlas working for Perry and Crowe. Bad for business. Actually we’re guessing Atlas just wanted revenge on Perry and Crowe. “Smash up their shipments—lots of glass all over the road. After all, they fired him. Found him trying to break in one night. Mr. Perry didn’t want it in the papers that the store ever hired a jelly-brain like Atlas. Customers wouldn’t like it. The little old ladies who buy their Christmas trinkets at Perry and Crowe might get the idea that more Atlases were lurking behind the counter, ready to wait on them. It was bad for the store image, so it didn’t go in the papers. The Perrys own half this town. Everyone knows that.”

  “Oh,” said Helen in a small voice. “He was just out there … for kicks? To get back at the store for firing him?”

  Ryser nodded. “Any other questions?”

  Helen and Pinky shook their heads, but in Helen’s mind a warning light began to blink, and with the stubbornness of a metronome a shrewd voice whispered, Something’s wrong here. Something’s wrong.

  “Now, I’ll see those good citizenship awards get mailed to your houses. Look real pretty up on the wall. Come see us any time. Just remember, the Atlas case is closed. Thank God. Most of ’em don’t work out so clean and easy.” He glanced at his file. “Good luck with your article,” he said. “By the way, young man, I’ll just take that copy you made of the tip-off note. Confidential material!”

  Pinky handed it over.

  The other policeman followed them out into the hallway, at first, Helen thought, out of courtesy, but then she saw him beckon to them. He sat them down in a very different sort of office from the chief’s. Blue paint peeled in layers off the walls and the radiator. Cigarette butts covered the floor. The policema
n sat himself down behind a lame table and looked at his steeple-positioned fingers and then at Pinky and Helen with pain in his eyes. “I have a girl your age,” he said, nodding toward Helen. “If anything happened to Lisa”—here he spread his hands, and they trembled a little—“I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t think I could go on living. Do you understand that?”

  Pinky and Helen nodded.

  “I was out at the house the day of the accident. Remember? You only saw me for a second when I poked my head in the door. But I heard you, young lady.” He waited until he caught Helen’s eye. “Yes, you,” he went on. “Now, don’t get me wrong. You’re both great kids. Go write your article for the Whaler. But stop there. Don’t go messing around anymore. This is heavy drugs. Atlas had a particularly fine grade of heroin on him. We don’t know where it came from, but we’re looking. We’ve got an eye on every dealer and junkie in New Bedford and Fall River. You don’t want to put one more toe in this cesspool. Got it?”

  “Yes,” said Helen.

  Pinky just stared ahead wide-eyed. Then Pinky said, “Can I ask you something?”

  “You better. I want to answer every question in your hot little heads so you don’t go poking around after the answers.”

  “The tip-off note?” Pinky said slowly. “The one that was dropped in the squad car?”

  “Yeah? What about it?”

  “The print on it. The typeface. I know something about printing. My Uncle Max is a printer. It was funny. Raised lettering almost like embossing … like a wedding invitation.”

  “Yeah. We tried to trace that. Probably some toy printing set. Maybe a foreign-make typewriter. We checked out every lead we could on that. But who cares? It was just some pea-brained pal of Atlas’s who heard him bragging in a bar. Look, kids, we’re not the FBI. This isn’t a murder case involving some rich heiress from Newport or some rich doctor from Scarsdale. This is dangerous, workaday drug stuff, and the Atlas case is closed.”

  Helen looked questioningly at the officer’s intent, tight face. Pinky scratched his stomach nervously.

  “I want to tell you something,” the officer went on. “Atlas’s old man, Chet, is cooling his heels for fifteen years in Springfield State Prison. Drug pushing. Okay? Chet Atlas had a little red book with all the names and addresses of his contacts, other pushers all over the country. Okay? Now, he gave that little red book to his son, Stubby, before we nabbed him. So what happens? Stubby Stupid loses the book. Fell out of a hole in his pocket, he says. He’s terrified somebody whose name is in that book is going to find out he lost it. Stubby won’t tell us anything about his old man’s book or his old man’s connections. He confessed to throwing the rocks and that’s all. Now a lot of people are looking for that little red book, kids, including us. So you guys stay out of this. You don’t want to run into some of Chet Atlas’s pals, do you?”

  “No!” said Helen.

  “Good. Now, if I hear that you, young lady, take one more step playing detective, I’m going to tell your folks, and they’ll keep you under lock and key at home for a year. As for you, Levy, I’ll have that motorbike of yours taken away tomorrow. Understand?”

  Pinky reddened and nodded.

  “I don’t want to see either of you at the Pearly Gates for another eighty years. Okay?”

  At the bus stop, under the orange leaves of a sugar maple, Pinky breathed in a deep draught of the warm September air. “The end, my friend. Can’t afford to lose my wheels.”

  “How did they know about your motorbike?” Helen asked.

  “Cops have ears on every tree,” Pinky answered morosely.

  Helen gave a short, neat sigh. “Well, I’m glad it was Stubby who threw the rocks after all. Can you imagine, though, Pinky? The Post-Dispatch didn’t print the whole truth? They left out the part about Stubby being an employee of Perry and Crowe? I’m going to end my Whaler story with that fact. That’s worth a gold medal.”

  The bus chugged into view at the end of the street. Pinky shuffled his feet impatiently. “Yes, well,” he said at last, “I guess it was a jogger after all that you chased. Someone who didn’t want to get involved.”

  “It must have been,” said Helen. For an instant their eyes met guiltily. Helen knew Pinky didn’t believe this any more than she did. “Pinky, I’m not going home right now,” she said. “I want to visit one of my teachers from last year at St. Theresa’s.”

  “Include me out,” said Pinky. The bus pulled up and stopped in front of them. “Got a souvenir for you,” Pinky announced cheerfully. He reached into his pocket and handed Helen a Xerox copy of the tip-off note.

  “But Pinky! Ryser took the copy away from you!”

  “I made three,” said Pinky. “One for me, one for you, and one for him to take back.” He jumped onto the bus, and with an explosion of smelly black exhaust the bus pulled out, leaving Helen waving from the sidewalk while Pinky waved from the window. Then he was gone. Helen wished she’d gone with him.

  “He’d make a great thief,” Helen explained to Sister Ignatius Paul over tea, “if he didn’t have such a good streak inside him.”

  Sister Ignatius laughed. She took in Helen’s eyes with her own big green ones. “A bit early, I think, my dear young child, for you to have such strong feelings for a boy.”

  Helen felt herself blush wildly. “I don’t. Really, Sister. Pinky’s just a friend.”

  “My dear child, I have asked you about everything under the sun concerning school and your family and the splendid story you intend to write, and you persist in talking only about this young man.”

  “But I don’t have strong feelings, Sister. It’s just that Pinky has been with me in this whole …

  “It is completely normal, I assure you. But one must never lose perspective. Never forget, Helen, the great gift that God has given you. In your drawing one day, you will speak in His voice, because it is His voice that speaks in you. Always remember that His gift is far more important than the strong tides of mortal ferment that are common to all of us, including, dear Lord forgive me, the most butterfingered girl at the A&P cash register whose imagination runs constantly to movie magazines.”

  Sister Ignatius adjusted the sleeves of her long, old-fashioned habit. All the other sisters in the order wore the lighter modern dress which Sister Ignatius had more than once called “street clothes.” She claimed that much mystery and grace was lost in the wearing of street clothes, particularly the blocky blue twill suits that the Sisters of Mercy had selected. “Mother Luke does not argue with me,” Sister Ignatius had also told Helen more than once. “If I don’t want to teach school looking like a mortician’s wife, I don’t have to.” Helen did not wonder at Mother Luke, because no one ever successfully argued with Sister Ignatius.

  “Sister Ignatius,” Helen insisted, holding her teacup as if it might fly from her hand, “I am not … I am not in love with Pinky Levy! And that’s the truth!”

  Sister Ignatius smiled mischievously under the spotless black of her coif. “Dear,” she said, “today is Sunday. By Monday you will think you are. Be warned! Now. Tell me more about the marvelous adventure you’ve had chasing after the Punk Rock Thrower! Tell me about the story you’re going to write!”

  “The adventure’s all over,” said Helen. “I’ve told you all there is to tell, right up to today, when we went to the police. I was so sure that it wasn’t Stubby up in the woods, Sister. But I guess I was wrong. I must have been. It certainly was Stubby Atlas who threw those rocks out onto the highway. The police have proof. He confessed. Even his mother knows he’s guilty. One of the police officers told us to stay clear of any more involvement. He threatened to tell my dad and Aunt Stella. He said he’d take Pinky’s motorbike away if we went one more inch into this.”

  “A shame you can’t do any more research,” said Sister Ignatius. “I love adventures. But it’s just as well. I’m sure you would only come to harm if you were to persist. Wouldn’t it be something,” she said abruptly, interrupting her own train of
thought, “if we could just send this empty tea tray back on that trolley up there all the way to the kitchen and have them zip us out a new one!” She pointed upward to an old railing far up on the wall. “Did you know this convent was once New Bedford’s first hospital? I’ve looked into it. There are all sorts of plans and old physicians’ papers left in the basement. That, for example, was a patients’ food trolley track. They were able to serve up to twenty meals on the trolley. Manually cranked from the kitchen, but still ingenious.” Sister Ignatius had described the patients’ food trolley on every single one of Helen’s visits.

  “Aunt Stella will be worrying about me,” said Helen. “She’ll probably call the police again if I don’t get home.”

  “Of course, dear. And I have papers to correct. Don’t worry your aunt. I understand she is a trial to you at times, but she has a good heart.”

  Helen kissed Sister good-bye on both cheeks. “And do take the policeman’s advice,” said Sister Ignatius. “Don’t involve yourself in this any further.”

  “I won’t,” said Helen. “Look!” She reached into her pocketbook and withdrew Pinky’s copy of the tip-off note. “This is enough to scare me to pieces every time I read it. I think I’ll pin it over my desk just to remind myself to keep out of trouble.”

  Sister Ignatius propped a pair of exquisite gold-rimmed glasses, unlike the other nuns’ steel-rimmed glasses, on the bridge of her nose. She read the note over at least three times. “Extraordinary!” she announced and gave it back to Helen. Helen read it again, frowning.

  To the poleese:

  Stubby Atlas, 42 Dock Street, New Bedford, is the toilet head freek who throwed them roks at cars. I dont want that he nows who I am bekauze he mite kill me or my sister. (You kan fine him toonihgt in the bar at the Drif Inn on the warf.)

  “Clever job,” said Sister Ignatius.

  “Clever?” asked Helen.

  “It’s awful!”

  “Oh, yes, but dear heart, I have not been a teacher for twenty-five years for nothing. The grammar is appalling, the spelling is cretinous, but look at the punctuation!”