Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  “Oh my God.”

  They hadn’t seen John Fry in nine months. Cheryl wondered what kind of turmoil he was bringing this time into her life.

  When the pair came inside, Frank could tell it wasn’t just a surprise social visit. Dawn quietly took a seat on the couch, putting her hands between her knees. She looked as though she was kicking drugs. Fry wanted to talk to him outside.

  “Frank, I’ve got to get cleaned up so I can get traveling.”

  Frank wondered what Al’s Buick Regal was doing parked in his driveway. John said Al had loaned it to him for a couple of days because Dawn’s car wasn’t running.

  Frank looked at John’s shaven head. He began to chuckle.

  “Hey, baldy.”

  John wasn’t in a joking mood. He looked tired, strung out.

  “Frank, I’ve got some incriminating evidence I have to get rid of, and I’m kinda on the run.”

  “What for?”

  “Dawn passed a bunch of bad checks and shit. How about if we take this bag I got in the car and throw it in some of that quicksand?”

  Frank laughed again. John hadn’t been there five minutes and already the plotting had begun. Never a dull moment, he thought. But he was even more amused that John had actually bought that northern-woods tale a couple of years back about the sinkholes off his property. What did he think this was, Frank thought, the movies? He could see John’s overactive imagination was still intact.

  “Well, if you really want to bury it,” Frank said, “we’ll just take it out in the middle of the woods somewhere.”

  Frank suspected John had a bunch of checks and false IDs to dump. Maybe they could stop for coffee first.

  “No, Frank, now.”

  John won’t be satisfied until he plays out his little fantasy of cops and robbers, Frank decided. He put a shovel in the Buick. The two of them went inside to tell Cheryl and Dawn they were leaving.

  “Cheryl, we’re gonna be gone for a while,” Frank said.

  Dawn looked up at John and said, “That?”

  “Yeah.”

  John began to talk as he drove north on U.S. 31 toward Pellston.

  “Frank, I killed somebody back in Detroit last night.”

  “What, again?”

  Frank was smiling. Lucky Fry and his continuing saga of murder and mayhem, he thought. When hadn’t John killed somebody right before a visit to Alanson?

  “No, no, no. I killed Al. I’ve got the identifiable parts.”

  “OK, baldy.”

  As the Buick sped north from Alanson ten miles, Frank wondered what John’s plans were. He rambled on about having to get to Florida or Texas or somewhere. Frank had just the spot in mind for John’s “incriminating evidence.”

  Just past the Pellston airport they turned east off U.S. 31 onto Douglas Lake Road. The area was designated a University of Michigan Biological Station, but the small signs posted on trees along the rural road were misleading. There wasn’t a scientist or a station in sight. An old logging road, nothing more than a couple of ruts, led off of Douglas Lake Road into a good square mile of raw state forest. Hardly anybody ever went back there.

  Local folk called the area the “animal boneyard.” The Department of Natural Resources dumped dead deer and other animal carcasses found along the state highways in one clearing back off the trail. Frank had hunted that stretch of woods.

  They took the car into the forest a good quarter mile or more before the center hump began scraping the Buick’s underbelly. It was a hot, still morning. Mosquito and blackfly weather, and Frank suspected they would be waiting in swarms.

  Frank waited for John as he pulled the brown valise out of the trunk. Frank could see the straps straining on the bag. He grabbed the shovel. John must have a hell of a load of stuff, he thought. What junkies do for money.

  They marched through the underbrush, heading off the trail at an angle past stands of birch and oak toward the thicker woods ahead. Once under the big timber Frank looked for an open area among the ferns and pine needles. He found a spot under three pines.

  Frank could dig a posthole the length of a shovel. For John’s contraband he stopped at about three feet. John was complaining about the bugs. His bald head was covered with bites. The flies’ handiwork showed up as little trickles of blood on his scalp.

  Blackflies are such nasty little bastards, Frank thought. A lot of victims just wave the air, mistaking them for harmless fruit flies. By then they already were at work, taking flesh by the mouthful. By the time someone realizes he’s been had, most of the damage is done.

  Fry dropped the bag into the hole sideways, then sported a smirk Frank knew so well.

  “ ’Bye, Al,” he said.

  Frank thought, what in the hell is he talking about? Had he stolen some of Al’s belongings too?

  John covered the satchel with dirt. Frank scattered pine needles over the freshly turned earth. No one would ever find it. They fled the bugs, heading back to the car. Fry seemed to relax once they were back on the road to Alanson.

  “Well,” he said. “We got rid of the shit. Unless they find the ID and the checks Dawn can’t go to jail for forgery.”

  They talked about plans for that day. Frank suggested they go grocery shopping. There wasn’t enough food in the house for four. Then, maybe, they could do some sight-seeing.

  “Lookit, man. Dawn and I have been up all night. Maybe we’ll sleep.”

  “Bullshit. You’re not wasting the most beautiful part of the day. You’re not going to waste it sleeping.”

  When they got back to the house, Frank was still thinking about what they might all do together. Dawn still was on the couch. Cheryl had just come out of the bedroom. John stopped, pointed his finger at Dawn, and said in a firm voice:

  “You know now, this is for life. One way or the other.”

  Dawn broke into sobs and ran into the bathroom. Cheryl was right behind her. Suddenly Frank McMasters felt as though someone had hit him in the diaphragm with the shovel he’d carried into the woods. “I killed Al.” “Identifiable parts.” “ ’Bye, Al.” He’s got Al’s car.

  “John, what the fuck have you done?”

  “Frank, I didn’t want to kill the man. He was our life-support.”

  Cheryl came waddling out of the bathroom, saying, “John, it’s true? This stuff?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Oh shit,” said Frank.

  John said Al had been drinking. They got into an argument. Al pushed him.

  “I went out, man,” John said.

  When he realized what he’d done he panicked, he said. He had to get the body out of the house. He cut him up in the bathtub. Al’s head, hands, and feet were in the brown valise.

  Frank was angry, scared, and curious all at once. My fingerprints are all over that Buick, he thought. Christ, I’m an accessory to murder.

  Then he couldn’t believe John’s stupidity. He began firing questions at Fry as fast as they came to his mind, as though somehow that could change things, as though somehow that would keep him from being involved. But I already am, Frank thought. I’m fucking involved in something I have no business even being around.

  “It was self-defense, Frank.”

  “Why didn’t you just call the goddamn police?”

  “With my record, who is gonna believe me?”

  “John, you’re taking a chance on a murder rap, as opposed to manslaughter or something simple.”

  “Frank, I don’t want to go back to prison. It was self-defense. The guy pushed me first.”

  “Fucking pushing isn’t killing. It’s not a death situation. The law says if somebody hits you, you can hit him back … But if somebody pushes you with his hand, you can’t pick up a goddamn club and beat him to death.”

  Manslaughter, maybe, Frank thought. Now, who knows? Cut him up! Christ. What would a jury think? Christ almighty!

  Frank surveyed his living room. Dawn was crying. Fry was nursing his bites. And Cheryl. Jes
us, Cheryl. She looked weak, nervous. The baby, he thought. She can’t take this. The baby can’t take this.

  He had to do something. He had to get John and Dawn out of his house. How? What was he going to say? What would Fry do? I’m the only one that knows where those body parts are, he thought. Who else is Lucky Fry capable of killing?

  Frank McMasters had to face it. I’m up to my ass, he thought. I’m right here in the middle of it with these goddamn junkies. How can I ever explain that trip out to the woods? How does anyone explain Lucky Fry to a cop, to a jury, to anyone?

  The black Buick, he thought. It’s sitting out there, right in my driveway. In his mind he could see fingerprints, his fingerprints, all over the Regal.

  “The car,” Frank said. “First thing we do. We’ve got to get rid of that fucking car.”

  79

  Celia Muir was going stir-crazy. Everyone looked paralyzed. Neither Jan nor Gladys Canty had moved since she’d arrived at the big Tudor in the heavy Sunday morning rain.

  Jan was pressed into the corner of the couch, hugging a big pillow that had the same contours as the skin around her eyes. Celia would have thought Jan had been up for days, but only fifteen hours had passed. Al’s new Hush Puppies were still tucked under the coffee table.

  Gladys Canty’s immobility was of a different sort. She’d arrived at dawn. Now it was late morning and Mrs. Canty had yet to stir from the formal wooden-backed chair in front of the window. Her view through lead-framed panes was distorted by the sheets of rain. She sat with her back rigid, her eyes never straying from the street.

  “Where’s my son? Where is my son?”

  Besides calling hospital emergency rooms, Celia had spent much of the morning shuttling back and forth between the two women—holding one’s hand, patting the other’s back. Not once had they sat together on the couch. The two women in Al’s life are so divorced, she thought. They can’t even connect in worry.

  There must be something more they all could do, Celia decided. She had to get her friend out of that living room.

  “Come on,” Celia said. “We’re going. We’re not going to just sit here. We’re going to look. Mrs. Canty’s here. She can answer the phone.”

  Then Mrs. Canty spoke up. No, she said, she did not in fact approve of the rule made by Detroit police of waiting twenty-four hours for a missing-persons report, not in Buster’s case.

  “I know people in high places,” she said. She planned to call them while they were out looking.

  Celia had feared the worst since she received Jan’s message. Al must have had another nervous breakdown. Celia imagined him out there in his Buick somewhere, perhaps disoriented by the streets of Detroit. Then she remembered his monologue in University Hospital.

  “Jan, remember he brought up the Cass Corridor, a girl?” she said as they got up. “Maybe we ought to look there.”

  “Oh no, Ces, no,” Jan said. “That was all through a patient. He was mixed up, living a life of a patient.”

  Suddenly Mrs. Canty stood up, her eyes still riveted on the street.

  “The Cass Corridor?” she said. There was disbelief in her voice.

  “Well,” Celia said, “he had mentioned in the hospital he’d gone down to the Cass Corridor.”

  “My son,” Mrs. Canty said, “would have no reason to be in the Cass Corridor. We know what kind of people are down there.”

  There was much anger in her voice.

  That was dumb, Celia thought. I should have never mentioned that in front of his mother.

  Jan wanted no part of the Cass Corridor either during their several-hour search. Celia insisted Jan do the driving. The more active she was, the better, Celia thought. Jan put her Thunderbird on the track of her husband’s predictable habits. They looked in the Kroger parking lot and checked a party store at the Detroit border where Al always bought his beer. They drove down the alley behind the store. Jan was reluctant to give anything a good look, especially when a black car appeared parked in the alley ahead.

  “Check the license plate, Ces,” she said, not looking herself. “Is it his?”

  “No, Jan, it’s not his.”

  The car wipers and freeway expansion joints beat out free-form rhythms as they headed for their next stop. From a distance on such a dull day, the Fisher Building looked as gray as an old cemetery monument. Its terracotta-tile roof, normally a smart green under bright sun, was the color of mud.

  Celia didn’t like the looks of anything when they stepped off the elevator onto the tenth floor. The corridor was very dark. Jan said they were working on the lights. Celia knew Jan had been there the night before. Yet her heart was slapping at her breastbone when they opened the door to the suite.

  “Wait, Jan,” she said, stopping her friend from sliding the key into the door. In her mind’s eye she could see him inside, dead. Jan turned the tumbler on the lock, sending a metallic click reverberating down the polished marble corridor.

  The smell hit Celia’s nostrils only a few feet inside. Sweet, she thought. No, lemon. Lemon oil, or furniture polish. She walked around the waiting room, then followed the smell into Jan’s office. The big oak desk once ruled by Al Sr. was dustless and bright.

  “Oh, look, Ces,” Jan said. “He’s polished my desk.”

  Jan Canty fell into a chair and began to weep.

  “He knew I wanted that done. No one had gotten around to doing it. Look, he’s hung my picture frames. Celia, he’s been trying so hard.”

  They discovered other housecleaning chores completed. Her books had been put in order on her shelves. The big Chinese cabinet was polished. Al must have done it all before he left the night before, Jan said. This is not Alan Canty, Celia thought.

  Celia walked hesitatingly into Al’s office. It was neat, clean. Gone were the little notes he usually left scattered everywhere for himself. Everything was so orderly.

  Celia’s worst fear crawled up inside her and curled up into a snake-tight spiral in her stomach. Al Canty has committed suicide. She knew it. Everything has been left so complete.

  “The bathrooms, Jan,” she said. “We’ve got to check the bathrooms.”

  “Why?”

  “Why, you know, for Al. He might be in there. He might need help.”

  Jan stared at her quizzically. Celia grabbed her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes.

  “Jan. We have to brace ourselves. Brace ourselves to the fact he might have harmed himself. You know, he’s been having a lot of financial problems. Maybe he’s been trying too hard. We’ve got to brace ourselves for the fact he might have killed himself.”

  One by one Celia checked the toilets on the floor. She tiptoed into the darkened rooms, checking the space under the stall doors from a distance. She was ready to flee for help the minute she saw anything—a pant leg, a shoe, anything. She checked the women’s as well as the men’s.

  They’d worked out a plan by the time they got to the Thirteenth Precinct. Technically, Celia and Jan figured, Al had been gone more than twenty-four hours. After all, Jan hadn’t seen him since the previous morning.

  Celia watched Jan right herself into her best professional demeanor as they walked into the station. She had trouble getting her story out to the woman police officer behind the desk. The cop kept interrupting her to change her lunch-run order to a nearby Burger King.

  The next officer they talked to was watching TV, a boxing match. He kept his eyes on the fights, turning only to ask questions.

  “Lady, did you have a fight?” he asked.

  “No,” Jan said. “Ces, you know that. You know I don’t fight with him.”

  “That happens a lot, though,” the cop said.

  “I understand.”

  “Did you check his friends? Is he out with his friends?”

  “Yes. No, he doesn’t go out with friends. You don’t seem to understand.”

  “Did you check the places he hangs out?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t hang out places. Officer, that’s what I’m try
ing to tell you.”

  “Did you check the hospitals?”

  “Yes, we checked all the hospitals. Celia, here, checked the hospitals.”

  There was a pause as the cop concentrated on the fight. The bell rung on the round, then he spun and said, “Lady, did you ever think to check the morgue?”

  Celia watched Jan sit down suddenly in the chair behind her, as though she was about to collapse.

  “Could you?” Celia asked.

  “Well, you can call the morgue,” the cop said.

  The cop saw the shock on Jan’s face and woke up. He admitted maybe this was out of character for the missing man. He apologized several times as he filled out the missing-persons report.

  “Celia,” she said as they walked out. “They don’t see the seriousness of this. Al has been trying. You know things have been better than ever between us.” Gladys Canty still was at her post when they returned to the big Tudor. Jan pulled out Al’s appointment book. It was getting late. They’d have to start calling his patients to cancel his Monday appointments.

  “No,” Gladys said. “You mustn’t do that. You mustn’t do that yet. Think of his practice. What will they think?”

  “Look,” Jan snapped. “We don’t have to tell them what’s happened.”

  They began leafing through the pages of a schedule that had become increasingly spotty. Some patients’ names looked unfamiliar. They were odd-sounding names, as though they had been made up. The appointments for several weeks were printed out in block letters, each one in a different-colored felt pen—blue, yellow, orange, green. After Saturday, July 13, all the pages were blank.

  When Mrs. Canty saw the empty pages, there were two women who suspected suicide.

  Gladys Canty had picked up the telephone while her daughter-in-law was out searching with her friend. She dialed up an old friend from her tenure on the Detroit school board. The Reverend Nicholas Hood was a longtime member of the Detroit City Council, the city’s legislative body.

  “Nick,” she told him, “this is not just another case of an errant husband. This is my son. I think he deserves something special. Whatever happened to him, it isn’t run-of-the-mill.”