The Walkaway

by Scott Phillips

  “Nothing up here either.”

  Sidney left the room, and Gunther stood there in silence until the door slammed downstairs.

  “All right, Jasper, I’m going to let you out of here,” he said, opening the door. “You shouldn’t drink in the daytime,” he said to the unconscious man on the floor, and as he dragged him toward the bed Gandy’s overworked bladder gave up the fight, warm urine soaking his already dirty pants.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Gunther muttered, not unsympathetically. “Like being back in the goddamn old folks’ home.” He picked him up under the arms, careful not to let the urine stain his own clean clothes, and laid him with some difficulty on top of the bed. He would have turned it down and tucked the poor bastard in if not for the urine and the dirty clothes.

  He moved carefully to the window. Both cars were still there, but they were standing there talking like they were about to go, and when they had he’d call a taxi. There were risks involved, but the driver would assume he was picking up a Mr. Gandy at home, and he was confident he could talk his way out of it if he needed to.

  “Well, we gave it a shot,” Sidney said. “At least we know he was alive and kicking some time this morning.”

  She stood next to the Caddy inside the open driver’s side door, without appearing terribly anxious to leave. It seemed to him an odd choice of vehicle for an attractive woman her age. As soon as she’d stepped out of her car he had been riveted by the length of her legs, and not staring required a conscious effort; in her heels she was almost as tall as he was. Whoever her husband was, he was a lucky bastard.

  “Nice car,” he said. “Roomy.”

  She looked down into it as if to verify its roominess. “I just keep kicking myself for not offering poor old Gunther a place to stay last night.”

  “You didn’t know he was on the lam.”

  “I could have asked.”

  He had a strong, sudden urge to make a pass at her, which he knew was a bad idea. Instead he pulled a couple of tickets from his wallet. “I’m putting on a car show this weekend. Is two enough? You have kids?”

  “They’re both at KU. Two’d be fine, maybe I’ll take my mom. Thanks.”

  He handed her two passes, noting that she hadn’t mentioned the husband as a possible companion. “See you later.”

  He headed out of College Hill in the direction of the hair salon. Lester Howells had given him a rundown of all the places Gunther had been spotted, a rough trajectory that extended from the hair salon westward to a diner, skipped forward several miles to Harry’s barber shop, and then picked up again at a motel south of downtown.

  Pulling up to the curb next to the salon he recognized the space as that of Ray and Cal’s old barber shop, where he used to get his hair cut as a little boy. He went down the steps and looked inside. It was dark, and a sign on the door indicated that they were closed Friday afternoons. Even with the lights out, the place bore little resemblance to Ray and Cal’s, and he climbed back up to the street and got back into the car, wondering what had happened to old Ray. The watch repair place was gone, too.

  Down the road at the diner an obese, elderly woman with dyed black hair looked at him quizzically as he entered. There was only one other customer, seated at the far end of the counter. An old man in a new-looking brown suit, he didn’t look up from his cheeseburger and french fries, which he was eating quickly but methodically.

  “Counter okay?” the woman asked.

  “Counter’s fine with me,” he said, but he remained on his feet. “Just coffee. I wanted to ask you about Gunther Fahnstiel.”

  “I know you,” she said, brightening. “Gunther’s boy.”

  “Stepson. Sidney McCallum.”

  “Well, I’m Irma. Hey, Fred,” she called out to the fat man, who didn’t respond. She threw a packet of sweetener at his head and he looked over at her, adjusting a hearing aid.

  “What?”

  “This’s Gunther’s boy.”

  The man raised his eyebrows and nodded, chewing. “Fred Elting. Glad to meet you. Sorry about old Gunther.”

  “Fred used to work for the Eagle.”

  “Beacon before that, back when this was a two-paper town,” Fred said, his attention partially back on the cheeseburger. He squinted and cocked his head, studying Sidney. “You the one was married to that gal, had all that cocaine trouble?”

  “That’s me.”

  Fred looked pleased with his powers of deduction. “Gunther never told you what he did, did he?”

  “I don’t know, what’d he do?”

  “Had her arrested, her and that pusher she was keeping company with.”

  Sidney shook his head. “That wasn’t any of Gunther’s doing.”

  Fred nodded emphatically. “Sure as hell was. Gunther thought she was gonna get custody of your kids, and he knew the courts back then about as well as anybody, I guess. He made a couple phone calls, next day there was a raid.”

  “And this is a mother of how many kids, now?” Irma asked.

  “Three,” Sidney said, dazed. He finally sat on the stool.

  Fred saw that he’d struck a nerve, and he was happy to supply more privileged information. “He was pretty worried. First, ’cause he still sort of liked her despite it all. Second, he was afraid you’d find out about it and get sore at him. Are you?”

  “Just surprised,” he said, and he became aware of his heart thumping furiously. He’d been so preoccupied at the time he didn’t remember ever discussing the situation with Gunther. The woman started pouring him a cup of coffee, and he looked at it without picking it up.

  “Well, I hope you find the old reprobate,” Fred said, turning his hearing aid back off.

  Sidney took a drink of his coffee.

  “So do I,” Irma said. “Just between you and me, though, I’m not sure I believe that about him being out of his mind. He seemed just fine to me, and I see crazy people every day.” She gave Sidney an ostentatiously wise look, then put the pot back on the burner.

  14

  WAYNE OGDEN

  June 19, 1952

  I parked the Plymouth in the dirt in front of the farmhouse, which must have been nice when it was new, with rounded dormers on a curving roof and an ornate iron railing around the top of it, a widow’s walk a couple of thousand miles from the nearest ocean. There was a porch big enough to hold twenty people standing, and an old swing lay pathetically beneath the spot where it had once hung. The faded white paint was flaking away, and the wood beneath it was dried out, dark gray, and splintering between the chips. I stood back far enough from the ripped screen door to be seen clearly through the glass, cracked of course, of the front door; the oak door itself, massive and ornate, was the only part of the porch that seemed intact. I leaned forward and knocked loud three times, then brought my hands back into plain view at my sides; I was on the verge of knocking again when the door opened and a small, odd-looking man of about fifty in a pair of ancient, filthy overalls and nothing underneath them stood inside looking at me in mute wonder. His tiny, glistening eyes were a watery blue.

  “Mr. Gladwell?”

  “Uh-huh?” His white hair was cropped close to his head, too raggedly to pass army inspection but just as short, and I saw that I had surprised him in the act of shaving. The right half of his face was still soaped up, the beard under the lather thick and tough-looking, and on the left side among the small patches of beard he’d missed were three pieces of toilet paper, each red in the center. Beneath his chin a small, untreated nick still bled feebly.

  “Name’s McCowan. I just wondered if I might go take a look around your property.”

  His disinterested expression didn’t change. “How come?”

  “I’m interested in buying it.”

  “Ain’t for sale.” He frowned. “Anyway it ain’t worth nothing. Can’t farm it. Can’t dig for no more gravel even if they was wanting it still. Quarry flooded up a long time ago.”

  “My friend Amos Culligan tells me there’s some pr
etty fine duck hunting over there.”

  Gladwell brightened, revealing with a grin a mouthful of yellow, broken teeth. “Ol’ Amos, huh? Well, there’s lots better duck hunting other places. But if you was interested in leasing it for part of duck season, I might.” He had a slight lisp, and Amos came out “Amosh.” “Problem is I got other people using it, at least on weekends.” He watched me carefully, wondering how much to let out. “They don’t want no company.”

  “Oh, yeah, Culligan’s deal. Well, I wouldn’t necessarily want it on weekends. Wouldn’t want to mess up a good thing.”

  The grin widened. “It sure is a good thing. Well, if you want to go take a look, go ahead. There’s a trail out back of the house, that’s the straightest way to get there.”

  He went back inside, presumably to finish his hebdomadal shave. I stepped off the porch and walked around the back of the house, following a trail in the overgrown grass. There was a considerable rise, topped with a grove of cottonwood, that obscured the view of the quarry. Once I got to the top of it I could see a clearing, with a decent-sized body of water to the west of it, surrounded by gravel. A few dozen feet to the left of it stood a small cabin, somewhat roughly constructed but in infinitely better shape than the farmhouse. I sauntered over to it and peered in the window; inside it looked pretty swell. Next to a large fireplace was a padlocked cabinet, which I assumed was a wet bar; next to it was a kitchenette, and in the center of the room were several big, comfortable-looking armchairs and a dining table with four wooden chairs. There was an open door revealing a bathroom, and on either side of it two closed doors, which I assumed led to bedrooms. Behind the house I looked inside and verified it; here’s the room where my wife screws other men for money, I thought, and I laughed out loud. I noted the number of windows and the locks on the front door—a deadbolt and a cheap knob lock, both useless since the door itself looked thin enough to smash into splinters with a token effort. I walked back toward the house, trying to figure out where the cop stayed. Most likely he camped at the top of the rise, among the cotton-woods. There was also a duck blind next to the shore that might serve as a discreet vantage point for surveillance of the cabin, but when I pulled up its plywood cover I found nothing inside but a bench and some foul-smelling water.

  I hadn’t intended to stop at the house on my way back, but as I exited the trees at the top of the rise and approached the Plymouth Gladwell leaned out his window and hollered at me. “Hey, mister. Come on in for a minute.”

  By the time I was up the porch steps he was holding the door open. He’d finished shaving and had put on a black suit that must have pre-dated the Depression and fit him as if he’d shrunk half a size since buying it. He had added three scraps of toilet paper on the right side of his face to match the left, and his feet were bare. He didn’t seem interested in whether or not I was going to lease the quarry. “You like a drink?”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t want to seem too interested in what went on here on weekends, but I’d be glad for any information he was willing to volunteer; I was also curious to see if the interior of the house matched the exterior’s decay. I stepped through an entryway into what had once been a parlor and was not disappointed; it was knee-deep in old farming bulletins, newspapers, and magazines, some of them from the same era as the suit. The same sort of paper detritus covered all the furnishings, along with old and deteriorating clothing of all kinds and from several different decades; a lady’s hat from the turn of the century with an ostrich feather curling up from its brim lay atop a pile of what appeared to be worn-out men’s work shirts, and sitting on a threadbare but finely made wing chair was a pair of army boots from roughly the time of the First World War. They were covered with dried mud, as was the chair’s seat fabric. The vertically striped wallpaper was peeling from the walls, water-stained a yellowish brown on the bottom and so mildewed I nearly retched at the smell. A well-worn path led through the debris to a staircase, toward which he gestured.

  “I mostly do all my receiving upstairs. It’s a little bit neater.”

  At that point I was tempted to make an excuse and go, but I wanted to hear what he had to say, and even more than that I had a strange desire to see the squalor of the upstairs. So I followed him up, conscious of the weight of the brass knuckles at the small of my back.

  “This here’s my bedroom,” he said, nodding his head at a room whose sour odor, a bachelor’s stink of perspiration, skid-marked shorts, and masturbation, kept me at a distance. He closed the door and we continued down the corridor to another bedroom in shockingly good condition.

  “This one here’s my mother and dad’s room. They’re both dead now, going on twenty years.” The big bed was neatly made, nothing was out of place, and with its window open the smell was almost pleasant, if slightly mildewy. On its dark green walls were framed photographs from early in this century and late in the last, and on a fine old oak dresser stood a vase with a fresh sunflower in it. The strange sensation of having traveled back to the year 1910 evaporated when he pulled a pint of Top Hat from the top drawer of the dresser and took a long drink, his Adam’s apple pumping in rhythm as though his heart had migrated to his throat. He handed the bottle to me without wiping off the neck and, hiding my distaste, I took a swig.

  “This is where I do most of my sinning. You like girls?” he asked.

  I nodded, happy I’d brought the knuckles. “Sure,” I said.

  “I guess you know what old Amos Culligan and them get up to out there at the cabin.”

  “I have a rough idea.”

  He nodded, grinning. “You know how Culligan and them pays me my rent?”

  “Nope.”

  “I get forty bucks a month in cash and every two weeks on Friday I get a visit from one of them gals.” He beamed with pride. “You know. A little sex action. Intercourse,” he added, in case I hadn’t picked up on what he meant by “sex action.”

  “Sounds like a good deal.”

  “Sure is.” He swept his hand down from chin to waist, indicating the suit. “That’s how come I’m so fancied up today. I don’t ever pay for no hoors no more.” He shook his head. “Don’t have to.”

  I resisted the temptation to point out that by accepting sex in lieu of additional rent, he was indeed paying for the sex with that lost income. “Good for you,” I said encouragingly. I wondered if my own lovely bride ever paid this part of the rent herself, and had to chase the image of the two of them screwing from my mind for fear I’d burst out laughing and hurt his feelings.

  “Thing is, I got an idea. An idea on how to make some more money.”

  “What’s that?”

  He took another long drink and handed the bottle back to me. “That’s all’s I’m gonna have. Get too drunk and my pecker won’t stand.” He went over to the dresser drawer and pulled out a pile of glossy photos, some of them 5-by-7s and some 8-by-10s. Mostly they were studio shots of plain girls in their underwear or naked, with a few more lewd than the rest. In the drawer were several more neat stacks of glossies, and another stack of the carefully preserved brown envelopes in which they’d arrived.

  “You think those are okay?”

  “Sure, they’re all right.”

  “Okay, then.” He picked up another stack and handed them to me. These were sex shots: similarly homely gals, many of the same ones as in the first batch, blowing and screwing a variety of unsavorylooking characters, a high percentage of whom left their socks on, suggesting a poorly heated studio or an odd sort of modesty. I’d sold photos just like them in Japan; in fact, I recognized one series featuring a peroxide blonde with a hairy upper lip as coming from the Wilkerson Photographic Studios of Urbana, Illinois. “How do you like those ones there?”

  “They’re swell.”

  “So, you know what I been thinking? I been thinking if I got a fella with a camera in here every other Friday I could make me some of these pictures and sell ’em in the back of True and Argosy and such.”

  “Sure you could.�
��

  “Hoor wouldn’t even have to know about it, if I took ’em on the sly.”

  “I guess not.”

  “See, I had this idea a while ago. Now look at this.”

  He pulled the dresser out from the wall and revealed a peephole. Through it was the next room over, empty of furniture and strewn about with yellowed newspapers and worn-out clothes like the parlor downstairs.

  “Now see, I’d just have to have a fellow on the other side with a camera.”

  I looked around the bedroom. Even with the curtains pulled at high noon, the bed wouldn’t have been very brightly lit. “Awful dark in here for that,” I said. “Maybe you just ought to tell the girl about it and use a flashgun.”

  He shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I’d use one of them spy cameras. You ever seen one of them?”

  Outside I heard another car coming up the drive, and I wondered if it might be Sally. “Sure have,” I said, and on impulse I pulled out my gold cigarette lighter. “Ever seen one of these babies? Looks just like a cigarette lighter, don’t it?”

  “Sure does.” He pushed me out of the room, hand on my shoulder blade. “Get on in there now and I’ll move the dresser so she don’t see it.”

  “Better put your shoes on. Sounds like your gal’s pulling up outside.”

  He shoved the dresser back into place, a little to the right of its former position to allow a clear view through the peephole. “Don’t think I will. Be taking ’em off pretty quick if I did.” He looked out the window. “It’s Lynn this time. That’s good, ’cause she’ll do things Sonya won’t.” His eyebrows moved up and down suggestively, as if the names should have meant something to me, and then he went downstairs.

  I moved into the next room and took my place at the peephole, its view limited pretty much to the bed itself and the window beyond, and I heard first voices downstairs, then footsteps coming up the staircase and down the hall. I admit to a certain disappointment that the woman wasn’t Sally, and I decided I’d go as soon as they were going at it hard enough not to notice my departure.