“Oh, yeah?” Jake said. “Up on Erie, huh?”
“That's the one. I was hoping I could talk to your brother about some books he took out. Do you have any idea when he might be back?”
“Well, to tell you the truth...” Jake said. And before he could finish, a very proper, silver-haired woman in a high-collared print dress appeared at the door. She was wearing square, tinted glasses with her initials R.L., spelled out in tiny zircons at the bottom of each lens. Behind them, her eyes glittered like hard blue stones in a jewelry store window. Something about those eyes and the stiff-necked way she was holding herself told me she was expecting trouble. What kind I didn't know.
“What is it, Jacob?” she said in a clipped, nervous voice. “What's going on?”
Jacob gave me a cute conspiratorial wink and said, “Mom, this is Mr. Stoner. He works for the library.”
Mrs. Lord seemed to relax a bit. “Well, why don't you tell Mr. Stoner we're eating?”
“He's looking for Haskell, Mom,” Jacob said in a longsuffering voice.
Mother Lord's face trembled momentarily. It was the exact look that hard-nosed men get on their faces when they're trying to bite back grief. It was a damn interesting look and it made me curious. I decided, on the spot, to change my tack.
“It's really rather important that I speak to your son, Mrs. Lord. He could be in some trouble.”
That was it. That was the word she'd been waiting to hear. That was the worry I'd seen in her face when she'd come to the door.
“What sort of trouble?” she said in a broken voice and reached for Jacob's hand.
He blushed a little and ducked his head, as if this were a scene he'd been through before.
“Mom,” he said gently, “don't jump to conclusions. I mean this guy's from the library, not the police department. Just what is it you want?” He said it with authority, as if he were taking the part of his mother and his apparently trouble-prone brother.
“Maybe if I could come in?” I said.
Jake looked at his mother and she gave him a small nod.
“All right,” he said. “We'll go to the den.”
Jacob ushered me through a foyer flanked by a mahogany staircase, down a corridor, and into a den that looked rather like a fifties furniture showroom: blonde wood furnishings with chocolate-colored handles that looked like the buttons on a child's overcoat; a nubby orange couch that was merely an L-shaped frame meant for two sets of cushions; a striped armchair; a coffee table with seashells in a glass top; a pole lamp with two frosted glass shades; and a multicolored cotton rug, shaped like a place mat, in the center of the floor. Sitting in that room was like sitting in an Edsel, an experience vaguely embarrassing and borderline funny, except that there was nothing funny about the look on Mrs. Lord's face or about the photographs and trophies that crowded the walls and the mantle.
I thought at first they might have been Haskell's trophies or Jacob's. Then I saw the open plush velvet box on the mantle and the medal cushioned inside it, as if it were something to be picked up and admired. It was a purple heart with oak-leaf cluster. And the man in the pictures, the man who'd won the medal and the trophies and who smiled down handsomely from every wall as he must have smiled in life, was Captain Herbert Lord, U.S.N.
Mrs. Lord caught me looking at one of the trophies and sighed.
“My husband was a very courageous man,” she said. “Sometimes I wish he was still here to help me, to lend me some of his strength. He died when Haskell was only ten years old. Jacob was only six. It's been very difficult to raise two boys on my own. I know I've made mistakes, but...” Her face trembled again and brother Jake made soothing noises.
“Just what's Hack supposed to have done?” he said belligerently.
“I'm not sure he's done anything,” I said and started to feel a little guilty about the crisis I'd caused, even though I had the feeling that the mother was attuned to crisis, that she'd given her “lend me your strength, Herbert” speech like grace at every meal. Still, it made me uncomfortable to see her choking back tears. It made me uncomfortable to sit in that fifties room with all those pictures of Captain Lord on the walls. So uncomfortable that I decided to level with them. “There's been some trouble at the library. Some trouble about books that Haskell took out. I just want to ask him a few questions.”
Then something very odd happened. Instead of looking relieved as I thought she would, the mother began to sob.
“Oh, Jesus,” Jake said under his breath. “For crying out loud, Mother, he hasn't done anything!” He turned to me with embarrassment and tried to explain. “You've got to excuse her, Mr. Stoner. She just doesn't understand the impression she makes. Haskell's...well, he's gotten into trouble in the past.” Jake glanced at his mother and said, “Not all of it was his doing.” He looked back at me. “Mom just assumes the worst every time somebody comes looking for him.”
“Where is he, Jake?”
He blushed and said, “I'm not sure. We haven't seen him in a while.”
“How long awhile?”
“Over two years. He moved out two years ago. To tell you the truth,” he said under his breath, “I didn't blame him.”
“Oh, you didn't!” Mrs. Lord said suddenly. “Well, I blamed him. I blamed him! My Jacob doesn't think his brother Haskell can make mistakes. He thinks everything Haskell has done is right and everything I've done is wrong.”
“You know I didn't say that. I just meant I could understand why he might want to move out.”
“And not talk to his mother or the brother who loves him?”
It was degenerating into a low-grade family argument, one that I didn't particularly want to witness. I started to get up and the woman said, “Wait! Don't leave, Mr. Stoner. Don't leave until you've heard why my son Haskell decided to move away from our home.”
“Mother,” Jake said. “I'm not going to listen to this.”
“Then, don't!” she said imperiously. “Haskell left us because of a girl.” She laughed with a funny bitterness. “Did I say girl? She's a forty-five-year-old woman. A tramp, pure and simple. Lowlife. She's the reason Haskell chose to leave us. She's the reason he never calls. What do you think of that, Mr. Stoner? A twenty-seven-year-old boy running around with a white-trash woman who's old enough to be his mother?”
I didn't say anything.
Mrs. Lord got up from the couch and walked over to the mantlepiece. She plucked a photograph in a small oval frame from the little garden of photographs growing there like Boston ferns. “It's a good thing that his father can't see him now,” she said, staring at the picture. Her lip trembled, whether in anger or pity I couldn't tell. I imagined that would always be a hard thing to tell about Mother Lord, whose feelings seemed to run in a narrow circuit that led constantly back to her—what the world had done to her. “I have two sons,” she said. “One of them has given me nothing but joy. He's made me proud of him. The other.” She shook her head despairingly. “Haskell has been in and out of trouble since he was fourteen years old. And I'm tired of lying for him and making up excuses. If there's been some trouble at your library, Mr. Stoner, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if Haskell were the cause. He doesn't have that terrible mark on his arm for no reason.”
I felt a chill run up my spine. “What mark?” I said and tried to sound casual. But she heard through it to the real excitement underneath.
“A mark,” she said vaguely. “A tattoo he got in the Navy.”
“Could I see the photograph, Mrs. Lord?”
She looked over at Jacob, who'd sunk into a kind of indignant silence since his mother had begun her embarrassing monologue. “I guess you can,” she said, trying to build up her nerve. “Certainly you can. If he's done something wrong, he should be punished for it.”
She thrust the photograph at me, as if she were renouncing responsibility for the boy it pictured. And I took a long look at him. He was standing beside his brother Jacob in what was probably a gym or a weight room. They were bot
h the same height and they were both stripped to the waist. But that's where the resemblance ended. It was like a before-and-after picture for a muscle-building program. Jacob, blonde and skinny, with a tiny grin on his boyish face that indicated he was all too aware of the puny contrast he made to his muscle-bound brother, who was built like a miniature Hercules—huge biceps, huge pectorals narrowing to a wasp waist. Haskell was smiling, too, with amused tolerance at his kid brother. But it wasn't his build or his sleepy-eyed smile that chilled me. It was the tattoo on his right forearm, only half-visible in the photograph because he was resting that arm on Jacob's shoulder. I couldn't see all of the design. Just the serpent's fanged head coiled about the head of a woman and the first two letters of the slogan printed beneath it. E...V...
I took another look at his face. To fix it in my mind. The eyes, heavy-lidded as a reptile's and as coal-black as the hair. And the tight little mouth that smiled without pleasure—a bully's quick, triumphant grin. Then I handed the photograph back to the mother.
“It's extremely important that I locate your son, Mrs. Lord,” I said.
She'd been watching me as I examined the photo and I could tell from the look on her face that, in spite of what she'd said, she wasn't ready to cut the family ties. She clasped the picture to her breast as if she were reclaiming Haskell as one of her own and said, “What has my boy done?”
She wouldn't have been unhappy to have heard that he'd stolen something or committed some minor mischief. But she wasn't ready to hear the truth. Neither was Jacob, who'd perked up in his chair. He stared at me with a kind of forlorn hope, as if he were praying that I'd tell his mother once and for all that Haskell wasn't the black demon she'd made him out to be. But I couldn't tell her that. So I told her some books had been stolen, and she turned to Jacob with a look of vindication on her face that had to have been seen to have been believed. My heart went out to the kid, who slumped back haplessly in his chair.
“If he should get in touch with you, Mrs. Lord, I'd appreciate a call.”
“Of course,” she said smartly.
“And this woman you mentioned before. You wouldn't know her name, would you?”
“I certainly would,” she said. “Effie. Effie Reaves. I don't know where she lives—these people move around so much. But she's somewhere in the county. At least her family is. She has a brother who owns a service station in Dent. Norris Reaves. You might try out there.”
I thanked her and walked to the door.
14
I WAS half-way down the walk when Jake came running up behind me.
“Mr. Stoner?” he said. “Wait a second.”
I stopped and waited for him to catch up with me. I could tell from the agonized look on his face that he was going to apologize—for his mother and for his brother, Hack. He was a polite, goodhearted kid, Jacob was, and I felt bad for him that he'd had the luck to have been born into that ill-starred family.
“Hack's in real trouble, isn't he?” he said with half a heart. “I mean, more than just stolen books?”
I said, “Yeah, Jake. He could be in real trouble.”
“It's her fault,” he said between his teeth. “Nothing he ever did was right. Nothing was ever good enough. And he tried, Mr. Stoner. He really tried to please her. Then I guess he just couldn't try anymore.” He looked down at the walk and I looked down, too. “I guess I'd better level with you,” he said after a moment. “That woman, Effie, she's kind of a tough case like Mom said. Into drugs and stuff like that. I could never figure out what Hack saw in her. Their relationship wasn't a bit romantic. I don't think Hack ever felt that way about a girl. Not after what he went through with her” He glanced back at the doorway. “I'm just trying to tell you that if Hack did something wrong, it wasn't all his fault. He just didn't have much of a chance. Especially after getting drummed out of the service and tying up with that Reaves woman and her crowd. After he met her, he went all to hell. So I hope you'll take that into consideration if you do catch up with him.”
I said, “Thanks, Jake. I'll do that.”
“One thing, though,” he said as he turned to go back to the house. “Hack's got a real short temper. He's had it since he was a kid. He just never seems to know his own strength. I guess that's one reason he's always getting into trouble. You're a pretty big man—a lot bigger than he is. But Hack's been pumping iron since he was twelve and he's stronger than anybody I know. Effie's a pretty rough lady, too. So if I were you, I'd be careful.”
I told him I would.
******
The library lot was virtually deserted when I pulled up to the rear doors at a quarter past eight. I got out of the car and listened to the night sounds. Loose leaves were skittering across the tarmac, making a dismal, grating noise like the sound of a rake being dragged across concrete. Or maybe the rattle of a skeleton in a closet? Because that's what I'd been thinking about. Skeletons and Haskell Lord, with his heavy-lidded snake's eyes and his tight bully's mouth. And his forlorn brother, who'd wanted me to understand that it wasn't all Hack's fault—that even psychopaths, sex killers who crumple up little girls like paper bags, have family problems. And hard-bitten mothers in print housedresses who are unwilling to accept responsibility for helping to make them into what they are. Or just the sweet part. The part that makes them feel like they've done their all and been miserably repaid for their effort. There was probably real tragedy in there somewhere, in among the skeletons in the Lord family closet. Only I couldn't seem to find it. Because every time I started thinking about Hack Lord, I'd remember Twyla and the library books and what he was planning to do. And it would make me shiver as I had in that strange den, when I'd seen the picture of the snake gliding across his arm as if it were readying itself to strike again.
I walked through the chattering leaves and into the library, where Kate Davis and Miss Moselle stood gossiping in front of the circulation desk. The place looked eerie that late at night, with the big white lights pooling dully on the empty tabletops and collecting on the carpeting the way sunlight collects on a road bed. But then any place but my own apartment would have looked a little eerie after what I'd seen in the Lord home. And suddenly I wanted to get back to my two-and-a-half rooms. To get back there with Kate Davis and to make a little, uncomplicated love. If there is such a thing. To show some tenderness to her and to be shown tenderness in return. That's exactly what I want, I said to myself. That and a drink or two to wash the ugliness of the Lord house as far out of my life and out of Kate's life as I could.
“You look positively beat,” she said to me as I walked up to her. “Did something go wrong?”
“You could say that. I think I found the Ripper.”
Her blue eyes got very large behind the tortoiseshell glasses and her little mouth fell open noiselessly. “You found him?” she said breathlessly.
“His name is Haskell Lord. Hack, for short. I saw a photograph of him and he has the snake tattoo. He also has just about every other problem that Benson Howell said he would have. Broken home. Nasty, overweening mother. A history of violent behavior. Some pretty crummy friends. You name it. About the only thing that Hack Lord had going for him since he was ten years old was his brother's love. And that apparently wasn't enough.”
“My God,” Kate said. “Did you see him? Was he in the house?”
“No. They aren't sure where he is. That's what I've got to look into tomorrow.”
“Some prospect,” she said grimly. “I think you need a drink.”
“Many drinks. And would you mind if we went to my place? I don't think I could take a lot of strangers tonight.”
“Just one, maybe?” she said with a sweet, encouraging smile.
******
We got back to the Delores at nine. I called Al Foster and gave him Hack's name and description. He said he'd put out an A.P.B. That made me feel a little better. After a Scotch or two I felt better still. I stopped brooding about what to do with Haskell Lord and started enjoying Kate Davis, who was de
monstrating surprising civilian skills for the great-granddaughter of an impetuous general. She made me scrambled eggs, á la M.F.K. Fisher, cooked in a cold skillet with a half-pound of butter for what seemed like an hour and a half. And it was good.
“Where'd you learn to cook?” I said to her.
She grinned at me and said, “I can even dress myself since they've given me back my belt and shoe laces.”
Then she fixed me a hot toddy, á la The New York Times Cookbook. Rum and more butter and a cinnamon stick stuck in a cut-glass goblet. And it was good.
“Where'd you learn to mix drinks?” I said to her.
She grinned again. “Oh, I know lots of things. How to get tomato juice stain out of a wool sweater. How to darn a Gold Toe sock,” she said, pulling at my foot.
“How ‘bout making love?”
She nodded. “That, too.”
“You'd make somebody a nice wife.”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head and some of the playfulness went out of her smile. “I tried that route, Harry. For three years. And it's taken another three years to wash out the stain. You wonder where I got all those T.A. terms from? Well, buddy, it wasn't out of a book. I've been seeing a shrink since I left Ed. We're down to one meeting a month and I want to keep it that way. So no marriage. Not for this girl.”
“You consult your shrink about everything?” I said.
“Not everything,” she said, mocking my tone of voice.
“How about me? You think I might come up?”
She laughed. “I'd be willing to bet on it.”
She sat down on the couch and looked me over with a bright, lecherous eye. “Well, you've had your supper. And you had your hot toddy. “What's left to do?”
I shrugged. “We could share intimacies again.”
She shook her blonde head solemnly. “No. We've had enough of that, I think. At least for one day. You certainly have, haven't you?”
I thought of Haskell Lord and said, “Yeah.”
“Anyway I've never been too high on sharing secrets. It reminds me of grade school when we all exchanged valentines. You know it was never the ones you got that caught at your heart. It was the ones you didn't get. The ones who forgot you or who you forgot. The past is too damn sad and small to share. So let's have what my shrink might call a ‘now’ experience. How does that sound?”
Final Notice Page 10
