“O.K.,” I said. “I like games. How does it work?”
“Close your eyes.”
“I'm not sure I like those kind of games.”
Kate winked at me and said, “You'll like this one.”
I closed my eyes.
I don't know how she did it. I mean, of course, without making a sound. Whether she'd had that much practice or whether she was just being especially careful for me. But when she told me I could open my eyes again, she was sitting across the room on the baize armchair and her frilly white blouse and denim jeans, her bikini panties and her lacy brassiere were piled in a neat little stack on the bare wood floor.
She had a beautiful body and she was the sort of girl who knew it. Who didn't have to exaggerate by posturing or to play modest by hiding herself with a timid hand. No thrown-out chest, no sucked-in tummy for Kate Davis. She sat across from me as coolly as if she were fully clothed. And when she saw the look in my eye, she threw her head back and laughed.
“I told you you'd like this game,” she said.
“What happens next?”
“That, my dear,” Kate Davis said, “is up to you.”
“Then close your eyes.”
She did as she was told. I walked over to the armchair and lifted her up. Her rear end was bumpy from the twill of the cushion. She wrapped her arms around my neck and whispered. “You really are old-fashioned, aren't you?”
“Not about everything,” I said and carried her to the bed.
******
She made love expertly—fierce, competitive love that was exhilarating. Lovemaking that left us both exhausted. I hadn't felt that kind of excitement since I was a kid breaking into my first brassiere. And the lady seemed fairly well satisfied, too. Satisfied but, I thought, a little perplexed. A little remote. As if lovemaking weren't quite as uncomplicatedly joyous for her as it had been for me.
I stroked her blonde curls back from her forehead and pulled her beside me and didn't ask what it was, what sad song was playing in her head. Not that I didn't want to know. I did. But it was her grief and I learned a long time ago that when people want to be rescued they'll let you know. That when you butt in on your own, you're looking to soothe some pain inside of you—some sense of exclusion. I wanted her to “share intimacies,” as she put it. But in her own time. Because this girl was special. She had her own quirky rhythms, her own hurky-jerky style of play. Sometimes funny and hurried-up. And at that moment, as she lay curled in my arms, very slow and serious.
So I held her and held my tongue. And after a time she turned in my arms so I could feel her breasts against my chest, hard-tipped and as round and firm as oranges. She reached up and brushed some of the sandy hair out of my face and wiped at my eyes as if she were brushing back tears.
“Goddamn it,” she said softly. “I think Jessie was right. I think I am falling in love with you.”
“Maybe you'll get over it,” I said.
She made a sour face and said, “I don't think so. I know the symptoms too well.”
“Well, if you're asking my opinion, I think it's a fairly good idea.”
She shook her head. “It's a rotten idea.”
“And why is that?”
“Because one of us will end up getting hurt.”
There was no sense in pretending it wasn't possible. Maybe even probable, given the fact that both of us liked to have things our own ways. But, good Lord, love's as common as colds and we're just about as defenseless against it. Unless we turn into hermits or turn the impulse inward, twist it like a bramble, the way Haskell Lord had done, or treat it like a game, make it into a pleasure trip and when it stops being fun, when it starts becoming as complicated as the rest of life or when it starts making the rest of life look simple, call it quits. Some people can do that. Judging from the number of divorce cases I handle, a good number of people. But I can't. Or won't. Someone once told me that the two are one.
So I told her getting hurt was the chance we'd both have to take, which didn't seem to please her.
“Maybe you've never had a really painful relationship?” she said defensively. “Maybe that's why you can be so highminded about it?”
I thought of Jo Riley and said, “You know what your trouble is, Kate? You think you're the first lady since Eve who made a bad bargain and got burned for it.”
She drew back in the bed. “You think I'm acting like a child?”
“No,” I said. “I think you're treating me like one. I told you before. I can take care of myself. I like to take care of myself. In love or not.”
She looked a little hurt and said, “You mean you're not in love with me?”
“Jesus,” I said. “Let's drop the subject.” She laughed mildly and hooked her legs around mine. “You're feeling better now?” I said. She nodded. “Let's make love again, Harry,” she said pulling me to her. “And talk about what it all means in the morning.”
15
ONLY WHEN the morning came, there didn't seem to be any talk left in either of us. Maybe it was the look of the dreary sky. Or maybe it was just too early in the day for the “making commitments” scene she had planned. But as we sat on the couch, sipping hot coffee and reading the newspaper and generally acting like an old married couple at the start of a day, there was no talk larger than “Pass me the editorial page, would you?” or “I'll make you some coffee with egg shell in it one of these mornings,” as if it had all been settled, miraculously, during the night—that we would live together and see how things went.
I would have preferred to talk it out. But I didn't force the issue. Not simply for the sensible reason, for the adult reason that you can't make up another person's mind. But for the very selfish reason that I didn't want to scare Kate Davis away. I'd enjoyed making love to her more than I'd enjoyed anything in a long time. I liked the way she looked, blonde and pink in my terry robe as she sat beside me, reading the newspaper with her habitual look of high seriousness. I liked the seriousness itself, the willingness to mix it up in bed and out, and the sense of humor that accompanied it. I liked the lady enough not to risk losing her to her past or to her hard-won sense of independence. So I pretended it had all been settled, too, and went about my early morning business.
I called Al Foster again and found out that Haskell Lord hadn't turned up. But Al had gotten the C.I.D. report and, for what it was worth, the only felons with that kind of tattoo on their arms were serving life terms in Lima. Which was just as well. I told him about Effie Reaves and her brother Norris. And he said to get back in touch if I got a lead. Then I pulled out the phone book and looked up Norris Reaves's auto repair shop. It was on Harrison Pike, about two miles outside the city limits on the western edge of town. Trying to find Hack Lord could be a long process, which was why Al was letting me do the spade work. And I figured that finding Reaves's sister would be a good first step. I jotted down the address of the garage, patted Kate on the cheek and said, “I'm going to get dressed.”
She looked up at me bashfully. “About last night.”
“What about last night?”
“It was really fine,” she said. “That's all. As good as it's been since...well, since Ed and I fell out of love. Maybe it'll stay that way, for awhile at least.”
I sat down beside her on the couch and had to fight the impulse to cup her lovely face in my hands. It was the natural impulse, given the shy look of hopefulness on that face. But the gesture smacked too much of a chauvinism that I wanted to avoid. Besides, the truth was I didn't know anymore than she did whether we'd stay together for awhile or forever.
“I think it might,” I said and realized I was picking my words the way a nervous man might pick through a plate of food. “We can try to make a go of it, Kate.”
She smiled fecklessly and I thought, oh hell, Harry! and threw a lot of good adult reasoning out the window. “We'll make it last, Kate. I'll see to it.”
“Promise?” she said with a small, unhappy laugh.
And I promised.
******
I dropped Kate off at the library and gave her a kiss goodbye. A sweet, passionate kiss.
“Wow!” she said.
“My words, too.”
We weren't likely to see each other until well after nightfall. She had to canvas the six girls on Ringold's list, to find out if any of them had seen a black-haired, muscle-bound young man with a tattoo on his right forearm. And I had to run down Effie Reaves. So we kissed again, like a young married couple saying their first goodbye after the honeymoon, and wished each other luck. Then she headed into the library and I backed the Pinto onto Erie and drove west to Dana and the expressway.
It would be stretching a point to call Dent, Ohio, a town. You're in it before you realize it, straight off the Boulevard and up Race Road to the Pike; then you're past it a mile farther on, when Harrison dips down into the green, hilly countryside of north Hamilton County. A couple of two-pump gas stations, a tiny trailer park, a drive-in theater marked “Closed for the Season,” a handful of go-go bars with signs that read “Girls, girls, girls!” All of this set on the shoulderless curbs of a mile-long stretch of highway is all there is to Dent, Ohio.
Norris Reaves Auto Repair Shop, which looked like a big, white slat barn, was located on the western fringe of the small commercial strip along Harrison Pike. It probably had been a barn at one time, because Dent marked the edge of farm country. The little township itself had been farm country not too many years before. Corn fields and blackberry patches and jagged stands of oak and maple that looked like puzzle pieces set out on a broad, dusty tabletop. The yard around the garage was littered with automobile parts, rusting axles, bald outsized truck tires, and old radiators lying like spent canteens on the hard dirt driveway that led up to the garage doors. I parked the Pinto behind a Harley-Davidson Electraglide that was propped beneath an oak tree, took a quick look at the sky, which was threatening rain, and walked up to the Reaves repair shop.
The big barn doors were open, but nobody seemed to be around. I stepped inside. There weren't any cars being serviced, but there were plenty of tools and parts lying about. Big workbenches full of them. Black hoses dangling on the walls like sausages. A portable hydraulic lift sitting in the center of the dirt floor. A big, gun-metal chest sitting beside it, with a couple of drawers pulled open and the tools inside shining like scalpels on a hospital tray. Chrome-plated reversible wrenches, lug nuts of every shape and size, screw drivers, ratchets, power drills. I picked up one of the wrenches and looked it over. It still had the price sticker on its shank.
Whoever had bought those tools must have liked the way they sparkled. Either that or he had a lot of extra cash to spend. I dropped the wrench back in the chest and walked out into the yard and around the side of the building to the rear lot. Something was making a noise back there. A huffing sound that got louder as I rounded the corner. It wasn't until I was almost on top of him that I realized the sound wasn't coming from a piece of machinery but from a huge, red-haired man doing bench presses inside a little caged-off area behind the barn.
“Ouf-ouf-ouf.” He grunted every time he lifted the bar. Which was Olympic size and loaded with three forty-five pound black iron disks on each end. That made two-hundred and seventy pounds, plus the bar, the man was pressing, which was enough to make Arnold Schwarzenegger groan. He was bare-chested and his abdomen looked like the carapace of a lobster—all rock-hard, etched, and segmented musculature.
“Jus’ leave me finish this set,” he called out to me. “Got three more reps to go.”
He lifted the bar three more times and with each lift the muscles in his chest knotted up like wet, twisted towels and his biceps bulged as if there were grapefruits rolling beneath his flesh.
“Ouf!” the red-haired man grunted and lowered the bar into the prongs of the bench.
“Jus’ working on my pecs,” he said, poking one long finger into his chest. He moved up on the bench, his huge legs straddling either side, and continued to prod at the red swollen muscles, as if he'd lost feeling there and was trying to restore the circulation. He looked up at me and smiled cheerfully. His front two teeth were broken off at the gum; but, aside from that, his face had the gentle bovine look of a country boy. Long and dewy-eyed and easygoing.
“Just pumping up,” he said as he worked on his pecs. “Going to do some dumbbell flyes next. Then bomb out on my lats. That is, if you don't have a problem that keeps me from it.”
He got up from the bench and pulled a gray sweatshirt from where it was hung on the chicken wire cage. Property Of O.S.U. Athletic Department, it said on the front. The red-haired man did a check pose to impress me, laughed a little when I looked impressed, then slipped the shirt on.
“What kin I do for you?” he said as he walked from the cage.
Now I'm a pretty good-sized man. Six three, two-fifteen. No muscle-builder, but I stay in shape. Yet old Red, standing there in front of me, made me look the way Jake Lord had looked standing beside his brother, Haskell. I mean he dwarfed me. It couldn't have been a coincidence that he was a body-builder. Not after the picture I'd seen of Hack. So I figured this giant was Norris Reaves, Effie's brother. And judging from the quantity of equipment in the cage—bench press and barbells and flye-pulls and all of it relatively new—I figured that it was just possible that old Hack worked out there, too.
“Your car broke down?” he said. “I kin getchu a wrecker. But it's going to cost some.”
“Looks like business is booming,” I said, pointing at the equipment in the cage.
“I do all right,” Norris said and frowned. “You got a car you want me to look at or what?”
“No car, Red. But I'd like to ask you a few questions.”
“You kin ask,” he said, flexing his right arm as if he were working out a cramp.
“I'm looking for a friend of yours.”
“Yeah?” Reaves said. “Who might that be?”
“Haskell Lord.”
He didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Just chewed it over solemnly. Then he smiled as if to say it wasn't that big a deal. Only he'd thought it over a second too long for my liking. Besides he had a face like a mirror and anything as rare as a worrisome thought smoked it up like a dying man's breath. When a man that big and strong starts calculating, I wonder what he's toting up.
“Ain't seen Hack around here for a while,” Reaves said.
“How about your sister? Have you seen her?”
“Oh, sure. I see Effie all the time.”
“I understand that she and Hack are friends.”
“Could be,” he said. “Where'd you hear all that?”
“From Hack's brother.”
He mulled it over again. “You ain't a cop, are you?”
“Private investigator.”
“Looking for Hack, huh?”
I nodded.
“Well, I can't tell you where he is, ‘cause I don't know. But if you want to talk to Effie, I kin point her out to you.”
“That would be a help,” I told him.
“You know where Turkey Run Ridge is?” he said.
“I can find it.”
He laughed, a big robust laugh of amusement at the city slicker. “You can, huh? Well, I don't doubt you, mister, but it's a might tricky getting there.” He sighed and looked back at the cage, as if he wished he were inside doing flye-pulls.
“I guess I kin take a few minutes off to show you. Only I ain't got a car here. Just a cycle.”
“My car's out front,” I said. “You can ride with me or I can follow you.”
He looked back one last time, over his enormous shoulder, at the cage where the dumbbells and weight disks were standing like cast-iron animals, and said, “All right, then. Just let me close up here. And I'll take you on over.”
16
IF YOU’VE ever seen a growling man straddling a Shetland pony, you have some idea of what big Norris Reaves looked like hunched on the Harley. I followed that hulking figure as he burbled west down
Harrison, past the I-275 interchange, and up into the autumn hills along the Whitewater River. About three miles out, he veered north onto an S-shaped, two-lane road that climbed through stands of maple and pine to a broad plateau dotted with farm houses. Farmland rolled and tumbled on either side of the roadbed, then the highway jogged east and started climbing again. I began to see Reaves's point about finding my way. The roads were like coils of rope tossed haphazardly on the hillsides. And I probably wouldn't have had a bit of trouble getting lost.
Two miles farther on, we came to an interchange. The main road continued eastward, while a gravel road ran north up the side of a hill. A street sign stuck in the dirt read Turkey Run Ridge. Reaves turned off on the side road. And up we went. The lane ran high above a huge forested valley, which lay beneath us on the west side of the road. A few ramshackle farmhouses were set on the east side, old frame houses and outbuildings weathered black by the wind. It was a rugged-looking spot for a lady to be living in. Rugged and remote as a Tennessee mountain road. But if what I'd heard about Effie Reaves were true, she was as tough as the landscape.
About a half mile farther on, Reaves pulled off the lane into a dirt yard in front of one of those ramshackle farmhouses. I slid in behind him. It was a one-story frame house with a roofed veranda in front and what looked like an old tobacco-colored barn set about a hundred yards behind it, at the foot of a gentle hill. A dirt path led down the hillside to the barn and another path led up to the front steps of the house. A porch swing dangling from the veranda roof was creaking in the wind.
As I got out of the car, Reaves walked up to the porch and bellowed, “Effie!”
A spatter of cold rain kicked at the dust in the front yard and peppered the Pinto's roof like a handful of shot. I pulled my coat lapels around my neck and waited by the car while Reaves searched the house. I heard him holler “Effie!” a couple more times, then he came back out the door and stood on the porch, with his big hands on his hips and a look of blank perplexity on his farmboy's face.
Final Notice Page 11
