by Ed Gorman
The town now belonged to the Cliffies, Senior and Junior, respectively.
The third thing about Cliffie is that he secretly thinks he’s Glenn Ford. Back when we were in grade school together, everything was Glenn Ford Glenn Ford Glenn Ford. In the early fifties, when Ford started making a lot of Westerns, he sometimes wore a khaki outfit and carried his gun slung low. Hence, you will notice that Cliffie, as he makes his appearance here, is also dressed in khaki with his gun slung low.
I admit to a bit of hypocrisy, complaining about Cliffie walking around pretending he’s Glenn; I walk around pretending I’m Robert Ryan.
I was in the driveway when Cliffie swept up in his cruiser, a hopped-up Mercury with a whip antenna that could amputate low-hanging branches if given half a chance. The ambulance was already here, along with Doc Novotony’s shiny black Corvette. Doc is the medical examiner and a distant relative of Cliffie’s. He’s one of the few Sykes menfolk who doesn’t blow his nose on his shirt sleeve.
Usually, Cliffie swaggers. And sneers. The thing is, though he had his gun and his white Stetson and his cowboy boots, he had one more thing tonight, too. His feelings of inferiority.
Most people don’t ever forget being poor. As much as poverty deprives the belly, it also deprives the spirit. A big house like this, a dozen locally prominent people standing on the Jay Gatsby lawn, a hint of art and culture glimpsed through the wide front windows… this wasn’t Cliffie territory and never would be. No matter how mean, rich, or powerful Cliffie got, he would never be accepted by people like these and he knew it.
I would have felt sorry for the dumb bastard but he would’ve scowled if I’d mentioned that I knew how he was feeling.
He came up and said, “Looks like these fancy friends of yours got some trouble on their hands.”
“Looks like.”
“One of ‘em needs a lawyer, Counselor, I’ll bet it won’t be you. It’ll be some blue-suit prick from Cedar Rapids.”
“Probably.”
He looked at me as if my face had broken out. “You not feeling well tonight, Counselor?”
“Why?”
He checked his wristwatch.
“Been here nearly two minutes and you haven’t insulted me yet.”
“That’s because you and I have one thing in common tonight.
We don’t belong here. And we both know it.
It’s sort of intimidating for a couple of hayseeds from the Knolls.”
He spat a stream of chewing tobacco. He usually spat in the direction of one of my shoes.
The way the bad guy in the bad Westerns always shoots at the ground and makes the pitiful old drunk dance.
“Shit, Counselor, I’ll bet my old man has three times as much money as Coyle here.”
“I’ll bet he does, too,” I said. He knew damned well what I was talking about. And I knew damned well he wouldn’t admit it.
Two of his men took care of business. They’d been taking police training at the state academy. They had a pretty decent knowledge of inspecting crime scenes and interviewing witnesses and identifying suspects. He looked at them now and snorted. “Those two men, they get a little bit of police school and they think they’re hot shit.”
“Maybe you should get a little of that training yourself.
Couldn’t hurt.”
He gaped at me again. “What the hell’s with you tonight, Counselor? You sound like one of those psychologist guys on the tube.” Then, “And you tell that judge of yours not to get you involved in this one, McCain, you get me? I’d hate to have to make a fool of her again.”
I almost said something but stopped myself in time. The standing battle between Judge Whitney and Cliffie took the form of her always disproving the guilt of the person Cliffie had charged with a capital crime. By this time the score was something like 37 to 0, due in no small part to the fact that Cliffie didn’t know anything about investigative techniques. He always claimed he went on “hunches.” Ah, those good old hunches.
Cliffie said, “Now I gotta go call the Griffins and tell them what happened. I’ll just patch in through my two-way.”
“Sort of the personal touch, huh, Chief?”
“You want to call them for me, Counselor?
You think you’d like to make a call like that?”
He went away and came back within a few minutes. I spent the time talking to one of his deputies, who actually sounded intelligent.
For a minute or so I was alone. I took in the summer moon-drift sky and the scent of grass and flowers from the nearby garden. It was a night to be twelve again, catch fireflies, and read comic books under the covers with a flashlight and dream of the girl you hope to walk home from school with some lucky day.
Cliffie said, “Well, well, Counselor, looks like you and me may be buttin’ heads on this dead girl after all.”
“How would that be?”
“One of my least favorite people sounds like he’s in a lot of trouble.”
“How does that affect me?”
“He’s one of your clients. One of those punks we’re always haulin’ in and you’re always bailin’ out. Mrs. Griffin told me that her daughter and him had a terrible argument just this afternoon and that he slapped her.”
I knew the name he was going to say. And I dreaded hearing it. A lot of people had predicted that he would kill somebody someday. Maybe that day had come around at last.
“David Egan, Counselor.” Cliffie smirked. “He is a client of yours, isn’t he?”
Three
Over the next half hour, I got curious about why Cliffie was spending so much time talking to Linda Dennehy. She was pretty, maybe that was why. But after the third time he walked over to his men and then came right back to Linda, I wondered what was going on.
I stood on the lawn with everybody else. As soon as Cliffie’s men finished with them, the guests left. They all looked tired. They’d talked it all out for now; tomorrow, over breakfast coffee, they’d start talking about it again. And for days after that.
Linda drifted over after a time. “You about ready for that car ride, Sam?”
“Been ready.”
“I think Cliffie’s done questioning me.”
“What was that all about?”
“The party-I came with Jane Daly. I’d left my purse in her car and needed to get it.
He wanted to know if I saw anything or anybody. I didn’t. Cliffie seems to think I’m hiding something because I’m afraid to be a witness. No matter how many times I told him otherwise, he’d keep coming back and telling me how he’d protect me and I shouldn’t be afraid to tell him who I saw in the garage. He really thinks I saw the killer.”
“That’s our Cliffie. He never lets reality get in his way.”
“I almost feel guilty for not having seen the killer, you know?”
“You did what you could. You told him the truth.
From now on it’s his problem.”
I was just about to ask if she wanted to go when Cliffie appeared.
“Counselor, you could do me and this town a favor by convincing your frightened little friend that she should tell me everything she knows.”
“She’s told you everything she knows.”
He smirked. “I see she’s already told you I’ve been asking her for the truth.”
“You want her to make up something? Maybe draw a name out of a hat?”
He looked at her and said, “You ever gone out with this David Egan, Linda?”
“I don’t usually date high school boys.”
“This day and age, anything’s possible.”
“Well, I’ve never dated him, Chief.
I’m not sure I’ve ever even spoken to him.”
“Pretty gal like you, maybe he’s spoken to you.”
“I’m afraid not.”
Cliffie started to ask another question but I interrupted him. “She’s told you what she knows.
She’s willing to sign a statement to the effect that everything’s s
he’s told you is the truth. How’s that?”
“You her lawyer now, are you, Counselor?”
“I am if she needs one. Does she need one, Chief?”
He sighed. “Maybe you can make her understand, Counselor.” We were talking man to man now.
Girls excluded. It was as if Linda had vanished. “Maybe you can explain how police protection works. Everywhere she goes, she’ll have one of my men trailing her. And every time she’s at home, I’ll have a man parked nearby. I won’t let anybody touch her.”
Linda smiled. “That sounds very nice, Chief.
Having protection like that. Unfortunately, I really don’t know who the killer is.”
“That’s just about all she has to say, Chief.
Now, we’d like to get out of here if possible.”
He leaned in my direction and said, “You know these people pretty good, do you, Counselor?”
“If you mean the Coyles, I’m a friend of Jean’s.”
He leaned in and whispered. “Glad you’re not a friend of her husband’s. There’s a jackass for you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You come out here often?”
“A few times a year. To parties.”
“I’m surprised they’d invite somebody who grew up in the Knolls out here.”
“They’re well-off. But that doesn’t mean they’re snobs.”
“I’m also told that the dead girl was going out with David.”
“I have to take your word for all this. I don’t know anything about David’s personal life. Not much, anyway. I’ve represented him on a few traffic charges is all.”
“The way he drag races, he’s gonna get himself killed one of these days. And he’s gonna kill somebody else, too, while he’s at it.”
“I agree. And I’ve told him that many times.”
The smile. “Well, Counselor, it was bound to happen. We had to agree with each other someday and it finally happened.” Then, to Linda, “Don’t leave the county without my permission.”
“Darn, Linda,” I said, “there goes your trip to Antarctica.”
“Gosh, and I was hoping to bring back all that whale blubber, too.”
“You two should go on Ed Sullivan,”
Cliffie said. “You’re getting your act down real good.”
“Can he do that? Order me to stay in the county?”
Linda asked as Cliffie walked away. He was now a whole lot less intimidated by the house and its guests. His swagger was back. And that was the natural order of things. Cliffie was an incompetent jerk. My momentary madness of feeling sorry for him had passed.
“Of course not.”
“That ride really sounds good, Sam.”
“Yeah,” I said, sliding my arm around her slender shoulders, “it sure does.”
I always try to picture the land as it was before even the Indians arrived. Impenetrable timber and man-tall grass and prairies and meadows and hills raw with deep true colors. Enough buffalo and bison to make the ground rumble when they approached. Enough steep red limestone cliffs to provide a facsimile of life as the original cliff dwellings must have looked like.
And the rushing, bank-overflowing rivers, fast and blue and slapping with fish.
At night come the mysteries that must have given even the Vikings pause, those sounds and shadows, that harsh and brazen moon, the tumbled dark ravines and the caves with their seared white bones of unknown animals-night is best of all.
We didn’t talk.
You can do that sometimes after sharing a proximity to death. A car accident, all mangled metal and terrible lurid blood on the highway; or sobbing, plump swimsuited adults telling you about a five-year-old who has just drowned in the public pool; or a crowd of drunks in a parking lot where one drunken battler accidentally killed another with an unlucky punch.
There’s either a lot of talk or not much talk at all.
A teenage girl had died tonight and there was nothing to say and so we said it.
There was just the wind and the smooth V-8 of the red ragtop in the moon-silver countryside: the sandpits where we’d drunk underage beer in high school; the drive-in theater that would close with the first frost but for now showed a screenful of images of rock and roll and sex and despair and death, city images out here in the country dancing on a piece of cloth; and the baseball park where the Little Leaguers dreamed of big league glory, not understanding that the cost of such glory would be their innocence.
We got Koma on the radio, best rock-and-roll station in the country, pure rock all the way across the land from Oklahoma City, the favorite of small-town Midwestern kids and adult-kids everywhere.
I decided to talk. “I’ll be your lawyer.”
She didn’t respond at first. Her eyes behind her glasses looked far, far away. She was pulled up on the seat with her fine legs beneath her and her hair caught in the wind.
“Will I need one?”
“Probably. Cliffie’ll pester the hell out of you.”
“He can’t make me say anything I don’t want to say.”
“He can try.”
“He’s such an idiot.”
“You can be an idiot when your old man runs the town,” I said.
“That’s why I like Iowa City so much better.
You have a lot more privacy. And they wouldn’t put up with Cliffie for thirty seconds. And it’s a lot more sophisticated. I see a lot of foreign movies there. I never thought I could get used to the subtitles but I have.”
I sensed she was going to tell me whatever she’d hinted at back on the patio. But she was going to work up to it.
She said, “You know he left me.”
“I heard that, yes. I’m sorry.”
“Something happened to me and as much as I hate to say it, I guess I can’t really blame him for leaving.” She hesitated. “He just couldn’t handle it is all.”
“Sounds like you’re taking all the blame for whatever happened.”
“Oh, it isn’t blame so much as… just being real about it.”
Then we didn’t talk for some time. I headed back to town. The river was nice this time of night, speeding down the long, narrow asphalt with the moonlight on the dark water and campfires on the far shore up near the bend. A Piper Cub glided above the birch trees.
“Did you hear that I’d been sick?” she said.
“No, I hadn’t. What was wrong?”
“Oh, you know, a woman thing.”
“Are you all right now?”
“Well, the doctors think everything is going well.” She tried to smile but it didn’t quite work and the sadness was back on her face. “And I pray a lot. I pray all the time.” Then, “I don’t want to-let me put it another way. I’d like to make out with you tonight, Sam. But I can’t. I hope you won’t get mad.”
“I’ll try and control that psychotic temper of mine.”
She reached out and put her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m having a hard time with some-things-Sam.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t feel very… female these days.
Do you know much about breast cancer?”
And then all her comments made sense. Same thing had happened to an aunt of mine.
“A little, I guess.”
“Well, I didn’t feel very female after the operation. And when my husband saw me-undressed me the first time-it wasn’t his fault, but I could see how repelled he was and-and I was repelled, too. Every time I’d look in the mirror. They had to take my right breast.”
She didn’t cry. She simply looked out at a passenger train snaking, its lighted window like the glowing skin of a rattler, across the Midwest midnight.
“Right now, Sam, I just couldn’t handle making out.”
Four
“So you have no idea how it got there?”
“God, Sam, how many times do I have to tell you? I don’t have any idea at all.”
“And you weren’t out there last night?”
“No. Not even close.”
“And you can prove that?”
David Egan said, “I can prove it but I’d rather not.”
I sat on the edge of my desk and lighted a Lucky. He put his hand out. I pitched him the pack.
He said, “All I’ve got is the habit, Sam. I’ll need a match, too.”
I’d been planning to go to Iowa City for the Hawkeye game that day. But not now. Not with the events of last night. I’d have to send Dad and Mom on alone.
David Egan was the local heartbreaker.
Even my part-time secretary, Jamie-who was so in love with her boyfriend, Turk, that she wore two of his rings, both suitably stuffed with pink angora, one on her wedding finger, the other on a chain around her neck-her cheeks flushed, and she dithered even more than usual when Egan was around.
She claimed Egan looked just like Tony Curtis-which came as news to me and, I assumed, would come as news to Tony. Egan had been raised by two maiden aunts after his drunken father rambled west and got himself killed under mysterious circumstances and his mother died young of heart disease. There were two distinct David Egans. Now that he was in trouble, he was the humble Egan. But there was a harsh side, too, the self-pitying side that always let you know how tough his life had been and implied it should be your turn to have a little of his hard luck. This only seemed to attract the girls, who foolishly thought they could use maternal skills to take away his bitterness. He was a heartbreaker and proud of it.
He was also an obsessive drag racer and that was how I knew him. I’d had to represent him in court several times because his souped-up black Mercury just dragged him into trouble again and again.
“We’ve got two things we need to clarify before Cliffie finds you,” I said to Egan.
Cliffie had gone looking for Egan last night. But Egan had gotten the word first and hidden out in the abandoned grade school. He called me around dawn. It was now nearly 9 A.M.
