StoneDust

by Justin Scott

  “Couple of guys broke into my house.”

  “That why you’re here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Looking for them.”

  “No, they came up from Waterbury.”

  “So why aren’t you in Waterbury?”

  “I have to get back in shape first.”

  Gwen took a pull on her Bud, tongueing the bottle and enjoying my reaction. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I’m wondering who might visit the Indians late on a Saturday night.”

  “Like the night your pal Reg ODed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I have no idea—Hey, Buddy! Dance with me.”

  She glanced back, just once, to make sure I was staring at her jeans, which I was, and disappeared onto the dance floor.

  I returned to the bar, disappointed, but not particularly surprised. Gwen owed me little, and what she did she would never pay with information about her neighbors, much less her own.

  In fact, after eight bars, a lot of driving, and a hundred bucks’ worth of booze and club soda, the day and night were beginning to wear thin. What had started with promise—an easy look at the impounded Blazer—had deteriorated to a headache in a loud, smoky joint full of people having a better time than I was. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed. But first I had to pry my cousin off a stool he appeared welded to.

  “Matt wants money,” Pink welcomed me back to the bar. “We had another round—hell, Matt, while he’s got his money out might as well pour some more. Matthew! More Screech! ’Less you want me and Zeke to come back there and get it ourselves—no, I didn’t think so.” He and the bearded Canadian shared a laugh, which was suddenly drowned out by loud cheers at the door. Shouts and whistles followed the newcomer across the room.

  Pink stood up, peered over the crowd. “Son of a bitch, it’s old Smokey.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s the Norfolk dude that chainsawed the Hitching Post bar.” (We had stopped at the Hitching Post earlier, found it boarded up.) “Hey, Smokey! Haul ass over here and let me buy you a drink. Buy him a drink, Ben.”

  “Is that Freddy Butler with him?”

  “Yeah, the little weasel—Pour fast, Matthew, if you don’t want another exit. That’s Smokey coming—Hey Smoke.” Big palms smacked together and Smokey, clearly enjoying his new celebrity, greeted Pink like an old friend. They weren’t old friends; it was more a matter of the Alien extending Godzilla professional courtesy.

  Freddy Butler, oozing in Smokey’s trail like a pet snake, gave me a condescending nod. We’d gone to grade school together, where the bicepally challenged Freddy always made friends with the bully. He was a Jervis hanger-on with no obvious job, though he drove a new truck. Now he’d palled up with a case-hardened woody from the north.

  I heard Pink say, “Ben, my cousin, here,” and Smokey offered a double-wide hand. “Nice to meet you. I worked for your dad on occasion; came down, cleared some lots for him. I was sorry when he passed away.” Smokey was a weather-wrinkled forty or so, backwoods lanky, long arms like braided wire. His hazel eyes were opaque, which would mask what I imagined would be abrupt changes in his mood.

  “Thank you. Pink thought you might enjoy a drink.”

  “Yup. Yup. That’s not a bad idea at all. Hello, Matthew. Got any of that Screech left?”

  I asked Freddy what he’d have and he wanted Screech too.

  “Let the little bastard buy his own drinks,” Pink rumbled in my ear, but the Hitching Post wasn’t that far from the covered bridge, and, the way I heard it, Smokey’s alterations had been executed after closing time the night Reg died.

  Everyone threw back his Screech and no one protested when I suggested another. “All right,” said Pink. “I’ve heard seventeen versions of what happened that night. Now I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.”

  “You shoulda been there,” piped Freddy Butler. “It was neat.”

  “If I’d been there I wouldn’t of asked,” Pink growled. “So what happened, Smoke? Bastards wouldn’t serve you? Too drunk?”

  “I wasn’t that drunk. But the bartender said it was five past one.”

  “Closing is one,” Freddy noted.

  “I said my watch must have stopped.”

  Smokey held up two bare wrists, and everybody laughed.

  “‘How about a quick one?’”

  “So the bartender goes, ‘We’re closed,’” said Freddy.

  “So I say, ‘Okay, I know you’re closed. All we want is one drink.’”

  Freddy said, “The bartender goes, ‘The cash register is locked.’”

  “So I say, ‘Put the cash in a coffee can until the morning, only pour me and my friend a drink.’ This is one surly son of a bitch.” Smokey’s eye fell on the grandmother with the baby. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he touched his cap.

  “So the bartender goes—”

  Smokey cut Freddy off. “Can it. The bartender says we gotta leave. I said, ‘I’m leaving as soon as I get a drink.’”

  “You gotta be firm with these people,” Pink agreed.

  “Bartender says, ‘Get the hell out.’ Picks up one of them little sawed-off baseball bats. I said, ‘Look, everybody in this piss hole is still finishing their last drink. It’s not going to hurt to give me and my friend a drink.’

  “He waves his bat in my face. I didn’t like that, but I figured, okay, maybe the sorry ’sucker’s had a bad day. So I say, ‘Tell you what. We’re going visiting anyhow’—I got an Indian gal I’m buddies with—‘so sell me a couple of six-packs we can bring as a house present. Like decent, well-brought-up people do.’ Man bangs the bat on the bar and says next time it’s going to be my head.”

  Smokey drained his Screech and looked around expectantly. I motioned Matthew, who came quickly.

  “Thank you, Ben…Now, I should explain he’s doing this in front of people some of which I know personally. Couple of little Freddy’s cousins, and their buddy Pete Stock. So he’s not only threatening me, he’s embarrassing me. Well, I blew my stack.”

  “I’d have blown it a lot faster,” said Pink.

  Smokey nodded. “Yes, you would. Anyway, I told Freddy to stand by the door in case the son of a bitch—excuse me, ma’am—tried to lock me out, and I went out to the truck to get a saw.”

  “Which one?” asked Pink.

  “I would have preferred my Stiel, except it had a brand new chain, and I expected I’d run into nails. So I grabbed my old Husqvarna.”

  “Good tool,” said Pink.

  “The Husky’s a quiet tool, yeah, but the Stiel is your better saw. ’Course, these days a lot of people go for the Jonsered.”

  “I won’t buy a foreign tool.”

  “Where you think the Husky’s made?”

  “Alaska.”

  “Anyway, when I get to the door, poor Freddy’s on the wrong side and it’s locked.”

  “He hit me with the bat,” said Freddy.

  Everyone looked at Freddy; no one believed him.

  “Not only was the door locked, it was one of them steel ones Stanley makes. So first thing I had to do was cut a new door. That didn’t take long and I walked through the wall and there was the bartender on the phone to the cops, so I sawed the phone off the wall and then I got busy on the bar. Boy, you should have heard the noise. It was loud in there.”

  “Thought you said the Husky’s a quiet tool.”

  “I forgot my earmuffs.”

  “Sawed it in half,” yelled Freddy. “Right in half.”

  “I made two cuts thirty-six inches apart, to make Freddy a path. Told Freddy to grab a couple of six-packs and drop some money on the register. I mean, I wanted it clear we weren’t talking robbery here.”

  “Entirely different situation,” said Pink.

  “Tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Since then, I never recall so many friendly bartenders. Second I’m
in the door, there’s a glass waiting.”

  “Was your lady friend grateful?” I asked.

  “What’s that, Ben? Oh, my Indian gal? She was pleased. I left Freddy to sleep in the truck and had a couple of beers with her. Left her the rest except one for the road.”

  “Wasn’t that the night Reg Hopkins died?”

  Smokey laughed. “Well, that was the funniest damned thing of all.” He looked around.

  The jukebox was screeching Mary-Chapin Carpenter and the car thieves had joined the dancing. Smokey’s immediate audience included Pink and Matthew, the grandmother, Canada Zeke, and me, working hard at maintaining an appearance of casual interest.

  “Don’t pass this on, but this is the funniest thing you ever heard. Freddy and I start home, but when we get to the covered bridge, the ’sucker’s blocked. There’s this Chevy S10 sitting inside. Okay?

  “Freddy here sticks his head out the window and yells, ‘Move that goddamned truck.’ Nothing. I notice the headlights are on, burned down to cats’ eyes. Battery’s dying. Freddy yells again, ‘Move that goddamned truck or we’ll saw it in half.’ I say, ‘Hold on, Freddy. First of all, I’m done sawing tonight. Second, man who parked there probably had a reason. We’re just going to leave him and go around the long way.’ ‘Long way,’ yells Freddy. ‘That’s twenty miles.’ Well, it ain’t, but it’s a ways.”

  “I left my car at the Hitching Post,” Freddy explained. “I thought the cops might take it.”

  “Freddy starts arguing with me. I said, ‘Son, if you want to cross that bridge, you can walk, but I’m driving around.’ Freddy starts yelling, ‘Push it off the bridge. Push him out of the way.’

  “Why didn’t you?” asked Pink.

  “You know, Pink, sometimes you reach a point of an evening when you just don’t feel up to it. I just wanted a peaceful drive, finish my beer, and fall asleep. Nice warm night, I didn’t want the aggravation. And like I say, I had a feeling the fellow in the Blazer wanted to be there.”

  “What time was that?” I asked.

  “Three-thirty, maybe four, four-thirty. Hell, could have been five.”

  “But it was after three.”

  “Huh? Oh, had to be, counting the time at the Hitching Post and the time with my gal. Right, Freddy?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. Anyway, Freddy decides he’s going to walk to the Hitching Post. Not that anybody was thinking that clearly by then. I said suit yourself. So I turned the truck around and the last I see of Freddy, he’s walking across the covered bridge.

  “Now get this. Next day I’m up early. Never made it home. Fell asleep in the truck. So I drive back down to Newbury for some breakfast at the White Birch. Some dude comes in and says the cops found poor Reg Hopkins dead in the covered bridge. Don’t you see? That was his Blazer. Reg was in it. Dead. So I call up Freddy and ask his mother to wake him and he gets on the phone and I say, ‘Hey, turkey. You know that Blazer you wanted to push? There was a dead body in it.’”

  “I thought he was shitting me,” said Freddy.

  Smokey winked a hazel eye. “I said, ‘Freddy. I hope you didn’t leave your fingerprints on that Blazer. ’Cause if the cops find ’em, you’re in deep trouble.’

  “Freddy starts crying. ‘I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t do nothing.’ Pink, you should have heard him. He’s begging me, ‘Don’t tell I was there. Don’t tell I was there.’ And I said, ‘I don’t have to tell if you left your fingerprints. They’ll call you.’ ‘I didn’t touch it,’ says Freddy. ‘I swear I didn’t.’”

  “I didn’t,” said Freddy. “But I was scared until Smokey started laughing. You really had me going there, Smokey.”

  While everyone was laughing, I asked Freddy, “What did you scratch it with, a can opener?”

  “Car keys—Hey. What? What?”

  “Wha’d you say, Ben?” asked Smokey, and Pink looked puzzled.

  “You crossed the bridge into the reservation about two and there was no Blazer on the bridge. When you came back between three and five, it was blocking the bridge.”

  “The devil are you talking about, son?”

  “I’m wondering when Reg arrived at the bridge.”

  “What scratch?” asked Freddy. “I didn’t scratch nothing.”

  “What scratch?” asked Smokey.

  Pink glared uncertainly through a haze of Screech. Finally, he said, “Oh, that scratch,” and fell silent.

  “You are making me jumpy,” said Smokey.

  “How’s that?” I asked.

  “You been following me around or something?”

  “I saw a long scratch on Reg’s Blazer.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Heard the police call on the scanner. Drove out for a look. Anyway, Pink towed it into Plainfield pound and we were talking about the scratch. Now you tell this story and I figured it was Freddy who scratched it, being in a bad mood because he had to walk home.”

  Smokey clamped a big hand on my shoulder. Matthew Jervis found spills to wipe at the far end of his bar and the grandmother shielded her baby. The last thing I needed was another hit in the head, so I glanced at Pink, who said, “Let him go.”

  “When he explains what the hell—”

  I heard an explosion like a gunshot point-blank. Smokey flew off his stool and landed on his back, motionless, his face red as a tomato where Pink had slapped him.

  “Let’s go, Ben. Man’s got a lot of friends here.”

  We walked unhurriedly, but resolutely, across the dance floor, toward the door. We got some looks, but nobody made a move, except Gwen Jervis, who blew me a kiss.

  In the parking lot, I said, “Thanks for the help.”

  Pink tossed me his keys. “Needed the ride home. I’m too shitfaced to drive.”

  I woke him outside his trailer in Frenchtown. He belched Screech and groaned, previewing his hangover.

  “By the way, what can I tell Aunt Connie about the rattle in the Lincoln?”

  “You gotta know now?”

  “I’m going to have breakfast with her in the morning. I’d like to give her some good news, before I hit her up for a favor.”

  Pink swayed like a Sequoia in an earthquake. “Tell her…Tell her I’m going to tear that ’sucker down to the rocker panels if I have to. Tell her when I’m through with that mother—”

  Chapter 16

  “Chevalley Enterprises stands by their warranty,” I said, ladling a third portion of Connie’s raspberry preserves. “Pink guarantees he’ll fix that rattle.”

  “He’s been guaranteeing for months now and it still rattles. Now for whom do you want me to give a dinner party?”

  It was seven-thirty in Connie’s morning room. Warm summer air drifted in the french doors. Yellow walls reflected sunlight dappling through an elm tree. House finches and chickadees nattered at a feeder.

  Connie had already walked to the General Store for her Wall Street Journal, which she had been reading in neatly folded sections when I arrived. Coffee, tea, and toast were spread on a sideboard, and it appeared to me that Pink had been right about the medicinal qualities of Screech: My headache had diminished to the growl of a backhoe chewing on the other side of a hill. Which was just as well, as I had run into resistance.

  “I told you. The Fisks, the Carters, the Bowlands, and the Barretts.”

  “But I don’t know them.”

  “Of course you know them. Duane and Michelle Fisk own Newbury Pre-cast. Bill Carter the builder. Ted Barrett’s the shop teacher—you know, the builder who went broke. The Bowlands are new; Rick works for IBM. He was cooking with me at the cookout. Remember? Button-down? You said he reminded you of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.”

  “I don’t know them.”

  “You’ve known Duane and Bill and Ted since they were kids.” Newbury boys learned the work ethic raking Connie Abbott’s lawn.

  “You know what I mean, Benj
amin.”

  I did, of course, know what she meant. Although she was a fierce democrat in the small “d” sense—her commitment exceeded only by her generosity toward charities and institutions that championed equal opportunity—Louis XIV would have felt right at home at her dinner table, where guests had to be known by family, long acquaintance, laudable achievement, or sterling introduction. Wealth was not considered a laudable achievement and, in fact, fortunes accumulated since the Civil War were a liability.

  “I really need a favor, Aunt Connie. I’m betting eight people can’t sustain a lie. At a dinner party I could trap all four couples in one place at the same time. If I can shake them up so they think I know more than I do, they’ll fill in the empty spaces.”

  I had kept my word to Vicky. Not even to Aunt Connie would I name Vicky as the mystery guest, although I had filled her in on everything else I had learned since our last chat when she recommended I query gossip-queen Marie Butler.

  Connie returned a shrewd look. “I looked up the word nepotism the other day. Did you know that it means, literally, favoritism shown to nephews?”

  “It’s a wonderful word, Connie. And I’m willing to pull nepotistical rank to settle up with whoever dumped Reg in that bridge.”

  “Perhaps you’d better explain why you can’t give this dinner party in your own house.”

  “For one thing, it’s pretty hard for a single guy to serve eight people alone. Beer and pizza won’t lock them up the way you could in your dining room.”

  “Victoria McLachlan would be delighted to act as your hostess.” Connie held Vicky in high regard and followed her career with keen interest, while on the personal side, she thought Vicky was an ideal candidate to take me off the streets.

  “They won’t come to my house. They’ll know right away I’m still chasing Reg.”

  “I can’t very well invite them here, only to reveal you lurking under the tablecloth.”

  “They’ll know I’m coming, but they have to accept your invitation.”

  “Oh, Ben, nobody cares about those old rules any more. Least not these people. Though Ted Barrett was an especially well-mannered young fellow—and quite handsome—No, if you want them to accept my invitation knowing you’ll be here, you’ll need juicier bait than dinner with what passes for grande damedom in these parts.”