The Brickeaters
Page 7
“So this is the guy?” He could have been talking about a dead skunk. “This is the hotshot reporter from L… A…” Speaking deliberately, Duane added a sound somewhere between a snicker and a snort, loudly punctuating the end of his sentence.
“Duane! I told you to leave us alone. This is official business.”
“Yeah, right… official business.” Duane turned to me. “So I guess you’ll be leaving town pronto… right, reporter dude?”
“It’s Franklin, Duane. Franklin Blodgett,” I said, holding out my hand. Duane scrutinized it as if eyeing a dead fish covered in moose manure. Reluctantly, the trooper enveloped my palm in his, completely crushing my feeble mitt in the process.
“DUANE…”
“Okay, okay, I gotta go to work anyway…. but I’ll pick you up tonight and we can go over to Jimmy’s and have a few beers. I think there’s a good game on later.”
“No, Duane, I’m busy tonight…”
“Busy, what do you mean…” Duane was giving me a hard stare.
“I’m sorry, Duane, but I promised Bernie I’d catch up my paperwork. We’ll get together another time.”
“But it’s Saturday night, Patty. We always go over to Jimmy’s.” Duane’s eyes had not left me. The malice produced by his glare could curdle armor plate.
“I’m sure Jimmy will get by without us for once. Bye, Duane.” As I uneasily glanced back and forth between them, Patty stared back at her boyfriend.
Turning away, the trooper frowned, shrugged his shoulders and said, “Yeah, yeah, okay, okay,” then looked back at me. Placing an enormous index finger in the center of my chest, Duane sneered, “See you around clown town, hotshot.” And with that snappy retort, he left.
After I finished paying, Patty and I also left the café. Watching the state cop roar away in his patrol car, we headed toward my spiffy Sonic. After a few steps Patty remarked, “Duane’s not such a bad guy, but I guess he can be kind of a bully at times.”
Okay… good news… was I loving this latest development or what? “Yeah, great… he seems like a real sweetheart. I’ll bet he gives away free lollipops with every citation. Maybe we should leave before Captain Cojones decides we need an official escort.”
“You’re funny, Frank. You know, I like you.”
“Yeah, I like you too, Patty.” Trouble, trouble, boil and bubble. A blind rat could see it coming and guess who was in the crosshairs? Regardless, for better or worse, my path was dead ahead. We got in the car and headed out Highway 18. At this point Patty could no longer restrain her curiosity. “So what’s this all about, Frank? Where are we going?”
“Like I said before, it’s pretty hard to explain, but it seems that Wilmer Graves and his accomplice, who I’m certain is a guy named Ted Hendricks, were out here just before Graves died.”
“And you think this Hendricks guy is the one who tipped us on Graves’ body?”
“Absolutely… the call about the body came from Hendricks’ home phone, so it had to be him… but some really weird shit went down out here not long before Wilmer Graves died… really weird. I’ll show you something. Here… open this glove box, Patty.”
I pointed at the small compartment between the seats used to hold CDs, small electronics, whatever. Patty reached over, flipped it open and pulled out several pieces of gold-colored metal. As she picked up the scarred and twisted fragments, the young woman looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What… what is this?”
By now the scenery was racing past the windows of the car. It was cold outside and from the look of the sky, it might start snowing any minute. And since my mood perfectly matched the grim feeling of a bleak winter day, I felt a certain synchronicity between myself and the world around me. Okay, so it was probably an illusion, but what the fuck—this was it. Jump in or go home. Shit or get off the pot, dude. So I took a deep breath and plunged ahead, “Hold on, Patty, because this is where it starts to get strange. What you are holding in your hands are the partial remains of a brand new Cadillac Escalade; Wilmer Graves and Ted Hendricks were seen driving it shortly before Graves died.” The young blonde’s eyes widened as she stared at the shards of marred and misshapen metal in her hand. I pressed on, “From what I can tell, someone or something blew that Cadillac to holy fuck. That much I’m pretty sure of. What I can’t figure out is how Graves and Hendricks survived an explosion undoubtedly designed to eliminate any trace of them and their bodily functions. BOOM! They should’ve been gone—but for some reason they weren’t. Graves died shortly after, maybe from the shock of the explosion or maybe he was just finally worn out. Then Hendricks went back to a café near Adrian where he had left his car and drove away; he called in the tip on Graves’ body when he got home.”
Patty was stunned. “But… but… who would do such a thing… and why?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. At this point I have no idea who did it, but when I spoke to Ted Hendricks, he was scared shitless of something… or someone. In a few minutes, I think you’ll see why.”
The look on Patty’s face said it all. The mental wheels were turning but it was a useless process, an endless, earnest and empty yearning, leading only to a single non-conclusion: cannot compute. The young woman had just been given information so far beyond her comprehension that she had no frame of reference. Confused, Patty sat beside me staring at several oddly shaped hunks of metal previously associated with the outer shell of an expensive automobile. Whatever had transformed them from a sleek and shiny Cadillac into ugly, distorted scraps of paint and metal were outside her grasp, and understandably so. Finally, after a long pause, in a voice slightly above a whisper, Patty spoke, “I… I don’t understand.”
For the next fifteen or twenty minutes, we sat in silence. Nothing was going to prepare Patty for the scene she was about to see, but at least the drive gave our conversation a little time to sink in. It had begun to snow, lightly at first, but the heaviness of the gathering clouds promised considerably more. Getting out of the car at the site of the explosion would be pure misery. After a long period of reflection, Patty finally broke the silence, “So, you must be taking me to the place where this explosion happened… is that right?” She sounded a little apprehensive, but the kid was smart. She was putting it together.
“Yeah… this whole thing is so wacky, I figured a trip to the bomb site was about the only way for you to get the full impact. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Five minutes later we reached the turnoff leading back into the wooded area sheltering the bomb crater from the rest of the world. As we turned, the snowfall had increased, but more striking was the wind, propelling the flakes in a trajectory almost parallel to the ground. I pulled the Sonic up to the edge of the crater and stopped.
Wide-eyed, Patty sat and stared. Reluctantly, I encouraged her to leave the car and feel the full effect of what had happened here. “Let’s get out, Patty. It looks totally miserable out there, but you need to walk around in that crater. It’s really the only way to get a sense of this whole crazy deal.”
Immediately assaulted by the wind, we struggled to maintain our footing as we left the car. It had to be blowing thirty to forty miles an hour, slowly rising as the temperature had gradually dipped into the twenties. Why people lived in hellholes like this when God had created Malibu was beyond me.
The snow was starting to fill the small crevices distinguishing the landscape of the crater, but the feeling of devastation was unchanged. As we battled the wind, walking around the barren terrain, Patty’s eyes were wide with wonder and confusion. A couple of times she stopped and bent over, picking up a door handle at one spot and what appeared to be a piece of a hubcap in another. Finally, after four or five minutes, she turned and walked toward me, holding out the car fragments for my inspection. “So this was a car? A huge SUV… and it was just sitting in the middle of this crater… and somebody blew it up?”
“Well, technically, there was no crater until the explosion, but, yeah, you’re getting
the picture.”
“But why, Frank… why? It doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing around here.”
“I don’t know, Patty. I haven’t figured that part out yet… but I’m freezing my butt off out here. Let’s get back in the car.”
I had left the engine running with the heater on, so it was nice and toasty in the car. As we sat there with the snow still swirling around us, Patty spoke, her voice tight with urgency. “We have to do something, Frank. We have to tell Bernie or the sheriff… we have to get somebody out here!”
“I know, Patty. That’s one of the reasons I had to show this to you. Look… there’s obviously a big story here… it’s easily the biggest thing I’ve ever been involved in. But I have a confession to make… I don’t have any connection to the L.A. Times. I just said that to try and get information on Graves. Your pal Bernie sniffed me out like a month-old rat corpse. I figure if I go back to her, she’ll just blow me off, but she’ll pay attention to you. But you also mentioned the sheriff… maybe we should go to him… I don’t know. What do you think?”
“It’s Sheriff Fitch… but he’s old and doesn’t do anything but play cards… or dominos. He’ll just tell Bernie to deal with it. She runs everything around there, so we might as well just deal with her directly.”
“Yeah, okay, I guess that’s more or less what I expected.” I put the car in gear, turned around and headed back to Clinton.
“So why did you lie to Bernie, Frank? I know she likes to act tough, but she’s okay. It’s just a coverup. She’s really kind of shy.”
Yeah, they say rattlesnakes are shy, too. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Try me, Frank. I like you, but this is kind of freaking me out. What are you up to… and if the newspaper didn’t send you, why did you come all the way out here from L.A.?”
“Okay… okay… Here’s the deal. I’m really not a bad guy, but I’m… well, I’m kind of at a weird point in my life. It’s true, I’m not with the L.A. Times, but I am a writer… and… and I just broke up with my wife… Louise… and I needed something to do beside sit around my stupid apartment… and drink bourbon… and watch TV… and… and…” My voice drifted away. Maybe I said too much. I mean here I was in fucking southern Missouri spilling out my guts to a twenty-three-year-old kid I didn’t even know a week ago. Was this crazy or what?
Patty’s eyes were brimming with concern. “I understand, Frank… sort of… you mean you got on a plane and came all the way to Clinton because you were lonely?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. I saw this piece on the news about Wilmer Graves and all of a sudden, it just hit me… there’s a story here… and I needed a story… well, I needed something.”
“Okay, I guess that makes sense… in a weird way. So what’s next?”
“Well, we have to tell people… Bernie… the sheriff… whoever. And that means I have to give up the Hendricks kid… and I feel kind of bad about that. I have no idea how he got involved in all this and he seems like a nice enough guy, but the bottom line is that somebody blew up that SUV and I don’t think it was Ted Hendricks. And anybody crazy enough to totally waste a brand new car, a car that right before it blew up had two people in it, is dangerous… more than dangerous… lethal… deadly… who knows what he might do?”
“Yeah… yeah… of course… you’re right.”
Lost in thought, we sat in silence for several more minutes until Patty finally spoke, “Look, why don’t you take me back to my car? I’ll go see if I can find Bernie. She usually works on Saturday, so she’s probably around the office. I’ll tell her about this and see what she says, but she’ll probably want to talk to you. How does that sound?”
It sounded like a gift from the gods. There was no way around it… I figured I’d have to deal with Deputy Dawg again, but if Patty was willing to break the news, it was not a problem. “Sure, Patty, that sounds great. Thanks, I appreciate it.”
“I have to go and see Mom after that, but I thought maybe I could cook dinner for you after I leave the hospital… if you want to.”
I wondered if I heard right. “What? I thought you told Duane you had to do more paperwork tonight.”
“Oh, I can see Duane anytime. I just said that to get rid of him. He’ll go over to Jimmy’s and drink beer and watch the game and forget all about me. I wanted to spend some time with you, Frank. Can you come over around six—here’s the address.” Flashing a sweet smile, she handed me a scrap of paper.
Life was suddenly moving much too fast. “Oh… yeah, cool… uh, me too.” My head was spinning as Patty kissed me on the cheek. After dropping her off at her car, I hurried back to my motel looking for my friend, Black Jack. I needed a drink.
A few hours later I got in the Sonic and headed over to Patty’s. I hadn’t had a lot to drink, but I did have a couple of shots killing time before dinner. For some reason the idea of spending the evening with this young woman I barely knew was making me nervous, which was, like, mondo dumbo. Patty was a cute kid and I got the feeling she had a crush on me, but jeez, I was practically old enough to be her father, something she had pointed out right after we met. I figured maybe a little wine with dinner might calm me down, so I stopped at a liquor store and picked up a bottle of Chardonnay I normally prefer reds, but the chicks usually go for white so it seemed like a safe bet.
Patty had given me directions with the address, so finding the house was easy. It was a little after six, dark and freezing cold when I pulled up and parked at the curb in front. I knew she still lived with her mom, so I wasn’t surprised to find a fairly modest, wood-framed house in the middle of a working-class neighborhood. Kicking the snow off my boots as I stepped onto the porch, I reminded myself not to move to Missouri anytime soon.
Twenty seconds after I rang the bell, Patty opened the door. Wow! She looked great, relaxed and casual on one hand, but totally done up at the same time. It may have been cold as hell outside, but the petite blonde was wearing this tiny little top that stopped about three inches above her jeans, exposing her lower abdomen and navel in a way that made my hand yearn for the touch of a soft seductive belly. With no hesitation, Patty threw her arms around my neck and gave me a huge, wet kiss. The windmills of my mind began to move.
“Patty… hey, you look great!… just great!” Drowning in a sea of potent femininity, I took three or four wobbly steps into the house, stopped and looked around. The living room was a total homage to Patty and her younger brother, Tommy Joe. There were photos of Patty playing piano, Patty as a baton twirler, Patty with her Girl Scout troop, etc., accompanied by similar images of Tommy Joe on various sports teams, holding a huge fish, with a girlfriend at the prom and many more. Virtually every inch of shelving, wall space, tabletops and other surfaces were filled with photos of the two siblings covering every age from birth to the present.
“Wow! This room is pretty crazy… it looks like your mom practically worships you guys.”
“Yeah, Mom is pretty devoted to us. Being a mother is really about the only thing she ever cared about.” Patty took my coat and directed me toward the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink, Frank… coffee… tea… Diet Coke?”
“No, I’m good, but I did bring a bottle of wine for dinner. We could have some of that.”
My host returned to the range where she was finishing our dinner. “No thanks, I don’t drink alcohol, but it’s okay if you have some. Do you want a glass?”
“Sure, great…” She reached in a cabinet, pulled out a large Mason jar, handed it to me then returned to the stove. After eyeing the jar cautiously, I asked, “Uh, do you have a… corkscrew?”
Patty shook her head sheepishly. “No… sorry.”
“Hmmm…” For a moment I looked back and forth between the jar and wine bottle. This was a problem. Setting the jar aside, I stared at the bottle for a moment, then tried again. “How about a knife?”
Patty reached her hand into a drawer and pulled out a large carving knife. “Is this okay?”
“Oh, I forgot… you didn’t know Tommy Joe is here. He’s up in his room. I’ll call him down for dinner.”
As Patty left the room, my fantasies of a steamy romantic evening were beginning to fade. Puzzled, I turned my attention to the table. Patty, sweet as she was, did not appear to be a mistress of culinary delights. The meal consisted of boiled sausages, canned string beans and tater tots. Oh yeah, there was also a green salad accompanied by a bottle of Wish-Bone dressing. I emptied my wine glass and poured some more.
A few moments later the room was invaded by the thundering hooves of Tommy Joe, closely followed by his sister. “Tommy, this is Frank.” The teenager threw his leg over the back of a chair, plopped into the seat and grabbed the plate of sausages without ever looking up. Two of the boiled meat tubes were on his plate and half-eaten almost as quickly.
“Tommy Joe! I just introduced you to Frank!”
“Yeah… where’s the mustard?”
“TOMMY! Where are your manners! Frank is our guest!”
At this point, less than eager to test Tommy Joe’s conversational acumen, I joined in, “It’s okay… it’s not a problem…”
“IT IS A PROBLEM!” Patty was pissed. “He has to learn how to be a civilized human being! Tommy, shake hands with Frank!”
Realizing that he was hungry and his sister was not about to back down, Tommy Joe rolled his eye and shoved a limp fist in my direction. “Yeah… hi… so this is the dweeb you’ve been talking about?”
“Tommy…”
“Yeah, yeah… so you’re from L.A.? Big deal…”