Blown Away

by G. M. Ford

  And how, when he’d hit it big with the second book, how he’d offered to buy her any house in town and how she turned him down, holding out for years, insisting her house had been good enough for his father and the rest of the family and was good enough for her too, until she finally relented, but even then preferring a modest ranch house out at the end of Perkins Lane to the newer, glossier palaces closer to town. What the hell was it she was gonna have to say to those town people anyway?

  Corso ambled over to the desk and sat down. He sorted through his notes, sifting for everything he had about the Marino family. Three brothers, James, Nathan and Paul, and a sister, Hannah. Parents, Herm and Diane, still alive and all of them still living right here in town, at least as of a couple of years before.

  While Carl had proved respectful of the family’s privacy, Mary Anne Guidry had been less circumspect. In a futile attempt to spice up her otherwise puerile columns, Ms. Guidry had included a number of folksy little details, such as the fact that older brother James was a longtime employee of the Karlin County Road Department. That sister Hannah, last name now West, had given birth to a fine baby boy back in December of 2001. That the boy had been named Henry Lee after his father. Guidry also related that the parents were among the first residents of the now-long-established Conger Hills neighborhood. Just the kind of information any self-respecting investigative reporter could and would use to find his way to their doorsteps.

  Corso pulled the phone book from the desk drawer and fingered it open to M. Sure enough, Herm and Diane were still at 359 Conger Hills Road. Henry and Hannah West lived on Flowering Tree Lane and the Karlin County Road Department…

  The bedside phone began to ring. Corso glared at it, demanding it stop. It didn’t. Five, six, then seven times. He stood up, bent over the desk and snatched the receiver from its cradle. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Frank.” The voice was intimate, almost jovial.

  “Yeah,” Corso repeated. “Who’s this?”

  “Greg.”

  “Greg who?”

  “Greg. You know…” He recited Corso’s new publisher’s name.

  “Ah,” was all Corso could come up with.

  “I just got off the line with Kevin.”

  He made it sound like the last word was “heaven.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s firm on this, Frank. He believes in this story.”

  “Then tell him to come out here,” Corso said.

  “What?”

  “I need some help. Tell him to come out here and give me a hand.”

  A pause ensued. “Er…I mean…Kevin doesn’t…he’s in the Caymans at a con…”

  “Yeah…those conferences in the Caymans will just wear a body out.”

  Greg searched for an appropriate response. Corso threw him a bone.

  “If you guys are so gung ho about this thing, I’m going to need some help out here.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “Serious investigative reporting help. The kind of help who can watch my back and take care of himself at the same time.”

  “I thought you always worked alone.”

  “I’ve got no cover here. Thanks to that goddamn magazine, everybody in this town knows who I am and what I’m here to do. Everybody in this burg knows everybody else. Everybody knew Nathan Marino. The way I figure it, somebody around here probably does know something they’ve been keeping to themselves, but one person slogging around in the snow by himself isn’t going to turn over the right rock unless he gets real real lucky. Also I need somebody who can watch my back while I’m turning over rocks.”

  “Why would you need your back watched?”

  “I’ve been meeting some resistance.”

  “What kind of resistance?”

  Corso told him. Starting with the sheriff, the pair of policemen and Hargrove, before segueing into his little wrestling match with the ski-mask brothers. The latter recitation seemed to catch in Greg’s throat. He coughed once, then went silent.

  “Now…if this is dangerous…” he hedged.

  “All good stories have an element of danger to them,” Corso said. “That’s what makes people buy the books.”

  Silence filled the airways again. Finally, the editor said, “If you don’t mind my saying, Frank, you seem to have had a complete change of heart in the past twelve hours or so. If I recall correctly, last evening you had no interest in this story whatsoever. Exactly what precipitated this sudden attitude shift?”

  Corso mulled it over. “I guess I don’t like being told to leave town…no matter how professionally it’s done. I don’t like being denied access to generally available sources of information. And, you know, call me crabby, but getting manhandled and having needles poked at me just seems to bring out the worst in me.”

  Greg made a noise as if to speak, but Corso cut him off. “Given a little time, I’m betting there are a whole lot of things I could learn to dislike about this place. And, contract or no contract, a little time is all I’m prepared to spend in this godforsaken hamlet. So send me out some serious help and we’ll see exactly what it is these people are so damn preoccupied with keeping out of sight.”

  “I know just the person,” his editor said. “…Chris Andriatta…freelances for our television news department…lives over in Hoboken…just got back from an assignment in Afghanistan.”

  “See now…that’s exactly the kind of experience I’m looking for.”

  “I’ll put things in motion,” Greg assured him.

  “With all dispatch,” Corso added before starting to hang up the phone. He stopped midway and brought the receiver back to his lips. “Hey,” he said. “Gary.”

  “Greg.”

  “Right. Eh…Sorry. So listen.”

  “Yes.”

  “For the time being anyway, it’s probably best Chris and I not be seen together. Get another car. Book another room in this hotel. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay.”

  “And from here on, if you want to call me, use my cell phone.”

  8

  T he snowflakes were smaller now. This morning’s flakes had turned to shards of windblown ice, slanting in from what seemed every direction at once. The kind of snow that freezes the end of your nose and squeaks under your feet. The kind of snow that stays long past its welcome, ending its life as black ice, hiding in the shadows of walks and stairs, crouched and waiting for its moment of mayhem to come round at last.

  The wind had freshened since morning, and now rolled off the lake in gusts…icy spurts licking the piles of freshly fallen snow, sending it skyward again, mixing the new with the old, creating a landscape of suggestion.

  The storm had fully mobilized the Karlin County Road Department. By the time Corso pulled to a stop in the parking lot, the last plow was roaring out the gate, engine bellowing, orange lights ablaze, hurrying to join the dozen others Corso had spotted as he’d white-knuckled the last seven miles up State Route 67.

  The rented Chevy Suburban had been rock solid on the road. Nearly six thousand pounds of plastic and rubber and steel, it shrugged off the buffeting of the wind and just kept lumbering on through the maelstrom, Corso clinging to the wheel like a tick.

  The faint hiss of the falling snow became audible as Corso peeled his stiff fingers from the wheel and used them to shut off the engine. The Karlin County Road Department occupied a one-story brick building sitting at the center of what looked like about ten fenced acres. The yard was nearly empty as Corso popped the door, stepped out into the storm and picked his way over the snowy sidewalk to the front door. At the extreme back of the yard, a front loader was scooping sand into the bed of a dump truck, its shrill electronic beeper sounding every time it was shifted into reverse.

  A blast of warm air massaged Corso’s face as he stepped into the room. The lights were on, but nobody was home. Half a dozen desks were scattered about the walls, but other than the insistent ringing of a telephone, the only sounds were distant voices…two maybe t
hree…coming from a brightly lit room running along the back of the building.

  Corso weaved his way through the furniture toward the voices. Turned out to be the lunchroom. Redwood picnic tables with attached benches. A couple of coffee stations. A bunch of vending machines. Two guys in short-sleeved shirts and ties. One sitting at a table peeling an orange, the other feeding coins into a Coke machine. Whatever it was they’d been chatting about came to a stop the second Corso entered the room.

  James Marino set his orange on the table. He was older than Corso. Fifty or so, with a fair complexion and bright blue eyes behind rimless glasses. Corso walked over and sat down opposite him. He waited as James rolled the orange peel up in a paper towel and began to tear the fruit into segments.

  “My name is…” Corso began.

  “I know who you are,” the man said.

  Over by the wall, the Coke machine disgorged a can of pop. The other guy scooped it up and walked past them on his way out to the office area, where the phone was still ringing its plaintive song. James Marino read the question in Corso’s eyes.

  “It’s just somebody wanting to know when we’re going to get their street plowed,” he said. “Everything we own is already out there, so there’s no sense making any promises we aren’t going to be able to keep.”

  “Seems like folks around here would be used to this kind of thing.”

  “They are,” Marino said. “Except they forget they’re the very same people who voted down the county budget three years in a row. Then they’re the first to complain about the potholes we can’t afford to fix or when the snow removal service isn’t as good as it used to be.” He popped an orange segment into his mouth and eyed Corso while he chewed. “You don’t look much like your pictures in the magazine.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because…that’s how we’ve decided to handle it.”

  “I should think you’d be the first people to want to see whoever did this to your brother brought to justice.”

  James Marino ate another orange segment, then dabbed at his lips with another paper towel. “When the family is ready to make a statement, we’ll make one.”

  “And you-all don’t wonder how come the police department made your brother sit there in that parking lot until the bomb went off?”

  Marino held up a hand. “We wonder about a lot of things, Mr. Corso, but we do it privately. That’s the way we handle our business.”

  “It’s been over a year,” Corso offered. “How are your parents holding up?”

  “You leave my parents out of this.”

  Marino looked up from his orange. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of equipment out in the field tonight.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “Whatever problems Nathan had are over now.”

  He chewed the last three segments, dabbed at his lips again and got to his feet. Corso stood up with him. “You think it was him, don’t you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “You think Nathan rigged himself to that bomb. That’s why you’re keeping mum on the subject, instead of what any other family would be doing…instead of demanding justice for your brother.”

  “How would you know? Have you ever lost a brother?”

  “I have.”

  The answer startled him. “To what?” he asked after a moment.

  “To booze. To methamphetamines,” Corso said. “I guess…in the end to despair.” Corso paused, took a deep breath. “Michael hung himself in a jail cell down in Georgia where I come from.”

  “When was this?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Six and a half years ago.”

  “Folks still talk about it?”

  “My mother says they do.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I can’t say. I haven’t been there in a long time.”

  An accusation hung in the air like smoke.

  Somebody had come into the office area and was having a conversation with the other guy. Marino began to ease himself out of the room.

  “Then you know what this kind of thing can do to a family.”

  Corso nodded. “My youngest brother…Ronnie…I hear he’s pretty much determined to take up where Michael left off.”

  “Then you know why I insist you keep away from my parents.” He started to say something else but stopped himself.

  “The FBI doesn’t think Nathan’s guilty,” Corso said.

  James Marino stopped moving. He turned back to face Corso. “The FBI hasn’t said anything one way or the other.”

  “I know a couple people in the Bureau. I made a few calls. They’re still very tight-lipped about the whole thing. All they’re willing to say is that the Bureau’s satisfied that Nathan Marino did not have the wherewithal to build the explosive device on his own.”

  “That doesn’t make him innocent.”

  “What it means is that whatever happened to Nathan that day is out of the realm of the obvious. Nathan is the obvious. If the Feds could have made any kind of case on Nathan, they would have. They like the obvious. It’s what they’re set up to do. They catch the easy bounce, get their picture taken with the locals and ride out of town on a wave of gratitude. The fact that they’re still not saying anything…the fact that they’re offering a hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the guilty parties tells me they don’t have a clue.”

  “That still doesn’t make Nathan innocent.”

  “As far as I’m concerned it does. I mean…what are the alternatives. If he wasn’t an innocent victim…what?…He let somebody talk him into wearing a bomb to rob a bank? Who’s gonna agree to something like that?”

  James Marino started to move again. “I’ve got to go,” he said, gesturing toward the office area.

  Corso got to his feet. “You think it’s possible, don’t you. You think maybe somebody talked him into taking part in some harebrained bank robbery scheme.”

  “I think I’ve got work to do,” James Marino said.

  “You must think your brother was pretty goddamn stupid.”

  The other man spun to face Corso, his face beginning to redden. “What I think of my brother is none of your business. Nathan was…” Again he stopped himself. “Nathan was what he was. Nothing’s going to change any of that. I can’t stop you from poking your nose into it, but I can refuse to be part of adding any more misery to the load my family is already carrying. Now…if you’ll excuse me.” He turned and walked to a desk over in the right-hand corner of the room. Before zipping up his coat and heading for the door, Corso watched him dial the phone and begin to speak into the receiver.

  9

  T he Bullseye Diner had one of those neon signs they don’t allow outside of Nevada anymore. As a shimmering silver arrow pierced the center of a red-and-white target, neon sparks flew upward in delight. Then the whole thing blinked like a Keno machine and started over. Repeated itself about every fifteen seconds or so. A real eye-catcher it was.

  It was two-thirty. Late for lunch. Early for dinner. Except for a waitress whose name tag proclaimed her to be Ruth and a cook she’d called Myron, the place had been deserted ever since a pair of long-haul truckers had settled up their bills and rolled off into the storm.

  Corso used a piece of toast to sop up the last of the egg yolk. He was running over his conversation with James Marino, replaying the moment he’d lost any chance of breaking him open. It had happened in the second when he’d admitted he hadn’t been back home for a long time. Something about being that far from one’s roots had created a gulf between the two of them, a fissure that even the specter of mutual loss had been unable to span. Corso wondered if James Marino had ever dreamed of leaving. Ever seen himself making conquests on faraway fields or whether his life here in the place of his birth was truly enough for him. As if familiarity, fellowship and a
sense of place were sufficient salve for the call to adventure.

  It was a phenomenon Corso had puzzled over for years. Seemed like some folks were destined to stay at home while others were just as destined to leave. The notion of his mother living anyplace other than where she’d always lived was laughable. “Why would I want to go someplace else?” she’d want to know. “I got everything I need right here. Why go anywheres else?” Corso, on the other hand, had always been destined to leave. From his earliest memory, he’d always felt like an alien in that place. As if he’d fallen off a wagon and been taken in and raised by the family. The rest of them knew it too. Just from the way he taught himself to talk. Like the people on the TV. Not like anybody they knew.

  Frank was going places. Wasn’t like he wasn’t one of them or anything like that. No…he looked too much like Papa before he went off to war for there to be any doubt as to his lineage. It was more like Frank’d been born knowing he was gone and wasn’t about to be coming back. Like he was telling you to take a good look while you had the chance because it was going to be a while before you caught sight of him again.

  Corso suddenly recalled the summer of his seventeenth year as he’d stood in that dirt bus stop with a cardboard suitcase in one hand and a GI knapsack in the other. He was on his way to college. Going away on a full-ride scholarship he’d won in an essay-writing contest sponsored by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “What Democracy Means to Me.” For all the family knew about going off to college, he might as well have been going off on a lunar expedition.

  His mother waited until the bus came into view and threw her arms around him. “You make us proud, Frankie,” she said. “This is the beginning of whatever you was born for.” He remembered feeling like Clark Kent leaving Smallville. His mother stepped back a pace and fixed him with her hawklike gaze. She’d worn her teeth for the occasion. Her eyes filled with water. “I ain’t gonna say good-bye,” she said. And she didn’t either. His mind’s eye watched out the back window of the bus as she’d faded to a faraway dot, then all of it to black.