FrostLine (24 page)
I threw money on the table. “I gotta run.”
“Oh, come on. Stay for lunch. Don't be a sore loser.”
“It's not a game. The poor man's dying in jail.”
J.J. Topkis' story made Mr. Butler a perjurer for testifying that Dicky knew nothing about explosives. Worse, it made him a participant and accessory to murder.
“Wait. J.J. nails Dicky's dead hide to the wallânot to mention Mr. Butler'sâwith an uncorroboratable lie that conveniently eliminates himself as a suspect.”
“Did I say J.J.'s a suspect?”
“Can he prove it?”
Marian smiled. “Did I say it's âuncorroboratable?'”
“Is it?”
Silence.
“Come on, Marian. I'm running around in circles. It wouldn't be a big deal to tell me if you've eliminated Topkis as a suspect.”
“Running in circles? Ohhhh. Did it ever occur to you that your circles keep
you
out of
my
way?”
“Thanks a lot. How did this supposed timer disappear?”
“A little watch. Coated with a nitro paste, so when it blows, there's nothing left to find. Isn't that interesting?”
“Bull. They always find something.”
“Not always. Especially when an entire lake washes away the evidenceâBen, where you going? Aren't you hungry?”
“You're that sure?”
“Believe it, fella.”
“J.J. could have read that in the library. So could Dicky.”
Marian grinned. “You really disappoint me, Ben.”
I disappointed
myself
. I was falling way behind. I had to do something to catch up. “Look, do me one favor.”
“Maybe.”
“Get me a copy of Trooper Moody's log for the Saturday morning before the explosion.”
Marian stopped grinning. And in case I'd forgotten who she was she gave me a dose of cop eyes, bleak as a January midnight. “Out of some damned good memories, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.”
“I apologize,” I said.
“You have some nerve.”
“I never should have asked.”
Our tuna sandwiches arrived just in time. I chomped into mine to hide a smile that an unfriendly observer might have called a smirk.
***
I never expected her to hand me state police documents. But if I knew Marian, she'd be poring through Trooper Moody's reports the second she got back to the barracks, wondering what the hell I was getting at. I gave her two days of frustration before she finally came out and asked.
A minor victory, however, compared to the damage J.J. Topkis had sown. Unless Tim could find some way to keep the biker's testimony out of the trial, Mr. Butler would end up wishing he was back in Vietnam.
I didn't believe him. A banger who took pride in his sucker punch was exactly the kind to shake hands and hoist a few with an enemy he was about to blow to Kingdom Come. But why stick it to Mr. Butler, too?
I burned up the roads back to Newbury and ran into Town Hall. The first selectman's door was open, her receptionist off somewhere. I knocked on the frame.
Vicky looked up and pushed her curls from her face. “What?”
“Can we talk?”
“Zoning and Planning are down the hall. Tax Collector across the lobby.”
“Vicky, every time I turn around I see you holding hands with Tim.”
“You've never seen me hold hands with him.”
“Well, I've seen him put his arm around you.”
“Take it up with him.”
“Look, this is kind of important and Iâ”
“Sorry,” she said. “I thought we were talking about something important.”
“Vicky, I'm sorry.”
“Hey, you don't owe me apologies.”
“But you're acting like I do.”
“No, I'm acting like I'm hurt. Which I am. Even cheerful Vicky gets hurt, sometimes. When I see you with somebody.”
At that moment, seeing the hurt in her face, I wished I could say that Julia was just one of those things.
“What do you want?”
“Can I close the door? It's private.”
“Oh, this wasn't?”
“Okay if I close the door?”
She nodded. I closed it and came in and sat in the chair beside her desk.
Vicky rounded on me. “Did it ever occur to you that if I screwed around the way you do you'd think I was a
whore
?”
“No. Because, as you darned well ought to remember, when I get involved I get deeply involved.”
I felt pretty proud of the depth and clarity of my answer until she shot it down with a scornful, “That's worse! You talk yourself into that romantic fairy tale and make yourself so damned believable that you end up hurting every woman who falls for you.”
“I get hurt, too, Vicky.”
“Oh good. I feel better already.”
Several minutes into a silence less pleasant than assisting at an amputation, I ventured, “Let me say that this doesn't come as totally new information. It's been on my mind, too. I will think about what you said. But right now, I need a favor.”
“If I can.”
“Can you chat up Greg Riggs for me?”
“Why?”
“He's defending a biker named J.J. Topkis. I want to know who hired him.”
“Well, didn't Mr. Topkis hire him?”
“I doubt he could afford him. There are bottom-feeders who specialize in bikers.”
“You want me to ask him?”
“It's for Mr. Butler.”
“Ohâ¦.What makes you think he'll tell me?”
This was delicate. If not distasteful. “Remember the fundraiser party he threw for you?”
“Gratefully. Greg Riggs was very good to me. I owe him.”
“Well, I knew it made political sense. But I had the feeling he might not go to such an effort for an ugly candidate.”
Vicky stared long and hard. “Greg Riggs is engaged to be married. And if you're trying to flatter me by pretending to be jealous, it would work better if you had ever earned the right to be jealous.”
I slunk home and settled in with the telephone.
My third call to the Admiral got another promise that he would receive the message and get back to me.
A call to Fox Trot elicited the information that Ms. Devlin and Mr. King were “out of the office.”
At Fort Bragg, everyone I spoke to called me sir. I finally got through to a barracks with the background sound of women laughing. “Yo, Jervis!” cried the woman who answered and Josie came on the line, crisp and proud.
“Corporal Jervis.”
“Josie, it's Ben Abbott.”
Her breath caught. “Is my momâ”
“Fine, fine. No problem. I gotta talk to you.”
“I can't. I'm on duty in a minute.”
“J.J. Topkis told the troopers that Dicky said his father taught him how to make a time bomb.”
“He did?”
“Did you hear Dicky say that?”
“No.”
“But you were drinking with them.”
“Not really.”
“Is he lying?”
“Well, no. I mean. When I got there, we left. Dicky and me.”
“You mean they were drinking? Just the two of them? Then you came.”
“I didn't get there 'til midnight. My mom had the truck. They were pretty far gone by then. Ben, I gotta go.”
“I'm curious why you didn't mention J.J. when we talked.”
“We went off by ourselves. Dicky was just killing time waiting for me.”
“Did he say how he happened to get friendly with Topkis?”
“Not really.”
“I was surprised to hear it.”
“Dicky didn't hold a grudge. He was kind of happyâ¦.You know what he told me?”
I waited, but she had started crying.
“What?” I asked, and when she told me I thought, again, What a waste, just when he was getting his miserable life in order.
“He told meâ¦he told me he never used to think what would happen next. But now he'd wake up in the morning and think, Hey, I'm going to see Josie todayâ¦.”
***
I had to make another trip to Derby. But I was really worried by how low Mr. Butler had seemed that morning. So I drove back over to Plainfield. He shuffled into the interview room, confused and distracted.
He had botched a shave, which had left his face raw and flecked with small cuts and clumped with stubble he had missed. When I handed him a Coke and a cheeseburger, he fumbled open the wrapper and chewed slowly.
I told him what J.J. Topkis said about the detonator.
He finished the burger before he looked up. “I told you already, I never taught Dicky anything about explosives.”
“I remember. But I had to ask. I know you wouldn't lie to me.”
He threw back his head and chugged the Coke, and remained in that position, staring at the ceiling. “Well, I did lie to you, once.”
“About what?”
“There was no calf.”
“What do you mean?”
“No calf caught in the fence.”
“What? Why?”
“I thought I better say that to fill in the time.”
“Where were you?”
“I was up there, but there was no calf.”
“But Albert and Dennis Chevalley said they saw you with the calf.”
“They're lying.”
“Why would they lie?”
“Maybe
they
need an alibi.”
***
One lie at a time. Derby. But not alone. I telephoned Betty Chevalley and asked to borrow my cousin Pinkerton.
“You can keep him as far as I'm concerned.”
“What did he do now?”
“Since you were here this morning? He threatened to break my best mechanic's hands, told Reverend Owen to you-know-what himself, and mounted drag slicks on Mildred Gill's Dodge.” Mildred was eighty-four and her Dodge wasn't much younger.
I promised to keep him till dark, loaded the car with beer and ice, and swung down the hill to Frenchtown. His mood could be read on his black tee shirt, in letters stretched wide across his enormous chest,
When it Absolutely,
Positively, has to be
Destroyed Overnight!
*****U.S. MARINES*****
No one knows if Pink was in the Marinesâhe did disappear for a few years when I was a boyâbut I've yet to see anyone demand his credentials to wear that shirt.
“Pink, let me buy you a beer.” I opened the cooler in the back seat of the Olds, packed with Bud.
He licked his lips. “I'm kinda busy.”
“I cleared it with Betty. Hop in.”
“Hey, I don't take no shit from no women.” Womenâexcept his mother, with whom he still lived at the ripe age of forty-somethingâhe regarded as a subspecies poorly adapted to deliver food and sex, in that order.
“Where we going?”
“Derby.”
“I'll drive.”
There was no arguing. He powered the seat all the way down and back to accommodate his giant frame, and tromped the accelerator.
No one can drive like Pinkerton Chevalley. For years he dominated the New England dirt tracks, racing Renny's souped-up stock cars to victory from Rhode Island to Maine. His fingers, thick as a girl's forearms, played lightly on the wheel and stick; his size fourteens skipped like ballet shoes between brakes and gas and clutch.
“You know Ollie got a new laser thing.”
“What's in Derby?”
“The Derby Death. Ever hear of 'em?”
“Weenies. That's who gave you the black eye?”
“J.J. Topkis.”
“That dude Dicky Butler nuked Wide Greg's window with? Shit, you can take J.J. Topkis.”
“He had a couple of friends.”
“So we're going to kick ass.”
“Uh, no. I'm going to talk to him.”
“Weenie.”
Pink drove and drank in silence for awhile. Every time he lowered the window to toss a bottle I'd grab it out of his hand and explain I was saving the deposits. Lower down Route 34, traffic thickened up until, to my relief, it was impossible to maintain Warp speed.
“Let me ask you something, Pink. What do you think of Albert and Dennis?”
“Dumb as rocks.”
“Can you imagine them killing anybody?”
“Not if they had to think how.”
“Let's say they did it accidentally.”
“Yeah?” He looked over, mildly curious.
“Could they get away with it?”
“Not if they had to think how.”
“What about Dennis?”
“What about him?”
“Is he maybe smarter than he seems?”
Pink thought that over. “Could be. Course, it wouldn't take a lot.”
***
Derby was hot as last time. But the neighborhood was quiet, and only J.J.'s mother was home. “J.J.'s at his club,” she informed me. Her directions took us to an abandoned warehouse beside an ancient mill race diverted from the river.
Six bikers were hanging in the shade of the shed roof. Pink parked the car facing out. “Sweet Jesus, look at that man's bike.”
J.J. was sitting on a brand-new custom Harley, the kind that comes chopped from the factory, with red enamel tanks, red leather seat, and everything else but the tires made of chrome.
“Where the hell did he get the money for that?”
“Now's your chance to ask him.”
J.J. stepped off his new bike, his hand extended in a friendly manner. “Man, did you piss off the cops. They couldn't do squat without you ratting.”
We shook and I said, “That was the general idea. This here's my cousin Pinkerton.”
Pink solemnly enveloped J.J.'s hand in his and waited for a wince before he let go.
“Fine looking machine.”
J.J. acknowledged the compliment and answered a few technical queries Pink put to him.
The biker in the engineering boots whom I'd laid out cold was watching me sullenly. His wrench-wielding friend, however, was barely paying attention, deep in conversation with three others who were passing a bottle of Jack.
Somewhere in the rundown neighborhood of struggling machine shops and vacant factories, the state police might have a surveillance team. Or might not.