HardScape (23 page)

“I'm Ben Abbott, by the way.” I stuck out my hand.

“Oh, I know you, Mr. Abbott,” he said as he took my hand in a rough grip.

“I'm sorry. You look familiar, but I can't place you.”

“My name's Ed Hawley. I cook at the Church Hill Diner. You come in for breakfast now and then.”

“Of course. Oh yes. But what are you doing here?—I mean, why are you living outdoors when you have a job?”

“Security deposit and first and last month's rent up front,” he answered. “I'm still getting it together.”

I must have stared. I thought I knew something about the ways of the world, but I hadn't put much thought into the fact that a guy with a steady job couldn't rent some little apartment someplace. He mistook my puzzlement for sympathy. “Hey, no problem. I almost got it saved up. With any luck I'll get indoors this winter. As long as I keep my job.”

“How long have you been outside?”

“Ten, eleven years.…I had a little drinking problem. It's getting better.”

I stood there feeling ignorant. He watched me placidly. I could see the booze lines in his face now. He had put it away over the years. But I'd seen him at the diner since I got out of prison, so he had obviously gotten his act together enough to keep a job. I said, “I don't have it with me, but I'll certainly slip you a hundred if you tell me what you know about my cousin.”

“I'd appreciate that. Very much. But I didn't see much.”

“What did you see?”

“Well, I didn't understand it at the time, I only put it together when I saw a paper next day at work. You know, about the airplane?”

“Right.”

“I saw a guy in a car.”

“Where? Where were you?”

“Up near the top of the Morris Mountain Road.”

“How'd you get all the way up there? Do you have a car?”

Ed Hawley smiled. “Two or three, but it was the chauffeur's day off.”

“So how'd you get up there?”

“It's a long story.”

“I don't understand.” I was trying to be patient. Hawley seemed intent on spinning it slowly.

Which he did, explaining that to supplement his short-order cook income he tried to get day work, hitchhiking down to a street corner in New Milford where contractors and the like hired laborers from the down-and-outers who gathered there at dawn. A farmer on Morris Mountain—a man I knew, as a matter of fact—had offered him five dollars an hour to drive fence posts. Hawley had taken it, but they had had a falling out near the end of the day, with the farmer refusing to pay all the money because he hadn't sunk enough posts and Hawley contending that the particularly stony land had slowed him down. It had turned into a shoving match, and when the farmer threatened to call the police, Hawley had run for it without any money at all.

“Eight hours I gave that man. Eight hours. Didn't offer a bite of lunch. I had to ask permission to drink from his hose. Anyway, I got out of there quick before he got some friends and came looking for me. So I'm walking down Morris Mountain Road, figuring I got a long walk to go because there's no cars up there at all. I saw a pickup coming down and ducked in case it was the farmer.…So I'm walking along.”

“What time?”

“Three-thirty. I know because I started working at seven.”

“Go on.”

“A little white plane comes in low, looks like it's going to crash in the trees. Disappeared. I didn't hear a crash or see any smoke, so I figure he made it. Course, I didn't know there was a airstrip up there. Ten minutes later I hear this car screaming down the road. He comes around a curve and I see he's not the farmer, so I stick out my thumb. Guy goes by me at sixty.”

“What did he look like?”

“I saw sunglasses and a hat.”

“What kind of sunglasses?”

“Wraparound. Doper shades.”

“What kind of hat?”

“Cap. Baseball cap.”

Great. If there was a man in Newbury who didn't own at least one cap, I hadn't met him yet. Many kept a clean one at home to wear at the supper table.

“You saw nothing of his face?”

“Not behind that fancy smoked glass.”

“The sunglasses?”

“And the car windows.”

“What kind of car?”

“Old muscle car. Camaro, maybe.”

“Why ‘maybe'?”

“Well, it looked brand new. But of course they don't make 'em like that any more. Do they?”

“No, they don't. Did you see the license?”

“Connecticut plates,” he answered. “Something HAL. Three numbers and HAL. I remember the HAL because that was the name of the computer in
2001
.”

I slapped his shoulder and shook his hand. I was sure that the three numbers preceding HAL could be found in Marian Boyce's computer.

“I really appreciate this, Ed.”

“Yeah, well, he was your cousin. If I had known, I would have told you sooner, I guess, when I saw you at the diner. But I didn't figure a Main Street guy for being a Chevalley. Man, when some of them eat we have to hose the booth out.”

“I really appreciate this. Now look”—I gave him my card—“stay in touch. You say you have some of your rent and deposit saved up?”

“Some.”

“Well, maybe I can find you something you don't have to put up so much. I know some people looking to rent space, and maybe I could talk them into reducing the up-front money if I vouched for you. When do you work next?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I'll bring your hundred in the morning. Soon as the bank opens.”

“You know, that might have been some kid out joyriding.”

Ed was right, but I thought he was trying to answer his own second thoughts concerning why he hadn't told the police. I pressed the rest of the cigarettes into his hand and we walked back across the clearing, where Tom Mealy stuck out his palm for his hundred dollars.

I drove him to New Milford first, to put him on the Pittsfield bus. I told him not to come back to Newbury drunk. And if he wanted to visit Alison sober, call me first and I'd set something up. I gave him the money and he lurched up the steps, belching and grumbling. The bus driver looked thrilled to see him, and he thanked me warmly when I bought Tom's ticket.

I passed the bus on the first short straight and tore across the county to see Marian Boyce.

Chapter 20

Trooper Marian welcomed me to the Plainfield barracks with a big handshake. “What brings you to Monster-woman's Lair?”

“I got a partial license number from a car leaving the airstrip the afternoon Renny Chevalley was shot.”

“From whom?”

“Homeless guy walking down the road.”

She invited me in. The detective room was as bright and snappy as Jack Butler's Church Hill Insurance Agency. They had
WANTED
posters instead of happily insured family portraits on the walls, and the staff wore guns, but the neat half-partitions, the industrial carpeting, and the coffee machine all promised the same dedication to a secure night's sleep.

Marian's temporary office could have belonged to a CPA with a brilliant secretary. On her desk was a pencil, a phone, and a notepad. A computer waited. Beside it a lucite frame held a photograph of a little boy high-fiving the camera.

“This guy have a name?” Marian asked.

“Why don't we check out the number first?”

“Why don't you tell me the witness's name?”

“If it looks good I'll give you his name. If not, why bother the poor guy?”

Marian gave me a wintery look. I gave her one back.

“HAL, old Camaro probably. Dark. Black or blue.”

Marian shrugged, poked her computer, and punched HAL into it. “Sit,” she said. I sat, inspecting the little boy while she frowned at her screen. He had her chin and her eyes. He'd make a good cop when he got a little older, if he learned to sit on his smile.

Marian frowned some more as blocks of information scrolled up the screen. “That's Jason,” she said.

“How old is he?”

“Five.”

“I didn't realize you had a child.”

“I reserve him for the second date.”

She touched a key and the scrolling stopped.

“Find something?”

“You're not going to like it.”

“What?”

“Well, once we eliminate the HALs that aren't Camaro look-alikes, we get down to one 1973 Camaro, navy blue, 337 HAL.”

“Who owns it?”

“It's registered to the Frenchtown establishment Chevalley Enterprises.”

“What?”

“It's Renny's car.”

“No. He doesn't drive a Camaro. He leased a four-door Blazer when the kids were born.”

“He registered the Camaro two weeks before he was murdered.”

“Oh, Christ. One of his restorations.”

She made some notes, hit some keys, and turned from the screen. “Okay, let's have the witness's name.”

“Ed Hawley. He cooks at the Church Hill Diner in Newbury. Don't screw it up for him.”

“Contrary to what you may think, I am not in the business of getting witnesses fired from their jobs. Neither is Sergeant Bender. If you don't mind too awfully much we'd like to discuss with Mr. Hawley anything else he might have seen. Like the numbers 337, or even the face of the driver.”

“I asked. He didn't.”

“Thank you, Sherlock, but we'd like to ask too.”

“Sorry. I'm really disappointed. I thought this would lead to something.”

“At least it suggests your cousin expected to land at that strip.”

“And the guy who shot him stole his car.”

“Could have happened.”

“Where do you think it is now?”

“I've already asked the computer for abandoned-car recoveries.” She gave me a goodbye look.

I looked at the picture on her desk.

“Where's his dad?”

“My husband was a trooper too. When I filed an affirmative-action suit for unfair disciplinary procedures, the force retaliated by eliminating his resident post. Lost the house that came with it. A neat little saltbox like Trooper Moody's. Began to seem like my fault. We split.”

“Marian? Can I ask you something?”

“Try me.”

“If it was a drug thing, do you think the guy planned to kill him, or was it a sudden fight?”

“Sorry, Ben. I can't discuss it.”

“Come on, Marian, all I'm asking is whether you think it was a premeditated double cross or a spontaneous quarrel.”

“I'll listen to your theories. But ours are not your business. Thanks for coming by. Appreciate the witness.”

“Show your appreciation. Answer one question.”

“What?”

“Did Renny's plane crash into that tree landing or taking off?”

“Taking off.”

“Was he shot through the windshield?”

“No more questions. We're even.”

“No, no, no, Marian. We're even on the witness. You still owe me for the other night.”

“You owe me, fella. Bender wanted to bring you in while we checked out your gun permits. So did that jerk you decked—nice hit, by the way. Stupid move, but nicely done. They teach you that left cross at Leavenworth?”

“Prep school.”

I left, thinking that the existence of Renny's car at the airstrip, which suggested that Renny had planned to land there, sort of fit Marian Boyce's drug-delivery theory. Sort of. But he had crashed his plane into a tree while trying to take off? Trying to escape? Or heading back to Danbury to return the plane as promised? Leaving his passenger a car to drive away in. So why was the coke aboard the plane? It made no sense to unload it at Danbury Airport in front of Chernowsky. Why hadn't he unloaded it in the privacy of Al Bell's hilltop airstrip?

I was also curious how he got the Camaro up there, so I swung through Frenchtown on the way home and asked the mechanics and the women who ran the front office at Chevalley Enterprises if they recalled whether Renny had towed the Camaro the day or so before he died. He had not, on their shifts, and the night tow-truck driver confirmed that Renny hadn't taken the wrecker out after business hours. So if he didn't tow the Camaro up Morris Mountain, who had given him a ride back when he dropped the car?

I had a feeling I knew who, though prying it out of her might be impossible. It meant putting off my New York City trip another day. Another day without seeing Leslie. With luck, Jack Long, Rita, and Alex Rose would all confess to Ron Pearlman's murder, and I'd never have to go.

***

The wise man calls on a Jervis woman when her father, sons, and brothers are away. The safest bet is the first day of hunting season. I couldn't wait till then, so I tried twelve noon—time, I hoped, for Jervis men to be down at the White Birch for their morning beer.

Gwen's branch of the clan lived in a crowd of trailers circled like prairie schooners in the deep woods, far beyond Frenchtown, on the edge of the Housatonic Reservation. In the center area of beaten earth, children fought. Washing hung in the cool air. Beyond the trailers were cars and trucks up on blocks. Women called their children inside as I parked beside Gwen's rust-eaten '79 Ford pickup. My Chevalley connections were worthless here: Jervises draw no distinctions between Frenchtown and Main Street.

Her tin door had buckled at the lock and someone had bolted on a couple of lengths of pressure-treated two-by-fours to straighten it out. A fair-sized crack remained between door and frame, stuffed with a pink towel. I knocked a few times. “Gwen, it's me. Ben Abbott.”

“I know why you're here,” she greeted me. Her old bathrobe would have looked ratty on a woman with a lesser body, but at forty Gwen was still all curves and angles, full-breasted, narrow-waisted, long-legged. To describe her as sullen would ignore her sadness.

“I'm real sorry, Gwen. I miss him and I know you do too.” She'd hung in to school until tenth grade, as she'd been repeatedly left back, finally giving up when I was in seventh. Puberty had propelled me in her direction with a six-pack of Bud Pinkerton Chevalley bought for me. She wasn't sullen back then, just a big, warm, open girl-woman. She'd lived a hard twenty years since. But at noon in an old bathrobe and missing a front tooth she still radiated sex, and I caught myself staring into those deep dark curves, remembering how fortunate I had been that she chose to be my first.

“May I come in?”

“No.”

“I've really got to talk to you, Gwen.”

“About what?”

“Renny.”

“Why?”

“I'm trying to find out who killed him.”

She just stared.

“He wasn't running coke, was he?”

“Cops think so. See how they trashed my door? Busted into every trailer. Frightened the kids.”

“Search warrants?”

“Oh, they had all their papers. Left real disappointed, though.”

“Renny wasn't running coke, was he?” I asked again.

“People here are really pissed.”

Gwen stared some more. Then she said, “Take me for a ride. I'll get dressed.”

She came out in tight jeans and a loose sweatshirt. She'd run a comb through her thick red Jervis hair, which she had chopped short. It used to fall to her waist. The night she initiated me it was in a braid, which she wrapped around my neck, further scaring the hell out of me. She noticed me looking and said, “I was going to grow it out for him.”

We got in the Olds. “Where would you like to go?”

“The mall.”

I knew she meant the new little mini-mall down Route 7. The Danbury Fair Mall was as distant and intimidating to her as Fifth Avenue. Staring into the bright autumn woods that hugged the dirt road, she lit a cigarette and said, “He was one sweet explosion after another.”

“How'd you hook up?” I still couldn't believe it. Renny was not exactly a ladies' man.

“My damned truck stalled over on 349. Renny happened along in his wrecker. Jumped me,” she said with a smile. “After that we jumped each other every chance we got.”

“Wha'd your husband think?”

“Last I heard he was humping an oil rig in the Persian Gulf. Checks stopped in May.”

“Renny give you money?”

“Screw you, Ben Abbott.”

“I meant did he help out?”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Did Renny have any problem with your brothers?”

“Pete ran him off the road down in Morrisville. I spoke to Daddy and he ordered a truce. Said I'm old enough now to run around with who I want.”

“That sounds uncharacteristically mellow of your father.”

“Daddy's got arthritis. He's slowing down.”

“Pete taking over?” I didn't say “the business,” but she knew I meant the stolen-car chopping, the cigarette smuggling, the distribution of uppers and downers to the truckers, and the fencing of stolen goods. Years ago when the Hunt brothers of Texas cornered the silver market, the Jervises turned a pretty penny melting down antique candlesticks from every unguarded house in the county.

“Little Bill,” she answered. “Pete's got a drinking problem.”

“Good choice,” I said. Little Bill Jervis had beaten a triple-murder rap back in 1978. Some Hell's Angels from Derby had tried to cheat him in a drug deal.

“How are the kids?”

Gwen brightened. “Josie's in the army. She made corporal.”

“When'd she join the army?”

Her expression darkened. “Those bastard MacKays wouldn't put it in the paper.”

I wasn't surprised; the MacKay family's
Clarion
trumpets school, sports, and agricultural achievements, a balanced town budget, and a social order where people know their place. Also, rumor had had it that Scooter's sexual initiation had proved a disappointment all around.

“What about Rick?”

“He'd get a pipeline job if he could find his dad.…Little Bill's leaning on him to drive a truck.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” The word was that the Jervises' Canadian cousins stole cigarettes, which the Newbury Jervises delivered to the United States, neglecting to declare them at the border.

“Yeah, well, Rick's not stupid, maybe he'll…”

We left that hope hanging until we finally reached a blacktop road. I hated to admit it, but part of me had to wonder whether Old Man Jervis had intervened in the Pete-Renny dispute for business reasons, such as protecting a valuable coke-flying pilot.

“So what do you want to know about Renny?”

“Pillow talk,” I said, knowing that a direct question would turn her off forever. A long, slow afternoon would have to run its course.

“What?”

“The stuff he'd tell you and no one else.”

“Jesus, scared me a minute there, Ben. Thought you meant doin'-it talk.”

“I'll bet he would have told you if he was flying coke.”

“He wasn't.”

“Are you sure?”

“Ben, when's the last time you've been really hot for somebody?” She gave me a motherly look—Mom passing on the facts of life. I could have said “twenty minutes ago” staring at her in her bathrobe, but that wasn't the “hot” she meant.

“Couple of Fridays ago.”

“Well, think back and try and imagine something you wouldn't have told her.”

“That's what I mean. Pillow talk. And you're saying you're sure Renny would have told you if he was flying coke.”

“Positive.”

“What if he were working for your father? Would he still tell you?”

“Why not? Daddy and me get along fine.” I glanced over at her. She was regarding me with mild puzzlement, a reminder that even though she was glad Josie was in the army, and she worried about Rick, Gwen was very much a Jervis. And it was true that her father, a man not known for soft spots, had always had one for his youngest. I reminded myself, too, that she, and most of the clan, spoke well—maybe they read the Bible at home or something—which could throw you off and fox you into thinking they were just ordinary middle-class people who happened to live in trailers. They were not. They were Jervises.

So my problem was this: She might be telling the truth. But if Renny had been working for her father, she might be lying. She didn't owe me anything. Nor was there any hope of bringing him back.