Lost Girls (32 page)

By the time I reach the courthouse corner the pain in my lungs doubles me over, spitting for air. A sound in my head like the beating of wings. Somewhere in the wind the carnival smell of spoiled meat.

When I stand straight again I force myself to turn and look back to the window, knuckle the burning sweat from my eyes. Focus on the outline of the Empire Hotel, on the one square of yellow above the rain-blackened street.

Still there, eyes set upon me.

It can't be so at this distance, two full blocks away, but I'm certain I can see the splintering cracks of powdered skin around their mouths, teeth bared through wax lips. Pulling open to throw out a laugh. To speak.

But this for just a second. For in the time it takes me to draw my next breath the overhead light is flicked off and the honeymoon suite is dark once more.

The rest of the night is spent walking the streets waiting for dawn to arrive. I'm aware of the cold but don't feel it, recognize the rain for what it is but not for its soaking through my pants legs to stiffen my knees. By the time the first light crests over the eastern rooftops, I'm empty of everything but the idea of pillow and mattress and sheets. And somehow I make it back to the Empire, up the stairs, through the door, to splay myself across the bed, all outside of memory.

But I'm denied half the sleep I need by the ringing of the bedside phone sometime in the morning. Cold plastic banged against my ear.

''Sorry if I got you up,'' the voice at the other end says in response to my grunt of acknowledgment. ''Wondering if you had any lunch plans.''

''Who?''

''It's Doug.''

''Oh? What time is it?''

''Twenty to twelve.''

''Twenty.'' I cough, and the sound of it is painfully amplified in my own ear. ''Twelve.''

''Calling about your visit the other day. Your mention of Mrs. Arthurs and her story about the--her recollections with regard to the lake. Remember? We were discussing--''

''Yes.
Doug
. Yes.''

''It's just that I've done a little footwork of my own. Prepared some things--''

''Prepared. Good.''

''--and I thought we might get together over lunch to go through the results. Do you like wings?''

I can't think what he means, and for a moment I summon the image of a closet full of hanging white angel costumes wrapped in clear plastic with feathery attachments smelling of mothballs.

''Wings?''

''Spicy,'' he says, pauses. ''
Chicken
wings.''

''Oh. Delicious. Sounds good.''

He gives me directions to Offside's, a sports bar located in a strip mall on the highway north of town, and although I take them down as carefully as I'm able it's not until he hangs up that I finally recognize who it was who called.

Today's Friday, the trial adjourned until the following Monday in order for Justice Goldfarb to ''consider submissions made on preliminary matters'' but more likely to afford her the time to make her standing eight o'clock dinner reservation at Scaramouche. The end result either way is a day off. And instead of doing something sensible like some real work I'm out of bed and slipping into dry clothes, slipping into the Lincoln, and pushing it out of town.

But it's not far. Just beyond the Dairy Queen (CLOS D 4 THE SE SON) and the high fence around the sewage treatment plant. A sign in the window urges me to CHECK OUT OUR PATIO!, so I do, peeking over a wobbly trellis enclosing a dozen overturned tables and posters of the Budweiser bikini girls stapled to the fence. A stack of empties giving off the smell of stale bread and piss.

I step back and walk around to the front door. A sun-yellowed menu the size of a broadsheet newspaper taped to the inside of the glass with headings like Gut Busters, Meaty Madness, and Hall of Fame Fries. Inside there's something immediately recognizable about the place, in the carpet crumbled with peanut shells and ash, the humidity of spilled draft, the aquatic flickering of television light. The same feeling you get in airport lounges, magazine stores with X-rated back rooms, cramped diners with chain-smoking cooks. Men's rooms.

There may also be women present in these places, of course. Perhaps even a good number laughing beneath a warm dome of menthol smoke. There may even be a woman in charge of the whole show, one with obvious vices and arms thick as tenderloin who'd sooner kick your ass out the back door than look at you. But it makes no difference. A
sports bar
. And although I have no interest in sports or the opinions contained within the bloated heads hanging above their beers, I know that this place was built for me.

Listen to the frat-house babble of color commentators, the jabbering marketplace of sports: plus/minus average, shot percentage, career-high penalty minutes, PGA, RBI, NFL, ERA, NBA, total yards rushed, shots on goal, 140 yards to the pin, wind against. No greater philosophical beliefs than the bold slogans for electrolyte drinks, half-ton trucks, and cross-trainers: Drink It Down, Like a Rock, Just Do It. A place where accusations hurt no one and there can be no blame because if your team won they won and if they lost the ref was fucking blind.

Pittle raises a hand and waves at me from his table, his figure especially dwarfed under the giant-screen TV that is now showing two gleaming black men pummeling each other in a ring at Caesars Palace.

''I hope this isn't taking up too much of your time,'' Pittle says as I take the seat across from him.

''Not at all. Besides, everybody's got to eat sometimes.''

''That's true.'' Pittle looks at me, twists the hair on his chin between busy fingers. ''It's just that I wanted to share some things that may be of interest to you.''

''To my case, you mean.''

''No. To you.''

I could fight this distinction but shrug instead, sit back in invitation for him to continue.

''There's good news and there's bad news.''

''Oh, yeah? Give me the bad news.''

''There's only one document in the entire county archives that makes any reference to Mrs. Arthurs's Lady in the Lake.''

''The good news?''

''It's a handwritten manuscript written by none other than Alistair Dundurn.''

''So it's the same thing as the book I already have, right?
A History of Northern Ontario Towns
. I don't see how that's helpful.''

''No, it's different. And I never said it would be
helpful
.''

''So what is it, then?''

''This.''

He disappears beneath the table and for a not-quite-awake moment I expect a hand puppet to appear in his place, a red-nosed ceramic face that tells dirty jokes in a squeaky voice. But then Pittle returns and brings with him a bundle of wrinkled papers bound in a leather satchel.

''This,'' I say, ''is paper.''

''A manuscript. Dundurn's. Except more like Dundurn's own memoirs. Very interesting stuff. A later work than his history, probably written at the same time as he was going a bit wonky. Which either makes it more honest or completely unreliable.''

Pittle wriggles back in his chair and grips the ends of the armrests, his head tottering on his neck. At this point the waitress arrives (''Have youse decided what youse want?'') and Pittle orders a pint of Ex and twenty Suicide Wings. I ask for the same.

''You sure you like it hot?'' she almost sneers, and I wonder why she didn't ask Pittle the same thing.

''Hot as you can make them,'' I tell her with forced relish, and she curls her upper lip toward her nose in a troubling expression I take to mean
Oh, yeah, pal? We'll see
about that
.

''So,'' I say after the waitress has left. ''What's so interesting about our friend Mr. Dundurn's life?''

''Not much, I expect. Aside from the fact that he was there on the night Mrs. Arthurs described to you. The night the Lady went through the ice.''

Above our heads a commentator's voice interrupts to announce, ''We've just learned that he's suffered a severe concussion, ladies and gentlemen. Johnson
will
be scratched for at least the first two games with Chicago.'' The voice is excited, even cheerful, slowing only to emphasize
concussion
and then instantly picking up again.

''How do you know he was there?'' I ask.

''Well, he doesn't actually come out and
say
it, of course. But he slips in enough hints to make it clear.''

Pittle clicks open the satchel and pulls a single sheet out from the manuscript pile before him, holds it close to his face, and reads through its trembling creases.

'' 'The men watched her fall through, and not a soul among us said a word. For they
knew
what they had done. And while there was a darkness settling upon their hearts, there was also the relief that the town was once more safe from physical or moral threat.' Did you notice the slip-up in there? 'Not a soul among
us
said a word'? Dundurn's manuscript is entirely handwritten, but the
us
stands on the page uncorrected. I think this shows that the entire work is nothing less than a personal recounting of the event. A confession, really.''

The waitress returns with our beers and slides them before us, watery suds spilling over the sides and rushing into a moat around the base of the glass. Without a word both of us pick them up and glug down the first third in sudden thirst. Then, a moment later, first Pittle and then I fill the air with belches passed through clenched lips, a sound like the release of radiator steam. Neither of us excuses himself before speaking again.

''So he knew her,'' I say.

''Everybody knew her. But he might've been the only one who found out what her story was. Or some of the pieces, anyway.''

''And?''

''She was Polish. Not a great thing to be in Europe during the early forties. Dundurn doesn't say how he found even this out, because she had no passport or documentation of any kind. But I suspect he went out and visited her where she was camping in the woods near the lake. To interview her.''

''Maybe for other reasons too.''

''What do you mean?''

''Mrs. Arthurs told me that some of the men in town would go out there to spend a little time with her. Before the wives found out.''

''I see.''

Everywhere I turn to look at something other than Pittle's face my eyes meet only televisions. Hanging on chains in the corners, pull-down screens taking up entire walls, three smaller units nesting in the boxes above the bar originally designed as wine racks. Each one showing a different athletic spectacle: a body-sculpting show hosted by a man whose skin is so oiled and packed with sinew, he looks like a sausage fried to the point of bursting; a stock-car race where cameras set on the dashboards showed just how tedious driving around an oval track two hundred times must be; a highlights tape of downhill skiing accidents featuring one neck-snapping accident after another.

''Okay, so one way or another, Dundurn was researching the Lady,'' I say, taking another gulp of beer. ''What did he get?''

Pittle lifts his hands and they hover over the papers like two metal detectors searching the sand for buried change. Inside his beard something quivers.

''Not much, in the end,'' he says. ''Her English was almost nonexistent, and I don't think she was much of a talker anyway. What we do know is that she arrived here in the summer of 1945 as a DP, but without official papers, as I've said, which suggests she'd managed to--''

''DP?''

'' 'Displaced person.' The government's term for all people left homeless by the war. A refugee. Somebody that made it out.''

''But how'd she get here?''

''Who knows? She'd probably been on the road in Canada for a while, camping out, staying away from the larger cities and towns where they'd be more likely to ask questions. As for how she got out of Europe? We have to be talking about a very resourceful woman here. Keep in mind that Poland was the first place to undergo Nazi 'Germanizing.' The Nuremberg anti-Jewish laws served as the model for similar regulations aimed against the Polish people generally. Basically this meant complete loss of rights, nationhood, name. Children between six and sixteen were forcibly taken away from their families to be brought up as Germans, a policy that entailed their being sent to institutions to be 'reeducated' in order to erase their language, culture, history along with everything else. And they were the lucky ones. The others, the 'undesirable elements,' were sent to the camps.''

''All this is in Dundurn's papers?''

''Mostly the transcripts to Nuremberg Trial Number 8, actually. I did some research of my own.''

Pittle's face exhibits no pride in this, his voice offering only the evenness of professional clarification. Above me the same commentator states the word
concussion
for a second time.

''What made her 'undesirable,' then?''

''She was a single mother, which suggests in itself that her husband either fought in the Polish military or was one of the first ones sent to the camps. Maybe he worked in the government, was an academic or a writer--one of the ones they took care of right away. There could have been secondary concerns as well: after the Jews and the Gypsies came Communists, the mentally ill, pregnant women, homosexuals. She may have been one or all of them. But my bet is she wasn't thinking of herself at the time. She had to get out of there in order to save her daughters no matter who she was--they would have been just the right age to be taken away. Not an easy thing, but she pulled it off. It would've made a great story, but she certainly didn't tell it to Dundurn. As far as we know she didn't tell it to anyone.''