The Walkaway (14 page)

March 29, 1952

Dear Wayne,

Perhaps you remember me. We were in high school together on the debate team. I always remember your quickness and off-the-cuff wit when I am called upon to make a presentation here at Collins. For you see I have followed in your footsteps and got myself a job here in the Public Relations Division. Several people here have spoken highly of you, including Mr. Collins himself. You will no doubt be glad to learn that he still comes in every morning rain or shine, and he has asked me to convey his belief that you have a future here when your service to our country has run its course.

But it is not to tender an offer of employment that I write you. What I speak of here could destroy your future with this company, even with this city! I do not relish the prospect of passing on the terrible knowledge I am about to. Every man who weds carries with him into that blessed state an image of his wife as a pure and sacred being, and I well remember your own Sally from our high school days, when she was both admired for her beauty and cherished for her . . .

I didn’t see a second page and my time was short so I dug through a bunch of ratty civilian clothes to the bottom of the bag, where I found a blackjack, an eight-inch hunting knife, and a cardboard box full of ammunition for a .38. I put them back where I’d found them and left.

Getting off the elevator on the ground floor I asked the operator his name. “Roger Lantrain,” he said. He wasn’t much over twenty, with a smirk on the corner of his mouth.

“Okay, Roger. Word gets around that I was up there and I’ll shut your little operation down real quick.”

His smirk didn’t disappear, but he had to work to keep it up. “What operation?”

“Sneaking bottles and call girls up into the rooms. A little reefer sometimes, too.” The bottles and whores were a sure thing in a big hotel, but I was just guessing on the reefer. I had him, though. That smirk was gone.

“Yes sir.” He damn near saluted when I stepped out of the cage.

I hadn’t found any cash in the room, so unless he had his whole wad on him he must have put it in the safe. Mr. Nash wasn’t too keen on the idea of me searching the safe.

“I don’t want to search it. I just want you to show me what he put in it.”

He led me into the hotel office and opened the safe, then pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. It contained the title to a 1946 Plymouth and one thousand six hundred thirty dollars in cash. I handed him the envelope back and he replaced it in the safe.

“That’s all for now, Mr. Nash.” He didn’t answer, just went back to his paperwork and pretended he couldn’t see me anymore.

As I was walking out a guy with a fading shiner passed me on his way in. I stopped at the lobby tobacco stand and pretended to study the headline on the
Beacon
while he talked to Nash at the desk. Something he said made the man blush, and as soon as Ogden was in the elevator on his way up I stopped back at the desk.

“Yes, that was him,” Nash said.

“What’d he have to say that got you so flushed?”

“He said he just fucked the ugliest prostitute in the world, and he did it four times.” He couldn’t help laughing a little, and neither could I.

I still wanted to see Sally before reporting for duty. It was two-thirty, and she’d be getting home in an hour or so. On the way I stopped in at Welker Brothers and went up to the sales office. I didn’t see the salesman who’d unloaded the piece of shit old Ford on me. Probably he’d gone on to something more legit, like selling fake magazine subscriptions door to door. The man who’d sold Ogden his car was there, though, and once I flashed the badge he was happy to talk, maybe even relieved.

“Sergeant McCowan accused me of cheating him before we’d even exchanged names,” he said. “There was definitely the implication that if he wasn’t treated fairly something bad would happen.”

“So you treated him fair and square?”

“Sure.”

“Must have felt good for a change.”

“I don’t mean I ordinarily wouldn’t have.”

“Look,” I said. “See that Ford out there? The black one? I bought that here less than six months ago and it’s a real pile of shit. Nothing but trouble. Won’t start half the time, stalls in traffic.”

He was starting to get nervous. “You should’ve brought her in when you had trouble.”

“Warranty stopped after thirty days. Didn’t start to go bad until day thirty-one.”

He was sweating, from the heat or from the idea that they’d sold a cop a lemon. “You’re a police officer. Why didn’t you tell us that when you bought the car?”

“What makes you think I didn’t?”

“We never would’ve . . .” He stopped himself and shrugged. “We might’ve made you a better deal, is all.”

“All right.” I got up. “I’m coming back in next week and if it’s not running like a goddamn top when I take it off the lot I’m trading it in for the full purchase price, understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“And if you see this character again, not a word about my coming around.”

“Yes sir.”

I got back into the Ford and headed for Sally’s. I was glad I’d come in. The bastards had skinned me, and I wanted it put right. Maybe I’d get some satisfaction after all. Maybe I’d even go back and buy Ginger’s car there.

I stopped at a phone booth to make sure Sally was going home. After six rings the baby-sitter answered.

“Mrs. Ogden will be home around three forty-five, and then she’ll be taking me home.” Which meant she wouldn’t be back home until four-fifteen, probably, and I was on duty at five. “Would you like to leave a message?”

“Just tell her Officer Fahnstiel called.” I hung up and went back to the car. I’d make a stop later, when I was on duty, or in the morning before I went to work. Whatever her husband was doing back in town it wasn’t charity work, and I wasn’t going to let her do anything this weekend that would give this creep an opening. She wouldn’t like it, but that was how it was going to have to be.

13

Tricia had made her way through the whole front section of the paper to the funnies and her father was still trying to pry something out of her grandmother. As was her habit she had tuned out of the argument and was only vaguely aware of the source of the dispute. Dot had finished the Jumble and done enough of the crossword to ruin it, and there seemed to be nothing in the house to read except the preceding month’s Silhouette Regency Romances. She needed something to keep her mind off the bickering or it would give her a stomachache, and she thought about walking around the corner to the drugstore for
People
or maybe a cheap paperback.

“All right,” Sidney said, no closer to getting his mother to talk than when they’d walked in on him. “Let’s say you’re playing it straight. You paid off the RV and the mortgage—”

“Who says we paid off the RV?”

“The bill of sale says so. Let’s say you paid that off, plus about twenty years of a thirty-year mortgage, plus you installed air-conditioning and God knows what else, on Social Security plus a cop’s pension and a nurse’s on top of it. Just for the sake of argument.”

“That’s what we did.”

“Then how’d you eat? How’d you buy shoes? You didn’t have any savings when the old man died.”

Tricia stood and moved for the door, waiting for an opening in the conversation where she could announce her departure. Her stomach muscles were starting to tighten and she considered leaving without saying anything. Probably they wouldn’t even notice.

“And just how exactly would you know that?” Dot snarled.

“Because the VA paid for the funeral and I know you’d have paid for it yourself if you could. Hell, I’d have paid for it
myself
if I’d had the money back then. Would’ve been my pleasure.”

“Just getting him in the ground was pleasure enough for me.”

Tricia shot a disbelieving look at her grandmother. Surely she’d heard wrong.

“Yeah, hard to see how it could’ve gotten any better than it already was just knowing he was dead.” They both chortled in a similar, furtive way.

“What are you guys talking about? About Grandpa McCallum?”

Dot and Sidney looked at each other guiltily, and Sidney drew in and let out a deep breath. “You never knew him, sweetie.”

“You were glad when he died?”

Sidney shrugged. “I don’t know about
glad
, exactly. I sure as shit wasn’t sorry.”

“Listen, honey,” Dot said, putting her hand on her granddaughter’s shoulder. “We’re just kidding. Your grandpa had a lot of nice qualities, too.”

“That’s a laugh,” Sidney said, which earned him a sharp look from his mother. “Okay, then, give me something nice to say. If you can honestly come up with one nice thing to say about the old bastard, I’ll say it right back to you.”

“He loved that old hunting dog of his,” she said, after a long pause.

Sidney nodded. “I guess he did.”

Dot thought for a second, then chuckled again. “That’s about the best I can come up with.”

“I got one,” Sidney said. “He was always kind to his drinking buddies.”

“He never crashed his car into anybody else’s house but ours.”

“Good with his hands when they weren’t shaking.”

When the phone rang in the kitchen Tricia slipped out quietly to answer it. It was for her father, a woman’s voice she didn’t recognize, and she went back to the living room, happy for the chance to interrupt. “It’s for you, Daddy.”

Tricia looked through the kitchen at her father as he picked up the phone and started talking, trying to make sense of this unprecedented lack of respect for poor dead Grandpa McCallum, about whom she had never before heard an unkind word. In fact, though, she hadn’t ever heard him discussed much at all; he’d died when she was in diapers, and she supposed the reason he didn’t come up much in conversation was sensitivity to Gunther’s feelings. Her grandmother turned to her, still laughing. “Sorry, sweetheart. I always tried not to talk that way in front of you kids.”

“You’re full of surprises today, Moomaw,” Tricia said. On the way home from the mall Dot had insisted on stopping at St. Luke’s Catholic Church, where she went in and lit a candle for Gunther’s safe return home. It was the first time Tricia had ever been aware of any member of her family besides her crazy mother willingly entering a church.

“Now keep your damn mouth shut about that business.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Well, don’t.” She was whispering now. “I don’t want Sidney to know, and I particularly don’t want Gunther to ever find out.”

“I won’t say anything, don’t worry.”

Sidney came back out of the kitchen. “This lady in College Hill got a weird phone message from the old man, thinks he might have been at her house. I’m gonna check it out.”

“You call me, you understand? I don’t like sitting around waiting.”

“I’ll call you, don’t get your bowels in an uproar. And don’t think I’m forgetting about the money.”

When he was gone, Dot sat down at the kitchen table with her map, and when Tricia sat down next to her she didn’t seem to notice.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for? Maybe I can help you find it.”

Dot looked up at her. “You know how to read a map?”

Sidney took the freeway east toward Loretta Gandy’s house, feeling guilty about talking the way he had in front of Tricia, then wondering what was the problem with them knowing the truth about his old man, dead before Danny and Amy were born and before Tricia had any idea who he was. They were all adults now, and God knew as tiny children they’d seen worse with their own mother.

He couldn’t deny his share of responsibility there. It had been at his urging that Christine had first sampled some coke he’d reluctantly accepted in lieu of cash for a football bet from a customer, in violation of his own strict policy of cash up-front. He was head bartender then at a club called the Sporting Life, long since closed, and between his salary, his mostly undeclared tips, and his share of the gambling action he’d been making a good living, even with three kids to feed. Suddenly, though, it wasn’t enough.

By the time the marriage was over she was shacked up with her connection, a squirrelly little guy who wore a big knit beret and thought he looked like a white Superfly. Shortly after she moved into his house he got busted and Christine along with him, and he ended up getting fifteen years. She ended up with four years’ probation, a sentence so light in comparison that many observers believed a deal had been struck. Her good fortune had not lessened her appetite for coke or love of a good time, however, and Sidney had been raising the kids by himself with barely a hello from her for almost five years when she abruptly decided she wanted them back. She’d married the owner of the very club where Sidney had scored that original packet of coke, and since she was living in a spacious home in a trendy suburb she thought she might as well have some kids to complete the picture.

It might have worked if she’d bothered getting clean beforehand, but this judge liked her even less than the first one had, and Sidney’s lawyer hadn’t even had to bring up Christine’s status as a recent probationer or her new husband’s involvement in the coke trade. He’d had to work two shifts for a year after that to pay off his legal bills, though, and he resented every extra shift bitterly, popping white crosses just to stay on his feet. She was married to a fucking millionaire, but she wasn’t interested in supporting the kids financially unless she had custody.

She had since gotten divorced again, joined NA, and found Jesus. For their sake and not hers Sidney told the kids they should be nice to her, which as far as he was concerned was more than she deserved. His small measure of revenge was his refusal to allow her to make amends to him, which she kept trying to do. She’d been trying to get him and the kids to attend family counseling sessions at the goofball Holy Roller church she belonged to. Tricia had attended a couple of sessions— Amy and Danny had refused categorically—and he’d gone to pick her up afterward, waiting outside the mobile home the church had set up next to it, watching people showing up at the church’s cinder-block main building. The session had been timed, he realized, to end just as a service was starting. Tricia came out of the mobile home, followed by Christine, and then a youngish man in a robin’s egg blue suit with a badly sculpted helmet of hair hurried out to beat Tricia to the car. Sidney rolled the window down and gave him the look he used to give troublemakers at the Sweet Cage, the look that usually preceded violent expulsion. The man nonetheless stuck out his hand, which Sidney ignored with childish satisfaction.

“Mister McCallum? Jeff Lorrell. Tricia and her mom are fixing to attend services, I hope the change of plans doesn’t put you out too much. In fact we were sort of hoping you’d join them.”

“Tricia,” Sidney yelled, and as she started to move forward the minister motioned her to stay back for a second.

“Mister McCallum,” the reverend began, lowering his voice to an intimate near-whisper, “what I’m learning from these sessions is that part of the problem seems to be lack of involvement by the family in any church-based activities. Tricia tells me her and her brother and sister have never had any kind of religious training, is that right?”

The reverend seemed unintimidated by the glare, but Sidney kept it up.

“Tricia. You ready to go?” Tricia started to come again, but her mother was saying something to her and looking very emotional and she stayed behind to listen.

“I think there’s a real need in your family, Sidney, that’s not being met.”

“Don’t call me Sidney.”

“Sorry. Mr. McCallum, I’m talking about the need for salvation.”

“Yeah, I pieced that together. Tricia, you want me to come back and get you when the tent show’s over?” Unlike her brother and sister, Tricia was softhearted enough to come to the counseling session for her mother’s sake, but he sensed she’d about hit her limit for the day, and Sidney wasn’t surprised when she kissed Christine on the cheek, raced to the car and dove in without a farewell to Pastor Lorrell. Sidney rolled his window up with Lorrell in the middle of a sentence and they drove away.

“How was it?”

“Shitty. He was trying to get me to forgive her, and I told him I already had a long time ago, and he wanted to know how come I wouldn’t join the church then, and he started talking about Mary Magdalene and how sinners could be forgiven, even the worst ones, and he was sort of calling Mom a whore.”

“Hah!” For a second Sidney wished he’d gone after all.

“And I told him again I’d already forgiven her, but he just kept coming back to the same thing: If I’d really forgiven her for being a coke slut then I’d join their weird little church.”

“So how’d it end up?”

“Finally I said if that’s what it takes, then I guess I couldn’t forgive her.”

“Good for you, honey. I’m proud of you.”

“I was feeling a little sorry for her, then I thought, hey, she left me when I was eight. It won’t kill her to go to church all by herself.”

“Moomaw?” Tricia was leaning against the doorjamb, half in and half out of Dot’s kitchen. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything as small as a rock quarry on this map, and even if it was there I wouldn’t know what to look for.”

She was right; it looked to Dot like a big abstract painting with names and numbers and lines pasted in at random. “Don’t suppose I would either.”

“Want to go to the WSU library? There’d be better maps and librarians who know how to read them.”

“Maybe we should. You still got a library card?”

“Don’t need one, we’re not checking books out. So are you gonna tell me what it’s about or not?”

She was going to have to tell somebody, because somebody was going to have to drive her there, and she’d rather it was Tricia than Sidney. Before she made the decision there was a knock at the door and Tricia went to see who it was.

“Uncle Ed!” Tricia’s voice rose to a squeal and Dot’s stomach got tight. “Moomaw! Uncle Ed’s here.”

“He’s not your uncle,” she said quietly, and she stood and gave him a smile anyway as he stepped into the kitchen. Ed gave her a little hug and patted her consolingly on the shoulder.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said. “What you looking at? A map?” He put his hand on the table to steady himself and leaned down to look at it. His sport jacket was off, but he was sweating hard. Those tiny, perfectly round blue eyes glistened and protruded like marbles from the orbits even while he was squinting at the green map.

“You like something to drink, Uncle Ed?”

“I sure would, sweetheart. Hot as the hinges of Hades out there.”

Tricia opened the ice box and poured Ed a glass of iced tea. “You can cuss in front of me, Ed. I’m twenty-two.”

“I never cuss, honey. Gunther’s pulling your leg if he ever told you any different.” He took the iced tea and drank half of it in a single swig. “That’s good, thanks. Jeepers, it’s hot out there. Nice and cool in here, though.” He looked around, trying to spot the source of the cold air. “You got central air?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Seems like I remember Gunther griping about the heat in the house.”

“Didn’t have AC when we moved in, just central heat.”

“Huh. When’d you put the condenser in?”

“Eight, nine years ago. Sidney bought it for us,” she lied, knowing he was leading up to a remark about the expense of installing an air conditioner.

“What do you know.” He peered up at a vent as if he were trying to figure out how the whole process worked, then turned to her. “How you holding up, Dot?”

She shrugged. “Okay, I guess, considering.”

“You got any idea what might have made him walk away like that?”

“Well, he’s in the zombie ward of the goddamn old folks’ home, and he doesn’t want to be. How’s that for a start?”

“Did he talk about wanting to get out?”

She gave a little grunt. “How about every goddamn time I talk to him.”

“Anything else? How’s his health?”

“Apart from being half senile, pretty good. Blood pressure’s high but he’s medicated. Course he left his meds behind. No aches and pains to speak of, not compared to me anyway, or you either, probably.”