Missing Girls- In Truth Is Justice

by Larry Crane

  It got a little tricky with the basketball games because they’re at night. You might walk to the game with a bunch of friends but who knew what would happen once you got there—like a boy might offer you a ride home. Then what? All of this was Vickie talking, not her. She was just a twerpy freshman, but it was not forever. She’d be following the same path soon enough. As scared as Vickie was to walk along Wyckoff Avenue in the dark, she seemed to forget all about it as soon as a boy said: “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride.” Some boys, not just anyone.

  ***

  Vickie knew everybody’s car on sight, and when the Aqua Merc went past her, she knew it had to be Joe Gilroy at the wheel. She turned around enough to see that the brake lights were on. Joe was slowing to make a turn into the driveway opposite the Nixon’s house. She waited at the side of the road as the Merc came back her way, approaching with the bright lights dimmed. It stopped, and the window dropped slowly. Then, she could see that it wasn’t Joe Gilroy at all. It was Eddie Smith.

  “Need a ride?”

  “Hi Eddie. No thanks. I’m meeting Myrna,” Vickie said.

  “Get in. I’ll take you both home.”

  It was important not to be unfriendly. She didn’t want to get in the car. It was such a short ride to the house anyway, but— “Well, all right,” she said, opening the door.

  Vickie slid into the front seat as Edgar Smith reached to drag the full kerosene can closer to him, giving Vickie more room. She held her notebook and accounting text in her lap.

  “Myrna should be coming along the road right up here,” she said, pointing out the windshield. Edgar pressed the button to raise the power window beside her. He pressed the button to lock all the doors. Click!

  “How’re you doing, Vickie?” he said.

  “Fine. How are Patricia and the baby?” she asked.

  “They’re fine,” he said.

  They were soon approaching Crescent Avenue with its streetlight. They hadn’t seen Myrna. Where was she?

  “No Myrna,” Smith said.

  “Can you drop me here? It wouldn’t go well with my father if he saw me getting out of a car,” Vickie said.

  “I’ll just turn off here then,” he said. Edgar Smith turned left onto West Crescent Avenue.

  “Right here’s good enough,” Vickie said, looking directly at him.

  Smith pressed on the accelerator. They drew away from the streetlamp into darkness on the dirt road. He flicked on the bright lights.

  ***

  “What am I picking up at Davis Pharmacy?” Donald Hommell asked as he shoved his arms into his jacket.

  “It’s a package of stuff,” Mr. Passaro, the manager on duty at Wyckoff Pharmacy said. “Take this to pay for it. They’ll be expecting you.”

  The pharmacy station wagon was parked out in back next to his Ford sedan. If this were a delivery, he’d take his own car and not even come back to work because it would already be quitting time when he got back. But for a pickup he’d take the wagon. No sense using his own gas. He cranked Wyckoff Pharmacy’s green-and-white ’54 Ford station wagon and pulled out onto Wyckoff Avenue heading toward Clinton Avenue. When he got back, he’d drive over to Pelzer’s Bar in his own car to see what was going on. He was sure to see someone he knew.

  There was no sense setting any speed records either. This was probably his millionth delivery or pickup, and it took twenty minutes total, out and back, every time. It was suburbia USA. Wall-to-wall houses and small businesses all along Wyckoff Avenue except for the Reformed Church and cemetery on the left and the big Midland Park Lumberyard. He settled in at about 35-40 miles per hour toward Ridgewood. Streetlights flashed by at every cross street.

  Wyckoff Avenue became Lake Avenue when he passed under the railroad tracks at Goffle Road. Then he made a little jog onto Godwin for a block and turned left onto Clinton Avenue. Ridgewood Avenue loomed ahead and he took a hard right onto it and followed it all the way into town where he parked the wagon across the street from the Davis Pharmacy on Wilsey Square. Ten minutes exactly. What a surprise.

  ***

  Myrna closed her algebra book and gathered her notes. She pushed her chair away from the table and ducked into the living room. Her mother was engrossed in Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts on TV.

  “Myrna! You’re supposed to be on your way to meet your sister,” her mother said.

  “Oh my god, she’s going to be so mad.”

  “Well, get going. You’re going to have to walk faster. Go on. Hurry up.”

  “Can you drive me, Ma?”

  “No. Daddy would have a fit. Get your coat on and get going.”

  She dragged her jacket out of the closet and crammed her arms in the sleeves on the way out the door. She buttoned up the front as she tripped along the driveway out to Wyckoff Avenue, then picked up a steady fast walk across the street to the sidewalk. Past the streetlight at West Crescent, the sidewalk ended. She strained to see further out into the night, expecting to see Vickie, and secretly hoping she wouldn’t so her absent-minded dreaming wouldn’t turn out so bad. Vickie was going to be steaming mad.

  She didn’t meet Vickie or see a car on the road all the way to the Nixon’s house. She could see the white fence illuminated by the streetlight on the corner with Fardale, but she didn’t see her sister. In a way it was good—it probably meant that Vickie had forgotten about leaving at 8:30 too. Myrna hurried down the Nixon’s driveway, climbed the porch stairs, and rang the doorbell. She was breathless and her face felt hot.

  ***

  “Hey, where are you going? C’mon, stop.” Vickie said, staring out the side window at the ghostly trees gliding by in the passing light from the headlamps of the car.

  “Just going,” Edgar answered. He reached for his Camels in the breast pocket of his wool shirt. He expertly flipped the pack and pulled a cigarette out with his front teeth. He reached and pushed the dashboard lighter. He touched the glowing end to the cigarette, sucked in deeply, and blew out a long thin cloud.

  “I can’t be late getting home. They’ll be waiting for me,” Vickie said. She began gnawing on the fingernails of her left hand.

  “You worry too much,” he said. Edgar bore left onto Shadyside Road. It was even narrower than West Crescent, and had one or two houses widely spaced along its length. Shadyside had a hard right turn as it became Young’s Road. Smith knew exactly where he was going. Vickie felt a fluttering fear rising in her chest the farther she got from home.

  “I’m already in all kinds of trouble,” she said. “The school sent a note home about me, and I stole it before Daddy could see it. If I don’t get back when I’m supposed to, they’re going to ground me for sure. Take me home.”

  “Shut up,” Edgar said.

  “I want to go home. Take me home.”

  Edgar made a hard left at Chapel Road. Vickie darted her eyes back and forth between the bobbing beams of the headlights and the side of Smith’s face. She chewed at her fingernails. At Fardale Avenue—a narrow dirt road, hardly an avenue—Edgar came almost to a full stop before he took a right turn into the darkness. It wasn’t much more than a rutted wagon trail, and the car lurched from hump to hump. He braked the car to a stop, turned the key to kill the engine, and flicked off the lights. Edgar mashed the Camel in the dashboard tray. He stared straight ahead. Vickie stared straight ahead. It was absolutely noiseless in the Merc.

  “Take me home,” Vickie said, quietly.

  “Shut up,” Edgar said.

  ***

  “Myrna! Hi! Come on in.” It was Laura, Barbara’s little sister.

  “Hi Laura. Can you get Vickie for me? She was supposed to meet me.”

  “Yeah, she left ten or fifteen minutes ago. You didn’t see her?”

  “No, I didn’t. Wow. Now what?”

  “Maybe she got a ride, Myrna.”

  “Oh god, she better not. She wouldn’t do that, anyway. Not in a million years,” Myrna said. “I don’t think she’d do it, anyway. Well, I can’t stay. I have to get
going home. Maybe I missed her somehow. I couldn’t have missed her.”

  “What’s the matter, Myrna,” Mrs. Nixon called from the living room.

  “She didn’t see Vickie all the way here,” Laura said.

  “Well, there’s probably a good explanation,” Mrs. Nixon said.

  “There better be,” Myrna said. “I have to go. Daddy’s going to be furious.”

  “Barbara! Myrna’s here looking for Vickie.” Barbara Nixon came down the stairs.

  “Hi Myrna. She left a good ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago,” she said.

  “I was late starting out, and I didn’t see any cars,” Myrna said.

  “She probably got a ride, and they went to Pellington’s or something,” Barbara said.

  “Both of us are going to be in big trouble when Daddy hears about this. I better get going.” Myrna hurried down the porch steps.

  “Maybe he won’t need to know,” Laura called after her.

  “Maybe,” Myrna called back.

  She trotted out to the fence and beyond, to Wyckoff Avenue. She could see her breath in the light from the streetlamp. She trotted across the road, turned left and picked up another fast walk north toward home.

  ***

  Donald Hommell went through the front door of Davis Pharmacy and straight back to the prescription pickup window. “Hello! Wyckoff Pharmacy pickup,” he yelled.

  “Hi Donnie. I have a package here for you. It comes to $23.75.” Delores, the cashier, said, entering from in back.

  “Need a signature?” he said.

  “Not this time. Here you go,” Delores said, handing over a shoebox-sized package wrapped in brown paper. “I’ll be so glad when this weather breaks. But, that’s March, right?”

  “What is it? In like a lion, out like a lamb?” Donald said. He gave Delores the twenty-five dollars that Mr. Passaro had given him to pay with, took the change, and slid it into his pocket. Outside, he cranked the engine of the wagon.

  ***

  Vickie edged toward the door of the car. She felt for the handle in the darkness. Edgar reached with his right hand and grabbed the collar of her jacket. Her books spilled from her lap onto the floor. He pulled her over toward him.

  “Let go of me,” she screamed.

  He groped with his left hand and grasped the front of her jacket and pulled, popping all of the snaps. He burrowed his face into her throat and yanked her sweater up. He clutched at her right breast, then jerked on her bra. He bit down on her.

  “Stop it!” she screamed. Vickie fought hard with both hands. She twisted and crashed her right hand into his face. He gasped and recoiled, releasing the grip he had on her collar. Vickie gripped the door handle and pushed down. Nothing. She pulled up hard on the locking toggle. She tumbled out of the car onto her hands and knees in the sandy soil. He lunged to the passenger side of the car and out the open door. He snatched the back of her jacket as she tried to scramble away.

  “Get away from me. I’m going to tell my father,” she screamed.

  “Bitch, you hit me!” Edgar Smith swung with all his might and struck her full in the face with his fist. Vickie fell to her back, stung with pain that filled her whole head. He clutched her jacket again, pulled her to her feet and manhandled her back into the car. Vickie’s nose gushed blood. She rolled to her back on the seat and kicked hard at him with both feet as he closed in on her. She fought and squirmed out of the car again and careened away blindly in the darkness, both hands cradling her face. He tackled her from behind. She battled harder with both hands and both feet. She freed herself, got up again, and scuffled away from him.

  The blur that had been all she could see cleared. It was pitch black, but she saw light in the direction of the road they’d traveled. A pure white disk of light. She ran toward it, tripped, fell and rose to run some more. She could hear nothing except her own frantic sobbing. “Run, run.”

  Edgar Smith also saw the light coming from a distance down the dirt road that was Fardale Avenue. He saw the outline of the girl as she staggered away. He could just let her go. Let her go bang on somebody’s front door. Worse things had happened, he was sure. If he just hadn’t smacked her—punched her really. Well, she’d started the punching. But he popped her hard. He couldn’t just let her go. He got to his feet, scrabbled toward the car, stubbed his toe on a rock and pitched forward to the ground again. He crawled to the car. He scrambled in and pawed the darkness of the backseat. He found the smooth hardness of a baseball bat, backed out of the car, and faced toward the distant light. He’d lost a shoe in the madness, but he stepped forward anyway, and then he began a steady trot.

  Chapter 42

  Gavin sat still surrounded by cement block walls and bleak wooden benches. It was cold and hostile despite the cheery family visiting area sign above the door. One family sat together, a woman with her child and a prisoner in his orange jumpsuit. Gavin gazed up at the ceiling. Where had Marcella come up with the guts to come to such a hole? Smith would be this emaciated, blanched and bald sourpuss, immediately posturing to establish dominance, he thought. It was a shot in the dark to request a meeting with Smith, but it wasn’t going to happen without his agreement. Why would he meet? Curiosity? Smith came through the prisoner entrance, fixed his gaze, and sauntered toward him. Then the staring contest. Gavin took the initiative.

  “Where’s your bald head?” Gavin asked. “Don’t all jailbirds get shaved? No Fu Manchu. No punk shit at all? No nothing.”

  Edgar Smith belched and wiped at his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Fuck you. They told me who you are. She sent you, huh?” he said.

  “Nobody sends me anywhere. I hear you crawled out of your hole-in-the-ground to see who in the world would want to talk to a slime bucket like you,” Gavin said.

  “If I’m slime, what does that make you? She actually came to see me, leaving you to jerk off in the corner.”

  All right, the pissing contest went as expected, Gavin thought. It was odd to say the least, to come face to face with this guy who he’d only seen pictures of—this semi-famous celebrity jailbird—and he looked nothing like the pictures. It was like bumping into somebody famous in an elevator by accident—Henry Kissinger, say, or somebody like that. Why should he look like a photograph of him? The images of Smith he’d seen were taken by a news photographer at the time he was being questioned in the sandpit and in the police station in Mahwah in 1957. He’d gained fifty pounds since then.

  Smith was not nervous or fidgety as he had been at the time of the questioning when everything in his future was uncertain and he was straining to come up with answers to questions coming from every direction. His freedom depended on his credibility, and with every feigned lapse of memory, every evasion he offered, his authenticity leaked away into the air. To be stripped so naked—exposed as a liar, had to have been a terrible feeling.

  And now, face to face with a stranger in a penitentiary where everything was completely controlled, his home, Smith was in his element—just as the police had been at home in their headquarters with him. Incarcerated, but absolutely at ease with himself, Smith was in charge and it was Gavin’s credibility being tested. It was terrible.

  “You don’t know anything about her,” Gavin said.

  “Look asshole, I know what you’re thinking. Who’s the prick she’s seeing? You’re jealous.”

  “Of you? Pond scum? You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

  “I know exactly what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you want to take a poke at me, but you won’t. At the moment of truth, you’re doubtful. You wonder if you’re big enough—if I’m weak enough—if you’ll lose control and make a fool of yourself. You fantasize—you and I locked in a death struggle. You worried about this the whole three-hour trip down here.

  Why am I so bulldozed? Because he’s right? Because he nailed it? I have nothing specific to say about what I’m doing here, whereas we both know very well what he’s doing here. So, what is it? Have I been neutered somehow? I think
I have—exposed in the lie of having no legitimacy. Did I think enough about this before I barged in?

  “You’re just what I thought you’d be, an arrogant punk, all bluff,” Gavin said. Oh fuck. That came off so weak.

  “Now that you’re here, Mr. Armand. Should I call you Mr. Armand?”

  “Sure. Go ahead,” he said.

  “Well asshole, I mean Mr. Armand, you can see that none of that macho, death struggle bullshit is going to happen, and you’re sorry because it’s been so long since you even dreamed such a thing, and you wish you were young enough to be that stupid. You think your problem is that you’re not young anymore. I’m not your enemy. It’s too bad. It would have been interesting. I almost wish I were, so that I could test my own flabby muscles against yours.”

  “You have no real relationship with Marcella. Nothing. It’s all up on the surface,” Gavin said. Wimp! he thought.

  “What kind of a relationship is possible in prison? It’s more than you think, and less than you think. Yeah, it’s flattering to have someone come to you, seek you out, and to have that person know things about you that can only be known if they really dig and really want to know. Does Marcella know as much about you?”

  “She knows everything there is to know about me.”

  “You’re a lucky man. I like the way she looks in what she wears and what she doesn’t.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Gavin said.

  Smith was calm in the face of the insult. “You lie, and she lets you get away with it. She lies and you let her go. We two, we nail each other every time. Truth. The Whole Truth. Nothing but the Truth. I didn’t even have that with my own wife. I baked a cupcake for Marcella. I know why you’re here. Guard!”

  “Wait a minute! You’re so good at talking. Listen this time. I’m willing to pay you to—” Is that going to be my ace in the hole, that I assert my dominance with bribery? You weak, sniveling jellyfish, he thought.