Mohawk

by Richard Russo

  64

  Two days before Randall Younger’s trial was due to convene, the prosecutor collapsed. He had played his hand boldly, some said recklessly, but things just hadn’t worked out. The young man could not be shaken from his story. In the beginning it had looked like a child could get a conviction, but the mounting testimony and evidence weakened the prosecution’s case like a wasting disease. Randall’s lawyer was combing the town looking for people who had witnessed peculiarities in Officer Gaffney’s last days, and he didn’t have much trouble. The Presbyterian minister had discovered two thirty-eight caliber shells in the wall when he went up to investigate the darkened belfry, and these the attorney was extremely interested in. Several of the regulars at Harry’s were willing to testify to the policeman’s condition on the Fourth, and the abandoned car in the ditch was a matter of public record. It turned out Officer Gaffney had also accosted his landlady with explicit directions never to let anyone into his flat in so wild-eyed and accusatory a manner that the old woman had been terrified.

  The way the defense would tell it, Officer Gaffney, unhinged by his impending retirement, had gone loony and started shooting and stopped when there was no one left to shoot. Then he had shot himself. Ballistics would do little to discourage such a theory. The boy’s lawyer was rumored to have enlisted a big shot from down the line to testify that the bullet’s angle of entry was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. The prosecution’s own experts would be forced to admit to possibility if not probability. To make matters worse, the prosecution would be asked to explain why Randall’s gloves were covered with Rory Gaffney’s blood, while the gun used to kill Rory’s brother was clean. Thus reasonable doubt would be established.

  The district attorney himself would tell a very different story, admirable in its consistency. If he worked hard and told it well, he would not seem a fool. He might even convince a few jurors. But the outcome? A reasonable doubt. The boy’s story, most of it, would sound true. Secretly the prosecutor had to admit that it sounded true even to him, which left him with a dead cop, a dead citizen, a dead retard, an angry public, lots of media attention, the chance of a political lifetime and nothing to do but drop the charges. In desperation he called on the boy’s lawyer and offered, “in the interest of all involved,” to reduce the charges to first-degree manslaughter. But the son-of-a-bitch just smiled, and the game was up. “Zilch,” he told his staff. “That’s what we got here.” His staff had offered this much off the record for weeks. And so, late Friday afternoon, three days before the biggest trial in the history of the tri-city region, the Mohawk County district attorney called a press conference to announce that all charges against Randall Younger were being dropped because the prosecution had zilch. Then, after telephoning the Selective Service, the district attorney went south on vacation. He had three weeks coming and intended to use every minute of it.

  The media were still gathered outside the courthouse when Randall Younger was taken from his cell to the second floor for final processing of his release and the restoration of his valuables, a wallet with forty-two dollars cash. From the window above the street, Randall looked down at the mob scene in the street. Directly below near the front of the crowd were two men in sedate three-piece suits and sunglasses. They seemed far more patient than the rest, and for some reason they reminded Randall of the Cobras, who had lounged idly at the base of Nathan Littler’s statue outside the junior high. He slipped his wallet in his pocket.

  “Well,” said Dominic. “That’s it. Say what you want when we get outside. Don’t be afraid to rub it in.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Randall said.

  “Go ahead,” said his lawyer. “Piss away. You’re a free man.”

  The men’s room was two doors down and nobody followed Randall in. A single window high on the wall opened on the alley in back of the courthouse. There was also a vertical drain pipe.

  The reporters and the two men in the conservative suits had to settle for zilch.

  65

  Benny D. had a rough night, and as usual it was all Dallas Younger’s fault. He’d started looking for Dallas eight o’clock the night before, and when the sun peeked through the trees around seven the next morning, Benny was still looking. Somewhere in the course of the long, dark night he’d forgotten precisely why he was looking for his friend and sometime mechanic, but it would come back to him eventually, and in any event the quest itself had proved sufficiently absorbing.

  Dallas hadn’t been to work in the three days since his kid’s release and disappearance, but word of his exploits had filtered back to the Pontiac dealership. The first night Dallas had closed down a bar on the Albany road and was so drunk that he backed his car into the Mohawk River, barely escaping with his life. Somebody had called Benny D. the next day and he’d taken the wrecker to haul it out. Dallas himself wasn’t there, but for some reason the car was, its rear wheels and trunk underwater, its front wheels and hood on the dry bank. To Benny D. the car looked like it was trying to climb out of the river on its own. It took him an hour to haul it onto the highway and back to the lot at the Pontiac dealership, where he locked it up safe behind the chainlink fence. He would’ve asked the cops to drag the river for Dallas, but somebody claimed to have seen a man clawing his way up the muddy bank, and the police were inclined to go with the hypothesis that Dallas had made it.

  Indeed he had, for no sooner did Benny D. sit down at his desk than simultaneous reports of Dallas’s activities began to come in from such far-flung corners of the county that Benny D. began to suspect that his friend had died and spawned nine new alcoholic lives. At the Fall Inn he bought drinks for everyone in the house and disappeared before the bartender could collect. At Greenie’s he was said to have cornered Untemeyer in the sour men’s room, pinned him against the wall and forcibly removed a valuable diamond ring over the man’s chubby knuckle.

  Since Benny D. figured Dallas was having a hell of a good time, his first instinct was to join up. No one was more fun than Dallas on a binge. Unfortunately Benny D.’s wife, who three years before had walked out on him for the second time, had suddenly reappeared. He was so surprised and, at the moment, delighted to see her that he unthinkingly promised to mend his ways and act right. He promised other things, too, things he knew he would regret deeply, but which could not be undone. In Mrs. Benny’s three-year absence she had taken an associate degree in business, and as one of the provisions of her resumption of wedded bliss obliged her husband to turn over to her day-to-day management of the garage and dealership, along with the checkbook. “I don’t even get to write no checks,” he asked. “We’ll see,” she answered.

  Still, all around, he was pleased. She looked better than when they had married, and she’d taken to going braless like the young college girls who were her classmates. When he looked at her, he felt lucky and grateful for her return, swollen with admiration for her breasts and herself. They had drawn the office blinds and done it right there on the desktop, their cries of delight muffled by the banging and wheezing in the shop on the other side of the wall.

  Indeed, the only Mohawk resident who seemed to be having a better time was Dallas Younger, whose rampage continued. The fourth night of his binge, Dallas apparently learned of Benny D.’s salvage work, because the car was gone the next morning. Somehow, Dallas had scaled the fence, subdued the vicious mutt that Benny D., who fed him, always kept at arm’s length, and somehow spirited away the car that Benny D. had purposely hidden among other autos to prevent just such an event until he could be reimbursed for his considerable trouble. And still the saga continued. Dallas at the Outside Inn, Dallas at the OTB, Dallas at Greenie’s to return Untemeyer’s ring and apologize about the bruised knuckle. Dallas. Dallas. More Dallas. Benny D. was cruelly ashamed of himself for being such a malcontent, but he couldn’t help but wish that his beloved, jiggly wife had returned a week later. He began to droop, partly out of wistfulness, partly the result of feverish activity with Mrs. Benny, who had
learned somewhere that getting laid was fun. He began to philosophize about life and nearly came to the conclusion that total happiness was not in the cards for mortal men. But he was wrong, it turned out, because Mrs. Benny told him he’d better go find Dallas and bring him back to work, since the service department was backed up with troublesome Pontiacs that would listen only to him.

  So, on the night of the sixth day of Dallas’s rampage, Benny D. sallied forth in search of his chief wrench, hoping desperately that he wouldn’t find his friend spent. Mrs. Benny had counted him out fifty dollars with which to conduct his search, just enough to ensure success without creating a serious risk factor. He had searched for Dallas before, of course, and knew how to go about it. Following the time-honored theory of concentric circles, he started at the geographical center of town, say Greenie’s, and widened his loops until he hit the county line, the enchanted boundary that Dallas, as Benny D. knew from long experience, would never penetrate. By midnight Benny D. had canvased the likely Mohawk bars and pieced together a decent picture of his friend’s travels, but the trail was still cool and he began to sense that Dallas was maintaining a twenty-four-hour lead. In terms of alcohol consumed, the lead was even more impressive, though Benny did what he could to narrow the gap. He heard about a poker game at the Knights of Columbus and dropped by. Dallas wasn’t there but others were, all of them happy to see Benny D., who sat down with what remained of the fifty dollars after being assured that his paper was good. What these men didn’t know was that he had legally transferred the dealership to his wife, and he saw no reason to tell them. Anyway, he felt lucky and knew that sitting still wasn’t a bad strategy for finding somebody in Mohawk. Running in circles within a limited space could theoretically be endless. But if you stayed put, what you were chasing sometimes found you.

  This time it didn’t, though, because Benny D. had the most incredible run of luck he could remember. At one stretch he won seven hands in a row and by three-thirty had cleaned everyone at the table, whereupon the game broke up and he was on the road again. He had nearly six hundred dollars in his pocket and couldn’t even brag to Mrs. Benny about it, the proscription of gambling having been one of the conditions of his parole. At seven, when the sun came up, he knew he’d have to return home defeated. He felt small and puny and doubted that even the sight of Mrs. Benny’s pendulous breasts would cheer him up.

  What did, in fact, was the sight of Dallas Younger’s water-marked car parked in the dealership lot. Dallas was alone in the garage, standing beneath Mrs. Schwartz’s ailing Bonneville. He had showered and shaved and was wearing a pressed shirt which, amazingly, said Dallas in flowing script. “I’ve been looking all over hell for you,” Benny D. said.

  “I’m right here. Somebody’s got to look after your business. You look like shit, by the way.”

  “How’d you get in?” Benny D. had a lot of questions, but this, strangely, was foremost in his mind.

  “With a key. How’d you think?”

  “I gave you a key?”

  “You must’ve. I got one, don’t I?”

  It made sense, Benny D. had to admit.

  “Somebody told me your old lady was back.” Dallas pressed the button that lowered the Schwartz Bonneville until the tires met the cold floor and the lift whooshed in relief.

  Benny D. wondered what else Dallas had heard, and decided he’d better assert his manhood. “Took the boys for a bundle last night. Your buddy John had it the worst.”

  “Good,” Dallas said. “I could use a hundred, since you got it.”

  Benny D. peeled off some bills and passed them to him.

  “You ever paint a house?” Dallas said.

  “Not recently.”

  “You got brushes and stuff? A ladder?”

  Benny D. shrugged. “I guess. You can come over and check in the cellar.”

  “All right.”

  A car pulled up outside and Mrs. Benny got out. When her husband saw her through the bay doors, he shoved the rest of the money he won into Dallas’s back pocket. “Put it someplace for me. Someplace safe.”

  Mrs. Benny walked directly into the office, then noticed the two men in the garage. “See you found him,” she said, approaching carefully.

  “Of course I found him,” Benny D. said.

  “Look at you,” Dallas leered appreciatively.

  “Nevermind, Dallas Younger.”

  “Tell her to go away and come back again. Leaving does her good.”

  “I’m the one doing the telling,” she said before closing the office door.

  “So I heard,” Dallas said.

  Benny D. reddened. “So where the hell were you last night?”

  “Home.”

  “Bullshit. I was by there half a dozen times.”

  Dallas got into Mrs. Schwartz’s Bonneville and gunned the engine. No knocks or pings. Perfect timing.

  Benny D. looked at him slyly. “Wouldn’t be your brother’s house that needs painting?”

  “You should see the place.”

  Benny D. shook his head. “No time of year to start painting.”

  “I was thinking about spring.”

  Dallas turned off the engine and handed Benny D. the key.

  “You don’t suppose we’re going to end up pussy-whipped, do you?” Benny D. said.

  “Nah,” Dallas grinned. “Not me, anyway.”

  66

  A car was backing out of the Woods’ driveway when Anne Grouse turned onto Kings Road. She recognized the driver as Dan’s nephew, who’d been a bearer at her father’s funeral six years before. Though they hadn’t seen each other since, he smiled and rolled down his window. “Hi. Going in to see Uncle Dan?”

  Anne nodded. “How is he feeling?”

  “All right,” he said. “A little down. I think he wanted to say his goodbyes to the place alone.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t bother him. Tell me, is he drinking?”

  “A little.” The boy reddened. “He’s okay though. I never saw anybody that can drink like him.” At this his voice sounded happier. “I’d be in a coma.”

  For some reason Anne was irritated and in no mood for small talk. “I’ll just go in and say hi.”

  “Sure, that’d be great. You want me to hang around?”

  “No need, I don’t think.”

  “We could go out for coffee later.”

  “What for?” But his hurt was immediately obvious, and she apologized. She also noted that she was forty.

  “Oh,” he said seriously. “I didn’t think.”

  Dan was padlocking the pool shed when she swung the gate shut with a clang. The back door of the house was open and all its rooms empty and hollow, most of the furniture sold at auction the week before, the rest put in storage. She’d seen little of him since the funeral, and they hadn’t been alone at all. Nor was Anne sure how seeing him now would work out. The length of the swimming pool was between them, a distance that seemed greater than it was. “You just missed Michael,” he said.

  “Actually, we passed the baton in the drive,” she said. “He asked me out. Pretty funny, I thought.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “You can be a very nasty person.”

  “I don’t mean to be,” he said. “How’s tricks at Forest Lawn?”

  “It’s not Forest Lawn, as you well know. It’s Forest Towers.”

  She had dropped in on her mother and aunt that morning. They had moved into the small, fourth-floor apartment the previous week. There was an elevator, cable TV, a supermarket and drugstore next door. The OTB was across the street, and Milly, to her sister’s horror, had actually hobbled in, elbowing her way to the counter where she extracted two musty dollar bills from her fat coin pouch, asked for and ignored advice from a man with a tattoo, then played her own daily double. She lost her money, but not her enthusiasm. “I like that gambling,” she told Anne. “All those years I lived with that son-in-law of mine, I never had a minute’s fun.”

  “How are things,
” Anne asked her mother once Milly was out of earshot.

  “Fine,” Mrs. Grouse said. “Just fine.”

  “It’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know,” her mother allowed. “But it’s welcome to be needed. No one’s needed me since your father.”

  “I’m sorry,” Anne said, not that Mrs. Grouse meant anything particular by her remark. The present arrangement was perfect. Her sister was probably the only soul Milly wouldn’t torment with bogus complaints and needs. When the sale of Mather Grouse’s house became final, the two old women would have enough to live more than comfortably. Anne planned to be out before Christmas. The new owner had bought the Grouse home for an investment and was chagrined to hear that Anne didn’t intend to stay on. But he quickly rented both flats.

  “I’d offer you a chair,” Dan said, “if I had one to offer.”

  “How’d you make out?”

  “Not bad, actually. The house fetched more than we thought. Than I thought. Break-even territory.”

  Anne looked away.

  “Of course Di didn’t break even, but she always knew she wouldn’t.”

  The swimming pool seemed to stretch even longer. Neither had moved. “If we’re going to part friends, you’re going to have to stop trying to hurt me, Dan.”

  At first he didn’t say anything, just looked off past the redwood fence at the sky above the golf course. “I’m not trying to hurt you. Myself, maybe. But not you.”

  “But we feel the same things. That’s the really terrible part. We always have. You can’t punish yourself without punishing me. So please stop. I’ve always been the one to push for us, even when I knew there couldn’t really be any us. But I won’t any more. I promise. We’ve lost practically everything there is to lose, haven’t we?”

  “I’m not hurting. That’s the strange part. I don’t mind losing the house, or anything in it. I know I should, and I’ll probably feel better when I do, but right now I just feel bored. I’d even feel better if I thought there was some tragic flaw, some error in judgment I could trace everything to. If I could look back and say I’d missed a sign, and that if I hadn’t, things would’ve been different.”