by Jack Ketchum
It was like the sixties had never happened in Panik’s joint.
They had definitely happened to Schilling.
“Pye, the mother and Elise Hanion were the last ones who really got to me. I want to touch bases with her.”
“Phone her up.”
“Won’t do.”
“You’re telling me you’re gonna drive all the way to Short Hills?”
“Soon as I leave here.”
Ed nodded toward the scotch glass.
“You better go easy, then.”
“I can drive on three.”
“You can drive on five. I was your partner, remember? But I’d just as soon you didn’t.”
It was two hours from Sparta to Short Hills, out of the lakes district down through rolling hills to flatlands and once he hit Route 10 he took his time. He could drive on three but two would push him over the Breathalyzer limit and cop or not it would not be a good idea to get himself pulled over down here. Not in Short Hills anyway. The town was about as prosperous as New Jersey got and despite what most out-of-staters thought that was considerable. Their police were entirely by the book and their chief an irascible old son of a bitch in Schilling’s opinion. Besides, it was getting on to dark and his night vision wasn’t exactly what it used to be.
Number 245 Old Short Hills Road looked pretty much the same as the last time he’d seen it maybe a year ago. Except that the big black Lincoln wasn’t there anymore. The husband, the lawyer, had held on to that and the word was not much else, leaving Barbara Hanlon the big white house on the corner, the three-acre plot behind it and presumably a settlement large enough to cover Elise’s medical expenses and for Barbara to go on living in the style to which she’d become accustomed. In place of the Lincoln there was a dark blue Ferrari now. The Ferrari looked lonely on the long wide blacktop and dwarfed by the house.
Barbara Hanlon had told him once that theirs had been a happy marriage and he’d believed her. He guessed that too had taken a bullet in the head four years ago though nobody had been aware of it at the time. Elise had outlived her parents’ marriage by just under a year.
The lawyer’d remarried. The wife hadn’t.
He parked behind the Ferrari, got out and took the winding walkway up the hill through the carefully tended lawn and shrubbery to the steps, wondering just why he was here now that in fact he was here and what in hell he was going to say to her. He hadn’t rehearsed this. During the drive his mind had been mostly a blank, focused only on the road ahead, on the process of getting there. Probably he was defending himself against something. He didn’t know. Right now he felt like a toad on a four-lane expressway. Something just might roll him over. He probably should have taken Ed’s advice and phoned.
He crunched the last of his peppermint Lifesaver with his front teeth and swallowed it against whiskey breath and climbed the steps and rang the bell.
She took a while coming. He almost rang again. He had time to think that maybe there was nobody home. But the living room lights were on and there was the Ferrari sitting in the driveway.
He needn’t have bothered with the Lifesaver. The woman who opened the door was one he almost didn’t recognize. The Barbara Hanlon he knew, even in her grief, even in those awful first days and nights at the hospital, had been proud and strong and very nearly beautiful, the length of her chin almost, but not quite, spoiling her elegant patrician features. As the investigation faltered and finally died she would visit the station trying to urge them on, eyes flashing with a fury only barely restrained by her sense of dignity and sheer will. It was always clear she shopped the best stores. Her grooming dotted all the i’s and crossed the t’s. She struck him as a tough lady and Schilling admired her.
There was nothing tough about her now.
This Barbara Hanlon was a mess.
She’d gained maybe twenty pounds since he saw her last. That was very clear to Schilling because beneath the thin satin robe she was also clearly naked. The robe didn’t do much in the way of obscuring the fuller breasts and belly. Her face looked puffy and her makeup smudged. The long brown hair was lank and needed brushing. Her eyes were red and he was betting it wasn’t tears that got them that way.
She held both sides of the doorframe for balance. As drunk as Schilling had ever been in his life and that was going some. She stunk of gin and cigarette smoke. She stood in the doorway polluting the Short Hills air.
“Christ,” she said. “It’s you.”
Even the voice had changed. Like she was living with a permanent head cold now.
“I heard about Elise, Mrs. Hanlon.”
“You did.”
“I thought I’d come by.”
She nodded. Weaved. Everything he’d said so far sounded lame to him but he had to wonder if she even noticed.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
She stared at him. Empty-eyed and then not. As though some sort of light upstairs kept blinking on and off.
“Hon? Who’s that?”
The voice was a man’s and it was every bit as slurred as hers was.
They’d been having a little party here.
On the eve of her daughter’s death.
He appeared behind her barefoot, wearing wrinkled slacks and nothing else. He was fastening his belt. He had a bony chest and thin pale arms and he’d needed a shave since yesterday.
“Policeman, Eddie. Sparta Police. Come to see us ’bout Elise. Detective Charles Schilling. The gen’lman who investigated the case. This is Eddie.”
“That’s awfully nice of you,” Eddie said. He reached out and Schilling shook his hand.
He didn’t know what to say. He felt suddenly very weary. He didn’t know whether he was disgusted or sad or angry with her or exactly what he was. Maybe he was all those things at once or maybe none of them.
“She died eleven thirty-five this morning. They called me. Said she passed away.”
“I know, Mrs. Hanlon. I’d asked the hospital to phone me at the station if and when, so they had a note on the chart to that effect. I guess I learned a little while after you did.”
“I’m a little drunk, y’know?”
“I figure you probably have a right to be.”
She started to cry. The man behind her put a hand on her shoulder. The man looked both befuddled and sincere.
“Thing is, I been a little drunk a lot these days. I never did drink much before ’cept maybe a glass of wine but now I do. With Eddie. I met Eddie . . . where did we meet, Eddie?”
“We met at the Standish House, Barb. At the bar there.”
“That’s right. We met at the bar. Thing is, see, it’s not just today. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“It’s good of you to come by, Officer,” Eddie said. He had both hands on her shoulders now. She was quietly sobbing. Her face was red and streaked with tears.
“It’s not just ’cause Elise’s gone. I wish to hell I could tell you that it was.”
“Elise’s been gone a long, long time,” Eddie said to him. “Y’know?”
There was nothing he could do here. Not for himself and not for them. He knew about drunks. When Lila and the kids had left him he’d taken to starting the morning with a couple shots of vodka and then nipping from his flask all day and passing out at night. The usual sad and stupid story. It was Ed who threw his ass into detox, telling the chief he was visiting a sick brother in Florida. Which turned out to be a poor choice of places to lie about when he returned without so much as a hint of a tan.
“If you need any help with this,” he said, “with the drinking I mean, give me a call. Either of you. I know a good place. I’ve been there myself. Anything I can do, you call me. I’m truly sorry about your daughter, Mrs. Hanlon.”
“Me too,” she said. “Real sorry.”
It should have sounded silly. It didn’t.
It sounded like a voice up out of a well.
“Thanks, Officer,” Eddie said.
He turned and walked
down the steps and heard the door close behind him and thought that he’d probably interrupted them fucking, or drunk as they were, trying to fuck and that it probably wasn’t a bad idea on a night like she was having to be fucking or trying to fuck, that it was flesh on flesh at least and that was something. He got in the car and headed back to Sparta and one or two more drinks at Panik’s.
His visit hadn’t worked. He felt nothing.
Chapter Two
Tim
Tim Bess thought that probably he was in love with Jennifer Fitch but lately, over the last year or so, she kept making it harder for him to stay in love with her. It never had stopped him in the past that she was crazy about Ray. That was a given. She’d been crazy about Ray for years. And she wasn’t alone, Ray being who he was. She was only one of many. But it wasn’t her thing with Ray that bothered him.
Stuff was just happening to her.
It was only ten past midnight and here she was drunk on beer and stoned on dope already. They were waiting for Ray by the baseball field behind the high school and Ray was forty minutes late as usual but this time Tim was worried. He wasn’t going to like seeing Jennifer the way she was. It was going to piss him off. Hell, she had to hold on to the wire backstop to keep from falling. The only time she let go was to reach down for another bottle of Miller. After two beers and a half-dozen tokes of homegrown Tim wasn’t exactly stone-cold sober himself but he had it to where he could handle it and Jennifer didn’t.
You couldn’t even talk to her much lately, she was so loaded half the time. But talking to her was something to do other than bouncing chipped pieces of the fence’s concrete base off the pitcher’s mound so Tim figured he’d try it anyway.
“You ever wonder what happened to Brian Wilson?”
“Huh?”
He tossed a big chunk of the concrete and saw the dust fly. They’d have to clean up the mound for the game tomorrow. Big chunks of the stuff all over the place.
“Hello? Earth to Jennifer? Brian Wilson? The Beach Boys? Ever since Pet Sounds, all you get is this hippie-dippie Beatles rip-off shit. Wouldn’t it Be Nice, Sloop John B. I just don’t get it.”
Hell, he was talking to himself. She swigged the beer. Despite her grip on the fence she was starting to droop again.
“You better finish that one and then lay off. Ray’s gonna be pissed at you.”
“Ray couldn’t care less.”
“He’s gonna care if you puke all over his boots.”
“Ray doesn’t care what I do.”
“He’ll care if you puke.”
“I’m not gonna puke.”
He tossed another, smaller chunk. It fell short. He had to pry them out now with his fingers. He swatted a mosquito on his neck. In this humidity the little fuckers were everywhere. The palm of his hand came away sticky with his own blood. And probably somebody else’s. He hated that. He wiped it on his jeans.
He watched her tilt the bottle up and drink. He had to admit, he still thought she was pretty as hell after all these years, even half in the bag. It was hard for him to figure Ray, who didn’t seem all that interested anymore. But Ray had other girls. He had the gift and Tim didn’t.
He wondered how much she minded. About Ray having other girls. You could tell she did mind but she’d never say how much. He’d never seen her go after Ray about it, not ever, though there was no way to know what she said to him in private. According to Ray she’d never said a thing but you couldn’t tell with Ray. She might have.
There was no way he could ask her. They didn’t have that kind of open thing together.
He wished they did and wondered why after all these years they didn’t. He wished he could really talk to her about some of the important stuff. About Ray. About minding.
About the other thing.
The girl had died. Word traveled fast in this town, and he guessed it was all over summer school. He and Jennifer had been hanging out in the parking lot after the 3:15 bell waiting for Suzy and Dan and Sheila and whatever other kids would want to score a joint or two and the whole damn lot was buzzing over it.
He still remembered that night four years ago as though it had happened yesterday. Specific events would come back to him at peculiar times. He’d be sipping a cherry Coke at the counter of a soda fountain waiting for Ray and he’d remember pulling up and finding them both gone and finding the note telling them to stay put and he’d remember Jennifer’s panic, not knowing what in hell had gone wrong but both he and Jennifer scared to drive away, scared of Ray and just as scared to stick around some dead girl’s body. Not knowing what to do, whether to load the tent and all their gear into the car or not and consequently not doing anything, just waiting by the cold remains of the fire.
He’d be walking toward the school with half an ounce of pot rolled into joints in a plastic Baggie in the front pocket of his jeans and he’d remember the way Ray looked when he returned without her. Somehow she’d made it to the road, stumbled out in front of a car, he said. Ray had crouched in the brush and watched two men load her into the backseat of a Mercury and drive away. He was furious, fucking crazy. And Tim could see that he was scared too.
He’d remember all this in glimpses, blinks in time that would catch him unawares. The panic to load their stuff into the trunk and the long drive west all the way to the Delaware Water Gap so they could dump it. The drive back. Jennifer crying. Ray fidgeting behind the wheel, saying how he should have kept the lantern, dammit, the lantern was brand new and expensive. The long heavy silences.
He avoided silences now.
Like this one.
“So. You thought about it yet?”
“’Bout what? Brian Wilson?”
“Nah. About what you want to do tonight. Me, I still say Don’s.”
Don’s was a drive-in restaurant just out of town, one of the last drive-ins in the lakes area and, he guessed, one of the last in the state. But they served great chocolate egg creams and it made a good change from the beer. Good burgers too. He watched her finish her bottle and toss it into the grass under the bleachers.
He considered going after it, putting the empty back in the six-pack but decided against it. He’d look like a wuss.
“Doesn’t matter what I want to do,” she said. “Or what you want to do. It’s what Ray wants to do.”
“Sure.”
“It’s true.”
“Bullshit. He always asks.”
“Yeah. He asks. Then he does whatever he wants to do.”
He looked at her. Propped up against the fence, staring up into the moonlight. At least she wasn’t reaching for another bottle yet.
“Shit. Whatever,” he said.
He stooped and tried to loosen another piece of concrete. The problem he had was that he always bit his fingernails, so the concrete wouldn’t come free. He stood and kicked at it with his heel a few times and that did it. He popped it off the pitcher’s mound. He was fucking bored to tears. He didn’t even feel like drinking. It would just screw him up for later.
For what later? What comes later?
Same-old, same-old? He pushed the thought away.
Come on, Ray, he thought. Could you hurry it up a little, please?
“Fuck Brian Wilson,” she said. “You ever think about Twiggy?”
He grinned and shook his head. Now at least she was talking.
“No. Not lately.”
“Know what her real name is? Lesley Hornly. Homsby. Something like that. No ass, no tits, arms and legs like sticks so they call her Twiggy. Makes millions of dollars and I bet you wouldn’t even want to fuck her, would you.”
“No.” Though there were plenty of times he figured he’d fuck pretty much anything.
“That’s what I don’t get.”
“What? The money thing?”
“Yeah. Why’s she make all that money? When a guy wouldn’t even want to fuck her.”
“I guess some guys would.”
“Who?”
“I dunno. Some hippie wou
ld I guess.”
“Not even fucking hippies would want to fuck her. She’s got no tits, man! Janis Joplin’s got tits. Whatser-name, Grace Slick’s got tits.”
“Yeah, but not big ones like Joplin’s.”
“She at least looks like a woman for godsakes! What’s all this bullshit with Leslie Hornsby?”
“Little girls.”
“Huh?”
“Some guys like little girls. They like kids. Look it up in your Funk and Wagnalls.”
She didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smile. Instead she reached down for another beer. Oh shit. That killed the first six-pack, four for her and two for him. Good thing they had another. Ray’d be pissed if there wasn’t one for him when he arrived.
“Sick,” she said. “That’s sick.”
They saw the headlights in the distance moving down Hanover Road, slowing, the car beginning to turn into the parking lot and he got the six-packs off the ground, the empty tucked under his arm and the full one in his hand and with the other hand he took her arm. He practically had to pry her off the backstop.
“C’mon, Jennifer!”
“It’s just Ray.”
“Jennifer, you’re not stupid. You know the drill. It might not be Ray and it could be the Man. Now c’mon!”
They headed for the entrance gate next to the bleachers. She was staggering, bumping up against his hip. If they had to run she was going to get caught. But he was the one with the beers. And he could outrun any cop, especially through the woods behind the gym which he knew like the back of his hand. If he had to he’d take the open bottle from her hand and all they could get her for was trespass. Unless she got hostile which nowadays with Jennifer was perfectly possible.
Then it was drunk and disorderly.
The arc of light swept over them. The car pulled up in the middle of the lot.
Ray’s Chevy.
And about goddamn time.
He could feel her straighten up beside him and let his hand drop from her arm and looked at her. Her eyes seemed brighter, clearer, less the drunken slits they’d been just a moment ago. Ray’s magic working in her. Even her face seemed to have softened in the moonlight.