FrostLine

by Justin Scott

  “He told me…he told me he never used to think what would happen next. But now he’d wake up in the morning and think, Hey, I’m going to see Josie today….”

  ***

  I had to make another trip to Derby. But I was really worried by how low Mr. Butler had seemed that morning. So I drove back over to Plainfield. He shuffled into the interview room, confused and distracted.

  He had botched a shave, which had left his face raw and flecked with small cuts and clumped with stubble he had missed. When I handed him a Coke and a cheeseburger, he fumbled open the wrapper and chewed slowly.

  I told him what J.J. Topkis said about the detonator.

  He finished the burger before he looked up. “I told you already, I never taught Dicky anything about explosives.”

  “I remember. But I had to ask. I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”

  He threw back his head and chugged the Coke, and remained in that position, staring at the ceiling. “Well, I did lie to you, once.”

  “About what?”

  “There was no calf.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No calf caught in the fence.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I thought I better say that to fill in the time.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I was up there, but there was no calf.”

  “But Albert and Dennis Chevalley said they saw you with the calf.”

  “They’re lying.”

  “Why would they lie?”

  “Maybe they need an alibi.”

  ***

  One lie at a time. Derby. But not alone. I telephoned Betty Chevalley and asked to borrow my cousin Pinkerton.

  “You can keep him as far as I’m concerned.”

  “What did he do now?”

  “Since you were here this morning? He threatened to break my best mechanic’s hands, told Reverend Owen to you-know-what himself, and mounted drag slicks on Mildred Gill’s Dodge.” Mildred was eighty-four and her Dodge wasn’t much younger.

  I promised to keep him till dark, loaded the car with beer and ice, and swung down the hill to Frenchtown. His mood could be read on his black tee shirt, in letters stretched wide across his enormous chest,

  When it Absolutely,

  Positively, has to be

  Destroyed Overnight!

  *****U.S. MARINES*****

  No one knows if Pink was in the Marines—he did disappear for a few years when I was a boy—but I’ve yet to see anyone demand his credentials to wear that shirt.

  “Pink, let me buy you a beer.” I opened the cooler in the back seat of the Olds, packed with Bud.

  He licked his lips. “I’m kinda busy.”

  “I cleared it with Betty. Hop in.”

  “Hey, I don’t take no shit from no women.” Women—except his mother, with whom he still lived at the ripe age of forty-something—he regarded as a subspecies poorly adapted to deliver food and sex, in that order.

  “Where we going?”

  “Derby.”

  “I’ll drive.”

  There was no arguing. He powered the seat all the way down and back to accommodate his giant frame, and tromped the accelerator.

  No one can drive like Pinkerton Chevalley. For years he dominated the New England dirt tracks, racing Renny’s souped-up stock cars to victory from Rhode Island to Maine. His fingers, thick as a girl’s forearms, played lightly on the wheel and stick; his size fourteens skipped like ballet shoes between brakes and gas and clutch.

  “You know Ollie got a new laser thing.”

  “What’s in Derby?”

  “The Derby Death. Ever hear of ’em?”

  “Weenies. That’s who gave you the black eye?”

  “J.J. Topkis.”

  “That dude Dicky Butler nuked Wide Greg’s window with? Shit, you can take J.J. Topkis.”

  “He had a couple of friends.”

  “So we’re going to kick ass.”

  “Uh, no. I’m going to talk to him.”

  “Weenie.”

  Pink drove and drank in silence for awhile. Every time he lowered the window to toss a bottle I’d grab it out of his hand and explain I was saving the deposits. Lower down Route 34, traffic thickened up until, to my relief, it was impossible to maintain Warp speed.

  “Let me ask you something, Pink. What do you think of Albert and Dennis?”

  “Dumb as rocks.”

  “Can you imagine them killing anybody?”

  “Not if they had to think how.”

  “Let’s say they did it accidentally.”

  “Yeah?” He looked over, mildly curious.

  “Could they get away with it?”

  “Not if they had to think how.”

  “What about Dennis?”

  “What about him?”

  “Is he maybe smarter than he seems?”

  Pink thought that over. “Could be. Course, it wouldn’t take a lot.”

  ***

  Derby was hot as last time. But the neighborhood was quiet, and only J.J.’s mother was home. “J.J.’s at his club,” she informed me. Her directions took us to an abandoned warehouse beside an ancient mill race diverted from the river.

  Six bikers were hanging in the shade of the shed roof. Pink parked the car facing out. “Sweet Jesus, look at that man’s bike.”

  J.J. was sitting on a brand-new custom Harley, the kind that comes chopped from the factory, with red enamel tanks, red leather seat, and everything else but the tires made of chrome.

  “Where the hell did he get the money for that?”

  “Now’s your chance to ask him.”

  J.J. stepped off his new bike, his hand extended in a friendly manner. “Man, did you piss off the cops. They couldn’t do squat without you ratting.”

  We shook and I said, “That was the general idea. This here’s my cousin Pinkerton.”

  Pink solemnly enveloped J.J.’s hand in his and waited for a wince before he let go.

  “Fine looking machine.”

  J.J. acknowledged the compliment and answered a few technical queries Pink put to him.

  The biker in the engineering boots whom I’d laid out cold was watching me sullenly. His wrench-wielding friend, however, was barely paying attention, deep in conversation with three others who were passing a bottle of Jack.

  Somewhere in the rundown neighborhood of struggling machine shops and vacant factories, the state police might have a surveillance team. Or might not.

  I asked J.J., “Were you banging the cops telling ’em you were drinking buddies with Dicky Butler?”

  “Naw. I figured, truth can’t hurt, right? The ’sucker’s dead meat already—no offense to your friend.”

  “Where were you drinking? River End?”

  “White Birch. How’d you hear?”

  “I figured you two for duking it out.”

  “Me too. ’Stead, he goes, ‘Hey, you want a beer?’ First I didn’t believe him. Then I noticed he was carrying those gloves, you know he wore? Carrying ’em in his pocket. Last time, he puts ’em on before he hits me back. Funniest goddammed thing. Guy picked himself up off the floor, put these gloves on like he’s one of them tuxedos dancing in a movie. Long as he didn’t put them gloves on I knew we wasn’t gonna fight. Everybody’s weird one how or another. Right? How’d you hear?”

  One glove on and one glove off.

  When the dynamite exploded, he’d been wearing only one.

  Because when he was murdered—I finally realized—he had been in the midst of putting his gloves on. Had one glove on and was reaching for the other.

  Suiting up to slug it out.

  Off balance while trying to protect whomever he was about to beat up from contracting AIDS through a split lip or bloodied nose. Off balance while he was doing the right thing, for the first time in his miserable life. Guard down long enough for his victim to turn the tables.

  J.J. was growl
ing in my ear.

  “What?”

  “I said, how’d you happen to hear we was drinking?”

  “Dicky’s girl.”

  “Oh, yeah. Little fatso.”

  Pink had sort of drifted back, waiting near the Olds like the Atlas Mountains. I saw that look I’d seen last time in J.J.’s eyes, that belief he could take me.

  “J.J., you’ve had a heck of a week. First you get arrested on an anonymous tip. Then you get bailed out by a hotshot attorney you can’t afford. But I’m thinking maybe he’s not such a hotshot, maybe you got bail because you ratted Dicky’s dad to the troopers.”

  “Say what?”

  “You told them that Dicky told you his dad taught him how to detonate a bomb with a disappearing timer.”

  “Bullshit. I never said that.”

  “Cops make it up?”

  “You been talking to ’em?”

  “I figure you did what you had to do to make ’em go away. Like you said, Dicky’s dead, so who cares? Except it’s a helluva complicated story just to get the cops off your back.”

  “It worked.”

  “Yeah, but it’s really hurting Dicky’s father. Makes me wonder what do you get out of hurting that old farmer?… Well, you did buy yourself a brand-new twenty-five-thousand-dollar factory-customized Harley-Davidson motorcycle. So I wonder where you got the cash, J.J.?”

  “You wonder all you want.”

  “Or did you jump Dicky later that night?”

  “Are you kidding? The dude had the AIDS.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Told me. He said, No more fighting. I said fine with me, man. I didn’t want to get his blood.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  J.J. Topkis’ sucker punch rocketed from the deep nowhere. So fast that Pink admitted later it had caught even him by surprise.

  I’d seen it before.

  ***

  The Derby Death wasted a millisecond gaping at their fallen hero. And another putting down their bottles. By then I was passing Pink at a dead run.

  “You drive.”

  Chapter 24

  With five motorcycles swarming after us like a squadron of Messerschmitts, what remains most clearly in my mind is Pink’s attempt to put my Oldsmobile into a power slide to cross the Stevenson Dam.

  Lake Zoar lay dead ahead. The road hooked sharp left onto the dam. The flimsy fence that was supposed to keep vehicles that missed the turn from flying into the water had been torn down so they could build a better one, which hadn’t yet happened.

  The lake I’d been watching grow rapidly large in front of the car was suddenly visible through the passenger window. The view out the windshield was a green blur of roadside. The motorcycles formerly maneuvering in the rearview mirrors now appeared in the driver’s window, hazily through a cloud of rubber smoke. Pink downshifted to second, turned on the radio, and reached back for a beer.

  Six inches before the turn, he released the brake, popped the clutch, and bore down hard on the accelerator. The Olds shot left onto the dam. Three Harley-Davidsons Knieveled into the lake.

  It was well after dark when we arrived back in Frenchtown.

  Pink opened his fourteenth Bud. “Did J.J. do Dicky Butler?”

  “No. But he sure did a number ratting out his father.”

  “What for?”

  “That was a hell of a Harley. Maybe somebody paid him to.”

  “Who?”

  “Beats me. But I know one thing.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “Whoever killed Dicky did it in a fight.”

  “She’s pulling to the right,” Pink replied gravely. “You better make an appointment to get your wheels aligned.”

  Next morning, the Admiral still hadn’t returned my calls.

  When I telephoned Fox Trot, Jenkins reported that Henry King and Julia Devlin were in a meeting.

  It was a day early to expect inquiries from Sergeant Marian about my interest in Trooper Moody’s log.

  I telephoned the county jail. The guard who answered said Mr. Butler was, quote, “a real mess,” and offered to bring him to the phone. But the farmer wouldn’t come.

  Tim reported no progress swinging a bail deal with the state’s attorney.

  Then Vicky called. “I had drinks with Greg Riggs last night.”

  “That was fast.”

  “You said it was important.”

  “Wha’d you find out?”

  “Something weird.”

  “Want to meet for coffee?”

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  She said it with a crisp golden-spike-through-the-vampire’s-heart finality that didn’t leave me room to say more than, “Okay….So what happened with Greg? Did he tell you who hired him to defend Topkis?”

  “He was practically bragging to me.”

  “Gee, I wonder why?”

  “I did too, pretty talkative for a lawyer.”

  “Who hired him?”

  “He was so proud of himself. He kept saying, ‘I hit the bigtime.’”

  “Who?”

  “He swore me to secrecy.”

  “That doesn’t help Mr. Butler.”

  “I crossed my fingers.”

  “Excellent. Who?”

  “You won’t believe this.”

  “Who, for crissake?”

  “Bertram Wills.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Ben, why would a former secretary of state hire Greg Riggs to defend biker scum?”

  “Beats me.”

  The phone was quiet. Then Vicky said in a small voice, “Ben?”

  “What?”

  “Is Mrs. King the kind of woman you dated when you worked in New York?”

  “Mrs. King?”

  “Henry King’s wife.”

  I said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Fancy clothes and jewelry and that incredible hair. She came in to see me, yesterday. I felt like mud.”

  After a longish silence, puzzled on my part, I asked, “Can I assume that Mrs. King paid you a visit with a purpose beyond making you feel like mud?”

  “I feel so stupid. I don’t care about that stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Fancy clothes and jewelry and that incredible hair. I really don’t. Then all of sudden she’s looking me in the face and I’m thinking, what is she, fifteen years older, but I’m the one who looks like roadkill?…Tim just doesn’t get it. He’s, like, ‘Oh, you’re so pretty.’”

  “Maybe you caught Tim on a busy day. What did Mrs. King want?”

  “She paid Mr. Butler’s back taxes.”

  “What?”

  “She made an appointment to meet me. Asked how much Mr. Butler owed. And wrote a check.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “She said he had suffered too much. She didn’t want him to worry about the farm.”

  “Did you accept it?”

  “Of course. The town needs the money.”

  “Were there any strings attached?”

  “No strings. I told her that up front. I even had Don Darbee explain that Newbury had no immediate plans to seize his farm in case she was thinking to buy it for taxes.” Don was town attorney.

  “Did she agree to no strings?”

  “Absolutely. I don’t think it ever occurred to her to ask anything back. Except, she made me promise not to tell anybody.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You’re different. I thought maybe it meant something for Mr. Butler. Besides, I trust you.”

  “Well that’s an improvement.”

  “To keep it to yourself. Anyhow, I thought you should know….Does it mean anything?”

  “I don’t know….How did she pay?”

  “Personal check.”

  “Joint checking account?”

  “No, her own.”

  “Interesting
…I had the impression she’s not comfortable with King bullying Mr. Butler. Sounds like she decided to do the right thing.”

  “You know what else she did?”

  “No.”

  “She asked me to have lunch. Like just the two of us. Like ladies lunching?”

  “Do it. She could be a good friend. Somebody to know when you run for governor.”

  “I thought of that right away and hated myself. She seems a little lonely. Anyhow, she said they’re real busy wrapping up something and then she’ll be free and let’s have lunch. Isn’t that nice?”

  “She’s a nice lady.” How nice? Mr. Butler had been about twenty-five grand in the hole. A lot of money, even for a woman who could cover it with her personal check. And I’d seen all sorts of possible agendas five nights ago in Fox Trot’s sunken garden.

  ***

  There was no one around the Butler farm, the morning milking long done by the neighbors. Someone had mowed the grass around the house. The beds where Dicky’s mother might once have nursed flowers were choked with goldenrod and black-eyed Susans. The heat still hadn’t broken. Yet a lowering angle of the light presaged autumn creeping down from the north, and thin-spun cirrus threatened rain.

  As I got out of the car I realized it was almost the same time of day that Josie had dropped Dicky off to sober up for their picnic. I stopped and reoriented myself, and tried to imagine it through Dicky’s bleary eye: climbing down from Josie’s pickup truck; reeling uncertainly. He sees his father’s truck. The tractor is nearby, so he knows the old man’s having lunch.

  The stream funnels down a gully lined with brush and trees and drops into the woodlot that was always too steep to plow. The sun is hot. His father’s in the house. He heads for the cool trees.

  I found his path.

  The animals had made it. Big-hoofed fat cows beating a surprisingly narrow track that hugged the rim of the gully, then sloped down to the stream bed at the easiest descent—a route as mathematically correct as if civil engineers had surveyed it with transits—to a pool where they drank. Hundreds of hoofprints pocked the mud. Beyond, the track forked. A furrow of beaten earth rose from the watering hole back up to the field, while a narrower deer path that paralleled the stream continued down into the woodlot that separated the Butler and King properties.

  Dicky had cleared obstacles. I could see sawn stubs and dead leaves still clinging to the brush he had flung into the woods. Here and there, where the path criss-crossed the stream, he had placed stepping stones. A shaft of sunlight, penetrating the leaf canopy, gleamed on a red Marlboro box he had tossed.