A Witness Above

by Andy Straka

  Not too surprisingly either, the pimp himself had ended up dead a few months after offing Singer, the victim of an overdose. Bronx homicide had I.D'd him as the likely perp in the patrolman's murder, based on rumors from the street and a footprint of a rare Armani loafer, size 10, found in the frozen mud behind one of the Dumpsters in New Rochelle. They were the same shoes the pimp had been wearing in the cheap hotel room in Queens where'd he'd taken his last wild ride with Mr. Rock.

  Sometimes I wonder if, with all our technology, we acquire more information than is good for us. No one had even considered reopening the case.

  I folded the letter and put it back in among the maps. The TV crew was starting to roll film now. A deputy let me past the blockade and I pulled away from the scene as quickly and inconspicuously as I could.

  I cut down Route 231 through Banco, crossed the Robinson River, then on to the town of Madison. I veered through the village onto U.S. 29, its southbound lanes bending toward Charlottesville and home. Twenty-nine ran roughly parallel to the famous Skyline Drive twenty miles to the west and offered panoramic views. It had yet to deteriorate into one of those sleazy strips, lined with cheap hotels and flesh bars, that other highway corridors nearer bigger cities had become.

  I wasn't enjoying the views, however. Not today. I needed to talk to my daughter pronto, but I was afraid to use the car phone—call me paranoid. I turned on the radio and picked up Roy Orbison on the oldies station out of C'ville.

  Traffic was already picking up with weekend tourists. C'ville is an overgrown college town with roots to the founding of the republic, Thomas Jefferson, the Rotunda, Monticello, and all that. A city where old brick and old ways clash with hip thinking. Development had recently mushroomed from the central lawn of the university, where Edgar Allen Poe had his old room enshrined, to a seemingly ever-expanding panoply of shopping venues, expansive farms and upscale neighborhoods that dotted the piedmont hills like jewels all the way to the distant Blue Ridge. Hard to imagine that on those same streets and country roads slaves were once kept and traded like cattle, a few even by old Tom Jeff himself.

  I pulled into my own driveway just as the sun was beginning to drop below the treetops over on Rugby Avenue. It was a relatively quiet neighborhood, far enough from the university and downtown. The smell of charcoal and the sound of Dizzy Gillespie emanated from somewhere on the next block. Most of the houses were simple ranches or split-levels. My landlord, Walter Dodd, sat on the front stoop of the two-story frame-over-brick he and his wife shared with me; it had separate entrances and two interior layouts that were mirror images of each other.

  “How was the hunt?” His bony fingers worked methodically to coil an orange power cord he'd been using to trim the hedge.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Well, we had a little incident.”

  “Incident?” He finished spooling his cord.

  If I ever had to be away for a day or two, I could leave Arimstead in the care of Walter and Patricia. The Dodds, retired, were an odd pair, but peerless as far as landlords go. They had been married almost as long as I had been alive, and didn't ever seem to regret it. They had even allowed me to construct a mews for Armistead in the backyard. Walter had kept a Cooper's hawk himself, growing up on his family's farm in Tennessee, long before the feds started requiring their sanction for such things. Arthritis made walking long distances difficult for the couple, but whenever possible I took them hunting with me to watch “our” hawk in action from the truck.

  I gave him a thumbnail sketch of all that had happened.

  Walter used to manage a lumber yard in the city, still met regularly for coffee with a group of pals at Spudnut's Donut Shop, still devoured the local newspaper every day. He had lost most of his hair, but retained the demeanor of the classic Southern gentleman—unhurried, unruffled, at times seemingly unconcerned. None of it fooled me. He had been an MP in the army during Korea, had seen his share of dismal news.

  “I thought that hawk looked a little different,” he said. “Thing like that can affect an animal. …”

  He was right. I probably should have been paying more attention to Armistead, but right now my mind was focused on Nicole.

  “The police say how they thought the body got there?”

  “They're pretty sure the young man was murdered.”

  “Murdered?” Walter's expression said he was impressed. He had the idea most of the cases I took weren't sexy enough for a real-life private eye.

  “Come on, Walter, that's what the cops are for. This isn't some dime store novel. If the kid were a drug dealer, this kind of thing happens all the time.”

  “Hrmph,” he said. “You used to work homicide, didn't you? Still pack a gun too, I've noticed.”

  I said nothing.

  He helped me unload Armistead and her paraphernalia from the truck and settle her on her perch in the mews out back.

  “Thought you might be going out again tonight with that gal of yours,” he said.

  “Really? Why?”

  “She called about your date.”

  “Date?” I stared dumbly at him.

  “The one you were supposed to have with Miss Marcia What's-Her-Name. She called about over an hour ago. Wanted to know if we'd seen you around.”

  I slapped my palm to my head.

  Marcia D'Angelo was the schoolteacher I had been dating since we'd met at a Christmas party the winter before. Our situation had grown a little complicated. We were ripe with possibilities, short on consummations. I was supposed to have met her at the Barnes and Noble on Barracks Road at four. The rendezvous was to include coffee and talking, then maybe onto dinner and a movie afterward, if the talking went OK.

  “Did she leave any message?”

  “Yup. Said you could reach her on her cell phone when you got in. Said she was going out to dinner and a play with some friends.”

  Funny how friends could materialize when you'd stood someone up on a date. Some of Marsh's amigas were great, but others I could do without. Who was I to be picking her friends anyway? Did I let her pick mine?

  “Guess I better call her.”

  Walter nodded in reply. Then he pulled out his tobacco pouch and said he would sit with Armistead for awhile. Armistead's mews was one of the few places Patricia still let him smoke. I suppose the smell of his hickory pipe was as responsible for Armistead's manning as anything I had ever done. The red-tail looked to me as her source of food, which was the only reliable bond that kept a raptor with any falconer. But sometimes with Walter, and even once or twice with myself, there had been a glimmer of a deeper trust.

  The apartment, closed up for the day, smelled a little musty but at least was nice and cool. I went to the fridge, popped open a beer and stood in the middle of the kitchen to dial the phone.

  Marcia answered on the third ring.

  “Oh, hey. Forgot about me, huh?” Her tone told me she was in the presence of others.

  “I'm sorry, Marsh. Boy, am I sorry.”

  “Okay, but you don't realize what you missed.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.” Playing it cool. Camouflage the hurt.

  I tried humor. “You mean you were finally going to let me take you home and ravage you?”

  “Not quite, but it's a thought. Jason's staying overnight at a friend's.”

  I waited. Another opportunity down the drain.

  “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”

  “I was thinking about your thought,” I said.

  “Men …” I could almost see her rolling eyes. “So what happened? You just out hunting and forget?”

  I heard her whisper something away from the receiver.

  Some of her friends opposed hunting, period. Even falconry. They thought something as natural as a tree barbaric.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Lose Armistead again?”

  “No. Not this time.”

  “What then?”

  I paused
to give my words more impact. “We stumbled on some remains.”

  “Remains? … What kind of remains?”

  “Human. I spent a good part of the afternoon dealing with the state police.”

  There was an appropriate moment of silence while the information was being processed, passed on, perhaps even discussed. She came back on. “Frank? Are you there?”

  “I'm here.”

  “You're serious, aren't you?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “You okay? You want me to come by?”

  I could tell she wanted to, and if it hadn't been for the long conversation I was expecting with my daughter, I would have said yes.

  “No. Thanks, you go ahead and go on to your play.”

  More whispering ensued from her end. “Frank, listen, I'm sorry. It must have been awful … like back when you …” She stopped, maybe realizing she didn't want to bring up some specter from the past.

  “It's all right, Marsh.”

  “The play should be over by eight-thirty. Can you meet me afterwards at Sloan's?” Sloan's was a homegrown fern bar, not one of those cookie-cutter outlets of a national chain. The place was almost always packed on weekends.

  “Sure, I—”

  “I want to hear all about it,” she said, “I'll be waiting at a table. If I'm not there first, you do the same.”

  “All right.”

  “I really am sorry, Frank …”

  “Me too. I should have called you.”

  “Yes.”

  After we hung up, I moved through the foyer with the cordless handset, into the spare room I had turned into a library. A Mennonite carpenter, grateful for the information I had provided him about a general contractor with whom he had some concerns, mainly because the man hadn't paid him in six months, had lined the walls for me with bookshelves made of pine. Nothing fancy, just practical. I didn't own a degree from a prestigious university or some snooty little liberal arts college to tack on the wall. What I had were novels, a number of historical texts, and books of poetry. Several hundred of them in fact.

  Cummings to Twain, Dostoyevsky to Steinbeck. Shakespeare to James Joyce and John Gardner, Rita Dove to Doris Betts and E. Annie Proulx, James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler, even Beckett, Salinger, Vonnegut and Frost. Literary, historical, mysteries, thrillers, interspersed with short stories and poems with some of the most creative use of language around. You didn't get that kind of education in detective work, but I had decided scholarship was more a matter of passion and discipline than of breeding and the opportunity to sit in the finest schools.

  I settled into my favorite reading chair, the big recliner with the pulsing waves of heat massage and stereo sound that hadn't worked in more than three years. My back stuck like Silly Putty to the leather. I was badly in need of a shower.

  Nicole's phone rang several times. Her voice eventually answered, an upbeat recording that said please leave a message.

  I said: “Nicky, this is your dad. It's Friday about suppertime. I'm at home and I need to talk with you about something important. Please call me as soon as you can.”

  I could think of nothing else to safely say. I didn't know who else might listen to her messages. There was no other way of getting in touch with her, either, except through her mother, who'd been about as friendly to me, of late, as your average rattlesnake.

  I decided I better call Cat Cahill too, before his uncle got to him, not that he could do anything about the situation from over in Leonardston. He knew my daughter, of course—sometimes she even referred to him as Uncle Cat—but I wasn't about to share my suspicions with anyone until I had talked with her myself.

  I tried his restaurant first, but they said he had taken the night off. Must have been my night for answering gizmos. After his wife's cheery electronic greeting, I rattled off a cursory summary of my discovery on their home machine.

  Images kept flashing through my mind—gray skin fragments, what could have been a toenail, smooth edges of exposed skull. If I let them, Dewayne Turner's remains might even fit into some larger pattern for my life, one I was still trying to decipher. It seemed a whole lot easier to picture them as a mere extension to the detritus of the forest floor.

  Sloan's was packed, as usual, by the time I arrived. A crowd of men and women in their twenties and thirties, dew-eyed and dressed to romp, hugged the bar. An Orioles/Yankees pennant race game on the big screen held a lot of people's attention in the main dining room. A glass block wall divided the drinkers from the rest of the restaurant, which was peppered with university sports memorabilia and photographs.

  Marcia sat at her agreed-upon table, doing her best to remain inconspicuous. I watched her for a minute from across the room. She was not the most beautiful woman in the world, if you go by what the fashion magazines show—her nose was a little too big, her lips perhaps a bit too thin. But she had something great models almost always possess: a photogenic magnetism that sprang from her eyes.

  She was also a recognized expert on the Civil War, namely the role that women played in the conflict, had even authored a book on the subject. I often wondered what her students thought of her—she taught history at Albemarle High School—whether or not there were any schoolboy crushes.

  Her face brightened when she caught sight of me. She was wearing black pumps tonight with a dark blue sheath dress; someone might have made this particular blue just to match her eyes. I moved toward her through the throng.

  “You sure you're okay?” She stood up to give me a peck on the cheek. “I felt terrible after we talked earlier. Here I was all ready to jump down your throat … And the play was just … well, I couldn't stop thinking about what happened to you.”

  “I should have kept our appointment or at least called. You want another chardonnay?”

  She covered her glass. “I'm driving. Better switch me to club soda.”

  I got the waitress's attention and ordered two club sodas.

  Her hand reached over to cover mine. “So tell me what happened out there today.”

  I shrugged. “Like I said on the phone, I found a body.” Just your average everyday corpse. What could be more blasé?

  She saw through me in an instant. “Then what happened?”

  “Let's see. I called the state police. They came and cordoned off the area. A couple of detectives questioned me for awhile. That was about it.”

  “Who was it?”

  “You mean the body? I don't know. Some black kid I'd never heard of. They said he was a drug dealer.”

  “Oh.”

  Marcia knew all there was to know about my past. The irony of my discovery could not have been lost on her. I thought of my wallet with the slip of paper and Dewayne Turner's name and license number written on it.

  “But something else seems to be worrying you,” she said.

  I hesitated. If I told her too much I risked drawing her in as a witness to my illegal collection of evidence.

  “Kid was from Leonardston,” I said.

  “Leonardston? You mean where you used to—?”

  “Right.”

  “And?”

  “I saw something around the body, something that caused me to be suspicious.”

  “Suspicious? Of what?”

  “Of someone who went out to fly Armistead with me at the same farm not too long ago.”

  She said nothing for a moment. She ran her finger around the rim of her glass, thinking. “Did you tell the police anything about what you saw?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  We stared at one another. “Couldn't you get into trouble?”

  “Potentially. Look, it may just be a coincidence.”

  “Did you talk to your daughter yet?”

  I shook my head. “Left a message on her machine.”

  “Don't you think you ought to try her again? When was the last time you two spoke?” She was wanning to the challenge.

  “I don't know, two, maybe three weeks.”

  “How long ago did you
say you'd been out there with her?”

  “It was earlier this month.”

  “Would that have been long enough for the body to have ended up in the condition you found it?”

  “Probably.”

  The waitress brought our club sodas. I could sense Marcia sifting through the possibilities.

  “I don't know much about police work, but might I make a suggestion?” She stroked the side of her new glass with her little finger.

  “Couldn't hurt, I suppose.”

  “You don't wait for Nicole to call you back. You go over there and find out in person right now what's going on.”

  “You mean to Leonardston?”

  “Uh-huh.” She squeezed her lime into her glass and took a sip. “You're over there all the time anyway, aren't you, to visit Jake?”

  “Yeah, but that's different.”

  “It's also more reason for you to go—you're familiar with the area. So I say, go now. Get to the bottom this. You can be there well before midnight.”

  Any visions of romance for the night vanished. “I'm not sure it's so simple, Marsh. Other than hunting once in awhile, Nicky and I aren't exactly close. And anyway, the state police are involved. They'll want to talk to me again for sure, if she's a suspect. It's not like people down there don't know she's my daughter.”

  “Jason and I are leaving early Sunday to go to Williamsburg for a couple days. Remember? It's his history club's field trip to Yorktown. If you have to be out of town, it's the perfect opportunity for you to go.”

  “Look,” I said. “There'll be a story on the news tonight or in the paper tomorrow about the body. A TV van was just pulling up when I split the scene.”

  “Really? I suppose as long as they don't mention your name in the reports, no one else will be able to connect you with the body,” she said.

  “Connect me with the body? …” The folks at the next table cast us a sidelong glance.

  Marcia lowered her voice. “Well, from what you said, you already have a connection, whether you like it or not.”