by Ed Gorman
“Turk’s father owns a construction company,” I explained to Kylie.
“Ah,” Kylie said.
“I mean, she sprained her ankle was all,”
Jamie said. “It wasn’t like she died or anything.”
The horn. For the third time.
“He isn’t real patient sometimes,” Jamie explained. Then, “Gee, I’ve got a lot of other stories about stuff me’n Turk did, Kylie. We’ll have to get together again sometime.”
“You know,” Kylie said, sounding sincere.
“I’d actually like that.”
Jamie was wearing a pair of jeans so tight they should be illegal. Unfair to lechers like me.
Kylie sat down in the client chair. “She really made me feel better. She’s not a genius but there’s an innocence and an energy that’s really great to be around.”
“Great. So you’re feeling better.”
“Much better, actually. I can’t believe it.”
And then her body sort of collapsed in on itself and she started sobbing. “I’ve been up and down like this ever since he told me about his affair,” she managed to say.
I didn’t have any Kleenex so I went into the can and got several fistfuls of toilet paper.
She said, when she’d gathered herself,
“I should leave him, shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, no, what?”
“No advice. You give people advice on matters of the heart, you lose them as friends forever.”
“But I’m asking for advice. That absolves you of all responsibility.”
“You say that now-but later…”
“C’mon, McCain. You really think I should leave him, don’t you?”
I took her hand in mine and gently said, “You know what I really think?”
“What?”
“That we should go get some lunch.”
She jerked her hand away. “Coward.”
“Damn right I’m a coward. I have three fewer friends today because I advised them on their affairs of the heart. They won’t speak to me.
Now, let’s go.”
The wading pool in the town square was packed with tots. You could hear them squealing, summer music on a summer breeze. There was a drowsy, siesta feeling such as you always read about in the western novels of Mr. Max Brand, for whom I’d formed a real affection. I’d read two of his when I was twelve and then kept on reading. His heroes were always brooders and mourners and failures and daydreamers and that lent his stories a uniqueness and depth most westerns just don’t have, John Wayne forgive me. He was especially great at describing Mexico. And that, at least in my imagination, was how our little town felt at this noontime. Some dusty Mexican pueblo where this really neat-looking short guy rides in on a white horse and all the se@noritas come running. It was so hot here today tires were losing tread simply by revolving against the steamy pavement.
Kylie spotted them before I did. On the windshield of a pink-and-white Nash rambler. And on the windshield of a nice new Pontiac convertible. And on the window of a Dairy Queen panel truck.
Flyers.
She snatched one up. Glanced at it.
Flicked it in my face.
Why The Jews Want Jfk
To Win!
The Zionist Powers Behind The
Kennedys!
The rest you can imagine for yourself.
“But didn’t old man Kennedy hang around with Hitler?” she asked.
“Liked the man very much. Considered him a friend.
That’s one of the reasons the Kennedys have to keep old Joe out of sight. A lot of people still resent the old bastard.”
“Then why do they think the Jews are behind Kennedy?”
“I guess I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe for the same reasons the Jews are stashing all their guns in church basements.”
“These people are nuts!” she said with great authority. “As my folks always pointed out.”
Her folks were (a) university professors and (but) Jewish, in a time when it was not universally fashionable to be either. Kylie’d grown up in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the most lovely and exciting cities in the U.S.
“Well, they get to economize on this election, anyway,” I said.
We started walking again. She started fanning herself with her fingers. She had wonderful long fingers. Artistic, I guess you’d say. She also had a very artistic ass.
“How are they economizing?”
“Well, when the Klan and the other crazies get all riled up around election time, they usually take the Jews and the Catholics on separately. But since Kennedy has a lot of Jewish advisers, they’ve decided they can save on their printing bills by doubling up. The only thing they didn’t get to is the
Eleanor-Roosevelt-is-a-lesbo-thing.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt is a lesbian?”
“That’s what all the pamphlets say. Say, I wonder if Kenny Thibodeau has heard that one. There’s a political novel in it for him.
Lesbo Legislators.”
She laughed. “He’s actually an interesting guy.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“He goes away to all these big cities and comes back and tells us what’s going on. You know, trends and stuff. I even read a couple of his novels.”
“Shameless hussy,” I said.
“He can write people well. I was surprised.
I asked him why he doesn’t write a serious book and you know what he told me?”
“What?”
“He said that every time he tries, he freezes up. Blocks. But that he can write his porno just fine because he knows it’s just trash and doesn’t matter. I sort of feel sorry for him.”
“You feel sorry for everybody.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Al Monahan has two bus-stop benches on either side of the entrance to his caf@e. Nice for eating outdoors on hot days, which we did.
I had iced tea and a cheeseburger. She had iced tea.
“I thought you wanted some lunch.”
“Iced tea is lunch,” she said defensively.
“I’d hate to hear you argue that in court.”
“Want to take the case?”
“You should eat,” I said.
“You should stop being a mother hen.”
“That’s the most effective diet in the world.
Heartbreak.”
“It sure is.”
“When’s the last time you ate?”
“Last night. A piece of pizza.”
I was about to do a little more mother-henning when I saw them.
Sara and Dierdre Hall. Jaywalking from the other side of the street.
“Be right back,” I said and jumped up, setting my lunch down.
I caught them just as they reached their baby-blue DeSoto convertible. They were dressed pretty much the same-pink summer blouses, white pedal pushers, white dressy sandals. And the darkest sunglasses this side of Elizabeth Taylor.
They looked alike, too. Quiet beauty all the richer the longer you studied it.
“Hi, Sara, I wondered if I could call you this afternoon.”
“Get in the car, Dierdre.”
“Mom, didn’t you hear him?”
“Didn’t you hear me, Dierdre? I said to get in the car.”
“Sara, we really do need to sit down and talk.”
“Mom, do you have any idea how embarrassing this is? Why don’t you at least answer him?”
“I’ll answer him when you get in the car.”
“This is very embarrassing, Mr.
McCain. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. Your mom’s obviously having a bad day.”
“My mom’s always having a bad day.”
Dierdre got in the car. Crossed her arms across her chest.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Sara Hall said to me.
“I’m trying to help you, Sara.”
“How noble.”
“Would you
prefer if I just started talking right here? In front of your daughter?”
“Yes, Mother,” Dierdre said. “That’d be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“I resent this,” Sara Hall said.
“So do I. You owe me some answers.”
“I don’t owe you anything. And I plan to take this up with Judge Whitney, believe me.”
I knew better than to say that the Judge already knew I’d be talking to Sara. “I’d appreciate it if you’d be at my office at four o’clock.”
“If she isn’t there, I will be, Mr.
McCain.”
That was another point I’d make on my list.
Muldaur’s daughter and Hall’s daughter offering to cooperate even though their mothers refused to.
“I’ll see you at four,” Sara Hall said, and got into her car.
I could see them pantomiming an argument as the swept-fin convertible swept away. I had the sense that it was an argument they’d had many times. I wondered what it was about. I felt sure it had some bearing on the murders.
“Ah,” I said, sitting down next to Kylie on the bench again and picking up my lunch. “Just the way I like it. My cheeseburger’s cold and my iced tea’s hot.”
“I’m now a black-belt in fly-shooing. It looked like Pearl Harbor on your burger.” She sipped her iced tea. “So, did you learn anything?”
“Just that Sara and Dierdre Hall don’t seem to get along very well.”
“Any idea why?”
“Not yet.”
“Meaning you plan to find out?”
“Of course. Before Richard Milhous
Nixon gets here and finds out that we have murders just like everybody else.”
“He says he’s not sure if he loves her.”
“I take it we’re not talking about Nixon anymore.”
“He says he knows he’s being unfair to me and he wouldn’t blame me if I just walked out.
We really got into a terrible argument-the people downstairs were banging on the wall and everything-and then we ended up making love practically all night. And then when he was leaving for school this morning-even though he doesn’t have any classes today-I asked him if I’d see him tonight and he said that he had a date with her.”
“Ah.”
“That’s all you’re going to say? Ah? What kind of comment is that?”
“A non-comment. I’m staying out of this, remember?”
“Well, pretend it’s you and not me. What would you do, then?”
“That’s how it sorta was at the end with Pamela. We finally made love one night and as soon as we were finished the phone rang. It was good ole Stu and she went rushing off to him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you take her back?”
“She never came back. Not really, anyway.
She snuck away a few days later because Stu was having second thoughts about dumping his wife and family and the governorship.”
“What governorship?”
“Everybody figured it was his turn to be governor.”
“But he’s here now.”
“Yes, he is. Rebuilding his image after running away with a hussy.”
“And where’s Pamela?”
“Hiding somewhere. I’m not sure where, exactly.”
“What if she called and asked you to get married?”
“I don’t know. That’s the only answer I can give you.”
“She walked all over you.”
“Yes.”
“And ditched you for somebody else.”
“Yes.”
“And you’d still consider taking her back.”
“I’d consider it, I suppose.”
“Well, that’s exactly how I’d feel, McCain. I’d consider it.”
“We’re a couple of fools,” I said, “is what we are.”
“Damned fools.”
“Double-damned fools.”
“We’re really pathetic, you know that?”
“Do I know it? Do I know it? I make myself sick I know it so much.”
And that’s when I saw this guy working his way up the street, slipping leaflets under windshield wipers.
“I’ll call you at work this afternoon,” I said.
“I’m really going to need you tonight, McCain.”
“Good. Because I’m really going to need you, too.”
She grabbed my hand. “You are?”
“Sure I am.” And then I did something I really shouldn’t ought to have done. I leaned over and gave her a kiss right on the mouth. A married woman-well, a somewhat married woman-right on the mouth.
Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you, I could hear my ninth-grade nun, Sister Mary Florence, saying. Just the kind of thing I’d expect from you.
Eleven
John Parnell was a chunky guy with a limp that resulted from a grade-school tractor accident. He wore a lime-colored
T-shirt and jeans and sandals. He was bending over a Ford station wagon to slap a leaflet beneath its windshield.
“Hi, John.”
He backed himself off the car hood he’d been bent over and said, “Hey, McCain, how ya doin’?”
“Fine. Or I was till I saw you putting those leaflets on car windows.”
He grinned. “Yeah, that’d make the nuns mad, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded to the stack of leaflets in his car.
He was still the freckled, snub-nosed guy I’d always known. I couldn’t connect him to the leaflets.
“You printed them and now you’re distributing them?”
“Yep. That’s what God wants me to do, McCain.”
“He told you that?”
“Now you’re being blasphemous, Sam.”
Maybe this wasn’t the old Parnell I’d known.
“You’re a Catholic, Parnell, and you’re handing this stuff out?”
He shook his head. “Not anymore I’m not.
A Catholic, I mean.”
“Since when?”
He shrugged. “Well, the wife-I’m not sure you ever met her, gal from Sioux City I met when I was doing my printing apprenticeship up there-anyway, she was raised as an evangelical. And what with one thing and another she kinda got me interested in the whole thing. She always says you should feel bad when you go to church.
And I tried ‘em all-Lutheran, Baptist, Presbyterian. But they always tried to make you feel good. But bad’s the only way you know your religion’s workin’ for you. When you feel terrible.
And that’s what we both liked about Reverend Muldaur. His whole deal was how unworthy we all are. And I believe that, McCain. You might believe something else-but that’s what I believe, McCain.”
“But the snakes-”
“That’s what people don’t understand.”
“What don’t people understand?”
“They’re not snakes.”
“They sure looked like it to me.”
“They’re devils. Really and truly.
Devils. Evil spirits. I’ve held them. I can feel their evil. I truly can. But they didn’t bite me because Reverend Muldaur cleansed my soul before he handed me the snakes.”
“But all this bullshit about Jews and Catholics-”
“I don’t use words like bdds. anymore, Sam. But I’ll tell you, they’re both out to conquer the world. They know they can’t do it alone, so they’ve joined forces. And the only people who can stop them are people like me.” He leaned forward confidentially. He smelled of sweat and onions.
“And there’re a lot of people in this town who believe the same way I do, Sam. But they don’t want people to know it.”
“So you just gave him all this printing free?”
“Heck, no. A friend of his paid for it.”
“What friend?”
He leaned toward me again. He mst’ve had an onion sandwich with some onion rings and onion juice on the side. “Like I said, Sam, there’re a lot of folks in this town who agree with everything we do. And one
of them was nice enough to pick up the tab for the printing. I just charged my costs.
No profit. That wouldn’t be right, seeing’s how I was doing it for the Lord.”
Parnell, Parnell, what did somebody drug you with? How can you possibly believe this crap?
Then I realized it was time for me to go pick up the rabbi and the monsignor. We were doing some target practice this afternoon with the guns in the church basement.
“I’d really appreciate it if you told me who paid for the printing, John. I’m trying to find out who killed Muldaur.”
“I know you are. We all hear the Judge is trying to get it all cleaned up before Nixon gets here. Now, there’s a guy with almost as many Jew friends as Kennedy has. Hard to know who to vote for.”
I couldn’t deal with it any longer.
“You’re making me so damn sad, Parnell.”
“And you’re making me sad, too, Sam. I saw you over there eating with that Jewess. She’s not fit company for a true Christian, Sam.”
“Well, she’s fit company for me. She’s a damned good woman, in fact.”
He shook his head. He really did seem sad. “The ways of the flesh, Sam, the ways of the flesh.”
At one time, the two-room house had probably looked pretty nice sitting all alone by the fast creek in the curve of a copse of pine. It looked like one of those houses a fella could order himself from the Sears Roebuck catalog late in the 1890’s. Such homes came with assembly instructions; the fancier kits even included hammers and other tools. You could see some of these Sears houses standing well into the 1940’s, by the grace of spit and God, as the old saying had it.
Ned Blimes, whose last name and current address I’d learned by asking around, didn’t seem to be at home as I pulled my ragtop behind a stand of pine to the west of his house. I didn’t want my car to pick up any stray bullets.
A dainty man, he wasn’t. His meals apparently included a lot of self-shot squirrel meat because the grass on the side of his place was strewn with carcasses. Several gleaming crows hovered nearby. I’d interrupted their meal. I’ve never been able to tolerate the smell of squirrel meat frying. The air was coarse and bloody with it.
I knocked on the front door of the shack-like house. The lone front window was filled with cardboard and just a jagged remnant of the glass that had once covered it.
The crows went back to eating. The pollen got to me and I sneezed. And somebody poked something in my back.