by Rex Miller
“Yep. Gave it a shot."
“Could I ask you to make me that same list? I know it's a lot of trouble—"
“It's no big deal. Sure."
“I'd really be grateful,” she said with a smile that showed just the tip of her tongue. He thought it was so sexy he nearly came unglued. The mental governor in his head spotted a fantasy starting and nipped it hard in the bud. He swallowed and told her he'd think on it.
“Could you give it to me now? I don't mind waiting a while."
“I can't. I was supposed to go over to the set-back pasture and help this guy with some cattle,” he looked up at the kitchen clock, “and I'm already way behind."
“Oh, I'm awfully sorry.” She felt like an oaf. “Let me call a taxi. Can I get a cab to come out here?"
“No, don't worry about that. The pasture is only a mile or two away from the highway,” he lied smoothly. “I can take you back to your car or wherever you say. Are you at the motel out on the highway?"
“Yeah, but I can't impose—"
“If you feel fit enough to ride, we'll go on in.” He got up awkwardly, hoping he didn't sound as if he we kicking her out.
“I am so sorry for inconveniencing you."
“Hey, you aren't a bit,” he said, a little too emphatically, as they went outside. “It's no bother. Tomorrow I gotta come back by the motel there, and I'll leave the list off, okay?"
“Are you sure?"
“No bother,” he told her, holding the door open.
But she bothered him plenty, this mysterious lady with her exquisite femininity and little tongue trick, her big-city manners, blondish hair, and dynamite, pale green eyes. He knew, of course, that Sharon was Jewish. Aaron Kamen had mentioned it enough. Meara suspected she was a beautifully natural blonde, which, so far as his experience went, was pretty rare for a Jewish woman. It was one of many unusual things about Sharon.
Ray would have been chilled to read her thoughts at that moment. She was far more shaken than she appeared, and at that instant, getting in his pickup truck, she was making a mental note to tell the authorities about Mr. Meara as a possible suspect, and about the list he claimed to have made for her father. Doubtless they knew anyway but she wasn't going to overlook anything.
The day had turned spooky and then very strange. By the time they arrived at where her car was parked her mind was back on the Nazi demonstrators, and she was suddenly glad again for the presence of the rather frightening man beside her. “I hope those Neo-Nazis aren't going to be angry with you because of the way you helped me, Ray. That one—you know—you hit with the shovel?"
Meara looked over at her with a lopsided laugh. “That punk? Forget about it,” he said, genuinely amused. She wondered what had happened to Mrs. Meara, shuddering slightly as chilled rain splashed against the bug-smeared windshield.
38
Sharon Kamen began the day in a go-get-'em mood, resolved she'd find her dad within the next eight hours. He was somewhere not too far away, St. Louis maybe, working on the Nazi. She sat at the table under the window of room 6, working on the checklist for the day, looking out at the steady rain that showed no signs of abating, making notes, and clock watching. The second it hit 9:00 A.M. she picked up the phone and asked the office to get the operator for her.
She placed a call to work and a voice she didn't recognize answered. After she identified herself, she spoke briefly with her Coalition stand-in, then asked if she might speak with Wendy or Gloria. A moment later she smiled to hear, “When you comin’ back? D'jew find your father? Are you aw-right or what?” Ditzy but lovable Wendy had never sounded better to her. She needed a friendly voice in her ear.
“I want a favor,” she told Wendy. “A big one."
“You got it. Hey—you okay?"
“Yeah. I'm fine.” She smiled. Wendy's familiar speech pattern lifted her spirits. “Listen, I've put a couple of keys in the mail to you at the office. Could I please ask you to go over to my apartment and get the mail?"
“Yeah! Of course. No problem."
“And I know it's a lot to ask, but would you please go over and pick up my dad's too?” Sharon explained the details, what to do with the keys afterward, to put everything in the big envelope she'd sent. There were labels in the envelope too, to apply to any boxes. Money for postage. No, she didn't think Wendy would need to do it more than one time. It was in case something came that might help her father, but Wendy was sweet to offer.
She'd finished up on the phone when she saw the truck pull up in the space next to her car, and when she saw Raymond Meara getting out she hurried to the door and opened it.
“Hi,” she said.
“Morning."
“Come in,” she said, with no other option since it was raining.
“Yeah,” he said, but as he stepped barely into the doorway he also seemed to be in an all-business mood. “If you don't mind me asking, what have you got planned for today?” She told him briefly and he surprised her by saying, “I got a suggestion for ya."
“Oh?"
“I've put together a list that's close to what I gave Mr. Kamen, as best as I can recollect.” He unfolded a thick wad of ruled tablet pages. The pages were covered in heavy black pencil marks, neatly printed company names and the names of doctors, then a page of addresses, all of this alphabetized. He'd obviously gone to a lot of work, reconstructing the list, then alphabetizing it and printing out all the addresses.
“I really appreciate this. You didn't have to go to all that work. My gosh—"
“No big deal. Anyway, what I thought was, we'd go around to some of these places together. You know, you could ask if your father had been there and if he had we could establish who he'd seen and who he hadn't seen, what time and so on, and you could give that to the cops. Might find out something they missed. Anyway that was my idea."
“It's a good idea, but Ray, really, I can handle this on my own. I do appreciate your willingness to come with me but I can find the places. This list is what I needed.” Her tone was trying to dismiss him.
“Look. You'd best let me help you. I got nothing I have to do. This is a slack time for me. I could take you around and it wouldn't be a bit of trouble. I really want to help find out what happened to your father,” he said, and kept going before she could say no again, “and, you know, it's gettin’ to be a problem on some of the highways. I'm familiar with the area and you're not, and I know which places to try first before the roads get closed off by the water. Also we can get to places in the truck, might be a problem for that little car of yours, low as it sits. Two heads are better than one.” It was a long speech for him and he looked serious.
“That's really kind of you but—” She stopped the sentence in midair, shaking her head no. She didn't want or need the hassle, even though it was logical enough. “I couldn't ask you to do that.” Having rescued her, did he now feel responsible? That was the last thing she wanted.
“You didn't ask me to do that,” he said. She was shaking her head again, a smile in place, obviously convinced it was a bad idea. “What I think we should do first is hit the ones in Cape.” He leaned over her shoulder and pointed to the list. “Here. Here. This guy. And the sooner we get going the sooner we can get it done."
She turned her face up to his but knew she was going to let him help and the refusal was never articulated. He was putting the list back together and sort of angling toward the door, trying to make it as easy for her to agree as he could. “Mm—” she made a small moan of protest but he was hearing none of it.
“If we're lucky we can finish up in Cape Girardeau by late afternoon, but one of these is near Jackson. That's a good piece of driving and the water's already over the interstate in two places so by tonight that highway's going to start to be a problem."
“You sure?"
“Let's go,” he said, somewhat abruptly. “Come on."
She got up and got her raincoat and purse. “This is really kind of—” But he was already outside and getting
into the truck.
Ten minutes later, sandwiched into the midst of a convoy of giant semis, she was glad Meara had volunteered his help. Water was already over the highway, as he'd predicted, but it didn't seem to have stopped anybody.
She studied Ray's notes:
ANNISTON COMMUNITY CENTER
Dr. Paul J. Childress
BERTRAND HOSPICE
Dr. William Syre
CONSOLIDATED RESEARCH
LABS, INC.
(Sikeston)
Dr. Mishna Vyodnek
CHARLESTON MEDICAL ASSN.
Dr. Claude E. Romanowski
DELTA GENERAL
(Sikeston)
Dr. Raoul Babajarh
FLETCHER, N.J.
(New Madrid)
Dr. N. J. Fletcher
[Retired from private practice]
FUTRELL ANIMAL CLINIC
(Hwy. 61)
Dr. Homer Thuey
FUTRELL, C. Z. (retired)
(Kewanee)
Dr. Charles Z. Futrell
[Retired veterinarian)
HOSPICE OF NEW MADRID
Dr. Donald Henry
MOODY VETERINARY
(Sikeston)
Dr. Preston Moody
ST. JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Clement Puyear
TROUT, OTIS
(retired) DENTIST (Bayou City)
Dr. Otis Troutt
[Retired dentist]
TATUM, BARBANUS G
(retired)
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Bamabus G. Tatum
[Retired D.O.]
ST. LUKE'S MEDICAL CENTER
(Cape Girardeau)
Dr. Howard Southmore
This seemed an unlikely way to go about finding her father, from a stranger's arbitrary list, and her pessimism was scarcely diminished by her companion. Sharon glanced surreptitiously at the badly scarred man beside her.
“Ray, how did you know all these doctors, and all the different places and everything? And what made Dad so sure this man would be a doctor, just because he'd been a doctor for the Nazis?"
“Well—"
“It seems like such guesswork, you know?"
“Your dad thought this guy'd be one of those, what-yacallem—ego freaks? Figured he couldn't stand it if he couldn't practice medicine or experiment on things. In small towns like this everybody knows about all the doctors, what their reputations are, where they came from. That's all people do around here is talk medicine, discuss their operations, or who's going out with whose wife. See, here's what I figure. This guy's got to be pretty old. Even if he was like twenty in 1944 you can see he'd be past retirement age. That narrows it some. Like that retired dude Barnaby something?"
“Barnabus Tatum,” she read from the list. “Retired D.O."
“What's D.O.?"
“Ophthalmology—no, that's the eye. Osteopathy, that's it."
“Thing is...” He picked and chose his words carefully before he spoke. What Meara was thinking he wasn't about to verbalize. He knew she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of finding anything out, but he wasn't going to be the one to break the news. “This was the direction your father was heading, anyway.” He left the rest of it unsaid. If her father had got himself jammed up in a bad scene, at least it proved one thing. He'd looked under the right rock.
39
Cape Girardeau
It took them an hour and seventeen minutes to get from the door of Sharon Kamen's motel on the outskirts of Bayou City to the home where Dr. Tatum lived. He was very old and quite ill. She never found out what else he was suffering from other than acute emphysema and didn't care to have his illness diagnosed. She was inside the home five minutes tops, and when she came back to the truck her face looked ashen. Bloodless.
“Let's go, please,” she said, and slammed the passenger-side door.
“You wanna go by the hospital next?"
“Sure, fine."
“That didn't take long."
She didn't say anything, put her head against the seat, facing away from him, and began sobbing bitterly.
He thought he really had a dandy effect on her. Ray fought the impulse to touch or console her, focused his mind on the rainy streets and dangerously stupid Cape motorists, and kept his mouth shut.
Finally she brought herself under control. “You know,” she said, blowing her nose and trying to smile, “it's funny. I'm not a crier normally. I don't tend to cry much. You caught me in a slump.” This struck her as absurd and she laughed. “It's all so impossible.... I don't know. That man in there is a dying invalid. His wife said Dad hadn't been to see them and suddenly it seemed as if there was no hope. I know something's happened—I know it has.” She blew her nose again.
“Hey, I understand,” he spoke quietly. “But your dad looked to me like the kind of person could handle himself. Don't jump to any conclusions yet. This is only the beginning. The fact he didn't get to the Tatum house doesn't mean anything bad."
“Okay."
Three stops later, midafternoon, the weather having warmed up and the rain having slackened, Meara still sat in the truck, waiting. Ever since this lady got into his pickup that morning he'd been self-conscious about how dirty the interior of the truck was.
He started to get out and stretch and saw her coming out of the building, striding toward where he was parked on her long, gorgeous legs, and she took his breath away with the flawless geometry of limb and the artwork of pore and follicle. But he was beginning to realize there was more than beauty that made her so intensely attractive to him.
“Hey, listen,” she said, in a bossy, businesslike tone, as if she'd read his mind, “this is really taking way too much of your time, Ray. Please take me to a taxi and I'll make my own way back, huh? You've been super, but this is fine."
“I'm not going anywhere,” he said. “Where to next?"
“Oh, well,” she said, letting a lot of breath out as if in disgust. When she inhaled deeply, Meara couldn't help but watch her chest push the sweater out and fill it. Why was he doing this to himself?
Again, Sharon was uncomfortably aware of his attention, and the last thing she needed was someone coming on to her. She was smart enough to know, however, that she was a woman who was capable of unconscious provocation and this was the sort of routine interpersonal moment she dismissed. She knew things by taste, background, and instinct: how to appear warmly feminine, for instance, without crossing the line and becoming unduly provocative. She also knew the reverse, and she could chill a man without half trying. With her concerns about her father, the kind of look Meara had given her virtually negated all his kindesses to the moment. She about tore the raincoat off in her haste to pull it around her, and to hell with what he thought.
He felt, appropriately, as if he'd acted like a boorish pig, and it was clear she was going to end up hating him if he didn't get his act together. He could hear words coming out of his mouth, something about Sikeston and Anniston. Bertrand. Dr. Syre. Just words in a businesslike tone. He couldn't get his mind right, and glanced at her again.
Ridiculously, she could feel herself responding to his gaze. Ludicrous. It angered her and she felt soiled sitting in his filthy, moronic truck with its country and western music on the radio. She felt tired, too, and vulnerable, and her breasts were quite sensitive under the blouse and sweater, as if he'd reached across and touched her. She didn't understand or welcome the feeling, rejected it wholly, trying to keep it out of her eyes and keep the heat out of her face.
“I don't care which,” she said, reading his thoughts and telling him “no way” with her mind, tone, and body language. She did everything but print No Chance in the accumulated dust on the dash.
“Let me study on it a minute,” he said, guilelessly, in what he thought sounded like the voice of a man strangling on his own lowbrow thoughts. “It's—uh—you know, hard...” Hard. Jesus. “Hard to know—” He was closer to her than he had been. How had
he accomplished that? Ray was behind the wheel and she hadn't moved. Maybe it only seemed closer.
To him she smelled like flowers in a springtime garden. He was getting drunk on her and it was hard ... hard to breathe. He cracked a window. He knew she read all of this somehow, on the wavelength where a woman's intuition operates, and he imagined her recoiling as if she'd seen a snake slither out of the glove compartment. All of this in a half second, and at least he had the wit to sense he'd conducted himself rudely, and with a woman looking for her missing loved one. He wrenched his thoughts out of the absurdly adolescent male fantasy.
“Charleston's out of the way. Let's head back this way,” he pointed, “and we can swing on back through East Prairie and Bayou City."
“All right,” she said icily.
“We could go to Sikeston, back down sixty-one to Kewanee, and swing back through New Madrid, then take you back to the motel. You want to do that?"
“Okay, let's try Sikeston,” she said, “and we can see how it goes from there.” Sharon pushed all thoughts away but those of her father's whereabouts.
How many contacts would it take before she generated a single positive lead? Quite casually, a hideous thought intruded, and she realized a very frightening portal had been unlocked inside her mind. The crushing fear that something was terribly wrong returned and wrapped itself tightly around her.
The pickup truck smelled of leather, oil, Ray's aftershave, and something she couldn't place. She guessed it was her own anxiety.
Sikeston proved to be the reverse of Cape; everywhere they went, Aaron Kamen had already been there. When she left the last location she was exhausted, and they went back to Bayou City directly.
She thanked Meara, he said he was glad to help, and they each left it at that. She went inside and took two showers, one hot and one cool, crawled into bed, found an easy-listening station on the fm, turned the music down to enough of a murmur that it could compete with the cowpokes ramrodding the eighteen-wheel longhorns down Highway 80, and fell fast asleep.