Plugged Nickel

by Eric

  "I'll have coffee and what kind of pie?"

  "Apple and cherry."

  "Home-baked?"

  "I wish I could say yes. From the commercial bakery over to McCook. Cherries are canned, but the apples are fresh this time of year."

  "I'll go with fresh," I said, motioning Karen to go ahead of me down the aisle to the last booth.

  "You want me to heat it and put a slab of butter under the crust, Jake?" Millie asked.

  "I would." We settled into the booth and I took another look at Karen.

  Pretty women are one of the great pleasures in life.

  "Deputy said the town was crawling with reporters and cameramen. I don't see them."

  "A rumor came back that the search party'd made another discovery. They all thundered off to be first on the scene."

  "What makes you say rumor?"

  "It's the third time that word came back today."

  "Do you think you'll know when somebody brings back the right word?"

  "I don't much care. I've got a crew out there on the tracks. I'm looking for something else."

  "What's that?"

  "An angle."

  Millie brought the pie and coffee.

  "You have a way with all the ladies, don't you, Jake?" Karen said, when she saw the size of the slab of pie.

  "I appreciate them and I think they know it. What kind of angle?"

  She shrugged. "Maybe I should say color. Texture. Background. You know, 'Murder on the Railroad.' 'Machine of a Fading Era Still Takes Lives.'"

  "There it goes again," I said.

  "Goes what?"

  "Somebody calling it murder. Two people fell under a train, probably because of some crazy accident, and everybody wants to see murder."

  "You don't really believe that, do you, Jake? I mean the business about some crazy accident."

  "There's no evidence to prove otherwise," I said, digging in my heels like a mule.

  "But you don't really believe it?" she insisted.

  "I suppose not, but that's not a quaint quote."

  "I'll respect that. I won't use it. You tell me what I can and can't as we go along."

  I cocked my head as though I thought she were working the shell game on me.

  "I mean it. I have an idea we'll be seeing each other again, Jake, and I want to play fair right from the start."

  I went through the whole thing again, leaving out conjecture, like the business about the teeth, sausage and kraut, and the marks on the coin that could've been gypsy patrin. She was a good listener who asked sharp questions, some of which I hoped, would get me thinking along some track I hadn't tried before.

  When I was finished, she nodded.

  "I'm not going to hint at murder on tonight's broadcast, Jake. I'm not going to play a sensational horror for more sensation. I'm not even going to mention your name more than once or twice."

  "I just heard a cash register," I said.

  "Everything's got a price. We both know that."

  "I didn't have to give you anything. I didn't have to even talk to you."

  "But you did, so that's that. I'm going to soft-pedal the murder angle and that's good for you. In return I want you to give me anything you get first—"

  "Not exclusive?"

  "Just first."

  "If I can."

  She leaned back and looked me over in a way that was different from the way she'd looked at me so far.

  "You're out of an era, Jake."

  "You mean I'm an old man? A relic?"

  "You're fishing for compliments. You're not old, you're ripe. A man doesn't have to be very old these days to become a relic. But I didn't exactly mean that. I guess I mean that you're a railroad man. It's written all over you. I guess I mean that the railroads won't be around much longer and when they're gone, I wonder what will happen to you."

  "I guess I'll go hang out with old cops and firemen and circus clowns."

  "You're a goddamn poet, Jake."

  "I'm glad you noticed."

  NINETEEN

  I found Freeman's farm with no trouble at all. The house was a good-looking two-story clapboard sitting on the lee side of a swell in the land and further sheltered by an ancient apple tree. A half a dozen outbuildings, including what looked like a pretty new tractor and machine shed, clustered around it like chicks around a hen. A long cottonwood windbreak marched like a file of soldiers across the land about a hundred yards northwest, on the weather side. There was a barn and a silo closer to the cottonwoods than to the apple tree.

  I stopped the car at the fork in the dirt road, one leg of which climbed the gentle rise to the yard in front of the house and the other of which went down to the barn.

  I got out and stood there with the breeze combing my hair and washing my face. It was still warmer than a fall day should've been, but the cider tang of cold weather was just under the surface.

  Indian summer never did last more than two or three days.

  There were no cows grazing on the hillsides. No bull in the paddock. The fields on the other side of the house where winter feed should've been grown had been cut but there were no stacks of hay under canvas.

  It was a pretty picture of a farm not much used. There weren't even any chickens in the wire pen and no clucking from the henhouse.

  I stood there for a long while looking at the house on the hill under the apple tree and then the barn and silo in front of the cottonwoods. Nothing moved. The only life I saw was a hawk riding the thermals over head.

  I walked up to the house about halfway, my head pointed toward the door but my eyes looking out from under the brim of my hat at the windows on the first and second floors. Then I cut across the grass to the path leading to the barn and silo.

  There was a window in the side door, too dusty to let me see much. There was a lock dangling from the staple but the hasp hadn't been engaged, so I shoved the door open and stepped inside. The smell of cattle still lingered but it was plain that none had sheltered there in a long, long time. There were new spiderwebs and the long strands of broken ones drifting in the air above my head.

  I turned around to leave when I saw the metal disk and handle leaning against the wall beside the door among the handles of some muck rakes and hoes. A pair of earphones was draped on a small bracket on the handle of one of those metal detectors once used for clearing minefields and used more recently for combing beaches.

  The sound was no louder than the creak of a board in the breeze or a mouse overturning a corn cob. When I turned my head I saw a slight drift of dust falling through the cracks in the boards of the loft, falling like flakes of gold in a beam of sunlight.

  I climbed up the ladder to the loft. Freeman was sitting on the floor by the door, grinning at me. "This is private property."

  "Not much to steal," I answered, as though I took his remark for a little bit of kidding and was kidding right back.

  "Just being nosy?"

  His grin may have changed or maybe I just saw it differently, but all at once his smile wasn't very pleasant.

  Were all his smiles just cardboard fakes pasted on to draw attention away from his eyes? They were cold eyes; flat and watchful.

  "Just wanted to ask about the inquest," I said. "How come you went ahead and held it without the testimony of the witnesses on the scene?"

  "What for? I had your deposition, didn't I? It came in handy after all. I talked it over with George first and he said go ahead. He thought it might help to get the whole damned thing out of the newspapers and off the television so he could go about his business without tripping over people."

  "Didn't help much, did it? Press all over the place."

  "Thick as fleas. Who told you I held the inquest?"

  "The deputy at the sheriff's office."

  He got up off the floor with the same graceful ease he'd shown hopping into the baggage car. There was a moment I thought he was going to attack me, but he just said, "He tell you I was here?"

  "She. She didn't know."


  "So you took the chance I'd be off with the search party. Thought you'd have yourself a little look around."

  "No," I lied. "I didn't think you'd be off with the search party. I figured you'd have had enough of that."

  "One time was enough for me," he agreed. "When I saw your car coming, I was afraid it was somebody sent by George to get me."

  It was about as lame an excuse for hiding as I'd ever heard.

  "So, here I am. If you came to see me about something, speak up."

  One second he was being chatty and the next belligerent, like a damned teeter-totter. I knew from past experience that when a fella starts acting like that he can be dangerous.

  I started backing down the ladder. He started coming down right after me, not facing the rungs the way farmers do but clambering down face forward like a sailor.

  Sailors tuck their cigarette butts In pockets and folds, just like soldiers do, whenever they're in an area that needs policing.

  "Well, I just did speak up," I said. "I wanted to know about the inquest."

  That was a pretty lame excuse too.

  "Was it decided murder and mayhem by person or persons unknown or was it death by misadventure or—"

  "The deputy didn't say?"

  "She didn't seemknow."

  "I thought everybody got the word. Just goes to show."

  We both had our feet on the barn floor by now. I started walking to the door with him right behind me. When I got there, I nodded to the metal detector.

  "I haven't seen one of those since I took a vacation to Florida and saw the old men out early in the mornings hunting for coins and jewelry on the beaches."

  "Go to Florida often, do you?"

  "Well, no, just the once. But that thing just reminded me of that one time. Get much use for it around here?"

  He knew exactly what I was doing with all my talk about Florida beaches and old men looking for tourist treasure, knew that I was trying to put him in a box and make him scramble for a story that would explain having such a device on a farm. For a second I could see that he was about to tell me to go to hell with my little games and traps, but then he shook his head as though amused and said, "Plenty of use. I go through these fields with that thing and pick up all sorts of old rusted machine parts and busted sections of barbed wire that work themselves up to the surface. Cows get that crap in their stomachs while they're grazing, it can do a lot of damage. Don't do a man's foot any good if you step on some of it, neither."

  "That's pretty clever, using that thing like that. I'd never have thought of it."

  We left the barn and were out in the clean air.

  "Get the idea when you were in the army?" I went on.

  "Got the idea combing beaches down in Florida," he said.

  When I looked at him, he was grinning at me in that challenging way again.

  "So you took a vacation down there too?"

  "I was with the circus for a time when I was young. We winter-quartered there."

  "So you were never in the army?"

  "Oh, I was in the army. The navy too."

  "How's that?"

  "Army has boats and ships, you know. I was a soldier but I was part of a ship's complement. We going to swap war stories? Which one was yours?"

  "Korea."

  "That was a police action."

  "Which was yours? Vietnam?"

  He nodded.

  "That was a disaster."

  TWENTY

  The chickens scattered out of my way as I drove into the backyard at McGilvray's. Bess was standing on the stoop with a broom in her hand. She came down a couple of steps and the screen door banged shut behind her. She turned to look at it as though it had startled her, and I knew she'd been daydreaming about something.

  Standing in the sun, remembering what it had been like when she was a young woman waiting for her new husband to come home? Or back further still when it would have been her father coming home to supper?

  A cold wind kicked up some dust and fallen leaves. Autumn was back.

  "Hello, Jake. Have you had anything to eat?" she asked as I got out of the station wagon and started walking toward her.

  "I had a big breakfast in Denver."

  "That was hours ago. Come inside. Will a chicken salad sandwich do you?"

  "If you've got any of that soup left on the stove, that'll do me just fine, Bess."

  She seemed pleased that I liked her soup. I took the broom from her hand. She watched me do it as though she'd forgotten it was even there.

  She laughed. It sounded sad but brightened her face, which was still very pretty.

  "George wants to hire a cleaning woman to come in."

  "I'd let him."

  "I never worked outside the house, you know? Not before I married or after. These big changes in the lives of women came too late for me. I mean, even if the arthritis would let me go out to work, I'd be afraid to. My home is all I've ever had by way of work."

  "And taking care of your father for years after he was widowered, and being a cop's wife for forty years, and raising three kids in Denver, and growing vegetables out back here, and keeping chickens, and making quilts, and . . ."

  She laughed again, with greater pleasure. It was a silver sound. "You do know how to charm," she said. "After I have my soup, I'm going to take down your screens and put up your storm windows and doors," I said.

  "George had it on his calendar for this week and then—"

  "So let me earn my supper. I sure as hell can't sing for it."

  I was almost through with the windows when George came back. Dixie Hanniford was riding with him. She got out of the prowl car first.

  Without her hat on she looked younger and somehow prettier, more like the young girl she must have been before the hard life of farming and the harsh wear of the years had thickened her.

  I came down off the ladder as she went around and helped George out of the car, taking his whole weight, when he stumbled, with hardly a flinch. He was wet clear up to his waist.

  "You need a hand?" I said, hurrying over.

  "I can manage him, I think, but if you want to give him your shoulder it might ease his leg a little better." Bess was making soft noises of concern as she stood there holding open the door. Nothing like panic—she could see he wasn't wounded—more like the gentle clucking of a mother at a child who'd fallen out of a tree.

  "It's nothing, Bess," George called out. "Twisted my knee climbing back up the slope from the river."

  "George figured out where the rest of that poor girl might be," Dixie said. "It was a bad place and he just had to lead the way."

  "Well, I don't know who else should've gone first."

  "Somebody considerably younger," Dixie said, and tossed a wink at Bess.

  George turned his attention to me as the only way of politely cutting off that kind of talk. "I didn't expect to see you back so soon."

  "There's a couple of things needs talking about. You talk to the FBI?"

  "They've been calling but I haven't called back yet."

  Dixie and I let go of George in the mud room and went on into the kitchen.

  While he took off his boots and corduroys. Bess hovered around him, plucking up pieces of clothing as fast as be could shed them until he was down to his long johns. He didn't protest even though she winced once or twice. He knew enough not to refuse the loving attention. I got a blanket off the bed and brought it back so George could wrap himself in it. He backed up to the stove, making a funny sight, while I poured him a cup of hot coffee.

  "You got something to lace it a little?" I said.

  "I'm temperance," he said.

  "Since when?"

  "Oh, since a long time."

  Bess came back with a pair of trousers, a flannel shirt, wool socks, and sheepskin slippers.

  George turned his back and Dixie turned her head while he dressed, though George in long johns was nothing to see.

  Bess started setting out soup and bread then. Plain, sturdy
food that filled a body's stomach right down to the toes.

  There was that about marriage. Somebody always there to do the little things for you, and you for them, with scarcely a word passing between you. That kind of knowing couldn't grow very wide or deep in the kind of relationships I enjoyed.

  "Don't set out a plate for me,"Dixie said. "I've got to get back to my own place."

  "How about just a cup of coffee?"

  "Not even that. I'll want to take a nap when I get home."

  "All right, then," Bess said, but still Dixie didn't leave.

  "The other half of the woman'd slid all the way down the slope into the stream," George said. "A miracle it didn't catch on a tree or bush."

  "Probably just happened to fall on a patch where the underbrush had been swept clean by a rock-slide," Dixie said, wanting her share of the story.

  "Anyway, she was way the hell downstream, almost to Platner."

  "Treacherous land around there," Dixie said. "All shale and scree, slippery as mercury."

  George looked up at me while putting on a sock and said, "Young woman. Badly battered. She might have been very pretty once, but . . . Well, you'll see. After I eat and get warm, we'll drive down to the station. You'll see."

  He went back to the other sock, as though he didn't want to talk about it anymore with the ladies there.

  Dixie said, "Well," and put her hands on the table to lift herself up.

  Her hands gave me a start. They weren't all banged up and short-nailed like you'd expect a farm woman's hands to be. They were red and chapped with cold, but smoother than any at the work should be, the nails longer than most and painted red.

  She saw where I was looking and grinned, taking her gloves from her pocket and drawing them on: "Vanity, vanity," she said.

  TWENTY-ONE

  While Bess saw Dixie Hanniford out through the mud room, I started telling George what I'd found out in Denver as he settled down to finish his meal.

  I told him about the postmortem findings, about the fillings in the teeth and the sausage and sauerkraut in the belly.

  "From that evidence Bosley figured the man was a Middle European and a spy."

  "Well, I suppose that's as good a thought as any," George said.