by Eric
Bess came back and sat down again.
"How does Dixie keep her fingernails looking that good?" I asked her.
"Oh, she likes to dress out like she's a working farmer but she's big-city. She came here with a pocketful of cash and bought the Clinton place next to the farm Howard Freeman bought."
"Just a gentleman farmer."
"Well, lady farmer," Bess said, laughing a little.
"Same thing," George said. "Plenty of money.
Sick of the city. Longing for the simple life. Buys a farm for more than it's worth. Hires plenty of help. Spends a fortune fixing up the house. You ought to see it."
"Ought to see her when she's out of that mackinaw and work boots and into a negligee and slippers," Bess interjected.
". . . then goes around in a brand-new but dirty pickup with a dog in back and a shotgun in the cab."
"Dixie's so open and up front about having fun playing the part, nobody much minds. She'll probably get sick of it after a while and go away to try something else."
"How long has she been around?"
They looked at each other again, didn't say a word for a minute, then said, "A year. No more 'n that," in practically one voice.
"Are she and Freeman very good friends?"
"You mean more than just friends?" Bess said.
"Whatever."
"As far as I can tell they're just good neighbors."
I took the nickel out of the corner of my handkerchief and put it down on the table. "I've been asking around about these marks."
"You find out anything?"
"I've got a friend says they're gypsy," I said.
"Could be hobo signs," George said. "Trick is to read them, whatever they are and whoever made them."
"Let me have a look," Bess said. Taking the nickel in her poor twisted hands, she brought it up close to her eyes. "The first little triangle could mean telling fortunes with cards."
"How could you know something like that?" George said, openly surprised.
"Annie McMonigle taught me a little one sunny afternoon."
George made a sound halfway between a cough and a grunt.
"What's the matter?" I said.
"George doesn't approve of Annie McMonigle," Bess said.
"It's not a question of approving or not approving," George said. "She owns a house."
"Hardly a house. Nothing but a shack. Not much more than a garden shed."
"Well, it's shelter. The fact is she has a little money from somewhere and no need to beg the way she does. No need to gather up all the junk she collects, stuffing it into that shack until she can't live in it and the city has to send the fire department in there once a year because she's turned it into a prime fire hazard. No need to sleep in people's basements or in doorways. I've come near to breaking my leg a dozen times this year alone stumbling over her curled up in the back doorway of my office, right there by Shultz's dumpster."
"The poor old thing picks through the vegetables he throws out."
"He's told me a hundred times that all she's got to do is ask and she can have all the ripe fruits and vegetables she wants to lug away."
"Well, she's too proud to ask, isn't she?"
I could understand being too proud to ask for a handout but not too proud to scavenge.
"Just who, may I ask, is Annie McMonigle?" I asked.
"One of Akron's oldest citizens," Bess said. "She was a child at the turn of the century and saw Halley's comet twice."
"She could be in her nineties," George agreed. "Pesky woman. Charges housewives for telling their fortunes."
"Harmless," Bess said.
"Well, I don't know. I've had complaints about things gone missing after Annie's been in the house."
"Pesky or not," I said, "maybe this old woman knows something that could be useful."
There was a knock at the door. Bess went to answer it.
"Annie," she said.
There was an old woman standing on the stoop. She was wearing layers of skirts, half a dozen blouses and sweaters, an old shawl with a man's felt hat over it jammed down almost to her ears, and fingerless gloves. Her feet slopped around in a run-over pair of men's brogues with the laces gone, tied onto her feet with bits of twine.
"Hey, George," I said. "Maybe there's something in this business about gypsies reading minds and telling fortunes."
"Hell, she's just doing her weekly rounds," George said.
Annie's clever eyes caught sight of George, who'd turned around to face the door, and then of me.
"Somebody's talking about me," she said.
TWENTY-TWO
Once George invited her in, he treated her with all the courtesy he gave to every other woman. We both half stood up, bent at the waist, until she'd taken a seat at the table.
Without asking, Bess served her a bowl of soup and a thick slice of bread slathered with butter and jam, then drew her chair up beside her.
"Do you mind?" Annie said, and before anyone could say did they or didn't they, she popped out her false teeth and put them into the pocket of her topmost sweater.
"These aren't my eatin' teeth," she lisped. "These are my sportin' teeth." She slurped up a few swallows of soup without even testing how hot it was, soaked a piece of bread, butter and jam to soften it up for her gums, popped it into her mouth, chewed, and smiled in sheer satisfaction. "How can I help you, General?"
"Don't call me General, Annie. You can call me Chief, Mr. McGilvray, or George, whichever suits you best, but stop turning me into a military man."
"You remind me of a soldier I knew in my youth," she said. "He was a general. Or maybe a colonel. Memory falters."
"Have you lived here in Akron a long time, Annie?" I said.
"Long enough."
Bessie put her hand over Annie's free hand, hers looking older than Annie's, twisted as it was with the arthritis, and said, "Annie introduced herself the first day George and I arrived in this house."
"Were you on the road much when you were young, Annie?" I said in a soft, friendly voice.
She looked at me as though she'd like to tell me that she knew the smell of butter, but for Bess's soup she'd put up with as much of it as I wanted to spread.
"From one end of the country to another before I was married."
"And when would that be?"
"Before your time."
"Was your family Romany? You don't look like Romany."
"How would you know what Romany look like?"
"Oh, I've seen gypsies in my time. Even knew one or two."
"Which is it?"
"Which is what?"
"Did you know one or two?"
"Well, I knew a whole family when I was a boy. Knew two brothers best. They were Manush."
"Vatsikanes? Piemontesi?" she asked.
I shook my head once, saying I didn't know what she meant.
"French circus gypsies?" she said. "Italian gypsies?"
"I don't know much about the different types. What sort of gypsy are you?"
"My people were Kalderash."
"But you didn't marry a gypsy?"
"No, I married a cowboy."
"You have any children?"
"Twelve." She'd been looking at me all this time, glancing at her plate only when she filled her spoon. Now I saw her eyes fill up with tears.
"All living?"
"All dead by now. I lived too long. There's nobody left to lay me outside to die, or wash my body, or put a gold coin in my coffin, or toast me by name at the grave."
"Oh, you know there'll be someone there—I'll be there—to do that for you, Annie," Bess said. "I don't know about laying you outside to die, though."
"Okay, you can forget that part. You can forget about the gold coin too. They come very dear nowadays."
"I'll make the toast if I'm around, Annie," I said.
"How can you do that? You don't even know my name."
"Why, it's Annie McMonigle isn't it?"
"That's just my nav gajinkano
name. The name I use with people who aren't gypsies. I have other names."
"What name's on your birth certificate?"
"My name isn't on any birth certificate. Not on any school record or census list, neither." That seemed to please her. "Some names might be on some old police records but they won't be my names either."
"You were arrested?"
"Oh, plenty."
"What for?"
"Telling fortunes. Stealing. Working the bujo. "
"What's that?"
"Switch-the-bag. See, people are sick or having bad luck. They come to me. I say, 'Have you been given a large sum of money lately?' 'Well, yes I have,' some people say, or, 'Not lately, but I've got some in the bank.' 'That's the trouble,' I say. 'That money's got a curse on it. Bring it to me and I'll take the curse off it.' They bring me the money, and right there in front of their eyes, I sew it into a piece of cloth. Then I get them to look elsewhere for a second. I do switch the bag and give them a package in the same cloth which has nothing but cut paper sewed up in it. I tell them to hold on to the package unopened for a week or ten days. Until I know I'm going to be out of town," she laughed. It was more like the cackle of a hen. "Then I tell them they can open it. That's the bujo."
"That sounds pretty slick."
"Not so slick. It brought the FBI down on us. They could make it a federal crime because the people doing it were crossing state lines." She made a whooshing noise through her nose that was meant to demonstrate her disgust at such lack of understanding.
"You think they should just let you go on stealing?"
"Taking from the gaje isn't stealing unless you act too greedy."
"Do you really believe that?"
"I'll tell you a story," she said after finishing the last bite and carefully wiping her mouth on the corner of the tablecloth. "Jesus was going to be crucified. A gypsy blacksmith was ordered by the Roman soldiers to make four nails, three for the hands and feet and one for the heart. The gypsy didn't want to make the nails but the soldiers whipped him until he did. When he delivered the nails, he swallowed one and told the soldiers he'd lost it. When God saw that he'd swallowed the nail meant for the heart of Jesus he said, 'Gypsy, you're free to go and travel anywhere and you can steal your food and take what you need to live.'
"That's why gypsies travel and why they steal."
"Do you still steal from the gaje?" McGilvray said.
"When I stopped traveling, I stopped stealing," Annie said, looking him hard in the eye, knowing damn well that George halfway believed the tales told about her stealing by forgetful or deceitful housewives.
"Did you ever pick pockets, Annie?" I asked.
"It's against my religion to tell you that," Annie said.
She was having fun teasing me.
"Did you ever work the trains picking pockets?"
"Oh, sure, I had my wortacha."
"Wortacha?"
"Partners."
"Have some more soup, Annie?" Bess said.
McGilvray looked daggers at Annie and then at her plate. Not that he begrudged her the food, he wasn't like that at all. It was just I could hear his mind working, telling himself that Annie was like a stray cat. You start feeding one, and first thing you know, you've got a cat whether you want one or not. He could see it. Pretty soon she'd be coming regularly for supper, then for lunch, and before they knew, what'd happened, she'd be sleeping in the woodshed summers and in the furnace room winters. Maybe even in the guest room.
"I've had a sufficiency, thank you," Annie said, and popped her teeth back into her mouth.
"I can't stand sleeping in the same place every night," Annie said as though she'd read George's mind too. "Even now when I've grown too old for the road." Her speech was clear and lilting, her voice much younger than her face and body.
George handed her the nickel. "Do these marks mean anything to you?"
She scarcely glanced at it.
"It's a gypsy will," she said. "Part of one, at least."
"How do you make that out?" I said.
She gave it a closer look.
"This first mark means fortune because this last triangle with the line through the top means that a master died."
"Master?"
"The chief of a tribe. The leader of a band. Or maybe just the head of a family. The father. The master."
"What about the two lines between the triangles?" Bess asked.
"That could mean a lot of things. Two of anything. Like two horses. Or it could mean that two people are meant to share the fortune—or whatever—half and half. Or it could mean that whoever was given this coin was being told to take second place to another who was the first heir of the chief who died."
She wiped her mouth on her sleeve with a motion that was almost delicate.
"I don't think it's horses," she added. "That was in the old days. Gypsies don't have much to do with horses anymore, especially not here in America. They travel in trucks. They use the trains and planes. The old ways die. You'd like all gypsies to be sedentary gypsies."
"Are you a sedentary gypsy?" I asked.
She stared at me with old, watery eyes that were wiser than any creature's I'd ever seen except maybe for a tortoise I'd known once long ago.
"I'm an excluded gypsy," she said. "When I married outside the tribe, my family wouldn't have me anymore."
"How old are you, Annie?" I asked.
She grinned, showing her white false teeth.
"Old enough to chew hay," she said.
I didn't know what else to say. After a couple of minutes Annie got the idea she was no longer wanted and asked to be excused. Bess told her to come with her first because she had a warm sweater she wanted to give her.
When they'd left us alone in the kitchen, McGilvray said, "That old woman's probably got thirty sweaters. Now that it's blowing cold and winter's coming on, she'll get thirty more."
"I suppose it makes Bess feel good."
"I suppose."
When Bess and Annie came back into the kitchen, the old woman had a bundle of old clothes in her arms. She shuffled to the door, stopped, and with the air of somebody who was doing a great, though reluctant, service for the authorities, turned to George and said, "On the other hand those marks could just be somebody's calling card."
Then she went out into the cold.
Bess was grinning when she came back to the table.
"Well, now you know more than you did before Annie came to supper."
"But what we know doesn't seem to be doing us a hell of a lot of good," George said.
"Gypsies and spies," I said.
"What's that?"
"Gypsies and spies are a little too exotic for my taste."
"If we've got to have killings, and I had my druthers, I'd like it better if it was two drunks going at it in a fight over a barmaid," George said. "But it seems to me, we haven't got any choice in the matter. Read the papers. This country's got as many spies running around as ticks on a hound dog's belly. Gypsies too."
"Oh, I know gypsies," I said. "I see them on the trains and nab them working their games in the stations. Know about them passing through towns, oiling down houses, claiming it'll preserve the shingles. Read about them flying here and there in groups, stealing radios out of cars, and busting into parking meters."
"So," George said, "if it turns out it's spies and gypsies we got, we'll just have to accept the fact that they're the nuts that fell off the tree."
"What bothers me most is that we've got both these unusual, out-of-the-ordinary, types involved in the same case of death by misadventure. I wouldn't mind so much one or the other, but both is . . ." I groped around for a word.
"Too much of a muchness," Bess said.
"Too much of a muchness," I said, nodding. "Well, I guess we'll just have to learn some more about them so they won't seem so peculiar."
I had a brief picture of Harriet and her drawing of the merging woman and beast. That reminded me about trains passing in the night, one go
ing east and the other west. I took the timetable out of my pocket.
"Have a look at this," I said.
George moved his chair over a little and so did I. Bess got herself in the middle so she could see as I put the timetable down between us.
I put the tip of my finger on McCook, Nebraska.
"There it is."
"There's what?" they both said.
"The only place the woman could have got off the train going east and then got on the train going west."
"Both trains pull into Holdrege within twenty-five minutes of each other," George said.
"But the train going east pulls in later than the one going west. The train with the man on it would have been on its way before the one with the woman on it arrived at Holdrege. McCook's the only place that makes sense. See, right here? Eastbound arrives at one fifty-three A.M. Westbound pulls in two hours later!"
"How big is McCook?" Bess asked.
"It's a town of about seven, eight thousand."
"Anything around there?" George asked.
"Prairie."
"Military installations? Missile silos?"
"There's the SAC base at Omaha," I said.
"That's better than two hundred fifty miles from McCook," George said. "If it was two spies meeting, why didn't one just go to where the other was? Chicago, maybe. Or Denver. Instead of all this fancy dipsy-doo train hopping in the middle of Nebraska?"
We were all quiet for a while, staring at the timetable as though we could scare it into giving up some secret. Finally, I folded it up and put it back in my pocket.
"You want me to take that girl's other half to Denver?"
"Are you going back there again? You're like a Ping-Pong ball."
"I'm going to McCook first. Then I'm coming back so I can stop at Fort Morgan before I drop the body in Denver. I'd like to find out if anybody remembers seeing that young woman on any station platform, or getting on or off any train between Denver and McCook."
"You want to go down to the station now and look over what we found?" George said.
"If I've got to, I guess I've got to."
TWENTY-THREE
Looking at the young woman's face was a lot worse than looking at the face of the middle-aged man with the gold foil teeth. She'd fallen down the mountain into the gorge and been battered against the rocks as the white water tumbled her along.