by L. L. Enger
“I don’t know what I’d do,” Gun said.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
Gun wasn’t sure what he believed, but he did know what he wanted to believe and for now that had to be good enough. That’s why tonight he was driving west toward a place called Indiantown. He’d just learned from Moses that Billy Apple had spent some time there and had spoken the name in passing once in a while. What Moses figured was that Billy must have had a girl out there. “Drive through it sometime and then try thinking of any other reason Billy would hang around a place like that,” he’d said.
Now Gun saw what he meant. There wasn’t much here. A pair of gas stations, one with a general store attached (the sign read burt’s smile and trot), three bars with parking lots full of battered pickups, and out west of town a retirement community, indiantown retirement acres, according to the big sign on the highway. Gun turned in and made a swing through it. Saw nothing but double-wides—acres of them, true to billing—set down in geometric patterns that approximated the layout of city blocks. Nicely cut lawns, though small. Picket fences. Buicks and Oldsmobiles parked beneath carports. An occasional RV on the street. Some very nice flower beds. Modest middle-class lives.
Gun left the trailer park and drove back into town and pulled into Burt’s. Inside he bought a bottle of soda from a large cooler full of ice and, paying for it, asked the woman at the counter if she’d ever heard of a guy named Billy Apple.
“He from here?” she asked.
“West Palm Beach.” Gun took a photo of Billy from his wallet and showed it to her. She ran a tongue across the surface of her bright teeth, turned and shouted into the back of the store.
“Bobby! We got a cop in here.”
“I’m not a cop,” said Gun.
The woman stared up at him as if trying to read his face. Her complexion was the color of white soap, and she dragged her fingertips down across one cheek, leaving pink tracks. Finally she said, “You’re actin’ like one. Who’s he supposed to be?” She nodded at the picture.
“Friend of a friend. He spent a lot of time around here. ‘You should have seen him.” Gun looked beyond her at the man entering through a door that apparently led to living quarters. He left the door ajar, and the blue flickering of a television played against it. Gun heard a child laugh.
“Says he ain’t a cop,” said the woman.
“That’s right, he ain’t. He’s a ball player, or used to be.” The man took the photograph from Gun’s hand and brought it close to his face. He was slight and dark and wore a sleeveless jersey that said Dallas Cowgirls. Instead of a drawstring around the top of his gray sweatpants, he’d cinched a narrow, beaded belt, the kind you could find in a dime store for a few bucks. He hadn’t shaved for a few days and his eyes, as he looked up at Gun, were brown and crisp, intelligent. “Yeah, I seen him before, a few times. Came in to buy bread, beer, staples. He likes to talk boats, always buys this here little booklet.” He snapped his finger on the stack of Boat Trader magazines next to the cash register. “He told me he was buying that there ship of Donald Trump’s, what’s the name?”
“The Trump Princess,” Gun offered.
“That one. Real bullshitter.”
“Does he have a place here? Any friends you know of? A business?”
“Always alone, pays in cash. Never asks for credit.” The man shrugged. From the back, a child’s voice called out: “Dad, you’re missing the best part. Hurry up.” Then the television flashed and the music jumped and the child screamed with laughter.
“Anything else you can tell me?”
The woman shook her head and put her hand against her chest. “Wasn’t in here that much, Enos. You know that.”
The man shook a cigarette from a pack he took from the waist of his pants, then looked up at the ceiling, his face compressing with sudden concentration. “I might remember more if you gave me a good reason to,” Enos said.
“All right.” Gun reached for his wallet.
“No.” The man’s black eyebrows shot together like a pair of magnets above the bridge of his nose. “I said a reason.”
Gun found himself looking at his own hand and wishing he weren’t so tall, or the other guy so short.
“I’m an honorable man, Mr. Pedersen. I don’t want nothing from you. Just to know why you’re here.”
“I’m sorry.” Gun returned the photograph to his breast pocket and looked from Enos to the woman, then around the store, which was empty except for the three of them. “You didn’t see the papers, I guess,” he said. “The man we’re talking about is dead. He was murdered. Someone hanged him.”
“Oh.” Enos closed his eyes and his lips moved without making any sound for a few seconds. “That shouldn’t have happened to him,” he said. “Should it? That’s no good.”
“That’s shitty,” said the woman. “It’s a shitty place. God help him.”
“Dad!” the kid called out from the back room. “You coming?”
“And you think you can find the one that did it? I don’t think so. That’s not how it works,” said Enos. The features of his face seemed to harden and his eyes left Gun’s and went to the cash register, which he rung open, slammed shut, and opened again.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. I don’t mean nothing.”
“Danny wants you to watch that video show with him,” said the woman, moving out from behind the counter. She walked down the aisle between the cookies and soda, adjusting the arrangement of her shelves.
“You said you needed a reason, and I gave it to you. What’s the matter?”
“The matter? The matter is he got killed,” said Enos. “That’s plenty. I’m going back to watch TV with my boy Danny.”
“Just tell me what Billy was doing here, that’s all. Please do that.”
Enos hesitated, one hand on the stack of Boat Trader magazines, his eyes on the flickering rear door. “Did you see a billboard coming into town that’s got a big white yacht on it? Spotlights aimed at it from the ground?”
“Don’t remember it,” said Gun.
“Just past the little church over there on the east side.” Enos lifted his hands and made an appeal with his eyes that said, That’s ail you get. Then he turned and walked back toward the door. “Coming, Danny.” Gun drove east to the outskirts of town until he came to the billboard where he did a quick turnaround. The sign advertised maxie’s marina, left on IRVING AND HALF A MILE SOUTH ON THE INLAND CANAL. WE give you the world. He followed the directions and parked in the asphalt lot next to a white Lincoln Continental, late seventies model. The marina was small, a single U-shaped dock about the size of a baseball diamond. Most of the slips were filled, but only one boat still had its lights on. Gun checked his watch. It was just past eleven.
The boat was about thirty feet long, with varnished teak rails and a white curving hull that formed a right angle with its own reflection in the dark water. Gun stepped aboard and called softly toward the galley.
“Anybody home?” He stepped down and knocked on the small door.
“Yes, come in.” A woman’s voice, sharp.
“Excuse me.” Gun pushed open the door and bent to show his face. He smiled, trying to look smaller than he was. Not easy here. He couldn’t see her at first.
“What do you want?” she asked, and he looked toward the voice. She was back in the corner, her bare feet up on a small table, and Gun’s eyes told him here was a woman worth a much longer look than he could politely give in this situation.
“I’m looking for Billy Apple’s boat.”
“This is it. Billy’s dead.” The borders of her face were all angles, but there was softness within. She had auburn hair in a braid that fell down in front of one shoulder, and her eyes, Gun saw in the muttering light of a Coleman lantern, were someplace else. On the lift-up galley table in front of her was a six-inch stack of By-Line clippings. Billy’s columns. She crossed her arms on her chest as he stooped under the low ceiling and did not invite
him to sit. In the dim mahogany cabin and enclosing incense of kerosene he felt he had intruded upon worship.
Then her dark eyes placed him and settled into understanding. “Gun Pedersen.” A faint smile. “You’re looking for my brother. If you’re Billy’s latest crusade, then you’re almost as unlucky as he was.”
“I’m sorry. I know about Billy.”
“And knowing about him, here you are on his boat. I’ve got to tell you, that makes you look real good, slugger.” She said it calm and bitter as a poisoned lake and Gun thought, Sweet Heaven she’s quick. And she was lovely, too. The things you noticed at the wrong times: pretty fisherman’s sweater showing such pretti-ness beneath, no makeup on her and none needed, all this mahogany glow from the lantern.
He said, “I’d like to sit down,” and she stretched a stockinged toe beneath the table and shoved out a canvas camp stool and he sat.
“If I’d known you were here—” he began.
“You’d have stayed off the boat. How courteous. What do you want?”
He found now that he didn’t want to tell her. Linda drifted into his head with her sour breath and tight pants and her pathetic lie for Moses. Moses’s own lie, even to Gun, that he’d been with her that night. The deceit boiled in his stomach. He wanted to step out of it all, say good-bye right now and fly north to his lake.
He told her anyway: about Moses Gates, who was no one to her except the man who found her brother, about Billy’s interest in Moses, and how there were people now saying Moses killed him, though it wasn’t true.
“Why couldn’t it be true?” Diane said vengefully. “Because he’s your great buddy?”
That landed in the solar plexus and took a while to absorb. “Moses was your brother’s friend,” he said finally. It came out lame and to crutch it up he added, “He was with somebody when it happened.” Thinking as he said it, All this for a friend who lies.
She believed him though, or perhaps not, but released him for the moment and picked up the top inch of newspaper clippings.
“You ever read my brother’s stuff?”
“No.”
“For a writer he was damned shy about it. I wanted to subscribe to his paper but he wouldn’t have it, told me he’d be self-conscious. Every couple of months I’d get one of those brown envelopes from him with clippings, the ones he wanted me to read.” A smile surfaced briefly and Diane pushed it under. “I’m older by three years but he was protective. Always. All those years he’s down here writing away and I’m up in Boston thinking he’s Charles Kuralt, doing sweet stories about ninety-year-old canoe racers and old guys getting through spring training just one more year.”
“You didn’t know about the other stories.”
She snorted, waving clippings. “I heard, once or twice. On the big ones, people I knew saying, ‘Hey, that brother of yours, Carl Bernstein.’ So I’d call up and say, ‘Congratulations—why didn’t you tell me?’ And always it was, ‘Geez, Diamond, I just lucked into it.’ I didn’t know he was on a steady diet of that stuff. My God, soccer players eating dope.”
She quit talking and sifted through newsprint. The Coleman lantern murmured quietly and dimmed suddenly like a bulb on a stormy night, then flared back. She held up a clipping, three columns of print surrounding a photo.
“I remember him sending me this one,” she said. “A couple of years ago. It’s about this girl and she’s from some kind of home for wayward kids. She gets regular grades at school, no dummy but no standout. She’s a girl who never got noticed by her parents or anybody else. And then it turns out she can run. Marathons. It’s a total shock because one day she just decides to be a runner and in a year she’s beating everybody and she’s the pride of the school. The track coach is salivating.” The smile surfaced again, looked around warily, stayed. Gun reached for the clipping and saw the picture of the girl standing hopeful and slight in running silks, brown hair chopped at the shoulders and a few strands ghosting across her face.
“Billy loved doing that story. He said she reminded him of me.” She looked carefully at Gun. “After our parents divorced, Billy was always trying to make sure I felt appreciated. He really was too wise to be a little brother.”
“You were a fortunate big sister.”
The lantern flared again, gasping the last kerosene. Diane said, almost reluctantly, “You never did tell me why you came.”
“I told you about Moses. That whole story.”
“It doesn’t explain why you came. What did you think you were going to find here?”
She waited, sitting forward now, the lantern throwing frantic shadows.
Gun said, “Nobody found any of your brother’s notes from the story he was doing on Moses. We don’t know what he learned, or who knew he’d learned it. When I found out about the boat, I thought I’d look here.”
Her smile dove for cover then and she stood up taller than he would’ve guessed, her braid swinging, and spoke with heat. “You think this Moses Gates story is the reason someone killed him.”
“Might be.”
“But Moses is your friend, so you come here wanting to absolve him!” Suddenly livid as the darkness came.
“I thought if I could take a look—” but he was
talking to himself, she wasn’t hearing any more but was going up the four steps out of the cabin and all he could do was follow.
The bright barbed moon had come up quickly and swung like an omen over the mast. Sky almost bitter clear but a low ground mist bringing chill over the marina. Strange night.
“You have to go,” she said to him.
He saw her sadness and the moon on her skin and did not want to.
But she said, “Billy did enough for the lost when he was living,” and he had no trouble going after that.
15
If you were an old ballplayer, Moses had told Gun—good or bad, if you’d ever made the big leagues—the folks down at the Dugout treated you right. Walk in, sit, they set down a beer. Sometimes you had to pay.
There were no windows in the place, though, and you also had to listen to old ballplayers.
“You laugh,” Eddie Viken was saying, “but I don’t get many better offers.” He held up a clear brown plastic bottle. “They phoned me up, said they’d give me a free grandfather clock if I bought a three-month supply of vitamins. Okay. I buy the stuff and they say, Mr. Viken, sir, could you use some extra income?”
“Hell yes,” said a big grinning Cuban.
Eddie nodded. “So they say, Mr. Viken, we’d like to make you a distributor. All you got to do is have two vitamin parties a month, introduce us to your neigh-
borhood, you keep twenty percent of everything you sell.”
“Ah, generous bahstads,” said the Cuban. He was Thick Fingers Garza and he’d been a rookie when Gun retired. Up-and-down career, Gun remembered. Especially down.
“And you jumped at it.” Rott Wetter had the far end of the table along with Harold Ibbins. Disappearing Harold, Gun thought, this time we’ll talk.
“Damn right,” said Eddie Viken. “They sent a guy out to see me. Big, soft, fat, never worked a goddamn day. He had a red suit jacket with real gold buttons. He had a Ferrari.”
“Oooh,” said Rott.
Thick Fingers showed enormous teeth.
Toby Juling said, “You take these vitamins of yours, Eddier
“Absolutely.”
“They gonna get you back to the bigs, ah?” said Thick Fingers Garza. The table hooted and Gun smiled; Eddie Viken had been up for parts of three seasons, pitching middle relief. Gun had faced him a handful of times. It had always been fun.
“You pricks can laugh, you had big contracts. I didn’t make shit playing ball.”
Rott said, “Worth every nickel,” and there was more hooting, and Eddie shut his mouth at last, fleeing to the silent place of the abused.
“Gun,” Toby Juling said, “Moses says you’re not here to join up.” Toby had almost twenty years of third base behind him in the Nat
ional League and now did it for Moses’s team, the Patriarchs.
“Just visiting.”
“I guess you used your money right,” Toby said.
“Where I live, you don’t need a lot of it”
Toby rubbed his beard. It was trimmed close, brown going white. “So tell me what you think of us, Gun. A bunch of old men, back to playing for sandlot crowds, sandlot money. You think we weren’t smart enough to quit?”
Earlier that afternoon Gun had stood in the third-base dugout and watched Toby play the corner. The legs were supposed to go before anything else and Gun knew Toby’s were going, all that stretching and limping between innings, but when Toby stepped over the chalk he was back in the National League. He felt of the dirt, leaned in, hurt like hell, and made the plays.
It was quiet around the table.
“The way you play it,” Gun said, “it’s still a pretty game.”
The barman arrived and set down another round.
Toby said, “Way I saw you hit old Hector the other day, you’re still taking a few swings yourself. You sure you didn’t come to suit up?”
“Gun’s down here playing Sam Spade.” Rott grinned. “On account of the Hangman, here, hey Moze?”
“The hell.” Moses protested but he had on a smile.
Across the table Gun saw Harold Ibbins’s eyes go cold.
“That reporter, ay,” said Thick Fingers, a needle of ivory showing behind his lips, “it’s too damn ahhh-bvious. You hang one mahn, Moze Gates, you got to find another way the next time.”
“Where I walk, bullshit follows,” Moses said. He said it in a big voice and in it Gun recognized the gee-whiz inflection of the modest aunt who’s won the pie contest And he realized for the first time that in the right company, Moses liked being the Hangman. Out in the light, it was scandal and trouble; down here in the Dugout it was attention, and the owner sent you a beer.
“You talk like that, you might be next,” Moses was saying to Thick Fingers Garza. “Man’s a killer,” Rott said. Next to him Harold was staring dark-faced into his glass. He hadn’t put in a word since Gun and Moses stepped into the bar and he was leaning slightly away from Rott as if from a backed-up toilet. Harold and Rott had some history, Gun remembered; roommates on the Twins for a while before some clubhouse nastiness happened and set them apart. He’d have to ask Moses about it.