by L. L. Enger
“Television, so far. Billy was proud, but he teased
me ruthlessly about it. Contributing to the national anasthetic.” She swallowed and put down the bottle and her guard was up again. “I’ve written enough stories so that I know why you’re back. You’re the faithful pal. You’re still worried sick about this Moses who found my brother because there’s bad talk going around, and you’re hoping I’ve stumbled on something that’ll prove your buddy innocent.”
“Have your’
She took her feet off the rail and leaned toward him. “Don’t you think I want to know who did it? Ill tell you something. I was in West Palm this morning talking to the cops. You want my guess? If it wasn’t for the word of some sad woman, I think they’d be crawling all over your friend Moses. Because it makes sense. My brother’s reopening an old case. What if he digs in the right spot and finds out Moses killed that, that—”
“Ferdie.”
“Ferdie—God, you ballplayers and your names— what if Moses did kill him? What’s he going to do, sit around until the story comes out? Hold out his hands for the cuffs? The only thing on your friend’s side is that Treasure woman.” She stood up exhausted. “You guys, even your women have ungodly names.”
Gun let that go by. It was time to tell her. “There’s been a new development.”
She didn’t answer.
“Your brother interviewed someone else for the story. Harold Ibbins, he played for the Twins, like Moses. I went to his place this morning, and he was dead.”
She turned to him.
“And his wife, Mary. Dead, too. Harold and Mary. Nice normal names.”
She said “Who—” but telling her had made him angry and he cut her off.
“They did it very unkindly, Diane, though I’d
rather not go over it if you don’t mind. And no, I don’t know who, but I know it wasn’t Moses Gates. We were up late last night, talking, and I didn’t see him go off and kill anybody.”
Her dark skin trembled slightly beneath her eyes. Her fingers went white around the neck of the brown bottle.
“I don’t understand it,” he said more gently. “But it has to do with Billy’s story. It’s more than just Moses now—I think anyone connected with that story’s in trouble. What Harold told him, I don’t know. Not even his editor knows. Billy was too good, no one kept tabs on him.”
She sat down again and leaned her head back, closed her eyes.
“You were closer to him than anyone,” he said. “Help me put this all together.”
“I can’t read his mind,” she said, and got up and went below and came up with two more bottles of Billy’s Mexican beer.
18
“He called me Diamond all the time,” she said.
The sun had gotten to where it was doing more than necessary and driven them below deck to shade and a small breeze in and out of the portholes. They had the table up. It was covered with news clippings, wire-bound notebooks, and Mexican empties.
Gun thought the name fit, but didn’t say so.
“It was from a game I made up when we were
kids,” she said. “I was about seven, he would have been four. I don’t remember the rules except that to win, you had to draw the Queen of Diamonds. We’d play it evenings. He never quit calling me Diamond. Then later he turned it into another game. I’d get home from college, and he would have tucked a Queen of Diamond card into my sock drawer, somewhere I’d be sure to see it, and that meant he’d hidden a present for me.”
The notebooks were Billy’s, full of names and interviews and story scribbles. Diane had found them in a neat stack in a storage compartment and carried them out in triumph, but nothing came of it. They were full of the wrong stories, the aging athletes, the lonely runners.
“His Kuralt side,” Diane said. She said it quietly, leaning close over the pages. “More of the lost.”
They went through the notebooks anyway, slowly, Diane’s eyes never leaving her brother’s quick script. When they were done it was getting dim and cooler in the cabin. She looked up at Gun and he saw the raw grief in her eyes and lips.
“Diamond,” she said.
For an instant he forced himself to wonder what Billy Apple had done with the notes for his other stories, the ones that might be worth killing for. Then he saw her again and tilted her face up and kissed her, and stood and went on deck.
It was a while before she followed him. With the day ending she’d put on a white cotton cardigan and sandals. She approached him with the last of the sun hitting her hair and burning it red.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I should go.”
“Not yet.” At last there was the trace of something full and sound again in the way she spoke. Her eyes came up and there were laugh lines at the corners. “It was a long day. Stay and eat.”
There was almost nothing in the little galley fridge; a loaf of stiff bread, an orange, a few somber Mexicans left.
“I’ll get some food,” Gun said.
She smiled, opened a drawer in the galley, and lifted out a set of keys on a ring. “Take the Lincoln. Tall man like you.”
He stepped off the boat A new breeze was taking the last of the heat off the marina. She was standing in the cockpit leaning with her back against the wheel.
“Remember the wine,” she said.
He thought he could do that.
Cliffert’s Greens-N-Goodies was open twenty-four hours for the benefit of Indiantowners venturing out after sunset. Gun parked the Lincoln at the side of the low wood building and went in.
Cliffert’s was lit by a few huge racks of fluorescent bulbs that hummed and burned Gun’s eyes. The walls were bare and whitewashed but going gray. Hank Williams, Jr., sang from a back room, still surviving. Dust lay in mouse-size heaps upon the shelves. He walked the aisles, squinting. How long did a box of Lucky Charms have to sit to accrue such dust? He stopped finally in front of a crusty aquarium full of green water and lobsters squatting on the bottom.
Okay.
The guy at the counter looked Semmole, with black hair ponytailed and a straw cowboy hat with the sides bent up in a redneck curl. He rang up the lobsters and some spices and cheese and bread and the first bottle of wine Gun had bought in a decade. The Seminole looked at the lobsters with feeling.
“I gotta boy,” he said. “I take these little suckers home sometimes, enda my shift. They’re good pets, he says.”
Coming out of Cliffert’s his eyes were so stunned by the darkness that he had to grope for the Lincoln. He opened the door and swung in, holding the bag on his lap.
There was a new smell in the car.
And then a small hup of fear and someone who’d been sitting in the passenger seat of the Lincoln shoved the door open and made a run for it.
Only Gun had him by the wrist.
Lord, he wished he could see him.
19
The boy’s name was Clarence Coldspring and he had a voice like a bad fan belt, a spooked squeal. He said he’d just been on his way to the marina when he saw Billy Apple’s Lincoln sitting in the shadows.
“Who the hell’re you, man? This Billy’s car, you ain’t foolin’ nobody.”
The dome light showed a slight Indian boy of perhaps seventeen. He had a thin black border of whiskers on his lip, a dozen more curling on his chin, and smooth concave cheeks. His chest looked concave, too. Right for the voice.
“I’m a friend of Billy’s,” Gun said. “I guess.”
The hesitation gave Clarence confidence. He sat up straighter and rolled his head around on his shoulders, loosening up like Canseco.
“Well be the judge of that. How about if you let go my hand now?”
Gun let go.
“So Billy knows you, man? Maybe we better drive out to the boat right now, you and me. See how well he knows you. See if he knows you well enough you’re to be handlin’ his Lincoln.”
Gun thought: Such news I have for you.
“Well, start her
up. I got to see Billy anyhow. He needs me, man.” The kid rolling his head around.
“Billy’s dead, Clarence. Murdered.”
The head stopped cold and Clarence twisted in the seat. “Shittin’ me, man. Better be.”
“Sorry.”
Clarence slumped back and said “Aaawww,” and Gun saw his left hand steal into the pocket of his jeans toward a long thin lump.
“Leave it mere,” Gun said.
“What!”
“You don’t need it. I didn’t kill him.” He had a thought and it felt like his first good one in a while. “You think you might know who did?”
Clarence Coldspring eyed him for the first time without apparent cockiness or fear, “You northern.”
“Minnesota.”
“Friend of Billy’s.”
“In a way.”
When Clarence said, “You damn right I know who killed him,” his fan-belt voice was a notch quieter, and Gun nodded and lifted the sack from Cliffert’s.
“Back to the boat,” he said. “It’s lobster.”
“Billy was on our side, man,” Clarence said. They were sitting in the shadowy cabin of the Long Napper while the lobsters danced in the galley pot. “These last months, I was workin’ with him. He knew all my family. He came out to the farm. And old Leavitt musta saw him once, and that’s how come I know who killed him.”
“Wait,” said Diane. She had a Bic pen and one of
her brother’s old notebooks opened to a blank page. “Back up. We know none of this.”
“He was white but he didn’t think white,” Clarence went on. “Listen. Me and my family, we’re out on the Leavitt place, a ways east. Fix the machines, make sileage. Used to do the cows. Milk ‘em. Round ’em up, move ’em out, rawhide, you know? We’re about thirty of us now, with the uncles and cousins.”
“You live right there?” Gun asked. “On the farm?”
“Two-thousand acres,” Clarence said. “There’s a little buncha houses the old grandfathers put up, on a back patch. We live there. Wait, though: a couple years ago, old Leavitt’s like all the other dairy guys in the world, they’re making too much milk. And here comes the government to buy it all up. Leavitt, shit, he don’t need no more farmin’, so he sells the herd. To the feds, man. Every damn cow. Does this without so much as whispering to a Coldspring what he’s thinkin’ about. So one day here come the men with the trucks, and we’re standin’ next to the big barn there. And they start loadin’ the cows! I’m just a little kid and I say to my old man, ‘Rustlers!’ and I’m goin’ after my rifle. But the old man, he grabs me and shakes me good. ‘Government men,’ he says.”
Diane said, “My brother knew you all that time ago?”
“Naw. I’m just a little shit at the time. We thought we’d move on, you know? After the cows went. Pick up and find another farm. Only we couldn’t. You know how many of these bigshot dairy men sold off?”
“A bunch,” said Gun.
“We looked, man. But everywhere was just empty pastures, and the ones that kept their cows, they had workers all over ’em like ticks. Good luck.”
“So how’d you stay on with Leavitt, with no work?”
Clarence shrugged, a gesture that made his shoulders fold forward until his chest seemed to collapse. “You just stay. We were holed up pretty good, and then one day old Marse Leavitt comes out in his El Dorado. He’s smiling like he’s half-cocked and he tells the old man, All right, it’s hard times. Stay on, do the odd jobs, I’ll cut back on the rent until you get some real work.”
“And you’re still looking,” said Diane.
“Us? Hell no,” Clarence said. He had that squeal again, it set Gun’s teeth at odds. “We haven’t looked no more since. You want to hear about Billy, right?”
The kid could tell a story. Gun had almost forgotten.
“There’s a couple things happened to us, it’s years ago now. First one I guess was old Cleo Coldspring, great-uncle of mine. Cleo would wander sometimes, take a few bottles and maybe a week and come back folia stink, all sorry. I wasn’t even born yet, and one time Cleo leaves and nobody sees him anymore. They kept thinkin’ he’d show up. Then maybe ten years ago, I can remember this one, my cousin Loola puts up a tarp, she’s gonna camp out, and next morning she’s nowhere. Never came back, neither. So. Coupla years ago, pretty soon after the cows went, everybody’s sleepin’ away in the night, except me cause I got a Big Mac and the special sauce was bad, and I swear I’m hearin’ horses. Leavitt’s got horses, and somebody’s slow ridin’, thunka thunka thunka, and I’m thinkin’ what’s the old prick coming for in the night? And then all of a sudden Leavitt, whoever, lets loose with a shotgun. Jump? Man, I was in the air. And a big hole opens up in the middle of the front door, he hadda be close, and he rides right down the row and four more of our places get it. Boom boom boom boom. You wanna soil your jammies, man, that’ll do it.”
Clarence was grinning, enjoying the telling. Diane hadn’t taken a note. She said, “Why would Leavitt do it? He’s your landlord, right?”
“Aaahh.” Clarence waved a hand in the air. “You think he let us stay to be nice? He hates Indians, man. We’re like his hobby. Hey. Some guys got their bass-fishin’, some take their dogs, go out after ‘coons at night. Leavitt’s got Indians, is how I figure.”
“Didn’t you say anything? Report it?”
Clarence lowered his voice and leaned toward her. “Man, don’t you know what lives down here? It’s the beast, man, the white beast. It’s got big ears. You can whisper, but it hears you.” He sat back. “Now here’s how I come to know Billy. This shotgun thing has happened more times since—couple times a year, no shit. Always when we’re asleep, nobody gets hit but it plows you outa bed in a hurry. Last time was four, five months ago. There had to be half a dozen guys that time, Leavitt’s got friends, they musta parked on the highway and come through the bog, ‘cause after the shootin’ one of our dogs, Early, took out after ‘em. Early’s got a hell of a nose. Next morning I’m up and looking at the new holes in the siding—it’s that cheap fiberboard, man, old tightass—and Early trots up to me. She’s all thrilled to be alive because of this new toy she’s found, looks like an old rat carcass to me but I take a better look and you know what it is? It’s somebody’s braid. A braid of hair and it’s all fulla dirt and junk and there’s something on the thick end of it, looks like skin.”
Diane’s throat made a dry noise and Gun thought: This kid is used to bad news.
“I took it to the old man and he starts to cry because it’s Cleo’s braid, he’s sure of it, and we set off with Early. She was sure proud. Took us straight out to the bog and that’s where Cleo was, buried shallow in the muck. First time I ever saw my great-uncle and he was a skeleton. And we poked around some more, and you know? Cousin Loola wasn’t ten feet from him. So I guess they didn’t just wander off and get lost.” Clarence stood, rolled his head on his shoulders. “So that’s a long one, hey? Mind if I wash it down with somethin’?”
Gun went to the galley. The lobsters were overdone and he turned the heat off. He wasn’t hungry. He brought back a Mexican for Clarence Coldspring.
Diane said, “Billy.”
“Yeah. We buried old Cleo and Loola right, in nice deep holes, dry ground. Maybe two, three weeks go by, and it does nothin’ but ram. Then one day this big ol’ Lincoln comes wallowin’ in and stops in the muck in front of our place.” Clarence shrugged. “It was Billy. First any of us ever saw of him. And he gets outa the car and looks around a little nervous and makes friends with Early. And then he comes in and drinks about three pots of the old man’s coffee and asks us a hundred questions about Leavitt. We bit it off, man.”
Clarence opened the bottle and took three long swallows that made swishing sounds in the quiet. Gun waited until he lowered the beer and said, “You think Leavitt killed Billy?”
“Leavitt and his friends?” Clarence said, grinning again. “What I know, Billy was on our side. And he was gonna show their asses t
o the world.”
20
Next day, driving back from the grocery store— midmorning and the air heating up fast—Gun sang along with the radio, adding his own chesty bass to the nasally velvet of Randy Travis. The guy made it sound so easy. Gun couln’t help feeling a little twist of jealousy. Singer, surgeon, writer, almost anything, he
told himself and right now—at this point in life— he’d be peaking. Instead, he was ten years past retirement. You couldn’t really blame the poor guys down here in the Senior League for trying to make it all happen again.
In his motel room he unpacked his sack of breakfast makings and lit both burners of the stove, one for eggs and one for pancakes, which weren’t part of his routine but it wasn’t every morning you found coconut syrup on the grocery shelf. And Krustees pancake mix in Florida? It might just turn out to be a good day. He’d even gotten enough sleep for once.
He drank coffee standing at the stove and did his eggs bright side up spooning grease over the top until the yokes glazed. He mixed the pancake batter heavy on the powder and let them swell up nice and fat on the griddle, eight-inch rounds, and golden. Then he sat down at the small wooden table painted forest green and allowed himself the pleasure of eating slowly. The syrup was remarkably good, sweet with just the right sting and pucker, and it brought Gun a headful of memories. Last time he’d eaten it, his wife was still alive.
They’d flown to Honolulu for their tenth anniversary, and Mazy, seven, had stayed behind with Amanda’s mother. For a week they had played in the ocean, gone to bed early, and risen long before the beach crowd for walks along the sand toward Diamond Head. They’d been happy then, unprepared for anything less than happiness, and now, going to that time in his thoughts was difficult but necessary. He felt he owed it to her, owed it the part of himself that demanded full payment for what he had allowed to happen between them. And to her. The wrong, of course, was unrightable. Full payment was not something he could provide.
After breakfast, Gun turned to the newspaper he’d picked up at the Winn-Dixie and found the sports page. The name jumped out right away. Neil Faust. The columnist for the Minneapolis City Beat had gone syndicated a few years ago, and here he was. Use Microscope on Gates, the headline said. Gun read quickly, not surprised by the strident tone.