“Zedda,” she said.
“What’s his last name?”
She shrugged. “He’s just Zedda.”
“Were he and Billy friends?”
She nodded. “Till lately. They were in the war, I think.”
“Is that where they met? Vietnam?”
“I guess so.”
“Does Zedda live here?”
“Him and some others.”
“What does WILD do, exactly?”
“Protects the environment.”
The grandeur of her statement was ridiculously undermined by the decay of the sad little house on the other side of the crumbling walk. I asked her how they went about it.
Starbright widened her eyes and took a deep breath and began a litany. “By opposing urban sprawl. By demanding soil conservation programs. By pushing for herbicide and pesticide controls and the elimination of nitrates in pork, so we won’t all be killed by chemicals.” Starbright’s voice grew firm. “I mean, this is the country and all,” she went on dramatically, “but you wouldn’t believe the kinds of things that go on out here, things that threaten us all, especially babies.” She wrapped her arms around her belly once again.
“Is WILD part of a national group?”
“I don’t think so. I never heard anyone say anything about it.”
“So this Zedda is the head man?”
Starbright nodded. “His old lady is my best friend. Sort of. She’s pregnant, too. We meditate together twice a week. If you touch the womb when you say your mantra, it prevents crib death.”
I decided to let Starbright go and look up this Zedda another time, to talk about Billy and maybe about the crop he had apparently planted.
As Starbright got out of the car the door of the house opened and a man walked toward us. He was tall and thin, Billy’s age or a bit older. He wore his hair in a black mane that hung to the nape of his neck. His shirt had been made from sackcloth and was gathered at the neck and wrists. Above his tight black slacks and high black boots it gave him the aspect of a swashbuckler just in off the seven seas. His eyes had the sharp edges of intelligence or cruelty. He was the man I’d seen on the square while I was talking with Chuck.
“Who’re they?” he asked Starbright as his easy saunter brought him toward the car.
“He’s Billy’s uncle,” Starbright said quickly. “Billy’s dead, Zedda. Hanged.”
“I know,” Zedda replied, the words flat, his face unreadable.
“Billy wouldn’t hang himself, would he, Zedda?” Starbright asked, as though what Zedda answered would be the one and only truth.
“Who knows? Billy was weird lately.” Zedda came close to the car and looked through the window, across Sally at me. “Which one are you?” he asked. “The salesman or the private eye?”
“Guess.”
He smiled peaceably. “Not the salesman.”
“We have a winner.”
“I was a winner before you came along,” he said.
I looked over his shoulder at the house. “Is that the prize?”
He followed my glance, then smiled again. “Among other things, Mister Detective. Among other things.” His glance made Sally look away.
We were silent for a minute, measuring the extent of our dislike of each other. “We should talk,” Zedda said finally.
“I agree. When?”
“Not now. Tonight. Late.”
“How late?”
“Midnight.”
“Where?”
“Here.”
I nodded. “I’ll try to make it,” I said, and slipped the car in gear. “Take care of Starbright. That’s my kin in there.”
“Like one of our own,” Zedda said, smiling still. I wasn’t comforted.
Starbright got out of the car without his help and lugged her baby and her bag toward the little house. I almost called her back, to put her someplace else. Zedda stayed where he was, making Sally squirm in his presence. As I drove away the hot ray of his black-eyed stare climbed my neck like a bug. “He gives me the creeps,” Sally said.
Twelve
When I got back to the square I asked Sally where I could drop her. She looked at her watch. “It’s dinner time, Marsh,” she said. “Want to join me?” Her voice was high and lilting, her face wide with bogus innocence. The lack of subtlety depressed me a little, as did my inability to refuse her.
“Pick the spot,” I said.
“There’s a new Italian place over in Seymour,” she said. “And a steakhouse in Bloomfield.”
“I don’t want to drive that far.”
“Want to try the Blue Star? It’s still going strong.”
“Okay.”
I drove to the rear of my hotel and parked. “Let me run in and call Gail,” I said to Sally. “I’ll be right with you.”
“Can I go freshen up in your room, Marsh?” she responded. “I feel like I’ve just come in from a hayride.”
I considered quickly whether there was anything in the room I didn’t want Sally to see, then flipped her the key. “Meet you back at the car,” I said.
Sally hesitated, started to say something, then stopped and got out of the car slowly. I interpreted it all to mean she was hoping I would go to the room with her. Once she had been the best and worst of my life and now she was becoming the threat of change and one thing worse: the threat of reliving my bungled youth.
I directed Sally toward the stairs to the second floor, then checked at the desk for messages. There was one, a call from a Mary Martha Gormley. I juggled the name and caught it. She was the editor of the paper, the one who’d written the article Tom Notting had given me. I threw away the message slip and called Gail.
Her husband answered after eight rings. “Gail isn’t back yet,” Tom said, after I told him who it was. “She’s still over in Glory City with Curt and Laurel. She called a while back, said she might spend the night. Hell of a thing,” Tom added, without emotion.
“It is that,” I said.
“Of course, he was asking for it for a long time,” Tom went on carefully.
“How was he doing that?”
“The drugs. The people he hung around with. The crazy way he acted, the things he said. Made lots of people mad.”
“Exactly what things was he saying?”
“Oh, he was always making these, these charges, outlandish accusations with no proof at all. I mean, he made these wild statements and then got enraged when no one took him seriously.”
“What kind of accusations?”
“He accused the best lawyer in town of malpractice, for one thing. And claimed the agricultural extension man didn’t know his business.” Tom paused and chuckled dryly. “He even went after me. Claimed I played favorites with the assessments. No one took him seriously, of course, but that kind of gossip can hurt you. After the party decided to run young Wilton for assessor instead of me I had a chance to go in with a bunch over in Ottumwa as a consultant. Your little Billy took care of that. But hell.” Tom laughed. “This retirement thing beats work any day.”
There was nothing humorous in the tone Tom used, and nothing truthful in his praise of early retirement. I asked Tom why Billy had went after him that way. He said he didn’t know. The way he said it made me think he did.
Billy had evidently been Chaldea’s gadfly, if not its scourge. There are a thousand secrets in a small town, secrets that only stay secret because of the studied and belligerent posture of unawareness that people choose to adopt. Billy seemed to have made it difficult to maintain that stance, which meant there could be a thousand motives for killing him. I told Tom I’d see him the next day.
“Funeral’s tomorrow,” he said. “I was supposed to tell you.”
“What time?”
“One.”
“Where?”
“Cemetery. They’re not doing anything at the church. Curt wouldn’t let them. Said Billy had betrayed his faith.”
I shook my head wordlessly, told Tom good-bye, and went out to wait for Sally.
&n
bsp; She came out ten minutes later, gave me back my key, pressed a brief kiss to my cheek, and settled in for the ride, angled so she could study me. Her glossy lips left a stripe of grease on my cheek. She smelled of lilacs. “Can I ask you something, Marsh?” she said as we reached the edge of town.
“I guess.”
“You don’t make much money, do you.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Your things. Your suitcase. You don’t have anything very … new.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do you need money?”
I still didn’t say anything.
“I have some. It’s yours if you want it.”
“Leave it alone, Sally. I make as much money as I need; probably more than is good for me.”
“Well,” Sally concluded sweetly, “I’m always here if you need me.”
I wanted to push her out of the car.
Ten minutes later we pulled into the parking lot at the Blue Star, a restaurant a few miles out of town, a place that used to serve great steaks and I hoped still did. “Rudy and Madge still here?” I asked.
“Can’t you tell? A new owner would have done something about that sign. Their daughter June does most of the cooking now.”
“June? Jesus. I remember when she was born. Rudy showed movies of the birth on the walls. Complete with sound track.”
Sally smiled. “June’s married and has four kids of her own. Rudy’s got heart trouble and Madge has an ulcer. They spend the winters in Florida and the summers on the lake. Rudy loses all their profits betting the horses at Ak-Sar-Ben.”
“What’s that mean again? I forget.”
“It’s just Nebraska spelled backward.”
I pulled off the highway and onto the gravel bed of the parking area beside the squat block building behind the winking star-shaped sign with a dozen bulbs blown out. Rudy and Madge weren’t in evidence when we got inside. A young girl with an old beehive showed us to a table with a plastic tulip in the center and a rack of napkins on the side, next to a cruet of curdled cream. We ordered drinks. The room was full of people wearing clothes they didn’t like. The jukebox was playing the Oak Ridge Boys. The menus had been glued to boards shaped like paddles and the prices had been erased a lot.
A T-bone cost five times what it had the last time I’d been there. I changed my mind and ordered a sandwich. A breaded pork tenderloin. We marked time munching celery and removing melba toast from cellophane shells. We had two drinks before the meals arrived. The meat in mine was twice the circumference of its bun.
“I’ve tried to find these in California for twenty years,” I said after the first bite. “Sometimes I have dreams about them.”
“It’s good you still like them,” Sally said. “When you get our age it seems like nothing’s as good as it was or as you thought it would be.”
“You’re even more cynical than I am, Sally.”
“Eric would make the Pope a cynic.”
We ate awhile in silence, amid the convivial buzz of the room. “Can I say something?” Sally asked suddenly.
“Sure,” I said, not so sure.
“Now don’t let me frighten you, Marsh. I mean, what I’m going to say is just talk. Nothing definite.”
“Okay,” I said, more leery by the second.
Sally shifted and squirmed and got ready for a speech. “Like I said, I’m in Chaldea to get my feet on the ground, to decide where to go and what to do.”
I nodded.
“Eric makes lots of money. I have a good alimony arrangement and he’s generous to Rachel. He’s agreed to pay for her education, as far as she wants to go.”
“Good.”
“And I can work. My secretarial skills are good. I worked in an insurance office for a year before I got married. I’m not afraid to hold a job.”
“Good.”
She paused, arranging her thoughts in a pattern I was increasingly certain I didn’t want to hear. “What it all means,” she said finally, “is that I’m free to do what I want. Go where I want to go. So one place I could go is San Francisco, Marsh. Rachel and I could move out there. We could be there by Christmas.”
What she saw on my face after her breathy rush of words made her hurry with an elaboration. “I don’t mean move in with you or anything, Marsh. I mean I could get an apartment, put Rachel in a nice school, then get a good job. But take my time, you know? Find the right thing.”
Sally paused again, wanting me to help her in a way that would imply both aid and encouragement. “What do you want me to say, Sally?”
The question was the best I could do and it irritated her. “I guess what I want you to say, Marsh, is that you like that idea. I mean, that you would, I don’t know, be my friend when we got out there. Something. Help me, Marsh, for God’s sake. This isn’t easy, you know.”
“I know it isn’t,” I said, and reached out and placed my palm over the hand that was rubbing the sheen off her swizzle stick. It’s always silly when people who have been lovers start talking about being friends. What they are is something more and less than friends, something sadly worse, and there’s no other way about it. I knew enough about myself to know that if Sally did what she had just described we would quickly become lovers or enemies, but nothing in between. I think Sally knew it, too: it was why she was so scared. She had one enemy like that already.
Sally still waited for me to say something, and I did, but it wasn’t the yes or no she wanted. “I can’t promise you anything, Sally. I mean, what with Billy and all I haven’t really been able to think about you—us, that much. And I have to warn you, my relationships with women have been pretty rough for the past few years. I’m getting real hard to put up with. Everything seems to be so much trouble. So, I mean, you shouldn’t count on anything. Not anything you want from me.”
She smiled, with a hint of rue and shame, then forced a laugh, and her resilient humor reminded me why I had loved her so much for so long, reminded me how often she had propped me up when my life seemed to have gone so mysteriously awry, reminded me that for a lot of early years there was one thing I had always known for sure, that I was the most important thing in the world to Sally Stillings.
Sally reversed our hands and grasped mine firmly. “Forget what I just said, okay, Marsh? I’m not going to haunt you. It’s just that I’ve been so lonely since Eric; hell, even before Eric. There’s been just Rachel and me for so long. I love her more than anything, but that’s not enough. I need someone to talk to the way we used to talk about things. Remember?”
“Sure.”
“No one wants to do that anymore, talk about important things. I wonder why not.”
“Maybe it’s just that the important things have changed.”
“Not for me, they haven’t.”
“That’s good,” I said, not knowing whether it was or not.
“How about you? Have they changed for you?” Sally asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I don’t think about what’s important much anymore. Not in the abstract, at least.”
Sally smiled that smile again. “I was always asking you what you were thinking and you were always trying not to tell me. Actually, I think I only asked you what you were thinking so you would ask me what I was thinking. At least that’s the way it usually worked out. Then I could tell you all my problems. There seemed so many then; now those days seem like heaven.”
Sally grasped my hand with both of hers and squeezed it. She leaned toward me and the lilacs made my nostrils twitch. “Can we go back to your room now, Marsh? Please?”
“Sally …”
“Please? You don’t know how many times I’ve thought of this, of us meeting again. Not just since I came back here, but for years and years. I need this to happen to me, Marsh. I need something nice to happen to me.”
Her eyes swam in pleading tears. I knew what she was talking about because I had thought of it often, too, seeing Sally once again. My fantasy usually placed us in some large city wh
ere neither of us was known. I would take her to bed in a fit of the passion that absence and betrayal breeds, then listen to her tell me I was the best there ever was. This wasn’t that, but it was as close as I ever get to seizing fantasy. And I had it within me to make Sally’s dream come true as well, or so she thought. But reality never quite swells up to dreams—it’s the reason for both monks and drunks—and I would fail her. Which was why I finally decided to go ahead.
I paid the check and helped Sally on with her coat and we started to leave the restaurant. Suddenly my way was blocked by a swarthy, stocky man wearing a shiny exercise suit and white running shoes. His hair was as thick as a mop in tar and his face was glistening as though his flesh were mirrored. If he ran anything it was the numbers. “Your name Tanner?” he growled. His tone implied I should be punished for it.
I acknowledged that I was.
“You got a brother name of Curt?”
“I do.”
“I been trying to reach him. You tell him that. You tell him we had a deal, and I want my dough.”
“What kind of deal?”
“That’s between him and me. You just tell him what I said.”
“Who are you?”
“Pantley. Rufus Pantley. I’m at the Tall Corn Motel. I’ll expect the dough tomorrow. I don’t get it, I come after.”
The thick man turned away, heading for the door. I grabbed his arm. “What’s this all about? What did you do that Curt owes you money?”
He swore and ripped his arm away. “It ain’t what I did, it’s what I’m gonna do. Now back off, pal.”
He looked dumb or crazy enough to go to the limit of violence if I tried to stop him, so I let him go. Sally hurried to my side and asked me what it was all about. I told her truthfully that I didn’t know, then went out into the parking lot and found my car. I picked Sally up at the entrance and drove back to town.
The Christmas decorations on the square were already up, or maybe they had never been taken down. The only lights in the stores came through the oily windows of saloons. I asked Sally if she wanted to go in for a drink. She shook her head and shivered. I turned on the car heater. “Want to ride around?” I asked.
“You mean cruise the square? Go out and park?”
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