Fatal Obsession

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Well, Billy was here, and I knew his old man had some kind of spread. And this place needs help more than up north. I mean, they ain’t got soil to waste down in this neck of the woods. If the good folks don’t wake up and fly right, the dirt around here won’t be fit to grow weeds. They need WILD, man. We can show them the way.”

  Zedda had drifted out of his drug daze into the ritualistic, messianic fervor of his public pose. His chatter, though possibly true, was mostly slogans, and his life-style belied a serious interest in the kinds of things he was talking about. I waited till Zedda’s eyes seemed focused again, then asked him what Billy had been doing for WILD.

  “Whatever the fuck he wanted to do. Messing with people’s minds, mostly.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, these are the folks that sent him over there, right? These are the friends and neighbors who said sure, go ahead and teach our little Billy just exactly how to slit a slant-eyed throat. Well, Billy made sure they knew exactly what they’d done to him, see. He told them what he was and what that made them.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Oh, he’d be sitting in a bar and some polyester dude would come up and start to rap with him, just being polite, you know, they all liked little Billy Tanner. And the conversation would swing around to the war, eventually, and sooner or later the poor bastard would ask Billy what he did over there, you know. How things were. And Billy would tell him, man. I mean, the details, you know? And just before the poor fucker puked his Bud all over the floor Billy would pull out this ear, this fucking gook ear, man, and set it on the bar. Fucking thing looked like a dried turd laying there or something, and Billy would smile and the polyester bastard would ask him what it was and Billy would lay it out for him real soft and polite, with just those baby blues rolling a little too much for comfort, is all, and that usually took care of things. Yeah, they liked the Billy they sent off to war, but they didn’t much care for the one that came back.”

  Zedda sucked more dope into his system. I was getting a contact high myself.

  “Starbright told me Billy was sick. Any idea what it was?”

  “Poison, man. Genuine American-made poison.”

  “Agent Orange?”

  “The one and only.”

  “Was he doing anything about it?”

  “What’s to do? The dude was dying. Someone just accelerated the program.”

  “Who?”

  “Who killed Billy?”

  “Right.”

  He shrugged. “I hear the police call it suicide.”

  Zedda’s smile was a calibrated insult.

  “I don’t care what they call it,” I said roughly. “Billy was murdered. I’ll prove it before I leave town. So. Again. Any idea who killed him?”

  “Nope.”

  “None at all?”

  “Oh, I got a thousand ideas, man. I just ain’t got one. You see what I’m saying?”

  I saw. Zedda didn’t much give a damn who killed Billy. Zedda had been a guru to Billy and, as usual with gurus, the benefit ran only one way. “I hear Billy dug up some dirt on a few of the locals,” I said, still determined to mine Zedda’s well-stoned mind.

  “If he did it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “Who-all did he go after?”

  Zedda shrugged, his lids drooping even lower across his eyes, giving him an Oriental aspect to match the décor and the history he had just described. “The town lawyer. The assessor. The extension man. I don’t know who-all. That was Billy’s private fight.”

  “What about Carol Hasburg?”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s a woman here in town. I heard she and Billy were an item.”

  Zedda laughed and sucked his pipe. “Starbright was Billy’s chick. I don’t know about the others. Some chicks like to play with fire, man, and that’s what Billy was.”

  “How is Starbright?”

  “Fine and dandy.”

  “She here?”

  Zedda shrugged. “Comes and goes.”

  “Will you see her in the morning?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Tell her Billy’s funeral is at one. Tell her I’ll come by here and pick her up at a quarter till. If she wants to go.”

  “Funerals are a drag, man.”

  I pushed myself up off the pillows. “Just tell her,” I said, and headed for the door.

  “Hey,” Zedda called out. “You and your people decide what you’re going to do with that farm out there?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Be a big mistake to cave in to the developers or the strip miners, man.”

  “Maybe. Seems to depend on who you talk to.”

  “It’s the land, man. Should stay the way it is. Grass and birds and animals, man. Nature.”

  “Some people don’t see it that way.”

  “How about you? How do you see it?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Zedda leaned forward and got his feet under him and stood up. The crystal amulet darted across his naked throat like Tinker Bell in transit. “It would do a lot for the movement for us to be able to say we put a stop to mining or development out there, man. So much so that WILD is willing to make a financial contribution to encourage you to dedicate the place to public use. You dig?”

  “How much of a contribution?”

  “Fifty thousand dollars. For a deed of the Tanner plot to WILD.”

  I looked to see if he was serious. He seemed to be. “That’s a lot of money,” I said.

  “Our fund drives are a bitch.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “What?”

  “I said bullshit, Zedda. Let me tell you what I think. I think WILD isn’t an environmental group at all. It’s a cover for a wholesale marijuana operation, maybe other drugs as well. You came down here because Billy Tanner had access to a half section of farmland and because marijuana would thrive on it with a modicum of cultivation. You came down here to make a killing in the drug trade, Zedda. That’s what I think. And you used Billy to guard the crop.”

  “Well, well,” Zedda said, his pipe in his hand instead of his mouth, his eyes broken and scrambled by the flickering candlelight. “So that’s what you think.”

  “It is.”

  “You tell anyone about this crap you been talking, man?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You going to?”

  “If it helps me find the man who killed Billy, I will. Was a drug deal going down, Zedda? Did it go sour? Is that why someone strung him up?”

  Zedda shook his head. I realized I had been screaming at him on some unnatural high of my own. “Billy didn’t have anything to do with drugs, man. Not after they came in off the farm. Nothing going down involving Billy-boy. Nothing at all.”

  “If I find out different, I’ll have the law out in that field in about three seconds,” I said.

  “Be cool, man. I’m telling you, we weren’t dealing this week. Now, we got a deal for the farm? Fifty grand, man. All cash. Uncle don’t ever have to know.”

  “No deal,” I said. “And if you were a REMF, how’d you get the Silver Star?”

  Zedda smiled his evil smile. “Traded an ounce of righteous smack for it, man. How else?”

  When I left him he was laughing.

  Fourteen

  When I got back to the hotel there was a note on the pillow: “Let’s do it again sometime. All it takes is a call. S.” I got undressed and lay down on sheets still warm from her body, still wet from our sex, and struggled to find sleep.

  I felt rough the next morning, as though I’d absorbed a beating or a binge. I stayed in bed with my book until I was sure the locals had left the coffee shop to ply their various trades, then wandered down and ate some toast and eggs. Afterward, I wandered back to my room with the morning paper. After I finished reading of Hawkeyes and Cyclones and Bulldogs, I called Gail. She sounded for a moment as if she didn’t know me from a crank. Then she told me Curt and Laurel were taking Billy’s death as wel
l as could be expected. “They seem relieved, Marsh, if you want to know the truth. Billy was like a yoke for them, I think; a sin. They felt responsible for what he was.”

  “From what I hear it was the war that changed him,” I said. “Curt and Laurel didn’t get us into Vietnam.”

  “In a way they did, though. In a way we all did. I mean, we supported it, we said nasty things about the ones who went to Canada and the ones who burned their cards. He made us realize that we were prepared for war to kill a boy like Billy, but we weren’t prepared for it to send him back to us so different. We weren’t prepared for him to hate so much, or worse, to tell us why.”

  I didn’t speak until the echo of Gail’s words had died away. Then I asked if Tom was home.

  “No. Why?”

  “What happened between Tom and Billy, Gail? The thing about the assessments?”

  Gail’s sigh stretched slowly across the wire. “Oh, it was so bad, Marsh. First, the party decided not to back Tom for reelection. He took it hard, being abandoned after all those years. But he came out of it, gradually, and had another job lined up, when all of a sudden Billy made these charges against him. Billy went down to the courthouse and looked through all the assessments on our house and the mayor’s house and the sheriff’s house and people like that, and some of our neighbors, too, and then compared those assessments with those of people who weren’t in city government and people who didn’t know Tom, and he made it look like Tom had been doing favors for his friends and his political allies over the years. The newspaper printed the figures—not the local paper but the one in the state capital—and reporters came down and it made Tom look like such a crook, Marsh. They called it the Little Watergate and everything. He lost the job opportunity, of course, but what’s worse, he lost his will to live, almost. He’s like he was when the party kicked him out.”

  “What’s wrong with him, exactly?”

  “No one knows. I mean, Doctor Yarrow told me once he thought it was psychosomatic. Some kind of defense mechanism Tom created to lessen his responsibility for the things Billy said he did. But I don’t know. It’s too complicated. All I know is that Tom and I, well, there’s not much left there, Marsh.”

  “I’m sorry, Gail.”

  “We all have our burdens, Marsh. I’m just thankful mine didn’t come along earlier.”

  “That’s nonsense, Gail. If it’s all over between you two, then you should leave him.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Sure, you could. Divorce isn’t always a mistake.”

  “In Chaldea it is.”

  For the first time in my life I felt Gail needed something abstract from me, felt that whatever had sustained her over all these years, her faith, her friends, her town, had failed her when she needed them most. The problem was, I didn’t have anything to give but platitudes, the same thing she got from all the rest. Instead I asked a question. “Why do you think Billy did this to Tom?”

  “That’s what no one knows, Marsh. We asked Curt about it and he didn’t know, and I even tried to talk to Billy about it once, but he wouldn’t say. Just smiled that crazy smile of his. It’s a mystery.”

  “Was Tom involved in the war in any way?”

  “No. How could he have been?”

  “I don’t know. It just seems that everything Billy did was connected to the war somehow, that Vietnam was his obsession.”

  “I guess maybe that’s right, but I don’t see how that would have involved Tom more than anyone else in town.”

  “I don’t either,” I admitted. “The funeral is at one, right?”

  “Yes. We’re supposed to go out to Curt’s afterward, for cake and coffee. Laurel’s been working like mad making food. It keeps her mind off Billy, I guess. And Matt wants us to meet then and decide about the farm one way or another. He wants to leave town tonight.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be ready to decide by then.”

  “Why not, Marsh? What have you been doing, anyway? I tried to call you last night and you weren’t there. I’ll bet you were with Sally.”

  I didn’t tell Gail about the marijuana field, or about the threat from her share farmer, but I did admit to dinner with Sally. “I’m bringing someone to the funeral,” I said, after I’d lied about the way Sally and I spent the evening’s end.

  “Sally?”

  “Billy’s wife.”

  Gail gasped. “You mean that girl with the hair down her back?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Were they really married, Marsh? No one seemed to know for sure.”

  I didn’t know either, and I told Gail so.

  “Then do you think it’s right to bring her? I mean, Curt and Laurel have enough people picking at them as it is.”

  “The girl’s carrying Billy’s child,” I said, a bit angrily. “That should be a sufficient ticket to the show, don’t you think? Even in Chaldea?”

  “Are you sure it’s Billy’s baby? I mean, you know how they are.”

  Gail’s primness worked like an auger in my stomach. “How are they, Gail? Fertile?”

  “Oh, never mind. Do what you think is right.”

  “I will,” I said. “And I suggest you do the same.”

  “I don’t need lessons from you on how to act, Marsh Tanner.”

  “I didn’t think so up to now,” I countered, and then I asked a question more with anger than with sense. “Where was your husband last night, Gail? Did he go out at all?”

  “He goes out every night. Explorer Scouts. That’s the only thing he ever does anymore, meet with his precious scouts. But what does that have to do with anything? Oh. I see. You think Tom might have done something to Billy because of the assessment thing, don’t you? Oh, Marsh.”

  Gail began to cry and hung up before my apology reached her ear. I brandished the receiver like a cudgel and trained it on myself, then replaced it.

  I had taken advantage of a vulnerable time for Gail, and by springing my surprise had forced her to act like something she was not—a personification of Midwestern religiosity, the pseudopiety that finds Bible-quoting, teetotaling deacons ranting against niggers and hippies and bemoaning welfare and cheating the tax man all the while. I dialed Gail’s number again. When she answered I told her I was sorry.

  “Me, too.”

  “Should I come over?”

  “No. I’m okay. It’s just that so much is happening. Life is upside down. I can’t deal with it all, sometimes. Bring the girl, Marsh.”

  “Good. See you at the cemetery.”

  “Okay.”

  “I am sorry, Gail.”

  “I know.” The words were tired and sad and I had made them so.

  I hung up again and looked up the number for young Doctor Yarrow. His nurse said he was with a patient but he would call me back shortly. I gave her my number and name and dialed again. The sheriff picked up the phone himself.

  “Well, Mr. Tanner. How you doing today? Hear you sampled the local steakhouse last night.”

  “You hear pretty good, Sheriff. Pretty fast, too.”

  “Enjoy your loin?”

  “Very tasty.”

  “Better than a steak these days,” the sheriff said. “Can’t get good beef anywhere. People in these parts get too willing to sacrifice quality for quantity.”

  “Happens everywhere, Sheriff.”

  “Seems like folks don’t think for themselves anymore, you notice that out where you live? Just stand around and wait for someone on the TV at breakfast time to tell them what’s good and what ain’t.”

  I told the sheriff what he said was true. “You ever hear of a man named Rufus Pantley?” I asked when the philosophy had ended.

  “Nope. Any reason I should?”

  “I hope not.”

  “That all then, Tanner?”

  “Just wondering if you had any further thoughts about Billy Tanner’s death.”

  “Thoughts? You mean other than that he was too damn young to die, and that a rope around the
neck sure plays havoc with the circulation? You mean thoughts other than those? Not any worth breath.”

  “Still calling it suicide?”

  “Yep. Hoping it was, too.”

  “I think I can convince you that’s not what happened.”

  “That so? Well, why don’t you hold your convincing till I see the autopsy report. Then I’ll know more how bad I want to be convinced.”

  “The report’s not in?”

  “Doc Yarrow’s supposed to bring it by any minute.”

  “Then maybe I’ll talk to you later.”

  “You’re welcome to talk, Mr. Tanner. Can’t promise I’ll listen.”

  “Let me ask you one more thing, Sheriff,” I said quickly. “Do you have much of a drug problem here in Chaldea? I mean something more than a few kids smoking grass to show off?”

  “Well, I’d say it was a little more serious than that. We got a lot of marijuana around, and it’s not just kids using it, neither. You’d be surprised the smells come out of some of those big houses in Conklin Heights. We got more than marijuana around, too. More than one runny nose in town wasn’t caused by ragweed. Pills, too. What makes you ask?”

  “Just curious. People say Billy used drugs. I was just wondering where he got them.”

  “Don’t know for sure,” the sheriff said. “Plenty of times I saw him I knew he was high on something. But I never busted him, never caught him dealing, and I figured what he did to his mind and body was his own business. I mean, he had a rough time of it over there in Vietnam. I figured I owed him something.”

  “You a vet, Sheriff?”

  “Korea.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What outfit?”

  “Big Red One.”

  “First Marines,” the sheriff said. “A lousy war.”

  “They don’t make them any other way.”

  “Lately, for sure.”

  We both stopped there, experiencing a fresh fix of war for an instant, hating a lot of it but not quite all. “Sheriff,” I said finally, “what I’m getting at is, if Billy was a big drug user, then maybe he was a dealer, too. Maybe this was just a deal that went sour. Hell, the streets of San Francisco are littered with kids who got burned trying to rip off the big one. It could happen here.”