“Like one of your cases?”
“That’s exactly what it’s like,” Sherman said, looking at Ruth with open admiration. “You collect as much information as you can. Then you take whatever you want to test—it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about a plumbing line or a theory—and you try it out, see if it’ll hold up.
“You put a lot of pressure on it,” the big man explained. “Work slow and careful. Keep good notes. Check and recheck. Never let your emotions get in the way. Just because you want something to turn out a certain way doesn’t mean it will. If you let what you want . . . influence you, the whole thing falls down.”
Ruth made a complete circuit of the big room, then seated herself elegantly on a couch made of wide, rough-hewn pine planks, covered with a heavy Indian-pattern blanket.
“How did you learn the carpentry part?” she asked. “Was that from books, too? Or did your father teach you?”
“The only thing my father ever taught me was to fear him,” Sherman Layne said, his voice as quiet as cancer. “Until the day I taught him to fear me.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:47
* * *
“What do you mean, ‘find’ me?” Tussy said.
“Would it be enough if I promise to tell you everything?” Dett replied. “Not now, before I leave. If you don’t want to see any more of me until then, I’ll understand. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I thought you were going to take me out again tonight,” she said, making a pouty motion with her mouth.
“I am. I mean, I’ll take you anywhere you want to—”
“You know where I’d like to go? The drive-in. I haven’t been there in a million years. But I looked in the paper this morning, and North by Northwest is playing. I really wanted to see that one.”
“Sure. What time should I—?”
“Well, if we get there by seven-thirty, we’ll have plenty of time to eat and everything.”
“Do you know a place?”
“To eat? No, I mean right there at the drive-in, silly.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Haven’t you ever done that? Eat dinner at a drive-in?”
“I’ve never been.”
“In your whole life?”
“Not even once.”
“Oh, you’ll love it. It’s so much nicer than in a movie theater. Like having the show playing just for you.”
“If you like it so much, how come you don’t go more?”
“It’s really for kids. Or people with kids. For the teenagers around here, the drive-in’s just another place to make out. They wouldn’t care if the screen was blank.”
Dett was quiet for a few seconds. Then he said, “That tuna was delicious, Tussy. The best I ever had.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not. I don’t do that. Just say things, I mean. Every time I have tuna salad, from now on, I’m going to ask for basil on it. And a little piece of parsley on the side.”
“Well, most places have parsley. We serve it at the diner with certain dishes. Like it always comes with the meatloaf. But basil, I don’t know.”
“I can just buy some. In a store, I mean. And take it with me.”
“Oh, people do do that. One old man, he’s a regular, a real sweetheart, flirts with all the girls, he always brings his own bottle of sauce. I don’t know what’s in it, but he puts it on everything. Meat, fish . . . even eggs. I don’t know if the basil would stay fresh, though.”
“It would if you bought it that same day.”
“I guess it would. But it seems like a lot of trouble.”
“No,” Dett said. “That isn’t trouble.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:56
* * *
“Do a lot of people know you live out here?” Ruth asked.
“I’m . . . not sure. My mail comes to the post office; I’ve got a box there. But this place, it’s not a secret.”
“It doesn’t look like you get a lot of visitors. Or else you have a woman come in and clean for you.”
“I never have visitors,” Sherman said.
“Until me,” Ruth said.
“You’re not a visitor.”
“What am I, then?”
“What you’ve been for a long time,” Sherman Layne said. “The person I trust. The only one.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 13:57
* * *
“You ever get tired of all this?” the man behind the binoculars asked the rifleman.
“This?”
“Waiting. Waiting all the time.”
“Any job there is, there’s always some waiting in it,” the rifleman said.
“You never get bored, just sitting around, doing nothing?”
“What we do, it only takes a couple of seconds,” the rifleman said. “But waiting to do it, that’s part of doing it right.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:04
* * *
“Would you like to see my garden?” Tussy asked. “You couldn’t have seen much in the dark, last night.”
“Yes,” Dett said, getting to his feet.
Tussy led him out the back door. She pointed to a neat square of plowed and furrowed earth. “My mother started it,” she said, “before I was even born. That parsley you had? I grew it right here. I’ve got fresh carrots, onions, radishes, all kinds of vegetables. Better than anything you could buy in the store. My dad always said he was going to put a beehive back there. One of those you build yourself. We’d have fresh honey then, too. But Mom said she wasn’t going to have a bunch of bees buzzing around her every time she went outside.”
Fireball left the house, moving slowly and purposefully.
“He’s playing like he’s stalking a bird,” Tussy said. “He hasn’t caught one since my thirteenth birthday. He brought it home. For me, like a present. I cried and cried. My dad explained it was just him being a cat—he couldn’t help himself. But I think he—Fireball, I mean—I think he understood how upset he’d made me, because he never brought one home again.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:09
* * *
“Is there a basement?” Ruth asked.
“Well . . . no. The foundation is really just some big pieces of rock I hauled myself.”
“Oh. And the garage, it doesn’t have heat, does it?”
“The garage? No. It’s all wired, for when I have to see what I’m doing when I work on my car, or put some project together, but you wouldn’t want to go out there in the winter without your coat.”
“It’s all so . . . open in here.”
“You don’t like it, Ruth?”
“I love it. It’s beautiful, Sherman. I was just looking for a place where you could . . . build me something?”
“Build you . . . I don’t understand.”
“Like in my blue room,” she said, looking him squarely in the face. “Only right here.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:11
* * *
“You sure I’m the man you want with you for this, Mickey?”
“Ah, Brian, how many times is it I’m to be telling you the same thing? Now, just drive, boyo. You be the pilot; I’ll be the navigator,” Shalare said.
“Not to drive the bloody car, Mickey. I mean that other thing you said.”
“All you have to do is use your eyes, Big Brian. Make them into little cameras. Whatever you see, it’s gold for us. I don’t know if they’re going to let you in, keep you outside, stash you someplace else . . . but it doesn’t matter. Wherever they take you, wherever they let you be, it’s going to be someplace we’ve not ever seen before.”
“Why is that so important, then?”
“Because we may have to come back someday, Brian. Only without the invite.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:16
* * *
“Why?” Rut
h demanded.
“Why what?” Sherman said. Knowing he was evading her question; knowing she knew.
“Why can’t you trust me the way you say you do?”
“I do trust you, Ruth. You know my . . . you know things about me nobody else does.”
“That’s not trusting, Sherman. That’s trusting not to tell. There’s a big difference.”
“What would be trusting you?” the detective asked. A wave of depersonalization washed over him. He could see himself, seated across from Ruth. Lean back to invite a confidence; lean forward to intimidate; work the middle distance to assure the suspect that whatever he’s about to say is going to stay between us. His shoulders trembled as he shook off the wave. Sherman Layne knew how to do that. He had been practicing since he was a child.
“Building me what I asked you for would be a start.”
“Ruth, I don’t think of you like that.”
“But you said . . . I mean, when I said I’d do anything for you, I meant it. And when you asked me out here, I thought . . .”
“You don’t understand,” he said, in the hushed tone used for sharing secrets. “What you . . . think I do . . . out at your place? You’re wrong.”
“But I don’t care what you—”
“Just listen, okay?” Sherman said. “Please?”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 14:55
* * *
“Damn, I’d hate to find this place after dark, Mickey. Are you sure we’re going right?”
“If the directions he gave us are true, we are,” Shalare said.
“Are you thinking . . . ?”
“Ambush? No, Brian. I’m not saying Beaumont’s not capable of it, mind. But he’s too smart for such a stunt now.”
“Now?”
“He’ll be wanting to hear what we’ve got to say first,” Shalare said. “That’s what I’d be doing myself.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 15:03
* * *
“You got a call, Rufe. On the pay phone, down in the kitchen. Man say you should call home. Hope nothing’s wrong, bro.”
“Thanks, Earl. Probably just one of my dumb-fuck cousins. Got a couple of them staying at my crib. Probably can’t figure out how to turn on the stove or something. Country boys, you know?”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 15:41
* * *
“There it is,” Shalare said, pointing at the black boulder. “The perfect landmark, isn’t it? Looks like God himself tossed a giant lump of coal into those birch trees.”
“Aye,” the prizefighter said, steering carefully. “And here comes the . . . curves, just like he said.”
“Remember what I told you, Big Brian.”
“Eyes like a camera.”
“Yes. And ears like a pair of tape recorders.”
“I doubt they’re going to be talking to me, Mick. They’ll probably just put me in some—”
“Lymon’s been good for more than helping us see the future, Brian. He’s told us a bit about some of Beaumont’s boys, too. And if luck smiles on us today . . .”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 15:49
* * *
“What?” Rufus said.
“You know that boy, Preacher? He’s the head of the—”
“I know. Come on, man. I’m at work.”
“He’s been around,” Darryl said. “Wants to buy something. Thought we might have it.”
“We?”
“At the yard. Look, I told him, come back tonight.”
“Why you do that?”
“When you come by, I tell you, brother. But, hear me, this is a decision we got to make. Tonight.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 15:51
* * *
Seth emerged from the guard cottage and walked slowly over to Shalare’s Chrysler, a shotgun in his right hand.
“Help you folks?” he said, as the driver’s-side window descended.
“I’ve got Mr. Shalare here,” Brian said, “to see Mr. Beaumont.”
“Right on time, too,” Seth said, glancing at his wristwatch. “Hey!” he said, suddenly. “You’re not Brian O’Sullivan, the fighter, are you? I could swear—”
“That’s me, for true,” Brian said, grinning broadly. “Hard to mistake a mug like mine, once you’ve laid eyes on it, I’ll bet.” He extended his hand.
Without taking his eyes off the men in the car, Seth tossed the shotgun from his right hand to his left, and used the gentle momentum to bring his open hand up to take Brian’s offered grip. “I was at the Paladium in Akron the night you fought Buster Blaine,” he said. “You’ve got one of iron and the other of steel, just like people say.”
“I sure needed both that night. Fighting Buster was like punching smoke.”
“That’s right! I told my pals he could dance all night but sooner or later Brian O’Sullivan would land one. And that was all it took.”
“Did you bet on me, then?”
“Didn’t I? A double sawbuck, I went for. The odds were . . . well, they were pretty good,” Seth said, embarrassed.
“Well, they should have been,” Brian assured him. “Buster Blaine is a better boxer in his sleep than I ever was awake.”
“Faster, maybe,” Seth said, stoutly. “But sure not better. You were never a man to get a break from the judges. I thought you got jobbed when you fought John Henry Jefferson. By rights, they’re supposed to give you points for being aggressive.”
“Nah, he won that one,” Brian said. “My own mother would have scored it for him. If I could have caught him, even one time, maybe it would have ended otherwise, but—”
“No ‘maybe’ about it,” Seth said, conviction ringing through his voice. “If you’d of ever caught him, it would have ended, all right!”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 15:59
* * *
“Oh! I’m sorry,” Tussy said, belatedly covering her mouth as she yawned. “I didn’t realize how tired I am.”
“Are you sure you still want to go out tonight?”
“I am absolutely sure. All I need is a little nap.”
“All right. Should I come back in—?”
“Just a catnap. Only an hour or so,” she said. “I’d rather you stayed . . . if you want.”
* * *
1959 October 06 Tuesday 16:02
* * *
Seth walked beside Shalare’s Chrysler as it slowly crept along the curved drive.
“You can leave it right here,” Seth told Brian. Directing his voice to Shalare, he continued, “And you, you can go right in the front door. Just give a knock, and Luther will take care of you from there on.”
“Many thanks,” Shalare said, opening his door.
“We’ll have a wait,” Seth said to Brian. “If you like, you can come back and share my guard duty with me. Or I could get you a—”
“Ah, it isn’t every day that I meet a man I can talk boxing with,” Brian said. “That little house of yours, it wouldn’t by any chance have a little refrigerator in it?”
The door opened before Shalare could knock. The slack-mouthed man on the other side of the threshold stared blankly, as if waiting for someone to throw his switch.
Good sweet Jesus, Shalare thought. The man’s a blessed dummy.
“Come on,” Luther said, turning and walking away.
Doesn’t search me, lets me walk behind him—what kind of people does Beaumont have working for him, anyway?
It took almost a full minute for Luther to wend his way through the house to their destination. Like a bloody damn museum, Shalare thought. “Beautiful place, this is,” he said aloud.
Luther didn’t respond.
They came to a double-width door, the entrance ramp telling Shalare that the room inside was higher than the floor he had been walking on.
Luther strode through the doorway, Shalare three steps behind him. Beaumont was at the other end of the
room, seated behind a modern, kidney-shaped desk. Shalare crossed over to him. “Thanks for having me,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Thank you for coming,” Beaumont said, with equal formality.
Here comes the bone-crusher, Shalare thought, steeling himself as they shook hands. To his surprise, Beaumont’s grip was just firm enough to be masculine-polite. One quick, dry squeeze, and it was done.
“Please sit down,” Beaumont said. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? A drink?”
“Well, since you’re offering, an Irish coffee would be a treat.”
“Jameson’s good by you?”
“I see you’ve been doing your homework,” Shalare said, grinning broadly. “Good by any son of Erin, and good anytime.”
“No homework necessary,” Beaumont said. “I fancy it myself. The Jameson’s, I mean, not in coffee. That one’s an acquired taste, I believe.”
“Well, that may be,” Shalare said, touching two fingers to his lips. “But I acquired it quite early on.”
Luther reappeared, handed Shalare his drink, placed a heavy tumbler full of ice cubes and a fifth of Jameson’s on Beaumont’s desk, barely moving his head in a “no” gesture as he did, indicating the Irishman was not armed.
Beaumont poured himself a shot of the whiskey, held up his glass. “To friendship,” he said.
“To friendship,” Shalare echoed.
Each man sipped at his drink. Noticing the black marble ashtray at his elbow, Shalare lit a cigarette. Nodding, as if this confirmed still another point of understanding between them, Beaumont opened his silver cigarette case and lit up himself.
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