Night Game

by Alison Gordon

  “These here are the folks who found Lucy, Mom.”

  I ignored his tactlessness and conveyed our sympathies.

  “I’m June Hoving,” she said, then indicated a wiry older man with thinning hair and glasses, who stood beside and slightly behind her, one hand resting on the back of the couch.

  “This is my husband, Dirk. He was Lucy’s stepfather.”

  We shook hands, then June invited me to sit next to her. She was big-boned and strong-looking for all her grief, but had a tense and distracted air. Her hair was pulled back into a severe chignon, with a few wisps escaping around her forehead. She wore a plain navy-blue dress belted at her slender waist.

  “Lucy talked about you,” she said. “She told me that you were her role model.”

  Oh lord, I thought.

  “I’m honoured,” I said.

  “She always wanted to be a reporter,” she continued. “Her father was a writer, too. I guess that’s where she got it. I was glad she had ambitions.”

  She stopped, then stared bleakly ahead. Her eyes were red. She lit another cigarette.

  “I understand that you two were very close,” I said.

  “Like sisters,” she said. “Everyone said we were like sisters. We were friends, best friends.”

  “I know this isn’t a good time,” I said, “but I would like to write a story about Lucy for my paper in Toronto. Would you be willing to do an interview with me?”

  She glanced at her husband, who was talking to Jeff.

  “I guess that would be all right,” she said. “When do you want to do it?”

  “Whenever is convenient for you.”

  “The funeral is tomorrow,” she said. “I could do it the next day.”

  “That would be Thursday,” I said.

  “If you say so,” she said. “I don’t know one day from another anymore. They’re all the same. Rotten.”

  “I’ll call you Thursday morning,” I said.

  She gave me her address and phone number, which I wrote on the flap of my cigarette pack.

  “Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?” I asked. “Perhaps one of her friends?”

  “She didn’t really have many close girlfriends,” her mother said. “I think maybe they were jealous of her.”

  “Was she seeing any man regularly?”

  “Not lately. She didn’t want to get too serious about anyone. She saw what happened to me. I got married when I was eighteen, and I haven’t had much of a life. I always told her there was plenty of time for getting married and having a family.”

  She got that haunted, bleak, look again.

  “Oh, shit, here I go again,” she said, and started to cry. Her husband bent down to pat her shoulder, and glared at me. I got up.

  “We’d better go,” I said to Jeff.

  Before we had a chance, there was a small commotion at the door. Lucy’s brother was scuffling with a large, shambling man, who was as intent on coming in as Ringo was on keeping him out.

  “She was my damn daughter,” the man shouted, shaking off Ringo’s hands. He stood, a bit unsteadily, and glared around him. The room fell silent, tense.

  Lucy’s father, if that’s who it was, was a mess. Clearly, he was drunk. His face was blotchy, his grey hair, thin on the top, hung in greasy tendrils to his shoulders. He was dressed in faded jeans and a work shirt, embroidered long ago with flowers and a peace symbol.

  “My own damn daughter,” he repeated, more quietly.

  Hoving began to move towards him, but June stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “I’ll handle this,” she said, then crossed the room.

  When the old hippie saw her coming, he began to cry.

  “It’s okay, Ringo,” she said to her son, coming between him and the other man.

  “What are you doing here, Hank?” she asked. “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “My baby,” he sobbed, and threw his arms around June. She winced, then embraced him and patted him on the back like a child who needed soothing.

  Dirk, the second husband, started towards them, but a shake of her head over Hank’s shoulder stopped him.

  “Get your father a cup of coffee, Ringo,” she said, then led the man to a pair of armchairs in the corner of the large room farthest from the coffin. They sat down, and conversation, which had stopped again, picked up, loud and embarrassed. Jeff and I left, unnoticed.

  It was pouring rain. We ran to my rental car, splashing through puddles. Jeff slammed the door and slumped in the passenger seat.

  “I hate that stuff,” he said.

  “Which particular stuff do you mean?”

  “Coffins. Strangers. People crying.”

  “Oh, that stuff,” I said. “Not my favourite, either, but it’s not too bad. You get used to it.”

  “What do you make of the father?”

  “The hippie? He looks pretty screwed up. I bet there’s an interesting story there, though.”

  “The stepfather is a different kind of dude altogether,” Jeff said. “He’s so straight.”

  “I guess June didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Only a fool marries a poet twice.”

  “What makes you think he’s a poet?”

  “June said Lucy’s father was a writer. Assuming that’s the guy, he doesn’t look like he writes copy for the Chamber of Commerce. Maybe he’s a songwriter, but I put my money on poet.”

  “Or the Great American Novel,” Jeff said.

  “The first chapter, max. He’s probably blown his attention span away with drugs and booze. I doubt that discipline is one of his virtues. I’ll have to check him out.”

  “Where are we going?”

  I looked at my watch.

  “I’ll drop you off. I’ve got a meeting in half an hour with a guy from the Sentinel.”

  “The local rag?”

  “He knows where all the bodies are buried.”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Jeff said.

  Chapter 16

  A small elderly woman wearing a flowered dress and a pale blue sweater was looking at the sky and fussing with an accordion-pleated plastic rain hat, just inside the door of the storefront Sentinel office. She was talking away as I approached, perhaps to me.

  “Will you look at that? This is the worst spring I can remember.”

  “I’m looking for Cal Jagger,” I said.

  “It’s good for the gardens,” she said, still peering at the rain, tying on her hat with a bow under her chin. “But not for my rheumatism.”

  “Cal Jagger?” I asked.

  “He’s inside, dear,” she said, then turned and called gaily back into the room. “Company, Mr. Jagger! And I’ll be on my way, now.”

  A man of about my age came out from behind the counter. He was tall and slightly stooped, with a strangely old-fashioned haircut, parted almost in the middle. It looked good with his rimless glasses, striped shirt, and bow tie. It was as if he had watched Gregory Peck playing the part of a small-town newspaper editor one too many times.

  “Thank you, Estelle,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

  The tiny lady beamed, and bustled out the door into the parking lot, pausing for a moment to tap on the glass in front of the gerbils in the pet shop next door. She caught me watching.

  “They get lonely at night,” she said. The editor and I shared a smile.

  “Kate Henry, I think,” he said.

  “Guilty.”

  “Come on in. We’re wrapped up for the week.”

  He held up the countertop for me to pass into the main office area, where a couple of men and one woman were covering their computer terminals or cleaning off their desks. It was a cheerful, friendly place, with tourism posters and community notices tacked to the walls. We
went through it into a small, messy office in the corner. Jagger cleared some papers off the second chair.

  “How would a beer go about now?” he asked.

  “It would go grand, thank you. I’ve just come from the funeral parlour.”

  “That’ll give you a thirst every time. Just let me let the rest of the staff out, and then we can talk.”

  I looked around the room while I waited. It was messy enough to be a journalist’s. There was an old upright typewriter on the desk, as well as a computer. A tall bookcase held reference books, style guides, and some of the better books about the craft.

  There were various plaques on the walls, and framed photographs which told me something of the man: Cal Jagger with chubby wife and red-haired children, one of each, in a studio portrait; Cal Jagger with large fish; Cal Jagger with Gloves Gardiner, on the golf course; autographed photo of Jimmy Carter; autographed photo of Jimmy Buffett. There was a faded snapshot stuck into the frame of one of the Chamber of Commerce certificates of commendation.

  I got up and looked at it. It was a piece of ancient history, a faded candid shot of a group of laughing young people in tie-dyed gear, sprawled under a palm tree on the beach. I tried to recognize a younger version of Jagger beyond the hair and love-beads.

  “Beach Blanket Blowout, 1970,” a voice behind me said. I jumped. Jagger was grinning and holding out a cold can.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy,” I said, taking the beer. “Is one of these wild and crazy young guys you?”

  “Third from the left,” he said, laughing. “The one making the peace sign.”

  “Amazing.”

  “You’re wondering how that disreputable kid turned into this straight and respectable good burgher of Sunland, right?”

  “Something like that,” I confessed. “It’s none of my business, of course. Besides, I’ve got some pretty embarrassing photographs of myself in that same era.”

  “It was the standard story. I wanted to defy my conservative parents with their small-town attitudes. I ran all the way to Chicago to write the Great American Novel. Got a job on the Tribune to pay the rent. Settled down a bit. Discovered I liked a few middle-class comforts. Reconciled with my parents just before my dad died, and came home to run his newspaper. Met my high-school sweetheart on the street one day, married her six months later, and we have lived happily ever after.”

  “And the Great American Novel?”

  “Right up there,” he said, pointing to a cardboard box tied with string on the top shelf of the bookcase. “I take it down and look at it from time to time. The world may have to be denied the pleasure.”

  “No regrets?”

  “No. Not for any part of it.”

  “What about the other people in the picture? Ever see any of them anymore?”

  He came and stood beside me, gulped some beer, and pointed at the kid with his fingers making horns over his neighbours head.

  “This one was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The day before his tour was up. This one died of a drug overdose over in Miami. This one runs a liquor store in Saint Pete’s. Bobby is a real estate broker now; almost as respectable as I am. I’ve lost touch with Dwayne completely. Last I heard he was out in California, working in a bar band. And this one is still the same.”

  He looked at me.

  “Except for the fact that his daughter just got murdered. This is Hank Cartwright, Lucy’s father. She was born about when this was taken.”

  “He was at the funeral parlour.”

  “Sober?”

  “I doubt it,” I said, then told him the story. He shook his head.

  “Poor Hank. He’s a sad case. I hardly ever see him anymore, but I think about him sometimes. Do you ever wonder why it is that some of us came through the drugs and craziness and out the other side and others didn’t?”

  “Yeah, I do sometimes. I’ve got friends like that in my past, too.”

  “It haunts me. Take Hank. He was bright and talented, probably the most talented of the whole bunch of us. But he just pissed it all away. He crossed the line and never came back. It was a real waste.”

  “What does he do now?”

  “He gets by,” Jagger shrugged. “He still deals drugs on a minor level, I think. Grass. There’s a blues band he sings with sometimes. He drives cab when he can keep himself straight for long enough. He lives in a trailer in a friend’s backyard. His friends look out for him.”

  “He was a writer once?”

  “Still is, for all I know. He was a poet; a good one. A bit self-indulgent, now that I look back, but he was young. He was a wizard with words, though. Better than me, that’s for sure. He just never took it to another level.”

  “So you were a friend of June’s too?”

  “Yeah, we were like a family, about a dozen of us, before I left,” Jagger said, then went behind his desk and sat down, gesturing towards the other chair for me. “I still see her from time to time, at the restaurant. She was doing okay, too. Until this. I’d better go and see her later.”

  “She looked like she could use some old friends,” I said.

  “Yeah, I’ll go see her. Garden of Memories, right?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, enough about my misspent youth,” Jagger said. “How can I help you?”

  “Just some background. I’m doing a weekend feature on Lucy. I guess you know that one of the Titans has been arrested.”

  “Yes. Pretty convenient for Troy Barwell.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s handy having a stranger to charge. A foreign stranger, particularly. A black foreign stranger’s even better.”

  “Barwell’s a racist?”

  “You’ve met him. What do you think?”

  “I’m from Canada. I thought he was pretty unpleasant, but I try to avoid stereotyping all Southerners as ignorant bigots.”

  “Don’t bother. He’s a racist and a bully. I’ve known Troy Barwell for twenty years. He used to go out with my youngest sister when they were kids. Even then, he was a brute. We were all glad when she came to her senses and dumped him.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go out with him.”

  “He was a big wheel in high school. He was the star of the baseball team, he was good-looking, his daddy was rich. Quite a combination. He still has no trouble attracting women.”

  I shrugged.

  “The charm escaped me. Is he married?”

  “Divorced. Twice. Rumour is he beat both of them up a bit.”

  “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

  “But you’re not here to listen to gossip about our police force, right?”

  “Right. I want to talk about Lucy. I don’t know how well you knew her.”

  “Pretty well. She used to work for me, part-time.”

  “When was that?”

  “A few years ago, when she was still in high school,” Jagger said. “She was a bit scattered, but not a bad worker.”

  “Tell me about her. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who had anything nice to say about her, outside of her family.”

  “Well, she was bright, as I told you, despite that airhead act. She was starved for approval, for affection.”

  “I could see that.”

  “There was no such thing as too much praise for Lucy Cartwright. I always had to be really careful. At that point in her life she would burst into tears if she thought she had done something wrong.”

  “She always seemed pretty thick-skinned to me.”

  “That came later. I’m no psychiatrist, but I think that her father leaving had a lot to do with it.”

  “When did her parents split up?”

  “I guess she was about four when he went to jail the first time. That pretty much ended the marriage.”

  “What did he go t
o jail for?”

  “Drugs. He was dealing pretty heavily.”

  “You said that was the first time. How many times have there been?”

  “Hank’s always getting in trouble. A couple of short stretches for theft, the drugs that one time, and a bunch of petty stuff. Drunk driving, drunk and disorderly, busting up a bar when they wouldn’t serve him. Things like that.”

  “Did they have any kind of continuing relationship?”

  “I don’t think so,” Cal said. “June once told me he always broke promises to the kids. Missing birthdays and things like that. Lucy had given up on him by the time she was seven.”

  “So your theory is that her promiscuity was based on losing her father’s love?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s too pat,” he admitted.

  “No, there might be something in it. How promiscuous was she? I’ve just heard all the rumours about her with the ballplayers. Are they true?”

  “Probably. She didn’t go around with any of the local boys in recent years. A lot of them tried. Her last local boyfriend was the kid she went steady with in high school. He was pretty cut up when she began to date the ballplayers. He tried to commit suicide when they broke up.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “He was a bit unhinged to begin with. He’s been in and out of the state hospital ever since. Arnie was his name. Arnie Bonder.”

  “What about her mother? How did she get by?”

  “June? She’s done the best she could. I don’t think Hank ever gave her a penny of support, but she’s raised those two kids pretty well.”

  “And the brother? Is Ringo his real name?”

  “June was pretty nuts about the Beatles,” Cal laughed. “She originally wanted to call him Sergeant Pepper. Lucy was named after ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.”

  “Acid has a lot to answer for in this world. What does Ringo do?”

  “He’s a mechanic. He works at the company where his stepfather works, Trucking for Jesus.”

  “Trucking what?”

  “Haven’t you seen their trucks around? They’re born-again truck drivers. That’s what Dirk does. He brought Ringo into the fold a few years ago. I’m not sure he’s completely settled down yet, if you want to know the truth. I think he accepted the Lord to get a job. But Dirk’s happy.”