by Gerry Boyle
“What?”
“You probably shouldn’t bring the Mauser. Massachusetts has nasty gun laws.”
“Goddamn uncivilized place,” Clair said.
“Well, we won’t stay long. Interview a few drug lords, find Bobby Mullaney, and be home in time for cocktails tomorrow.”
“But we’ll take a real truck. I like you okay, but I’m not sitting on your lap.”
“Story of my life,” I said.
So by one o’clock we were on the road in Clair’s big Ford. We had a thermos of tea and a thermos of coffee. A bag of apples. Our duffels were in plastic garbage bags in the back, in case of rain, which didn’t start until somewhere around Biddeford. Clair clicked on the wipers and the truck lumbered along at a regal pace as we sat high above the traffic, peering down into passing cars.
“You think we should have told Mary and Roxanne we were going?” I said.
“Just get ’em all worried,” Clair said. “Hell, a man shouldn’t have to check with the old lady every time he blows his nose.”
“Right.”
I looked out as a Mercedes swished by.
“But Roxanne may have had a hard day. I think I’ll call when we get there,” I said.
Clair looked at me and grinned.
“Yeah. Me, too.”
So we drove down the interstate, with country and western playing softly on the radio and the heat on just enough to offset the dampness and chill. Just south of Kennebunk, Clair reached for the case on the floor and took out a folder. From the folder he took out a cassette tape and put it in the radio. A man’s voice said, “Chapter twenty-four. ‘The Sharpsburg Campaign.’ ”
“Most people know it as Antietam,” Clair said.
And then the narrator began, reading his story about McClellan and Lee and Joe Hooker and Stonewall Jackson.
“More Americans killed that day than any other day in history,” Clair said quietly. “Twenty-three thousand casualties.”
“Insanity,” I said.
“No, not really. It’s just that people are sort of shortsighted. One action leads to another. That one leads to something else. Before you know it, you’re into some pretty horrible situations. You don’t know how you got there. You don’t know the way back out.”
“It was like that in your war, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Clair said quietly. “One dumb move leads to another.”
I thought for a moment.
“This pot story’s like that,” I said, as the wipers waved. “One thing led to another. Sort of snowballed. Out of control.”
Clair looked in the side mirror and pulled out to pass a semi-trailer.
“I don’t know,” he said, glancing in the mirror to pull back into his lane. He reached out and ejected the Civil War tape.
“Tell me about this one again. Start at the beginning. Don’t leave anything out.”
I didn’t. I told him the whole story, from the fair to Stephen and Melanie. When I forgot something, I went back and retrieved it. Tromping through the woods to see the bushy green plants, with their rose-tinted buds. Melanie calling me, asking for help. Going through their drawers. Finding the name Bernie. Going to Lewiston. Sitting in the cathedral with a drug dealer.
When I was done, Clair reached for his thermos and filled his cup with coffee.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It seems like there’s a straight line that runs right through the whole thing. It’s like there’s a hook in you and every little while the line gets reeled in a little more.”
“But I picked them out,” I said. “I was the one who initiated the whole thing. They didn’t even know me.”
Clair sipped his coffee.
“But they didn’t waste any time bringing you into the fold,” he said.
“They want some sympathetic press.”
Clair sipped again.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know much about it, but seems to me, for drug dealers, they’re awful chatty.”
“I can’t help it if I inspire confidence.”
“When did you start doing that?” Clair said.
18
As we crossed from New Hampshire into Massachusetts on Route 495, the woods became more scrubby, more temporary, as if they could be mown anytime, should the right deal come along.
We drove in silence, listening to the accounts of long-ago battles for pastures and cornfields. The light faded but the rain continued, and finally we crossed a highway bridge over the Merrimack River. The river was wide and skimmed smooth by the rain, and I looked beyond it and saw the mills, sprawling redbrick buildings that stretched far into the distance.
I elbowed Clair but he’d already seen them and he slowed the truck. The buildings closest to the highway had graceful arched windows, some without glass, some plugged with plywood. The complex looked vast and abandoned, a massive undertaking that had seen its purpose flow by like the waters of the river itself.
“Jesus,” Clair said. “Looks like some goddamn Mayan city, doesn’t it?”
“The ruins of the Industrial Age.”
It did look like ruins, standing there empty and grand. Then the mills were gone and we were still heading down the highway and I reached for the map. Two exits up, we turned off and headed north on a two-lane road that passed scrubby lots and then dingy plazas, linked by lines of small square houses. The houses were drab, with porches on the front, one after another, and then there was a faded white wooden sign that said we were entering the city of Valley, Massachusetts.
The sign promised nothing else.
We stopped at the first light, the truck towering over the car in front. The car was small, a Honda or Toyota, and there were little kids in the backseat. They turned and stared at the truck and at us, and then the woman in the front passenger seat turned and stared, too.
“We must look like a couple of lost lumberjacks,” Clair said.
“So much for undercover.”
“I thought you were just gonna look in the Yellow Pages under D for drug dealers.”
“Let’s look under M for motel,” I said.
“Isn’t exactly a tourist trap.”
“Yeah, but people must stay the night here sometime.”
“Yeah, when their cars are stolen,” Clair said.
“And the rental place is closed.”
The light changed and we followed the traffic as it made its way into what must have been downtown Valley. The truck idled along in the line of Toyotas and Nissans and I looked out the window. A stone church with a high stone wall around it, statues peeking out timidly. A huddle of kids in hooded football jackets, standing on a corner that was as close to a football field as they’d ever get. An insurance office in a storefront barricaded with heavy wire mesh. A used-car lot lit brighter than Fenway Park, ringed by a chain-link fence, which was topped by glistening razor-wire loops. A fortified shop that cashed checks and sold beepers. A sporting goods store that probably sold banana clips for AK-47s.
“The American dream,” I said.
Clair looked out at the brick and concrete.
“You know, we turn up our noses, but a big chunk of the world would kill to live in a place like this,” he said, his big arm slung over the steering wheel. “Running water, toilets that don’t dump on the ground. Medicine and schools.”
“Hope, you mean.”
“A lot of places, there isn’t any. People come here from these dirt-poor countries and they work their asses off. After five years, they’re out of here. Fifteen years, their kids are in graduate school. Places they come from, it can’t be done. Once you’re born, that’s it. A few people get lucky, get born rich. The rest crap out and have the rest of their lives to think about it.”
“And the ones who don’t want to work their asses off can deal drugs.”
“And if they get caught they get a free lawyer,” he said. “Like I said, a great country. Where to?”
We decided to look for a place to stay, but on the first pass thro
ugh the main drag, didn’t see anything remotely resembling a hotel. Beyond the little business district, the street went over a drab little green bridge and then passed into the half-light between two brick mill walls. We peered up like explorers eyeing the jungle along the Amazon. The mills were four stories high, broken windows on each floor. Pigeons huddled on the granite sills, a couple of winos on the sidewalks below them. Gang graffiti was painted on the walls like petroglyphs. “MLA . . . Cookie . . . TZT.” A graceful brick tower loomed above it all, with a clock in it that had once kept the workers punctual.
The clock said it was eleven-thirty. These days, that was close enough.
Then the mill walls ended and there were empty lots and more drab little houses. One had a sign advertising rooms by the day, week, or month.
Clair slowed.
“Nah,” I said.
“Nah,” he said.
Clair took a right and the houses closed in.
The street was narrow, the tenements right on the sidewalk. The big Ford seemed to take up both lanes, and the first oncoming car went up on the sidewalk to pass us. Two young women pushing baby carriages stared. At the corner at the end of the block, there was a store with boarded-up windows. The sign said IGLISIA PENTECOSTAL. SOLDADOS DE JESUS. A bunch of guys stood in a knot on the sidewalk out front. Hooded jackets. Hard stares as the big truck with Maine plates rolled slowly by.
“We could stop, but they’d probably try to convert us,” I said.
“They may have been soldados, but I don’t think they were with Jesus.”
“Hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways.”
We worked our way through the neighborhood back toward the downtown. The signs in the stores were in Spanish. The bakery was Dominican. In the window of the Spanish video store was a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger holding a big pistol. The store sat at a square named for somebody called Thomas Kelly, who was probably long dead, his progeny scattered to the suburbs. In their wakes were women, hurrying to the store where the sign advertised chuleta de cerdo.
“How’s your Spanish?” Clair said.
“Somewhere between rusty and nonexistent.”
“Me, too. Between the two of us, we ought to be able to communicate at least the basics. If they speak English.”
“Like, ‘Have you seen a guy named Bobby Mullaney?’ ”
“Right,” Clair said. “And, ‘Which way to the Holiday Inn?’ ”
“I think the nearest one’s in Boston. Let’s try the police station, first.”
“What do we do there?”
“Ask if they’ve seen Bobby Mullaney,” I said.
“I thought you already asked them that.”
“I did, but you get different answers when you’re standing right in front of somebody.”
“You hope,” Clair said.
“I hope.”
Clair tossed our duffel bags in the truck cab and locked it. The truck was parked in front of a meter on a triangular common at the center of the downtown. Valley City Hall was across the common. A guy on a street corner had told us the police station was out back. He looked like he would know. And he did.
The Valley cruisers were black and white and so was the paddy wagon that pulled up to a side door as we passed. The cops got out and yanked the back door open and said, “Watch your step, ladies,” and several women of indeterminate age but very determinate profession teetered out.
“What time is it?” I asked Clair.
“Five-thirty,” he said.
“Things get rolling early here.”
“Maybe they never quite stop,” Clair said.
“It’s the crack.”
“No rest for the weary,” he said.
Which I was feeling myself, but we followed the women into the police station and down a flight of stairs. They went through a door, ragged models heading for the runway. The door closed and we stood there, looking at the empty seat behind the bulletproof information window. Police, uniformed and detectives, went by us going both ways. They all looked busy and my mission seemed suddenly trivial, but I shook it off. I followed a detective down the hall and Clair followed me.
Twenty steps down the hall, the detective turned.
“Can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking for Detective Martucci.”
He was chunky, gun high on his right hip, folder in his left hand. Young but tough beyond his years.
“Who are you?”
“I’m a reporter.”
He looked at Clair, big and hard in his green canvas jacket and work boots.
“He’s with me,” I said.
“I figured that. She isn’t here.”
“Is she gone for the day?”
“No, she’s out.”
“You expect her back soon?”
“I don’t know. She’s on a homicide.”
“Oh, wow.”
His look said no wow was necessary.
“What sort of homicide was it?”
“The kind with a stiff,” he said.
“Stiff wasn’t named Bobby Mullaney, was it?”
The detective looked at me. While I had his attention, I quickly explained.
“Never heard of him,” he said. “But I’ve only been here three years. Came from Methuen. You came all the way from Maine to find this guy?”
I shrugged.
“I got a bridge in New York I want you to look at.”
“Only if Bobby Mullaney’s floating under it,” I said.
The detective looked at Clair.
“What’re you? The photographer?”
“Chaperone,” Clair said.
He smiled as he looked down on the detective. The detective didn’t know whether to smile, so he didn’t, but something in Clair connected with him.
“You hunt?” the cop said. “I bet you hunt.”
“Oh, yeah. Waldo County’s chock-full of deer.”
“Last year I went up, I didn’t even see one. Froze my butt. This year I may say the hell with it.”
“You gotta let ’em come to you,” Clair said. “Know where they spend time and go there and wait.”
“Hey, I don’t have the patience.”
“That’s hunting. It isn’t chasing animals through the woods. Hell of a lot more relaxing. Know your prey and let it come to you.”
“Well, maybe I’ll try it,” the detective said, and with that he walked down the hall and through an unmarked door. It closed behind him. We stood there.
“If you’re all through male bonding, maybe I could ask some questions,” I said.
“He never heard of him,” Clair said.
“I wanted to give him my name, in case he came across him.”
“What’re you gonna do? Have him call you on the car phone?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you’re reporting like he hunts. Let’s go find a hotel and a TV and a couple cold beers. See if this Mullaney guy’s on the local news.”
I looked at him. A uniformed cop came by and gave us a suspicious look. I smiled at her and it was enough to keep her moving.
“I thought I was in charge here,” I said to Clair.
“Where’d you get that idea?”
“I don’t know. It was my idea to come down here. It’s my story.”
“And my truck. Let’s go.”
“Once an officer, always an officer,” I said.
“Goddamn right. Ain’t often I get outranked.”
“And she’s in North Carolina.”
“Right.”
“Let’s find a room and a phone,” I said. “You can go first.”
“Chicken,” Clair said.
Mary told Clair to be careful. Then she put his daughter on and his voice softened even more. He asked Susan if she was getting enough rest and he asked what the baby did that day. Then, sitting there on the edge of the motel bed, he smiled and said, “Hey there. You let your mama get some sleep, you hear me? Or I’ll have to come down there and pummelize you. Yeah.
That’s what I’ll have to do. Yeah.”
He paused and smiled deeply and said his good-byes.
It was my turn.
I got Roxanne’s answering machine, which could have meant she was in the tub, in a courtroom, putting out the trash, or facing down some bullying scumbag parent. I told the machine I was in Valley, staying at the renowned Route 293 Motel. I gave the number and I said I was with Clair, which would reassure her. I said we’d stop on the way back tomorrow and I said I loved her. As I hung up, Clair handed me a beer.
He turned on the TV and found the local news. The newscasters, a daft-acting man and woman, were chuckling over what was apparently a private joke. When they were through laughing, they reported that asbestos had been found in a Valley elementary school, causing the place to be shut down, maybe forever. Then they laughed some more. Finally they said it was going to be clear and cool on Friday but before that, police were investigating a possible murder-suicide on Lawrence Street in Valley. A man had killed his wife and himself, in that order. There were no names available, but the man and wife were in their seventies.
And then the newspeople took a breath and laughed some more.
“Doesn’t sound like Bobby,” I said.
“Nope. Let’s go eat.”
“After I call Melanie.”
“Break the good news?”
“Make sure he hasn’t come straggling home, tail between his legs. Wouldn’t that be funny?”
“We could relax and take in the sights,” Clair said.
“What sights?”
“Don’t be such an uptight Anglo. Let’s find a good Dominican restaurant. Or Cambodian. I thought I saw a Cambodian place when we were downtown.”
“Let me call Melanie,” I said. “See if she can give us anybody to talk to.”
Clair opened two more beers and handed me one. I put it next to the first, on the phone table, and took out my notebook. I found Melanie’s number in Florence and dialed, charging the call to my number in Prosperity. The phone rang and then there was a click. A long pause.
“Hello?” I said. “Yeah,” a voice said.
It was Stephen.
“Stephen. This is Jack McMorrow. How’re you doing?”