Pot Shot

by Gerry Boyle

  “Police didn’t think it was so harmless,” I said.

  “They think the worst of people. It’s their job.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Only when it comes to kids. You don’t have to babysit me. I’ve got my gendarme. You don’t have to be here twenty-four hours a day. You’ve got a life to live. And a story to write. When is that due?”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” I said. “I’ll get to it.”

  “I think you should do it while it’s all fresh. I could be in here for another week. You can’t just sit here.”

  I looked at her.

  “I don’t know. The view isn’t bad.”

  She smiled.

  “Just don’t forget what the full panorama looks like.”

  “Never,” I said.

  We talked for a while longer and then Roxanne’s eyes began to unfocus and she lapsed back into her medicated sleep. I looked at her for a minute, then went out to the corridor where the cop was standing. It was the young woman again. She had seen the black flowers and the razor blade. She had not been amused.

  “She’s sleeping,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be back in an hour. Keep a weather eye out.”

  “You can count on it,” she said.

  “I am,” I said.

  I went downstairs to the truck and drove through the streets and down the big hill and over the bridge to Roxanne’s. It was sunny and breezy, and the water was a shimmering green-blue and Roxanne was stuck in a hospital room thanks to some craven, weak-willed loser. Some nodded-out druggie. I looked at my notes, spread on the table beside my computer, felt my sympathy for the marijuana movement draining away. This wasn’t going to make the story any easier to write.

  But I clicked on the computer and sat down. It whirred and I opened up the file, “Marijuana outline.” I scrolled through the chronology, picked out the holes, and looked through my notebooks. What had the banner said at Bobby’s table at the Country Life Fair? What had the petition said? How many miles was Florence from Augusta or Portland or some other landmark that even readers in Boston would know?

  I needed Bobby’s rap sheet, not Mendoza’s secondhand account. I needed to know the year that Bobby had gone to the high school and threatened to demonstrate. I needed the coroner’s report so I could say how many broken bones he had, and which ones. I needed to know how many acres the Mullaneys owned. I needed to get back to Florence and get a reaction to his death from his pals in the pot movement, and other people in town. Who was the dentist? What did he think when he got the call from the cops?

  What was the rank of that DEA cop in Florence, the one who had the son with a drug problem? What was his son’s name? Where was Bobby born? Were his parents alive? Did they know what had become of their little boy?

  I needed to talk to Melanie again, as a source. I needed to talk to the Valley police. I needed to talk to Mendoza, have him send me a copy of his story. I needed to talk to the Globe and tell Wellington that the story I was going to deliver was going to be more extensive than the one we had discussed. Maybe I’d pitch it to the Globe magazine.

  All of this was going to be hard to do from Portland. Maybe I could bring Roxanne to Prosperity to recuperate. Clair could stay with her when I was gone. Mary could make her chicken soup. God, I really did have to get back to Florence. Maybe down to Valley again. Could I ask Clair to come to Portland?

  I looked at my watch. My hour was almost up and I hadn’t even made a phone call. I dug in my wallet and took out a folded piece of paper: the instructions for my answering machine. I went to the counter with a pad and dialed, punching in numbers as my own voice answered.

  The messages played.

  Joe Mendoza, times five. A couple of hang-ups. Wellington, from the Globe, asking me to call him. Another hang-up. Then a tentative man’s voice, asking for Mr. McMorrow the reporter. He said his name was Sam and that we’d met at the restaurant in Madison.

  It was Sam, the pot guy with the son who thought his daddy was a criminal. He said he wanted to talk to me about Bobby, that they all did. He said they wanted to set the record straight.

  “Police are gonna try to discredit him, I know, just like they try to discredit all of us and what we’re working for,” Sam said. “Please call because we think you’ll try to tell the real story.”

  He had left a number. I dialed it.

  Sam answered breathlessly, as if he’d been sitting by the phone for eighteen hours, awaiting my call.

  “So like I said, we need to talk to you about Bobby. The police are going to turn this into a smear campaign, and we’ve got to defend him and defend ourselves. I mean, this is a good man we’re talking about.”

  “Running with the wrong crowd?”

  “Exactly. The wrong place at the wrong time. I mean, Bobby was no more a drug trafficker than I am.”

  My eyebrows raised.

  “So I can call everybody. We’ve been waiting to hear from you, and we can be at the restaurant in, let’s say, an hour?”

  “Can’t do it. I’m in Portland.”

  “Well, how ’bout an hour and a half?”

  “Can’t do that, either. I’ve got a friend in the hospital down here.”

  “Oh.”

  He seemed puzzled.

  “You going to the service?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

  “I’m going to try to make that. How ’bout we talk then?”

  “Meet before?”

  “What time’s the service?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “How would nine be? Same place in Madison.”

  “Good,” Sam said.

  “How’s your son?” I asked.

  “My son?”

  “Yeah. You told me before he was upset. About the pot arrest.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, he’s more upset now.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He called him Uncle Bobby.”

  So my hour was up and I went back to the hospital. The nurses smiled at me when I got off the elevator, and the cop was at the door. None of the flowers had exploded and Roxanne was beautiful in the bed, sipping a cup of coffee, her leg under a leg-size pup tent.

  We sat and talked and held hands and watched the jets coast by outside the window. I told Roxanne what I still had to do on the story, and that I’d like to make a quick trip up to Florence in the morning. She said that was fine, because she had friends who wanted to come over and she wouldn’t be alone. I said I wouldn’t be too long, and Roxanne said I ought to take a day off from her and wind up the research and then take another day off and write it. I told her I’d think about it, and she said not to worry about her, and I said I’d do just that.

  That was the way the day went, and Sunday, too.

  I went back to Roxanne’s and called the Globe and told Wellington what I was up to. He was interested, but said he didn’t want to give the story to the magazine because he wanted it for his own section, so screw them. I told him it would be three days, which meant I would file by Tuesday night, which also meant I would need more money.

  Wellington said he’d go as high as six hundred if the piece was as I’d described. I asked him if I’d ever led him astray before, and he said no.

  When I went back at six, Roxanne was gone.

  The nurse said she’d been moved to another room, on the eighth floor, as a security precaution. I got on the elevator and went up and asked for Roxanne at the desk and a new nurse asked my name. I told her, but then the older cop with the paperback book waved to me and told her I was okay. I walked down the hall to the room and the cop asked how I was.

  “Fine. How ’bout you?”

  “Great.”

  “Why’d they move her?”

  “Routine.”

  “Because of the mother and the flowers?”

  “Mostly because of the mother,” the old cop said. “They can’t find her.”

  That night we watched the news on the televisio
n hanging from the ceiling. One story said the attorney general’s office was still investigating the shooting of a Portland man by a Portland police detective who was accompanying a social worker on a visit to a downtown apartment. The man, Mark Radcliffe, twenty-eight, was in stable condition at Maine Medical Center.

  “The social worker, Roxanne Masterson, twenty-seven, of the State Department of Human Services, was also seriously injured in the fracas,” the TV reporter said. “Masterson was taken to Maine Med with multiple fractures. A hospital spokesman said the Portland woman was expected to be transferred to another facility for further treatment.”

  “That true?” I said.

  “Not that I know of,” Roxanne said.

  “Misinformation.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “No, it’s completely unethical. And they should have said you’d been taken to a special hospital in Ohio.”

  That night I left again when Roxanne slept. With a beer beside me, I called Mendoza, first at the paper, then at home. The woman who answered was older, with a stronger Latino accent. His mother. She said Joe was working, that he was always working, even on a Saturday night.

  “He’s a reporter,” she said proudly.

  “I know,” I said. “So am I.”

  “You must be very proud, too,” Mendoza’s mother said.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  After that I called Martucci to see about the autopsy report and Bobby’s sheet. Martucci wasn’t in, either. Out of excuses, I called Melanie. Nobody answered. Good things come in threes.

  So I worked until ten, then called Roxanne’s floor. The nurse connected me and the phone rang and Roxanne answered, sounding groggy. I had awakened her. I told her I loved her, that she wouldn’t remember me calling in the morning. She said she would, but the next morning she didn’t.

  “You don’t remember any of it?” I said, standing by her bed.

  Roxanne shook her head.

  “You wouldn’t believe some of the things you said. And with the nurses right there. I tried to urge discretion, but you wouldn’t have any of it. They left when you started comparing me to Adonis. I think they were embarrassed.”

  She smiled wearily. I squeezed her hand and pulled up a chair.

  Roxanne dozed. I sat. Nurses bustled in and bustled out, the way nurses do. One bearded guy called her Roxie and tugged on her IV tube. He said I didn’t have to move, so I didn’t.

  People from her office came in after lunch. A couple of them, women in their fifties, hugged her. One started to cry. Roxanne said it was okay. The woman said she knew, but she clearly didn’t.

  More medication in the afternoon. An orthopedic surgeon who poked his head in, but saw me, and said he’d come back, just wanted to say hello. He seemed a nice fellow.

  “I wonder if he shaves yet,” I said.

  Roxanne smiled, her eyes closed. She slept and then dinner arrived, in a covered tray. Beside it was a plastic container of what appeared to be tapioca pudding. I let her sleep, watched her mouth part. She started to snore, and I decided I wouldn’t tell her. For a moment, I had a vision of her old, in a nursing home bed. I took her hand, and the vision slipped away, leaving an unsettling chill.

  A teenage girl came in and stopped. Whispered, “Should I leave her dinner here?”

  I nodded, and she left. I sat. Roxanne slept.

  It was after nine when two nurses, one with a beard, one without, came in with a cart full of stuff. They said they’d be twenty minutes or so. Roxanne stirred. I said I’d say good night. Roxanne smiled her woozy junkie grin. I kissed her cheek and left. The cop in the hall told me to have a good night. I wished him the same, but meant it more.

  The next morning, I was on the road by six, tea in my mug and rifle in my rack. The sun came up beyond the bay and I drove north with it on my right and then swung northwest. The sunlight beamed in low and the day seemed charged with light, the trees golden and reflective.

  I took Route 4 north to Livermore Falls and Jay, where the paper mill’s plume was clean and white against the blue sky. By seven I was in Farmington and then beyond it, into the forgotten hills, where it was a beautiful day to look back on Bobby Mullaney’s life, and just as good a day to try to figure out, yet again, why he caused his own death.

  But first another piece of the story. The local reaction. On the western outskirts of Florence, a woman was walking across the road from her mailbox with her newspaper. I pulled over and got out. She was somewhere near eighty, wearing jeans and boots, and she gave me a hard look that dared me to try something funny.

  Instead, I introduced myself and asked her if she knew Bobby Mullaney. She said no, and kept on toward her trailer. I asked her if she knew about the marijuana legalization movement in her town.

  “You mean them friggin’ potheads?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I’m doing a story on one of them. He was killed this week in Massachusetts.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  “Goddamn right. Ought to haul the rest of ’em down there, too, and blow ’em to hell. Ruined this town, is what they’ve done. Now let me ask you a question there, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is. Why don’t you do a write-up on somebody decent?”

  My poll continued all the way into the center of Florence and out the other side. I asked everyone I saw. When I was done, Bobby Mullaney’s death had been approved, three to two. One guy, who was in his dooryard clanking on the underside of his old truck, was undecided—not on Bobby Mullaney, but on whether he should let me leave on my own volition or set the dog on me.

  I fixed my notes on the side of the road and headed east toward Madison. It was eight-fifteen when I passed the restaurant on Main Street, and I didn’t see any of Bobby’s clan. I drove past the mill and up to the light and took a left. I was about to take another left and circle back when I saw a sign that read LESTER PELHAM, DMD. I drove on and pulled in.

  It was an old Victorian house, olive green with a plywood wheelchair ramp nailed to the front. The dentist was on the left and an accountant’s office was on the right. There were a car and a truck out front. I went up the ramp and opened the door.

  A chime sounded when I stepped on the carpet. The waiting room was paneled, and a big unshaven guy was sitting in one of the wooden chairs. I went to the counter and leaned. A matronly woman came from out back and gave me a friendly smile. I did the same and told her my name.

  “I’m writing a story for the Boston Globe about a man who lived in Florence,” I said. “I was told that his dentist in Madison helped police in Massachusetts identify his body. I just wondered if this might be the dentist. I don’t know how many there are in town.”

  “Two,” the woman said.

  The look on her face said this was the one.

  She asked me to have a seat, so I did. The unshaven guy stared at me for a good thirty seconds before going back to his magazine. Not to be outdone, I picked up a magazine, too. I had read most of an article on manatees when the woman called pleasantly to the unshaven man. He heaved himself up and left.

  Dr. Pelham appeared at my left shoulder.

  I stood and we shook hands. He was fifty-five, maybe, with a silvery mustache and a kind, open face. I explained what I wanted to know and he looked intrigued.

  “Boston Globe?”

  “That’s right. I string for them.”

  “You intend to put us on the map, huh?”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t even know if I have the right dentist.”

  “You do.”

  “So the Valley police called you?” I asked, slipping my notebook from my jacket pocket.

  “Yes, they did. They asked if Bobby was a patient of mine. I said he was. We did whatever we could to help.”

  He paused, as if he thought his next comment might be quoted, and he wanted to word it carefully.

  “He was a very pleasant, very funny fellow, and this is a terrible tragedy,” Pelham said.

  I did the obligatory sc
ribble.

  “So you sent the dental records to the Massachusetts police?”

  “They were out of here within twenty minutes of the call.”

  “Yes, they told me you were especially helpful.”

  He seemed proud.

  “Have you had to do this before?”

  “You know, that’s an interesting question,” Pelham said, folding his hands across his white coat. “I’ve been in practice here for twenty-six years. I’ve been called on to help with identification of bodies seven times. Two were drowning victims whose bodies were in the river for several months. One was a man who died in a house fire. They pretty much knew who it was, but they had to be positive. Smoking in bed. Terrible thing. One was a body they found up in the woods outside Caratunk. Man hung himself from a tree. Hunters found him two years later. Animals had scattered the bones pretty good, but they found the skull. The skull and a belt buckle. Buckle was silver. With turquoise. One of those Indian ones.”

  “Did you identify him?”

  “No. I helped unidentify him. He wasn’t the man they thought he was. They never did figure out who he was, as far as I know.”

  “So this is almost routine for you?”

  “Oh, yeah. I tell Carol, ‘Pull the last X-rays. Send them Federal Express.’ She knows what to do.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, writing in my notebook. “I would have thought that something like this would be pretty unusual for a small-town dentist.”

  “Heck no. We tend to know everybody in town, of course. Everybody has teeth. Well, most people do. And small towns aren’t the idyllic little places they’re made out to be. Not to disappoint the readers of the Boston Globe, but small towns have many of the bad things you find in the city. Just in smaller numbers. Proportionate numbers.”

  I smiled and scrawled. It was his theory, and it was well polished.

  “You know this building was broken into this week.”

  “They broke in here?”

  “No, next door.”

  “What is it? An accountant?”