Bad Moon Rising

by Ed Gorman

  BAD MOON RISING

  BAD MOON RISING

  ED GORMAN

  PEGASUS CRIME

  NEW YORK

  To my friends and saviors

  Linda and Randy Siebels

  To the websites and e-groups that educate and inspire

  those of us with the incurable cancer multiple myeloma.

  “A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.”

  —Ronald Reagan

  “Good morning! What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.”

  —Wavy Gravy at Woodstock

  “We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”

  —President Lyndon Johnson

  “There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

  —Creedence Clearwater Revival

  “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming … Four dead in Ohio.”

  —Neil Young’s “Ohio” about Kent State

  JESUS CHRIST WAS NOT A HIPPIE

  In the summer of 1968, the good Reverend Cartwright, last seen setting himself on fire while attempting to burn a huge pile of Beatles records, purchased six billboards around town to make sure that believers and nonbelievers alike got the message that Jesus Christ had not been like hippies during his time on earth.

  Three weeks earlier, an eighty-six-year-old woman had written the local newspaper to defend our resident hippies from the slings and arrows of those who hated them. She said that given how the adults had screwed up the world there just might be a chance that these young people had some ideas worth listening to. Further—and you can imagine the bulging, crazed eyes of the good reverend as he read this—further, as a lifelong Christian she was pretty sure that if Jesus Christ walked the earth today he would walk it as a hippie. Not, I assumed, in Birkenstocks, but you get the idea.

  So now Reverend Cartwright was on the attack. Seeing the billboard, I realized that it was in fact time for his radio show. Lately I’d been using it as my humor break for the day. For lunch I’d pull into the A&W for a cheeseburger and a Pepsi and sit in my car and listen to his show. It always opened with a tape of his choir—one of the worst I’d ever heard—singing some song about the righteous Lord and how he was going to disembowel you if you didn’t do exactly what he told you to do. Then the reverend would come on. He always opened—as he did today—with the same words: “I spoke with God last night and here’s what he told me to tell you.”

  I’d been hearing his show all my life. My father used to listen to it on the days he wasn’t working. He’d laugh so hard he couldn’t catch his breath at times. I’d be laughing along with him as my mother would peek in and say we shouldn’t be wasting our time on a moron like that. But then, she didn’t understand our weakness for The Three Stooges, either.

  Today, as I jammed extra pickles under the top of my bun, the reverend said: “If Jesus Christ was a hippie, as some local infidels are saying, then that would mean that Jesus Christ would sanction what goes on at the commune right on the very edge of our town. A town I have personally sanctified to the Lord. If you will support me with your prayers and your pledges I will see that that commune is closed down and the infidels driven from our midst.”

  His pitches for money were the dullest part of the show, and since he was obviously headed in that direction I twisted the selection knob looking for some news. I counted three stations playing “Harper Valley P.T.A.,” a song critics likened to a three-minute hillbilly version of the novel Peyton Place.

  I found a newscast and quickly wished I hadn’t. The war the war the war. It had brought down LBJ and had returned to prominence Tricky Dick Nixon.

  When I finished eating, I sat back and smoked a cigarette. Right then I felt pretty down, but nothing would compare to how down I would feel less than ten hours later.

  PART ONE

  1

  “I am just way too groovy for this scene, man.”

  If you were a teenager saying “groovy” you could get away with it. If you were a thirty-four-year-old Buick dealer all gussied up in purple silk bell-bottoms, a red silk shirt, and a gold headband, all you were was one more drunk at a costume party where everybody was dressed up as hippies. Or their idea of hippies, anyway.

  “That’s you all right, Carleton,” I said. “Just way too groovy.”

  Wendy Bennett gave me a sharp elbow, not happy with the tone of my voice as the six-two Carleton Todd swayed over us, spilling his drink all over his hand. These were her people, not mine. Wendy Bennett came from one of the most prominent families in Black River Falls. Occasionally she wanted to see some of the friends she’d known from her country club days. Some of them I liked and surprised myself by wanting to see again. They were ruining my old theory that all wealthy people were bad. It just isn’t that simple, dammit.

  “Don’t worry about ol’ Carleton,” Carleton said, his eyes fixing on Wendy’s small, elegant breasts. We both wore tie-dyed T-shirts and jeans, our only concession to costume. “I’m used to his insults. I was just in the TV room watchin’ the Chicago cops beat up the hippies. Your boyfriend here called me a couple of names in there.” He opened his mouth to smile. Drool trickled over his lower lip. “But I called him names right back. If I was a cop I’d club every hippie I saw.”

  “Carleton, you’re a jackass,” Wendy said, steering me away before I could say something even nastier.

  Don Trumbull’s mansion sat on a hill in what had been forest, a bold invention of native stone, floor-to-ceiling windows, and three different verandas. At night the windows could be seen for half a mile. Now, like people in a play of silhouettes, human shapes filled the glass lengths, many of them wobbly with liquor.

  “I’m proud of you.”

  We were on one of the flagstone verandas, the one that loomed over the downslope to the river. Moonlight glittered on the water and stars served as a backdrop to the pines that staggered up the steep incline of the far hills.

  Men with Rotarian eyes drifted by, slightly drunk and silly in Nehru jackets. I wondered if they hated costume parties as much as I did. Tonight’s fashions were dictated by all the slick magazine spreads about hippies, the problem being that the spreads featured Madison Avenue hippies. Collars so wide and droopy they looked like elephant ears; medallions that would have suited Roman soldiers; and of course fringed leather vests for both men and women.

  The hippies I knew really did live back to nature; dungarees for boys and girls alike and nary a Neiman Marcus item among them. The musical Hair had become a hit signifying the sexual revolution that people talked about with disdain or envy. There were whispers that the revolution had inspired more than a few people here. Why leave sexual freedom to just the kids? The more we became a bedroom community for Cedar Rapids, the more modern parts of the populace became.

  We sat on the edge of the flat stone railing and let the breeze have its way with us. “I always wanted to be in a Disney movie. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “No, not that I can remember.” The Disney remark signified that she’d reached her limit for the evening. She generally got wistful then and I felt terribly protective of her.

  “Not to be Cinderella or anything like that. But to be one of the animals that are always in the forest. They always seem so happy.”

  I was too much of a gentleman to remind her of Bambi’s fate.

  “No regrets. No fears. Just grateful to be alive and enjoying nature all day long.” Then she giggled. “God, I just remembered what I said to Carleton.”

  “I’m sure he’ll remind you.”

  “He’s really not so bad.”

  “If you say so.”

  “C’mon, Sam, it’s not that bad, is it? You li
ke some of these people.”

  “Yeah, I actually do. But most of them aren’t here tonight.”

  “It’s summer. A lot of them are on vacation.”

  She yawned and tilted her perfect head back. When we went to high school together her name was Wendy McKay. Because of the Mc in her name and the Mc in mine we sat together in homeroom where, eventually, she was forced to talk to me. She’s admitted now that proximity alone had forced her to converse. We were social unequals. She was from a prominent family whose gene pool had endowed her with shining blonde hair, green eyes, and a body that was frequently imagined when teenage boys decided to seek the shadows for some small-town self-abuse.

  She married into the Bennett family believing that her husband loved her. Unfortunately, as she learned all too soon, he’d still been in love with a girl he’d known all his life. After he was killed fighting in Vietnam, it all became moot.

  As we had both passed thirty, we didn’t try to delude ourselves. She’d gone through a period of sleeping around and drinking too much. She’d ended up spending a lot of money on a shrink in Iowa City. I’d come close to being married three times. We wanted to be married; we even wanted to have a baby or two. But unlike me, Wendy wanted to go slow. So I kept my apartment at Mrs. Goldman’s even though I spent most of my nights at her house, shocking numerous guardians of local morality.

  “Am I drunk? I can’t tell.”

  “A little.”

  “Damn. Don’t let me do anything stupid.”

  “Why don’t we make a pass through the house once more and then head home?”

  I stood up and took her hand. She came up into my arms and we spent several minutes making out like eleventh-graders. I opened one eye and saw over her shoulder the couple who had appeared unheard on the veranda. I smiled at them as I eased out of the embrace. They didn’t smile back.

  “It doesn’t do you any good to watch the tapes of those cops beating up the hippies,” Wendy said as we passed through the open French doors and went back inside where three young musicians with long hair were playing guitars and singing Beatles songs. Somebody somewhere was smoking pot. As a lawyer and a private investigator for Judge Whitney, I had the duty to find and arrest this person. I decided to put it off for a few months. “You just get depressed, Sam.” She didn’t sound as drunk as either of us thought she was.

  As we mixed with the throng inside, she said, “Remember, don’t watch those tapes again. You get too worked up.” Then she hiccupped.

  The networks were running tapes of this afternoon over and over again, the ones of Chicago cops clubbing protestors. The protestors weren’t exactly innocent. They screamed “Pigs!” constantly; some threw things and a few challenged the cops by running right up to them and jostling them. There were no heroes. But since the cops were sworn to uphold the law it was their burden to control not only the crowd but themselves. Dozens of kids could be seen with blood streaming down their faces. Some lay unmoving on the pavement like the wounded or dead in a war. In the TV room of this mansion several men stood watching the tapes, their hands gripping their drinks the way they would grip grenades. When I’d been in there, about a third of the men were against what the cops were doing. The rest wanted the cops to inflict maximum injury. One man said, “Just kill the bastards and get it over with.”

  For the next twenty minutes we circulated among the faux hippies. Most of the people we said good-bye to were cordial and even amusing, aware of the irony of middle-aged hippiedom. One man, a school board member I’d disagreed with on a few fiery occasions, even patted me on the shoulder and told me he agreed with me about the Chicago cops. “No excuse for what they’re doing. I would’ve said something in the TV room but I didn’t want to get my head taken off.” I probably wouldn’t be as fiery next time.

  For a roomful of people dressed as hippies, most of the conversations sounded pretty square. The men discussed business; the women discussed domestic life and gossiped a bit. While Wendy excused herself to go to the bathroom—still hiccupping—I let a drunken city councilman tell me that he was going to start sending me all his personal legal business because “The big shots want too much money. You have any idea what they charge an hour?” Then, weaving around while he stood in place, he raised his drink, aimed vaguely for his face, and said, the glass a few inches from his lips, “You don’t have the greatest reputation, but for the kind of stuff I’ll be sendin’ you it doesn’t matter.”

  Wendy reappeared and rescued me. Her hiccups were gone. She looked around the largest of the rooms and said, “I wish there were more people from our class here.”

  “They aren’t successful enough to be here. I only got in because you brought me.”

  “You’re like my gigolo.” She laughed, but a certain dull glaze remained in her eyes. Where liquor was concerned she was the ultimate cheap date. A couple of drinks and she was at least semi-plastered.

  “Let’s try the front steps this time,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  I grabbed a cup of coffee for Wendy. We sat on the front steps of the enormous house, enjoying the midwestern night. Trumbull, the man who owned it, was the director of four steel plants. His wife was from here, so they bought this place, turned it into a masterpiece, and lived in it during the warm months. Florida was their home when the cold weather came. The drive that curved around the place was crowded with cars. We’d be long gone by the time most of them left, so we wouldn’t have any trouble getting out. But many people well into their cups were going to have some frustrating moments if they all tried to leave at once.

  Wendy caught a firefly. She cupped it in her hand and said, “Hello, little fellow.”

  “How do you know it’s a fellow?”

  “Take a look.”

  In the shadow of her hand a golden-green light flickered on and off. “Yep, it’s a fella all right.”

  She laughed and let him go. After her head was on my shoulder she said, “I know these aren’t your kind of people, Sam. But remember, your kind of people aren’t my kind of people, either.”

  “I thought you liked Kenny.”

  “I don’t mean Kenny. I mean your clients. Some of them are really criminals. I mean bad people.”

  The front door opened behind us. Our haven had been invaded again. We could have kept on talking but we were self-conscious now. I got up and helped Wendy to her feet.

  “Hope we didn’t chase you off,” a woman’s voice said from the shadows.

  “No. We were leaving anyway.”

  When we were out of earshot, Wendy said, “Very nice, Sam. You’re really learning social skills.”

  “You mean instead of saying, ‘Look, you sorry bastard, you ruined our whole evening.’?”

  “Exactly.” She clung to my arm woozily and kissed my cheek. “See, isn’t it fun being polite to people you hate?”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  As we drew closer to my car, I slid my arm around her shoulders. We had our battles, but most of the time there was peace, something I’d never had much of in my past affairs. I’d started to believe what I’d heard a TV pop psychologist say, that some people liked agitation in their relationships. I’d just always assumed that was the way it had to be. But Wendy showed me how wrong I’d been.

  Somebody called my name twice. I turned around and shouted back.

  “There’s a phone call for you, Sam,” the female voice said.

  I yelled my thanks.

  “A client,” Wendy said.

  “Most likely.”

  “Poor old Sam.”

  “Poor old Wendy.”

  “I don’t mind. Right now, relaxing at home sounds better than this anyway.”

  A woman named Barbara Thomas was waiting for us on the porch. She was another one who’d skimped on costuming herself. A very flattering pair of black bell-bottoms and a white flowing blouse. She’d been in our high school class and had married a lawyer. She was one of those girls
who’d ignited many a speculative sexual conversation among boys. She’d always seemed aware of just how stupid we all were.

  “Hi, Wendy.”

  “Hi, Barb. How’re your twins?”

  “Exhausting but beautiful, thanks. There’s a phone in the den, Sam.”

  They stayed on the porch while I worked my way through the costumed revelers. The den was as big as Wendy’s living room and outfitted with enough electronic gear to make me suspect that the owner of the house might be in touch with Mars. He was some kind of short-wave enthusiast. Four different kinds of radios and three different gray steel boxes that made tiny chirping sounds contrasted with the traditional leather furnishings.

  I picked up the phone. “Sam McCain.”

  “Sam. It’s Richard Donovan.”

  “You really needed to call me here, Richard?”

  “Look, we’ve got a real problem out here.”

  Donovan was the leader of the commune. He brought rules and regs to the otherwise disorganized life out there. When one of his people got in trouble in town—usually being harassed for no reason by one of police chief Cliffie Sykes’s hotshots—Donovan was the one who called me.

  “And it can’t wait until morning?”

  “No.” Then: “Look, I’m not stoned or anything and I’m telling you, you need to get out here right away.”

  The tension in his voice told me far more than his words. “You’re not telling me anything, Richard.”

  “Not on the phone. We’ve had run-ins with the feds before. They may be tapping our phone.”

  Paranoia was as rampant as VD among the hippies these days. The troubling thing was that some of it was justified.

  “I’ll be out as soon as I can.”

  “Thanks, Sam. Sorry I had to bother you.”

  If the trouble was as serious as it sounded, and if I got involved in it, I would certainly hear from my boss. Though my law practice was finally starting to make reasonable money, my job as private investigator for the judge was still half my income. And Judge Whitney, along with many other people in town (including a couple who kept writing letters about me in the local newspaper), didn’t like the idea that I was representing the people at the commune. They wanted the commune and its hirsute folks to move to a different county. Or maybe, if God was smiling that day, out of the state. Judge Whitney didn’t believe any of the ridiculous rumors about them—they were satanic and were summoning up the old bastard himself to turn the town into flame and horror being my favorite—but they did violate her notion of propriety, which had come to her down generations of rich snobs who felt that all “little people” were suspicious, period.