by Ed Gorman
“You did such a great job on Sam, Alan.”
“I inflicted all the pain I could on him, Wendy. I did the best I could.”
Wendy was of course delighted. She giggled.
“He’s all yours, Wendy. Good luck. Sam, I gave her instructions on what to watch for and how to take care of you. She’s got my card. I wrote my home number on the back of it. If anything changes, call me. Now I’ve got some really sick patients to see.”
Just as the door closed, Wendy said, “I’ve never been in charge of anybody before. This’ll be fun. I’ll be back in a minute. While I’m gone, don’t do anything dumb, Sam.”
“Such as?”
“Such as trying to walk. Alan told me you’d be unsteady on your feet.”
“Yes, boss.”
Her lovely red lips bloomed into a smile. “I like the sound of that.”
While she was gone I eased myself off the examination table and tested my legs. Shaky, but not as bad as Alan predicted. I walked over to the sink. I moved slowly, carefully. There was a moment when my left leg lurched wildly. I stood absolutely still, waiting for the shock of the lurch to recede. Then I started walking again, much more slowly this time.
I made it to the sink and back before Wendy returned.
“Good boy,” she said. “I’m sure you were walking around while I was gone but I appreciate you pretending you didn’t.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
I didn’t argue.
At Wendy’s I lay on the couch watching a rerun of I Love Lucy while Wendy worked in the kitchen. My impression was that I dozed off for a few minutes. But when I woke up to the aromas of good food, Wendy informed me that I’d been out for nearly forty-five minutes and that she hadn’t started breakfast until she heard me stirring.
“I thought you might like this. Scrambled eggs, French toast, bacon, orange juice.”
“God, thank you, I’m starved.”
“Sit up then, we’ll go out to the breakfast nook. I wanted to entice you with this food in case you tried to tell me you weren’t hungry.”
“Thank you very much, Wendy.”
“How’s your head?” she asked as she helped me up off the couch.
“Tolerable.”
“How about the stitches?”
“Sting a little.”
“I’ll run some warm water on a washrag and hold it against your wound while you eat.” She kissed me on the cheek. “So eat.”
I ate. A window in her breakfast nook allowed me to glance outside at a backyard filled with the green, green grass and the blue and red and yellow of various birds that were almost, but not quite, as beautiful as those in Disney animation. Wendy held the washrag against the back of my head for nearly fifteen minutes. She did this while sitting in a chair and drinking coffee and smoking Winstons. “Lady Madonna” played low on the radio.
“Do you remember me helping you to bed?”
“Vaguely. I was exhausted. And maybe I just didn’t want to think about everything that had happened so I blacked out.”
“Survival tactic.”
“That sounds like something your shrink would say.”
“He talks like that.”
“You sure he’s not trying to get you into the sack?”
“That was the last one. That’s why I got this new one. And this new one looks very tame. He wears Hush Puppies. I’m pretty sure if you wear Hush Puppies you’re faithful to your wife.”
I hate laughing with my mouth full.
Then she said: “It’s in the paper. They make you sound like a hero. How you suspected there was something wrong about that trailer and how you went to arrest Cameron and how his sister knocked you out.”
There was a reason for the favorable treatment. A distant cousin of mine was now the editor. If Cliffie could rely on kin, why shouldn’t I? But Wendy was only repeating what my mother, my friend and landlady Mrs. Goldman, and Kenny had told me earlier this morning when they’d called to see how I was doing.
“Well, we’ll see how it plays with the people. Cliffie will say I got beaten up by a girl.”
“Did I ever tell you that Cliffie groped me once?”
I had to speak around a large bite of French toast. “Cliffie did?”
“One of those Christmas dances for charity. Several years ago. Cliffie’d had plenty of eggnog. He grabbed me and dragged me to the dance floor. I swear that guy has six hands. Just when I was brushing his hand off my bottom he started dry-humping me. He even started kissing my neck. I was worn out after one dance. And I knew he remembered because every time he’d see me afterward he’d look away. This went on for a long time. Now he’s back to ogling me. So don’t worry about what Cliffie thinks. He’s an idiot.”
The kitchen phone was a bright yellow. It was affixed to the wall next to the counter space in the kitchen and its ring complemented the color. It trilled yellow. Honest.
I enjoyed watching her walk to the phone in her red shorts and loose white blouse. A comely woman. When we were apart I could actually feel her sleep warmth. I considered that a very good sign.
“Hello.” Then: “He’s right here.”
She held the phone out to me and when I took it she was nice enough to lean into me and kiss me on the cheek again.
“Are you all right? I was so scared reading about you. I’ve said a lot of prayers already. Oh—sorry. Good morning, Mr. C. I should have said that first I guess.”
My secretary, Jamie, has come a long way. She still can’t type but at least she catches about half her mistakes and retypes them over Wite-Out. The problem here being that she’s a bit sloppy with the white stuff so that it tends to run down the page and smear some of the words below. But the fault is mine. I was forced to take her in trade from her father who couldn’t pay the bill he owed me for representing him in court. She’s cute and sexy and as good-hearted as Bambi. Despite my attempts to explain why Turk, the lazy, shallow, and self-absorbed love of her life, was bad for her, she went back to him after a long break-up Wendy and I had helped along. Turk had apparently interpreted their wedding vows to include his right to hit his wife, which he’d done on at least one occasion.
“Good morning, Jamie.”
“I really like Wendy, Mr. C. You two should get hitched.”
The “Mr. C” owes to the fact that the people on Perry Como’s TV show called him “Mr. C.” I know—my name doesn’t begin with C. But as Jamie explained, “There’s a C in the second and third letters.”
“We’re working on that, Jamie. What’s going on?”
“The police station called and they said that Sarah Powers wants you for her attorney.”
Days that began with surprises were not my favorite. Somehow the surprises were always bad. “All right. I’ll stop there before I come in this morning.”
“Oops. There’s the other line, Mr. C.”
I finished my eggs and a fresh cup of coffee while telling Wendy about Sarah Powers.
“Be careful she doesn’t still have that steel rod. You sure you want to help her?”
“No.”
“Then why do it?”
“Because there’s nobody else who’ll sign on. And she definitely needs help.”
“You have a lot of other things to do.”
“I just hate to see her in jail. She’s sort of a sad case. In her mind she was just trying to help her brother.”
“Why is she a sad case?”
“The ugly girl. The fat girl. The boyish girl. Easy to imagine how the other kids treated her growing up. She and Cameron lost their parents when they were still kids. She was defending the only real friend she’s ever had.”
“I hate to remind you, Sam, but you’re still wincing from your headache because of her.”
“Maybe I’m doing it just to piss off Reverend Cartwright.”
She poked me on the shoulder. “Now there’s a reason I can understand, Sam.”
4
“Hippies,” Cliffie
Sykes said. “I had my way we’d deport their asses.”
“Sounds reasonable to me.”
The police station was relatively new, thanks to a matching grant from Sykes Foundation. Old man Sykes even sprang for some new Western-style uniforms. Now all the officers dressed like Cliffie, military tans and campaign hats. He had the usual state-celeb political black-and-whites framed on the wall along with a melancholy painting of Jesus.
Behind him, the centerpiece of the office—ruling over all four dark green filing cabinets, the desk, the three-button phone, and the family portrait—was an outsized framed photo of John Wayne all dressed up as a marine in his laughable propaganda movie The Green Berets. I preferred looking at the family portrait. Cliffie’s youngest daughter suffered from spina bifida. When you saw how gentle and loving Cliffie was with her, you couldn’t quite hate him for the bumbling, bigoted fool he was. You could dislike him but not hate him, though I was in a pissy enough mood to give him grief. While I didn’t have a steady headache, I did have attacks of sharp pain that forced me to close my eyes and grit my teeth. “You like ’em, don’t you? You and friend Kenny, you guys were beatniks and now you’re hippies.” I was here to see Sarah Powers, but as Potter had told me last night, I needed to see Cliffie first—the mandatory endurance contest I always had to survive.
“Kenny was a so-called beatnik when we were juniors in high school. I never was. And neither of us are hippies. I mean, if you want to get your facts straight for once.”
“Yeah, well, he still writes dirty books.”
“He writes other things, too.” I was counting on Cliffie’s lack of interest in everything literary. He didn’t ask me to tell him exactly what those “other things” were. In addition to paperbacks such as Satan’s Love Slaves and Lesbo Lodge, Kenny had now started writing for men’s adventure magazines. You know the ones I mean. The guys never have shirts on and they’re usually under attack by Nazis or killer dogs. Well, for that matter, the women don’t have shirts on, either, and they’re frequently attacked by Nazis and killer dogs. But the women don’t have scars all over their mostly naked bodies and they aren’t holding machine guns. “Nazi Terror Orgies” was one of Kenny’s latest. This was not to be confused with “Nazi Lust Prisons.” Kenny had a very good novel in him somewhere; he still wrote seriously good short stories for himself. I had faith in him; his wife, Sue, had faith in him. All we had to do was convince Kenny to have some faith in himself.
“I had my way, we’d put all those pornographers in jail. And that goes for the Smothers Brothers.”
Why correct him? The Smothers Brothers’ politics offended him—offended more than half the nation—so their TV show had become a focal point for all the people who thought that the Vietnam War was just a dandy idea.
But this was just sparring and we both knew it. The main bout would start with something else, something he just couldn’t wait to spring on me.
“I stopped by the Blue Moon Tap and told ’em what happened to you.”
“Had a good laugh, I’ll bet.”
“Couple of ’em were laughin’ so hard I thought they’d puke.”
“Well, thanks for telling me, Chief.”
“One guy had beer runnin’ out of his nose he was laughin’ so hard.”
“I’ll bet that was you, wasn’t it?”
He glared at me. I’d found him out. Glare became glower and he said: “So a girl knocks out Sam McCain and the prisoner escapes.”
He was saying that real men don’t get knocked out by women. “I guess you could tell it that way if you wanted to.”
“Oh, I want to, McCain. I really want to. All the crap I’ve had to take from you over the years. You and that g.d. judge of yours. All the b.s. about how you solved my cases before I did. And you with your law degree and the private investigator’s license your judge made sure you got so you could snoop around. You damn right that’s the way I want to tell it. And that’s the way just about everybody in this town’s gonna tell it. Hotshot Sam McCain tries to collar a killer and gets knocked out by a girl so the killer gets away. That’ll look real nice in the state paper.”
Before he’d mentioned the state paper his words hadn’t had their desired effect on me. I knew that the people in Black River Falls who didn’t like me (and the number seemed to grow every year) would have their fun. I’d be embarrassed and sometimes I’d get mad and sometimes maybe I wouldn’t want to leave my office. But Wendy would help me through it and if I got lucky enough to look good on a few more cases, the story about Sarah smacking me with a steel rod would fade in time. Never disappear, nothing ever does; but fade. But now I imagined what the story would look like under a bold headline in the state paper. They had a photo of me a few years back following a trial I’d won. The trouble was I’d just gotten done tripping on a step in front of the county courthouse so my expression was that of shock and dismay when the photographer snapped his pic. Hapless was what I looked like—hapless.
Cliffie was taking such pleasure in my embarrassment I couldn’t help myself. If he could be petty so could I. I realize that the thought of Sam McCain being petty—unthinkable. But—
I nodded to his framed melodramatic photo of big John Wayne in his Green Beret getup. “You do know John Wayne was a draft dodger, don’t you?”
“What the hell’re you talkin’ about? Some lefty crap you thought up?”
“Not crap, Chief. Facts. It’s in several books. He decided against serving because he was afraid he wouldn’t have a career when he came back—even though most other stars enlisted. So they trumped up some health problem and the draft board went along with it because they’re part of Hollywood, too. So now you have big brave Duke calling war protestors draft dodgers. Kind of a hypocrite, wouldn’t you say?”
“Just because it’s in a book doesn’t mean it’s true.”
“No, but people who knew him at the time agreed that it was true.”
“Lefty crap.”
“Which is the reason you always give for sending your officers out to harass the people who live on that farm. Because they’re all ‘lefties.’ I thought we had an agreement you were going to lay off.”
“I’ll lay off when they start wearin’ shoes and having some respect for this country and cuttin’ their hair so you can tell the boys from the girls.”
“Yeah, that’s a real problem, all right. I get confused all the time.”
“You think it’s funny. But it sure as hell isn’t. A lot of people want to run ’em out on a rail. Reverend Cartwright says he can’t sleep at night thinkin’ of all the fornicatin’ that’s goin’ on out there.”
I couldn’t help myself. I smiled.
“What’s so funny?”
“Just thinking of Reverend Cartwright and all that fornicating. Must be driving him crazy.” I stood up. “I take it we’re through here.”
“I don’t believe a word you said about John Wayne.”
“Up to you, Chief. But it’s true. He was a draft dodger.”
He waved me off. Then grinned. “You be careful walkin’ around town, McCain. There might be a teenage girl lookin’ for a fight. And you know how mean they can be.”
There wasn’t much point getting mad. I was going to be hearing a lot more of it in the days to come.
5
Harry Renwick, a guy my father had bowled with, led me past several prisoners. Two of them were former clients of mine. One waved and one smirked. The smirker still owed me money.
I’d used the two interrogation rooms many times. Harry opened the first door. I went in and sat down at a bare table with four chairs around it. I didn’t need to light up. There was about a carton of smoke still on the air from the last few interrogations.
“How’s your mom doing, Sam?”
“Still trying to believe Dad’s really gone.”
He smiled. “Those World War Two guys, they always told us we had it easy in Korea.”
It seemed more and more that the American Dream had turned
into a war for every generation.
“Yeah, my dad could really get going sometimes.”
“He was a great guy, Sam. One of my best friends. And he sure was proud of you.” I’d wondered what was wrong with me after my father passed on. I never cried. I knew in the abstract I wanted to but somehow the tears never came. Now sometimes at odd moments I just wanted to let go. This was one of those moments, sitting here in an interrogation room where people were dragged to confess the terrible things they’d done—I just wanted to put my head down and wail for the father I loved so much. And who I’d never see again.
A knock on the half-opened door. Sarah Powers stood there in the two-piece maroon jail uniform. She looked heavy, pasty, and angry. The only fashion accessory she’d been allowed were the handcuffs. A police matron nudged her inside.
Harry pulled a chair back for her. She sat down. Only when she was seated for a time did I see how fatigue had drawn crevices in her face.
The matron, a scrawny Irish woman, said, “I’ll be right outside.”
“You tell your mom I said hi.”
“I sure will, Harry. Nice to see you.” Then, whispering, I said: “This room bugged?”
Harry shook his head. “Not this one. The one down the hall.”
After he was gone, Sarah said, “It was either you or a public defender. I didn’t have any choice.”
“You trying to flatter me?”
“Oh, go to hell, McCain.”
“We’re off to a good start.”
Silence.
“How’re you doing in here?”
Silence.
“You asked for me, remember? You keep this up, I’m going to walk out the door. You understand me?”
She raised her cuffed hands to her face and sighed. After she put her hands on the table again, she said, “There’s a woman in my cell who left her baby in her car for three hours while she was in some dive seeing her boyfriend while her husband was home sleeping off a hangover. Thank God a cop came along and found the little baby. The woman was telling me that she shouldn’t be in here. That she’s actually a good mother. This is the second time she’s done this. Then there are the two prostitutes. And the woman who embezzled money from the trucking company where she worked. Not exactly the kind of people I’m used to.”