“Robbie was at the farm on Tuesday?” I said to Annie.
“Yes. She came in on Sunday night. Bobby dropped her off.”
“He didn’t stay with her?” I said with surprise.
“I think he wanted to stay,” the girl said. “But Theo acted like he was being too protective. Theo said she had to learn to survive on her own.” Annie looked down at the floor. “That’s the same thing he said when anyone new came to the farm.”
I could tell from her voice that she was speaking for herself, as well as for Robbie, and that she was speaking out of a deeply felt sense of disillusionment. It wasn’t a resentful feeling, if I was hearing her right. It was more wintry than that, as if something she’d once loved dearly had turned out terribly wrong. I decided to be completely honest with her, because I wanted to follow that line of feeling to its source. I wanted to know who or what had gone so wrong.
“Annie, I know who Clinger is,” I said. “I’ve been trying to locate him for the last few days.” I took the photograph of Robbie, Irene, and Cìinger out of my coat and showed it to her.
The girl winced when she saw the picture. For some reason, the sudden look of pain on her face frightened me.
“She’s the one,” the girl said in a haggard voice. “She’s the reason.” She tapped the photograph and handed it back to me. I couldn’t tell whom she’d pointed to—Robbie or Irene—although I was almost certain it was the Croft woman.
“The reason for what?” I asked her.
But she went on as if she hadn’t heard the question. “Man, it was so beautiful at the start. I’ve bounced around since I left Detroit and seen some things, but when I got there, I thought, This is it, Annie. This is what you’ve been looking for!’ You just can’t know what it was like—to find a place like Theo’s farm, where no one seemed to care about all the shit things you’re supposed to care about. I mean, it was too good to be true. I almost didn’t believe it myself. When you’ve been fucked over by everyone from your boyfriend to your old man, you get that way. You figure it’s another gimmick—another way to get you to slip your pants off. But Theo’s farm...it wasn’t like that. I mean, you could do it if you wanted to. Practically everybody did. But you didn’t have to do it. Nobody beat you up or locked you in your room or threatened to kill you if you didn’t come across. You had to work, of course. Earn your keep. But you didn’t have to fuck unless you wanted to. And you did want to, because it seemed like the best way to be. It was like, instead of money and rules and all the crap you’re taught in school, we had love. I know that sounds old. But that was the way it felt. Like love was the real way to pay and to be repaid. And I don’t mean sex. I mean love.”
Annie’s eyes filled with tears. “Theo, man,” she said. “He was so good. He was so deep. It was as if there wasn’t anything he hadn’t done. Not a thing he didn’t know about. He understood it all. He’d been there before you, and he’d forgiven them for you. My fucking old man. My mother who watched the TV and drank and didn’t give a shit about anything but the neighbors. He understood them. He could love them—so goddamn unlovable. And what I don’t understand”—she began to cry—“is what went wrong, man? How could it all get so fucked up?”
She sobbed heavily. I put my arm around her shoulder, and she fell against my chest. My heart went out to her—for all that she’d lost. After awhile, Annie stopped crying and just sat there with her cheek buried in my coat.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’ve never been to Denver.”
“It’s a beautiful city,” I said.
She nodded against my chest. “Beautiful,” she said.
“Are you going to be O.K.?” I asked her after another minute.
“Yeah.” She lifted her head from my shoulder and wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve. “I’m all right,” she said. “I’m a lot tougher than I look.”
The P.A. came on with a pop that made us both jump. The announcer said that the bus to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver was arriving at dock ten.
Annie reached down and picked up her beaten backpack. She studied it for a moment, then heaved it over her shoulder and stood up.
“Walk me to the loading dock?” she said.
I got up and guided her across the huge concrete plaza to the loading docks.
“Robbie was at the farm on Monday and Tuesday,” she said as we walked. “I don’t know if she’s still there or not. Bobby didn’t want her to stay. They had a big fight about it on Tuesday night—Theo, Bob, and Robbie. It got very ugly. Bob was furious because Robbie wouldn’t come away with him. I think he blamed Theo for that. But then there had been so much arguing and shouting over the last few weeks that I didn’t pay much attention to what was said. I’d already decided to go myself. I left that night. So did some of the others.”
“You don’t know what the argument was about?” I said.
“Bob didn’t want her to stay at the farm any more. He didn’t want her fucking around.”
“Was she?”
Annie didn’t answer me for a moment. “Robbie wasn’t like the rest of us,” she finally said. “She just hadn’t been around very much. She’d spent her whole life in one room, and I guess when she got out, she went a little crazy. It was too much for her, I think. Being able to do whatever she wanted to do. And the weird thing was that she didn’t really understand what she was doing to Bob and to the rest of us. She was just too young to understand. I guess it’s hard to be that beautiful and that young. It’s as if the two don’t go together right.”
When we got to the loading dock, I asked her, “What went wrong, Annie? Why are you leaving?”
She bit her lip and glanced at the bus door. Six people were standing in line, while the driver took their tickets and checked their luggage.
“I guess I can tell you. Roger told the cop. So I guess I can tell you. It was money. Theo got in over his head on a couple of deals. And things got very bad. At first we thought it was going to be all right—that he’d gotten some help. But then a couple of weeks ago some men came out to the farm—guys in business suits. I think they would have killed Theo if we hadn’t been there. It was a real desperate scene.”
I said, “What kind of deals was Theo involved in, Annie?”
She shook her head, as if she didn’t want to say.
“Was it drugs, Annie?”
She made a sad face and nodded.
I felt another twinge of fear—for the girl in front of me and for Robbie. “Where’s the farm, Annie? How can I find it?”
“Oh, Harry,” she said brokenly. “Please don’t ask me that. Ask Roger or ask the cops. They know. But don’t ask me.”
“I don’t have time to ask Roger, Annie. You know that.”
“But Theo!” she cried. “What’ll happen to Theo?”
“All I’m interested in is Robbie,” I told her. “I want her to get away, too. Before it’s too late.”
She hung her head on her chest and whispered, “Across the river. On Route 4, about five miles west of Anderson Ferry.”
She turned on her heel and ran to the bus.
“Annie!” I called out.
But she was already inside. The door hissed shut and the bus began to pull out of the dock. I watched it go and kept watching it until the taillights disappeared down Gilbert Avenue.
21
I TRIED calling Bannock from a pay phone in the Greyhound coffee shop, but the duty sergeant at Central Station told me he’d already checked out. I suppose it should have made me feel better to know that Bannock—who had the same information that I had or, at least, most of it—had felt as if he could put the case away for the night. Only it didn’t make me feel better. Bannock had been investigating Bobby Caldwell’s murder, and he’d ended up in the same place I had. I didn’t like that one bit. I hadn’t liked what I’d heard from Annie, either. She’d been badly frightened by what had been happening at Clinger’s farm—so frightened that she’d decided to run as far away as she could go
. There was definitely a great deal of trouble in paradise, and although Robbie didn’t seem to be directly involved in it, she was still living there—or she had been up until Tuesday night. And after Bobby’s murder on Wednesday, she’d had no way out, except Annie’s way. And judging by what I’d heard that evening, Robbie wasn’t old enough or experienced enough to have made an escape of her own, even if she’d wanted to.
I put the phone back on its hook and glanced at my watch. It was ten-thirty. If I stepped on it, I figured I could make it to the Anderson Ferry marina by eleven and then over to the Kentucky side. Only it would be hell trying to locate Clinger’s farm in the middle of the night. At least in the daylight I’d have an even chance of spotting a familiar face or of finding a helpful neighbor. But after talking to Annie, I just couldn’t see waiting another day. It had been too long for Annie to wait, and she’d had most of the week to think it over. I thought of the look on her face when I’d shown her the picture of Robbie, Clinger, and Irene Croft. She’d blamed the Croft woman for what had gone wrong out there—I was almost sure of it. And if Irene was that deeply involved in Clinger’s family, she was one more reason to bring Robbie out as quickly as I could—a particularly ugly reason from what I’d seen of her.
Her presence at the farm certainly made better sense if Clinger had been involved in the drug trade, as Annie had said. Marcie had told me that Irene was a druggie, and the whole world knew that she was a very rich and very eccentric lady. Clinger might have needed her backing to finance a particularly large deal. I had no idea how he’d rationalized the addition of someone that hard and loveless to his family of love, but I figured he might have managed it, and the demands she’d made on his talent, in return for a sizable loan. And Irene would probably have been delighted to acquire a talented new client and a free supply of cocaine or smack or whatever else it was that Clinger had been hustling. She might even have gotten her pick of Clinger’s followers as part of the arrangement. It would have been a swell deal for both of them, if something hadn’t gone wrong. Perhaps Irene had backed out at the last moment, or maybe Clinger had just gotten in over both of their heads. In any event, he’d come up short. But I figured he’d been coming up short for a long time. Maybe inflation and tight money had forced him into drug trafficking in the first place, as a way of keeping the rest of his empire afloat. There was no telling what risks he might have run to maintain the illusion that love, not money, was the true source of his power. Whatever had gone awry, he’d had that illusion beaten out of him by some mob toughs. And when his illusions gave out, the whole enterprise had begun to collapse like a ruined kingdom.
Annie had gotten out before the end. Maybe the rest of The Furies had gotten out, too. But I had the strong feeling that Theo Clinger was going to take whoever else was left out at the farm with him when he fell. As I walked out of the bus station to the parking lot, I couldn’t help thinking that one of his luckless followers had already been sacrificed.
There really wasn’t any way around it. Bobby’s murder had to be linked to what had been going on at the farm. There was just no other way to make sense of it. What Annie had told me about the fight the boy had had with Clinger on Tuesday night and the fact that Arthur Bannock was investigating Theo, too, clinched it for me. The Caldwell boy must have gotten in the way. He must have made someone very, very angry. Someone who had no patience or pity left. Someone who’d wanted to watch him die.
And that was another reason why I couldn’t wait for the daylight. I started the Pinto up and headed west, through the Third Street basin to River Road.
It was a little after eleven when I turned off Highway 52 onto the bumpy dirt lane that led to the Anderson Ferry marina. A thin, river-dwelling fog hung above the dock. It swirled like mist around my feet as I got out of the car and walked over to the landing. The ferry wasn’t moored on the Ohio side of the river, but there was a rusted signal bell hung from one of the piles. I slapped my arms against the cold night air and pulled the bell cord. The bell clanged dully, as if I’d knocked it off a shelf, and a few seconds later an answering bell sounded across the foggy water. A power winch began to putt and cough like a lawnmower, and I could hear the rustle and splash of the towline as it tautened and leaped out of the river. I walked back to the car and leaned against the hood. The night had turned so cold that the hood metal bit through my trouser leg, making me shiver.
In a matter of minutes, I could make out the water lights of the ferryboat, as it guided its flat barge up to the dock. The wheelhouse was lit by an oil lamp. I could see the helmsman inside it, passing his hands nimbly over the wheel. As the boat got closer, I could see another man standing on the barge’s deck. He leaped onto the landing as the boat docked and threw a line over one of the pilings.
“Well, c’mon,” he shouted to me.
He had a young, exuberant voice.
I drove the Pinto onto the barge, and the boy cast off the line and hopped back on deck. The winch started up again with a shudder, and the ferryboat began to chug its way back through the fog to the Kentucky shore.
The boy sat down on the barge rail and began to whistle tunelessly. He had a country boy’s red, lumpy face. He was wearing a watch cap and windbreaker. I got out of the car and let the damp wind sober me up. It was getting late, and I had a long night ahead of me. The smell of hot coffee drifting out of the wheelhouse made my mouth water.
“You know if there’s an all-night diner close by?” I said to the deckhand.
“One about two miles up Route 4, going west,” he said. “Tillie’s Diner. She makes good pecan pie, too.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said.
The boy swiped at the fog as if it were a swarm of gnats floating in front of his face. “Bad night,” he said.
I nodded. “You know the Kentucky side of the river pretty well?”
“Pretty well,” he said.
“You know a guy named Clinger who owns a farm about five miles west of here? I’m trying to find his place.”
The boy shook his head. “Don’t know him. But you might ask at Tillie’s. She knows just about everybody ‘round here.”
The boat docked with a lurch.
“Damn,” the kid said, glancing at the wheelhouse.
He jumped off the rail and onto the landing and made the boat fast again.
As I got out of the car, I heard him say to the helmsman, “You might give us a little warning, Willie.”
I coasted off onto the dock, handed the kid a couple of dollars, and drove up a short hill out of the fog. The road led through a grove of sycamores and ended abruptly in a gravel turnaround on the north side of Route 4. I turned right onto the two-lane highway and headed west for Tillie’s.
For a mile or so, the sycamores grew thick on the riverside of the road. My headlights played among their trunks, lighting up the rusty marine refuse scattered on the ground and the fiery red eyes of opossums. On the south side of the roadbed, the Kentucky hills rose in a steep plane that blocked out most of the night sky.
I kept driving west. And eventually the sycamores died off and I could see the fogbound river again and the pinpoint lights of the shanties built above the bank. Then the highway jogged south into the hillside. As it moved inland, Route 4 took on a civil, neighborly look. Historical markers popped up on the north side of the road. So did white slat gas stations and shed restaurants and glassed-in motel offices with tiny stucco bungalows herded behind them like grazing sheep. Tillie’s Diner was just another shed on the roadside, with corrugated tin roof and walls. But its lights were still on and its sign read, “Open All Night.”
I pulled into the lot and parked beside a semi. There were half a dozen big trucks in the lot. According to folklore, that meant Tillie served good food. But I had the feeling it meant that Tillie’s was the only place that stayed open for about forty miles in either direction. The restaurant looked like a pint-sized airplane hanger with a plantation porch. I walked through the door, past a glass display case
full of aviator sunglasses and penknives and key chains shaped like Kentucky, and sat down at a long, U-shaped counter.
A meaty, heavily made-up woman with orange hair and a wart the size of a button mushroom under her nose was sitting on a stool behind the counter, reading a copy of Glamour magazine. She had on a green plastic waitress’ uniform, a gold bracelet, and silver earrings with red stones in them. She put the magazine down when she spotted me, pulled a pencil from behind her ear, and ambled up to the counter.
“What’ll it be, honey?” she said in a sweet, nasal voice.
She smelled like lilacs and bourbon.
“Just coffee,” I said.
She pulled a cup out from beneath the counter and set it down before me. Then she got a percolator off a hotplate and poured coffee into the cup.
“Are you Tillie?” I asked her as she poured the coffee.
“Yes, I am, honey. Been Tillie all my life.”
“The guy at the Anderson Ferry told me you might be able to help me.”
“Well, now, that depends on what kind of help you need,” she said slyly.
I grinned at her. “I’m looking for a farm near here, owned by a fella’ named Clinger. Theo Clinger. You think you could help me find it?”
“You all a friend of Theo’s?” she said.
“I’m his cousin,” I told her.
Tillie threw her hand at me playfully. “You ain’t his cousin. You don’t look a bit like Theo.”
“What difference does it make? I still want to find him.”
“No difference to me, honey,” she said carelessly. “That Theo sure is a popular fella all of a sudden, though. You’re the second one tonight come in wanting to find his farm.”
“Was the first guy a short, stocky man with white hair?” I asked her.
She nodded. “You ain’t his cousin too, are you?”
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