I could believe that the Croft family had a pathological fear of scandal. I could even believe that business might suffer, locally, from a criminal proceeding against Irene. What I couldn’t quite believe was that they would engage in a widespread criminal conspiracy, a true obstruction of justice, just to keep Irene from being fingered as a drug peddler. They simply didn’t have to go to that much trouble to keep her out of jail. A smart lawyer, a friendly judge, the right witnesses, a little tampering with evidence, and she wouldn’t even be indicted. In fact, there wasn’t any evidence, except for the dead boy.
Of course, the Crofts were a prudent family, used to taking extreme precautions. And perhaps that was why the conspiracy seemed too elaborate for the crime. But I didn’t really believe that. What I believed was that there had been a brutal murder committed at or near the farm, and that Lavelle and the Crofts were more than a little afraid that Irene or her friend Theo or someone else at the farm had been criminally responsible. That suspicion made sense of their proposals, because what they were doing, in essence, was making the farm and the people on it disappear. If Clinger’s empire didn’t exist, then nothing scandalous or criminal could have taken place within its confines. No drug deals and no murders.
Of course no one would really be hurt by the scam. Clinger could always refloat his kingdom at a later date. Irene could move back to her lonely castle and brew up more trouble for the Crofts. Robbie would return home—at least for the night. And the only casualty—outside of the hopes of a handful of kids like Annie—would be Bobby Caldwell, who was beyond feeling disappointment or pain. He was the only real sacrifice, and even his death could be sweetened up with money. And if I knew Pastor C. Caldwell, he’d jump at the Crofts’ deal.
But as I sat there by the phone, I knew that I wasn’t satisfied with the arrangement, with the deliberate sacrifice of a love-struck teenager. He’d swallowed the crap that Clinger had preached about love. He’d preached it himself to Robbie and watched it sour into something amoral and strange—something as tainted as the farm itself. And yet he hadn’t given up hope. He’d remained loyal to the girl up to the end. The world owed him something for that—some manner of justice—because he’d been better than the world had expected or wanted him to be. And that made him indismissible. I decided to hold off on the Croft deal and the call to Mildred until I’d found out exactly what had happened to the boy.
25
ONCE I got out in the real world, full of the glare of April sunlight, my righteous indignation waned and I started to realize just how much that beating had taken out of me. I hobbled to the parking lot, head bent, eyes on the pavement. And by the time I got to the car, I’d broken into a light sweat. Young Galahad could scarcely hold onto the hard plastic steering wheel or guide his car out into traffic. He was a goddamn menace on the roads, weaving down Reading, through the spacious, sunlit overpasses of the expressways, to the northeast edge of town.
On my left, Mt. Adams rose up into the blue afternoon sky, a woody hillside laced with spring green. I squinted at it with regret. Just the thought of having to climb to the top of it—to that monied plateau overlooking the river—and to search out Grace wearied me, and Saturday had only begun.
I managed to make it to the Court House Building—a huge stone temple on the east side of town—and to park in the square. But it took me another few minutes to actually step out into the street. I swallowed a couple more aspirins dry and bulled my way through the crowd of lawyers and crooks, up the hundred concrete stairs to the dark lobby of the Court House. I rested against a pillar, while passersby gaped at my bandaged head and bruised face. My ankle smarted from the climb, but I could live with the pain. It was the dizziness and the nausea that wracked me. I figured if I could survive the next few hours they would subside, because a lot of the sick feeling was just bone weariness. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and my whole body felt out of focus. I bought a cup of coffee from a vending machine, choked it down, then tackled the brass stairway that led up to George DeVries’s office. I still wanted to confirm Clinger’s drug connection—just to make sure that Logan and his buddy had been hired to ward off Clinger’s enemies and not to sap nosy detectives looking into a murder.
I stumbled down the broad hallway, past the varnished oak doors of court rooms and judges’ chambers. And at the end of the corridor, I got to the D.A.’s offices.
A secretary was sitting at a desk in front of George’s room. I startled her with my beaten face.
“My God,” she said in a flat, midwestern voice. “What happened to you?”
She was a middle-aged brunette with the bleary, sagging features of a heavy drinker. I stared at her a moment and said, “You don’t want to know.”
She nodded as if she agreed with me and pressed a button on the intercom. “Mr. DeVries?”
George came out of the office and said, “What is it, Helen?” Then he noticed me standing there and his puckered, brick red face turned assessorial—a look like a long, drawn-out whistle.
“Jee-zus!” he said between his teeth. “What happened to you?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, George.”
“Well, come right in, Harry.” He waved his arm and stepped away from the door.
”Jee-zus,” he said again when he’d sat down behind his desk. He shook his head and laughed nervously. “You’re a sight.”
I didn’t think it was particularly funny and told him so.
“No offense, Harry,” he said wryly. “I just didn’t think there were many men who could take you like that.”
“There aren’t,” I snapped. And then felt foolish for having said it. I had nothing to prove to George DeVries, although for one naked moment it hadn’t felt that way. That moment passed and I found myself sitting across from a run-down cop with the craggy face of a redheaded Carl Sandburg. He wasn’t a very smart cop, but he was ruthless and efficient—a tough man who probably thought he’d earned the right to pass judgment on me.
He sat back in his chair, tented his fingers at his lips, and said, “You need some help, Harry?”
I knew the kind of help he meant, and I resented the offer. “I can still take care of myself, George. What I need is some information.”
“What about?” he said.
“A man named Theo Clinger.”
He made a puzzled face to indicate that the name rang no bells. So I explained the drug deal to him, leaving out any mention of the Caldwell boy or of the missing girl.
“What I really want to know,” I said when I’d finished, “is whether any drug dealers have put out a contract on him. Or if anyone had a big enough grudge to have wanted to give him grief.”
“What kind of grief?” DeVries said.
“Murder.”
He smiled as if I’d named one of his kids. “You know there are an awful lot of people in this city dealing drugs, Harry. And every damn one of them is dangerous if he’s pushed hard enough.”
“I realize that, George. But let’s narrow it down to heroin or cocaine dealers. And from what I know about Clinger, the deal that fell through was probably a large one.”
“That’s a much smaller ballpark,” DeVries admitted. “You have any idea why the deal fell apart?”
“I think that one of his backers dropped out at the last moment, leaving Clinger holding the bag.”
DeVries scraped his chin with a dirty thumbnail. “That could do it, all right. Those boys tend to get mighty anxious where money is concerned, especially if they’d fronted some of the stuff.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “And give you a call tonight.”
******
After finishing with George, I dragged myself back down to a phone booth in the lobby and rang up Central Station. I wanted to talk to Al Foster, who was the closest thing to a friend I had on the force. But he wasn’t at his desk. I told the duty sergeant to tell him I’d drop around in a
half an hour, hung up, and walked out into the day.
I spotted a little storefront bar and grill across the square and gazed at it longingly. I knew that liquor was the last thing I needed with a concussion. I also knew that it was the first thing I needed if I was going to stay on my feet. I tossed a mental coin; when it came up tails, I tossed it again and walked across Elm to the bar.
The bartender—a chunky Irishman with a shock of red hair and a square, pit-marked face—didn’t look terribly impressed with my wounds. But in a Court House bar, he probably saw his share of bruises and bandages daily. I ordered a Scotch and another. And by the time I put the three dollars on the bar, I was feeling moderately improved. I knew that I’d probably pay for those drinks again, later in the day, when the buzz wore off. But there was always more Scotch, I thought cheerfully. Like death and taxes, it could be depended on.
I almost enjoyed the drive over to Ezzard Charles. The pain in my head was still there, but it had withdrawn a pace or two into the distance. And the nausea had gone away completely. Even my ankle felt better, as I stepped out of the car and walked to the Police Building.
I sailed past the desk sergeant and up to the second floor—to Al Foster’s tiny office. I didn’t even bother to knock.
He was bent over his desk when I walked in. All I could see of him was his shiny bald spot and the smoky white line of the cigarette in his mouth. When he looked up and saw me standing there, his long rubbery face went slack and the cigarette drooped between his lips like a tongue depressor.
“You’re getting too old for this business, Harry,” he said in his high-pitched, sardonic voice.
I sat down on a corner of his desk and said, “You may be right.”
“Who did it?”
“A boy by the name of Logan.”
He nodded listlessly. “And next time, his name will be Smith or Jones.”
“You worried about me, Al?”
“Have you taken a good look at yourself in a mirror lately?”
“There was one in a bar in Elm Street,” I said. “I stared into it for a while.”
“I’ll bet,” he said drily. He made a little pile of the stuff on his desk, then slapped his hands on top of it like a paperweight. “You push too hard, Harry. You always have. Sometimes it’s smarter to let up.”
He was usually the most impersonal of men, and the sudden solicitude surprised me. Maybe it was the booze, but I found myself getting angry. “I’ll take care of my house,” I said coldly. “You take care of yours.”
“And what does that mean?”
“It means you’ve got a cop in homicide who may be taking his orders from outside the department.”
Whether it was true or not—and I was hoping Al could tell me—he hadn’t liked to hear me say it. That was police business, and I was an outsider. He took a deep breath and said, “Take it up with the public prosecutor. I don’t want to hear about it.”
“It’s important, Al,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s always important when a cop’s involved.”
“Will you give me a chance to explain?”
He tamped the cigarette out in a tin ashtray and shook a fresh one from a crumpled pack. His eyes had gone cold and vague, as if he’d stopped caring about what was said. I went ahead and told him anyway. Because I was a little drunk and a little angry and because whether he wanted to hear it or not, I wanted to say it. I told him everything about the case, from the Segal girl’s disappearance through Lavelle’s visit. And then I told him what I suspected.
“Bannock’s in the Croft family’s pocket, Al. I don’t know how firmly, but he’s in there. And if he can make the case without involving Irene Croft, he’s going to do it”
“And why not?” he said. “There’s no proof that she and Clinger are involved in the Caldwell boy’s murder.”
“Maybe not. But they could be involved and we’d never know it, because the Crofts don’t want the question to come up.”
He took a drag off the Tareyton and squinted at me through the smoke. “Take it up with Bannock,” he finally said.
“I’m taking it up with you, Al.”
“And I told you I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped. “Bannock knows his business.”
“Yeah, he’s a credit to the force.”
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Foster said. “You don’t even have a case, and you’ve got him convicted.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you, Al, instead of to a grand jury.”
He scowled at his desk.
I said, “All I’m asking you is whether it’s possible—whether Bannock could be a crooked cop.”
“Anything’s possible,” he said coldly.
“Will you look into it?” I asked him. “Just nose around. See if he’s connected?”
“I’ll think about it,” Foster said.
26
I WASN’T sure that Foster would follow up on what I’d asked him to do. But then I’d asked him to do what, in his book, was a dirty thing—to impugn the integrity of a brother officer. The fact that Bannock might actually be implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice was beside the point. No cop likes to fink on another cop—it was really that simple.
As I walked downstairs and out to the car, I decided not to count on Foster’s help. Which left me feeling very much alone. My only hope was finding Grace and getting her to talk to me about the Caldwell boy’s murder. She wouldn’t make much of a witness in her high heels and feathered hats, but I didn’t really need a witness—just the threat of one. It had occurred to me, as I was talking to Foster, that the Croft family was peculiarly vulnerable to threats. It was the threat of scandal that had started the whole conspiracy. And that morbid fear of scandal could be turned against them, if I could manage to convince Lavelle that it would be smarter to let the truth come out than to go ahead with the cover-up. And to convince him of that I needed to know precisely what had happened on Wednesday afternoon. I needed to know at least as much as the Crofts did about the boy’s death.
Of course, my plan was predicated on the assumption that there was something to cover up—that Bobby Caldwell had not died at the hands of some hophead with a very bad temper. And the only way to confirm that assumption was to talk to someone who knew the truth.
I stood beside the Pinto and gazed up over the domed roof of Music Hall at the green fringe of hillside on the eastern horizon. It was time to make that climb again, I thought. To the top of Mt. Adams, where I hoped Grace would be waiting with what I needed to know.
******
That Saturday afternoon, Mt. Adams seemed filled with a sleepy beauty. The cobbled streets, the colorful houses had the dazed, sun-suffused look of a town in the tropics. White walls and dark spaces. All life gone torpid and weary. I coasted down Hill Street, past Corky’s—its doors wide open, the bar just a woody gleam amid the dark, empty tangle of chairs and tables. Below me, the Ohio made a muddy, glistening path between the steep green hills on either bank. The river had the imposing look of a borderline that afternoon—something to be crossed over. But then I was thinking ahead to the ferry and the farm.
I dropped down to the Celestial Street plateau and parked beneath a hackthorn on the south side of the street. Up the block, the black roof of The Pentangle Club twinkled in the sun.
My head had begun to feel heavy again and I had to blink to focus my eyes. It was the concussion, coming back to life. I wanted another drink. I wanted to go to sleep, like that sunny hillside. To curl up and forget Bobby Caldwell and Robbie Segal and Grace. But I made myself walk the length of the block, past the wrought-iron fences and the blank wooden facades of the tired houses, up to the long porch. I stopped for a moment on the bottom step, wondering if she would be inside, as Joey had said she would be on a Saturday afternoon, or if she had bolted like Annie when she’d realized how dangerous a place Clinger’s farm had become. I actually held my breath as I mounted the stairs and stepped through the door. And let it back out—in a long, grateful sigh—w
hen I found her sitting on the stool, humming a melancholy tune.
“Grace?” I said softly. She stopped singing and looked up.
Her pale face filled with pain when she saw me. Her eyes touched at the bandages on my head and the purple bruises on my cheek, and she brought her hand to her own temple and held it there, like a sympathetic salute.
“My God. My God, your head.”
“If it wasn’t for you, it would have been much worse,” I said and felt a rush of gratitude to her that made me blush. I looked away—partly because I was embarrassed and partly because I needed her help again and didn’t know how to ask for it.
She lowered her hand and touched delicately at my cheek. Her fingers felt like snow.
“I didn’t really see—last night. I didn’t know how badly they’d hurt you. Those sons-of-bitches,” she said furiously and her eyes slid from my face to the floor. “I’m sorry.”
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