“Oh. Thank you kindly. But I must excuse myself for a moment first. Polly? Coming?” I came. I know a summons when I hear one. I plunged through the crowd after her, and she slipped her arm through mine.
“What on earth are you doing? This is your gentleman caller? An Ontario Provincial Police officer? You must be off your head. No wonder George wouldn’t tell me.”
“He’s a nice man, Susan,” I said.
“Hmmmph.”
Susan started hissing at me after we’d peed for appearance’s sake and were washing our hands at the sink.
“I think it’s very foolish, considering your lifestyle, to think for a moment that you’ll have anything in common other than sex. He’s good-looking, I’ll give him that, but he’s a policeman, Polly. A copper.”
A young woman burst into the washroom at a run, followed closely by three or four friends. She made a bee-line for the wheelchair toilet and proceeded to vomit loudly into the bowl.
“What about you?” I said, turning back to Susan after assessing the situation and deciding that the girl didn’t need another witness. “You and George don’t have much in common either. Yet it’s obvious that you’re getting physical. What’s wrong with sex?”
“Nothing at all. With the right person.”
“And do you think that George is the right person for you?”
“Why? Do you think he isn’t?”
“I bet you fifty bucks the guys are having the exact same conversation right now,” I said.
They weren’t. We came up to find that the bar and the dance-floor had emptied. The musicians had stopped playing and were standing together behind the lead microphone, as if they were discussing whether or not to join everybody else outside in the entrance way.
There was a fight going on, and it sounded big.
Twenty
When you want to know the colour of the night, girl,
ask the band.
—Shepherd’s Pie
“What's going on?” I called over to the band.
It was loud outside. One of the musicians answered, but I couldn’t hear him.
“Sorry?”
The guy stepped up to the mike and spoke into it. The sound-technician had left the setting on reverb, and it sounded like the voice of God.
“We just finished a song and someone screamed real loud over by the door and then all hell broke loose. People swinging punches. Place cleared like a loose bowel. Pardon me, ma’am.” Behind him, the rest of the band snickered manfully. We headed for the door.
A wall of people jammed the exit. There was the smell of adrenaline in the air and the crowd was pressing in to get a look-see, chattering away like greedy gray squirrels at a city picnic. It was first come, first served, and we were late. We joined the jam, at the very back.
“When I heard that gun go off, I spilled my beer on my wife,” one man said. “She’ll kill me for sure when we get home.”
“That was no gun,” the man next to him said. “Someone threw a chair.”
“Oh? Geez, so I spilled it for nuthin, then. Well, I’ll get hell anyway. Who screamed? You see?”
“Some woman. I was over by the bar. Fight broke out, four or five guys, right about where we’re standing.” Both men immediately looked at the floor, possibly for blood.
“Excuse me,” I said. “Can we get by, please?” The man who had spilled his beer on his wife glared at me.
“Wait your turn, dear,” he said.
Susan tapped me on the shoulder.
“Window,” she said, pointing.
We couldn’t see much because it was dark outside and the windows hadn’t been washed since Trudeau’s reign, but there was definitely a brawl going on. Lots of inarticulate profanity and what looked like some unpleasantness with fists.
“Do you think anyone’s called the cops?” I said.
“There’s a policeman there already,” Susan said.
“There he is, look. He just pulled the little one off the big one.”
“Oh, God. Becker. I have to get in there.”
“Why? You the cavalry?”
“No. The girlfriend,” I said. “Is there a back way?”
Susan gave me an eyebrow, then made for the washrooms again. I followed.
Next to the ladies’ room was a door marked FIRE EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND. Susan pushed it open. I’m more Canadian than she is. I gasped. She chuckled.
“The alarm’s never been connected,” she said.
It was cold enough outside to see our breath. We walked along the side of the building, around behind the kitchen-extension and out to the front, where a set of stairs led up to the foyer of the old building.
The exterior lights were on, and it looked like a stage set, the brawlers front and centre, with a Greek chorus made up of Cedar Falls citizens, grouped artistically on the steps, beer glasses in hand.
We stuck to the bushes, finding ourselves a bit closer to the ringside than was comfortable. I’ve never been big on violence, and while I may have jumped in a time or two when Francy was in danger, I certainly had no intention of getting involved for Becker’s sake. He was holding his own.
The six guys fighting were the pickup boys, whose names I didn’t know, versus Becker and Vern, a giant, simple man I’d seen occasionally in the village. It was four against two, but three of the pickup boys were stagger-drunk. The other was right out of his mind with rage about something, but he was tiny, shorter than Susan is, and thinner than a winter birch.
Vern was easily identifiable as the focus of the trouble. The pickup boys were trying to kill him, but they weren’t having much luck. Their opponent stood his ground like a front-end loader, baffing them away with hands the size of dinner plates. Whenever two or more went for the giant at once, Becker stepped in and pulled them off, which meant a battle every time. Vern’s fists had dealt some stinging blows, but this just seemed to enrage the boys, the same way a rolled up magazine enrages a wasp.
They were all yelling.
“Back off now before somebody gets hurt.”
“Fucking touch my motherfucking girlfriend fucking asshole?”
“Neil, fucking help us, man.”
“Fucker smacked me right in the face.”
“Fucking kill him!”
From the giant came a low rumbling sound, like a semi out on the highway, getting closer. His eyes were half-closed and he had a serene, beatific smile on his face. His tweed cap hadn’t budged from his head.
Susan and I had crept round to where George and Otis Dermott stood near the front steps. Otis toasted us with his plastic glass.
“Vern’ll blow any minute now,” Otis said.
“Why isn’t anybody helping?” I said to George. “Surely three of you guys could go in there and help pull them off?”
“They started it,” Otis said. “Vern won’t get hurt none, although your cop friend may get hurt if he don’t stay out of the way.”
I raised an eyebrow, Susan style. “Cop friend?” I said.
Otis leered. “I remembered him,” he said. “I seen him talking to Freddy at the dump. You go for a man in uniform, eh? I should have wore my army coat.” He wheezed with laughter and swigged at his beer.
I looked at George and Susan. They gazed blandly at the fight, avoiding my eye. When I looked back at Otis, he was doing the same thing.
“It’s like this, eh?” Otis said, after a moment. “Them boys have been making trouble since they got to Cedar Falls. Everybody knows, but nobody’s been able to catch them at it.”
“This fight could be classified as trouble, couldn’t it?” I said. “Grounds for arrest?”
“What good would that do? They wouldn’t get a court-date till God knows, and there’d be worse trouble in between. Listen up. Them boys were stupid enough to pick a fight with Vern, they should take their medicine here and now. He won’t kill them.”
Vern’s rumble was getting louder. The little guy was still calling him a motherfucker and poking at his unde
rbelly with a pair of pointy little fists.
“Why’s that little guy screaming about his girlfriend?” I said.
“Vern felt her up, eh? I seen it. She was staggering around and she bumped into him and almost fell over so he caught her. He held her wrong and she screamed and ran for the bathroom and the boys went for him. Vern broke a chair getting outside, eh? He knows he’s not supposed to fight.”
Becker was bleeding from a cut over his left eye. Every time he pulled a boy off Vern’s back, the boy lashed out with wild punches and kicking feet.
“That guy should get out of it,” a young, bearded fellow said to Otis.
“He’s a cop, eh?” Otis said. “Probably feels obliged.”
“I guess that’s why he’s not hitting back. If he gets decked, I guess we should go in there, eh?”
“If he gets decked,” I said, “the guy who decked him will be charged with assaulting a police officer.” Both men looked at me.
“He should be minding his own business,” Otis said. I gazed back at them. They were grinning.
I looked over at Becker. He was wiping blood away from his eye.
“Becker! Hey!” I said, raising my voice. He looked up, frowned and hurried over to me. The pickup boys, sensing a void, moved in on Vern.
“You should move away from here,” Becker said. “You could get hurt.”
Vern blew. It was like a Marvel Comic.
Biff! Blowie! Splat! Ka-boom!
Four pretty pickup boys, laid in a row. The crowd went wild, hooting, cheering and stamping their feet. Vern swept the cap off his head with a flourish, bowed gravely to the audience and shambled away into the night. The crowd started moving back inside, while three or four big, strong fellows stepped forward to check on the boys. They were conscious, but groggy.
Becker stared wildly at the four prone figures on the grass, turned to see the last of Vern as he disappeared into a thicket of fir trees and then turned back to me.
“Jesus,” he said.
“You’re bleeding,” I said and handed him my backup hanky.
George and Susan came up, arm-in-arm, as if they’d just returned from an evening at the opera.
“You may need a stitch or two,” Susan said.
“I’m fine,” Becker said.
“You did well, son,” George said. “Just leave them be, now.”
“I’ve got to make a phone call,” Becker said.
“To the station?” I said.
“Where do you think? There’s been an assault.”
“Becker,” I said, “you’re off-duty, remember?”
“It was just a little misunderstanding,” Susan said.
“They’ve learned their lesson,” George said. “Kevin, there, will drive them home. He knows where they live.”
Becker was breathing through his nose. He was very pale and his hands were clenched into fists at his side. There was a nasty little pause.
“Jim?” I said. “James T. Kirk? Speak to me. Is it? Oh, God! Not… the goat poison?”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Who’s James T. Kirk?” Susan said. Becker said nothing, kept on breathing. His eyes were bugging out. I stepped in closer.
Becker’s breath hissed loudly through his clenched teeth. Susan moved in as well, worried now.
“Relapse,” Becker said softly into Susan’s ear. “Tell McCoy to beam us up.”
“Is he all right?” she said, turning to George.
“Nothing that a Deacon can’t fix, I think,” George said.
“Who’s McCoy?” Susan said, turning back to Becker, who hadn’t moved. Susan had never watched much TV.
I reached into my pocket for the condom-packet, which I slipped into George’s hand. “Dr. McCoy says play safe,” I said.
He handed it right back. “Dr. McCoy should teach her grandmother,” George said.
Becker and I headed for the parking lot.
I drove. I told him I didn’t think he should be behind the wheel after receiving a blow to the head, and he agreed. Gosh. Jeep Cherokees sure go fast.
“Hey, slow down,” Becker said, “or I’ll have to pull you over.”
“Show me your flashing lights.”
“I think they got punched out.” He laughed, a little wildly.
I pulled over to the side of the road and turned on the overhead.
“What?” Becker said.
“Detective Mark Becker, what you did back there was noble and totally right-action, but I want to thank you for not arresting anybody.”
“Well, I was off duty, right?”
“Right. So. I guess dinner and pool in Laingford’s out.” The cut over his eye was still bleeding. “How hurt are you?” I said. “You want to go home? Are you dizzy? Should we go to the hospital?”
“I think sick bay would be better.”
“Sick bay your house or sick bay my house?”
“You’re the doctor.”
“You got gauze and disinfectant at your place?”
“No.”
“The Deacon residence it is. Anyway, when you’re suffering from goat poisoning, you have to return to the source.”
I headed for the Dunbar sideroad and home.
Twenty-One
Move me I’m steel pipes
bashing demented in the gale
—Shepherd’s Pie
I handed the keys over reluctantly. It had been a nice ride. Driving the Cherokee after three years of mollycoddling George’s cranky old pickup was like a snort of fine brandy after years of drinking lemonade. It would never do to own a vehicle that powerful. No wonder that the men who drive those things act like teenagers with painful erections.
“I can feel the testosterone just pumping through me,” I said.
“What?” Becker said. He slammed the passenger door and winced as something in his arm reminded him that he had been rough-housing with the locals.
“The Jeep,” I said. “Getting behind the wheel turns you into a seventeen-year-old boy with his baseball cap on backwards.”
“Not me, ma’am,” Becker said. “I drive like a cop.” Lug-nut jumped up and put his paws on Becker’s chest, wagging his tail.
“Down!” I said, but it was too late to save the shirt. “Sorry. He likes you.”
Becker patted the dog’s head. “It’s only a shirt. So, medicine woman, you got the cure down here or in your cabin?”
“Are you up for the hike?”
“No problem. I’m tough. I own a Jeep, remember?”
He slowed down halfway up the hill. The stars were out, in a navy blue sky.
“Hey, Polly, come here a sec,” he said.
It was dark where he was. There was moss and bracken on the ground. We stayed there a while.
“Mmm, Bkrr?”
“Mmmmn?”
“You’re still bleeding.”
“How come you’re still calling me Becker?”
“I hardly know you.”
“Oh. You have a thing in your hair. Wait.”
“Mmmmn.”
Later, we finished the climb. At a trot. I lit the lamps and put the kettle on.
“You cleaned up in here,” Becker said.
“Yeah, well. Sit here where the light is. We’ll fix that eye.”
“Now?”
“There’s clean pillowcases,” I said. “I don’t want blood on them.” It was a lie, but still. Tending to the wounds of a devastatingly handsome officer by lamplight has got to be the biggest Florence Nightingale wet-dream in the world.
“Don’t move.” I washed the cut with a goldenseal solution to disinfect it, then mixed up a bit of myrrh and goldenseal into a paste.
“What the hell is that?” he said.
“If we had gone to the hospital, they would have given you a couple of stitches. This is cheaper, and you won’t have a scar.”
I used a couple of tiny strips of surgical tape to close the wound, which was a split just above the eyebrow. Then I dabbed a bit of herbal paste
on, added a scrap of gauze and a band-aid.
“I did this a while ago when I slashed my finger with an Olfa knife,” I said. “It works. Trust me. Just don’t wiggle your eyebrows for a couple of days.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am. As long as I don’t wake up with three eyes in the morning. Some kind of spell involved here?”
“You’re not religious, are you?”
“No.”
“Thank heaven for that,” I said and poured a couple of brandies.
“It’s quiet up here,” Becker said. “How do you stand it? You listen to music at all? Have you got a CD player? Tunes?” There had been CDs in his Jeep. I hadn’t thought to look at them.
“There’s no hydro and batteries are expensive,” I said. “I do have a radio that winds up like clockwork, though. It gets the CBC.”
“You’re kidding. Clockwork?”
“Yeah. They were designed for the third world. I figure we’ll all be third world soon enough, so I bought one.”
“Where? Is this it?” Becker walked over to the clockwork radio which held pride of place over the sink, by the window.
“How does it go on?”
“Crank the handle at the side, then press the ON switch. Don’t worry about over-winding it, they’re indestructible.”
Becker turned the crank until the coiled spring inside was tight, then pressed the button and Margery Doyle’s genial Newfie drawl came on, introducing a string quartet.
“Perfect,” I said.
“You like this stuff?” Becker said.
“Don’t you?”
“I listen to MEGA FM most of the time. This is fine, though.”
He returned to the table and started to massage the back of my neck.
“I feel like I should be wearing a suit and tie,” he said.
“Why? The music?” There was a long pause. The cello spoke of caramel passion and the violin sang like spring.
“It’s kind of high-brow,” he said.
“We could turn it off. Nobody says you need music.”
He turned it off, then came back to me.
“Mmmn. That feels wonderful,” I said. “Cop fingers. Strong.”
Polly Deacon Mysteries 4-Book Bundle Page 16