The Coal Black Asphalt Tomb

by David Handler

  “Even though you have to put it together all by yourself?”

  “That’s not entirely true. A couple of Uncle Buzzy’s fishing buddies help out a bit when they’re awake and sober. One of them has been talking to our local advertisers, the other keeps tabs on society news. Or tries. It’s the ladies who really know what’s going on, but for some reason I can’t get any of them to help me. Except for Mrs. Grossel, the faculty advisor for the high school paper. She’s recruited her students to handle our sports coverage and youth news. I have help, Mitch. Really, I do.” He trailed off, running a hand through his floppy hair. “It’s just not the kind of help that I need.”

  “What kind is that, Bart?”

  “I grind out a ton of articles every week. I sure could use someone to give them the once over. Our masthead says that Uncle Buzzy’s the editor of The Gazette. But what with his health and all he’s really not up to it anymore.” Bart gave Mitch a sidelong glance. “You went to Columbia J-school, didn’t you?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So you know everything there is to know about editing other people’s copy.”

  “I know a bit,” Mitch acknowledged. “But my plate’s kind of full right now. I’m writing a lot of articles myself every week. Plus I’ve got my Web site, Facebook page, Twitter account and a book under contract.”

  “I understand. You’re hot stuff.”

  “That’s not what I meant, Bart. I’d like to help you out. I’m just incredibly busy.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Bart said with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “So what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about wedding photos.”

  “Don’t tell me you and the resident trooper are getting—”

  “Okay, I won’t. Because we’re not. But when local couples do get married you typically run a wedding photo, don’t you?”

  “Absolutely. That’s our bread and butter.”

  “Do you archive those photos?”

  “Uncle Buzzy’s a pack rat. Never throws anything away.”

  “Even a wedding photo from the 1960s?”

  Bart eyed Mitch curiously. “Whose wedding photo are you looking for?”

  “A couple that was married in Old Henry’s garden at the country club in June of ’69. The 14th, to be exact.”

  “A couple named…”

  “Bob and Delia Paffin.”

  Bart let out a hoot. “I am so glad the voters finally booted that fossil out of office. He was a do-nothing and a crook. I nailed him cold for misappropriating town resources to regravel his driveway.”

  “I heard about that.”

  “Uncle Buzzy wouldn’t print it.”

  “I heard about that, too.”

  “Why do you want to see the Paffins’ wedding photo?”

  “I had a notion about something.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me what that notion is, are you? That’s cool. I’m happy to help a colleague—assuming you give me the story first.”

  “Who says there’s a story?”

  “I say there’s a story. Something’s going on or you wouldn’t be here looking for a photo from the Paleozoic era.” Bart went to one of the glass-fronted bookcases and removed a bound volume of back issues from June of 1969. He laid it open on an empty desk and leafed through it until he arrived at the weddings for the week of the 14th. “By God, Bob was a geeky-looking doof, wasn’t he?” He spun the bound volume around so Mitch could get a good look at Bob and Delia Paffin posed together in Old Henry’s garden on their wedding day.

  “Indeed. I’m amazed he could find a shirt collar big enough to fit over that Adam’s apple.”

  The proud, squinty young groom had his arm around his zoftig new bride, who was twice as wide as Bob even way back then. Her eyes gleamed at the camera in monumental triumph.

  The paragraph of copy beneath the photo was standard society-page stuff. The bride, Miss Delia Ann Blackwell, daughter of Stephen and Laurel Blackwell of Dorset, had been attended by her maid of honor, Miss Beryl Beckwith. The happy couple planned to honeymoon on Sanibel Island, Florida, before taking up residence in Dorset where the groom, whose best man had been Mr. Chase Fairchild, was an associate of Paffin Realty.

  Mitch studied the photo of the happy couple, which had been cropped tight at their shoulders and waists. Too tight. “Bart, do you suppose there were other photos of them taken that day?”

  “Sure. Probably an entire roll.”

  “Do you think Buzzy kept them?”

  “Photos and negatives are stored in those filing cabinets over in the corner. Knock yourself out. I have to get back to work.”

  Mitch poked around in the oak cabinets for a while before he located the file that contained all of the black-and-white wedding photographs the newspaper’s photographer had snapped in June of 1969. There were quite a few weddings that month. Bob and Delia’s was the only one high-toned enough to be held in Old Henry’s garden. And he found the eight-by-ten glossy print of the photo that The Gazette had run, crop marked with a red grease pencil. What had been cropped out were the opulently blooming rose bushes that the couple had posed in front of. He also found two other eight-by-ten glossies that hadn’t been used. These were less formal shots of the newlyweds and a few close friends grouped around those teak garden benches that were still there. Some of the friends were standing. Some of them were seated. All of them were sipping champagne. Mitch recognized Buzzy Shaver and his liverish, low-hanging bottom lip instantly. The old editor had worn a cowlicky crew cut back in those days that was reminiscent of the young Jerry Lewis. Mitch also recognized the maid of honor, Beryl Beckwith, who was as gorgeous as he’d been led to believe. A total knockout. The young guy holding hands with her had to be Chase Fairchild. Glynis was a dead ringer for him. Chase had been fair-haired and on the short side, barely as tall as Beryl. But good looking in an earnest, all-American sort of way. Luke Cahoon was there, too, sporting a mane of hair that fell to his shoulders. The future US congressman looked like a wild-eyed hippie beside his scrubbed country club friends. The willowy, dark-haired beauty standing with him was likely Noelle, the woman he married.

  Mitch studied them one and all, these people who Beryl Fairchild had characterized as young and privileged and insulated from, what was it, life’s harsher realities. Back then our world seemed so perfect. Mitch studied the garden, too, which was for damned sure plenty perfect. Snipped and manicured, not a leaf or petal out of place. A traditional garden, Delia Peck had called it. Properly enclosed.

  Bart sidled over toward Mitch, his reporter’s curiosity getting the best of him. “Find what you were looking for?”

  “Don’t know. Have you got a magnifying glass?”

  Bart pulled one from the top drawer of his desk and handed it to him. Mitch held it over the photos, studying each of them closely.

  “Uncle Buzzy hasn’t changed much, has he?” Bart said. “It’s a shame he never got married. He sure seems lonely.”

  “Sure seems … hunh?” Mitch murmured distractedly, his wheels spinning as he moved the magnifying glass this way and that.

  “But you’re not interested in him, are you? What are you…”

  “Old Henry’s garden.” Mitch tapped the photo with his finger. “It doesn’t look like this anymore. Got completely replanted after they had a fire in ’92.”

  Bart frowned at him. “And this is significant because…”

  “These days it’s enclosed by a boxwood hedge. But back in ’69 it was ‘properly’ enclosed.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It was surrounded by a low wrought-iron fence, see? Looks to me like it was two feet high. Maybe two and half.” Mitch offered him the magnifying glass. “Take a look for yourself.”

  Bart took the glass and peered closely at the fence. “Okay, I’m looking at a wrought-iron fence. So what?”

  “It’s a spiked wrought iron fence, that’s so what. Do you mind if I hold on to this photograph?”


  “Not if you promise to tell me what you’re up to. I don’t get it, Mitch. Why do you care so much about that fence?”

  “Because it’s not there anymore. Is there any way to find out what happened to it?”

  Bart tilted his head at him quizzically. “Does this have something to do with Lance Paffin’s body being found under Dorset Street?”

  “That information hasn’t been made public yet.”

  “True enough. But I hear things. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “You didn’t answer mine either.”

  “This is Dorset, my friend. Nothing ever gets tossed. That fence probably found a home somewhere else in town. Young Henry might know where. Do you belong to the club?”

  “Not a chance. Why, do you?”

  “Buzzy does. So they let me have the run of the place. Want me to talk to Young Henry for you?”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t ask. I’m volunteering. Maybe some day you’ll do me a favor in return. Like, say, read a few stories for me. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Mitch handed Bart his business card. “My landline and cell numbers.”

  “I’ll be in touch.” Bart flashed his big-jawed smile at Mitch. “Know what? Something tells me I’m going to be seeing a lot more of you.”

  Mitch stood there in the middle of the old-time newsroom, soaking up the magical elixir of its atmosphere. “Know what? Something tells me you may be right.”

  CHAPTER 9

  THE SENIOR CENTER IN Fairburn was a beautiful new facility—which meant that Des was there ten whole minutes before she wanted to sprint out into the road and hurl herself in front of the nearest oncoming car. She had a bit of a thing when it came to senior centers. She respected older people. And respected the services that were provided at the centers, mostly by neighborly volunteers. Yet the places gave her the jimjams. Partly it was the hushed stillness. Older people don’t move around a lot or make much noise. Partly, it was the suffocating air. There’s no such thing as an open window at a senior center. But mostly it was just an overwhelming sense of dread that one day soon she, too, would find herself caged in just such a temporary holding center for the soon-to-be departed.

  All she could think about was fleeing.

  It had taken her forty minutes to drive to Fairburn, an old brass mill town that was about twenty miles inland from Mystic Seaport. Eastern Connecticut was comprised of two completely different worlds. There were the coastline towns such as Dorset. Lovely, prosperous places that were popular summer destinations. And then there were the landlocked towns to the north such as Fairburn, which had once been thriving mill towns and were now just a tattered assortment of economically depressed backwaters with few job opportunities. If young people wanted to make a life for themselves they had to move elsewhere.

  But Fairburn’s new senior center was state of the art, thanks to the strenuous efforts of US Congressman Luke Cahoon, whose district encompassed not only the shoreline towns but also Fairburn and a dozen other struggling towns just like it. There was a fully equipped nurse’s station. A recreation room with a giant flat-screen TV. And a cafeteria where hot breakfasts and lunches were served up daily by a crew of volunteers.

  Today, one of those volunteers serving up scrambled eggs, sausage links and oatmeal was the seventy-three-year-old congressman himself. It was a made-for-the-media event. The local TV news crews were all set up and ready to capture Congressman Cahoon as he ladled out oatmeal and bromides about the future of Medicare. The congressman was scheduled to spend no more than thirty minutes at the center assuring his older constituents that he was in DC fighting for their interests. Then he’d be whisked off to Electric Boat in Groton to assure the workers there that he was in DC fighting for their interests.

  “I am so happy to see so many smiling young faces here this morning,” the congressman exclaimed as the news cameras rolled.

  The four dozen or so old-timers who were gathered there—most of them ladies—squealed with delight.

  “And I’d like for all of you to know that I am always—”

  “Hang on a sec, Congressman!” a reporter from Channel 8 bellowed. “We didn’t have sound. You’ll have to start over again.”

  Luke Cahoon didn’t so much as blink. He was a consummate pro whose job was playing a role for the cameras. If he was told to say his lines again then he said them again—calmly, graciously and convincingly. When viewers saw this little snippet on tonight’s news they’d have no idea that what they were watching was a retake of a staged event.

  Washington, as Mitch was fond of saying, was nothing more than Hollywood for the homely.

  Luke Cahoon was tall and lanky with shaggy eyebrows, a long blade of a nose and a lopsided smile. He combed his silver hair across his forehead in a style that harkened back to Bobby Kennedy. He was dressed in a rumpled gray flannel suit, white button-down shirt and striped tie. Wore a pair of reading glasses on a chain around his neck, and the relaxed air of a man who’d become a pillar of his generation. Back in 2000 his name had even been floated as a potential running mate for George W. Bush. The congressman had vast foreign-policy experience and decades of service on the Armed Services Committee. He was a courtly, affable moderate who got along well with members of both sides of the aisle. But Bush veered hard right and chose Dick Cheney instead.

  And so today Luke Cahoon was in Fairburn ladling up oatmeal and schmoozing with the oldies. “What can I get for you this morning, young lady?” he asked the white-haired lady who stood before him with her tray, dazzled by his star presence. “And how about you, dear?” he asked the next lady in line, smiling, smiling. Give it up for him—the man knew how to work a room. When he spotted Des standing there he never stopped smiling. “Master Sergeant Mitry, I’ll see you outside in five minutes.” And then kept right on working it. “Say, that is some kind of a lovely sweater you’re wearing, dear. Knit that yourself?”

  The news vans were all clustered together in the parking lot, which overlooked a soccer field that was attached to the community center next door. The congressman’s humongous black Chevy Suburban was parked just outside of the door for a quick getaway. His driver/bodyguard, a bulky man in his fifties, sat behind the wheel waiting for him. A retired cop by the look of him. A state police cruiser on escort detail idled there next to the Suburban. Des didn’t know the young trooper, who was out of Troop E in Montville. But she did know that the Deacon would scorch his ears off if he caught him reading a magazine like he was.

  The congressman was punctual. Precisely five minutes later he came striding out of the senior center trailed by two young aides. One was a ferret-faced guy with an officious air about him. The other was a clenched-looking woman who was barking into her cell phone. His driver got out and opened the back door of the Suburban for him.

  “Tom, why don’t you go inside and grab yourself some chow?” the congressman suggested. “Steve, Polly? I’m going to need the car for a few minutes, okay?” On their surprised looks he said, “Get in, Master Sergeant Mitry.” She got in. He joined her in the roomy back seat and closed the door, gazing at her admiringly. “You wear that uniform well. Is it custom tailored?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Yet you seem at home in it, unlike most of the female troopers who I’ve encountered. West Point, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Perhaps that explains it. I want you to know that I truly appreciate the job you’ve been doing as Dorset’s resident trooper. You approach your work with the same mind-set that I have. You’re a uniter, not divider. And I like your style. Bob and Buzzy do not. In fact, they never miss an opportunity to tell me just how much they detest you. I think you scare the crap out of them, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I don’t mind at all.”

  He flashed a smile at her. “I also want to thank you for keeping an eye on the family homestead on Johnny Cake. I treasure that old house.”

  “It�
�s a lovely home. Or it sure looks that way from the outside.”

  “You haven’t been inside? Hell, you’ll have to come to tea one of these days. Noelle and I restored it from top to bottom after we were married. Our daughter, Katie, spent the first two years of her life there, not that she remembers.”

  “Does it have exposed chestnut beams like so many of the old places do?”

  He nodded his head. “In the taproom.”

  “I’ll bet those beams are full of those old square-headed nails. My friend Mitch’s place is.”

  Luke Cahoon narrowed his gaze ever so slightly. “Why are we sitting here in Fairburn talking about square-headed nails?”

  “No particular reason, sir. I just find them charming.”

  He glanced out the window at the soccer field, which hadn’t greened up yet. The grass still looked pale and dead. A layer of high, thin clouds had started to move in, dimming the morning sunlight. “Those are Lance Paffin’s remains that they dug up, correct?”

  “Correct. The DNA results leave no doubt. We’re continuing to keep his identity under wraps until the ME can finish going about his business.”

  “Has he been able to determine what happened to Lance?”