by Justin Scott
We went to the ice cream shop, then strolled the empty drugstore and the grocery. I asked Gwen if I could buy her anything. She said she had everything she needed, though she did want to browse the videos. I bought a used copy of Sea of Love. Gwen wandered.
Back in the car, as I pulled out of the parking lot, she said, “Look, Ben.”
I looked. She lifted her sweatshirt. I thought she was flashing me. And indeed, I caught a lovely glimpse of her full, round breasts. But flashing wasn’t her intent. Out of her sweatshirt tumbled a couple of video cassettes, some pricey shampoo, perfume, several tins of pâté, and a teddy bear.
“Hey, you stole—”
“You wuss!” She laughed.
“You used me for cover.”
“Did not. You kept getting in my way.”
“How’d you do it?”
She lifted her sweatshirt again—not high enough—and showed me an interior layer of cloth elasticized around her waist.
I turned the car around.
“Where you going?”
“Back to pay for that stuff.”
“No way.”
“My money.”
“No.”
“Gwen, I’m weird about stealing, okay? I don’t like it.”
“I’m weird about paying. Turn around.”
“I’m not going to rat on you, I’m just going to pay.”
“If you don’t turn around, now, I’m going to jump out of the car.” She opened the door. The road roared by at forty. I saw she meant it. I pulled over and stopped.
“Jump.”
“If you pay I won’t tell you about Renny.”
“Tell me what?”
“Take me home.”
She picked up her shampoo, opened it, and sniffed. “Oh, wow. You gotta smell this, Ben.”
I turned the car around, again, and headed back to Newbury. She held the shampoo under my nose until I sneezed. Then she scrutinized her teddy bear.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Sleep with it,” she muttered, suddenly dark.
She opened the perfume—the venerable Madame Rochas—dabbed her ears, glanced sidelong at me, and ran some under her sweatshirt. I remarked that my car smelled like a cathouse.
“What were you doing in a cathouse?”
“It was a navy ritual. Tell me about Renny.”
“What?”
“You told me you knew more about Renny.”
“I did?”
“Goddammit, Gwen.”
“Okay, okay. God, you should see your face. You’re so serious.”
“I am serious, about Renny. I thought you were too.”
“Ben, your cousin was your friend. He was a lot more than that to me. Okay? Let me be sad the way I want to be sad.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You bastard in your big white house. I hate you.”
“I’m sorry, Gwen. I’m really wired about this.”
Silence the rest of the way to Newbury. Silence down Church Hill Road, past the Grand Union, past the afternoon motorcycles outside the White Birch Inn, past the old train station. Silence all the miles to the junction with the Jervises’ dirt road.
“Stop.”
I shut off the engine. A shotgun echoed in the hills. Someone jumping the season. Gwen grimaced. “Deer meat till April.”
She gazed into the deep woods. I watched her tongue probe the hole in her front teeth. “Gwen, give me a break. All I’m trying to do is clear Renny’s name.”
“What the hell for? Who cares? He’s dead.”
“He cared,” I said. “He worked like a dog for respect.”
“He worked for money. He wanted to be rich.”
“Of course he wanted money. But he wanted respect too.”
“You want respect,” she countered.
“I have it.”
“Jailbird.”
“I’m still an Abbott,” I replied. “It goes with my big white house.”
“Screw you, Ben Abbott. You think he was just like you. He wasn’t like you at all.”
I sat back comfortably and draped a hand over the wheel. Another shotgun boomed, closer. Gwen ignored it. “Gwen?”
“What?”
“Do you know what a chevalier is?”
“No,” she said sullenly. She had come closer to graduating high school than anyone in her family and was very defensive about words she didn’t know.
“Well, I didn’t either until they put me in the day school. A chevalier is a French knight.”
“Any connection to Chevalley?”
“Direct. Chevalley comes from Chevalier. Originally, back in Colonial times, Renny’s name would have been René. When I learned that, I jumped on my bike and pedaled like mad down to Frenchtown to tell Renny he was really René Chevalier: René the French knight.”
“I’ll bet you made his day.”
“He decked me.”
“Ha!”
“Took me totally by surprise. Renny never got in fights. Hit me so hard I saw stars.”
“Good for him.”
“I said, ‘Wha’d you do that for?’ You know what he did?”
“Started crying.”
“He told you?”
Gwen gave me a look of disgust. “No. But that’s what he would have done. You made him feel like garbage.”
“Well, that’s what I’m trying to explain. He was hurt. All this nonsense about names and position really bothered Renny.”
“Easy for you to call it nonsense.”
“That’s the point. He cared. So I’m going to clear his name.”
“That ought to make him feel better.”
“I’m also going to get the guy who killed him.”
Gwen touched my hand and pulled me deep into her eyes. “Tell me who,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I’ll take it from there.”
“No thanks. I’ll take it to the cops.”
“I can wait,” she said, in the same matter-of-fact voice, which I took to mean that Renny’s murderer would face Jervises in jail.
“But first I have to find him,” I said. “Which is why I need your help. Did you give Renny a ride back when he dropped the Camaro at Al Bell’s field?”
“We met up there to screw.”
“Friday night?”
“One of the nights.”
“And you left his car?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Renny say why?”
Gwen hesitated. I said, “Gwen, if the cops ever find the Camaro, are they going to find your fingerprints?”
“Footprints.” She smiled.
“What?”
“‘Footprints on the dashboard upside down’: You know the song?” She hummed Humoresque.
“Did he say why he was leaving the car?”
“No.”
“Well, didn’t you ask?”
“What the hell would I ask for?”
“Gwen, didn’t it seem strange he’d leave a mint-restored Camaro up in the woods?”
“You think old Al would steal it?” Gwen scoffed.
“It just seems to me you’d at least ask how he was going to get it back.”
“My mouth was full.”
“What?”
“Renny was driving.”
“Oh.”
We fell silent. Until she asked, “What are you smiling about?”
“You and Renny. He was always afraid of girls when we were kids.”
“Betty Butler was his first.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He was a late starter.”
“I guess so. Wow.”
“I never met such a grateful man in my life. Just my luck.”
“You think he was running dope, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you ask about the car?”
“I don’t ask men their business. I wasn’t raised that way.”
This made a certain sense, and just then, as if to emphasize her point, the hemlocks on the edge of the dirt road parted and out stepped a Jervis teenager, wild and lanky as a coyote. He froze when he spotted my car.
Gwen waved. The kid turned back into the trees and returned carrying a shotgun. He was trailed by old Herman Jervis himself, the head of the clan.
“Oh shit!” Gwen whispered. She jumped out of the car and approached her father warily. That she was his favorite did not exempt her from the occasional backhand swipe of a bony hand if he was crossed.
Well into his seventies, Herman Jervis slouched on a wide-legged stance, baggy green pants sliding down his skinny hips. He might have looked like a harmless old woody. But a red scar slanted down his face from temple to jaw, and his eyes brimmed with cold intelligence and contempt for everything he saw.
He jerked his head at the kid, who handed him the shotgun and slipped back into the woods. Then he addressed Gwen, who listened, head down. I couldn’t hear what he was saying. When he was done, he lit a cigarette. Gwen came back and leaned in the window.
“He wants your car.”
“What for?”
“He shot a buck. Wants you to run it back to my place.”
“Oh, great.” I could just imagine Oliver Moody cruising by me with an out-of-season deer on the roof. Not, I could see, that I had a lot of choice in the matter. The boy staggered out with the deer on his back, its front legs in his hands, its horned head over his—a prime way to get shot in the woods, as he looked exactly like a deer himself. Ignoring me totally, he heaved the dressed carcass, bouncing the Olds on its springs. Old Man Jervis approached, pulling a rope from one of his deep pockets as blood started trickling down my windshield.
He gave the Olds a sour look. “Goddamned new cars—nothing to tie on to.”
My “new” car was eight years old, but I didn’t see much point in correcting him. “Here. Pass it through.” He shoved a rope end in my window and indicated I should pass it to Gwen, which I did. We passed it over the deer a couple of times until the old man allowed it would hold.
“Get going.”
“Want a ride?” I asked.
“Nope. When you get to my daughter’s place, you lend her a hand hanging it.”
“My pleasure. I’m Ben Abbott, by the way, Mr. Jervis.”
“I know who you are.”
“Can I ask you something, Mr. Jervis?”
Gwen, who had climbed back into the car, gave a little inward hiss of alarm, but it was too late now. Her father broke open his ancient double-barrel, inserted fresh loads, and snicked it shut.
“Like what?”
“Would you know if my cousin was flying drugs?”
“Yup.”
“Was he?”
“Nope.”
“Thank you. I’ll get your buck home.”
“Sonny.”
“Yes, sir?”
“You ask the wrong man questions like that, he’ll blow your head off.” He rounded the car, trailed by the kid, and plunged back into the woods.
Gwen exhaled. “You are out of your mind. You are crazy.”
“We understood each other.”
Gwen snorted. “You didn’t even hear the warning.”
“What warning?”
“Don’t ask Bill.”
“Your brother?”
“Jesus, you’re over your head, Ben. He probably just saved your life.”
“Wait a minute. Does that mean Renny might have been working for Bill and your dad didn’t know?”
“He said he’d know and he said Renny wasn’t. Which I told you all along. You asked two of us now. Go look someplace else.”
“Gwen.”
“Your car’s getting bloody. You better take me home.”
I drove her home to the trailers and parked under a tree that had a hook and chain hanging from a low limb. I took off my jacket and shirt and wrestled the carcass onto the hook.
Gwen returned from her trailer with paper towels for the blood and a cold beer. “You better get going before the boys get home.”
I cleaned off, dressed, and drained the beer. “Thanks.”
“No more questions?”
“You told me not to ask.”
“That never stopped you before.”
I got in the car. She had undergone some transformation when she went for the beer. The edge of anger that had underlain her all afternoon was gleaming in her eyes. “Ask,” she said.
“All right. Renny left his car because he knew he was flying into Al’s field. Did he tell you who his passenger would be?”
“No.”
“But he knew, didn’t he?”
“Yeah. He knew.”
“But you think it was someone in your family. That’s why you’ve been lying to me.”
“One of my people,” Gwen confessed.
“And you’re caught in the middle. You’d never tell who.”
“I don’t know who. If I did, I’d kill him.”
I started the engine. “You’re wrong, Gwen. It wasn’t your family.”
“Are you kidding, Ben? Soon as they learned we’re running around, they went for him like flies on honey. A pilot! A real live pilot humping their sister.”
“I thought Pete ran him off the road.”
“I told you, Pete drinks. The rest of them were tickled pink. I swear, if my husband had come home from the Gulf they would have drowned him in the river.”
“No,” I said. “Renny played it straight.”
“They would have given him anything.”
“No. He hated being at a disadvantage. I lent him a few bucks for the garage. Drove him crazy. Finally insisted on giving me a new engine. No way he would have let your people get control over him by doing something illegal.”
“I had control over him.”
“I gather that ran fifty-fifty.”
Gwen nodded. Tears slipped from her eyes, down the lines in her face.
“If you hear anything, would you let me know?”
“Are you sure what you said, that it’s not my people?”
“Positive. It just couldn’t happen that way. Partly for the reason you just said. If he had flown coke—which I’m sure he didn’t—they wouldn’t kill the golden goose. Would they?”
“No.”
“It had to be a paying passenger, Gwen. Somebody local he’d leave his car for. Somebody he trusted.”
***
I was half a mile from the trailers when I spotted headlights in the woods. It looked like I had left Gwen just in time: “The boys” were coming home. They were angling along one of the two-rut tracks that joined the dirt road. But when they reached my road they turned right and continued on ahead of me.
“Son of a bitch.”
My own headlights revealed a long, dark van similar to the one that had blasted Connie’s Lincoln. I hit the gas to pull up for a closer look and hung tight on his tail until a curve in the road gave me a glimpse of its battered right side. Same van.
I edged closer, to read the mud-spattered license plate. Brake lights flashed and he stopped dead. The Oldsmobile’s brakes are good, but not great, and I came within six inches of smacking his bumper. Before I could wonder, What next?, pickup-truck roof-rack lights blazed on behind me. I had not seen the second vehicle following me with his lights out. I had six inches of maneuvering space in front, six inches in back, and thick woods on either side.
Chapter 21
Doors thumped. I locked mine. Someone rapped hard on the driver’s-side window, and when I did not open it fast enough, someone else smashed the opposite glass with a shotgun butt and pressed the barrels against my temple.
“Open the door.”
“Just take it easy,” I said. “You can see both my hands, right here on the wheel.”
“Open the door.”
Very slowly, I reached and pressed the lock release, unlocking all
four doors with a thud much softer than my heartbeat.
“Get out of the car.”
Slowly, keeping my hands conspicuously in view, I opened the door and climbed out, relieving the pressure on my temple.
“Turn around.”
They helped me with that one, turning me roughly to face the truck lights. I was blinded. I sensed one of them circle the car and knew he had when the shotgun touched my head again.
“Step away from the car.”
I stepped sideways until he said to stop.
“Put your hands behind your head.”
I raised my hands, clamped them around the back of my head, and waited, distinctly aware of my exposed front and my elbows pointing at the sky. We all knew they were going to hit me. I was the only one who didn’t know where. I guessed an elbow. Off by a mile.
A second shotgun whipped across my gut—a direct hit to the solar plexus that slammed me to the dirt, retching for air. When I could breathe again, one of them shoved a shotgun muzzle against my lips.
“You hear me, Abbott?”
“I hear you.”
“Got anything to say?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why you’re doing this.”
“Guess.”
“Shoot the son of a bitch, for chrissake. Let’s get it over with.”
“No, wait. I want to hear this.”
I couldn’t see their faces. If I had to guess, I thought the one baiting me might be Pete Jervis. I could smell beer. The impatient one was just a lanky stick figure against the glare.
“Guess!” yelled the first, and I was pretty sure it was Pete. A familiar something crazy in his voice.
“Shoot him.”
“Speak.” Pete pulled the shotgun back an inch so I could move my lips.
I said, “I also don’t know why you ran me off the road the other day.”
“Same reason.”
“Come on, Pete. Let’s do it and go home. I’m fuckin’ freezing.”
I knew that wasn’t Bill, which was both good and bad. Good because Bill was undoubtedly a murderer several times over. Pete, on the other hand, drank, and when he drank he got crazy. It was Pete who had run Renny off the road.
I said, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. But you’ll bring a shitstorm down on yourselves if you kill me.”