Ticket to Ride

by Ed Gorman

  “You look funny with a rubber band hanging off your nose.”

  “Gosh, and just think. Next year you’ll be in fifth grade.”

  “I have a Polaroid camera in my desk, but I suppose the rubber band would fall off by the time I got it.”

  “Aw, shucks.” I ripped the rubber band off my nose, strung it between thumb and forefinger, and fired it back at her. I missed, as I usually do.

  “Now who’s being juvenile, McCain?” She lifted her blue package of Gauloises from her desk and lighted one with a fey little solid silver lighter. “Lou Bennett was a friend of mine. Of sorts.”

  The way sunlight angled through the tall windows and illuminated the framed painting of her patrician father reminded me of the day years ago when I’d brought my parents here to meet her at her request. My mother had been taken with the severe but handsome image of the patriarch. I could remember her standing in a similar stream of light.

  My folks were as quiet and polite and intimidated as if the Pope had asked them to an audience. The lustrous dark wainscoting, the rich ruby carpeting you could twist an ankle in, and the magisterial walls of leather-bound books intimidated most people. That was the intention. My parents were humbled being here, of course. Not many people from the Hills got invites. They only relaxed when the judge, who’d been unusually cordial, told them she’d invited them here so that they could hear her offer me a job as her investigator. She’d even had a bottle of champagne on hand for the occasion.

  “I don’t find that surprising, Judge. You and Bennett had a lot in common.”

  “I know how you meant that, McCain, but I’d have thought you’d have respected him. He saved a colored man’s life. You’re always prattling on about civil rights.”

  “He couldn’t dine out on that forever. He did one good thing in his life, but he did a lot of bad things too.”

  “If you mean the run-in he had with the school board, I agreed with him one hundred percent. Those two teachers had no respect for American history. The way they taught it, we were butchers and murderers when we came here from Europe.”

  “He wanted a whitewash. And he wanted the teachers fired.”

  Something shifted in her upper-class gaze. “Well, he did go a bit far, I have to admit. I’m the one who suggested that he drop the idea of firing them. Or monitoring their classes.”

  “You did?”

  “You don’t have to sound so damned surprised, McCain. I do believe in the Constitution, you know.”

  “He didn’t.”

  She looked unhappy. “No, he didn’t.” Then: “He was a bit of an ass, I have to say. But I heard about him breaking down last night at that stupid rally of yours. I felt sorry for him.”

  “So did I. So did most of the people at the rally. Commies have feelings, too.”

  She ignored my comment. Instead she inhaled deeply and exhaled a blast of smoke heavy enough to tar a road. “So tell me about this Doran person Cliffie thinks killed Bennett.”

  She winced at his political activities but seemed pleased when I mentioned Yale. The filthy degenerate Communist troublemaker with a Yale degree wasn’t quite so filthy after all.

  “Why does Cliffie think Doran killed Lou?”

  I told her about the fight on the sidewalk. “That’s all I know right now. As I said, Cliffie didn’t want me anywhere near the crime scene.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad we make him nervous. And we should. He’s a buffoon.”

  “He was a friend of Bennett’s too, remember? I’m surprised the three of you didn’t sit around getting drunk and making lists of all the Commies here in Black River Falls.”

  “I’d call you insolent if you weren’t so juvenile.” She left the perch on her desk and walked over to one of the windows. Good gams and a tight backside. Every one of her four husbands had no doubt been most appreciative of these and her many other charms. “Well, hop to it, McCain. I want to really humiliate Cliffie this time. Giving that stupid minister a permit for that record-burning tomorrow was the last straw.”

  The record-burning she had alluded to was the brainstorm of Reverend H. Dobson Cartwright, DD, which allegedly stood for Doctor of Divinity. Kenny called him Reverend Cartwright, DDT. That was more appropriate. Cartwright had a radio show and a flock and was given to publicity stunts that embarrassed everybody but true believers. Tomorrow his flock would be burning the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and many others.

  Knowing I was being dismissed, I stood up and took my last shot, “Gee, you mean you’re not taking in your Lawrence Welk records?”

  “Good-bye, McCain.”

  “Jerry Vale?”

  “I said good-bye.”

  “Kate Smith?”

  She’d never given me the finger before. She looked sort of cute doing it.

  5

  MOLLY WEAVER WAS LEANING AGAINST MY RED FORD RAGTOP when I reached the parking lot behind the county courthouse. In her yellow shirtdress and tortoiseshell glasses, she gave the impression of remaining crisp on this sultry day. But the small face was anything but crisp. Dark circles under the eyes and way too much makeup. I’d never seen her like this before.

  “I suppose you’re mad at me.”

  “Hell, no, Molly. Not after I thought about it.” I pulled my keys from my pocket and walked around to the driver’s side. She followed me. “We were just friends. You didn’t owe me anything.”

  “Well, I think we were a little more than friends, McCain. We slept together.” Her words were apparently heard by an elderly couple emerging from a tugboat-sized Chrysler. Their heads whipped around as if Jesus had called them.

  “Talk a little lower,” I whispered.

  “Well, it’s true, we did sleep together.” A much quieter Molly now.

  I took her arm. “Look, Molly. You’d been dumped and I’d been dumped. We used each other to get through the worst of it. It was kind of like taking medicine. But we both knew that as soon as we found people we really wanted to go after, it’d be over between us. You found Doran.”

  That was when she broke down and fell into my arms, sobbing. “He didn’t kill anybody, McCain! He really didn’t!”

  The elderly couple had just about made it to the courthouse, but Molly’s cries stopped them. They turned around and stood there watching us. This was a lot better than daytime TV any day.

  I got the door opened and guided her into the seat. I pushed her over to the passenger side, then got in myself. I punched open the glove compartment and took out a small box of Kleenex, which I placed on her lap. She was at the eye-dabbing and nose-blowing stage, the eruption being over.

  “Cliffie thinks he killed Lou Bennett.”

  “Cliffie’s a moron.”

  “Yes, but he’s the chief of police.”

  “Does he have any evidence?”

  “Somebody saw him in front of Bennett’s place about three o’clock this morning.”

  Because Molly’s natural inclination was to look on the bleak side of things—Jean-Paul Sartre was a game-show host compared to her—I’d assumed that Cliffie had made his usual mistake of grabbing at the obvious. But a witness seeing Doran there was serious.

  “I love him, McCain. I love him.” She started crying again. I waggled the Kleenex box under her chin. She plucked one like a dandelion and put it to her jaunty little nose. But praise the Lord, it was a false start. The tears didn’t get out of the gate. She just snuffled some and then went on talking. “I want to marry him. He’s the man I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

  It would have been downright mean to point out that she was only twenty-two.

  “Well, he needs a good lawyer, and with his money he won’t have any trouble getting one, Molly.”

  I waved to a few courthouse employees as they passed by. One of the males gave me a smile and then the high sign. Yes, that’s right. I was going to hump Molly right here in the parking lot. She faced the wall. She hadn’t seen him.

  Now she angled in her seat and said, “Do you hav
e a cigarette?”

  “Sure.”

  I lighted two and gave her one.

  “I wish you smoked filters. I always get tobacco in my teeth from these.”

  “I’m sorry. From now on it’s filters for me. Filters, filters, filters.” Usually she would have smiled. Not this time.

  “I have to tell you something.”

  “You can’t be pregnant. Last night was your first time with him.”

  No smile this time, either.

  “You know how he said he knows Joan Baez and Norman Mailer and he went to Yale?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He made it up.”

  “Aw, shit.” I didn’t say that to her; I said it to myself. Of course he made it all up. All the theatricality, all the name-dropping, all the James Dean rebel stuff. He made it up. Of course. And I hadn’t figured it out. Molly had had to tell me.

  “He got real drunk last night and told me everything.”

  “Was this before or after you slept with him?”

  “How do you know I slept with him?”

  “Please.”

  “After I slept with him, I guess.”

  “Figures.”

  “But now I love him more than ever.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “He’s had to pretend to be someone else for so many years. I feel so sorry for him.”

  “Me, too. I’ll probably have to start using those Kleenex myself.”

  “Now you’re being mean. He may have made things up, but he’s brilliant and he’s sweet and he really is against the war.”

  There was nothing I could say. There were women who’d loved Rasputin. There were women who’d loved Hitler. There were even women who loved Dick Nixon, Judge Esme Anne Whitney being one of them.

  “He needs a lawyer. And don’t say no, McCain. You’d be letting down the cause.”

  “What cause?”

  “The anti-war cause. It’s like Harrison said, we’re all soldiers in the anti-war cause.”

  I sank back in my seat. Soldiers in the anti-war cause. That sounded like something good old Doran would say. “There are plenty of other lawyers in this town.”

  “He doesn’t have any money, and the other lawyers won’t help him because they don’t want to be associated with our cause.”

  “Gee, couldn’t he just call Joan Baez or Norman Mailer to help him out?”

  “That isn’t very funny. His whole life is at stake here.” Then: “Will you at least talk to him? Please, McCain? Please?”

  She was right about the other lawyers in town. Nobody’d go near Mr. Wonderful. And not just because of their reputations. This was a conservative town. They really believed that people like Doran were subversives. And they threw me in for good measure.

  “Please,” Molly said. And for the first time, she smiled. “You know you’re going to say yes eventually, so why don’t you just get it over with?”

  I looked at her and shook my head. “But I’m not going to start smoking filters.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “And I’m not going to pretend that he’s anything but a bullshit artist.”

  “That’s fine too.”

  “And I’m going to send him a bill even if I only talk to him for ten minutes.”

  “Just say it, will you, McCain, for God’s sake?”

  “Shit,” I said. “Yeah, I’ll see the bastard.”

  “I knew you would.” She opened her door. “Now I need to get back to work. Oh, here. I almost took this with me.”

  And with that she handed me the much-depleted Kleenex box. At least she’d stuffed the dirty ones in her purse.

  She got about five feet from my ragtop and I said, “Hey, can you give him an alibi for last night? If you were with him all night, then the eyewitness was wrong.”

  “Oh, God, I wish I could, but I had to go home because I knew my period would be starting.”

  Of course her period was starting. It fit right in with everything else.

  6

  THE WHITMAN FUNERAL HOME IS WHERE THE PROPER PEOPLE get themselves buried. Proper translates to those who can afford it. When I played Little League, which I did to please my dad, the funeral home sponsored a team, but nobody wanted to be on it. Who wanted corpses to sponsor you? We all made fourth-grade jokes about what the real funeral home logo looked like. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi figured prominently in our imaginary artwork.

  But if you absolutely have to die, the Whitmans will give you the fanciest of send-offs. They use two hearses instead of one to lead the cars to the cemetery, and Willis Whitman, who for years has been the baritone in the barbershop quartet here, will throw in a song at graveside, the gag being that if you pay him a little more he won’t sing. As I said, this is where the wealthy go. It used to be Protestant only, but over the past ten years a few Catholics have been boxed up and gift-wrapped in the Whitman basement. Papist money spends just as well as Martin Luther’s. Jewish people go to Iowa City. Everybody else goes to Sweeny’s. Mr. Sweeny is a Catholic and Mrs. Sweeny is a Methodist, so it’s what you might call corpse-friendly to all kinds of Christians.

  There was no way I was ever going to get past the various barriers Linda Raines would have put up at the mansion. I would have to try and talk to her outside of her estate. The logical place was Whitman’s. They’d no doubt be making arrangements this morning. Linda’s sports car would be easy to spot.

  The coffee shop directly across the street from the funeral home made waiting her out tolerable. It didn’t have air conditioning, but it had enough fans and open windows to cool things down several degrees. I sat at the counter until a window table opened up. I drank iced coffee and smoked cigarettes and read the Des Moines Register. Around ten thirty, a quick little red car driven by an elegant brunette wearing a red scarf and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses pulled into the parking lot on the side of Whitman’s.

  As always, she moved with pure purpose. She’d picked up the military bearing from her old man. She was out of her car and mounting the front steps as if somebody was chasing her.

  While I waited for her reappearance I thought about Molly asking me to represent Doran. He was a con. That I didn’t doubt. But to have somebody associated with our peace group accused of murdering a war hero—that discredited all of us. And more important, it discredited our political position. I had to represent the bastard.

  She stayed just about thirty-five minutes. She stood on the small front porch talking to Harold Whitman, Jr., fifth generation of friendly ghouls. The body language didn’t tell me anything. She was as rigid as always, all those perfectly blended curves wasted by what she obviously considered finishing school propriety.

  When the tip of her tan high heel reached the sidewalk I was out of the coffee shop and bolting across the street. She was in the parking lot before I reached her.

  “Mrs. Raines, Mrs. Raines.”

  She didn’t even turn around to see who was calling her. “Leave me alone.”

  “I need to ask you two questions.”

  “I told you to leave me alone.” But then I’d always thought Scarlett O’Hara was an obnoxious bitch, too.

  I beat her to her car, leaned against the door so she had no choice but to face me.

  “Oh, God, it’s you.”

  “I’m sorry about your father.”

  “I’m sure you are. That’s why you had that rally. That’s why you’re trying to tear down everything he fought for.”

  “Doran didn’t kill him.”

  “Have you ever heard of mourning, McCain? That’s what I’m doing. My father has been murdered and you’re attacking me in the parking lot of the funeral home. The judge is a family friend but you’ve always been something of a joke. A very bad one. Now get out of my way before I call the police.”

  “Cliffie, you mean?”

  She leaned forward and punched me in the shoulder. “Get out of my way.”

  “I need to know if your father had any enemies. Ones who’d been givin
g him grief recently.”

  Then she cheated. Behind those shades tears began to run, streaming down her perfect cheeks to her perfect little chin. “Will you be a goddamned gentleman for once and leave me to my mourning?” She was having a difficult time talking through her tears.

  “Oh, hell,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.” Every once in awhile you’re able to see yourself through somebody else’s eyes. What would I be like if my father had just died and some creep was bothering me the way I was bothering her?

  I reached out, unthinking, to touch her arm. She twisted away from me. “Just let me get in my car and get out of here.” She was still crying.

  I stood aside immediately. I opened the door for her. She eased into her seat. I tried not to notice how her skirt rode up on those fine fine legs. She backed up fast, wheeled around fast, and left fast.

  That old Sam McCain magic was working just swell.

  On the way back to my office, I passed by the library. Well, I’d planned to just pass by, but when I saw the small group gathered at the bottom of the steps, I pulled my ragtop over to the curb and parked. The concrete lions on either side of the staircase watched me suspiciously the way they had been since I was checking out Hardy Boys mysteries in fifth grade.

  Officer Bill Tomlin had his notepad out and was talking to Trixie Easley, the chief librarian. Two or three people in the crowd were pointing to the glass doors at the top of the stairs.

  COMIE! appeared in dripping red letters across the doors. Whoever had put it there wasn’t going to be taking home any prizes from a spelling bee. He or she had obviously meant COMMIE. Of course it could have been intentionally misspelled to make people think an illiterate had done the work. The library had most likely been the target because Trixie Easley had been one of the main organizers of the rally.