Ticket to Ride

by Ed Gorman

  “I can always subpoena you.”

  The smile was cold. “You can always try.” A deep sigh and then: “I really am in a hurry, McCain. And if it’s a question about what happened, you already know the answer. Your man killed Colonel Bennett.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “A witness put him out in front of our place at three A.M.”

  “What the hell was a witness doing out there at that time?”

  This time the smile was one of satisfaction. He was about to nail my ass to the wall. “The kind of witness who’d been at the hospital most of the night waiting for his wife to have a baby. He stayed with her for two hours after the delivery and then drove on home. He passes by our house every night. And he made a positive identification of Doran.”

  “What’s his name?”

  He tapped me on the chest with the prescription sack. “Isn’t that what your private investigator’s license is for, McCain?”

  Wendy Bennett’s house was a split-level ranch situated on a rise overlooking a clear blue turn of river. The silver Mercury sedan in the drive, the powerful TV antenna on the roof, and the ruthlessly kept lawn and garden spoke of solid middle-class prosperity. Nothing arrogant, but nothing humble either.

  She sat on the front steps smoking a cigarette and watching me walk toward her. We’d been friends in high school. Even though she’d been a cheerleader and the daughter of wealth, Wendy McKay had been forced to sit next to me in homeroom and various other school functions because of the Mc’s in our names. That was how she’d treated me at first, anyway. Forced confinement. But eventually we started talking. I’d made her laugh. Later on, I’d come across Andrew Marvell’s line from the fifteenth century: “The maid who laughs is half taken.” I’d never taken the blonde, green-eyed girl with the body that occasionally made standing up embarrassing, but we did become friends.

  She wore a peasant skirt and a white blouse, and her shining blonde hair was in a ponytail. I sat down next to her and looked at the timberland on the other side of the road. The location was just about perfect, a sense of isolation but only five minutes away from town.

  I’d called earlier and asked if I could come out and talk to her. I’d been surprised that she’d been home and not at the Bennett mansion. I was even more surprised that she’d agreed to see me. She smelled of heat and perfume, a mixture that stirred me.

  “Thanks for coming out.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Yes. It gave me an excuse to get out of there. Linda wanted me to stay but that place always suffocates me. I told her an old friend of mine was in town and I had to meet her for lunch. She didn’t like it, but she doesn’t like much I’ve ever done anyway.”

  Linda Raines was Wendy’s sister-in-law, Wendy having married Bryce a few years before he’d gone to Vietnam.

  “Was it always like that?”

  She smiled. She had teeth so white, you wanted to lick them. “To her I’ll always be ‘the cheerleader.’ Her father used to tease me about it and I think she was jealous. She caught him sort of patting my bottom one night when he was drunk. I got the feeling that she wanted him to save that for her.” The smile was impish now. “Pretty bitchy, huh?”

  “Didn’t Bryce ever say anything to her?”

  “Oh, no, Bryce wouldn’t. They had this strange relationship. They never criticized each other.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Very seriously.” She put her hand on mine. “Thanks for coming up at Bryce’s funeral. You said just the right thing.”

  “I did?”

  “Yes, because you didn’t say anything. Not with words. But with your eyes. And you held my hand just the right way and I thought of all the times you made me laugh in high school, and for just a minute there I didn’t have to think of how I wasn’t Bryce’s first choice.”

  “First choice for what?”

  “For wife material.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Karen Shanlon? From high school? The really pretty red-haired girl with the limp?”

  “But they broke up when he went to college.”

  Her ponytail wagged. “That’s what everybody thought. But he kept in touch with her and he managed to come home once a month or so. That’s why he went to Northwestern. He could drive home. The only reason he finally broke it off was because of his father. But then Lou figured out he was seeing her on the sly anyway.”

  “I see her sister Lynn all the time. She works in the courthouse. Very quiet and very pretty. But I guess I haven’t thought of Karen in a long time.”

  “Well, Bryce didn’t have that problem. He thought of her a lot.” She leaned back with her palms flat against the entranceway. I tried not to notice how her breasts were defined by the material of her blouse. “That’s why he went into the Army.”

  Now I knew why she’d agreed to my visit. She needed to go to confession. Lou’s murder had forced her to face her life with the Bennetts.

  “She died in that fire and he couldn’t handle it. He used to try and hide it from me, Sam. You know, how he felt about her. But after she died—He just had to get away from everything. Even a war was better than staying around here without her. That fire really took its toll. And the whole thing struck me as odd, the way she died, I mean. She was supposedly smoking in bed and it went up. Bryce said she rarely smoked, maybe three or four times a year when they’d be out somewhere. He seemed upset about the report they did on the fire, too. The whole thing just tore him apart.”

  “Did he see her while you were married?”

  “That’s the funny thing. I’m not sure. Whenever I’d start in on him about her, he’d tell me how sorry he was. That he should have told me about her before I agreed to marry him.” She sat up again, this time with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands like a little girl staring out a summer window on a rainy day. “He tried to be honorable about it. He even said that that’s why we shouldn’t have kids until he’d worked through it. And he was even worse after she died. That’s when he let Lou find him a spot where it was guaranteed he’d go to Vietnam.”

  Listening to her, watching her, I realized that in all the years I’d known her, I hadn’t known her at all. She was smiles and laughter and breasts and perfect ankles, but emotionally she wasn’t real in any sense, because I’d never seen her hurt. I’d always supposed that with her looks and her money, she was one of those gleaming girls whose worst tragedy would be losing her looks at sixty or so.

  “I’ll bet you didn’t expect this when I said you could come out here.” She strained a smile for my sake.

  “I’m just sorry you’ve gone through all this.”

  “You know—so am I. But I can’t hate him. I can resent him, but I can’t hate him. I blame Lou and Linda for breaking Bryce and Karen up. They should have stayed together.”

  “That would have left you out. You obviously loved him.”

  “Boy, did I,” she said wistfully. “I’d get kind of woozy sometimes just seeing him walking toward me. It was like being drunk. Sometimes I resented it. You know how it is? When someone has that much power over you?”

  “Sure.”

  “So it’s happened to you?”

  “Two or three times.”

  “The funny thing was, Bryce was never that way about me. But I’m sure he was about Karen. He had this little metal box that he kept in the garage with his tools. A pretty good hiding place if I hadn’t been looking for a screwdriver one day. I saw the box there and it looked wrong. Just out of place. So I took it down and opened it and I thought I’d pass out. I really did. I had to keep my hand against the wall to hold myself up. I managed to get to the steps of the back porch. I sat down there and opened the box again and started looking through all the photos of her he had. Her whole life. Teeny-tiny baby pictures right up through high school. Now, that’s love. Caring about somebody that way. I don’t think I’ve ever been hurt like that in my life. But I hurt myself. He’d hidden the photos from me. H
e had to know what they’d do to me if I ever saw them.”

  “Did you ever ask him about them?”

  “Oh, no. How could I? But I never quite got over them. I still think about them three or four times a day. Sometimes I want to take a knife and cut that part of my brain out. It probably doesn’t take up much space up there. Just slice out that one little part, the part about that little metal box.”

  I’d been thinking the same thing about Jane since she’d left. Some freak accident that would magically cleave away all memory of her but leave everything else intact.

  “I was such a bitch in high school. Sometimes I think this is just me getting what I deserve.”

  She had a small soft laugh. “Nobody was as bad as Diane. You remember what she wrote in the yearbook about what she planned to do after graduation? ‘I plan to become a goddess.’ She was only half kidding.”

  There was a breeze. I wanted to close my eyes and ride it. It made me realize how comfortable I felt sitting here with Wendy. That had been something neither Molly nor I had ever felt with each other. The simple pleasure of just hanging out together. We’d been all jittery with the need to talk about being dumped and then to have vengeance sex as balm for our wounds. One of Kenny’s best serious stories was called “Grudge Humping on the Amazon.” He’d gone through the same thing himself.

  Inside, the phone rang. “That’ll be Linda. She keeps calling and telling me to come back. According to her, my proper place is in the mansion.” She pushed up, dusting off her bottom with finely turned hands. She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe I’m just being a bitch. Maybe I’d better take it.”

  I stood up and she took my hand. “Thanks for coming out, Sam. I really needed to talk to someone.”

  And then what I’d always wanted to happen, happened. She kissed me on the mouth and then took me to her. I had to imagine myself wearing an invisible pair of handcuffs, otherwise I’d do something very foolish.

  “All right,” she said as we broke apart, nagging at the nagging phone. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  Then she was inside and I was walking to my car.

  10

  IN THE LOBBY OF THE NEW POLICE STATION, YOU CAN FIND THREE large framed photographs. One is of our governor, which is only fitting, while the other two bear a remarkable resemblance to Cliffie himself. In fact, they are of Cliffie. Both show him in his khaki uniform and campaign hat. One of them depicts him in a crouch aiming his Magnum right at the viewer. It’s a pulp-magazine cover pose. The other shows Cliffie standing next to the gallows where prisoners were hanged. The picture remained even after the legislature voted against capital punishment a few months ago. Cliffie didn’t want to deprive his fans of any thrills.

  The woman at the front desk was Marjorie Kincaid, a buxom middle-aged woman with a tinted black beehive hairdo and a sweet, somewhat mannish face. She was supposed to hate me—that was an official order in this department—but if nobody was looking she always had a quick grin for me. Marjorie and my mom had been friends in school.

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Not very well, Marjorie.”

  “I always told your mom she got the best one. We used to double-date all the time. I got Hank.” She made a face. “He fell off the wagon again last month.”

  “I’m sorry, Marjorie.”

  “I know it’s not his fault. I went through that program with him, where they teach you that it’s a disease and everything. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “Well, why don’t you serve him some coffee and then you two can really get cozy?” A familiar and unwelcome voice.

  There are times when I think Cliffie has superpowers. He can just appear, like one of those invisible avengers who can pop in and out of visibility in comic books.

  Marjorie swiveled in her chair and started typing. Maybe I’d have Jamie come over here and get a few lessons.

  “I’d like to see Harrison Doran.”

  “No can do, McCain. I told you it’d be at least tomorrow.”

  “I take it you haven’t talked to your cousin.”

  “What cousin?”

  “Your cousin the district attorney?”

  “What about him?”

  “I called him about twenty minutes ago. He said you have to let me see him. By law.”

  “Bullroar.” Cliffie always watched his language in the presence of a woman.

  “Go call him.”

  His face was flushed now. He was so mad I wondered if his campaign hat would start spinning around on his head. “You wait here.”

  I knew better than to talk any more to Marjorie. I went over and sat on one of the new scotch-plaid couches and smoked a cigarette.

  An attorney named Dix Tolliver came in and nodded at me. He looked as if he’d just spotted a pile of doggie excrement. He was one of the Brahmins, a second-generation Brahmin in fact. He always dressed as if he was about to appear before the Supreme Court. I wondered how many gray flannel suits he owned. While he waited for Marjorie to finish up her phone call, he said, “So I guess that whole story about Doran being a rich boy from Yale isn’t true?” The patrician nose sniffed the plebian air. “And he already had a warrant out for his arrest back East?”

  I tried not to look surprised. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he knew something vital about my client that I didn’t know. And saying anything could be dangerous. If, for instance, I said, “Yeah, but it’s a minor matter” and he said, “You mean killing a family of six is a minor matter?” where would I be then?

  Fortunately, Marjorie hung up and distracted him. He was here to see a detective on another matter. She spoke into an intercom and before you could say kiss my ass a detective appeared. The men shook hands and joked a bit like the golfing buddies they were and then disappeared into the innards of the station. Face it. I was just jealous I didn’t get that kind of treatment.

  Cliffie would be damned if he debased himself by telling me that I had the legal right to see Doran. He sent a uniformed cop named Winslow to guide me back to one of the interrogation rooms.

  “I assume you’ve got the room bugged?”

  “That supposed to be funny?” Winslow, all khaki and malice, said as he scratched at his cheek as we moved along the hallway. He had a boozer’s nose.

  He opened the door for me then stood aside to let me pass. A long narrow room with a long narrow folding table and six folding chairs and several cheap chipped glass ashtrays. Woolworth specials. Despite the air conditioning, the room smelled of used old sad griefs.

  “We’ll bring him in. You have fifteen minutes.”

  “The DA said I have half an hour.”

  “Around here, the chief makes the rules.” He made sure to slam the door.

  Harrison Doran looked five years older when Winslow followed him into the room. The leg irons and the handcuffs clanked and clinked. His expression was mournful. His jail suit was gray and two sizes too big for him. Winslow slammed him into a chair. Doran’s eyes were downcast. He hadn’t looked at me once.

  “Fifteen minutes.” He managed to slam the door even harder this time.

  “We don’t have much time.” His head still hung down, his long, lanky blond hair covering his forehead. “Did you hear me, Doran? We don’t have much time.”

  The eyes were crazed when I finally saw them. “I wanted a real lawyer. I know who you are, man. I need a real lawyer. I mean I don’t mean any offense, but when I heard you tell Sykes you were my lawyer, I couldn’t believe it. Molly said she’d help me, but—” His shrug reinforced his words. “I need a major lawyer.”

  “The kind Joan Baez could get you?”

  “You can kiss my ass, you hack.”

  I stood up. “Okay, moron. I just paid my dues. Be sure and mention that to Molly.”

  “Molly. She’s an idiot.”

  I wondered what kind of sentence I’d get for picking up one of the folding chairs and beating him about the head sixty or seventy times.

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nbsp; Then he started sobbing. Everybody was crying this morning. He brought his silver-cuffed hands to his face and wept. I sat back down and smoked a cigarette. I pushed the pack across the table. When he saw it, he snuffled up some tears and said, “How am I supposed to light it?”

  “Take a cigarette. I have a match.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “Sure you did.” Then I just said it. “Look, I think you’re a showboat bullshit artiste and you think I’m a hayseed lawyer. Right now neither of those things matter.”

  He manipulated his hands around the cuffs to get a cigarette in his mouth. It was like one of those tricks contestants on game shows have to perform to win a refrigerator. I gave him a light.

  “Man, you really tell it straight. ‘Showboat bullshit artiste.’ Wow.” He was blinking at seventy miles an hour.

  “Anybody hit you while you’ve been in here?”

  “No.”

  “How many times did they talk to you?”

  “Three times. Always with that moron Sykes. He yelled at me so much, I was surprised he had a voice left.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing, man. You kidding? I’m a smart guy.”

  “Yeah, Yale, wasn’t it?” Then: “Sorry.” Then: “Harrison Doran probably isn’t your real name, is it?”

  “No. It’s Elmer Dodd.”

  “You’re kidding me. Elmer Fudd?”

  “Gee, I never heard that one before.”

  He exhaled smoke in a long wavering stream. “I grew up on a farm in Ohio and ran away and joined the Navy when I was sixteen. When I got out, I tried working in a grocery store, but I couldn’t cut it. I just saw my whole life in front of me, you know? I couldn’t deal with it.” He still snuffled up tears once in a while. “So this chick I knew got me interested in this theater group—this was in New York—and I really got caught up in acting. I mean I’m good looking. That helped. But I also had a little talent.” A quick smile. “That didn’t help. Hundreds of people have a little acting talent. So I started inventing roles for myself to play in real life.”