by Ralph Dennis
“I take Floyd with me?”
“Sure. But if you get yourself arrested for flashing underwear, I never heard of either of you.”
After they left, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Sparks and shadows danced behind his eyelids. And then, as if he’d willed it, the tattoo.
The Tale that Diane held back, to tell him later. Her version of the Thousand and One Nights. Only this was a simple tale, one that could be told in an evening. What could be complex about a tattoo?
The afternoon got busy.
With Joe and Floyd away, Wilt had to take patrol calls. A pickup had rammed a Mustang carrying four students home from high school at the crossroads near Gus Triffon’s gas station. There were no deaths but some broken bones and a lot of blood and the sour odor of whiskey under peppermint on the pickup driver’s breath.
He’d hardly completed his report on the drunk driving arrest when Elle Purdy called and said that her husband, Carl, was drunk and threatening her and her mother.
“You’re the only one who can calm him down,” Elle said.
So Wilt drove out to the Purdy farm and scared Carl into something like sober attention.
The Purdy incident wasn’t worth a report.
Wilt settled in and waited for his six o’clock relief.
Joe returned at five-thirty. He dumped a stack of newspapers on Wilt’s desk. “Guess what?”
“I really have to guess?”
Joe turned the top paper, a Durham Morning Herald toward Wilt. The composite drawing was centered under the headline: Do You Know this Man? The one below, the Raleigh News and Observer used the caption: Wanted for Questioning.
“They took their time.”
“You know newspapers. They look on helping the police like it’s some kind of public service, to be done when it fits their purposes.”
“How’d the afternoon go?”
“I’d hoped you wouldn’t ask.” Joe turned and took a bag from Floyd. “You’d be surprised the crappy underwear a woman’ll put under a hundred dollar dress.”
Not really, Wilt thought.
Joe placed a package of underwear on Wilt’s desk. “Bought these at Rose’s.”
“You get any idea how many pairs of these underwear a store like Rose’s sells in a week?”
“A lot.”
“How many Rose’s did you try?”
“Three,” Joe said. “I showed the composite. As far as I could tell nobody’s seen him. In fact, the girls say not any men buy women’s underwear.”
Wilt pulled the package toward him and looked at where the panties were made. He’d been close. Taiwan, Republic of China. The package contained three pairs. “Any different packages? Six packs?”
“Three packs only,” Joe said.
“So, say our boy bought one package. He’d used two pairs. That leaves one to account for.”
“Or use,” Joe said.
That was the chilling thought. One more pair. One more dead child.
Wilt didn’t like to consider that possibility. He pushed his mind away from it and looked at the clock. “Charles due in?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes.”
Floyd had come in at noon and would relieve Susie at the switchboard. Charles would take over and Wilt and Joe could leave for the night. But they were on call if there was a need for them.
“I’ll split for the day,” Wilt got his coat.
“Where’ll you be?”
“At the apartment for a couple of hours. Then out.”
“You want me to guess where?”
“I’ll call in when I leave the apartment.”
Joe nodded. He circled the desk and settled into Wilt’s chair.
“You’re beginning to like that chair too much.”
“Comfortable,” Joe said.
“Enjoy it while you can.”
Joe gave him a wave and a lazy grin.
In his apartment, Wilt stood at the living room windows and watched the full darkness come. The new carbon arc streetlamps flared and crackled in the distance. A young couple passed on the other side of the street, arm-i-arm. The man caught the girl and turned her and kissed her. The carbon arc halo blurred above them.
Wilt backed away. He didn’t need to watch young love.
He opened a beer in the kitchen and carried it into the bathroom. Between sips, he ran the electric razor over the day’s growth of beard. He finished the beer and the shave at about the same time. He tossed the beer can into the trash and undressed and showered.
He dressed in gray slacks, a blue tie shirt without a tie and a tan tweed jacket. His black loafers were dusty. He used a dirty sock to wipe the dust away. He was ready to go. But go where?
There was Charlie’s Apple. It was a new singles bar half a mile over into the county. Flashy but almost in good taste for that kind of place. A long bar and a piano player during the week and a jazz combo on the weekends. And women, women, women … Or the Blue Lagoon.
He avoided the thought and the decision by putting a Stouffer’s frozen entree into the oven. Shrimp in some creamy sauce. When that was ready, he opened another beer and switched on the TV set. He ate the Stouffer’s while he watched a game show. God, how he hated game shows.
He sopped the sauce with a wedge of sourdough bread. He watching a giggly woman trying for a fancy car as the grand prize, rooted against her and was pleased to see her disappointment when she lost.
That was the real American dream. The losing.
Another beer. He cut off all the lights and sat in stuffed chair and listened to his heart beat, the slow and even thump of it, until his body clock told him it was eight o’clock.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Kyle waved him past the cash register. For the first time since Wilt started dropping by, Kyle didn’t seem grumpy about the free admission.
“I’ll send your favorite waitress by,” Kyle said.
Wilt wasn’t sure when Erlene had become his favorite waitress. But he couldn’t deny she was, not without putting back on her some of the pressure that being a close friend of the Sheriff had taken off her.
He skirted the pool tables and entered the main room. Erlene arrived at his table only seconds after he sat down.
“You want Daniels. Wilton?”
“Well, actually I wanted a glass of milk, but since I’m here …”
Erlene giggled and moved away.
It was a big crowd. Half the tables were taken and most of the booths. All that and the girls hadn’t started dancing yet.
Erlene leaned over him when she brought his drink. “They’re all nice to me now that they know I’m a friend of yours. Especially Miss Mills.”
“What does …?”
“She always asks how I am and how the kids are and I think she told the guys to leave me alone.”
“I thought you said they weren’t bothering you.”
“Well, you know … saying things. That’s all.”
Wilt knew that kind of verbal hassle. The kind some men might dump on a girl if they thought she was vulnerable.
“It’s not happening anymore.” Erlene’s smile was fragile, tentative.
Wilt dropped a couple of ones on her tray. “Baby might need a new pair of shoes.”
“My oldest baby is ten,” she said.
He watched her walk away, a sadness in him. Not the plastic sadness of the new country and western music. The real thing. A husband bugs out and leaves a woman with two kids to raise and she’s past the age when she interests men much or she’d let herself go during the marriage and there was too much to reclaim. And all those old hopes, what she expected when she was in high school, have soured. Old dreams to throw out with the day’s trash, the week’s trash, a lifetime’s trash.
A sadness that he had to shake off his back.
Or shock himself so that he could distance himself. What is so goodam great about your own life, Wilton Drake?
Answer that.
Erlene must have timed him. She brought another dr
ink just as he finished the first. She hesitated. “I think Miss Mills is dancing tonight.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s what I heard.”
For the first time, he felt embarrassed. The other times he’d watched her dance, he’d come to see the body, the fine legs and the breasts. He’d been just another customer looking at the girls. That had changed now. He realized that Kyle knew why he was here and Erlene knew and God knows who else. He felt foolish and very much like a teenager.
The room lights dimmed. Colored spots washed across the stage and the first girl was announced. It was the big girl, Rachel, the one Diane had used to bait him. He watched Rachel galump around the stage and told himself, no, never, not even on his worst day …
Another girl, tall and bony, followed and then, off in the wings next to the sound booth, he saw Diane. She was dressed in a robe and she leaned in to talk with the man in the sound booth.
Wilt got to his feet and carried his empty glass to the bar. Behind him, he heard Diane announced. He didn’t look back. He saw that both tables were empty. He grabbed a pool cue and carried his glass to the bar. Kyle tossed in a couple of ice cubes and a long pour of black Jack Daniels followed.
“The girls don’t interest you tonight?” Kyle pushed Wilt’s money back toward him. Wilt grabbed the bills and stuffed them in the tip jar.
“Didn’t you know I was gay?”
“Unlikely,” Kyle said.
“In a mid-life crisis, anything’s possible.” Wilt carried his drink to the nearest pool table. He racked the balls and broke and ran off a few standard shots. He wasn’t good at pool. The hand and eye coordination wasn’t there. With a piece, a weapon, maybe, but not with a pool cue.
A biker wandered by the table and watched for a few shots. Then he laughed and walked away. He swaggered to the bar and said something to Kyle and laughed again. In the blink of an eye, Kyle had him by the collar and halfway over the bar. He said something to the biker and pushed him away. The biker straightened his coat. “How the hell was I supposed to know he was law?”
“Go home,” Kyle said.
The biker slammed the door on the way out.
Wilt continued his listless practice until the next dancer was announced. Then he put the stack away and eased his way to the bar. Kyle added a trickle of Daniels to top off Wilt’s drink.
“You’re hard on your friends.”
“That loudmouth?” Kyle shook his head. “He’s no friend of mine.”
“That wasn’t necessary. I’ve been changing my own diapers for years.”
“I never heard otherwise about you,” Kyle said.
“As long as you know.”
“I thought it might not be a good time for that child to get on your wrong side.”
Wilt thought about it for a few seconds. One possibility was that he was talking about Diane. “Could be,” he said.
“Those child-killings, that’s what I mean.”
“It’s a bitch,” Wilt admitted.
Kyle straightened up, like he went to attention. “Good evening, Miss Mills.”
“Don’t be formal just because the Sheriff’s here, Kyle.”
“Okay, Diane.”
Kyle backed away and ran water in a wash sink. But he watched Diane and Wilt.
She’d done a quick change. Now she wore jeans and an off-white sweater in a fisherman’s knit. “I dance for you, Wilton, and you don’t even watch.”
“Don’t dance on my account.”
“I’ll stop dancing.”
“That a promise?”
“No more dancing tonight. That’s the promise.” She looked past Wilt and nodded. Kyle placed a glass on the bar, added two ice cubes and poured scotch over them.
“Want to sit down?”
“Not in there,” she said.
“In your office?”
“Depressing there.”
“You got any ideas?”
“You didn’t tell me why you took me to that lake.”
“It used to be a necking and petting spot for the high schoolers.”
“You think it’s still there?”
“Probably,” he said.
Another swallow of the scotch and Diane placed the glass on the bar. “Kyle, give me two tall Buds in a bag.” She grinned at Wilt. “Wilton’s taking me to Dead Woman’s lake. You know where that is?”
“I know.”
“You know what the lake used to be?”
“Can’t say I do,” Kyle said.
“It’s a necking and petting place.”
“That’s interesting.” But Kyle really didn’t sound very interested. He placed the bag on the bar. “You sure two cans are enough?”
At the door, before they stepped outside, Diane stopped. “Did you take Erlene to the lake in the old days?”
“Erlene was just a kid then. I messed around with the fast girls.”
“Like tonight?”
“Just like tonight,” he said.
He parked the cruiser on the shoulder high above the lake. In the moonlight, he could see the near edge of the lake and the trees and undergrowth. The far bank and that part of the lake were in darkness. The surface water seemed to be polished stone.
He rolled down the window a couple of inches. “Tell me if you get cold.”
“Don’t you have a blanket? I understood the boy always brought along …”
“That was a hundred years ago. I don’t remember.” He pulled the tabs on both tall Buds and passed one to her. A swallow and he lit a Chesterfield.
“Tell me how it was then.”
“Probably like it was in Charleston.”
“We had the beach there.”
“This was clean water then, fed from an underground spring. No matter how hot it was, the water was only warm for a few inches. Below that, it was like ice. Hot afternoons or muggy nights we’d collect some beer and some hot dogs and we’d spread blankets near the water. And we’d go swimming.”
“With or without suits?”
“Without some nights. Suits during the day.
“Get laid much?”
“Jesus, you have to ask that question?”
“That’s not an answer, Wilton.”
“There were a lot of virgins around here in those days. Boys and girls.”
“Just like Charleston.”
“Tell me about the tattoo.”
“Even though you didn’t want to see it tonight?”
“I chickened out,” he said.
“Nothing wrong with being honest about it.”
He shook his head.
She turned slightly and put her shoulder against the car door. Her head was up and he could see the shadows in the hollow of her throat. “Let’s see. Where was I then? I think I’d just split with Jimmy and I’d gone off on my own.”
“That was where you were.”
“I felt like doing something go-to-hell.”
“Was that before or after you met the biker?”
“What do you know about any biker?” She waited, as if for him to answer. When he didn’t, she went on. “It was after. He liked tattoos on his women.”
“How did you feel about the tattoo?”
“That it didn’t matter. That it was something to put on a body. Especially a body that I didn’t care that much about.”
“Punished the flesh, huh?”
“He punished it for me and he did it very well, thank you.”
“You’ve got spurs, lady.”
“I wasn’t born with them. I grew them. I put all that divorce settlement money in the bank and forgot about it. I played biker mama for a few months. I smoked all the funny cigarettes I wanted, I tried other drugs, I screwed all I wanted and when it was time to move on, I didn’t feel any better or any worse for the experience. I peeled away the old skin but the new skin under it was very much like the old one.”
“Except for the tattoo.”
“I like it,” she said. “You know, in the dark, the tattoo f
eels just like any other patch of skin.”
“Now I know.”
“Take my word for it.”
“Knowing that takes all the suspense out of my life.”
“You didn’t tell me it was important.”
“All the good puzzles are solved before we get a chance to accept the challenge.”
“Poor baby, one more time.” She shivered. He tossed his cigarette through the opening and rolled up the window. “Tell me about your marriage, Wilt.”
He noticed that she’d called him Wilt for the first time. Whatever that meant. If it meant anything. He took a long swallow of beer and cleared his throat. He told her that after he was shot by the sniper in Lebanon, he was sent to Oak Oak Knoll Naval Hospital near Oakland, California to recover. One surgery after another.
It was while Wilt was at the hospital that Mary Ellen left him and started the divorce. She said she just didn’t love him anymore and she didn’t see any point being married to a man who spent about every other year away from home on sea duty or posted to some hellhole where a wife couldn’t be taken along. Her mind was set. It was a firm decision. He didn’t contest the divorce. There wasn’t much community property. He gave her the car and the household goods. The divorce was granted and she disappeared from California. He never heard from her again. That was easy enough and perhaps it was the best way. There were no children and, therefore, no reason to stay in touch when the marriage was over.
The odd part was, when the medical miracle didn’t come about, when he received his discharge, he realized there would be no more sea duty, no more hellholes he would have to staff. She would have had what she wanted.
“You think she deserted you?” Diane asked.
“I guess I did at the time. In bed all day, the operations to try to rebuild the hip and all the pain. I had a lot of time to feel sorry for myself.”
“And now?”
“It’s old news. It’s nothing that concerns me anymore, like it happened to someone else.”
“You ever wonder how she’s doing?”
“No.”
He finished his beer. He placed the can in the paper bag.
“That hip. It slow you down?”
“Only in the short dashes.”
A smile. “But not the distance events?”