Gentlemen

by Michael Northrop

  “Nah, I don’t think so, but it seems like maybe more people will get killed. I mean, it’s just part one and there’s already a body count.”

  “Yeah, maybe he’ll kill someone more popular next time,” Mixer said, and we both laughed. And then we both really laughed, because there was a 99 percent chance that all this stuff was totally ridiculous, that we were talking about this book for nothing and the only real crime was Tommy maybe getting molested in Manchester. And I said that, too, and so we were laughing even more, feeling pretty good. Then Bones turned the corner, and I was getting ready to tell him why we were laughing, but he was all serious and told us both to shut up.

  “What’s your problem, man?” Mixer said.

  “Throckmorton’s here, and he’s going to be talking to people,” Bones said.

  “Throckmorton?” said Mixer.

  “Yeah, ’morton,” said Bones.

  “He want to talk to us?” I said.

  “What do you think, dumbass?” said Bones, so that was pretty much a total buzzkill. Sheriff Throckmorton. Not Principal Throckmarten, that we could handle. It was just two letters off, but a major difference. The story was that they were the same family back in the day in Soudley, and that the two names were the result of an old family feud. I’ve got no way of knowing if that’s true or not. I mean, my family has been in town a long time, but that family’s like the Founding Fathers or whatever, only no one knows which family that was: Throckmorton or Throckmarten. There’s a brook named after one and a street named after the other and, no surprise, everyone always gets confused as to which name goes where.

  The other rumor was that the two didn’t get along at all, and I heard that one was definitely true, so Throckmorton wasn’t here for a social visit.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, and it was kind of weird, because I honest to god hadn’t done anything. None of us had—not recently, anyway—but getting grilled by some dude with a badge and a gun was just not my idea of a good time. Not unless I was watching it on TV. It’s like they wrote down what you said and asked you again and tried to get you to screw up. And then it’s like you’re guilty, even though the only thing you’re guilty of is getting confused and saying the wrong thing.

  So Thursday schedule, same as Tuesday, and that meant Practical Math with Doucheley first period. And sure enough, not halfway through it there was a knock on the door. Sometimes they call the teacher and sometimes they knock on the door. They don’t announce it over the loudspeaker like they did in elementary school: “Will the following students please report to the principal’s office.” And then the class would start snickering and looking over at you. They don’t do that in high school, because sometimes in high school it’s serious, and sometimes in high school it’s not the principal you’re going to see.

  Dantley opened the door a crack, and a hand curled around the edge so you could see the fingers. It was a black man’s hand, so I knew it was Trever, but I pretty much knew that anyway. The door opened up and no one was surprised when he asked Bones, Mixer, and me to come up to the front. But they didn’t know what it was about. At least I don’t think they did. Some of the others had been asking us what was up with Tommy, but we were always like, Search me, so they all thought he was just suspended. They didn’t know he was missing. They would now, I figured, because Trever called out a few other names, including Max. Max gave me a look like, What’s up? But I gave him a look like I didn’t know, because Max and me were never that tight.

  Then Trever paused for a tick or two and added, real casual, “You too, Dantley.”

  Man, no one saw that one coming. Trever said, “I’ll watch the class till you get back,” but Dantley just stood there, a dumb look on his face and his eyes not looking at anything, and you could see that he was confused. His expression was like, I’m getting called to the principal’s office? Then he turned to Trever with a big question mark on his face, and Trever was just like, “They just want to clear some things up.”

  It was the same easy-breezy tone but now I could tell that Trever was working at it. I also realized right then that Dantley didn’t know who he was going to see, and wouldn’t he be surprised when he found out. Throckmorton was the county sheriff. Officially, it was County High Sheriff. Every four years since I could remember, red-white-and-blue signs went up in front lawns saying VOTE THROCKMORTON HIGH SHERIFF. It was like a thing to do to draw a big fat blunt on the sign because, you know, high sheriff.

  It didn’t matter much, I’d never once seen a sign for anyone else running for the job. Throckmorton lived in Soudley, but he got around. These towns around here were too small to have their own police departments, so it was basically him and his deputies, plus the Staties prowling around to write the speeding tickets.

  And that was about as much as I knew about him until it was my turn and I was called into the principal’s office. I was surprised to see Throckmarten still in there because of that whole family feud thing. The sheriff had taken over the principal’s desk, and Throckmarten was sitting over on the windowsill. They were talking as I walked in. “…because he didn’t take anything with him this time, didn’t pack, not even a pair of socks,” Throckmorton was saying, but he stopped talking when the door closed behind me. Throckmarten looked over at me and said, “Micheal Benton,” but not to me.

  Throckmorton made a sound in the back of his throat, meaning that he’d heard him, and then flipped through some papers in his hands. I was thinking about Without a Trace, all the angry questions and accusations and hands slammed on tables.

  “Take a load off,” he said, putting the papers down on the desk and looking back up at me. And right then, I knew this wasn’t going to be like on TV. His voice sounded friendlier than I thought it would, and I had to remind myself again: I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t know where Tommy was, much less have anything to do with putting him there. There was no reason I should’ve been feeling the way I was—cornered is the best I can describe it, cornered and under suspicion—no reason except I was in a closed room with the principal and the sheriff.

  There were two chairs on the front side of the desk, and I took my usual one on the right side. I angled the chair to face Throckmorton and sat up straight so I wouldn’t be shorter than him. I could feel my shoulders were tensed up and pinching together, so I shook them out a little.

  “You cold?” Throckmorton asked, because I guess that looked like a shudder or something. It didn’t sound like a real question, though.

  “Nah, I’m OK,” I said, and then I thought, Am I supposed to call him sir or sheriff or something like that? I mean, I wasn’t going to, but I wondered if I was supposed to. He paused, and I sort of looked around. Throckmarten was looking out into the front parking lot through the slits in the blinds. He was wearing a suit, which he didn’t always, and I figured that meant he knew the sheriff was going to be there. It was a dark suit and it made me think of my gramps’s funeral. The light was coming in through the blinds and cutting him up into slices as he sat there on the windowsill. He wasn’t looking at me but you could tell he was listening.

  I looked back and Throckmorton was looking at my left eye. He looked down at his papers quick, shuffled them a little, but I’d caught him.

  “So I guess you know why you’re here,” he said, raising his eyes back up.

  “Tommy, I guess,” I said.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, but he said it in that hip-hop way, like: yezzurr, and I was thinking: Did he just say that? Because even though that slang was like two years old, it was still slang. I mean, I used to say that. So now I was thinking, What is this dude’s deal? Is he trying to be cool and like “relate” to me, or does he really talk like that? He was sitting behind the desk, so I could only see half of him. He had a button-up white shirt on, and it could’ve been part of a uniform, but it could also just’ve been a plain white shirt. I tried to remember other times I’d seen him around town, like in the pharmacy or wherever, and tried to picture what he’d been wearing. Wa
s it a uniform, and if it was, would they take it away if he lost the election? I don’t think I’d ever seen him in anything else. All I could remember was his face, his gun, and his jacket.

  His face was square and fleshier than the rest of him, sort of bulldoggy, and his hair was dark brown, almost black. He still had all of it and I didn’t see much gray, but you could tell he was real old, maybe even forty. I always thought of him as kind of a big guy, but up close, I could see that wasn’t really the case. The jacket was slung over the chair behind him. It was dark blue and medium weight, and whatever it was made of reflected the light just a little bit.

  His gun was out of sight at the moment, but I knew it was a revolver and a little too big, like he’d be shooting at something larger than a person with it. He walked right by Mixer and me once when we were hanging out in front of the town hall, this was maybe three years ago, when we were still basically kids, and Mixer said, “Magnum.” I figured he was right, even though I’d never shot one of those. I’d never shot a pistol at all, come to think of it, just rifles and my uncle’s shotgun once.

  “You and Thomas, Tommy, are friends, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “How long have you two known each other?”

  “Since start of freshman year,” I said. “Going on two years now. Two school years, I mean.”

  “He didn’t go to elementary school with you?”

  “Nah,” I said. “He’s from North Cambria. I went to Central.”

  Central was Soudley Central Elementary School, which is the only school in Soudley, so I don’t know what the central is for.

  “Yeah, course,” said Throckmorton. “I’ve seen you around town.”

  And there was nothing weird about him saying that, I’ve seen you around, because like I said, he lived in Soudley, but I sort of interpreted it as halfway between neighborly and an I’ve-got-my-eye-on-you sort of thing. I guess I might’ve been reading too much into it; I couldn’t tell. His eyes were muddy brown and sort of sleepy. People always say, like in the movies, that police have piercing eyes, that they look right through you, but that wasn’t the vibe that Throckmorton gave off. He didn’t give off any vibe at all. It was like a poker face, which is supposed to be for the criminals, but I could see where it would work for him, too.

  “And your friends out there?” he said, looking down at his papers again. “Bonouil and Malloy?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “all three of us went to Central.”

  “So Tommy was the new guy?”

  “I guess.”

  “Was that ever a problem, was he an outsider or anything like that?”

  “Nah,” I said, but he was waiting for more, so after a while I went on. “I mean, it took him a while to get up to speed, but we’re all tight with Tommy,” I said, trailing off to see if that was enough, but also because there’d been some friction between Tommy and Bones lately, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to mention that.

  “Get up to speed?”

  “You know, like our jokes and stuff.”

  “Got it. So you guys are good friends now?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Like links in a chain.”

  I just tacked that last part on because, you know, I’d been thinking it.

  “Who’s closest with Tommy, would you say?”

  “Me, I guess,” I said. I thought about it some more and nodded, because I was pretty sure that was the case.

  “So he’d tell you if he was planning something big?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said.

  “But you just said…”

  “Yeah, I mean, I’m the closest to him, but that doesn’t mean I’m all that close. This isn’t like—we don’t sit around talking all day. Tommy keeps to himself a lot. We’re not, like…”

  I couldn’t think of how to finish that sentence.

  “So when was the last time you saw him?”

  “When he flipped the desk.”

  “You didn’t see him after that?”

  “Not after he left the class. Last time I saw him was when the door closed behind him.”

  “Haven’t heard from him?”

  “Nope. Tried to call him. I’ve tried every day on his cell. Just goes to voice mail.”

  “You been leaving messages?”

  “I’ve left a few,” I said, even though I didn’t see why that mattered.

  “It’s been a couple of days now; do you have any idea where he might be?”

  And I laughed, just a little bit, but it surprised me. I’m pretty sure it surprised Throckmorton, too. And the principal looked over from the windowsill. And it was a nervous laugh, too, which was pretty much the exact wrong thing to do. And the reason I did it, and I knew this right then, was because this would be the time to mention Haberman, and this little laugh came out because what was I supposed to say: “Well, Sheriff, he just might be stuffed in the trunk of our English teacher’s car”? I mean, I didn’t necessarily think he was, but he’d said do I have “any idea,” and that was an idea.

  I couldn’t say it, though, no way. I mean, one, it would sound crazy. It would sound crazy, because it probably was crazy. And two, Throckmarten was right there, and he’d tell Haberman, and those two would have a good laugh over it, and I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. And I remembered one of the things that Haberman had said, too: Who would they believe? And that was spot-on true. I sort of wished I’d read more of the book, so I’d feel better about it myself, but I still wouldn’t’ve said anything. So now I had to explain that laugh away, so I told him about how he’d bused it to Manchester last winter, and how we all thought that was kind of a crazy thing to do. And, you know, I should go to church on Sunday or something, because Throckmorton seemed to buy it.

  “Yeah, he’s done that a couple of times, I hear,” he said.

  “Well, not like that. Mostly it’s just like a day or two and he’s still right around here, like he’s got an older cousin in Cambria who he’ll crash with if things get real intense for him.”

  “That Albert?”

  “Yeah, I think. He calls him Al. You talk to him yet?”

  “He was number one on our list,” said Throckmorton. “Says he hasn’t seen him.”

  “You believe him?” I said. The sheriff just looked at me, and Throckmarten looked over again, so I could tell that wasn’t the sort of question I was supposed to be asking.

  “No reason not to,” Throckmorton said at last. “What do you know about Tommy’s family situation?”

  And I looked at him for a moment. I’d been pretty much spilling the beans on everything he asked since I sat down. I mean, I figured we both wanted the same thing, as far as Tommy was concerned, so I might as well. But Tommy was pretty touchy about his family situation, as Throckmorton called it, and I understood that. I started thinking, What if Tommy was sitting here and the sheriff was asking the same question about me, would I want him talking? Both accounts would start the same way, in any case.

  “It’s pretty messed up,” I said.

  “How so?” said Throckmorton.

  I shrugged, but he just sat there, looking at me and waiting for more.

  I let out a long breath, and once I was done with that, I was ready to talk.

  “Well, the guy who’s his stepdad now used to be his dad’s boss, and that was a bad scene,” I said, and for the first time Throckmorton leaned forward and started writing stuff down as I was talking. I guess that kind of revved me up, because I went ahead and told him the whole thing.

  “Like it was like she, I mean, I shouldn’t be saying this, but it’s like his mom was sneaking around with the guy for a while before his dad found out, and when his dad found out, well, you probably know what happened then.”

  “Yeah, I took that call myself,” said Throckmorton, and I was glad for that, because I didn’t want to be the one to say that Tommy’s dad beat the crap out of Tommy’s mom.

  “Right,” I said, “and then the guy, his name is Gary, comes o
ver and he wales on him, too.”

  Throckmorton would know that, too, it would’ve been on the same call, but I had no problem telling that part.

  “So then Tommy’s dad doesn’t have a wife and he doesn’t have a job, either, and for a while, Tommy didn’t see his dad, and then it’s like, meet your new dad, but Tommy always sort of hated Gary for busting his folks up.”

  “You think Tommy blames his stepdad?”

  “Oh, yeah, totally. I think his stepdad blames his stepdad. He worked real hard to patch things up with Tommy’s dad, but that just made it more awkward, if anything. Like I don’t think he pressed charges?”

  Throckmorton ignored the question. “Is Tommy still close to his father?”

  “I got to say not really. I mean, he resents the hell out of his stepdad, but it’s not like he seems that cool with his dad. But then his dad’s kind of a wreck, and I guess he didn’t used to be. I didn’t know Tommy back then. I don’t think he’s dying to live with his dad in that little apartment, if that’s what you’re wondering. The two are kind of like, what’s the word—formal?—with each other, but Tommy’ll talk some smack about his dad when he’s not around. Which is pretty much all of the time. Not all of the time that he talks smack, but all of the time that he’s not around. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I think I do. I appreciate your help with this.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’m wondering where he is, too, you know?”

  “And you don’t have any idea?”

  “Nah, wish I did.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  And here, I was thinking about Haberman again, thinking I should just mention it, just throw it out there, that he’s been talking about murder and disposing of bodies, because even though there’s a murder in the book, there’s no disposing of bodies, not yet anyway. And I remembered how whatever it was in the barrel had tumbled out of it like a dead thing. But I just said, “No, don’t think so.”

  As soon as I said it, I thought, Crap, what if Bones or Mixer throw it out there? But I figured I could just say I didn’t mention it because I thought it would sound crazy, so then I sort of hoped one of them would.