Goofy Foot

by David Daniel

  I didn’t comment. I put a hundred cash down on the work, with the rest on account.

  “You ought to wrap that shotgun in something,” Charley said.

  “Got a violin case handy?”

  But he was thinking about keeping body oils off the blued steel, more than concealment. I still had images of a panicked old pizza twirler tumbling into my office with a sandwich bag. Charley got some newspaper, which he used to wrap up the shotgun florist-style, minus the ribbon and little card. I thanked him and carried it out like a bundle of long-stemmed death. Behind me I heard the police lock rattling into place. I put my package in the back of the Blazer, under a Pendleton blanket. Driving away, I reflected on how I would never sell the shotgun to anyone who might use it in the commission of a crime, and yet I would consider using it myself. For menace? For death? I’d let the opinion editors at the Globe grope through the ethical tangles of that. I was at my apartment in fifteen minutes.

  I got a directory listing for Mandino’s Auto Salvage in Scituate and called. The kid I talked to said, “Waxy went out for supper, but he’ll be back.” I said I’d try later. I removed the bandage on my head and examined the damage. Nothing gray had leaked out, at least. I showered and put on fresh clothes, minus the hardware this time. I swabbed some antiseptic on my wounds, but didn’t reapply dressing. Jack Nicholson could walk around through half of Chinatown with a gob of bandage on his nose the size of a snowball, but he was Nicholson. I was running out of snappy replies for when people asked me what’d happened.

  I looked in the refrigerator a couple of times, but it was a nervous reflex. I still didn’t have much appetite, which was just as well, unless I wanted to eat mayonnaise on slabs of moldy Muenster with a can of Blue Ribbon. I put on the TV to catch the six o’clock news. The top story on Channel 4 was the pollen explosion. “If it sneezes, it leads,” joshed one of the anchors. The weatherman promised rain later for the South Shore, the Cape, and the islands. I grabbed a light jacket, along with my .38, and headed out.

  There was an envelope in my mailbox that hadn’t been there when I’d arrived. It was sealed with tape and addressed with just my name. Inside was a four-by-six color photo of a woman sitting at an outdoor table and smiling for the camera. Attached was a note, penned in the same clumsy hand as the address: “Guess whose girlfriend?! Told you we could work together someday.” It was from Grady Stinson. I looked at the woman. She was brown-haired, attractive, though not as pretty as Paula Jensen, to my eye, at least, but that wasn’t for me to say; neither of them was my woman. Stinson had likely snatched the photo on his nighttime raid of Ross Jensen’s office, and now, thinking he was proving his chops, he had laid it on me. He was wrong. I would have torn it up on the spot, but there was no place to put the litter. I slid the photograph into my pocket.

  34

  Mandino’s Auto Salvage was at the rear of a small industrial park, in a corrugated-steel shed. With assorted wrecks scattered in the yard, it was an ad for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I got out and heard the high-speed shrieking of a rotary saw cutting steel. I wandered over to the big open doors and peered into the dim interior. Someone was hunched over a fender, showers of sparks flaring around him. I didn’t see anyone else around, and I didn’t want to come up on the guy unawares and have him whirl my way. I waited until he set his saw aside before I went over.

  “Is Waxy around?” I called.

  He pushed goggles up onto his forehead. “You found him. What can I do for you?”

  He wore greasy gray coveralls and an old GI cap turned bill backward. Lank gray hair spilled under the sides of it. With the pale area around his eyes in contrast to his work-stained face, he looked like one of the Beagle Boys in negative. I guessed him to be about fifty. I mentioned Charley Moscowitz, and he nodded. “Yeah, he said you might be in touch. About the Jeep.”

  “What can you tell me?”

  “This guy comes in yesterday morning and asks me how much I’d give him for a late-model Grand Cherokee. Dark blue, he said. He tried to make it seem like it made all the sense in the world, bringing it in and selling it for scrap. ‘How bad is it totaled?’ I asked him. Oh, it wasn’t totaled at all; it was just that he needed cash fast and didn’t want the bother of selling it. Well, that story made about as much sense as freezing Ted Williams, so I asked to see the car and the title. That got him backing and filling the holes in his story, but he said he’d return later with both, and I said fine, we’d talk then.”

  “Meanwhile, back in the real world … Twenty dollars says he didn’t leave a name.”

  “I lose. I can describe him, though. Medium-sized, sort of tough-looking. Younger than you by a few years.”

  It didn’t describe Ben Nickerson, but then I hadn’t expected it to. The car fit, though.

  “What’s your read?” I asked.

  He plucked off his goggles and cap and scrubbed at the flattened gray hair. “If it was his own, he could be working a scam to collect on it, but if the title was clean, it’d make more sense to just sell it. If the car was hot, no title, police maybe looking, you run a risk trying to sell it, so you could look for a chop shop. Which this ain’t.”

  “Did you notify the police of his approach?”

  “No reason to. If he’d brought the Jeep in and I wasn’t convinced, I would’ve.”

  I offered him the twenty anyway, but he waved it off. “If Charley ever found out I took money off a friend of his, he’d raise the devil at the next wedding, or funeral.” He saw my puzzled look. “Didn’t he tell you? We’re second cousins or something, about three marriages removed.”

  As I drove off, I saw the sparks spitting in the shrieking gloom, like meteors on an August night.

  I called the Standish police station and asked for Delcastro. He didn’t seem angry at hearing my voice, merely resigned, the way cattle get to biting flies. I told him about the Cherokee.

  “It doesn’t automatically follow that it was Nickerson’s,” he said.

  “No, but it’s a big coincidence. And if it is his, it raises the question, what happened to Nickerson?”

  “I’ll put out a BOL,” he said, sounding reluctant. “I’ve got the California tag number. Anything else?”

  I thanked him and we hung up. Not that I really expected a beon-the-lookout would produce the car. Having failed with Waxy Mandino, whoever had the Jeep could since have found a chop shop, or a crooked used-car dealer, or have it stashed in a garage to cool off. It could be anywhere, or nowhere. I hadn’t forgotten where Jillian Kearns’s car had ended up.

  At the beach house, as I got out of the car, I noticed a dark Lincoln parked in close to the thicket of beach roses. The driver, who evidently had been waiting, got out. In the dusk, I saw it was Rand. I bristled. As he walked toward me, I did a quick scan of the surrounding area, bracing for a flying wedge, but he appeared to be alone. Studying my face, he raised an open palm, I guess to show he came in peace. “I’m sorry about what happened. I overreacted. I do that.” His voice was soft, breathy. “It’s a failing, I know. There’s no excuse for it. None.”

  What was he expecting, a hug? I stared at him. He had on the Dartmouth sweatshirt and plaid swim trunks, his white hair a froth of curls. “I’ll pay your doctor bill, your car repairs. Whatever you need.”

  “I’ve got insurance.”

  “I appreciate that it didn’t end up on the police blotter.”

  “Would it be there long?”

  He sighed. “Look, I am sorry, but I felt I needed to make a point. I overdid it, obviously. It’s just that there’s more going on here than you can possibly know.”

  “Then why the hell don’t you tell me, so folks won’t have to keep saying that. So I don’t decide to even the score right now.”

  His laugh was uncertain, almost grateful. “Good, mad I can deal with. I do apologize, and I mean that.” And something in the brightness of his eyes made me believe he did. “It’s this land development,” he went on. “It’s ridiculously complicated
. It’s a wonder anyone ever gets anything built. There’s so much regulation and expense … and the timing.” He flung his hands skyward. “These deals sometimes sit a hair’s breadth from disaster you wouldn’t believe. I can’t afford anything that might queer it.”

  “Does my visiting your son threaten something?”

  “I’m just sensitive where he’s concerned. Too sensitive, I suppose.”

  “Because you’ve got him in a VA ward instead of private care? Look, the question has occurred to me—it’s my nature to wonder about things—but frankly it’s none of my concern. I’m sure you have reasons. And probably I was off base going over there. But I’m looking for Michelle Nickerson. That’s the only thing on my radar.” That and wanting to get in the house and use the bathroom; a long car ride will do that.

  “Of course,” Rand said. “But if she were here, you’d have found her by now, wouldn’t you? Or Vin Delcastro would have. He runs a tight ship.”

  “So did Captain Bligh.” I was thinking about Red Dog’s roust over smoking a joint. “Even so, people can slip away. Like you say, any one of us sits a hair’s breadth from disaster. Wasn’t there a teenage girl who went missing some years ago and was never found?”

  His brow crinkled. “That goes back. A runaway, I think. And anyway, it was never confirmed that she actually disappeared in Standish. You think there’s a connection?”

  “My point is, the police can’t know everything. If Michelle Nickerson was here, she may still be around.”

  “Granted. Or you might be wasting your time.”

  Time and the Jensens’ money. But my time wasn’t important; only Michelle Nickerson’s was—and what might be happening to it. “If I’m going to give up looking here, I need a convincing reason why—and that’s what I don’t have. I’ve got no stake in interfering in any deal of yours,” I said. “But right now, I’ve got to use the bathroom or I’m going to be tap dancing.”

  He chuckled. “Go, go.”

  When I went back out, Rand was waiting for me on the deck, facing the sea, where dark clouds were hastening the coming night. It was the spot where I’d stood when I’d first laid eyes on him, four days ago. “All right,” he said. “I’m going to help you. I know lots of people in town, maybe someone’s seen the girl. But first I want to swim. If I put things off, I end up not doing them. The ocean is magic when it comes to clearing the mind.” I followed him down the steps to the sand. He pulled off the sweatshirt. His torso was sun-browned, his chest covered with woolly gray hair. “You’re welcome to join me.”

  “I still don’t have a swimsuit.”

  “Then, neither do I.” He bent and drew off his trunks, dropping them on the sand. In the surrounding darkness I couldn’t tell he was naked except for the pale patch where he wasn’t tanned. “It’s up to you,” he said. “You’ll do okay—though I have to tell you, muscles don’t float. I’ll do better, being full of hot air.”

  “The forecast is for rain,” I said.

  “It always is.” With a chuckle, he waded into the low surf and dived under. He resurfaced a few yards farther out, swept back his hair and started swimming. Not sure why, except that I sensed it was important somehow and should not be put off, I did as he had done. When I’d laid my clothes aside, I headed for the water.

  Moving with a lot more style and efficiency than I, Rand continued to stroke outward, foam flashing in his wake. I was soon panting. I worked too hard at things in life to be graceful at most of them, though I usually got to the places I needed to get to. “Will we need passports?” I called.

  I changed strokes, and we kept going. After a while, he slowed and turned, waiting for me to reach him. “This is good,” he said when I had. “Look.” He nodded toward the shore, where the short row of beach houses stood, night-lit in the distance, like scale models in an architect’s display. The water was surprisingly warm and buoyant, and I could feel a slow current moving down where my feet hung. I suddenly felt great empathy with the woman in the Jaws poster.

  “Lord Byron had a deformed foot,” Rand said. “What used to be called a clubfoot. Maybe being the wild lover poet was compensation. He liked to swim out into the ocean … way, way out, until he was totally exhausted. He’d swim out to his absolute limit, where he couldn’t swim another stroke.”

  I spat some water, listening, wondering if he was going somewhere, or just rhapsodizing. The salt stung the cuts on my face, but it helped keep my mind off the tiny core of fear I’d always felt in deep water. I tried not to imagine how deep it might be.

  “Ah, but then he had the life-or-death challenge of getting back to shore.” Rand paddled around to face me. “I was born poor, come from a long line of it. That was my limiting factor.”

  “You went to Dartmouth?”

  “God, no. They were recruiting my son pretty heavily. I wish he’d gone. Me, I’m a humble man.”

  “Who reads Byron and quotes ‘Dover Beach,’” I said.

  He drew a dripping hand from the water and gestured toward the dark sweep of Shawmut Point off to the left. “‘Ah, love, let us be true to one another! For the world which seems to lie before us like a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new.’ Thanks for reminding me.” He laughed.

  “Of what?”

  “That’s all mine,” he said, with a note of half-surprise. “Not literally. Some of it is. But I possess it in my imagination. I’ve envisioned what it can become and have taken steps to see it happen.”

  “I heard something about it,” I said.

  “Understand, not everyone’s happy with the idea. I’d like them to be, of course. I try to spread things around and make it work for everyone. But I can’t worry too much about folks who choose not to see it that way. The fact is, anytime a person makes something happen in this world, he’s going to acquire enemies.”

  “You must have your share. I know I do.”

  His eyes twinkled with reflected starlight. “My good friend the judge told me you’d made some in the legislative ranks. I told the judge that probably just meant you’ve got character.”

  I found it interesting that I’d been a subject of conversation between busy men, but I was more interested in Ted Rand. “What about your enemies?” I asked.

  “Well … there’ll be some attempts to block me. Obscure zoning laws are bound to come up. Or EPA rules no one’s ever noticed before. Hell, we found some old bones, and people wanted to shut me down.” He gave a bark of amazed laughter. “But the bones are safely housed in a Native American collection now, and maybe the state will approve a casino soon—God knows it’d spur the economy—and most people are happy.”

  Rand cleared water from his eyes. “I’ve learned not to rely on anyone but myself. Most people, when they push past their limits, get into trouble. They sink.” Like Ben Nickerson? I wondered. “I’m prepared for obstacles. They’re like the traps on a golf course. I expect them, relish them. They add zest and challenge to the game, and when you overcome them, the satisfaction is high. You see, I’ve got a vision for Standish.”

  “I guess you’re not a strong adherent of the old one-man/one-vote concept.”

  “Oh, absolutely. A wonderful notion. But votes aren’t what make things happen. Power is, and power always flows from money.”

  It sounded like an anthem for good old-fashioned buccaneer capitalism. Money and power—and progress—was the charge that arced between the two poles … a circuitry of golf links and shops and big homes on the point, which sparked with the electricity of wealth and the cool green promise of more. Certainly, I had no interest in stopping him. Puffing with the exertion of treading water, I said, “How do you propose to find Michelle Nickerson?”

  “We’ll put some resources into it. Chief Delcastro will handle it.”

  “That’s what Michelle’s stepfather said when he told me he didn’t need me.”

  “Well, the fact is, my attorney knows the senior partners at his firm. I had him talk to them, to convince Mr. Jensen it was a ma
tter better handled here. He wanted discretion, and frankly so does Standish. I told the police I could add some resources.”

  A thought occurred to me. “Is that what you and Delcastro were talking about the other night?” At his questioning look, I said, “I saw you in the alley across from the gas station.”

  I thought he grimaced, but if so, it was only for an instant and then gone. “Whatever we need to do to find the girl,” he declared, “we will. When we get ashore, we’ll make a plan.”

  “I’m ready to go.”

  “Tarry awhile. This’ll clear our heads.” He rolled onto his back and floated, gazing up. With the clouds billowing in from the horizon, the sky seemed as deep and dark as the ocean around us. I didn’t feel that calm and kept treading water. Off to the right, in the distance, I saw a sweep of bright light, which I took to be the lighthouse where I’d met with Jillian. Farther off, in the other direction, was a dark hump with winking lights atop it. It was the Pilgrim nuclear power plant, as John Carvalho and Red Dog had pointed out to me. Even so, I was disoriented and was huffing a little from the effort of keeping afloat.

  “Rand,” I called.

  With his ears submerged, he didn’t hear me. I splashed a little water his way. He raised his head. “Ready?” I said.

  His hair was pasted to his head like a gleaming white helmet. Our hands collided briefly as we trod water. Our breathing fell into rhythm, mine more labored than his. “I like deep water,” he said. “It’s mysterious. It must be like that being a private detective. Right below us, under the surface, there could be all kinds of things going on that we never realize.”

  I didn’t try to one-line or second-guess him. I was conserving breath.

  “Well done,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  I set out for shore. The water was smooth, undulating in slow swells. After I’d swum awhile, I paused and caught my breath. We were halfway back, a hundred or so yards to go. Rand drew alongside. As I set out again, something cracked against my skull. Lights sparked in my vision. I turned and he was on me, climbing me like a tree, driving me under. I tried to wrestle him off, but he held on. Strength is reversed in the water. Mine worked against me, my efforts pushing me deeper. Desperately, I thrust my chin up and gobbled air. His face was a foot from my own, his eyes fixed and strange, then I went under again. He got something around my neck, a cord of some kind, and I realized it was a long frond of kelp, the rock anchor of which he’d used to whack me.