“Roger,” Tree said, very friendly, “I’d like to talk to Frank Jr. alone now, please.”
Roger thought about that a while. He narrowed his eyes, which were wide-set and an eerily beautiful shade of green, in a face with otherwise large, irregular features that seemed to have exploded into being, like a kernel of popped corn. Despite that, it was a young face. Roger couldn’t have been older than twenty.
And right now he was pointing a thick finger at me, and looking at Tree, puzzled, saying, “Ah low?”
Alone.
“This is a friend of mine,” Tree said. “I’d like him to stay and talk to Frank Jr. with me.”
And Roger nodded his head, his shaggy black hair flapping like a cheap wig, and shambled off.
“Retarded, of course,” Tree explained.
“I didn’t think this place was designed for that kind of thing.”
“He’s a special case. He gets violent.”
“Terrific.”
“They have him sedated, now. He’s gentle as a kitten.”
“Yeah, but does he know that?”
“There’s one person he’d never hurt, in any circumstance, and that’s Frank Jr. It’s pathetic, really, the way he’s taken to Frank.”
I’d almost forgotten about Frank Jr., who was still sitting silently at the desk, staring out the window.
“Roger is Frank Jr.’s protector,” Tree said, in a tone that mixed melancholy and irony. “Doesn’t let Frank out of his sight. Always stands nearby, watching him, guarding him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’ve asked Dr. Cash and he doesn’t understand it, either. Maybe it has something to do with Roger feeling sorry for Frank Jr.”
That didn’t make much sense to me, but I didn’t ask him to explain. I was getting uneasy, talking about Frank Jr. like somebody who wasn’t around. The fucker was a few feet away from us, sitting at a desk, listening to everything we said, even reacting a little, if I was reading my body language right.
Tree took a tentative step toward the boy.
“Son?” he said.
The boy was silent.
“Dr. Cash tells me you joined the exercise group this week. He says you’re hanging right in there. I can’t… can’t tell you how happy that makes me.”
The boy turned and smiled, almost imperceptibly, and turned back toward the window.
“Looks like you’re putting on some weight. That starchy hospital food, I suppose. Good thing you’re taking up that exercise thing.”
The boy was silent.
“It’ll be getting warm soon. Maybe we could get out and play some tennis together. Dr. Cash says there’re some courts near here, and we could use one, if you like, when it warms up.”
And it went on like that, for fifteen minutes, Tree struggling painfully to maintain the one-sided, small-talk conversation, while his son sat staring, reacting occasionally, usually with that small smile, but nothing more.
“Well,” Tree said, finally, with reluctance, in relief, “gotta go now. See you next Monday. I… I love you, son.”
The boy turned and nodded and turned away. Roger waved to us in the hall as we left. He was on his way back to Frank Jr.’s side.
I didn’t ask Tree anything till we were out of there, iron doors shut behind us, in the cool outer corridor of the hospital.
“He never says anything?” I asked. “He just sits there and looks out the window and smiles now and then?”
Tree’s eyes were glazed. “You don’t know how much those smiles mean to me. It’s taken him four months to get that far.”
Half an hour later, in a bar in downtown Iowa City, Tree told me the story.
23
The only time business is slow in a college-town bar like the Airliner is when it’s closed, but this was mid-afternoon and a quieter time than most, so it didn’t make a bad place to talk. We bought drinks at the bar, a double Scotch straight up for Tree and a Coke on ice for me, and carried them to a booth at the rear.
Tree had a lot of lines in his face, which gave him a rough-hewn, Marlboro man quality capable of luring at least an occasional younger woman for a bounce on his water bed. At the moment, however, in the shadowy, flickering reflection of the candle in glass that lit the booth, those lines seemed simply a sign of age.
And his sigh said he felt even older than he looked.
“I didn’t raise him,” he said. “His mother did. I met her in Reno, in ’56 or 7. I was drifting back and forth between Vegas and Reno, working for casinos sometimes, sometimes for myself. I already knew what I wanted… my own place, why settle for less? I ran some joints for the DiPreta boys, in Des Moines, after the war. Learned everything there is about managing a club, any kind of a club. But there was no place to climb, there were enough DiPreta brothers to fill all the top slots in the Des Moines action, so I left. I liked to gamble and I was good at it. I started hitting poker games in little towns and big ones and everything between. Ended up on the Reno and Vegas circuit, of course. She was a cocktail waitress at Harold’s. Nineteen and already divorced once, but no kids. I was dealing blackjack. Knocked her up, married her. I don’t know why, except I always had it in the back of my head to have a kid, and she was a looker and I thought I loved her, the cunt. She had blond hair everywhere and tits that wouldn’t stop and I’d fuck her today if I could and hate her while I was doing it.”
He stopped for a moment, embarrassed. Scratched his head. Dandruff seemed his only grooming problem. He looked down at his drink. Drank it, got up and got another and drank half of that before going on.
“You know the first couple years weren’t so bad. She loved Frank Jr. She was a good mother, no shit. And she was good to me. That was while I was out hustling my ass, making my goddamn fortune. Maybe that’s why she put up such a good front, those first couple years. She must’ve known I had it in me to make it, and figured to stick with me till I did. We weren’t married three years before I had my place on the river, across from Burlington, and it made money from day one, right away they were calling it Little Las Vegas, that little town we took over. I owned my own place and a piece of everybody else’s on the street. The only help I had was the DiPretas. My old bosses backed me, at the start, but they stayed out of my way. You want another drink?”
“No.”
He did.
This was hard for him and the lubrication was a must. Still, he seemed to feel the need to tell me all this, and not just because someone wanted him dead and to stop it I needed background. That was part of it, but important too was his need to tell somebody, to purge himself of memories too personal to tell anyone except a stranger.
He came back with a third double, drank it, and went on.
“She waited,” he said, “waited till things were going real good for me, and then she filed the papers. She socked me for a ton of alimony, let me tell you, and child support, only that I didn’t mind so much, the bitch. She took my kid and drained the fuck out of me, and my opinion of marriage ever since went down a little, you know? Never again. Anyway, she raised the kid, or her sister did. She was screwing a lot of guys, never did get married again, but then that’d stop the money, right? I’ll never figure out why she was such a good mother at first and then just turned the kid over to that senile sister of hers. The only thing I can say for the twat is she let me see the kid, couple of weeks in the summer, Christmas, some other holiday, usually. I’d take him camping, ball game, things like that. I was a good father to him, good as I could be, considering what little chance I got. And he looked up to me. He really did. That made me feel good, and I’m not ashamed to say it. Another drink?”
“Not me,” I said. “You have to drive back, remember.”
“One more won’t hurt.”
Well, if it did, he sure didn’t seem to feel it. He showed it only in the increased speed and ease of his speech, which wasn’t slurred in the least.
“She turned into a sort of a lush, after a while,” he said, his own
glass empty now. “You get soft living on somebody else’s money all the time, never working a day, you know? She never worked a day. Last fucking job she ever had was when she was a cocktail waitress at Harold’s, in Reno, which is where I met her, the whore. That’s what she turned into, only she gave it away. With all the money of mine she had, you’d think she’d at least go around fucking the country club set or something, but no. Lowlifes. That’s what she was and who she liked to be around. Just pick up some goddamn factory worker in a bar and ball him and blow him and Jesus. Anyway, she got hit by a car about five, six, years ago. Drunk. And Frank Jr. came to live with me. He was torn, though, I think, you know? That sister-in-law of mine was the closest thing to a mother Frank ever had, and how can you blame him for feeling something for the old douche bag? Listen, I got to have a beer chaser, that’s all there is to it. You?”
“Okay. Make it a gimlet, though.”
He did, and he sipped some beer before starting up again.
“He was a quiet kid, Frank Jr. He wasn’t too active, not in sports or any of those high school things. I think I maybe disappointed him, a little, because I was more strict than he thought I’d be. I wanted to know where he was going, what time he’d be in, things like that. I wanted to know what crowd he was running with, would check out the kids, their parents. He had some friends I didn’t much approve of, but I finally gave up on that. He was his mother’s son, after all, what’re you gonna do? The biggest blow-up we ever had was over money. I didn’t give him much. Hell, I didn’t give him any. I put a roof over his head, food on his fucking table, and it was a goddamn good roof and the food wasn’t leftovers by a long shot. I had a sixty-thousand-dollar home, there in Burlington, maid who cooked, kid had it easy. Too easy to suit me. I wanted him to work. He needed to know about that, that things don’t come easy in this life. I didn’t want him to be a lousy whore like his mother, if you know what I mean. You got to learn to earn your money, or at least fucking win it, you know what I mean? I tried to teach him that, and I think he came to learn it and maybe even respect me for it. He worked at a gas station and before you know it he had his own car and he dressed good and I was proud of the kid, really was. The only thing was I should’ve watched him closer. I just couldn’t keep him from that crowd he ran with, and about two years ago it all kind of came to a head.”
He paused. Sipped, then gulped at his beer. Draining it.
“I found this bag of grass in his room. Marijuana. Shit is what they call it, and I couldn’t agree more. I showed it to him. He admitted he’d tried it. His friends insisted, he said. It was a pretty good-size bag and I enjoyed emptying the motherfucker down the toilet and flushing it in front of him. I didn’t beat him or anything like that. I’m not that kind of father. But I had to do something.”
He leaned forward.
“I looked into it a little and found out the high school Frank was going to was a pusher’s paradise… You could buy anything in that fucking place you wanted, anything you could buy in some fucking Chicago slum. I found out the junior high in town was the same, thirteen-year-old kids smoking grass and popping pills and I don’t know what. There was nothing to do but get Frank the hell away from there. Why not, I figured. What better way. People had been wanting to buy me out since the second week I opened, and business had slacked off a little since the looser drinking law passed in Iowa, so it wasn’t a bad business move getting out of there, either.”
“So you came to Des Moines again,” I said.
“Well, we moved to West Lake, that little town by the Barn, first. I bought a house. Frank Jr. enrolled at the new consolidated high school there, for his senior year. I got the Barn going and was making a profit before the dust settled.”
“Sounds like a happy ending.”
“I thought it was. Where I fucked up was I didn’t spend more time with the boy. I was busy getting the Barn off the ground, and he was still a little sullen about me pulling him out of high school his last year, away from all his lowlife friends, so I was just sort of leaving him alone. Thought he’d work things out for himself.”
“How did he do?”
He studied the flame in the glassed candle. “This time I didn’t find it in his room. He stopped hiding things in his room, after the first time. This was in his car. Another bag of stuff.”
“Grass again?”
“I wish it was. Grass isn’t white, though, is it, Quarry? White fucking powder?”
“Christ,” I said. “Your kid was shooting smack?”
“Evidently it hadn’t got that far, thank God. The way I reconstruct it, he must’ve got in with some peckerheads from Des Moines who make his friends back home look like goddamn choir boys. I know for a fact he was using marijuana, right along, talked to some kids his age who went to school at West Lake with him, and they all knew what he was into, everybody knew but me. His peckerhead friends must’ve convinced him to turn onto the hard stuff about the time I stumbled in.”
“What did you do about it?”
“Same as before, only this time I shoved his ass in the car and drove him to Iowa City and checked him into the Psychopathic Hospital and said, here, here’s my kid, help him, he’s got this drug problem. And later they told me he did… but not heroin. I found the goddamn stuff before he had a chance to use it, even once, and that’s about the only break I got out of this fucking game. But he was psychologically addicted, they said, to marijuana.”
“Is that why he doesn’t say anything?”
“That’s part of it. I guess. Even the peckerhead doctors don’t know, really. You see, when I found that junk, I flushed it down the john, like the other time, and made him watch, too, like the other time, and while I was doing it, he said, ‘Don’t.’ And that’s the last thing I’ve heard him say. When he was first checked in, at the hospital, he talked to the doctors, other patients, but he was quiet, and gradually, over a period of a couple weeks, he pulled into a shell. Hasn’t said a word.”
“Frank,” I said. Kindly. “I know this is something you’re very concerned about, but how does it relate to you and me?”
“I think it does relate.” He looked convinced, like Oral Roberts telling his audience God is not dead. “I’ve stepped on people, Quarry. I’ve made some enemies. But that’s, most of it, past history. This is a recent history.”
And he took a clipping out of his pocket. The date was recent, about a month old; the headline: CITIZEN GROUP LAUNCHES ATTACK ON DRUGS, with a smaller headline above saying: Young People Major Victim. The article told of a civic group whose initials were D.O.P.E. (Des Moines Organization of Parental Enquiry) and who were demanding action on the “rampant drug problem demoralizing the youth of our city, state and country,” in the words of the ex-mayor who headed the “Executive Council” of the group.
I gave the clipping back to him. I looked at him close, in hopes he was kidding. He wasn’t.
“I’m staying on the sidelines, naturally… but it was my idea, my money, my connections got this thing going. I got some very influential friends, rich people, well-to-do assholes who don’t like the idea of their kids being stuck in the same school with a bunch of nigger junkies, and who’re willing to put their money where their mouth is and help cause a stink and put a stop to it. It’s a matter of educating the public, finger-fucking the press, all that Ralph Nader lobby group bullshit. Of course the group can only do so much, but I can put pressure on by myself, with the people I know in politics, local and state and even federal, and people in law enforcement, all kinds of people I got influence with.”
“You’re kind of an unlikely candidate for civic reformer, aren’t you, Frank?”
“Look, I know dope’s just a business, like anything else. Of course I never fucked with it myself, or any people I worked with, either, the DiPretas, say, they never had their hands in that kind of shit. A lot of mob people never did get into it, and hardly no mob people are into it, anymore. It’s the niggers and spicks who own it, now, but even so, I know I�
�m not gonna single-handed wipe out dope in the world, and couldn’t care less if I did. I just want to cause some trouble for the fucking leeches who turned a decent kid into a vegetable, all right? And I must be pulling it off, and it looks like, even though I kept in the background on this thing, word’s out I’m the one who put the heat on.” He shrugged. “So somebody bought a contract.”
“That’s what somebody did,” I said.
“Anyway, they’re two different things entirely.”
“What?”
“Running a gambling house and selling poison.”
“Right,” I said.
And finished my drink.
24
She was half asleep and completely naked, sheets and covers twisted and not covering much of her at all. She was on her stomach but turned to one side, hugging a pillow, against which rested one generous breast, cuddled there, not squashed, its large dark nipple soft and smooth and delicate, a flower with its petals unfolded. Her face, sans make-up, looked young, almost child-like, except for the worldly cast of those eyes and the faint smile of the freshly fucked. She lay there, dark blond hair tickling her shoulders, beads of sweat glistening along the sweep of her slender back, legs sprawled but gracefully so, slopes of her ass spread gently, exposing wisps of pubic hair and a glimpse or two of pink and one firm creamy thigh.
Often, in the clinical light of post-coital moments, a man may notice for the first time a pimple on a formerly perfect ass, or a dark coarse hair growing along the edge of a nipple, or how her one breast seems now oddly smaller than the other one, or the redness from the elastic around panty hose, or a scar or stretch marks or a birthmark, and pretty soon he can’t remember what was the big deal.
Lu was what every man is looking for: a woman who looked as good after as before.
I brought her a cup of Sanka. I brought myself one, too.
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