by Brad Smith
“Yeah, that’s it,” Virgil said. “So far I’ve got a stolen boat, a broken arm, and a knot on my head about the size of Vermont.” He put the truck in gear and pulled away from the curb. “I’m one smooth operator.”
TWENTY-FOUR
When Virgil came in from doing the chores, he found Dusty at the stove in the kitchen, heating spaghetti sauce from a jar on one burner while some pasta boiled in a pot on another. They’d stopped at her place for a change of clothes before leaving the city and he saw that she’d changed into khaki pants and a faded cotton shirt. Her hair was damp. The sink had been half full of dirty dishes when he’d left earlier; now they were washed and sitting in the strainer.
“I used your shower,” she said.
“No problem.”
“Any idea how old this spaghetti is?” she asked, holding up the box.
“I would say … less than a year,” he estimated.
“Christ,” she said.
“Spaghetti doesn’t go bad.”
“You can eat first then,” she said. “And you don’t believe in washing dishes?”
“I got one arm,” Virgil said.
“Right,” she said. “I forgot about that. You wouldn’t be able to do the dishes. You can bale hay, and feed cows and combine wheat. You can steal the rotor from my truck and throw it in a fucking storm sewer, but there’s no way you could wash dishes.”
“That spaghetti about done?” Virgil asked.
After they ate, Virgil made a pot of coffee—another thing he could do with one arm, Dusty pointed out—and they sat on the side porch. There was a half-moon rising and the barns and outbuildings were clearly visible across the yard. A couple of barn cats came out into the moonlight and sat cleaning themselves on the concrete pad outside the milk house. Maybe ten feet apart, typical cats, each pretending the other didn’t exist.
“What’s that smell?” Dusty asked.
“Probably the horses in that field yonder.”
“I like it.”
“Yeah?” Virgil said. “I always assumed your average city person didn’t care for the smell of manure.”
“I’m an average city person?”
“I guess not,” Virgil said after thinking about it. He removed his Mud Hens cap, hung it on the arm of the chair, and pushed back his hair with his fingers.
“What’s with the bird, anyway?” Dusty asked.
“It’s a mud hen.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s a bird.”
Dusty sighed. “We’ve established that. How come you’re wearing a hat with a mud hen on it?”
“I used to play for the Toledo Mud Hens,” he told her. “This is the cap I wore.”
“And you’re not allowed to wash it?”
Virgil gave the cap a look as if seeing it for the first time. “I never gave it much thought.”
“That’s obvious.” She settled back in the chair, getting comfortable. “You’re lucky living out here,” she said. “Just listen to that.”
“Listen to what?”
“Silence.” She took a drink of coffee. “There’s no such thing where I live. Night or day, it’s never quiet.” She didn’t say anything for a time. “I have to get out of there. I have to get my son out of there. Before it’s too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“For everything.”
“Well, it looks like your sister managed it,” Virgil said.
Dusty, her head tilted back against the chair, nodded.
“She’s a tough nut, isn’t she?” Virgil said. “She looked at me like I was running a Ponzi scheme.”
“Big sisters are protective.”
“She was protecting you from me?”
“From everybody. You just landed in her sights.” Dusty glanced over. “She’s a little judgmental at times but I owe her … everything. She’s been a second mother to Travis. Actually, she was his first mother. I had him when I was in stir. Julie took him home and raised him until I got out, two years later. You want to talk about fucked-up meetings. Try walking up to a two-year-old and saying, ‘Hi, I’m your mother. I just got out of prison.’ He’s already walking and talking. He’s already his own little person. And you have to try to fit yourself into his life without freaking him out.”
“He seems okay,” Virgil said. “I mean, the kid could use a jar of neatsfoot oil, but I wouldn’t say that makes you a bad mother.”
Dusty smiled, looking across the yard to the barn and the cats lolling in the light. She sipped at her coffee.
“I looked for your computer while I was waiting for the water to boil,” she said after a while. “I wanted to Google Crow’s Landing.”
“I don’t have a computer,” Virgil said.
“I figured that when I didn’t find one.”
“What would I do with a computer?”
“You could Google Crow’s Landing.”
Virgil shrugged and drank his coffee. The cattle in the back pasture, out of sight of the house, began to moan and the lowing floated across the air. Dusty turned her head toward the sound; it seemed to take a moment before she recognized it.
“Place might not be easy to find,” Dusty said, glancing back to Virgil. “It’s probably not even the name of a town. Shit, it might just be a spot where a guy named Crow landed a boat a hundred years ago. How we going to find it?”
“We will.”
“So you know where to find it?”
“Nope,” Virgil said. “But I know where to find a guy who does. I don’t need to gurgle anything.”
“Google.”
“That either.”
“Okay.” She shook her head, as if Virgil was being obstinate and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an argument.
“What’s your real name?” Virgil asked. “Even your sister calls you Dusty.”
“It is my real name,” Dusty replied, again watching across the yard. “My mother was a singer, a professional actually, for a while anyway. Sang under the name Irma Lachance. Her real name was Betty Saunders. Anyway, she was a blues singer, pretty good too, I guess, sang in a couple of clubs in Jersey. Atlantic City once, some blues festival. And she worshipped Dusty Springfield. So that’s how I got the name.”
“‘Son of a Preacher Man.’”
“You’re not going to sing to me, are you?” she asked.
“You’ve been through enough,” Virgil said.
Dusty, smiling, sipped her coffee.
“What happened to your mother?”
“She was a drunk and she died.”
Virgil glanced over at her. She was still staring straight ahead, holding the cup with both hands, up near her face. After a moment she exhaled and turned to him, looking to shift topics. “So where’s your wife, Mr. Cain? What’s she going to say when she gets home and sees me?”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“No?” Dusty feigned surprise. “I guess that Lady Schick on the edge of the tub is yours then. Along with a few other feminine touches I noticed. How often do you shave your legs anyway?”
“For Chrissakes.”
“Well?”
“I have a friend …” Virgil began awkwardly.
“A friend?” Dusty repeated. “What, she comes over to use your bathtub? Where is she now?”
“France. Why do you need to know this?”
“Hey, you wanted to know everything about me. Turnabout is fair play, dude.” She was smiling now. “What’s she doing in France?”
“Visiting long-lost relatives.”
“She didn’t invite you along?”
“No.” Virgil realized for the first time that Claire hadn’t asked him to go with her. Not that he could have gone, with the harvest and everything else. Still, she could have asked.
“Too bad,” Dusty said, looking out over the yard again. “If you were in Europe, you wouldn’t have been on the river that day. And none of this would be happening. What does she do, your friend?”
“She�
��s a cop.”
Dusty turned to him. “You’re kidding me. Does she know about all this? Have you talked to her?”
“I talked to her. She doesn’t know.”
Dusty fell quiet while she deliberated. “Okay. You didn’t tell her. And the reason you didn’t tell her is because she would have given you good advice. Like, forget about your goddamn boat and tell the cops about the cylinder. Why do I get the feeling you’re not real good at taking advice?”
“I had no idea you were such an expert on me.”
Dusty laughed. “I’m getting there.”
Virgil stood and tossed his remaining coffee onto the grass, then turned and went into the house. When he came back he was carrying a bottle of Jameson and a couple of glasses. He poured for them both.
Dusty was still smiling. “Giving me liquor so I’ll quit asking about your love life?”
“Worth a try,” Virgil said, sitting down. “So you want to leave the city. What’s keeping you?”
Dusty tried a little of the Irish whisky. “Money,” she said. “I want to buy a house and I don’t have enough for a down payment. I could swing the mortgage payments. I’m already paying rent, wouldn’t be much different. But I need money down.”
“No boyfriend?”
“No.”
Virgil took a sip and savored the whisky on his tongue before swallowing. In the pasture field by the barn, the horses were walking toward the water trough. They always came in a bunch, never in ones or twos. It was the herd mentality, Virgil assumed, from the days when horses ran wild and were wary of predators. Nowadays it wasn’t really necessary but apparently the instinct remained. Horses were safe in the modern world. Safer than people in some respects. He had another drink and then asked, “Does Parson know that Travis is his son?”
Dusty had her glass halfway to her mouth. Her eyes narrowed, then she took a healthy slug. “There you go, being smart again.”
The moon crossing the sky dropped just enough to shine fully on her face beneath the eave of the porch. She looked like a kid sitting there. A kid with a lot of weight on her shoulders.
“No, he doesn’t know,” she said slowly. “And I don’t want him to know. If he finds out, I’m fucked. He’ll take Travis away from me. There is no doubt in my mind about that.” She stared straight ahead, her eyes defiant. “He can’t find out.”
“The courts would never give him custody.”
“The courts won’t be involved,” Dusty said flatly.
“And you’re sure he doesn’t know.”
She took another drink, needing it now to address the situation. “No, I’m not. I think he might suspect something.”
“That’s why you want to leave the city.”
“I was looking for a house before all this,” she said. “This ups the ante. Through the roof.”
Virgil looked at the liquor in his glass, thinking. “So he’s been out of your life since that night on the boat?”
“Yeah.”
“And then I find the cylinder and suddenly he’s back in your life.”
“Yeah. Way to go.”
“And you don’t want him getting too close,” Virgil said. “Because if he does, he’s going to find a little boy who looks like him. And the math works too.”
“You’re right on the money.”
Virgil saw that her glass was nearly empty and reached for the bottle. “So if you track down the coke, and hand it over, then he’s out of your life again. That the way it is?”
“I’m hoping that’s the way it is.”
* * *
It was midmorning when Hoffman walked into Yuri’s office behind the pool hall the next day. He found the Russian at his desk, talking on the phone while rolling a cigarette. There was a rotund black man on the couch, with an acne-scarred face and a wispy goatee. His bare belly showed where his tight T-shirt didn’t meet his sweatpants, and he had a dreamy, spaced-out look on his face that was all too familiar to Hoffman. The office smelled strongly of pot.
“Mr. Hoffman,” Yuri said when he hung up. “I wish you to meet my new friend Jay Dee.”
“Yo,” Jay Dee said and Hoffman didn’t reply.
“I am deputizing Jay Dee,” Yuri said. “Because Jay Dee knows how to find the camp owned by the man Pop. Jay Dee used to go there with Mr. Soup, when they are teenagers and playing the basketball.”
Hoffman regarded the man on the couch doubtfully. “Where is it?”
“Adirondacks,” Jay Dee said.
“We know that,” Hoffman said. “But where?”
“Man, I don’t know the name of this road, that road. I’m gonna know when we get there. I been there a lot of times. I got like a map in my head. We get there, I’m gonna know.”
Hoffman looked at Yuri, eyebrows raised. The big Russian just smiled as he stood up and walked to a cupboard in the corner. He pulled out an Adidas sports bag and tossed it on the desk, then went back into the cupboard for a bottle of vodka, a handful of energy bars, and a large bag of peanuts in the shell. He put everything in the bag, then opened the top drawer to the desk and brought out a Colt .44 revolver, checking that it was loaded before tucking it in his belt. Finally he reached into the same drawer and produced an Uzi automatic pistol and a couple of clips. Both the Uzi and the ammunition went into the bag and he zipped it shut.
“Okay, now we are prepared,” he said, and smiled again. “Is like we are going on little picnic. You agree, Mr. Hoffman?”
“It’s no fucking picnic,” Hoffman said.
Yuri wanted to take his truck but Hoffman vetoed the idea. The new deputy, Jay Dee, reeked of pot and body odor and the Russian himself wasn’t exactly a fanatic when it came to personal hygiene. Hoffman had no intention of being crammed in the cab of a pickup for hours with the pair of them. They took his sedan.
They left the city just after eleven o’clock, driving north on 87, Hoffman behind the wheel with Yuri on the passenger side and Jay Dee sprawled in the center of the backseat, legs splayed, his hands resting on his big belly. With the long drive ahead of him, Hoffman once again considered the bizarre predicament he found himself in. Since the day he had seized the cylinder from the hick at the marina it was as if he’d been caught up in a ridiculous movie. A very long and ridiculous movie. If Soup wasn’t hiding out in the camp up north, and Hoffman had little faith that he was, the movie would just get longer, although he doubted it could get any more ridiculous. Of course, Hoffman could end it at any time, just walk away from it all, take his pension and live with it, but he’d invested too much time and effort now for that to be a consideration, and the promise of a payoff was too big. He had come this far; he would play it out.
He wished he had scored a GPS system from the force before he’d retired. Now he was stuck with a state road map and the vague recollections of the pothead in the backseat. For a guide he had the lunatic in the front. At this moment the lunatic was looking at the map, charting their route. He had his seat back all the way and one big black cowboy boot was resting on the dash. His Stetson was pushed up onto his forehead.
“So what is first exit we take?” he asked. “There is U.S. 9, which takes us to Lake Placid. Is where they have the Olympics one time.”
“Yeah,” Jay Dee said brightly. “I remember going through there.”
Yuri glanced over at Hoffman, smiled, and looked at Jay Dee in the backseat. “This is where we go. You can stand easy for now, Deputy Jay Dee. We will not need your expertise until we reach the mountains of the Adirondacks. This is learning experience for me. I did not know they are having mountains in the New York State. But they cannot be big, like the Rocky Mountains?”
“They’re not the fucking Rockies,” Hoffman said irritably.
“They’re big enough,” Jay Dee said. “You wouldn’t want to climb one, dog.”
“There will be no mountain climbing on this trip,” Yuri said. “This is strictly hunting expedition. Our quarry is Mr. Soup. He is a small quarry, I will admit, but so far a formidable
one.” He paused to look out the side window, off into the distance. “However, is not like the old days on the Great Plains, when the men hunt the buffalo. Foolish men—they were indiscriminate with their shooting and almost they make the buffalo … what is the word when an animal is no more on the earth?”
“Extinct,” Hoffman said.
“Extinct,” Yuri agreed. He sighed. “How I wish I could have participated in the buffalo hunt. I would have had Sharps fifty-caliber rifle. Can shoot one-half mile, this rifle. Who knows—maybe they would call me Buffalo Yuri, like the great Buffalo Bill.”
“The dude that started the football team?” Jay Dee asked.
“You’re a moron,” Hoffman said.
Yuri gave Hoffman a look. “Come on, Mr. Hoffman. Jay Dee is making joke, I think. You must join in. This is great adventure we are on. Why is it you cannot enjoy yourself?”
Hoffman said nothing as he swung into the left lane to pass a tractor trailer. Yuri watched him for a moment longer, then turned back to Jay Dee, who, Hoffman suspected, had not been making a joke.
“Tell us about Pop’s Camp,” he said. “How is it that you go there?”
“Shit, most everybody I knew went there, one time or another,” Jay Dee said. “This old white dude, Pop Chamberlain, used to run the b-ball program at the Y, and then like once a year he’d take a whole busload of kids up to the camp. Didn’t cost us shit neither. I don’t know where the money come from, but we never had to ante up a dime. I went three, maybe four times.”
Yuri glanced at Hoffman. “Mr. Soup—he is going with Jay Dee to this camp.”
“Yeah—I remember him being there. Him and me weren’t never too tight. He was a big fucking star on the court, and I was this little fat kid, you know? Everybody said he was going to college, he was gonna play in the NBA, all like that. Shit, one pull on the pipe and that motherfucker wasn’t going nowhere.”
In the front seat, Yuri shook his head. “Unfulfilled potential. Is a sad thing.”
“Whatever,” Jay Dee said. “The camp was cool, though. Played ball every morning but in the afternoon we got to swim and fish and drive around in boats and shit. They had this big mess hall, and the old guy’s wife would cook for us. If we caught us some fish, old Pop would clean them up and she’d cook that.”