No Way Home

by Andrew Coburn

  “Why are you calling, Meg?”

  “You had a visitor, but he wouldn’t wait. He did for a while, but got jittery.”

  “Who? Do you have a name?”

  “Sure I have a name. I didn’t have to ask, I knew who it was.”

  She was milking it all the way, for all it was worth, and he said, “OK, who was it?”

  “Junior Rayball.”

  His heart jumped, and his stomach took a chill. “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He mounted the stairs, slowly at first and then rapidly, stumbling on the top one. He rapped on the bathroom door. “I have to go.”

  “There’s a John downstairs,” she said through the door.

  “I have to leave.”

  The door opened. “I heard you the first time.”

  • • •

  They ran into each other in Tuck’s General Store, where they were picking up the Sunday papers. Arlene Bowman had the Times in her arms, Christine Poole the Globe. The store was crowded. People who had just gotten out of church were buzzing among themselves as if something unholy had gone on. Arlene nudged Christine with her shoulder and said, “Let’s get out of here. I want to talk to you.”

  Outside, in the full strength of the sun, Christine said, “I’ve lost two pounds.”

  “That’s great,” Arlene said. “But you might have more to worry about than your weight. Have you had a visitor lately?”

  “A visitor? I don’t quite follow.”

  Balancing the bulky Times in one arm, Arlene gave an impatient swipe to her hair. “A visitor. To your house. Like a man.”

  “No.”

  “Has your husband?”

  “Not that I know of. I don’t know, why?”

  “Then maybe you have nothing to worry about. Depends on Gerald, what he does.”

  Christine, who attended Christ Episcopal in Andover but had not gone that morning, had on a yellow dress. The sun tickled her bare shoulders and was melting her makeup. “Can you tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a man who came to the house, someone Gerald apparently knows, from the town. He mentioned you, not by name, but it was obvious. You and the damn old chief.”

  She faltered. “Me and the chief?”

  “You and the chief. And me too. What I’m saying is he spilled the beans to Gerald.”

  The Globe, an unwieldy bundle bigger than the Times, nearly slipped from her grasp. Her throat was parched. “They played golf yesterday. Calvin. Your husband.”

  “Did they? No repercussions?”

  “Nothing.” Her eyes flew here, there. On the green a man aimed a camera at children who did not want their picture taken. “No, he said nothing.”

  “Nothing? Then maybe you have nothing to worry about. The chief, however, that’s another matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gerald. I’ve never heard him speak in any tone but neutral. What I’m saying is he never gets mad, he gets even.”

  Christine hurried away, still struggling with the paper. Parts slipped away, then most of it. She stopped to gather up the loss. A man rushed to help her. “My name’s Fossey,” he said, smiling. “I handle veterans’ affairs.”

  She left him with the ad inserts and the comics and rushed to her car. She was struggling with the door when Arlene called to her over the roof of a Mazda sports coupe. “I can handle my husband, Christine. If it comes to it, can you handle yours?”

  • • •

  As soon as Chief Morgan came to a bumpy stop near the house, Papa Rayball appeared bare-chested in the screen door. Before Morgan could switch the motor off, Papa shouted, “What d’you want? I got nothin’ to say.” Morgan silenced the motor, opened his door, and stuck a leg out. Papa hollered, “You can’t come in. I ain’t dressed. I ain’t even pissed yet.”

  “Where’s Junior?”

  “I ain’t seen him. He goes off.” Papa scratched his chicken chest. “You wanna talk to anybody here, you talk to Clement. He’s handlin’ our business now.”

  “All right,” Morgan said. “Tell him to come out.”

  “He ain’t here. He lives better than us. You wanna talk to him, go check the motels. He’s wearin’ his fancy watch, maybe he’ll give you a minute, though I ain’t promisin’.”

  The screen went blank, as on television, and Morgan backed the car down the rutted drive to the road, onto which he spun quickly, with a squeal. He drove to stretches where he thought Junior might be walking and eventually to a lonesome one where pine rose up on one side and hardwood on the other. No luck. He cruised into the cemetery, past Eunice Rayball’s grave, past his wife’s, past the Laphams’, and saw no one except Fred Fossey with flowers and flags.

  Back on the road, a warning light flashed from the dash. He pulled over, climbed out, and raised the hot hood. The motor was a furnace, hissing hard and pinging loud. Teenagers in an open car worth three of his sped by with catcalls. The smart-ass driver blasted the horn. He returned to the wheel, radioed the station, and said, “I need help.”

  Meg O’Brien said, “Are you sure you called the right place?”

  Lieutenant Bakinowski, sitting in his car in front of Matt MacGregor’s house, stared out over a can of Diet Coke. He had been parked there for nearly a half hour. From the porch, his feet on the rail, MacGregor stared back over a can of beer with a malevolence that looted his boyish face of its better qualities. “I can sit here longer than you can,” he said.

  Bakinowski said nothing, nor did anything spring from his eyes, which he kept caged. He sipped his Coke as a boy flitted by on a bicycle. Next door a neighbor came out on her porch and stared with curiosity.

  “You don’t bother me,” MacGregor said, flourishing the beer can. “I don’t even know you’re there. But I know what you are. You’re just a fucking Polack, no brains. If you ever had any, they fell out your ass a long time ago.”

  Bakinowski’s eyes started out of his head and then drew back. The neighbor woman retreated into her house as if some things were better left alone.

  “You know what I heard about you, Polack? Not nice, believe me.” MacGregor let out a harsh laugh. “I heard you blow dead dogs.”

  Bakinowski placed the Coke can on the dash. Reaching between his jacket and sweat-soaked shirt, he removed his snub-nose and, turning slightly, aimed it.

  “Go ahead, Polack. We’ll both go to hell.”

  He replaced the revolver in his hidden holster, smiled his sweetest, and said, “Guess who’s sleeping with your girl?”

  In the cemetery the sunlight stung, and the heat hung heavy. May Hutchins, with fire in her hair, came up on Fred Fossey and said, “We meet again.”

  “I saw you in church,” he said.

  “I mean we meet again here.”

  “This time I brought flowers.” He had laid them all on Flo Lapham’s marker. “I brought flags for some of the guys. I already put ‘em in place. Earl’s got a new one.”

  May sucked her cheeks in. “Can you believe what that damn Reverend Stottle said?”

  “I think he hit it on the head. I think Earl did choose to go. I know I would of.”

  “I mean about saying only one — ”

  “Let’s not talk about it, May, not in front of them.”

  May fanned a hand near her face. “You got a hankie, Fred? Mine’s sopping.”

  He reached into his pocket and dragged out a big one. “I don’t know if I used it. I don’t think I did.”

  “It’s all right.” She made it into a neat square and dabbed her throat and just inside the top of her dress. “I saw Chief Morgan on the road. His car’s broken down.”

  “Didn’t you stop?”

  “He didn’t want me to. He waved me on.” Burning through her dress, the sun lit her plump knees. She sighed sharply. “I heard he’s looking close after poor Lydia. Maybe too close.”

  Fred’s eyes leaped. “Who told you that? Ethel? When she’s right she’s only half rig
ht, and when she’s wrong she’s all wrong. If the chief’s doing anything, he’s protecting the poor girl.”

  “Everything’s so fishy, Fred, you don’t know what to believe.”

  He stiffened. “We shouldn’t be talking this way, not here.”

  They moved away, over the hot grass, toward graves where the occupants were too long dead to care, no interest in anything. May said, “Here’s your handkerchief.”

  “You keep it.”

  She winked at him. “We keep meeting like this, I ought to bring sandwiches.”

  He winked back. “And some lemonade. The real stuff. Not from the mix.”

  “What would Flo say?”

  “She won’t tell on us.”

  Felix from Felix’s Texaco picked up the chief’s car, and Meg O’Brien picked up the chief. Meg drove an old Plymouth with a radio in it just like a real police car, a fishpole aerial quivering in the air. Morgan was surprised to see her. “Where’s Eugene?” he asked.

  “He never came back from church. He’s still got a bug.”

  “Who’s minding the store?”

  “Bertha came in to rest her feet. But she doesn’t think she’ll be in this evening. Do you want me to take her shift?”

  “Not if you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said, “but I will. You don’t have to thank me. I can always use the extra money.”

  “What extra money?”

  “I was joking.”

  Morgan sat straight, on the alert, for Meg tended to drive in the middle of the road. The good thing was that she was driving slowly. She wanted to talk. “People,” she said, “not just Ethel Fossey, noticed your car parked all night at Lydia Lapham’s, last night and the night before.”

  A crow feeding on the road flew away. The heat in the car was enervating. Morgan, trying to concoct a response, came up dry.

  Meg said, “She’s always been Matt’s girl, I don’t have to tell you that.”

  “I know,” he said. “But she’s not seeing him anymore.”

  “James.” Her voice was a reprimand, the tone censorious. “You took advantage.”

  It was a thought that had nagged him. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

  “She’s not one of those Oakcrest Heights women. She’s one of us, James. Don’t hurt her.”

  He stuck his elbow out the window and let the heat hit his face. Harder on him was the pressure of Meg’s eyes. “Watch the road,” he said as a car came up from the opposite direction. They missed it. “You know how you’re always telling me to settle down?” he said. “I think I could with Lydia.”

  “You’re older.”

  “Fifteen years. Is that too much?”

  “I don’t know. Ask her. Then ask yourself.”

  “She was friends with a doctor. I checked up on him. He’s my age, and his hair’s gray. Mine’s not.”

  “There’s your answer.” She drove slower and kept to her side of the road, too much so, for the tires on his side crunched gravel. “Another thing,” she said. “On the investigation. If you told me what you were doing, maybe I could help.”

  “If I knew everything I was doing, Meg, I might not be doing it.”

  They approached the center of town and began to make the swing around the green. Malcolm Crandall was talking with Dr. Skinner outside Tuck’s, and two women from the Heights were entering Roberta’s, which opened on Sundays from one to four. A door hung open at the Congregational church.

  Looking at it, Morgan said, “Maybe we should seek guidance.”

  “In there?”

  “Why not?” he said. “Unless you’re still a Catholic.”

  She was a lapsed one, with little regard for priests, whom she considered black-bound volumes of misinformation. Ministers she ranked lower.

  “I’ll walk through that door when you do,” she said.

  Morgan, who had not been in a church since his wife died, said, “That means we’ll have to wait till hell freezes over.”

  • • •

  “Some of the paper’s missing,” Calvin Poole said from the patio. Christine was a statue just inside the house. She made herself move and went out to him. “The comics,” he said, “and I don’t know what else.”

  “They must not have packed everything in,” she said, examining his face but not meeting his eyes. Then she did. “Is there anything you want to ask me, Calvin?”

  “Ask you?” he said, and she felt herself drowning in her own words. His she hardly heard. He busied himself looking for missing sections. “Such as what, dear?”

  “Has anybody been here? I mean, while I was gone?”

  “No, nobody. You weren’t gone long.” He dropped the thick classified sections beside his chair and kept the rest of the paper in his lap. “Who were you expecting?”

  “Nobody,” she said and let her bare arms hang loose. He knew. Everything in her sensed that he did. Or was she wrong? She did not want to step irredeemably over the line, for she was only beginning to realize how much this second marriage meant to her. Yet she could not go on this way. “Calvin!”

  He hurled his face up from the business pages and presented a facade — formal, hard, inerrant — in which she read agony. What have I done? she thought and shivered. Scarcely hearing his response, she slipped back a step with an agony of her own and a face shot with embarrassment. “What is it?” he repeated.

  A friend in common, a woman, had introduced them. The woman, an irrepressible classmate of hers from Wellesley, had confided in her ear: “He’s a straight arrow, old school, wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.” Later she and Calvin had exchanged deep looks, and each had seen comfort in the other.

  “Are you feeling all right?” he asked, and she watched him lift a pant leg and scratch a hairless calf, which made him seem more vulnerable.

  “A touch of the sun,” she said quickly. “Maybe I’m going through the change.”

  “You’re too young for that.”

  “No, Calvin.” Her voice drifted as she moved back toward the house. “No, I’m not.”

  • • •

  Chief Morgan borrowed Meg O’Brien’s car and drove to Felix’s Texaco, on the east side of town, near the line. Felix, who serviced many of the expensive foreign cars from Oakcrest Heights, was a master mechanic, humorless and direct, with a thin black mustache Morgan’s grandmother would have associated with a snake oil salesman. Though it was Sunday, he had his two sons laboring in the stalls, one with a Mercedes on the lift. Morgan’s car was still strung to the tow truck. He was wiping his hands in a rag when Morgan approached him at the pumps.

  “That shitbox of yours,” he said, “ain’t worth fixin’, but I’ll fix it. You need a new radiator, and the fan belt ain’t pretty. I bill the town, I don’t wanna wait six months for my money.”

  “How long do you wait for the folks from the Heights to pay?” Morgan asked.

  “Those rich bastards,” he said, lowering his voice, “you gotta squeeze ‘em for every dime. My wife says they’re anal.”

  “When can I pick up my buggy?”

  “Tomorrow if you’re lucky, and you probably won’t be. I gotta hunt up a radiator.” He tilted his head. “See that silver-gray Mazda over there? The woman in it, she’s waitin’ for her husband, but she’s lookin’ at you.”

  The Mazda was parked in the shade of a maple, and the woman was Arlene Bowman. “Yes, I know her,” Morgan said.

  “Figured you did,” he said slyly.

  Morgan ambled over to her. Despite the heat she looked cool as spring water. Her door opened, and she got out. He remembered the morning they had met. She had showed him scratches on the lock of the outside sliders leading into the kitchen. She was sure someone had been trying to get in. Perhaps. Busy, she moved agilely about the kitchen in her tight designer jeans and spoke to him with her behind. The next day he came back on his own.

  Her smile now was no different from then. She said, “That’s my husband in there
. He’s telling the mechanic exactly what’s wrong. He doesn’t trust the boy to see for himself.”

  “I had a car like that, I wouldn’t either.”

  “But you’ll never have a car like that. By the way, he knows.”

  “Knows what?”

  “What do you think?” Irony floated into her smile. “No, I didn’t tell him. One of your townies did. I didn’t catch his name.”

  There was a knock in Morgan’s head. “Describe him.”

  “Thirty, thirty-five at the most. He had the eyes of a sniper. They go through you.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No, you are,” she said with greater irony, her dark eyes pinned to him. “My husband’s of the opinion you don’t know your place. He does have a point, doesn’t he, James?”

  “What are you telling me?”

  “He intends to cut your balls off. Perhaps he already has, but you don’t know it yet.”

  Morgan’s mind raced. “Are you talking about my job?”

  “Exactly. Take that away from you and you’re a zero, a big nothing.”

  “As far as I know, Arlene, I’m still the chief, and I don’t plan to step aside.”

  “You may not have a choice. Gerald’s a powerful man in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “In a town like this, his power might not reach down.”

  “I wouldn’t depend on that.” Her eyes taunted. “Would you like to give me a farewell kiss, old time’s sake?”

  He glanced away. The day was brilliant, even the dust was bright. “You always did like to play it close, Arlene. I figured you were looking to get caught.”

  “Don’t analyze me,” she said. “You’re not that smart.”

  Gerald Bowman came out of the stall, for a moment blinded in the blaze of sunlight. Morgan had never met him, had glimpsed him only from afar, though he had often gazed at the formal photograph of him framed and hung in the master bedroom. Arlene stepped slightly away. Her legs were tapers.

  “One small thing, James. Something that’s bothered me. How could you go from me to that old bag Christine Poole?” Then her face altered and brightened, and her voice rose. Her husband was upon them. “Darling, I don’t think you’ve met James Morgan. He’s our police chief busy solving murders, though obviously not at the moment.”