Sam McCain - 01 - The Day the Music Died

by Ed Gorman

  It was a few minutes before anybody appeared.

  A wan young woman, pretty in a studied way, came out of the back room. She wore a black turtleneck, black jeans and sandals.

  Francois Sagan, a writer I liked, had shown Midwestern girls how to look European: get the hair shorn, wear the black clothes and look innocent and world-weary at the same time. It took a certain concentration, no doubt about it, looking that way.

  I said, “Is Steve around?”

  “He’s upstairs doing the books.”

  “I’d like to see him.”

  “I don’t think I recognize you.”

  “I buy most of my books down at the bus station.”

  She didn’t know how to take that. Was I joking? It happened to be true. The bus station had large wall racks of paperbacks.

  “He really hates to be interrupted when he’s doing the books.”

  “I won’t need much of his time.”

  “God,” she said, “you really can’t take a hint, can you? He’s busy. If you’d like to leave your name and number, I’ll have him call you.”

  She was beginning to irritate me, which took some doing, given how pretty she was.

  “Tell him it’s about Susan.”

  “Susan.”

  “Uh-huh. Susan.”

  “No last name?”

  “No last name.”

  She seemed to see me for the first time, and looked mightily displeased at the information her eyes were receiving. “That crack you made about buying your books at the bus depot? You weren’t kidding, were you?”

  I relished her disdain. “Uh-uh. That’s where I buy most of my magazines, too.”

  Just then, the classical orchestra chose to swell up, as if in angry response to what I’d just said.

  “I’ll go talk to him.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said.

  “He won’t be happy.”

  “Life,” I said, “is like that sometimes.”

  She went up and he came down. Quickly. She hadn’t been kidding about him being unhappy. He had a gaunt face with little James Joyce glasses and auburn hair too long for his skinny neck and long head. He wore a white starched shirt with a tab collar, a dark vest and jeans. “Just what are you trying to pull?”

  “I wanted to talk to you about Susan.”

  “Susan who?”

  I made a face. “C’mon, you can do better than that.”

  “I know a lot of Susans.”

  I walked over and picked up a copy of F.

  Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up.

  “Good book.”

  “I don’t want to talk about books.”

  “Really?” I said, looking at him.

  “Usually, you can’t wait to give your opinion.”

  He leaned toward me and said, “Who the hell told you, anyway?”

  “Say her name.”

  “What?”

  “Say her name. You owe her that much.”

  He shook his head. “You bastard.”

  The front door opened and Eileen Renauld came in. She wore a cape and a beret and a pair of dramatic black pants and leather boots that laced up to her knees. She had large and dramatic features, austere yet imposing.

  She wasn’t as petulant as her husband but he was a few years older and had had more practice.

  I had no doubt she’d catch up.

  She seemed to know instantly that something was afoot. She said, “What’s going on?”

  I started to say nothing but he said, “He wants to know about Susan.”

  For just a moment, her dark eyes showed pain and faint embarrassment and I felt sorry for her.

  When she didn’t have Proust to hide behind, she was almost human. But then instead of being the girl from Mt. Vernon, Iowa that she was, she struck a pose. “You wouldn’t expect someone like him to understand, would you, Steve?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I saw him at the bus depot one day looking at girlie magazines.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but I had a copy of Ezra Pound inside the magazine.”

  She whipped off black gloves and

  slapped them on top of a glass counter that housed rare books.

  She walked right up to me. “Why don’t you leave?”

  “Because I want to find out what happened between them.”

  She stared at me and shook her head. “What do you think happened between them, McCain? Or do you want me to draw you a picture? They had an affair. It wasn’t very long, and I doubt it was very worthwhile, but Steve loves French novels and so to him it was very important.”

  I didn’t know which of us to feel embarrassed for at this point. Maybe I felt embarrassed for all three of us.

  But she wasn’t finished. “She had big tits and a very nice smile and she loved the way he read poetry to her in bed. He used to read poetry to me in bed, too, back when we were courting.

  He’s especially good with every. every. cummings. It’s a better aphrodisiac than wine. But then, I’d hardly expect you to understand that, McCain.”

  “Did you kill her, Steve?” I asked.

  He did something he shouldn’t have. He looked scared. His eyes clung to his wife’s for help. I’d rattled him.

  “Did he kill her?” she asked. “Of

  course, he didn’t kill her. What the hell are you talking about, anyway? Kenny Whitney killed her.”

  “You’re sure of that?” I said.

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “Quite sure.”

  The clerk came back. She wore a fitted gray winter coat. There was something Russian about it, which was probably the effect she wanted.

  “It’s my break time. I thought I’d go get a Danish.”

  “Fine,” Eileen said. “But yesterday you took twenty minutes. Our agreement is fifteen.”

  The girl’s gaze met Steve’s. He

  looked away quickly, not wanting to anger his wife but appearing to be sympathetic to the girl. The girl left.

  “You probably guessed,” Eileen said, “Steve and she are at the “eye” stage of their relationship. Nothing serious yet. Just those wonderful little accidental brushes against each other in cramped spaces, and the occasional hand on the shoulder or on the elbow. Nothing overt,

  as I say. But they’re slowly getting there.”

  “Why the hell you do have to say things like that, Eileen?” Steve said, miserably.

  “Because they’re true,” she said. “And isn’t that what we’ve dedicated ourselves to, Steve?

  Truth above all? And that’s what McCain wants, too, isn’t it, McCain? Truth.”

  I wanted to run out the door. I’d learned far more about their relationship than I’d wanted to.

  I hated her for being so pathetically strong, and him for being so ruthlessly weak. He was a lot more dangerous than she was. He’d pull you down and destroy you without even understanding what he was doing.

  “Anyway,” she said, nodding toward the front door and the girl who just left. “She has bad ankles. And that’s a moral failing of some kind, don’t you think, McCain? Bad ankles? At least Susan had wonderful ankles along with those breasts of hers.”

  She picked up her gloves from the top of the glass rare bookcase. “I think I’ll go make some very strong tea now.”

  She left, sweeping her cape off as she walked to the back.

  “When’s the last time you saw Susan?”

  “You don’t really expect me to talk now, do you, after everything Eileen said?”

  “When was the last time you saw Susan?”

  Fear was in his eyes again. “Why the hell are you asking me these questions?”

  The front door opened. A matronly

  woman in a fur coat came in. She moved with ease for a woman of her age and size. She came directly to Steve. “Eileen called yesterday and said my D. H. Lawrence books were in.” She smiled at me. She had a nice smile, actually. “They’re not for me, they’re for my niece, believe it or not. She loves D.

&n
bsp; H. Lawrence. And she’s seen La Dolce Vita three times. I guess she’s sort of a beatnik. They live in Chicago and her husband’s in advertising. He’s a beatnik on weekends.”

  “I’ll get the books, Mrs. Beamer.”

  I waited around, looking at the new Hemingway editions Scribner’s had published over the past year. If I ever got money, these were the kinds of editions I would buy. Steve came back but two more customers came in.

  There was no point waiting anymore.

  I walked to the front door. The matron with the D. H. Lawrence books was just ahead of me.

  “I hope I don’t get arrested for having pornography,” she laughed.

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “Call me if you need me.”

  She giggled naughtily.

  It was nearing lunchtime. I decided to stop by my folks’. I started to go get my ragtop.

  Somebody said, “Hey. Hey, you!”

  When I turned, I saw the girl from Leopold Bloom’s running to catch up with me.

  “I overheard what you were talking about with Steve. About Susan Whitney?”

  I nodded.

  “He had this real battle with her on the phone the day before she died.”

  “How do you know it was her?”

  “Oh, it was her all right. He was obsessed.

  He called her all the time and threatened her. He couldn’t let go.”

  I thought about what Eileen had said about this girl and Steve. “Eileen thinks you and Steve are about to have an affair.”

  She laughed. Her face was tinted red from the cold. It was a healthy and appealing red. “An affair? Are you kidding? They both give me the creeps. All that melodramatic

  artsy-craftsy bullshit.” She leaned closer.

  “She’s got a stack of romance novels in the back she’s always reading and he’s got a bunch of dirty paperbacks. You hear the crap she gave me about a fifteen-minute break? They don’t know it yet but this is my last day. I’ve got a better job in Iowa City.”

  “Well, good luck, and thanks for telling me that.”

  She laughed again. “I think it’d be cool if Steve had killed her. At least he would’ve done something with his life. What a douche bag that guy is.” Then, “Say, do you know Maggie Yates?”

  The name jolted me. I wondered if she knew about Maggie Yates and me.

  But she quickly went on. “I saw Maggie and Susan in the store together a few times. You might ask Maggie about her. She’s kind of crazy, but I like her.”

  “Maybe I should look her up.”

  “You know where she lives?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I know where she lives.”

  I should. I’d slept there often enough.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  She gave me a pert little salute, cute as hell, and then turned and walked away. Iowa City already had a million great-looking girls.

  Why couldn’t she stay here?

  Twenty

  The colors in housing developments always get me. Orchid and mauve and puce, among others.

  Colors I don’t associate with houses. The other thing that always gets me is how many Tv antennas there are. The houses look as if they’re hooked up for direct contact with Mars.

  But despite my misgivings about housing developments—ll villages whose dynamics Nathaniel Hawthorne would have understood very well —I was glad for Mom and Dad that they had this place. Mom not only got a new place out of the Knolls but also a garbage disposal, a telephone with an extension in another part of the house, a sundeck and a full basement. Dad got a garage, a big backyard and a look of pride when he sat on the small front porch with his can of Falstaff and listened to the Cubs on the radio.

  Personally, I like an older house with fewer neighbors. And a lot less excitement. All the people who bought houses out here lived through the Depression, and most of the men fought in the war. So this is nirvana to them. This is what they dreamed of in the years following the stock market crash, and when they were overseas watching their friends die. And so there’s an edge of desperation here, everybody always telling one another how lucky they are and how happy they are. Steak is the talisman: a family that can have steak twice a week is in good shape. And these days most blue-collar families can eat steak just about as often as white-collar families. It’s as if they’re scared it’ll all go away if they don’t constantly remind themselves of their great good fortune.

  Mom and Dad are like that, but not to an obnoxious degree. Every time Mom opens her big new Kelvinator double-door refrigerator, she says, “I just don’t know how I got along all these years without it.” And whenever she

  carries a load of laundry down to the basement, she stops and looks at me and says, “I wish my mother’d lived long enough to see my laundry room. She’d just go crazy about it.” For Dad, it’s the large shop in the basement. No more cold garages on winter nights; no more leaky roofs that rust out tools. Dad’s got a regular workshop down there and he loves it. You can smell freshly sawn lumber and hear the table saw whining through wood so new it’s sometimes green.

  I could smell the soup the minute Mom opened the door. Tomato bisque. Homemade. How could I say no?

  Over lunch, I said, “Ruthie isn’t here, is she?”

  “Ruthie? She’s in school.” She gave me a funny look for asking such a stupid question.

  Mom is pretty. I suppose most boys think their mothers are pretty. But mine really is.

  Not that there’s much of her to be pretty.

  Eighty-nine pounds and five-foot-one. Dad had to win her away from an accountant named Nesmith. Mom always says it was because of Dad’s curly red locks. She said he had the most beautiful hair she’d ever seen. Dad always looks uncomfortable when she says that. And then Mom’ll get a little teary and talk about what a good man he’s been to her all these years and how she just can’t imagine what her life would’ve been without him. They still dance in the kitchen on Saturday nights, the radio playing the old tunes, Benny Goodman and Harry James and Artie Shaw, and still make out in front of the Tv and jump up like teenagers whenever one of us kids show up.

  “So everything’s going all right with her?” I said around a spoonful of tomato bisque. I tossed the words off, as if I was just making conversation.

  But now I’d gotten her curious. “Why wouldn’t everything be all right?”

  “Just wondering was all, Mom. I saw her over in town a couple of days ago and she looked tired.”

  “Oh,” Mom said. She looked satisfied that I’d explained my curiosity. “It’s her grades. You know how hard she studies. She’s got a bunch of tests coming up. So she stays up all night. The poor kid.”

  The phone rang. Mom went to the

  yellow wall phone. “It’s so handy to have a phone in the kitchen.”

  I smiled.

  It was a friend of hers wanting a recipe. Mom consulted a card file she kept. She read it slowly, giving her friend plenty of time to write down each ingredient.

  I was getting groggy. The soup and the kitchen-warmth and the slow way Mom was talking made me want to go upstairs and pick up a Ray Bradbury paperback and read for a while and then drift off to sleep, the way I used to in high school. I’d always been in such a hurry to grow up. Now I wondered if high school was the best time I’d ever have.

  When she hung up, she came back and sat down, her shoulder-length dark hair showing inevitable streaks of gray, her sweet little face still wrinkle-free. Dad was the one showing his age and sometimes when I looked at him I felt so sad I had to look away.

  “What time’s her last class these days?”

  “Ruthie’s?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She usually gets out at two forty-five.”

  “Oh.”

  “And then heads over to Sheen’s.”

  Sheen’s was a clothing store where Ruthie worked two hours after school every day, putting in a full day on Saturdays. Saving for college.

  She was watching me
. “You know what’s funny?”

  “Funny weird or funny ha-ha?”

  “Funny weird.”

  “What?”

  “That you haven’t mentioned anything about Kenny Whitney.”

  “Not much to mention.”

  “Doris’ husband—Doris down the street here—he’s a cop and he says that the judge doesn’t think Kenny killed his wife.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You don’t? How come?”

  I shook my head, finishing up my homemade soup. “I’m not sure. I mean, there’s some evidence he didn’t—at least it looks like evidence to me—but even before that, I just had the sense he didn’t kill her.”

  “I have to be careful about what I say around Doris.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know, you working for the judge and all.”

  “Because her husband likes Sykes?”

  “Yes. He and the chief go fishing a lot.”

  “Right. Probably when they should be out doing their jobs.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. I just mentioned that I have to be careful.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “The judge isn’t exactly well-liked by most people, you know.”

  I stood up and went over and kissed her on the cheek. “The judge? Not well-liked?” I grinned at her. “You must be talking to the wrong people.”

  “Oh, you,” she said. Then took my hand.

  I’d never noticed her liver spots before. “I wish you’d stop by more often. I mean, we’re right here in the same town.”

  “I know, Mom,” I said. “I’ll try

  harder. I promise.”

  Judge Whitney said, “Blackmail? For what?”

  She sat on the edge of her desk, a paradigm of style in her black suit and red blouse, the cut of both vaguely Spanish, a Gauloise going in one slender hand and a snifter of brandy in the other.

  “So he never told you about it?” I said.

  Irritation shone in her glance and voice.

  “McCain, you don’t seem to understand. Kenny and I never communicated unless it was absolutely necessary. Having him out to the house would be like having Adlai Stevenson over for dinner.”