“Well, he had an accident over there tonight. Cracked his skull on the cement floor. Anyway, the body was waiting here for me when I got home from the meeting and I’ve just had a look at him. He’s got two nasty lumps on the back of his head as well as the fracture in front. Like from a lead pipe or something like that.”
Bassett cradled the phone between his head and his shoulder and automatically began to button his shirt. “You think it’s connected with our business tonight, is that it?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Toby said. “But the thing is, I can’t get hold of anybody in Hillside. There’s a big fire down there, the operator says.”
“I’ll get things rolling,” Bassett said. “Get the coroner first, but don’t do anything on him till we get some pictures, eh?”
“Right.”
Bassett took the time to go to the kitchen for a cup of strong cold coffee. It was always there. If it were still there in the morning his wife would throw it out and assume he had got to bed at a decent hour.
Jurisdiction. He was always having to back into a case, and generally after it was well mucked up. He would take his oath that wherever MacAndrews had been killed it might as well have been in Grand Central Station for the traffic through it since. He began making phone calls. He was exceeding his authority, he well knew, but he counted on opening up the Pontiac and getting to Kearns himself before the first of the state technical trucks could reach the scene. They had ten miles to roll, he but five. He gave the locations and then instructions to stand by until the local officer was on hand. Then he called his own boss and got the okay to do what he had already done.
The roads were all but deserted. He did not need to use his siren, the only police equipment he had. It was his own car. In a way, the fire might prove fortuitous: It would keep the volunteers occupied. Then he thought what a hell of a note it was to be grateful that somebody’s house was burning down—just so he could do his job better.
Bassett had to park a block from the blaze and walk; the Hillside police car was parked crosswise to block the street to traffic. Bassett opened the door of the car. Inside, the radio was on, county police central droning the usual communications. Bassett went on. Fire equipment from Anders Cove, the next town, was on hand as well as the two Hillside engines. Twenty or so men were working furiously, bravely, for the fire was whipping out of the upstairs windows, and it wasn’t safe on the roof of the frame house at all, but men were up there all the same, chopping holes, while others dragged the hoses to their furthest reach, not quite far enough. It was an awesome sight, at once terrible and magnificent-like some primeval battle, man against nature. Other men were hosing the next house, for the wind was coming up from the north, carrying sparks like skyrockets in the night. A younger batch of volunteers was keeping back the people of the neighborhood who had come out in their nightclothes under their coats. Bassett wondered if there was a killer in this crowd. It was too soon to speculate on that, but he realized that if there were, the fire might not be so fortuitous for a policeman after all. With all this excitement, nobody was going to remember any other odd thing in the town with any degree of reliability.
Kearns was easily discovered. He stood between the fire trucks, his hands behind his back, his feet spread, his body tilted forward attentively, and with a great, dead cigar in his mouth.
“Kearns,” Bassett said.
Kearns squinted at him to see who it was and shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. “Bad one, isn’t it?”
“Toby’s been trying to get hold of you,” Bassett said.
Kearns grunted and jerked his head toward the police car. “Why didn’t he try the radio?”
Bassett said, “Well, I was on hand.” It was better to do it the easy way. Bassett was not a man who yearned after authority. In fact, he did not yearn after police work, having got into it accidentally. He had been trained as a sociologist. But that was before the war.
“What’d he want?”
“MacAndrews seems to have got a couple of raps on the back of his head.”
Kearns took the cigar from his mouth, looked at it, and threw it away. “That a fact?” he said.
The two men walked toward the cars, neither of them actually having taken the lead.
“Funny,” Kearns said. “There didn’t look to have been anything like that happen. Pay night, of course. But the payroll wasn’t touched. We got the day man down to open the safe. Maybe that’s why he got it, because he wouldn’t open up. Mac wasn’t a guy to scare easy.”
“Well, let’s have another look now,” Bassett said. “I assumed you’d want the technical boys to go over the place when you found out. So I rolled them out.”
The police chief hesitated for only a moment. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”
Kearns was no less competent than the majority of men in positions like his. The job paid no great fortune, but more than he could have earned at the plant. He had taken a course at the State Police School, getting the appointment. He was honest, except possibly in the ways politicians sometimes have to balance facts against factions.
Hillside was a factory town, skirted round in recent years by commuters from New York City who settled in the houses owned by families in the Hudson Valley long before the Graham plant had been built, or in homes they built themselves, carving terraces out of the mountainside. But the core of the village population was in the people who had moved in with the factory, two generations before, primarily Italian, but with a sprinkling of other nationalities, largely intermarried by now. It was a town proud of its autonomy, delivering a strong one-party vote, working-class conservative, and ruggedly determined to keep its independence. It would not consolidate with other areas in school, police, or sanitation facilities. It was a town determined to take care of its own.
They had almost reached the car when a great hulk of a boy ran up to them, calling to Kearns. “Chief, have you seen my sister?”
“No. Wouldn’t she be in with the women at Lodini’s?”
“I didn’t look there,” he said, and wiped his dirty face with the back of his sleeve. “You’d think she’d be out here helping, wouldn’t you?”
“Not much for a girl to do, Georgie,” Kearns said.
The boy loped back toward the fire.
“Not much for anybody to do,” Kearns added. “Want to take your own car?”
“I’ll go down with you,” Bassett said. He might want to use the radio. “The boy’s house?”
In the car Kearns said, “Most of the houses along here are tinderboxes. Bad wiring, junk. Getting as bad as Moontown—that’s the colored section.”
“Moontown,” Bassett said.
“Got its name from Prohibition. That’s where the gambling is they were talking about tonight. Those people live on it—and religion.”
“What else have they got?” Bassett said.
“Oh, I don’t know. They get the same at the plant as a white man now. Get laid off a little sooner maybe. That’s all.”
“What about the union?”
“They belong to it—some of them.”
Bassett was trying to think of everything he knew about Hillside. He lived on the other side of the mountain himself, near the county seat where he worked. “That’s autonomous, too, isn’t it?”
“The union? It’s independent if that’s what you mean.”
“Any of the national boys ever come in and try to organize?”
“Nope. They don’t come where they ain’t invited.”
“That’s pretty much the truth, isn’t it?” Bassett mused. He was getting a little sour on trade unionism himself these days. Whether the unions were getting fat or he was, he wasn’t sure. Both probably.
“Young Martin Scully tried to get them in here a couple of years back. It didn’t win him any popularity contest for a while, I’ll tell you that.” Kearns slowed down and looked both ways before driving across the main street. There wasn’t a car in sight. “Matter of fact, he had a fist
fight with MacAndrews over it. The real old-fashioned kind you ain’t seen in years. We got the high school athletic coach to referee it … out back of the plant.” Kearns turned past the Crazy Cat, now all in darkness. “I was just thinking, I won twenty bucks on Mac.”
“He beat the younger man?” Bassett said. He knew MacAndrews had to have been well into his fifties.
“No. But I had good odds on him to stay to the sixth round. And that’s what he did. It cost him a new dental plate but he hung on. Those of us coming out ahead on him chipped in for his new choppers.”
But all the gambling in Hillside was done in Moontown, Bassett thought. He said, “Was there bad blood between him and the young fellow after that?”
“Hell, no,” the police chief said. “That’s how you get rid of bad blood, spill a little of it. Get it out of your system.”
“Might be an idea all the same to have a talk with him,” Bassett said. “Don’t you think?”
“Don’t see where it’ll do any harm. He’s up at the fire right now—first ladder man.”
“No hurry,” Bassett said. The technical truck had just rolled in behind them. “What’s his name again?”
“Scully. Martin Scully. His father used to be the druggist here in town. Married one of the Tonelli girls. They were killed in an auto accident when Martin was a kid. Funny how close things are in this town—Martin goes with Johanna Rocco—and that’s her house they aren’t going to be able to save a stick of.”
If Martin Scully were one of the firemen he’d seen on the roof, Bassett thought, he’d be lucky if they saved a stick of him.
4
GEORGIE RAN FROM ONE operation to another, lending his weight and pull to the hose, his hands to the ladders; he got hold of one of the fire axes and came within an inch of splitting a man’s head with his backswing. Joe Lodini, the fire chief, took the axe from him and ordered him out of the area.
“It’s my house,” Georgie said.
“That don’t give you the privilege of helping it burn down.”
“That’s what you think, man,” Georgie murmured, but under his breath. He faded back into the crowd, but only for a moment. When Daley and Martin Scully started to maneuver the ladders to the south, Georgie could not resist the impulse to help them. He succeeded only in trampling on their feet.
Daley swore at him.
“Watch it, brother,” Georgie warned him. “Just watch it.”
Daley was too surprised to say anything, Rocco telling him to watch it.
Scully said, “Where’s Johanna? Somebody ought to be taking care of her just now, Georgie.”
“Yeah,” George said, again under his breath. “She needs taking care of, all right.” But he fell back to the fringe of the operation, to where he could watch from between the fire trucks. His feet were freezing. How the guys could stand it in rubber boots, he didn’t know. He’d gone hunting in rubber boots once; he could have shot off his own toes and they would have felt better.
A scream went up from the crowd as a section of the roof collapsed in a torrent of sparks. It was the section of the house from which Martin Scully and Daley had just moved the ladder. It passed through Georgie’s mind that if anything happened to Daley, if he was killed, well … He looked around then to see if Pekarik was in the crowd. Not him. He’d be home with the blankets over his head, chicken all the way through. What had been real dumb was messing around with him in the first place.
Shortly after two o’clock the fire was declared under control. By then an odd piece of furniture that wouldn’t burn, such as the brass bedstead in his mother’s room, stood gaunt as a skeleton. And the upstairs bathroom. It made Georgie sick, looking at the sink and the toilet bowl and the knob-footed tub, not because of the way they looked now, but because of his memories of them—the water-stained bowl that Jo couldn’t get clean no matter what—she spent more money on Sani-Flush than he was allowed for cigarets—the chipped tub, and the torn linoleum with the goddamned red paint under it like somebody’d bled to death.
As soon as he declared the fire under control, Chief Lodini said, “Now where’s young Rocco? Let’s find out what happened here.”
Georgie faded back of the trucks and galloped down the other side of the street to Lodini’s house. He wanted to tell his story once and with Johanna there to confirm it. He went round to the kitchen door at the side of the house; a couple of times he had already been there, looking in on Jo who was taking it like she did her father’s death, just sitting and staring. She could cry over the priest all right, but not over her own family. It was hard to dig girls. All the women were yapping, a half-dozen of them maybe. The big round table was stacked with coffee mugs. He could smell the coffee outside. The men would be coming along soon. He’d meant to say something to Daley, to be sure he’d be there when he was telling his story. The trouble with Daley, with all the fire gang, after they’d come off a job you couldn’t speak to them. You’d think they’d just raised the flag on Iwo Jima or something.
The women, all except Jo, looked around when George came in. Mrs. Lodini got up from the table and made him sit down while she got him coffee.
Georgie put his hand on Jo’s shoulder and gave her an awkward hug. The women sounded like Ferucci’s chickens with the clucking of their tongues and their babble of sympathy. Georgie felt he was making a good impression on them.
“You aren’t hurt?” Jo said.
If only he was hurt, Georgie thought, he’d have her eating out of his hand. But the men would be coming up soon. He couldn’t play it both ways. “Naw,” he said with bravura. “But it’s all over and there ain’t much left, Jo.”
“Never mind,” Mrs. Gerosa said, and patted his hand. “We got lots of things for you, clothes and blankets and dishes.”
Things the Salvation Army wouldn’t take for bums off the street. And what she’d like to give to him, Georgie thought: slow poison. He wasn’t good enough for her Rosie. And where the hell was Rosie? Some girl friend who didn’t show up when a guy’s house burned down. Only her old man wouldn’t let her, probably, with the fire gang around. He blew up if anybody just whistled at her. “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Gerosa.” He started to rise when Mrs. Lodini brought him coffee.
“Don’t get up,” she said. “Sugar and milk?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’m in football training.”
“Grandma Tonelli invited us to stay at her house,” Johanna said.
Mrs. Tonelli was no relation to them; she was Martin’s grandmother and she had a lot of other grandchildren living outside Hillside, but everybody in the town called her Grandma Tonelli. Georgie didn’t like the old lady much, except that she had money. That fascinated him. But she had the dark, sharp eyes of a bird and a bird’s way of pecking at you for information. She loved to know everything that was going on. She was the only person he knew who could send for the priest and have him come when she wasn’t sick even.
“Can we go up soon, Georgie?” Johanna asked.
“Sure,” Georgie said, “but I think Mr. Lodini wants to talk to us. You know, how it started and all that. And old Martin, he wants to see you.” He watched the little dilation at his sister’s nostrils, the dropping of her eyes after one startled look at him. Georgie poured it on: “Jeez, was he the hero tonight. The way he was trying to get up the ladder to your room—you’d’ve thought you were in it, I mean.”
“Reckless,” Mrs. Gerosa said. “Like all the Tonellis. They do not care that for life, you would think.” She snapped her fingers.
“Life is like that,” Mrs. Lodini also snapped her fingers. “You heard about Mr. MacAndrews tonight. At his desk one minute. Dead the next. Who can tell when he gets up in the morning where he’ll lie down at night?”
Georgie’s heart began to pound. He hid his face behind the great mug of coffee, spilling it when he burned his lip.
“I found a penny today,” Mrs. Gerosa said solemnly. “It was black like the heart of a miser …” She said the word
in Italian, unsure of it in English, but everybody at the table, even Georgie, understood it. “I said to myself, MacAndrews must have lost it. And I threw it away. Yes! I threw it as far as I could. Men,” she nodded morosely. “All men!” Then she reached across to Johanna and caught her hand. “Except your Martin. He has courage.”
Johanna merely stared at her.
Someone across the table grunted. “Wait till he has a houseful of kids. Courage is what you lose a little every time you get another baby.”
Georgie wanted them to talk about MacAndrews. Why didn’t they talk more? Wasn’t it something to talk about? Or wasn’t old Kearns telling what really happened to him?
Mrs. Gerosa said to Johanna, “How cold your hand is. But your heart, it will soon be warm, eh? That is all that matters.” She nodded knowingly toward the door. The sound of the men’s approach confirmed her meaning: Martin’s coming. The flashing light of the ladder truck played across the room as the truck was turned around, and even as the men came in, the low moan of the siren could be heard as the driver headed it down to the station house. The pumps and hoses would have to stay on for a while.
The women withdrew from the table as the men came in slowly, for they stopped at the door to remove their boots. Martin Scully went to Johanna directly. He was in his late twenties, good-looking but not in the way of most Hillsiders: his hair was light brown and his eyes blue. Georgie thought he looked like he’d been on an all-night bender just now, his eyes bloodshot and watery from the smoke. Georgie hung close to his sister.
Martin took her hands. She didn’t seem anxious to give them, Georgie thought. “I’m sorry this had to happen to you, Jo,” Scully said. “We tried our damndest …” He shook his head.
“I know,” she said. Georgie thought she was trying to get her hands back.
“And I’m sorry about not calling you earlier,” Martin said. “But every time I looked out, the booth was loaded with kids.” Scully lived over the drugstore that had been his father’s across the street from the Crazy Cat.
Black Sheep, White Lamb Page 3