When I come to a short metal bridge that spans the stream and connects with a narrow country road that leads into town, I pull the hearse off onto the soft shoulder and get out. I spot a lone fly fisherman working the area under the bridge for the trout that might be hiding amongst the rocks and shadows. Walking onto the designated pedestrian pathway set along the far right side of the bridge, I stop in its center, lean both elbows onto the railing, and poke my head over the side to look directly down at the fisherman. For a quiet moment, I watch him work his line with the skill and grace of a lion tamer and his bullwhip. I don’t want to disturb his concentration by shouting out at him, so I wait until he senses my presence and looks up.
“Any luck?” I pose.
“Haven’t caught anything but a chill today,” he says.
“Maybe they haven’t stocked the stream yet. It’s early in the season.”
The bearded man takes in some line with his right hand while holding to his fly rod with his left. “Some optimist you are. Are you gonna watch or you gonna fish?”
“Neither. I’m working.”
“Somebody’s got to.”
“You from around here?”
“That’d be about right,” he says, gearing up for another cast, cocking the nimble rod over his right shoulder.
“You know of a man named Roger Walls?”
He stops his cast, allows the loose line to drop onto the swift moving stream. “Kind of question is that? Anyone who lives here knows Roger. He’s famous.”
“Well, old famous Roger seems to be missing in action these days and I’ve been hired to try and find him. Any ideas?”
“He’s missing? What are you, a cop?”
“A private detective. His literary agent has hired me to find him.”
The fly fisherman smiles.
“You really a private detective?” he asks with a smile. “Or you telling tall tales?”
“Says so on my license.”
“You carry a gun?”
I open my leather coat just enough to reveal the inverted butt of my shoulder-holstered Browning .38.
“Nice piece,” he nods. “I sometimes deer hunt with a pistol in the fall.”
“Any idea where Roger might run off to if given the chance?”
“Can’t imagine why he’d run off, unless he shot somebody again.” He shoots me a quizzical look. “He shoot somebody again?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Must be he’s on one of his benders.”
“He pull a lot of benders?”
“Good for one or so a year.”
“He always leave town when that happens?”
The fly fisherman nods, while once more retrieving his line.
“Almost always. But he always comes back after a week or so, claiming to have no idea where he’s been.”
If all this is simply about a bender, I could probably camp out in Chatham for a week, collect my money from Bonchance, and wait it out on the comfort of a bar stool until Walls shows back up. Maybe even do a little fishing. But that wouldn’t be very honorable of me, and I suck at fly fishing.
“Where’s a good place to start looking for Roger? In your opinion?”
“How about the tavern? It’s the only one in Old Chatham. Just keep on following the road until it makes the bend at the start of town. It’s directly across the street from the post office. Roger has his own stool in the far corner as you walk in the door. There’s a bust of him set there.”
“A bust. You mean, like a statue?”
“Yup. Local artist carved it up in clay. Pretty good likeness.”
I thought about my own book. If it sold well, I wondered if I would ever become famous enough to have my own stool at a village tavern. My own bust.
“How nice for Roger. Must be nice to be famous.”
“Can’t be that great if he feels the need to get fucked up all the time.”
“You got a point there. It’s why I avoid being rich and famous myself.”
The fisherman laughs. “Hey, Old Chatham is smaller than small. Blink and you’ll miss it altogether. Whether he likes it or not, Roger is one famous writer. And he’s our local Hemingway. He brings in the much needed revenue from tourists looking to catch a look. Or wannabe writers looking for advice.”
“I’ll start there. At the stool and the bust and the bar.”
“Good luck.”
“You too.”
He casts his line under the bridge. I hold my position to see if a trout strikes. But nothing happens. What did a famous fisherman say once? They call it fishing because you can’t always expect to land a fish with every cast. Otherwise, they wouldn’t call it fishing at all. They’d call it, catching.
“Don’t give up,” I say.
“Back ‘atcha.”
I walk back across the bridge toward Dad’s ride while contemplating the fact that I am fishing for Roger Walls. And so far, not a single nibble.
Chapter 8
THE CHATHAM TAVERN LOOKS like one of those ancient American watering holes that might have been frequented by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson back in the day. Maybe the joint they would have come to immediately after scribbling their signatures on the Declaration of Independence and committing high treason against Mother England. Made entirely of rough wood planks and heavy beams, the low-ceilinged establishment is heated by an honest-to-goodness hearth-and-kettle brick fireplace to the left of the door. To the right is a long wooden bar so old its thick plank top is worn from the countless elbows, glasses, mugs, and bottles that have no doubt occupied it for a century or more.
Just like the fly fisherman told me, at the very end of the bar is an empty bar stool sporting a gold-plated plaque screwed onto two of its four legs. Even from where I’m standing, just inside the door, I can see the plaque has the name ROGER WALLS embossed in thick upper-case letters, as if the name must be presented in a way that resembles the larger-than-life literary legend. Set to the right side of the stool on top of the bar, is a life-sized bust of Walls’s bulbous head. It’s made of hardened, kiln dried clay, and it depicts the writer’s bearded, wide-eyed face as it scowls ferociously at the patrons who occupy the rest of the bar, as if even in his absence, they are nothing but a royal pain in his writerly ass.
There aren’t a whole lot of customers at the bar. Two men I take to be spin fisherman drinking tall-necked Buds. Both of them wearing the same green, brown, and white camo overalls and lace-up boots they might wear during deer hunting season, with matching camo baseball hats.
Rednecks.
It makes sense to me they’ve gravitated to a place along the empty bar situated directly across from a deer head that’s been mounted to the bar-back wall, a Remington lever-action rifle like the kind Hoss used on Bonanza supported horizontally atop its twelve-point rack. There’s a framed black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall below the deer head. It’s of a clean-shaven man who’s dressed in checkered hunting jacket. No doubt the man responsible for the impressive kill. Possibly the original bar owner, if my built-in shit detector serves me right. Moonlight the Master Sleuth.
I wait at the bar in Walls’s designated spot for a full minute or so, with only the pine wood-burning crackle coming from the fireplace and the mumbled voices of the rednecks to fill the silence, until a woman appears out from behind a curtain that separates the bar back from an adjoining room. Standing maybe five foot one or two with short, spiked black hair, she’s bears the stocky build of a country woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone, not the least of which would be a drunken, belligerent customer. I peg her for about forty-five or forty-six. She’s wearing a plain gray sweatshirt over a pair of loose blue jeans and on her feet, a pair of black pointy-toed cowboy boots. Far be it from me to make any kind of judgment regarding one’s . . . let’s call it, sexual preference. As far as I’m concerned, whatever anyone does behind closed doors is their own business so long as it doesn’t involve kids and so long as they aren’t harming anyon
e. But if I had to guess, I’d venture to say this woman prefers the fairer sex when it comes to getting her rocks off. Something we both have in common.
She approaches without a smile.
“That seat’s reserved,” she says, her lips hardly moving when she speaks.
“I can see that,” I say, putting on the best Moonlight smile I can manage. “Mr. Walls is precisely the reason why I’m here.”
She stares at me. Correction. Not at me necessarily, but into me. As if on cue, the two rednecks behind her put an abrupt end to their conversation midstream, and glare at me from over her shoulder.
“Okay now that I have everyone’s attention,” I say after a beat, “my name is Dick Moonlight. I’ve been hired to find Roger. I’m a private detective.”
More silence. More stares. Like I’m an old rusted out pickup they want to tear up for spare parts.
“Tell you what,” I say, my eyes focused only on the barmaid. “Why don’t I start all over? How about you give me a Budweiser like the kind these fine gentlemen are drinking.” I dig into my pocket for a five-spot, set in onto the bar. “I’ve already had one today. What can one more hurt?”
The barmaid peels her eyes away from me long enough to slide open a cooler and dig out a beer. Uncapping the top with the metal opener mounted to the underside of the bar, she sets it not directly in front of me, but in front of the empty stool beside me to my left. I get the point and shift myself over.
She grabs the five, makes change with it, and sets it down beside the beer.
“Keep it,” I say, trying my best to maintain my Moonlight glow.
“What’s this about Roger going missing, Mr. Moonlight?” she asks.
“You don’t have to tell this Moonlight asshole nothin’, May,” barks one of the rednecks. He’s the taller one of the two, sporting a black, three-day growth. I can tell he’s downed a few already by the way he’s trying not to confuse the syllables in his words. “Ain’t none of his business.” He says “business” like “bishzzznezzz.”
“Gospel,” chimes in the shorter, chubbier, clean-shaven one. “And he ain’t showed you any ID neither.”
In my head I’m picturing the movie Deliverance. Tighty-whitey-wearing Ned Beatty being raped doggy style by two backwood gangbangers. Makes me yearn for the city life.
I drink down a swallow of beer, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Tucked against my ribs inside my leather coat is my Browning .38 caliber. Not that I’m going to need it for anything. But it feels good to know it’s there, hanging right beside my broken, but still beating, heart.
“Well, where are my manners,” I say, pulling out my wallet, flashing May my laminated PI license. She steps up to the bar, gives it a once over, her lips silently reciting my name like she can read without mouthing the words. “Look good to you, May? All I’s dotted and T’s crossed?”
She steps back, looks into my eyes.
“How am I supposed to know? I’ve never seen one of those before.”
I return the wallet to my back pocket, drink down another sip of beer. “You’ll just have to have a little faith.”
“Hey don’t you make fun of May,” Bearded Redneck spits. “She might be a carpet muncher, but she’s one of us. Now ain't that the truth, May?”
She slowly turns to the redneck. “Call me a carpet muncher again, Harlan, and I’ll bite off your ball sack.”
“Harlan?” I say. “Never met a real Harlan before.”
“Well, you just did, wise-ass. So watch your step.”
I turn back to the alternative lifestyle-abiding barmaid. “Like I said, May. I’m currently trying to locate the whereabouts of your most famous patron. Would you care to offer up any ideas? Any starting places?”
She crosses her arms over a barrel bosom. “You’re standing in the starting place. Or directly beside it, anyway.”
“I’m guessing Walls spends a lot of time here.”
The two rednecks both break out in laughter.
“That’s an understatement,” May smirks. “Roger pays my salary. We hurt when he’s not around. He attracts a crowd, too. And that crowd drinks, especially with Roger’s encouragement, because Roger hates to drink alone.”
“Then you must have noticed his lack of presence in recent days. Can you tell me how long he’s been gone?”
She cocks her head over her right shoulder.
“This time? I’d say about a week and a half so far.”
“And if he’s on a bender, about how long will he be gone? In your estimation?”
“If it’s one of his typical benders, he won’t be much more than a week or two before he comes crawling back in, filthy, broke, and not remembering a goddamned thing. He’ll sleep it off in the back room for a day or two and then get his shit together over a pitcher of Bloody Marys.”
May’s story about Walls’s benders matches that of the fly fisherman’s. Could it be that I’m actually making progress?
“How come he doesn’t head right home?”
The rednecks choke on their laughter again. May shoots them a quick look over her opposite shoulder. It immediately shuts them up.
“His wife still lives in the house,” she explains, turning back to me.
“I heard he was married again. To an actress.”
“Well, this is wife number eight, and she’s rather young. Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. Her name is Sissy. She’s kicked him out a few times for his drinking, drugging, and womanizing. She’s always on him about it, and the more she does it, the worse he gets. The benders become more frequent if he’s not writing. And when he’s on a bender he can’t write, even if he wants to.”
“So what you’re describing here is a vicious cycle.”
“Something like that.” She shakes her head. “Poor Roger. If it’s not the booze that’s his own worst enemy, it’s the pussy. If only he could learn to keep that cock of his in his pants for a while, he might get down to writing another good book instead of that silly barroom poetry.”
“I take it Roger is trapped in yet another bad marriage?”
More guffaws from the rednecks.
“You can say that again, Mister,” offers the clean-shaven one.
“If you had to guess, where would Roger go on one of these benders?”
“Probably Albany,” May says. “But you could spend your entire life chasing him from one bar to another and never find him.”
“Will his wife talk to me?”
May works up a smile. “You can certainly try.”
“You got an address for casa Walls?”
May shoots another look at the rednecks, as if she needs their approval. The skinny, bearded one glares back at her silently. But his silence is deafening.
“Come on, Harlan,” she says, “use your words like a good boy. He’s gonna' find the place anyway. And besides, Sissy will probably chase him off before he gets his first question out of that pretty little mouth of his.”
“Pretty little mouth,” I repeat, Deliverance flashing through my brain again. “Thanks for saying so. I think.”
May picks up a pen from beside the cash register, jots down a couple of lines on a Post-it note, hands it to me from across the bar. I pocket it and then finish my beer.
“Thanks for your help,” I say, backing away from the bar. “Enjoy the rest of this fine afternoon in God’s country.”
May says nothing. But the rednecks both grin at me like I’m not a human being, but something that might taste good for dinner roasted over a spit.
“She wasn’t lying, Mr. Moonlight,” Harlan says as I approach the door.
“I’m sorry?” I say, my left hand gripping the handle.
“You do have yourself a pertty little mouth,” he mumbles.
I feel my heart pound in my throat, visions of a Ned Beatty down on his knees, his underwear wrapped around his ankles, dancing in my head.
Clean-Shaven Chubby Redneck snorts like a pig.
I open the door and shoot on out like swine e
scaping the butcher’s blade.
Chapter 9
BEHIND THE WHEEL OF Dad’s hearse, I read the address May scribbled down for me on the Post-it note.
It tells me to head to 16 Pipeline Road.
Sounds like a country address to me, if ever there was one.
I pick up my smart phone, type the address into the Google search engine, thumb send. A map appears. It says, “Get Directions.” I do it. Thank God for GPS and digital technology. Otherwise, I might actually have to think for myself or, worse yet, stop at a gas station and ask for directions from a real live human being.
I turn the big eight-cylinder engine over, listen to it purr. Glancing into the driver’s side-view mirror, I determine the coast is clear and drive out onto the gravel-covered road, heading in the direction of Walls’s spread. Over my right shoulder I can’t help but notice an old, blue Ford F-150 pickup truck parked alongside the road. It’s got a gun rack mounted behind the seats, at least two bolt action rifles stored there. The tires are thick, off-road, mud chompers. There’s a couple of bumper stickers stuck to the rear fender. The first one depicts the red and blue X-shaped rebel flag of the long defunct US Confederacy. Another one says, “How’s my driving? Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT.” The license plate is a specialty vanity plate. It says, “Free Bird 69.”
As I speed up Dad’s hearse, I picture my new redneck friends cruising the streets of downtown Old Chatham in that truck, a case of beer set out on the seat between them. I think about being a single girl walking those streets as the truck passes by. Or worse, a lone African American, Hasidic Jew, or Asian citizen. I picture empty beer cans flying out the window, along with a redneck curse only a Neo-Nazi or a Ku Klux Klan member would appreciate.
But then just as quickly, I try and remove the evil thoughts from my brain. High blood pressure is bad for the bullet.
Ten minutes later I arrive at a wooden gate attached to a long perimeter fence of wood and barbed wire. It looks like something you might see out west on a cattle ranch. There’s a large sign nailed to the top most horizontal board on the rectangular gate. It reads:
Moonlight Sonata: (A Dick Moonlight PI Thriller No. 7) Page 5