Riders on the Storm

by Ed Gorman

  Then Byrnes went looking for a lawyer….

  That morning five years ago I’d been prepping for an important case when Jamie said “Oh.” There was a disturbed tone in her voice, a mixture of shock and surprise. When I looked up from my papers I saw what that “Oh” was all about. Standing in my doorway was none other than Teddy Byrnes. Jamie had recognized him. A whole lot of people knew who he was. He reveled in it.

  He wore a white shirt, blue slacks, carefully tousled hair, and a big black Irisher smile. “They said I should get the best and so here I am, Counselor.”

  I would have been flattered if I hadn’t known the truth. He was out on bail and looking for legal representation. None of the other firms in town would touch him. The public defender he’d had said that he feared for his life. Well-known legal expert Teddy Byrnes hadn’t liked the public defender they had come up with and had started shoving him around and making threats.

  “No thanks, Byrnes.”

  But this was a movie moment for him and he played it through. “You know the word I like, Counselor? ‘Sumptuous.’ I learned that by reading a lot of your friend Thibodeau’s books. That surprise you, that bad-ass Teddy Byrnes is a reader? Well I am. I even read Hemingway sometimes. I think you could use that in my defense. That I read a lot. That I’m not this terrible hood people need to be afraid of.” Byrnes was telling the truth. High IQ and a big reader.

  “But I forgot what I was talking about. ‘Sumptuous.’ I see something sumptuous right now.” He shifted his gaze to Jamie. She was breathing nervously and staring straight ahead. His legend could do that to you. “I’ve been to every law firm in town but none of them has got a little gal like you do, Counselor.”

  The “Counselor” reference had triggered a memory I could not bring into focus. And then it was there. Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear, based on one of my favorite novels by John D. MacDonald, whom I’d been reading since sixth grade. Throughout the movie Mitchum mockingly refers to attorney Gregory Peck as “Counselor.”

  Teddy Byrnes was a movie fan.

  Then he did it. Advanced quickly on Jamie. He put his hands on her shoulders and was trying to spin her around in her desk chair so she’d face him fully. She screamed.

  I didn’t think. I acted.

  He was taller, thicker, stronger but I hit him in the side of the face anyway. And in the haze of those few seconds he landed at least six or seven punches on my head and chest and stomach, Jamie screaming all the time.

  As he charged out of the office he said: “We’ll meet again, you little asshole.”

  Now, sitting with Kenny….

  “Teddy Byrnes,” I said.

  “Guess he’s meaner than ever.”

  “That’s hard to imagine. How he could be meaner.”

  “I’d be damned careful of him, Sam. Just stick to Lon Anders.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like a very good idea. Just sticking to Lon Anders.”

  My bones still remembered the impact of Byrnes’s fists.

  7

  THE REXALL DRUGSTORE WAS NOTABLE IN MY LIFE FOR A NUMBER of reasons. It was where their metal paperback rack provided a good share of my reading material, which ran to crime fiction of the Gold Medal Books variety. I’d grown up on writers such as Peter Rabe, Charles Williams, Vin Packer and Richard Prather. Not to mention Mickey Spillane. The sandwiches were very good, the coffee was strong and hot, and one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in the entire valley had worked there since we’d graduated from high school. No college for Mary. She had to work to support her father, who was struggling with cancer.

  She was always too modest to admit it but people liked to tell her that she looked very much like the actress Jean Simmons, that kind of gentle but riveting beauty. And she did even in the yellow uniform she wore every day.

  A man in a suit sitting a couple of stools from me said, “Mary, hon, keep the radio on, will you? I want to hear the senator’s press conference.”

  Knowing my political tastes, she glanced at me and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Costello. It doesn’t start for another ten minutes yet.”

  She brought me coffee black and a small glazed donut. What she didn’t bring me was her usual smile and I didn’t blame her.

  “Hi, Sam. How’ve you been?”

  “Pretty good until last night.”

  “Poor Will and Karen.”

  At that Mr. Costello, who owned the haberdashery, snapped, “How about poor Steve Donovan?”

  “You’re right, Mr. Costello. Of course, poor Steve Donovan. It’s just that I don’t believe that Will could kill anybody. Sam and I grew up with him.”

  “I know,” Mr. Costello snapped, “in the Hills.”

  We were both surprised by his anger. Red tinted Mary’s lovely face. I said, “Yeah, everybody who grew up in the Hills is a born killer.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But that’s what you meant.”

  “Drugs, hippies, Negroes wanting everything for free—that’s what the Hills has turned into these days. And whether you want to admit it or not, McCain, it wasn’t any better in the old days. Now, Mary, turn that radio up so we don’t miss anything.”

  After she turned the volume up, she walked back to me, “The girls leave for three weeks in another week.”

  “That’s right. Wes has them for three weeks.” Wes Lindstrom was Mary’s ex. His family had owned the Rexall for years but when he’d dumped Mary for the final time—he’d had two trial runs previously—he sold the place and went to live with his new bride in Louisiana. Given his personality, he was probably going to set up a plantation and kidnap him some slaves.

  “I’ve been thinking, Mary—”

  Costello was intently trying to listen while intently pretending not to.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “I’d like that, Sam. And so would the girls.”

  The relationship was just so damned entangled. I had been in love with the beautiful Pamela Forrest from fourth grade until just a few years ago. But she’d never been in love with me. And Mary had been in love with me for just about as long, though I think she really did fall in love with Lindstrom after a few years of going out with him. The complications of all this confused me; I’d always been told by my friends—and my parents—that Mary was the girl I should marry. If it was vanity, as my mom had told me one day long ago, Mary was just as beautiful as Pamela and maybe even more so, and there was no doubt who would make the better wife and mother.

  Mary was the sensible choice and since when did reckless buccaneers like Sam McCain settle for “sensible.”

  So of course I’d told Mary that maybe we should take a little break till I could figure out what was going on. She confused things even more by not reacting with anger or self-pity or even sadness. Just that quiet, dignified Mary acceptance.

  “We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled program so that we can bring you the following press conference with Senator O’Shay, who is speaking from the steps of the county courthouse.”

  Senator O’Shay: “This is a sad day not only for me personally but for the entire nation. Our country is in crisis and we need the kind of leadership and patriotism that young men like Steve Donovan can bring to our Congress. But Steve was cut down before he had the chance, cut down by the sickness that infects our nation more and more every day. So before I take questions I want to offer my sincere condolences to Valerie Donovan. The only satisfaction that we can have now is knowing that the person who murdered young Steve will spend his life in prison. Like many of you I would have preferred the death penalty, but the Democrats in our state legislature chose to encourage lawbreakers by doing away with it. Now I’ll take questions.”

  I shook my head and said it loud so Costello would be sure to hear it: “Yeah, if there’s one thing O’Shay’s known for, it’s telling the truth.”

  I reached over and touched Mary’s arm. “Let’s get together tonight.”

  Then I left before I got all t
hat patented O’Shay truth-telling inflicted on me.

  8

  ZOOM WAS A MOTORCYCLE SHOP LOCATED IN THE HILLS. WHILE they had a few new bikes there they mostly sold very reconditioned ones to the lower-income men and teenagers of the Hills. The owner and chief mechanic was Tim Duffy, who’d done a stretch in Anamosa for stealing cars and selling them to a chop shop in Des Moines. I’d arranged for him to talk to some state bureau boys—name some names—and thus gotten him a sentence reduced to only two and a half years with good behavior. He was now the father of three and an usher at church.

  He loved getting greasy. He’d told me that once with a big proud grin, and since he’d been greasy when he told me, I believed him. Today was no exception. T-shirt, jeans, motorcycle boots all glazed with grease as he came walking out of the large garage that sat next to his small showroom and office. He was a country-western fan and so was I if all the songs were sung by Johnny Cash. His mechanics had similar tastes, as you could hear from the twang that bounced off the walls.

  “Hey, man, how you doing?”

  “Pretty good until last night.”

  Short, lean with the puggest of noses, he hadn’t been cut out for a life of crime. His parole officer told me that he’d never seen anybody turn his life around as absolutely as Duffy had.

  “Donovan getting killed. Everybody thinks my friend Will Cullen did it. But I’m sure he didn’t.”

  “Oh, right. That’s all anybody’s been talking about all morning. Every hour on the hour when the news comes on, my men stop working so they can hear it. It’s a pretty big deal, Donovan getting ready to run for Congress and all.”

  “You ever know Donovan?”

  “A little out of my league socially, Sam.”

  “Yeah, mine, too.”

  “But I have a feeling I know why you’re here. It’s because of Teddy Byrnes and him being Donovan’s bodyguard.”

  “A lot of his gang gets their work done here.”

  “They don’t hassle me and I don’t hassle them.”

  “I just wonder if you’re picking up anything about Byrnes and Donovan.”

  “Well, I know that Byrnes was somebody Donovan stayed away from for a long time. I think Donovan tried to help him a couple of times but gave up. And I don’t blame him. Byrnes’s first stretch was when I was doing mine. Then he did that second one and he just got out. You had to be pretty careful around him. It was obvious he had something wrong with him. Even the real tough guys walked wide of him most of the time. He loved beating on people. I was surprised he got out of there alive.”

  “I thought he was so tough.”

  “Yeah, but the other bad guys, man, they’re only gonna take so much shit. I think there was something in the wind, in fact, when I was getting out. About taking care of him, I mean. But it never happened, I guess.” A laugh. “You know he’s a mama’s boy, don’t you?”

  “A mama’s boy?”

  “Never married, picks up a chick once in a while, but to me it’s mostly for appearances. This may not be true but one of the gang told me he sends his mother a card on Valentine’s Day. And he’s always lived at home. I guess a lot of the prisoners made fun of him behind his back. He had a big photo of his mom on his cell wall while the other guys had girlfriends and wives. Guy he bunked with made a joke about it once and Byrnes broke his arm. Just snapped it in two.”

  “He’s crazier than I thought.” Then, “You hear anything about Byrnes and Donovan having a falling-out or anything recently?”

  From a back pocket he took a greasy rag and wiped his long, greasy hands on it. Then he took a cigarette from behind his ear and fired it up with a metal lighter that clanked when he flipped the top back. “I haven’t heard anything specific but I wondered how long it would last.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “With that temper of Byrnes’s, he’s not one to take orders real well. There was a joke going around in the joint that someday he’d go off and punch out the warden. I never thought it was much of a joke. Byrnes just never took to doing anything except exactly what he wanted to do.”

  Somebody called him on the loudspeaker. “Be back in a sec.”

  There was a phone booth on the edge of his property. I went over and called the office.

  Three calls: Kenny, Karen, dry cleaning that I hadn’t picked up for two weeks. Then I said, “Jamie, please call the Psychological Partners and see if I can get in to see Lindsey Shepard as soon as possible. I’ll call you back when I’m leaving here. I’m at ZOOM right now.”

  “My daughter loves saying that word. We drove past there one time and she’s been saying it ever since.”

  I gave her the number of the pay phone.

  Duffy was waiting for me.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Tim.”

  “So what you want is for me to ask around?”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Kenny Thibodeau was usually the only faux stool pigeon I needed but I didn’t think Kenny hung out with too many biker gangs.

  “Byrnes takes his bike over to Len Gibbons’s shop. He used to go out with Len’s sister, only time he ever got sort of interested in a lady. And big surprise—she’s still alive. I guess Byrnes loves smacking the gals around.”

  “One more reason I want him for president.” Then, “I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

  I pushed my hand out to shake but he held his right hand up and pointed to it with his left. “You don’t really want to shake hands with me, now do you, Sam?”

  Just then his name was called on the loudspeaker again.

  “Thanks, Tim.”

  “Thanks to you, you mean. You did me a hell of a good turn and I’ve never been able to pay you back. I’ll see what I can find out.”

  I needed to give Jamie a few more minutes to make her call to Lindsey Shepard. I sat sideways in my car with the door open and smoked. I thought about Mary. I’d always loved her, that was the strange thing. And after the first long-ago time we made love I found her endlessly erotic. But there had been this almost psychotic need for Pamela for so long….

  The return call took longer than I’d assumed it would.

  “She was in session and the woman who was helping me didn’t know if Lindsey was going out for lunch. Lindsey said that if you could come right now she could give you twenty minutes or so.”

  “Great. Thanks, Jamie.”

  The name Lindsey Shepard put me in mind of a glacial Grace Kelly blonde but she was instead a winsome little thing who would look young even in her sixties and seventies.

  She wore a red blouse with nubby red buttons and a black skirt. She had winsome legs, too, and tiny feet in tiny black flats. Lindsey Shepard, High School Shrink.

  She seemed too diminutive for the enormous Victorian house that she and her husband had turned into a fashionable site for both their practice and their living quarters.

  “I’m glad to know that Will has you for a friend, Mr. McCain,” she said. “But I really can’t help you. I guess I’m old-school, but when I was in grad school my favorite instructor always said that one rule was absolute. We aren’t to discuss confidential information with anyone unless we feel that a patient is a danger to himself or to someone else.”

  “You don’t consider Will a danger to himself at least?”

  “Not enough that I want to talk about him with anyone else.”

  “Not even the police?”

  Her office was a rain forest of heavy plants and an art museum of Chagall and Impressionists. Contradictory styles of art but it worked. From her wide, square window you could see in the distance the limestone cliffs above the river. Peaceful.

  “I care about Will, Mr. McCain.”

  “Sam. Please.”

  “I care about Will as I do all my patients. Especially the vets. Very few people seem to appreciate what these young men have been through and the price they’ve paid. And as for the police, Sam … we’re social friends with the chief. I guess he expected that I’d pretty much open my files
on Will to him but I didn’t. He was very disappointed. He even tried to get my husband Randall to help him. Randall saw Will for three months before I did. Then Randall decided that maybe how I approached things might be more productive for Will. But Randall wouldn’t help the chief, either. Foster looked angry when he left here earlier.”

  The smile was pure imp. “Randall tells people we arm-wrestle to see who has the better approach. We actually do argue about it sometimes. My husband has a great sense of humor.”

  I’d come here hoping she’d give me the kind of information that would buttress the case I was making that Will was an unlikely killer. The only solace I had was that Chief Foster hadn’t gotten anywhere, either.

  Her phone line buzzed.

  “Excuse me a minute.” Then, “Oh, sure, Randall. Please do.”

  After hanging up she said, “Randall would like to stop in and say hello.”

  I nodded.

  Within a minute there was a knock and then a tall, professorial, not unhandsome man with a Vandyke beard and an imposing bearing appeared in the doorway. Both dark hair and beard were streaked with gray. The blue three-piece suit had to be Brooks Brothers. He moved with the ease of a politician comfortable with the meet-and-greet. The hand that clasped mine was firm but not inclined to show off. He was probably eight years or so older than his wife but in very good shape.

  “We’re very sorry about Will. We know how close you two are. He’s talked to both of us about you in sessions. I just wanted to let you know Lindsey and I will do anything we can to help Will and his family without violating our professional ethics.”