Dorsey slipped the presentencing report to the bottom of the pile. With no employment record prior to his arrest, Dorsey figured Demory for a busy little burglar. A pro, a child prodigy in his profession. And Preach says to trust him?
Next in the file was a National Crime Index Computer report, a brief summary of arrests and convictions. Six months after his release from the Beaver County jail, Demory had been arrested for another burglary, but it didn’t stick; no conviction. A year later, he’d been acquitted on a charge of receiving stolen property. Dorsey chuckled at Demory’s advancement from burglar to fence. From labor to management.
At twenty-six he was given six months’ probation for terroristic threats against the mother of his child. Two months later the Aliquippa police had collared him on a drunk-and-disorderly in an after-hours club. His probation officer issued a violation order on the arrest, and Demory did another four months for Beaver County.
Demory’s sheet was clean for a little over three years, and then a drug bust put him in Pittsburgh SCI. Western Pen, Dorsey thought, the Wall. And he comes away from there a master of deception, the primary survival art inside a state correctional institution. Trust him, Preach said.
For the next nine years, according to the NCIC report, Arthur Demory’s record was clear, confirming Dorsey’s belief that the Wall had been Demory’s finishing school. Then at age forty, Dorsey concluded, the man forgets all he’s learned and is cracked for armed robbery, taking off a Seven-Eleven. And he ends up with his present address, maximum security at Huntingdon. Perhaps to relearn what he had obviously forgotten.
Dorsey skimmed the remainder of the file, thumbing through inmate records, hearing transcripts, and work-release reports. After packing it all away, he climbed out from behind the steering wheel. Shaking the cramps from his legs, he circled the Buick and checked his watch. Gretchen had ten more minutes of roadwork, by his figuring. Resting against the car hood, he studied the farmhouse: two stories of red brick, front and side porches, and stone chimney.
Gretchen had told him the fields and pasture beyond the fence no longer belonged to the Kellers: sold off, parcel by parcel, by Gretchen’s late father to finance her medical training. And, Dorsey remembered, Mother lived on a schoolteacher’s pension, Father’s life insurance and social security. You need to settle things with her, he told himself. Don’t leave without a promise. Even if it’s only a promise to think it over.
Back behind the steering wheel, Dorsey allotted himself another three minutes of heat, watching the crest in the county blacktop. First came the puffs of steam put out by churning lungs. A speck of woolen cap was next, then head and shoulders cleared the crest. Gretchen came over the top and quick-stepped down the steep grade, struggling with gravity. But elegantly, Dorsey thought. The movements, finely timed legs and arms: always so goddamned elegant. He watched her puff her way up the driveway, kick off her shoes, and enter the house. Dorsey slipped the car into drive and made for the farmhouse.
He parked at the top of the driveway, climbed the two front steps, and knocked. Her mom would answer the door, he was sure; Gretchen was a fast shower artist. As predicted, an elderly version of Gretchen came to the door. The face was weathered, but the lean strong build was the same, and the hair was a tight curly crown. Introducing himself, Dorsey’s heart was stung by how handsome Gretchen would remain through the years to come.
“You look awful,” Mrs. Keller said, smiling to soften her words, a habit Gretchen had picked up. She was dressed in pressed khaki shirt and pants as if, despite its being November, she planned to spend the day gardening. “Better come inside. Some coffee?”
The mere thought cramped Dorsey’s stomach. “No, no, thanks,” he said. “Lately I’ve been trying to stay away from it.”
“Then some juice and oatmeal.” She took his jacket and led him through a hallway papered in a cornflower print and into a small kitchen. Even the mannerisms and the movements, Dorsey thought; they’re the same. She’ll be beautiful forever.
Dorsey sat at a rectangular oak table while Mrs. Keller poured orange juice. “She’ll be a surprise,” she said. “I’ve heard a lot about you the last couple of days. You know you’re not really perfect, are you? Please don’t get me wrong, now; I like it that she hasn’t hung a halo on you. A lot of people do that, but I’m glad Gretchen hasn’t. This way, if the two of you stick it out, she won’t have too many disappointments. You either.”
“Thanks,” Dorsey said. “For the juice and the backhanded compliment. And for letting me barge into your home so early in the morning.”
“No thanks necessary.” Mrs. Keller placed a bowl of oatmeal in front of Dorsey and took the seat across from him. “It’s romantic, you coming all this way at night. I’m impressed.”
Dorsey poured milk from a pitcher into the oatmeal, mixing it with a spoon. “She still angry with me?”
Mrs. Keller sipped at her coffee. “That’s where you’re wrong. She never was angry; she was disappointed. As I said, disappointments are what we have to keep an eye out for in life. Keep them to a minimum and get them out of the way early on, the worst ones, anyway. Then you’ll know if you’re good for the long haul. Like the two of you are doing now, although I don’t think either of you realizes it. I must admit, it’s nice to be here and watch. It’s touching.”
Dorsey wolfed down the oatmeal, surprised at his appetite, now that the threat of coffee had passed. He washed it down with the last of the orange juice. Overhead he heard a dull thud, followed by the rattling of the house’s plumbing. The shower was over; he knew the routine. She wipes down with a bath towel and then works it over her wiry hair. Then a few seconds to brush her teeth and apply deodorant, and then she wraps herself in a terry-cloth robe. Five minutes puts her down the steps for breakfast. Five minutes.
In sync with Dorsey’s thoughts, Mrs. Keller began arranging a place setting to his right: juice glass, spoon, cloth napkin. A few silent minutes passed; then at the sound of footfalls down the stairs, they nodded to each other.
“Ah, Mum?” Gretchen called out from the hall, her voice coming closer. “I might pass on the oatmeal today. Just some coffee and maybe a little—”
As she stopped, framed in the doorway, Dorsey looked her over from head to toe—from brain stem to bunghole he remembered Bernie saying once. The once-over confirmed that five hours of turnpike driving had been worth it. And looking at both her and her mother, he knew the long haul would be worth it, too, whatever it took.
“Good morning,” Dorsey said cautiously. Gretchen remained in the doorway, knuckle to her lips, as if pondering his appearance.
“Coffee and juice is on the table.” Mrs. Keller motioned her into the room and toward a chair. “Something needs tending to, I’m sure. Enjoy your breakfast, both of you.”
As her mother left the room, Gretchen spent a few moments silently staring into her coffee. “I said I would call when I got back to town,” she said, looking now at Dorsey. “On your machine. I said I needed time and I’d call.”
“You needed time,” Dorsey said. “Me, I’m afraid of time, scared shitless of what it might do. Like one day you’re away and that day gives birth to two more, which split into a week or a month. And the longer you’re away the easier it is for you to get used to the idea of my not being around. It scares the hell out of me.”
“And your work scares me.” Gretchen sipped at her juice, then moved the glass away from her. “That day with Claudia shook me up. You put her through the wringer. From the stories you tell, I thought all you did was keep watch on dishonest people, people who want something for nothing. The stories were always funny, with plenty of irony. There was always a nice little twist about the lengths people will go to for a buck. Now I’m faced with the lengths you’ll go to for a job.”
Dorsey smoothed his napkin. “I’ve never had a big case like this before, not since the DA’s office. And what’s worse, I’ve got my neck stretched out pretty far. It’s a make-or-break deal for me. I go
big-time or hire myself out as a rent-a-cop. So I fell back on what I knew, which is that every informant is dishonest. I needed to know what Claudia knew, and she didn’t want to share it.”
“So what’s next?” Gretchen asked. “When does round two with her take place?”
“It doesn’t.” Dorsey explained that nothing short of a subpoena could get him within earshot of her, and he was following up another lead that could wrap up the whole affair very quickly.
“And then you get another tough case as a reward, right?” Gretchen gently rotated her cup, swirling the brown liquid. “And each time you get a tough case, you fall back on what you know.”
“Succeed or fail,” Dorsey said, “there won’t be another tough case. Success will guarantee me plenty of work, enough to hire help and pick and choose my cases. So all I’ll do is watch a guy’s house to see if he’s reshingling the roof. And if I fail, there’ll be no cases at all, period.”
Dorsey searched her face, finding nowhere to advance, no sign of how to proceed. He gave his mouth an abrupt swipe with his napkin and dropped it on the table. “Your mother and I, we had a good talk before you came down. Bright woman.”
“Don’t tell me.” Gretchen chuckled. “The disappointment routine, right? Anything bad happens, it’s a disappointment. We don’t see things for what they are, so we expect more than is reasonable. And she applies it to us.”
“Worked for me.” Dorsey hoped for a laugh that didn’t follow. “Could you give it some thought? You’ve got—what, another two days off? You get back to town, I’ll stay away for a while if you need more time. But just one thing: keep some of your stuff at my place, okay? At least till you figure out what you want. It’s only a bone, but I love you, so I’ll settle for it.”
Gretchen began to cry softly, the tears welling up from the bottom of her eyes, then brimming over, in a way Dorsey had seen before and had committed to memory. “I’ve been here since Sunday,” she said, her chin resting on her hands, propped on the table. “And I’ve done nothing but think about us. On the ride out here, I missed the turnpike exit, almost ran off the road. Even with the snow, I wasn’t paying attention.”
Dorsey took her empty cup to the sink, rinsed it, and stacked it in the rack. There was a half window above the sink, and Dorsey looked out on the fields that had once been the Kellers’, down payments on Gretchen’s future. So it all goes back to a storefront in Johnstown, he thought, where you had to put the heat on the chain’s weakest link. Then three silent hours through the snow. She gets a night’s rest and an early start for Lancaster. And you miss her call because you’re at the police station.
The realization struck him as he moved away from the sink. Frozen on the kitchen tile, Dorsey pulled it all into one piece. Jesus Christ. Sunday morning, early on. Before the papers or even the radio had the story. And after a few miles east on the turnpike, the car radio gets only the farm report and prayer meetings. Good God, she doesn’t know.
“Look, something happened Saturday night.” He slipped back into his chair and toyed with a spoon. “It might not help you see things my way, but—whatever. You think nothing could be worse than what you saw, but believe me, everything is relative. And there’s always another notch to take things up to.” Dorsey told her about the assault, Russie’s death, and the funeral.
“That’s where it stands.” Dorsey took her hand, softly squeezing it. “The job I did on Claudia Maynard was pretty low, but it’s not the worst. Death is the worst—unless Father Jancek has enough pull in the hereafter to fix me up for eternal damnation. Don’t put me in his league.”
Dorsey watched her go to the sink and wipe her face. “I didn’t know,” she said, her back to Dorsey as she gazed out the window. “He was your friend. I’m sorry. He got the car that morning, the day they were watching the house. Kind of an odd guy, but even still.”
“Odd?” Dorsey said. “He was damned strange. But he was my friend. And I was the target, the one they came for.”
Gretchen turned to him. “So you’ll see this thing through; I suppose you have to now. We’ll talk when it’s over. I can’t promise anything, except that we’ll talk.”
22
Dorsey left the Buick in a parking lot near the perimeter of the prison compound, located in a windy hollow between two mountains. Looking for the visitor’s check-in, he crossed through an area that might be taken for a mobile-home court, filled with Airstreams and Avions. But Dorsey knew it for what it was: housing for the trusties who worked the prison farm. He recalled a time several years earlier when he had interviewed an inmate who had begun pulling in compensation checks just before sentencing. The inmate claimed to be in constant excruciating back pain. After the interview, using binoculars from a perch atop one of the guard towers, Dorsey watched for two hours as the inmate bounced along on a tractor, jumping on and off during breaks, plowing a field.
At the visitor’s check-in, still outside the high red-brick walls, Dorsey found that Preach was as good as his word: Dorsey’s name had recently been placed on inmate Demory’s list of approved visitors. Dorsey was given a brief lecture on prison regulations and the penalties for smuggling things inside. After he browsed for a few minutes in a gift shop that carried inmate art work, mostly depressingly dark sketches of prison scenes, Dorsey’s name was called and he was escorted to the main gate.
Next to the barred gate was a walk-through entrance, the final security checkpoint. A gray-uniformed corrections officer handed Dorsey a plastic tray, instructing him to empty his pockets into the tray, along with his belt. The officer then motioned to a second officer seated in a glass observation booth overlooking the gate. Holding his pants up by the belt loops, Dorsey passed through the metal detectors and entered the maximum security area of Huntingdon SCI.
Dorsey retrieved his belongings and walked through a small garden, brown with winter, following a sign for the visiting center. In a long one-story wing, he found a lounge equipped with easy chairs and vending machines where inmates, dressed in uniforms of varying colors depending on their housing and work assignments, mixed with visitors. At the far end were three doors; Dorsey made his way through groups of families and girlfriends to the door marked ATTORNEY’S CONFERENCE and slipped inside, locking the door behind him. The room was ten by twelve, divided by a waist-high counter across its middle. From the countertop to the ceiling was wire-reinforced glass, with a metal speaking portal at the height of a sitting man. A chair sat at the portal; a companion chair was beyond the glass.
Dorsey sat at the divider, took a pen and steno pad from his coat pocket, and placed them on the counter. As he watched the door at the opposite end of the room, his thoughts trailed back to Gretchen and that farmhouse, now three hours away. She’d be back, he was sure . . . almost sure. She’ll be back and you’ll make it work, he promised himself, or nothing’s ever going to go right again.
With a metallic clang, the steel security door’s deadbolt was released. Dorsey nervously ran his hands down his sides, checking his appearance, as if he were the subject of the interview. A short, heavily gutted guard swung open the door and motioned an even shorter black man into the room. Unlike the officer, the black man was very thin and looked to Dorsey as though he was only beginning his recovery from a serious illness. The skin of his face was tight to the bone, and his eyes were more brown than white. The sleeves of his orange coveralls were rolled to the elbows and ballooned out from there. His hair was trimmed close to the scalp with a razor part on the left, and when he came opposite Dorsey at the glass he fished two packs of cigarettes from his pockets. Dorsey checked the two vertical scars on his chin and figured them for a cell game that got out of hand.
“Word is you’ve got the room for as long as you want.” The guard turned to Demory as he began to close the door. “Art, bang on the door when you’re through. Or if you need more smokes. Just keep at it, I’ll hear ya eventually. Okay?”
Demory watched the door shut then dropped into the chair. “You D
orsey? The guy Lou Preach sent?”
“That’s me,” Dorsey said. “You believe me, don’t you? How many visitors you get up here in the mountains? I could show you some ID, perhaps a major credit card?”
Demory snorted out a laugh. “Fuck, no. This is good. Preach said you’d be good for a talk. But you’re who you’re supposed to be?”
“Yes, I am. I is me.” Dorsey flipped open the steno pad.
“This is gonna be okay,” Demory said. “You gotta realize. My day is full of hangin’ out with cons or bullshittin’ to guards, assholes like the one that brought me here. On a good day I get to pull the psychiatrist’s leg.” Demory lit a cigarette. “I shouldn’t call the guy who brought me here an asshole. He ain’t bad. But here you are, my fuckin’ diversion for today.”
The ground rules were set, as far as Dorsey could tell. No hard-ass bullshit, no threats, valid or otherwise. You’ve seen him before. He wants to talk, to impress on you that he is no ordinary jailbird. Lead him a little and sit back for the ride. And, of course, make sure he’s not a fraud, a put-up job by Lou Preach.
“I read up on you on the way here,” Dorsey said, tapping at the glass. “Your home turf, I’m familiar with it.”
“Fuck you know about Aliquippa?” Demory laughed and took a deep pull on his smoke. He flicked the ash to the floor. “What you know, maybe, is the Serbian Club, some Italians, and the mill. You don’t know shit.”
“Somebody say something about Aliquippa?” Dorsey registered confusion. “Plan Eleven, that’s the place I had in mind.”
Demory grinned and wagged a finger at Dorsey. “You know the Plan? Damn straight. The Plan, that’s where I spent what I like to think of as my formative years.”
“And learned your profession?”
The Fall-Down Artist Page 20