‘Health hazard, I suppose.’
‘Yeah, that’s what he said.’
‘Well, I don’t see what you can say about it if you haven’t got some knowledgeable opinion, and you can’t really count the police chief in this kind of thing.’
‘Bondarevsky wants us to say it’s the work of maniac or maniacs unknown and at large.’
‘That just sounds silly to me,’ Phipps scoffed.
‘That’s what I think.’
‘Another thing you have to consider, Martin. If we run a story with no plausible explanation, it might have the effect of inviting pranks and mischief. Nobody wants that, least of all the other farmers in the area.’
‘Well, something did happen.’
Phipps stood up and walked to the window of his office. He was a wiry man in his mid-fifties, scarcely an inch over five feet tall. In the case-room he had to stand on a wooden crate to inspect the final sections of standing type — an unnecessary routine that Phipps insisted on for every edition. It was one of many things Lasker admired in the man.
‘Something did happen, agreed,’ the editor said. ‘But what? Hold your notes until you get some reasonable theory.’
‘If ever.’
‘Yeah, hold it in your “if ever” file.’
*
Marge Calder looked out her kitchen window. It was another hot afternoon. Too hot to do anything except sit in the sun. Not a cloud in sight. She wore snug white shorts and a blouse that tied up just under her breasts. It was very quiet outside.
A metal lid clattered against a trash can. That would be Sylvia Berkowitz, from the next house. Marge walked outdoors and across the back lawn to chat with her neighbour.
Sylvia was wiping her hands on the apron she wore. Garbage was such a bother. Unsanitary. Nixon, the family dog, a feeble old Alsatian lying in the sun, rolled his head over and looked longingly at the trash can.
‘You leave this trash alone,’ Sylvia said to the dog. He blinked and looked to one side, as if anxious to avoid her accusing stare. There’s nothing the matter with your dog food, it’s expensive enough. I don’t know why you prefer garbage.’ Nixon was a nuisance, always hanging around trash cans, knocking them over and rummaging through the contents. Personally, she would get rid of him, but the kids would never stand for it. They thought the old dog was funny.
‘Hi, Sylvia,’ Marge Calder said as she approached. ‘How are you?’
‘Hi, Marge,’ Sylvia replied. ‘I’m fine but hot.’ A fine thing. She probably saw me talking to that damn dog again. She’ll think I’m batty. Milton just had to get a garbage disposal unit for the kitchen.
‘Yes, it’s hot enough, that’s for sure.’
‘I think I’ll just lie down for a while.’
‘Stu and I were supposed to go play tennis this evening but I’ve called up and cancelled. The heat and humidity are just too much.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Sylvia said. ‘Stick to the cool shade.’
‘I don’t mind the sun so much. I’m getting a good tan now.’ Marge inspected her arms, legs and bare midriff. ‘But anything strenuous is just silly in this weather.’
Sylvia thought she would go inside and make a tall cold drink. Alone. Marge wasn’t her favourite company. Something in the distance caught her eye and she tried to focus on it. A mile or two away, was it? In the air.
Marge noticed the distracted look on her neighbour’s face and tried to follow the line of Sylvia’s vision. In a few seconds she too spotted the unusual sight.
‘What do you think it is?’ Marge asked. She raised one hand to her eyebrows and peered intently.
‘I don’t know.’
They were looking at a bright blue disc hovering over the treetops more than a mile away. It seemed to flicker, and it was remarkably bright for broad daylight. It stayed in the same place, neither rising, falling or drifting.
‘Do you believe in flying saucers?’ Marge asked after a few moments.
‘I don’t think so, no,’ Sylvia said with a chuckle she didn’t even try to repress.
‘I’ve never seen one, but I suppose they could exist. Don’t you think it’s possible?’
‘Not unless they land on the White House lawn. Then I’ll believe it.’
‘What do you think that is then?’
‘Probably just a big kite or a balloon, dear. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.’
Marge continued to stare into the distance.
CHAPTER THREE
Joe Garfield sat on his front porch sipping cold Ringnes Special beer from the bottle, as he did almost every night in the summer. It was nearly ten o’clock, early yet. Sometimes he sat until one or two in the morning if it was a nice night and the fireflies were out. He would go through twelve or fourteen bottles of the Norwegian beer in a good sitting. It was the only beer to drink, the others were dishwater. Joe never got too drunk, but he always ended up feeling fine, and occasionally uttered a few remarks aloud to himself or a passing car.
He was sixty-one years old last month and lately he had given some thought to retirement. He would be eligible next year, and the idea was tempting. He had worked at Gunntown Arms for forty-two years now, without a break. He had started as a short, scrawny kid hauling cases on the shipping dock. Now he was still short but a good deal heavier, bald and still on the dock, though he had been named freight manager eleven years ago. He told the kids what to do. It wasn’t a bad job as jobs go, and he seriously wondered if he should retire the minute he was eligible. Some fellows retired and six months later they stopped breathing. He had known one or two like that. Maybe he should stick with the job. I’m too old to get interested in gardening or anything like that, and too young to sit around watching quiz shows on TV all day. Have to do something.
Across the street, and two houses down, a television set blared loudly. Those damn Italians always have that thing on full blast. In another half hour they’ll start arguing about the late movie again — that happened at least twice a week.
Directly across the street the Halsey household was quiet, as ever. Nice, peaceful folks. That’s more like it. Some nights Joe could see the faces of the Halsey boys, Bob and Tom, pressed against the screen of their bedroom window. They counted passing cars one taking Fords, the other Chevrolets. Once in a while they’d whisper a sharp ‘Hi’ to Joe, letting him know they were there instead of sleeping. He ignored them. When he sat down for his evening beer he didn’t want to get into a conversation. Especially not with a couple of kids.
Tonight was a good night, a fairly quiet night. Usually there was a lot of coming and going at this spot. Joe’s house was next to the corner lot on Barton Street, where it ran into Highland Avenue. But tonight was pleasant and relatively traffic-free. He could hear the soft rustle of a breeze in the sugar-maples on his front lawn. A mere postage stamp of a lawn, but with two fine trees that he loved. Trees kept squirrels and squirrels were essential to a neighbourhood as far as Joe was concerned.
Annie Garfield, his wife, came down the hallway to the front door — Joe could hear the pad-pad of her slippers on the linoleum. She stood behind the screen door for a few seconds. ‘How you doing, Joe?’
‘Fine, I’m fine, Annie.’
‘Do you need another beer?’
‘No, I’m still working on this one.’
‘You’re okay?’
‘Yeah, I’ll come in for another one in a little while. How are you?’
‘Okay.’
‘What are you watching?’ He didn’t care at all, but whenever she came to the porch he always asked.
‘I don’t know. Something is on but I’m reading the paper.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
After a few more moments Joe heard her moving back into the house. Annie very seldom came out onto the porch and sat with Joe. He liked to sit alone. Early in the evening she might sit for a spell, but when Joe sat down with his beer the porch was his and she left him to it If she’d retire, I’d retir
e, Joe thought, but she can’t. Annie was fifty-eight years old and had a way to go yet before she could afford to quit working. She did the payroll and bookkeeping at the Grand Union supermarket. Annie always was good with numbers, Joe thought.
Joe Garfield happened to be looking squarely at Ernie Pachman’s car when it turned bright green and exploded with the most ear-bruising racket he had ever heard.
‘Holy shit,’ he exclaimed, rising to his feet.
The car was parked near the corner of Highland Avenue, diagonally opposite the Garfield house. The corner lot was part of Pachman’s yard so Joe had a clear view. The car just seemed to — explode. Suddenly. In a green flash. All four tyres blew and the chassis collapsed to the ground as the axles shattered. Glass sprayed in all directions. The hub-caps spiralled into the air, one smashing through a side window in the Pachman house. The headlights and parking lights also blew outwards, like eyes popping out of their sockets. The front bumper ripped loose from one end and twisted in the air, then, tearing loose completely and clanging on the road, bent almost in a circle. The hood peeled back away from the windscreen, letting out dozens of parts and broken chunks of metal from the engine beneath. The steering column heaved up and through the windscreen, and the steering wheel wrenched loose and spun wildly into Barton Street toward the Garfield house. The seats ballooned and then shredded into a storm of upholstery and stuffing, which hung in the air around the car like a woolly cloud. The doors buckled in, then out, and finally snapped onto the ground in pieces. Everything, from the front grille to the exhaust pipe, was chewed up and spat out into the night, all in the space of a few seconds. Most of the debris remained within ten yards of where the car was parked, but the next day one of the door handles was found in Stu and Edie Wright’s flower garden, about a hundred and fifty yards down the street. Considering the great force involved, it was extraordinary good fortune that no one was injured.
When the violence and noise ended, Joe Garfield stepped down from his porch and slowly walked towards the car. Ernie Pachman came running out of his house yelling ‘What the fucking hell is going on?’ and other things. A few more people appeared, wives and children standing in their doorways, husbands tucking their shirts in their pants and approaching cautiously.
‘Who did this? Who did this?’ Ernie Pachman demanded hotly. He was a thin-haired, thin-bodied, nervous insurance agent. He kept picking up destroyed pieces of his car, looking at them for a few seconds and then throwing them aside.
‘I saw it Ernie, I saw it,’ Joe said, striding forward briskly now. ‘Hang on, I saw it.’
Everyone turned quickly to look at him as he moved purposefully through the growing cluster of people. Joe immediately realised the importance of the occasion and he responded to it wholeheartedly.
‘You saw it, Joe?’ Pachman continued to gesture emptily with his arms. ‘What the hell happened? Who did this?’
‘Nobody did it, Ernie. It just happened.’
‘Nobody?’ Packman was incredulous and angry. He glared at Joe as if he were in fact confronting the guilty party. ‘Somebody had to do this, it couldn’t just happen by itself.’
‘I tell you, it just happened. I was —’
‘Come on, Joe,’ someone said. ‘What really happened?’
‘I was on my porch,’ Joe continued, addressing himself to Pachman and ignoring the others. ‘Your car just suddenly began to fall apart or explode, I guess. There was a kind of green flash.’ Joe was aware that he was explaining it badly but he couldn’t think of anything else to say without sounding even sillier.
‘All by itself?’ Pachman fairly bellowed. ‘Fell apart? Exploded?’
‘That’s right,’ Joe persevered. It all took place in a couple of seconds. You were out your front door just when it was over. It was very fast and then it was all over.’
‘I came out when I heard that noise and something came through our window, but it had to have been going on before that, Joe.’ Pachman’s face showed he clearly felt Garfield was holding something back. ‘These things don’t just happen. Somebody had to do it.’
‘I’m telling you —’
‘Either you saw them or you didn’t.’
‘There was a green flash for just a second.’
‘A green flash?’
‘Doesn’t look like there was any fire,’ someone said from the crowd. People began examining the remains with increased attention.
‘Not a fire, no,’ Joe said.
‘A green flash?’ Pachman repeated blankly.
‘The car just flared with it and then — blam!’
‘How many beers, have you had tonight?’ Pachman asked disgustedly and turned away from Joe. ‘There wasn’t any explosion here. No smell of it, no sign of fire.’ He resumed picking up pieces of his car with a pained look on his face, muttering about vandals and drunks.
Joe Garfield stayed cool and tried to project an air of seriousness and dignity. ‘Beer has nothing to do with it. The car just went, in nothing flat. One second it was there, and the next — boom!’ He put his hands in his pockets and stood his ground calmly. ‘That’s the truth,’ he added.
Jack Mitchell, a young man of twenty-eight, peered intently at Joe as if waiting for more. ‘You say it was green?’
‘Seemed that way to me. Of course I could be wrong, it all happened so fast, like I said. But it sure looked green to me. Just a big spark, like someone took a picture with a green flashcube. No smoke though, is there? So I guess it wasn’t a fire, nor any kind of normal explosion. Damnest thing.’
‘Hunh,’ Mitchell grunted.
‘Anybody else see any part of it?’ Joe asked the crowd. ‘Anybody?’
No one spoke up. Many of the people were now milling about restlessly, talking among themselves in small knots.
‘I guess not,’ Joe said to himself. ‘Just me.’
Then the people moved out of the road as a big police car came cruising along. The black-and-white stopped in the middle of the street and a tall, lanky young policeman stepped out slowly, surveying the scene with puzzlement and suspicion,
‘What’s going on here?’ he asked.
*
Arturo Pomar swung his rattly old Mustang in towards the curb and parked on Water Street, just opposite the studio of RMLV, the local radio station. He checked his watch: it was just after 7.20 p.m. and he was early. He consciously walked slower, but within two minutes he had arrived at the rectory of St Jude’s Church. It was a handsome, old redbrick building, flanked by good-sized fir trees. He had passed it hundreds, maybe thousands of times, he thought, but he had never been inside.
The Pomars were good Catholics but they sent their children to Emerson, the public school, because of the simple geographical convenience. St Jude’s was on the other side of the river. Besides, the kids went to religion class every Thursday evening. If there were a Catholic school a little closer to home, that would be a different matter; of course they would go.
Pomar pushed the doorbell and heard a brittle ringing from inside the rectory. After a few moments the door opened and an elderly woman smiled at him.
‘I’ve come to see Father Lombardy,’ he said.
‘Yes, come in,’ the woman answered in high, musical tones. She led him into the first room on the right off the entrance hallway. ‘Do sit down,’ she smiled. ‘Father Lombardy will be down in a minute.’ She whisked out of the room, leaving the door half-open.
Pomar sat back in a deep easy-chair in front of a large mahogany desk. The Naugahyde squeaked as he made himself comfortable in the chair. He looked around the room. It was obviously the room in which the priest met parishioners on church business. There were three other chairs identical to the one in which Pomar sat, one behind the desk and two arranged at convenient angles in front of it. Pomar wondered idly what they did if they had more than three visitors at the same time. Another room obviously.
There were paintings on the walls — a portrait of Christ wearing the crown of thorns, which was to
be expected, another of Christ speaking to a crowd of people, probably the Sermon on the Mount, from the look of it, and on the wall behind the desk, a placid seascape. In a stand-up frame on the bookshelf was a photograph of the Pope. Next to it was a photograph of someone who looked as if he might be a bishop — Pomar couldn’t remember who was the bishop of the Hartford diocese. He glanced only briefly at the books in the bookcase; the only title that stood out was Father Damian, which, Pomar vaguely recalled, was about a priest who devoted himself to the lepers in Hawaii, or somewhere in the Pacific, a long time ago.
Pomar swallowed and cleared his throat; the priest would be along any minute now. He dreaded this meeting and he felt silly being there. He didn’t know any of the priests to talk to, and when he had phoned up they put him on to Father Lombardy, who was polite and said he would be glad to talk to Arturo whenever was mutually convenient. That’s what priests were for, among other things. No, it wasn’t about a baptism, a wedding, or anything like that. Pomar had a problem. Fine, okay come in as soon as you’d like.
The only thing was, Father Lombardy was one of the younger priests, and Pomar felt awkward about talking to someone in his own age-group about such a personal matter. Well, that’s the way it is, he thought; maybe Father Connors or Father Slomcenski, the elder of the four priests stationed at St Jude’s, would be even more difficult to talk to. Any way you looked at it, it was a difficult business. Father Lombardy, Pomar knew, left the confessional every twenty minutes to stand on the front steps of the church and have a cigarette. Didn’t seem right for a priest.
‘Good evening.’ The priest strode into the room and shook hands with Pomar.
‘Father Lombardy, I’m Art Pomar. I haven’t met you before, but —’
‘How are you?’
‘Fine. We go to the eight-thirty Mass and we never seem to have you.’
The priest smiled. ‘No, I usually do the ten or the eleven-fifteen High Mass. It’s nice to meet you now, though.’
‘Yes, Father, thank you.’ Pomar sat down again.
The Fates Page 4