by Ed Gorman
"Wow. Counselor has a bad temper, doesn't he?"
A second later, beer was dripping from the shelf of his brow, from his nose, from his jaw. The booth was big enough that nobody had seen me splash him.
"You sonofabitch," he said.
"You're the only one left, Tomlin. Conners and Rivers and Cronin are dead. And the two girls sent out here aren't worth throwing a beer at. So you're elected."
He wiped himself off with a handkerchief. Beer had spilled onto his blue button-down shirt and tan sportcoat. I tossed him my handkerchief.
He said, "I should put this up your ass."
"Go ahead and try."
Two midgets talking tough. Norman Mailer would be proud of us.
He said, reluctantly using my handkerchief to finish the job, "I'm not your killer. And neither is Chris."
"No? You had a good reason. Conners was spending time with your wife; and Rivers and Cronin threatened to expose your meal ticket - namely, Conners. Power is what you're all after - power and that tape Conners made when Rivers and Cronin shot him up with Pentothal."
"He wasn't a communist."
"He sure had a lot of nice things to say about Joe Stalin."
"The right-wing press has vilified Stalin over here. He only did what he needed to do to hold his country together."
"To hold power. That's what you're really saying. And that's just what Joe McCarthy's defenders say, too. He was only doing what he needed to for the country."
"You must be a lonely man, McCain. A moderate with convictions." Contempt was clear in his voice. The only ones for him were the true believers.
I said, "Have you heard the tape?"
"How would I hear the tape?"
"Do you have any idea where it is?"
"None." He dabbed at his face.
I said, "You were in the garage Conners rented, approximately fifteen minutes before he was killed."
For the first time in our conversation, I'd succeeded in surprising him. It felt good. Too bad private eyes don't get gold stars for especially well-done jobs.
"How do you know that?"
I told him how I knew. And I also told him how I knew about his visits to the fishing cabin. By now he'd had time to recover. He no longer looked surprised, he looked angry.
"I should've let that bitch have it years ago."
"Why didn't you?"
"Why do you think? Because I fucking love her, that's why. She's screwed half the men in town and I keep coming back for more. You have any idea how demeaning that is?"
"You just keep giving me more reason to think you killed Conners."
He sighed. He looked sad and old, startlingly so, and I was almost sorry I'd doused him with the beer. "I used to be fat." He raised his glass, but instead of taking a drink, he said, "The last several years with her - three or four pretty serious affairs, not to mention a lot of just general screwing - I've been seeing a psychiatrist. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I get these terrible migraines. And I stay with her."
"Maybe she killed him."
He shook his head. "No, they were alike. They both enjoyed sleeping around. She told me the sex was good."
At the risk of sounding like a rube, I said, "She told you that?"
"Sure. I asked her and she told me. We were having one of our arguments - this was the night Rivers was killed - and I asked her and she told me everything. I went crazy. I even started slapping her; I'm not proud of that. I might have done worse things if Dorothy hadn't gotten in late and heard Chris scream. She'd never seen me like that before - Dorothy, I mean. I think I scared her."
I looked at him. "I don't think I could handle it."
"I've left her twice already. She promises she'll change, and I come back. It's a little dance we do. Maybe I like it and I don't even know it."
"There're a lot of good women around to choose from."
He smiled coldly. "That why you wasted so much of your life on Pamela?"
"I was thinking the same thing."
"At least you're not smug. Nice girl like Mary and you treat her like shit. The whole town wonders about it."
"Maybe I'm changing."
"Pamela called, you'd go flying back. It could be your wedding day and you'd still go flying back. There're men who treat women the same way Chris and Pamela treat us. Neither sex has a monopoly on breaking hearts."
I said, "I'm sorry I threw that beer in your face."
He shrugged. "Somebody should've done it a long time ago. I tend to be insufferable. I don't have any balls, I just have poses. Richard said that to me once and I hated him for it."
I said, "I need to find the tape."
He nodded. "And what would you do with it?"
I hadn't thought about that before. "I'm not sure."
"If it reveals he was a communist, you'd destroy my meal ticket, as you called him. Nobody'd want a biography about a communist, not these days, they wouldn't. I have a big stake in that tape. It could cost me a lot of money. I probably have the biggest stake of all." He looked at his watch. "I wasn't planning on going back home. There's a concert in Iowa City tonight. Chamber music. Now I'll have to change. Chris wouldn't want to be seen with me looking this way. She's very particular about how her men look."
Neither of us made the effort to shake hands. I'm not sure why.
***
I stopped by the office thinking to call Mary and see if she wanted to have dinner. Nice family-style restaurant that always served Swiss steak on mashed potatoes. Then a movie. There was a Robert Mitchum Western and a Doris Day romance at the second-run house. One for me; one for Mary. I kept thinking about what Bill Tomlin said - about spending your whole life at the mercy of somebody else. He'd managed to scare me. Mary wouldn't be hard to fall in love with at all.
The moment I reached for the doorknob, I heard a noise inside. I shouldn't bother to lock my door. People just let themselves in. The bus depot could lease space from me. We could put in a few chairs and lockers and maybe a hot dog stand.
The scent of the smoke was unmistakable: French. Gauloise. Judge Whitney.
She had made herself to home, as folks out here like to say. Parked her trim behind on the edge of my desk, one hand holding her French cigarette, the other a Peter Pan P-nut Butter glass filled with whiskey. My bottle of Jim Beam was open on the desk.
"This stuff," she pronounced, "is swill."
"Glad you're enjoying yourself. Most burglars are real nervous when they break into somebody's office."
"Hilarious as always, toots," she said. "Happen to see The New York Times this morning?"
"Afraid I didn't." She put her P-nut Butter glass down long enough to toss me the front section of the Times. "I thought it might interest you."
Not hard to find what she was so irritated about. Small Iowa town devastated by "red scare" murders, other strife. I tossed it back on the desk.
"My guests have been having fun with me all day," she said, "and it's terrible. Fun at my expense is something I'm not used to. 'Oh, look, is that a commie over there behind that bush?' 'Oh, look, is that a commie submarine coming up out of the Iowa River?' They've even taken to making fun of Ayn Rand, which is really hard to take. Now, just when are you going to solve these damned murders and get this stuff off the front pages?"
"I'm doing what I can."
"Obviously it's not enough."
"How come you have all these liberal friends?"
"They play tennis and go yachting and spend half the year in Paris and London. They're fun to be around. So when I want fun, I go to them."
"What about conservatives?"
"Well, they have different things to do. Like count their money. Or complain that Dick Nixon is too liberal. They're just not quite so amusing." Then she said, "No word from our friend Pamela?"
"I'm not sure she's our friend. Not where I'm concerned, anyway."
"I told you long, long ago, McCain. Mary Travers is the one for you. You look cute together. Nice wholesome midwestern people. I'm afr
aid Pamela is a little out of your league. That's why you want her, of course. But that's exactly why you'll never have her."
"I think the subject's sort of moot," I said, "now that she's run off with Stu."
She sighed and took up Gauloise and whiskey once again. "God, I need some good brandy after the day I've had. I had to supervise all these trucks being unloaded."
I laughed. The prospect of Esme Anne Whitney being within three miles of a truck being unloaded struck me as hilarious. "You had to supervise what?"
"That damned charity I agreed to head up this year. I had to sit in this freezing warehouse while they unloaded the trucks. I had to tell them if their merchandise was something we wanted to offer at the sale next weekend. And then Dorothy Conners deliberately tried to scare me - pretended she didn't see me sitting there and damned near ran over me. She's a tough old broad. Communist women usually are. You should see her throw heavy things around."
The image came unbidden. A panel truck with a body in it. Dragging the corpse of Rivers up my back stairs to hide it in my closet. And then I thought of something else. "Excuse me a minute, Judge."
I called the motel where Rivers had been staying. Esther Haley, the woman I'd spoken with the other day, was on the desk. She had to think a minute before she answered my question. But then she said, "Now that you mention it, McCain, I think you're right. I think there was."
While I was talking, I could feel Judge Whitney watching me, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a puff of smoke hanging in the air.
After I hung up, I headed for the door.
"Where're you going?" the Judge called after me.
"I've got an errand to run."
"I hope it has something to do with this case."
"As a matter of fact," I said, as I reached the door, "it does."
Just as I got outside, I saw the black convertible. It was parked across the street and the blonde was in it, the blonde from a couple of years ago. A fantasy blonde - so cool, so fetching. Once she'd even sent me a photo of her sitting in the car. Who was she? What did she want? She pulled away. I wished I had time to hop in my own ragtop and follow her.
SIXTEEN
I took the road this time instead of the river. When I got a quarter mile from the Conners manor house, I put the car behind a copse of scrub pines - though not very close, the way the pines weep sticky stuff over everything below - and circled back around so I'd come out in the woods behind the house.
Even in brilliant moonlight, the woods were dark. You couldn't see the forest animals but you could hear them, leaping, crawling, scuttling, digging. The river smelled cold, the woods smelled tart, a scent I associate with autumn. I carried the shovel I keep in the trunk for emergencies, usually winter ones.
Lights burned everywhere in the house. They might have been having a party. I was self-conscious about crossing the back yard to the incinerator. I was even more so about dragging the bench of a redwood picnic table over to it.
I went to work. I spent 90 percent of my time digging and 10 percent glancing up at the windows on the three floors of the manor house. I didn't see anybody.
The incinerator was filled with ash of various weights and textures. I rarely dug into anything solid. Not long before I was sweating. Not long before I was standing on my toes so I could shovel deeper in the five-foot-tall cylinder. I could feel the ash on my sticky face. My white shirt was grimy. Shamuses should get dry-cleaning discounts.
I went Eureka! two or three times for no good reason at all, the simple nudge of the shovel edge against anything solid filling me with hope.
But there was no reason for hope. I had found nothing useful, not until I was about three-quarters of the way down. By then I wasn't only on tippy-toes, I was damned near hanging over the edge. I knew instantly what it was. Which was when, of course, a silhouette appeared in a second floor window. I recognized the shape of her. I had to move.
But I didn't move fast enough. By the time I was jumping down from the bench, my find in my hand, she was bursting out the back door in her dark cardigan sweater, paint-splashed jeans, and a.38 special that she handled with alarming dexterity.
She knew what I'd found.
She didn't say anything and neither did I.
She was out of breath and the.38 was trembling a bit in her hand. She kept it pointed right at my heart.
Then she reached out and took it from me. Almost reluctantly. As if she didn't want to touch it.
"I didn't even listen to it, McCain, can you believe it?"
I said, "Sometimes it's better not to know the truth."
"He worked so hard all his life to do the right thing. And then he lets some stupid woman - she might well have been a Russian agent - talk him into helping her. Slipping her a few secrets here and there. He told me all about it one night when he was drunk."
She apparently didn't hear the back door open behind her. Or see the shadow slip silently across the stone patio.
"I couldn't have our name destroyed that way," Dorothy said. "There's no mark worse than treason. None. And of course it had to be a woman. None of them were any good. None of them."
"So you killed Rivers and Cronin?"
"They'd drugged him, and he'd told them the truth." She sounded weary now. "I had to have the tape. What choice did I have?"
"So none of us was good enough for your dear sweet son?"
Dorothy turned and saw Dana. Both women held handguns.
I suddenly realized what had happened.
"You killed Richard, didn't you, Dana?" I said.
"Dear sweet Richard, you mean? Honest Richard? Faithful Richard?" I'd just begun to realize how drunk she was. "Three different times I caught your dear sweet son in bed with somebody else, Dorothy. And I'm sure he treated his other wives the same way."
Dorothy sounded astonished. "You killed him? You killed Richard?"
"I wish I could say I regretted it, but I don't. And I feel sorry for you that you don't understand. He was a totally selfish, arrogant man. You loved him too much. Much too much. You drove your own husband away because of how you loved your son."
"You killed him," Dorothy whispered, as if she couldn't comprehend the thought.
"She was trying on dresses in one of the back rooms at Fran's," I said. "She knew just about when he'd be pulling into the garage. She was right across the alley. Very slick."
Looking at the grotesque piece of melted plastic Dorothy held in her hand, Dana said, "God, what's that?"
"The tape Rivers and Cronin doped him up to get."
"The tape that would've destroyed the great Richard Conners."
"We'll never know," I said. "The only people who heard this tape are dead. Dorothy suspects what's on it, but that's a long way from knowing."
I stepped over to Dana, who wore a man's russet-colored crew neck sweater and jeans, and put my hand out. "I'd like the gun."
"It's not even loaded."
"I'd still like it."
She said, "I'm sorry, Dorothy. The funny thing is, I've always liked you. You have a good heart and a good mind and you're very, very brave. There aren't many women around like that. Or men, for that matter. I'm not sorry for Richard. But I am sorry for you."
I took the gun from her hand and turned toward Dorothy, which was when Dana took a few steps toward us. "Please forgive me, Dorothy."
My sense was that she was going to embrace the older woman. She was drunk now and sounding forlorn. Her arms reached out.
And that's when Dorothy shot her: twice, in the chest.
I can't tell you what happened in the next minute or so. Something happened to my voice. I made some kind of animal noise I'd never heard before. And then I was kneeling next to Dana. There was blood. My own sobs. Her arms and legs were spasming. I'd never seen anything uglier or more terrifying, the way this woman was dying. I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead, a desperate good-bye kiss.
From somewhere I heard a barn owl cry and saw the moonlight make Dana's clas
sic face oddly lovely in its horror, the light almost mythic in this relinquishing of life.
At some time I heard the noise of another bullet being fired. No cry this time, just a moan, and I barely had time to turn to see her fall, already dead, the bullet to the temple so swift, to lie upon the land she'd loved so much.
Sometime, somehow, I stumbled into the house and called Cliffie and poured myself a drink. There was nothing to do about the two women now, nothing at all.
SEVENTEEN
By eleven o'clock, I was tired of all the calls. You know, people congratulating me on figuring the whole thing out. Mom and Dad, Sis from Chicago ("Don't tell the folks, but I'm dating this man who's ten years older than I am," which depressed the hell out of me but I was too tired to argue), some reporters wanting interviews, Natalie and arch-enemy drinking-buddy Margo both getting gassed at a neat place called the Airliner in Iowa City, two people I'd gone to high school with but hadn't talked to for a long time ("Remember the night you got bombed, McCain, and stood up on top of the memorial cannon in the city park and took a leak?" and other such hallowed memories), and finally Mary.
"Gee," I said. "I've been trying to get you all night."
"Sorry. I was - out, I guess."
"You guess?"
Something was wrong.
"How'd you like the blouse?"
"Oh, the blouse." She'd forgotten. "I'm sorry. It's - beautiful, McCain. It really is. But I can't accept it."
"Why not?"
Long pause. "This afternoon."
"Yes. This afternoon?"
"Wes came up and took my apron off me and said, 'We're going for a drive.' Just like that."
"And you went for a drive."
"And we talked."
"About?"
"Personal stuff."
"And?"
"And McCain, he started crying. Just sobbing. I've never seen him like that. I mean, I've seen him cry but I've never seen him so - humble. He said he was sorry for all the mean things he's ever said to me and he wants us to get married right away. Just do it. Don't wait for a big church wedding or anything."