Chances Are . . .

by Richard Russo

  “Are we done here?” Teddy said.

  Troyer had moved over to the stairs and was about to leave, but now spun back around.

  “No, come to think of it, there’s one more fucking thing. Tell your friend if he really wants to know what happened to that girl, he should be asking the big guy, not me.”

  Teddy blinked. “You mean Mickey? You’re out of your mind. He was in love with her.” He was about to add We all were when Troyer again broke into his nasty chortle.

  “Right,” he said. “Like nobody in the history of the fucking world ever killed a girl he was in love with.”

  Then he lumbered noisily down the steps and across the sloping lawn, his stiff, awkward gait that of a man approaching old age at a gallop, his body breaking down all at once. Stepping over the low stone wall that marked his boundary, he spotted something and bent over to pick it up—a manuscript page that had escaped Teddy’s notice. “Minerva College?” he called up to him, wadding the paper into a ball. “What a fucking joke.”

  Lincoln

  “So,” said Lincoln, trying hard to process what Teddy had just finished telling him, the gist being that (1) Mason Troyer was no longer interested in purchasing his house and (2) he’d had nothing to do with Jacy’s disappearance. Lincoln couldn’t decide which of these pronouncements was more unexpected. After all, twenty minutes ago Marty had informed him that the man needed to buy the property. Was it possible he was wrong and Troyer knew nothing of the easement issue? Even more mind-boggling was that he’d denied involvement in a crime Lincoln hadn’t actually accused him of. “He just appeared on the deck? No warning?”

  “He might’ve thought I was you,” Teddy said.

  Lincoln shook his head. “He knows me on sight.”

  “Yeah, but my back was to him as he came up the lawn. You should’ve seen the look on his face when he recognized me from 1971.”

  “And he just started in on you?”

  “Yep. He seemed to think I’d know what he was talking about.”

  Lincoln went over to the sliding screen door but didn’t go outside. If Troyer saw he’d returned, he might come charging back up the hill. “Did he threaten you?”

  “Not really,” Teddy said. “He was seriously pissed off, but more than anything he seemed to be blowing off steam. For some reason, the fact that we all went to Minerva really set him off. Like he applied there and didn’t get in, so we were looking down on him.”

  Lincoln nodded, recalling that Coffin had exhibited a similar class resentment.

  “He strikes me as one of those people who’s always ginned up about something,” Teddy continued. “He’s also got it in for the summer people who apparently shun him for not sharing their lordly liberalism.”

  The late-model Mercedes that usually sat in the driveway—Troyer’s, Lincoln assumed—was now the only vehicle there. “This visitor? You say he was driving an old pickup?”

  “There was some sort of argument, I think. Too far away for me to make out what they were saying.”

  So, Lincoln thought, his earlier intuition at the rotary had been right. “And Troyer actually brought up Jacy? By name?”

  Teddy shook his head. “No, he called her ‘that hippie chick,’ but it was definitely Jacy he was talking about. Where in the world did he get the idea you thought he was involved?”

  Lincoln collapsed onto the sofa, stared up at the ceiling and said, “Shit.” Feeling he had little choice, he gave Teddy a condensed version of how Marty had gotten the ball rolling by suggesting that Troyer might be trouble. How yesterday evening, Google had revealed that he had a history of harassing women. How all that had sent him to the Vineyard Gazette to look for details about the investigation in ’71. And finally how Beverly, at the mention of Troyer’s name, had recommended he talk with this retired cop named Joe Coffin.

  “Oh, that’s the other thing Troyer wanted me to tell you,” Teddy recalled. “That he and this ‘Joey’ Coffin were pals.”

  Which wasn’t, Lincoln thought, how Coffin himself had described it. Yes, after Troyer got in trouble in Wellesley, the Coffins had taken him in for his senior year—information that Lincoln had to pull out of him—but he didn’t have the impression that the boys had become friends, despite living under the same roof. “They were apparently teammates back in the day,” he told Teddy. “Won something called the Island Cup that I’m told is a big deal locally.”

  “So you think this guy Coffin came out here to warn Troyer that you were nosing around?”

  “Either that,” Lincoln said, trying to think it through, “or after our conversation he got to thinking.”

  “About Troyer’s history with women.”

  Lincoln nodded. “That, but also about the three of us. Coffin said that if he’d been in charge of the investigation back in seventy-one, we would’ve been his chief suspects. As he put it, we had motive, means and opportunity.”

  “What motive?”

  “He figured maybe we lured her here thinking she’d put out for us and were disappointed when she refused.”

  Teddy looked ill. “Does he still believe that?”

  “He claims not to. If we’d done something to Jacy back then, why would I be snooping around now? And what kind of sense would it make for all three of us to return to the scene of the crime forty-four years later? No, here’s what I think happened. Our conversation triggered something. It can’t be a coincidence that a few minutes after we said goodbye, Coffin drove right out here and started interrogating the guy, can it?”

  “So,” Teddy said, “you do think Troyer was involved?”

  Lincoln massaged his temples. “I did yesterday, after learning about his issues with women. I mean, a lot of people here seem to think he’s dangerous. It felt like all of the pieces of the puzzle were coming together. And it explained some things.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, one reason that investigation didn’t yield any results is that it took so long to get going. Once the cops heard Jacy was getting married, they figured she’d gotten cold feet and run off. We did, too, that first month or so, right? All along we’d taken it for granted that she and Vance were getting married. They were engaged, after all. But after she disappeared, all that changed. Suddenly her marrying Vance didn’t compute. She never talked about the guy or seemed to miss him when they were apart. They disagreed about everything—where they’d live, whether to have kids or not, you name it.”

  “The war, too.”

  “Right. But if Troyer’s involved, that’s all irrelevant.”

  “Except there’s a problem. Troyer claims Mickey broke his jaw with that punch and he had to go to Boston to get it wired shut.”

  Lincoln nodded. “Coffin interviewed him a week or so after we all left the island, and it was wired shut then.”

  “Which means he might not’ve even been on the island that Tuesday.”

  “I know. Today, the whole thing feels like a fever dream. Basically I wanted him to be a murderer because he’s an asshole, and it doesn’t work that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “Tell me something,” Lincoln said, his mind zigzagging. “Anita says our coming out here was my idea. Is that how you remember it?”

  “More or less. You and I talked about it first, and Mickey wasn’t hard to convince. We didn’t think Jacy would come, not with the wedding just a few weeks off.”

  “I don’t even remember inviting her.”

  “That’s because I did.”

  “Really? You’re sure?”

  Teddy winced, as if the memory were painful. “Yeah, I have a pretty clear recollection, actually. She answered the phone there at her parents’ place, and her voice sounded strange, like I’d woken her up. Then she asked me to repeat my name, as if she’d already forgotten who I was. But when I said again who it was, she was really happy,
like I was the answer to a prayer. Neither response felt right, somehow. Anyway, my plan was to pitch the weekend as one last attempt to convince Mickey not to report for duty, but she said she’d come even before I got the chance.”

  “I guess I was thinking along those same lines. Maybe her agreeing to come didn’t have anything to do with us. What if she was just looking for an excuse to escape Greenwich for a few days?”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe the cops were right about her having second thoughts about getting married. Still, I just can’t help feeling we’re missing something.”

  Teddy started to speak, then changed his mind.

  “What?”

  “Well, actually, the day she and I went out to Gay Head? She did hint about having misgivings.”

  His eyes, Lincoln noticed, were brimming. “You never told us that.”

  Teddy shrugged. “I guess it felt like she’d spoken in confidence. She didn’t say she wasn’t going to get married. Just that she wasn’t sure anymore.”

  Getting to his feet again, Lincoln went back over to the screen door and stared outside. In the late-afternoon shadows the elongated outline of his mother’s house stretched all the way down to Troyer’s place. Weakening sunlight still sparkled on the ocean in the distance.

  “Anyway,” Teddy said, “now it makes sense. Why you were talking earlier about that history class we took with Tom Ford. He was forever harping on remote and proximate causes. How attractive the proximate ones can be, even though the real truth’s usually buried deeper.”

  “I have to say,” Lincoln admitted, “that if Troyer wasn’t involved, it would be a relief.”

  “How so?”

  “That’s another thing Coffin said. That if he’d been in charge, he’d have had a backhoe dig up every inch of this property.” Lincoln shook his head now. “The one thing I don’t think I could bear would be to find out she’s been lying dead out here all these years. Under this very ground.”

  They were silent, then, until Teddy finally voiced what they both were thinking. “We never should’ve let her slip away that morning. We could’ve rousted Mick and gone after her. Given her a lift to the ferry instead of letting her hitch. Why didn’t we do that?”

  “I wouldn’t say this to anybody except you,” Lincoln said, “but the truth is, I was relieved she was gone.”

  If this surprised Teddy, he didn’t show it. “I remember what you said that morning.”

  Lincoln didn’t, and wasn’t sure he wanted Teddy to remind him.

  “You said, ‘That’s that, then.’ ”

  It was true, too. That’s exactly what he’d said, Lincoln recalled now. Almost as if he’d known even back then that they’d never see Jacy again.

  Down the hill, a screen door banged. Troyer had come out onto his deck and was now standing there, shirtless, with both hands on the railing, gazing up in their direction.

  * * *

  —

  “DO YOU EVER WONDER about Mickey?” Teddy said.

  They were on their way to a club in Oak Bluffs where they’d meet up with Mickey, who’d e-mailed Lincoln earlier: Face Man. Be at Rockers at 7. Bring Tedioski. Don’t let him weasel out, either. Predictably, the message had lifted Lincoln’s spirits. From their freshman year at Minerva, Mickey’s ability to put things in perspective had always been his greatest gift. Lincoln and Teddy were both prone to taking life too seriously, so Mickey provided a natural antidote to their brooding. And how bad could the world be if he was in it? Nor had he lost this knack over time. His insistence that Lincoln was still Face Man and Teddy still Tedioski demonstrated his conviction that four decades had neither damaged nor corrupted them. Somehow, in Mickey’s presence everything seemed less threatening, as if life had taken his measure and decided not to fuck with him. It didn’t really matter whether Troyer was the villain of Lincoln’s earlier fever dream or just a garden-variety dickhead. Mickey had made short work of him before and would do so again should the need arise.

  Teddy, for some reason, looked like he was on a different wavelength. Their earlier conversation seemed to have plunged him into a reverie, and Lincoln now regretted sharing Coffin’s dark speculations about what might’ve happened to Jacy. He hadn’t had much choice though, not after Troyer’s visit.

  “Wonder about him how?” Lincoln said, the question coming at him out of left field.

  Teddy shrugged. “What his life’s like? I mean, you and I know a lot more about each other than we do about him.”

  “Yeah, but with him there’s less to know.”

  Teddy raised an eyebrow at this.

  “Okay, that didn’t come out right,” Lincoln admitted. “What I mean is, Mickey’s always been a what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy.”

  Teddy didn’t disagree, but something was clearly troubling him. “Why do you think he punched that pledge at the SAE house?”

  “He was drunk.”

  “Even drunks have reasons.”

  “True, but most of the time they make sense only to them.” He couldn’t help chuckling at this memory. “He claimed at the time those stone lions out front pissed him off, remember?”

  “Okay, but why?”

  “I’m supposed to explain why statuary would piss off a drunk?”

  Teddy shrugged again. “Okay, so how about this. Why do you think he stayed in the kitchen scrubbing pots when he could’ve been out front with us?”

  “I just assumed he was being Mickey.”

  “That’s a tautology, not an explanation.”

  “I’d look up the word, but I’m driving.”

  “Well, the door-prize question is why he changed his mind and went to Canada.”

  At least this one made sense to Lincoln. “I’ve always wondered. In the end I suppose I thought you and Jacy convinced him. You’d both been riding him since December. Maybe when the time came to actually report, he saw the light. Like Paul on the road to Damascus? Anyway, where are you going with all this?”

  “I don’t know,” Teddy confessed, “but back in college I used to think you could change people’s minds. You’d reason with them, and if you knew more and you were clever and persistent, you’d eventually win them over.”

  Now Lincoln couldn’t help smiling. “In addition to yourself, you’re describing our current president.” Of the many bones he had to pick with Obama, this one topped the list; the man seemed to believe the world was a rational place in which everyone proceeded from goodwill.

  “Isn’t that the whole idea of serious debate? We forget that even under Nixon, most people supported the war. Eventually, though, there was just too much evidence.”

  “There’s your answer, then. Mickey was like the rest of the country. He reached a tipping point.”

  “Except in his case, it was never about the evidence, and reason never came into it. He promised his father he’d go. Nothing else mattered.”

  Lincoln nodded, beginning to understand. “So what you’re saying is—”

  “If we didn’t change his mind, what did?”

  “Okay, I guess that’s fair enough, but why is this suddenly so important?”

  “I guess what I’m getting at is there’s a lot we don’t know about people, even the ones we love best. There are things I’ve never told you about myself, and there are probably things that are none of my business that you haven’t told me. But the things we keep secret tend to be right at the center of who we are. Tom Ford never let on that he was gay, for instance.”

  “True,” Lincoln said, “but we knew.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Really?” Though now that he thought about it, Lincoln wasn’t sure he did, either, not when they were at Minerva. A decade later, though, when he read of Ford’s death in the alumni magazine he hadn’t been surprised; at some point, subconsciously, he must’ve put two
and two together.

  “What’s interesting,” Teddy was saying, “is that people aren’t more curious about each other.”

  “Don’t we all have a right to privacy?”

  “Absolutely. But that’s not what I’m talking about. We let people keep their secrets but then convince ourselves we know them anyway. Take Jacy. We all were in love with her, but what did we really know about her? I’d never met anybody like her before, so I had no frame of reference. And if you think about it, she was in the same boat. We must’ve been as mysterious to her as she was to us.”

  “Except there’s nothing very mysterious about us.” But as soon as Lincoln said this, he realized it was bogus. Because there had been times when she seemed to be studying them and puzzling over their entire non-Greenwich existence. Public schools. Split-levels with Ford Galaxies in the driveways. Mortgages. Neighborhoods full of first- and second-generation immigrants. Two-week summer vacations someplace nearby. People for whom summer wasn’t a verb. She appeared to be drinking it all in. Had she been wondering if maybe it was as good as or maybe even better than what she knew? “Did I ever tell you my mother’s take on her?”

  “Your mother met her?”

  “No, but I talked about her. How wild she was. I even gave her a slightly sanitized version of the night at the dog track in Bridgeport and our barhopping back to the Theta house. Then about Jacy giving us big wet kisses in front of the house president. When I finished, my mother had this strange look on her face, like she couldn’t figure out how a son of hers could be so dim-witted. She wanted to know if it hadn’t occurred to me that Jacy might be waiting for one of us—okay, I guess me—to work up the courage to declare his true feelings.”

  “She really said that?”

  “It gets better,” Lincoln told him. “When I explained how unlikely this was, that Jacy was engaged to a law student from a rich family, Mom said that maybe she wanted to be unengaged both to him and them.”