"Thanks, Betsy."
"This stays between us, Ralph. I'm counting on having a job to come back to when my maternity leave is over. Tell me you hear that."
"Loud and clear."
9
John Zellman, owner and operator of Gentlemen, Please, called Ralph fifteen minutes later. He sounded curious rather than irritated, and was willing to help. Yes, he was sure Claude Bolton had been at the club when that poor kid had been grabbed and killed.
"Why so positive, Mr. Zellman? I thought he didn't go on duty until four PM."
"Yeah, but he came in early that day. Around two. He wanted time off to go to the big city with one of the strippers. He said she had a personal problem." Zellman snorted. "He was the one with the personal problem. Right under his zipper."
"Gal named Carla Jeppeson?" Ralph asked, scrolling through the transcript of Bolton's interview on his iPad. "Also known as Pixie Dreamboat?"
"That's her," Zellman said, and laughed. "If no tits count for shit, that ole girl's gonna be around for a long time. But some men kind of like that, don't ask me why. Her and Claude have got a thing, but it won't last long. Her husband's in McAlester now--bad checks, I think--but he'll be out by Christmas. She's just passing the time with Claude. I told him that, but you know what they say--a foreskin just wants to get in."
"You're sure that was that day he came in early. July 10th."
"Sure I am. Made a note of it, because no way was Claude gonna get paid for two days in Cap City when he had his vacation coming right up--with pay, mind you--less than two weeks later."
"Kind of outrageous. Did you consider firing him?"
"No. At least he was honest about it, you know? And listen. Claude's one of the good ones, and they're scarcer than hen's teeth. Mostly security guys are either pussies who look tough but don't want anything to do with a brawl if one breaks out in front of the runway, as they sometimes do, or guys who want to go all Incredible Hulk every time some customer gives them a little lip. Claude can throw somebody out with the best of them when he has to, but most times he doesn't. He's good at quieting them down. He's got a touch. I think it's on account of all those meetings he goes to."
"Narcotics Anonymous. He told me."
"Yeah, he's up-front about it. Proud, actually, and I guess he's got a right to be. A lot of guys never get that monkey off their backs once it climbs on. It's a tough monkey. Long claws."
"Staying clean, is he?"
"If he wasn't, I could tell. I know from junkies, Detective Anderson, believe me. Gentlemen is a clean place."
Ralph had his doubts, but let it pass. "No slips?"
Zellman laughed. "They all slip, at least in the beginning, but not since he's been working for me. He doesn't drink, either. I asked him why not once, if drugs were his problem. He said both things were the same. Said if he took a drink, even an O'Doul's, he'd be off looking for blow or something even stronger." Zellman paused, then said, "Maybe he was a douche when he was using, but he isn't now. He's decent. In a business where your trade comes to drink margaritas and stare at shaved pussies, that's kind of rare."
"I hear you. Is Bolton on vacation now?"
"Yup. As of Sunday. Ten days."
"Is it what you might call a stay-cation?"
"You mean is he here in FC? No. He's down in Texas, somewhere near Austin. It's where he's from. Hold on a second, I pulled his file before I called you." There was the sound of shuffling papers, then Zellman was back. "Marysville, that's the name of the town. Just a wide spot in the road, from the way he talks about it. I got the address because I send part of his paycheck down there every other week. It goes to his mother. She's old and pretty feeble. Got the emphysema, too. Claude went down to see if he could get her into one of those assisted living places, but he wasn't too hopeful. Says she's one stubborn old nanny goat. I don't see how he can afford it, anyway, on what he makes up here. When it comes to taking care of old people, the government should help regular guys like Claude, but does it? Bullshit it does."
Says the man who probably voted for Donald Trump, Ralph thought. "Well, thank you, Mr. Zellman."
"Can I ask why you want to talk to him?"
"Just a couple of follow-up questions," Ralph said. "Small stuff."
"Dotting i's and crossing t's, huh?"
"That's right. Do you have an address?"
"Sure, to send the money. Got a pencil?"
What he had was his trusty iPad, open to the Quick Notes app. "Shoot."
"Box 397, Rural Star Route 2, Marysville, Texas."
"And what's Mom's name?"
Zellman laughed cheerfully. "Lovie. Ain't that a good one? Lovie Ann Bolton."
Ralph thanked him and hung up.
"Well?" Jeannie asked.
"Hang on," Ralph said. "Notice I've got my think-face on."
"Ah, so you do. Could you use an iced tea while you think?" She was smiling. It looked good on her, that smile. It looked like a step in the right direction.
"No doubt."
He returned to his iPad (wondering how he had ever gotten along without the damn thing), and found Marysville about seventy miles west of Austin. It was little more than a dot on the map, its single claim to fame something called the Marysville Hole.
Ralph considered his next move while he drank his iced tea, then called Horace Kinney of the Texas Highway Patrol. Kinney was now a captain, mostly riding a desk, but Ralph had worked with him several times on interstate cases when the man had been a trooper, logging ninety thousand miles a year in north and west Texas.
"Horace," he said after they had finished with the pleasantries, "I need a favor."
"Big or small?"
"Medium, and it requires a bit of delicacy."
Kinney laughed. "Oh, you need to go to New York or Connecticut for delicacy, hoss. This is Texas. What do you need?"
Ralph told him. Kinney said he had just the man, and he happened to be in the area.
10
Around three o'clock that afternoon, Flint City PD dispatcher Sandy McGill looked up to see Jack Hoskins standing in front of her desk with his back turned.
"Jack? Did you need something?"
"Take a look at the back of my neck and tell me what you see."
Puzzled but willing, she stood up and looked. "Turn to the light a little more." And when he did so: "Ow, that's one hell of a sunburn. You should go down to the Walgreens and get some aloe vera cream."
"Will that fix it?"
"Only time will fix it, but it will take some of the sting out."
"But a sunburn is all it is, right?"
She frowned. "Sure, but bad enough to have blistered in places. Don't you know enough to put on sunblock when you're out fishing? Do you want to get skin cancer?"
Just hearing her say those words out loud made the back of his neck feel hotter. "I guess I forgot."
"How bad is it on your arms?"
"Not quite so bad." No burn on them at all, in fact; it was just on the back of his neck. Where someone had touched him out at that abandoned barn. Caressed him with just his fingertips. "Thanks, Sandy."
"Blonds and redheads get it the worst. If it doesn't get better, you should get it looked at."
He left without replying, thinking of the man in his dream. The one lurking behind the shower curtain.
I gave it to you, but I can take it back. Would you like me to take it back?
He thought, It will go away on its own, like any other sunburn.
Maybe so, but maybe not, and it really did hurt worse now. He could hardly bear to touch it, and he kept thinking of the open sores eating into his mother's flesh. At first the cancer had crawled, but once it really took hold, it galloped. By the end it was eating into her throat and vocal cords, turning her screams into growls, but listening through the closed door of her sickroom, eleven-year-old Jack Hoskins had still been able to hear what she was telling his father: to put her out of her misery. You'd do it for a dog, she'd croaked. Why won't you do it for me?
"Just a sunburn," he said, starting his car. "That's all it is. A fucking sunburn."
He needed a drink.
11
It was five that afternoon when a Texas Highway Patrol car drove up Rural Star Route 2 and turned into the driveway at Box 397. Lovie Bolton was on her front porch with a cigarette in her hand and her oxygen tank in its rubber-wheeled carrier beside her rocking chair.
"Claude!" she rasped. "We got a visitor! It's the State Patrol! Better come on around here and see what he wants!"
Claude was in the weedy backyard of the little shotgun house, taking in wash off the line and folding it neatly into a wicker basket. Ma's washing machine was all right, but the dryer had shit the bed shortly before he arrived, and these days she was too short of breath to hang out the clothes herself. He meant to buy her a new dryer before he left, but kept putting it off. And now the THP, unless Ma was wrong, and she probably wasn't. She had plenty of problems, but her eyes were fine.
He walked around the house and saw a tall cop getting out of a black-and-white SUV. At the sight of the gold Texas logo on the driver's side door, Claude felt his gut tighten. He hadn't done anything for which he could be arrested in a long, long time, but that tightening was a reflex. Claude reached into his pocket and gripped his six-year NA medallion, as he often did in moments of stress, hardly aware he was doing it.
The trooper tucked his sunglasses into his breast pocket as Ma struggled to rise from her rocker.
"No, ma'am, don't get up," he said. "I'm not worth it."
She cackled rustily and settled back. "Ain't you some big one. What's your name, Officer?"
"Sipe, ma'am. Corporal Owen Sipe. I'm pleased to meet you." He shook the hand not holding the cigarette, minding the old lady's swollen joints.
"Same goes right back, sir. This is my son, Claude. He's down from Flint City, kind of heppin me out."
Sipe turned to Claude, who let go of his chip and held out his own hand. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Bolton." He held onto Claude's hand for a moment, studying it. "Got a little ink on your fingers, I see."
"Got to see both to get the whole message," Claude said. He held out the other hand. "I did em myself, in jail. But if you're here to see me, you probably know that."
"CANT and MUST," Trooper Sipe said, ignoring the question. "I've seen finger tattoos before, but never those."
"Well, they tell a story," Claude said, "and I pass it on when I can. It's how I make amends. I'm clean these days, but it was a hard struggle. Went to a lot of AA and NA meetings while I was locked up. At first it was just because they had doughnuts from Krispy Kreme, but eventually what they were saying took hold. I learned that every addict knows two things: he can't use and he must use. That's the knot in your head, see? You can't cut it and you can't untie it, so you have to learn to rise above it. It can be done, but you have to remember the basic situation. You must but you can't."
"Huh," Sipe said. "Sort of a parable, isn't it?"
"These days he don't drink nor drug," Lovie said from her rocker. "He don't even use this shit." She cast the stub of her cigarette into the dirt. "He's a good boy."
"I'm not here because anyone thinks he's done something bad," Sipe said mildly, and Claude relaxed. A little. You never wanted to relax too much when the State Patrol swung by for an unexpected visit. "Got a call from Flint City, closing out a case would be my best guess, and they need you to verify something about a man named Terry Maitland."
Sipe brought out his phone, diddled with it, and showed Claude a picture.
"Is this the belt buckle the Maitland fella was wearing the night you saw him? And don't ask me what that means, because I sure don't know. They just sent me out here to ask the question."
This was not why Sipe had been sent out, but the message from Ralph Anderson, relayed to Sipe by Captain Horace Kinney, was to make sure everything stayed friendly, with no suspicions aroused.
Claude examined the phone, then handed it back. "Can't be positive--that was a while ago--but it sure looks like it."
"Well, thank you. Thank you both." Sipe pocketed his phone and turned to go.
"That's it?" Claude asked. "You drove all the way out here to ask one question?"
"That's the long and short of it. I guess someone really wants to know. Thank you for your time. I'll pass this along on my way back to Austin."
"That's a long drive, Officer," Lovie said. "Why don't you come in first, and have a glass of sweet tea? It's only from a mix, but it ain't bad."
"Well, I can't come in and sit, want to get home before dark if I can, but I'd take a taste out here, if you don't mind."
"We don't mind a bit. Claude, go in and get this nice man a glass of tea."
"Small glass," Sipe said, holding his thumb and finger a smidge apart. "Two swallows and I'm down the road."
Claude went in. Sipe leaned a shoulder against the side of the porch, looking up at Lovie Bolton, whose good-natured face was a river of wrinkles.
"Your boy treats you pretty good, I guess?"
"I'd be lost without him," Lovie declared. "He sends me a 'lotment every other week, and comes down when he can. Wants to get me in an old folks' home in Austin, and I might go one of these days if he could afford it, which right now he can't. He's the best kind of son, Trooper Sipes: hellraiser early, trustworthy later on."
"I heard that," Sipe said. "Say, he ever take you out to the Big 7, down the road there? They make one hell of a breakfast."
"I don't trust roadside cafes," she said, taking her cigarettes from the pocket of her housedress and clamping one between her dentures. "Got ptomaine in one over Abilene way back in '74, and like to die. My boy takes over the cookin when he's here. He ain't no Emeril, but he ain't bad. Knows his way around a skillet. Don't burn the bacon." She dropped him a wink as she lit up, Sipe smiling and hoping there was a tight seal on her tank and she wasn't going to blow them both to hell.
"I bet he made you breakfast this morning," Sipe said.
"You bet he did. Coffee, raisin toast, and scrambled eggs with plenty of butter, just the way I like em."
"Are you an early riser, ma'am? I only ask because, with the oxygen and all--"
"Him and me both," she said. "Up with the sun."
Claude came back out with three glasses of iced tea on a tray, two tall ones and a shortie. Owen Sipe drank his in two gulps, smacked his lips, and said he had to be off. The Boltons watched him go, Lovie in her rocker, Claude sitting on the steps, frowning at the rooster-tail of dust marking the trooper's progress back to the main road.
"See how much nicer the cops are when you ain't been doin nothin bad?" Lovie asked.
"Yeah," Claude said.
"Drove all the way out here just to ask about some belt buckle. Think of that!"
"That wasn't why he came, Ma."
"No? Then why?"
"Not sure, but that wasn't it." Claude put his glass down on the step and looked at his fingers. At CANT and MUST, the knot he had finally risen above. He stood up. "I better get the rest of those clothes off the line. Then I want to go over to Jorge's and ask if I can help him out tomorrow. He's roofin."
"You're a good boy, Claude." He saw tears standing in her eyes, and was moved by them. "You come here and give your ma a big old hug."
"Yes, ma'am," Claude said, and did just that.
12
Ralph and Jeannie Anderson were getting ready to go to the meeting at Howie Gold's office when Ralph's cell phone rang. It was Horace Kinney. Ralph spoke to him while Jeannie put on her earrings and slipped into her shoes.
"Thank you, Horace. I owe you one." He ended the call.
Jeannie was looking at him expectantly. "Well?"
"Horace sent a THP trooper out to the Bolton place in Marysville. He had a cover story, but what he was really there for--"
"I know what he was there for."
"Uh-huh. According to Mrs. Bolton, Claude cooked them breakfast around six o'clock this morning. If you saw Bolton downsta
irs at four--"
"I saw the clock when I got up to pee," Jeannie said. "It was 4:06."
"MapQuest says the distance between Flint City and Marysville is four hundred and thirty miles. He never could have made it from here to there in time to make breakfast at six, honey."
"The mother could have been lying." She said it without much conviction.
"Sipe--the trooper Horace sent--said he didn't pick that up on his radar, and thinks he would've."
"So it's Terry all over again," she said. "A man in two places at the same time. Because he was here, Ralph. He was."
Before he could answer, the doorbell rang. Ralph shrugged on a sportcoat to cover the Glock on his belt and went downstairs. District Attorney Bill Samuels stood on the front stoop, looking strangely unlike himself in jeans and a plain blue tee-shirt.
"Howard called me. Said there was going to be a meeting--'an informal get-together about the Maitland business,' is how he put it--at his office, and suggested I might like to come. I thought we could go together, if that's all right."
"I guess so," Ralph said, "but listen, Bill--who else have you told? Chief Geller? Sheriff Doolin?"
"Nobody. I'm no genius, but I didn't hit my head falling out of the dumb-tree, either."
Jeannie joined Ralph at the door, checking her purse. "Hello, Bill. I'm surprised to see you here."
Samuels's smile was without humor. "To tell you the truth, I'm surprised to be here. This case is like a zombie that won't stay dead."
"What does your ex think about all this?" Ralph asked, and when Jeannie gave him a frown: "Just tell me if I'm stepping out of line."
"Oh, we've discussed it," Samuels said. "Except that's not quite right. She discussed and I listened. She thinks I played a part in getting Maitland killed, and she's not entirely wrong." He tried to smile and couldn't quite make it. "But how were we to know, Ralph? Tell me that. It was a slam-dunk, wasn't it? Looking back . . . knowing all we did . . . can you honestly say you would have done anything different?"
"Yes," Ralph said. "I wouldn't have arrested him in front of the whole fucking town, and I would have made sure he went into the courthouse by the back door. Come on, let's go. We're going to be late."
MACY'S TELLS GIMBELS
July 25th
1