Dallas threw a dollar bill on the bar. “I can take up a collection if you want,” the bartender offered.
“He already did,” Untemeyer growled. “Your ex-wife still live around here?”
“She’s almost as broke as me,” Dallas said.
“The old lady still alive?”
“Her mother? As far as I know.”
Untemeyer shivered.
59
The corridors of the Mohawk Medical Services Center smelled smoky, though all the windows were open and fans had been set up to circulate the air. Like many summer storms, the one that had struck the night before had granted only temporary respite. Again it was muggy and wet, and when the sun broke through everything steamed. Anne Grouse had the waiting room all to herself. There were magazines to read, but instead she watched the sun drop out of sight behind Myrtle Park. Then the street lamps came on, barely discernible in the gloaming.
No one—doctor, nurse, staff—had said anything to her for hours. She had spoken to Dan on the telephone, and of course he offered to come out, but she told him not to, then regretted it immediately. She almost wished Dallas was here to share the responsibility of waiting. He’d been by the house earlier and she’d foolishly given him her savings account for Randall’s bail. She didn’t mind the money, obviously, but in a weak moment had violated one of the few rules she lived by, which was never to give money to Dallas. In a way, that Dallas was off someplace trying to be useful was just as well. His company was never soothing, though it wasn’t all his fault. He wanted to be taken seriously, the one thing she’d never been able to do. Briefly she felt sorry for the people he was borrowing from. If he didn’t get the full amount, he’d probably drop the whole bundle on a sure thing at Saratoga. In the end she’d have to ask her mother to put a second mortgage on the house, and of course Mrs. Grouse would do it. The old woman could inspire random violence moment to moment, but for the big things could be counted on, provided that sacrifice and not intervention was called for. Anne smiled to herself. There was, after all, something to be said for sacrifice.
Mrs. Grouse had been shaky after her assault on the worms, and Anne had sat with her until she finally slept, but when she came down early in the morning, before the call about Randall, her mother had already eaten breakfast and was housecleaning. She’d even been outside to clean up the lawn. She never allowed the ship of state to list for long. Now it was back on an even keel, and Anne knew that any references to the previous night would be greeted with blank stares. That night no longer existed. When Dallas called with the news, Anne said nothing to her mother.
When the evening shift came on at the hospital, one doctor made the mistake of venturing into the waiting room. “I want you to tell me about my son,” Anne told him. The doctor was young and clearly intimidated by so attractive a woman fifteen years his senior. “Let me find out what I can,” he said. “They’ll talk to me. I think.”
Fifteen minutes later he was back, but in the interim had gathered himself and applied the mask of his profession. “He’s resting well. You’d better go home and get some rest yourself.”
“I’d like to sit with him a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s the police, isn’t it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, you are.”
At nine, she gave up. In the lobby she saw Diana Wood at the admissions desk. Anne almost didn’t recognize her, she was so stooped, so gnarled. There was no girl left in her, and her expression was even more vacant than Anne felt. When she looked up and saw Anne at her elbow, she flushed.
“You didn’t have to come,” Anne said.
“I’m ashamed,” she said. “I’m not here about Randall.”
“Not again.”
“She’s curious about the fire, I think. Has to know what’s going on.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t waste the feeling,” her friend advised. “Most people assume they have an unlimited supply of emotions. They don’t.”
“Do you have time for coffee?”
“I better not. I always end up paying double for tardiness.”
“Please, have a cup with me. You can blame the desk.”
Diana shook her head. “Go see Dan. He’d love the company, and he’s better at it.” Before Anne could object, her cousin added, “Dallas stopped by around noon.”
Anne took a sharp breath. “Oh, no.”
“We didn’t mind, really. I wish it could’ve been more.”
“But you don’t have it.”
“If we didn’t have it, we couldn’t have given it. Besides, we hadn’t seen him in years. Why don’t you and he grow old?”
Anne reluctantly watched her cousin walk down the corridor and wait patiently for the elevator that wouldn’t come.
Dan was watching television when she came in. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I haven’t come to seduce you.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “Tonight I could be had, maybe.”
“Not me. I feel like I’ve been had. And had.”
“Things don’t look good,” he said. “I’ve been hearing some stuff. Turn that down, if you want.”
Anne turned it off. “Tell me.”
“They found a van full of stolen leather out there. Speculation is that one Gaffney brother has been stealing for years, probably with his brother’s knowledge. Randall was involved somehow, probably driving the stuff downstate.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“That’s their thinking, is all. There must’ve been some kind of blowup. When the cops got there, they found Randall all bloody, the dead cop a few feet away. Apparently the kid was wearing gloves, too. That makes it look worse. They figure he shot the cop, then tried to make it look like suicide.”
“The son was killed too? Billy?”
Dan nodded. “They found him and his old man someplace downtown. Nobody knows how they got there. The good part is that there are some things that don’t add up, at least according to my sources. All of which is private, by the way. Bail is going to be out of sight, in any case.”
“You shouldn’t have given Dallas the money.”
“I didn’t mind.”
“You can’t make up for things that way. You can’t make up for them at all.”
“That’s not why I did it. I’d just rather him have it than Milly. Next time she goes in, it’s the ward.”
“God, Dan.”
“Don’t look at me like that. You’ve got your own worries, kiddo. Besides, when the bank officers arrive, I’m going to be the happiest man in Mohawk County.”
Anne sat next to him on the sofa and took his hand. “Let’s run away,” she said. “Like I wanted to twenty years ago.”
“It hasn’t been me stopping us.”
“Nonsense. It’s been your ethics, not mine.”
“And you’ve been counting on them.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you aren’t as wild as you think. You’re Mather Grouse’s daughter, after all. And a good deal more, thank God.”
“But not an abject sinner?”
“No. Just a sinner. Garden variety. Garden of Eden variety.”
When Anne got home, the living room light was on downstairs. Anne went in, never suspecting her mother might have a visitor at this hour. She did, though. Mrs. Grouse sat very straight, smoothing her thin housecoat over her slender knees. Across the room, looking even more uncomfortable, sat the man in the alpaca suit.
60
Dallas Younger arrived to meet his ex-wife at the hospital hours after the prearranged time. The place was quiet, idling between the end of visiting hours and the closing time at the bars. The wing that had burned the night before looked charred and desolate. Two rent-a-cops were protecting the ruins from adventuresome boys. In the lobby, a pretty young girl was alone at the reception desk, and Dallas smiled at her when she looked up. “Younger,” he said.
The girl told him Room 237. Since he was late a
nyway, he decided to call Benny D., locating him eight dimes later at the Oak Lounge. “Where you been?”
“Looking for you,” Dallas said.
“I’m right here. Dominic went out to the hospital.”
“That’s where I’m at now. I haven’t been up yet.”
“Don’t be surprised if they don’t let you in. According to Dom, he has a bad concussion and the cops haven’t had a real go at him yet. They won’t let anybody in until they do. Rumor has it they fucked up and let him sit in the car while the hospital was burning and then took him down to the station for questioning before admitting him. A couple of the doctors are all bent out of shape, and they’ll probably testify if you decide to sue. That’s the good news.”
“The bad?”
“Twenty grand, Dominic figures. Minimum.”
Dallas slumped into the seat in the booth. He had raised a little over eight thousand. One or two people might be able to pony up a little more, but not that much more.
“I can’t make it.”
“Of course you can’t. How do you think they pick those figures?”
Dallas knew that, had known it all day and ignored it, glad for something to do. But there was a cop dead, and bail as high as it had to be. “It stinks,” he said.
“They figure he’ll skip. Turns out he was drafted and failed to report, so that doesn’t help. The DA’s acting pretty cocky about the whole fuckin’ thing, but Dominic says he’s encouraged. Over what I don’t know. You can bet they’ll try to protect Gaff’s reputation.” Benny D. paused, and Dallas heard his cigarette lighter click. “What do you figure happened out there?”
Dallas had no idea. He couldn’t picture Randall shooting anybody, but then he couldn’t picture Randall at all. Their paths never crossed, except at the diner, and then the boy was always in the kitchen. He never asked for anything, never seemed to want anything. Including the companionship of his father. Not that Dallas had been such a hot father, but you’d have thought the kid would have to be mad or something. Instead, it was like he hadn’t even noticed.
After he hung up, Dallas just sat for a while. By now Anne would be hopping mad. She wouldn’t say anything, but he’d look at her and feel unworthy, the way he always felt around her. Then it occurred to him that with any luck she’d given up by now and gone home, a possibility that cheered him considerably as he rode the elevator to the second floor. The waiting room was empty, so he ambled down the corridor glancing at the three-by-five name cards in the metal slots outside each room until he came to 237, “Younger.” There were no policemen in sight, and he ducked in.
Inside were two beds, one empty and the other occupied by a young girl, asleep, her light brown hair radiating outward on the white pillowcase. Her face, neck and arms were covered with purple bruises so bright they looked painted on, since there was no swelling. Dallas’ first thought was that Randall had been moved, probably to some high-security wing where the cops could grill him in peace.
A woman was seated on the edge of the girl’s bed and, when she turned to see who’d come in, Dallas saw it was his brother’s wife. Her eyes registered nothing when she looked straight into his face. “Younger,” he’d said at the desk, not thinking.
Someone had told him a week or so ago that his niece was sick, but despite repeated efforts to make himself remember he’d succeeded in forgetting. Since the night they’d slept together, Dallas thought about her pretty often, and there were times when he would’ve liked to go back. But he feared it would happen all over again. And though he was angry when he heard that John, married with three kids, was hanging out with her, there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. She’d lost a good deal of weight and was prettier than she’d been since before David married her.
It wasn’t Loraine he looked at now, but the girl. He couldn’t look away, and without wanting to he moved closer, up to the foot of the bed. His throat tightened and he couldn’t breathe right. Trying to fight it off, the way he had delayed throwing up when he was a child, he tried to imagine his niece in the form before him. But there was little resemblance, and when he remembered the closet still half-full of his brother’s presents, he thought it would be good to die, if only to escape what he was feeling. If there was an open window, he thought, I’d jump.
Then, to make matters worse, he realized Loraine was looking up at him and had actually taken his hand. Somehow she had found something to feel for him who couldn’t have deserved it less. Suddenly he realized he was crying. He hadn’t done that in twenty years, even at David’s funeral, and was embarrassed for doing it now. “Don’t,” his brother’s wife was saying. “It’s not your fault. You came. You’re a good man. A good man.” When she said that, he let some terrible sound escape, and before he knew exactly what he was doing, he had emptied his pockets into Loraine’s lap. Some of the bills fell to the floor, fifties and hundreds, all mixed together, neither counted nor organized. Then he ran out of the room and into a stairwell, at the bottom of which he made a wrong turn and found himself not in the lobby but in a dark corridor. Then he took another turn and was outside, the stars overhead sectioned into grids by the steel rafters above. He tripped, got to his feet, fell again. The ground was wet and dirty. When he emerged, the rent-a-cop grabbed him roughly. “You got no business in there,” he said dutifully. “No business at all.”
“I got lost,” Dallas choked, the smell of the dead fire deep in his lungs, black char all over his hands and clothing.
The cop shoved him in the general direction of the parking lot. “Well, get unlost, for Chrissake.” Lost? Crazy was more like it. In his long and varied career in enforcement; he’d studied people carefully and concluded that most of them were full of shit.
61
People in Mohawk still talk about the events leading up to the Randall Younger trial. Headlines in the Mohawk Republican, television coverage on all the tri-city TV stations and, in general, a circus atmosphere. Cameras everywhere and the issues all but lost as revelation followed closely upon revelation. It was alleged by the tanneries that Rory Gaffney, his son William and Randall Younger had been engaged in transporting stolen leather. The man who owned the van reported it stolen as soon as he heard about the trouble, but the police were suspicious and after an hour or two of interrogation he withered and directed them to the shack across the tracks from the tannery. The police chief suggested he state unequivocally that Officer Gaffney had no part in the thefts, and he complied.
Coincidentally, just as the pre-trial publicity was nearing its height, a long awaited, federally funded study was published, officially linking the abnormally high incidence of cancer, leukemia and Lou Gehrig’s disease in Mohawk County to the tanneries and mills. Numerous charges of illegal chemical dumping in the Cayuga Creek as well as citations for unsafe working conditions in the shops were specified and substantiated. One mill was closed down by the state and two others closed voluntarily under the onslaught of the Republican’s editor, for many years the sole enemy of the tannery owners. The old arguments—that a coalition of shopowners had deviously and systematically prevented clean industries from entering the county, preferring decline to competition—were raised and examined, this time in the big city papers. As outrage and animosity toward the tanneries mounted, Rory Gaffney, who’d apparently been stealing from them for years, was elevated to folk-hero status, and the men who for decades had drunk draft beer with him at Greenie’s began to recall fondly the many times Old Gaff had taken on the owners and shop stewards, very nearly unionizing the men. None of this boded particularly well for Randall Younger, who stood accused of snuffing out this simple and noble flame. Those prone to moralizing saw parallels between the fate of Rory Gaffney and that of the Kennedys, struck down by outcasts unworthy to shine their shoes.
Once the Gaffney myth was gaining decent momentum, however, there was a third revelation, this one made by none other than The Bulldog, “Your Hostess” at The Grotto, beloved wife of Harry Saunders. Indeed, Harry was probabl
y the motivating force behind his wife’s revelation. She had first met Rory Gaffney when she was just a girl, living with her mother and older sister in Cresson, a tiny community in central Pennsylvania. The sister had been married but left her husband—a godless man, she said—to live with those who cared something for her. It was this sister’s husband who appeared on their doorstep one afternoon, and with him a seventeen-year-old boy who said nothing at all and stared at nothing at all out of swollen eyes that were little more than slits. The boy frightened her more than the man, she said, because she couldn’t think why he was the way he was, and if anyone else knew, they wouldn’t tell her. She concluded that he must’ve been visited by God, and guessed that it must be God he was looking at through the slits, which was why he was so puffy all over. But as the days passed, the swelling lessened and his eyes opened a little and he began to resemble a boy. At night she heard the arguments between the man and her older sister, him saying that he had a good mind to take her back and show everybody what her running off had done. That if she couldn’t help heal her own flesh and blood, he’d make sure the whole world knew the kind of unnatural mother she was. One day her sister broke down completely and told her she must in God’s judgment be corrupt for such a terrible thing to have happened, and to be pursued so far. And the younger girl thought her sister must’ve been right, because she was never the same afterwards, not even when the man and the boy were gone. “I am unholy in God’s sight,” her older sister told her again and again during that last year.
For months after he left, the swollen boy who made crazy sounds when he talked haunted her imagination, and she frequently expected him to reappear on the porch. Then came her sister’s death, which meant that he wouldn’t be coming back, thank God, but still she couldn’t forget him. Then, for a long time, things didn’t work out, first one thing and then another. Her mother was placed in a nursing home in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and waiting for her to die took years. And one day a letter came for her sister, who’d been dead for well over a decade, from the man who had brought the boy, and it said the boy had gotten into a mess and to come back if she wanted to. She tore the letter up and didn’t bother answering, but it got her thinking about the swollen boy again, and wondering if he was still looking at God. She didn’t believe in God herself any more. Not since her mother and sister died, and she discovered that not believing didn’t make such a hell of a difference. So, a month after the letter came, she went to Mohawk to find out about the boy, who by then had been taken to Utica. People said a man named Harry Saunders had been his only friend, and since Harry was a decent enough man she got him to marry her. She saw the man Gaffney once or twice—he’d changed surprisingly little, and she would’ve recognized him anywhere—but she never let on who she was, or that she remembered him, or that over the years she had pieced it all together. Every Christmas she sent him a card with a message inside. “Unholy in the sight of God,” she scribbled every year, signing her dead sister’s name—the only retribution she allowed herself.