The Wrong Case

  “What’s wrong with him?” Dick asked as we got in his van.

  “He just needs a drink.”

  Being nasty to Simon had ruined the good feeling I had when I decided to find the Duffy kid, and the arm and the buttock that Reese had kicked were beginning to throb. Not even the sight of the ill-fated house cheered me. It had been deserted, and in the dim streetlight looked as if it had been bombed.

  “Did a job on it, huh?” Dick said, but I didn’t bother to answer. “Remind me not to piss you off, old buddy.”

  “I wasn’t even irritated. It just happened.”

  “And what happens now?”

  “You find out where Helen Duffy is staying?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I’m going to find her goddamned little brother.”

  “Good luck,” he murmured, not sounding too happy.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not after anything. I’m just going to find the little bastard, that’s all.”

  “It’s none of my business,” he said lightly.

  “Don’t try to shit your friends, Richard.”

  “Okay. Like I said, good luck. You going to stop for a taste?”

  “Don’t I always?” I said.

  “See you at Mahoney’s,” he said, then drove away as I stepped out of the van.

  I started toward the rig, but the lights were still on in the old woman’s house next door, and she was standing at the front door looking out. Thinking she might be the sort of Nosy Parker who might have seen the Duffy kid, I cut through the brambles and weeds and climbed up on her porch, but she wouldn’t open the door. She just stood there, smiling and waving through the glass as if we were on opposite sides of the street. When I knocked on the door, a large, angry woman came to the door, looked at me, shook her head, and took the old woman away before I could explain that I wasn’t selling anything.

  When I got to my rig, I discovered that I had been, as the kids say, ripped off. Everything was gone but the seats. Everything.

  “You forgot the fucking seats!” I shouted at the silent, dark houses, then drove back down to the police station to report the theft in the hope that I could collect the insurance. If the premiums were paid.

  —

  Publicly I bemoaned my lack of desire to hunt animals and blamed it on the Army and the Korean War, but the truth was that I’d never really liked to hunt. It seemed a great deal of hard work, both before and after the quick excitement of making a good shot. But I liked guns, so I took up skeet and target shooting and promised my friends that I’d go hunting next year for sure. Driving down to Mahoney’s, the inside of my rig as empty as a church on Saturday night, I thought about hunting low-life bastards, the sort who would steal a man’s guns.

  When I got there, Dick had already left. I had a quick drink by the door, then shoved my way through the frenzied melee of freaks toward the back and my other office. They didn’t seem like happy flower children that night; their fragrance was that of the unwashed, and they were no nicer drunks than any other type of people. I bounced off a tall girl, made her spill her beer, and she snapped at me, her long, pointed breasts rearing like the muzzles of two Afghans. I shouted at the night bartender helping Leo, told him to give the bitch a beer on me. She ran her fingers through her kinky blond hair and asked me why in the hell I had done that. I replied that I was afraid she would bite my head off, then walked away, into the quiet sanctuary of my other office, grabbing a can of beer as I passed through the cooler.

  Inside, I switched on the television, flipped around the cable stations until I found a movie on a Salt Lake station. I sat down to watch it while I loaded clips for my Browning 9-mm automatic pistol. Harry Carey and Ben Johnson were riding Roman style, standing on two horses each, as they circled the parade field. John Wayne had a mustache and a cavalry officer’s uniform. His face twitched, as if the mustache made his face itch. Victor McLaglen looked as if he had a hangover, and Maureen O’Hara like a good Irish girl who needed a drink. I remembered the title, Rio Grande, but couldn’t remember the actor’s name who played John Wayne’s son by Maureen O’Hara. He was riding with Harry Carey and Ben Johnson—that is, his stunt man was riding. Also, I couldn’t remember who got killed in the movie.

  “The old fart looks good in a mustache,” Leo said as he came into the office.

  “Did you see Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter?”

  “Think so. Why?”

  “He had a mustache. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “He looked really good. You think I ought to grow a mustache, Leo?”

  He laughed for a moment, then stopped, and said, “I just came from the hospital. The colonel just died.”

  “That’s too bad,” I said, filling my mouth with empty words.

  “The old fart survived two wars and some goddamned punk pushes him down the stairs and kills him. What the hell kinda life is that?”

  “I don’t know, Leo. The kind we have, I guess. I don’t know.”

  “The kind a fella needs a drink just to survive,” Leo said, his hand holding his little gray beard. His mouth moved silently, as if pleading for a drink. “I don’t know if I can handle that madhouse tonight. Why don’t you lock me in on your way out?”

  “Why don’t you just go home?”

  “Can’t be a success staying at home, Milo.”

  “You want me to stay with you?”

  “Ah, hell, you wouldn’t be any help, Milo,” he said, then glanced at me. Maybe he thought he had hurt my feelings because he added quickly, “I didn’t mean that. You’d just get drunk, then I’d have to tend to you.”

  “Might keep you busy.”

  “I ain’t up to tending drunks tonight, Milo. Not even myself.”

  He left slowly, unable to face the business of his life, but going anyway. I turned off the television without looking to see what John Wayne was doing. From the old trunk beneath the bed, I took a .41 double-barreled derringer and a handful of rounds, then a shoulder holster for the automatic, and stuffed my armaments into a paper sack. I needed a quiet bar and a slow drink, a large sandwich and a telephone, more than I needed the guns, but they were important too.

  —

  Occasionally, in my line of business, I had to cause a small scene at a local motel to obtain evidence for divorces. As a result, I wasn’t too popular with motel management. If a switchboard operator or night clerk recognized my voice on the telephone, they wouldn’t give me the correct time, but by the time I started calling around I was so tired that nobody knew my voice. I found Helen Duffy registered at the Holiday Inn, and just after midnight had the switchboard ring her room. She answered on the first ring, sounded expectant instead of sleepy, almost cheerful, but I broke the connection, and leaving the remains of my coffee and cheeseburger, drove out to the east side of town, where the better motels lined the highway—large buildings discreetly lighted, looking like a government installation or the campus of a shoddy junior college.

  When I knocked, she came quickly to the door, asking who. I told her. She opened the door abruptly, warm and flushed from her bath. Streaks of dark-red hair lay across her cheeks and forehead like smears of dried blood, and her eyes, reflecting the dark green of the velour robe, were wide and empty, like the eyes of an accident victim. She fell against me, throwing her arms around me as if she had been waiting for me all day, her shoulder banging heavily into my sore arm. But the groan came from somewhere deeper inside. I held her, wondering how she could cry when I was so happy.

  As she cried, she scattered tissues about the room, and they seemed to surround us like a flock of little pink animals. Between her sobs, she told me that her little brother was dead. He had been found in the Willomot Hill Bar men’s room, an Indian bar north of town, and the deputy had told Helen that it looked like a drug overdose. Raymond Duffy had been found with a shoelace around his biceps and the needle still hanging from the bend of his elbow. Helen had gone down to the morgue and identified the body.
Her grief, seeking a safe object for displacement, had centered upon her little brother’s hair and beard; she accused the morgue attendants of cutting his hair short and shaving off his thick black beard.

  “I didn’t believe it,” she murmured, daubing her eyes, “not even when I saw the body, and I didn’t cry until you came. I’ve been taking showers, one after another. I used all the hot water in the motel…” She began to giggle faintly, but they quickly changed to sobs. This time she fell into a chair, out of my arms.

  “But now I’ve accepted it,” she said, drawing a deep breath, seeming almost calm. “However, I do not believe he—he died of a drug overdose. The young deputy seemed to think that Raymond was an addict; he didn’t come right out and say it, but I could tell.”

  “How did they find you?”

  “Who?”

  “The sheriff’s department.”

  “Oh—I don’t know…they—didn’t say,” she said brokenly. “I didn’t ask.”

  “I’ll ask,” I said, taking a pad and pen out of my pocket.

  “I’m sure it isn’t important,” she said, so I put the pad back.

  “Did they mention the autopsy?”

  “No. They can’t do that…Can they? I mean I didn’t sign anything. I can’t—couldn’t bear—that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but in a case like this, they don’t need your permission.”

  “Oh my God,” she wailed, the sobbing about to begin.

  “If you don’t believe he died of an overdose,” I said, reaching out to touch her shoulder, “then an autopsy will prove it.” My fingers stayed a second on the warm, damp cloth of her robe, my thumb gently kneading her fragile collarbone.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, moving away from my hand. “I’m just not thinking—the shock, I guess…you’re absolutely right.”

  “Just don’t think about it,” I said, which, of course, made her think about nothing else.

  “How…He looked so frail—lying there—like a child—so young…innocent…”

  “You must have been awfully close to your little brother,” I said, hoping she might remember happier times, and in the memory ease the grief.

  She glanced up at me, staring for a long moment, then in a very calm voice said, “Yes.”

  “That’s unusual,” I said. “The age difference—” I stopped because she seemed angry. Her eyes, abraded by tears, flashed a hard green and fired with anger. Then, as if heavy shutters had fallen inside her, the eyes became opaque with control.

  “My father,” she said, “is a wonderful man but somewhat—distracted and not the outdoors type at all. My mother—works. Raymond and I were very close.”

  “Have you called your parents?” I asked, and for the second time said exactly the wrong thing.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, her hand flying to her mouth, her eyes suddenly frightened. “Oh my God.” Sobs jerked her body, and she jammed her fist into her open mouth as if she could hold them back with physical force.

  I reached for her, but she jumped out of the chair, stumbled across the room and threw herself across the bed, moaning about kindness and suffering, youth and innocence, and dreadful grief, both hands holding her face. She cried so hard that I almost envied her the grief. Nothing had ever touched me that hard, not since my father’s death years before. She wept among the disarray of hurried packing or unpacking, slips and brightly colored dresses and dark hose scattered as if by the wind across the bedspread. An empty suitcase, wide open like a hysterical mouth, leaned against the headboard. As she sobbed and rocked, like a mother thrown across the body of her child, a cosmetics case slipped off the side of the bed and emptied itself on the carpet, glass and metal clinking, a heavy gold chain slithering out of its niche like a sigh. But she heard none of it.

  Beside her now, I pressed my hand into the small of her back, finding in the raw palm another bit of tiny, sharp gravel, and I rubbed her back until she finally fell asleep, whimpering and flinching in the uneasy sleep. I cleaned off the bed, folding her soft scraps of clothing, then covered her with the blanket from the other bed, my fingers caressing once more the slim reach of her waist, then, knowing that my comfort wouldn’t be enough, I called Dick.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Of course not, old buddy. I’m never asleep at—one in the morning. Especially not when I have an eight o’clock freshman comp class. Christ, I can explain illiteracy to the little bastards in my sleep—”

  “Helen Duffy’s little brother is dead,” I said, stopping him. “What?”

  “Helen Duffy—her little brother is dead.”

  “Jesus Christ, what happened?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Can you come over?”

  “Jesus, Milo, I don’t know.”

  “She’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “Okay. Be there as soon as I get my pants on. Where?”

  “Room 217. Holiday Inn.”

  I hung up before I could overhear the beginnings of Dick’s excuse to Marsha, then went back to the bed to tug the blanket higher about Helen’s shoulders. I nearly pulled it over the top of her head. An old habit from the days when most of the bodies I covered with blankets were growing cold beside steaming, mangled automobiles, hunks of meat quivering in the pulse of red lights. Sometimes I thought that the accidents had finally driven me out of a deputy’s uniform and into the wreckage of the divorce courts. I slipped the blanket back from her neck, felt lightly for the pulse in her warm, soft throat. She groaned slightly, turning, but the blood ticked merrily along beneath my fingertips.

  Our bodies betray us constantly. In grief and confusion that should still its beat, the heart murmurs on about its business. Cells wither like ash with every beat, but never from sorrow. And desire remains. As I held a handful of her thick hair, as I leaned over and buried my face in the smell of her, clean and unscented, my body, ignoring my pleas, wanted her, a fierce unbidden desire rising. I wanted her then, wanted to lie next to her, to stroke that bare damp skin beneath the green robe, to bury myself in her.

  But I moved away, picked up the room, putting things in their proper places, until Dick rapped softly at the door.

  While he sat with her, I went down to the lobby and called Jamison at home. Evelyn answered but wouldn’t wake him.

  “He’s tired, Milo, damned tired. He works too hard,” she said quietly, sounding much older than I remembered her.

  “If you don’t wake him, babe, I’ll come over and kick the goddamned door down.”

  “You bastard,” she hissed, but she went to wake him. We hadn’t lived together in years, but she remembered.

  “What the hell do you want?” Jamison grumbled. He didn’t sound sleepy, just tired.

  “You knew about the Duffy kid, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he sighed, “I knew. I didn’t know you were gonna wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me what I already knew.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It wasn’t any of your business, Milo. She wasn’t your client anyway.”

  “I’m going to take this personally,” I said.

  “Thought you might. The Duffy lady—she taking it hard?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “Ah, get the fuck outa my life, Milo,” he said, then hung up, banging the telephone.

  Dick and I spent the night watching over her, drinking coffee and talking about nothing in whispers, as she started and muttered through her restless dreams. Once she sat up, her wild eyes staring through us, then she laughed in short, hard barks. Before either of us could rise, she fell back on the bed, tumbled back into her dreams. Just after sunrise, she woke, sat up again, rubbing her eyes as if she were trying to gouge them out. Then she remembered and let her hands fall into her lap. Her robe gaped open, revealing small, freckled breasts with dark, heavy nipples. I looked away. She saw Dick, and with a moan that sounded as if it had been wrenched from her chest with a steel hook, she launched herself at him, nearly kno
cking his chair over. She wept against his shoulder. He glanced at me over the top of her head, his arms away from her body, his palms open as if in explanation or making a plea, his face drawn and confused.

  I left, walked out into the summer morning, into birdsong and air as light and pleasant as children’s laughter. The sun came up, as they say, like thunder, topping the eastern ridges, raining golden fire into the valley. It was a morning for youth and rosy cheeks, but I was old and tired and needed a shave, so I went home, up to my log house on the bank of Hell-Roaring Creek, on the northern verge of Milodragovitch Park, which had been the family estate and my front yard until my father died and my mother gave the land to the city, cut the family mansion into sections, had it moved east of town to be reassembled as a country club house.

  The sun wasn’t high enough over the east ridge to reach the creek or the house, but the tops of my tall blue spruces shimmered like blue flames above the cool, shaded air. Inside, I drew the drapes to capture the shaded morning. My father had solved his life with whiskey and the full-choke barrel of an LC Smith hammerless double. The police had my shotgun, but I still had his. And a case of Canadian whiskey. I switched the telephone to the answering service, then laughed and jerked it out of the wall, sat down at the kitchen table to work on my own suicidal drunk.

  Five

  Since I’ve never been what they call a thoughtful man, I didn’t spend much time worrying about why I only had one drink that morning. One drink and an omelette, then a shower and to bed. Maybe I was just bored with being drunk. Not that I tried anything quite so drastic as quitting. I drank; I didn’t get drunk. For a change. Living very peacefully, working out at the gym and playing handball every morning, fishing in the afternoons but without ambition, watching the light ripple across distant mountains without thinking of it as scenery. In court, I pleaded nolo contendere, and paid small fines for disturbing the peace and discharging a firearm within the city limits. I persuaded the judge not to suspend my license, though what I needed it for wasn’t clear, but failed to convince the telephone company that vandals had destroyed their property. I paid cash for that damage but had to sign a note to the real estate agency that owned Lawrence Reese’s former house. And I thought about Helen Duffy more often than I meant to.