McMansion (18 page)

“Probably for free in exchange for screwing Newbury.”

“Weird coincidence—him, my kid.” Kimball gave a flat laugh. “Goes to show you, there are damned few crooked judges in Connecticut.”

“He implied that he happened to be rotated through our district when Billy connected. How'd you hook up with him?”

“Nothing to do with Billy Tiller. One of our performers got in a dispute on I-95.”

“You're kidding.”

“No I'm not. It was a serious situation. Very serious. My consultants explained that the way it usually works is you let the performer go to prison. Use the opportunity to pump publicity going in. Another big push when they try to burn some tracks inside. Then a big release when they get out with new material. But this one was just launching a clothing line and he had to appear at openings. Our store orders were phenomenal.”

“Zip hoodies?” I'd checked the Joey Girl collections on line and I assumed he was describing one of their adolescent male counterparts like Rawkus Joe.

“No. A baller collection. Suits. Like they make the basketball players wear now. It's unbelievable, but our thug customers are dressing like attorneys. Amanda saw it coming and the line was very sharply placed. So, there was no way we could let him—you know—go to jail. So we cut a probation deal.”

“With Judge Clarke?”

“He made it, shall we say, possible. No jail time. It all worked out. The line is selling. Not as good as we hoped, but still selling.”

“How much did you pay him?”

“I don't answer stupid questions. I don't even hear them.”

“Stupid is the operative word. We're facing a chief state's attorney who sees the road to the United States Senate paved with your son's conviction. He would like nothing more than to appeal a thrown trial and send all three of you to prison: you, the judge, and your son. I'm amazed. I would have thought you were too smart to try bribing a judge in a capital case, for crissake.”

“I'll do anything I have to.”

“It won't work. Forget it.”

His jaw set hard, just like Jeff's, and I knew he regretted confiding in me.

I said, “Just back off. I will prove that your son didn't kill Billy Tiller.”

“How?”

“I'm working several angles.”

“Like what?”

“I'm not ready to talk about them.”

“I'm supposed to just trust you?”

“I'm on your side. I know your kid didn't do it.”

Kimball looked away, across his lawn and empty pool. “Then you know more than I do.”

Chapter Eighteen

In the car, as we started down the driveway, Connie asked, “Benjamin? What were you talking to Mr. Kimball about?”

“Corruption, cynicism, and the collapse of civilization.”

“Look out, Ben! Stop the car!”

I saw him too. One of the bodyguards was racing across the lawn to cut us off at the end of the driveway. He skidded to stop beside us. “Thank God I caught you. Miss Connie, you forgot your watercress. Everybody gets a bag to take home. He held out a sealed plastic bag tied with a yellow ribbon.

“Thank you, Edward. I am very pleased to have met you.”

“Same here, Miss Connie. Drive careful, fella.”

I promised I would. As soon as we got rolling, Connie said, “Mr. Kimball seemed very upset.”

“He's worried.”

“Will his son go to prison?”

“At this moment it looks that way.”

“But you don't think he should?”

“I just don't think he killed Billy Tiller.”

“Air guitar.”

“What?” I glanced over at her. She was biting her lip. “I beg pardon, Connie?”

“Air guitar. I keep thinking about air guitar and I don't know why.”

“It's been a long day. You're a little tired.”

She looked down at her hands, which had begun twisting in her lap. “I am tired. But I keep on thinking air guitar. It keeps racing through my head.”

“You want to close your eyes, catch a little sleep?”

“When I was a girl every department store sold sheet music… We'd look for new songs, run home and learn them, and play for each other.”

I glanced from the wheel again. She had never been big on reminiscing—though she had always been a font of history if you asked her. She sounded wistful. She kept working her hands and her eyes were bright, miles from sleep, so I asked, “Did you have a good time at the party?”

“Oh yes. Don't you prefer parties where there's something to do?…The bodyguards were such proper young men. Did you notice?”

“I didn't talk with them much.”

“Oh, you should have. They were just brimful of knowledge.”

“Like what?” I asked, glad to be off air guitar.

“Nothing about their employer. They were discreet.”

“Then what,” I asked, disappointed. I would have liked to learn a little more about Kimball and his relationship with Judge Clarke.

“Henry wants to be a musician. He's studying the harmonica. With a man who plays classical music on it. Ralph was in the Army. I gathered he served in Iraq, though he did not want to discuss it. But he loved the Army and he said he missed it. Charles was in prison. For something he didn't do.”

I could relate to that. Though in my case I had believed in my heart that I deserved to be there anyhow. “Was he bitter?”

“He seemed quite philosophical about it. And he was grateful for the opportunity to improve his physique. Lifting weights.”

Connie began working her hands again and I nudged her back to the moment, asking, “What about the other one. Who was he?”

“Edward. Edward was not very talkative. But he did tell me he had a child, whom he doesn't see much of.”

“How did that come up?”

“He was observing how children would love Mr. Kimball's house with the grass and pool and all that. As I said, they were quite forthcoming, but discreet. Though Edward did mention that Mr. Kimball keeps a bowling alley under his pool house.”

“They seemed to like you.”

“They were grateful to be noticed…I learned that at parties long ago.”

Her hands were working faster. She was tearing at her fingers. Her skin was paper thin and I feared she would cut herself with her own fingernail.

“Learned what?”

“People are so grateful to be noticed.”

Desperation made me brave. I tried a different tack, straight at it. “Tell me about air guitar.”

“I don't know, Ben. I just don't know…Oh, Lord, I hate this.”

“Close your eyes,” I said. “Take a nap. I'm okay driving…No, I didn't drink. Not a drop.”

I got her home and settled with a glass of warm milk and a promise that she would at least try to eat the thin cheddar cheese sandwich I made. Then I went across the street and poured vodka free hand.

I had touched the glass to my lips before I realized I wasn't alone. Alison was seated on the floor, propped in a dark corner of the living room. The big tom cat was sitting up on her lap, yellow eyes fixed on me with deep skepticism.

“Hey, sweetie, I didn't see you there. How you doing?”

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“The guy my mother went out with?”

“Did you meet him?”

“It's my father.”

I put down the glass. The last time I had seen Tom Mealy I had put him on a bus to Massachusetts, having banned him from the property until he got sober—an event unlikely to ever happen. This had followed a knock-down-drag-out fight that had started when I interrupted him beating up Alison's mother. He was a large and fearless bar room brawler and I had won, barely, because he had been too drunk to throw a straight punch. The thing I remembered most vividly about the fight was afterwards, after I had finally had him down on the floor. Alison clung to my leg, begging me not to hurt him.

“How is he?” I asked.

“Okay.”

“Did you talk?”

“A little…I showed him Redman.”

“Did he like him?”

“Oh, yeah. He thought Redman was great.”

“Is he at your mother's now?”

“No. But he said he wants to talk to you.”

I took my glass and carefully poured the vodka back into the bottle, spilling very little.

“Are you going to talk to him?”

“Anytime he wants. He knows where to find me.”

“He said he'll come back, tomorrow.”

“Then I'll talk to him, tomorrow.”

The phone rang. I picked up, wondering who was calling on what was—even this early—already a weird Saturday night. Vicky having decided to leave Tim? Marian having decided to dump her kind engineer? Alison's father looking for a rematch? Billy Tiller's murderer asking me to introduce him to Trooper Moody?

“Hey, Ben?”

“Pink?” Cousin Pinkerton.

“Hey, buddy. Can you do me a favor?”

“Name it.” I couldn't think of a time he had ever asked for a favor.

“You want to go drinking?”

“Sure. Where?”

“I don't know. Where do you think?”

The penny dropped. I said, “What do you say we hit the White Birch. Say hi to Wide Greg.”

“You think?”

“I am sure I can get Wide Greg to listen to reason.” Code for, commute Pink's one-week ban to time served.

“I'll pick you up.”

“That's okay. I'll meet you in the parking lot.” It was always fun driving with Pink—a dirt-track race champ throughout New England with an infallible sixth sense for radar traps in general and Trooper Moody's in particular—but I preferred to be my own designated driver. I knew from experience that if I could persuade Wide Greg to give my cousin a break, Pinkerton Chevalley would be just getting started when a person of normal capacity approached the early stages of alcohol poisoning.

Chapter Nineteen

Wide Greg was busy separating rival gangs when Pink and I hooked up in the White Birch parking lot, and not in a forgiving mood. “Maybe I'll go in and give Greg a hand,” said Pink.

“Greg doesn't want a hand.”

“Yeah, but then next time I get in trouble, maybe he won't bar me.”

“I don't think it works that way.”

Pink looked longingly at the bar, where the sound of breaking glass was getting louder. “Wouldn't mind getting into that.”

“Until they unlimber firearms. Why don't we drive up to the Hitching Post?”

But the Hitching Post, Pink informed me, had still not recovered from a disgruntled woody from Norfolk chainsawing its bar in an attempt to get served after hours.

“Lorenzo's?”

“Not on a weekend.” Lorenzo's Pizza Palace had gone upscale in a successful attempt to attract the new McMansion crowd. Weekends, the whiskey-drenched regulars fled squalling toddlers and ill-bred eight-year-olds.

I wasn't about to suggest the Yankee Drover, which Pink regarded as an uptight bastion of Main Street privilege on the scale of the Ritz of London. But I knew that if I didn't get him out of here very soon he would wade into whatever was unfolding in the White Birch.

“Boat launch?” The warm night would see a crowd drinking beer until Trooper Moody interrupted the party.

“Mosquitoes,” said Pink. “Besides, it's just kids.”

“How about the River End?”

“All right!”

The River End Bar was managed by Matthew Jervis, a yet-to-be convicted member of the felonious Jervis clan. It was on a dirt road, deep in the Jervis woods, not far from the Indian reservation. Any McMansion dwellers who somehow stumbled upon it would assume, judging by the vehicles in its parking lot and the plywood walls without windows, that the patrons roasted unruly children on spits.

We drove north, Pink in his truck, I in my overpowered Olds. Just before we hit the dirt roads, he signaled me to pass on a straightaway, and when we arrived at the River End, his was the (borrowed) vehicle caked with dust.

The crowd drinking and dancing quieted noticeably, as crowds tended to when Pink darkened a door. The noise picked up again when he exchanged civil hellos with Matthew, the owner. We ordered Screech for Pink and a Rhode Island Red, the house beer, for me. Screech, the private stock rum, was imported from Newfoundland by snowmobile, speed boat, ATV, and beneath-the-radar aircraft. Or so it was said.

“Fine-looking trucks outside,” Pink said to Matthew, who replied, “Folks are doing all right,” and left it at that. A new prosperity was evident indoors, too: a wide plasma TV, encased in wire mesh in case someone threw a bottle, diamond nose studs, even some platinum teeth bling.

I remarked on the kitchen Matthew had added, with a cook and a teenage Jervis waitress passing plates of decent-looking burgers and remarkably crisp French fries. In the past, a patron who wanted solids with his beer or Screech had purchased them from a dusty rack of beef jerky or carried in take-out. “What's next, Matthew? Windows?”

“Not likely.”

Two beers and four Screeches later, Sherman Chevalley wandered in, looking aggrieved, and I thought, Oh hell, here we go again. Pink braced him right off. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Wide Greg kicked me out.”

“Wha'd you do?”

“Nothin'.”

Pink shook his head at the injustice and bought Sherman a Screech. Soon they were gazing peacefully up at the TV on which was playing a DVD of “American Chopper.”

Half an hour and several Screeches later, Pink nudged me. “Thought Little Rick was still inside.”

“Early parole,” I said. “Good behavior.”

Little Rick was a son of my long-time friend Gwen Jervis, daughter of old Herman Jervis, clan leader emeritus, who had recently celebrated the retirement of the third generation of state police that failed to pin convictable charges on him. Gwen's brother Bill now ran day-to-day operations with a firm hand and was, by most accounts, only murderous when he had to be. Little Rick looked up to his uncle.

Pink, unusually talkative tonight, said, “Makes you wonder what his cell mate was like.”

A while later, in walked Gwen Jervis, and her daughter Josie, home on leave from the Army, which had included Iraq this year. Josie had enlisted as a chubby little eighteen-year-old. Every time she came home she arrived a little taller and leaner. It was possible that she was developing a kind of beauty that one day might rival her mother's.

Josie sat with her brother.

Gwen spotted me at the bar and swayed over smiling. She appeared to have started drinking earlier, back around the time Connie and I had arrived at Kimball's watercress party.

“Hey, Pink.” She punched him on the arm, said, “Hi, Ben, slumming?” and gave me a warm, rum flavored kiss on the mouth. She was a tightly strung redhead, missing a front tooth. As Old Herman's daughter, she was as close to royalty as you'd find in the River End Bar.

I kissed her back and bought her a Screech and basked in an unexpected glow of well-being. I had admired Gwen since I was eight years old and she was twelve. When I reached twelve I had begun to realize why. At fourteen, I was given an introduction and a six-pack by Pink, which had led to a night that was incandescent. Over the years we had stayed friendly. Now and then we managed to do each other a favor. She had been having a love affair with my cousin Renny when he was murdered, and sadness lingered.

“Josie looks great.”

Gwen was hugely proud of her daughter, the first of the clan to complete high school, though Gwen herself had come close.

“You know she made sergeant?”

“Read it in the
Clarion
.” I had leaned on Scooter MacKay to do the right thing and reprint the Army press release even though Jervis territory wasn't officially in Newbury and Jervises lay beneath Scooter's social radar. “Is she going back?” I asked, meaning Iraq.

“I hope not. Hey, there's poor Jimmy Butler. I've never seen him here. He looks scared stiff.”

He would not be the first, upon first entering the River End. Jimmy lunked in the doorway, ducking his head like a turtle. I could just see Billy Tiller sizing up the sucker to drive a hot truck. Just when I thought he would bolt out the door, he broke into a relieved grin and hurried over to Sherman Chevalley, who had drifted down bar from us. Sherman greeted him with a skeleton-rattling clap on the back and let Jimmy buy him a Screech.

“What are you doing here?” I heard Sherman growl.

“Humongous fight at the White Birch. Troopers brought a Corrections bus and a flatbed for the bikes.”

“How'd you get away?”

“Got there late.”

“Guess I got lucky, too, getting kicked out, early. Greg okay?”

Wide Greg was boarding up windows, Jimmy reported, and their conversation moved on to the merits of multi-position V-plows. Gwen reeled across the room to say something to Josie. I turned to Pink, who was arm-wrestling two truck drivers from Vermont. “You want another Screech?”

“I'll need a straw.”

I got him a Screech with a straw.

“What the hell is that?” Pink and the truck drivers cocked ears toward the open door. Something huge was clanking and rumbling up the road.

“Sounds like a tank.”

Everyone exchanged looks. What were the Jervises into now?

The cement floor was trembling.

I got to the door first and stepped out for a look. Guided by blazing headlamps, an absolutely enormous machine trundled into the parking lot and stopped just short of demolishing my Oldsmobile. Bearded, long-haired men and close-cropped women began jumping down from the bucket and the rear deck.

“That's a goddamned D-7R,” somebody said behind me. “Look at that sucker. Brand new.”

Someone asked, “Where the hell did that come from?”

A third voice answered, “It's from the Fed job.”

“What Fed job?” I asked.

“EPA doing the Jervis dump.”

The bulldozer crew bunched tentatively beside the machine, as if unsure of their welcome. Most of the men were skinny and bespectacled. Most of the women were round and bespectacled. And all had the sun-burned glow of academics released from the academy to romp outdoors. A tall figure shut down the lights and the motor. And who should climb down and lead her colleagues toward the bar but Ms. Jennifer Giraffe?

She stopped when she recognized me. She was wearing blue jeans and a hoodie. The hood was sprayed over her shoulders, framing her angular face like a cowl. Her hair was shorter than I'd seen three days ago. “Hey! Ben Abbott, how you doing?”

“I wasn't aware you knew how to drive a bulldozer.”

“Remember, I told you, I'm doing the Northwest Connecticut Landfill Reclamation project? The site characterization study?”

“And you picked up bulldozing this week?”

“No,” she said, as serious as ever, despite a new exuberance. “I took courses in school.”

“She's fantastic,” said a graduate student.

“First rate,” said an older fellow who was clearly the professor.

“And you brought the machine here to characterize the site of the River End Bar?”

“My van wouldn't start. We wanted some wine. No one else's car was big enough for all of us.”

That made a kind of sense, though I did wonder whether they had considered the environmental impact of the gallons of diesel the monster would burn on a pub crawl. On the other hand, a single vehicle represented a kind of carpooling.

The academics got a lot of looks on the way to the bar, and I could see various Jervis reprobates preparing to separate the college girls from the college boys by the simple expedient of pounding the boys through the floor. An eager fellow lurched at the women, grabbing his crotch to present it like a bouquet. Gwen Jervis gave a nod toward the parking lot. Numerous less drunk Jervises led him away, opening the door with his head.

“Welcome,” said Gwen. “Matthew, buy our Audubon friends a drink.” To me she muttered, “I love these kids. The Feds are paying us a fortune to let 'em work the dump.” That was the source of the new wealth. Well, why not? As long as they didn't use it to replace their house trailers with McMansions.

Matthew splashed blood red wine from a gallon jug into a row of highball glasses.

Jennifer passed them around, then took a sip. “Oh, that's great. I really was thirsty. You know what we're doing, it is so cool. We're going to return that dump to marshland!”

“Have you seen Jeff?” I asked.

“I saw him yesterday after work and I went down again today. We had a long talk.”

“How is he?”

“Haven't you seen him?”

“I'll try to get over there Monday. How is he?”

“He's seems to be doing a lot of thinking.”

“About what?”

“How he wants to live his life.”

“Is that what your long talk was about?”

“We talked about lots of stuff.” She glanced away from me. “You know, just talk.” Suddenly, her face grew pretty with a smile. “Hey, Georgie! Georgie. Hey, how are you? Later, Ben.” She crossed the room with long-legged alacrity and threw an arm over the low, narrow shoulders of George Stefanopoulos, who looked happy to be out of his Home Depot apron and glad to be hugged.

I got a fresh beer and stayed at the bar conversing with any who stumbled near.

I had to marvel at how many Billy Tiller victims I had interviewed had made their way to the River End on this same night. Jimmy Butler. Sherman Chevalley. George from Home Depot. Okay, the cops had closed the White Birch. The McMansion dwellers had taken over Lorenzo's. The Hitching Post was dark. But still, this was practically a Billy Tiller memorial, waiting only for the Gordons, Andrew Sammis, and the couple with the McMansion-quaking Jacuzzi to begin.

I imagined the lawyer who threatened to sue me or disbar me or something if I didn't stop smearing the present with Billy's past would conduct the service. Evil Engineer Edwards would march to the podium with Total Landscape's blueprints to turn the Jervis Woods into a Billy Memorial Shopping Mall tucked under one arm and his sturdy, lovely Caroline on the other. Judge Clarke would gavel for order, while Jervises homed in like bats on his girlfriend's diamond. Any Kimballs? Not likely, with father wrapping up his watercress party down in Newtown, Mom watching TV in her kitchen, and Jeff in his cell.

I talked to Sherman. I talked to Jimmy Butler. I talked to George when he came to the bar to buy another wine for Jennifer. I learned nothing new from any of them. Josie came over to say hi. She seemed happy, which she deserved to be. Later, when the crowd had begun to thin and I was thinking of calling it a night, Gwen reeled up to me. “I'm shit faced. Would you drive me home? Josie's staying.”

“Sure.”

I got her into the Olds and buckled her seatbelt for her. Then I walked across the parking lot, planting each step immediately after the other, toe to heel.

“What the hell are you doing?”

I stood on my left foot and timed sixty seconds on my watch. Then I balanced on my right foot for sixty seconds.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Making sure I can pass a DUI checkpoint.”

“Jesus Christ, it's easier to outrun them.”

I got in the car. “Hold your finger in front of my nose. Okay, now move it way to the left. Hold it there. Is my eyeball shaking?”

“Why the hell would it be?”

“There's a kind of astigmatic reaction you can't control when you're high. Is it shaking?”

“No.”

“All right. We're outta here.”

Gwen closed her eyes. I maneuvered the car around Jennifer's bulldozer and headed down a dark road into the woods. Gwen woke up after a while and asked, “Are you going to try to take advantage of me drunk?”

“Could I have a rain check?”