Mortal Stakes (12 page)

Two kids were sitting astride the cannon as I pulled up in front of the town hall. In the parking area to the right of the town hall was a black and white Chevy with a whip antenna and POLICE lettered on the side. I went around to that side and down along the building. In the back was a screen door with a small blue light over it. I went in.

There was a head-high standing floor fan at the long end of a narrow room, and it blew a steady stream of hot air at me. To my right was a low mahogany dividing rail, and behind it a gray steel desk and matching swivel chair, a radio receiver-transmitter and a table mike on a maple table with claw and ball feet, a white round-edged refrigerator with gold trim, and some wanted posters fixed to the door with magnets. And a gray steel file cabinet.

A gray-haired man with rimless glasses and a screaming eagle emblem tattooed on his right forearm was sitting at the desk with his arms folded across his chest and his feet up.

He had on a khaki uniform, obviously starched, and his black engineer boots gleamed with polish. A buff-colored campaign hat lay on the desk beside an open can of Dr Pepper. On a wheel-around stand next to the radio equipment a portable black-and-white television was showing Hollywood Squares.

A nameplate on the desk said T. P. DONALDSON. A big silver star on his shirt said SHERIFF. A brown cardboard bakery box on the desk contained what looked like some lemon-filled doughnuts.

”My name’s Spenser,“ I said, and showed the photostat of my license in its clear plastic coating. Germ-free. ”I’m trying to backtrack a woman named Donna Burlington. According to the FBI records she was arrested here in nineteen sixty-six.“

”Sheriff Donaldson,“ the gray-haired man said, and stood up to shake hands. He was tall and in shape with healthy color to his tan face, and oversize hands with prominent knuckles. His shirt was ironed in a military press and had been tailored down so that it was skintight.

”Hundred and First?“ I said.

”The tattoo? Yeah. I was a kid then, you know. Fulla piss and vinegar, drunk in London, and three of us got it done. My wife’s always telling me to get rid of it but…“ He shrugged. ”You airborne?“

”Nope, infantry and a different war. But I remember the Hundred and First. Were you at Bastogne?“

”Yep. Had a bad case of boils on my back. The medics said I ought to eat better food and wash more often.“ His face was solemn. ”Krauts took care of it, though. I got a back full of shrapnel and the boils were gone.“

”Medical science,“ I said.

He shook his head. ”Christ, that was thirty years ago.“

”It’s one of the things you don’t forget,“ I said.

”You don’t for sure,“ he said. ”Who was that you were after?“

”Burlington, Donna Burlington. A.k.a. Linda Hawkins, about twenty-six years old, five feet four, black hair, FBI records show she was fingerprinted here in nineteen sixty-six, at which time she would have been about eighteen. You here then?“

He nodded. ”Yep, I been here since nineteen forty-six.“

He turned toward the file cabinet. A pair of handcuffs draped over his belt in the small of his back, and he wore an army.45

in a government-issue flap holster on his right hip. He rustled through the third file drawer down and came up with a manila folder. He opened it, his back still to me, and read through the contents, closed it, turned around, put the folder facedown on the desk, and sat down. ”You want a Dr Pepper?“

he said?

”No, thanks. You have Donna Burlington?“

”Could I see your license again, and maybe some other ID?“

I gave him the license and my driver’s license. He looked at them carefully and turned them back to me. ”Why do you want to know about Donna Burlington?“

”I don’t want to tell you. I’m looking into something that might hurt a lot of people, who could turn out to be innocent, if the word got out.“

”What’s Donna Burlington got to do with it?“

”She lied to me about her name, where she lived, how she got married. I want to know why.“

”You think she’s committed a crime?“

”Not that I know of. I don’t want her for anything. I just ran across a lie and I want to run it down. You know how it goes, people lie to you, you want to know why.“

Donaldson nodded. He took a swig from his Dr Pepper, swallowed it, and began to suck on his upper lip.

”I don’t want to stir up old troubles,“ I said. ”She was eighteen when you busted her. Everyone is entitled to screw up when they’re eighteen. I just want to know about her.“

Donaldson kept sucking on his upper lip and looking at me.

”It’ll be worse if I start asking around and get people wondering why some dick from the East is asking about Donna Burlington. I’ll find out anyway. This isn’t that big a place.“

”I might not let you ask around,“ Donaldson said.

”Aw come on, Hondo,“ I said. ”If you give me trouble, I’ll go get the state cops and a court order and come on back and ask around and more people will notice and a bigger puff of smoke will go up and you’ll be worse off than you are now.

I’m making what you call your legitimate inquiry.“

”Persistent sonovabitch, aren’t you? Okay, I’ll go along. I just don’t like telling people’s business to others without a pretty good reason.“

”Me either,“ I said.

”Okay.“ He opened the folder and looked at it. ”I arrested Donna Burlington for possession of three marijuana cigarettes. She was smoking with two boys from Buckston in a pickup truck back of Scooter’s Lunch. It was a first offense, but we were a little jumpier about reefers around here in ’sixty-six than we are now. I booked her; she went to court and got a suspended sentence and a year’s probation. Six weeks later she broke probation and went off to New York City with a local hellion. She never came back.“

”What was the hellion’s name?“

”Tony Reece. He was about seven or eight years older than Donna.“

”What kind of kid was she?“

”It was a while ago,“ Donaldson said. ”But kind of restless, not really happy, you know—nothing bad, but she had a reputation, hung out with the older hotshots. The first girl in class to smoke, the first to drink, the first one to try pot, the one the boys took out as soon as they dared while the other girls were still going to dancing school at the grange hall and blushing if someone talked dirty.“

”Family still live in town?“

”Yeah, but they don’t know where she is. After she took off, they were after me to locate her. But there’s only me and two deputies, and one of them’s part-time. When nothing came of that, they wrote her off. In a way they were probably glad she took off. They didn’t know what to do with her. She was a late baby, you know? The Burlingtons never had any kids, and then, when Mrs. Burlington was going through the change, there came Donna. That’s what my wife says anyway.

Embarrassed hell out of both of them.“

”How about Reece? He ever show up again?“

Donaldson shook his head. ”Nope. I heard he got in some kind of jam in New York and he might be doing time.

But he hasn’t shown up around here anyway.“

”Okay, any last known address?“

”Just the house here.“

”Can you give me that? I’d like to talk to the parents.“

”I’ll drive you over. They’ll be a little easier if I’m there. They’re old and they get nervous.“

”I’m not going to give them the third degree, Donaldson, I’m just going to talk to them and ask them if they know anything more than you do about Donna Burlington.“

”I’ll go along. They’re sorta shiftless and crummy, but they’re my people, you know? I like to look out for them.“

I nodded. ”Okay, let’s go.“

We got into Donaldson’s black and white and drove back up the main street past the row of storefronts and the sparse yards. At the end of the street we turned left, down toward the river, and pulled up in front of a big shanty. Originally it had probably been a four-room bungalow backing onto the river. Over the years lean-tos and sagging additions had been scabbed onto it so that it was difficult to say how many rooms there were now. The area in front of the house was mud, and several dirty white chickens pecked in it. A brown and white pig had rooted itself out a hollow against the foundation and was sleeping in it. To the right of the front door, two big gas bottles of dull gray-green metal stood upright, and to the left the remnants of a vine were so bedraggled I couldn’t recognize what kind it was. The land to the side and rear of the house sloped in a kind of eroded gully down to the river. There was a stack of old tires at the corner of one of the lean-tos, and beyond that the rusted frame of a forty-year-old pickup truck, a stack of empty vegetable crates, and on the flat mud margin where the river lapped at the land a bedspring, mossy and slick with river scum.

I thought of Linda Rabb in her Church Park apartment with the fresh jeans and her black hair gleaming.

”Come to where the flavor is,“ I said.

”Yeah, it’s not much, is it? Don’t much wonder that Donna took off as soon as she could.“ We got up and walked to the front door. There were the brown remains of a wreath hanging from a galvanized nail. The ghost of Christmas past.

Maybe of a Christmas future for the Burlingtons.

An old woman answered Donaldson’s knock. She was fat and lumpy in a yellow housedress. Her legs were bare and mottled, her feet thrust into scuffed men’s loafers. Her gray hair was short and straight around her head, the ends uneven, cut at home probably, with dull scissors. Her face was nearly without features, fat puffing around her eyes, making them seem small and squinty.

”Morning, Mrs. Burlington,“ Donaldson said. ”Got a man here from Boston wants to talk with you about Donna.“

She looked at me. ”You seen Donna?“ she said.

”May we come in?“ I said.

She stood aside. ”I guess so,“ she said. Her voice wasn’t very old, but it was without variation, a tired monotone, as if there were nothing worth saying.

Donaldson took off his hat and went in. I followed. The room smelled of kerosene and dogs and things I didn’t recognize. The clutter was dense. Donaldson and I found room on an old daybed and sat. Mrs. Burlington shuffled off down a corridor and returned in a moment with her husband. He was pallid and bald, a tall old man in a sleeveless undershirt and black worsted trousers with the fly open. His face had gray stubble on it, and some egg was dried in the corner of his mouth. The skin was loose on his thin white arms and wrinkled in the fold at the armpit. He poured a handful of Bond Street pipe tobacco from a can into the palm of his hand and slurped it into his mouth.

He nodded at Donaldson, who said, ”Morning, Mr.

Burlington.“ Mrs. Burlington stood, and they both looked at Donaldson and me without moving or speaking. American Gothic.

I said, ”I’m a detective. I can’t tell you where your daughter is, except that she’s well and happy. But I need to learn a little about her background. I mean her no harm, and I’m trying to help her, but the whole situation is very confidential.“

”What do you want to know?“ Mrs. Burlington said.

”When is the last time you heard from her?“

Mrs. Burlington said, ”We ain’t. Not since she run off.“

”No letter, no call, nothing. Not a word?“

Mrs. Burlington shook her head. The old man made no move, changed his expression not at all.

”Do you know where she went when she left here?“

”Left us a note saying she was going to New York with a fellow we never met, never heard nothing more.“

”Didn’t you look for her?“

Mrs. Burlington nodded at Donaldson, ”Told T.P. here.

He looked. Couldn’t find her.“ A bony mongrel dog with short yellow fur and mismatched ears appeared behind Mr. Burlington. He growled at us, and Burlington turned and kicked him hard in the ribs. The dog yelped and disappeared.

”You ever hear from Tony Reece?“ It was like talking to a postoperative lobotomy case. And compared to the old man, she was animated.

She shook her head. ”Never seen him,“ she said. The old man squirted a long stream of tobacco juice at a cardboard box of sand behind the door. He missed.

And that was it. They didn’t know anything about anything, and they didn’t care. The old man never spoke while I was there and just nodded when Donaldson said good-bye.

In the car Donaldson said, ”Where to now?“

”Let’s just sit here a minute until I catch my breath.“

”They been poor all their life,“ Donaldson said. ”It tends to wear you out.“ I nodded.

”Okay, how about Tony Reece? He got any family here?“

”Nope. Folks are both dead.“ Donaldson started the engine and turned the car back toward the town hall. When we got there, he offered me his hand. ”If I was you, Spenser, I’d try New York next.“

”Fun City,“ I said.

WHEN BRENDA LORING GOT OUT of a brown and white Boston cab, I was brushing off an old man in an army shirt and a flowered tie who wanted me to give him a quarter.

”Did you autograph his bra, sweetie?“ she said.

”They were here,“ I said, ”but I warned them about your jealous passion and they fled at your approach.“

”Fled? That is quite fancy talk for a professional thug.“

”That’s another thing. Around here I’m supposed to be writing a book. My true identity must remain concealed. Reveal it to no one.“

”A writer?“

”Yeah. I’m supposed to be doing a book on the Red Sox and baseball.“

”Was that your agent you were talking with when I drove up?“

”No, a reader.“

She shook her head. Her blond hair was cut short and shaped around her head. Her eyes were green. Her makeup was expert. She was wearing a short green dress with a small floral print and long sleeves. She was darkly tanned, and a small gold locket gleamed on a thin chain against her chest where the neckline of the dress formed a V. Across Jersey Street a guy selling souvenirs was staring at her. I was staring at her too. I always did. She was ten pounds on the right side of plump. ”Voluptuous,“ I said.

”I beg your pardon.“

”That’s how we writers would describe you. Voluptuous with a saucy hint of deviltry lurking in the sparkling of the eyes and the impertinent cast of the mouth.“