Stone Cold Dead (9 page)

“I can take care of myself,” I said, feeling touched and annoyed at the same time. “They have guards at Fulton, don’t they?”

“It’s too late to go over there today anyway,” grumbled Frank. “They’ll be locking down those animals in an hour or so.”

Polack Hill, so delicately named for the Polish folk who lived in the humble duplexes around Upper Church Street, dominated the city’s East End from above. On the corner of Church and Tyler, St. Stanislaus Church stood white and tall, bounded by the Polish-American Veterans Club on one side and the Lithuanian Club on the other. Nearby, Jepsen’s Lumber spread out over four entire city blocks, its tall green fence surrounding the yard like a palisade. You could hear the shrill buzz of the saws and the banging of hammers inside; smell and taste the smolder of fresh pine passing under the spinning teeth of the blade; and—if there was no rain—you could see the fine sawdust hanging in the air and feel it settle on your hair.

I drove two blocks past Jepsen’s to the intersection of Tyler and Grove, where a chain-link fence, crowned by a tangle of rusting barbed wire, stretched around a large gravel parking lot. An orange-and-black metal sign read “New Holland School District Vehicle Depot.” Inside, dozens of yellow school buses, spattered with the frozen brown-and-gray residue of slush and salt, huddled on the uneven ground in the bitter cold.

I parked at the curb and waited in the warm car, working up the courage to open the door to the cold. Just to mock me, the radio played “Theme from a Summer Place.” I smoked a cigarette and waited. It was just five, already dark, when an empty bus rumbled up to the gate, negotiated the bumpy bit of cracked sidewalk between the street and the parking lot, then juddered its way toward the other buses. A stocky man, dressed in a red-checked hunter’s cap (flaps down), blue dungarees, and a dark-green field jacket, emerged from the bus. Lugging his gray lunch pail in his meaty hands, he trod off to the dispatcher’s cabin next to the garage. I switched off the radio and climbed out into the cold.

“I’m looking for Gus Arnold,” I announced to the two men inside. One was a slight man, about thirty, with slicked-down wavy hair and a thin, tired mustache. He was seated at a heavy wooden desk with a nameplate that identified him as “S. Pietrewski, Dispatcher.” The other man was the bus driver I’d just seen pull into the parking lot. Both stared at me. I could see their frozen breath in the cold room.

“Gus Arnold?” I repeated.

“That’s me,” said the driver. His broad face was red from the cold, and his bulbous, pocked nose betrayed a fondness for drink.

“My name is Eleonora Stone. I’m a reporter for the
Republic
.”

“What do you want with me?”

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Darleen Hicks. I believe she rode your bus.”

“Yeah,” he said hesitantly. “I already talked to Sheriff Olney about that. He said she ran off.”

“Would you mind answering a few questions for me?”

He looked at the dispatcher, who didn’t seem to like the idea of one of his drivers mixed up in a story like this. He squinted at me through the low light.

“Do you remember seeing Darleen that day?” I asked, ignoring the dispatcher’s scrutiny.

“Yeah, I seen her get on the bus in the morning like usual.”

“What about that evening? The sheriff said you remembered seeing her on the bus.”

Gus Arnold twitched, wiped his nose with his hand, then shook his head. “I must have remembered wrong. She didn’t get on the bus that afternoon.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

He frowned and whined at me that there were a lot of kids, wearing heavy coats and winter hats. He couldn’t be expected to remember every one of them every day.

“But the sheriff said you were certain Darleen was aboard the bus that afternoon. Then you changed your mind. What would make you doubt your memory now?”

“I seen her in the morning, but not in the afternoon,” he repeated.

“Did she have friends on the bus?” I asked, moving on. “Who did she sit with?”

“There was a couple of girls, I guess. They got off at the same stop. The one before the Metzger farm. There’s the Dobbs girl and the Liswenski girl. I don’t know their first names.”

“And you dropped those girls off that day?” He nodded. “What time was that?”

“Same as always,” he fidgeted. “I finish my run around four twenty or so.”

“I can show you the log from that day if you don’t believe him,” volunteered the dispatcher. “Right here,” and he flipped back several pages in his ledger to the date in question.

I ran my finger down the column, searching for G. Arnold. It was there. Route number 17, bus 63, South Side and the Town of Florida.

“It says here you returned the bus to the depot at six eighteen p.m.,” I said, and Gus Arnold blanched.

“Let me see that,” said the dispatcher, rising from his seat. He scanned the ledger then looked to Gus for clarification. “That’s right, you got back late that day. Where were you?”

Gus Arnold looked terrified, his eyes open wide, revealing a network of bloodshot capillaries in the whites.

“The streets were icy,” he said.

“But you were more than an hour late,” I said.

“And I had a flat.”

“That’s true,” said the dispatcher. “There was a big puncture in the tire.”

I knew that was a lie. Frank Olney had said that the bus driver had taken a nap near the snow hills beyond Darleen Hicks’s house. Maybe he was lying to the dispatcher to save his job. Or maybe he had other reasons to lie. I kept quiet; I would confront him about his story at a more appropriate time.

The dispatcher eased himself back into his seat and fixed his glare on the driver. He said nothing, but I could tell he was thinking hard on something.

“You changed the tire yourself ?” I asked after a long, awkward silence.

Gus Arnold nodded but wouldn’t look at me. I glanced at the dispatcher, who was still staring at Gus, a troubled look of doubt on his face, as if he was wondering how well he knew this man.

CHAPTER SIX

It was after eight, and I was already slouched on the sofa, working on my second drink of the evening.
Laramie
was playing on the television. No volume, and I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t like westerns, especially on TV. Between sips of whiskey, I nibbled on some slimy canned asparagus spears and a cold slice of ham. Dinner. The phone rang. I didn’t recognize the voice at first. It was Norma Geary.

“Sorry to interrupt your evening,” she said.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“At work. I just wanted to give you your schedule for tomorrow.”

“Schedule?”

“You’ve got a nine a.m. appointment with Joey Figlio at the Fulton Reform School for Boys,” she began. “Maybe you should write this down.”

I rummaged through my purse for a pencil and paper, wondering who was working for whom. “Ready,” I said, and Norma gave me the agenda:

9:00 a.m.: Joey Figlio at Fulton Reform School

11:00 a.m.: City Desk meeting in Charlie Reese’s office

12:00 p.m.: Lunch with Norma Geary at Wolfson’s to review requested editions of the
New Holland Republic
and
Canajoharie Courier Standard

1:00–3:00 p.m.: Work on Hicks story for Thursday’s edition

3:30 p.m.: Meet Darleen Hicks’s friends at junior high school

“Good job, Norma,” I said, quite impressed. “But what are you doing at work? What about your son?”

“I’m leaving now. Toby will be waiting for me at home. He likes to watch
Dobie Gillis
on Tuesdays.”

I said goodnight, feeling wretched for being two drinks into my evening ritual while Norma was still at work and her son, Toby, sat waiting with Dobie Gillis and Maynard G. Krebs for company.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 4, 1961

About eight miles west of New Holland, a cluster of single-story buildings huddled behind a high fence at the bottom of a hill: Fulton Reform School for Boys. Probably lush green in summer, the place was now barren, desolate, and white. A line of naked elms, their brittle, gray branches spreading like fans against the sky, fronted the school’s metal fence like pickets. The school looked like a lonely outpost in hostile territory.

The guard let me through the gate and instructed me to check in with the officer on duty, who was expecting me inside the main building. He searched my purse for contraband, confiscated my nail file, and asked if I really wanted to take a camera in there.

“More than likely you’ll get it stolen,” said the skinny young man in a green uniform and cap.

I left my precious Leica and billfold with the guard, who stashed them in a box below his desk. He smiled and waved me past, then pointed me in the direction of the visitors’ room.

Fulton wasn’t really a prison, so guests and inmates mingled in many of the public areas. A dark, heavyset man, smelling of stale perspiration, showed me to a large, cold room outfitted with long wooden tables and benches. The high, steel windows looked like the ones I’d seen at the junior high school, only these had a sturdy metal grating between them and the inmates below.

“Wait here,” said my escort, and he disappeared through the swinging doors.

I sat down at one of the long tables. Ten minutes later, the doors swung open again, and some students started drifting in. A rough-looking bunch, they sauntered over to different tables and slouched into their seats, eyeing me the whole time. After a few minutes of quiet study, three got up and began circling me like buzzards. The boldest of the three sized me up and took the seat opposite. I tried to avoid his stare, but he twisted and contorted himself like a bird doing a mating dance until he’d attracted my eye. He was small and wiry, with dark, curly hair and a football mustache above his lip: eleven hairs on each side. He had the hardened look of a wretch. Young, but let’s face it, already lost.

“Hey, you, pretty chick,” he said. “Hey!”

I ignored him. He reached across the table and flicked my nose. I recoiled then froze in place. His buddies closed in. The oldest of them was all of sixteen, but I was scared.

“What’s your name, baby?” asked one of the boys behind me. I didn’t look to see which one.

“Scram, Dooley,” said the boy across from me. “I was here first.”

Where was that smelly guard who’d shown me in? Another boy touched my hair from behind me. I jumped.

“Screw you, Frankie,” said the voice at my back. “Maybe you saw her first, but I’m here now, so shove off,” and he gave my hair a quick twirl with his hand.

Yet another boy sat down next to me and grinned. His incisors were gray with decay where they touched his canines. His breath smelled, too. With no help in sight, and seriously fearing the worst, I took a gamble.

“Okay, who wants to be first?” I blurted out. The boys all gave a start. “You, Breath of Death?” I said to the one next to me. “Have you ever even kissed a girl before? And Frankie here doesn’t count.” Their jaws dropped, and the other boys roared with laughter. “You think this is funny?” I said, turning to face the boy who’d twirled my hair from behind. “Hairy palms, gaunt, sallow expression . . . You’d better cool it with the self-abuse, or it will fall off.”

Howling laughter from across the room, and red faces all around me. Breath of Death and Hairy Palms crumbled instantly under the weight of derision from their mates and lost their swagger. Still the boldest of the bunch, Frankie didn’t budge. He just smirked at me.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, fixing me with his eyes.

I leaned forward and placed my elbows on the table before me, returning his stare. I tried to reflect his animus back at him and force him to blink. But that wasn’t working. Then I laughed, I don’t know why. It was one of those nervous, uncontrollable explosions that snorted through my nose. That made things worse. The laughter turned into a fit. My eyes watered, I pointed at Frankie in derision, and slapped the table. I must have looked crazy, and everyone in the room was watching.

“Cut it out!” said Frankie, but I laughed harder and louder. “I said shut up!”

I’d unnerved him. He broke off his glare and glanced around to gauge the reactions around him. He sneered some more, yelled at me again to can it, but I was beyond reason now. Then he swore and called me an unflattering name. He pushed away from the table and screamed, “Weirdo!” as he threw his hands in the air.

He began to walk away, and his fellow reprobates directed a chorus of jeers at him. But he had one last salvo to fire as my laughter finally subsided.

“I’ll come looking for you when I get out of here,” he snarled. “And you’ll get yours.”

Frankie exited stage right, and the assembled quieted down. I had won the round, but beneath my self-satisfied smile, I was trembling. My God, why had I taunted him so? A rush of panic overcame me, and I had to drop a pencil underneath the table so I could bend over and hide the tears I could not control. I wiped my face as I pretended to reach for my pencil. Then I righted myself and stared down at my notebook, praying no one had noticed. Slowly, I caught my breath and willed myself to calm down, if only in the interest of self-preservation. I really needed to control my more daring impulses.