Ticket to Ride (19 page)

I wanted to move away, but I couldn't. Maybe I felt I had this kind of abuse coming. It was small payment, considering the payment he'd had to make.

His words came with such violence and speed that I no longer heard them. I just stared at the sad enraged face they were coming from, remembering him when we were young and the night we shot craps by the campfire and how he was always cruising the night in his '55 black Chevy. Only to end up like this for no reason at all.

And then somebody had my hand and was tugging me away and three or four other people started shouting at me, too, joining Mike. I was several long feet away from them before I said, “Thanks.” Then I slipped my hand from hers.

“No PDA, huh?”

“What's PDA?”

“God, Sam, somebody's got to sit you down and explain the facts of girl life. Public Displays of Affection.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“I don't know who I felt sorrier for, Mike or you. Both of you, I guess.”

Wendy wore a starched mauve blouse and tan walking shorts. The sandals only emphasized how small her feet were, fine delicate bones beneath the ornate clutches of the sandals.

“I stopped by your office. Jamie—is that it, Jamie?—she told me you were at the courthouse. I thought I'd find you and let you buy me a cup of coffee.”

“That's damned nice of you.”

“I thought so too. But that seems to be my nature. Nice.”

“Uh-huh. I remember that from high school.”

“I wasn't that stuck up.”

“The hell you weren't.”

“Well, but then I took a sacred vow of niceness and look at me now.”

“Major improvement, I'll give you that.”

“Oh, look. Isn't that that little street café everybody likes so much?”

“You must have taken a sacred vow of subtlety, too.”

“You rarely get what you don't ask for. I grew up with two sisters who were both better-looking and a lot smarter than I was. I only got things when I badgered my mother for them. Subtlety gets you nowhere, Sam.”

I had iced coffee, she had regular. We sat at a small table on the sidewalk under an umbrella.

Between the heat and humidity, the crowds moved slowly, as if they were under water. I watched as a meter maid put a ticket under a windshield wiper. She jerked her hand away. The windshield had been damned hot.

“I actually wanted to see you for two reasons. First, I wanted to make sure that I was going to see you tonight.”

“I'm hoping so, Wendy. I had a good time last night.”

“And second, from the little you told me at dinner about Lou Bennett and the fire and everything, I had an idea. Do you remember Doris Crachett?”

“Vaguely. She was a year ahead of us, right?”

“Two years, actually. We knew each other from summers at the country club. If you think I was a snob, you should have hung around Doris. Anyway, her father was the assistant fire chief up until a year ago. He retired then. Doris always said that Chief DePaul did too many favors for people.”

“What kind of favors?”

“Well, I remember Doris said that one of the mayor's friends had a business that burned down. Her father thought it was obviously arson, but the chief wrote the report and called it accidental.”

“Why didn't her father say something?”

She shrugged. “I guess he was always careful about not wanting to come on too strong—you know, with his education and his money. A lot of people made fun of him because he was a member of the country club.”

“How can an assistant fire chief afford the country club?”

“Oh, they had inherited money from her father's side. Her dad had a college degree and no interest in anything special. Doris always said that he became a fireman by default. Probably thought it was exciting. He's a widower now, and he lives with Doris and her husband. The husband's a neurosurgeon in Cedar Rapids.”

“That's good to know about DePaul. That he took a dive for somebody before Karen died.”

“So you owe me a dinner.”

“That's how this works, huh?”

“Damn right. That's another thing you learn when you have two older sisters who are prettier and brighter than you are. You have to keep doing favors for people so they'll do a few for you.”

I looked at the golden down on the slender arm and then at the curve of the long neck as she turned in profile to pick up her pack of Viceroys. Then I had a brief jolt of Jane. My first brief jolt of the day, and I'd been up for several hours. The patient seems to be doing better today, Doctor.

“So, what time are you picking me up tonight? Barring unforeseen problems of course.”

“Seven.”

“What would you think about The Eyrie, that new place out on the highway? We can dance there, too.”

“You and dancing.”

“Face it, Sam. You like it too. You just have to be all boy about it and pretend you don't. You were grinning when you were doing the Watusi.”

“I was doing the Watusi? I was just sort of jerking around.”

“That's what everybody does when they do the Watusi.”

“Man, talk about useless information.”

She laughed. “Yes, and there's a lot more where that came from.” Then she tapped me on the top of my hand. “You feeling any better about Mike?”

“No. And I doubt I will. He thinks we're betraying him. It's hard to face him. I don't blame him for thinking what he does. I'd probably feel the same way if I'd gone through what he did. And here I am all safe and sound, talking against the military. I feel like shit about it.”

“But you won't stop?”

“No. No, I can't. And who knows, I may have to go some day.”

“You're kidding.”

“No. I'm in the National Guard. I spent two weeks in June at camp. If the war keeps expanding, they'll be calling us up.”

“Will you go if they do?”

“Probably. I'm not any better than the rest of the guys in my unit. We're all pretty good friends. I couldn't do that to them.”

She sank back in her chair. “So the best husband material I've run across in the last two years is going to run away?”

“Write your congressman.”

“You're damned right I will.” Then: “Oh, shit, if you'll pardon my French. I don't want you to go. I'm already having all these stupid dreams about you—about us. Based on one night. How's that for crazy?”

“I had one or two dreams like that myself. Based on one night. Maybe it's just that we're so comfortable with each other. Maybe all that time we spent sitting next to each other in high school is finally paying off.”

“I hope so. I just want to feel as good as I did last night. And as soon as I saw you this morning, I felt good again—until you brought up the war. Now I'm nervous about it.”

I left a dollar tip for the waitress and stood up.

She worked her way over to me and kissed me on the cheek. “Lou wanted me to be a perfect little wife, so he made me get into all these clubs for the snooty people. I have to go to one of the meetings this afternoon.”

“My kind of folks.”

“I'll bet, wise-ass. So, where're you headed?”

“To talk to Cliffie, if he's back from Roy Davenport's yet.”

“Sometimes I almost feel sorry for him. He's got that poor little girl with spina bifida, and when you see them together he's so loving and proud of her. But then he's so stupid at his job. Then I don't feel sorry for him, because he shouldn't be the chief. If his father hadn't bullied the city council into giving it to him, he'd be walking a beat.”

I kissed her back on the cheek. “You think he knows how to Watusi?”

She jabbed me in the ribs and then we parted.

20

T
HE LOBBY OF THE POLICE STATION WAS FILLED WITH
reporters. Two murders in a few days brought TV, radio, and print journalists from Cedar Rapids, Des Moines, Iowa City, and two or three smaller towns, in addition to our own people.

Molly was one of them. In her pink dress, sandals, and ponytail, she was the belle of this particular ball, the only other female being a surly woman from a nearby newspaper. Over beers one night, the woman told me she'd been hired to edit the paper and do rewrite. She did not like being sent out on assignment. She had a cigarette hack, could drink most men under the table, and one night belted a TV reporter who insulted the Chicago Bears. I'd considered asking her to marry me, but then I thought better of it. She was not only tougher than I was; she was also meaner.

Molly took me by the elbow and led me into a corner perfect for whispering.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“This. Roy Davenport being murdered. Now Cliffie'll probably let Harrison go.”

After all the coffee I'd had, I was self-conscious about my breath. We had to be almost head-to-head to speak in whispers. I talked out of the side of my mouth like Bogart so I wouldn't scorch her with a full blast.

“Why're you talking like that?”

“Coffee breath.”

“Here, for God's sake.”

She gave me a stick of Doublemint. I didn't have the heart to complain that this gum was at least as old as I was. I jammed it into my mouth and crunched down on it with my molars. It sounded like tiny rocks being crushed. Then I started whispering again. “Cliffie has to let him go. It's obvious these two murders are related. He won't have any choice.”

She stamped her foot. Some of the other reporters started watching us. She whispered, “But Harrison says he needs at least a week in prison or it'll spoil the book.”

“First of all, it isn't ‘prison,' it's jail. Second of all, his book is a fantasy. Third of all, I can't believe you're being sucked into this.”

“God, McCain. You're just so jealous, it's embarrassing.”

“Not jealous, Molly. Just worried about you a little.” Apparently my voice had risen, because two or three reporters started watching us again. “I don't want to see you get hurt. Doran isn't exactly stable.”

“And you are? All the women you've been with, and you're not married yet? How stable is that?”

“I'm just trying to help you, Molly. That's all.”

There wasn't anything else to say. I walked away. My friend Marjorie Kincaid was behind the desk again. Her black beehive hairdo was intact. I wondered how she slept with it. Maybe she had some kind of aluminum tube that slipped over it at night to keep it from getting messed up.

“Finally I get to talk to somebody who's not a reporter.” She obviously didn't care if they heard her.

“Is the chief in?”

“‘The chief'? This must be very serious, Sam.”

“I just want him to know how much I respect him.”

“We all want him to know that, Sam. That's the reason I live.”

“He's going to hear you one of these days.”

“All the stuff I have on him—I'm not worried.” She swiveled to her intercom: “Chief, Sam McCain would like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Is he sober?”

The reporters laughed. Cliffie knew they could hear him.

“Has he grown any, or does he still look like a kid?”

Marjorie rolled her eyes. “Should I send him back?”

“I'm giving him five minutes.”

She clicked off. A reporter snapped: “Why does he get to see the chief when we don't?”

“They go to the same church,” Marjorie said.

“What's the denomination?”

“Druid,” I said and walked back.

Cliffie was smiling when I walked into his photo gallery that he called an office. Cliffie had signed black-and-white photos from a few famous people, but mostly from people who were political hacks like himself. Famous or not, they all got framed space on his walls. Most of the poses were the same, too, Cliffie shaking hands with the person. Cliffie looked like a used-car salesman who had just unloaded the biggest lemon on the lot.

I started to sit down, but he waggled a metronome finger at me—back and forth, forth and back. “Huh-uh, McCain. You're not going to be here long enough to make it worth your while to sit down.”

“You don't even know what I'm going to say.”

On the wall behind him, to the right of the large window, was his most sacred framed photo, that of actor Glenn Ford.

“Oh, I know what you're going to say, McCain. When I was out there at Davenport's looking at the body I said to myself, I'll bet McCain's going to try and tell me that Lou Bennett's murder is tied to this one. That's what you're going to tell me, right?”

“Well, I—”

He held up a pudgy hand. “And then I said to myself, what he's after is to spring this Harrison Doran. He's going to say that since these two murders are tied together, Doran should be let go.”

“You're making my case for me.”

“Uh-uh. I'm making my case for me. An amateur like you sees a connection between the two killings, but an old pro like myself—huh-uh. Roy Davenport was a hood. He had plenty of enemies of his own. Whoever killed him figured by bumping off Davenport now, it'd look like it had something to do with the Bennett murder. Pretty good thinking except for one thing. He hadn't counted on a brain like mine.” He tapped his temple for dramatic effect. “You see what I'm trying to say here, McCain? He thinks he's outsmarting me, but I'm outsmarting him.”

“With your brain.”

“That's right, McCain, with my brain. So your boy Doran stays right where he is. He killed Lou Bennett. That one I've got wrapped up. Now I have to start a separate investigation to find the man who killed Davenport. That's how an old pro does it. Stick around. You could learn something.”

“Oh, I've learned something already.”

“Oh, yeah, what's that?”

“You're even dumber than I thought you were. The same person killed Bennett and Davenport. They were business partners for years. If one of them had an enemy, then the other one had the same enemy. And that means that Doran didn't kill Bennett. Somebody else did.”