Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (26 page)

* * *

Ed Bodine Sr. lived in a five-story brick retirement home on the hill above the abandoned steel mill; an inscription over
its door indicated that it had once been the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. As I stepped off the elevator at the third floor,
I caught a glimpse of the mill through the window—sprawling, dark, and unpopulated in the fading light. The residents of this
home, Amos had told me, were mainly former steelworkers; I wondered how they could bear to look at the mill’s ruins day after
day. For me, that would have been a constant reminder of life’s failures and my own impending death.

The man who answered my knock at the door of unit three-seventeen was bent and frail, supported by an aluminum walker. When
I gave him my card and asked if I could talk with him about his son, anxiety clouded Bodine’s eyes. He ran an arthritically
swollen hand over his thin white hair, and for a moment I thought he would refuse to let me inside. Then he moved back, almost
shying away from me; I sat in the place that he indicated at the end of the sofa, and he took a chair opposite, warily positioning
the walker between us.

“Mr. Bodine,” I said, “I know the last few years have been very difficult for you, and I understand that you don’t want to
relive unpleasant memories. But in the course of a related investigation I’ve found some facts that may help to clear your
son’s name.”

Bodine’s fingers tightened on the walker.

I went on, “I understand that before his arrest Ed was afraid that management was plotting to get rid of him.” Bodine had
said so in the statement taken immediately after his arrest.

The old man dipped his chin in acknowledgment.

“Did he ever talk about his fears with you?”

He cleared his throat and spoke in a deep voice that was at odds with his frail appearance. “Eddie didn’t talk much about
union business. Child protecting the parent; he didn’t want me to worry about him. Why, I don’t know. I’m a union man myself.
Walked the picket line at Keystone during the strike of fifty-nine. Was dangerous then, just like in Eddie’s time. Hell, the
work itself’s dangerous. Just a fact of life; you learn to live with it.”

“But you knew he feared for his safety?”

“Well, sure. Not just his safety—his life. He knew Gordon’s kind, and the gang he brought in to do his dirty work. The local
was one of their main problems, and the best way to weaken labor was to do away with their leader—my Eddie.”

“Had Ed taken any precautions against that? Made any preparations in case they went after him?”

“Sure. Three weeks before he got arrested, Eddie left this canvas bag with me. Said it was full of extra clothes and cash,
in case he needed to get out of town and hole up someplace.”

When I’d begun to suspect that Ed Bodine and the August man were one and the same, a detail about the United Airlines bag
left in the room at the Aces and Eights Motel had bothered me: the Keystone Steel pen caught in its lining. I doubted that
Bodine would have carried the pen to prison with him, but if the bag had belonged to him before his incarceration, the pen’s
presence made more sense.

I asked his father, “What happened to the bag?”

He looked away. “I got rid of it after Eddie went to prison.”

“What did it look like?”

“… I don’t remember.”

“It wouldn’t have been blue, with a United Airlines logo?”

Slowly he looked back at me. “You’ve seen it?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve seen Eddie?”

“No.” What had been exhumed from the desert grave was not his son—not anymore.

Bodine nodded, as if I’d confirmed something for him.

“When did Ed pick up the bag?” I asked. “The night he walked away from Greensburg?”

“He didn’t pick it up.”

I waited.

Bodine sighed, let go of his walker, slumped in his chair. “All right, he called that night and asked me to bring it to him.
That was before my arthritis got so bad, and I was still driving. I met him at a rest stop over on the turnpike—New Stanton.”

“Have you heard from him since?”

He shook his head.

“Are you sure of that?”

“All right—two postcards, that’s all.”

“From where?”

“One from someplace in Illinois, the other from Omaha. No message, really, just the usual tourist stuff, and not in Eddie’s
true hand. After that, nothing.”

“Did he say where he planned to go when you met him on the turnpike? What he planned to do?”

Again the old man looked away.

“Mr. Bodine?”

“Doesn’t matter anyway.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Can’t hurt Eddie now. He’s dead.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if he was alive, he’d’ve been in touch. I know my boy. He went after Gordon, and Gordon finished him.”

“He told you he was going after Gordon?”

Bodine closed his eyes, nodded. “Yeah. We was sitting in my car that night at New Stanton. Eddie said he’d make Gordon pay
for what he done to him and Keystone. I told him Gordon was too powerful. I begged him to let it go. But my Eddie never listened
to me.”

I thought again of the desert grave, of the dental charts that were now speeding toward Nevada.

“Nothing matters now,” Bodine said.

I had no words to comfort him, and none were expected. Bodine had lost his son, he knew it, and very soon—perhaps as early
as tomorrow morning—a police officer would knock on his door and deliver the news that the old man already felt in his brittle
bones.

* * *

I dropped off the twenty-dollar bill I’d promised Whitey with the bartender at McGlennon’s Pub and was parked near the railroad
embankment on River Street by seven-fifty. A harvest moon hung high, streaky clouds scudding across it; the night was so chill
that I could see my breath. Lights shone behind curtains and blinds of the shabby houses facing the river. A jack-o’-lantern
leered prematurely from a porch railing.

I watched the railroad trestle, but no one entered the park. A police car rounded the corner and began to prowl toward me;
I ducked down until it had gone past and turned uphill. Then I got out of my car and walked toward the trestle.

From the south came the blare of a train’s horn. I glanced up, saw its headlight moving slowly around the bend by the decaying
mill. Long freight, picking up speed on the straightaway. I started down the dirt track to the beach, and then the train was
overhead, engine thundering, wheels pounding, steel squealing against steel. I was prepared for the noise but not for the
vibration; it nearly threw me off-balance, and I stopped walking until the train passed. Finally, when its sound began to
fade thin and plaintive in the distance, I moved to the far side of the trestle and peered out at the darkened park.

No one there. Just the metal drum surrounded by trash and illuminated by a dim spotlight. The rickety picnic table slumped
in shadow.

Spitz might have changed his mind, I thought, but more likely he was biding his time, checking things out, just as I was.
I decided to wait under the trestle a few minutes more. The gun I’d borrowed from Amos was in the side pocket of my shoulder
bag; now I transferred it to the waistband of my jeans. Anna’s cape concealed it, gave me plenty of room to maneuver if necessary.

Men’s voices on the beach now. I pulled back, listened. Two of them, coming this way. Talking loud, slurring their words.
Then a clank as a tossed can hit and bounced off the trash drum. The men kept walking past the trestle and south along the
shoreline.

I relaxed some, then heard more voices, this time on River Street. Tensed all over again, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t come
under the trestle. A car door slammed, and an engine started up. Going away.

After that the night became very quiet. It was black and damp under the trestle. Cold, too. The Monongahela lay wide and still,
the moon’s path scarcely rippling. I stared at it, in danger of becoming hypnotized. And heard a suppressed cough coming from
the grove of willows.

Jim Spitz, checking out the park from the shelter of the trees.

Spitz waited. I waited. Finally I decided it was a standoff and stepped out onto the beach. Stood close to the trestle, hand
resting on the gun’s grip.

After half a minute a man came out of the grove: medium height, clad in a navy pea jacket and jeans. I couldn’t make out his
features, only the paleness of his face, the darkness of his hair. He stopped, looking toward me, then went over to the picnic
table and sat down.

I went over there, too. Stood on the table’s far side, as I had earlier with Whitey. In the moonlight I saw a face that had
been handsome before age and hard experience set in. Now the eyes were pouched, the once-chiseled nose skewed by a break that
hadn’t healed right. Discontented parentheses surrounded Spitz’s mouth, and in its set I caught a touch of uncertainty. I
took my hand off the gun; I had nothing to fear from this loser.

Spitz studied me in return, began to cough, then asked, “So where’s Gordon’s five hundred?” The question was supposed to sound
tough, but it came out a whine.

“Two hundred now,” I told him, “three later.”

“When, later?”

“After we talk.”

“About what?”

“How you set up Ed Bodine.”

“… I thought you said you were working for Gordon.”

“I am.”

“Then you ought to know all about it.”

“I wasn’t working for Gordon when that went down, and he’s not talking about it. He’s not talking about much these days. You
heard what happened to his wife?”

Spitz nodded.

I took one of my cards out, slid it across the table toward him. “Gordon hired me to find somebody who was harassing him,
but before I could, the explosion happened. I think it was set by the same person, and I also think the whole thing started
here in Monora, with the Bodine bust. I want to know everything about it—who approached you, who figured in the arrangements.”

He held the card up, squinted at it. Fingered the lettering as if he were reading Braille. I watched, waiting for him to make
up his mind. Far away a car backfired, and then a dog began barking.

After a while Spitz asked, “You going to make trouble for me?”

“No. As far as I’m concerned, the Bodine bust is history. You give me the information, I’ll pay you and leave you alone from
then on.”

“But how do I know you won’t take what I tell you to the cops, the D.A.?”

“This is how.” I took out two hundred dollars and set it in the middle of the table. “This taints any evidence I could pass
along to them.”

Spitz looked at the money for a moment; then his hand snaked forward and grasped it. As he stuffed it into the pocket of his
pea jacket, he was seized by a spasm of coughing. He got it under control, took out a handkerchief and spat into it. “I got
TB,” he said. “You believe that? Nobody gets TB any more.”

“I’ve heard there’s been a rise in the incidence of it.”

“Yeah, well, leave it to me to be on the cutting edge of a trend.” His lips twisted bitterly. “I got this fuckin’ disease,
I got no wife any more, I got two little boys to raise. Kids, they need things. Otherwise I wouldn’t touch your goddamn money.”

I doubted that, but I merely said, “Why don’t you tell me about the Bodine bust?”

“Yeah, okay. First person who talked to me about it was this gofer on Gordon’s staff, I forget his name now. He said word
had come down to take care of Bodine, and did I want to earn some extra money? I didn’t mind; Ed’d screwed me over more times
than I could count.”

“Who bought the drugs? You?”

“Nah, I wasn’t into this dodge then. I just steered them towards Ray Wilmer. The guy who delivered the blow to me was Gordon’s
pilot, that Josh Haddon. I snagged Bodine’s jacket while he was on shift and had my wife sew the bags into the lining. Then
I made the call to Bodine and set up the meet. It was easy to sell Ed on the idea I was on to some confidential management
plans. He knew they were going to get him; it was just a matter of time. What he didn’t figure was that they’d use a union
brother to do it.”

“Who planted the coke in Bodine’s apartment and tipped off the cops?”

“Haddon or the gofer, I suppose. Haddon was the one I let know about when the meet was coming down.”

“And for this they paid you …?”

“Not nearly enough.” His mouth tightened, and he looked away.

“Weren’t you concerned that the prosecutor’s office might not grant you immunity?”

“No. They told me the fix was already in.”

“Did you have contact with anyone in Gordon’s organization besides the gofer and Haddon?”

“Well, Russ Zola’s name came up a couple of times, but I never talked to him. The way I figure it, word came down from Gordon
to Zola, then to Haddon, who sent the gofer to make the first contact.”

It was, I thought, a perfect example of limiting accountability, a concept that had been developed to a science under the
last few political administrations. Corporate specialists like Suits had now perfected it to an art. God knew to what new
heights the rest of us would take it in the future.

“Okay, Mr. Spitz,” I said, “you steered them to Ray Wilmer. Do you know who made the buy?”

“Haddon, I think. He was pretty damn streetwise—already knew about Wilmer, knew he kept regular business hours here in the
park.”

“And who paid you off afterward?”

“Haddon.”

“What were the conditions of the payoff?”

“The what?”

“Did they tell you not to talk about the frame to anyone? Did they tell you to leave town?”

“Both.” Spitz began to look anxious. What if this was a test of how well he continued to comply with the first condition?

“Don’t worry, Mr. Spitz.” I reached into my bag for the remaining three hundred dollars, held the bills up for him to see.

Spitz’s greedy eyes focused on them. “That all you want to know?”

“Almost. Did Gordon’s name ever come up in connection with the frame?”

“Not really.”

“What about Noah Romanchek, his lawyer?”

“No, although I figured he was the one fixed it with the D.A.”