Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? (18 page)

    Halfway through Inferno, we were making out. I felt sorry for her and sorry for me. It was going to take a lot of lip-locking to make us feel good again.

    Here goes McCain, he's rounding first and heading for second.

    I hadn't kissed Mary in a long time. I'd forgotten how soft her flesh was. And how well she kissed. And how her breasts were just right: friendly but dignified. We steamed up the windows and then we were crawling into the back seat. Now we regretted dressing so warm. We had to take off both jackets and sweaters. We were high school hellcats, was what we were.

    As I said, I don't talk much about my sex life, except with Maggie Yates, and I only talk with her because she says that having the kind of sex we have means absolutely nothing other than the fact that we're both horny. Maggie gets some kind of stipend from her New York fashion model sister, and this lets her keep writing her novel, which she claims is a combination of Peyton Place and The Grapes of Wrath. Your guess is as good as mine.

    The thing with the car happened when I came up for air. We'd made it so warm that I was down to my T-shirt and I needed a break. It was becoming obvious that after all these years we were going to share a home run. I was ready and so was she. The noise the shocks were making was squeaky testament to our lust. And then, while I was kneeling on the seat next to Mary, who was shimmying out of her panties, I rubbed my hand against the steamy back window and saw it. Parked in the last row. At an angle you wouldn't choose unless the place was packed and you were forced to.

    Jeff Cronin's black Studebaker, the futuristic-looking one.

    "Wow," I said.

    "Oh, no," she said. "Don't fink out on me now. I want this to happen, Sam."

    "I know. So do I."

    But we both knew I was seriously distracted.

    "God, Sam, c'mon back down here."

    "I just need to check it out."

    "Oh, Sam. It isn't even that I'm so horny. It's just that it would mean something to me. It really would."

    I lost it and she found it for me again and then we did it and it was great - but great as it was, the whole time we were thrashing around at least half my mind was on the black Studebaker. Cronin had been missing all this time. Now was he sitting at the drive-in watching a movie?

    I held her afterward.

    "If I start to tell you I love you, Sam, slap me, will you?"

    "Upside the head or across the bottom?"

    She laughed. "Both." Then she said, "God, I had this so built up in my head."

    I couldn't help it. I kept staring out the back window I constantly wiped clear.

    "It was going to be like a movie. And it'd be so wonderful for you, we'd be inseparable the rest of our lives."

    I wrenched my gaze from the back window.

    "I'm too crazy now with everything to say anything you could rely on, Mary. But I love you. I don't even know what that means for us. Maybe I love you like a kid sister. Or maybe I love you just because you're such a good woman and I respect you so much. Or maybe I love you because of those wonderful breasts you have, or your bottom; that's very nice too. Or maybe all those reasons put together. Or maybe none of them. I mean, maybe I don't love you after all. Maybe love isn't the right word here. I just don't know. And I don't want to lead you on. But I want to start seeing you, I know that much. And I've never felt that before. So maybe that means something - or maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just because - "

    "Sam, will you shut up and go check out Cronin's car? That's what you want to do anyway, and you're starting to descend into gibberish, as Mrs. Fulton used to say." Mrs. Fulton was our tenth grade English teacher.

    "Wait here," I said, pulling on my clothes. "I'll be right back."

    She gave me a quick, lovely kiss. "You'd better."

    There wasn't anybody in it. That was the first wrong thing. The second wrong thing was that the engine was running.

    It took me a few minutes to find the third wrong thing. I took the key from the ignition and went around to the trunk and opened the lid and there he was.

    I touched his forehead. It was colder than it had any reasonable right to be. And then I reached down for his wrist. It was as disappointing as all those signals we send into outer space. No response whatsoever.

    

    

    

    "You know, McCain, if you're not real careful, people just might mistake you for an asshole."

    Now, there are many things people accuse Cliffie Sykes Jr. of - sloth, ignorance, duplicity, intolerance, smelling bad - but wit is not one of them.

    So I couldn't help but smile, even though the barb was aimed at me.

    "Cliffie," I said, "who's writing your material these days? That's actually funny."

    He shrugged. "Actually, I heard this state trooper say it to some con he brought in. But I think of stuff like that all the time."

    Ah, the world made sense again. For a moment I'd worried that it had gone off its orbit, Cliffie actually saying something funny.

    I should have been in a somber mood. Every man's death diminishes me, and all that. But Jeff Cronin had been a special case. He'd been bullying his way through life ever since he reached kindergarten. And in the past few years, what with the red scare and all, his bullying had taken an especially nasty turn.

    The folks at the drive-in couldn't figure out which was more interesting, the juvenile delinquent movie on the screen or the real-life crime movie in the back lane. On the screen one juvie had stabbed another juvie to death and a couple of tough cops (whom I recognized from RKO Westerns) - were commenting on "youth run wild."

    An ambulance, two police cars, four cops, Doc Novotny, and movie-goers-turned-gawkers now surrounded the black Studebaker. Cronin's body was still in the trunk. Only one of the cops had his uniform on. The others had been dragged from home and wore sweatshirts and jackets with large police badges in conspicuous places.

    Cliffie went over my story twice. Then he said, "You're so smart, McCain, why would somebody put a stiff in the trunk and leave the motor running?"

    "Panic."

    "Huh?"

    "Got scared. Thought maybe somebody spotted them. Ran off and left the key in the ignition."

    He looked at me and shook his head. "My old man's on my ass."

    "For what?"

    "For what? For all the shit that's goin' on in this town. Personally, I think this place is crawlin' with commies."

    "Black River Falls is crawlin' with commies?"

    "You're damned right. I seen this movie on TV the other night, I Married a Communist, and that's the first kinda broad the Ruskies go for."

    "What kinda broad we talking about?"

    "You know, the teacher."

    "Helen Toricelli."

    "Hell, yes, Helen Toricelli. That's how the commies do it. They get these teachers to sneak in all this commie philosophy, and then before you know it your kids've turned red."

    I'm sure he slept well, Cliffie. The world was such a simple, knowable place to him. Nothing to trouble his slumber.

    "If you say so."

    "So anyway, my old man says we need to find out who's been killin' all these people, because otherwise the state attorney general may send some investigator out here to start lookin' into things."

    Cliff Sr. knew that Cliff Jr.'s police work would never stand up to any scrutiny. The press would love to get details of Cliffie's incompetence. It was one of those moments when I almost felt sorry for him.

    "The Judge is on my ass, too."

    "Oh, yeah? How come?"

    We stood at the two-foot wooden fence that ran around the back of the drive-in. The night was colder now. You could see your breath. A plane roared overhead. A train hooted in the distance. It was a busy night on the prairie, and I couldn't get over how the movie crime scene compared to the real one in the back row.

    "She's got some of her friends from back East here. She thinks all this red scare stuff makes us look ridiculous. Which it does."

    He sighed. "Between us, the wife thinks Cronin got carried away. She lived next door to Helen Toricelli when she was growin' up. Helen used to baby-sit her. So when Jeff'd stop by and start talkin' about what a commie Helen was" - he paused - "he was a prick."

    "Who was?"

    "Jeff."

    "I thought he was your friend."

    "I probably shouldn't say this, with him still in the trunk and all, but he was a jerk. He had a nice little wife and he couldn't leave the other broads alone. He got around, that boy did. And he always had to let you know you weren't as smart as he was, either. He was drunk one night and he told me I didn't know shit from Shinola about police work. You believe that? After I took that correspondence course and everything?"

    I tried to commiserate but I couldn't quite get the words out. Shit from Shinola might not have been eloquent, but it stated the truth.

    "Hell, he was sniffin' around Tomlin's wife one night out at the softball park."

    "Chris Tomlin? Why would she have anything to do with him?"

    He shrugged. "You know how lover boys are. They just get the broads. Broads that shouldn't want to have nothin' to do with them."

    A PhD from Yale. A contributing editor to Atlantic Monthly. A woman who'd written three or four well-received books. And she was spending time with Jeff Cronin?

    "I ain't sayin' anything actually happened."

    "I can't believe it."

    "But she was definitely interested in him. Up by the pavilion above the river there? Roger Weed had this bowling tourney over to Williamsburg that night, so I had to cover for him. That's when I seen 'em, Jeff and the Tomlin gal. Sittin' on a bench in that pavilion all by their lonesome."

    One of his men started toward him. "Need you over here, Chief."

    He said, "I don't want no inspector comin' in here tryin' to second-guess me, McCain. Make the whole town look bad."

    And not only the town.

    "So if you find out anything - "

    "I'll tell you right away."

    He clapped me on the shoulder. He'd never been friendly before. I wasn't sure I liked it. "I'll get the old man off my back and you'll get the judge off yours."

    Then he walked away to play cop. Just the way his correspondence course had taught him to.

    

    

    "Sometimes I hate to go inside," Mary said. We were parked in front of her house in the Knolls. There was the darkness and the wind, enough wind to rock the ragtop.

    "How come?"

    "All the memories. You know, first Dad dying, then Mom."

    "I'm sorry, Mary."

    "I probably should sell it."

    "Maybe you should."

    "But I wouldn't get much."

    "Maybe enough to pay down on a house somewhere else."

    "That always looks so strange, though. A woman living alone in a house."

    "Times are changing."

    Then she said, "I don't suppose this is going to go anywhere, is it?" She looked straight out the window at the night, at the way the light pole swayed in the wind on the corner.

    "You mean tonight?"

    "Yes."

    "I just don't know."

    "God, I wish I could keep my mouth shut. Here a man dies and all I can think about is myself."

    Moonlight didn't redeem the houses in the Knolls. If they looked bad in the daylight, they still looked bad in the moonlight. Busted windows, tarpaper patches on the exterior, front door ajar, a junk car or two on the front lawn. Every once in a while you'd see an obstinately neat little house where everything was kept up. Mary's house was like that. My folks' house in the Knolls had been like that too. We'd lived there physically but not spiritually.

    "I wonder if his wife knows yet."

    "Cronin's?"

    "Yes. She's nice."

    "That's what Cliffie said. He also said that Cronin ran around a lot."

    "That's what I heard."

    "You did?"

    She nodded. "At the lunch counter I heard people talking about Cronin and Chris Tomlin. I felt sorry for Mrs. Cronin. She's at mass every day and always delivering food baskets to the poor. I don't know why she ever married him." She shrugged. "His looks, I guess. He was a good-looking man, I have to give him that."

    She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

    "Don't worry, Sam, I'm not going to make anything of tonight. We'll just see what happens."

    "I appreciate that."

    " 'Night."

    She started to open the door. I grabbed her and kissed her the way she deserved and needed to be kissed. "I had a good time tonight."

    She smiled sadly. "Well, except for the murder."

    "Yeah, I guess that part wasn't so good, was it?" I smiled sadly right back.

    She got out of the car and went into the small dark house. I waited until a light went on inside and then pulled away.

    

    

    Oh, they were a jolly pair, they were. I wondered how long they'd been drinking. I didn't have to wonder about how they'd gotten through my back door. That was their profession, getting through front, back, and side doors and taking whatever they wanted in pursuit of the truth - or the truth as they happened to see it, anyway, the truth of the far right versus the truth of the far left.