Prayer for the Dead

Chapter 8

“ It was good of you to see me so late.”

“Not at all. This is a service industry. I’m just glad we could work out a mutual time and place.”

The salesman was still in coat and tie at this time of night, no doubt maintaining his image for a customer.

“Come in, come in,” said the salesman. He backed away from the door, arm extended like a courtier. “Wife’s not feeling well? I’m sorry about that.”

“Sorry to impose, but I just thought it was better to meet at your home while she was under the weather. You know how women are.”

“Tell me about it,” he said, nodding knowingly. “Although I’ve never had the pleasure to be married myself”

“A lot of us who’ve been married haven’t had the pleasure, either.”

The salesman laughed, with a quick, easy flash of teeth and a throaty chuckle, useful for most occasions.

“I would have come by your office but I get off work so late.”

“No, listen, no problem. A man needs insurance, I’m eager to accommodate.”

The windows were covered with heavy drapes. The porch light had been on because a customer was coming, but the living room and entrance hall were illuminated only by a glow emanating from the adjoining room.

“Not all my customers are so eager to see me. But you may have heard the jokes about insurance salesmen.”

“I’ve heard a few.”

“I’ll bet you have. Well, listen, it comes with the job. At least I’m not a proctologist, you know?”

“I hear you.”

“Let’s go in the den; my stuffs in there. Insurance is actually the best investment you’ll ever make and, let’s face it, we’re all going to need it someday.”

“Absolutely.”

The den was dim and shadowed. What little light came from the single sixty-watt bulb seemed to be soaked up and swallowed by the wood of the bookshelves, the dark leather of the furniture. The lamp itself was turned so that the light hit the wall first and reflected back weakly.

“Have a seat, Mr. Beck,” he said, waving at a recliner in front of the coffee table that was already spread with insurance materials.

“Becker.”

“Becker, I’m sorry. I misheard you on the phone.” Becker leaned forward and looked into the man’s eyes.

“I hope this is bright enough for you, Mr. Becker. I can turn on another light if you want, but I keep it this way for myself. Too much hurts my eyes. Photo-phobic. Most people find it restful once they get used to it, but just say the word.”

“It’s fine, Mr. Scott.”

“Call me Doug,” said the salesman. “Everyone does.”

The man held Becker’s gaze, grinning slightly, forthright, foursquare, bored already with the sound of his own voice but also eager to make the sale.

“Tell me, Mr. Becker, what can I do you for?”

I’ve made a mistake, thought Becker. This is not my man.

“Do you sell for just one company, or what?”

“Let me tell you how that works,” said Scott. “I can sell you anything. You tell me what you need, we can find the company that suits you best, and I can sell you that policy… but I have found that for a combination of price and service, generally the best around is Connecticut Surety and Life. Most people don’t consider service when buying insurance, but, Mr. Becker, let me tell you, this is a service industry.”

Becker leaned back against the leather upholstery and heard the slow hiss of air escaping his weight. He felt the tension ebb from his body and his mind, but whether the sensation was one of relief or disappointment, he could not say.

Tee was in a jovial mood. He patted the passenger seat before Becker got in. “So.” Grinning widely.

“You look like you just ate something you shouldn’t,” said Becker. “And it agreed with you.”

“Me? You’re the one’s been dining out, as I hear it.”

Tee pulled away from the curb in the police cruiser and swung around the circular drive that terminated Becker’s dead-end road.

“Janie tells me she served you and Cindi breakfast the other day,” said Tee.

“Janie speaks to you now?”

“She’s thawing out. I got her on my back burner.”

“A little crowded there, isn’t it?”

“Changing the subject? Tell me about it.”

“Cindi had eggs, I had a bagel, as I recall it. It was a grand breakfast. Janie was a charming hostess.”

“I hate gentlemen,” said Tee. “Fortunately, I don’t meet that many. Did she mention me at all?”

“Couldn’t get her to shut up about you. It seems she has a thing for married cops.”

“Chief cop.”

“Even better. She’s contemplating a life of crime just to keep you calling on her.”

“Well, if I have to, I have to. I’m a martyr to the cause.”

“Ever take the wife dancing anymore, Tee?”

“I tried to call you last night. You weren’t home. You weren’t with Cindi, either. Unless she lied to me.”

“She didn’t lie to you; she doesn’t respect you enough. I was buying insurance.”

“Always a good investment. And?”

“We all make mistakes.”

“And then sometimes we get lucky,” said Tee.

He pulled onto 1-86, lights flashing to clear a space for himself.

“She called me last night, but you weren’t around,” he continued. “Maybe just as well because we got more information since then.”

“Who called, just so we each have the same conversation.”

“Woman named Helen Brasque, a checkout girl at the Grand Union on Ridge Road. Seems her boyfriend is missing. Hello, says I, that has a familiar ring, tell me about it. The guy’s named Roger Dyce. He lives in Clamden, over in the old military dependent area.”

“Where’s that?”

“Over by the Sherman access road; we just passed it. You don’t know about that neighborhood? I forgot you’ve been away twenty years. We used to have a missile here. Did you know that? I want to say Minuteman, but that’s not it. Anyway, they had a missile stored in a silo just off the electric company’s area. Less than half a mile from the high school, if you can believe it. You never been past there? The chain-link fence is still up; that’s about all that’s left. The things went out of style or something. I’m not sure what it is; they took it away at least fifteen years ago. Anyway, the point is, the military built some housing to put up the troops who operated it, serviced it, polished it, whatever you do with a missile. About twenty houses, all told, quick-fix jobs, built them on slabs, no cellars, a regular little neighborhood tucked away there pretty much by itself. Not bad houses, actually, a family neighborhood, lots of kids-what the hell am I talking about?”

“I’ve been trying to figure it out.”

“Oh, this guy, Dyce, who was reported missing by his girlfriend. Or she says she’s his girlfriend, but I’m not too sure of that. She doesn’t seem to know much about him except where he lives. Their relationship is fairly recent and-uh-more physical than cerebral, well, you would know about that, wouldn’t you.”

“Christ.”

“A man your age. A pretty young thing like Cindi. And I’m younger than you are. Where’s the justice?”

“They say if you tie a string real tight around your dick, after three days it will just fall off. Your problems would be over.”

“That’s horseshit, John. I’ve got a string around my dick all the time, just to remind me to use it.”

Tee turned off on the third exit and turned onto the Post Road, following the signs to the hospital.

“This Helen was frantic-she’s the frantic type to begin with. Seems her boyfriend has been missing for four days. With a girl like her, I would figure he’s just not answering his phone-except for what’s going on around here. So I did the usual checking around and I found him. In the hospital here in Essex.”

“So he’s not missing.”

“No, but here’s the thing. I think maybe he nearly was. The EMS people found him at the train station in Guileford. He’d been mugged. Well, a good deal worse, really. Someone really did a number on his head, slammed the door on his arm, I mean kicked the shit out of him before they took his money. That’s rare enough around here. This isn’t the city, after all, although, by the train station, maybe some of the boys from Hartford are looking for new territory, but I don’t think so. The thing is, we found a syringe on the ground next to the car. On the passenger side.”

“A drug buy that went wrong.”

“I thought that, but we checked the substance in the syringe and it wasn’t drugs. I mean recreational drugs. It was something called PMBL, a barbiturate, kind of out of fashion according to the drug people. You heard of it?”

“No, but that’s not my line. What does it do?”

“It’s an anesthetic. Actually a combination hypnotic and anesthetic, what they told me. It puts you out and keeps you out.”

“You have a theory?”

“What kind of chief would I be without a theory?”

“A Clamden chief. Turn at the light for the hospital.”

“I know where to tum. What if this guy Dyce went to the ATM at the station and our snatcher is waiting there. The snatcher follows Dyce to his car, tries to stick him with the needle and drag him off, but Dyce resists, fights. The snatcher loses his cool, beats the shit out of Dyce, and drops his anesthetic in the struggle so he can’t cope with Dyce anyway.”

“Why the ATM? Why not getting off the train?”

“The tuning’s bad; too many witnesses if a train just came in. Besides, we think the snatcher was hanging around the money machine. Somebody pissed all over it.”

Becker laughed.

“It’s not funny, John. You forget, this isn’t the city. Commuters use the train here, not derelicts, not kids. People don’t just drop by to take a quick pee at the train station. It’s the kind of thing anybody who’s weird enough to snatch people would do.”

“Or any boy under the age of eighteen, or any half-drunk adult male, or any dog, for Christ’s sake.”

“If this was a dog, you’d better call Ripley’s. The guy hit the computer keys.”

“We’re not looking for a public pisser. Tee. More likely he pees sitting down and wipes his dick afterwards.”

“How do you figure?”

“This is not a man who calls attention to himself. If he did, he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”

Tee parked the cruiser in front of the hospital’s main entrance, sliding in front of a departing Volkswagen that had just let off a pregnant woman. The driver of the Volkswagen honked angrily. Tee stepped toward the Volkswagen, whose driver thought better of it and pulled around, shaking his fist.

“I read that people in New York have stopped doing that,” Becker said. “They don’t even yell at cab drivers for fear they’ll get shot.”

“We need a little more random violence around here,” said Tee. “Teach these people respect for the police.”

The woman at the information desk seemed annoyed that they wanted a patient’s room number. She made them wait until she finished her phone call.

“I asked this Helen if she knew Dyce’s mother’s maiden name. She didn’t, of course. Then I ran the usual checks on him myself, just to see if he had a record, and so forth.”

The woman at the desk finally checked her computer and told them the room number.

“They’re volunteers.” Tee led the way to the elevators. “You can’t fire them, so they act like that. Ever notice how many of them are fat? Why is that?”

“Got a theory for that, too?”

“A man’s got to speculate, John. That’s why you’ve got an imagination… The MVD came up with something interesting. Mr. Dyce is a safe driver-but he hasn’t always been Mr. Dyce. Four years ago he changed his name.”

Tee punched the floor button, suddenly silent.

“And I say, ‘From what?’ “ said Becker.

“Dysen. Scandinavian, wouldn’t you say? I may not know anything about the urinary habits of the perpetrator, but I do believe Mr. Dyce/Dysen was a very lucky man who just missed being victim number nine.”

Becker did not respond.

As they approached Dyce’s hospital room. Tee said, “I knew a kid in high school who wiped his dick. Weird. Shook, then wiped. Barely had any to mention in the first place.”

“Good thing you were there to notice,” said Becker.

“Guy became a golf pro, not a player, a teacher. How’s that for symbolism? Spend your life with this four-foot-long club swinging between your legs. A classic case of compensation.”

Becker said, “Unlike our good selves.”

“Well, exactly,” said Tee.

Dyce dreamed his father was alive again and looking for him. He could hear his angry voice calling “Roger,” with the snarl of an animal in the tone, and his footsteps, those dreaded, off-beat clumps of a cripple, were coming toward him. The young Dyce was hiding under the bed, whimpering with fear. He did not know what he had done to bring on the wrath this time, but then he seldom knew. Sometimes he thought his very existence enraged his father, as if his presence, perhaps even his very life, were a mistake that the man was trying to eradicate with his belt and his fists.

In the dream Dyce could see directly through the covers that hung to the floor and concealed him. His father entered the bedroom and Dyce could see him yanking the belt from his pants, see him breathing heavily through his mouth as he always did when he had been drinking. His eyes were red from the alcohol, the capillaries burst from within, and a crust of something had formed in the corners of his mouth. His hair fell diagonally across his forehead, limp and straight and dirty blond.

“Roger,” he said again, this time softer, cajoling. “Come on out, Roger. Come here son. Daddy’s not mad.”

Dyce was not fooled by the change in tone. He had been caught that way before. There was neither sweetness nor forgiveness in the man when he had been drinking, only malice and cunning. Much as Dyce wanted to believe it was the voice of love calling, he dared not move.

He looked straight up through the bed and saw the man’s eyes cloud and the lids quiver, then close. His father sat heavily on the bed above Dyce, then fell back, inert, dropped finally by the liquor. When his father’s rage was gone, he collapsed inward, as if the anger was the only thing to keep him going.

Hovering over his father while somehow still under the bed, Dyce saw the drool form and dribble from his mouth. He heard the breath making its tortured way through his nose, still miraculously straight and fine despite the brawls, the spills, and the accidents of a drunkard’s life.

With his heart racing in his chest, the young Dyce crawled out from under the bed and knelt with his face next to his father’s. Peace had come upon the man and he looked so young lying there. If only he could always be this way, Dyce thought. He leaned forward to kiss his father and the man’s eyes flew open and he bared his teeth as he said, “Roger.” His hand grasped Dyce’s shoulder and the young boy felt his bowels release in fear.

Dyce awoke with a start to find Helen at his side, shaking his shoulder and whispering his name. Two men stood behind her, watching him.

“These men are from the police, dear,” she said. Helen never called him dear.

“I’m not,” said Becker.

“Oh,” said Helen. “I thought you were.”

“I’m Chief Terhune of the Clamden Police,” said Tee. “Mr. Becker has some experience in these matters, and he’s here to help out.”

“What matters?” asked Dyce. He rolled his tongue to moisten his dry mouth.

“The mugging,” said Helen.

“I talked to the police,” said Dyce.

“That’s true,” said Helen, looking to Tee for explanation.

“That would be the Guileford Police. You were attacked in Guileford. I’m from Clamden.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They’re here to help,” said Helen. Dyce wished she would shut up and leave. He needed to concentrate and not worry about what stupid thing she might say next. There was something not right here, something to be careful of.

Dyce looked at the one who was so quick to point out that he wasn’t with the police.

“We think this might be part of a pattern,” said Tee.

The quiet man was studying Dyce. Not staring at him precisely, but sizing him up. His eyes would wander off sometimes, taking in the rest of the room, and then return suddenly, as if to catch him off guard. Dyce averted his own eyes. There was something dangerous there. It was almost as if the man were reading Dyce’s mind. Or as if Dyce were reading his.

The policeman was asking about the incident. Dyce had almost convinced himself by now that it was a mugging.

“Were you able to get a look at the man who hit you?” Tee asked. “No,” said Helen.

“You must have some idea what he looks like- white, black? Dark, fair?”

“It all happened so fast,” said Helen.

“Ma’am,” said Tee. “It might work better if Mr. Dyce tells us himself.”

Dyce lay back and closed his eyes. “Helen, could you get me some water, please?”

“Of course, dear,” she said. Again, the dear. She was showing the police her position, he supposed. Giving herself the right to be here.

“I’m sorry,” Dyce said. “They’ve got me all drugged up. It’s a little hard to concentrate.”

“Sure,” said Tee. “Take your time. But any kind of description would help.”

Dyce kept his eyes closed and forced himself to visualize the incident as he had described it to the police before. He could feel the quiet man’s eyes on him, but there was nothing to see now. Let him look, thought Dyce. He can’t see into my skull, and if he does, he’ll see only what I’m thinking. But remember him, he’s dangerous.

“It was very fast,” Dyce said. “He knocked on the window on the passenger’s side of my car. I opened the door and he reached in and hit me in the face. I was stunned. He hit me again, several times, but I didn’t really seem to feel it after that first time. I had my eyes closed, of course-he was hitting me in the face. He was white, though, I think I know that much. And he was wearing leather. Yes, I can see that much now. When he rapped on the window his sleeve was leather.”

“What kind of leather? Suede?”

“Black, heavy, like a motorcycle jacket.”

“Did you see the syringe, Mr. Dyce?” It was the other voice, the dangerous man named Becker.

Dyce paused and rubbed his throat. The other police had not mentioned the syringe, had not seen a connection.

“Helen,” he said. “I’m so dry.”

Helen put the glass of water in his hand and helped him to sit upright as he sipped on the straw. Dyce allowed himself a look at Becker. The man smiled as their eyes met, politely. He seemed almost bored. So quickly? Dyce wondered. Could he lose interest that fast, or is he hiding something? He slipped back onto the pillows and closed his eyes again.

“No one said anything about a syringe,” said Dyce. “What do you mean?”

Tee said, “Did you see one?”

“No.”

“Do you use drugs, Mr. Dyce?” Becker’s voice again.

“Heavens, no!” said Helen. “I can swear to that.”

There was a weight on the bed. Someone was sitting next to him.

“I don’t usually even take aspirin. That’s why I’m reacting so much to the pain killers here, I guess.”

There was a hand on his arm; he knew it wasn’t Helen’s. Dyce opened his eyes and saw Becker sitting on the bed next to him. His face was close and he was smiling, not just politely this time, but with warmth. Dyce recognized the smile. It was the same one his father would use sometimes to make him calm down before he hit him.

I know you, Dyce thought. I’m ready for you.

“What’s your mother’s maiden name?” Becker asked.

Dyce smiled back.

“I never knew her.”

The two looked at each other for a long time. Their smiles widened as if they were sharing a private joke. Tee thought it was creepy.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Dyce asked finally.

“Larssen,” Becker said.

When Becker rose from the bed, it seemed to Tee that he released Dyce’s arm with reluctance.

“What the hell was that all about?” Tee asked as they waited for the elevator to take them to the lobby. “I thought you two were going to kiss or something, staring at each other like that. What the hell were you doing?”

“Communicating.”

“That what they teach you in the Bureau?”

“I’m not in the Bureau now, I’m not a cop, either. I can use whatever methods I need to.”

“You trying to seduce him or something? What kind of witness do you think he’ll make if the defense attorney learns you questioned him by making goo-goo eyes at him?”

“I was just establishing trust,” said Becker, laughing. “Letting him know I was on his side. Besides, I don’t think you’re going to be able to use him as a witness.”

“No, he doesn’t seem to know much, does he? He doesn’t even fit the pattern.” Becker looked at Tee from under his brows. “Were we in the same room?” he asked.