Shallow Graves

10

The Cleary Volunteer Fire Department had a long history of proud firefighting and a photo gallery to prove it.

Dozens of faded pictures of hand-pump, horsedrawn wagons, even a few of bucket brigades, were scattered on the walls of the tiny office-as if the company had had a Matthew Brady protégé on staff to record every major fire before, after and including the big one of 1912. The firemen seemed to have been arranged by the photographer and Pellam wondered if they'd actually stopped working momentarily, smoothed their pushbroom or handlebar mustaches and posed for the leisurely exposures.

"Afternoon," said the man sitting at the desk, rocking back in a metal chair. He was in his early thirties, wearing a black T-shirt over good muscles, blue jeans, a New York Mets cap.

"How you doing?"

"Not bad."

Silence.

Pellam looked through a glass window at a big, yellow Seagrave fire truck. "Got some nice equipment there."

"Town don't scrimp, I'll say that."

"You all volunteer, huh?"

"Yep. There's pay for one man on duty to take calls twenty-four hours."

"He must get pretty tired."

The man snagged the joke right away and fired back with, "But makes a hell of a lot of overtime."

Pellam said, "I'm the one with the movie company."

"I know."

"You mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Nosir."

"You on duty when that car blew up? The one in the park?"

"That your friend's car?"

Pellam said, "That's right."

"I answered that call, yessir. All of us did."

"You tell me what happened?"

"You mean what caused it?"

"Whatever you can tell me."

The man said, "There was most of it in the coroner's report."

"This isn't official or anything like that. I'm just curious. He was a good friend."

"Yessir, I understand." The fireman squinted up at the spotless, red-enameled tin ceiling. "I recall the back end of the car was burning pretty good when we got there. Somebody'd driven past and called it in."

"You know who?"

"Nope. I think it was a call from a pay phone. Anonymous."

"You showed up and then what happened?"

"No hydrants, course, so we had to use the tank on the truck to get things cooled off enough to get close to your friend. Then half the crew started on the brush fire with extinguishers and shovels. That was about it. We got the body away from the wreck and finally got the fire out. He died right away. It was pretty quick."

"The gas tank had blown up?"

"Yessir."

"You opened the trunk?"

"We popped it open, that's right."

"How do you do that?"

"Usually, we just pop out the cylinder, then reach in and flip the release bar. But the steel'd been pushed outward, so what we did was whack it a couple times with a pike. That jarred the bar and popped it open."

"Why'd you open the trunk?"

"The sheriff wanted us to. To see what was inside. Anyway, it's standard procedure. In case there's cans of gas or oil. Also, your spare'll burn for hours you don't douse it good."

"You find anything interesting?"

"Sir?"

"You said the sheriff wanted to look inside."

"I don't know. I was at the hood."

"You have one of those pikes handy?"

He wasn't yet uncomfortable under this questioning but he was growing warier. "They're mounted on the truck, sir. We're not really supposed to let civilians into the house, you know."

Pellam nodded. He looked at the truck through a greasy window. The pikes looked blunt and heavy. It didn't seem they'd leave holes as small as the ones he'd seen in the car.

"What're they made out of?"

"Steel of course."

"One last question. Why was the area dozed over?"

"Sheriff ordered it. Somebody called him up and told him to, I heard. I don't know why."

"You don't know who called, do you?"

"Sure don't."

Pellam thanked him then said, "Aren't you going to ask me?"

"Ask you what, sir?"

"Whether we're going to be making a movie here?"

The man shrugged. "Don't make a lick of difference to me, sir. I work in feed and grain, not movies."

At noon, Meg Torrens walked out the door of the Dutchess County Realty office, set the hands of the Be Back At clock at 1:15. She looked around the square. Pellam's Winnebago camper was parked opposite. She looked up and down the street, then crossed over and circled the camper. Taking in the tan and brown paint, the battered fenders, the mud stains, the chips in the windshield.

What the hell was she doing here?

Going shopping on my lunch hour, that's all.

And when was the last time, my dear, you bought anything in one of these rip-off antique stores? Three, four years ago, wasn't it?

She imagined herself in one of the campers, on location. She imagined what it was like to be in a movie. The modeling she'd done had been pure effort-exhausting. And she'd been treated like a dim-witted cocker spaniel. Making a movie would have to be different, she believed.

She caressed the metal skin of the camper. Noticed the faint remains of some graffiti on the side. It looked like two crosses.

Meg slung her leather bag over her shoulder and strolled up and down the street, looking at sights she'd walked past for years and never noticed. A cornerstone dated in late September, 1929-could that have been Black Thursday? A painted wooden barrel on the side-walk emblazoned with the number 58 in red paint. One building was topped with a weathervane in the shape of a whale-why here, a hundred fifty miles from the ocean? Another was decorated with a beautiful round stained-glass window.

Meg was gazing into the window of Steptoe Antiques when she heard slow footsteps. A voice asked her, "Could use seconds on the brownies."

Meg turned, looking blank at first, the way she'd rehearsed in case this happened. She said, "Should've eaten them while you had the chance, cowboy."

Pellam stepped next to her to look at what she was examining. "How're the driving lessons coming?"

"'Bout the same as your photo classes."

Meg pointed to a tattered rug hanging on the wall in the window. "See that? Price tag looks like it says sixty. Wrong, that's six hundred. They'll sell it for that too."

"What's that supposed to be on there, a dog?"

Meg looked at it closely. "Could be. Maybe a cat. I don't know."

"Dinner was nice," he said. "I enjoyed it."

She lifted an eyebrow. "I did too." She'd chosen the pronoun carefully.

"Your house is beautiful. That was the first dinner I'd had in a house, I mean a real house, in over a year."

"No kidding," she said, though she wasn't surprised. "Sam's done nothing but talk about you. You better make good on that promise."

Pellam said, "The practice bombs. I haven't forgotten."

They walked past another real estate office. Pellam looked at some of the listings.

Meg's voice dropped a half octave. "I've got some wonderful properties, Mr Pellam. Owner financing is available…"

They laughed.

Eyes were on them. Cars slowed as they passed. Meg thought, Go to hell. But the defiance was shaky. She felt vulnerable, like the time she found herself at a Florida resort wearing a new bikini that turned out to be more see-through than she was comfortable with. As she did then she now crossed her arms over her chest.

"I guess I better get going," she said.

Pellam touched her arm. She froze, then stepped back casually. He said, "I'd like to ask you a question. In confidence."

Her thoughts raced but she just nodded slowly.

He asked, "There any reason why somebody might not want a movie made in Cleary?"

"We say no to drugs."

"Beg pardon?"

"There's some talk that there might be bad influences if your company came to town."

"Okay, granted. I've heard that before… But let me be a little blunter. There any reason why somebody might kill my friend to keep a movie from being made here?"

Meg turned to him, her mouth open in shock. "You're serious, aren't you?" She turned back to the window. "That was a stupid thing to say. Sure, you're serious."

"This is off the record?"

"Sure," she said.

"Okay, Marty did have some pot. Except, it was in the camper. Along with the rolling papers-"

"What's that?"

"Rolling papers? Cigarette papers."

"Oh. Right."

"So it wasn't in the car with him when it blew up. Somebody planted those drugs on him."

She shook her head, but noncommittally, as if he were a lawyer taking down her reactions.

"Then I looked over the car a little while ago."

"You did?"

"And I found two bullet holes in it."

"Bullet holes?"

"I think so. Near the gas tank. I think that's what happened. Somebody shot the tank, it exploded and then they planted the drugs and left before the fire truck got there."

At first she thought this was impossible-in Cleary. But then she remembered the darker side of the town. The murders of those businessmen, the occasional rapes, two high school boys had driven into a tree at eighty miles an hour-they were both stoned on heroin, of all things.

He continued. "I was hoping I could talk to Keith. Maybe there's a test he could do. On the metal. See if they were bullet holes."

Meg said, "Why don't you talk to Tom? Didn't he investigate…" Then she understood. "I see. You think he's involved in some way, do you? The sheriff?"

"I just want to keep it low-key."

Nodding. She opened her purse and handed him one of Keith's business cards. "Well, sure. Give him a call. He liked you."

Across the square she saw a couple staring at them. The woman leaned toward the man; there was an extended whisper going on. Meg felt the burst of discomfort again.

Life in a small town…

I've lived here for five years, Pellam. But it feels like ten.

"Lunch?" he asked.

She hesitated. Yes, no, yes, no… she said, "Uh, I don't think so."

"Why not?"

Don't Do a Don't. She said, "Because this is Cleary."

He nodded and said, "Got it."

"Good luck, Pellam." She walked to the coffee shop.

"Uhm, one thing… All I'm interested in is lunch. Nothing more or less than that."

Meg lifted her hands and dropped them to her sides with faint slaps. "You maybe have the most honorable intentions in the world…" She paused, and for a millisecond tried to read his face for his reaction to this. She couldn't tell. She added, "but Cleary's still Cleary."

"Suppose that doesn't change."

"Not in your life or mine," she said and walked into the diner. The screen door snapped shut with a wooden slam.

M &T Pharmaceutical was a one-story cinder block square outside of Cleary. Prefab. It was surrounded by a gravel parking lot, in which sat thirty or forty cars-a lot of old ones, Torinos and Novas, as well as newer Japanese imports. And, Pellam noticed, pickup trucks galore-many of them with back windows smeared from the noses of excited hunting dogs.

Near the main entrance were several marked parking places. Mr Torrens was the first. Beside it was an empty space with a sign that had been painted over. It was probably the spot reserved for Keith's late partner. This had been L.A., Pellam thought cynically, that space would have been appropriated five minutes after the funeral.

It was late afternoon, dusky, and just as he eased the Winnebago into two of the visitor's slots, a sodium vapor light on a pole in the middle of the parking lot came on. He walked past the company sign, a swirling design of an M and a T, backlit.

A young receptionist, hair shooting up in a frothy tease, smiled and shoved the Juicy Fruit into the corner of her cheek.

"Hello, Darla," Pellam said, reading the name off her gold-plate necklace.

"Help you, sir?"

"John Pellam to see Keith Torrens."

"Yessir, have a seat."

Pellam sat and thumbed through a pristine copy of Chemical Week. In three minutes, a grinning Keith Torrens walked into the reception area.

"John." They shook hands. "Good to see you."

"Thanks for taking the time."

"Come on, I'll give you the fast tour."

Factories generally depressed Pellam-the regimentation, the way machines dictated where people stood and what they did (reflecting some kind of fear, he decided, that if it all fell apart, he'd end up on an assembly line somewhere twisting sheet metal screws into Whirlpools for the rest of his life). M &T, though, was a surprise. It was bright and clean. Filled with spotless white tile, brilliantly lit. The workers wore white jackets, pants and shoes and transparent bluish hats, like shower caps. It looked like a kitchen. Many of the people were bent over conveyor belts, checking machinery, packing cartons, reading computer screens. The machinery was stainless steel and white.

"Quite an operation."

Keith said, "I'm a small guy. To compete with the Pfizers and Bristol Meyers-Squibbs, you've got to be efficient. That's the key word." Light brown cardboard cartons rose to the ceiling on small elevators and moved along a conveyor overhead until they vanished into the shipping department.

Keith was so excited to show off his company that he talked very quickly; that speed, together with the loud pulse from a dozen different kinds of machines, made it impossible for Pellam to catch more than a few phrases. Still, he smiled and nodded enthusiastically.

They finished the tour and ended up outside Keith's office. "It's small but we're proud of it."

Pellam said, "I'll buy your cough syrup next time I get the flu."

"I'll give you enough samples to last for two years." He vanished into a corridor.

Five minutes later-throat lozenges, cough syrup, nasal spray stuffed in Pellam's jacket pockets-they walked into Keith's office, a large sparse room, done in cheap paneling. Keith seemed like the sort who'd sink most of his money into the factory itself. Pellam shut the door and said softly, "I'd like to ask you a favor."

"Meg said there was something on your mind."

"I'd appreciate if you'd keep this off the record."

"Surely."

Pellam said, "It's about my friend. The one who was killed."

"That car accident."

"I'm not sure it was an accident."

"No?"

"I found the wreck and I noticed what looked like two bullet holes in the back. The sheriff said they were caused by the fire department but I checked out their equipment and I don't think that's it."

"Bullet holes." Keith was frowning.

Pellam shrugged. "I was wondering if there was any way somebody could look at a hole and see if it was definitely made by a bullet. Someone like you?"

Keith said, "Possibly. What do the holes look like?"

"The ones I saw were about a third of an inch, so that would mean they're about thirty caliber."

Keith said, "Deer round, so it might be copper jacketed."

"Could be, sure."

Keith was looking up at the ceiling. "Any chance you could find the bullets in the car?"

"Let's assume they disappeared."

"Got you." He nodded knowingly. Then reflected. "The car burned, right?"

"Right."

"If," Keith began slowly, "they were just lead bullets, the odds are that any residue would have been burned away. Lead oxidizes at a very low temperature. Copper, though, that's a different story. It has a real high vaporization point. And going through sheet steel in a car? Yeah, I'd guess enough would have come off in the holes to find traces."

"Now, next question-"

"I'd be happy to."

"I wasn't going to ask you to go to the trouble. Isn't there something you can show me to look for?"

"After about four years of inorganic chemistry, sure. But why don't we just spend a half hour right now? I'll take some samples and we can have it back here in the lab in no time. We'll run it through the chromatograph and spectrometer. Where's the car?"

"Out at a small junkyard on Route 9."

"R &W?"

"Yeah, that's it."

Keith frowned. "I thought it would've been impounded or something."

"See why I'm a little curious about what's going on?"

The camper, followed by Keith's Cougar, pulled into the R &W parking lot, much of which was piled high with twisted copper piping. The pudgy man Pellam had spoken to yesterday-Bobby, he recalled-stood looking at it like a proud father, his hands on his ample hips. He wore bib overalls and a seersucker hat, like a train engineer's.

Pellam and Keith climbed out, walked up to him. Keith said, "Hey."

"Hey, Mr Torrens. How you doing?"

"Not bad. How's business?"

"Lookit this," Bobby said proudly. Keith nodded.

Pellam examined the tangle of pipe. "Not bad."

"No shittin'."

He laughed at the obvious statement. Three men, staring down at ten cubic yards of pipe. Nodding, impressed the way men always are at good finds.

Pellam glanced along the front of the fence toward the charred wreck. It was lit by bare incandescent bulbs in mechanic's hand-held light baskets.

With an odd formality Bobby stuck out his hand. "How you doing, sir? You're that movie guy, right?"

Pellam blinked. "That's right. We're here about what I was asking you before. The car?"

"Car?"

"I was talking to you about that wreck." He nodded toward the remains.

The man frowned. "Don't believe so. No." Pellam glanced at him. "We were talking about that car down there. The wreck."

The man lifted his hat and greasy bangs dropped onto his forehead. "Don't recall that." Oh, I get it.

Pellam sighed, reaching for his pocket. He found a bill and was starting to pull it out when the man said, "Bobby."

"What?"

"You were talking to my brother. Bobby. I'm Billy."

Oh. The W in R &W. Got it.

Keith laughed. "Billy and Bobby're twins."

Billy said, "But don't let that stop you." He accepted the twenty.

"You mind if we take a look at the wreck?"

"If you're in the market for a car," Billy said, shrugging, "I can do better'n that. But help yourself." He turned back to his precious pipe.

They walked toward the burnt-out car.

Pellam whispered to Keith, "Twins?"

"You do horror films for your company, I'll bet you could get 'em pretty cheap."

They walked around the wreck. Pellam stopped suddenly.

"It's gone."

Keith blinked and leaned forward. Someone had used an acetylene torch to cut off the trunk and rear portions of the fenders.

Pellam called, "Excuse me…"

Billy tore himself away from his pipe. "Yessir?"

He wandered slowly to the wreck.

Pellam said, "What happened to the metal here? The back portions?"

"Whatsat?" Billy called.

"Look here," Keith said.

"Shit, it's gone," Billy said.

"I got the gist of that," Pellam said.

"Shit." The twin put his hands on his hips and looked around, like he was searching for a dropped quarter.

Keith said, "Bobby start to cut her up?"

"Naw, he's not into like heavy work. Damn now. Who'd come by and steal half a burnt car?"

Keith and Pellam walked back to their vehicles.

"I'm sorry. Wild goose chase."

Keith said, "It's pretty funny, though. You go out to look at the car and find what looks like evidence. Next thing, you come back and that part's gone."

"Yeah, funny."

Billy stood in the shack, waving goodbye to Keith Torrens and the movie man. He picked up the phone and punched in a number. Bobby answered on the first ring. He must have known it was Billy because he just picked up the phone and said, "So what is it now?"

"Hey, guess who was just here."

"Lessee, Elvis's ghost, singing 'Love Me Tender.'"

"Naw," Billy said, "but wish it was. That'd be a fuck of a lot better for you and me."