A Tap on the Window

Eleven

Phyllis led me back through Patchett’s, behind the counter, and into an office. I briefly considered protesting, telling her I was fine. But first, she had a viselike grip on my arm. And second, I thought she’d be worth talking to. As we passed the guy who’d handed me my Corona, she said, “Get me some ice in a towel, Bill, for Sam Spade here.

“Have a seat,” she ordered, releasing her grasp on me and pointing to a leather couch across from a desk. I sat. Bill appeared with a red-and-white-checkered towel in which he’d collected half a dozen ice cubes.

“Put that on your noggin,” Phyllis said. I took the towel and held it against my temple, which, I had to admit, was throbbing. As Bill left and closed the door behind him, Phyllis parked her butt on the edge of the desk and held up a fist in front of my eyes.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

“That’s funny,” I said.

She extended the middle one. “How about now?”

“One.”

She laughed. “I think you’ll live. But you keep that ice on there. Head injuries are no joke. Remember how Mannix got knocked out nearly every week? That guy should have been brain-damaged.”

“I’m guessing the Mannix and Sam Spade references mean you know what I do for a living,” I said.

She nodded. “I recognized you when I saw you lying down there. You’re Cal Weaver.”

“And you’re Phyllis...”

“Phyllis Pearce.”

“If we’ve met before, I’m sorry, but I don’t remember.”

“We haven’t,” she said, shaking her head. “But I’ve seen you around. I make a point of knowing who everybody in Griffon is. Lived here my whole life, so whenever a new face comes to town, I ask who it belongs to. You moved here, what, eight, ten years ago?”

“Six,” I said.

“Sorry about your boy,” she said.

I raised my head slowly to look her in the eye. “Thanks.”

“Could have been anybody, you know.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Could have been anybody who sold him those drugs.” I must have looked surprised at what she seemed to be implying she knew, and it made her smile. “I hear you’ve been asking around. That what you were doing here tonight?”

“No,” I said.

“Because,” she said, talking right over my denial, “I can’t have that. You want to go around interrogating kids about what happened to your boy — and I don’t blame you one bit in that regard — you can’t be doing it on my premises. Starting a fight on my front steps, I won’t have that. You do what you have to do, but don’t be causing any trouble on my turf.”

“I didn’t start a fight,” I said, feeling like some kid telling his mother he was blameless. “And that’s not why I’m here.” I took the ice away from my head for a second. “I’m looking for Claire Sanders.”

“The mayor’s kid?”

“Yeah.”

“That who slugged you out there? Some little thing of a girl?”

“No. I don’t know who it was. I was coldcocked. I wanted to talk to a kid named Sean Skilling. You seem to know everyone around here, so you probably know that name.”

“Ford dealer’s kid.”

“Yeah.” I paused. The ice was so cold it was starting to hurt, but I held it in place. “I should take you on as a partner, you know so much of what goes on. Save me a lot of legwork.”

Phyllis Pearce grinned. “I got enough to do, running my vast empire.” She opened her arms wide. “What’d you want with the Skilling kid?”

“His girlfriend is friends with Claire. She may know where Claire is.”

Phyllis Pearce nodded slowly. “Got it. I think Claire was around here a night or two ago. Whatcha want to talk to her for?”

“I just want to find her,” I said.

“Who you working for?”

I looked at her and said nothing.

“Oh, I get it. Client confidentiality and all that.” She went around the desk and dropped into her oversized, overly padded office chair. There was a keyboard in front of her, but the monitor was angled off to the side, so we could see one another. She brushed her long gray hair off her shoulders, raised her head so it would fall on her back. “Although it would stand to reason it’s her dad who wants her found.”

“I would imagine he does,” I said.

“Who’s the Skilling kid’s girlfriend?”

I told her.

“Hanna, oh yeah, Chris Rodomski’s kid. We had to throw that drunken son of a bitch out of here all the time fifteen years back. Well, my husband. Not me.”

“Your husband’s the bouncer?” I hadn’t noticed anyone on the premises who looked like an age-appropriate match for Phyllis.

“It was among Harry’s duties back then. But I lost my husband seven years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She shrugged. “Not easy, running this place on my own. Our son ended up pursuing a different line of work, but I’ve got good people working for me here.”

I stopped pressing the cold, damp towel to my temple. “What should I do with this?”

Pearce pointed to a small sink along one wall. She had a small bar set up there. I got up, tossed the towel into the sink, the shrunken cubes clinking into the drain. I scanned the room, which had maybe twenty old black-and-white photos of Griffon from its early days. Horses and buggies in the streets in some of them.

She noticed me admiring them and said, “No, I didn’t take them myself. Even that was before my time.”

There was one shot of a much younger, slimmer Phyllis, her hair in exactly the same style but dark, arm in arm with a man I presumed was Harry, standing in the street in front of Patchett’s. Maybe an inch taller, curly-haired, and thinner than his spouse.

“This your husband?” I asked.

“Yup. But not Harry. That’s my first husband there. That was taken around 1985 or so, before he got cancer and passed on. Harry I met in 1993, married him a couple of years after that.” She cackled. “I was about sixty pounds lighter then. But as I gained weight, I gained wisdom.”

I sat back down on the couch. Maybe she was expecting me to leave, now that I was done treating my injury, but I still had things to ask her.

“Obviously, you know about my son, Scott. Did you ever see him around here?”

She thought. “It’s possible, but I don’t know. If they look like they’re still reading the Hardy Boys, they don’t get in. It’s like throwing back a fish that’s too small. Your boy, he was still pretty wet behind the ears.”

“Probably half the clientele here right now shouldn’t be.”

Phyllis Pearce smiled warily. “For someone who’s lived here as long as you have, you don’t seem to have an idea of how things work in Griffon.”

“Enlighten me.”

She leaned forward, her elbows on the desk, her heavy breasts resting on the keyboard. “Sure, we got people having a drink here, a little something to eat, who may technically be under twenty-one years of age. The State of New York, in its infinite wisdom, raised the drinking age from nineteen to twenty-one back in 1985. Based on your observations, Mr. Weaver, would you say that stopped people under the age of twenty-one from drinking?”

“No.”

“Of course not. I would imagine that in 1985 you yourself were under the age of twenty-one.” When I said nothing she continued. “And did that law put the fear of God into you, or did you and your friends get hammered every weekend anyway?”

“We pretty much got hammered.”

“Damn right you did. We know what kids are going to do, because we know what we did when we were that age. Better it’s happening in one place, where we can keep an eye on it, don’t you think?”

“So we’re surrendering. We’ve decided we can’t control what our kids do, so we’re just happy if we know where they’re doing it.”

Pearce beamed at me like I was the smartest kid in the class. “And not just that. I’m doing what I can to help the local economy. Because if they can’t come here, they can be across the border to Canada in ten minutes, where the drinking age is nineteen. A seventeen-year-old with the right ID can pass for nineteen. But a seventeen-year-old has a lot harder time passing for twenty-one. All these kids, before and after they come to Patchett’s, they buy pizza, go to Iggy’s for a burger, get gas, pop into the local 7-Eleven. And zipping across the border ain’t what it once was. How many of these kids have passports? Used to be, they whisked you through in five seconds, but now, if you haven’t got a passport, you’re not going across that border one way or the other, thank you very much, Osama bin Laden, may you rot in hell, you motherfucker.”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m not gonna tell you I’ve managed to put every Griffon parent’s mind at ease, thinking if their kids are drinking, they’re doing it here. Kids are still having parties in their basements, having a wild time when their parents are out of town. There’s quite a little business going on of getting booze to kids who aren’t old enough to go into stores to buy it themselves. They even deliver.” She smiled. “But I do my part.”

“And the police leave you alone.”

“They’re very... supportive. Once in a while, we get some riffraff in from the south, and they look after us in that regard. Couple of fellows out there right now, monopolizing the pool table, have me a little concerned.”

“Maybe the local cops give you a pass because, as you’ve demonstrated, you know everybody’s business. Pissing you off might not be in anyone’s interest.” My eyes narrowed. “And maybe there’s a little something in their Christmas stocking, too.”

“You smooth talker,” Phyllis said, grinning. “Thinking I wield any power around here. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m just a simple businesswoman, trying to get by. But I will say this — that Augustus Perry, he’s a good man.” She served me a sly smile. “Not that I have to tell you.”

“One last thing,” I said. “I’d like a peek at your security tape. See who it was who clobbered me.”

“I can’t help you there,” she said.

“If you don’t show me, you’ll just have to show it to one of Griffon’s finest.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” She gave me a look of disappointment. “You’re not going to the police about that and you know it. Is that what a real private eye does? Goes running off to the cops every time he gets a knock on the head? Please.”

She was right. I had no intention of reporting the assault.

“But that’s got nothing to do with why I won’t let you see the security tape,” she said, and then waved her arm around the room, like she was about to pull back the curtain to Door Number Two. “You see any monitors in here? We have no surveillance system. No closed-circuit cameras.”

“Not even out front?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“You look surprised,” Pearce said.

“I’d heard different.”

“You were misinformed. Or you misunderstood.”

“Maybe so,” I said, getting up off the couch.

“But if there’s anything else I can help you with, my door’s open,” she said. “You strike me as someone who could use a bit of guidance.”