Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 112, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 684 & 685, September/October 1998

The Vista O’Shea by Gerald Tomlinson

©1998 by Gerald Tomlinson

A writer of both fiction and non-fiction, Gerald Tomlinson devotes much of his time nowadays to topics of local interest in New Jersey. He has been published most recently by Rutgers University Press (see Murder in Jersey, 1994, a book of true crime). But for this new tale for EQMM he revisits some beautiful spots in upstate New York, where he once taught school.

Mike O’Shea had been a movie fan since childhood, and like many movie fans he had a habit of quoting socko lines from remembered films. Jimmy Cagney was one of his favorite actors, and it followed naturally that when Mike, as a young man, caught his first breathtaking glimpse of the Tionega Valley from atop the so-called “Lookout Platform” on the old High Cliff Restaurant on Route 29, he shouted, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

The line came from White Heat, from the great, fiery ending of that movie, and although Mike didn’t incinerate himself the way Cagney did, he burned with a raging desire to own the High Cliff Restaurant. His wish made a certain amount of sense, too, because the restaurant had a For Sale sign in its cobwebbed front window.

Now, anyone who has driven through this area of upstate New York has passed the restaurant. Perched on the edge of a high cliff, it overlooks a broad, lush valley that the Iroquois once roamed. The valley is placid these days, but in Revolutionary times a bitter struggle for it took place.

The nearest town is Finleysburg, which in the late 1800s was a bustling rail center but today is slumberous. A river, the Tionega, threads its way down from the west, catching the sun and shooting up diamonds from its surface. A motorist standing near the restaurant, high above the valley, can easily imagine history and legend spread out in a gleaming tapestry below.

The O’Sheas, whose ancestors had marched with General Sullivan in the Revolutionary War, owned a number of businesses in the Buffalo-to-Rochester area. A shrewd and aggressive family, they took care of their own. Mike, a star third baseman in high school but a failed minor leaguer at the age of twenty-two, was casting about for the right business to buy and operate.

When he saw the boffo scenery from that lookout platform on the mountain, he knew what he wanted. He wanted what he saw. He fell in love with the place, fell in love with a dream, the dream of a classy new High Cliff Restaurant looking down on the idyllic countryside. He said so to his traveling companion.

His mother (for she was his traveling companion) pronounced herself less than impressed.

“Why do you want a run-down hash house in the boondocks?” she asked him in her solicitous, motherly way as the two of them motored away, she peeling rubber in her Packard ragtop. “It’s just another greasy spoon in need of repairs. Use your coconut, Mike. Restaurants are headaches. The hired help always turns out to be more hurt than help. Take my advice, son. Forget it. There’s a nice twenty-stool bar for sale in downtown Batavia. You can’t go wrong with a gin mill, as your late father, bless his failed liver, used to say.”

Mike, appalled at her reaction, shot back, “But you saw the scenery, Ma! The river. The green farmland. You know how I love pretty sights. The building needs a lot of work, sure, but the view — It’s fantastic! There’s none better. Ma, I’ll fix up that eatery and herd ’em into it like ants at a picnic!”

His mother stared hard at the unreeling highway. “You might make a go of it at that,” she mused, biting off a plug of her favorite chewing tobacco. “With luck and a sixteen-hour workday. A fancy restaurant. I don’t know. People go for the damnedest things nowadays. You’ll have to charge plenty for the chow.”

“What do you say, Ma? Can I do it?”

“Okay, Mike. I’ll stake you.”

She proved as good as her word, slipping him the needed moola only ten days before she died tragically in a fall from the Dipsy-Doodle Fun Ride at the family-owned Cascade of Light Amusement Park outside of Niagara Falls.

He took possession of the High Cliff Restaurant, rebuilt it, modernized it, cantilevered its main dining room out into space, raised a bigger and higher lookout platform above its slanting roof, and with more pride than actual genius renamed it The Vista O’Shea.

The new restaurant prospered. Critics rated the food fair, the view fabulous. During the years of Eisenhower golf and Kennedy touch football, O’Shea’s became the picture postcard pride of little Finleysburg. Local bigs who wanted to be seen would hide themselves off to The Vista O’Shea, get a table near the tall windows, and pensively survey the Tionega Valley while their lesser peers admired, envied, or tried to ignore them against the backdrop of amethyst mountains, emerald farms, and the looping, silver river.

Mike became sharply possessive of the scenery. That view belonged to him, all of it. He merely leased it out for a time to his paying customers. The broad, enchanting valley had been the first great vision of his life, his first great love — even greater than the movies — and he was its protector.

Speaking of love—

The second great vision in Mike’s life was also a stunning sight, an enchanting redhead by the name of Kathleen Fergus. She ascended to the restaurant one autumn day while tooling over from Peekskill toward a holy-name college in western New York. She admired the sunbathed valley, nibbled on an overpriced shrimp-salad sandwich, and studied a textbook on Greek mythology.

Mike, the maitre d’, hastened not only to seat her but also to serve her. To his surprise, he found himself a shy, awkward host. Smitten, he ignored the lowland wonders entirely and focused on the topography of Kathleen Fergus. She was as lovely as Maureen O’Hara in The Black Swan. No, lovelier. And early autumn or no, his sap rose.

He managed to talk her into a date, despite his tangle-tongued manner, and then into an embrace, and then into bed. He persuaded her to tarry for a while at the top of the world, where they dallied, kissed, and parried. At last, long before the first snows of winter, his reason gave way to his passion, and he asked her to marry him.

Kathleen, nineteen, accepted and thus tied her destiny to this man who owned Olympus, or at least that part of it that Mike billed as “the dining room with the best view in America.”

He was never shy or backward after that, not with his advertising claims, not with his wife. Mrs. O’Shea bore nine children in the next ten years, barely managing to get in a few games of tennis, a couple of movies, and a rubber or two of bridge between babies.

Mike, caught up in the day-to-day struggle of running a restaurant — it was as hard as his mother had said it would be — stayed apart from the nursery and never really got to know his children. Worse, he adopted a hazardous practice from the old Charlie Chan movies. Charlie Chan, you may remember, called his boys “Number One Son” and “Number Two Son” in a B-movie affectation that seemed to wow the audiences in those days.

With only two kids and a shrewd private eye like Chan for a father, that worked out all right in the movies. But in real life, with nine kids and a vague, romantic restauranteur calling the numbers, forget it. When Mike began addressing his children as “Number Three Daughter,” “Number Five Son,” and so on, he mixed those children up. He muddled everything.

“Number Four Daughter,” he would say imperiously to an already rebellious teenager.

“I’m Deirdre,” would come back the frosty reply.

That sort of snafu became more and more common as the years sped by. Then, too, the children’s answers were often ambiguous, and a less trusting father might have suspected sarcasm. After all, what did Deirdre, that green-eyed little vixen, really mean when she said, “I’m Deirdre”? Was she his Number Four Daughter with a perverse desire to be called Deirdre? Or was Deirdre not his Number Four Daughter? Indeed (and Mike sometimes forgot) was there a Number Four Daughter? Yes, there had to be, didn’t there? By the end of the Vietnam War, his numerical system, like the war itself, had turned into a hopeless quagmire. But Mike refused to abandon it.

“Number Two Son,” he said one evening during the brief and troubled reign of Jimmy Carter. “I hear—”

“I’m Ted, Pop. Kev’s Number Two. The body-and-fender king of Elm City. The one who restores old Chevys. I’m Number Three. I’ll be a senior at Cornell this fall.”

Mike went on carefully. “Sorry, Ted. But listen to me. I’ve just heard that Clyde Wrighthouse has inherited the Ayrshire Dairy Farm.”

“So?”

“So listen. What I’ve got to tell you is important. It’s about the family business. I think you’re old enough to hear it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Good. You may have noticed that the Ayrshire Dairy Farm is the center of the whole scene down below us. It’s three hundred and some acres of green and lovely farmland. When the mayor of Bentonville comes up here to meditate on the burdens of his office, he stares down in silent awe at the beauty of the Ayrshire Dairy Farm.”

Ted looked ready to yawn.

“So?”

“So Clyde Wrighthouse now owns the Ayrshire Dairy Farm.”

“You already said that, Pop.”

Mike O’Shea spoke through tightened lips. “Do you pay any attention to your surroundings, son? This Clyde Wrighthouse is not exactly a charter member of the Sierra Club. He’s not a man who phones the Garden Hot Line to find out how to tend his marigolds.”

“Who is he?”

“I’ll tell you. Clyde Wrighthouse is the man who owns the Wrighthouse Junk and Salvage Yard on John Street in Elm City.”

“Oh.”

Mike concentrated on the view below them, at the nub of which lay the well-tended Ayrshire domain.

“That’s a fact, son. And while it may mean nothing at all, it could mean trouble.”

Ted pooh-poohed it. “I thought the Ayrshire Dairy Farm belonged to Percy Wrighthouse. Old Perce. A gentleman farmer. Deacon of the Finleysburg Methodist Church. A pillar of the community.”

“It did. But life is fleeting, flesh is mortal, and last month Percy passed away from the galloping ague or some damn thing. He left his farm to his brother Clyde.”

“The junk dealer.”

“The same. I doubt if Percy really wanted to leave his farm to Clyde. They’re as different as you and Terence.”

“Terence?”

Mike paused for a moment. Wasn’t one of his sons named Terence? He thought so, but decided to ignore the question. He went on. “They say Percy and Clyde hadn’t spoken to each other in forty years. Percy’s wife is dead, they had no children, and his two cousins live in Illinois. The property went to Clyde.”

Ted yawned.

Mike bristled. Had this fresh-faced son of his learned so much about calculus up above Cayuga’s waters that he couldn’t add two and two?

“Have you seen the Wrighthouse Junk and Salvage Yard, son?”

“No.”

“It’s a vision of hell. It’s a crime against God’s green and pleasant land. All junkyards are ugly. This one is an atrocity. Can you imagine what would happen if... if—”

Ted said, “You sobbed, Pop. Jeez, what can I say? Maybe Clyde will sell the place to another dairy farmer. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.”

They waited.

They saw what happened.

It was hard to miss.

Within a week, a half-dozen gutted, rusted automobile hulks stood piled up like profane corpses along one side of the spotless white barn. Within two weeks, by careful count, twenty-seven metallic cadavers littered the landscape, making a garish mockery of the best view in America.

Mike took aspirin and Irish whiskey to ease the pain. He chased it with Harp lager. He tried to collect his thoughts, tried to decide on a course of action. He paced the dining room in off hours, grim and despairing.

Should he phone Clyde Wrighthouse and start yelling? Should he call on Clyde Wrighthouse and utter a few syllables of sweet reason? Should he take off the mitts and have his lawyer in Elm City bring legal action?

More loathsome, twisted cars arrived in the valley. Then came a mangled and monstrous tractor-trailer, which, for some reason, remained a unit despite its collapsed wheels and caved-in metal from hood to tailgate. The Ayrshire Dairy Farm was beginning to resemble nothing so much as an untended cemetery for wrecked autos and trucks.

Seven days passed. On the eighth day, as gray rain coursed down, matching Mike’s mood, and as thunder rolled across the valley, matching his thoughts, and as bolts of lightning continued to miss what should have been the Almighty’s primary target, Mike dialed Clyde Wrighthouse’s number.

“Ay-yuh?”

“Mr. Wrighthouse.”

“Ay-yuh.”

“This is Mike O’Shea. Up on the mountain.”

“Ay-yuh.”

“I’m calling about those wrecks on your property. Those cars and trucks you’ve been bringing in.”

“What about ’em?”

“I thought your salvage yard was in Elm City.”

“Overflow.”

“You mean your Elm City yard is full and you’re bringing the wrecks out here?”

“Older ones. Not much call for Kaiser-Fraser parts, you know. Hudson, Studebaker. Stuff doesn’t move.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Wrighthouse, it’s an eyesore. It’s a damned disgrace. It ruins the view. It spoils everything up here on the mountain.”

“Tough luck. I’m in business, O’Shea. Business ain’t always pretty.”

“Move the wrecks, Mr. Wrighthouse, or you’ll hear from my lawyer.”

Clyde shot back, mean as a junkyard dog, “I’ve already checked with mine, O’Shea, and I’m within my rights. This is my land. You need any parts from a used DeSoto?”

“Mr. Wrighthouse, I’m not joking.”

“Me neither. I’m a junk dealer. I got auto parts to sell. You name the car, I got the parts. You want to buy, or you just in the mood to caterwaul?”

Mike studied the black holes in the mouthpiece of the phone.

“No answer, O’Shea? Okay. If you ain’t buyin’, I ain’t talkin’.”

“Mr.—”

Click.

Mike switched to an extra-strength pain reliever and grabbed a double shot of Bushmill’s. His headache thundered on, unimpeded, out-booming the electrical storm. Mike’s fury reduced all remedies to impotence.

That night the Honorable J. D. Medworthy, U.S. Representative for the Twenty-seventh Congressional District of New York, a wealthy son of Finleysburg, a local lawyer with clout, came to O’Shea’s to sip vodka and tonic and ruminate on his own singular magnificence. He often came to O’Shea’s. He considered himself a drawing card. As if to clinch that presumption for him tonight, the crowd was large and boisterous. Medworthy sat alone at his window table, handsome, aquiline-nosed, a veritable lone eagle of the Republic.

Mike approached him. “J. D.?”

“Hey, Mike-O! Good to see you, pal. We missed you at the door. Got your daughter Eileen as an escort, I think. How’s it going these days? Grab a chair and tell us what’s new.”

Mike smiled thinly and sat down in a chair beside his congressman. He said nothing, but pointed toward the cancerous junkyard surrounding the Wrighthouse farm. A crumpled white Jeepster, just dragged in, caught the last rays of the sun.

Congressman Medworthy grinned. “That’s Clyde Wrighthouse’s place, I believe. Old Clyde, he’s a regular two-ring circus these days.”

“A circus, J. D.? He’s a criminal.”

“Hey, wait a minute, Mike. Watch your words. That’s Wrighthouse land down there, and... well, look, I guess you know Clyde W... he supports the party right down the line. Flush times and bust, ever since I was a councilman. He’s always backed us pretty good with those dimes and dollars. Better’n...” Medworthy glanced uneasily around the room, “why, hell, Mike, better’n you.”

“I’ll sue him,” Mike whispered. “I’ll sue the creep.”

“Sue him? No way, pal. He’d laugh you out of court. There’s no zoning restrictions on that valley land. I mean, you may like the sight of munching Holsteins better than a bunch of rusted-out cars from the fifties, but that’s Clyde’s land down there. Clyde’s got powerful friends.”

Mike groaned, “But the view, J. D.”

“The view? Hey, Mike, like the old gray mare, she ain’t what she used to be. When Tony Lopata built this place, back when Gehrig was in knickers, you couldn’t find so much as a nick in any of the white fence rails on the flat. It was gorgeous. I admit it. But times change, nothing lasts.” He slapped the table for emphasis. “You got to roll with the punches, Mike-O. This Clyde’s a helluva guy. A go-getter. And you shouldn’t slander his business. You should appreciate it. Hey, look at the crowd you got here tonight. You’re not hurting too bad.”

Mike stood up and walked stiffly away, rather like Rick in Casablanca. Ordinarily he liked Medworthy. J. D. patronized The Vista O’Shea without also patronizing Mike, which distinguished him from a number of other window-hogging superstars. But tonight—

Still, there was no ignoring reality. Mike got the picture, and a few days later, reluctantly, he made up his mind. He knew what he had to do.

He dialed the number in the valley.

“Ay-yuh?”

“Mr. Wrighthouse, this is Mike O’Shea, up on the mountain. I won’t beat around the bush. I want to settle this thing with you once and for all. What’s your asking price for that junk on your farm? I’ll buy it all, if you’ll agree not to bring in any more.”

A long silence. “Asking price? You mean for all the stuff down here? The whole lot?”

“Every last swinging tailpipe.”

Another pause. Then, with a trace of caution, “Make an offer.”

Mike was ready to make an offer. A high offer. He didn’t want to haggle. It was the best way to go.

“Forty thousand dollars.”

A gasp on the other end of the line. The voice turned cunning. “Forty thousand bucks?” Clyde wheezed excitedly. “Hoo-ee! Forty... forty... going once, going twice... do I hear fifty?”

Mike’s own breath was coming in short puffs, but his course was set. “Okay, you hear it. Fifty thousand dollars. But you’ll have to clear out the whole lot of it by next week. Clean up the whole mess. And don’t bring in any more.”

“I... I’ll—”

Wrighthouse hung up.

The next morning, a little after ten, the scrap-iron owner of the Ayrshire Dairy Farm, wearing baggy khakis, a T-shirt, and a jaunty air of triumph, wrestled a long aluminum extension ladder into place on the side of the barn that faced O’Shea’s. He scooted up the ladder like a monkey in rut, carrying a bucket of black paint and a wide brush. In bold letters on the side of the spotless white barn, he wrote “EX.” That was the beginning. When the message was finished, it stated, in huge and sloppy capitals, “EXPENSIVE PROPERTY FOR SALE — BEST OFFER.”

The lunch-hour diners got quite a belt out of it. Buzzing and pointing, they stood three deep at the windows. They chortled. As Wrighthouse fashioned his message, they cheered him on, merry as babes.

Mike trembled with rage. He dialed Wrighthouse again that afternoon.

“Okay. How much?”

“For the junk? Or for the whole spread?”

“The farm. Name your price.”

“You name it. Best offer. You saw the sign.”

“You’re in the driver’s seat, Wrighthouse. How much?”

“Well, let’s see now. How much did that fancy hog trough of yours up there gross last year? Three million? Four?”

“That’s my business.”

“Ay-yuh. It sure is. And a pretty good business, too. Could be ailing now, though. Not such a red-hot view anymore, eh?” He cackled and added, “But we can take care of that.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Seven figures. That’s what I want, Mr. O’Shea. Count ’em: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Seven figures. That’s what I’m after.”

“Seven figures?” Mike howled. “Seven figures would buy the whole valley.”

“Not anymore, it wouldn’t.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Nope,” Wrighthouse set him straight. “Sane as a free-agent outfielder with a three-fifty batting average. Seven figures and you’re in the ballpark.”

“No way!” Mike screamed. “No!”

It was Wrighthouse who heard the click.

Weeks passed. Summer lapsed into autumn. Mike’s hired college kid, the one he paid by the week to paddle a canoe picturesquely down the Tionega between eleven and two each day, returned to St. Bonaventure. It was just as well. There was no point in paying a kid to complement the valley scene like that while Wrighthouse went on fouling the farm with an ever-increasing collection of junk. Not just cars and trucks now, but discarded bathtubs, sinks, water heaters, air conditioners, electric fans, room radiators.

During this period, while the nation was deciding whether to put its fate in the hands of the star of Bedtime for Bonzo, Mike met Clyde for the first time. It happened in downtown Finleysburg. The junkyard farmer, tall, lantern-jawed, and pipestem thin, was as ugly as his acreage, with vicious little gray eyes and angry pockmarks cratering his face. Mike recognized him as the painter on the ladder, whom he had seen clearly through his pay-for-view telescope on the restaurant’s lookout platform.

The business section of Finleysburg, with its single main street and false-fronted stores, had the look of a fading cowtown. Wrighthouse staggered from a saloon. The kingpin of scrap, flushed crimson, clearly had been swilling something stronger than sarsaparilla.

Clyde and Mike spotted each other at twenty paces. Swaying in the light breeze, Wrighthouse stopped, squinted, gathered his thoughts, and put them into a slurred offer: “Mr. Michael O’Shea, ain’t it? The big man on the mountain. Tell you what, Mr. O’Shea. I’ll give you half a million bucks for that hog trough of yours up yonder. Cash on the barrelhead. Call me anytime.”

He tipped around on his heel and lurched away.

That did it.

At that precise moment, Mike O’Shea decided he’d had enough. Clyde Wrighthouse, like Carthage of old, must be destroyed. According to Medworthy, it couldn’t be done within the law. All right, he’d do it outside the law.

Mike knew a man outside the law — Lennie (the Loon) Garofalo of Reedsboro. On Friday nights, after a hard week of breaking legs or whatever he did, Lennie would gun his ’vette south to The Vista O’Shea, usually with a sumptuous blonde aboard, and seldom the same blonde. According to J. D. Medworthy, the loud-talking but impeccably dressed Lennie Garofalo was a top lieutenant of Joe (Mr. Big) Biggadario, a dapper weasel who ran the upstate rackets from Erie County east to the Catskills. Lennie, so said J. D., oversaw Mr. Big’s interests in the Tionega Valley.

At eight o’clock on Friday evening, Garofalo arrived, and O’Shea seated him personally, leading him and his undulating blond knockout, Gina, to the Loon’s regular table by the window.

“Could I speak with you later, Mr. Garofalo?” O’Shea asked quietly when the couple had been seated.

“Right now,” Lennie said, motioning to Gina to vacate her chair. “Check out the ladies’ room, sugar.”

Gina left, and O’Shea, marveling that anyone since the great Bogey could get away with a line like that, sat down self-consciously.

“Well?”

“Well,” Mike began, “I guess you’ve noticed what’s happened to the scenery in the valley.”

Lennie glanced toward the darkening landscape. “Terrible,” he said without emotion. “But funny, too. The farm belongs to Clyde Wrighthouse. ‘Steel Jaws,’ we call him. Ever see that James Bond flick with the huge guy and his metal teeth?”

“The Spy Who Loved Me. Richard Kiel. Seven foot two. You know Wrighthouse?”

“Not personally, but I hear the boys talk about him.”

“He’s a junk dealer.”

“He makes a buck.”

“I’ve got nothing against junk dealers, Mr. Garofalo. They’re fine in their place. I just don’t think their place is down below the dining room with the best view in America.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’d like to eliminate him and his junkyard from that farm down there.”

“Kill him?”

“No, no, no, no. Nothing like that.”

Lennie smoothed his blow-dried hair and studied the earnest face of his host. “I hope you don’t think I’m a violent guy, Mike, just because I work for Joe Biggadario. I’m in business. I’m legit. Pizza.”

“I know. I’m sure you are. Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about. It’s a practical joke, you might say. A kind of hoax.”

Garofalo arched his eyebrows doubtfully.

Mike went on. “Suppose Clyde Wrighthouse wasn’t just dealing in auto parts. Suppose he was using his junkyards — using those wrecked cars — to dispose of bodies. Mob bodies.”

Lennie looked startled, then snapped, “He ain’t.” His abrupt, unfeigned surprise passed in an instant. “Who the hell told you that?”

“Nobody.”

“So what are you talking about?”

“Look, I know Wrighthouse doesn’t dispose of bodies for the mob. But suppose the cops think he does. Suppose somebody has tipped them off about it. And then suppose a dead body shows up in the trunk of one of his wrecked cars down on the flat. That might give Mr. Wrighthouse some problems, don’t you think? They’d close his junkyard, wouldn’t they?”

Garofalo shrugged. “I didn’t hear none of this,” he said, looking away across the valley. “Things like that cost money. How much we talking about?”

“Whatever it takes.”

Lennie continued to look toward the red-tinged twilight. A turkey vulture glided across the sky. “Any idea who this dead body should belong to?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. Someone whose time is up anyway, I guess. If you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lennie growled. “I don’t know nothing about these things. I’m a businessman. Like you. I ain’t some kind of hit man.” Despite several arrests on capital charges (but no convictions so far), he acted genuinely offended. “In fact, I don’t even hear you talking.”

Gina reappeared, her toothpaste-ad smile uncertainly in place. “Get lost,” Lennie snarled the moment he saw her. She shrank back, reddened, and retreated.

“I wish you could hear me, Mr. Garofalo,” Mike insisted. “It could be worth your while.”

“Yeah? We’ll see. I’ll send a man down from Reedsboro to talk to you in a day or two. Maybe you’ll cool off by then.”

“I don’t think so.”

Mike stood up, abashed by the daring step he had taken.

Lennie’s man, Just Plain Ed, called two days later. Ed’s last name was unpronounceable, he explained, and Just Plain Ed would do fine. The price was steeper than Mike expected, but it was a lot less than Wrighthouse was asking. They agreed on a plan. Half the money would be mailed immediately and in cash to a post-office box in Reedsboro. The other half would be paid the same way after Ed phoned Mike, telling him to tip off the state police that a body was stuffed in the trunk of a car in the valley.

That should put Wrighthouse on the defensive all right. Close down the pockmarked litterer. Get those madly multiplying wrecks off the landscape.

It went off without a hitch. Up to a point.

Ed’s phone call came at about three o’clock the next Thursday. O’Shea slipped away from the restaurant, drove to a roadside pay phone on the outskirts of Finleysburg, dialed the state police barracks at Aaronsville, and, speaking hoarsely through his handkerchief, said, “Check the trunk of the green fifty-seven Chevy on the Wrighthouse property. River Road.” He hung up.

He drove back to the restaurant and took up a nonchalant pose near the window. In less than ten minutes, a state trooper’s car, lights flashing, pulled into the Wrighthouse driveway. The trooper who was driving veered off in the direction of the green Chevy and drove to within a few yards of it. Mike didn’t recall seeing the Chevy down there the day before.

He watched the trunk of the car being raised. Within minutes, two more patrol cars pulled in, trailing dust. Half a dozen officers milled about. A photographer took pictures. An ambulance arrived, and a shrouded form on a stretcher departed.

The news reports should be well worth reading, Mike figured. He could see the bold headline in his mind’s eye: “Police Probe Junkyard Link to Gangland Murder.” That should fix the landscape-trashing Clyde Wrighthouse. Get him off the streets and highways. Close down his operation.

But it didn’t happen that way. Before Mike had a chance to pour himself a second celebratory dram of Bushmill’s that night, two plainclothes state police officers, a man and a woman, appeared in the lobby of O’Shea’s, stern-faced and purposeful.

Mike intercepted them. “Officers?” He made it a question, but he knew who they were, knew them by name.

“Mr. O’Shea?”

“Yes.”

The burly male detective, showing his badge, said, “I’m Lieutenant Finch of the state police. Harry Finch. We’ve met before. This is Sergeant Mitchell. Alissa Mitchell. I think you’ve met her, too. We need to ask you some questions.”

“Certainly.”

The detective looked around. “Do you have an office where we can talk?”

O’Shea led them to his bright but windowless office near the lobby. Deirdre, who was there working on the books, glanced up. “Number Two Daughter,” Mike introduced her in an offhand way. Deirdre grimaced and held up three fingers.

Mike waved her out of the room.

O’Shea stood behind his massive walnut desk, trying to look pleasant. The two officers faced him across it. Sergeant Mitchell was too pretty to be a cop, Mike thought. She looked fragile, like porcelain.

“Mr. O’Shea,” Lieutenant Finch said, “we found a body a few hours ago in the trunk of a car down on River Road. We’ve impounded it. The man in the trunk had been murdered.”

Mike nodded. “I saw some police activity, some flashing lights below the restaurant.”

“The car we found the body in,” the lieutenant continued, “is a green fifty-seven Chevrolet sedan.”

Mike tapped his fingers on the polished desktop.

“Mr. O’Shea, your son Kevin is the owner of that car.”

Kevin? One of Kevin’s Chevys? Mike’s eyes skipped back and forth between the accusing face of Lieutenant Finch and the wanly sympathetic face of Sergeant Mitchell. Though naturally talkative, Mike found no words on his lips.

Finch repeated his news. “The Chevy belongs to Kevin R. O’Shea. It’s registered in his name.”

Stunned, Mike took refuge in a flow of meaningless talk. “My son’s cars aren’t like the wrecks down there in the valley, Harry. Kevin restores cars. That’s his job. He always owns three or four old Chevys. He fixes them up and sells them. He’s good at it. He doesn’t kill people.”

Lieutenant Finch said, “The man we found in the trunk was stabbed with what looks like a steak knife from this restaurant. No fingerprints, but the knife has an O’S monogram on the handle. My partner” — he glanced toward Sergeant Mitchell — “says your restaurant uses monogrammed steak knives.”

Alissa Mitchell was right, of course. Every winter Mike bought monogrammed steak knives by the gross, knowing that half of them would be carried off as souvenirs.

Mike struggled with the bizarre details of the crime. Kevin’s restored ’57 Chevy amidst the Wrighthouse junk. Why had Just Plain Ed stolen a car from Kevin O’Shea, of all people? And why had he, or anyone else, swiped a steak knife from The Vista O’Shea to use as the murder weapon? What was going on? Why hadn’t Ed put a bullet behind the victim’s ear? Wasn’t that how they did it in professional circles?

Kevin’s car down there on the flat made no sense. Nothing made sense. Still, Mike tried to explain away the knife.

“It’s true we use monogrammed knives, Harry. We’ve lost hundreds of them over the years. Anyone who eats at O’Shea’s can swipe a steak knife or two. Like towels in a hotel. We expect it.”

“Of course,” the detective said evenly. “But not everyone had a motive for this particular murder. Unfortunately, you seem to have had one. It’s common knowledge, we’re told, that you and the deceased were on bad terms.”

What? He and the deceased on bad terms? Come on, he thought. Not me. Mike O’Shea gets along with everybody. Who was the deceased?

A sudden, sinking feeling gripped his stomach. The truth about this ghastly mix-up, about Wrighthouse’s sideline business and Lennie’s loony betrayal, struck him like a cudgel. Kevin’s ’57 Chevy. A monogrammed O’Shea steak knife. A victim on bad terms with Mike.

He saw the thread, the dark implications.

While Mike thought he had been outlining a hoax to Lennie Garofalo, he had accidentally presented a dead-on factual picture. He had stumbled upon the skeleton in the Wrighthouse closet. The rat-eyed kingpin of junk was disposing of bodies for the mob. Steel Jaws, indeed. And Mike O’Shea, naive Mike, had blunderingly suggested a hoax with that exact scenario. No wonder Garofalo had acted so startled.

But couldn’t Lennie just have walked away from Mike’s scheme? Maybe. But he didn’t. Instead he decided to play a macabre practical joke of his own.

“So the victim—” Mike said haltingly. “The man in the trunk—”

“Clyde Wrighthouse,” the detective said. “The owner of the Wrighthouse Junk and Salvage Yard. Your son Kevin is being held at the county jail on suspicion of murder.”

Mike O’Shea stared first at the lieutenant, then at the sergeant.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he said, fighting to control his voice. “I’m the one responsible for this. Not Kevin. It was my idea.”

Sergeant Mitchell, sensing a domestic tragedy of some kind, stopped him. “Maybe you’d better call your lawyer, Mr. O’Shea.”

Mike sagged into the swivel chair behind his desk. He could see a bleak future opening up before him. He felt himself trapped in his own scheme. He didn’t dare finger the real villains, Lennie the Loon and Just Plain Ed. It would be too dangerous to the other O’Sheas. He couldn’t, wouldn’t expose his family to the possible wrath of the mob. He would have to take the fall himself.

What did Marty Robbins say in that old country song? — “One window, four walls, and a door that won’t open.” That was what Mike foresaw. No more shining vista of purple mountains, green farms, and the winding silver river. Well, he consoled himself, he would have time to watch a lot of movies.

Sergeant Mitchell repeated her advice. Mike O’Shea, not responding, kept his head lowered. Finally, he looked up with composed determination. “Tell Ted — Number Four Son — the restaurant is his. Tell him to buy the Ayrshire Dairy Farm from the Wrighthouse estate.”

Sergeant Mitchell, puzzled, studied some notes she had made on a yellow legal pad. “I have a question, Mr. O’Shea. Is it Ted you want us to tell? Or is it Sean? Sean is your fourth son, I believe. He lives in Tulsa.”

Mike waved impatiently. “Ted. Tell Ted. He’s at Cornell.”

The sergeant moved around the desk and, in a most undetectivelike gesture, laid a comforting hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You seem to have some explaining to do. You may be able to save yourself trouble by getting some legal advice. You really should.”

“No,” Mike said sadly. “It’s all over. Gone with the wind. I’ll never be able to look down on that valley in the same way again. Even after the junkyard is cleared, I’ll have an image of it burned in my mind. Not to mention the memory of Clyde Wrighthouse. No. It’s history. What’s important now is to get Kevin out of jail. I can’t abandon one of my nine kids.” He thought for a moment. “Or is it ten?”

Sergeant Alissa Mitchell’s expression took on the pitying look of understanding perfected over the years by actress Angela Lansbury.

Mike looked up at Detective Mitchell with a resigned half-smile.

“I know you think I’m being foolish, Alissa. Well, I’ve been foolish all my life. I’m not likely to change now. As for what happens to me from now on—” His reflective musings tailed off, and he finished in a world-weary voice that was a fair imitation of Clark Gable’s: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”