Pale Kings and Princes

6

It is hilly country around Wheaton. No mountains but a steady up and down-ness to the terrain that makes a five-mile run in the morning a significant workout. Susan had given me one of those satiny-looking warm-up outfits for Christmas and I was wearing it, with a .32 S&W zipped up in the right-hand jacket pocket. I’d brought two guns with me. The .32 and, in case the culprit turned out to be a polar bear, a Colt Python .357 Magnum that weighed about as much as a bowling ball and was best left in the bureau drawer when jogging.

My new jogging suit was a shiny black with red trim. I felt like Little Lord Fauntleroy chugging along. I had on brand-new Avia running shoes, oyster white with a touch of charcoal that understated the black jogging suit. I didn’t have crimson leg warmers. Maybe for my birthday.

Back at the motel, loose, warm, full of oxygen, I did some push-ups and sit-ups in my room and took a shower. At quarter of ten I was in my car heading into downtown Wheaton. I had my Colt Python in a shoulder holster under my leather jacket. Since I’m a size 48 and so is the Python, I’d had to shop extensively to find a leather jacket that fit over both of us.

I stopped at a Friendly’s restaurant on the corner of Main and North streets in Wheaton for breakfast, listened to the other diners talking about weather and children and what they saw on the Today show, picked up no clues, paid the tab, got a coffee to go, and sat in my car to drink it.

The cops were no help. Valdez had filed no story and whatever notes he’d kept were missing. I needed someone to talk with, anyone who would mention someone else and lead me to talk with them and they would mention someone else and so on. I put the car in gear and cruised up Main Street. Kyanize paints, the District Court of Wheaton, the Wheaton Fire Department, the Acropolis Pizza, the Wheaton Cooperative Bank, the Olympic Theatre Two Dollars at all times. At the head of town, clustered around a narrow-gorged, deep-cut river, were four or five red-brick nineteenth-century textile mills. Now they were factory clothing-outlets, and woolen and yarn shops. An attempt had been made to gentrify the mills, by painting windows and doors with contemporary pastel trim, and putting some green plants around. But the attempt was feeble. The riverbed was strewn with boulders, jumbled by the centuries of white water that had surged through the channel. There was low water in the river now, frozen perhaps, or dammed off upstream. Like the town.

I went around a rotary under some railroad tracks and headed back down Main Street, past a True Value hardware store, and Wally’s Lunch, and turned right onto North Street. A block uphill on North Street was the Wheaton Free Library in a big old red-brick building that looked like the town hall and had probably been done by the same architect and built at the same time. I parked on the street in front and went in.

There was an old man using the Xerox machine, two men past retirement were reading newspapers in the periodical area, and a strong-featured woman with short black hair was behind the desk. Her nose was straight and considerable, her back was straight, she was wearing a fuzzy pink sweater, her breasts were high and prominent, her waist was small, and the rest was hidden behind the counter. If the bottom matched the top, she was an excellent candidate for trained investigative surveillance. I strolled over to the side of the desk and read one of the posters advertising a production by the Wheaton Spotlighters of Oklahoma. Then I glanced casually back. She was wearing light gray slacks. The bottom matched. My instincts are rarely wrong.

“Excuse me,” I said. “I’m looking for a history of Wheaton. Is there such?”

She looked up from her card file. There were light smile lines at the corners of her mouth, and gentle crow’s-feet at her eyes. Her mouth was very wide.

“Not yet,” she said. “In fact, we’re in the process of compiling one.”

“Really,” I said. “Who is the we?”

“The Historical Commission, myself, two others.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “Talk about luck. How far along are you?”

“We’ve been compiling data on index cards,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re a long way from finished.”

“Too bad,” I said. “I guess it’s too early to help me much.”

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” she said. “But perhaps if you had specific questions I might be able to help you.”

A teenage girl came in with her hair combed over to one side and pulled back. She wore heavy eye makeup and brilliant lipstick and very high heels and very tight tapered pants that ended at the anklebone. She was chewing gum and looked like a horse’s ass to me, but not probably to the senior boys at Wheaton High. She checked out two books, a collection of essays on The Scarlet Letter and a picture book about Ricky Nelson.

“Well,” I said, “in fact, I’m interested mostly in the history of the Colombian migration to Wheaton.”

Her smile lines deepened. “That’s a larger question than I can answer right here,” she said. “The connection exists in a man named Abner Norton, who ran the largest textile mill here in Wheaton and also had business interests in the town of Tajo in Colombia. He was having trouble getting people to work in the mills so he imported labor here from Tajo and the connection formed. It was Mr. Norton’s grandfather who donated the money for this library.”

“And is Mr. Norton living around here?”

“No, the mills failed, as you may know. Much of the industry moved south and Mr. Norton moved with it. The Colombians remained, largely impoverished.”

“Un huh. What about the impact of so substantial a group of very different people on a small city?”

“And so insular an area,” she said. “The impact has been substantial.”

The elderly man operating the Xerox machine came over and complained that it was out of paper. The librarian went to fix it.

When she came back, I said, “What kind of impact?”

“Obviously tensions between the Yankees and the Colombians.”

“Give me your huddled masses,” I said, “yearning to breathe free.”

“We’re no better than anyone else, here,” she said. “A sudden ethnic influx creates problems for everyone.”

“Un huh.”

“By now they’ve become, how should I say it, institutionalized. The Yankee kids don’t go into the Hispanic neighborhoods, and vice versa. The Hispanics stick with one another. There are fights at the school occasionally. Graffiti, wild rumors about the sexuality of Hispanic women.”

“Gee,” I said, “the American dream falls short again.”

“Not just here, Mr....?”

“Spenser,” I said.

“Caroline Rogers,” she said. We shook hands.

“How about drugs?” I said. “I don’t wish to perpetuate a stereotype, but...” I let it trail off, trying to look a little languid, like a scholar.

“The young people use drugs, Mr. Spenser, Colombian or not.”

“Sadly true,” I said. “But I was wondering more about drug business. Cocaine and Colombians are often associated, at least in the popular press.”

She looked at me a bit more sharply. “Have you been reading the Argus?” she said.

“Well, sure, it’s the local paper.”

“It is not local,” she said. “It’s published in Worcester, it is an out-of-town paper.”

“Any truth to that stuff about the cocaine trade?” I said.

“I’m afraid that’s more than the town librarian can know,” she said. “It is not part of the Historical Commission research.”

“But just informally,” I said. “As a private citizen?”

“Why do you ask?” she said.

“Honesty is the best policy,” I said. “I’m a detective. I’m looking into the death of Eric Valdez.”

She tilted her jaw up, and took in a breath, slowly.

“Ah,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “ah.”

She looked at me steadily for a long minute, her head still tipped slightly back.

“Do you know,” she said, “that my husband is the chief of police in Wheaton.”

“Oh,” I said, “that Rogers.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And?”

“He did not encourage me.”

“Nor will I, and I surely don’t appreciate your snooping around here under false pretenses.”

“What other kinds of pretenses are there?” I said.