Paper Doll

chapter sixteen

MY RENTAL FORD was parked in the lot at the rear right corner of the hotel. I went out the front door and headed for it. The guy in the Buick could see me. And he had positioned himself so that if I drove off he could follow. Tailing somebody is much easier if you don’t mind them knowing.

As I started up the Ford, I could see a little puff of heat come from the tailpipe of the Buick. I pulled out of the driveway of the hotel parking lot, swung around the corner, and parked directly behind the Buick with my engine idling. Nothing happened. I couldn’t see the interior of the Buick because of the darkly tinted glass. I sat. Across the street the Blue Tick hound mooched around the corner of the hotel and sat on the top step of the veranda with his forefeet on the next step down. Sedale came out after a while and gave the dog something to eat. It kept its position, its jaw working on the scrap. Sedale picked up a broom and began to sweep the veranda. The place looked clean, but I suspected it was something Sedale did when things were slow, to keep from hanging in the lobby and chatting with the desk clerk.

The Buick sat. There was a slight tremor to its back end and a faint hint of heat shimmering from its tailpipe. I thought about whether Brooks Robinson or Mike Schmidt should be third baseman on Spenser’s all-time all-star team. I was leaning toward Schmidt. Of course Billy Cox could pick it with anybody, but Schmidt had the power numbers. On the other hand, so did Eddie Matthews. In front of me the Buick slid into gear and pulled away from the curb. I followed. The Buick turned left at the end of the short street, then a sharp right, slowed at a green light, and then floored it as the light turned. I ran the red light behind him, and stayed with him as he went down an alley behind a Kroger’s supermarket, and kept him in sight as he exceeded the speed limit heading out the County Road.

When we hit Route 20, he headed east, toward Columbia, going around eighty-five. The rental Ford bucked a little, but it hung with him. After ten miles of this, the Buick U-turned in an Official Vehicles Only turnaround, and headed back west, toward Augusta. I did the same. We slowed after a few minutes at a long upgrade. There was a ten-wheeler in the right-hand lane, and a white Cadillac in the left lane, traveling at the same speed as the tractor. They stayed in tandem, at about forty miles an hour. We were stuck behind them. We chased along at that rate for maybe five minutes. The Buick kept honking its horn, but the Cadillac never budged. There was no sign, in the Caddy, of the driver’s head above the front seat. This is not usually a good omen.

At the next exit the Buick turned off, roared down the ramp, turned right toward Eureka. I followed and almost rolled past him. He had pulled in off the highway onto a gravel service road. I actually passed it before I got a flash of blue through a screen of scrubby pine trees. I stopped, backed up, and pulled in behind him. Again we sat.

There was a blue jay flying around from scrub pine to scrub pine, looking at us, and looking, also, at everything else. He would sit for a moment, his head moving, looking in all directions, then, precipitously, for no reason that I could see, he would fly to another tree, or sometimes merely flutter to another branch, and look in all directions again. Semper paratus.

Ahead of us the gravel road wound up toward some power lines that ran at right angles to the highway through a cut in the woods. Behind us, and above, the highway traffic swooshed by, unaware that a little ways ahead was a slow-moving roadblock.

Shortstop on my all-time team had to be Ozzie Smith. I’d seen Marty Marion, but he didn’t hit like Ozzie. Pee Wee Reese, on the other hand, was one of the greatest clutch players I’d ever seen. That was the qualifying rule. This was an all-seen, all-time, all-star team. And Ozzie did things I’d never seen anyone do on a ball field. It had to be Ozzie.

The driver of the Buick came to a decision. The door opened and he got out and started back toward me. He had on a light beige suit and a maroon blouse with a bow at the neck, and medium high heels. He carried a black shoulder bag and he was female. Maybe forty, well built, with a firm jaw and a wide mouth. Her eyes were oval and set wide apart. Her eye makeup emphasized both the ovalness and the spacing in ways I didn’t fully understand. I rolled down my window. Her heels crunched forcefully into the gravel as she walked toward me. She seemed angry.

As she came alongside the car I said, “You ever see Ozzie Smith play?”

“Okay, pal,” she said, “what’s your problem?”

“Well, I’m trying to decide between Ozzie Smith and Pee Wee Reese for my all-time, all-seen team…”

“Never mind the bullshit,” she said. “I asked you a question, I want an answer.”

I smiled at her. She saw the smile, and ignored it. She did not disrobe.

“You wouldn’t want to go dancing or anything, would you?” I said.

She frowned, reached in her pocket, and pulled out a leather folder. She flipped it open.

“Police officer,” she said.

The shield was blue and gold and had Alton County Sheriff on it, around the outside.

“That probably means no dancing, huh?”

She shook her head angrily.

“Look, Buster,” she said. “I am not going to fuck around with you. You answer my questions right now, or we go in.”

“For what, following an officer?”

“Why you following me?”

“Because you were following me. And your license plate was classified. And I figured that if I stuck behind you, either you’d have to confront me, or I’d follow you home.”

She stared at me. It was a standard cop hard look.

“You decided to confront me,” I said. “Now I know you’re with the Sheriff’s Department. Who put you on me?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Bud.”

“No you won’t. You don’t know what to ask.”

“Whether I do or not,” she said, “I can tell you something. I can tell you that you are in over your head, and you’d be smart to go home and find another case before this thing gets pulled up over your ears.”

“You were showing me an open tail,” I said. “Somebody tossed my room, and let me know it. I figured that I was being scared off. What I want to know is, why? Who wants to discourage me? What can you tell me about Olivia Nelson? Who does your hair?” I smiled at her again.

She gave me her hard cop look again, which was surprisingly effective, considering that she looked sort of like Audrey Hepburn. Then she shook her head once, sharply. And her eyes glinted oddly.

“Rosetta’s,” she said, “in Batesburg.”

Then she turned on her medium high heels and walked back to her car, got in, U-turned, and drove past me out onto the Eureka Road.