Promised Land

Chapter 5

I asked at the town hall for directions to the police station. The lady at the counter in the clerk’s office told me in an English accent that it was on Elm Street off Barnstable Road. She also gave me the wrong directions to Barnstable Road, but what can you expect from a foreigner. A guy in a Sunoco station straightened me out on the directions and I pulled into the parking lot across the street from the station a little before noon.

It was a square brick building with a hip roof and two small A dormers in front. There were four or five police cruisers in the lot beside the station: dark blue with white tops and white front fenders. On the side was printed BARNSTABLE POLICE. Hyannis is part of Barnstable Township. I know that but I never did know what a township was and I never found anyone else who knew.

I entered a small front room. To the left behind a low rail sat the duty officer with switchboard and radio equipment. To the right a long bench where the plaintiffs and felons and penitents could sit in discomfort while waiting for the captain. All police stations had a captain you waited for when you came in. Didn’t matter what it was.

“Deke Slade in?” I asked the cop behind the rail.

“Captain’s busy right now. Can I help you?”

“Nope, I’d like to see him.” I gave the cop my business card. He looked at it with no visible excitement.

“Have a seat,” he said, nodding at the bench. “Captain’ll be with you when he’s free.” It’s a phrase they learn in the police academy. I sat and looked at the color prints of game birds on the walls on my side of the office.

I was very sick of looking at them when, about one-ten, a gray-haired man stuck his head through the door on my side of the railing and said, “Spenser?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He jerked his head and said, “In here.” The head jerk is another one they learn in the police academy. I followed the head jerk into a square shabby office. One window looked out onto the lot where the cruisers parked. And beyond that a ragged growth of lilacs. There was a green metal filing cabinet and a gray metal desk with matching swivel chair. The desk was littered with requisitions and flyers and such. A sign on one corner said CAPTAIN SLADE.

Slade nodded at the gray metal straight chair on my side of the desk. “Sit,” he said. Slade matched his office. Square, uncluttered and gray. His hair was short and curly, the face square as a child’s block, outdoors tan, with a gray blue sheen of heavy beard kept close shave. He was short, maybe five-eight, and blocky, like an offensive guard from a small college. The kind of guy that should be running to fat when he got forty, but wasn’t. “What’ll you have,” he said.

“Harv Shepard hired me to look for his wife. I figured you might be able to point me in the right direction.”

“License?”

I took out my wallet, slipped out the plasticized photostat of my license and put it in front of him on the desk. His uniform blouse had short sleeves and his bare arms were folded across his chest. He looked at the license without unfolding his arms, then at me and back at the license again.

“Okay,” he said.

I picked up the license, slipped it back in my wallet.

“Got a gun permit?”

I nodded, slipped that out of the wallet and laid it in front of him. He gave it the same treatment and said, “Okay.”

I put that away, put the wallet away and settled back in the chair.

Slade said, “Far as I can tell she ran off. Voluntary. No foul play. Can’t find any evidence that she went with someone. Took an Almeida bus to New Bedford and that’s as far as we’ve gone. New Bedford cops got her description and all, but they got things more pressing. My guess is she’ll be back in a week or so dragging her ass.”

“How about another man?”

“She probably spent the night prior to her disappearance with a guy down the Silver Seas Motel. But when she got on the bus she appeared to be alone.”

“What’s the guy’s name she was with?”

“We don’t know.” Slade rocked back in his chair.

“And you haven’t been busting your tail looking to find out either.”

“Nope. No need to. There’s no crime here. If I looked into every episode of extramarital fornication around here I’d have the whole force out on condom patrol. Some babe gets sick of her husband, starts screwing around a little, then takes off. You know how often that happens?” Slade’s arms were still folded.

“Yeah.”

“Guy’s got money, he hires somebody like you to look. The guy he hires fusses around for a week or so, runs up a big bill at the motel and the wife comes back on her own because she doesn’t know what else to do. You get a week on the Cape and a nice tan, the husband gets a tax deduction, the broad starts sleeping around locally again.”

“You do much marriage counseling?”

He shook his head. “Nope, I try to catch people that did crimes and put them in jail. You ever been a cop? I mean a real one, not a private license?”

“I used to be on the States,” I said. “Worked out of the Suffolk County D.A.‘s office.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“I wanted to do more than you do.”

“Social work,” he said. He was disgusted.

“Any regular boyfriends you know of?”

He shrugged. “I know she slept around a little, but I don’t think anybody steady.”

“She been sleeping around long or has this developed lately?”

“Don’t know.”

I shook my head.

Slade said, “Spenser, you want to see my duty roster? You know how many bodies I got to work with here. You know what a summer weekend is like when the weather’s good and the Kennedys are all out going to Mass on Sunday.”

“You got any suggestions who I might talk to in town that could get my wheels turning?” I said.

“Go down the Silver Seas, talk with the bartender, Rudy. Tell him I sent you. He pays a lot of attention and the Silver Seas is where a lot of spit gets swapped. Pam Shepard hung out down there.”

I got up. “Thank you, captain.”

“You got questions I can answer, lemme know.”

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Spenser, I’ll do what I can. But I got a lot of things to look at and Pam Shepard’s just one of them. You need help, gimme a call. If I can, I’ll give you some.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” We shook hands and I left.

It was two-fifteen when I pulled into the lot in front of the Silver Seas Motel. I was hungry and thirsty. While I took care of that I could talk to Rudy, start running up that big bar bill. Slade was probably right, but I’d give Shepard his money’s worth before she showed up. If she was going to.

There’s something about a bar on the Cape in the daytime. The brightness of lowland surrounded by ocean maybe makes the air-conditioned dimness of the bar more striking. Maybe there’s more people there and they are vacationers rather than the unemployed. Whatever it is, the bar at the Silver Seas Motel had it. And I liked it.

On the outside, the Silver Seas Motel was two-storied, weathered shingles, with a verandah across both stories in front. It was tucked into the seaward side of Main Street in the middle of town between a hardware store and a store that sold scallop shell ashtrays and blue pennants that said CAPE COD on them. The bar was on the right, off the lobby, at one end of the dining room. A lot of people were eating lunch and several were just drinking. Most of the people looked like college kids, cut-offs and T-shirts, sandals and halter tops. The decor in the place was surfwood and fishnet. Two oars crossed on one wall, a harpoon that was probably made in Hong Kong hung above the mirror behind the bar. The bartender was middle-aged and big-bellied. His straight black hair was streaked here and there with gray and hung shoulder length. He wore a white shirt with a black string bow tie like a riverboat gambler. The cuffs were turned neatly back in two careful folds. His hands were thick with long tapering fingers that looked manicured.

“Draft beer?” I asked.

“Schlitz,” he said. He had a flat nose and dark coppery skin. American Indian? Maybe.

“I’ll have one.” He drew it in a tall straight glass. Very good. No steins, or schooners or tulip shapes. Just a tall glass the way the hops god had intended. He put down a paper coaster and put the beer on it, fed the check into the register, rang up the sale and put the check on the bar near me.

“What have you got for lunch,” I said. He took a menu out from under the bar and put it in front of me. I sipped the beer and read the menu. I was working on sipping. Susan Silverman had lately taken to reprimanding me for my tendency to empty the glass in two swallows and order another. The menu said linguica on a crusty roll. My heart beat faster. I’d forgotten about linguica since I’d been down here last. I ordered two. And another beer. Sip. Sip.

The juke box was playing something by Elton John. At least the box wasn’t loud. They’d probably never heard of Johnny Hartman here. Rudy brought the sandwiches and looked at my half-sipped glass. I finished it—simple politeness, otherwise he’d have had to wait while I sipped— and he refilled the glass.

“You ever hear of Johnny Hartman,” I said.

“Yeah. Great singer. Never copped out and started singing this shit.” He nodded at the juke box.

“You Rudy,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Deke Slade told me to come talk with you.” I gave him a card. “I’m looking for a woman named Pam Shepard.”

“I heard she was gone.”

“Any idea where?” I took a large bite of the linguica sandwich. Excellent. The linguica had been split and fried and in each sandwich someone had put a fresh green pepper ring.

“How should I know?”

“You knew Johnny Hartman, and you add green peppers to your linguica sandwich.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know where she went. And the cook does the sandwiches. I don’t like green pepper in mine.”

“Okay, so you got good taste in music and bad taste in food. Mrs. Shepard come in here much?”

“Lately, yeah. She’s been in regular.”

“With anyone?”

“With everyone.”

“Anyone special?”

“Mostly young guys. In a dim light you might have a shot.”

“Why?”

“You’re too old, but you got the build. She went for the jocks and the muscle men.”

“Was she in here with someone before she took off? That would have been a week ago Monday.” I started on my second linguica sandwich.

“I don’t keep that close a count. But it was about then. She was in here with a guy named Eddie Taylor. Shovel operator.”

“They spend the night upstairs?”

“Don’t know. I don’t handle the desk. Just tend bar. I’d guess they did, the way she was climbing on him.” A customer signaled Rudy for another stinger on the rocks. Rudy stepped down the bar, mixed the drink, poured it, rang up the price and came back to me. I finished my second sandwich while he did that. When he came back my beer glass was empty and he filled that without being asked. Well, I couldn’t very well refuse, could I. Three with lunch was about right anyway.

“Where can I find Eddie Taylor?” I said.

“He’s working on a job in Cotuit these days. But he normally gets off work at four and is in here by four-thirty to rinse out his mouth.”

I looked at the clock behind the bar: 3:35. I could wait and sip my beer slowly. I had nothing better to do anyway. “I’ll wait,” I said.

“Fine with me,” Rudy said. “One thing though, Eddie’s sorta hard to handle. He’s big and strong and thinks he’s tough. And he’s too young to know better yet.”

“I’m big-city fuzz, Rudy. I’ll dazzle him with wit and sophistication.”

“Yeah, you probably will. But don’t mention it was me that sicked you on to him. I don’t want to have to dazzle him too.”