Riders on the Storm

1

Despite the panic in his voice I risk wheeling into a convenience store for coffee. Whatever crisis he is facing this time, I won’t be much help if I’m this groggy. It is twenty-three minutes to two a.m. That dread I’d felt coming home? It is finally realized on this bleak, mysterious night.

A town like Black River Falls generally goes to sleep between ten and eleven except for the taverns and the three clubs where you can dance. A Quad City businessman, which is often synonymous with Mob, has tried to open both a XXX bookstore and a strip club in the past year. The whisper is that in the next six months or so city council members will give up fighting — the guy loves lawsuits — and allow the bookstore. No doubt night owls of a special species will flock to it.

Will Cullen lives in the wealthy area of town. His home is a sprawling yellow-brick house that has been here long enough to have creeping vines venerating the exterior walls. A piney windbreak to the east isolates the place from its neighbors. His wife Karen has a wealthy father who paid for the place. He thought that maybe this kind of splendor would help Will recover from his Nam tragedy.

I top a small hill and gaze down at the moonlit homes stretching out before me. Senators love to bluster about how the rest of the world envies us, and when you see this portrait in shadow and light you have to agree with them. Solid houses, good jobs, bright futures. Too bad we were losing thousands of our troops — not to mention even more thousands of innocents — just so two fine fellows named Johnson and Nixon could play John Wayne.

The streetlights are sparse and so my headlights and motor hum seem all the more intrusive as I sail down the street to Will’s home.

I have my window rolled down. The slight chill feels good after the blistering August we’ve been having.

The enormous house is dark. Maybe Will hadn’t wanted to wake Karen or their daughter up. Still, the dark house puzzles me and makes me uneasy.

I glide up the driveway and snap off the engine. The triple-stall garage is closed. His and her cars will be inside.

The scent of flowers — morning glories and scarlet rockets from what I can see in the deep shadows — lend the breeze a pleasant scent. The only other aroma is of the Lucky I am smoking.

I walk from my car up the curvy and lengthy flagstone path to the front door. I expect him to step out at any minute. I knock feebly, thinking of Karen and their three-year-old daughter Peggy Ann. No response.

There is a huge window to the right of the front door so I go over there and peer in. The faint light of the half-moon lends the living room the look of a showroom. There is a joke among all their friends that Karen is such a fastidious housekeeper she’d prefer that when you visit you stay outside. God help the person who sets a drink down without using a coaster. Death would be swift.

No sign of Will.

I have terrible thoughts. Every once in a while there are stories in the news about the lives of a seemingly happy family ending when the husband — usually the husband, though wives have done it, too — takes a gun and kills the wife, the kids and finally himself.

I think of the mental problems Will had developed while serving in Vietnam. Like many sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder, he has turned to alcohol to deal with his griefs. Karen has told me that he’s even started drinking at work sometimes. He has been put in mental hospitals for short stays twice.

I move along the side of the house. More flowers, more scents. Distantly the sounds of eighteen-wheelers on the highway; a lone lonely dog a few blocks over barking out his need for companionship.

I stop at the side door. People in our town of thirty-five thousand or so still leave their doors unlocked. This is slowly changing with the increase of serious crime across the country.

I try the door. Apparently Will is still of the belief that you can trust your neighbors. The door is unlocked.

I have terrible thoughts again.

If I call the police and there is nothing wrong — maybe Will has just had one of his frightening panic attacks — then I will have embarrassed Will. Karen is from some of the town’s oldest money. She is the reason that Will’s veterinary clinic is doing so well. She is on enough boards of this and boards of that to know people who do not mind expending heavy-duty dollars on their animals.

I start inside and then stop. A good way to scare the hell out of people; a good way for me to get shot. Both of them know how to shoot. Karen’s father owned a large chain of sporting goods stores. The entire family was taught to shoot, even, and as Karen often joked, the dog.

I close the door and then stand in the starlight deciding what to do next. My impulse is to just get in my car and head back to my apartment.

Then I see the beam of a flashlight waving around inside in the kitchen window.

The light vanishes quickly. Through a window close to the front room I see the beam again still waving around. Searching for something.

Then the living room light comes on.

I move cautiously back to the front of the house and there she is in the window. Karen in a flattering pink nightgown, her mussed, bobbed blond hair giving her the look of a just woken child. But that impression is contradicted by the Colt Python in her hand. Pretty as she is, there is a hard side to her. I have no doubt she is tougher than Will.

When she finally sees me, she sets the gun down on the table and hurries to the front door. As she’s letting me in she says, “Are you all right, Sam? What’re you doing here?”

“Will called me. About twenty minutes ago.”

“Will did? Why?”

“What I’m thinking now is that he must’ve had one of his panic attacks.”

We have a small circle of friends. We all know of Will’s troubles. His panic attacks, the frightening temper he’s developed, his inability to get a good night’s sleep, his recklessness in both his personal and business lives.

“He always wakes me up when he has them. Usually I give him more of his meds and sit with him until he calms down. I wonder why he didn’t wake me up tonight.” Will had accidentally shot and killed a little girl in Nam. He’s never gotten over it. And worst of all, sometimes he has to rush out of his own home when he sees his daughter, who is about the same age as the little girl he killed. Mere sight of Peggy Ann triggers all his self-loathing and terror. Drunk one night he told Karen that maybe their daughter is actually the little Vietnamese girl here to haunt him.

We are standing a few feet apart. She smells of sleep and yesterday’s perfume. “I’m so sorry you had to come over here, Sam. Look at the time. You have to get up and go to work in a few hours.”

“And Peggy Ann will have you up pretty early yourself.”

“Is there something I can get you? How about a beer?”

“I won’t say no.”

She pats me on the cheek. “You’re such a good friend, Sam. I’ll get you your beer and then round up Will. He may be embarrassed and hiding in the den. He does that sometimes.”

The living room is so formal I never quite feel comfortable in it. From the grand piano to the white-brick fireplace to the long flocked drapes that cover the tall narrow windows to the bay window that overlooks the swimming pool — I am always careful when I’m here. I like the Cullens very much, it’s just that their modest abode is a little less modest than my own. I sit down on a tan leather ottoman, mindful that I don’t want to brush my Levi’s against her couch or chairs.

The beer is served in a fancy Pilsner glass. I thank her for it and she rushes off.

I soon hear a door open quietly. From here I can see into the hall that divides the house. A light comes on and then goes off almost immediately. A child’s voice, frightened. Maybe a bad dream. Or adults up at this time of night. Adults do terrifying things at night. Even three-year-olds know that.

Karen has a soothing voice and she uses it now with her daughter. I can’t understand the words but the sound Karen makes is almost songlike. There will be hugs and kisses and then Peggy Ann will be tucked back down into the gentle dreams of three-year-olds. She will forget whatever had woken her.

Karen comes back. Shaking her head and twisting her long hands together. “He’s not in the den or any of the bathrooms or the kitchen. Just a second. I should try the basement.”

“Let me try that, Karen. Why don’t you just sit down?”

I am pretty sure she knows as well as I do that he isn’t in the basement. Not unless he’s dead down there. At his own hand.

I spend several minutes in the basement. It is not only finished but also furnished with expensive family room chairs and a couch. There is even a small bar and a twenty-nine-inch TV console. Even though I am not much of a sports fan — except for the World Series — I’ve spent many long afternoons down here with Will’s group of vets.

She waits for me at the top of the stairs. She’s changed into dark slacks and an olive-colored cotton blouse. Her feet are in thongs.

“No luck?”

“Sorry. No luck.”

She waits until the basement door is closed again before she says, “Now I’m afraid, Sam.”

“Before either of us starts to panic, let me check the garage, which I should have done first anyway. I’m just a little foggy, I’m afraid.”

“You think he went somewhere? It wouldn’t be like him to go anywhere. After he has these attacks he usually goes to sleep and I have a hard time waking him up.”

“I’ll flip the backyard light on and go have a look.”

“I’d like to go with you.” Tension has tightened her narrow face.

I smile. “Since it’s your house I think that can be arranged.”

The backyard grass is green and rich in the sudden light. A picnic table, a child’s swing set, a barbeque are spread across the sizable stretch of yard. Suburban bliss.

She keeps so close to me she bumps me a few times.

I’ve known Will since we made our First Communion together. He’d been one of those kids who didn’t take much seriously. B’s were fine with him. His main interest until late in high school was science fiction in all forms. He’d had a few dates but none had ever turned into anything serious. In his sophomore year in college he’d shocked everybody by going out with a true heartbreaker, Cathy Vance. There were a lot of jokes about how he’d managed to get her to fall in love with him, including mind control. Two years they went together and when it ended it was him not her who broke it off. They were engaged until he suddenly met Karen. They got married quickly and had Peggy Ann four months after the rings slid on their fingers. Then he was drafted. Before the war he’d been the dominant one. When he returned, their relationship changed considerably. He’d come home in pieces and shards of his former self.

Before the war they’d been parents and friends. But given his condition on returning she’d also had to become mother, sister, protector, and defender. Anybody who’d thought she was just a rich girl and a snob had to quickly and forever change their minds. Her love for him was fierce and resolute.

She carries the garage door opener with her when we walk outside. Now she thumbs it and we wait and listen as the door rumbles. As we start inside I can see that the stall for Will’s Thunderbird is empty.

2

You don’t expect to find a sitting senator and a couple of reporters at a backyard barbeque. That was my first thought last night when I showed up at Tom Davis’s new native stone and glass home on a perch above the river.

I might have been happier to see a senator if he hadn’t been one who was hawkish on the war but had two draft-eligible sons who had mysteriously not served. He was a proud friend of the defense industry and, as Time had leaked to no apparent avail, a heavy investor in said industry. Though he was a Republican, he wasn’t friendly with our brave and laudable Republican governor who had denounced the war last year.

The press was there — a TV crew from Cedar Rapids and an old-time newspaper reporter from here in town — so I assumed this was the night that Senator Patrick O’Shay was going to announce that he had persuaded Steve Donovan to run for the Congressional seat in this district. O’Shay needed some help. His opponent was now in a virtual tie with the lordly Mick.

I would stick to beer. Since my return from the military hospital I’d taken to getting sloppy drunk sometimes. I didn’t want to inflict this on what was supposed to be a gathering of Nam vets.

Fifty or sixty people fitted comfortably on the breathtaking patio from which you could see across the river to where the white birch trees showed ghostly in gloom. Rain was in the forest and you could smell it and taste it but it didn’t seem imminent.

I would have brought Mary, but ten days ago I’d told her that it was all moving too fast and that I was confused and that the meds weren’t tempering my anger or my depression. They also weren’t helping in the erection department. One out of six or seven times I couldn’t get it up. The docs said this might happen. As if that was any comfort.

She hadn’t cried when I made my announcement. She’d had a notably tough life and accepted it quietly. All she said was that the girls would miss me. I loved all three of them equally, if in different ways. Kate and Nicole were a lot more fun than anything on TV. I hadn’t actually moved in. I’d stayed late, but always went back to my apartment.

The headache came about a half hour after I got there. Stress. The docs said that because of the two neurological operations I’d had, my moods would sometimes be difficult for me and for those around me. I felt out of place here, but then I felt out of place just about everywhere since coming back home.

I used one of the four bathrooms in the lavish house and dumped two capsules down me. Generally they’d back down the headache within an hour.

It was time for me to do the social thing.

I shook a lot of hands; I laughed and flattered and remained staunchly humble when people talked about how brave I’d been. Brave? Some drunken sergeant piled up a Jeep I happened to be riding in; nothing brave about that. And I had a shit-eating smile that could charm a mass murderer. Maybe I could give O’Shay some pointers on peddling his ass. A few of the more observant ones said I’d changed. They could sense it, feel it, and they weren’t just talking about the inch-long scar that ran just under my hairline.

All the vets were from our county so we all pretty much knew each other’s stories. But there were a few who still wanted to know mine.

So many of the wives here tonight looked so sweet and loving and beautiful in the sentimental glow of the Japanese lanterns.

A couple of times I was tempted to ask for a drink from the pert young woman serving them from the silver impromptu bar near the west edge of the patio. But I stuck to slow-drinking my bottle of Hamm’s.

The TV crew interviewed a number of couples. How did it feel to be home and safe? How many sleepless nights did you have knowing your husband was in harm’s way? And then the question that had become controversial the last few days: What do you, as a soldier who fought over there, think of this anti-war group of soldiers led by a man named John Kerry?

There was a mix of responses. Anger (which is what the crew wanted); sadness (knowing that vets would turn on each other this way); understanding. The two vets who opted for this spoke specifically of one vet, the local vet who’d signed up for the group, Will Cullen.

“Will’s my friend,” said a brawny vet named Max Kirchoff. “He’s had problems dealing with the war and I wish some of the fellas would take that into account. He went over there and served along with the rest of us. I don’t agree with this anti-war thing but if it makes Will feel a little better about himself, I’m all for it.”

“Will’s like family to us,” his petite wife said.

This explained why Will wasn’t here tonight. Probably better than half of the other vets would be happy to see him. They were like Kirchoff. Guy went over there and suffered a breakdown. Did two stints in mental hospitals. He’s not thinking straight so he signs on to this dumb-ass anti-war group.

On the other hand there were the vets like soon-to-be Congressional candidate Steve Donovan. He’d been interviewed on TV yesterday and said that the anti-war group was not only “a disgrace but also run by Communists.” He added: “I know there’s a vet right here in town who’s joined. I’d be very careful if I were him. A lot of us here resent him a hell of a lot.”

So Will and Karen stayed home.

The speechifying started right at seven thirty. There would still be time to get the story on the ten o’clock news in Cedar Rapids.

Tom Davis thanked everybody for being here tonight. He talked sincerely about the special bond vets had. And then he toasted them. Hard as you tried to hate him for his inherited wealth, his acumen as a businessman, his good looks, and his movie-star gorgeous wife, the sonofabitch wouldn’t let you. He was just too nice a guy. I’ve learned to my dismay that there are a lot of downright decent wealthy people. Not fair at all.

Now it was time for the commercial.

Patrick O’Shay had once been called “the biggest hambone in the Senate.” If that had been an exaggeration, it was only slightly so. Tall, lean, white-haired, his body and its language suggested a mercenary side that belied the treacle that he usually spewed.

The Treacle Master proceeded.

“I’m so grateful to have been asked here tonight. To see the proud and happy faces of those who made the ultimate patriot’s sacrifice — to fight for the freedoms we all enjoy in this country; the freest country in the history of the world. And I might say the same for the wives and children who waited for their brave warriors to return home. Ladies, I salute you tonight right along with your husbands.”

As I glanced around I wondered what the men without legs, arms, sight were thinking. Certainly they must have had second thoughts about the war. Had they realized that it was nothing more than rich old men and the corrupt Pentagon living out another round of endless and pointless slaughter?

A few of the wounded men smiled — one man gave the thumbs-up with his right hand; he had no left hand — but the faces of their wives were solemn. One woman grimaced. O’Shay bullshit overload.

He went on, a little history for the groundlings:

“From the beginning of time women have waited for their men to come home from battle. As a proud Irishman I can tell you that the literature of my people is steeped in stories and poems about war. Nobody wants it, of course. I would never have voted for what we’re doing in Vietnam if I hadn’t seen the facts — that we have no choice but to stop them there before they come over here. And so the men fight and the women — the very good women just like the women here tonight — wait.”

He blathered on another ten minutes before getting down to it. Easy to tell that he was enjoying it more than his constituents were.

“You know what this country needs more than anything right now? I’m sure you already know the answer to that. This country needs patriots. Real patriots. Not the kind who go overseas and fight and then return home to claim that what they did was morally wrong. There’s a sickness in our society that breeds men like this—”

The applause surprised me. Close to half the group clapped. A few whistled.

“But I didn’t come here tonight to belittle anybody. I came here tonight to say that with your help we can put a true man and a true patriot in this Congressional seat — and I don’t have to tell you who that is, do I? A very successful businessman as well. Come over here, Steve!”

This time everybody applauded. I joined in. He was a shit most of the time but then there was a decent, generous side to him that almost, but not quite, made you like him. I’d known him since grade school. He’d always been this way.

Donovan was a slick package. A fit, blond man who’d played good basketball at the university in Iowa City, he’d just gotten his business launched when Uncle Sam dragged him out of his house. Tonight he was dressed much like the senator. Golf shirt, in his case black; tailored yellow slacks; a large and no doubt real gold watch; and a smile that could not quite hide the smirk inside.

My eyes strayed to his wife Valerie, who stood at the front. A perfect fit for him. A lithe brunette of brutal beauty in a chic emerald fitted dress and a smile very much like hubby’s. Practiced and cold. She applauded just the right, proper way and gazed just the right, proper way on our next congressman. The too liberal for these times — and face it, uninspired — congressman presently holding the seat would undoubtedly stay in Washington, but now as consultant or lobbyist.

“Those of you who know me know that I’m not really practiced at giving speeches. Valerie and me” — the classic ungrammatical pronoun to go along with this whole shuck and jive I’m just a regular feller bullshit — “we’re private folks. So this doesn’t come natural to me.”

“You do great!” a man in the back shouted.

“Well, thank you. I appreciate the support. And I’ll need that support when I run.”

The orgasm moment. He’s running. Applaud until your hands run with blood; scream until you lacerate your throat.

The camera man — a young guy interchangeable with most hippies you saw on the street — panned the faces of the excited people up front.

Donovan started waving for them to calm down, but that smile said who could blame them? A hot-shit property like me? Just who the hell could blame them?

“I’ll tell you what, my friends. I’m going to accomplish things when we get to Washington. I’m going to cut the terrible taxation we all suffer under and I’m going to make sure that every single country on this planet is either our friend or our enemy. And if they’re our enemy then all I’ve got to say is — watch out! I’m sick of hearing this country denigrated by all these third-rate loudmouths. And it’s happening right here at home. Just look at our morals. Moral people can’t go to movies anymore. And the songs on the radio. I’m not afraid of censorship. You heard me say that, right? Sometimes you have to have censorship. And one more thing — I won’t let any so-called American citizen run this country down. And that goes for soldiers who sign petitions that claim that our honorable service was immoral!”

I couldn’t take any more applause. I let my bladder lead me into the house. When I finished I put the lid down and sat on it. I smoked and did a little smirking myself. I knew just enough about politics to know that he had to use groups like these to get the initial support he needed. When he started appearing before large groups he’d have to be much more moderate. The TV news tonight would be kind to him. He’d get at most a minute and a half and the sound bite would be how he was going to make our country safe again from porno and songs of sex. He sounded good; he looked good, didn’t he? And who among the voters gave a shit anyway? He was as much against hippies and lust as they were, wasn’t he?

I sat there a while longer, enjoying the fact that my headache was fading. I was tempted to call Mary, but what would I say? If I said I was lonely she’d interpret that as meaning that the break was over. But I needed the break.

I had left a patio loud and ripe with good times. But when I returned it sounded as if the party was winding down. It wasn’t even eight thirty yet.

A beer sounded good but first I wanted to find out what was going on. I noticed that the crowd had split into smaller groups of fives and sixes. And I noticed they were talking quietly but earnestly.

What the hell was going on?

Then I heard the voices erupt from around the east wing of the house. I recognized Will’s voice first. Then Donovan’s. Donovan was drawing down on Will and Will was meekly trying to tell Donovan that he still wanted to be friends with all the vets. That his decision to sign the anti-war petition was nothing personal. I felt sorry for him then. There was no way that most of the vets would not take it personally. I understood that; apparently Will didn’t.

And then they appeared on the patio.

My stomach churned. Sometimes the three different meds I took backed up in me but I didn’t think this was the meds. It was these feelings of anger and sorrow and defeat that were so common these days. Will just looked so damned sad and played out and confused.

Donovan was dragging him. It almost looked like an old TV comedy routine. Donovan had Will by the collar of his button-down shirt while Will’s arms were trying to push against Donovan. Will kept saying, “These’re my friends, Steve. At least let me talk to them.”

This was the scene Senator O’Shay returned to from somewhere inside the house. He must have been using one of the four bathrooms, too.

He commandeered the patio instantly. “Steve, stop it! What’re you trying to do to this man?”

But Donovan was too angry to stop. His face was ruby and sweat drained off him. “This is Cullen, the guy who signed the anti-war thing! He snuck around the side of the house! I’m just escorting him out!”

O’Shay advanced. Not too difficult to understand why he, too, was angry. But not at Will, at his protégé. Donovan had sounded too angry on his first on-camera appearance tonight but he could slide past it. But dragging somebody — even an anti-war vet — out of the party... O’Shay knew the rules. You could be a lot of things and hold a Congressional seat, but you could not be a madman.

O’Shay had to be reading the crowd as well. While maybe a fourth of the people shouted agreement with Donovan’s rage, the majority looked unhappy and some looked disgusted. They knew Will as a mild, quiet man; they knew Donovan as a charming but dangerously short-fused man.

O’Shay reached out to grab Donovan much as Donovan had grabbed Will. But instead of releasing Will, Donovan launched into a real beating. Before O’Shay even had a chance to stop him Donovan pounded punches into Will’s face and stomach and then started all over again. Blood spurted from Will’s nose and the roll of his eyes indicated that he was unconscious before he hit the flagstone floor.

By now I and five other men had surrounded Donovan and forced him to stop throwing punches. His entire body surged with his fury. He screamed over and over that he wanted to kill Will.

Many women and more than a few men watched all this in fear and revulsion.

Donovan got his shirt torn in the process of the manhandling it took to hold him back. He raved on. He’d never been like this before the war; not this kind of lunacy. I would’ve heard about it.

Slowly, reason came back into his eyes. Not apology or shame but common sense. He gaped around as if he’d just been dropped here from another planet. You could see him begin to recognize not only faces but context. Maybe he wasn’t sorry for what he’d done to Will but it was easy to see that he was embarrassed about it.

O’Shay was at the bar. I’d glimpsed him earlier flirting with the woman running it. Not flirting this time. When he got his drink he gunned it in a gulp and then held the glass out for a refill.

No doubt his people had vetted Donovan and no doubt they’d learned of his temper and no doubt they’d weighed that temper against his points as a businessman and Nam vet. But temper in the abstract is not the same as stories witnessed in real time.

O’Shay was in a dilemma. His people could minimize this with the press. Area reporters would not be eager to take on a war vet, particularly one who was also a prominent businessman. Maybe he could slide by this whole night. But what about the future?

I knelt next to Will. A woman who identified herself as a nurse joined me. She checked his vitals — not what they should be — and then checked his nose — not broken — and then she said the best thing would be to get him to an ER. He’d been savagely beaten.

His eyes fluttered open and he said, “I kicked his ass, huh?” He loved jokes. But then, his mood swings worse than mine, he started crying. The nurse took one arm and I took the other and we gradually got him sitting up.

A large number of people encircled us. Even a few vets I recognized as friends of Donovan were saying sympathetic things. Maybe Donovan wasn’t such a hero to them anymore.

Just after I stood up a large sinewy hand fell on my shoulder. When I turned around I looked into the wary green eyes of O’Shay.

“I’m very sorry about this.”

“I’m sure you are. He’s one hell of a candidate.”

“War vets are often stressed to the point of anger. I’m sure someone in the VA can deal with his anger problem.”

Right now O’Shay was doing his own public relations. I couldn’t dispute that Donovan was a brave man. He had the medals to prove it.

“I need to get Will to the hospital.”

“We’re here to help you,” a vet I recognized from Iowa City said. “We’ll help you get him in your car and we’ll follow you all the way to the ER.”

But O’Shay wasn’t quite finished. “Someone pointed you out to me. Told me what happened at boot camp. I’m very sorry. If there’s anything I can ever do for you, please let me know.”

This guy could kiss your ass under water.

He turned away. He had a lot of work to do. He had to sell this crowd on what a great guy his seriously disturbed Congressional candidate really was.

Right now that was going to be one hell of a job.

3

We were talking about shunning.

There was an Amish community not too far from here and one of its rare but controversial practices was to shun a member who had violated certain beliefs or rules of the sect. They pretend the shunned person does not exist.

So Karen and I sat in the ER waiting area and smoked our cigarettes and kept glancing at the large round clock above the ER desk. As if checking it would hurry the intern who was examining Will. Karen had called a neighbor, who was now watching Peggy Ann.

On the way over here Karen had told me about some threatening letters that had been sent to their house over the last three months. Each looked like a kidnap note and each hinted at an ominous future. These really needed to be looked into.

She’d also told me about other letters. “About a month ago I was cleaning his den and I found this shoebox on the shelf of the closet. It was pushed way back. I couldn’t help myself. I took it down and opened it. There were all these love letters he’d written and never sent. Longhand, the tiny way he writes. He’s been seeing Cathy Vance again.” No tears; dead cold voice.

Cathy Vance was the college sweetheart he’d been engaged to, but he’d thrown her over when he met Karen.

Then we were in the Emergency Room.

Tart smells of medicine, hospital sounds including whispery calls over the intercom now that most of the patients would be sleeping or trying to, and the whoosh of the double ER doors as people passed in and out. I’d dated an ER nurse for a time and learned some things about the department. It was the Wild West. You never knew who or what you were going to get. One night a man with a gun had confronted her, demanding to see his estranged wife whom he’d just beaten half to death. Fortunately, in his rage and rush he hadn’t noticed the police officer behind him. The officer had just brought in a drunk who’d fallen and cut his head. The officer now walked up behind the crazed husband and managed to take away the man’s gun without incident.

“He used that word ‘shunned’ more than a few times in the past few days,” Karen said. “You know he can be pretty dramatic sometimes but I know that’s how he was feeling. Being in the army made him feel accepted as a man. He was afraid to go but I always sensed he thought he could prove something to himself over there. I don’t think he ever felt adequate about being tough. God, I love him so much. I tried to warn him that this would happen if he signed that petition. Look what’s going on in Washington.”

A small faction of the anti-war vets (whose large numbers were being disputed by some in the press) had clashed at a demonstration with regular vets near the White House the other day. All the expected name-calling and bitterness. A particularly sad day for the country, I thought. A feast for the blowhards in Congress who loved to pout over alleged heresy.

“Then when he left tonight for the party—”

“He just said that he needed to buy oil, so—”

I smiled. “Oh, right. He learned how to change oil when he was over in Nam—”

“So he worked on his car whenever he could. It was another thing that made him feel good about himself.”

A heavyset middle-aged Negro came in with his wife. She pointed to a chair and said, “Sit there, Bob. I’ll get you all checked in.” He wore a Cubs T-shirt and jeans. The way he gritted his teeth and held his right arm as if it was an infant suggested that he had broken it.

“He’s in this softball league at work and he tried to slide into second base earlier tonight,” she told the woman at the desk. She glanced back at him. “He thinks he’s still sixteen, I guess. Anyway, we went home after the game but the pain’s getting worse and worse.”

The man had smiled at her when she’d said he thought he was still sixteen. He knew she’d been telling him that she loved him.

Our doc came along just as the woman was taking a seat next to her husband.

Will looked stronger and more purposeful than I’d expected he would. He’d been in the examination room for nearly an hour.

The intern was short, wiry, and balding. He had an O’Shay smile. He was going to send Will and Karen home happy. Maybe he’d give Will a sucker.

“The beating looked a lot worse than it actually was, Mrs. Cullen. There’s no concussion, no fractures, just a whole lot of bruising. Warm baths will help that.” He spoke to her as if Will was her child and not her husband.

She didn’t wait.

She stepped over to Will and stood on tiptoe so she could kiss him. Will threw his arms around her and drew her in.

“He’ll be much better in a few days,” the intern said to me.

Karen wasn’t about to let go of him.

“I’m writing two prescriptions for him, Mrs. Cullen. They’ll help with the pain. They may make him a little groggy so I’d keep an eye on him.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.” Karen beamed in relief.

Then we were outside in the steamy night. The mosquitoes were doing their version of the Normandy invasion. The three of us were the Germans. An ambulance about a quarter block from the ER external entrance had just cut its siren and emergency lights and speed so it could slot in right next to the ER double doors.

“This is actually kind of embarrassing,” Will said. “I had a couple drinks and then I got this bright idea that I’d go out to the party and explain myself to all my friends and they’d all see that I wasn’t this terrible guy after all and then we’d all be buddies again. You know, like it is on TV when everybody is hugging each other after some big misunderstanding. I could write that crap myself.” Grinning. He’d always been self-deprecating. One of the reasons we’d been friends is that we knew we hadn’t been blessed with most of the gifts All-American Boys had been. Better to put yourself down than have somebody else do it for you.

Karen had a kiss for me. I tried not to notice how warm and soft her breasts felt against my chest. Or the scent of her hair. Or the simple pleasure of her affection for me. It would be so easy to call Mary.

“I’m scared, Sam, I’m really scared.”

Karen stares at the empty stall normally filled with Will’s cherry 1957 red Thunderbird. They’d joked that this would be both his Christmas and birthday gift until 2198. T-Birds in this kind of condition are not easy to find no matter what kind of coin you have.

The time according to my three-dollar-and-ninety-five-cent Timex is now two thirty.

“Did he come to bed last night?”

“I’m pretty sure he didn’t. The covers weren’t thrown back or anything. He didn’t give you any hint he was going somewhere?”

“Our whole conversation was about a minute. He just pleaded with me to come over and see him. Help him.”

She puts long, thin hands over her face and inhales deeply. Then exhales. Then takes her hands away. “A drink and a cigarette. C’mon.”

The kitchen is modern with gleaming white appliances, a parquet floor and a butcher block set up in the middle of the room.

We sit there for the next half hour waiting for the phone to ring or the noise of a motor to stir the silence of the driveway. He will be home. He will be safe. He’s had another panic attack. He is such a fuck-up, will we please forgive him this one last time.

He doesn’t call and he doesn’t come home.

We decide, being medical experts, that the fight had concussed him after all. Doctors make mistakes and this intern — whom we’d never actually liked or thought much of when you came right down to it — this young doc is as full of shit as the machines they’d used on poor Will. The whole hospital is full of shit. And now here he is brain-damaged and wandering around and where is the intern right now? Probably having one of the night nurses give him a blow job in one of the storage rooms.

You know how you get when you desperately need to blame somebody.

Karen gets so riled she is going to call her lawyer right now and institute a lawsuit for at least two hundred million dollars. Or more, dammit — more even.

Peggy Ann comes out in her little blue nightie to break our hearts. She stands there rubbing her eyes and asking how come Mommy and Daddy aren’t in bed. She’s had a bad dream and ran into their room for comfort but neither one of them was there.

“How come Uncle Sam is here?”

“He was working late and stopped by to say hello.”

“It’s dark out. How come he works when it’s dark?” Way too smart for us.

“I had to help a friend of mine find his dog.”

“We had a dog once. He ran away to be with his brothers and sisters.” Woofer had been hit by a truck. The saving lie parents become experts at.

Karen goes over and picks her up and says, “I’m going to put her back to bed, Sam.”

The temptation is to call the police. Our laughable chief of police, due to popular demand, had been summarily retired six months ago. His family owns and runs this town. But even they had to concede that he’d botched one too many cases. They’d imported a homicide detective from Peoria to take over the chief’s job. He was reported to be quiet and competent, quite the contrast to Cliffie Sykes, Jr., who’d dressed like Glenn Ford in Ford’s Western movies — khaki with a campaign hat, don’t you know — and who at his worst made even little children laugh.

I can call the station and ask for the three night cars to keep a cop eye out for Will in his red T-Bird. They’ll be happy to do it and they’ll likely find him without much problem. The trouble is, I don’t know where Will is or what he’s up to. Given everything that has happened tonight I have the feeling that much worse is possible. I’d been an H. P. Lovecraft fan in high school. I knew all about the dark gods and the enjoyment they take from destroying our lives.

“I took a trank,” Karen says when she comes back. “I probably shouldn’t have with the two drinks I had but right now I don’t give a damn.”

“I thought about calling the police.”

“Why don’t you?”

“He could be just driving around. He might not like being stopped by the cops.”

“Please, Sam. We need to find him. And right away.”

The call doesn’t take long. A helpful officer — the new Chief Foster has replaced all of Cliffie’s kin and buddies with officers who’d gone through the police academy and who didn’t think that forensics was for sissies — knows of Will and has seen the T-Bird around and will let all three cars know that they should be watching for him.

“That makes me feel better, Sam.”

“I should’ve done it earlier. I guess I’m just punchy.”

“You look exhausted.”

“I was in court at nine this morning, meaning I had to be in my office by seven doing paperwork. Same thing tomorrow.”

She is up and pecking me on the cheek. “I really appreciate you being here. You’re the best friend either of us has ever had.”

“You hear anything, call me.”

“Even if I wake you up?”

“Even if you wake me up.”

Sleep-hungry as hell, I head for my car.

4

When the phone rang on the small table next to my bed I wasn’t sure I had the energy to reach for it. Sleep was such a wonderful mistress and now I was being wrenched from her arms by some interloper. Then I realized that it might be Karen and I shot straight up and grabbed the receiver.

“Sam, this is Paul Foster down at the police station. I know this is one hell of a time to be calling anybody, but something’s come up I could use your help with.”

The window was pink and gold, dawn. I had to pee real bad. And Tasha the cat had appeared to rub her cool nose against my arm. And I was eyeing my Luckies with great desire.

But couldn’t these details be part of a dream?

Since when did the police chief of Black River Falls call on me for some help?

But dream or not, my presence was required.

“Yes, Chief.”

“I know you’re a good friend of Will Cullen’s and Will’s had a bit of trouble and I’d like to tell you about it.”

“Uh, could you tell me a little bit more?”

“I don’t blame you for wanting to know more but his wife Karen is here, too, and she needs a friend.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

I was.

Chief Foster had redecorated Cliffie’s old office. Instead of the John Wayne poster and framed photos of Cliffie all got up as Glenn Ford in various poses, the wall featured posters highlighting what it takes to be a competent police officer. A slight man, he was dressed in a summer-weight blue suit straight off the rack at Sears. I knew that because I had one just like it in a lighter blue. The thinning hair was combed from the right and the narrow, thin face showed intelligence and even reflection.

“I apologize for waking you up again, Sam, and please call me Paul.”

Different strokes, as the song said. The laid-back style; hell, the apologies and the sensible clothes — Cliffie would have shot him on sight. I didn’t like it much either. I don’t hate cops, I don’t love cops. But I do distrust cops. “Paul” invited the kind of intimacy that can be dangerous unless you happen to be another cop.

“Coffee?” He indicated a brewer on top of a gray metal bookshelf.

“Please.”

After I’d sat down and after he handed me my cup, he sat down, too, and said, “There’s a good possibility that Will Cullen murdered Steve Donovan last night.” Then, “And from everything I know about Cullen I’d say that it’s a pretty sad thing. I know he accidentally killed a little girl in Nam and has never really gotten over it. I was over there in ’68. One tour and back home. I had a couple of buddies who re-upped. They both got killed. I’m telling you this so you understand that I have some sympathy for your friend. But I’m also a law enforcement officer so I have to do my job.”

I’d been right to distrust him. Talk about a rush to judgment.

“Look, Chief, no offense, but you’re way down the road here. Way down. I’ve known Will most of my life. He did not kill anybody.”

He dismissed me. “I’d appreciate it if you’d let me do my job.”

He started doing his job by telling me what he knew so far. Donovan had been drinking most of the night at a place called “Cherie’s,” an upscale roadhouse near the county line. Foster had talked to the manager of the place already this morning. He’d been there all night and said that Donovan had been very drunk but not belligerent. He got even worse when Will went out there and tried to talk to him. That sure as hell hadn’t helped. They tried to talk Donovan into letting somebody drive him home but he got so pissed off the manager finally caved in.

As yet there were no witnesses to what happened next, or to what Foster assumed happened next. The place was so crowded so early last night that Donovan had been forced to park in a poorly lighted spot near the forest that ran up to Cherie’s property line. When Foster looked over the scene this morning he found that both of Donovan’s rear tires had been slashed. Foster’s surmise was that when Donovan had drunkenly bent over to check on the tires somebody had smashed him over the head with a tire iron.

“How do you know it was a tire iron?”

“I’ll get to that. Anyway, a jogger found the body. He cuts through the parking lot every morning to get on a nature trail about a quarter mile from there.

“Now the tire iron. About a block from the roadhouse there’s a small rest stop. Will pulled in there. One of our patrol cars saw this Thunderbird sitting there and remembered that you’d called about it last night. He checked on the driver who he guessed was sleeping one off. He found the tire iron on the back seat. Bloody, with hair on it. The tire iron is in the forensic lab right now. The driver wasn’t responsive in any way. The officer took him to the ER, where he’s being examined.”

I did my best not to look stunned by his claim about the tire iron. The back seat. Hair and blood. How could it get any worse?

“He was just in the ER last night.”

“Yes, they mentioned that.”

“I don’t believe he killed Donovan.”

“Neither does his wife.”

“But you believe he did.”

“You have to admit the circumstances could lead to that conclusion.”

“Circumstances. Rather than evidence.”

When I didn’t say anything more, he said, “Pretty damn convincing evidence.” Then, “You work for Judge Whitney as well as yourself?”

“Yes. You’ve met her?”

“She invited me to have dinner at her club the other night. She’s quite the woman. Was she really married four times?”

I nodded.

“And she used to play golf with Dick Nixon and she knows Leonard Bernstein well enough to call him ‘Lenny’?”

I nodded again. He was changing the subject. I said, “Will didn’t kill Donovan.”

“I guess the record’s stuck. I say there’s a more-than-even chance he did. And I have some evidence to back up what I say. You, on the other hand, just keep saying he’s innocent, but you don’t have any evidence at all.”

“I haven’t had time to find any.”

His lips thinned. “His wife is waiting for you down the hall, McCain.”

Her package of Winstons had been ripped apart. I guessed she’d tried to open them but they wouldn’t cooperate so instead she took all her anger out on the trim red package. Two cigarettes lay broken like snapped legs.

The room was twice the size of a cell. A wooden table and four wooden chairs comprised the furnishings. On a metal bookcase sat a tape recorder and a stack of Scotch recording tapes.

“I’ve never said the word ‘fuck’ in my life but I’ve been saying it to myself ever since Paul called.” Then, “Listen to me. The man arrested my husband for a murder he didn’t commit and I’m calling him Paul. I should be calling him a fucker or something like that.”

The relentlessly fastidious Karen was gone and in its place sat a disheveled woman whose loveliness had been robbed by lack of sleep, exasperation, and fear. There was a fresh stain on the right cuff of her sand-colored blouse. Probably from the coffee she was drinking now. She had affected a chignon but hairs sprang out like wings everywhere. She was without makeup. She’d probably been too upset to try an operation that delicate.

“At least they got rid of the death penalty in this state,” she whispered.

I reached out and hugged her to me. I put my hand on the side of her face to bring her in even closer. I kissed the top of her head. She needed to cry and she did.

It was several minutes before she was able to gather herself and separate from me. She nodded down at her sundered cigarette pack and laughed tearily. “I guess I showed them who’s boss.”

“They had it coming.”

“If you ever have a pack that gives you trouble, let me handle them.” Then, “He really didn’t do it, Sam.”

Our fervent mantra.

“And now,” she sighed, “they’re going to put him back on a mental ward. The chief of staff at the hospital here says their ward is sufficient for him and Lindsey Shepard, that psychologist he’s been seeing, agrees. They have some fancy terminology for it, but what it comes down to is that he’s in some kind of withdrawal and needs to be watched twenty-four hours a day.” Then, “I want to do something, Sam. But I don’t know what.”

“I need to find out more about Steve Donovan.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“If Will didn’t kill him, who did?”

“He had enemies. I don’t think he was ever faithful to his wife. A man named Thad Owens caught Donovan making out with Thad’s wife and he dumped her because of it. I know of at least two times when his wife was going to leave him. And then his business partner and he had a big falling-out.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I knew Donovan liked the ladies but I didn’t know that his wife had threatened to leave him and I didn’t know anything about his business partner.”

“But won’t Paul be doing the same thing?”

“He’s a policeman and he’ll go at it his way. But I grew up here. And I have a source he doesn’t. Kenny Thibodeau.”

“I know this sounds snobbish but I’m so glad he’s not a beatnik anymore.”

Given the situation, I felt guilty about laughing. “I don’t think anybody’s been called a ‘beatnik’ in several years.”

“Will always says I’m a square. But you know what I mean about Kenny. He dresses like a normal person and he’s married and they have that sweet little girl. It doesn’t even bother me that he writes those dirty books anymore. I even bought one at a used-book sale last year. I was embarrassed and the woman who sold it winked at me when I put it in my purse, but I enjoyed it. I thought it would just be filth but it was a really good story and it wasn’t all that sexy anyway. Kenny’s a good writer.”

“And because he writes that column for the newspaper, people tell him things all the time.”

“That’s another thing I’m happy for him about. He really makes the history of this town interesting.”

“And people confide in him because of it. It’s weird. They tell him what’s going on now, too. So he’s a good source.”

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms out like a comely kitten taking a break. “Umm. This was nice.”

“What was?”

“Just now. Talking about what you’re going to do. And talking about Kenny. For a little while there I forgot all about where we are and why we’re here. I was so far gone I even started thinking about what I was going to make Peggy Ann for lunch. But she’s at my sister’s until further notice. Right now, for a few days at least, I’m afraid I won’t be much of a mother. I’ll just sit around and brood.”

I’d been distracted by all this, too. All too soon I would need to be in court. While I should have done more prep, I was confident I could handle it. The insurance company would likely settle before the judge appeared. They’d made two offers in the past two weeks but we’d declined them. I was pretty sure this would be an offer we could accept.

“I was just sitting here waiting for you, Sam. I guess I’ll go back home now.”

As we left the station, she pecked me on the cheek again, squeezed my hand, and then set out for a home without child or husband. Or maybe even future.

5

I got Jamie Newton in trade. When I explain this to people I frequently get a lewd smile, especially after they’ve seen her.

It happened this way. Her father is an argumentative freelance home repairman who got it in his head that his neighbor had illegally seized a portion of the Newton backyard. He came to me to set up a lawsuit because I have a deserved reputation for taking on cases that others won’t, i.e., they don’t pay enough. Or, all too often, not at all.

Cam Newton slapped down a hundred-dollar bill on my desk so I said I’d help him. I also said that our chance of winning was slim owing to the fact that the amount of land he wanted ceded back didn’t amount to much more than a few yards. He naturally said that didn’t matter, that it was the principle of the thing.

Then he told me the real truth, that his neighbor had insulted Cam’s wife one night by smirking that she was a “hefty gal.”

We lost the case and Cam lost his money — “lost” as in he couldn’t find the other five hundred dollars he owed me. I guess the dealer must have just given him that new Dodge.

He then proposed that his high school-aged daughter would “work off” his debt. I learned quickly not to use that phrase. The smirkers did everything but light up and ring bells the few times I said it.

The fact that Jamie couldn’t type, answer phones, operate the Xerox, take dictation, or make tolerable coffee (hers was almost but not quite as bad as mine) didn’t make her any less sweet. Though she dressed like the teenage girls on paperback crime novels — tight blouses and skirts, bobby socks and saddle shoes — her naïveté was both endearing and sometimes dangerous.

The latter applied to her choice of boyfriends. Turk was the leader of a local surf band much like the Beach Boys. Since Iowa was a landlocked state, the resemblance to the great Brian Wilson ensemble was strained at best. And as an artist he needed free time with his band for their inevitable — according to him — appearance on American Bandstand which would coincide with their album hitting numero uno which would coincide with the launching of their first world tour.

She believed all this and was willing to hand over half her paycheck to support Turk’s absolute certain triumph around the world. I knew better than to suggest that she might reconsider Turk as a worthy mate. She got married and got pregnant. Turk was last heard from working in a car wash in Davenport. He’d left after he realized that being married to a sweet, wonderful young woman with a child just got in the way of running Iowa’s only surf band.

Motherhood changed her. She managed to complete secretarial courses at a local business college and learned to be an excellent secretary. She even went through the filing cabinets she’d wildly misarranged years ago. Now I didn’t have to look for Merle Hennings in F or K or Z. He was right there in H, God love ’im.

Her style in clothes had changed, too. With that freckled country-girl face, so open and pretty, and that body nothing short of a feed sack could hide, she now looked like the kind of secretary you saw in the skyscrapers of Chicago. Very uptown, right down to the newly affected blond pageboy. She can afford this look because one of my clients is the best department store in town. I’m their security adviser. I get a large discount on what I buy there, and so by agreement does Jamie. I also give her a “clothing allowance.” Despite the fact that she doesn’t feel “ready” to date again, I want her to meet a decent guy who can convince her that not all males are like the vanishing Turk, whose name I never understood because he’s black Irish.

She was typing as I walked into my one-room office that rests in the rear of a single-story building that houses in front a Laundromat. Not to worry. The longest any business has lasted up front is eleven months. The Laundromat has been here five months. Somewhere there is a moving van circling and circling and circling, waiting to descend on the Laundromat when it folds. Maybe that XXX bookstore will find a home yet.

“I know Will didn’t kill anybody, Sam, even though everybody I talk to says he did. They keep talking about how he was in that mental hospital those times. I had a cousin who was in a mental hospital for about three months a few years ago and she’s fine now.”

“That’s all you have to say is ‘mental hospital’ and he doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Some people in this town are narrow-minded.”

“It isn’t just this town. It’s worldwide.”

“Really? Everywhere?”

“Just say ‘mental hospital’ and it doesn’t matter if you’re speaking Chinese or Spanish, you’ve convicted the guy.”

She just frowned. “Anyway, I’ve laid everything out for you. For court.”

And so she had. About all that was left for me to do was walk to the county courthouse. Then the phone rang and it was for me.

Greg Egan had served in Nam in 1966. For only eight weeks. As a grunt he’d been in some terrible fighting. So terrible that today he was confined to a wheelchair due to the fact that his legs had been surgically removed just below the knees. In some respects he was the conscience of a small group of vets who’d had physical and mental problems in assimilating back home. The wife he’d left behind him when he’d gone to Nam was still behind him. She drove him to the VA three times a week. They were starting the prosthetic process.

“Hi, Sam. I figured you’d know what was going on. All I hear from the news is that Will is a cold-blooded murderer who spent two terms in the bughouse. The murder stuff, that’s got to be bullshit, right?”

“I’m sure he’s innocent, Greg, but there are some extenuating circumstances.” I explained the situation as quickly as I could.

“Because that asshole Donovan beat him up? Will is one of the nicest guys I’ve ever known.”

“I agree, but as much as I’d like to, I can’t blame the police for making certain assumptions at this point.”

“Think if Cliffie was involved.” Then, “I know you gotta run. Five of the guys called me in the last fifteen minutes. I said I’d call you and see what was going on. Anything we can do, you know you got it, Sam. I don’t have any legs but I’ve still got a pretty good mind.”

I wanted to say you didn’t need to say that, Greg, but he was used to people pitying him without quite taking him seriously as a human being. I wondered if Senator O’Shay ever realized things like that.

“I’ll keep you posted, Greg.”

“Say hi to Karen for us. A very sweet lady.”

“She sure is that.”

On the walk to the courthouse I didn’t think about Will or Karen, I thought about O’Shay. What might have been a political embarrassment for him had been turned into a victory. O’Shay would get to rail again about the “sickness” of the country — and what better example of that sickness than the murder of a brave soldier, a man he’d favored for Congress. Soldiers never “died,” they were always “cut down in their prime.” Apparently he was unaware that men as old as fifty-five were fighting and dying over there, too.

A press conference was inevitable. He hadn’t been scheduled to return to Washington for a few days so he’d likely stage a splashy performance here. If I were one of his aides I would suggest he stage it down in the basement of the funeral parlor where they prepared the corpses for burial. But that would be too much of a reminder about what the good old president Nixon and his de facto vice president Henry Kissinger were really up to, wouldn’t it?

Then I started thinking about Will again. I was so tight and angry that I took a pit stop in the john on the second floor of the courthouse. I splashed chilly water on my face and since I was alone — I’d carefully checked — I got down and did twenty push-ups. My max. These gave me a sheen of sweat and for some reason sweating usually relaxed me. I wanted to represent my client as well as I could. I was pretty confident.

I wished I was as confident about Will.

6

In the late 1950s a large number of boys wanted to be James Dean or Elvis or maybe Ricky Nelson. My friend Kenny Thibodeau and I had different aspirations. Kenny wanted to be Jack Kerouac and I wanted to be the actor Robert Ryan.

Kenny did something about his aspirations. If he couldn’t be Kerouac, he could at least meet him. And so in the summer of 1958 Kenny drove to San Francisco to meet Mr. Kerouac. Kenny spent several days hanging in and around City Lights Bookstore where all the important Beat writers hung out. He did meet the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also happened to own the bookstore, and he did see, among others, such Beat writers and poets as Gregory Corso and even the famous Allen Ginsberg. But no Kerouac.

A few days before he was to leave, Kenny read some of his poems to some tourists. A man who’d been listening came up to him afterward and offered him a job writing what we’d called at Catholic school “right-handers” (some imagination required here), books with brazenly sexy covers and titles but with almost prudishly written “erotic” scenes inside. Kenny was expected to write one book a month for four hundred dollars.

The man gave Kenny a cardboard box full of what he called his “product” and after shaking hands as Kenny was about to depart said, “Kid, think lesbian.”

At the moment Kenny was shoving not one of his monthly paperbacks but a magazine called Real Man’s Adventure across the table to me.

The mostly naked women with bullwhips had swastikas all over the tatters of their skirts and shirts. A rugged American-hero type was tied to a pole. The lashes had slashed his bare chest mercilessly. “Nazi Gal Killers Made Me Their Sex Slave.” I thumbed my way to the contents page to see what pen name he’d slapped on this one. “Burt Scaggs.” Manly, very manly.

“Ten cents a word. Eight thousand words — the second lead in the magazine — and I did it in two afternoons. And they want more from me.”

I asked what I thought was the logical question. “If he’s their sex slave why are they beating him?”

“They’re sadists. All Nazis were sadists.”

“Wow, all this and historical accuracy.”

He smiled. Kenny had a good novel in him. He’d shown me the part he’d written. I truly believed — and I hoped he did, too — that he would finish the book in a year or so. He was a hell of a good storyteller and a number of his soft-core novels really had strongly developed characters.

We were sitting in the café where the town’s lawyers hung out before and after court. I’d won the case for my client. Kenny had agreed to meet me here.

“You know what time it is.”

“Yeah, I do.”

Melissa Thibodeau was in danger of becoming the most photographed little girl in the state. But she was so damned pretty and sweet, who cared?

The new photographs showed her in her new bonnet and Sunday dress. I did the expected oohing and aahing, but it was sincere oohing and aahing. I was Melissa’s godfather.

“She’s beautiful. Thanks for letting me see them.”

I handed them back and then he spoke the mantra. “No way anybody’s going to convince me that Will Cullen ever killed anybody.”

“I know. That’s what most people I’ve talked to say. But when you put it together as it stands right now you see why Foster thinks he’s got a case.”

“I hear average citizens call him ‘Paul.’”

“Yeah, I don’t know about that. It’s like a political gimmick. It creates a false sense of security. He’s a cop. You can only trust cops so far.”

“Wow. You sound like some guys I know who drop too much acid. Mr. Paranoid. Maybe he’s just a nice guy.” He leaned forward and dragged his billfold out of his right back pocket.

I went through everything again; the kicker was the tire iron.

“Yeah, I see what you mean. But it’s not Will. He’s just not like that.”

“No, he isn’t. But I need to move on this. I don’t know enough about Donovan to really get going on checking him out. I need to spend time in the library, for one thing. And Karen told me a couple of things. I guess he and his business partner had a falling-out.”

“Yeah, big time. Donovan forced him out. Or his new partner did, this Lon Anders.”

“That’s been proven?”

“Yeah. The old business partner, Al Carmichael, dropped into this depression and finally just said screw it. He let Donovan buy him out for pennies on the dollar. He lives in Pittsburgh now and works for an outfit named ChemLab. I’ve known Carmichael for a long time. You remember him?”

“Right. Al. He had that cool racing bike when we were in seventh grade. Then he went to public school.”

I told him about the angry husband Karen had alluded to.

“Thad Owens. That happened two, three years ago. He caught Donovan and the wife making out at a party. The wife broke down and told him all about her affair with Donovan. He’s remarried and could care less about Donovan now. He’s got a newborn with the second wife and enjoys himself. I run into him at the supermarket every once in a while.”

“Well, I can scratch off those two.”

Kenny touched the knot in his tie. Yes, tie. These days instead of looking like the comic beatnik Maynard G. Krebs of the late lamented Dobie Gillis show, Kenny affected button-down shirts, chinos, and cordovan penny loafers. His weekly newspaper column gave him some real prominence. There were still people who complained about his books but nonetheless he was asked to talk to groups as respectable as Kiwanis and Rotary. “Don’t worry, I’ve got somebody for you.”

“Who?”

“I’ve heard Anders is as much of a player as Donovan was. And he’s a big pilot. Was a fighter in Nam in the mid-sixties and now has his own big-ass plane. I’ve also been told that lately Donovan and Anders had been arguing pretty violently behind closed doors. But nobody could figure out why. I guess one day Anders came to work with a black eye and wouldn’t come out of his office until just about everybody had left that night.”

“Then they really weren’t getting along.”

“I guess Donovan started hanging around his cousin again to the point that some people thought the cousin was a bodyguard. Your old friend Teddy Byrnes.”

“You’re kidding me. I thought he was still doing time.”

“Been out for a month.”

Teddy Byrnes had been a member of the Night Devils, a biker gang associated with at least three murders over the years. They’d started after the big war when gangs like them came to prominence. In those days Marlon Brando in The Wild One was their patron saint. But there was a difference between movie violence and real violence. They had escaped punishment for their suspected murders but they had been busted for numerous burglaries, assaults, and armed robberies. Their legend terrified people. Whenever they roared into a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon the picnickers fled.

Teddy Byrnes had been a punk among punks. A pretty-boy psychopath who enjoyed beating people. No guns or knives for him. Just beating them. He’d been in our class for three years but got expelled and went to public school. One beating in particular convinced the county attorney that he had Byrnes nailed, but the victim suddenly declined to testify. Then Byrnes’s luck changed. He severely beat a man outside a tavern one rainy night. What he didn’t know was that a police officer who’d been checking doors in the downtown area just happened to have turned the near corner and was walking toward Byrnes and his victim. The officer saw everything.

Then Byrnes went looking for a lawyer....

That morning five years ago I’d been prepping for an important case when Jamie said “Oh.” There was a disturbed tone in her voice, a mixture of shock and surprise. When I looked up from my papers I saw what that “Oh” was all about. Standing in my doorway was none other than Teddy Byrnes. Jamie had recognized him. A whole lot of people knew who he was. He reveled in it.

He wore a white shirt, blue slacks, carefully tousled hair, and a big black Irisher smile. “They said I should get the best and so here I am, Counselor.”

I would have been flattered if I hadn’t known the truth. He was out on bail and looking for legal representation. None of the other firms in town would touch him. The public defender he’d had said that he feared for his life. Well-known legal expert Teddy Byrnes hadn’t liked the public defender they had come up with and had started shoving him around and making threats.

“No thanks, Byrnes.”

But this was a movie moment for him and he played it through. “You know the word I like, Counselor? ‘Sumptuous.’ I learned that by reading a lot of your friend Thibodeau’s books. That surprise you, that bad-ass Teddy Byrnes is a reader? Well I am. I even read Hemingway sometimes. I think you could use that in my defense. That I read a lot. That I’m not this terrible hood people need to be afraid of.” Byrnes was telling the truth. High IQ and a big reader.

“But I forgot what I was talking about. ‘Sumptuous.’ I see something sumptuous right now.” He shifted his gaze to Jamie. She was breathing nervously and staring straight ahead. His legend could do that to you. “I’ve been to every law firm in town but none of them has got a little gal like you do, Counselor.”

The “Counselor” reference had triggered a memory I could not bring into focus. And then it was there. Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear, based on one of my favorite novels by John D. MacDonald, whom I’d been reading since sixth grade. Throughout the movie Mitchum mockingly refers to attorney Gregory Peck as “Counselor.”

Teddy Byrnes was a movie fan.

Then he did it. Advanced quickly on Jamie. He put his hands on her shoulders and was trying to spin her around in her desk chair so she’d face him fully. She screamed.

I didn’t think. I acted.

He was taller, thicker, stronger but I hit him in the side of the face anyway. And in the haze of those few seconds he landed at least six or seven punches on my head and chest and stomach, Jamie screaming all the time.

As he charged out of the office he said: “We’ll meet again, you little asshole.”

Now, sitting with Kenny...

“Teddy Byrnes,” I said.

“Guess he’s meaner than ever.”

“That’s hard to imagine. How he could be meaner.”

“I’d be damned careful of him, Sam. Just stick to Lon Anders.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds like a very good idea. Just sticking to Lon Anders.”

My bones still remembered the impact of Byrnes’s fists.

7

The Rexall drugstore was notable in my life for a number of reasons. It was where their metal paperback rack provided a good share of my reading material, which ran to crime fiction of the Gold Medal Books variety. I’d grown up on writers such as Peter Rabe, Charles Williams, Vin Packer and Richard Prather. Not to mention Mickey Spillane. The sandwiches were very good, the coffee was strong and hot, and one of the sweetest, prettiest girls in the entire valley had worked there since we’d graduated from high school. No college for Mary. She had to work to support her father, who was struggling with cancer.

She was always too modest to admit it but people liked to tell her that she looked very much like the actress Jean Simmons, that kind of gentle but riveting beauty. And she did even in the yellow uniform she wore every day.

A man in a suit sitting a couple of stools from me said, “Mary, hon, keep the radio on, will you? I want to hear the senator’s press conference.”

Knowing my political tastes, she glanced at me and said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Costello. It doesn’t start for another ten minutes yet.”

She brought me coffee black and a small glazed donut. What she didn’t bring me was her usual smile and I didn’t blame her.

“Hi, Sam. How’ve you been?”

“Pretty good until last night.”

“Poor Will and Karen.”

At that Mr. Costello, who owned the haberdashery, snapped, “How about poor Steve Donovan?”

“You’re right, Mr. Costello. Of course, poor Steve Donovan. It’s just that I don’t believe that Will could kill anybody. Sam and I grew up with him.”

“I know,” Mr. Costello snapped, “in the Hills.”

We were both surprised by his anger. Red tinted Mary’s lovely face. I said, “Yeah, everybody who grew up in the Hills is a born killer.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you meant.”

“Drugs, hippies, Negroes wanting everything for free — that’s what the Hills has turned into these days. And whether you want to admit it or not, McCain, it wasn’t any better in the old days. Now, Mary, turn that radio up so we don’t miss anything.”

After she turned the volume up, she walked back to me, “The girls leave for three weeks in another week.”

“That’s right. Wes has them for three weeks.” Wes Lindstrom was Mary’s ex. His family had owned the Rexall for years but when he’d dumped Mary for the final time — he’d had two trial runs previously — he sold the place and went to live with his new bride in Louisiana. Given his personality, he was probably going to set up a plantation and kidnap him some slaves.

“I’ve been thinking, Mary—”

Costello was intently trying to listen while intently pretending not to.

“I’ll call you later.”

“I’d like that, Sam. And so would the girls.”

The relationship was just so damned entangled. I had been in love with the beautiful Pamela Forrest from fourth grade until just a few years ago. But she’d never been in love with me. And Mary had been in love with me for just about as long, though I think she really did fall in love with Lindstrom after a few years of going out with him. The complications of all this confused me; I’d always been told by my friends — and my parents — that Mary was the girl I should marry. If it was vanity, as my mom had told me one day long ago, Mary was just as beautiful as Pamela and maybe even more so, and there was no doubt who would make the better wife and mother.

Mary was the sensible choice and since when did reckless buccaneers like Sam McCain settle for “sensible.”

So of course I’d told Mary that maybe we should take a little break till I could figure out what was going on. She confused things even more by not reacting with anger or self-pity or even sadness. Just that quiet, dignified Mary acceptance.

“We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled program so that we can bring you the following press conference with Senator O’Shay, who is speaking from the steps of the county courthouse.”

Senator O’Shay: “This is a sad day not only for me personally but for the entire nation. Our country is in crisis and we need the kind of leadership and patriotism that young men like Steve Donovan can bring to our Congress. But Steve was cut down before he had the chance, cut down by the sickness that infects our nation more and more every day. So before I take questions I want to offer my sincere condolences to Valerie Donovan. The only satisfaction that we can have now is knowing that the person who murdered young Steve will spend his life in prison. Like many of you I would have preferred the death penalty, but the Democrats in our state legislature chose to encourage lawbreakers by doing away with it. Now I’ll take questions.”

I shook my head and said it loud so Costello would be sure to hear it: “Yeah, if there’s one thing O’Shay’s known for, it’s telling the truth.”

I reached over and touched Mary’s arm. “Let’s get together tonight.”

Then I left before I got all that patented O’Shay truth-telling inflicted on me.

8

Zoom was a motorcycle shop located in the hills. While they had a few new bikes there they mostly sold very reconditioned ones to the lower-income men and teenagers of the Hills. The owner and chief mechanic was Tim Duffy, who’d done a stretch in Anamosa for stealing cars and selling them to a chop shop in Des Moines. I’d arranged for him to talk to some state bureau boys — name some names — and thus gotten him a sentence reduced to only two and a half years with good behavior. He was now the father of three and an usher at church.

He loved getting greasy. He’d told me that once with a big proud grin, and since he’d been greasy when he told me, I believed him. Today was no exception. T-shirt, jeans, motorcycle boots all glazed with grease as he came walking out of the large garage that sat next to his small showroom and office. He was a country-western fan and so was I if all the songs were sung by Johnny Cash. His mechanics had similar tastes, as you could hear from the twang that bounced off the walls.

“Hey, man, how you doing?”

“Pretty good until last night.”

Short, lean with the puggest of noses, he hadn’t been cut out for a life of crime. His parole officer told me that he’d never seen anybody turn his life around as absolutely as Duffy had.

“Donovan getting killed. Everybody thinks my friend Will Cullen did it. But I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Oh, right. That’s all anybody’s been talking about all morning. Every hour on the hour when the news comes on, my men stop working so they can hear it. It’s a pretty big deal, Donovan getting ready to run for Congress and all.”

“You ever know Donovan?”

“A little out of my league socially, Sam.”

“Yeah, mine, too.”

“But I have a feeling I know why you’re here. It’s because of Teddy Byrnes and him being Donovan’s bodyguard.”

“A lot of his gang gets their work done here.”

“They don’t hassle me and I don’t hassle them.”

“I just wonder if you’re picking up anything about Byrnes and Donovan.”

“Well, I know that Byrnes was somebody Donovan stayed away from for a long time. I think Donovan tried to help him a couple of times but gave up. And I don’t blame him. Byrnes’s first stretch was when I was doing mine. Then he did that second one and he just got out. You had to be pretty careful around him. It was obvious he had something wrong with him. Even the real tough guys walked wide of him most of the time. He loved beating on people. I was surprised he got out of there alive.”

“I thought he was so tough.”

“Yeah, but the other bad guys, man, they’re only gonna take so much shit. I think there was something in the wind, in fact, when I was getting out. About taking care of him, I mean. But it never happened, I guess.” A laugh. “You know he’s a mama’s boy, don’t you?”

“A mama’s boy?”

“Never married, picks up a chick once in a while, but to me it’s mostly for appearances. This may not be true but one of the gang told me he sends his mother a card on Valentine’s Day. And he’s always lived at home. I guess a lot of the prisoners made fun of him behind his back. He had a big photo of his mom on his cell wall while the other guys had girlfriends and wives. Guy he bunked with made a joke about it once and Byrnes broke his arm. Just snapped it in two.”

“He’s crazier than I thought.” Then, “You hear anything about Byrnes and Donovan having a falling-out or anything recently?”

From a back pocket he took a greasy rag and wiped his long, greasy hands on it. Then he took a cigarette from behind his ear and fired it up with a metal lighter that clanked when he flipped the top back. “I haven’t heard anything specific but I wondered how long it would last.”

“Why’s that?”

“With that temper of Byrnes’s, he’s not one to take orders real well. There was a joke going around in the joint that someday he’d go off and punch out the warden. I never thought it was much of a joke. Byrnes just never took to doing anything except exactly what he wanted to do.”

Somebody called him on the loudspeaker. “Be back in a sec.”

There was a phone booth on the edge of his property. I went over and called the office.

Three calls: Kenny, Karen, dry cleaning that I hadn’t picked up for two weeks. Then I said, “Jamie, please call the Psychological Partners and see if I can get in to see Lindsey Shepard as soon as possible. I’ll call you back when I’m leaving here. I’m at ZOOM right now.”

“My daughter loves saying that word. We drove past there one time and she’s been saying it ever since.”

I gave her the number of the pay phone.

Duffy was waiting for me.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Tim.”

“So what you want is for me to ask around?”

“I’d appreciate it.” Kenny Thibodeau was usually the only faux stool pigeon I needed but I didn’t think Kenny hung out with too many biker gangs.

“Byrnes takes his bike over to Len Gibbons’s shop. He used to go out with Len’s sister, only time he ever got sort of interested in a lady. And big surprise — she’s still alive. I guess Byrnes loves smacking the gals around.”

“One more reason I want him for president.” Then, “I’d appreciate any help you can give me.”

I pushed my hand out to shake but he held his right hand up and pointed to it with his left. “You don’t really want to shake hands with me, now do you, Sam?”

Just then his name was called on the loudspeaker again.

“Thanks, Tim.”

“Thanks to you, you mean. You did me a hell of a good turn and I’ve never been able to pay you back. I’ll see what I can find out.”

I needed to give Jamie a few more minutes to make her call to Lindsey Shepard. I sat sideways in my car with the door open and smoked. I thought about Mary. I’d always loved her, that was the strange thing. And after the first long-ago time we made love I found her endlessly erotic. But there had been this almost psychotic need for Pamela for so long....

The return call took longer than I’d assumed it would.

“She was in session and the woman who was helping me didn’t know if Lindsey was going out for lunch. Lindsey said that if you could come right now she could give you twenty minutes or so.”

“Great. Thanks, Jamie.”

The name Lindsey Shepard put me in mind of a glacial Grace Kelly blonde but she was instead a winsome little thing who would look young even in her sixties and seventies.

She wore a red blouse with nubby red buttons and a black skirt. She had winsome legs, too, and tiny feet in tiny black flats. Lindsey Shepard, High School Shrink.

She seemed too diminutive for the enormous Victorian house that she and her husband had turned into a fashionable site for both their practice and their living quarters.

“I’m glad to know that Will has you for a friend, Mr. McCain,” she said. “But I really can’t help you. I guess I’m old-school, but when I was in grad school my favorite instructor always said that one rule was absolute. We aren’t to discuss confidential information with anyone unless we feel that a patient is a danger to himself or to someone else.”

“You don’t consider Will a danger to himself at least?”

“Not enough that I want to talk about him with anyone else.”

“Not even the police?”

Her office was a rain forest of heavy plants and an art museum of Chagall and Impressionists. Contradictory styles of art but it worked. From her wide, square window you could see in the distance the limestone cliffs above the river. Peaceful.

“I care about Will, Mr. McCain.”

“Sam. Please.”

“I care about Will as I do all my patients. Especially the vets. Very few people seem to appreciate what these young men have been through and the price they’ve paid. And as for the police, Sam... we’re social friends with the chief. I guess he expected that I’d pretty much open my files on Will to him but I didn’t. He was very disappointed. He even tried to get my husband Randall to help him. Randall saw Will for three months before I did. Then Randall decided that maybe how I approached things might be more productive for Will. But Randall wouldn’t help the chief, either. Foster looked angry when he left here earlier.”

The smile was pure imp. “Randall tells people we arm-wrestle to see who has the better approach. We actually do argue about it sometimes. My husband has a great sense of humor.”

I’d come here hoping she’d give me the kind of information that would buttress the case I was making that Will was an unlikely killer. The only solace I had was that Chief Foster hadn’t gotten anywhere, either.

Her phone line buzzed.

“Excuse me a minute.” Then, “Oh, sure, Randall. Please do.”

After hanging up she said, “Randall would like to stop in and say hello.”

I nodded.

Within a minute there was a knock and then a tall, professorial, not unhandsome man with a Vandyke beard and an imposing bearing appeared in the doorway. Both dark hair and beard were streaked with gray. The blue three-piece suit had to be Brooks Brothers. He moved with the ease of a politician comfortable with the meet-and-greet. The hand that clasped mine was firm but not inclined to show off. He was probably eight years or so older than his wife but in very good shape.

“We’re very sorry about Will. We know how close you two are. He’s talked to both of us about you in sessions. I just wanted to let you know Lindsey and I will do anything we can to help Will and his family without violating our professional ethics.”

“I know Karen appreciates that. In fact she appreciates everything you’ve both done for Will.”

“The wives become stress victims themselves,” he said. “The man who went overseas is rarely the same man who comes back.”

Car horns; a few shouts. Both sounded vulgar on the reticent air of the Victorian house.

Randall Shepard walked over to the window and looked out. “They’ve been here twice with cameras already. I’m very much a liberal but I can see why people get annoyed with the press. The intrusiveness.” He turned back and gave me a smile he’d bought at a store. “People hear this story and they think we’re all snake-oil peddlers. It discourages people from coming here. People really do need to come here.”

“Randall’s right. There are so many people we could potentially help. But bad publicity doesn’t help.”

“Well, right now the only person I’m concerned about is Will,” I said.

“Of course,” Randall said. “And we feel the same way.”

Lindsey checked her watch. “I’m afraid I’ve got another session in ten minutes.” To Randall, “Honey, would you ask Myra to get me something edible from the fridge and get it up here fast?”

“Sure will.”

Another handshake.

Then he did one of the damndest things I’ve ever seen. He gave me a thumbs-up. The beard, the suit, the slight air of stuffiness, the position in the community — I didn’t expect it from somebody like him. From Kenny maybe or from one of my clients or from Nick who worked on my car. But not this guy. I wanted him to stay the comfortable stereotype of the somber shrink. You don’t want your MD coming in with drinking straws sticking out of his ears.

She was up and moving toward me now, too, as the door closed and Randall went to order her something edible from the fridge. She put her childlike hand in mine and said, “I’m sure this is going to work out all right. I hate all this pop psychology garbage about ‘keeping a positive attitude’ but I think this is a case where we need to do it. For Will’s sake as well as ours.”

This was pure rote, nine out of ten of her patients getting it at least once. But ironically I needed to hear it. Sometimes cornball works.

Then she got me to the door in seconds and said to tell Karen to call anytime she wanted or needed to talk.

I left with a full understanding of why both Will and Karen preferred this place to the VA.

9

International electronics was a handsome white two-story building located in a wooded area that had only started being developed a few years ago. This was the distribution and business center. The factories shipped everything here. By the time he’d been drafted Donovan had steered the company to becoming a major local employer. The company turned out a variety of products, but its mainstay was stereophonic speakers for the very high end — the real audiophiles.

He and his longtime friend Al Carmichael had been music fanatics since grade school, always tampering with record players to get better sounds. As young men they got serious and created speakers that became the standard worldwide.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the business over the years but did hear from time to time that their market share was thinning due to both domestic and foreign competition. I do remember that there were layoffs a few years ago. But then there was talk that the company had stabilized and the layoffs had ended. The figure I remembered was that the downturn had cut their work force by about twenty percent.

Even with Donovan gone the business was running full force. The two parking lots were crowded and the loading docks were busy. I parked in Visitors and noticed two special parking spots. One was marked Donovan. One was marked Anders. The latter was filled with a brand-new silver Porsche. I went inside.

Busy in here, too. People with papers hurrying left and right. A long desk where a prim but attractive middle-aged woman sat. She wore a pewter-colored blouse that she filled nicely. A pair of pince-nez rested enviably on her bosom. She was so programmed that she couldn’t help smiling even on the bereavement watch for her boss.

There was only one way I could make this work. I needed to be brazen. It wasn’t my style and a dump truck was pouring vats of acid into my stomach. And the sweat wasn’t from the eighty-six-degree heat.

“May I help you?”

“I’d like to see Mr. Anders.”

“You do realize what’s happened to our founder, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’m very sorry. That’s why I’m here to speak to Mr. Anders.”

“They were not only coworkers. They were best friends. I can’t imagine what Lon — Mr. Anders — is going though.”

“But he is here. I just saw his car.”

She’d admirably kept her irritation in check until now. “May I ask what your name is?”

“Sam McCain.”

“And what would your business be with Mr. Anders?”

“Will Cullen is my client. That’s what I’d like to see Mr. Anders about.”

She leaned most attractively back in her chair and said, “Is this some kind of joke? You represent the man who murdered Mr. Donovan and you want to see Mr. Anders?”

“Afraid that’s the case.”

She sat up straight again. “Well, I won’t let you.”

“Of course you will. Your job description includes informing your employers who is here to see them. You don’t decide if they see me; that’s their decision. Now please inform Mr. Anders that I’m here.”

“He’s a very good-sized man and he has a very bad temper.”

“Then I’ve been warned and I appreciate it. Now please tell him I’m here.” I really liked her perfume. She was probably ten years older than me but that didn’t bother me at all.

“You certainly have your gall,” she said as she leaned over to finger the proper button. “I’m so very sorry to disturb you, Mr. Anders, but there’s a man here who insists on seeing you.”

“Who the hell would be bothering me on a day like this? What’s his name?”

“He says it’s Sam McCain.”

There was a considerable pause. “I can’t believe this.”

“I can’t either. I was even considering calling the police and not even telling you.”

“Send him in.”

“Are you serious?”

“Would I say it if I wasn’t serious, Annette? I’m not really in a joking mood today, believe it or not.”

“All right.” She obviously wanted to ask him if he’d lost his mind. “Thank you, Mr. Anders.”

A very nice shape, too, tall and almost regal, her dark skirt loving its duty. I followed in the wake of her perfume.

She opened the door and allowed me to enter what appeared to be a photographic library. Black-and-white as well as color photographs covered half the walls. Each contained dead animals of the kind found in Africa. Rhinos, lions, tigers, even an elephant. And standing with his booted foot on or near their heads was none other than my host, Lon Anders. He wore Hemingway khaki as well as a pith helmet. He’d even grown a wispy beard in some of them. And always at the ready was the rifle he held straight up in his grasp. He’d bravely let his guides find his prey and do everything but kill it for him. They would have made sure that there was no chance the animal would get loose and charge him. And then, heroically, he would blast the shit out of the poor beast.

I thought what I always thought when I saw these great white hunter photographs. We have to start arming the animals. The kind of photo I wanted to see was of a giant elephant’s foot on the head of a douchebag white hunter.

The other half of the walls were covered with framed photographs of him in three different types of flight suits during the days he was a pilot in Nam. I thought of Randall Shepard because in one of the pictures he was giving a thumbs-up.

He said, “You’ve got a lot of balls coming here.”

“Your secretary used the word ‘gall’ instead of ‘balls.’”

“Hilarious. Now what the hell do you want?”

“I thought maybe you could help me figure out who really killed Donovan.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Your secretary used that line, too.”

Lon Anders: running-back size, Scandinavian good looks, Marine Corps blond crew cut and the empty, angry blue eyes I’ve seen on a number of men convicted of murder. Tan shirt, brown knitted tie, brown pleated slacks. This was the swaggering country club Lothario who tried to get blow jobs from the college-girl waitresses after they were finished for the evening.

“Your nut-job buddy Cullen killed Steve. Talk to Paul Foster, he’ll tell you. If Cullen hadn’t wigged out he’d probably be signing a confession right now.”

“And you were doing what last night?”

He was pretty good. He smiled. He must’ve had sixty teeth and had elves polish them when he slept at night. “You know, McCain, I’ve always heard that you were a dumb little jerk but I have to say — you just don’t have any common sense at all. If I was worried about being a suspect do you think I’d let you in here?” He pointed to his phone unit. Very sleek. “Why don’t you call Paul and tell him you think I killed Steve?”

“You call him ‘Paul,’ too, huh?”

“Yeah, I call him Paul. We’re on a number of committees together. He also likes to play handball. We’re friends the same way Steve and I were friends.”

“I hear you and Steve weren’t good friends at all.”

“I’m not even going to comment on that.”

“So if you didn’t kill him, who do you think did?”

The teeth again. They were spectacular. He went around the desk and sat down. I started to sit in one of the visitor chairs but he said, “Don’t even think about it. I don’t want your shit-kicker ass contaminating the furniture. This stuff is imported. And you’ve got three more minutes, by the way, and then I start breaking your bones.”

“I hear Teddy Byrnes was playing bodyguard for Donovan.”

“You have lousy sources if you heard that. Teddy’s a cousin of Steve’s. He got off to a bad start in life.”

My laughter came out much louder than I would have expected. “‘Got off to a bad start in life’? He’s a psychopath. What was Donovan going to do, ‘rehabilitate’ him?”

“As a matter of fact, in a way he was. One thing about Steve, he always believed in giving people second chances. You should see his office wall. He’s got so many plaques from places like Big Brothers you wouldn’t believe it.”

“I doubt Al Carmichael would agree with that.”

He was pretty damned good at scoffing. I wondered if he’d ever done any community theater. “Al Carmichael. He damned near destroyed this company. It took everything Steve and I could do to save it.”

“I guess my lousy sources gave me some bad information on that one, too. The way I heard it, you and Donovan screwed him out of his part of the business.”

I’d have to look into getting some teeth like that. “It’s a good thing you’re not a reporter. You’d get your ass sued out of business for slander.”

“Libel.”

“What the fuck ever. Al Carmichael insisted that we sink money we didn’t have into two projects we should never even have considered. But he was adamant. He even threatened to sell his stock to this group that wanted to buy us and then clean out our cash and dump half our employees and then sell us for a big profit. I guess your lousy sources didn’t tell you anything about that, did they?”

I have the bad habit of wondering how people I meet would do as lawyers. He would work well either way, defense or prosecution. He could lie without his pants catching fire.

“Seems to me if Donovan was really your friend, you’d want to help me find out who really killed him.”

“Right. And Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t really kill President Kennedy.”

“I wasn’t a big fan of Donovan’s,” I said quietly. “But he deserved better friends than you.”

The teeth again. He started to say something, then shook his head.

He said nothing more to me and neither did the sumptuous Annette as I walked out the front door.

10

Jamie said, “I Don’t know how they’re going to put a parade together on such short notice.”

“O’Shay’s so desperate to get reelected I’m sure he’ll find a way.”

“My mom always votes for him. I think it’s his hair. He reminds her of some old-time actor I’ve never heard of. I don’t like him because of what he said about Negroes one time. I had three Negro girls in my homeroom and there were a lot of people who were terrible to them. It used to make me so mad. So Senator O’Shay goes ahead and says that too many of them would rather live on the dole than work. Our pastor gave a sermon about people who talk that way. You could tell he was pretty mad. He even used Senator O’Shay’s name. But somebody in the church must have written him and told him what the pastor said because he wrote the pastor a letter and said he wanted it read to the whole congregation.”

O’Shay was spending time addressing a church whose pastor he’d pissed off? Not exactly a good use of his time.

“Did he read it?”

“He did, yes, but then he attacked Senator O’Shay again for things that were in the letter.” A happy look. “Most of us were so proud of Pastor Jim.”

I was waiting on a call to Al Carmichael at ChemLab in Pittsburgh. Who better to talk about Steve Donovan and Lon Anders than their former business partner? Good reporters always use disgruntled sources. Not all of them are reliable but the ones who are can give you explosive information and insights.

Meanwhile I called the hospital and asked for the psych ward. The nurse I talked to sounded wary and weary. “All calls about Mr. Cullen go through our public relations office downstairs. If you’d told the receptionist what you were after she would’ve directed you there.”

“All I want to know is if his condition has changed.”

A put-upon sigh. “No, it hasn’t.”

“Thank you.”

By the time I got “Thank” out she’d hung up.

“A man named Al Carmichael is on the phone for you,” Jamie said after the phone rang next.

“Thanks for returning my call, Al.”

“I’m assuming this has something to do with Steve Donovan’s death. I still have friends back in Black River Falls and three of them have called me about it. I think they half expected me to jump up and down and celebrate, but as much as I hated him at the end we’d been good friends for four or five years and so I have good memories of him, too. So if you want some kind of bad quote about him, I’m not going to give it.”

“Would the same apply to Lon Anders?”

A snort. “Exactly what are you looking for, Sam?”

I told him. I also explained that I did not believe that my friend Will Cullen had killed the man. And that I was serving as both his lawyer and his investigator.

“You think that’s smart? It’s pretty hard to be objective in a case like this.”

“I’ve known Will all my life. I trust my instincts.”

“Well, it’s your call, Sam.”

“So how about Lon Anders?”

“A total piece of shit. As soon as Steve hooked up with him things started to change at the place.”

“How so?”

“Somehow Anders was able to convince Steve that he knew something about our business. Anders is a quick study, I’ll give him that, but he’s basically a peddler. He liked to give pep talks to all the workers there. They thought he was an arrogant, stupid blowhard and they were right. After he got Steve’s ear, my staff and I could never get Steve to prototype anything we came up with. And we knew why. It was a turf battle. And what Steve never realized was that Anders would someday push him aside just as he’d pushed me aside. Three of my best staffers quit. They were so frustrated they couldn’t take it anymore. Anders took it on himself to find their replacements. They knew even less about our business than Anders did. But behind my back they reported everything to him. What he was doing was building a case against me for Steve’s sake. I have a family history of depression. And that’s what landed on me. Anders was nice enough to spread the word that I had ‘mental problems’ so people started looking at me as if I’d bring a shotgun to work and kill two or three of them. So finally I just resigned and let Steve buy me out for pennies. But I just wanted out of there and didn’t really care what he paid me.”

My mind fixed on him talking about Anders someday pushing Donovan aside.

“What were profits like when you left?”

“I admit to being petty when it comes to Anders and the clowns he’d hired. But the products they came up with made money. I couldn’t believe it but I saw it on the P&L sheets and there wasn’t much I could say about it.”

“Have you had any contact with Donovan since then?”

“No. I didn’t know what I’d say to him or what he’d say to me. But today... well I think maybe I should have called him once in a while.”

“This has been very helpful, Al.”

“I don’t really see how, but if you say so, I’m glad.”

“Thanks,” I said. And I meant it.

I was excited about it.

One of the experiences I’ve never had as an investigator is being followed. The police do it all the time in unmarked cars and it is one of the staples for most private investigators. But it had never happened to me. And in comic strips, short stories, novels, TV shows, and movies, private investigators do it — and have it done to them — all the time.

So I was sort of enjoying it.

He’d followed me at about a half-block distance from my office. Drab four-year-old Dodge sedan.

I had half a tank of gas so I was able to run him for half an hour, even up into the limestone cliffs above the river. He was good, very good. Easy peasy. Never panicked once. Just stayed behind me and never once came close to losing me.

After a while it got boring. Plus I was hungry. My exhaustion needed to be fed.

I drove to a Mexican restaurant called “Carlos’.” He was smart. Seeing where I was going he pulled into a parking space across the street and waited till I went inside. I was pretty sure he had no idea that I’d finally spotted him.

From my booth I could see him. An older man a little slumped in the driver’s seat. He’d occasionally glance over at me and I’d glance away. Eye tag.

I had a taco and a glass of Pepsi. The Pepsi was warmer than the taco. I’d have to remember not to come in here again.

After relieving myself in the john, I walked through the kitchen and out the back door. Numerous pairs of eyes watched me. One man said, “Hey.” But I didn’t wait to find out if that was a friendly “Hey” or an unfriendly one.

There was an alley across the street. There would be no way he could see me from where he was parked.

The old battered garages in this poor neighborhood reminded me of my boyhood in the Hills. Everything there had been in a perpetual state of rot and falling-down, too, but alleys and half-collapsed garages had been a fine place to sail the imaginary seas you saw in all those Technicolor pirate movies or to hide behind huge pretend boulders to shoot at bad guys who populated all the B Western movies.

I came out a block behind him. The temperature had to be approaching ninety because even this slight bit of exercise soaked my shirt. He wouldn’t be having that problem. Even at four years of age his car probably had air conditioning.

I had had to cross a street, which gave him the opportunity to see me. Now I walked up the sidewalk leading to his car, which gave him another opportunity. From what I could tell he didn’t ever glance in his rearview or look around.

I opened the passenger-side door before he could do anything about it. But then he didn’t have to do anything about it because he was holding a Smith & Wesson Model 586 with the four-inch barrel pointed directly at me. He had one of those old-time smooth radio voices that suggested both manliness and more than a hint of irony.

“That looked like a terrible place to eat, McCain.” But before I could say anything, he said, “It’s too hot to keep the door open. Get in and sit down. And if you’re with weapon, please put it in my glove compartment.”

With weapon. Despite the situation I liked that.

“No weapon.”

“Good.”

I sat.

He resembled the actor Robert Montgomery. Intelligent, slightly slick manliness. Gray-streaked hair combed straight back; the blue gaze probably not as strong as he would have liked. Still looked good in the somewhat worn three-piece suit.

Now that I could see him close-up the fine features and baritone voice were all that was left of a man who had, most likely, seen better days. The right arm was dead, just hung there. And as I watched him he convulsed almost imperceptibly. Even so, in snapshot he looked like all the upscale private investigators on the covers of the used mystery pulps I used to buy for three cents apiece.

“Stroke.”

“I’m sorry. And I’d be even sorrier if you weren’t pointing that at me.”

“My apologies. I never liked it when somebody pointed a gun at me, either.” He set the gun on his lap.

Then we just sat and looked at each other for a minute.

“We’re doing the same thing, McCain.”

“Yeah, and what would that be?” But I had a pretty good idea.

“You haven’t figured it out by now?”

“You’re a private investigator.”

“That’s right.”

And then — the air of dash, the sleek patter, the stroke — I recognized who he really was.

“You’re Gordon Niven.”

“At your service. And in case you’re wondering how I can still get work, I do it all by phone and mail. I sound pretty sturdy on the phone. They call me and tell me their problem and I agree to help them on my own terms. Not everyone agrees but at least thirty or forty percent do.”

In Des Moines there was this legendary investigator named Gordon Niven. He’d been a bona fide spy in the big war and the highest-priced private investigator in Chicago for the fifteen years following it. Then he fell in love with the wife of a prominent radio host. She left her carousing and abusive husband on the condition that they settle in Des Moines, her hometown. His work crisscrossed the state. He broke up counterfeiting rings, drug rings, seditionist rings and did every other kind of investigative work as well. He built and lived on a giant sprawl of an estate and never quite quit courting his new wife. I’d read his interviews in the paper. Despite his usually polished demeanor he still got downright corny about her. But I thought I’d heard a rumor that they’d split up.

“You mind if I ask why you’re following me?”

“I need some help.” He clapped his dead arm. “There’s this and there’s the fact that you may be the man who’ll help me finish up what I’m doing here and get back home. My wife and I have reconciled. I miss her. And frankly, I’m tired.”

“Maybe I could be of more help if you told me what’s going on.”

“That would violate the private-eye code.”

“What private-eye code?”

“Haven’t you ever read your Raymond Chandler?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Marlowe adheres to a strict moral code. In fact Marlowe is why I got into this business after the war. Spying’s a very dirty game. I had to kill two people and let someone I liked be tortured to death. No moral code in spying. The opposite, if anything. Then I happened to read Farewell, My Lovely and as ridiculous as it sounds I realized that that was a field where I could make my own moral code and not be forced to violate it.”

Here I was sitting with a living legend who was telling me that he partially became a living legend because of Philip Marlowe.

“So when do I get to know what’s going on?”

With his good hand he waved me off. “Go somewhere interesting, will you, McCain? So far this has been pretty boring.” The grin made it clear he was kidding me.

“I’ll do what I can for you, your Lord and Majesty.”

“You have to admit, you’re at least a little bit pleased to be working with me.”

I sure as hell wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him.

“Take care of yourself, McCain. I’m relying on you.”

I got out of the car and started walking to the rear of it when I looked through the backseat window and saw three manila file folders spread across it. The folders didn’t interest me but the black-and-white photograph of the woman lying on one of them did.

Her image stayed with me all the way back to my car.

What the hell was Gordon Niven doing with a photo of Steve Donovan’s wife Valerie?