The Ax

31

"Self and current wife." A lot of undercurrents under that "current." A hard-nosed ex-Marine, I wonder how many wives he wore down.

The simple son of a bitch was more faithful to his employer than to any woman. Out of the Marines and straight into Oak Crest and stayed there until they dumped him. How close was he to pension; a year and a half?

Hauck Curtis Exman; my God, it's my second HCE. I started with an HCE and, except for Fallon, I'm ending with an HCE. Here Comes Everybody. Yes, and here comes a candle to light you to bed.

Sable Jetty is south of Kingston, where I had my accident with the pickup truck. It's right on the Hudson River, a little old river town of wood and brick, built up the steep slope, probably two hundred years beyond any economic justification for its existence. These places have become weekend homes for the city well-to-do because they're so quaint, and they're quaint because the people have been too poor to keep up with the latest trends. This is the sort of town movie companies use when they're shooting a film set in the twenties or thirties. Now that the city people are losing their city jobs, maybe these towns will go on being quaint.

Sable Jetty spreads up from a small cove on the Hudson's western bank, where a hillock of land extends into the river, forming a natural calm basin along the shore just to its south, downstream. The Indians launched their canoes there, long ago, and the first European explorers landed there, because it was out of the river's current. A settlement built up, and then a ferry was started, and the town prospered, and all of that eventually disappeared. Today, the old ferry office is the county historical museum, the old ferry dock is long gone, and the old brick or wooden houses built up the teetery hill westward from the river's edge seem more and more like two-dimensional flat genre paintings and less and less like places where actual human beings live their lives.

River Road runs from the square in front of the ferry dock northward, immediately leaving town, arcing around the long gradual slope of the hillock. It doesn't go right along by the water, but partway upslope, with more substantial houses on its upward side, originally meant to give doctors and aldermen and hardware store owners good river views, and less substantial shacklike houses between road and water, originally meant to give the working class a roof over their heads where they could supplement their poor incomes with fish.

27 is on the uphill side, a big brick sprawl of a house, with a broad curved porch stretching around the front, set off by thick wooden pillars painted a creamy yellow. There must have been plantings around the house and along the roadside at one time, but they're gone now, replaced by a long narrow ribbon of lawn, flowing down the smooth and gentle slope from the front wall of the house to the low white picket fence — plastic, not wood — that defines the edge of the road. This lawn is flanked on both sides by very black blacktop driveways, the one on the left belonging to 27 and the one on the right belonging to the house next door. Newer smaller houses flank 27 too closely on both sides, so that this must once have been a more gracious and spacious property, until the side lots were sold off in the fifties.

Monday morning, 11:30. I came here directly from dropping Marjorie off at Dr. Carney's, crossing the Hudson on the same bridge as when I came back from Everett Dynes. I drive by 27 River Road southbound, looking up at the house on my right. A red-haired woman in a tan sweatshirt and blue jeans sits on a riding mower, grooming the lawn in slow ovals. The detached garage at the top of the driveway is closed, and no car is parked on the blacktop. The mailbox, oversized and silver, with the address stenciled on it in severe black, stands on a whitewashed wooden post between the end of the picket fence and the end of the driveway. Its flag is up; ideal for a shooting, if I could use the gun.

I don't even have the Luger with me; what's the point?

I drive on down into town, where half the small dusty shops around the square are hopelessly for rent. I park in front of one of the empty shops to study my road atlas, and there's no comfort there. River Road sweeps out of town and north around the protruding hillock, on the other side of which it angles west to dead-end at State Route 9, the main north-south state road on this side of the river. Route 9 continues south, avoiding the center of Sable Jetty, but with no other turnoffs before it reaches the town. No other road enters or crosses the area of the hillock, which makes a sort of pumpkin stuck onto the shore of the river. A private road, sealed with an electric gate, leads from the town end of River Road up to the mansion that commands the top of the hillock; long ago a lumber baron's or a railroad baron's place, it is now a Buddhist retreat, impenetrably fenced against its neighbors.

I can't get at HCE's house from behind. River Road itself is quite exposed, a long curve with several houses always visible and with no public parking areas. I hadn't noticed any vacant-seeming houses or For Sale signs near HCE's place. Several of the smaller houses on the river side of the road had looked to me to be seasonal, summer places for today's blue-collar people, but this is June and the season has begun; a few boats bob at rickety wooden docks along there, and any or all of those houses could be occupied right now, even on a Monday.

HCE, my ex-Marine, is being harder to get at than any of the others.

The road atlas can't help me. I put it away, and start the Voyager, and drive around the square to head north again up River Road.

HCE's house is now on my left. The woman on the riding mower is making smaller ovals now, her work almost done. And the garage door is open, the interior of the garage empty.

Damn! He came out! While I was in town, he came out and went… anywhere. For all I know, he drove right on by me while I was parked down there, frowning at my road atlas.

I don't know what he looks like. I don't know what the car looks like.

I drive on up to the T intersection with Route 9, where there's a diner just to the south and a big covered mall just to the north. It's almost lunchtime now anyway, so I pull in at the diner, and as I have my usual BLT I wonder if he happens to be working here. Hauck Curtis Exman. HCE. Is this where he drove to, from his house? Is his car outside there somewhere, maybe next to mine? There are only female employees visible out front, but could he be in back? A short-order cook?

Or did he just go out to get the newspaper, and is he home again by now?

Finishing my lunch, I drive back down River Road. The flag is down on the mailbox, so the mail has been delivered. The garage door is still open, garage still empty. The woman and the riding mower are both gone. The mower doesn't seem to be in the garage, so they probably have a shed for it around back.

I drive into town, and through it, and several miles farther south I pull over at a parking area for a scenic river view. I sit there and try to think how to get at HCE. How to find him, and then how to kill him, without using a gun.

But find him first. Identify him, so I can follow him, look for my chance.

How long will he be gone from the house? Has he a make-work job somewhere? Has he a real job, a paper mill job, one that takes him out of contention? Could I be that lucky twice in a row?

But what real job would have him leave the house between 11:30 in the morning and noon?

When the clock in the Voyager reads 1:30 I drive away from the scenic view, which I'd barely looked at. I go back up through Sable Jetty and up River Road, and there's no change at HCE's house. Garage open and empty. He's still gone.

There's nothing more I can do today. I feel anxious, impatient, this business is so close to being over and done with, but I know there's nothing more to be done, not today. I don't want to be careless, in too much of a rush. I don't want to cause another mess, like a couple I've had, and I certainly don't want to be caught by the police, not at this stage.

When I reach Route 9 I turn north, past the big mall and on toward the bridge and, beyond that, home.