Bad Moon Rising (7 page)

“Paul, I owe you an apology.”

He brushed it away. “It wasn't your fault, Sam. Don't listen to all this. I was in the army for four years. Things just go wrong sometimes. The girl admitted that she struck you on the back of the head with a steel rod and knocked you out. I don't know anybody who could stand up to that.”

I wanted him to repeat what he'd just said. I couldn't quite believe it after just one hearing. I was already known as the man who'd been outsmarted by a young girl. It was absurd—as Paul said, anybody can be felled by a steel rod smashing into your skull—but when you have enemies they work with what they're given. And yet the one who should despise me the most for my stupidity was telling me that getting smacked in the head was the reason I wasn't able to arrest Neil Cameron. Not because I was incompetent.

“I let myself down, Paul.”

He extended his hand and we shook. I wasn't sure why we shook.

Then he offered his second surprise. “I want to hire you, Sam.”

I allowed myself the luxury of a smile. “Right. I can see that. I come highly recommended.”

“As I said, things happen. You've done some good work as a private investigator. And you know all the kids out at that commune. If anybody knows where Cameron might have gone, they do.”

“I'm not sure they trust me.”

“They trust you more than they do Cliffie. I've asked him a number of times to stop harassing them but all I get are those speeches Reverend Cartwright gives. All the marijuana and sex. By now Cliffie must've run every one of them in at least once. They certainly won't cooperate with him.”

“I'm representing Sarah Powers, Paul. You should know that up front.”

He blinked only once. “I didn't know that.”

“That's why I think you should look for somebody else.”

“She of course says Neil didn't kill Van.”

“That's what she says.”

“And you believe her?”

“In a case like this I only represent people I think are innocent. I want to find Neil and have him turn himself in.”

“What if he's guilty?”

“Then he's guilty. If he's not, then I want to find the person who really killed Van.”

“Then there's no conflict. I still want to hire you.”

“I wish you'd think it over. I can recommend a few people in Cedar Rapids or even Des Moines. It might be better to let them handle it instead of me.”

For the first time I saw resentment—anger—in the long, angular face. “You have a stake in this now, too, Sam. You need to prove to people you're not the fool they say you are.”

He'd meant for his words to hurt. He'd succeeded. “I'll send a check to your office. I appreciate this, Sam.” He spoke through a kind of pain I'd never had to deal with. “Maybe I'll call you tomorrow.”

He turned and walked back to his people and his Jag. His daughter came to him and slid her arm around his waist. She tilted her head against his chest as he guided her to their car.

Tommy walked a few feet toward me and said, “Hope no girls beat you up on the way home, McCain.”

“Get back here,” Mainwaring shouted without turning around.

Of course Tommy gave me the famous soul-freezing evil eye before he did what Mainwaring said. I wondered what he'd look like if I was fortunate enough to back over him six or seven times.

A few years ago, before Jamie married her wastrel boyfriend Turk and bore him a baby girl as sweet as Jamie herself, I always checked out the clothes she wore. She had one of those stunning bodies you see on the covers of paperbacks, usually under the title
Teenage Tease
or some such thing. The wholesome pretty face only made her more appealing. These days I checked her for signs of bruises and cuts. In the first year of their marriage Turk had given her a black eye. I returned the favor by giving Turk a black eye. I'm not tough, but I'm tougher than Turk. I also drew up divorce papers that Jamie refused to sign. She loved him and he would change, she said.

These days I had her solemn word that if he ever got physically violent with her again she was to tell me immediately. I made her promise on her mother's life. A good Catholic girl, she took such oaths seriously.

Turk still had his surfing band, probably the only one in landlocked Iowa—despite the fact that surfing bands were now seen as wimpy and irrelevant. And he was still going to be on
American Bandstand
, though
American Bandstand
was fading fast. And he was still going to have several gold records. And he was still, when the time was right, planning to become a movie star. And he still didn't want to get a job because working conflicted with his songwriting and practicing. He couldn't even babysit his little daughter. That was left to Jamie's mother. These artistes, they need their time to create.

Today Jamie wore a sleeveless yellow blouse and a richer yellow miniskirt. She was easy to scan for bruises. I didn't see any. She also wore a pair of brown-rimmed eyeglasses. She'd started having headaches so I'd paid for her visit to an optometrist and then for the glasses. I still wondered about the headaches. I didn't trust Turk. Somehow in the course of our years together she'd become my little sister and I'd be goddamned if anybody was going to hurt her or baby Laurie.

Jamie's typing skills had improved marginally and she'd learned how to answer the phone professionally and take down information without mistakes. She gave me my messages and a cup of coffee. That was another thing she handled capably. Our new automatic coffee brewer. Me being me, I still couldn't make a decent cup of coffee, even with that new machine I'd bought on sale at Sears. But Jamie had triumphed.

As I went through my phone messages, I glanced up once and saw the way Jamie straightened all four of the framed photographs of one-year-old Laurie she had on her desk. Not that they needed straightening. But touching them brought her peace you could see in her face. At these times I always wanted to kill Turk. He should honor her for her sweetness and loyalty. Maybe I could get him convicted as a Russki spy and get him deported. After I beat the shit out of him.

7

I
n grade school we always swapped comic books. Kenny Thibodeau tended to like Superman and The Flash. I went more for Batman and Captain Marvel. In junior high we swapped paperbacks. Mickey Spillane and Richard S. Prather were early favorites though soon enough I discovered Peter Rabe and F. Scott Fitzgerald, among others. Kenny discovered John Steinbeck and Henry Miller. In high school I'd picked up on all the Gold Medal crime writers such as Charles Williams, while Kenny had discovered Jack Kerouac and the Beats. At none of these junctures was it possible to predict what Kenny would bring to the table—literally the table in the booth at Andy's Donuts where I'd gone straight from jail—on this already hot and humid morning.

Baby pictures.

His daughter Melissa was two and a half years old. She wasn't just the center of Kenny's life, she was
all
of Kenny's life. Yes, he still wrote his soft-core sex novels and he still wrote his men's magazine “Die Nazi Die!” articles, but those he did almost unconsciously these days. Automatic pilot. His conscious attention was devoted to Melissa. All this was reflected in his attire. Not a vestige of the former Beat. Short, thinning brown hair. Pressed yellow short-sleeved cotton shirt and pressed brown trousers. I mention pressed by way of introducing his wife, Sue. As Kenny always joked, by marrying him Sue had inherited both a husband and a son. Kenny needed help and Sue, loving and amused, was there to provide it.

“This one's of Melissa and the cocker spaniel we got her last week.”

Even though we had gone past picture number twenty I had to admit this one of Melissa in her frilly sundress leaning down to kiss the puppy on the head was pretty damned cute.

“And here's one—”

I held up my hand. “I don't mean to be rude, Kenny, but I've got a lot to do today.”

For only a moment he looked hurt, then he grinned. “Yeah, Sue says I drive people nuts with my pictures. Just be glad I haven't invited you out to see the slide show I made of all the pictures we have of her.”

“You have a slide show? Seriously?”

“With music.” He sipped his coffee. “Don't worry, you'll get to see it one of these days.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

The timbre of his laugh hadn't changed since we were in fourth grade. “It is. But I'm sure you want to talk about the girl who got killed last night.”

Kenny was the unofficial historian of Black River Falls for our generation. Every once in a while he'd talk about this huge novel he was going to write someday, a kind of
Peyton Place
about our own small city. Despite his reputation for writing smutty books, people liked Kenny and confided in him. He knew secrets nobody else did. He'd been helping me with cases since the day I'd hung out my shingle.

“Do you know anything about her?”

“I know one thing.”

“What's that?”

“She's been seen with Bobby Randall on occasion.”

“You're kidding.”

“Wild child. Lot of trouble for her old man.”

“Bobby Randall deals drugs.”

“That's my point. A lot of trouble for her old man.”

“I'm representing Sarah Powers. She's the sister of Neil Cameron, the guy everybody's looking for. They're both part of the commune. You ever hear of Bobby Randall hanging out at the commune?”

“Oh, sure. They had some real head-trippers out there for a while. Right after Donovan and the rest of them came here. Randall was the only source they had so they dealt with him. But finally the head-trippers moved on. Randall still goes out there. I think he had something going with one of the girls at the commune for a while, but she broke it off with him for some reason. He's a heartbreaker.”

I took a moment to finish my glazed donut. This coffee shop was one of the few small businesses that hadn't shriveled up since the new mall opened. The larger downtown stores had all moved to the mall, taking with them a good deal of traffic and thus business. The mayor had been frothy with reassurances that the mall would increase business for everybody because shoppers who'd trekked to Iowa City or Cedar Rapids would now be happy to shop here again. The younger people thought it was pretty cool of course. But the older ones—and the ones like Wendy and me, touched by a spiritual old age on occasion—saw it as one of those generational betrayals that are a part of growing up. The young betray the old until they are old enough to be betrayed by the next generation. I'm sure the good Reverend Cartwright has an explanation for such things.

“You hear much about the Mainwaring family?”

“Just that it's sort of gone to hell since Mrs. Mainwaring died and Mainwaring married again. I know the Mainwaring kids really don't like her.”

“She's pretty exotic.”

“Yeah, and from what I hear not a real warm person. But she went to Smith and worked on the Bobby Kennedy campaign and drives a Jag. I know you like Mainwaring but he's really a snob. And I still don't understand how a guy who makes stuff for war can pretend to be such a liberal.”

“You think he's pretending?”

“Don't you?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe he's just sort of blind to himself.”

“I don't trust him. I was in a peace march in Iowa City last month and I saw him on the sidewalk talking to a guy I was pretty sure was a fed.”

“How can you tell?”

“Didn't you read that article in
Esquire
about how the feds who check out peace marches dress? Short hair, T-shirts, and jeans. Hoover likes his boys to wear uniforms. And they all drive black Fords with blackwalls because Hoover gets a deal on them.”

One thing about Kenny—he'd never met a conspiracy theory he didn't like. “Maybe he's changed things because of that article.”

“I doubt it. I admit I'm being paranoid but I still don't trust Mainwaring. I mean his
business
is with the federal government.” He checked his wristwatch. “Melissa's at her grandmother's right now. I had to leave her there while I went to have Alan check my blood pressure. He sure is a smart-ass.”

“You should've heard him last night when he was sewing me up.”

“He was always like that.” He slid out of the booth. “We were too mature to act like that, as I remember.”

“Right. All the times we both called his glasses Mount Palomars. Real mature.”

As if I hadn't spoken, he said: “I'll have some new pictures of Melissa next time I see you.”

I wanted to ask if that was a threat or a promise but I was too mature to do it.

My early boyhood was spent in the section just past the city limits called the Hills. This was where the poor white people lived. Even sociologists would have had a hard time defining the Hills because there were degrees of poverty even here. Depending on where you lived in the Hills, your home was either lower-class livable or little more than a shack. If you lived in one of the shacks, which far outnumbered the tiny one- and two-bedroom homes, you saw a lot of the local gendarmes. A fair number of men dealt in stolen property; a fair number of men couldn't seem to stay out of bloody fights; and a fair number of men let the bottle keep them from steady jobs. In the midst of all this the more reliable people like my parents and many others tried to carry on respectable lives. Kenny lived in one of the shacks but was saved and redeemed by his early interest in books. My mother and father were both readers, Dad with his pulps and paperbacks and Mom with her magazines (one of them,
The American
, carried Nero Wolfe stories frequently, introducing me to mystery fiction around age eight or so), and encouraged my brother and sister to be readers as well.

The worst part of my early life was when my older brother Robert died of polio. He had been, no other word, my idol, all the things I could only hope to be. When I got old enough I drove his 1936 Plymouth. My sister Ruth was sure that Robert visited her at night in ghost form. And I remember hearing my father half whispering to my uncle Al that he was worried about my mother, that maybe she would never get over it and be herself again. We still went back to the Hills to lay fresh flowers on my brother's grave in the cemetery where Hills people buried their dead. In the worst of my depression after losing the woman I was sure would be my wife, I found myself waking one birdsong morning next to his gravestone. I had drunkenly confided in my brother—for that matter I'm not quite sure I ever really got over his death either—hoping he'd bring me solace.