A Child's Garden of Death (9 page)

“Wouldn't the file show the shipment of records to the new school?”

There was a pause on the line, then the return of the now doubtful voice. “That is strange. Under ordinary circumstances a transcript would have been sent along, or sent when the new school requested it. Of course, that form could have been lost from the file years ago.”

“But under ordinary circumstances there should have been a further notation, a follow-up.”

“Yes, usually there would be.”

“Thank you very much.” Lyon Wentworth hung up with a sick feeling, the photograph of the dark-haired girl clear in his mind. He quickly dialed town police headquarters and asked for Chief Herbert. “How's it going?” he asked when Rocco picked up.

“Just great, really great. Fourteen parking tickets in an hour, which is my record. Caught a selectman and a member of the Board of Ed.”

“You'll get in trouble doing that.”

“I'm not stupid. I scribble a signature on the ticket, and when they complain I blame it on a new man. Now I'm going over patrolmen's time sheets to see if I can suspend anyone for anything. As you can tell, I'm in a good mood.” His voice lowered. “I've got to call in the state, Lyon.”

“Wait another day. I may have something.”

“Another day.” He could sense the Chief's voice attempting to sound not too hopeful. “You really think you have something?”

“I guess so, Rocco. At least I think I guess so. I'll let you know this time tomorrow.”

“Call me as soon as you can.”

Houston Boulevard had changed since he was a boy. The Park River had flowed green and was filled with shad. Now the river was cement-covered and ran murky in hidden culverts, while the whole area was covered with clusters of elevated portions of Interstate highway. The Houston Company had grown over the years until now it was one of the largest factories in the area.

He pulled the car to a stop in front of the address the school records had indicated and beat the steering wheel in disappointment. The address, next to the Houston factory, was the General Douglas MacArthur housing development, one of the first large city projects built in the early fifties. Before him in drab alignment stretched endless rows of dull brick buildings with parking lots filled with vintage cars.

He grimaced at the artistic development of man. After all, it took great talent and ingenuity, one had to really work at it in order to take a perfectly pleasant area and turn it into a shambles, a shambles where people lived. He started the car and eased it down the street wondering why other nations seemed to do so much better with their housing projects than this country.

The Houston Company was completely surrounded by a high chain link fence. The entrance to the large parking lot was guarded by a sentrylike building with a movable lift gate. The gray-haired and uniformed guard at the gate handed Lyon a visitor's pass, pointed to the executive offices, and let him pass.

Lyon had to shake his head and remind himself that he was in another factory miles away from the aircraft plant. The young personnel assistant was practically the twin sister of the one at the other plant. Her young, intense face turned toward him with great interest as she seriously considered the problem. She left him in the small office and returned in minutes.

“I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Wentworth. Our employment records prior to 1950, except for the men still working here, have all been destroyed. There have been so many here, our files would be Voluminous, and it does cost two dollars a year per linear foot of storage. So, you can …”

He rose tiredly. “Thank you, I appreciate your looking.” On an impulse as he left the Houston Company he stopped at the gate and called to the security guard. “Have you worked here long?”

“About twelve years,” the guard replied.

“Oh, then you came in the early sixties.”

“Right, 1961 to be exact. But I know the area pretty well, let me tell you. Used to patrol here when I was on the force.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep. Twenty years with the Hartford P.O.”

“Do you remember what was on that property before the housing development was built?”

“Sure do. The company owned it. Used it for temporary housing during the war. Hell, the company was hiring people by the car load and there weren't no place to put them. They had quonset huts and things like that.”

“That's interesting. What about trailers?”

“Sure. There must have been a hundred trailers over there in the forties.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“Thanks. Really, thanks a lot.”

The guard saluted as he drove off.

The gentle brush of warmth from cheek to folded fingers was the only measurement of time Rabbi Ben Alchium now knew. “Ten to two,” a lilting voice on the porch told him as she tucked the blanket around his legs and folded his hands. He did not believe her, for he knew that a lifetime had passed while the sun, ever so slowly, moved from cheek to finger.

At first there was always the city of Pinsk, and he was young, and often ran sideways as children do. He could not remember the game. The child that was himself laughed, jumped and ran while others were there in the sun also. Somehow the details of the game itself were never clear. His father, a teacher also, forbidding behind the long beard, and yet often holding him tightly until the bad times came and the sun moved on.

Hours of study in a warm room where a dark girl laughed. He knew it was his wife, but now she was gone, and the sun moved on.

There were children, and children of children and more, and often he wasn't sure which were which, for he was very old. As the sun warmed his fingers he stood before the group. The raven-haired girl looking toward him while the children were there with the others, and his voice was strong as he spoke, and that was his life, and as the sun moved on he lived it each day.

The light hand on his shoulder interrupted, and that was wrong, for the sun was not yet gone. “There's someone to see you.”

A chair scraped, and he sensed a man near him, perhaps a child of a child, and he turned to look.

“Rabbi Alchium.”

“Yes.”

“I need your help,” Lyon said.

“What can I do for you?”

“A man, a great many years ago, a member of your temple perhaps.”

“There were so many, it is hard to remember.” The hand turned the chair and the sun fell on his cheek again and a child laughed and ran sideways in Pinsk. “I wonder what game we played?” the Rabbi said.

“Pardon, sir?” Lyon asked.

“Nothing,” the Rabbi replied. “What about the man from my temple?”

Lyon leaned forward. “He was named Meyerson. In 1943 he was a tool maker or an engineer, married, with a little girl. He, kept an orthodox home.”

“Yes, many did then. Now, even the children of the children do not. There were many Meyersons. So many, they all become one.”

“This Meyerson left one day, without a farewell, without any word, and no one ever heard of him again.”

The Rabbi leaned back and the sun was gone. He remembered such a Meyerson, and the hurt had been great. “Yes,” he said. “I remember such a man,” and there was a tear in his eye. “A faithful member of the Minyon each morning, a strong faithful man and a friend; and he left without a word.”

“You do remember him.”

“Yes, I must have failed him greatly. I went to where he lived, his house that moved.”

“A trailer.”

“Yes. And it was gone. Without a word to the temple, and someone said he moved away. I failed him.”

Lyon Wentworth stood by the old man's chair. “No, sir. I don't think you failed him. In fact, I know you didn't fail him.”

The tentacle-like fingers clutched Lyon's hand. “Thank you,” the old man said, and his eyes were bright.

“
JESUS
,
LYON
,” Beatrice shouted. “Call your Congressman.”

“Come on, Bea. You're my State Senator.”

“Damn it all, hon, the welfare mothers are going to streak the Governor's mansion today unless I get some action out of committee.”

Lyon glanced down the hallway of the state capitol's crowded second floor. The House and Senate were due to go into session within minutes, and the hall was crowded with legislators, lobbyists, and assorted constituents. Down the hall and marble staircase he saw the stalwart women of the Antivivisectionist League marching through the crowd, and he knew they'd make for Bea as soon as they saw her. Since none of the legislators except the majority leader had offices, a certain pecking order existed concerning the marble pillars in the hallway. Beatrice, by seniority and outspoken views, had the third pillar from the stairs, only three removed from the state chairman. So it was here that Bea met with her constituents, fellow legislators and occasionally her husband.

The Antivivisectionist group was almost at the head of the stairs, and approaching from the other direction was Kimberly leading a covey of welfare mothers. Lyon grasped Bea's arm and led her firmly into the Senate majority leader's office.

“If I've told you once, I've told you for three terms, Lyon. There's no place to screw in the Capitol. You just have to wait until I get home.”

The young secretary looked up from her desk with bewilderment and quickly fled the office.

“Knock it off, Bea. And get your hearing aid fixed.”

She put her arms around his neck. “There is a large broom closet in the …”

“Two phone calls, Bea.”

“Two quick ones.”

“Please. One to Washington, the Senator's office; one to the State Banking Commission. An imperative rush. Have them call me at home this afternoon.”

“What do you need to know?”

He handed her the slip of paper as she resolutely picked up the telephone.

“Sarge's” Bar and Grill was never the local “in” spot. It housed a neighborhood bar in a house set back from a secondary highway with living quarters for the owner upstairs. The bar's interior was functional in its utilitarianism—a long bar with ten stools, wooden floors, and half a dozen booths. The interior decorations, for the most part, were beer company photographs of young women in bathing suits, holding beer cans, next to canoes. On the bar were large jars filled with pickled eggs, pigs' feet and other unappetizing assortments which no one ever seemed to eat or buy.

The owner, Sarge Renfroe, was a heavy-set, bulbous-nosed Army veteran of twenty years who'd come to Murphysville some years before to visit Rocco Herbert, his old company commander. He had stayed on, seeming to feel that there were distinct advantages in opening a bar in a town where his old commanding officer was the chief of police. He'd been right. On countless nights Rocco had come by at closing time and taken the half-unconscious owner upstairs to his bedroom after he'd sampled too much of his own products.

Lyon had been trying to reach Rocco all afternoon, and the only response from his office had been that he was out on a very important investigation. Requests to raise him by radio had failed, and finally, after leaving word with Kim where he'd be, Lyon had driven too fast down to “Sarge's Place.”

Rocco was in the far booth, a small glass of beer cuddled in his hands as he stared out the window.

The Sarge waved at Lyon with a dirty bar rag. “I've heard of hidden speed traps,” Lyon said, “but this is ridiculous.”

“I've got a direct view of a stop street,” Rocco replied. “Had some of my best days just sitting here.”

A glass of sherry miraculously appeared in front of Lyon as he settled opposite Rocco in the booth. “Our time's almost up,” Rocco continued with a glance at the large clock over the bar.

“Rocco, you know damn well that the Sarge's clock is the only bar clock in the state of Connecticut that runs forty minutes fast … you set it that way yourself.”

“It takes the slob that long to close out; otherwise I'd be busting him every other night for violation of closing hours.”

“I think I may have it,” Lyon said.

“Thinking isn't good enough, Lyon. I can't sit on this thing any longer. In a few more minutes I have to see the first select-man, and we've got to call in the state.”

“All right, do that. But before you do, call a press conference and release the names of the victims.”

“Sure. We can make up what we want, any good titles … like your books. We can call them the Ghouls in the Graves, the Corpse in the Cove. Do you know what I've calculated? I'll tell you what I've calculated. The number of traffic tickets and domestic squabbles I'm going to handle between now and retirement. It's up in four figures. That's a lot of people to yell at.”

“You are depressed.”

“Jesus, Lyon. I'm sorry. I hate self-pity. It's just that we seemed so close.”

The Sarge stood next to the booth with a phone in his hand. “For you, Lyon.” He handed Lyon the receiver. “Some dame claims she's from a U. S. Senator's office.”

Lyon took the phone. “Yes …”

Immediately after the call from Washington, he received the second call from the State Banking Commission. He gestured to Rocco and was handed a small pocket notebook. At the completion of the call he hung up the phone and walked slowly back to the booth.

“We've got it,” he said to the expectant chief.

“How so?”

“Social security records indicate that a Meyer Meyerson was definitely employed by the Houston Company in 1942 and 1943. Company payments were made on his behalf. No further payments have ever been credited to his account.”

“That's almost enough.”

“The Meyersons left a three-thousand-dollar savings account in the Hartford Savings Bank. The money was never claimed and eventually was turned over to the state.”

Lyon proceeded to tell Rocco about the rabbi and the disappearance of his most devout temple member, about the address which had been a trailer park, and the school records never forwarded.