Day of Wrath (24 page)

"Drugs," he said. "They're an abomination, Harry. Personally
I never go near them—not even prescription. And let me tell you . . .
if I ever found one of my children smoking pot, they'd live to regret it.
If somebody'd taken the time to give Irene the right kind of instruction,
the family wouldn't be in this mess. But what's the use of talking? The
fact is she got herself involved with this bum, with this Clinger. And
with the drugs and the sex. A young boy gets killed. A girl is missing.
It's a very bad business. And now she's gone back over there—to that
farm."

"She's back with Clinger?" I said.

Lavelle nodded. "This morning," he said, with a look of
disgust. He slapped his hands on his knees. "What to do? The Crofts are
all upset. And who could blame them? They're in the insurance business.
Very big. If I took you down there and showed you their operation. . .
I mean this is a hell of an organization, Harry. I'm talking millions.
Nationwide. Been in business for better than a hundred years. Got a reputation
like Lloyd's of London. They got life, auto, home, theft—all the lines.
But you know what Mr. Croft himself said to me? He said, 'Jerry, nobody
buys from us because they think they're going to save a dollar. They buy
our name'." He smiled as if it were a clever parable. "That's what they're
selling, Harry. Their name. They're selling trust. 'Trust us. We know what's
right for you. We got the experience.' You follow me?"

"I follow," I said. "The Crofts want me off the case."

Lavelle got a pained look on his pleasant face. "That's
one way to put it," he said.

"Why?"

"I just told you why. They got a wacko woman on their
hands they can't control. And they don't want her slinging crap on the
rest of the family."

"And what about Bobby Caldwel1?" I said.

Lavelle looked confused. "Who's that?"

"The boy who was murdered."

"
Terrible," he said heavily. "A young boy like that. But
let me ask you this. Is slopping mud on the Crofts going to bring him back
to life? As I understand it, the boy was killed by some doped-up drug peddlers.
By scum. And I say they deserve everything they get. Let the police find
them. It's their job. Let the police find out where the blame lies, and
let justice be done."

I began to get a sick feeling in my gut. "The Crofts don't
care if the cops investigate the boy's murder?"

"Why should they care?" Lavelle said with a shrug.

I sighed. "You bought the police off, too, didn't you,
Jerry?"

Lavelle looked deeply offended. "We don't buy off anybody.
This is America. We're businessmen. The Crofts don't expect to get something
for nothing. Now with this boy, this Bobby Caldwell, some arrangements
can be made. A suitable annuity can be paid to his family. We aren't heartless
animals. We got a
quid pro quo
for I you, too."

"I can hardly wait."

Lavelle grinned like a horse trader. "We got the girl,
Harry."

I stared at him for a moment. "You mean Robbie?" I said
with astonishment.

"Who else?"

"Then she's alive?" I said.

Lavelle smiled broadly. "Absolutely. She's at the farm
right now."

"
That's not what Clinger told me."

"
He was nervous," Lavelle explained. "He was worried about
her. She had a rough time at home. He didn't want to send her back."

"And what makes you think you can get him to hand her
over to me?"

"
Hey, Clinger's a businessman, too," Lavelle said, and
I knew he was right. "He'll see the light. It may take a couple of days.
We need to straighten a few things out for him. Get a little heat off his
back. But it'll all work out. In two, three days she'll be back with her
fami1y."

For a moment, I really didn't know what to say. I'd begun
to think she was dead—murdered by accident or for some reason I hadn't
yet discovered—and suddenly she was being handed back to me, out of the
grave, by this genial hoodlum with the businesslike manners.

"Why can't I get her right away? Why the delay?"

"These things take time, Harry," he said. "Use your head.
Clinger's still afraid he's going to get gunned down on his front porch.
"

It did make sense. All I could think to say was, "I'll
have to discuss it with her mother."

Lavelle held up a hand. "Take your time. Spend the day.
I'll be back in touch tomorrow."

He got off the couch and walked back to the door.

"What a world," he said sadly. "A boy is killed. A family
is almost ruined." He shook his head and left, closing the door gently
behind him.

It took me a couple of minutes to get my bearings after
Lavelle had gone. I'd been hit on the head once that morning; and the news
that Robbie was alive hit me like a second blow. I sat down, stunned, in
the desk chair and stared blankly at the phone. I knew that I should probably
call Mildred right away. I knew that she was sitting by the phone at that
very moment, waiting for the call. Finding out that Robbie was all right
would probably send her straight into shock. She'd break down and cry it
all out—all the anguish and the guilts. Then she'd sleep around the clock.
When she awoke, she could begin to take accounts again—to make provisions
in her patient and proper way for the return of her daughter.

I stared at the phone and knew that I should make the
call. And yet I held back. It wasn't that I hadn't believed Lavelle. What
he'd proposed seemed straightforward. I'd swap Irene Croft for the girl,
allowing the Crofts a couple of days to buy off Theo and his enemies. Old
man Caldwell would get his annuity. Irene and Theo would come away unscathed.
And Mildred would get Robbie back. It was as neat and efficient as an insurance
policy, an actuary's idea of a fairytale ending. I think I was a little
awed at the ease with which the Crofts—those folks who knew best, who
set the standards around this town—had signed everyone up. Me, Theo,
Robbie, Pastor Caldwell; Bannock, too, if I'd read Lavelle correctly. There
was even a possibility that the terms of their insurance policy actually
reflected the truth. Clinger had claimed the Caldwell boy had been killed
by his enemies. Of course, he'd lied about Robbie, but there was little
reason to believe that Bobby's death hadn't been a revenge killing. And
if the killers turned out to be small-time druggies, my reservations about
the circumstances of the murder could be removed. Its was a nifty deal
all right. And the only thing holding me back—keeping me from picking
up the phone and calling Mildred—was the sure knowledge that neither
Lavelle nor the Crofts nor Clinger had been telling me the whole truth.

I could believe that the Croft family had a pathological
fear of scandal. I could even believe that business might suffer, locally,
from a criminal proceeding against Irene. What I couldn't quite believe
was that they would engage in a widespread criminal conspiracy, a true
obstruction of justice, just to keep Irene from being fingered as a drug
peddler. They simply didn't have to go to that much trouble to keep her
out of jail. A smart lawyer, a friendly judge, the right witnesses, a little
tampering with evidence, and she wouldn't even be indicted. In fact, there
wasn't any evidence, except for the dead boy. Of course, the Crofts were
a prudent family, used to taking extreme precautions. And perhaps that
was why the conspiracy seemed too elaborate for the crime. But I didn't
really believe that. What I believed was that there had been a brutal murder
committed at or near the farm, and that Lavelle and the Crofts were more
than a little afraid that Irene or her friend Theo or someone else at the
farm had been criminally responsible.

That suspicion made sense of their proposals, because
what they were doing, in essence, was making the farm and the people on
it disappear. If Clinger's empire didn't exist, then nothing scandalous
or criminal could have taken place within its confines. No drug deals and
no murders.

Of course no one would really be hurt by the scam. Clinger
could always refloat his kingdom at a later date. Irene could move back
to her lonely castle and brew up more trouble for the Crofts. Robbie would
return home—at least for the night. And the only casualty—outside of
the hopes of a handful of kids like Annie—would be Bobby Caldwell, who
was beyond feeling disappointment or pain. He was the only real sacrifice,
and even his death could be sweetened up with money. And if I knew Pastor
C. Caldwell, he'd jump at the Crofts' deal.

But as I sat there by the phone, I knew that I wasn't
satisfied with the arrangement, with the deliberate sacrifice of a love-struck
teenager. He'd swallowed the crap that Clinger had preached about love.
He'd preached it himself to Robbie and watched it sour into something amoral
and strange—something as tainted as the farm itself. And yet he hadn't
given up hope. He'd remained loyal to the girl up to the end. The world
owed him something for that—some manner of justice—because he'd been
better than the world had expected or wanted him to be. And that made him
indismissible. I decided to hold off on the Croft deal and the call to
Mildred until I'd found out exactly what had happened to the boy.
 

ONCE I GOT OUT IN THE REAL WORLD, FULL OF THE glare of
April sunlight, my righteous indignation waned and I started to realize
just how much that beating had taken out of me. I hobbled to the parking
lot, head bent, eyes on the pavement. And by the time I got to the car,
I'd broken into a light sweat. Young Galahad could scarcely hold onto the
hard plastic steering wheel or guide his car out into traffic. He was a
goddamn menace on the roads, weaving down Reading, through the spacious,
sunlit overpasses of the expressways, to the northeast edge of town.

On my left, Mt. Adams rose up into the blue afternoon
sky, a woody hillside laced with spring green. I squinted at it with regret.
just the thought of having to climb to the top of it—to that monied plateau
overlooking the river—and to search out Grace wearied me, and Saturday
had only begun.

I managed to make it to the Court House Building—a huge
stone temple on the east side of town—and to park in the square. But
it took me another few minutes to actually step out into the street. I
swallowed a couple more aspirins dry and bulled my way through the crowd
of lawyers and crooks, up the hundred concrete stairs to the dark lobby
of the Court House. I rested against a pillar, while passersby gaped at
my bandaged head and bruised face. My ankle smarted from the climb, but
I could live with the pain. It was the dizziness and the nausea that wracked
me. I figured if I could survive the next few hours they would subside,
because a lot of the sick feeling was just bone weariness. I hadn't gotten
enough sleep, and my whole body felt out of focus. I bought a cup of coffee
from a vending machine, choked it down, then tackled the brass stairway
that led up to George DeVries's office. I still wanted to confirm Clinger's
drug connection—just to make sure that Logan and his buddy had been hired
to ward off Clinger's enemies and not to sap nosy detectives looking into
a murder.

I stumbled down the broad hallway, past the varnished
oak doors of court rooms and judges' chambers. And at the end of the corridor,
I got to the D.A.'s offices. A secretary was sitting at a desk in front
of George's room. I startled her with my beaten face.

"
My God," she said in a flat, midwestern voice. "What
happened to you?"

She was a middle-aged brunette with the bleary, sagging
features of a heavy drinker. I stared at her a moment and said, "You don't
want to know."

She nodded as if she agreed with me and pressed a button
on the intercom. "Mr. DeVries?"

George came out of the office and said, "What is it, Helen?"
Then he noticed me standing there and his puckered, brick red face turned
assessorial—a look like a long, drawn-out whistle.

"Jee-zus!" he said between his teeth. "What happened to
you?"

"
That's what I wanted to talk to you about, George."

"Well, come right in, Harry." He waved his arm and stepped
away from the door.

"Jee·zus," he said again when he'd sat down behind his
desk. He shook his head and laughed nervously. "You're a sight."

I didn't think it was particularly funny and told him
so.

"
No offense, Harry," he said wryly. "I just didn't think
there were many men who could take you like that."

"There aren't," I snapped. And then felt foolish for having
said it. I had nothing to prove to George DeVries, although for one naked
moment it hadn't felt that way. That moment passed and I found myself sitting
across from a run-down cop with the craggy face of a red-headed Carl Sandburg.
He wasn't a very smart cop, but he was ruthless and effcient—a tough
man who probably thought he'd earned the right to pass judgment on me.

He sat back in his chair, tented his lingers at his lips,
and said, "You need some help, Harry?"

I knew the kind of help he meant, and I resented the offer.
"I can still take care of myself, George. What I need. is some information?"

"What about"" he said.

"A man named Theo Clinger."