Lullaby Town (1992) (11 page)

Between ten-thirty and noon eight people pulled up to the First Chelam, went in, did business, and came out. None of them were fat guys with caviar skin or people who wore string ties, but I held hope.

At five minutes after twelve Karen Shipley came out and got into her LeBaron. She was wearing a tweed pants suit and brown flat-heeled shoes under a slim leather topcoat, and she carried a briefcase. She pulled out of the lot and turned south, and I hustled out to the Taurus and went after her. Twenty minutes later we turned into a shopping mall in upper Westchester where Karen went into a little cafe. A man in a gray suit took her hand and kissed her on the left cheek and they sat at a window table. I sat in my Taurus. Midway through the meal she opened the briefcase and took out some papers and gave them to the man. He put on tortoiseshell half-glasses, read the papers, then signed them. She put the papers back in her briefcase and they resumed their lunch. Business.

At ten minutes before two Karen was back in the First Chelam and I was back in the John Deere showroom. Opie and Aunt Bea were nowhere to be seen.

At three o'clock Karen Shipley came out again, climbed back into the LeBaron, and drove half a mile out of town to the Woodrow Wilson Smith Elementary School. Toby got into the car and they drove back across Chelam to a single-story medical building with a little sign that read B. L. Franks, D. D. S. Susan Witlow, D. D. S., a dental corporation. They stayed for just under an hour.

After the dentist, we went back through Chelam along a two-lane county road between fields and woods and a scattershot of ponds and small lakes until we turned down a broad new black-topped road past a stone sign that said Clearlake Shores. Someone had come in with a bulldozer and carved out a housing development around a couple of lakes that were too round and too sculptured to be natural. Most of the lots were still unimproved, but some of them had houses underc onstruction, and some of them held completed houses warm with life.

Karen Shipley pulled into a one-story brick colonial with a wide cement drive and white pilasters and virgin landscaping. Maybe a year old. Maybe less. Four white birch trees and a live oak had been planted in the front yard. The trunks on the birch were only a couple of inches thick, the oak was maybe a little thicker. They weren't much now, but if you gave them a little time they would grow tall and strong and you would be glad you stayed with them. There was a basketball backboard suspended over the drive at the lip of the garage. Toby and Karen went inside through the front door and lights came on. They didn't come out again. Home.

I cruised through the development and parked in some high weeds near the county road and watched the house until the sky was dark. Joey and the guy with the string tie didn't show up. Shadows didn't skulk across the landscape. The new house and its hopeful landscaping didn't look like a place where people hid in fear or sicced leg-breakers on unsuspecting private eyes, but then they never do. When my stomach made more noise than the radio, I drove back to the Howard Johnson's.

Each day was pretty much the same. Toby would head for school on his red Schwinn mountain bike, then Karen would leave for the bank. She would get to the bank before anyone else and unlock the door. Joyce Steuben would get there two or three minutes later, and the teller would roll up by nine, just before the bank opened. Bank customers would come and go, and sometimes during midmorning or in the early afternoon Karen would drive to a house or a building or a piece of unimproved land where she would meet two or three people and they would look and smile andp oint, and then Karen Shipley would go back to her office.

Every day between four and four-thirty Toby would pedal up to the bank and go in and stay until Karen left, sometimes as soon as Toby arrived, sometimes not until five. They would go home, Karen sometimes stopping to do a quick errand on the way, but most times not. Once, they drove fourteen miles to a McDonald's, and once they drove to the next town to see the new Steven Segal film. One day Toby didn't come to the bank. Karen left early and drove to the school where the Woodrow Wilson Smith Barking Bears took on the Round Hill Lions in a basketball game. I went in through the rear of the auditorium and watched from the stage. Toby played right forward and he was pretty good. Karen sat on the lowest bleacher and cheered hard, once screaming at an official and calling him a jerk. The Barking Bears lost 38 to 32. Karen took Toby out to a place called Monteback's for a malt. Portrait of the successful single-parent family in action.

At six-oh-five on the morning of the fourth day it fell apart I was driving down the county road toward Karen Shipley's when Karen Shipley passed me going in the opposite direction, an hour before she usually left.

I turned around in a gravel drive and waited for a pickup with a beagle in the back to pass, then pulled out and followed her. She went past Chelam, then picked up the state highway and drove most of the way to Westchester. Traffic heading down toward the city was dense and made keeping her in sight easy. She stayed in the right lane and took an exit marked Dutchy. Less than a mile off the interstate she pulled into the parking lot of an abandoned Eagle service station and parked. There was no one else around. I stayed behind an oldg uy in a 1948 Chevy for another half mile, then pulled over, parked off the road, and walked back through a jumble of birch and elm trees until I was behind the Eagle station. She was still in the car.

The cold air and the winter woods smell made me think of when I was a boy, hunting in the autumn for squirrel and whitetail deer, and I felt the peace that comes from being alone and in a wild place. I wondered if Karen Shipley felt that peace, and if that was why she came.

At twenty-two minutes before seven a black Lincoln Town Car with smoked glass and a car phone antenna turned off the road and parked behind her. The door opened and a dark man with a thick neck and a wide back got out. He was in his early forties and taller than me, and he wore an expensive black Chesterfield topcoat and gray slacks and black Gucci loafers shined so cleanly that he probably kept them in his refrigerator. He took a green nylon bag out of the trunk of his Lincoln and walked over to Karen's LeBaron and gave Karen an off-white smile, but I don't think he was trying to be friendly. Karen got out without smiling back. She took the bag and tossed it into the passenger side of the LeBaron. They talked. Karen's mouth was tight and her eyes were edged on a frown and she stood with her bottom pressed against the LeBaron. The dark man reached out and touched her arm and I could see her stiffen from eighty yards away. He said something else and touched her again and this time she pushed his arm away and as fast as she touched him he slapped her. It was a single hard pop that turned her head. She didn't scramble away from him and she didn't scream for help. She stood there and glared and he raised his hand again, but then he lowered it and went back to the Lincoln and drovea way with a lot of spinning tires and spraying gravel and roaring engine. I copied down his license number.

Karen Shipley watched him drive away" and then she got back into her LeBaron and started the engine and put her face into her hands and cried. She slapped the LeBaron's steering wheel and screamed so loudly that I could hear her even with the windows up and the engine running.

She cried for another five minutes and then she dried her eyes and checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, and when it was perfect she drove away.

I ran back through the woods and pushed the Taurus over a hundred on the roads back to Chelam and picked up Karen Shipley again just as she turned into the bank's parking lot. I pulled up beside the grocery and watched. It was six-fifty-two. Still plenty of time before Joyce Steuben or the teller would arrive.

Karen got out of the LeBaron and carried the duffel bag into the bank. Ten minutes later she came out with the duffel now deflated and folded into a tight roll. She walked across the street to a public waste can in front of the hardware store and threw the duffel away.

Someone in a green and white Chevy Blazer drove by, beeped his horn, and waved. Neighborly. Karen Shipley did not wave back. She walked with her eyes forward and her face set all the way back into the bank. She looked tired and old. Older than the lemon-pie girl in the 8 X 10.

I sat in the Taurus in the empty grocery store lot and watched the town come to life. A rural town with small-town ways. The air was cool and smelled of maple and the coming of Halloween. I turned on the radio. A man and a woman were discussing all the fine recipes you could make with pumpkins and the other autumn squash. A little bit of butter. A little cinnamon. A little sugar. After a while I turned off the radio. Fall used to be my favorite time of the year.

I called the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles from a pay phone at a Shell station just off the interstate and said, "This is foot patrol Officer Willis Sweetwell, badge number five-oh-seven-two-four. I need wants and warrants on New York plate sierra-romeo-golf-six-six-one. And gimme the registration on that, too." They either go for it or they don't.

There was a little pause, then a guy with a deep voice said, "Wait one." Score for the Jack Webb.

The deep voice came back on and told me there were neither wants nor warrants on six-six-one, and that it was registered to the Lucerno Meat Company at 7511 Grand Avenue in lower Manhattan.

I said, "You don't have an individual on that?"

"Nope. Looks like a company car."

I said, Thanks for the help, buddy. Have a good day." Cops like to say "buddy."

I took the Merrill Parkway down through While Plains, ihen wenl across Ihe peninsula lo ihe Henry Hudson Parkway and down along ihe western rim of Manhattan with ihe Hudson River off to my right A green Ireesy park followed along ihe river wilh joggers and old people and kids who should've been in school hanging oul and laughing and having a good time. I passed Grant's Tomb and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and then ihe Hudson parkway became Ihe Wesl Side Highway and Ihe green strip of park was gone and the road ran along ihe waterfront Lee J. and Marlon, slugging il oul. You hear lhal the Hudson is ugly and barren, but I didn't see any dead fish or floating bodies, just a couple of nice sailboats and about a million Japanese container ships and a Cessna floatplane tied lo a short pier.

At the Holland Tunnel I went east along Canal, crossing lower Manhattan between Little Italy and Chinatown. The buildings were old and made of red brick or yellow brick or stone, some painted and some not, each webbed with a tarnished latticework of fire escapes. People jammed the sidewalks, and yellow cabs roared over the streels without regard to traffic lanes or bicyclists or human life, and no one seemed to see anyone else, as if each person was inalienably alone and liked it that way, or at least was used to it.

Lucerne's Meat Packing Plant was in a two-story redbrick industrial building between a tire wholesaler and a textile oullel, four blocks from the Manhattan Bridge. There was a drive and a large crushed-gravel parking lot on the side where Econoline vans and six-by trucks turned around and backed up to a loading dock.

Five cars were parked at the far end of the lot, out of the trucks' way. The second car from the end was the black Lincoln.

I pulled into the lot past the six-bys, whipped a snappy turn like I was trying to get out of the place, put it into reverse, backed up, and crunched the Lincoln nicely. I turned off the Taurus, got out, and made a big deal out of looking at what I had done. The Lincoln's left front headlight was popped and the chrome around it crumpled and the bumper compressed. A couple of black guys in dirty white aprons up on the loading dock were watching me. One of the black guys went into the warehouse and yelled something, and then a little guy in a white jumpsuit and a clipboard came out. I walked over and said, "I was trying to turn around and I backed into that Lincoln. Do you know who owns it?"

The little guy came over to the edge of the dock and stood with his boot tips hanging over and looked at the cars. Lucerno'sFine Meats was embroidered on the back of his coveralls with red thread and FRANK was sewn over his left breast pocket. His face was sour and lined, like maybe he'd just checked his lunch pail and discovered that his wife had given him a roach sandwich. He said, 'Jesus Christ, where'd you learnta drive? Wait here a minute." He went back into the warehouse. The two black guys finished loading a dolly of white boxes into a six-by. They took the boxes off the dolly two at a time and slid them into the six-by so hard that the boxes slammed into the truck with a heavy thud. Tenderizing the meat.

In a litde while Frank came back and said, "Forget it You're off die hook."

I looked at him. "What do you mean, forget it?" Best-laid plans.

"Just what I said. You had a bad break, but we'ren ot gonna bust your chops about it Take off." The old smash-their-car-and-offer-to-pay-for-it routine wasn't getting me very far.

I said, The headlight's smashed and the bumper's pretty dinged up and the frame around the light is busted. Maybe the owner should come take a look."

"It's a company car. Forget it."

"I don't want to forget it. I'm responsible. I oughta pay something to somebody."

He gave me Desi looking at Lucy, the look saying, Jesus Christ, what did I marry? "I'm giving you a pass, capisce? What, are you stupid?"

I said, "You know, that's the trouble with America today. Everybody's looking for a pass. Nobody wants to own up. Well, not me. I own up. I take what's coming to me. I pay my way." Maybe I could appeal to his national pride.