Promised Land (5 page)

I showered and shaved and got dressed. Six hours of paper shuffling had led me to a surmise that the Hyannis cops had begun by checking the bus terminal. She was in New Bedford. But I had an address, maybe not for her, but for someone. It pays to do business with your local gumshoe. Personalized service.

The drive to New Bedford up Route 6 was forty-five miles and took about an hour through small towns like Wareham and Onset, Marion and Mattapoisett. Over the bridge from Fairhaven across the interflow of the harbor and the Acushnet River, New Bedford rose steeply from the docks. Or what was left of it. The hillside from the bridge to the crest looked like newsreel footage of the Warsaw ghetto. Much of the center of the city had been demolished and urban renewal was in full cry. Purchase Street, one of the main streets the last time I’d been in New Bedford, was now a pedestrian mall. I drove around aimlessly in the bulldozed wasteland for perhaps ten minutes before I pulled off into a rutted parking area and stopped. I got out, opened the trunk of my car and got out a street directory for Massachusetts.

Centre Street was down back of the Whaling Museum. I knew the hill and turned left past the public library. Out front they still had the heroic statue of the harpooner in the whaleboat. A dead whale or a stove boat. The choices then were simple, if drastic. I turned left down the hill toward the water, then onto Johnny Cake Hill and parked near the Whaling Museum, in front of the Seaman’s Bethel.

I checked my street map again and walked around the Whaling Museum to the street behind it and looked and there was Centre Street. It was a short street, no more than four or five buildings long, and it ran from North Water Street, behind the museum, to Front Street, which paralleled the water. It was an old street, weedy and dank. Number three was a narrow two story building with siding of gray asbestos shingles and a crumbly looking red brick chimney in the center of the roof. The roof shingles were old and dappled in various shades as though someone had patched it periodically with what he had at hand. It needed more patching. There was worn green paint on the trim here and there and the front door on the right side of the building face was painted red. It had the quality of an old whore wearing lipstick.

I hoped she wasn’t in there. I wanted to find her but I hated to think of her coming from the big sunny house in Hyannis to burrow in rat’s alley. What to do now? No one knew me, neither Rose Alexander or Pam Shepard, nor, as far as I knew, anyone in New Bedford. In fact the number of places where I could go and remain anonymous continuously amazed me. I could enter on any pretext and look around. Or I could knock on the door and ask for Pam Shepard. The safest thing was to stand around and watch. I liked to know as much as I could before I went in where I hadn’t been before. That would take time, but I wouldn’t run the risk of scaring anyone off. I looked at my watch: 12:15. I went back up toward what was left of the business district and found a restaurant. I had fried clams and cole slaw and two bottles of beer. Then I strolled back down to Centre Street and took up station about five past one. On North Water Street a municipal crew was at work with a backhoe and some jackhammers, while several guys with shirts and ties and yellow hard hats walked around with clipboards and conferred. Nobody came down Centre Street, or up it. Nobody had anything to do with Centre Street. No evidence of life appeared at number three. I had picked up a copy of the New Bedford Standard Times on my way back from lunch and I read it while I leaned on a telephone pole on the corner of North Water and Centre. I read everything, glancing regularly over the rim of the paper to check the house. I read about a bean supper at the Congregational church in Mattapoisett, about a father-son baseball game at the junior high school field in Rochester, about a local debutante’s ball at the Wamsutta Club. I read the horoscope, the obituaries, the editorial, which took a strong stand against the incursion of Russian trawlers into local waters. I read “Dondi” and hated it. When I finished the paper, I folded it up, walked the short length of Centre Street and leaned against the doorway of an apparently empty warehouse on the corner of Centre and Front streets.

At three o’clock a wino in a gray suit, a khaki shirt and an orange flowered tie stumbled into my doorway and urinated in the other corner. When he got through I offered to brush him off and hand him a towel but he paid me no attention and stumbled off. What is your occupation, sir? I’m an outdoor men’s room attendant. I wondered if anyone had ever whizzed on Allan Pinkerton’s shoe.

At four-fifteen Pam Shepard came out of the shabby house with another woman. Pam was slim and Radcliffy looking with a good tan and her brown hair back in a tight French twist. She was wearing a chino pantsuit that displayed a fine-looking backside. I’d have to get closer but she looked worth finding. The woman she was with was smaller and sturdier looking. Short black hair, tan corduroy jeans and a pink muslin shirt like Indira Gandhi. They headed up the street toward the museum and turned left on the Purchase Street pedestrian mall. The mall had been created by curbing across the intersection streets and had a homemade look to it. Pam Shepard and her friend went into a supermarket and I stood under the awning of a pawnshop across the street and watched them through the plate-glass window. They bought some groceries, consulting a shopping list as they went, and in about a half-hour they were back out on the street, each with a large brown paper sack in her arms. I followed them back to the house on Centre Street and watched them disappear inside. Well, at least I knew where she was. I resumed my telephone pole. The warehouse door had lost some of its appeal.

It got dark and nothing else happened, I was beginning to hope for the wino again. I was also hungry enough to eat at a Hot Shoppe. I had some thinking it over to do and while I always did that better eating, the fried clams had not sold me on New Bedford cuisine and I would probably have to sleep sometime later on anyway. So I went back and got my car and headed back for Hyannis. There was a parking ticket under the wiper but it blew off somewhere near a bowling alley in Mattapoisett.

During the ride back to Hyannis I decided that the best move would be to go back to New Bedford in the morning and talk with Pam Shepard. In a sense I’d done what I hired on for. That is, I had her located and could report that she was alive and under no duress. It should be up to Shepard to go and get her. But it didn’t go down right, giving him the address and going back to Boston. I kept thinking of Eddie Taylor’s final look at her, lying on the bed on her back screaming at the ceiling. There had been a pathetic overdressed quality to her as she came out of the shabby two-story on Centre Street. She’d had on pendant earrings.

It was nine-thirty when I got back to the motel. The dining room was still open so I went in and had six oysters and a half bottle of Chablis and a one-pound steak with Bearnaise sauce and a liter of beer. The salad had an excellent house dressing and the whole procedure was a great deal more pleasant than hanging around in a doorway with an incontinent wino. After dinner I went back to my room and caught the last three innings of the Sox game on channel six.

In the morning I was up and away to New Bedford before eight. I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop for a training-table breakfast to go, and ate my doughnuts and drank my coffee as I headed up the Cape with the sun at my back. I hit New Bedford at commuter time and while it wasn’t that big a city its street system was so confused that the traffic jam backed up across the bridge into Fairhaven. It was nine-forty when I got out of the car and headed for the incongruous front door at 3 Centre Street. There was no doorbell and no knocker so I rapped on the red panels with my knuckles. Not too hard, the door might fold.

A big, strong-looking young woman with light brown hair in a long single braid opened the door. She had on jeans and what looked like a black leotard top. She was obviously braless, and, less noticeably, shoeless.

“Good morning,” I said, “I’d like to speak with Pam Shepard, please.”

“I’m sorry, there’s no Pam Shepard here.”

“Will she be back soon?” I was giving her my most engaging smile. Boyish. Open. Mr. Warm.

“I don’t know any such person,” she said.

“Do you live here?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Are you Rose Alexander?”

“No.” Once I give them the engaging smile they just slobber all over me.

“Is she in?”

“Who are you?”

“I asked you first,” I said.

Her face closed down and she started to shut the door. I put my hand flat against it and held it open. She shoved harder and I held it open harder. She seemed determined.

“Madam,” I said, “if you will stop shoving that door at me, I will speak the truth to you. Even though, I do not believe you have spoken the truth to me.”

She paid no attention. She was a big woman and it was getting hard to hold the door open effortlessly.

“I stood outside this house most of yesterday and saw Pam Shepard and another woman come out, go shopping and return with groceries. The phone here is listed to Rose Alexander.” My shoulder was beginning to ache. “I will talk civilly with Pam Shepard and I won’t drag her back to her husband.”

Behind the young woman a voice said, “What the hell is going on here, Jane?”

Jane made no reply. She kept shoving at the door. The smaller, black-haired woman I’d seen with Pam Shepard yesterday appeared. I said, “Rose Alexander?” She nodded. “I need to talk with Pam Shepard,” I said.

“I don’t…” Rose Alexander started.

“You do too,” I said. “I’m a detective and I know such things: If you’ll get your Amazon to unhand the door we can talk this all out very pleasantly.”

Rose Alexander put her hand on Jane’s arm. “You’d better let him in, Jane,” she said gently. Jane stepped away from the door and glared at me. There were two bright smudges of color on her cheekbones, but no other sign of exertion. I stepped into the hall. My shoulder felt quite numb as I took my hand off the door. I wanted to rub it but was too proud. What price machismo?

“May I see some identification?” Rose Alexander said.

“Certainly.” I took the plastic-coated photostat of my license out of my wallet and showed it to her.

“You’re not with the police then,” she said.

“No, I am self-employed,” I said.

“Why do you wish to talk with me?”

“I don’t,” I said. “I wish to talk with Pam Shepard.”

“Why do you wish to talk with her?”

“Her husband hired me to find her.”

“And what were you to do when you did?”

“He didn’t say. But he wants her back.”

“And you intend to take her?”

“No, I intend to talk with her. Establish that she’s well and under no duress, explain to her how her husband feels and see if she’d like to return.”

“And if she would not like to return?”

“I won’t force her.”

Jane said, “That’s for sure,” and glared at me.

“Does her husband know she’s here?” Rose Alexander asked.

“No.”

“Because you’ve not told him?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to see what was happening in the china shop before I brought in the bull.”

“I don’t trust you,” Rose Alexander said. “What do you think, Jane?”

Jane shook her head.

“I’m not here with her husband, am I?”

“But we don’t know how close he is,” Rose Alexander said.

“Or who’s with him,” Jane said.

“Who’s with him?” I was getting confused.

Rose said, “You wouldn’t be the first man to take a woman by force and never doubt your right.”

“Oh,” I said.

“We back down from you now,” Jane said, “and it will be easier next time. So we’ll draw the line here, up front, first time.”

“But if you do,” I said, “you’ll make me use force. Not to take anyone, but to see that she’s in fact okay.”

“You saw that yesterday,” Jane said. The color was higher on her cheekbones now, and more intense. “You told me you saw Pam and Rose go shopping together.

”I don’t think you’ve got her chained in the attic,“ I said. ”But duress includes managing the truth. If she has no chance to hear me and reject me for herself she’s not free, she’s under a kind of duress.“

”Don’t you try to force your way in,“ Jane said. ”You’ll regret it, I promise you.“ She had stepped back away from me and shifted into a martial arts stance, her feet balanced at right angles to each other in a kind of T stance, her open hands held in front of her in another kind of T, the left hand vertical, the right horizontal above it. She looked like she was calling for time out. Her lips were pulled back and her breath made a hissing sound as it squeezed out between her teeth.

”You had lessons?“ I asked.

Rose Alexander said, ”Jane is very advanced in karate. Do not treat her lightly. I don’t wish to hurt you, but you must leave.“ Her black eyes were quite wide and bright as she spoke. Her round pleasant face was flushed. I didn’t believe the part about not wishing to hurt me.

”Well, I’m between a rock and a hard place right now. I don’t want you to hurt me either, and I don’t take Jane lightly. On the other hand the more you don’t want me to see Pam Shepard, the more I think I ought to. I could probably go for the cops, but by the time we got back, Pam Shepard would be gone. I guess I’m going to have to insist.“

Jane kicked me in the balls. Groin just doesn’t say it. I’d never fought with a woman before and I wasn’t ready. If felt like it always does: nausea, weakness, pain and an irresistible compulsion to double over. I did double over. Jane chopped down on the back of my neck. I twisted away and the blow landed on the big trapezious muscles without doing any serious damage. I straightened up. It hurt but not as much as it was going to if I didn’t make a comeback. Jane aimed the heel of her hand at the tip of my nose. I banged her hand aside with my right forearm and hit her as hard a left hook as I’ve used lately, on the side of her face, near the hinge of her jaw. She went over backward and lay on the floor without motion. I’d never hit a woman before and it scared me a little. Had I hit her too hard? She was a big woman but I must have outweighed her by forty pounds. Rose Alexander dropped to her knees beside Jane, and having got there didn’t know what to do. I got down too, painfully, and felt her pulse. It was nice and strong and her chest heaved and fell steadily. ”She’s okay,“ I said. ”Probably better than I am.“