Salem’s Lot (14 page)

10

Parkins paused a moment to look in the show window of the new shop before knocking on the door. When the place had been the Village Washtub, a body could look in here and see nothing but a lot of fat women in rollers adding bleach or getting change out of the machine on the wall, most of them chewing gum like cows with mouthfuls of mulch. But an interior decorator’s truck from Portland had been here yesterday afternoon and most of today, and the place looked considerably different.

A platform had been shoved up behind the window, and it was covered with a swatch of deep nubby carpet, light green in color. Two spotlights had been installed up out of sight, and they cast soft, highlighting glows on the three objects that bad been arranged in the window: a clock, a spinning wheel, and an old-fashioned cherrywood cabinet. There was a small easel in front of each piece, and a discreet price tag on each easel, and my God, would anybody in their right mind actually pay $600 for a spinning wheel when they could go down to the Value House and get a Singer for $48.95?

Sighing, Parkins went to the door and knocked.

It was opened only a second later, almost as if the new fella had been lurking behind it, waiting for him to come to the door.

‘Inspector!’ Straker said with a narrow smile. ‘How good of you to drop by!’

‘Plain old constable, I guess,’ Parkins said. He lit a Pall Mall and strolled in, ‘Parkins Gillespie. Pleased to meet you.’ He stuck out his hand. It was gripped, squeezed gently by a hand that felt enormously strong and very dry, and then dropped.

‘Richard Throckett Straker,’ the bald man said.

‘I figured you was,’ Parkins said, looking around. The entire shop had been carpeted and was in the process of being painted. The smell of fresh paint was a good one, but there seemed to be another smell underneath it, an unpleasant one. Parkins could not place it; he turned his attention back to Straker.

‘What can I do for you on this so-fine day?’ Straker asked.

Parkins turned his mild gaze out the window, where the rain continued to pour down.

‘Oh, nothing at all, I guess. I just came by to say how-do. More or less welcome you to the town an’ wish you good luck, I guess.’

‘How thoughtful. Would you care for a coffee? Some sherry? I have both out back.’

‘No thanks, I can’t stop. Mr Barlow around?’

‘Mr Barlow is in New York, on a buying trip. I don’t expect him back until at least the tenth of October.’

‘You’ll be openin’ without him, then,’ Parkins said, thinking that if the prices he had seen in the window were any indication, Straker wouldn’t exactly be swamped with customers. ‘What’s Mr Barlow’s first name, by the way?’

Straker’s smile reappeared, razor-thin. ‘Are you asking in your official capacity, ah… Constable?’

‘Nope. Just curious.’

‘My partner’s full name is Kurt Barlow,’ Straker said. ‘We have worked together in both London and Hamburg. This’-he swept his arm around him-’this is our retirement. Modest. Yet tasteful. We expect to make no more than a living. Yet we both love old things, fine things, and we hope to make a reputation in the area… perhaps even throughout your so-beautiful New England region. Do you think that would be possible, Constable Gillespie?’

‘Anything’s possible, I guess,’ Parkins said, looking around for an ash tray. He saw none, and tapped his cigarette ash into his coat pocket. ‘Anyway, I hope you’ll have the best of luck, and tell Mr Barlow when you see him that I’m gonna try and get around.’

‘I’ll do so,’ Straker said. ‘He enjoys company.

‘That’s fine,’ Gillespie said. He went to the door, paused, looked back. Straker was looking at him intently. ‘By the way, how do you like that old house?’

‘It needs a great deal of work,’ Straker said. ‘But we have time.’

‘I guess you do,’ Parkins agreed. ‘Don’t suppose you seen any yow’uns up around there.’

Straker’s brow creased. ‘Yowwens?’

‘Kids,’ Parkins explained patiently. ‘You know how they sometimes like to devil new folks. Throw rocks or ring the bell an’ run away… that sort of thing.’

‘No,’ Straker said. ‘No children.’

‘We seem to kind have misplaced one.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes,’ Parkins said judiciously, ‘yes, it is. The thinkin’ now is that we may not find him. Not alive.’

‘What a shame,’ Straker said distantly.

‘It is, kinda. If you should see anything… ’

‘I would of course report it to your office, posthaste.’ He smiled his chilly smile again.

‘That’s good,’ Parkins said. He opened the door and looked resignedly out at the pouring rain. ‘You tell Mr Barlow that I’m lookin’ forward.’

‘I certainly will, Constable Gillespie.
Ciao
.’

Parkins looked back, startled. ‘Chow?’

Straker’s smile widened. ‘Good-by, Constable Gillespie. That is the familiar Italian expression for good-by.’

‘Oh? Well, you learn somethin’ new every day, don’t you? ‘By.’ He stepped out into the rain and closed the door behind him. ‘Not familiar to me, it ain’t.’ His cigarette was soaked. He threw it away.

Inside, Straker watched him up the street through the show window. He was no longer smiling.

11

When Parkins got back to his office in the Municipal Building, he called, ‘Nolly? You here, Nolly?’

No answer. Parkins nodded. Nolly was a good boy, but a little bit short on brains. He took off his coat, unbuckled his galoshes, sat down at his desk, looked up a telephone number in the Portland book, and dialed. The other end picked up on the first ring.

‘FBI, Portland. Agent Hanrahan.’

‘This is Parkins Gillespie. Constable at Jerusalem’s Lot township. We’ve got us a missin’ boy up here.’

‘So I understand,’ Hanrahan said crisply. ‘Ralph Glick. Nine years old, four-three, black hair, blue eyes. What is it, kidnap note?’

‘Nothin’ like that. Can you check on some fellas for me?’

Hanrahan answered in the affirmative.

‘First one is Benjaman Mears. M-E-A-R-S. Writer. Wrote a book called
Conway’s Daughter
. The other two are sorta stapled together. Kurt Barlow. B-A-R-L-O-W. The other guy-’

‘You spell that Kurt with a "c" or a "k"?’ Hanrahan asked.

‘I dunno.’

‘Okay. Go on.’

Parkins did so, sweating. Talking to the real law always made him feel like an asshole. ‘The other guy is Richard Throckett Straker. Two t’s on the end of Throckett, and Straker like it sounds. This guy and Barlow are in the furniture and antique business. They just opened a little shop here in town. Straker claims Barlow’s in New York on a buyin’ trip. Straker claims the two of them worked together in London an’ Hamburg. And I guess that pretty well covers it.’

‘Do you suspect these people in the Glick case?’

‘Right now I don’t know if there even is a case. But they all showed up in town about the same time.’

‘Do you think there’s any connection between this guy Mears and the other two?’

Parkins leaned back and cocked an eye out the window. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is one of the things I’d like to find out.’

12

The telephone wires make an odd humming on clear, cool days, almost as if vibrating with the gossip that is transmitted through them, and it is a sound like no other the lonely sound of voices flying over space. The telephone poles are gray and splintery, and the freezes and thaws of winter have heaved them into leaning postures that are casual. They are not businesslike and military, like phone poles anchored in concrete. Their bases are black with tar if they are beside paved roads, and floured with dust if beside the back roads. Old weathered cleat marks show on their surfaces where linemen have climbed to fix something in 1946 or 1952 or 1969. Birds-crows, sparrows, robins, starlings-roost on the humming wires and sit in hunched silence, and perhaps they hear the foreign human sounds through their taloned feet. If so, their beady eyes give no sign. The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep in the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.

‘… and he paid with an old twenty, Mabel, one of the big ones. Clyde said he hadn’t seen one of those since the run on the Gates Bank and Trust in 1930. He was… ’

‘… yes, he
is
a peculiar sort of man, Evvie. I’ve seen him through my binocs, trundling around behind the house with a wheelbarrer. Is he up there alone, I wonder, or… ’

‘… Crockett might know, but he won’t tell. He’s keeping shut about it. He always was a… ’

‘… writer at Eva’s. I wonder if Floyd Tibbits knows he’s been… ’

‘… spends an awful lot of time at the library. Loretta Starcher says she never saw a fella who knew so many… ’

‘… she said his name was… ’

‘… yes, it’s Straker. Mr R. T. Straker. Kenny Danles’s mom said she stopped by that new place downtown and there was a genuine DeBiers cabinet in the window and they wanted
eight hundred dollars
for it. Can you imagine? So I said… ’

‘… funny, him coming and that little Glick boy… ’

‘… you don’t think… ’

‘… no, but it
is
funny. By the way, do you still have that recipe for… ’

The wires hum. And hum. And hum.

13

9/23/75

Name: Glick, Daniel Francis

Address: RFD #I, Brock Road, Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine 04270

Age: 12 Sex: Male Race: Caucasian

Admitted: 9/22/75 Admitting Person: Anthony H. Glick (Father)

Symptoms: Shock, loss of memory (partial), nausea, disinterest in food, constipation, general loginess

Tests (see attached sheet):

1. Tuberculosis skin patch: Neg.

2. Tuberculosis sputum and urine: Neg.

3. Diabetes: Neg.

4. White cell count: Neg.

5. Red cell count: 45% hemo.

6. Marrow sample: Neg.

7. Chest X ray: Neg.

Possible diagnosis: Pernicious anemia, primary or secondary; previous exam shows 86% hemoglobin. Secondary anemia is unlikely; no history of ulcers, hemorrhoids, bleeding piles, et al. Differential cell count neg. Primary anemia combined with mental shock likely. Recommend barium enema and X-rays for internal bleeding on the off-chance, yet no recent accidents, father says. Also recommend daily dosage of vitamin B12 (see attached sheet).

Pending further tests, let’s release him.

G. M. Gorby

Attending Physician

14

At one o’clock in the morning, September 24, t nurse stepped into Danny Glick’s hospital room to give him his medication. She paused in the doorway, frowning. The bed was empty.

Her eyes jumped from the bed to the oddly wasted white bundle that lay collapsed by the foot. ‘Danny?’ she said.

She stepped toward him and thought, He had to go to the bathroom and it was too much for him, that’s all.

She turned him over gently, and her first thought before realizing that he was dead was that the B12 had been helping; he looked better than he had since his admission.

And then she felt the cold flesh of his wrist and the lack of movement in the light blue tracery of veins beneath her fingers, and she ran for the nurses’ station to report a death on the ward.

BEN (II)

1

On September 25 Ben took dinner with the Nortons again. It was Thursday night, and the meal was traditional-beans and franks. Bill Norton grilled the franks on the outdoor grill, and Ann had had her kidney beans simmering in molasses since nine that morning. They ate at the picnic table and afterward they sat smoking, the four of them, talking desultorily of Boston’s fading pennant chances.

There was a subtle change in the air; it was still pleasant enough, even in shirt sleeves, but there was a glint of ice in it now. Autumn was waiting in the wings, almost in sight. The large and ancient maple in front of Eva Miller’s boardinghouse had already begun to go red.

There had been no change in Ben’s relationship with the Nortons. Susan’s liking for him was frank and clear and natural. And he liked her very much. In Bill he sensed a steadily increasing liking, held in abeyance by the subconscious taboo that affects all fathers when in the presence of men who are there because of their daughters rather than themselves. If you like another man and you are honest, you speak freely, discuss women over beer, shoot the shit about politics. But no matter how deep the potential liking, it is impossible to open up completely to a man who is dangling your daughter’s potential decoration between his legs. Ben reflected that after marriage the possible had become the actual and could you become complete friends with the man who was banging your daughter night after night? There might be a moral there, but Ben doubted it.

Ann Norton continued cool. Susan had told him a little of the Floyd Tibbits situation the night before-of her mother’s assumption that her son-in-law problems had been solved neatly and satisfactorily in that direction. Floyd was a known quantity; he was Steady. Ben Mears, on the other hand, had come out of nowhere and might disappear back there just as quickly, possibly with her daughter’s heart in his pocket. She distrusted the creative male with an instinctive small-town dislike (one that Edward Arlington Robinson or Sherwood Anderson would have recognized at once), and Ben suspected that down deep she had absorbed a maxim: either faggots or bull studs; sometimes homicidal, suicidal, or maniacal; tend to send young girls packages containing their left ears. Ben’s participation in the search for Ralphie Glick seemed to have increased her suspicions rather than allayed them, and he suspected that winning her over was an impossibility. He wondered if she knew of Parkins Gillespie’s visit to his room.

He was chewing these thoughts over lazily when Ann said, ‘Terrible about the Glick boy.’

‘Ralphie? Yes,’ Bill said.

‘No, the older one. He’s dead.’

Ben started. ‘Who? Danny?’

‘He died early yesterday morning.’ She seemed surprised that the men did not know. It had been all the talk.

‘I heard them talking in Milt’s,’ Susan said. Her hand found Ben’s under the table and he took it willingly. ‘How are the Glicks taking it?’

‘The same way I would,’ Ann said simply. ‘They are out of their minds.’

Well they might be, Ben thought. Ten days ago their life had been going about its usual ordained cycle; now their family unit was smashed and in pieces. It gave him a morbid chill.

‘Do you think the other Glick boy will ever show up alive?’ Bill asked Ben.

‘No,’ Ben said. ‘I think he’s dead, too.’

‘Like that thing in Houston two years ago,’ Susan said. ‘If he’s dead, I almost hope they don’t find him. Whoever could do something like that to a little, defenseless boy -’

‘The police are looking around, I guess,’ Ben said. ‘Rounding up known sex offenders and talking to them.’

‘When they find the guy they ought to hang him up by the thumbs,’ Bill Norton said. ‘Badminton, Ben?’

Ben stood. ‘No thanks. Too much like you playing solitaire with me for the dummy. Thanks for the nice meal. I’ve got work to do tonight.’

Ann Norton lifted her eyebrow and said nothing.

Bill stood. ‘How’s that new book coming?’

‘Good,’ Ben said briefly. ‘Would you like to walk down the hill with me and have a soda at Spencer’s, Susan?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Ann interposed swiftly. ‘After Ralphie Glick and all, I’d feel better if-’

‘Momma, I’m a big girl,’ Susan interposed. ‘And there are streetlights all the way up Brock Hill.’

‘I’ll walk you back up, of course,’ Ben said, almost formally. He had left his car at Eva’s. The early evening had been too fine to drive.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Bill said. ‘You worry too much, Mother.’

‘Oh, I suppose I do. Young folks always know best, don’t they?’ She smiled thinly.

‘I’ll just get a jacket,’ Susan murmured to Ben, and turned up the back walk. She was wearing a red play skirt, thigh-high, and she exposed a lot of leg going up the steps to the door. Ben watched, knowing Ann was watching him watch. Her husband was damping the charcoal fire.

‘How long do you intend to stay in the Lot, Ben?’ Ann asked, showing polite interest.

‘Until the book gets written, anyway,’ he said. ‘After that, I can’t say. It’s very lovely in the mornings, and the air tastes good when you breathe it.’ He smiled into her eyes. ‘I may stay longer.’

She smiled back. ‘It gets cold in the winters, Ben. Awfully cold.’

Then Susan was coming back down the steps with a light jacket thrown over her shoulders. ‘Ready? I’m going to have a chocolate. Look out, complexion.’

‘Your complexion will survive,’ he said, and turned to Mr and Mrs Norton. ‘Thank you again.’

‘Anytime,’ Bill said. ‘Come on over with a six-pack tomorrow night, if you want. We’ll make fun of that goddamn Yastrzemski.’

‘That would be fun,’ Ben said, ‘but what’ll we do after the second inning?’

His laughter, hearty and full, followed them around the corner of the house.