Sam McCain - 02 - Wake Up Little Susie (15 page)

Don Henderson was in business at last.

No Mary.

Don hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks, in fact. In fact, he hadn’t seen me for a couple of weeks. What’s the matter? You don’t like my pizza anymore? (i noticed he’d picked up a modest Italian accent somewhere along the way.)

Still no Mary.

I went back home. A nice new

red-and-blue Buick was parked at the curb.

Mrs. Goldman’s gentleman caller. I

imagined she was dazzling him.

I pulled my car in back and went up the rear steps. Or tried to. Somebody was blocking them.

At first, in the soft moonlight, I wasn’t sure who it was. He wore a cotton-lined jacket, gray work pants, and heavy steel-toed work boots. With his collar up, and his eyes burning angrily out of the mask of shadows, he would have made a perfect cover villain on an old pulp magazine.

He said, “You talk to me a few minutes, McCain?”

“Sure, Mike. The steps here all right?”

“Fine.”

I sat on the bottom step. He sat up a few higher. We both lit up cigarettes. It was chilly but good chilly. The cigarette tasted great. I felt guilty. Nothing should give me pleasure when Mary was missing. And she was definitely missing.

“I think he’s gonna arrest me.”

“Cliffie?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t kill her?”

“Hell, no, I didn’t.”

“Squires said you were bugging them.”

“I was. It was stupid but I did it.

Two-three times I parked out by his house and just sat there.”

“Why?”

“Because the sonofabitch sent me up without givin’

my public defender information that woulda cleared me.”

“You couldn’t appeal?”

“He destroyed the evidence.”

A familiar story among ex-cons. Not only had they been framed, they’d been framed by a Da with an inexplicable hatred for

them.

“Why would he do that?”

“I knocked up his sister.”

“What?”

“Back in high school. Before your time.

Forty-two. Me ‘n’ Helen used to sneak off.

Her folks hated me. I got her pregnant.

They tried to run me out of town but they couldn’t.

Soon as he got to be Da, he came after me. He waited till he had a good chance to get me. I wasn’t in on that armed robbery. I’d been trying to stay out of trouble. I’d been in a lot of little scrapes but nothing big. A friend of mine stuck up a gas station one night and got caught. Squires made him a deal. He wouldn’t serve much time if he swore I was driving the car. He served two years; I served nearly eight.”

“You can prove this?”

“My friend died in the can. Somebody cut his throat.”

I believed him. There were all sorts of reasons not to—y’d naturally resent the man who put you away for eight years—but the simple way he told it seemed authentic. No anger, no bitterness.

I also had another thought. Maybe Squires had hired me just so I’d keep him apprised of everything I learned. Cliffie would bumble around for weeks and not find the right man. But Squires might have figured I might uncover something.

He’d want to know everything if he was going to frame Chalmers. It was the only rational reason Squires would ever have come to me for help.

Nothing else made sense.

“What happened to Helen?”

“Married a doctor. Lives in downstate Illinois.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Abortion. Her old man knew a doc in La.” He took a deep drag on the

cigarette. “Funny. Couple of times she sent me a postcard in the can. On the date she had the baby cut out of her. Said she still thought about me sometimes. And the kid. She’s a nice gal.

Nothing like the rest of her family.”

“You think Squires knew about the cards she sent?”

“Probably not.”

“So he just wants to frame you for old

times’ sake?”

“I smacked him around pretty hard one day.”

“When was this?”

“His office. When he was questioning me about the stickup. I lost my temper and went for him.

Took a couple of guys to pull me off him.”

Humiliation was something a man like Squires would never forget.

“What happens to Ellie if Cliffie

arrests you?”

He shook his head. Looked up at the clear, starry night. In the distance you could hear the high school marching band practicing for homecoming weekend.

“That’s what I’m scared of.”

“You want a lawyer, right?”

“Right.”

“You’ve got one. Cliffie makes a move on you, call me.” I dug out one of the cards I always carry. “Day or night.”

“I’ll do my best to pay you.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. Squires was using me and I resented it. Paying him back would be pay aplenty.

“I still have dreams about Helen.”

“Apparently she still has dreams about you too.”

“Two people who should be together, and somehow it never happens.”

I tried not to think of the beautiful Pamela.

Especially with Mary missing.

“Call me if you need me.”

“I really appreciate this, McCain.”

Upstairs, I phoned Squires at home.

No answer. I tried his office. No answer.

Then I decided to give Judge Whitney the satisfaction of telling her she was right.

Brahms was loud in the background when her man Andrew picked up. He has an accent. Some think it’s British. Some think it’s German.

I think it’s strictly Warner Brothers.

He’s from St. Louis, for God’s sake.

She said, in her brandied evening voice, “I hope you’re working hard.”

“Very hard.”

“Good. Then I can enjoy my loafing.”

“I just called to say you were right about Squires.”

I brought her up to date.

“Looks to me as if he wanted

to learn everything a competent cop would find out about the murder. He didn’t want anything to get in the way of his framing Chalmers.”

“You don’t have any doubts about Chalmers’s story?”

“Not really.”

“Now don’t take offense, McCain, but I know how you people from the Knolls stick together.”

“Not any more than you country-club people do.”

“I don’t know what you’ve got against country clubs. It’s a good thing I know you like money.

Otherwise I might start suspecting you were a Red.”

“I think he’s telling the truth.”

“Once Cliffie arrests him, you may have a hard time convincing anybody about Squires’s part in all this.” A pause. I could hear her sipping, then taking a deep drag on her Gauloise.

“Have you considered the possibility that Squires is more than an opportunist?” I asked.

“Meaning what?”

“Well, one way we could look at this is that he’s simply taking advantage of a situation he didn’t have anything to do with. Somebody murdered his wife; on the spur of the moment, Squires decides to frame your friend Chalmers.”

“On the other hand—”

“On the other hand, of course, Squires is behind the whole thing. He killed his wife and had Chalmers all ready to go as chief suspect.”

“That’s how you see it?”

“Maybe he was tired of Susan. Maybe she wouldn’t let him out of the marriage—or threatened a scandal if she left him. He’d beaten her up pretty badly several times. A guy with political ambitions sure wouldn’t want that kind of thing out and about.”

“But Squires seems so unlikely—”

“Now you’re going country-club on me. Just because he gets a manicure doesn’t mean he’s not a killer.”

“By the way, I noticed that Lenny Bernstein doesn’t have manicured nails. Isn’t that strange?”

“V. Isn’t that the eleventh commandment: Thou shalt have manicured nails?”

“On the other hand, he’s most courtly and devastatingly handsome.”

“How nice for the two of you. Can we

get back to the murder now?”

“I thought you just might be interested when somebody of Lenny’s stature pays a visit to this cow pie of a state.”

“Why don’t you share that metaphor with the Chamber of Commerce? I’m sure they’d love it.”

Another gulp of brandy. “So, before you get any more tiresome, McCain, what do you propose to do next?”

“I propose to find Mary.”

I told her about Mary’s strange absence.

“She’s a beautiful and intelligent girl.

I’m sure she’s fine.”

God only knew what that meant, but it was getting late and the brandy was flowing freely.

“I’m going to try and find Squires too.”

“Why?”

“So I can resign. I don’t want to be part of his charade anymore.”

“That seems like a sensible idea. Good night, McCain. Just as long as we catch the real murderer before Cliffie does, that’s all that matters.”

I started to say good night but she’d already hung up.

The next two days were frantic. There was no word about Mary. And I kept calling the Illinois number about the ‘ee Chevy. No answer.

One of Cliffie’s third cousins had run into a manure wagon and had twice failed to appear for his scheduled court appearance before Judge Whitney. She found this intolerable. I spent most of the following forty-eight hours hunting down Bud “Pug” Sykes. He worked as a county assessor and had long displayed an affection for the bottle. I’m sure he was hiding out. This was between Cliffie and the Judge. Pug was incidental.

I found him the next county over. He was sitting through a western double feature with Also “Lash” La Rue and Monte Hale. I’d

never cared for these gentlemen. “Lash” was a little too ornate for me; Monte, I’m sorry to say, always looked a little dense. Pug had been kind enough to park out in front of the theater,

making it easy for me to see his license plate.

On the drive back, he said, “I got

t’get me one of them whips. Like that Lash La Rue.” He was holding up family tradition: food stains on his work jacket, shirt, and trousers, and a dab of mustard on one cheek.

“I can see where that’d come in handy. A bullwhip like that.”

“Bet cousin Cliff’d like one too.”

I was so used to people calling him Cliffie, Cliff sounded strange.

“Cliff told me I didn’t have to go to that there hearing unless I wanted to,” he said. “And I didn’t want to.”

“You’re in violation of the law, Pug. You have to show up. You be nice to the Judge, and she’ll be nice to you.”

Pug snorted. “Cliff always says, “I wouldn’t screw that old bitch with your dick, Pug.”” He giggled. “That Cliff.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A million laughs.”

He was still giggling. “Hell, who needs Jackie Gleason when you got Cliff around?”

As soon as I dropped Pug off at

Judge Whitney’s office, I went straight to Mary’s house. The street was sunny and lazy in another Indian summer afternoon. A small girl in pigtails rode a rusty old

tricycle furiously up the cracked

sidewalk. Then she stopped. She wanted to watch me walk up to the Traverses’ door.

She could have been Mary or Pamela fifteen years earlier, that smart little face, that clean but mended dress. The good ones in the Knoll never gave in to the temptation to go around dirty. Maybe they had little money and even less hope, but by God they were clean.

Miriam Travers had gotten old before her time. Life hadn’t been easy. She’d lost a brother in the big war and a son in Korea, and now her husband had serious heart problems and her daughter was missing. The face was still pretty, the body still slender, but there was a defeated air about her, like a village that has been sacked by a particularly brutal army.

“Did you find her?” For just that moment, with hope in her lovely gray eyes, the hair was girlishly dark once more and the faded housedress a stylish frock. Miriam Travers

was a young woman again, and life ahead looking happy.

“I’m afraid not, Miriam.”

She hadn’t said hello or invited me in.

She’d just burst out with her hopeful question before I could speak or move. And now there was a death in her, one of those deaths you experience every time a phone rings and you plead with God that the news will be good.

She collapsed into my arms. There’s no other way to express it. She didn’t put her arms around me, she just fell forward. I held her. I didn’t try to move her back into the house. I simply held her. She smelled of coffee and a faint perfume. She didn’t cry or tremble or even move much. She was trying to hide. She needed to put her face deep into a darkness where she could not be reached by any more bad news.

Then Bill Travers was behind her, a wraith in a robe. He’d been a ruddy and robust man just a few months ago. The heart attack had taken both qualities from him. He’d lost at least forty pounds and moved uncertainly, like a bad actor playing a withered old man. His loose slippers slapped the floor and a

bronchial-sounding cough filled his throat.

He slid his arms around her, and she turned with great sudden grace inside his embrace. And then she began crying. Sobbing.

“I’d like to go up to Mary’s room,” I said to the pale man impersonating Bill Travers.

He nodded. By the time I reached the narrow staircase, he was leading his wife carefully to the couch.

Time travel.

I remembered the day. Who didn’t? Very-Just Day. End of the long and murderous war. Dad coming home. Six hundred thousand dads coming home.

There were Mary and I in the army caps our fathers had sent us, tiny American flags in our mitts, grinning at the camera. We had our arms over each other’s shoulders.

There were other photos of the two of us: dances, bonfires, horseback rides, hot afternoons at the public swimming pool; later on, hot afternoons at the sandpits, high school beer cans glinting off the sunlight.

And Mary evolved in each one. More and more beautiful and graceful. A cutup, to be sure —clowning in a sport coat of her

father’s as a ten-year-old me watched; smoking a cigarette at her thirteenth birthday party (a very sophisticated lady until, as Miriam had predicted, she rushed to the john and threw up), me looking gawky and dumb in the background, shorter even than most of the girls; Mary in a talent contest lip-synching (as I recall) to “Music! Music! Music!” by Teresa