The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy (32 page)

Slawski got most of the credit for Dwayne’s arrest, since it went down on his home turf—although there was still plenty of ink left over for Klaus, who was the subject of many glowing feature articles. Klaus really bogarted the pub, if you want to know the truth. Lulu was livid. I had to sit her down and explain to her how the deal this time was that we weren’t getting any credit. A concept she fully understands, having been through the ghost wars with me many times before. But she was still pissed.

As for Dwayne’s tape-recorded confession—portions of which the Connecticut State Police soon released to the press—that was simply a case of quick thinking on my part. Professional writers often keep a small tape player by their bed for recording the many wise, deep thoughts that occur to them in the night. I had simply managed to flick mine on without Dwayne noticing. And just in case you’re wondering … the answer is no, I don’t usually keep a tape recorder by the bed. I don’t need one, being neither wise nor deep. But the press bought it. In fact, they bought the whole package. Had no reason not to. It made good copy.

Dwayne Gobble was front-page news all over the world for weeks to come, a mega-celebrity whose scarred face graced the covers of
Time, Newsweek, People, The National Enquirer, The Star
and
Rolling Stone
all in the very same week, a rare sweep previously credited only to Madonna, Jacko and the Juice. The verb “to Gobble” soon supplanted “to Bobbitt” as common vernacular for castration. Inevitably, the jokes started. They always do. They were bad jokes. They always are. Like: What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Dwayne Gobble? Answer: “You gonna eat that?” There were many more, but one is my limit. Someone’s putting out a quickie paperback joke book if you want to read the rest.

Everyone kept waiting for Dwayne to apologize for what he’d done. He wouldn’t. He insisted that he’d simply done what a man, any man, is meant to do. His court-appointed attorney was leaning toward an insanity plea, figuring that a man, any man, who kills three people and isn’t sorry has to be insane. Psychobabble filled the talk-radio airwaves day and night; everyone so desperate to
understand
Dwayne. But there wasn’t much to understand. He was one of Thor’s Lost Boys, a fatherless mutant who had no sense of right and wrong, no sense of who he was, and nothing to believe in. Nothing but a hunger deep down inside. A hunger that happened to fixate on Clethra Feingold.

Thor was right—we don’t know how to make men anymore. We have way too many Lost Boys like Dwayne in our midst. And we’re producing more and more of them every single day. Soon they will be old enough to inherit the world. It will all be theirs. I think about that a lot in the night. I won’t be around to witness it, I hope. But Tracy will be. That’s why I think about it.

Naturally, the one person who didn’t swallow our version of how we nailed him was Chick Munger. The lieutenant was positive we three had conspired to bone him out of his collar. For some strange reason, he decided to blame me most of all. But for some even stranger reason, he decided to be big about it.

“Wanna have a word with you, Hoag,” Munger growled after he and his crew had wrapped things up that rainy night. Dwayne was en route to the hospital, Slawski sticking with him. “Something needs saying.”

I was slumped at the kitchen table in my silk target-dot dressing gown, drinking a Macallan. Very was sitting there drinking one with me. Munger kept glancing suspiciously back and forth between us, as if he thought one of us was making funny faces at him behind his back.

“Go ahead and say it, Lieutenant Munger,” I said to him.

“I know I gave you a pretty hard time,” he admitted. “You went and gave me a hard time right back. Far as I’m concerned, we’re even. What I’m saying is … why don’t we forget all about it, huh? Main thing is we got to the bottom of it.”

I tugged at my ear. “Yes, we certainly did.”

Munger stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings?”

I stared up at it. “Your hand, Lieutenant, is extremely dirty. I’d appreciate it if you’d get it out of my face.”

He turned bright red. Stood there a moment, sputtering with rage, then stormed out, slamming the kitchen door behind him.

Very sipped his scotch, shaking his head. “You never change, dude.”

“Why, thank you, Lieutenant.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t take it as one.”

“School me, dude. Why you always got to piss off authority figures?”

“Everyone ought to have something they truly enjoy doing in life.” I refilled our glasses. “And you, Lieutenant?”

“What about me?”

“How are your brain waves?”

“Way cool,” he replied, with that blissful, creepy smile of his. “I’m digging the life out here. It’s real peaceful.”

“This is your idea of peaceful?”

“You may not get rid of me so fast,” he confided, beaming at me from across the table. “Slawski’s invited me to crash at his place for a few days. A good guy, Slawski. Major sense of humor.”

I frowned. “Are we talking about the same Slawski?”

“He’s one funny dude.”

“
Our
Slawski?”

Very nodded. “Only reason you haven’t seen that side of him is that you intimidate him.”

“I do?”

“What he said.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“Just between you and me, dude,” said Very, draining his scotch, “I can’t either.”

A big memorial service for Ruth Feingold was held a few days later in New York City at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. Several hundred people showed up, among them a who’s who of American feminism, past and present, as well as one vice president, two senators, the governor, the mayor, four former mayors, six congressmen and a partridge in a pear tree. Kim Basinger sent that. She was there. Barbra Streisand was there. Jane Fonda and Ted Turner were there. So were Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Phil Donahue and Mario Thomas, Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer, John-John Kennedy, Barbara Wawa, Beverly Sills, Ralph Nader and supermodel Naomi Campbell, who wore a frilly baby-doll dress, spiked heels and no stockings. I was there with Merilee. Clethra was there with Arvin, the newest and saddest of the Lost Boys. Barry was there with Marco. Both wore sunglasses. A lot of people got up and made speeches about what Ruth had meant to the women’s movement over the past thirty years and to them personally. Some were funny. Some were sad. Joan Baez sang
Amazing Grace.
Everyone cried. Everyone except for Arvin, who sat there stoically throughout. He still would not cry.

Afterward, we gathered up Tracy and headed back out to the country with the family for yet another memorial service. This one for Thor, who had been cremated. We drove out to Griswold Point together and scattered his ashes in Long Island Sound.

Merilee and I held hands as we walked back along the beach toward our car. She looked uncommonly radiant that day, her cheeks flushed from the brisk sea air, her long, golden hair shimmering. Tracy bobbed happily along in her kangaroo pouch, her knit cap set jauntily on her abnormally large head. Lulu chased seagulls.

Clethra caught up with us. She was still awed and more than a little shaken by what had happened. “I’m, like, you know what I keep thinking?” she said, her voice rising over the surf. “He
killed
for me. That’s just so extreme. I’m, like, it’s heavy metal love, y’know? People fantasize about it, but he actually
did
it. And all because he loved me.”

“How did you feel about him?” Merilee asked her.

Clethra shrugged her shoulders in her leather jacket. “I thought he was cute.”

There it was. Clethra Feingold’s epitaph for the entire awful episode—she thought he was cute. God, she was so young. And to think she’d unwittingly set off a killing spree that had left three people dead and more than a few permanently scarred, herself included. What a burden to have to carry around. I sure wouldn’t want to.

“It’s not your fault, you know,” I said to her. “You didn’t have anything to do with what Dwayne did.”

She walked in silence a moment, her mouth scrunched tightly shut. “I know I didn’t. But I also
did,
somehow. Because he did it for
me.
And that’s … it’s just such a weird thing to think about. Because, like, what if I’d just blown him off from day one? What if I hadn’t let him kiss me that night in the car? What if I’d just … ?” She stopped short, her words choking with emotion. “Thor and Mom and Tyler might still be alive. I mean, that’s just so weird, y’know?”

“Yes.” I put my arm around her. “I’m afraid I do.”

“I’m worried about Arvy,” she said, lowering her voice. “He’s like this brain-snatched humanoid zombie. He won’t even, like, react.”

I looked over my shoulder at him. He was plowing along listlessly in the sand, hands in his pockets, his eyes hollow and remote.

“Will you talk to him for me? Like, man to man?”

I said I’d be happy to.

She thanked me and fell back alongside him, holding her hand out to him the way one would to a stray cat. He took it, slowly and shyly, and brother and sister walked along together, hand in hand.

“You know, darling,” Merilee observed, “you were right.”

“What about?”

“It
was
a love story.”

“That’s true, it was. But I’m afraid that’s the only thing I was right about.”

Her eyes flickered at me. “You blame yourself a little, don’t you?”

“I blame myself a lot, Merilee. If it hadn’t been for me, Dwayne and Clethra would never have come in contact with each other. I’m the link. I brought the two of them together.”

“Now you’re talking horseradish, mister. If Clethra’s not to blame, then you’re not to blame either.”

I left that one alone. “Well, at least Thor got his way.”

“Oh?” She arched an eyebrow at me.

“He told me I needed to get out of my comfort zone,” I replied. “I’d say this qualified, wouldn’t you?”

We all went back to the farm after that and drank a great deal of wine and grilled a few chickens marinated in fresh rosemary, shallots and lemon juice. Barry made his potato salad, which was well above average. He was in an uncommonly bubbly mood that day. Relief, mostly. Marco’s fever had broken. The bug that he’d been fighting had cleared out, and he felt fine—for now, anyway.

Marco was much better company himself as a consequence. Not nearly so combustible. He even made a special point of admiring the house. That earned him the grand tour.

“Hoagy, I’m sorry I’ve been behaving like such a shit,” he apologized softly when I was pointing out Josiah Whitcomb’s paneling in the front parlor. “I’ve had a lot of scary, awful things on my mind.”

“Not to worry, Marco. We all have.”

Our new handyman was busy upstairs in the master bedroom repairing the windows Dwayne had shattered when he made his dive for freedom. It was painstaking work, but he was a skilled and patient craftsman. We’d hired Kirk, actually, that kid Thor provoked into the fight at Slim Jim’s. Kirk needed the work and he absolutely swore to me that his days of smoking illy were behind him—largely because his girlfriend, Jennifer, absolutely swore to him that she’d drop him otherwise. Fortunately, he showed zero interest in Clethra. And Clethra wasn’t interested in him.

No, it was Romaine Very whom she was interested in. He and Resident Trooper Slawski, the buddies, came by and hung for a while. Clethra latched right onto the lieutenant. The two of them sat together and talked and talked. She seemed to be doing most of the talking. He seemed to be ill at ease. Shy, even. After a while Clethra convinced him to take a walk in the woods with her. They were gone a long time.

Slawski was out of uniform for the first time since I’d met him. The trooper looked much younger in jeans and a sweatshirt, though still most imposing. I brought a beer to him out in the pasture, where he was tossing sticks for Klaus, who was prancing and frolicking like an ebullient pup. Quite some personality change. Lulu watched him from between my legs, most suspicious of this new development.

“What’s gotten into your partner, Trooper?” I wondered, as Klaus arfed at him playfully. “A testosterone rush from all of that pub?”

“Nothing like that,” Slawski replied gruffly. “He’s off duty, that’s all. Likes to unwind just like any other officer.”

Slawski wound up and fired a stick high and deep across the pasture. He threw it so far I could barely see it come down. But Klaus was already there waiting for it when it did. Grabbed it in his mouth and came streaking back with it, dropping it at Slawski’s enormous feet.

“He’s very good,” I observed.

Slawski shot me a look.

“I’m serious, Trooper. He really showed me something that night he took down Dwayne. Lulu couldn’t have done that.”

“Well, he’s a professional,” Slawski said modestly.

“Let that be a lesson to you,” I said to Lulu.

She snuffled at Klaus most beguilingly and offered him various parts of her anatomy to sniff. He obliged, what with being off duty and, like the trooper said, raring to unwind just like any other officer. I don’t know what will happen between them. I can’t, somehow, see her getting mixed up with a cop. Especially a rookie. But stranger things have happened. And will continue to happen. This much I am sure of.

Slawski drank his beer down thirstily and let out a sigh of pure pleasure. He examined the label carefully for future reference. It was a Double Diamond.

“How about another one?”

“I’m down to that,” he agreed.

We started back toward the house together, leaving our partners to their … whatever.

“Very tells me you’ve got quite some sense of humor.”

Slawski shrugged. “You may not think so, being more inclined toward the art of witty repartee.”

“You must have me confused with someone else.”

“Myself, I tend toward the humor of deconstruction. My own idols are Beckett and Ionesco and possibly Mr. Joe Orton.” He cleared his throat nervously. “Still, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to show you some of my material sometime.”

“Your material?”

“I write plays in my spare time,” he said, smoothing his high-top fade with his hand. “Just my own way of kicking it, recreationally speaking. I’ve authored three full-leng?h plays and several one-acts. But I haven’t … what I mean is, I’ve never shown them to anyone. And I could use some intelligent feedback.”