Absolute Rage (15 page)

“You
have
to come,” cried Dan, his voice breaking. “I haven't got anybody else. Everyone around here is too scared now, or bought out by the company or Weames. And Emmett is drinking and talking big about going over to Weames or one of his people and beating the truth out of them, and he's going to get killed, too, and he's all I've got left in the world.” Heavy breathing, then stifled sobs.

Marlene sighed and rolled her eyes upward. Lucy, who had not gone far, asked, “What's wrong?”

Marlene put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “He wants me to go down there and . . . Okay, Dan, calm down. Get hold of yourself! Look, here's what I think you should do.” She paused there. What
should
he do? She had no idea, except maybe not to have called, not to have had a mother who struck up a conversation on a Long Island beach with a woman who should have known better than to blather on about her colorful past, and then gotten herself killed in some godforsaken hole in West . . . No, that was the wrong line of thought. The question was, what should
she
do? Marlene felt Lucy's eyes on her.

“What I think you should do,” Marlene resumed, “is get your drunk lawyer friend to hand you copies of all the paper he's got on the case, as complete a record as he can—arrest reports, evidence reports, whatever. I'll need to look at all that. Where are you guys staying now?”

“At our house . . . Wait, does that mean you're coming?”

“At your house?” cried Marlene. “You're living in the
crime scene?”

“Uh-huh. It's our house. They took all the, you know, the murder evidence out. And we hired a couple of women to clean it up and paint and all.”

“Oh, great!”

“What's wrong? Did we make a mistake?”

“Oh, no, it's not your fault—but just so you know, in the regular world, crime scenes are usually sealed for a considerable time. Sometimes even until the trial. I've known defense lawyers and prosecutors to actually tour a jury through a preserved crime scene. Well, it doesn't matter now.”

“But you're coming, right?”

She blew out a long breath. “Yeah, I guess. Hang in there, kid. And try to keep your brother from doing something stupid.” After a few more similar encouraging banalities and a brief logistical discussion, she hung up.

“Speaking of stupid,” she said to the air.

Lucy was almost trembling with frustration.
“Mahumm!
What is going
on?”

Marlene explained the situation. “I want to come, too,” was the response.

“Idiot child, you can't come. I couldn't go at
all
if you weren't here. The boys . . . ?”

“They could go to summer camp. And you might need help down there.”

“Yes, and if they held court in Estonian, you would be invaluable.”

“That is really nasty.”

Marlene hung her head and controlled her temper. “Yes. I'm sorry. Look, here's what's going to happen. What we have here is a case of panic. It's a delayed reaction to the shock, and God knows those poor kids have a right to be a little weird. I will go there, take a look around, calm them both down, find them a decent
West Virginia
lawyer, and depart. It should take a week, two tops.”

“You going to take your gun?”

“No, but I am going to take a lot of Kleenex.” Marlene held her hands palms up and pirouetted once. “Look, this is the new nonviolent mom, just like you always wanted. It's a mission of mercy.”

“Uh-huh. Are you taking the dog?”

“Well, yeah,” said Marlene, startled a little by the question. Of course she was taking Gog. She would take her shoes, her toothbrush, and a change of undies, too.

Lucy raised an eyebrow over a baleful look, then left the room.

This is ridiculous, thought Marlene—why am I trying to impress my daughter with my benevolent intentions? Feeling annoyed at herself, at the Heeneys, and at Lucy, she decided to call her husband and vent.

“Well, any comments?” she demanded after she had apprised him of the situation and her plans.

“I'm jealous,” he replied. “You get to go flitting off to fight evil, and I have to stay here and
be
evil.”

“I thought you were the good guys.”

“Oh, yeah, maybe once a week. Meanwhile, 75 percent of the cases we handle involve putting black and Latino kids in jail forever for selling dope. The really evil still flourish, as you may have noticed. And my youth and beauty are fading and every day is like every other day, and it's hot as a bitch in here, and you're wandering away to the cool mountains to wipe noses. It's not fair.”

“You're right. Are you going to whine any more?”

“Yes. I might even get all red and sweaty and snotty-nosed.”

“Seriously, what do you think?”

Karp paused before answering, detecting one of the numerous no-win queries (Am I too fat? Does this look good on me?) that husbands are so often called upon to answer.

He said, “It seems like a charitable act as long as you don't get involved. I assume Lucy is going to watch the boys. You have no problems with that?”

“Of course not—for a couple of days? She's the most responsible creature on God's earth. They'll be prepping for seminary by the time I get back.”

“Maybe I'll take some leave anyway.”

“Do that. What did you mean about getting involved?”

“I meant
involved.
Legally, emotionally—it's not your problem, it's a complex situation in a part of the world you don't know diddly-squat about, and where you're liable to make things worse.” In your inimitable fashion, Karp thought, but declined to say.

“Make things worse? Gosh, this is just fucking great. I volunteer to upset my life and go help out a couple of kids I barely know, and all the support I get from my family is a kind of insinuating suspicion. For crying out loud, don't you trust me?”

No, thought Karp. “Of course,” he said.

S
HE DECIDED TO LEAVE JUST
before dawn, to get free of the City-bound traffic and be out on the great American road at sunup. Having committed herself, having spent the whole of the previous evening generating quality time with her sons (Monopoly, casino, hours of Tolkien) and explaining what she was doing, having overinstructed her daughter and her manager, she felt for the first time in a long time like the old Marlene, or at least like the nostalgic memory thereof. As she loaded her bag and dog into the Dodge, she discovered she was humming the Pirate Jenny song from
Threepenny Opera.

She stopped when she saw that her daughter, dressed in an old flannel bathrobe, was watching her from the doorway, smiling.

“Off on an adventure,” Lucy observed. “You're as happy as a puppy.”

“It's not an
adventure,”
answered Marlene a little testily. “It's a very dull mission of mercy. I should be back in a week, tops.”

Lucy shook her head pityingly. “Oh, Mom . . .”

“What? What's with this ‘Oh, Mom'? I fail to understand why everyone is making such a big deal out of this. Could you please explain that?”

Lucy walked over and embraced her mother and kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself, okay? Call me when you get there, and give my regards to the Heeneys.”

Marlene made agreeable noises and hugged her back, thinking at the same time that their natural positions had somehow been reversed, that Lucy was being understandingly parental and she childish. This thought occupied her mind for the two minutes it took her to get off the property and out onto the dark road. She punched up the radio: AM, oldies. Marlene had a tape player in her console but rarely used it. She liked the local stations, liked the way they waxed and waned as the miles vanished under the wheels, little driblets of what remained of regional culture in America. The station took her into the City, around the fat underbelly of Brooklyn and over the Verrazano to Staten Island and Jersey. The sun was well up when she drove onto Interstate 78 in the middle of the Garden State, which, to her surprise, was quite gardenlike in these parts, and took it west into Pennsylvania.

By noon, she was in Youngwood, Pennsylvania, and hungry. She drove off the turnpike, ate at a Hardee's, walked and fed the dog. Full of unhealthy greases and sugars, she continued onto the 70 cutoff and then south on 79 to Charleston. South of Charleston, the land rose, the divided highway petered out at Logan, and she found herself on winding, two-lane blacktop running along mountainsides covered with dark second-growth timber. The radio was all country and western and static now, the little stations fading in the valleys and bursting out again on the ridges. As she drove deeper into the southwestern part of the state, she began to see the marks coal had made on the country. Scrapes of blackness against hillsides, with huge gallowslike structures rising above the hills, and factories with brick smokestacks and square yards of smashed windows. Once she crossed on a narrow bridge and saw a newer industrial complex of some sort tucked into the curve of the river below, lines of ocher buildings, shooting out white smoke and yellow, and a smoky flame like a badly trimmed candle twisting above a tall pipe. The river was a bright medicinal green. By three she was in Robbens County, climbing a steep grade and then descending past several roadside crosses and an escape road for runaway trucks. McCullensburg was at the bottom of a fourteen-mile-long, seven-degree grade, built on what looked like the only halfway flat patch in the county.

It was not a pretty town. The usual strip development hung on its outskirts, gas stations and fast food and little, sad, hopeful businesses in concrete-block structures, a beauty shoppe, an upholsterer, a lawn-mower guy. She turned left on Market as directed and passed through the business district. Like many towns in this part of the world, it had peaked around the late nineteenth century when coal was king. The two-story brick and stone buildings were of that era, and the courthouse square had a courthouse in it, this a handsome Federal-style building flanked by old trees, complete with white columns, a portico, and a tall cupola. Six streets and the town was gone. She proceeded along Route 199 into the scant suburbs, small bungalows with aluminum siding mainly, and squat, ugly, manufactured housing, with the occasional faded wooden carpenter-Gothic Victorian. She took a turnoff marked 3112, whose blacktop soon became rutted gravel hairpinning back and forth across the steep face of a mountain.

The large mailbox that said
HEENEY
had been shot full of holes. The house itself was set in a grassy field surrounded by a neat white fence, and hanging over it loomed a group of large, dark oaks. The renovated farmhouse had a cedar shake roof, two cobble chimneys, and a fieldstone foundation, obviously of considerable age, but well maintained; two stories, painted buff with dark red shutters and trim. The original barn of the place stood broken-backed and sagging, covered with creeper, but a weathered shed near the house served as a garage. She saw the Heeneys' GMC there and a very old and dusty Ford next to it. She parked and got out, groaning and stretching. She let the dog out, who did the same.

The front door of the house popped open and there was Dan Heeney, looking worn and even younger than he had on Long Island.

“You got here.”

“I did,” she said. “Here I am to save the day, just like Mighty Mouse. But first I need to pee.”

“Uh, sure, right,” he said, as if unsure, and led her (and she her dog) into the house. It was spacious and well furnished with local stuff, hooked rugs and country chests, set off nicely by a few pieces of the kind of fine old cherry and mahogany accumulated by families that were well-off in the late 1800s. Marlene thought of Rose decorating this place on a fairly tight budget, out of trips to swap meets and castoffs from her family, and felt a pang of loss deeper than expected for a woman she had scarcely known.

In the bathroom (which showed the grungy effects of two young bachelors living there alone) she heard voices raised. She finished and followed these into the kitchen. Dan and his brother were standing across the room from one another, glaring and calling each other unpleasant names.

“What's up, boys?” she said cheerfully.

Both young men had red faces. Marlene didn't know whether it was from anger or embarrassment, nor did she care.

Emmett actually stamped his foot and yelled at his brother, “Goddamnit, what the hell did you think you were doing?”

“We need help, Em, and you're too damn boneheaded to see it.”

Emmett cursed and got redder and made a move toward his brother, from which he was brought up short by a rumbling growl from Gog.

Marlene said, “Emmett, you're upsetting my dog, and you're upsetting me. We both prefer peaceful discourse to yelling. I have just driven twelve hours straight to help you all out, and whether or not you are personally willing to accept my help is beside the point. Right now, I'm a guest of your brother in his home. I'm sure your folks taught you better manners than what you've been showing.” She indicated the enameled kitchen table. “Let us sit down and take counsel with one another and see where we are.”

All three sat. After a brief silence, Marlene said, “Welcome to McCullensburg, Marlene. Did you have a pleasant trip? Would you care for some refreshment? A frosty glass of beer, perhaps? A mint julep?”

Dan looked startled for an instant and then broke into a sputtering laugh.

Emmett tried to keep his face grim and failed. “Dick-head.”

“Shit for brains,” said Dan kindly. “I think I can offer you a beer,” he added, rising to open the refrigerator. The bottom two shelves were completely packed with cans of Iron City.

They popped, they drank. “How was your drive?” Dan asked.

“Pretty good,” she said. “Your state seems extremely mountainous, however. I guess you noticed that already.”