All That I Have (10 page)

“Yes, sir, I do,” I said. “I do have a summons. Mr. Babcock, the bugs are awful out here. Can I come inside?”

“Heh, heh,” said Chum. “Hell, no, you can’t come inside.” A third jar flew out the window and broke against my patrol car.

“How many jars has he got up there?” I asked Mrs. Babcock.

”Quite a few, it looks like,” she said. “He knew you’d be along. He’s been saving up.”

“Bugs are pretty savage today, ain’t they?” called Chum from inside. “You don’t want to be standing around out there. Here’s what you do. Put your summons away, get back in your rig, go home, and tell Ripley Wingate he can take his summons, stick it up his ass, and bust it off.”

Nobody had anything to say to that. Mrs. Babcock turned to me. “Let me see your paper,” she said.

I handed the writ to her. She took it out of its envelope, raised her bug veil, read the summons. She stuck it back into its envelope.

“This ain’t going to work,” she said. “He ain’t going to take it. You’d better go.”

“What about the writ?”

“Leave your paper with me,” said Mrs. Babcock. “I’ll see he gets it.”

“You know I can’t do that, Mrs. Babcock,” I said.

“Well,” she said, “you’d better go, then.” She handed me the summons.

I went back to the department and told Wingate I couldn’t serve Chum.

“ ‘Course you couldn’t,” said Wingate.

I told him the circumstances: the blackflies, Mrs. Babcock, the Mason jars, what was in the Mason jars, the upper window. Wingate nodded.

“We’ll give him another whirl in a day or two,” said Wingate.

“A day or two? Why not now?”

Wingate seemed to think about this, and then, “No,” he said. “We’ll let him work, we’ll let him develop for a little.”

So it was a couple of days later that Wingate and I went out to Babcocks’ together. We had our writ, and this time each of us had his own anti-bug headgear — county issue. We found Mrs. Babcock out front, and the three of us were standing there in our black veils like a club of beekeepers getting ready to go to a funeral, when here comes Chum out of the house in his own bug net, a specially heavy, dark, long one, and he starts right in on Wingate.

“Sent the big boy today, I see,” said Chum. He was having a fine time. “You’ve got your paper with you, I guess.”

“We’ve got it,” said Wingate.

“This is a dogshit business, here, Sheriff,” said Chum. “I never moved that son of a bitch’s stakes. Why would I?”

“I didn’t say you did,” said Wingate. “I ain’t here to say one way or another what anybody did. I’m here to serve you.”

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know who you’re serving,” said Chum, very pleased with himself. “A man wouldn’t know his own mother if she was wearing one of these.” He tugged at the black bug veil, which hung down to his chest. “You can’t prove who I am. You can’t serve me.”

At that I felt my blood pressure starting to climb. Here’s Chum, living out in the woods like a rabid coon, more than half crazy, pissing into fruit jars to throw at public servants, by now well into his second day of wasting the sheriff ’s time and the taxpayers’ money over a two-dollar lawsuit with the rabid coon down the road, who’s as crazy as he is — and he thinks he can come over like some crafty lawyer in a pin-striped suit. I wanted to cuff him and take him in to the lockup.

Wingate knew it, too. He knew how I felt. He put his hand on my shoulder for a second and leaned toward Chum a little, like he was trying to see through Chum’s blackfly veil. He shook his head.

“You’re right,” said Wingate. “I couldn’t swear it was you. It looks like you got us, Chum.”

“Hah. Very clever,” said Chum. “But I ain’t saying nothing to that, am I? I ain’t answering like it’s me. You can’t prove it’s me.”

“It looks like we’ll have to go back to the clerk and advise him, we’ll have to tell him it ain’t been served,” said Wingate. He handed the summons in its envelope to me.

“Put it in the car,” said Wingate.

I went to our patrol car and put the summons on the dash, then returned to Wingate and the two Babcocks. Wingate was talking to Mrs. Babcock.

“I saw Lucinda the other day,” he told her. “How is she doing?” Lucinda was Mrs. Babcock’s big sister. She had come out of the hospital after having a female operation.

“She don’t seem to rally,” said Mrs. Babcock. “She don’t have any energy.”

“I know it,” said Wingate.

“Lucy ain’t young,” said Mrs. Babcock.

“I know it,” said Wingate.

“None of us is,” said Mrs. Babcock.

“I know it,” said Wingate.

We got in the patrol car and started back to the office. There, Wingate took out the summons, signed it, and handed it to me.

“Just take it across and give it to the clerk,” he said. “Tell him it’s served.”

“But it ain’t,” I said.

“Yes, it is,” said Wingate. “Chum knows where he has to be. He knows when. If he don’t,
she
does. Chum will show up. She’ll drag him in by his ear if she has to.”

That was, oh, twenty-five, thirty years ago. Chum and Mrs. Chum are under the grass. Wingate’s over eighty, and I ain’t exactly green in the sap, myself. That business with Chum was sheriffing the way I was learning to do it from Wingate. Sometimes you have to hold back and let a thing develop, was one of his rules.

It’s still good, too. It’s a good rule. But a kid like Sean tests it. Yes, he does. An old fool like Chum, you can let him develop and things will get better. He’ll come around, or if he don’t his wife will make him. You know that. With Sean, if you let him develop, you don’t know. Things may get better. They may get worse.

9

BIG LOOKERS ON THE DOWNSIDE

Saturday is no day off for the sheriff. Evildoers, the unlucky, and our most faithful customers, the plain rock-stupid, are generally open for business well before noon, and then of course you build through the day Saturday to your big night of the week for bad behavior.

I thought I’d give myself a ride over to Manchester that Saturday and have a visit with Emory O’Connor, see if I couldn’t get some kind of an idea about who it was we were dealing with at the Russians’ place. Then later on, I meant to poke around here and there, try to start Sean out of whatever hole he’d gone down. Deputy Keen, I guessed, would be doing the same.

I was pretty sure Emory would be working, too. Saturday is a busy day in the real estate business, as in sheriffing. Is that because home buyers forget for the weekend that they’re going to have to work to earn the money to pay off all the debt they’re about to go into? I don’t know.

Emory O’Connor did very well. He had his office in a nice old brick house right on the green in Manchester. He’d bought the place and spent a lot of money in fixing it up so it looked right, or a little better than right. Emory liked to make money, and he liked to spend money — and he was good at both.

He was in his reception room talking on the phone when I walked in. He wasn’t happy to see me, but he held his hand up for me to wait, and when he got done with his call we went into his office and he shut the door. Emory took the chair behind his desk, and I sat across the desk from him.

“What can I do for you this morning, Sheriff?” Emory asked me.

“Well,” I said, “you can tell me who in the world is that fellow Tracy, at the place up in Grenada, who’s his friend with the slickeddown hair who don’t have much to say, who’s behind them. You can start by doing that for me.”

Emory smiled and shook his head. “No, I can’t, Sheriff,” he said. “Not really. You know as much as I do. Tracy’s with the owners’ insurance company, in New York. I told you that. The other guy’s name I don’t know, either. I took it he’s one of the owners or their representative.”

“Buster Mayhew, your caretaker, says the owners ain’t around much. He says they’re some kind of foreigners. He can’t understand what they’re saying.”

Emory chuckled. “If you’ve talked to Buster,” he said, “you know he may not be the brightest guy who ever lived. He’s paid to make sure the doors are locked, basically. He’s not paid to be a linguist, Sheriff. He doesn’t have to talk to the owners.”

“You do, though. Who are the owners?”

“Investors,” said Emory.

“Investors,” I said. “There’s a good many investors, one kind and another, here and there, ain’t there? Do these ones have names? They pay you, don’t they? For managing the place? Somebody sends you checks.”

Emory smiled again. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Big ones.”

“Who’s name’s on the checks?”

“Odessa Partners, Limited,” said Emory. He was sounding a little short.

“Who are they?”

Emory shrugged. “Investors,” he said.

“Where are they located?”

“Offshore.”

Getting information out of Emory was like trying to get a turtle to stick its head out of its shell when you’ve caught it crossing the road.

“Offshore, where?”

“St. George’s, Bermuda,” said Emory.

“Bermuda?”

“Does that surprise you, Sheriff?” said Emory. “Bermuda’s a very — I guess
hospitable
is the word. It’s a very hospitable place.”

“They’re Russians,” I said. “At the house in Grenada. They ain’t Bermudas. The place is full of papers in Russian, newspapers, magazines. They’ve even got Russian skin books. Bermuda? Do they read Russian in Bermuda?”

“Look, Sheriff,” said Emory. “I’m not responsible for what they read. Bermuda’s where the checks come from. Have for several years. Very regular. Very useful. We’re in business, here, you know.”

“I know you are,” I said. “I know you’re in business. And, talking about business, that insurance company in New York? Atlantic Casualty? Mr. Tracy’s company? That’s a business, too, ain’t it?”

“Of course it is.”

“ ‘Course it is,” I said. “But it’s the damndest thing. What would you say if I told you I called New York, and the telephone company down there never heard of Atlantic Casualty? There ain’t no such business.”

“If you’re asking me whether that surprises me,” said Emory, “I have to tell you I can’t say it does.”

“Don’t it kind of trouble you, though?”

“Not in the least,” said Emory.

“There ain’t much does, is there?” I asked him.

“Look, Sheriff,” said Emory. “What do you want from me here? I’m in the real estate business. I’m not in the business of morality checks. Do I think Logan Tracy is a Sunday school teacher on vacation? No. Do I think Odessa Partners buys guide dogs for blind children? No. Do I care? No.”

Look, Sheriff,
says Emory.
Look, Sheriff,
says Logan Tracy. Look, this. Look, that. Your big lookers, these important fellows are. When you hear that “Look,” be careful. Go slow. Because the fellow who’s telling you to look don’t want you to. He wants you to think he’s an honest, plain-talking straight shooter who, when he says “Look,” is getting ready to level with you. He ain’t. He never is. He says
look,
but he means
don’t look.

“Do you follow me, Sheriff?” Emory asked. “I’m telling you that you know as much as I do here. I can’t help you. Much as I’d like to, I can’t. Now, I know how busy you are.”

“I ain’t busy. I ain’t at all busy. Take your time. I’ve got all day.”

“You do, maybe, Sheriff. I don’t. Can we wrap this up?”

I got up from my chair. Emory stayed sitting behind his desk. He didn’t offer to shake hands.

“Have a nice day, Sheriff,” he said.

Well, I might have lost Emory’s vote there. Couldn’t be helped. No hard feelings on my end, though. Emory’s a businessman, sure he is. He’s in the real estate business. That means he’s a valuable man. The real estate business is big in these parts, and getting bigger. On the whole, that’s a good thing. Now, to be sure, it does bring in people like Emory, it brings in your big lookers, people with a very high opinion of themselves based on what, when you take away their money, it ain’t always easy to see. The big lookers are the — what do you call the bad part of the good part? They’re the downside. Are ten thousand Emory O’Connors a downside? You bet they are.

But still and all, I say thank God for real estate. Because it looks like real estate is about the only thing we’ve got left up here that people are willing to spend serious money on. Other good things people used to get from us, like milk, cows, tool and die work, lumber, sheep, saddle horses, wool, and the rest they’re getting from someplace else, but real estate’s something people want that we’ve still got plenty of. We’re adding more, too, every day, and we’re selling the hell out of it. It looks as though there’s no bottom to real estate.