Day of Wrath (20 page)

"Mine's Harry."

"Pleased to meet you,"`she said.
 

IT TOOK US FIVE MINUTES TO GET TO THE CAR AND another
ten to drive over to the Greyhound Bus Station on lower Gilbert Avenue.
By the time we got there, Annie had begun to warm up a little. But just
a little; she still wasn't sure of me. I wasn't sure of me, either, or
of why I'd decided to give her a lift. But things had been going badly
that night; and if nothing else, helping the girl had given me the chance
to act like a decent human being again. Of course, it also gave me the
chance to learn something more about Robbie, although I didn't do any pushing
with this one. I felt as if I'd done enough pushing in Corky's Bar.

When we got inside the depot, I took Annie to the coffee
shop and boosted her to a Coke. The place looked like early morning in
an all-night diner. It was just a quarter of ten, but the waitress was
already droopy-eyed and sluggish. A handful of seedy, worn-out men were
gathered around the counter, hunched miserably over coffee cups and crumpled
Racing Forms. Annie and I were the only couple in the joint.

A few of the men eyed the girl hungrily as we sat down.
I could feel her shiver and tighten up. She was a smart, independent young
lady, but she was no match for the Greyhound Bus Station. I wondered what
she was doing there—where she had come from and where she was going—but
I didn't ask. From the beaten look of her backpack, I could see she'd been
on the road before. And when she reached for the Coke, I caught a glimpse
of a half-moon tattoo on her right wrist—the sort of thing that bikers'
girls decorated themselves with. She certainly didn't sound like a motorcycle
queen. She seemed to be a very intelligent kid. She might even have gone  
to college for a quarter or two before dropping out—like Grace. But she
wasn't as cocky as Grace had been. Or as slick and venal. She still had
a kind of rough, styleless edge to her, as if she hadn't yet settled on
the type of woman she wanted to be. But then she was only nineteen, and
that rough, inchoate quality suited her.

She drank her Coke and when I got.up to pay the bill,
she said, "Would you mind waiting here with me until the bus comes? I almost
got raped in a bus station once, and this place gives me the creeps."

I told her I'd stay.

We wandered out of the coffee shop to the waiting area
and sat down on a couple of hard plastic chairs. There was only a smattering
of people waiting with us, and half of them looked as if they'd come inside
to nod off. It was cheaper than a flop house.

We sat there watching the arrival times flash on a closed-circuit
TV. When a P.A. announcer said that the bus to Denver would be delayed
ten minutes, Annie sighed.

"
That means half an hour," she said unhappily.

"You're going to Denver?"

She nodded. "I'm going as far away as seventy bucks will
take me."

"Why?" I said. I felt as if I could say it now, without
sounding like a detective.

"Things," she said gravely. "It was just a bad scene where
I was living. Very bad."

"You mean the kid with the moustache?"

"Larry?" she said with a laugh. "No, I wasn't living with
Larry. He might have thought I was, but I wasn't. I was living with a bunch
of people on a farm." Annie sighed heavily. "For a while, it was beautiful?
She glanced at me guiltily, as if she'd revealed something about herself
that she didn't want known, then she looked down at the concrete floor
and sighed again. "I guess I better tell you a couple things," she said
in a soft, sad voice. "Roger told the cop most of it anyway, so I l guess
I can tell you, too."

"What things?"

"It's about Robbie. This farm I was at—she was staying
there, too. At least she was four days ago."

And there it was. What I'd been looking for since Wednesday
afternoon. I felt as if I'd wandered into it by mistake, although when
I thought of the photograph of Roger and Bobby and the other musician,
I realized that it was perfectly reasonable. I'd thought that all three
of them had been visiting the farm for the day, when the truth was that
Bobby had been the only visitor. The Furies and their girls had apparently
lived there as part of Clinger's family.

"Robbie was at the farm on Tuesday?" I said to Annie.

"Yes. She came in on Sunday night. Bobby dropped her off."

"He didn't stay with her?" I said with surprise.

"I think he wanted to stay," the girl said. "But Theo
acted like he was being too protective. Theo said she had to learn to survive
on her own." Annie looked down at the floor. "That's the same thing he
said when anyone new came to the farm."

I could tell from her voice that she was speaking for
herself, as well as for Robbie, and that she was speaking out of a deeply
felt sense of disillusionment. It wasn't a resentful feeling, if I was
hearing her right; It was more wintry than that, as if something she'd
once loved dearly had turned out terribly wrong. I decided to be completely
honest with her, because I wanted to follow that line of feeling to its
source. I wanted to know who or what had gone so wrong.

"Annie, I know who Clinger is," I said. "I've been trying
to locate him for the last few days." I took the photograph of Robbie,
Irene, and Clinger out of my coat and showed it to her.

The girl winced when she saw the picture. For some reason,
the sudden look of pain on her face frightened me.

"She's the one," the girl said in a haggard voice. "She's
the reason." She tapped the photograph and handed it back to me. I couldn't
tell whom she'd pointed to  Robbie or Irene—although I was almost
certain it was the Croft woman.

"
The reason for what?" I asked her.

But she went on as if she hadn't heard the question. "Man,
it was so beautiful at the start. I've bounced around since I left Detroit
and seen some things, but when I got there, I thought, 'This is it, Annie.
This is what you've been looking for!' You just can't know what it was
like—to find a place like Theo's farm, where no one seemed to care about
all the shit things you're supposed to care about. I mean, it was too good
to be true. I almost didn't believe it myself. When you've been fucked
over by everyone from your boyfriend to your old man, you get that way.
You figure it's another gimmick—another way to get you to slip your pants
off. But Theo's farm. . . it wasn't like that. I mean, you could do it
if you wanted to. Practically everybody did. But you didn't have to do
it. Nobody beat you up or locked you in your room or threatened to kill
you if you didn't come across. You had to work, of course. Earn your keep.
But you didn't have to fuck unless you wanted to. And you did want to,
because it seemed like the best way to be. It was like, instead of money
and rules and all the crap you're taught in school, we had love. I know
that sounds old. But that was the way it felt. Like love was the real way
to pay and to be repaid. And I don't mean sex. I mean love."

Annie's eyes filled with tears. "Theo, man," she said.
"He was so good. He was so deep. It was as if there wasn't anything he
hadn't done. Not a thing he didn't know about. He understood it all. He'd
been there before you, and he'd forgiven them for you. My fucking old man.
My mother who watched the TV and drank and didn't give a shit about anything
but the neighbors. He understood them. He could love them—so goddamn
unlovable. And what I don't understand"—she began to cry—"is what went
wrong, man? How could it all get so fucked up?"

She sobbed heavily. I put my arm around her shoulder,
and she fell against my chest. My heart went out to her—for all that
she'd lost. After awhile, Annie stopped crying and just sat there with
her cheek buried in my coat."I don't know what I'm going to do," she said.
"I've never been to Denver."

"It's a beautiful city," I said.

She nodded against my chest. "Beautiful," she said.

"Are you going to be O.K.?" I asked her after another
minute.

"Yeah." She lifted her head from my shoulder and wiped
her eyes on her coat sleeve. "I'm all right," she said. "I'm a lot tougher
than I look."

The P.A. came on with a pop that made us both jump. The
announcer said that the bus to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Denver was arriving
at dock ten. Annie reached down and picked up her beaten backpack. She
studied it for a moment, then heaved it over her shoulder and stood up.

"Walk me to the loading dock?" she said.

I got up and guided her across the huge concrete plaza
to the loading docks.

"Robbie was at the farm on Monday and Tuesday," she said
as we walked. "I don't know if she's still there or not. Bobby didn't want
her to stay. They had a big fight about it on Tuesday night—Theo, Bob,
and Robbie. It got very ugly. Bob was furious because Robbie wouldn't come 
away with him. I think he blamed Theo for that. But then there had been
so much arguing and shouting over the last few weeks that I didn't pay
much attention to what was said. I'd already decided to go myself. I left
that night. So did some of the others."

"You don't know what the argument was about?" I said.

"
Bob didn't want her to stay at the farm any more. He
didn't want her fucking around."

"
Was she?"

Annie didn't answer me for a moment. "Robbie wasn't like
the rest of us," she finally said. "She just hadn't been around very much.
She'd spent her whole life in one room, and I guess when she got out, she
went a little crazy. It was too much for her, I think. Being able to do
whatever she wanted to do. And the weird thing was that she didn't really
understand what  she was doing to Bob and to the rest of us. She was
just too young to understand. I guess it's hard to be that beautiful and
that young. It's as if the two don't go together right."

When we got to the loading dock, I asked her,"'What went
wrong, Annie? Why are you leaving?"

She bit her lip and glanced at the bus door. Six people
wer e standing in line, while the driver took their tickets and checked
their luggage.

"I guess I can tell you. Roger told the cop. So I guess
I can tell you. It was money. Theo got in over his head on a couple of
deals. And things got very bad. At first we thought it was going to be
all right—that he'd gotten some help. But then a couple of weeks ago
some men came out to the farm—guys in business suits. I think they would
have killed Theo if we hadn't been there. It was a real desperate scene."

I said, "What kind. of deals was Theo involved in, Annie?"

She shook her head, as if she didn't want to say.

"Was it drugs, Annie?"

She made a sad face and nodded.

I felt another twinge of fear—for the girl in front
of me and for Robbie. "Where's the farm, Annie? How can I find it?"

"Oh, Harry," she said brokenly. "Please don't ask me that.
Ask Roger or ask the cops. They know. But don't ask me."

"I don't have time to ask Roger, Annie. You know that."

"But Theo!" she cried. "What'll happen to Theo?"

"
All I'm interested in is Robbie," I told her. "I want
her to get away, too. Before it's too late."

She hung her head on her chest and whispered,

"
Across the river. On Route 4, about five miles west of
Anderson Ferry."

She turned on her heel and ran to the bus.

"Annie!" I called out.

But she was already inside. The door hissed shut and the
bus began to pull out of the dock. I watched it go and kept watching it
until the taillights disappeared down Gilbert Avenue.
 

I TRIED CALLING BANNOCK FROM A PAY PHONE IN THE Greyhound
coffee shop, but the duty sergeant at Central Station told me he'd already
checked out. I suppose it should have made me feel better to know that
Bannock—who had the same information that I had or, at least, most of
it—had felt as if he could put the case away for the night. Only it didn't
make me feel better. Bannock had been investigating Bobby Caldwell's murder,
and he'd ended up in the same place I had. I didn't like that one bit.
I hadn't liked what I'd heard from Annie, either. She'd been badly frightened
by what had been happening at Clinger's farm—so frightened that she'd
decided to run as far away as she could go. There was definitely a great
deal of trouble in paradise, and although Robbie didn't seem to be directly
involved in it, she was still living there—or she had been up until Tuesday
night. And after Bobby's murder on Wednesday, she'd had no way out, except
Annie's way. And judging by what I'd heard that evening, Robbie wasn't
old enough or experienced enough to have made an escape of her own, even
if she'd wanted to.

I put the phone back on its hook and glanced at my watch.
It was ten-thirty. If I stepped on it, I figured I could make it to the
Anderson Ferry marina by eleven and then over to the Kentucky side. Only
it would be hell trying to locate Clinger's farm in the middle of the night.
At least in the daylight I'd have an even chance of spotting a familiar
face or of finding a helpful neighbor. But after talking to Annie, I just
couldn't see waiting another day. It had been too long for Annie to wait,
and she'd had most of the week to think it over. I thought of the look
on her face when I'd shown her the picture of Robbie, Clinger, and Irene
Croft. She'd blamed the Croft woman for what had gone wrong out there—I
was almost sure of it. And if Irene was that deeply involved in Clinger's
family, she was one more reason to bring Bobbie out as quickly as I could—a
particularly ugly reason from what I'd seen of her.