Day of Wrath (21 page)

Her presence at the farm certainly made better sense if
Clinger had been involved in the drug trade, as Annie had said. Marcie
had told me that Irene was a druggie, and the whole world knew that she
was a very rich and very eccentric lady. Clinger might have needed her
backing to finance a particularly large deal. I had no idea how he'd rationalized
the addition of someone that hard and loveless to his family of love, but
I figured he might have managed it, and the demands she'd made on his talent,
in return for a sizable loan. And Irene would probably have been delighted
to acquire a talented new client and a free supply of cocaine or smack
or whatever else it was that Clinger had been hustling. She might even
have gotten her pick of Clinger's followers as part of the arrangement.
It would have been a swell deal for both of them, if something hadn't gone
wrong. Perhaps Irene had backed out at the last moment, or maybe Clinger
had just gotten in over both of their heads. In any event, he'd come up
short. But I figured he'd been coming up short for a long time. Maybe inflation
and tight money had forced him into drug trafficking in the first place,
as a way of keeping the rest of his empire afloat. There was no telling
what risks he might have run to maintain the illusion that love, not money,
was the true source of his power. Whatever had gone awry, he'd had that
illusion beaten out of him by some mob toughs. And when his illusions gave
out, the whole enterprise had begun to collapse like a ruined kingdom.

Annie had gotten out before the end. Maybe the rest of
The Furies had gotten out, too. But I had the strong feeling that Theo
Clinger was going to take whoever else was left out at the farm with him
when he fell. As I walked out of the bus station to the parking lot, I
couldn't help thinking that one of his luckless followers had already been
sacrificed.

There really wasn't any way around it. Bobby's murder
had to be linked to what had been going on at the farm. There was just
no other way to make sense of it. What Annie had told me about the fight
the boy had had with Clinger on Tuesday night and the fact that Arthur
Bannock was investigating Theo, too, clinched it for me.

The Caldwell  must have
gotten in the way. He must have made someone very, very angry. Someone
who had no patience or pity left. Someone who'd wanted to watch him die.
And that was another reason why I cou1dn't wait for the daylight. I started
the Pinto up and headed west, through the Third Street basin to River Road.

It was a little after eleven when I turned off Highway
52 onto the bumpy dirt lane that led to the Anderson Ferry marina. A thin,
river-dwelling fog hung above the dock. It swirled like mist around my
feet as I got out of the car and walked over to the landing. The ferry
wasn't moored on the Ohio side of the river, but there was a rusted signal
bell hung from one of the piles. I slapped my arms against the cold night
air and pulled the bell cord. The bell clanged dully, as if I'd knocked
it off a shelf, and a few seconds later an answering bell sounded across
the foggy water. A power winch began to putt and cough like a lawnmower,
and I could hear the rustle and splash of the towline as it tautened and
leaped out of the river. I walked back to the car and leaned against the
hood. The night had turned so cold that the hood metal bit through my trouser
leg, making me shiver.

In a matter of minutes, I could make out the water lights
of the ferryboat, as it guided its flat barge up to the dock. The wheelhouse
was lit by an oil lamp. I could see the helmsman inside it, passing his
hands nimbly over the wheel. As the boat got closer, I could see another
man standing on the barge's deck. He leaped onto the landing as the boat
docked and threw a line over one of the pilings.

"Well, c'mon," he shouted to me. He had a young, exuberant
voice.

I drove the Pinto onto the barge, and the boy cast off
the line and hopped back on deck. The winch started up again with a shudder,
and the ferryboat began to chug its way back through the fog to the Kentucky
shore.

The boy sat down on the barge rail and began to whistle
tunelessly. He had a country boy's red, lumpy face. He was wearing a watch
cap and windbreaker. I got out of the car and let the damp wind sober me
up. It was getting late, and I had a long night ahead of me. The smell
of hot coffee drifting out of the wheelhouse made my mouth water.

"
You know if there's an all-night diner close by?" I said
to the deckhand.

"One about two miles up Route 4, going west," he said.

"Tillie's Diner. She makes good pecan pie, too."

"I'l1 remember that," I said.

The boy swiped at the fog as if it were a swarm of gnats
floating in front of his face. "Bad night," he said.

I nodded. "You know the Kentucky side of the river pretty
well?"

"Pretty well," he said.

"You know a guy named Clinger who owns a farm about five
miles west of here? I'm trying to find his place."

The boy shook his head. "Don't know him. But you might
ask at Tillie's. She knows just about everybody 'round here."

The boat docked with a lurch.

"
Damn," the kid said, glancing at the wheelhouse. He jumped
off the rail and onto the landing and made the boat fast again. As I got
out of the car, I heard him say to the helmsman, "You might give us a little
warning, Willie."

I coasted off onto the dock, handed the kid a couple of
dollars, and drove up a short hill out of the fog. The road led through
a grove of sycamores and ended abruptly in a gravel turnaround on the north
side of Route 4. I turned right onto the two-lane highway and headed west
for Tillie's.

For a mile or so, the sycamores grew thick on the river
side of the road. My headlights played among their trunks, lighting up
the rusty marine refuse scattered on the ground and the fiery red eyes
of opossums. On the south side of the roadbed, the Kentucky hills rose
in a steep plane that blocked out most of the night sky.

I kept driving west. And eventually the sycamores died
off and I could see the fogbound river again and the pinpoint lights of
the shanties built above the bank. Then the highway jogged south into the
hillside. As it moved inland, Route 4 took on a civil, neighborly look.
Historical markers popped up on the north side of the road. So did white
slat gas stations and shed restaurants and glassed-in motel offices with
tiny stucco bungalows herded behind them like grazing sheep. Tillie's Diner
was just another shed on the roadside, with corrugated tin roof and walls.
But its lights were still on and its sign read, "Open All Night."

I pulled into the lot and parked beside a semi. There
were half a dozen big trucks in the lot. According to folklore, that meant
Tillie served good food. But I had the feeling it meant that Ti1lie's was
the only place that stayed open for about forty miles in either direction.
The restaurant looked like a pint-sized airplane hanger with a plantation
porch. I walked through the door, past a glass display case full of aviator
sunglasses and penknives and key chains shaped like Kentucky, and sat down
at a long, U-shaped counter.

A meaty, heavily made-up woman with orange hair and a
wart the size of a button mushroom under her nose was sitting on a stool
behind the counter, reading a copy of Glamour magazine. She had on a green
plastic waitress' uniform, a gold bracelet, and silver earrings with red
stones in them. She put the magazine down when she spotted me, pulled a
pencil from behind her ear, and ambled up to the counter.

"What'll it be, honey?" she said in a sweet, nasal voice.
She smelled like lilacs and bourbon.

"
Just coiIee," I said.

She pulled a cup out from beneath the counter and set
it down before me. Then she got a percolator off a hot-plate and poured
coffee into the cup.

"Are you Tillie?" I asked her as she poured the coffee.

"Yes, I am, honey. Been Tillie all my life."

"The guy at the Anderson Ferry told me you might be able
to help me."

"Well, now, that depends on what kind of help you need,"
she said slyly.

I grinned at her. "I'm looking for a farm near here, owned
by a fella' named Clinger. Theo Clinger. You think you could help me find
it?"

"You all a friend of Theo's?" she said.

"
I'm his cousin," I told her.

Tillie threw her hand at me playfully. "You ain't his
cousin. You don't look a bit like Theo."

"What difference does it make? I still want to find him."

"No difference to me, honey," she said carelessly.

"That Theo sure is a popular fella all of a sudden, though.
You're the second one tonight come in wanting to find his farm."

"Was the first guy a short, stocky man with white hair?"
I asked her.

She nodded. "You ain't his cousin too, are you?"

I shook my head. "I'm his son."

Tillie barked with laughter. "Well, I'll tell you what
I told your old man. You go on up Route 4 a little over two miles until
you come to a fenced-in cornfield on the south side of the road. They'll
be a sign on the gate saying, 'Private Property'. Just go on through that
gate up the road 'bout half a mile and you'll come to Theo's farmhouse.
But don't you let on that I sent you, hear?"

"I won't," I promised. "When did you say my father stopped
in?"

"I didn't say, honey. But it was around seven o'clock
this evening."

I swallowed the rest of the coffee, dug a couple of dollars
out of my pocket, and laid them on the counter.

"Thanks, Tillie," I said.

She shook her head with rueful amusement. "You cops kill
me."

"What makes you think I'm a cop?"

"
The size of the tip for one. And for two, who else comes
visiting at twelve o'clock at night and don't have no idea how to get where
he wants to go?"

When I thought about it, she had a point.
 

I HAD NO TROUBLE FINDING THE FARM. IT WAS EXACTLY where
Tillie had said it would be, two and a half miles up Route 4 on the south
side of the highway—a fenced-in field with a lumpy dirt access road cutting
through it like a keloid scar. I pulled the Pinto off the highway and parked
in front of the gate. Somewhere, farther down the road, a hound began to
bay forlornly. His broken, querulous voice carried across the dark field
like the peal of a warning bell. And then, as suddenly as it had begun,
the baying stopped, and the roadside was filled with a cottony quiet, like
the hush at the heart of a pine forest on a cold January day.

I couldn't see a farmhouse from where I was sitting. The
field appeared to rise steeply for a couple hundred yards before falling
away into a glen or valley on its south slope. The farmhouse was probably
located in the hollow—invisible from the roadside, I stared at the rusted
tin sign posted on the gate—Private Property.

I wondered for a moment whether I could pull the same
trick on Clinger that I'd pulled on his disciple, Roger—claim that I
was a cop and flash the Special Deputy's badge at him. That might get me
onto the porch. But it sure wouldn't get me in the front door, not if Clinger
was in the kind of trouble I thought he was in.

If he was involved in the drug trade, even a cop would
need a search warrant to get inside the house—I was sure of that. Moreover,
he was bound to be suspicious and edgy, especially if Bannock had paid
him a visit earlier that night. The smart thing to do would be to try calling
Bannock again, I thought, and to find out exactly what he was onto.

I toyed with the idea of driving back to Tillie's Diner
and phoning the cops, but I was already there, within shouting distance
of Robbie Segal. And I didn't want to leave without making that shout.
Oddly enough I felt fairly certain the girl was still alive. Which wasn't
to say that I didn't feel Robbie wasn't in danger. just that I couldn't
see her following Bobby to the grave, like a spring widow. In the light
of what I'd learned, the two of them now seemed like protagonists in different
stories—the devoted lover of a medieval romance and the impetuous heroine
of a gothic adventure story. It was an ill-formed match—but I'd sensed
that all along. What I hadn't realized, until I'd talked to Annie, was
just how hopeless Bobby's love had been from the start. I wondered now
if the girl had ever loved the boy or if, like her mother, she never understood
what the word meant.

She had maneuvered Bobby into taking, her to paradise—to
a world that he and a lot of other people had thought of as being constituted
solely of love. And she'd grown fast to the place, like one of those fleeing
women in mythology turned into a brook. She'd become part of Clinger's
world, so immediately and so completely that she'd astonished Annie and
the Caldwell boy with the very fierceness of her attachment. Annie had
seen something inexplicable in that attachment. But then she hadn't been
following the girl as I had—hadn't seen the loveless street she'd come
from or been in her antiseptic room and seen the paltry dream she'd concocted
there out of a few icons and a few paragraphs in a book, like a bird made
of paste and newsprint. And then Bobbie was very young, as Annie had said,
and very beautiful, which is a cruel combination, as all precocity is cruel.