Hawk Moon (12 page)

"Meaning what exactly?"

"Meaning I'd like to know why you were pounding on David last night."

He tried for a smile but it came out a sneer. "Do you know who I am?"

"I've got a pretty good idea."

"You know who my best friend is?"

"Probably not."

The Mayor of this town, that's who my best friend is. Is this starting to make any sense to you, pal? I mean, I can be more explicit if you want me to." He jabbed at me with his racket. I didn't give him the satisfaction of backing up. "You're not jack shit to me or anybody else in this town. Maybe the ex-FBI agent bullshit plays out in the sticks, but not around here." He pointed his racket to my car. "Now you can get your ass off my property or I'm going to throw it off. Understand?"

He didn't look all that tough — business leaders get an inflated sense of their own power, both social and physical but then I'm not that tough either.

"You know something about the murder, Heston."

"I do, eh?"

I nodded. "So I'll be back."

"Going to pull your big bad gun on me again, Sport?"

As I got back to my rental, I saw Claire Heston carrying an armload of books over to her silver Jaguar. I walked across and opened the door for her.

She nodded her thanks. "Library books. Even as a little girl I always had to pay fines for bringing them back late. But the funny thing is, even when I put them in the car like this I don't take them back right away. They ride around with me until I need to go to the library again."

She started to lean in, to drop the considerable stack on
the rear seat, but a few of the books tumbled onto the drive. I picked them up. There were two Agatha Christies, one Joan Hess,
True Crimes
, volume two, one Nancy Pickard, and one Robert J. Randisi.

"You must like mysteries," I said.

"A lot." She smiled. "I guess I still like to be scared the way I got when I was a little girl. Not horror movies, I mean. Real stuff. It's a lot scarier."

"It sure is."

She put the books inside, closed the car door.

"He's really a pretty decent man."

This seemed to be a trend lately. Perfectly nice women defending indefensible mates.

"I'm sure he is."

"That didn't sound very sincere, Mr. Payne." The smile went. "He came up the hard way, as they say. His father had a very small construction business and lived on the west side. There wasn't even enough money for my husband to finish college. But he got together with Bryce Cook and they worked very hard. These days, their company is the biggest exporter in Cedar Rapids."

"Your background seems different, Mrs. Heston."

An empty polite laugh. "’To the manor born’ as they say. My great-great-grandfather came up from Virginia and built a small but very profitable railroad and then proceeded to help put Cedar Rapids on the map. This town was his pride and joy. And then it got away from him, I'm afraid."

I wanted to hear the rest of it but she stopped then.

And even if she'd wanted to tell me, her husband wouldn't have let her. He came up from the tennis courts, saw me and said, "I thought I told you to get the hell off my property. Now!"

"I see what you mean about him being a pretty decent guy," I said.

She allowed herself a small smile that he didn't catch, and I saw then the first hint of anger in her eyes as she turned to confront her husband.

"I
t's Saturday."

"I know it's Saturday, Gilhooley."

"The Cubs are playing."

"You should be happy I'm distracting you," I said.

"They're not doing that bad this year, Payne. They're not in last place."

"Yeah, they're in next to last place."

"Well, that's something to be thankful for, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

"My apartment's a pit."

"Boy, there's a shock. Gilhooley with a messy apartment."

"You sonofabitch!"

"Thank you," I said.

"I mean the first baseman. He just dropped the ball."

"I really would be doing you a favor, Gilhooley. Coming over, I mean. Distracting you from the Cubs' humiliating themselves as usual."

"Who do you want to know about anyway?"

"Perry Heston."

"That asshole. He got lucky. A west-sider who picked up all the chips, including the beautiful socialite daughter with the one bad habit."

"Which is?"

"Booze. Three or four extended trips to detox programs around the country. None of them seem to work for long."

"I take it you don't like Perry Heston much?"

"He's a jerk but at least he didn't earn his money the way everybody else around here did."

"How did they earn theirs?"

He laughed. The old-fashioned way. They inherited it."

I'd known Gilhooley back in my Reserve Officers Training Corps days at the University of Iowa (you know, turning college boys into soldiers). In those days, ROTC was mandatory. Gilhooley had been the only Maoist that I knew of in our unit.

"You said you had another appointment?" he prompted.

"Yeah," I said.

"Why don't you get over here about four, then?"

"That'd be great. I appreciate it."

"Sure thing, kiddo. And I wouldn't object if you brought some good whiskey."

"Jack Daniel's black be all right?"

"Jack Daniel's black would be just about right, kiddo. Just about right."

I
recognized the blonde woman several blocks away. She wore a yellow blouse and white shorts and blue Keds. She came out of one of the back doors of the three-building concrete-block complex that was Heston-Cook Computer, Inc. Being Saturday afternoon, only a few cars were in the lot.

Evelyn Cook led her two kids to a blue Saab sedan, got them inside, strapped into safety belts, then turned around to find me waiting there.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi." I liked her easy, open face and manner. "I thought I might talk to your husband."

The open face closed some. "He won't want to talk about David Rhodes, Mr. Payne. He and Perry discussed it and that was their decision. They don't want to talk about David to anybody."

"What if it's the police?"

She shook her head. "This isn't going to help Claire, you know."

"Oh?"

"She — well, she's been drinking again. Not a lot, but that's how it always starts. Just a little bit at a time. And now this publicity — she's very protective of the family name." She smiled. "I guess that's why it's better to be a west-side girl like me. You don't have to worry about sullying the family crest." Then she stopped herself. "That sounds cruel and I don't mean it to. Claire's my best friend and I love her. It's just — she has this thing about the family tradition. Her great-great-grandfather was one of the most important men in this town and then he had to withdraw. He became a hermit and died at a relatively young age."

She was a contrast to her friend Claire. No stunning beauty but a kind of healthy suburban sexuality and a real intelligence in the deep blue eyes and the calm very female voice.

I followed her gaze. Her husband Bryce was hulking toward us. He wore a red golf shirt and dark slacks. He
obviously spent time body-building.

I readied myself for another confrontation like the one I'd had with his partner Perry, but Bryce came bearing gifts. He put out a hand and I put out mine and this time he didn't try to tear it from my shoulder and crush it.

"I'm glad I got a chance to see you again," he said. "I was into the sauce pretty good last night and being a real jerk. I'm sorry"

"I appreciate the apology, Cook."

"No problem." He glanced at his gold Rolex. We're due at the Club in an hour. A luau tonight."

Evelyn smiled. "Bryce wants me to wear a hula skirt." She would have looked damned fine in a hula skirt. Bryce knew what he was talking about.

"I know why you're here," Bryce Cook said. "It's about David Rhodes, isn't it? We had some trouble, is all. Nothing whatsoever to do with that woman they found dead or anything. Gambling stuff, actually."

"Gambling?"

He nodded. "There are a few after-hours places in Cedar Rapids and that's where we met Rhodes. He accused us of cheating him and that's why he started coming after us, making trouble. You know what I mean."

"Gambling," I said. It was a nice, slick story and I didn't believe a word of it.

"Gambling." Then, "You go get in the car, hon."

She nodded. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Payne."

"Nice to see you."

She went around and got in the car and shut the door.

Bryce Cook moved a little closer to me and spoke in a low voice. It was meant to assure me, this gesture of intimate good friendship, that now he was going to tell me the real truth.

"Actually, it was about this woman. This after-hours place I mentioned?"

"Right."

"Well, there was this woman there and Perry and I were kind of drunk and we were hustling her a little bit and well, you know how it goes."

"And David Rhodes—"

"Rhodes gets bent all out of shape and starts hassling us. And keeps hassling us. So finally, the other night we go to the casino — not even knowing he worked there — and he starts hassling us again, this time in front of our wives. That's why we took him outside on our break and punched him around a little. He was getting to be a real pain in the ass over this really minor deal. You know?"

Another very slick story that didn't quite seem real.

But how could I argue with it?

"You can see the kind of guy we're dealing with, right?" he said. "The way he cut that Indian woman up? God."

One more glance at his Rolex for my sake. "Hey, I've really got to go. Take care of yourself, right?"

Evelyn waved at me as they drove away in their nice new snug Saab.

I waved back with a genuine sense of loneliness. I really did sort of like her.

A
fter stopping off at City Hall to check on deeds and properties, I spent the early afternoon in the downtown branch of the Cedar Rapids Library going through books about the city at the turn of the century.

It's always fun to imagine that there was a kinder, gentler time even if that sort of nostalgia is largely a fantasy. The photographs deceive. How simple and amiable life looks in the faded snapshots of women in big fancy bustles and men in sideburns and bowlers. Barbershop quartets serenading lovers as they stroll along the moonlit Cedar River; horseless carriages bedazzling the children who chase after them down the street; and trolley cars pulled by a mule.

Kinder, gentler.

Until you look more closely at the faces in the faded photographs and see in their eyes all the grief, all the fears, all the heartache we know today.

The human condition has probably been the same since that first ancient ancestor of ours, in whatever form he took, struggled from the ocean to collapse on the beach, starving for food, shelter and some sense of why he'd been put on this planet in the first place.

It is this reality that the old photos rarely convey, except in the pictures of the Civil War with the broken and dead strewn across the bloody ground, or the Nevada executions where three men were hanged at once, or in the crazed and aggrieved eyes of the darky slaves as they slink from the plantation house to the filth and grime of their own abodes.

You have to be careful with the happy old photos. They can trick you into believing that at one time there was this human race completely different from our own.

Tobacco is a filthy weed that

From the Devil does proceed.

It drains your purse, it

Burns your clothes. And makes

A chimney of your nose.

(Admonition to schoolchildren, 1886)

I always go through a few old history books every time I'm in a library. I usually turn up something for my notebooks. I don't know that I'll ever use all the notes I have but they're pleasant to compile.

But my real task was finding a book on the homes of the Cedar Rapids elite. It took a while but I found one.