Promised Land (3 page)

”Yeah, okay. I’ll get Millie first, and I’ll look for that stuff while you’re talking with her.“ He hadn’t come right home and done it like I told him. Maybe I lacked leadership qualities.

Millie didn’t look happy to talk with me. She sat at the table and turned her father’s empty coffee cup in a continuous circle in front of her. Shepard went off to collect the phone bills and letters. Millie didn’t speak.

”Any thoughts on where your mother might be, Millie?“

She shook her head.

”Does that mean you don’t know or you won’t say.“

She shrugged and continued to turn the coffee cup carefully.

”You want her back?“

She shrugged again. When I turn on the charm they melt like butter.

”Why do you think she ran off?“

”I don’t know,“ she said, staring at the cup. Already she was starting to pour out her heart to me.

”If you were she,“ I said, ”would you run off?“

”I wouldn’t leave my children,“ she said and there was some emphasis on the my.

”Would you leave your husband?“

”I’d leave him,“ she said and jerked her head toward the door her father had gone through.

”Why?“

”He’s a jerk.“

”What’s jerky about him?“

She shrugged.

”Work too hard? Spend too much time away from the family?“

She shrugged again.

”Honey,“ I said. ”On the corner I hang out, when you call someone a jerk you’re supposed to say why, especially if it’s family.“

”Big deal,“ she said.

”It’s one of the things that separate adults from children,“ I said.

”Who wants to be an adult?“

”I been both and adult is better than kid.“

”Sure,“ she said.

”Who’s your mother’s best friend?“ I said.

She shrugged again. I thought about getting up and throwing her through the window. It made me feel good for a minute, but people would probably call me a bully.

”You love your mother?“

She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and gave a sigh. ”Course,“ she said and looked back at the circles she was making with the coffee cup. Perhaps I could throw it through the window instead.

”How do you know she’s not in trouble?“

”I don’t know.“

”How do you know she’s not kidnapped?“

”I don’t know.“

”Or sick someplace with no one to help her.“ Ah, the fertility of my imagination. Maybe she was the captive of a dark mysterious count in a castle on the English moors. Should I mention to the kid a fate worse than death?

”I don’t know. I mean my father just said she ran away. Isn’t he supposed to know?“

”He doesn’t know. He’s guessing. And he’s trying to spare you in his jerky way from worse worry.“

”Well, why doesn’t he find out?“

”Ahhh, oh giant of brain, come the light. What the hell do you think he’s hired me for?“

”Well, why don’t you find out.“ She had stopped turning the coffee cup.

”That’s what I’m trying to do. Why don’t you help? So far your contribution to her rescue is four I-don’t-knows and six shrugs. Plus telling me your old man’s a jerk but you don’t know why.“

”What if she really did run away and doesn’t want to come back?“

”Then she doesn’t come back. I almost never use my leg irons on women anymore.“

”I don’t know where she is.“

”Why do you suppose she left?“

”You already asked me that.“

”You didn’t answer.“

”My father got on her nerves.“

”Like how?“

”Like, I don’t know. He was always grabbing at her, you know. Patting her ass, or saying gimme a kiss when she was trying to vacuum. That kind of stuff. She didn’t like it.“

”They ever talk about it?“

”Not in front of me.“

”What did they talk about in front of you?“

”Money. That is, my old man did. My old lady just kind of listened. My old man talks about money and business all the time. Keeps talking about making it big. Jerk.“

”Your father ever mistreat your mother?“

”You mean hit her or something?“

”Whatever.“

”No. He treated her like a goddamned queen, actually. That’s what was driving her crazy. I mean he was all over her. It was gross. He was sucking after her all the time. You know?“

”Did she have any friends that weren’t friends of your father’s?“

She frowned a little bit, and shook her head. ”I don’t think so. I don’t know any.“

”She ever go out with other men?“

”My mother?“

”It happens.“

”Not my mother. No way.“

”Is there anything you can think of, Millie, that would help me find your mother?’‘

“No, nothing. Don’t you think I’d like her back. I have to do all the cooking and look out for my brother and sister and make sure the cleaning lady comes and a lot of other stuff.”

“Where’s your brother and sister?”

“At the beach club, the lucky stiffs. I have to stay home for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, my father says I have to be the hostess and stuff till my mother comes home. I’m missing the races and everything.”

“Life’s hard sometimes,” I said. She made a sulky gesture with her mouth. We were silent for a minute.

“The races go on all week,” she said. “Everybody’s there. All the summer kids and everybody.”

“And you’re missing them,” I said. “That’s a bitch.”

“Well, it is. All my friends are there. It’s the biggest time of the summer.”

So young to have developed her tragic sense so highly.

Shepard came back in the room with a cardboard carton filled with letters and bills. On top was an 8 1/2 x 11 studio photo in a gold filigree frame. “Here you go, Spenser. This is everything I could find.”

“You sort through any of it?” I asked.

“Nope. That’s what I hired you for. I’m a salesman, not a detective. I believe in a man doing what he does best. Right, Mill?”

Millie didn’t answer. She was probably thinking about the races.

“A man’s gotta believe in something,” I said. “You know where I’m staying if anything comes up.”

“Dunfey’s, right? Hey, mention my name to the maitre d’ in The Last Hurrah, get you a nice table.”

I said I would. Shepard walked me to the door. Millie didn’t. “You remember that. You mention my name to Paul over there. He’ll really treat you good.”

As I drove away I wondered what races they were running down at the beach club.

I asked at the town hall for directions to the police station. The lady at the counter in the clerk’s office told me in an English accent that it was on Elm Street off Barnstable Road. She also gave me the wrong directions to Barnstable Road, but what can you expect from a foreigner. A guy in a Sunoco station straightened me out on the directions and I pulled into the parking lot across the street from the station a little before noon.

It was a square brick building with a hip roof and two small A dormers in front. There were four or five police cruisers in the lot beside the station: dark blue with white tops and white front fenders. On the side was printed BARNSTABLE POLICE. Hyannis is part of Barnstable Township. I know that but I never did know what a township was and I never found anyone else who knew.

I entered a small front room. To the left behind a low rail sat the duty officer with switchboard and radio equipment. To the right a long bench where the plaintiffs and felons and penitents could sit in discomfort while waiting for the captain. All police stations had a captain you waited for when you came in. Didn’t matter what it was.

“Deke Slade in?” I asked the cop behind the rail.

“Captain’s busy right now. Can I help you?”

“Nope, I’d like to see him.” I gave the cop my business card. He looked at it with no visible excitement.

“Have a seat,” he said, nodding at the bench. “Captain’ll be with you when he’s free.” It’s a phrase they learn in the police academy. I sat and looked at the color prints of game birds on the walls on my side of the office.

I was very sick of looking at them when, about one-ten, a gray-haired man stuck his head through the door on my side of the railing and said, “Spenser?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He jerked his head and said, “In here.” The head jerk is another one they learn in the police academy. I followed the head jerk into a square shabby office. One window looked out onto the lot where the cruisers parked. And beyond that a ragged growth of lilacs. There was a green metal filing cabinet and a gray metal desk with matching swivel chair. The desk was littered with requisitions and flyers and such. A sign on one corner said CAPTAIN SLADE.

Slade nodded at the gray metal straight chair on my side of the desk. “Sit,” he said. Slade matched his office. Square, uncluttered and gray. His hair was short and curly, the face square as a child’s block, outdoors tan, with a gray blue sheen of heavy beard kept close shave. He was short, maybe five-eight, and blocky, like an offensive guard from a small college. The kind of guy that should be running to fat when he got forty, but wasn’t. “What’ll you have,” he said.

“Harv Shepard hired me to look for his wife. I figured you might be able to point me in the right direction.”

“License?”

I took out my wallet, slipped out the plasticized photostat of my license and put it in front of him on the desk. His uniform blouse had short sleeves and his bare arms were folded across his chest. He looked at the license without unfolding his arms, then at me and back at the license again.

“Okay,” he said.

I picked up the license, slipped it back in my wallet.

“Got a gun permit?”

I nodded, slipped that out of the wallet and laid it in front of him. He gave it the same treatment and said, “Okay.”

I put that away, put the wallet away and settled back in the chair.

Slade said, “Far as I can tell she ran off. Voluntary. No foul play. Can’t find any evidence that she went with someone. Took an Almeida bus to New Bedford and that’s as far as we’ve gone. New Bedford cops got her description and all, but they got things more pressing. My guess is she’ll be back in a week or so dragging her ass.”

“How about another man?”

“She probably spent the night prior to her disappearance with a guy down the Silver Seas Motel. But when she got on the bus she appeared to be alone.”

“What’s the guy’s name she was with?”

“We don’t know.” Slade rocked back in his chair.

“And you haven’t been busting your tail looking to find out either.”

“Nope. No need to. There’s no crime here. If I looked into every episode of extramarital fornication around here I’d have the whole force out on condom patrol. Some babe gets sick of her husband, starts screwing around a little, then takes off. You know how often that happens?” Slade’s arms were still folded.

“Yeah.”

“Guy’s got money, he hires somebody like you to look. The guy he hires fusses around for a week or so, runs up a big bill at the motel and the wife comes back on her own because she doesn’t know what else to do. You get a week on the Cape and a nice tan, the husband gets a tax deduction, the broad starts sleeping around locally again.”

“You do much marriage counseling?”

He shook his head. “Nope, I try to catch people that did crimes and put them in jail. You ever been a cop? I mean a real one, not a private license?”

“I used to be on the States,” I said. “Worked out of the Suffolk County D.A.‘s office.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“I wanted to do more than you do.”

“Social work,” he said. He was disgusted.

“Any regular boyfriends you know of?”

He shrugged. “I know she slept around a little, but I don’t think anybody steady.”

“She been sleeping around long or has this developed lately?”

“Don’t know.”

I shook my head.

Slade said, “Spenser, you want to see my duty roster? You know how many bodies I got to work with here. You know what a summer weekend is like when the weather’s good and the Kennedys are all out going to Mass on Sunday.”

“You got any suggestions who I might talk to in town that could get my wheels turning?” I said.

“Go down the Silver Seas, talk with the bartender, Rudy. Tell him I sent you. He pays a lot of attention and the Silver Seas is where a lot of spit gets swapped. Pam Shepard hung out down there.”

I got up. “Thank you, captain.”

“You got questions I can answer, lemme know.”

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass, Spenser, I’ll do what I can. But I got a lot of things to look at and Pam Shepard’s just one of them. You need help, gimme a call. If I can, I’ll give you some.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.” We shook hands and I left.

It was two-fifteen when I pulled into the lot in front of the Silver Seas Motel. I was hungry and thirsty. While I took care of that I could talk to Rudy, start running up that big bar bill. Slade was probably right, but I’d give Shepard his money’s worth before she showed up. If she was going to.

There’s something about a bar on the Cape in the daytime. The brightness of lowland surrounded by ocean maybe makes the air-conditioned dimness of the bar more striking. Maybe there’s more people there and they are vacationers rather than the unemployed. Whatever it is, the bar at the Silver Seas Motel had it. And I liked it.

On the outside, the Silver Seas Motel was two-storied, weathered shingles, with a verandah across both stories in front. It was tucked into the seaward side of Main Street in the middle of town between a hardware store and a store that sold scallop shell ashtrays and blue pennants that said CAPE COD on them. The bar was on the right, off the lobby, at one end of the dining room. A lot of people were eating lunch and several were just drinking. Most of the people looked like college kids, cut-offs and T-shirts, sandals and halter tops. The decor in the place was surfwood and fishnet. Two oars crossed on one wall, a harpoon that was probably made in Hong Kong hung above the mirror behind the bar. The bartender was middle-aged and big-bellied. His straight black hair was streaked here and there with gray and hung shoulder length. He wore a white shirt with a black string bow tie like a riverboat gambler. The cuffs were turned neatly back in two careful folds. His hands were thick with long tapering fingers that looked manicured.