Rubout (24 page)

Just as suddenly, the landscape became beautiful. The last thing I saw in Missouri was the Riverlands Environmental Demonstration Area. I caught a glimpse of graceful long-necked water birds feeding in the marshes. I forgot about them when I saw the Clark Bridge. It made the Golden Gate Bridge look like a clumsy hunk of orange iron. The Clark Bridge was twin golden fans of cables suspended from concrete poles. The gleaming golden bridge looked as delicate as a spiderweb, yet it was eighty-one-hundred tons of structural steel. As we crossed over to Illinois, I gave an inarticulate shout of awe. The great sparkling river spread out below us, the golden cables soared overhead, and the sunlight dazzled my eyes. Then we were in the old brick river town of Alton, riding through the antiques district. The little shops, with their frilly curtains and cute names, were clustered near the Alton casino boats. I wondered how many people walked off the gambling boats with their winnings, then lost them in those innocent little lace-lined antiques shops.

When we passed the ConAgra grain elevators, the Great River Road opened onto another stunning view: On one side were soaring white limestone
bluffs. On the other side was the Mississippi River, wide, smooth, and silver in the sunlight. It was a sight you expected to see in California, not the Midwest. I selfishly hoped its beauty would stay undiscovered.

Right before we got to the little gingerbread village of Elsah, Mark turned off on Dorfmann Road. We passed ranch houses and mobile homes with carports and satellite dishes. We saw flocks of plastic lawn ducks, chickens, and deer. Then the homes and lawns vanished. The road grew more deserted and hilly. There were long stretches of woods and a few fields. Fat round hay bales were rolled against the barbed-wire fences. The fences were covered with bright red vines that were probably poison ivy. Tough, bug-bitten flowers and yellowing weeds grew along the road. I spotted a dead possum that had been run over, its guts red and glistening on the center line, and I shuddered and tightened my helmet strap, thinking of Jack. There was a sharp curve around a cornfield, then a steep rollercoaster drop. Mark took it fast—at least sixty. My stomach fell into my boots, then lurched up again when we hit a bump and another curve. After the curve, Mark braked the motorcycle and pulled off the road. We had reached the scene of Jacks death. If Jack came roaring drunk down that hill and swerved to avoid the box at the bottom, he didn’t have a chance. He’d slide into the oil and gravel on the curve, go straight into the dense trees and down into a ditch.

I didn’t get any special evil feeling about the place. There wasn’t much to see. The oil on the blacktop road had been cleaned up. Mark pointed out the ugly
skid marks. He showed me the thick old maple with the cycle-scarred bark on the curve. I saw the tread going down into the muddy ditch. We walked up the road a little way, and Mark showed me where the accident reconstruction team thought the killer’s car might have been parked.

“Seen enough?” he said. I nodded. Then we walked back to his motorcycle and rode a little farther to a fruit-and-vegetable stand with a hand-lettered sign:
CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. SEE U NEXT YEAR.
The Stand was a weathered white that probably would get another coat of paint next summer when it reopened, and it had four tiers of boards, like steps, for displaying produce. I sat down, while Mark rummaged in his saddlebags and came out with a metal Thermos, a foam cup, paper napkins, and a bag of muffins.

“Thirsty?” he said.

I was, after that ride. He poured his coffee into the foam cup and gave me my coffee in the top to the Thermos. I reached in the bag and took out a big gooey raspberry muffin, the kind that looks virtuous and isn’t. It was good. Food is always extra good after a ride, maybe because part of you never expects to eat again. Hoping to keep the subject on business, I told Mark about seeing the motor oil in the trunk of Hudson’s car.

“Why isn’t a rich guy like him going to the Jiffy Lube?” he asked.

“I didn’t get to ask Hudson if he changed his own oil,” I said. “He called up and complained to Charlie and the publisher and now I’m under orders to stay away from him and Hud Junior.”

Mark grinned. “I can ask Hudson, though,” he
said. “Not that I expect hell give me a straight answer. Hell probably have his lawyer call the mayor, who will remind me it’s not illegal for a man to have motor oil in his trunk. But it’s damn strange for someone like Hudson.”

Mark smiled, and I didn’t feel so much like an outsider. “The son has been behaving oddly, too. Hud Junior was stopped by a city patrol car near the Casa Loma the night of his mother’s murder. He was buying drugs in an alley off Cherokee and California. The dealer ran off. The officer ran Hud Junior’s plates and decided a rich kid like him would have Daddy hire an expensive lawyer and bail him out before he even finished the paperwork. The officer was tired and it was almost the end of his shift. He let the kid go with a warning to keep his drug-buying Ladue ass out of the Third District. Said if he ever saw him in the neighborhood again, he’d run him in. The kid looked scared and took off. But when the officer heard that Mrs. Vander Venter was murdered that night, he mentioned the incident to me. We’ve got it on tape. The officer radioed in a 27 car check, with Hud Junior’s car make and license number. The kid was stopped a block or so from the Casa Loma, half an hour before his mother was killed.”

“Interesting,” I said. We sipped coffee in a companionable silence. I thought about what Mark told me.

Now father and son both had reason to avoid me. What if Hud Junior didn’t leave the Third District? What if he stayed around and killed his mother? If he was buying drugs, he needed more money than he could make working at a coffeehouse. His mother’s
trust fund was instant cash. He was furious at her. Was he mad enough to kill her? I needed to find out more about him.

I finished my coffee and Mark finished his. When we got to his motorcycle, I handed him the muffin wrapper and my Thermos cup. Our hands brushed, by accident or design, I have no idea, but then we were kissing on the back of his motorcycle and unzipping zippers, when a beat-up old pickup truck came by and the driver honked and whistled and I straightened up. “We can’t do this here,” I said.

“We can’t go to my place. How about yours?” he said, and then added, “You know I’m married. I won’t leave my wife and kids.”

“Good!” I said, with a force that surprised us both.

We rode back to my place without saying another word. I held Mark tightly. I liked everything about this man: his hair, his smell, his smile, and the fact that unlike Lyle, he’d never pressure me to marry him. The high speeds and road noise blew any sensible thoughts out of my head, and that’s how I wanted it. The hour-long trip back seemed shorter. When we got to my place, he parked his Harley in front. I pulled off my helmet, and he put it away in his saddlebag and took off his. We peeled off our gloves and stuck them in our jacket pockets. I unlocked my door while Mrs. Indelicato stared out her confectionary window at us. Her glare could remove the paint from my door. I knew she disapproved if I was bringing home another man. Mrs. I is a great fan of Lyle’s. Good thing she didn’t know Mark was a married cop.

My front door opened into a typical South Side
arrangement: a long, dark flight of steps with a bend near the top. Three green-and-pink art-glass windows were set in the staircase wall. The steps were steep and painted with flat brown deck enamel. They started in a narrow entranceway with just enough room for a throw rug and a radiator. Over the radiator I had a framed poster of St. Louis artist Ernest Trovas “Falling Man.” It should have been Falling Woman. I barely shut the door against Mrs. I’s soul-stripping glare before Mayhew took up where he stopped on the roadside. He leaned me up against the opposite wall, kissed me hard and then softer and then harder, and ground his pelvis into mine. I ground right back and wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him just as hard. A long motorcycle ride is a great aphrodisiac. Holding him tightly for miles had melted any awkwardness between us. I felt like I already knew him and we fit together. Mark didn’t talk a lot, but he made appreciative little moans and groans while he kissed me. I hoped Mrs. I didn’t hear them. I could feel his hands under my sweater. They were warm and slightly callused. Mmmm. I started to move up the steps and he followed, but we only got about three steps up when we stopped for more kisses. I was half lying, half sitting on the steps, with my head on a stair tread, and he was on top of me, French kissing me with an interesting rhythm while one of his hands unzipped my killer Calvin Klein boot. It dropped on the stairs with a loud
thunk!

I felt his other hand down the back of my black jeans, and if Mrs. I didn’t hear that boot
thunk!
I was
pretty sure she heard that last moan from me. Or was it Mark making those noises? I came up for air long enough to say “We really should go upstairs.”

“Mmmmunh,” he said, which I took for yes. We made it four more steps and then we stopped again and I lost the other boot and my sweater, and he took off his leather jacket to pillow my head and kiss me some more, and he unbuckled his shoulder harness and hung it on the banister, and I helped him out of his sweater, but he had a shirt on underneath. Three steps later he’d unzipped my jeans, although I still had them on. I’d lost my socks and he’d lost his boots and his belt was unbuckled. The stairs looked like the last hour at the parish rummage sale, when all the clothes are marked down to twenty-five cents and people start flinging them everywhere. We were moaning and smooching like a couple of teenagers making out on a car seat, and let me tell you, a stair tread is even more uncomfortable than a gear shift knob. I was dizzy with lust and my lips were swollen from his kisses by the time we got to the bend near the top of the stairs. Three more steps and we’d be in my apartment. The bend formed a triangular landing and gave us more room to maneuver. I got a few buttons undone on his shirt, and he got me out of my black jeans. I could hear them sliding down the stairs and I could feel myself sliding back on the landing and I could feel him on top of me, and we needed a bed. If we didn’t make it to the bed, the living-room carpet would be more comfortable. I could handle rug burn better than stair-tread marks.

“Upstairs,” I said between kissed-bruised lips.

“Yes,” he said, his warm breath in my ear. “Oh, baby, yes.”

I managed to stand up, even though I was a bit shaky. I stood at the top of the steps, down to my new underwear.

I
f you’re going to have an affair with a married man, don’t do it at your grandparents’ house. The first thing I saw, when I was standing at the top of the stairs in my sexy underwear, was my grandma’s TV shrine: the picture of Christ over the Magnavox television set. The TV was one of those big dark old cabinet jobs from the early 1960s, with skinny brass-tipped legs. On top the TV, as if it was an altar, Grandma had two white candles in glass candlesticks. Christ’s picture was wreathed in white plastic roses. Christ’s eyes follow you around the room. They followed me around in my underwear, watching half my ass hanging out the back.

Suddenly I felt foolish, standing half naked in Grandma’s living room with someone else’s husband. I also felt chilly. Did I turn down the heat? Or did the temperature suddenly drop? It was cold in here. I had goose bumps, and they weren’t from pleasure. Before I found the thermostat, I better find a
condom. Did I even have one? Lyle and I had been faithful to each other for so long, we quit using them a couple of years ago. I hated condoms. But I’d hate AIDS a lot more. I remembered a diagram I saw in the
Gazette
showing what it was like when you had unprotected sex with someone. The diagram showed you and the guy holding hands, since the
Gazette
did not put unmarried people in bed in a family newspaper. Behind your man were all the women he’d slept with, standing in a ghostly line, and you sure hoped it was only women he’d had for lovers. Then there were all the men you’d slept with forming another ghostly line. My line would be pretty short, not much longer than the line at an ATM on a Tuesday night. But if the gossip was true about the way Mark Mayhew was behaving since he broke that last big case, he’d need red velvet ropes like a ticket counter line at the airport. Heck, the diagram would look like one of those “Where’s Waldo?” drawings, with zillions of people swarming all over the place.

Somewhere in that picture would be Charlie and the guys at the
Gazette.
And my father. I’d have joined the crowd. I’d be one of the destroyers, one of the people who ruined lives, wrecked other people’s marriages, and hurt their own children and spouses with their careless adulteries. Now I was going to be in that picture. I’d be just as bad as my philandering father, who drove my mother crazy with his infidelities. I’d be just like Charlie, who screwed staffers and then promoted them in kingly fashion after they’d been touched by the royal scepter. Soon I’d be promoting my squeeze, writing funny little features about the noble police detective who’d been in my
pants. A fine future awaited me. My virtue, or whatever you called it, was thinner than my fancy underwear at this point. I’d just about lost it, step by step. But I still had a few scraps covering me. I didn’t want to lose them.