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Authors: Robin Hathaway

Scarecrow (6 page)

BOOK: Scarecrow
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When I walked into the motel, Mr. Nelson was poring over the newspaper.
I greeted him. “I saw our buddies today.”
He looked up, puzzled.
“You know. The ones who skipped without paying.”
“Oh.”
I've seen patients on their way to the OR show more enthusiasm. “But I let them get away.”
“Good.”
“But they walked off with a night's rent!” I was indignant.
“It's only money.” He went back to his newspaper.
It's only money
. The words vibrated in my head. It was not a common Manhattan expression.
“Look at this.” He shoved the paper under my nose, jabbing his finger at the lead headline.
HUMAN SCARECROW REMAINS A MYSTERY
 
I bent to read the article.
 
The body disguised as a scarecrow, discovered in Saul Perkin's field last week, remains unidentified. After …
My mind was too full of my own affairs. I couldn't concentrate on the small type. “Mr. Nelson—”
“Paul.”
“Paul—could I have a word with you?”
“Sure.” Caught by the earnestness of my tone, he laid the paper aside.
“Could you give me the names of those motels that might need my services?”
He looked as if I'd told him he'd won the lottery.
“This is just temporary. A sort of experiment.”
He nodded enthusiastically.
“There will be a slight delay,” I rattled on. “I've got to get a New Jersey medical license, narcotics licenses, and change my malpractice insurance. And I'll need some time to arrange my affairs in New York—”
“I understand.” He was still looking at me as if he was five years old and I'd just handed him a double-decker ice cream cone. All chocolate.
“Then there are the arrangements down here. I'll need a small office, a place to stay, and—”
“No problem.” He grinned. “This end will be easy. You can have one of the cabins out front for an office, and any room in the motel is yours.”
“That's very kind of you, but I won't be able to pay rent for a month or two—”
“No rent for the office. That cabin's been sitting there, taking up space, since the forties. As for the room—the rent can wait. And if you want to make any changes, you know—paint it, bring in your own furniture—that's fine, too.”
“I don't know what to say …”
“Not another word. You've made me a very happy man.”
And indeed, he seemed changed. Before, he had seemed surrounded by a gray aura, bowed down by some invisible weight. Now he even looked younger. As I turned to go, he stopped me. “By the way, my wife thinks you're great.”
“I hardly spoke to her.”
“She says you have steady eyes.”
My gaze automatically dropped to the floor.
“You'd be surprised how many shifty eyes we get in here.”
I thought of the Pillsbury couple. “No, I wouldn't.”
“When will you be leaving?”
“Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn.” I was glad to escape. Too much adulation made me queasy. Or was it my empty stomach? I had barely touched my gourmet dinner.
 
 
At Harry's Bar and Grill (apparently the only food-and-watering place for miles) the bar was horseshoe-shaped, and the stares of the bulls across from me seemed less intent than the night before. Could they be getting used to me? Except for one stare, which was even more intent. Recognition dawned. Robin Hood. I quickly bent to my beer and hamburger.
A few minutes later, I was conscious of someone sliding onto the barstool next to mine. “Does this remind you of Manhattan?” His voice was as cool as shaved ice—useful for conning females.
I turned. “I beg your pardon?” Why did this guy get under my skin? One word from him and I was talking like a New York socialite.
“Name's Tom. I hear you're staying on.”
I blinked. Once more the village grapevine had caught me off guard.
“Paul Nelson is a friend of mine,” he explained. “I dropped by the motel after you'd left and—”
“Another generation, isn't he?”
He hesitated. “I knew his son.”
“He has a son?”
“Had.”
Silence. I wanted to know what had happened to the son, but I'd be damned if I'd ask.
“He disappeared.”
I looked at him. “As on milk cartons?”
He nodded.
“When?”
He shrugged. “Three years ago.”
“Did they try to find him?”
“Oh, sure. Even got the FBI in on it. Nothing turned up. I think the Nelsons have accepted it—finally.”
“That he's not coming back.”
He nodded.
In a flash, I understood Mr. Nelson's gray aspect—and his expression,
It's only money.
“What do you think happened?”
“He ran with a wild crowd in high school …”
“Yours?”
He ignored this. “He always needed money. Somebody in his crowd had a leather jacket; Nick had to have two leather jackets. His parents—the Nelsons—couldn't keep up with it. They tried. But the Oakview Motor Lodge isn't exactly the Ritz.”
“I get the picture.” I cut him off. I didn't want a rundown on the Nelsons' financial affairs. “Was he into drugs?”
“His staff of life.”
“Is he alive?”
He looked down. “I hope not.”
“For his sake or the Nelsons'?”
He raised his eyes to mine and said softly, “I don't care what happened to that bastard.”
There didn't seem to be anything more to say. I worked on the remains of my hamburger.
After a minute he said, “Paul's very happy you've decided to stay.”
“I know. I only hope I can live up to his expectations.”
Where had that crap come from?
“I hafta get back.” I dug in my jeans for a tip, snatched up my check, and made a beeline for the cash register.
What's wrong with me? Why antagonize a perfectly nice hunk?
Disgusted with myself, I hurried back to the motel in search of sleep—and oblivion. My last thought before I conked out:
I need another man like a hole in the head. Don't I have enough troubles?
Although I had been away from Manhattan for only forty-eight hours, when I got back to my apartment and checked my phone messages there were half a dozen from my father—the note of panic increasing a few decibels in each one.
“Hi, Dad.”
“Thank God. Where've you been?”
“I took a little vacation. Needed to get out of town. Sorry I worried you.” (Long ago I'd stopped reminding him that I was twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight years old and able to take care of myself. When I was a hundred, he'd still worry.)
“Never mind. Where'd you go?”
“Salem, New Jersey.”
Dead silence.
“It's near the Delaware Bay. Its main claim to fame is a nuclear power plant.”
“What the—?”
“Look, it's a long story—and I just got in. I'll meet you at the diner for dinner.” The diner was the Gemini just two blocks from my apartment at Second and Thirty-third. Whenever Dad came into the city, we ate there. Not for us the glitzy, expensive restaurants that catered to the tourist trade. Besides, the food was better.
He grunted his agreement.
 
 
“So that's the plan.” I glanced at my father over a pile of shrimp carcasses and one squeezed-to-death lemon segment.
He stared back at me over the naked bones of two pork chops and a parsley sprig that would never rise again.
I was the first to look away. My father's gaze had not been hard to read:
Are you crazy?
There was some justification for this. The last time I'd seen him, I had described with pride a cocktail party to which all the great names in New York medicine had been invited—and me, too. At the time I'd suspected he'd thought it was silly, but you could never tell with Dad. Maybe it was just my sudden about-face that had thrown him. But more likely, it was the distance it would put between us. Since my mother died (when I was four), I had never lived more than an hour away from him.
“It's just a six-month trial,” I murmured. As usual, one of his looks had set off a chain reaction of doubts about my most carefully laid plans.
He tossed his balled-up paper napkin on the table. “When do you leave?”
“In a week.”
“Not much time. What about your office? Your apartment?”
“I can rent the office like that!” I snapped my fingers. “And I think I can sublet the apartment.”
“You're sure this is—?”
“It's just an experiment, Dad.” I cut him off before he could undermine my decision any further. “I can be back in Manhattan tomorrow.”
“But your opportunities …”
“My credentials are my opportunities.”
He sighed. And it was the sigh of someone from another generation—a generation in which education was not as easy to come by, or work as readily available.
He shook his head. Suddenly he looked up. “What about Ken?”
I didn't answer.
“Now I get it.”
He didn't, but I let him think he did. He thought I was perfect. Why disillusion him? I had told him about Sophie when it happened, of course. But it was an abbreviated account, omitting such salient points as my misdiagnosis. To spare his feelings, I told myself.
“Shall we go?” I started to pull on my parka.
He couldn't resist one last searching glance for signs of unrequited love. Finding none, he shook his head again and wormed his way into his own parka.
Leaving the glittering amber lights of the diner behind, we headed south on Second Avenue. Usually we linked arms, exchanging heated views on some past or upcoming contest between the Yankees and the Orioles, the Islanders and the Rangers. Tonight we walked in silence with space between us until we hit Thirty-fourth. There we parted, Dad heading across town for his subway while I continued on to Thirty-third.
As I'd told Dad, it was a snap to unload my office. Office space in upscale medical buildings in Manhattan is always at a premium. The apartment was another story. My lease still had six months to go, and my landlord wasn't about to let me worm out of it. I had been planning to call Ken and get him to find me a subletter. He had lived in my apartment for over a year—why shouldn't he take some responsibility? But when I went to dial him, I realized I didn't know where he was. I could call him at work, but he shared an office with a couple of colleagues and I wasn't in the mood for small talk. I could track him down, of course, but this would mean a roundabout phone search through friends, and endless explanations about our split that I didn't feel up to right now. Fortunately, he called me. He had been trying to reach me all weekend. It was an uninspired conversation, but one that ended to my satisfaction—a promise from him to find a subletter for my apartment. Whew! Home free. Now I just had to decide what to store and what to take. Dad had promised to bring his van over to pick up the things I didn't want to take to New Jersey. There was plenty of storage space in the cellar and garage, he assured me. If there was any overflow, there was always the print shop. But I'd have to rent a U-Haul for the remainder.
It took a little over ten days to wind things up. There had been
no problem staying on the courtesy staff of my fancy hospital. My colleagues had managed to keep their surprise under wraps. What they said behind my back, I could only guess. I left my savings account untouched in the Manhattan bank (all $200 of it). My final act before leaving the city was to mail the apartment keys to Ken. (He was temporarily sharing a pad on the West Side with a couple of his buddies.) As I walked back down the block from the mailbox toward my overstuffed U-Haul, I felt as giddy as a kid on the first day of summer vacation. Edging the U-Haul out of the parking spot, I pointed it downtown toward the Holland Tunnel.
BOOK: Scarecrow
3.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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