Starvation Lake (44 page)

“You know, it’s really too bad old Rudy isn’t still around, because now we’ve got the Internet. Supply is so much more efficient. And demand is unlimited. Unlimited, Gus. And it’s never going to stop.”

“You’re lying.”

“I don’t know where he came up with the money either. But your dad was obviously a pretty determined guy.” He leaned forward in his chair. He grinned. “You don’t actually take after him, do you, Gus?”

My father had wanted a Cadillac, if only just for Sunday drives to Lake Michigan. For years he saved to buy one. But when he finally had enough money, he chose instead to buy a used Bonneville so he could put the rest of the money into an investment. What investment? A retirement fund? My college education? Anything, I hoped, but Blackburn’s “opportunity.” Not my father. Even if he had misled my mother about where he worked those Saturday nights, it was only because of the looming death sentence of his cancer and the duty he felt to make sure Mom and I were cared for.

“You’re a goddamn liar.”

“You don’t have to believe me,” Blackburn said. He sat back again and lifted his glass to his lips. “Ask your mother.”

“Fucking liar!” I leaped from my chair, knocking the table over and sending my untouched drink flying. I slapped his glass out of his hands and it shattered against the table hockey game. “This is not about my mother and father,” I yelled, “this is about you and all the kids you fucked over. You’re going to jail or I can take you out right here.”

I was hovering over him now, breathing hard, heart pumping, fists clenched. I wanted to rip Blackburn’s face off from the ears.

He didn’t move. “Take me out?” he said. “Starvation ain’t enough of a jail for you? What are you really going to do, Gus? You want to hit me? Go ahead. See what difference it makes in your life or mine.”

“It’s over. It’s over now.”

“That’s right!” he shouted, and before I could react, he bolted up straight in his chair and grabbed my shirt collar and yanked me down close to him. I struggled to free myself as hairy knuckles scraped my neck and liquor breath slithered up my nose. “That’s right, boy,” he snarled. “It’s over. Right…now!” In one motion he raised himself out of the chair and with a grunt from his belly flung me back against the wall. I righted myself and braced for him to charge, but he just stood there looking at me and gasping for breath. He leaned over and picked the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a long slug. Finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and let the bottle fall to his side.

“You know,” he said, “it could’ve been you. It could’ve been you and not the others. You didn’t see me over at Swanny’s when he was a squirt teaching him how to play the game, did you? But that’s the way you wanted it, or your mother wanted it, and now, here we are. You got away, I got away.” He took another swig from the bottle. “Now go home. Nobody knows you were here. Go home to your mommy. Let your father rot in peace.”

“My dad would spit in your face.”

“Yeah? Well, we’re done here. I’m calling the cops.”

He took the bottle into his office. I heard the beeps of numbers being punched into a phone.

I crossed Blackburn’s front lawn at a slow trot and hurried down the sidewalk to the Bonnie, relieved to have the cover of dark. I kept my headlights off until I was out of the neighborhood, where I pulled into a strip mall lot, parked, and wrote down everything I could remember.

   The cop flashers blinked in my rearview mirror about an hour northwest of Pittsburgh. A tow truck dispatched the Bonnie while two Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies ferried me to the Ohio border, where they stopped and took me out of their car and ushered me to the backseat of a Mahoning County sheriff’s cruiser. None of the cops said much. Every hour or so, we’d stop and I’d be moved to a different car as one county sheriff handed me over to another and another until we pulled over at the southern border of Michigan. Through the windshield I saw two Monroe County sheriff’s cruisers, one from Pine County, and a burly officer wearing an earflap cap and puffing on a thin brown cigar.

   “You know a lot of sheriffs,” I said.

We’d driven about half an hour into Michigan, Dingus at the wheel, me in the back. It was nearly three o’clock Friday morning.

“It was either that or let the state boys grab you,” he said. “I have a little piece of paper here from Judge Gallagher that says you’re mine until six o’clock tonight. Then I’ll be having to hand you over to the state police, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“Depending on what you tell me.”

Of course I was bursting to tell someone what I knew, and the longer I waited, the more time Blackburn had to get away. But I had no idea what Dingus was going to do with me. I wouldn’t be able to help Joanie much with that FedEx delivery if I was in jail. And where would Blackburn go anyway? Once the world knew he was alive, he wouldn’t be hard to track down.

I was thinking, too, about my father and what he had or hadn’t done. I told myself that Blackburn was lying, that Blackburn was just trying to manipulate me yet again. But what if he wasn’t? What shame might be brought down upon my father’s grave and, inevitably, my mother?

“It’s not my job to help you do your job,” I said.

“Oh, really?” Dingus caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Did you think you fooled me on your way out of Starvation? Did you think I don’t know those back roads?”

I didn’t say anything.

“For the record, we had you at every turn until you hit Old Twenty-seven. Not too hard to keep track of a car the size of a battleship.”

“Wait. You’re saying you just let me go?”

He lit another Tiparillo. “Sheriff Aho declined to comment.”

“You’re a funny guy, Dingus.”

The car filled with the smell of the cherry-sweet smoke. We drove in silence for a while.

“So,” he finally said. His eyes were in the rearview again. “Are you going to tell me what you learned on your little trip?”

   The clang of a jail cell door woke me.

“You’re up,” Darlene said.

I looked around, blinking against the light from the caged bulbs. A little before dawn, Dingus had stuck me in a part of the jail I’d never seen before, away from Soupy and the other prisoners. In my cell there was a sink, a toilet, and, instead of a cot, a concrete slab where I had fallen asleep.

“I guess so,” I said.

“You have visitors.” She motioned down the corridor. Catledge appeared with my mother and Joanie.

“Oh,” I said. “Mom.” Her eyes were red around the rims. Joanie had an arm around my mother’s shoulders. Two days before, they hadn’t even met. Joanie was one great reporter.

“Skip, can you get a couple of chairs?” Darlene said. “Hold on, Mother Bea.” Catledge went for the chairs and Darlene stepped into the cell and handed me an envelope. “Here,” she said.

The envelope had already been sliced open. I took it and pulled out a note written on a piece of notepaper in pen.

Gus,
Very sorry to hear of your troubles. If you are in need of an attorney, don’t hesitate to have the police contact me.
Sincerely, Francis J. Dufresne
P.S. Our friend Leo will be remembered at a service this afternoon. I will pass along your regards.

I set the envelope on the edge of the sink as Catledge returned with the chairs. Mom and Joanie sat facing me.

“What time is it?” I said.

“Where were you, Gussy?” Mom said. “Why did you go away like that without telling me? Why didn’t you tell me the police were after you? Why are you keeping things from me? What’s wrong, son?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“You are not fine. Dingus says they’re going to take you to jail in Detroit tonight. He says he’s trying to help you but you’re not cooperating.”

“Does he?” I said.

Dingus had persisted in his interrogation all the way back to Starvation. Whenever I dozed off, he roused me with more questions. I told him a little, though obviously not as much as he wanted to know. Hearing that Blackburn was alive didn’t seem to surprise Dingus much; he kept asking who else was involved, who was the brains behind Blackburn. It was as if he’d listened in on Blackburn telling me he couldn’t have been the only one peddling porn. I thought of my father and shut my mouth. Dingus deposited me in that jail cell.

“Gus,” Mom said. “It’s time to grow up now.”

“I’m sorry you think that,” I said. “But I’m not the only one who’s been keeping secrets, am I?”

Tears welled in my mother’s eyes. “It’s all right, Bea,” Joanie said. She looked at me. “Your mother has some things to tell you.”

“Yes.”

“Tell him about Leo.”

Mom pulled a packet of tissues from her coat pocket and used one to dab at her eyes. “I think I told you,” she said, “that on the night of Jack’s accident, Leo tried to tell me he’d done a terrible thing.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m not proud of this, son. As I said, I wouldn’t let Leo tell me what the thing was. He was hysterical, one minute cursing Jack, the next near tears. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what he was trying to say. But I knew, I mean, I didn’t
think
I wanted to hear it. Then the police came. Leo must’ve gotten scared. But I’m not so dumb. I could see he wasn’t wet.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying”—she stopped to collect herself—“I’m saying I knew what Leo was trying to say. I didn’t understand until later, a lot later, when I didn’t think it mattered anymore.”

“What was it, Mother?”

“He meant he’d let Jack go.”

“And why,” Joanie said, “would Leo have thought this was so terrible, Bea?”

“I can’t be sure. But I thought something—something that wasn’t right—was going on at those little houses Jack had for the out-of-town boys. I was with him once at his own house after we’d gone to a show. I could just—” She paused. “He was a strange man. A very strange man.”

My brain had begun to throb against the inside of my skull.

“You have to believe me, son,” she said. “I didn’t know for sure what was going on there. And, yes, maybe I didn’t want to know. But at least I kept you away. I’m so glad I did that. Joanie told me about the young man in Canada.”

“Did you tell all of this to Dingus?” I said.

“I told him I wouldn’t talk until I spoke with you.”

“Anything else?”

From a sweater pocket Mom produced a folded sheet of paper. She set it on her lap. “Your father,” she said. “I know you’ve been looking for answers. By now”—she glanced at Joanie—“maybe you know some things.”

I looked at Joanie.

“The delivery isn’t in yet,” she said. “Snowstorms.”

Shit, I thought. I turned back to my mother. “I know Dad made some sort of investment in something that had something to do with Blackburn.”

“No,” Mom said. “Not with Jack.”

“Mother, he made an investment. I knew it even back then.”

“Whatever he did, he did for us. For you.”

“Can we please stop this bullshit? Dad’s gone. If you have something to tell me, just tell me. What was this second job he had on Saturday nights? What was the damn investment?”

“Settle down,” Joanie said.

Mom continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “On Friday nights, he went to those poker parties, and—”

“At Blackburn’s?”

“Some. Remember, Jack was only here a year or two before your father passed. They were playing poker long before that.”

“All right.”

“Those nights, after a while your father started sneaking that old movie projector out of the house. The same one you were sneaking out the other day. He thought I didn’t know. I wanted to think it was just some harmless boys’ fun. But Rudy wasn’t the sneaking kind.”

“So what?”

“It wasn’t like your father.”

“What about
Saturday
nights, Mother? The job?”

“He just wanted some extra money. We were starting to save for your college. And there was that Cadillac he had to have. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You didn’t mind him working at a titty bar?”

“Watch your mouth,” she said. I glanced at Darlene standing outside the cell and she looked away. “I didn’t know that, at least not right away. He was in his funny period after Cousin Eddie died. Anyway, the money was very good. And he didn’t work there long.”

“Long enough to get mixed up with the wrong people?”

She ignored me and unfolded the piece of paper. “Your father wanted that Cadillac. After the doctors told him about his illness, I wanted him to have it. But he insisted on buying that other car and putting a thousand dollars into this business opportunity. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know your father.”

“What opportunity?”

“You’re not going to like this, son.”

“What?”

“Rudy never told me. He never told me anything about our money. That’s the way things were then. He just said it would pay off. He wouldn’t do anything that would harm anyone. Your father was a good man.”

“You said he didn’t give it to Blackburn, though.”

“No. He gave it to Francis.”

I felt suddenly dumb. “Francis? Dufresne? What’s he got to do with Blackburn?”

“Didn’t they work on a lot of real-estate things?”

“Yeah, years after Dad died. Was Dad investing in real estate?”

“I told you I don’t know. All I know is, after your father died, when I was having trouble making tax payments on the house, Francis came to the rescue.” She handed me the paper. “This is from last year.”

“You never said anything about problems paying taxes.”

“You weren’t around, Gus. You were in Detroit.”

The paper was a photocopy of a receipt from the Pine County Treasurer’s Office and a canceled check drawn on First Detroit Bank. The receipt confirmed a payment of $542.61 in taxes on property owned by Beatrice Carpenter on December 5, 1997. The check in the same amount was signed by Francis J. Dufresne. So my father had given Francis that thousand dollars for who knows what, and years later, Francis returned the favor by helping my mother with her taxes? Was that how the investment paid off?