Sugartown (6 page)

“You remember that so good, how come you can’t remember how close the shots came together?”

“A boy coming home from summer school is a normal occurrence. Shotgun blasts are not, or were not, in this neighborhood in those times. It’s difficult to think of timing with something so unexpected.”

“Got all the answers, don’t you?”

“You have all the questions.”

I set fire to the cigarette finally, trying not to grin.

Mayk circled back. “Six witnesses swore the boy came home after the shots were fired.”

“Did they see him come home?”

“You’re the only one claims you saw that.”

“Interesting. That they’d swear to a thing they didn’t see.”

“Yeah, there seems to be a lot of that here.”

They went back to the subject of the argument and I lost interest. I wandered to the open doorway where my smoke could find its own way out and leaned against the frame. From there I had a good view through the front dining room window of the house across the way, where on a sweltering afternoon in a time of relative innocence three loud crashes had carried across the world to the other side of Europe.

Father Olszanski came in twenty minutes later. A lean six feet, he brushed his iron-gray hair back from his widow’s peak in twin wings that kept wanting to slide down over his forehead and he trimmed his white beard so close it looked like stubble until you looked again. His eyes were a flat sad blue behind spectacles whose gold rims winked when he jerked his hair out of his eyes. The clerical collar under his light black topcoat was blue-white against the brown of his throat.

“Have you grown weary of your graven images?” Leposava greeted him, once Mayk and I had introduced ourselves and taken the priest’s clean corded short-nailed hand in ours.

“You old pagan, what are you doing in bed? You’ve played the crippled ancient so long you’ve begun to believe it yourself.”

The banter proceeded in this fashion for another minute or so. Olszanski’s accent was as American as french fries.

Mayk said, “He won’t let us call the police.”

“Once they got the address they’d just file it under the blotter,” the priest said. “
Now
will you move, you old Tartar?”

“I did all the moving I intend to in the fall and winter of nineteen seventeen.” He lay as calm as a boulder in the sun.

This was where I’d made my entrance. I pinched out my second butt and parked it in my jacket pocket next to its uncle. “We appreciate your time, Mr. Leposava. Good luck.”

“I won’t wish you the same. The young man should stay lost.”

Olszanski escorted Mayk and me into the front room. He slid an aluminum tube out of an inside pocket and broke out a greenish cigar without a band, went through the ritual of passing it under his nose and licking the seam and never did light the thing.

“Stash is a remarkable man,” he said in a low voice. “He fought the Bolsheviks, you know. There’s Cossack in him and the Lord God knows what else. He speaks six languages and could have been a fine writer in any of them if he didn’t insist on translating the work of men of lesser talent. He worked until he was past eighty. Lately, though, his mind—” He waved the cigar. “He has no family. When he says he’ll be here to greet the wreckers he means it. There are some good nursing homes up north; as the one closest to him I can go to court and sign the papers. He’ll have clean quarters and round-the-clock care and even a counterfeit of love, plastic smiles and girls one-fourth his age who will call him by his first name in tones the rest of us reserve for dogs and children.” He smiled in his beard with his sad eyes on the expensive unlit cigar. “I’ll miss our talks.”

“Where do you preach?” Mayk asked.

“Immaculate Conception.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.” The sad smile was unchanged. “Some of the parishioners feel we will save it yet. I admire their faith. At election time the politicians all have their pictures taken going to church. I haven’t seen them since the condemnation papers came. I regard this as a sign.”

“I was asking Mr. Leposava about the Evancek shooting across the street,” I said.

He nodded, licked the cigar. “Yes, there was some gossip about it when I came here from Our Lady in Boston. It was before my assignment.”

I asked him about the Nortons. He didn’t know anyone by that name. We thanked him for coming.

“Thank you for calling me. Though I would rather it were anyone else.”

Mayk and I got out of there. On the porch, the ex-dick filled his lungs with a long draught. “Next time you be bad cop.”

“What do you think of Leposava’s story?” I asked.

“I think he’s an old guy that once he gets his choppers into something won’t let go if you hit him in the head with a trombone.”

“What
was
the sequence of those shots?”

He shook his head. “We never got two people to agree on that.”

“You nearly had me,” I said. “It was a sweet act.”

“I just sort of slipped into it.”

We started down the walk.

“Witnesses can be wrong,” I said. “Even six of them.”

“Don’t I know it. My last year with the department we trashed a guy on an attempted six-two-seven. Eight people who were in the bar when this steelworker bought a thirty-eight slug in the neck ID’d our man from the book and nailed him in the lineup. Then the steelworker came out of his coma and took one look at the mug and said, hell no, that ain’t him. Detroit snagged the right fish for CCW a week later and he spilled his guts under questioning. But that was different.”

“Yeah, the victim was still breathing.”

He stopped walking and turned toward me. The Stanislauses’ porch light was off now and we were beyond reach of the glow through Leposava’s window. But I felt Mayk’s cop’s-eyes on me in the shadows.

“It isn’t like that,” he said. “We don’t tie up a case the soft way just because there’s nobody left to raise a squawk. Once you get enough dots strung together to see the trunk you don’t need to connect the rest to know it’s a picture of an elephant. The only mystery in these domestic beefs is who gets stuck with the report.”

We didn’t say anything in the Bronco during the demolition drive back to his place. There was a light on in the house when we swung into the driveway and stopped behind a battered blue Pinto with panic stripes on the rear panel.

“My wife.” He killed his headlamps. “Uses a fork to fish a piece of toast out of a live toaster and she’s scared a truck will rear-end her and flame her out on the E-way.”

“You’ve got to laugh in its teeth somewhere.” I put a foot outside and stuck one of my cards on top of the visor. “If you ever have a keyhole that needs looking through.”

He was watching me with his hands still on the wheel. “We went together kind of smooth in there. Where were you ten years ago?”

“Protecting my best side in a Cambodian jungle.”

“Yeah? Korea here.”

“Same war,” I said. “Different people. Good night, Sergeant.”

“That’s Mister. But good night anyway.”

In ten minutes I was home. Just three rooms, a garage, and a dandelion patch with some grass in it, but the surrounding houses were still standing with lights on and when you woke up in the morning it was to the sound of the neighbor’s power mower or the Doberman down the block yapping its head off at a lost hubcap on the front lawn and not a two-ton ball punching holes in the brick house across the street. So far General Motors hadn’t whistled at the mayor and pointed my way.

There was nothing in the mailbox but a religious pamphlet. I had had enough of religion that evening. I left it for seed and let myself in. The place needed dusting, but not as badly as Stash Leposava’s. I determined to do something about it before it did. I hung up my hat and climbed out of my jacket and necktie, wound the clock my grandfather bought for his mother, went into the kitchen and got a tray out of the freezing compartment of the refrigerator and ran some water on it in the sink. Scrod, with a side of corn and little round potatoes the size of marbles in compartments like you see in a cash box. I hate scrod, but it had been on sale and I had four more trays of it. There was a time when I cooked, really cooked, but it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for just me.

I took down a bottle of Scotch three-quarters full, or one-quarter empty, from the cabinet over the sink and wet a glass from it and cut it with water. While waiting for the hoarfrost to melt off the TV dinner I looked at my reflection in the night-backed window and wondered how I would look with a white moustache.

When the scrod was in the oven I took my glass and went back into the living room and sat down and looked at the dust on the blank television screen.

People move all the time. They can’t find work at home and go where the jobs are, they get transferred, they grow tired of shoveling snow in April and go west or south, they get sick of waking up every morning to the same face on the next pillow, they go to find themselves, they go to lose themselves, wives run to Bermuda with exterminators, husbands head for Vegas with little blonde numbers from the secretarial pool, kids light out for anywhere not home with just their thumbs and a nylon backpack with something by Kerouac in it. Mommy’s gone away, son. No, Daddy doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Eat your cauliflower. What was he wearing when he left, lady? I can’t understand it, Dad. He’s never been away this long without calling. She was an A student until she met this boy, Officer. Jim, Brian’s an hour late getting home from school and I’m worried sick.

Sometimes they get snatched and then you wait for the call from someone talking through a handkerchief, telling you where to bring the cash or from a cop asking you to come downtown and take a look at what they found jammed into a culvert in Redford Township. Sometimes they go into hiding and then you have to work backwards to find out why. Sometimes they just move and forget to leave a forwarding address. Those are the hardest, because people forget a lot more thoroughly than they cover up.

You get a cramp filling out duplicate driver’s license application forms and wear your tongue out licking stamps, you bribe postal clerks to go into the basement and rummage through the obsolete change-of-addresses for information that’s supposed to be free to the public, you ruin your eyes reading old personals on microfilm at the library, you say sir and ma’am to people you wouldn’t wipe your feet on otherwise, because they might remember the name of a moving van parked across from the house they were casing on a certain afternoon. Sometimes people don’t like your questions or the tie you’re wearing and bounce things off your skull, and that might not be so bad except they call you names while they’re doing it. Then the cops call you names because you didn’t run to them with information you didn’t know you had about felonies you weren’t aware took place and shine lights in your eyes and shove tape microphones up your nose and tank you for forty-eight hours on suspicion without a telephone call or a lawyer. They can do that and to hell with what you saw on
Adam 12,
all bets are off when you get sucked up into the big blue machine. All to keep the bloodsuckers off your back and your belly from scraping your spine, or so you answer on those not infrequent occasions when you find yourself asking why you do what you do.

Every morning is your last. You’ll put in one more day and then hang up the shoulder holster, ditch the forms, let your dues lapse in the Snoopers and Sleuths Union and get a real job with a place that has a bowling league and a company picnic and every other Friday a check you can almost raise two-point-five kids on with a wife who thinks she really ought to have a facelift, you make that decision and then the telephone rings or the door opens and the devil enters disguised as an old lady in widow’s weeds with a thousand dollars and a picture of a new missing face and you bite the apple. You’re hooked, you’re an addict. You’ve got the call.

The oven timer made a rude noise and I drank off what was in my glass and went in and ate my dinner standing up at the drainboard. It saved washing dishes and wiping up afterwards. I don’t know why I bothered. It was too late to reserve a table at the Rooster Tail.

When that was done I mixed some more Scotch and water and sat back down in front of the set and dialed Martha Evancek’s number in St. Clair Shores.

“Hello?”

It was the voice of a young woman without a foreign accent. After a pause I asked if I had the right number.

“Yes, that’s correct. Is this Mr. Walker?”

I said it was and asked if she was related to Mrs. Evancek.

“I’m her companion. She’s gone to bed. May I take a message?”

“It can wait till tomorrow,” I said.

“Wait, Mr. Walker. Hello?”

“I’m here.”

“I’m in Mrs. Evancek’s confidence. I know she’s hired you to locate her grandson and I’m familiar with the circumstances surrounding his disappearance. You can talk freely.” The voice was fresh and cool, like an ice-green mint.

“I’m sorry, Miss —?”

“McBride.”

“I’m sorry, Miss McBride, but you’re not in my confidence. No one ever is. I have one or two more questions I’d like to ask Mrs. Evancek. I’ll swing by in the morning if that’s all right.”

The voice got a little cooler. “Any time after nine o’clock would be acceptable.”

I thanked her and cradled the receiver.

There was nothing on television and I sat up for a while smoking and trying to read a paperback mystery I’d picked up in a drugstore once while tailing someone. It was about a private eye back East who wore expensive running shoes with everything and squawked so much about the things he wouldn’t do that you had to wonder what people hired him for in the first place. His partner was a professional killer and if there was a mystery to it at all I couldn’t find it and gave up. To hell with P.I.’s with codes they have to keep hauling out and looking at like pocket watches and to hell with cool fresh voices in women’s mouths. They never match the faces. I put down the book and looked around the room in the light of the one lamp I had burning. It needed dusting, all right. She probably had pinched nostrils and fuzz on her chin.

I went to bed and dreamed I was a Cossack who got his head lopped off bending down to tie his expensive running shoes in the middle of a battle.