The Throat (77 page)

"Benjamin
Grady," Hubbel said. "There's one for your book. Big, handsome kid.
Took him right after high school. I wrote to him two or three times,
but the letters never got through. I wrote a lot of my boys."

"You knew
where he had been assigned?"

He peered up
at me. "Took a special interest. Grady came back in 'sixty-two, but he
didn't stay long. Went to college in New Jersey and married some Jewish
girl, his dad told me. See?" He moved his finger across the line, where
he had written NJ.

The finger
traveled down the column again. "Here's a boy for you. Todd Lemon. Used
to work at Bud's Service Station here in town, cutest little guy you
ever saw in your life. Spunky. I can still remember him at the
physical—when the doc asked him about drugs, he said, 'My body is my
temple, sir,' and all the other fellows standing in line gave a big
laugh of appreciation."

"You went to
the physicals?"

"That was how
I met the boys who enlisted," he said, as if that should have been
obvious. "Every day of the physicals, I turned over the business to my
clerks and went down there. Can't tell you what a thrill it was, seeing
all those wonderful boys lined up—God, I was proud of all of them."

"Is there a
separate list for the volunteers?"

My question
made him indignant. "What kind of record-keeper would I be if there
weren't? That's a separate category, after all."

I asked to
see that list.

"Well, you're
missing out on some fine, upstanding boys, but…" He turned over another
page. Under the heading enlisted was a column of about twenty-five
names. "If you'd let me show you 1967 or 1968, you'd have a lot more to
choose from."

I scanned
down the list, and my heart stopped about two-thirds of the way down,
when I came to Franklin Bachelor. "I think I've heard of one of these
people," I said.

"Bobby
Arthur? You'd know him, of course. Great golfer —turned pro for a
couple of years after the war."

"I was
thinking of this one." I pointed at Bachelor's name.

He bent over
to peer at the name, and then he brightened. "That boy, oh, yes. Very,
very special. He got into Special Forces, had a wonderful career. One
of our heroes." He nearly beamed at me. "What a boy. There was some
kind of story there, I always thought."

He would have
told me even if I hadn't asked.

"I didn't
know him—I didn't know most of my boys, of course, but I never even
heard of a family named Bachelor living in Tangent. By God, I believe I
even checked the telephone book when I got to my place that evening,
and damned if there were no Bachelors listed. I had a feeling this was
one of those lads who signs up under another name. I didn't say
anything, though —I let the boy go through. I knew what he was doing."

"What was he
doing?"

Hubbel
lowered his voice. "That boy was
escaping
."
He looked up at me and
nodded. He looked more like an owl than ever.

"Escaping?" I
wondered if Hubbel had managed to guess that Fee had been avoiding
arrest. He wouldn't have even begun to imagine the sorts of crimes Fee
had committed: all of his "boys" had been as sinless as his own ideas
of himself.

"That boy had
been mistreated. I saw it right away—little round scars on his chest.
Sort of thing that makes you sick inside. Idea that his own mother or
father would do a thing like that to a handsome little lad."

"They scarred
him?" I asked.

He almost
whispered. "Burned him. With cigarettes. Until they left scars." Hubbel
shook his spotted head, staring down at the page. His hands were spread
out over the names, as if to conceal them. Maybe he just liked touching
them. "Doc asked him about the scars, and the boy said he ran into bob
wire. I knew—I could see. Bob wire doesn't leave scars like that.
Small, like dimes. Shiny. I knew what happened to that boy."

"You have a
wonderful memory," I said.

"I go over
these journals pretty often, being here by myself." His face hardened.
"Now I got so feeble, I can't get the books down so easy anymore, need
a little help sometimes."

He moved his
hands and stared down at the pages. "You probably want to copy down
some of my boys' names."

I let him
read out half a dozen names from the enlisted men and the draftees
while I copied them into my notebook. They were all still living in
Tangent, he said, and I'd have no trouble finding them in the telephone
book.

"Do you think
you'd still be able to identify Franklin Bachelor from a photograph?" I
asked.

"Maybe. You
got one?"

I opened my
briefcase and took out the manila envelope. Tom had cut off the
caption. I put it on top of the list of names, and Hubbel bent over so
that his nose was only an inch away from it. He moved his head back and
forth over the picture as if he were smelling it. "Policeman," he said.
"He went into law enforcement?"

"Yes," I said.

"I'm going to
write that in my book."

I watched the
top of the spotted head drift back and forth over the photograph.
Sparse gray hairs grew up out of his mottled scalp.

"Well, I
believe you're right," he said. "It sure could be that boy I saw at the
induction center." He blinked up at me. "Turned out fine, didn't he?"

"Which one is
he?"

"You're not
going to trick
me
," he said,
and planted the tip of his right index
finger on top of Paul Fontaine's face. "There he is, right there,
that's the boy. Yep. Franklin Bachelor. Or whatever his real name was."

I packed the
photograph away in my briefcase and told him how helpful he had been.

"Would you do
me a favor before you leave?"

"Of course,"
I said.

"Fetch my
journals for 1967 and 1968, will you? I'd like to remember some more of
my boys."

I pulled the
books from the shelf and piled them on his desk. He spread his hands
out on top of them. "Tell you what, you honk the horn of that flashy
car when you want me to open the gate. I'll push the button for you."

When I let
myself out onto the porch, he was pushing his beaky nose down a long
column of names.

I still had
two hours before the flight back to Millhaven, and Tangent was only two
miles down the highway past the airport. I drove until I came to
streets lined with handsome houses set far back on wide lawns. After a
while, the quiet streets led into a part of town with four-story office
buildings and old-fashioned department stores.

I parked on a
square with a fountain and walked around the square until I found a
diner. The waitress at the counter gave me a cup of coffee and the
telephone book. I took the book to the pay telephone near the kitchen
and called Judy Leatherwood.

The same
quavery voice I had heard at Tom's house said hello.

I couldn't
remember the name of the insurance company Tom had invented. "Mrs.
Leatherwood, do you remember getting a call from the Millhaven branch
of our insurance company a few nights ago?"

"Oh, yes, I
do," she said. "Mr. Bell? I remember speaking to him. This is about my
brother-in-law's insurance?"

"I'd like to
come out to speak to you about the matter," I said.

"Well, I
don't know. Have you located my nephew?"

"He may have
changed his name," I said.

For about ten
seconds, she said nothing. "I just don't feel right about all this.
I've been worried ever since I talked to Mr. Bell." Another long pause.
"Did you give me your name?"

"Mister
Underhill," I said.

"I think I
shouldn't have said those things to Mr. Bell. I don't really know what
that boy did—I don't feel right about it. Not at all."

"I understand
that," I said. "It might help both of us if we could have a talk this
afternoon."

"My son said
he never heard of any insurance company doing things that way."

"We're a
small family firm," I said. "Some of our provisions are unique to us."

"What was the
name of your company again, Mr. Underhill?"

Then,
blessedly, it came to me. "Mid-States Insurance."

"I just don't
know."

"It'll only
take a minute or two—I have to get on a flight back to Millhaven."

"You came all
this way just to see me? I guess it would be okay."

I said I'd be
there soon, hung up, and showed her address to the waitress. The
directions she gave took me back the way I had come.

When I drove
up to the nursing home, I realized that I had mistaken it for a grade
school when I had driven past it on the way into town. It was a long
low building of cream-colored brick with big windows on either side of
a curved entrance. I parked in front of a sign that read
FAIRHOME
CENTER FOR THE AGED
and walked toward a concrete apron beneath
a wide red marquee. An electronic door whooshed open and let out a wave
of cool air.

A woman who
looked like Betty Crocker smiled when I came up to a white waist-high
counter and asked if she could help me. I said that I wanted to see
Mrs. Leatherwood.

"It'll be
nice for Judy to have a visitor," she said. "Are you family?"

"No, I'm a
friend," I said. "I was just speaking to her on the phone."

"Judy is in
the Blue Wing, down the hall and through the big doors. Room six, on
your right. I can get an aide to show you the way."

I said that I
could find it by myself, and went down the hall and pushed open a
bright blue door. Two uniformed nurses stood at a recessed station, and
one of them came toward me. "Are you looking for one of the residents?"

"Judy
Leatherwood," I said.

She smiled,
said, "Oh, yes," and took me past the nurses' station to an open door
and a room with a hospital bed and a bulletin board crowded with
pictures of a young couple and two blond little boys. An old woman in a
print dress sat on a wooden chair in front of a desk below the bright
window at the end of the room. The light behind her head darkened her
face. An aluminum walker stood beside her legs. "Judy, you have a
visitor," the nurse said.

Her white
hair gleamed in the light from the window. "Mister Underhill?"

"It's nice to
meet you," I said, and came toward her. She lifted her face, showing me
the thick, milky glaze over both of her eyes.

"I don't like
this business," she said. "I don't want to be rewarded for my nephew's
misfortune. If the boy is in trouble, won't he need that money himself?"

"That may not
be an issue," I said. "May I sit down for a minute?"

She kept her
face pointed toward the door. Her hands twisted in her lap. "I suppose."

Before I sat
down, she asked, "Do you know where my nephew is? I'd like to know
that."

"I want to
ask you a question," I said.

She turned
briefly to me and then back to the door. "I don't know what I should
say."

"When your
nephew lived with you, did you notice any scars on his body? Small,
circular scars?"

Her hand flew
to her mouth. "Is this important?"

"It is," I
said. "I understand that this must be difficult for you."

She lowered
her hand and shook her head. "Fee had scars on his chest. He never said
how he got them."

"But you
thought you knew."

"Mister
Underhill, if you're telling me the truth about any of this rigamarole,
please tell me where he is."

"Your nephew
was a major in the Green Berets, and he was a hero," I said. "He was
killed leading a team on a special mission into the DMZ in 1972."

"Oh,
heavens." She said it twice more. Then she started to cry, softly,
without moving in any way. I took a tissue from the box on her dresser
and put it into her hands, and she dabbed her eyes.

"So there
won't be any trouble about the money," I said.

I make an
extravagant amount of money from writing, not as much as Sidney Sheldon
or Tom Clancy but a lot anyhow, a matter I talk about only with my
agent and my accountant. I have no family, and there's no one to spend
it on except myself. I did what I had decided to do on the airplane if
I learned conclusively that Fee Bandolier had grown up to be Franklin
Bachelor, took my checkbook out of my briefcase, and wrote her a check
for five thousand dollars.

"I'll give
you a personal check right now," I said. "It's a little irregular, but
there's no need to make you wait for our accounting office to process
the papers, and I can get reimbursement from Mr. Bell."

"Oh, this is
wonderful," she said. "I never dreamed—you know, what makes me so happy
is that Fee—"

"I'm happy
for you." I put the check in her hands. She clenched it into the tissue
and dabbed her eyes again.

"Judy?" A man
in a tight, shiny suit bustled into the room. "I'm sorry I couldn't get
here right away, but I was on the phone. Are you all right?"

Before she
could answer, he whirled toward me. "Bill Baxter. I run the business
office here. Who are you, and what are you doing?"

I stood up
and told him my name. "If Mrs. Leatherwood spoke to you about our
earlier conversation—"

"You bet she
did, and I want you out of here right now. We're going to my office,
and I'm calling the police."

"Mr. Baxter,
this man—"

"This man is
a fraud," Baxter said. He grabbed my arm.

"I came here
to give Mrs. Leatherwood a check," I said. "It represents the death
benefit on a small insurance policy."

"He gave me a
check, he did," Judy Leatherwood said. She extricated it from the
tissue and flapped it at Baxter.

He snatched
the check away from her, looked at me, back at the check, and then at
me again. "This is a personal check."

"I didn't see
any reason to make Mrs. Leatherwood wait two or three months for our
office to issue the payment," I said, and repeated my statement about
reimbursement.