A few dry leaves skittered across the road in my headlights, urged by the rising wind, as I drove back across the city. Cold was coming, but I left my window open, letting the air blow in on me. With some vague notion of making up for the missed meal with simple fare at home, I stopped at a supermarket and bought a bag of provisions, though I wasn’t very hungry. I put the bag in the trunk and crossed the river and went out the VFW, my mind finding focus on nothing in particular. I twitched the radio on, then twitched it off again. As I passed Regatta Field, I noticed several vehicles in the field, ringed in a semicircle, facing inward, their headlights aimed in a converging V and illuminating a group of people. That was odd; the carnival crew was still holed up at the Venice as far as I knew. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone at the fairgrounds. Curious, I parked along the street and got out. For a moment, I stood there, uncertain, then I unlocked my trunk and got my .38 out of the hidden compartment by the wheel well. I snapped the holster onto my belt. As I started across the big field, an old plastic bag came whipping along, wrapped around my ankle for a moment, then danced on past. The air had a damp ash smell from the burnt-out haunted house.
When I got to where I could make out details, though no one had
seen me yet, I realized the group consisted of ten or twelve people. Some had their backs to the headlights, and others stood slightly farther away, so I couldn’t make out any faces; they were just shapes and shadows in the night—a shaved head here, a baseball cap there. Carnival people, gathered for an informal meeting?
Then, over the sigh of wind, a voice said, “Since you birds shut down the show, we figured we’d come out and get our own show. Lucky we found you.”
My hackles rose. I edged closer, and that’s when I saw that the two people facing the light were Moses Maxwell and Nicole. Moses was wearing his porkpie hat, and his face was shiny with sweat. The others, whoever they were, had the two surrounded.
“Hey, you’re a pinhead, aren’t you, girl?” the man who had spoken before said. He was a tall, lanky party with a beak that could etch glass.
“There’s no call for that,” Moses said. “No call for you to be here. Let’s just let it alone, shall we, gentlemen? And all go home peaceably.” He said it in his calm way, but I heard a thread of worry in his voice.
“Say what, dude?” the tall man said. “And what would be your role?”
“Maybe he’s the bearded lady. Ain’t you the bearded lady?” said another, a shaved-head, dressed in shorts and a football jersey with the inevitable number 69.
“Quit it, you!” Nicole said. “Go away.”
Hoots of laughter. “Ooohhh … ‘Quit it, you,’” Shaved Head mocked. He gripped her arm and gave her a shake.
“Stop it!” Nicole cried. There was an ice-skim of hysteria on her voice.
I looked around, hoping someone else was nearby to even the numbers a little, but there were only the scattered trailers and the shutdown rides. Something had brought Nicole and Moses here, but I didn’t waste time trying to figure out what it had been. I needed an angle, something more inspired than simply turning up and saying, “Hi, guys.”
Alongside Ray Embry’s trailer, I noticed one of the torches that he used for his juggling stuffed in an open can, and it gave me an idea. One sniff of the wick told me there was still kerosene in it. I hoped it would be enough. Holding the unlit torch, I walked over to the ring of headlights.
At my approach, heads turned. Most of the strangers appeared to be in their twenties, a few slightly older. The tall party looked forty. I stepped just to the edge of the light, and with my free hand I drew my gun. It took a few seconds for the effect to register, then I saw people stiffen.
“Mr. Rasmussen!” cried Nicole.
“What the fu—” began the tall guy.
I held the torch wick down, put the gun barrel next to it, aimed at the ground. If my idea flopped, it was going to be hard to find another entrance line. I squeezed the trigger.
People jumped at the explosion. The snout of flame sparked the torch, which instantly caught fire. The effect was riveting. No one said a word. Hiding my own amazement, I lowered my gun, raised the torch, and walked into the center of the lighted ring.
“You want to play with fire?” I swung the torch in a half circle. In the after-silence of the gunshot, the flames made a suitably dramatic roar. I swung it back again, and people edged away, gawking at me as if I were some madman, or a wraith of vengeance. Even Moses Maxwell and Nicole seemed suddenly not quite sure what to make of me.
“You’re shit-crazy, dude,” the tall one said. He had on a green surgical smock and a pair of baggy canvas pants.
“Stick around and see how crazy. I just pushed nine-one-one.”
Several of them traded worried looks, but the tall guy just stared. “We gonna shit our pants over one guy? I think he’s bluffing.”
I noticed that the torch flame had dwindled slightly and had given up its throaty sound. I shook it a bit, for effect.
“We could fuckin’ take you down right now,” the tall guy said.
I brought the .38 up. My finger was well away from the trigger, but he wouldn’t know that. “Grin big, brother,” I said.
“Come on,” said one of the others, “let’s split.”
The leader had other words for me, but no one seemed ready to back him up. After a few more seconds of standoff, even he must’ve agreed that discretion was the better part of valor. They got into the cars and gunned off across the field, headlights stabbing the dark, dust rising in their wake. I holstered the .38.
“Good to see you, Mr. Rasmussen,” Moses said, using his hat to fan himself. “And that’s a fact.”
I held the torch out to the side, so we could see one another more clearly in its florid light. “Sorry for the cheesy special effects. Are you two okay?”
Nicole was hugging herself, shivering. Emotions were coming and going on her face like the restless flicker and shadow of the torchlight. “They had me really scared. We didn’t hurt them. Why did they do that?”
There was a note of hysteria in her voice, but she seemed to be calming down. Moses put a comforting arm around her. “For some folks it seems to be a labor walking upright all the time. They want to get down on all fours sometimes and howl. Tomorrow, they’ll be sobered up and maybe feel ashamed. They ought to, anyway.” He sent me a look. “You suppose they the ones burnt up the trailer?”
I said they could be, though something told me they had been a ragtag group. I could imagine them parked in a local juice mill, corking up a head of steam, until finally someone mentioned the carnies, and they’d tumbled out into cars and come looking for mischief. I snuffed the torch and set it back in the can where I’d found it, although the kerosene smell stayed on me like a taint.
“That true about you calling the police?” Moses asked.
“A bluff. Though I doubt any of that crew is going to report it.”
“Not till they change their shorts, leastways.” Moses chuckled. “Cats were some spooked for a while there.”
“They weren’t the only ones,” Nicole said.
I didn’t doubt that they’d be back; probably not tonight, and maybe not the same ones, but when people did come again it would be with bigger numbers and more determination. I detected a crusade growing in the city, a need to repulse the invaders, fanned by lamebrain candidates trolling for votes and at least one opinion columnist willing to exploit the issue. “What are you two doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be at the hotel?”
“We came with Pop,” Nicole said.
That surprised me. “He’s here?”
“He got let out of the hospital earlier. He insisted on comin’ over here.”
As we approached Sonders’s darkened motor home, through the little
porthole window I could see that the computer monitor was alight inside, like an eye that refused to close. “What’s all the ruckus?” Pop demanded when we went in. “Was that a gunshot?”
“Nothing to worry about,” I told him.
“Jesus,” he groaned. He was sunk in the patched vinyl recliner. In the curved rim of light cast by the computer screen, I made out some little scraps of toilet paper on his cheeks and chin, where he’d plastered over a bad shaving job.
“What you doin’ here practically in the dark?” Moses Maxwell said. He switched on a lamp, and I saw Pop’s dismal expression, his eyes sunken and lusterless. With a weak gesture he waved us into chairs. Nicole retreated to the little corner desk, with the computer, and sat. I’d been in the motor home only a couple of times before, but something was different. I couldn’t put a finger on what it was. “How you doing, Rasmussen?” Pop asked.
“I’m glad you’re out of bed. How do you feel?”
“About like somebody put me on the Rocket Whip and spun me around a thousand turns. I feel like crap,” he said morosely.
I glanced at the others for elaboration but got none. The mood in there was as cheery as the Red Sox dugout after dropping a doubleheader to the Yankees, and there were a lot of evasive looks racketing around the walls. The walls—that’s what was different. They were bare. A cardboard carton was pushed into one corner, with the framed citations and awards heaped inside. I nodded at it. “No pawnshop will give you much for those,” I said, pointing at the carton. “There’s a glut on keys to cities. I just picked up Bangor and Boise for peanuts.”
Moses Maxwell offered his flask. I waved it away.
“What brought you, Mr. Rasmussen?” he asked politely. “Cold night to be out just cruising, though don’t get me wrong, I was some happy to see you.”
I looked from him to Nicole to Sonders, wondering what I was missing. And then something dawned. Squisher had told me. “Hackett visited you at the hospital this afternoon.”
Sonders frowned. “What the hell’s that to you?” His voice was scratchy, but it had a note of its former ferocity, and I was beginning to fathom the gloom in the trailer.
“It’s done?”
“Already sent word to my accountant to get the paper together. Right, Nicole? You sent them the e-mail?”
“It’s gone out, Pop.”
He nodded. “Rag Tyme wants to take possession tomorrow. Any objections?”
I didn’t have words for my sudden swarm of thoughts, but my face must’ve conveyed them. “I needed the reality,” Sonders said. “World don’t stop spinnin’ just ’cause some old duffer’s stomach goes south. Right now I’m feeling the way I ought to be feeling. Lucky, maybe. Who knows?”
“Windy this evenin’,” Moses said, tipping his head to listen as a gust whined in the jalousie panes. “The hawk is talkin’ out there. Better night for a fellow to be sitting by his home fire with his squeeze.” He held out the flask again. I ignored it.
“Shoot, Moses,” said Sonders. “You’re being too damned subtle with your St. Bernard routine. Rasmussen here’s something of an idealist. You got to club him over his fool head. If I were you,” he went on, meaning me, “I’d see this as a lucky thing, too. A way out. This ain’t the fight you signed on for. You’ve got cops breathing heat on you. You’ve got hoodlums—and a guy in jail who won’t give you the time of day. Hell, your lawyer friend evidently got wise.”
I frowned a questioning look at the others, then at Pop. “Fred Meecham?”
“Where the hell you been? Don’t you two share scuttlebutt? He quit.”
“Is that true, Pop?” Nicole thrust forward, making the chair creak. “I didn’t know that.”
“I only told Moses. Meecham called me just a short while ago, said he was sorry but he had to withdraw.”
I was still trying to muster words. Nicole got to them first. “You mean he isn’t Troy’s lawyer anymore?”
“Professional reasons is how he explained it. I didn’t even ask. I heard the first part plain enough.” He blew a slow, disheartened breath. “He said he wouldn’t charge me, and he’d find someone else to recommend.”
“Did you tell him about Rag Tyme?” I said, finding my tongue.
“I didn’t say anything.”
I asked to use his phone. I wasn’t surprised that Fred Meecham was still in his office; an honest lawyer works hard for his money. He knew from my voice that I’d heard. “Alex, I tried to reach you earlier. I’m just about to go home. Look—” He cleared his throat. “It’s complicated. I’ll try to explain in the morning, first thing.”
“What is it, Fred?”
“I just can’t do it. I had to let the case go.”
“Does it concern Rag Tyme?”
“Huh? What’s that?” His mystification was genuine.
“Is it what’s going on in the city right now?”
“It’s many things. Too many. They’re churning around in my head right now. That’s why I want to take time when I explain it to you. I’ll recommend other representation. Pepper’s case will go to a jury, and who knows? I don’t.” I heard him sigh. “Jurors think they come to weigh guilt or innocence, to determine truth, but mostly they’re wrestling with their own demons of crime and punishment, outrage and righteousness. And there seem to be plenty of both right now.” I wondered if Fred had been drinking, though I’d never known him to, not at the office. “Somebody left a note on my car,” he said, “implying I was no different than a killer.”
“You can’t let that get to you,” I said.
“No … I know. That isn’t the reason.” But he vented a long breath, and I heard exhaustion in it. “I’ll speak with you tomorrow, Alex. I’ve got to get home to my family.”
Sure, I understood. I told him I’d see him in the morning. Pop was watching me as I put the phone down, his chin quirked up so that in the lamplight I could see a piece of tissue on his chin, like a tiny white flag of surrender. He roused himself. “Anyway, you should get out, too. The good news is you have friends here in town.”
Did I? I was no longer sure. The wind pulsed against the motor home, making it tremble like a subway car moving through a tunnel. “You ought to get over to the hotel,” I said. “Those jokers could come back. I don’t think they will tonight, but just in case.”
He ignored it. “Remember you one time asked me where I come from, and I rattled off a list of places? It’s true for these folks, too. Moses,
Nicole, the rest. Most of us ain’t from any one hometown, a place you know folks and folks know you and your birth certificate’s on file in the town hall. You’re from here. That means something. You’ve got history. You can pick up that phone and call folks and they know you. Your high school math teacher recognizes you in the supermarket.”
“Make that truant officer,” I said, “but I get your point.”
“Roots is what I’m talking. My roots I can pull up with one hand and shove in a five-dollar suitcase. No, you’re well off, and you know it. Or if you don’t, you ought to. Christ, you’d do better to step down there in the shooting gallery with a bull’s-eye target on your head than to stand in the way of the police and public opinion and all the rest. Am I right, Moses?”
“Amen,” the old jazzman agreed. “There ain’t much difference that I can see.”
“You’d be best off keeping warm in your own bed on a cold night,” Pop insisted.
“While you lie in a smutty hotel room, trying to get to sleep with the water pipes coughing? What’d you do, find religion in the ICU?”
“Too soon old, too late smart. It’s a bitch, but at least I’m ahead of my dad. He never did wise up before they rolled him away in a shroud.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“That was my line,” he snapped. “You set me straight. Deal with facts, you said. Situations. Well, I am. The situation is this—I can’t pay my bills, and the fact is I got to get out from under. So the show is going to the syndicate. Contract says so. I signed it myself.” A dab of tissue had come off of his chin and a shaving cut was beginning to bleed, but he paid it no attention. “I’m meeting with Hackett tomorrow at noon to sign the papers.”
“Can’t you hold off?”
“For what? They’ll call for an audit. Some bean counter will sieve every scrap of paper I’ve got, and you can bet your bottom dollar he’ll find something.”
“You’re clean, though. You said your accountant is honest.”
“Honest schmonest. There’s always something to find. Even if it ends up being nothing. It’s the auditor’s job. Hell, if he doesn’t find something, the G’s take his abacus away.”
“Chew on this, then. You sell the show to Rag Tyme, and that’s the end of it.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I’m done.”
“Literally. Your legacy is scrap iron.” I told him about the cutting torches and the equipment auction.
His eyes sparked momentarily with outrage, but there was no place for it to go. “It’s their call,” he said dejectedly. “We’ll be hauling stakes after that. Time to move on. I’m out of choices.” He glanced at the bare walls, as if confirming it. “And I don’t want no date with that sicko wrestler. Selling will give me some cash. I’ll take care of people as I can.”
“And Troy Pepper?”
“It ain’t about him now. He doesn’t have sense enough to put up a fight.”
“You do, though. Or did.”
“I’m tired out, I tell you. I’ve got a stomach that could blow for good any time.”
“Pop—” Nicole cried.
“Not according to your nurse,” I said. “She thinks you’ll outlive Mount Rushmore.”
“Is it her stomach? Anyway, we talked it over and we’re in agreement, each and all. Don’t none of us like it, of course, but there’s nothing to fight anymore. Deals are deals.” I glanced at the other two, who didn’t meet my gaze. “Plus there is one other thing that decided me.”
I waited.
“Lying there in that bed, all those tubes crawling into me and the little screens going beep-beep, I had time to think. Didn’t want to necessarily, but there it was.” He sighed. “Now I figure he may have done it.”
“Pepper?”
“Hell, yes, Pepper. Who do you think I’m talking about?”
“Pop’s right, Mr. Rasmussen,” Moses said quietly.
I turned to him, his lean dark face half shadowed by the lamplight, a little arc of dusty freckles on one cheek. “You think he did it, too?”
“I don’t know about that. I was referring to cuttin’ losses. Like those old days touring with the band and not being able to stay at some hotels, or eat at restaurants on account of being the wrong shade. Sure, it made a person angry, but you decided when there wasn’t no point fightin’ it and
you went along, because goin’ along kept the world spinning at thirty-three and a third, and that’s what mattered most. You got to sit up on a bandstand and play, and to eat, and have some clear space all your own between your ears. In that regard, I guess, I felt like a mostly free man.”
“Do I hear the old Lackawanna?” I asked.
For a moment I thought I observed anger glitter in the jazzman’s eyes, like sparks from night fire, and I thought, Go for it, man. Let’s put it all out where we can get at it and learn what’s really going down—but evidently I was wrong. Maxwell pinched at the little soul patch under his lower lip. His voice, when he spoke, was calm. “Nossir, just sayin’ you already done what you could, and now maybe you want to let it be.”
“So you’re free to go, too,” Pop said. “While you still got a place in this town.”
Nicole had been sitting in the corner through most of this, staring at her knitted fingers in her lap. “What about you?” I asked her.
“Me?” She flicked her glance away, but her face was as transparent as ever. I saw confusion and worry. Still, she managed a woeful smile. “I don’t do so good with these kind of things. Pop and Mr. Maxwell are most likely right.”
Pop’s shrug said, You see?
Why was I so stubborn as to be arguing with people who had my own best interests at heart? Hadn’t Phoebe been for me, too? And even St. Onge? And Meecham would’ve advised the same. “What’ll you do?” I asked the old man.
“I’ll celebrate is what. I’ll pay off creditors. I’ll call in a few favors I still got and try to land jobs for some of my people. I’ll go on relief, if there’s any left after these robbers in Washington give it all away in blue-blood welfare. And there’s you. Four days’ work at your rate per day sound right?”
“You don’t owe me.”
“The hell I don’t. You earned it.”
“Save it for—” I’d been about to say for Pepper’s defense fund, but I remembered he didn’t have a defense anymore. I shut up. I had worked for them, and my time was worth something. “You have my address.” I got up and took the two paces to the door.
“‘Rasmussen,’ with one s and then two,” Sonders called after me. “I’ll mail it.”
The wind yanked the door wide when I turned the knob, and I nearly lost it; then I went down the steps.
“Good night, Mr. Rasmussen,” Nicole said quietly from the doorway. “Thank you for all your help.” She meant it, too; poor sweet simple girl. She actually thought I’d helped the situation somehow. As I closed the door I wished I’d had the presence of mind to ask her to explain it to me.
I stood there on the matted grass, my mind full of incoherent thoughts. An eddy of night wind twirled dead leaves past. Somewhere a dog bark-barked. When I got into my car, I slammed the door. I gunned the motor a few times. Someplace I found maturity enough not to lay down smoking tracks of Goodyear. I jerked into the flow of traffic on Pawtucket Boulevard, three lanes of unimportant little people, pushing their big gas-guzzlers hard to get nowhere and do nothing.
Motion helped. Definitely. If Warren Sonders and Co. wanted piano for blues and brandy, what was that to me? They were adults; they could make their own damn decisions. And in one regard they were absolutely right. My intentions had been good; that’s what mattered. If my judgment was faulty, Pop had straightened me out. It wasn’t my fight. Where the hell did I ever get the idea that it was? I was strictly a day-jobber. A private shadow would be a fool to get between the cops and the courts and wannabe gangsters over a man who was most likely guilty—especially when said shadow didn’t even have a client. He was fool enough to have practically insisted on turning down the fair wage he had coming. He’d be a bigger fool to turn down a good woman who was waiting. Moses had it right: a night to sit with a lover by a cozy fire, tally the costs tomorrow. All at once, I felt a strong desire for Phoebe. I drove off, praising myself for finally coming to my senses, lauding my good luck …
Are you afraid? Phoebe had asked me.
I stopped for the red light at the intersection before the Rourke Bridge and waited for a green arrow. On the skyline, a moon was just beginning to shine, fat and full and yellow as—the corn moon! We’d forgotten
all about it. Well, there it was. A left turn and I’d be crossing the river, heading for Phoebe’s house, ten minutes away, to announce my wise decision, and to cash the one chip I still seemed to hold. Her arms would be warm, the wine chilled. We’d raise a glass to good sense and vive la différence, and then a second to auld lang syne, and a final giddy glass to something more sweetly carnal. It was our time. The traffic signal glowed ruby red and teetered in the wind. Green-eyed Phoebe was going to be glad to see me, and vice versa.
Across the river, a train hooted, a long, lonely sound in the night, and for some reason I thought of Pepper, sitting in his dark cell, in his solitude. Was he waiting for something from me? I thought of him last Sunday evening when he’d handed me the big wooden hammer and murmured, “Good luck,” like somehow I’d been given the one chance, a long shot to ring the bell, but I got stuck in Cake Eater land, and I’d fallen away, clunk. I sat there. The train hooted again, farther-away-sounding now. Bound south for Boston? North to Nashua? If the signal told the answer, I couldn’t translate it.
Damn.
I hammered the steering wheel with the heel of my hand.
Double damn.
A horn beeped behind me. I looked up and the arrow was green. I pulled over to the right and waved on the VW bug behind me, which blew a testy little blat that didn’t need translation. When the road was clear, I hung a U-turn and started back.
The cell phone chirped.