“Been up this way before?” said Detective Gagnon.
“No,” Ivy said.
They drove down Main Street in an unmarked car, went past a video place with dusty windows, a going-out-of-business furniture store, and some boarded-up shops. “Nothing too fancy,” said Gagnon, watching her from the corner of his eye. “But a nice town.”
“Is there much crime?” Ivy said.
“What you’d expect,” said Gagnon. “Our main problem is lack of opportunities when the kids get out of high school.”
“I’d like to see the high school,” Ivy said.
“We can swing by,” Gagnon said. “Our other problem is you throw a casino into a place like this, it’s kind of…” He searched for a word.
“Destabilizing?” Ivy said.
He glanced at her. “Yeah. Exactly.”
Gagnon turned off Main, away from the river, and climbed a long hill. Fields opened up on the right, and then came goalposts and a low brick building with peeling trim. Gagnon slowed down. WELCOME TO WEST RAQUETTE HIGH, read one of those marquee-on-wheels signs out front. Where the Future Happens it added at the bottom, although the e had fallen off future. A school-bus driver in the parking lot lay slumped over his steering wheel.
“I understand you played on the team, too,” Ivy said.
“Leon tell you that?”
Mistake: she’d actually inferred it from Harrow’s “The Cop Who Busted Me” story, didn’t even know it was true. Ivy was still thinking how to handle this, when Gagnon continued. “His dad was a big fan, came to all the games. Harrow and Carter were sophomores my senior year. We played together that one season.”
“What position were you?” Ivy said.
“Know something about football?” said Gagnon.
“I was a cheerleader in high school.”
“I don’t believe it,” Gagnon said.
“Give me a B,” said Ivy.
“B?”
“For Brookfield,” Ivy said. “The rampaging Rough Riders of Brookfield High.”
“Any good?” said Gagnon.
“At science fair,” Ivy said. And soccer: the truth was she’d dropped cheerleading to concentrate on playing goal after one year.
Gagnon smiled. “We went to the districts once or twice. I was the quarterback.”
“Did Harrow and Carter get much playing time?” Ivy said.
Gagnon’s eyebrows rose; she did know some football. His posture changed slightly, unstiffening. “Yeah, they got playing time. Carter was probably a potential D-one college player. And Harrow was fast—played wide receiver and ran back kicks.”
“So you must have thrown passes to him.”
“Sure. Hit him for a fifty-yard touchdown on Thanksgiving Day.”
“What was he like?”
“As a high-school sophomore?” Gagnon thought for a moment or two. “Quiet.”
He made another turn. The houses got farther apart and more rundown. A chicken flapped furiously in someone’s yard, maybe still not convinced it couldn’t take off. Then came a street sign: RANSOM ROAD. Ivy felt a strange little thrill, kind of like when in Paris her junior year she’d gone to the Louvre and seen the Mona Lisa—it was real. But Gagnon went right on by Ransom Road, kept going for two or three miles, then took a nameless dirt track into the woods. He rounded a bend, drove up a slope, and parked in front of a small house with trees closing in around it and a fading For Sale sign outside.
“This is it?” Ivy said. She’d expected a trailer, and at the bottom of a hill.
“Been empty for a year or so,” said Gagnon. “Want a look inside?”
“Sure,” Ivy said.
They got out of the car, walked up to the house. Gagnon unlocked the door.
“Is that some kind of master key?” Ivy said.
Gagnon pointed to the sign: GAGNON REALTY. “One of my mom’s listings.”
He led Ivy into an empty rectangular living room. It had a bare wooden floor, a mound of ashes in the fireplace, and yellow-and-red floral wallpaper that made you want to get out of there fast.
“It was all carpet at that time,” Gagnon said. “Beige, I think. He was vacuuming, had his back to the door, didn’t hear me come in.”
“How long after the robbery was this?” Ivy said.
“Half an hour, forty-five minutes,” said Gagnon. Going bad at warp speed. “As soon as Mandrell’s tip went out, we headed here.”
“Isn’t it a little strange,” Ivy said, “vacuuming at a time like that?”
“Probably getting rid of evidence before he took off,” Gagnon said.
“And Betty Ann was already gone with the money?”
“Yup.”
“He told you that?” Ivy said.
“Not in so many words,” Gagnon said. “But it was obvious—no money, no Betty Ann.”
Ferdie asks the big question, the one about where the money is. I can only laugh.
“Did he resist?” Ivy said.
“Not much,” Gagnon said.
Then Ferdie’s back in the picture, a little different with missing teeth. Gagnon looked strong, but nothing like Morales, and Ivy had seen what Harrow did to him.
Ivy walked through a low arch into the kitchen. She tried a tap at the sink; no water came out. “Why didn’t they go together?”
“Smarter to travel separately,” Gagnon said, “meet up at some prearranged spot.”
Ivy opened a door, gazed down a flight of plywood stairs, covered in dust. One of those simple robberies gone wrong, a movie staple, but there was so much about it she didn’t understand.
“What do you think the original plan was?” she said.
“Don’t have to speculate,” Gagnon said. “Mandrell gave it all up, part of his deal.”
“And?”
“In Mandrell’s version, the whole idea was Harrow’s. We didn’t give that much credence—Mandrell was smarter than the other three put together. After the robbery they were all supposed to meet at the boat ramp, Betty Ann included. The fact that she didn’t show is how Mandrell knew Harrow was double-crossing him and not just improvising after Jerry Redfeather made his play.”
“Meaning Harrow had it in mind the whole time?” Ivy said.
“You got it.”
Ivy flicked the switch for the basement lights. Nothing happened. “If that’s true,” she said, “why was everyone so sure Mandrell was the smart one?”
Gagnon smiled. His front teeth: yes, a little too white and undifferentiated in shape to be real. “Good point,” he said. Then he made a better one. “But Harrow’s the one doing time.”
“And Mandrell’s in the witness protection program?” Ivy said.
“Part of his deal.”
“What was he getting protected from?”
“Harrow, of course.”
“But he’s locked up.”
“No reason you’d know this, being a civilian, but guys reach out from prison all the time,” Gagnon said. “And Betty Ann’s out there somewhere.”
“Is she dangerous, too?” Ivy said.
“The kind of money she got away with?” Gagnon said. “Hires as much danger as you need.”
“Leon says you keep an eye on her sister.”
“Claudette,” Gagnon said. “A year or two older. They were close.”
“I’d like to talk to her.”
“I can set that up.”
Ivy bent down for a better angle on the basement. Faint light penetrated a high, dusty window, illuminating a low stack of cement blocks on the dirt floor. “I’d like to talk to Mandrell, too,” she said.
Gagnon blinked. “He’s in WP.”
“But does that mean I couldn’t talk to him?” Ivy said. “Even just on the phone?”
“I don’t know,” Gagnon said.
“Who would?” said Ivy.
Gagnon looked at her. “A mystery novel, based on the case?” he said. “That’s what we’re talking about here?”
“Something like that.”
“I’ll make a few calls,” Gagnon said.
Gagnon arranged for her to meet Claudette Price at six. That left Ivy a couple hours to kill. She drove around West Raquette, finally understanding that most of what she saw was rural poverty, or something close. The football team was out practicing. On her third or fourth pass by the high school, Ivy stopped to watch.
The players wore orange game pants, white practice jerseys, orange helmets. Offense against the defense, with only a handful of reserves. They ran the same play over and over, one of those off-tackle plays that was just plain boring to watch. It started to drizzle. The boys got muddy, color fading all around, bright orange turning brown. After a while, the coach—a bent old guy—blew his whistle. The team headed back toward the school, which meant crossing the parking lot, cleats clacking on the pavement. The coach, mesh bag of footballs over his shoulder, came last. Ivy got out of the Saab.
“Coach?” she said. “A quick word?”
The coach squinted at her. He had wild white eyebrows and a nose that had been broken more than once.
“Do I know you?” he said.
“Ivy Seidel,” Ivy said. “Have you been the coach here long?”
“Thirty-nine years,” he said. “Does that count for long?”
Ivy ran through her story—book, research, robbery; it came out in a jumble that invited the answer no.
“You want to talk about Vance Harrow?” the coach said. “C’mon in out of the rain.”
The coach had an office next to the locker room. Sounds of the boys shouting, laughing and crashing around came through the walls. The coach didn’t seem to hear.
“Harrow was a pretty good player,” he said. “But not in Simeon Carter’s class. Carter was the best player ever come through here. Besides which he had a mean streak wide like so.” The coach spread his hands. “Carter, I’m talking about. Could have actually ended up making some dough out of this dumb game.”
“But?” said Ivy.
“He was a bad kid.”
“And Harrow?” Ivy said. “Was he a bad kid, too?”
“Nope.” The coach gave her a quick glare, then looked away. His voice, harsh and reedy, softened a little. “Growing up, town like this, you need some breaks.”
“Did things go wrong after high school?” Ivy said.
“Went bad long before high school,” said the coach. “Vance had the cards stacked up against him pretty good.”
“Are you talking about his home life?”
The coach nodded. “ ’Cept it wasn’t even his home.”
“What do you mean?”
“Kid lost his parents when he was eight or nine,” the coach said. “Had to move in with some cousins or whatever they were. Pure trash.”
“How did he lose his parents?”
“Killed in a wreck.”
“On Ransom Road?” Ivy said.
“Ransom Road?” said the coach, voice back to normal. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“I must be mixed up.”
“Must be,” said the coach. “This wreck was up in Canada. They got caught in one of them ice storms.”
Pieces of Harrow’s story began rearranging themselves: Ice storm, but not on Ransom Road; a house, not a trailer; at the top of a hill, not the bottom. A quote from Picasso that Professor Smallian wrote on the board at the start of every semester popped up in Ivy’s mind, a quote she’d memorized word for word:
Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds.
“Which,” the coach went on, “was how Vance ended up living with the Lusks.”
“The Lusks?” Ivy said. “Marv Lusk’s family?”
“Trash,” said the coach. “Pure and simple.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Trust me,” said the coach. “A wonder he got out of there in one piece.”
“Just a brief one,” Ivy said.
“You’re a writer—use your imagination,” said the coach. “But what I can do is show you some tape.”
“Tape?”
“Of Vance back then.” The coach went to a shelf, plucked out a cassette tape, stuck it in a VCR. “We got a budget of nothin’ up here, so excuse the quality.” He fast-forwarded. “This is Thanksgiving, kind of a famous play hereabouts.” He slowed the tape to normal speed: the ball at midfield, snowflakes blowing through the air. A team in purple and green waited at the line of scrimmage. West Raquette, orange top to bottom, trotted out of the huddle. The center—a huge kid—dug in over the ball.
“Carter,” said the coach.
The quarterback came up under center. “Ferdie Gagnon, be chief of police here one day soon,” the coach said, “but then he was just one more in a long line of mediocre quarterbacks come to curse me. And flanked out wide—that’s Harrow.”
“Number ninety-nine?”
“Yup,” said the coach. “Thirty-one seconds left, down by five.”
Carter snapped the ball to Gagnon, who backpedaled into the pocket. “Play’s called goat forty-three slant,” said the coach. His face got a little flushed: a dumb game but he still loved it.
Ninety-nine ran a diagonal pattern about ten yards downfield. Gagnon lofted a wobbly pass, much too high, but ninety-nine leaped up and grabbed it, came down already changing direction, darted past a tackler, dodged another, and took off down the sideline.
“Whee,” said the coach, quiet, to himself.
Ninety-nine had a long, easy stride that looked effortless but chewed up the yardage. No one got near him. Touchdown. Ninety-nine wheeled in the end zone to greet his teammates, charging into the picture. The tape froze; a grainy tape, the focus not always right, but ninety-nine’s grin was visible through his face mask.
“You’re sure that’s Harrow?” Ivy said.
“Huh?” said the coach.
“Ninety-nine.”
“Course I’m sure,” said the coach. “I look senile to you?”
“Sorry,” Ivy said. “I just meant…” What did she mean?
“What?” said the coach.
“Did anything bad happen to him later on?” Ivy said.
“Hell, yes. He got himself caught up in that goddamn robbery and ruint his life.”
“I meant did he get injured?”
The coach shook his head. “One of those shifty kids that’s hard to lay a clean hit on. Played every down for me right through senior year.”
“What about after high school? Did he ever get hurt then?”
“Not that I heard,” said the coach. “What are you driving at?”
“I don’t know,” Ivy said, although by now she kind of did. Ski-mask Harrow was a duck-footed runner, slow and clumsy; this grinning Harrow frozen in the end zone was a beautiful athlete, born to run, his stride classic. And therefore?
The coach switched off the machine.
“Any of this help?” he said.