“Bitch lied to me.”
“Why don’t you just leave, Todd? She was my friend.”
“You always treated me like shit too.”
“Good-bye, Todd.”
And then he was gone, wobbling off down the bar, people just naturally making room for his hulking body.
“Friend of yours?”
“Oh, sure. Couldn’t you tell how happy I was to see him? He was Susan’s old boyfriend, believe it or not. She went out with him for six or seven months before she met David Squires. He was one of those insanely jealous guys. She had to account for every single minute she wasn’t with him. He used to follow her around until she caught him at it one night. When they broke up, he used to call her ten times a night. And when she started seeing David Squires, he started sending her threatening letters.
Squires had Cliffie pay him several visits, but he still wouldn’t lay off. Finally, Squires wrote a letter to the local medical association in Cedar Rapids.”
“Medical association?”
“Yes. Believe it or not, Todd’s a doctor.”
“No surgical tools for that guy. He just tears your liver out when he wants to examine it.”
“Anyway, he seemed finally to give up.
Then about four months ago, the threatening letters started again. Susan was sure it was Todd.”
Then: “How about a dance?”
“My feet are at your command.”
Then I saw him.
At first I wasn’t sure I was seeing right: Mike Chalmers? I used to play sandlot baseball with him until he stole my bike one day and tried to blame it on a kid who hung around the diamond. That’s how Mike’s life ran, one scrape after another. Stealing bikes.
Stealing money from cash registers. Stealing cars.
Breaking and entering. Finally, armed robbery. He’d gotten out of prison a couple of years back.
Chalmers, a slight man with a hard peasant handsomeness, smirked at me and then looked away.
“Friend of yours?” Mary asked.
“I helped send him up.”
“God, I’d hate to have your job.” Then: “He looks kind of sad, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, he does.”
We were slow-dancing to a Pat Boone song when I glanced out one of the barn windows and got the idea for the taillight check. There had to be a couple of hundred cars here this evening, maybe one of them with a broken taillight. I was going to get an early A.M. call from the Judge, demanding to know what I’d done on the case so far.
Maybe I could sell her on the idea that I’d come to the hayrack ride to check out the cars. We live by blind hope, don’t we?
I wasn’t sure how Mary would respond.
This was a date, not a stakeout.
But she said, “Good. I’ll help you.”
“You will?”
“Sure. I’ll take the cars on the far side of the barn. You take the cars on this side.”
“You really don’t have to do this.”
“God, McCain, please quit treating me like a little kid, all right?”
“All right.”
“When I don’t want to do something, I’ll tell you. And I won’t be subtle. I promise.”
I should have been working for the Kinsey Report.
I saw a lot of couples coupling in the backseats of their cars. High school kids, mostly. I moved quietly as possible. They were too enraptured to hear me. But I heard them: sighs, gasps, cries of pleasure, and a symphony of car springs. What could be lovelier on a Indian-summer night with a full harvest moon?
I even stopped to admire a few of the street rods. Chopped, channeled, louvered. They looked like something out of hot-rod magazines.
Only in a small town like this could their owners feel safe leaving them and going inside. That was my dream. Have a wife and a couple of kids and pack them all in the front seat of a customized ‘ci Ford Phaeton and cruise up and down dusty Main Street on some fine June afternoon.
Maybe I’d even give Judge Whitney a ride someday.
I didn’t have much luck with taillights. The only one I found missing belonged to a ‘dh Buick, and I could see that the intact one didn’t resemble the pieces I had.
I was just walking back to the front of the barn when I saw Mary, breathless, running up to me. “I think I may’ve found the car. But it’s just pulling out.”
We ran around the side of the barn. It had been parked far to the west, out where a windbreak of oaks had been planted.
We finally got close enough to see the shape of the car: the unmistakable configuration of the ‘ee Chevy, which is, to me, one of the most elegant car designs ever built. From this angle, I couldn’t see the taillight. The Chevy was moving without headlights along the back row of cars. It could pick up the edge of the graveled drive there and angle right out onto the county road that ran past the stables. I couldn’t see the driver.
We kept pace with it by trotting to the county road.
Not until it got to the clearing between driveway and road did I see the taillight. It was raw yellow, two small naked bulbs. No red plastic covering.
I don’t think the driver saw us. All of a sudden the car fishtailed through the gravel and shot onto the county road. It was doing 30 by then and 50 by the time it disappeared behind the trees.
“You get the license number?”
“I did.” She gave it to me.
“Illinois.”
“Yeah. Good work.”
“Thanks. Now what?”
“Need to check out the number.”
“And how do we do that?”
“I noticed you said we.”
She laughed. “I thought I was being sneaky.”
Then: “I want to help you on this, McCain.
Susan was my friend.”
“I’ll call my buddy when we get back to my place.”
“Is that where we’re going?”
“If it’s all right with you.”
“It’s fine by me.”
We were silent on the drive back, listening to the Saturday Night Top Ten countdown on the radio. I think we both knew it was going to happen tonight. Though I still felt as if I were taking advantage of her, I decided she was right. I wasn’t coercing her in any way. She knew I was in love with Pamela. I’d been honest with her, and that’s all I could do. She sat very close to me and it felt good, felt right somehow. I was relaxed with her in a way I could never be with Pamela.
The lights were off downstairs. Mrs.
Goldman was still out on her date. I would get a full report later. I’d become her father in all this. From now on I’d be shaking hands and approving her dates before I let her go out with them. Or was that being too strict in this modern age?
We went upstairs. I got the lights on and the heat turned up. Frost was on the grass.
She used the bathroom first. Did some more fixing up. Was lovelier than ever.
The buddy I’d referred to was a Chicago police commander who’d picked up his law degree at Iowa. He
