guy.” He leaned forward in his chair. He grinned. “You don’t actually take after him, do you, Gus?”
My father had wanted a Cadillac, if only just for Sunday drives to Lake Michigan. For years he saved to buy one. But when he finally had enough money, he chose instead to buy a used Bonneville so he could put the rest of the money into an investment. What investment? A retirement fund? My college education? Anything, I hoped, but Blackburn’s “opportunity.” Not my father. Even if he had misled my mother about where he worked those Saturday nights, it was only because of the looming death sentence of his cancer and the duty he felt to make sure Mom and I were cared for.
“You’re a goddamn liar.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Blackburn said. He sat back again and lifted his glass to his lips. “Ask your mother.”
“Fucking liar!” I leaped from my chair, knocking the table over and sending my untouched drink flying. I slapped his glass out of his hands and it shattered against the table hockey game. “This is not about my mother and father,” I yelled, “this is about you and all the kids you fucked over. You’re going to jail or I can take you out right here.”
I was hovering over him now, breathing hard, heart pumping, fists clenched. I wanted to rip Blackburn’s face off from the ears.
He didn’t move. “Take me out?” he said. “Starvation ain’t enough of a jail for you? What are you really going to do, Gus? You want to hit me? Go ahead. See what difference it makes in your life or mine.”
“It’s over. It’s over now.”
“That’s right!” he shouted, and before I could react, he bolted up straight in his chair and grabbed my shirt collar and yanked me down close to him. I struggled to free myself as hairy knuckles scraped my neck and liquor breath slithered up my nose. “That’s right, boy,” he snarled. “It’s over. Right…now!” In one motion he raised himself out of the chair and with a grunt from his belly flung me back against the wall. I righted myself and braced for him to charge, but he just stood there looking at me and gasping for breath. He leaned over and picked the bottle, unscrewed the cap, and took a long slug. Finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and let the bottle fall to his side.
“You know,” he said, “it could’ve been you. It could’ve been you and not the others. You didn’t see me over at Swanny’s when he was a squirt teaching him how to play the game, did you? But that’s the way you wanted it, or your mother wanted it, and now, here we are. You got away, I got away.” He took another swig from the bottle. “Now go home. Nobody knows you were here. Go home to your mommy. Let your father rot in peace.”
“My dad would spit in your face.”
“Yeah? Well, we’re done here. I’m calling the cops.”
He took the bottle into his office. I heard the beeps of numbers being punched into a phone.
I crossed Blackburn’s front lawn at a slow trot and hurried down the sidewalk to the Bonnie, relieved to have the cover of dark. I kept my headlights off until I was out of the neighborhood, where I pulled into a strip mall lot, parked, and wrote down everything I could remember.
The cop flashers blinked in my rearview mirror about an hour northwest of Pittsburgh. A tow truck dispatched the Bonnie while two Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies ferried me to the Ohio border, where they stopped and took me out of their car and ushered me to the backseat of a Mahoning County sheriff’s cruiser. None of the cops said much. Every hour or so, we’d stop and I’d be moved to a different car as one county sheriff handed me over to another and another until we pulled over at the southern border of Michigan. Through the windshield I saw two Monroe County sheriff’s cruisers, one from Pine County, and a burly officer wearing an earflap cap and puffing on a thin brown cigar.
“You know a lot of sheriffs,” I said.
We’d driven about half an hour into Michigan, Dingus at the wheel, me in the back. It was nearly three o’clock Friday morning.
“It was either that or let the state boys grab you,” he said. “I have a little piece of paper here from Judge Gallagher that says you’re mine until six o’clock tonight. Then I’ll be having to hand you over to the state police, depending.”
“Depending on what?”
“Depending on what you tell me.”
Of course I was bursting to tell someone what I knew, and the longer I waited, the more time Blackburn had to get away. But I had no idea what Dingus was going to do with me. I wouldn’t be able to help Joanie much with that FedEx delivery if I was in jail. And where would Blackburn go anyway? Once the world knew he was alive, he wouldn’t be hard to track down.
I was thinking, too, about my father and what he had or hadn’t done. I told myself that Blackburn was lying, that Blackburn was just trying to manipulate me yet again. But what if he wasn’t? What shame might be brought down upon my father’s grave and, inevitably, my mother?
“It’s not my job to help you do your job,” I said.
“Oh, really?” Dingus caught my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Did you think you fooled me on your way out of Starvation? Did you think I don’t know those back roads?”
I didn’t say anything.
“For the record, we had you at every turn until you hit Old Twenty-seven. Not too hard to keep track of a car the size of a battleship.”
“Wait. You’re saying you just let me go?”
He lit another Tiparillo. “Sheriff Aho declined to comment.”
“You’re a funny guy, Dingus.”
The car filled with the smell of the cherry-sweet smoke. We drove in silence for a while.
“So,” he finally said. His eyes were in the rearview again. “Are you going to tell me what you learned on your little trip?”
thirty-one
The clang of a jail cell door woke me.
“You’re up,” Darlene said.
I looked around, blinking against the light from the caged bulbs. A little before dawn, Dingus had stuck me in a part of the jail I’d never seen before, away from Soupy and the other prisoners. In my cell there was a sink, a toilet, and, instead of a cot, a concrete slab where I had fallen asleep.
“I guess so,” I said.
“You have visitors.” She motioned down the corridor. Catledge appeared with my mother and Joanie.
“Oh,” I said. “Mom.” Her eyes were red around the rims. Joanie had an arm around my mother’s shoulders. Two days before, they hadn’t even met. Joanie was one great reporter.
“Skip, can you get a couple of chairs?” Darlene said. “Hold on, Mother Bea.” Catledge went for the chairs and Darlene stepped into the cell and handed me an envelope. “Here,” she said.
The envelope had already been sliced open. I took it and pulled out a note written on a piece of notepaper in pen.
Gus,
Very sorry to hear of your troubles. If you are in need of an attorney, don’t hesitate to have the police contact me.
Sincerely, Francis J. Dufresne
P.S. Our friend Leo will be remembered at a service this afternoon. I will pass along your regards.
I set the envelope on the edge of the sink as Catledge returned with the chairs. Mom and Joanie sat facing me.
“What time is it?” I said.
“Where were you, Gussy?” Mom said. “Why did you go away like that without telling me? Why didn’t you tell me the police were after you? Why are you keeping things from me? What’s wrong, son?”
