“Yeah, the Seavers or Deavers, something like that. They were both doctors. Said they were moving to town.” Alice took a sip from her cup, judged it too hot with a pucker, and set it back down. “I don’t know what they make these cups out of at Mess-o Espresso but it’ll keep your coffee hot all day.”
“They said they were doctors, is that right?”
“Yeah. But they aren’t, are they? They seemed nice at the time, but I knew something was fishy.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
“The only doctors ever want to practice around here are the ones that grew up here. People are mostly trying to get out of Brixton, not into it.”
“Huh.”
“So if they’re not doctors, who were those two?”
“Actually, they really are doctors.”
“Oh.” Alice seemed disappointed.
“Any idea what business they’d have with a guy named Rick Weiss?”
“Ricky Weiss?” Alice tucked her lower lip under the upper and leaned away. “Could be just about anything with that one. He’s always got some sort of scheme going.”
“No kidding?”
“He never has any money, though, which is just as well, because if he did he’d just throw it away on some crazy thing or other.”
“Do you know what he’s been planning lately?”
The temperature of Alice’s coffee was finally to her liking. “I think I heard it was mulch.”
“Mulch?”
“Yeah. He knows a guy at the lumberyard. He knows another guy with a chipper. Ricky’s got an old truck. He’s going to be the mulch magnate of Brixton, I guess.” She laughed.
“He still works at the golf course, though, right?”
“Oh, yeah. And he does mulch on weekends. Any of that help you?”
“Maybe,” Philly said. “But you’re very kind. Thanks for having coffee with me.”
“Oh sure,” Alice said. She held up her cup and licked her lips. “Mess-o Espresso.”
Canella looked at his watch. He’d never make the last flight back to Chicago. “Is there anything to do around here?”
“We’re not known for much,” Alice said. “Nothing besides being the birthplace of Jimmy Spears.”
“Who’s that?”
“Jimmy Spears? The football player? You didn’t notice the big sign on the way into town?”
“No, didn’t see the sign. But I remember him. Played at Northwestern.” Canella remembered a game in which Spears threw for some ridiculous number of yards and knocked him out of a five-dollar gambling pool he’d entered with some friends. “Is he still in the NFL?”
Alice nodded. “Miami. We all wish he’d play more than he does. It makes the games on TV a whole lot more fun. Some people got satellite dishes just to watch him stand on the sidelines every week.”
“Were you working at the school when he went here?”
“Yes, I was.” Alice leaned forward again. Her smile was tobacco yellow and the joints where her teeth met were dark brown.
“Nice kid?”
“Very nice.” Alice said. “All the teachers liked him. All the girls liked him. All the boys liked him. By the time he graduated he was president of student council, captain of the Class A champion football team, won a bunch of ribbons showing cattle. Everyone’s still real proud of him. Of course, the good ones get up and leave town, to Omaha or Lincoln or wherever. The others, the losers like Ricky Weiss, they’re the ones that stick around, which is why this little village will never be more than it is. Jimmy and Ricky were in the same class, I think.”
“What about these kids?” Canella nodded at the bunches of children improvising their recess on a grass infield framed by a bus circle.
“These kids are still young,” she said. “It’s up at the high school they all become stinkers. All except Jimmy.”
Canella drove in rectangles around the local farms, which radiated from the town like bonus squares on a Scrabble board. When he became tired, he pulled over and called Big Rob.
“What are you working on out there?” Big Rob asked, after his friend had described the remoteness of his location. “The usual. Cheating husband,” he said. “Wife wants some more details, but I don’t know if they’re out here to be found. To tell you the truth, I dread this kind of shit.”
“Cheating spouses?” Big Rob said. “That’s our bread and butter, Philly.”
Canella said, “I’m telling you, Biggie. Get out of the city. Come up by me. The North Shore. Do you know what the fastest-growing part of my business is? I call it ‘babysitting.’ No shit. Eighth-graders. Ninth-graders. Sometimes even older kids. Sometimes even younger. Three to four grand a pop. You follow them after school: to parties, basketball games, on Saturday nights while they cruise Main Street. The parents wanna know if they’re tripping on X. Or diddling. Or hanging with the wrong crowd. They just want to be sure the kids are going where they say they’re going, and it’s so easy, Biggie. Christ. These boys and girls have no clue I’m following them, and the parents will pay more to have their kids chased than they will their spouses.”
“Because they aren’t trying to hide the withdrawals from one another,” Biggie said with an understanding lilt.
“Yeah, they’re both in on it. This predivorce legwork takes it out of me, though, I tell you.”
Around six, Philly trolled by Ricky Weiss’s trailer and saw a red pickup in the drive that hadn’t been there two hours before. He parked his rented Focus in the street and walked up to the aluminum door without any thought to what he expected to find inside. He wanted to see his face, hear his voice, and get a look around his home just so he could tell Jackie Moore he did it. Fatten her file. Maybe he could get him talking somehow. Find out something that might connect him to Davis Moore.
He had thought of a story to tell Rick Weiss, and it was a thin one as far as Canella was concerned. He was counting on Ricky being as dense as everyone said.
Philly knocked and a man appeared on the other side of the screen. He was short and thin, and his back and legs bent in strange places, like pipe cleanerers. On his head was a mesh baseball cap with the name of a manufacturing company Canella didn’t know. He wore a white V-neck undershirt with so many stains and handprints Philly guessed he rarely wore anything over it. Through its cheap synthetic weave he could see matted brown chest hair that spread like kudzu up to the shaving line just above the man’s collarbone. There was a tattered leather belt looped around the waist of his grass-streaked jeans. In front was a big buckle with a horse on it, which made Philly wonder when he last saw a real buckle worn unironically on a belt. The man didn’t open the door.
“Yeah?”
“Hi. Are you Ricky?”
“Rick,” he said.
“Rick. Right. Sorry. My name is Phil Canella and I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I’m doing a feature story about Jimmy Spears and I heard you knew him growing up.”
“Yeah.” Weiss put his nose against the screen and peered at him. “I know Jimmy. What do you want to know?” Philly thought he looked appropriately suspicious.
“Can I come in?”
Ricky pushed the door open and Canella stepped past him. A city boy, he had never been inside a trailer home before and this one was nicer than he expected, larger than he would have thought. The kitchen to their left had only a small number of tiny cabinets but the counters were clean and clutter-free. The living room was dusted and the end tables flanking the couch were bare except for a beer can centered on a wooden coaster. Through a cracked door Philly saw the made bed, and the decorative pillows lined up across the headboard. Ricky has a wife, he thought. Or a girlfriend.
“So what do you want to know?” Weiss said, looking him over slowly.
“Just a few quick questions,” Philly said, getting Weiss’s permission to take a chair at the kitchen table.
“Yeah.”
“What was he like in high school?”
“What was he like?”
