sequence or consequence. When a knock came at the wooden gate to the driveway Bates called out: “Come on in.”
He wore a dark blue suit whose double-breasted coat drained half an apparent foot or so off the actual height I encountered when I stood to shake hands. Around lower legs and cuffs were swaths of whitish-looking hair from a house pet, dog or cat. Leather loafers long neglected, a silk tie carefully knotted early that morning then forgotten.
“You must be Turner.
“Mayor Sims,” Bates said as we shook hands.
“Henry Lee. Please. Thanks for having me by, Lonnie.”
“Been way too long. And you’d best go in and pay respects to Shirley before you leave-if you know what’s good for me.”
“I will, I will.”
“So why don’t I go get drinks. Black Jack as usual, Henry Lee?”
“You have to ask?”
“Beer, if it’s not too much trouble,” I said.
“You’ve got it.”
It took Bates a long while to get those drinks. A couple of times I saw him edging up to the kitchen window, looking out. I had little doubt he meant for me to see that.
“So,” Mayor Sims said, sinking into a chair. “You going to be able to pull that layabout’s butt out of the fire on this?”
“We’ll see.”
All about us, over by the house, near the gate, above a solitary fig tree, the cold chemical light of fireflies came and went.
“How’s your mail delivery these days?” I asked.
“I have noticed a difference.”
“Glad to hear it.” I listened to mosquitoes spiraling in close by my ears. Whatever the reason, I’d never been much to their taste. They come in, do the research, apply elsewhere.
“I’ve been wondering how you were able to go three months without ever noticing no bills had been paid.”
“Point taken.” We watched a bat flap across moonlit sky. Scooping up gnats, mosquitoes and moths as it went, no doubt. Joyful is a human word, but it was hard to watch the bat’s flight without its coming to mind. “My wife always took care of household bills, balanced the checkbook, all that. Anything needing my attention, something out of the ordinary, she’d let me know. Dorothy’s in a nursing home. I put her there two weeks ago. Alzheimer’s.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Took me a long time to admit to myself something was seriously wrong. A lot longer to admit it to others. Damn, I was getting forgetful myself, you know? Dorothy always hid it well. And when something did get past us and hit the wall, there I’d be, ready with an excuse for her. Besides, the way I was brought up-you too, would be my guess-whatever happens in the family, you handle it. You take care of your own.”
Lonnie emerged with our drinks and the two of them made small talk for a few minutes, hunting seasons, local football, that sort of thing, before the mayor excused himself, stood, downed the remainder of his drink in a single swallow, and went inside. Moments later the mayor came out, said good-bye to the two of us, strode through the gate and was gone.
“What d’you think?” Lonnie said.
“Other than that you set me up?”
Full night now. Fewer mosquitoes, and the cicadae had quietened. Deepening silence everywhere. Stars brightened, intense white as though tiny holes had been punched in a black veil, letting through the merest suggestion of some blinding light that lurked just past, waiting.
“Get you another?”
I held up my half-full bottle.
“I live here,” Lonnie said. “Sometimes-”
“I understand.”
“Man’s full of himself. And I don’t approve of a lot of what he does. Few years back, the city council passed an ordinance that rental houses had to have internal plumbing, bathrooms. How they pushed that past him I don’t know, since he owns almost every unit of cheap housing in the county-all those plywood, used-lumber and tarpaper shacks south of downtown?”
I’d seen them. Hell, I’d grown up with their like.
“Toilets went in wherever it was easiest. In kitchens, bedrooms, on the porch. Crew had it all done within the week. I’m going to freshen this up. Sure you don’t want another?”
He was back in moments but instead of resuming his seat stood looking off at the dark silhouettes of trees.
“He doesn’t need me or anyone else to approve of what he does. I don’t need that, either. Don’t have to approve of him, I mean.”
“I understand, Lonnie. I really do.”
“He told you about Miss Dorothy?”
I nodded.
“Been coming a long time. We all saw it, long before he did. Some ways, I think it’s changed him as much as it has her. Never had children, there’s just the two of them. Man has to be lonely.”
He sat again.
“Beautiful night.”
I agreed, and we sat quietly side by side, listening to gushes of water from the kitchen as Shirley rinsed dishes. Somewhere close by, a bullfrog called.
“You miss the city? I know I asked you that before.”
“The city, yes. But I don’t miss the person I became in the city.”
“He really that much different?”
I nodded.
“Not a good man? Sort of person you saw him coming, you’d cross the street?”
“Right.”
“So here you are, this beautiful evening, miles away from any city at all, with a handful of new friends. Still trying to get across the street to avoid that man.”
Chapter Twenty
The Moon hung orange as Halloween candy in the sky, a perfect circle that made the city’s spinal ridge- single-level convenience stores, three- or four-story apartment and office buildings and high-rises all in a jumble- look even more eccentric, more unnatural. No right angles in nature. I remembered that from some all-but-forgotten art class.
On the seat beside me, Randy tipped back his head to squirt saline up his nose. Bottle the size Merthiolate used to come in when I was a kid and everyone called it monkey blood. Stuff was like dye. Get it on you, it was there till the skin sluffed away. Not a lot of plastic around then, though. Monkey blood came in glass bottles. You painted it on with a glass stinger attached to the cap. Plastic dinnerware started showing up when I was in grade school.
“You okay?” I said.
“I’m fine. Look: you have problems with the squad you pull, you take it back in, right? It doesn’t corner, scrapes its way over potholes or bottoms out, maybe the mirrors are gone permanently cockeyed, you take it back in.” He tucked the saline bottle away, staring straight ahead. “No different with a partner.”
Despite rank, we’d been put on the streets in an unmarked car responding to general calls. Other detectives
