The Hellfire Club

police.

The car wailed to the front of the Ford and turned off its lights and siren a second before another highway patrol car came screaming into Northampton Street. Two big men in flat-brim hats left their car angled in front of the Ford. One of them began questioning the two policemen while the other walked past the green car and waited for the second state vehicle. The clamor of the siren shut off in mid-whoop, but the light bar stayed on. One of the big troopers consulted with the driver of the second car, who got out along with his partner and matched the plate with a number in his notebook. Both men from the second car walked crouching around the Ford to peer through the windows. They pulled gloves from their belts and opened the front and rear doors on the driver's side. One of them leaned in and brandished the keys. He gestured to the local cops. The younger of the two jogged back toward his police car while the trooper opened the trunk and began poking through bags and boxes.

His partner walked back to their vehicle and rapped on a rear window. The window rolled down, and the state policeman put his hands on the sill and leaned forward to talk to two men in the backseat. The troopers who had arrived first were talking to the remaining Holyoke cop, who pointed across the street, then at the Ford, and finally at his own car. Nora bent forward and groped for the handle at the top of her suitcase.

One state policeman looked up, grinning, from the trunk.

The rear doors of the second state car opened, and two men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties, one of them taller and fairer than the other, got out. The taller man wore heavy black sunglasses. Nora froze, her case halfway out from under the bench. Mr Shull and Mr Hashim, Slim and Slam, idled up to the trunk and inspected a box proffered by the grinning trooper. Nora pushed her suitcase back under the bench and tried to vanish into the shadow of the awning.

Slim looked inside the box, and the corners of his mouth jerked down. He displayed its contents to Slam, who nodded. Slim handed the box back to the trooper, and the trooper allowed himself a final smirk before returning it to the trunk. Mr Hashim began rooting through the Ford's glove compartment. Mr Shull wandered away, thrust his hands in his pockets, and regarded the surface of Northampton Street through his hipster sunglasses.

The trooper who had shown Mr Shull the box came up beside him, attended to a few words, and then signaled to one of the big troopers from the first car. After another brief exchange, he waved at the local cop, who bounced forward and answered a few questions. He nodded, shrugged, nodded again, then turned to point at Nora.

The trooper glanced at her, asked a question, got another nod in return, and planted his hands on his hips as the policeman began walking toward Nora. Mr Shull lifted his head and looked at Nora, then at the cop, then back at Nora. He drifted to the passenger door and said something to Mr Hashim. Mr Hashim leaned forward and gave her a skeptical glance through the windshield of the Ford.

The policeman coming toward her had concerned brown eyes and a wispy mustache, and his belly was beginning to roll over his belt. Nora swallowed to loosen her throat and sat up straight. She found that she was still holding the book open somewhere in the middle, and inserted a finger to look as if she had been interrupted while reading. 'Hi,' she said.

The policeman moved into the shade. He took off his hat. 'Hot out there.' He wiped his forehead with a hand and wiped the hand on his trousers. 'I'd like to ask you a few questions.'

'I don't know what I can tell you.'

'Let me ask the questions and we'll find that out.' He put his hat back on his head and took a notebook and ballpoint from his shirt pocket. 'How long have you been out here, ma'am?'

'I'm not too sure.'

The policeman put his foot on the bench and flattened the notebook on his knee. 'Could you give me a rough estimate?'

'Maybe half an hour.'

He made a note. 'Did you observe any activity taking place in or around the vehicle under investigation? Did you observe anyone in contact with the vehicle?'

She pretended to consider the question. 'Gee, I don't think so.'

'Would you give me your name and address, please?'

'Oh, sure. No problem. My name is…' Her mind refused to supply any name but Mrs Hugo Driver. 'Dinah,' she said. Shorelands? 'Dinah Shore.' As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt like holding out her hands for the cuffs.

The policeman looked up from his notebook. 'That's your name, Dinah Shore?'

'I got teased about it all the time in school. For a long time I had to listen to all these Burt Reynolds jokes, but that stopped a couple years ago. Thank God.' She forced herself to stop babbling.

'I can imagine,' said the policeman. 'Address?'

Where did Dinah Shore live? 'Boston.' She groped for a Boston street name. 'Commonwealth Avenue. Four hundred Commonwealth Avenue. I just moved there about a week ago. Half my stuff is still in storage.'

'I see.' Another note. 'What brings you to Holyoke, Dinah?'

'I'm waiting for a friend. He's picking me up.'

'You don't have a car, Dinah?'

Of course she had a car. Every American had a car. 'I have a Volvo station wagon, but it's in the garage.' The policeman stared down at her, waiting for Dinah Shore, a resident of Boston, to explain her presence on a bench in Holyoke. 'A friend gave me a ride this far, and my other friend is coming along to pick me up. He should be here soon.'

'And you've been here how long, Dinah?'

What had she said earlier? 'I'm not too sure. Maybe forty-five minutes?'

'You bought your book in the Unicorn?'

How did he know that? The policeman nodded down at the brown paper bag printed with a picture of a unicorn and the name of the bookstore beside her bag. 'Oh, yes. I knew I'd have to wait for a while. So I went into the bookstore, and then I had something to eat at that restaurant next to it.'

'Dinah's?'

'Is it called Dinah's? What a coincidence.'

He stared at her for a moment. 'So you went into the Unicorn, you looked around, you bought a book -'

'Three books,' she said. She looked away from the policeman's troubled gaze. A red MG convertible driven by a man in a blue Eton cap was cruising post the patrol cars and officers taking up most of the southbound lanes in the region of Sheldon Dolkis's Ford. Another Holyoke squad car had joined them, and two burly men in sports jackets were talking to the troopers. A tow truck turned the corner of Hampden Street and came to a halt. The man in the Eton cap pulled to the curb across the street from Nora. Her heart gave a thump of alarm; the face under the blunt visor of the cap was Jeffrey's. He looked back at the crowd of policemen and their vehicles. One of the highway patrol cars was moving out of the way, and the tow truck was making beeping sounds as it backed up toward the Ford.

'You bought three books, and you went into Dinah's. You had something to eat. You did all that in forty-five minutes?'

'It was probably more like an hour. My friend just showed up.'

The policeman twisted his body to look across the street. 'That's him in the MG?'

She raised her arm and waved. Jeffrey was looking at the corner where she had said she would meet him. 'Jeffrey!' He snapped his head in her direction and took in the spectacle of an unknown blond woman waving at him from a bench while a policeman glanced back and forth between them. It was dawning on him that the unknown blond woman had called him Jeffrey. He bent over the top of the door and peered at her. Nora prayed he would not utter her name.

The cop said, 'That guy doesn't look like he knows you.'

'Jeffrey's a little nearsighted.' She spread her arms and shrugged, miming her good-humored inability to leave the bench.

'Oh, there you are,' Jeffrey said. He opened the door and put one leg out of the car, but she waved him back.

The policeman faced her again and hitched himself back into position. 'Where did your friend from Boston drop you off?'

'On the corner. Where all the people are.'