Mystery

“I don’t believe that,” he said.

She turned into Main Street. At eight o’clock in the morning, most of the shops were closed and only a few people were on the sidewalks. None of them looked like tourists. Barbara Deane pulled up to the sidewalk at the first intersection. A black and white sign said OAK STREET. “My house is right up the street. Is it all right if I drop you off here?”

She suddenly looked shy and uncertain. “I know you’re busy, but would you think about coming to my house for dinner some night? It would be nice to cook for someone else, and I enjoy your company, Tom.”

“I’d like that very much,” he said.

“I might be able to tell you some things about the summer Jeanine died without being disloyal to your grandfather. After all, the important thing to remember is that whatever he did, he did it to protect your mother.”

“Just name the day,” Tom said.

She touched his arm to say one more thing.

“Your mother told you that she saw a man running through the woods on that night?”

“It must have been Anton Goetz. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Well, it couldn’t have been Anton Goetz, either. Goetz walked with a cane, and he limped. It was a very romantic limp. Anton Goetz couldn’t move faster than a slow walk. Gloria might not have seen anything at all—she had a very active imagination, and she couldn’t always tell the difference between it and reality.”

“I know that,” he said, and got out of the car.

As he walked back along the highway an hour later, the black Lincoln coasted past him, drew ahead, and pulled onto the shoulder of the road. The Lincoln’s back doors opened, and two men in grey suits and sunglasses got out of the car. One of them was too fat to button his suit, and the other was as skinny as a hound. Both of them had long sideburns and swept-back Elvis hair. They looked at him with bored indifferent faces. The lean one put his hands in his pockets. Jerry Hasek, also in a grey suit but without the sunglasses, opened the driver’s door and got out and looked unhappily at Tom across the top of the car. “We’re going to give you a ride,” he said. “Come on, get in the car.”

“I’d rather walk.” Tom looked sideways into the woods.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Jerry said. “What good is that? Just get in the car.”

The other two began coming toward him.

“Nappy and Robbie,” Tom said. “The Cornerboys.”

Robbie took his hands out of his pockets and glanced at his fat companion, who scowled at Tom. Nappy’s sideburns almost reached his jaw.

“I remember you,” Nappy said.

“Just get him in the car,” Jerry said. “We already took too long doing this. Tom, get sensible. We don’t want to hurt you, we’re just supposed to bring you back.”

“Why?”

“Somebody wants to talk to you.”

“So get in the car,” Nappy said in a thick, constricted voice that sounded as if someone had once stepped on his throat.

Tom walked past Nappy and Robbie and opened the front passenger door. All three bodyguards watched him get in, and then got in themselves.

“Okay,” Nappy sighed. He looked like a bullfrog, seated in the back of the car.

“Okay,” said Robbie. “Okay, okay, okay.”

Jerry started the car and drove down the highway back toward the lake.

Nappy leaned forward from the back seat. “What’s this Cornerboy stuff, huh? Where do you come off, with this Cornerboy stuff?”

“Just keep quiet, will you?” asked Jerry. “And you too, Pasmore. I want to talk about some stuff before we get back.”

“Good,” Tom said.

Jerry rubbed his face and glanced at him. “A long time ago, you came to my house. My sister and me came out to talk to you. When my friends turned up, you ran away and you got hurt. Nobody meant for that to happen.”

“I don’t think you were deliberately trying to kill me,” Tom said. “I got scared when I saw these two guys waving knives.”

“Everybody should have handled things in another way,” Jerry said. “The main thing was, my father sent me out to see what you wanted.”

“I realize that now,” Tom said.

“I mean, there’s already enough excitement,” Jerry said.

“Right,” Tom said.

“So what was that about the dog?” Jerry asked.

Robbie snickered.

“I heard something scream.”

Nappy said, “I guess we all make mistakes, huh?”

“Nobody says another word about that,” Jerry said. “You hear me?”

“Dog,” Robbie said, and Nappy made a little uh oh sound that ended almost as soon as it had begun.

Jerry took his hands off the wheel and whirled around so fast that he seemed nearly not to have moved at all—Tom saw only a blur—and then Jerry was leaning over the back of the front seat, whacking Robbie with both hands.

“ASSHOLE! SHITHEAD! FUCKING RETARD!”

Robbie held his hands up before his face. “You hit my—you got my—”

“YOU THINK I CARE? GODDAMN YOU, I TOLD YOU—”

The Lincoln drifted slowly into the oncoming lane. Tom grabbed the wheel and steered it back. The return of Vic Pasmore, he thought. Jerry smacked Robbie once more and turned around and grabbed the wheel away from Tom. His face was a deep red.

“Okay? Okay? We got that straight?”

“We got it straight,” Nappy said.

“We damn well better have that straight,” Jerry said.

“You busted my shades,” Robbie said.

Tom looked back over the seat. Nappy was staring straight ahead. He looked like a man on a bus. A smear of blood slid down Robbie’s cheek. A cut on the bridge of his nose bled toward its tip. A bow had been snapped off his sunglasses. Robbie stared at the two broken pieces. He glowered at Tom, then rolled down his window and tossed the sunglasses into the road.

“All right,” Jerry said. “Now we’re all straight.”

He swung the car into the bumpy track that led to the lake.

Tom expected them to pull up before the compound, but Jerry rolled past it without even a sideways glance. They continued past the Spence lodge and stopped in front of Glendenning Upshaw’s. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go in and finish this bullshit.”

All four of them got out of the car.

“You first, sport,” Jerry said. “This where you live, right?”

Tom rounded the car. Nappy and Robbie put their hands in their pockets and looked up at the big lodge as if they were thinking about buying it for a vacation home. Robbie had wiped the trickle of blood from the bridge of his nose, but two red stripes lay on the side of his face like warpaint. Tom went up the stone steps. Jerry crowded him from behind, and the other two sauntered toward the steps after them, looking up and down the path.