Lowery handed Spiff a tall glass and the old man snatched it from him aggressively.
Scratch wanted to hurry back to the police station to get his car. He had business at the Primrose. He kicked at a stick on the ground.
“You antsy, boy,” Spiff drained his glass. “You got something on your mind?”
“I want to get the hell out of here,” Scratch said. “I need to find out who's trying to set me up.”
“Leave it alone, yardbird,” Spiff told him. “You're out of the fire. Don't jump back into another?”
“What's that mean?” Scratch asked.
“Don't screw with it, is what it means. I'm not tellin' ya, I'm ordering ya!”
Spiff and Scratch locked eyes.
“I don't have to work for you,” Scratch said.
Spiff chuckled. “Oh yeah you do, yardbird. Nothin' anywhere else for you. No one's gonna take a broken-down GI who has nightmares while wide awake. So stop fuckin' around and pay attention to young Lowery. He has something for you to do at Horace Hammock's house.”
“Why not send Shep?”
“Because you're the yardbird, boy. He's the sheriff. He's busy protecting the county.”
“And your interests,” Scratch said.
Spiff sniffed the air. “It's the same damn thing.”
“Yes, Scratch. There's something Mr Spiff would like you to get from Horace Hammock's house,” Lowery said.
He'd fixed himself a smaller glass of whiskey and poured a shot of freshly squeezed orange juice in it. Scratch had never seen anyone make an alcoholic drink with orange juice. Lowery cleared his throat and continued.
“It's a large 13-inch black vinyl hatbox with a gold satin rope around it. Gold initials on the front: SS.”
“And the significance of this hatbox?” Scratch asked.
“Don't worry about it!” Spiff screamed before Lowery had a chance to answer. The old man's spit went all over Shep, who jumped from his chair, cursing. Lowery flashed an uneasy smile. Spiff continued his tirade. “Stop asking dumb questions and do what yardbirds do!”
“What is it I'm supposed to do, huh?” Scratch retorted. He was hot under the collar. Sick of the old man ordering him around. Sick of the uppity attitudes of a hick town like Odarko. He just wanted to go back to Darktown. Back to where people acted like real people and not characters from a Robert Mitchum movie.
“Yardbirds do what I tell 'em to do! Nothing more! You gotta eat, I tell ya! You gotta sleep, I tell ya! Ya gotta take a shit…” Spiff chuckled, “…I definitely tell ya to shit. Now, get, boy. I'm sick of seein' ya!”
8
Shep and Ralph took Scratch to the Wildwood Diner. He didn't eat much. He didn't say much. He had a lot on his mind. Afterwards, they dropped him off at the station to get his car.
He was torn about what to do first. He knew he needed to go back to the room at the Primrose before they cleaned it up, but he'd been ordered to get a hatbox from Horace Hammock's house. Was it the same hatbox? He couldn't remember. Some of what happened in that room was kind of shaky in his memory. Scratch wasn't sure if it was because of wallop on the head or because the nightmares were of Korea were haunting him again.
Scratch started his '48 Dodge and eased out of the parking space. He put the car into drive, rolled down Main Street slowly, then took a quick right on Tulip drive. He was going to Horace Hammock's house first. Twilight was setting in and the moon and the sun were exchanging hellos and goodbyes. Scratch came up on a stop sign and he jabbed at the car brakes, tires squealing.
A three-story brick house sat at the end of Tulip. Horace Hammock's house.
Scratch parked at the end of the street. Then he cut through a little wooded area that led past three other people's houses before he reached the backyard of Horace's house. He crept past several hedges that hadn't been trimmed in months, and circled around a shack that was ready to fall apart at the first whisper of noise. He came to the high window of what looked to be a study.
Scratch saw a tall brown-haired woman in oval-shaped glasses, red blouse and black skirt, rifling through a chestnut desk. She was being fast and sloppy. Tossing papers aside, books, old newspaper clippings and photographs. The woman was actually quite striking, thick-boned with an hourglass shape. Scratch was immediately attracted to her. She took him back to the days when he fancied a school teacher he had as a teenager. He watched her a little longer, and when she gave up irritably and sat on a small couch in the study, Scratch decided to go inside the house himself.
He jimmied the lock on the backdoor with the fingernail file on his Swiss Army Knife. The lock popped with no trouble and Scratch opened the backdoor carefully. He went through the kitchen, felt his way through the darkness, using a light in the hallway as a guide. From the hallway, the living room was dark, but the light from the study was shining through the door left partly open. Scratch saw the woman's leg and her shoeless stockinged foot hanging off the couch. Scratch pushed the door with the palm of his hand and the door creaked open.
The woman turned her head and stared at Scratch with tired eyes. She was now sitting upright but with her legs stretched along on the couch. Both shoes were off her feet and her brown hair was loose about her shoulders, not pulled up in a bun as it had been when he last saw her. The first few buttons on her blouse were unfastened and its collar was loose and wide, revealing a long white neckline and even more of a see-through diamond-patterned brassiere.
Her eyes grew large
