All That I Have Read online

  “The Mafia,” said Sean. “Fucking Mafia. Ain’t they?”

  “No, they ain’t. They’re from overseas. They’re Russians.”

  “Russians? Fucking Commies?”

  “No. They ain’t Commies anymore. They switched teams, a while back, it looks like.”

  “Fuckers.”

  “They’re just like us now,” I said. “They want what’s theirs. You’ve got what’s theirs.”

  “Fuck I do,” said Sean.

  I pulled off the road into a turnout and switched off the motor. We were right at the top of Paradise Hill, and you could see out over the country to the south and west, toward Gilead, the hills like waves on the ocean, one after another, spread out in the evening as the sun set and houselights began to come on in the valleys between the hills, here and there, some lights close, some miles off.

  “Okay,” I said to Sean. “You wanted to talk. Talk, then. Tell me what you took out of their place. Tell me where it is. Then I can help you. Maybe I can.”

  “I tell you fucking nothing,” said Sean. “I know what happens, I do.”

  “Nothing happens,” I said. “Not for that. Not now. You’ve got the upper hand here, remember? You came to me. We get done, I’ll drop you wherever you say, and off you go.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I said it.”

  Sean was quiet for a minute. He was probably trying to think if he knew how to say something without saying “fuck.” It took him a while, but he finally made it. He said, “It wasn’t just me.”

  “Who else?”

  “Her,” said Sean. “Crystal.”

  “You and Crystal broke in there together?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, ain’t it?” said Sean. “It was her idea.”

  “What did you take away?” I asked him.

  “Now, I ain’t saying I didn’t do nothing,” Sean went on. “That it was Crystal that did it all, not me. Fuck no. I did it. I busted down their door. I’d seen the place, working there, I’d seen all that shit they have in there? How far out in the brush it was? Burglar alarm didn’t mean shit way out there. I knew how to open their gate. I told Crystal, and she said, Well, let’s go have a look.”

  “What did you take?”

  “Little kind of safe or like a chest,” said Sean. “Steel. Heavy sucker. Crystal’d worked for a guy once had one like it. He kept his coin collection in it. Gold coins. It wasn’t, like, bolted down or nothing. We thought we’d toss the place a little bit, fuck it over so nobody would miss the safe right off, take the safe, take the whole fucking thing, and then, later, we had time, get some tools to it, bust it open. See what was in it.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Fuck if I know,” said Sean. “We couldn’t get into it. Took it back to Crystal’s, hid it. Then Saturday we went by her brother’s with it. He’s got a garage. He’s closed weekends. We got out the bars and chisels and shit, sledgehammer, and banged away at it for most of an hour. Fucking nothing.”

  Sean was laughing now.

  “So,” he went on, “couple days later, I went out to my uncle Fred’s, there in Humber. He’s got this big fucking magnum revolver. Told him I needed it to kill a dog, had rabies. Fred is so fucking dumb. He said sure. I got the revolver and a box of shells, and Crystal and me took the safe and the magnum way out into the woods back of her place, there. Set the safe up on a log. We were going to shoot the fucker open. You know, you see them do it on TV all the time.”

  “So you do. How did that go for you?”

  “Went like fuck-all,” said Sean. “Blam, blam, blam — we shot up half the box at it. Did nothing. You couldn’t even hardly tell where we’d hit it, just little dents and like smears from the jackets on the rounds. Great big fucking .44 magnum, there. They do it on TV all the time, you know? Shoot the lock? Shoot the door open? Bullshit. We couldn’t even knock the fucker off the log. Crystal was pissed.”

  “What then?”

  “Crystal said, Fuck it, we’ll lose the thing,” said Sean. “She told me to drop it off a bridge somewhere.”

  “Did you?”

  “She thinks so.”

  “Where is it, then?” I asked Sean.

  “It’s in a safe place, Sheriff,” said Sean. He was so stuck on himself.

  “That’s why I wanted to see you,” he went on. “Like you say, those Russians or whatever the fuck? They want their little safe. They want it very fucking bad. Ain’t that right?”

  “I’d say it was.”

  “Well, then,” said Sean, “I reckon they can pay me for it. What do you reckon?”

  I didn’t answer him. I sat there looking off over the hills and shaking my head.

  “That’s why I wanted to talk, see?” Sean said. “You, you’re working with those fuckers, ain’t you? Investigating for them? You know them. You can make the deal. Tell them to make me an offer. We’ll give you a piece.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Crystal.”

  “I thought Crystal thought you’d got rid of the safe,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Sean. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, she does. Okay, then, I’ll give you a piece.”

  “Going to cut Crystal right out, is that it?” I said. “Being kind of tough on her, ain’t you? What’s she going to say?”

  “Fuck I care?” said Sean. “Fuck her. She ain’t the only girl in the world.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “There’s others, Sheriff,” said Sean.

  “ ‘Course there are.”

  “More than one,” said Sean.

  “Is that right?”

  “Fucking-A right that’s right, more than one. More than two, Sheriff.”

  I started the car and got us onto the road headed back down to the Four Corners.

  “Where’s your vehicle?” I asked Sean.

  “Around back of the store,” he said. “So, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About what?” Sean said. “About what we said. About you making the deal. About the plan.”

  “Oh,” I said. “The plan. I think the plan is the dumbest plan since General Custer rode down the hill after the Sioux,” I said.

  “General who?”

  “General Custer. Your great-great-I-don’t-know grandfather.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Sean. “Well, fuck him, too.”

  “These people are not going to buy their thing back from you,” I told Sean. “What they are going to do, they’re going to put your balls in a vise or wire them up to a truck battery, and get you to see things their way.”

  “Bullshit,” said Sean.

  “No bullshit,” I said. “They can do that. They will do that.”

  “They can try,” said Sean.

  “You think you’re pretty tough, don’t you?”

  “Tough enough,” said Sean.

  “Nowhere near,” I said.

  “We’ll see,” said Sean.

  “No, we won’t,” I said.

  “Fuck, we won’t,” said Sean. “Why won’t we?”

  “Because you won’t be here.”

  “Fuck, I won’t,” said Sean. “You think I’m going to run?”

  “That’s right. That’s what you’re going to do.”

  “Fuck that,” said Sean. “I’d rather they did what you said they’d do to me. I’d rather that than run.”

  “That ain’t your choice,” I said. “Your choice is this: You get out of town, now, or you deal with me. Not them. Me.”

  “Fuck that,” said Sean. “You think I’m going to run because you ask me to?”

  “I ain’t asking,” I said.

  I left Sean at the Four Corners and went on home for dinner, told Clemmie I’d got delayed at the store, didn’t tell her why. Why didn’t I tell her? In the kitchen I put her sugar down on the counter.

  “What’s the matter?” Clemmie asked me.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. You look like
something’s the matter. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter,” I said. “When’s supper?”

  “This side of midnight,” said Clemmie. I left her in the kitchen.

  Now, I never claimed to be the brightest fellow in the world, but that night I felt like my IQ, such as it was, had lost twenty-five or thirty points just from my sitting for ten minutes in the same car with Sean. What was going to become of him? The way he was going, nothing good. The way he was going, even the bottom of the law wouldn’t be the end of his fall.

  One thing, though: I guessed I knew where that little strongbox was. I guessed I did. If I was right, then maybe I could let the air out of this business, maybe I could make this business go away — if Superboy would only get to hell on the road.

  12

  NEGATIVE

  Well, he made it, but not by much. Three more minutes, and he would have been too late. Three more minutes, and we would have been into a different kind of game, here.

  Tuesday night about ten, I got a mobile call from Trooper Timberlake. He was en route to Sean’s parents’ place in Afton. Sean was there. He was loading up his truck, getting ready to take off, it looked like. Melrose Tidd had called the state police barracks to turn Sean in. He hadn’t called the sheriff’s department. The state police dispatcher was putting it out on all bands, though, because Deputy Keen had advised that Sean was wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting in Monterey. Therefore, if you were any kind of peace officer at all, if you had a badge out of a Corn Flakes box, you were on your way to Afton.

  I punched it and got there in twenty minutes. Trooper Timberlake was sitting in his patrol car in the dark beside the road at the bottom of Melrose and Ellen’s driveway. Nobody else had showed up, not yet.

  Timberlake didn’t leave his patrol car. I parked the truck behind him and went to his window.

  “Is he still here?” I asked Timberlake.

  “And a good evening to you, too, Sheriff,” said Timberlake. “That’s affirmative. He’s there. He’s in the garage. Him and his mom, both.”

  “Where is everybody?” I asked. “I thought the place would be crawling.”

  “It will be,” said Timberlake. “But it seems as though the dispatch said Grafton, not Afton, so some of them had to turn around. They’re straight now, though. They’ll be here directly.”

  “Grafton?”

  “That’s affirmative, Sheriff.”

  “That ain’t even in the county.”

  “That’s affirmative, Sheriff,” said Timberlake. “Honest mistake. Happen to anybody. How do you want to do this, here?”

  “I want to talk to them alone, before the army, navy, air force, and marines get here,” I said. “Can you handle that?”

  “I can handle it for about three minutes. That’s how long you’ve got, more or less.”

  “I’m obliged,” I told Timberlake.

  “It’s your show, Sheriff,” said Timberlake. “Call me if you need me. I’ll be right here.”

  “Thanks, Trooper.”

  “I’ll be right here, studying up on my Russian,” said Timberlake.

  Some of these young hotshots are trying to develop a sense of humor, it looked like, and that’s good to see, but I didn’t have time to appreciate it right then. I walked up the driveway to the garage. The lights were on inside, and the door was open. I could see Sean putting boxes and bags into the rear of his truck. Ellen was sitting on a kitchen chair watching him. She had a paper tissue balled up in her hand, and she touched her eyes with it from time to time. When I stood in the door of the garage, she left her chair and came to me.

  “What do you want, Sheriff?” she asked me. “What do you want with us?”

  “You know what I want,” I said. I nodded at Sean.

  “He’s leaving, Sheriff,” said Ellen. “He’s going away. Are you here to stop him?”

  “I won’t have to stop him in a couple of minutes,” I said. “Half the law in the county’s on its way here. They’ll stop him.”

  Sean slammed shut the tailgate of his truck and came to stand behind Ellen.

  “I’m out of here,” he said. “All I need is five minutes to go over and tear the lungs out of that fucker Melrose.”

  “Sean . . . ,”said Ellen.

  “You ain’t got five minutes,” I told Sean. “If you’re going, go now.”

  “I’m going,” said Sean. “I got some people to see first.”

  “I bet you do,” I said. “Go ahead. See them. Long as they ain’t here. Long as you ain’t here. You’re all done here.”

  “You fucking got that right,” said Sean. “There’s fucking nothing here, never has been.”

  “Sean . . . ,” said Ellen.

  “That’s the way we like it,” I said.

  “Ahh, fuck it,” said Sean. But he was going. Did he take time to say goodbye to his mother, to give her a hug? Did he offer to shake my hand, or even turn to look at me? Not Superboy. He got in the truck, started the engine, and rolled out of the garage and down the driveway without lights. He passed Trooper Timberlake’s patrol car, but Timberlake stayed in the vehicle. In the road, Sean switched on his lights and drove off.

  “Well, Sheriff,” said Ellen, “you’ve done it. I hope you’re happy. You’ve been down on that boy all his life, you’ve never given him a break, and now you’ve finally driven him from his home. I hope you’re happy now.”

  I didn’t answer her. I was waiting for the others to begin turning up.

  “That boy has never been given a break of any kind, by anybody,” said Ellen. She shook her head; she touched her damp tissue to her eyes.

  “Some people would say different,” I said. “Where’s Melrose?”

  “He’s in the house,” Ellen said. “This doesn’t concern him.”

  Melrose was going to be sleeping on the couch tonight, it looked like.

  “Here they come,” I said.

  From the door of Melrose and Ellen’s garage you could see up and down the road for a quarter mile each way. Now from both directions came blue lights, yellow lights, red lights — the whole Christmas tree. Trooper Timberlake saw them too. He got out of his patrol car, put his state trooper hat carefully on his head, and came up the driveway to stand with Ellen and me in the garage.

  First man on deck was Deputy Keen. No surprise there. He came fast from the left, overshot the driveway, braked hard, skidded, reversed at speed, and came up the driveway backward, spitting gravel. Lyle threw his door open, left his patrol car, and came toward the three of us with his sidearm out and ready for business, held in both hands, pointed away but not far away. When he got close enough to see us in the dark, “Sheriff?” he said.

  “Put up your weapon, Deputy,” I said. “We’re secure here.”

  “Where’s Superboy?”

  “He don’t appear to be on the premises,” I said.

  “The hell he don’t,” said Deputy Keen. “His dad called it in. He’s here. We can take him.”

  “That wasn’t his dad,” said Ellen. “That was my husband, Melrose.”

  Lyle looked from one to another of us. His mouth was hanging open. He was breathing hard. He still held his pistol two-handed, but now he had it pointed to the ground at his feet.

  “His dad’s dead,” said Ellen.

  “War hero,” said Trooper Timberlake. How did he know about that?

  “So what?” Deputy Keen said. “He’s here. He was here.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “He ain’t now. Put it up.”

  “If he ain’t, it’s because you let him walk,” said Lyle. He put his gun away. “You let him walk, because you either can’t or won’t do your job. Can’t or won’t. Which is it?”

  “You might want to go a little slow, here, Deputy,” said Trooper Timberlake. “You’re talking to your boss.”

  “My boss,” said Deputy Keen. He practically spat it. He turned on Timberlake. “You were here,” Lyle said. “You know what happened. You’re in it,
too. He let him walk. He let Superboy walk away. He was here, Superboy. You know he was.”

  Timberlake didn’t answer him. He looked at Lyle from under his broad, flat-brimmed trooper hat. Timberlake’s a good deal bigger and taller than Lyle. He had five inches to look down at the deputy, and he used all five of them.

  “You saw him, didn’t you?” Lyle demanded.

  Timberlake looked at him.

  “Didn’t you?” Lyle was practically shouting now.

  “Negative,” said Trooper Timberlake.

  13

  SIX RIGS AT THE ETHAN ALLEN

  Six vehicles were in the parking lot of the Ethan Allen Motel when I drove in. I looked for the big Mercedes that Logan Tracy rode in, but it wasn’t there.

  Six rigs.

  Tracy had called that Tuesday, in the afternoon before Sean had taken off. He wanted to meet — it was important. I told him, okay, I could be at the Russians’ place up on the mountain in an hour.

  “No,” said Tracy. “Not the house. I’m in the city. I’ll be up there tonight late. I’ll meet you someplace else tomorrow. Someplace quiet. Someplace private. Nowhere near the house.”

  I told him about the Ethan Allen, a big old place on Route 10, right at the county line. It had the reputation of being what they used to call a No-Tell Motel, but it was easy to find. Tracy was driving up from New York that night, he said. I met him about ten the next morning.

  Six rigs in the lot at the Ethan Allen.

  The Mercedes wasn’t there, and neither was Tracy’s slab of a driver, unless he was in the motel. He wasn’t. I found Tracy’s room, knocked on the door. Tracy opened the door a crack and peeked out, saw me, and practically pulled me off my feet into the room. He shut the door and locked it. Inside all the curtains were drawn.

  “Sheriff, you have got to find that kid,” Tracy started right in.

  “Good morning, Mr. Tracy,” I said.

  “This is not a game, Sheriff,” Tracy went on. “You have got to get that safe. I don’t mean soon. I mean now.”

  “Nice to see you again, too, Mr. Tracy.”

  “Don’t try to smoke me, Jack,” said Tracy. “You’ve got as much exposure in this thing as I have.”

  “Then how come I ain’t soiling my britches, like you?” I asked him.