The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy Page 11

  “Far fucking out!” cried the other.

  “I think he just called me a faggot,” one guy grunted, with acute Beavian logic.

  “I think he did, too,” his friend muttered.

  All of them were growing hard-eyed now. They knew when they were being dissed, free beer or not.

  “Thor,” I cautioned. “Now wouldn’t be a good time to do this.”

  “Nonsense,” he huffed. “We have nothing to fear from these little lonnie limp dicks.”

  “Watch your mouth, pops,” snarled a hulking kid in a flannel shirt and jeans.

  “Or what, you little twit?” Thor snarled back. “You’ll punch me? Go right ahead. This I’d pay cash money to see!” Not that he had any cash money. He swaggered down the bar toward the kid, his hands loose at his sides. A man on a quest, all right. He was trying to prove to himself he was still rough and tough. He was also, I was well aware, trying to duck my questions. “Or what, pussy boy?” he jeered, shoving the kid in the chest.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” the kid warned. His face reddened.

  “Or what?” Thor shoved him again. “Tell me what you’ll do. Go on, tell me.”

  “This guy’s mouth needs shutting,” the boy threatened, clenching his fists angrily.

  “Think you’re the man for the job, do ya?!” screamed Thor, going face to face with him. His eyes blazed. Sweat glistened on his bald dome. “C’mon, pussy, show me what you’ve got.”

  “All right, cool it!” ordered Slim Jim, coming out from behind the bar with a baseball bat. “Leave the man alone, Kirk.”

  “He’s the one’s hassling me!” Kirk protested.

  Thor shoved him again, backing him up against the jukebox.

  “I don’t want to fight you, old man,” Kirk warned between gritted teeth.

  “I may be old,” bellowed Thor, “but I’m still twice the man you’ll ever be. Christ, boy, don’t you have any capacity for human outrage? Don’t you know you have the right to remain violent? Don’t you even know when someone’s calling you a worthless piece of dogshit to your face?!”

  Three of Kirk’s husky friends were edging toward Thor now, jaws and fists clenched. If Kirk didn’t want a piece of him, they did.

  Slim Jim turned to me. “Mister, get him out of here right now or I’m calling the trooper.”

  “C’mon, Thor. You’re already violating your parole by being in here. You don’t want to get in a fight or they’ll send you back.”

  Kirk’s eyes widened. “You been doing time?”

  Thor let out a laugh. “No, he’s just playing mind games with you.”

  “He’s right, I am,” I admitted. “Unfortunately, it takes two to play.” I tossed some money on the bar. “Let’s go, Thor. These guys are twenty years younger than I am. They’ll kill us both.”

  Lulu certainly knew this. She was already halfway out the door.

  But Thor wouldn’t budge. “Not until this here boy gets up on his hind legs and howls.”

  “Call me crazy but I don’t think he’s going to.” Indeed, I think at that point we had a better chance of getting ol’ Kirk to dress up in a red velvet dress with white stockings, a garter belt and matching pumps. “So let’s go.”

  But by now a half dozen of them were circling us.

  By now I realized we weren’t going anywhere.

  Kirk moved first, charging Thor and ramming him into the bar, fists digging into his ribs. Someone grabbed my arms from behind me. Someone else punched me in the nose, which immediately went numb. And then in the stomach, which didn’t. I struggled free and did a little damage. I know I hit someone square in the mouth. And I know Lulu, the noted barroom brawler, had her jaws clamped around one kid’s ankle, snarling like a stuffed animal possessed. But I’d have to say the three of us were, well, getting killed. Until, that is, one kid jumped in on our side.

  Dwayne Gobble was a fearless scrapper. He punched, he kicked, he hurled guys bodily over the pool table. “C’mon, Mr. Gibbs,” he gasped, pulling Thor from the fray. “Man of your stature shouldn’t be mixed up in this shit.”

  “Wait, what about a man of my stature?” I wanted to know.

  I can’t tell you if Dwayne answered me or not, because that was when Slim Jim knocked my head clean over the left-field fence with his Louisville Slugger and the crowd cheered and they turned off all the lights in the stadium. When I came to I was lying out in the gravel parking lot with blood on my shirt and Cole Slawski standing over me looking most imposing and certainly no more than twelve feet tall.

  Actually, Lyme’s resident state trooper was a chiseled six-feet-six, not counting his broad-brimmed, rather silly hat. And he was a celebrity anywhere he went in the state of Connecticut. He’d been a swingman on UConn’s 1990 dream team, the one that would have made it to the Final Four if Duke’s Christian Laettner hadn’t drained that buzzer beater and broken the entire state’s heart. Tate George and Scottie Burrell were the stars of that team, Slawski a scrapper with no outside shot who played tough defense and hustled after every rebound and loose ball. Not a lot of natural talent but a world of desire and blah, blah, blah—all the usual coach-speak you hear when they’re trying to say something nice about the white kid who comes in off the bench. Except Cole wasn’t white. He was black. And his name wasn’t Cole. It was Tyrone. Until, that is, ESPN’s resident genius, Chris Berman, dubbed him Tyrone “Cole” Slawski one night on SportsCenter and it stuck. Not that Slawski was what you’d call much of a kidder. He looked like he’d tried to smile exactly once in his entire life, when he was perhaps three, and didn’t like it and vowed never, ever to do it again. The man had a pair of hot coals for eyes and shoulders out to here and a nineteen-inch waist. His uniform, of two contrasting shades of muck, looked like it been painted on. It was somewhat unusual to have a black resident trooper in such a rural part of the state, but Slawski was a big hit. Not just because he was a former basketball star but because he was bright, efficient, courteous and fair. Everything you’d want in a resident trooper or scoutmaster. He had everyone’s respect. He also had a master’s in criminology and ambitions to move up. As was standard throughout the state, the community provided one half of his salary and a house. Slawski’s was a snug, two-hundred-year-old cottage across the road from Lyme Town Hall, where he lived alone.

  Unless you counted his K-9 Corps partner, a 135-pound German shepherd who was even more no-nonsense than he was. Lulu, the little flirt, was yapping at the four-legged officer girlishly. He just stood there at Slawski’s heel, ignoring her big-time. Probably preferred tawny, long-legged show bitches. Or maybe he just didn’t go for girls who got in bar fights in the middle of the day.

  “Will you be requiring the services of an ambulance?” he barked at me. Slawski, not his partner.

  I shook my head, which was a big mistake. Something rattled around in there, like it does inside an aerosol paint can.

  Thor and Dwayne were over leaning against Slawski’s kidney-colored Ford Crown Victoria cruiser. Dwayne’s shirt was torn to shreds and Thor had lost himself another tooth. But both of them seemed to be in better shape than I was. In fact, Thor seemed positively juiced, laughing and crowing like a boy.

  The Lost Boys were crowded into Slim Jim’s doorway, watching us. Especially watching Slawski, who got down on one knee so as to look me over. My head wasn’t bleeding. My nose was.

  Lulu was still trying to turn his partner’s head. She was over on her back now, dabbing at the air with her paws. It was a shameless display, really. I know I was embarrassed for her.

  “What’s his name?” I asked Slawski hoarsely.

  “Whose?” he asked, frowning at me.

  “Your partner.”

  “Klaus.”

  “Klaus?”

  “You got some particular degree of difficulty with that?” he demanded, his voice booming and most authoritative.

  “Not at all. Klaus is a nice name. Aryan.”

  “It’s a dumb name. Fool trainer give it t
o him.” He glanced down at Lulu irritably. “She may as well knock that off. He’s a trained police officer. Won’t pay her no mind while he’s on duty.”

  “What about when he’s off duty?”

  Slawski climbed back up to his full height and took off his hat and examined the brim. He wore his hair in a high-top fade that looked like it had been shaped with a T square. “Why, you looking to mate her?”

  Lulu gulped and let out a whimper. She’d witnessed firsthand what Merilee went through—and that was to produce a litter of merely one.

  “I just thought maybe they could get together sometime. She’s going through a rather rough transition, and she doesn’t know many dogs out here who she can relate to.”

  “Uh-huh.” Slawski gave me a knowing nod. “Okay, I done heard about you.” Ah, yes. One of the non-joys of small town life. Everyone knows you—or thinks they do. “You’re that writer dude’s married to Miss Nash. Got you a farmlike configuration up off Joshua Town, all the time goofing on people and talking piffle.”

  “Piffle? I didn’t know anyone still used that word.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot you don’t know. Like how to behave yourself in public. That goes for you, too, Mr. Gibbs,” he added, raising his voice for Thor’s benefit. “Don’t know how you figure into this but—”

  “He started it,” I said.

  “Now don’t you be passing the blame off on some old man,” the trooper fumed.

  “No, no, he’s absolutely correct, officer,” Thor said. “It’s all my fault—if you wish to call it that.”

  “What you call it?” demanded Slawski, peering at him.

  “An awakening,” Thor answered, beaming.

  Slawski turned back to me, perplexed.

  “And you thought I was the weird one,” I said.

  “They’re fast asleep,” Thor explained, gesturing to them. They were still crowded there in the doorway, yucking it up. Although when Cole looked their way they grew silent. “I was trying to wake them up.”

  “You was chumping them down’s what you was doing,” Slawski said with frosty disapproval. “Except you picked the wrong bunch. Half of them just got laid off over at Electric Boat and they’re itching to get in a knuck game with someone. I’m in a serious avoidance mode regarding this particular situation, Mr. Gibbs.” The man was positively fluent in cop-speak. Most impressive. “Folks in town don’t want to see them awake. And I don’t want to see you in here again, either of you. I hear you are, I’ll throw your sagging gray butts in jail. Understood?”

  “My sagging butt happens to be pink,” I pointed out defensively.

  “Understood?” he repeated, louder.

  I said I understood. “Any chance you could keep Thor’s name out of your report, Trooper? He’s trying to keep a low profile.”

  “He’s got a funny way of showing it,” Slawski snarled. “You got somebody can drive you home?”

  “I can drive,” I assured him. “I only had one beer.”

  “And one conk on the head,” Slawski reminded me. “No way.”

  “I’ll run ’em home,” Dwayne offered, hitching up his sagging jeans. “I didn’t have nothing to drink.”

  The trooper eyed Dwayne’s stitched-up face and torn shirt dubiously, Dwayne growing more and more resentful the longer the lawman scrutinized him. Slawski went over to him and sniffed his breath. Grudgingly, he said okay. Then he put his hat back on, straightened his shoulders and started toward the gang in the doorway. They backed inside, cowed.

  We piled into Dwayne’s pickup, brimming with testosterone, and took off around Rogers Lake for home. The truck rode very high and bouncy. The interior was strewn with beer cans, junk food wrappers and dirty laundry. It was as if the kid lived, ate and slept in the damned thing. Thor rode in the middle, clutching his broken tooth in his big hand. Lulu got to ride in back with the scrap lumber and tools just like a real country dog, one of those big retrievers named Travis or Justin that chase Frisbees and have no allergies. It was a real thrill for her, almost enough to make up for Klaus blowing her off. But not quite. Trust me, a father knows these things.

  “Good thing you stepped in when you did, Dwayne,” Thor declared. “No telling when I might have hurt someone.”

  Dwayne’s eyes flickered across him at me, then back out at the road. “I got no use for them dumb shits.”

  “Still, it wasn’t your fight,” I put in.

  “Anytime Kirk and them are involved it’s my fight,” Dwayne said, his jaw muscles hardening. “Been mixing it up with them guys since I’m ten years old. They’re ignorant and close-minded and mean. Gave me hell over my mom. If I was you I’d watch out for ’em. They hold a grudge. And they smoke that shit, that illy.”

  “Illy?” Thor asked.

  “It’s new,” I answered. “Marijuana soaked in embalming fluid.”

  “Good Lord,” gasped Thor. “That sounds … great.”

  “It’s not,” warned Dwayne. “It’s bad, dangerous shit. Makes you crazy—violent crazy. Like getting dusted, only worse.”

  “You’ve tried it?” I asked him.

  He glanced at me uneasily. I was, after all, his employer. “Maybe once or twice.”

  “Good man,” Thor said approvingly. “You should try everything in this world once or twice.”

  “Do they buy it around here?” I wondered.

  “No way, Mr. H,” Dwayne replied. “Not as long as Slawski’s around. He can spot a dealer a mile away. Have to go to New Haven you want illy.” He punched his cigarette lighter, fished a bent Camel out of his shirt pocket and lit it. “Wasting your breath on them boys, Mr. Gibbs, you want my opinion. All they care about’s their next paycheck. Give ’em six cold ones and some wet pussy on Saturday night and they’re happy.”

  “No, they’re not, boy,” Thor countered. “They think they are, but they’re not.”

  Dwayne furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “I guess maybe they don’t realize they have the power to reach for more, like you say.”

  “And so,” Thor added somberly, “they gulp their beers in sullen silence and they drug themselves and every once in a while they erupt in spasms of frustrated violence. Because they are men, and deep down in their wild selves, they cannot accept limits. Cannot accept unhappiness. Men must act, Dwayne. It is in our nature to act.”

  “To act,” Dwayne recited, as if he were trying to memorize it. “To act.”

  Merilee was working in the garden when we pulled up, Tracy next to her in her buggy. Clethra was sprawled in an Adirondack chair looking supremely bored. Merilee gave me her fiercest stare when she saw my bloody nose. It was practically enough to turn me into a pillar of salt.

  Clethra, however, lit up. “I’m, like, what’d you guys do?” she squealed, jumping excitedly to her feet.

  “Kicked some butt, girl,” Thor boasted, offering her his tooth like it was a trophy cup.

  She took it, thrilled. He went inside to wash up.

  I asked her if she’d mind driving back to Slim Jim’s with Dwayne to fetch the Land Rover. No problem. She hopped in and I tossed her the keys and off the two of them went down the driveway, music thumping from his stereo. Dwayne had not, I realized, played it when we were with him. This made me feel even creakier than I already did.

  I went upstairs and climbed into a hot tub, which I seemed to be doing a lot of on this particular non-assignment. Merilee came up a few minutes later with an ice pack for my nose and a brandy and soda for the rest of me.

  Plus a few choice words: “Look at you.”

  “I’d really rather not,” I said.

  “You know what you look like?”

  “I’d really rather not.”

  “An aging patrician club fighter who’s taken one punch too many.”

  “Looks are not deceiving.”

  “What is this, some kind of guy thing?”

  “Some kind.”

  “Are you happy now?”

  “I’m not unhappy.”

  “
And why is Lulu acting so weird?”

  “Weird how?”

  “She just growled at me from under the bed.”

  “Oh. She may have met someone, that’s all.”

  “Do you suppose it’s for real this time?”

  “I doubt it. He’s a cop.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  I shifted my ice pack and had a sip of the brandy. “I thought we’d go to Essex tomorrow.”

  Merilee froze, startled. “Essex?”

  “We may have to make one or two stops along the way, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said carefully.

  We were silent a moment. She was gazing at me, her green eyes brimming with tears.

  “What is it, Merilee?”

  “Nothing, darling,” she sniffled, swiping at them.

  “Tomorrow is Sunday, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, darling,” she said gently, squeezing my hand with hers. “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  Five

  WE CROSSED THE CONNECTICUT River at Hadlyme on the little car ferry that steamed back and forth there in the shadow of Gillette’s Castle, that immense, storybook rock pile built by William Gillette, the actor who popularized Sherlock Holmes on the Broadway stage at the turn of the century. From there it was a short jog down to Essex, which was the prettiest village in the area, and my least favorite. Too quaint, too precious, too much. Clethra rode next to me in the front seat of the Woody with her sunglasses on, even though the morning was gray and drizzly. She was tapping her foot, wringing her hands, dying for a cigarette. But this was a no-smoking car—Tracy was riding directly behind her in her baby seat, Merilee next to her. Lulu was behind them in back, grumbling sourly. She hates the whole suburban dog thing. Hates it.

  We drove in tense silence. This was Sunday, a day for deception, for intrigue, for treachery. A day for family, in other words. First, I’d had to arrange the clandestine meeting between Clethra and Arvin. This had meant taking Barry into my confidence and keeping Ruth completely in the dark—Clethra did not, repeat not, wish to see Ruth. Barry’s assignment was to take Arvin out with him to buy the Sunday papers. On their way back, they would decide to stop for breakfast at Debbie’s Diner, which would explain why they were gone for an hour or more. We would drop Clethra there on our way to my own personal hell. She and Arvin would have breakfast together. Barry would get lost. And Marco, who was in on the plot, would feed and entertain Ruth back at Barry’s house. Barry would then pick up Arvin and take him back home, and we would do the same with Clethra on our own way back home.