Cul-de-Sac (6 page)

Camel tried always to follow these and other rules, what he would or wouldn’t do … as complicated as chivalry, with Camel keeping the book on what was wrong, what was right.

Going back into the other room and slipping under the covers with Annie would be wrong, Camel knew this instinctively … though if Annie came through the connecting door right now and took him by the hand and led him back to bed, he would accompany her joyously, without second thought. He wasn’t sure what the difference was, why going to her uninvited struck him as the act of a man who couldn’t be taken seriously, yet
following
her to bed wouldn’t break any of his rules. All this was tied up with what
happened between them fourteen years ago and had very little to do with the legal fact that Annie was married.

Camel used to have affairs with married women, though not for several years now … not since his affair with a woman who would make love to him only in the bed she and her husband used. As soon as the husband left for a business trip the woman would contact Camel. When Camel arrived at her house she’d always make a point of mentioning, her eyes flashing when she spoke, “I didn’t change the sheets.” As if this should arouse him the way it did her.

One evening the husband called while Camel and the woman were in coitus. She picked up the bedside phone and carried on a conversation with her husband. She talked about ordinary things, she asked the husband how his flight was, did he have a nice room, the meeting go okay … and all the while she’s on top of Camel, moving back and forth on him, rubbing her breasts for him to watch, pulling on a nipple harder than he would’ve dared, keeping her eyes locked on his.

Toward the end of the conversation she leaned forward and placed her left hand on the pillow next to Camel’s head, her right hand still holding the phone, breasts hanging just above Camel’s chest … then she brought her face close to his so that her lips were almost touching his mouth, the woman wide-eyed when she told her husband on the phone, “I love you.”

After hanging up she fucked Camel the way a man sometimes will a woman, hard and fast to reach a conclusion … and Camel knew he was incidental, whatever was going on here existed between the woman and her husband.

Camel never saw her again after that, made excuses why he couldn’t come over the next time her husband was out of town. The woman didn’t seem brokenhearted but the incident continued to fill Camel with a sense of wrongness … not regret or guilt but a sense that what had happened simply wasn’t right. Camel couldn’t explain even to himself the difference between fucking the guy’s wife while he’s out of town and unaware of it
or
fucking the guy’s wife while he’s out of town and unaware of it and on the
phone with her … but he knew in ways he couldn’t articulate that the incident had crossed some line he didn’t want to be over. Just as he was instinctively sure that getting into bed with Annie would turn out wrong, would not be the act of a serious man.

He hadn’t met with much success in his life, didn’t have a good marriage and his career went bad there toward the end when it really counts, he was estranged from his daughter, he was broke and had sold his car … but if you asked anyone who knew him even those who didn’t particularly like him, to a person they’d tell you he was a serious man.

To ensure Annie wouldn’t be disturbed by the calls he’d be making Camel closed the door between his two offices. The door had frosted glass in its top half so Camel could see if Annie woke up and turned on a light.

First call was to Michael Neffering, Eddie’s boy who’s a real estate broker … Camel asking Michael if he could research a piece of property called Cul-De-Sac, find out its history and if the property had ever been connected to anything criminal. Michael said he’d call back within the hour.

After several other calls Camel returned to check on Annie who still slept soundly. He wondered what she would think of the way he lived … in this room with daybed, hotplate, TV, microwave, half-size refrigerator, sink, cutting-board countertop, bookshelves, table and two chairs, recliner with footrest in front of it and a floor lamp behind, one corner of the room drywalled in to enclose the commode and shower. Maybe she’d think he’d mastered the art of low overhead.

Annie’s face was plain in repose, it was animation that sparked whatever beauty she owned, the way she worked a smile up and down like window shades letting in sunlight, the way she flashed those blue green eyes like headlights going on and off high beams … that’s how Camel had always thought of her, light to his dark.

When the telephone rang he slipped out of the room and softly shut the door … it was Michael Neffering calling back to tell Camel the Cul-De-Sac property had been in and out of the courts
for as far back as he could trace. One entanglement over ownership came about because a person who would’ve inherited a one-third interest in Cul-De-Sac was convicted of murder.

Camel started taking notes.

“The victim,” Michael continued, “was a minor, Hope Penner, who owned one-third of Cul-De-Sac, an interest that would’ve gone to her cousin, Donald Growler, except he’s the one who killed her.”

“What’s that name again?”

“It’s spelled
G-r-o-w-l-e-r
, I don’t know if that’s pronounced Growler or Growl-er. The way it ended up, the girl’s share went to J. L. Penner who owned the other two-thirds of the property and who was the uncle to both the victim and the killer.”

“You said this Hope Penner was a minor.”

“Yes … seventeen when she was killed. The uncle, J. L. Penner, died last year, his estate has been in probate ever since but I guess it got settled recently because it says here that Cul-De-Sac was sold a month ago to a couple from North Carolina, Paul and Ann Milton.”

Camel asked Michael if he had any details on the murder … where it occurred or what the motive was.

“No, nothing like that in these files. A few other names are mentioned though. Lawrence Rainey and Judith Rainey, a married couple who worked for J. L. Penner and were left a small sum in his will. Elizabeth Rockwell was executrix.”

Camel asked if he had phone numbers and addresses, Michael said he was sorry but no.

“Mikey does anything in your files mention
elephant
.”

“Mention what?”

“Elephant.”

“As in Dumbo or pink or what?”

“As in I don’t know. A reference to elephant came up, I’m not sure how it connects to anything.”

“What’re you working on?”

“Mikey, Mikey.”

“I should know better than to ask?”

“Right.”

“No elephants, Teddy.”

“Okay.”

“You see the old man today?”

“Every day.”

“He and mom are coming over for dinner tonight, why don’t you come with them?”

“Love to Mikey but I can’t, not tonight.”

“Soon then.”

“Absolutely. Thanks for the information.”

Camel got on the phone to people he knew and three hours later had pieced it together: Seven years ago J. L. Penner, his niece Hope Penner, and his nephew Donald Growler were living at Cul-De-Sac. The niece was seventeen, a young lady who liked to party hard. The nephew was twenty-six, a handsome (his teeth were normal) but strange young man who kept a collection of severed animal heads in his room. Apparently the cousins were having an affair that turned bad, Donald Growler killing Hope Penner and using an axe to cut off her head which he then placed on a shelf in his room at Cul-De-Sac.

Camel went back to check on Annie who was still asleep. The blanket had slipped off her shoulders revealing an abundance of freckles, Camel remembering some of them individually. He gently pulled back that dark red hair to see if her ears still stuck out the way they did when he first met her and Camel was twenty-five years old and Annie Locken was ten.

“Dromedary or Bactrian?” She demanded upon being introduced to Mr. Camel. Her mother said be nice but the precocious girl was already launching a bubbly lecture on what she’d learned in school about the one-humped dromedary camel and the two-humped Bactrian camel, how they store fat not water in their humps, “bet you didn’t know that,” and have a double row of eyelashes to protect their eyes from sandstorms and they can also close their nostrils completely shut, “I bet you can’t.”

Camel considered this a moment then squeezed his nostrils with forefinger and thumb.

“Without using your hands!” she squealed, bending forward to laugh, covering her mouth, going red in the face … Annie’s mother telling her with little effect to settle down.

Camel was out of the army and recently hired by the D.C. police force as a uniformed patrolman. Friends had invited him down to their beach house on Cape Hatteras along with other of their friends, people he didn’t know, everyone assembling for a four-day weekend … eleven in all, six adults and five children (four boys and one Annie Locken).

She was buoyant, funny, curious, and self-aware, bouncing between arrogance and vulnerability, trying out varieties and possibilities
of who she wanted to be. At age ten Annie was all arms and legs, monkeylike and coltish, she had a long neck, she had little ears that stuck straight out and proved useful to keep her hair away from her face, finger-hooking dark red tresses behind those protruding ears which then held as securely as barrettes. Her eyes were blue and green, she was liberally freckled.

No one who knew Annie as a child would claim innocence on her behalf, at least not an innocence that means free from guile, unaware of effect. Rather, her considerable charm arose from what often is mistaken for innocence: a lack of complication. When she was happy she bounced up and down and laughed with big eyes and snorted through her little nose, she clapped her hands. Hurt, Annie wept openly and with a depth of feeling that made it seem she would never stop weeping … until it didn’t hurt anymore, then tears were gone, forgotten, traceless. Angry, her face clouded and her brows knit and her thin lips drew tight … Annie could’ve been modeling for an illustration in an anthropological text on classic human facial expressions. Asked a tough question, she would scrunch up her face and from the corner of her mouth a tongue tip would peak.

When the beach-house children played games that weekend Annie was guardian of the rules, chooser of sides, arbiter of out and safe. She was famous for making the boys cry … she’d get them down in the sand and force them to say uncle. Perhaps out of character for such a tomboy she preferred wearing dresses and in fact Camel never saw her in jeans or shorts. But she was always coming back to the beach house with those dresses torn and dirty, her hands and face looking as though she’d been working with coal. Annie’s mother would send her from the dinner table to wash, Annie returning to fall wide-eyed upon barbecued chicken as if she were more than hungry for it, she was enraged that food was out there on a plate instead of in her belly where it clearly belonged. As she ate, barbecue sauce stained her mouth then up around her cheeks until she resembled a vampire well fed.

The day’s play would scuff Annie’s knees and palms, when her mother immersed her in the evening bath you could hear Annie
throughout the house screeching from the effect of water and soap on cut and scrape … but after that bath Annie would come out clean and flanneled to sit among the adults, usually close to Teddy Camel, and apply a fresh set of Band-Aids in a performance of care and self-admiration to match any woman adorning herself with jewelry.

She had a crush on him, Camel was a policeman and also there was about the man some dark gravity that tugged at a girl so full of light and bounce. She would come loping up from the beach and spot Teddy in the group of adults and beeline for him to throw herself salt-wet upon his lap, draping an orangutany arm around his neck.

Her mother would tell her to stop pestering him.

“He doesn’t mind,” Annie would say … then look hard with predator-narrowed eyes at Camel and demand, “Do you?”

He would reply that her mother was right, she was a pest, and Annie would stick her tongue out, then run away to terrorize the boys who always stood when she came around, junior officers in the presence of their superior.

Her mother would say to Camel, “She’s in love with you.”

“I’m in love with her too,” he’d reply.

No one took it wrong and Camel’s actions with the girl were always correct. They went together for seashore walks and one evening they sat on the beach as the sun set behind them, Camel and Annie watching the sea change its mind from bright invitation to dark warning. On these times alone with her he never spoke to Annie or touched her in ways he wouldn’t have done in her mother’s presence, or her father’s had he been alive, yet Camel felt strangely on guard whenever he was with Annie as if one part of himself sat in watchful judgment of another part.

Early in his career as a D.C. patrolman he had aided in the arrest of a man in his mid-thirties, a long-necked hillbilly being charged with having sexual intercourse with a girl of twelve. Camel kept an eye on him at the station house while paperwork was being assembled. The man lined up words in his head … and
when he finally got them straight, he said, “I didn’t exactly rape her you know.”

Camel told him to save it for the detectives.

“You don’t understand how it was. She’s always coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel that don’t quite reach, always running around in her underwear … wanting to wrestle with me.” He pronounced it
rassle
. “I even told her, ‘Hey, I’m your mom’s boyfriend, not yours.’ Didn’t do no good, she’d come in my bedroom in the morning, her mother already off to work, and she’d ask me could I do up the back of her dress and she—”

Camel told him he didn’t want to hear it.

The man nodded in total agreement. “Ain’t nobody going to want to hear it, I know that … I
know
it.”

Camel held the man in utter, violent contempt as he continued his pathetic plea: “Ain’t nobody … no cop, no judge, no jury … nobody going to want to hear how that innocent little girl would come crawling into my bed when her mom wasn’t at home, wearing nothing but panties and little training bra, asking me to rub her back. Twelve years old, okay … but she’s got titties and she gets her period and—”