Tales from the Nightside (13 page)

And me, I was too busy planning my campaign.

Why is it I wondered as I hurried outside, that men always seem to look at women as objects of a military campaign? As if they were instinctively the enemy, and we the brash young majors who would storm them into submission.

Ridiculous posturing, I thought as I stepped into the Franklin Inn. And yet I paused to allow my eyes adjustment as they scanned the faces of the luncheon customers: a throwback reaction to the days of my beat when I was the Wichita marshal seeking trouble and danger in the local saloon.

Immediately I realized what I was doing, however, I grinned and shook my head, moved hurriedly to the back-wall booth where Catherine was waiting.

Though she was the first one I’d called after my return three weeks before, I hadn’t had the nerve to see her until now. Slender, dark-haired still, aware that an inch of pancake no matter how artfully applied to a fifty-year-old face was always an inch of pancake. I’d been gone for nearly two years, and the measure of my fear of finding things changed sent my glance instantly to her left hand. Ringless. To her faintly red lips. Smiling. She half rose and I gallantly waved her down, snapped my fingers for a waitress and ordered our drinks without consultation.

“Is that the way they do it in France?” she said. She took a cigarette from her purse, screwed it into an amber filter and waited for me to light it. Not impatient. Bemused, because she knew it annoyed me when her match flared before mine.

“France, Belgium, Italia—they’re all the same to me,” I said in mock boredom.

“And the women,” she said.

“Scrawny, busty, no hips and no sense of humor.”

She pouted her sympathy. “Oh, poor Kit, he couldn’t pick one up, could he? You mean to say they weren’t impressed by your policeman’s record? Your exploits in the colonies?”

“More by the size of my traveler’s checks,” I said. “And I suppose you were similarly besieged? Dansworth pounding on your door, Falkner chasing you around your desk, Greshton cheating on his wife and holding secret trysts in a luxury motel?”

She nodded, and blew smoke into my face. “Take that, dirty old man.”

“Dirty, yes,” I said, and left the other unspoken. A finger reached out and traced a cross on the back of my hand. The waitress set down our order and, with a smile of recognition when I spoke to her by name, hurried off to leave us wrapped in the dim light, the dark wood, the quiet conversations that drifted without touching us. We were silent, and said much; we ate as though there could be no further intimacy. Wine, then, and we toasted.

“And how are things at the paper?” I asked. “The weekly scandals keeping you busy?”

She shrugged. Being secretary and jack-of-all-trades to the editor of a small-town newsheet, she once told me, wasn’t nearly as glamorous as being a hooker, but definitely more promising than hushing kids in a library.

“Well, I myself have a new job,” I said when she couldn’t offer me gossip. “I just saw Marve and he thought I’d make a great Chief of Police.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Yeah,” I said, and grinned. “Actually, he wants me to babysit a playground.”

“You don’t mean the one on Hawthorne Street?”

“That’s right! How’d you know that was the one?”

She fussed with the ashes of her cigarette, took a nervous puff and sent the smoke toward her lap. “Well, a lucky guess. It’s the only one I know of not watched by a school guard.” She faked a smile and brushed a strand of hair back behind one ear. “Aren’t you superstitious?”

“About what, a playground?”

“For God’s sake, Kit, haven’t you talked to anyone since you got back? Didn’t Marve tell you?”

I blinked stupidly and shook my head.

“Just around the time you came back,” she said, “one of the kids was murdered there.”

“Here? Murder?” My voice rose and I coughed to cover my embarrassment. Our community wasn’t pristine, but murder was something usually relegated to old maids’ nightmares. “A young boy, fifteen. He was found by his mother.”

“Jesus,” I whispered. “How?”

“I don’t know. Nobody’s talked. Chief Dansworth had the mother and the body out of there before anyone knew what had happened. All he gave the paper was a statement.”

My first reaction was suspicious disbelief. In all the time I’d worked for him, Danny had never held anything back from anyone with a vested interest in police work. That he was refusing cooperation with Falkner’s admittedly minor newspaper seemed not only out of character, it was just plain wrong. But he did it, and was doing it, and Falkner was apparently willing to wait. It must have been a particularly brutal slaying, however, because not even the coroner was willing to discuss the condition of the body.

“Dumb,” I said finally. “Danny knows better than to act that way. Maybe if I went—”

Catherine smiled tolerant encouragement, like a pat on the head. “It’s over,” she said. “The family’s moved to New England and, as far as I can tell, your former cellmates are only going through the motions, praying for a miracle. You, on the other hand, are going back on the front lines, and you’d better get in shape.” She stared pointedly at my stomach, which, while not quite barreled yet, was at last hinting in that direction.

“No problem,” I said, slapping my chest and flexing my biceps. “I can still handle any kid who wants to test my reputation. But now I know why Marve wants me to carry something.”

“Something?” she said. “What’s that mean?”

“For Marve, it could mean anything from a tank to a derringer,”

I could see she wanted to second the motion, but I forestalled her by rising and holding her coat while she slipped into it. We walked, then, until it was time for her to return to the office, and at our parting she made me promise to call her that night.

And every night though she wouldn’t say it

Nice girl, I thought as I headed for home; and I must have been smiling because people kept giving me the oddest looks as they passed me.

2

I wasn’t supposed to start work until the weekend was over, but a light Sunday rain turned the hours into years and I fled the house before I began screaming. I walked, to renew my acquaintance with the neighborhood, my old beat the stores downtown. And though I didn’t know precisely what to expect I was rather disappointed that nothing drastic had altered. A few new houses here and there, two shops replaced by two others—but otherwise I could have just slept for two weeks for all that the traveling did to make things different.

Disappointed, then, but oddly pleased that I had no more culture shocks to absorb as I slipped back into my living.

And not surprisingly, I ended up on Hawthorne Street

The playground was small, a couple of acres on a comer, surrounded by a twelve-foot cyclone fence, bordered by woodland on the two sides not touched by streets. In its center were a half-dozen oaks so rich in their foliage the green looked like cloud, and their shadows midnight. At the base of the trees the earth had been undisturbed except to admit a concrete bench, but the rest of the area had been paved over with a blacktop supposedly softer to land on; somehow, though, a skinned knee tinged with dirt was more natural than a tom elbow with bits of black clinging to it. Progress, I thought and turned my attention to the far-rear comer and the swings and slides, jungle gyms and seesaws; they had been painted recently and mocked the sun in their gaiety, and seemed rather pathetic without children clambering all over them. The remainder of the area was open. For baseball, I supposed, and touch and those screaming games of tag that jar your nerves and make you want to join rather than leave them.

Then I stepped closer to the fence.

There was a lone sliding board beyond the swings, one of many but the only one that faced directly into the comer. Mats of some kind had been fastened to the fence, battered now by the weather and the kids who charged down the metal slope and slammed into their protection. Some mother’s idea, no doubt, to keep her fragile son from jamming his head between the links. I grinned, turned for home, and saw four children walking quickly toward me.

Now, two years is a millennium when children are growing, but I didn’t need help recognizing these; and they knew me right away. The eldest was Darlene the redhead, followed like a entourage by Miffy the brunette, Tim the freckled and finally, lagging as usual and vociferous about it, Stevie—who spent more time biting people’s legs than his meals. They were glad to see me, and I them—they’d been regular features on my beat since the day each had been born. We grew up together, so to speak, and they were laughing when they ran up to hug me.

Now, dammit, I thought as I crouched to receive them, leaned back against the fence to consider the smiles and the grins and the giggles they gave me—now, dammit, I’m home!

“How do you like our place?” Darlene said. As scrawny as the others, if it hadn’t been for her Celtic green eyes I would have sworn she was a boy.

“Your place?” I said. “That’s funny, but I thought everyone could use it.”

“Anybody can,” Tim said from behind his freckles. “If we let them.”

“Oh, now that’s really big of you,” I said, poking at Steve, who was eyeing my thigh. “And I suppose you charge a fee, right? Come on, now, I know you better. You make the little kids give you pennies, right?”

“Not me,” Steve said.

“You they wouldn’t dare touch or you’d eat them for lunch,” I laughed, and he darted behind Miffy’s back, peered around her and grinned with his thumb in his mouth.

“How come you’re here?” asked Darlene.

“Who, me? Well, I like the swings.”

“You’re too big,” Miffy said, and pushed at my arm.

“Well, maybe. Actually, I’m going to be working here starting tomorrow.”

“You can’t work here,” said Tim. “There’s nothing to do.”

“Sure there is. I’m going to beat you guys up when you get into trouble.”

“Are you going to be a cop again?” Miffy asked, wide-eyed and tugging at Darlene’s elbow. “Are you going to arrest people?”

“Only if they try to steal from you,” I said. “Nope, just keep an eye on things is all. Like I used to.”

“But Mr. Craig, how—”

A faint shouting distracted us. I rose, stiffly, and looked through the oak stand to a group of boys no older than seventeen scaling the fence. The first one to reach the ground began tossing a football into the air, laughing and waving at his friends. Dressed as I was in civilian clothes, I didn’t think any orders of mine to vacate the place would be appreciated, much less obeyed, so I only watched until I knew I’d recognize them again if I saw them on the street On the street.

Come on, Christopher, I scolded myself; you’re no more a policeman now than the sun is the moon.

It was a bad feeling. Like looking over your shoulder and W' finding a fine-edged knife protruding from your spine.

I hunched my shoulders and turned to leave, stopped when I saw Darlene and the others leaning against the fence. If looks could kill, I thought.

“You kids interested in some ice cream or something?”

They declined without looking up. I shrugged and tried to console them by explaining that things like this invasion wouldn’t happen again while I was on the job. “They have their own places to mess with, don’t worry. When they see Tm back they won’t bother you, okay?”

They said nothing.

“Okay?”

“Okay,” said Darlene, took Stevie by the hand and led them all away. I watched as they rounded the comer, keeping close to the fence, then vanished beyond the trees. I stayed for a few minutes longer to watch the game, feeling my muscles tense and relax as passes were caught, end runs were made, touchdowns sent them into screaming hysterics. Their language wasn’t the language I remembered using at their age, but then nothing is the same when you outgrow a playground.

Finally, stomach growling, I left for the roast I had simmering in the oven. Something about the group disturbed me, but I didn’t realize what it was until I had cleaned up after eating. There had been five of the boys, and for some inexplicable and unpleasant reason, I knew without proof that they were incomplete. I wish I’d known why then, but one of die boys was missing.

And when I mentioned it, laughingly, to Marve a few days later, he nodded thoughtfully. And not without some guilt.

“Gary George,” he said. “He was part of that long-haired mob.”

“Was?”

“I thought you knew already. He was killed a few weeks ago, right there in the playground.”

I kicked myself for forgetting what Catherine had told me, but when I pressed him for more details he was evasive and told me it was over and done. One of those small-town tragedies that never seem to be solved.

“But how is the job?” he said. “Not too difficult for your feet, I hope.”

“If you’re subtly and cleverly asking me if Im still in shape to keep standing all day, then don’t worry. I’m doing just fine. Besides, I use the bench a lot Read, and it’s right where I can see everything that’s going on.”

“No problems?”

“Come on, Marve, what the hell kind of problems could I have? Look, this whole job is featherbedding and you know it. There are more mothers there than kids. More carriages than I’ve seen in my whole life. Listen, those women can out- scream the whole damned police department when it comes to spotting a kid even thinking about doing something wrong.”

“All right all right,” he said. “Don’t get excited.”

I wasn’t, and I told him so, and we finished our dinner, had a few more drinks and went back to his house to get drunk on the sofa.

Just like the old days.

When one of us was young.

3

So passed July and August and the first three weeks of September.

Catherine and I saw each other several times a week, usually for dinner and a drive to the movies. It was a drifting game we were playing, and a purposeful one—the widow and the widower still clinging to their prime. Sooner or later we’d steady the current and stop at Marve’s office so he could say the words. Sooner or later. In the meantime, however, we drifted and gossiped and remembered with lessening pain the way it had been with spouses long gone.