The Mortal Groove (32 page)

“Well, that sure got a rise.”

“You've . . . kidnapped my son?” said Ray, feeling dazed. “Let's say I borrowed him for a while. Listen fast, Mr. Wannabe Governor. Your daughter and her friend have been poking their noses into matters that don't concern them. Gunderson started it all, so I had to take her out. Or I tried. Everybody has a bad day, know what I mean? Now that I got Peter, I believe your cooperation will follow. I need some time to get all my ducks in a row without the cops getting in my way. If you all don't keep your mouths shut, if you go to the cops about this or anything else that has to do with me, well, you may never see handsome young Petey again. It's really no skin off my nose. I'll erase him. You'll never find the body.”

“You hurt rny son and I'll—”

“You'll what, Mr. Hot Shit? Kill me?” He laughed. “That son of yours is a little soft, if you want my opinion. He needs hardening up. Don't worry. I'll make a good soldier out of him. You won't even recognize him when you get him back.
If
you get him back.”

“What do you want?” said Jane. She sounded frantic. “Anything. Money? Drugs? Just name it. I'll give you anything I have if you'll just let him go.”

“Sorry. But no thanks.”

“You can have
me.
We'll make a switch. I'd be a lot more fun, wouldn't I? I'm sure you'd like to torture a woman.”

“Now that ain't nice. And besides, I made Randy a promise. I said I wouldn't touch you or Cordelia. I swore on our friendship, the only thing that means anything to me in this rotten fucking world. Otherwise, yeah, you would have been my first choice.”

“Don't hurt him,” pleaded Jane.

“Larry,” said Del. “You know this is crap. Let him go. If you do it now, we'll look the other way. We'll even help you run.”

“No can do, dog. This is war. And you know how much I love a good war.”

“He's nuts,” whispered Randy.

“I don't believe you've got him,” Ray piped up.

Larry laughed. “Good try.”

“Prove it. Put him on the phone.”

“Can't do that.”

“Because it's all a lie.”

“Shut up, old man. I got your goddamn son all right.”

“Then you better offer me proof.”

The line was silent. Then, “Yeah, I suppose I could do that. Might even be fun. A finger. A toe.”

“Christ,” said Randy. “This is just bullshit. Utter bullshit! What's wrong with you? How can you be like that?”

“Why bro, I've always been like this. Didn't you ever notice?” Ray glanced up, saw Ethan move into the doorway.

“Well, folks, this has been real,” said Larry. “But I gotta hit the bricks. Enjoy the rest of your evening. I know I will.”

 

 

T
he silence in the room was broken by the deep rumble of thunder. Heavy rain began to pelt the trees outside the windows.

Randy watched Ethan back out of the doorway and disappear. He had to go talk to him, but he couldn't just bolt out of the room.

“What do we do?” asked Jane.

“We call the police,” said her father.

“I'm not sure that's the wisest approach,” said Del.

“He's my son,” shouted Ray, looking hard at Del, then turning to Randy. “I make those decisions.”

“I could talk to Nolan,” said Jane. “See what he thinks.”

“Who's Nolan?” Del had moved over to the windows, turned his back to them.

“He's a retired homicide cop,” said Jane. “A friend of mine. Before we do anything, I'd like to get his opinion.”

“Okay,” said her dad. “I'll agree to that.”

Jane stood up. “I've got to go talk to Sigrid.”

“Oh, God, I forgot about her,” said her father, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thanks, honey. But call Nolan on the way. And call me as soon as you've talked to him.”

Jane kissed him and left.

“Okay, boys,” said Ray, locking eyes with Randy. “I want the full story. Everything you know.”

Del turned around.

“Look, my son's the innocent bystander here. I can't fight your buddy, Larry, if I'm in the dark.”

“Come on, Ray,” said Del, pressing a hand to his back. “Let's you and me go find ourselves a couple beers.”

“Only if they come with some answers.”

Randy thanked Del with his eyes as Del guided Ray out of the study. When Randy heard the front door close, he got up. He rushed up the stairs to Ethan's bedroom. The door was closed.

Randy knocked. “It's me. We have to talk.”

“Go away,” came Ethan's voice.

Randy knocked louder. “Come on, Ethan. Please!”

“Leave me alone.”

Katie's door opened and she came out. “What's all the commotion?”

“Oh, hi, honey.” Randy shoved his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks. “I just needed to talk to Ethan for a sec.”

“Well, keep it down, okay? I gotta study for my geometry test.”

“Sure, honey,” said Randy, forcing a smile. “Sorry.”

After she closed her door, he waited a few more seconds, then, cursing Larry under his breath, walked back down the stairs.
Ray followed Del back to Stillwater, where they stopped at a bar on South Main Street. Because the lift bridge to Wisconsin was temporarily shut down for repairs, Stillwater had briefly returned to a quiet small town with decent parking. Ray found a spot not far from the entrance to the bar and dashed across the street, holding a newspaper over his head to prevent himself from getting soaked.

Del was already waiting for him at a table by the windows. “I ordered us a couple of Leines.”

Ray didn't care about the beer, he wanted to talk. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “First order of business. You're fired.”

Del leaned back in his chair. He seemed startled.

“Now tell me about this psychopathic friend of yours.”

“I never wanted any of this to happen, Ray. You must know that.”

“Fine. But it did. And now we have to deal with it.”

Del nodded, played with the salt shaker. “I never thought Larry was a psychopath. At least, not before tonight.”

“He tried to
kill
a woman, Del, a friend of my daughter's. Did you know about that?”

Del leaned into the table. “Yeah. I knew.”

“And you didn't turn him over to the police?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Good God, man. What were you thinking?”

The beers arrived.

Del took a long sip, then set the bottle down. “He lied to Randy and me about what he was up to. By the time we found out, it was already done.”

“So what? He belongs in prison.”

“I know.”

“Then why didn't you report it?”

“Look, you're a defense attorney. You know life isn't always a matter of action and appropriate reaction.”

Ray stared at him. He drummed his fingers on the table. “This reporter he knifed, was it premeditated?”

“Yeah, I think so. Randy and me, we just thought he was trying to scare her.”

“And you were okay with that?”

He nodded.

“Why? I mean, this is so . . . out of character. Nothing like the Del Green I know.”

“Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do. Maybe nobody knows anybody. Look, Ray, she was digging into that old murder case in Iowa. We wanted her to stop.”

“Why would you care? Unless one of you killed her.” Del's eyes drifted around the room.

“Christ! That's it? That was why he tried to murder her? He thought she might dig up some information that would convict one of you?”

“Yeah,” said Del, taking another sip of beer.

“Ethan was arrested for the murder, but he was acquitted. Are you all trying to protect
him?”

“I can't answer that, Ray.”

“Can't or won't?”

Del shook his head.

Now Ray was getting mad. “And my daughter—”

“She and Cordelia drove down to Iowa and talked to the people their reporter friend had planned to interview.”

Ray groaned. “Sounds like Jane.”

“Larry got them to back off, according to what Randy told me.”

“How?”

“I don't know, but obviously he felt they didn't really get the message. And then when Gunderson regained consciousness, I think he just went tilt and grabbed your son.”

Ray had no idea why Jane hadn't come to him with what she knew. Maybe she'd been trying to protect him, to see if the reporter's information had any validity before she came to him with her suspicions. Jane was the exact opposite of Peter—too goddamn independent, too capable and self-sufficient for her own good.

“Look, Ray, here's what you gotta understand. Randy and me, we met Larry in Vietnam. He saved both our lives more than once.” Del went on to explain how, after they came home, Randy had invited them to stay with him at his parents' house in Waldo, Iowa. Del didn't have anything else to do, so he took him up on it. Same with Larry. “You ever been in combat, Ray?”

“No. What's that got to do with any of this?”

“Everything.” He tipped his bottle back and finished the beer.

Ray pushed his across the table. “Take it. I don't want it. But keep talking.”

Del sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly. “It was the early seventies, man. I can only tell you what it was like back then from my viewpoint. When Randy got back to Waldo, they gave him a parade. A fucking parade! When I got back to Detroit, people spit at me. Randy was a local hero, I was a baby killer. When I heard about the parade thing, I made sure I was in uniform when I got off the bus in Waldo that spring. Otherwise, I woulda been just another nigger. At least with the stripes on my arm, most people had to make a pretense of respect. See,” he said, pulling his chair closer to the table, “a lot of people thought I murdered Sue.”

“Did you?”

He shook his head. “No, I loved her.”

“Love—as in romantically?”

“Nah, more like a sister. But people got the wrong idea because they saw us together. The night she was murdered, we walked out of a bar together. Arm in arm. Down the center of the street. I was drunk and didn't care. In fact, I wanted people to see us. I was as black as night and she was as white as a summer cloud, and we were friends. The goddamn world was changing and I wanted that town to look it in the eye.”

“But if you'd just met her,” said Ray, “how could you love her?”

He smiled, pulled Ray's beer closer to him. “Randy, he used to get letters from her every week. Sometimes he'd read them to us, sometimes he wouldn't. Nobody ever wrote me and I got to thinking, hell, maybe if I got Sue's address, sent her a letter, that she'd write me back. Course, I knew Randy wouldn't like it, being the jealous kind. So, when I finally got up the nerve to write her, I told her that she seemed like a nice person and that I was superlonely, that I'd like to hear from her—but that if she did write me, I suggested that she type the letters and use a different name. That's how it started. We got to be great friends that year. By the time I made it to Waldo, I felt like she was part of my family.” He laughed. “Better than family. Nobody back in Detroit ever wrote me a goddamn thing.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Ray. “Because you were friends, people saw you together, they assumed you murdered her? Even for racists, that's a stretch.”

“Actually, it's not, but I won't argue the point right now. No, it was more than that. If Jane did her work down in Waldo, you're going to hear about this sooner or later, so I might as well explain it now, tell you the whole truth.” He took a sip of Ray's beer. “It was my dog tags. The cops found them in the field
where Sue was strangled, close to the tree where they found her body. They'd already arrested Ethan, but they called me in for questioning. Larry came up with this plausible explanation, and since I was scared out of my mind, I used it. He told me to tell the cops that we'd been horsing around in that field earlier that night. Wrestling. And that my tags had come off then. We all met at a bar that night in town.”

“Who exactly?”

“Me and Larry, Ethan, and Randy and Sue. Larry backed up my statement, told the cops that I was so pissed that I'd lost my tags that I wanted to go back to the field and try to find them, but Larry talked me out of it, said we'd go back in the morning when we could see better.”

“But that wasn't true.”

“No. Like I said, Sue and I left the bar together that night. I walked her to the front door of her house and said I'd see her in the morning. She seemed really down, but wouldn't tell me why. She was like that sometimes, kept things to herself. I thought maybe it was the war. She was totally against it. She'd gotten into an argument with Larry that night. Larry was a huge supporter of what we were doing in Vietnam and made fun of the candlelight peace vigils and sit-ins she was always attending. At one point, I thought she was going to throw her beer at him. Anyway, as I was walking across the front lawn back to Randy's parents' place, her brother came up to me. He'd been in the garage working on his car. He didn't like me, didn't like it that I was a friend of his sister's. He'd been drinking, too. Seemed like everybody in town was drunk that night. Grant—that was his name—had just graduated from high school and registered with the draft. I knew he had a low draft number, and I also knew he was scared shitless about being sent to Nam.