Very Bad Men (22 page)

After a time, Elizabeth returned, her footsteps sharp in the calm of the night. The senator had returned to his seat on the grass.

“How is he?” I asked.

She sighed. “He gave me the same story he gave Fielder. He's on an errand. When I pressed him for details, he said he needs to get to his wife.”

The statement hung in the air between us. We both knew what was wrong with it. The senator didn't have a wife; she had passed away years ago.

“He needs help,” Elizabeth said. “I have to see if anyone's gotten through to his son yet.”

She waved at Fielder and started walking toward him. I circled the front end of the patrol car and drifted across the street toward the oak, hands in pockets, taking in the scenery.

When I reached the senator's spot, I joined him on the grass. The sleeves of his cream-colored dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows. The legs of his trousers rose to reveal his ankles. He had on penny loafers, no socks.

“Is it your turn next?” he said. “Did they send you here to question me?”

I gazed up at the sky of leaves and branches. “I'm just out for a walk,” I said. “It was either this or stay home and do yard work.”

“You're a sensible man. It's a good night for a walk.”

“Could be cooler.”

He leaned back on his arms. In the light from a streetlamp I could see the veins standing out on his wrists.

“I never minded the heat,” he said. “Have you been behaving yourself?”

I plucked at a blade of grass. “More or less.”

“I understand you phoned my daughter-in-law.”

That was true. I had called Callie Spencer earlier that day, because I had promised Lucy I would. Callie had surprised me by agreeing to Lucy's request for an interview.

The senator regarded me sternly. “You need to be careful,” he said. “She's taken.”

“I know.”

“Temptation,” he said. “We're all tempted.”

I listened to the rustling of the leaves. The senator had gone silent, though he looked as if he had more to say on the subject of temptation. Something had distracted him. I saw him staring past my shoulder, strands of silver hair falling over his forehead, his eyes suddenly keen.

I turned and saw a Lexus drawing up to the curb on the other side of Third Street. The driver's door opened, and Alan Beckett hauled himself up from behind the wheel. He wore a suit of the same vintage as the one he'd worn the night before, and he tugged at his collar as he crossed the street. He moved ponderously. The air seemed to drag on him.

He stepped onto the curb and drew out a handkerchief to mop the sweat from his scalp.

“Senator,” he said. “This won't do.”

“Al is an endomorph,” John Casterbridge said to me, as if we were still alone. “It's in his genes. He can't be blamed, really.”

“Senator—”

“That's why he lumbers like a walrus, like a creature not meant to go on land.”

Beckett ignored the insult. “We've been over this, Senator. You have a driver. If you want to go somewhere, he takes you.”

“Al thinks I need to be carted around like freight.”

“He takes you,” Beckett said, “and no one runs any stop signs, and no one gets hurt.”

I broke in. “The senator didn't run the stop sign. The other guy did.”

The words rolled off Beckett. He continued as if I hadn't spoken. “And we avoid scenes like this, with police and onlookers and the attendant embarrassment for your family.”

Casterbridge looked up at Beckett. Anger tensed his shoulders.

“I don't care to hear you talk about my family, Al.”

“Not to mention your constituents,” Beckett said. “What do you think they're going to make of this . . . this episode?”

The senator smiled grimly at that. “Don't worry about my constituents. They'll survive this, the darlings. It may bruise their tender sensibilities, but they'll endure. Bless their black, flabby little hearts.”

“That's enough,” said Beckett, wagging his head back and forth in disgust. “I'm going to talk to the police now, see if you're free to go. Maybe it's best you stay here.”

The senator waved him off. “Do what you need to, Al.”

Beckett scowled at me before he left us. I watched him lope away toward the intersection, where Elizabeth and Fielder were waiting.

He seemed to take the tension with him. John Casterbridge tipped his head back, filled his lungs with air. Let it drain slowly out.

“I shouldn't have said that about Al,” he told me. “He doesn't move like a walrus. A walrus is a graceful creature, one of the good Lord's marvels.”

His palm skimmed the grass. “He's not as bad as he seems. He comes from good stock. Grew up in Battle Creek. His father was a tradesman. Salt of the earth.”

Having said his piece about Alan Beckett, he rooted in a pocket of his trousers and produced the stub of a cigar and a box of matches. Soon he had the tip of the cigar glowing, and as he shook out the flame of the match the action jarred my memory. I reached into my own pocket and came out with a small metal cylinder.

The senator saw it and set the stub between his teeth to free his hands. I passed him the cylinder and watched him unscrew the cap on the end. He tipped the cigar out and read the label on the band.

“Not bad,” he said. “Where did you get this?”

It had been a gift from the owner of the shop that prints
Gray Streets
. The last time I delivered an issue, he was celebrating the birth of a grandson.

“I got it from a friend,” I said. “I'd like you to have it.”

He tipped it back into the cylinder, nodding his thanks. He put the cylinder in his pocket. “For later,” he said.

After that, we sat in silence. I watched the neighbors chatting with one another on their porches, Beckett talking to Elizabeth in the blue and red light of the patrol car. John Casterbridge finished off the stub of his cigar and tapped out the remnant against the sole of his shoe. The scent of the smoke lingered sweet in the air.

A hint of it remained when Beckett came back to us. His conversation with Elizabeth seemed to have mellowed him.

“Come on, Senator,” he said in a voice that was almost gentle. “We're going.”

I got up from the ground and offered Casterbridge a hand, but he rose on his own.

“What did they say about my car?” he asked Beckett.

“Don't worry about it. I'll arrange to have it towed.”

Casterbridge folded his arms. “I need that car, Al. I have an errand.”

Beckett stepped down from the curb and into the street. “I'm driving you home, Senator. Whatever else you need to do can wait until morning.”

“My errand can't wait. It's urgent.”

I thought Beckett might get angry, but he only rubbed his scalp wearily and said, “I don't have time for this. It's late. We'll talk about it on the way.”

Casterbridge wavered, letting his arms fall to his sides. I watched him take a step toward the street.

“I've got a car, Senator,” I said. “I'd be happy to drive you wherever you need to go.”

He looked back at me and then at Beckett, who waited silently in the street. The senator's eyes were shadowed. His indecision played itself out in small gestures: scratching at his elbow, plucking at his sleeve.

When he made up his mind he answered me quietly, with one of the saddest smiles I had ever seen.

“You head home, son. It's no good. The place I need to go is a long way off.”

 

 

A REPORTER AND A CAMERAMAN arrived at the intersection of Third and Jefferson around two minutes after the senator slipped away. Elizabeth gave them no comment. They didn't bother with me.

Back at the house we found Sarah lying on the sofa watching the same reporter on the ten o'clock news. She wanted to hear all about what had happened, and while Elizabeth stayed behind to tell her, I went upstairs.

I found a note on the dresser in the bedroom. Sarah's handwriting.
Lucy Navarro called. I gave her your cell. Any relation to E. L. Navarro?

I powered up my cell phone, and before I could wonder who E.L.Navarro was, it began to vibrate. I flipped it open. She didn't give me a chance to say hello.

“Loogan, you're a magician.”

“How's it going, Lucy?”

“I heard from Callie Spencer. That's how it's going. She agreed to meet with me. She said you had called and persuaded her.”

“I have a way with people.”

“What did you say to her?”

“I told her the truth. Told her you had the crackpot idea that Floyd Lambeau was her father.”

“That's all it took?”

“That's all. If she agreed to meet you, she probably thinks she can convince you otherwise.”

“We'll see. I've got the meeting, that's the important thing. Tomorrow at two at the Spencer house. I'm letting you know, just in case.”

“What do you mean?”

A hazy silence. Then: “You know what I mean, Loogan.”

I knew. Because something in her voice had changed. It sounded grave. I remembered her theory about the Spencers—that they might have hired the man in plaid. That they might have arranged to have Terry Dawtrey killed.

“Come on,” I said. “You think you're going to ask the wrong question and—what?—the Spencers are going to make you disappear?”

“I can't rule it out,” she said.

“Actually, I think you can.”

“We'll see. I'll call you after, let you know how it goes. If you don't hear from me, well, you do what you think is right. If I disappear, maybe you can find me.”

Her voice had turned careless and light, but I thought I could still hear an undertone of gravity in it.

“If you can't find me,” she said, “I wouldn't mind being avenged.”

A
ll men by nature desire to know. Aristotle said that in his
Metaphysics
. I picked it up in a college course on philosophy twenty years ago, the same course where I learned the meaning of Occam's razor and a few other semi-useful bits of wisdom.

All men by nature desire to know. It explains why parents snoop through their children's diaries, why people slow down to gawk at accidents on the highway, and why I went with Lucy Navarro to her meeting with Callie Spencer.

And even though I didn't really believe Lucy was in danger, that was part of it too. I remembered the bullets that someone had left outside our hotel rooms in Sault Sainte Marie.

I picked Lucy up at a quarter to two, and we arrived at the Spencer house right on schedule. We found Callie strolling in the sunlight on the lawn near the curved driveway; her parents were out for the afternoon, and her husband had driven back to Lansing.

She took us on a tour of the house, through her father's studio and her mother's garden. As we wandered over the back lawn toward the guest cottage, she chatted about a proposal coming up for a vote in the Michigan House of Representatives, a law that would extend health coverage for children living in poverty. A reminder of the good she was doing in the state legislature, and a hint of what she might do in the Senate.

Vines crept up the brown brick walls of the cottage, and a midsize silver Ford was parked on a gravel drive beside it. Ornamental grass grew along the path to the front door. The door opened into a large, high-ceilinged room. Stainless-steel appliances in the kitchen on the right, boxy leather sofas in the sitting area on the left.

Callie Spencer led us past the sofas to a glass-topped desk beside a window that faced the main house. She waved us into a pair of upholstered chairs. Our tour was over.

She set her eyes on Lucy Navarro and said, “You want to talk about Floyd Lambeau.”

Lucy laid her sunglasses on the edge of the desk and drew a notepad from her bag.

“That's right.”

“I can save you time,” said Callie. “You want to know if Lambeau's my father. He's not. It's an old charge, made years ago by a nasty political opponent. There's nothing to it.”

“I didn't hear it from one of your political opponents,” said Lucy. “I heard it from Terry Dawtrey, who claimed he got it from Lambeau himself.”

Callie sat down in a swivel chair behind the desk. “That's a new twist,” she said, “but it doesn't change things. The story's not true. There's a reason no paper has ever printed it.”

I watched her lean back in the chair, a lawyer confident of her case.

She said, “Floyd Lambeau's blood type was AB. You can find it in his autopsy report. It's a matter of public record. My blood is type O. That's public too. I did a campaign for the Red Cross once, encouraging other type Os to donate. Lambeau's not my father because a type AB can't be the father of a type O. It's impossible. A type O has to inherit the O gene from both parents. A type AB doesn't have an O gene to pass on.”

Lucy made notes on her pad. Sitting beside her, I could see the page clearly. When I read what she'd written, my estimation of her rose by several points.

“I'm glad you agreed to talk to me,” she said to Callie. “If I had turned in this story, I would have looked foolish.”

Does she think I haven't read Lambeau's autopsy report?
the notes on the pad said.
Does she think I never looked up her blood type?

“Maybe you'd be willing to clear up a few other things for me,” she said to Callie Spencer.

Sorry I wasn't entirely straight with you, Loogan,
the notes said.
Forgive me?