The Heavenly Table(108)
“She said that?”
“Her exact words.”
Chief Wallingford sat down at his desk and swallowed a handful of aspirins, then poured a good inch of Sir Alistair’s Stomach Soother into a cup of coffee. He thought for a minute, not so much about Mrs. Grady, but about something his mistress had said that morning, about how if he didn’t leave his wife, she was going to make things rough on him. After he had moved heaven and earth to cover her worthless baby brother’s gambling debts! His only option was to go out to the Whore Barn tomorrow, see if he could squeeze a little bit more out of the pimp. A piece of jewelry would keep her happy for a couple more weeks anyway, maybe even longer if it was gaudy enough. Why had he ever gotten involved with the highfalutin bitch in the first place? He’d known as soon as he slipped his cock into her that he was doomed. It had always been his nature to feel a bit depressed after he got his gun off, but with Marjorie Flagstaff, he’d actually heard a death knell ring in his head the moment he’d rolled off of her. And now the old bitch Grady had found out. Goddamn it to hell. He’d be at her beck and call every minute of every day for who knew how long.
“Dad?” Lester said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Wallingford said. “Take a wheelbarrow and a shovel down there and have him clean her yard up, then turn him loose.”
“What about Mrs. Grady? She’s gonna—”
“Jesus, Lester, I can’t keep a man in jail just because she’s got a bug up her ass.”
“Well, where do you want me to have him put it?”
“Goddamn it, boy, I don’t know. Have him dump it in the creek.”
“The creek? Hell, I eat fish out of there.”
“So? Won’t be no worse than what the paper mill puts in it. And you keep an eye on him until he’s finished, too, unless you want to do it.”
“What about Pollard?”
“It’s too early in the mornin’ to be thinking about that lowlife.”
“But it’s almost three o’clock,” Lester said.
“Son, just let me drink my coffee, will ye?”
Lester found a cart with wobbly wheels and a shovel buried under a pile of unclaimed stolen property in the shed behind the jail, then went in and took Sugar out of his cell. He had the prisoner push the cart back to the scene of the crime while he followed behind in the police car. “You get that yard cleaned up, and you’re a free man.”
“I don’t see why—” Sugar started to say, but the look on the cop’s blank face told him he’d be wasting his breath arguing. “Where you want me to put it?”
The policeman pointed down the alley to the creek bank. “You’ll have to take it down there, dump it in the water.” Then he took out his pocket watch and checked the time. “Now look, I got things to do tonight, so let’s get moving. I don’t want to see nothin’ but elbows and *s, understand?” Then he leaned back in the front seat of the car and pulled his hat down over his eyes.
At four o’clock, Sugar upended the last load of waste into Paint Creek. He’d kept waiting for Pollard to come around, so he could sling a shovelful in his face, but he never showed up. After waking Lester, he took the cart and the shovel back to the jail and hosed them off before he was officially released. Sugar stuck his razor in his pocket and tossed the nuts away, then headed for the colored section of town where he’d bought his bowler, thinking he might run into the whore with the wart on her lip again. If possible, he wanted to find someone to shack up with for a couple of days, so he could rebuild his strength before he proceeded on to Detroit. Walking down an alley, he happened to see the old man who had given him the drink of water just a few days ago. He was sitting on the ground at the edge of his garden with a sad look on his wizened, charcoal gray face. Of course, Sugar didn’t know, and if he had, he wouldn’t have given a damn, but the old man had just dug up the last of his turnips, a yearly event that always brought him much pain. It meant that cold weather was right around the corner; and within a few more weeks, he’d be shut up tight in two cramped rooms with his old woman until the spring thaw. Imagine, he’d told his daughter the last time she came down from Lima for a visit, being trapped in a coffin with your worst enemy. That’s what the winters were like for them now. By the middle of February, they’d both have murder on their minds. Sugar kept on walking; and the old man got up and went around the yard looking for a rat to beat on, but he couldn’t find one.
66
THE CHURCH BELLS chimed six o’clock just as Chimney headed into the park to meet up with his brothers. As he approached them seated on the bench, he saw, to his consternation, that Cob was wearing a pair of goggles just like the ones he carried in the pocket of his duster. “What the f*ck?” he said to Cane. “You bought him those just to piss me off.”
“No, I didn’t,” Cane said. “He got ’em on his own. I wasn’t nowhere around.” It was true. Cob was already gone when he woke up this morning, even though Cane had told him yesterday not to leave again without letting him know first. His first thought was to go on the hunt of him, but then he figured what the hell. Chances were he was with his inspector buddy, and if he wanted to spend his last day here poking around in outhouses, that was his business. Looking forward to a little time of his own, Cane had taken a hot bath, then eaten a leisurely breakfast at the Mount Logan Café. He was finishing his waffles when the well-dressed man who had been with the girl from the bookstore last night walked in and sat down at the counter. Cane watched Sandy order a cup of coffee, then complain to the waitress in an acidy tone that it was cold. As Cane walked out of the diner, an urgent need to see the girl one more time before they headed for Canada suddenly came over him. He began walking toward the bookstore. He would ask for her address, he vowed right before he got to the door, write her a letter once they were settled. But to his disappointment, she wasn’t working. Instead, there was a palsied, half-blind gentleman in her place, sitting behind the counter with a woolen scarf wrapped around his thin, wrinkled neck, reading a yellowed pamphlet with a magnifying glass. Cane figured he must be the father she’d mentioned, though he seemed rather ancient to have a daughter her age. He ended up buying a copy of The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, though he didn’t know for sure what an “essay” even was, and then walked back to the McCarthy to find out. As far as the girl went, by midday he realized how stupid he had been going back there again. What the hell had he been thinking? There was no way a woman like her would ever be interested in someone like him. Even he knew that the suit he was wearing didn’t fit right.