From a Buick 8(25)

'Yes, ma'am, okay.'

He gave her a smile, but I thought it was dutiful rather than spontaneous; he kept looking over at Shed B. He was under the spell of the thing now, as so many men had been over the years. Not to mention one good dog. And as I drank my first glass of iced tea, cold and good going down my parched throat, loaded with real sugar rather than that unsatisfying artificial shit, I had time to wonder if I was doing Ned Wilcox any favors. Or if he'd even believe the rest of it. He might just get up, walk away all stiff-shouldered and angry, believing I'd been making a game of him and his grief. It wasn't impossible. Huddie, Arky, and Phil would back me up ? so would Shirley, for that matter. She hadn't been around when the Buick came in, but she'd seen plenty ? and done plenty ? since taking the dispatch job in the mid-eighties. The kid still might not believe it, though. It was a lot to swallow.

Too late to back out now, though.

'What happened about Trooper Rafferty?' Ned asked.

'Nothing,' Huddie said. 'He didn't even get his ugly mug on the side of a milk carton.'

Ned gazed at him uncertainly, not sure if Huddie was joking or not.

'Nothing happened,' Huddie repeated, more quietly this time. 'That's the insidious thing about disappearing, son. What happened to your dad was terrible, and I'd never try to convince you any different. But at least you know. That's something, isn't it? There's a place where you can go and visit, where you can lay down flowers. Or take your college acceptance letter.'

'That's just a grave you're talking about,' Ned said. He spoke with a strange patience that made me uneasy. 'There's a piece of ground, and there's a box under it, and there's something in the box that's dressed in my father's uniform, but it's not my father.'

'But you know what happened to him,' Huddie insisted. 'With Ennis . . .' He spread his hands with the palms down, then turned them up, like a magician at the end of a good trick.

Arky had gone inside, probably to take a leak. Now he came back and sat down.   'All quiet?' I asked.

'Well, yes and no, Sarge Steff tole me to tell you she's getting dose bursts of interference on d'radio again, dose I'il short ones. You know what I mean. Also, DSS is kaputnik. Jus' dat sign on the TV screen dat say STAND BY SEARCHING FOR SIGNAL.'

Steff was Stephanie Colucci, Shirley's second-shift replacement in dispatch and old Andy Colucci's niece. The DSS was our little satellite dish, paid for out of our own pockets, like the exercise equipment in the corner upstairs (a year or two ago someone tacked a poster to the wall beside the free weights, showing buff biker types working out in the prison yard up at Shabene ? THEY NEVER TAKE A DAY OFF is the punchline beneath).

Arky and I exchanged a glance, then looked over at Shed B. If the microwave oven in the kitchenette wasn't on the fritz now, it soon would be. We might lose the lights and the phone, too, although it had been awhile since that had happened.

'We took up a collection for that rotten old bitch he was married to,' Huddie said. 'That was mighty big of Troop D, in my view.'

'I thought it was to shut her up,' Phil said.

'Wasn't nothing going to shut that one up,' Huddie said. 'She meant to have her say. Anyone who ever met her knew that.'

'It wasn't exactly a collection and he wasn't married to her,' I said. 'The woman was his sister. I thought I made that clear.'

'He was married to her,' Huddie insisted. 'They were like any old couple, with all the yaps and grumps and sore places. They did everything married folks do except for the old in-out, and for all I know ? '

'Snip, snip, bite your lip,' Shirley said mildly.

'Yeah,' Huddie said. 'I s'pose.'

'Tony passed the hat, and we all tossed in as much as we could,' I told Ned. 'Then Buck Flanders's brother ? he's a stockbroker in Pittsburgh ? invested it for her. It was Tony's idea to do it that way rather than just hand her a check.'

Huddie was nodding. 'He brought it up at that meeting he called, the one in the back room at The Country Way. Taking care of The Dragon was just about the last item on the agenda.'

Huddie turned directly to Ned.

'By then we knew nobody was going to find Ennis, and that Ennis wasn't just going to walk into a police station somewhere in Bakersfield, California, or Nome, Alaska, with a case of amnesia from a knock on the head. He was gone. Maybe to the same place the fella in the black coat and hat went off to, maybe to some other place, but gone either way. There was no body, no signs of violence, not even any clothes, but Ennie was gone.' Huddie laughed. It was a sour sound. 'Oh, that bad-natured bitch he lived with was so wild. Of course she was half-crazy to begin with ? '

'More dan half,' Arky said complacently, and helped himself to a ham and cheese sandwich. 'She call all d'time, tree-four times a day, made Matt Babicki in dispatch jus' about tear his hair out. You should count your blessings she's gone, Shirley. Edit' Hyams! What a piece of work!'

'What did she think had happened?' Ned asked.

'Who knows?' I said. 'That we killed him over poker debts, maybe, and buried him in the cellar.'

'You played poker in the barracks back then?' Ned looked both fascinated and horrified. 'Did my father play?'