Private Eye Four-Pack, page 41
I kept up two cabins—one in Missouri and another in Colorado. I moved back and forth between them. Missouri was my childhood home, but Missouri summers drove me into the Rockies. I had played football at Colorado State before turning pro and had fallen in love with the mountains. Denver was three hours away from my Colorado cabin. Three hours away geographically and light years away socially. She went places I no longer wanted to walk. Did things I no longer wanted to do. No more concrete canyons and smog. No more hermetically sealed, freeze-dried, one-size-fits-all lifestyle. No more shopping mall lemmings rushing to the edge of their gold cards. No more fitness clubs. No more elevator Muzak nightclubs and foreign luxury wheels. No more insurance salesmen piecing off my life. No more acrylic suits in BMWs rushing off to take another bite of American fabric.
No. No more. Farewell to all that. Good riddance to all that.
Was I just hiding? Or fooling myself? Hiding from what? A nineties dropout. Too late for existential posing. Maybe I was socially retarded. Hated crowds. Liked people. Maybe I was afraid. I had seen what civilization had to offer, had briefly reached for its definition of success, then, just as I was about to snatch it, I pulled my hand back and fled. Society was too lupine, too vicious and unrelenting for me.
Freedom. How I love her. Sandy. How I love her. How to have both? Or, settle for only one? But perhaps I couldn’t have both and half was somehow less than half.
Back at the cabin, I cut up a cantaloupe and brewed coffee. Sliced turkey breast from a block I’d bought at a deli two days ago. Noticed I was out of milk and flour. I put the turkey between two slices of wheat bread, not white. The last two pieces. I turned the stereo to an oldies station. The Byrds sang “I Wasn’t Born to Follow.” The phone rang. Startled me. It didn’t ring often. Only a handful of people had the number.
“Storme’s all-night Chinese laundry and fortune-cookie factory.” I was expecting to hear Matt Jenkins’s voice.
“Is Grizzly Storme there?” said a female voice. A voice like a silver bell in my head. Sandy’s voice. Lovely. I hadn’t expected it. There was a catch in my chest, a dull pang.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe if you describe him, I’ll recognize him.”
“He’s a broken-down wide receiver. Six two, maybe six three, gray eyes. Bad knees, worse attitude. Conceited chauvinist smirk on his perpetually boyish face. Loves John Wayne and Bob Dylan and beautiful newswomen. He can’t polka, but has excellent taste in women.”
“Nobody like that here. There’s a guy who kinda resembles Robert Redford, but his taste in women runs to media snobs with strange sexual appetites.”
“Mmmmm,” she purred. An electric shiver raced down my neck. “Sounds more interesting than the guy I had in mind. Maybe I’d like to meet him.”
“I can arrange it,” I said. “Anytime.”
“How about this weekend? She really needs to get away from the city for a while. Like maybe forever.”
“I think he’s told her that before.”
“Highway runs both ways, cowboy,” she said.
“My guy rides a one-way horse.”
“Sounds like the guy I’m talking about.”
“The Redford look-alike?”
“No. The stubborn has-been with the great hands and bad knees.”
“Oh. Him. He waits for you. Always will. When can you get away?”
“Saturday. I’ll have to do the six o’clock news, but Karen can cover me on the late broadcast. Do you watch the news?”
“Only the sports.”
“Liar. You probably tape the shows and dream of my sun-kissed hair and laughing eyes.”
“Self-assured TV snob,” I said. “Actually, I only think of your milky-white teeth and tanned legs.”
“I miss you, Wyatt.”
I admitted missing her. How long had I waited to hear those words. Three months. Seemed longer. She had called Matt when she couldn’t reach me in Colorado. He told her where to find me. Thank God, I hadn’t removed the phone as I’d thought about so many times. We talked. Good, fluid conversation, playing off each other. Filling in where it was needed, saying nothing when it wasn’t. Hearing what was not being said as well as what was. Her voice was a sunbeam, her laughter the west wind, warming me. Thawing me. Hearing it created an ache I couldn’t rub.
“Can you get back this weekend?” she asked.
I had planned to hunt for another week or so before returning. To get back by Saturday left me four days to hunt and one day to travel.
Reluctantly, I said good-bye. The phone clicked but didn’t break the spell. On the stereo Bob Dylan was singing “Forever Young” backed up by J. Robbie Robertson and The Band. The best version. The right version. The words wrenched from Dylan’s lips and the horns soared and Robertson’s guitar buzzed and cried. I tasted some coffee. Just right.
Forever young.
I showered, shaved, put on a pair of Levi’s, smoothed by time and memory, and a Colorado State University sweatshirt. Pulled on a pair of Adidas basketball shoes and drove to town. It was a beautiful day. Harvest autumn in Missouri. Cornstalks in fields stretching across the horizon. Trees blazing gold and orange. Leaves drifting and the wind sighing at summer’s passing.
I bought a cup of coffee, “made fresh every twenty minutes,” at a convenience store. Must’ve been nineteen minutes old. I stopped at a mom-and-pop supermarket in town. I don’t shop chains and conglomerates. A small rebellion, but we strike where we can. I parked the Bronco at the back of the hot-top parking lot. When I got out of the truck a slender, attractive young woman with chestnut hair and matching eyes stopped me. She had a bag slung over her shoulder that wasn’t a purse.
“You’re Wyatt Storme, aren’t you?” she asked, without preamble. She looked confident, assured, as if she were revealing something I wouldn’t know.
“He’s much taller,” I said, walking on. I smelled media. The lowest form of life. After lawyers. But I make exceptions. Sandy was one. The only one.
“Wait,” she said. I heard her low heels clack on the asphalt. I stopped. She said, “You’re the guy tipped the sheriff about the marijuana field.”
I looked at her. Wondered about the sheriff’s promise of anonymity. Maybe I’d misjudged him. No, I hadn’t. Somebody else had clued her in. Probably Baxter. But why? “You’ve got the wrong person. I’m just passing through.”
“I’d like to interview you.”
“No.”
“What are you afraid of?” Her eyes were defiant.
“Lots of things. What are you afraid of?”
“I’ll ask the questions.”
I smiled. “Maybe you can supply the answers, too.”
“How did you discover the field?”
“I looked under the letter F in the dictionary. It was right across the page from ‘fiasco’ and ‘fiction.’ ”
“My, my,” she said, cocking her head to one side. “How glib we are. How did you manage to kill the guard dog?” She was beginning to annoy me. An old prejudice. Old memories of microphones in my face. Cheap aftershave and cheaper cigar smoke in my nostrils, and the same tired questions and pat answers. “League policy, Storme,” I was told. “You will talk to those people or be fined again.” And again. But her perfume smelled good and she didn’t look the cigar type.
She said, “That’s quite a story. Man bites dog. A classic.”
I walked on. She trailed me. Followed me across the parking lot, through the whoosh of electric door and warm air. Down the aisles. I am irresistible to female journalists.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” she said. I selected a can of Campbell’s chunky clam chowder. Yummy.
“That’s okay. Are you housebroken? Maybe I can teach you to fetch my slippers, bring in the paper—”
“Where are you from?”
I pushed my cart. Somehow it’s difficult to feel supremely manly while pushing a shopping cart. But I thought manly thoughts. Hoped that would help.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “Where are you staying? Where have you been since the Super Bowl? What do you know about yesterday’s events?” People, women mostly, stared at us as we paraded through the frozen food section, through the produce. I paid at the register and she followed me to the parking lot.
“I’m going to get this interview,” she said, as I put the groceries in the Bronco. “One way or another.”
“Good luck,” I said. A young guy with a camera scooted quickly up and pointed the camera at me. I turned my head away before the shutter clicked. Years of practice.
“You get it?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Sorry, Jill.”
“Try again.”
“No,” I said.
“Do it,” she said.
I looked at him as he raised the camera. “Don’t,” I said. I wasn’t kidding. I’d put up with this nonsense for too long not many years ago. Some guy with a camera in your face—in restaurants, while you were shopping—all because I could run a Z-out and catch a football. Kinda silly when you think about it.
Something in my expression or my voice convinced him I was serious. Different in small towns. In the city you could hold a gun to their head and they’d still snap it. Cities made for social mutants with no sense of propriety. It was better here. “C’mon, mister,” he said. “It’s my job.” He started to raise the camera again. I reached out and gently put my hand on it. He stopped and looked at her.
“Take the picture, Andy,” she said, her teeth clenched. “Either you’re a photographer or you’re not. Take the damn picture.”
I felt sorry for the kid. Probably started out taking pictures of kittens and old farmhouses. “That’s right, Andy,” I said. “She’s not the one going to the hospital with a camera up her nose. What does she care?”
“He’s bluffing,” she said.
“Look at me, Andy. I look like I need to bluff?”
Andy chewed his lower lip, and his eyes slipped off me and trailed to the girl, asking for a reprieve. She blew out a puff of air, probably pure nitro, in anger. The muscles in her throat tightened. “All right,” she said. “If you’ll answer a few questions, then we won’t take any pictures.”
“No pictures,” I said. “No interview. No film at eleven. No kidding.”
Her eyes were hot. “This is a mistake.”
I shrugged. “Made ’em before.”
“Human life has no value to you, does it, mister hot-shit jock?”
I looked at her. She was serious. Human life? “What are you talking about?”
Her expression softened. She’d read something in my face, something she hadn’t expected. “You really don’t know,” she said, “do you?”
“Know what?”
“You don’t know about Sheriff Kennedy. I assumed you knew that’s what I was talking about.”
“What about him?”
“They found him this morning,” she said. “They wouldn’t tell me what happened, but I know they found him in his car. Early this morning. Nobody had seen him since last night. He’s dead.”
FIVE
“Where did they find him?” I asked her.
“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” she said.
I didn’t have time for word games. I was uneasy. The sheriff was dead, and he didn’t look easy to kill. Yesterday he was alive, smoking his pipe. Pictures of his children on his desk. Yesterday I told him about a marijuana field. Now he was dead. Maybe a coincidence. But I don’t believe in them. A man was dead, a good man, perhaps because of something I’d told him. But that was the job, wasn’t it? Like walking point in the bush and seeing the muzzle flash at the same instant your legs went out from under you. Sheriff Kennedy knew it was dangerous. Part of the job, right? Sure it was.
Then just walk away, Storme.
But could I?
When I was still playing in the NFL, the Eagles had a cornerback named Solomon “Slasher” Jones, a vicious D-back with a deserved reputation as a cheap-shot artist. He led the league in interceptions and sports page quotes. He loved to run with the ball, often giving up yardage to make another move, gain another second of attention. When he tackled you or broke up a pass, he would point at you. Talk at you. Constantly. It bothered some wide-outs. Messed them up. I ignored him.
In one game, Murphy Chandler, our quarterback and my best friend, was flushed from the pocket on a broken play when one of the offensive linemen missed his blocking assignment. Murphy, anything but a classic scrambler, managed to get out-of-bounds. In fact he was five yards out-of-bounds on the Eagle sideline when Slasher stuck his helmet in Chandler’s silver number sixteen. Then Slasher stood over Murph, talking his trash and pointing down at him. There was some shoving around, some names called, some facemask grabbing by both teams.
The Eagles were penalized fifteen yards for unsportsmanlike conduct and Jones was ejected. Didn’t do much for Murph, who spent several minutes on the ground trying to get his breath and several days recovering from bruised ribs. Nothing worse than the hit you think you’re safe from.
I was on the other side of the field when it happened.
I had suggested the play that got Murphy hurt. Wasn’t my fault the tackle missed his blocking assignment, but I had called the play. And Murphy Chandler was my partner.
In a postgame interview, Slasher said, “If Chandler don’t wanna get hit he can get his Texas ass out of the NFL. Football is for men.” Chandler laughed at the comment, rubbed his sore ribs. I remembered that comment. Remembered I suggested the play.
Later in the season the Eagles came to Texas. Chandler threw a deep route to Jackson Carlyle, our other wide-out. Slasher picked it off and began his dance—bobbing, weaving, high-stepping—a superb athlete.
I started running, hard as I could. Dodged a blocker, fought by another one. I had gained full speed when I drove my shoulder into Slasher’s solar plexus. It was a full-out, Brahma bull goring. I heard him grunt as the wind exploded from his lungs. His feet went straight up and I drove him to the ground. The ball popped loose and was recovered by Murphy Chandler. Who says there isn’t a God? I stood over Slasher, watching him writhe on the ground. Enjoyed it.
I didn’t point at him. “Clean hit,” I said. “In the open field. Not out-of-bounds. Straight up and in your face, clown. You don’t want to get hit, then get out of the NFL. Football is for men.” Then I walked away, the crowd noise swelling in my helmet.
“Damn, hoss,” said Murphy Chandler, in his West Texas drawl. “You hit ol’ Slash so hard you near separated him from his personality.”
I liked Sheriff Kennedy. Though I’d just met him. He was a straight shooter, tough and honest. He was dead, and that wasn’t right. It wasn’t my side of the field, but I had suggested the play.
“What is your connection to this incident?” asked the girl reporter as I opened the door to the Bronco. I stepped up and sat down. “Do you think the sheriff’s death is connected to the marijuana field?” I shut the door. She ran around to the other side and opened the passenger door and got in. Sat in the passenger seat. “You may as well tell me what I want to know.”
“Get out or I’ll throw you out,” I said, without emotion. I’d do it.
She sat there, her chin up, hands on her nice hips. “Try it,” she said.
I opened my door, got out, walked around the truck, opened the passenger door. “What’s it going to be?” I asked.
“You’d really do it, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You big bully.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But a bully who’ll toss your narrow tail in the street.”
She got out. I got back into the Bronco. She snatched the camera from Andy. I averted my face as she raised it. I heard her yell an obscenity as I drove away. Wyatt Storme, media darling.
The parking area around the Paradise County sheriff’s office looked like Christmas Eve at Wal-Mart—highway patrol units, local police cars, a couple of plain-brown-wrapper state cars, along with a KCMO news truck and a K.C. Star vehicle, were there. I wasn’t in the mood for an afternoon of badges and official questions, but I wanted to tell somebody what I knew. I parked a block away and walked to the station. Inside, the building swarmed with cops of all kinds and colors. The sheriff’s office door was closed and sealed with yellow tape.
Nobody paid attention to me. I could’ve done pretty much as I pleased. At least, that’s what I thought until I turned around and a state trooper with a square jaw and a military-clean uniform stepped in front of me. He was six feet tall and looked like a highway patrol recruiting poster.
“I’m Trooper Browne,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“Gee whiz,” I said, in my best rube-from-the-sticks accent. “I just dropped by to see my old buddy Bill Kennedy, and boy-howdy, this looks like the policeman’s ball. Where is Bill, anyway?”
He searched my face momentarily. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m afraid the sheriff is…” His eyes swept me, up and down. “Unfortunately, Sheriff Kennedy is dead.”
Another trooper stepped into the foyer and said, “Hey, Sam, we need you in here.”
“In a minute,” Browne answered. He looked back at me.
I put a hand to the side of my face. “Bill’s dead? I can’t believe it. How’d it happen? Car wreck?”
“What was your relationship to Sheriff Kennedy?” Oh-oh, I thought. He sounded like a cop with questions instead of one consoling a crash victim’s old friend. His eyes never left my face. Not a good guy to fool around with, perhaps. But what the heck.
“Sam Browne?” I said. “Great name for a trooper.”
“I’ve heard all the jokes. By the way, I’ve known Sheriff Kennedy for several years. Been fishing with him a few times. He never went by William or Bill. Everybody called him T.W., for Thomas William. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? How long have you known Kennedy?”
