The Witch Tree, page 14
Before the relocation, his mother had sung it to him, when she’d still believed in all that and life had been–
He felt a hand on his shoulder. “Hello,” Sally said, a lilt in her voice. “Earth to Buck.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Where do you go?” she asked. “When you just… sort of disappear like that, what is it?”
She was sitting with her legs drawn up under her, which made her all that more womanly. Jesus, she was pretty; no, she was that rare thing: lovely. Gracious. And wasn’t life itself grace?
“I’ve just got some things on my mind.”
“I just said, ‘Maybe we should go somewhere?’ A hotel, like that first night. It’s going to get cold.”
She smiled. And when he didn’t respond, she looked outside, over her shoulder. Then back again, some urgency in it. “You’re not… different, are you?” she said. “Because this has never happened.”
Different?
“I mean, it’d be okay if you were,” she said, glancing over at him. “You’d still be you. But I just–”
“Sally,” he said. How could he say what he really felt? Nind inigokodee, sagiiwewin, nin sadiidimin. That was it, his heart was… full to…, or bursting with…. But it didn’t translate. Affection wasn’t the half of it. And love? Love, here, was far too trite.
A knot in his throat, he got out of the car and, something occurring to him, he bent back in.
“Believe me, Sally,” he said, “no matter how badly you think you want to, you don’t want to go where I’m going.
“And for your sake, I won’t let you.”
29
He was in his room at The Evergreens, sleeping, when the phone rang. He jumped to his feet, shucked his pants on, then bolted into the kitchen and yanked the receiver off the wall.
“Buck,” Eli said, as if out of a nightmare.
“Yeah?” God, Eli – what a relief. “Where are you?”
“You forget?”
He tried to remember. There were voices on the other end. Loud music, in it a maddeningly twangy guitar.
“You didn’t pick me up like you said you would!” Eli shouted, though he hadn’t said he’d do any such thing.
Moby’s was crowded, the air thick with smoke, and here stale breath and closeness, smell of beer and funky body odor. The walls flesh red. He had only been in Moby’s once, which had been enough. Now, a tired-looking woman in a white apron lifted a tray of beers over her head, steered it through the rough assembly of men, one hooker at the bar in fishnet stockings and rabbit fur coat. A juke box played loudly, some old Rat Pack hit.
“You’re up, whitebread. Stick it to ‘em,” a black man in a top hat with silver dollars around it joked at the pool table.
From a corner, Eli shouted, “Hey! It’s us, you dumb Polack! Get yourself back here!”
He strode by the pool table to Eli, who sat at a table with Lester and the twins, vultures in their matching black leather jackets and their bony, black elbows angled on the table like greasy, folded wings.
“Right on time,” Eli said, and motioned for Buck to sit, “pull out a chair and join the club.”
“What are you callin’ him a Polack for?” Vern said. “He’s no Polack, ‘cept for the clueless look on his face.”
“Buck,” Eli said. He pointed with his chin to Lester, who was writing something on a pad of paper.
Lester stood, and Vern and Cleve lifted their heads, as if he had the stink of carrion on him.
“So, we’re all set?” he asked.
“Got it, Boss,” Vern replied, Vern’s now uplifted face catching the light just so, cross-wise, and his right eye yellowed by bruising, and the iris ice blue, clouded by white cataract.
His assailant, he realized, the one with the wire. Oh, the gall of it! The whole business.
“You just take care of your end now, leave the rest to the professionals,” Lester warned.
Passing Buck, he squeezed his shoulder, as if in comradery, though testing the bulk of him. He went out the door and, seconds later, floated by the window outside, a jiibay, a wraith.
“Siddown,” Eli said and caught Buck’s arm.
Buck sat. The space was too small, and his elbows seemed to get in the way. Contacted Vern’s, on his right.
“So, what gives?”
Eli laughed. He told a joke, as if that might make things better. “A pedophile, a priest, and a reservation businessman walk into a bar–”
“Awww, really?” Cleve said. “Do we have to listen to this? You and your whining?”
“–and then a second guy walks in, see?” Eli said. Vern and Cleve, and Buck condescended to grin.
“So, how you doin’?” Vern asked.
“Diversifying my stock portfolio,” Buck said, and when Vern grimaced, he added, “‘buy low, sell high, right’?”
Eli was balancing a complicated triangle of interlocked knives over his glass, his fingers trembling. There was a trick to it: Buck had seen Eli get the works perched on the glass in the kitchen at the apartment. Countless times. You couldn’t jog the table, which was Eli’s intention. To distract him, so he’d listen to what Cleve had to say, wouldn’t go off half-cocked, and he tried to catch Eli’s eye, to get a sense of it, but Eli wouldn’t look up from the knives.
Vern rubbed his thumb and index finger together, said, “Filthy lucre,” and Cleve made a steeple of his hands, chimed in, in an identical voice. “How’d you like to do better, Chief?”
It was disconcerting, made him second guess where to look, at Vern, or was it Cleve? Same hollow-mouthed, hillbilly voice, same gestures. But which was the bull goose?
“We’re talking the green stuff,” Vern said, “big money,” and when that didn’t get a reaction, he added, “Cash. He–” he nodded to Eli, “Eli must’ve told you how this works, right?”
Cleve, echoing his brother, added, “You said up front you wanted into the big money. Well this it, your chance.
“All you gotta do is say ‘Yes.’”
Eli, with the most delicate gesture, released the configuration of knives. The knives balanced, just barely, then one dipped, and the heavy, metal handle of it dropped into the glass, shattering it.
Buck glanced down at the broken glass, then up at Vern, Vern of the weird, dog-like eyes.
“And I would do what?”
“You’d run swoop, sidewinder, or T-bone,” Cleve replied, jovially, as if here was just another job.
“You don’t get hit, see?” Cleve said, in it a blunt, lethal disregard for those who would.
“And that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Vern shot back, playing the closer. “No stolen vehicles to get caught in. And no ways you get injured.”
“Not a hair on your chinny, chin, chin,” Cleve sang. “Which you Indin’s ain’t got noways anyway.”
Eli was fooling with the broken glass, dropping it in the ashtray there, then swiped his hand down his pants leg, having cut himself.
“Shit,” he said.
“So, when?” Buck asked.
30
Friday of that week, Ambrose was behaving strangely, was working around something. It had become their ritual to trade visits to The Kruller, and now it was Ambrose’s turn, only he’d asked Buck to go. He worried it was to get him out of the shop, so he wouldn’t see – or hear – whatever, and he stood in the door, as if taking in the morning.
Stepping up behind him, Ambrose said, “You waitin’ for the second coming, or what?”
Outside, the lilacs were blooming, spring having finally arrived, and the scent carried in.
“What’ll you have?” he asked, as if he didn’t know already.
“Like before,” Ambrose said, “no sprinkles, and no Boston Cream or whatever that… mo is.”
At The Kruller he pointed out the donuts. “Six, Beautiful.” The Russian, stout and grey-haired and by no means beautiful, smiled, a crooked, but wholly winning smile, happy.
“Da, so, you vant…? Usual?”
“No,” he said, “Let’s mix it up this time, make it four of these, and two of these, hey?”
At the Paradise, he poured himself a coffee, Ambrose watching him from the stack of tires across the shop. They’d worked hard, and were filthy and hungry. He tore at a donut. Lifted the bag and shook it. It made a papery crackling. Provocation, pure and simple.
“Three got your name on ‘em,” he said, perky and fresh, “‘n’ all special like you wanted.”
With a pitcher’s finesse, he lobbed the bag to Ambrose, who, equally adroitly, snatched it out of the air, then dipped a hand in and lifted up a donut – pink, with blue sprinkles.
And on Ambrose’s face a look of – what was it? – disgust, or was it something else?
“I told you, no sprinkles and no cream filled,” Ambrose said. “But gimme some of that coffee, will you?”
Buck lifted his thermos and looked into it. “Empty,” he said, which it wasn’t, and smiled for Ambrose.
Closing time, and Buck shut down the rack while Ambrose arranged tools in the chest, the tools making sharp, ringing sounds behind him. He turned off the acetylene and oxygen and coiled the hoses. Lester pulled his office door shut and locked it, then checked the rear bay doors and set the alarm. He’d been more diligent since the break in, and he left later now.
“Ambrose?!” he called out.
“Yeah?”
“Got it covered?”
Ambrose saluted, and Lester went out, pulled his hat down as he crossed the windows in front.
Water dripped in the restroom, then the compressor came on, chuttering, and Ambrose shut it down. Glared, his hat on backwards and his goggles on his forehead, a second set of eyes.
“Somebody tells me that you’ve been snoopin’ around Dr. Miller’s place,” he said.
“Who ‘somebody’ says?”
Ambrose crossed the distance between them; he moved fast, crabwise around the rack, then was in his face.
“You stay – the hell – out of the doctor’s business,” Ambrose said. “You don’t fuck with any of it!”
Yeah – he was fishing, that’s all it was, and he wasn’t going to give him anything, not so much as a clue.
Ambrose jabbed his index finger into his chest, said, “You – got that, Chief?!” and he swung on him, and Ambrose caught his hand and levered it behind him, spun him off his feet. It was a practiced move, and it took his breath away. He’d seriously underestimated him, his arm bent up and behind him, burning something awful, his heart racing.
“I said, ‘You got that?!’” Ambrose said. “Say it.” Ambrose got hold of his thumb and bent it back.
“Fuck you,” he said, and even as he did, Ambrose bent this thumb back as if to break it.
He boosted Ambrose on his hip, ran with him into the wall, and Ambrose hit him with something. Cold-cocked him, and he went down, gritty cement cool on his face when he came to.
Beside him, Ambrose stooped on one knee, said, “You’ve been warned. Twice now. Third time, you’re dead.”
31
Over dinner, the three of them pretended they were just eating, and he held his hand against his thigh under the table. If he didn’t move it, the nausea subsided. And his head throbbed; he had a goose-egg over his left ear.
“What, you’re not hungry?” Eli said, eyeing him.
At a walk-in clinic an intern had given him some pills for the pain, and he felt slow-witted now, and his senses dulled, as if everything came at him from a great distance.
“No, it isn’t that,” he said, “it’s my hand. A little accident.” They’d see it sooner or later, and he set it on the table.
His hand was enormous, swollen tight under a metal cast, his thumb bruised blue-black. Jenny was laughing. It was a sick, strange kind of laughter. She knew it hadn’t been an accident.
“Over at the shop, just wasn’t paying attention,” he said. Which, he thought now, was true.
“Real funny, Jen,” Eli said. “That’s real sweet. You’re just one hell of a sweetheart.”
Jenny laughed and hiccupped.
“Stop it,” Eli said, and cut his eyes at her. “For Christ’ssake. You’re just making it worse, all right?”
Just after eleven by his watch, he woke clear-headed. Pulled his bag up around his chest and went to the window, where he peered through the blinds into the unit opposite.
Nothing but darkness there, but for a mass that moved, nonetheless, or that he imagined did. Was Ambrose one of Miller’s lieutenants? Or was he working some angle for himself? Smoking, he thought on it. When nothing came to him, he closed the blinds, turned on the light and reached into his duffel for Dr. Miller’s album. Maybe, going through it, he’d see something?
He fingered the hole in upper right corner, lifted it to the light, could see the lamp on the other side. Leafed through the baseball photos, the bullet hole upper right on each page, a reminder. The photos were faded, the edges yellowed, the reds more coral than red now, the blues aquamarine. In a photo upper left, Miller stood shoulder to shoulder with his father, Od – Od in a too-tight, decades-outdated suit there, grinning uncomfortably, an Indian in a Edward Curtis print. Cattycorner, in his uniform, he stood with him as if with a stranger, or a fan.
He turned the page. On the side opposite was nothing – just black paper, and the bullet hole upper left now.
On the following leaf, Bear goofed for the camera, laughing, Eli beside him holding up a caramel apple. Joe there, too.
Tenth game of the season. He remembered it, because he’d pitched a shutout that night.
Now, though, as he paged through the album, he found Od in one photo or another at every- single- game: Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee. Even San Francisco and New York.
Od always off by himself, where he wouldn’t be seen, a hat pulled low over his forehead.
Running onto the field, he’d always looked up into the bleachers and, not seeing him, had assumed he wasn’t there.
Some time later, he switched off the light and sat in the dark, the images from the album swimming up at him.
No singular, unexpected solution to his problem had appeared. No connection that might lead him to something useful. But then he hadn’t expected to find anything in the album – though, he had hoped.
Yet, something did suggest itself to him now, unpleasant as it was. Other than those of his games, the images of Carol, Dr. Miller’s wife, seemed most insistent. Carol smiling on the lodge deck. Carol in a boat, a rod and reel in hand. Carol, bent at her middle, dancing in the visitor’s round at powwow.
No, having taken the album had yielded something, after all. Carol, he was surprised to think, was the answer.
She’d know where Dr. Miller kept his things. Mortgage. Medical records. Business records. A safe. Or….
But to get her to hand it all over, he would need proof – something as incontrovertible as a witness. Which meant, now, Ambrose. Ugly a scene as it would be, he’d drag Ambrose with his hands tied behind him to Bill’s house and, at gun point if he had to, he’d force Ambrose to tell Carol what was what. And Carol would hand over what he needed.
He’d go to the police – or… somebody – with it. And that way, he’d take Bill down before he went after Eli.
Because, Bill was going to. To get what he wanted. It was coming to that. Eli had something of his, and Bill meant to get it.
And he’d do – what? After? Well, that didn’t much matter, because he’d’ve got done what he needed to. End of story.
The things you did for love, sometimes they just killed you.
Sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, brooding on the real world, terrible logistics of it, Jenny came up the hallway, stepped into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator.
She broke ice from a tray, the crutch propped under her arm, and got a bottle from the cupboard.
“Can’t sleep?” he said.
She swept up the knife from the counter and spun around, and Buck leapt to his feet.
“For Christ’ssakes! It’s me!”
She leaned against the stove, her hand pressed to her chest. “Just… don’t… do that!” she said. She went to the window and pulled back the curtain. Took in the street, then glanced over her shoulder and said, “Weren’t you supposed to be out all night with Eli?”
“Not until later,” he replied, and she put her fisted hand to her mouth, muffled a sob, and spun back into the bedroom.
32
Behind Moby’s, he stood with Eli under a light, a swarm of moths hitting the tin cover so it pinged dully. He’d left Eli’s gun in the drawer for Jenny, but wished now he had it, instead of the knife in his pocket. Cleve had put on glasses. In his cheap suit, he looked like some huckster, not the well-intended motorist he meant to appear. Vern, to Cleve’s right, jabbed his finger into his palm.
“Buck, you’re on Sidewinder,” he said, “you stay alongside our mark. Keep him from turning. If a patrol car shows, you get them to follow, whatever it takes. Understand?”
He imagined himself stepping from the car and getting shot. It would be all too easy.
“And don’t bug out if the cops get rough,” Vern added, “because you won’t have done anything, or seen anything, right?”
“Right,” he said.
On the road behind Eli, he ran his hand around the collar of his jacket, lifting it to his neck, as if it might afford some protection. Eli’s sedan floated over the centerline. A car-length back, Vern came on in a tan-nothing of a car he’d boosted, the swoop, and back yet further, Cleve was in a Mercedes.
They crossed the Mississippi into St. Paul. At an intersection the street changed names, here Victorians, crenellated rooflines and gingerbread and broad, manicured lawns. A block or so later, they waited for a light at one of the multi-armed intersections St. Paul was famous for.
On one corner was a bar, over the green shamrock in the front window, in elaborate gold, Donnelly’s.
The light changed and they went through, Eli parking in front of a Cadillac Coup de Ville. Vern pulled in a good few blocks ahead of Eli. Cleve, for the moment, was nowhere.
