Blunt Darts (9 page)

“And the lifeguard!” from the old woman.

“The fuckin’ cops are off drinking and the fuckin’ lifeguard knows I’ll kick his ass if he so much as lets his shadow fall on me.” The other kids laughed, and they continued their running and passing drills up the beach. The big boy had the right moves; the other two were barely adequate. The old man sat down sputtering.

“Nice kid,” I said to Val.

“Craig Mann,” from her, disgustedly. “His father’s a selectman, so nobody will do anything about him. He was a real high-school star, tight end, I think. Last fall the local paper was full of his gridiron heroics at U Mass/Amherst.”

“Why wouldn’t that same local paper have been full of Stephen’s disappearance?”

Valerie frowned. “Judge Kinnington probably owns most of it.”

I rolled onto my side to face her. “A few more questions, then some fuel and reflection.”

I felt Valerie settle her bottom on the blanket like Beth used to do in bed. I also felt a stirring in my trunks that I hadn’t expected.

Change tacks. “Did you ever have reason to believe that Stephen was involved with Blakey in any way, with or without consent?”

“No. I mean, Stephen is not exactly average, but he’s not abnormal. At least, not that way. I don’t mean
that’s
abnormal, you know, if an adult, two consenting adults, decide to—”

“Okay. Assuming Stephen left involuntarily, he could have been taken to a place none of us would ever guess or stumble on. So, let’s assume that Stephen’s on his own. We don’t know where he went, but we have to start somewhere. So, again, how would he get where he’s going?”

“Hitchhiking,” said Valerie as she squeaked open the Styrofoam chest. “John, I’m sorry, but I’m starving. Can we start just a little bit early?” I didn’t like her voice when it wheedled.

“Sure, but hitchhiking, at least toward his destination, isn’t likely. Stephen’s smart enough to anticipate he’d be remembered and recognized. He might have hitchhiked
away
from here, though, and toward another form of transportation.”

“Like a bus station?” Valerie uncrinkled the aluminum foil around a food source of some kind.

“Good thought, but they’ve been checked, apparently competently.” I sat up.

She said, “Let me toss these away so they won’t blow, and then we can dig in.” Valerie trotted off with some paper toward a trash basket. I noticed that the Dallas Cowboys were headed back our way. As they approached Valerie, Craig Mann made some remark that sounded like, “Hey, hey, school is
out,
boys.” She shook her head and trotted back to the blanket while the two lackeys whooped at her distinctly feminine gait.

“I just so hate people like that,” Valerie said as she dipped into the cooler.

“Can you think of any type of transportation Stephen might prefer to use?” I asked.

Valerie cut a hunk of cheese and passed it and some gourmet crackers over to me. I reached over to pour the wine. I had my head down as she answered. “No, not really. Of course, he—Hey!”

I looked up to catch part of a rooster-tail of sand in my wine cup and all over the cheese.

“Sorry, lovers, but that pass was in the fourth quarter, and we needed it to keep our drive alive,” said Man-child Mann over his shoulder as he loped away from us.

I raised my voice so it would crack. “You fellows ought to have some respect for others, you know.”

“Oh, I have lots of respect for Miss Jacobs, Pop,” he yelled, his pals hooting. I noticed Mann was wearing jean cut-offs held up by an old belt. Off to our right, the old man was sputtering again.

Valerie was looking at me oddly, the way you react when someone you’ve so far liked shows some weakness or failing, like dropping a racist remark.

“Sorry about the cheese,” I said, brushing it off.

“Oh, um, that’s okay, John,” she said, dropping her eyes a little and fussing with the crackers.

“By the way,” I said, “do you have a hairbrush in that bag of yours?”

Valerie looked up. “A … what?”

“Hairbrush.”

“Yes.” She turned awkwardly for it without taking her eyes off me. “Yes, I do.” A dip into her bag this time produced a big, blue plastic one with a thick handle and a broad working end.

“Thanks,” I said, and slid it between two folds in our blanket. “Now, can you think of any form of transportation Stephen might favor?”

Valerie tried to refocus her thoughts. “No. No.”

I heard some thudding behind me and, sure enough, my imitation of the all-American wimp was drawing the all-American schmuck inexorably back toward us. Craig Mann did a stop-and-go turnaround, which again showered the elderly couple. He then came chugging at us full tilt, following the wobbly arc of the ball, his face turned back over his shoulder.

Valerie, believing—reasonably—that she had to try taking charge of the situation, rolled up onto her knees and yelled, “Hey, watch out!”

Big Boy did nothing to show that he heard her. He was about twenty feet from our blanket. I figured Mann would glance once at us to orient himself and then plant his left leg, the one farther from the passer, but just outside our blanket in order to (1) turn sharply to receive the ball and (2) inundate us with another tsunami of sand. I waited for it, then did what every schoolyard kid knows how to do.

I stuck out my right foot.

Big Boy’s left heel landed just before my outstretched calf. As he pivoted to redirect his momentum, the sand flew all over me. As Mann stepped off, though, my lower right leg was a bar to his left ankle, and he toppled. His left shoulder plowed into the sand, with all the awkwardness and impact that you see only when an athlete who knows how to fall from an opponent’s tackle instead goes down because of an accidental shot from a teammate.

Craig Mann also missed the pass.

I was standing a count before he was. I hoped that what I’d done would so embarrass him in front of his buds that he’d think only a punch could avenge it. Mann came up spitting sand and obscenities. He wound up with his right fist and let fly at my head. I parried it with my left, slashing the edge of that hand into his forearm. As I slashed, I cocked my right hand, fingers outstretched but slightly cupped to avoid jamming them, and then drove it up and into his solar plexus. There was a noise from Big Boy’s mouth like the sudden flapping of a sail that’s lost its wind and purpose. He sank to one knee and started gagging. I dropped to one knee, also, reached back for Valerie’s brush, and then yanked him by his hair over my other leg. I spanked him hard and loud with the hairbrush. Mann had about enough air to go “Emphh!” on each swat and wriggle a little.

After about ten strokes, my palm was beginning to sting, the way it does if you catch a hardball in the wrong part of the glove. I tossed the hairbrush onto the blanket and looked around for his friends. They were transfixed about twenty feet away. I rolled Mann off my leg and onto his belly. Standing, I reached down, gripped his belt dead center at the small of his back, and lifted him like a four-limbed suitcase. It’s really pretty easy to do, even with a heavy man, since you’re able to lift him at an almost perfect balance point, but it’s impressive as hell. I then walked purposefully down into the water until I was at mid-thigh. I yo-yoed him five times to help the water focus the sting I hoped the spanking had also imparted. He was making little gurgling sounds. I carried Big Boy back up the beach and stopped in front of his friends, then dropped him like a sack of battered junk.

“And if you do this again,” I said to them, shaking my index finger, “you’re all going to bed without any supper.”

As I returned to our blanket, the elderly man caught up with me. He grinned, hopping from one foot to the other, and started pumping my hand.

“Boy, oh boy. Son, that’s the best show I’ve seen since the war! That miserable brat-bastard’s been terrorizing this beach for years. My name’s Graden. Charlie Graden. If you need somebody to stand up for you with the cops or anything, you call me, me and Edna. We’re in the book. But boy, oh boy!”

I smiled at him. “Thanks, Mr. Graden. If this were twenty years ago, I’ll bet
I’d
be the one shaking
your
hand.”

“Damn right!” he said. “Take care of yourself, son.” He trotted, only a little uncertainly, back toward his chair.

When I reached the blanket, Valerie had already packed everything back in the chest and had her tank top on.

I said, “We can stop for lunch. …”

She glared up at me with tears in her eyes. “John, you’re just as bad as they are, you know? Only you don’t know it. You could have handled that boy easily, any time you wanted. You used a whiny tone to encourage him to come back.” Now her own voice cracked with emotion. “I thought you were a sincere, caring guy looking for a poor little boy. But all you are is a showoff too, just like those college kids. The only difference is, your shows are a little more clever and a lot more violent.”

Valerie Jacobs picked up her cooler with one hand, yanked up her blanket with the other, and strode determinedly off, trying unsuccessfully to gather the sand-trailing blanket into a bundle with just one hand.

As I picked up my keys and shook out my towel, it seemed that her version edged closer to the mark than the old man’s and mine did. I spent most of the drive back to Boston trying to persuade myself the other way.

I
STOPPED
at my apartment to shower. While I was drying off, I found the telephone number for one of the two people I planned to interview that afternoon.

Dave Waters and I had been first lieutenants together in Saigon in 1968. He absorbed a lot of indirect abuse during his first week until the day that a good ol’ boy told him to shag his black ass after some coffee. About ten minutes later Dave began absorbing a lot of direct respect. The good ol’ boy told the doctors he’d been hit by a speeding Citroen sedan.

The last contact information I had for Dave was the Denver P.D. I tried it.

“Lieutenant Waters’ line,” answered a voice.

“May I speak to him, please? Tell him it’s Lieutenant John Cuddy.”

“Hold on, sir.” A pause.

“Waters here.”

“Still just a lieutenant, I hear.”

“Christ, I was afraid it was you,” his voice becoming jocular. “You still padding insurance claims?”

“No, but that’s a long story. I’m on my own now, and I need some information about a war hero in-country.”

“I didn’t know anybody recognized heroes anymore.”

“This was in your sector, I think. Probably your second tour, April of sixty-nine. A captain named Telford Kinnington led a charge from a protected position against some VC attackers. Remember it?”

A grunt at the other end. “Jesus, John, I’ll never forget it. When I read his name off the initial field report, I was scared stiff that ‘Telford’ might be a brother, so I checked the file myself. He wasn’t—black, I mean—but a lot of the cooks and drivers he got the asses shot off were.”

“What happened?”

“Your Kinnington was a wild man. He’d been back in Hawaii a couple of times for battle fatigue. Only he’d never been in battle. ‘Telford’ was Intelligence, spent a tour in Saigon as a desk-riding lieutenant. Wasn’t promoted because, though his two-oh-one file didn’t spell it out, he was damned near psycho. Even so, Kinnington was from some big-time family up by you, so the pressure was put on to promote him. They did, and somehow he wrangled this staff position at base camp.”

“A staff position?”

“Yeah. Some sort of special-liaison crap, buck up his ‘self-esteem.’ Then, one morning, while the infantry troops were out on search-and-destroy, a ’copter pilot spotted a concentration of VC approaching the camp. Any gunships were a little too far away, so the base commander put his only remaining line troops inside the points Charlie was most likely to hit. Kinnington was with the bakers and candlestick-makers at the best natural-barrier side of the perimeter with hurried, ambiguous orders to fend off any attack. It was the ambiguity that saved Telford’s memory—if not his ass—because when the VC hit the camp at the expected place, Kinnington jumps up and leads his ‘company’ on an idiotic charge into Charlie’s flank. Just then, wouldn’t you know it, our gunships do arrive and maul the VC and ‘Kinnington’s commandos.’ The son of a bitch got thirty-some killed and wounded, mostly by ‘Death from Above.’“

“Dave?”

“Yeah?”

“How the fuck did Kinnington get a medal, then?”

A derisive chuckle at the other end. “How the fuck do you think, John? The family’s friends in high places applied a full-court press. The ambiguity was emphasized and the ’copter killing was excused, and old Telford got himself commended.”

“Dave, I appreciate your time. You coming back this way in the near future?”

Another chuckle but different tone this time. “Thanks, but if my kids are gonna ride school buses, I’d sooner they be in Denver than Boston.”

“I wish I could disagree with you. See you, Dave.”

“’Bye, John.”

I hesitated to call Valerie Jacobs, because I wanted to catch my other contact before his cocktail hour, which probably began when most people were finishing lunch. But during the drive back to Boston, I had thought of more than my bully-whipping on the beach.

“Hullo,” she answered huskily.

“Val, it’s John.”

“Oh, um …”

“Val, please don’t hang up.”

Quietly she said, “I won’t,” and sniffled. I was fairly certain she hadn’t developed a cold in the prior two hours.

We simultaneously said, “I’m sorry,” and laughed.

I stopped sooner than she did.

“Oh, John,” she said finally, “I’m so sorry I acted that way at the beach. It’s just that violence, in any form … well, it makes me feel sick, and …”

“It’s all right. After I thought things through, I agreed with you. Let’s forget it. Okay?”

A final sniffle at the other end of the line. “Okay,” she said.

“Val, I’ve been thinking. Stephen doesn’t seem to have confided anything to his family. Was there anybody in your class he was friendly with?”

She paused before answering. “Gee, John, that’s a tough one. Like I told you at L’Espalier, Stephen really is different from the other kids his age. I never noticed that he particularly palled around with any of the other boys.”