Trust (22 page)

“What happened?” Oakes said.

“Oh,” he said, “I was sitting here, going over payroll. I know, and you know, Elio’s a crackerjack service manager, and he’s such a stickler for getting things right the customers think he’s God. But damn it all, when he makes Rudy stay till nine because somebody’s car still knocks, Rudy gets this idea in his head that he’s earning overtime. So all right, Rudy’s not too bright, and if he was determined to go in the car business, he should’ve stuck to pumping gas, and maybe changing oil. But we need four guys out there, and three good ones’re all we’ve got, so Rudy’s where he shouldn’t be, doing what he doesn’t know how, and Elio is screaming at him, making him miss dinner, and
I’m
paying for it.

“Elio forgets that. He acts like he thinks Rudy gets paid by the job. But Rudy knows better’n that, so the worst mechanic that we’ve got is making close to the most money. Which isn’t good for morale. But what do I do? Fire Rudy? Leave us short a man? Tell Elio just to let Rudy’s crap work go out of the shop, and get my customers pissed off?” He sighed. “When it’s quiet,” he said, “like it was today, like it always is, this time of year, I like to bang my damned fool head against minor problems I can’t possibly solve.

“Well,” he said, “God saw my situation, and He took pity on me. Not completely, oh no. God doesn’t believe in making things
too
easy. Just a little something to get the old heart pumping away, you know? A call from Earl’s pet hooker. I didn’t even know her name. He’s always called her Penny, when he’s mentioned her at all. ‘Mary Slate,’ the switchboard girl said. ‘Says it’s personal’ ‘Personal?’ I say. ‘How the hell can it be personal if I don’t even know the name?’ But I took it anyway. Should’ve known it meant trouble. Should’ve ducked the call.”

“Oh my God,” Oakes said, “what’s that little shit done now?”

“Well, that’s what I mean about God,” Beale said. “When God sticks it to you, you don’t get full particulars. God likes to tease you some. I don’t know what Earl’s done, and neither does she. Which is why she’s calling me, to see if maybe I do. What Earl’s apparently done, I guess, is skip out on her. ‘I was out of town for Thanksgiving,’ she says. Crying, of course, which I guess is supposed to make me think she’s telling the truth. I don’t, naturally. Partly because I know she’s been shacked up with Earl quite a while, and only another natural-born liar could stand that, and partly because there’s no good reason for her to tell me that. The minute she tries to make sure I know she was with her family, that minute I know she was out working when Earl flew the coop. Why she cares what I think, I don’t know. Why she thinks I care what she thinks or she does—that I can’t answer either.

“So I’m a little short with her,” Beale said. “I say: ‘I hate to tell you this, miss, but Earl’s got a history of that. Skipping out on people that trust him. Did he
take something from you or something? Because I’m not making it good. If he got your jewelry, or he took your money, well, I’m sorry, you know? But your best bet’s to call the cops. I don’t insure anyone against Earl. I don’t trust the bastard myself.”

“Well,” Beale said, “surprise, surprise. At least as far as she can tell, he didn’t take a thing. Except his clothes and shaving gear—only his own stuff. ‘You checked your car since you got back?’ This is what I say to her. ‘Car still where you left it?’ Yup, right where it’s s’posed to be. The only bad thing that he did was leave the apartment filthy. ‘It really stunk in here,’ she said. ‘He left some steaks and stuff just rotting in the sink, and the refrigerator open so it all got spoiled in there. And the bed, I hadda change it. I think he threw up. Probably from too much beer—he left all his old beer cans and stuff dumped in the living room.’

“ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that’s in character for him too. My mother swears to this day that the swollen veins in her legs came from following Earl around, all the time he was growing up, bending over and stooping down to pick up all his garbage.’

“ ‘But I don’t care about that stuff.’ This is what she tells me. ‘All I care about is Earl. If he is all right. And that’s why I finally called you. To see if you know where he is.’

“I tell her I don’t,” Beale said. “ ‘Did he leave a note or anything that might give you a hint?’ And that was when she said he did, that he left her a note that said he had to drive up here and see me about some important family business. Something about seeing a lawyer and signing some papers. ‘And I called the people
where he works, and he told them the exact same thing.’

“ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘that takes care of one possibility then, which was pretty remote anyway—that some kind of fit took hold of him or something and he told the truth for once. Nobody from here called him, and if there’s some important business going on that concerns my family, I don’t know about it and I kind of think I would. My guess is that the law
is
involved, though, or will be before too soon.’ So she says, she gives me another dose of the crying there, just to see if maybe I do know, and I’m holding back on her, maybe covering for him, and she says: ‘I guess you can’t help me then.’ And I said that was how it looked to me. And she says: ‘If he gets in touch with you, will you at least tell him to call me? Get in touch with me?’ Well, there’s small chance of that happening. If Earl gets himself in a position where he decides he has to call me, one call’s all he’ll be allowed to make, and it’ll be to get him a lawyer. But I said: ‘Sure, sure I will.’ And she hung up.”

“Well,” Oakes said, “if that was all there was to it. Maybe it’s just a case of Earl ducking out on another girlfriend. Like you say, he’s done it enough before. And not just on girlfriends, either—family, friends, Earl plays no favorites. Maybe that’s all it is—he was sick of her, and he didn’t have the guts to face her. That would be typical.”

“I’ve kept trying to tell myself that,” Beale said, “ever since I hung up. And I couldn’t get it down. Couldn’t choke it down. What little I know, that I got from her, it’s
got
to be more than that. I know he’s gone—that part’s true. I know he left in a hurry, and
a mess behind him. Like you say: typical. I know she doesn’t know where he is, and I know Waldo that took him on doesn’t know, either, if he thinks he came up here.

“What I don’t know,” Beale said, “is why he left a false trail. If he hadn’t’ve left her the note, and gone to all the trouble of giving his boss a load of shit, then I’d be worried about him. Somebody from his noisy past finally caught up with him after all these years and grabbed him, to settle an old score. But he knew he was going. And he had time enough to write the note, and time enough before that to spin his yarn at the car lot. This wasn’t some kidnapping thing. This was something Earl planned. And it was something, it was something he planned without letting her in on it. This girl is no virgin. It wouldn’t bother her if something was illegal, if it looked like she could do it without getting caught and make some money at it. Hell, that’s how she makes her living. Her job’s doing something that’s against the law, peddling her ass for money. So if Earl didn’t tell her what he was up to, and did lie to her about it, then it figures it was either something pretty dangerous, or else it wasn’t dangerous but he didn’t want to share the loot with her. But it was still illegal.”

“You sold that car, didn’t you?” Oakes said. “You sold that Mercedes. You sold it to that flashy dame from over in Manchester.”

“I had the bill of sale,” Beale said. “Earl did send me that. Kathie Derwood. Morristown, New Jersey. To Earl Beale. Notarized. And another one, also notarized, from Earl to me.”

“I farted once, in a high wind,” Oakes said. “Worth about as much. Lasted about as long.”

“Well,” Beale said, “that deal was down the line. But this call put me on tenterhooks, and I’ve been on them ever since. The suspense is what does it, you know? If Earl’s doing something, Earl will get caught. The only real questions’re when, and for what. So that call amounts to an early Christmas card from Earl: ‘Happy holidays, Don. Guess what I’m up to, and how I’m gonna screw up your Christmas.’ ”

Oakes frowned. “I hope that’s all it amounts to,” he said. “For your sake, I mean. That lady from Manchester, she’s not from here.”

“Nobody’s from here anymore,” Beale said. “They all came from some other place. For some reason I don’t know, her husband’s sick of her. She bought him the car to revive him. Revive her. It won’t work. It never works. But I owned the car, and I sold the car, and she bought the car, and she gave it to him. That’s all there is to the thing.”

“I hope so,” Oakes said. “I sure hope so.”

Ed Cobb was not sympathetic. He sat in the chair in front of Don Beale’s desk in the upstairs office and let his displeasure show on his face. “There is one situation where we get in trouble, you and me,” he said. “It is when we have talked about something, and we either have not agreed on what to do about it, or else we
have
agreed on what to do about it. And then one of us goes out and does something that the two of us didn’t agree on. Oakesie tells me you sold that car.”

“Look,” Beale said, “the car is the least of my worries. Hell, it’s none of my worries at all. The car is fine. It’s Earl that’s my trouble.”

“That car came from Earl,” Cobb said. “Earl is trouble, and what comes from Earl is trouble, and you’re telling me that you got trouble with Earl? You better hope that woman’s husband is one lucky, damned good driver. If he ever gets a parking ticket on that thing, and some rookie cop, going by the book, runs a title check on that thing, there’ll be shit flying through the air like confetti, and all of us’ll get some on our clothes.”

“Leave me alone,” Beale said. “You said it was Briggs on your mind.”

“It was,” Cobb said, “until Oakesie told me you sold the car, and you told me Earl’s on the run. Here I’ve been out on the road like a sheriff, taking my good friend’s advice, and finding as usual, like I always do, his advice is pretty damned good. And then I come back, to thank my good friend, and what do I learn’s going on? My friend’s been ignoring
my
good advice, and absolutely jeopardizing all the possibilities that something good’ll happen, because I followed his.”

Beale sighed. “Ed,” he said, “If it’s good news, let me have it. I could use some. Just give it to me. Don’t make me pay for it. All right?”

Cobb exhaled loudly. “Shit,” he said. “In my next life I’ll do something simple, like my mother said. Be a jewel thief or something. This business of dealing with people’s beginning to get on my nerves.

“I did what you made me think of,” he said. “The first thing I did was sound out Danisi and Shaw: what’d they think of this idea. And they loved it. They both said the same thing that you said. That Henry’s the best-known guy in the Second, better’n Wainwright himself. And I said: ‘That’s fine. Glad to hear it. But that just means people know him. Does it mean also they’ll vote for him?’ And both of them said: ‘Why the hell not? Since when did the voters vote for a guy because he’s the best qualified? They vote for the guy because they like the guy, not ’cause they think he’s the best. They like him the best? Then he
is
the best. And everyone likes Henry Briggs.’ ‘But,’ I say, ‘sure, but like him enough? Like him enough to beat Wainwright?’ And they say: ‘Who cares? What difference
does it make? They like him a lot more’n Greenberg.’ See, I’m losing sight of my own object here. What we’ve got to do is beat Greenberg. And when they remind me of that, well, okay, I’ll go and see if they’re right.

“I went down to Occident,” Cobb said. “I went down and I saw Paul Whipple. There’re other people I’m going to see there, but Paul is the power in Occident. It’s okay to talk to the rest of the people that know things and keep up on things, but if you talk to them before you talk to Paul, then Paul will not talk to you. So I went in his IGA store there, and I had a cup of coffee with him. And I told him what it was I had on my mind, and I asked him what he might think.

“He looked at me like I had two noses. ‘For
Congress?
’ he says. ‘Henry Briggs?’ I said: Yes. He’s an old friend of yours, right?’ It was like you had him to dinner, and he ate it, and then you told him you just served him a casserole of his cat. ‘Well, Jesus Christ,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Don’t know as I ever considered it.’

“ ‘You grew up with him too,’ I said, ‘just like me. You know him better’n I do. Did you ever think, when we were growing up, well, let me put it to you this way: Did you ever think, when we were growing up, that Henry’d pitch for the Red Sox?’

“ ‘No,’ he said. ‘I knew he was a good ball player, but, no, I never did.’

“ ‘And he did, didn’t he?’ I said And Paul said: ‘Yup.’ And I said: ‘All right, then why shouldn’t he run for the Congress?’

“ ‘Well,’ Whip said, ‘well, for one thing, Henry
practiced the baseball. I never knew Henry to practice the politics. Never knew him to do that.’

“ ‘And if he had,’ I said, ‘you’d look at him like you look at me, an’ you’d call him a damned politician.’

“ ‘Yup,’ says Whip. ‘And you’d vote against him, for that,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t vote
for
him,’ Whip said. ‘Do you think most people feel that way?’ I said. ‘Couldn’t say,’ Whip said. ‘Never know what people’re thinking.’

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘take a stab at it. If I could get Henry, think about this some, would you say that he had a chance?’

“He got this strange look on his face. ‘Guess I would,’ ’s what he said. ‘Guess I’d have to say that. Henry’s got friends all around here. Don’t know as there’s enough, to win an election, but Henry’s got friends all around here.’

“I went over to Charlotte, saw Father Morissette. Asked him the same sort of questions. And I got the same kind of answers. Nobody ever thought about voting against Bob Wainwright. No one’s ever done it, really. Never had the chance. Now if they happened to get one, and the man was someone they liked, well, sure, they’d give it some serious thought. And many’d come down for Henry.

“I only talked to about ten people,” Cobb said, “but those ten people represent just about every kind of life we’ve got, in the Second District. And all of them deal with the public, every single day. What struck me was just what you said: everybody likes Henry. They all know who Henry is, and they all admired him. He’ll leave that Greenberg kid for dead, in the primary. He’s a natural.”