Trust (28 page)

“Well, one of the things,” he said, “I was hoping to use the men’s room.”

“We ain’t got one of those, soldier-boy,” she said. “Only the can inna room. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Never heard gas stations? That’s where the men’s rooms are.”

“Well,” he said, “could I use the can in here?”

“I’m not supposed, let anybody in here when I’m working,” she said. “You wouldn’t think so, look at it, but the owner’s very particular. Says he don’t want anybody seeing any room that’s not made up.” She snickered. “ ‘Gives the wrong impression, people see rooms not made up.’ Beat that? Anybody comes to this crummy-looking joint, if the bed’s not made up, I didn’t put in towels, well, I don’t think it’s gonna get
them all upset so they go off somewhere else. Only people we get here’s cheap bums anyway.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” he said. “Please just let me go to the latrine.”

She laughed at him. “I dunno,” she said. “The bed’s not made up or anything, but that might not bother you. You one of those raper guys? That why you really wanna come in? You gonna rape me, is that it? Might have to call the cops.”

He laughed. “Look,” he said, “I promise I won’t rape you, at least not until I’ve used the bathroom there. Then, we like each other? Well, let’s see how things work out.”

The lieutenant saw the door close and reopen, and the sergeant enter the room. After a few minutes the door opened again and the sergeant came out. He paused at the threshold and leaned down. He kissed the cleaning lady on the cheek. “Thank you very much, ma’am,” he said. “Today you’ve served your country well.”

She blushed. “Ahh,” she said, “it was nothin’. You’re actually kind of cute. I think I’ll tell people that you did come in and rape me. My friends’ll all be jealous.”

The sergeant returned to the car. He said, “He’s not here. She doesn’t know when he’ll be here. If he’s not here, in the morning, it usually means he’s home. But not always. She can’t call him up because he keeps the only key to the office, and the phones in the rooms don’t call out unless someone’s in the office and throws a switch.”

“Hmm,” the lieutenant said. “You find out where his house is? How to get to that?”

“More or less,” the sergeant said. “It’s about five miles south of here, off back in the woods.”

“Or we could have an early lunch,” the lieutenant said.

The gray Lincoln came into the parking lot from the south, moving fast. The driver swerved it to park next to the mobile sign but spotted the khaki Ford as he started the turn and racked the steering wheel over so that the tires howled and threw gravel, and the car hunkered down on its port side. It did not fully stabilize until he brought it to a halt next to the Ford. “My guess is, that’s him,” the sergeant said. “Time to do our full routine. Get your patter ready.”

“Crazy fuckin’ bastard, isn’t he?” the lieutenant said reflectively. “Roll that son-bitch, doing that, someday his luck runs out.” The cleaning lady opened the motel room door and stood on the threshold in the wind.

Battaglia left the door open when he got out of the Lincoln. He wore a trench coat, open, and a red velour collared sweatshirt over blue jeans. His hair was standing up, and his face was mottled. He came up to the driver’s side of the Ford and slammed his left hand down on the door. “Rollah window down,” he said, making a cranking motion with his right hand. The sergeant obeyed the order. “What the fuck’re you guys doing here?” Battaglia said. “You just wanna tell me that? What the fuck you’re doin’ here?”

The sergeant glanced at the lieutenant. The lieutenant shrugged. The sergeant looked back at Battaglia. “We’re trying to locate a man named James Battaglia,” he said. “Battaglia or Battles. Understand he goes by both.”

“Well, you fuckin’ did it,” Battaglia said. “But I
have to say you got a fuckin’ funny way of doing it, the way you fuckin’ did it.”

“Sir?” the sergeant said.

“You ever been married, asshole?” Battaglia said. “Either one of you two assholes, either one of you been married?” Both of them shook their heads. “No,” Battaglia said, “I didn’t fuckin’ think so. And I knew, I fuckin’
knew
, that if one of you was, you would not’ve pulled the fuckin’ stunt that you just pulled on me.”

The sergeant looked at the lieutenant. The lieutenant shrugged. The sergeant looked back at Battaglia. “Sir?” he said.

Battaglia slapped his right hand on the door of the Ford. He took his left hand off the door and put both hands on his hips. He took a deep breath. He looked at the sky. He turned and kicked a small stone along the macadam. He turned back and put his hands on the door of the Ford. He bent down. “
Listen
, all right?” he said. “Just fuckin’
listen
to me. You come down here from God knows where, to do what God knows what, and the minute that you get here, the first fuckin’ thing you do’s get things in a fuckin’ uproar. And,
why’d
you fuckin’ do that? Because you don’t know anything. There’s two of you, for Christ sake, and the two of you between you haven’t got enough brains to come in the fuckin’ rain.”

The lieutenant coughed. He leaned forward and bent down so that he could see Battaglia’s face. “Mister James Battaglia?” he said.

“Yeah,” Battaglia said, “I’m James Battaglia. And after all the shit you raised, you should be damned glad of that.”

The lieutenant nodded. He opened the passenger
door of the Ford and got out, shutting it behind him. He looked at Battaglia over the roof of the car. “Mister Battaglia,” he said in the wind, “if you’d permit Sergeant Fulling there to leave the vehicle …” Battaglia stepped back from the Ford. The sergeant opened the driver’s side door and got out. The wind nearly snatched the lieutenant’s hat, and he clamped it back on his head with his right hand. “It’s pretty windy here, sir,” he said. “Could we use your office?”

Battaglia looked resentful. “I suppose we can,” he said, “but I don’t see why we fuckin’ need to, or the fuck you’re doing here.”

“Please,” the lieutenant said, starting toward the motel. The cleaning woman retreated back into the room and closed the door behind her.

Inside the office Battaglia moved at a half trot behind the counter and seized the stool behind it. He clasped his hands on the counter and stared at the two soldiers. “Aw right,” he said, “what is it?”

“This is Sergeant Walter Fulling,” the lieutenant said, opening his coat. “United States Army. My name is Oliver McKissick. Lieutenant. Also U.S. Army. It is our sad duty to locate the next of kin of Specialist First Class Keith P. Battaglia, and deliver to said next of kin a telegram from the secretary. Of the army.” He took an envelope from the inside pocket of his overcoat.

Battaglia stared at him. “Keithie’s down in Georgia, there. Keithie’s down in Georgia. Nobody dies in Georgia, asshole. Nobody dies down there. Everybody lives forever.”

The sergeant frowned and looked at the lieutenant. The lieutenant cleared his throat. “Sir,” he said.

“
No
,” Battaglia said, unclasping his hands and slapping the counter with the palm of his right, “I don’t want that shit from you. Keith is down, Fort Gordon, Georgia, with his fuckin’ wife and kid. I got a Christmas card from him. Got it what, a month ago? He’s down in fuckin’ Georgia and I know he’s all right there. There’s been some kind of a mistake here like you guys’re famous for. Like going to the wrong house, in the wrong town, and getting everyone fucked up until it’s fuckin’ straightened out. Just like you did this morning, in the fuckin’ liquor store. Get my fuckin’ ex-wife all fucked up so she fucks
me
, the fucking woman. I knew she was fuckin’ nuts, but I never heard her like this. Like you guys got her this morning. ‘I got a premonition,’ she says. The cunt calls me at home. I’m fucking my wife, all right? I got a right, I think. And then the goddamned phone rings, so I have to answer that, and who the fuck is it that’s interrupting us? It’s my fuckin’ ex-wife’s who, and why’s she doing this? Because you fucking assholes stopped and asked fucking directions, and she’s got a fucking ‘feeling.’ That she knows what you’re here for. Well, I told that fucking woman. I said: ‘Look, you’re fucking nuts. Whatever these assholes want, it’s not what you think it is. It’s not for fucking Keith, all right? It’s not for fucking Keith. He’s down in fucking Georgia, I made fucking sure of that. And I made sure he fucking stays there, when I called up a fucking guy that made a call for me. And
you
know that’s where he was, because I came in and told you. Which I didn’t have to do and I did so you wouldn’t worry. So you know that’s where he is. And now after I did that, well, I wish you wouldn’t fuck with me while I’m fucking Maria.’ And she says
that’s the way I always was, all the things she hates. All I can ever think about is myself and my cock. Well, goddamnit, not
this
morning. Not this morning, I’m not. Because you two assholes riled her up, you got her having visions. And
she
called
me
at home.”

“Mister Battaglia,” the lieutenant said, opening the envelope and unfolding the document inside, “the secretary regrets to inform you that Specialist Keith P. Battaglia was killed in action while on a routine reconnaissance mission in Quang Tri Province in the service of his country in the Republic of Viet Nam on Sunday, January fourteenth, nineteen sixty-eight, and wishes you to be informed that as his next of kin you may choose whether you wish his remains to be interred there, or to be sent home for burial at a military cemetery or one of your own choosing.” He put the document and the envelope on the countertop in front of Battaglia. “On behalf of the secretary,” he said, “and on behalf of the army and the commander in chief, the president of the United States, we present the deep sympathy and sorrow we all feel on this sad occasion, and hope that your knowledge of our awareness of his bravery and valor, and our gratitude for it, may sustain you and his family in this hour of your grief.”

Battaglia did not read the document. He stared at the lieutenant. “You don’t know what this means,” he said. “She’ll come back here now. I know that’s what she’ll do. She’ll come back here with that damned kid, and I’ll have to support them. The little bastard. He did this. He did this on purpose. I wonder how the fuck he did it. How did he get out there without me knowing it?”

“Sir?” the lieutenant said.

“It doesn’t fucking matter,” Battaglia said. “Just get your fucking asses out of fucking here. You done enough goddamned damage, last you one fucking day. Fucking Ed Cobb. So I know him. What the fuck good did that do? Not a fucking goddamned bit.”

In the car after the wind, the sergeant said, “I still hate these things, matter what they do. I think I’d rather be back there. And at least it was warm there.”

“I wouldn’t rather,” the lieutenant said, “matter how cold it gets. And I doubt that you would, either.”

Late in the morning of the first Sunday in February, Neil Cooke in his blue Mercedes 190SL emerged from the underground garage in the building that housed the duplex cooperative apartment that he shared with his wife, Caroline, at Park Avenue and Seventy-third Street, and headed north toward Bruckner Boulevard and the New England Thruway. The day was warm. He was parked in the commuter pickup lot at the railroad station in Greenwich, Connecticut, when Nora Langley’s New Haven Line train pulled in from Grand Central shortly before 12:30. She was wearing sunglasses and a floppy, red picture hat with a black silk ribbon that trailed off the back brim and set off her long blond hair. Her suit was dark blue silk, and she carried a large red shoulder bag made of soft, bloused leather. She wore matching red leather gloves. Her skirt stopped two inches above her knees. He got out of the car and started toward the platform. They embraced and air-kissed, their cheeks barely grazing, and he escorted her back to the car. She stood back and removed the sunglasses. She had brown eyes. “It’s very
nice, Neil,” she said. “It’s lovely. And the top’s not even down.”

“Well,” he said, “I could put it down, if you like. But I thought it might be a little too cold. A little too chilly, I thought.” He opened the passenger door.

“Oh, no,” she said, leaning into the car, taking off her left glove and smoothing the leather seat with her left hand. “No, that isn’t what I meant. I was worried about my hat. And if I take it off, I don’t have a scarf for my hair.” She looked at him. “Aren’t I silly?”

He smiled. “No,” he said. “Not silly.”

“I wish,” she said, “I wish I could persuade Barry to get something like this.”

Cooke opened the passenger door and she got in, presenting a brief view of the tops of her stockings and the straps of her black garter belt. He shut the door and went around to the driver’s side. “So, buy him one,” he said, starting the engine. “Find something you like, and when it’s Christmas or his birthday, just make that his present.” He backed the Mercedes out of the spot. “That’s what Caroline did to me.”

“Didn’t you
want
this?” she said. “I think it’s beautiful.”

“Oh,” he said, “sure I did. I’ve been looking around, not really very hard, you know, but always on the lookout, for something just like this. Always liked this car. But whenever I thought I was close, close to getting one, well, it always turned out the clown who owned it’d modified it, put in a Corvette engine or something. Or else it was all shot to hell. One guy I met over in Ridgefield one night said he had one, and I got all excited, and the next day I went over to see it, had it in his barn there, and the thing was up on the blocks.
Well, that didn’t bother me. Showed he was taking care of it, he wasn’t going to drive it. And then I opened the hood. No engine. That was why he wasn’t driving it, and I must say I couldn’t imagine a better reason. Gave me some cock-and-bull story about how he’s having it rebuilt. And that was typical. But Caroline saw this one up there in Vermont, and so she snapped it up.”

Nora sighed. “Well,” she said, “I thought I did that. I had this little white ’fifty-six Thunderbird, with red leather seats and a hardtop. Just a lovely, lovely car. And we were going, this was just before we were leaving for Europe in May. I’d finally persuaded him to take a vacation. And the car was supposed to be ready when we got back. Well, I made a mistake. I left the house one day to do some shopping for the kids, because when his mother comes to stay with them, I like them to be well dressed. She’s such a picky woman. And while I was out, the man called, and the maid said that I wasn’t there. So he called Barry at his office, something about getting a signature on something or other before we left, insurance or something, and of course that let the cat right out of the bag. Barry came home in an absolute fit. Said he didn’t care if we could afford it, he didn’t want the damned thing. Well,
I
didn’t want it. I like my Jaguar a lot, and it does have room for the kids, when I have to take them with me, or Barry and I take them somewhere. So that was the end of that notion.”