Ed Gorman - Short Stories, Volume 1

It was a brand-new day... and when I finally got around to breakfast, the first thing I did was lift the horoscope section from the paper... and drop it, unread, into the wastebasket.

No more snooping in drawers... and no more bad-luck horoscopes.

Thursday, finally, something happened.

Favor had been tailing David Carson for two days, and they had each been equally dull days. Back when he was a city detective, there were two jobs Favor hated most: telling parents that their child had been killed, and tailing people. Favor’s ass always went to sleep.

For two days, Carson, a slender and handsome man, went to work, played squash, stopped by his country club for two quick drinks, and then drove on home to the wife and kids. Home being a walled estate complete with large gurgling fountain on the front lawn, and a pair of jags in the three-stall garage.

Thursday, Carson was nice enough to do something different.

As CEO of the electronics firm he had recently inherited from his father-in-law, Carson didn’t have any problem sneaking off in the middle of the afternoon. He stopped first at a branch of the Federal National Savings bank. Favor figured this was going to be another nowhere tail. But Carson parked and went inside, and stayed inside for nearly half an hour. When he came out, he carried a manila envelope.

From the bank, he drove straight to the bluffs out in Haversham State Park. On a weekday May afternoon, the birds and the butterflies frolicking in the warm air, the park was empty. Carson angled his shiny black Lincoln Towncar into a spot near the log-cabin restrooms, and got out carrying the manila envelope. There was another car already parked there, a sporty little red Mustang convertible with the top up. He then took off walking toward a path that led straight to an overlook above the river.

Favor gave him a couple of minutes and then went after him, shoving his small notebook back in the pocket of his blue blazer. He’d written down the number of the Mustang.

All Favor could think of, as he wound his way down the forest path, the damp leaves and loam playing hell with his sinuses, was that he didn’t have a cap on and was therefore susceptible to Lyme disease.

Favor was a good-looking guy of forty-five who seemed competent and confident in every way. His darkest secret was his hypochondria. Being in a room where somebody sneezed pissed him off for an hour and he could feel the jack-booted cold germs invading his body and seizing control of it. Sometimes he was so upset he wanted to take out his trusty old Police .38 Special and waste the offender. If he ever got to be President of the United States, which, he had to admit, wasn’t real likely, he would make public sneezing a felony.

For a few minutes, as the path wended and wound its way through the deepest part of the forest, and possums and rabbits and raccoons lined up to look at him, he was a seven-year-old again, imagining he was Tarzan, and this wasn’t a forest at all but a jungle, and it wasn’t in Iowa, it was in Africa, and it wasn’t the real Africa, which was actually kind of boring, it was Tarzan’s Africa, which was about the coolest place on the whole planet. Favor had been a stone Tarzan freak until he was fifteen years old, when he discovered a) girls b) marijuana and c) Neil Young records. Neil couldn’t sing for shit but he did stuff to a guitar that never failed to give Favor chills. But now, for a brief time at least, he was Tarzan again and seven years old again and if he wasn’t careful he just might get himself attacked by an alligator...

The overlook was actually a kind of stone verandah set on the highest point of a woodsy bluff. It was the kind of aerie the Indians had no doubt used for spying on intruders. Beyond, across the wide rushing river, were other bluffs, gleaming with the skins of white birch trees that struggled all the way up hill to the point where some old narrow-gauge railroad track could still be found. Jesse James had once robbed one of the short-haul trains that had used these very same tracks.

The man with David Carson was short, stumpy and bald. He wore a buff blue polo shirt, khaki pants, argyle socks and penny loafers. He put his hand out and Carson set the manila envelope on it.

Favor couldn’t hear what they were saying. A couple of motor boats were showing off below and drowning out the words.

Then Carson was angrily jamming his finger into the smaller man’s chest.

The man backed up but Carson pursued him, continuing to jab at his chest, continuing to spit angry words into the man’s face.

Favor could see that Carson was starting to glance back up the trail. He was probably going to leave soon.

Favor decided this would be a good time to leave.

He hurried back along the path, got in his car, and drove up near the exit where he parked on the shoulder of the road and took out his trusty newspaper. The paper was ten years old. He used it for every surveillance job. Someday he’d have to get a new paper.

A few minutes later, Carson came shooting up the asphalt. The posted speed limit was 15. He was doing at least 60. When he reached the stop sign at the exit, he jammed on his brakes, fishtailing a bit. Then he peeled out, laying down rubber. He was sure pissed off about something.

Favor followed him back to the manse, then drove down to the police station, where he had an old buddy of his run a check on the Mustang’s plates.

“You know anybody who drives a red Mustang?” Favor said three hours later.

“I didn’t know they still made Mustangs.”

“Yeah, they do. This one is red.”

Jane Carson shook her wondrously lovely head.

Jane Dalworth Carson had come from one of the old-money families in the city. Favor had first met her when he was ten, helping his dad in the yardwork business. He got goopy over Jane. No matter what girl he met he always compared her to Jane and found her coming up short. Jane was not only blonde and beautiful and rich and fun to be around, she knew how to make you feel like the most special guy in the known universe. None of Favor’s first three wives had been able to do that.

Jane had called him three nights ago. She said her husband was acting weird. Would Favor kind of, you know, follow him around a little and see what was going on? She suspected he might have a woman. “Nobody married to you would ever have a woman on the side,” Favor said. “Oh, you haven’t seen me lately. I’m looking middle-aged, Favor. I really am.”

Today was the first time he’d actually seen her in eleven years, here in this fern-infested restaurant with the waiters who all wore bouncy little ponytails and nose-rings.

Favor made a point of it to be modern. It didn’t always work. As for Jane, she looked great to him. Maybe a teensy-tiny bit older. But nothing to take seriously.

Jane said “Do you know anything about this guy?”

“He’s a male nurse. Sam Evans.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah. I was kind’ve of surprised, too.”

“Why would he be meeting a male nurse?”

“I don’t know. He handed him a manila envelope.”

“An envelope?”

“I think it had money in it. He went into the bank without it, and then came out with it. There’s only one thing I know you can get in a bank.”

“A male nurse and an envelope with money in it.”

Favor said, “Guy’s shaking him down.”

“Blackmail?”

“Uh-huh.”

She looked stunned by a thought she’d obviously just had. “I saw an Oprah once where this woman didn’t know her husband was gay till she found him in bed with another guy. I mean, a male nurse—”

For some reason, Favor was disappointed she watched Oprah. Princesses should have better things to do with their time. “I don’t think he’s gay.”