Ed Gorman: Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool

“David Egan, Counselor.” Cliffie smirked. “He is a client of yours, isn’t he?”

Over the next half hour, I got curious about why Cliffie was spending so much time talking to Linda Dennehy. She was pretty, maybe that was why. But after the third time he walked over to his men and then came right back to Linda, I wondered what was going on.

I stood on the lawn with everybody else. As soon as Cliffie’s men finished with them, the guests left. They all looked tired. They’d talked it all out for now; tomorrow, over breakfast coffee, they’d start talking about it again. And for days after that.

Linda drifted over after a time. “You about ready for that car ride, Sam?”

“Been ready.”

“I think Cliffie’s done questioning me.”

“What was that all about?”

“The party-I came with Jane Daly. I’d left my purse in her car and needed to get it.

He wanted to know if I saw anything or anybody. I didn’t. Cliffie seems to think I’m hiding something because I’m afraid to be a witness. No matter how many times I told him otherwise, he’d keep coming back and telling me how he’d protect me and I shouldn’t be afraid to tell him who I saw in the garage. He really thinks I saw the killer.”

“That’s our Cliffie. He never lets reality get in his way.”

“I almost feel guilty for not having seen the killer, you know?”

“You did what you could. You told him the truth.

From now on it’s his problem.”

I was just about to ask if she wanted to go when Cliffie appeared.

“Counselor, you could do me and this town a favor by convincing your frightened little friend that she should tell me everything she knows.”

“She’s told you everything she knows.”

He smirked. “I see she’s already told you I’ve been asking her for the truth.”

“You want her to make up something? Maybe draw a name out of a hat?”

He looked at her and said, “You ever gone out with this David Egan, Linda?”

“I don’t usually date high school boys.”

“This day and age, anything’s possible.”

“Well, I’ve never dated him, Chief.

I’m not sure I’ve ever even spoken to him.”

“Pretty gal like you, maybe he’s spoken to you.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Cliffie started to ask another question but I interrupted him. “She’s told you what she knows.

She’s willing to sign a statement to the effect that everything’s she’s told you is the truth. How’s that?”

“You her lawyer now, are you, Counselor?”

“I am if she needs one. Does she need one, Chief?”

He sighed. “Maybe you can make her understand, Counselor.” We were talking man to man now.

Girls excluded. It was as if Linda had vanished. “Maybe you can explain how police protection works. Everywhere she goes, she’ll have one of my men trailing her. And every time she’s at home, I’ll have a man parked nearby. I won’t let anybody touch her.”

Linda smiled. “That sounds very nice, Chief.

Having protection like that. Unfortunately, I really don’t know who the killer is.”

“That’s just about all she has to say, Chief.

Now, we’d like to get out of here if possible.”

He leaned in my direction and said, “You know these people pretty good, do you, Counselor?”

“If you mean the Coyles, I’m a friend of Jean’s.”

He leaned in and whispered. “Glad you’re not a friend of her husband’s. There’s a jackass for you.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You come out here often?”

“A few times a year. To parties.”

“I’m surprised they’d invite somebody who grew up in the Knolls out here.”

“They’re well-off. But that doesn’t mean they’re snobs.”

“I’m also told that the dead girl was going out with David.”

“I have to take your word for all this. I don’t know anything about David’s personal life. Not much, anyway. I’ve represented him on a few traffic charges is all.”

“The way he drag races, he’s gonna get himself killed one of these days. And he’s gonna kill somebody else, too, while he’s at it.”

“I agree. And I’ve told him that many times.”

The smile. “Well, Counselor, it was bound to happen. We had to agree with each other someday and it finally happened.” Then, to Linda, “Don’t leave the county without my permission.”

“Darn, Linda,” I said, “there goes your trip to Antarctica.”

“Gosh, and I was hoping to bring back all that whale blubber, too.”

“You two should go on Ed Sullivan,”

Cliffie said. “You’re getting your act down real good.”

“Can he do that? Order me to stay in the county?”

Linda asked as Cliffie walked away. He was now a whole lot less intimidated by the house and its guests. His swagger was back. And that was the natural order of things. Cliffie was an incompetent jerk. My momentary madness of feeling sorry for him had passed.

“Of course not.”

“That ride really sounds good, Sam.”

“Yeah,” I said, sliding my arm around her slender shoulders, “it sure does.”

I always try to picture the land as it was before even the Indians arrived. Impenetrable timber and man-tall grass and prairies and meadows and hills raw with deep true colors. Enough buffalo and bison to make the ground rumble when they approached. Enough steep red limestone cliffs to provide a facsimile of life as the original cliff dwellings must have looked like.

And the rushing, bank-overflowing rivers, fast and blue and slapping with fish.

At night come the mysteries that must have given even the Vikings pause, those sounds and shadows, that harsh and brazen moon, the tumbled dark ravines and the caves with their seared white bones of unknown animals-night is best of all.

We didn’t talk.

You can do that sometimes after sharing a proximity to death. A car accident, all mangled metal and terrible lurid blood on the highway; or sobbing, plump swimsuited adults telling you about a five-year-old who has just drowned in the public pool; or a crowd of drunks in a parking lot where one drunken battler accidentally killed another with an unlucky punch.

There’s either a lot of talk or not much talk at all.

A teenage girl had died tonight and there was nothing to say and so we said it.

There was just the wind and the smooth V-8 of the red ragtop in the moon-silver countryside: the sandpits where we’d drunk underage beer in high school; the drive-in theater that would close with the first frost but for now showed a screenful of images of rock and roll and sex and despair and death, city images out here in the country dancing on a piece of cloth; and the baseball park where the Little Leaguers dreamed of big league glory, not understanding that the cost of such glory would be their innocence.

We got Koma on the radio, best rock-and-roll station in the country, pure rock all the way across the land from Oklahoma City, the favorite of small-town Midwestern kids and adult-kids everywhere.

I decided to talk. “I’ll be your lawyer.”

She didn’t respond at first. Her eyes behind her glasses looked far, far away. She was pulled up on the seat with her fine legs beneath her and her hair caught in the wind.

“Will I need one?”

“Probably. Cliffie’ll pester the hell out of you.”

“He can’t make me say anything I don’t want to say.”

“He can try.”

“He’s such an idiot.”

“You can be an idiot when your old man runs the town,” I said.

“That’s why I like Iowa City so much better.

You have a lot more privacy. And they wouldn’t put up with Cliffie for thirty seconds. And it’s a lot more sophisticated. I see a lot of foreign movies there. I never thought I could get used to the subtitles but I have.”