Эд Горман - Riders on the Storm

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. I knew Donovan liked the ladies but I didn’t know that his wife had threatened to leave him and I didn’t know anything about his business partner.”

“But won’t Paul be doing the same thing?”

“He’s a policeman and he’ll go at it his way. But I grew up here. And I have a source he doesn’t. Kenny Thibodeau.”

“I know this sounds snobbish but I’m so glad he’s not a beatnik anymore.”

Given the situation, I felt guilty about laughing. “I don’t think anybody’s been called a ‘beatnik’ in several years.”

“Will always says I’m a square. But you know what I mean about Kenny. He dresses like a normal person and he’s married and they have that sweet little girl. It doesn’t even bother me that he writes those dirty books anymore. I even bought one at a used-book sale last year. I was embarrassed and the woman who sold it winked at me when I put it in my purse, but I enjoyed it. I thought it would just be filth but it was a really good story and it wasn’t all that sexy anyway. Kenny’s a good writer.”

“And because he writes that column for the newspaper, people tell him things all the time.”

“That’s another thing I’m happy for him about. He really makes the history of this town interesting.”

“And people confide in him because of it. It’s weird. They tell him what’s going on now, too. So he’s a good source.”

She leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms out like a comely kitten taking a break. “Umm. This was nice.”

“What was?”

“Just now. Talking about what you’re going to do. And talking about Kenny. For a little while there I forgot all about where we are and why we’re here. I was so far gone I even started thinking about what I was going to make Peggy Ann for lunch. But she’s at my sister’s until further notice. Right now, for a few days at least, I’m afraid I won’t be much of a mother. I’ll just sit around and brood.”

I’d been distracted by all this, too. All too soon I would need to be in court. While I should have done more prep, I was confident I could handle it. The insurance company would likely settle before the judge appeared. They’d made two offers in the past two weeks but we’d declined them. I was pretty sure this would be an offer we could accept.

“I was just sitting here waiting for you, Sam. I guess I’ll go back home now.”

As we left the station, she pecked me on the cheek again, squeezed my hand, and then set out for a home without child or husband. Or maybe even future.

I got Jamie Newton in trade. When I explain this to people I frequently get a lewd smile, especially after they’ve seen her.

It happened this way. Her father is an argumentative freelance home repairman who got it in his head that his neighbor had illegally seized a portion of the Newton backyard. He came to me to set up a lawsuit because I have a deserved reputation for taking on cases that others won’t, i.e., they don’t pay enough. Or, all too often, not at all.

Cam Newton slapped down a hundred-dollar bill on my desk so I said I’d help him. I also said that our chance of winning was slim owing to the fact that the amount of land he wanted ceded back didn’t amount to much more than a few yards. He naturally said that didn’t matter, that it was the principle of the thing.

Then he told me the real truth, that his neighbor had insulted Cam’s wife one night by smirking that she was a “hefty gal.”

We lost the case and Cam lost his money — “lost” as in he couldn’t find the other five hundred dollars he owed me. I guess the dealer must have just given him that new Dodge.

He then proposed that his high school-aged daughter would “work off” his debt. I learned quickly not to use that phrase. The smirkers did everything but light up and ring bells the few times I said it.

The fact that Jamie couldn’t type, answer phones, operate the Xerox, take dictation, or make tolerable coffee (hers was almost but not quite as bad as mine) didn’t make her any less sweet. Though she dressed like the teenage girls on paperback crime novels — tight blouses and skirts, bobby socks and saddle shoes — her naïveté was both endearing and sometimes dangerous.

The latter applied to her choice of boyfriends. Turk was the leader of a local surf band much like the Beach Boys. Since Iowa was a landlocked state, the resemblance to the great Brian Wilson ensemble was strained at best. And as an artist he needed free time with his band for their inevitable — according to him — appearance on American Bandstand which would coincide with their album hitting numero uno which would coincide with the launching of their first world tour.

She believed all this and was willing to hand over half her paycheck to support Turk’s absolute certain triumph around the world. I knew better than to suggest that she might reconsider Turk as a worthy mate. She got married and got pregnant. Turk was last heard from working in a car wash in Davenport. He’d left after he realized that being married to a sweet, wonderful young woman with a child just got in the way of running Iowa’s only surf band.

Motherhood changed her. She managed to complete secretarial courses at a local business college and learned to be an excellent secretary. She even went through the filing cabinets she’d wildly misarranged years ago. Now I didn’t have to look for Merle Hennings in F or K or Z. He was right there in H, God love ’im.

Her style in clothes had changed, too. With that freckled country-girl face, so open and pretty, and that body nothing short of a feed sack could hide, she now looked like the kind of secretary you saw in the skyscrapers of Chicago. Very uptown, right down to the newly affected blond pageboy. She can afford this look because one of my clients is the best department store in town. I’m their security adviser. I get a large discount on what I buy there, and so by agreement does Jamie. I also give her a “clothing allowance.” Despite the fact that she doesn’t feel “ready” to date again, I want her to meet a decent guy who can convince her that not all males are like the vanishing Turk, whose name I never understood because he’s black Irish.

She was typing as I walked into my one-room office that rests in the rear of a single-story building that houses in front a Laundromat. Not to worry. The longest any business has lasted up front is eleven months. The Laundromat has been here five months. Somewhere there is a moving van circling and circling and circling, waiting to descend on the Laundromat when it folds. Maybe that XXX bookstore will find a home yet.

“I know Will didn’t kill anybody, Sam, even though everybody I talk to says he did. They keep talking about how he was in that mental hospital those times. I had a cousin who was in a mental hospital for about three months a few years ago and she’s fine now.”

“That’s all you have to say is ‘mental hospital’ and he doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Some people in this town are narrow-minded.”

“It isn’t just this town. It’s worldwide.”

“Really? Everywhere?”

“Just say ‘mental hospital’ and it doesn’t matter if you’re speaking Chinese or Spanish, you’ve convicted the guy.”

She just frowned. “Anyway, I’ve laid everything out for you. For court.”

And so she had. About all that was left for me to do was walk to the county courthouse. Then the phone rang and it was for me.

Greg Egan had served in Nam in 1966. For only eight weeks. As a grunt he’d been in some terrible fighting. So terrible that today he was confined to a wheelchair due to the fact that his legs had been surgically removed just below the knees. In some respects he was the conscience of a small group of vets who’d had physical and mental problems in assimilating back home. The wife he’d left behind him when he’d gone to Nam was still behind him. She drove him to the VA three times a week. They were starting the prosthetic process.