Эд Горман - Fools Rush In

“He have many visitors?”

“Not that I noticed, anyway. His brother Will.”

Ted Wheeler, the owner of the Parker House, had played football for the Iowa Hawkeyes back in the early fifties. He’d known he wasn’t good enough for the pros, so he did what so many in sports do, he opened an insurance agency. Who wouldn’t want an esteemed Hawkeye as their insurance man?

He’d made so much money with the insurance that he was able to buy an aging restaurant on the highway and turn it into another prosperous business. A bit of a drive for small-town folk not used to driving more than a couple of miles for anything in town, but the drive just seemed to make the evening more special. It was a memorable night going to the Parker House.

I’d found Ted in back of his restaurant hosing off his new, black Jaguar. He was a short, thick man, blond hair thinning now, with a pleasant face that included a badly broken and badly set nose.

The water sparkled rainbows in the late afternoon sunlight and smelled of the rubber hose.

“The police been here to talk to you yet?”

He wiped a massive paw on his T-shirt. “Not yet. I don’t think too many people knew about this place.”

“I’d appreciate a look.”

He shrugged. “Fine by me.” He frowned. “He was a nice kid.”

I didn’t correct him.

“You want me to let you in now?”

“Please.”

“I really appreciate how you took care of my sis that time. The dog ripped her leg up pretty good. But then that shit owner brought in that vet who said that she must have done something to rile the dog herself. He looked pretty good on the stand there, but you brought him down right away.”

“I didn’t have to do much. His story didn’t make a lot of sense. And even if she had riled the dog, he was still responsible for what the dog had done.”

He twisted the hose off. I followed him up the outside stairs leading to the apartment on the second floor.

The front room must have been half the apartment. New linoleum, throw rugs, a pair of couches covered with matching floral slipcovers, a bookcase packed with a lot of Mickey Spillane and dozens of science fiction titles, a three-foot stack of albums that ran to Elvis and rockabilly types, and a refrigerator-freezer packed with every kind of tasty but spurious TV dinner on the market. With the long front window and light of the fading day, there was a pleasant college-dorm feel to the place.

“I need to get back and get the troops ready for tonight,” Ted said. “I always give ’em a little pep talk, you know, like a coach at halftime.” He laughed. “They hate it, think it’s real corny. But it’s a reminder that I expect them to do everything they can to keep the customer happy. You know how that goes. You start out on a job and pretty soon the customer starts looking like the enemy. Hell, I’m the owner and some nights I don’t want to wait on certain customers. The real picky ones, I mean. I’m half tempted to say, ‘Well, since you find so many things wrong with this place, why don’t you go somewhere else?’ But I never would, you know what I mean? I’ve worked too hard to get this place rolling to do anything stupid like that.” He gave me a wave. “Good hunting, Sam.”

I’ve always felt self-conscious picking over the bones of the dead. The left-behind letters and photos and books that seem to contradict what you knew of the person. On one job, trying to learn the identity of the man who’d robbed and strangled an eighty-six-year-old longtime widow, I found a fresh pack of Trojans beneath a silk slip; on another investigation, I found a letter written to the deceased man from the child he never knew he’d had until a few weeks before his death. And then there’d been the brutal street cop with a ninth-grade education who’d been killed by a man he’d beaten a false confession out of, the cop belonging to both a classical records club and the Great Books society.

Picking over all these bones through the years, I realized how little we know of each other. We judge each other without having all the information. Many times the quiet life of the soul has little bearing on the noisy life of the body.

But, after an hour of searching, I came to the conclusion that the exterior Richie had been pretty much like the interior one. Girly magazines, several handguns, books on weightlifting and advice on picking up ladies, several photography magazines that did double duty as girly books (the models in the photography magazines infinitely more mysterious and sexual than those in the girly magazines), and six different kinds of aftershave. Apparently the book on picking up ladies swore by aftershave as a tool of seduction.

I found the hidey-hole because I tripped over the register grate in the floor. Its black paint had long ago faded so that the grate was almost gray now. It had collected a furry tissue of dust on it. One thing was out of place. The east end of it was ajar, raised about a quarter inch from the floor. Maybe he’d been in a hurry pushing it down. Or maybe he simply hadn’t noticed.

I got down on my knees and went to work. He hadn’t made it especially difficult to find the envelopes once you figured that maybe the grate hid, in turn, a more artful hiding place.

My hand went left, my hand went right, waggling, wiggling, crawling until it reached what felt like a large manila envelope that was concealed beneath a piece of cardboard that had been spray-painted black and then carefully covered with mice turds and large furry dust devils. You wouldn’t look twice at how it had been concealed. It appeared to be a natural part of the heating system.

The envelope was heavier than it looked, an 8 x 10 standard issue that had been used for mailing before. It bore Richie’s name and the address of this place.

I grabbed a Falstaff from the refrigerator and seated myself in an armchair. The contents of the envelope radiated evil thoughts. I knew I’d found what I was looking for.

Twenty minutes later, having gone through all twenty-one photographs, I realized that he hadn’t been much of a Peeping Tom. He hadn’t needed to be. Who needed sweaty naked flesh when it was much easier to get a couple of simple shots of two adulterous people holding hands as they left a boathouse or two adulterous people walking into a motel room or two adulterous people furtively kissing goodnight as they stood between their respective cars. In divorce court, these would be a bonanza. You didn’t need pornography to make your case. Context alone was enough. Kissing and holding hands was pretty much a carnal act with photos like these.

But these weren’t local folks. Given the various settings, I could see that these had been taken in Chicago. The blackmail franchise had apparently started in Chicago and had been brought to Black River Falls.

I slid the photos back in the envelope and carried my beer can to the kitchen counter. The prig side of me had taken over again. I hated thinking about the misery these photos had wrought.

“How did you find out?”

“Guy who writes dirty books found out.”

“You have interesting friends.”

“And useful.”

“Will you be able to believe anything I tell you from now on?”

“It won’t be easy.”

“My first husband.”

“Beg pardon?”

“He had an affair right after we got married. Right after. I found out and tried to leave him. He convinced me to stay for three months and give it a try. But it didn’t work.”

“Because you couldn’t believe him. You were suspicious all the time.”

“You’ve been through it?”

“Both ends of the gun. Cheater and cheatee. Once somebody lies to you it’s hard to believe them again.”

“Maybe next time around I should try being the one who cheats.”