Keith Thomson - Once a spy

No sign welcomed Charlie and Drummond to Monroeville. The northwestern Virginia town appeared to have no signs at all. Or buildings, houses, or power lines. The Toyota Cressida’s replacement, the burgundy Ford Taurus Charlie drove, was alone on what, according to the map, was Monroeville’s only road, a crudely paved, single-lane straightaway through an eternity of dense, towering pine trees. Monroeville had no streetlamps either. And because of the shadows cast by all the pine trees, the town could have used some, even at ten on a cloudless morning such as this.

“I remember Mom liked the outdoors a lot,” Charlie said, “but enough that she could have become a forest hermit?”

“I don’t know,” said Drummond, taking the question at face value. “Now that I think of it, there is one thing I do remember about her: She was a smoker.” He said smoker with disdain.

Charlie had lost count of how many times this morning Drummond had recalled that she was a smoker and gone on to condemn the habit. All Charlie had learned otherwise was that the three of them used to take wonderful outings to the Prospect Park Zoo when he was in his pram. Which smacked of cover story. He gave up on questions while still in New Jersey.

Pine trees flew by for several more miles, and he was beginning to wonder if they’d left Monroeville, or Virginia for that matter, when he saw that the road terminated ahead at a pair of tall, rusty doors in a high stone wall.

He stopped the car at the doors. He couldn’t see over them or over the wall, just through the gaps between the hinges. All he saw was more forest.

To the left sat, at a slant, a small gatehouse. Many of its wooden roof and wall shingles were missing and the remainder were beset by rot. The lone window was cracked and caked with muck. Above the door, hardened pine sap formed outlines of letters that had since fallen off; Charlie was able to make out 1 Loblolly Blvd.

“That’s the address I have,” he said, “but she can’t live here.”

“Why not?” Drummond asked.

“For one thing, no one’s been here for a hundred years.”

The gatehouse door creaked open, giving them both a start. A string bean of a man unfolded himself through the tiny aperture. Although the pine boughs overhead diffused the sunlight, he squinted, transforming his pale and craggy middle-aged face into a roadmap of wrinkles. He hadn’t shaved in a few days and his graying black hair, while not long, was chaotic. A disproportionate belly swelled his soiled khaki windbreaker imprinted with MHFC SECURITY.

Charlie rolled down his window. Air blew in that was cold and redolent of pine. The guard’s approach brought the smell of liquor.

“Gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you to the Monroeville Hunt and Fish Club,” he said as if he’d learned it by rote. “How may I be of assistance?”

“We’re looking for Isadora Clark,” Charlie said. Off the guard’s blank look, he added, “Supposedly she lives here.”

“Nobody lives here, sir. No humans, that is.”

“Maybe she’s a member of the club or something like that?”

“She married to a member of the Plumbers and Pipe Fitters?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s who belongs here. Any case, the rule on club grounds is no ladies.”

Pine trees flew the other way on Loblolly Boulevard until, finally, Charlie spotted a filling station. The pumps still said ESSO. The faded yellow-clapboard general store at the back of the property predated horseless carriages. There was just one vehicle in the dirt lot that had tires, a rusty pickup. What mattered was the place was still in business and it had a pay phone. Better, the pay phone was outside the store on the rear wall; Charlie was keen on being seen by as few human beings as possible.

While Drummond waited in the car, Charlie fed a handful of change into the pay phone’s coin slot, then spun the rotary dial. By the second long ring, a sticky foreboding crawled over him. In the hours before the betting windows opened, when the tip trade was at its peak, Mickey was something of a legend for answering his cell phone before the end of the first ring. Even though it added fifteen minutes to his commute, he rode the bus instead of the subway because some of the subway tunnels blocked his cell reception.

By the fifth ring, Charlie suspected Mickey would never answer a telephone again. Hoping he was wrong-as well as praying to that anonymous entity he called upon when one of his picks was neck and neck with another horse-he dialed Mickey’s office line.

The phone was picked up in the middle of the first ring.

Along with profound relief, Charlie exhaled, “That address can’t be right.”

“This isn’t Mickey.” The voice was deeper than Mickey’s and solemn enough that guilt kicked Charlie in the stomach; if not for the phone cord to cling to, he might have fallen.

Boiling over with rage, Charlie sat at the wheel of the Taurus, gas pedal even with the floor, the filling station rapidly becoming a faded yellow speck in the rearview.

Drummond looked over as if Charlie were the one with lucidity issues. “Did you get the proper address?” Drummond asked.

“Do you know what they mean at the track by a stooper?”

“It rings a bell. I think. Maybe not.”

“Stoopers comb the floors and the corridors, picking up tickets in hope of turning up a winner that was mistakenly crumpled or tossed before the race officials took an infraction into account and revised the order of finish. A little while ago, while stooping in the Big A parking lot, my friend Mickey found a ticket from yesterday’s eighth race for a hundred bucks on a filly named Tigertown. Tigertown won, paying nine to one. The paramedic’s opinion was that, in his excitement, Mickey died of a heart attack on the spot.”

“I’m sorry, Charles.”

“Same,” Charlie said. For now his remorse took a backseat to retribution. “And we’re not the only ones who are gonna be.”

“Who else?”

“There has to be some way to make it look like a person had a heart attack that’ll be missed in a conventional autopsy, right?”

Drummond pondered it. “Had someone given your friend chocolate?”

“Why?”

“I–I don’t know.”

For Charlie’s purposes, that was as good as a toxicologist’s report. Getting a free Hershey bar would have made Mickey’s day.

“I assumed someone did something to him,” Charlie said. “So I asked myself, What the hell was I thinking about dragging Mickey into this?”

“You needed the address.”

“I know that. I meant, why hadn’t I taken into account what happened to the taxi driver, Ibrahim Wallid, who was an innocent bystander in comparison? One difference that occurred to me is Ibrahim Wallid posed a threat as a witness. But Mickey Ramirez? What did Mickey know? Just a wrong address for Mom-an address that’s supposedly a decrepit hangout for chauvinistic plumbers and pipe fitters.”

Charlie pulled off Loblolly Boulevard about a mile short of the club gate, then let the car roll into the woods.

“We’re not going to be able to go far with all these trees,” Drummond said.

“I was thinking we’d park here.”

“It would have been legal to park on the roadside.”

“I don’t want anyone to be able to see the car from the road. We’re trying to sneak onto the club grounds.”

“I see. Good thinking.”

They’d had the identical conversation a minute ago.

Having found a place to leave the car, they headed into the woods, batting aside boughs and crunching through mounds of crisp leaves and pine needles. A woodland novice, Charlie slipped and fell several times.