Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

As long as other people were unparanoid, Canella’s job was uncomplicated. He could tail them from a single car length, take their pictures without a telephoto lens, record conversations with conspicuous microphones, get spontaneous answers to pointed questions. On most days Canella could pick up the truth as easily as his childhood hero, Harold Baines, picked up the laces on a slow, hanging curveball.

At the Brixton Diner, Philly’s waitress still maintained the ghost of a pretty smile but her hair and hips and the years since high school had beaten away the beautiful bitch she once was. “Ricky Weiss?” the waitress scoffed. “What do you want with him?”

“What do you care?” Canella asked.

The waitress, whose name was Debbie, laughed. “Whatever.”

“So you know him?”

“I know Ricky,” she said. “It’s a small town. And as far as that jerk goes, I wish it was bigger.”

“No good, huh?”

The waitress shrugged. “He’s all right.” Philly could tell how it would be with this one – she would offer an honest clue and then retreat. Another clue, another retreat. But he had time and money for a nice tip, and the diner was mostly empty.

“Do you know where he lives?”

“In a trailer, ” she scoffed. “Why do you want to know?”

“Maybe he’s won a prize.”

“A cash prize?” The waitress opened her eyes wide, scraping mascara against one lens of her glasses.

“Maybe.”

“How much?”

Philly threw up his hands. The waitress gave him directions.

When lunch arrived a few minutes later, Philly engaged her again. “The other day, was Ricky in here with a couple of strangers?”

“Yeah, he was, actually.” The waitress didn’t ask what this had to do with Ricky’s prize. “A man and a woman. The man was a judge.”

“A judge?”

“Yep. Ricky kept calling him ‘Judge’ something.”

“Do you have any idea what they talked about?”

“No, but they left fifteen dollars for three coffees.”

“Hmm.”

“And whatever they were talking about, it made Ricky real mad. He was yelling something about them not having some money for him that they were supposed to have. He yelled something about a rip-off or something like that.” The waitress looked down at Philly as if she’d suddenly figured something out. “Ohhhh, okay,” she said, and grinned.

Philly smiled and nodded, wondering what sense the waitress was making of it all in her head. Then he asked in a whisper, “Is this the best coffee in town?”

The waitress shook her head. “Mess-o Espresso,” she said in a loud voice.

An hour later, Canella sat on a short wall of cut shale that bordered some young trees and other flowering greens outside the elementary school. Alice Pantini, school receptionist, sat to Philly’s left, her red skirt stretched judiciously around her knees. Between them were two Mess-o Espresso coffees.

“Yeah, the Seavers or Deavers, something like that. They were both doctors. Said they were moving to town.” Alice took a sip from her cup, judged it too hot with a pucker, and set it back down. “I don’t know what they make these cups out of at Mess-o Espresso but it’ll keep your coffee hot all day.”

“They said they were doctors, is that right?”

“Yeah. But they aren’t, are they? They seemed nice at the time, but I knew something was fishy.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“The only doctors ever want to practice around here are the ones that grew up here. People are mostly trying to get out of Brixton, not into it.”

“Huh.”

“So if they’re not doctors, who were those two?”

“Actually, they really are doctors.”

“Oh.” Alice seemed disappointed.

“Any idea what business they’d have with a guy named Rick Weiss?”

“Ricky Weiss?” Alice tucked her lower lip under the upper and leaned away. “Could be just about anything with that one. He’s always got some sort of scheme going.”

“No kidding?”

“He never has any money, though, which is just as well, because if he did he’d just throw it away on some crazy thing or other.”

“Do you know what he’s been planning lately?”

The temperature of Alice’s coffee was finally to her liking. “I think I heard it was mulch.”

“Mulch?”

“Yeah. He knows a guy at the lumberyard. He knows another guy with a chipper. Ricky’s got an old truck. He’s going to be the mulch magnate of Brixton, I guess.” She laughed.

“He still works at the golf course, though, right?”

“Oh, yeah. And he does mulch on weekends. Any of that help you?”

“Maybe,” Philly said. “But you’re very kind. Thanks for having coffee with me.”

“Oh sure,” Alice said. She held up her cup and licked her lips. “Mess-o Espresso.”

Canella looked at his watch. He’d never make the last flight back to Chicago. “Is there anything to do around here?”

“We’re not known for much,” Alice said. “Nothing besides being the birthplace of Jimmy Spears.”

“Who’s that?”

“Jimmy Spears? The football player? You didn’t notice the big sign on the way into town?”

“No, didn’t see the sign. But I remember him. Played at Northwestern.” Canella remembered a game in which Spears threw for some ridiculous number of yards and knocked him out of a five-dollar gambling pool he’d entered with some friends. “Is he still in the NFL?”

Alice nodded. “Miami. We all wish he’d play more than he does. It makes the games on TV a whole lot more fun. Some people got satellite dishes just to watch him stand on the sidelines every week.”

“Were you working at the school when he went here?”

“Yes, I was.” Alice leaned forward again. Her smile was tobacco yellow and the joints where her teeth met were dark brown.

“Nice kid?”

“Very nice.” Alice said. “All the teachers liked him. All the girls liked him. All the boys liked him. By the time he graduated he was president of student council, captain of the Class A champion football team, won a bunch of ribbons showing cattle. Everyone’s still real proud of him. Of course, the good ones get up and leave town, to Omaha or Lincoln or wherever. The others, the losers like Ricky Weiss, they’re the ones that stick around, which is why this little village will never be more than it is. Jimmy and Ricky were in the same class, I think.”

“What about these kids?” Canella nodded at the bunches of children improvising their recess on a grass infield framed by a bus circle.

“These kids are still young,” she said. “It’s up at the high school they all become stinkers. All except Jimmy.”

Canella drove in rectangles around the local farms, which radiated from the town like bonus squares on a Scrabble board. When he became tired, he pulled over and called Big Rob.

“What are you working on out there?” Big Rob asked, after his friend had described the remoteness of his location. “The usual. Cheating husband,” he said. “Wife wants some more details, but I don’t know if they’re out here to be found. To tell you the truth, I dread this kind of shit.”

“Cheating spouses?” Big Rob said. “That’s our bread and butter, Philly.”

Canella said, “I’m telling you, Biggie. Get out of the city. Come up by me. The North Shore. Do you know what the fastest-growing part of my business is? I call it ‘babysitting.’ No shit. Eighth-graders. Ninth-graders. Sometimes even older kids. Sometimes even younger. Three to four grand a pop. You follow them after school: to parties, basketball games, on Saturday nights while they cruise Main Street. The parents wanna know if they’re tripping on X. Or diddling. Or hanging with the wrong crowd. They just want to be sure the kids are going where they say they’re going, and it’s so easy, Biggie. Christ. These boys and girls have no clue I’m following them, and the parents will pay more to have their kids chased than they will their spouses.”