Toby Olson - Tampico

“An officer will come to the house,” I said. “You met him at the station in Provincetown. Then it’s the motel I told you about. You might have to sit tight until Monday, but I’ll call if I can get the lawyer there earlier.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice stronger now.

I called the lawyer in Providence then, but there was no answer, just the machine saying he’d return after the holiday weekend. Then I went back into the living room. The ambulance had arrived and they were loading the three men into it, Plummer and the one who had come through the window on stretchers, the other ambulatory. I could see the red taillights through the opening where the door had been, hear punches of static on the cruiser’s radio. It was a clear night, and starry, and a cool breeze came in and rustled the pages of magazines that had fallen from the coffee table. Warren was in the doorway. He waved his fingers and called me over.

“Who the hell is that?”

“You mean Carlos?”

“The little guy.”

“Right. Well he’s a friend now. He’s moved in here. We’re living together.”

“What for?”

“Well, to get some work done on the place. He’s a handyman, a carpenter. He used to work for Strickland.”

“Really?” Warren said. “Well he must be a tough little fucker, that’s for sure.”

“I just found that out,” I said. “And a good thing too.”

“So they’ll want you at the station, I suspect tomorrow.”

“Right,” I said. “And thanks for going after the Plummer woman.”

“Least I could do,” he said. “I put you onto her after all. Strickland, and now this. We’re batting a thousand.”

He gestured at the mess, then smiled at me and nodded to someone behind me, and then he turned and left. It was Carlos, and he was carrying his bag of tools and a few boards under his arm.

“I found them in the basement,” he said.

And before I could bring up our recent engagement, he had me holding the door as he spread the tarp. He removed the lock and knob, then got to work on the splintered panels, the door flat on the carpet, and while he was gluing and clamping I stood above him and counted my errors, considering the fiasco of my first real case as a private citizen detective.

The waning moon sat over Kelly’s house. It was early evening, no stars yet, and Gino could see the car in gravel near the porch and lights in a few windows, and then he saw a figure on the porch, carrying something and heading down the steps and toward the cliff, and he thought it must be Arthur. He looked over at the lighthouse. It was darkening in dusty shadows, and the structures and vehicles at its base were coming under shadow too, losing definition, and he could see the glowing string of night lights swelling up in the darkness at the perimeter. He heard the engine faintly in the sky then, one of the small Cessnas out of Provincetown. That’ll be the seven-o-five to Boston, he thought, connections to New York and Philadelphia. He knew all the schedules, and he knew it was a foolishness to know them, but it was something to do, though he was getting sick of it all, this doing something that was nothing.

“Yoo-hoo.”

It was that bugger Larry, farting around again, and Gino thought he wouldn’t turn, but then he did, his pipe between his teeth, and looked at the two of them. John was in his wheelchair, a blanket on his legs, and Larry was shuffling a pack of dog-eared cards over the small metal table he’d pulled up to his chair. He looked over at Gino.

“Back with us again?”

They heard a whisper of cloth slippers in the hall and they all glanced to the doorway. Then Frank shuffled in with the information and they were all there.

“Just the one now?” John said.

“That’s right,” said Frank. “I knew I heard that fucking ambulance. They think they’re keeping something from us? As if we were children? Those asshole doctors.”

“Maybe they planned for pillows under the sheets,” Larry said. “You know, to fool us?”

“Right, and a pumpkin for a head.”

“Anything about the other one?” John asked, lifting his chin to where the screen had been. There was nothing there at all now. They’d rolled out the bed and the IV pole, and he could see a horizontal gouge in the wall under the window where that bed and others had scraped it.

“I was here when Kelly came in,” Gino said. “Just stood there and looked, and then left.”

“Kelly’s upset, I think,” Frank said. “I don’t know. But the guy came around is how I hear it, and now he’s gone.”

“Who says?” said Larry.

“Kelly.”

“And we were watching the frigging Congress on the cable,” said Gino. “Wasting our time as usual.”

Frank was pulling an IV stand and mop string had caught in the wheels, and he jerked it up beside his chair as he sat down and the metal fitting on the bag clicked against the pole. He got the tube arranged and glanced up at the drip, and Larry put the cards down and Gino lit his pipe and John fished a cigarette out of a crumpled pack, straightened it with his fingers, then tapped it on the edge of his coffee can.

“What is it?” he said.

“Fucked if I know. Something about my electrolytes,” said Frank.

“It’s glucose. And probably a little potassium,” said Gino.

“How in the fuck would you know?”

“A little respect,” Gino said, as he tamped the tobacco down and lit the pipe again.

“Carolyn was surely pissed when we got back,” Larry said.

“Right. She was. But she was faking it some too, like an indulgent daughter.”

It was John, and his cigarette was in his tracheotomy tube again, sticking out of his throat, ash falling down to the blanket.

“Some daughter!” Gino said.

“I had a son once,” said Frank.

“You told us about that.”

“Not Frank Junior. He died in the war. I mean another one, still alive I think.”

“You said ‘had,’” Larry said.

“That’s the way it is. He was a plumber. Then he became a contractor. Too fancy for me I guess. He married some chippy, ten years ago or more. I haven’t seen him since then, haven’t heard from him either.”

“The right name for it,” Gino said. “Plummer.”

“That’s an old joke,” said Frank.

“Where is he?” asked Larry.

“He was over in Taunton, last I heard. Only a few lousy miles from here. But that was ten years ago, and I don’t know about now.”

“Children can be nasty fuckers,” Gino said. “My daughter for one.”

“Where is she?” said John.

“I told you. I have absolutely no idea at all.”

“Carolyn, on the other hand,” said Larry, winking.

“Well, now,” Gino said. “That’s another kettle of fish entirely.”

They settled into Frank’s revelation, yet another marker for each of them, even Larry, who had traveled in circles devoid of children, and John too, who had managed to miss family without ever trying. It was a marker of abandonment, the real thing and not the one romantically named as such, all those who had left them to go into death, quite naturally. There was nothing at all to be said about it, but to rail against it, and none had a taste for that because it was useless and undignified and seemed a childish thing even to consider. They weren’t thinking these things, though Gino took his pipe from his mouth once, then demurred, tapping the stem against his teeth, and Larry shuffled the cards absently. Frank held some papers in his lap, the tip of his pencil moving like a pointer over then, and John took the cigarette from his throat, coughed, then spoke.

“Whaddaya think about the structure? I thought the footings looked fine.”