Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

Actually, I have done some homework on this last topic and now believe that “Sally-Wally”—I think of them in the same spirit as “priced to sell,” “just needs love,” “move in today”—makes about as much sense as wanting your dead son to come back to life, or wanting to marry your long-divorced former wife, and has the same success potential: Zero. And therefore something different and better has to goddamn happen now —and will — just like when Wally showed up at my doorstep as empty-headed as a rutabaga, and something had to happen then. And did.

I definitely, however, am not going to tell Sally I have, or did or still do have a touch of cancer, since that could be viewed as a cheap late-inning win strategy — and might even be — and therefore prove unsuccessful. One of the hidden downsides of being a cancer victim/survivor is that telling people you’ve got it rarely comes out how you want it to, and often makes you feel sorry for the people you tell — just because they have to hear it — and spoils a day both of you would like to stay a happy day. It’s why most people clam up about having it — not because it scares them shitless. That only happens the first instant the doctor tells you and doesn’t really last that long, or didn’t in my case. But mostly you don’t tell people you’ve got cancer because you don’t want the aggravation — the same reason you don’t do most things.

F rom my desk upstairs, where I go to make my calls, I detect unfamiliar noises downstairs. It’s too bad the prior owners never carried out their retrofitting plans for a maid’s quarters/back staircase, so I could see what’s what down there now. Paul, I believe, is still outside digging and lecturing Mr. Oshi, since his voice is still audible, laughing and yorking like a used-car salesman. This noise downstairs, then — morning TV noise, plates rattling, strangely heavy footfalls, a feminine cough — can only be Jill, the one-handed girl (which I’ll believe when I see).

Call one I decide to make to the Haddam PD. Detective Marinara won’t be there anyway and I can just leave my cooperative citizen’s message. Only he is there, picks up on the first half ring with the standard indifferent-aggressive TV cop greeting, full of dislike and spiritual exhaustion. “ Mar -i-nara. Hate Crimes.”

“Hi, it’s Frank Bascombe over in Sea-Clift, Mr. Marinara. I’m sorry, I didn’t get your call till late.” I must be lying and am instantly nervous.

“Okay. Mr. Bascombe? Let me see.” Pages shuffling. Clickety-click, click-click. My name’s on a list, my number traced automatically. “Okay. Okay.” Clickety-click-clickety. I imagine the youthful bland face of a small-college dean of students. “Looks like—” A heavy sigh. Words come slowly. “We got a match. On your VIN at the crime scene yesterday. This is about the explosion here in Haddam, at Doctors Hospital. You might’ve read about it.”

“I was there !” I blurt this. Producing instant galactic silence on the line. Detective Marinara may be flagging to other cops at other desks, silently mouthing, “I got the guy. I’ll keep him on the line. Get the Sea-Clift police to pick him up. The fuck.”

“Okay,” he says. More silence. He is trained to be as emotionless as a museum guard. These people always call. They can’t stand not to be noticed. Actually, they want to be caught, can’t bear freedom; you just have to not get in their way. They’ll put the noose around their own necks. I’m sure he’s right.

More clickety-clicking.

“I mean, I was there because I came over to eat lunch at the hospital.” I’m fidgety, self-resentful, breathless. Paul’s voice is still audible through the bedroom window, in through my office door. Distant children’s voices are behind his. Out of the empty blue empyrean, I hear the calliope sounds of a Good Humor truck patrolling the beach, appealing to the hold-out holiday visitors, people not talking to the police on Thanksgiving Day about bloody murder.

“I see.” Click, click, click.

“I used to live in Haddam,” I say. Clickety-click. “I sold houses there for seven years. For Lauren-Schwindell. I actually knew Natherial. Mr. Lewis. I mean, I knew him fifteen years ago. I haven’t seen him in blows. I’m sorry he’s deceased.” Am I not supposed to know it was Natherial, and that he’s dead? I read it in the newspaper.

Silence. Then, “Okay.”

I hear more kitchen noises downstairs. Something made of glass or china has shattered on the floor, something a girl with only one hand might easily do. The TV volume jumps up, a man’s voice shouts, “Ter- rif -ic! And what part of Southern California do you hail from, Belinda?” Then it’s squelched to a mumble. “You say you knew Mr. Lewis?” Detective Marinara speaks in a monotone, very cop-like. He’s typing what I’m saying. My worries are his interests.

“I did. Fifteen years ago.”

“And, uh, under what circumstances were those?”

“I hired him to go find For Sale signs that had gotten stolen from properties we had listed. He was real good at it, too.”

“He was real good at it?” More typing.

“Yeah. But I haven’t seen him since.” Which is no reason to kill him is what I’d like to imply. My innocence seems bland and inevitable, a burden to us both. The HPD apparently hasn’t yet linked me to the August Inn dust-up with Bob Butts. I must seem exactly the harmless, civic-minded cancer victim I am. Of course this is the plodding police work — the investigative parameters, the mountain of papers, the maze of empty hunches, dismal dead ends and brain-suffocating phone conversations — that will relentlessly lead to the killer or killers, like the key to Pharaoh’s tomb. But for a moment, on Thanksgiving morning, it has led to Sea-Clift and to me.

“And you live where?” Detective Marinara says. Possibly he yawns.

“Number seven Poincinet Road. Sea-Clift. On the Shore.” I smile, with no one to see me.

“My sister lives up in Barnegat Acres,” he says. “It’s on the bay.”

“A stone’s throw. It’s nice over there.” Though it isn’t so nice. The water has a sulfurous bite and a cheesy smell. Quirky bay breezes hold acrid fog too close to shore. And it’s not far from the shut-down nuke facility in Silverton, which depresses house sales to flat-line.

“So.” More typing, a squeak of Detective M’s metal chair, then an amiable sniff of the constabulary nose. “Would you be willing, Mr. Bascombe, to drive over tomorrow and take part in an identification protocol?”

“What’s that? Mine or somebody else’s?”

“Just a lineup, Mr. Bascombe. It’s not very likely we’ll even do it. But we’re trying to enlist some community cooperation here, do some eliminating. We’ve got witnesses we need to double-check. It’d be a help to us if you’d agree. Mr. Lewis has a son in the department here.” (A cousin to young Lawrence, the hearse driver.)

“Okay. You bet.” If I don’t agree, my name goes into another pile, and the next person I’m interviewed by won’t be yakking about his sister Babs in Barnegat Acres but will be one of the neatnik, black-belt karate guys with Arctic blue eyes in an FBI windbreaker. It lances into my brain that I haven’t called Clare Suddruth back yet but am supposed to show him 61 Surf Road tomorrow. Then I remember I intend not to be available.

“Okay, then, that’s all set,” Detective Marinara says, more clicking. “Will. Participate. In. IDP. And…that’s great.”

“I’m happy to. Well. I’m—”

“Yep,” Marinara says. “Ya still in the realty business over there?”