Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

One night that week, Jerry Goldbirn phoned Harry Selby again from Las Vegas.

“Why didn’t you get back to me, for Christ’s sake, Harry? I called you weeks ago.”

“I tried to, but your secretary said you were out of town or something and wouldn’t be free until—”

“Oh, crap, you haven’t learned anything. Left your brains scattered around the artificial turf. If you’d told her you were a lawyer with a paternity rap, or an IRS auditor—”

They hadn’t talked for several years, not since the memorial service for Sarah, but Goldbirn’s voice was as Selby remembered it — accusing and threaded with suspicion.

Selby’s deliberate blind-side shot some years ago had done more than put Goldbirn out for the season; it had... as Davic suspected... saved his reputation and quite probably his life.

Goldbirn was a second-year man out of the Southeastern Conference that season, with an honest flair for case aces and marked decks. But playing poker with professionals on credit had got him into serious debt. They had wanted their money and when Goldbirn couldn’t come up with it, they wanted his help in shaving points. Goldbirn had been forced to consider their suggestion, because he believed that a deliberately dropped pass or two was preferable to having his legs broken in an alley.

Selby had solved Goldbirn’s problems by putting him on the bench for the year. If he couldn’t play, he couldn’t affect the score.

With time to maneuver, Goldbirn solved his problems by lending his name as a front for a small casino in Reno and ultimately becoming partnered with his creditors.

“What a rotten, goddamn business,” he was saying now, not bothering to mark the transition in mood or subject. “I remember Shana when she was learning to walk. Sarah brought her out to practice once, looked like she’d scooped her out of the bulrushes. Wrapped up in so many clothes that we rolled her around like a practice ball. They got the sonofabitch, right, Harry? Thomson something or other?”

“Earl Thomson, yes. They’ve got him, but whether they’ll get him is another matter.”

“I was afraid of that. I heard about it before it was in the papers, just some talk in Atlantic City. A radio report on a missing kid. It got back to a friend. He can’t swear where he heard it, a pit boss, a stiff on a comp flight, maybe a hooker. But it worried me. They remembered her name, how do you figure that? Who’s talking in a gambling casino about a teenaged kid missing a few hours? It don’t figure. You know how I keep the roses in my cheeks? I stay away from jai-alai games with Mexican partners, anybody in the Teamsters without callouses... anything that don’t figure, female impersonators, Irish Catholics voting Republican. What do you need, Harry?”

Selby said, “I’d like you to check out some names, get me a reading on them. There’s no reason why a case like this shouldn’t have top priority with the cops, right?”

“Something screwy going on, is that it?”

Selby gave him the names. After reading them back Goldbirn said, “One of them turns the tilt light on. The others are John Does to me... Slocum, Eberle, the Jesus freak, what’d you say his name was?”

“Oliver Jessup.”

“No, but I heard of Lorso. A tough little fucker. If he was in a jai-alai pool, I’d get out of it. Whether he’s legitimate, who knows. Because he’s got a vowel on the end of his name, don’t prove he’s not. Remember that stud, Ziggy Carlotto with the Forty-niners? He’s a bald-headed Hare Krishna, hangs around the L.A. Airport now, it’s a goddamn embarrassment to meet him. Lemme think. Lorso’s got an interest in some management hustle in New Jersey that’s a country cousin to loan sharking. I know that much. What else?”

Selby told him about Jennifer.

“No address, no last name? What do I do? Put personals up over big cities with sky-writers?”

“Here’s the only lead. Jennifer rented a car at the Memphis Airport to drive to Summitt City. That was back in October, the fourteenth or fifteenth. She told me she got a speeding ticket on the way over to Summitt. You could check that, Jerry.”

“Yeah, she’d need a driver’s license for a renter. Then she’d have to show it to the state trooper. I can check the rental agencies at the airport and the Tennessee State Police. You know that crazy bastard played tackle one season for the Eagles? Baby Joe Minton? His relatives came to all the games, Christers, and the uncles would crowd into the locker room to check out our bladder stems?”

“Vaguely,” Selby said.

“Baby Joe’s a state senator now in Tennessee. Listen, how’s Shana taking this? Shit, what a dumb question. Would it help if I sent her some flowers or alligator boots or something?”

“I’ll tell her you asked for her, Jerry.”

“Sure, she probably wouldn’t remember me anyway. Next time, tell that dumb secretary of mine who you are. If she puts you on hold again, I’ll sell her to a guy I know in Morocco who’s got a thing for whipped cream and feathers.”

There was another call for Selby later that night from Sergeant Ritter at the sheriff’s substation.

“I called his wife first, of course, and she thought you should know right away, Mr. Selby,” the sergeant said. “They found Casper Gideen’s body up in the woods behind Muhlenburg a few hours ago, head half blown away by his own shotgun. Looks like it went off when he was trying to climb a fence or something.”

Captain Slocum left City Hall after dark and drove to a public park on the Brandywine. The snack bar was closed for the season, the barbecue pits covered with canvas tarps, but one bundled-up group sat around a redwood table with sandwiches and coffee and beer. A young girl in a ski sweater played a guitar with her mittens on and laughed at the muffled music she was making.

Slocum took a drink from a flask in his glove compartment, popped a mint in his mouth and strolled past the picnic tables and down a slope to the river bank. He waited there until he saw the headlights of a Cadillac turn into the park and stop beside his car. When the lights went off, Slocum walked back and joined Allan Davic.

They greeted one another casually. Standing between their two cars, they were concealed in shadows. From a distance they could hear the guitar’s smothered chords,

“You understand,” Davic said, “this is just a formality,” and proceeded to pat down the policeman carefully and expertly, even checking his crotch and running a hand under his shirt and over his hairy chest and stomach.

Davic then opened his overcoat and unbuttoned his vest and allowed the captain to frisk him with equal care for microphones and wires.

They got into the front seat of the attorney’s Cadillac and Davic said, “We won’t meet again, Captain, or phone each other. I’ll have to tear you apart on the stand, because of the defendant’s taped meeting with you and Eberle, but that’s the last time I’ll talk to you in person. When you have information, get it to me through George Thomson.”

“I don’t like that,” Slocum shook his head with deliberate emphasis. “That brings it too close to Earl. I know Earl, you see. Know him better than you ever will ’cause he’s an actor and he’ll play a part for you. But I pulled his ass out of a crack over in New Jersey a while back. He was in college, a military school full of imitation grunts to my mind, fake soldier boys. Earl worked over some black cunt who’d apparently asked for it. There was some fuss, didn’t amount to piss-ants, but I had to lean hard on some characters. Afterward Earl suggested we shake ’em down because they’d saved his fucking ass but left themselves vulnerable. He’s a greedy bastard... When I’ve got something, I’ll park my blue Olds in Eberle’s slot at the Hall. You watch for that. Then you’ll get a call. No names. I’ll set up the drop.”