Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

Goldie Boy’s voice rose with the pure anger of conviction. “The lewd, the immoral, the perverted — we must share the Lord Jesus with them . Jezebels, devil’s whores with painted faces, seductive women and yes, children, thrusting themselves at God-fearing family men, inflaming them with their exposed and perfumed flesh...”

Selby cranked up the window, but they could still hear the horns and dogs.

“Praise the good Lord,” Brett said wearily, “for saving those nice men from those little fiends.” She lit a cigarette. “Do you know Freud’s phrase, the polymorphic perverse?”

Selby studied the buildings on all sides of Pyle’s Corners. “No,” he said. “Afraid it wasn’t in our play book.”

“What?... oh, I get it... well, anyway, Sigmund believed and wrote that women have a genetic tendency toward victimization, that their universal desire is to be roughly and forcefully handled in, you should forgive the expression, acts of sexual congress. I’m quoting Freud, Harry. I’m quoting .” She ground out her cigarette in the dashboard ashtray. “End of speech. His and mine. Let’s get a cup of coffee.”

“I heard you... I also noticed something.” He pointed to the Tabernacle of the Golden Flame. “Anyone at those windows would have a clear view of Earl Thomson and Shana that night.”

“But the church was dark,” she reminded him. “There were no services. The only witness was Mrs. Swabel across the street and she only saw Shana.”

“I know,” Selby said, “but the preacher’s church is the best seat in the house. Casper Gideen was checking out the preacher. And Casper’s got his head blown off.”

Later that night, Selby looked again through his father’s pictures and diaries, the familiar yellowing pages and snapshots, “The chief and the major,” his father had written, “they run things, they say jump . But we’ll pay for it.” He felt a fresh pang at the look of his father in his army uniform, tall and strong, a powerful, scowling young man, so very damn young at the beginning...

Selby heard Blazer barking in the pen beside his doghouse. He picked up a leather lead and went outside. As he walked toward Blazer’s barking, he thought of Claud Lissard. He wondered why. Maybe because Brett had touched his scarred cheek, except she did it as a reminder that things healed, that pain diminished, in time. Coincidentally Selby paid off the Frenchman the same summer evening the long distance phone call had come in from the recruiters at Penn. (“You cut it, son, or they cut you. It’s as simple as that. You get four years of the best coaching anywhere, pro sets and game plans, a shot at the national championship, then post-season bowl games.”) That call triggered the explosion, which in turn made Selby realize how much his grandfather had needed someone like Claud Lissard to discipline — no, to punish and humiliate his daughter’s bastard son...

Blazer stood stiff-legged and bristling, barking at something beyond the trees that bordered Fairlee Road. Snapping the lead to the big shepherd’s collar, Selby started down the trail toward the fence line.

As Blazer jerked and pulled him along, the strain on Selby’s arm reminded him again of Lissard... The Frenchman was round and fat, but his big, sagging stomach was deceptive; it was, in fact, hard as a board. The challenge Claud offered Harry, and which his grandfather always put aside his newspaper to watch, was simple enough; the Frenchman would order Harry to take a two-handed grip on his wide belt, after which Claud would swell his stomach muscles until Harry’s hands were clamped helplessly between hard leather and muscled flesh. The object was to pull free, but while a young Harry Selby struggled, the Frenchman would dance about the room, hopping from one foot to the other like a trained bear, swinging the boy from side to side until his arms were almost jerked from their sockets. There was no humor in this game, and never had been, in spite of the booming laughter that filled out Claud’s cheeks. The last time they played, Harry had tried to settle for a standoff; Claud was older then, almost forty, and not as powerful as he had been in his younger days. But he muttered under his breath about Selby’s leaving for college, saying, “You think you’re too good for us, but I’ll show you, like I always...”

Selby’s own anger, which was deeper than he realized, began to rise as he thought of the hot sun on the spur track and the fight he’d had to keep the name Selby and the way his grandfather stressed the name when he had to use it with strangers — Sel-by, two spaced syllables, the last one emphasized and always attended by a mildly sardonic question mark. “And here’s little Harry — Harry Sel- by ...?”...

Harry had spun Claud Lissard around in dizzying circles that last night, finally hurling him into the adjoining parlor, where Lissard crashed into the ancient upright piano. That ended it forever with the Frenchman, and with his life in Davenport, Selby realized, because his grandfather had stared down at his own pale, freckled hands for a moment, his expression oddly wistful, withdrawn, and then had deliberately returned to his paper without another glance at his tall grandson. In those moments Harry had looked at his own hands, young, strong, and suddenly felt he could take care of himself with the bullies of the world. He had never before loved his father so much. It was a damn good feeling...

There were two cars parked on Fairlee Road, and Selby saw their lights and heard men’s voices through the trees. He walked through the woods to the fence, but they must have heard Blazer’s growling challenge because the cars started up and drove off, leaving behind only the acrid smell of exhaust fumes.

Selby examined the shoulders of Fairlee Road with his flashlight. This was where Shana had been struck by Thomson’s car, and someone had been at work with a rake; the heavy grass was combed for dozens of yards on both sides of the road and deep grooves furrowed the hard ground.

Selby stood with a hand on the panting dog’s collar, wondering who it was who’d been searching around here in the dark at the scene of Shana’s accident. Which wasn’t the important question, he decided, walking back through the woods. The real question was — what had they been looking for?

The night before Earl Thomson’s trial, George Thomson and Dom Lorso took an electronically monitored elevator to the penthouse in one of Philadelphia’s tallest and newest high-rise apartment buildings.

Marvin Quade escorted them into a drawing room where modern paintings and tall lamps were framed by an electric glitter of the skyline beyond glassed-in terraces.

In a dress the color of ivory, Jennifer Easton stood at a bar, adding white mint to a pitcher of brandy and cracked ice. Above her blond hair hung an arrangement of shining discs and triangles, swaying in balanced patterns. Behind the bar a checkerboard mural was illuminated in chiseled precision by gallery lights which sparkled on her bare shoulders.

She greeted the men with a pleasantly vague smile and poured herself a drink. Quade stood in front of the glass-walled terrace where his bulk partially blocked out the city’s lights.

Simon Correll came in from the adjoining study, and Jennifer excused herself and took her pitcher of brandy stingers upstairs.

“Sit down, gentlemen, sit down.” Correll’s expression was tight as he watched Jennifer stroll along the railed balcony above the drawing room.

Thomson and Dom Lorso settled themselves in leather chairs at a mirrored coffee table. Lorso lit a cigarette and looked for an ashtray. He caught Quade’s eye, but Quade frowned and shook his head. Lorso dropped the match on the carpet.