State’s Evidence Read online

  I shrugged. “Everyone’s got scabs,” I said. “Some just show more than others.” I returned his smile. He looked at me more closely.

  “I think you know,” he said finally.

  “Know what?”

  “That the difference between what I am and what you are is only a matter of adaptability.”

  “Adaptability to what?”

  “To doing less than we were put here to do.”

  “Which is?”

  “To fight the bastards.”

  “What bastards?”

  “The bastards who want the rest of us to be just like them.”

  Lufkin looked at me intently, with faded black eyes that floated like smoke signals over his scraggly beard. What he saw must have convinced him that I agreed with him, and maybe what he saw was right. “What do you want to know, Tanner?” he asked expansively, leaning back in the chair and clasping his hands behind his head.

  “Start with what you were doing down on Oswego Street that night. Is that your usual turf?”

  “Naw. I hang out around Rutland Avenue, at the relief mission there, you know? I was on Oswego because of a woman.”

  Lufkin suddenly became a degenerate pixie. Because booze usually rots the capacity for lust, I had one more bit of proof that Colin Lufkin wasn’t quite what the world assumed him to be. “Explain,” I said.

  “It was a Sunday, right? Well, I know this woman. This lady. She’s married to a trucker, name of Rex. He’s on the road all during the week, so there’s no problem, but when he’s home, weekends, he drinks. And when he drinks, he beats her. He beats her bad. One night when she ran out of the house to get away from him she ended up running into me. We talked. We liked each other. We made love in a boxcar and then she went home. I told her I’d be there on Oswego every night on every weekend. I told her if it ever got bad again she could come find me.”

  “Did she come that night?”

  “No.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “Only that once. Nine months ago.”

  “And you’re still waiting?”

  He shrugged. “Gives me something to do.”

  “What’s her name?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, my good sir,” he said, gallant and proud of it.

  “Why doesn’t she leave the guy if he’s such a bastard?”

  “What would she do, Tanner? Live with me in a boxcar? I’m not part of the landed gentry, in case you hadn’t noticed. And she can’t support herself.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s only got one arm.”

  I couldn’t resist. “What were you before you hit the street, Lufkin?”

  He nodded, content that I was finally predictable. “Car salesman. Fords. I’ve sold a thousand Fords in my life. Every one of them a bigger piece of junk than the last. The early Mustang was the only one worth driving. And Ford was better than anything else Detroit put out.”

  I could have asked him why he quit, and why he turned to liquor instead of merely changing jobs, and why he lived the way he lived, but I didn’t. I’d listen if he started to tell me, but I wouldn’t ask. “What’s the first thing you saw that related to the killing?” I asked instead.

  “Well, I didn’t see the Blair woman drive up or anything, if that’s what you mean. I got there about six, and there wasn’t anyone around. I had my Ripple, and a relatively sanitary doorway, and I was probably nodding off, as usual, when things started to happen. The first thing I heard was the bang of a car door.”

  “Just one?”

  “I don’t know. There were a whole bunch of cars down there. I looked to see what was making all the racket—I was afraid it might be a cop, you know—and I saw these two guys standing out in the middle of the street talking to each other.”

  “You hear what they were saying?”

  “Nope. I didn’t pay that much attention, but then one of them hopped in his car and started it up and just plain ran down the other guy. Made a sound like a beached boat when he hit him.” Lufkin chuckled. “Another night of fun and excitement down on Oswego Street.”

  “Why didn’t the guy in the street run away?”

  “He tried to.”

  “Was he on the sidewalk when he got hit?”

  “Nope. Come to think of it, he started to run toward one of the buildings but it was like there was something over there in the dark that he was afraid of.”

  “Or someone.”

  “Right.”

  “You ever see either of the men before?”

  “I don’t think so, but who knows? I don’t see so good anymore.”

  “Were you drunk?”

  Lufkin laughed hoarsely. “I been drunk since ’sixty-two, so that’s not the right question. The question is, were the spiders out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that when I’ve been into the sauce real bad, two or three quarts a day, then it’s like there’s these spiders crawling on my eyeballs. Big, hairy spiders that scratch me and tickle me at the same time, and they won’t get off, not even when I shut my eyes or rub them or claw them or anything. They just stay right there, crawling up and down, the fuzzy little bastards. Man, it’s something.” Lufkin wrenched his head to the side fiercely, as though the spiders had arrived again.

  “Was it like that that night?” I asked.

  “No, but then it wasn’t exactly normal, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because after things died down, and I looked at the woman in the car stopped way down at the end of the block, I began seeing double.”

  “What about the kid you saw? Where was he?”

  “Down there, too. Screwing around on the sidewalk, tossing rocks, kicking cans. Probably looking for a drunk to roll.”

  “What did the kid look like?”

  “A kid. Long hair. T-shirt. Levis. A kid. A punk. Used to be one myself.”

  “Do you think he lives down there?”

  “He might live there, he might live on the moon. If he’s lucky, it’s the moon.”

  “How about Fluto? He do anything after he ran the man down?”

  “Just sped away, man. Like he’d run down a skunk.”

  “Anything else you can remember?”

  “Nope. Well, one thing. Just before he hopped in his car, Fluto told the other guy that he’d broken the law. ‘You broke the law,’ that’s what he said.”

  “What do you think it meant?”

  “Who knows? Maybe the guy was double-parked.”

  17

  He trudged up the hill along with four of his buddies, pushing his bike with one hand, slinging a book bag over his shoulder with the other. They were five cookies made from the same cutter, boys dressed as men who dressed as boys. One of them was shoving or being shoved, taunting or being taunted, each step of the way. The energy expended could have lit El Gordo for a week.

  I had been sitting on the front bumper of my Buick for half an hour, wishing I’d worn a sweater under my sport coat, waiting for him. When he saw me, he peeled off from the group and walked over toward me, his eyes dodging with uncertainty. The rest of the boys eyed us like guests at a second wedding.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi, Davy.”

  “You waiting for Mom? She won’t be home till five.”

  “What will you do till she gets here?”

  “You know. Hack around.”

  “You like being on your own?”

  “Sure.” His smile was less positive than his word.

  “I was waiting for you, actually, Davy.”

  “Yeah? Me?”

  I nodded.

  He frowned and thought a minute. It made his pug nose wrinkle. “I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” he said. “Are you a stranger?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  He thought about what he thought, kicking at the street dirt all the while with a shoe that had a score of black rubber nipples on the bottom and a two-inch slit i
n the side. The sock that puffed through the slit was black with dirt. “I guess you’re not,” he concluded finally. “You know Mom, and everything.”

  “Right.”

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Mrs. Blair.”

  “Oh.”

  “Hey, Martin.” The kid who shouted was freckled and red-haired and half a foot smaller than the others. “That your old man?”

  Before Davy could answer, another boy said, loud enough for Davy to hear: “Naw. His old man’s fat. Besides, his mom told his old man if he ever came back here again she’d shoot him.”

  “How do you know?” the redhead asked.

  “My mom told me.”

  “Maybe that’s Martin’s new dad,” the redhead said. The sneer on his face contorted everything below his cowlick.

  Davy dropped his eyes and stuffed his hands in his pockets and shuffled from foot to foot. “He’s already married,” he called out to his friends, republishing my earlier lie.

  “So what?” the redhead answered. “He can get unmarried and married again any time. If he wants to.”

  I groped for something to say, then stood up and turned toward the gang. “I’m with the government,” I called loudly. “Davy here has some information we need. I can’t tell you much about it, because it involves the national security. Now, we can’t be disturbed for a few minutes, but I’d like you all to do something for me while we’re talking. I’d like you to fan out and make sure no one tries to get close enough to hear what we’re saying. If you see someone coming, someone on foot, you yell and let me know. Got it?”

  They didn’t all buy all of it—it’s been tough to shuck a kid ever since they started getting shucked for four hours every Saturday in between the cartoons—and I wouldn’t have even tried it down in the flats, but up on the hill enough of them bought enough of it so that they nodded collectively and divided into two groups and started up and down the street, walking more on their toes than their heels, speaking in the whispered tones of worshipers and adulterers.

  Davy looked up at me and grinned. “You aren’t really with the government, are you?”

  “Not really. But sort of. Temporarily.”

  “Is it dangerous? What you do?”

  “Sometimes, but mostly not.”

  “Do you shoot people?”

  “No. I … no.”

  “Is Mrs. Blair in trouble with the government? Is that what you want to talk about?”

  “That’s not exactly it. But if I can get certain information from you, she won’t be, for sure. How about it?”

  Davy shrugged. “Okay. Mrs. Blair’s neat. She took me to a football game once. I don’t think she’s a criminal or anything.” He frowned. “She knows a lot about football,” he added with awe. “More than me, even.”

  “She’s not a criminal, Davy,” I said with more hope than truth. “Now, I want you to think back about five months ago. Back to June.”

  “June.”

  “Just after school let out.”

  “Sure. June. What about it? My mom’s birthday’s in June.”

  “Something happened last June ninth. On a Sunday night. Down on Oswego Street. That’s over on the other side of the freeway, down in the industrial area.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I was hoping you could tell me. I thought maybe you went down there with Mrs. Blair that night and saw something.”

  Davy thought for a few seconds, crinkling his nose again, but nothing came, even though he clearly wanted it to. “What was it, can’t you give me a hint? Maybe I just forgot.”

  “You wouldn’t forget this, Davy.”

  “I don’t know,” he said dubiously. “I forget all kinds of stuff. Mom says I’ll forget my name some day.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t forget all that much.”

  “I forget to eat my liver every time we have it.”

  His grin was elfin and endearing. I wanted to put him in my pocket and take him home. I put my hand on his shoulder instead. “Just think once more, Davy. Were you and Mrs. Blair down on the other side of the freeway one night? When it was getting dark? With a bunch of old warehouse-type buildings around? You were running up and down the street, kicking a rock or a can or something? Do you remember anything like that?”

  “Naw. The only place I been with Mrs. Blair are the ball game and a Smokey and the Bandit movie and some toy stores. She always wants to know what kind of things I like to play with. I think she tells my mom, and then I get it for my birthday.”

  I patted him again. “Okay, Davy. That’s all I wanted to know. Thanks for talking to me.”

  “Sure. Hey. Is Mrs. Blair going to be in trouble because I didn’t know what you wanted me to know?”

  “Nope. You did just fine. She’d only be in trouble if you didn’t tell the truth.”

  “I did. I guess.”

  “No doubt about it,” I said. “You can tell your friends it’s all clear.”

  “Okay. Mr. Tanner?”

  “Yes?”

  “You aren’t going to be my new dad, are you.”

  “No, Davy.”

  “Do you think I’ll ever have a new dad?”

  “I don’t know. I think you should talk to your mom about it.”

  “Mom never tells me anything. Not anything important.”

  “I’m sure she tells you all she can.”

  He scowled, his face as warped as a week-old jack-o’-lantern. “I’m going inside,” he said. “Don’t tell them, okay?”

  “The kids give you a rough time?”

  “Some. Not too much. Their dads all left, too, most of them. You know that red-haired kid? Scott? His mom left. Went to Hawaii to paint pictures. She sent him a coconut in the mail.” The enormity of the betrayal silenced Davy for a minute, and silenced me as well.

  “It’s been tough on your mom, too,” I said. “You two have got to stick together.”

  “I guess.”

  “I saw your dad the other day. He talked about you a lot. He said he’d be by to see you real soon.”

  “Yeah? I thought I saw him the other day, too. He was hiding behind a bush up there on the hill.” His eyes grew perfectly round. “But it couldn’t have been him, could it?”

  I didn’t know what to say; I said I didn’t think so. “See you later, Davy.”

  “See ya.”

  He started away and then turned back. “Do you think my mom would really shoot my dad?”

  “No chance,” I said. “No chance at all.”

  He nodded once and walked away again, pushing his fragile bike toward his fragile home. As I watched his reflector twinkle in the street light, I got an idea and climbed into my Buick and drove back down the hill.

  Winthrop Avenue was where and how I’d left it. I cruised past the Quilk house and looked it over. The toys were gone from the front yard and the feet were gone from under the pickup, but the joyless aura was as persistent as camphor. I turned around and pulled to the curb at the far end of the block and checked my watch. It was a little after four. I leaned back and waited for the child that I guessed and hoped was in that house to come out and play.

  Time curled up and napped on the front seat beside me. A garbage truck roared past but didn’t stop, its vapors as unapparent as longing. I filled the car with smoke. Somewhere a chain saw ate through a log, and somewhere else a baby cried.

  I wondered about the people on this sad street, wondered how they would fare under a government headed by a puppet-president and guided by men with neither political or philosophical or emotional fealty to them. In a step out of history, we had just given a man a mandate to terminate fifty years of national concern for the people on Winthrop Avenue. I’d thought a lot about why it had happened, thought too much about it, truthfully, and still the only reason I could come up with was that in America, for the first time anywhere, more people consider themselves nobles than serfs. Sadly, most of them are wrong.

  The sound of a siren jolted me
out of my reverie and I looked around. The house I was parked in front of was a five-room bungalow that probably rested on the remains of a much grander structure, which had long ago succumbed to the fate that awaited the rest of the block. Two of the front windows were broken and patched with brown plastic. A long slat of siding was missing from the length of the house. The tar paper that showed through the gap created a toothless grin, moronic and perpetual.

  As I was looking the place over, the front door opened and two boys came out, each carrying a brick in each hand. The taller boy had a pine board tucked under one arm. He was slim and wore a thin red T-shirt with a faded picture of Suzanne Somers on the front. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He couldn’t have been more than twelve.

  The other boy was thin as well, but small. His jeans were worn almost white, the sleeves of his shirt were rolled to his shoulders. A sheath knife hung from his belt. Both boys had rags wrapped around their knees and elbows and the smaller one had a thin strip of the same rag tied around his head in the fashion of Indians and jocks.

  With a religious solemnity the boys strolled into the street and stacked the bricks on the pavement near the gutter, then placed one end of the board on the bricks and the other on the ground, making a ramp about eight inches high. After testing the ramp for stability, the boys went back to the yard and pulled a couple of small, knobby-tired bicycles off the ground and mounted them. The shorter boy reached into his rear pocket and pulled out a round tin can. The thick pinch of leaf went into his left cheek, making a bulge as attractive as a goiter. They both adjusted their knee pads and their belts and pulled gloves from their back pockets and donned them.

  The taller boy flicked his cigarette into the grass, the smaller one spit, and they both rode off, their hips bobbing high above the bike seats, their legs churning like the rods of steam engines. They circled to a point some twenty yards behind the ramp and stopped and talked it over for a minute; then the smaller boy took off, popping a wheelie for several yards then pumping madly until just before he reached the ramp. The bike and rider sailed into space, evoking memories of cowboys and thrill shows.