All That I Have (8 page)

“Lady up in Mount Zion,” I said. “She’s a photographer. She takes photos. Takes photos of men. Get it? She thinks Sean’s beautiful. He’s her model, or something, it looks like.”

“What does that mean, her model?”

“What do you think it means?” I said. “I asked you, though: is she right? Is Sean beautiful?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” said Clemmie. “He’s not my type.”

7

THE ISSUE

Right at quitting time Thursday we’d had a call from Emory O’Connor, the real estate fellow in Manchester whose company managed the Russians’ house. One of the owners, or somebody working for the owners, had been to the house that day.

“I’m afraid there’s an issue,” Mr. O’Connor said.

“I guess there is,” I said. “I saw it. Whoever got in there about took down that whole wall.”

“That isn’t the issue. Can you meet us up there tomorrow?”

Us?

So Friday morning at nine, I was back in Grenada, on that mountain, on my way to get a look at some of those famous Russians.

Going up their million-dollar driveway, I thought, not for the first time, how differently rich and poor set on a piece of land. If there’s harm done, nine times out of ten it’s the rich who do it, not the poor. All my life, this mountainside up here had been the back of the backcountry. Out of the way, steep, heavily wooded, it had been perfectly good boondocks: good for logging, good for hunting, good for bears and porcupines. As the ass end of creation, it had done very well.

A poor man, if he had settled in here, would have bought a quarter-acre lot right on the road and moved in a trailer or put up a plain little house. He wouldn’t have been able to afford to do anything more. Then by and by, suppose his house burned or he moved his trailer, in two years, less, it would be as if he’d never been here at all.

A rich man is different. He can afford to do whatever he wants, so he does a lot. He does everything. He buys the whole mountain, he clears ten, twenty acres at the top, he gets in heavy equipment, builds a road a quarter-mile long to his house site, puts in ponds, walls, banks, berms. If there’s a hill where he don’t want a hill, he grades it; if there’s a dip where he don’t want a dip, he fills it. He changes the whole place, the whole land, so it’s to his liking — and he changes it forever. He turns the ass end of creation into real estate. Maybe the bears and the porcupines are still there, but now they’re his bears and his porcupines, in a way they never were the poor man’s.

It’s when the money moves in that the neighborhood goes to hell, it looks like to me. Have a rich man for your friend, if you can, but a poor man for your neighbor.

When I got to the house, I found two vehicles parked in front: a wagon that I took for O’Connor’s, with Vermont plates, and a Mercedes limousine, New York plates, with a man the size of your woodshed standing beside the driver’s door, waiting. I parked the truck and got down. The driver of the Mercedes — I guessed he was the driver — beckoned to me, and I went over to him. Without saying a word, he proceeded to pat me down. Patting people down is something I have done a fair amount of myself, and I know good work when I see it. This fellow knew his business. He went over me as though I’d just flown in from Damascus or Teheran, carrying a heavy suitcase that went
tick-tock.
When he got done, he nodded and pointed toward the house, so I passed him and went on in.

Inside were Emory O’Connor and two others, standing in a hallway with a high ceiling. O’Connor I knew, a bit. We shook hands, and he introduced me to one of the others.

“This is Mr. Tracy, Sheriff,” O’Connor said. “He’s up from New York, from the insurer. Sheriff Wing.”

“Logan Tracy,” the insurance company’s man said. He was a heavy, kind of soft fellow who looked like a college football player gone to seed. He had on one of those leather jackets that cost a few hundred dollars and that New Yorkers and others seem to think make them look like country people. But what country?

I shook hands with Mr. Tracy and looked to the third man, but nobody offered to introduce me to him, then or ever, and he never spoke a word that day. He was another kind of thing altogether, it looked like. He wore a gray suit and a dark tie. His shoes were polished. His hair was long, coal black, and slicked down and combed back around his head. He wasn’t trying to look like a country man. He wasn’t trying to look like anything. Was he a Russian? He might have been. He might have been from Pluto. Where he was not from was anyplace near here or anyplace like here.

“This way, Sheriff,” said Logan Tracy. He turned toward the room we had seen the other day, the study. I followed him. Emory O’Connor started to go with us, but Tracy told him to wait where he was, in the hall with the third man.

Somebody had picked up. The papers and other things that had been spilled over the desk and floor last Friday were put away. Tracy sat himself down on the edge of the desk and looked at me.

“This is a nice property, Sheriff,” he said.

I nodded.

“The owners keep it as a getaway, you know?” he said. “They come up here to relax. They don’t want a lot of activity or trouble. They certainly don’t want police going over the place. They are here to relax and have fun.”

“Who are the owners?” I asked him.

Tracy went on. “There are valuables in the house,” he said. “You’ve seen some of them: TV, electronics, appliances. There are cameras, firearms. There are artworks.”

“Is the gentleman in the other room one of the owners?”

“We have an inventory,” Tracy said. “Everything is accounted for. Except one thing.”

“What’s that?”

The quiet, slick-haired fellow who had been waiting with O’Connor had come to the study. He stood in the doorway.

“A safe,” Logan Tracy said. “A small, fireproof safe. Steel. It was in the bookcase, there.”

“How small?”

Tracy held his hands in front of him, about a foot and a half apart. He looked over at the man in the doorway. The man nodded.

“It’s a keyed safe,” said Tracy. “It’s strong, might weigh forty or fifty pounds. Still, easy enough to carry away.”

“What was in it?”

“Records.”

“Records?”

“Business records, Sheriff. Nothing of value to a common burglar. Nothing that could be sold. Records.”

“What kind of records?”

“Look, Sheriff,” said Tracy. “I’ve told you that’s irrelevant. The point is, these things have no value.”

“But the owners want them back,” I said. “They want them back pretty bad.”

“They do,” said Tracy. “Have you been investigating this, at all, Sheriff?”

“I’ve asked around.”

“You’ve asked around. Have you asked Sean Duke? Our information is that somebody called Sean Duke did this. Do you know him?”

“Where do you get your information?” I asked Tracy.

“That’s no concern of yours, Sheriff,” he said. “Do you know Duke?”

“Sure.”

“Is he the breaker?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is he your main suspect?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“Have you questioned him?”

“Not yet. Have you?”

“What do you mean, Sheriff?”

“Somebody else was up here looking for Sean Duke a few days back,” I said. “Found him, too. Might have wished he hadn’t. Fellow from Russia. Fellow named Eugene.”

“I know nothing about that, Sheriff,” said Tracy.

“Does he?” I looked over at the man in the doorway.

“No,” said Logan Tracy.

“How tough would your safe be to get into?” I asked Tracy.

Tracy looked at the man in the doorway, who shook his head slightly.

“Tough,” said Tracy.

“Then it’s likely whoever took it threw it away,” I said.

“Would you be apt to find it, then?”

“Depends on where they threw it.”

“Look, Sheriff,” said Tracy. “I’m not going to spar with you. That gets us nowhere. Let’s be clear, shall we? Somebody broke in here and robbed us. Maybe you know who it was, maybe you don’t. It doesn’t matter. We want him caught. That’s what you do. We’re on the same side, here.”

“We are?”

Tracy stood up from the desk where he had been sitting. “Alright, Sheriff,” he said, “This isn’t useful. We’ll leave it. The owners do want their property restored, obviously. That’s your job. I’m sure we can count on you, can’t we? Let me say, the owners are in a position to offer a reward for the return of their property. A substantial reward. Maybe that will help you in your investigation.”

“I work for the county,” I said.

“Of course you do, Sheriff,” said Tracy. “We appreciate that. I’m only saying the owners are prepared to be helpful to those who are helpful to them. You understand, I’m sure.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I do understand.”

Tracy pulled a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. “You’ll keep me informed,” he said.

“Are there going to be more fellows like that Eugene coming around?” I asked.

“I told you, Sheriff,” said Logan Tracy, “I don’t know anything about anybody by that name.”

I took a look at Tracy’s card. It had his name on it, and in the corner the name Atlantic Casualty, and a telephone number. There was no street address.

“Where is your office?” I asked Tracy.

“How do you mean?”

“How do I mean?” I said. “How do
you
mean? There’s no address here. On your card. No address. Where’s your office?”

“New York.”

“New York’s a big place,” I said.

“We’re downtown,” Tracy said.

He started toward the door of the study. The man who had been standing there had gone. Emory O’Connor had left too, it looked like. He wasn’t in the hall where he’d been waiting, and when I left the house, his car wasn’t there.

Did I enjoy being talked to like the dumbest boy in the third grade by that fellow with his fancy leather jacket and his little business card that not even the dumbest boy in the third grade would believe? Not really. But I don’t mind. In sheriffing, you ain’t there to show everybody you’re the smartest fellow in the room. You’re there to do your job, and sometimes you do it better if you look ten degrees cooler in the top story than you really are. That way, instead of talking, you shut up and listen, and watch. That way, you ask dumb questions, and sometimes it’s the answers to the dumb questions that are interesting — and the no-answers.

So no, I didn’t mind Mr. Tracy. Wingate used to say: Everybody thinks you’ve got to come out on top. You don’t. All you’ve got to do is do your job.

That was pure Wingate. On sheriffing he ran a kind of — what is it where everybody sits around and asks questions and nobody ever answers them? A seminar. Wingate ran a kind of a seminar on sheriffing. The end was always the same: do your job. All you have to do is do your job. But Wingate never said what the job was. You were supposed to figure that out on your own. On your own, but Wingate’s way.

Deputy Keen was at the office when I got back from the Russians’ house. He had talked to the Sweetheart of Sigma Chi about Sean. It sounded like he’d had better luck with her than I did.

“She ain’t a bad kid, Sheriff,” the deputy said. “Fucking Superboy’s got her brainwashed.”