“We never made that California visit. But we're fixing to drive up to Connecticut, after the crop's in, one of these days.”
I watched an hour and a half of tape and decided I'd seen enough. I called into the room where she had retreated. “Hey, thanks a lot.”
“No problem.”
“See you Friday.”
I walked back to my office, doubting that Chance Grose's family visit to Connecticut would have occurred even if Brian hadn't been killed. I felt a little guilty charging the Cemetery Association for my viewing time. All I knew now that I hadn't known before was that Brian Grose was a self-made man who had left his roots in the dustâwhich I could have guessed looking at his over-size house and flashy mausoleum.
Better to fix on Charlie Cubrero?
How well did I know Charlie? What do you know in eight hours? And glimpses over the months of seeing him mowing lawns with Jay. Body language showed how much he loved machines. Jay said the kid could drive anything. But that could be said about a murderer. One thing did not fit, and that was the look in Charlie's eyes when I slipped him a measly extra twenty at the end of a long day's work: gratitude, not for the money, which surely he needed, but for the fact that I had noticed how hard he had worked.
I kept thinking about the loneliness suffered by the hunted. And the fact was the cops were looking for him. And the fact was that my employers in the Cemetery Association wanted to look good. And if I brought Charlie in with a lawyer, they would look good and the kid would get a break and I could concentrate on who actually killed Brian.
So I went looking, sans Spanish-speaking detective.
I started at the Newbury Funeral Home. Mortician Brooks, a calm, gray-haired gent who was president of the Ram Pasture Photography Club had let himself be conned into volunteering to edit a coffee table book that would be a photographic record of Newbury's Tercentennial year. The club had fanned out around town shooting everything that moved. Don himself had come by my mother's with his camera the day Jay brought Charlie out to help pull stumps. We went through a slew of shots he had scanned into his computer under the heading “Newbury Workers.”
Don said, “Do you notice how he always turns away from the camera?”
Or hides in the shadow under the brim of his cap.
Or casually shields his face with his hand.
I did not recall that Ecuadorians were among the people who feared that photographs would steal their spirit. But that didn't make him any more a gang leader than any illegal immigrant dodging cameras just to be on the safe side.
We found a wide shot of Jay's tractor backing up, pulling a huge octopus of a stump at the end of a chain. Don had taken it from the other side of my mother's pond and had achieved an arty reflection in the water. He had been so far away that Charlie Cubrero, concentrating on the machine, probably didn't realize he was facing the camera. He had both hands on the controls, and he was looking over his shoulder with the late afternoon sun angling under the bill of his cap.
Unfortunately, the shot was so wide that his face was little more than a dot. Don blew it up and up and up on the computer, and we watched Charlie's face grow broad cheekbones, a handsome hawk nose, dark eyes, and a smile that suggested he was having a fine time on Jay's tractor.
It's a long way from the computer screen to paper, and I held little hope for more than a blown up blur. But Don printed me a color three by five that was as crisp as any portrait in the high school yearbook. When I marveled at the miracle, he explained, very proudly that he was an anti-digital troglodyte who still used 35 mm film.
As I was leaving I asked if he knew when Brian's funeral would be. Don looked annoyed. “I have no idea. The mausoleum company contracted a mortician from Waterbury. Not someone I would have hired, but nobody asked.”
Next, I dropped in on my twelve-year-old friend Alison Mealy, who had until recently lived with her mother in the old stable hand's apartment over my barn. Her father had returned after a long absence, stone cold AA sober and working hard to rescue his family from the destruction he had visited upon them. They lived down in Frenchtown in a tiny rented ranch house that had a shed out back big enough for Redman, the horse I had given Alison.
I missed the kid, and found what excuses I could to visit. Alison was usually busy doing kid stuff, of course, school, computer, music lessons, biking with her friends. I got lucky this summer day and found her at home on her horse. She demanded I watch Redman jump a fence, which I did with my heart in my throat as she was small for her age and the horse was very big.
While she brushed him down she told me that come Fall the school was assigning her a more advanced flute teacher. She grabbed her flute and played me an air from the “Magic Flute,” which impressed me mightily. Then she showed me the used computer her father's boss had passed down to her. Then she asked about Tom. The cat had originally come with Redman but had decided to stay with me when the horse left. Then, she told me that she had had tea with Aunt Connie last week and that Connie had invited her to come every Wednesday after school. (Just as Tuesday after school had been my day to learn the manners that would make me comfortable anywhere.)
Then Alison asked, as always, if I had seen First Selectman Vicky recently. I said no, running the town and Tim was keeping her very busy. Alison made a face. She adored Vicky and harbored fantasies of Vicky and me getting back together. Finally she asked, “What's up?”
“How are you doing in Spanish class?”
“Okay.”
“Can you print me a sign in Spanish?”
“I got Spanish software. What do you want to say?”
“I want the sign to say, âI am not a cop.' That's
policia
right?
“Yeah,” she said dubiously.
“Yes, not yeah.”
“Yes.”
“And then I want it to say, âI am a private detective.'”
“
Detective privado.
”
“Great. Then I want it to say, âI want to help this man.' And I'll show them this picture.”
“That's Charlie Cubrero.”
“How do I say I want to help him?”
“
Desear
â¦
socorrer
, like save.
Por que
?”
“What?”
“Why?”
“Even I know
por que
? means why.”
“Why would they trust you?”
“Why not?”
“Charlie's
lo busca la policia.
”
“What is that?”
“Wanted by the police.”
“That's the problem. So how do I say, Trust me?”
“
Esperar en alguien.
”
“Put that on the sign, too.”
“If you say so.”
I did and she did.
As I was leaving, climbing into the car, reaching for the key I had left in the ignition, she said, “Guess what.”
“What?”
“My father?”
“How's he doing?”
“They made him manager.”
“Good. He said he was hoping that would happen.” The hope was if it worked out the boss could buy another store, leave Alison's father in charge of the first store, and give him a break buying the ranch house, which the boss owned.
“He got a raise.” It meant, she explained that her mother could cut back to only three days a week cleaning houses.
“Ben?”
I let go the key. “What?”
“Do you think it's hard for him working in a liquor store?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So why does he do it?”
“Have you asked him?”
Twelve years old, she looked me in the face like a veteran State's Attorney investigator and said, “I'm asking you.”
“Wellâ¦well, your father told me it was like a test. It kept him strongâNo, actually, I think he meant it kept him alertâyou know, aware of the problemâ¦Of drinking.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I believe he believes it. And he said his sponsor had done something similar.”
“Yeah, butâ¦.”
“Yes, but what?”
“Yes, but isn't it like a pothead selling grass?”
“Not at all,” I shot back without even thinking. I didn't know where such certainty had come from, but I was glad it had, although I knew now I had better be prepared to flesh out my meaning.
Alison looked intrigued. “What do you mean?”
I reminded myself that, thanks to the Internet and cable TV, a small-town, twelve-year old child knows more of the world than I did before I was processed into Leavenworth. “It's more like a mid-level drug dealer. Not the pothead dealer at school, not his supplier, but the next guy up, or the one above him, who can't stay in business if he uses their own stuff.”
“Really?”
“Sort of.”
“But Dad's not a drug dealer.”
“No. But a liquor store manager does sell a product that some people can't handle. And he knows he can't survive if he uses it himself.”
“Because he can't handle it.”
“Which he knows.”
“Now.”
I said, “Your father came home, didn't he? He came home clean. With a job. He found this house. He's made a wonderful place for you and your mother.”
“For now.”
She was an intensely observant kid, and I worried that she was seeing some sign that Tom might be heading for a fall from the wagon. I said the only thing left to say. “You know the story. One day at a time.”
She brightened, willing to hope or just trying to make me not worry. “Hey, good luck with the sign.”
***
It wasn't the brightest idea. But it wasn't the dumbest, either. From talking to Fred Kantor and Rick Bowland and Jay Meadows I knew that the Ecuadorian immigrants were a close knit community from a small country. Many were related by blood, or at least came from the same village or city neighborhood. Last year, when a boatload of illegals trying to board a smuggler's freighter had drowned in the Pacific Ocean, every Ecuadorian in Connecticut lost somebody he knew. So if I got lucky and somebody who knew Charlie trusted my sign, fine, but even if they didn't trust me, I had reason to hope someone would pass my card to Charlie or to someone who knew where Charlie was hiding. Meantime, the second I met someone who could speak enough English to translate for me, that someone had a job with no heavy lifting.
I went looking in the places I was accustomed to seeing immigrants who were probably illegal and most likely penniless: street corners where contractors and homeowners cruised by to hire them for the day, the lumber yard parking lot, car washes, large lawns tended by mowing crews.
I was driving a Scion xA this morningâcourtesy of Pink who was still in his blue phase; “Indigo Ink Pearl” according to the spec sheet he had purloined from somewhere for my benefitâand while it handled relatively crisply, I did not believe that it made me look like a cop.
“
Policia
?”
“
!Yo no!
Not me!
Detective privado. Esperar en alguien
trust me.”
“
Por que
?”
The guys building the stone wall didn't trust me. They were courteous about it, but their eyes dimmed down and they backed away. Neither did the demolition crew knocking down an old gas station in Brookfield; they just kept swinging sledge hammers and throwing scraps in the Dumpster. I showed Charlie's picture to people who were lugging grocery bags on foot where everyone else drove. I showed it to a crew of roofers broiling in the midday sun. I climbed a ladder to show it to three guys painting a church steeple. And I showed it to weary men scarfing down a cheap Chinese lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet where it was cheaper before it was re-named-and-priced “dinner” at three-thirty.
Nine o'clock that night I called it a day when I was asked politely, but firmly, to leave a Ecuadorian bar on a back street of Waterbury. I drove the Scion home, drank some wine, and fell into bed at midnight telling myself that tomorrow was another day.
Deeee-Dahhhhh. Deeee-Dahhhhh.
I was up out of bed and on my feet before I realized that was exactly what I should be doing because the Plectron bleating its duo-tone
Deeee-Dahhhhh. Deeee-Dahhhhh
was saying,
Firehouse, now! Put gear on first.
I let it keep bleating while I climbed into my overalls, boots, and rubbery coat. One time I had squelched it while heading for my clothes and fell straight back to sleep, leaving my fellow volunteers to fight a house fire without me, which was not a way to their hearts. One reason why I was still on probation.
My watch on the night table said it was three minutes to three. If there was any good news at all it was that I had poured myself into bed three hours earlier with wine instead of martinis. As I grabbed my helmet, the duo-tone was interrupted by a mechanical voice that pinpointed the call: “Vehicular accident. Mount Pleasant Road.”
I ran out of the house and up Main Street toward Town Hall, behind which stood the firehouse. By the time I had galloped past the Drover, the flagpole, the churches, the bank and general store, pickups, trucks and cars were converging from three directions, flashing blue lights in their windshields. Most of the volunteers lived too far away to respond on foot. In fact I was the only one who lived on Main Street, except for seventy-eight year old Chuck Adams, Banker Dan's father, who clumped around on a cane but managed to get to the firehouse ahead of me anyhow, and was hobbling quickly toward his position in the cab of Engine 112, the all-wheel-drive attack pumper favored for motor vehicle accidents.
Chuck held the door so the new guy could squeeze in the middle between him and the driver, Wes Little, with my feet on the drive shaft hump and chin on my knees. We all buckled in, and 112 lurched out of the house, ahead of the rescue truck which carried the lights, cutters, spreaders, rams and first aid, and behind a red SUV driven by Chief Eddie Thomas, who was wearing the kind of smile you smile when you have just returned from a tour of the Middle East funded by the National Guard and have every reason to believe that angry Muslims will not be shooting at you on your way to this fire.
We tore off of Main Street onto Mount Pleasant.
My grandfather, who apparently had more of a sense of humor than my father had ever displayed, had invented the name Mount Pleasant in 1950, hoping to sell house lots on a slope known for centuries as Slut's Hill. The Board of Selectman had approved the change, impressed by his successful re-naming of Carcass Streetâthe route that had served the abandoned slaughterhouse, as Rose Lane.
Mount Pleasant veered away from the head of Main Street and up a long, tall hill of the steepness that used to mark the boundaries between towns that no one would climb on horse, wagon, or foot except for special events. For modern vehicles, Mount Pleasant Road offers a precipitous grade on a sharp curve halfway up the hill that guarantees at least one wreck a season. The most recent had been fatal: Grace Botsford's father Gerard.
Trooper Moody was there ahead of us illuminating an upside down SUV with more candlepower than a Rolling Stones' concert. Red and blue strobes flashed in his cruiser's light bar. White takedown and alley lights glared. Road flares pillared smoke into the night, blocking both lanes.
Wes Little wondered aloud what we used to when we were prowling teenagers, “Does Ollie ever sleep?”
The trooper was crouched on the asphalt shining his five cell Mag through the SUV's shattered windshield. We joined him with extinguishers. “One man, alone,” said Ollie. “Get him out as quick as you can. I want to breathalyze him.”
We could hear why. The victim flailing among yellow airbags was singing an inebriated attempt at a hymn in a voice as tuneless and flat as a garbage truck that needed a brake job. He was too big to crawl out the window. His doors were jammed and the frame around the former windshield had been squashed to half its normal height.
While I stood guard with the fire extinguisher, the guys got the Hurst kit, started our portable hydraulic pump, hooked up a spreader and pried open the passenger door. Out crawled Alison's father, Tom Mealy, blinking at the lights and yelling, “Son of a bitch cut me off.”
Ollie helped him to his feet, more firmly than kindly. “Tom, have you been drinking?”
“I haven't had a drink in one year, one month and seventeen days.”
“I want you to walk toward my cruiser nine steps, placing one foot directly in front of the other, heel to toe, turn when I tell you and walk back.”
“I can't walk like that. My leg hurts like hell.”
“Are you refusing to take a field sobriety test?” Ollie asked ominously.
Tom looked afraid. “But I haven't been drinking. This guy cut me off.”
“Then walk the line.”
I said, “You don't have to, Tom.”
“Butt out, Ben!” said Ollie, and one of the guys took my arm, saying, “Stay out of it, Ben.”
Tom said, “Yeah, but then what will he do to me?”
“They'll test you at the barracks,” I said. “It's a better test. More accurate. If you haven't been drinking.”
“I ain't been drinking.”
“Then you are better off doing it at the barracks. They can't use the road test as evidence, but a false positive still looks bad to the jury. If,” I repeated, again, “you haven't been drinking.”
“I want to go home. It's three o'clock in the morning. I gotta go to work.”
Betty Butler, the EMT crew chief stifled a yawn. “Come into the ambulance, Tom. We better look at that leg.”
“It's okay. It just hurts. Can somebody give me a ride home?”
“We'll take you home,” said Betty. “Just get in the ambulanceâOkay, Ollie?”
Trooper Moody looked about to detonate. Betty added in a low voice, “I don't smell alcohol.”
“He's a drunk.”
“Not tonight.”
“When I got here he was hanging upside down from his seatbelt singing. You heard him.”
“I was singing a hymn,” shouted Tom. “I was scared and I was grateful to be alive. I was singing a song from church.” He burst back into song and treated us to a couple of bars vaguely reminiscent of “A Closer Walk With Thee.”
I shook off the hand restraining me. “Ollie, you know damned well if Tom was drunk he'd have come out of that wreck swinging.” We had both had set-tos with Tom, Ollie armed with pistol, handcuffs, five cell flashlight and fists, me with fists and good intentions. When he was drunk, Tom Mealy was the belligerent, nasty sort who gave bar room brawlers a bad name.
“If he's not drunk?” asked Ollie. “What's he doing out at three in the morning?”
“I was down in Danbury, helping a friend.”
“What were you helping him do at three in the morning?”
“Get through the night.”
Betty Butler said, “I'll pull some blood, if he lets me. Would that be okay with you, Tom, if I draw a blood sample?”
Tom looked at me. I said, “Ask Betty for a second sample, sealed, in case your lawyer wants to get it tested yourself.”
“Okay, I'll let her. But I don't need no lawyer.”
“Ollie?” asked Betty.
Nobody likes to argue with a nurse, particularly with a dedicated volunteer who may be your first responder the night you wrap your cruiser around a telephone pole in a sleet storm, or get ambushed by an armed meth addict tweaking a fifteen day binge. Ollie finally did the intelligent thing, took Tom's statementâ“Son of a bitch cut me off!”âand let Tom climb into the ambulance with Betty and a brace of EMT trainees.
Scooter pulled up in his Range Rover with a blue light flashing and took a bunch of pictures for the
Clarion
. Then the Chevalley wrecker arrived and they tipped the SUV onto its wheels and hauled it away. We hosed down a smidgeon of spilled oil and spread kitty litter on the slick that remained.
I helped Chuck Adams drain and stow the hose. He looked troubled and kept stopping to stare at the side of the road. I asked him what was wrong.
“This is where Gerard died. You weren't here that night.”
“I was in New York.”
“Yeah, well, just like what happened to Tom tonight. Fell asleep at the wheel.”
“Tom said he was cut off.”
“Ninety-five years old. Doc Greenan told me his heart was fine. Autopsy showed no heart attack. Fell asleep at the wheel. Veered onto the curbing. Maybe woke up and tried to steer out of it. Spun out, instead. Do you see those skid marks?”
They were clear as day in the lights of the attack pumper. “Looks like Tom did a full three-sixty.”
“Skidded just like Gerard. Hit the curbing again. Caught a tire. Rolled over.”
“Tom said he was cut off.”
“I heard him. I think he fell asleep, just like Gerard. Or passed out. In my opinion. Not that anyone's asking it.”
“I didn't smell any booze on his breath.”
Chuck said, “When we were kids, we used to chew privet hedge to fix our breath.”
“Wasn't that for cigarette smoke?”
“Worked for hooch, too.”
“Well, maybe that's what happened to Tom.”
“What do you mean?”
“Reached out the window for a privet hedge and lost control.”
Age had not mellowed Chuck and it was clear from whom his son Banker Dan had inherited his pugnaciousness. He counterpunched with a familiar Main Street rumor as silly as it was nasty. “Maybe you're defending Tom Mealy because you were friends with his wife.”
Not in the habit of poking gentlemen forty years my senior in the snoot, I spoke the truth in mild tones. “Actually, I wasâam stillâfriends with his little girl, Alison. Mrs. Mealy is very shy.” (Too shy and frightened for a conversation, much less a love affair.) Besides, she had never stopped hoping that Tom would come home sober.
***
The next day, woozy on a short sleep, and surprised that the Feds still hadn't captured him, I resumed looking for Charlie Cubrero showing his picture and my Spanish signs at every lawn I saw being mowed. As had been the case yesterday, the Ecuadorians were polite, but totally unhelpful.
Heading down toward Danbury, I found a immigrant crew working for one of the national lawn care chains. They were spraying a yellow chemical, and I stopped to speak to a guy who was covered head to toe in yellow powder.
“You really should be wearing protective gear,” I said.
“The boss says no. It scares the customers.”
“What is that stuff, a cholinesterase inhibitor? Or âpre-emergent' herbicide?”
“He says it's not supposed to hurt me.”
“Your lungsâHey, wait a minute. You speak great English.”
“What?”
“I'm looking for this guy andâ”
Well I blew that one. He backed up like I was a snake.
“I'm not a cop.”
I heard him say something like “
Nada Ingles
,” as he vanished in the yellow mist.
Brilliant.
I continued driving south figuring I'd try the Danbury street corner where Brian Grose had picked up workers. I stopped to talk to a painting crew, who were no help, and some guys with loud leaf blowers, who were less. I spotted a car wash in Brookfield and tried it, but they were Israelis or Russians, I couldn't tell which. Then, nearing Danbury I pulled into another car wash where a crowd of short, slim Ecuadorians were drying the finished product. Waiting for a break in the action, I noticed a guy propped against a wall watching his friends work. His foot was in a cast and he had a beat up pair of crutches beside him. When he nodded in a not-unfriendly manner I said, “Por que,” pointing at his crutches. He answered in English, “Ramp slipped. Loading the mower? It dropped on my footâ¦The mower.”
“You speak good English.”
“A little.”
I spoke very slowly. “My name is Ben Abbott. I am a private detective. I'm trying to help a man named Charlie Cubrero.”
He spoke quickly. “I don't know him.”
“Would you like a job?”
“I can't walk.”
“Translating. Spanish to English. English to Spanish.”
“How much?”
Minimum wage was seven dollars and sixty-five cents an hour then. Immigrants hired off the street were getting nine. A decent glass of wine in most restaurants cost eight. A decent martiniâhard to findâran around ten. Jay Meadows had paid Charlie fourteen. Fred Kantor had stolen Charlie for fifteen with guarantees.
“Eighteen dollars an hour.”
He stood up on his crutches.
I told him, again, that my name was Ben Abbott. He told me his name was Henry. His English was meager, but far superior to my Spanish signs. Between us we could order a meal from a Spanish coffee shop. I helped him into the car and we headed into Danbury, the old hatter's city whose industry had gone up in smoke after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated without a hat on and combustible chemicals in bankrupt fedora factories mysteriously caught fire. For many years its once-fashionable shopping district had been a ghostly thoroughfare, abandoned for a mall. Today, Main Street bustled with Brazilian and Ecuadorian and Mexican restaurants and shops, while neighborhoods that hadn't seen fresh paint since 1962 were swarming with do-it-themselfers fixing up houses. This made the mayor of Danbury so angry he gave speeches denouncing illegal immigration.
Henry, who was leaning against the passenger door like he was calculating his chances of surviving a thirty-mile-an-hour jump on crutches, said, “I heard you were asking around.”
“What did you hear?”
“You're a cop.”
“Well, I'm not.”
“Okay,” he said, not sounding convinced.
“Why did you come with me?” I asked. Stupid question for a man who was broke with a broken foot, but I wanted to open him up and get him on my side so people would see us as a team they could trust.
Henry said, “My friend said maybe you're the guy who says hello.”