She wiped her eyes. “That would be a real help. I got to fix up a little.” She struggled to her feet and went in and closed the door.
“What else do you think she can tell us?” I asked Meyer.
“I noticed something when we talked before. She said she was certain they would never catch him. There didn’t seem to be any thought in her mind that he might be dead. It was a long time ago. If she had no word at all from him in all that time, she might believe he was dead. It would be a logical assumption. Certainly he had a better-than-average reason for suicide. But his possible death was no part of her monologue, Travis. So that seems to me reason to believe he has been in touch with her. I want to find out how. And when.”
When she came out, ready to go, the change startled both of us. She wore a dark blue dress and carried a shiny blue shoulder bag. Her hair had been brushed, and she had managed to hide the deepening color of the bruise on her left cheek. She wore sandals with one-inch heels, and stockings which covered her scratched and bitten legs. She wore lipstick and some eye shadow. She looked slimmer and younger.
“Do you want to lock up?” Meyer asked.
She gave him a pitying look. “Who would look at my place and think there’s anything worth stealing?” She patted the shoulder bag. “Anything worth stealing is in here.”
Meyer folded the seat down and climbed into the hack. She sat beside me. Meyer leaned over toward her and spoke to her. “How does Cody keep track of where you are?”
“I let-” She stopped abruptly.
“Who is it you let know? Who is the intermediary?”
“Damn you, Meyer. I thought you looked cuddly. You’re a smart-ass son of a bitch. You tricked me.” She worked herself around to face him. “You could set fire to my feet, I’d never tell you. You could pull out my fingernails, I wouldn’t say a word.”
“I don’t think you know where Cody is.”
“You’re right! I don’t have no idea at all.”
“So you would write to this intermediary, or maybe phone when there’s a change of address, and then when Cody phoned the intermediary he would get the information.”
“Smart-ass!”
“He needs the address because he sends you money.”
“Why would he do that?”
“You and he are family. He did a terrible thing. He wants to take care of you, so you’ll think well of him. As you obviously do.”
“He sends it because he’s my kid brother and, until Coralita came along, we always looked out for each other. He doesn’t have to buy my feeling for him.”
“How does he send it?”
“He ties it onto a pigeon.”
“Come on, Helen June,” Meyer said in a wheedling tone. “If you don’t know where he is, and I don’t believe you do, then the way he sends the money can’t tip us off as to where to find him. He’s a very clever man. I’m just curious as to how he would go about sending cash to you. It must be cleverly done.”
“He’s smart.”
“We know. He’d have to be to stay at liberty so long.”
“I nearly messed up the first time he sent any. It was a kind of messy old package that came for me. I was still living with Sonny. Thank God he wasn’t around when I opened it. On the outside it said BOOKS. My name was typed on the label. The return address was a box number in New Orleans. Inside were three paperback books with two rubber bands around them, one going one way and the other going the other way. I read the titles and decided it was some kind of sales gimmick. I’m no reader. Maybe the newspaper sometimes. So I unsnapped the rubber bands and leafed through the first one looking for the sales letter. And when I opened the second one, a bunch of hundred-dollar bills fell out onto the floor. There was forty of them. I damn near fainted. The middle book had been hollowed out, probably with a razor. Kind of a messy job. I guess it didn’t have to be real neat. There was a typed note with it. And it said, ‘Happy birthday Helen June. Whenever you move, let so-and-so know right away. Get rid of this note and don’t talk about the money.’ Isn’t that great? Here I am talking about the money.”
“How many packages have you gotten?” Meyer asked.
“I don’t know. What do you care? You with the IRS? Maybe a dozen, maybe more. They were mailed from Miami, Tampa, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles. Big cities. Sometimes with a little note. Birthday or Christmas or something. The biggest was eighty-five hundred. And the smallest was the first one. I never know when they’re coming. He cares about me, that’s all I know. That’s all I care. It keeps me alive. I told you this just to show you that he’s a good person.”
When we got to the place where Jesse had died, a tow truck was backed up to the Bronco. The winch was grinding and they were gently picking it out of the small trees. There were no other cars there. Two little farm kids were watching.
Helen June got out and trotted to the tow truck.
“This is my car!” she shouted over the sound of the winch. “Where are you going with it?”
He turned off the winch. “Hi, Helen June. Sorry about Jesse. His own damn fool fault. Bound to happen some day. We’re taking it down to the Village Garage. Okay?”
“What’s it costing me for you to take it, Jimmy?”
“Forty bucks, to you.”
“Is that a discount or are you hiking the price?”
“A discount, damn it. Sixty otherwise.”
“I got it right here and I want a receipt. Just a second.”
She came back to the car.
“Thank you for coming to tell me, and thank you for the ride. I talked too damn much. I don’t know what got into me. I don’t tell people my private business. Not to a couple of strangers. Meyer, you came up on my blind side.”
“I’m sorry that we… caused all this.”
“If you hadn’t it would have been somebody else. Or something else.” Her mouth twisted, the smile bitter. “He was a real sorry man, but he was the only one I got.”
“I know you don’t want to talk about your brother,” Meyer said, “but…”
“You are so right.”
“… you might want to see a recent picture of him.”
She stared at him. “You got one? How?”
“It’s back at the motel in Utica,” he lied.
“I sure would like to see how Cody turned out,” she said.
“It’s a little past noon now,” he said. “We could go get it and come back.”
The Bronco had been plucked out of the shrubbery, and they had it ready to roll. “Hey, Helen June!” She turned and yelled, “Hold it a minute, okay?”
She turned back to us.
“I hafta see about my car. I hafta find out where they took Jesse and tell his people. He’s got folks in Gloversville. You want to come out to my place late this afternoon? Four thirty?”
When we agreed, she turned and loped off toward the tow truck in a clumsy, pigeon-toed trot. As she climbed in, Meyer said, “I better come back alone. I think it will work better.”
“Then we better check back into the motel.” I headed south. “You got more than I ever thought you’d get.”
“When people have something they don’t want to think about, they’ll talk about other things, sometimes too much. One time, long ago, I visited a friend in the hospital one afternoon and found out that they had told him that very morning he wasn’t going to make it. He babbled at me for two hours. He was quick and funny and intense. He told me the dirty details of his failed marriage. I suspected he had never intended to tell all that to anyone. It was a strange and uncomfortable period for me. Then he started to cry and ordered me out. I went to see him again, but he resented me because he had told me too much. I took advantage of the way she was feeling. She didn’t want to think about Jesse.”
Meyer left me in the motel with some magazines and the Saturday afternoon television. I took a lateafternoon walk but the heat was still too intense. It inade you feel as if you could not breathe deeply enough. I phoned Annie’s private line, but there was no answer. I watched a portion of a bad ball game. I took a nap. I read the magazines. I tried television. Lawrence Welk had replaced the ball game. He had a batch of very old citizens there, playing old music very well on shiny horns. They had doubtless come out of the big band era and were happy to find work playing the same old stuff.