“Oh. Yeah, I figured that.”
Was he being sarcastic? Beth didn’t know how to reply. They had struck the wall of first-date awkward conversation.
“It’s not very interesting work,” she said. “So what do you do? No, let me guess. You’re a cowboy. A real one.”
“Unemployed like a real one,” he said. “What I been doing is driving around Missouri in my truck, looking for work.”
“What kinda work?”
“Any. And I mean any. Jobs are scarce out there.”
“So I heard.” They danced silently for a while. “Listen,” she said. “I’ve got a little influence at Arch.” Very little. “I can at least let you know when there’s an opening and put in a word for you.”
He looked down at her as if he could hardly believe her. “You’d really do that for me?”
That and more. “Sure. Why not?”
“Because you barely know me.”
“I’ve got a good feeling about you, Link.”
“Like I’ve got about you.” They danced slower and slower, until they were standing locked in a simple embrace, and then he kissed her.
Beth changed her mind about leaving the 66 with her friends. After the music stopped, she made her way over to the table and told May Ann and the others they could go without her. She had her own car, anyway, and thought she might leave early.
She could feel their eyes on her as she walked out of the 66 with Link Evans.
They sat in his dusty and dented pickup truck for a while and kissed and talked and kissed some more. Then he pulled her close and she felt his hand move up beneath her blouse and onto her right breast. His fingers danced over her nipple and then gave a slight pinch.
God! He knows what he’s doing.
As he began unbuttoning her blouse she realized that he’d felt her sudden involuntary resistance.
He released her immediately.
“I don’t want to rush things, Beth. Not with you.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that. Well…”
“If you’re not in the mood, that’s reason enough for me to wait.”
“There’s something you oughta know.”
“What? You’re married?”
“No. Divorced.”
“So?”
“I’ve got a fourteen-year-old son.”
He sat back as if he needed a little distance to take her all in at a glance. “No kidding?” He reached for a pack of cigarettes on the dashboard and lit one, coughed, and flipped the cigarette out the window. It made a glowing arc in the night, like a miniature shooting star. “Gotta quit those damned things.”
“His name is Eddie.”
“Well, Eddie’s a lucky boy, with you as his mom.”
“What about you, Link? Are you lucky?”
He laughed. “Well, I gotta admit I just now was trying to get lucky.”
“You know what I mean. Does what I just told you change things between us?”
He seemed puzzled, but only briefly. “Changes this. I’m very much looking forward to meeting Eddie.”
They kissed again, and she felt his fingers tugging at the material of her blouse. This time she helped him with the buttons.
Later, in Link’s motel room just off the Interstate, Beth lay wondering what she and Link had just begun. He was a wonderful, gentle lover, and he seemed more than pleased with her.
But Beth was worried. What was happening to her, and to Link, would take a measure of commitment. She had a hunch he was capable of it, but she wasn’t so sure about herself.
Somebody clomped around in the room upstairs and then was quiet. The only sound in the night was the distant whine of trucks on the highway, downshifting to make the turn on the dark Interstate instead of heading straight for Edmundsville. Beth thought it might be the loneliest sound she’d ever heard. It almost made her cry.
Hank Williams, what have you started?
Six weeks later they were married in Las Vegas and spent a week in luxury at the MGM Grand. Most of the time Beth felt she was trespassing. Link spent an hour at a slot machine and won almost a thousand dollars. He kissed her and told her it meant their marriage was starting off lucky.
The rest of their time there they didn’t gamble. That was the only way you could beat a casino, Link said. Beth agreed with his decision, figuring if they stopped gambling, their luck couldn’t change.
54
New York, the present
Whoever answered the phone at Sweep ’Em Up told Quinn that Jock Sanderson was at an uptown YMCA with the rest of a cleanup crew, making fresh again an auditorium where an author had spoken last night about his book on how television pundits were poisoning American society.
“I think I read that one,” Quinn said, and told the woman on the phone that if Sanderson happened to call, it would be best if she didn’t mention her and Quinn’s conversation.
“He’ll be too busy with his mop and push broom to call,” the woman said. “Anyway, once the daytime cleanup crews are out on the job, nobody calls here except maybe people like you.”
“Did Sanderson work last night?”
“No. It was his night off. That’s why he’s on this daytime job. It’s cheaper for our clients if we clean during the day, and venues like the YMCA don’t hold events so often that they’re in a big rush to clean up afterward.”
“How long’s it usually take to clean up after something like an author lecture at a YMCA?”
“You mean what time will Sanderson get off work?”
“You’re ahead of me,” Quinn said.
“They didn’t start all that early, so it’ll probably be pushing five o’clock. You want to talk to him, you might be able to catch him when he’s on his lunch break around noon. It’d be better for him if the boss and the rest of the crew didn’t know the police were visiting him.”
Quinn told her that was a good idea, but the moment he hung up he left to drive to the YMCA where Sanderson was working today. He wasn’t in the mood to give a damn what Sanderson’s boss or his fellow employees thought about the law questioning him.
The YMCA was a modern gray and glass cube on a block of old buildings being renovated. Quinn was directed by an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike in a too-tight shirt to the auditorium.
After walking down a hall with glass windows looking in on a swimming pool, an indoor track, and a room full of people working out on exercise equipment, he pulled open a wooden door with a pneumatic closer and stepped into a small lobby. He used an identical door to enter the auditorium.
It was dim and, even without people in the seats, it didn’t seem all that large. It smelled musty, in the way of empty auditoriums. Quinn estimated it would accommodate about five hundred people. He wondered what kind of turnout the author of the TV pundit book had spoken to last night. He guessed it would depend on whether the speech was free.
A man and woman in gray work coveralls were moving things from the small stage to an area behind some curtains. Two others, both men, were using long-handled push brooms to sweep the gray painted concrete floor between the rows of seats. One of the broom pushers fit Sanderson’s description. Quinn walked to the end of the row he was sweeping and waited until Sanderson looked up and noticed him. He held up his ID and motioned for Sanderson to come to him.
As if grateful for the break, Sanderson propped his broom between two seat backs. He sidled toward Quinn in a way that suggested the seats were occupied and he was worried about stepping on toes. Quinn saw why. The seats hadn’t been raised yet on that end of the row to allow room for sweeping beneath them.
Sanderson stopped and stood in front of the end seat, looking expectantly at Quinn. Up close, Sanderson looked shorter than he did at a distance, but he was solidly built-well set up, as old cops used to say. Quinn was disappointed to see that there were no scratches on his face. Weaver had clawed the man who attacked her, and had done so hard enough to come away with his flesh beneath her fingernails.
Quinn identified himself.
“I already talked to another cop-officer,” he said. “Pearl somebody or other.”