While I waited, I saw my own image reflected back at me from one of the corner mounted security mirrors. Distortion from the convex surface aside, I saw a face that the near-sighted might consider handsome. Unruly brown hair that seemed to have a mind of its own stuck up at odd angles from under my jaunty snap-brim porkpie hat. My face was a little too hawkish but was mellowed some by my sad brown eyes. I was tall and slim and the Sears suit fitted me nicely. I winked at myself in the mirror. Mrs. Whittier — the town librarian — harrumphed at me as she sidled by. I gave her a wink too and she hustled away angry and blushing at all at the same time.
When the jeweler — a man who was a called a dandy by the polite and far worse by the local teenagers — finally finished his business, I approached the cage. "Good afternoon, Betty Jean," I said in my most unctuous drawl. "How are you this fine day?"
She looked up from the jeweler's paperwork, and her face fell. "Mr. Taylor. What can I do for you?" She made ice seem warm and toasty.
Just so you understand, I had once worked for her husband, Cecil Stapleton. He'd had the uneasy feeling that his beloved wife was being tempted by a suitor. I swear, those are the words he used. I had stumbled upon Betty Jean and a member of the Morris Volunteer Fire Department at the Western Sky Inn. She was being far more than tempted when I'd used a borrowed master key to enter room 11 and snap a series of compromising photographs. The fireman and the unfaithful wife had offered a settlement of sorts. They would pay me double what the husband had paid me if I'd keep my mouth shut. The fireman promised it was the last time he'd volunteer to put out Betty Jean's fire. I'd accepted their terms and kept my silence, but I'd also kept the photographs.
"I just need one tiny piece of information." You could have planted corn in the furrows on her forehead. I handed over Wayne's $150 for deposit to my account and a folded note with my request. "And might I add," I said in my best Eddie Haskell impersonation, "you look quite lovely today." Betty Jean mouthed a phrase not often heard from small town bank tellers in Oklahoma and said she'd call me later.
I made my way up the stairs to my office, and damned if I wasn't grinning.
Two hours later, Betty Jean called with the information. "There have been three cash deposits over the last five months," she said. "Each one was for $500 even."
"Is that unusual?"
"Cash deposits happen all the time," she said. I could tell she was being deliberately vague. It was her way of not feeling completely humiliated and manipulated.
I took a deep breath and thought of the photographs I had taken of Betty Jean. I felt a little sorry for her but not so much that I'd tell her I had destroyed those photos a long time ago. Someday maybe, but not right now. "Is it unusual for Sheriff Boyd?"
"It had never happened before," she said. "Doesn't mean it won't happen again."
"Thank you, Betty Jean. I really appreciate the information."
I could hear her crying softly at the other end of the phone. I closed my eyes briefly. "Betty Jean," I said, "I think I should tell you that I destr—"
"Tell me what, you asshole?"
"Nothing," I said and hung up the phone." The world is filled with missed opportunities.
I went home, if you can call a room at the back of old man Pritchard's pawn shop a home. I lived there rent free to sort of keep an eye on the merchandise at night. I had a kitchen, a bedroom, a study, and a bathroom with shower. They just happened to all be in the same 12 x 15 foot room. My home was furnished with stuff so crappy that Mr. Pritchard hadn't been able to sell it at the shop. No wonder I hadn't had more than one date in a row in the last five years.
I sat for a few minutes staring at nothing. I didn't have a TV or a radio. I had a few paperbacks scattered around the place but was too distracted to read. Basically, I tried to spend as little time at home as possible. A lot of nights I hung out at the Moose Lodge with old men who didn't realize they were alcoholics. Lots of gossip floated around that place, and you never knew when someone might say something interesting. But tonight was chili and beans night at the lodge, and I just didn't think I could take it. Instead I called up Jimmy Lauper. He worked as a chemical mixer at Dow Chemical. He was the closest thing I had to a friend in Morris. He answered on the second ring.
"You had a chance to wash the poison off you yet?" I said.
"I found my cat dead when I got home," he said. It was one of the purest non-sequiturs I'd ever heard.
"I'm sorry," I said, but I think I fell a little short of genuine sympathy. I'd never had the pleasure of meeting his cat.
"It's this shit they got me doing," he said. The anger in voice was obvious.
"Come on over," I said. "I've got a few six-packs. Let's talk about it."
A half hour later, I heard Jimmy's rattle-trap Chevy station wagon squeal to a stop in the alley behind the pawn shop. The wagon was long and white and had fins on it like something out of the Jetsons. I knew that some nights he slept in it. It probably beat the hell out of the shit-hole trailer he lived in. The last time I was at his place he had the whole bathroom wall hung with a big, blue tarp to cover over where the frame had dry-rotted out. Jimmy was a little pathetic around the edges… but he had sure loved that damn cat.
"Damn, Alex," he said. "I should of known something was fucked up when my schefflera wilted and dried up."
I had only a vague idea what a schefflera was but opted not to ask for fear he'd tell me. "You think it has something to do with your job?"
Jimmy had already consumed five beers and I could hear the slur in his voice. "Fuckin-a, man." He wiped at his eyes. I really hoped he wasn't going to cry. "They got me mixing up this shit they dump on them gooks over in Vietnam." He said Nam so that it rhymed with Pam. "Of course it's gonna kill a cat."
"What's in the shit?" I said. I was still working on my first beer as Jimmy cracked number six. I wanted to be sober enough to remember anything he told me.
He laughed. "I only know what I put in it. I slop a shit load of 2,4-D. It's just a pretty common herbicide. Shit… I'm not supposed to be talkin' about this shit." He chugged most of the beer.
"Who am I gonna tell, Jimmy? I don't even know what the hell you're talking about."
"Well, here's the kicker, partner." He swilled more beer and popped a new one. "There's people talkin' down to the plant says they're putting something else in there too. Something not supposed to be in the shit in the first place. Way too dangerous. Won't just kill trees, if you know what I mean."
"Too dangerous for war?" I said.
"Shit gets on my clothes," he said nodding his head like a dashboard dog. "Cat sleeps in the laundry basket every night."
Then he did start to cry.
Shit.
Jimmy left at about 11 pm. He was drunk — actually past drunk — but that time of night on a week day in Morris there wasn't all that much to hit. I had a cup of hot milk and went to bed a few minutes after Jimmy staggered away. My guilt over sending Jimmy off in his condition kept me awake five, six minutes. I used that time to come up with a plan for following the sheriff around town without being spotted. I kept the .38 under my pillow.
I was up early the next morning — a curse imprinted on me by years of government service — slammed down some brutally bad coffee that I'd made in a cheap percolator on a dangerously wired hot plate. In my moments of guilt induced thrashing the night before — however brief — I had concluded that Sheriff Boyd was up to no good. If there's one thing that pisses me off, it's a man intent on doing my country harm. I believed that Boyd was just such a man.