Silence the Dead

ONE

Monday, June 21, 1982

Her hands were too sweaty. The knob slipped away and the door slammed back, echoing a thunderclap through the dark, deserted town.

She pressed back against the siding at the top of the stairs, clenching her fists to make her whole body stop shaking, and looked down. No surprise he wasn’t on the sidewalk; he didn’t like the light. He’d be somewhere else, invisible, making sure she walked straight home from the phone company.

For a flit of a moment, she wanted please to believe he’d come to his senses over the weekend. Lord, she wanted that, but she couldn’t dare hope it.

She touched her cheek. Though it was three nights since Friday, the bruise still throbbed. That was OK. The pain would give her courage to be strong. That, and pretending she was in a movie, and what she feared wasn’t really real.

She stepped out of the shadow and into the light, slow and unafraid, like Kathleen Turner in Body Heat. Kathleen was purposeful. She’d had courage, even if it was for devilish purposes. Kathleen got what she needed because she didn’t let being afraid stop her.

She took out her compact, mindful of the imaginary camera, and took her time inspecting her cheek. She’d sweated like a waterfall inside her operator cubicle all through her shift, maybe from the heat, more likely from the fear. All night long, she’d trembled.

The powder was doing fine, covering the bruise. Likely Pauly wouldn’t notice, though maybe his noticing wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

She’d called him two hours earlier. It was nervousness, but she needed to be sure he’d show up.

‘So, gorgeous, we’re still on for tonight?’ he said, right off.

Relief calmed her like cool water. ‘Remember, I finish at ten,’ she said, careful to talk low so the biddies in the next cubicles wouldn’t hear.

‘The Constellation, right?’

‘Yes.’ She’d chosen it because it was just across the highway and up Second Street, so close she could practically run to it. Then, somewhat theatrically, she whispered, ‘You might want to cancel, though.’

‘What?’ He sounded real concerned.

‘Things are a little unsettled for me right now,’ she said mysteriously. She’d decided it was only fair to give him a little warning.

‘Meaning what?’ he naturally asked.

‘Meaning I’m of interest to other men. One’s important. He thinks he owns me. There might be trouble if you come to Grand Point tonight.’

‘Old boyfriend?’

‘Not hardly – at least about the boyfriend part.’ Old was right on, though.

‘An older man? Don’t worry. I don’t get afraid,’ he said, in a most manly way.

‘Because you were a Marine, right?’

‘Semper Fi.’

She did not as yet speak foreign languages, having quit high school for bigger things two years before, but she assumed he’d just said something reassuring. Absolutely, Pauly was a wonderful man.

The biddy in the next cubicle had leaned back so she could eavesdrop better.

‘See you at the Constellation.’ She clicked off, relieved. Though this would be only their first real date, she was sure Pauly Pribilski was a confident man.

That was two hours ago. Now, alone in the light at the top of the outside stairs, the comfort she’d felt was gone. The Important was somewhere down below.

She moved to the edge of the stairs and hesitated again, knowing now she was exposed to the windows above the Red Wing shoe store across the street. Likely it was nerves that imagined them going black the instant she stepped outside. Doctor Romulous Farmont liked his perch above the shoe store for looking down on them all, but that time of evening he liked the darkness of the Hacienda better, sitting back against the wall with the rest of the Importants.

She shuddered, remembering her time above the Red Wing just a few weeks before. Crazy afraid, she’d gone to the doc because he was the only doctor in Grand Point and she’d had to know. He’d drugged her a little, to calm her, he said, but not so she couldn’t feel his fingers, working. She’d wondered how much of that was necessary.

An understandable concern after a minor indiscretion, he’d said in his fancy words, without asking who’d done the deed. If anything still developed, he’d take care of it. He would, too, without saying anything to anyone. He took care of things, especially for other Importants.

There was no sense remembering that now. She took a deep breath and went down the stairs. Nothing would happen until she got to the highway and didn’t turn for home.

Like always, the sidewalks were empty. The few cars parked at the curb belonged to the other phone operators. She hurried toward the corner, her footsteps clacking the cement loud enough for even the deaf to hear.

Too soon, she was out from the safe shadows of the storefronts. To her left, the highway ran dark to the bridge. The moon was full, glinting off the river like a thousand eyes, waiting. But there were only two eyes likely to be watching to make sure she headed straight home.

No, damn it, she said in her head. She was only seventeen. She was entitled to a proper date with a nice young man. She stepped off the curb.

Headlamps appeared sudden in the east, speeding across the bridge toward her.

She ran across the street before the lights could find her, and up into the trees on the courthouse lawn, their craggly old branches making welcoming long shadows to hide her. She ducked behind the biggest tree and stuck her head out enough to see.

The headlights grew larger as the car got closer.

Surely, it was him.

TWO

The Important had gone crazy dangerous the previous Friday night.

She’d been walking home from her four-hour shift at the phone company, thinking for the thousandth time about the gorgeous young man she’d met the night before. Tall, broad shoulders, blond, he’d appeared at the Pepsi machine in the break room like a god. She’d quickly closed her Photoplay magazine, cover down, so he wouldn’t think she was shallow reading about movie stars, and gave him a semi-interested smile.

It worked. He came over and sat down. She had only four minutes left on her break, but he was real charming and they talked for ten, about nothing and everything, until the supervisor found her and waved a bony finger. By then, Pauly Pribilsky said he’d drive her home after work.

And that’s all it was. They talked in his car for maybe fifteen minutes, then they had a kiss – the one she’d been thinking about ever since.

Walking home the next night, Friday, she’d been too lost in hoping Pauly would call over the weekend to pay any mind to anything else. She’d just passed the usual ruckus in the Hacienda parking lot when the Important had stepped out suddenly from the bushes to block her way.

His face had been purple with anger, and something wet was dribbling from the corner of his mouth. ‘Got yourself a boyfriend?’ he’d said, all out of breath and sneery.

‘He’s just a boy from work—’

‘I know who he is,’ he’d said, interrupting rapid-fire, still breathing heavy. ‘Paulus Pribilski, Polish, lineman for the DeKalb-Peering. Lives up in Rockford. Hot shot, fancy car, likes to gamble too much.’

Truly, the Important’s eyes were everywhere.

‘He’s someone my own age!’ she’d shouted, then instantly regretted it, because his face had puffed up like a kid holding his breath to not cry.

‘Look,’ she’d gone on, trying to be nice, ‘all’s you and I do is sneak off, and things went too—’

‘I know about you seeing Doc Farmont.’

There was no hope to it. She’d been major flattered when he, an Important, had expressed an interest in her one night when she was walking home, almost in this very spot. A man like him could be exciting, and she was leaving Grand Point anyway, soon as she saved up enough for beautician school in Chicago. He was married, but that would add to the excitement. Except it didn’t. All he wanted was to sneak off.

Now she’d met Pauly Pribilsky and romance needed to blossom. Still, she wanted to be kind. ‘It can never be anything between us,’ she’d said, trying to smile.

He’d slapped her hard across the face. ‘That’s for being unfaithful,’ he’d said, hissing like an animal.

Her eyes had teared up so quick she hadn’t seen the second one coming before it slapped the numbness where the first had hit. ‘That’s for dressing so provocative.’

She’d backed up but not fast enough.

He’d hit her a third time. ‘And that’s to remind you to walk straight home after work. No car rides from anybody.’

‘Go to hell!’ she’d screamed, and ran off.

It had taken her a block to realize that the Important wasn’t chasing. He didn’t need to. Grand Point was small and he was big. He could find her whenever he wanted.

She’d waited fifteen minutes in front of her house for her breathing to get regular. Going in, she’d told her mother she’d run smack into a tree because she’d not been paying attention to her walking. She couldn’t tell the truth. Her parents were from the east side of the river – Pinktown people. They’d suffer if she weren’t careful. Importants controlled everything in Grand Point.

Saturday morning had been bad. She’d not been able to figure out what to do. So she’d stayed in her room, icing the bruise that was now ripe as an eggplant.

And then Pauly had called at two, saying he’d been thinking about that one kiss ever since Thursday night. She’d said she had too, but the back of her mind had been screaming no way should she see the new young man. Then, talking, she’d got to remembering Kathleen Turner and Body Heat and living strong and purposeful, so she’d said yes to Pauly Pribilski. But that had been Saturday when there’d been hours and hours ahead for staying safe in her room. Now, come Monday night, she was out, hiding in the trees on the courthouse lawn, thinking she’d made a huge mistake.

The car got stopped by a red light at Second Street, its engine rumbling low. It was still too far away to recognize. She pressed back against the tree, waiting. When the engine got louder, starting up, she snuck another peek. The car was turning onto Second Street.

It was a cop cruiser, slowing at the sheriff’s side of the courthouse. She couldn’t see which deputy was at the wheel. Every one of them, young and old, had invented a reason to talk to her at one time or another. Most were harmless, except for the one that was particularly disgusting. The car pulled into the sheriff’s parking lot and disappeared behind the side of the building.

She stepped out from the tree, toward the darker shadows of the building. The old courthouse had been strung with red, white and blue banners for the Fourth of July, but already they were drooping like old women’s underwear. The ancient bricks had baked in that same exact spot for over a hundred hot summers, wilting everything around them. She supposed if they could talk, they’d surely rather scream, from the sameness of it all.

The town had gone back to quiet. No cars, no footsteps.

Across Second Street, the goofy stars on the Constellation’s sign winked slowly on and off, like the eyes of an old lech, of which Grand Point had too many. Its door was propped open, spilling light like milk onto the sidewalk, but no music came out. No one went to the Constellation for a lively time. It was a daytime place for county lawyers to down quick ones before going back to their more interesting towns. Nighttime, the Constellation was a crypt. That’s why she’d chosen it.

She ran across to the unlit store next to the Constellation. Catching her breath, she checked her reflection in the darkened glass. She’d borrowed her future sister-in-law’s blouse because the tan polyester caught the auburn in her hair and the hazel in her eyes. Her mother said the blouse was too tight in the wrong places, but it was only just a little. She looked good. Not just Pinktown good, but good enough for anyplace this side of the river, too.

She walked into the bar.

THREE

Pauly sat facing the door. He wore a nice gray shirt that looked tailor-made especially for his muscular physique, the big silver watch he’d worn on Thursday, and a pair of dark blue checked pants.

Otherwise, the Constellation was as pathetically empty as she’d hoped. Other than Pauly, there was no one there except for Dougie and two ancient couples smoking and drinking red drinks at a table in the back.

Pauly stood up, a real gentleman. ‘Betty Jo,’ he said. He pulled out a chair for her to sit down, another gentlemanly thing.

The chair he’d pulled out meant her back would be to the door. She sat there anyway, even though not being able to see the door made her uncomfortable.

Dougie came over, fast as a fly to a light bulb. ‘Hi, Betty Jo.’

‘Hi, Dougie,’ she said, with just the right amount of un-enthusiasm.

Pauly ordered them both beers, and she prayed Dougie wouldn’t choose that exact time to ask for ID, knowing as he did that she was only seventeen. But Dougie was cooperating, and left to get the beers.

‘How’s the phone company tonight?’ Pauly asked.

‘Quite hot.’

‘All those old switches, all those old lines,’ he said knowingly. ‘Guess what I heard?’

Dougie chose that precise moment to bring over their longnecks.

‘Hi, Betty Jo,’ he said again, braying almost exactly like a mule. He took his time setting the bottles down. Surely he was destined to spend his whole life in Grand Point.

‘Hi, Dougie,’ she said, being polite to his saying hello for the second time in five minutes.

She turned her attention back, as any lady would, to the man she was with. ‘What did you hear, Pauly?’

Pauly waited as Dougie was still standing there, awkward as something newborn, and unwise. When Dougie finally got the hint and walked off, Pauly said, ‘I heard our little telephone company is kept in business by the biggest phone company, Illinois Bell.’

She looked away, like she was carefully considering what Pauly said. It didn’t make sense, a big company like Bell being nice to a second-floor operation like DeKalb-Peering, but she’d not yet studied business.

Behind the bar, Dougie was shooting moony glances her way.

‘I suppose that’s possible,’ she said.

‘Competition, see? Politicians down at the capitol in Springfield say they like lots of phone companies slugging it out to keep prices reasonable, but it’s baloney. Those politicians get big contributions from Bell to keep other big competition away. Tiny fish like DeKalb-Peering keep things from looking like Bell controls the state.’ He sat back knowledgably and took a sip of his beer.

It appeared slimy behavior was everywhere, not just in Grand Point, Peering County.

‘Lived here long?’ he asked.

‘My whole life, though I’m fixing to change that.’

‘Leaving?’

She opened her purse and brought out the little pocket notebook. The thin cardboard cover was all frayed, and the curly wire at the top was squished from banging around in her purse, but it showed she was mature enough to have big plans.

‘Every night after work I write down the money that’s going to the bank come payday. I only make three-fifteen an hour, but a dollar of that goes to the bank, no excuses. In only seventy-four more weeks, I’ll have enough for beautician school in Chicago.’

She told him how she’d quit high school to work in Grand Point’s one beauty parlor, but how, after six months, it had closed, leaving her to find only part-time work as a nighttime phone operator.

‘Well, don’t leave before we’ve gotten to know each other properly,’ he said, flashing a fine smile.

‘That’s a most agreeable idea,’ she said. In fact, she was now thinking the whole business of Chicago might be slipping into a distinct second place if things worked out between herself and this sexy man.

Pauly glanced over at Dougie. ‘I tried getting your friend to cash my paycheck, but he won’t do it.’

Being as there was no one there except the ancients, she called across the room: ‘Dougie, cash this man’s paycheck.’

One of the ancients, a woman, looked over. The men had already been giving her the secret eyeball, probably recalling younger days.

Dougie’s face got red from her suddenly paying attention to it. ‘Not enough in the drawer, Betty Jo.’

She shrugged a what-can-I-do smile over at Pauly. ‘Big check?’

‘I do all right, climbing poles. Listen, let’s try that Mexican-looking place across the river.’

Her mouth went dry but she kept her face calm. ‘The Hacienda’s a dump.’

‘I saw lots of cars in their parking lot. They’re bound to have a full register.’

‘It’s full up with creeps.’ She touched her sore cheek. He might as well know.

‘What the hell happened?’ He leaned forward with encouraging concern.

‘A man in this town doesn’t want me seeing anyone but him.’

‘He hit you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And this bastard will be at the Hacienda?’

She quickly held up her hand. ‘I just need to stay away from him until he regains his senses.’

‘I’m in a little jam,’ he said. ‘You can wait in the car while I get my check cashed.’

He’d been a Marine. It would be OK. They drained their longnecks and went out.

‘Damn, what is it with cops in this town?’ he said as soon as they hit the sidewalk.

A sheriff’s cruiser was double parked alongside Pauly’s hot car. Yellow, with two manly black stripes running back from its nose, she’d thought Pauly’s Buick perfectly matched his strong physique when he’d driven her home Thursday night.

An officer had his face pressed against Pauly’s side window, trying to see in. She couldn’t see who it was. She backed into a dark doorway as Pauly walked up to his car.

A second later she heard voices. Pauly’s … and little Jimmy Bales’s.

It was a relief. She stepped out to join Pauly. Looking across the Buick’s waspy hood, she said, ‘Jimmy Bales, what on earth are you doing?’

Jimmy Bales was no real cop. Only a year older than her, he’d been hired to drive a cruiser around town in the evenings, to radio in reports of drunks getting into their cars. A real deputy would then speed over, and if the drinker was a nobody, write him a hundred dollar ticket. Word was it wasn’t about stopping drunk drivers so much as getting the county more cash. People were always getting drunk in Grand Point, being that there wasn’t much else to do.

‘Ad-ad-admiring the car is all,’ Jimmy stammered, nervous. He was another of those destined to spend his whole life rotting in Grand Point.

‘You been admiring too many things, Jimmy Bales,’ she said, thinking she’d demonstrate her self-assurance to Pauly.

Jimmy Bales seemed to grow even smaller. They’d given him too big a uniform, making him look like he was drowning inside it. At least they hadn’t given him a gun; for sure, the recoil would knock him on his butt.

‘Keep … keep … keeping an eye out, is all.’

‘Nothing about that car needs to be eyeballed,’ she said, feeling in control for the first time that evening. ‘Nothing anywhere else, either.’

Even in the dim light, she could see his face flushing beet red. Two months earlier, she’d caught him looking up into her bedroom window from his bike. He was a young, lustful boy.

For a moment, Jimmy Bales stood frozen in his too-big uniform. He’d caught the reference. He said, ‘You hadn’t ought to talk to me that way, Betty Jo. Something bad could come of it.’

‘Jimmy Bales? If you would be so kind as to move your vehicle?’

The frozen Jimmy Bales unfroze himself enough to get in his cruiser and drive away.

Pauly turned to look at her. ‘It appears you don’t take guff.’

Without meaning to, she touched her cheek. ‘When I can help it.’

He opened the passenger door for her, went around and got in. ‘I guess my car is real noticeable here,’ he said.

‘It’s not so much the car; it’s you.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘My Mr Important likes to keep tabs on people. He knows you gamble.’

‘Sometimes, after working lines here I stay to have a beer and roll some dice, is all.’

‘Mr Important’s friend knew about you driving me home, too.’

‘Sheriff’s people watched me doing that, too? Damn.’ The engine rumbled as he started it and pulled away from the curb.

‘We’ve hardly got regular police, just one per shift to answer phone calls about missing dogs and such. Everything else goes to the sheriff’s department. That’s the way the Importants like it.’

He laughed. ‘Importants?’

‘The men who run the town.’

They got to the bridge crossing the Royal River, leaving Grand Point proper. ‘How old are you, anyway?’ he asked.

‘Old enough,’ she said.

He laughed again.

FOUR

East across the bridge, on the Pinktown side, Al’s Rustic Hacienda squatted alongside the river, low and brown like an African shelter she’d seen once in National Geographic. Years before, Al had painted the roof red to look like clay tiles, and smeared nubby white stucco on the outside, all to make the place look Mexican. It hadn’t. The million little stucco bumps caught dust from the highway, turning the place the color of dirt. Al’s Mud Hut would now be a more fitting name, no different than the bait shack it had surely once been.

Still, go figure, it was the most popular bar in Grand Point. All the Importants went there. Folks who lived east of the river said that was because the Importants felt no shame in misbehaving on the Pinktown side.

For her, that night, the Hacienda was the most dangerous bar in Grand Point. Just beyond the parking lot was where he’d caught her the past Friday night. It was where he’d almost certainly be tonight.

She slid down in her seat as Pauly swung into the parking lot. It was crammed, as usual, with cars and trucks and people sucking on longnecks.

‘I’ll wait here,’ she said.

‘The man who hit you?’

‘Likely he’s inside.’

‘I can straighten that out.’

She doubted that, extremely. ‘It’s best to leave him be. I’m hoping he’ll come to his senses.’

‘I should have a drink first, instead of just charging in and asking the bartender to cash my check. Do you really want to be out here all alone?’

It was a consideration. Pauly’s was a noticeable vehicle. She’d be seen, no matter how low she stayed on the seat.

‘You’ll be fine with me,’ he said.

It was enough. She got out, and they walked into the Hacienda.

Two middle-aged men, bankers in town, acted most desirous of making room for her, even though she was with a man. But it took almost ten minutes for McGarrity to find time to take their order.

‘He always that slow?’ Pauly asked after McGarrity shuffled away.

‘We used to go out. I broke it off.’ It wasn’t quite true. McGarrity had ended it real sudden, two days after the Important first took notice of her. She’d suspected McGarrity had been talked to, but at the time it only made the Important’s interest in her more exciting.

‘He’s still upset?’

‘He’s not the one.’ She made a smile, sure she was being watched. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to be seen smiling and unafraid, like Kathleen Turner.

‘But he’s here?’

‘I haven’t looked under all the rocks yet,’ she said, sounding now like Bette Davis.

He laughed big, and she tried, too. The evening was progressing marvelously, all things considered.

She took a casual look around. She knew the Hacienda well from her time with McGarrity. Like always, it was jammed full of what crawled in Grand Point. Two sheriff’s cops, both in uniform and on duty, sat at their normal spot at one end of the bar. A couple of punks from two towns away sat at the other end. In between were the soggy usuals: a farmer who lived south of town but spent too much time driving too slow past the junior high school and who’d offered her a ride in seventh grade; the suffering, look-away wife of the sheriff’s chief deputy with one of her barfly friends; the guy who kept the accounting books at the Materials Corporation and supposedly a thousand dirtier ones in his room above the theater.

The Importants – those that controlled the town – were never at the bar. They sat at the small round tables in the shadows against the back wall, vultures in a row.

Doc Farmont, whose hands she could still feel probing her insides, was there, of course. He was talking to somebody she couldn’t see. Likely it was that slobbering bit of squirrel meat, Randy. The doc told folks that Randy came in only occasionally to help with non-medical stuff, but nobody believed there was anything occasional about it. During her last time in that rat’s nest of small rooms above the Red Wing, she’d sensed Randy close by, scuttling softly, at the ready for any opportunity to see parts of a woman he’d never encounter on his own. They were a pair, Doc Farmont and Randy – Doc’s fast fingers and Randy’s fast eyes.

Horace Wiggins, the newspaper publisher, was two tables down, sucking on one of his stinking, plastic-ended Tiparillos. The paper’s other employee, a bird-faced, chestless woman, was right beside him. McGarrity said that everybody in town knew what else she was taking in besides dictation.

The funeral director, Bud Wiley, was in the darkest corner. Ripping drunk and red-faced, ash hanging from his cigarette, he was jabbing his finger into the chest of his nephew, Luther. Rumor was that Bud Wiley enjoyed pictures of young boys and girls that he had to go to Chicago to buy. She shuddered, imagining the funeral director’s shaking, sticky hands on her. Please God, let that man be dead before my time comes.

Luther, the pale-faced nephew, was growing to be just as repulsive. He’d taken a run at her once, in this very establishment. She suspected he used rouge to color his white cheeks, and he smelled of formaldehyde.

Unseen, but surely there, was Clamp Reems, the sheriff’s chief deputy. He wouldn’t be talking so much as sitting back, smoking a broke cigar stuffed in his corncob pipe, watching and listening and tucking it all away for future use.

Even Jimmy Bales, the runt in a grown cop’s uniform, had wandered in to stand near the town’s rulers, like he belonged.

The Importants, and those who hung onto them, were all there.

McGarrity set their gin bucks down hard, slopping the tops of their drinks onto the scarred bar.

Pauly made his move. ‘Cash my check, will you?’

McGarrity laughed.

‘Come on, it’s a DeKalb-Peering check. They’re solid, right here in Grand Point.’

She turned to look closer at Pauly’s face. He was smiling but she heard desperation in his voice.

‘Damn it,’ Pauly said. ‘It’s a solid check.’ For sure, he was desperate.

McGarrity moved down the bar, probably because he wanted nothing to do with anyone she was with.

Pauly checked his big silver watch. ‘Quarter to midnight. I know another place.’

‘What’s with that check, anyway?’

‘I need to pay a debt, is all. In cash.’

‘Tonight?’

‘There’s a place south of here,’ he said, not answering. ‘They stay open until four.’

Leaving the Hacienda was fine with her. They set down their drinks, half-full.

The parking lot was alive with drunks. They hadn’t gotten ten feet when a fat woman with sprayed-up orange hair stepped in front of her and threw up a huge arm jiggling with fat and cheap silver bracelets. ‘Well, looka here,’ the woman said, trashed. She was with a stick of a man half her size.

Pauly,