The Chevrolet backs out, rear end wagging from side to side like a dog’s tail. Runkleman’s pickup goes next, with two of the men standing up in back and peering over the cab, trying to catch sight of the old restaurant’s roof, at least. Their curiosity lends them a look of unpleasant vacuity. The P.D. unit comes last, herding the old car and older truck like a corgi herding sheep, roof-rack lights now pulsing. Pam is forced to ride mostly on the brake, and as she drives she lets loose a low-pitched stream of words her mother never taught her.
“Do you kiss your kids good-night with that mouth?” Danny asks, not without admiration.
“Shut up,” she says. Then: “You got any aspirin?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Danny says.
They get back out to the main road just in time. Three more vehicles are coming from the direction of French Landing, two from the direction of Centralia and Arden. A siren rises in the warming air. Another cruiser, the third in what was supposed to be an unobtrusive line, is coming along, passing the lookie-loos from town.
“Oh man.” Danny sounds close to tears. “Oh man, oh man, oh man. It’s gonna be a carnival, and I bet the staties still don’t know. They’ll have kittens. Dale is gonna have kittens.”
“It’ll be all right,” Pam says. “Calm down. We’ll just pull across the road and park. Also stick your gun back in the fucking holster.”
“Yes, Mother.” He stows his piece as Pam swings across the access road, pulling back to let the third cruiser through, then pulling forward again to block the way. “Yeah, maybe we caught it in time to put a lid on it.”
“Course we did.”
They relax a little. Both of them have forgotten the old stretch of road that runs between Ed’s and Goltz’s, but there are plenty of folks in town who know about it. Beezer St. Pierre and his boys, for instance. And while Wendell Green does not, guys like him always seem able to find the back way. They’ve got an instinct for it.
11
BEEZER’S JOURNEY BEGAN with Myrtle Harrington, the loving wife of Michael Harrington, whispering down the telephone line to Richie Bumstead, on whom she has an industrial-strength crush in spite of his having been married to her second-best friend, Glad, who dropped down dead in her kitchen at the amazing age of thirty-one. For his part, Richie Bumstead has had enough macaroni-tuna casseroles and whisper-voiced phone calls from Myrtle to last him through two more lifetimes, but this is one set of whispers he’s glad, even oddly relieved, to listen to, because he drives a truck for the Kingsland Brewing Company and has come to know Beezer St. Pierre and the rest of the boys, at least a little bit.
At first, Richie thought the Thunder Five was a bunch of hoodlums, those big guys with scraggly shoulder-length hair and foaming beards roaring through town on their Harleys, but one Friday he happened to be standing alongside the one called Mouse in the pay-window line, and Mouse looked down at him and said something funny about how working for love never made the paycheck look bigger, and they got into a conversation that made Richie Bumstead’s head spin. Two nights later he saw Beezer St. Pierre and the one called Doc shooting the breeze in the yard when he came off-shift, and after he got his rig locked down for the night he went over and got into another conversation that made him feel like he’d walked into a combination of a raunchy blues bar and a Jeopardy! championship. These guys—Beezer, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill—looked like rockin’, stompin’, red-eyed violence, but they were smart. Beezer, it turned out, was head brewmaster in Kingsland Ale’s special-projects division, and the other guys were just under him. They had all gone to college. They were interested in making great beer and having a good time, and Richie sort of wished he could get a bike and let it all hang out like them, but a long Saturday afternoon and evening at the Sand Bar proved that the line between a high old time and utter abandon was too fine for him. He didn’t have the stamina to put away two pitchers of Kingsland, play a decent game of pool, drink two more pitchers while talking about the influences of Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein on the young Hemingway, get into some serious head-butting, put down another couple of pitchers, emerge clearheaded enough to go barrel-assing through the countryside, pick up a couple of experimental Madison girls, smoke a lot of high-grade shit, and romp until dawn. You have to respect people who can do that and still hold down good jobs.
As far as Richie is concerned, he has a duty to tell Beezer that the police have finally learned the whereabouts of Irma Freneau’s body. That busybody Myrtle said it was a secret Richie has to keep to himself, but he’s pretty sure that right after Myrtle gave him the news, she called four or five other people. Those people will call their best friends, and in no time at all half of French Landing is going to be heading over on 35 to be in on the action. Beezer has a better right to be there than most, doesn’t he?
Less than thirty seconds after getting rid of Myrtle Harrington, Richie Bumstead looks up Beezer St. Pierre in the directory and dials the number.
“Richie, I sure hope you aren’t shitting me,” Beezer says.
“He called in, yeah?” Beezer wants Richie to repeat it. “That worthless piece of shit in the DARE car, the Mad Hungarian? . . . And he said the girl was where?”
“Fuck, the whole town is gonna be out there,” Beezer says. “But thanks, man, thanks a lot. I owe you.” In the instant before the receiver slams down, Richie thinks he hears Beezer start to say something else that gets dissolved in a scalding rush of emotion.
And in the little house on Nailhouse Row, Beezer St. Pierre swipes tears into his beard, gently moves the telephone a few inches back on the table, and turns to face Bear Girl, his common-law spouse, his old lady, Amy’s mother, whose real name is Susan Osgood, and who is staring up at him from beneath her thick blond bangs, one finger holding her place in a book.
“It’s the Freneau girl,” he says. “I gotta go.”
“Go,” Bear Girl tells him. “Take the cell phone and call me as soon as you can.”
“Yeah,” he says, and plucks the cell phone from its charger and rams it into a front pocket of his jeans. Instead of moving to the door, he thrusts a hand into the huge red-brown tangle of his beard and absentmindedly combs it with his fingers. His feet are rooted to the floor; his eyes have lost focus. “The Fisherman called 911,” he says. “Can you believe this shit? They couldn’t find the Freneau girl by themselves, they needed him to tell them where to find her body.”
“Listen to me,” Bear Girl says, and gets up and travels the space between them far more quickly than she seems to. She snuggles her compact little body into his massive bulk, and Beezer inhales a chestful of her clean, soothing scent, a combination of soap and fresh bread. “When you and the boys get out there, it’s going to be up to you to keep them in line. So you have to keep yourself in line, Beezer. No matter how angry you are, you can’t go nuts and start beating on people. Cops especially.”
“I suppose you think I shouldn’t go.”
“You have to. I just don’t want you to wind up in jail.”
“Hey,” he says, “I’m a brewer, not a brawler.”
“Don’t forget it,” she says, and pats him on the back. “Are you going to call them?”
“Street telephone.” Beezer walks to the door, bends down to pick up his helmet, and marches out. Sweat slides down his forehead and crawls through his beard. Two strides bring him to his motorcycle. He puts one hand on the saddle, wipes his forehead, and bellows, “THE FUCKING FISHERMAN TOLD THAT FUCKING HUNGARIAN COP WHERE TO FIND IRMA FRENEAU’S BODY. WHO’S COMING WITH ME?”
On both sides of Nailhouse Row, bearded heads pop out of windows and loud voices shout “Wait Up!” “Holy Shit!” and “Yo!” Four vast men in leather jackets, jeans, and boots come barreling out of four front doors. Beezer almost has to smile—he loves these guys, but sometimes they remind him of cartoon characters. Even before they reach him, he starts explaining about Richie Bumstead and the 911 call, and by the time he finishes, Mouse, Doc, Sonny, and Kaiser Bill are on their bikes and waiting for the signal.
“But this here’s the deal,” Beezer says. “Two things. We’re going out there for Amy and Irma Freneau and Johnny Irkenham, not for ourselves. We want to make sure everything gets done the right way, and we’re not gonna bust anybody’s head open, not unless they ask for it. You got that?”