"Not bad."
"Then maybe you should climb in and go "er right on up the hill. They got some nice joints there. These bars are for millies." No Suspenders a.s.sessed me in a cold way I came to expect in Derry, but never got used to. "You"d get stared at. P"raps more, when the "leven-to-seven lets out from Striar"s and Boutillier"s."
"Thanks. That"s very kind of you."
The cold a.s.sessment continued. "You don"t know much, do you?" he remarked, then went inside.
I walked back to my convertible. On that gray street, with the smell of industrial smokes in the air and the afternoon bleeding away to evening, downtown Derry looked only marginally more charming than a dead hooker in a church pew. I got in, engaged the clutch, started the engine, and felt a strong urge to just drive away. Drive back to Lisbon Falls, climb up through the rabbit-hole, and tell Al Templeton to find another boy. Only he couldn"t, could he? He was out of strength and almost out of time. I was, as the New England saying goes, the trapper"s last shot.
I drove up to Main Street, saw the carriage lamps (they came on for the night just as I spotted them), and pulled into the turnaround in front of the Derry Town House. Five minutes later, I was checked in. My time in Derry had begun.
3.
By the time I got my new possessions unpacked (some of the remaining cash went into my wallet, the rest into the lining of my new valise) I was good and hungry, but before going down to dinner, I checked the telephone book. What I saw caused my heart to sink. Mr. No Suspenders might not have been very welcoming, but he was right about Dunnings selling cheap in Derry and the four or five surrounding hamlets that were also included in the directory. There was almost a full page of them. It wasn"t that surprising, because in small towns certain names seem to sprout like dandelions on a lawn in June. In my last five years teaching English at LHS, I must have had two dozen Starbirds and Lemkes, some of them siblings, most of them first, second, or third cousins. They intermarried and made more.
Before leaving for the past I should have taken time to call Harry Dunning and ask him his father"s first name-it would have been so simple. I surely would have, if I hadn"t been so utterly and completely gobsmacked by what Al had shown me, and what he was asking me to do. But, I thought, how hard can it be? It shouldn"t take Sherlock Holmes to find a family with kids named Troy, Arthur (alias Tugga), Ellen, and Harry.
With this thought to cheer me, I went down to the hotel restaurant and ordered a sh.o.r.e dinner, which came with clams and a lobster roughly the size of an outboard motor. I skipped dessert in favor of a beer in the bar. In the detective novels I read, bartenders were often excellent sources of information. Of course, if the one working the Town House stick was like the other people I"d met so far in this grim little burg, I wouldn"t get far.
He wasn"t. The man who left off his gla.s.s-polishing duties to serve me was young and stocky, with a cheery full moon of a face below his flattop haircut. "What can I get you, friend?"
The f-word sounded good to me, and I returned his smile with enthusiasm. "Miller Lite?"
He looked puzzled. "Never heard of that one, but I"ve got High Life."
Of course he hadn"t heard of Miller Lite; it hadn"t been invented yet. "That would be fine. Guess I forgot I was on the East Coast there for a second."
"Where you from?" He used a church key to whisk the top off a bottle, and set a frosted gla.s.s in front of me.
"Wisconsin, but I"ll be here for awhile." Although we were alone, I lowered my voice. It seemed to inspire confidence. "Real estate stuff. Got to look around a little."
He nodded respectfully and poured for me before I could. "Good luck to you. G.o.d knows there"s plenty for sale in these parts, and most of it going cheap. I"m getting out, myself. End of the month. Heading for a place with a little less edge to it."
"It doesn"t seem all that welcoming," I said, "but I thought that was just a Yankee thing. We"re friendlier in Wisconsin, and just to prove it, I"ll buy you a beer."
"Never drink alcohol on the job, but I might have a c.o.ke."
"Go for it."
"Thanks very much. It"s nice to have a gent on a slow night." I watched as he made the c.o.ke by pumping syrup into a gla.s.s, adding soda water, and then stirring. He took a sip and smacked his lips. "I like em sweet."
Judging by the belly he was getting, I wasn"t surprised.
"That stuff about Yankees being stand-offy is bulls.h.i.t, anyway," he said. "I grew up in Fork Kent, and it"s the friendliest little town you"d ever want to visit. Why, when tourists get off the Boston and Maine up there, we just about kiss em h.e.l.lo. Went to bartending school there, then headed south to seek my fortune. This looked like a good place to start, and the pay"s not bad, but-" He looked around, saw no one, but still lowered his own voice. "You want the truth, Jackson? This town stinks."
"I know what you mean. All those mills."
"It"s a lot more than that. Look around. What do you see?"
I did as he asked. There was a fellow who looked like a salesman in the corner, drinking a whiskey sour, but that was it.
"Not much," I said.
"That"s the way it is all through the week. The pay"s good because there"s no tips. The beerjoints downtown do a booming business, and we get some folks in on Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights, but otherwise, that"s just about it. The carriage trade does its drinking at home, I guess." He lowered his voice further. Soon he"d be whispering. "We had a bad summer here, my friend. Local folks keep it as quiet as they can-even the newspaper doesn"t play it up-but there was some nasty work. Murders. Half a dozen at least. Kids. Found one down in the Barrens just recently. Patrick Hockstetter, his name was. All decayed."
"The Barrens?"
"It"s this swampy patch that runs right through the center of town. You probably saw it when you flew in."
I"d been in a car, but I still knew what he was talking about.
The bartender"s eyes widened. "That"s not the real estate you"re interested in, is it?"
"Can"t say," I told him. "If word got around, I"d be looking for a new job."
"Understood, understood." He drank half his c.o.ke, then stifled a belch with the back of his hand. "But I hope it is. They ought to pave that G.o.ddam thing over. It"s nothing but stinkwater and mosquitoes. You"d be doing this town a favor. Sweeten it up a little bit."
"Other kids found down there?" I asked. A serial child-murderer would explain a lot about the gloom I"d been feeling ever since I crossed the town line.
"Not that I know of, but people say that"s where some of the disappeared ones went, because that"s where all the big sewage pumping stations are. I"ve heard people say there are so many sewer pipes under Derry-most of em laid in the Great Depression-that n.o.body knows where all of em are. And you know how kids are."
"Adventurous."
He nodded emphatically. "Right with Eversharp. There"s people who say it was some vag who"s since moved on. Other folks say he was a local who dressed up like a clown to keep from being recognized. The first of the victims-this was last year, before I came-they found him at the intersection of Witcham and Jackson with his arm ripped clean off. Denbrough was his name, George Denbrough. Poor little tyke." He gave me a meaningful look. "And he was found right next to one of those sewer drains. The ones that dump into the Barrens."
"Christ."
"Yeah."
"I hear you using the past tense about all this stuff."
I got ready to explain what I meant, but apparently this guy had been listening in English cla.s.s as well as bartending school. "It seems to"ve stopped, knock on wood." He rapped his knuckles on the bar. "Maybe whoever was doing it packed up and moved on. Or maybe the sonofab.i.t.c.h killed himself, sometimes they do that. That"d be good. But it wasn"t any homicidal maniac in a clown suit who killed the little Corcoran boy. The clown who did that murder was the kid"s own father, if you can believe it."
That was close enough to why I was here to feel like fate rather than coincidence. I took a careful sip of my beer. "Is that so?"
"You bet it is. Dorsey Corcoran, that was the kid"s name. Only four years old, and you know what his G.o.ddam father did? Beat him to death with a recoilless hammer."
A hammer. He did it with a hammer. I maintained my look of polite interest-at least I hope I did-but I felt gooseflesh go marching up my arms. "That"s awful."
"Yeah, and not the wor-" He broke off and looked over my shoulder. "Get you another, sir?"
It was the businessman. "Not me," he said, and handed over a dollar bill. "I"m going to bed, and tomorrow I"m blowing this pop-shop. I hope they remember how to order hardware in Waterville and Augusta, because they sure don"t here. Keep the change, son, buy yourself a DeSoto." He plodded out with his head down.
"See? That"s a perfect example of what we get at this oasis." The bartender looked sadly after his departing customer. "One drink, off to bed, and tomorrow it"s seeya later, alligator, after awhile, crocodile. If it keeps up, this burg"s gonna be a ghost town." He stood up straight and tried to square his shoulders-an impossible task, because they were as round as the rest of him. "But who gives a rip? Come October first, I"m gone. Down the road. Happy trails to you, until we meet again."
"The father of this boy, Dorsey . . . he didn"t kill any of the others?"
"Naw, he was alibi"d up. I guess he was the kid"s stepfather, now that I think about it. d.i.c.ky Macklin. Johnny Keeson at the desk-he probably checked you in-told me he used to come in here and drink sometimes, until he got banned for trying to pick up a stewardess and getting nasty when she told him to go peddle his papers. After that I guess he did his drinking at the Spoke or the Bucket. They"ll have anybody in those places."
He leaned over close enough for me to smell the Aqua Velva on his cheeks.
"You want to know the worst?"
I didn"t, but thought I ought to. So I nodded.
"There was also an older brother in that f.u.c.ked-up family. Eddie. He disappeared last June. Just poof. Gone, no forwarding, if you dig what I"m saying. Some people think he ran off to get away from Macklin, but anybody with any sense knows he would have turned up in Portland or Castle Rock or Portsmouth if that was the case-no way a ten-year-old can stay out of sight for long. Take it from me, Eddie Corcoran got the hammer just like his little brother. Macklin just won"t own up to it." He grinned, a sudden and sunny grin that made his moon face almost handsome. "Have I talked you out of buying real estate in Derry yet, mister?"
"That"s not up to me," I said. I was flying on autopilot by then. Hadn"t I heard or read about a series of child-murders in this part of Maine? Or maybe watched it on TV, with only a quarter of my brain turned on while the rest of it was waiting for the sound of my problematic wife walking-or staggering-up to the house after another "girls" night out"? I thought so, but the only thing I remembered for sure about Derry was that there was going to be a flood in the mid-eighties that would destroy half the town.
"It"s not?"
"No, I"m just the middleman."
"Well, good luck to you. This town isn"t as bad as it was-last July, folks were strung as tight as Doris Day"s chast.i.ty belt-but it"s still a long way from right. I"m a friendly guy, and I like friendly people. I"m splitting."
"Good luck to you, too," I said, and dropped two dollars on the bar.
"Gee, sir, that"s way too much!"
"I always pay a surcharge for good conversation." Actually, the surcharge was for a friendly face. The conversation had been disquieting.
"Well, thanks!" He beamed, then stuck out his hand. "I never introduced myself. Fred Toomey."
"Nice to meet you, Fred. I"m George Amberson." He had a good grip. No talc.u.m powder.
"Want a piece of advice?"
"Sure."
"While you"re in town, be careful about talking to kids. After last summer, a strange man talking to kids is apt to get a visit from the police if people see him doing it. Or he could take a beating. That sure wouldn"t be out of the question."
"Even without the clown suit, huh?"
"Well, that"s the thing about dressing up in an outfit, isn"t it?" His smile was gone. Now he looked pale and grim. Like everyone else in Derry, in other words. "When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, n.o.body has any idea what you look like inside."
4.
I thought about that while the old-fashioned elevator creaked its way up to the third floor. It was true. And if the rest of what Fred Toomey had said was also true, would anybody be surprised if another father went to work on his family with a hammer? I thought not. I thought people would say it was just another case of Derry being Derry. And they might be right.
As I let myself into my room, I had an authentically horrible idea: suppose I changed things just enough in the next seven weeks so that Harry"s father killed Harry, too, instead of just leaving him with a limp and a partially fogged-over brain?
That won"t happen, I told myself. I won"t let it happen. Like Hillary Clinton said in 2008, I"m in it to win it.
Except, of course, she had lost.
5.
I ate breakfast the following morning in the hotel"s Riverview Restaurant, which was deserted except for me and the hardware salesman from last night. He was buried in the local newspaper. When he left it on the table, I snagged it. I wasn"t interested in the front page, which was devoted to more saber-rattling in the Philippines (although I did wonder briefly if Lee Oswald was in the vicinity). What I wanted was the local section. In 2011, I"d been a reader of the Lewiston Sun Journal, and the last page of the B section was always headed "School Doin"s." In it, proud parents could see their kids" names in print if they had won an award, gone on a cla.s.s trip, or been part of a community cleanup project. If the Derry Daily News had such a feature, it wasn"t impossible that I"d find one of the Dunning kids listed.
The last page of the News, however, contained only obituaries.
I tried the sports pages, and read about the weekend"s big upcoming football game: Derry Tigers versus Bangor Rams. Troy Dunning was fifteen, according to the janitor"s essay. A fifteen-year-old could easily be a part of the team, although probably not a starter.
I didn"t find his name, and although I read every word of a smaller story about the town"s Peewee Football team (the Tiger Cubs), I didn"t find Arthur "Tugga" Dunning, either.
I paid for my breakfast and went back up to my room with the borrowed newspaper under my arm, thinking that I made a lousy detective. After counting the Dunnings in the phone book (ninety-six), something else occurred to me: I had been hobbled, perhaps even crippled, by a pervasive internet society I had come to depend on and take for granted. How hard would it have been to locate the right Dunning family in 2011? Just plugging Tugga Dunning and Derry into my favorite search engine probably would have done the trick; hit enter and let Google, that twenty-first-century Big Brother, take care of the rest.
In the Derry of 1958, the most up-to-date computers were the size of small housing developments, and the local paper was no help. What did that leave? I remembered a sociology prof I"d had in college-a sarcastic old b.a.s.t.a.r.d-who used to say, When all else fails, give up and go to the library.
I went there.
6.
Late that afternoon, hopes dashed (at least for the time being), I walked slowly up Up-Mile Hill, pausing briefly at the intersection of Jackson and Witcham to look at the sewer drain where a little boy named George Denbrough had lost his arm and his life (at least according to Fred Toomey). By the time I got to the top of the hill, my heart was pounding and I was puffing. It wasn"t being out of shape; it was the stench of the mills.
I was dispirited and a bit scared. It was true that I still had plenty of time to locate the right Dunning family, and I was confident I would-if calling all the Dunnings in the phone book was what it took, that was what I"d do, even at the risk of alerting Harry"s time bomb of a father-but I was starting to sense what Al had sensed: something working against me.