I pulled into the strip mall and parked about a hundred or so feet from the deli’s entrance. It was still open, but it was not the teeming hot spot I’d read about in the Bulletin.
I was still visible from the road-that couldn’t be helped-but at least I was out of the direct light of the streetlamp. I killed my lights but left the engine running to stay warm and to make a quick departure if necessary.
I’ve tried to re-create what happened next, but it’s something of a blur, a weird permutation of what had happened earlier. Just as Warren pulled in, he must have seen what I’d seen in my rearview mirror not long before-the red flashing lights of a Springfield police car. This time Warren tore ass out of the lot, knocking over a bank of free newspaper stands on his way to the highway. Something told me his truck driving partner would be hitching a ride to Virginia in the morning.
Seconds later the police car screeched into the lot, stopping at an angle, just shy of the overturned newsstand. Two cops jumped out and started running toward my Jeep. I turned the lights on to show them I was all right.
O’Malley stopped running first and walked the rest of the way. He did not look amused, but I was.
“You just can’t stand the thought of me meeting another man, can you?”
Twenty-eight
“You mean to tell me after all that, you never even met the guy?”
Babe Chinnery snatched back the menu as if she were going to withhold food because I’d failed to accomplish my mission. “I’m disappointed in you.”
“Hey, I have an absolute rule about how many times per night I’m going to arrange to meet a strange man in a deserted parking lot.” I said it a little too loud and got a few puzzled looks from the other diners at Babe’s.
I was disappointed, too. I’d given up an entire night’s sleep and had gotten only two useful words from Jeff Warren on the phone-Eddie Donnelley. How useful they were remained to be seen. Was Donnelley behind all Caroline’s troubles-old and new? That was the suggestion Warren had made, and it was what had gotten me out of bed a second time when common sense should have dictated that I stay put. Some people were like ticks-they just couldn’t let go of things-and I was turning into one of them.
Babe didn’t bother listening for my order. She brought me a tall glass of orange juice, coffee, buttered toast, and three scrambled eggs, well done, a meal that would have been anathema to me two years earlier, before I knew that a little bread and butter wouldn’t kill me. Her only acknowledgment of my formerly restricted lifestyle was that she didn’t heap a mountain of Pete’s parsleyed potatoes alongside the toast. A side dish fondly referred to as the 3Pete, Pete’s parsleyed potatoes were so good, they were all some diners had for breakfast, but I needed protein-and that wasn’t one of the Ps in the secret recipe.
Babe set the plate down in front of me and cast a quick eye around the diner. She decided she had a few minutes before the only other customer in the diner asked for the check, so she settled in on her side of the counter to wheedle the rest of the story out of me as I ate.
“This Donnelley creep must really hold a grudge. I myself don’t believe in holding grudges,” she said. “Stresses you out. Bad for the digestion, the skin. I knew a girl in the Collins Band whose hair fell out because she was stressed over not being named lead tambourine. Although she may have pulled it out herself. We were never really sure. Either way, it was stress related.”
I could feel another rock and roll flashback coming on.
“And if you do get some satisfaction,” she said, stretching her arms over her head, “that period of elation is fleeting. More likely you’ll regret it. I remember being ticked off at a roadie once. The guy promised to get me backstage to see Jerry Garcia after a concert. He got me backstage all right, but everyone was already gone. No Mr. Garcia, only Mr. Johnson.”
Babe’s revenge had been swift. She let the roadie keep drinking while she spilled her own wine in a bucket of sand meant to be used as an ashtray. When the guy was good and plastered, she led him out onto the empty stage, telling him she wanted their first time to be something special. Instead, he was so falling-down drunk she was able to tie him to a set of drums, where he passed out with his pants down around his ankles.
“The whole crew knew about it in the morning. It’s amazing what some guys will let you do when they think they’re going to get some. Coupla years later, he got religion and wound up traveling all the way to Decatur, Georgia, just to apologize to me.”
It warmed my heart that Babe was no longer inclined to seek revenge, but not everyone was as highly evolved. Something told me Eddie Donnelley wasn’t one of the enlightened. If he was in town, I didn’t think it was to give Caroline a big old bear hug and to have that cathartic “closure” conversation.
I hadn’t called Warren back. What for? The way the previous evening had gone we would have only missed each other again. And he’d have had to have the innocence of Charlie Brown to show up a third time for a rendezvous with a woman who claimed to have never called the cops and yet always seemed to have a police escort.
Instead, after a final round of verbal sparring with O’Malley I’d gone home and crawled into bed thinking how close I’d come to getting answers-if only the police hadn’t shown up again.
“The police,” I said, thinking out loud and shaking my head.
“Excuse me?” Babe was horrified. She was still reliving the revenge memory. “Jerry Garcia was a member of the Dead, the Grateful Dead? Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers were the Police.”
“Give me some credit, I know that. I’m not one of your little acolytes. I’ve owned vinyl. I was just thinking how happy I was to see the police the first time last night, then how unhappy.”
Babe was relieved-she didn’t take kindly to too many disappointments in one day. “Has it occurred to you that O’Malley may have appointed himself your guardian angel?” Babe said.
It hadn’t. Over the last few years the snappy dialogue between O’Malley and me-even when it bordered on the frisky-had built up a kind of scar tissue. We couldn’t touch nerve endings if we tried. And I think we did try every once in a while, but never, it seemed, at the same time, so we never made that complete circuit required to turn on the lightbulb.
“Speaking of the angel…” Babe jerked her chin in the direction of the police station across the road, where a now ubiquitous patrol car sat idling and O’Malley stood leaning against it, on the phone. “The angel’s lookin’ good. I think he’s dropped a few pounds,” she said, sizing him up. “You take him out of that blue polyester uniform, put him in a pair of black jeans, black T-shirt, leather blazer. I bet he’d look mighty fine, with that salt-and-pepper hair and blue eyes.” Clearly she’d given this some thought. I hadn’t and I had a hard time resisting the urge to raise myself up off the counter stool, peer out the window, and visualize Mike O’Malley’s proposed makeover.
Babe left to seat a couple of women with two toddlers and I peeked at O’Malley while pretending to be reaching for napkins. Not bad, but was he really date material? What was it Lucy and Babe were seeing that I wasn’t? Maybe all these near misses meant we were just supposed to be friends.
“You’re busted,” Babe said over her shoulder.
“I just wanted to see if he was coming this way.”
“You are such a bad liar. If you’re going to survive in a small town, you’re going to need to hone those skills.”
O’Malley headed toward the diner. He sprinted across the street easily, and moments later the screen door opened, then jingled shut with a smack. Babe was still with the newcomers, helping one of the women strap an obstreperous kid into a wooden seat that had all the appeal of a vintage electric chair. No wonder the kid was screaming.