I didn’t open it till I got home. It was just like all the others. “Your big box of books arrived today and I put it with all the others.” Not much chitchat. “Went over to Dadsy’s grave today… Your friend Junie Sykes is expecting again, this makes six she’s had with five different men. I said at the time and I say again, you are well out of that. You can’t eat your heart out forever… Why don’t you come home?” A sudden image of Peter wafted up, a vision of the bleak and solitary road he had chosen becoming so clear in the half-dark room. A young man then with little verbal ability, crushed by love. Junie Sykes had eaten him alive and sent him on his way, banished to this. Getting by on fifty-cent books and bummed cigarettes, still carrying the faint hope of the Big Score, the $10 million map found in a Salvation Army store for six bucks. In his mind, Peter Bonnema drove home to Portland in a solid gold Cadillac and snatched Junie Sykes from all that. He would come on like Gary Cooper, tall and lean and silent, infinitely ready to forgive. Life was sooooo good, in that dream, and it was only one… god… damn… score… away! Just that moment in time when something wonderful was put out by someone stupid, and he was there. He’d go home vindicated, king of the bookscouts!
I opened the drapes and read again through all the letters. It never varied. Mumsy acknowledged the books, wrote a line or two about Dadsy or Dadsy’s grave or what Dadsy would think of the world today, and slipped in a stinger about Junie Sykes. It was always “your friend Junie Sykes,” slapped on the page like an indictment. Mumsy’s apron strings snaked across the country, dooming her son to the life he led, sealing him in squalor.
Mumsy probably hadn’t been informed yet. The cops would still be in the early stages of investigating Peter’s next of kin, and without the Mumsy letters it might be days before they found her. I picked up the phone and called United Air Lines, got the next flight to Portland charged to my credit card. I called Hertz and had a rental car arranged on the other end.
If Jackie Newton wanted my money, he’d have to hurry. If I kept on this way, there wouldn’t be much left.
I had five hours to kill and I killed them well.
I had never stopped believing in that U-Haul lead. A two-ton truck doesn’t just materialize on Madison Street: someone somewhere rents it, buys it, or builds it from scratch in a back yard. I sat at my telephone with an open yellow pages and dialed one number after another. It didn’t take nearly as long when vou had a name. Peter Bonnema had rented a truck from an East Colfax gas station on the night of June 10: I had found the place on the sixth or seventh try; told the man I was Cameron of DPD and said I’d be over in a while to look at his records. Then I took a shower and lay down to rest. It was the first sleep I’d had in thirty-six hours.
Eighty minutes later my alarm went off. I got up feeling worse than ever, dressed, threw enough clothes together for a short weekend, locked up, and left. I didn’t take any dress clothes or neckties—I wasn’t flying to Portland to keynote a national conference of Disgraced Ex-Cops of America.
I pulled into the gas station with an hour to spare. The guy who had actually rented the truck to Peter didn’t work there anymore. He wouldn’t‘ve remembered anyway, the manager assured me. I thought it was also too much to expect that the same truck would still be on the lot, and it was. “That baby’s long gone,” the man said. “That went out on a one-way to Florida back in early August.” The truck had been rented out of this same station no less than eighteen times between Peter Bonnema and Tampa-Saint Pete: any physical evidence, unlikely under the best circumstances, would’ve disappeared a dozen times over, but I had to ask. “Do you people keep stuff that’s left in the trucks—papers, notes, anything like that?” The guy said yeah, sure, if it looked valuable or important. He showed me a box of junk. That’s all it was, junk: I combed through it and found nothing. I asked to see the original contract that Peter had signed. The original had been turned in to the U-Haul people, but the gas station kept a file of duplicates going back a year. “See, this-un went out without the proper paperwork,” the guy said. “That’s one of the reasons Jerry don’t work here no more, the bastard wouldn’t do what I told him. All these trucks are supposed to be backed up with credit cards. I don’t care if it’s Jesus Christ straight from the cross, if he wants to drive one of these babies out of here he’s got to have a card. I tell Jerry this fifteen times, and what’s he do? He rents the goddamn thing for cash and we got nothing but the guy’s driver’s license number on file. What good does that do us if he cracks it up?”
I looked at the pink contract dupe. Peter had signed out at 4:18 on the afternoon of June 10. He had returned the truck in good shape at 2:56 p.m. the following day—at least, someone had returned it: there was no mention made as to whether the same guy had brought it in, but even if old Jerry had been on duty, he wouldn’t‘ve noticed. Old Jer wasn’t real quick on the uptake. The truck had been out twenty-two hours and change. A few blocks from here, Peter had pulled over and stopped. Bobby Westfall had taken the wheel and Peter had faded into the night. These were the things that weren’t noted on the dupe. Bobby had taken over and driven the truck into eternity. By five o’clock he had been at Buckley’s store, cocky and alone: by seven he had been at Ballard’s, again alone. He had worked alone all night and left in the morning. The obvious thing to do would’ve been to have Peter come along and help, but Bobby hadn’t done that. Bobby would far rather do all the work himself than let Peter in on his secret.
Here was another important thing. On the contract dupe was a space for mileage. The truck had checked out with 39,523 miles on the odometer. It had come back with 39,597. Seventy-four miles. A guy could play with that in many ways, and none of it was certain. Bobby might’ve gone to Buckley’s and then straight to his real destination. Or he might’ve spent the entire early evening just cruising, full of restless energy. The whole seventy miles might be accounted for in drifting, waiting for the allotted hour for his appointment. Somehow I didn’t think so. Bobby had no driver’s license, and that meant that every minute he spent driving was a risk. If a cop pulled him for anything, he’d be in the soup. So he went to Buckley’s and killed time, and when Buckley closed the store he went to a cafe and sat over coffee to wait it out. That was my guess, and that meant he had taken Stanley Ballard’s books to some point that could be roughly calculated. Twenty-five to thirty-five miles, fifty to seventy there and back.
Rita McKinley’s place, for instance, was just about thirty miles from where I stood.
35
My flight into Portland arrived at seven forty-six, Pacific time. I slept the whole way. Hertz didn’t tie me up too badly, and by eight-thirty I was driving south on Interstate 5 through subdivisions called Raleigh Hills, Metzger, and so on. Mumsy Bonnema wasn’t easy to find, even with an address. I had to backtrack a couple of times through sprawling suburbs, and it was nine o’clock before I found her. She lived on a rural stretch, far away from neighbors. A mailbox on a post said bonnema in faded, worn letters. One of the n‘s had peeled away, leaving its outline.
I pulled into the driveway. Brace yourself, Mumsy. It wouldn’t be the first time I had broken bad news.
The place was weedy and rough, full of untrimmed trees. In a sad way it reminded me of the Liberty place, where I had lived with my crazy mother for the first six years of my life. There were huge piles of junk about, and the house was in pretty shabby shape. I killed the lights, killed the engine, took a deep breath, and got out. A pale yellow light shone through the drawn shades. Somewhere deep in the house, a dog barked. I knocked and the dog went into a frenzy. I heard a voice, a woman shouting at the dog, which, amazingly, shut up. Steps came and the door opened a crack. An eye peeped out.