Not that she was hard or vulgar. In fact, it was her contradictory femininity that most attracted him. It remained his particular secret-as was his inability to tell her-that he found her attractive, endearing, funny, smart, and a terrific cop to boot.
None of which had anything to do with where he was at the moment, except that by the time an outburst of laughter snapped him out of his reverie, he realized that he was on his third bogus drink and had been here for over an hour.
He gazed across at his reason for being here, having subconsciously tracked the entire conversation. He'd noticed that Griffis had participated halfheartedly only, as if his appearance had been stimulated less by pleasure and more by social obligation-a byproduct of being a local celebrity. Griffis was listening to one last story with a fixed smile on his face, while slowly pulling his wallet from the back pocket of his green work pants. Willy took this as his cue to simply leave some change as a tip and head out the door for the parking lot, the next step of his plan in motion.
Walking seemingly without care, Willy checked the empty lot for any movement, crossed over to E. T.'s parked truck, quickly bent over and stabbed its front tire with a small knife, and then veered left toward his own vehicle, all in one fluid arc.
There, he started the engine with his headlights off and waited, hoping that his reading of the social mores inside was correct, and that Griffis would be allowed to leave alone by his harder-drinking buddies.
All self-confidence aside, Willy was nevertheless relieved when Griffis did emerge on his own and worked his way slowly-even sadly, Willy thought-to his truck.
He pulled himself up behind the steering wheel, oblivious to the leaking tire, turned on the ignition, and lumbered out of the parking lot with Willy in slow and distant pursuit.
Less than two miles up the road, E. T.'s truck eased over to the side, its brake lights signaling Willy's efficiency.
Willy slowly drew abreast, idling in the middle of the deserted road.
"Great night for that," he observed, looking at the tire.
"No shit," Griffis said, already out of his truck and taking in the damage. "Doesn't make sense."
"Never does. You got a spare?"
Griffis sighed. "Of course not."
"Too cold to change it tonight, anyhow," Willy commented. "Be easier to deal with it in the morning. Wanna lift?"
E. T. straightened slightly and eyed him more carefully, distracted from his tire, taking in this strange person's gaunt, unshaven face, hollow eyes, and that odd, dangling arm he'd noticed earlier inside. "You were in the bar."
"Yeah. Butch Watters," Willy said, adding, "You're E. T. Griffis."
Griffis straightened slightly. "I know you?"
Willy began applying his homework. "Nah. I drove a rig for Bud Wheeler a while back, in Bradford, right before you put him out of business by buying that gravel pit he used. Best thing that ever happened."
"You didn't get along with Bud?"
Willy laughed. "Nobody got along with Bud. I did worse than most."
"What're you doin' down here?"
Willy pulled out his local trump card. "I'm staying with the Mackies on Five Corners Road. Don and I…" he paused tellingly before adding, "were in the service together. I'm sort of between things right now."
He made sure to keep his voice flat, unemotional, matching his appearance, as if uninterested in what he was saying. In fact, he was all but holding his breath, hoping the cover Gunther had set up for him with the Mackies would provide the nudge he needed.
It helped, at least, implying that maybe Don and Sue Mackie were the neighborhood stalwarts-and old friends-that Joe had made them out to be. Either that, or E. T. had read between the lines of Willy's inference of a war wound.
In any case, the older man seemed to soften his natural suspicion. "I oughta just call one of my guys out to take care of this."
But Willy could tell the fish was almost inside the boat. He let his pickup slip forward a foot. "Suit yourself. It's your butt to freeze off." He then asked a question his research had already answered. "You got a cell phone?"
E. T. shook his head stubbornly. "Nah. Stupid things. Probably wouldn't work anyhow."
"I can take you back to the bar," Willy offered. "Seems kinda dumb, if you're already half home."
That clearly did it. The older man finally nodded.
"Right," he said. "I guess I could do with a ride. Get my kid on this tomorrow."
Willy nodded without comment, feeding into the traditional New England version of a conversation, where the less you say, the less you have to explain later, not to mention that it's nobody's business anyway.
"Where to?" Willy asked, as Griffis climbed on board.
"Right. Up to the top, then left. I'll show you from there."
After he approvingly watched Willy negotiate the steering wheel one-handed, E. T. stared out the front of the old truck's smeared windshield.
"Sue still have that cold?"
"Pneumonia," Willy said shortly to pass the obvious test. He doubted Griffis cared one way or the other about Sue Mackie's health. "Antibiotics. Guess they're working."
"Not from around here."
No shit, Willy felt like saying. "New York."
That brought a brief stare. "City?"
"Yeah. Been bumming around a lot lately, though-like working with Wheeler."
The truck was grinding uphill, lumbering to overtake the feeble reach of its own headlights.
"New York's a long ways."
Christ, Willy thought. This was going to take a while.
"Figured this would be a better place to die," he said, risking a little melodrama in the hopes of speeding things up.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Griffis push his lips out thoughtfully.
"The Mackies know about that?" his passenger asked.
"They know what happened," Willy answered obliquely, nevertheless impressed by E. T.'s practical handling of his statement.
E. T. seemed to accept that and didn't speak until the truck had reached the top of the hill, when he repeated, "Left here."
After a few more minutes, during which Willy could almost hear E. T. arguing with himself, he'd been put in such an awkward spot, Willy took him off the hook with "I had a car crash. Fucked myself up, killed my son. I was drunk."
Both the wording and the tone had been carefully chosen-not so terse as to cut off further conversation, not so confessional that it was best not to ask. Just the facts, but sentimentally evocative enough to get the old man thinking of his own losses.
Willy waited patiently, the heavily shadowed snowbanks to both sides of them slipping past like discarded bundles of laundry.
"That's tough," Griffis finally said heavily. "Know the feeling."
Willy didn't doubt it. Not only had he played to E. T.'s recent loss of Andy, but he knew Griffis as a fellow alcoholic-only a nonrecovering one.
"You, too?" he asked open-endedly.
E. T. bit. "Yeah. My youngest. Hung himself."
Willy thought of Sammie again but didn't correct the other man's grammar. Instead, he faked a theatrical double take. "No shit? A woman, right? It usually is."
But he'd gotten as much as he was going to for the moment.
"Nah," E. T. said under his breath, eyes fixed ahead.
Willy let it be. "I can't get it out of my head, especially with this to remind me." He hefted his useless arm's shoulder. "How do you live with it?" he asked after a pause, trying a different tack, knowing he might be pushing too hard. In truth, it wasn't that important to him. He was doing Joe a favor, it got him out of the office and on his own, and he had nothing to lose if he ended up empty-handed. He could take risks.
But, as if E. T. were eavesdropping and not wanting Willy to betray his boss, the older man met him halfway with "I have another son."