McGully does a big freeze-frame comedy face on his punch line, waves his hands, wakka-wakka. I smile politely. Culverson scrapes honey into his tea from along the rim of the jar.
“Screw you both.” McGully dismisses us with a wave of his thick hands. “That’s funny.”
Detective Culverson grunts and sips his tea and I go back to my notebook, which is flipped open on the table beside our pile of unread menus. Ruth-Ann, the waitress here at the Somerset Diner, has kept the menus meticulously updated, editing them week by week, scrawling in changes, crossing out unavailable items with a thick black marker. McGully, still chortling at his own joke, takes out two cigars and rolls one across the table to Culverson, who lights them both and hands one back. My friends, chomping on their cigars in virtual unison: Middle-aged bald white man, middle-aged paunchy black man, peas in a pod, at their ease in a diner booth. Men in the lap of forced retirement, enjoying their leisure like octogenarians.
What I’m doing is reviewing my notes from this morning, remembering Martha, chewing on her fingernails, staring into the corners of the room.
“That’s a true story, by the way,” says McGully. “Not the bit where she says about the six months. But Beth has got a friend, just diagnosed, forty years old, not a goddamn thing they can do for her. True story.”
“How is Beth?”
“She’s fine,” says McGully. “She’s knitting sweaters. I tell her it’s summer, and she says it’s going to be cold. I tell her, what, you mean, when the sun is swallowed by ash?”
McGully says this like it’s supposed to be another joke, but nobody laughs, not even him.
“Hey, you guys hear about Dotseth?” says Culverson.
“Yeah,” says McGully. “You hear about the lieutenant governor?”
“Yeah. Nuts.”
I’ve heard all these stories already. I study the pages of my notebook. How the heck am I going to get ahold of a plastic samurai sword?
Ruth-Ann, ancient and gray headed and sturdy, stops by to clear our dishes and slide ashtrays under the cigars, and everybody nods thanks. Besides the oatmeal and the cheese, the main refreshment she can offer is tea, because its chief ingredient is water, which for now is still coming out of the taps. Estimates vary on how long the public water supply will last now that the electricity is down for good. It depends on how much is in the reserve tanks; it depends on whether the Department of Energy has prioritized our city generators over other sections of the Northeast—it depends, it depends, it depends…
“Hey, so, Palace,” says Culverson all of sudden, with practiced nonchalance, like something just occurred to him. My spine stiffens with irritation—I know what he’s going to ask. “Any word on your sister?”
“Nope.”
“Nothing?”
“Nope.”
He’s asked before. He keeps asking.
“You haven’t heard from her?”
“Not a thing.”
McGully chimes in: “You’re not gonna try and find her?”
“Nope,” I say. “I’m not.”
They look at each other: Such a shame. I change the subject.
“Let me ask you guys a question. How many miles would you say it is from here to Suncook?”
Culverson tilts his head. “I don’t know. Six?”
“Nah,” says McGully. “Eight. And change.” He blows out a thick cluster of smoke, which I fan away with the flat of my hand. The ceiling fan used to carry away some of the smoke, but now the fan is stilled and the thick gray cloud hangs low over the booth.
“Why?” says Culverson.
“A man I’m looking for, he was supposed to bike down to Suncook and pick up some chairs.”
“On a bike? With a trailer?”
“What man are you looking for?” says McGully.
“A missing person.”
“Bike them back from Suncook?” says Culverson. “What is he, a bull elephant?”
“Wait. Hold on.” McGully cocks his head at me, his cigar burning in the V of two fingers. “A missing person? You working on a case, detective?”
I give it to them briefly: my old babysitter, her runaway husband, the pizza restaurant by the Steeplegate Mall.
“Guy’s a trooper?” says Culverson.
“Was. He quit to work at the pizza place.”
Culverson makes a face. McGully interrupts: “What’s this chick paying you? To find her runaway man?”
“I said, she’s an old friend.”
“That’s not a kind of money.”
Culverson chuckles absently. I can tell he’s turning over the other thing, the trooper-turns-pizza-man element. McGully’s not done: “You told this chick it’s useless, right?”
“I told her it’s a long shot.”
“A long shot?” McGully, animated, thumping the table with a closed fist. “That’s one way to put it. You know what you should tell her, Ichabod Crane? You should tell her that her man is gone. He’s dead or he’s in a whorehouse or he’s smoking crack in New Orleans or Belize or some goddamn place. And that if he left her, it’s ’cause he wanted to, and the smart thing to do is to forget all about him. Pull up a chair and get ready to watch the sun go down.”
“Sure,” I say. “Yeah.”
I turn away from the conversation, look down at my hands, at the redacted menus. Dirty yellow sunbeams glow through the murk of the window glass, spreading across the tabletop like wavering prison bars. When I look back, McGully is shaking his head. “Listen, you like this chick? Then don’t give her false hope. Don’t waste her time. Don’t waste yours.”
Now I look to Culverson, who smiles mildly, tapping his forehead with his fingertips. “Hey, I ever tell you guys that my next-door neighbor is Sergeant Thunder?” he says.
“What?” says McGully.
“The weatherman?” I say.
“Channel Four at six and ten. My own personal celebrity.” Culverson starts patting his jacket pockets, looking for something. Culverson and I still wear blazers, most of the time; most of the time I put a tie on, too. McGully’s in a polo shirt with his name stitched across the breast pocket.
“We never used to talk that much,” Culverson explains, “just to say hi, except now it’s just him and me on the block, so I pop in on the guy every now and then, just knock on the door, how you doing, you know? He’s pretty old.”
McGully puffs on his cigar, getting bored.
“Anyway, yesterday Sergeant Thunder comes by to show me something. Says he really isn’t supposed to, but he can’t resist.”
Culverson finds what he was looking for in the right-inside pocket of his blazer and slides it across the table to me. It’s a brochure, slim and elegant, a glossy all-color trifold with pictures of smiling elderly people in a wood-paneled lounge, sconce lit and pleasant. There are photos of heroic-jawed security men in helmets striding sterile hallways. A young couple beaming over a meaclass="underline" linen tablecloth, pasta and salad. And in a tasteful and understated font, The World of Tomorrow Awaits You…
“The World of Tomorrow?” I ask, and McGully grabs the brochure. “Bull hockey,” he snorts, turning it this way and that. “A dump truck full of bull hockey.”
He tosses it back across the table and I read the pitch on the reverse side. The World of Tomorrow offers berths in a “meticulously appointed, securely constructed, permanent facility in an undisclosed location in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.” The word “permanent” is in italics. There are three levels of accommodation on offer: standard, premium, and luxury.