He decided Dr. Eugene Mead would have an accident.
The “accident” took place on July 3rd, although Eugene and I didn’t hear about it until three days later. That’s when I opened up my mailbox and found a letter from Harry Lamour. “Dear Mr. O’Dell,” it began. “I am very disappointed that neither you nor Dr. Mead chose to respond to my letters of July 4th concerning the automobile accident that occurred at 11:48 P.M. on July 3rd.” Lamour went on to describe the accident, which, he claimed, he had witnessed from his bedroom window. Eugene, backing out of my driveway, had supposedly struck Lamour’s car, which had been parked at the curb in front of his house.
I looked out the kitchen window over at Lamour’s driveway. His car was gone.
“I expected Dr. Mead would stop in order to inspect the damage he caused to my vehicle. When he drove on instead, I expected I would hear from him the next day.”
The night of the third, as usual, the Meads and the O’Dells had watched the fireworks at Lake Park. We’d sat at Eugene’s low folding table, with a white tablecloth and a vase with a pink rose, and nibbled our way through a hamper full of goodies, including a layered vegetable terrine and salmon mousse on water crackers, and a bottle of Chandon Etoile. Eugene hadn’t been tipsy on the way home. The fact is, Eugene’s not the type to ever get tipsy — except once, apparently, a long time ago.
Anyway, after dropping us off, Eugene had backed down our driveway. And yes, Lamour’s car had been parked on his side of the street. But if there’d been an accident, I’d have heard something, surely. The crunch of Eugene’s back bumper as it struck.
But I’d heard nothing.
The letter went on to explain that if Lamour didn’t hear from Eugene in twelve hours he was going to file a hit-and-run report with the Department of Motor Vehicles.
I had to laugh as I folded up Lamour’s letter. The war was to be carried out on a different level now. Goodbye, torn-up mailboxes. Hello, insurance scams. And it wasn’t just O’Dells who were targeted, it was enough to be a friend of O’Dells.
When I got ahold of Eugene on the phone, he’d opened his Lamour letter.
“You don’t remember hitting anything, then?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
I said that Margie and I hadn’t seen any evidence of an accident — broken glass, that kind of thing.
Eugene said, “That sleazeball thinks he’s going to get his car fixed at my expense.”
I laughed again. “I think you’ve been drawn into a war.”
“What do you mean?”
I explained.
“You didn’t think it was funny when Junior used to pull out your mailbox,” Eugene said.
He had me there.
Lamour’s luck had been going downhill for years. There was the Albert Coniglio case, which he lost. Then the big parties came to an end. The sharp cars grew less sharp. Then downright modest. Finally, Lamour took the rap for some local mob screwup.
It was Eugene who informed me our neighbor was going to jail. (Eugene keeps on top of things like that.)
It was summer, about seven years ago, and we were sitting around in Eugene’s newly landscaped backyard, complete with red-gravel paths snaking past raised beds of spikey crimson salvia. Blood seeped out of the sirloins on the gas grill. Eugene tossed his fancy new corkscrew at me. “Dick, this time, see if you can get the cork to pop out instead of in.”
Eugene’s sense of humor used to get to my wife. I told her he was just teasing.
“Jail?” I said. “How do you know?”
“Trust me.”
He was right, of course. Lamour did go to jail. His beater sat in the driveway oozing rust for maybe two years while his wife went about her business in her beater. On our evening walks Margie and I would come across little bits of the beaters that had sluiced down the driveway — lacy rosettes of metal, bolts whose threads were only a dim memory, chrome chips, fragments of rubber tubing that reminded me of Eugene’s line of work.
We didn’t mourn Lamour’s fate. Eugene had us out regularly to his new summer place on Lake Meewaulin, which was only a half-hour from Pinecrest Lane. Beautiful place, with picture windows on the lake side so the four of us — after a day of fishing or lounging around — could sit sipping a nice Beaujolais, watching the sunset. There were times Margie would complain about Eugene holding forth about his patients and operations and stuff. But what the hell, that was Eugene.
Somewhere in there, Eugene and I took up golf. Despite Margie’s complaints about the cost, I got into the Lake Meewaulin Club — actually, it was a provisional membership, based on Eugene’s recommendation. The way Eugene explained it was, Lake Meewaulin didn’t have anything against music teachers, it was their crummy salaries that was the problem.
I had to laugh.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. When Lamour came back from jail that winter, he looked older, thinner, grayer. Just like you’re supposed to, coming out of “the slammer.” He dressed in khaki pants and a blue jacket with a nylon fur collar, and he left the house every morning at seven-thirty, and returned at four-thirty.
Eugene had heard that Lamour was in some kind of probationary work program. A halfway house, something like that.
Funny coincidence, Lamour’s wife died about a month after he’d gotten home. We saw the van roll up for the body, and then later, in the paper, we read about it. Junior showed up for the funeral. Long-absent Junior, looking like he’d spent some time in institutions himself. We expected him to take off after his mother was in the ground, but he hung around instead. Then spring came around, and every evening he’d come out onto the driveway and practice karate kicks. He wasn’t so skinny anymore, but his eyes were still too big for his head.
The day after I picked Lamour’s letter out of my mailbox, Eugene and I were sitting in Eugene’s new golf cart, waiting for the foursome in front.
Out of the blue, Eugene said, “There’s always hormonal treatment.” He grabbed an imaginary cleaver from above his head and arranged his imaginary patient and whacked off a pair of you-know-whats, which is what hormonal treatment means to a urologist. “That’s what I’d like to do to our neighbor,” he said. He raised the cleaver in the air and whacked off at least ten or twelve more of Lamour’s testicles while I watched.
“I know what you mean,” I said. But it turned out I didn’t. Not really.
That evening I got around to showing Lamour’s letter to my wife.
She stood beside me and looked out the kitchen window at Lamour’s place across the street. I looked at it too. The driveway was still empty — no beaters, red (Senior’s) or blue (Junior’s). Just a big Rorschach oil stain where one or the other was usually parked. Probably it was at some repair shop being revitalized from stem to stern.
“What’s Eugene going to do?” she said.
I said he was getting in touch with his insurance agent.
“Why does Lamour say he didn’t call the police?”
“The idea is that Eugene was drunk, and by not calling the police Lamour saved his ass.”
“Blackmail,” my wife said, and sort of laughed.
“I think they picked on Eugene because he’s our friend.”
“You think it’s starting up again — the war?”
“Could be.”
“But there’s no proof,” she said.
“Maybe there doesn’t need to be.”
“What do you mean?”
I told her what I knew about Eugene’s accident when he was in his twenties, the girl in the front seat killed. The beer cans spilling out when the cops pulled him out.