“He’s worried that will come out.”
She looked at me. “How long have you known that?”
“Awhile.”
Junior came out a little later in the afternoon in his faded black shorts and beat-up running shoes. He ran through some warmup exercises, then into the kicking, his feet slashing out. I could hear his grunts. He stayed at the top of the driveway, above the oil stains. He stopped for a moment and I thought he’d spotted me. Without taking my eyes from him, I slowly backed up and found the light switch, and turned off the lights. I kept watching him from deep within my kitchen.
For a while my wife watched with me.
“Will we be involved?” she said.
“Maybe,” I said. “Written testimony.”
She wasn’t smiling now. “We should have moved years ago. Next time maybe it won’t be our mailbox.”
“Maybe it’ll be the garage,” I said. “Maybe Junior’ll pull down the garage.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she said.
A couple of days later Eugene and I were out at the Lake Meewaulin Club again, playing a quick nine after dinner. It had been a cool summer so far, but tonight it was hot, and the mosquitoes were feeding on Eugene, who’s one of those pale Nordic types. By the fourth tee, his arms were bloody from where he’d slapped at them. He hit a long drive that spilled into the woods. His mulligan sliced into the next fairway.
I helped him locate the ball in the woods. On the edge of the fairway, he dropped a ball, took out an iron. Addressed the ball even more stiffly than usual and took a big gouge out of the turf.
“Not my night,” he said, and set his jaw.
The next hole, our drives landed side by side. On the way Eugene said, “I talked to my insurance gal again today.”
“And?”
“I said I wasn’t aware of hitting him, but maybe I did.”
“You didn’t hit him, Eugene,” I assured him.
“You say that, but you can’t be absolutely sure,” he said.
“We would have heard something, seen something.”
“Why should I worry about saving American Family a couple of thou?”
I’d seen it coming, of course. He was going to cave in order to avoid any trouble.
“She’s going to do some more checking around. She’ll probably call you.”
“Fine.”
“It was dark, it was late, we’d had a little wine. Maybe I did crease him.”
“You didn’t touch him,” I said.
I took out a three-iron and knocked the ball on the green — it was the shortest hole on the back nine.
“What’s wrong with you, Dick?” Eugene said.
I shrugged.
I knew before Eugene hit the ball it was going into the trap.
For a couple of holes then he wouldn’t talk to me. Finally, as we’re going up to the ninth green, he said, “If American Family is willing to fix up his beater, so be it.”
“I’ll tell her what I know,” I said.
“Use your head for a change, Dick,” he said. “This is little stuff. It happens all the time.”
Eugene’s insurance agent called the next day; she got me in my office at St. Stephen’s. I was talking to a student who was having a hard time controlling her diabetes. She was a lovely redhead with a small red scar on her forehead, and as I talked to Eugene’s insurance agent my eye kept wandering to the scar.
The agent was personable enough, and — once I’d answered her questions — fairly free with information she’d managed to collect. Lamour was claiming that his car was totaled; its worth estimated at eighteen hundred dollars.
Her tone of voice made it clear she’d discovered Lamour’s criminal record and was convinced the “accident” was a scam.
Half an hour later the phone rang again. It was Eugene, checking on what I’d told his agent. I was on my way out to lunch.
“I said I saw no evidence of an accident.”
The other end of the line was silent.
“What could I say, Eugene? I couldn’t lie.”
“What did she say?”
I thought about the conversation I’d had with his agent. “She said I’d helped her make up her mind.”
“If it gets into the paper,” Eugene said, “it’ll be unpleasant.”
“I’ve got to go,” I said.
But Eugene wasn’t finished. “I got a call this morning from someone who claimed to be a reporter.”
“A reporter investigating a fender-bender?” I said. “I don’t believe it.”
“Maybe Lamour put him up to it. Maybe he wasn’t even a reporter. What do I know?”
I knew where he was going with this, and I was short of time. “I’m sorry you got dragged into this, but I’m not going to lie,” I said.
Eugene called back later. He’d gotten ahold of Lamour and arranged a meeting for that night at Lamour’s house. He sounded better than he had earlier, but still a little shaky. The shakiness was the side of Eugene that my wife hadn’t seen.
“I want you to come,” Eugene insisted.
Meeting with Lamour seemed like a crazy idea to me. I asked Eugene what he hoped to accomplish by it. Eugene said he thought Lamour could be persuaded to back off.
“You’re going to buy him off,” I said.
“Maybe.”
I said, “I don’t think I can make it.”
Around eleven that night, the phone rings. It’s Eugene. “I’m sitting in your driveway,” he says. “I need to talk to you.”
Margie’s watching a Julia Child rerun. “Who’s calling at this hour?”
I’m lacing my shoes, zipping up my fly. “Don’t worry about it, I’ll be right back.”
The dome light doesn’t go on when I climb in Eugene’s front seat.
“How’d it go?”
“Terrible.”
“How so?”
“Dick, I need your help.”
“I’m listening.”
“Lamour’s dead.”
I get a scooped-out, nauseated feeling in my chest.
It takes a couple of minute for the details to come out. “I brought money. He said it wasn’t enough.”
“Damn,” I say. “Dead.” I couldn’t believe it.
“Dead,” Eugene says.
“For two thousand... three thousand bucks.”
“The son of a bitch pushed me.”
“And you?”
“Pushed back. We were in the kitchen. He hit his head on the edge of the sink.”
Eugene says he did everything he could to save the bastard.
Where was Lamour now?
“Lying on his kitchen floor, wrapped in a tarp.”
In my mind it’s a blue tarp, who knows why. I ask Eugene if anyone saw him, coming or going.
He hesitates. “I don’t think so.”
“What about Junior?”
“I don’t know. Out of town, I hope. Listen, Dick...”
“I’m listening.”
Eugene laughs, a little weirdly. “I’ve got a plan...”
“Okay.”
He gets into it. He’s going to sneak back to Lamour’s and clean up — luckily, there hadn’t been much blood. Then around two, when everybody on Pinecrest was asleep, I’d come over. Together, we’d throw Lamour into the trunk of Eugene’s car and take him to the Meewaulin quarry. “What do you say?”
Suddenly there are lights behind us, and a car pulls up practically on Eugene’s back bumper, locking us in. Before Eugene can think to lock the doors, the back door opens and somebody gets in. I twist the rearview mirror to see who.
“Yo, neighbors.” It’s dark in the backseat, but Junior Lamour’s eyes haven’t changed. Too big for his face, they have the ability to look sleepy and malevolent at the same time.
I have this ominous feeling that the war between the Lamours and O’Dells has reached its final stage.