“Well, I don’t have a mustache now, but I did. The trimming got to be a nuisance. And yes, I have dark hair, and I’m thirty-seven now. Rube Prien, Rube Prien. Sounds as though I ought to remember. Where was this?”
The words spoke themselves: “At the Project,” but he didn’t know what he meant.
“What project?” The voice on the phone had gone cold. “What is this? You’re the second person who’s phoned about ‘the project.’ ”
“Who was the other!?”
“Look, I want to know what’s going—”
“Please. Mr. Rossoff, please; I have got to know. Who was the other?”
Reluctantly: “McNaughton, he said his name was, John McNaughton. From Winfield, Vermont.”
“Thank you, thank you very much,” Rube said swiftly. “Won’t keep you any longer, sorry to’ve troubled you,” and he pressed the button to break the connection. Then released it, dialed information, got the area code for Vermont, and dialed long-distance information. “I am sorry, we have no listing for a John McNaughton.” As though he could be seen, and as though he’d expected this, Rube nodded, took down the Manhattan phone book, and began leafing through the H’s for Hertz Rent a Car.
4
JUST PAST NINE O’CLOCK NEXT morning, he turned off the throughway onto an asphalt-paved county road. Ten more miles, then off onto a narrower, winding, weed-bordered road, once paved but potholed now, chunks of asphalt missing. The final eleven miles took over half an hour. Out of a last slow curve, and the road turned into concrete-paved Main Street, Winfield, Vermont.
Rube drove slowly through a block, head ducked to stare ahead through the windshield, then swung into an angled parking space. He got out, feeling in his pocket for meter change, but every meter flag in the block showed red, no other car parked; and on ahead for three blocks, only two cars, both pickups. Hell with it, he thought, probably don’t even bother collecting anymore.
On the sidewalk he stood glancing both ways. Nothing moved in the entire five-block length of Main Street, no one in sight. The walk lay silent in the morning sun, his foreshortened shadow slanted toward the curb; he turned to walk on, hearing no sound but his own footsteps.
In the block ahead, a man in blue jeans, dark plaid shirt, and a yellow good-old-boy visored cap walked out from a storefront, and on across the walk. He was young, big, wore a thick Zapata mustache, was heavy and big-bellied. He climbed up into a red pickup with enormous tires, and when he slammed his door the tinny crash bounced between the storefront walls, the only sound in the street till he started his engine and drove off.
Rube walked on past a men’s clothing store, one of its two display windows paved with work shoes, cowboy and pull-on boots. Past two bars into which he could not see. Past storefronts boarded over with plywood sheets so weathered the outer layers were separating in narrow swollen bulges. Most of the buildings he passed were two stories, a few three. Some of the upper windows were labeled: a doctor, a lawyer, a chiropractor. Rounded bay windows hung out over the walk at some corners, their separate roofs steeply conical. He glanced down the side streets as he crossed them: houses, wooden and old. Many had porches elaborately ornamented at the eaves, but the ornamentation was often broken, pieces missing. None of the houses had been painted in a long time, and a few were covered over with green asphalt shingling. The front windows of one were curtained with a gray blanket and a sun-faded quilt. The lawns were gone, only chopped-down weeds and winter mud marks, often tracked by car wheels. Cars stood on a few of these former lawns, others on dirt or cinder driveways. All were old, big, American. All sun-faded, dented, some listing. A new high-wheeled pickup stood parked in the street, one set of wheels up over the curb.
On past a little stucco movie theater, its shallow poster-display cases empty, the glass broken, its marquee letters reading, Closed. At a corner, a small grocery store, door open. Just inside, a low showcase crowded with bottles: dozens of brands of whiskey, gin, vodka, brandy. All were half-pints, and the sliding glass doors of the case were padlocked. Rube walked in, nodding at the middle-aged clerk. “Do you have a city directory?”
The man shook his head, eyes amused. “Isn’t any.”
“Is there a city hall?”
“Nope. No more. No city anymore, friend. We’re just county now. Who you lookin’ for?”
“John McNaughton.”
The man shook his head. “Nope.”
Out on the street corner, Rube stood glancing around again. Just ahead the street divided to angle right and left around a little square slightly higher than the street, its cut-stone curbing angled outward by frost, pieces missing. The square had been paved over, the asphalt now broken, patches of dirt showing, remnants of white-painted striping still visible, the ghosts of old parking spaces.
What now? Coffee. Just ahead, Larry’s Place, and he walked on to it, looked in. It was open: aproned proprietor behind the counter, a counter customer hunched over his coffee. Rube went in, ordering coffee as he sat down at the counter, glancing at the other customer as the man turned to look at him. “Major! Major Prien! My God, how are you!”
“Why, I’m fine, John, just fine,” Rube said easily, but—did he really know this man?
Who smiled and said, “Not quite sure about me, are you, Major?” He was big, broad-backed, maybe forty, wearing a threadbare brown suitcoat over a gray flannel shirt. Sliding his coffee cup on in advance, he moved to the stool beside Rube, saying, “Take a good look.”
An old-fashioned face, Rube thought, thin, tight-skinned, permanently weathered. The way Americans used to look, with haircut to match, no sissy sideburns but economically clipped high on the sides, a real last-a-month whitewall. “You look like a World War One doughboy.”
“Feel like one sometimes. Well? You know me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. You look like a hick; are you?”
“Depends. On occasion and within limits I can be a kind of rural Noel Coward. But yeah, by inclination I’m a hick. The haircut’s no disguise, it’s me.”
“You’re smart, though.”
“Well, yes, though I wouldn’t call for a new deal if I were dumb. Because it wouldn’t matter; I’d go along just about the way I do anyway. I’m a simple man, I like the simple life, so there’s no real need to be smart. Kind of a waste, actually. I have to be smart enough to stay simple and not get all dissatisfied. The way I’d be anyway if I were dumb. You follow me?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m not smart enough.”
“And what are your hobbies and favorite sports, Major?”
“Well, John, I like things to go my way. And I work at it harder and longer than most. What I don’t like is anyone trying to jerk me around. So just tell me; I think maybe I know you, but I’m not sure: jog my memory.”
“Remember Kay Veach? Thin, black-haired girl?”
Rube shook his head.
“From the Project. I phoned her; lives in Wyoming. But she didn’t remember me or the Project. How about Nate Dempster? Around thirty? Bald. Wore glasses.” Rube shook his head again. “Also from the Project, and also didn’t remember it or me. Oscar Rossoff?”
“Oscar, yeah. I phoned him. He said you’d called. And gave me your name.”
“Did he now?” McNaughton smiled. “Oscar was a little unhappy with me. Couldn’t quite remember me. Or the Project. Almost! But—no. Got mad when I pushed him about the Project.”
“The Project, the Project. What the hell is the Project!”
“Well.” McNaughton tasted his coffee, made a face, setting it down. “You never quite get used to how bad this stuff really is. Picture a big building, Major Prien. Fills a whole city block. Made of brick, no windows. On the outside says, Beekey’s Moving and Storage, phone number, stuff like that. But that’s only a front: inside, the building is gutted. Every floor but the top one ripped out, and the top one turned into offices. Underneath, just a hollow shell of brick walls, a block square. And down on the floor—”