He flicked his hand dismissively. “Oh, hell, they all talk like that. It’s the lotto or some relative dying. I never believe it. Is that why he got shot? He rob that guy the paper says he killed?”
I ignored the question. “You said he went from table to table. What was he doing?”
“Schmoozing. That’s one thing. When he did hang out with me at the bar, he’d talk a lot about who so-and-so was, and how they were connected to whatever.” He suddenly laughed. “As if it amounted to anything. I mean, shit, to be one of the high-and-mighty at the Dollar all you need to do is draw a regular welfare check.”
“Still,” I countered, “a few of them do all right. Jamie Good, for instance.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Who else?”
“Walter Freund. Jimmy Lyon hung out there whenever his wife would let him. Donnie Carter-the guy I work with. Hell, there’re a lot of ’em. But nobody’s rich. The real success stories just got jobs, like me.”
“You ever drink with Good?”
“Nah. He was a table regular. Liked to have people like Billy hanging around, making him feel special. Billy sucked up to him a lot.”
“Freund’s name keeps coming up. What’s he like?”
“Not as noisy as Good. He’s a little creepy. I didn’t have nothin’ to do with him.”
“And Owen Tharp?”
Padgett looked disgusted. “He was pathetic. Made Conyer look like a captain of industry.”
“You ever see him lash out?”
“I barely heard him speak. I couldn’t believe he knifed that woman. Are you sure you have the right guy for that? Just seems so unbelievable.”
When I didn’t answer, he looked at his watch. “I gotta get back. This going to take much longer?”
“Just a couple more,” I said. “You mentioned both Lyon and Carter. Those were two of the men you were playing poker with that night, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, them and Frankie Harris.”
“Harris didn’t frequent the Dirty Dollar?”
He hesitated a split second. “I might’ve seen him once or twice. He wasn’t a regular.” He stood up. “You said a couple. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
He moved toward the door.
“What about Brenda Croteau?” I asked. “She hung out with that crowd.”
He put his hand on the doorknob. “Could be, but I didn’t. I only saw ’em when they were drinking at the Dollar. Do me a favor, will you?”
“What’s that?”
“Tell Sammie what a good boy I was.”
I watched him leave without comment. To be honest, I had no idea what kind of boy he was.
18
To a native-born Vermonter, driving across New Hampshire is a little like walking on a rival team’s playing field. It’s not an infraction of the rules, or even in bad taste, but it does feel kind of funny.
On the map, they look like mirror images of the same real estate-two similarly sized wedges fitting together to form a rough rectangle. New Hampshire has the sea, Vermont, Lake Champlain; New Hampshire’s largest towns are near Boston to the south, Vermont’s are to the north, not far from Montreal. Both pride themselves on their mountains, their maple sugar, their cows, and their sense of independence.
And both couldn’t be further apart.
The rivalry between them predates the Revolutionary War, when New Hampshire claimed sovereignty right up to the New York border, declaring present-day Vermont to be the “New Hampshire Grants.” That was actually fine with the few settlers living there, except that in 1764, King George III stuck his foot in it again by giving Vermont to New York, whose governor had taken exception to New Hampshire’s high-handedness. This allowed a very belligerent Ethan Allen-with his Green Mountain Boys and the fortunate timing of the American Revolution-to create in 1777 not just a new state but a wholly independent republic, which didn’t join the Union for another fourteen years.
Referred to colloquially as Vermont from its birth, the new republic was officially named New Connecticut, revealing how ambiguous its residents had become.
Maybe as a result of this contentious start, both New Hampshire and Vermont have forever after eyed one another like suspicious twins and made great hay about their differences.
It was hard to admit, therefore, that the actual drive across New Hampshire to Portland, Maine-where Ron had set up a meeting with the prosecutor in Reynolds’s old case-was more pleasant at this time of year than a similar trip would have been across southern Vermont. At home, the Green and Berkshire mountains link up between Brattleboro and Bennington, making passage across their backs scenic but perilous in all but good weather. New Hampshire is only gently hilly and benign at the same latitude, influenced by the seashore to the east and the Massachusetts plains to the south.
Not that we had bad weather to contend with. The whole region had settled into a routine after that one major storm, with perfectly bearable alternating periods of grayness and sparkling sun. The day Ron and I had chosen for our drive was of the blue-skied, ice-cold variety so favored by skiers and longed for by those going bonkers with cabin fever.
We didn’t discuss work at first, taking advantage of the outing to simply enjoy the scenery. Traffic was light and the roads were in good shape, so the feeling encouraged more talk of home and family than of major crimes and office squabbles. Ron had a wife and a small child, of whom he was inordinately proud. Where many male cops referred to their mates as “the wife” on a good day, Ron carried pictures in his wallet, bragged about his small family at the drop of a hat, and made no bones about the delights of going home at the end of the day.
It was a healthy tonic for me to hear him go on about such domestic bliss, and so I encouraged him until we’d passed through Concord on our way to Manchester and then due east.
At which point, making a reasonable transition, he brought up Sammie Martens.
“You think she and Andy are going to become a permanent item?” he asked hopefully.
It had been several days since my chat with Andy Padgett, and I hadn’t said a word to anyone about it. I had double-checked some of what he’d told me-speaking with the bartender Sammie had recommended, for instance-but I’d only covered the basics. I hadn’t probed deeply, both for my sake and hers, and hadn’t found reason to in any case.
I didn’t harbor deep suspicions about Padgett. I truly believed him to be as he appeared: someone on the periphery, not my type of human being, and not too wise in his choice of drinking companions-but essentially an innocent.
That being so, I still didn’t like him and protectively hoped Sammie wouldn’t try to make a go of him.
“I don’t think so,” I said lightly.
“Really? She seems pretty stuck on him.”
“I think she’s making up for lost time.”
“Is this the father figure I’m hearing?” he asked with a smile.
I glanced at him appraisingly, impressed less by his insight, which hardly mimicked rocket science, and more by his boldness. To hear Ron Klesczewski speak in a jocular, mocking manner was like hearing Willy Kunkle being compassionate.
“You’re feeling your oats.”
He laughed. “Probably just getting away for a few hours. Not too often we have this heavy a caseload-which’ll only be getting worse.”
“With Reynolds? Could be. He’s certainly the strangest aspect of all this. The way his name keeps coming up is pretty weird.”
“Maybe that’s part of his game plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look at the chronology,” Ron said. “The break-in, the abandoned truck, the killing. Each one a little worse than its predecessor. The confusion over that car always struck me as real screwy. It was so elaborate, so stagy, and incredibly risky. If you get a guy like Resnick-from out of state and with a minimal support system-and you bang him over the head, why go to the effort those three guys went to? Especially when the frame can be pulled apart so easily?”