It was perking over on the stove.
"It certainly is," he said, going over to a cupboard. "Have you eaten?"
"Yes. we stopped at Sterling-Rock Falls."
"Good. My cook has Sunday off. and while I've been a bachelor for twenty-some years now, coffee is as yet my only culinary achievement. I'm afraid you'd have been in for cold cuts, had you needed a meal. The coffee, however, I can guarantee. Care to try a cup?"
"Love to," I said.
He gestured toward the nook, and I went over and sat down. He brought two steaming cups over and we sat and drank in silence. He was, I believe, trying to figure out where to begin with me; I was just enjoying the coffee and not being in the Chevy, though the nook was a little reminiscent of a cramped car, at that. A bath and bed sounded good to me.
But Mary Ann's father wanted to talk, and, since I was here to gather information about Jimmy Beame, I wasn't about to discourage him.
"My daughter called me a few days ago, Mr. Heller," he said, "and told me who you are, and why you've made this journey."
"Make it Nate, please."
"Fine. And my name is John."
"All right, John. Do you disapprove of my trying to locate your son?"
"I would've. six months ago. Now… well, I'm inclined to support your efforts. In fact, if my daughter hasn't paid you sufficiently, I would be glad to underwrite your efforts myself."
"That isn't necessary," I said.
Somebody cleared her throat.
We turned and looked over where, in the doorless doorway of the kitchen, Mary Ann, in a baby-blue bathrobe that covered her from neck to slippers, stood, arms folded, rather cross. Pouty.
"I just wanted to say good night," she said.
"Good night, darling," her father said.
She came over and hugged him again, remembering, I guess, that it was me she was irritated with, not him; and she kissed him on the cheek and smiled at him, then glanced over at me and put the smile away and went over and got her suitcase and turned her back and padded out with it.
I called out to her: "Good night, Mary Ann."
"Good night," she said, like a child, her back to me. already through the doorway and halfway down the hall.
John Beame studied me. like he might a difficult patient.
"That's something she didn't inform me of," he said.
"What's that, sir?"
"That she's in love with you."
"Well, uh…"
"Are you in love with her?"
"Sir, I…"
"She's a wonderful girl. Difficult. Childish. Self-centered. But quite unique, and loving, in her way."
"Yeah. Wonderful."
"You do love her, don't you?"
"I guess I do. Damned if I know why, if you'll excuse me for saying so, sir."
"John." he said, smiling wryly. "I love her because she's my daughter. Nate. What's your excuse?"
I laughed. "I just never met anybody like her before."
"Yes. And she's attractive, isn't she?"
"No argument there, sir… John."
"Spitting image of her mother, rest her soul. More coffee?"
"Please."
He brought the pot over and filled my cup; his gloved hands seemed able to cope pretty well. I tried not to look at them.
"Oh. these hands of mine function well enough, Nate," he said. "I can even give chiropractic adjustments with them, though I haven't practiced for years, in terms of hanging a shingle out. I was afraid, with some justification I might say, that my patients would be repulsed by my hands being disfigured. Of course I could've worn gloves. but even then- with only two fingers on my right hand and considerable pain in those early years- it didn't seem worth the trouble. My friend and mentor, B. J. Palmer, offered me a position teaching at his college, which evolved into my managing his radio station. WOC was the second licensed radio station in the United States, you know. At any rate, it's been, and continues to be, an interesting life. And certain of my friends still come to me privately, gratis, for chiropractic care. I have a room with an adjusting table upstairs."
"Mary Ann said you injured your hands in an automobile accident."
He looked into his cup of coffee; stared in. "Yes. Years ago. when she and Jimmy were very small."
"They were in the accident, too?"
He nodded. "I often took them on house calls. I had one out in the country, one evening, a farmer who'd twisted his back in a hayloft fall. A lot of my patients were rural I come from rural stock myself. It was my father's greatest disappointment that I didn't follow in his footsteps as a farmer, but I had a brother who made him happier, by staying in that field, if you will pardon a pun. But you asked about the accident. It was dark, and the road was narrow, unlit… a dirt road with deep ditches. Some drunken fool, driving without lights, ran into us, and… I was not entirely blameless. Like him, I was driving rather more fast than would seem in retrospect prudent… anxious to get my children home, wondering why I'd used such bad judgment in bringing them along on an evening call… but then, widower that I was and am, I had no one to stay with them, so I often took them along…"
He stopped. Sipped the coffee. The cup in the thumb and forefinger of the gloved hand looked like an affectation, and added to the peculiarly formal tone of our conversation.
"Mr. Beame. John, I was just curious- it's my nature as a detective, I guess. If this is something you'd rather not discuss…"
"Nate, there's not much left to tell. The collision was head on; both cars ended in the ditch, and there was a fire. I burned my hands pulling my children from the wreckage; burned them worse pulling the drunken fool from his wreckage but he died anyway. His head had hit the windscreen with such force the glass cracked."
"Mary Ann and Jimmy, were they injured?"
"Minorly. Cuts. Scrapes. They needed considerable chiropractic care. They'd always been close, being twins, but with a boy and a girl, you might expect them to be less close than if they'd been of the same gender. But this experience- this brush with death, if you'll allow an old man his melodrama- brought them even closer together than before."
"I see."
"They were, if I recall correctly, seven years old at the time. I believe the experience may have also encouraged their flights of fancy. The world of make-believe was always a better place than the world of reality. for them."
"That's true for all children."
He nodded, sadly. "But most children grow out of it. Jimmy- and, as you can see, Mary Ann- never abandoned their romantic fancies. A boy reads Treasure Island and wants to be a pirate when he grows up; but then he grows up and he is an accountant or a lawyer or a teacher. A girl reads Alice in Wonderland and wants to dress up and chase mythical white rabbits down holes; but then she grows up and is wife and a mother to her own little girls and boys."
"Sounds like you don't believe in Peter Pan."
He smiled sadly again. "Unfortunately, it would seem, my children do."
"Aren't you being a little unfair, sir? Your daughter is an actress, and that's a recognized profession, in which she seems to be doing rather well."
-
He shrugged. "With some help from me."
"Let me tell you some facts of life about the big city. You can get strings pulled for you, to get into a job; you can have a relative with money or position buy or clout your way in for you. But once you're in. if you don't cut the mustard, you get cut, but fast. If Mary Ann wasn't doing a good job for those radio people, she'd've had her pretty- rear end fired by now, if you'll excuse the crudity."
He folded his gloved hands, the fingers of his left hand resting over the knuckles of his right, where fingers had been. His smile was gentle. "I'll excuse it gladly, Nate. Because you're right. I suppose I have been unfair, where my children are concerned. Mary Ann is doing quite well. I only hope Jimmy is."
"Tell me about him."
"You have to understand something. During the years Jimmy was growing up, the Tri-Cities was a wild place… in the Chicago, gangster sense, that is. And it still is, to a degree. At any rate, the papers then were full of gunplay and sensationalism, as events admittedly warranted. A gangster named Looney trained his own son as a gunman, and when the son was shot down by rival gangsters, Looney ran on the front of the scandal sheet he published- which he used for purposes of extortion- a photograph of his dead son in his coffin. He accused the other, legitimate newspapers in town of hiring the murder."