‘We should be there sometime this afternoon,’ she said. ‘Phil, you’ll love it. It’s the most beautiful spot in the world. These big pines, and this finger of land that juts out into the lake. I hope you swim.’
‘Do fish swim?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but does Phil Colby?’
‘What kind of town is there?’ I asked. ‘Or is there?’
‘Sullivan’s Corners,’ she said. ‘A few miles from the Point. Small. Quaint.’
‘Any big cities nearby?’
‘Davistown,’ she said.
‘Never heard of it.’
‘It’s big.’
She told me all about Davistown, and all about Sullivan’s Corners and Sullivan’s Point and her travelogue took us right to lunch-time. We pulled into a Howard Johnson’s, had a leisurely snack, and then hit the highway again. We drove steadily, and we talked, and we laughed, and it was beginning to feel like a vacation, if you know what I mean. Eventually we began picking up the Davistown signs, and then the Sullivan’s Corners signs; twenty miles to Sullivan’s Corners, ten miles, five miles, and then we passed a big sign saying ‘You are entering SULLIVAN’S CORNERS’, and about a half mile past that, we picked up the state trooper. It was Ann who first spotted him.
‘Darling,’ she crooned, ‘I don’t want to upset you, but the minions of the law are on our trail.’
I looked into the rearview mirror, just catching a glimpse of the blue uniform and the motorcycle. The trooper was riding some hundred yards behind us, away over on my right rear fender where he hoped my mirror wouldn’t pick him up. I glanced at the speedometer.
‘I’m only doing forty,’ I said to Ann.
The trooper pulled up and got off his bike. He was a tall, muscular fellow with a ruddy brown complexion. He wore sunglasses, and when he got off the bike he stretched and yawned and then casually strolled over to where I was sitting behind the wheel.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hello.’
‘In a hurry?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘No? Maximum speed in this state is fifty-five miles per hour. You were tearing along at close to sixty-five.’
For a moment, I couldn’t believe I’d heard him correctly. I looked at his smiling face and I tried to read the eyes behind the tinted glasses.
‘You’re kidding,’ I said at last.
‘Am I?’ and he reached for the pinch pad.
‘I’m a cop,’ I told him. ‘Besides, I was only doing forty.’
‘You were doing sixty-five, and I don’t care if you’re a judge,’ he said. ‘Let me have your license and registration.’
‘Look, officer...’
‘Let me have your license and registration!’ he repeated, more sharply this time.
I dug into my wallet, making sure he saw the detective shield pinned to the inside leather, and then I handed him my license together with my acetate-encased police identification card and a card telling him I belonged to the Police Benevolent Association.
‘Never mind the rest of the garbage,’ he told me. ‘I just want the license and registration.’
‘The rest of the garbage is part of the license,’ I said. ‘Maybe you’d better look at it.’
He glanced at it. ‘So you’re a Detective/3rd Grade,’ he said. ‘So what? In this state, we don’t allow nobody to speed. Not even detectives from across the river.’ He handed my cards back, unfolded my license and then said, ‘Where’s the registration?’
Up until that point, I still had some hope of getting out of this with a small lecture about law-enforcement officers speeding-which I hadn’t been doing in the first place. When he mentioned the registration to me, though, it suddenly occurred to me that O’Hare and I had never even discussed it. Expecting the worst, I thumbed open the glove compartment.
‘I borrowed this car,’ I said. ‘I hope the owner keeps his registration in the glove compartment.’
‘You borrowed it, huh?’ the trooper said.
‘Yes. From another detective.’
‘The registration in there?’
I was wading through the pile of junk O’Hare kept in the glove compartment. There was a flashlight, a map of New Hampshire, a booklet advising him to how to keep up the maintenance on his car, several charge carbons from his gas station and — of all things things — a .32.
‘What’s that?’ the trooper said.
‘Huh?’ I said, knowing very well he wasn’t referring to the map of New Hampshire.
‘You got a license for that pistol?’
‘I’m a peace officer,’ I said. ‘You know damn well I don’t need a license to—’
‘Whose gun is that?’
‘Probably O’Hare’s. He’s the man I borrowed the car from.’
‘Did you find the registration?’
‘No,’ I said dully.
‘You’d better come along with me,’ the trooper said.
‘Why?’
‘How do I know this isn’t a stolen car? How do I know those credentials you showed me aren’t phony?’
‘I showed you my tin,’ I said. ‘I sure as hell didn’t buy that badge in the five and ten.’
‘You might have stolen that, too,’ the trooper said. ‘Follow me.’
‘Listen...’
‘I hate to hurl clichés,’ the trooper said, smiling, ‘but you can tell it to the judge.’ Then he stalked back to his bike as if he were ready to enter an International Motorcycle Competition.
‘Damn idiot,’ I said.
‘You were doing forty,’ Ann said. ‘I’m your witness.’
‘Sure, but whose word is the judge going to take? Mine or a cop’s?’
‘But darling,’ Ann said, ‘you are a cop.’
‘And why the hell didn’t O’Hare leave the registration with me? Of all the stupid.
‘Our friend is taking off,’ Ann said.
Chapter two
The justice of the peace was a man named Handy. He was a tall man in his early fifties with a magnificent mane of snow-white hair. He had pale blue eyes and a Cupid’s bow mouth, and he held court in a log cabin about two hundred yards off the main highway. He undoubtedly lived in the cabin, and when we arrived he acted as if he’d invited us to his home for a cup of afternoon tea.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, and then to the trooper, ‘Afternoon, Fred.’
Fred pulled off his gloves and his sunglasses and then followed us into the cabin. There was an old fireplace at one end of the room, around which George Washington and his troops had undoubtedly heated rum toddies. The j.p.’s credentials hung over the fireplace together with a Civil War saber that immediately put the Washington fantasy to rout. There was a long sofa and several easy chairs and an upright piano and a Grant Wood painting. A cut-glass cigarette box and ash tray rested on a coffee table before the sofa.
‘Justice Handy,’ Fred said, ‘got an interesting one this time.’
‘Sit down,’ Handy said. ‘You and your wife make yourselves at home.’
‘We’re not married,’ Ann said, and all at once all the precinct jokes about the Mann Act came into very vivid focus.
‘Oh?’ Fred said. Without the sunglasses covering them, his eyes were a frigid grey.
‘What’s the charge?’ Handy asked, and somehow his voice had grown sterner now that he knew Ann and I were not married.
‘Speeding,’ Fred said. ‘Driving a vehicle without a registration. Impersonating a police officer. Violation of the Mann—’
‘Now just hold it a minute,’ I said heatedly. ‘Let’s just hold it a goddamn minute!’
‘Is something wrong, son?’ Handy asked.
‘Just about everything is,’ I said. ‘You’d better inform your motorcycle champ about the consequences of false arrest.’