Lucky Stiff Read online

  If I hadn't known my uncle so well, I'd have wondered if he was hearing me. But, the same as how the river's current yields small clues if you pay attention, Uncle Guff gave me to understand that he was listening. Just the way he held his head, that told me.

  When fishing, your senses get sharper, and your mind unclutters as you focus on what might or might not be going on in the underwater world. People have written books about it. But just as you can't make someone understand exactly what swimming feels like until they do it, you can't make someone who's never held a fishing pole know that weird clarity that comes to you when you fish.

  I was feeling such clarity, and from it I sensed that Uncle Guff's and my relationship would be transformed before the day was over. Transformed how? That I didn't know.

  I opened Cokes for us and narrated everything, from my interview with Adele Hawley to my midnight encounter with her husband, through my Las Vegas investigation, to Duane and his arrest. I told Uncle Guff that Minerva LeBlanc had joined me on my quest for the truth. He knew very well who she was. I left out the sexy parts.

  I talked it all through methodically because, number one, my uncle had a right to know, detail by detail; and two, because I felt that the weight of the many facts I had gathered and the circumstances of their gathering would convince him of my commitment.

  All of it took so long that the sun began to touch the treeline of the western riverbank. Nothing was biting. I stopped talking and got out our sandwiches. We ate them, watching the day fade. I'd learned Uncle Guff was a patient man with a very long attention span. I felt it best to pause and let what I'd said soak in.

  Uncle Guff said, "Do you need to go ashore?"

  "Yeah." We pulled up our rigs, discarding the puffy, waterlogged worms. "Sorry, guys," I murmured to them. I pulled up the anchor and we motored to the shore of the little scrub-covered island. The mosquitoes were coming out. I helped Uncle Guff haul the boat out and we went separate ways into the bushes.

  We met up at the boat, slapping mosquitoes, and jumped in. Uncle Guff started the mighty Johnson outboard and steered us to a different place, southeast of Sugar Island, where I dropped the anchor. The mosquitoes thinned out away from shore, and to keep us even more comfortable a light breeze came up. It riffled the water. We put fresh worms on, cast out our rigs, and almost immediately began catching fish. The perch population of that part of the river really turned out for dinner right then. We reeled in fish, tossed them into our bucket, pinched worms in two, threaded them onto our hooks, and cast out again.

  Something heavy grabbed one of my hooks, and before I knew it my whole rig was gone, the line snapped. An adult carp, maybe. They can do that if they get ornery enough. I hastily tied on another rig and threw it out again. In an hour we'd caught a bucketful of perch, mostly, plus a few walleye. We released a couple of bullheads, a sucker, and some perch that were too small.

  There was still enough light to see by. The fish stopped biting. We'd hit that magical hour. Just to be sure, though, we put our lines back in. The fish may have been through biting, but we weren't finished talking.

  There wasn't any point in asking Uncle Guff how he felt about what I'd told him. He had made no sound as I talked. No shock. No anger. No dismay. I realized I wasn't afraid of what he might say or how he might feel. This last week had changed me. I thought about how Uncle Guff differed from my father in the greater measure of fierceness in his approach to life. Well, I now had that fierceness in me. That was what that hot-cold feeling was. I had uncovered a reservoir I never knew existed. It wasn't something I would need all the time. But when I did, it would be there. Blind Lonnie was right: I had more than I needed.

  The air took on its mossy evening smell. A cabin cruiser probably on its way to a dockside restaurant churned past us, politely keeping its wake low. A woman's laugh carried over the water. I was just able to tell that the skipper had put his running lights on.

  I said, "I need to find Bill Sechrist. I'm going to find him. I imagine, after hearing what I've told you, you'll want the bastard found as much as I do. Minerva LeBlanc is going to help me. I invite you to join in. If we got together and pooled our resources, I bet we could find him and get…and get…resolution. I have some very specific ideas on how to do it."

  My uncle said nothing.

  I went on, "Of course I could let this thing go. It's been so long. But something's happened to me, Uncle Guff. I guess I don't know if…The thing is, I'm no longer worried about what will become of me in life. I don't have very much concern for my own comfort anymore. There are lots of ways to get at truth, I see this now more than ever. You know?"

  "Mm-hmm." His eyes moved along his line as it left his rod and descended into the water.

  "Anyway, I know Sechrist is out there. I feel I owe that much to Daddy and Mom."

  He shifted on the bench seat of our little boat. Watching his posture, I saw I'd gotten through to him. His back was straight, his head, crowned by the white dome of his helmet, was erect. Yet he wasn't stiff. His expression was steady, and I saw something else too. There was a look of relief about him. As if he'd just come to a decision.

  He cleared his throat. "Lillian."

  "Yes, Uncle Guff." The sun had set, and the last of the day's light was blue and soft.

  "You won't find that man."

  The water darkened.

  "What?" I said.

  "He won't be found."

  Suddenly I felt disoriented. The breeze shifted. I searched the nearest shoreline—which island was it? But the world was receding into darkness. The red and white lights of the channel buoys emerged from the gloom, as the buoys themselves disappeared. Houses on either riverbank became pricks of light floating above the black water. The summer sky sent its deep blueness down onto everything, and everything was shadows.

  I said, "Tell me."

  His shoes scraped the bottom of the boat as he aligned his body squarely toward mine.

  His tone was neutral, his cadence deliberate. "Your dad came to me saying he needed money. He wouldn't tell me why he needed it. I had some I could've lent him, but I didn't do it. I thought he'd gotten into trouble, and I didn't want any part of it. When the…bar burned—I knew it was…"

  He couldn't bring himself to say the name. So I said, "Sechrist?"

  "Yeah. I knew it was him."

  "How?"

  "It's one of those things you know. I saw him sitting and talking with Marty—with your dad—the week before it happened. The way he talked. The way he moved his hands. I took Marty aside and told him I'd lend him the money after all, but he said no, he didn't need it now, he had it all worked out. He was mad that I didn't give it to him right away." My uncle took a long breath. "Wish I had. Well, when that man left town with the boy, I knew it for sure."

  "Did you talk to the police?"

  "They said they looked into it. They said there was no evidence. Until tonight, Lillian, I knew he'd done it, but I didn't know the rest."

  We held our fishing poles firmly, as if the fact of them, the realness of them, created safety for us.

  I felt a fish tug at my bait. A small perch, it felt like, the way it went tug-nibble-tug so fast. I let it eat, not setting the hook. The tip of my rod quivered. I saw Uncle Guff glance at it. I could barely see his face, but I thought he smiled very slightly.

  He went on, "I tried to put it out of my mind. I tried to accept…I prayed. But…" He paused. "It was no use."

  I waited, breathing the damp river air, feeling the fish below working at its dinner. Stars were coming out.

  My uncle said, "You know you resemble your father?" His voice was strong but not rough.

  I said, "I always hoped to grow up looking pretty like Mom."

  "I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about how you…trust people."

  I thought about that.

  "You and your dad were the same. Neither him nor you could ever understand how people really are. You never wanted to see it."

  My he
art began to race.

  Uncle Guff said, "I couldn't let it go. Three years it was, then. I figured the boy would be almost grown up."

  "Oh, my God."

  "I found that man."

  "Oh, God, Uncle Guff."

  "It wasn't hard. He wasn't hiding. I went to Florida and I got him to meet me. He didn't know who I was until it was too late."

  I could only see the outline of my uncle, as the night overtook us completely.

  He said, "I tried to tell myself I didn't mean to do it. But Lillian, I did. I took care of it. For all of them. And for you."

  I said, "You killed Bill Sechrist."

  "I killed him."

  "And you got away with it."

  Very clearly, my uncle's voice came to me out of the darkness, "He's a John Doe in a public cemetery in Florida. I guess nobody ever reported him missing. I rented a room for cash in a flophouse in Miami. He met me there."

  "Did you guys talk?"

  "Not much."

  "What did he say?"

  "Enough for me to know." He stopped with a tight sound in his throat.

  I knew I must ask now or never. "How did you do it?"

  Expressionlessly, he said, "With a piece of iron."

  I couldn't speak.

  "I took his wallet," Uncle Guff continued, "and threw it away later. I kept one thing to prove to you I'd done it. I thought you'd find it in my things, you know, when the time came. You might not know what it was. I brought it along today, thinking we might have this talk."

  He reached into his back pocket and pulled out something that jingled. He handed it over to me.

  It was a chain with a pair of metal dog tags on it. I couldn't read the stamped letters in the dark, but I didn't have to.

  Chapter 25

  Blind Lonnie was kicking off one of his specialties, an indigo version of "Younger Than Springtime," when I walked up. I waited until he finished, then set down my mandolin case on the sidewalk and clapped.

  "Lillian!" At the gladness in his voice I almost burst into tears. Listeners dropped money into his case and moved on.

  I held my voice steady. "How are you, Lonnie?"

  "Fine. So very fine this evening." His fingers wandered over his guitar, chording and plucking lightly. He tilted his broad, pleasant face toward me. "I just been warming up." His stout archtop Guild rested easy on his thigh.

  It was Friday night and Greektown was coming alive. I breathed it in: the food and spices, the toasty brown coffee, the cigarette smoke and the cologne and the aftershave.

  Lonnie's playing, and those familiar smells, cut through my numbness.

  "By the sound of you," he said, "you've had a long week."

  "Let's just play," I said.

  "Name one."

  "Ah, how about 'You're the Top'?" It was the first cheerful tune that came to me.

  "All right."

  We tuned, and Lonnie let me plink an intro. Then he threw down a rhythm and played some lead, ran the melody just once, then gave it the throttle, so to speak. He played it hard, with a driving beat, and people stopped to listen. He lifted his thigh and clomped his heavy shoe on the pavement. The people on the street were arrested by the joy pouring out of him, held there by the curious beauty of a familiar song moving from major to minor and back again. He handed it to me once in the middle, and I decided to drop the tempo and unleash some Mediterranean tremolo. That got him laughing. I boosted the tempo and gave it back to him. Lonnie's music challenged any indifference a passerby might be feeling that night.

  When we finished the song we sighed in unison.

  Next we played "Minor Swing," "It's Magic," and the goofy "Cleopatterer," a throwaway Jerome Kern song resuscitated on a recording by Joan Morris and William Bolcomb in Lonnie's collection. I sang a couple of verses, trying to mimic Morris's agile mezzo-soprano. But as had happened the last time I played with Lonnie, my music felt awkward. I felt a barrier between me and the kind of free improvisation I longed to master. Still, it was so pleasant being with Lonnie and listening to his sure playing.

  "Oh, Lonnie, I needed some fun," I said, feeling so much better.

  A quartet of middle-aged suburbanites on a double date passed by; Royal Oak, I judged, or Huntington Woods. Good clothes, but hairstyles that were just a bit too self-conscious. One stooped and dropped some change into Lonnie's case even though we were on break.

  "Thank you!" Lonnie called. "Next time, for you, it'll be free!"

  He played softly, moving around in G minor. "Your friend was by here," he said.

  "My friend?"

  "Your friend named Duane."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  Lonnie drummed his fingertips on the glossy top of his guitar in a scat rhythm. "Last week you told Lonnie you were going to Las Vegas."

  "Yeah, I did."

  "Well, did you win or lose?"

  I considered the question. I said, "Every loser is a winner in Las Vegas."

  Lonnie liked that.

  I said, "Well, the state of my life tonight is that I did what I intended to do in Las Vegas, and I found out what I wanted to know. Then I came home and found out the rest."

  "The answer was right at home?" Lonnie asked.

  "Essentially, yes. And like Dorothy, I had to leave home first to find it. Unlike Dorothy, my answer is a secret. A secret that I didn't know better than to pursue."

  Lonnie said, "Well, maybe that secret is not such a bad one. Think of the alternatives."

  We played more songs, and I gazed at the passing cars, and up to the black sky. I couldn't meet the eyes of any listeners who stopped.

  I played chords and thought about my parents. They had lived and they had died. They had gotten me off to a reasonably good start in life before it was over for them. What difference might Uncle Guff's vengeance have made to them? Where they out there somewhere? I didn't think so, had never believed they'd hung around in the ozone to look after me. I'd always had the feeling they'd moved on that night, moved firmly on without looking back. I was the one who'd needed to look back. Now that was over. Farewell, beloved parents. Someday I too hope to rest in peace.

  Lonnie and I continued to play, and my thoughts turned to Uncle Guff.

  As he and I stowed our rods and tackle that night, I asked, "Does Aunt Rosalie know?"

  "No," he grunted as he swung our bucket of fish onto the dock.

  He never would have told her. Aunt Rosalie's constitution, while not as delicate as she liked to think, could never withstand the possession of such knowledge.

  Now Uncle Guff and I had a secret from the whole world.

  I had avoided Duane in the last few days. How could he not guess it, seeing my face? How could this secret not be seen in me by everyone? Looking in the mirror, I could see it myself, there in the lines around my eyes, that terrible secret.

  Uncle Guff's hands were bloody.

  It was not innocent blood. Is that what he had protected me from, when he did what he did? My whole body went icy when I thought of that. I pictured myself, with my newfound fierceness, confronting an aging, stupid, selfish Bill Sechrist. What would I have done? How much was I capable of? Could I have tempted myself to pick up an iron bar? What excuses might I have made? Uncle Guff had spared me learning the answers.

  Sechrist hadn't intended for my parents to die. If my father hadn't agreed to give him the insurance money, my father and mother wouldn't have died. What, exactly, went wrong? That, I'd never know.

  Juanita Sechrist was marked for death days, weeks, months before that night. What of Duane? What was he marked for?

  What was I supposed to do now?

  I had taken Todd to the veterinarian on Thursday. He looked him over, checked his blood, and did an X-ray.

  "Todd here is all right," said the doctor at last. "He's just getting old." Todd looked from the doctor to me with his black shining eyes.

  I cried all the way home.

  Later that day Minerva summoned me to the Ritz. Of course she told me that her associ
ates were coming up empty on Bill Sechrist. I felt terribly uncomfortable. She wanted in on me.

  "What's the matter?" she said.

  "I feel—I feel tired."

  She encircled me with her arms. "Of course you do. What a strain all this is for you. I should get Tillie to come and look after you. She gives marvelous back rubs."

  I made no response. Shall I resign myself to her wants?

  "Well, how about a nice lunch?" she urged. "I'll order us something. Or we could go out somewhere. Me, I'm feeling better and better."

  She was catering to me. She wanted to appease and charm me, so that I would cooperate with her on the story she was determined to write. She tried to hide her determination from me, but the more she tried, the more I saw it.

  I couldn't prevent her from writing, from working. She was catching up with her life, for God's sake. She'd suffered so much—a year in a coma! Lingering disabilities!—all because of me. How could I begrudge her what she wanted from me?

  When Uncle Guff dies, I'll have to keep the secret all by myself.

  It occurred to me that I could cooperate with Minerva, up to that particular boundary. It was a boundary she need never discover. Maybe I could do that.

  .

  I played simple two-note chords and single-note rhythms behind Lonnie. I focused my attention on the music but continued to feel disappointed with my playing. My sound remained constricted somehow, as if my hands had stiffened as I stood there, thinking and playing and trying. Lonnie kicked off "Steeplechase," and I made an effort to concentrate, breathe, relax. It was a struggle.

  A startlingly familiar figure appeared before me in the small crowd of listeners that had gathered, as if someone had suddenly held a crazy mirror up to me.

  It was Duane, dressed in the jeans and T-shirt I'd lent him days ago. Could he possibly be as haunted as I was? But he smiled at me. He stood there lounging vertically, as it were, smoking one of his Marlboros. He looked tougher and happier than I'd ever seen him.