Part 16 (1/2)

”All right, dear.” He looked up at me again. ”Actually, that would be yours truly. I buy the best and let the Tracker brothers have the rest. Business is as business does. May I give you my card, George?”

”Absolutely.”

He did. The card simply said CHARLES ”CHAZ” FRATI BUY SELL TRADE. I tucked it into my s.h.i.+rt pocket.

”If you know all those people and they know you, why aren't you over there instead of sitting at the bar with the new kid on the block?” I asked.

He looked surprised, then amused all over again. ”Was you born in a trunk and then threw off a train, cuz?”

”Just new in town. Haven't learned the ropes. Don't hold it against me.”

”Never would. They do business with me because I own half this town's motor courts, both downtown movie theaters and the drive-in, one of the banks, and all of the p.a.w.nshops in eastern and central Maine. But they don't eat with me or drink with me or invite me into their homes or their country club because I'm a member of the Tribe.”

”You lost me.”

”I'm a Jew, cuz.”

He saw my expression and grinned. ”You didn't know. Even when I wouldn't eat any of your lobster, you didn't know. I'm touched.”

”I'm just trying to figure out why it should make a difference,” I said.

He laughed as though this were the best joke he'd heard all year. ”Then you was born under a cabbage leaf instead of in a trunk.”

In the mirror, Frank Dunning was talking. Tony Tracker and his friends were listening with big grins on their faces. When they exploded into bull roars of laughter, I wondered if it had been the one about the three jigs stuck in the elevator or maybe something even more amusing and satiric-three Yids on a golf course, maybe.

Chaz saw me looking. ”Frank knows how to make a party go, all right. You know where he works? No, you're new in town, I forgot. Center Street Market. He's the head butcher. Also half-owner, although he don't advertise it. You know what? He's half the reason that place stands up and makes a profit. Draws the ladies like bees to honey.”

”Does he, now?”

”Yep, and the men like him, too. That's not always the case. Fellas don't always like a ladies' man.”

That made me think of my ex-wife's fierce Johnny Depp fixation.

”But it's not like the old days when he'd drink with em until closin, then play poker with em down at the freight depot until the crack of dawn. These days he'll have one beer-maybe two-and then he's out the door. You watch.”

It was a behavior pattern I knew about firsthand from Christy's sporadic efforts to control her booze intake rather than stop altogether. It would work for awhile, but sooner or later she always went off the deep end.

”Drinking problem?” I asked.

”Don't know about that, but he's sure got a temper problem.” He looked down at the tattoo on his forearm. ”Milly, you ever notice how many funny fellas have got a mean streak?”

Milly flipped her tail. Chaz looked at me solemnly. ”See? The women always know.” He snuck a Lobster Pickin' and shot his eyes comically from side to side. He was a very amusing fellow, and it never crossed my mind that he was anything other than what he claimed to be. But, as Chaz himself had implied, I was a bit on the naive side. Certainly for Derry. ”Don't tell Rabbi Snoresalot.”

”Your secret's safe with me.”

By the way the men at the Tracker table were leaning toward Frank, he had launched into another joke. He was the kind of man who talked a lot with his hands. They were big hands. It was easy to imagine one of them holding the haft of a Craftsman hammer.

”He ripped and roared something terrible back in high school,” Chaz said. ”You're looking at a guy who knows, because I went to the old County Consolidated with him. But I mostly kept out of his way. Suspensions left and right. Always for fighting. He was supposed to go to the University of Maine, but he got a girl pregnant and ended up getting married instead. After a year or two of it, she collected the baby and scrammed. Probably a smart idea, the way he was then. Frankie was the kind of guy, fighting the Germans or the j.a.ps probably would have been good for im-get all that mad out, you know. But he came up 4-F. I never heard why. Flat feet? Heart murmur? The high blood? No way of telling. But you probably don't want to hear all this old gossip.”

”I do,” I said. ”It's interesting.” It sure was. I'd come into The Lamplighter to wet my whistle and had stumbled into a gold mine instead. ”Have another Lobster Pickin'.”

”Twist my arm,” he said, and popped one into his mouth. He jerked a thumb at the mirror as he chewed. ”And why shouldn't I? Just look at those guys back there-half of em Catholics and still chowing up on burgers n BLTs n sausage subs. On Friday! Who can make sense of religion, cuz?”

”You got me,” I said. ”I'm a lapsed Methodist. Guess Mr. Dunning never got that college education, huh?”

”Nope, by the time his first wife done her midnight flit, he was gettin a graduate degree in cuttin meat, and he was good at it. Got into some more trouble-and yeah, drinkin was somewhat involved from what I heard, people gossip terrible, y'know, and a man who owns p.a.w.nshops hears it all-so Mr. Vollander, him who owned the market back in those days, he sat down and had a Dutch uncle talk with ole Frankie.” Chaz shook his head and picked another Pickin'. ”If Benny Vollander had ever known Frankie Dunning was gonna own half the place by the time that Korea s.h.i.+t was over, he probably would have had a brain hemorrhage. Good thing we can't see the future, isn't it?”

”That would complicate things, all right.”

Chaz was warming to his story, and when I told the waitress to bring another couple of beers, he didn't tell her no.

”Benny Vollander said Frankie was the best 'prentice butcher he'd ever had, but if he got in any more trouble with the cops-fightin if anyone farted sideways, in other words-he'd have to let him go. A word to the wise is sufficient, they say, and Frankie straightened up. Divorced that first wife of his on grounds of desertion after she was gone a year or two, then remarried not long after. The war was goin full steam by then and he could have had his pick of the ladies-he has that charm, you know, and most of the compet.i.tion was overseas, anyway-but he settled on Doris McKinney. Lovely girl she was.”

”And still is, I'm sure.”

”Absolutely, cuz. Pretty as a picture. They've got three or four kids. Nice family.” Chaz leaned close again. ”But Frankie still loses his temper now and then, and he must have lost it at her last spring, because she turned up at church with bruises on her face and a week later he was out the door. He's living in a rooming house as close as he could get to the old homestead. Hopin she'll take him back, I imagine. And sooner or later, she will. He's got that charming way of-whoops, lookie there, what'd I tell you? He's a gone cat.”

Dunning was getting up. The other men were bellowing for him to sit back down, but he was shaking his head and pointing to his watch. He tipped the last swallow of his beer down his throat, then bent and kissed one man's bald head. This brought a room-shaking roar of approval and Dunning surfed on it toward the door.

He slapped Chaz on the back as he went by and said, ”Keep that nose clean, Chazzy-it's too long to get dirty.”

Then he was gone. Chaz looked at me. He was giving me the cheerful chipmunk grin, but his eyes weren't smiling. ”Ain't he a card?”

”Sure,” I said.

9.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down, so I spent most of that weekend making notes about what I'd seen in Derry, what I'd done, and what I planned to do. They expanded into an explanation of how I'd gotten to Derry in the first place, and by Sunday I realized that I'd started a job that was too big for a pocket notebook and ballpoint pen. On Monday I went out and bought a portable typewriter. My intention had been to go to the local business supply store, but then I saw Chaz Frati's card on the kitchen table, and went there instead. It was on East Side Drive, a p.a.w.nshop almost as big as a department store. The three gold b.a.l.l.s were over the door, as was traditional, but there was something else, as well: a plaster mermaid flapping her flippy tail and winking one eye. This one, being out in public, was wearing a bra top. Frati himself was not in evidence, but I got a terrific Smith-Corona for twelve dollars. I told the clerk to tell Mr. Frati that George the real estate guy had been in.

”Happy to do it, sir. Would you like to leave your card?”