Part 34 (1/2)

”What's he talking about? All that c.r.a.p he wrote?”

Tom began looking out of his window. The car was creeping up Main Street in heavy traffic, and sunburned people in T-s.h.i.+rts and visored caps filled the sidewalks. They pa.s.sed Maple Street, which was wrong. Ahead he saw Tamarack Street, also wrong. ”It started with an S. Think of street names that could start with the letter S.”

”Suspicious Street.”

”s.h.i.+thole Street.”

”That sounded just like Buddy.”

”Street names!”

”Satyriasis Street. Scintillation Street. Sevens! Where I live!”

”I give up,” Fritz said.

”Season Street.”

”Ah,” Tom said, and kissed her.

”I got it?”

”Yes,” he said, and kissed her again. ”You're brilliant.”

”It was really Season Street?”

”It was Summers Street. Now all we have to do is find it.”

Fritz protested that he could not find a street in a town he had never seen before, and Tom said that it was a small town, all they had to do was drive around for a while and they would run right into it.

”What's this about, anyhow?”

”I'll tell you after we find the place. If I'm right, that is.”

”Don't you get the feeling that he's right?” Sarah said.

”No. I get the feeling I'm going to be sorry I'm doing this.”

”You'll be a hero, Fritz,” Tom said. ”Wait. Slow down.”

Tom had seen the newspaper editor walking up the sidewalk on his side of the street, and he put his head through the window. ”Mr. Hamilton! Mr. Hamilton!”

Chet Hamilton looked over his shoulder, then looked across the street. Tom called his name again and waved, and the editor saw him and waved back. ”How's the research going? You having a good summer?”

”Fine,” Tom yelled. ”Can you tell us how to find Summers Street?”

”Summers Street? Let's see. It's a little ways out of town. Just keep on going straight past town hall, take the first right, the second left, go over the railroad tracks, pa.s.s the Authentic Indian Settlement, and you'll run right into it. It's about four, five miles.” He looked at Tom curiously, as did a number of other people on the sidewalk. ”There's not much out there.”

Tom thanked him and pulled himself back into the car. ”You got that?” he asked Fritz.

”First right past the town hall, second left, railroad tracks, Indians,” Sarah said. ”What are we supposed to find, once we get there?”

”A whole lot of stolen property,” Tom said.

”What!” Fritz screamed. Fritz screamed.

”That's my boy,” Sarah said.

”What stolen property?” Fritz demanded to know.

Tom told him about the burglaries that had been taking place around Eagle Lake and other resort towns over the past few years. ”If you walk away from people's houses with that much stuff, you need a place to store it until you get it to whoever you know who buys it from you. I think they must have to go a long way to get rid of it, and they can't get away all that often, so they need a big place.”

They drove past the town hall and the police station, past the signs at the edge of town, and Sarah said, ”Here's the first right.”

Fritz hauled on the wheel, and turned into a two-lane blacktop road. At first they drove past tarpaper shacks on lawns littered with bald tires and junked cars. FREE PUPPIES FREE PUPPIES, read rain-streaked lettering on a crude sign. The shacks grew more widely s.p.a.ced, and the land stayed empty. Narrow trees stood at the edge of a muddy field. Far off, a stooped figure moved toward a farmhouse.

”Fritz, your uncle would never buy or rent anything up here-in fact, he enjoys turning down deals, even when they might be good for him, because of the way the local newspaper treated his family.”

”Well, here's the first left,” Sarah said.

”I see it,” Fritz grumbled, and turned into another two-lane blacktop road. Another sequence of muddy fields, these enclosed by collapsing wooden fences, rolled past them. They pa.s.sed a large white sign reading 2 MILES TO AUTHENTIC MILES TO AUTHENTIC I INDIAN SETTLEMENT.

”So what?” Fritz asked.

”Two years ago, the Redwing Holding Company rented a machine shop on Summers Street. I saw it in a column in the Eagle Lake Gazette Eagle Lake Gazette on my first day here.” on my first day here.”

”A machine shop?” Fritz said.

”It was an empty building-they probably rented it for a hundred dollars a month, or something like that.”

”Oh,” Sarah said.

Fritz groaned. He put his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. ”What am I-what are you trying-”

”It's Jerry,” Sarah said, once again arriving instantly at an insight.

”Jerry and his Mends probably didn't know that the paper listed things like that, but they wouldn't have cared even if they did. They knew no Redwing would ever see it. And on the other side, the name protected them. The police would never suspect the Redwing company of being involved in a bunch of crummy burglaries.”

A lonely set of train tracks crossed the road, coming from nowhere, going nowhere. The Lincoln b.u.mped over them.

Five hundred yards farther on in an empty field, shabby tepees circled a low windowless building of split logs with a sod roof. The hides of the tepees had split and fallen in, and tall yellow weeds grew in all the open places. No one said anything as they drove past.

After another hundred yards, a road intersected theirs. A green metal street sign, almost surreal in the emptiness, said SUMMERS STREET SUMMERS STREET. The road past the abandoned tourist stop was not identified in any way.

”So where is it?” Fritz asked.

Sarah pointed-far down to the right, almost invisible against a thick wall of trees, a building of concrete blocks painted brown stood at the far end of an empty parking lot.

Fritz turned into Summers Street, and drove reluctantly toward the building. ”But why would they do burglaries?” burglaries?”