Fatal Flaw Part 21

"How the h.e.l.l?"

"Because I knew her, Mr. Cutlip. I knew her before she was murdered. What happened to her was wrong and needs to be punished."

I saw something just then, something in those stern, dark eyes, just a flutter come in an out, like a snake's tongue slas.h.i.+ng in the air. I stared at him, and he stared at me, and the thing in those eyes got brighter and glowed until he turned away from me and looked at Beth.

"I thought this was all up and finished already," he wheezed out. "I thought you was going to take the plea and put the son of a b.i.t.c.h in jail so we can all rest easy?"

"You knew about the offer?" said Beth.

"Of course I knowed about the offer. I ain't blind out here in the desert. It's d.a.m.n generous, that offer, too d.a.m.n generous. I thought it was a done deal." So he, too, had been anxious for me to accept Troy Jefferson's offer. That was more than pa.s.sing strange. Didn't it make sense for Hailey's uncle to want the greatest measure of justice for the murderer of his niece? You would think. And wouldn't a trial with a punishment of death waiting at the end be more to his liking? You would think. But that's not how he was acting. Instead he said, "I don't know why the h.e.l.l you folks ain't snapping at it."

"Because it's been pulled," I said.

"Is that a fact?" he said, a smile growing. "I guess now they're going to go through with a trial and kill that sumb.i.t.c.h."

"Our client says he didn't do it," said Beth.

"I can't do nothing about the lies he tells you."

"The story I heard was that you were a gambler, Mr. Cutlip," I said.

"Is that the story?"

I looked around at the lovely courtyard. "You must have read the odds pretty d.a.m.n well to be able to afford this place."

"Oh, I could, yes I could, when I wasn't drinking, though that wasn't much time total, was it, Bobo?"

The attendant smiled and nodded stupidly.

"But that's not how I can afford this. Hailey paid for it. And she paid for Bobo, too. What with her being a lawyer, it wasn't too much a strain."

I looked around again at the high-toned surroundings. "I'd expect it would be a strain for anyone. And she called you frequently?"

"Sure she did. We was close, we had a bond. Hailey and me, we had history. It warn't no picnic raising her and her sister after the father died. Warn't no picnic at all. We had us some tough times, some times we both of us would rather forget. But we can't, can we? I mean, the past it just jumps out and bites you in the a.s.s whenever it gets itself real good and hungry, don't it?"

"What kind of past, Mr. Cutlip?"

"I don't know, the past. The past. Maybe it's best it's just forgot. What about my check, my insurance check? When's that coming?"

"You'll have to ask the insurance company, Mr. Cutlip. But I'm glad to see you're not so overwhelmed with grief that you can't keep your mind focused on the more important matters, like your check."

He stared at me. His lips quivered. "Why you son of a..." came out of his throat until it was choked back by an acute breathlessness and a rising flood of anger that filled those dark eyes until they swelled with something else, something else, and then I could see that the something else they swelled with was tears. Whatever salty anger he had been aiming at me disappeared as if dissolved by the tears, and he came apart in front of us, his once huge body shaking with sobs, gasping for breath, the back of his still-large hands trying to wipe his cheeks dry and failing. And out of his trembling lips came one sentence, over and over again.

"My Hailey. My Hailey. My Hailey."

Bobo leaned over the wheelchair and whispered in Cutlip's ear and Cutlip nodded before tossing Bobo a withering glance. Bobo jerked back and stood straight. Beth and I glanced at each other and rose from our chairs, about to leave Cutlip with his grief, when he raised a hand in the middle of his sobs to stop us from leaving. Slowly the jag subsided, the tears abated, his breaths slowed and then deepened, the loose flesh of his palms pulled away whatever wetness still lay on his face. He coughed loudly as he slowly gained control.

"I'm sorry," he said, waving one of those big hands as if to cover his face. "It happens sometimes when I think, when I remember. I'm sorry. Sit down. It's just it's...it's..." It appeared as if he were about to start again.

It seemed genuine, his grief, it seemed deep and painful and more than I ever would have expected, and it caught me off guard. I turned and frowned at Beth as we both sat again. She had taken off her sungla.s.ses and was staring at Uncle Larry with deep interest.

"How were you and Hailey related, Mr. Cutlip?" she asked.

"She was my sister's daughter," he said as he wiped again at his eyes. "But I didn't have nothing much to do with her until her daddy died in the accident."

"When was that?" asked Beth.

"They was eight, the girls, when it happened. After that, I could see they was having troubles. After that, I could see they was near to starving. Little eight-year-old girls with no one much taking care of them, raggedy dresses falling off their bones."

"What about the mother?"

"My sister Debra was a sweet, pretty thing, but she didn't have what it took to do it all by herself, and when her husband died, she sort of broke apart. They needed somebody with them. So I moved myself in. Never had a steady job before, never needed one or wanted one, could always cadge a drink or find a game with a couple of fish that would keep me going for a spell. But I moved myself in with Debra and the girls and found a job and for eight years I didn't miss so much as a day at the plant carving carca.s.ses, grinding meat, stuffing casings. Stood ankle deep in blood just so I could help those girls be raised."

I saw the image just then, Lawrence Cutlip as a younger man, tall, dark, broad, hip boots on, wading through a wilderness of blood as he hacked away at the carca.s.ses pa.s.sing by him on a conveyer belt of hooks, a wild man who had tamed himself so that two little girls who weren't his own could have a decent start. The man wading through the blood, I knew, was the uncle that Hailey had told me about, the uncle who was the hero of her life and whom she had put up in this luxury nursing home as a way of offering thanks. My opinion of him s.h.i.+fted as fast as the image came and I felt a sudden swell of affection for the old coot. His grief had been real, his sacrifice true, his gruff, hard exterior a way to hide the caramel inside.

"That must have been hard, doing all that for them," I said.

"It was, sure, but I ain't never regretted it. It was the rightest thing I ever done in my life."

"And looking around at this place, Hailey seemed to appreciate it."

"Them girls, they needed a firm hand in that house. Now, Roylynn, she was a good girl, a little on the quiet side with all her big ideas, but Hailey, she was trouble, more than her mother could ever hope to handle. There was something about her that was catnip. No man could resist her. Those boys couldn't walk close as five feet without losing control of they bowels and s.h.i.+ttin' themselves. They swarmed around her, like she was some kind of queen bee, and she let 'em. She let 'em. I tried to swat 'em away, but it wasn't they fault, it was just the way she was."

"Did she have boyfriends?"

"Course she did. She didn't tell me things like that, personal things, she wasn't one to kiss and tell, but sure she did, though they never lasted too d.a.m.n long. There was Grady Pritchett, who was older and I didn't like him hanging around the way he was. And there was that Jesse boy, but he was kilt out near the quarry when she was fifteen. She and Jesse knew each other since grade school, and they was more like friends, not boyfriend girlfriend, but still, that was hard on her. After that there was that Bronson boy, the football player, but it was a halfhearted thing at best. Turned out he was more interested in standing over his center than being with Hailey, if you know what I'm saying. And he wasn't even the quarterback. If you know what I'm saying."

Old Bobo, standing still behind Cutlip, snickered, his twisted teeth catching bits of yellow light.

"But I can't rightly say too much about that one. When the girls they was fifteen or so, I figured I was done, that they could make it on they own. Had some opportunity out here and I took it. I had a lot of drinking to catch up on and I did. Didn't I, Bobo?"

Bobo nodded. "Oh, yeah," he said. "It was party time."

"Bobo was just a kid when I first met him, a runaway, come to sin city to make good. I showed him around, helped him out. Now I got him this job."

"Mr. Cutlip's been good to me."

"That's my Bobo. He's from out your way, some beach town in Delaware, ain't that right, Bobo?"

Bobo smiled and nodded. "Dewey Beach."

"Sure," I said.

"Inland from there."

"But he ran into trouble and came out here and I sort of adopted him. I take care of him like I took care of them girls."

"You kept in touch with Hailey, Mr. Cutlip?" I asked.

"I did, yeah. For a while, right after I left, I lost touch, but then she came out and found me. After that, we kept in touch. We was closer than the normal uncle and niece, you know, me and Hailey."

"You ever visit her in Philadelphia?"

"Nah. I don't travel much no more. I like it right here in the desert. Nice and hot, nice and dry."

"Did she tell you about Guy Forrest?"

"Just that she had decided to marry. I told her it was a mistake. The Hailey I knew wasn't the marrying type. And when she told me they was fighting over the money she spent to put me in this place, I knew it would all go to h.e.l.l. But Hailey, you could never tell her nothing. I would have told her to stop the fighting, to forget about the money, but I needed someplace. You ever hear of beriberi? It tears you apart from the inside, paralyzes you piece by piece as you swell to twice your size."

"Beriberi?" said Beth. "Like sailors used to get?"

"That's it. Strange to catch it in the desert, ain't it? Nothing I could do, it came and ran through me and destroyed half my insides. I needed this place."

"There are plenty of places," said Beth.

"Yeah, I knowed. I was happy just out in that motel I was living at, but she said I deserved a place like this. Couldn't talk her out of it. She said I deserved it, and said she knew how to get it for me. And she said I deserved having Bobo to push me around, and that I figured was all right, since I had pushed him around long enough."

"Did she tell you about anyone she was seeing besides Guy?" I asked.

"There was someone else, she said. But she never told me who. Was it you, you Hebrew son of a b.i.t.c.h?"

"No," I said, stunned and trying not to show it.

"You sure?" The old man stared at me for a moment, and I thought again I saw that snakelike flutter.

"I'm sure."

"Good." He smiled and then he turned to Beth. "It could have been him. It could have been anyone. To know Hailey was to want her, and even when she was with someone, they was always someone else. But she didn't tell me things like that. Never did. From the time she was fifteen or something, she just closed right up and told me nothing."

"Did she ever mention anyone named Juan Gonzalez?" said Beth.

"Is that the other fella she was sleeping with? Is that the fella, some Mexican? Had she fallen that low?"

"I don't think that was the other man," I said, relieved that his suspicions were so wild as to alight on any name tossed out.

"I wouldn't put it past her," he said, staring at me again. "Never had no idea what kind of sc.u.m riffraff she'd end up with."

"In your conversations before her death," said Beth, "did she mention to you that she was scared of anyone?"

"No, Hailey wasn't scared of no one."

"Do you have any idea who might have wanted to do her any harm?"

"Nope, none, except she was aiming to marry one man and sleeping with another and that's a dangerous proposition in our part of country."

"In our part of the country, too," I said. I looked at Beth. She put her sungla.s.ses back on. I slapped my thighs and stood. "I think that's everything. Thank you for your help, Mr. Cutlip."

He lifted one of those big hands and pointed at me. "You said you was going make the man who did that to my Hailey pay."

"Yes I did."

"Don't be acting like a lawyer. You be true to your word there, boy."

"Count on it, Mr. Cutlip."

"I aim to."

I nodded at Bobo, standing behind the man with a smile fixed dully on his face, and started heading for the door when Beth asked a final question.

"That boy, Hailey's friend. You said he died out near some quarry?"

"Jesse was his name. Jesse Sterrett. That's right."

"How did it happen?"

"It's a mystery, ain't it? Don't n.o.body knowed what he was doing there. All they knowed is that somehow he cracked his head and fell into the water sittin' there at the bottom."

"They ever find out who killed him?"

"Coroner ruled it an accident."

"But no one believed that, did they?" said Beth.

"Don't know what no one believed. Coroner said he slipped and cracked his head before he fell off the ledge they all used to hang out on. That's what the coroner said, and how the h.e.l.l you all the way over here fifteen years later can think something different is a G.o.dd.a.m.n mystery to me."

"Just like that," she said. "Fell off a ledge just like that."

"That's what he said, good old Doc Robinson. Best-loved man in the county. Good doctor, bad cardplayer. Ruled it an accident."

"What did Hailey think happened?"

"She didn't much say," said Cutlip. "We done never talked about it. She wasn't much interested in legal stuff then."

"Only after. Thank you, Mr. Cutlip," said Beth. "You've been a big help."

24.

OUR PLANE didn't leave McCarran International until late that evening, we were red-eyeing our way back to Philly, so I took the scenic route west toward Lake Mead. The narrow two-lane road, with shoulders soft and gravelly, twisted through hills and canyons. The desert here rose on either side in great piles of singed rock. There was a sign, didn't leave McCarran International until late that evening, we were red-eyeing our way back to Philly, so I took the scenic route west toward Lake Mead. The narrow two-lane road, with shoulders soft and gravelly, twisted through hills and canyons. The desert here rose on either side in great piles of singed rock. There was a sign, LAST STOP Ba.s.s LAST STOP Ba.s.s ' 'N' GAS GAS, there was a sign warning of the danger in an abandoned mine, and then just the road. In the desert, with the top of our convertible down and the wind rus.h.i.+ng over our heads, the world seemed still raw and the Strip far, far away, even though at night its gaudy lights would fill the sky like a hundred thousand beacons.

Beth hadn't said much during the drive, and that had been fine by me. There was much I had to think about, the young Hailey with tattered dresses hanging from her bones, the uncle exiling himself to the slaughterhouse to keep his nieces and sister fed, the boyfriend dead in the quarry, Hailey's subsequent tepid relations.h.i.+p with the football player who preferred showering with his teammates to pitching woo with his girl, the long, improbable haul through college and law school, only to end at the wrong end of a gun. It all seemed to amplify the tragedy of Hailey's story, turning the bare bones of what she had told me into some sad Gothic opera.

Beside me Beth shuddered, as if she were thinking through the same things, and then she chuckled.