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Ketchum had called the cook and his son, in the logger’s hungover or fragile sobriety of the morning following Dot and May’s calamitous visit to Avellino. Of course Ketchum phoned them individually, but it was irritating how the woodsman spoke to each of them as if both Da
“For thirteen years, the cowboy believed you two were in Toronto -because Carl thought that was where Angel was from, right? You bet I’m right!” Ketchum bellowed.
Dear God, the cook was thinking in his beloved kitchen at Avellino, where he’d made himself a very strong espresso and was wondering why Ketchum couldn’t resist shouting to make himself heard. According to Ketchum, Dot and May had sizably less imagination than a pinch of coon shit; while “the gossip-feeding bitches” would definitely tell the cowboy what they knew, they wouldn’t agree with each other about how to tell him, or when. Dot would be in favor of waiting until the retired deputy did something particularly obnoxious, or he was behaving in a superior fashion, whereas May would want to insinuate that she knew something-until Carl was crazy to know what it was. In short, the old broads’ habits of mean-spirited manipulation might buy Da
On the phone to Da
I’m not Cookie, Da
Toronto wasn’t such a bad idea, the writer Da
After Ketchum ended his call to Da
“There will be no peace while that lunatic has his own phone, Daniel,” the cook said to his son. “And if he ever gets a fax machine, we will be doomed to be addressed in capital letters and exclamation points for the rest of our lives.”
“But what do you think of Ketchum’s idea, Dad? What about Toronto?” Da
“I don’t care where we go-I’m just sorry to have dragged you into this. I was only trying to keep you safe!” his father said; then the cook started to cry. “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Tony Angel said. “I love it here!”
“I know you do-I’m sorry, Pop. But we’ll be okay in Toronto -I know we will,” the writer told his father.
“I can’t ask Ketchum to kill Carl, Daniel-I just can’t do it,” the cook told his son.
“I know-I can’t ask him, either,” Da
“You do have a publisher in Canada, don’t you, Daniel?” his dad asked. For the first time, Da
“She-my Canadian publisher is a she,” Da
“Okay,” the cook said, but he was still crying.
I could leave Vermont today, the writer was thinking. Da
When Carl eventually encountered those bad old broads Dot and May, the cowboy would get to Vermont too late. With Armando and Mary DeSimone’s help, Da
Was it possible that Carl was as much of an imbecile as Ketchum had, at times, maintained? Did the cowboy possess no better detective skills than those of Ketchum’s much-maligned pinch of coon shit? Or was it simply that, throughout the retired deputy’s investigations in Vermont, the Angel name had not come up? In Brattleboro, evidently, the cowboy had not inquired about the cook and his son at The Book Cellar!
“You knew Cookie was in Vermont -you knew it all along, didn’t you, Ketchum?” Carl would one day ask the old logger.
“Cookie? Is he still around?” Ketchum said to the cowboy. “I wouldn’t have figured that a little fella with a limp like his would be so long-lasting-would you, Carl?”
“Keep it up, Ketchum-you just keep it up,” Carl said.
“Oh, I will-I’ll keep it up, all right,” Ketchum told the cowboy.
But Da
That night he’d driven no farther out the back road to Westminster West than the bottom of Barrett’s long, uphill driveway. He had backed his car onto the animal lover’s property. Da
It was a warm, windless night. Da
At forty-one, Da