The Regulators Read online

  I’m not going to have a car, anyway, he thinks. Going to have a motorcycle. No Japanese bike, either. Big damn old Harley-Davidson like the one Mr. Marinville keeps in his garage. American steel.

  He checks the rearview again and catches sight of something bright red up on Bear Street beyond the Josephson place—a van, it looks like, parked just beyond the southwestern corner of the intersection—and then swoops his Schwinn back across the street again, this time to 247, the Wyler place.

  Of the occupied houses on the street (242, the old Hobart place, is vacant), the Wyler place is the only one which even approaches seedy—it’s a small ranch-style home that could use a fresh coat of paint, and a fresh coat of seal on the driveway. There’s a sprinkler twirling on the lawn, but the grass is still showing the effects of the hot, dry weather in a way the other lawns on the street (including the lawn of the vacant Hobart house, actually) are not. There are yellow patches, small right now but spreading.

  She doesn’t know that water isn’t enough, Cary thinks, reaching into his canvas bag for another rolled-up Shopper. Her husband might’ve, but—

  He suddenly realizes that Mrs. Wyler (he guesses that widows are still called Mrs.) is standing inside the screen door, and something about seeing her there, hardly more than a silhouette, startles him badly. He wobbles on his bike for a moment, and when he throws the rolled-up paper his usually accurate aim is way off. The Shopper lands atop one of the shrubs flanking the front steps. He hates doing that, hates it, it’s like some stupid comedy show where the paperboy is always throwing the Daily Bugle onto the roof or into the rosebushes—har-har, paperboys with bad aim, wotta scream—and on a different day (or at a different house) he might have gone back to rectify the error . . . maybe even put the paper in the lady’s hand himself with a smile and a nod and a have a nice day. Not today, though. There’s something here he doesn’t like. Something about the way she’s standing inside the screen door, shoulders slumped and hands dangling, like a kid’s toy with the batteries pulled. And that’s maybe not all that’s out of kilter, either. He can’t see her well enough to be sure, but he thinks maybe Mrs. Wyler is naked from the waist up, that she’s standing there in her front hall wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Standing there and staring at him.

  If so, it’s not sexy. It’s creepy.

  The kid that stays with her, her nephew, that little weasel’s creepy, too. Seth Garland or Garin or something like that. He never talks, not even if you talk to him—hey, how you doin, you like it around here, you think the Indians’ll make it to the Series again—just looks at you with his mud-colored eyes. Looks at you the way Cary feels Mrs. Wyler, who is usually nice, is looking at him now. Like step into my parlor said the spider to the fly, like that. Her husband died last year (right around the time the Hobarts had that trouble and moved away, now that he thinks of it), and people say it wasn’t an accident. People say that Herb Wyler, who collected stamps and had once given Cary an old air rifle, committed suicide.

  Gooseflesh—somehow twice as scary on a day as hot as this one—ripples up his back and he banks back across the street after another cursory look into the rearview mirror. The red van is still up there near the corner of Bear and Poplar (some spiffy rig, the boy thinks), and this time there is a vehicle coming down the street, as well, a blue Acura Cary recognizes at once. It’s Mr. Jackson, the block’s other teacher. Not high school in his case, however; Mr. Jackson is actually Professor Jackson, or maybe it’s just Assistant Professor Jackson. He teaches at Ohio State, go you Buckeyes. The Jacksons live at 244, one up from the old Hobart place. It’s the nicest house on the block, a roomy Cape Cod with a high hedge on the downhill side and a high cedar stake fence on the uphill side, between them and the old veterinarian’s place.

  “Yo, Cary!” Peter Jackson says, pulling up beside him. He’s wearing faded jeans and a tee-shirt with a big yellow smile-face on it. HAVE A NICE DAY! Mr. Smiley-Smile is saying. “How’s it going, bad boy?”

  “Great, Mr. Jackson,” Cary says, smiling. He thinks of adding Except that I think Mrs. Wyler’s standing in her door back there with her shirt off and then doesn’t. “Everything’s super-cool.”

  “Are you starting any games yet?”

  “Only two so far, but that’s okay. I got a couple of innings last night, and I’ll probably get a couple more tonight. It’s really all I hoped for. But it’s Frankie Albertini’s last year in Legion, you know.” He holds out a rolled copy of the Shopper.

  “That’s right,” Peter says, taking it. “And next year it’s Monsieur Cary Ripton’s turn to howl at shortstop.”

  The boy laughs, tickled at the idea of standing out there at short in his Legion uniform and howling like a werewolf. “You teaching summer school again this year?”

  “Yep. Two classes. Historical Plays of Shakespeare, plus James Dickey and the New Southern Gothic. Either sound interesting to you?”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  Peter nods seriously. “Pass and you’ll never have to go to summer school, bad boy.” He taps the smile-face on his shirt. “They loosen up on the teacher dress-code a little come June, but summer school’s still a drag. Same as it ever was.” He drops the rolled-up Shopper onto the seat and pulls the Acura’s transmission lever down into Drive. “Don’t give yourself a heatstroke pedaling around the neighborhood with those papers.”

  “Nah. I think it’s gonna rain later, anyway. I keep hearing thunder off and on.”

  “That’s what they say on the—watch out!”

  A large furry shape bullets by, chasing a red disc. Cary leans his bike over toward Mr. Jackson’s car and is just feathered by Hannibal’s tail as the German shepherd chases after the Frisbee.

  “He’s the one you ought to warn about heatstroke,” Cary says.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Peter says, and drives slowly on.

  Cary watches Hannibal snatch the Frisbee off the sidewalk on the far side of the street and turn with it in his mouth. He has a jaunty bandanna tied around his neck and appears to be wearing a big old doggy grin.

  “Bring it back, Hannibal!” Jim Reed calls, and his twin brother, Dave, joins in: “Come on, Hannibal! Don’t be a dork! Fetch! Bring!”

  Hannibal stands in front of 246, across from the Wyler house, with the Frisbee in his mouth and his tail waving back and forth slowly. His grin appears to widen.

  The Reed twins live at 245, a house down from Mrs. Wyler. They are standing at the edge of their lawn (one dark, one light, both tall and handsome in cut-off tee-shirts and identical Eddie Bauer shorts), staring across the street at Hannibal. Behind them are a couple of girls. One is Susi Geller from next door. Pretty but not, you know, kabam. The other, a redhead with long cheerleader legs, is a different story. Her picture could be next to kabam in the dictionary. Cary doesn’t know her, but he would like to know her, her hopes and dreams and plans and fantasies. Especially the fantasies. Not in this life, he thinks. That’s mature pussy. She’s seventeen if she’s a day.

  “Aw, sugar!” Jim Reed says, then turns to his dark-haired sib. “You go get it this time.”

  “No way, it’ll be all spitty,” Dave Reed says. “Hannibal, be a good dog and bring that back here!”

  Hannibal stands on the sidewalk in front of Doc’s house, still grinning. Nyah-nyah, he says without having to say anything; it’s all in the grin and the regally serene sweep of the tail. Nyah-nyah, you’ve got girls and Eddie Bauer shorts, but I got your Frisbee and I’m leaking canine spit all over it, and in my opinion that makes me the Grand Wazoo.

  Cary reaches into his pocket and pulls out a bag of sunflower seeds—if you have to ride the bench, he has discovered, sunflower seeds help to pass the time. He has become quite adept at cracking them with his teeth and chewing the tasty centers even as he spits the hulls onto the cracked cement of the dugout floor with the machine-gun speed of a major leaguer.

  “I gotcha covered,” he calls back to the Reed twins, hoping the sweet little redhead w
ill be impressed by his animal-taming prowess, knowing this is a dream so foolish only a kid between his freshman and sophomore years in high school could possibly entertain it, but she looks so wonderful in those cuffed white shorts she’s wearing, oh great gosh a’mighty, and when did a little fantasy ever hurt a kid?

  He drops the bag of sunflower seeds down to dog level and crackles the cellophane. Hannibal comes at once, still with the red Frisbee caught in the center of his grin. Cary pours a few seeds into his palm. “Good, Hannibal,” he says. “These’re good. Sunflower seeds, loved by dogs all over the world. Try em. You’ll buy em.”

  Hannibal studies the seeds a moment longer, nostrils quivering delicately, then drops the Frisbee onto Poplar Street and vacuums them out of Cary’s palm. Quick as a flash, the boy bends, grabs the Frisbee (it is sorta spitty around the edges), and scales it back at Jim Reed. It’s a perfect, floating toss, one Jim is able to grab without moving a single step. And, oh God, oh Jesus, the redhead is applauding him, bouncing up and down next to Susi Geller, her boobs (small but delectable) kind of jiggling inside the halter she’s wearing. Oh thank you Lord, thank you so much, we now have enough jackoff material in our memory banks to last at least a week.

  Grinning, unaware that he will die both a virgin and a backup shortstop, Cary throws a Shopper onto the stoop of Tom Billingsley’s house (he can hear Doc’s mower yowling out back), and swoops across the street again toward the Reed house. Dave tosses the Frisbee to Susi Geller and then takes the Shopper when Cary flips it to him.

  “Thanks for getting the Frisbee back,” Dave says.

  “No problem.” He nods toward the redhead. “Who’s she?”

  Dave laughs, not unkindly. “Never mind, little man. Don’t even bother to ask.”

  Cary thinks of chasing it a little, then decides it would probably be better to quit while he’s ahead—he got the Frisbee, after all, and she applauded him, and the sight of her bouncing around in that little halter would have gotten an overcooked noodle hard. Surely that is enough for a summer afternoon as hot as this one.

  Above and behind them, at the top of the hill, the red van begins to move, creeping slowly up on the corner.

  “You coming to the game tonight?” Cary asks Dave Reed. “We got the Columbus Rebels. Should be good.”

  “You gonna play?”

  “I should get a couple of innings in the field and at least one ay-bee.”

  “Probably not, then,” Dave says, and yodels a laugh which makes Cary wince. The Reed twins look like young gods in their cut-off tees, he thinks, but when they open their mouths they bear a suspicious resemblance to the Hager Twins of Hee Haw.

  Cary glances down toward the house on the corner of Poplar and Hyacinth, across from the store. The last house on the left, as in the horror movie of the same name. There is no car in the driveway, but that means nothing; it could be in the garage.

  “He home?” he asks Dave, lifting his chin at 240.

  “Dunno,” Jim says, coming over. “But you hardly ever do, do you? That’s what makes him so weird. Half the time he leaves his damn car in the garage and cuts through the woods to Hyacinth. Probably takes the bus to wherever it is he goes.”

  “You scared of him?” Dave asks Cary. He’s not exactly taunting, but it’s close.

  “Shit, no,” Cary says, cool, looking at the redhead, wondering about how it would feel to have a package like her in his arms, all sleek and springy, maybe slipping him a little tongue as she snuggled up to his boner. Not in this life, Bub, he thinks again.

  He tosses the redhead a wave, is outwardly noncommittal and inwardly overjoyed when she returns it, then sails diagonally down the street toward 240 Poplar. He’ll deliver the Shopper onto the porch with his usual hard flip, and then—if the crazy ex-cop doesn’t come charging out the front door, foaming at the mouth and glaring at him with stoned PCP eyes, maybe waving his service pistol or a machete or something—Cary will go across to the E-Z Stop for a soda to celebrate another successful negotiation of his route: Anderson Avenue to Columbus Broad, Columbus Broad to Bear Street, Bear Street to Poplar Street. Then home to change into his uniform and off to the baseball wars.

  First, however, there is 240 Poplar to get behind him, home of the ex-cop who reputedly lost his job for beating a couple of innocent North Side kids to death because he thought they raped a little girl. Cary has no idea if there’s any truth to the story—he has never seen anything about it in the papers, certainly—but he has seen the ex-cop’s eyes, and there is something in them that he’s never seen in another pair of eyes, a vacancy that makes you want to look away just as soon as you can without appearing uncool.

  At the top of the hill, the red van—if that’s what it is, it’s so gaudy and customized it’s hard to tell—turns onto Poplar. It begins to pick up speed. The sound of its engine is a cadenced, silky whisper. And what, pray tell, is that chrome gadget on the roof?

  Johnny Marinville stops playing his guitar to watch the van slide past. He can’t see inside because the windows are polarized, but the thing on the roof looks like a chrome-plated radar dish, goddamned if it doesn’t. Has the CIA landed on Poplar Street? Across from him, Johnny sees Brad Josephson standing on his lawn, still holding his hose in one hand and his Shopper in the other. Brad is also gaping after the slow-moving van (is it a van, though? is it?), his expression a mixture of wonder and perplexity.

  Arrows of sun glint off the bright red paint and the chrome below the dark windows, arrows so bright they make Johnny wince.

  Next door to Johnny, David Carver is still washing his car. He’s enthusiastic, you have to give him that; he’s got that Chevy of his buried in soapsuds all the way to the wiper-blades.

  The red van rolls past him, humming and glinting.

  On the other side of the street, the Reed twins and their gal pals stop their front-lawn Frisbee game to look at the slow-rolling van. The kids make a rectangle; in the center of it sits Hannibal, panting happily and awaiting his next chance to snatch the Frisbee.

  Things are happening fast now, although no one on Poplar Street realizes it yet.

  In the distance, thunder rumbles.

  Cary Ripton barely notices the van in his rearview mirror, or the bright yellow Ryder truck which turns left from Hyacinth onto Poplar, pulling onto the tarmac of the E-Z Stop, where the Carver kids are still standing by Buster the red wagon and squabbling over whether Ralph will be pulled up the hill by his sister or not. Ralph has agreed to walk and keep silent about the magazine with Ethan Hawke on the cover, but only if his dear sister Margrit the Maggot gives him all of the candybar instead of just half.

  The kids break off their argument, noticing the white steam hissing out of the Ryder truck’s grille like dragon’s breath, but Cary Ripton pays zero attention to the Ryder truck’s problems. His attention is focused on one thing and one thing only: delivering the crazy ex-copper’s Shopper and then getting away unscathed. The ex-copper’s name is Collier Entragian, and he is the only person on the block with a NO TRESPASSING sign on his lawn. It’s small, it’s discreet, but it’s there.

  If he killed a couple of kids, how come he’s not in jail? Cary wonders, and not for the first time. He decides he doesn’t care. The ex-cop’s continued freedom isn’t his business on this sultry afternoon; survival is his business.

  With all this on his mind, it’s no wonder Cary doesn’t notice the Ryder truck with the steam pouring out of the grille, or the two kids who have momentarily ceased their complicated negotiations concerning the magazine, the 3 Musketeers bar, and the red wagon, or the van coming down the hill. He is concentrating on not becoming a psycho cop’s next victim, and this is ironic, since his fate is actually approaching from behind him.

  One of the van’s side windows begins to slide down.

  A shotgun barrel pokes out. It is an odd color, not quite silver, not quite gray. The twin muzzles look like the symbol for infinity colored black.

  Somewhere beyond the blazing sky, afterno
on thunder rumbles again.

  From the Columbus Dispatch, July 31st, 1994:

  CHAPTER 2

  1

  Steve Ames saw the shooting because of the two kids arguing beside the red wagon in front of the store. The girl looked seriously pissed at the little boy, and for one second Steve was sure she was going to give him a shove . . . which might send him sprawling across the wagon and in front of the truck. Running over a brat in a Bart Simpson shirt in central Ohio would certainly be the perfect end to this totally fucked-up day.

  As he stopped well short of them—better safe than sorry—he saw their attention had been diverted from whatever they were fighting about to the steam pouring out of his radiator. Beyond them, in the street, was a red van, maybe the brightest red van Steve had ever seen in his life. The paintjob wasn’t what attracted his eye, however. What did was the shiny chrome doodad on the van’s roof. It looked like some sort of futuristic radar dish. It was swinging back and forth in a short, repeating arc, too, the way that radar dishes did.

  There was a kid riding a bike on the far side of the street. The van slid over toward him, as if the driver (or someone inside) wanted to talk to him. The kid had no idea it was there; he had just taken a rolled-up newspaper from the sack hanging down on one hip and was cocking his arm back to throw it.