Holly

July 27, 2021

At quarter to eleven in the morning, the universe throws Holly a rope.

She’s in her office (all furniture reassuringly in place), filling out an insurance company payment invoice. Every time she sees a jolly insurance ad on TV—the Aflac duck, Flo the Progressive lady, Doug and his emu—Holly mutes the sound. Insurance ads are a laugh a minute. The companies themselves, not so much. You can save them a quarter of a million dollars on a bogus claim and still have to bill them two, three, sometimes four times before you get paid. When filling out invoices of this sort, she often thinks of a line from some old folk song: a handful of gimme and a mouthful of much obliged.

The phone rings just as she’s finishing the last few lines of the poopy three-page form. “Finders Keepers, Holly Gibney speaking, how can I help?”

“Hi, Ms. Gibney, this is Emilio Herrera. From Jet Mart? We talked yesterday.”

“Yes we did.” Holly sits up straight, the invoice forgotten.

“You asked me if any other of my regulars ever just stopped showing up.”

“And have you thought of someone, Mr. Herrera?”

“Well, maybe. Last night before I went to bed I was switching around the channels for something to watch while I waited for my melatonin to work, and The Big Lebowski was on AMC. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen it.”

“I have,” Holly says. Three times, in fact.

“Anyway, that made me think of the bowling guy. He used to come in all the time. He’d buy snacks and soda and sometimes Rizla papers. Nice kid—seemed like a kid to me, I’m pushing sixty—but his picture could have been in the dictionary next to stoner.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t really remember. Cory, maybe? Cameron? This was five years ago at least, maybe more.”

“What did he look like?”

“Skinny. Long blond hair. He kept it tied back, probably because he drove a moped. Not a motorcycle and not really a scooter, just a kind of bike with a motor. The new ones are electric, but this one ran on gasoline.”

“I know what they are.”

“And it was noisy. I don’t know if something was wrong with the motor or if that was just the way mopeds like that are supposed to sound, but it was really noisy, blak-blak-blak, like that. And covered with stickers, silly stuff like NUKE THE GAY WHALES and I DO WHATEVER THE LITTLE VOICES TELL ME TO. Also Grateful Dead stickers. He was a Deadhead kind of guy. Used to come in just about every weeknight in warm weather—you know, April to October. Sometimes even November. We used to talk about movies. He always got the same thing. Two or three candybars and a P-Co’. Sometimes rolling papers.”

“What’s a P-Co’?”

“PeruCola. Kind of like Jolt. Do you remember Jolt?”

Holly certainly does. For awhile in the eighties, she was a Jolt fiend. “Their motto was ‘all the sugar and twice the caffeine.’ ”

“That’s the one. P-Co’ was all the sugar and about nine times the caffeine. I think he’d go up to Drive-In Rock and watch the movies at Magic City—you can see the screen really well from up there, he said—”

“I’ve been there, and you can.” Holly is excited now. She turns over the pain-in-the-butt insurance payment invoice and scribbles Cory or Cameron, moped w/ funny stickers.

“He said he only went up on weeknights, because there were too many kids on the weekends, goofing off and grab-assing around. A nice enough young fellow, but a stoner. Did I already say that?”

“You did, but that’s okay. Go on.” She scribbles Drive-In Rock and then RED BANK AVENUE!!!

“So I said what’s the point when there’s no sound and he said—I got a kick out of this—he said ‘It doesn’t matter, I know all the dialogue.’ Which was probably true of the movies they show there. Oldies, you know. And actually there are movies where I know all the dialogue.”

“Really?” Of course really. Holly knows long stretches from at least sixty movies herself. Maybe a hundred.

“Yes. You know, you’re gonna need a bigger boat, get busy living or get busy dying, stuff like that.”

“You can’t handle the truth,” Holly can’t resist saying.

“Right, that’s a famous one. Tell you something, Ms. Gibney, in my business the customer is always right. Unless it’s kids wanting cigarettes or beer, that is. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking, does it?”

“Of course not.”

“And what I thought about this kid is that he was speedballing. I think he’d go up there, smoke some dope to get high, then chug a can of P-Co’ to put chrome on it. They quit making that soda two or three years ago, and I’m not surprised. I tried a can of it once and just jittered. Anyway, that guy was a regular. Like clockwork. He’d get off his shift, drive his blatty little moped here, buy his candy and soda, sometimes rolling papers, talk a little, then off he went.”

“And when did he stop coming in?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been working at that Jet Mart a long time. Seen em come and seen em go. But Trump was running for president, I remember that because we joked about it. Seems like the joke was on us.” He pauses, perhaps thinking over what he just said. “But if you voted for him, I’m only kidding.”

Like fun you were, Holly thinks. “I voted for Clinton. You called him the bowling guy?”

“Sure, because he worked at the Strike Em Out. It was right on his shirt.”

They talk a little more, but Herrera can’t remember anything else of value. It shouldn’t be hard to find out the bowling guy’s name, though. Holly cautions herself that it may not mean anything. And yet… same store, same street, no car, about the same time of evening when Bonnie Rae went missing. And Drive-In Rock, where Holly herself was sitting after finding Bonnie’s earring.

She checks her iPad and sees that Strike Em Out Lanes opens at eleven AM. They’ll know the bowling guy’s name. She heads for the door, then gets another idea. Imani McGuire didn’t allow her to record their interview, but Holly recapped the high points on her phone afterward. She opens that recording now, but even as she’s about to push play, the name of Imani’s husband comes to her. Yard, impound yard.

She finds the number for the city impound and asks if Mr. Yardley McGuire is there.

“Speaking.”

“Mr. McGuire, my name is Holly Gibney. I spoke with your wife yesterday—”

“About Ellen,” he says. “Immi says you had a good talk. Don’t suppose you tracked Ellen down, did you?”

“No, but I may have stumbled across someone else who went missing a few years earlier. Might not be connected, but it could be. He drove a moped that was covered with stickers. One of them said NUKE THE GAY WHALES. Another one might have been a Grateful Dea—”

“Oh sure, I remember that moped,” Yard McGuire says. “It was here for a year at least, maybe longer. Jerry Holt finally took it home and gave it to his middle kid, who’d been yelling for one. But he tuned it up first, because—”

“Because it was noisy. Went blak-blak-blak.”

Yard laughs. “Yuh, pretty much just like that.”

“Where was it found? Or abandoned?”

“Gee, no idea. Jerry might know. And listen, Miz Gibney, it wasn’t like Jer stoled it, all right? The license plate was gone, and if there was a registration number, nobody bothered to run it through DMV.org. Not for a little kettle-burner like that.”

Holly gets Jerry Holt’s number, thanks Yardley, and tells him to give her best to Imani. Then she calls Holt. After three rings she gets voicemail, leaves a message, and asks him to call back. Then she walks around her office, running her hands through her hair until it looks like a haystack after a windstorm. Even without knowing the bowling guy’s name she’s ninety per cent sure that he’s another victim of the person she’s coming to think of as the Red Bank Predator. It’s unlikely that the predator is an old white lady with sciatica, but possibly the old lady is covering up for someone? Cleaning up after someone? Maybe even her son? God knows such things have happened before. Holly recently read a story about an honor killing where an old lady held her daughter-in-law’s legs so her outraged son could behead her. The family that slays together stays together—that type of thing.

She thinks of calling Pete. She even thinks of calling Isabelle Jaynes at the cop shop. But she doesn’t think seriously of calling either one. She wants to roll this herself.

The lot of Strike Em Out Lanes is big but sparsely populated. Holly parks and as she’s opening her door, her phone rings. It’s Jerry Holt.

“Sure, I remember that bike. When nobody came for it after a year—no, more like sixteen months—I gave it to my kid. Does someone want it back?”

“No, nothing like that. I just—”

“Good, because Greg wrecked it doing jumps in a gravel pit near here. Damn idiot broke his arm. My wife gave me sixteen kinds of hell.”

“I just want to know where it was found. Do you happen to know that?”

“Oh yeah,” Holt says. “It was on the worksheet. Deerfield Park. In that overgrown part they call the Thickets.”

“Near Red Bank Avenue,” Holly says. More to herself than to Jerry Holt.

“That’s right. One of the groundskeepers found it.”

There are two signs on the bowling alley doors. One says OPEN. The other says NO MASK? NO PROBLEM! Holly pulls hers up and goes in. The foyer is decorated with dozens of framed group shots of children. Above them is a sign reading KIDS BOWL FOR HEALTH! Holly can think of healthier activities—swimming, running, volleyball—but she supposes every little bit helps.

There are twenty lanes, all but three dark. The sound of the few balls is loud. The crash of the pins when the balls hit is even louder, like the part of a Hollywood action movie when a disposable character cuts the red wire instead of the blue one.

A lanky longhair in an orange-striped Strike Em Out shirt is at the counter, pulling an early afternoon beer for one of the bowlers. For a wild moment Holly thinks she’s found Cory-or-Cameron—alive, well, and undisappeared—but when he turns to her, she sees the nametag pinned to his shirt says DARREN.

“Want shoes? What size?”

“No thank you. My name is Holly Gibney. I’m a private investigator—”

His eyes widen. “Shut up!”

Holly takes this as an expression of surprised respect rather than an actual command and pushes on. “I’m looking for information about someone who used to work here a few years ago. A young man. His name might have been—”

“Can’t help you. I’ve only been here since June. Summer job. You want to talk to Althea Haverty. Owns the place. She’s in the office.” He points.

Holly walks to the office as more pins explode and a woman gives an exultant whoop. She knocks. Someone inside says “Yow,” which Holly takes as an invitation and opens the door. She would have opened it even if the person inside had said go away. She’s chasing the case, and when she’s doing that her natural timidity disappears.

Althea Haverty is an extremely large woman who sits behind a cluttered desk like a meditating lady Buddha. She’s got a handful of papers in one hand. A laptop is open in front of her. Holly’s pretty sure from the sour way she’s looking at the papers that they’re bills.

“What’s the problem? Pinsetter on Eleven shit the bed again? I told Darren to shut that lane down until Brock comes to fix it. I swear that kid has popcorn for brains.”

“I didn’t come to bowl.”

Holly introduces herself and explains what she wants. Althea listens and puts her papers aside. “You’re talking about Cary Dressler. He was the best worker I ever had in here since my son moved to California. Got along with the customers and had a way of cutting off the day-drinkers when they’d had enough without getting them all pissed off. And scheduling? A champ! He was a doper, but these days aren’t they all? And it never got in the way. Never late, never called in sick. Then one day he’s just gone. Boom. Like that. You’re looking for him, huh?”

“Yes.” Penny Dahl is the client, but Holly is now looking for all of them. The missing. What they call desaparecidos in South America.

“Well, it ain’t his folks paying your bills, I don’t have to be a detective to know that.” Althea puts her hands behind her head and stretches, jutting out a truly mammoth bosom that shades half her desk.

“Why do you say that?”

“He came here from some little shitpot town in Minnesota. Stepfather tuned up on him a lot, he said. Mother turned a blind eye. He finally got sick of it and put on his traveling shoes. No sob story, Cary was matter-of-fact about it. Good attitude. All that young man cared about was movies and working here. Plus dope, probably, but I’m the original don’t-ask-don’t-tell mama. Besides, it was just the bud. Do you think something happened to him? Something bad?”

“I think it’s possible. Can you help me pinpoint when he left? I talked to a Jet Mart clerk where Cary used to stop on his way home… to some apartment, I’m guessing… but the only thing the clerk seemed sure of is that it happened around the time when Trump was running for president the first time.”

“Fucking Democrats fucking stole his second term, pardon my Spanglish. Wait a minute, wait a minute.” She opens the top drawer of her desk and begins pawing through it. “I hate to think something happened to Cary, the league situation just isn’t the same without him.”

Rummage, rummage, rummage.

“I mean, fucking Covid has killed a lot of the leagues—it would be ridiculous if it wasn’t also killing my business—but without Cary here the matches and seedings were getting jumbled up even before Covid hit. Cary was just so fucking good at… ah. I think this is it.”

She plugs a flash drive into her laptop, puts on a pair of glasses, hunts and pecks, shakes her head, hunts and pecks some more. Holly has to restrain herself from going around the desk and finding whatever the woman’s looking for herself.

Althea peers at the screen. Reflected in her spectacles Holly sees what looks like a spreadsheet. She says, “Okay. Cary started here in 2012. Too young to serve alcohol until his birthday, but I hired him anyway. Glad I did. He got his last paycheck on September 4th, 2015. Six years ago, almost! Time sure does zip by, doesn’t it? Then he was gone.” She whips off her glasses and looks at Holly. “My husband had to take over for him. That was before Alfie had his heart attack.”

“Do you have a picture of Cary?”

“Come out to the Bowlaroo with me.”

The Bowlaroo turns out to be a restaurant where a tired-looking woman (masked, Holly’s glad to see) is serving burgers and beer to a couple of bowlers. The tile walls are decorated with more framed photos. A couple feature smiling men holding up score sheets showing Xs all the way across. Above these is a sign reading 300 CLUB! Most of the others are groups of bowlers wearing league shirts.

“Look at this place,” Althea laments, gesturing at the empty booths, tables, and counter stools. “This used to be a good business, Holly. If it goes on like this, I’ll be out of business. All because of some fake flu. If the fucking Democrats hadn’t stolen the election… okay, here he is. That’s Cary, right up front.”

She has stopped near a photo of seven older men—white hair on four, chrome-domes on three—and one young man with his long blond hair tied back. The young man and one of the older guys are holding up a trophy. Underneath it says GOLDEN OLDIES WINTER LEAGUE CHAMPS 2014–2015.

“Can I take a picture?” Holly asks, already raising her phone.

“Be my guest.”

Holly snaps it.

“He’s in a couple others, too. Check this one out.”

In the one she’s pointing at, Cary is standing with six smiling women, two of whom look like they could eat young Mr. Dressler with a spoon. According to their shirts, they are the Hot Witches, champs of the Ladies Division in 2014.

“They wanted to call themselves the Hot Bitches, but Alfie put his foot down on that. And here he is with one of the Beer League teams. They bowl for a case of Bud.”

Holly takes more pictures.

“Cary’d roll with any league team that showed up a man or woman short. If it was during his shift, that was. He worked from eleven in the morning, when we open, to seven at night. He was very popular, and a good bowler—200 average—but he’d pull back when he was subbing. He fit in with any team, but these guys were his favorites and they were the ones he rolled in with most often.” She has led Holly back to the Golden Oldies. “Because they played in the afternoons, when this place was pretty dead even before fucking Covid. The Oldies could do afternoons because they were retired, but I think Cary had something to do with it, too. Maybe a lot.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because after he stopped working here, the Oldies switched to Monday nights. We had a slot and they took it.”

“Is it possible that Cary might have talked to any of those guys about his plans for quitting and maybe leaving town?”

“I guess he might’ve. Anything’s possible.”

“Do they still play? I mean, the men in this picture?”

“Some do, but at least a couple are gone.” She taps a smiling white-haired man who’s holding a red marbled ball that looks custom. “Roddy Harris still comes most weeks, but these days he just watches. Bad hips, he says, and arthritis in his hands. This one is dead… this one I think had a stroke… but this guy still plays.” She taps the man holding up the trophy with Cary. “In fact, he’s the team captain. Was then, is now. Hugh Clippard’s his name. If you want to talk to him, I can give you his address. We’ve got the addresses of all the team members, in case they win something. Or if there’s a complaint.”

“Do you get a lot of those?”

“Girlfriend, you’d be surprised. Competition gets pretty hot, especially in the winter leagues. I remember a match between the Witches and the Alley Sallies that ended in a fight. Punching, scratching, hair-pulling, beer spilled everywhere, what a mess. All about a little bitty line foul. It was Cary who got them broken up. He was good at that, too. Gee, I miss him.”

“I would like Mr. Clippard’s address. And his phone number, if you have it.”

“I do.”

She follows Althea Haverty back to her office. Holly doesn’t for a minute believe Cary Dressler told any of the Oldies about his plans to leave, because she doesn’t think he had such plans. His plans were changed, perhaps permanently. But if an old woman cleaned out Ellen’s trailer, it’s possible that one of these old men knew her. Might even be related to her, either by blood or marriage. Because the Red Bank Avenue Predator isn’t picking his victims at random, or not entirely at random. He knew Ellen was on her own. He knew Cary was on his own. He might have known Pete Steinman’s mother had a booze problem. He knew Bonnie had recently broken up with her boyfriend, her father was out of the picture, and Bonnie’s relationship with her mother was strained. In other words, the Predator had information. Was picking his targets.

Holly is better than she used to be—more grounded, more emotionally stable, less prone to self-blame—but she still suffers from low self-esteem and insecurity. These are character flaws, but the irony is this: they make her a better detective. She’s perfectly aware that her suppositions about the case could be entirely wrong, but her gut tells her they’re right. She doesn’t want to know if Cary confided in one of the Golden Oldies about his plans to leave the city; she wants to know if any of them know or may even be married to a woman who suffers from sciatica. Unlikely, but as Muskie used to say to Deputy Dawg on the old cartoon show, “It’s possible, it’s possible.”

“Here you go,” Althea says, and hands Holly a sheet of notepaper. Holly folds it into one of the flap pockets of her cargo pants.

“Anything else you can tell me about Cary, Ms. Haverty?”

Althea has picked up the sheaf of bills again. Now she puts them down and sighs. “Just that I miss him. I bet the Oldies—those like Clippard, who were here when Cary was here—miss him, too. The Witches miss him, even the kids who came on buses for their once-a-month PE outings miss him, I bet. Especially the girls. He was a stoner, and I bet that wherever he is he believes in the fake flu just like you do, Holly—no, I’m not going to argue with you about it, this is America, you can believe whatever you want to believe—I’m just saying he was a good worker, and there are less and less of them around. That Darren, for instance. He’s just putting in time. Do you think he could make out a tourney sheet? Not if you put a gun to his head.”

“Thank you for your time,” Holly says, and offers an elbow.

Althea looks amused. “No offense, but I don’t do that.”

Holly thinks, my mother died of that fake flu, you gullible bitch.

What she says, and with a smile, is “None taken.”

Holly slow-walks across the lobby, listening to the roll of balls and the crash of tenpins. She is about to push open the foyer door, bracing herself for the wave of heat and humidity that will strike her, then stops, eyes wide and amazed.

My God, she thinks. Really?