and totalitarian he got to sound speaking into it.
Chief Winston was a big man with a wide head and an avuncular quality that I associated with gardeners and the ’80s Celts coach K.C. Jones, who I admired despite his having ruined my Magic-Johnson-loving childhood. Chief Winston was in-laws with George Harvey, our CYC coach, and had a daughter our age named Ava who went to private school in Connecticut. We knew her from the summers, from Tanglewood where we parked cars and she wandered with her private school friends through the mazes, girls with names like Karina and Ellis, girls who ignored us until they needed someone to smuggle in a fifth of blackberry schnapps and make out with and then throw up on. But nobody messed with Ava, probably because she was the daughter of the local police chief and maybe also because she didn’t make herself available, as if she felt a little torn between her school world and her home world and didn’t want to throw up all over the latter, at least not yet. And as long as she kept bringing hot chicks in to slum with us, that was fine.
Maybe because we’d never tried to lay a hand on Ava, or maybe because he knew about the stuff with Bill Trivette, Chief Winston went easy on us. Grevantz had marched us to the rusted gates of Fleur-de-Lys and stuffed us into the back of a cruiser driven by another of our local cops—there were only six—named Mulvaney, who had been on the job forever and didn’t say anything to us except “watch your heads.” Then Grevantz had led the cruiser back into town on the ATV, like he was at the head of a big parade, a hunter towing in the bucks he’d brought down. People on Main Street stared at the cruiser. Chickie stared back. Sometimes he waved.
In his office, Chief Winston fixed us with a glare he’d probably been practicing for years. An old yellow dog lay curled at the foot of his desk.
“Where’d you stash it?” he asked, squinting first at Chick and then at me.
We looked at each other.
“Stash what?” I asked.
“We didn’t stash anything,” Chick said.
“So you have it on you?” Chief Winston said.
“What?”
“Don’t get smart with me, son.”
“What?”
The chief let me shake for a minute, then started chuckling. Man, these fuckers were bored. I recognize that now. At the time, I almost started to cry.
Then he picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Yeah,” he said, after a pause. “They’re here. I’m sending them your way. If they aren’t there in the next”—he looked at his watch—“five minutes, let me know. I’ll send out the dog.”
Chief Winston hung up the phone and snapped his fingers. The dog at his feet raised its head. The chief looked at us.
“You’re wanted,” he said, “at the library.”
The town library was three-quarters of a mile away. Chick and I sprinted across the street, through the back parking lot of the Curtis, over the fence at Lilac Park, almost got hit by a car crossing Housatonic, and arrived at the doors just as the head librarian, a wizened octogenarian named Florence Banish, bent her bun to check her watch.
“You are the miscreants?” she asked, holding the door handle with fine fingers, her bones sheathed in parchment. With her other hand, she pressed her glasses back over the crook of her nose.
We were keeled over, wheezing, our hands on our knees.
I looked up and nodded.
“Chief Winston says you are here to write a book report on Fleur-de-Lys. An apologia of a sort. It is to be thirty pages long and is due by the end of the month. Fortunately for you,” she said, “I am the definitive resource.”
She turned in the door and headed inside.
“Follow me.”
Guy Van Nest was the only child of Forsyth and Helene Van Nest, a late baby, a gift to the tycoon’s second wife when he was in his fifties and she was already pushing thirty-five. In photos from the late 1800s, Guy appears as a small boy in short pants, pale—but that might be the tint—and
Chief Winston was a big man with a wide head and an avuncular quality that I associated with gardeners and the ’80s Celts coach K.C. Jones, who I admired despite his having ruined my Magic-Johnson-loving childhood. Chief Winston was in-laws with George Harvey, our CYC coach, and had a daughter our age named Ava who went to private school in Connecticut. We knew her from the summers, from Tanglewood where we parked cars and she wandered with her private school friends through the mazes, girls with names like Karina and Ellis, girls who ignored us until they needed someone to smuggle in a fifth of blackberry schnapps and make out with and then throw up on. But nobody messed with Ava, probably because she was the daughter of the local police chief and maybe also because she didn’t make herself available, as if she felt a little torn between her school world and her home world and didn’t want to throw up all over the latter, at least not yet. And as long as she kept bringing hot chicks in to slum with us, that was fine.
Maybe because we’d never tried to lay a hand on Ava, or maybe because he knew about the stuff with Bill Trivette, Chief Winston went easy on us. Grevantz had marched us to the rusted gates of Fleur-de-Lys and stuffed us into the back of a cruiser driven by another of our local cops—there were only six—named Mulvaney, who had been on the job forever and didn’t say anything to us except “watch your heads.” Then Grevantz had led the cruiser back into town on the ATV, like he was at the head of a big parade, a hunter towing in the bucks he’d brought down. People on Main Street stared at the cruiser. Chickie stared back. Sometimes he waved.
In his office, Chief Winston fixed us with a glare he’d probably been practicing for years. An old yellow dog lay curled at the foot of his desk.
“Where’d you stash it?” he asked, squinting first at Chick and then at me.
We looked at each other.
“Stash what?” I asked.
“We didn’t stash anything,” Chick said.
“So you have it on you?” Chief Winston said.
“What?”
“Don’t get smart with me, son.”
“What?”
The chief let me shake for a minute, then started chuckling. Man, these fuckers were bored. I recognize that now. At the time, I almost started to cry.
Then he picked up his phone and dialed a number.
“Yeah,” he said, after a pause. “They’re here. I’m sending them your way. If they aren’t there in the next”—he looked at his watch—“five minutes, let me know. I’ll send out the dog.”
Chief Winston hung up the phone and snapped his fingers. The dog at his feet raised its head. The chief looked at us.
“You’re wanted,” he said, “at the library.”
The town library was three-quarters of a mile away. Chick and I sprinted across the street, through the back parking lot of the Curtis, over the fence at Lilac Park, almost got hit by a car crossing Housatonic, and arrived at the doors just as the head librarian, a wizened octogenarian named Florence Banish, bent her bun to check her watch.
“You are the miscreants?” she asked, holding the door handle with fine fingers, her bones sheathed in parchment. With her other hand, she pressed her glasses back over the crook of her nose.
We were keeled over, wheezing, our hands on our knees.
I looked up and nodded.
“Chief Winston says you are here to write a book report on Fleur-de-Lys. An apologia of a sort. It is to be thirty pages long and is due by the end of the month. Fortunately for you,” she said, “I am the definitive resource.”
She turned in the door and headed inside.
“Follow me.”
Guy Van Nest was the only child of Forsyth and Helene Van Nest, a late baby, a gift to the tycoon’s second wife when he was in his fifties and she was already pushing thirty-five. In photos from the late 1800s, Guy appears as a small boy in short pants, pale—but that might be the tint—and
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