Mr. Marko's Pickup Truck

A preview of my forthcoming novel

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When not bloviating about this, that, and the other thing here at Un-Woke in Indiana, I’ve been working on a novel featuring Detective Lucy Esposito, who has appeared in two of my short stories. I hope to have it ready for publication early next year.

To prepare the world for this major literary event, I’m providing you, my Substack subscribers, with a preview of my as-yet untitled opus. Enjoy!

Prologue

Mr. Marko’s Pickup Truck

1

“You’re going to arrest him, aren’t you?”

“Yes Lucy, we are.” The detective learned back in his chair, which emitted a rusty squeak. He checked his watch. “We brought him in for questioning, and though it might take some time to nail things down, I do believe that Jerome Marko will be going away for a long, long time.”

“I hope so,” she said with a prim little nod. “Because he did it. I know he did.”

The detective, a twenty-two-year veteran with a paunch and a pale doughy face, studied the girl who sat facing him across the metal table. Under the interrogation room’s harsh lights, she looked slight and vulnerable, but her face was composed, and she kept her hands clasped on the table.

“I know that you know,” the detective, whose name was Bennington, replied eventually. “What I’m still not clear about, Lucy, is how you knew that he did…what he did. Let’s go over it again, okay? But it was the truck for starters?”

 “It started with the truck,” she agreed. “Like I told you, Detective, I read the newspaper every day. That story about the murders had something in it about a truck. The same kind of truck my Dad drove, so I knew what it looked like.”

“A Ford F-250.”

“That’s right. My Dad…he loved that old truck…”

2

When Lucy Esposito was twelve, she and her mother lived in the Pin Oak Trailer Park, on the south side of a small Midwestern city whose better days were behind it. Bonnie Watson—she’d resumed her maiden name after Hector Esposito hit the road, having decided that he wasn’t cut out for marriage—hated Pin Oak. On his way out of town Hector had stopped by the credit union to empty the checking and savings accounts. But at least he didn’t bother about the seventy-seven dollars in Bonnie’s purse or the thirty or so in the family change jar, which was considerate of him.

After Hector split, Bonnie was able to sell their house for enough to pay off the mortgage and pull out a couple of thousand dollars, but on the money she made working for a temp agency, a rented double-wide in Pin Oak was all she could afford. They were broke, she explained to her daughter, dead broke. But somehow, she promised, they’d get by.

Mom never said a word about the anger and humiliation she felt over their demotion to a precarious lower working-class existence, of which the double-wide, the trailer park, the coupon clipping, the penny pinching, the clothes and furniture bought at Goodwill, were hated symbols. But Lucy knew. It was there on her mother’s tired, dispirited face when she came through the door after a long day. It was there in the slump of her shoulders when she sat down to the frugal suppers that Lucy prepared: things like hot dogs and beans, sliced tomatoes on lettuce, off-brand white bread spread with margarine, instant coffee.

She knew that it would be a sin to add to her mother’s troubles, so Lucy was a good girl. Though she missed her snug little bedroom in their old house, she never complained. At school she stayed out of trouble; at home she cooked and cleaned. And because she knew it would hurt her mother’s heart, Lucy never asked for something that she knew they couldn’t afford.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, kiddo,” Bonnie sometimes sighed, giving her daughter a hug. But from the sad, defeated tone of her voice, Lucy deduced that things were bad and getting worse. Money, it was always about money, there was never enough money. When Lucy needed a new winter coat, it was paid for with a week of plain macaroni or canned soup for supper. When Mom’s car needed a muffler, she took a second job, working nights and weekends in a fast-food joint. That lasted over a month, and it left her utterly exhausted at the end of each day.

Lucy knew she was a burden. Without her, Mom wouldn’t have so many troubles. She wished she was old enough to get a job so that she could pay her way. She wished that she could grow up overnight and join the Navy in the morning. See the world, send Mom some money every month. Carrie Denning, the pretty black lady who lived two trailers down in the same row, got money every month from her husband in the Navy, who was on an aircraft carrier someplace. “Girl,” she told Lucy, “it’s some sweet deal. I didn’t have nothing before I met Darren. But together we got a little bit now, and someday…”

But Carrie knew Lucy’s story and stopped before saying Someday we’ll have a nice house in a decent neighborhood. Instead she smiled and asked if Lucy would like a couple of oatmeal-raisin cookies, fresh baked. Sure she would, Lucy replied, smiling to hide the fact that she knew what Carrie Denning had almost said.

At bedtime, after brushing her teeth, Lucy sometimes spent a minute examining her face in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t a pretty face like Carrie’s: too pale, too narrow, with that stupid little bump on the nose. There were changes coming, she could feel something stirring in her body, but Lucy doubted that that she’d ever blossom into a beauty. Then she would sketch a smile as she turned from the mirror, never noticing how wonderfully it transformed her face.

3

Lucy didn’t share her mother’s detestation of the Pin Oak Trailer Park. True, the trailers were old and showed it. But the owners kept them in good repair, and as long as the rent was paid on time they dealt promptly with plumbing or appliance problems. Many of the little plots on which the trailers sat were landscaped with a bit of ornamental stone or mulch and some of them sported flags: the Stars and Stripes, a Navy flag at Carrie’s, a couple of scarlet and gold Marine Corps flags, a yellow one with red stripes that Mom said was Vietnamese.  The old couple who lived in the trailer with that flag were quiet and very polite. The wife always smiled and said Hello, Miss Lucy when their paths crossed. Most of the trailer park’s residents were like Carrie Denning and the Vietnamese couple: okay. But of course, a few were not at all okay. There was Mr. Streeter, for instance, who had what Mom called a hillbilly accent. He came home drunk one night, beat up his wife, and was hauled off by the police. Mrs. Streeter was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and neither of them ever returned to Pin Oak. A few days later, someone came by with a U-Haul and packed up their stuff.

Then there was the man whose name she didn’t know.

Well, Lucy told herself, of course the man had a name. She supposed that some of the residents of Pin Oak must know it, but when she asked her mother, Bonnie shrugged. “Don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never spoken to him. But do me a favor, kiddo. Steer clear of him, okay?”

From this Lucy deduced that Mom thought the guy might be a pervert who liked young girls or something. Mom worried about things like that: She worked long hours and Lucy was often alone.

“I will, Mom,” Lucy promised. Her mother had enough on her mind already.

 But to Lucy, the man with no name looked ordinary enough. He was old, maybe even thirty or thirty-five, with brown hair that was getting thin in front. He was kind of skinny, and he didn’t look healthy. His skin was pasty-pale and he walked with a shuffle. Whenever Lucy crossed paths with him, the man without a name kept his head down and said nothing. Lucy was reminded of something her dead grandmother had said once: He keeps himself to himself. She figured that he must have a job, because every weekday morning he left early in his pickup truck, a dinged-up old Ford F-250, kind of like the one her Dad drove. Most days he returned around six but every now and then he came home late or was gone overnight.

If anyone had told her she was keeping the man with no name under surveillance that summer, Lucy wouldn’t have known what that meant. School was out, there wasn’t much to do around the trailer park, keeping tabs on him was a way of passing the time. Lucy made up identities for the man with no name: a bank robber hiding out until the heat was off, a secret agent working undercover. Not a pervert who liked young girls, though—that scenario creeped her out. Besides, he seemed like a lonely person and she kind of felt sorry for him.

“Oh, yeah,” said Carrie Denning. “Jerome Marko. That’s his name. He’s not what you’d call the sociable type, she added with a laugh.

 That was the summer during which three young women from three small towns around the state were brutally murdered. Lucy read about it in the paper. They couldn’t afford a subscription, but Carrie Denning always let Lucy take her copy after she was done reading it.

When the weather was fine, Lucy liked to sit on the steps of their trailer, reading the paper while waiting for Mom to get home from work. She read most everything: international and national news, regional and local news, the sports pages, the comics. She sipped iced tea or, on the infrequent occasions when Mom splurged and bought a six-pack, Coke in a tall glass with lots of ice. Later while they ate supper, Lucy would give Bonnie a rundown on the news of the day.

On a hot and humid Friday afternoon in the middle of August, Lucy read about the fourth murder. Like the others it had happened downstate, in a small town about four hours’ drive from Pin Oak. She read the name and particulars of the victim: Kate Stevens, twenty-three, unmarried, employed as a waitress at a steak house called The Wrangler, stabbed thirteen times, body dumped in a ditch by a cornfield along some county road. And then she read about the truck.

4

“So you noticed that Jerome Marko drove the same kind of truck that newspaper story described.” Detective Bennington nodded. “That was a good catch, Lucy. But, you know, there’s lots of trucks like that on the road.”

“It made me start looking at him, though,” she said. “I mean looking at him, you know?”

Bennington did know, and he nodded, but then he frowned, saying: “You took a hell of a chance, young lady—pardon my French. That wasn’t so smart.”

“That’s OK, Detective. My Mom says hell sometimes. And I wasn’t scared of Mr. Marko.” Lucy paused, looking down at her hands, clasped on the table. “Well…maybe kind of scared. But I’m not a little kid. I’m twelve.”

Bennington had to smile at that.

“So I started watching him, and I made notes about when he left and when he came back, and…” She went silent, looking down at her hands again.

And when victim number five turned up dead, you checked your notes and found that Mr. Jerome Marko hadn’t come home the night she went missing. Bennington had those notes, torn from a steno book, in front of him and he touched them with a fingertip. “All right, Lucy,” he said aloud. “You made the case and no mistake. That was good police work, young lady.”

“But I’m not the police, so I couldn’t arrest him. That’s why I took the bus downtown to talk to you guys. I hope Mom’s not mad at me. I guess I should have told her first.”

“Well, she sounded a little mad when I called her. But I said she should be proud of her daughter. Anyhow, us guys thank you very much. Bennington held out his hand and they shook. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll make detective yourself one of these days.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, really. Okay, just sit tight for a second and I’ll get your mother.”

“Thanks, Detective. Thanks a lot.”

And that was Lucy Esposito’s first clue from God concerning the purpose of her life.

5

In the car heading home, Mom did scold her a little, but Lucy could tell that she wasn’t really mad. Which was just as well, because Lucy had other things on her mind.

It wasn’t that she’d lied to Detective Bennington. But she hadn’t told him the whole truth, either. Lucy guessed that he knew it, too, because his pale gray eyes had twinkled a little as they said goodbye in the parking lot. Well, maybe he was used to people telling him less than the whole truth. She bet that happened a lot in the detective business.

Anyhow, it wasn’t evidence or anything like that. Lucy had slumped against the passenger side door of the car, cranking down the window to let the humid breeze cool her face. But the cold that made her shiver came from within.

Mr. Marko was a bad, bad man. No, an evil man. She’d seen it right away once she really looked at him. The evil came off Mr. Marko like the stink of the dead cat she’d found behind the Pin Oak maintenance shed a few months back. And what made her look? Why, Mr. Marko happened to drive the same kind of truck that Dad drove, and that little detail was enough to open her eyes. Then she watched him and took the notes she’d given to Detective Bennington. But she’d waited to go to the cops, because she needed to be sure, and what made her sure was the murder of Francine Bach, thirty-one, divorced, employed as a dental hygienist, stabbed eleven times, body dumped behind a row of trash cans in an alley between a hardware store and a tattoo parlor, whose date of disappearance matched an entry in Lucy’s steno book.

Francine had to die so that Lucy could be sure.

“You OK, kiddo?”

“Sure, Mom.” Lucy sat up straight. “I was just thinking. I guess they’ll send Mr. Marko to Death Row.”

“I guess they probably will.” Bonnie Watson glanced at her daughter. “That bother you?”

“Maybe a little.”

But that was a white lie. The contemplation of Jerome Marko’s final destination didn’t bother her —not one little bit. It was Francine Bach who bothered Lucy Esposito.

To be continued…