American Gods

Mulligan lowered his window. “Library sale?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I bought a box of Robert Ludlum books there two, three years back. Keep meaning to read them. My cousin swears by the guy. These days I figure if I ever get marooned on a desert island and I got my box of Robert Ludlum books with me, I can catch up on my reading.”

“Something particular I can do for you, Chief?”

“Not a damn thing, pal. Thought I’d stop by and see how you were settling in. You remember that Chinese saying, ‘You save a man’s life, you’re responsible for him’? Well, I’m not saying I saved your life last week. But I still thought I should check in. How’s the Gunther Purple-mobile doing?”

“Good,” said Shadow. “It’s good. Running fine.”

“Pleased to hear it.”

“I saw my next-door neighbor in the library,” said Shadow. “Miz Olsen. I was wondering…”

“What crawled up her butt and died?”

“If you want to put it like that.”

“Long story. You want to ride along for a spell, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Shadow thought about it for a moment. “Okay,” he said. He got into the car, sat in the front passenger seat. Mulligan drove north of town. Then he turned off his lights and parked beside the road.

“Darren Olsen met Marge at UW Stevens Point and he brought her back north to Lakeside. She was a journalism major. He was studying, shit, hotel management, something like that. When they got here, jaws dropped. This was, what, thirteen, fourteen years ago. She was so beautiful…that black hair…” He paused. “Darren managed the Motel America over in Camden, twenty miles west of here. Except nobody ever seemed to want to stop in Camden and eventually the motel closed. They had two boys. At that time Sandy was eleven. The little one—Leon is it?—was just a babe in arms.

“Darren Olsen wasn’t a brave man. He’d been a good high school football player, but that was the last time he was flying high. Whatever. He couldn’t find the courage to tell Margie that he’d lost his job. So for a month, maybe for two months, he’d drive off early in the morning, come home late in the evening complaining about the hard day he’d had at the motel.”

“What was he doing?” asked Shadow.

“Mm. Couldn’t say for certain. I reckon he was driving up to Ironwood, maybe down to Green Bay. Guess he started out as a job hunter. Pretty soon he was drinking the time away, getting stoned, more than probably meeting the occasional working girl for a little instant gratification. He could have been gambling. What I do know for certain is that he emptied out their joint account in about ten weeks. It was only a matter of time before Margie figured out—there we go!”

He swung the car out, flicked on the siren and the lights, and scared the daylights out of a small man with Iowa plates who had just come down the hill at seventy.

The rogue Iowan ticketed, Mulligan returned to his story.

“Where was I? Okay. So Margie kicks him out, sues for divorce. It turned into a vicious custody battle. That’s what they call ’em when they get into People magazine. Vicious Custody Battle. Always makes me think of lawyers with knives and assault weapons and brass knuckles. She got the kids. Darren got visitation rights and precious little else. Now, back then Leon was pretty small. Sandy was older, a good kid, the kind of boy who worships his daddy. Wouldn’t let Margie say nothing bad about him. They lost the house—had a nice place down on Daniels Road. She moved into the apartments. He left town. Came back every few months to make everybody miserable.

“This went on for a few years. He’d come back, spend money on the kids, leave Margie in tears. Most of us just started wishing he’d never come back at all. His mom and pop had moved to Florida when they retired, said they couldn’t take another Wisconsin winter. So last year he came out, said he wanted to take the boys to Florida for Christmas. Margie said not a hope, told him to get lost. It got pretty unpleasant—at one point I had to go over there. Domestic dispute. By the time I got there Darren was standing in the front yard shouting stuff, the boys were barely holding it together, Margie was crying.

“I told Darren he was shaping up for a night in the cells. I thought for a moment he was going to hit me, but he was sober enough not to do that. I gave him a ride down to the trailer park south of town, told him to shape up. That he’d hurt her enough…Next day he left town.”

“Two weeks later, Sandy vanished. Didn’t get onto the school bus. Told his best friend that he’d be seeing his dad soon, that Darren was bringing him a specially cool present to make up for having missed Christmas in Florida. Nobody’s seen him since. Non-custodial kidnappings are the hardest. It’s tough to find a kid who doesn’t want to be found, y’see?”

Shadow said that he did. He saw something else as well. Chad Mulligan was in love with Marguerite Olsen himself. He wondered if the man knew how obvious it was.