Lit.103.3
Fiction For The Ears
Media Player
Lit103.3
SHOW SCHEDULE - June 30th and July 7th- When in Rome by Dorothy Francis and Get Yourself a Face by Gail Farrelly
Dorothy Francis writes mystery short stories and novels from her home studios in Iowa and the Florida Keys. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Short Mystery Fiction Society. Her latest novel, EDEN PALMS MURDER is now available at libraries and book stories. This story won a Derringer Award in 1999 awarded by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.
Gail Farrelly writes mystery novels, articles about the mystery field, and Op-Eds. She also publishes satire pieces (Gail Farrelly's satire and parody stories) on TheSpoof.com, a British website. Her first mystery, Beaned In Boston: Murder at a Finance Convention, was named to the Washington Irving Book Selection List. Gail's other books are Duped By Derivatives: A Manhattan Murder and Creamed at Commencement: A Graduation Mystery. She's working on a fourth mystery, The Virtual Heiress. Gail shares a website (www.FarrellySistersOnline.com) with her sister Rita, also a mystery writer; first chapters of the Farrelly mysteries are available on the website.
Gail Farrelly writes mystery novels, articles about the mystery field, and Op-Eds. She also publishes satire pieces (Gail Farrelly's satire and parody stories) on TheSpoof.com, a British website. Her first mystery, Beaned In Boston: Murder at a Finance Convention, was named to the Washington Irving Book Selection List. Gail's other books are Duped By Derivatives: A Manhattan Murder and Creamed at Commencement: A Graduation Mystery. She's working on a fourth mystery, The Virtual Heiress. Gail shares a website (www.FarrellySistersOnline.com) with her sister Rita, also a mystery writer; first chapters of the Farrelly mysteries are available on the website.
WELCOME and LIT103.3; fiction for the ears NAVIGATION INSTRUCTIONS
Welcome to Lit.103.3; fiction for the ears.
Lit103.3; fiction for the ears is broadcast on WXOJ LP, 103.3 on your FM dial every Tuesday at 1:00 PM. The show is also streaming on the web at www.valleyfreeradio.org.
Each week I’ll read a short story or two. You may be alone in your house or car, but you’ll listen as a community. Like the old days, communal, a story around the campfire; while at the same time intimate, as when your mother or father read you a story before bed. But Lit103.3 is also new. Interactive. My voice, a medium between the words and your imagination. I read, but you create the images. Think about it; a thousand listeners, a thousand different visual images of the same words.
ALL OF THE WRITTEN VERSIONS OF THE STORIES, AS WELL AS THE PODCASTS, ARE LOCATED IN THE "MONTHLY ARCHIVE" SECTION TO THE RIGHT, JUST ABOVE "RECENT ENTRIES." TO VIEW THEM, SIMPLY CLICK ON THE WORDS, "FEBRUARY 2008." For purposes of positioning, I've altered the dates that stories or podcasts were published on the website, so the listed dates are absolutely inaccurate and irrelevant for anything but design placement. You can also use Quicksearch located on the top right, or simply scroll down to read or play entries.
Click on any of the"recent entries", "archives," or on the blue highlighted title above the audio or written version of the story to isolate a particular story or podcast. In the case of a story it will appear in a format that allows for convenient printing.
You can also listen to the podcast by clicking on the underlined word "download" just under the arrow for the audio bar.
Or you can listen by clicking on the arrow of the audio bar. The audio bar should move from left to right as you listen. If you see the bar at the far right and the audio won't play, either refresh your screen, or close your browser window, then reopen it, and perhaps again refresh your screen if you need to. I hope you suffer no inconvenience. Please contact me if you do.
SUBMISSIONS: Any genre, or none at all. Please submit to lit103.3@comcast.net. DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS, rather, include your story in the body of your email. Please place the wordcount of the story on the first page. Also, provide any biographical or relevant material you'd like readbefore or after the broadcast in the event your story is selected forairing. If chosen, the story will appear here on the site in writtenform, and as a podcast.
I look forward to reading your stories as well as your thoughts and comments here at the website.
Lit103.3; fiction for the ears is broadcast on WXOJ LP, 103.3 on your FM dial every Tuesday at 1:00 PM. The show is also streaming on the web at www.valleyfreeradio.org.
Each week I’ll read a short story or two. You may be alone in your house or car, but you’ll listen as a community. Like the old days, communal, a story around the campfire; while at the same time intimate, as when your mother or father read you a story before bed. But Lit103.3 is also new. Interactive. My voice, a medium between the words and your imagination. I read, but you create the images. Think about it; a thousand listeners, a thousand different visual images of the same words.
ALL OF THE WRITTEN VERSIONS OF THE STORIES, AS WELL AS THE PODCASTS, ARE LOCATED IN THE "MONTHLY ARCHIVE" SECTION TO THE RIGHT, JUST ABOVE "RECENT ENTRIES." TO VIEW THEM, SIMPLY CLICK ON THE WORDS, "FEBRUARY 2008." For purposes of positioning, I've altered the dates that stories or podcasts were published on the website, so the listed dates are absolutely inaccurate and irrelevant for anything but design placement. You can also use Quicksearch located on the top right, or simply scroll down to read or play entries.
For overall convenience, you can listen to any or all the podcasts by pressing the "launch player" to launch the media player. The media player will allow you to move through all the shows by pressing the forward or back arrows that appear as you listen to a selection.
Click on any of the"recent entries", "archives," or on the blue highlighted title above the audio or written version of the story to isolate a particular story or podcast. In the case of a story it will appear in a format that allows for convenient printing.
You can also listen to the podcast by clicking on the underlined word "download" just under the arrow for the audio bar.
Or you can listen by clicking on the arrow of the audio bar. The audio bar should move from left to right as you listen. If you see the bar at the far right and the audio won't play, either refresh your screen, or close your browser window, then reopen it, and perhaps again refresh your screen if you need to. I hope you suffer no inconvenience. Please contact me if you do.
SUBMISSIONS: Any genre, or none at all. Please submit to lit103.3@comcast.net. DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS, rather, include your story in the body of your email. Please place the wordcount of the story on the first page. Also, provide any biographical or relevant material you'd like readbefore or after the broadcast in the event your story is selected forairing. If chosen, the story will appear here on the site in writtenform, and as a podcast.
I look forward to reading your stories as well as your thoughts and comments here at the website.
When In Rome by Dorothy Francis and Get Yourself a Face by Gail Farrelly - podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:00
Dorothy Francis writes mystery short stories and novels from her home studios in Iowa and the Florida Keys. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Short Mystery Fiction Society. Her latest novel, EDEN PALMS MURDER is now available at libraries and book stories. This story won a Derringer Award in 1999 awarded by the Short Mystery Fiction Society.
Gail Farrelly writes mystery novels, articles about the mystery field, and Op-Eds. She also publishes satire pieces (Gail Farrelly's satire and parody stories) on TheSpoof.com, a British website. Her first mystery, Beaned In Boston: Murder at a Finance Convention, was named to the Washington Irving Book Selection List. Gail's other books are Duped By Derivatives: A Manhattan Murder and Creamed at Commencement: A Graduation Mystery. She's working on a fourth mystery, The Virtual Heiress. Gail shares a website (www.FarrellySistersOnline.com) with her sister Rita, also a mystery writer; first chapters of the Farrelly mysteries are available on the website.
The Murder Cache by Beth Groundwater- podcast version
Download | Duration: 00:59:39
Beth Groundwater's first mystery novel, A REAL BASKET CASE, was published in March, 2007 and was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The second in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, was just released this May. It is set in Breckenridge, CO and opens with a death on the ski slope. As Kirkus Review said, "Groundwater's second leaves the bunny slope behind, offering some genuine black-diamond thrills." Between writing spurts, Beth defends her garden from marauding mule deer and wild rabbits and tries to avoid getting black-and-blue on the black and blue ski slopes of Colorado. Please visit her website at bethgroundwater.com/ . "The Murder Cache" first appeared in The Map of Murder anthology, published February, 2007. This anthology was an Award-Winner in the Short Story Fiction category of the National Indie Excellence 2007 Book Awards.
--
Beth Groundwater, bethgroundwater.com/
A REAL BASKET CASE, Five Star, 3/2007, Best First Novel Agatha Nominee
TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET, Five Star, May 2009
STICKERS by Daniel Scott - podcast version as read by Walter Mantani
Download | Duration: 00:58:21
Daniel Scott has authored two short-story collections, Some of Us have to Get Up in the Morning and Pay This Amount. HIs work has also appeared or is forthcoming in many national and international magazines including StoryQuarterly, The Southern Anthology, River Oak Review, The Dublin Quarterly, Clockwatch Review, Quercus Review, Confrontation, Press and Berkeley Fiction Review. He is the recipient of an Artists’ Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency and two MacDowell Colony Fellowships. A Massachusetts native, He now lives in New York. Daniel can be reached at www.danielscottonline.com
Guest reader Walter Mantani is co-host of the Valley Free Radio show, "Shootin' From The Hip," every Monday at 1:00 PM on WXOJ-LP FM 103.3 Northampton, MA.
A Stab in the Heart by Twist Phelan- podcast version
Download | Duration: 00:59:57
A retired trial lawyer and former commodities trader, Twist Phelan writes the critically-acclaimed Pinnacle Peak series, legal-themed mysteries featuring endurance sports. Her latest book, FALSE FORTUNE (Poisoned Pen Press), was a Rocky Award finalist. In researching her books, Twist has paddled the open ocean, bicycled across the country, and roped steers. But she's still scared to light the barbecue.
Lenny in Love by Steven Wander and Beleaguered by Ben Malisow- podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:28
March 31st and April 7th - LENNY IN LOVE by Steven Wander and BELEAGUERED by Ben Malisow
Steven Wander- Steven H. Wander, currently an adjunct professor of Art History at the University of Connecticut, Stamford was formerly assistant professor and chair of the Art History department at the University of California, Irvine, from 1976-80. Between then and now he ran the family jewelry business with branches in New York, Paris, France and Texas. The short story is the opening chapter of a novel based on the events of December 5, 1991 when his safe was burglarized, and the thieves made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of jewelry (insured). The novel was accepted for publication, but contract issues prevented its appearance.
He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley and received his doctorate from Stanford University. In addition to the two novels he has written, the second a thriller about the True Cross, entitled Cross, Double Cross, his publications consist of scholarly articles on the Cyprus Plates, which are currently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum in New York according to his proposed arrangement, Westminster Abbey, the York Minster Chapter House, and Wenceslaus Hollar’s engravings of the tombs of Old St. Paul’s, London. His current project is a full-length reevaluation of the Joshua Roll, a tenth-century Byzantine manuscript about which he recently spoke at Oxford University.
Professor Wander has been the recipient of a Fulbright-Hays Grant for Graduate Study Abroad to the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1973-74, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Annual Award in 1975, an American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-aid for Recent Recipients of the PhD in 1977, and in 2006 he was a member of the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, Trajan’s Column: Narratives of War, Civilization, and Commemoration in the Roman Empire at the American Academy in Rome.
Ben Malisow- Ben Malisow has been an Air Force officer, an actor, a journalist, a schoolteacher, a college professor, and a security consultant, among other things. His first book 1,001 Things To Do If You Dare was published by Adams Media in 2007, and his second Terrorism, from Chelsea House/Facts on File, came out in 2008. You can find him online at www.benmalisow.com. And his dad is a really nice guy.
Mercy 101 by Pat Remick - podcast version
Download | Duration: 00:59:57
Award-winning mystery short story writer Pat Remick also is a national freelance journalist, New Hampshire municipal employee working on a statewide tax issue, non-fiction author and veteran news reporter. Her short story “Mercy 101” won the prestigious Al Blanchard Award in 2007 and was published in ““Still Waters: Crime Stories by New England Writers.” Her story “Circulation” is part of the 2008 New England anthology “Deadfall” out this November. She is working on a mystery novel tentatively titled “Murder Most Municipal.”
Pat co-authored two professional development books with husband and fellow mystery writer Frank Cook, the most recent being "21 Things Every Future Engineer Should Know." Over the years, she has worked for such news outlets as United Press International, CNN, AARP Bulletin, Discovery.com, n ewspapers and newsletters.
Pat is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. She and Frank live in Portsmouth, NH, with their two sons. Her often humorous blog, PatRemick.blogspot.com, is called “It’s All Novel Material.” www.PatRemick.com
Triple Header- Colin Campbell- podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:01
Read By Valley Free Radio's own star of "The NighClub with his wife Linda Kennedy, as well as Match of the Day, perhaps the only show dedicated to soccor in the greater Western Massachusetts Northampton area. Eddie hails, as does author Colin Campbell from England
Author Colin Campbell:
Ex-policeman. Ex-soldier. International tennis player. And full-time crime writer. Author of twelve novels and a novella Colin Campbell has also written numerous short stories and is a retired police officer in West Yorkshire, having tackled crime on the streets of one of the UK’s busiest cities for 30 years.
Four books have been published in the UK, one of which is being adapted for TV as a two-hour drama. He counts Lee Child, Reginald Hill, Caroline Carver, and Stephen Booth among his fans.
And he is currently world doubles champion (over 50s) at the World Police/Fire Games 2007 in Adelaide.
PUBLISHED WORK
• DARKWATER TOWERS. Blackie & Co Publishers.
• THROUGH THE RUINS OF MIDNIGHT. Pen Press.
• BALLAD OF THE ONE LEGGED MAN. Pen Press.
• GARGOYLES – SKYLIGHTS AND ROOFSCAPES. Pen Press.
YOUR SWEET MAN by Libby Hellmann podcast version
Download | Duration: 00:00:00
YOUR SWEET MAN by Libby Hellmann. Libby Hellmann has published over 12 short stories, and edited the acclaimed crime fiction anthology, CHICAGO BLUES, which was released in October, 2007 by Bleak House Books. She served as National president of Sisters in Crime, and was president of the Midwest Mystery Writers of America chapter. Your Sweet Man was included in that anthology. Libby has published five novels in the The Ellie Foreman series, the latest of which is Easy Innocence. In hard cover through Poisoned Pen Press and in paperback through Berkley Prime Crime. Learn more at her website www.libbyhellmann.com
A transplant from Washington, D.C., Libby has lived in the Chicago area thirty years. When not writing fiction, she conducts executive training programs in presentation skills, speech delivery, and media interviews. She also writes video scripts, articles, and speeches. She holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Film Production from New York University. After an eight year stint in television news, including PBS and NBC, she spent eight years at Burson-Marsteller, the large public relations firm.
Libby lives on the North Shore of Chicago with her family. Sadly, her Beagle, shamelessly named Shiloh, recently passed on. She is represented by the Ann Rittenberg Literary Agency.-
Word of Mouth by Stephen Rogers and and The Runt by Daniel Scott- podcast version
Download | Duration: 00:58:27
WORD OF MOUTH by Stephen Rogers appeared in HandHeldCrime, Feb 2002. Over five hundred of Stephen's stories and poems have been selected to appear in more than two hundred publications.His website, www.stephendrogers.com, includes a list of new and upcoming titles as well as other timely information.
RUNT by Daniel Scott has authored two short-story collections, Some of Us have to Get Up in the Morning and Pay This Amount. HIs work has also appeared or is forthcoming in many national and international magazines including StoryQuarterly, The Southern Anthology, River Oak Review, The Dublin Quarterly, Clockwatch Review, Quercus Review, Confrontation, Press and Berkeley Fiction Review. He is the recipient of an Artists’ Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation Grant, a Millay Colony for the Arts Residency and two MacDowell Colony Fellowships. A Massachusetts native, He now lives in New York. Daniel can be reached at www.danielscottonline.com
The Maids by G. Miki Hayden- podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:15
G. Miki Hayden’s, The Maids, won the 2004 Edgar Award for best mystery short story. Last year she contributed her story, Rock on Rock to the show, which can be found in our archives. Miki is also the author of The Naked Writer, a comprehensive style and composition book for all levels of writers, as well as her instructional, "Writing the Mystery," which was also nominated for three awards.
Miki is available for private coaching at Ghayden2@nyc.rr.com, but also teaches at Writer’s Digest online.
Shoulders by Colin Campbell and Vendetta Olympics by Daniel Tomasulo- podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:01
Shoulders by Colin Campbell- Ex-policeman. Ex-soldier. International tennis player. And full-time crime writer. Author of twelve novels and a novella Colin Campbell has also written numerous short stories and is a retired police officer in West Yorkshire, having tackled crime on the streets of one of the UK’s busiest cities for 30 years.
Four books have been published in the UK, one of which is being adapted for TV as a two-hour drama. He counts Lee Child, Reginald Hill, Caroline Carver, and Stephen Booth among his fans.
And he is currently world doubles champion (over 50s) at the World Police/Fire Games 2007 in Adelaide.
PUBLISHED WORK
• DARKWATER TOWERS. Blackie & Co Publishers.
• THROUGH THE RUINS OF MIDNIGHT. Pen Press.
• BALLAD OF THE ONE LEGGED MAN. Pen Press.
• GARGOYLES – SKYLIGHTS AND ROOFSCAPES. Pen Press.
Vendetta Olympics by Daniel Tomasulo- Dan Tomasulo is a licensed psychologist and psychodrama trainer in Red Bank, New Jersey, and a former a visiting faculty member on fellowship at Princeton University. His first popular –press debut, Confessions of a Former Child: A Therapist’s Memoir was published earlier this year. Kirkus Reviews called it “Disquietingly funny, stuffed with entertaining details and penetrating insights.”
Dr. Tomasulo is a former stand-up comic and comedy writer, and the first psychologist to be honored with the Statewide Healthcare Provider Award by the ARC of New Jersey. He has an MFA from the New School in New York City, and is also co-author of Healing Trauma: The Power of Group Treatment for People with Intellectual Disabilities, the American Psychological Association’s first book on psychotherapy for people with Intellectual disabilities.
Lily-Ray by Karen Condon and Only Child by Jennifer Bouchard- podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:03
Lily-Ray by Karen Condon - Karen Condon received her MFA in creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1993, and has written a novel and two short story collections. Her stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, Bottomfish Magazine, Sonora Review, Kansas Quarterly, Arkansas Review, Antigonish Review, and Fiddlehead.
She wrote the stories in Are You a Survivor during and after her treatment for breast cancer in 2001 and 2002. The title refers to a question she was asked at a breast cancer support group the day after her diagnosis. She lives in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Brown Street Press is proud to release Karen's novel, Are you a Survivor?. It will go on sale in November 1st 2008.* * *
Only Child by Jennifer Bouchard - Jennifer Bouchard is a writer and high school English teacher. She has
written numerous articles on education and literature for EBSCO Publishing. Her work also has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor. She received a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.Ed.in English from Framingham State College, and is currently pursuing an M.F.A in Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University. She lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband and daughter.
Lovers Only, Friends Optional by Lisa Smith-Overton podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:03
Lisa Smith-Overton is a freelance writer and photographer published in both fiction and non-fiction. Her short story, The Travels of Mary Magdalene won the short story prize in the 2006 CT State University System Fiction and Poetry Contest and was published in the Connecticut Review. A graduate of Eastern Connecticut State University, she is currently a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts program in professional writing at Western Connecticut State University.
The Last Pork Chop by Bayard- audio podcast version
Download | Duration: 01:00:03
Bayard has had 150 stories published in the last 10 years in dozens of literary magazines. Bayard has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 9 times, and is the editor of a literary magazine entitled Happy. Bayard is also visual artist of note, with sculptural pieces in major private and corporate collections, and is currently represented by Schroder-Romero in New York and GV Art in London. He has recently been an artist-in-residence at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and was featured in Contemporary Textiles.
SYLVIE HAS GONE TO THE DELI by Elizabeth Esse Kahrs- WEB ONLY PODCAST DUE TO EXPLICIT CONTENT
| Download | Duration: 00:20:24
Elizabeth Esse Kahrs is a freelance journalist and fiction writer. She has been a columnist for Parent and Kids/Boston for the past six years. An excerpt from her novel, The Trouble in My Mirror, appeared in the Fearless Voices section of the The Huffington Post. You can find more of her work in The Boston Globe, the Baby Journal, Static Movement, and Shine. Elizabeth graduated from Lafayette College with a Bachelors degree in Psychology. A native of suburban New York, she lives with her husband and two children on Boston’s South Shore. The Trouble in My Mirror is her first novel.
Music Show Special
STORIES IN SONG- The ground rules are this: listen to the lyrics and let the music add emotional power to the story. A special show to kick off the second season of Lit103.3; fiction for the ears.
Download | Duration: 01:00:03
Happily Ever After & The Crash - Alan Vogel- audio podcast
| Download | Duration: 01:02:20
Alan Vogel is the creator of, and reader for Lit103.3. Alan practiced law for many years at a firm he founded in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Since leaving the legal field, again a human being, he spends time writing short stories and novels and, of course, producing and broadcasting Lit103.3; fiction for the ears.
Death Will Clean Your Closet by Elizabeth Zelvin and A Trader's Lot by Twist Phelan- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:05
"Death Will Clean Your Closet" first appeared in the anthology MURDER NEW YORK STYLE (L&L Dreamspell 2007) and was a 2007 Agatha nominee for Best Short Story. Its protagonist, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, also plays the lead in Elizabeth Zelvin's debut mystery novel from St. Martin's, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER. DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER is the first in a series, came out on April 15, and is in stores and online bookstores now. Zelvin is a New York psychotherapist who ran alcohol treatment programs
A Trader's Lot, originally appeared in the crime fiction anthology WALL STREET NOIR. Called a standout in Publishers Weekly's starred review, the story was just named a finalist for the Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society. A retired trial lawyer and former commodities trader, Twist Phelan writes the critically-acclaimed Pinnacle Peak series, legal-themed mysteries featuring endurance sports. Her latest book, FALSE FORTUNE (Poisoned Pen Press), was a Rocky Award finalist. In researching her books, Twist has paddled the open ocean, bicycled across the country, and roped steers. But she's still scared to light the barbecue.
Counterflow by Bill Cameron & The True and Real History of Elspeth and the Indian Wars by Adam Novitt- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:02:59
Bill Cameron lives with his wife and a menagerie of critters in Portland, Oregon. He's an eager traveler and avid bird-watcher, and likes to write near a window so he can meditate on whatever happens to fly by during intractable passages. His stories have appeared in Spinetingler, The Dunes Review, The Alsop Review, and in KILLER YEAR, edited by Lee Child. LOST DOG, his debut suspense novel, is available from Midnight Ink Books. His second novel, CHASING SMOKE, will be available Fall 2008 from Bleak House Books. He is currently at work on his third novel. Bill a member of Friends of Mystery and International Thriller Writers, and serves as Vice President of the Northwest Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America
* * *
Adam Novitt is a librarian at Forbes Library. He lives in Northampton, MA where he keeps bees and chickens in his backyard. He is an accomplished motorcyclist and bicyclist and is engaged to be married to Priscilla Miner.
Juggling & So Small by Barbara Sosman- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:05
Barbara Sosman has an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Vermont College, as well as a BA in English from the University of Connecticut. Her short story "Juggling" won FIRST PRIZE in the 2004 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest sponsored by Humboldt State University and is being published in the spring 2005 issue of Toyon. Her short story "Ashes" was published in the spring 2003 Louisville Review, and another short story, "Me and Grace," was a prizewinner in the 2003 Fiction Competition sponsored by The Ledge, and published in The Ledge #27.
She has been adjunct professor of English at Western Connecticut State University and is Contributing Editor to the literary journal Hunger Mountain. She has been a teacher, journalist, and writer and editor for numerous textbook programs for Harcourt, Harper & Row, MacMillan, Scott Foresman and others; she also was Senior Editor in language arts for Noble and Noble, the textbook publishing arm of Dell Publishing. She lives in Bangor, Maine and teaches English at Eastern Maine Community College where she is working on a memoir.
Building An Elephant by Sean Ferrell- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:07
Sean Ferrill lives and works in New York City. He's been published by the Adirondack Review, Cafe Irreal, Uber, Words, and Bossa Nova Ink. He's currently working on a novel.
"Building An Elephant," won the Fulton Prize from the Adirondack Review. Sean is honored by the prize and asked if I would include their link, adirondackreview.homestead.com , which I, of course, am happy to do.
Rock on Rock by G. Miki Hayden, & How I Became My Father by A.S. King- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 00:00:00
Short story Edgar winner, G. Miki Hayden was also nominated for three awards for her instructional, "Writing the Mystery." Her latest book out is "The Naked Writer," a comprehensive style and composition book for every level of writer- produced after years of working with talented but erring students.
A. S. King is a novelist recently relocated from Ireland. This story, "How I Became My Father," was a finalist for a Glimmer Train Award in 2007. Her work has appeared in Washington Square, Word Riot, Literary Mama, FRiGG, Eclectica, Amarillo Bay, Underground Voices, The Huffington Post, The Arabesques Review, Natural Bridge and other cool places. One of her novels, The Dust of 100 Dogs, is due from Flux in February 2009.
Rat by Trey Barker, HH & Roger Fine by Anne Le Prade - audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:02:09
Anne LaPrade is a visual artist who lives in Western Massachusetts. She was born in Massachusetts and lived in Europe from age 18 - 35. She has a BA English, and an MFA Visual Arts. She'll be off to Romania (for the first time) for artists residency this summer, 2008.
Trey Barker'snovel, 2000 MILES TO NOWHERE is available from Five Star Press. Treyhas published fiction is just about every genre imaginable; from crimeto mystery, horror to science fiction, traditional western to fantasy,historical, mainstream and poetry, as well as hundreds of non- fictionarticles. Once a journalist, as well as a karaoke salesman, dollassembler, and pizza cook, Barker is now a deputy in the bureau CountySheriff's Office in Illinois.
Lost In The Water- Trey Barker- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:03:42
Trey Barker's novel, 2000 MILES TO NOWHERE is available from Five Star Press. Trey has published fiction is just about every genre imaginable; from crime to nystery, horror to science fiction, traditional western to fantasy, historical, mainstream and poetry, as well as hundreds of non- fiction articles. Once a journalist, aswel as a karaoke salesman, doll assembler, and pizza cook, Barker is now a deputy in the bureau COunty Sheriff's Office in Illinois.
The Adventures of Froggy March- Christopher Harris- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:03:33
Christopher Harris is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts graduate writing program. "The Rembrandts" was published in Washington Square, the journal of New York Unversity, and also read by Christopher at a Washington Square forum. He has also had work recently published in News From The Republic of Letters, the literary journal of Boston University, and LIT,The New School's literary journal. He lives in Amherst Massachusetts, and has a day job working for ESPN.com and appearing on TV for ESPN.
The Rembrandts- Christopher Harris- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:52
Christopher Harris is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts graduate writing program. "The Rembrandts" was published in Washington Square, the journal of New York Unversity, and also read by Christopher at a Washington Square forum. He has also had work recently published in News From The Republic of Letters, the literary journal of Boston University, and LIT,The New School's literary journal. He lives in Amherst Massachusetts, and has a day job working for ESPN.com and appearing on TV for ESPN.
A Long To Die- Dave Zeltserman- audio podcast
Download | Duration: 01:00:19
About Dave Zeltserman: Dave’s short crime fiction has been published in many venues, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, with his story, More Than a Scam, receiving honorable mention in the 2003 Best American Mystery Stories anthology. Dave’s first crime novel, Fast Lane, was published in 2004 and was picked by Poisoned Pen Bookstore as one of the top hardboiled novels of the year. His second novel, Bad Thoughts, was published in 2007 and called “A compellingly clever wheels-within-wheels thriller. An ingenious plot, skillfully executed.” by Booklist. The UK publisher, Serpent’s Tail, will be publishing his next three crime noir novels, with the first of them, Small Crimes, due out March 20, 2008.
Sans Farine- Jim Shepard, January 22,2008- audio podcast
| Download | Duration: 01:02:15
The Murder Cache by Beth Groundwater- written version
The Murder Cache
"Let's go to that one, Dad." Jeffrey's finger shook with excitement as he pointed at the computer screen.
"The Murder Cache? I haven't seen it before." Mark clicked on the name. He and his son were avid participants in the sport of geocaching, in which outdoor treasure hunters use Global Positioning System receivers to hide and seek hidden waterproof containers holding a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets related to the cache’s theme. They were searching for one to hike to during Jeffrey's weeklong shared custody visit. Scanning the description, Mark said, "It's brand new. Just added to the list a week ago and no entries in the visitor log."
"Maybe no one's been there yet. We might be first. Wouldn't that be cool? You know how much Mom and I like to read mysteries. She even let me read one of her Michael Connelly books when I finished all the R.L. Stine ones."
Mark frowned. "I don't think Connelly's books are appropriate for an eleven year old. You shouldn't be reading thrillers."
Jeffrey rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Dad."
"Your mother should be directing you to Agatha Christie or the Cat Who series if you've outgrown the young adult mysteries."
Mark shook his head. What the hell was Roxanne thinking? This was just one more example of her flawed child-rearing practices. Like letting the boy stay up late on school nights to watch Crime Scene Investigation dramas and R-rated scary movies, then leaving him alone with the resulting nightmares while she hit the bars. All the more reason to get Jeffrey out of her clutches and under his guidance as primary custodian. But the hellion was fighting the custody suit with claws bared.
"The Cat Who stories are too tame for me." Jeffrey leaned toward the computer. "Anyway, it says this cache has stuff from murder mystery books, like bookmarks or postcards from authors, and spyglasses, disappearing ink and plastic weapons." He snorted. "Why'd they post a warning not to leave real weapons—as if anyone would?"
Someone very well could, Mark thought. Who knows what type of kooks a geocache with a murder theme could attract? "I think we should look for another one." He reached out to click on the Back command.
Jeffrey put his hand on his father's arm. "I want to go to this one, Dad. Look, it's close. In the National Forest above the Blodgett Open Space. It doesn't look too hard for you."
Mark winced. Ever since his minor heart attack six months ago, his son had been overly solicitous of his health. The divorce battle was the cause of Mark's high blood pressure readings, not the extra fifty pounds he was lugging around his middle. But Jeffrey wouldn't understand that.
Mark checked the Difficulty and Terrain ratings. Three stars for each—average. He pulled out his topographic map of the area and located the cache's GPS coordinates. "Looks like about a three mile hike in from the trailhead, but there's quite an altitude gain." He counted the contour lines. "About eight hundred feet."
Jeffrey's face fell. "If you can't make it, we can find another one to hike to."
Mark wasn't about to disappoint his son. He ruffled Jeffrey's blond mop. "I can hoof it. I was just making sure you want to do the climb. It'll be hot today. The forecasted high is ninety."
"No problemo." Jeffrey shot him a thumbs-up. "And I've got an R.L Stine bookmark in my backpack to trade for something in the cache. C'mon, let's pack lunch."
* * *
Two hours later, Mark paused on the Blodgett trail to wipe his brow. With absolutely no clouds in the piercingly blue Colorado sky, the sun was merciless. Sweat trickled down his face from under the broad-brimmed hat he wore to protect his balding pate from sunburn. He'd loaned his son a baseball cap to wear, since Roxanne hadn't packed a hat for him. Or a rain-jacket, or sunscreen. And the boy needed new shoes. Mark made a mental note to take Jeffrey out shopping the next day. Hell, he was paying child support, but he seemed to be buying all the clothes for his growing son, lately.
Mark took a swig of his water bottle, then checked their location on his GPS receiver against the map. "Drink some water, Jeffrey." He didn't want the boy getting heatstroke.
Squinting into the distance, Mark spotted where the trail made a wide turn to the left, skirting around a clump of scraggly Gambel oak. He pointed out the turn to Jeffrey. "The cache is north of that turn. That's where we need to leave the trail and start bushwhacking."
"What's bushwhacking?"
"When you blaze your own trail. I guess the expression comes from having to whack bushes to get them out of the way."
Jeffrey laughed. When they reached the turn and left the trail to head up the mountain, the boy found a stick and started swatting nearby bushes. "Take that. And that!"
Mark shook his head. The energy of youth. He was saving his for just putting one foot in front of the other.
With no need to banter with his shrub-conquering son, Mark's thoughts drifted to his ever-present quandary: how to deal with the boy's unstable mother. Roxanne's mercurial moods fascinated him when they were young and had no real responsibilities. But once Jeffrey came along, the heavy burden of fatherhood changed Mark's outlook. Being wakened past midnight to hunt for fairies in the moonlight no longer appealed to him when he had to go to work the next morning. Nor did Roxanne's long calls to the office to breathlessly describe her latest grandiose plan for making a million dollars, or to sob out how a friend had slighted her.
Roxanne had never been able to hold a job for long. Her bosses frowned on employees taking off in the middle of the day, or for a couple of days, for a mental health break. And Mark couldn't let her neediness interfere with his career. He was the breadwinner for the whole family. So, he stopped taking her calls at work. He suspected that was the first of many times her image of him plummeted from an idolized hero to an evil sadist who'd cruelly abandoned her.
She couldn't even manage being a stay-at-home mom. Mark was the one who had checked Jeffrey's homework, washed the clothes she let pile up, packed lunches for the boy, and made sure the checks got written. Mark had grown up, for Pete's sake, and she hadn't.
The situation finally reached the point where Mark couldn't live with Roxanne anymore, so he filed for divorce. He thought getting custody of Jeffrey would be easy, but the state usually sided with the mother, unless the father could show she was unsuitable. So, he'd had to document Roxanne's wild mood swings, impulsive spending and drinking binges. Having her inadequacies paraded in public just made her all the more furious. When he picked up Jeffrey for this latest visit, she'd glared and refused to speak to him.
Probably, Roxanne was dreading their court date later that week when the custody issue would be decided. The judge showed every indication he would rule in Mark's favor.
Mark scanned the trail for Jeffrey. The boy was getting too far ahead. "Hey, son," Mark shouted, "slow down and give your old man a chance to catch up."
Jeffrey smiled and waved, then sat on a large pink slab of Pikes Peak granite to wait.
Thank God, Roxanne hadn't turned Jeffrey against Mark yet. The boy was smart enough to know the poison she spouted about his father was lies. And Mark had explained Roxanne's mental condition patiently to his son, trying not to cast any blame on her.
After reaching Jeffrey, Mark slumped on the rock beside his son. He took out the GPS receiver and handed over the unit. "Time for another check. You do it this time."
Mark drank from a water bottle and wiped his brow while heat waves shimmered off the ground. With no rain in the past two weeks, even the small cactus plants beside the rock drooped. Mark ran his tongue over his dry lips and scanned for wildlife. Nothing moved on the ground or in the sky. Smarter than their human kin, the birds and animals were waiting out the heat and would forage for food after the sun sank below the horizon. Mark lifted the backpack, stuffed with jackets, lunch, first-aid kit and extra water, off his back to let the dry air draw the sweat out of his T-shirt.
Jeffrey painstakingly read the latitude and longitude off the GPS receiver and found their position on the topographic map. They were only a quarter of an inch away on the map from the red X Mark had drawn to mark the geocache location.
Jeffrey looked up at his dad, eyes shining. "Almost there."
"Read the hint," Mark said. "Then see if you can find the landmarks it describes."
"Tucked in a rock pile between two big Ponderosa pines." Jeffrey looked around. "There's pine trees all around us."
Mark pointed north. "It should be over there, about five hundred feet or so, give or take fifty feet. See any rocks?"
Jeffrey stood and craned his neck. "I think so. Can I go?"
Mark nodded, and the boy took off up the mountainside. Mark followed more slowly, stepping carefully on the loose gravel scree between the sharp spines of yucca plants. Three stars, my ass, he thought. With this steepness and roughness to the trail, the geocache should have been rated at least four stars. He'd be sure to post a warning when he logged their visit.
After a few minutes, he caught a glint of metal up ahead, most likely an ammo box, in a pile of rocks behind some chokecherry bushes. As he hiked after Jeffrey, he kept his eye on the spot. He didn't say anything, wanting his son to experience the joy of discovery, but he prepared a hint to throw Jeffrey's way if the boy passed the box.
Two massive Ponderosa pine trees shaded the rocks from the sun now beating down from its zenith. Might be a good place to eat their lunch after Jeffrey spied the cache. Mark could use an extended rest. His legs ached, and the short sit-down hadn't been long enough for him to catch his breath. Maybe he should start going to the gym.
"Found it!" Jeffrey scrambled over the rock pile, sat and hoisted the ammo box onto his lap. He popped open the lid, peered inside and pulled out a piece of paper.
Mark stepped into the shade of the trees and looked up at his smiling son, who glowed with health and the excitement of discovery. God, he loved the boy. Jeffrey seemed to be turning out okay despite of his mother's inadequacies. Though Roxanne would love to strangle Mark, she'd never hurt her son. She loved Jeffrey as much as—or, Mark had to admit, even more than—he did, in her own fierce way.
"Is that the guest log? You want to write in our names?"
Jeffrey shook his head. "No, it's a clue. Listen." He read from the paper. "Congratulations. You've found the cache, but now you need to solve the mystery. Who did it and how? First, find the murder victim, count the clues, then return here to see if you found them all. Go up the hill, north by northwest, to the large rock shaped like a coyote. The body's hidden near the rock. Beware of the blood!"
What the hell? Mark's gut tightened as the possibilities swirled in his mind. Did some sicko really kill something? An animal, or God forbid, a person? And leave the body for geocachers to find? Or was this all some macabre joke? Either way, he didn't like it. Not one bit. He reached for the paper. "Let me see that."
Jeffrey stood, hand shading his eyes as he searched the hillside above them. Engrossed, he let the paper fall from his hand. "I don't see a coyote rock."
Mark picked up the typed note and read it. A prickly premonition made the hair on his neck rise. "There's no need to look for it. I think this is far enough--"
"There!" Jeffrey pointed. He hopped off the rock pile and started running uphill through the dry brush.
"Jeffrey, stop!"
"It's not far, Dad. Take your time. I'll wait for you when I get there." Thin legs pumping, he clambered up the slope.
"Damn it, I said stop."
As if he hadn't heard his father, Jeffrey kept climbing.
Mark searched the hillside far above the boy and spotted a large rock that looked like the profile of a sitting coyote. Getting there would be a steep climb. But Mark was determined to stop Jeffrey before he reached it, or to get there first and shield the boy from whatever traumatic sight lay in wait.
He took off with long, loping strides, clawing his way through the scratchy brush after his son. "Jeffrey," he hollered again, as he heaved himself over a large boulder, "wait for me."
"I'm going to find it first!"
The damn kid thinks this is a game. Mark's heart pounded as he pushed himself harder and faster up the slope. He tried to call his son again, but he was out of breath. His chest heaved with the effort of his uphill scramble. His stomach twisted with fear of what the boy would find.
Jeffrey's bright red hat bobbed ahead, in and out of patches of scrub oak and chokecherry bushes, marking his progress toward the coyote rock, now within a few yards.
Mark ignored the stitch in his side and lunged forward. "S-s-stop," he cried out again, expelling all the air in his chest with the effort. He gasped, coughed and lost his balance. He fell, slamming his knee against the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he shoved to his feet again.
Jeffrey reached the rock and put a hand on it to steady himself. He looked down, head moving back and forth as he scanned the ground.
Damn. Mark felt a tight band constricting his chest, but he pushed on, only a few yards to go now. Maybe he could get there before Jeffrey found the body. But, no.
Jeffrey's face screwed up, his mouth fell open, and he stumbled back. "Eeww, gross."
Too late. What had the boy seen?
Dizzy now with fatigue, Mark threw his body up the hill with sheer willpower. He crashed through the brush next to Jeffrey, and stood with hands on his knees, chest heaving.
A decapitated, nude Barbie lay on the ground in a pool of dried red liquid. One of the doll's legs was sliced open. A small skeletal bone protruded from the cut. A miniature ax lay imbedded in her well-endowed, red-streaked chest. The blonde head lay off to the side, the hair matted with the red liquid, dark shadows drawn under the innocent eyes, the perfect, pouty mouth fixed in a macabre grin.
Mark fell to his knees and sucked in a couple of quick breaths. "What kind of . . . sick person . . . would leave this?"
Jeffrey stepped back toward the doll and puffed out his chest. "I think it's cool."
Well, thought Mark, that's a fine indication of how Roxanne's warping the boy's sensitivities. Murder's cool, now.
Jeffrey picked up a stick and drew it through the crusted red pool. "What do you think this is? Pig's blood? Jello?"
"Put the stick down, Jeffrey." Mark rubbed his left arm, which felt numb and sore.
Jeffrey threw the stick away, then bent to stare at the Barbie. He slowly walked all the way around the pretend crime scene, eyes searching the ground.
"Get away from there." Mark grimaced. He was still winded, still gasping for breaths, even feeling a little dizzy. He sat down hard and groped for the water bottle in the pack behind him.
Jeffrey plopped down next to him and reached over to pull the water bottle out of Mark's pack and hand it to him. "So who do you think did it? The ax makes me think a lumberjack. Is one of the Ken doll's friends a lumberjack?"
In the process of slurping water from the bottle, Mark sputtered. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Suspects, Dad. And clues. We need to find more clues. Mom said the killer always takes something with him and leaves something behind. He left the ax, but maybe there's something else. And he took Barbie's clothes, but he coulda' taken something else, too. Maybe the killer wasn't even a he."
Mark swiped sweat away from his eyes and looked around while Jeffrey droned on. Mark needed to find some shade, to get away from the merciless sun. His dizziness was getting worse. But no trees stood nearby, and the looming rock faced south, so it cast no shadow. The sky was still pure blue, no clouds, not even small puffs, only a predatory hawk circling on a thermal, scanning for prey.
With a triumphant scream, it dived.
A heaviness made Mark clasp his chest. The water bottle slipped from his hand.
Jeffrey stopped talking and stared at his father. "You okay, Dad? You look kinda sick."
The clues coalesced in Mark's mind while he pieced the puzzle together. Shortness of breath, sweating, chest feeling like an Anaconda had wrapped itself around his ribs, pain radiating down his arm, dizziness, and yes, even some nausea. The logical deduction forced its way into the open. He was having another heart attack. A big one this time.
Mark dug his bottle of nitroglycerin and aspirin out of his pocket. He chewed an aspirin and washed the bitter taste away with water, then slipped a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue. He felt for a pulse on his neck. It seemed weak and fluttering.
"Jeffrey," he started, then licked his lips and debated how much to tell his son. What if he sugarcoated the serious situation and died right here and now, leaving the boy fatherless? No, Jeffrey had to be told the truth. All Mark could do was to be calm himself, show his son how to be a man. He reached for Jeffrey's hand.
"I'm having a heart attack." At Jeffrey's gasp, Mark gripped his son's hand tighter. "People live through heart attacks every day. Remember, I lived through my last one."
He held up the bottle of pills. "These should help. But we need to get some more help for your old dad."
Jeffrey leapt to his feet and looked around, his actions jerky with panic. "There's no one here." Tears welled in his eyes.
Mark nodded. Even that little movement hurt. "We have to call 9-1-1 with the cell phone." He reached behind him for his backpack, but a sharp pain made him gasp.
Jeffrey's wide-eyed face loomed over him. "I'll get it."
Gratefully, Mark let his son ease the backpack off his back, then he slipped another nitroglycerin pill under his tongue and lay down. The world shifted and spun. He closed his eyes to focus on settling his stomach. The contents of the backpack clattered on the ground. Mark felt his head being lifted, and Jeffrey slid a lumpy pillow made out of his jacket underneath.
When Mark opened his eyes, Jeffrey had the cell phone open and was staring at the screen. "I see two bars."
"Then we've got service." Mark sucked air through clenched teeth. Even talking was getting difficult now. The pills didn't seem to be working. "Get the GPS out of my pocket."
Jeffrey's fingers scrabbled in Mark's pocket and pulled out the device.
"Now call. Give them the co-" The Anaconda squeezed Mark's chest.
"The coordinates?"
"Yes," Mark whispered.
Clutching the two devices tightly, Jeffrey called 9-1-1 while glancing worriedly at his father. Mark tried to listen to the boy answer the dispatcher's questions, but his attention kept drifting to his dizziness, nausea and chest-crushing pain.
"Dad!" Jeffrey's face was inches from his.
"Wh-what?"
"She wants to know if you're conscious."
"For now."
"He's conscious. He talked to me." Jeffrey listened for a minute, nodded, then laid the phone down and started stuffing their jackets and rocks into the backpack.
Mark's head was lifted then returned to the ground after Jeffrey removed the jacket. "What're you doing?"
"They said I should elevate your feet until they can get here." Jeffrey zipped the full backpack, lifted Mark's feet and shoved the bulky pack under them.
"How long?"
Jeffrey relayed the question, then stared at his father in dismay. "About forty-five minutes."
Mark grimaced in pain. Forty-five minutes was a long time. He wasn't sure he'd make it. But he had to. If he died, Jeffrey would be raised by his crazy mother.
"I'm scared, Dad."
"Me, too."
"I wish Mom was here."
Mark couldn't answer 'me, too' to that, but realized Jeffrey would have been comforted by Roxanne's presence. Should he have Jeffrey call her? He envisioned what she'd tell the judge about their predicament—that Mark had exposed Jeffrey not only to a disturbing scene, but to danger by taking the boy out in the wilderness where Mark had no business being with his heart condition. Why give her fuel for arguments that she should have custody?
Mark looked at his son, hunched over with his brow furrowed, chewing on his lip. "Call her."
"What?"
"Tell the dispatcher you want to call your mom."
"Okay." Jeffrey asked the dispatcher then listened for awhile. "Ten minutes. Every ten minutes. Right. I'll call you then." Then he recited Mark's cell phone number.
He turned to Mark. "She told me to call back every ten minutes until the EMTs come. If I don't, she said she'd have the phone company interrupt my call to Mom so she can check on you."
"Good. Hold my hand." Mark felt Jeffrey's hand, warm and slippery with nervous sweat, slide into his. "You're doing a good job, son. You've been real brave."
Mark wheezed. What if he stopped breathing and his heart stopped? Would Jeffrey be able to follow the dispatcher's CPR instructions? CPR was hard work. How long would the boy be able to keep it up? The last thing Mark wanted was for Jeffrey to feel guilty if his father died.
When Jeffrey squeezed his hand, Mark gave a weak squeeze back. He had to hold on, for his son. "I'll keep squeezing to show you I'm still okay. Now call your Mom."
Jeffrey punched the buttons then almost shouted, "Mom. Dad's having a heart attack. I had to call 9-1-1. I'm really scared."
Roxanne's voice murmured from the cell phone. Good, she was trying to calm the boy. Mark focused on regulating his breathing, trying not to gasp with the pain. A dark tunnel closed in on the edges of his vision.
Jeffrey's voice seemed to come from far away. "Dad?"
The tunnel receded, and Jeffrey's face filled Mark's vision. He wouldn't faint, or die. Yet. He gave Jeffrey's hand a weak squeeze. "Yes."
"Mom wants to talk to you." Jeffrey put the phone by Mark's ear.
"How are you feeling?"
"Terrible."
"Jeffrey said you're having a heart attack. You going to be able to hold on until the paramedics get there?"
Mark glanced at his son. "Don't know."
"Damn, Mark. I feel for you, I really do, but I can't do anything from here. Jeffrey says you ran after him when he went up the hill to find the doll. Poor boy's feeling guilty that he didn't stop when you called to him."
Though she tried to sound sympathetic, Mark could tell she was more worried about the impact on her son. Rightfully so. Jeffrey must be scared to death. "Y-yes, but--"
"I told him it wasn't his fault that you piled on the pounds, let your blood pressure get too high. Won't protect yourself, but you're way too protective of him."
"It could've been an animal. Or human."
"Don't worry about Jeffrey. He's a brave boy. He'll be able to deal with it, and I'll be there every day to help him."
Mark realized she wasn't talking about the doll. "I'm not going to die."
"From what Jeffrey tells me, you won't make it."
The dark words sank into Mark's head, spreading poison like a coastal oil spill he tried to help clean up years ago. The black goo had coated everything: gasping seabirds, withering vegetation, and flaccid fish with cloudy eyes. It sucked at his shoes, sapping his motivation and energy. Death had lurked everywhere, and he could do nothing about it.
Just like now.
A heavy weakness settled on Mark's limbs. His chest fought his efforts to make it rise. Blackness loomed at the edge of his vision. Soon he'd lose consciousness then stop breathing. With many minutes to go before the EMTs arrived, he doubted his son could keep him alive.
"Mark, you need to say goodbye to Jeffrey. Tell him you love him."
Mark looked at Jeffrey's solemn face, opened his mouth, but no words came out. He silently mouthed, "I love you." He gazed at his son, memorizing the features, the sweetness of the last moment of being just a boy, a carefree kid, before being shoved out of childhood and into the adult world by tragedy.
Jeffrey blinked, fighting tears. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I love you, too, Dad."
"Good," Roxanne said into Mark's ear. "Now you can let go. You know I'll take good care of Jeffrey."
Mark knew she loved Jeffrey, fiercely loved him, with as much intensity as she hated Mark. Yes, she would take good care of the boy, maybe too good, smothering him, but he'd never lack for anything. Except a father. Roxanne would try her damnedest to poison the boy's memories of his dad. Mark could only hope Jeffrey would hold onto the good times they'd shared. He exhaled long and slow. The black tunnel narrowed again.
"One last thing."
Mark heard a muffled sound, like she was stifling a laugh, no, more like a cry. Maybe the hatred hadn't eaten away all her feelings for him.
"Jeffrey and I will clean up that geocache, get rid of the Barbie doll. We wouldn't want someone else to have a heart attack, would we?"
Yes, the cleanup was a good thing to do. Mark stopped fighting the dark. The Anaconda slammed him one last time.
Roxanne's voice came from far away. "Besides, the Murder Cache has served its purpose."
"Let's go to that one, Dad." Jeffrey's finger shook with excitement as he pointed at the computer screen.
"The Murder Cache? I haven't seen it before." Mark clicked on the name. He and his son were avid participants in the sport of geocaching, in which outdoor treasure hunters use Global Positioning System receivers to hide and seek hidden waterproof containers holding a logbook and “treasure,” usually toys or trinkets related to the cache’s theme. They were searching for one to hike to during Jeffrey's weeklong shared custody visit. Scanning the description, Mark said, "It's brand new. Just added to the list a week ago and no entries in the visitor log."
"Maybe no one's been there yet. We might be first. Wouldn't that be cool? You know how much Mom and I like to read mysteries. She even let me read one of her Michael Connelly books when I finished all the R.L. Stine ones."
Mark frowned. "I don't think Connelly's books are appropriate for an eleven year old. You shouldn't be reading thrillers."
Jeffrey rolled his eyes. "C'mon, Dad."
"Your mother should be directing you to Agatha Christie or the Cat Who series if you've outgrown the young adult mysteries."
Mark shook his head. What the hell was Roxanne thinking? This was just one more example of her flawed child-rearing practices. Like letting the boy stay up late on school nights to watch Crime Scene Investigation dramas and R-rated scary movies, then leaving him alone with the resulting nightmares while she hit the bars. All the more reason to get Jeffrey out of her clutches and under his guidance as primary custodian. But the hellion was fighting the custody suit with claws bared.
"The Cat Who stories are too tame for me." Jeffrey leaned toward the computer. "Anyway, it says this cache has stuff from murder mystery books, like bookmarks or postcards from authors, and spyglasses, disappearing ink and plastic weapons." He snorted. "Why'd they post a warning not to leave real weapons—as if anyone would?"
Someone very well could, Mark thought. Who knows what type of kooks a geocache with a murder theme could attract? "I think we should look for another one." He reached out to click on the Back command.
Jeffrey put his hand on his father's arm. "I want to go to this one, Dad. Look, it's close. In the National Forest above the Blodgett Open Space. It doesn't look too hard for you."
Mark winced. Ever since his minor heart attack six months ago, his son had been overly solicitous of his health. The divorce battle was the cause of Mark's high blood pressure readings, not the extra fifty pounds he was lugging around his middle. But Jeffrey wouldn't understand that.
Mark checked the Difficulty and Terrain ratings. Three stars for each—average. He pulled out his topographic map of the area and located the cache's GPS coordinates. "Looks like about a three mile hike in from the trailhead, but there's quite an altitude gain." He counted the contour lines. "About eight hundred feet."
Jeffrey's face fell. "If you can't make it, we can find another one to hike to."
Mark wasn't about to disappoint his son. He ruffled Jeffrey's blond mop. "I can hoof it. I was just making sure you want to do the climb. It'll be hot today. The forecasted high is ninety."
"No problemo." Jeffrey shot him a thumbs-up. "And I've got an R.L Stine bookmark in my backpack to trade for something in the cache. C'mon, let's pack lunch."
* * *
Two hours later, Mark paused on the Blodgett trail to wipe his brow. With absolutely no clouds in the piercingly blue Colorado sky, the sun was merciless. Sweat trickled down his face from under the broad-brimmed hat he wore to protect his balding pate from sunburn. He'd loaned his son a baseball cap to wear, since Roxanne hadn't packed a hat for him. Or a rain-jacket, or sunscreen. And the boy needed new shoes. Mark made a mental note to take Jeffrey out shopping the next day. Hell, he was paying child support, but he seemed to be buying all the clothes for his growing son, lately.
Mark took a swig of his water bottle, then checked their location on his GPS receiver against the map. "Drink some water, Jeffrey." He didn't want the boy getting heatstroke.
Squinting into the distance, Mark spotted where the trail made a wide turn to the left, skirting around a clump of scraggly Gambel oak. He pointed out the turn to Jeffrey. "The cache is north of that turn. That's where we need to leave the trail and start bushwhacking."
"What's bushwhacking?"
"When you blaze your own trail. I guess the expression comes from having to whack bushes to get them out of the way."
Jeffrey laughed. When they reached the turn and left the trail to head up the mountain, the boy found a stick and started swatting nearby bushes. "Take that. And that!"
Mark shook his head. The energy of youth. He was saving his for just putting one foot in front of the other.
With no need to banter with his shrub-conquering son, Mark's thoughts drifted to his ever-present quandary: how to deal with the boy's unstable mother. Roxanne's mercurial moods fascinated him when they were young and had no real responsibilities. But once Jeffrey came along, the heavy burden of fatherhood changed Mark's outlook. Being wakened past midnight to hunt for fairies in the moonlight no longer appealed to him when he had to go to work the next morning. Nor did Roxanne's long calls to the office to breathlessly describe her latest grandiose plan for making a million dollars, or to sob out how a friend had slighted her.
Roxanne had never been able to hold a job for long. Her bosses frowned on employees taking off in the middle of the day, or for a couple of days, for a mental health break. And Mark couldn't let her neediness interfere with his career. He was the breadwinner for the whole family. So, he stopped taking her calls at work. He suspected that was the first of many times her image of him plummeted from an idolized hero to an evil sadist who'd cruelly abandoned her.
She couldn't even manage being a stay-at-home mom. Mark was the one who had checked Jeffrey's homework, washed the clothes she let pile up, packed lunches for the boy, and made sure the checks got written. Mark had grown up, for Pete's sake, and she hadn't.
The situation finally reached the point where Mark couldn't live with Roxanne anymore, so he filed for divorce. He thought getting custody of Jeffrey would be easy, but the state usually sided with the mother, unless the father could show she was unsuitable. So, he'd had to document Roxanne's wild mood swings, impulsive spending and drinking binges. Having her inadequacies paraded in public just made her all the more furious. When he picked up Jeffrey for this latest visit, she'd glared and refused to speak to him.
Probably, Roxanne was dreading their court date later that week when the custody issue would be decided. The judge showed every indication he would rule in Mark's favor.
Mark scanned the trail for Jeffrey. The boy was getting too far ahead. "Hey, son," Mark shouted, "slow down and give your old man a chance to catch up."
Jeffrey smiled and waved, then sat on a large pink slab of Pikes Peak granite to wait.
Thank God, Roxanne hadn't turned Jeffrey against Mark yet. The boy was smart enough to know the poison she spouted about his father was lies. And Mark had explained Roxanne's mental condition patiently to his son, trying not to cast any blame on her.
After reaching Jeffrey, Mark slumped on the rock beside his son. He took out the GPS receiver and handed over the unit. "Time for another check. You do it this time."
Mark drank from a water bottle and wiped his brow while heat waves shimmered off the ground. With no rain in the past two weeks, even the small cactus plants beside the rock drooped. Mark ran his tongue over his dry lips and scanned for wildlife. Nothing moved on the ground or in the sky. Smarter than their human kin, the birds and animals were waiting out the heat and would forage for food after the sun sank below the horizon. Mark lifted the backpack, stuffed with jackets, lunch, first-aid kit and extra water, off his back to let the dry air draw the sweat out of his T-shirt.
Jeffrey painstakingly read the latitude and longitude off the GPS receiver and found their position on the topographic map. They were only a quarter of an inch away on the map from the red X Mark had drawn to mark the geocache location.
Jeffrey looked up at his dad, eyes shining. "Almost there."
"Read the hint," Mark said. "Then see if you can find the landmarks it describes."
"Tucked in a rock pile between two big Ponderosa pines." Jeffrey looked around. "There's pine trees all around us."
Mark pointed north. "It should be over there, about five hundred feet or so, give or take fifty feet. See any rocks?"
Jeffrey stood and craned his neck. "I think so. Can I go?"
Mark nodded, and the boy took off up the mountainside. Mark followed more slowly, stepping carefully on the loose gravel scree between the sharp spines of yucca plants. Three stars, my ass, he thought. With this steepness and roughness to the trail, the geocache should have been rated at least four stars. He'd be sure to post a warning when he logged their visit.
After a few minutes, he caught a glint of metal up ahead, most likely an ammo box, in a pile of rocks behind some chokecherry bushes. As he hiked after Jeffrey, he kept his eye on the spot. He didn't say anything, wanting his son to experience the joy of discovery, but he prepared a hint to throw Jeffrey's way if the boy passed the box.
Two massive Ponderosa pine trees shaded the rocks from the sun now beating down from its zenith. Might be a good place to eat their lunch after Jeffrey spied the cache. Mark could use an extended rest. His legs ached, and the short sit-down hadn't been long enough for him to catch his breath. Maybe he should start going to the gym.
"Found it!" Jeffrey scrambled over the rock pile, sat and hoisted the ammo box onto his lap. He popped open the lid, peered inside and pulled out a piece of paper.
Mark stepped into the shade of the trees and looked up at his smiling son, who glowed with health and the excitement of discovery. God, he loved the boy. Jeffrey seemed to be turning out okay despite of his mother's inadequacies. Though Roxanne would love to strangle Mark, she'd never hurt her son. She loved Jeffrey as much as—or, Mark had to admit, even more than—he did, in her own fierce way.
"Is that the guest log? You want to write in our names?"
Jeffrey shook his head. "No, it's a clue. Listen." He read from the paper. "Congratulations. You've found the cache, but now you need to solve the mystery. Who did it and how? First, find the murder victim, count the clues, then return here to see if you found them all. Go up the hill, north by northwest, to the large rock shaped like a coyote. The body's hidden near the rock. Beware of the blood!"
What the hell? Mark's gut tightened as the possibilities swirled in his mind. Did some sicko really kill something? An animal, or God forbid, a person? And leave the body for geocachers to find? Or was this all some macabre joke? Either way, he didn't like it. Not one bit. He reached for the paper. "Let me see that."
Jeffrey stood, hand shading his eyes as he searched the hillside above them. Engrossed, he let the paper fall from his hand. "I don't see a coyote rock."
Mark picked up the typed note and read it. A prickly premonition made the hair on his neck rise. "There's no need to look for it. I think this is far enough--"
"There!" Jeffrey pointed. He hopped off the rock pile and started running uphill through the dry brush.
"Jeffrey, stop!"
"It's not far, Dad. Take your time. I'll wait for you when I get there." Thin legs pumping, he clambered up the slope.
"Damn it, I said stop."
As if he hadn't heard his father, Jeffrey kept climbing.
Mark searched the hillside far above the boy and spotted a large rock that looked like the profile of a sitting coyote. Getting there would be a steep climb. But Mark was determined to stop Jeffrey before he reached it, or to get there first and shield the boy from whatever traumatic sight lay in wait.
He took off with long, loping strides, clawing his way through the scratchy brush after his son. "Jeffrey," he hollered again, as he heaved himself over a large boulder, "wait for me."
"I'm going to find it first!"
The damn kid thinks this is a game. Mark's heart pounded as he pushed himself harder and faster up the slope. He tried to call his son again, but he was out of breath. His chest heaved with the effort of his uphill scramble. His stomach twisted with fear of what the boy would find.
Jeffrey's bright red hat bobbed ahead, in and out of patches of scrub oak and chokecherry bushes, marking his progress toward the coyote rock, now within a few yards.
Mark ignored the stitch in his side and lunged forward. "S-s-stop," he cried out again, expelling all the air in his chest with the effort. He gasped, coughed and lost his balance. He fell, slamming his knee against the ground. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he shoved to his feet again.
Jeffrey reached the rock and put a hand on it to steady himself. He looked down, head moving back and forth as he scanned the ground.
Damn. Mark felt a tight band constricting his chest, but he pushed on, only a few yards to go now. Maybe he could get there before Jeffrey found the body. But, no.
Jeffrey's face screwed up, his mouth fell open, and he stumbled back. "Eeww, gross."
Too late. What had the boy seen?
Dizzy now with fatigue, Mark threw his body up the hill with sheer willpower. He crashed through the brush next to Jeffrey, and stood with hands on his knees, chest heaving.
A decapitated, nude Barbie lay on the ground in a pool of dried red liquid. One of the doll's legs was sliced open. A small skeletal bone protruded from the cut. A miniature ax lay imbedded in her well-endowed, red-streaked chest. The blonde head lay off to the side, the hair matted with the red liquid, dark shadows drawn under the innocent eyes, the perfect, pouty mouth fixed in a macabre grin.
Mark fell to his knees and sucked in a couple of quick breaths. "What kind of . . . sick person . . . would leave this?"
Jeffrey stepped back toward the doll and puffed out his chest. "I think it's cool."
Well, thought Mark, that's a fine indication of how Roxanne's warping the boy's sensitivities. Murder's cool, now.
Jeffrey picked up a stick and drew it through the crusted red pool. "What do you think this is? Pig's blood? Jello?"
"Put the stick down, Jeffrey." Mark rubbed his left arm, which felt numb and sore.
Jeffrey threw the stick away, then bent to stare at the Barbie. He slowly walked all the way around the pretend crime scene, eyes searching the ground.
"Get away from there." Mark grimaced. He was still winded, still gasping for breaths, even feeling a little dizzy. He sat down hard and groped for the water bottle in the pack behind him.
Jeffrey plopped down next to him and reached over to pull the water bottle out of Mark's pack and hand it to him. "So who do you think did it? The ax makes me think a lumberjack. Is one of the Ken doll's friends a lumberjack?"
In the process of slurping water from the bottle, Mark sputtered. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Suspects, Dad. And clues. We need to find more clues. Mom said the killer always takes something with him and leaves something behind. He left the ax, but maybe there's something else. And he took Barbie's clothes, but he coulda' taken something else, too. Maybe the killer wasn't even a he."
Mark swiped sweat away from his eyes and looked around while Jeffrey droned on. Mark needed to find some shade, to get away from the merciless sun. His dizziness was getting worse. But no trees stood nearby, and the looming rock faced south, so it cast no shadow. The sky was still pure blue, no clouds, not even small puffs, only a predatory hawk circling on a thermal, scanning for prey.
With a triumphant scream, it dived.
A heaviness made Mark clasp his chest. The water bottle slipped from his hand.
Jeffrey stopped talking and stared at his father. "You okay, Dad? You look kinda sick."
The clues coalesced in Mark's mind while he pieced the puzzle together. Shortness of breath, sweating, chest feeling like an Anaconda had wrapped itself around his ribs, pain radiating down his arm, dizziness, and yes, even some nausea. The logical deduction forced its way into the open. He was having another heart attack. A big one this time.
Mark dug his bottle of nitroglycerin and aspirin out of his pocket. He chewed an aspirin and washed the bitter taste away with water, then slipped a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue. He felt for a pulse on his neck. It seemed weak and fluttering.
"Jeffrey," he started, then licked his lips and debated how much to tell his son. What if he sugarcoated the serious situation and died right here and now, leaving the boy fatherless? No, Jeffrey had to be told the truth. All Mark could do was to be calm himself, show his son how to be a man. He reached for Jeffrey's hand.
"I'm having a heart attack." At Jeffrey's gasp, Mark gripped his son's hand tighter. "People live through heart attacks every day. Remember, I lived through my last one."
He held up the bottle of pills. "These should help. But we need to get some more help for your old dad."
Jeffrey leapt to his feet and looked around, his actions jerky with panic. "There's no one here." Tears welled in his eyes.
Mark nodded. Even that little movement hurt. "We have to call 9-1-1 with the cell phone." He reached behind him for his backpack, but a sharp pain made him gasp.
Jeffrey's wide-eyed face loomed over him. "I'll get it."
Gratefully, Mark let his son ease the backpack off his back, then he slipped another nitroglycerin pill under his tongue and lay down. The world shifted and spun. He closed his eyes to focus on settling his stomach. The contents of the backpack clattered on the ground. Mark felt his head being lifted, and Jeffrey slid a lumpy pillow made out of his jacket underneath.
When Mark opened his eyes, Jeffrey had the cell phone open and was staring at the screen. "I see two bars."
"Then we've got service." Mark sucked air through clenched teeth. Even talking was getting difficult now. The pills didn't seem to be working. "Get the GPS out of my pocket."
Jeffrey's fingers scrabbled in Mark's pocket and pulled out the device.
"Now call. Give them the co-" The Anaconda squeezed Mark's chest.
"The coordinates?"
"Yes," Mark whispered.
Clutching the two devices tightly, Jeffrey called 9-1-1 while glancing worriedly at his father. Mark tried to listen to the boy answer the dispatcher's questions, but his attention kept drifting to his dizziness, nausea and chest-crushing pain.
"Dad!" Jeffrey's face was inches from his.
"Wh-what?"
"She wants to know if you're conscious."
"For now."
"He's conscious. He talked to me." Jeffrey listened for a minute, nodded, then laid the phone down and started stuffing their jackets and rocks into the backpack.
Mark's head was lifted then returned to the ground after Jeffrey removed the jacket. "What're you doing?"
"They said I should elevate your feet until they can get here." Jeffrey zipped the full backpack, lifted Mark's feet and shoved the bulky pack under them.
"How long?"
Jeffrey relayed the question, then stared at his father in dismay. "About forty-five minutes."
Mark grimaced in pain. Forty-five minutes was a long time. He wasn't sure he'd make it. But he had to. If he died, Jeffrey would be raised by his crazy mother.
"I'm scared, Dad."
"Me, too."
"I wish Mom was here."
Mark couldn't answer 'me, too' to that, but realized Jeffrey would have been comforted by Roxanne's presence. Should he have Jeffrey call her? He envisioned what she'd tell the judge about their predicament—that Mark had exposed Jeffrey not only to a disturbing scene, but to danger by taking the boy out in the wilderness where Mark had no business being with his heart condition. Why give her fuel for arguments that she should have custody?
Mark looked at his son, hunched over with his brow furrowed, chewing on his lip. "Call her."
"What?"
"Tell the dispatcher you want to call your mom."
"Okay." Jeffrey asked the dispatcher then listened for awhile. "Ten minutes. Every ten minutes. Right. I'll call you then." Then he recited Mark's cell phone number.
He turned to Mark. "She told me to call back every ten minutes until the EMTs come. If I don't, she said she'd have the phone company interrupt my call to Mom so she can check on you."
"Good. Hold my hand." Mark felt Jeffrey's hand, warm and slippery with nervous sweat, slide into his. "You're doing a good job, son. You've been real brave."
Mark wheezed. What if he stopped breathing and his heart stopped? Would Jeffrey be able to follow the dispatcher's CPR instructions? CPR was hard work. How long would the boy be able to keep it up? The last thing Mark wanted was for Jeffrey to feel guilty if his father died.
When Jeffrey squeezed his hand, Mark gave a weak squeeze back. He had to hold on, for his son. "I'll keep squeezing to show you I'm still okay. Now call your Mom."
Jeffrey punched the buttons then almost shouted, "Mom. Dad's having a heart attack. I had to call 9-1-1. I'm really scared."
Roxanne's voice murmured from the cell phone. Good, she was trying to calm the boy. Mark focused on regulating his breathing, trying not to gasp with the pain. A dark tunnel closed in on the edges of his vision.
Jeffrey's voice seemed to come from far away. "Dad?"
The tunnel receded, and Jeffrey's face filled Mark's vision. He wouldn't faint, or die. Yet. He gave Jeffrey's hand a weak squeeze. "Yes."
"Mom wants to talk to you." Jeffrey put the phone by Mark's ear.
"How are you feeling?"
"Terrible."
"Jeffrey said you're having a heart attack. You going to be able to hold on until the paramedics get there?"
Mark glanced at his son. "Don't know."
"Damn, Mark. I feel for you, I really do, but I can't do anything from here. Jeffrey says you ran after him when he went up the hill to find the doll. Poor boy's feeling guilty that he didn't stop when you called to him."
Though she tried to sound sympathetic, Mark could tell she was more worried about the impact on her son. Rightfully so. Jeffrey must be scared to death. "Y-yes, but--"
"I told him it wasn't his fault that you piled on the pounds, let your blood pressure get too high. Won't protect yourself, but you're way too protective of him."
"It could've been an animal. Or human."
"Don't worry about Jeffrey. He's a brave boy. He'll be able to deal with it, and I'll be there every day to help him."
Mark realized she wasn't talking about the doll. "I'm not going to die."
"From what Jeffrey tells me, you won't make it."
The dark words sank into Mark's head, spreading poison like a coastal oil spill he tried to help clean up years ago. The black goo had coated everything: gasping seabirds, withering vegetation, and flaccid fish with cloudy eyes. It sucked at his shoes, sapping his motivation and energy. Death had lurked everywhere, and he could do nothing about it.
Just like now.
A heavy weakness settled on Mark's limbs. His chest fought his efforts to make it rise. Blackness loomed at the edge of his vision. Soon he'd lose consciousness then stop breathing. With many minutes to go before the EMTs arrived, he doubted his son could keep him alive.
"Mark, you need to say goodbye to Jeffrey. Tell him you love him."
Mark looked at Jeffrey's solemn face, opened his mouth, but no words came out. He silently mouthed, "I love you." He gazed at his son, memorizing the features, the sweetness of the last moment of being just a boy, a carefree kid, before being shoved out of childhood and into the adult world by tragedy.
Jeffrey blinked, fighting tears. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I love you, too, Dad."
"Good," Roxanne said into Mark's ear. "Now you can let go. You know I'll take good care of Jeffrey."
Mark knew she loved Jeffrey, fiercely loved him, with as much intensity as she hated Mark. Yes, she would take good care of the boy, maybe too good, smothering him, but he'd never lack for anything. Except a father. Roxanne would try her damnedest to poison the boy's memories of his dad. Mark could only hope Jeffrey would hold onto the good times they'd shared. He exhaled long and slow. The black tunnel narrowed again.
"One last thing."
Mark heard a muffled sound, like she was stifling a laugh, no, more like a cry. Maybe the hatred hadn't eaten away all her feelings for him.
"Jeffrey and I will clean up that geocache, get rid of the Barbie doll. We wouldn't want someone else to have a heart attack, would we?"
Yes, the cleanup was a good thing to do. Mark stopped fighting the dark. The Anaconda slammed him one last time.
Roxanne's voice came from far away. "Besides, the Murder Cache has served its purpose."
STICKERS by Daniel Scott - written version
STICKERS
Erhardt never knew where the face came from until one of his sons showed up, nearly in tears, on the cellar steps.
The kid had just seen something on TV about the man who owned the copyright for the face. He was cracking down on illegal users of it. Two people were shown being taken away in handcuffs. The kid wanted to know if Erhardt was going to be taken away in handcuffs too.
“Of course not! That’s a stupid question. Those people weren’t printing stickers, were they?”
“No.”
Erhardt stood up from behind the press, where he was replacing a broken belt. He tried to seem casual as he wiped his hands with a rag, but his voice swerved a little when he said, “What were they doing?”
The kid said, “I don’t know.”
Erhardt tossed the rag aside. “Get upstairs now.” He was about to resume printing and the kids weren’t allowed in the cellar when the press was running. “And don’t say anything about this to your mother,” he added, but the kid did anyway.
Erhardt scoured the next morning’s paper until he found the small mention of it. Some guy in Ledgeville, Florida was busted for heading up a counterfeit T-shirt operation that extended to three states. Erhardt dismissed it elaborately, mostly for the sake of Brenda, his wife, who worried a lot. “I’m not running any kind of operation,” he told her and even if he was it was only in one state and that state, Massachusetts, was one hell of a long way from Ledgeville, Florida.
Brenda had gotten up with him like she had every Saturday and Sunday morning for the last two months. It was still dark out. She served him breakfast as he tuned to the local station that read off a list of schools in the area that were holding weekend fairs, which they did every year around this time. Brenda sat down with a cup of coffee for herself. She broke off a thread hanging from the sleeve of her housecoat.
“Do you think we’ll get in trouble, Joe?” she said.
“No, honey.”
“Could they put you in jail for this, Joe?”
“Brenda, please. I’m trying to hear this.” He jotted down six locales he could hit in the course of the day. He tried not to stray more than fifty or sixty miles from home, but lately the perimeter was stretching.
He looked up and Brenda was squinting at the newspaper article again -- eyebrows lifted, lids quavering, head lowered to within a few inches of the tiny print. She rarely complained but Erhardt was well aware she needed new glasses. She’d had the same pair since before they were married.
Erhardt tugged the paper away from her, saying he needed to check the almanac.
Brenda packed him a lunch and a thermos of coffee. She threw a jacket over her housecoat and helped Erhardt load the boxes of stickers into the back of the van.
“Do you suppose Al Hurley knew about this when he gave you the plate for that sticker, Joe?” she said. “Do you think he’s breaking the law too?”
“Nobody’s breaking the law, Bren. Stop worrying.” He lifted the van’s hood to check the coolant. She went back into the house, where the kids were up to watch their Saturday cartoons. She heard the van start and drive away. She was tired all day.
*
On the drive to the morning’s first fair, Erhardt concluded that Al Hurley probably did know he was breaking the law. Hurley was a friend, a graphic artist who had worked up a good likeness of the face and made a plate of it. He had given the plate to Erhardt in exchange for all of the printer’s future artwork business (allowing Erhardt’s printing company ever got off the ground, of course).
Before then, Erhardt had never seen or heard of the face, but Hurley said the kids were wild for it, and that the merchandising was “through the roof.” There were T-shirts and hats, backpacks and notebooks and bike baskets. It even had its own brand of gum, according to Erhardt’s own kids, and a Saturday morning cartoon they were probably watching at that very moment. The appeal of the face was lost on Erhardt; to him, it was nothing more than a jaunty sketch, with black zigzags for eyes, no nose, and a big electric scribble of a mouth that turned upwards at the ends in a vague suggestion of parentally unauthorized pleasure-taking. The face had a name...something Erhardt could never remember. . .Easy [capitalized?]something ...something easy[capitalized?] -- though it was explained to him by one of his daughters that it was actually “E.Z.,” like they were initials. “Oh,” he had said to her, “and what’s that supposed to stand for?” The kid just rolled her eyes and left the room, unable to believe her own father would ask a question like that.
Erhardt made the stickers in the six colors of ink that were cheapest to buy and easiest to mix -- blue, red, yellow, green, orange, and purple -- plus white, the color of the paper.[Does he have to mix the color of the paper?]
At the fairs where he sold the stickers for fifty cents apiece, Erhardt kept to himself. At some point he had learned he was supposed to have a vendor’s license. He also found out they were not hard to get, except for the $455 fee. No one had ever asked to see Erhardt’s license, despite even[omit “even”?] the makeshift appearance of his enterprise: just the aging van he carted his load of children and wife around in, with no special paintjob or stenciling like most of the other vendors’; a small collapsible card table for a display, a relic from the days when he and Brenda did things other than feed and clothe children; and untidy stacks of the variously colored face stickers held in place on breezy days by pebbles he picked up off the ground.
Once he set up, it didn’t take long for the kids to flock around. Erhardt typically did a brisk business, though today he would find a fair bit slower than usual. There was even a stretch of ten or fifteen minutes when no one at all was at his table. It was during this odd lull that he felt he was being watched from behind, and he was.
He recognized the man as one of the other vendors he had seen around from time to time. This man always wore tight, dirty T-shirts that showed the sags and folds of his torso, and his hair was shorn to a fine buzz that was silver in spots and black in others, giving his head the appearance of a giant speckled egg. Erhardt remembered that he sold novelties. He always suspected the man of being one of the illegals, like himself.
The man said his name was Wright and stuck his hand out. His grip was greasy, and Erhardt wiped his hand on his pants afterward, and not discreetly. Up close the man’s T-shirt showed a picture of a shapely young woman in a bathing suit that might have been inappropriate for a school fair if the image weren’t so faded and hard to make out.
“You’re doin’ good with those stickers, aren’t ya?” Wentzel said. “I see all the kids with them. Is that all you sell?”
Plainly that was the case.
“Where are you getting them? Who’s your distributor?”
Erhardt just smiled. It was a good approximation of the face on the sticker, or at least for a fleeting instant it felt that way to Erhardt. He nodded at a couple of kids who were walking by, but they didn’t stop. He was starting to think Wentzel’s presence was scaring away his customers.
Wentzel picked up a sticker and examined it front and back. “I’m not looking to mess up your deal,” he said. “Maybe I can get some through you. You know, you can make a little extra for yourself. I’d pay whatever price you felt was fair.”
“You’re getting that smudged...please put that down.”
“Oh, look at that. I guess I owe ya -- what is it? -- fifty cents?” He took a Kennedy half-dollar from his pocket and handed it to Erhardt. Erhardt didn’t take it outright so Wentzel placed it on the table with a snap. “Well? Whadaya say?”
“Why should I get you any stickers?” Erhardt said. “Right now I’m the only one selling them, as far as I can tell.”
“I’m heading down to Connecticut and Rhode Island in a couple of weeks. I keep heading south, the colder it gets. You can’t tell me you were thinking of going down there?”
“I can’t? Why can’t I?”
“Well, for one thing, you got that wedding ring on. You probably got kids too. You wouldn’t wanna just run off and leave them.”
Erhardt looked at the man. He hated how much he believed in his own rotten assumptions. He hated how sure he was that Erhardt believed them too. He looked in the direction opposite Wentzel and said, “How many are we talking about?”
“How many fills up one of them boxes you got there?”
“Ten, twelve thousand.”
Wentzel nodded. “I’d say ten boxes would do me good. Fifteen if you can swing it.
There came to Erhardt’s eyes a glint of interest, which he tried to disguise with surprise: “You got room for all that in there?” Wentzel drove and apparently lived in a black Winnebago. It had some sort of satellite dish on its roof.
“I got room for whatever I make room for,” Wentzel said. “I’ll be at the Ainsbury fair next Saturday. Let me know if you can set something up. It would definitely be worth it for you.”
Erhardt was noncommittal in his response.
Wentzel folded his sticker in half and slipped it in his shirt pocket. “You could charge more than fifty cents a pop for these, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, well. I don’t like to gouge the kids.”
Wentzel waved that off as he started back toward the Winnebago. He said, “Kids have all kinds of money these days.”
With Wentzel gone the kids began coming around Erhardt’s table again. He was so busy he hardly had time to think about anything Wentzel had said until he arrived to set up at the day’s second destination, where he quietly upped the price of a sticker to seventy-five cents. They sold just as well, and at his third stop he went for a dollar and again they sold just as well. He kept the price there for the rest of the day.
That night in bed, Brenda asked him what the trouble was. He said there was no trouble, except that he was tired and had to get up at four thirty in the morning. He laid awake thinking how he had never seen a black Winnebago before. All the ones he could remember seeing were a cream color. You got it mixing four parts white with one part yellow. Usually they were inscribed with names that invoked free-spiritedness or affection. But he had never seen one with a name that ran along the back of Wentzel’s: Salamander, in orange block lettering.
The extra cash he pulled in that day still wasn’t enough. No matter what he charged, there was really no such thing as profit. Whatever came in went out just as fast. There was never a moment when someone in the family didn’t want for something. He knew he needed the money too badly to turn down Wentzel’s offer.
In the morning Brenda asked him again what the trouble was. “I told you nothing,” he said. She stepped away, but not before a look that said she believed he was lying.
He wished he could have assured her there was no trouble, but there’d already been too much for her to ever believe that. Admittedly, it was he who started it. He had a job that at least sustained them, running a press at Victory Printing in Dorchester. Since he lost it, after deciding to siphon off a few customers for himself, he often thought he should have left barely enough alone. How Victory found out they wouldn’t say, but Erhardt suspected it was through one of those stolen customers, a man named Frank O’Brien. O’Brien denied it when Erhardt confronted him, but there was a lot of apologetic sympathizing and a promise to send a big order of bologna labels Erhardt’s way -- a promise that three months later he had heard nothing more about.
On Monday he started filling Wentzel’s order. To do that and keep up his own supply of stickers meant he had to run the press all day and well into the night. There was not a corner of the house the [noise] failed to reach. Somehow the kids slept through it fine, but Brenda laid in bed with a low throbbing that afflicted her behind the eyes. She was always straightening the clock on the kitchen wall or turning up the TV. Erhardt thought she was holding up pretty well until the middle of the week when Bud Kailer from across the street came over.
He had come to the back door instead of the front, which Brenda thought rude. They stood there, unhappy to have to look at each other, the press roaring underneath them. “What in God’s name is going on over here?” Kailer said.
Brenda tried hard to behave like everything was quite ordinary. She shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t know what I mean? Are you deaf?”
“Oh, that. That’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing!”
“It’s just -- Joe’s working on something -- not working, I mean, but...” She felt a little woozy, and she swayed. Kailer looked the way she imagined he would if she woke from fainting to find him over her. She shook her head and said, “I don’t know what Joe’s doing, exactly.”
Abruptly the press ceased. It was as if a cold clean breeze had suddenly swept through the house and Brenda felt relieved though she knew she shouldn’t have. They both listened as the printer ascended the cellar steps, emerging with red ink smeared on the front of his T-shirt.
“Hi, Bud,” he said.
“What the hell is going on down there?” Kailer was looking him up and down. “What’s all over you? -- paint?”
It seemed to Erhardt that any idiot would know the difference between ink and paint.
“It’s nothing,” Brenda said. “I told him it was nothing, Joe.”
“And what was that truck that was here the other day?” Kailer went on. “You can’t have eighteen wheelers coming down this street.” Erhardt had ordered some paper.
“We had a delivery!” Brenda blurted.
“Of what?” Kailer demanded.
Erhardt took a step forward. “I don’t think it’s any of your business, Bud.”
Two of the kids, wearing pajamas, ran in and suddenly halted. They stared up at Kailer, which made him uncomfortable.[point of view]
“Well,” he said. “Please try to keep it down. It’s against the law to run a business from your home, you know.” Kailer and his wife were childless, and he looked at the kids like they were some new species of weed that had cropped up on his lawn, which he tended to obsessively. He left without another word.
Erhardt had gotten [to]the point where he wondered if there was anything he had to do to survive that wasn’t against the law.
From then on, with urging from Brenda, Erhardt decided he would only run the press during the day. So he cranked out as many of the faces as he could in that time. If that meant fewer stickers for himself to sell, then he would charge Wentzel even more for his order.
When Brenda wasn’t upstairs with the kids, she was down with Erhardt. She would sweep up or help him sift through the freshly printed batches of stickers to weed out the bad ones, though she often let bad ones go by.
Later, in the bedroom, she worked with a nail file at removing a blue face that had ended up on the bottom of her slipper. She said, “I don’t know what they see in these things.”
“What?” Erhardt said. He had already begun to fall asleep.
“What’s it supposed to be anyway?” she said.
Erhardt turned over. “The kids like it,” he said.
“It looks like it’s on drugs.”
“It’s just a face, Bren.”
“Well I hate it.”
“I do too,” he said.
On Saturday Erhardt got up as usual and listened to the radio. There was indeed a fair at the Ainsbury Elementary School. It was a tiny town and he had to unfold his map of the state. Brenda, serving breakfast, watched his finger trace the route, stopping way out past Worcester. He had told her he would never go that far.
The road to Ainsbury passed through several small towns, each with their own creeping speed limit. As a result, the trip took longer than he’d allowed for. He arrived late.
He got a spot near the entrance of the school grounds and quickly set up his display. The fair was in full swing, meaning the few rides were up and operating while the grounds were traversed with docile small-town children and adults with puffy eyes and hair a little messier than it would be during the week. [awkward sentence]
Erhardt scanned the scene for Wentzel’s Winnebago, but did not find it. Immediately a dread took hold of his chest. His breathing became hard; there was nothing else to do but ask around.
He walked over to a vendor he had seen a lot, a seller of flavored ices, a chancy business in the waning months of the year. He eyeballed Erhardt skeptically as he approached.
Erhardt nodded and forced a smile. “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen that guy around today? He’s got a Winnebago. Sells, you know, things like those glass balls that you shake up and it looks like it’s snowing?”
The ice man’s eyes narrowed as his head shook out a no.
Erhardt asked one or two others, to the same effect. He headed back to the van. A gaggle of kids interrupted his path. He saw that some of them were carrying stickers showing the face. They were printed on a glittering silver paper that Erhardt knew was expensive. “Hey sweetheart,” he said to a little girl with one, “where’d you get that?”
“Over there.” She pointed to the other side of the school grounds. Erhardt could not be sure exactly where she was pointing. When he turned back, she was gone but a boy with an identical sticker was nearby.
“Hey kid. How much you pay for that?”
“Fifty cents.”
Erhardt made it back to his table. He had kept his eye on it the whole time. No one had approached it. He lowered his price to fifty cents. There was a nip in the air, and he sat in the van with the heater running. Quickly it became too hot. He shut the heater off and cracked the window.
He spent the next two hours like that. Three times he got out of the van to make a sale. He kept watching the gate for any sign of Wentzel. In that time it occurred to him that every instinct he ever had in his life had steered him wrong. Every seemingly good idea -- Brenda, the kids, the notion that he could work for himself -- turned out to be a trap. In the rearview mirror he could see the boxes and boxes of face stickers. He flipped the mirror to its tinted nighttime position, and tried to keep himself from calculating the loss. [Couldn’t he sell them eventually?]
The last of the other vendors began to pack up. He
got out and did the same. He wasn’t careful about it as he usually was, but instead folded up the table and threw it inside the van. He even left a few stickers lying on the ground, and ran over some as he backed up and then tore ahead. A man in a rumpled sport coat hailed him as he approached the gate. It was not clear who the man was, though Erhardt believed him to be a teacher or the principal. He had an overgrown moustache that was exactly the pale brown color of his coat, and thick glasses that made his eyes look like small muddy lakes.
Erhardt pulled up and the man leaned into the vehicle. “Take it easy, pal. This isn’t the Mass Turnpike. There’s still kids around.”
Erhardt said nothing as he started the van forward.
“Whoa!” the man said, and Erhardt stopped again. “I’d like to see your papers, please.” Apparently he didn’t like Erhardt’s attitude. Erhardt stepped on the gas and the man tried frantically to disengage his head from the window. In his panic he grabbed the steering wheel and the van lurched to the left. Erhardt broke his grip and righted the vehicle. Somehow the man freed himself, though not before whacking his head against the open car window. As he sped off, Erhardt heard him swearing in a way that he thought was particularly filthy for someone concerned about the kids all around.
He made his way to the state highway and headed south, the direction of Rhode Island. Wentzel had said something about Rhode Island. He looked all around for the black Winnebago. He knew he wouldn’t find it, but he kept looking. Several times the state highway became a local road, then a state highway again. After that, it was a long residential street where the houses got nicer and the cars newer the further[farther] he went. Then he stopped. He had to. In an hour’s time he had driven the length of the tiny state. He had reached the ocean.
He stopped the van in a parking lot. He got out and stood to watch the choppy gray water. The strong breeze made him zip up his coat. To his left he could see a small ship at a dock. People were boarding. He walked down to get a closer look. He had lived all his life near the ocean and had never been on a boat. He had no objection to boats, but in thirty-four years the opportunity had never come up.
He had come close enough that a man in a booth came out and said, “Twelve dollars, guy.”
“What?”
“Ticket is twelve dollars, round-trip.” The man was wearing a blazer and a variation on a train conductor’s hat.
“Where does that go?” Erhardt said.
“That’s the ferry to the island.”
“What island?”
“Block Island. This is the last weekend it’s running.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t run in winter. Are you buying a ticket?”
“How much is a one-way?”
“No one-ways. Round-trip only. Twelve dollars.”
Erhardt took out his wallet. He had barely half that much. The man went back to his booth.
Erhardt stayed to watch the ferry. A loud horn blew when it was ready to go. The people on the deck talked like they were on a street corner or an elevator. They acted like they didn’t know they were on a boat. It took less than fifteen minutes to disappear from Erhardt’s sight.
He went back to his van and pulled it into a gas station. He spent the six dollars on gas for the trip back to Massachusetts. He took the straightest route there, but he didn’t hurry. He didn’t know what he would tell Brenda, who would surely expect an explanation.
But when he returned, his wife met him at the door with glowing eyes.
“Frank O’Brien was here,” [I had forgotten O’Brien by this point] she said. “The order came through.” She guided Erhardt to the kitchen, where everything O’Brien had brought -- artwork, plates, a check equal to ten percent of the total payment -- was carefully laid out on the table. Erhardt sat down gently, as if any sudden movement might cause it all to scatter.
The order was bigger than Erhardt ever expected. O’Brien was acting as broker for the SuperWay chain of supermarkets, which wanted labels not only for their store brand of bologna, but beef bologna, Genoa salami, olive loaf, and P&P loaf as well. He sorted through the materials as Brenda served the supper she’d been keeping warm. He stared at each label a long time. They were three-color jobs that really looked sharp. And he liked that they were real labels, labels with a purpose. People would look at them and learn something. O’Brien had left a note: “They want this by Friday -- sorry for the rush -- your labels will be in supermarkets all across southern New England!”
Brenda slid into the adjacent seat. She kept her arms off the table so as not to interfere with his careful sorting. “I was getting kind of worried,” she said. “You never came home so late before.”
“Accident on the highway.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” He thought this would be a good place to elaborate a little, make the lie more believable. Shattered glass everywhere. Blood on the road. But he didn’t say anything. And not because he didn’t want to lie to her. He was just tired of explaining everything to her. Since he lost his job,[Did you mention earlier how long ago he lost his job? Maybe I missed it.] he and Brenda had been together every minute, except for the time on weekends he spent at the fairs.
Despite his exhaustion Erhardt was up the next morning five minutes before the alarm. He slipped from the bed quietly and took a fast, hot shower. He crept downstairs and looked over the SuperWay order again, deciding which label to run first, what blend of red and yellow would achieve the orange they wanted for the background. Then he put the order aside and switched on the radio. All school fairs were on for that weekend, weather permitting. He jotted down the possibilities. When he looked up, Brenda was standing on the threshold.
“We don’t have to do this anymore, Joe,” she said.
“Yes we do. Go back to sleep.”
“We’ve got the order.”
“That doesn’t solve everything.”
“It’s gotta be done by Friday.”
“Brenda, go back to sleep.” And to his surprise, she tightened the housecoat around her body, and went back upstairs. She knew he always woke up hungry. He could have made breakfast himself -- he had done so on the odd occasion, there was even a time when his Sunday mornings were spent making cheese omelettes for the kids. But instead he grabbed his thermos and his coat and he left, making no effort as he usually did to be quiet about it.
He felt sure that Wentzel would be at one of the fairs he visited that day. Every school he approached filled him with the sense that something was about to happen. All day, Wentzel was nowhere to be found.
To make matters worse, he sold the fewest face stickers he had since he started selling them, and at the old price of fifty cents. The kids just didn’t seem as interested as they once were.
He returned to the house a little later than usual. The van was still filled with the boxes of stickers. Brenda didn’t say anything about that, even though she took the van that night, to where she didn’t say.
Afterward she stepped carefully into the cellar, where Erhardt was readying the press for the SuperWay order. She had a pair of glasses in her hand. He recognized them immediately as the pair the school principal was wearing. They must have fallen off in the struggle.
“Whose are these?” Brenda said.
“They’re no one’s.” Then something occurred to him. “Try them on,” he said.
“These look like a man’s. Why were they under the car seat?”
“Try them on,” he said. “They might be just what you need.”
She couldn’t be sure if he was kidding, but she slipped them on. They were far too big for her face, and she had to perch them high on her nose. She looked around. She picked up the artwork for the salami label and focused in. She took the glasses off. “They don’t help at all,” she said.
“Throw them out then,” he said. She took them upstairs with the intention of throwing them out, but she threw them into the kitchen drawer that held a lot of other junk.
Erhardt was up at five the next morning. By seven the kids were off to school and Bud Kailer had gone to drive his wife to her job like he did every morning. When he returned, as Erhardt had seen for himself, Kailer filled his day by peeking through his window blinds at intervals, mowing his lawn when it didn’t need it, and forcing the mailman into longer chats than his route really gave him time for. “What kind of guy is that?” Erhardt said. “He lets his wife work for him?”
“He gets a pension,” Brenda said. She was a little heartened by her husband’s conversation. “He has some disability. That’s what Sally told me.”
“Sally who?”
“At the liquor store.”
Erhardt worked as if in a dream. The obliterating roar of the press at full speed was a backdrop against which his thinking was clearest and his senses their most attuned. In the racket he could make out the various musics of the machine: the claw and grab of the gears, the grinding pave of the rollers, the stripping of the excess paper from the die-cut labels. He could hear instantly went something went wrong, though it hardly ever did; the job, though huge, printed almost flawlessly.
He worked all day, and through supper. At nightfall, Brenda descended the stairs. “It’s time to quit for the day,” she said.
He shook his head. “I got the whole night ahead of me,” he said.
“Bud Kailer was out on his lawn earlier. He was staring at us.”
“I’ve got bigger problems than that jerk,” said Erhardt. The truth was he would have to work every night this week to have the order done by Friday. He never told Brenda that, but she understood it now.
From time to time during the week, she came down to bring him a sandwich or help pack the finished labels into boxes or just get away from the kids, who to Erhardt became like ghosts constantly moving overhead. Mostly she left him alone but sometimes she would feel lonely and, in the intervals when the press was not running, she would talk about anything.
“I wonder what p&p loaf is,” she said, looking at a roll of that particular label.
“I don’t know,” said Erhardt.
She squinted at the ingredients, then gave it up. “I wonder who eats this stuff,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Erhardt said.
The only interruptions in the work came when Brenda rapped on a pipe in the bathroom. The pipe ran down into the cellar, and Erhardt easily detected the sound in the all the noise. Swiftly he silenced the press; this was their signal for Kailer. Brenda kept watch. On three separate occasions, all at night, the neighbor made his way through the winding stone path that circumvented his lawn and showed up at the back door. Each time Erhardt listened on the cellar stairs to Kailer’s complaints and threats to call the police. Brenda stayed calm and said, “It won’t happen again.” Then, when Kailer disappeared into his house, the press resumed.
Erhardt was still finishing the last of the job by Friday when O’Brien came by with a check and two young men who looked like faint replications of O’Brien. They were there to load the boxes of labels into the minivan idling in the driveway. O’Brien politely pretended to be fascinated by the small talk of Brenda, who he called “Linda,” while Erhardt hurriedly packed the last of the order. After that, there were smiles all around -- even the little Erhardts, sensing it was alright, got into the act.
All night Brenda was, if not light-hearted, then at least serene. Most of the relief came from finally having some money in the bank, but she was pleased too at not having the press running. In bed, she turned away from her husband and softly began to snore.
Erhardt did not sleep. The clarity he had gained from the week of work had not left him, and it prevented him from feeling too much at ease. The money from O’Brien was substantial, but again there was no profit to be had. It would all be spent in six or seven weeks’ time, and there were no new orders in sight, and Christmas loomed now. Soon, they’d be right back where they were.
The next morning, Saturday again, Erhardt was up early. He heard Brenda sigh into her pillow as he left the bedroom.
The radio made no mention of any school fairs in the area. The time for those was over. Still, Erhardt filled his thermos and readied to go out and find Wentzel.
The kids were getting up, and he heard Brenda in the bathroom. The brood crowded the den, filling up the couch and the floor, munching from their bowls of cereal as they watched their cartoons.
Erhardt stopped by the den. He had his jacket on but he hadn’t left yet. “Is this the one with that Mr. Easy in it?” he said.
“What?” said one of them, very irritated. “No.” She seemed unable to fathom how she and someone that stupid could be in any way related.
Erhardt went to the kitchen window and looked out at the gray sky. With Brenda still in the bathroom, he slipped down into the cellar. He took his jacket off and started cleaning the rollers of the press, which were filthy. Brenda did not come down.
Later he came up and piled her and the kids in the van. They sat on the boxes of stickers as he drove to the town incinerator. The kids had a lot of fun throwing handfuls of stickers into the air and watching them flutter into the pit below.
After that, because they were too small to be left by
themselves, he took them along with him and Brenda to the
glasses place at the mall.
Erhardt never knew where the face came from until one of his sons showed up, nearly in tears, on the cellar steps.
The kid had just seen something on TV about the man who owned the copyright for the face. He was cracking down on illegal users of it. Two people were shown being taken away in handcuffs. The kid wanted to know if Erhardt was going to be taken away in handcuffs too.
“Of course not! That’s a stupid question. Those people weren’t printing stickers, were they?”
“No.”
Erhardt stood up from behind the press, where he was replacing a broken belt. He tried to seem casual as he wiped his hands with a rag, but his voice swerved a little when he said, “What were they doing?”
The kid said, “I don’t know.”
Erhardt tossed the rag aside. “Get upstairs now.” He was about to resume printing and the kids weren’t allowed in the cellar when the press was running. “And don’t say anything about this to your mother,” he added, but the kid did anyway.
Erhardt scoured the next morning’s paper until he found the small mention of it. Some guy in Ledgeville, Florida was busted for heading up a counterfeit T-shirt operation that extended to three states. Erhardt dismissed it elaborately, mostly for the sake of Brenda, his wife, who worried a lot. “I’m not running any kind of operation,” he told her and even if he was it was only in one state and that state, Massachusetts, was one hell of a long way from Ledgeville, Florida.
Brenda had gotten up with him like she had every Saturday and Sunday morning for the last two months. It was still dark out. She served him breakfast as he tuned to the local station that read off a list of schools in the area that were holding weekend fairs, which they did every year around this time. Brenda sat down with a cup of coffee for herself. She broke off a thread hanging from the sleeve of her housecoat.
“Do you think we’ll get in trouble, Joe?” she said.
“No, honey.”
“Could they put you in jail for this, Joe?”
“Brenda, please. I’m trying to hear this.” He jotted down six locales he could hit in the course of the day. He tried not to stray more than fifty or sixty miles from home, but lately the perimeter was stretching.
He looked up and Brenda was squinting at the newspaper article again -- eyebrows lifted, lids quavering, head lowered to within a few inches of the tiny print. She rarely complained but Erhardt was well aware she needed new glasses. She’d had the same pair since before they were married.
Erhardt tugged the paper away from her, saying he needed to check the almanac.
Brenda packed him a lunch and a thermos of coffee. She threw a jacket over her housecoat and helped Erhardt load the boxes of stickers into the back of the van.
“Do you suppose Al Hurley knew about this when he gave you the plate for that sticker, Joe?” she said. “Do you think he’s breaking the law too?”
“Nobody’s breaking the law, Bren. Stop worrying.” He lifted the van’s hood to check the coolant. She went back into the house, where the kids were up to watch their Saturday cartoons. She heard the van start and drive away. She was tired all day.
*
On the drive to the morning’s first fair, Erhardt concluded that Al Hurley probably did know he was breaking the law. Hurley was a friend, a graphic artist who had worked up a good likeness of the face and made a plate of it. He had given the plate to Erhardt in exchange for all of the printer’s future artwork business (allowing Erhardt’s printing company ever got off the ground, of course).
Before then, Erhardt had never seen or heard of the face, but Hurley said the kids were wild for it, and that the merchandising was “through the roof.” There were T-shirts and hats, backpacks and notebooks and bike baskets. It even had its own brand of gum, according to Erhardt’s own kids, and a Saturday morning cartoon they were probably watching at that very moment. The appeal of the face was lost on Erhardt; to him, it was nothing more than a jaunty sketch, with black zigzags for eyes, no nose, and a big electric scribble of a mouth that turned upwards at the ends in a vague suggestion of parentally unauthorized pleasure-taking. The face had a name...something Erhardt could never remember. . .Easy [capitalized?]something ...something easy[capitalized?] -- though it was explained to him by one of his daughters that it was actually “E.Z.,” like they were initials. “Oh,” he had said to her, “and what’s that supposed to stand for?” The kid just rolled her eyes and left the room, unable to believe her own father would ask a question like that.
Erhardt made the stickers in the six colors of ink that were cheapest to buy and easiest to mix -- blue, red, yellow, green, orange, and purple -- plus white, the color of the paper.[Does he have to mix the color of the paper?]
At the fairs where he sold the stickers for fifty cents apiece, Erhardt kept to himself. At some point he had learned he was supposed to have a vendor’s license. He also found out they were not hard to get, except for the $455 fee. No one had ever asked to see Erhardt’s license, despite even[omit “even”?] the makeshift appearance of his enterprise: just the aging van he carted his load of children and wife around in, with no special paintjob or stenciling like most of the other vendors’; a small collapsible card table for a display, a relic from the days when he and Brenda did things other than feed and clothe children; and untidy stacks of the variously colored face stickers held in place on breezy days by pebbles he picked up off the ground.
Once he set up, it didn’t take long for the kids to flock around. Erhardt typically did a brisk business, though today he would find a fair bit slower than usual. There was even a stretch of ten or fifteen minutes when no one at all was at his table. It was during this odd lull that he felt he was being watched from behind, and he was.
He recognized the man as one of the other vendors he had seen around from time to time. This man always wore tight, dirty T-shirts that showed the sags and folds of his torso, and his hair was shorn to a fine buzz that was silver in spots and black in others, giving his head the appearance of a giant speckled egg. Erhardt remembered that he sold novelties. He always suspected the man of being one of the illegals, like himself.
The man said his name was Wright and stuck his hand out. His grip was greasy, and Erhardt wiped his hand on his pants afterward, and not discreetly. Up close the man’s T-shirt showed a picture of a shapely young woman in a bathing suit that might have been inappropriate for a school fair if the image weren’t so faded and hard to make out.
“You’re doin’ good with those stickers, aren’t ya?” Wentzel said. “I see all the kids with them. Is that all you sell?”
Plainly that was the case.
“Where are you getting them? Who’s your distributor?”
Erhardt just smiled. It was a good approximation of the face on the sticker, or at least for a fleeting instant it felt that way to Erhardt. He nodded at a couple of kids who were walking by, but they didn’t stop. He was starting to think Wentzel’s presence was scaring away his customers.
Wentzel picked up a sticker and examined it front and back. “I’m not looking to mess up your deal,” he said. “Maybe I can get some through you. You know, you can make a little extra for yourself. I’d pay whatever price you felt was fair.”
“You’re getting that smudged...please put that down.”
“Oh, look at that. I guess I owe ya -- what is it? -- fifty cents?” He took a Kennedy half-dollar from his pocket and handed it to Erhardt. Erhardt didn’t take it outright so Wentzel placed it on the table with a snap. “Well? Whadaya say?”
“Why should I get you any stickers?” Erhardt said. “Right now I’m the only one selling them, as far as I can tell.”
“I’m heading down to Connecticut and Rhode Island in a couple of weeks. I keep heading south, the colder it gets. You can’t tell me you were thinking of going down there?”
“I can’t? Why can’t I?”
“Well, for one thing, you got that wedding ring on. You probably got kids too. You wouldn’t wanna just run off and leave them.”
Erhardt looked at the man. He hated how much he believed in his own rotten assumptions. He hated how sure he was that Erhardt believed them too. He looked in the direction opposite Wentzel and said, “How many are we talking about?”
“How many fills up one of them boxes you got there?”
“Ten, twelve thousand.”
Wentzel nodded. “I’d say ten boxes would do me good. Fifteen if you can swing it.
There came to Erhardt’s eyes a glint of interest, which he tried to disguise with surprise: “You got room for all that in there?” Wentzel drove and apparently lived in a black Winnebago. It had some sort of satellite dish on its roof.
“I got room for whatever I make room for,” Wentzel said. “I’ll be at the Ainsbury fair next Saturday. Let me know if you can set something up. It would definitely be worth it for you.”
Erhardt was noncommittal in his response.
Wentzel folded his sticker in half and slipped it in his shirt pocket. “You could charge more than fifty cents a pop for these, you know,” he said.
“Yeah, well. I don’t like to gouge the kids.”
Wentzel waved that off as he started back toward the Winnebago. He said, “Kids have all kinds of money these days.”
With Wentzel gone the kids began coming around Erhardt’s table again. He was so busy he hardly had time to think about anything Wentzel had said until he arrived to set up at the day’s second destination, where he quietly upped the price of a sticker to seventy-five cents. They sold just as well, and at his third stop he went for a dollar and again they sold just as well. He kept the price there for the rest of the day.
That night in bed, Brenda asked him what the trouble was. He said there was no trouble, except that he was tired and had to get up at four thirty in the morning. He laid awake thinking how he had never seen a black Winnebago before. All the ones he could remember seeing were a cream color. You got it mixing four parts white with one part yellow. Usually they were inscribed with names that invoked free-spiritedness or affection. But he had never seen one with a name that ran along the back of Wentzel’s: Salamander, in orange block lettering.
The extra cash he pulled in that day still wasn’t enough. No matter what he charged, there was really no such thing as profit. Whatever came in went out just as fast. There was never a moment when someone in the family didn’t want for something. He knew he needed the money too badly to turn down Wentzel’s offer.
In the morning Brenda asked him again what the trouble was. “I told you nothing,” he said. She stepped away, but not before a look that said she believed he was lying.
He wished he could have assured her there was no trouble, but there’d already been too much for her to ever believe that. Admittedly, it was he who started it. He had a job that at least sustained them, running a press at Victory Printing in Dorchester. Since he lost it, after deciding to siphon off a few customers for himself, he often thought he should have left barely enough alone. How Victory found out they wouldn’t say, but Erhardt suspected it was through one of those stolen customers, a man named Frank O’Brien. O’Brien denied it when Erhardt confronted him, but there was a lot of apologetic sympathizing and a promise to send a big order of bologna labels Erhardt’s way -- a promise that three months later he had heard nothing more about.
On Monday he started filling Wentzel’s order. To do that and keep up his own supply of stickers meant he had to run the press all day and well into the night. There was not a corner of the house the [noise] failed to reach. Somehow the kids slept through it fine, but Brenda laid in bed with a low throbbing that afflicted her behind the eyes. She was always straightening the clock on the kitchen wall or turning up the TV. Erhardt thought she was holding up pretty well until the middle of the week when Bud Kailer from across the street came over.
He had come to the back door instead of the front, which Brenda thought rude. They stood there, unhappy to have to look at each other, the press roaring underneath them. “What in God’s name is going on over here?” Kailer said.
Brenda tried hard to behave like everything was quite ordinary. She shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t know what I mean? Are you deaf?”
“Oh, that. That’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing!”
“It’s just -- Joe’s working on something -- not working, I mean, but...” She felt a little woozy, and she swayed. Kailer looked the way she imagined he would if she woke from fainting to find him over her. She shook her head and said, “I don’t know what Joe’s doing, exactly.”
Abruptly the press ceased. It was as if a cold clean breeze had suddenly swept through the house and Brenda felt relieved though she knew she shouldn’t have. They both listened as the printer ascended the cellar steps, emerging with red ink smeared on the front of his T-shirt.
“Hi, Bud,” he said.
“What the hell is going on down there?” Kailer was looking him up and down. “What’s all over you? -- paint?”
It seemed to Erhardt that any idiot would know the difference between ink and paint.
“It’s nothing,” Brenda said. “I told him it was nothing, Joe.”
“And what was that truck that was here the other day?” Kailer went on. “You can’t have eighteen wheelers coming down this street.” Erhardt had ordered some paper.
“We had a delivery!” Brenda blurted.
“Of what?” Kailer demanded.
Erhardt took a step forward. “I don’t think it’s any of your business, Bud.”
Two of the kids, wearing pajamas, ran in and suddenly halted. They stared up at Kailer, which made him uncomfortable.[point of view]
“Well,” he said. “Please try to keep it down. It’s against the law to run a business from your home, you know.” Kailer and his wife were childless, and he looked at the kids like they were some new species of weed that had cropped up on his lawn, which he tended to obsessively. He left without another word.
Erhardt had gotten [to]the point where he wondered if there was anything he had to do to survive that wasn’t against the law.
From then on, with urging from Brenda, Erhardt decided he would only run the press during the day. So he cranked out as many of the faces as he could in that time. If that meant fewer stickers for himself to sell, then he would charge Wentzel even more for his order.
When Brenda wasn’t upstairs with the kids, she was down with Erhardt. She would sweep up or help him sift through the freshly printed batches of stickers to weed out the bad ones, though she often let bad ones go by.
Later, in the bedroom, she worked with a nail file at removing a blue face that had ended up on the bottom of her slipper. She said, “I don’t know what they see in these things.”
“What?” Erhardt said. He had already begun to fall asleep.
“What’s it supposed to be anyway?” she said.
Erhardt turned over. “The kids like it,” he said.
“It looks like it’s on drugs.”
“It’s just a face, Bren.”
“Well I hate it.”
“I do too,” he said.
On Saturday Erhardt got up as usual and listened to the radio. There was indeed a fair at the Ainsbury Elementary School. It was a tiny town and he had to unfold his map of the state. Brenda, serving breakfast, watched his finger trace the route, stopping way out past Worcester. He had told her he would never go that far.
The road to Ainsbury passed through several small towns, each with their own creeping speed limit. As a result, the trip took longer than he’d allowed for. He arrived late.
He got a spot near the entrance of the school grounds and quickly set up his display. The fair was in full swing, meaning the few rides were up and operating while the grounds were traversed with docile small-town children and adults with puffy eyes and hair a little messier than it would be during the week. [awkward sentence]
Erhardt scanned the scene for Wentzel’s Winnebago, but did not find it. Immediately a dread took hold of his chest. His breathing became hard; there was nothing else to do but ask around.
He walked over to a vendor he had seen a lot, a seller of flavored ices, a chancy business in the waning months of the year. He eyeballed Erhardt skeptically as he approached.
Erhardt nodded and forced a smile. “I’m just wondering if you’ve seen that guy around today? He’s got a Winnebago. Sells, you know, things like those glass balls that you shake up and it looks like it’s snowing?”
The ice man’s eyes narrowed as his head shook out a no.
Erhardt asked one or two others, to the same effect. He headed back to the van. A gaggle of kids interrupted his path. He saw that some of them were carrying stickers showing the face. They were printed on a glittering silver paper that Erhardt knew was expensive. “Hey sweetheart,” he said to a little girl with one, “where’d you get that?”
“Over there.” She pointed to the other side of the school grounds. Erhardt could not be sure exactly where she was pointing. When he turned back, she was gone but a boy with an identical sticker was nearby.
“Hey kid. How much you pay for that?”
“Fifty cents.”
Erhardt made it back to his table. He had kept his eye on it the whole time. No one had approached it. He lowered his price to fifty cents. There was a nip in the air, and he sat in the van with the heater running. Quickly it became too hot. He shut the heater off and cracked the window.
He spent the next two hours like that. Three times he got out of the van to make a sale. He kept watching the gate for any sign of Wentzel. In that time it occurred to him that every instinct he ever had in his life had steered him wrong. Every seemingly good idea -- Brenda, the kids, the notion that he could work for himself -- turned out to be a trap. In the rearview mirror he could see the boxes and boxes of face stickers. He flipped the mirror to its tinted nighttime position, and tried to keep himself from calculating the loss. [Couldn’t he sell them eventually?]
The last of the other vendors began to pack up. He
got out and did the same. He wasn’t careful about it as he usually was, but instead folded up the table and threw it inside the van. He even left a few stickers lying on the ground, and ran over some as he backed up and then tore ahead. A man in a rumpled sport coat hailed him as he approached the gate. It was not clear who the man was, though Erhardt believed him to be a teacher or the principal. He had an overgrown moustache that was exactly the pale brown color of his coat, and thick glasses that made his eyes look like small muddy lakes.
Erhardt pulled up and the man leaned into the vehicle. “Take it easy, pal. This isn’t the Mass Turnpike. There’s still kids around.”
Erhardt said nothing as he started the van forward.
“Whoa!” the man said, and Erhardt stopped again. “I’d like to see your papers, please.” Apparently he didn’t like Erhardt’s attitude. Erhardt stepped on the gas and the man tried frantically to disengage his head from the window. In his panic he grabbed the steering wheel and the van lurched to the left. Erhardt broke his grip and righted the vehicle. Somehow the man freed himself, though not before whacking his head against the open car window. As he sped off, Erhardt heard him swearing in a way that he thought was particularly filthy for someone concerned about the kids all around.
He made his way to the state highway and headed south, the direction of Rhode Island. Wentzel had said something about Rhode Island. He looked all around for the black Winnebago. He knew he wouldn’t find it, but he kept looking. Several times the state highway became a local road, then a state highway again. After that, it was a long residential street where the houses got nicer and the cars newer the further[farther] he went. Then he stopped. He had to. In an hour’s time he had driven the length of the tiny state. He had reached the ocean.
He stopped the van in a parking lot. He got out and stood to watch the choppy gray water. The strong breeze made him zip up his coat. To his left he could see a small ship at a dock. People were boarding. He walked down to get a closer look. He had lived all his life near the ocean and had never been on a boat. He had no objection to boats, but in thirty-four years the opportunity had never come up.
He had come close enough that a man in a booth came out and said, “Twelve dollars, guy.”
“What?”
“Ticket is twelve dollars, round-trip.” The man was wearing a blazer and a variation on a train conductor’s hat.
“Where does that go?” Erhardt said.
“That’s the ferry to the island.”
“What island?”
“Block Island. This is the last weekend it’s running.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t run in winter. Are you buying a ticket?”
“How much is a one-way?”
“No one-ways. Round-trip only. Twelve dollars.”
Erhardt took out his wallet. He had barely half that much. The man went back to his booth.
Erhardt stayed to watch the ferry. A loud horn blew when it was ready to go. The people on the deck talked like they were on a street corner or an elevator. They acted like they didn’t know they were on a boat. It took less than fifteen minutes to disappear from Erhardt’s sight.
He went back to his van and pulled it into a gas station. He spent the six dollars on gas for the trip back to Massachusetts. He took the straightest route there, but he didn’t hurry. He didn’t know what he would tell Brenda, who would surely expect an explanation.
But when he returned, his wife met him at the door with glowing eyes.
“Frank O’Brien was here,” [I had forgotten O’Brien by this point] she said. “The order came through.” She guided Erhardt to the kitchen, where everything O’Brien had brought -- artwork, plates, a check equal to ten percent of the total payment -- was carefully laid out on the table. Erhardt sat down gently, as if any sudden movement might cause it all to scatter.
The order was bigger than Erhardt ever expected. O’Brien was acting as broker for the SuperWay chain of supermarkets, which wanted labels not only for their store brand of bologna, but beef bologna, Genoa salami, olive loaf, and P&P loaf as well. He sorted through the materials as Brenda served the supper she’d been keeping warm. He stared at each label a long time. They were three-color jobs that really looked sharp. And he liked that they were real labels, labels with a purpose. People would look at them and learn something. O’Brien had left a note: “They want this by Friday -- sorry for the rush -- your labels will be in supermarkets all across southern New England!”
Brenda slid into the adjacent seat. She kept her arms off the table so as not to interfere with his careful sorting. “I was getting kind of worried,” she said. “You never came home so late before.”
“Accident on the highway.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” He thought this would be a good place to elaborate a little, make the lie more believable. Shattered glass everywhere. Blood on the road. But he didn’t say anything. And not because he didn’t want to lie to her. He was just tired of explaining everything to her. Since he lost his job,[Did you mention earlier how long ago he lost his job? Maybe I missed it.] he and Brenda had been together every minute, except for the time on weekends he spent at the fairs.
Despite his exhaustion Erhardt was up the next morning five minutes before the alarm. He slipped from the bed quietly and took a fast, hot shower. He crept downstairs and looked over the SuperWay order again, deciding which label to run first, what blend of red and yellow would achieve the orange they wanted for the background. Then he put the order aside and switched on the radio. All school fairs were on for that weekend, weather permitting. He jotted down the possibilities. When he looked up, Brenda was standing on the threshold.
“We don’t have to do this anymore, Joe,” she said.
“Yes we do. Go back to sleep.”
“We’ve got the order.”
“That doesn’t solve everything.”
“It’s gotta be done by Friday.”
“Brenda, go back to sleep.” And to his surprise, she tightened the housecoat around her body, and went back upstairs. She knew he always woke up hungry. He could have made breakfast himself -- he had done so on the odd occasion, there was even a time when his Sunday mornings were spent making cheese omelettes for the kids. But instead he grabbed his thermos and his coat and he left, making no effort as he usually did to be quiet about it.
He felt sure that Wentzel would be at one of the fairs he visited that day. Every school he approached filled him with the sense that something was about to happen. All day, Wentzel was nowhere to be found.
To make matters worse, he sold the fewest face stickers he had since he started selling them, and at the old price of fifty cents. The kids just didn’t seem as interested as they once were.
He returned to the house a little later than usual. The van was still filled with the boxes of stickers. Brenda didn’t say anything about that, even though she took the van that night, to where she didn’t say.
Afterward she stepped carefully into the cellar, where Erhardt was readying the press for the SuperWay order. She had a pair of glasses in her hand. He recognized them immediately as the pair the school principal was wearing. They must have fallen off in the struggle.
“Whose are these?” Brenda said.
“They’re no one’s.” Then something occurred to him. “Try them on,” he said.
“These look like a man’s. Why were they under the car seat?”
“Try them on,” he said. “They might be just what you need.”
She couldn’t be sure if he was kidding, but she slipped them on. They were far too big for her face, and she had to perch them high on her nose. She looked around. She picked up the artwork for the salami label and focused in. She took the glasses off. “They don’t help at all,” she said.
“Throw them out then,” he said. She took them upstairs with the intention of throwing them out, but she threw them into the kitchen drawer that held a lot of other junk.
Erhardt was up at five the next morning. By seven the kids were off to school and Bud Kailer had gone to drive his wife to her job like he did every morning. When he returned, as Erhardt had seen for himself, Kailer filled his day by peeking through his window blinds at intervals, mowing his lawn when it didn’t need it, and forcing the mailman into longer chats than his route really gave him time for. “What kind of guy is that?” Erhardt said. “He lets his wife work for him?”
“He gets a pension,” Brenda said. She was a little heartened by her husband’s conversation. “He has some disability. That’s what Sally told me.”
“Sally who?”
“At the liquor store.”
Erhardt worked as if in a dream. The obliterating roar of the press at full speed was a backdrop against which his thinking was clearest and his senses their most attuned. In the racket he could make out the various musics of the machine: the claw and grab of the gears, the grinding pave of the rollers, the stripping of the excess paper from the die-cut labels. He could hear instantly went something went wrong, though it hardly ever did; the job, though huge, printed almost flawlessly.
He worked all day, and through supper. At nightfall, Brenda descended the stairs. “It’s time to quit for the day,” she said.
He shook his head. “I got the whole night ahead of me,” he said.
“Bud Kailer was out on his lawn earlier. He was staring at us.”
“I’ve got bigger problems than that jerk,” said Erhardt. The truth was he would have to work every night this week to have the order done by Friday. He never told Brenda that, but she understood it now.
From time to time during the week, she came down to bring him a sandwich or help pack the finished labels into boxes or just get away from the kids, who to Erhardt became like ghosts constantly moving overhead. Mostly she left him alone but sometimes she would feel lonely and, in the intervals when the press was not running, she would talk about anything.
“I wonder what p&p loaf is,” she said, looking at a roll of that particular label.
“I don’t know,” said Erhardt.
She squinted at the ingredients, then gave it up. “I wonder who eats this stuff,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Erhardt said.
The only interruptions in the work came when Brenda rapped on a pipe in the bathroom. The pipe ran down into the cellar, and Erhardt easily detected the sound in the all the noise. Swiftly he silenced the press; this was their signal for Kailer. Brenda kept watch. On three separate occasions, all at night, the neighbor made his way through the winding stone path that circumvented his lawn and showed up at the back door. Each time Erhardt listened on the cellar stairs to Kailer’s complaints and threats to call the police. Brenda stayed calm and said, “It won’t happen again.” Then, when Kailer disappeared into his house, the press resumed.
Erhardt was still finishing the last of the job by Friday when O’Brien came by with a check and two young men who looked like faint replications of O’Brien. They were there to load the boxes of labels into the minivan idling in the driveway. O’Brien politely pretended to be fascinated by the small talk of Brenda, who he called “Linda,” while Erhardt hurriedly packed the last of the order. After that, there were smiles all around -- even the little Erhardts, sensing it was alright, got into the act.
All night Brenda was, if not light-hearted, then at least serene. Most of the relief came from finally having some money in the bank, but she was pleased too at not having the press running. In bed, she turned away from her husband and softly began to snore.
Erhardt did not sleep. The clarity he had gained from the week of work had not left him, and it prevented him from feeling too much at ease. The money from O’Brien was substantial, but again there was no profit to be had. It would all be spent in six or seven weeks’ time, and there were no new orders in sight, and Christmas loomed now. Soon, they’d be right back where they were.
The next morning, Saturday again, Erhardt was up early. He heard Brenda sigh into her pillow as he left the bedroom.
The radio made no mention of any school fairs in the area. The time for those was over. Still, Erhardt filled his thermos and readied to go out and find Wentzel.
The kids were getting up, and he heard Brenda in the bathroom. The brood crowded the den, filling up the couch and the floor, munching from their bowls of cereal as they watched their cartoons.
Erhardt stopped by the den. He had his jacket on but he hadn’t left yet. “Is this the one with that Mr. Easy in it?” he said.
“What?” said one of them, very irritated. “No.” She seemed unable to fathom how she and someone that stupid could be in any way related.
Erhardt went to the kitchen window and looked out at the gray sky. With Brenda still in the bathroom, he slipped down into the cellar. He took his jacket off and started cleaning the rollers of the press, which were filthy. Brenda did not come down.
Later he came up and piled her and the kids in the van. They sat on the boxes of stickers as he drove to the town incinerator. The kids had a lot of fun throwing handfuls of stickers into the air and watching them flutter into the pit below.
After that, because they were too small to be left by
themselves, he took them along with him and Brenda to the
glasses place at the mall.
A Stab in the Heart by Twist Phelan- written version
A Stab in the Heart
The drums caught Henri Karubje unawares.
He had emerged from the subway station, gotten his bearings, and headed south on Utica. The thin warmth of spring sunshine penetrated his jacket. As a homicide detective, Karubje could have checked out one of the department’s sedans, but he’d been downtown when the call came in, and at that time of day the Number 4 train was the fastest way to get to Crown Heights. Besides, he hadn’t learned how to drive until middle age, and still wasn’t completely comfortable with it.
For a strange few moments, it seemed as though all the people were moving to the same silent beat. A businessman in a gray suit bopped across the street; a stroller-pushing nanny nodded her head in time to his strides. Karubje passed a drugstore, a psychic, and a nail salon with his fingers snapping out a matching rhythm before he realized what he was doing.
A dreadlocked young man sat in a doorway, his hands beating a tattoo on a pair of congas. Karubje had seen the effects of the sound before hearing it. It was a sound he always avoided if he could.
The memories pounded against his skull. Africa was inside his head, so intensely he had to blink away moisture from his eyes. The chicken burritos from the vendor’s cart became his mother’s roasted inkoko. The cracked sidewalk, abloom with candy wrappers discarded in scraggly bushes, dissolved into a smooth asphalt swath cutting through the green hills of Kigali, lined with small palms and kept pristine by sweeper’s brooms.
The drumbeats became the running feet of the interahamwe. Karubje saw the flash of the machetes, heard the thud of the clubs. He smelled the stench from the mass graves filled with the Tutsi corpses.
Karubje stilled his fingers.
His cousin Paul had joined a squad of Tutsi rebels hunting down the renegade Hutu militia who had slaughtered their families, friends, and neighbors. Paul was a lanky sixteen-year old whose peroxide deadlocks camouflaged a driven personality. When he urged his cousin to join the cause, Karubje, then a pre-law student, refused.
“Appointing yourself judge and jury won’t bring justice,” he said.
Paul scowled. “But you can’t do nothing!”
Karubje’s family were outsiders in Rwanda—much as he now was in America. His father was a cattle rancher in a land of farmers. French and English rather than Kinyarwanda was spoken at home. The family attended Mass, while most of their neighbors believed in predestination and an underworld inhabited by spirits who either protected or harassed the living.
Later, when Karubje was in the refugee camp, ghosts had come—his friend Amélie, his cousin Paul, his mother and father, demanding vengeance. Until that day in the food tent, standing in line for his ration of beans and rice, when he glimpsed the man with the red-rimmed eyes and scarred lip that made him look like a snarling hyena.
To escape the spectral pleas, Karubje turned his back on his homeland. He applied for a visa through his church; when it came through, he got on the plane to New York.
He lived in Koreatown, forsook soccer for baseball. He called himself American, never African. After a decade and a half, he barely remembered the green hills, the whitewashed house, the smell of his mother’s cooking.
Until he heard the drums.
Karubje kept walking, lighting the cigarette that he’d have to put out as soon as he got to the crime scene.
He turned at the next corner onto a narrow street of brownstones and small apartments. The buildings looked worn but neat, almost alike in color and design, the result not of a developer’s vision but of their inhabitants’ common culture. The people who lived here were elderly and white. Their clothes proclaimed their dependence on meager savings and Social Security. Hispanics may have taken over other Eastern European communities, but this block was still more Warsaw than Juarez.
A squad car and an ambulance were double-parked in front of one of the apartment buildings. A small group of onlookers stood beside the ambulance, kept in check by the crossed arms of a burly patrol officer. Karubje flashed his shield and identified himself.
“Dwayne Spivak,” the patrol officer said. There was a hint of the bully around his mouth and suspicion in his eyes. He was the type of cop who would retire with a pot belly, a bruised nightstick, and more fishing boat than he could rightfully afford on a city pension. He nodded at the closest apartment building. “Vic’s in there.”
Karubje walked up four chipped concrete steps to a front door of painted steel propped open with a wedge of wood. The bulbs in two of the overhead fixtures were burned out, and he paused in the vestibule while his eyes adjusted to the dimness.
At the end of the hallway, two EMTs and another patrol officer clustered around a prone figure at the bottom of the stairs. Karubje saw that the corpse was an old man. Its head was twisted to the side—a broken neck.
“So you don’t think he fell?” the patrol officer said. She was a coffee-skinned young woman with close-cropped hair.
The older EMT repacked his equipment. “That’s for you to investigate and the DA to prove. My job is to keep ‘em alive—if they’re not dead first. You ready, Sid?” The two EMTs picked up their bags.
“Hey, Henri,” said the second EMT. Everyone except the dispatcher who’d grown up in Haiti pronounced his name Hen-ry instead of On-ree.
“Hello, Sidney,” Karubje said. “What do we have?”
Sid hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. “Thought it was a slip-and-fall—no tread on the stairs, vic was wearing those geezer slippers.”
Karubje looked at the old man’s feet. One was bare, the other had a worn fake-leather mule on it. Karubje had a nearly identical pair at home next to his bed.
Sid continued. “But when I was checking his vitals, Davey”—he nodded in the direction of the older EMT—“noticed the guy was holding something pink in his hand.”
The patrol officer spoke up. “Like strands of wool.” The nametag over her badge read L. Hulce. “But the vic isn’t wearing that color. And I didn’t find anything at the top of the stairs.”
“Time of death?” Karubje asked Sid.
“An hour, plus or minus. But you’ll have to ask the ME.” A voice squawked from one of the EMT’s radios. “Duty calls,” Sid said. “Later, Henri.”
“Do we have an ID?” Karubje asked when the EMTs were gone.
Hulce consulted her notebook. “Jakob Cohen. Lived by himself on the second floor.”
“And you called Homicide because of the pink fibers in Mr. Cohen’s hand?” Karubje made it a point to use a victim’s name whenever possible.
Hulce ducked her chin. “Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t find anything at the top of the stairs?” Karubje said. The came out zee. Despite classes to overcome his French accent, Karubje still had trouble with the English th sound.
“No, sir. But there are fresh scratches on the railing.”
Karubje eyed the banister, dull with age and old wax. “So he tried to break his fall.”
“But there’s nothing under his fingernails, sir. I checked after the EMTs were done.”
“Nothing you could see,” Karubje said mildly.
Hulce ducked her chin again. “No, sir.”
“When the ME van arrives, please ask them for a rush prelim on Mr. Cohen’s hands.” Karubje turned and walked back toward the front door. Spivak’s bulk loomed in the opening.
“Told her it was a waste of time to call Homicide,” he said. “Old guy just fell down the stairs.”
Karubje noticed a yellow smear on the front of the patrol officer’s uniform. Mustard-yellow.
“But those pink strands are interesting, don’t you think?” Karubje nodded toward the body. “Officer Spivak, secure the lobby until the ME van arrives. Officer Hulce, come with me.”
Spivak blew out a breath that was nearly insubordinate. Hulce, her mouth barely suppressing a smile, hurried down the steps after Karubje.
Karubje scanned the rubbernecking crowd. Slightly apart from the others, a young woman stood with her head canted, as though trying to figure out something. She looked to be in her early twenties and was demurely dressed in a knee-length skirt and ballerina flats. She held a bouquet of blue flowers the way a bridesmaid might, with both hands clasped around the stalks.
“Officer Hulce, find out if anyone saw or heard anything. Start with people closest to the building.” Karubje knew that while doers might lurk on the fringes, busybodies usually pushed to the front. He walked over to the young woman with the flowers.
“I’m Detective Karubje,” he said.
Her eyes widened at the sight of his shield. They were the color of raisins, brown with a purplish cast. Like Karubje’s skin.
“Zata Maronski.” She offered her hand, something people rarely did when badged.
Karubje took it, then nodded at the apartment building. “Do you live here?”
“Third floor. What’s going on? Mrs. Levine said Mr. Cohen was hurt.”
“He apparently fell down the stairs.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“I’m afraid he died from his injuries.”
“Alev ha shalom,” the young woman murmured.
“Amen,” Karubje said reflexively.
She cut her eyes at him. “Are you Jewish?”
The French may have provided the refugee camp at Lake Kivu with medical supplies, but it was the Israelis who staffed it with top surgeons. Karubje ran errands for the doctors and helped out at the field hospital. In return, they shared baklava sent from home and taught him Yiddish phrases.
He permitted himself a small smile. “A member of one of the lost tribes, you mean? No.” He waited for a follow-up question, but she surprised him.
“What kind of accident brings a homicide detective?” Zata said. She had noticed the small print on his badge.
He looked up the street. A hardware store, a laundromat, a kosher grocer on the corner—it was like a small village. The scene made Karubje think of another neighborhood, one of corrugated tin-roofed buildings, streets clogged with cars and bicycles, and stores with bilingual signs.
“Did you know Mr. Cohen?” he said.
The young woman shook her head. “He moved in after the first of the year. He didn’t really—”
“You should talk to that schmuck Erik,” interrupted a thickly accented voice. It belonged to an old man of modest height and generous girth squeezed into an old suit with unfashionably wide lapels. Even though its collar was frayed, his white shirt was clean and pressed, and his shoes, cracked across the top, were polished.
“Who’s Erik?” Karubje said.
“Erik Brandt, the gonif who lives in the basement apartment who’s supposed to be the super.” The old man waved a pudgy finger under Karubje’s nose. “He’s the landlord’s nephew, so there’s no getting rid of him. And the chutzpanik knows it! It took him two weeks to turn off the steam. Did he care that it was ninety-five degrees? No! My Marta could have collapsed from the heat if Mrs. Shulstein hadn’t loaned us her electric fan.”
A woman standing next to the speaker, similar in age and proportion, spoke up. “Levi’s right—Erik’s a balegula. It’s a disgrace he’s in this building. A shtuken nisht in harts.” Despite the warmth of the day, the woman pulled her cardigan close.
Karubje recognized the Yiddish phrase from the doctors’ conversations after a long day in the makeshift OR. A stab in the heart. It referred to a terrible memory. He wanted to ask the old woman what she meant, but she had vanished into the crowd.
Levi rapped his fist on his breastbone as though it were a door. “Erik’s been bothering Mr. Cohen, always following him, trying to talk to him.”
“It’s true,” said another elderly man. His accent, while not as pronounced as Levi’s, was clearly Eastern European. His apron had Karsh’s Kosher Grocery stenciled across the bib, the same name as on the awning over the store on the corner.
“Last week when Jakob was in the store, Erik came in. Jakob didn’t even wait to buy his groceries. Just set them down and asked if he could go out the back. I could tell he didn’t want Erik to see him.”
Karubje took out his notebook.
“That’s Erik with a k,” the grocer said, then turned to Zata. “My condolences on the passing of your bubbie. Aleha ha shalom. I have missed seeing her in my store these past months.”
“Thank you for the fruit basket. It was very thoughtful,” Zata said.
“First berries of the season.” The grocer beamed at her, his smile revealing a dental calamity of twisted and missing teeth. “You’re a good mommellah, Zata.” He inclined his head toward Karubje as though sharing a confidence. “When the stairs become too much for Esther, does Zata send her to live with strangers? No! She moves here to take care of her bubbie.”
“You lived with your grandmother, Ms. Maronski?” Karubje asked.
“Please, call me Zata. And yes; since January. That’s when she started having a hard time getting around. The elevator is unreliable and she lived on the third floor.”
Levi snorted. “Those stairs were no problem for Esther. We walked down and up them together when you were at work, Zata. We’d go to the garden in back. Esther said she liked feeling the United States under her feet.” Levi shook his head. “Esther said she didn’t like going out by herself anymore. She thought the neighborhood had changed.”
The grocer glared at him. “You took Esther on a shpatzir? Why did you not come to my store?”
Levi’s shirt puffed out at chest level. “The only place she wanted to go was the garden!”
Zata reached a hand toward the quibbling men. “Levi, Mr. Karsh, please.” The gesture bared her wrist, exposing a small tattoo. Its colors were bright and the edges of the design had started to scab.
Mr. Karsh stared at the tattoo. “Oy vay!”
Zata tugged down her cuff. “Forget-me-nots,” she said, dropping her eyes to her bouquet. Her voice became softer. “Bubbie’s favorite flower.”
The Tutsi rebel squads often got matching tattoos. Paul’s had been cut off his arm and stuffed in his mouth along with his genitals. Karubje prayed the boy was already dead when it was done.
“Besides Mr. Brandt, did Mr. Cohen have problems with anyone in the neighborhood?” he asked.
Levi raised his hands, palms up. “Who knows? He only moved into the building five months ago. He wasn’t one to play cards in the park, or sit on the stoop and kibbitz.”
“He was Orthodox,” Mr. Karsh said. “Always bought kosher, observed the holiday customs.”
Karubje knew street corners, not second-floor landings, were for random killings. If Mr. Cohen was a victim, he was a chosen one.
The drums beat again in his head. He pressed his fingers to his temple.
“All you all right?’ Zata asked.
“Are you going to arrest Erik?” Levi said at the same time.
Karubje dropped his hand. “Right now, I’d just like to talk to him. Officer Spivak?”
The medical examiner’s van had arrived, along with more onlookers. Accompanied by a sulky Spivak, Karubje wove through the crowd and re-entered the apartment building. They went downstairs and knocked on the door labeled “Superintendent.”
“Mr. Brandt?”
There was no answer.
Karubje and Spivak went back up the stairs and out onto the street. Hulce was standing beside the ME’s van as Jakob Cohen’s body was loaded through its rear doors.
“I requested a prelim on the vic—Mr. Cohen’s—hands, sir. And I bagged the pink fibers,” Hulce said. Spivak rolled his eyes.
Karubje took the glassine baggie holding the strands of wool. The flowers outside his parents’ whitewashed house were nearly the same color. Before the visit by the man with the red-rimmed eyes and hyena snarl. Before splashes of blood had stained them burgundy.
“The fibers won’t do us much good without something to match them to,” Karubje said. “I’m going to take a look at the landing and Mr. Cohen’s apartment.” He nodded at the row of houses that lined the street. “You two canvass the neighborhood. See if someone knows about any problems involving Mr. Cohen. Or where Erik Brandt might be.”
“Yes, sir,” Hulce said. She bounded up the steps of the nearest brownstone and punched the doorbell. With considerably less enthusiasm, Spivak crossed the street and did the same.
Levi materialized at Karubje’s elbow. “So did you talk to the paskudnik?”
“He wasn’t home,” Karubje said. “Does he have another job?”
“That one? He sleeps late, goes out, comes back, I don’t know from where.”
“Sometimes he comes to the store in the afternoon to buy cigarettes,” Mr. Karsh volunteered.
“So you will wait for him, yes?” Levi said to Karubje.
“The officers are canvassing the neighborhood. Don’t worry—we’ll interview Mr. Brandt.”
“But when he comes back, he will find out the police are looking for him. Then pft, he will be gone.” Levi hooked his thumbs together and flapped his hands like bird wings.
While Levi was talking, Karubje glimpsed Zata in the crowd watching the ME’s van drive away. Standing next to her was the old woman in the cardigan who had said it was a disgrace for Brandt to be the super. A stab in the heart.
Zata turned and caught Karubje looking at her.
“Excuse me,” Karubje said. He walked toward the apartment building. Zata met him at the bottom of the steps.
“Is it okay if I go back to my apartment?” She still held the bouquet of blue flowers. They drooped in the heat.
Karubje nodded at the wilted blooms. “Those could use some water.”
“I was going to put them on Bubbie’s grave.” Zata tilted her head. “How about you, Detective? Would you like some water, too? Or do you prefer iced tea?”
Heat had never bothered Karubje. “Tea would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
Karubje followed Zata past the tiny elevator and up the stairs. She moved with the grace and quiet of a dancer. As they passed the second floor landing, Karubje looked at the banister. There were the scratches Hulce had mentioned, fresh scribbles in the wax that had built up over the years. Only a careful eye would spot them. Karubje noted the police seal and a perfect X of crime-scene tape on what he presumed was Mr. Cohen’s apartment door. Hulce did good work.
Zata used two keys on a pair of elaborate locks. The apartment was small and shabby, but the space was arranged pleasantly, for comfort. Some of the chairs had lace doilies on their plump arms, and there was a dark wood table with carved bowed legs.
Karubje watched Zata fill a vase with water for the flowers. She then poured two glasses of tea from a pitcher out of the refrigerator and put a few small rolled-up cookies on a plate.
“Please, sit down,” she said, setting the refreshments on the table.
Karubje chose one of the chairs without doilies. He raised his glass—it smelled of mint and lemon—and drank. In the next instant, the mouthful of sweet coolness turned brackish, just like the water from the plastic jugs at the refugee camp. He forced himself to swallow, then ate a cookie. Its cinnamon tang was a relief.
“Who was the woman who called Mr. Brandt a disgrace to the building?” he asked.
“That’s Mrs. Levine. She lives on the first floor, in the back.”
“Why would she say that?”
Zata looked uncomfortable. “Because Brandt’s a skinhead. You know—one of those neo-Nazi types. The tenants in this building are older European Jews—mostly Polish, like Bubbie. I’m named after her mother; Zata is short for Malgorzata. Anyway, all of them lived through the war.” She pointed to the array of photos on the mantel and her eyes became shiny. “Most lost their families. That’s why Bubbie didn’t want to go into assisted care. She said the people in this building, in this neighborhood, were her new mishpokhe.”
The pounding started in Karubje head’s again. His cousin Amélie and her ten-year-old son, Bernard—he hadn’t thought about them for years. The boy had been “strung” by the interahamwe—his Achilles tendons severed so he couldn’t run away—then beaten severely. Amélie made a litter from cardboard boxes and umuvumu branches. Every day, she dragged Bernard to the bathing area, to the food tent, up the little hill so he could watch the other children play.
Later, when Bernard was dying of cholera, Amélie refused to budge from her place beside his pallet. Karubje tried to reason with her. “I am his family,” was all Amélie said. The interahamwe killed her when she left the camp to return Bernard’s body to their village.
The ice tinkled in Karubje’s glass, and he realized he was trembling. He stared at the photos on the mantel.
Framed in cheap plastic were color snapshots of Zata. Her dark hair had reached halfway down her back when she was younger, and her cheekbones were less angular than now. A birdlike woman stood next to her in several of the photos, wearing a black dress that looked too large for her. Zata’s bubbie.
One photo had been taken at a beach. Zata and her grandmother wore black one-piece swimsuits and stood next to each other in the sand. The woman’s arm curved around young Zata’s shoulders, exposing a bruise on the underside. Her expression made plain her fierce love for the little girl.
There were black and white shots of the same woman, twenty years younger, posed in front of New York monuments—the Statue of Liberty, the Staten Island ferry. She stood with brittle poise and her smile was guarded.
At the end of the mantel was a cluster of even older photos. Adults and children posed stiffly before the camera. In one shot, a smiling couple cradled a newborn baby close to the lens. Snow pillowed behind them. From their clothes and background, Karubje guessed the photo had been taken in Europe. Bubbie was printed in ink across the bottom border. The photo was yellowed and creased, as though it had been folded into a tiny square.
“When did your grandmother pass?” he asked.
“Eight days ago. If you had come yesterday, I would still be sitting shiva.”
“I thought grandparents weren’t within the circle.”
Zata raised an eyebrow. “First Yiddish, now Judaism. Do you have a Jewish girlfriend?”
Karubje shook his head. “The medical staff at Lake Kivu was Israeli.”
“Lake Kivu?”
“The refugee camp in Zaire. I am Tutsi. My father was a member of the old government.”
Something flickered behind Zata’s eyes that Karubje couldn’t read. “I understand,” she said.
Images and sounds from more than a decade ago flashed through Karubje’s mind, things he usually didn’t allow into his consciousness. Paul’s maimed body dumped on his mother’s doorstep, his congealed blood squishing up around the soles of Karubje’s sandals. The screams of Karubje’s mother, the sickening thud of the machete hacking at his father’s flesh.
“Tutsi are cockroaches. Tutsi are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land,” blared from the radio, day and night. The interahamwe killed a million people in barely three months. “A local conflict—not genocide,” said President Clinton, who did nothing to stop the killing.
At the refugee camp, Karubje found it impossible to eat meat. He took up smoking to mask the smells of blood and infection.
The idea of practicing law lost its attraction. He applied to the police academy the day he received his green card, and progressed from patrol officer to homicide detective with record speed. Fellow cops knew he was “good police.” No suspects ever complained of brutality when Karubje was the arresting officer. Appointing yourself judge and jury won’t bring justice.
“More tea?”
Zata’s soft voice jarred Karubje back to the present. She held up the pitcher and her sleeve pulled back from her wrist, exposing the tattoo again—A2618 written in ornate script surrounded by blue flowers.
“I got it yesterday,” Zata said. “It’s Bubbie’s birthday—See? August 26, 1918. I wanted to . . . remember her.”
Karubje looked at the photos again. He wondered how many of the people had died in the camps. “Some things are better forgotten.”
A small crease appeared between Zata’s brows.
“No,” she said. “We have to remember.” The crease deepened. “Even the awful things.”
His cousin Paul’s lean face materialized above her head. But you can’t do nothing.
Karubje gulped some tea, the hot liquid making his eyes water. When his vision cleared, the apparition was gone.
“Will you stay here?” he asked.
Zata shrugged. “It’s a rent-stabilized apartment. The subway’s close, and the neighborhood’s safe.”
Would she feel the same if her neighbor’s death turned out to be a murder? “Did your grandmother know Mr. Cohen?” he asked.
Zata shook her head. “He moved in around the time she started staying in more.”
“I understand he lived alone. Did he get a lot of attention from the neighborhood ladies?”
“You should have seen how many women dropped by with Matzah ball soup and homemade knishes. But I don’t think he was interested—at least, I never saw him with anyone.” The crease appeared between her brows again. “I think the only time we spoke was when I carried his groceries up the stairs for him. He wouldn’t take the elevator on the Shabbes.”
Opalescent light shone through the living room window. Karubje saw dust motes drifting in the late afternoon glow. He stood. “I’d better get back to work. Thank you for the tea.”
“Take some rugula.” Zata wrapped two cookies in a napkin. “I’ll never be able to eat everything the neighbors brought.”
Karubje ate one of the cookies as he walked downstairs to Jakob Cohen’s apartment. No reason to try Erik Brandt’s place again. Hulce would call him as soon as the young man surfaced.
Mr. Cohen’s apartment was typical for an elderly man living alone—bed, dinette with one chair, cheap television. Few personal effects. No photos.
Karubje went into the small kitchen. Stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet was a ticket stub. Yankees, first game of the current season. Karubje had been there, too. The Friday evening was unseasonably warm, and he had stayed until the last inning, when the fans were rewarded by a walk-off homer.
Something glinted on the cheap carpet. Karubje picked it up. A gold cufflink stamped with an eagle, its wings outstretched. He looked under the furniture and in the dusty corners of the room but couldn’t find its mate. He bagged and labeled the cufflink. As he was putting it in his pocket, his cell phone rang.
It was Hulce. Spivak had seen Erik Brandt hop the rear fence and enter the apartment building. He answered his door when the two officers knocked, but quickly became belligerent.
Probably provoked by Spivak. “Where is he now?” Karubje asked.
“Cuffed in the back seat of the patrol car.” Hulce paused. “I searched his apartment, sir. There’s something you should see.”
It was an ordinary cardboard carton, stashed behind a pair of scuffed work boots and a battered tool kit on the floor of the closet. Its contents were packed with care: A flag embroidered with the same eagle emblem as on the cufflink. An SS uniform patch. Photos of men in uniform—guards, not soldiers. A dagger with a swastika on its hilt. Pamphlets, their pages yellowed and crumbling but their hateful messages still legible: Heil Hitler, Cleanse Russia, Exterminate Jewish Cockroaches.
Cockroaches. George Rutaganda had shouted the word as he pounded on the door of their whitewashed house. He was their neighbor, a bean farmer. Karubje would never forget his red-rimmed eyes and hyena snarl. He hid in the cellar. Later there were the screams, the coppery smell, the red splotches of blood on the pink flowers.
The afternoon sun all of a sudden seemed unbearably bright. Karubje raised a hand to shield his eyes.
“Are you all right, sir?” Hulce asked.
“Let’s talk to Mr. Brandt,” he said.
Brandt slumped in the back seat, cuffed hands in his lap. According to his ID, he was twenty-four years old. He had an empty dinner plate of a face with small, close-set eyes.
Spivak held up an evidence bag. “He had this on him.”
It was a gold cufflink. Karubje compared it to the bagged one in his pocket. Two eagles with outstretched wings.
“Did you Mirandize him?” Karubje asked.
“Twice, sir,” Hulce said. “He didn’t invoke.”
Karubje opened the patrol car’s rear door. Brandt smelled like cigarettes, breath mints, and overworked deodorant. The short sleeves of his T-shirt exposed crude tattoos on his pale skin—88, a Celtic cross, a swastika.
“Mr. Brandt, were you in Mr. Cohen’s apartment this afternoon?”
Brandt spit. The gob barely missed Karubje’s shoe. “That traitor? He deserved to die. He—” Brandt abruptly stopped talking.
“Mr. Brandt?” Karubje said.
“Forget it, mud person.” Brandt spit again. “Lawyer. That’s all I got to say.” His lip curled in a sneer.
Drums pounded in Karubje’s ears. Fists on a door. The noise grew louder. Karubje lunged. His hands closed around the meaty neck. Fingers clawed at him, but he hung on. Rutaganda’s small eyes rolled back in his head.
“Stop it, sir. STOP!”
The pounding in Karubje’s head receded as quickly as it had come. He let Hulce pull him away from the patrol car. Coughing, Brandt scooted to the other end of the seat.
“Goddamn crazy mud person!” he rasped. “I’m suing your ass! You’re gonna—”
A grinning Spivak slammed the door on Brandt’s tirade while Hulce stared at Karubje.
He took a deep breath. There was a gash on the back of his hand. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and pressed it against the wound. “Officers, why don’t you take five, buy yourselves a soda,” he said.
Hulce hesitated, but then followed Spivak to the corner store, looking back twice over her shoulder.
The carton of Nazi paraphernalia was in the open trunk of the patrol car with the sheaf of photos on top. Karubje paged through the images of jack-booted soldiers on parade, Hitler throwing a salute, wraith-like men and women penned behind tall fences of concertina wire.
He glanced up at Zata’s apartment building, then at other houses on the street, thinking of the old people living in them. Erik Brandt had made them prisoners again in their new country, afraid to go to the corner store. A shtuken nisht in harts.
An old woman made her way along the sidewalk, pulling a handcart of laundry. It was Mrs. Levine. Karubje now understood why she thought it a stab in the heart that Brandt was the super. He put the lid on the carton to hide its contents.
Mrs. Levine peered into the backseat of the squad car as she passed.
Brandt’s words carried through the steel and reinforced glass. “Get out of here, cockroach,” followed by curses at the old woman.
Ms. Levine pulled her sweater close around her. “A choleryeh ahf dir,” she muttered as she shuffled past.
May you get cholera. Karubje blinked. Across the sidewalk, thin but upright, Bernard stood beside his mother’s tent, staring at him. Karubje blinked again, and the boy became a broom in the hardware store display again.
Hulce and Spivak returned carrying drink cups. Spivak sucked nosily on his straw.
“Should we roll, sir?’ Hulce asked.
“Sooner we get this cockroach locked up, the better,” Spivak said.
“In a minute,” Karubje said. Brandt had called Cohen a traitor, not a cockroach. Why would he . . .
Karubje sorted through the bagged evidence until he found the gold cufflink from Jakob’s apartment. He realized something just as important had been left behind.
“I’ll be right back,” he told the two patrol officers.
Karubje took the stairs two at a time. He tore down the crime scene tape, opened the door, walked to the refrigerator, and slid the ticket stub out from under the magnet.
New York Yankees and April 1 were printed under a photo of Yankee Stadium, followed by Friday 7:05 PM. An hour when an Orthodox Jew would have been at synagogue, not in the stands.
Traitor.
He searched Jakob’s apartment more carefully this time. He found the hidden cupboard next to the radiator. The trove of memorabilia was smaller than Brandt’s. An old pistol marked with a swastika. Photos of men in uniform—guards, not soldiers. A worn velvet jeweler’s box.
Karubje opened the box. There were dents in the cushioning that he knew would match the contours of the eagle cufflinks. Oswiecim was stamped on the box’s inside lid.
Oswiecim. The Israeli doctors sometimes mentioned this place after a new wave of interahamwe victims arrived. Auschwitz.
Karubje scrutinized the photos, trying to imagine how the Aryan visages would look sixty years later. After two passes he was pretty sure he’d found the one that belonged to the body crumpled at the foot of the stairs.
Traitor.
The day his visa came through, Karubje had seen George Rutaganda in the food tent. There was no mistaking that hyena snarl. He was hiding among his victims, posing as one of them—eating food from the relief agencies, drinking their scarce water, using their precious medical supplies.
Eric Brandt must have stumbled on the cupboard while he was turning off the steam.
Traitor.
Karubje deposited the contents of the cupboard into an evidence bag and relocked the apartment. At the landing he hesitated, then went up instead of down. He wanted her to know about the masquerade that had led to murder.
He knocked on the apartment door. While he waited, he looked through the clear plastic at the photos of the prison guards. The prints were creased and faded, with scalloped edges.
Hours before he was to leave for New York, Karubje had crept through the darkness. In his fist was a scalpel from the OR. He drew back the tent flap where George Rutaganda lay snoring. He watched the pulse beat in the fleshy neck.
Iminsi nticuza imana, said the other refugees. Destiny is never defeated.
Karubje had let the tent flap drop, threw away the scalpel, and caught the bus to the airport.
Now he turned the evidence bag over in his hands. He noticed a folded sheet of paper between two of the photos. He opened the bag and slid it out.
It was a court order, signed by a judge.
Whereas defendant Jakob Clebsche was born in Germany . . . joined the Nazi Party . . . served as a guard at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland, which housed Jews . . . . on his visa application, defendant did not mention . . . defendant naturalized as a United States citizen . . . defendant willfully misrepresented and concealed material facts . . .
Karubje felt his hands shaking as he turned the page.
Defendant’s citizenship revoked . . . this order of deportation is hereby entered this 22nd day of December . . .
Karubje put the letter back in to the evidence bag. He thought about the newborn baby among the pillows of snow. She could not have been born in August.
He rubbed his face. It felt slick and greasy.
Zata opened the door.
“You’ve hurt your hand,” she said.
Karubje glanced down. There was a smear of blood from his scraped knuckles on the plastic of the evidence bag.
He saw everything.
On Zata’s wrist was the Auschwitz identification number adorned with forget-me-nots. On her feet were the ballerina flats that would have made no sound as she slipped downstairs and pushed a startled old man. Somewhere in her apartment, on a shelf in her closet or in a drawer, would be a wooly pink sweater or a fluffy pink scarf.
For a moment, Karubje was back creeping through the darkness, scalpel in hand. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.
“I know,” he said.
Zata started to speak, but he cut her off.
“I came to tell you that Mr. Cohen’s death was an accident. Mr. Brandt won’t be charged.” He turned to leave.
“Shalom, Detective,” Zata whispered. The apartment door clicked shut.
As Karubje walked downstairs, he recalled the word in Kinyarwanda. Amahoro. He pushed against the steel front door. Peace.
Out in the street, the conga player had started up again. The drumbeats matched the beat of Karubje’s heart.
# # #
The drums caught Henri Karubje unawares.
He had emerged from the subway station, gotten his bearings, and headed south on Utica. The thin warmth of spring sunshine penetrated his jacket. As a homicide detective, Karubje could have checked out one of the department’s sedans, but he’d been downtown when the call came in, and at that time of day the Number 4 train was the fastest way to get to Crown Heights. Besides, he hadn’t learned how to drive until middle age, and still wasn’t completely comfortable with it.
For a strange few moments, it seemed as though all the people were moving to the same silent beat. A businessman in a gray suit bopped across the street; a stroller-pushing nanny nodded her head in time to his strides. Karubje passed a drugstore, a psychic, and a nail salon with his fingers snapping out a matching rhythm before he realized what he was doing.
A dreadlocked young man sat in a doorway, his hands beating a tattoo on a pair of congas. Karubje had seen the effects of the sound before hearing it. It was a sound he always avoided if he could.
The memories pounded against his skull. Africa was inside his head, so intensely he had to blink away moisture from his eyes. The chicken burritos from the vendor’s cart became his mother’s roasted inkoko. The cracked sidewalk, abloom with candy wrappers discarded in scraggly bushes, dissolved into a smooth asphalt swath cutting through the green hills of Kigali, lined with small palms and kept pristine by sweeper’s brooms.
The drumbeats became the running feet of the interahamwe. Karubje saw the flash of the machetes, heard the thud of the clubs. He smelled the stench from the mass graves filled with the Tutsi corpses.
Karubje stilled his fingers.
His cousin Paul had joined a squad of Tutsi rebels hunting down the renegade Hutu militia who had slaughtered their families, friends, and neighbors. Paul was a lanky sixteen-year old whose peroxide deadlocks camouflaged a driven personality. When he urged his cousin to join the cause, Karubje, then a pre-law student, refused.
“Appointing yourself judge and jury won’t bring justice,” he said.
Paul scowled. “But you can’t do nothing!”
Karubje’s family were outsiders in Rwanda—much as he now was in America. His father was a cattle rancher in a land of farmers. French and English rather than Kinyarwanda was spoken at home. The family attended Mass, while most of their neighbors believed in predestination and an underworld inhabited by spirits who either protected or harassed the living.
Later, when Karubje was in the refugee camp, ghosts had come—his friend Amélie, his cousin Paul, his mother and father, demanding vengeance. Until that day in the food tent, standing in line for his ration of beans and rice, when he glimpsed the man with the red-rimmed eyes and scarred lip that made him look like a snarling hyena.
To escape the spectral pleas, Karubje turned his back on his homeland. He applied for a visa through his church; when it came through, he got on the plane to New York.
He lived in Koreatown, forsook soccer for baseball. He called himself American, never African. After a decade and a half, he barely remembered the green hills, the whitewashed house, the smell of his mother’s cooking.
Until he heard the drums.
Karubje kept walking, lighting the cigarette that he’d have to put out as soon as he got to the crime scene.
He turned at the next corner onto a narrow street of brownstones and small apartments. The buildings looked worn but neat, almost alike in color and design, the result not of a developer’s vision but of their inhabitants’ common culture. The people who lived here were elderly and white. Their clothes proclaimed their dependence on meager savings and Social Security. Hispanics may have taken over other Eastern European communities, but this block was still more Warsaw than Juarez.
A squad car and an ambulance were double-parked in front of one of the apartment buildings. A small group of onlookers stood beside the ambulance, kept in check by the crossed arms of a burly patrol officer. Karubje flashed his shield and identified himself.
“Dwayne Spivak,” the patrol officer said. There was a hint of the bully around his mouth and suspicion in his eyes. He was the type of cop who would retire with a pot belly, a bruised nightstick, and more fishing boat than he could rightfully afford on a city pension. He nodded at the closest apartment building. “Vic’s in there.”
Karubje walked up four chipped concrete steps to a front door of painted steel propped open with a wedge of wood. The bulbs in two of the overhead fixtures were burned out, and he paused in the vestibule while his eyes adjusted to the dimness.
At the end of the hallway, two EMTs and another patrol officer clustered around a prone figure at the bottom of the stairs. Karubje saw that the corpse was an old man. Its head was twisted to the side—a broken neck.
“So you don’t think he fell?” the patrol officer said. She was a coffee-skinned young woman with close-cropped hair.
The older EMT repacked his equipment. “That’s for you to investigate and the DA to prove. My job is to keep ‘em alive—if they’re not dead first. You ready, Sid?” The two EMTs picked up their bags.
“Hey, Henri,” said the second EMT. Everyone except the dispatcher who’d grown up in Haiti pronounced his name Hen-ry instead of On-ree.
“Hello, Sidney,” Karubje said. “What do we have?”
Sid hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. “Thought it was a slip-and-fall—no tread on the stairs, vic was wearing those geezer slippers.”
Karubje looked at the old man’s feet. One was bare, the other had a worn fake-leather mule on it. Karubje had a nearly identical pair at home next to his bed.
Sid continued. “But when I was checking his vitals, Davey”—he nodded in the direction of the older EMT—“noticed the guy was holding something pink in his hand.”
The patrol officer spoke up. “Like strands of wool.” The nametag over her badge read L. Hulce. “But the vic isn’t wearing that color. And I didn’t find anything at the top of the stairs.”
“Time of death?” Karubje asked Sid.
“An hour, plus or minus. But you’ll have to ask the ME.” A voice squawked from one of the EMT’s radios. “Duty calls,” Sid said. “Later, Henri.”
“Do we have an ID?” Karubje asked when the EMTs were gone.
Hulce consulted her notebook. “Jakob Cohen. Lived by himself on the second floor.”
“And you called Homicide because of the pink fibers in Mr. Cohen’s hand?” Karubje made it a point to use a victim’s name whenever possible.
Hulce ducked her chin. “Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t find anything at the top of the stairs?” Karubje said. The came out zee. Despite classes to overcome his French accent, Karubje still had trouble with the English th sound.
“No, sir. But there are fresh scratches on the railing.”
Karubje eyed the banister, dull with age and old wax. “So he tried to break his fall.”
“But there’s nothing under his fingernails, sir. I checked after the EMTs were done.”
“Nothing you could see,” Karubje said mildly.
Hulce ducked her chin again. “No, sir.”
“When the ME van arrives, please ask them for a rush prelim on Mr. Cohen’s hands.” Karubje turned and walked back toward the front door. Spivak’s bulk loomed in the opening.
“Told her it was a waste of time to call Homicide,” he said. “Old guy just fell down the stairs.”
Karubje noticed a yellow smear on the front of the patrol officer’s uniform. Mustard-yellow.
“But those pink strands are interesting, don’t you think?” Karubje nodded toward the body. “Officer Spivak, secure the lobby until the ME van arrives. Officer Hulce, come with me.”
Spivak blew out a breath that was nearly insubordinate. Hulce, her mouth barely suppressing a smile, hurried down the steps after Karubje.
Karubje scanned the rubbernecking crowd. Slightly apart from the others, a young woman stood with her head canted, as though trying to figure out something. She looked to be in her early twenties and was demurely dressed in a knee-length skirt and ballerina flats. She held a bouquet of blue flowers the way a bridesmaid might, with both hands clasped around the stalks.
“Officer Hulce, find out if anyone saw or heard anything. Start with people closest to the building.” Karubje knew that while doers might lurk on the fringes, busybodies usually pushed to the front. He walked over to the young woman with the flowers.
“I’m Detective Karubje,” he said.
Her eyes widened at the sight of his shield. They were the color of raisins, brown with a purplish cast. Like Karubje’s skin.
“Zata Maronski.” She offered her hand, something people rarely did when badged.
Karubje took it, then nodded at the apartment building. “Do you live here?”
“Third floor. What’s going on? Mrs. Levine said Mr. Cohen was hurt.”
“He apparently fell down the stairs.”
“Is he going to be okay?”
“I’m afraid he died from his injuries.”
“Alev ha shalom,” the young woman murmured.
“Amen,” Karubje said reflexively.
She cut her eyes at him. “Are you Jewish?”
The French may have provided the refugee camp at Lake Kivu with medical supplies, but it was the Israelis who staffed it with top surgeons. Karubje ran errands for the doctors and helped out at the field hospital. In return, they shared baklava sent from home and taught him Yiddish phrases.
He permitted himself a small smile. “A member of one of the lost tribes, you mean? No.” He waited for a follow-up question, but she surprised him.
“What kind of accident brings a homicide detective?” Zata said. She had noticed the small print on his badge.
He looked up the street. A hardware store, a laundromat, a kosher grocer on the corner—it was like a small village. The scene made Karubje think of another neighborhood, one of corrugated tin-roofed buildings, streets clogged with cars and bicycles, and stores with bilingual signs.
“Did you know Mr. Cohen?” he said.
The young woman shook her head. “He moved in after the first of the year. He didn’t really—”
“You should talk to that schmuck Erik,” interrupted a thickly accented voice. It belonged to an old man of modest height and generous girth squeezed into an old suit with unfashionably wide lapels. Even though its collar was frayed, his white shirt was clean and pressed, and his shoes, cracked across the top, were polished.
“Who’s Erik?” Karubje said.
“Erik Brandt, the gonif who lives in the basement apartment who’s supposed to be the super.” The old man waved a pudgy finger under Karubje’s nose. “He’s the landlord’s nephew, so there’s no getting rid of him. And the chutzpanik knows it! It took him two weeks to turn off the steam. Did he care that it was ninety-five degrees? No! My Marta could have collapsed from the heat if Mrs. Shulstein hadn’t loaned us her electric fan.”
A woman standing next to the speaker, similar in age and proportion, spoke up. “Levi’s right—Erik’s a balegula. It’s a disgrace he’s in this building. A shtuken nisht in harts.” Despite the warmth of the day, the woman pulled her cardigan close.
Karubje recognized the Yiddish phrase from the doctors’ conversations after a long day in the makeshift OR. A stab in the heart. It referred to a terrible memory. He wanted to ask the old woman what she meant, but she had vanished into the crowd.
Levi rapped his fist on his breastbone as though it were a door. “Erik’s been bothering Mr. Cohen, always following him, trying to talk to him.”
“It’s true,” said another elderly man. His accent, while not as pronounced as Levi’s, was clearly Eastern European. His apron had Karsh’s Kosher Grocery stenciled across the bib, the same name as on the awning over the store on the corner.
“Last week when Jakob was in the store, Erik came in. Jakob didn’t even wait to buy his groceries. Just set them down and asked if he could go out the back. I could tell he didn’t want Erik to see him.”
Karubje took out his notebook.
“That’s Erik with a k,” the grocer said, then turned to Zata. “My condolences on the passing of your bubbie. Aleha ha shalom. I have missed seeing her in my store these past months.”
“Thank you for the fruit basket. It was very thoughtful,” Zata said.
“First berries of the season.” The grocer beamed at her, his smile revealing a dental calamity of twisted and missing teeth. “You’re a good mommellah, Zata.” He inclined his head toward Karubje as though sharing a confidence. “When the stairs become too much for Esther, does Zata send her to live with strangers? No! She moves here to take care of her bubbie.”
“You lived with your grandmother, Ms. Maronski?” Karubje asked.
“Please, call me Zata. And yes; since January. That’s when she started having a hard time getting around. The elevator is unreliable and she lived on the third floor.”
Levi snorted. “Those stairs were no problem for Esther. We walked down and up them together when you were at work, Zata. We’d go to the garden in back. Esther said she liked feeling the United States under her feet.” Levi shook his head. “Esther said she didn’t like going out by herself anymore. She thought the neighborhood had changed.”
The grocer glared at him. “You took Esther on a shpatzir? Why did you not come to my store?”
Levi’s shirt puffed out at chest level. “The only place she wanted to go was the garden!”
Zata reached a hand toward the quibbling men. “Levi, Mr. Karsh, please.” The gesture bared her wrist, exposing a small tattoo. Its colors were bright and the edges of the design had started to scab.
Mr. Karsh stared at the tattoo. “Oy vay!”
Zata tugged down her cuff. “Forget-me-nots,” she said, dropping her eyes to her bouquet. Her voice became softer. “Bubbie’s favorite flower.”
The Tutsi rebel squads often got matching tattoos. Paul’s had been cut off his arm and stuffed in his mouth along with his genitals. Karubje prayed the boy was already dead when it was done.
“Besides Mr. Brandt, did Mr. Cohen have problems with anyone in the neighborhood?” he asked.
Levi raised his hands, palms up. “Who knows? He only moved into the building five months ago. He wasn’t one to play cards in the park, or sit on the stoop and kibbitz.”
“He was Orthodox,” Mr. Karsh said. “Always bought kosher, observed the holiday customs.”
Karubje knew street corners, not second-floor landings, were for random killings. If Mr. Cohen was a victim, he was a chosen one.
The drums beat again in his head. He pressed his fingers to his temple.
“All you all right?’ Zata asked.
“Are you going to arrest Erik?” Levi said at the same time.
Karubje dropped his hand. “Right now, I’d just like to talk to him. Officer Spivak?”
The medical examiner’s van had arrived, along with more onlookers. Accompanied by a sulky Spivak, Karubje wove through the crowd and re-entered the apartment building. They went downstairs and knocked on the door labeled “Superintendent.”
“Mr. Brandt?”
There was no answer.
Karubje and Spivak went back up the stairs and out onto the street. Hulce was standing beside the ME’s van as Jakob Cohen’s body was loaded through its rear doors.
“I requested a prelim on the vic—Mr. Cohen’s—hands, sir. And I bagged the pink fibers,” Hulce said. Spivak rolled his eyes.
Karubje took the glassine baggie holding the strands of wool. The flowers outside his parents’ whitewashed house were nearly the same color. Before the visit by the man with the red-rimmed eyes and hyena snarl. Before splashes of blood had stained them burgundy.
“The fibers won’t do us much good without something to match them to,” Karubje said. “I’m going to take a look at the landing and Mr. Cohen’s apartment.” He nodded at the row of houses that lined the street. “You two canvass the neighborhood. See if someone knows about any problems involving Mr. Cohen. Or where Erik Brandt might be.”
“Yes, sir,” Hulce said. She bounded up the steps of the nearest brownstone and punched the doorbell. With considerably less enthusiasm, Spivak crossed the street and did the same.
Levi materialized at Karubje’s elbow. “So did you talk to the paskudnik?”
“He wasn’t home,” Karubje said. “Does he have another job?”
“That one? He sleeps late, goes out, comes back, I don’t know from where.”
“Sometimes he comes to the store in the afternoon to buy cigarettes,” Mr. Karsh volunteered.
“So you will wait for him, yes?” Levi said to Karubje.
“The officers are canvassing the neighborhood. Don’t worry—we’ll interview Mr. Brandt.”
“But when he comes back, he will find out the police are looking for him. Then pft, he will be gone.” Levi hooked his thumbs together and flapped his hands like bird wings.
While Levi was talking, Karubje glimpsed Zata in the crowd watching the ME’s van drive away. Standing next to her was the old woman in the cardigan who had said it was a disgrace for Brandt to be the super. A stab in the heart.
Zata turned and caught Karubje looking at her.
“Excuse me,” Karubje said. He walked toward the apartment building. Zata met him at the bottom of the steps.
“Is it okay if I go back to my apartment?” She still held the bouquet of blue flowers. They drooped in the heat.
Karubje nodded at the wilted blooms. “Those could use some water.”
“I was going to put them on Bubbie’s grave.” Zata tilted her head. “How about you, Detective? Would you like some water, too? Or do you prefer iced tea?”
Heat had never bothered Karubje. “Tea would be nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
Karubje followed Zata past the tiny elevator and up the stairs. She moved with the grace and quiet of a dancer. As they passed the second floor landing, Karubje looked at the banister. There were the scratches Hulce had mentioned, fresh scribbles in the wax that had built up over the years. Only a careful eye would spot them. Karubje noted the police seal and a perfect X of crime-scene tape on what he presumed was Mr. Cohen’s apartment door. Hulce did good work.
Zata used two keys on a pair of elaborate locks. The apartment was small and shabby, but the space was arranged pleasantly, for comfort. Some of the chairs had lace doilies on their plump arms, and there was a dark wood table with carved bowed legs.
Karubje watched Zata fill a vase with water for the flowers. She then poured two glasses of tea from a pitcher out of the refrigerator and put a few small rolled-up cookies on a plate.
“Please, sit down,” she said, setting the refreshments on the table.
Karubje chose one of the chairs without doilies. He raised his glass—it smelled of mint and lemon—and drank. In the next instant, the mouthful of sweet coolness turned brackish, just like the water from the plastic jugs at the refugee camp. He forced himself to swallow, then ate a cookie. Its cinnamon tang was a relief.
“Who was the woman who called Mr. Brandt a disgrace to the building?” he asked.
“That’s Mrs. Levine. She lives on the first floor, in the back.”
“Why would she say that?”
Zata looked uncomfortable. “Because Brandt’s a skinhead. You know—one of those neo-Nazi types. The tenants in this building are older European Jews—mostly Polish, like Bubbie. I’m named after her mother; Zata is short for Malgorzata. Anyway, all of them lived through the war.” She pointed to the array of photos on the mantel and her eyes became shiny. “Most lost their families. That’s why Bubbie didn’t want to go into assisted care. She said the people in this building, in this neighborhood, were her new mishpokhe.”
The pounding started in Karubje head’s again. His cousin Amélie and her ten-year-old son, Bernard—he hadn’t thought about them for years. The boy had been “strung” by the interahamwe—his Achilles tendons severed so he couldn’t run away—then beaten severely. Amélie made a litter from cardboard boxes and umuvumu branches. Every day, she dragged Bernard to the bathing area, to the food tent, up the little hill so he could watch the other children play.
Later, when Bernard was dying of cholera, Amélie refused to budge from her place beside his pallet. Karubje tried to reason with her. “I am his family,” was all Amélie said. The interahamwe killed her when she left the camp to return Bernard’s body to their village.
The ice tinkled in Karubje’s glass, and he realized he was trembling. He stared at the photos on the mantel.
Framed in cheap plastic were color snapshots of Zata. Her dark hair had reached halfway down her back when she was younger, and her cheekbones were less angular than now. A birdlike woman stood next to her in several of the photos, wearing a black dress that looked too large for her. Zata’s bubbie.
One photo had been taken at a beach. Zata and her grandmother wore black one-piece swimsuits and stood next to each other in the sand. The woman’s arm curved around young Zata’s shoulders, exposing a bruise on the underside. Her expression made plain her fierce love for the little girl.
There were black and white shots of the same woman, twenty years younger, posed in front of New York monuments—the Statue of Liberty, the Staten Island ferry. She stood with brittle poise and her smile was guarded.
At the end of the mantel was a cluster of even older photos. Adults and children posed stiffly before the camera. In one shot, a smiling couple cradled a newborn baby close to the lens. Snow pillowed behind them. From their clothes and background, Karubje guessed the photo had been taken in Europe. Bubbie was printed in ink across the bottom border. The photo was yellowed and creased, as though it had been folded into a tiny square.
“When did your grandmother pass?” he asked.
“Eight days ago. If you had come yesterday, I would still be sitting shiva.”
“I thought grandparents weren’t within the circle.”
Zata raised an eyebrow. “First Yiddish, now Judaism. Do you have a Jewish girlfriend?”
Karubje shook his head. “The medical staff at Lake Kivu was Israeli.”
“Lake Kivu?”
“The refugee camp in Zaire. I am Tutsi. My father was a member of the old government.”
Something flickered behind Zata’s eyes that Karubje couldn’t read. “I understand,” she said.
Images and sounds from more than a decade ago flashed through Karubje’s mind, things he usually didn’t allow into his consciousness. Paul’s maimed body dumped on his mother’s doorstep, his congealed blood squishing up around the soles of Karubje’s sandals. The screams of Karubje’s mother, the sickening thud of the machete hacking at his father’s flesh.
“Tutsi are cockroaches. Tutsi are murderers. Rwanda is our Hutu land,” blared from the radio, day and night. The interahamwe killed a million people in barely three months. “A local conflict—not genocide,” said President Clinton, who did nothing to stop the killing.
At the refugee camp, Karubje found it impossible to eat meat. He took up smoking to mask the smells of blood and infection.
The idea of practicing law lost its attraction. He applied to the police academy the day he received his green card, and progressed from patrol officer to homicide detective with record speed. Fellow cops knew he was “good police.” No suspects ever complained of brutality when Karubje was the arresting officer. Appointing yourself judge and jury won’t bring justice.
“More tea?”
Zata’s soft voice jarred Karubje back to the present. She held up the pitcher and her sleeve pulled back from her wrist, exposing the tattoo again—A2618 written in ornate script surrounded by blue flowers.
“I got it yesterday,” Zata said. “It’s Bubbie’s birthday—See? August 26, 1918. I wanted to . . . remember her.”
Karubje looked at the photos again. He wondered how many of the people had died in the camps. “Some things are better forgotten.”
A small crease appeared between Zata’s brows.
“No,” she said. “We have to remember.” The crease deepened. “Even the awful things.”
His cousin Paul’s lean face materialized above her head. But you can’t do nothing.
Karubje gulped some tea, the hot liquid making his eyes water. When his vision cleared, the apparition was gone.
“Will you stay here?” he asked.
Zata shrugged. “It’s a rent-stabilized apartment. The subway’s close, and the neighborhood’s safe.”
Would she feel the same if her neighbor’s death turned out to be a murder? “Did your grandmother know Mr. Cohen?” he asked.
Zata shook her head. “He moved in around the time she started staying in more.”
“I understand he lived alone. Did he get a lot of attention from the neighborhood ladies?”
“You should have seen how many women dropped by with Matzah ball soup and homemade knishes. But I don’t think he was interested—at least, I never saw him with anyone.” The crease appeared between her brows again. “I think the only time we spoke was when I carried his groceries up the stairs for him. He wouldn’t take the elevator on the Shabbes.”
Opalescent light shone through the living room window. Karubje saw dust motes drifting in the late afternoon glow. He stood. “I’d better get back to work. Thank you for the tea.”
“Take some rugula.” Zata wrapped two cookies in a napkin. “I’ll never be able to eat everything the neighbors brought.”
Karubje ate one of the cookies as he walked downstairs to Jakob Cohen’s apartment. No reason to try Erik Brandt’s place again. Hulce would call him as soon as the young man surfaced.
Mr. Cohen’s apartment was typical for an elderly man living alone—bed, dinette with one chair, cheap television. Few personal effects. No photos.
Karubje went into the small kitchen. Stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet was a ticket stub. Yankees, first game of the current season. Karubje had been there, too. The Friday evening was unseasonably warm, and he had stayed until the last inning, when the fans were rewarded by a walk-off homer.
Something glinted on the cheap carpet. Karubje picked it up. A gold cufflink stamped with an eagle, its wings outstretched. He looked under the furniture and in the dusty corners of the room but couldn’t find its mate. He bagged and labeled the cufflink. As he was putting it in his pocket, his cell phone rang.
It was Hulce. Spivak had seen Erik Brandt hop the rear fence and enter the apartment building. He answered his door when the two officers knocked, but quickly became belligerent.
Probably provoked by Spivak. “Where is he now?” Karubje asked.
“Cuffed in the back seat of the patrol car.” Hulce paused. “I searched his apartment, sir. There’s something you should see.”
It was an ordinary cardboard carton, stashed behind a pair of scuffed work boots and a battered tool kit on the floor of the closet. Its contents were packed with care: A flag embroidered with the same eagle emblem as on the cufflink. An SS uniform patch. Photos of men in uniform—guards, not soldiers. A dagger with a swastika on its hilt. Pamphlets, their pages yellowed and crumbling but their hateful messages still legible: Heil Hitler, Cleanse Russia, Exterminate Jewish Cockroaches.
Cockroaches. George Rutaganda had shouted the word as he pounded on the door of their whitewashed house. He was their neighbor, a bean farmer. Karubje would never forget his red-rimmed eyes and hyena snarl. He hid in the cellar. Later there were the screams, the coppery smell, the red splotches of blood on the pink flowers.
The afternoon sun all of a sudden seemed unbearably bright. Karubje raised a hand to shield his eyes.
“Are you all right, sir?” Hulce asked.
“Let’s talk to Mr. Brandt,” he said.
Brandt slumped in the back seat, cuffed hands in his lap. According to his ID, he was twenty-four years old. He had an empty dinner plate of a face with small, close-set eyes.
Spivak held up an evidence bag. “He had this on him.”
It was a gold cufflink. Karubje compared it to the bagged one in his pocket. Two eagles with outstretched wings.
“Did you Mirandize him?” Karubje asked.
“Twice, sir,” Hulce said. “He didn’t invoke.”
Karubje opened the patrol car’s rear door. Brandt smelled like cigarettes, breath mints, and overworked deodorant. The short sleeves of his T-shirt exposed crude tattoos on his pale skin—88, a Celtic cross, a swastika.
“Mr. Brandt, were you in Mr. Cohen’s apartment this afternoon?”
Brandt spit. The gob barely missed Karubje’s shoe. “That traitor? He deserved to die. He—” Brandt abruptly stopped talking.
“Mr. Brandt?” Karubje said.
“Forget it, mud person.” Brandt spit again. “Lawyer. That’s all I got to say.” His lip curled in a sneer.
Drums pounded in Karubje’s ears. Fists on a door. The noise grew louder. Karubje lunged. His hands closed around the meaty neck. Fingers clawed at him, but he hung on. Rutaganda’s small eyes rolled back in his head.
“Stop it, sir. STOP!”
The pounding in Karubje’s head receded as quickly as it had come. He let Hulce pull him away from the patrol car. Coughing, Brandt scooted to the other end of the seat.
“Goddamn crazy mud person!” he rasped. “I’m suing your ass! You’re gonna—”
A grinning Spivak slammed the door on Brandt’s tirade while Hulce stared at Karubje.
He took a deep breath. There was a gash on the back of his hand. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and pressed it against the wound. “Officers, why don’t you take five, buy yourselves a soda,” he said.
Hulce hesitated, but then followed Spivak to the corner store, looking back twice over her shoulder.
The carton of Nazi paraphernalia was in the open trunk of the patrol car with the sheaf of photos on top. Karubje paged through the images of jack-booted soldiers on parade, Hitler throwing a salute, wraith-like men and women penned behind tall fences of concertina wire.
He glanced up at Zata’s apartment building, then at other houses on the street, thinking of the old people living in them. Erik Brandt had made them prisoners again in their new country, afraid to go to the corner store. A shtuken nisht in harts.
An old woman made her way along the sidewalk, pulling a handcart of laundry. It was Mrs. Levine. Karubje now understood why she thought it a stab in the heart that Brandt was the super. He put the lid on the carton to hide its contents.
Mrs. Levine peered into the backseat of the squad car as she passed.
Brandt’s words carried through the steel and reinforced glass. “Get out of here, cockroach,” followed by curses at the old woman.
Ms. Levine pulled her sweater close around her. “A choleryeh ahf dir,” she muttered as she shuffled past.
May you get cholera. Karubje blinked. Across the sidewalk, thin but upright, Bernard stood beside his mother’s tent, staring at him. Karubje blinked again, and the boy became a broom in the hardware store display again.
Hulce and Spivak returned carrying drink cups. Spivak sucked nosily on his straw.
“Should we roll, sir?’ Hulce asked.
“Sooner we get this cockroach locked up, the better,” Spivak said.
“In a minute,” Karubje said. Brandt had called Cohen a traitor, not a cockroach. Why would he . . .
Karubje sorted through the bagged evidence until he found the gold cufflink from Jakob’s apartment. He realized something just as important had been left behind.
“I’ll be right back,” he told the two patrol officers.
Karubje took the stairs two at a time. He tore down the crime scene tape, opened the door, walked to the refrigerator, and slid the ticket stub out from under the magnet.
New York Yankees and April 1 were printed under a photo of Yankee Stadium, followed by Friday 7:05 PM. An hour when an Orthodox Jew would have been at synagogue, not in the stands.
Traitor.
He searched Jakob’s apartment more carefully this time. He found the hidden cupboard next to the radiator. The trove of memorabilia was smaller than Brandt’s. An old pistol marked with a swastika. Photos of men in uniform—guards, not soldiers. A worn velvet jeweler’s box.
Karubje opened the box. There were dents in the cushioning that he knew would match the contours of the eagle cufflinks. Oswiecim was stamped on the box’s inside lid.
Oswiecim. The Israeli doctors sometimes mentioned this place after a new wave of interahamwe victims arrived. Auschwitz.
Karubje scrutinized the photos, trying to imagine how the Aryan visages would look sixty years later. After two passes he was pretty sure he’d found the one that belonged to the body crumpled at the foot of the stairs.
Traitor.
The day his visa came through, Karubje had seen George Rutaganda in the food tent. There was no mistaking that hyena snarl. He was hiding among his victims, posing as one of them—eating food from the relief agencies, drinking their scarce water, using their precious medical supplies.
Eric Brandt must have stumbled on the cupboard while he was turning off the steam.
Traitor.
Karubje deposited the contents of the cupboard into an evidence bag and relocked the apartment. At the landing he hesitated, then went up instead of down. He wanted her to know about the masquerade that had led to murder.
He knocked on the apartment door. While he waited, he looked through the clear plastic at the photos of the prison guards. The prints were creased and faded, with scalloped edges.
Hours before he was to leave for New York, Karubje had crept through the darkness. In his fist was a scalpel from the OR. He drew back the tent flap where George Rutaganda lay snoring. He watched the pulse beat in the fleshy neck.
Iminsi nticuza imana, said the other refugees. Destiny is never defeated.
Karubje had let the tent flap drop, threw away the scalpel, and caught the bus to the airport.
Now he turned the evidence bag over in his hands. He noticed a folded sheet of paper between two of the photos. He opened the bag and slid it out.
It was a court order, signed by a judge.
Whereas defendant Jakob Clebsche was born in Germany . . . joined the Nazi Party . . . served as a guard at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland, which housed Jews . . . . on his visa application, defendant did not mention . . . defendant naturalized as a United States citizen . . . defendant willfully misrepresented and concealed material facts . . .
Karubje felt his hands shaking as he turned the page.
Defendant’s citizenship revoked . . . this order of deportation is hereby entered this 22nd day of December . . .
Karubje put the letter back in to the evidence bag. He thought about the newborn baby among the pillows of snow. She could not have been born in August.
He rubbed his face. It felt slick and greasy.
Zata opened the door.
“You’ve hurt your hand,” she said.
Karubje glanced down. There was a smear of blood from his scraped knuckles on the plastic of the evidence bag.
He saw everything.
On Zata’s wrist was the Auschwitz identification number adorned with forget-me-nots. On her feet were the ballerina flats that would have made no sound as she slipped downstairs and pushed a startled old man. Somewhere in her apartment, on a shelf in her closet or in a drawer, would be a wooly pink sweater or a fluffy pink scarf.
For a moment, Karubje was back creeping through the darkness, scalpel in hand. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.
“I know,” he said.
Zata started to speak, but he cut her off.
“I came to tell you that Mr. Cohen’s death was an accident. Mr. Brandt won’t be charged.” He turned to leave.
“Shalom, Detective,” Zata whispered. The apartment door clicked shut.
As Karubje walked downstairs, he recalled the word in Kinyarwanda. Amahoro. He pushed against the steel front door. Peace.
Out in the street, the conga player had started up again. The drumbeats matched the beat of Karubje’s heart.
# # #
Lenny in Love by Steven Wander - written version
LENNY IN LOVE © 2001
“Call me…Just…call me.”
He hoped to sound alluring. He wanted to say something witty, to sparkle, to be original, enticing. He felt this need to find exactly the right beginning.
“It’s me,” he managed after a thoughtful pause. “Lenny, Lenny Goldinstine. We met at that 25-karat club diner. You remember? I do! We have to talk. I admit it. I made a mistake. I really gotta see you again. I’m desperate. Call me!…Please….”
The disembodied voice on the answering machine, heard against a background of softly modulated music, the song ‘con te partiro’ (‘I will leave with you’), belonged to a young woman, he knew, a very beautiful woman. Her sweet accented soprano urged, beckoned even. “Per piacere, tell me your name. Leave me the telephone. And maybe — is possible — I will be, come si dieci, in your touch.” Her words ended with a deep sigh, longingly evoked, and were followed directly by the “beep.”
He recognized that voice. In his mind’s eye he saw her as she breathed. He vividly recalled her touch, that sigh accompanied by the sight and feel of her heaving chest. She was simply too gorgeous, too desirable, and probably – there was no doubt – too expensive. What was left to say?
“Call me, ‘Schmuck’,” he voiced to himself. “She’ll never telephone.” He considered redialing. It was even less likely she’d pick up. There was nothing left to do. He put the car phone back in its cradle.
He knew it was wrong. How could he have been so stupid? He never should have offered her cash. It was all perfectly clear to him now. Those hundred dollar bills just weren’t enough. He should have given her a personal check, a really large check, one with plenty of zeros. Why hadn’t he realized he was up against investment bankers and instantaires, all those Wall Street tycoons? The draft shoulda been enough money to make those electric azure eyes bug right out of her head. So what if his account was overdrawn. She couldn’t know that. She didn’t look the type to make a quick exit from the party and try to cash it right away. In that dress, Lenny guessed, no more than spun yarn contoured to her body, she couldn’t rush anywhere, but what if she did? Lenny always planned for contingencies. Instantly he knew what he’d do. He’d lay the blame on his bookkeeper, offer her another, drawn this time on an out-of-state bank requiring deposit, equally worthless but probably not returned for five working days. It’d be weeks, at least two, before it all played out. Right now he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was everything to him. A month from today – if past results are any guarantee of future performance – she’d be a forgotten memory.
He was anxious. He looked at his watch, the one for work, a stainless steel and 18kt gold Audemars Piguet, very expensive. He realized he was going to be late for his appointment. Now he was in a hurry to get to the office. Traffic on the Long Island Expressway this time of day, as usual, was awful. It was always awful, no matter the hour. As far as he could see, there was an unbroken line of bumpers, probably stretching all the way to the Midtown tunnel. He pounded the horn, smashing his fist against the hub of the steering wheel with rage and impatience. He jerked the flashers for the headlights, sending his annoyance in pulses directly to the rearview mirrors of drivers in front of him. Traffic peeled slowly to either side like a worn zipper on a tattered jacket, reluctantly and uncertainly. Lenny’s threshold had passed. He was getting out of this jam – right now. He honked furiously. He ignited the turret lights on the roof, rotating red and white warnings to the cars on all sides of him. He barely nudged forward as neighboring vehicles jostled to find space where none had existed previously. Lenny fumed. This could be a matter of life and death. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and he wasn’t waiting any more. He grabbed his Koss headphones, turned the CD player to Joplin’s ‘Pearl’ and set the sirens off. The high-pitched scream shocked the cars around him. Those ahead exploded out of his way. He grabbed the far left lane of the Expressway and roared past the stalled and still traffic – lights blinking, horn blowing and sirens whirring. Commuting to work had finally become a pleasure again. To and from his office on glittering Fifth Avenue, the address of Dior and Fendi, Bvlgari and Tiffany, Lenny drove an ambulance.
Lenny acquired his commute car after a client with nursing homes complained how the HMO’s were squeezing his business. He had to shrink his fleet of ambulances. Lenny offered to buy an obsolete model without all the very fancy emergency medical gear. It came with New York State certification and double “A” tags, and for his chauffeur’s license Lenny needed to guess only 6 out of 10 multiple-choice questions on the art and science of trucking. The name of the company, Red Sea Medical Services, was emblazoned on all four sides of the ambulance. Like the vehicles of other Hassidic medical transport, the ambulance was dedicated to the memory of three benefactors - all of whom died in transit. Lenny kept the Jewish blessings but changed the names to those of world famous killers: Typhoid Mary, Son of Sam and that slayer of men’s hearts, Angelina Jolie. Despite having forgotten most of his Hebrew, he had no troubling translating ‘Son of Sam’. It was ‘Ben Schmuel’.
At the Midtown tunnel he commandeered the E-Z pass lane and crossed without slowing (or paying) through the toll. In the grid-locked Manhattan traffic, his ambulance sliced between stopped vehicles, blaring its way down crowded one-way streets with cars pulling aside and trucks giving up their double parking to let it pass. With English sophistication he was even capable of navigating major thoroughfares on the opposite, the left-hand side of the road.
Whenever Lenny blasted his way at high speed through the city or down the breakdown shoulder of the interstate with normal traffic slowed to a stop-and-go, he felt and looked like a modern Moses. To the other drivers his wake of dust and sand and exhaust fumes was a cloud by day, his red flashing roof lights a torch by night. Since his first crossing of the East River, an unimpeded exodus at the height of the rush hour, he never once doubted this was the only way to drive in New York.
Lenny parked on the far East Side a few long blocks from work. He avoided the pricey garages off Fifth Avenue on side streets between Madison and Sixth. After some hunting, he had located the perfect Manhattan parking spot only a short walk away. Months ago he discovered he could leave his vehicle in the lot unmolested, never once towed away or even a costly ticket. It was certainly convenient, and whatever the time of day or night he always managed to find a vacant slot. What’s more, the price could not be beat. In New York where rates for ground level parking could surpass one thousand dollars a month, Lenny successfully parked for free. Lenny left his ambulance right next to ‘admissions’ at the Manhattan Hospital for Incurable Diseases.
It was serendipity when he heard their radio jingle which stood out among the welter of new advertisements for medical services. After announcing with trumpet fanfare the river view address and daily smorgasbord of pain medications on demand, a chipper-sounding registered nurse in the full bloom of health introduced herself, New York license # 271828, and asserted, “It’s the right place for you when the prognosis is poor and the insurance is good. Major Medical, Medicare, Medicaid, Diner’s Club.”
Now at rest, Lenny checked his hair in the mirror, thick and combed straight back with mousse, flashed a signature smile of perfect teeth, tugged his tie straight and smoothed his shirt collar. Last he grabbed his overcoat hanging from the empty gun rack behind the front seat and before leaving slid it on. For his commute he had purchased a white leather ankle-length duster sans fringe at Ermenegildo Zegna. As he strode across the hospital lot, his Armani suit under wraps, Lenny blended right in with regular EMT personnel in his own version of their long white laboratory coats. Among the paramedics and emergency vehicles, Lenny in his designer cowhide and his ambulance with caduceus and blue crosses looked right at home.
“Nice threads…looking very good. Awdacious,” singsang an Hispanic orderly nearby who was leaning against one support for the canopy over the hospital entrance. He reached out and fingered the soft fine-grained leather of Lenny’s sleeve and nodded favorably.
Lenny smelled the sweet acrid marijuana smoke exhaled from a hand-rolled cigarette. “Thanks,” and began moving on.
“You wanna trade coats?” demanded a louder grating voice.
Lenny turned to stand still and erect; he understood that people died in New York for their bomber jackets. He freed his hands from his pockets. “Sure,” was his answer. He wondered if he could avoid a fistfight without total capitulation. At the very least it meant soiling his clothes. “Sure,” he repeated. “Anytime at all…once it’s battle-stained like yours.” He eyed the blotches of human waste – dull reds, yellows and browns in an assortment of blood, bile and excrement bleached pale by frequent commercial washings.
“Mine here’s real nice. It has the hospital insignia. See.” He touched the raised red and white patch stitched to the breast pocket. “What’s that?” He asked and pointed to the lapel emblem on the white duster.
Lenny immediately reidentified Zegna’s karate kicking black-belted kangaroo logo. “This is very special. It’s the certification for advanced lifesaving. You see, if you’re dead, I’m the guy.” Lenny pointed his finger gun-barrel style and, popping his lips surprisingly loud, drew down his trigger finger.
Gesturing large, the orderly shielded himself with one arm and with his cigarette hand aimed back, laughing the whole time.
Lenny stayed stock-still, drew out his wallet, crumpled a fifty, and shoved in deep in the guy’s shirt pocket. He read his picture identification. “You do me a favor, José Rivera. You keep an eye on my wheels.”
“Si, mi amigo. No problema, you da’ man.”
“Right. Thanks. I gotta tell ya, you learned an important lesson today.” He confided with a chuckle.
“Waz that?”
Lenny snuck a glance at the billboard across the way with a common public service message. “Don’t say ‘no’ to thugs.”
On nice days Lenny enjoyed a stroll through midtown. This afternoon he was in a hurry. Just before hailing a cab, he looked back once over his shoulder to see José making the acquaintance of U.S. Grant and swaying to unheard music. With the joint at his lips he raised his free hand and “v’d” Lenny for ‘victory’, or was it ‘peace’. Lenny shrugged.
His destination was 55th and Fifth where Goldinstine & Sons, the upstairs fine jewelry salon his grandfather had founded, was located on the fourteenth floor. The keys to the front door were in his pocket when he rang the bell. After a glance at the closed circuit television monitor the receptionist buzzed him through and stood up to take his coat.
As he turned his back to her, she leaned forward on tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “Your three o’clock is already here.”
“Now! Where?”
“The small office.”
“Damn.” This meeting with ‘Extravagant Gems’, a major diamond dealer, was important. Thoughts of the young woman still troubled his concentration, and Lenny wished he had time to prepare himself properly. The oversight could be very costly. He walked quickly through the showroom, shielding his eyes and chastising himself for taking off his sunglasses. Custom-designed chandeliers hung from the ceiling among a checkerboard of recessed lighting fixtures. An idea lifted from a competitor’s Paris boutique, the bulbs of these crystal luminaires hung below the cut glass in order to shower the showroom with the maximum of direct and reflected light. During hours of opening the light switches on rheostats were all turned to high.
At eye level, separated by a minimum of trim, showcases alternated with mirrors so clients viewed either the jewelry for sale or themselves, the two things that attracted them most. The sales staff of young women wore exclusively black gowns, suitable for evening, with appropriately sheer black stockings, the company dress code. Their young trim bodies were startlingly beautiful, and gold and especially diamonds in platinum would never look better than against their dark simple silhouettes. Clothing colors didn’t conflict with decor, and their spaghetti straps, decollates and puff skirts lent an air of formality to the interior and set the tone for high prices. Everything in public view from the deep pile carpets to the antique tables to the Georgian sterling silver urn at the entrance with fresh cut flowers daily said ‘rich’.
Lenny entered a private office where a single north-facing window spread an even natural light throughout. Winter or summer, morning or evening, cloud-cover or not, the level varied little. Without highlights or shadows this was honest illumination for gemstones, betraying their true character, a light to buy by. The halogen spots in the ceiling made everything sparkle with supernatural luster. The bulbs were extinguished now, reserved for private purchasers when their brilliance made anything shine with the illusion of beauty.
“Kalesh, my good friend, my buddy.”
The corpulent, dark skinned Indian acknowledged Lenny, slightly dipping his chin and touching the palms of his hands together. “Bokrish, I am Bokrish. Kalesh is my older brother.”
“Of course, of course, no matter, my mistake.”
Lenny hated making errors; but he would swear, up and down, that the two brothers did – sort of – look alike, and he was absolutely certain they smelled the same. Like inhabitants of the tropics everywhere, they eschewed bathing, sweated profusely, and rarely, Lenny imagined, had their clothes laundered.
“It’s good to see ya, buddy.” Introductions over, courtesies done, now down to work, Lenny took a seat opposite at the table.
Bokrish bowed again and touched his palms. With studied slowness he pushed back the sides of his soiled suit jacket and began unbuttoning the elephant skin vest both he and his brother always wore when carrying valuables. Lenny studied the gray and grainy skin with its deep veining, noting the ivory tusk buttons held on with coarse black elephant hair thread.
“100% elephant, Indian elephant, very rare,” the stone dealer said as he extracted a well-worn leather purse that remained attached to the pachyderm by a solid link chain. “I have, very special. Very special. I show first you, now.” He opened the leather case with sacramental care. “These are my children. I offer them you.”
Lenny nodded.
Bokrish took a large parcel paper in his hand and began unfolding it in the usual way, first one side, then the top, next tapping the contents to the bottom and finally after acknowledging his audience of one, he began pouring the gemstones onto the leather tabletop. Diamonds! Brilliant, luminous, sparkling as only they can. But strange, unexpected, not white, not transparent, not clear to the eye. Colored diamonds! A rainbow of reds, blues, lavenders and grays, greens and pinks, oranges and yellows. These stones were intense, soaked in pigment, vivid. Lenny was truly startled. He had never seen such saturated colors except rarely in the mineralogical collections of museums. The Hope Diamond for instance. Never before did such stones lie in front of him and never in such sizes. Bokrish was right. This was special. There had been rumors of new mining activity in South Asia, but just rumors. There were always rumors from countries with closed borders. No one he trusted had seen the raw crystals, much less polished and finished goods, and he simply dismissed it as idle talk, just fantasy, but not anymore. He thought of the colored diamonds that sold for outrageous prices at auction, in particular, the recent 5.54ct. orange brilliant, nicknamed the ‘Halloween Diamond’, purchased by Harry Winston, Inc. for more than one million dollars, a world record two hundred thirty-eight thousand dollars per carat. Some pumpkin!
Lenny drew a tweezers from his shirt pocket and spread the stones over the table, no stone on top of another. He began his prattle. “Times are so tough. You and I both know you can’t make money in this business anymore, not since they began publishing The Diamond Dealer’s Digest.”
He reserved his venom for this monthly publication that came out on bright red paper to foil duplication. Before color copiers the red background Xeroxed black obscuring the numerical text. Nicknamed for obvious reasons, the ‘Red Rag’, The Digest published the price of a white diamond grouped according to the 4C’s, carat weight, color, clarity and cut. There was a grade for how white it was, how free from imperfections and even for the accuracy of its cutting. On the chart it was so much per carat for this color, this quality and this cut. There was the wholesale asking price for anyone to see. The publisher knew this was information worth taking, and at the bottom of the page was his admonition: “Thou shall not steal - Subscribe.”
Lenny complained, “Everybody knows how much a white diamond costs. How can you make any money?”
“Yes,” the dealer agreed, “very hard. De Beers, they tell you how much a diamond costs, and the ‘Red Rag’ it says what you charge. Business is whor-e-bull.”
“Horrible?”
“Yes,” business is whor-e-bull. Vishnu has forgotten the faithful.”
“Right,” said Lenny, Jewish by birth.
It was regrettable that the cost of white diamonds was fixed, but Lenny also knew there were no established prices for colors like these. This was new territory, and Lenny saw a chance for some real price gouging.
All the while he talked, his tweezers danced among the diamonds, pulling a line of stones from here and a smaller cluster from elsewhere. The movement of his tweezers had the appearance of mindless doodling, but somehow – as if by accident – the larger stones moved to the periphery. The better-made diamonds and the fancy shapes ended up in a group on the fringe of the original pile. In the center were left the weaker colors and smaller sizes. With a final sweep of his tweezers around the edge he separated these outer stones from the center. Two nearly equal piles of diamonds were now side by side on the tabletop.
Bokrish spoke. “Kalesh and I wish to sell all we have. I offer you a very special ‘lot’ price for everything. It is high, I apologize, but for such a parcel not so high. The price per-carat is most reasonable, I assure you. For selection, to pick and chose amongst these my children, to take the brightest and the finest and leave me only cripples and lepers, would be a hardship for which I must ask you at least…” he paused. “The triple.” He looked from the stones to Lenny. “To decide, I think, among such beauties would be most difficult, but the choice, my revered host, is yours. Do you prefer to have all the diamonds from the parcel, my good friend, or do you prefer to choose individual stones.”
Lenny hesitated. The difference was huge: three times the price for selection. Lenny figured that at lot price there was still plenty of room to make serious money. If he cherry-picked the parcel, it was a different matter. It would be much harder.
“Good buddy, we’ve known each other too long. I can’t argue with you over money. My father always said, ‘Never money between friends’. I’ll do whatever you want. Tell me what you want….but…right now it’s just too much goods for me to handle, you see, at one time. Let me take this half.” Lenny’s tweezers ushered one pile of stones to his right, the grouping of larger and better diamonds.
Lenny was counting on tradition. It was practice in the trade when a salesperson saw a large lot split into equal portions right before his eyes to sell half at ‘lot price’. The two companies had done business before, and plus which, and probably more important, the firm was known to pay quickly and when necessary, in cash. For all the usual reasons Lenny expected to get what he wanted.
Bokrish looked Lenny with dead eyes in the face, gleaning little and offering little of his intentions. Then he cracked the tinniest of smiles. “Of course, I accommodate you.” Of all the many nationalities active in the jewelry industry, the Indians were if anything accommodating.
Bokrish bowed again. “As you wish.” And with the back of his hand he pushed the two piles back together. Whereas the two halves had lain side by side before, Bokrish now divided them in the middle up and down. “The half,” he nudged a random grouping towards Lenny.
Staring at the new division mixing better and worse goods, Lenny reconsidered. “You know, if you give me a little help on the price and some time, I could take them all. 20 and 120.” Lenny meant a 20% discount off the lot price and 120 days time for payment, 4 months.
Now the bargaining began. Lenny had one slight advantage in these negotiations. He knew how much these diamonds cost. Bokrish, like other dealers, wrote the cost of his merchandise in code on the outside of the parcel papers. The codes were never hard to decipher. They had to be easy to read or else expensive mistakes happened. Lenny had bought the code from a disgruntled worker in the firm. It required dropping the first and last pair of letters, generally “x’s”, “z’s” and “q’s”, scrabble letters, and then substituting specific integers for the rest. With that information Lenny was able to negotiate from strength. After the preliminaries of finding every reason for now not wanting to buy the diamonds, he made his final offer which afforded Bokrish a small profit; and he held firm to the terms of financing. They settled on 8 and 120. Equal notes due over the next four months at an 8% reduction of the per carat lot price.
“Mazal u’Bracha,” Bokrish concluded. Even the Indians were fluent with the Jewish closing for a deal. “Luck and blessing.”
Lenny pushed the intercom on the speakerphone and summoned his cousin Marlon, second-in-command. Blood more than talent or intelligence explained ties in the jewelry business. Trust mattered most.
Marlon appeared almost instantly. He was above average height and girth. In his puffy face, his features seemed small and undistinguished: thin lips, weak chin, unremarkable eyes. His rush of friendliness, the exuberance of a used-car salesman, did not quite disguise an edgy nervousness. In his haste he had not bothered to put on his sport coat, and his button-down Oxford shirt showed broad gray perspiration stains. It was company policy, Lenny’s policy, that suit jackets were de rigueur with clients but shirtsleeves were perfectly acceptable for dealers.
“Marlon, you know Bok-choy from Extravagant Gems.”
“Bokrish,” responded the seated Indian, chin dipped, palms joined. “Bokrish Char.”
Marlon reached down and shook his clasped hands first with one then both of his. “Nice to meet ya again, Mr. Choy.”
“And I likewise,” countered the diamond merchant, who except for the flutter of an eyebrow betrayed no surprise.
“We just bought these; take a look at ‘em. Check the weights; get Bokrish four promissory notes for these dates and amounts, non-interest bearing. You sign ‘em. I gotta leave.” Lenny handed Marlon the parcel full of diamonds and a scrap of paper with scribbled figures. The bookkeeper would draw up the formal documents.
It was getting late; he had been at work for over an hour. He could count on Marlon seeing the valuables put away, locking the vault, and setting the security alarms, their workday ritual. Lenny searched his messages for any mention of her, and there it was. She returned his call. He ignored the rest along with the list of the day’s sales and cash receipts. His thoughts were on her: the dress she wore, the body that filled it, her face. This was a dream come true. Finally! He had her number and reached for the phone. He couldn’t wait another moment; and if, he got a busy signal or her answering machine, he’d telephone again from the car. Now, he sensed, she was within his reach.
“Call me…Just…call me.”
He hoped to sound alluring. He wanted to say something witty, to sparkle, to be original, enticing. He felt this need to find exactly the right beginning.
“It’s me,” he managed after a thoughtful pause. “Lenny, Lenny Goldinstine. We met at that 25-karat club diner. You remember? I do! We have to talk. I admit it. I made a mistake. I really gotta see you again. I’m desperate. Call me!…Please….”
The disembodied voice on the answering machine, heard against a background of softly modulated music, the song ‘con te partiro’ (‘I will leave with you’), belonged to a young woman, he knew, a very beautiful woman. Her sweet accented soprano urged, beckoned even. “Per piacere, tell me your name. Leave me the telephone. And maybe — is possible — I will be, come si dieci, in your touch.” Her words ended with a deep sigh, longingly evoked, and were followed directly by the “beep.”
He recognized that voice. In his mind’s eye he saw her as she breathed. He vividly recalled her touch, that sigh accompanied by the sight and feel of her heaving chest. She was simply too gorgeous, too desirable, and probably – there was no doubt – too expensive. What was left to say?
“Call me, ‘Schmuck’,” he voiced to himself. “She’ll never telephone.” He considered redialing. It was even less likely she’d pick up. There was nothing left to do. He put the car phone back in its cradle.
He knew it was wrong. How could he have been so stupid? He never should have offered her cash. It was all perfectly clear to him now. Those hundred dollar bills just weren’t enough. He should have given her a personal check, a really large check, one with plenty of zeros. Why hadn’t he realized he was up against investment bankers and instantaires, all those Wall Street tycoons? The draft shoulda been enough money to make those electric azure eyes bug right out of her head. So what if his account was overdrawn. She couldn’t know that. She didn’t look the type to make a quick exit from the party and try to cash it right away. In that dress, Lenny guessed, no more than spun yarn contoured to her body, she couldn’t rush anywhere, but what if she did? Lenny always planned for contingencies. Instantly he knew what he’d do. He’d lay the blame on his bookkeeper, offer her another, drawn this time on an out-of-state bank requiring deposit, equally worthless but probably not returned for five working days. It’d be weeks, at least two, before it all played out. Right now he couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was everything to him. A month from today – if past results are any guarantee of future performance – she’d be a forgotten memory.
He was anxious. He looked at his watch, the one for work, a stainless steel and 18kt gold Audemars Piguet, very expensive. He realized he was going to be late for his appointment. Now he was in a hurry to get to the office. Traffic on the Long Island Expressway this time of day, as usual, was awful. It was always awful, no matter the hour. As far as he could see, there was an unbroken line of bumpers, probably stretching all the way to the Midtown tunnel. He pounded the horn, smashing his fist against the hub of the steering wheel with rage and impatience. He jerked the flashers for the headlights, sending his annoyance in pulses directly to the rearview mirrors of drivers in front of him. Traffic peeled slowly to either side like a worn zipper on a tattered jacket, reluctantly and uncertainly. Lenny’s threshold had passed. He was getting out of this jam – right now. He honked furiously. He ignited the turret lights on the roof, rotating red and white warnings to the cars on all sides of him. He barely nudged forward as neighboring vehicles jostled to find space where none had existed previously. Lenny fumed. This could be a matter of life and death. He wasn’t getting anywhere, and he wasn’t waiting any more. He grabbed his Koss headphones, turned the CD player to Joplin’s ‘Pearl’ and set the sirens off. The high-pitched scream shocked the cars around him. Those ahead exploded out of his way. He grabbed the far left lane of the Expressway and roared past the stalled and still traffic – lights blinking, horn blowing and sirens whirring. Commuting to work had finally become a pleasure again. To and from his office on glittering Fifth Avenue, the address of Dior and Fendi, Bvlgari and Tiffany, Lenny drove an ambulance.
Lenny acquired his commute car after a client with nursing homes complained how the HMO’s were squeezing his business. He had to shrink his fleet of ambulances. Lenny offered to buy an obsolete model without all the very fancy emergency medical gear. It came with New York State certification and double “A” tags, and for his chauffeur’s license Lenny needed to guess only 6 out of 10 multiple-choice questions on the art and science of trucking. The name of the company, Red Sea Medical Services, was emblazoned on all four sides of the ambulance. Like the vehicles of other Hassidic medical transport, the ambulance was dedicated to the memory of three benefactors - all of whom died in transit. Lenny kept the Jewish blessings but changed the names to those of world famous killers: Typhoid Mary, Son of Sam and that slayer of men’s hearts, Angelina Jolie. Despite having forgotten most of his Hebrew, he had no troubling translating ‘Son of Sam’. It was ‘Ben Schmuel’.
At the Midtown tunnel he commandeered the E-Z pass lane and crossed without slowing (or paying) through the toll. In the grid-locked Manhattan traffic, his ambulance sliced between stopped vehicles, blaring its way down crowded one-way streets with cars pulling aside and trucks giving up their double parking to let it pass. With English sophistication he was even capable of navigating major thoroughfares on the opposite, the left-hand side of the road.
Whenever Lenny blasted his way at high speed through the city or down the breakdown shoulder of the interstate with normal traffic slowed to a stop-and-go, he felt and looked like a modern Moses. To the other drivers his wake of dust and sand and exhaust fumes was a cloud by day, his red flashing roof lights a torch by night. Since his first crossing of the East River, an unimpeded exodus at the height of the rush hour, he never once doubted this was the only way to drive in New York.
Lenny parked on the far East Side a few long blocks from work. He avoided the pricey garages off Fifth Avenue on side streets between Madison and Sixth. After some hunting, he had located the perfect Manhattan parking spot only a short walk away. Months ago he discovered he could leave his vehicle in the lot unmolested, never once towed away or even a costly ticket. It was certainly convenient, and whatever the time of day or night he always managed to find a vacant slot. What’s more, the price could not be beat. In New York where rates for ground level parking could surpass one thousand dollars a month, Lenny successfully parked for free. Lenny left his ambulance right next to ‘admissions’ at the Manhattan Hospital for Incurable Diseases.
It was serendipity when he heard their radio jingle which stood out among the welter of new advertisements for medical services. After announcing with trumpet fanfare the river view address and daily smorgasbord of pain medications on demand, a chipper-sounding registered nurse in the full bloom of health introduced herself, New York license # 271828, and asserted, “It’s the right place for you when the prognosis is poor and the insurance is good. Major Medical, Medicare, Medicaid, Diner’s Club.”
Now at rest, Lenny checked his hair in the mirror, thick and combed straight back with mousse, flashed a signature smile of perfect teeth, tugged his tie straight and smoothed his shirt collar. Last he grabbed his overcoat hanging from the empty gun rack behind the front seat and before leaving slid it on. For his commute he had purchased a white leather ankle-length duster sans fringe at Ermenegildo Zegna. As he strode across the hospital lot, his Armani suit under wraps, Lenny blended right in with regular EMT personnel in his own version of their long white laboratory coats. Among the paramedics and emergency vehicles, Lenny in his designer cowhide and his ambulance with caduceus and blue crosses looked right at home.
“Nice threads…looking very good. Awdacious,” singsang an Hispanic orderly nearby who was leaning against one support for the canopy over the hospital entrance. He reached out and fingered the soft fine-grained leather of Lenny’s sleeve and nodded favorably.
Lenny smelled the sweet acrid marijuana smoke exhaled from a hand-rolled cigarette. “Thanks,” and began moving on.
“You wanna trade coats?” demanded a louder grating voice.
Lenny turned to stand still and erect; he understood that people died in New York for their bomber jackets. He freed his hands from his pockets. “Sure,” was his answer. He wondered if he could avoid a fistfight without total capitulation. At the very least it meant soiling his clothes. “Sure,” he repeated. “Anytime at all…once it’s battle-stained like yours.” He eyed the blotches of human waste – dull reds, yellows and browns in an assortment of blood, bile and excrement bleached pale by frequent commercial washings.
“Mine here’s real nice. It has the hospital insignia. See.” He touched the raised red and white patch stitched to the breast pocket. “What’s that?” He asked and pointed to the lapel emblem on the white duster.
Lenny immediately reidentified Zegna’s karate kicking black-belted kangaroo logo. “This is very special. It’s the certification for advanced lifesaving. You see, if you’re dead, I’m the guy.” Lenny pointed his finger gun-barrel style and, popping his lips surprisingly loud, drew down his trigger finger.
Gesturing large, the orderly shielded himself with one arm and with his cigarette hand aimed back, laughing the whole time.
Lenny stayed stock-still, drew out his wallet, crumpled a fifty, and shoved in deep in the guy’s shirt pocket. He read his picture identification. “You do me a favor, José Rivera. You keep an eye on my wheels.”
“Si, mi amigo. No problema, you da’ man.”
“Right. Thanks. I gotta tell ya, you learned an important lesson today.” He confided with a chuckle.
“Waz that?”
Lenny snuck a glance at the billboard across the way with a common public service message. “Don’t say ‘no’ to thugs.”
On nice days Lenny enjoyed a stroll through midtown. This afternoon he was in a hurry. Just before hailing a cab, he looked back once over his shoulder to see José making the acquaintance of U.S. Grant and swaying to unheard music. With the joint at his lips he raised his free hand and “v’d” Lenny for ‘victory’, or was it ‘peace’. Lenny shrugged.
His destination was 55th and Fifth where Goldinstine & Sons, the upstairs fine jewelry salon his grandfather had founded, was located on the fourteenth floor. The keys to the front door were in his pocket when he rang the bell. After a glance at the closed circuit television monitor the receptionist buzzed him through and stood up to take his coat.
As he turned his back to her, she leaned forward on tiptoes and whispered in his ear, “Your three o’clock is already here.”
“Now! Where?”
“The small office.”
“Damn.” This meeting with ‘Extravagant Gems’, a major diamond dealer, was important. Thoughts of the young woman still troubled his concentration, and Lenny wished he had time to prepare himself properly. The oversight could be very costly. He walked quickly through the showroom, shielding his eyes and chastising himself for taking off his sunglasses. Custom-designed chandeliers hung from the ceiling among a checkerboard of recessed lighting fixtures. An idea lifted from a competitor’s Paris boutique, the bulbs of these crystal luminaires hung below the cut glass in order to shower the showroom with the maximum of direct and reflected light. During hours of opening the light switches on rheostats were all turned to high.
At eye level, separated by a minimum of trim, showcases alternated with mirrors so clients viewed either the jewelry for sale or themselves, the two things that attracted them most. The sales staff of young women wore exclusively black gowns, suitable for evening, with appropriately sheer black stockings, the company dress code. Their young trim bodies were startlingly beautiful, and gold and especially diamonds in platinum would never look better than against their dark simple silhouettes. Clothing colors didn’t conflict with decor, and their spaghetti straps, decollates and puff skirts lent an air of formality to the interior and set the tone for high prices. Everything in public view from the deep pile carpets to the antique tables to the Georgian sterling silver urn at the entrance with fresh cut flowers daily said ‘rich’.
Lenny entered a private office where a single north-facing window spread an even natural light throughout. Winter or summer, morning or evening, cloud-cover or not, the level varied little. Without highlights or shadows this was honest illumination for gemstones, betraying their true character, a light to buy by. The halogen spots in the ceiling made everything sparkle with supernatural luster. The bulbs were extinguished now, reserved for private purchasers when their brilliance made anything shine with the illusion of beauty.
“Kalesh, my good friend, my buddy.”
The corpulent, dark skinned Indian acknowledged Lenny, slightly dipping his chin and touching the palms of his hands together. “Bokrish, I am Bokrish. Kalesh is my older brother.”
“Of course, of course, no matter, my mistake.”
Lenny hated making errors; but he would swear, up and down, that the two brothers did – sort of – look alike, and he was absolutely certain they smelled the same. Like inhabitants of the tropics everywhere, they eschewed bathing, sweated profusely, and rarely, Lenny imagined, had their clothes laundered.
“It’s good to see ya, buddy.” Introductions over, courtesies done, now down to work, Lenny took a seat opposite at the table.
Bokrish bowed again and touched his palms. With studied slowness he pushed back the sides of his soiled suit jacket and began unbuttoning the elephant skin vest both he and his brother always wore when carrying valuables. Lenny studied the gray and grainy skin with its deep veining, noting the ivory tusk buttons held on with coarse black elephant hair thread.
“100% elephant, Indian elephant, very rare,” the stone dealer said as he extracted a well-worn leather purse that remained attached to the pachyderm by a solid link chain. “I have, very special. Very special. I show first you, now.” He opened the leather case with sacramental care. “These are my children. I offer them you.”
Lenny nodded.
Bokrish took a large parcel paper in his hand and began unfolding it in the usual way, first one side, then the top, next tapping the contents to the bottom and finally after acknowledging his audience of one, he began pouring the gemstones onto the leather tabletop. Diamonds! Brilliant, luminous, sparkling as only they can. But strange, unexpected, not white, not transparent, not clear to the eye. Colored diamonds! A rainbow of reds, blues, lavenders and grays, greens and pinks, oranges and yellows. These stones were intense, soaked in pigment, vivid. Lenny was truly startled. He had never seen such saturated colors except rarely in the mineralogical collections of museums. The Hope Diamond for instance. Never before did such stones lie in front of him and never in such sizes. Bokrish was right. This was special. There had been rumors of new mining activity in South Asia, but just rumors. There were always rumors from countries with closed borders. No one he trusted had seen the raw crystals, much less polished and finished goods, and he simply dismissed it as idle talk, just fantasy, but not anymore. He thought of the colored diamonds that sold for outrageous prices at auction, in particular, the recent 5.54ct. orange brilliant, nicknamed the ‘Halloween Diamond’, purchased by Harry Winston, Inc. for more than one million dollars, a world record two hundred thirty-eight thousand dollars per carat. Some pumpkin!
Lenny drew a tweezers from his shirt pocket and spread the stones over the table, no stone on top of another. He began his prattle. “Times are so tough. You and I both know you can’t make money in this business anymore, not since they began publishing The Diamond Dealer’s Digest.”
He reserved his venom for this monthly publication that came out on bright red paper to foil duplication. Before color copiers the red background Xeroxed black obscuring the numerical text. Nicknamed for obvious reasons, the ‘Red Rag’, The Digest published the price of a white diamond grouped according to the 4C’s, carat weight, color, clarity and cut. There was a grade for how white it was, how free from imperfections and even for the accuracy of its cutting. On the chart it was so much per carat for this color, this quality and this cut. There was the wholesale asking price for anyone to see. The publisher knew this was information worth taking, and at the bottom of the page was his admonition: “Thou shall not steal - Subscribe.”
Lenny complained, “Everybody knows how much a white diamond costs. How can you make any money?”
“Yes,” the dealer agreed, “very hard. De Beers, they tell you how much a diamond costs, and the ‘Red Rag’ it says what you charge. Business is whor-e-bull.”
“Horrible?”
“Yes,” business is whor-e-bull. Vishnu has forgotten the faithful.”
“Right,” said Lenny, Jewish by birth.
It was regrettable that the cost of white diamonds was fixed, but Lenny also knew there were no established prices for colors like these. This was new territory, and Lenny saw a chance for some real price gouging.
All the while he talked, his tweezers danced among the diamonds, pulling a line of stones from here and a smaller cluster from elsewhere. The movement of his tweezers had the appearance of mindless doodling, but somehow – as if by accident – the larger stones moved to the periphery. The better-made diamonds and the fancy shapes ended up in a group on the fringe of the original pile. In the center were left the weaker colors and smaller sizes. With a final sweep of his tweezers around the edge he separated these outer stones from the center. Two nearly equal piles of diamonds were now side by side on the tabletop.
Bokrish spoke. “Kalesh and I wish to sell all we have. I offer you a very special ‘lot’ price for everything. It is high, I apologize, but for such a parcel not so high. The price per-carat is most reasonable, I assure you. For selection, to pick and chose amongst these my children, to take the brightest and the finest and leave me only cripples and lepers, would be a hardship for which I must ask you at least…” he paused. “The triple.” He looked from the stones to Lenny. “To decide, I think, among such beauties would be most difficult, but the choice, my revered host, is yours. Do you prefer to have all the diamonds from the parcel, my good friend, or do you prefer to choose individual stones.”
Lenny hesitated. The difference was huge: three times the price for selection. Lenny figured that at lot price there was still plenty of room to make serious money. If he cherry-picked the parcel, it was a different matter. It would be much harder.
“Good buddy, we’ve known each other too long. I can’t argue with you over money. My father always said, ‘Never money between friends’. I’ll do whatever you want. Tell me what you want….but…right now it’s just too much goods for me to handle, you see, at one time. Let me take this half.” Lenny’s tweezers ushered one pile of stones to his right, the grouping of larger and better diamonds.
Lenny was counting on tradition. It was practice in the trade when a salesperson saw a large lot split into equal portions right before his eyes to sell half at ‘lot price’. The two companies had done business before, and plus which, and probably more important, the firm was known to pay quickly and when necessary, in cash. For all the usual reasons Lenny expected to get what he wanted.
Bokrish looked Lenny with dead eyes in the face, gleaning little and offering little of his intentions. Then he cracked the tinniest of smiles. “Of course, I accommodate you.” Of all the many nationalities active in the jewelry industry, the Indians were if anything accommodating.
Bokrish bowed again. “As you wish.” And with the back of his hand he pushed the two piles back together. Whereas the two halves had lain side by side before, Bokrish now divided them in the middle up and down. “The half,” he nudged a random grouping towards Lenny.
Staring at the new division mixing better and worse goods, Lenny reconsidered. “You know, if you give me a little help on the price and some time, I could take them all. 20 and 120.” Lenny meant a 20% discount off the lot price and 120 days time for payment, 4 months.
Now the bargaining began. Lenny had one slight advantage in these negotiations. He knew how much these diamonds cost. Bokrish, like other dealers, wrote the cost of his merchandise in code on the outside of the parcel papers. The codes were never hard to decipher. They had to be easy to read or else expensive mistakes happened. Lenny had bought the code from a disgruntled worker in the firm. It required dropping the first and last pair of letters, generally “x’s”, “z’s” and “q’s”, scrabble letters, and then substituting specific integers for the rest. With that information Lenny was able to negotiate from strength. After the preliminaries of finding every reason for now not wanting to buy the diamonds, he made his final offer which afforded Bokrish a small profit; and he held firm to the terms of financing. They settled on 8 and 120. Equal notes due over the next four months at an 8% reduction of the per carat lot price.
“Mazal u’Bracha,” Bokrish concluded. Even the Indians were fluent with the Jewish closing for a deal. “Luck and blessing.”
Lenny pushed the intercom on the speakerphone and summoned his cousin Marlon, second-in-command. Blood more than talent or intelligence explained ties in the jewelry business. Trust mattered most.
Marlon appeared almost instantly. He was above average height and girth. In his puffy face, his features seemed small and undistinguished: thin lips, weak chin, unremarkable eyes. His rush of friendliness, the exuberance of a used-car salesman, did not quite disguise an edgy nervousness. In his haste he had not bothered to put on his sport coat, and his button-down Oxford shirt showed broad gray perspiration stains. It was company policy, Lenny’s policy, that suit jackets were de rigueur with clients but shirtsleeves were perfectly acceptable for dealers.
“Marlon, you know Bok-choy from Extravagant Gems.”
“Bokrish,” responded the seated Indian, chin dipped, palms joined. “Bokrish Char.”
Marlon reached down and shook his clasped hands first with one then both of his. “Nice to meet ya again, Mr. Choy.”
“And I likewise,” countered the diamond merchant, who except for the flutter of an eyebrow betrayed no surprise.
“We just bought these; take a look at ‘em. Check the weights; get Bokrish four promissory notes for these dates and amounts, non-interest bearing. You sign ‘em. I gotta leave.” Lenny handed Marlon the parcel full of diamonds and a scrap of paper with scribbled figures. The bookkeeper would draw up the formal documents.
It was getting late; he had been at work for over an hour. He could count on Marlon seeing the valuables put away, locking the vault, and setting the security alarms, their workday ritual. Lenny searched his messages for any mention of her, and there it was. She returned his call. He ignored the rest along with the list of the day’s sales and cash receipts. His thoughts were on her: the dress she wore, the body that filled it, her face. This was a dream come true. Finally! He had her number and reached for the phone. He couldn’t wait another moment; and if, he got a busy signal or her answering machine, he’d telephone again from the car. Now, he sensed, she was within his reach.
Beleaguered by Ben Malisow- written version
Beleaguered
I went to visit Greg at McClusker’s Pool Emporium; that summer, he spent a lot of time hanging out in pool halls, where he kept losing lots of money while he acted like he knew what he was doing.
It was an upscale place, with lots of high-end young people, mostly men, stockbrokers and investors and whatnot, in a safe street downtown. Eight-ball had returned to a faddish prominence for about two or three years, when Hollywood gave us another movie-star-playing-pool flick, so even the dry cleaning crowd was chucking bucks at custom sticks and drinking bad beer from dubious barrels. It was not the sort of place Greg would normally be found in (or allowed in, for that matter), but he was convinced he was a Pool Hall Ace that season, and no amount of losses could evidently dissuade him.
I caught him finishing off a quick game. Or, better, “being finished off.” He paid his opponent as the guy’s friends looked on, cheering their buddy. Greg was in a lime collared tee, with chinos.
I followed after him as he stalked back to the small circular standing table where his beer waited for him.
“Nice shirt,” I said from behind him as he took a pull.
He turned to face me, a question in his eyes, then squinting as he recognized and frowned. “Piss off,” he muttered and drank again.
I grinned. “Buy me a beer?” He raised an eyebrow. “With all your winnings.”
He gave a cursory sigh, waved at a waitress, and said, “Eat my ass.”
I nodded. “Yeah. So, how’ve you been?”
He cocked his head at me, then turned to face the waitress who’d appeared at his elbow. He ordered two more domestic drafts, finally turning back to me.
“Your mother asking?”
I nodded. “She says you can come home any time now. She’s back from Bristol and the gutters need cleaning.”
Greg grunted, and curled his lip: yeah, no big deal...but there was relief behind his eyes, I’m damned sure I saw it.
“Whatever. Maybe I’ll go back Thursday.”
I nodded again. I gave him until Monday afternoon. “Okay. I’ll let her know.”
He snorted. “And is that it?”
My own grin turned a bit sheepish. “Well, okay, yeah--“
This snort was louder, and more distinct. “I knew it.”
I couldn’t even pretend umbrage. But I did, anyway. “Now, hey, c’mon, it’s not like that--“
“Sure it is,” he scoffed. “Sure-- it’s exactly like that.” He’d finished the beer I’d originally seen him with, and was starting the newbie. “What is it? What do you need? Money?”
“No!” I was taken aback, honestly. That wasn’t even a possibility, not even an issue. Hadn’t been, for a pretty long time. “Are you kidding? Not at all.”
“So?”
I looked at him.
He put the beer down. “No.”
I kept looking at him.
“No. No way. I--“
I tried to step in, “It would--“
Greg overrode me, getting louder. “I don’t do that anymore. No way. I told you that. You know that. Not in the-- what are you thinking? What is going through your head?”
I waited a few seconds, not saying anything at all.
Greg couldn’t hold back, even in the brief pause I gave him.
“Really-- what the hell? Didn’t I raise you any better than that? Seriously.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. But I still didn’t say anything.
He spluttered, exasperated. He looked, for a moment, very much like a cartoon character. A simple, old-fashioned, hand-drawn cartoon character.
“Really? Seriously?” he was strident, but not too loud.
“Seriously,” I said to him. “Four thousand.” And I said the guy’s name.
He didn’t even blink. “Seven thousand.”
“Four,” I repeated, calmly. “Do it by Thursday.”
He muttered into his beer, looking away. I think he said something like, “You’re a real piece of work,” or something very close to that. I smirked at him.
“Thanks, Pop.”
He shot me a look.
“What’s with this guy?” He stared straight at me. There was actually some steel in the eyes, some flair. Good for him.
I shrugged. “He’s been throwing rocks at my cat.” I finished my beer, and headed towards the door. As I moved past him, I patted him once, firmly, on the shoulder.
As I pushed the door out into the night, I looked back at him. He was examining the table again, muttering to himself some more.
I think he’d already figured out how to lose the four grand.
I went to visit Greg at McClusker’s Pool Emporium; that summer, he spent a lot of time hanging out in pool halls, where he kept losing lots of money while he acted like he knew what he was doing.
It was an upscale place, with lots of high-end young people, mostly men, stockbrokers and investors and whatnot, in a safe street downtown. Eight-ball had returned to a faddish prominence for about two or three years, when Hollywood gave us another movie-star-playing-pool flick, so even the dry cleaning crowd was chucking bucks at custom sticks and drinking bad beer from dubious barrels. It was not the sort of place Greg would normally be found in (or allowed in, for that matter), but he was convinced he was a Pool Hall Ace that season, and no amount of losses could evidently dissuade him.
I caught him finishing off a quick game. Or, better, “being finished off.” He paid his opponent as the guy’s friends looked on, cheering their buddy. Greg was in a lime collared tee, with chinos.
I followed after him as he stalked back to the small circular standing table where his beer waited for him.
“Nice shirt,” I said from behind him as he took a pull.
He turned to face me, a question in his eyes, then squinting as he recognized and frowned. “Piss off,” he muttered and drank again.
I grinned. “Buy me a beer?” He raised an eyebrow. “With all your winnings.”
He gave a cursory sigh, waved at a waitress, and said, “Eat my ass.”
I nodded. “Yeah. So, how’ve you been?”
He cocked his head at me, then turned to face the waitress who’d appeared at his elbow. He ordered two more domestic drafts, finally turning back to me.
“Your mother asking?”
I nodded. “She says you can come home any time now. She’s back from Bristol and the gutters need cleaning.”
Greg grunted, and curled his lip: yeah, no big deal...but there was relief behind his eyes, I’m damned sure I saw it.
“Whatever. Maybe I’ll go back Thursday.”
I nodded again. I gave him until Monday afternoon. “Okay. I’ll let her know.”
He snorted. “And is that it?”
My own grin turned a bit sheepish. “Well, okay, yeah--“
This snort was louder, and more distinct. “I knew it.”
I couldn’t even pretend umbrage. But I did, anyway. “Now, hey, c’mon, it’s not like that--“
“Sure it is,” he scoffed. “Sure-- it’s exactly like that.” He’d finished the beer I’d originally seen him with, and was starting the newbie. “What is it? What do you need? Money?”
“No!” I was taken aback, honestly. That wasn’t even a possibility, not even an issue. Hadn’t been, for a pretty long time. “Are you kidding? Not at all.”
“So?”
I looked at him.
He put the beer down. “No.”
I kept looking at him.
“No. No way. I--“
I tried to step in, “It would--“
Greg overrode me, getting louder. “I don’t do that anymore. No way. I told you that. You know that. Not in the-- what are you thinking? What is going through your head?”
I waited a few seconds, not saying anything at all.
Greg couldn’t hold back, even in the brief pause I gave him.
“Really-- what the hell? Didn’t I raise you any better than that? Seriously.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. But I still didn’t say anything.
He spluttered, exasperated. He looked, for a moment, very much like a cartoon character. A simple, old-fashioned, hand-drawn cartoon character.
“Really? Seriously?” he was strident, but not too loud.
“Seriously,” I said to him. “Four thousand.” And I said the guy’s name.
He didn’t even blink. “Seven thousand.”
“Four,” I repeated, calmly. “Do it by Thursday.”
He muttered into his beer, looking away. I think he said something like, “You’re a real piece of work,” or something very close to that. I smirked at him.
“Thanks, Pop.”
He shot me a look.
“What’s with this guy?” He stared straight at me. There was actually some steel in the eyes, some flair. Good for him.
I shrugged. “He’s been throwing rocks at my cat.” I finished my beer, and headed towards the door. As I moved past him, I patted him once, firmly, on the shoulder.
As I pushed the door out into the night, I looked back at him. He was examining the table again, muttering to himself some more.
I think he’d already figured out how to lose the four grand.
Mercy 101 by Pat Remick- written version
Mercy 101
The space beside him was cold. He rolled over and flicked on the light.
The clock read 3:30 a.m. He strained to hear the sound of the television coming from downstairs. Just the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock. Not even the cat was stirring. Jenny was away at college. Jack lived in New York with his new wife.
He was alone.
He turned off the bedside lamp and lay rigid in the dark, listening to the silence. It gave him no peace. It was that way in the daylight, too – dark and silent. And without peace.
But he knew where she had gone: The same place she went every night. Driving endless miles along New Hampshire Route 101. Her destination was a place where pain could not reach.
It had been this way for 3 months, two weeks and three nights. It would be this way again tomorrow. She would return after daybreak. The tires would crawl across the gravel driveway at exactly 7:25 a.m.
The sound woke him. He was surprised that he had actually slept for a few hours. Most nights he just lay in the dark, thinking, worrying, waiting for her return.
He dressed and went downstairs. She was sitting at the scarred wooden kitchen table. Staring out the window, seeing nothing. Steam coming from the red coffee cup in front of her. Traces of wet sand on her battered sneakers.
He walked into their once cheery kitchen. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She did not look at him.
“Did you stop at the beach?” He moved past her to the coffee pot.
“Yes.”
He poured hot coffee into his cracked “World’s Greatest Dad” mug. “See anyone last night?”
“Kristin.” She picked up her cup and took a sip.
He sat down across from her. “Working?”
“On break. I stopped for coffee.” She gazed out the window again.
“What did she have to say?”
“Not much. She got called out right away. A couple of guys off the road, probably drunk or high.
“Dead?”
“Maybe. Mass plates.”
“She say anything else?”
“She misses him.”
“Me, too.” He looked away.
She stood and walked over to the sink filled with dirty dishes. She found an opening in the jumble of plates and glasses, and emptied her cup.
“I need to sleep.”
“Of course.” He said it automatically, without emotion, without judgment.
He watched her climb the stairs. She would stay there until late afternoon, sometimes sleeping but mostly tossing and turning. When she came back down, she’d move silently through the house in her socks and a well-worn sweatsuit, her partially gray hair tied back. The woman who had been his vibrant and impeccably dressed wife had been replaced by an empty shell. Eventually she would slide into her favorite armchair and stare at the television for hours.
Sometimes it was even turned on.
He would make supper. They ate in silence in front of the nightly news. Then he moved to the living room to read. But she preferred to remain surrounded by the sitcom laughter and commercials. At 10 p.m., she’d go upstairs again, change into a sweatshirt and blue jeans and lay down in bed, eyes closed. He’d kiss her goodnight when he came to bed after the 11 o’clock news. She never responded. But it was the only time she let him touch her.
Then the cycle resumed. He would fall asleep, then wake up to find her gone. He didn’t worry anymore about her driving alone. But winter would soon be here and the weather could complicate her nightly journeys. Tomorrow he would try to persuade her to stop.
The next morning he found her in the kitchen again. She was looking out the bay window into the backyard, a cup of coffee in her hand and a slight smile on her face. The morning newspaper was on the table.
He wondered if she was reliving a happy memory. She turned and for the first time in three months, spoke first. “Good morning.”
“You look happy. Good night?” He moved toward her. She stiffened, then raised her cup as if to shield herself.
“Not really.”
He sat down and picked up the newspaper. He could make out the word “Gangstas” on the Massachusetts license plate of the mangled Dodge Intrepid. The headline over the photograph read, “Teens Killed, Speed Suspected.”
“Isn’t this the wreck Kristin got called out on the other night? Looks like her in the corner of the picture.”
She moved closer to the table. “I didn’t notice.” She bent to read the news story. “They were from Lowell. Probably drug dealers if they were on 101 that time of night. Not exactly a big loss to society.” She got up to refill her cup.
He was surprised by how cavalier she seemed. “They had mothers and fathers, too, you know,” he said quietly.
Her face turned red and her eyes flashed with anger. She opened her mouth but quickly closed it.
“Say it, Janice. For God’s sake, just say it.”
She gulped, shook her head and rushed by him toward the stairs. It was the most emotion she had shown in months. He wanted it to continue. He wished she would yell, scream, even hit him.
Again, nothing.
He wasn’t sure how much longer this could go on before he was the one doing the yelling, or leaving. He grabbed his book and sweater, and marched onto the screened porch. Maybe fresh air would help. His home had become a mausoleum and the air was stifling. He needed space, to breathe. But he was afraid to leave her alone for long.
He put down his book and gazed into the backyard. It hurt to look. Too many memories. He could see them laughing, sweaty and dirty as they tumbled over each other like puppies. His three beautiful children had grown up well. Made him proud. As young adults, their playfulness moved from the yard onto the porch, where they shared stories and their new lives.
With his firstborn, Jimmy, that meant drinking coffee together after he ravished the hot breakfast his mother had waiting precisely at 7:25 a.m. She poured his juice when she heard his tires roll across the gravel. His arrival each morning was reassurance that his shift had ended safely. Breakfast together also helped Jimmy decompress before heading to his new apartment to sleep.
But the morning ritual ended when Trooper James Gardner Jr. was killed as he returned to his patrol car after a routine traffic stop on Route 101. The investigators concluded it was a hit-and-run accident.
There had been no comfort in hearing that Jimmy died in the line of duty, doing what he loved. The pomp and circumstance of his funeral didn’t help. Nor could the nearly 1,000 somber law enforcement personnel who came from across New England to pay their respects, or the heartfelt remarks of the Governor, remotely ease their pain.
Jimmy’s death devastated them all, but in different ways. Jenny returned to college, her youthful optimism gone. At first, she came home on weekends, seeking comfort and a place to talk about her brother. She didn’t find it. It soon became clear that her mother couldn’t look at a living child without thinking of her dead one. It was easier for everyone if Jenny stayed at school. She called frequently but spoke only to him. Janice hadn’t touched a telephone since Jimmy’s death.
Jack used e-mail to stay in contact from New York. There was little substance in the daily messages, but their youngest son ached too. Janice also wouldn’t use the computer, so he printed out Jack’s e-mails and left them on the kitchen table. He would find them later in the trash, ripped into tiny fragments.
It seemed as though he had lost not only his son, but all of his children. He also had lost the woman who had been his wife. Anguish had turned the two of them into little more than shadows moving between light and dark, day and night. He prayed every day for an end to the cycle of sorrow. He knew his only hope for survival was accepting that a terrible accident had taken his son’s life.
In the old days, he would have found comfort in a glass. But Jimmy’s death had made him vow never to drink again. Still, each night he took the bottle of bourbon down from the cupboard and stared at it in the dark until he found the strength to put it back.
Mercy was his only way out of this hell, but he knew Janice could never forgive the driver who killed their son. She sought solace on Route 101. He wondered if she drove only the portion Jimmy patrolled or the entire 95 miles stretching from western New Hampshire through Manchester, the state’s largest city, all the way to the ocean at Hampton Beach.
In the days after Jimmy died, Kristin and the other troopers contacted him whenever they spotted her Taurus sedan in the early morning hours. It was difficult to miss the “JJJJJ-G” license plate, or forget that now there was one less Gardner with a first name beginning with J. The troopers were concerned. Not that she drove alone along deserted stretches of highway, but that she might believe it could bring her closer to Jimmy.
They had no reason to stop her. She drove the speed limit. She wasn’t intoxicated. She had the right to drive anywhere she wanted. So they simply flashed their headlights in greeting. They knew she would eventually find her way to Al’s Diner, as Jimmy always had, and they would try to take their breaks with her if things were quiet.
Kristin had told him it was heartbreaking to see Janice sitting alone at the counter as if she were waiting for Jimmy. Her face would light up when she saw a trooper’s forest green and khaki knife-creased uniform, but sadness too quickly returned.
Kristin said the troopers would tell Janice about the shift or a funny story about Jimmy. Tears ran down Janice’s cheeks while the trooper pretended not to notice. Although she never asked, they knew she wanted to hear that the driver had been found. They were relieved they didn’t have to tell her the investigation had gone cold.
Sometimes a trooper spent an entire break with Janice. But all too often, the trooper’s radio crackled with news of an accident or erratic driving to investigate. Early on, the troopers tried to hug her goodbye. But it made her so uncomfortable that now they gently patted her arm or didn’t touch her at all.
No one could keep so much grief inside forever. He wondered if she would ever break -- or just continue to shrivel until she faded away.
Their brief exchanges and routines of grief had resumed. She seemed to have forgotten her anger over his comment about the dead teenagers having parents. The next morning he would broach his concerns about the unpredictable weather that would follow winter’s arrival.
It was after 8 a.m. when she got home. He could see through the bay window that there was a hint of buoyancy in her step as she moved toward the house. He even thought he heard humming as she unlocked the door. She looked startled to see him already at the table. “Oh, you’re up,” she said.
“How was your night?”
“Fine.” She moved toward the coffee pot.
“Anything happen?” He watched her slowly fill her cup. Grief had deepened the lines on her face.
“Actually, yes.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the cream. “A Nissan Maxima went off the road into Miller’s Creek. I saw it in the rearview mirror after they honked at me.”
“What did you do?”
She poured the cream into her cup. “I drove to Troop A to tell them. They called in the dive team but it was too late.”
“How many?”
“Three guys in their 20s. Car had New Hampshire plates, registered in Milford.” She stirred her coffee.
“That’s the second fatal in two weeks in Troop A’s district. Headquarters won’t be happy.” He looked past her into the backyard. The trees were losing their leaves.
“Everyone speeds on 101. They were probably drunk the way they were driving.” She sipped her coffee.
“That’s why I don’t like you out there all night. And I’m worried about winter coming.”
She got up and put two slices of bread into the toaster. “I had to give a statement.”
“Who took it?”
“The rookie, Sousa. Had the nerve to ask me how I knew it was a Maxima in the dark.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that if everyone in law enforcement can learn to identify headlights in the dark, so can the mothers who help them practice. He knew I was upset so he changed the subject. Said if you wanted to sell the Wrangler, he’d buy it.”
“Maybe I should.”
There it was again: anger, almost outrage. She shook her head vigorously. Her eyes welled up. She rushed toward the stairs. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
He heard the bedroom door slam. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all.
The Wrangler was stored in an old shed on the edge of his neighbor’s farm. Jimmy had found the beat-up and rusted 1989 jeep at an estate sale five years earlier and persuaded his father it would be a great retirement project to restore the junker together.
It became far more expensive and time-consuming than they’d anticipated. But he never regretted a single dollar or hour. The night he finished repainting it, he’d wanted to celebrate and surprise Jimmy. Now, he wasn’t sure he could look at it again.
The evening news briefly mentioned a Route 101 accident had killed three unidentified men in their 20s. He suspected the story might have been longer if a news crew had videotaped the divers removing the bodies.
The newspaper account the next morning was more detailed. Fingerprints proved the victims were ex-cons. The story said an unnamed motorist had alerted State Police to the accident, and speed and alcohol were likely involved.
He was grateful Troop A hadn’t revealed Janice’s name. It might destroy her to be identified as “the mother of Trooper James Gardner who died in a tragic, unsolved hit-and-run accident in the same deserted area.”
Jenny was coming home for the long Columbus Day weekend. He looked forward to having a conversation that was more than a few words long. God knows he had tried to reach Janice. But she pushed everyone away. He had suggested counseling or a support group, but she refused. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
He felt so alone. Their friends no longer called or came by. Acquaintances acted as though their loss was contagious or pretended nothing had happened. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Only the troopers stayed in touch.
But hadn’t Janice seemed a little better lately? At least she was showing anger. And wasn’t she humming that morning? Things might continue to improve with Jenny home.
But nothing changed. Janice still disappeared at night, slept through the day and seemed to sleepwalk through the evening. Jenny tried to make conversation, but Janice responded with one-word answers.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” Jenny pleaded after Janice went upstairs at 10 p.m. “Is she still going out every night?”
“She leaves after I fall asleep, I’d guess around midnight. She comes home at 7:25, just like your brother used to.”
“Where does she go? 101 is less than 100 miles long. Even if she drives from one end to the other and back, there’s no traffic. It can’t take more than 4 hours, tops.”
“She stops at Al’s. The troopers see her there. I think she also walks on the beach. I’ve seen sand on her shoes.”
“Don’t you ask?”
“Of course I ask, Jenny. She won’t talk to me. But the doctor says as long as she’s not hurting herself, or anyone else, we have to let her work it out.”
“Maybe we should follow her to see where she goes.”
“I know where she goes. I think it makes her feel closer to Jimmy to be on 101.” He put his arm around Jenny’s thin shoulders, trying to comfort her as much as himself.
“I want my mother back,” Jenny sobbed.
“So do I, honey. But this is going to take time, lots of time.”
They were waiting at the kitchen table when Janice returned the next morning. “Hi, Mom. Where were you?”
Janice stared at her, then moved to the coffee pot. “Driving,” she said, her back to them.
“But where did you drive, Mom?”
“Nowhere. I saw Kristin at Al’s. She says hi.”
“I’d like to see her. Can I come with you tonight?”
“No.” She put down her coffee cup and stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Jenny’s lower lip quivered. “Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I need to get back to school so I can focus.”
With Jenny gone, the house turned desolate again. He had to get out. Maybe do some grocery shopping, although Janice barely ate. He would put gas in her car. It was the least he could do. Most gas stations were closed during the hours she traveled 101.
As the gas flowed into the tank, he moved around the car to wash the windows. There was something on the front bumper. It looked like blue paint and a small dent. He scraped the color off with his fingernails. Strange, she hadn’t mentioned hitting anything.
During supper, he asked her about it.
“Maybe someone hit me when I was at Al’s or parked at the beach.” She continued eating.
“What do you do at the beach anyway?”
She took a drink of water. “Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I sleep in the car. Is that a problem?” She turned back to the evening news.
“No. I was just worried that you might have hit something.”
The next morning she burst into the kitchen. Her agitation unnerved him.
She also looked directly at him for the first time in weeks. “A Ford Escort tailgated me for miles, flashing the high beams. They flipped me off and threw beer cans at the car when they finally passed me. Bunch of teenagers in a beater car.”
He had forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. “Did they hit you?”
“I swerved.” She sat down and rubbed her temples. “Remember how Jimmy always said that people who couldn’t take of their cars, rarely took care of their lives? He could, but now he’s gone. But a bunch of low-life dropouts can be out there terrorizing people. It’s just not fair.”
It was the most she had said in months. Maybe she was getting better. He reached for her hand. “But life isn’t fair. We already know that.”
She pulled away and stood. He thought she might cry, but she turned away. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
According to the noon news, a 1992 red Ford Escort carrying three teenaged boys and two girls from Manchester had slammed into a bank of trees near Epping around 4 a.m. Troop A Commander Bill Edwards reported that none of the victims were wearing seatbelts and beer cans were found in the wreckage. He suggested speed and alcohol were to blame, but asked the public to call with any information.
The news video also showed grieving young people with multiple tattoos and piercings leaving remembrances at the crash site. “We was partying, man, and they wanted to see the sun rise at the beach,” a girl with black lipstick and spiked hair sniffled into the camera.
He believed the investigating officers would want to know that Janice had encountered the Escort before it crashed. She lay on her side facing the wall of their darkened bedroom, snoring lightly. He gently shook her shoulder.
“Janice, wake up. Those kids in the Escort, they’re dead. Commander Edwards is asking for the public’s help. You have to tell them what you saw.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she mumbled.
“You saw them before the wreck. Maybe you can help the investigation.” She was groggy but he persisted. “You must have driven right by the accident. Didn’t you see anything?”
“No. Please, let me sleep.”
He went downstairs and stared at the telephone. He didn’t want to upset Janice, but Jimmy would have told them to call. He punched in the number for dispatch.
An hour later, the phone rang. He told Patrolman Sousa about Janice’s road rage encounter with the Escort. “She’ll be mad that I called. But I knew you’d want to know.”
“We’re getting a lot of heat from the public about all the accidents on 101 so I hope we can wrap this one up quickly,” Sousa said. “We got a report from a trucker who says they harassed him, too, and he saw them tailgating a mini-Cooper and maybe a jeep. We’re hoping those drivers will come forward. ”
“Janice was pretty upset when she got home this morning.”
“I didn’t realize she was out last night. Hey, Mr. Gardner, speaking of jeeps, I told Mrs. Gardner a couple of weeks ago that if you want to sell the Wrangler, I’d love to buy it. I know it’s in pristine condition.”
“I wouldn’t even know how much to ask.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you Blue Book value, OK?”
It wouldn’t hurt to see what it was worth. But he needed to know the exact mileage in order to get an accurate estimate from the Blue Book web site. He decided to drive her car so he could fill it with gas on the way. But to his surprise, the tank was still three-quarters full so he drove directly to the shed. His hands trembled as he unlocked the peeling wood door.
He took a deep breath. The door opened with a creak as always, but it still made him jump. He felt his knees weaken when he saw the jeep. The memory of the last time he saw Jimmy alive seared his brain. He felt sick.
He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He slid into the front seat and turned the key. It purred to life. They had done good work. He was surprised that the mileage read 78,714. He thought it was lower, but so much had happened that he was unsure of anything anymore.
He turned off the ignition and opened the door. The car light flashed on just long enough for him to notice the clumps of something almost white on the floor. He reached down.
It was beach sand.
Someone had been in their Wrangler. He opened the glove compartment and unfolded the bill of sale. It showed the mileage as 77,659. He and Jimmy had probably added another 40 miles or so. Who had driven the other 1,000 miles?
The shed was locked. Only he and Jimmy had keys. All of Jimmy’s keys had been given to them after the accident. That meant someone had taken a key to the shed from the house.
It had to be Janice. But why? Was the Wrangler another place where she felt closer to Jimmy?
He backed the jeep out of the shed into the daylight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but then he saw the dented front bumper. It was streaked with traces of red.
He sank to his knees. This couldn’t be happening. Janice had barely shown any emotions for months. Surely she was too grief-stricken to find enough rage to force the red Escort off the road for tailgating. She had been upset when she came home, but upset enough to kill someone?
Maybe she had hit something again and not realized it. His mind raced. There had been three fatal accidents during the time she was driving on 101. Ten people were dead. But people drove too fast on that highway. There were lots of wrecks that weren’t fatal, especially recently. Still, the Governor had demanded increased patrols.
Even if Janice was responsible for the 10 deaths, each victim probably would have come to a bad end eventually. And they might have hurt innocent people along the way.
Maybe Janice, or someone else, had done the world a favor.
Even if the investigators found out about the paint and dents on the fenders, they would never suspect a grief-stricken mother. If they did, she could plead temporary insanity from her beloved son’s death.
He had to know if sorrow truly had stolen her sanity.
First, he had to stop her from using the jeep. He would say he replaced the lock because it looked like someone had tried to break into the shed and he wanted to keep the jeep safe while he decided what to do with it. He would hide the key from her.
He needed a rental car so he could follow her. She recognized headlights too well for his truck to remain undetected. He would sleep on the couch while she spent the day upstairs in bed and she would never suspect that he, too, had been on 101 all night.
For the next two weeks he pretended to sleep when she left at night. He sprinted down the block to the elementary school where the rental car was out of sight in a rear lot. Within minutes, he also was driving east on 101.
The most difficult part was not catching up to her. She drove the speed limit, but he tended to push it by 10 miles per hour, or more, which might close the gap.
When she stopped at Al’s, he drove to the all-night gas station at the next exit to watch for her car to go by en route to Hampton Beach. He would follow until she parked at the beach. Then he rushed home to change clothes and pretend to be rested when she returned at 7:25.
He was beginning to think he was the one who was crazy. If nothing unusual happened tonight, he would stop following her. Traffic was light as he steered the rental car onto 101, cranked up the radio and cracked open a window to stay awake. The route was tedious. He didn’t understand how Janice could drive it the same way every night.
They were on their way back from Keene and had just rolled through Manchester when he noticed he was gaining too quickly on her Taurus. He slowed and moved into the lane behind her. Fifteen minutes and a mind-numbing radio commentary later, he realized he had lost sight of her. He sped up but there was no sign of the Taurus ahead of him, or broken down along the shoulder.
When he neared the exit for Al’s, he decided to risk detection and check the parking lot for her car. It wasn’t there. He quickly turned around and headed back onto 101. Maybe she had decided to forego Al’s to head directly to the beach. He sped up. He had almost reached the bridge before the Exeter exit when he was nearly blinded by the headlights looming in his rearview mirror. A vehicle was approaching quickly.
He hit the accelerator and switched lanes. The headlights followed, becoming brighter by the second. He swerved back into the right lane and pumped his brakes, trying to get the vehicle to back off. It didn’t. He sped up again. The vehicle followed. They were going at least 80 mph. He desperately hoped someone would stop them for speeding – and soon.
He kept changing lanes, but the vehicle followed. It made no attempt to pass him. He felt a thud, and then another. The vehicle was hitting his car on purpose. He panicked. Maybe the same vehicle had pushed Janice off the highway earlier.
He jerked the steering wheel to the right, bounced off the guardrail and then steered to the left. The vehicle hit him again, only harder. He heard metal crumple as he pulled the car back into the right lane. Miller’s Creek was ahead. He might be forced off the road into the water unless he reached the bridge first. He accelerated again and heard a roar as the other vehicle pulled beside him. He looked over.
It was Janice.
The bridge lights provided just enough illumination to see the shock on her face before she accelerated and pulled into the lane in front of him. It happened too quickly for him to avoid slamming into the Taurus. He watched helplessly as his wife’s car seemed to gather speed seconds before it flew through the guardrail and plunged into the creek.
He screeched to a stop. She had driven into the creek on purpose. If she had not died on impact, she would drown before he could reach her.
Her anguish was over. But his torment would continue.
The rental car would raise suspicions. Troopers would wonder why he was stalking his own wife along deserted portions of 101. They would know he hit the Taurus.
Eventually they would find the jeep and match the paint on the bumper to the Escort. He might be charged with killing the five teenagers. That could be enough to reopen the investigations into the other accidents, as well. He could be charged in five more deaths. The accusations might not stop there.
He couldn’t bear it if they learned the truth.
There had been enough blame. He would end it now. He backed up the rental car, shifted into drive, jammed his foot into the gas pedal and drove straight through the gap in the guardrail into the creek.
He wasn’t afraid. His nightmare would end. No one would ever have to know he was drunk when the jeep struck and killed his son.
The End
The space beside him was cold. He rolled over and flicked on the light.
The clock read 3:30 a.m. He strained to hear the sound of the television coming from downstairs. Just the quiet ticking of the grandfather clock. Not even the cat was stirring. Jenny was away at college. Jack lived in New York with his new wife.
He was alone.
He turned off the bedside lamp and lay rigid in the dark, listening to the silence. It gave him no peace. It was that way in the daylight, too – dark and silent. And without peace.
But he knew where she had gone: The same place she went every night. Driving endless miles along New Hampshire Route 101. Her destination was a place where pain could not reach.
It had been this way for 3 months, two weeks and three nights. It would be this way again tomorrow. She would return after daybreak. The tires would crawl across the gravel driveway at exactly 7:25 a.m.
The sound woke him. He was surprised that he had actually slept for a few hours. Most nights he just lay in the dark, thinking, worrying, waiting for her return.
He dressed and went downstairs. She was sitting at the scarred wooden kitchen table. Staring out the window, seeing nothing. Steam coming from the red coffee cup in front of her. Traces of wet sand on her battered sneakers.
He walked into their once cheery kitchen. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She did not look at him.
“Did you stop at the beach?” He moved past her to the coffee pot.
“Yes.”
He poured hot coffee into his cracked “World’s Greatest Dad” mug. “See anyone last night?”
“Kristin.” She picked up her cup and took a sip.
He sat down across from her. “Working?”
“On break. I stopped for coffee.” She gazed out the window again.
“What did she have to say?”
“Not much. She got called out right away. A couple of guys off the road, probably drunk or high.
“Dead?”
“Maybe. Mass plates.”
“She say anything else?”
“She misses him.”
“Me, too.” He looked away.
She stood and walked over to the sink filled with dirty dishes. She found an opening in the jumble of plates and glasses, and emptied her cup.
“I need to sleep.”
“Of course.” He said it automatically, without emotion, without judgment.
He watched her climb the stairs. She would stay there until late afternoon, sometimes sleeping but mostly tossing and turning. When she came back down, she’d move silently through the house in her socks and a well-worn sweatsuit, her partially gray hair tied back. The woman who had been his vibrant and impeccably dressed wife had been replaced by an empty shell. Eventually she would slide into her favorite armchair and stare at the television for hours.
Sometimes it was even turned on.
He would make supper. They ate in silence in front of the nightly news. Then he moved to the living room to read. But she preferred to remain surrounded by the sitcom laughter and commercials. At 10 p.m., she’d go upstairs again, change into a sweatshirt and blue jeans and lay down in bed, eyes closed. He’d kiss her goodnight when he came to bed after the 11 o’clock news. She never responded. But it was the only time she let him touch her.
Then the cycle resumed. He would fall asleep, then wake up to find her gone. He didn’t worry anymore about her driving alone. But winter would soon be here and the weather could complicate her nightly journeys. Tomorrow he would try to persuade her to stop.
The next morning he found her in the kitchen again. She was looking out the bay window into the backyard, a cup of coffee in her hand and a slight smile on her face. The morning newspaper was on the table.
He wondered if she was reliving a happy memory. She turned and for the first time in three months, spoke first. “Good morning.”
“You look happy. Good night?” He moved toward her. She stiffened, then raised her cup as if to shield herself.
“Not really.”
He sat down and picked up the newspaper. He could make out the word “Gangstas” on the Massachusetts license plate of the mangled Dodge Intrepid. The headline over the photograph read, “Teens Killed, Speed Suspected.”
“Isn’t this the wreck Kristin got called out on the other night? Looks like her in the corner of the picture.”
She moved closer to the table. “I didn’t notice.” She bent to read the news story. “They were from Lowell. Probably drug dealers if they were on 101 that time of night. Not exactly a big loss to society.” She got up to refill her cup.
He was surprised by how cavalier she seemed. “They had mothers and fathers, too, you know,” he said quietly.
Her face turned red and her eyes flashed with anger. She opened her mouth but quickly closed it.
“Say it, Janice. For God’s sake, just say it.”
She gulped, shook her head and rushed by him toward the stairs. It was the most emotion she had shown in months. He wanted it to continue. He wished she would yell, scream, even hit him.
Again, nothing.
He wasn’t sure how much longer this could go on before he was the one doing the yelling, or leaving. He grabbed his book and sweater, and marched onto the screened porch. Maybe fresh air would help. His home had become a mausoleum and the air was stifling. He needed space, to breathe. But he was afraid to leave her alone for long.
He put down his book and gazed into the backyard. It hurt to look. Too many memories. He could see them laughing, sweaty and dirty as they tumbled over each other like puppies. His three beautiful children had grown up well. Made him proud. As young adults, their playfulness moved from the yard onto the porch, where they shared stories and their new lives.
With his firstborn, Jimmy, that meant drinking coffee together after he ravished the hot breakfast his mother had waiting precisely at 7:25 a.m. She poured his juice when she heard his tires roll across the gravel. His arrival each morning was reassurance that his shift had ended safely. Breakfast together also helped Jimmy decompress before heading to his new apartment to sleep.
But the morning ritual ended when Trooper James Gardner Jr. was killed as he returned to his patrol car after a routine traffic stop on Route 101. The investigators concluded it was a hit-and-run accident.
There had been no comfort in hearing that Jimmy died in the line of duty, doing what he loved. The pomp and circumstance of his funeral didn’t help. Nor could the nearly 1,000 somber law enforcement personnel who came from across New England to pay their respects, or the heartfelt remarks of the Governor, remotely ease their pain.
Jimmy’s death devastated them all, but in different ways. Jenny returned to college, her youthful optimism gone. At first, she came home on weekends, seeking comfort and a place to talk about her brother. She didn’t find it. It soon became clear that her mother couldn’t look at a living child without thinking of her dead one. It was easier for everyone if Jenny stayed at school. She called frequently but spoke only to him. Janice hadn’t touched a telephone since Jimmy’s death.
Jack used e-mail to stay in contact from New York. There was little substance in the daily messages, but their youngest son ached too. Janice also wouldn’t use the computer, so he printed out Jack’s e-mails and left them on the kitchen table. He would find them later in the trash, ripped into tiny fragments.
It seemed as though he had lost not only his son, but all of his children. He also had lost the woman who had been his wife. Anguish had turned the two of them into little more than shadows moving between light and dark, day and night. He prayed every day for an end to the cycle of sorrow. He knew his only hope for survival was accepting that a terrible accident had taken his son’s life.
In the old days, he would have found comfort in a glass. But Jimmy’s death had made him vow never to drink again. Still, each night he took the bottle of bourbon down from the cupboard and stared at it in the dark until he found the strength to put it back.
Mercy was his only way out of this hell, but he knew Janice could never forgive the driver who killed their son. She sought solace on Route 101. He wondered if she drove only the portion Jimmy patrolled or the entire 95 miles stretching from western New Hampshire through Manchester, the state’s largest city, all the way to the ocean at Hampton Beach.
In the days after Jimmy died, Kristin and the other troopers contacted him whenever they spotted her Taurus sedan in the early morning hours. It was difficult to miss the “JJJJJ-G” license plate, or forget that now there was one less Gardner with a first name beginning with J. The troopers were concerned. Not that she drove alone along deserted stretches of highway, but that she might believe it could bring her closer to Jimmy.
They had no reason to stop her. She drove the speed limit. She wasn’t intoxicated. She had the right to drive anywhere she wanted. So they simply flashed their headlights in greeting. They knew she would eventually find her way to Al’s Diner, as Jimmy always had, and they would try to take their breaks with her if things were quiet.
Kristin had told him it was heartbreaking to see Janice sitting alone at the counter as if she were waiting for Jimmy. Her face would light up when she saw a trooper’s forest green and khaki knife-creased uniform, but sadness too quickly returned.
Kristin said the troopers would tell Janice about the shift or a funny story about Jimmy. Tears ran down Janice’s cheeks while the trooper pretended not to notice. Although she never asked, they knew she wanted to hear that the driver had been found. They were relieved they didn’t have to tell her the investigation had gone cold.
Sometimes a trooper spent an entire break with Janice. But all too often, the trooper’s radio crackled with news of an accident or erratic driving to investigate. Early on, the troopers tried to hug her goodbye. But it made her so uncomfortable that now they gently patted her arm or didn’t touch her at all.
No one could keep so much grief inside forever. He wondered if she would ever break -- or just continue to shrivel until she faded away.
Their brief exchanges and routines of grief had resumed. She seemed to have forgotten her anger over his comment about the dead teenagers having parents. The next morning he would broach his concerns about the unpredictable weather that would follow winter’s arrival.
It was after 8 a.m. when she got home. He could see through the bay window that there was a hint of buoyancy in her step as she moved toward the house. He even thought he heard humming as she unlocked the door. She looked startled to see him already at the table. “Oh, you’re up,” she said.
“How was your night?”
“Fine.” She moved toward the coffee pot.
“Anything happen?” He watched her slowly fill her cup. Grief had deepened the lines on her face.
“Actually, yes.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out the cream. “A Nissan Maxima went off the road into Miller’s Creek. I saw it in the rearview mirror after they honked at me.”
“What did you do?”
She poured the cream into her cup. “I drove to Troop A to tell them. They called in the dive team but it was too late.”
“How many?”
“Three guys in their 20s. Car had New Hampshire plates, registered in Milford.” She stirred her coffee.
“That’s the second fatal in two weeks in Troop A’s district. Headquarters won’t be happy.” He looked past her into the backyard. The trees were losing their leaves.
“Everyone speeds on 101. They were probably drunk the way they were driving.” She sipped her coffee.
“That’s why I don’t like you out there all night. And I’m worried about winter coming.”
She got up and put two slices of bread into the toaster. “I had to give a statement.”
“Who took it?”
“The rookie, Sousa. Had the nerve to ask me how I knew it was a Maxima in the dark.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that if everyone in law enforcement can learn to identify headlights in the dark, so can the mothers who help them practice. He knew I was upset so he changed the subject. Said if you wanted to sell the Wrangler, he’d buy it.”
“Maybe I should.”
There it was again: anger, almost outrage. She shook her head vigorously. Her eyes welled up. She rushed toward the stairs. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
He heard the bedroom door slam. Maybe she wasn’t dead after all.
The Wrangler was stored in an old shed on the edge of his neighbor’s farm. Jimmy had found the beat-up and rusted 1989 jeep at an estate sale five years earlier and persuaded his father it would be a great retirement project to restore the junker together.
It became far more expensive and time-consuming than they’d anticipated. But he never regretted a single dollar or hour. The night he finished repainting it, he’d wanted to celebrate and surprise Jimmy. Now, he wasn’t sure he could look at it again.
The evening news briefly mentioned a Route 101 accident had killed three unidentified men in their 20s. He suspected the story might have been longer if a news crew had videotaped the divers removing the bodies.
The newspaper account the next morning was more detailed. Fingerprints proved the victims were ex-cons. The story said an unnamed motorist had alerted State Police to the accident, and speed and alcohol were likely involved.
He was grateful Troop A hadn’t revealed Janice’s name. It might destroy her to be identified as “the mother of Trooper James Gardner who died in a tragic, unsolved hit-and-run accident in the same deserted area.”
Jenny was coming home for the long Columbus Day weekend. He looked forward to having a conversation that was more than a few words long. God knows he had tried to reach Janice. But she pushed everyone away. He had suggested counseling or a support group, but she refused. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait.
He felt so alone. Their friends no longer called or came by. Acquaintances acted as though their loss was contagious or pretended nothing had happened. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Only the troopers stayed in touch.
But hadn’t Janice seemed a little better lately? At least she was showing anger. And wasn’t she humming that morning? Things might continue to improve with Jenny home.
But nothing changed. Janice still disappeared at night, slept through the day and seemed to sleepwalk through the evening. Jenny tried to make conversation, but Janice responded with one-word answers.
“Dad, what are we going to do?” Jenny pleaded after Janice went upstairs at 10 p.m. “Is she still going out every night?”
“She leaves after I fall asleep, I’d guess around midnight. She comes home at 7:25, just like your brother used to.”
“Where does she go? 101 is less than 100 miles long. Even if she drives from one end to the other and back, there’s no traffic. It can’t take more than 4 hours, tops.”
“She stops at Al’s. The troopers see her there. I think she also walks on the beach. I’ve seen sand on her shoes.”
“Don’t you ask?”
“Of course I ask, Jenny. She won’t talk to me. But the doctor says as long as she’s not hurting herself, or anyone else, we have to let her work it out.”
“Maybe we should follow her to see where she goes.”
“I know where she goes. I think it makes her feel closer to Jimmy to be on 101.” He put his arm around Jenny’s thin shoulders, trying to comfort her as much as himself.
“I want my mother back,” Jenny sobbed.
“So do I, honey. But this is going to take time, lots of time.”
They were waiting at the kitchen table when Janice returned the next morning. “Hi, Mom. Where were you?”
Janice stared at her, then moved to the coffee pot. “Driving,” she said, her back to them.
“But where did you drive, Mom?”
“Nowhere. I saw Kristin at Al’s. She says hi.”
“I’d like to see her. Can I come with you tonight?”
“No.” She put down her coffee cup and stomped out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Jenny’s lower lip quivered. “Dad, I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I need to get back to school so I can focus.”
With Jenny gone, the house turned desolate again. He had to get out. Maybe do some grocery shopping, although Janice barely ate. He would put gas in her car. It was the least he could do. Most gas stations were closed during the hours she traveled 101.
As the gas flowed into the tank, he moved around the car to wash the windows. There was something on the front bumper. It looked like blue paint and a small dent. He scraped the color off with his fingernails. Strange, she hadn’t mentioned hitting anything.
During supper, he asked her about it.
“Maybe someone hit me when I was at Al’s or parked at the beach.” She continued eating.
“What do you do at the beach anyway?”
She took a drink of water. “Sometimes I walk. Sometimes I sleep in the car. Is that a problem?” She turned back to the evening news.
“No. I was just worried that you might have hit something.”
The next morning she burst into the kitchen. Her agitation unnerved him.
She also looked directly at him for the first time in weeks. “A Ford Escort tailgated me for miles, flashing the high beams. They flipped me off and threw beer cans at the car when they finally passed me. Bunch of teenagers in a beater car.”
He had forgotten how beautiful her eyes were. “Did they hit you?”
“I swerved.” She sat down and rubbed her temples. “Remember how Jimmy always said that people who couldn’t take of their cars, rarely took care of their lives? He could, but now he’s gone. But a bunch of low-life dropouts can be out there terrorizing people. It’s just not fair.”
It was the most she had said in months. Maybe she was getting better. He reached for her hand. “But life isn’t fair. We already know that.”
She pulled away and stood. He thought she might cry, but she turned away. “I need sleep.”
“Of course.”
According to the noon news, a 1992 red Ford Escort carrying three teenaged boys and two girls from Manchester had slammed into a bank of trees near Epping around 4 a.m. Troop A Commander Bill Edwards reported that none of the victims were wearing seatbelts and beer cans were found in the wreckage. He suggested speed and alcohol were to blame, but asked the public to call with any information.
The news video also showed grieving young people with multiple tattoos and piercings leaving remembrances at the crash site. “We was partying, man, and they wanted to see the sun rise at the beach,” a girl with black lipstick and spiked hair sniffled into the camera.
He believed the investigating officers would want to know that Janice had encountered the Escort before it crashed. She lay on her side facing the wall of their darkened bedroom, snoring lightly. He gently shook her shoulder.
“Janice, wake up. Those kids in the Escort, they’re dead. Commander Edwards is asking for the public’s help. You have to tell them what you saw.”
“I didn’t see anything,” she mumbled.
“You saw them before the wreck. Maybe you can help the investigation.” She was groggy but he persisted. “You must have driven right by the accident. Didn’t you see anything?”
“No. Please, let me sleep.”
He went downstairs and stared at the telephone. He didn’t want to upset Janice, but Jimmy would have told them to call. He punched in the number for dispatch.
An hour later, the phone rang. He told Patrolman Sousa about Janice’s road rage encounter with the Escort. “She’ll be mad that I called. But I knew you’d want to know.”
“We’re getting a lot of heat from the public about all the accidents on 101 so I hope we can wrap this one up quickly,” Sousa said. “We got a report from a trucker who says they harassed him, too, and he saw them tailgating a mini-Cooper and maybe a jeep. We’re hoping those drivers will come forward. ”
“Janice was pretty upset when she got home this morning.”
“I didn’t realize she was out last night. Hey, Mr. Gardner, speaking of jeeps, I told Mrs. Gardner a couple of weeks ago that if you want to sell the Wrangler, I’d love to buy it. I know it’s in pristine condition.”
“I wouldn’t even know how much to ask.”
“Tell you what, I’ll give you Blue Book value, OK?”
It wouldn’t hurt to see what it was worth. But he needed to know the exact mileage in order to get an accurate estimate from the Blue Book web site. He decided to drive her car so he could fill it with gas on the way. But to his surprise, the tank was still three-quarters full so he drove directly to the shed. His hands trembled as he unlocked the peeling wood door.
He took a deep breath. The door opened with a creak as always, but it still made him jump. He felt his knees weaken when he saw the jeep. The memory of the last time he saw Jimmy alive seared his brain. He felt sick.
He didn’t bother to turn on the light. He slid into the front seat and turned the key. It purred to life. They had done good work. He was surprised that the mileage read 78,714. He thought it was lower, but so much had happened that he was unsure of anything anymore.
He turned off the ignition and opened the door. The car light flashed on just long enough for him to notice the clumps of something almost white on the floor. He reached down.
It was beach sand.
Someone had been in their Wrangler. He opened the glove compartment and unfolded the bill of sale. It showed the mileage as 77,659. He and Jimmy had probably added another 40 miles or so. Who had driven the other 1,000 miles?
The shed was locked. Only he and Jimmy had keys. All of Jimmy’s keys had been given to them after the accident. That meant someone had taken a key to the shed from the house.
It had to be Janice. But why? Was the Wrangler another place where she felt closer to Jimmy?
He backed the jeep out of the shed into the daylight. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but then he saw the dented front bumper. It was streaked with traces of red.
He sank to his knees. This couldn’t be happening. Janice had barely shown any emotions for months. Surely she was too grief-stricken to find enough rage to force the red Escort off the road for tailgating. She had been upset when she came home, but upset enough to kill someone?
Maybe she had hit something again and not realized it. His mind raced. There had been three fatal accidents during the time she was driving on 101. Ten people were dead. But people drove too fast on that highway. There were lots of wrecks that weren’t fatal, especially recently. Still, the Governor had demanded increased patrols.
Even if Janice was responsible for the 10 deaths, each victim probably would have come to a bad end eventually. And they might have hurt innocent people along the way.
Maybe Janice, or someone else, had done the world a favor.
Even if the investigators found out about the paint and dents on the fenders, they would never suspect a grief-stricken mother. If they did, she could plead temporary insanity from her beloved son’s death.
He had to know if sorrow truly had stolen her sanity.
First, he had to stop her from using the jeep. He would say he replaced the lock because it looked like someone had tried to break into the shed and he wanted to keep the jeep safe while he decided what to do with it. He would hide the key from her.
He needed a rental car so he could follow her. She recognized headlights too well for his truck to remain undetected. He would sleep on the couch while she spent the day upstairs in bed and she would never suspect that he, too, had been on 101 all night.
For the next two weeks he pretended to sleep when she left at night. He sprinted down the block to the elementary school where the rental car was out of sight in a rear lot. Within minutes, he also was driving east on 101.
The most difficult part was not catching up to her. She drove the speed limit, but he tended to push it by 10 miles per hour, or more, which might close the gap.
When she stopped at Al’s, he drove to the all-night gas station at the next exit to watch for her car to go by en route to Hampton Beach. He would follow until she parked at the beach. Then he rushed home to change clothes and pretend to be rested when she returned at 7:25.
He was beginning to think he was the one who was crazy. If nothing unusual happened tonight, he would stop following her. Traffic was light as he steered the rental car onto 101, cranked up the radio and cracked open a window to stay awake. The route was tedious. He didn’t understand how Janice could drive it the same way every night.
They were on their way back from Keene and had just rolled through Manchester when he noticed he was gaining too quickly on her Taurus. He slowed and moved into the lane behind her. Fifteen minutes and a mind-numbing radio commentary later, he realized he had lost sight of her. He sped up but there was no sign of the Taurus ahead of him, or broken down along the shoulder.
When he neared the exit for Al’s, he decided to risk detection and check the parking lot for her car. It wasn’t there. He quickly turned around and headed back onto 101. Maybe she had decided to forego Al’s to head directly to the beach. He sped up. He had almost reached the bridge before the Exeter exit when he was nearly blinded by the headlights looming in his rearview mirror. A vehicle was approaching quickly.
He hit the accelerator and switched lanes. The headlights followed, becoming brighter by the second. He swerved back into the right lane and pumped his brakes, trying to get the vehicle to back off. It didn’t. He sped up again. The vehicle followed. They were going at least 80 mph. He desperately hoped someone would stop them for speeding – and soon.
He kept changing lanes, but the vehicle followed. It made no attempt to pass him. He felt a thud, and then another. The vehicle was hitting his car on purpose. He panicked. Maybe the same vehicle had pushed Janice off the highway earlier.
He jerked the steering wheel to the right, bounced off the guardrail and then steered to the left. The vehicle hit him again, only harder. He heard metal crumple as he pulled the car back into the right lane. Miller’s Creek was ahead. He might be forced off the road into the water unless he reached the bridge first. He accelerated again and heard a roar as the other vehicle pulled beside him. He looked over.
It was Janice.
The bridge lights provided just enough illumination to see the shock on her face before she accelerated and pulled into the lane in front of him. It happened too quickly for him to avoid slamming into the Taurus. He watched helplessly as his wife’s car seemed to gather speed seconds before it flew through the guardrail and plunged into the creek.
He screeched to a stop. She had driven into the creek on purpose. If she had not died on impact, she would drown before he could reach her.
Her anguish was over. But his torment would continue.
The rental car would raise suspicions. Troopers would wonder why he was stalking his own wife along deserted portions of 101. They would know he hit the Taurus.
Eventually they would find the jeep and match the paint on the bumper to the Escort. He might be charged with killing the five teenagers. That could be enough to reopen the investigations into the other accidents, as well. He could be charged in five more deaths. The accusations might not stop there.
He couldn’t bear it if they learned the truth.
There had been enough blame. He would end it now. He backed up the rental car, shifted into drive, jammed his foot into the gas pedal and drove straight through the gap in the guardrail into the creek.
He wasn’t afraid. His nightmare would end. No one would ever have to know he was drunk when the jeep struck and killed his son.
The End
Triple Header by Colin Campbell- written version
The first head Ham came across on Wednesday night didn’t really count as one of the three since it was still attached to its shoulders. It nearly wasn’t for long though when Andy Scott threw the patrol car into Brigham Street and Mick Habergham screamed at his partner to stop, but with a few inches to spare the drunk in the gutter kept his head.
“Jesus, Andy. Not two in one week.”
Andy bristled.
“I didn’t hit the last one.”
“You bounced him off the bonnet. Course you hit him.”
“No he bounced off the bonnet. Shouldn’t have been resisting arrest.”
They were talking about the first nightshift of the week, Monday, when Bob McFalls had asked for an extra unit to transport a prisoner. Unfortunately for Ham, Andy got the keys first and was patrolling at breakneck speed as usual. Add blue lights and siren and he became positively reckless and when they’d flown around the corner Bob had to dive out of the way. The prisoner jumped out of his skin, and onto the bonnet, before rolling off into the strong arms of the law. With no witnesses to contradict them the grazed shin and bump to the head were recorded on the custody sheet as minor injuries caused prior to arrest.
The D and I in the gutter tonight could easily be written up the same way since he was clearly drunk and definitely incapable. Any bumps and bruises he might incur on arrest could be put down to lifestyle choices, i.e. getting falling-down-drunk three days out of four. It would have been difficult trying to explain how his head came off under the patrol car but fortunately nobody was going to lose their head until later. Ham climbed out of the car and checked the body.
“Aw. I think he’s lost his teeth again.”
Andy wound the window down.
“You sure? Remember last time?”
“Last time he’d had more to eat. Lumpy vomit. Anybody could have missed them. Must have been on a liquid diet tonight. No lumps. And no top plate. Are you going to give me a hand or what?”
“Or what. This is a van job. He’s not getting in the back of this car smelling like that.”
Winding his window up Andy shouted over the radio for the van while Ham tugged the divisional drunk into the recovery position. Joe Callahan had been an alcoholic for so long he should be able to collapse into the recovery position on his own but now he was the police’s responsibility Ham had to keep him alive until he was handed over. Avoiding the vomit leaking out of the slack-jawed mouth Ham was back in the car in double quick time.
“You know, it’s scandalous we can’t take him to the Bridewell.”
“The cells don’t take D and Is any more. Remember?”
“I remember when they did. Easiest lock-up going in my probation.”
“Yeh well. I left my history books at the nick.”
“Back in ’76 they had the detox centre. Ideal place for such as Joe. Book ‘em in. Clean ‘em up. And dry ‘em out. Bypassed the cells altogether.”
The van came round the corner a lot slower than Andy had, little Billy Hollis barely being able to reach the pedals. Andy did get out this time, indicating the prone figure on the road.
“Bypass the cells nowadays too. Straight to hospital.”
Ham pulled his gloves on ready for the old heave-ho.
“The doctor’s going to love us.”
Getting a grip under Callahan’s shoulders, Ham sat the drunk up. Callahan gulped once, then threw up over Andy’s shoes.
“Dirty fucking bastard. I’ll give the doctor something to complain about.”
But he didn’t. He simply helped manhandle the dead weight into the back of the van then followed Billy Hollis to casualty.
∗
The old drunk had come round a bit by the time they’d booked him through Triage. Being rolled about in the back of the van for half an hour had done wonders for Callahan’s constitution but not for his temper and it was nip and tuck whether he’d develop into a Drunk and Disorderly before they could offload him. Ham had talked him round with the promise of early release once the doctors had checked him over but old Joe wasn’t impressed.
“Where’m I sposed to go?”
“Anywhere but the railway arches. You’ll only get moved on again.”
“Where’s’ma teef?”
“God knows. Check tomorrow to see if they get handed in.”
That was a forlorn hope. The chances of anyone taking a set of manky teeth to the police station were slim to anorexic.
“Ma wife gave me ‘em teef.”
“Just chill out Joe. And eat soft dinners.”
Andy was talking to Billy outside when Ham joined them. The van was parked in the ambulance bay, freshly hosed out and ready for the next prisoner. Andy’s shoes had been hosed down as well. It was ten to midnight. Almost the bewitching hour. Wednesday night. It should be quieting down around now. Fat chance. The radio crackled into life.
“Alpha Three. Have you resumed from the hospital yet?”
For a second Ham considered saying no, but if he did then someone else would have to go. Since the only thing you had going for you on nights were your colleagues he couldn’t drop the ball. He cleared from the hospital and asked for details.
“Sudden death at Branksome Business Park. Possible suicide.”
∗
There was no, Possible, about it. The gable end of the three-story office block painted a gruesome picture of a suicide that, while certainly being successful had clearly not gone according to plan. Unless the plan was to drop from the fire escape almost to the ground before having your head ripped off by being pulled up short. Whatever failures Duane Chambers had encountered in his business life, not being able to tie a good knot wasn’t one of them. He hadn’t seen that coming two hours earlier though, while writing his suicide note.
∗
As head partner of Chambers, Martin and Gough Advertising Agency, writing a short note should have been far easier than all the advertising slogans he’d dreamed up over the years, but composing a letter advertising his own death was proving more difficult than he thought.
Sitting at his desk in the third floor office Duane slid the notepad aside and took another drink of his coffee. Decaffeinated, so it wouldn’t keep him up all night. It was paying attention to these little details that made him the insufferable prick that he was, driving his wife and family away, and persuading his business partners that they would be better off without him. It also made him the most efficient advertising executive this side of The Pennines, so losing his business to a pair of low rent hangers-on was even more annoying.
It was dark as night outside, probably because it had slid into night while he’d drunk three cups of coffee and produced exactly zero copy for his latest campaign. The Farewell-Cruel-World campaign. He was having trouble defining his audience, the first step to any good advert. Who were you trying to sell to? Who were you trying to influence? In this case his wife had left him and his partners didn’t care. So who gave a flying fuck what happened to Duane P. Chambers?
The profanity shocked him even in his thoughts. He wasn’t a man accustomed to swearing but then again he wasn’t a man accustomed to committing suicide either. Choosing a method of departing this life had proved easier than writing the farewell note. His fingers played across the towrope on his desk then practiced the knot he’d selected from his repertoire. It wouldn’t surprise anyone who knew him that Duane P. Chambers had been an excellent Boy Scout and his hands tied a perfect noose.
Being an insipient coffee drinker, instead of a whisky drinker like his partners, it should have been more difficult to make the final decision but unlike his partners he liked to keep a clear head when conducting business. To be drunk when ending your life was simply taking the coward’s way out and Duane didn’t consider taking his own life to be the coward’s way out. He considered looking death in the face and taking the plunge to be doing the honourable thing, even courageous. It was just a pity his sense of distance wasn’t as good as his knot skills.
“To Hell with the letter.”
With a dash of instinct that might have saved his marriage if he’d displayed it earlier he scribbled a single line__
Farewell cruel world
__then stood up. He downed the last of his coffee and slung the rope over his shoulder. The main office was in darkness and he considered turning the rest of the lights on but decided against it. There was something dramatic about the light spilling across the empty desks and drawing boards. It only just picked out the fire escape door at the far end and that was just the way he wanted it. When they found him let the light provide its own trail and let his office be the only place of illumination. That’s how it had always been with his partners so let that be how it ended.
He nudged the bum-bar and cold night air made him feel faint. The door swung outwards onto the metal fire escape. After taking a moment to gather himself he tied one end of the towrope to the door handle and stepped outside. His Jaguar was parked in its bay across the car park. The rest was empty. The noose fit snugly around his neck. Then, ignoring the basics that even a fairground bungee-jumper would observe, he paid no attention to the length of the rope and jumped over the railing.
∗
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Being the first head of the night, Ham didn’t realise it would be the easiest one to find. All he had to do was follow the speckled trail of blood across the car park to the Jaguar S Type that was parked neatly in its bay. Duane P. Chambers’ head was upside down under the front nearside tyre, like a football trapped before the shot at goal. The comical look of surprise on its face took the edge off Ham’s shock at finding the wall spray-painted red in an arc where the body had swung gushing blood before it dropped.
The duty inspector pulled up behind the patrol car, blue lights flashing for all to see. Soon the ambulance would home in on those lights and the Coroner’s Officer and SOCO would have a good look before the body was moved. The head too, but just for now Ham leaned a Police Accident sign against the wheel arch to keep it hidden. The body was less of a problem, crumpled as it was beneath the dangling noose. Andy, as usual, lowered the tone.
“Not a bungee-jumper then.”
“I don’t know. Missed the ground until his head came off.”
SOCO took an hour photographing the outside scene before Andy went up and found the note. Breaking protocol he brought it to the top of the fire escape, put one hand across his heart, and shouted down to the gaggle of police officers.
“Farewell cruel world.”
The inspector displayed a brief moment of humour.
“Don’t do it man.”
“All the way down there? No way boss.”
“No. Jump if you like. But don’t move the letter you arse. This could be a murder scene until we know better.”
Ham was smiling up at his crestfallen partner when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“Just hold this a minute will you?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
This time the expletive spurted out with more venom. The Scenes of Crime photographer dumped the head in Ham’s arms then set the tripod up at the back of the ambulance. The stretchered body was covered in a white sheet leaking blood. A soft electronic whine sung in Ham’s ears and he thought he was having a reaction.
“Flash.”
The photographer raised the flash unit to show it was charging up.
“Just a couple more shots before we go. Bring the head over here.”
Ham took the head to the back doors of the ambulance. The photographer manoeuvred it into position on the severed neck until Duane P. Chambers looked almost as good as new.
“Hold it there.”
Flash. The blaze of white light blinded Ham and the next couple of shots went by in a blur. Head on shoulders. Head off shoulders. Meaty cross-section of shoulder part of neck. Meaty cross-section of head part of neck.
“Just in case they don’t believe it’s the right head.”
The photographer wasn’t even smiling when he said it. If Ham had known he still had another two heads to deal with he wouldn’t have thought it funny either.
∗
“Do you miss being in SOCO?”
It was half-past-one and they were heading back to the station to complete the sudden death report and get a head start on their meal break. Andy was stalling. Once he was behind the wheel of a patrol car on nightshift he flew around the division like a whirling Dervish but when it came time to return to the nick he suddenly took his foot off the gas. It was as if he was waiting for any excuse to stay out, holding back until the last minute in case another immediate came in. Part of his stalling technique was making small talk.
“You know? After such a long time?”
The best part of Ham’s service, fifteen years, had been as a Scenes of Crime Officer and being dumped out by the civilianisation programme had been a shock to the system. Having to relearn everything he ever knew about frontline policing would have been doubly difficult if he hadn’t crewed up with Andy Scott, who was born for the frontline.
“Photographing severed heads you mean?”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“Tell you the truth, after this last couple of years on the beat, I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Caught me by surprise a bit.”
The speedometer was sinking below 30mph, Ham’s normal patrol speed. Andy was clearly praying for something to happen before they reached the station.
“What was all that, holding-the-head-on-the-shoulders, about?”
“Physical fit. Like when you find the broken tip of a screwdriver at a burglary then stop someone with a broken screwdriver later. Match the two together and you’ve got a physical fit. Case proved.”
“Yeh, but. A head. Wasn’t any secret where it came from.”
“I know. But with forensics you’ve got to go to the far end of a fart. Just in case. They’ll do the proper fit at the mortuary, with measuring tape and close-ups. This was just coverage in case anything went wrong.”
Into Norman Avenue and almost home. They were down to 20mph now and only half a mile from safety. Ham’s stomach rumbled. He could see the canteen windows across the rooftops of the estate.
“So? Do you miss it?”
Ham thought about it for a moment; the murder scenes he’d covered; the burglaries he’d examined; the injuries he’d photographed. There was something about getting kitted up in a paper suit and being the most important man at the crime scene; being an expert whose knowledge everybody wanted a part of.
“Sometimes; when I see a murder on the news and there’s SOCO going through their paces. You felt a bit special.”
“You’re special now.”
“Stop taking the piss.”
“No, really. Frontline. Uniform patrol are the first on the scene of everything. Any evidence gets lost in the first hour it’s down to us. That makes us special.”
“The magic hour.”
“Yep. Cases are won and lost on what we do.”
Ham’s stomach rumbled again.
“Yeh, well. What we do now is go in for meal. You’ve stalled long enough. There’s nothing else coming in so, “Home James.” And don’t spare the horses.”
And just like that Ham jinxed the rest of the night. His radio crackled into life.
“Alpha Three. Can I divert you to a serious RTA?”
“Aw fucking hell. Not an accident?”
“Car into lamp post. Valley Road. One person made off.”
“Oh great. And a TWOC as well.”
Andy didn’t need asking twice. He spun the car round and floored the accelerator. Ham’s head whipped on his shoulders and hit the headrest. What the radio didn’t say was what the car had hit before the lamp post. Ham thumbed his transmit button.
“Alpha Three. One-twenty.”
The sirens and blue lights cut through the night.
∗
What the car hit was less important than what it left behind, and what it left behind nobody in the black BMW would have guessed. Robin Wade flew down the bypass in his father’s car, allowing the adverse camber to take it towards the central reservation. The twenty-three year old accountant laughed as if he was on a roller coaster and corrected his steering. In the passenger seat his best friend, Gary Field, laughed even more.
The girls in the backseat were way past laughing; they were hysterical, sitting with their mini-skirts up above the Plimsoll line and legs slightly apart. This was party night, and neither Rebecca nor Suzie was going to waste a minute of it. Suzie leaned over Robin’s shoulder and passed him the bottle of Johnny Walker. Robin swerved as he took it and they all laughed some more. Rebecca shrieked, flashing a brief glimpse of skimpy white knickers in the driver’s mirror before slamming her knees together. Enough’s as good as a feast. The feast was due once they got to her flat and the competition was on as to who got the plumb choice of the wealthy businessman’s son. She intended it to be her.
Nobody paid any attention to the speed, especially the driver, but it was fast, well over the 70mph the dual carriageway allowed. The bypass swept down the hill and slid into Valley Road. Once it straightened out after the slight kink in the road it would run straight as a dye along the valley bottom to the posh end of town and Nirvana. That meant heaven for the boys, and if the girls had anything to do with it, the girls as well.
100mph.
Whisky sloshed over Robin’s jeans as he passed it to Gary. They were flying now and, boy, wasn’t this fun? If his father only knew what his son was doing while he was away on business. The kink in the road caught them all by surprise, not only a gentle dogleg but a slight rise as well. At 100mph there is no such thing as a gentle anything. The BMW took off and they really were flying. The dogleg threw the car towards the central reservation again and the hillock launched them to disaster.
Rebecca screamed first. Gary was busy swigging from the bottle and didn’t see the road sign, and Suzie was hidden behind Robin. Robin was struck dumb. The car hit the speed limit sign halfway up its eight-foot pole, bending it at right angles and turning the circular disc into a scimitar. It cut through the nearside support like a knife through butter, throwing Robin to one side. Suzie wasn’t so lucky. Her neck stuck up like a gofer out of its hole and met the scimitar full on.
Then in a flash they hit the lamp post and the car stopped dead, crumpling like an old cigarette packet as the engine was driven into the passenger compartment, breaking Gary’s legs. His seat shot back pinning Rebecca, and the entire car belly-flopped onto the central reservation in a shower of broken glass and steam.
∗
Ham’s first thought was, how could anyone make off from this? Steam drifted around the car like a pall waiting to settle over the dead, only judging by the coughing and moaning those left in the car weren’t dead. Yet.
Andy pulled the patrol car across the carriageway and left the blue lights on, being careful to avoid the BMW’s approach path in case of skid marks. AIB would need them to gauge speed and distance and SOCO would need them to photograph. Ham wasn’t calling for the Accident Investigation Branch or night SOCO when he climbed out of the car though.
“Alpha Three. Code Six. Casualties still on site. We’ll need two ambulances and the fire brigade with cutting gear.”
The front end of the BMW was concertinaed to half its normal length and the roof crushed. The driver’s side had been sliced open like a peeled can by the road sign but if they were going to get the passengers out the rest would need cutting off. Something sparked and popped above them and Ham looked up at the damaged lamp post. The twin bulbs blinked on and off, leaning like a half-chopped tree waiting to fall.
“And you’d better call Street Lighting to secure the lamp post.”
“Alpha Three. One Twenty.”
Andy was already heading for the nearside, ignoring the lamp post altogether. Ham went to the driver’s door, expecting the worst. The cut metal and shattered windscreen were head height. In the distance sirens rose above the silent night. Andy was tugging at the passenger door when Ham peered through the slashed support.
Nothing.
The driver’s seat was empty apart from a puddling of blood sprinkled with shards of glass. Looking through the car Ham saw Andy peering in the other window. In between them a smartly dressed young man moaned, semi-conscious, his knees jutting up at an obscene angle. His seat had been pushed back into a teenage girl whose face was a mask of blood and matted hair. She coughed and spluttered through her broken nose.
Ham stepped back and took a deep breath. During his years in SOCO he’d photographed some horrendous injuries, mostly after the victim was dead, and it had hardly ever bothered him. Apart from the post mortem on the twelve-month old baby. It was easy to disengage himself from the corpses in a way he’d never been able to do with the living. Show him a cut finger and he’d gip like a schoolgirl. Paramedics had his heartfelt admiration.
It wasn’t until he stepped back from the car that he noticed that the blood puddling in the bottom of the driver’s seat was still filling up. A steady trickle ran down the back of the seat, swilling wafer thin slivers of glass out of the stitched creases. Ham leaned in the window for a better look then jerked back in shock, banging his head on the roof.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
For a moment he was back with Duane P. Chambers, except there was no severed head here, just the meaty jut of neck leaning over the back of the driver’s seat. Blood leaked out of the cut joint and dribbled down the upholstery. The rest of the girl looked as if she might have been attractive but she was never going to smile again. Unlike Duane’s neck there was no ripped tissue on the girl’s throat, this was a clean cut, as if she’d been beheaded on the guillotine.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
A whisper this time. Andy stood up and looked over the roof at his partner. The drip white face and staring eyes told it all. The onset of shock needed holding back otherwise they weren’t going to get the job done. Andy knew it, and just what to do about it.
“We’re going to have to address this language issue Mick. Any more JFCs and you’ll be getting sued by Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
It was the first time Andy had used Ham’s real name and it was that more than the joke that pulled him round. He quickly scoured the interior but unlike the guillotine there was no basket to collect the head. When he stepped back a second time the colour had returned to his cheeks.
“Well there’s no chicken in a basket in there.”
“No sign of the driver either.”
Andy was looking down the central reservation where the dual carriageway split to avoid a copse of trees. Beyond that the road levelled out, passing through an industrial estate on its way out of town.
“Bastard could be halfway home by now.”
“Yeh, well. Let’s see where home is shall we?”
Ham walked to the back of the car and called up on the radio. Reading out the number he waited for the registered keeper details. And his address.
∗
It took over an hour for the fire brigade to cut the casualties out, pealing the BMW’s roof back like a sardine can. Three ambulances arrived but one of them was really nothing more than a hearse. It had to wait until the night SOCO finished photographing the headless corpse in situ. AIB were busy looking for skid marks with the traffic officers who had, thankfully, taken over the accident from Ham and Andy. That left Ham and Andy to look for the missing head.
“Jesus Andy. How far can a head go?”
“Well that’s a step up from Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Now who’s swearing? But what about the head?”
“Talking about head, I knew a girl once__”
Ham stood, arms akimbo, on the central reservation and gave Andy an old fashioned look. Making a joke of it was the only way to get through the night sometimes but there were jokes and there were jokes. When Michael Barrymore’s boyfriend had drowned in the swimming pool with an enlarged back passage, Herald Of Free Enterprise jokes had circulated like wild fire, suggesting that if he’d kept his back doors shut he wouldn’t have sunk. But a young girl losing her head in a car wreck seemed less funny when you had to go looking for the head.
“Alpha Three. Can I speak?”
The casualties were being loaded into the ambulances out of earshot so Ham fingered the button and acknowledged the call.
“No reply at the keepers address. Owner is away on business.”
Ham looked at Andy.
“So it is stolen then? No wonder he ran off.”
The radio dispelled that theory.
“Neighbours say the son has access to the car. He’s not home either.”
“Bingo. And I’ll bet he doesn’t go home tonight either. Fucking bastard.”
“Language.”
“I’ll give him fucking language if I get my hands on him.”
Ham glanced along Valley Road. Beyond the copse of trees and past the kink in the road it ran straight as a dye along the valley bottom towards the posh end of town. Somewhere up there a rich kid was hiding from his responsibilities and Ham wanted to make him pay. Throughout his service he’d been able to separate his feelings from the job, it was the only way to reach retirement without driving yourself into the ground, but tonight it felt personal. As he looked he noticed something in the copse.
“It can’t have gone that far can it?”
Andy was way ahead of him, trotting along the grass verge towards the trees. Ham followed then stopped short on the edge of the woods. There was no blood, not even a trickle, and that made it look all the more disturbing. Ham took one look at the girls face then turned away. Without waiting for Andy he shouted up the road for the photographer. Even Andy wasn’t joking when the SOCO staked a flag in the ground for line of sight and began the timed exposures for the long shots.
∗
There was no more small talk on the way to the canteen this time, and to be honest eating didn’t seem like the thing to do, but if there was one thing Ham had learned over the years it was how to keep his stomach in a separate compartment from his brain. Whatever crap he saw during a shift and whatever crap he dealt with, come mealtime it was all water off a duck’s back. Some might call it callous but if an army marched on its stomach then Mick Habergham had more stomach than most.
They were late in so the rest of the shift were back out on the streets, those who hadn’t locked up and were busy completing court files or handover packages. It was after three and the night had slid past midnight into the early hours. Hopefully it would quieten down a bit now.
Ham changed to MTV on the satellite in the hope that Shania Twain would still be strutting her stuff and laid out his sandwich box on the table. Andy watched in silence as his partner first unwrapped a sandwich and laid it on the snack box lid then emptied a stack of Pringles from their portable container and played a tattoo with both sections, tapping the crumbs out. Next he laid the Kit Kat Chunky across the top and he was ready to eat. Steam spiralled up from his mug of tea.
“You must have had a deprived childhood.”
“Never wanted nothing. I led a very sheltered life.”
Andy patted Ham’s expanding waistline.
“Too much, too soon.”
“You can never have too much love.”
He knew that was true but it didn’t seem fair that some people got more than their share. Angela hadn’t received any love at all as a child, leaving Ham to make up for it as her husband. The strain often forced cracks in their marriage that he could never discuss with Andy. Some things were too private. Andy on the other hand was an open book and discussed everything about any relationship with absolutely anyone. If you ever wanted to broadcast something then all you had to do was tell Andy in confidence.
“You can never have too much loving.”
“Yes you can. Any more and your love muscle’ll drop off. When are you going to settle for the love of a good woman?”
“Never happen. Look what happened to old Joe Callahan.”
“His wife got him his teef.”
“And his wife drove him to drink. Where’s his teef now?”
“Everything in moderation. Then he’d have been alright.”
“Just contradicted yourself haven’t you? What happened to, you can never have too much?”
Ham was caught. Whenever they started talking in metaphors he always ended tripping himself up. He tried to worm out of it.
“Just working up to the point of the day.”
“No, no, no. You fucked up. Admit it.”
“The point being, that some people clearly do have too much of everything. That’s why they have no respect for others, including their mates, otherwise that bastard could never have left them in the wreck.”
A sobering thought. Andy didn’t think it won the argument though.
“Mute point. Some people are bastards born and bred. Having money just makes them rich bastards.”
“Moot. Moot. Mute means being unable to speak.”
“Exactly. Old Joe can’t speak without his teeth. Losing them probably means more to him than Ritchie Rich losing daddy’s BMW.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Andy nodded over Ham’s shoulder.
“Shania Twain.”
“What?”
Before he could formulate a rebuttal Shania’s husky tones sent shivers down his spine. Leave it long enough and MTV would always come to the rescue. And while little and large lusted after her proclivities, rich man poor man came together under the railway arches.
∗
Joe Callahan smoked his last cigarette and bemoaned the state of the trains. Standing in the cold damp railway tunnel since being kicked out of the Casualty Department had done nothing for his rheumatism and even less for his cigarette balance. It was pitch black but his eyes had adjusted enough to see the scattering of cigarette butts around his feet like confetti at a wedding. He wished he had something to drink but all he’d been able to afford were the 20 Lambert and Butler he’d just smoked. And still the train hadn’t come.
He glanced at his watch but it didn’t have a luminous dial. Judging by the patch of night sky and criss-cross of railway track outside the tunnel it could be any time from midnight to 6am. His back told him it was nearer dawn but there was still no lightening of the overcast sky. And there was still no train.
“Fucking privatisation.”
Privatisation is what he said but without his top plate it’s not what came out of his mouth. He understood what he meant though, and there was nobody else listening to his last will and testament anyway. The lack of teeth still rankled. The lack of trains rankled even more. He was certain there used to be a night service out of The Interchange but he’d been waiting in the long tunnel north of town ever since he’d made his decision and the wait was testing his resolve. Resolve was something he didn’t have much of, otherwise he’d have quit drinking and saved his marriage years ago. Now the drink had cost him the last reminder of a wife who had loved him too much to watch him die in a bottle.
“Fucking teef.”
That came out right, but there was still nobody to hear him.
“Fucking, fucking, fucking, teef.”
The rattle of stones deep in the tunnel almost scared him to death. Footsteps echoed from the blackness and whoever had fallen over scrambled to his feet. Joe’s first thought was that the coppers had come for him again.
“Anywhere but the railway arches. You’ll only get moved on again.”
That’s what the fat policeman had said, and here he was, as good as his word. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? The first train must be due any time now. In a moment of panic he took the note from his pocket and wedged it into a crack in the wall. He didn’t want the coppers laughing over it while he was still alive. Damn the state of the trains. Where are they when you want one? Just like coppers really. Never around when you need one but always there when you don’t.
The crying coming down the tunnel wasn’t the police and the uneven footsteps weren’t a coppers heavy tread. Whoever it was fell over again, kicking aggregate between the sleepers as he tried to stand up. A pale face materialised in the darkness and Joe could even see the dark smudges beneath the eyes. The smartly dressed young man was anything but smart now, his knees ragged and bleeding and his hair matted with blood.
Blood?
That dragged up some of the deep-seated Good Samaritan instinct that Muriel had known about but Joe had forgotten. The last few years he had been so self-centred that anyone else’s problems could damn well stay with someone else. The youth stumbled again and just managed to stick a hand out. The tunnel wall was damp and mouldy and the hand slipped. Joe dashed forward, thankful for once that he was sober, and caught the boy before he fell. Guiding him to the workmen’s arch they sat together and Robin Wade began to talk.
∗
On Platform 3 the worker’s express growled as the doors slammed shut. The first train of the day might not be the busiest but it made up in noise what it lacked in numbers. Garrulous figures huddled in overcoats and woolly hats and made the connections that made the workplace such a hotbed of passion. They talked about last night’s football results. They talked about the latest Big Brother eviction. And, God forbid, some of them even talked about the latest Coronation Street gossip.
Whatever they talked about didn’t matter though. They talked and that’s what counted. The human contacts that kept the world turning. The three-carriage diesel cranked up its engine as the guard signalled that all the doors were shut and the old style rolling stock – Northern hadn’t been upgraded to sliding doors and air conditioning yet – inched forward. It was 5.25am.
∗
Joe sat in silence while Robin finished his tale of woe.
“I couldn’t stay. I just couldn’t.”
In the darkness of the tunnel the huddled figures of the aging drunk and the young accountant could be interchangeable, both just careworn souls at their lowest ebb. One feeling guilty at what he had just done and the other feeling guilty about a lifetime of what he had not.
“I feel sick.”
“And so you should. It’s disgusting. What you’ve done.”
Joe was getting used to having no teeth but it was still coming out a bit mushy.
“No, really it is. You deserve everything you get.”
Robin sat up as if slapped. He didn’t know what reaction he expected, certainly not a sympathetic ear, but to be so roundly condemned surprised him. He lived in a world where if someone asked how you were, you said okay no matter how bad you felt. And if someone did happen to explain how bad things were you simply listened, nodded, and moved on. What you didn’t do was agree then say you deserved everything you got.
“But it’s not that you deserve it. It’s how you get on with life after.”
That was funny coming from an inveterate non-achiever; a man who took life’s punches on the chin then dived into a bottle. Muriel had told him the same thing so many times he knew it off by heart; he’d just never taken it to heart, until now. Somehow, telling this sorry looking sad-knacker how to get on with life made him feel maybe he could kick-start his own life again.
“My wife used to tell me it’s not the obstacles but how you overcome them.”
Robin shrugged but the sigh was more angry than sad.
“This isn’t an obstacle, it’s death.”
“Not your death. It’s a big fuckin’ obstacle yes. But face up to it.”
Yes. Helping this lad was making him feel better about himself. Perhaps this is what he’d needed all along, someone worse off than himself who he could shepherd through the hard times. Someone to take his mind off his own problems. He stood up and held out a hand.
“Come on. Let’s go see the coppers.”
And that was something new as well. Joe Callahan going to see the police instead of the police coming to get Joe Callahan. The boy stood with him and they slowly trudged along the sleepers towards the mouth of the tunnel. Joe even began to wonder if Muriel might give him one last chance.
Both were so deep in thought that they didn’t feel the vibration running through the track or hear the distant roar of the diesel. Joe heard it first and when he turned round he stood like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He would never have thought a train could be on you so fast, rushing out of the darkness like an avenging angel. His last thought was for the teeth Muriel had paid for. He really didn’t want to die without his teeth.
∗
“Alpha Three. Sorry to do this to you. Sudden death at the railway tunnel. Baxandale Street. BTP unavailable. I’ll get you units to backup.”
“Shit me. It’s twenty to six.”
Ham didn’t say that down the radio but the operator must have sensed it.
“I’ll try and get Early Turn to relieve you as soon as they come on.”
Andy acknowledged and Ham turned the car round. He’d finally managed to wrestle the keys from his partner and had been patrolling at cruise speed for the final hour of the shift, hoping to wind down as night crept towards dawn. The domestics were over, the burglars back in bed, and the streets were beginning to come alive as early starters set off for work. He had even found old Joe Callahan’s top plate in the footwell, a minor miracle in an otherwise shitty night. The first bus of the day coincided with the first train and milkmen had been delivering for almost two hours. The world was waking up to a new day, completely unaware of what had been going on while it slept. Ham continued to grumble.
“British Transport Police. Are they ever available?”
“Are if you haven’t bought a ticket.”
“Christ. They only have to patrol the bloody station.”
“And the bloody lines in this case.”
Ham nodded. A sudden death on the railway line was always sudden and definitely dead. When a train hit you at 50mph you stayed hit; you just didn’t stay where you were hit. The last one Ham had dealt with had been in SOCO, and he’d been photographing body parts for half a mile. Little bits at a time. A more urgent thought crossed his mind and this time he did transmit it.
“Have you contacted the Northern Line to turn the power off? I don’t want to end up frying like that bloke on Pelham One Two Three.”
“Alpha Three. Already done. The entire section is dead.”
∗
That was an understatement. Judging by the amount of blood, this poor fella had more of the red stuff than the advertising suicide and the headless passenger put together. Or maybe it was just that being hit by a train you bled from a whole lot more places than a stumpy neck. The point of impact was easy to find because the track was painted in the stuff; a paint bomb of life blood that quickly tapered off into a splatter trail as body parts were dotted along the line.
Half a mile further on the interior lights of the worker’s express shone out in the distance and Ham could see the early turn units taking witness details. The radio operator had been true to her word but both Andy and Ham knew being relieved wasn’t going to get them home any sooner. There was still an extended scene to preserve and no one else to preserve it. Ham looked up from the meaty torso, nothing more than a sliced carcass that had been stripped of its clothes by the impact, and backtracked into the tunnel. If the last one he’d dealt with was anything to go by this unfortunate suicide would have been waiting in the tunnel for the first train, and that could have been a long wait.
“I’m just checking in there Andy.”
The first hint of blue entered the pre-dawn sky, glinting off the shiny tracks, but the light disappeared six feet into the tunnel. Ham turned the Maglite on and played it along the side walls. Twenty feet in he found what he was looking for. Why were suicides always heavy smokers? This one had smoked a full pack while plucking up courage to step in front of the train, disproving the argument that suicide was a coward’s way out. The long wait and final step must have taken every last ounce of courage. Ham shouted over his shoulder.
“He waited here.”
“No need to shout.”
Andy was right behind him and Ham’s heart missed a beat.
“Jesus. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
He shone the torch at the pile of cigarette ends against the wall, then back towards the mouth of the tunnel and the point of impact.
“Why’d he walk all that way to be hit though? Why not do it here?”
“Why do it just before we’re due to go off?”
Ham gave Andy a look.
“I’m sure it wasn’t personal.”
The torch picked out something else, a splash of white tucked into the wall above the cigarettes. Ham plucked the piece of folded paper and read it. His shoulders sagged.
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
He passed Andy the note.
“That’s why we should still take D and Is to the cells. They must have kicked him out of Casualty as soon as we’d gone.”
The note was surprisingly well written. It was brief and to the point.
To whom it may concern.
This is Joseph Edinburgh Callahan. I am sorry for the mess but I cannot go on any longer. I let my wife, Muriel, down. I let myself down. And now I have lost the last thing she gave me. Without my teeth there is nothing of her left. And now there is nothing of me left. Break the news to her gently.
Yours sincerely. J.E. Callahan.
“Old Joe, you silly bastard.”
Ham fingered the smooth top-plate in his coat pocket.
“You silly old bastard.”
At least that solved the mystery of whose the body was. Now all they had to do was deal with the scene while early turn took statements for Coroners Court.
“Let’s map out all the bits for SOCO.”
Dawn had taken the edge off the night, turning the railway lines into pale blue scars dappled with red. Working methodically from the torso outwards they managed to find a leg, two arms, and a shoeless foot without too much trouble. The third head of the night they found in a gully off to the left. Or the biggest part of it they could find. The piece of ripped meat was only recognisable as human because of the single eye, the nose, and the teeth together with one side of the jawbone. Most of the teeth were mangled and dislodged but there were probably enough to make a formal__
Ham stopped right there.
Identification by dental records or fingerprints was normal for decaying or disfigured corpses, providing you had the dental records or the fingerprints. Nobody wanted relatives to have to look at the bloated body of a river victim or the maggot eaten face of the long ago dead. Joe Callahan’s fingerprints were definitely on record but how do you check the teeth of a man who has no top teeth?
“This head’s got teeth.”
Andy looked puzzled. Ham pulled Joe’s top plate out and held them up.
“Joe’s.”
Then he picked up the head, teeth forwards.
“Not Joe’s.”
A moan sounded from the bushes and Joseph Edinburgh Callahan sat up, shook his head, then struggled to his feet. He was cradling a broken arm. Ham dropped the head.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Even Andy stepped back in amazement.
“Fucking hell.”
Joe looked at the fallen head.
“Last time I become a guardian angel.”
“Guardian angel?”
“Said he’d been in an accident. Was gonna see the coppers.”
“Well he can’t see us now.”
“Guess not. God, I could do with a drink.”
Ham looked at the broken arm.
“You’ll get a drink. Tea with two sugars. They can hardly kick you out of Casualty now, can they?”
Joe grinned, revealing his vacant top gums.
“Knocked me out an’ all. Have to keep me overnight now won’t they?”
Ham handed him the top plate.
“Might need these then. Food’s a bit tough on Ward 19.”
Joe looked at the teeth and for the first time in his life was speechless. Ham took the folded note out of his pocket.
“This as well. Maybe Muriel will like to see it.”
“Maybe.”
The two coppers helped the recovering alcoholic up the embankment and called for an ambulance. It would have been a touching scene but Andy had to spoil it.
“Edinburgh?”
“Where I was conceived.”
“You weren’t conceived. You were poured out of a bottle.”
“Fuck you copper.”
And with his top plate in that came out just right.
“Jesus, Andy. Not two in one week.”
Andy bristled.
“I didn’t hit the last one.”
“You bounced him off the bonnet. Course you hit him.”
“No he bounced off the bonnet. Shouldn’t have been resisting arrest.”
They were talking about the first nightshift of the week, Monday, when Bob McFalls had asked for an extra unit to transport a prisoner. Unfortunately for Ham, Andy got the keys first and was patrolling at breakneck speed as usual. Add blue lights and siren and he became positively reckless and when they’d flown around the corner Bob had to dive out of the way. The prisoner jumped out of his skin, and onto the bonnet, before rolling off into the strong arms of the law. With no witnesses to contradict them the grazed shin and bump to the head were recorded on the custody sheet as minor injuries caused prior to arrest.
The D and I in the gutter tonight could easily be written up the same way since he was clearly drunk and definitely incapable. Any bumps and bruises he might incur on arrest could be put down to lifestyle choices, i.e. getting falling-down-drunk three days out of four. It would have been difficult trying to explain how his head came off under the patrol car but fortunately nobody was going to lose their head until later. Ham climbed out of the car and checked the body.
“Aw. I think he’s lost his teeth again.”
Andy wound the window down.
“You sure? Remember last time?”
“Last time he’d had more to eat. Lumpy vomit. Anybody could have missed them. Must have been on a liquid diet tonight. No lumps. And no top plate. Are you going to give me a hand or what?”
“Or what. This is a van job. He’s not getting in the back of this car smelling like that.”
Winding his window up Andy shouted over the radio for the van while Ham tugged the divisional drunk into the recovery position. Joe Callahan had been an alcoholic for so long he should be able to collapse into the recovery position on his own but now he was the police’s responsibility Ham had to keep him alive until he was handed over. Avoiding the vomit leaking out of the slack-jawed mouth Ham was back in the car in double quick time.
“You know, it’s scandalous we can’t take him to the Bridewell.”
“The cells don’t take D and Is any more. Remember?”
“I remember when they did. Easiest lock-up going in my probation.”
“Yeh well. I left my history books at the nick.”
“Back in ’76 they had the detox centre. Ideal place for such as Joe. Book ‘em in. Clean ‘em up. And dry ‘em out. Bypassed the cells altogether.”
The van came round the corner a lot slower than Andy had, little Billy Hollis barely being able to reach the pedals. Andy did get out this time, indicating the prone figure on the road.
“Bypass the cells nowadays too. Straight to hospital.”
Ham pulled his gloves on ready for the old heave-ho.
“The doctor’s going to love us.”
Getting a grip under Callahan’s shoulders, Ham sat the drunk up. Callahan gulped once, then threw up over Andy’s shoes.
“Dirty fucking bastard. I’ll give the doctor something to complain about.”
But he didn’t. He simply helped manhandle the dead weight into the back of the van then followed Billy Hollis to casualty.
∗
The old drunk had come round a bit by the time they’d booked him through Triage. Being rolled about in the back of the van for half an hour had done wonders for Callahan’s constitution but not for his temper and it was nip and tuck whether he’d develop into a Drunk and Disorderly before they could offload him. Ham had talked him round with the promise of early release once the doctors had checked him over but old Joe wasn’t impressed.
“Where’m I sposed to go?”
“Anywhere but the railway arches. You’ll only get moved on again.”
“Where’s’ma teef?”
“God knows. Check tomorrow to see if they get handed in.”
That was a forlorn hope. The chances of anyone taking a set of manky teeth to the police station were slim to anorexic.
“Ma wife gave me ‘em teef.”
“Just chill out Joe. And eat soft dinners.”
Andy was talking to Billy outside when Ham joined them. The van was parked in the ambulance bay, freshly hosed out and ready for the next prisoner. Andy’s shoes had been hosed down as well. It was ten to midnight. Almost the bewitching hour. Wednesday night. It should be quieting down around now. Fat chance. The radio crackled into life.
“Alpha Three. Have you resumed from the hospital yet?”
For a second Ham considered saying no, but if he did then someone else would have to go. Since the only thing you had going for you on nights were your colleagues he couldn’t drop the ball. He cleared from the hospital and asked for details.
“Sudden death at Branksome Business Park. Possible suicide.”
∗
There was no, Possible, about it. The gable end of the three-story office block painted a gruesome picture of a suicide that, while certainly being successful had clearly not gone according to plan. Unless the plan was to drop from the fire escape almost to the ground before having your head ripped off by being pulled up short. Whatever failures Duane Chambers had encountered in his business life, not being able to tie a good knot wasn’t one of them. He hadn’t seen that coming two hours earlier though, while writing his suicide note.
∗
As head partner of Chambers, Martin and Gough Advertising Agency, writing a short note should have been far easier than all the advertising slogans he’d dreamed up over the years, but composing a letter advertising his own death was proving more difficult than he thought.
Sitting at his desk in the third floor office Duane slid the notepad aside and took another drink of his coffee. Decaffeinated, so it wouldn’t keep him up all night. It was paying attention to these little details that made him the insufferable prick that he was, driving his wife and family away, and persuading his business partners that they would be better off without him. It also made him the most efficient advertising executive this side of The Pennines, so losing his business to a pair of low rent hangers-on was even more annoying.
It was dark as night outside, probably because it had slid into night while he’d drunk three cups of coffee and produced exactly zero copy for his latest campaign. The Farewell-Cruel-World campaign. He was having trouble defining his audience, the first step to any good advert. Who were you trying to sell to? Who were you trying to influence? In this case his wife had left him and his partners didn’t care. So who gave a flying fuck what happened to Duane P. Chambers?
The profanity shocked him even in his thoughts. He wasn’t a man accustomed to swearing but then again he wasn’t a man accustomed to committing suicide either. Choosing a method of departing this life had proved easier than writing the farewell note. His fingers played across the towrope on his desk then practiced the knot he’d selected from his repertoire. It wouldn’t surprise anyone who knew him that Duane P. Chambers had been an excellent Boy Scout and his hands tied a perfect noose.
Being an insipient coffee drinker, instead of a whisky drinker like his partners, it should have been more difficult to make the final decision but unlike his partners he liked to keep a clear head when conducting business. To be drunk when ending your life was simply taking the coward’s way out and Duane didn’t consider taking his own life to be the coward’s way out. He considered looking death in the face and taking the plunge to be doing the honourable thing, even courageous. It was just a pity his sense of distance wasn’t as good as his knot skills.
“To Hell with the letter.”
With a dash of instinct that might have saved his marriage if he’d displayed it earlier he scribbled a single line__
Farewell cruel world
__then stood up. He downed the last of his coffee and slung the rope over his shoulder. The main office was in darkness and he considered turning the rest of the lights on but decided against it. There was something dramatic about the light spilling across the empty desks and drawing boards. It only just picked out the fire escape door at the far end and that was just the way he wanted it. When they found him let the light provide its own trail and let his office be the only place of illumination. That’s how it had always been with his partners so let that be how it ended.
He nudged the bum-bar and cold night air made him feel faint. The door swung outwards onto the metal fire escape. After taking a moment to gather himself he tied one end of the towrope to the door handle and stepped outside. His Jaguar was parked in its bay across the car park. The rest was empty. The noose fit snugly around his neck. Then, ignoring the basics that even a fairground bungee-jumper would observe, he paid no attention to the length of the rope and jumped over the railing.
∗
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Being the first head of the night, Ham didn’t realise it would be the easiest one to find. All he had to do was follow the speckled trail of blood across the car park to the Jaguar S Type that was parked neatly in its bay. Duane P. Chambers’ head was upside down under the front nearside tyre, like a football trapped before the shot at goal. The comical look of surprise on its face took the edge off Ham’s shock at finding the wall spray-painted red in an arc where the body had swung gushing blood before it dropped.
The duty inspector pulled up behind the patrol car, blue lights flashing for all to see. Soon the ambulance would home in on those lights and the Coroner’s Officer and SOCO would have a good look before the body was moved. The head too, but just for now Ham leaned a Police Accident sign against the wheel arch to keep it hidden. The body was less of a problem, crumpled as it was beneath the dangling noose. Andy, as usual, lowered the tone.
“Not a bungee-jumper then.”
“I don’t know. Missed the ground until his head came off.”
SOCO took an hour photographing the outside scene before Andy went up and found the note. Breaking protocol he brought it to the top of the fire escape, put one hand across his heart, and shouted down to the gaggle of police officers.
“Farewell cruel world.”
The inspector displayed a brief moment of humour.
“Don’t do it man.”
“All the way down there? No way boss.”
“No. Jump if you like. But don’t move the letter you arse. This could be a murder scene until we know better.”
Ham was smiling up at his crestfallen partner when someone tapped him on the shoulder.
“Just hold this a minute will you?”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
This time the expletive spurted out with more venom. The Scenes of Crime photographer dumped the head in Ham’s arms then set the tripod up at the back of the ambulance. The stretchered body was covered in a white sheet leaking blood. A soft electronic whine sung in Ham’s ears and he thought he was having a reaction.
“Flash.”
The photographer raised the flash unit to show it was charging up.
“Just a couple more shots before we go. Bring the head over here.”
Ham took the head to the back doors of the ambulance. The photographer manoeuvred it into position on the severed neck until Duane P. Chambers looked almost as good as new.
“Hold it there.”
Flash. The blaze of white light blinded Ham and the next couple of shots went by in a blur. Head on shoulders. Head off shoulders. Meaty cross-section of shoulder part of neck. Meaty cross-section of head part of neck.
“Just in case they don’t believe it’s the right head.”
The photographer wasn’t even smiling when he said it. If Ham had known he still had another two heads to deal with he wouldn’t have thought it funny either.
∗
“Do you miss being in SOCO?”
It was half-past-one and they were heading back to the station to complete the sudden death report and get a head start on their meal break. Andy was stalling. Once he was behind the wheel of a patrol car on nightshift he flew around the division like a whirling Dervish but when it came time to return to the nick he suddenly took his foot off the gas. It was as if he was waiting for any excuse to stay out, holding back until the last minute in case another immediate came in. Part of his stalling technique was making small talk.
“You know? After such a long time?”
The best part of Ham’s service, fifteen years, had been as a Scenes of Crime Officer and being dumped out by the civilianisation programme had been a shock to the system. Having to relearn everything he ever knew about frontline policing would have been doubly difficult if he hadn’t crewed up with Andy Scott, who was born for the frontline.
“Photographing severed heads you mean?”
“Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“Tell you the truth, after this last couple of years on the beat, I’d almost forgotten what it was like. Caught me by surprise a bit.”
The speedometer was sinking below 30mph, Ham’s normal patrol speed. Andy was clearly praying for something to happen before they reached the station.
“What was all that, holding-the-head-on-the-shoulders, about?”
“Physical fit. Like when you find the broken tip of a screwdriver at a burglary then stop someone with a broken screwdriver later. Match the two together and you’ve got a physical fit. Case proved.”
“Yeh, but. A head. Wasn’t any secret where it came from.”
“I know. But with forensics you’ve got to go to the far end of a fart. Just in case. They’ll do the proper fit at the mortuary, with measuring tape and close-ups. This was just coverage in case anything went wrong.”
Into Norman Avenue and almost home. They were down to 20mph now and only half a mile from safety. Ham’s stomach rumbled. He could see the canteen windows across the rooftops of the estate.
“So? Do you miss it?”
Ham thought about it for a moment; the murder scenes he’d covered; the burglaries he’d examined; the injuries he’d photographed. There was something about getting kitted up in a paper suit and being the most important man at the crime scene; being an expert whose knowledge everybody wanted a part of.
“Sometimes; when I see a murder on the news and there’s SOCO going through their paces. You felt a bit special.”
“You’re special now.”
“Stop taking the piss.”
“No, really. Frontline. Uniform patrol are the first on the scene of everything. Any evidence gets lost in the first hour it’s down to us. That makes us special.”
“The magic hour.”
“Yep. Cases are won and lost on what we do.”
Ham’s stomach rumbled again.
“Yeh, well. What we do now is go in for meal. You’ve stalled long enough. There’s nothing else coming in so, “Home James.” And don’t spare the horses.”
And just like that Ham jinxed the rest of the night. His radio crackled into life.
“Alpha Three. Can I divert you to a serious RTA?”
“Aw fucking hell. Not an accident?”
“Car into lamp post. Valley Road. One person made off.”
“Oh great. And a TWOC as well.”
Andy didn’t need asking twice. He spun the car round and floored the accelerator. Ham’s head whipped on his shoulders and hit the headrest. What the radio didn’t say was what the car had hit before the lamp post. Ham thumbed his transmit button.
“Alpha Three. One-twenty.”
The sirens and blue lights cut through the night.
∗
What the car hit was less important than what it left behind, and what it left behind nobody in the black BMW would have guessed. Robin Wade flew down the bypass in his father’s car, allowing the adverse camber to take it towards the central reservation. The twenty-three year old accountant laughed as if he was on a roller coaster and corrected his steering. In the passenger seat his best friend, Gary Field, laughed even more.
The girls in the backseat were way past laughing; they were hysterical, sitting with their mini-skirts up above the Plimsoll line and legs slightly apart. This was party night, and neither Rebecca nor Suzie was going to waste a minute of it. Suzie leaned over Robin’s shoulder and passed him the bottle of Johnny Walker. Robin swerved as he took it and they all laughed some more. Rebecca shrieked, flashing a brief glimpse of skimpy white knickers in the driver’s mirror before slamming her knees together. Enough’s as good as a feast. The feast was due once they got to her flat and the competition was on as to who got the plumb choice of the wealthy businessman’s son. She intended it to be her.
Nobody paid any attention to the speed, especially the driver, but it was fast, well over the 70mph the dual carriageway allowed. The bypass swept down the hill and slid into Valley Road. Once it straightened out after the slight kink in the road it would run straight as a dye along the valley bottom to the posh end of town and Nirvana. That meant heaven for the boys, and if the girls had anything to do with it, the girls as well.
100mph.
Whisky sloshed over Robin’s jeans as he passed it to Gary. They were flying now and, boy, wasn’t this fun? If his father only knew what his son was doing while he was away on business. The kink in the road caught them all by surprise, not only a gentle dogleg but a slight rise as well. At 100mph there is no such thing as a gentle anything. The BMW took off and they really were flying. The dogleg threw the car towards the central reservation again and the hillock launched them to disaster.
Rebecca screamed first. Gary was busy swigging from the bottle and didn’t see the road sign, and Suzie was hidden behind Robin. Robin was struck dumb. The car hit the speed limit sign halfway up its eight-foot pole, bending it at right angles and turning the circular disc into a scimitar. It cut through the nearside support like a knife through butter, throwing Robin to one side. Suzie wasn’t so lucky. Her neck stuck up like a gofer out of its hole and met the scimitar full on.
Then in a flash they hit the lamp post and the car stopped dead, crumpling like an old cigarette packet as the engine was driven into the passenger compartment, breaking Gary’s legs. His seat shot back pinning Rebecca, and the entire car belly-flopped onto the central reservation in a shower of broken glass and steam.
∗
Ham’s first thought was, how could anyone make off from this? Steam drifted around the car like a pall waiting to settle over the dead, only judging by the coughing and moaning those left in the car weren’t dead. Yet.
Andy pulled the patrol car across the carriageway and left the blue lights on, being careful to avoid the BMW’s approach path in case of skid marks. AIB would need them to gauge speed and distance and SOCO would need them to photograph. Ham wasn’t calling for the Accident Investigation Branch or night SOCO when he climbed out of the car though.
“Alpha Three. Code Six. Casualties still on site. We’ll need two ambulances and the fire brigade with cutting gear.”
The front end of the BMW was concertinaed to half its normal length and the roof crushed. The driver’s side had been sliced open like a peeled can by the road sign but if they were going to get the passengers out the rest would need cutting off. Something sparked and popped above them and Ham looked up at the damaged lamp post. The twin bulbs blinked on and off, leaning like a half-chopped tree waiting to fall.
“And you’d better call Street Lighting to secure the lamp post.”
“Alpha Three. One Twenty.”
Andy was already heading for the nearside, ignoring the lamp post altogether. Ham went to the driver’s door, expecting the worst. The cut metal and shattered windscreen were head height. In the distance sirens rose above the silent night. Andy was tugging at the passenger door when Ham peered through the slashed support.
Nothing.
The driver’s seat was empty apart from a puddling of blood sprinkled with shards of glass. Looking through the car Ham saw Andy peering in the other window. In between them a smartly dressed young man moaned, semi-conscious, his knees jutting up at an obscene angle. His seat had been pushed back into a teenage girl whose face was a mask of blood and matted hair. She coughed and spluttered through her broken nose.
Ham stepped back and took a deep breath. During his years in SOCO he’d photographed some horrendous injuries, mostly after the victim was dead, and it had hardly ever bothered him. Apart from the post mortem on the twelve-month old baby. It was easy to disengage himself from the corpses in a way he’d never been able to do with the living. Show him a cut finger and he’d gip like a schoolgirl. Paramedics had his heartfelt admiration.
It wasn’t until he stepped back from the car that he noticed that the blood puddling in the bottom of the driver’s seat was still filling up. A steady trickle ran down the back of the seat, swilling wafer thin slivers of glass out of the stitched creases. Ham leaned in the window for a better look then jerked back in shock, banging his head on the roof.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
For a moment he was back with Duane P. Chambers, except there was no severed head here, just the meaty jut of neck leaning over the back of the driver’s seat. Blood leaked out of the cut joint and dribbled down the upholstery. The rest of the girl looked as if she might have been attractive but she was never going to smile again. Unlike Duane’s neck there was no ripped tissue on the girl’s throat, this was a clean cut, as if she’d been beheaded on the guillotine.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
A whisper this time. Andy stood up and looked over the roof at his partner. The drip white face and staring eyes told it all. The onset of shock needed holding back otherwise they weren’t going to get the job done. Andy knew it, and just what to do about it.
“We’re going to have to address this language issue Mick. Any more JFCs and you’ll be getting sued by Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
It was the first time Andy had used Ham’s real name and it was that more than the joke that pulled him round. He quickly scoured the interior but unlike the guillotine there was no basket to collect the head. When he stepped back a second time the colour had returned to his cheeks.
“Well there’s no chicken in a basket in there.”
“No sign of the driver either.”
Andy was looking down the central reservation where the dual carriageway split to avoid a copse of trees. Beyond that the road levelled out, passing through an industrial estate on its way out of town.
“Bastard could be halfway home by now.”
“Yeh, well. Let’s see where home is shall we?”
Ham walked to the back of the car and called up on the radio. Reading out the number he waited for the registered keeper details. And his address.
∗
It took over an hour for the fire brigade to cut the casualties out, pealing the BMW’s roof back like a sardine can. Three ambulances arrived but one of them was really nothing more than a hearse. It had to wait until the night SOCO finished photographing the headless corpse in situ. AIB were busy looking for skid marks with the traffic officers who had, thankfully, taken over the accident from Ham and Andy. That left Ham and Andy to look for the missing head.
“Jesus Andy. How far can a head go?”
“Well that’s a step up from Jesus fucking Christ.”
“Now who’s swearing? But what about the head?”
“Talking about head, I knew a girl once__”
Ham stood, arms akimbo, on the central reservation and gave Andy an old fashioned look. Making a joke of it was the only way to get through the night sometimes but there were jokes and there were jokes. When Michael Barrymore’s boyfriend had drowned in the swimming pool with an enlarged back passage, Herald Of Free Enterprise jokes had circulated like wild fire, suggesting that if he’d kept his back doors shut he wouldn’t have sunk. But a young girl losing her head in a car wreck seemed less funny when you had to go looking for the head.
“Alpha Three. Can I speak?”
The casualties were being loaded into the ambulances out of earshot so Ham fingered the button and acknowledged the call.
“No reply at the keepers address. Owner is away on business.”
Ham looked at Andy.
“So it is stolen then? No wonder he ran off.”
The radio dispelled that theory.
“Neighbours say the son has access to the car. He’s not home either.”
“Bingo. And I’ll bet he doesn’t go home tonight either. Fucking bastard.”
“Language.”
“I’ll give him fucking language if I get my hands on him.”
Ham glanced along Valley Road. Beyond the copse of trees and past the kink in the road it ran straight as a dye along the valley bottom towards the posh end of town. Somewhere up there a rich kid was hiding from his responsibilities and Ham wanted to make him pay. Throughout his service he’d been able to separate his feelings from the job, it was the only way to reach retirement without driving yourself into the ground, but tonight it felt personal. As he looked he noticed something in the copse.
“It can’t have gone that far can it?”
Andy was way ahead of him, trotting along the grass verge towards the trees. Ham followed then stopped short on the edge of the woods. There was no blood, not even a trickle, and that made it look all the more disturbing. Ham took one look at the girls face then turned away. Without waiting for Andy he shouted up the road for the photographer. Even Andy wasn’t joking when the SOCO staked a flag in the ground for line of sight and began the timed exposures for the long shots.
∗
There was no more small talk on the way to the canteen this time, and to be honest eating didn’t seem like the thing to do, but if there was one thing Ham had learned over the years it was how to keep his stomach in a separate compartment from his brain. Whatever crap he saw during a shift and whatever crap he dealt with, come mealtime it was all water off a duck’s back. Some might call it callous but if an army marched on its stomach then Mick Habergham had more stomach than most.
They were late in so the rest of the shift were back out on the streets, those who hadn’t locked up and were busy completing court files or handover packages. It was after three and the night had slid past midnight into the early hours. Hopefully it would quieten down a bit now.
Ham changed to MTV on the satellite in the hope that Shania Twain would still be strutting her stuff and laid out his sandwich box on the table. Andy watched in silence as his partner first unwrapped a sandwich and laid it on the snack box lid then emptied a stack of Pringles from their portable container and played a tattoo with both sections, tapping the crumbs out. Next he laid the Kit Kat Chunky across the top and he was ready to eat. Steam spiralled up from his mug of tea.
“You must have had a deprived childhood.”
“Never wanted nothing. I led a very sheltered life.”
Andy patted Ham’s expanding waistline.
“Too much, too soon.”
“You can never have too much love.”
He knew that was true but it didn’t seem fair that some people got more than their share. Angela hadn’t received any love at all as a child, leaving Ham to make up for it as her husband. The strain often forced cracks in their marriage that he could never discuss with Andy. Some things were too private. Andy on the other hand was an open book and discussed everything about any relationship with absolutely anyone. If you ever wanted to broadcast something then all you had to do was tell Andy in confidence.
“You can never have too much loving.”
“Yes you can. Any more and your love muscle’ll drop off. When are you going to settle for the love of a good woman?”
“Never happen. Look what happened to old Joe Callahan.”
“His wife got him his teef.”
“And his wife drove him to drink. Where’s his teef now?”
“Everything in moderation. Then he’d have been alright.”
“Just contradicted yourself haven’t you? What happened to, you can never have too much?”
Ham was caught. Whenever they started talking in metaphors he always ended tripping himself up. He tried to worm out of it.
“Just working up to the point of the day.”
“No, no, no. You fucked up. Admit it.”
“The point being, that some people clearly do have too much of everything. That’s why they have no respect for others, including their mates, otherwise that bastard could never have left them in the wreck.”
A sobering thought. Andy didn’t think it won the argument though.
“Mute point. Some people are bastards born and bred. Having money just makes them rich bastards.”
“Moot. Moot. Mute means being unable to speak.”
“Exactly. Old Joe can’t speak without his teeth. Losing them probably means more to him than Ritchie Rich losing daddy’s BMW.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Andy nodded over Ham’s shoulder.
“Shania Twain.”
“What?”
Before he could formulate a rebuttal Shania’s husky tones sent shivers down his spine. Leave it long enough and MTV would always come to the rescue. And while little and large lusted after her proclivities, rich man poor man came together under the railway arches.
∗
Joe Callahan smoked his last cigarette and bemoaned the state of the trains. Standing in the cold damp railway tunnel since being kicked out of the Casualty Department had done nothing for his rheumatism and even less for his cigarette balance. It was pitch black but his eyes had adjusted enough to see the scattering of cigarette butts around his feet like confetti at a wedding. He wished he had something to drink but all he’d been able to afford were the 20 Lambert and Butler he’d just smoked. And still the train hadn’t come.
He glanced at his watch but it didn’t have a luminous dial. Judging by the patch of night sky and criss-cross of railway track outside the tunnel it could be any time from midnight to 6am. His back told him it was nearer dawn but there was still no lightening of the overcast sky. And there was still no train.
“Fucking privatisation.”
Privatisation is what he said but without his top plate it’s not what came out of his mouth. He understood what he meant though, and there was nobody else listening to his last will and testament anyway. The lack of teeth still rankled. The lack of trains rankled even more. He was certain there used to be a night service out of The Interchange but he’d been waiting in the long tunnel north of town ever since he’d made his decision and the wait was testing his resolve. Resolve was something he didn’t have much of, otherwise he’d have quit drinking and saved his marriage years ago. Now the drink had cost him the last reminder of a wife who had loved him too much to watch him die in a bottle.
“Fucking teef.”
That came out right, but there was still nobody to hear him.
“Fucking, fucking, fucking, teef.”
The rattle of stones deep in the tunnel almost scared him to death. Footsteps echoed from the blackness and whoever had fallen over scrambled to his feet. Joe’s first thought was that the coppers had come for him again.
“Anywhere but the railway arches. You’ll only get moved on again.”
That’s what the fat policeman had said, and here he was, as good as his word. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? The first train must be due any time now. In a moment of panic he took the note from his pocket and wedged it into a crack in the wall. He didn’t want the coppers laughing over it while he was still alive. Damn the state of the trains. Where are they when you want one? Just like coppers really. Never around when you need one but always there when you don’t.
The crying coming down the tunnel wasn’t the police and the uneven footsteps weren’t a coppers heavy tread. Whoever it was fell over again, kicking aggregate between the sleepers as he tried to stand up. A pale face materialised in the darkness and Joe could even see the dark smudges beneath the eyes. The smartly dressed young man was anything but smart now, his knees ragged and bleeding and his hair matted with blood.
Blood?
That dragged up some of the deep-seated Good Samaritan instinct that Muriel had known about but Joe had forgotten. The last few years he had been so self-centred that anyone else’s problems could damn well stay with someone else. The youth stumbled again and just managed to stick a hand out. The tunnel wall was damp and mouldy and the hand slipped. Joe dashed forward, thankful for once that he was sober, and caught the boy before he fell. Guiding him to the workmen’s arch they sat together and Robin Wade began to talk.
∗
On Platform 3 the worker’s express growled as the doors slammed shut. The first train of the day might not be the busiest but it made up in noise what it lacked in numbers. Garrulous figures huddled in overcoats and woolly hats and made the connections that made the workplace such a hotbed of passion. They talked about last night’s football results. They talked about the latest Big Brother eviction. And, God forbid, some of them even talked about the latest Coronation Street gossip.
Whatever they talked about didn’t matter though. They talked and that’s what counted. The human contacts that kept the world turning. The three-carriage diesel cranked up its engine as the guard signalled that all the doors were shut and the old style rolling stock – Northern hadn’t been upgraded to sliding doors and air conditioning yet – inched forward. It was 5.25am.
∗
Joe sat in silence while Robin finished his tale of woe.
“I couldn’t stay. I just couldn’t.”
In the darkness of the tunnel the huddled figures of the aging drunk and the young accountant could be interchangeable, both just careworn souls at their lowest ebb. One feeling guilty at what he had just done and the other feeling guilty about a lifetime of what he had not.
“I feel sick.”
“And so you should. It’s disgusting. What you’ve done.”
Joe was getting used to having no teeth but it was still coming out a bit mushy.
“No, really it is. You deserve everything you get.”
Robin sat up as if slapped. He didn’t know what reaction he expected, certainly not a sympathetic ear, but to be so roundly condemned surprised him. He lived in a world where if someone asked how you were, you said okay no matter how bad you felt. And if someone did happen to explain how bad things were you simply listened, nodded, and moved on. What you didn’t do was agree then say you deserved everything you got.
“But it’s not that you deserve it. It’s how you get on with life after.”
That was funny coming from an inveterate non-achiever; a man who took life’s punches on the chin then dived into a bottle. Muriel had told him the same thing so many times he knew it off by heart; he’d just never taken it to heart, until now. Somehow, telling this sorry looking sad-knacker how to get on with life made him feel maybe he could kick-start his own life again.
“My wife used to tell me it’s not the obstacles but how you overcome them.”
Robin shrugged but the sigh was more angry than sad.
“This isn’t an obstacle, it’s death.”
“Not your death. It’s a big fuckin’ obstacle yes. But face up to it.”
Yes. Helping this lad was making him feel better about himself. Perhaps this is what he’d needed all along, someone worse off than himself who he could shepherd through the hard times. Someone to take his mind off his own problems. He stood up and held out a hand.
“Come on. Let’s go see the coppers.”
And that was something new as well. Joe Callahan going to see the police instead of the police coming to get Joe Callahan. The boy stood with him and they slowly trudged along the sleepers towards the mouth of the tunnel. Joe even began to wonder if Muriel might give him one last chance.
Both were so deep in thought that they didn’t feel the vibration running through the track or hear the distant roar of the diesel. Joe heard it first and when he turned round he stood like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He would never have thought a train could be on you so fast, rushing out of the darkness like an avenging angel. His last thought was for the teeth Muriel had paid for. He really didn’t want to die without his teeth.
∗
“Alpha Three. Sorry to do this to you. Sudden death at the railway tunnel. Baxandale Street. BTP unavailable. I’ll get you units to backup.”
“Shit me. It’s twenty to six.”
Ham didn’t say that down the radio but the operator must have sensed it.
“I’ll try and get Early Turn to relieve you as soon as they come on.”
Andy acknowledged and Ham turned the car round. He’d finally managed to wrestle the keys from his partner and had been patrolling at cruise speed for the final hour of the shift, hoping to wind down as night crept towards dawn. The domestics were over, the burglars back in bed, and the streets were beginning to come alive as early starters set off for work. He had even found old Joe Callahan’s top plate in the footwell, a minor miracle in an otherwise shitty night. The first bus of the day coincided with the first train and milkmen had been delivering for almost two hours. The world was waking up to a new day, completely unaware of what had been going on while it slept. Ham continued to grumble.
“British Transport Police. Are they ever available?”
“Are if you haven’t bought a ticket.”
“Christ. They only have to patrol the bloody station.”
“And the bloody lines in this case.”
Ham nodded. A sudden death on the railway line was always sudden and definitely dead. When a train hit you at 50mph you stayed hit; you just didn’t stay where you were hit. The last one Ham had dealt with had been in SOCO, and he’d been photographing body parts for half a mile. Little bits at a time. A more urgent thought crossed his mind and this time he did transmit it.
“Have you contacted the Northern Line to turn the power off? I don’t want to end up frying like that bloke on Pelham One Two Three.”
“Alpha Three. Already done. The entire section is dead.”
∗
That was an understatement. Judging by the amount of blood, this poor fella had more of the red stuff than the advertising suicide and the headless passenger put together. Or maybe it was just that being hit by a train you bled from a whole lot more places than a stumpy neck. The point of impact was easy to find because the track was painted in the stuff; a paint bomb of life blood that quickly tapered off into a splatter trail as body parts were dotted along the line.
Half a mile further on the interior lights of the worker’s express shone out in the distance and Ham could see the early turn units taking witness details. The radio operator had been true to her word but both Andy and Ham knew being relieved wasn’t going to get them home any sooner. There was still an extended scene to preserve and no one else to preserve it. Ham looked up from the meaty torso, nothing more than a sliced carcass that had been stripped of its clothes by the impact, and backtracked into the tunnel. If the last one he’d dealt with was anything to go by this unfortunate suicide would have been waiting in the tunnel for the first train, and that could have been a long wait.
“I’m just checking in there Andy.”
The first hint of blue entered the pre-dawn sky, glinting off the shiny tracks, but the light disappeared six feet into the tunnel. Ham turned the Maglite on and played it along the side walls. Twenty feet in he found what he was looking for. Why were suicides always heavy smokers? This one had smoked a full pack while plucking up courage to step in front of the train, disproving the argument that suicide was a coward’s way out. The long wait and final step must have taken every last ounce of courage. Ham shouted over his shoulder.
“He waited here.”
“No need to shout.”
Andy was right behind him and Ham’s heart missed a beat.
“Jesus. Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
He shone the torch at the pile of cigarette ends against the wall, then back towards the mouth of the tunnel and the point of impact.
“Why’d he walk all that way to be hit though? Why not do it here?”
“Why do it just before we’re due to go off?”
Ham gave Andy a look.
“I’m sure it wasn’t personal.”
The torch picked out something else, a splash of white tucked into the wall above the cigarettes. Ham plucked the piece of folded paper and read it. His shoulders sagged.
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
He passed Andy the note.
“That’s why we should still take D and Is to the cells. They must have kicked him out of Casualty as soon as we’d gone.”
The note was surprisingly well written. It was brief and to the point.
To whom it may concern.
This is Joseph Edinburgh Callahan. I am sorry for the mess but I cannot go on any longer. I let my wife, Muriel, down. I let myself down. And now I have lost the last thing she gave me. Without my teeth there is nothing of her left. And now there is nothing of me left. Break the news to her gently.
Yours sincerely. J.E. Callahan.
“Old Joe, you silly bastard.”
Ham fingered the smooth top-plate in his coat pocket.
“You silly old bastard.”
At least that solved the mystery of whose the body was. Now all they had to do was deal with the scene while early turn took statements for Coroners Court.
“Let’s map out all the bits for SOCO.”
Dawn had taken the edge off the night, turning the railway lines into pale blue scars dappled with red. Working methodically from the torso outwards they managed to find a leg, two arms, and a shoeless foot without too much trouble. The third head of the night they found in a gully off to the left. Or the biggest part of it they could find. The piece of ripped meat was only recognisable as human because of the single eye, the nose, and the teeth together with one side of the jawbone. Most of the teeth were mangled and dislodged but there were probably enough to make a formal__
Ham stopped right there.
Identification by dental records or fingerprints was normal for decaying or disfigured corpses, providing you had the dental records or the fingerprints. Nobody wanted relatives to have to look at the bloated body of a river victim or the maggot eaten face of the long ago dead. Joe Callahan’s fingerprints were definitely on record but how do you check the teeth of a man who has no top teeth?
“This head’s got teeth.”
Andy looked puzzled. Ham pulled Joe’s top plate out and held them up.
“Joe’s.”
Then he picked up the head, teeth forwards.
“Not Joe’s.”
A moan sounded from the bushes and Joseph Edinburgh Callahan sat up, shook his head, then struggled to his feet. He was cradling a broken arm. Ham dropped the head.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Even Andy stepped back in amazement.
“Fucking hell.”
Joe looked at the fallen head.
“Last time I become a guardian angel.”
“Guardian angel?”
“Said he’d been in an accident. Was gonna see the coppers.”
“Well he can’t see us now.”
“Guess not. God, I could do with a drink.”
Ham looked at the broken arm.
“You’ll get a drink. Tea with two sugars. They can hardly kick you out of Casualty now, can they?”
Joe grinned, revealing his vacant top gums.
“Knocked me out an’ all. Have to keep me overnight now won’t they?”
Ham handed him the top plate.
“Might need these then. Food’s a bit tough on Ward 19.”
Joe looked at the teeth and for the first time in his life was speechless. Ham took the folded note out of his pocket.
“This as well. Maybe Muriel will like to see it.”
“Maybe.”
The two coppers helped the recovering alcoholic up the embankment and called for an ambulance. It would have been a touching scene but Andy had to spoil it.
“Edinburgh?”
“Where I was conceived.”
“You weren’t conceived. You were poured out of a bottle.”
“Fuck you copper.”
And with his top plate in that came out just right.
Marys Ribbon and Aunt Agnes Comes for A While by Pamela Tyree Griffin- written version
Marys Ribbon
By
Pamela Tyree Griffin
My sister Mary was twelve and I was seven on the first day of summer
vacation. We had been out of school for just a day. Mary was finally
going to be allowed to walk the two blocks down to Burkes store all by
herself - something the rest of the kids in our family accomplished by
the time we were six.
With her nickel, Mary was going to buy us lollipops. Mamma wrote a note
for Mary to give to Mr. Burke telling him what she was to buy with her
nickel. If not, Mary might fill a bag full of lollipops without knowing
she shouldn't do so. Today, even the smell of a lollipop makes me sick.
That June day was a shining thing full of sunny promise. I remember
looking at Mamma as she washed the lunch dishes, the strings of her apron
hanging loose around her waist. Daddy had just planted his usual kiss on
the top of her head before leaving for work. He said he could not begin
his shift unless he kissed his sweetheart first.
I heard the snap of the screen door as it slammed shut and the creak of
the third step off the back porch that Daddy never got around to fixing.
Daddys whistling as he walked to the car is as clear to me as if it
happened today. The clink of the dishes, the scrape of food into the
garbage pail, the billowy softness of mammas yellow curtains are as
vivid to me now as then
Mary was so excited and not just about going to the store either. Summer
meant the end, at least for a while, to her waving goodbye from the porch
as I walked to school with our brothers. It meant that we could be
together every day.
Mamma watched her skip down the sidewalk, her long pigtail captured in a
red ribbon to match her shorts. Mamma said she watched her go into the
store. I asked for a glass of orange juice and Mamma got it for me.
My two brothers came in making a commotion pretending they were flying
planes in the war or something noisy like that. The baby started crying
and Mamma went to pick her up. Then when she went to the front porch and
called for Mary,I was thinking Mary was playing in the backyard. I went
out back to look but she wasnt there. Mamma said, Sarah, go on down to
the store and fetch your sister. That was fine by me since I was getting
impatient.
She wasn't at the store either and only her red ribbon on the sidewalk
marked her place. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. She wasn't
anywhere. Mary made me mad now even though we knew we weren't supposed to
get mad at her-she didn't know what she was doing.
Until you know for sure what has happened and even when you do,
everything is regret. Blame and loss hang over everyone like a thick fog.
Should someone have gone with her? Should we have noticed sooner that she
was gone? If we had called her name just once, would she have heard us
and come running? Did we take too long to call the police?
Life went on the way it does. I had one dream of Mary where she told me
she was okay and she told me not to worry. That made me cry because it
was the only time Mary had ever spoken. For the rest of her life, Mamma
would weep for no reason; at least no reason I understood until I had
children of my own.
I keep Mary's red ribbon, now frayed and faded, in my jewelry box. There
are rings and trinkets in there which shine and twinkle but are not
nearly as precious to me as that one piece of fabric.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aunt Agnes Comes For A While
By
Pamela Tyree Griffin
Aunt Agnes came to stay with us when Mamma went into the hospital to have
some of her inner workings adjusted, as Daddy said. Aunt Agnes had spent
most of her life in the Army where she earned many awards for her skills.
She was an excellent markswoman. My Uncle Ernest still limps from the
bullet stuck in his behind. It got stuck there when she found him in a
compromising position with the neighbor lady. Aunt Agnes aimed and fired
as he ran down the street and got him in one shot.
She could play the piano better than Elton John and Little Richard put
together. She complained that she was slowing down even though she could
still run the 50 yard dash in 7.5 seconds at close to 70 years old.
It was obvious to us early on however, that if they gave a medal for
cooking, she would never win. A medal for eating her food maybe, but
cooking? Not a chance.
As Mamma said, Bless her heart but your Aunt Agnes, an apron, lard and
fire are nothing to be messed with. In fact, if we saw any combination
of these items, Daddy told us we should run. Daddy's saying that Aunt
Agnes had no idea what constituted edible victuals always drew a quick
smile from Mamma.
Before Aunt Agnes arrived, Daddy made me and my sister clean the house
thoroughly. We scrubbed the floors until they shone; even the raggedy
linoleum in the kitchen was buffed to perfection. We cleaned the pots and
pans until we could see our harried reflections on their bottoms. We
flipped a coin to see who would have to stick her hands into the toilet
and I lost. We swept the front porch, weeded Mamma's precious flower beds
and we washed the windows until they sparkled. Daddy looked the house
over satisfied that we'd done a great job. He gave us each a crisp five
dollar bill for our efforts.
Then Aunt Agnes blew in through the front door with her various baskets,
bags and suitcases one of which held her cleaning ingredients. The first
thing out of her mouth was, Stanley you done let my sister's house go
straight to Hell. Where are the girls? We gonna clean up this place.
Out of one bag she pulled what Daddy called her damnable cauldron. From
the depths of it she pulled jars, bottles, cans of potions and elixirs
the combined smells of which made us woozy. And finally, from a straw
basket lined in wax paper she grabbed a clump of chicken feet and
potatoes each one with with more eyes that a common house fly.
Girls, get your mother's lard out. I'm gonna fry us up a mess of these
chicken feet and taters while we clean this house. Proper like. She
added that last bit just to antagonize Daddy who by now was hiding behind
his newspaper and cramming his last supper of three hot dogs into his
mouth.
And so the torture began. And running was out of the question.
By
Pamela Tyree Griffin
My sister Mary was twelve and I was seven on the first day of summer
vacation. We had been out of school for just a day. Mary was finally
going to be allowed to walk the two blocks down to Burkes store all by
herself - something the rest of the kids in our family accomplished by
the time we were six.
With her nickel, Mary was going to buy us lollipops. Mamma wrote a note
for Mary to give to Mr. Burke telling him what she was to buy with her
nickel. If not, Mary might fill a bag full of lollipops without knowing
she shouldn't do so. Today, even the smell of a lollipop makes me sick.
That June day was a shining thing full of sunny promise. I remember
looking at Mamma as she washed the lunch dishes, the strings of her apron
hanging loose around her waist. Daddy had just planted his usual kiss on
the top of her head before leaving for work. He said he could not begin
his shift unless he kissed his sweetheart first.
I heard the snap of the screen door as it slammed shut and the creak of
the third step off the back porch that Daddy never got around to fixing.
Daddys whistling as he walked to the car is as clear to me as if it
happened today. The clink of the dishes, the scrape of food into the
garbage pail, the billowy softness of mammas yellow curtains are as
vivid to me now as then
Mary was so excited and not just about going to the store either. Summer
meant the end, at least for a while, to her waving goodbye from the porch
as I walked to school with our brothers. It meant that we could be
together every day.
Mamma watched her skip down the sidewalk, her long pigtail captured in a
red ribbon to match her shorts. Mamma said she watched her go into the
store. I asked for a glass of orange juice and Mamma got it for me.
My two brothers came in making a commotion pretending they were flying
planes in the war or something noisy like that. The baby started crying
and Mamma went to pick her up. Then when she went to the front porch and
called for Mary,I was thinking Mary was playing in the backyard. I went
out back to look but she wasnt there. Mamma said, Sarah, go on down to
the store and fetch your sister. That was fine by me since I was getting
impatient.
She wasn't at the store either and only her red ribbon on the sidewalk
marked her place. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. She wasn't
anywhere. Mary made me mad now even though we knew we weren't supposed to
get mad at her-she didn't know what she was doing.
Until you know for sure what has happened and even when you do,
everything is regret. Blame and loss hang over everyone like a thick fog.
Should someone have gone with her? Should we have noticed sooner that she
was gone? If we had called her name just once, would she have heard us
and come running? Did we take too long to call the police?
Life went on the way it does. I had one dream of Mary where she told me
she was okay and she told me not to worry. That made me cry because it
was the only time Mary had ever spoken. For the rest of her life, Mamma
would weep for no reason; at least no reason I understood until I had
children of my own.
I keep Mary's red ribbon, now frayed and faded, in my jewelry box. There
are rings and trinkets in there which shine and twinkle but are not
nearly as precious to me as that one piece of fabric.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Aunt Agnes Comes For A While
By
Pamela Tyree Griffin
Aunt Agnes came to stay with us when Mamma went into the hospital to have
some of her inner workings adjusted, as Daddy said. Aunt Agnes had spent
most of her life in the Army where she earned many awards for her skills.
She was an excellent markswoman. My Uncle Ernest still limps from the
bullet stuck in his behind. It got stuck there when she found him in a
compromising position with the neighbor lady. Aunt Agnes aimed and fired
as he ran down the street and got him in one shot.
She could play the piano better than Elton John and Little Richard put
together. She complained that she was slowing down even though she could
still run the 50 yard dash in 7.5 seconds at close to 70 years old.
It was obvious to us early on however, that if they gave a medal for
cooking, she would never win. A medal for eating her food maybe, but
cooking? Not a chance.
As Mamma said, Bless her heart but your Aunt Agnes, an apron, lard and
fire are nothing to be messed with. In fact, if we saw any combination
of these items, Daddy told us we should run. Daddy's saying that Aunt
Agnes had no idea what constituted edible victuals always drew a quick
smile from Mamma.
Before Aunt Agnes arrived, Daddy made me and my sister clean the house
thoroughly. We scrubbed the floors until they shone; even the raggedy
linoleum in the kitchen was buffed to perfection. We cleaned the pots and
pans until we could see our harried reflections on their bottoms. We
flipped a coin to see who would have to stick her hands into the toilet
and I lost. We swept the front porch, weeded Mamma's precious flower beds
and we washed the windows until they sparkled. Daddy looked the house
over satisfied that we'd done a great job. He gave us each a crisp five
dollar bill for our efforts.
Then Aunt Agnes blew in through the front door with her various baskets,
bags and suitcases one of which held her cleaning ingredients. The first
thing out of her mouth was, Stanley you done let my sister's house go
straight to Hell. Where are the girls? We gonna clean up this place.
Out of one bag she pulled what Daddy called her damnable cauldron. From
the depths of it she pulled jars, bottles, cans of potions and elixirs
the combined smells of which made us woozy. And finally, from a straw
basket lined in wax paper she grabbed a clump of chicken feet and
potatoes each one with with more eyes that a common house fly.
Girls, get your mother's lard out. I'm gonna fry us up a mess of these
chicken feet and taters while we clean this house. Proper like. She
added that last bit just to antagonize Daddy who by now was hiding behind
his newspaper and cramming his last supper of three hot dogs into his
mouth.
And so the torture began. And running was out of the question.
Those Stepford Guys by Winifred Seery- written version
THOSE STEPFORD GUYS!
The day seemed flawless--the air pristine, the traffic well-regulated,
the store windows playfully decorated with cardboard witches and crepe paper
pumpkins. Rex Midas whistled as he strolled down Main Street on his way home
from the office. Two nights before the guys from the Men’s Association had
fixed him up with a perfect, living doll.
So absorbed was Rex in contemplating his recent gtood fortune that right
in front of the hardware store he smacked into one of the Association's
engineers.
"Are you okay?" Rex blurted. The man had landed on his bottom, missing
by an inch a line of new snowblowers set out on the sidewalk for a pre-winter
sale. Rex offered him a hand up. He owed much to the Association’s
middle-aged geniuses.
"Not to worry; it’ll take more than a little fall to damage this old
guy." The engineer brushed himself off. "By the way, how’s the new wife working
out? Custom job, wasn’t she?"
Rex grinned. "Like clockwork, pal." He made a circle with his thumb
and forefinger. "She’s incredible."
"That’s good to hear. Those cerebral cortex modifications can be darn
tricky." Looking at Rex, the engineer waxed sympathetic. "Every guy wants a
perfect wife, hmm? And you put up with the old one long enough, my friend."
Rex’s blue eyes hardened. "It *was* rough toward the end—-the beds
went unmade for a week, the mashed potatoes were lumpy--"
"You don’t have to spell it out; I understand, old buddy. We’re all
the same. But now you’ve got yourself the ideal woman. Thirty-six,
twenty-four, thirty-six, wasn’t she?"
Rex shook his head. "You’re off by a tad. Thirty-eight, twenty-four,
thirty-six."
"You’re sure?" The engineer pulled a notebook from his back pocket,
flipped pages till he found the one he wanted, and ran his scraggly fingernail
over a column of numbers.
"Must have confused her with one of the others," he mumbled as he
snapped his notebook shut. "Main thing is you’re happy now, right? Immaculate
house, gourmet meals, a sex kitten who worships you and demands zilch? You could
buy yourself that little sports car you’ve been itching for. It’s the real
thing, isn’t it, Rex boy?"
"You bet," Rex agreed heartily. "There’s only one problem--I hate to
sound picky--but she keeps calling me ‘sir.’"
"Oh, you didn’t want that?"
"*I* don’t mind really. It’s just that she confuses the kids."
The engineer folded his arms over his chest. "Most of the fellows think
it sets a good example for them."
"Well, yeah, but--there's my image to consider too. Suppose she starts
talking like that in a restaurant outside of Stepford? I’d look stuffy. Feel
embarrassed. Know what I mean?"
The technician gave some thought to the problem as he scratched the top
of his head. "Okay, Rex. She’s *your* wife." He jotted a few words in the
front of the notebook and replaced it in his back pocket. "Bring her to the
Association meeting tonight and I’ll modify her conversation tape."
"Sounds good. Oh, wait--I can’t manage it this evening. The boss is
coming to dinner. How about tomorrow night?"
The other man frowned. He seemed to find Rex’s words difficult to
digest. "You mean you won’t be there at all?"
Rex felt miffed. Cheez! What did they want from him? He attended all
the semiweekly meetings, participated in a heck of a lot of kidnappings, and
he always paid his dues on time.
"Come on, Werner. I don’t have to prove my loyalty to the Men’s
Association. But job security has gotta be my bottom line, especially these days.
You know that."
The engineer smiled. "You want me to back off, huh?"
"I’ll bring 'er in tomorrow night."
"Sure' that'll be fine." Patting Rex’s arm. "Meantime, make a note if
anything else goes wrong. She’s still under warranty."
The Midases’ suburban home with the green shutters and matching lawn
seemed quieter than usual. Even Rusty, their Irish setter, had been restrained
somewhere. As Rex closed the front door, the smell of air fresheners greeted
him. But the kitchen was empty, the table unset.
"What is the meaning of this?" he wanted to shout. His chest
constricted as visions of the old days crowded his brain. "Barbie?"
No answer.
Only one payment and already--. He marched into the den where the twins
were watching their late-afternoon TV cartoon show.
"Gene! Jean!" he barked.
Two halibuts would have manifested greater response. He strode to the
TV set and placed himself in front of it, blocking their view. "Where is your
mother?"
They blinked. "Our real mother or our play mother?"
"Your new mother!"
"Oh--her," Gene said. "She got stuck in the broom closet as she was
putting away the vacuum cleaner."
"She just stopped moving, Dad," Jean whined.
"And didn’t you even try to help her?" Rex started down the hall, the
children at his heels.
The door to the broom closet was open. True enough, Barbie stood
pulsing in the space next to the Upright, her back to the hallway.
Rex looked down at the twins and frowned. "I expected greater
cooperation from you two," he growled.
The children defended themselves:
"We tried our darndest to pull her out--honest."
"But she was too heavy."
"And we couldn’t get her feet to work."
"Yeah, all we could hear was a whirring noise."
Rex turned away. Dropping to his haunches, he attempted to move
Barbie’s right leg, then her left, to no avail.
"We did that," Jean said from behind him.
"Okay!" He stood up, knuckles on hips, scowling. "Did you try to rock
her from side to side and bump her out backwards?"
"We told you--she’s too heavy," Gene said. "Could we go back to our
cartoon show now?"
"Hold on. Did she say what she was planning for dinner?"
"She has something stuffed in the refrigerator," Jean answered. "A huge
roast, I think. She took all the bottles off the top shelf and put them in
the door to make room for it."
The children edged toward the TV room.
"Stuffed--eh!" Suddenly optimistic, Rex gathered himself together,
wrested his new wife from her closet prison, whirled her around to face him, and
discovered that despite her ordeal Barbie hadn’t lost her toothpaste smile.
Perhaps her malfunction could be remedied with simple measures. Like--um--oil.
He steadied her against the wall, went to the garage, and got a can of W-D-40
off the shelf. He lubricated her joints.
No reaction.
Maybe the battery? He checked it out. Barbie still didn’t budge. The
perfect wife--bah! What a time for a breakdown! In a fit of pique he brought
his knee up under her seat and let her have it. A second later something
started up inside. Her feet began to move and she turned to greet him. She was
still smiling.
"Rex--sir. You’re home."
"Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Barbie. What happened?"
"It was so-o-o dark in there," she said dreamily. "Did I fall asleep?"
She *was* lovely. Despite his frustration, resentment, and the
suspicion that he'd been sold a lemon, Rex still couldn’t help marveling at what the
engineers had achieved: her shining, baby blue eyes--just like his; her blonde
hair--the same shade; an identical roguish tilt to her nose. What he’d felt
for her the night he'd brought her home from the Men’s Association clicked
into place again.
"Barbie," he breathed, "you don’t have to kneel."
He helped her to her feet, led her into the living room, and sat her
down on the sofa. Then he sank into his recliner. Unwrapping a cigar from the
box on the end table, he cast a fond eye on his beautiful robot. Hands folded,
she returned his glance with a look of puppylike expectation.
"Are we all set for dinner then?" he asked.
"We couldn’t be more readier, sir."
Rex lit the cigar. Tomorrow evening he’d talk with the programmers abo
ut Barbie’s choice of adverbs.
Unaware, of course, of any defects in her system, Barbie went on to
boast of her domestic achievements. "This morning I baked bread and mowed the
lawn," she said in her bell-tone voice. "Then I cleaned the gasket around the
dishwasher door."
"You actually cleaned the gasket?" What a woman!
"Oh sure, it was simple. You wrap a table knife in a wet rag and push
it along inside the ridges. I read about how to do it in *Kitchen
Cleanliness*."
"Barbie," Rex said sternly, "you’ve been--reading?"
She smoothed her dress. "Yes, dear. *Kitchen Cleanliness* is a
magazine we all subscribe to."
"Oh, I see. It’s like a manual, eh? Then that would be all right. Go
on."
"I scrubbed the plastic cushions on the kitchen chairs with mild
detergent, being careful not to wet the threads, of course." She began to talk
faster. "Thirty minutes in the backyard making mud pies with Jean but she grew
tired of that--" The syllables started to rush together, higher and faster, till
her speech became nothing but a high-pitched whine. Still her face retained
its calm smile.
Rex stubbed out the cigar and flew to the sofa, where he shook her till
her teeth rattled. "Barbie! Come back!" It was an entreaty, not an order.
The voice decelerated. "Then I took--the dirty dishes out of the
dishwasher."
"You what?"
"I cleaned--each window --with cold cream."
"No!"
Her smile was fading and her voice was barely audible. "I scrubbed the
bathroom floors--with soy sauce." The glimmer of a smile appeared once more,
then disappeared. "After that--I stuffed--the dog--for dinner."
Rex screamed. Alarmed, the twins ran from the den. "What’s wrong?"
they said in unison.
He put it to them gently. "I believe your mother has completely broken
down, children."
"Into the ashcan with her." Gene moved determinedly in Barbie’s
direction.
"Gene! That’s not nice! It’s not even economical!" Rex ran a hand
over the threatening pain in his right eye. "Go back to the TV," he said
weakly. "I’ve gotta make a call."
His friend, the engineer, hadn’t arrived at the Club yet; and the repair
man who answered the phone didn't sound terribly sympathetic.
"Is your model wife a pre-fab?" he asked in a bored voice.
"Custom."
"Are you sure her switch is turned on?"
"Of course!"
"Are the smile batteries facing in the right direction?"
"They must be. She’s had no trouble with that. But her voice keeps
speeding up and slowing down, and she’s mixed up the housework at an
inappropriate time."
"Mm. Sounds like a glitch in the tape reader. She may need a complete
overhaul. I’m all out of loaners right now. You’ll have to make do for a
few days."
"Well, that’s just great. I might as well have kept the old one. At
least she used to keep going when she got mad enough. Maybe I should try to get
this one ticked off. Think it would work?"
"Lemme see." A pause. "Nope. She wasn’t programmed for anger. In
fact, no negative emotions whatsoever."
"Well, I’m riled enough for the two of us. The boss and his wife are
coming to dinner and I’m not prepared."
"Look, bring her in; and as soon as I get a minute I’ll check her
out--batteries, microprocessors, tapes, everything. Ask for Lou."
Just as the repairman hung up the doorbell rang. Rex looked at his
watch. Too early for the boss and his wife to arrive. He opened the door. The
woman standing on the porch had brown hair and brown eyes and her measurements
looked to be about thirty-two, twenty-six, thirty-six.
"What is it?" Rex said gruffly.
"Hi! I know it’s a bad time to be calling. You must be sitting down to
dinner. I’m from the Welcome Wagon. I’ll only take a few minutes--."
No wedding ring. An insidious temptation entered Rex’s brain. The
Welcome Wagon woman probably ate alone most evenings. Bet she could cook up a
storm if she were sufficiently motivated. He grinned boyishly at her.
"You haven’t interrupted anything at all. Won’t you come in?"
"I thought your wife--" the woman began as she stepped through the door.
"Ah, there she is!" She took a step forward.
Barbie sat motionless on the sofa. Plaid, shirtwaist dress; hair
exquisitely coiffed; hands still raised in elation over having successfully stuffed
the family pet.
The Welcome Wagon woman stopped in her tracks. "Oh, I see; it’s one of
them. Having a bad day, is she?" She gave Rex the once-over. "I have to get
home to dinner myself," she said hurriedly. But I’ll leave you some gifts
and materials--"
"That’s awfully nice of you. Do you have to run off?" He tried to look
real. "No sense in your eating alone. I’ve got some things in the
refrigerator--"
The Welcome Wagon woman gave him a canny look.
"Uh-uh. If I do get involved, it won’t be with a Stepford man. Look,
why don’t you work things out with your so-called ‘spouse’ over there? After
all, you signed a contract, didn’t you?"
"Yes, but not with her. She’s only a robot."
"And you’re tired of her already; I can see that."
The Welcome Wagon woman had told the truth. He’d even become bored with
himself, believe it or not. In the few days since he’d owned Barbie, he’d
also begun to realize that he’d planned his big purchase poorly, and now
life--life wasn’t as perfect as they’d promised in the brochure. But this new
woman seemed different from the people he knew. Why not try her out, see what
develops?
Her fingers were on the doorknob. She’d turned to say good-bye. How to
convince her he was sincere?
Trying to recall the expression in his late setter’s eyes, Rex stepped
toward the door. "Then how about coffee some evening? A cup of java wouldn’t
compromise you, would it?"
The woman let go of the doorknob and turned slightly. She glanced at
Barbie, then at Rex.
"I will if you think about setting her free." Color rose in her cheeks.
"In fact, they should *all* go free," she said heatedly.
He looked at her, considering. Maybe her seemingly airy notion wasn’t
beyond the crafty resources of those techies at the Men's Association. But who
would dare suggest that any of them deprive themselves of their glamorous
toys? Good thing the Welcome Wagon woman hadn’t mentioned women’s liberation
during her interview with Ed at the Chamber of Commerce or he’d have replaced
her with a Welcome Wagon Barbie.
It wouldn’t be smart to clobber her with the awful truth right now
though. "That’s an interesting idea--retrofitting the wives for spontaneity," he
said with a disingenuous grin. "If I ask them to work on it, then will you go
out with me?"
"I’ll think about it." She took her car keys from her purse.
The sincerity ploy had worked. Rex felt a smidgin of guilt about using it,
but he had to see her again. Somehow she made him want to be authentic.
But could he chance it? The messy tears? Sickness? And if the Men’s
Association found out he was seeing someone they disapproved of, his own life
would be in danger. He knew too much.
What the heck. He could fool ’em. Maybe she’d even cooperate. He
turned on her his most angelic smile.
"Say, can you turn at right angles?"
The day seemed flawless--the air pristine, the traffic well-regulated,
the store windows playfully decorated with cardboard witches and crepe paper
pumpkins. Rex Midas whistled as he strolled down Main Street on his way home
from the office. Two nights before the guys from the Men’s Association had
fixed him up with a perfect, living doll.
So absorbed was Rex in contemplating his recent gtood fortune that right
in front of the hardware store he smacked into one of the Association's
engineers.
"Are you okay?" Rex blurted. The man had landed on his bottom, missing
by an inch a line of new snowblowers set out on the sidewalk for a pre-winter
sale. Rex offered him a hand up. He owed much to the Association’s
middle-aged geniuses.
"Not to worry; it’ll take more than a little fall to damage this old
guy." The engineer brushed himself off. "By the way, how’s the new wife working
out? Custom job, wasn’t she?"
Rex grinned. "Like clockwork, pal." He made a circle with his thumb
and forefinger. "She’s incredible."
"That’s good to hear. Those cerebral cortex modifications can be darn
tricky." Looking at Rex, the engineer waxed sympathetic. "Every guy wants a
perfect wife, hmm? And you put up with the old one long enough, my friend."
Rex’s blue eyes hardened. "It *was* rough toward the end—-the beds
went unmade for a week, the mashed potatoes were lumpy--"
"You don’t have to spell it out; I understand, old buddy. We’re all
the same. But now you’ve got yourself the ideal woman. Thirty-six,
twenty-four, thirty-six, wasn’t she?"
Rex shook his head. "You’re off by a tad. Thirty-eight, twenty-four,
thirty-six."
"You’re sure?" The engineer pulled a notebook from his back pocket,
flipped pages till he found the one he wanted, and ran his scraggly fingernail
over a column of numbers.
"Must have confused her with one of the others," he mumbled as he
snapped his notebook shut. "Main thing is you’re happy now, right? Immaculate
house, gourmet meals, a sex kitten who worships you and demands zilch? You could
buy yourself that little sports car you’ve been itching for. It’s the real
thing, isn’t it, Rex boy?"
"You bet," Rex agreed heartily. "There’s only one problem--I hate to
sound picky--but she keeps calling me ‘sir.’"
"Oh, you didn’t want that?"
"*I* don’t mind really. It’s just that she confuses the kids."
The engineer folded his arms over his chest. "Most of the fellows think
it sets a good example for them."
"Well, yeah, but--there's my image to consider too. Suppose she starts
talking like that in a restaurant outside of Stepford? I’d look stuffy. Feel
embarrassed. Know what I mean?"
The technician gave some thought to the problem as he scratched the top
of his head. "Okay, Rex. She’s *your* wife." He jotted a few words in the
front of the notebook and replaced it in his back pocket. "Bring her to the
Association meeting tonight and I’ll modify her conversation tape."
"Sounds good. Oh, wait--I can’t manage it this evening. The boss is
coming to dinner. How about tomorrow night?"
The other man frowned. He seemed to find Rex’s words difficult to
digest. "You mean you won’t be there at all?"
Rex felt miffed. Cheez! What did they want from him? He attended all
the semiweekly meetings, participated in a heck of a lot of kidnappings, and
he always paid his dues on time.
"Come on, Werner. I don’t have to prove my loyalty to the Men’s
Association. But job security has gotta be my bottom line, especially these days.
You know that."
The engineer smiled. "You want me to back off, huh?"
"I’ll bring 'er in tomorrow night."
"Sure' that'll be fine." Patting Rex’s arm. "Meantime, make a note if
anything else goes wrong. She’s still under warranty."
The Midases’ suburban home with the green shutters and matching lawn
seemed quieter than usual. Even Rusty, their Irish setter, had been restrained
somewhere. As Rex closed the front door, the smell of air fresheners greeted
him. But the kitchen was empty, the table unset.
"What is the meaning of this?" he wanted to shout. His chest
constricted as visions of the old days crowded his brain. "Barbie?"
No answer.
Only one payment and already--. He marched into the den where the twins
were watching their late-afternoon TV cartoon show.
"Gene! Jean!" he barked.
Two halibuts would have manifested greater response. He strode to the
TV set and placed himself in front of it, blocking their view. "Where is your
mother?"
They blinked. "Our real mother or our play mother?"
"Your new mother!"
"Oh--her," Gene said. "She got stuck in the broom closet as she was
putting away the vacuum cleaner."
"She just stopped moving, Dad," Jean whined.
"And didn’t you even try to help her?" Rex started down the hall, the
children at his heels.
The door to the broom closet was open. True enough, Barbie stood
pulsing in the space next to the Upright, her back to the hallway.
Rex looked down at the twins and frowned. "I expected greater
cooperation from you two," he growled.
The children defended themselves:
"We tried our darndest to pull her out--honest."
"But she was too heavy."
"And we couldn’t get her feet to work."
"Yeah, all we could hear was a whirring noise."
Rex turned away. Dropping to his haunches, he attempted to move
Barbie’s right leg, then her left, to no avail.
"We did that," Jean said from behind him.
"Okay!" He stood up, knuckles on hips, scowling. "Did you try to rock
her from side to side and bump her out backwards?"
"We told you--she’s too heavy," Gene said. "Could we go back to our
cartoon show now?"
"Hold on. Did she say what she was planning for dinner?"
"She has something stuffed in the refrigerator," Jean answered. "A huge
roast, I think. She took all the bottles off the top shelf and put them in
the door to make room for it."
The children edged toward the TV room.
"Stuffed--eh!" Suddenly optimistic, Rex gathered himself together,
wrested his new wife from her closet prison, whirled her around to face him, and
discovered that despite her ordeal Barbie hadn’t lost her toothpaste smile.
Perhaps her malfunction could be remedied with simple measures. Like--um--oil.
He steadied her against the wall, went to the garage, and got a can of W-D-40
off the shelf. He lubricated her joints.
No reaction.
Maybe the battery? He checked it out. Barbie still didn’t budge. The
perfect wife--bah! What a time for a breakdown! In a fit of pique he brought
his knee up under her seat and let her have it. A second later something
started up inside. Her feet began to move and she turned to greet him. She was
still smiling.
"Rex--sir. You’re home."
"Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Barbie. What happened?"
"It was so-o-o dark in there," she said dreamily. "Did I fall asleep?"
She *was* lovely. Despite his frustration, resentment, and the
suspicion that he'd been sold a lemon, Rex still couldn’t help marveling at what the
engineers had achieved: her shining, baby blue eyes--just like his; her blonde
hair--the same shade; an identical roguish tilt to her nose. What he’d felt
for her the night he'd brought her home from the Men’s Association clicked
into place again.
"Barbie," he breathed, "you don’t have to kneel."
He helped her to her feet, led her into the living room, and sat her
down on the sofa. Then he sank into his recliner. Unwrapping a cigar from the
box on the end table, he cast a fond eye on his beautiful robot. Hands folded,
she returned his glance with a look of puppylike expectation.
"Are we all set for dinner then?" he asked.
"We couldn’t be more readier, sir."
Rex lit the cigar. Tomorrow evening he’d talk with the programmers abo
ut Barbie’s choice of adverbs.
Unaware, of course, of any defects in her system, Barbie went on to
boast of her domestic achievements. "This morning I baked bread and mowed the
lawn," she said in her bell-tone voice. "Then I cleaned the gasket around the
dishwasher door."
"You actually cleaned the gasket?" What a woman!
"Oh sure, it was simple. You wrap a table knife in a wet rag and push
it along inside the ridges. I read about how to do it in *Kitchen
Cleanliness*."
"Barbie," Rex said sternly, "you’ve been--reading?"
She smoothed her dress. "Yes, dear. *Kitchen Cleanliness* is a
magazine we all subscribe to."
"Oh, I see. It’s like a manual, eh? Then that would be all right. Go
on."
"I scrubbed the plastic cushions on the kitchen chairs with mild
detergent, being careful not to wet the threads, of course." She began to talk
faster. "Thirty minutes in the backyard making mud pies with Jean but she grew
tired of that--" The syllables started to rush together, higher and faster, till
her speech became nothing but a high-pitched whine. Still her face retained
its calm smile.
Rex stubbed out the cigar and flew to the sofa, where he shook her till
her teeth rattled. "Barbie! Come back!" It was an entreaty, not an order.
The voice decelerated. "Then I took--the dirty dishes out of the
dishwasher."
"You what?"
"I cleaned--each window --with cold cream."
"No!"
Her smile was fading and her voice was barely audible. "I scrubbed the
bathroom floors--with soy sauce." The glimmer of a smile appeared once more,
then disappeared. "After that--I stuffed--the dog--for dinner."
Rex screamed. Alarmed, the twins ran from the den. "What’s wrong?"
they said in unison.
He put it to them gently. "I believe your mother has completely broken
down, children."
"Into the ashcan with her." Gene moved determinedly in Barbie’s
direction.
"Gene! That’s not nice! It’s not even economical!" Rex ran a hand
over the threatening pain in his right eye. "Go back to the TV," he said
weakly. "I’ve gotta make a call."
His friend, the engineer, hadn’t arrived at the Club yet; and the repair
man who answered the phone didn't sound terribly sympathetic.
"Is your model wife a pre-fab?" he asked in a bored voice.
"Custom."
"Are you sure her switch is turned on?"
"Of course!"
"Are the smile batteries facing in the right direction?"
"They must be. She’s had no trouble with that. But her voice keeps
speeding up and slowing down, and she’s mixed up the housework at an
inappropriate time."
"Mm. Sounds like a glitch in the tape reader. She may need a complete
overhaul. I’m all out of loaners right now. You’ll have to make do for a
few days."
"Well, that’s just great. I might as well have kept the old one. At
least she used to keep going when she got mad enough. Maybe I should try to get
this one ticked off. Think it would work?"
"Lemme see." A pause. "Nope. She wasn’t programmed for anger. In
fact, no negative emotions whatsoever."
"Well, I’m riled enough for the two of us. The boss and his wife are
coming to dinner and I’m not prepared."
"Look, bring her in; and as soon as I get a minute I’ll check her
out--batteries, microprocessors, tapes, everything. Ask for Lou."
Just as the repairman hung up the doorbell rang. Rex looked at his
watch. Too early for the boss and his wife to arrive. He opened the door. The
woman standing on the porch had brown hair and brown eyes and her measurements
looked to be about thirty-two, twenty-six, thirty-six.
"What is it?" Rex said gruffly.
"Hi! I know it’s a bad time to be calling. You must be sitting down to
dinner. I’m from the Welcome Wagon. I’ll only take a few minutes--."
No wedding ring. An insidious temptation entered Rex’s brain. The
Welcome Wagon woman probably ate alone most evenings. Bet she could cook up a
storm if she were sufficiently motivated. He grinned boyishly at her.
"You haven’t interrupted anything at all. Won’t you come in?"
"I thought your wife--" the woman began as she stepped through the door.
"Ah, there she is!" She took a step forward.
Barbie sat motionless on the sofa. Plaid, shirtwaist dress; hair
exquisitely coiffed; hands still raised in elation over having successfully stuffed
the family pet.
The Welcome Wagon woman stopped in her tracks. "Oh, I see; it’s one of
them. Having a bad day, is she?" She gave Rex the once-over. "I have to get
home to dinner myself," she said hurriedly. But I’ll leave you some gifts
and materials--"
"That’s awfully nice of you. Do you have to run off?" He tried to look
real. "No sense in your eating alone. I’ve got some things in the
refrigerator--"
The Welcome Wagon woman gave him a canny look.
"Uh-uh. If I do get involved, it won’t be with a Stepford man. Look,
why don’t you work things out with your so-called ‘spouse’ over there? After
all, you signed a contract, didn’t you?"
"Yes, but not with her. She’s only a robot."
"And you’re tired of her already; I can see that."
The Welcome Wagon woman had told the truth. He’d even become bored with
himself, believe it or not. In the few days since he’d owned Barbie, he’d
also begun to realize that he’d planned his big purchase poorly, and now
life--life wasn’t as perfect as they’d promised in the brochure. But this new
woman seemed different from the people he knew. Why not try her out, see what
develops?
Her fingers were on the doorknob. She’d turned to say good-bye. How to
convince her he was sincere?
Trying to recall the expression in his late setter’s eyes, Rex stepped
toward the door. "Then how about coffee some evening? A cup of java wouldn’t
compromise you, would it?"
The woman let go of the doorknob and turned slightly. She glanced at
Barbie, then at Rex.
"I will if you think about setting her free." Color rose in her cheeks.
"In fact, they should *all* go free," she said heatedly.
He looked at her, considering. Maybe her seemingly airy notion wasn’t
beyond the crafty resources of those techies at the Men's Association. But who
would dare suggest that any of them deprive themselves of their glamorous
toys? Good thing the Welcome Wagon woman hadn’t mentioned women’s liberation
during her interview with Ed at the Chamber of Commerce or he’d have replaced
her with a Welcome Wagon Barbie.
It wouldn’t be smart to clobber her with the awful truth right now
though. "That’s an interesting idea--retrofitting the wives for spontaneity," he
said with a disingenuous grin. "If I ask them to work on it, then will you go
out with me?"
"I’ll think about it." She took her car keys from her purse.
The sincerity ploy had worked. Rex felt a smidgin of guilt about using it,
but he had to see her again. Somehow she made him want to be authentic.
But could he chance it? The messy tears? Sickness? And if the Men’s
Association found out he was seeing someone they disapproved of, his own life
would be in danger. He knew too much.
What the heck. He could fool ’em. Maybe she’d even cooperate. He
turned on her his most angelic smile.
"Say, can you turn at right angles?"
The Apprentice Assassin by A. P. Littlewood written version
Chad turned the door knob gently and pushed. Damn. The old bat had locked the bathroom door. He could hear the shower going strong and smell that flowery goo women used. So much for Plan A. She was alone in the house, or so she thought, but she'd locked the damn door anyway. Must of watched that old movie about some psycho hacking up broads in the shower.
He walked back into the living room, no point in tiptoeing, and waited, trying to think. He bounced the crowbar in his palm, bounced a little on the balls of his feet. He could handle it. This was—what—his fourth job? Really his third since the last one hadn't gone too good. But this one would go fine. He'd remembered the gloves this time,cloudy pale vinyl. Remembered to wipe the crowbar for prints, done
everything perfect. This was a slow-ball job, no question, old lady inthis house out in South Nowhere with no alarm system, but if it went right, Irma would get him the bigger jobs with more money.
How should this come down? Nothing sweet came to him. OK, just wait until she walked out and whack her. Tear the place up, steal something so it looked like a robbery gone wrong, and book it on out. Dead simple. Call in and tell Irma, then check his bank balance in a couple of days, buy the Honda Goldwing and hit the road for couple weeks. No sweat.
He heard the shower go off and after a tedious wait, out walked the target, a mess. Short gray hair still wet, some sort of saggy yellow bathrobe, looking a hundred years old. She didn't see him, turned the other way toward the bedroom. "Neva Ralston?" he said, cold voice.
She jumped a mile, turned and looked at him, eyes big as headlights."Ohmygod. Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"Neva Ralston?" he asked again, enjoying this part.
Her voice was high, uneven. "No. I'm Bertha Wilson, her sister. What do you want? I don't have any cash."
Shit. "Where's Neva Ralston?" He could hear his own voice lose the icy edge. Damn.
"Hawaii. I'm house sitting." She clutched the robe over her chest, as if he cared about her tits.
"Sit." He pointed to a chair in the living room, something old and wood and spindly.
She sat.
He called in, hating it, knowing he had to. "Irma, gotta situation.Her sister's here, says Ralston is in Hawaii. Sister is—what'd you say?" He glared at her.
"Bertha Wilson."
He finished the call and hung up. Irma set up this mess, she could straighten it out. No blame on him.
He sat down on the sofa, lots of those little squishy pillows,everything loose and tan, and crossed his legs. Sofa like that kind of dog with all the wrinkles. "We wait." That came out good. Short,tough.
The old woman got herself organized, robe just so, messed with her hair, nervous. Irma didn't call. The woman stood up. "I need to get dressed."
"No way. You sit there."
"I don't own a gun or anything. I just have to get my clothes on."
She was up and scuttling barefooted down the hall. So he had to clip her now or else follow. Last time he'd clipped the wrong person and
that couldn't happen again. He followed, pissed off, the crowbar feeling good in his hand. He was in charge here.
He let her get herself dressed, underwear, pants and a tee-shirt. She sort of hid behind the robe with her back to him. He watched, amused that she hid her tired old body from him. She walked to the closet.
"Where in hell you going?"
"To get my shoes." She didn't hesitate, didn't look at him, just opened up the big folding door on the closet and walked in.
He had to hump on after her. Grabbed her by the arm, yanked her out of there, and spun her onto the bed. "You move when I say to and not before."
She curled up on the bed, cuddling her arm. "I only wanted my shoes."
Looked like she was about to cry.
He marched her into the living room again, shoved her into the wood chair, heard something crack, a dry, brittle sound, but the chair
didn't collapse. He sat on the soft sofa, sank deep in the cushions,and waited for Irma to call. Damn. He wanted this over, sick of waiting.
The woman wasn't quiet for long, too nervous. "You get hired to do this. You're a professional assassin, right?"
He kept his face blank, maybe a hint of a nod.
"You must have been in the military. Delta Force? Navy Seals?"
He shrugged. Juvenile detention was as close as he'd come to the military, but he liked her thinking he was trained to kill.
"How do you get a job like this? A middle man? Like an agent?"
Yeah, that would be Irma. Plus a friend to get him started, a friend who owed him. Not that he needed any help.
"You have to make it look like an accident, right? Like a robbery"? She leaned toward him in the chair, hands clutched together almost like she was praying. "I know where Neva keeps her jewelry. You'll never find it by yourself. An emerald necklace from our mother. Pearl rings. You could get good money for them. I'll show you if you let me go."
Emeralds and pearls.
* * * *
The jewelry hooked him, she could tell. That immobile look copied from The Terminator flickered. He wanted it. A second chance, if she had enough time. He'd yanked her out of the closet before she could get to the box that held her grandfather's straight razor collection. Whoever Irma was, she was likely to call back any minute, and that would be that. "What do you say? I'll show you if you promise not to hurt me, to let me go." She shivered and forced a little smile. "A deal?"
She watched his brain click over to "lie".
"Works for me. I get the jewels and leave. This job sucks anyway."
She stood up, knees weak. She had to be careful. It was possible the kid wasn't as dense as he seemed. Tristan had hired him, she was sure of it. Tristan didn't want to pay her any more for enduring ten years of marriage to him, the worst mistake of her life. Things had changed somehow in the financial heights where he operated, and Tristan no longer feared the records she'd kept as insurance against his retribution. The understanding had been that, dead or alive, she could put him in jail. Tristan was capable of violence—she had the scars—and she'd been foolish to believe she'd be safe forever. She expected the money to stop someday, but not this. Surely Tristan would hire someone capable—the kid was faking dumb? Or maybe not. It would be like Tristan to dispose of her on the cheap. The kid was out of shape although he couldn't be older than 25, pale unhealthy skin, plain as a mud fence. No one would ever notice him. Unless he was in your apartment carrying a crowbar. She felt dizzy and a little nauseated,sure that fear was dismembering her brain, neuron by neuron.
She led him to the second bedroom, her office, and took the Tuscany landscape off the wall, setting it carefully on the bed. She reached for the dial and, as she half expected, the kid snapped at her. "Get away from there. Tell me the combo. I dial."
"Um, four, six, then nine. No, wait. I can't think. Six, nine, three?"
The kid's face tightened, his hand pausing on the dial, and she realized he thought she was stalling, that she'd changed her mind.Stalling? She was in a panicky rush to beat Irma's call. But she couldn't let him open the safe. "I can't think of it. I just can't. I have to turn the dial to remember." It wasn't hard to cry.
He stood aside, crowbar raised, glaring at her with the face he'd learned from bad movies. She spun the dial and tugged on it. The safe ignored her. She breathed deeply, fighting the black specks swirling before her eyes, and dialed again. His cell phone rang and he fumbled with it, trying to get it out of his pocket and open with his left hand while his right hand brandished the weapon. She tugged, and the safe did not open.
"Yeah, got it. Whadda lying bitch. No, totally under control. Give me five and I'll confirm."
Ah, she'd forgotten the last digit. She turned the dial and the door opened.
He wasn't even looking at her. He closed the phone and looked up. Neva let him see the .38 Special, waited for his eyes to go wide, waited to see if he would back off or remember that he had a weapon. The arm with the crowbar drew back for attack, and she pumped a bullet into his chest, bracing herself the way she'd been taught. He spun back against the wall, every line of his face and body expressing
amazement. She shot him again and he jerked hard and crumpled. This time she felt the recoil shocking her wrist and arm.
Neva stood with her hands shaking so hard she almost dropped the gun.She'd wet herself. Waves of dizziness swept in and out like tides. She forced herself to look at him. He was as dead as a person could be. Trembling, she set her gun back in the safe and sat down in the office chair.
She'd taken a human life. She waited for that to settle. She'd killed to save her own life, not avoidable, certainly not criminal. But she had taken years away from a young person in exchange for whatever remained of her own allotment. She had committed an act of extreme violence against another human being. The first bullet was terror, and it had hit where she aimed it. The second bullet? She rocked a little in the chair. Yes, the second bullet was to make sure, but it was also rage. Tristan had sent this ugly punk into her house to smash her skull and make it look like a robbery. This punk who broke her grandmother's chair, who sneered at her body, who assumed a sixty year old woman was helpless. She took an unsteady breath, wondering if this lingering fury was post traumatic shock or what. Had she always harbored a killer inside? Perhaps Tristan had created the nucleus and this incident had set it free, like a dry sponge ompressed and tiny until it encountered water and swelled to full size. Or maybe it was only an inner core of iron that had always been hers, that would not accept anything but survival.
She should call the police.
But still she sat. She'd been spared because her assassin wasincompetent. What if he hadn't been? Tristan would send another, a better one. She would never stand a chance against a skillful killer. How would she even identify him before it was too late? If she didn't come up with something, she would live in fear and hiding for the rest of her life.
She had to admit that the kid dead on her carpet had a few characteristics of a good assassin. No one would notice him in a crowd. Without the crowbar, he wouldn't look dangerous, no matter howhe narrowed his eyes and curled his upper lip. If he'd been any good at his job, he would have a big advantage because people would always underestimate him. Just as he'd underestimated her. Like Tristan had.
Neva felt her heart rate steady with her breathing. She should definitely call the police. She reached down to the floor for his cell phone and held it in her hand. She opened it and found Recent Calls.
Pressed Send.
Said, "Irma, this is Neva Ralston. There's been a change in personnel.We need to talk about your training program and salary."
He walked back into the living room, no point in tiptoeing, and waited, trying to think. He bounced the crowbar in his palm, bounced a little on the balls of his feet. He could handle it. This was—what—his fourth job? Really his third since the last one hadn't gone too good. But this one would go fine. He'd remembered the gloves this time,cloudy pale vinyl. Remembered to wipe the crowbar for prints, done
everything perfect. This was a slow-ball job, no question, old lady inthis house out in South Nowhere with no alarm system, but if it went right, Irma would get him the bigger jobs with more money.
How should this come down? Nothing sweet came to him. OK, just wait until she walked out and whack her. Tear the place up, steal something so it looked like a robbery gone wrong, and book it on out. Dead simple. Call in and tell Irma, then check his bank balance in a couple of days, buy the Honda Goldwing and hit the road for couple weeks. No sweat.
He heard the shower go off and after a tedious wait, out walked the target, a mess. Short gray hair still wet, some sort of saggy yellow bathrobe, looking a hundred years old. She didn't see him, turned the other way toward the bedroom. "Neva Ralston?" he said, cold voice.
She jumped a mile, turned and looked at him, eyes big as headlights."Ohmygod. Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"Neva Ralston?" he asked again, enjoying this part.
Her voice was high, uneven. "No. I'm Bertha Wilson, her sister. What do you want? I don't have any cash."
Shit. "Where's Neva Ralston?" He could hear his own voice lose the icy edge. Damn.
"Hawaii. I'm house sitting." She clutched the robe over her chest, as if he cared about her tits.
"Sit." He pointed to a chair in the living room, something old and wood and spindly.
She sat.
He called in, hating it, knowing he had to. "Irma, gotta situation.Her sister's here, says Ralston is in Hawaii. Sister is—what'd you say?" He glared at her.
"Bertha Wilson."
He finished the call and hung up. Irma set up this mess, she could straighten it out. No blame on him.
He sat down on the sofa, lots of those little squishy pillows,everything loose and tan, and crossed his legs. Sofa like that kind of dog with all the wrinkles. "We wait." That came out good. Short,tough.
The old woman got herself organized, robe just so, messed with her hair, nervous. Irma didn't call. The woman stood up. "I need to get dressed."
"No way. You sit there."
"I don't own a gun or anything. I just have to get my clothes on."
She was up and scuttling barefooted down the hall. So he had to clip her now or else follow. Last time he'd clipped the wrong person and
that couldn't happen again. He followed, pissed off, the crowbar feeling good in his hand. He was in charge here.
He let her get herself dressed, underwear, pants and a tee-shirt. She sort of hid behind the robe with her back to him. He watched, amused that she hid her tired old body from him. She walked to the closet.
"Where in hell you going?"
"To get my shoes." She didn't hesitate, didn't look at him, just opened up the big folding door on the closet and walked in.
He had to hump on after her. Grabbed her by the arm, yanked her out of there, and spun her onto the bed. "You move when I say to and not before."
She curled up on the bed, cuddling her arm. "I only wanted my shoes."
Looked like she was about to cry.
He marched her into the living room again, shoved her into the wood chair, heard something crack, a dry, brittle sound, but the chair
didn't collapse. He sat on the soft sofa, sank deep in the cushions,and waited for Irma to call. Damn. He wanted this over, sick of waiting.
The woman wasn't quiet for long, too nervous. "You get hired to do this. You're a professional assassin, right?"
He kept his face blank, maybe a hint of a nod.
"You must have been in the military. Delta Force? Navy Seals?"
He shrugged. Juvenile detention was as close as he'd come to the military, but he liked her thinking he was trained to kill.
"How do you get a job like this? A middle man? Like an agent?"
Yeah, that would be Irma. Plus a friend to get him started, a friend who owed him. Not that he needed any help.
"You have to make it look like an accident, right? Like a robbery"? She leaned toward him in the chair, hands clutched together almost like she was praying. "I know where Neva keeps her jewelry. You'll never find it by yourself. An emerald necklace from our mother. Pearl rings. You could get good money for them. I'll show you if you let me go."
Emeralds and pearls.
* * * *
The jewelry hooked him, she could tell. That immobile look copied from The Terminator flickered. He wanted it. A second chance, if she had enough time. He'd yanked her out of the closet before she could get to the box that held her grandfather's straight razor collection. Whoever Irma was, she was likely to call back any minute, and that would be that. "What do you say? I'll show you if you promise not to hurt me, to let me go." She shivered and forced a little smile. "A deal?"
She watched his brain click over to "lie".
"Works for me. I get the jewels and leave. This job sucks anyway."
She stood up, knees weak. She had to be careful. It was possible the kid wasn't as dense as he seemed. Tristan had hired him, she was sure of it. Tristan didn't want to pay her any more for enduring ten years of marriage to him, the worst mistake of her life. Things had changed somehow in the financial heights where he operated, and Tristan no longer feared the records she'd kept as insurance against his retribution. The understanding had been that, dead or alive, she could put him in jail. Tristan was capable of violence—she had the scars—and she'd been foolish to believe she'd be safe forever. She expected the money to stop someday, but not this. Surely Tristan would hire someone capable—the kid was faking dumb? Or maybe not. It would be like Tristan to dispose of her on the cheap. The kid was out of shape although he couldn't be older than 25, pale unhealthy skin, plain as a mud fence. No one would ever notice him. Unless he was in your apartment carrying a crowbar. She felt dizzy and a little nauseated,sure that fear was dismembering her brain, neuron by neuron.
She led him to the second bedroom, her office, and took the Tuscany landscape off the wall, setting it carefully on the bed. She reached for the dial and, as she half expected, the kid snapped at her. "Get away from there. Tell me the combo. I dial."
"Um, four, six, then nine. No, wait. I can't think. Six, nine, three?"
The kid's face tightened, his hand pausing on the dial, and she realized he thought she was stalling, that she'd changed her mind.Stalling? She was in a panicky rush to beat Irma's call. But she couldn't let him open the safe. "I can't think of it. I just can't. I have to turn the dial to remember." It wasn't hard to cry.
He stood aside, crowbar raised, glaring at her with the face he'd learned from bad movies. She spun the dial and tugged on it. The safe ignored her. She breathed deeply, fighting the black specks swirling before her eyes, and dialed again. His cell phone rang and he fumbled with it, trying to get it out of his pocket and open with his left hand while his right hand brandished the weapon. She tugged, and the safe did not open.
"Yeah, got it. Whadda lying bitch. No, totally under control. Give me five and I'll confirm."
Ah, she'd forgotten the last digit. She turned the dial and the door opened.
He wasn't even looking at her. He closed the phone and looked up. Neva let him see the .38 Special, waited for his eyes to go wide, waited to see if he would back off or remember that he had a weapon. The arm with the crowbar drew back for attack, and she pumped a bullet into his chest, bracing herself the way she'd been taught. He spun back against the wall, every line of his face and body expressing
amazement. She shot him again and he jerked hard and crumpled. This time she felt the recoil shocking her wrist and arm.
Neva stood with her hands shaking so hard she almost dropped the gun.She'd wet herself. Waves of dizziness swept in and out like tides. She forced herself to look at him. He was as dead as a person could be. Trembling, she set her gun back in the safe and sat down in the office chair.
She'd taken a human life. She waited for that to settle. She'd killed to save her own life, not avoidable, certainly not criminal. But she had taken years away from a young person in exchange for whatever remained of her own allotment. She had committed an act of extreme violence against another human being. The first bullet was terror, and it had hit where she aimed it. The second bullet? She rocked a little in the chair. Yes, the second bullet was to make sure, but it was also rage. Tristan had sent this ugly punk into her house to smash her skull and make it look like a robbery. This punk who broke her grandmother's chair, who sneered at her body, who assumed a sixty year old woman was helpless. She took an unsteady breath, wondering if this lingering fury was post traumatic shock or what. Had she always harbored a killer inside? Perhaps Tristan had created the nucleus and this incident had set it free, like a dry sponge ompressed and tiny until it encountered water and swelled to full size. Or maybe it was only an inner core of iron that had always been hers, that would not accept anything but survival.
She should call the police.
But still she sat. She'd been spared because her assassin wasincompetent. What if he hadn't been? Tristan would send another, a better one. She would never stand a chance against a skillful killer. How would she even identify him before it was too late? If she didn't come up with something, she would live in fear and hiding for the rest of her life.
She had to admit that the kid dead on her carpet had a few characteristics of a good assassin. No one would notice him in a crowd. Without the crowbar, he wouldn't look dangerous, no matter howhe narrowed his eyes and curled his upper lip. If he'd been any good at his job, he would have a big advantage because people would always underestimate him. Just as he'd underestimated her. Like Tristan had.
Neva felt her heart rate steady with her breathing. She should definitely call the police. She reached down to the floor for his cell phone and held it in her hand. She opened it and found Recent Calls.
Pressed Send.
Said, "Irma, this is Neva Ralston. There's been a change in personnel.We need to talk about your training program and salary."
Your Sweet Man by Libby Hellmann written version
YOUR SWEET MAN
“Who’s Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I’m gone?
Who you gonna have to love you?”
...Muddy Waters
1982: Chicago
Calvin waited for the man who’d been convicted of killing his mother. Outside Joliet prison the July heat seared his spirit, leaving it as bare and desiccated as a sun-bleached bone. Sweat ringed his arm pits, grit coated the back of his neck. Almost noon, and not a shadow on anything.
He extracted a Lucky from the crumpled pack on the dash and leaned forward to light it. The ‘74 Chevy Caprice never failed to start up. As long as he kept enough fluid in the radiator, the engine ate up the highway without complaint. Even the lighter worked.
He took a nervous drag. He hadn’t seen his father in fifteen years. His granny had made him come when he graduated high school to show him that Calvin had amounted to something, after all. Calvin remembered clutching his diploma in the visitors’ room, sliding it out of the manila envelope, edging nervously up to the glass window that separated them. He held it up against the glass, hating the sour smell of the place, the chipped paint on the walls, the fact that he had to be there at all. He remembered how his father nodded. No smile. No “atta boy – you done good.” Just a lukewarm nod. Calvin imagined a yawning hole opening up on the floor, right then and there, a hole he could sink into and disappear.
Now, the black metal gates swung open, and a withered man emerged. Calvin was still wiping sweat off his face, but his father was wearing a long sleeved shirt and beige canvas pants. Even from a distance, his father looked smaller than he remembered. Frailer. The cancer that was consuming him, that had triggered his early release, was working its way through his body. He walked slowly, stooped over. His skin, a few shades lighter than the rich chocolate it once was, looked paper-thin, and he blinked like he hadn’t been in sunlight for years. Maybe he hadn’t. His father looked around, then spotted Calvin in the Caprice. He nodded, took his time coming over.
Calvin slid out of the car, tossed his cigarette on the dirt, and ground it out with his foot.
“Hello, Calvin…”
Calvin returned his greeting with a nod of his own. Cautious. Polite.
“Appreciate you coming to get me, son.”
A muscle in Calvin’s gut twitched. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him “son.” “Son” was a word that belonged in the movies or TV, not in real life. Calvin gestured to the gym bag his father was carrying. “Let me take that.”
His father held it out. Calvin threw it in the back seat. His father stood at the passenger door but made no effort to open it. Calvin frowned, then realized his father was waiting for permission. Twenty-five years in prison did that to a man. “Just open the door and get in.”
His father shot him a look, half-embarrassed, half-grateful, and slid into the car. Calvin waited until his father was settled, then started the engine. As they pulled away from Joliet, he said, “Thought we’d go back to my place.”
“You still in Englewood?”
“Hyde Park now. Got ourselves a house near 47th and Cottage Grove.”
His father’s eyebrows arched. “Well, that’s mighty fine.”
“Jeanine fixed it up nice. Even got a little garden out back. She’s a good girl.”
His father didn’t seem to notice. He should have. It was Jeanine who shamed him into picking him up in the first place.
“He’s dying, Calvin” she’d said. “And he’s paid his dues. Twenty-five years of ‘em.”
Now his father turned to him. “How’s that job coming?”
“What job?” Calvin made his way back to the highway.
“The one you was talking about when you come to see me. Janitorial supplies.”
“I opened my own company six years ago. I got five people working for me now.”
“Well that’s mighty fine, son. Mighty fine.”
But it didn’t feel fine. It felt false. Calvin imagined that black hole opening up even wider. That was why he never wrote or visited his father, except for the Christmas card Jeanine made him sign every year. Any time he thought about him, even a stray fragment, the night his mother was murdered flooded back into his mind. He couldn’t help it. Better not to think about it at all, his granny would say. “Just go on and live your own life.”
But Granny was dead, and the people at Joliet called him when they found the cancer. Calvin stole a glance at his father. He was quiet. Just staring out at the road, a dreamy look on his face. Calvin remembered that look. His father’s body might be in the front seat, but his mind was miles away. Calvin knew he was thinking about his mother.
He tightened his grip on the wheel. How dare he? “So… You feelin’ okay?”
His father pulled his gaze in and looked at Calvin. “For the days I got left, I’m doing jes’ fine.”
Calvin turned onto the interstate. “You sure? Jeanine talked to our doctor. He can see you tomorrow if you want.”
His father gave him a sad little smile. “Appreciate it son, but don’t go to no trouble.” His father went back to looking out the window. Calvin turned on the radio. The all news station was blaring out something about Israeli troops in Lebanon. His father didn’t react, just kept gazing out. He seemed somehow smaller, less distinct than he’d been just ten minutes ago. Like his shadow was slowly fading from black to gray. At this rate he might disappear altogether.
Calvin snapped off the radio. For a while the whine of the air conditioning was the only sound in the car. Lulled by the air blowing through the vents and the rhythm of his wheels on the highway, Calvin was startled by the abruptness of his father’s voice.
“You start making the arrangements?”
Calvin cleared his throat just loud enough. “Not yet.” He wasn’t sure what to expect. Would his father lay into him? Cuss him out?
But all his father did was to wave a weak hand. “I guess I got to do it myself.”
“Why don’t we talk about it later?”
His father’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. “I ain’t got many laters, son.”
***
1950’s: Chicago
The hot breath of the blues kissed Jimmy Jay Rollins when he was little, leaving him hungering for more. His mama -- he never knew his daddy – took him to church in the morning and the blues joints at night. By the time he was seven, he was playing guitar licks with whoever his “uncle” of the moment happened to be, and by the time he left school at 16, he knew he wanted to play bass guitar.
The bass wasn’t as flashy as the electric slide guitar of Little Ed or Muddy Waters, but it was the glue that held everything together. No one could play a 12-bar chorus without him; no one could start a lick or riff. The bass was there through every number, from beginning to end, setting the pace. Steady. Unrelenting. The lead guitar, saxophone, even the drummer could take a break; not so the bass. Willie Dixon became Jimmy Jay’s personal hero.
By day, Jimmy Jay worked in a steel factory near Lake Calumet, but at night, he bounced around playing gigs on the South side. You could smell stale cigarette smoke and yesterday’s beer in the air, spot a few guns and knives if you looked real close. But none of that mattered when the music started. The Blues flowed through his veins, transporting him to a place where he could let go, soar above the world, tethered only by an electric guitar, wailing horn, or harmonica riff.
He was jamming at the open mike set in the Macomba Lounge one hot summer night, a thick cloud of smoke, perfume, and sweat choking the air, when a wisp of a girl – she couldn’t have been more than 18 -- came up to the stage. She was wearing a red dress that skimmed her body just right. A curtain of black hair shimmered down to her waist, and her skin looked pale blue in the light. She tentatively took the mike and asked them to play in G, then launched into a bluesy version of “Mean to Me,” an old Billie Holiday song.
By the middle of the second verse, people set their glasses down, stubbed out their cigarettes, and a hush fell over the room. Her voice was raw and unpolished but full of surprises. At first a sultry alto, she could hit the high notes in a silver soprano, then dip two octaves down to belt out the Blues like a tenor. At first he thought it was a fluke – no one had that range and depth. He tested her, moving up the scale, changing the groove, even throwing her a sudden key change. She took it all with a serene smile, bobbing her head, eyes closed, adjusting perfectly. Her voice never wavered.
After a few numbers, the band took a break, and Jimmy Jay bought her a whiskey. As he passed her the drink, he noticed the contrast between her face, soft and round, and her eyes, dark and penetrating. Her name was Inez Youngblood, she said, and she’d just moved here from Tennessee. She was part Cherokee, once upon a time, but mostly mountain white.
“A hillbilly?” Jimmy Jay joked.
She threw him a dazzling smile that made his insides melt. “A hillbilly who sings the Blues.”
“Why Chicago?”
“I listen to the radio. Chicago Blues is happy Blues. You got Muddy Waters. Etta James. Chess Records. Everybody’s here. Sweeping you up with their music. There just ain’t no other place to sing.” Those dark eyes bored into him. “And I got to sing.”
By their third drink, he began to imagine the curves underneath that red dress, and what she looked like without it on. She had to know what he was thinking, because she smiled and started to finger a gold cross around her neck. Still, she didn’t seem put off. More like she was teasing him.
Another set and half a reefer later, a fight broke out in the back of the bar. Inez, who was singing “Wang, Dang, Doodle” took it in stride, even when knives glinted and someone pulled out a piece. She just pointed to the fighters, asked the bartender to shine a spot in their direction, and leveled them with a hard look. The brawl moved into the alley. Jimmy Jay was impressed.
It was almost dawn when they quit playing. Someone bought a last round of drinks, and Jimmy Jay was just thinking about packing up when Inez came over.
“You’re pretty damn good, Jimmy Jay.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Hillbilly. You got a set of pipes yourself.”
She laughed. “We ought to do this again.”
Jimmy Jay suppressed his elation. “I could probably get us a couple of gigs.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He nodded, just looking at her, not quite believing his good fortune.
She offered him a slow sensual smile. “Meanwhile, I got a favor to ask you, baby.”
Jimmy Jay cleared his throat. “Yeah?” His voice cracked anyway.
She turned around, and lifted her hair off the back of her neck. “Help me take off my cross.”
She ended up in his bed that night. And the next. And the night after that. She might only have been 18, but she was all heat and fire. All he had to do was touch her and she shivered with pleasure. When he ran his fingers slowly up her leg, starting at that perfectly shaped ankle, past her knee, stopping at the soft, pliant skin of her thigh, she would moan and grab him and pull him into her. Sliding underneath, rocking him hard, like she couldn’t get enough.
“You are my sweet man,” she would whisper when they stopped, exhausted and sweaty. “My sweet, sweet man.”
***
They were a team for almost ten years. Inez, the hillbilly, soaring like an angel in one number, moaning like a whore in another; and Jimmy Jay, steadfast and sturdy, setting the beat, making her look good. Inez drove herself hard, and her sophistication grew. Her timing was impeccable. She rolled with the band, but could carry the show. If someone missed a chord, she covered them, and if they messed up their solo, she’d make light of it by singing scat, humming a chorus, or talking to the crowd.
Before long they were headlining at places like the Macomba before it burned down, South Side Johnny’s, and Queenie’s. Their only disagreement was over Chess Records and the two white owners who wanted to sign them. Jimmy Jay was all for it -- not only did his idol Willie Dixon work for Chess, but a record contract was something he’d dreamed about all his life. Inez kept saying they should hold out for a better deal. So far they had.
Even Calvin’s arrival didn’t slow them down. Calvin was a good baby who turned into a good boy. The same face and nappy hair as his Daddy; the high cheekbones and coffee-with-cream skin from his Mama. Inez seemed thrilled. She cooed and sang to him all day, but if Jimmy Jay figured she might retire, he figured wrong. Calvin came with them to the clubs on the South and west side, even to Peoria and East St. Louis. They’d bring blankets and put him to sleep in the back room on a ratty sofa, sometimes the floor. When he was older, Jimmy Jay or Inez would drop him off at school before they went to bed themselves. Jimmy Jay didn’t mind. His own mama had brought him to all the Blues joints.
Inez started calling them both her sweet men. Jimmy Jay would grin. They were happy. Real happy. Until the gig at Theresa’s.
***
It was late autumn, and a chilly rain had been falling for two days, flooding the viaducts and lots of basements. Jimmy Jay and Inez were headlining at Theresa’s Lounge on South Indiana. The place wasn’t as upscale or as large as Macomba’s, and the regulars, mostly people from the neighborhood, treated the place like home, dancing and talking with the players during the set. Tonight the smell of wet wool mixed with the smoke and booze and sweat.
A promoter from Capitol Records was in town and supposedly coming down that night. Inez was excited -- Capitol was huge, much bigger than Chess. Jimmy Jay was glad he’d talked a new lead guitar into playing the gig with them. Buddy Guy had just come up from Baton Rouge, and everyone was saying he was gonna change the face of the Blues.
It was a knockout performance. No one missed a chord and the solos kicked. There were no amp or mike problems. Jimmy Jay and the drummer locked into a tight groove, and Buddy Guy’s guitar was by turns brash, angry, and soulful. Inez’s voice was as rich and mellow as thick honey. Even with the lousy weather, the place was packed, everyone swaying, dancing, bobbing their heads. It was like great sex, Jimmy Jay thought. Hot, sticky sex that trembled and throbbed and built, and ended in a long, fiery climax.
During the break, a white guy came up to the stage. He’d been at one of the back tables, smoking cigarettes. With his baby face and eager expression, he couldn’t have been much older than Jimmy Jay. But his tailored suit and hair, slicked back with Bryl Crème, said he was trying to look well-off. He bought the band a round of drinks and nodded to Jimmy Jay. Then he turned to Inez and started talking quietly but earnestly. She looked from him to Jimmy Jay, then back at him. When she nodded, he took her hand and covered it with thick fingers. She didn’t pull away. After the next set, Jimmy Jay caught them talking behind his back. By the last set, Inez was favoring him with the same smile she’d shot Jimmy Jay the first night at Macomba’s ten years ago.
By the time Inez left town with him a week later, the rain had changed to snow. Jimmy Jay went to fetch Calvin at school. When he got back, she was gone. At first he thought she was at the store, picking up something for dinner, but when she didn’t come home by six, an uneasy feeling swept over him. He checked the closet and drawers. Most of her things were gone. Except her gold cross.
Word got around that she’d run away with Billy Sykes. He hadn’t worked for Capitol, it turned out. He did work in the record business, but dropped out of sight after he shorted some men who’d been financing a label with mob money. He reappeared a year later as a promoter. No one could say who his clients were.
That winter Jimmy Jay sat for hours on the bed, running Inez’s gold cross and chain through his fingers. His mother moved in to look after Calvin who, at nine, was just old enough to realize his world had shattered. Word filtered back -- someone had seen her in Peoria, someone else heard she was in Iowa. Jimmy Jay tried to play, but he sounded tired and flat. Inez was inextricably bound up in his music and his life; with her gone, it felt like part of his body – worse, his soul -- had shriveled up and fallen off.
One day Calvin came in and saw him on the bed, fingering the cross with tears in his eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy.” He came over and gave Jimmy Jay a hug. “I know what to do.”
Jimmy Jay gazed at his son.
“Mama just got lost. She don’t know how to get home. All we got to do is find her.”
Jimmy Jay smiled sadly. “I don’t think she wants to come home, boy.”
“Granny says every mama wants to come home. All we needs do is find her. Once she sees us, it’ll be just fine. I know it. ”
Jimmy Jay tried to discourage him, but Calvin clung to his idea like a leach to a man’s skin. He talked so much about finding his lost mama that after a while, his intensity infected Jimmy Jay. Could it really be that simple? Maybe Calvin was right. Sure Inez wanted to be a star, but she had a family. If they went after her, maybe she would realize what she’d given up and come home.
The following spring Billy Sykes brought Inez back to Chicago for a show on the West side – no one on the South side would book her. She was singing with some musicians from St. Louis, Jimmy Jay learned. They were staying at the Lincoln hotel, a small shabby place near the club.
Jimmy Jay waited until Calvin was home from school and had his supper. Then they both dressed in their Sunday best and took the bus to the hotel. Jimmy Jay slipped an old man at the desk a fiver and asked which room Inez Rollins was in. The man pointed up the steps. Jimmy Jay and Calvin climbed to the third floor and knocked on #315.
A tired female voice replied, “Yes?”
“It’s me, Inez. And Calvin.”
The door opened and suddenly Inez was there, her body framed in the light.
“Mama!” Calvin ran into her arms.
Her face lit, and she clasped Calvin so tight the boy could hardly suck in a breath. When she finally released him, she turned to Jimmy Jay.
“Hello, Jimmy Jay.”
She looked washed-out, Jimmy Jay thought, although it gave him no pleasure to see it. Gaunt and nervous, too. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and her black mane of hair wasn’t glossy. He thought he saw a bruise on her cheek, but she kept finger-combing her hair over the spot.
“Hello, Inez.” He looked around. “Where’s Sykes?”
“He’s at the club. Getting ready for tonight.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. He got right to the point. “We want you to come home. We are a family. Calvin needs you. So do I.”
At least she had the decency to look ashamed. Her eyes filled. She gazed at Jimmy Jay, then Calvin. Then she shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Remember what I told you the first time we met?”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“I need to sing, Jimmy Jay. And Billy’s gonna make me a star.”
Jimmy Jay saw the determination on her face, as raw as the first time he’d met her. His heart cracked, but he struggled to conceal his grief. He might have lost her, but Calvin didn’t have to. “Take the boy. He needs his mama. I’ll – I’ll pay you for him, ‘ifin you want.”
“I’ll think about it.” Inez looked down at Calvin, trailed her fingers through his hair, and smiled. Calvin snuggled closer. “I’ll talk to Billy when he gets back.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “I’ll leave the boy with you. I’ll pick him up at the club when you start your gig. We can talk more.”
Inez looked sad but grateful. Calvin looked thrilled.
***
Two hours later, the band had finished setting up but there was no sign of Inez. Or Billy Sykes. Or Calvin. Jimmy Jay saw the uneasiness on the musicians’ faces, heard one of them say, “Where are those damn fools?”
He retraced his steps to the Lincoln Hotel.
No one was behind the desk when Jimmy Jay got there. He went up the stairs and down the hall. Music blared out from Inez’s room. The radio. Benny Goodman’s orchestra, he thought. He was about to knock on the door when he saw something move at the other end of the hall. Something small. He wheeled around and squinted.
“Calvin? Is that you?”
The figure trotted toward him. Calvin, looking small and lonely.
“What you doin’ out here, son? Where’s your mama?”
Calvin didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“Is she inside?” Jimmy Jay pointed to the door.
Calvin nodded.
“Is Sykes back?”
Calvin nodded again.
Jimmy Jay turned back to the door, leaned his ear against it. The music was loud. He knocked. No one answered. Probably couldn’t hear him above the music. He knocked again, and when no one responded, started to push against the door.
“Inez, Sykes…. Open up!”
Nothing. Except the music.
Jimmy Jay looked both ways down the hall, then threw his weight against the door. It almost gave. He backed up, turned sideways, and rammed himself against it again. This time the door gave, and Jimmy Jay burst into the room.
***
He was still holding the gun when the police arrived. Inez’s body was at the foot of the bed, but Sykes’ was half way to the door. A pool of blood was congealing under each of them.
1982: Chicago
Three weeks later, Jimmy Jay no longer had the strength to get out of bed. Calvin was putting in twelve-hour days. He knew it was an excuse for not dealing with his father, but he couldn’t bear to come home to a place where death hovered in the air.
One night, though, was different. As he trudged inside, Calvin heard music from upstairs. And laughter. When he climbed the steps, he saw that Jeanine had moved their stereo into Jimmy Jay’s room. An old album revolved on the turntable. His father was in bed, eyes closed, snapping his fingers. Jeanine was sitting in the chair smiling too, her head bobbing to the music. Calvin peered at the album cover. Chess Records. Muddy Waters.
His father opened his eyes. “Hey, Calvin.” His face was wreathed in smiles. “There ain’t nothing like Muddy for an old soul. With Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf on back up. Lord, it makes me see the gates of heaven.”
“Don’t talk that way, Dad.”
Jimmy Jay dismissed him with a wave of his hand. When the song came to an end, Calvin lifted the needle and turned off the stereo. Jeanine went downstairs, claiming dishes that needed to be washed.
“Calvin,” his father said, “We can’t put it off no more. It’s time to talk about the arrangements.”
Calvin stiffened. He dug in his pocket for his Luckys, pulled one out and lit it. He sat in the chair. “I don’t know why you want to be buried there.”
His father eyed him. “She was my wife, Calvin. And your mama.”
“She was white trash!” Calvin exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “White trailer trash.”
“Don’t you ever talk that way ‘bout your mama!” His father’s voice was unexpectedly strong. “And she was from the mountains of Tennessee, boy,” his father added. “The Smoky Mountains.”
But Calvin wasn’t mollified. “She ran out on us. You and me. She left us. And for what?”
His father just looked at him. Then he turned his head toward the window. “She was my woman,” he said quietly, his burst of energy now dissipated. “And I was her sweet man.”
Calvin felt his stomach pitch. The black hole was opening up again, and all he wanted to do was jump in and let it consume him. He stubbed out his cigarette, letting the window fan clear the smoke. Jeanine ran it all the time, even though it didn’t do much cooling. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead .
“I still miss her, son.”
Calvin swallowed. “Pop, don’t.”
“I ain’t got no regrets.” His father said. “At now, in a little while, if the good Lord is willin’, I’ll see her again.”
Calvin’s throat got hot. He felt tears gather at the back of his eyes. He tried to blink them away hoping his father wouldn’t notice. But he did.
“Why you crying, Calvin? You’re a good son. And Jeanine is a good woman. She been taking good care of me.”
“It’s not that.” The words spilled out.
His father cocked his head. The slight movement seemed to require more energy than he could muster.
“I – I got to tell you something.”
His father’s body might be wasted, but his soul seemed to expand. His eyes grew huge, taking over his entire face. “What’s that, son?”
The black hole widened. Calvin had to take the plunge. “That – that night...” Calvin’s words were heavy and sluggish, as if the hole was already sucking him down. “The night mama died ….” Calvin whispered. “It was my fault. I killed Mama.”
An odd look registered on Jimmy Jay’s face.
“After you left …” Calvin’s voice was flat and hard.“… Mama sang to me. And hugged me. It felt – so good... So right.”
“Your mama had the voice of an angel.”
Calvin held his hand up to stop him. “Then Billy Sykes come back. He was pissed when he saw me. ‘What’s that kid doing here?’ He yelled. He and Mama -- well, she told him she wanted to take me with them. Sykes wouldn’t have none of it. ‘Are you crazy?” He said. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re a hillbilly. And part Injun. I ain’t taking your nigger kid, too. Get rid of him.’
“Mama begged him. ‘He won’t be no trouble,’ she kept saying and looked at me. “Will you, sweet man?”
“But Sykes kept saying no. ‘I put too much of my money in you to throw it away. What are people gonna think when they see you with a nigger kid?’
“Mama and me were on the bed. She was hugging me real tight. ‘I want my son,’ she said.
“’He’ll be in the way,’ Sykes said. “You want to be a star? You got to make a choice. Me or the kid.’”
Jimmy Jay didn’t say anything.
Calvin shuddered. “Mama said, ‘Don’t make me do that. I’m his Mama!’”
“’Then I’ll make the choice for you.’ Sykes says. And he pulls out a gun and aims it at my head.’” Calvin looked at the floor.
“What happened then, son?” Jimmy Jay asked, his voice almost as flat as Calvin’s.
Calvin covered his eyes with his hand. “Mama got up from the bed. She looked scared. ‘All right. All right. Put that gun away, Billy. I’ll send Calvin back to his Daddy. Just put the gun away. Before someone gets hurt.’ Then she looked from me to Sykes. She didn’t say nothing more.”
Calvin pressed his lips together. He couldn’t look at his father, but he knew his father was staring at him.
“Sykes started to put the gun away, but then -- I don’t know, Pop -- something came over me. I jumped up and tackled Sykes. Right there in the room.” He hesitated. “The gun went off. And Mama dropped off the end of the bed. Just dropped dead right in front of me.”
His father whispered. “And then?”
“Sykes was like a crazy man. It was like he couldn’t believe what happened. He started screaming, first at mama. Kept telling her to get up and stop foolin’ around. But she didn’t, Pop. She never got up.” Calvin’s voice cracked. “Then he dropped the gun and started for the door. He was gonna take off! Just leave her there.” Calvin paused again. “I just couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. When he was half way to the door, I picked up the gun and shot him in the back.”
Calvin felt tears streaming down his face.
Jimmy Jay, his eyes veiled, let out a quiet breath. Calvin heard the hum of traffic through the window above the fan.
After a long time, Calvin said haltingly, “I guess it’s time to go to the police.”
“You won’t do nothing of the kind, son.” His father raised himself on one elbow. “I already done the time. For both of us. And…” His features softened. “…I figured out what happened a long time ago.”
“You knew?” Calvin’s stomach turned over. “How?”
“There was no way your mama could do anything to hurt you. Or you her. I knew it had to be an accident. At least with her. And Sykes… well…” Jimmy Jay shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“You knew? All these years?” Calvin felt his features contort with anguish. “I killed them, and you took the rap for me?”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “And I’d do it all over again.”
Calvin searched his father’s face for an explanation. The silence pressed in.
“You were just a boy,” Jimmy Jay finally said, gazing at him with an expression of infinite sadness, compassion, and love. “I done the time for you both…so you would grow up and turn into her sweet man. Now…” He paused. “We got to get back to that plannin.’ The Lord ‘ll be givin’ Inez back her other sweet man, and I need to be ready. We still got a lot of music to make together.”
X X X X
“Who’s Gonna Be Your Sweet Man When I’m gone?
Who you gonna have to love you?”
...Muddy Waters
1982: Chicago
Calvin waited for the man who’d been convicted of killing his mother. Outside Joliet prison the July heat seared his spirit, leaving it as bare and desiccated as a sun-bleached bone. Sweat ringed his arm pits, grit coated the back of his neck. Almost noon, and not a shadow on anything.
He extracted a Lucky from the crumpled pack on the dash and leaned forward to light it. The ‘74 Chevy Caprice never failed to start up. As long as he kept enough fluid in the radiator, the engine ate up the highway without complaint. Even the lighter worked.
He took a nervous drag. He hadn’t seen his father in fifteen years. His granny had made him come when he graduated high school to show him that Calvin had amounted to something, after all. Calvin remembered clutching his diploma in the visitors’ room, sliding it out of the manila envelope, edging nervously up to the glass window that separated them. He held it up against the glass, hating the sour smell of the place, the chipped paint on the walls, the fact that he had to be there at all. He remembered how his father nodded. No smile. No “atta boy – you done good.” Just a lukewarm nod. Calvin imagined a yawning hole opening up on the floor, right then and there, a hole he could sink into and disappear.
Now, the black metal gates swung open, and a withered man emerged. Calvin was still wiping sweat off his face, but his father was wearing a long sleeved shirt and beige canvas pants. Even from a distance, his father looked smaller than he remembered. Frailer. The cancer that was consuming him, that had triggered his early release, was working its way through his body. He walked slowly, stooped over. His skin, a few shades lighter than the rich chocolate it once was, looked paper-thin, and he blinked like he hadn’t been in sunlight for years. Maybe he hadn’t. His father looked around, then spotted Calvin in the Caprice. He nodded, took his time coming over.
Calvin slid out of the car, tossed his cigarette on the dirt, and ground it out with his foot.
“Hello, Calvin…”
Calvin returned his greeting with a nod of his own. Cautious. Polite.
“Appreciate you coming to get me, son.”
A muscle in Calvin’s gut twitched. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had called him “son.” “Son” was a word that belonged in the movies or TV, not in real life. Calvin gestured to the gym bag his father was carrying. “Let me take that.”
His father held it out. Calvin threw it in the back seat. His father stood at the passenger door but made no effort to open it. Calvin frowned, then realized his father was waiting for permission. Twenty-five years in prison did that to a man. “Just open the door and get in.”
His father shot him a look, half-embarrassed, half-grateful, and slid into the car. Calvin waited until his father was settled, then started the engine. As they pulled away from Joliet, he said, “Thought we’d go back to my place.”
“You still in Englewood?”
“Hyde Park now. Got ourselves a house near 47th and Cottage Grove.”
His father’s eyebrows arched. “Well, that’s mighty fine.”
“Jeanine fixed it up nice. Even got a little garden out back. She’s a good girl.”
His father didn’t seem to notice. He should have. It was Jeanine who shamed him into picking him up in the first place.
“He’s dying, Calvin” she’d said. “And he’s paid his dues. Twenty-five years of ‘em.”
Now his father turned to him. “How’s that job coming?”
“What job?” Calvin made his way back to the highway.
“The one you was talking about when you come to see me. Janitorial supplies.”
“I opened my own company six years ago. I got five people working for me now.”
“Well that’s mighty fine, son. Mighty fine.”
But it didn’t feel fine. It felt false. Calvin imagined that black hole opening up even wider. That was why he never wrote or visited his father, except for the Christmas card Jeanine made him sign every year. Any time he thought about him, even a stray fragment, the night his mother was murdered flooded back into his mind. He couldn’t help it. Better not to think about it at all, his granny would say. “Just go on and live your own life.”
But Granny was dead, and the people at Joliet called him when they found the cancer. Calvin stole a glance at his father. He was quiet. Just staring out at the road, a dreamy look on his face. Calvin remembered that look. His father’s body might be in the front seat, but his mind was miles away. Calvin knew he was thinking about his mother.
He tightened his grip on the wheel. How dare he? “So… You feelin’ okay?”
His father pulled his gaze in and looked at Calvin. “For the days I got left, I’m doing jes’ fine.”
Calvin turned onto the interstate. “You sure? Jeanine talked to our doctor. He can see you tomorrow if you want.”
His father gave him a sad little smile. “Appreciate it son, but don’t go to no trouble.” His father went back to looking out the window. Calvin turned on the radio. The all news station was blaring out something about Israeli troops in Lebanon. His father didn’t react, just kept gazing out. He seemed somehow smaller, less distinct than he’d been just ten minutes ago. Like his shadow was slowly fading from black to gray. At this rate he might disappear altogether.
Calvin snapped off the radio. For a while the whine of the air conditioning was the only sound in the car. Lulled by the air blowing through the vents and the rhythm of his wheels on the highway, Calvin was startled by the abruptness of his father’s voice.
“You start making the arrangements?”
Calvin cleared his throat just loud enough. “Not yet.” He wasn’t sure what to expect. Would his father lay into him? Cuss him out?
But all his father did was to wave a weak hand. “I guess I got to do it myself.”
“Why don’t we talk about it later?”
His father’s shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. “I ain’t got many laters, son.”
***
1950’s: Chicago
The hot breath of the blues kissed Jimmy Jay Rollins when he was little, leaving him hungering for more. His mama -- he never knew his daddy – took him to church in the morning and the blues joints at night. By the time he was seven, he was playing guitar licks with whoever his “uncle” of the moment happened to be, and by the time he left school at 16, he knew he wanted to play bass guitar.
The bass wasn’t as flashy as the electric slide guitar of Little Ed or Muddy Waters, but it was the glue that held everything together. No one could play a 12-bar chorus without him; no one could start a lick or riff. The bass was there through every number, from beginning to end, setting the pace. Steady. Unrelenting. The lead guitar, saxophone, even the drummer could take a break; not so the bass. Willie Dixon became Jimmy Jay’s personal hero.
By day, Jimmy Jay worked in a steel factory near Lake Calumet, but at night, he bounced around playing gigs on the South side. You could smell stale cigarette smoke and yesterday’s beer in the air, spot a few guns and knives if you looked real close. But none of that mattered when the music started. The Blues flowed through his veins, transporting him to a place where he could let go, soar above the world, tethered only by an electric guitar, wailing horn, or harmonica riff.
He was jamming at the open mike set in the Macomba Lounge one hot summer night, a thick cloud of smoke, perfume, and sweat choking the air, when a wisp of a girl – she couldn’t have been more than 18 -- came up to the stage. She was wearing a red dress that skimmed her body just right. A curtain of black hair shimmered down to her waist, and her skin looked pale blue in the light. She tentatively took the mike and asked them to play in G, then launched into a bluesy version of “Mean to Me,” an old Billie Holiday song.
By the middle of the second verse, people set their glasses down, stubbed out their cigarettes, and a hush fell over the room. Her voice was raw and unpolished but full of surprises. At first a sultry alto, she could hit the high notes in a silver soprano, then dip two octaves down to belt out the Blues like a tenor. At first he thought it was a fluke – no one had that range and depth. He tested her, moving up the scale, changing the groove, even throwing her a sudden key change. She took it all with a serene smile, bobbing her head, eyes closed, adjusting perfectly. Her voice never wavered.
After a few numbers, the band took a break, and Jimmy Jay bought her a whiskey. As he passed her the drink, he noticed the contrast between her face, soft and round, and her eyes, dark and penetrating. Her name was Inez Youngblood, she said, and she’d just moved here from Tennessee. She was part Cherokee, once upon a time, but mostly mountain white.
“A hillbilly?” Jimmy Jay joked.
She threw him a dazzling smile that made his insides melt. “A hillbilly who sings the Blues.”
“Why Chicago?”
“I listen to the radio. Chicago Blues is happy Blues. You got Muddy Waters. Etta James. Chess Records. Everybody’s here. Sweeping you up with their music. There just ain’t no other place to sing.” Those dark eyes bored into him. “And I got to sing.”
By their third drink, he began to imagine the curves underneath that red dress, and what she looked like without it on. She had to know what he was thinking, because she smiled and started to finger a gold cross around her neck. Still, she didn’t seem put off. More like she was teasing him.
Another set and half a reefer later, a fight broke out in the back of the bar. Inez, who was singing “Wang, Dang, Doodle” took it in stride, even when knives glinted and someone pulled out a piece. She just pointed to the fighters, asked the bartender to shine a spot in their direction, and leveled them with a hard look. The brawl moved into the alley. Jimmy Jay was impressed.
It was almost dawn when they quit playing. Someone bought a last round of drinks, and Jimmy Jay was just thinking about packing up when Inez came over.
“You’re pretty damn good, Jimmy Jay.”
He grinned. “Thanks, Hillbilly. You got a set of pipes yourself.”
She laughed. “We ought to do this again.”
Jimmy Jay suppressed his elation. “I could probably get us a couple of gigs.”
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He nodded, just looking at her, not quite believing his good fortune.
She offered him a slow sensual smile. “Meanwhile, I got a favor to ask you, baby.”
Jimmy Jay cleared his throat. “Yeah?” His voice cracked anyway.
She turned around, and lifted her hair off the back of her neck. “Help me take off my cross.”
She ended up in his bed that night. And the next. And the night after that. She might only have been 18, but she was all heat and fire. All he had to do was touch her and she shivered with pleasure. When he ran his fingers slowly up her leg, starting at that perfectly shaped ankle, past her knee, stopping at the soft, pliant skin of her thigh, she would moan and grab him and pull him into her. Sliding underneath, rocking him hard, like she couldn’t get enough.
“You are my sweet man,” she would whisper when they stopped, exhausted and sweaty. “My sweet, sweet man.”
***
They were a team for almost ten years. Inez, the hillbilly, soaring like an angel in one number, moaning like a whore in another; and Jimmy Jay, steadfast and sturdy, setting the beat, making her look good. Inez drove herself hard, and her sophistication grew. Her timing was impeccable. She rolled with the band, but could carry the show. If someone missed a chord, she covered them, and if they messed up their solo, she’d make light of it by singing scat, humming a chorus, or talking to the crowd.
Before long they were headlining at places like the Macomba before it burned down, South Side Johnny’s, and Queenie’s. Their only disagreement was over Chess Records and the two white owners who wanted to sign them. Jimmy Jay was all for it -- not only did his idol Willie Dixon work for Chess, but a record contract was something he’d dreamed about all his life. Inez kept saying they should hold out for a better deal. So far they had.
Even Calvin’s arrival didn’t slow them down. Calvin was a good baby who turned into a good boy. The same face and nappy hair as his Daddy; the high cheekbones and coffee-with-cream skin from his Mama. Inez seemed thrilled. She cooed and sang to him all day, but if Jimmy Jay figured she might retire, he figured wrong. Calvin came with them to the clubs on the South and west side, even to Peoria and East St. Louis. They’d bring blankets and put him to sleep in the back room on a ratty sofa, sometimes the floor. When he was older, Jimmy Jay or Inez would drop him off at school before they went to bed themselves. Jimmy Jay didn’t mind. His own mama had brought him to all the Blues joints.
Inez started calling them both her sweet men. Jimmy Jay would grin. They were happy. Real happy. Until the gig at Theresa’s.
***
It was late autumn, and a chilly rain had been falling for two days, flooding the viaducts and lots of basements. Jimmy Jay and Inez were headlining at Theresa’s Lounge on South Indiana. The place wasn’t as upscale or as large as Macomba’s, and the regulars, mostly people from the neighborhood, treated the place like home, dancing and talking with the players during the set. Tonight the smell of wet wool mixed with the smoke and booze and sweat.
A promoter from Capitol Records was in town and supposedly coming down that night. Inez was excited -- Capitol was huge, much bigger than Chess. Jimmy Jay was glad he’d talked a new lead guitar into playing the gig with them. Buddy Guy had just come up from Baton Rouge, and everyone was saying he was gonna change the face of the Blues.
It was a knockout performance. No one missed a chord and the solos kicked. There were no amp or mike problems. Jimmy Jay and the drummer locked into a tight groove, and Buddy Guy’s guitar was by turns brash, angry, and soulful. Inez’s voice was as rich and mellow as thick honey. Even with the lousy weather, the place was packed, everyone swaying, dancing, bobbing their heads. It was like great sex, Jimmy Jay thought. Hot, sticky sex that trembled and throbbed and built, and ended in a long, fiery climax.
During the break, a white guy came up to the stage. He’d been at one of the back tables, smoking cigarettes. With his baby face and eager expression, he couldn’t have been much older than Jimmy Jay. But his tailored suit and hair, slicked back with Bryl Crème, said he was trying to look well-off. He bought the band a round of drinks and nodded to Jimmy Jay. Then he turned to Inez and started talking quietly but earnestly. She looked from him to Jimmy Jay, then back at him. When she nodded, he took her hand and covered it with thick fingers. She didn’t pull away. After the next set, Jimmy Jay caught them talking behind his back. By the last set, Inez was favoring him with the same smile she’d shot Jimmy Jay the first night at Macomba’s ten years ago.
By the time Inez left town with him a week later, the rain had changed to snow. Jimmy Jay went to fetch Calvin at school. When he got back, she was gone. At first he thought she was at the store, picking up something for dinner, but when she didn’t come home by six, an uneasy feeling swept over him. He checked the closet and drawers. Most of her things were gone. Except her gold cross.
Word got around that she’d run away with Billy Sykes. He hadn’t worked for Capitol, it turned out. He did work in the record business, but dropped out of sight after he shorted some men who’d been financing a label with mob money. He reappeared a year later as a promoter. No one could say who his clients were.
That winter Jimmy Jay sat for hours on the bed, running Inez’s gold cross and chain through his fingers. His mother moved in to look after Calvin who, at nine, was just old enough to realize his world had shattered. Word filtered back -- someone had seen her in Peoria, someone else heard she was in Iowa. Jimmy Jay tried to play, but he sounded tired and flat. Inez was inextricably bound up in his music and his life; with her gone, it felt like part of his body – worse, his soul -- had shriveled up and fallen off.
One day Calvin came in and saw him on the bed, fingering the cross with tears in his eyes.
“Don’t be sad, Daddy.” He came over and gave Jimmy Jay a hug. “I know what to do.”
Jimmy Jay gazed at his son.
“Mama just got lost. She don’t know how to get home. All we got to do is find her.”
Jimmy Jay smiled sadly. “I don’t think she wants to come home, boy.”
“Granny says every mama wants to come home. All we needs do is find her. Once she sees us, it’ll be just fine. I know it. ”
Jimmy Jay tried to discourage him, but Calvin clung to his idea like a leach to a man’s skin. He talked so much about finding his lost mama that after a while, his intensity infected Jimmy Jay. Could it really be that simple? Maybe Calvin was right. Sure Inez wanted to be a star, but she had a family. If they went after her, maybe she would realize what she’d given up and come home.
The following spring Billy Sykes brought Inez back to Chicago for a show on the West side – no one on the South side would book her. She was singing with some musicians from St. Louis, Jimmy Jay learned. They were staying at the Lincoln hotel, a small shabby place near the club.
Jimmy Jay waited until Calvin was home from school and had his supper. Then they both dressed in their Sunday best and took the bus to the hotel. Jimmy Jay slipped an old man at the desk a fiver and asked which room Inez Rollins was in. The man pointed up the steps. Jimmy Jay and Calvin climbed to the third floor and knocked on #315.
A tired female voice replied, “Yes?”
“It’s me, Inez. And Calvin.”
The door opened and suddenly Inez was there, her body framed in the light.
“Mama!” Calvin ran into her arms.
Her face lit, and she clasped Calvin so tight the boy could hardly suck in a breath. When she finally released him, she turned to Jimmy Jay.
“Hello, Jimmy Jay.”
She looked washed-out, Jimmy Jay thought, although it gave him no pleasure to see it. Gaunt and nervous, too. Her eyes were rimmed in red, and her black mane of hair wasn’t glossy. He thought he saw a bruise on her cheek, but she kept finger-combing her hair over the spot.
“Hello, Inez.” He looked around. “Where’s Sykes?”
“He’s at the club. Getting ready for tonight.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. He got right to the point. “We want you to come home. We are a family. Calvin needs you. So do I.”
At least she had the decency to look ashamed. Her eyes filled. She gazed at Jimmy Jay, then Calvin. Then she shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Remember what I told you the first time we met?”
“You told me a lot of things.”
“I need to sing, Jimmy Jay. And Billy’s gonna make me a star.”
Jimmy Jay saw the determination on her face, as raw as the first time he’d met her. His heart cracked, but he struggled to conceal his grief. He might have lost her, but Calvin didn’t have to. “Take the boy. He needs his mama. I’ll – I’ll pay you for him, ‘ifin you want.”
“I’ll think about it.” Inez looked down at Calvin, trailed her fingers through his hair, and smiled. Calvin snuggled closer. “I’ll talk to Billy when he gets back.”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “I’ll leave the boy with you. I’ll pick him up at the club when you start your gig. We can talk more.”
Inez looked sad but grateful. Calvin looked thrilled.
***
Two hours later, the band had finished setting up but there was no sign of Inez. Or Billy Sykes. Or Calvin. Jimmy Jay saw the uneasiness on the musicians’ faces, heard one of them say, “Where are those damn fools?”
He retraced his steps to the Lincoln Hotel.
No one was behind the desk when Jimmy Jay got there. He went up the stairs and down the hall. Music blared out from Inez’s room. The radio. Benny Goodman’s orchestra, he thought. He was about to knock on the door when he saw something move at the other end of the hall. Something small. He wheeled around and squinted.
“Calvin? Is that you?”
The figure trotted toward him. Calvin, looking small and lonely.
“What you doin’ out here, son? Where’s your mama?”
Calvin didn’t say anything, just shrugged.
“Is she inside?” Jimmy Jay pointed to the door.
Calvin nodded.
“Is Sykes back?”
Calvin nodded again.
Jimmy Jay turned back to the door, leaned his ear against it. The music was loud. He knocked. No one answered. Probably couldn’t hear him above the music. He knocked again, and when no one responded, started to push against the door.
“Inez, Sykes…. Open up!”
Nothing. Except the music.
Jimmy Jay looked both ways down the hall, then threw his weight against the door. It almost gave. He backed up, turned sideways, and rammed himself against it again. This time the door gave, and Jimmy Jay burst into the room.
***
He was still holding the gun when the police arrived. Inez’s body was at the foot of the bed, but Sykes’ was half way to the door. A pool of blood was congealing under each of them.
1982: Chicago
Three weeks later, Jimmy Jay no longer had the strength to get out of bed. Calvin was putting in twelve-hour days. He knew it was an excuse for not dealing with his father, but he couldn’t bear to come home to a place where death hovered in the air.
One night, though, was different. As he trudged inside, Calvin heard music from upstairs. And laughter. When he climbed the steps, he saw that Jeanine had moved their stereo into Jimmy Jay’s room. An old album revolved on the turntable. His father was in bed, eyes closed, snapping his fingers. Jeanine was sitting in the chair smiling too, her head bobbing to the music. Calvin peered at the album cover. Chess Records. Muddy Waters.
His father opened his eyes. “Hey, Calvin.” His face was wreathed in smiles. “There ain’t nothing like Muddy for an old soul. With Willie Dixon and Howlin’ Wolf on back up. Lord, it makes me see the gates of heaven.”
“Don’t talk that way, Dad.”
Jimmy Jay dismissed him with a wave of his hand. When the song came to an end, Calvin lifted the needle and turned off the stereo. Jeanine went downstairs, claiming dishes that needed to be washed.
“Calvin,” his father said, “We can’t put it off no more. It’s time to talk about the arrangements.”
Calvin stiffened. He dug in his pocket for his Luckys, pulled one out and lit it. He sat in the chair. “I don’t know why you want to be buried there.”
His father eyed him. “She was my wife, Calvin. And your mama.”
“She was white trash!” Calvin exhaled a cloud of white smoke. “White trailer trash.”
“Don’t you ever talk that way ‘bout your mama!” His father’s voice was unexpectedly strong. “And she was from the mountains of Tennessee, boy,” his father added. “The Smoky Mountains.”
But Calvin wasn’t mollified. “She ran out on us. You and me. She left us. And for what?”
His father just looked at him. Then he turned his head toward the window. “She was my woman,” he said quietly, his burst of energy now dissipated. “And I was her sweet man.”
Calvin felt his stomach pitch. The black hole was opening up again, and all he wanted to do was jump in and let it consume him. He stubbed out his cigarette, letting the window fan clear the smoke. Jeanine ran it all the time, even though it didn’t do much cooling. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead .
“I still miss her, son.”
Calvin swallowed. “Pop, don’t.”
“I ain’t got no regrets.” His father said. “At now, in a little while, if the good Lord is willin’, I’ll see her again.”
Calvin’s throat got hot. He felt tears gather at the back of his eyes. He tried to blink them away hoping his father wouldn’t notice. But he did.
“Why you crying, Calvin? You’re a good son. And Jeanine is a good woman. She been taking good care of me.”
“It’s not that.” The words spilled out.
His father cocked his head. The slight movement seemed to require more energy than he could muster.
“I – I got to tell you something.”
His father’s body might be wasted, but his soul seemed to expand. His eyes grew huge, taking over his entire face. “What’s that, son?”
The black hole widened. Calvin had to take the plunge. “That – that night...” Calvin’s words were heavy and sluggish, as if the hole was already sucking him down. “The night mama died ….” Calvin whispered. “It was my fault. I killed Mama.”
An odd look registered on Jimmy Jay’s face.
“After you left …” Calvin’s voice was flat and hard.“… Mama sang to me. And hugged me. It felt – so good... So right.”
“Your mama had the voice of an angel.”
Calvin held his hand up to stop him. “Then Billy Sykes come back. He was pissed when he saw me. ‘What’s that kid doing here?’ He yelled. He and Mama -- well, she told him she wanted to take me with them. Sykes wouldn’t have none of it. ‘Are you crazy?” He said. ‘It’s bad enough that you’re a hillbilly. And part Injun. I ain’t taking your nigger kid, too. Get rid of him.’
“Mama begged him. ‘He won’t be no trouble,’ she kept saying and looked at me. “Will you, sweet man?”
“But Sykes kept saying no. ‘I put too much of my money in you to throw it away. What are people gonna think when they see you with a nigger kid?’
“Mama and me were on the bed. She was hugging me real tight. ‘I want my son,’ she said.
“’He’ll be in the way,’ Sykes said. “You want to be a star? You got to make a choice. Me or the kid.’”
Jimmy Jay didn’t say anything.
Calvin shuddered. “Mama said, ‘Don’t make me do that. I’m his Mama!’”
“’Then I’ll make the choice for you.’ Sykes says. And he pulls out a gun and aims it at my head.’” Calvin looked at the floor.
“What happened then, son?” Jimmy Jay asked, his voice almost as flat as Calvin’s.
Calvin covered his eyes with his hand. “Mama got up from the bed. She looked scared. ‘All right. All right. Put that gun away, Billy. I’ll send Calvin back to his Daddy. Just put the gun away. Before someone gets hurt.’ Then she looked from me to Sykes. She didn’t say nothing more.”
Calvin pressed his lips together. He couldn’t look at his father, but he knew his father was staring at him.
“Sykes started to put the gun away, but then -- I don’t know, Pop -- something came over me. I jumped up and tackled Sykes. Right there in the room.” He hesitated. “The gun went off. And Mama dropped off the end of the bed. Just dropped dead right in front of me.”
His father whispered. “And then?”
“Sykes was like a crazy man. It was like he couldn’t believe what happened. He started screaming, first at mama. Kept telling her to get up and stop foolin’ around. But she didn’t, Pop. She never got up.” Calvin’s voice cracked. “Then he dropped the gun and started for the door. He was gonna take off! Just leave her there.” Calvin paused again. “I just couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t. When he was half way to the door, I picked up the gun and shot him in the back.”
Calvin felt tears streaming down his face.
Jimmy Jay, his eyes veiled, let out a quiet breath. Calvin heard the hum of traffic through the window above the fan.
After a long time, Calvin said haltingly, “I guess it’s time to go to the police.”
“You won’t do nothing of the kind, son.” His father raised himself on one elbow. “I already done the time. For both of us. And…” His features softened. “…I figured out what happened a long time ago.”
“You knew?” Calvin’s stomach turned over. “How?”
“There was no way your mama could do anything to hurt you. Or you her. I knew it had to be an accident. At least with her. And Sykes… well…” Jimmy Jay shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“You knew? All these years?” Calvin felt his features contort with anguish. “I killed them, and you took the rap for me?”
Jimmy Jay nodded. “And I’d do it all over again.”
Calvin searched his father’s face for an explanation. The silence pressed in.
“You were just a boy,” Jimmy Jay finally said, gazing at him with an expression of infinite sadness, compassion, and love. “I done the time for you both…so you would grow up and turn into her sweet man. Now…” He paused. “We got to get back to that plannin.’ The Lord ‘ll be givin’ Inez back her other sweet man, and I need to be ready. We still got a lot of music to make together.”
X X X X
The Runt by Daniel Scott- written version
THE RUNT
Greeley and Dovanovich are smoking on the twelfth-floor terrace of a building on 38th Street. With a swiftness that belies his large size, Dovanovich lifts Greeley over his head and for a time it seems he will throw the smaller man over the guard rail to the street below. But he puts Greeley down again, saying it's all in fun. Immediately Greeley dashes inside and down the twelve flights of stairs. There’s no time to wait for the elevator.
In the lobby he meets the night security guard, Gordon, a black man with a Caribbean accent and a blue uniform that looks striking against his deep-colored skin. He knows Greeley is a janitor in the building. They have never really spoken beyond a nod and a hello when Greeley came in for his shift. But the janitor is so wild-eyed and breathing so hard that Gordon says, “What is it?”
“Upstairs.” He puts a hand on his heaving chest. “The guy I’m working with...I think he tried to kill me.”
“What? Who?”
“Dovanovich.” He hulks up his shoulders in an attempt to describe him. “Big guy,” he says. “Big chest.” His arms try to encompass the whole of the man. “Big,” he says.
Gordon blinks incomprehensibly. Apparently he doesn’t know who Greeley is talking about. But as a way of denoting the seriousness of the situation, he turns down the Caribbean music station he has on his radio and listens carefully.
The trip down the flights of stairs had been a terror-fueled blur. But now that he is in the lobby, beginning to breathe easier, Greeley wonders if maybe Dovanovich really had meant it as good-natured fun. After all, they had gone out to the terrace for a cigarette at Greeley’s suggestion. A law had recently been passed by the city making it a crime to smoke inside office buildings. It was true it was nighttime and he and Dovanovich were the only ones there, but all the janitors had been warned that any fines incurred would be taken out of their paychecks and Greeley feared the smell would linger into the morning.
He did not know Dovanovich well. While Greeley was a lifer -- he just marked ten years on the job -- Dovanovich had only been there a month or so. Greeley had seen a lot of workers come and go, and only a few stay on for any real length of time. It was not complicated work, but it could be exhausting and exhaustingly dull. His impression was that Dovanovich would not last half a year.
Out on the terrace, the new man accepted a cigarette with a smile. Alone, the terrace was not big; with Dovanovich, it was just a little too tight. The black metal guard rail rose to about the top of Greeley’s thigh. He was listening with interest to Dovanovich describing a wrestler he admired on TV when Greeley was suddenly grabbed and lifted into the air. It happened so quickly and with virtually no resistance from Greeley -- he instinctively sensed that any squirming on his part might well lead to his slipping from Dovanovich's grip. He went completely inert. He could not let go of his cigarette or the smoke he had sucked into his lungs just prior to being picked up.
Greeley was a small man. “Wiry” was the word often used. When she was angry his wife called him “you little runt.”
Suspended suddenly in the air, unable to hear Dovanovich, who was still speaking, he saw and heard the city as never before. Car horns were like stabs at the sky; the lights from far-off buildings wobbled as heat rose from below.
Then Dovanovich put him down. Seeing how rattled Greeley was, he assured him he meant no harm. But Greeley bolted.
Gordon listens carefully to the story, but in the end he does not know what to do about it, and he seems anxious to turn up his music again and return to the newspaper he brought with him.
Greeley goes out to the street to smoke a cigarette. When he finishes, he lights up another one. That one he tosses away before it’s done. He heads for the subway. His union contract affords him nine sick days a year and he has yet to take one.
He intends to go back to work the following night, but at the last minute he calls in sick. His wife, Lissette, seems angry to find him there when she comes in from her day job at an office-supply store downtown. She has grown used to having the apartment to herself nights. “What’s the matter with you?” she says.
“My head hurts.”
“You’re just sitting there watching TV.”
“So?”
“So you don’t look like your head hurts.”
The next day Greeley begins to imagine that his head really does hurt. He watches TV laid out on the couch, with a pillow from the bed and the extra blanket they keep in the hallway closet. But after Lissette goes to bed, he admits to himself that he’s faking. It’s a ruse to avoid having to work with Dovanovich again.
That night he falls asleep thinking he’ll go back to work the next night, but when the next night comes he just stays on the couch. It is Friday after all, and he could have Saturday and Sunday without wasting any more sick days. And he figures the longer he stays away, the longer Dovanovich will have to do a two-man job by himself and the more likely he will quit.
Lissette kneels next to him. “What is it, Runty? You’re really starting to scare me.”
“Don’t be scared. I’m alright.”
“I think you should go to a doctor.”
He shakes his head and assures her again that he’s alright. In the course of the weekend she suspects his goldbricking, he thinks, but she doesn’t say anything about it. She hasn’t even complained about his taking up the couch. She sits in the big rocking chair to watch TV with him. She makes him soup. She gets aspirin when he asks for it. She can be nice, he thinks, when she wants to be.
Late Sunday night he gets up to go to the bathroom and is shocked by his image in the mirror. His skin looks yellow and there are dark rings around his eyes. He believes that his ribs are more visible than usual. He steps on the bathroom scale. He is several pounds lighter than what he assumes himself to be, but then again, he rarely weighs himself and couldn’t say at any given time what his weight is.
He turns and Lissette is in the doorway. “Look at yourself!” she says. She points into the mirror. “Look!”
She starts to cry. He steps off the scale and comforts her. She pleads with him to go to the doctor. He swears to her he will call him in the morning.
But what he really thinks is that he will go back to work the following night, stop wasting his sick days and scaring his wife.
In the morning, with Lissette off to her job, he is awakened by the ringing telephone. It’s his supervisor asking if he plans to ever come back to work.
Of course he does, but Greeley takes umbrage at the supervisor’s uncaring tone. Greeley knows he’s not really sick, but the supervisor has no reason to suspect that.
“I’m not sure,” Greeley says, affecting a sniffle.
“What the hell is wrong with you anyway?”
“Not sure. Could be a few things.”
The supervisor grumbles. “Well you only have four sick days left so you better get better soon.”
“I’m really touched by your concern, Jerry.”
“Look I’m telling you this for your own good. You use up your sick days you gotta get a letter from a doctor.”
“I know that.” A brief silence follows.
“I suppose Dovanovich can’t handle the place on his own?” he says. Just saying the man’s name sends a shudder through him.
“He’s not working alone.”
“He’s not?”
“No we got somebody working with him.”
“Who?”
“What difference does it make? Look just get your butt in here as soon as you can.”
So Greeley does not go in that night like he planned. He feels it is a shame, in a way. He had wanted to surprise Lissette by not being there when she came home. He wanted her to find a note saying “Hi honey. I’m feeling better and went in to work.”
But instead she comes home to find him on the couch watching TV.
“Did you call the doctor today?” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “I have an appointment for next week.”
“Next week?”
“Yeah. It was the earliest they had. I mean, they asked if it was like life-or-death or something and I couldn’t really say that, you know?”
“But won’t your sick days run out before then?”
“No. Don’t worry. I told them if someone cancels then call me.”
He will go back to work the next night for sure, he says to himself.
But whenever he thinks about going back to work, he thinks about Dovanovich and when he thinks about that man he thinks of how helpless he was in that man’s large hands, how those hands were big enough to dispose of him in so many ways.
And so he does not go back the next night. Or the next. Or for the rest of the week. He stays on the couch, in front of the TV. Fleetingly he feels restless, but mostly he is surprised at how content he is being bored. Lissette tiptoes around with what he thinks is a detached expression, as if she has begun to give up on him.
The morning of his last sick day, he receives another call from the supervisor. He is to produce a doctor’s letter stating his condition and why it prevents him from coming to work or he will be fired. He has to go back.
It terrifies him so that he forgets to leave a note for Lissette, which he had planned to do. Instead he calls her from a pay phone at the subway station and leaves a message on their answering machine. He tries to sound as upbeat as possible.
When he arrives at the building, Gordon welcomes him with a handshake. The supervisor is there and says, “Well if it isn’t the sickie.” He means it to be funny, but not even he laughs. Greeley senses that is because of what he looks like. There is no sign of Dovanovich.
He takes the elevator to the twelfth floor. He wants to have a cigarette to calm his nerves. Almost maniacally he wants to revisit the terrace and smoke there like he has for the past ten years. Once there, he smokes two cigarettes, and something about the mist shrouding the skyline has as calming effect on him.
He takes the elevator to the basement, where the floor buffer is kept in a closet. As he is unlocking the door, the elevator opens and Dovanovich emerges. Immediately he is struck with terror. He realizes he is in a basement with no easy means of escape. Dovanovich spots him and bounds up to him. “Hey, buddy,” he says. “How you feeling?”
Greeley mutters something -- he isn’t sure what. Whenever Dovanovich takes a step or gestures toward him, he shrinks visibly. Finally Dovanovich shakes his head, grabs a mop and bucket, and disappears back into the elevator.
The ordeal is very draining to Greeley. He has to sit down. He feels extremely tired. He has gotten into the habit of sleeping at night and being awake in the day. Inside the closet, there is a space on the floor next to the buffer. Only someone as small as Greeley could fit in it. He covers the space with some cardboard and lays down on it, shutting the door and falling asleep in the darkness. That is where Dovanovich finds his body just before he was to go to lunch. At first the police would surmise that he had suffocated, but they will come to doubt that the closet was airtight. The blame would then be laid on the fumes from several open bottles of cleaning agents found in the closet. The space was so small and enclosed, they would say, and the dead man had been sick lately and was in such an obviously deteriorated physical state.
Dovanovich flips over a bucket, strides it, then
sits. His shoulders tremble. Gordon retrieves a roll of paper towels from the bathroom and hands it to him. The big guy cannot keep his face dry though, no matter how much he wipes it. The supervisor sends him home for the rest of the shift.
Greeley and Dovanovich are smoking on the twelfth-floor terrace of a building on 38th Street. With a swiftness that belies his large size, Dovanovich lifts Greeley over his head and for a time it seems he will throw the smaller man over the guard rail to the street below. But he puts Greeley down again, saying it's all in fun. Immediately Greeley dashes inside and down the twelve flights of stairs. There’s no time to wait for the elevator.
In the lobby he meets the night security guard, Gordon, a black man with a Caribbean accent and a blue uniform that looks striking against his deep-colored skin. He knows Greeley is a janitor in the building. They have never really spoken beyond a nod and a hello when Greeley came in for his shift. But the janitor is so wild-eyed and breathing so hard that Gordon says, “What is it?”
“Upstairs.” He puts a hand on his heaving chest. “The guy I’m working with...I think he tried to kill me.”
“What? Who?”
“Dovanovich.” He hulks up his shoulders in an attempt to describe him. “Big guy,” he says. “Big chest.” His arms try to encompass the whole of the man. “Big,” he says.
Gordon blinks incomprehensibly. Apparently he doesn’t know who Greeley is talking about. But as a way of denoting the seriousness of the situation, he turns down the Caribbean music station he has on his radio and listens carefully.
The trip down the flights of stairs had been a terror-fueled blur. But now that he is in the lobby, beginning to breathe easier, Greeley wonders if maybe Dovanovich really had meant it as good-natured fun. After all, they had gone out to the terrace for a cigarette at Greeley’s suggestion. A law had recently been passed by the city making it a crime to smoke inside office buildings. It was true it was nighttime and he and Dovanovich were the only ones there, but all the janitors had been warned that any fines incurred would be taken out of their paychecks and Greeley feared the smell would linger into the morning.
He did not know Dovanovich well. While Greeley was a lifer -- he just marked ten years on the job -- Dovanovich had only been there a month or so. Greeley had seen a lot of workers come and go, and only a few stay on for any real length of time. It was not complicated work, but it could be exhausting and exhaustingly dull. His impression was that Dovanovich would not last half a year.
Out on the terrace, the new man accepted a cigarette with a smile. Alone, the terrace was not big; with Dovanovich, it was just a little too tight. The black metal guard rail rose to about the top of Greeley’s thigh. He was listening with interest to Dovanovich describing a wrestler he admired on TV when Greeley was suddenly grabbed and lifted into the air. It happened so quickly and with virtually no resistance from Greeley -- he instinctively sensed that any squirming on his part might well lead to his slipping from Dovanovich's grip. He went completely inert. He could not let go of his cigarette or the smoke he had sucked into his lungs just prior to being picked up.
Greeley was a small man. “Wiry” was the word often used. When she was angry his wife called him “you little runt.”
Suspended suddenly in the air, unable to hear Dovanovich, who was still speaking, he saw and heard the city as never before. Car horns were like stabs at the sky; the lights from far-off buildings wobbled as heat rose from below.
Then Dovanovich put him down. Seeing how rattled Greeley was, he assured him he meant no harm. But Greeley bolted.
Gordon listens carefully to the story, but in the end he does not know what to do about it, and he seems anxious to turn up his music again and return to the newspaper he brought with him.
Greeley goes out to the street to smoke a cigarette. When he finishes, he lights up another one. That one he tosses away before it’s done. He heads for the subway. His union contract affords him nine sick days a year and he has yet to take one.
He intends to go back to work the following night, but at the last minute he calls in sick. His wife, Lissette, seems angry to find him there when she comes in from her day job at an office-supply store downtown. She has grown used to having the apartment to herself nights. “What’s the matter with you?” she says.
“My head hurts.”
“You’re just sitting there watching TV.”
“So?”
“So you don’t look like your head hurts.”
The next day Greeley begins to imagine that his head really does hurt. He watches TV laid out on the couch, with a pillow from the bed and the extra blanket they keep in the hallway closet. But after Lissette goes to bed, he admits to himself that he’s faking. It’s a ruse to avoid having to work with Dovanovich again.
That night he falls asleep thinking he’ll go back to work the next night, but when the next night comes he just stays on the couch. It is Friday after all, and he could have Saturday and Sunday without wasting any more sick days. And he figures the longer he stays away, the longer Dovanovich will have to do a two-man job by himself and the more likely he will quit.
Lissette kneels next to him. “What is it, Runty? You’re really starting to scare me.”
“Don’t be scared. I’m alright.”
“I think you should go to a doctor.”
He shakes his head and assures her again that he’s alright. In the course of the weekend she suspects his goldbricking, he thinks, but she doesn’t say anything about it. She hasn’t even complained about his taking up the couch. She sits in the big rocking chair to watch TV with him. She makes him soup. She gets aspirin when he asks for it. She can be nice, he thinks, when she wants to be.
Late Sunday night he gets up to go to the bathroom and is shocked by his image in the mirror. His skin looks yellow and there are dark rings around his eyes. He believes that his ribs are more visible than usual. He steps on the bathroom scale. He is several pounds lighter than what he assumes himself to be, but then again, he rarely weighs himself and couldn’t say at any given time what his weight is.
He turns and Lissette is in the doorway. “Look at yourself!” she says. She points into the mirror. “Look!”
She starts to cry. He steps off the scale and comforts her. She pleads with him to go to the doctor. He swears to her he will call him in the morning.
But what he really thinks is that he will go back to work the following night, stop wasting his sick days and scaring his wife.
In the morning, with Lissette off to her job, he is awakened by the ringing telephone. It’s his supervisor asking if he plans to ever come back to work.
Of course he does, but Greeley takes umbrage at the supervisor’s uncaring tone. Greeley knows he’s not really sick, but the supervisor has no reason to suspect that.
“I’m not sure,” Greeley says, affecting a sniffle.
“What the hell is wrong with you anyway?”
“Not sure. Could be a few things.”
The supervisor grumbles. “Well you only have four sick days left so you better get better soon.”
“I’m really touched by your concern, Jerry.”
“Look I’m telling you this for your own good. You use up your sick days you gotta get a letter from a doctor.”
“I know that.” A brief silence follows.
“I suppose Dovanovich can’t handle the place on his own?” he says. Just saying the man’s name sends a shudder through him.
“He’s not working alone.”
“He’s not?”
“No we got somebody working with him.”
“Who?”
“What difference does it make? Look just get your butt in here as soon as you can.”
So Greeley does not go in that night like he planned. He feels it is a shame, in a way. He had wanted to surprise Lissette by not being there when she came home. He wanted her to find a note saying “Hi honey. I’m feeling better and went in to work.”
But instead she comes home to find him on the couch watching TV.
“Did you call the doctor today?” she says.
“Yeah,” he says. “I have an appointment for next week.”
“Next week?”
“Yeah. It was the earliest they had. I mean, they asked if it was like life-or-death or something and I couldn’t really say that, you know?”
“But won’t your sick days run out before then?”
“No. Don’t worry. I told them if someone cancels then call me.”
He will go back to work the next night for sure, he says to himself.
But whenever he thinks about going back to work, he thinks about Dovanovich and when he thinks about that man he thinks of how helpless he was in that man’s large hands, how those hands were big enough to dispose of him in so many ways.
And so he does not go back the next night. Or the next. Or for the rest of the week. He stays on the couch, in front of the TV. Fleetingly he feels restless, but mostly he is surprised at how content he is being bored. Lissette tiptoes around with what he thinks is a detached expression, as if she has begun to give up on him.
The morning of his last sick day, he receives another call from the supervisor. He is to produce a doctor’s letter stating his condition and why it prevents him from coming to work or he will be fired. He has to go back.
It terrifies him so that he forgets to leave a note for Lissette, which he had planned to do. Instead he calls her from a pay phone at the subway station and leaves a message on their answering machine. He tries to sound as upbeat as possible.
When he arrives at the building, Gordon welcomes him with a handshake. The supervisor is there and says, “Well if it isn’t the sickie.” He means it to be funny, but not even he laughs. Greeley senses that is because of what he looks like. There is no sign of Dovanovich.
He takes the elevator to the twelfth floor. He wants to have a cigarette to calm his nerves. Almost maniacally he wants to revisit the terrace and smoke there like he has for the past ten years. Once there, he smokes two cigarettes, and something about the mist shrouding the skyline has as calming effect on him.
He takes the elevator to the basement, where the floor buffer is kept in a closet. As he is unlocking the door, the elevator opens and Dovanovich emerges. Immediately he is struck with terror. He realizes he is in a basement with no easy means of escape. Dovanovich spots him and bounds up to him. “Hey, buddy,” he says. “How you feeling?”
Greeley mutters something -- he isn’t sure what. Whenever Dovanovich takes a step or gestures toward him, he shrinks visibly. Finally Dovanovich shakes his head, grabs a mop and bucket, and disappears back into the elevator.
The ordeal is very draining to Greeley. He has to sit down. He feels extremely tired. He has gotten into the habit of sleeping at night and being awake in the day. Inside the closet, there is a space on the floor next to the buffer. Only someone as small as Greeley could fit in it. He covers the space with some cardboard and lays down on it, shutting the door and falling asleep in the darkness. That is where Dovanovich finds his body just before he was to go to lunch. At first the police would surmise that he had suffocated, but they will come to doubt that the closet was airtight. The blame would then be laid on the fumes from several open bottles of cleaning agents found in the closet. The space was so small and enclosed, they would say, and the dead man had been sick lately and was in such an obviously deteriorated physical state.
Dovanovich flips over a bucket, strides it, then
sits. His shoulders tremble. Gordon retrieves a roll of paper towels from the bathroom and hands it to him. The big guy cannot keep his face dry though, no matter how much he wipes it. The supervisor sends him home for the rest of the shift.
Word of Mouth by Stephen Rogers- written version
WORD OF MOUTH
I was the only black lesbian private investigator this side of
the river. Or if they preferred, I was the only Jewish good-ol'-
boy private investigator this side of the river. Or if they
preferred, I was the only four-foot Navaho private investigator
this side of the river.
Whatever made potential clients comfortable and more likely to
hire me, that's what I was.
I had three sets of letterheads, and I was good at voices. I
conducted all of my client meetings over the telephone, and I
didn't plan to start adding video. While I couldn't be sure, I
may have been the only charge-card accepting private investigator
this side of the river.
While I might lie more than most people, I was good at my job.
My clients were word of mouth, and they knew before they hired me
that I produced. I didn't embarrass them by asking them to visit
an office in the dingy part of town, or meet me in some coffee
shop where they might be seen by a next door neighbor. I
provided a low-impact, low-profile service.
Except for some secrets that they would rather not have known,
people were satisfied with my results. So why was I the only
private investigator this side of the river who had a dead body
in the trunk?
Trust me, I didn't kill him. I never even saw him before, or my
name wasn't Sista Steele, Beau Weinstein, and Big Red.
Granted, if I was able to make my clients happy, that meant that
I was probably making someone else unhappy. Private
investigators didn't specialize in win-win situations.
Which of me was someone trying to frame? How had the person
learned the investigator's identity, and then come to the
conclusion that they needed to leave a body here in my car? Had
they at least killed someone they wanted dead anyway?
I slammed the trunk and checked to make sure that no one was
peeking through the tiny windows in my garage door. This was the
first time my business had reached out to touch my real life, and
I didn't like my feeling of vulnerability. Perhaps I had lost
some edge by hiding behind aliases for this long.
On the other hand, maybe I should hire one of my personalities to
discover whose body was fitted around my spare tire. Since I
never saw my clients, this could have been one of the paid-in-
full-ers. I just hoped he told three friends about me before he
was killed.
I checked the garage door but it was secure. The door to the
back yard was a different story however, the killer and the
victim entering through this door after punching out the lock.
Getting out my keys, I opened the trunk again to search the
victim for identification, trying to ignore the blood that was
pooling under the knife wound. There had to be a tie between us
or the frame wouldn't make sense.
In the nearest pocket I found a small slip of paper: INSPECTED
BY NUMBER SEVEN. "A clue." I laughed and checked the rear
pocket, surprised to find his wallet.
There was no money, no charge cards, no ATM card, no folded blank
check. So much for this being an easy money case.
The wallet also contained an expired driver's license for James
Cabernet, and the face in the picture was a slightly younger,
slightly less pale, slightly more surprised version of the dead
man's face.
While I had successfully named the corpse, there weren't any
bells ringing. Unless I was mistaken, I'd never had a James
Cabernet as either a client or a subject. True, the license
might be as new as the pants, but I couldn't even recall a case
that might have sent someone scurrying for a new identity.
I closed the trunk again, glad at least that Kowalski had called
this morning asking to borrow my portable polygraph machine.
After rooting unsuccessfully through the basement, I had come out
to the garage to see if I had left the piece of equipment in the
car. If I hadn't gone to look for the polygraph machine, I might
have been driving around with James Cabernet in the trunk for
days, or at least until someone made an anonymous call to the
police to close the frame.
Thinking the name again sent a tiny bell tinkling. I had known a
Cabernet: Pat, my roommate at college. Pat had had a brother,
and "James" didn't seem like a wrong name. I suddenly remembered
telling the brother that I while I was studying law enforcement,
I was going to become a private investigator.
College for me had consisted of one semester, and after leaving I
hadn't kept in touch with Pat, never mind James whom I had met
only that once. Could James have really remembered me after all
these years, sought me out because of something I had said to him
when I was nineteen?
Didn't private investigators advertise wherever he was from?
Maybe it was time for me to move to a greener pasture.
I went back into the house to think about my next step, and who I
might be able to bill this to. At the very least I was going to
have to redo the inside of my trunk.
Maybe Pat hadn't seen James since college either, and would pay
me to find him. "I ran your brother through some databases, and
then I opened my trunk and there he was."
I walked into my living room to see a large tattoo sitting on the
couch. The tattoo stood, the movement allowing me to pick out
some basic shapes: a head, two arms, two legs, a knife.
My Glock was in the other room, and the living tattoo was too
close for me back out of the room. "The police aren't going to
have to work the identification kit too hard for my neighbors to
describe you."
He stopped in front of me and smiled. After all the body art, I
expected his teeth to be anything but pearly white. "I want to
hire you."
If this what my average client looked like, there was no way that
I was ever going to add video to my telephone. I might even get
out of the business. "I'd rather you show me a retainer than a
knife."
"I'm a bit short on cash right now. That's why I need your
help."
"Have a seat and tell me about it."
"You sit first."
I made myself comfortable and tried to ignore the six-inch blade
in his hand. The smart move seemed to be listening until I had a
chance to turn the tables on him. "What's your name?"
"They call me Trombone."
"Why?" I couldn't imagine a connection between the art work and
a wind instrument.
"I don't know."
"Maybe that's what you want me to investigate?"
"I'm just out of the pen. Me and Jimmy were there on armed
robbery. The cops never caught Nicholas, and he has the loot. I
want you to find him."
"Why me?"
"Jimmy knew about you, and our lawyer tracked you down. I want
you to find Nicholas. You can keep ten percent of what Nicholas
has left. It's been seven years."
Wondering whether I was making a mistake letting on that I had
seen his handiwork in my trunk, I asked why Jimmy was in the
garage instead of sitting on the couch talking about old times.
"He wanted fifty percent."
That made sense. "I thought ten percent was more than sufficient
myself. So tell me Trombone, what makes you think that Nicholas
still has the money? You said it was seven years ago? That's a
long time."
"The plan was, if Jimmy and I got caught, Nicholas was going to
save our money for us."
I nodded rather than laugh out loud. "Why did you leave Jimmy in
my trunk?"
Trombone shrugged. "I didn't know where we were going until we
got here. You were his friend."
"I met him exactly once."
"That's why I figured I could ice him without making you too
upset. I want you to find Nicholas."
There was a growing sense that Trombone was a few notes short of
a octave. "Do you have a last name for Nicholas?"
"I think Nicholas is his last name."
"Well then, do you have a first name for him?"
"No. Unless Nicholas is his first name."
I told myself to count to ten but stopped at three. "You want me
to find someone whose first or last name is Nicholas. Do you
know where or when he was born? Do you know about his family,
other business acquaintances?" I stood and began pacing, seeing
this as a opportunity to take control. "Did he go to school
somewhere, serve time, or at least get arrested? Do you have his
social security number, a sample of his DNA?"
"I, uh, no."
I shook my head. "Listen to me Trombone. The chances of me
finding Nicholas are so small that you'd be better off hiring me
to find you a new gang."
"Could you do that?" I was walking around the room so fast that
I thought he might get whiplash trying to follow me.
"Trombone. Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath?" I
slowed long enough to take a heavy framed photograph of my
parents off the wall.
"Not that I know."
"It's what I had to take to become a private investigator.
Section 2, Paragraph 3. Do you know what it says?" I stopped in
front of him, glad to see that he had apparently forgotten that
he was holding a knife.
"What?"
I swung the frame at his head and knocked him out cold. "It says
don't be an idiot. You, my friend, are an idiot."
After tying him up, I dragged him out to my car and dumped him on
the floor of the back seat, covering him up with an old blanket.
He was lucky there wasn't enough room in the trunk, or I might
have put him in there for messing up my personal life.
The next step was discovering where Jimmy and Trombone had done
time, and then backtrack to the crime that had sent them there.
From that point, I should be able to start getting a lead on
Nicholas.
While Nicholas certainly didn't still have the money Trombone was
after, he would probably be more than willing to pay for
information on his ex-partners if I pitched it correctly.
Maybe they had tried to hire me, and in doing so had mentioned
that they had also hired some hitmen. That should get Nicholas's
attention.
The only fly in the ointment was Trombone. If I let him go, he
could screw up the whole deal. I didn't see how I could keep him
here under wraps while I was searching for Nicholas, and there
was no way that I was taking him along on the jaunt.
Killing wasn't my style, and I didn't see how I could scare
Trombone enough to ensure that he wouldn't eventually backslide
into stupidity and somehow muck things up for me.
Going into the house, I went into the kitchen and picked up the
telephone.
"Kowalski Detective Agency."
"A small plane registered to a Panamanian company carrying
American and German tourists crashes in the Suez Canal at a spot
equidistant from Egypt and Jordan. The plane is brought to the
surface by a British salvage company which was hired by a Greek
shipping tycoon. Where are the survivors buried?"
"I'll have to interview a lot of people to discover the truth.
Did you find your polygraph machine?"
"No, and I looked everywhere. Are you sure you didn't borrow it
already and forget to return it?"
"I think that the machine was originally mine in the first place,
and you were the borrower who never returned it. Keep searching
though, the machine may be in the last place you look."
"The last place I looked was my trunk, and I found a dead body
there instead." When I was trying to get my license, I had
worked for Kowalski for the experience. We went way back, and
trusted each other as much as two people could.
"Anybody you know?"
"Someone from my past."
"You have a past?"
"Very funny. In my living room was the guy who put the body in
my trunk. Currently, he's unconscious in the back seat."
"Aren't you glad you didn't buy one of those little sports cars
the last time you were looking for a new vehicle? I don't think
they have enough storage for a bag of groceries, forget about two
bodies. Have you called the police yet?"
"I'm weighing the wisdom of that."
"It doesn't sound like they would charge you with anything."
"No, and I couldn't charge them either. I've got time invested
in this, and I'll at least have the expense of cleaning my car.
The police aren't going to pay me for the trouble I've saved
them."
"Money isn't everything."
"I think I heard that somewhere. Explain then why greed is the
motivation for the two bodies in my garage, one of which is
leaking blood from a big knife wound."
"Money's not everything, but it's a heck lot more than nothing?"
"That's pretty good."
"Tell you what, why don't I come over and take a look around, see
if I can't find that polygraph machine. I was always a better
detective than you."
"In your dreams. But, whatever floats your boat. Just make sure
that you realize that I'm not giving you one of my bodies."
"If I need to, I'll dig up my own."
Hanging up the telephone, I went back out into the garage to
discover the back door of the car open, the blanket on the floor,
the rope on the seat, and Trombone nowhere in sight. I opened
the trunk to make sure that Jimmy hadn't also disappeared. One
for two wasn't bad.
Reaching in under a hole in the carpeting, I pulled out the Colt
.32 that I kept there for emergencies and stuffed it into my
pocket. The location wouldn't produce any quick draw, but then
that wasn't my strength.
Closing the trunk, I wondered whether Trombone had disappeared
from my life or snuck back into the house. One thing was
certain, as soon as I could get to the hardware store, I was
improving the security of the door that lead from the garage to
the back yard and the one that lead from the back yard into my
kitchen.
If Trombone had fled, that meant that I needed to find Nicholas
pronto before Trombone did. While I wasn't sure that Trombone
could find his back pocket, he might interest another private
investigation who smelled an opportunity to make a quick buck.
Going back into my house, I found another stranger staring at me
over a weapon, this time a Glock. While the end result was the
same, I hoped that I wasn't going to get shot with my own gun.
"You're not that real estate agent who was pressuring me to sell,
are you?"
"We're going to talk, you and I, about two old friends of mine
that are coming to see you, or perhaps they've already been
here."
"Jimmy and Trombone? That makes you Nicholas."
Nicholas laughed. "I guess that lawyer was money well spent. He
said that you would be worth talking to."
Nodding, I added, "I have a daily rate, a weekly rate, and we can
come up with arrangement if the case takes longer. I'm the only
private investigator this side of the river who accepts plastic."
Nicholas used the gun to motion me to the front door. "We're
going to go somewhere and have a little talk about my friends.
We can discuss money after I see what you have to offer."
As I reached for the knob, the doorbell rang. I turned to
Nicholas to see what he wanted me to do, and saw Trombone running
from the kitchen towards Nicholas with his knife in the air.
Nicholas must have seen something in my face, because he turned
and shot Trombone in the head. Trombone fell back on top of my
glass table as I flung the front door open with one hand while
trying to pull the Colt out of my pocket with the other.
Nicholas spun at the sound of the door banging into the wall, and
was then further distracted by Kowalski screaming my name.
Finally disentangling the gun from my pocket, I shot Nicholas
twice in the chest.
Taking a deep breath, I marched over to Nicholas and moved the
Glock out of his reach. "I'm all right, and it's safe to come
in."
Kowalski entered and closed the front door. "I thought you said
that one of these guys was dead in your trunk? I think your
diagnosis was a bit premature Doctor."
"The dead one is still in the trunk. Trombone here, the guy
lying on top of the wreckage of my coffee table, is the one who
killed him. The one I shot, Nicholas is the new addition to the
cast. He'll be remembered for taking out my lamp on the way
down."
Kowalski laughed. "You mean there are three bodies now?"
"And no one left to bill." I sighed as I surveyed the damage.
"This case is a total washout. Look, they're bleeding all over
my carpet."
"Where were the survivors buried indeed?"
"I suppose I might as well call the police now."
After a short moment of silence, Kowalski smiled. "About your
rug, I heard about this cleaning company that can do wonders with
bloodstains. I understand that their rates are very reasonable."
My reply need not be repeated.
I was the only black lesbian private investigator this side of
the river. Or if they preferred, I was the only Jewish good-ol'-
boy private investigator this side of the river. Or if they
preferred, I was the only four-foot Navaho private investigator
this side of the river.
Whatever made potential clients comfortable and more likely to
hire me, that's what I was.
I had three sets of letterheads, and I was good at voices. I
conducted all of my client meetings over the telephone, and I
didn't plan to start adding video. While I couldn't be sure, I
may have been the only charge-card accepting private investigator
this side of the river.
While I might lie more than most people, I was good at my job.
My clients were word of mouth, and they knew before they hired me
that I produced. I didn't embarrass them by asking them to visit
an office in the dingy part of town, or meet me in some coffee
shop where they might be seen by a next door neighbor. I
provided a low-impact, low-profile service.
Except for some secrets that they would rather not have known,
people were satisfied with my results. So why was I the only
private investigator this side of the river who had a dead body
in the trunk?
Trust me, I didn't kill him. I never even saw him before, or my
name wasn't Sista Steele, Beau Weinstein, and Big Red.
Granted, if I was able to make my clients happy, that meant that
I was probably making someone else unhappy. Private
investigators didn't specialize in win-win situations.
Which of me was someone trying to frame? How had the person
learned the investigator's identity, and then come to the
conclusion that they needed to leave a body here in my car? Had
they at least killed someone they wanted dead anyway?
I slammed the trunk and checked to make sure that no one was
peeking through the tiny windows in my garage door. This was the
first time my business had reached out to touch my real life, and
I didn't like my feeling of vulnerability. Perhaps I had lost
some edge by hiding behind aliases for this long.
On the other hand, maybe I should hire one of my personalities to
discover whose body was fitted around my spare tire. Since I
never saw my clients, this could have been one of the paid-in-
full-ers. I just hoped he told three friends about me before he
was killed.
I checked the garage door but it was secure. The door to the
back yard was a different story however, the killer and the
victim entering through this door after punching out the lock.
Getting out my keys, I opened the trunk again to search the
victim for identification, trying to ignore the blood that was
pooling under the knife wound. There had to be a tie between us
or the frame wouldn't make sense.
In the nearest pocket I found a small slip of paper: INSPECTED
BY NUMBER SEVEN. "A clue." I laughed and checked the rear
pocket, surprised to find his wallet.
There was no money, no charge cards, no ATM card, no folded blank
check. So much for this being an easy money case.
The wallet also contained an expired driver's license for James
Cabernet, and the face in the picture was a slightly younger,
slightly less pale, slightly more surprised version of the dead
man's face.
While I had successfully named the corpse, there weren't any
bells ringing. Unless I was mistaken, I'd never had a James
Cabernet as either a client or a subject. True, the license
might be as new as the pants, but I couldn't even recall a case
that might have sent someone scurrying for a new identity.
I closed the trunk again, glad at least that Kowalski had called
this morning asking to borrow my portable polygraph machine.
After rooting unsuccessfully through the basement, I had come out
to the garage to see if I had left the piece of equipment in the
car. If I hadn't gone to look for the polygraph machine, I might
have been driving around with James Cabernet in the trunk for
days, or at least until someone made an anonymous call to the
police to close the frame.
Thinking the name again sent a tiny bell tinkling. I had known a
Cabernet: Pat, my roommate at college. Pat had had a brother,
and "James" didn't seem like a wrong name. I suddenly remembered
telling the brother that I while I was studying law enforcement,
I was going to become a private investigator.
College for me had consisted of one semester, and after leaving I
hadn't kept in touch with Pat, never mind James whom I had met
only that once. Could James have really remembered me after all
these years, sought me out because of something I had said to him
when I was nineteen?
Didn't private investigators advertise wherever he was from?
Maybe it was time for me to move to a greener pasture.
I went back into the house to think about my next step, and who I
might be able to bill this to. At the very least I was going to
have to redo the inside of my trunk.
Maybe Pat hadn't seen James since college either, and would pay
me to find him. "I ran your brother through some databases, and
then I opened my trunk and there he was."
I walked into my living room to see a large tattoo sitting on the
couch. The tattoo stood, the movement allowing me to pick out
some basic shapes: a head, two arms, two legs, a knife.
My Glock was in the other room, and the living tattoo was too
close for me back out of the room. "The police aren't going to
have to work the identification kit too hard for my neighbors to
describe you."
He stopped in front of me and smiled. After all the body art, I
expected his teeth to be anything but pearly white. "I want to
hire you."
If this what my average client looked like, there was no way that
I was ever going to add video to my telephone. I might even get
out of the business. "I'd rather you show me a retainer than a
knife."
"I'm a bit short on cash right now. That's why I need your
help."
"Have a seat and tell me about it."
"You sit first."
I made myself comfortable and tried to ignore the six-inch blade
in his hand. The smart move seemed to be listening until I had a
chance to turn the tables on him. "What's your name?"
"They call me Trombone."
"Why?" I couldn't imagine a connection between the art work and
a wind instrument.
"I don't know."
"Maybe that's what you want me to investigate?"
"I'm just out of the pen. Me and Jimmy were there on armed
robbery. The cops never caught Nicholas, and he has the loot. I
want you to find him."
"Why me?"
"Jimmy knew about you, and our lawyer tracked you down. I want
you to find Nicholas. You can keep ten percent of what Nicholas
has left. It's been seven years."
Wondering whether I was making a mistake letting on that I had
seen his handiwork in my trunk, I asked why Jimmy was in the
garage instead of sitting on the couch talking about old times.
"He wanted fifty percent."
That made sense. "I thought ten percent was more than sufficient
myself. So tell me Trombone, what makes you think that Nicholas
still has the money? You said it was seven years ago? That's a
long time."
"The plan was, if Jimmy and I got caught, Nicholas was going to
save our money for us."
I nodded rather than laugh out loud. "Why did you leave Jimmy in
my trunk?"
Trombone shrugged. "I didn't know where we were going until we
got here. You were his friend."
"I met him exactly once."
"That's why I figured I could ice him without making you too
upset. I want you to find Nicholas."
There was a growing sense that Trombone was a few notes short of
a octave. "Do you have a last name for Nicholas?"
"I think Nicholas is his last name."
"Well then, do you have a first name for him?"
"No. Unless Nicholas is his first name."
I told myself to count to ten but stopped at three. "You want me
to find someone whose first or last name is Nicholas. Do you
know where or when he was born? Do you know about his family,
other business acquaintances?" I stood and began pacing, seeing
this as a opportunity to take control. "Did he go to school
somewhere, serve time, or at least get arrested? Do you have his
social security number, a sample of his DNA?"
"I, uh, no."
I shook my head. "Listen to me Trombone. The chances of me
finding Nicholas are so small that you'd be better off hiring me
to find you a new gang."
"Could you do that?" I was walking around the room so fast that
I thought he might get whiplash trying to follow me.
"Trombone. Have you ever heard of the Hippocratic Oath?" I
slowed long enough to take a heavy framed photograph of my
parents off the wall.
"Not that I know."
"It's what I had to take to become a private investigator.
Section 2, Paragraph 3. Do you know what it says?" I stopped in
front of him, glad to see that he had apparently forgotten that
he was holding a knife.
"What?"
I swung the frame at his head and knocked him out cold. "It says
don't be an idiot. You, my friend, are an idiot."
After tying him up, I dragged him out to my car and dumped him on
the floor of the back seat, covering him up with an old blanket.
He was lucky there wasn't enough room in the trunk, or I might
have put him in there for messing up my personal life.
The next step was discovering where Jimmy and Trombone had done
time, and then backtrack to the crime that had sent them there.
From that point, I should be able to start getting a lead on
Nicholas.
While Nicholas certainly didn't still have the money Trombone was
after, he would probably be more than willing to pay for
information on his ex-partners if I pitched it correctly.
Maybe they had tried to hire me, and in doing so had mentioned
that they had also hired some hitmen. That should get Nicholas's
attention.
The only fly in the ointment was Trombone. If I let him go, he
could screw up the whole deal. I didn't see how I could keep him
here under wraps while I was searching for Nicholas, and there
was no way that I was taking him along on the jaunt.
Killing wasn't my style, and I didn't see how I could scare
Trombone enough to ensure that he wouldn't eventually backslide
into stupidity and somehow muck things up for me.
Going into the house, I went into the kitchen and picked up the
telephone.
"Kowalski Detective Agency."
"A small plane registered to a Panamanian company carrying
American and German tourists crashes in the Suez Canal at a spot
equidistant from Egypt and Jordan. The plane is brought to the
surface by a British salvage company which was hired by a Greek
shipping tycoon. Where are the survivors buried?"
"I'll have to interview a lot of people to discover the truth.
Did you find your polygraph machine?"
"No, and I looked everywhere. Are you sure you didn't borrow it
already and forget to return it?"
"I think that the machine was originally mine in the first place,
and you were the borrower who never returned it. Keep searching
though, the machine may be in the last place you look."
"The last place I looked was my trunk, and I found a dead body
there instead." When I was trying to get my license, I had
worked for Kowalski for the experience. We went way back, and
trusted each other as much as two people could.
"Anybody you know?"
"Someone from my past."
"You have a past?"
"Very funny. In my living room was the guy who put the body in
my trunk. Currently, he's unconscious in the back seat."
"Aren't you glad you didn't buy one of those little sports cars
the last time you were looking for a new vehicle? I don't think
they have enough storage for a bag of groceries, forget about two
bodies. Have you called the police yet?"
"I'm weighing the wisdom of that."
"It doesn't sound like they would charge you with anything."
"No, and I couldn't charge them either. I've got time invested
in this, and I'll at least have the expense of cleaning my car.
The police aren't going to pay me for the trouble I've saved
them."
"Money isn't everything."
"I think I heard that somewhere. Explain then why greed is the
motivation for the two bodies in my garage, one of which is
leaking blood from a big knife wound."
"Money's not everything, but it's a heck lot more than nothing?"
"That's pretty good."
"Tell you what, why don't I come over and take a look around, see
if I can't find that polygraph machine. I was always a better
detective than you."
"In your dreams. But, whatever floats your boat. Just make sure
that you realize that I'm not giving you one of my bodies."
"If I need to, I'll dig up my own."
Hanging up the telephone, I went back out into the garage to
discover the back door of the car open, the blanket on the floor,
the rope on the seat, and Trombone nowhere in sight. I opened
the trunk to make sure that Jimmy hadn't also disappeared. One
for two wasn't bad.
Reaching in under a hole in the carpeting, I pulled out the Colt
.32 that I kept there for emergencies and stuffed it into my
pocket. The location wouldn't produce any quick draw, but then
that wasn't my strength.
Closing the trunk, I wondered whether Trombone had disappeared
from my life or snuck back into the house. One thing was
certain, as soon as I could get to the hardware store, I was
improving the security of the door that lead from the garage to
the back yard and the one that lead from the back yard into my
kitchen.
If Trombone had fled, that meant that I needed to find Nicholas
pronto before Trombone did. While I wasn't sure that Trombone
could find his back pocket, he might interest another private
investigation who smelled an opportunity to make a quick buck.
Going back into my house, I found another stranger staring at me
over a weapon, this time a Glock. While the end result was the
same, I hoped that I wasn't going to get shot with my own gun.
"You're not that real estate agent who was pressuring me to sell,
are you?"
"We're going to talk, you and I, about two old friends of mine
that are coming to see you, or perhaps they've already been
here."
"Jimmy and Trombone? That makes you Nicholas."
Nicholas laughed. "I guess that lawyer was money well spent. He
said that you would be worth talking to."
Nodding, I added, "I have a daily rate, a weekly rate, and we can
come up with arrangement if the case takes longer. I'm the only
private investigator this side of the river who accepts plastic."
Nicholas used the gun to motion me to the front door. "We're
going to go somewhere and have a little talk about my friends.
We can discuss money after I see what you have to offer."
As I reached for the knob, the doorbell rang. I turned to
Nicholas to see what he wanted me to do, and saw Trombone running
from the kitchen towards Nicholas with his knife in the air.
Nicholas must have seen something in my face, because he turned
and shot Trombone in the head. Trombone fell back on top of my
glass table as I flung the front door open with one hand while
trying to pull the Colt out of my pocket with the other.
Nicholas spun at the sound of the door banging into the wall, and
was then further distracted by Kowalski screaming my name.
Finally disentangling the gun from my pocket, I shot Nicholas
twice in the chest.
Taking a deep breath, I marched over to Nicholas and moved the
Glock out of his reach. "I'm all right, and it's safe to come
in."
Kowalski entered and closed the front door. "I thought you said
that one of these guys was dead in your trunk? I think your
diagnosis was a bit premature Doctor."
"The dead one is still in the trunk. Trombone here, the guy
lying on top of the wreckage of my coffee table, is the one who
killed him. The one I shot, Nicholas is the new addition to the
cast. He'll be remembered for taking out my lamp on the way
down."
Kowalski laughed. "You mean there are three bodies now?"
"And no one left to bill." I sighed as I surveyed the damage.
"This case is a total washout. Look, they're bleeding all over
my carpet."
"Where were the survivors buried indeed?"
"I suppose I might as well call the police now."
After a short moment of silence, Kowalski smiled. "About your
rug, I heard about this cleaning company that can do wonders with
bloodstains. I understand that their rates are very reasonable."
My reply need not be repeated.
The Last Pork Chop by Bayard- written version
The Last Pork Chop
I have a wife. I love my wife. I love football too. More than I love my wife but that isn’t why Sharone is divorcing me. I’ve got three wonderful, and I might add beautiful, children. You want to see pictures? I’ve got pictures. I’ve got more pictures than Campbell’s got soup.
Don’t believe me, ask Campbell’s.
This is Aaron my oldest. He’s going to be a lawyer. Abraham, the middle child, with middle child syndrome, his analysts tell me, his mother and I think might be a faigelah. Faigelah smaigelah. Abraham wants to be a doctor but he’s going to be a lawyer if it kills him and me both. This is our precious baby, Shamu.
Shamu is as beautiful as her mother. More beautiful but don’t tell Sharone I said so. She’s so emotional especially now what will all the hormone replacement therapy.
Shamu, bless her, when she isn’t eating looks up at me with those lovely eyes of hers, eyes as lovely as the eyes of Elizabeth Taylor say, and says, Daddy more than anything in the world I want to grow up and marry a lawyer, or two lawyers, maybe three lawyers.
I laugh and say, Shamu darling, three lawyers is better than one most days of the week, I’ll tell you.
Shamu is the darling of her mother and my eyes. Her mother and me are hoping the gastric bypass surgery is as successful as the hormone replacement therapy. Not just for baby Shamu but for all of us.
We’re doing gastric bypass on the family plan. Hormone replacement therapy too. Our healthcare covers us all with no copay, can you imagine? What a windfall.
As a family we’ve lost more weight per capita than most families living in the continental United States and still Sharone is divorcing me.
Sharone is divorcing me, my business is in bankruptcy with threats of corporate raiders raiding and forcing me out, my life is in a shambles and Charm Tantrum is the cause so I’m not as upset as one would think me to be that Charm Tantrum is dead.
If Charm Tantrum wasn’t dead I’d give serious thought to killing Charm. But then who hasn’t given serious thought to killing Charm. Show me any man has met Charm Tantrum and I’ll show you a man wants Charm Tantrum dead.
Honestly, I never set out to become the person I am or to lead the life I’m leading. My life is as much an accident of my own creation as Charm Tantrum was an accident of all creation.
You want to die of boredom! Get handed the infant inflammable sleepwear business your father and his brother were handed by their father who started out selling from a pushcart on the Lower Eastside.
To this day I am haunted by nightmares of Babalum Mo with his gimpy leg pushing his infant inflammable sleepwear cart through the cobbled streets of the Lower Eastside singing out it that wonderful cantorlike voice of his, Sleepwear, infant inflammable sleepwear, get your infant inflammable sleepwear, one hundred percent inflammable.
My father and Uncle Morty turned Babalum Mo’s sleepwear pushcart into Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International a truly boring business that kept me and my family fed and would see to it my sons got to law school.
Uncle Morty, bless his black heart, died of a massive heart attack, a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association said Uncle Morty’s heart attack was the largest heart attack ever to take place in the free world and considering the size of Uncle Morty’s heart it came as something of a surprise not just to Aunt Seal but to the rest of the family as well.
My father, never the clever one when it came to business, especially the family business, broken hearted at the death of his beloved brother Morty retired to Florida with his secretary and most, if not all of the business assets leaving my darling mother, and huge international debt, on my doorstep.
My darling mother and my beloved wife never got along to begin with and it was World War Three after the last pork chop.
The last pork chop!
You don’t take the last pork chop if my darling mother is at the table, in the room, or around the corner, not if you want to keep your hand and Sharone, unschooled, foolishly took the last pork chop.
My darling mother has been dead these ten years and from beyond the grave I’m still hearing, Irving, how could she, how could your bitch of a wife take the last pork chop?
With my father in his secretary in Florida, my darling mother on my doorstep, huge mounting international debt and my beloved wife Sharone eating pork, there was no one but my cousin Norma and me to get the business.
Me and Norma got the business in more ways than one.
And no one got the business more than me.
You want boring get handed the infant inflammable sleepwear business your father and his brother started up from their father’s Lower Eastside pushcart and get it handed to you to run with your unmarried cousin Norma.
Who would marry Norma? An uglier woman I have never seen and I’ve seen some ugly women in my time. You tell me infant inflammable sleepwear attracts beauties and I’ll tell you you need your eyes examined.
Infant inflammable sleepwear isn’t the worst business if you discount all those ugly women and that’s more discounting than you’ll see during market week.
Sure there are worse businesses but infant inflammable sleepwear has been good to me and my family for what seems like generations. Infant inflammable sleepwear has put food on our table, enough food so everyone in the family needs gastric bypass surgery. But as the television says over and over and over again, the family that has gastric bypass surgery together stays together.
So we’d tried gastric bypass surgery as a family. And Sharone is still divorcing me.
That’s the last time I listen to anything the television has to say.
Infant inflammable sleepwear is boring. My cousin Norma is boring. My beloved wife and my darling children are boring. But most of all I am boring. I admit it. I’m just deep down to the bottom of my shrunken soul boring. Don’t believe me, ask my shrunken soul.
Life was good. We led our boring lives and we were doing okay being bored. We were bored and getting along fine being boring but just when you think you’re going to die from boredom fate steps in.
Babalum Mo bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg used to say, Irving, fate steps in.
Babalum Mo after pushing his pushcart around the Lower Eastside selling infant inflammable sleepwear would huddle about with all the other Lower Eastside pushcart vendors at the Lower Eastside Pickle Emporium eating pickles and bragging what big profits they were taking in. Babalum Mo never failed to come home with a great big half garlic dill for his darling grandson, me.
Bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg Babalum Mo would say, Irving, what do you think your Babalum Mo has in his pockets for you my fat little boy?
I’d scream, A pickle! A pickle! A pickle! My darling Babalum Mo!
What kind of pickle does Babalum Mo have for his fat little Irving? Babalum Mo, his gimpy leg growing weary, would ask.
A great big half garlic dill Babalum Mo, I’d scream.
When I was courting Sharone years before she made me marry her we used to play the same game and Sharone would scream with as much delight as I did when Babalum Mo offered me his great big half garlic dill.
I can hear my Babalum Mo now, Irving, fate steps in.
It was the night of the Sleepies.
You know the Sleepies? The Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences. The Academy Awards of infant inflammable sleepwear.
Norma had this big deal of a great idea wouldn’t it be fun if we had some of our garments made up not in sizes infant to toddler but in big sizes to fit us.
That’s a whole lot of polyester, I told Norma but Norma said, Irving, we got polyester to spare.
At the time, and confidentially off the record I still think Norma’s big deal of a great idea was one of the stupidest ideas ever thought of in human history but Norma went ahead and had these giant snuggly sleepsuits made up for us to wear to the Sleepies.
The night of the Sleepies was a night I will never forget because it is a night that changed my life forever.
The Sleepies were being held, as they are every year, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey.
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey is a lovely room. Sharone and I are giving serious thought to staging baby Shamu’s debutante cotillion in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey when all her surgeries are complete and she is a beautiful, normal looking girl.
Norma insisted I wear this great big snuggly sleepsuit. Talk about ugly and would sell in the hundred millions, if it had been made up for little girls infant to toddler but what grown man wants to be seen in a giant pink snuggly sleepsuit pickered all over with wild strawberries.
You don’t know Norma. You don’t want to know Norma. No one wants to know Norma and speaking in a biblical sense no one ever will and that is a mercy. But what Norma wants Norma gets and to shut Norma up once and for all I put the damn giant pink snuggly sleepsuit pickered all over with wild strawberries on and Norma and me waddled down to the bus stop to catch the Number Forty Two Express Bus that would let us out right in front of the Howard Johnson’s.
Me and Norma was standing at the Number Forty Two Express Bus Stop when this car full of guys I went to high school with, guys I used to play football with, guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school pulls up alongside the Number Forty Two Express Bus Stop and starts making fun of me and Norma. They were shouting things like, Nice outfits but Halloween is in October not July you stupid fags!
I was laughing along like I’d done most of my life, like I’d done in high school. I understood about the guys shouting about the nice outfits, about Halloween being in October and not July but why were they calling us fags. Norma has always been rather butch but that’s no reason to call us fags.
I didn’t understand it.
Were we fags because we were dressed up in giant pink infant inflammable sleepwear pickered all over with wild strawberries on our way to the Sleepies at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey?
It didn’t make sense. To me, to Norma, to you? But then the guys I went to high school with, the guys I used to play football with, the guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school, never did make much sense. To me. To Norma. To you?
There are more fags than you can shake a stick at, and how those fags like to shake their sticks, in the fashion industries but not in infant inflammable sleepwear. Especially not in Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International.
We had a great big sign out front of our factory in China.
FAGS NEED NOT APPLY.
I don’t mind being called a fag. What’s the big deal being called a fag? If you aren’t a fag and someone you went to high school with and played football with and still drives around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school calls you a fag, what after all is the big deal if you aren’t actually a fag.
In high school when I’d come home crying that these same boys I went to high school with, played football with, drove around in their Trans Am had called me a fag, my Babalum Mo would ask, Are you a faigelah, Irving?
I’d cry, No Babalum Mo, I ain’t no faigelah.
Babalum Mo would snap, Irving, don’t use ain’t! Ain’t ain’t a real word, and add, If you ain’t no faigelah what do you care if these faigelahs call you a fag for?
My Babalum Mo could sure make sense when he needed to make sense and add comfort when comfort was due what with that giant half garlic dill pickle he kept in his pockets.
What I didn’t like and what I don’t like to this day, is having someone I went to high school with and played football with and still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school saying, Halloween is in October not July, especially as the Sleepies, the Academy Awards of infant inflammable sleepwear, take place in October so it was October and not July and I got hot under the collar and when I get hot under the collar there’s no telling what I am capable of doing.
Don’t believe me, ask Norma.
I was hot under my collar, those giant snuggly sleepsuits were so damn uncomfortable, there was no telling what I was going to do, so I stuck my tongue out. Out of heat prostration, sheer frustration or at our assailants I don’t recall, all I know is my tongue came out of my mouth.
That’s when friendly taunting went from fun to frantic.
Okay, okay. To be truthful I was the kid always chosen last for football. No one, especially not this lot, wanted me on their team. But when these guys I went to high school with and played football with got out of the Trans Am they had been driving around in since high school with baseball bats I was like, Guys, I can’t play ball with you now.
Norma who is generally not a passive person in any way, shape or form was barking at me, Irving, I don’t know who is stupider, you or your stupid friends who want to play ball when we’ve got a date with destiny at the Sleepies. This is a night we will remember for the rest of our lives. So if you ignore these yutzes maybe like a bad dream they will go away and we can get on with the great business of infant inflammable sleepwear.
I tried to ignore these guys. I did my best to ignore these guys. I had been doing my best to ignore these guys ever since high school. Only Norma, these guys just didn’t ever go away.
What a bunch of guys driving around in a Trans Am as old as Norma and me combined was doing with buckets of hot tar in the trunk of the Trans Am they have been driving around in since high school I will never know and someone will have to explain to me.
This is a mystery as mysterious as Charm Tantrum.
Hot tar! I didn’t mind hot tar. It was a rather cold October night and I didn’t mind the feathers that followed though I’m allergic and started to bloat and sneeze not to mention all the giant red welts starting to come up all over my face. What I did mind was being hit repeatedly with the baseball bats, especially in the head where it hurt and being called a big fag bird.
Look at these big fag birds, the guys I went to high school with and played football with, the guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they were driving around in in high school, was laughing. Two great big fag birds! An emu and an ibis.
Like these retards even knew what an emu and an ibis was unless emus and ibises had been the topic on some reality television series the night before.
I suppose things could have been worse. The subject on the reality television series could have been sparrows and blue tits.
Can you imagine, I can’t, being called Sparrow and Blue Tits Glamorous? That would never have done.
There we were, me and Norma in our giant snuggly sleepwear covered in tar and feathers, me with giant red welts coming up all over my face just as the Number Forty Two Express Bus comes along.
Me and Norma didn’t have time to change. Didn’t have nothing to change into. We were late as it was and had to get to the Howard Johnson’s for the Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences, also known as the Sleepies. Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International was up for Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year and we couldn’t miss that. Could we? You tell me. Could we?
Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year would be a first for Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International and would mean a huge rise in business. Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International could expect three to four percent more business if we won Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year and that three to four percent would mean the extra surgery my family needed, required and deserved.
In the ensuing scuffle, what with my tongue, baseball bats, the tar, the feathers, Norma barking, We’re not big fag birds, I managed to lose my eyeglasses and Norma, always too vain to wear hers was squinting something awful like she always does and when we got to the Howard Johnson’s dressed as we were, we were haphazardly escorted not into the Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences, also known as the Sleepies, but into the Haute Couture Fashion Association of America’s big breakfast luncheon.
Suddenly and rather unexpectedly me and Norma were superstars. Headlines flashed across the front page of Women’s Wear Daily:
EMU AND IBIS GLAMOUR INTRODUCE THE NEW LOOK.
I was all for dismissing the entire episode and getting back to business as usual but Norma was busy barking, Irving, we’ve been handed an opportunity like the opportunity handed to our fathers by Babalum Mo and it is time to leap blindly into the big time.
Without so much as a backward glance, suddenly we’re no longer Irving and Norma of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International but Emu and Ibis Glamour of Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International.
From the lowest of the low end of the garment business thrust by providence into the highest of the high end of the rag trade what could Norma and me do but run with the ball we’d been handed.
Suddenly, quite suddenly and most unexpectedly, I’m no longer a married man but a fag. That’s fashion, my friends. Low end you got your slubs of married men, high end you got your spectacular fags doesn’t matter if you’re a fag at the low end or a married man at the high end, at the low end you’re a slub of a married man and at the high end you’re a spectacular fag. That’s how fashion works. Don’t believe me, ask the fags.
Look, the money is much better at the high end, during a good season and Ibis, don’t dare call her Norma now, and I were having many good seasons, and if the money is good, do I care if I’m a fag or a married man?
I don’t know where we got the moxie, the gumption, or the nerve but I could hear Babalum Mo laughing in the background, Sleepwear, infant inflammable sleepwear, get your infant inflammable sleepwear, one hundred percent inflammable.
Babalum Mo used to sigh as I was sucking on his giant half garlic dill, If you’re going to do something do something right Irving.
Ibis and I were at the high end. We had to act high end even if our low ends were showing how high end we weren’t.
You’ve got to put on a good show. It’s all about a good show. Ibis and I had a fabulous season planned. We were high end fags, everything had to be fabulous, even if it wasn’t. But everything was fabulous, trust me, I wouldn’t lie. Why would I lie?
Don’t get me wrong I never designed anything in my life. We hired fags to do the designing. Had to take down the FAGS NEED NOT APPLY sign out front of our factories in China cause aside from all those things I don’t want to think about that fags do to each other the one thing fags know the rest of us haven’t got clue one about is design.
You want something designed and designed fabulously hire yourself a fag. Fags know more about design than they know about anything we can talk about in a family medium.
Ibis and I had a staff of fags designing away for Glamour US. But having a high end staff of high end fags designing high end glamorous garments for you when you’re high end isn’t always enough. Having a great gimmick couldn’t hurt.
That’s my Babalum Mo. Bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg while I sucked on that giant half garlic dill pickle of his Babalum Mo, used to say, Irving, having a great gimmick is like having a giant half garlic dill, it can’t hurt.
I’m not much on the uptake in a downward market but there I was sitting in my great big recently redesigned powder pink with all that lace office in my giant pink, pickered all over with wild strawberries infant inflammable sleepwear appliquéd with tar and feathers lounging suit reading Women’s Wear Daily, okay I wasn’t really reading I was just looking at the pictures, looking for pictures of myself so I could read about myself, when I came across a picture of Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee.
You must have heard of the Kunstmusee twins. They’ve been in all the papers. Global news stories. Bigger than the death of that guy in Rome that wears all those dresses I tell you I wouldn’t mind redesigning, all that filigree, all that beading, all that hand sewn lace, makes my head swim and my nipples as hard as if I was swimming in ice water. Don’t believe me, ask the ice water.
Huge news the Kunstmusee twins. You never heard of the Kunstmusee twins. Where have you been living under a rock? Siamese twins! Only you don’t call them Siamese twins no longer, at least not in the fabulous global world of haute couture.
Here in Haute Coutureland you call them conjoined. Conjoined twins.
Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee conjoined at the breasts.
These young ladies had been making headlines since their birth what with being conjoined at the breasts but here they were beautiful young ladies blossoming into womanhood and they had grown apart if you get what I am trying to tell you.
Doctors worldwide had been consulted and consulted and consulted again and again and again. And three out of four doctors agreed separating the twins now that they were a thirty eight double D apart from each other on both sides would not in anyway endanger their TVQ though it might seriously imperil their lives.
The surgery performed by world famous, world renowned television evangelist Dr. Angus Spalpeen was a gargantuan success in sheer numbers alone.
The press the separation of these conjoined young ladies was causing, bigger than the separation of those badly dressed, excessively ugly, so ugly they could have worked in infant inflammable sleepwear, royals over in England I would have loved to design for caused, would have made up for their deaths if indeed they had died but they didn’t. They were alive.
Alive!
The Kunstmusee Twins, not necessarily the royals, and as successful as their surgery had been the surgeries me and my little family had been partaking of made me feel more than a kinsmen of Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee.
Norma, I screamed through the office intercom after reading of the Kunstmusee Twins’ successful surgery, We’ve got to sign these girls.
Norma, screaming back through the office intercom, like Norma needed an intercom, when Norma screamed the fags we’d been hiring in China could hear her screaming in our factories in China, screamed, Don’t you ever scream Norma at me again, Emu, my name is Ibis, Ibis Glamour and don’t you forget it you stupid fag.
The financials alone could have bankrupted Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International and Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International both but in the long run what is money against the fabulosity of art and all would have been worth every rotten cent of the expenditure if Charm Tantrum hadn’t come sneaking upstaging upon the scene.
Look, I had nothing against Charm Tantrum. Who was Charm Tantrum? Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International had signed the Kunstmusee Twins with all their press and p
I have a wife. I love my wife. I love football too. More than I love my wife but that isn’t why Sharone is divorcing me. I’ve got three wonderful, and I might add beautiful, children. You want to see pictures? I’ve got pictures. I’ve got more pictures than Campbell’s got soup.
Don’t believe me, ask Campbell’s.
This is Aaron my oldest. He’s going to be a lawyer. Abraham, the middle child, with middle child syndrome, his analysts tell me, his mother and I think might be a faigelah. Faigelah smaigelah. Abraham wants to be a doctor but he’s going to be a lawyer if it kills him and me both. This is our precious baby, Shamu.
Shamu is as beautiful as her mother. More beautiful but don’t tell Sharone I said so. She’s so emotional especially now what will all the hormone replacement therapy.
Shamu, bless her, when she isn’t eating looks up at me with those lovely eyes of hers, eyes as lovely as the eyes of Elizabeth Taylor say, and says, Daddy more than anything in the world I want to grow up and marry a lawyer, or two lawyers, maybe three lawyers.
I laugh and say, Shamu darling, three lawyers is better than one most days of the week, I’ll tell you.
Shamu is the darling of her mother and my eyes. Her mother and me are hoping the gastric bypass surgery is as successful as the hormone replacement therapy. Not just for baby Shamu but for all of us.
We’re doing gastric bypass on the family plan. Hormone replacement therapy too. Our healthcare covers us all with no copay, can you imagine? What a windfall.
As a family we’ve lost more weight per capita than most families living in the continental United States and still Sharone is divorcing me.
Sharone is divorcing me, my business is in bankruptcy with threats of corporate raiders raiding and forcing me out, my life is in a shambles and Charm Tantrum is the cause so I’m not as upset as one would think me to be that Charm Tantrum is dead.
If Charm Tantrum wasn’t dead I’d give serious thought to killing Charm. But then who hasn’t given serious thought to killing Charm. Show me any man has met Charm Tantrum and I’ll show you a man wants Charm Tantrum dead.
Honestly, I never set out to become the person I am or to lead the life I’m leading. My life is as much an accident of my own creation as Charm Tantrum was an accident of all creation.
You want to die of boredom! Get handed the infant inflammable sleepwear business your father and his brother were handed by their father who started out selling from a pushcart on the Lower Eastside.
To this day I am haunted by nightmares of Babalum Mo with his gimpy leg pushing his infant inflammable sleepwear cart through the cobbled streets of the Lower Eastside singing out it that wonderful cantorlike voice of his, Sleepwear, infant inflammable sleepwear, get your infant inflammable sleepwear, one hundred percent inflammable.
My father and Uncle Morty turned Babalum Mo’s sleepwear pushcart into Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International a truly boring business that kept me and my family fed and would see to it my sons got to law school.
Uncle Morty, bless his black heart, died of a massive heart attack, a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association said Uncle Morty’s heart attack was the largest heart attack ever to take place in the free world and considering the size of Uncle Morty’s heart it came as something of a surprise not just to Aunt Seal but to the rest of the family as well.
My father, never the clever one when it came to business, especially the family business, broken hearted at the death of his beloved brother Morty retired to Florida with his secretary and most, if not all of the business assets leaving my darling mother, and huge international debt, on my doorstep.
My darling mother and my beloved wife never got along to begin with and it was World War Three after the last pork chop.
The last pork chop!
You don’t take the last pork chop if my darling mother is at the table, in the room, or around the corner, not if you want to keep your hand and Sharone, unschooled, foolishly took the last pork chop.
My darling mother has been dead these ten years and from beyond the grave I’m still hearing, Irving, how could she, how could your bitch of a wife take the last pork chop?
With my father in his secretary in Florida, my darling mother on my doorstep, huge mounting international debt and my beloved wife Sharone eating pork, there was no one but my cousin Norma and me to get the business.
Me and Norma got the business in more ways than one.
And no one got the business more than me.
You want boring get handed the infant inflammable sleepwear business your father and his brother started up from their father’s Lower Eastside pushcart and get it handed to you to run with your unmarried cousin Norma.
Who would marry Norma? An uglier woman I have never seen and I’ve seen some ugly women in my time. You tell me infant inflammable sleepwear attracts beauties and I’ll tell you you need your eyes examined.
Infant inflammable sleepwear isn’t the worst business if you discount all those ugly women and that’s more discounting than you’ll see during market week.
Sure there are worse businesses but infant inflammable sleepwear has been good to me and my family for what seems like generations. Infant inflammable sleepwear has put food on our table, enough food so everyone in the family needs gastric bypass surgery. But as the television says over and over and over again, the family that has gastric bypass surgery together stays together.
So we’d tried gastric bypass surgery as a family. And Sharone is still divorcing me.
That’s the last time I listen to anything the television has to say.
Infant inflammable sleepwear is boring. My cousin Norma is boring. My beloved wife and my darling children are boring. But most of all I am boring. I admit it. I’m just deep down to the bottom of my shrunken soul boring. Don’t believe me, ask my shrunken soul.
Life was good. We led our boring lives and we were doing okay being bored. We were bored and getting along fine being boring but just when you think you’re going to die from boredom fate steps in.
Babalum Mo bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg used to say, Irving, fate steps in.
Babalum Mo after pushing his pushcart around the Lower Eastside selling infant inflammable sleepwear would huddle about with all the other Lower Eastside pushcart vendors at the Lower Eastside Pickle Emporium eating pickles and bragging what big profits they were taking in. Babalum Mo never failed to come home with a great big half garlic dill for his darling grandson, me.
Bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg Babalum Mo would say, Irving, what do you think your Babalum Mo has in his pockets for you my fat little boy?
I’d scream, A pickle! A pickle! A pickle! My darling Babalum Mo!
What kind of pickle does Babalum Mo have for his fat little Irving? Babalum Mo, his gimpy leg growing weary, would ask.
A great big half garlic dill Babalum Mo, I’d scream.
When I was courting Sharone years before she made me marry her we used to play the same game and Sharone would scream with as much delight as I did when Babalum Mo offered me his great big half garlic dill.
I can hear my Babalum Mo now, Irving, fate steps in.
It was the night of the Sleepies.
You know the Sleepies? The Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences. The Academy Awards of infant inflammable sleepwear.
Norma had this big deal of a great idea wouldn’t it be fun if we had some of our garments made up not in sizes infant to toddler but in big sizes to fit us.
That’s a whole lot of polyester, I told Norma but Norma said, Irving, we got polyester to spare.
At the time, and confidentially off the record I still think Norma’s big deal of a great idea was one of the stupidest ideas ever thought of in human history but Norma went ahead and had these giant snuggly sleepsuits made up for us to wear to the Sleepies.
The night of the Sleepies was a night I will never forget because it is a night that changed my life forever.
The Sleepies were being held, as they are every year, in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey.
The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey is a lovely room. Sharone and I are giving serious thought to staging baby Shamu’s debutante cotillion in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey when all her surgeries are complete and she is a beautiful, normal looking girl.
Norma insisted I wear this great big snuggly sleepsuit. Talk about ugly and would sell in the hundred millions, if it had been made up for little girls infant to toddler but what grown man wants to be seen in a giant pink snuggly sleepsuit pickered all over with wild strawberries.
You don’t know Norma. You don’t want to know Norma. No one wants to know Norma and speaking in a biblical sense no one ever will and that is a mercy. But what Norma wants Norma gets and to shut Norma up once and for all I put the damn giant pink snuggly sleepsuit pickered all over with wild strawberries on and Norma and me waddled down to the bus stop to catch the Number Forty Two Express Bus that would let us out right in front of the Howard Johnson’s.
Me and Norma was standing at the Number Forty Two Express Bus Stop when this car full of guys I went to high school with, guys I used to play football with, guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school pulls up alongside the Number Forty Two Express Bus Stop and starts making fun of me and Norma. They were shouting things like, Nice outfits but Halloween is in October not July you stupid fags!
I was laughing along like I’d done most of my life, like I’d done in high school. I understood about the guys shouting about the nice outfits, about Halloween being in October and not July but why were they calling us fags. Norma has always been rather butch but that’s no reason to call us fags.
I didn’t understand it.
Were we fags because we were dressed up in giant pink infant inflammable sleepwear pickered all over with wild strawberries on our way to the Sleepies at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion Lunchroom in the Grand Ballroom of the Howard Johnson’s on Route 87 in Paramus, New Jersey?
It didn’t make sense. To me, to Norma, to you? But then the guys I went to high school with, the guys I used to play football with, the guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school, never did make much sense. To me. To Norma. To you?
There are more fags than you can shake a stick at, and how those fags like to shake their sticks, in the fashion industries but not in infant inflammable sleepwear. Especially not in Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International.
We had a great big sign out front of our factory in China.
FAGS NEED NOT APPLY.
I don’t mind being called a fag. What’s the big deal being called a fag? If you aren’t a fag and someone you went to high school with and played football with and still drives around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school calls you a fag, what after all is the big deal if you aren’t actually a fag.
In high school when I’d come home crying that these same boys I went to high school with, played football with, drove around in their Trans Am had called me a fag, my Babalum Mo would ask, Are you a faigelah, Irving?
I’d cry, No Babalum Mo, I ain’t no faigelah.
Babalum Mo would snap, Irving, don’t use ain’t! Ain’t ain’t a real word, and add, If you ain’t no faigelah what do you care if these faigelahs call you a fag for?
My Babalum Mo could sure make sense when he needed to make sense and add comfort when comfort was due what with that giant half garlic dill pickle he kept in his pockets.
What I didn’t like and what I don’t like to this day, is having someone I went to high school with and played football with and still driving around in the same Trans Am they drove around in in high school saying, Halloween is in October not July, especially as the Sleepies, the Academy Awards of infant inflammable sleepwear, take place in October so it was October and not July and I got hot under the collar and when I get hot under the collar there’s no telling what I am capable of doing.
Don’t believe me, ask Norma.
I was hot under my collar, those giant snuggly sleepsuits were so damn uncomfortable, there was no telling what I was going to do, so I stuck my tongue out. Out of heat prostration, sheer frustration or at our assailants I don’t recall, all I know is my tongue came out of my mouth.
That’s when friendly taunting went from fun to frantic.
Okay, okay. To be truthful I was the kid always chosen last for football. No one, especially not this lot, wanted me on their team. But when these guys I went to high school with and played football with got out of the Trans Am they had been driving around in since high school with baseball bats I was like, Guys, I can’t play ball with you now.
Norma who is generally not a passive person in any way, shape or form was barking at me, Irving, I don’t know who is stupider, you or your stupid friends who want to play ball when we’ve got a date with destiny at the Sleepies. This is a night we will remember for the rest of our lives. So if you ignore these yutzes maybe like a bad dream they will go away and we can get on with the great business of infant inflammable sleepwear.
I tried to ignore these guys. I did my best to ignore these guys. I had been doing my best to ignore these guys ever since high school. Only Norma, these guys just didn’t ever go away.
What a bunch of guys driving around in a Trans Am as old as Norma and me combined was doing with buckets of hot tar in the trunk of the Trans Am they have been driving around in since high school I will never know and someone will have to explain to me.
This is a mystery as mysterious as Charm Tantrum.
Hot tar! I didn’t mind hot tar. It was a rather cold October night and I didn’t mind the feathers that followed though I’m allergic and started to bloat and sneeze not to mention all the giant red welts starting to come up all over my face. What I did mind was being hit repeatedly with the baseball bats, especially in the head where it hurt and being called a big fag bird.
Look at these big fag birds, the guys I went to high school with and played football with, the guys still driving around in the same Trans Am they were driving around in in high school, was laughing. Two great big fag birds! An emu and an ibis.
Like these retards even knew what an emu and an ibis was unless emus and ibises had been the topic on some reality television series the night before.
I suppose things could have been worse. The subject on the reality television series could have been sparrows and blue tits.
Can you imagine, I can’t, being called Sparrow and Blue Tits Glamorous? That would never have done.
There we were, me and Norma in our giant snuggly sleepwear covered in tar and feathers, me with giant red welts coming up all over my face just as the Number Forty Two Express Bus comes along.
Me and Norma didn’t have time to change. Didn’t have nothing to change into. We were late as it was and had to get to the Howard Johnson’s for the Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences, also known as the Sleepies. Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International was up for Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year and we couldn’t miss that. Could we? You tell me. Could we?
Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year would be a first for Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International and would mean a huge rise in business. Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International could expect three to four percent more business if we won Inflammable Infant Inflammable Sleepwear of the Year and that three to four percent would mean the extra surgery my family needed, required and deserved.
In the ensuing scuffle, what with my tongue, baseball bats, the tar, the feathers, Norma barking, We’re not big fag birds, I managed to lose my eyeglasses and Norma, always too vain to wear hers was squinting something awful like she always does and when we got to the Howard Johnson’s dressed as we were, we were haphazardly escorted not into the Academy of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear Arts and Sciences, also known as the Sleepies, but into the Haute Couture Fashion Association of America’s big breakfast luncheon.
Suddenly and rather unexpectedly me and Norma were superstars. Headlines flashed across the front page of Women’s Wear Daily:
EMU AND IBIS GLAMOUR INTRODUCE THE NEW LOOK.
I was all for dismissing the entire episode and getting back to business as usual but Norma was busy barking, Irving, we’ve been handed an opportunity like the opportunity handed to our fathers by Babalum Mo and it is time to leap blindly into the big time.
Without so much as a backward glance, suddenly we’re no longer Irving and Norma of Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International but Emu and Ibis Glamour of Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International.
From the lowest of the low end of the garment business thrust by providence into the highest of the high end of the rag trade what could Norma and me do but run with the ball we’d been handed.
Suddenly, quite suddenly and most unexpectedly, I’m no longer a married man but a fag. That’s fashion, my friends. Low end you got your slubs of married men, high end you got your spectacular fags doesn’t matter if you’re a fag at the low end or a married man at the high end, at the low end you’re a slub of a married man and at the high end you’re a spectacular fag. That’s how fashion works. Don’t believe me, ask the fags.
Look, the money is much better at the high end, during a good season and Ibis, don’t dare call her Norma now, and I were having many good seasons, and if the money is good, do I care if I’m a fag or a married man?
I don’t know where we got the moxie, the gumption, or the nerve but I could hear Babalum Mo laughing in the background, Sleepwear, infant inflammable sleepwear, get your infant inflammable sleepwear, one hundred percent inflammable.
Babalum Mo used to sigh as I was sucking on his giant half garlic dill, If you’re going to do something do something right Irving.
Ibis and I were at the high end. We had to act high end even if our low ends were showing how high end we weren’t.
You’ve got to put on a good show. It’s all about a good show. Ibis and I had a fabulous season planned. We were high end fags, everything had to be fabulous, even if it wasn’t. But everything was fabulous, trust me, I wouldn’t lie. Why would I lie?
Don’t get me wrong I never designed anything in my life. We hired fags to do the designing. Had to take down the FAGS NEED NOT APPLY sign out front of our factories in China cause aside from all those things I don’t want to think about that fags do to each other the one thing fags know the rest of us haven’t got clue one about is design.
You want something designed and designed fabulously hire yourself a fag. Fags know more about design than they know about anything we can talk about in a family medium.
Ibis and I had a staff of fags designing away for Glamour US. But having a high end staff of high end fags designing high end glamorous garments for you when you’re high end isn’t always enough. Having a great gimmick couldn’t hurt.
That’s my Babalum Mo. Bouncing me on the knee of his gimpy leg while I sucked on that giant half garlic dill pickle of his Babalum Mo, used to say, Irving, having a great gimmick is like having a giant half garlic dill, it can’t hurt.
I’m not much on the uptake in a downward market but there I was sitting in my great big recently redesigned powder pink with all that lace office in my giant pink, pickered all over with wild strawberries infant inflammable sleepwear appliquéd with tar and feathers lounging suit reading Women’s Wear Daily, okay I wasn’t really reading I was just looking at the pictures, looking for pictures of myself so I could read about myself, when I came across a picture of Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee.
You must have heard of the Kunstmusee twins. They’ve been in all the papers. Global news stories. Bigger than the death of that guy in Rome that wears all those dresses I tell you I wouldn’t mind redesigning, all that filigree, all that beading, all that hand sewn lace, makes my head swim and my nipples as hard as if I was swimming in ice water. Don’t believe me, ask the ice water.
Huge news the Kunstmusee twins. You never heard of the Kunstmusee twins. Where have you been living under a rock? Siamese twins! Only you don’t call them Siamese twins no longer, at least not in the fabulous global world of haute couture.
Here in Haute Coutureland you call them conjoined. Conjoined twins.
Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee conjoined at the breasts.
These young ladies had been making headlines since their birth what with being conjoined at the breasts but here they were beautiful young ladies blossoming into womanhood and they had grown apart if you get what I am trying to tell you.
Doctors worldwide had been consulted and consulted and consulted again and again and again. And three out of four doctors agreed separating the twins now that they were a thirty eight double D apart from each other on both sides would not in anyway endanger their TVQ though it might seriously imperil their lives.
The surgery performed by world famous, world renowned television evangelist Dr. Angus Spalpeen was a gargantuan success in sheer numbers alone.
The press the separation of these conjoined young ladies was causing, bigger than the separation of those badly dressed, excessively ugly, so ugly they could have worked in infant inflammable sleepwear, royals over in England I would have loved to design for caused, would have made up for their deaths if indeed they had died but they didn’t. They were alive.
Alive!
The Kunstmusee Twins, not necessarily the royals, and as successful as their surgery had been the surgeries me and my little family had been partaking of made me feel more than a kinsmen of Kayla and Karla Kunstmusee.
Norma, I screamed through the office intercom after reading of the Kunstmusee Twins’ successful surgery, We’ve got to sign these girls.
Norma, screaming back through the office intercom, like Norma needed an intercom, when Norma screamed the fags we’d been hiring in China could hear her screaming in our factories in China, screamed, Don’t you ever scream Norma at me again, Emu, my name is Ibis, Ibis Glamour and don’t you forget it you stupid fag.
The financials alone could have bankrupted Infant Inflammable Sleepwear International and Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International both but in the long run what is money against the fabulosity of art and all would have been worth every rotten cent of the expenditure if Charm Tantrum hadn’t come sneaking upstaging upon the scene.
Look, I had nothing against Charm Tantrum. Who was Charm Tantrum? Glamour US a glamorous division of Glamour International had signed the Kunstmusee Twins with all their press and p