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While I monitored the reading of these stories during the radio broadcast I noticed that although the subject matter, content, and tone of the stories are quite different, they nonetheless share themes of loss and responsibility. After a story is complete and out of a writer's day to day life, he or she re-approaches it not as a writer,but a reader, and often sees things that weren't conscious decisions while writing. Very interesting part of the process.

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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.

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Adam has been to Greenland.

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Sean's website is www.byseanferrell.com

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TIME WILL TELL     

by Twist Phelan

            LaurenWinslow swept into my office a half hour after my secretary left, twentyminutes before Security came on duty downstairs. As slim as a fading hope, shewore a long sapphire sheath that was sexy but modest at the same time. She hungher wet umbrella on the coat tree next to the door and collapsed into herfavorite chair, the one closest to my desk.

            Iturned over the spreadsheet I’d been reviewing and put on a welcoming smile.“You’re looking lovely this evening, Madame Prosecutor. What’s the occasion?”

            “Annualjudges’ dinner at the Downtown Club. If I’d known the weather was going to bethis bad, I would have rented a tux.” She brushed off the raindrops thatspangled her hem, revealing a pair of satin slingbacks with vicious heels.“They’re roasting Galletti, so I have to be there. Would you please just killme now?”

            Lauren going to an event for Glamour BoyGalletti? “An evening of lawyers in white ties telling white lies—you’ll bein your element, Counselor.”

            Shechuckled, a low sound of genuine mirth. She had deep-set brown eyes, wavychestnut hair, and a dusting of freckles so fine I often wondered if I’dimagined them. “I think you’d hold your own, Tommy.”

            Laurenheaded up the Complex Crimes Unit for the regional office of the Department ofJustice. A dozen attorneys under Galletti were on a crusade against“sophisticated” criminals—corporate fraudsters, identity thieves, computerhackers, pay-for-play politicos, big-time polluters. “We’re not interested inordinary crooks,” Lauren had told me when we first met. “We go after the smartpeople who’ve gone bad, the ones who screw over widows and orphans.”

            Iheld up an almost-empty tumbler of whiskey. “Care to get a head start on the festivities?”

            Shedeclined, as she always did during her impromptu visits. Instead, she stood upand walked to the window, all fine-boned elegance and height. What began as anafternoon shower had turned into leaden rain. It was an ugly day, exactly asforecast.

            Iwondered why Lauren was here. Usually she dropped by to regale me with somecourtroom triumph—the defeat of a defendant’s motion to suppress evidence, aunanimous Guilty verdict, a plea thatsent somebody away for twenty-five years. Her stories hinted at rules she hadto bend, witnesses she had to bully into fatal admissions.

Tonight, though, she was different. There wassomething about her I hadn’t seen before; she was wired, so electric she nearlyset the air vibrating. I swallowed a mouthful of scotch, felt the warmth spreadthrough my belly, and waited.

            “HaveI ever told you what brought me to Seattle?” she asked, gazing out at the city.Her skin was pale against the darkness on the other side of the glass.

            “No.”Although Lauren was familiar with my background, she had always beenclose-mouthed about hers. I took another sip of my drink. In less than aweek, I’d be downing mojitos instead of single malt.

            Sheturned, and her dress pulled tight against her thigh. I glimpsed the outline oflace through the thin fabric and sucked in my breath. Lauren was the only womanI knew who wore a garter belt. Her legs were great, and outside the courtroomshe preferred short skirts to pants. During our first meeting she had leanedacross a table to hand a document to Nick, exposing a thin strip of smoothflesh at the top of her stocking. Nearly a minute had passed before I’d beenable to focus on her questions again.

            “Itwas four years ago,” she said, turning away from the window to reclaim herchair. I could smell her perfume. She always wore the same scent—subtle butcrisp, not too flowery. I imagined her touching the glass stopper to the hollowof her neck, dabbing it in between her breasts . . .

            Ifelt the heft of my new watch as I lifted the whiskey bottle from the deskdrawer and replenished my tumbler. Audemars Piguet—the only brand Arnold Schwarzenegger wore. Withits gold face and thirty-two diamonds rimming the bezel, the thing weighedalmost a pound. The black rubber wristband made it popular among the yachtiesin Boca.

            Laurennoticed my new hardware. “Check out the bling. I could hire another paralegalfor what that cost.”

            More like two, I didn’t say. Eightythousand dollars, no discount for cash.

            “Whathappened to the Rolex?” she asked. “Or was that aPatek Philippe in your briefcase?”

            I put the bottle back into the drawer, next to the minidigital recorder. I touched the square red button and left the drawer open.“I still can’t believe you snooped.”

            “Yourdriver shouldn’t have left the back seat door open. And briefcases come withlocks for a reason.”

            Iwas tempted to ask what part of nounreasonable searches and seizures she didn’t understand. “Next you’ll betelling me, if I carry cash, I deserve to have my pocket picked. You’re lucky Ididn’t think you were a carjacker.”

            Laurenlooked at me through her eyelashes. “What if you had, Tommy? Would you haveshot me?”

            “Jesus,how can you—”

            “Inever figured you for one of those big-watch guys,” she interrupted. “Bonusfrom a grateful client?”

            “Ifyou’re gonna keep asking questions, Madame Prosecutor, I want my lawyer.” Isaid it automatically. Not a big–watchguy. I turned my wrist so the diamonds wouldn’t show so much.

            Laurenmade a face. “Very funny, Tommy.”

            As hilarious asthe Fourth Amendment, Lauren. Bad guys aren’t the only ones who thinkthe end justifies the means. I pulled at my drink. Galletti knows it, too.

Outside, headlightswere yellow smears in the downpour, and a foghorn mooed. I knew I shouldn’tspill the beans, but I couldn’t resist.

            “Asa matter of fact, the watch is a going-away present to myself. Good-bye,perpetual rain; hello, eternal sunshine.”

            Laurentilted her head. “You’re moving? Where?”

            Ipicked up the Prada sunglasses from my desk—another recent purchase—and putthem on.

            “Nextweek I’ll be sitting on the private beach of one of the ritziest golfcommunities in Florida.” Harbour View or Vista or something like that. Harbourwith a u of course, and a gatedentrance even more pretentious than the name.

            Gated,alarmed, rent-a-copped. Drop-ins at the office were one thing, but I’venever been keen on clients—or anyone else—showing up at my house. “And I won’tbe back,” I added in my best Ahnuldimitation.

            Asmall crease appeared between Lauren’s brows. A big reaction, if you knew her.I took off the glasses, prepared to launch into my sun, beach, and golf riff.None of these things actually mattered to me, but the explanation had satisfiedeveryone else.

            Fewpeople ever surprised me like Lauren.

            “Soyou’re walking away before things are finished,” she said.

            “Whatdo you mean? The practice is all wrapped up. Not that there was much to do.After what happened to Nick, things went into the crapper pretty fast.”

            Whenmy partner got shot in our parking garage, the local news feasted on it for aweek. There was a lot of speculation—fueled by an anonymous source—that it wasa mob hit. That was enough to scare off old clients and keep away new ones. Iregarded Lauren. And with my other reason to stay in Seattle leaving, too . . .

            “I’mnot talking about your accounting firm,” she said.

            Ilooked at my watch, no longer giving a damn what she thought of it. “Aren’t yousupposed to be at Galletti’s roast?”

            Laurentossed back her prodigal curls. Usually she wore her hair in a ponytail. Idecided I preferred it loose around her face.

            “Iwant to arrive late.” Her tone turned coy. “Besides, don’t you want to hear whyI came to Seattle?”

            Itwas impossible to stay annoyed with her. Besides, this could be our lastevening together before I left. “Go ahead.”

            “Everplay Monopoly when you were a kid?”

            Youcould get whiplash trying to follow her train of thought. “Sure.”

            “Didyou know it’s the only game where going to jail is an accepted risk?”

            Iput on an Uncle Sam scowl and pointed at her. “Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars.”

            Hereyes sparkled. “I used to really rub it in when my brother pulled that card.Sometimes I made him so mad, he’d kick me out of the game.”

            You’re still pissing off the other players,Lauren. “All I cared about was collecting rent,” I said.

            “Spokenlike a true accountant. So, Tommy, did Monopoly make us what we are today?”

            Iwasn’t exactly sure what she was getting at, so I sipped my whiskey and stayedquiet. The rain increased its patter on the windows. It sounded impatient, likea dealer’s fingers drumming on the felt.

            Laurenbroke the silence. “Private placement offerings put together by MerrillBache—coal mining deals. That’s what brought me here.”

            Shewas talking about PPOs. If the investment banks won’t touch you, they’re a wayto raise capital without jumping through too many government hoops. Lawyers andaccountants vet you and your numbers, then brokers sell the deal to“accredited” investors, rich people who’ve been around the financial block afew times.

            Ialways thought private placements were small-time. Give me a REIT any day. Youpool investor funds to buy commercial rental properties or mortgages—that’sserious money.

            “Idon’t remember hearing anything about coal.”

            Sincemeeting Lauren, I’d made a point of keeping up with local financial and legalnews. The deals must have gone down before I moved to Seattle.

            “Itwas a pretty standard fraud. The geology was faked—there wasn’t any coal. Theinvestors got stuck with worthless holes in the ground.”

            Ishrugged. “So a few of the privileged class spent the summer at their lawyer’soffices instead of the beach.”

“Not so privileged,” Lauren said, her voice likeice. “The brokers sold units to anyone who walked in the door, even if theyweren’t accredited. Retirement savings, college funds, cushions against medicalemergencies—they took in millions, tens of millions.”

            Althoughwe’d never talked about it, I sensed that Lauren took investors’ lossespersonally. I wondered if there was private history.

            “Themoney was gone, of course.” I tried to sound sympathetic.

            “Ifollowed the funds through three banks before the trail went cold. As usual,nothing was left stateside. Rich crooks don’t need walking-around money.”

            “Promoterdisappear, too?”

            “Assoon as the deal went south, he followed it.”

            Iswirled the scotch in my glass. “So you were left with the professionals. Iassume you picked the obvious target.”

            Shenodded. “The brokers who peddled the deal. You know how I hate white-collartypes who think the rules don’t apply to them. When these guys tried to playgames during discovery, it really ticked me off. I wasn’t going to settle for afine after that. I wanted them in prison.”

            “Anydefense?”

            “Theusual.” Her voice became singsong. “Each investor received documents describingthe risks, the brokers had no way to know the attorneys hadn’t done the duediligence or that the accountants had inflated the numbers, it wasn’t theirfault unqualified investors bought into the deal, blah blah blah blah.”

            “Didthe jury buy any of it?”

            “Notafter it took the head broker a full five minutes to locate where the lawyershad buried the risk disclosures in the offering memorandum. The printing was sosmall, he couldn’t read it without borrowing the judge’s glasses. Meanwhile,the projected returns were smack dab in the middle of the first page, intypeface as big as the top line on an eye chart.”

            “Itake it you won.”

            “Don’tI always?”

            Thathad been true for as long as I’d known her. Lauren was a real buccaneer. Shetried cases other prosecutors would have passed on, and she was willing to dowhatever it took to win, even if it meant sailing to the edge of legalboundaries, or beyond. I get the message,Lauren.

            Itook a long pull from my tumbler. “A criminal conviction makes a civil suitpractically a slam-dunk. I bet some class-action attorney had a complaint onfile the same day your jury came back.” I could feel my neck getting red.

            Sheplucked at a thread on her sleeve and looked bored. “Probably.”

            “Whatdid the investors finally end up with? Ninety, ninety-five cents on thedollar?” I heard the edge in my voice, so I gulped some of my drink. I had tochoke back a cough as the whiskey scorchedmy throat.

            Laurenhitched up her dress so she could cross her legs. “A little more than ahundred, actually. The jury was generous with punitive damages.”

            Iforced myself to look away from her slender ankles. “I bet you went after theattorneys and accountants, too.” I set the tumbler down hard on my desk. Amberliquid sloshed over my hand.

            “Thelaw allows—”

            “Tohell with the law! The investors got back morethan they put up. And they’re no less greedy than the professionals you’re sohot to put in prison. Most people wouldn’t go near these deals if they didn’tthink they’d get a big tax write-off, plus beat the market. Why not bereasonable? Dial it back after things are more or less even again, go after real bad guys.”

            “Ido! Lawyers and accountants are supposed to be the watchdogs who make sureofferings are legit. And the ones in these deals did more than look the otherway. The promoter was smart, but not that smart. He couldn’t have put the fraudtogether without professional help.”

            Imade a calming motion with my hands, I was determined not to argue with her.Besides, it was an old debate. “Okay, okay, theselawyers and these accountants weredirtbags. You have my blessing to prosecute them.”

            Shegrimaced. “Easier said than done. I barely had enough evidence for a searchwarrant. By the time it was executed, they had shredded all the documents. Ineeded the promoter’s testimony that the attorneys and accountants were in onthe scam from the get-go.”

            Irubbed a thumb against the rubberized band of my watch. “Those guys can be hardto find once they’re in the wind.”

            “Thecoal mines were in Kentucky, so I started there. I went to the town, talked tothe guy’s landlord, the people who leased him office equipment, even thewaitresses at his favorite diner. Wasn’t hard—I was raised in a place likethat. Turns out the guy’s Norwegian, grew up working on a family fishing boat.He immigrated to the States about ten years ago with plans to make it big.”

            “Let’shear it for the American dream!” I took a mouthful of scotch and let it sizzle onmy tongue. I was feeling good again. “He must have played Monopoly when he wasa kid.”

            Laurenglared at me. “I expected him to go back to Europe. But Immigration didn’t havea record of him leaving.”

            “Howabout Canada?”

            “Theysaid he wasn’t there either. So that left Seattle.”

            “Seattle?What made you think—”

            “Whenwe went through his office in Kentucky, we found a bunch of blank Seattlepostcards and some country-western CDs in the back of a desk drawer. Apparentlyhe missed them when he cleaned out the place.”
            “Youthought he came here because of some postcards?”

            “Don’tgive me a hard time, Tommy. It was all I had to go on. The databases—”

            “Iwas wondering when you’d get to those.” I heard that edge in my voice again.“Do you feds even bother with warrants anymore? Or do you just whisper the wordterrorist and wait for the sysop tohand over the master password?”

            Lauren’sexpression told me she wasn’t in the mood for my privacy-rights rant. “Oh, wegot the password all right, but the databases were a bust. There was nothing inthe computers—no driver’s license, no address, no credit cards.”

            Iwas impressed by Lauren’s quarry. Despite disposable cell phones, falseidentities for sale on the Internet, and banks that were more interested infees than references, it was harder than ever to live off the grid. “So whatdid you do?”

            Sheflashed that luminous smile. “Drove around in the rain, hyped on caffeine. Iwent to bars, hotels, used car lots—anywhere he might have gone or donebusiness. Nada. It was as though he’dnever been here.”

            Despitemyself, I was getting interested. “Why not give up?”

            “Ialmost did. I was running out of places to look. But I knew—I just knew—he was here. The local Norwegiancommunity, the climate, the fishing, the postcards”—she ticked each one off ona finger—“made Seattle the most logical place for him to go to ground.” Sheshook her head. “Thank goodness for clams.”

            “Whatdo clams have to do with this?”

            “Iwas eating lunch at this tiny joint downtown—”

            “Theone next to the bridge? You ever have the chowder?”

            “EveryTuesday. White, with extra crackers.” She ducked behind a grin. “And an ElysianFields Pale Ale, no glass.”

            A noontime beer should be the least of yourworries, Lauren. For half a second, I wondered if she would go to lunchwith me. Maybe if I called it a bonvoyage thing . . .

            “Anyway,I was eating on the patio when the ferry came in from Bainbridge Island. That’swhen it hit me.”

            “Aboat,” I said.

            “Aboat,” she repeated, clearly relishing the memory. “And I had five days to findit before I had to start working another case.”

            “TheState of Washington must have a hundred thousand registered vessels. How didyou think you were going to come up with the right one in time?”

            “Makethat three hundred thousand, plus transients.” Lauren flicked invisible lintfrom her dress. “Still, it was no problem.”

            “Okay,I’ll bite. How did you find the needle in a third of a million boats?”

            “Didyou know the DMV is in charge of maritime registrations? It handlesthem just like cars. I sat in a back office and scrolled through the listingsfor vessels over thirty feet—the DMV guy said that would be the minimum sizefor someone to live on. I found it the second day.” Her tone was only slightlysmug.

            “Hecouldn’t have been stupid enough to put his name down as the owner.”

            Laurenlooked offended. “Of course not. Besides, I didn’t look at the owner registry.I figured title would be held by some offshore corporation. I went through thelist of boat names instead.”

            “Boat names? Why would you do that?”

            “Becausemen aren’t sentimental, except when they are.” She looked at my watch. “Theycan’t hide the things that matter to them.”

            Itugged my cuff over the gold dial. “So did he go for a name from the oldcountry? Or something dumb, like OtherPeople’s Money or Sucker Bet?”

            “Wrong,and wrong. But I knew I’d found the right one as soon as I saw it.” Shegrinned, and I half-expected to see canary feathers sticking out of her mouth.“The Loretta Lynn.”

            “Isn’tthat a country-western singer?”

            “Yougot it. Born and raised in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky.”

            “Whywould this guy name his boat after her? He’s Swedish.”

            “Norwegian.”Lauren hugged herself happily. “Remember when I told you the coal mines were inKentucky? Well, guess what town they’re in.”

            “You’vegot to be kidding. I still don’t seehow the hell you made the connection with Loretta Lynn. I didn’t think you werea country-western buff.”

            “I’mnot. But the CDs he’d left in his office were all hers, except for—here’s thegood part—the soundtrack from CoalMiner’s Daughter, the movie they made about her life.”

            Thepride in her voice was beginning to grate. “So then what did you do?”

            “Therecords said the Loretta Lynn was aconverted trawler. The DMV guy said that meant it ran on diesel. I calledaround to the fuel docks until I found the one that knew the boat. The gasjockey ID’d an email photo of my guy, and the Harbor Patrol took me out there.Two days later, I was waiting when he showed up with empty tanks and a grocerylist.”

            “Isuppose you called the media for the perp walk,” I said into my glass. Thetumbler was almost empty again, and I considered refilling it.

            “Ofcourse.” She almost purred the words. “You know I love the look of a man in amonogrammed shirt and handcuffs.”

            “Yeah,those initials come in real handy when it’s time to sort prison laundry.”

            Thecorner of her mouth twitched. “Always the clever one, Tommy.”

            Lookingout the window, I could see the interior of my office reflected endlesslyacross the skyline, illuminated boxes filled with bland furniture,screen-savered computers, and generic wall art. As I scanned the warren ofother buildings, I half-expected to see someone like me looking back. It mademe uncomfortable, and I pulled my gaze back to Lauren.

            “Sowhy did you stay?” I fiddled with the thick clasp on my watch—opening it,snapping it shut, opening it again. The diamonds winked at me. “In Seattle, Imean.”

            Herreply was quiet, measured. “I met you, Tommy.”

            Istopped playing with my watch.

            Laurengot up from her chair.

            “Assumingthat ridiculous sundial on your wrist is correct, I better get going,” shesaid. “One of the secretaries let slip that part of tonight’s program includesa small celebration in my honor.”

            Thewords jumped out before I could stop them. “A celebration?”

            Hereyes drilled into mine. Anticipation shimmered off her.

            “I’mleaving Seattle, too.”

            Ifelt something flutter in my chest, forced my eyebrows up in feigned surprise.

            “You’relooking at the new DOJ liaison with the local SEC office.” Lauren leanedforward and placed her hands flat on the desktop. Her fingers were long andtapered, the nails filed into perfect ovals. “In Boca Raton.”

            Thechange in her demeanor was subtle but unmistakable. Damn. Sooner or later, we always came to this point in theconversation.

            “Youmay be clever, Tommy, but you’re not clever enough.” Her voice was as soft ascashmere, but underneath I could feel the chill of steel. “I’m going to getyou. Three years left on the securities fraud SOL. And, of course, there’sNick. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

            Evenwhen I held the winning hand, she still made me feel like I was chasing thepot. Had I refilled my glass twice or three times? I passed a damp palm over myface.

            “Thisisn’t one of your coal deals.” My tongue felt slightly too big for my mouth.“For starters, the REIT investors’ lawsuit was tossed.”

            Laurenblew out a dismissive breath. “Plaintiff’s lawyer jumped the gun. Doesn’taffect the criminal prosecution.”

            “Lack of evidence—that’s what the judgesaid when he granted my lawyer’s motion to dismiss. If the plaintiffs didn’thave enough proof to get past more likelythan not, how are you going to make it all the way to beyond a reasonable doubt?”

            Thedetermination was plain on her face. “I’ll find the evidence.”

            By any means necessary. I tapped mywatch. “You know as well as I do, the more time that passes, the more memoriesfade, the more documents are lost, the more people decide to put all thisbehind them and move on. As for what happened to my partner . . .” I put on thesad expression I’d used for the reporters. “Carjacking gone wrong. Realtragedy.”

            “Fourthousand investors lost everything in your REIT, Tommy. Four thousand. Already there have been two suicides, plus God knowswhat other damage—divorce, derailed retirements, ruined careers—” Laurenpaused, bit down on her lip.

            But it wasn’t my fault, I wanted to tellher. I’d been in hock up to my eyeballs to those deranged Russian bookies. They“let me” pay off my marker by washing their gambling profits through the REIT.I didn’t know they were going to rip off the investors, too.

            “Andwe both know Nick wasn’t killed by any carjacker.” Her voice had dropped to awhisper, and I had to lean forward to hear her. Our faces were so close, Icould see the pulse beating at her temple and smell her perfume. Definitely grapefruit. Maybe a littlecypress?

            “He’sdead because he decided to take the immunity offer and testify.” She nearlyspat the words. “Against you.”

            Also not my fault. Since when did mypartner the schmoozer ever bother to look into the mechanics of a deal? Nick’sjob was to bring in the business, not run it. When he stumbled onto the moneylaundering, I had no choice. Otherwise the Russians would have left me lying onthat cold concrete floor.

            Laurenpushed herself off the desk. “Run to Florida, run halfway around the world. Itwon’t make a bit of difference. You’ll never be able to put enough distance—ortime—between us. More search warrants, new witnesses—I’ll plant the damnevidence if I need to—I’ll get theproof I need. Then it’ll be like that hideous watch of yours was turned back toyesterday.”

            Herlook of distaste stung. I dropped my eyes to thedigital recorder in the drawer. I imagined I could hear its motor humming. Everybody’s onthe run from something, Lauren. Or should be.

            “I’llsee you in Florida, Tommy. Don’t get too comfortable in your new place. Beforeyou know it, you’ll be moving to another gated community—the kind where Securitycarries pump shotguns instead of cell phones, and the bars on the windowsaren’t just for show.”

            Witha rustle of blue silk, she was gone.

            I’ll see you in Florida, Tommy.

            Theblack October rain beat against the window. I checked my watch, drained thelast of the scotch, and pushed back my chair. Ipicked up the recorder from the drawer, turned it off, and dropped itinto my pocket.

            Theirony of where I was headed hit me in the hallway, and kept me laughing all theway to the elevator. I punched the Downbutton.

            Gallettiwouldn’t have offered a talk-and-walk on the Russian thing if he suspectedanything about Nick. Lauren must have been keeping her cards close. Made itsweet for me. Once her overeager—or dumb—boss put blanket immunity on thetable, I had my Get Out of Jail Freecard. If I took his deal, I’d be untouchable for the murder.

            Asthe elevator doors slid open on the parking garage, I thought back to thatnight. I hadn’t expected Nick to struggle, let alone rip the watch from mywrist. The Rolex had fallen into a crack in the cement floor beside one of thesupport beams, wedged out of reach. I averted my eyes as I walked past thespot. What the hell had possessed me to engrave the damn thing?

            MyDNA, Nick’s blood . . . The feds had already been over the scene. But Laurenwas talking about a new search warrant. If she found the watch before Idisappeared into witness protection, my deal with her boss would evaporate. I’dbe facing the needle instead of twenty years.

            The gray Buick was parked next to the exit ramp, its enginerunning, in one of the spaces with a good view of the main entrance. Theair was thick with the stink of exhaust. I could heartires swishing through the puddles at street level.

            Islid into the back seat and rested my head against the plump leather. Gallettieagerly twisted around in the driver’s seat. No doubt he’d seen Lauren leave.Jesus, the guy had it in for her so bad, he was going to be late to his ownroast.

            Ourlast meeting had not gone well. He’d moaned about my coming up empty-handedagain. I’d dropped the bomb about my Florida move.

            “Weboth know witness protection is gonna stick me in some place like Oshfart,North Dakota,” I’d told him when he finished squawking.“I want to see sun and beach and girls in bikinis one last time. Besides, isn’tthis all moot, like you lawyers say? If Lauren’s moving to Florida, she’s notyour problem anymore, right?”

            Hehadn’t been able to hide the ambition and spite in his hooded eyes. Gallettiwasn’t gunning for Lauren because she crossed theline. He wanted to take her down because every month she won more cases,more headlines, more fans. She wouldn’t be the first prosecutor to parlay thoseinto a glory ride. But it was a trip her boss wanted to take himself.

I let my eyelids closeas his voice once again bore into my skull, more excruciating than thehangover I knew I’d have in the morning.

            Heasked me the question.

            Howmany had it been this time? Two—no, three—counts of prosecutorial misconduct,any one of which was enough to deliver Lauren’s head—and career—to Galletti ona silver platter.

“Nothing.” I shifted inthe seat. The recorder jabbed me in the rib. “Didn’t even get a chance to turnit on.”

            Igot out of the car and went back to my office. I sat down at my desk, took thewhiskey bottle out of the drawer, and poured slowly until my glass was fullagain. I thumbed the Rewind button onthe recorder and turned up the volume so I could hear her voice over the rain.

I’ll see youin Florida, Tommy.

# ##

Friday, May 29, 2009, 7:30 am

We had a chalkboard in our dining room.

It took a while for me to realize that this was unusual. Even after going to lots of other kids’ houses, it still seemed fairly ordinary, until someone (no doubt someone chalkboard-deprived) asked me about it. Evidently not every family had dinner conversations that regularly – frequently – required charts or drawings to explain. We did, and so there was a big green chalkboard dominating one wall of the dining room at 1504 Harris Drive in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

I’ve been thinking about that chalkboard a lot the last couple of days. I’m writing this on Friday, May 29. On Wednesday morning, I was in my office at the law school, packing up for the move to the deans’ suite for my new job. Along with packing boxes of books and decorations and toys, I took the chalkboard off the wall to move downstairs.

The chalkboard made the move with the family from Oklahoma to Minnesota back in 1983, but there was no appropriate wall for it, so it lived in the basement. I took it with me to college, and then it was with me in law school, and it was on my wall through my time in practice in D.C., and it’s been on my wall of my office at the law school since I started there in 2004.

I usually use the chalkboard-in-the-dining-room concept for laughs. But as I took it off of the wall of my office, and erased it – ideas for articles, explanations of torts doctrine from office hours, my kids’ doodles, and so on – I thought, just for a bit, about how the oddity of a chalkboard in the dining room had affected me. Not that I think it is exclusively responsible for, well, anything in my life except for some chalk dust on my clothes, but it is indicative of how we were raised: to ask questions, to learn, to challenge, to always – always – think.

On Wednesday afternoon (my cell phone “recent calls” listing tells me it was at 4:32), not long after coming home from packing the office and taking the kids to their violin lessons, I got a call from my mom, telling me that my dad has pancreatic cancer.

After a moment of shock, my reaction – and I expect the rest of the family’s – was to sit down and research pancreatic cancer. I (and I bet my siblings) found the Mayo Clinic’s site, we found the site about the chemo treatment that looked promising post-surgery (we don’t know as of this writing whether surgery will be an option), we probably all giggled, and then felt a little bad for giggling, at the name of the surgery (“The Whipple Procedure” – c’mon, you giggled a little too).

Back to the phone call, though. After telling me the news and a quick overview, my mom handed the phone to my dad.

After pleasantries and such and a brief acknowledgment of the diagnosis, he turned to what he was really wanting to talk about, which was not his diagnosis or prognosis – no, he wanted to talk about a global warming skeptic’s column that had been published by the local paper. As usual, he’s going through multiple iterations of a response to the column’s silliness, with challenges interspersed into the Word document. We talked about how best to try to get his response out there, where the author had gone wrong in his assumptions and his thinking, and so on.

Always think, always challenge. That’s what the chalkboard was about, at least in part. (To be fair, we also used it for messages.) That’s what he’s taught his kids and grandkids, to the extent that I have a graph on my desk from my daughter and him testing the widespread (but, they showed, wrong) notion that hot water freezes faster than cold water.

And thinking and challenging is what we’ll be doing with whatever comes.

Remarks at memorial service of Ves Childs • Bill Childs

I’m talking today both on my own behalf and on behalf of my brother Mike.

But I’m going to start with part of a speech that my dad gave when he was accepting the award as a distinguished alumnus of Southern Arkansas University; it’s one of his more thoughtful and philosophical commentaries. Here’s the excerpt:

We live between two golf courses and a lot of geese raise young right on the course.  (This is when they were living in Minnesota.)  The geese like the water and green grass… For the past few weeks those geese and several hundred others have been practicing flying in formation.  They start out flying three or four in a line and now they have worked up maybe fifty or sixty and they are flying in vees.

Have you ever noticed how one side of the vee is always longer than the other?  I found out the other day why that is so.

The long one has more geese in it.

When our preacher told that one, the Germans groaned, the Swedes laughed, and the Norwegians still haven’t got the point.

He liked starting remarks with a joke, and I figured I should follow suit.

One month and a day ago I wrote a short essay about growing up as part of the Childs family, and how that upbringing was going to affect how we approached Daddy’s diagnosis.  Two days earlier, we’d gotten word that Daddy had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. 

It stuns and devastates me to be standing here such a short time period later at his memorial service.  He died just over three weeks after his diagnosis. 

The subject of that essay is the same thing I’d really like to focus on for a couple of minutes today, but instead of focusing on how the way we grew up affected our process of going through his illness, I’d like to focus on it as his legacy – it’s a major thing I will remember about him, and that I know my kids and nieces and nephews will remember it about him too.

And it’s symbolized by the fact that we had a chalkboard in our dining room.

It took a while for me to realize that this was unusual, and that seems to have been true for Mike and Lisa too. Even after going to lots of other kids’ houses, it still seemed fairly ordinary, until someone (no doubt someone chalkboard-deprived) asked me about it.

Evidently not every family had dinner conversations that regularly – frequently – required charts or drawings to explain. We did, and so there was a big green chalkboard dominating one wall of the dining room at 1504 Harris Drive in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  My mom says she bought it for him very early in their marriage when she realized how often, when asked how his day at work was, he would reply that “It’d be easier to explain with a chalkboard.”  So she bought him one.

The chalkboard made the move with the family from Oklahoma to Minnesota back in 1984, but there was no appropriate wall for it, so it lived in the basement of that house. I took it with me to college, and then it was with me in law school, and it was on my wall through my time in practice in D.C., and it’s been on my wall of my office at the law school where I teach since I started there in 2004.

I usually use the chalkboard-in-the-dining-room concept for laughs. And it’s pretty good for those.  Very few of my students grew up with a chalkboard, and it’s a nice icebreaker with them when they come in for office hours. 

But it’s also a good indication of how we were raised: to ask questions, to learn, to challenge, to always – always – think.

That was central to his being a father – Mike remembers building great real-world examples of scientific concepts, including building electromagnets (one is still around the house somewhere) and boiling water in a tin can, sealing it, and demonstrating atmospheric pressure through its consequent collapse.  We all did science fair projects that went well beyond the baking soda volcanoes.  It continued into adulthood for us, too,– he was a key editor and commenter on my scholarly work (which focuses on the intersection of law and science) and, maybe a little more mundane but still important, designed the treehouse that Mike and I built in my yard that you saw in the photo slideshow (which will run again after the benediction, by the way).  Even though his ataxia made travel difficult, stuff like that treehouse made it so he could be a nearly daily part of our kids’ lives over a thousand miles away.

Asking questions and challenging accepted thought was a big part of his marriage too, supporting Mother in her work for women’s rights and all of her other political work, and in her going back to graduate school in chemical engineering.  There wasn’t much conventional about their lives, especially in that time and place, but it worked, completely.

And it was obviously the foundation of his career – he loved telling stories about both challenging established scientific authority (with success) and about him being the scientific authority challenged, most notably by a junior engineer in his lab at 3M, who tried something Daddy thought would never work – and of course it did. 

(One of the things I love most is how much he relished telling that story on himself.  It was a measure of his own humility that he was happy to be proved wrong in that sort of situation.)

And it was a huge part of his retirement, whether in mentoring local entrepreneurs, or, more notably for me, in sharing his love of learning with his grandchildren; I can’t tell you how often one of their questions would be answered with, “That’d be a great question to ask Granddaddy.” 

Last week, I spent just a few minutes going through some of his old e-mail exchanges with my kids, and came up with a few examples of the questions he answered for them – every one with a thoughtful and understandable answer, often with a PowerPoint accompanying it.  (This was despite the fact that he was known in his Sunday School for asking unanswerable questions – there were lots of questions he could and would answer.)  He never ever spoke down to the kids, either. 

So here are some of the questions I came across from Ella or Liam:

·      What is in onions that makes your eyes water? (that one got a full page, including a mention of Leonard Pike, a former student of his dad’s now teaching at Texas A&M)

·      Do fish sleep like we do?

·      Why do gymnasts in the Olympics use chalk?

·      How would you make an egg cracking machine where the egg rolls a little bit?

·      How do they make things glow in the dark?

·      What is fire made out of?

·      Why does hot air rise and cold air sink?

·      I put four pennies in vinegar and after two days they had blue things on them.  What is it?

·      Can water have no surface tension?

·      Can people make water?

·      How are crystals made?

·      How do people make elements?

·      What was before the big bang?

So. 

They were all pretty easy questions, obviously. 

But he loved to answer them; his joy was palpable in the e-mails.  I’m so sad that he can’t answer more of them, and especially for his younger grandchildren too, but I know they’ve inherited his love for learning and his curiosity.

One more little story about how he loved to teach the grandkids.  Ella and Liam were here for Spring Break a few months ago and Ella and her granddaddy did an experiment to test the long-standing assertion that hot water freezes faster than cold water.  They worked together to design and perform the experiment and analyze the data to reach a conclusion that, despite its persistence, the idea is wrong.  Last week – probably the day after Daddy died – Ella and I were talking about him, and she said that her best way to remember him was to never stop learning.  She’s got a fierce grasp on that idea and I think it’s a lot because of him.

And that’s the positive we can focus on today – or at least it’s what I’m going to focus on.  Countless people have learned a little more about the joy of learning and of asking questions from him, whether it’s people he mentored in his career, his friends in churches and organizations in the communities in which he lived, his kids and grandkids, or any of the myriad other people with whom he came into contact.  You can see it in Lisa’s work with the University’s inventors; you can see it in Mike’s work advancing technology with Intel; you can hopefully see it in my work teaching lawyers to be challenging and creative; you can see it in Ella reading constantly (even when that tries her parents’ patience) and her desire to be a paleontologist; you can see it in Liam’s love of math and learning; you can see it in Maggie’s curiosity, even when it leads to multiple bee stings; you can see it in Ty’s eternal questioning every day and finding new myths for MythBusters to test; you can see it in Kian’s taking things apart and putting them back together again (usually working); and you can see it in Hope’s exploration and learning.  And you can see it in Mother taking classes at the University and becoming a master gardener and all the rest.  That’s the theme I was trying to capture with the pictures in the slideshow, and I hope you’ll watch that.

His dad, our Poppaw, used to say that your influence for good is the only thing that lasts, and the influence for good that Daddy had is immeasurable.

I lost my powers on a Monday.

           If you’ve never been in a super fight, just know they’re quick and brutal. Mylast one happened on the roof of a skyscraper. Like always, my nemesis had thescheme laid out before I arrived.

           I approached the setup, chalky gravel crunching under my booted feet. It wassimple: girl tied to a pole, shotgun mounted on another pole and aimed at herface. My nemesis stood off to the left, watching.

           “It’s the fast man! But will he be fast enough this time? Get the girl free before the shot reaches her. Those are the rules of this game.”

           He held up a small red remote, like a cell phone.

           “When you move.”

           I was fast, you see. Or maybe fast isn’t right. I could slow the passage oftime around me, like a tiny dam in a rushing river. I moved normally, but everyone else was more or less frozen until I let time melt back into place.

           “Give it up, Brian. We can do this easy or hard.”

           This was normal hero/villain banter. He’d told me his name because I hadtrouble pronouncing his villain name. That gun was going off, but Brian knewI’d be able to get to her in time. That was the point; we do some variation of this dance daily.

           I couldn’t see his face behind the smoked glass of his helmet, but I knew hewas smiling. The girl moaned through her gag, but there was no danger. Iignored her, focused my mind instead, touched that strange power inside me.

           Brian twirled the remote like he was stirring a drink.

           “I’m waiting.”

*

          I take scraping steps up the stairs. Rats and roaches scuttle from my feet, butthey’re in no danger: I’m harmless now. The only light is from the cracked sputtering yellows that are still burning for reasons unknown. It smells like mildew and mold. It smells old. My tears are sucked up by the hungry grime on each step. This is a condemned building.

           There’s a vagrant on the fifth landing wrapped in a filthy green jacket. He lifts his head up from the cardboard box and blinks gunk from his eyes.

           “Hero?”

           “There is no hero here.”

*

           I moved.

           Brian hit his remote, expecting me to have the girl untied and clear before theshot left the barrel. Easy. Until I reached for my power and found empty space. Without warning, I was a man again. 

           There was a red cloud that glowed from the sun, a mars-colored cloud, perfectly round like the planet. The girl sagged in her restraints and I looked away because I had never seen violence like that before.

           Brian choked on his words.

           “I. I. You were supposed to.”

           He took tiny steps backward, away from the girl.

           “You were supposed to save her.”

           I fell to one knee and threw up. My ears didn’t ring because the wide blue skyhad swallowed up all the noise. The smoked glass of Brian’s face mask was speckled with blood, making it look like some kind of exotic egg. As I kneeled,his je tpack fired up, the low whine steadily building. The girl remained dead.

           I fumbled with my grappling hook, thinking to catch him and pull him back and make him pay. But my hands didn’t work, because I’m not really a hero. I watched him float above me and shake his head once and dart away to some other place. The white trail from his jet dissolved, leaving no trace.

           I untied the girl and laid her body on the gravel rooftop.

           Then I sat there for a while.

*

           I’m almost to the top now. Even though I haven’t been counting floors, I know the top is near. Everything has a fine layer of unbroken dust. Most of the trash has trickled down to lower levels, leaving my path clear.

My breathing comes faster; my cruel mind shows me the cloud of blood, how it seemed to hover in place for a single second before scattering in the wind.

I’m through the rooftop access and the sky is as blue and beautiful as it was a few hours ago. I think about how I don’t have to do this, how even heroes make mistakes. But now I’m just a man, and a man shouldn’t have to live with this kind of guilt. She was an honor student, two weeks from graduating with a full swimming scholarship. Her name was Allison.

The streets are empty on this side. I’m twenty stories up. This is selfish, going out this way. But I’ve always wanted to fly and my foot is on the edge now so I might as well go before I think about it too much.

Wind roars in my ears and my eyes gush tears and I feel a little bad.

I see the kidnapping ten stories through my decent. A black van with black windows and three men trying to drag a female into the side door. She struggles. She kicks and bites and punches. But they’re men; they’re strong. I watch for another story and wonder who is going to save her.

But of course I know.

My grapple gun is in my hands. The sun is a white-hot marble reflected on its mirror finish. The hook explodes skyward with a beautiful sound––suh-TING––and catches on the edge of the roof. The cord twangs, pulls tight. That’s also a beautiful sound.

I swing over the street and land on top of the van, blowing out the black glass.

I was never one to take the easy way out.

--

www.dankrokos.blogspot.com

DEATH WILL TRIM YOUR TREE

Elizabeth Zelvin

I sat on the floor in Jimmy and Barbara’s living room with a pile of blinking electrical spaghetti in my lap and ground my teeth. For this I’d stayed sober for 357 days and changed my whole life? Cursing the malevolence of circuitry, I began to

disentangle the single strand of tiny bulbs that I’d finally gotten to light up all at the same time from the rest.

“Think of it as a meditation,” Barbara said, perky as one of Santa’s elves.

“You wanna take over?”  

“I can’t. I’m making latkes.” Barbara does Chanukah along with Christmas. She showed me puppy eyes soft with regret.  Her feminism flies south at this time of year. Women cook. Men wrestle with the frigging lights.  

“Why don’t you run over to Broadway and pick up some that work?” Jimmy suggested. Computer geniuses supervise.

I growled low in my throat, sounding more like a pit bull than I expected. Jimmy took it in stride.  

“These lights are obsolete, anyhow,” he said. “With the new ones, if one bulb goes out, the rest stay on. Replace the one, and you’re back in business.”

“Thank you for sharing.”

I didn’t bother asking so how come we were still using the old ones. I knew the answer: Barbara never throws anything out. I picked bits of last year’s tinsel off my sweater, grabbed my down vest off the back of a chair, and headed for the door.

“Bruce!” Barbara called after me. “While you’re at it, pick up a pint of sour cream.”

I could pretend I hadn’t heard. But I’d probably get the sour cream. As people were always telling me, AA interferes not only with your drinking but also with such cherished traits as surliness and willingness to disappoint people.

I headed for Manny’s Hardware over on Broadway. Manny was long gone, but the hole in the wall he’d founded in 1923 still carried everything you could possibly need, from the oddball size of screw to a giant silver samovar that had been sitting there for years. Or maybe they kept selling and replacing it, one samovar at a time.

In spite of its eight million people, New York is a small town. In the old days, I knew someone in every bar I stumbled into. Now, wherever I went, I saw someone from the program. AA meetings are better lit than bars, so the faces stayed with me.  

At Manny’s, I recognized the clerk.

“Hi, Tim.” I read the name off his shirt, greeting him as I would have at a meeting.

He nodded, giving me a half-smile to acknowledge that he knew me too but wasn’t about to break my anonymity by saying so. We said, “What’s happening?” and “Not much,” and then we were ready to talk hardware. I described the kind of lights I needed. He said they’d been flying off the shelves, but he still had a few boxes in stock. They never don’t have what you need at Manny’s.

“Give me a minute,” he said. “I’ll go in the back and get them.”

 Tim opened a door in the wall behind the counter. I could see a stockroom bigger than the shop. A half-open door in the rear offered a glimpse of one of those hidden New York back yards that visitors don’t even know exist. The tall, narrow space was lined with ceiling-high gray metal shelves crammed with merchandise and towers of giant brown boxes. He’d have a job finding one carton.

“I may be a while. I know we’ve got ’em, though.”

“No problem.”

Tim sketched a salute and dove into the storeroom, closing the door behind him.

I browsed the shelves for a while, decided I didn’t need a set of Phillips head screwdrivers or a non-stick pizza stone, and went out front for a smoke. The faint jingle of Salvation Army Santa Claus bells served as background music. The even fainter scent of pine trees from Maine and Canada stacked three deep on wooden scaffolding down the street provided ambience. I drifted off, thinking about nothing in particular. I was far away when a female voice broke into my reverie.

“They’re not closed, are they? If I don’t find red and gold tinsel, I’ll have a panic attack.”

New Yorkers.

I dropped the butt I held pinched between my fingers. Grinding it out with the toe of my shoe, I realized I’d stood there long enough to suck up and crush out four cigarettes.

“No, it’s open. The clerk went out back to find something for me.”

I held the door, which clanged the way shop doors do, and let her precede me into the store. She was a tall, thin woman with a white streak bisecting jet black hair like Cruella de Vil, bundled up in a faux fur coat with matching trim on her faux leather gloves. She lugged a bulging Zabar’s shopping bag in each hand.

“Yoohoo!” She bumped her way through the narrow aisle to the counter. “Can I get some service here?”

Tim did not appear.

“He’s been gone for a while,” I said. “Maybe I should go back there and take a look.”  

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I love Manny’s. I could browse in here forever.”

Her eyes lit up as she spotted a cut-glass punch bowl on the highest shelf. I’d better get Tim back out here, or she’d be asking me to get it down for her.  

            I ducked under a hinged flap in the counter top, then opened the stockroom door.

            “Tim?” I called. “You’ve got a customer.”

            No answer. I marched down the narrow aisle toward the rear door. An open carton blocked the way. Christmas lights. I straddled it and proceeded to the door. It wasn’t ajar any more, though a strip of thin winter light still filtered in. I pushed it open with my shoulder and stepped out into the yard.

Tim lay sprawled face down on the concrete, to one side and a few yards beyond the back door. If he was dead, I didn’t want to touch the body. I’d rather keep my DNA to myself. But if he wasn’t dead, and I failed to help, I’d feel guilty. No more Jack Daniel’s to help me blow it off, either. I took a cautious stroll around him, hands in my pockets. The far side of his head, crumpled like a ball of paper, lay in an ooze of blood and brains. Too late for CPR, then.

I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths until the desire to throw up subsided. I’d better call 911. To tell the truth, I would rather have walked away. But for the new me, that was not an option. As I drew my cell phone from my pocket, I looked around the yard. No handy two-by-four coated with blood and gray matter in sight. Tim had fallen onto concrete. The area wasn’t exactly a garbage dump. But recent litterers had left six cigarette butts, seven pop tops, and three candy wrappers within a foot of his outstretched hand.

I would have picked the litter up, out of respect for the abandoned body. But I didn’t think the police would appreciate it. I’d better make my call from out front, with the lady customer as witness. While I was at it, I could scoop up my own butts, hopefully before the cops got there. Taking one last look at the body, I saw a familiar-looking bronze coin half hidden by the sprawl of his hip. He’d gone outside wearing only a white T shirt and faded jeans. They’d pulled apart when he fell. I could see a bit of pale skin in between. It looked smooth and vulnerable.

I squatted and fished the coin out with my thumb and forefinger: a medallion with the AA triangle and “3 months” on one side, the Serenity Prayer engraved so small that I had to squint to read it on the other. The bronze was antiqued, so it wasn’t shiny. But it didn’t look worn, not as if it had been hanging out in somebody’s pocket for years. These “chips” were cherished in the fellowship. The only way you could get one was by staying sober for ninety days. Or stealing it off a corpse. I tucked the chip into the pocket of my jeans.

I went back into the store and out the front. Cruella was still there. I broke the news and said I’d call 911.

“I live right around the corner,” she said. She looked longingly at the pile of

shiny housewares and appliances she’d selected from Manny’s shelves and piled on the counter by the cash register. “Do you think it would be okay if I pop back home and get my holiday goodies into the fridge before they spoil? I could come back.”

“Please don’t go,” I said. “The cops might take a dim view of your leaving. And I would really appreciate it if you’d tell them you saw me go behind the counter only a few minutes before I found—before I called the police.”

“When you put it that way—oh, why not?” She put the Zabar’s bags gently down on the sidewalk and flexed her fingers. “I’ll stay. It’s Christmas.”

Shortly after that, the uniformed cops arrived, then two detectives, crime scene folks, and a parade of snoopy Upper West Siders who didn’t want to miss the excitement. It knocked the warm fuzzies from Cruella being nice right out of me. When the detectives asked if I’d known Tim outside the store, I lied. They took my address and told me where to report to be fingerprinted. Then they shooed me off the scene along with the nosy neighbors.

When I got back to Jimmy and Barbara’s, I told them what had happened and showed them the ninety-day chip.

“It’s evidence, Bruce!” Barbara’s voice soared into a shocked squeak. She kind of lost the moral high ground when she added, “Couldn’t you have picked up those lights while you were at it?”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist, peanut,” Jimmy said. “I’ll order some online.”  

 “Why did you take it, Bruce?” Barbara said. “Here, have some latkes.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I had some kind of goofy idea of protecting AA. I didn’t want cops busting into every meeting in the city to ask questions.”

“They’ll figure out he was in AA sooner or later,” Jimmy said. “The guy had a job and an apartment. At the very least, they’ll find a meeting list.”

“Okay, so AA was part of his life. But a chip on the scene makes it part of his death. I didn’t want them getting the wrong idea.”

“Maybe it’s the right idea,” Barbara said. “Maybe somebody in the program killed him.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Lots of people carry their anniversary coins on them all the time.”

“It wasn’t his coin,” Jimmy said.

“How do you know?” Barbara asked.

“You knew Tim?” I asked. Why was I surprised? Jimmy knew everyone.

“I go to the hardware store now and then,” he said. “I knew Tim from meetings. If he was alone in the store, we’d talk.”

“Still, how do you know it wasn’t his chip?”

“He didn’t have ninety days,” Jimmy said. “Last week, I went into Manny’s to get the new Christmas tree stand.”

“Bruce didn’t even notice the stand,” Barbara said.

“Yes, I did. I noticed the tree didn’t fall down this year. Yet. Go on, Jimmy.”  

“I asked Tim if he wanted to qualify at the Thursday step meeting. He said, and I quote, ‘I don’t have the clean time. I’m only seventy-two days back from a slip.’”

“Then the chip must have belonged to the murderer,” Barbara said. “Bruce, you should have left it there.”

Oops.

            In the next couple of weeks, with some reluctant help from Jimmy and overenthusiastic help from Barbara, I trolled the twelve-step programs for gossip that might suggest a motive for Tim’s death. Tim was a well-known chronic relapser. He’d get a few months together and then pick up. So far, he’d managed not to lose the job at Manny’s. But the slips meant that he was perennially on Step One, admitting he was powerless over alcohol. He could put dealing with all his other shortcomings on hold. Like cheating on his girlfriend, Suzanne, whose tearful share I heard one night at a meeting.

“What was I supposed to do?” she wailed to the group of thirty or so alcoholics. “Break up with him every time he had a slip?””

 I heard a few quiet mutters of “Yes!” and “Go to Al-Anon!” The woman next to me said, “Stop going to the hardware store for oranges.” It’s what people trying to recover from addictive relationships tell each other.

“I told him I’d move in with him,” Suzanne said, “when he got a year together. I thought it would motivate him to stay sober.”

More mutters and a sigh or two from the folks who had mentioned Al-Anon.

“But he didn’t want me to move in. He said he wanted to leave his options open. Ha!” For a moment, the rage broke through. “He was seeing someone else, I know he was. And now he’s dead!” She broke down sobbing.

Afterward, Suzanne came over to the woman next to me. I eavesdropped, pretending to take part in the conversation of a group of guys I didn’t know, as they rattled on.

“In Al-Anon they talk about the three Cs,” her friend said. “You didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, and you can’t control it”—“it” in this case being Tim’s drinking.

“I don’t get it,” Suzanne said. “I loved him. How could I not try to help him stay sober?”

They also talked about Tim’s infidelity. Her friend tried to give her some tough love about jealousy, possessiveness, and paranoia being shortcomings that could only hurt her in the end. That went right over Suzanne’s head as she obsessed about who the woman Tim was seeing on the side could be. She thought it might be somebody Tim had met at Manny’s, if not a program person. Her friend didn’t think it could have been a program person, but she got flustered in the middle of telling Suzanne why not. I understood. No alcoholic with good long-term sobriety would have thirteenth-stepped—the polite term for hitting on a newcomer—someone whose recovery was as shaky as Tim’s. And of course Suzanne had done just that.

She might have killed him. She was plenty messed up herself. And messed-up alcoholics have some predictable symptoms, including poor judgment, impulsive behavior, denial, and simmering rage that could blow any time. All it would have taken was an angry confrontation, a moment when she lost control, and a blunt instrument.

 We also found Tim’s sponsor, Malcolm. He’d been in the program for ten years or so, and Jimmy knew him. Jimmy reported back to us that Malcolm had talked mostly about his own moral dilemma. Did he owe it to society to tell the police what he knew? Or did he still owe it to Tim to protect his anonymity?

“What did he know?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Jimmy said. “And no, I didn’t try to pry it out of him. I told him that if his conscience was bothering him, he should go to the police.”

Barbara and I had a good time speculating about what Tim might have told Malcolm and nobody else. Sponsees are supposed to be completely honest with their sponsors. Maybe Tim had turned over a resentment list. The idea is that you’re supposed to let go all your grudges with the help of a Higher Power. But Tim, with his periodic relapses, could have made the list of resentments without being ready to let them go.

I uncovered one of Tim’s secrets when I ran into a guy I knew, Gary, in a church basement that hosted a lot of meetings. I was on my way to AA; he had just come out of a Debtor’s Anonymous meeting.

“Did you hear about the program guy who got murdered?” he asked.

Gary had never been Mr. Anonymity. If I told him I’d not only found the body, but also been the last person to see him alive, it would be all over the city in a week.

“Yes,” I said.“Did you know him?” Hey, if my Higher Power hadn’t wanted me to hear Gary’s gossip, I wouldn’t have run into him.

“I owed him money,” Gary said. “He got me a couple of power tools I wanted at a discount. I just started DA, and if I want to be solvent, I have to make a plan to repay all my debts and not incur any new ones. I cut up all my credit cards, but to tell the truth, I’m not so sure I can get by without them. Say, do you think now that he’s dead, that cancels the debt? It’s not as if he had a wife and kids or anything.”

“Ask your DA sponsor, dude.”

I had never been crazy about Gary. He’d just confirmed my low opinion.  Still, he’d opened up a whole new area of speculation. Could Tim have been stealing from his employer? Selling stuff out the back door? Maybe not while he was clean and sober. But when you’re getting high, you’ll do anything for the money to score. Maybe Gary wasn’t his only customer. Maybe somebody else thought a blow to the head was a good way to cancel an inconvenient debt.

By the day before New Year’s Eve, I hadn’t found the murderer. And neither had the police. They had come by a couple of times to go over exactly what I’d done, seen, and touched between the front door of Manny’s and the puddle around Tim’s head. But I could account for all of it. By now, they knew that Tim had been in AA. They’d probably  found the Big Book on his night table and program phone numbers in his address book. But I’d never given him my number. And they didn’t have probable cause to search my apartment. So I played dumb and shook my head politely when they asked me if I went to AA too.  

“Now what?” I asked Jimmy and Barbara. I picked a strand of tinsel off the tree and ran it through my fingers. “I’ve been to tons of meetings, and nobody’s raised their hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Bob, I’m an alcoholic. I killed the guy in the hardware store, and I want to turn it over.’”

“Tomorrow is Amateur Night,” Jimmy said. He peered at me over the row of lights Barbara had run across the top of his computer monitor.

“So?” I had been only seven days sober and pretty fogged out last New Year’s Eve, but I knew that’s what sober alcoholics called it: the one night a year when all the civilians went out and got what they naively thought was drunk.

“There’ll be a marathon only a few blocks from Manny’s.”

He didn’t mean a race for runners, but round-the-clock AA meetings to help us get through the holidays clean and sober. I’d gone with Jimmy on Christmas Eve. We’d stayed for a couple of hour-long meetings. It hadn’t been boring. Recovering alcoholics telling holiday war stories can be very, very funny. Then I’d gone to sleep on Barbara and Jimmy’s couch with the Christmas lights, all present and accounted for, glowing softly, the tinsel shimmering, and the smell of pine in my nostrils. In the morning, there’s been stockings—Barbara had insisted—and presents under the tree. And between one thing and another, I hadn’t missed the booze.

“Did you get any clues at the Christmas marathon?” Barbara asked.

“No,” I said, “but I was kind of distracted.”

“Of course you were,” she said. “You were dealing with the holiday and having found Tim dead only a couple of days before, and it was the first anniversary of your Christmas hitting bottom in detox on the Bowery.”

Barbara never leaves anything to the imagination. But I could see the love in her eyes, so I responded with a token snort and left it at that.

“It has to be someone with anywhere between ninety days and one year sobriety,” Jimmy said. “More than that, and I don’t think they’d have gotten entangled with him either financially or emotionally.”

“Suzanne did,” Barbara said. “But she’s a total codependent. Can I come with you guys to the AA marathon? I do have boundaries, but it is New Year’s Eve, and I hate to get left out.”

Understatement.

            The meeting was packed. The holiday season was tough on the clean and sober.  There was an AA joke about the “threefold disease” being Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. But everyone in this room tonight had made it through without picking up. As people shared, the word “gratitude” came up a lot. It didn’t even embarrass me much any more.

            Since the meetings would run all night, even people who usually didn’t raise their hands got a chance to share. We heard from guys with forty years’ sobriety and newbies who had crawled in after celebrating Christmas with a binge and blackout, like me last year. In the back, people milled around chugging coffee and scarfing down Christmas cookies. I grabbed a styrofoam cup of java and leaned against the wall alongside the rows of folding chairs, where I could see as many faces as possible. 

“Tomorrow,” one guy said, “the civilians will all be making New Year’s resolutions—and breaking them within a week or two.”

Everybody laughed.

“I don’t make resolutions any more,” he said. “I live one day at a time, and it works for me.”

 A pillar blocked my view of the woman who spoke next. I was wondering if one more cup of coffee would make me hyper, so I didn’t hear her name. But I tuned back in when she said, “I made my ninety days right after Thanksgiving.” I started to work my way around to where I could see her as she went on about how things happen the way they’re meant to happen. “Sometimes life doesn’t come out the way you expect,” she said, “but maybe it’s for the best.”

I saw the white-on-black hair before I saw her face. It was Cruella. For the best, huh? For her, maybe, but not for Tim. She must have been the other girlfriend. She’d met him behind the store before she came around the front to use me as her alibi. Once I told the cops, they’d find someone who’d seen her. They might even find the murder weapon. They sell a lot of stuff at Zabar’s. But not blunt instruments.