Love You to Death

by Grant Michaels

  “Sorry, baby,” I said. It had been a long night, and my poor cat was probably feeling abandoned. And now, instead of coming home and giving her all my attention, I was arriving late and bringing a strange person in with me. Did she at least realize Tobias wasn’t a trick?

  I tucked him into my bed, then I gave Sugar Baby her supper. After that, there was just one more thing to do before setting up the sofa and collapsing onto it. I took the two boxes of chocolate truffles to the kitchen table and opened them. Without touching the candy inside, I carefully examined each piece as it rested in its ruffled paper cup. I searched for some clue that the stuff had been tampered with, but none showed any fingerprints—which didn’t surprise me, since chocolate makers usually wear plastic gloves. However, many of the truffles did have decorations that had either been clumsily applied or else clumsily altered. I wondered why Laurett had wanted me to dispose of them. Had she done anything to them? Was there a chance that some of these truffles were loaded with cyanide? Is that why she’d tried to hide them from Tobias? And the worst question for me was, Should I turn this stuff over to the cops as possible evidence against my friend, to help that handsome, hunky foil, Lieutenant Vito Branco?

  4

  BABYCAKES

  I WAS AWAKENED FROM A HEAVY SLEEP by the sound of Sugar Baby yowling from the kitchen. I knew something was wrong, since that girl usually sleeps in, buried under the blankets, until five minutes before I have to leave for the shop. That’s when she deigns to leave my unmade bed, wrap herself around my legs—leaving her scent and strands of taupe-colored fur on my black chinos—and look up at me with big, sad eyes that imply that the portion of premium quality cat food just placed into her Limoges porcelain bowl might not be to her liking today, and would I please remain close by in case she desires something else? Yes, my cat is pampered and lives in a higher social stratum than I do. Why else would I work so hard?

  So when I heard her making unrefined noises from the kitchen in what seemed the middle of the night, I knew something was wrong. I jumped out of bed, naked as usual, but it wasn’t the bed, it was the sofa. No time to think or remember why. I stumbled toward the kitchen, where a light was on. Burglar? I thought drowsily. But instead of a dark-clothed stranger in the kitchen, I saw through my squinting eyelids a young boy on his hands and knees. It was Tobias. What was he doing in my kitchen? Was I dreaming? Then the facts rushed in all at once, and I remembered last night’s events.

  Tobias had cornered Sugar Baby and was tying a piece of cotton twine around one of her hind paws. Though his modus tormenti with the cat was harmless, I was still mortified at his pleasure in making her life a piece of hell.

  “Stop that!” I yelled.

  He turned and looked at me calmly, giving Sugar Baby a chance to scamper away, the long string trailing behind her.

  “Just leave the cat alone.”

  “She woke me up, sniffing in my face.”

  “You were in her bed.”

  “Where’s my ma?” he demanded.

  Last night I’d planned to tell Tobias the bad news in the morning, over a nice family-style breakfast—kind of set the scene warm and homey and secure, then calmly slip him the fact that his mother had been booked for manslaughter last night. “She’s still with the police,” I explained quickly.

  “Was it Trek?”

  “Trek?” Perhaps it was a new street drug. “What’s trek, Tobias?”

  “He’s my pa.”

  “Trek is a man?”

  “You need a man to be your pa, don’t you?”

  “That’s a fact,” I said, wondering again where Tobias had learned so much in four short years. But with a chill I then surmised that the Caucasian stranger who had been poisoned last night was possibly Tobias’s father. The bad news had just got worse.

  Tobias stared at me. “Did he hurt my ma?”

  “No, Tobias.” How could I tell him that the opposite was more likely?

  “Where is she, then?”

  “I told you, she’s with the police.”

  “In jail?”

  “Tobias, why don’t I make us some breakfast and we’ll talk about it, okay?”

  His eyes remained glued on me, quiet but defiant. Then, out of nowhere, he remarked, “Uncle Stan, you got a nice dingdong.”

  All too late I realized that I’d forgotten to put on a robe. Hell, I was at home, wasn’t I? Why should I have to be modest and demure in my own apartment? Why? Because I had a four-year-old house guest who perhaps didn’t realize the trouble such a scene might cause if it ever went public. Trouble for me, that is. And with Tobias’s yapper, I knew anyone within earshot today would hear about his Uncle Stan flying into the kitchen this morning, wagging his unit in the innocent boy’s face. I grabbed a dishtowel and held it over the happy handful in my crotch. “Tobias, look, I just forgot to cover myself. It’s nothing. It was an accident. I didn’t mean for you to see me like this.”

  Tobias looked at me and shrugged nonchalantly. “Trek is always naked too.” He pronounced the word “nake-it.” “He likes to show sex, just like you, Uncle Stan.”

  I wanted to gag the little brat with a chastity belt. It was unnerving to hear him spouting off so casually about the very stuff on which my Roman Catholic upbringing had left its holy scars. Tobias had not yet been brainwashed about the sacredness of sex, lucky boy. Then I had a troubled thought: What if this Trek guy, supposedly Tobias’s father, had ever been a bit too intimate with Tobias under the guise of sex education? Where did a parent draw the line? Biologically speaking, it shouldn’t matter. But we poor humans have to contend with the baggage of psychology and theology and just plain old consciousness too.

  I got my robe from the bedroom, where Sugar Baby had dispatched the demon twine from her hind leg and had reinstated herself properly under the covers. Then I returned to the kitchen to make breakfast. It was six-thirty, but at that hour during a Boston winter the sun is nowhere near the horizon. I put on some coffee, heated milk for cocoa, popped in some toast, and set the small table in the dining nook. When I called Tobias, he didn’t answer. I went into the living room and called again. In response I heard a muffled groan from the sofa. The little monster had crept under the blankets there and had gone back to sleep. So much for his breakfast and our heart-to-heart talk. But for me, once awake, it’s hopeless to try to get back to sleep. So I stopped the toast, then showered quickly and returned to the kitchen to have my breakfast alone. The radio was tuned to a public station at the low end of the dial, the one that begins its broadcast day with the gentle forest sounds of twittering birds, a sound of nature rarely heard in downtown Boston. After that, an over-educated but groggy voice announces the news. Though that station is fastidiously adverse to sensational reporting, the feature story that morning was the killing last night of a man who’d crashed the glamorous reception for Le Jardin chocolates. Names were named, and Laurett Cole was being held for the killing of Trek Delorean. His name sounded like a European road race.

  I was glad that Tobias had gone back to sleep. I’d hoped to tell him less bluntly what had really happened between his mother and his father. But then, did I really know? As it turned out, though, Tobias was standing in the doorway and had overheard the newscast.

  “Did Ma kill Pa?”

  “No, Tobias.” Was it still a lie if you didn’t know all the facts?

  “That radio said he’s dead.”

  “He is.”

  He stared sullenly at the floor, then looked around aimlessly, as though searching for Sugar Baby. “How long do I have to stay here, Uncle Stan?”

  “Until the police release your mother.”

  “When?”

  “Tobias …” I sighed heavily. “It might be a while.”

  “Will they send me to a home again?”

  “I won’t let them. You can stay here with me.”

  “But Ma said you can’t have children.”

  “Hydraulically speaking, Tobias, that’s not true. But the urge to p
rocreate isn’t too strong either.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means if I ever have children, I’ll probably adopt them.”

  “Will you adopt me?”

  His frankness surprised me. “You’d be at the top of the list.”

  He seemed content with that answer, and climbed up to sit at the table with me. He took a piece of toast from the warm plate and clumsily spread butter on it. The he took a huge bite from it and chewed it all with his mouth agape. I watched the browned bread transform into grey mush within the small pink cavity of his mouth.

  “Close your mouth when you chew, Tobias.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s impolite and unattractive.”

  “Ma doesn’t make me.”

  “That’s because she’s witnessed all your other bodily functions so far, which makes her more tolerant. When you eat with me, it’s mouth closed.”

  He then pressed his lips tightly together and jammed the slice of toast against them, mashing it onto his face.

  “What are you doing?”

  He mimicked someone talking, but kept his lips sealed, then smashed the toast against his face again, crumbling more of it onto the table and the floor.

  “Tobias, stop that.”

  He opened his lips a hairline crack and spoke through the buttery crumbs and goop around his mouth. “Yr shed kip muh mth sht.”

  “When you chew.”

  He broke into laughter, then took a bite of what was left of the toast and let it sit on his tongue, mouth open, jaw slack. I glared at him, and he said, “I’m not chewing, so I can leave my mouth open.”

  I was about to scold him again, then realized that, more than likely, his terror tactics at breakfast were his way of expressing fear over what was to become of him without his mother or his father. So instead of further instruction in dining etiquette, I asked him if he was hungry for more toast. He said nothing, but shook his head no. I knelt near his chair and faced him directly.

  “Tobias, your ma’s going to be all right. She’ll want you to be strong while she’s gone.” Then I hugged him. A little brainwashing and Pavlovian conditioning sometimes work better than a round of cat and mouse. Sometimes. At least I felt victorious for the moment, having restrained myself from applying the remainder of the toast onto his head, a la Clifton Webb and the projectile oatmeal in Sitting Pretty.

  Breakfast finished, I prepared Tobias for a quick sponge bath, under loud protest. “Ma don’t do this,” he wailed.

  “I know, Tobias,” I said, sniffing the air around me. “And my nose knows too. But if you’re going to stay with me, you wash every day. It would be real nice if you’d learn to do it yourself.”

  “I’m not washing.”

  “Then it comes down to this: I’m bigger, I’m stronger, and I’ll do it.” Perhaps the sweet-talk, negotiating school of parenting was less efficient than the bullyish, power-wielding approach. I wondered, Is this how Branco thinks? Then I wondered, horrified, if bathing a screaming child qualified as molestation.

  Through all the morning’s antics, I was still planning my day’s itinerary. It’s another advantage of being a Gemini: One of your personalities can be doing one thing while another is somewhere else entirely. My first stop that morning would be at Snips, even though it was my day off. I intended to leave Tobias there while I did some legwork. Nicole didn’t yet realize that she and Snips Salon had a sideline in the day-care business.

  Tobias and I walked to the shop together, which is only about six blocks from my apartment. Once out in the world, Tobias adopted the personality that made him so lovable. He was a frisky, inquisitive, humor-filled young boy, with blond curly hair and burnished bronze skin, a natural performer, with the world as his stage and the adult population his audience. Too bad some of us had to experience Tobias’s backstage foibles as well. Then again, who would have thought that this boy’s mother was now in jail for the possible killing of his father?

  We arrived at the shop around eight-thirty. Nicole had already opened the place, proving that when necessary, she could be out and about with the rest of the clock-conscious world. She greeted us warmly, as though we were loved ones arriving after a long absence, quite different from her austere and cool attitude of last night. Did I mention that Nicole was subject to drastic mood swings? She picked up Tobias and hugged him hard, nibbled at his ear, and said, “You smell good enough to eat, young man.”

  “Uncle Stan washed me,” was his reply.

  Nicole arched an eyebrow at me.

  I retorted, “He stank so I cleaned him up.”

  “Uncle Stan has a nice dingdong.”

  “Tobias!” I yelped.

  “Dingdong, dingdong,” he sang out, then giggled mischievously.

  Nicole held him close to her and said to me, too coolly I thought, considering the hearsay evidence being hurled about, “Perhaps I should take care of the boy, Stanley. A woman’s comforting presence might be less traumatic for him.”

  “Nikki, it’s not how it sounds.”

  “Save your breath,” she said, putting Tobias down. “Just tell me why you’re here so early, and on your day off.”

  “I have a lot to do today, and I can’t have company.” I rolled my eyes toward Tobias.

  “And you assumed I would help?”

  “Yeah, since you have to be here anyway.”

  “Exactly where are you going?”

  “To the WDU, where Charles said a certain someone was staying last night.”

  Nicole gave me a look that meant she understood I was referring to Laurett, and that I didn’t want Tobias to know I was going to see his mother.

  I continued, “And I don’t think the local small fry would have much fun on that misadventure.”

  Now in collusion with me, Nicole placed her hand on Tobias’s head. “I think I’d like this young man to stay here with me for a while. How do you like that, Tobias?”

  The young boy looked up at us both. “If Uncle Stan wants to be alone, it’s okay.”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. The little brat’s intuition was disquieting.

  Nicole remarked, “I’m sure he’ll be back in time to take you out for lunch, Tobias. Won’t you, Uncle Stan?”

  I sighed heavily and nodded. “Yes, Auntie Nik.” Then I looked up the address for the Women’s Detention Unit and set out to visit Laurett Cole in prison.

  5

  WHO’S ZOOMIN’ WHOM?

  I TOOK A CAB TO THE WOMEN’S DETENTION UNIT, which was on Asylum Street, an unlikely name, in the deep South End, where the squalor of Industrial Age Boston persists. Sexism reigns even in prisons. I’d once been to the Charles Street jail, where the male criminals are kept. That place is cold and brutal. In contrast, the WDU, while not exactly homey, was more like a dreary government office building than a prison. And unlike the men’s jail, with its damp, acrid, metallic smell, the walls of the WDU retain the distinctive scent of long hair after it’s received its two-hundred daily brush strokes.

  Getting into the visiting room was no trouble at all. Laurett was still only a suspect, not a convicted felon, so she had complete visiting rights. The long, rectangular visitor’s room had six stalls arranged in a row, much like those in an old-fashioned language laboratory. Each stall was separated from the prisoner’s side by a panel of plate glass roughly the size of an LP record jacket and about an inch thick.

  Laurett’s beautiful face appeared in the window, and without the softening effect of makeup, her strong features seemed defiant. Her first remark was, “How is my boy?” Her voice came over a small speaker mounted in the wooden counter under the window.

  I yelled back, “He’s fine!”

  With her index finger to her lips, she gave me the sign to shush. Then she pointed to the chipped black button near the speaker, and I heard her voice over the speaker again. “Push the button, Vannos.”

  I pressed it and heard a slight pop over the speaker. “Better?” I asked.

&nb
sp; Laurett nodded. I wondered why she knew how to use the intercom so well. Who else had visited her? Or had she been in here before? I realized unhappily that I was already doubting my own friend.

  “Where is he now?” she asked.

  “At the shop with Nicole.”

  “Why didn’t you bring him here?”

  “I didn’t think he should see you like this.”

  “Like what? Vannos, my boy will learn how the world turns. You bring him here next time, let him see what they do to his ma. Promise?”

  Reluctantly, I nodded.

  The social niceties over, I launched directly into why I’d come to see her. “Laurett, that man who died last night—was he the same one who used to see you at the salon?”

  Laurett sat up defensively. “Who?”

  “Trek Delorean.”

  “Who?” she said again, and already I sensed that she was playing stupid.

  “I recall you had a boyfriend—”

  “So what? Is that against the law?”

  “Was Trek Delorean Tobias’s father?”

  “That what my boy say?”

  I nodded.

  Laurett’s eyes narrowed and hardened. “For a baby man, he have a wild mind and a big yapper.”

  “He mentioned a guy named Trek, which was the dead man’s name, so I figured it was the same person. He said Trek was at your place a lot.”

  Laurett studied my face warily. “What else Tobias tell you?”

  I felt my face flush. “That Trek liked to walk around naked a lot.”

  Laurett burst into raucous laughter, which she kept up long after the joke had passed, whatever it was. Finally she said, “You a grown man believing what a four-year-old brat telling you?”

  “You deny it?”

  “That boy’s pa be back in Jamaica where I left him.”

  “But—”

  “I should know my own boy’s pa, shouldn’t I?”

  “Yes, Laurett,” I admitted sheepishly. “But Tobias has obviously got white blood in him, and Trek was white ….”