My Detective

by Jeffrey Fleishman

  “What do they do with them when they die?”

  “There’s a cemetery outside town.”

  “Have you been?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course you have.”

  I turn from the window and sit down, reach into my bag for another cigarette.

  “It’s a smoke-free building.”

  “Arrest me.”

  The smoke—I love how it fills me. He strains at his tape, stills.

  “Jamieson wasn’t so hard. He didn’t recognize me. I thought for a second he might have. He’d been drinking—not a lot, but he was relaxed. Didn’t your toxicology find a bit of Valium? He opened a bottle of wine. We talked for a while. Such a braggart. About the city, the buildings he imagined. So pretentious. He said, ‘I have buildings inside me.’ What an ass. I must admit, though, he was a good architect. He was, Sam. He had art inside him. More than Gallagher and Jensen. He and I would have been a good team, architecturally speaking. He would have drawn out my sparser tendencies. I would have reined in his romanticism. I’ve always been good at understanding the strengths of my enemy. Tennis, I guess.” I lean forward and brush the hair from Sam’s forehead. “We drank, and he asked me to dance. Slow. To dance and strip. He undressed and sat in the chair. I sat in his lap and kissed him, tasting his wine. His skin so warm. He was a handsome man, as you’ve seen. I let him believe that, the way working girls do. I started dancing around him. Someone was singing arias. He closed his eyes and listened, kept telling me to dance. I had spiked his wine, so he was pretty numb by then. Words all slurry. My bag was behind his chair. I pulled the needle from it and jabbed it right to the neck. He slapped his skin like swatting a bee. He didn’t know what it was. He was confused. He turned and tried to get up. But …”

  A long drag. A sip of wine.

  “I did my little makeup job on him. The bow, I got from Nordstrom’s one day. Just walking through the aisle, it caught my eye.”

  “You wanted to humiliate him.”

  “Before I pushed the knife in—hypothetically, of course—I told him who I was. What he had done to me. I pulled off my wig. That woke him up. Recognition came over his face. Then I put on the mask. It was shattering. It shattered him, Sam. He saw the knife. Couldn’t move. I let him think about it. We listened to arias. They went quiet after a while. His blurry eyes got terrified. It was strange. They were the only thing of him that moved, as if all his energy were in his eyes. They were wild. Like a horse’s eyes in a stable fire. I worried the drugs might wear off. But he still couldn’t move. I told him he would never build the buildings inside him. I laughed. A witch’s laugh. I told him he would be forgotten before he was known. I sat back and watched the blood come.”

  “The finger?”

  “I still can’t figure that. Oh, dear, Sam. Sometimes, we just do things.”

  I stub out the cigarette and light another.

  “I bet you don’t know this, my inquisitive little detective. I taped it. Well, I pretended to. I held my cell phone up to Jamieson and started filming. He thought I was, anyway. He so much wanted to squirm. To hide his nakedness. I whispered to him, ‘How does it feel?’”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Righteous. Like an evangelical. Power. The power to take. I saw the world like an animal. A lioness on the savanna. Is that too rich? It was that real, though. Instinctive. My heart beat so fast while he was dying. My mind raced. As I pushed the knife in—and I pushed it in ever so slowly—a calmness came. A serenity almost. I felt him leave this world. Not a gasp, really, the final breath. More like a soft whoosh. So much had gone into it, you know. The planning. Like the stuff you do for a party. You want it to be perfect. Ah. I see you disapprove. Don’t look at me like that, Sam. Like I’m crazy. I’m not crazy.” The smoke fills me; I exhale. We sit for a minute in silence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. But I was clearheaded. No doubts in what I did. No crazy lady’s dream.”

  “And now?”

  “I’m here with you.”

  “Why me? Like this?”

  “Surely, you must know, Sam. I love you. There, I said it. Am I blushing? I feel I am. It just came out.” I stare into him. “‘Love’ is maybe too strong. We just met. But I know you. I read everything on your laptop. I saw into you. Every crevice. That can be done. Even between strangers. But you are not a stranger. I suppose I am one to you, but not really, right? You have been after me. I know what you wrote after you saw the video. You said there was a grace—Was it grace or beauty? I don’t remember—in me that they couldn’t take away. Did you believe that, or was that what you hoped? There was something else too, wasn’t there? You had lust, Sam. Deep down. A helpless woman naked. A rape. That’s primal. The dark, deep place. It’s natural. Your lust was fleeting, though. You were ashamed of it. That’s what you wrote. But it was unconscious, Sam, that reaction. You pushed it aside and wanted to do good instead. That is what makes you, Sam. The need for good. You didn’t see my face, but you saw something, something inside. My spirit. You saw it. Like you saw your father’s. I know you were a boy then, but the way you wrote about him years later. A flawed, wild, beaten, broken man. Your father. You saw a beauty in him too, Sam. It is your nature. I believe this.”

  I stand, put his face in my hands, and kiss his forehead. I am crying tears stored for years. For this moment. My strange confession to murder and love. An ideal, maybe. Yes, perhaps Sam is just an ideal, a cop I once read about in a newspaper, his picture in front of the Bradbury Building. His eyes. A girl’s infatuation. No. It is more. Way more.

  “How can you pretend to know me?”

  Ouch. I don’t pretend. Does he think I pretend?

  “Let me go,” he says. “You’re breaking. All your tough words about Gallagher and Jamieson—they’re not you. They’re part of this thing you created, but not really you. Let me go. It’s gone too far, Dylan.”

  “You said, ‘pretend to know me.’ I do know you, Sam. Don’t be difficult. I understand you might feel robbed of your secrets. But you know what? I still love you. Yes. Why not? I have no tough words for you. I see you in full. How often do we get that? To be seen as everything we are, and still be wanted. The dark and the light. Husbands and wives don’t have that. Children and mothers don’t have that. But we do. I had to tape you to the chair. I didn’t want to. I told you, circumstance. Now you’re mad at me. But you’re no good mad. It’s not you. I can be mad. I’m quite good at it. But not you. Talk to me.”

  “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Use some of your cop psychology—you know, getting into the killer’s mind.”

  “Into your mind?”

  “Yes, the water’s fine.” I laugh. “My mother used to say that from the shore on summer days. ‘Go on in, Dylan, the water’s fine.’”

  He almost smiles. I think. No. Maybe, I’m pretending.

  “You wanted revenge,” he says. “You took it. You killed three people. Very clever, Dylan.”

  Ooh, the way he says my name. A bit of annoyance in his voice. But still … the tingle.

  “I understand why you did what you did,” he says. “What they did to you. But you let them win. They won’t design or build anymore. They took from you and you took from them. It took years, but you did it. Your rage became a colder thing. I’ve seen it with others, Dylan. You didn’t know where to go. Who to tell. Where to put the shame. I get that. No one can pretend to know what you felt. I’ve tried since I saw the video, but I can’t. I hated them too. Their conceits. What I found out about them.” He stops talking. He looks around the room. The bookcase, the record player that long ago went silent. The pictures, the rugs. His eyes find me again. They hold me, like hands. “You won’t design anymore, either, Dylan. Your church in the desert and a few other buildings are all you’ll have. Nothing splendid out there.” He nods toward the window. “Where do you have to go now? It’s don
e. Cut me loose and we’ll talk some more. I’ll make coffee. It’s almost dawn.”

  I step to the window. He’s right. The night is leaving the sky.

  “What would you have done, Sam?”

  “You’re crying again.”

  “What would you have done?”

  I’m tired. I hear the cracks in my voice. But so much to do.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “You could have gone to the police. You could have come to me. But it’s over now.”

  “No, Sam, it’s not. The police? Please. Can’t you just hear them? So, you’re just finding this video now. Hmmm. How did you get it? Why didn’t you report it right after that night? Drugged? You must have felt something had happened. So much time has passed. What were you doing in a house with three men drinking? Is it really you behind that mask? More degradation. My career. It was my drawings and designs that saved me. I drew places I wanted to go. To vanish in. No, Sam, I played the cop scenario out. Trials never end well in cases like mine. You know that. So don’t give me that shit about justice and going to the police. Don’t belittle it.”

  I stand and walk around him. Let him think. I reach into my bag and pull out the mask. I sit back in front of him and put it on.

  “What do you think? Isn’t she lovely? She’s my little hiding place. Her expression never changes. So inscrutable she is. I think she has the face of eternity, don’t you? A sly knowingness that the ages will pass and all will come to be. She’s watching you, indifferent to what happens to you. It’s all the same to her. I’ve become quite intimate with her. We have an understanding. She’s my confidante.”

  “Dylan, you need to …”

  “Don’t patronize me. You don’t know. You know nothing. I thought you did. I thought you would be my confidant too. But no, not Sam. Not Mr. By-the-Book Detective. But look at her, Sam. So old. From Venice. But she looks new. She is a survivor.”

  “I want to—”

  “No.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why they did it.”

  “Is this finally a bit of detective psychology? Why they did it? They hated the idea of women architects. I know this. They wanted a fuck. They had mommy-complex issues. Poorly potty trained. We could go on and on.”

  “Jamieson thought women architects were beneath him. That women lacked the art and pragmatism needed. Or some crap like that. He kept quiet about it except to certain people. McKinley told me. The old man. He was going to hire you. McKinley loved your drawings. He thought you had great promise. His exact words. But Jamieson told him no. McKinley didn’t resist. He regrets that. I could tell. Did you know anything about this?”

  I step toward Sam. I stand for a moment. I push up my mask. Straddle him. We sit face-to-face, nose touching nose. I breathe in the hours of him: wine, whiskey, sweat, but still sweet. I kiss him. A slight reply. Or am I pretending? I am crying. My tears on both our faces. I want to be held. Just for a moment. To feel him around me. I cannot cut him free. No. I know that now. Perhaps one day. Maybe on Eternity Street. Isn’t that funny? Broadway was once Eternity. I hold him, whisper in his ear.

  “Yes, Sam, I knew that. I’m omniscient, after all. It’s to be expected, though, don’t you think?”

  That’s all I’ll give him. A few lines of response. Why say more? Why fake surprise? Isn’t history full of Jamiesons?

  I stand and step back. The gray-speckled light of dawn is entering. The room sharpens. I put my mask in the bag, zip it shut. Sam watches. I wet the towel under the faucet and cool his head. There, there. We should have met another way, years ago, before all this. I would have liked that. I straighten my dress, pick up my bag.

  “I’m going now, Sam.”

  “Let’s talk some more.”

  “I’m tired of talking.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, Sam, please. You are funny.”

  “Let me go.”

  “Someone will come.”

  “I’ll find you.”

  “Says the man taped to a chair. I don’t think you will. Maybe you’ll get lucky, though. If it makes you feel better, tell me I’m under arrest.”

  “Where’s Jensen?”

  “Oh, yes, Jensen. Almost forgot about him. Easily forgettable type. A moth of a man. A real weeper.” I sigh for effect. “He’s in my basement. He’s starting to ripen.”

  Sam’s eyes, for the first time, show disappointment.

  “You thought he was innocent?” I say.

  “No, but he’s not like the other two.”

  He nods to the water; I give him a sip.

  “All that work on your house and you can’t go back to it,” he says.

  “I’m on the lam, Sam. That rhymes.” I laugh. “You should live in it. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  I walk to the table and put my key and tennis picture on his inlaid box for the dead. I gaze at him one more time. He looks at me. For the briefest moment, we are one. I pass him and brush my hand across his cheek. So many lives we could have led; so many truths that now slip past, unknown. I turn and step back and lean down and kiss him, pressing hard but then softening, no space between us, just a breath. He lets me hang there before him, our lips still but touching the way I had imagined. Why can’t I have this man? I rise and walk down the hall on his long Afghan carpet, past the picture of the monk, resolute and serene in a faraway place. I would have loved to live in this apartment, sitting by the window with him, watching the city change, whispering to him about shape and form and how buildings have souls. He would have learned. He would have understood. I breathe. The door clicks. Cool air whirls in. A new day has begun.

  “Bye, Sam.”

  Chapter 26

  I wrap my mother tight in her scarf. She is balanced between Maggie and me, pointing to the mansions on the cliff, trying to make her mind remember what it was like in those days with the man she loved. It’s cold. Winds are blowing off the ocean, and the weather lady says it will snow in the inlands beyond Newport. We came to visit my father’s grave. My mother still insists she sees him, walking down the street, a face in the window, a man on church steps. Maggie and I put her in the car and drove up from Boston this morning. I haven’t been here in years, and like my mother, I think I see him, punching the air, running in the mist. No. They are memories, and memories are ghosts. The ocean hits the rocks, and the spray rises toward a gray sky.

  “Let’s go swimming,” my mother says.

  “I think it’s too cold.”

  “No. It’s summer.”

  “It’s not summer, Mom. You have a coat on.”

  “Someone put this thing on me. It’s summer. Where’s my bathing suit? He’s down there on the beach. He’s waiting for me. We have picnics.”

  “He’s not there.”

  “I think he is.”

  “Let’s turn around,” says Maggie. “It looks like rain.”

  “It rains in summer,” says my mother. She looks at Maggie and lowers her voice. “Do you think this man with us will take us down to the beach?”

  “That’s Sam, your son. He lives in Los Angeles.”

  She looks at me. Steps closer. Puts a gloved hand on my face.

  “Is it summer there?” she says.

  The rain comes hard. We drive back to Boston. My mother sleeps the whole way. Maggie and I talk and listen to Simon and Garfunkel and Aretha Franklin. Maggie thinks it’s funny that I like the same music as she. “You always were an old soul,” she says, singing “Scarborough Fair” and wiping fog from the windshield. We eat sandwiches and soup for dinner in Maggie’s kitchen. The radio plays low. We walk my mother upstairs to her bedroom. She sits by the window; her reflection floats in the night. She stands and presses her face against the glass.

  “Maybe he’ll come tomorrow.”

  “
Let’s get you to bed,” says Maggie.

  My mother slides like a small curled bird beneath the covers. I kiss her on the forehead and remember the scent of lemons. When I was a child, she would cut them in half and rub them over her face. She said it made her skin soft and cleaned better than soap. Our house was full of lemons, and my father used to joke that we lived in a garden. My mother looks at me, and for a second, I think she knows me. It passes, and she turns toward the window and the rooftops beyond.

  “We’re losing her, aren’t we, Maggie?”

  “Yes. It’s good you took some time off and came back.”

  “She doesn’t know who I am.”

  “She might remember. I show her your picture every day and tell her.”

  Maggie slides two glasses across the table, pulls two beers from the fridge.

  “I like your kitchen,” I say.

  “It’s getting a little shabby, but it has a character. It’s my room, you know that.”

  We sip our beers and listen to the wind and the rain falling in the alley.

  “Where do you suppose she vanished to, Sam?”

  “Mom?”

  “No. Dylan Cross.”

  “I don’t know. No trace.”

  “She’s smart.”

  “Very.”

  Maggie fidgets with a bottle cap.

  “I know I shouldn’t say this, and don’t get mad, but I’m glad she got away.”

  She looks at me. I pour the last of my bottle into the glass. I sip and say nothing.

  “Why do you think she let Jensen live?”

  “He wasn’t like the other two,” I say. “He was weaker. That night destroyed a lot of him. She saw that. When we went down into the basement, he was sitting chained to the wall. Unshaven, dirty. He looked like a prisoner in an old Communist country. The knife she killed Jamieson with was lying just beyond his reach. He said she came at him with it. She flashed it in his face. He said he closed his eyes. He thought he was going to die. He felt the blade on his neck. He didn’t fight or strain. He said he waited. For a long while, it was there. He could hear her breathing. He thought she whispered something, but couldn’t make out what it was. He felt the blade lift away, and he opened his eyes. She was standing over him. She dropped the knife and stepped back. He said she stood there in her mask for what seemed an hour. Motionless. Staring at him. He told me, ‘She didn’t want me to forget. But I never did. I see that mask every day.’ He said he wanted to be arrested for that night. He looked right at me and said, ‘Detective, I want some record of guilt beyond my own.’”