by Paul Bishop
I set my suitcase down and wrapped my arms around him. He felt thinner, bony. I whispered into his ear, “How’s Mother?”
Tears welled in his eyes. “Not too good today.”
I held him at arm’s length, surprised at how old he looked.
“Let me go tell her you’re here.”
He walked away from me, went down the hall, and I stood waiting, feeling like a salesman calling on the lady of the house. Then I followed.
“Hi,” I said softly. She lay on her side on top of the bedspread. She was wearing a pink sweat suit, her feet tucked inside a pair of white cotton socks. She didn’t turn to look at me. I walked to her side of the bed and knelt.
And then she whimpered.
I threw myself on top of her, and we hugged.
When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw how swollen and misshapen her face was. She reminded me of one of those Betty Boop dolls.
“Why didn’t you call me? Or Delia.”
“What could you do?” she asked, puzzled.
“What could I do? Love you. Comfort you. What does a family do for one another?” I knew then she hadn’t the slightest idea.
I couldn’t get any information out of them. For two days, I watched my father dole out vitamins, steroids, and antibiotics. He cooked, he helped her up, he helped her down. I was in the way most of the time.
When I asked about Dr. Blair, I received mixed reviews. I decided to check out Blair for myself. Telling my folks I was going shopping, I headed for Christ Community Hospital and the two o’clock meeting I’d set up the day before.
He looked like Elton John. Dark hair cut in bangs across his forehead, a toothy grin, and oversized glasses. I agreed with Mother. I liked him.
“Her mental attitude is wonderful, and your father takes excellent care of her.” His compassion assured me he wanted Mother to be well as much as I did. But doctors can’t guarantee miracles.
I called Delia from a pay phone in the hospital lobby. She seemed relieved and encouraged. I felt better about the relieved part, but cautious about the encouragement.
I packed my suitcase as my father trailed behind me. He walked in a clipped step and waved his arms as his voice rose. “How dare you?”
I folded a blouse, keeping my back to him. “I’m her daughter. I have the right.”
Words came in slow, deliberate syllables. “You’re trying to turn your mother against me. We were doing fine until you came.”
Hot, angry tears dripped down my face. I bent over the suitcase, quickly fastened the clasps, and turned to get my coat.
“Now what are you crying about? I can’t say two words to you without you bawling. You’re too goddamned sensitive, Robbie. Always have been. We’re just having a conversation, and you get hysterical.”
“I gotta go.” My eyes scanned the carpet as I walked toward Mother’s room. I crept in and kissed her cheek. She breathed slowly, never acknowledging my presence. Confrontations were not her forte.
My father followed me to the front door, all the time telling me how I didn’t understand, how selfish I’d always been.
I called a cab from the store across the street and waited, staring out the window.
It was worth one more try. I dialed Amy Schaefer’s number. Timid as ever, she asked, “Hello?”
“Amy. Just thought you’d like to know we’re taking Kevin and going to Disneyland for Christmas.” That seemed like the kind of thing Tanner would do. At least I hoped it was. “Sorry if it screws up your holiday, doll.”
“You’re full of shit! Jimmy ain’t going nowhere.”
“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the...”
Slam.
I dashed out of the Holiday Inn and got in my car. Sure enough, after a ten-minute wait, Amy Schaefer came out of her apartment. This time she carried two shirt boxes wrapped in Christmas paper and tied with red ribbons.
I giggled. “Someone’s gonna get their Christmas presents early.”
Once again we headed up 72nd Street. Turning west on Dodge, we passed the Touchless Car Wash. She made a right on 120th and turned into an apartment complex. Amy got out of her pink car and opened the door of apartment number forty-nine with her own key.
I knew I’d have to sit and wait. And I admit, okay, it would have been nice to have a phone in the car.
I checked my watch against the bank’s huge read-out. My watch showed two-ten; the bank displayed two-twenty. I decided to compromise. It was two-fifteen.
Around three o’clock, the door of number forty-nine burst open, and I saw those two Christmas packages come flying across the parking lot. Amy Schaefer dashed for her car, followed by a short guy with dirty hair. I’d seen his driver’s license photo and recognized James Tanner.
I called the police from the Taco Bell across the street, identified myself, and gave them the address where they could pick up James Tanner.
Within ten minutes a squad car pulled in behind me. They’d kept the siren off as I’d advised, but Tanner spotted the car just the same. He ran for the apartment while Amy stood screaming after him, “Run! You lying son of a bitch. I wish I would have called the cops myself. Coward!”
The police knocked at number forty-nine until Tanner answered. By that time, several neighbors had gathered, and traffic slowed to catch a glimpse of the action. I waited while an officer escorted James out. A female officer went inside and after a few minutes came out holding a frightened little boy in her arms. She patted his back, talking softly into his ear. The boy clung to her.
I opened my car door. I just couldn’t resist.
“Amy?”
She spun around, relieved to see I wasn’t wearing a uniform. “What? How’d you know my name?”
“Santa told me. Said you’d been a really good girl. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way.” I kept singing as I returned to my car. “Thanks for all your help. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You bitch!” the timid church mouse screamed. “You fuckin’ bitch!”
Some days are like that. You get no appreciation.
“Here you go.” I dropped the papers onto Harry’s desk. “All wrapped up neat and tidy. Tanner’s in custody, Kevin’s being reunited with his mother as we speak, and Amy Schaefer is selling Passionate Pink blusher with a heavy yet cheerful heart. Life just keeps—”
“Your mother died this morning.”
It took me a minute. “What did you say?”
He stood as I fell into the chair. Coming around his desk, he bent to touch my shoulder. “Roberta...Robbie, I’m so sorry.”
“But I just saw her.” I was angry. No, I was upset. I was going to cry. No, I was going to faint. Don’t let go. Hang on.
“Your sister’s been trying to get you all day. She broke down, couldn’t say another word after she told me. I offered to break the news. I didn’t want you to feel, you know...alone.”
My grief started slowly and built into deep gulping sobs. Harry knelt in front of me, hugging me against his chest.
As the funeral procession wove down the street my parents had lived on for the past eighteen years, I noticed the Christmas decorations. A brick house at the end of the block had a life-sized wooden Santa, painted a hideous red and white. I hated it. The tree lights twinkling around doorways and windows seemed to accentuate our sadness.
Dad stood by himself at the cemetery. Bitter. He told anyone who would listen that now he had no family. Friends reminded him he had two lovely daughters, but he didn’t hear. He repeatedly told Delia and me that he was alone and no one had ever loved him but my mother. I was too empty to fill him with reassurance.
“We’ve got through Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. I really don’t think he should be alone for his birthday,” Delia was worried. “We’ll make a cake, bring some presents.”
It was August, and once again, I found myself back in Chicago. The birthday party had been a good idea. But the pressure of having a normal celebration had tired us all. Del
ia had gone to bed early. I sat in the living room, rocking and watched a Fawlty Towers rerun. John Cleese always made me laugh.
Dad walked into the room, grunting.
“What’s so funny?” Before I could answer, he attacked. “How can you laugh? Your mother’s dead! You know, come to think of it, I haven’t seen you or your sister cry.”
“We’ve cried a lot.” My agony was all that would comfort him now.
“I’ve never seen it.”
I stared at the TV.
When he realized he wasn’t going to get me to play, he changed tactics. Reclining in his chair, he sighed. I glanced sideways at him and he smiled. When I turned to look him full on, he smirked.
“I’ve got to tell you something.” He leaned forward. “This is just between us.”
“What?”
“I hired someone to kill the doctor.”
This had to be one of his lies. The kind he took back later claiming he had only been kidding.
“Your mother’s doctor. That cocksucker, Blair.”
“A hitman?”
“Yes.” He sat back, satisfied his announcement had knocked the laughter out of me. “Money can buy anything, Robbie. That bastard is to die on the anniversary of your mother’s death at exactly eleven-ten in the morning. And if he’s not alone, his wife or children, whoever’s with him, are gonna die, too. Slowly, in agony. I want them to suffer like I have—like your mother did.”
“Mother told me she was never in any pain.”
“That’s beside the point,” he almost shouted.
“But what about Delia? And me? You could ruin our lives—our futures. There’d be headlines, reporters, we’d be humiliated. You’d end up in prison.”
“It’ll be done right.”
“Don’t you care about any of us?”
“He killed your mother. You expect me to let him get away with that?”
I walked over to him. Softly I tried to reason. “No one killed Mother. She had cancer, and she died.”
“She didn’t have cancer. She was getting better. You heard what they said. It was that doctor, he killed her. And I’m going to kill him.”
“I can’t talk to you now.” I walked down the hall and went to the room I shared with Delia. In the morning I’d tell my sister that our father was crazy. She’d laugh and say, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”
By the time I returned to Omaha, it was late. The nine-hour car ride had allowed time for lots of thinking. I called Delia.
“I really think we should take Dad’s threat seriously.”
“Me too.” She offered no resistance.
“Before we do anything, I’ve got to be sure. I’ll try to trip him up or get him to admit he lied.”
“Do it now. Please,” Delia said. “I can’t sleep until you do.”
“Right now.”
I made a cup of tea to warm my hands, spirit, and mood. All the time wondering when things would get back to normal. But as Delia said at the funeral, “Normal will never be normal again.”
Finally, I placed the call.
Dad spoke in a calm and serious tone. “I meant every word. Everything’s been taken care of, there’s nothing you can do now.”
Then I lost it. All of it—my composure, my logic, my last shred of loyalty. “How can you do this?” I screamed hysterically. “How can you do this to us?”
Slowly, he explained, “Nothing will go wrong. No one will ever know. Just forget about it; it doesn’t concern you.”
“Please.” I was crying now. “Please...”
“You don’t owe this man anything. He’s a murderer.”
“No.” I stopped. And that proverbial straw, the one that broke the camel’s back, had finally been hoisted upon my own. I hung up the phone.
“From here on out,” I later told Delia, “we’re taking care of ourselves because no one else will. I’ll go see a guy I know—a criminal lawyer. I’ll pick his brain.”
“You’re the mother now,” she said. “Please, don’t let Daddy hurt us.”
“I won’t,” I said, and swore silently to protect us both. Our lives had suddenly taken on a soap opera quality, and I did not like being cast in the role of victim.
Bradley Johnson has this great office located in the Old Market area. A bricked passageway flanked on one side by restaurants and on the other by shops, illuminated by large skylights. Bradley’s office is at the top of four flights of wooden stairs.
His secretary, Lucy, sits behind a small desk and greets clients with a cup of coffee.
“I heard your mother died. Harry told me. I’m so sorry.” She buzzed Bradley.
“Thanks.”
Brad escorted me into the large room that serves as his office, meeting room, and lounge. We sat next to the tall windows he prefers to keep free from draperies. He shifted his legs and leaned back in an overstuffed chair.
I confided everything. Bradley reacted with a raised eyebrow.
“Legally, there isn’t a thing you can do, Robbie. It’s your word against his.”
“What I wanted, I guess, was more of a favor. I thought maybe you could contact my father, tell him we’ve talked. That might scare him enough to call everything off—if there really is a hitman. This way I’d be covered, the doctor would be safe, and my father would have to forget about all this.”
“My advice is to call Dr. Blair yourself. Explain the situation, see what he suggests. That’s the best you can do. But, Robbie?”
“Yeah?”
“None of this is your fault. You know that, don’t you?”
“I guess. It’s just that I feel so dirty. It’s hard to explain.”
The hospital receptionist said Dr. Blair was with a patient and would get back to me. I knew he kept late hours and told her I’d wait up for his call, no matter what the time.
Around ten o’clock, he called.
He was kind, and my hands immediately started to shake. I finally worked the conversation around to where it should have started.
“My father told me he holds you responsible for my mother’s death.”
“Your father has been through a lot. He and your mother were married forty-some years. It’s only natural he misses her.”
“I know.” Nothing would ever be as difficult as this moment. “But my father told me he’s hired someone to have you killed.”
Silence.
“Let me take this call on my private line, Ms. Stanton. Hold on a minute.”
When he came back, his tone was hushed. “You don’t really think he’s serious?”
“Yes, I do. It’s to be done in four months, on the anniversary of my mother’s death.” My voice trembled. I felt sorrier for all of us having to go through this than I ever could for my father.
Dr. Blair said he wanted to think about things. He’d get back to me.
Sergeant Danta of the Oak Lawn Police Department contacted me two days later. Dr. Blair had filed a complaint.
I’d talked with police before. Lots of times. But this was about me, about my life. I repeated my story for what seemed like the hundredth time and for the hundredth time, I didn’t believe it myself.
“We’ll have to proceed with this as if it were the truth. But tell me, Ms. Stanton, would you be willing to testify against your father in a court of law?”
I thought about all the years I’d worked for Dad’s approval. I thought about all the agony Delia and I were going through so soon after losing our mother and I answered.
“No.”
“Call on line two. Pick it up, Roberta,” Harry barked.
“Miss Stanton? I’m Detective Carter with the Chicago Police Department. A report has been filed with us concerning your father.”
“I’ve already been through this with Sergeant Danta.”
“Danta’s out of Oak Lawn, where the hospital is located. We need something filed in your father’s precinct.”
I repeated my story from the day before.
“I have to tell y
ou, Miss Stanton, when he first opened the door—”
“Wait a minute. You spoke to my father? You confronted him? In person? What did he say about Dr. Blair?”
“We had to get his statement. He said he thought the doctor killed your mother.”
I suddenly felt as though I’d been strapped into a roller-coaster and was slowly being hauled up to the top of Anxiety Mountain. I could hear the gears clicking and I prayed I wouldn’t crack before Christmas reared its holy head.
“Your father’s in bad shape.”
“We all are.”
“There’s nothing else we can do.”
“I know.”
Detective Carter apologized and promised there would be no need to disturb my father again.
“Get any last night?” Ken asked as I walked through the door.
I punched him on the shoulder. “Scum.”
“You may think I like it when you call me that, but I don’t,” he complained.
“Sorry. I had an awful night, didn’t sleep at all.”
He waited for the punchline, and when none came, he shrugged and sat down at the computer.
Harry came banging in from outside, and a frigid gust slammed the door. “Roberta. In my office. Now.”
I followed behind, like a little spaniel, and watched as his boots tracked wet black prints along the dirty carpet.
“Close the door.” Harry pulled his gloves off and stuffed them into his pockets. Without removing the snowflaked overcoat, he abruptly turned.
“The body of one Dr. Blair, practicing out of Christ Community Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, was found this morning in the trunk of his car. The car was parked in the doctor’s reserved space in the hospital lot. He had been beaten to death. They think it was one of those aluminum baseball bats. Very sloppy. I spoke with Sergeant Danta. He said it definitely was not a professional hit.”
Click. Click. Hang on.
“Your father’s in custody.”
“Was anyone else with the doctor?”