by D. J. Herda
I got part of the answer when I laid eyes on her. I expected her to turn on me. But she was cordial, pleasant, businesslike. One employee to another. And she stuck to her story. Almost as if she really didn’t know the extent of my involvement. Maybe she had checked up on Mrs. Martinowicz, found out about the bum loan applications, and saw that the old lady had already transferred half her funds to Acapulco. And that she had rented a villa there in her name. And was planning on leaving the country for good. At least, that’s the way it must have appeared.
That was it. Margaret actually did think Mrs. M. was the only guilty party here. She really did believe the old lady had done everything I’d actually set in motion and was planning on skipping out for good with her account. How could she possibly think anything else? Everything I’d done was in the name of J. Martinowicz!
On the way out of the station, Marge asked if I needed a lift home, and I told her thanks. And for the next several minutes, the communication between us was an abyss, a black hole of emptiness. I didn’t know what to say, and she wasn’t exactly in a chatty mood. So when she pulled up outside my place, I leaned over, gave her a quick peck on the cheek, and thanked her.
“For what?”
I shrugged. “Oh, I guess for including me in your report to the police, saying I had a bigger role to play in the apprehension of Mrs. M. than I actually had. I mean, you really could have taken all the credit. You’re the one who figured this whole thing out. I didn’t have anything to do with that end of it.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say that.”
I looked at her, my brows furrowed, my lips pursed.
“Hmm?”
“I said, I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I sat there, waiting for an explanation, and when none came, I asked her what she meant.
“Well, if it hadn’t been for you changing Mrs. Martinowicz’ signature card from ‘Josephine” to “J” Martinowicz and updating her residence from Maple Street, Chicago, to Acapulco, Mexico ...”
I sat in deathly silence as she rattled off every single move I had made in the litany of missteps I had taken on my way to pulling off the Crime of the Century. And when she was finished, I sat, mouth agape, hands sweating. How did she know? How could she have known?
“Once I began checking up on Mrs. Martinowicz’ banking history,” she continued, “I stumbled across a series of suspicious loan applications made by her friends and neighbors, each of whom had a Polish surname and each of whom ended up defaulting on their loans after disappearing into the woodwork. I guess she provided each one with a one-way ticket back to the Old Country. That’s how I knew she’d never had any intention of transferring her funds to Mexico and skipping out.”
When I told her I still didn’t get it, she explained how only a fool would risk a perfectly successful scam like hers by pulling up stakes and leaving the country right in the middle of a winning streak. It would have been financial homicide. “So, I began looking for someone else behind the transfers, another party, someone who knew her well enough and could get close enough to her to learn certain things about her lifestyle and personal habits. Someone with access to her banking records.”
“Someone like me,” I said.
She nodded.
I shook my head.
“What’s the matter? Stunned?”
“More like ... stupefied.”
“Why? Don’t you think I have the brains to put two and two together and come up with embezzlement?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “That’s ... such an ugly word.”
She forced a smile. “Well, how about theft, then. Better?”
I was trapped, and I knew it. I shrugged. My mouth opened and, after the awkward passage of several electrically charged moments, a single word flopped out.
“Fuck.”
She smiled. “Later, darling. We’ve got a lot to do before then.”
“What?” I peered over at her, her eyes fixed on the road. “What are you talking about?”
“About what you have to do, and soon.”
“Like what?”
“Like, going back to finish packing and then getting some rest. We’ve got a flight to catch tomorrow at eleven.”
“What?”
“Has this rain impacted your hearing? I said we’ve got a flight to catch to Mexico tomorrow morning, so you’d better get some rest.”
“Look, here,” I said finally. “I’m grateful for what you did and all. I really am. You didn’t have to help me out. You could have told Lieutenant Cartwright everything.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But ... we can’t exactly go riding off into the sunset together ...”
“It’s dark out, and it’s raining,” she said flatly. “Besides, we’re traveling by air.”
“I mean, what if we did go off to Mexico together?”
“What if we did?”
“You’d always have something over my head.”
“So?”
“So, what’s to say that one day you wouldn’t use it against me? I mean, you’d always have that power over me.”
“True.” She glanced at me before returning her eyes to the street. “So, what’s your point?”
“My point is that this can’t possibly work.”
“Why not?”
“I just told you.”
“That’s just silly. Everybody knows a wife can’t testify against her husband on a felony rap. Not even in Cabo San Lucas.”
“Acapulco,” I said.
“Cabo. My family has a villa on the cape overlooking the bay. Or did have. When mom died last year, she left it to me. It would be a shame to see it go to waste.”
“So, this is how you see things ending? The bad guy gets the girl and the glitz and the glamor, and everything turns out for the best?”
She thought for several moments. “Yeah,” she said, “something like that.”
“And the good girl ends up with some jackass who just happened to be fortunate enough to have her fall in love with him and save him from the gallows?”
“Pretty much,” she said.
“So, in other words, crime does pay. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I’d prefer to think of it a little differently. I’d prefer to think of it as you recognized from the moment you laid eyes on Mrs. Martinowicz that something about her was fishy, and, as an officer of the bank, you felt it was your duty to investigate. And you were right. So, you shifted some funds around to prevent her from absconding with the bank’s money and taking a hike. That’s a small enough risk to take in saving the bank a bundle. You’ll probably get a handsome reward. Maybe even a medal.”
“We both know that’s a bunch of crap.”
“Do we?”
“I’d have to have a pretty creative imagination to talk myself into believing that’s how this all went down.”
“But, darling, you do have, remember? After all, you talked yourself into believing you had a fool-proof plan, didn’t you? And that you were poised on the brink of success?”
“Okay, okay, I confess. I blew it. All right? Satisfied? I overestimated my criminal talents.”
“That’s the understatement of the decade.”
I paused, thinking, puzzled, defeated. “So, what’s next? Do I throw myself on the mercy of the court here or what?”
“In this particular instance, yes. Just think of me as the judge.”
I nodded. “And ... you’re going to give me a suspended sentence providing we get married so that we can live happily ever after in Cabo San Lucas. Is that about it?”
“That’s about it.” She pulled the car to a stop, unfastened her safety belt, leaned over, and slipped her arms around my neck. “Oh, there is one more thing,” she said, pulling me closer.
I looked into her face, the street lights dancing in her eyes, her hair shimmering like spun gold. “Yes, your honor?”
She moved s
o close to me, I could smell the tantalizing scent of her lipstick. “Don’t ever pull a fool stunt like that again.”
TWO: Fisher of Men
JOHN LOOKED AROUND, up-shore, down-shore, all around. Nothing. Not a solitary shrub. Not another person. Nothing. He shrugged. Perhaps it would pass, this growing pressure deep down inside his bladder. Maybe he needed to take his mind off of it and just concentrate on the task at hand.
I shouldn't' have had that fourth cup, he thought. But he knew, even in his four a.m. stupor, that the lake would be cold, the winds would be bitter, the water whipped into froth, icing everything in its path.
It was that fourth fucking cup.
It was not John's idea of a good time, coming to the lake so early in the morning—in fall, just days before the first snowflakes began their assault on Lake Shore Drive, mere weeks before classes resumed at Chicago’s Columbia College. It was not his idea of fun at all. But when his uncle had called the night before and said he was going smelting and would he like to come along (“They’re running big-time!”), well, John naturally clenched his fingers around the receiver, fought off the lump that had sprouted in his throat, and stammered, "Sure. Love to. What, uhh, time are you going?"
John loved his uncle dearly. And his uncle? He loved fishing. Well, not fishing, exactly. More like catching. There was a big difference between the two. Fishing, to John's uncle, was a means toward an end that was, simply enough, bringing home the bacon. Never mind how you got from Point A to Point B. It was arriving that made all the difference.
John's uncle wasn't a spit-and-polish fisherman; he was not of the catch-and-release school of thought. He had never tied a fly in his life and never could see the value of standing in the middle of a rolling trout stream, throwing cast after cast into the wind in the hopes of snagging a small brookie or a rainbow or even a giant brown and reeling it in for the sport of it all. To John's uncle, it was a simple fact: you fish to catch. The more you fish, the more you catch. The more you catch, the better your life will seem when you look back upon it only moments before expiring, wheezing up your last breath because of lung cancer or angina or maybe even something as mundane as getting run over by a bus: Jesus, but I’ve caught a shit-load of fish. It's been a good life!
That was pretty much how John's uncle saw it. And John knew that, if his uncle said the smelt were running, then, by God, the smelt were running. John liked little more on the face of God's green earth than the taste of freshly caught smelt freshly fried in a pan and served up with a little salt, pepper, and enough seafood sauce to float a small armada. And if he occasionally had to go through hell to get it, so be it.
The wind whipped up suddenly—a growling, sudden gush sweeping across the lake and across John and across the entire world, making the boy's teeth rattle—literally chatter out loud—so that in order even to catch his breath, he had to turn sideways to its fury. "Fuck!" he said finally. His uncle looked up at him, that same vacuous stare John had seen a million times before.
"What?"
"What, what?" John couldn't believe his ears. He couldn't believe his uncle could even think about asking such a foolish question. "What? It's fuckin' cold out here, that's what! Jesus, who's idea was this, anyway?"
His uncle laughed. Besides catching fish, John's uncle liked nothing better than showing off his toughness. He had served proudly in the U.S. military as an infantryman stationed in Italy during the waning days of World War II. He had caught some shrapnel in one arm at some battle or another, Antietam or something, and John thought he remembered his uncle saying that he'd caught some in his head, too, which is exactly where the doctors decided to leave it for fear of causing complications should they have decided on going in to remove it. So, they installed some sort of metal plate inside his uncle's skull to prevent the shrapnel from shifting, and they left it there. And now John wondered if it had somehow managed to work its way in deeper, like a worm tunneling through the decaying carcass of a once-living creature, until finally it had reached the soft innards of the man’s cranium, itself, turning his uncle into an avocado.
"Aren't ... aren't you ... c-c-c-c-cold?" John shivered.
His uncle laughed again. "Naw. Cold is all in the head."
John pictured the metal plate slowly but steadily decaying.
"Tell you what," John's uncle said as he strained to see his watch in the near-light of near-morning. "It's almost five. Old Man Feeney will be opening the bait shop soon. Why don't you walk on over and get yourself a cup of hot Java. That'll warm you up. When you get back, we'll check the net and see how we're doing."
John didn't have to be asked twice. He tugged at his coat collar until it hid his ears, and then he turned windward and followed the shoreline north, shielding his head from the incessant pounding of the wind and spray so that his face cranked to one side like an owl. He walked like that, head skewed sideways against the cold, when he felt himself stumble across the edge of the pavement and turned to face the glowering windows of Old Man Feeney's bait shop. He quickened his pace and reached the wooden steps, hiking them three at a time while grabbing for the knob that led to the heated confines inside. He twisted it. He twisted it again.
"Shit!" he spat. He looked around before glancing at his watch. Two minutes to five. "Shit!"
John peered through the glass pane rattling against the wind, peered through the door and into the shop where the lights glowed an eerie yellow-green, and the coffee machines sent plumes of steam funneling surrealistically toward the ceiling. He looked away, huddling lower into his coat so that a passerby might mistake him for a huge turtle. He shivered, which made him recall that he still had to pee, and he looked around for some sign of a rest room. He peered back inside the shop and saw a closed door against the back wall.
"Thank God," he said softly before pulling back into his shell where he stood quietly except for the shivering. He stood there counting off the seconds, too cold to pull his hand out of his pocket to check his watch. What if he doesn't open on time? John thought. What if he doesn't open at all? What if he had an emergency or something and had to take off and won't be back until tomorrow?
These were not mere rhetorical questions. Old Man Feeney was a loon, pure and simple. His reputation preceded him up and down the lakefront.
It'd be just like the old fart not to open up at all on the coldest fucking day of the year. It'd be just like him, goddamn it.
It would have been like him, but when it came time for Old Man Feeney to open shop, John heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps followed by the soft clang of metal-on-metal as the iron bolt slipped to one side. Suddenly the knob turned and John's heart leaped as the door opened wide.
Now, Old Man Feeney—John knew from past fishing trips he'd taken to Lake Michigan with his uncle—was a year or two older than Moses and a lot more ornery. John once watched the old bastard drop a pot of coffee in some poor kid's lap before throwing the kid out of his shop for making such a mess. Still, Old Man Feeney today would be a welcomed sight, no matter how much of a shit he could be.
John slipped halfway through the door and stopped to shake off the cold. As he looked up, his jaw fell slack and his eyes glazed over until they looked like the shiners he used for bait whenever he and his uncle went walleye fishing in Wisconsin. He shivered. Less from the cold than from what lay before him.
My God!
She looked up at him ... curiously at first, then more comfortably. She craned her head gently to one said and smiled through dainty white teeth, each set perfectly into a turned-up mouth like so many matching pearls clinging to some widowed dowager's neck. She batted her eyes—actually batted them, for Christ’s sake.
"I ... I ..." John heard somebody say, and then he realized it had been he. His eyes brushed her lips—red, deep red, crimson, the color of a fire engine after it has been freshly washed but not yet dried. She smiled past a complexion so sweet, it had to have come from a pitcher of cream risen to the top, soft and white, with just a blush
of peach.
But her eyes ... oh, her eyes. Those two limpid pools of aquamarine, the color of Lake Michigan on a calm summer's day; the color of a sapphire caught glistening in the sunlight; the color of a Taos sky on a cold, crisp, January eve. It was those eyes that caught his attention, caught his desires, caught his very heartstrings and sent them tumbling toward her until he could feel their two bodies touching, beating, pounding in unison. He smelled the jasmine in the air, heard the nightingales sing, felt the silk of her anointed skin. More, still, he realized something else:
Jesus, she’s built like a brick ...
John knew right then and there that he would have to have her. She didn't have to say a word. She wouldn't ever have to say a word. And if it turned out that she never ever did say a word, he would still possess the world in all its glory.
I'd kill for a shot at those tits!
"Aren't you cold?" she said.
John stirred. Fear beat at his chest. Terror stalked his brain. He wasn't positive, but he thought for one split second that he felt his heart stop beating. She had spoken to him. She—this apparition of joy, this vision of perfect loveliness, this goddess of all goddesses, this monument to love and light and life.
What a fucking body!
The girl giggled. "I'd just better get you a hot cup of coffee, mister," she said, and she turned, jiggling her way across the room. John felt himself take one step after her, heard the door slam closed behind him, and stared. She was poetry in motion, a perfect body to match a perfect face. A twenty-four-inch waist set between 34-inch hips and a 38-inch chest ... 38-D, even! Give or take a letter or two.
The goddess hesitated as she reached the counter, and then she looked back at him and smiled once more before ducking down and skittering through the passageway only to emerge upright on the other side, looking more radiant and perfect than before.