Remember Me, Irene

by Jan Burke

  June Monroe nodded. “Thank you for taking care of my son,” she said to Roberta. “I would like to see where he stayed.”

  WE MADE A BRIEF TOUR of the shelter. It offered spartan but clean accommodations. A simple bed or cot—perhaps nothing more than a floor space on a cold night. But to someone living on the street, I suppose its hot showers and flush toilets made it look like the Ritz. It seemed it would almost be like living at one’s high school gym. There was no real privacy, and yet I could not help feeling that we were intruding in someone’s home, and was glad when we walked on to the dining area.

  One of the men in the kitchen had been a friend of Lucas, and as he told June Monroe how much he would miss her son, Roberta pulled me aside.

  “Thank you for sticking up for me, but I didn’t really search for him or even take very good care of him,” she said. “And I wasn’t very encouraging when you talked to me at Ben’s funeral. Of all the people who asked me about Lucas after that SOS meeting, I think you were the only one who really cared about him.”

  “Who asked about him?”

  “Oh, let’s see. Ivy, Marcy, Becky, and even Jerry and Andre.”

  “Jerry and Andre? They weren’t at the meeting. How—?”

  “The morning before Andre’s heart attack, Andre called and asked if Lucas was living here. I guess Lisa must have mentioned it,” she said. “She’s staying with Jerry, you know.”

  “Shit. I didn’t realize that many people overheard us that night. And if word spread beyond—What did they want to know about Lucas?”

  “How he was doing, why he was at the shelter, what had become of him, and so on.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “Nothing. No one seems to understand my position—”

  “No, you’re wrong,” I said. “I understand it. There’s a version of that in my business, too.”

  “Of course. Your sources.”

  “Right. It just makes it a little irritating when I want to know something and somebody else wants to invoke confidentiality. Think of Lucas, for example. I know he was involved in something important—something that was important not only to him personally, but also to the city, to the people who live here. But now he’s dead. So what happens to that important information he had?”

  “It dies with him,” she said. “At least as far as I’m concerned.”

  I crossed my arms to keep myself from reaching out and shaking her. “For your sake, Roberta, I hope everyone believes that’s true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, maybe someone realized that Lucas had to be sober to stay here. They overhear you say that he wants to get in touch with me—a newspaper reporter. You said …” I thought back. “You said, ‘The things he wants to talk to you about are important,’ then you added something about ‘When he makes his case this time, he wants to do it right.’ Doesn’t that sound like Lucas was on some kind of quest?”

  “Well, perhaps.”

  “Think, Roberta! Suppose someone didn’t want Lucas’s quest to succeed.”

  “But that can’t matter now. He’s dead.”

  “Don’t you get it? No one is certain that Lucas died a natural death.”

  “The police said it was a heart attack!”

  June Monroe turned toward us when she heard Roberta say this. Her eyes narrowed, and she began to walk back to where we stood.

  “Be careful, Roberta. I mean it. Please.”

  I suddenly realized that I sounded just like Frank. I hoped Roberta wasn’t as stubborn as I am sometimes.

  “You should be careful, too,” she said. “I heard about, well, his street name is Two Toes.”

  “You know him?”

  “Yes, he’s much brighter than he may seem, and that’s partly why he’s dangerous—he’s delusional, not dumb. Most schizophrenics are intelligent, a few are violent. He’s both. Without discussing particulars, let’s just say a person may not be violent because he’s schizophrenic. Perhaps he’s like other violent people: he grew up with it, worked with it, or lived with it. Often it’s in his history long before the onset of his schizophrenia. Even when he’s not on medication, Two Toes can be lucid and rational. In those times he controls his anger. At other times he’s childlike or just withdrawn. Most of the time he’s harmless, but he has had episodes of becoming extremely brutal. Don’t underestimate him.”

  “Thanks, I won’t,” I said, just as June reached us. “Ready to go?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she replied, studying us. “Wait!” Roberta said. “It just dawned on me. Lucas’s things.”

  “His things?” June asked.

  “From his locker. We—we cleaned it out yesterday. But I didn’t know where to send his things. I suppose you should have them, Mrs. Monroe.”

  She took us back to her office, and opened one of the file drawers. She pulled out a brown paper grocery sack, gave it to June.

  JUNE DIDN’T OPEN the sack until we were back in the car. As we sat in the parking lot near the shelter, I watched her examine Lucas’s meager legacy.

  At first, it appeared to contain nothing more than a few articles of clothing. She pulled each carefully folded item out of the bag and placed it on her lap.

  A gray T-shirt.

  Two pairs of white socks, one dark pair.

  Three pairs of briefs. Perhaps someone else would have been embarrassed, or even thought it comical to see underwear pulled out of a bag. I only felt sad when I saw them. A T-shirt could have been worn by anyone. Not these most intimate items. Death with dignity. What a laugh. This kind of accounting of personal belongings is due to all of us some day, I suppose. Perhaps it’s best if it comes to us only after death.

  June kept reaching into the bag. Next came a handful of AA tracts. I was looking through them when I heard her moan softly. In her hand was a little Bible.

  “I gave this to him,” she said, and pressed it to her lips. She was crying as she handed it to me.

  There was a piece of paper in the Bible, marking the Twenty-third Psalm. I was trying to make out something scrawled on the paper when June Monroe pulled out the last item in the bag.

  22

  HIS THERMOS,” she said.

  “His thermos? Why would a man with so few possessions need two thermos bottles?” I asked.

  “No, there’s only one in here,” she said.

  “There was also one in the hotel room. At the Angelus.”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “There was an open thermos bottle in the room where he died. But this thermos was here, at the shelter. So someone else must own this one… or someone else owned …”

  “Why are you looking like that all of a sudden?” she asked. “Is there something I’m not understanding? You’re saying this Two Toes fellow who took Lucas’s ring left this thermos behind?”

  “No. The homicide detective you talked to last night—now that I think about how he put it, he wasn’t very clear with you about this. Even though Lucas died of a heart attack, the coroner was puzzled, because Lucas seemed to have a healthy heart. That’s why the coroner is doing the toxicology studies.”

  “Poison?”

  “He thought it was a possibility. But the studies take weeks to complete.”

  “You’re saying someone brought Lucas some kind of something in that other thermos?”

  “I’m saying it’s very possible. A lot of things in the hotel room didn’t make sense—the missing ring, the pennies, the scrapes and bruises. But now we know that the thermos wasn’t Lucas’s. It explains how someone could have poisoned him.”

  “Someone poisoned my boy …” She was looking at me in total disbelief.

  “Maybe.”

  “Who? Who would want to kill him?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe someone felt threatened by him.”

  “Threatened? By a man who lived like this?” she asked, motioning toward the shelter. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Big tears rolled down her face. “Why
wouldn’t he come home to me?” she whispered. “Why live in these places? On the streets of this city? I could have offered him a roof and meals. I would have taken care of him.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  She shook her head. “Pride. That devil’s pride in him. So hard in him, like a rock. Nothing could break it.”

  I looked out across the parking lot, watching a group of men walking slowly toward the shelter door. “I’m not sure the people out here always know why they stay on the streets,” I said. “Maybe there aren’t any good reasons. But as for Lucas—how old was he when his father died?”

  “About twelve, I guess. Why?”

  “Old enough to be aware of his father’s drinking, and maybe what it cost you?”

  She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “So maybe he just wanted you to be proud of him, and he wasn’t quite there yet. Like that money for the phone call.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He probably knew you could afford the call he made to Las Piernas. Maybe he just needed to show you that he wanted to pay his own way.”

  “But I would have cared for him better than these people did. He’d rather be here all alone, not a friend in the world.”

  “He had friends here.”

  “Who? That man in the kitchen? You?”

  “I wasn’t much of a friend. I’ve admitted that to you. But Lucas made friends here. Even on the street. His friends helped me find him. They respected him. He protected some of the weak ones from the bullies.”

  “That was his way,” she said. “Even as a kid.”

  She pulled herself together, then began carefully replacing the contents of the grocery bag. She looked over at me, and I realized that I still had the Bible on my lap. I started to close it, saw the note again.

  “Can you read this?” I asked, handing it to her.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” she began.

  “Er, no, I meant the scrap of paper.”

  “Oh.” She frowned over it, then said, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I couldn’t make it out either,” I sighed.

  “Oh, I think I can make it out. It just doesn’t make any sense. It says, ‘She rubs.’”

  She passed it back to me. I studied it again, now that I had a hint of how to proceed. “How did he get such good grades with such lousy handwriting?” I asked.

  “Teachers are as good as pharmacists at reading bad handwriting. His teachers knew he was bright—and you wouldn’t believe how hard some of them worked with him on it. He printed lots of things—his printing wasn’t as bad as his handwriting. But mostly it was just that they knew he was trying. Might have had some kind of learning disability, I don’t know. In those days, they didn’t test for things the way they do now.”

  “This is an s?” I asked, looking at the first mark on the paper.

  She looked at it again. “I think so. Or maybe a c.”

  “A c? Then it would make sense. Cherubs.”

  She smiled a little. “Well, that’s a more sensible note to leave in a Bible.”

  I drove her over to the rental car place, wondering if she was right. Maybe the Good Book wasn’t the inspiration for the note. After all, Lucas Monroe had died surrounded by angels.

  GEOFF’S GREETING DIDN’T do anything to soothe my nerves as I entered the Wrigley Building. The old security guard shook his head slowly and said in funereal tones, “Mr. Walters is very happy.”

  “Any idea what’s caused this monumental change in affect?”

  “You mean, why is he so happy?”

  I nodded.

  “You.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sure it can’t be as bad as all that,” I said, heading for the stairs.

  “And I thought I was an optimist,” I heard him mumble behind me.

  I ignored the stares of coworkers, the drop-off in both conversation and keyboard clatter as I made my way across the newsroom. I had thought to stop by Lydia’s desk, but decided not to prolong my misery. I glanced over to see her catching the tip of her nose between two fingers, scissors-style—as if snipping it off. It was an old signal between us from our school days, one I hadn’t seen since the last time I got sent to the principal’s office. Better no nose than a brown nose, it meant, invented long ago as a response to Alicia Penderson’s shameless kissing up to the nuns. Alicia had been in serious danger of putting a new crease in the backside of Sister Vincent’s habit.

  I smiled, returned the gesture, and knocked on the frame of John’s open office door. “Hello, John. You wanted to see me?”

  My smile must have taken him aback, because he scowled briefly before saying, “Come in, Irene. And close the door.” Once the door was shut, he smiled again and said, “Have a seat.”

  He then went back to looking at a computer monitor, where he was scrolling the wire—browsing through the long directory, looking over the lead paragraphs of stories filed on the wire service. I took a quick peek over his beefy shoulder to see what he was reading and noticed there was nothing urgent or local on the monitor. The faker.

  Unfortunately for John, I recognized the trick as one that Sister Vincent herself had often used: stall and make them squirm. My immunity to this tactic built by experts, I leaned back in my chair and studied my fingernails as if they had the winning lotto numbers painted on them.

  “How’s the story on Moffett coming?” he asked, not looking at me.

  “Oh, just swimmingly.”

  He turned to look at me, his scrutiny real this time.

  “So tell me about it.

  “I’ve met with Corbin Tyler and it looks like I’ll finally be able to interview Roland Hill. So I’m meeting with some people who worked very closely with him. I expect to have more by the end of the week …”

  “Dammit, Kelly, you work for a newspaper, not a goddamned history journal! The man resigned on Thursday. Monday, I practically had to chain you to your chair. It’s now Tuesday and you’re strolling in here late. Maybe I should put someone else on to this. Someone who has time to be a reporter. Maybe Dorothy Bliss should be handling this one.”

  That brought me to my feet. “You want a load of half-assed, meaningless bullshit on your front page, go right ahead. You’ll have a column full of conjecture and nothing to back it up. She puts more filler in her stories than a flat-chested girl could stuff into a bra on prom night!”

  “At least this newspaper would appear to be looking into the matter of Moffett’s sudden resignation!”

  “That’s all it would be, John. Appearance! Quotes from ten people who don’t know diddly, filled in with could-it-be crap. ‘Could it be that Mr. Moffett really needed more time to care for his ailing poodle?’ ‘Could it be that younger higher-ups were demanding more than the old commissioner could deliver?’”

  “Kelly …”

  “Maybe she’ll make it dramatic.” I put my hand over my heart and went into a Betty Boop voice, the closest I can come to imitating Dorothy. “‘There’s an empty office in city hall. Very, very empty. Outside, on the door of the office, an equally empty slot, a place where a narrow brass plaque bearing a very important name should be. Everyone here knows the missing name on the missing plaque. Could it be that these uneasy, silent coworkers know why it’s missing?’”

  He started stabbing his blotter with a ballpoint pen. I went for broke.

  “‘As this reporter looked at the sun-faded carpet, the little bitty indentations where the big oak desk used to sit, the really, really big oak desk that once had a really, really big leather chair behind it …’”

  “That’s enough!”

  “Oh, sure it is,” I said, dropping the act. “Give the story to Dorothy and you’ll get ten inches on the office decor alone, no sweat. Smoke and mirrors. But what the hell? You’re in a hurry. Go ahead and give it to her. Call me if you start to be curious about what really happened.” I started for the door.

  “Sit down!”

  I hesitated, decided to turn an
d face him. One look at his mottled red face convinced me I should sit down.

  His eyes narrowed. “You are the most insolent, insubordinate—”

  “This is so much better than what I expected.”

  That stopped him for a moment. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You were in a good mood this morning. Scared the hell out of everyone in the building.”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed.

  “Haven’t seen enough of you around here lately, Kelly.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I was irritated with you, that’s all. A suggestion was made, and I thought it might solve some of our current difficulties.”

  “What suggestion?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  We sat there in silence for a moment. John started tapping the pen again.

  “Can we start over?” I asked.

  He looked up at me.

  “I mean, about the Moffett story,” I went on. “I need you to forget two things.”

  “Namely?”

  “First, forget that I ever knew Lucas Monroe.” His scowl returned. “And?”

  “And forget that Lucas was homeless.”

  “That’s quite an attack of amnesia you’re asking for.”

  “Stay with me for a minute. Ben Watterson, Allan Moffett, and a handful of other civic leaders were very heavily involved in redevelopment in the 1970s, right?”

  “Lots of people got involved.”

  “This group more than others. Think of how easy it would be for a group of investors to make money with the kind of inside information Allan Moffett could supply.”

  “Give me your version.”

  “A group of investors learns—very early on—that a certain area is going to be declared a redevelopment zone. They buy run-down buildings for a very low price. They pick up one seedy property after another. Just to stick with round numbers, let’s suppose we have two general partners who put in five thousand dollars each. They pick up a hotel for ten thousand.”