‘Uncle Paul. Did you see Mom?’ he says.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Visitors’ day,’ he says. ‘First time they would let me in.’
Looking at the tattooed crowd of tough faces, Danny is a little taken aback, but seems a bit relieved to have run into us.
‘Do you wanna come up with me?’
‘I’d love to, but I have a client waiting at the office.’
I introduce Harry, but Danny’s not looking. Instead he is studying the escalator to the mezzanine, the route taken by most visitors to see friends or relatives. He scans the ceiling, nearly three stories over his head, light fixtures like star bursts.
‘Whoa. What a place,’ he says.
To Danny, whose generation has lived out their school life in portable classrooms, that taxpayers would foot the bill for a structure on this scale is, I suppose, a novelty. He is lost in other thoughts, checking it out, I can tell by the look, fantasies of hang-gliding down from the ceiling dancing in his mind, or the raucous ride a skateboard could do down the escalator.
‘I haven’t been here before,’ he says.
I can tell.
‘How did you get here?’
‘Vespa’s across the street at the library,’ he tells me, ‘in the bike rack.’
‘Does your father know you’re here?’
He gives me a look, Tom Cruise in Risky Business.
Jack doesn’t have a clue. What’s worse, I know, is the only thing that would bother Vega is that the kid is here to see his mother. But for this, I suspect Jack couldn’t give a damn where Danny was.
‘How’s Mom?’
‘She’s fine. A little tired,’ I tell him. ‘Otherwise she’s okay.’
‘Are you gonna get her off?’ There is an urgency in his soulful eyes. This is Danny. Cut to the quick, bottom line, why mess around?
‘We’re going to try.’
‘How does it look?’
‘We’re still collecting evidence,’ I tell him. ‘It’s going to be a tough case.’
‘It looks that bad?’
‘Not to worry,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll deal. We’ll cope. Your mother is a tough lady.’ A lot of brave talk without an answer to his question.
‘I know,’ he says. ‘But she didn’t do it.’
‘I know,’ I tell him. ‘We’re gonna do everything we can.’
‘Can’t you talk to the judge?’ he says. To Danny the elements of justice are simple.
‘It’s not that easy,’ I tell him.
‘I know,’ he says. The boy’s hands are suddenly everywhere, nervous gestures like he doesn’t know what to do with them. Finally he reaches out to Harry. Shakes his hand.
‘Nice to meet you,’ he says. ‘I gotta go.’ He nods to me, a big smile, the same one I remember as being toothless when he was seven. He turns and saunters toward the line leading to the escalator.
I watch for a moment as Danny walks through the metal detector. Beepers go off and they send him back. A guard passes a hand-held magnetometer over the boy’s jeans. Danny empties his pockets, a handful of loose keys and a folding knife that they take in return for a claim check.
As I watch him disappear up the escalator, I want to spit at the self-indulgence of my generation. My guilt as a father simmering deep inside, vapors of shame. We are a society that sheds spouses and takes on new lovers faster than a raja can work through his harem. We dissolve entire families on a whimsy of lust. We pursue bald ambition as if it were the true religion, leaving our children to come home to empty houses, to fix their own meals, to cope with the crippling insecurities of adolescence, while we engage in an endless chase after the grail of possessions. And we have the audacity to wonder who killed the innocence of childhood.
Chapter 11
This morning is what they call an early-dismissal day at Sarah’s school. Class is out at eleven so that teachers can attend a conference. I am doing lunch with my daughter, a treat at one of those pizza places with big singing dummies where they dispense tokens to play games and take all your change.
We’re sprawled at a table over a twelve-inch disk filled with cheese, the processed kind a cow would never recognize, sharing a pitcher of Coke. Sarah is big round eyes and smiles, struggling with a string of cheese that has stretched longer than the reach of her arms.
It snaps and she chews. She rubs her mouth with her sleeve.
I hand her a napkin.
‘Kevin’s been kissing me again.’ She says this out of the blue with her mouth full, reaching for her Coke.
Kevin is the little second-grader in her class who has taken a shine to my daughter. He hasn’t heard that girls are yucky yet. I am told that disease sets in among the boys about the third grade. I can’t wait.
‘Tell him to stop,’ I say.
‘It’s okay,’ she says. ‘I kinda like it.’
‘Well, I don’t.’
‘We’re not French kissing,’ she says.
I roll my eyes skyward. Nikki, I need you. ‘Where did you hear that?’ I say.
‘Hear what?’ A face of toothless wonderment, her two front ones gone.
‘About French kissing.’
‘Courtney showed us, at the sleep-over. She knows all that stuff.’ Courtney is one of her little girlfriends, a foot taller than Sarah but the same age. She is the authority on everything. It seems size at this age is a big thing.
‘We will talk about this later,’ I tell her.
I need some time for perspective. I will talk to Laurel.
‘Why do we have to talk?’
‘Never mind. Just tell Kevin to stop kissing you.’
‘All right. I’ll try to remember,’ she says.
She grabs a bunch of tokens, still chewing on cheese and half-cooked dough, and heads for the helicopter ride. She’s been waiting for ten minutes to get her chance.
I take the opportunity to call the office from the pay phone near the rest rooms. I can see Sarah across the way as the thing lights up. She pulls the control stick and the little chopper lifts on its hydraulic arm, maybe four feet off the ground.
I dial and get the receptionist.
‘Hello, Sally, it’s Paul. Any messages?’
‘Let’s see.’ I hear her pawing through slips at the other end.
‘Your one o’clock canceled. He wants to reschedule next week. Department twelve called, motions in Vega are due the fourteenth.’
‘Who’s the judge?’ These are the pretrial motions in Laurel’s case. Whoever hears these is likely to be our trial judge.
‘Don’t know,’ she says.
‘Check the court roster.’
‘A new one’s due out. Reassignments,’ she says. ‘Do you want me to call over there and find out who it is?’
‘Yeah. And put a note on my desk.’
‘Will do. And one more message. Marcie Reed called.’
‘Who?’
‘She says her name is Reed.’
‘I don’t know any Reed. Did she say what it’s about?’
‘No.’
I’m racking my brain. Then it hits me. Marcie – the woman from the post office. Kathy Merlow’s friend.
‘Did she leave a phone number?’
She gives it to me and I write in on the back of a business card.
I thank her, hang up, and dial.
‘Postal Service. Can I help you?’ A man’s voice.
‘Marcie Reed, please.’
‘Who’s calling?’
‘Paul Madriani, returning her call.’
‘Just a minute.’
I hear him hollering Marcie’s name. He calls out several times. Several minutes go by, a lot of shuffling and noise on the other end. Then suddenly a voice, in the female timbre and very tentative.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello. Ms. Reed? This is Paul Madriani.’
‘Oh, yeah. You’re returning my call.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I uh… I saw your name and your picture
in the paper,’ she says. Dead silence on the other end.
I wonder for a moment if the line’s gone dead.
‘Hello? Are you there?’ I ask.
‘Yeah. I’m still here,’ she says. ‘The woman you’re defending, is she the one you told me about, the one you want Kathy Merlow to help?’
‘She is. Do you know where I can find Mrs. Merlow?’
‘Maybe. I might be able to help you.’
‘How?’
‘I can’t talk on the phone. They monitor our calls,’ she says. ‘They keep track of the time we’re on the phone. If they catch us making personal calls –’
She leaves the thought hanging, but I can hear the swift glide of the guillotine blade in its runners. The sweatshop school of management. They spend two million designing a chic logo for better image, an eagle’s head with a beak like the Sunset Limited, but still they can’t resist shoveling metric tons of psychic guano on the help.
‘Can we get together? I can meet you wherever you say,’ I tell her. ‘My office?’
‘No. No – I don’t want to do that. Besides, I can’t leave here during the day.’
‘After work?’ I say.
‘I have to pick up my kids from the sitter. How about over here?’
‘The post office?’ I say.
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you sure you won’t get in trouble?’
‘Mr. Haslid is off today.’ For Marcie Reed trouble starts with an H.
‘He was the shouter on the loading dock?’ I say.
‘Yeah. But he’s gone today.’
And the mice will play, I think.
‘Why not.’
‘I take my lunch at one. I have forty minutes,’ she says. ‘We can talk in Kathy’s old office. There’s nobody in there right now.’
I look at my watch. It’s nearly twelve-forty.
‘Do I come to the front counter?’
‘No. Don’t do that. I’ll meet you on the loading dock. One o’clock. Gotta go now,’ and she hangs up.
Sarah’s run out of tokens and is grounded playing with the stick, a little blond boy eyeing the craft jealously. I pluck her out of the helicopter and make his day. I will have to cut short the date with my daughter, drop her at day care a little early.
On the loading dock two mail carriers are putting letter crates into the back of little jeeplike vans. There’s no sign of Marcie Reed, so I hang back at the end of the alley. I’m about five minutes late, and I begin to wonder if she has already come and gone, or had second thoughts about talking to me.
I lean against the wall of a building, one eye on my watch, the other on the loading dock. Several minutes pass and finally the door opens. It’s Marcie. I move down the alley until she sees me. She says something to one of the guys working on the dock.
He stops long enough to look at her, hands on his hips. He shakes his head.
As I get closer I can hear part of their conversation. ‘You get caught, it’s your ass,’ he says.
She appears undaunted and waves me on.
‘You’re late. I thought you weren’t comin’,’ she says.
‘I had to drop my daughter at day care.’
‘I don’t have much time.’ She’s carrying a sack in her hand. I assume her lunch.
The two men on the dock are sizing me up, the look in their eyes, like get caught inside and you’re dead meat.
‘Are you sure this is all right?’
‘Yeah. It’s okay, but let’s not stand out here,’ she says. To Marcie okay means not getting caught. There’s the gleam of excitement in her eye. The boss is gone, time to play.
I climb the dock. The looks I get from the two mail handlers tell me I am probably violating several sections of postal regulations, thoughts of the inspector upstairs with his badge and gun.
‘Are you sure it’s okay? There’s a coffee shop down the street. My treat,’ I tell her. Last gambit to do it off-site.
‘It’s all right.’ She looks at me, like grow some balls. Marcie strikes me as one of those impish characters, hammered all her life, always in trouble, capable of feigning great fright but never truly afraid, something from never-never land.
I’m on her heels and we’re through the swinging door, the one with the big red sign on it:
AUTHORIZED POSTAL PERSONNEL ONLY
Inside is a maze of tables, canvas mail bags tied open to metal hooks, rolling dollies and carts. Maybe a dozen people, dressed in various versions of the uniform, blue-gray shirts with the postal emblem on the shoulders, jeans, and sneakers.
‘How old’s your kid?’ she says. Small talk as we walk, under her breath.
‘Seven,’ I whisper. I feel like some teenager sneaking onto the driving range after hours to steal balls.
‘Same as my boy,’ she says. We are doing a circuitous course at a quick-step that seems to take us the long way, around mail carts and stacks of sorting trays, skirting any contact with other employees. I can see hands flipping letters, and midriffs as they work at tables one aisle over, the upper bodies concealed by cabinets that I assume on their side contain pigeonholes for mail or parcels being sorted.
Near the front of the building Marcie stops. She’s fumbling with several keys in the lock of a door – dark, mottled glass in the upper part of the frame. Stenciled on the glass the words
CUSTOMER SERVICES
She finds the right key, flips on the light, and we are inside, with the door closed. She finally takes a deep breath.
‘There, that wasn’t so bad,’ she says. She turns to look at me. The excitement of a mission accomplished written in her eyes. The frizzled ends of her pigtails look like she’s stuck her finger in a light socket. Freckles on her face. If she were a little shorter, she could pass for one of Sarah’s friends.
She sits in the chair on the other side of a clean desk, just a little dust on the surface of green metal, and catches her breath.
I drop my attaché case on a chair in the corner and slide the other chair over, in front of the door, and sit. Inside my briefcase I have a little tape recorder in case Marcie knows something and is willing to talk on tape. If not, there is a note pad.
‘I take it if they catch you here with me, you could lose your job?’ I say.
She doesn’t answer. Instead she’s looking at me, studying me up and down, taking stock before she talks. I’m waiting for the pitch. How much is this worth? Marcie’s information market.
‘Is this Kathy Merlow’s office?’
She nods. ‘It was,’ she says. ‘For two months and four days. Before she left.’
There’s a sweater hanging on a hook on the back wall. A few directories on a bookshelf. The look of an abandoned office.
‘You must have got to know her in a short time?’
‘Soulmates,’ she says. ‘Kathy and I had some things in common. Management didn’t like us,’ she says.
‘Did she go on to another job?’
She shakes her head and continues to look at me.
‘What exactly did she do?’ I nod toward the stenciled letters. ‘What’s customer services?’
‘A title.’
‘That’s all?’
‘That’s what they gave her. An office and a title and a paycheck,’ she says.
‘She must have been civil service?’ I say.
‘Not exactly.’
‘How do you get a job –’
‘We don’t have time for this,’ she says. ‘We can talk about all that later. Right now I need to know a few things. This charge against your client. I need to know whether there’s anything you can do to get her off without Kathy’s help.’
The way she says this makes me wonder who’s asking the question, Marcie or Kathy Merlow?
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘A trial is a crap shoot. This one I wouldn’t want to bet on.’
Maybe she’s testing the ante, I think, trying to find out how much her information is worth.
‘Do you know where the Merlows are?’ I say.
She turns to the bag she’s been carrying. It’s on the desk. I think maybe I’m finally going to get some answers.
She opens it. Takes out a package, wrapped in waxed paper. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.
‘You want half?’
‘No, thanks.’
‘How much do you know about Kathy and her husband?’
I know that they lived next door to the house where the murder occurred. I think they saw something that night.’
She gives me a face, no confirmation. But she has told me enough already for me to put the pieces together.
‘Then they haven’t told you,’ she says.
‘Told me what? Who’s “they”?’
She seems mystified, like there is something manifest, an obvious item I have missed. Part of the equation.
‘What do you know?’ I ask her.
‘I know your client didn’t do it.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I know who did it, and why.’
‘Kathy Merlow told you this?’
Her expression is a stone idol, but I can read yes in her eyes.
‘What did she tell you?’
‘Someone was hired to do it.’
‘The murder?’
She nods.
‘Who hired the killer?’
‘You want more, you gotta talk to her, to Kathy.’
‘Fine. Tell me where she is.’
A lot of deep sighing from across the desk, nervous hands all of a sudden, fingers to the mouth. I notice that her nails are chewed to the quick.
She studies me for a long moment, quiet contemplation. Then she reaches down and slides open the center desk drawer. She pulls out a small white envelope, the kind that carry little thank-you notes. I can see a penned scrawl on the outside.
‘I got this about a week ago,’ she says. ‘It’s a note from Kathy. Nobody else knows about it. I don’t think George even knows she sent it. She wanted something she left behind. I mailed it to her yesterday. I have to have your word that if I tell you where she is, you won’t tell anyone else. You’ll talk to her yourself. You won’t send somebody else.’
I give her a face, consternation. ‘Depends where she is,’ I say. ‘I’m preparing for a trial. Usually we use an investigator.’
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