I was listening as intently as if a bear were in the woods and my life depended on hearing his approach, but I still didn’t hear anything informative.
When that kept up for several more minutes, I decided I must be all alone on the scene. But the scene of what? Moving quietly and cautiously, I raised myself to my knees, then bobbed my head up until I could just see out the window. Quickly I jerked my head down. But nobody had shot at it. I risked another peek. All I saw was the yellow Caddy—or at least, a yellow Caddy—which was nose-deep in a snowbank in the front yard of a modest frame house. The driver’s door hung wide open; the interior light cast a throw rug of yellow onto the snow.
One of the cops, I saw now, was circling west, slowly and carefully, keeping to the trees where possible. His mate was duplicating his efforts, to the east. I wondered why they couldn’t just follow footprints in the snow, until I saw that the snow all around us was well trampled by a good many more than one set of feet. Soon, the officers disappeared from my view along the night-darkened street. I couldn’t remember if I’d heard them radio in this location, so I didn’t know whether to expect reinforcements anytime soon.
After a few more silent, cold moments, I alighted as quietly as I could from the van, closed the door a bit, and stood behind it. Smart, Cain, I thought: now they can only shoot your ankles or your head. Still, it was dark, and I was standing in shadow.
It seemed we were in a lower-middle-class neighborhood where, if people were curious about us, they were certainly hiding their interest well. A couple of dogs barked, including a chained one close by that kept barking and lunging. I felt a moment of irrelevant fury at the owner who would keep his animal outside on a night so bitter. But apart from the dogs, there were no sounds or signs of life. No curtains moved in the windows, no doors opened a crack, all was silent and—except for the occasional streetlight, porch light, and interior lamp—dark. The dog on the chain barked ever more frantically, until I became afraid that he would strangle himself on the chain that bound him; the other dog down the block echoed in high-pitched, hysterical yips.
A back-porch light flew on in the house where the chained dog was going berserk, and a rough male voice yelled at the dog to “shut the fuck up.” In the illumination of the porch light, I saw that the animal was a beautiful malamute that was barking and lunging at its own doghouse. Suddenly, I realized why—another dog had stolen into it. I watched as the second mutt—a great, furry creature, as big as a St. Bernard—dashed out of the doghouse and raced toward the dark at the back of the yard. Just as it reached the shadows, the dog got up on its hind legs and ran.
I was too surprised for a moment to react, but then I screamed: “There he is! It’s Mob!”
Both officers came running, listened to my impassioned, shouted instructions, and then vaulted the fence and disappeared into the dark backyard. I waited tensely, stamping my feet and clapping my hands against the sides of my legs to try to keep my blood circulating.
But when the two young officers returned—exhausted and sucking air—all they had to show for their desperate hunt was the pelt of the “dog” they were chasing. It was a soft, warm, luxurious mink coat. The driver held it out to me. I stroked it briefly with my gloved hands and felt a totally unexpected surge of gladness—which I hid from the officers—that the coat was limp and empty.
How would he stay warm now? I wondered.
In the hours that followed, roadblocks and a house-to-house search ensued, but Kitt Blackstone eluded them. He had disappeared as completely as if he had turned into one of the phantoms in his mind. This time, his sister wasn’t given any opportunity to hide and shelter him or to mislead the police. The photograph she had originally given them, of the bearded, wild-eyed man, was a picture of an actor playing a role in a play she had helped to produce at our local theater—one of her many volunteer jobs. MaryDell Paine’s career as a respected civic leader was over, at least for a while. Eventually, people will forgive hardworking volunteers almost anything, even harboring fugitives and impeding the police. Eventually, they’d say, “Well, he was her brother, after all, what was she supposed to do, turn him in?” To which my husband would have replied, furiously, “Yes.”
But for now, Kitt Blackstone was gone again, giving the citizens of Port Frederick the terrifying feeling of having a raving monster on the loose.
29
At the trustees’ meeting the next day, I skirted over the fact that Derek was missing—a fact the police didn’t want publicized—and that Faye had not returned, either to work or to apologize.
“Flu bug,” I lied to my five elderly bosses.
They seemed to accept that with sweet trust.
By describing them as sweet and elderly, I do not mean to imply that they are dumb and docile but, rather, that I’m fond of them and that they all happen to be around seventy years old. That does not make them feeble. God knows, they’re not feeble.
For that Thursday morning meeting, I had also called in Marsha Sandy and her friend Joe Fabian, whose hometown job was that of county mental-health director. Together at one end of the long conference table we faced: Jack Fenton, chairman of the board of First City Bank; Edwin Ottilini, founding partner in the law firm of Owens, Owens and Ottilini and also chairman of this board; Roy Leland, chairman emeritus of United Grocers; and Pete Falwell, retired president of Port Frederick Fisheries.
“I’ve never heard of this project before,” Roy Leland immediately objected. “Where’d it come from, all of a sudden?”
“I’m sure Jennifer will explain everything,” Mr. Ottilini said dryly, with a slight and knowing smile directed toward me. He was the oldest, the most formal, but possibly also the kindest and most shrewd of them all.
“I want you to know right off the bat, Jennifer,” Jack Fenton said, in the strong, fair way he has of expressing himself, “that I won’t vote for this if we have to force it down the neighbors’ throats.”
“If it comes to that, we won’t, Jack,” I promised.
“What if one of the clients goes nuts?” Roy demanded. He is a man as broad as he is blunt. “What if he sets the goddamn place on fire, and somebody sues us?”
“The insurance information is in the packet in front of you, Roy,” I said, a shade too soothingly, evidently, because it made Jack Fenton and Mr. Ottilini smile. Roy, however, merely harrumphed and calmed down.
“What’s the damned hurry anyway?” Pete Falwell asked.
“Look outside, Pete,” Jack advised him, and then I explained about the competition and about the singular advantages of the site.
They finally let me make my formal presentation, but they were far from convinced by the time I had finished. It was the unseemly—to them—need to hurry and the attitudes of the neighbors that bothered them in varying degrees. I wasn’t even sure we had a majority after Marsha mesmerized them and Joe browbeat them.
But then I said, “Gentlemen, it’s all very well for us to sit here talking dryly about this problem, this project. We’re all sane”—I smiled at them; they all smiled back at me—“one hopes. We’re well dressed, well fed. We’re warm. We have someplace to go after this meeting and to our homes after that. We have family and friends, we have good intentions, and you certainly have good business sense.”
I smiled at them again; a couple of them unconsciously nodded back at me. Good, I thought, two votes.
“But what you don’t have,” I continued, “unless some of you are harboring secrets from the rest of us, is a personal knowledge of what it is like to be on the streets, a little crazy, homeless, and hopeless.”
My trustees, except for Mr. Ottilini, stirred a bit restlessly. This was getting a shade sentimental for Pete’s, Roy’s, and even Jack’s taste, I could see. Jack was the only Democrat among the trustees, but I knew that even he had a limited appetite for sob stories. I sensed their recoil, and so I stood up straighter and put a brisk, businesslike note into my voice.
“I wouldn’t ask you to buy a car with
out seeing it,” I said. “I wouldn’t sell you a suit until you had it on. And I won’t ask you to help someone you’ve never met.”
That was Marsha’s cue, the one we’d cooked up over the phone that morning. She, in turn, glanced meaningfully at Joe Fabian. He got up and walked over to the door that connected the conference room to my office. He opened that door and disappeared for a moment. When he came back in, he was leading by the hand our secret weapon: Rosalinda N. Mclnerny.
The trustees, those old-fashioned gentlemen, pushed back their chairs and stood up in their places. They didn’t sit down again until Rosalinda was settled in the chair Joe pulled out for her, between him and Marsha.
I was watching Rosalinda’s face: there was panic there. Were we helping her, or using her? I wondered.
“Gentlemen,” Marsha said in a matter-of-fact voice, taking over from me, as we had also planned, “I’d like you to meet one of my patients, Rosalinda Mclnerny. She already knows who you are and what you’re trying to decide.”
From across the table, Jack Fenton shot me an amused glance that said, “Uh-huh. I’m on to you.” Only someone who knew Mr. Ottilini very well would have caught the wisp of a smile at the corners of his thin, dry lips.
“I have asked Rosalinda to tell you a little about her history,” Marsha was saying, “and she has bravely agreed to do that.” She turned to the woman, and her voice was low, gentle, and soothing. “Do you feel like doing that now, Rosa?”
A whisper: “Okay.”
“This is hard for her,” Marsha informed us, stating the obvious. “It’s possible that I shouldn’t even have asked her to do it. But she says that if I’ll ask her questions, she’ll try to answer them as well as she can. All right?”
Marsha seemed to be appealing to everyone there, and we nodded. I suspected that they were all feeling as tense and uneasy as I was. This might backfire.
“Rosa,” Marsha said, “when did you first get sick?”
After a pause, a whisper: “When I was twenty-one.”
“How many times have you been in the hospital since then, Rosa?”
A long pause, and then: “Thirty times.”
“How many hospitals have you been in?”
Rosalinda picked at her skirt and then looked up. In her soft, almost childish voice, she said, “Uh, I’m not sure. I don’t exactly remember. I think it’s maybe six or seven?”
“I think that’s right,” Marsha said gently. “Maybe even eight or nine. And what’s the average length of time that you’ve spent out of a hospital since you were twenty-one, Rosa, could you tell them that?”
Rosalinda whispered something to Marsha, who whispered something back.
“Six months,” Rosalinda said. “I get real sick, and then I go into the hospital for a few months, and then I get out for about six months, and I get real sick again, and I go back in again. I think one time I was out for almost eight months. That was nice.”
“How long have you been out of the hospital this time?” Marsha asked her.
“Three months,” she said, with unmistakable pride.
“It is a clear cycle, you see,” Marsha told the trustees. “And one of the keys to breaking the hold of the illness is to crack that cycle. Her illness, with which I would rather not label her here, is of such a nature that it seems to build in severity, all the while plunging her into deeper and deeper despair. Rosalinda, as you see her today, is at a peak of functioning and well-being—”
Pete Falwell looked simply stunned at that statement.
“—and we are trying hard to break the old pattern, so that she can progress instead of decline. But, gentlemen, it is very hard to progress, when the only bright spots in your days are your visits to your state-paid psychiatrist and your visits from your social worker. I’ll tell you the truth. Rosalinda and I have talked at some length about this idea for a recreation hall, and she’s not at all sure about it. But I know, and I think she understands, that her hesitancy is a symptom of her disease. That disease makes her despair of ever having the confidence to go anywhere, of ever having the ability to speak to people, and of anyone ever loving her.” Marsha cast a loving glance at her patient. “With my support, Rosalinda would attend such a recreation hall. And if it is managed in the way that is promised, she will be encouraged there. She will begin to feel comfortable, liked, and needed. She will have some place that is important to her to go to, and there will be a much greater chance that we will break the pattern that binds her.
“Gentlemen, in my practice, I see many others who are like Rosalinda, at least in their chronic suffering. I won’t beg you to provide this recreation hall, and neither would they. They have, most of them, too much pride to do that. But I will tell you that”—she paused, as if searching for the right words, and then smiled wryly at us—“it would help. It would certainly be a big help.”
She smiled at Rosalinda. “Is there anything you’d like to add to this?”
Rosalinda thought a minute, but shook her head.
“Thank you, Miss … Rosalinda,” Mr. Ottilini said.
She ducked her head, then looked up and smiled shyly at me. “Thank you,” I mouthed back at her, and she smiled more broadly.
Joe ushered her back out of the conference room. The trustees rose to their feet and stayed there until the door closed on Rosalinda.
There was a general clearing of throats and shuffling of chairs as everybody sat down again.
Mr. Ottilini inquired, “Do we need any more discussion on this issue?”
The other board members shook their heads.
“Do I hear a motion?”
“Move,” said Jack.
“Second,” said Roy.
“Opposed?” inquired Mr. Ottilini.
No one was.
“Jennifer,” Pete Falwell interjected, “if you talk to Mike Laurence, tell him we’re sorry that he’s the one we’re beating out of this thing. But, hell, he used to be one of us; if anybody ought to understand our position, he should. Right, Roy?”
“Right,” the big man said.
I didn’t disabuse them of that notion.
“All right, Ms. Cain,” the chairman said, by way of instructions to me. And that was that. We moved on to the next order of business.
I didn’t hang around in the conference room to chat with the trustees after the meeting, as I usually did. I was eager to get to my office to let our visitors know the outcome of the vote on the recreation hall.
“Yes,” I announced, as I walked in and faced Marsha, Joe, and Rosalinda.
Marsha looked enormously relieved, Joe seemed to relax a little, but Rosalinda didn’t change her basic expression of pleasant, passive puzzlement. After I had thanked each of them, I ushered them into the outer office and then out into the hall.
Two police officers were waiting there.
“Ms. Mclnerny?” one of them inquired of Rosalinda.
30
Later, when I called Geof to protest, he said, “I’m sorry, Jenny, but we hadn’t been able to locate her. She wasn’t at her apartment, but she was never in the park, either. So when you mentioned this morning that she was going to be your surprise witness at the trustees’ meeting, I thought of sending over a couple of officers to question her about Kitt Blackstone.”
“You didn’t tell me. You let me set a trap for her.”
“Jenny, this is a murder case.”
“And all’s fair, I suppose.”
“Hell, yes.”
Of course, he was right; of course, he had done the right thing; of course, I had to admit it. But even after I hung up, I was still feeling the sting of Joe Fabian’s anger when he had first assumed it was I who had betrayed them. And I knew I’d never forget the whimpering, clinging terror into which Rosalinda had disintegrated when the cops tried to question her. Not that it had done them much good.
“Ms. Mclnerny,” they’d said, “do you know the whereabouts of a man by the name of Kitt Blackstone, who is also known as Mob?”
<
br /> She’d brought her hands together in front of her heart and clasped them beseechingly, and she had started to cry in short, panicky little whimpers, like a newly weaned puppy. The officers were only doing what they were supposed to do; I knew they didn’t mean to cause the harm or the scene they did. But within seconds, they had Joe Fabian shouting at them to leave “Ms. Mclnerny alone,” while Marsha embraced the sobbing woman and tried desperately to calm her. It didn’t work. Soon, Rosalinda was calling, “Mob! Mob!” like a child beseeching Superman to fly in and rescue her.
It was clear, however, that the Friend Christopher she had mentioned to me was, indeed, the Mob for whom the police were searching. But it was also clear that even if she knew where he was, she wasn’t capable of telling them. The poor cops, after trying to ask the same question in several different ways, finally subsided into standing by helplessly, staring at her, and looking thoroughly baffled. They didn’t even protest when Marsha and Joe hustled Rosalinda into an elevator. It was clear to all of us that they weren’t going to get any help from Rosalinda, at least not then, and possibly not ever.
The cops took the next elevator down.
I walked back into the foundation offices, just as my trustees began emerging from the conference room. Thank God they were all old enough to be hard of hearing, I thought.
“Jenny,” Roy Leland hailed me. He approached, strutting belly first as always. “Now, listen, don’t let that landlord have it all his own way. Don’t give him everything he’s asking for, force him down on the terms. I could come along, I can rearrange my schedule—”
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