3 Women Walk Into A Bar

by Linda Sands

  “The ‘villain’?” I looked at Barbara. “Is he serious?”

  She shushed me with her eyes as Tommy continued his story, acting out the scene like a game of charades, complete with wide eyes and flailing arms. “I grabbed for branches or something to stop my deadly decline, but alas—”

  “Alas? Did you just say ‘alas’? Barbara, help me out here.” I said, patting the empty space on the bed she’d recently vacated. She hesitated, but I saw her shoulders drop an inch and she smiled, then sat with me, laying her hand on mine.

  “Okay?” Tommy asked, as if he had been asked to pause a movie for someone to take a piss or get another beer.

  “Yes,” I said, pressing the painkiller pump beside my bed. “Please continue.”

  “So there I am, falling to my certain death, when I hear a gun go off. The shot is followed by a girly scream—”

  “Wait. Did you say ‘girly’ scream? He’s not talking about me, is he Barbara? Tell me he is not talking about me.”

  “No dear. Of course not,” she said, patting my hand like my mother did the first time I got the crap kicked out of me in grade school.

  “Soooo . . .” Tommy continued, “I land on this wide ledge, at least I think it’s a ledge. I pat myself to see if all my parts are there and I really am a little surprised that nothing’s broken. I’m just about to climb back up that steep, slippery slope to rescue you and Barbara—”

  I had to stifle a laugh at that one, but Tommy continued.

  “When the snow slides off the face of the ledge I’m laying on. And yes, I mean face.” Tommy paused for a dramatic eye roll and a hand-flutter-over-the-heart moment. “I was saved by a fat, frozen dead guy. I know, right?”

  Without waiting for us to agree, Tommy continued. “The dead man who saved my fall was later identified as James John Smith, the James John Smith, whose residence we had recently plundered.”

  “Is he talking like a pirate?” I asked Barbara.

  “Ah-ah,” Tommy said, stopping me with a waggle of his finger in my direction. “No interruptions. Do you know how many James John Smiths there are? Over forty-six thousand in the United States alone, according to the name search I ran . . .”

  He said some more about Smiths and men and computer programs, but I was watching Barbara shred a tissue in her lap. I reached out and stroked her arm as Tommy began to pace.

  “At any rate,” Tommy continued in his best Perry Mason—though I was thinking more of a Perrier Masonic manner. “There were a few missing pieces to be assembled before Captain Seton arrived.”

  “That lazy asshole finally showed up?”

  Tommy nodded. “With his help and the help of his team, we were able to—”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Yes, we.” Tommy said. “We were able to positively identify the deceased on the cliff as one James John Smith, originally of Rindge, New Hampshire.”

  “Ring?” I asked.

  “No. Rindge.”

  “Ridge?”

  “No. Rindge,” he said.

  “Whatever.”

  “Tedesco. Please,” Tommy said.

  I waved for him to continue.

  “All right, so the dead guy on the ledge was James John Smith and the guy who came to Syracuse, now also dead, was only pretending to be James John Smith. What's his name?”

  "James John Smith."

  I was getting confused. I couldn’t imagine how anyone else might be feeling at this point.

  “Allow me to clarify,” Tommy said. “Thanks to my infinite knowledge and extensive connection via social media networks—”

  “There’s those words again,” I said.

  “I know.” Barbara smiled.

  “Because of that,” Tommy said, “I was able to access and download a private video shot in Flannigan’s one month before the murders. You see, Tedesco, with a little effort and technological expertise, the world of investigative . . .”

  Chapter 43

  TEDESCO’S GOT A POCKETFUL OF SUNSHINE,

  ANGEL’S GOT A POCKETFUL OF SHIVS

  It was a funny thing. Learning that I had been asleep for days, but finding that my job was done when I woke up, all the loose ends wrapped up tighter than the back of a hospital gown. It was as if I’d been working even in my dream state, or had visiting elves. I was ready to admit it wasn’t really me doing the job, but I wasn’t sure. As the doctors kept telling me, part of my brain hadn’t been asleep. I may have been operating on a higher level. My very thoughts might have incited change.

  If that was truly the situation, I should have done more than solve a single murder case. I should have cured cancer or perfected space travel or put a new president in office, right? I mean, if I was going be using my thoughts for good, shouldn’t I have been dreaming a bit bigger?

  And if I could do that? If I could really change the world around me, just by thinking? It made me wish for that ability on other days, like when I had to work a boring surveillance job, or deliver bad news, or run sixteen miles or complete a juice fast.

  When I was more awake and a little more clear-headed, everything was reexplained to me.

  Tommy and some friends—who really weren’t friends, but called one another that, in a cyberspace way on something called “Book Face” or “Face Hooker” or something—had found a video posted by some SU fraternity guys who were out partying on the hill, the neighborhood of bars and eateries located three hundred feet above downtown, near the college campus.

  The guys were only out doing what college boys do—meeting college girls in a bar. But being college boys of today, someone had caught them in the act. From girl-on-girl navel shots to thong-and-bra-revealing flashes to dancing that looked more like something you’d see in a certain kind of movie, this video had it all, including a clear shot of the then-alive, now-deceased owner of Flannigan’s.

  From that frozen video image, enlarged and de-pixilated, Barbara’s almost-kidnapper and my almost-killer, Mrs. Angel Smith, was able to positively identify her husband, one James “Jimbo” John Smith V, of Virginia Beach, Virginia. This assisted the detectives at the Syracuse Police Department with filling in the blanks on their case paperwork and helped her with her own situation, at least a little bit.

  Barbara explained it all to me, speaking slowly, carefully, patting my bandages, fussing over me. I could see the strain in her face, the new lines around her eyes. She still wore her wedding band, though she told me she and Mick were “on a break.” It sounded so high school. I felt even worse for hearing it.

  “You should go,” I told her.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “You should go home.”

  “It’s okay, I’m not tired. What can I get you? Are you hungry?”

  “No, Barbara. Go home.”

  She met my eyes and I saw the hurt. I felt like a shit for being the one to make her look like that, but I was a shit.

  “Find Tommy before you leave. He has something for you. Something I want you to see.”

  “Bill? What’s this about?”

  “You should go. Good-bye, Buffy.”

  She leaned over and kissed my forehead, then wiped her eyes and headed for the door. I waited, but she didn’t look back.

  Later, Tommy came in shaking his head. “Nice one, slick. So the Tin Man does have a heart after all.”

  “Shut the hell up, Tommy.”

  He made an “oooh” face and stepped back with his hands up.

  I said, “I want to see her.”

  “What? You just sent her away!”

  “Not her,” I said.

  “Who? Michelle? Hate to tell you, pal, but she’s gone too. You signed the divorce papers the first time you woke up. You were pretty broken up about it, made all the nurses cry when you told Michelle, ‘Follow your dreams. Make a new life with a better man.’”

  “I guess that wasn’t a dream, then.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Shit. Well, I still want to see her.”

>   “Her. Well the only her left would be . . . your killer?”

  “I’m not dead, Tommy.”

  “She’s in jail, Tedesco. And you’re in the hospital.”

  “Not for long,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of the bed and instantly regretting the rapidity of my movements. I took a few deep breaths and felt my stomach recede to its original location.

  “Hand me my pants,” I said. “And make the call. Tell them we’ll be there in an hour. I want her in a room waiting for me.”

  When I was in junior high school, we took a personality test that told us what careers we’d be best suited for. No one ever thought to question the answers. It was as if the test paper was a late-night psychic we’d called and paid for. No matter what we felt in our hearts or what we desired, our choices were presented to us as predetermined, limited by the selections a thirteen-year-old test offered.

  There was always someone in the class designated to be teacher-perfect, another was aligned for government service, and the sloppiest kid always got janitor or sanitation management. The jock, the one who seemed so cool and surrounded by girls all the time, the one who never looked into the camera, who always looked like he was hiding something? The test might say he’d be a great manager, a born leader. But you knew he’d grow up to be a wife beater or an emotional abuser, a man who’d never be happy because his daddy didn’t love him.

  When I took the test, I thought it was a joke. Until five years later, when I was doing exactly what it had pegged me for—entertainment, theater, and performing arts.

  Stepping into the county jail, I wondered about the people who worked there, what their tests results had been. Especially the female guards. How is that a normal job for anyone, much less an attractive woman? I imagined them going home at night and putting on old pairs of sweats, pulling their hair back, making dinner, helping kids with homework, and then retreating to their bedrooms. I imagined them booting up internationally connected laptops, logging in as a dominatrix for the masses, unleashing all the brutality they had witnessed during the day on an unsuspecting public, using such names as Mas Pain, Miss Whippett, or The Dungeon Mistress. But maybe that was just my twisted brain.

  When they led Angel Smith into the room, she was wearing shackles. She wasn’t as thick as I remembered her, but then again, she wasn’t wearing the puffy parka and I wasn’t dodging bullets.

  I’d read the transcripts of her interviews, skimmed the court documents, and after getting the wrap-up from Tommy, I was pretty sure what I was about to hear. What I wasn’t prepared for was Angel’s intelligence—or her utter purity.

  I’m not saying she was pure as in perfect. No one is. But she chose strong, smart words. She had an honesty in her eyes and very, very full lips that made me want to believe her. She sat so straight and determined in that plastic chair that if I had been the one pointing a finger at her for the bad things she’d done, I might have wanted to take whatever I said back. I was pretty sure she could convince a jury that sometimes bad things are done for good reasons. I didn’t want to like her, but I did.

  She’d been an open book during the taped interrogation, even suggesting that maybe she’d driven her husband to do the things he’d done because she wasn’t there for him, because she hadn’t supported him as much as she could have.

  It scared me a bit to see someone give so willingly, confess so fully, be so racked with sorrow. She was honestly believable, and had an inherent goodness about her like a halo over her head. She was that good. Not in a psycho way, not in the way of the truly deranged, but like a pregnant nun no man has ever touched and yet who no one believes is a virgin.

  We might go around saying we have faith, saying we understand and accept and even desire miracles, but really we’re cynical, pessimistic, mistrusting sons of bitches.

  Faith. It was fucking with my head.

  My mother had dragged me to church after church when I was young. We never really found one that stuck, but I felt in every building a different kind of glory, a charm and a lightness of heart that lasted for days, a peace that wasn’t bound to the material.

  I still believed in God, in the idea of heaven and hell, in all the things my mother wanted me to learn in those churches. But I had a problem with the business end of things, the passing of the basket, the placing the needs of third-world strangers over the needs of our own. As a result, my current church attendance was limited to Sunday morning radio programs.

  So as Angel talked—and yes, even her name was messing with me—even as she spoke about loving Jimbo and failing him and feeling responsible, even then, I knew she’d be all right. She’d get through this and move on.

  “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I want to apologize. I never meant to hurt you. I—”

  I held up my hand. “Let’s just talk about your husband, and not any of this.” I motioned to her in her jumpsuit and shackles and me with my bandages, my wound.

  She nodded.

  “There’s been a lot of press around this story,” I said, watching for her reaction.

  She shrugged and looked toward the window. “People are curious by nature.”

  “And James, was he?”

  “James,” she said, scoffing. “I can’t get used to hearing that name. He was always Jimbo to me. Sure, I guess he was as curious as the next guy.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean? How was he curious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, about women. About people’s interactions. Who we really are . . .” She shrugged. “He was curious about a lot of stuff, like how things were made, said his dad had been good at building things.” She smiled, “Jimbo knew more about those old black-and-white films than anyone I ever knew.”

  She seemed proud of him even though the guy had so obviously been a loser, a borderline sociopath. Maybe there really was someone for everyone.

  “Did he ever talk about starting anew? About wishing he was someone else?” I asked.

  “No. He seemed happy. I thought we were happy. I asked him once, you know, if he could do anything, have anything, what would he want?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d want a quiet place in the Caribbean. A hut on the sand, with a beach bar.” She laughed. “It was probably something he’d seen in a movie. Jimbo wasn’t much of a planner. I mean, if someone handed him money and a plane ticket, maybe he’d do something then, but if he actually had to come up with an idea on his own? No. Not seeing it.”

  I pushed a bit. “So, this whole taking over someone else’s life thing was quite the surprise?”

  “Yeah. You could say that.”

  “Even with your father’s connections?”

  It was her turn to redirect the conversation. “Let’s leave him out of this,” she said, trying to hold up a shackled hand. The chain stopped her short.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Did you know that before your husband left he’d been running an Internet scam, had three girlfriends in two states, and was holding the money he collected every Christmas for orphans in a private savings account—”

  “Stop.” Her eyes welled up. “Please. They’ve already told me all of that.”

  She raised her face to the ceiling as tears ran in rivulets down her cheeks. She looked me in the eye. “‘A person doesn’t change just because you find out more.’”

  I knew that line. “That’s from—”

  “The Third Man. One of Jimbo’s favorites.” She smiled.

  “They don’t make films like that anymore.” I said, smiling back.

  She stared at the walls and the ceiling, then said, “The only thing he liked more than movies were dogs. He used to volunteer at the SPCA. He wasn’t all bad, like they’re saying.”

  “The SPCA? What did he do there?”

  “He was the Goodnight Man.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “He held the euthanized dogs as they died.”

  “He killed them?”


  “No.” She shook her head. “He couldn’t. Someone else did the injecting. Jimbo just held them and talked to them. He always said, ‘No one should die alone.’”

  Something happened in the next few moments that I wasn’t sure I really understood, or needed to. On the job I watched people, I analyzed data, I made judgment calls and decisions based on prior experience. I usually felt good at the end of the day, if not a little empty.

  But in that concrete room, behind that locked door, sitting across from a woman I hardly knew, I felt something fill me that I hadn’t felt before.

  I stood and walked to the door, knocked on the glass panel, and nodded to the cop outside. As he unlocked the door, I turned around.

  “Be okay if I came back sometime?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said, and threw me a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter 44

  EXPECT THE WORST, YOU’LL NEVER BE DISAPPOINTED

  Saying good-bye isn’t easy for anyone. When you’re in love, when someone’s dying, when you’re moving on, and they aren’t. When you’ve found someone new, or you’ve found out they have. A piece of you has to die to allow a new piece to grow. Saying good-bye to a part of yourself may be the toughest farewell of all.

  Grandma Tedesco called it “pruning,” losing a bit of yourself now to be a better person later. As if people were plants. She’d tell me how even though, right now, the rose bush in the front garden was beautiful and blooming and as perfect as could be, she was going to go out there and cut it back. Make it ugly. She’d find the bend in the branch where the new growth would sprout, where next season more roses would bloom. Cutting off beauty and promise meant a stronger, better-rooted plant with more flowers, healthier limbs. A plant that was not only more attractive, but sturdier, better able to withstand anything the world might throw at it.