A Long December

by Richard Chizmar

Afterward, near the church steps, numerous young men came over to Michael for a closer look at the new one in his life.

  Dad went over to talk to a few of the older people, so I was standing there alone when Mister Cosgrove, a handsome, proper businessman and community leader came over to me and blasting me with whiskey breath harsh enough to gag me, hissed, “You’re the only decent one in the family and you know it.”

  Then he was choking on his tears. I touched his arm, but his wife and daughter dragged him bitterly away before I could say anything in return.

  The next day Michael smiled and told me that the new one had given him the best blow job he’d ever had.

  A week after our confrontation at the station, I saw him downtown, standing by that new GTO. I was on duty. He wasn’t. He had called in sick.

  He was dressed in jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt, and he looked angry.

  I pulled my car over and put down the window. He didn’t look happy to see me.

  “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” No grin this time. He wasn’t in the mood for pretending.

  “It was just a question, Michael. You don’t need to get upset.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe sometimes I get tired of your—”

  His cell phone rang. He waved me off and answered it. “Where the hell are you?”

  Then he walked away, wanting his privacy.

  I waited a good five minutes for him to hang up and come back.

  When he didn’t, I drove away and went back to work.

  There were six of us that September night at Jen’s birthday party. Me and Jen. Michael and his wife, Laura. And Jen’s best friend, Erin, and her doctor husband, Aaron. The kids were at a sitter across the street.

  Jen was delighted with the whole affair, and it made me happy to watch her smile and listen to her laughter. She must have thanked me a dozen times before dinner was served.

  I grilled steaks outside on the lawn and helped Laura make a great big salad at the island in the kitchen. We ate out back on the deck and drank wine while fireflies danced around us. They would be gone in another week or so, it was already Autumn chilly, but tonight they reminded us of how it felt to be young again.

  Laura was pretty quiet while we fixed the salad and again during dinner, but that wasn’t unusual for her. Otherwise, she seemed fine.

  Michael seemed better than fine. He was relaxed and charming, and he surprised Jen with a signed first edition of her favorite novel. She squealed with joy when she opened it and hugged him.

  I was relieved and grateful until I caught him whispering on his cell phone in the bathroom upstairs.

  I was standing outside the bathroom door when he came out. I knew who he had been talking to, and he knew I knew.

  Before I could say a word: “I don’t want to hear it. I’m trying to end it, Chet.”

  “Try harder,” I said, but he was already heading downstairs and back to the party.

  The call came about a month later. Laura.

  “I’m sure you’re watching the football game,” she said. I’d met her years ago at a grade school. I had been there to tell the kids about being a policeman. Laura was a slender, dark-haired young woman with a very pretty face spoiled only by a quick, nervous smile that revealed the stress she always seemed to feel. This was at the time when Michael had neared the end of his problems—no job, into some gamblers for several thousand dollars, and drinking way more than he should have been. Laura herself was just getting through a divorce, a husband who’d run around on her. Neither of them wanted to meet each other, but I stage-mothered the relationship until it found its own way.

  “Actually, no. Joan’s volunteering at the hospital tonight, so I’m here with the kids. I just cattle-prodded them into bed, in fact.”

  A strained laugh. “They’re just like ours. They hate going to bed.” Then: “Could we talk a little, Chet?”

  “Sure. That’s what brothers-in-law are for.”

  So this was to be the night. I knew that it would happen and that when it happened a whole lot of things would change. I thought of what Dad had told me the night he’d drunkenly admitted he’d been such a terrible husband and that I was to keep Michael from repeating Dad’s mistakes. I wondered how much Laura knew. I was about to find out.

  “I don’t think Michael loves me anymore.”

  “Oh, come on. You know better than that.”

  “He used to come straight home after work. He’d only hang out at that cop bar once a week. But now—three or four nights a week he doesn’t get home until three in the morning. And he hasn’t had much to drink. That’s what makes me suspicious.”

  “I guess I’m not following you.”

  “He always tells me he’s just at the bar with the boys. Well, first of all, the bar closes at two, and it’s only about a mile away. It sure doesn’t take him that long to drive home. But even worse than that—he’s never drunk.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it, that he’s cut back on his drinking?” I tried to put a smile into it.

  “But I know him well enough that if he was at that bar, he’d be drunk when he came home.” Cop wives always say “that bar” when referring to the Golden Chalice. They hate it because they know all about the cop groupies who hang out there.

  She said, “Would you talk to him, Chet?”

  “I’d be happy to. But you know how he resents me sometimes.”

  “You know how I feel about that. And I’ve told him so. You were in a situation where you were forced to be his father. You had to give up a lot of things other boys your age got to do—and all for his sake. I always tell him that.”

  “I appreciate it, Laura. But that doesn’t mean he’ll be any happier if I butt into your marriage.”

  A long pause: “Then how about a little spying?”

  “Spying?”

  “Just seeing what he’s up to after your shift ends. Where he goes and things like that.” This time her laugh was real but sad. “I know this is awful. I’d sure resent it if somebody spied on me. But our marriage—it hasn’t been good for quite a while.”

  For a moment I was back in the parking lot and Michael was explaining to me, as if I was slightly retarded, how everything was under control. He had his mistress and he had his family, and according to him, he was doing well by both of them.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called, Chet. I’m just so—”

  She started crying. I let her get through the worst of it. Michael was doing it all over again. He’d lost a first wife who’d been every bit the player he was. But this woman was different. Only through her had he finally put his life on track. And now he was turning away from her.

  “I’m sorry, Chet,” when the tears became sniffles. “I just feel so isolated, I guess. I’m sorry I called.”

  “Tell you what. I’m going to do a little poking around. I’ll be back to you in a day or so.”

  “I’m sorry I’m so needy, Chet.”

  “I’m needy, too. I want to find out what’s going on. We’ve both got a stake in this, Laura, believe me.” I made a joke of it before hanging up: “I didn’t spend all those years raising him so he’d act this way.”

  2

  Three o’clock a.m. Sitting in my boxers. Staring at the glow of the guttering fire we’d set to chase the autumn cold away.

  I heard Jen coming down the stairs, her slippers flapping with each step. When she reached the living room, I said, “Leave the lights off, please.”

  She came over, the hem of her long cotton robe whispering across the hardwood floor. She sat on her haunches next to my armchair. Bare branches scraped the windows in the whistling wind. Shadow goblins played on the walls.

  “So what seems to be troubling our baby boy tonight?”

  “Sometimes I wish I was a baby boy.” Then: “Michael. Of course.”

  She touched my wide coarse hand with her long smooth one. “Now I’m going out to the kitchen and get that .45 you taught me how to shoot. And th
en I’m going to come back and kill one of us. And at this point I really don’t care which one of us it is. Because if I ever hear that you’re brooding about him again—”

  “He’s my brother.”

  “Oh, yes, and you swore to your father you’d raise him right.”

  “Don’t make fun of that. I gave him my word.”

  “Yes, and that was the right thing to do. When Michael was still a boy. But he’s almost thirty now. He has a wife and two children. You got him a job, you found him a wife, and you’ve been playing daddy to him right straight through. It’s not right, honey. Or normal.”

  For some reason that irritated me. Normal. What was abnormal about taking care of your kid brother?

  “If I don’t take care of him, who will?”

  “Oh, let’s see—maybe himself. He’s an adult, Chet. At least that’s what it says on his driver’s license. You have your own family and your own problems you need to take care of. You can’t keep spending all your time on him. It’s unnatural.”

  Abnormal. Unnatural.

  “You know how selfish that sounds?”

  “Selfish? What’re you talking about?”

  “That I shouldn’t worry about my own little brother?”

  “Worry, fine. But try to turn his life around—no way.” Her hand pulled free from mine. She used it as a lever on the arm of the chair to pull herself up. “You know I don’t like him very much. But sometimes I can’t help myself—I feel sorry for him, the way you’re always putting yourself in his business. I understand why he resents you, Chet. I really do.”

  And then the line I hated most where my little brother was concerned: “You could always see the police shrink. I really think it’s something you should talk through. We’ve been arguing about this since we first started dating. And it never seems to get any better.”

  “And you never stop saying that I should see the police shrink.”

  She was all done with banter. Tears trembled in her voice. “You ever think that’s because I love you? You ever think how tired I am of all this? And I meant what I said about Michael. I feel sorry for him sometimes. I really do. But if he’s going to screw up his life, that’s his business.”

  “If it’s his business, why did Laura call me today and tell me she’s worried about their marriage?”

  “Laura called you?”

  “That’s right. So if I’m butting in, it’s because she asked me to.”

  “Oh, great,” Jen said. “Now we’ve got her pulling you into their lives. This whole thing is insane.” She started to walk back to the stairs. “I’m going to sleep on the couch in the TV room. You need your sleep, so you take the bed.”

  I started to object but she stopped me.

  “I’m too tired to argue about it, Chet. I’m taking the couch. I’ll grab a blanket from the closet upstairs.” Six steps up the staircase, she said, in a gentler tone, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Twenty minutes later, I hugged my pillow in bed and tried not to think about Jen on the couch downstairs.

  And I tried not to hear her voice inside my head: Abnormal. Unnatural.

  I loved her more than anything in this world, but she was wrong. Michael was my brother.

  It took a long time, but I finally fell asleep—and dreamed about Michael.

  We were younger, in our twenties, and I was picking him up from his first stint at rehab.

  I signed him out at a long polished table in a glass enclosed conference room and we walked out together into a bright spring morning.

  Michael was grinning that million dollar grin of his and talking my ear off about how much he had learned and how he was going to do this and how he was going to do that and never ever make the same mistakes again, what the hell had he been thinking in the first place doing the things he had done.

  I put his suitcase in the trunk of the car and we got in and drove away.

  He put his window down and leaned his head out into the wind and closed his eyes. Then he stuck his arm out the window and surfed the wind with his palm, something he had always done as a little boy.

  I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and felt sudden tears streaming down my cheeks.

  It was a good dream.

  3

  I didn’t even know her name, my brother’s mistress.

  I had never asked because I didn’t want to know, and I’m not sure Michael would have told me anyway.

  I had seen her once, just a glimpse, as they drove away from a liquor store I happened to be passing. All blonde and shiny, even at a distance. That was months ago.

  Michael didn’t know that, and I had never mentioned it.

  I asked Kathi Reynolds to do me a favor the next morning and pull Michael’s cell phone record. Kathi is a very large and very beautiful black single mom who has become a vital part of our department. If the information you need can be found somewhere online, no matter how difficult the task, she can find it. Kathi thinks she owes me because I once helped her oldest boy out of some trouble at his high school. But it was nothing, really.

  She likes to believe otherwise and nothing I say can change her mind. She’s stubborn and proud of it. She also likes to call me “boss.”

  She dropped the file on my desk no more than an hour after I asked for it, and I thanked her for her discretion.

  She shooed my thanks away and said, “Anything for you, boss, you know that.”

  And then she was gone, and I was alone with the file and my thoughts.

  I spent the next few days finding out what I could about Jane Cameron and found nothing I liked.

  You couldn’t call her rich, I suppose, but she did have the remains of a large inheritance to rely on if she needed it for her business, which was public relations. You would have to call her beautiful. College girl beautiful, though she was mid-thirties—fine, clean features; gym-trim body; and a radiant blonde presence in any environment. A ten-year-old daughter conveniently locked away at a boarding school in Vermont. Two husbands, several lovers, at least three of whom had been married at the time. A few very public and very angry scenes with angry wives.

  As I sat at my computer looking at her photos, I realized what my little brother was living out here. He’d met her the night a jilted lover of hers had assaulted her in the lobby of her expensive condo. Michael and his partner were the first on the scene. It probably hadn’t taken long for Michael to find himself in the sort of bad movie he used to star in frequently. Married cop intrigued by fashionable, vulnerable beauty, cheats on family, honor, good sense.

  So, for three nights, I followed him. Twice he left work to meet her at the bar across the street from her condo, the bar where all the successful young lawyers in town like to do their cheating. An hour of drinks there and back across the street to her condo. The third night, still in uniform, he went straight home. In my talk with Laura, she’d said this was his standard pattern. Somehow, she wasn’t convinced any of this had to do with a woman. I guess she just couldn’t face what was really going on.

  One night I took my camera and got some good snaps of them making out in the parking lot of a café.

  I put them in a manila envelope and set them in the front seat of his new Pontiac.

  The next night, when I got off shift, I found them sitting on the front seat of my own car.

  He came over, still in uniform, and slid into the shotgun seat.

  “You really think I wouldn’t figure out you were behind this bullshit?”

  “I wanted you to know, Michael. If you hadn’t figured it out, I would’ve told you.”

  “You’re insane, you know that? Clinically, I mean. Off your damned rocker.”

  “You know anything about her, Michael?”

  “Sure I know about her. She’s a very beautiful and successful woman.”

  “And she has a lot of enemies.”

  “That’s because she’s so successful.”

  “That’s because she’s slept with so many important men around
town.”

  “People change.”

  I couldn’t help it. I laughed.

  “In Japan they get their hymens sewn back in for the wedding. She thinking of doing that, is she?”

  “Be careful here, man. You may still be able to take me but I can put a lot of hurt on you.”

  I stared straight ahead. Sighed.

  “So now it’s supposed to be serious, Michael?”

  “Isn’t ‘supposed to be.’ Is.”

  “I thought it was going to end.”

  Now it was Michael who stared straight ahead and sighed.

  “I’m not sure what to do, Chet.”

  “Take out that picture of your kids in your billfold and look at it for awhile. That’ll tell you what to do.”

  Silence for a time.

  “You know how good a woman you’ve got in that wife of yours, Michael.”

  “Of course I know.”

  “And you treat her like this, anyway?”

  “We’re different is all, Chet. You and me, I mean. You’re satisfied to sit home and watch TV and I want—”

  “Excitement.”

  “Not exactly. Not the way you mean. Not running around and getting all boozed up and hanging out in clubs. It’s just—I’m starting to feel old, Chet. I’m young. But when I met Jane I realized that I’d mentally become an old man. She didn’t make me feel young exactly, but I didn’t feel old anymore, either. I’m a better cop now because of her. I know that sounds funny but it isn’t. She really thinks it’s true. I’m even thinking about taking the test for detective.”

  “Laura wanted you to do that two years ago.”

  “Yeah, but with Laura it was different. It was just because I’d make more money. But with Jane being a detective isn’t just about that, it’s because being a detective is—”

  “Cool.”

  “God, Chet, you don’t understand any of this.”

  “I don’t think you do, either. You’re getting a nice piece of ass on the sly and you think it’s worth destroying your family for.”

  “I’m going to go now. I can’t sit here and let you lay all this on me. Remember when I called you the Pope once? Well, you haven’t changed. You think you can run my life from this big ass throne you sit on. But it doesn’t work that way anymore, Michael. Maybe I am screwing up my life. I’m not stupid. I know what I’m doing is wrong. But right now I can’t pull myself out of it. But you playing Pope isn’t helping. You can’t order me around anymore, Michael.”