“What about going to Vernon’s place?” I asked. “You could stay with him for a few days.” I took him aside and said, “She can’t stay here and can’t be alone. What choice do you have?”
“This is messed up,” he said. “You messed her up, Ruzak. I’m gonna look into this.” I wasn’t sure what he meant by that.
Felicia sat beside Eunice and spoke to her quietly while Vernon and I argued. Tommy enticed Archie from Eunice’s lap and commenced to playing a game of tug-o’-war on the floor in front of the TV, using an athletic sock that he had found somewhere, probably under my sofa. Archie growled, shoulders hunched around his apple-shaped head, and Tommy mimicked him, showing his baby teeth as he grred.
Eunice began to nod, clearly connecting to whatever Felicia was saying. Vernon asked if I had anything to drink. I offered to make some coffee. He asked if I had anything stronger, so I handed him my last Budweiser.
“Part of it’s my fault,” he said, more mellow after a few swallows. “I took away her TV.”
“Why?”
“All those damn infomercials. And that goddamned QVC channel, forget about it! I walk in one morning and there’s five Cuisinarts on the kitchen counter and an Ionic Breeze in every room, including the plug-in models for the john.”
“Maybe she needs a more supervised environment,” I said.
“You offering?”
“I didn’t encourage this,” I said, a bit defensively. “I tried to put the kibosh on it, but the more I tried, the more stubborn she became.”
“I go by every day,” he said. “Or every other day, to make sure she’s taking her meds and there’s food in the house.”
“What about her car keys?”
“Took them once and she went on a hunger strike.”
“I guess I’m lucky that way,” I said. “To be spared that. My mom died last year.”
“You’re lucky that your mom died.”
“I meant the role reversal. I don’t know how good a parent I would have been to her.”
“Well, my own kids won’t talk to me, so if I live to be her age, I’m screwed.”
He was finished with his beer, Felicia was finished with her speech, and Eunice, I guessed, was finished with her recalcitrance. She allowed Felicia to help her rise from the sofa. I fetched the tote.
Vernon said, “Hide that damned thing.”
“I will follow you home,” Eunice said to Vernon.
“No, Momma, I’ll drive. We’ll pick up your car later.”
“I am a burden to you,” she said.
“No, Momma.”
“It is a terrible thing,” Eunice announced from the doorway. “All this …” waving her hand in my general direction, but I got the idea she was getting at something much bigger.
And then they were gone, and I stood in the middle of the room, clutching the tote.
“If you threw that into a fire,” Felicia said, “would you burn up, too?”
She turned toward Tommy and Archie, still frolicking on the floor.
“Come on, kiddo,” she called. “We’re late for dinner.”
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks. For everything.”
“Do you really think I have pleasant knees?”
“You bet.” I was blushing.
“That’s sweet … and weird—what’s her name?”
“Amanda.”
“Not your type, Ruzak.”
“She is a little moribund.”
“Pushy. I see you with some sweet, naïve thing, a type-B personality.”
She took a deep breath, steeling herself, and called again to Tommy. He ignored her. She looked at me. I walked over and scooped up the dog. Tommy’s pudgy arms shot up and he hopped up and down, trying to wrest the animal from my grip. Felicia grabbed his wrist.
“Say good-bye to Archie,” she said. “If you’re good, Ruzak might bring him over for another visit.”
“You bet,” I said. “That’s a promise.”
Tommy burst into tears. I was sure Felicia had set him up for this good-bye, had told him Archie was Ruzak’s dog, not his, and every hello implied a good-bye. But the kid looked shocked, as if leaving Archie behind was the last thing he expected. I communicated my question to Felicia with my eyes—Why not?—and she shook her head angrily. She pulled Tommy toward the door, as he reached for the animal in my arms with his free hand, his face scarlet and glistening.
“Hate Roo-zack!” he hollered. “I hate Roo-Zack!”
There was no comforting him, so I tried to comfort Archie as he whined and scratched at my forearms to join Tommy.
“I’ll call you later,” Felicia shouted over the ruckus. “And congratulations!”
“For what?”
“For nabbing the killer!”
The door slammed and, after that, the silence. I was alone again, except for Archie, who leapt from my arms and scratched frantically at the door, going up on his hind legs and pawing at the wood just below the doorknob.
Later that long night, as Archie, exhausted, lay curled in front of the door, waiting for his boy to return, I pulled a random page from Eunice’s manuscript and read this:
You would think living alone would free me from all the normal burdens of responsibility that people complain or worry about, but all living alone does is increase your psychological weight, as if your soul were living on Jupiter. It tends to make you more important to yourself and exaggerate your problems to the point that they’re insurmountable afflictions.
The passage got my heart rate up. Not only did it strike me as eerily prescient, it even sounded like something I would say. Either Eunice Shriver had found her way into my head or I had indeed found my way into hers.
DECEMBER 7
THIRTY-SIX
I had trouble falling asleep—go figure—so the phone ringing at two A.M. broke only the lightest of dozes. I noted two things before answering: Archie’s staring from the bedroom doorway and the display on my cordless, UNKNOWN CALLER.
“Hello?” Silence answered, but for a slight background hissing. It might have been someone breathing; it might not. “You keep calling, but you won’t say anything,” I said. “Like God.” Maybe that’s it. Maybe that was as far as he would reach. I chased that thought away. Time to get focused. “I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing you’re connected in some way to the murder of Jack Minor. That’s his name—he had a name, you know; he wasn’t just some faceless vagrant, some useless parasite. He was a man, a human being like you and me.
“Maybe you know what happened, maybe you were involved or know who was involved, but you should know a man is sitting in jail for the murder, and you and I both know he isn’t guilty. He’s there because he thinks it’s the safest place to be right now, and he’s left it up to me to save him. That’s ironic, since he wouldn’t be sitting there right now if he hadn’t put his trust in me.
I heard a sound like a sigh, pitched in an upper register, like a child’s … or a woman’s.
“I’ll double the reward,” I offered. “Fifty thousand dollars.”
No answer. I looked at Archie, his big brown eyes shining in the ambient light coming from the bathroom. For almost thirty-four years, I had slept with a light on. I had read somewhere that God is to us as we are to dogs, that the gulf separating our intellects must be, if God is God, wider than the universe. Archie sensed I cared for him. He sensed his entire existence relied upon my tender feelings. But my thoughts were unfathomable, unknowable, and so he stared, unable to reach me except through signals as easily interpretable to me as mine were ineffable to him.
“You know,” I said into the phone. “This is a little like praying. I talk and hope you are listening, and I don’t expect a reply. At least, not a direct one. Look, I can’t help you and you can’t help me—or yourself—unless you tell me what you want. What do you want?”
Silence.
“One way or the other, I’ll find you,” I said, but the promise sounded hollow in my own ears. “I won’t stop
till I do, so why don’t you make it easy for both of us? It’s the why more than anything. I got the what and the when and the where. I even have the who, sort of. The why is what I’m getting at. You don’t have to tell me who. Tell me why. Why is Jack dead? Why was God’s hidden name carved on his forehead?”
A tiny voice whispered, a girl’s voice, “He’ll kill me.”
I started to ask Who? but that would break my promise not five seconds after I made it. There should be more lag time between a promise and its breaking.
“There’s gotta be a way we can do this,” I said. I worked furiously at it, while Archie rested his chin between his forelegs, watching me.
“You don’t have to actually tell me,” I said. “I’ll just ask a question and all you have to say is ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ How’s that?”
That offer met with a long sigh. I couldn’t tell if it was an acquiescent sigh or not.
“Do you know who killed Jack Minor?” I asked.
“Yes,” came the answer, escaping from the receiver like air leaking from a tire.
“It wasn’t another homeless man who killed him, was it?”
“No.”
“There were three of them,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Students at UT?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” I swung my legs out of the bed and ran a hand through my hair. Archie moved when I moved, sitting up, eyes locking onto me, lowering his nose toward the carpet.
“Were you there?” I asked.
“No.”
“But you heard about it?”
“Yes.”
I stood up. Archie rose with me. I shivered in my boxers. I felt larger somehow, or maybe the room just felt smaller.
“You weren’t there, but somebody told you about it.”
“Yes.”
“And they made you promise not to tell anyone.”
“Yes.”
“Or they would hurt you?”
“No. Yes.” I heard something on the other end that might have been a sob.
“It’s going to be okay. You’re doing the right thing. Don’t be afraid.
“ “Yes.”
“Doing the right thing is hardly ever easy. Otherwise, there’d be more right things being done. One thing you gotta keep to the forefront is the fact that keeping vital information from the police about a crime is also a crime.”
“Yes.”
“I can help you,” I said. I wasn’t sure I could, really, but these crumbs she was dropping marked the only path toward justice. “Tomorrow I’m getting a list of names of students. If I showed you that list, could you highlight a name or two for me?”
I waited for her answer. Archie padded to the edge of the bed and sat down about a foot from my cold feet. He looked up at me.
She didn’t answer. I went on. “Tomorrow night, eight o’clock at World’s Fair Park, at the base of the Sunsphere. Look for the guy in the floppy brown hat. Can you do that? Can you do that for me? Can you do that for Jack?”
Archie and I waited for the answer.
THIRTY-SEVEN
The phone rang again at eight-thirty, snapping me out of a restless sleep.
“Yep,” I said instead of “hello.”
“Ruzak?”
“Oh, yeah.”
It was Felicia, raising her voice to be heard over Tommy’s wails in the background.
“Tommy wants to talk to the dog.”
“Right now?”
“And then I want to talk to you.”
Archie still manned his station by the bedroom door. I whistled, snapped my fingers and called his name, but he remained in his sphinxlike pose.
“I’m thinking I might remind him of his former owner,” I said. “And it wasn’t a happy relationship.”
I held the receiver by the dog’s ear while Tommy brayed on the line. The tip of Archie’s tail twitched, and the end of his tongue swiped over his nose.
Felicia came back on the line.
“I’m meeting you for breakfast,” she said.
“You are?”
“You have other plans?”
I admitted that, as usual, I was planless. An hour later, we were sitting in a booth at Pete’s Diner. Felicia was wearing a chartreuse turtleneck, a long black skirt, and matching black boots. The day was overcast, with snow likely in the afternoon.
“Reggie Matthews is innocent,” I said after the waitress left to turn in our order. Western omelet for me, a bagel and fruit cup for her. I told her about my conversation with Unknown Caller.
“Could be a prank,” she said. “Some college kid sees your flyer and decides to have a laugh at your expense.”
“It’d be hard to think of a sicker joke,” I said.
“They didn’t actually offer you any information, Ruzak.”
“No, but she did offer confirmation.”
“You’re about to lay a hypo on me, aren’t you?”
“One of the guys who did this told his girlfriend, swore her to secrecy and, I think, threatened her to keep her mouth shut. But it’s been weighing on her conscience, and one day she sees my number on the flyer—”
“Or she sees the dollar sign on the flyer.”
“Could be a little of both, but you shouldn’t always assign the worst motives to people.”
“What if the boyfriend’s setting you up? He knows you’re poking around and this was his way of finding out what you know. Then you, being the crackerjack detective that you are, set up a clandestine meeting in a dark, deserted place—”
“I’ll bring my gun.”
She pushed her plate a few inches toward me and folded her arms on the tabletop, leaning forward slightly, so I got a whiff of White Diamonds by Liz Taylor.
“Now about this dog, Ruzak. Some things in life are impossible. Sometimes those things are the things you want the most. And the sooner you develop your own personal solution to that dilemma, between the wanting and the can’t-having, the better off you’ll be.”
“You’re teaching Tommy a lesson? Why can’t he have the dog?”
“Bob’s allergic.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t say ‘oh’ like that.”
“It’s just an ‘oh.’”
“Nothing is just what it is with you.”
“I guess you’re saying I never learned the lesson you’re trying to teach Tommy.”
“I guess I’m saying exactly what I’m saying. It’s incredibly hard for me to imagine a scenario in which your mentioning my knees has any meaningful context.”
“It might have been a non sequitur. You know I have that problem.”
“What problem?”
“With linear thought.”
“Ruzak, what goes on in your head never bothered me much. It’s part of what makes Ruzak, Ruzak. It’s what’s going on in your heart that’s bothering me.”
It hit me, finally, what she was getting at.
“I don’t have a crush,” I protested. “I really don’t. I was dealing with a high-pressure situation. She’s not subtle, this girl, and it was a desperate moment.”
“You could have brought up your old girlfriend from high school,” Felicia pointed out. She reached up with her left hand and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear.
“She’s married. To a guy named Bill Hill.”
“So would Amanda know that?”
“It’s been more than a couple years since high school. What kind of guy carries a torch for sixteen years?”
“Oh, Ruzak, and I always took you for a romantic.”
“Again, my only defense is you’re the one woman I know who’s around my age and around me—”
“A random choice?” She was smiling.
“Sure. No. I mean, I don’t really know why I brought up your knees. I’ll never do it again. It’s not as if I said you had ugly knees.Pleasant and well formed, I think I said, and that part wasn’t a lie. I’ve admired your knees for some time now, tho
ugh I’m no voyeur or pervert; I mean, I don’t have a knee fetish or anything like that, though I’m sure there’s men—and women—who do; you can have a fetish on practically anything. Well, not practically. Literally. Anyway, it’s been my experience—or observation, I guess I should say—that a lot of women don’t have any kind of knee structure to brag about, not even those fashion models, whose knees tend toward knobbiness, very unattractive,” I said rapidly, and sipped my cold coffee.
“Bring the cops along,” Felicia said.
“What?”
“To your rendezvous tomorrow night. That way, they can bust whoever shows up: the girl as a material witness or the perp as the … well, the perp.”
“I’ll call Detective Black.”
“You could have used her as your excuse.”
“She has a mean smile.”
Felicia laughed. “What about her knees?”
“I never looked, to be honest.”
“What do you suppose that means? That you took the time to notice mine but not hers?”
I looked right into her eyes and said, “I don’t ascribe any meaning to it at all.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
Of course, she could have pointed out, correctly, that that was my biggest problem: I ascribed meaning to everything, even to things that had no meaning or no potential meaning, like the letters on Jack Minor’s forehead, or that my concern for life (the ferns) that brought me to the office the morning after Jack’s murder had anything to do with my finding him. Life is pretty damned random, and maybe it was the randomness that terrified me.
I called Detective Black the minute I got back to the apartment, the omelet resting uneasily in my gut. I distrusted my digestive powers. Growing up, I was always the nauseated kid, puking in the school bathroom before the big test.
“What if I told you I’ve turned up a corroborating witness?” I asked her.
The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs Page 15