She had taken the liberty of buying my lunch, a steaming steak-and-cheese from Charlie’s Steakery. They served the fries, the greasiest I’d ever had, in a paper cup. Felicia had salad from McDonalds.
“Reggie won’t recant,” I told her.
“He’s getting three squares a day and twenty-four-hour, taxpayer-provided protection. He figures he can wait till the last second and they’ll have to let him go. Would you recant?”
“I wouldn’t have confessed in the first place.”
“Well,” she said. “At least it’s over and you can concentrate on more important things. Like passing your PI exam. Three weeks, Ruzak. You better be ready.”
“I could let it go,” I said. “If it weren’t for her.”
“Who her?”
“Unknown Caller. What if something happened to her? Why hasn’t she called me?”
“Because it worked. He beat you up to send her a message, too.”
“She said he would kill her.”
“Has there been anything in the papers? Any story on TV? And even if he did do something to her, what’re you going to do about it? She had the opportunity to be straight with you and she chose not to.”
“One thing that puzzles me,” I said. “Why did she call me and not the cops? That way she gets him locked up and unlocks up an innocent man.”
“Maybe it’s more than fear,” Felicia said.
“She loves him?”
She shrugged. “It happens.”
A frazzled-looking woman hurried by our table, arms loaded down with bags, two kids in tow as she talked on her cell phone.
“I haven’t bought the first present,” I told Felicia, watching the woman. “What does Tommy want?”
She gave me a look. “What do you think?”
“They do have hypoallergenic breeds.”
“You know something? Whenever you say a word over four syllables there’s this caressing thing that goes on with your mouth.”
“Floccinaucinihilipilification.”
“Flocci what?”
“It’s the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary.”
“What does it mean?”
“The estimation that something is worthless.”
“Like knowing the longest word in the Oxford English Dictionary. What was it again?”
“Floccinaucinihilipilification.”
“Wow. That was practically orgasmic.”
“Amanda asked me why I kept a dictionary in the bathroom.”
“Do you think that’s significant? That I say the word orgasmic and you think of Amanda?”
“Oh, nothing like that’s going on. She sleeps on the sofa.”
“Let me ask you something, Ruzak. Are you human?”
“She did ask me if I was gay. I told her I wasn’t, but what if I am?”
“You’re not gay, Ruzak.”
“I’ve never been attracted to a man, but maybe that’s only because I haven’t been around the right man.”
“I don’t think the fact that you’re not attracted to this girl means you’re not attracted to girls. Does she still throw herself at you?”
“Once, the night she moved in, but that was more of a gentle toss.”
“So when does she plan to move out? You’re ambulatory now.”
“I don’t know how to broach the topic.”
“How about, ‘Hey, thanks for the help, but I’m okay now?’”
“I’m figuring it won’t be long. She’ll want to spend Christmas with her mom.”
“So am I,” Felicia said, pulling a compact out of her purse to check her face. Her red lips puckered at the mirror. “Not her mom, mine up in Kentucky.”
“This’ll be my first Christmas since Mom died,” I said. “I’m thinking of spending it at the mission. The food wasn’t all that bad at Thanksgiving, and it’ll give me something to do.”
“You need that,” she said. “Something to do.”
“The other thing I thought of was working the list myself. You know, maybe the cops missed something. I doubt they checked out all those guys’ alibis. I’ve got a copy of it.” I tapped my pocket. The idea had been to show the list to Reggie, but in the middle of our conversation it struck me how useless that would have been.
“You know what the secret to happiness is, Ruzak? Knowing when to give up.”
I nodded. “That’s it. You’ve hit it right on the money. Knowing which battles to fight and knowing the time to walk from the fray. But it’s like great sex. Afterward, when the moment’s done, there’s the ‘what next.’ I don’t have any what-next.”
“You don’t have the sex, either.”
She dropped the compact into her purse and pulled out a small notebook. The tip of her tongue came out as she studied whatever was written in it.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Shopping list, Ruzak.”
“I haven’t bought the first present,” I said.
“I know, you already told me.”
“Do you ever worry about dementia?”
“Only when I’m with you.”
“Eunice’s son committed her to a rest home.”
“They don’t call them rest homes anymore, Ruzak.”
“I know. Why is that?”
“Does it matter?”
“That’s my other problem,” I said. “One of my other problems. Figuring out what matters.”
“Here’s what matters,” she said. “Knowing for certain I’ve taken care of everyone on the list.”
She noticed me staring at her.
“What?”
“‘Everyone on the list,’” I said.
“Even the mailman. He loves M&Ms, so I have to hit the Candy Factory before I leave.”
“There were twenty-seven names on that seminar’s class roster,” I said. “Twenty of which are male. Felicia, Detective Black told me they interviewed every guy on that list. Every guy on that list.”
I pulled the list from my pocket and showed her.
“They never talked to the girls,” I said.
She let the notebook fall closed and said, “I’ll drive.”
FORTY-THREE
I made the calls from the passenger seat of Felicia’s Corolla. The first and third were picked up by an automated voicemail system, and I hung up without leaving a message. We could always swing by the addresses later. The second, fourth, and fifth also went to voicemails, these with personalized greetings, but I didn’t leave a message on those, either. I didn’t want to spoil the element of surprise.
“School’s out for the semester break,” I said. “We might not get anybody.”
The sixth call was answered on the tenth ring, right as I was about to hang up.
“Hello?”
I glanced at the list. Angela Cummings. “Angela,” I said. “This is Teddy Ruzak.”
A good ten seconds of silence, and then the line went dead.
I looked over at Felicia. “I think my network dropped the call.”
Felicia started the car. “Bullshit,” she said, and whipped out of the parking space. Then it took ten minutes just to get out of the lot and onto Kingston Pike, where the brake lights twinkled very Christmaslike. Felicia banged her palm of the steering wheel.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said.
“You should cut over on Papermill to the interstate,” I said.
“Really, you think? Thank you so much, Ruzak, for stating the obvious! Why do you men do that?”
“Here’s my theory—”
“Screw your theories! You have more theories than China has people!” She laid on the horn and yelled, “Come on!”
It took twenty-five minutes to get eastbound on I-40. Felicia asked for the address again, and I gave it to her, on Seventeenth Street, about four blocks north of the Strip on campus.
“Okay, okay,” she said, alternating between slamming on the gas and pumping the brake. “I think I know where that it is.”
It turned out to be in a row of brownst
ones converted into student apartments. The entire block had a deserted feel to it, an atmosphere of abandonment, with the leafless oaks and maples and Bradford pears, and the small yards of winter-killed grass.
Felicia parked on the street about half a block to the north. She cut off the engine and we sat in silence for a few minutes, looking at the house. Someone had wrapped silver tinsel around the porch railing.
“She’s had plenty of time to scoot,” Felicia said.
“And probably won’t come to the door when she sees it’s us,” I added.
“You’re the detective, Ruzak. Now what?”
“Maybe she called him,” I said. “Maybe he’ll show up.”
“Maybe they live together and he has a knife to her throat.”
“Maybe we should call the cops.”
“Maybe that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard after the way they’ve screwed this up,” she said.
“Well,” I said. “If she isn’t inside, she’s somewhere else….”
“Oh, you’re so good.”
“And she’ll either come back or she won’t.”
“Right.”
“Or she’s still inside trying to figure out what to do.”
“Calling first was a stupid idea,” she said. “I say we stake it out. If she’s in, at some point she has to come out. If she’s out, odds are at some point she has to go back in.”
“Okay,” I said.
And so we waited. After about fifteen minutes, Felicia checked in with the sitter, telling her she got tied up at the mall and she might have to stay through dinner. She hung up and looked at me.
“Aren’t you going to call Amanda? She might be worried.”
“She’s at work,” I said, avoiding her eyes.
“Maybe you’re just in denial, Ruzak. You really are attracted to her, but you’re afraid of getting your heart broken.”
“Or the opposite,” I said. “The last girl broke it and maybe I’m afraid it’ll be mended.”
The hours drew out, and the snow began to grow fatter, taking longer to melt on the windshield and actually surviving on the exposed tree branches. Every few minutes Felicia started the car to keep us warm. It was nearly three o’clock when she said, “I can see why you’re so enamored by this detective deal. Such heart-pounding excitement.”
She scrunched down in her seat, pulling the red scarf tighter around her neck. I didn’t smell cinnamon now, but peaches with a hint of coconut.
“I’m hungry,” she said suddenly.
“There’s a Walgreens on the corner,” I said. “I’ll get us something.”
“No. I’ll go. You’re the big strong man. Did you bring your gun?”
“Why would I bring my gun?”
I watched her walk down the sidewalk toward Cumberland. When I couldn’t see her anymore, I watched the house. I looked for any sign of life, any movement in the windows. Nothing.
Felicia came back with some candy bars, a couple of Mountain Dews, and a bag of Bugles.
“Bugles!” I said. “I haven’t had those since I was a kid.” I tore open the bag and popped a handful into my mouth. Felicia watched me, amused.
“It takes so little, doesn’t it, Ruzak?”
The light began to fail. Despite the massive dose of caffeine from my soda, I started to get a little heavy-lidded. I think I dozed off. The next thing I knew, Felicia’s head was on my shoulder, her left arm across my body, her hand curled into a fist in my lap, and my world was the smell of coconuts. It was cold inside the car and it was hard to see through the snow-dusted windows, but I didn’t wake her. I put my hand over hers, to see if it was cold. I told myself, if her hand was cold I would wake her so she could get the heater going. Her hand didn’t seem that cold to me, so I didn’t wake her.
Then she stirred—maybe because I touched her—and her arm moved around my waist and she pressed herself closer, moving her head to my chest, and she made some low sound in the back of her throat, a contented purr. I wondered if I was Bob—or a memory of Bob, a kind of Boblike echo—and I had found myself in a situation rooted in a false pretext, the equivalent of a stolen kiss.
Back when I was a security guard and Felicia was a waitress at the Old City Diner, I would make small talk to keep her by my table, because, frankly, there was something about the way her nose crinkled when she laughed. At seven o’clock, my shift had ended; hers had just begun. It was the only hour of the day when our orbits overlapped, and I flattered myself that something might be born in the area formed by the intersection of our spheres.
She wore a white uniform and those thick-soled white shoes over white stockings, her hair always swept back into a tight bun, only a few wisps of blond would hang down in the back, and at the time I wondered how her hair would feel between my fingers. Now that same thick hair was inches beneath my nose, and the smell of coconut made me think of piña coladas, which led to tropical breezes and the rustle of palm trees and the feel of sand beneath your toes, the foam of crashing waves, and the water fading into the sky, even that old Rupert Holmes song, “If you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain …”
I sat very still, skirting along the edge of the moment, maybe the only opportunity I would ever have to touch Felicia’s hair. Fifty years from now, would I chase sleep on my deathbed, haunted by my cowardice, my failure of will at the critical hour on that snowy night when she lay curled in my arms? Sometimes we’re afforded some space before we must screw our courage to the sticking place, and that’s all we need, a little time to steel ourselves. Then there are moments like this one, where the courage must be drawn from some inner reserve before that singular moment is gone forever. With no warning, the test comes, and whatever is beneath the mask you present to the world, the elemental you, stripped of pretense, is exposed. Reggie Matthews had one of the moments and, when that moment came, Reggie Matthews ran. In a way, he was still running.
And speaking of runners: Consider Ruzak inside this snow-encrusted car, in the gloaming of an early winter day, as he begins to shiver and not because it’s cold. What should I make of him, when even the simplest act forces him to freeze like a tightrope walker teetering on the rope, absurdly paralyzed in midstride, in that instant before the fall?
Really, Ruzak, how much courage does it take to touch a pretty girl’s hair?
I raised my hand to touch Felicia’s hair.
FORTY-FOUR
And when I did, she said, “Ruzak, what the hell are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said, dropping my hand. She pulled away, touching her hair where I had almost touched it.
“Did I fall asleep?”
“I think we both did.”
She pulled down the visor and checked out her face in the mirror.
“Oh God,” she said. “I think I drooled.” I looked down at my shirt, but didn’t see any evidence of dribble.
“Great,” she said. “We probably missed her.”
I looked down the street. “Maybe, but here comes somebody.”
He was wearing a Tennessee orange hoodie and blue jeans, walking toward us from Cumberland Avenue. A short guy, painfully thin, with long dark hair that pooled in the folds of the hood, hands jammed into the hoodie’s pocket. He approached us with his head down, so I didn’t get a good look at his face. He turned up the walk of the house. The door swung open as he mounted the porch; she must have been watching for him. He disappeared inside.
“Okay,” Felicia breathed. “Now what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought he’d be bigger.”
“You said you didn’t get a look at him.”
“No. But I had the impression he displaced a lot more air.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You know, like he was more lumbering than lithe. I say we chance it. We might not get another shot at this.”
I started to open the door. Felicia grabbed my forearm.
“First tell me what we’re chancing, Ruzak.”
; “We’re going to knock on the door.”
“We could have done that hours ago.”
“We didn’t know she was there.”
“We still don’t know she’s there. This guy might not be connected at all. Or maybe her roommate let him in.”
“Only one way to find out.”
I heaved myself out of the seat. My battered torso sang a little protest song. I leaned against the car, holding my cane, as Felicia got out and met me on the curb. A snowflake clung to her eyelash.
“I’ll get to one side,” I said. “Between the window and the door. You do the knocking.”
“They can see us coming,” Felicia murmured as we approached the brownstone.
“He’s here now,” I said. “I doubt they’re hovering by the door, watching.”
I leaned on the wall, trying to catch my breath in the thin winter atmosphere. I made a mental note to always carry my gun with me. Then I mentally tore up the note—I’d forgotten I was getting out of the detective business.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. Maybe I’d try to get into college and study something that might one day benefit mankind, like medicine. Dr. Ruzak to the OR, stat! I watched a lot of the Discovery Health Channel, and the operating room scenes never grossed me out. I wasn’t sure how far that went to qualify me to practice medicine, but I wasn’t so old yet I had to close that door.
Felicia knocked. We waited. She knocked again.
“‘Who’s that?’” Felicia whispered. “’Oh, just that beefy detective and his trusty sidekick. Let’s let them in!’”
“You could kick down the door using your ninja powers,” I suggested.
“And they prosecute us for breaking and entering,” she said, which sort of acknowledged that she did have ninja powers.
“They’re college students,” I said. “I say we go Pavlovian. Yell ‘Pizza!’”
“My hands are so cold it hurts to knock.”
“What do they want?” I asked rhetorically. “They want us to leave. So we don’t. We stay until they realize we won’t.”
“They’ve probably already run out the back door.”
“You know,” I said. “I didn’t even consider that.”
The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs Page 18