“We weren’t yelling. Just our usual domestic banter, with your mother threatening divorce.”
“She’s doing that again?”
“She never stopped.”
“I thought maybe it was because of what day it is.”
“What day is it?”
“You know, Daddy. A year to the day since the accident.”
Frank’s arm around her spare, sweet shoulders squeezed her even closer to him. “I know, baby. We just have to put it behind us. Life goes on. Because it has to.”
“Daddy, you always say that. But a day hasn’t gone by that I haven’t thought about Tommy and what happened.”
“Honey, I hope to Christ you’re not still blaming yourself. You promised me you wouldn’t do that.”
The girl moved away from him to the edge of the dock and stared down at the water just barely moving at the pilings. “Yeah, I know. But how can I not blame myself?”
“Because it was an accident, baby. If anyone was to blame it was Tommy himself. But it was simply an accident.”
When she spoke again, it was with a thin quiver of her lip. “Okay, so Tommy had too much beer, but so did I. No, he shouldn’t have been hot-dogging, backwards on that ski. But I shouldn’t have been driving so fast. Yes, it was just bloody fate or whatever that the Fisher’s dog was swimming out there, and I veered to avoid him. But if I had been under better control, it just would not have happened.”
Frank moved up to hold his daughter’s shoulders and stop their shiver. “Baby, you’re way too hard on yourself.”
Jennie didn’t answer and stared up at the sun hanging huge above the tree line across the lake. Then her gaze moved down and to the right to the remnants of an ancient dock in the water in front of a home about half-mile away. After a long pause she said, “You know, sometimes I wish they had left that damn piling sticking up out there in front of the Fisher place. Because for me, every time I look out there, I still see it. I know exactly where it was. I see it right now, even though I watched them pull it out with that crane. How long am I going to still see it out there? Probably for the rest of my life. I have dreams about it, weird nightmares, really. It’s gone for a while and then one day it’s back again, all bloody. Once, in one dream, I even took your chain saw out there and started chopping it off at the waterline, and it starting talking to me, screaming at me, telling me it was alive and I was killing it.”
He squeezed her softly and kissed the crown of her head. “I’m so sorry, baby. I had no idea.”
She turned to him, tears on her cheeks. “No, how could you know? I haven’t talked to anybody about it.”
While Jennie tucked herself into her father’s arms, her head on his chest, he held her, and, not trusting his own voice, said nothing. Without a question or a doubt, he had always felt he would give his life for his kids, and yet, with this sweet grieving girl, he’d been deaf, dumb and blind.
Chapter 21
At one end of the quiet newsroom, in the lazy pause after lunch and before the afternoon’s editorial meeting, Dennis Clark half-sat on the edge of a desk where Blanche Barowski, the news director’s heavy-set secretary, held up a garish greeting card, homemade with gold script and multicolor ink sketches.
“Look at this one,” said the perpetually red-faced Blanche, who also handled Frank’s correspondence. “Hand-printed with a long poem called ‘Jesus and Frank.’”
She handed him the card, and he opened it like an accordion.
“Good Christ! This must have taken weeks.”
Then Dennis read aloud: “‘Jesus and Frank are my two best friends. For the sins of the world they make amends. When the news was bad and our hearts sank, who did we turn to but Jesus and Frank?’”
He laughed with a sad delight. “This is incredible.”
“You wouldn’t believe the stuff he gets.” Blanche pointed to a large box on the corner of the desk. “Holy cards, novena cards, home remedies. They all have the answer to his backaches and his headaches and every other malady they imagine he has. This is just from the last few days.” She picked up a large wad of letters and drops them into the box.
“You give it all to him?”
“All except the hate mail, the really vicious stuff, and he gets a lot of that too.”
“Well, that’s his secret. You either love him or hate him. Nobody’s neutral. You see the paper today?”
“No.”
“Wil Barnes’ column.” Dennis grabbed a section of the paper from a nearby desk.
Blanche rolled her eyes. “Again?”
“It’s a blind item, but it’s obvious who he’s talking about. Here it is. ‘Strange Sighting Department: Was that who we think it was? Our favorite TV journalist (How’s that for an oxymoron, folks?) tooling through a downtown avenue in his fancy flivver with a drop-dead redhead (not his wife) often dipping from view?’”
“What’s an oxymoron?”
“It’s a contradiction in terms. Like TV journalist. Get it?”
“Got it. That should be worth another fifty irate letters.”
“So where is our favorite oxymoron?”
“In with the boss.”
Chapter 22
“Frank, you were in a convertible.” Alice Whitney sat with a cup of tea at one end of a couch. Frank was next to her in an armchair. A handsome woman in her 50s, Alice wore her VP-GM suit with just a hint of cleavage, her fashion reflecting her manner: firm but feminine.
“So? Lots of people have convertibles.”
“Not like yours.”
“Alice, I didn’t know she’d do that.”
“You knew exactly what she’d do.”
“Women throw themselves at me, Alice. I can’t help it. I’m irresistible.” This was delivered with the kind of practiced self-mockery that usually got her to drop the whole thing.
“Frank, to coin a phrase, just say no. Especially when we’re in a book, and you’re in a convertible.”
“Jesus, Alice, let me have some fun. We’re nearly out of May and the numbers are fine. We’re going to win again, for what, the 15th book in a row?”
“Don’t kid yourself, Frank, the audience is restless out there. They’re doing a lot of sampling. And we’re down a half point in the last two weeks. Look, all I’m saying, Frank, is this is a pretty conservative town. You know that better than I do. You grew up here. And you know how many Catholics there are. They’ll accept a little booze, and they may even accept a little wenching. But they won’t accept wenching in public, and neither will I.”
“How about in private, just you and me?”
Alice smiled sadly and ignored him. “How’s your back these days?”
“I’m sure we could find a position that wouldn’t put too much stress on it.”
They had been through this kind of scene a million times, and she was still smiling and ignoring him. “How about the headaches?”
“I’d never have one with you.”
“Frank, just stay out of his column. That’s all I'm asking.”
Chapter 23
The hollow, echoing smack of the hard rubber ball careening off the front wall was followed by the distinctly middle-aged grunts coming from Frank and Judge O’Bryan. Both men were shirtless and sweating as they flew around the court, jostling and bumping each other in a frantic effort to win this final point. When Frank dove and missed the shot to lose the match he pounded his racket on the floor and screamed, “You tripped me, you son of a bitch!”
The judge screamed back, “You tripped yourself!” Gasping and out of breath, they were both obviously exaggerating their anger.
“You cheat your ass off.”
“Whatever it takes, man.”
“You admit it!”
“I admit nothing,” said the judge. “I’m simply stating a basic philosophical principle.”
Heading through a door in the court’s back wall into the racquetball lounge, each grabbed a towel from a nearby chair and mopped his sweaty face. Two attractive young
women were there waiting for the court.
“So you tripped me on philosophical grounds?”
Frank noted the women, and said, “Hi, girls.”
In mocking unison the women called out, “Hi, boys,” then walked into the court without looking back. Frank checked them out over his shoulder as he and the judge headed for the locker room.
“Boys?” said Frank.
“They were putting you down, Frank.”
“Me? What about you?”
“You called them ‘girls.’”
“I hate liberated women.”
“You have to know how to handle them.”
Frank pushed through the locker room door and headed for a line of lockers and benches. He looked around to find the room unoccupied.
“Big talk. How’s your physics major?”
“Who?”
“You know, the blond. What was her name? Kim? Kim the Bim.”
“Oh, yeah, I have a new one. She’s into space medicine.”
Arriving at their lockers they sat on benches and removed their shoes and socks. Frank asked, “By the way, how was that guy’s body odor the other day?”
“What?”
“The guy who tried to choke you. When we ran that tape the other night, I figured the boy probably had a bad case of B.O.”
“I couldn’t tell you. He was choking me so hard I couldn't breathe.”
“So why’d he go off like that?”
“Well, I had just taken the prime of his youth and shoved it in the can for the next ten or fifteen years. It’s not hard to understand.”
Frank slipped off his shorts and jockstrap. “But most of those slimeballs don’t jump you when you send them away.”
Naked now the two men were walking to the shower, each carrying a towel to place on a hook just outside the shower room. Inside they found two other fellows, just finishing, who left the water running. Frank and the judge moved under the steamy spray.
“They’d all love to strangle me,” said the judge when they were alone. “I’m not exactly popular with that group.”
Frank let the water hit him in the face with his eyes closed. “You are very popular with a guy I met recently.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah, a sleezoid character I ran into in a dive a couple weeks ago. Said you could have put him away for 20 years. But instead you worked out some kind of a deal and let him walk.”
The judge turned his back to Frank and faced the spray. “Yeah? What kind of a deal?”
“A bribe is the term I think he used.”
The judge turned to meet Frank’s gaze, but when he answered there was no discernable change in his casual, almost bored tone. “A bribe, eh? That’s another of my occupational hazards.”
“What, taking bribes?”
“No, having scumbags running around saying they made this, that or the other deal with me. I put so many shitheads away and ruin so many plans to continue cheating and stealing and killing, it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often.”
“So, you don’t take bribes?”
“How much did this asshole say I took?”
“He didn’t.”
“Did you get his name?”
“Byrd. B-Y-R-D. Randal Byrd.
The judge paused for a moment, apparently searching his memory. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Did he say who his attorney was?”
“No.”
“That’s another thing that happens. Some of these boys who’ve worked the court a while will tell their client, ‘Look, I can get your case before Judge So-And-So, and for a $50,000 contribution, or whatever, he’ll throw out your case.’ And all along they know it’ll be tossed anyway, or has been already because of some technicality.”
“And then they pocket the 50 grand.”
“It’s easy to justify. Here you got the scum of the earth with millions stashed from rollin’ dope or whatever. Is he going to miss a little 50 thou contribution to your kid’s college fund?”
“Whatever it takes, man.”
“What?”
Frank smiled. “Just stating a basic philosophical principle.”
Chapter 24
In a gilded frame the photograph showed a young man in his late teens with casual good looks. His sandy hair tossed by a gust of wind, he offered a careless grin to someone unseen, the moment caught candidly on the deck with the sun and the lake doing a million twinkles in the background.
Frank was holding the frame and staring at this picture in the young man’s still-intact bedroom with photos of sports stars and athletic teams covering one wall and on another, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves the boy had built himself with bricks and boards, still loaded with all of his books, an impressive array worthy of a young Renaissance type.
So why, staring at 18-year-old Tom, soon off to his first year at U. of M., did Frank’s mind leap back to 4-year-old Tommy? To the day he had brought the boy with him to the library, as he so often had in those days, to use the dime-a-copy duplicating machine, to copy the manuscript pages he was churning out for a novel he never finished. A kind of ritual for father and son, the other kids being too young to drag along at the time. Put the page print-side down on the glass, close the cover, plunk in the dime and hear the machine whirl as the green light gleamed at the edges of its scan. The little kid with the big eyes had pressed himself against the machine and watched carefully as the emerging copies had stacked themselves on the side.
On this particular day, needing also the contents of a short chapter in a book on World War II Belgium, he had brought it to the copier with little Tommy trailing behind. Having promised Marci he’d be back for dinner in a half-hour, he had hurried to open the book to the right page and place it on the glass.
Next to him the boy’s little voice had been urgent. “But, Daddy, wait! What...?”
He had given the child a few seconds to find his question, but it hadn’t come. “Just wait, kiddo. I’ll talk to you about it in the car.”
Later in the Bonneville he had asked over his shoulder about the question.
What would happen, the little boy had asked, if you didn’t put anything under the machine’s cover and then put in your dime?
Well, he said, the machine would give you just a plain white sheet of paper.
Tommy had thought about that for a while and then asked: “What would happen if you put a crayon on the glass and covered it up?”
Still not sure where this was heading, he had said, “I guess the machine would give you a piece of paper with a little blotch on it the size and shape of the crayon.”
More silence and then he had finally understood the boy’s dilemma. “You thought,” he had said, glancing at those brown eyes in the rearview mirror, “that the copying machine really was a copying machine, didn’t you? You thought if you put in a book or a crayon, the machine would make you another book or a crayon.”
“Yes,” the boy had said, looking sheepishly away from the mirror.
“Yes, wouldn’t it be great if the machine really did that?”
“Yes.” Tommy had brightened with a smile.
Of course he’d gone on to explain how the machine really worked, by “taking a picture” of whatever you put on the glass. But he had silently reveled in the thought that his son might well be a budding scientist, formulating his little hypotheticals, then assessing his outcomes in an effort to explain his world.
Yes, the boy had grown into a sensitive, articulate young man, a graceful athlete with a marvelous mind and a keen, off-beat sense of humor. His siblings, friends, teachers and adoring parents were all expecting special things from him until...
With his back to the room’s open door, he heard a soft shuffle behind him. He turned and found Bobby walking past in the hallway. His son stopped and looked in.
The two exchanged glances, but Frank, still lost in his reverie, said nothing, then looked back at the photograph. After a few seconds Bobby shook his head and left. Frank looked back again, this time to the empt
y doorway.
“Bobby?”
There was no answer, and Frank returned his gaze to the picture in his hand, wondering what it was about this younger boy that made him impossible to talk to.
Chapter 25
“Fabulous chow.”
“Thanks so much for having us.”
“Our pleasure, thanks for being had!”
In a two-story foyer with a cathedral ceiling and circular staircase Judge William O’Bryan and wife Gloria were saying goodbye to Frank and Marci DeFauw and two other couples. But the scene was stopped by the entrance at the top of the stairs of an exquisite four-year-old in a pink nightie. Missy O’Bryan was dragging a well-worn blue blanket in one hand and carrying “Green Eggs and Ham” in the other as she slowly descended the staircase.
“Daddy, I need you.”
There was warm laughter and various adoring noises.
The judge literally glowed as he turned to his daughter. “You need me, darling? It’s the middle of the night, sweetheart.”
Missy sat on the stairs half-way down. “I need you, Daddy, to read me this book.”
More adoring noises.
“Baby, we just read “Green Eggs” a few hours ago, before you went to sleep.”
“Daddy, I NEED you!”
Clearly the judge had no choice. He kissed Marci, who was standing in front of him, and waved to the others. “Sorry, folks, I am needed! Thanks so much for coming.”
A chorus of “Our pleasure," “Go ahead!" and “Take care of that little girl,” accompanied the judge on the staircase as he scooped up his daughter and carried her to the second floor. His wife kissed Frank and then Marci and said, “Our little love child has daddy wrapped.”
Frank said, “He never could resist a beautiful girl.”
Gloria rolled her eyes with an exasperated flair. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
Marci whispered, “It was wonderful, Glo. I’ll call you.”
Gloria squeezed her hand one last time. “Great. Thanks for being so sweet.”
Frank and Marci moved out the front door. After a few steps he turned to glance at the judge’s large home, its elaborate array of windows in the foyer lit up impressively against the night sky. They walked together in silence to the Viper parked at the end of the long circular drive.
The Car Bomb (The detroit im dying Trilogy, Book 1) Page 5