No pussyfooting! “Okay: How did you do it?”
“What?”
“You heard me: How did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Get me pregnant. I’m not the Virgin Mary. God didn’t do it and I didn’t do it all by myself. So don’t stand there and tell me you’re sterile or something. How did you do it?”
“Sterile!” He was indignant. “Of course not! How can you, of all people, say a thing like that? When have I not been ready for you? Why it’s all I can do to hold on without premature ejaculation! I’d rip that thing off you and take you on the floor right now if we weren’t talking about a really serious matter.”
Sure, sure, she thought. If he tried the floor bit, he’d probably trip and fall through a window.
She had to admit he had no trouble with erection. But that, of course, wasn’t the question. “I’m not talking about getting a hard-on. I’m talking about getting a baby. Your baby. From your sperm.” She shook her head. “You must have one helluva sperm count.”
He smirked. “Yeah … how ‘bout that? I’ve got ’em, I can tell you that. The sperm count is part of my annual checkup. I insist on it. And you know, babe: I’m all man!”
Her reaction was a silent but heartfelt, Ha!
“Okay then,” she said, “we know you’re always hot to trot. That’s not the point. The point is: how did I get pregnant?”
“I don’t know. God, I don’t know. You took every precaution. We both did. What more could either of us have done? Even with’ everything we did, something must’ve gone wrong. “Yeah, that’s it.” He nodded vigorously. “Something went wrong.”
It was a puzzle, she had to admit. Not unheard of, but most rare, given the amount of protection she and her partners always used.
Of course this didn’t prove that Lou actually was the father of her child, just that there was no cogent argument against that possibility. But what a relief after yesterday’s shutout!
It was such a relief that Barbara almost was willing to forgo the other two areas of inquiry. But what the hell; she’d gone this far, might as well go the distance.
She stretched out on the sofa. He didn’t stir from the chair he occupied, his head drooping as if he were a boy about to be lectured.
“Well, Lou, look at it this way: it could be worse.”
“‘Worse.’“ He raised his head and looked at her incredulously. “How could it get worse than this?”
“Al really should’ve lived. And if he had, pretty soon he’d be nailing your hide to the wall. You’d be the other man in a divorce complaint. He would’ve seen that you paid not only child support, but with your reputation too.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Al’s death” —she paused for effect—” appears to be more than a coincidence. It’s downright convenient!”
“Huh?”
“Convenient that he’s not here to point his finger at you.”
Lou didn’t respond.
“Not only is he not here to accuse you, he’s also not here to displace you.”
“What?”
“You must have heard it, Lou.” She sat upright on the sofa. “There’s been a lot of talk about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
“What?”
“The way the talk went, if Al had made a success of the new bank venture—and he would have—he would have been promoted. He would have been given an exec’s position.”
Lou smiled nervously. “There’s only three executive positions. And they’re all filled.”
Barbara smiled in return. “Then one of them would have to be vacated.”
His perspiration increased. “What are you saying?”
What, indeed, she thought. Left to his own devices, Lou would never figure out all the ramifications. He needed help. And that, she thought, might be the understatement of the day. “This is how the talk is going, Lou ….” She leaned forward to heighten the almost palpable tension. “Some are saying you were involved in Al’s murder.…”
“Me—! But I … but that’s … that’s ridiculous. The police killed the man who shot Al. The police said he was the guy! I mean, that’s over. How could anyone say …” The uncompleted statement hung in the air.
“They call it taking out a contract. Don’t you ever watch TV or go to a movie?”
“A contract! Wha—I wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to go about a thing like that. That’s as bad as pulling the trigger itself. That’s … that’s monstrous!”
“I’m just telling you there’s been talk.”
“But … but why would I do a thing like that?”
“Well, according to the talk—and mind you, I’m just relaying what I’ve heard-—you knew that, one, Al would make a success of his venture. Two, that he would get the reward—a seat as an executive vice president. And the seat he would take would be yours.”
“Why mine?” It was the whine of a querulous child. “Why mine?”
“Because you’re the most vulnerable. Some of the loans you make …! Well, they’re as good as down the drain. How long do you figure you can continue like this? Even Tom Adams’s patience is at an end … or so I’m told.”
“No! It’s not true! Not anymore, anyway. You can ask Jack Fradet. He says I’m doing much better. He’s even suggested some areas that escaped my attention. Maybe I did make some mistakes in the past. But that’s over. You can ask. Not the troublemakers who’re spreading gossip and rumors. Ask people who know.”
“Well, all right, Lou.” Barbara switched to a consoling tone. “Take it easy. Don’t get mad at the messenger. I’m just telling you what’s on the grapevine.
“And you’re right: we shouldn’t pay any attention to the petty people who don’t really know what they’re talking about. Just relax. Take it easy.”
Lou shifted in his chair. Suddenly a silly smile took over. “Whatcha got under the robe?”
Damn! Why hadn’t she gotten fully dressed for Lou Durocher? They’d had relations numerous times. But she felt as if she’d just played a maternal role with her frightened little boy. She didn’t want to add incest to their relationship. She didn’t respond.
“You wearing anything, babe?” he persisted. “It just came to me: we don’t have to be safe anymore. You’re already pregnant. What say we visit the bedroom? Nobody to hide from now. Whaddya say?” He stood. Plainly he was ready.
Not quite so plainly, she was not. “Really, Lou! Don’t you think we ought to wait a decent period of time? I mean, Al’s funeral was just yesterday.”
Later—too late to do anything about it—Durocher would consider Barbara’s reasoning intentionally specious. At this moment, and with his confused mind, somehow it made sense. “Well …” he stammered, “if you think so ….”
“I think so.” She rose to see him out. “One last thing: does Pat know about us?”
“About us?” He pulled on his lower lip. “I don’t think so,” he said finally. “No, I don’t think she had a clue—at least till now.”
“‘Till now’?” Her brow knit. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just that since I got your note, I’ve been pretty nervous. I think it showed at home. Pat’s been asking me what’s wrong maybe a million times. I keep putting her off. What I mean is I’m pretty sure Pat knows something is wrong; I don’t think she knows exactly what.”
“Let’s keep it that way. Until we figure out what to do.”
“About what?”
“The baby, Lou. About the baby. We’re going to have to make some arrangements.”
“Huh?”
“Support. Child support. The baby and me. You’re going to have to support us of course.”
Perspiration flooded forth again. “Support? How can I afford that and not involve Pat? And how can I involve Pat without her finding out about us? Oh my God!”
“Something you should have thought about when we began this. affair. Don’t gamble unless you can afford to los
e.
“Anyway” —she brightened—” let’s leave that for another day. Enough for now. Go on home—or back to work—wherever you’re supposed to be. Don’t call me. I’ll call you—and you can put your last dollar on that.”
Having experienced only a moment or two of relief during their tête-à-tête, Lou Durocher left as nervous and disturbed as he’d been when he arrived, if not more so.
Barbara closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
She’d never wanted to have relations with Lou. She did it, as she did with all men, only to manipulate those who sought to exploit her.
But today especially she did not want intimate contact with Lou Durocher. Fortunately, he bought the bromide of observing some interval before restoring a happy hour.
In retrospect she had her doubts about what had transpired between her and Lou Durocher.
Almost on the face of it, she was willing to believe Lou had nothing to do with Al’s death. He seemed totally incapable of such a conspiracy. If he had been a party to the deed, it almost certainly would not have been implemented as successfully as it was. Besides, it was against his religion—some of whose tenets he kept.
That would mean—if she gauged correctly—that none of the three execs was involved in Al’s death. Of course Martin and Jack would be much more believable liars than Lou. In the end, though, she had no proof of any kind that one or another had taken out a contract on Al.
Nor on the surface of it did it seem that any of the three had any sort of scam going on at the bank. Like feathering their nests against being dismissed. Lou, the one who had most to fear on that score, seemed genuinely to feel that he had turned a corner and was on—for him—fairly solid ground.
Which led to the final consideration: paternity.
Impossible for Martin and Jack—if their claims bore out.
Entirely possible for Lou.
Unfortunate for Barbara: of her four candidates, the least qualified as Mr. Romantic was Lou Durocher.
One thing was certain: Pat Durocher, should she learn of her husband’s infidelity, might well divorce him, but she certainly wouldn’t need to as far as Barbara was concerned. Under no circumstances was she in the market to marry Lou Durocher. That would be a case of out-of-retirement into the hell of war. At least Al hadn’t had anything physical to do with her. Lou would be all over her.
Just send money.
Yet the bottom line had not been written. All she really knew was that Lou might be the father of her child. He had no reason to reject the possibility.
Still, another county remained to be heard from. Tom Adams was to check in this afternoon. And until Tom spoke his piece, there was still a chance that Lou Durocher—and she herself, for that matter—would be off the hook.
There was more talking and thinking to be done. Until then, she would rest.
Twenty-Two
Barbara sat at her kitchen table. She looked out the window at a parking lot where cars baked under a blazingly hot Dallas sun. A child’s cry broke her despondent mood.
She turned to look into the living room where her baby girl fussed as she awakened from her afternoon nap. Debbie had thrown her toys from her playpen. Barbara walked by the pen, absently tossing the toys back into the enclosure.
She gazed out the living room window. Approximately twelve feet of parched, fissuring clay separated her apartment from an eight-foot-high brick wall.
Debbie had her prison. Barbara had hers.
The air conditioning pumped in its battle with the intolerable outside furnace. It was a Mexican standoff.
She went to the dining room table on which she’d dumped today’s mail. All of it was addressed either to her husband, Lou Durocher, or to Barbara Durocher, or to both Mr. and Mrs.
Tom Adams had fired Lou after learning of his adulterous relationship with Babs and that Lou was the father of her baby. He offered Lou the opportunity to do the honorable thing. Having no sword to fall upon, Lou was given the chance to divorce his wife, Pat, and marry Barbara, the widow.
Lou refused. So he was fired. Pat divorced him and got a huge financial settlement plus all their property. And he ended up married to Barbara anyway. No one had ever accused Lou Durocher of being exceptionally intelligent.
In truth, they would have been on the dole had it not been for Lou’s brother, who owned a used car franchise in Irving, Texas—a suburb of Dallas—where the Durochers now lived in a vast rabbit warren of an apartment complex.
On the rare occasion when Barbara ventured outside, she seldom saw anyone. Not a human, not a dog, not a cat. It seemed that Dallasites stayed inside their air-conditioned apartments, homes, offices, cars. While swimming pools bubbled in the simmering heat. Some more enterprising citizens dumped 500-pound blocks of ice in their pools to render them swimmable. And one woman’s published letter to the editor claimed that she preferred to think of the Dallas temperature as a wind chill factor of 123 degrees.
Barbara turned the fan on the baby to maximize the a/c’s cooling. Debbie first looked startled, then burst out crying. Barbara felt like screaming.
The doorbell rang.
Who would venture out on a day like this? The discomfort would discourage Jehovah’s Witnesses. She opened the door—and staggered as if she’d been struck. “J … Joyce! It can’t be! You’re dead!”
Joyce Hunter smiled. “May I come in? Or would you rather watch me melt?”
Wordlessly, Barbara stepped aside to let her erstwhile lover enter. Joyce looked wonderful, just the way Barbara remembered her.
“What’s going on? You committed suicide!”
“That’s what we wanted everyone to think. I worked it out with Harry. In return for my ‘disappearance,’ he and I faked the suicide.”
“But all this time! Why didn’t you contact me? How could you not contact me?”
“It was part of the deal. Something like the Witness Protection Program where a person is given a new identity. The agreement I reached with Harry was that I would move far away and continue to practice psychotherapy. In return, Harry would not reveal that I was gay.
“But I couldn’t tell anyone … especially not you. It was part of our agreement. Otherwise I would have been destroyed as a therapist.
“This … this is such a shock. I mean, you’ve come out of nowhere. What are you doing here? What about your agreement with Harry?”
“Harry’s dead … a little while ago. Cancer. So now, all bets are off.”
Barbara felt faint. “It’s … it’s going to take me a while to get used to this.” She shook her head.
“I understand. After Harry died I began looking for you. You were hidden away almost as well as I was. Then, once I found you, I wasn’t sure how to handle this. If I phoned you, you’d never believe it was I. I had to come in person. So … here I am.”
“So here you are. And what are we going to do about this?”
“Why … take up where we left off.”
‘“Take up …’? Joyce, I’m married. Lou Durocher. You never met him. He came along after … after you died. What am I saying? You didn’t die. Anyway, you didn’t know him. And we—he and I—we’ve got a baby.”
“So I see.” Joyce walked over to the playpen, leaned over, and picked up the baby. “Boy or girl?”
“Girl?”
“Name?”
“Debbie.”
“Pretty. I like it.”
“Joyce! How are we going to pull this off?”
“Why, the same way we did before. Only now in reverse.”
“Reverse?”
Joyce continued to bounce the baby gently. Debbie seemed to love it. “Sure. When we first became lovers, you had the freedom to get a room at a motel, or when the coast was clear, we met at your apartment. I had the husband and family. Now you’ve got the family and I’ve got the open house. See how simple it is?”
“It’s not that simple, Joyce. What am I going to do with the baby?”
“Why … bring her a
long, of course.”
“I don’t know …” Barbara tapped a tooth with her fingernail. “It could get complicated in a hurry. Lou is an idiot, but he comes home at unpredictable times. The chances of his finding out about us are too good.”
“There’s another, even better solution.” Joyce smiled broadly.
Barbara raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Leave him.”
“Leave him! You mean divorce Lou?”
“Sure. He means nothing to you. Dump him. If he had an offer like this, don’t you think he’d dump you in a minute? You never should’ve married him in the first place.”
“I know … I know.” Barbara was filled with remorse. “I thought I had that all figured out when Al—he was my husband—”
“I know.”
“Well, when Al died I had four guys on the string. Any one of them could’ve been Debbie’s father.”
“You wicked thing, you!” Joyce said with a smirk.
“I thought I could get all four of them to contribute to me and the baby. I thought I had it made. Then, one by one they proved they couldn’t have been the father. Only one had no excuse. He had to be the father, and he knew it.”
“Lou Durocher.”
“Lou Durocher.”
“Even so, Babs, you shouldn’t have married the jerk.”
“What was I to do? I was going to have Lou’s baby. The only way I could get support from him was to marry him. He was virtually destroyed by the scandal. There was no alternative. I had to marry hi—” She looked up, startled. “What’s that noise?”
“I don’t know.” Joyce held the baby aloft and, like a sword swallower, fed the baby into her mouth and down her throat. Somehow, Barbara did not find that odd.
The phone rang. It rang again. And again.
Barbara awakened. She was covered with perspiration. She was alone in her apartment. Instead of a parking lot and a brick wall, she looked out on the magnificence of Belle Isle and the Detroit River.
Struggling to return to the present, she sat up and reached for the phone. “Hullo …”
“Barbara? Is it you?”
“Yes, it’s me, Tom.”
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