Body Language

by James W. Hall

  When Benito was limp, Stan let him go. A drowned puppy tumbling to the floor. And Stan eased back against the seat and listened to the whoop of the sirens as they arrived, the shouts of the crowd hurrying after the last of the loot, to the wonderful sweet music of chaos whirling around him.

  SEVEN

  While Lawton stood at the kitchen sink and turned the water off and on, studying the foaming stream, Alex spread his afternoon allotment of taco chips on a paper plate, sprinkled them with grated cheddar and salsa, and put the plate in the microwave for forty seconds. She opened a Budweiser, and when the bell rang, she’d get the nachos out and lead Lawton to the TV room and settle him in his chair so he could watch the afternoon talk shows.

  Not too many years before, he’d been merciless with Alexandra’s mother about watching those same shows. Mocking her, scoffing at the celebrities who made small talk with the host, or the trailer-park trash shouting at one another about affairs and betrayals. “If you have to watch television,” he’d say, “for God sakes at least watch something that’s real. This shit’s as phony as live studio wrestling.” But these days, Lawton refused to miss the TV hour before the evening news began. Sipping his beer while he stared with fascination. Sometimes she’d find him weeping over some guest’s particularly horrific predicament.

  If Alexandra let it get to her, the television thing could be unbearably sad. But the way she’d decided to look at it was to imagine that her dad was establishing solidarity with his departed wife, some long-delayed rapport that extended beyond this earthly plane.

  It was a struggle sometimes to come up with views that coped with her dad’s new habits. She’d tried arguing with him, using logic and rational sense when he was being ridiculous. But his illness was stronger than any logic she knew. So these days, what she did was flex. She entered his world, let him set the terms, and then tried to use those terms to quiet him, to comfort him and keep him safe. “Oh, so you’re going on a trip? Well then, you’ll need a good breakfast first.”

  Just as the microwave beeped, the kitchen phone rang, and her father spun around and snatched it off the hook.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  Alexandra took the plate of nachos out and carried them over to the counter.

  “Okay,” her father said. “I’ll ask her.”

  He set the phone back in its cradle and picked up the plate and started for the living room.

  “Dad, who was on the phone?”

  “He said his name was Jason.”

  Alex wiped her hands on the kitchen towel.

  “What’d he say, Dad?”

  “Wanted to know if you’d changed your mind yet.”

  Alex smiled.

  “Do we know a Jason?”

  “It’s just a friend from work, Dad. Nothing important.”

  “Fine,” he said. “You got young men calling you at home. I got no problem with that. You’re a grown woman. Carpe diem. Make hay while the sun shines. ‘Cause it sure as hell won’t be shining much longer. Look at me. Let this be a warning to you. Follow your bliss before you forget what bliss is.”

  He plucked a taco chip from the plate and buried it in his mouth.

  Listening to the hoots and laughter from the television, Alex mixed a can of tuna with a can of cream of celery soup. Another tuna casserole.

  For the first couple of years of their marriage, she’d tried to introduce Stan to a few exotic recipes that her mom had taught her, but he fought her at every step. Plenty of evenings after he stared grimly at his plate for ten minutes, he got up and made himself a toasted cheese sandwich and ate it silently in the Florida room. Eventually, she’d abandoned her attempts at culinary re-education, and now they had a mindless routine of tuna, hamburger, pot roast, chicken cordon bleu, and burritos, which satisfied him just fine. Though even her father had remarked disdainfully on the unceasing parade of tuna casseroles.

  It was 5:30 and she was opening a can of peas for the tuna casserole when her father called out for her to come and see something on the TV.

  “Later, Dad. I’ve got to get dinner started.”

  “It’s Stan,” her father called. “He’s made a mess. A real big mess.”

  Alexandra and Lawton were out the front door and across the yard, headed for the hospital at double time, when the big man emerged from the compact car out by the curb. Alex caught her father by the elbow and drew him to a halt as the man slammed his door and headed around the front of his car toward them.

  He was well over six feet and was wearing a loose-fitting blue Hawaiian shirt, gray jeans, and silver running shoes. His hair was dark and smoothed back and he had on a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses.

  Coming up the walkway, the man stared down at the pavement and gave a couple of awkward little hops, as if he was trying to avoid the cracks in the cement.

  “Can I help you?”

  The man looked up from the pavement and his smile dwindled.

  “It’s me, Junior.”

  Lawton shrugged out of Alexandra’s grasp and stepped up to confront the large man.

  “Junior Shanrahan,” he said, drawing back from Lawton, raising his hands slowly as if to defend against the old man. “From the photo lab.”

  “It’s okay, Dad. It’s a man from work.”

  For a moment, Lawton studied the bright pineapple slices that decorated Junior’s shirt; then he raised his right hand and pointed a finger at the young man’s face.

  “Well, that may be true. But this boy needs some work on his people skills. In this town, you don’t just come stalking up to folks out of the wild blue yonder unless you want to get a bellyful of lead.”

  Alex stepped up to her father’s side.

  “It’s okay, Dad. He didn’t mean anything.”

  Junior had his hands raised to his shoulders, showing Lawton his empty palms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I guess I should’ve worn my smock and hair net.”

  “What’re you doing here, Junior?”

  “You said you wanted those Bloody Rapist photos in a rush.”

  He drew a white packet from his jeans and stepped farther out of range of Lawton. Junior held the photos out to Alex.

  “I thought you wanted to see them, so I came over.”

  She waved them away.

  “Look, I’m sorry, Junior. It’s a bad time. We’ve got to get somewhere in a hurry. We’ve got an emergency.”

  She tugged her dad toward the car.

  “I’ve got a theory about the case, Alexandra. I’ve been working on it.”

  Junior was still watching Lawton as if the old man might be about to quick-draw a six-shooter.

  “Not now, Junior. We have to go.”

  “I’d sure as hell like to get out of that lab, do some real police work for once.”

  “Tomorrow, Junior. Okay?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “Tomorrow’s good.” And he backed away toward his car, still watching Lawton. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  A growl rumbled in Lawton’s throat.

  Junior walked backward across the grass, stumbled on the sidewalk, then turned and went hustling back to his car. He ducked inside and sped away.

  “Was that your boyfriend?” Lawton said. “The one on the phone?”

  “No, Dad, it was just a man from work.”

  “You’re married, right? Stan what’s-his-name.”

  “Stan Rafferty”

  She opened the car, got in, and reached over and unlocked Lawton’s door.

  “Call me old-fashioned,” he said as he climbed into the Camry. “But I don’t think you should be out in your front yard exchanging sweet talk with your paramour in full daylight. A woman’s got to be more discreet about these things.”

  “It was just a work thing, Dad. That’s not my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend. And I don’t want one.”

  “Well, say what you want, but I know what I saw,” Lawton said. “I’m not so old I don’t recognize full-blo
wn lechery when I see it.”

  “I did it,” Stan said to the paramedic. “I fucking did it.”

  “Hang on, bud, you’re doing fine.”

  They were in the fire rescue ambulance, siren blazing, jostling over the potholes and crumbling asphalt between Liberty City and Jackson Memorial Hospital, Stan strapped tightly to the stretcher, his blood on fire.

  “I did it,” Stan said again to the Cuban man who was kneeling beside him, checking his vital signs. “I fucking crashed the armored truck.”

  “Yeah, you did, man. You fucking crashed it all right.” The paramedic was grinning. “Sorry I couldn’t stay around and pick up some of the loot.”

  “No,” Stan said. “I did it. I fucking did it.”

  The Cuban paramedic had probably heard every manner of deranged bullshit on the job—people babbling under the influence of drugs, people crazed from all sorts of violence and mayhem. Stan could probably confess the whole thing to this guy and he’d never give it a second thought. Tell him about chaos, about the plan that wasn’t a plan. Tell him about studying crime all his life just so he could reach this ultimate moment. He could probably tell the guy about drowning Benito, how it felt when the man stopped breathing, Stan’s hands touching the guy as he went from a wriggling human being to a slab of lifeless flesh. He could probably tell this fat Cuban paramedic the complete and total truth, that Stan Rafferty was now a member of the crème de la crème, the elitest of the elite of criminal wrongdoers.

  But he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take the chance. It was sad, too. Incredibly sad, now that he thought about it. Stan Rafferty had done it: He’d fucking well pulled off a major, world-class crime, and no one was ever going to know.

  “Stan robbed an armored truck,” Lawton said. “They’ll be shipping him back to Raiford.”

  “Stan was in an accident, Dad.”

  “He robbed the armored truck company and now he’s going back to Raiford, where he belongs. Back with all the other cons.”

  It was no use. Alexandra tried to reason with him all the way over to Jackson Memorial, but he wouldn’t budge. The idea had taken hold and it might last for hours or days. Stan was a bank robber, a liquor store thief, a car jacker, a kidnapper, and even a rapist. Lawton was replaying some of the crimes still lodged in his memory, assigning each of them to Stan, names, dates, details. And he kept it up, a steady stream of old cases glowing to life, all the way to Jackson Memorial Hospital, Alex fighting rush hour, a headache tightening behind her left eye. And her father continued to list Stan’s crimes while they sat in the waiting area of the emergency room, nurses hurrying past, no one telling them anything for the last hour since the young Indian doctor came out to say that Stan was going into surgery for his left leg.

  “A messy fracture,” the doctor said.

  “How messy?”

  “Nothing we can’t fix,” the doctor said. “He should be learning how to use his crutches in a day or two.”

  She thanked him and he hurried off.

  They watched the evening news on an overhead TV. “The Dash for Cash,” as one station was calling it, was the number-one story. Hundreds of people had converged on the accident scene to grab some of the spilled loot, drivers piling off the interstate to join in, local residents of Liberty City, kids and grannies, welfare moms and dopers and hard-working citizens. They had a lot of video footage of the scramble, Metro-Dade and Miami PD standing nearby, hands on their hips, unable or unwilling to intervene.

  “Finders keepers,” one kid said, and held up a fistful of quarters, grinning into the camera.

  “Anyone taking money from this truck will be considered a thief,” a Metro police spokesman said. “This is not their money. They are stealing.”

  The young Cuban woman who was reporting the story stood a few yards from the wrecked truck and told her viewers that one of the guards, Benito Rodriguez, had drowned in the deluge set off from a broken fire hydrant. The driver of the truck, she said, was injured, but his wounds were not believed to be life-threatening. Eyewitnesses to the event said the truck had swerved to avoid a speeding vehicle; this vehicle, believed to be a red Mustang, had apparently been involved in a drag race along I-95, and the driver of the armored truck, Mr. Stanley Rafferty, had apparently lost control of his vehicle while trying to avoid a collision. Other unsubstantiated reports described a barrage of gunfire heard in and around the area of the overpass about the time the accident occurred. Perhaps a bungled robbery attempt. No confirmation on either version from the police so far.

  At the moment, only a fraction of the money had been recovered. A fire rescue paramedic arriving on the scene had found one bag estimated to contain $300,000. He was being hailed as a hero for handing the money over to the investigating officers. Brinks spokesmen refused to give an exact amount, but informed sources told reporters on the scene that since the accident had occurred late in the afternoon, it was entirely possible that as much as $4 million had been on board the vehicle at the time of the accident.

  The second story was about the Bloody Rapist. The victim was identified as Julia Straker, a young law secretary who had recently been divorced. Police spokesmen reported that once again the killer had left a trail of his own blood at the scene. The TV station’s psychologist du jour came on for a quickie.

  “Informed sources are telling us,” the anchor said to the shrink, “that the victims’ bodies have been left in gruesome, contorted positions. Does that tell us anything about the profile of the killer?”

  “Well, if it’s true,” the psychologist said, “it would be a very troubling sign. Because it would then suggest we have not only a rapist and murderer on our hands but a man who is on some sort of crusade. Crying out for someone or something very specific. Trying to send a signal.”

  “Oh, great,” Alex said.

  “I’m going to relocate,” said her dad. “I’m heading north, where I can see the leaves change colors. I miss those damn leaves, even though I get blisters every autumn from all the raking, and then the blisters turn into calluses. Did I ever show you my calluses?”

  Lawton held his hands palms-up and Alexandra nodded wearily at his smooth flesh.

  “That’s not an easy job, raking leaves. When you’ve finished, you’ve got these big piles, and then you have to burn them. We put the piles in a ditch out by the road; then you light the pile with matches and you stay there and make sure it doesn’t spread. That’s how you rake leaves in Ohio.”

  Alexandra sat on the hard bench, the smell of onions still on her hands, still wearing the green-and-black-checked shorts, the white shell, an outfit she’d chosen because it had once earned a rare compliment from Stan. It seemed like a year ago that she had put it on, full of determination to revive their marriage.

  Watching the hubbub of the waiting room, Alex listened to the television anchors drone on about the other horrors of the day. Other people’s lives splashed onto the TV screen.

  “Is someone hurt?” her dad asked her.

  “Stan’s been in an accident.”

  “Do we know a Stan?”

  “My husband, Dad. My husband was in a traffic accident.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That’s too bad.”

  She watched the sports guy put a microphone in the face of one of the rookie Dolphin players. He was sweaty and his face was bright red.

  “Can we go home now?” her father said. “I’d like to eat supper.”

  “We have to wait until Stan comes out of surgery, know that he’s okay. We want to be there when he wakes up.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “I can get you something from the machines. Would you like some cheese crackers to tide you over?”

  “When you’ve got the piles all raked up,” he said, “you get a running start; then you dive on your belly, and it doesn’t hurt. That’s the fun part. Belly-flopping into big fluffy piles. And you hide inside the pile. It smells like dust and trees.”

  Alexandra put her arm around his shoulder.r />
  “I’ll get you some crackers, Dad. Maybe something to drink, a Coke, a Sprite?”

  The national news was on and they were showing the same footage of people grabbing for coins and fluttering bills. The lead story.

  “Why didn’t anyone tell me what happened?”

  “Tell you what, Dad?”

  “That your mother died. Did you think you had to protect me?”

  “That was a long time ago, Dad. We’ve already moved on from there.”

  “Okay, then,” her father said. “How did he drown?”

  “What?”

  “Stan’s partner. How did he drown?”

  “The truck hit a fire hydrant, and I suppose the water flooded the cab of the truck. He must have been unconscious.”

  “Sounds suspicious to me, a man drowning on a city street. Fire hydrant or not, it sounds very dubious. I’d look into that if I were you, Alexandra. I’d give that some serious scrutiny.”

  EIGHT

  Emma Lee Potts tapped four times on the gunmetal-gray door, positioned herself in front of the peephole, and let her smile blast.

  “Whatta you want?” Norman Franks said through the door.

  “It’s me, Emma. I saw something you might be interested in.”

  She pushed a strand of her kinky blond hair off her face and kept her smile at full power.