A Postmodern Love

by Nick Totem

  Thomas watched the bureaucratic hurricane from afar and was haunted by its ferocity, its wanton and indiscriminate destruction of things in its path. Sure enough, it came for him. One day he was served with an order for a deposition. He was prepared.

  The police station was no more than a rectangular box made of bricks and concrete, punctuated by windows. Through a couple of hallways, Thomas was led into a sparse interrogation room with a single metal table bolted to the floor, two aluminum chairs, a one-way mirror, and, high up in the corner of the ceiling, a camera. A sour smell that was pervasive along the hallway wafted into the room.

  “Hi, come on in,” the detective said, already waiting; his voice was relaxed. He stood up, kicking back the aluminum chair, and extended his hand.

  “Thomas Wilde.” They shook hands.

  “Detective Hugo Figueroa. Homicide. Thanks for coming. Please have a seat.” There were a slight Spanish inflection to his deep voice. The detective was heavily built, and his full cheeks bulged against his lower lids, making his eyes seem buried deep under the bushy brows; brown hair sloped over his forehead. He wore a dark brown shirt that appeared worn around the armpits. Though he was not tall, his shoulders and arms appeared muscular and powerful. Over his right shoulder, another camera had been set up over a tripod and was obviously recording them; thick wires leading from the camera connected to a socket in the wall.

  “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Wilde.” Figueroa looked down and read from a file, flipping the pages. Finally, he raised his eyes to Thomas, “Here is how it works. I’ll swear you in. Read your rights, including your right to have an attorney present if you so choose. Be advised that any information or evidence that you may see or hear today must remain confidential. Divulging this information will subject you fine or imprisonment, or both. Be aware that your deposition is being recorded.” With his pen, he pointed over his right shoulder to the camera. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I understand,” Thomas said coolly, though his stomach was bubbling and his heart raced even faster than when he had entered the station. Stone face, he told himself, the camera is watching.

  After the procedural swearing in, Hugo Figueroa kept his eyes to the files as he began, “A male, named Lloyd Quattleberns, was found dead outside the Biltmore Hotel on . . .” After reading what sounded like a factual description of the case, Hugo asked, “You know the victim?”

  “Yes.”

  “You first meet him, when?”

  Thomas recounted as truthfully as he could the circumstances of his acquaintance with Lloyd, and that inevitably led to an explication of his relationship with Lana.

  “You feel what about Lloyd Quattleberns?” Hugo Figueroa interrupted him.

  He saw the trap. “I don’t have any particular feelings about him.”

  “Come on, Doctor,” Hugo said, calling him a doctor for the very first time. “He’s your competition, isn’t he? You fought him for Lana Fauves, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe he is, but so are a large number of men who met her and went out with her. I don’t have any particular feeling for them, either.”

  “And this Chau the Dog who was employed by Lloyd Quattleberns? You feel what about him?”

  “He’s a criminal and he is still free. He shot at us, so I’m afraid of him, of course. I’d be less afraid if you caught him. Maybe he killed Lloyd.”

  “You were upset when Lloyd flew Lana to Brazil?”

  “If you’re done asking me questions about facts, I’ll go. I prefer talking to a psychologist about my feelings if you don’t mind.” He stared straight into Hugo’s eyes.

  “All right. Let’s stick to facts.” Hugo smiled, as though he were playing; his large teeth had a dark gap next to the right canine. “Tell me where you were the night in question, the night of the murder. Let’s start real early. I understand you went to work that day. After work you went where?”

  “I picked up some Chinese food. I went to Lana’s apartment. We had dinner together.” He paused and wrinkled his forehead, trying to remember correctly. “I changed her dressing. After that I went out to park the car.”

  “You went out to park the car at what time?”

  “Eight thirty, nine. I don’t remember exactly.”

  “Eight thirty or nine,” Hugo repeated, writing in his notebook. “Please go on.”

  “I bought a cup of coffee and walked around the neighborhood.”

  “You usually drink coffee at night?” He raised his eyes.

  “Sometimes, if I need to stay up late.”

  “And you needed to stay up late that night?” He studied Thomas closely.

  “As a matter of fact, I did. I had to make rounds at the hospital later on.”

  “All right. So you walked to where?” He seemed to stare at something, though under bushy brows it was hard to see where he was looking at.

  “Around the neighborhood.”

  “Around the neighborhood? You were walking for how long?”

  “I can’t remember exactly.”

  “Your best estimate would be?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes,” Hugo repeated with emphasis and wrote in his notebook with a scrupulous intensity. “Then what happened?”

  “I went back to the apartment. I talked to Lana for a while, then I left for the hospital.”

  Hugo abruptly looked down and flipped through some pages of the file, searching for a critical piece of evidence, and as he did so, he said casually, “You had your cellphone with you, didn’t you?”

  The camera seemed to beckon, and he glanced at it, knowing that Hugo didn’t need to look at him to know his reaction, that the camera was capturing the finest twitches on his face, the tiniest beads of sweat that were beginning to form on his forehead. Suddenly, portraying a stone face no longer seemed the best strategy, and so he purposely made a face at the camera. “I don’t remember,” he said finally.

  “But, you usually have your cellphone with you, right? Being a doctor and all.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes I forget. What does this have to do with anything?” Thomas asked but already knew that his cellphone could have been used to track his location.

  “I guess it doesn’t,” Hugo said curtly. “You were at the hospital for how long?”

  “An hour or so. Then I went home.” He made a face at the camera, distorting his face at whoever was on the other end.

  Hugo kept his face to his notebook and wrote furiously, but then he stopped and from the file yanked out a photo and placed it on the table, all without raising his eyes to Thomas. “You recognize this person?”

  The photo was fuzzy and showed a man dressed in black, his head covered by a black hoodie. Thomas felt a jolt so strong that a pain shot out over his chest. Uncontrollably, he cringed, anticipating that the next few photos would show him walking the street. “Why would I recognize this person? Looks like the Unabomber.” He looked up from the photo and saw Hugo staring at him with a stone face.

  “You don’t see anything familiar about this person?”

  “No.”

  “No? How about this?” Hugo flopped another photo on the table, a bit out of focus; it must have been taken from a store’s surveillance camera.

  Thomas scrutinized it and nodded. “That looks like me, taking a walk.”

  Hugo pointed to the photo, near the center, and said, “You were holding what?”

  Nausea rose up in his stomach. “It must have been left-over Chinese food. I was taking it home. I don’t remember.” His voice strained.

  “Chinese left-over? Doesn’t look like a food bag.”

  “Do you have anymore photos to show me?”

  “You should have dropped the bag in your car before you took a walk, shouldn’t you? You did go out to park the car, didn’t you?”

  “I can’t tell you because I can’t remember having anything in my hand. So if you have a photo of me pointing a gun at Lloyd, you’d better show it, because if
you are trying to build a case with a fuzzy photo and a questionable bag, you’re not going to be a detective for very long.”

  Hugo didn’t blink; he simply sat there with an unchanging look. “You’re right, Doctor. You have no criminal record, a clean, honorable discharge from the Army Reserve. If I were to charge you, I’d need a lot more. While you were in the downtown area, you said you parked your car at around 8:30 or 9. You walked for fifteen to twenty minutes. You came back to the apartment and talked to Lana Fauves. So, you had to come back to the apartment around 9:15 or 9:20. Lana Fauves would remember that, wouldn’t she?”

  “Ask her.”

  “I will, since she is the only one who saw you that night, the only who can corroborate your story. But during the time when you were walking, she could have killed him, couldn’t she?”

  Thomas rolled his eyes. “That’s absurd. You’re a real Sherlock Holmes, you know that.”

  “You own several firearms registered to your name. A Reuger 223 AR, an HK .40 caliber handgun, a Beretta .40 caliber handgun, a 0.38 caliber pistol; that is correct?” Hugo was reading from a list.

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll have to turn them in for ballistic forensics.”

  “No problem. I’ll drop them off here, tomorrow. So, we’re done here?” Thomas didn’t wait for a response, and stood up, pushing back the aluminum chair, sending it screeching over the cement floor, and giving the camera a final look.

  “Thank you for coming, Doctor.”

  “Sure,” he muttered and went out. Up the stairs to the first floor, he headed straight to his car; once outside he ran. When he reached the car, a nausea came uncontrollably. Gastric juices bubbled up his esophagus. Against the car he steadied himself, all the while panicking—what if he couldn’t to get to Lana before Hugo Figueroa?

  41

  Leaving the police station, Thomas raced to the apartment. From the street to the front door of the apartment building and finally up the elevator, he went as he had always gone, and nothing unusual struck him until he got to the apartment. He knocked, and as he waited, only now did he realize that his absence over the last few days from Lana had left him out of the loop.

  The door opened with a furtive air, and a woman startled him. He recognized her to be Quattlebern’s secretary, the same woman who had greeted him the day he met Quattleberns in his office. She was in a black dress, neat and close fitting; she was young and very pretty, with her blond hair tied behind her head.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Is Lana in?” he asked and peeked over her shoulder.

  “Oh, Thomas,” Lana called out. “Please come in.”

  A few boxes of paper were scattered on the floor, and stacks of paper crowded the little kitchen table except for a central area where a laptop sat. Lana was hunched and typing. She closed the computer and went to him. Her outfit, a white blouse over a black shirt, imparted a cool professionalism that, together with her keen eyes and slick hair, seemed to have transformed her into a different woman.

  She gave him a kiss and said, “Thomas, this is Margo. Lloyd’s secretary. Thomas Wilde, my friend.”

  “Hi, nice to meet you.”

  “Same here,” Margo replied.

  “She has been very helpful with the paperwork,” Lana said.

  “Here?” he asked and caught sight of the stacks of paper. The top pages looked like spreadsheets.

  “How are you, darling? I miss you. I’ve been so busy putting things in order. I wish we had time to go out for a drink or dinner. Margo and I have been munching on nothing but pizza.” She made motion toward the kitchen where an open pizza box lay. Her familiar sweetness to him jarred against her cool appearance.

  “Paperwork? You used to work with Lloyd, right?” His voice was unconsciously loud. He was puzzled, remembering that she had told him about being asked by Martin to make arrangements, which he had naturally assumed to be funeral arrangements, death notification and things of that nature.

  “Will you excuse us for a minute, dear?” Lana asked Margo, who had been standing there, listening with wide eyes.

  “Oh, okay,” Margo said and left.

  “Thomas, darling. I’m helping to sort out Lloyd’s businesses and to disburse the capital back to the clients.”

  “I know you worked with him years ago,” he said, remembering that she had told him once, but he had no idea of the extent of her knowledge or involvement with Lloyd’s business.

  “Yes, I used to manage quite a few clients.”

  “All right. I understand.”

  “Anyhow, it won’t take long.”

  He suddenly had a sick sensation that this was just the tip of his vast ignorance.

  “Darling, don’t be upset. You can’t possibly be upset with any of this now. Loyd is dead, Thomas. Have some compassion. Let me do what I need to do and then we’ll be together.”

  He frowned. “If it was years ago, how would you still know what to do?”

  “The book keeping doesn’t change. You can have a look if you’d like.” She picked a stack of paper. “Here, take a look. It’s just accounting.”

  He gave it a cursory glance, knowing he wouldn’t understand the numbers anyway.

  “Listen, darling. I really must finish today. But will you come tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Why?” he said curtly.

  “Will you go with me to the police station? I’ve been subpoenaed to answer some questions.”

  “I wonder how many other people they’ll call in for this wild goose chase.” He decided to wait until tomorrow during the drive to the police station to talk to her. Being trapped in the car with her would give him the perfect environment to hash out the details of that night.

  “You told me you went in. How was it?”

  “A goddamn interrogation. You would think they’d be spending their time chasing after the real killer,” he said. He caught her eyes, clear and stern, scrutinizing him.

  “Dominic, Martin too. Dominic told me Dietrich also got subpoenaed. It seems they want to talk to everyone. Just thinking about it fills me with such trepidation. Will you take me, darling?”

  “Of course . . . How are your wounds? Any problem.” He suddenly remembered.

  “Perfectly fine. They’re perfectly healed.”

  Just then the door opened, and Margo poked her head in. “Do you, like, still need me? Or should I go?”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sorry, Margo. Please come back in. We have work to do.” Lana turned to Thomas. “Tomorrow then, darling.”

  That night, Thomas Wilde couldn’t fall asleep until the early hours. Churning emotions built upon one another, adding to the vastness of his ignorance, and the more he tried to figure out and put in place what he had just discovered about Lana, the more confused he became. Mentally, he rewound and re-examined the scene in the apartment, and to his amazement he saw a different Lana. Her demeanor had been carefree, professional, in control, and, despite her usual display of intimacy, an unmistakable air, cool and indifferent, enveloped her. Without Lloyd Quattleberns, the field should be wide open for him, but it was not. A seemingly insurmountable barricade had materialized around Lana over the last three days, something that he could see mostly clearly when his mind finally submerged below the twilight of consciousness. How easily she could take over Lloyd’s business! he murmured to himself, drifting deeper into sleep at last as the sky outside showed a hint of dawn. What about tomorrow? What will she say to the detective?

  The next day, he saw patients in the morning and had to leave around noon. He asked Mike once again to cover for him, and though Mike agreed right away, he noticed the obvious strain in Mike’s voice and knew he had worn out his friend’s generosity. “I’ll make it up to you, Mike,” he said as he headed out.

  Lana was waiting for him at the apartment. In white pants and a colorful silk blouse that reminded him of a Hermès handkerchief, she gave him the impression of being a new person in an old shell, but when she kissed him and held his ar
m as they walked to his car, this sense of a new person made him happy and dispelled the previous night’s conflicting emotions. On the drive to the police station, the future, as much as anyone could claim it, assumed a solid form he could reach out and seize, and she held his hand and gazed at him, further adding to it. They would marry, and if not, they would certainly live together. She had spoken of having a child, who would bind them together forever, before her ovaries were to be removed. However, a final thing stood in the way, and as the car jumped over a pothole in the road, Thomas panicked a little.

  “Listen, Lana,” he said calmly.

  “Yes, darling.”

  “The police station can be very intimidating. There’re all sorts of criminals there. The cops can look scary with their guns and tasers and handcuffs, but don’t worry about any of that.”

  “Yes, but I can’t help it, you know. I have never been to a police station before.”

  “And the detective, Hugo Figueroa, he’s a real character. He’ll try to confuse you. See if he can trip you up. If you’re uncertain about anything, just say you don’t remember.”

  “But don’t you have to answer honestly?”

  “Yes, of course, but if you are uncertain about anything, anything at all, just say you don’t remember. He can’t make you answer. It’s been shown again and again that the cops can sometimes coerce false confession from people by pressing them again and again until they themselves believe something that’s clearly never happened.”

  “Yes, darling.”

  He looked away and a sudden panic kicked his gut. “He’ll ask you about that night . . . He’ll ask you about me. When you saw me. How long I was gone for, you know, parking the car. What we did when I got back.” He turned back to her.

  “I’ll try to remember.” Her hands squeezed the clutch.