Katrina watched me empty two packets of artificial sweetener and two of those little plastic containers of cream into my coffee.
“Do you know when I first realized I loved Tom? On our second date, we met for coffee and he took it black.”
“Not many men do.”
“I thought it was so … masculine.”
Ergo, not many men are masculine. I stirred my coffee. Sipped. Fought the irrational urge to extend my pinkie.
“That’s the thing about Tom,” she said. “He’s overloaded with testosterone. The quintessence of manliness.”
“Like feeling up the waitress on his honeymoon.”
“He always reminded me of a Kennedy. You know, all that earthiness and energy. All that physical and cerebral franticness. The sense that every second is precious, not to be wasted, sinful to waste.”
She sipped her undiluted coffee.
“I don’t know if that’s the secret to all success, but it certainly is the secret of his. His father was only forty-six when he died, Tom’s grandfather fifty-two, and Tom’s always been convinced he is going to die young, like them.”
“Life is a cup to be drunk to its very dregs,” I said.
“Is that a quote?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “Sometimes I say things that sound like they might be, and they very well might be, only I’ve forgotten where I heard it or read it and I think maybe it’s original.”
She laughed. “Well, Teddy, you certainly are.”
“So this offer is just another manifestation of Tom’s cerebral franticness? He’s covering all the bases?”
“He’s an honest man, Teddy. I’m not saying he’s never fudged on his taxes or told his share of white lies, and you already know about the affairs, but he’s no criminal.”
“That you know of.”
“We’ve been married for twenty years. I would know.”
“Okay. Why would someone with nothing to hide be willing to pay twenty thousand dollars for something that would only confirm he has nothing to hide? And if he has nothing to hide, what makes you think you could destroy him with it?”
“Who said I wanted to destroy him?”
“You did. On the phone the day I called him.” I opened the file and showed her my note, which read “Wants to destroy him.”
She studied it for a few seconds, and then she said, “I hope you take that part out before you give it to him.”
“So it’s okay? You don’t care?”
She shrugged. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes.
“He’s moved out,” she said. “I think he’s shacking up with that little whore.”
“Kinsey Brock?”
“Or some other little whore. What does it matter which little whore?”
“So you don’t think he’ll confront you about it?”
“About what? He’s the one shacking up.”
“About what’s in the file.”
“You’re worried about me. That’s sweet.”
“I haven’t been married to him for twenty years. I don’t know him like you do. And maybe you don’t know him, not like you think you do. I don’t know what’s in his past or what kind of paranoia could make somebody offer twenty grand for something his wife already knows. What I do know is that if I accept his offer, I’m going to cover my own bases. I’m going to prepare for every contingency, or at least every contingency that comes to mind.”
I told her about the plan to insert the bogus allegation.
“That way, he’ll be convinced I’ve given all I got. And I’ll do it in such a way that he won’t think it came from you. He’ll think I got it independently.”
“Why does that matter?”
“It matters for the same reason I’ve been maneuvered into selling him the file. Because you could be wrong. You might not know him like you think you know him.”
“And if you don’t sell him the file, he might think I actually do know or you actually do, and somebody might get hurt to protect his secret—is that what you’re saying?”
I nodded. “There’s no way around it now. They don’t buy my story it’s been destroyed. Selling it—and the big lie in it—might be the only thing that buys your safety.”
“And that matters to you?”
“Of course it matters to me, Katrina.”
“Oh my. Say my name again.”
“Katrina,” I said.
“I like the way you say it,” she said.
SCENE NINE
The Sterchi Building
That Evening
Whittaker intercepted me in the lobby. I wasn’t sure, but I thought he was wearing the same suit as the day he confronted me about Archie. He was like a cartoon character—always in the same clothes.
“Mr. Ruzak,” he said.
“Whittaker,” I said. I wasn’t sure if Whittaker was his first or his last name. “My thirty days aren’t up yet.”
“We’ve received reports of a strong odor.”
“What kind of odor?”
“The odor of feces.”
“From my apartment? Have you checked the plumbing? My dog does all his business outdoors.”
“I would think that’s something you’d be highly motivated to lie about.”
“You’re calling me a liar?”
“I’m saying the smell of poop on the third floor is unmistakable.”
“You’ve smelled it?”
“I’ve had reports, as I believe I’ve told you.”
He shadowed me to the elevators. I had my briefcase. I figured I could coldcock him with it. Just lay it upside his head. No witnesses, his word against mine.
“It could be flatulence,” I offered. “His farts are extremely loud and incredibly close.”
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.
“Sorry. I’ve never outgrown it. Words like fart and poop. Titties to a lesser degree. Tickles me even if I’m the one who says it. Fart.”
He stared at me, stone-faced.
“I was wondering if management ever made exceptions to the no-pet clause,” I said.
“Do you have a disability? Are you blind, Mr. Ruzak?”
“In what sense?”
His smile was as tight as his Windsor knot.
“No, the management does not,” he said.
“What about some sort of damage-deposit arrangement? Say a month’s rent.”
“If I make an exception for one tenant—”
“Two months. In cash.”
“Mr. Ruzak, are you offering me a bribe?”
“I just want what’s fair. For you, for me, for the dog.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you got the dog.”
The doors slid open. I didn’t step inside. He’d just follow me.
“Well, I’ve put an ad in the paper. Hopefully I’ll find him a good home before the thirty days is up.”
“The dog must be vacated from the premises, whether you find a good home for it or not.”
“Do you have a dog?” I asked. The doors slid closed. That bothered him; I could tell. Why didn’t Ruzak get on that car? He went shifty-eyed on me.
“I own,” he said stiffly. “I don’t rent.”
“So you do have a dog?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Why are you avoiding the question?”
“Why are you avoiding the issue?”
“My mom died,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“And my dad. I have no brothers or sisters or any family close by. I’m what you’d call between relationships right now. Are you alone, Whittaker?”
“That’s none of your business, Ruzak.”
So maybe Whittaker was his last name and he was going tit for tat with the “Ruzak.”
“You’re asking me to get rid of more than a dog; that’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m not concerned about your personal problems.”
“Well, it sure would be a better world if more of us were, don’t y
ou think?”
I hit the button. The elevator hadn’t moved. The doors opened.
“Are you going up?” I asked. “Or down?”
“I could take that as a threat.”
“Take it however you want,” I said as the doors closed. I called out as I rose, “And he doesn’t poop in the apartment!”
I couldn’t detect any noxious fumes on my floor. I dropped to my hands and knees outside my door and sniffed near the crack. Nothing. I stood up and announced out loud in the empty hallway, “There is no poop.” I was more righteously indignant than I had a right to be. The issue wasn’t unauthorized defecation; the issue was the unauthorized defecator. Still, it bordered on harassment, giving me thirty days, then hounding me over trumped-up charges of illegal dumping. It got my back up. It made me want to fight. Damn you and your Paragraph F, Section Five, Whittaker!
After his walk, Archie removed himself to the far corner of the family room and stretched out on his belly, working on a rawhide chewy while I put the water on to boil for pasta and fried up a pound of ground chuck for the sauce. Even the smell of food couldn’t entice him to be near me. There he sprawled on the far side of the apartment, completely indifferent, not only to the smell of meat, which was hard to understand, but to the struggles of his owner on his behalf. People get pets for their companionship, and I suspected most people get dogs partly because their species’ slavish devotion to us is deeply gratifying. To feel needed might not be as primal a drive as sex or hunger, but there was no doubt in my mind it excites more than a few neurons in our insula. I caught this show about people who “adopt” monkeys to be their surrogate children. They construct special rooms for them, a kind of monkey nursery; they diaper them, push them around in strollers, take them to the playground, prop them up at the dinner table in high chairs, dress them in baby clothes, and pepper them with baby talk. The reporter actually said this about one woman who spent thousands of dollars on one of these creatures: “Since she was a little girl, she had dreamed of owning a monkey.” After all that money and seven years of his mommy taking care of his every need, this creature (a capuchin monkey from South America), turned on her with his two-inch canines and nearly ripped her scalp off. Talk about ingratitude! Off she sent him to the monkey farm. Yet there she was on a visit a couple years later, crying outside his enclosure, trying to get his attention: “Mommy’s here, Jack. Hello, Jack. Come say hello to Mommy, Jack.” While the monkey pointedly, in my opinion, ignored her. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the monkey (who had, after all, been ripped away from his real mommy, stuffed in a wooden crate, shipped several thousand miles, and forced to live for seven years in a diaper, with no monkey friends to play with) or feel sorry for the woman, who was capable of bearing children, according to the reporter, but instead chose to lavish her maternal gifts on a wild animal that no amount of cuddling could domesticate. I suspected there was something a bit more profound at work in her than a simple childhood dream; all those years and all those thousands of dollars would have been better spent on a good therapist.
Felicia called midway through Wheel of Fortune.
“Well, did you get the green light?”
“I did. How old do you think Pat Sajak is?”
“Who?”
“He’s been on this show forever. I thought he was old back when I was a kid, and I’m a long way from being a kid now.” And Vanna White, a woman her age still wearing evening gowns. Each year it was a little creepier, like one of those aging Disney villainesses, the plunging necklines and the frozen, slightly ghoulish, too-big-for-the-face smile.
“Ruzak, turn off the damned TV and talk to me.”
I turned off the damned TV. The ensuing silence was thundering.
“What did she say?” Felicia asked.
“She said he was as pure as the driven snow, so I should feel free to muddy him up a bit.”
“She’s not afraid of catching hell?”
“He moved out.”
“Why?”
“I guess to shack up with the little whore.”
“ ‘Little whore?’ ”
“Katrina’s term.”
“So what did you come up with?”
“I didn’t, but if I had, it would have been something less pejorative, like the ‘other woman.’ ”
“No, Ruzak. The big lie.”
“Oh. I haven’t yet.”
“But you’re working on it between buying vowels?”
“Well, I keep going back and forth. I mean, we don’t want to cross too far into slanderous territory. A felony would be better than a misdemeanor—we’re going for big, after all—but you don’t want something too serious, like child molestation or serial killing. And I don’t want anything connected to Katrina, like poisoning her soup or deliberately giving her an STD.”
“How about drugs? He has a cocaine habit.”
“Drugs would be good, but maybe something nastier than cocaine. Meth or OxyContin.”
“Heroin.”
“Hard to stay a functioning overachiever on heroin.”
“It’s a lie, Ruzak,” she reminded me.
“But the best ones have their own internal logic. Maybe we should go with something more exotic, I don’t know, a little less banal than drug addiction.”
“Tell an addict it’s banal.”
“You know what I meant.”
Archie rose from the spot he hadn’t moved from since I let him out of his crate, took two steps toward the sofa, upon which I lay beached, then froze, as if startled that I was still in the room (Why hasn’t this palooka left yet?). He stared at me, the soggy remnants of the chewy jutting from his mouth.
“Here’s what we do,” I said. “I give Archie to Tommy.”
“Give what to who?”
“Not for real. Bob’s allergic, I know. But I tell Whittaker I’ve gotten rid of him, and anytime he pops in unannounced and finds him, I say, ‘Oh, I’m just pet-sitting.’ ”
“Ruzak, one of us has lost hold of this conversation, and I don’t think it’s me.”
“There’s no prohibition against it. The lease is completely silent on the issue.”
“Oh. You’ve been busted.”
“Whittaker won’t buy it, though. It could come down to some kind of eviction proceeding and they might put Tommy on the stand. I wouldn’t want to do that to a little kid, make him lie like that. Maybe if we convinced him I really did give him the dog, only I have to keep him because Bob’s allergic. Bob could testify to that. Do you think Bob would have a problem doing that? Not telling the truth, but going to bat for me, since we’ve never officially met?”
“Why don’t we apply the lesson we learned from high school biology, Ruzak.”
“What lesson? The only thing I remember is the innards of a baby pig make me nauseated.”
“Nature prefers the simple to the complex.”
“I don’t remember learning that.”
“That’s obvious to anyone who’s listened to you for five minutes. You have this tendency to muck up the works with too much information. It’s like your brain is on constant overload. Get rid of the dog, Ruzak.”
“You think I should?”
“He doesn’t like you.”
Spoken so bluntly, the truth hit like a slam in the solar plexus.
I didn’t argue with her, though. She knew the situation too well and, more important, she knew me too well.
“Maybe he just needs a little more time,” I said, and I wondered if that woman from the monkey report had thought the same thing. Jack just needs a little more time to get adjusted. And then the damn thing nearly ripped the top of her head off.
“You should apply the same principle to the Bates case,” she said. “Keep it simple. Simple and plausible.”
“I thought we were going for outrageous.”
“Go too far and he’ll know what you’re up to. He doesn’t know you like I know you, and he’ll assume no detective would bother putting something so outlandish i
n a case file.”
“Maybe not something criminal,” I mused aloud. “Something embarrassing.”
“Impotency.”
“Homosexuality.”
“Who’s embarrassed by that anymore?”
“When I was a kid, we called them ‘homos.’ ”
She laughed, for some reason.
“A different kink. … He’s into animals,” she said.
“Monkeys.”
“Monkeys?”
“All his life, he’s dreamed of having a monkey.”
“That’s really sick. I had no idea your mind worked that way.”
“I was thinking about them earlier.”
“Oh my God!”
“Not in that way.”
“I’m not going to ask why.”
“It breaks the plausibility rule,” I said. “Who’s going to believe a Nobel finalist sodomizes lower primates?”
“We’re the randiest species on earth, Ruzak. A guy will stick his doohickey into practically anything with an orifice.”
“And some things without one.” Doohickey? “I’ve heard of farm-workers in the watermelon patch.”
“Let’s move on to something else.”
“Illegitimate children.”
“Plagiarism.”
“Internet porn.”
“Gambling.”
“Necrophilia.”
“With dead monkeys.”
By this point, we were both laughing so hard, talking was impossible. Who knew character assassination could be such fun?
SCENE TEN
Outside the Ely Building
Two Days Later
The little guy with the square head and round spectacles fell into step beside me on the sidewalk, and I thought of Whittaker lunging from the shadows in the lobby of the Sterchi. Why was I being bushwhacked so much lately?
“Mr. Ruzak,” he said.
“Mr. Hinton,” I said.
“All done with the research for the day?”
The Highly Effective Detective Plays the Fool Page 5