Love Nest

by Andrew Coburn

  “Yes,” he said. “Get in touch with Alfred Bauer. Tell him I want to see him.”

  “Tell him yourself.”

  “No, you tell him,” he said and pointed to the telephone. “Do it now.”

  Something in his face, the eyes, made her decide to accommodate him. Two steps took her to the bedside table, where she picked up the receiver, struck a button for the outside line, and looked back at him. “Have you ever killed anybody, Sergeant?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever drawn your revolver?”

  “Only to qualify.”

  “Then I’ll tell Alfred he has nothing to fear.”

  Dawson laid his head back and closed his eyes. “You’d be lying.”

  • • •

  Chick gave her a broad smile from behind the desk and said, “I got good news for you, Mrs. Gately. A big group of Japanese engineers checked in. They’re here visiting Raytheon. Rolling Green’s all full, so they came here.”

  “That’s wonderful,” she said with scant attention and added automatically, “Alert the restaurant.”

  “Already did. I wouldn’t forget something like that,” he said, hurt that she had thought otherwise. She continued on toward her office. “Mrs. Gately.”

  “Yes,” she said with irritation, stopping in her tracks.

  “Mr. Fellows is in there waiting. I guess it’s OK he went in. He said it’d be. I mean, I didn’t do nothing wrong, did I?”

  “You never do, Chick.”

  She entered the office, closing the door slowly and firmly behind her. Ed Fellows was pouring coffee for himself, his back to her. “You have a cup here doesn’t match,” he said. She went to her desk and sat down, a weariness invading her all at once. She forced off one shoe and then the other. Fellows breezed forth with his coffee, drew up a chair, and fell carefully into it. On the desk was the crystal dish of pink cupcakes and glazed cookies she had laid out for her earlier visitors. Fellows picked up a cookie and bit off half. He eyed her searchingly. “I don’t like the look on your face.”

  “It didn’t go right. They chopped their offer by fifteen percent.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he said, chewing fast. “They’re playing a game.”

  “No game,” she said. “They’re considering another site, but they’re still interested in this one. Only at their price.”

  “I should’ve been here.”

  “Wouldn’t have helped.”

  “You at least should have had Rollins here.”

  “Don’t tell me what I should have done, Ed.”

  “We’ll get them back,” he said, eating the rest of the cookie. “We’ll dicker.”

  “Won’t do any good.” Her voice was unhurried, un-modulated. “It was take it or leave it. They weren’t kidding.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took it.”

  He did some fast figuring in his head, eyes rolling, thick fingers twitching. “We still make a profit.”

  “Not what I planned.”

  He smiled to make the best of it. “You know what they say about the best-laid plans.”

  “I don’t need to be reminded,” she said with the irony of someone struck down by an unknown hand. “There were three of them, and one didn’t look any more than twenty-five, though he was probably thirty. Hotshots in Brooks Brothers suits. They won’t keep much of the help. They took one look at Chick and gagged.”

  “Not your problem.” Fellows brushed crumbs from his pinstripes and reached again into the dish, this time choosing a cupcake. In his big hand it looked like a fluffy Easter chick, much care needed not to crush it. “You have to be philosophical about these things.”

  “Have I ever not been?” she said, more to herself than to him. Then in a louder voice: “You usually send me something nice from Nazarian’s for Christmas.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “This year make it money.” She pushed back in her chair and swung her stockinged feet up onto the desk. “You have coffee. Where’s mine?”

  He rose on the instant, frosting on his mouth, and lumbered to the service set. He chose the cup that did not match. His head bent over his chore, he said, “Was anything wrong before? Chick said you had to go to one of the rooms.”

  She wondered how much to tell him and then said simply, “A problem with a guest.”

  • • •

  Chick delivered the sandwich and a pot of coffee himself and said, “You’d’ve got it sooner if she’d said something. You hadn’t called, I wouldn’t’ve known.” He dragged a low table close to Dawson’s knees and set the tray on it, fluffed out a napkin, poured the coffee.

  Dawson said, “Who’s minding the store?”

  “A kid from the kitchen. He’s a Puerto Rican from Lawrence, but that don’t make no difference to me. I mean, long as he’s clean and honest.”

  “Mrs. Gately gone home?”

  “No, Sonny. She’s in her office with Mr. Fellows.”

  “Ed Fellows? Does he come here often?”

  “Not much. Just on business. He’s her banker, her money man, but I guess you know that.”

  “You’d be surprised at the things I don’t know.”

  “I know what you mean. People think because I work at a motel I know all kinds of things. I just mind my business is what I do.” He backed off. “You want anything else, phone’s right there.”

  The sandwich was spiced ham and cheese on rye with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. Dawson ate it all. He drank the cupful of coffee and then a half cup more. He felt stiff from the neck down when he went into the bathroom, where he first used the john and then bent over the sink to gargle and to wash his face. Straightening, he smoothed his hair back with wet palms. He tried to read his face in the glass, but it had little to say. Before resettling in the chair, he drew the drapes against the evening dark. He was not asleep but his eyes were shut when a draft of cold air briefly washed over him. Alfred Bauer’s entry into the room, accompanied by the telltale redolence of bay rum, was nearly soundless.

  Dawson rubbed his eyes before opening them. “I don’t know if it’s still hot,” he said, “but there’s coffee in the pot.”

  “Seldom touch it,” Bauer replied. He started to remove his coat but then decided against it. “Chilly in here.”

  “Feels warm to me.”

  Bauer anchored himself in a chair six feet away, near the silent television set. The velvety collar of his dark coat crept up on him. A protective lotion gave his bald head a shine, but his face was dry and paste-colored.

  “Have you been in this room before, Mr. Bauer?”

  “Don’t give me any shit,” he replied without rancor or force. His usually rich voice was hoarse and hollow. Dawson scrutinized him.

  “You’re the fellow was going to grind me up. Looks like somebody’s done it to you.”

  “Don’t breathe easy, Sergeant. I’m biding my time.”

  “It’s good to know where we stand.”

  “We’ve always known,” he said, still without rancor but with a bit more drive. Then he smiled. “Do you know what I was thinking about, driving here? My first piece. Do you remember yours, Sergeant? Eve James, wasn’t it? Mine came late, in the army, somebody’s wife. I opened her, entered her, thoroughly enjoyed her. Then afterwards, when she was dressing, she stared through me as if I didn’t exist. Always struck me as inhuman. Melody was never like that.”

  Dawson had no comment, no reaction other than a compression of the lips.

  Bauer said, “Mel and I had something in common, you probably didn’t know that. We both got off to bad starts. Lousy parents. My father was a prosperous lawyer but a violent man, and my mother unfortunately had an eye for men. He killed her and then himself, forgot about me. I was brought up in a private institution for male orphans with trust funds. In upstate New Hampshire, not a bad place. Overlooked a lake and the green side of a mountain. From my bedroom window I could watch the sun glance off the water. The buildings were brick, the floors marble
. I was there eight years, though it seemed forever, every day the same. I was never mistreated, but never shown affection either. I was just there. Do you know what I mean, Sergeant?”

  “I’m not sure I’m interested.”

  “A man you suspect of murder you ought to let talk. The only good thing at that place, Sergeant, was its physical culture program. The director was a woman. She was in her sixties, but when she got in her tights you’d have thought she was twenty. She drummed it into us every day, nothing more important than your God-given body. I worshipped that woman, but I don’t think she ever knew my name.”

  “All you had to do was tell her.”

  “At that age it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t go on to college. I could have, but I didn’t. Instead I served three years in the army. Never left the States. I was an enlisted aide to a two-star general. I was trained for the position at Fort Lee, Virginia. I learned to prepare and serve drinks and tend to family pets, and to open and close doors after people.”

  “They also teach you how to pimp?”

  “I learned it on my own, for the general, a man with a voracious appetite. I also learned hookers have bigger hearts than other women, long as you treat them right. I always did. I even married one, which I never tried to hide. I’m proud of it.”

  “What happens if you treat them wrong?”

  “Then you don’t know what to expect.”

  “Is that your situation now?”

  “You’re a shrewd fellow, Sergeant, but always a little off the mark. You’d never succeed in my business.”

  “You haven’t always been so successful. You got your picture in the Herald when those health clubs and massage parlors of yours went into bankruptcy.”

  “I waltzed away with a bundle.”

  “But you got busted for promoting prostitution.”

  “All charges were dismissed after long court delays. The Gardella organization gives you juice.”

  “He’s gone.”

  “His sister isn’t.”

  Dawson felt it was his turn to smile. “Is that good or bad?”

  Bauer conceded the point and returned the smile. “Let’s just say it’s not the same.”

  “How did you get your hooks into Rollins?”

  “A town this size, it’s a formula, scientific. You find out the lawyers born and bred here, bound to know people in the right places. Then, long as he’s not stupid, you pick the one with the smallest practice. Small practice means he should be doing better but he’s got a little something wrong with him, some psychological quirk probably. Doesn’t matter what it is, it’s a weakness. You put him on a fat retainer and he’s yours for whatever you want. You become the big thing in his little life.”

  “Rollins introduced you to Paige Gately.”

  “Brought me to her house. Grand old place, plaster falling off the ceiling. I read her in a minute. I told her I needed weight with the planning board, and she said she had a friend. I left the rest to Rollins.”

  “Who was her friend?”

  “You figure it out. Shouldn’t be hard.”

  Dawson reached out and laid cautious fingers on the outside of the coffee pot. “Sure you won’t have any?” he said and poured himself a cup, slopping a little.

  “Nervous, Sergeant?”

  The coffee was no longer steaming but was warm enough to drink black. He took a sizable swallow. “What if I told you I’m wired?”

  “I’d laugh in your face. It’s not what you got me here for, and I’ve got nothing to hide from you. The moment you took Melody into your house, you canceled yourself out. You’re nothing. I look at you and I laugh. I’m doing it now. No, Sergeant, you’re not wired. I got nothing for you. All I got is a dead son and a wife who’s not the same anymore. And here I am looking at the guy who had a hand in it. What do you think is going through my mind?”

  Dawson, feeling strangely at ease, said nothing.

  “I wanted to, I could take you out with my bare hands. I know you’re carrying a piece. I could make you eat it.”

  “For my sake, I hope you don’t try.”

  “I don’t have to. You see, this town is mine. I have a future in it. You don’t. That’s going to grind you down, and something else is going to grind you more. You don’t know in your head who wasted Melody. If my son didn’t do it you figure I did, and if I didn’t do it you figure it was Harriet. I have the worst news in the world for you, Sergeant. You’re never going to know.”

  • • •

  He was alone again in the room, the silence deadly, as if he were the only one in the whole motel. He lifted his coat from the bed and turned back the covers on one side, the white of the pillow and sheets dazzling. He hung his coat in the open closet and switched on the television, though not loud enough to hear. With his back to the screen, he took a deep sip of cool coffee to retrieve himself from a clutch of bad thoughts. Then he picked up the phone and rang the desk. “Give me a wake-up call at seven, Chick.”

  “You staying the night?”

  “No problem in that, is there?”

  “No, none at all, but you don’t have to stay in that room. I can get you another, I’ll bring the key right over.”

  “This will do fine,” he said, loosening his tie. There was a long pause from the other end.

  “What are you looking for in there, Sonny? Answers?”

  “No answers here, Chick. Not even echoes.”

  “Then why you staying there?”

  “I’m too tired to move. It’s as simple as that.”

  He removed his jacket and his holstered revolver and tossed them on the chair Bauer had occupied. Outside it began sleeting. He heard it on the window and parted the drapes a little to look out at it. On the mute television screen youths with godlike looks and girls with active and adventurous legs frolicked on a brilliant beach, the sun a blaze of gold heralding a Coca-Cola commercial. The telephone rang. It was Mrs. Gately.

  “The room is fifty-five dollars. With room service and tax, the bill comes to sixty-eight-fifty. I don’t want you to be surprised when you get it in the morning.”

  “Thank you for the warning.”

  “I don’t need to worry, do I?”

  “About what, Mrs. Gately?”

  “I wouldn’t want to think you might blow your brains out.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Then have a good night’s sleep, Sergeant.”

  • • •

  The sleet turned to snow and gradually back to sleet and by morning was a freezing rain. Harriet Bauer was up early tramping through the woods, each twig and blade of grass a crystal, each step she took a crunch. Under her hooded rain slicker she had on her husband’s bulky Norwegian sweater. Massive mittens kept her hands warm. A man walking his dog greeted her, but she passed him without seeing him. Then she stopped in her tracks and looked back at him with a small, worldly look. “Why don’t you call me later this week,” she said.

  He was a slight man in his seventies. He said, “I beg your pardon?”

  “Beg it all you want,” she said, “it won’t get you anywhere.” She continued on with a firmer tread, a louder crunch, at times a detonation. She passed the man again on her way back but this time ignored him, as if she had never before laid eyes on him or his dog, a retriever that sniffed briefly at her legs.

  When she approached the house she saw her husband staring down at her with sleep-swollen eyes from a bedroom window, his mouth set with concern, his chest bare. Inside the house she pulled off her mittens and shed the slicker. He came down the stairs on bare feet, a towel equipped with snaps fastened around his middle. Lipstick was smeared into his bare chest. When he had come home last night she had greeted him in an open negligee, a ruffled garter belt, and briefs with a lacy front and ribbon ties, and for the first time since their son’s death she had pleasured him with an expertise acquired twenty years ago.

  “I was worried,” he said.

  “Why was that?”

  “You
get up earlier and earlier.”

  “I have to. December days are short.”

  He stepped near her and, as if he could sense her thoughts traveling away from him, took hold of her hands and rubbed them.

  “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “They’re not cold.” She sat on a chair and began taking her boots off.

  He said, “Would you like me to stay home today?”

  “Don’t do it for me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She placed her boots inside the chair, neatly. “Yes.”

  “I’m going to do a few laps in the pool. Will you join me?”

  She shrugged, her face closing up on him.

  “Think about it.”

  “I will,” she said.

  • • •

  Late that morning she placed her son’s stereo speakers in the open windows of his room and fired rock music into the quiet of Southwick Lane. The vibrations reached Porter Road in one direction and Hidden Road in another. At least two neighbors telephoned complaints to the police station. A young officer named Hawes, less than a year on the force, was dispatched to the neighborhood. He heard the thump of music well before he reached the cul-de-sac. It sounded as if it emanated from the trees.

  He rang the front doorbell of the Bauer residence but received no response, hardly a surprise. Who could hear? Since he had no right to enter the premises, he returned to the cruiser and activated the flashing roof lights. Moments later the music ceased. He was back at the front door when it opened and Harriet Bauer peered out.

  He said, “You can’t play your stereo that loud, ma’am. It’s disturbing everybody.”

  She regarded him quizzically while giving a small tug to her loose gym costume, which was stained under the arms and across the midriff. “You’re not the one I want to see.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am?” He cocked his head, his cap slightly too large for it.

  “The detective,” she said coolly.

  It had stopped raining, but the air was raw. The officer’s voice floated out ragged. “Which one’s that? We got a few.”

  She thought for a moment. “The sergeant.”

  “Sergeant Dawson?”

  Her sudden smile showed a mouthful of handsome teeth and cherry red gums. “That’s the one,” she murmured.