by Alec Cizak
She picked up the receiver to make sure it worked. The plate on the front instructed her to insert twenty-five cents. “The good old days,” she whispered. She dropped a coin in the slot and dialed. “You better be home,” she said. “Worthless pri—”
“Hello?”
“Daniel?”
“Who’s this?”
She wanted to kill him. “It’s Sarah.”
“Oh, hey!”
She could hear him straightening himself out. She wondered, for a moment, if he was with another woman. That thought quickly evaporated. It was a relic from a time when she still cared about the personal lives of the men she slept with. “Are you busy?”
There was a pause. “Not at the moment.”
“I’m in trouble. Big trouble.”
“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
She wished he had been there, right then, so that she could have smashed the receiver over his head. “I can’t get pregnant. Dummy.”
“Play nice,” said Daniel. “I might find something better to do.”
What a bastard. “Look, baby,” she said, “I need your help. Real quiet, though.”
“What time is it?”
“What does it matter?”
Silence. Uncomfortable. Finally, Daniel said, “Where are you?”
September 13
11:27 p.m.
Daniel Elbow had been watching the Bears on Monday Night Football when his boss Sarah called for a favor. She wouldn’t reveal exactly what. He cussed at himself for most of the drive to Martinsville. When he became deputy prosecutor, he told himself not to get involved with the district attorney. It was impossible, though. Sarah Miles was powerful, intelligent, and sexy. She used everything she had to build a reputation as the toughest D.A. in Indiana. They worked together for ten, twelve, sometimes sixteen hours a day. No man and woman could spend that much time together and not, at the very least, get the urge.
Daniel was ambitious, more so, he believed, than even the almighty Sarah Miles. He wanted to be mayor. Then governor. Then senator. He had his navy suit and burgundy tie already picked out for the day he won the nomination for president from the Republican Party. He was put on this planet, he believed, to save America from the liberal virus he felt made it so difficult to prosecute criminals. Sarah Miles was his ticket. Getting on her good side would take him places. Part of that process, it turned out, involved relieving her stress after particularly brutal days at the city-county building. They met at motels in Plainfield or Avon and sweated out their frustration with marathon sessions in bed.
She told him to drive to the McDonald’s just off of I-37. She had gotten herself in trouble before. Never anything too bad. But Daniel Elbow could not afford a scandal on Sarah’s part. If she went down, he’d crash with her. Politics, nothing else.
When he arrived, he saw her Lexus parked near the trash dumpsters, in the dark. He pulled into a spot on the other side of the lot, got out, and hustled over to her. He noticed the front of her car had been smashed in. It looked like there was blood on the corner of the bumper.
Sarah rolled her window down. She was smoking a cigarette. She was supposed to have quit six months before. “Get in,” she said.
He walked around to the passenger-side and did as he was told. Right away, he noticed her hands shaking more than usual. “What’s going on?”
“I hit somebody. Killed him.”
“Ah,” he said, “you hit someone…And ran?”
She nodded. She looked like she might cry. She never cried. Even when the pressure of work made her walk hunched over, as though she were carrying the entire world on her back, she refused to show any signs of weakness.
“All right.” he thought about it. “Nobody knows the law better than us.”
“Never mind the goddamn law,” she said. “I need you to help me dump the body.”
He wiped his hand across his face. “Oh God.”
“Never mind God,” she said. “We’re going to Brown County to throw the little guy into Lake Monroe. There’s no debate involved.” She put the car in gear and drove back to the highway.
It would take twenty minutes to get to the lake. Daniel wanted out of the situation, needed to think of a way to pin the crime on Sarah, where it belonged, without tarnishing his own reputation. He talked with her to distract her, to bring her around to turning herself in.
“Who is it?”
She lit another Camel. “How should I know? Some midget. I couldn’t see him. I was driving on Meridian, south of the monument. I’m just driving along, you know, and wham! This little guy flies up onto my hood and rolls to the side.”
“Why didn’t you call the police? It was an accident, right?”
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and gave him her I’m Sarah Miles, You’re Nobody, Shut the Hell Up look. “Of course it was an accident.”
“So? You didn’t have anything to hide.”
“I panicked.”
Daniel leaned away from her. “Were you, ah…” He tilted an invisible bottle.
“I told you I quit drinking last year.”
“You also said you quit smoking.”
“Look…” She pointed her cigarette at him, like a weapon. “Cut the third degree. I messed up, I know. I dragged the little guy around to the back of the car and put him into the trunk.” She laughed. “You’d think he wouldn’t weigh so much, being a midget and all.”
“I believe they prefer to be called little people.”
“What the hell does that matter? He’s dead.”
There was no way out. He had to protect Sarah for his own sake. “Anybody see you?”
“I doubt it. It was after rush hour. It was dark. Doesn’t matter now.”
* * *
They wound through the hills of Brown County and turned onto a gravel road leading to Lake Monroe. Sarah explained that she had purchased a chain and three padlocks at a Home Depot in Martinsville. She said she stole a cinderblock from the gas station she had called him from. “All you have to do is help me wrap him up and toss him into the drink.” She pressed the button under the dashboard to release the trunk.
The back of the car rocked. Sarah whipped her head around. “Dammit.”
Daniel heard two thumps on the ground. In his side-view mirror, he saw a tiny man stumble into the darkness.
“Get him,” said Sarah.
Daniel jumped out and ran after him. He could hear the little man breathing and breaking twigs as he scrambled. Then there was silence. A tire iron swung from the darkness and slammed into his knee. “Son of a…” He buckled and tumbled into the dirt. He grabbed one of the man’s legs and tripped him. Daniel rolled over. Bolts of pain charged up and down his body. He found the tire iron and swung blind. Cracked the little man’s skull with one shot. “Hey,” he said, poking the man. No movement. “Shit.” He got to his feet and pulled the man by his shirt collar back to the car. The body was a lot heavier than he thought it would be.
Sarah helped him wrap the corpse in chains and attach it to the cinder block with the padlocks. They waded into the water with it. The air stank of fish. As soon as they could feel the bottom sinking away, they let go of the dead man. The lake wrapped itself around the corpse and dragged it under.
On the drive to an all-night self-service car wash in Bloomington, Sarah said, “I’m going to move for a dismissal of Tom Doyle’s case.”
This surprised Daniel worse than the tire iron had. “What?”
“Some of Tom’s friends let me know why it wouldn’t be a good idea to prosecute him.”
“We’ve got murder one on him. We can put him away for good.”
Sarah raised her blouse and turned her back to him. She made sure he got a good look at the brown and red arrow-shaped imprint in her skin, just under her bra strap. She described how it had felt, to be scorched with a clothes iron by Tom Doyle’s gangsters. “The case is going to be dismissed. That’s all you need to know.”
Daniel stared out the wind
shield. The headlights opened up the road just in front of them. Not too far beyond, there was nothing but cold, country darkness.
September 13
6:07 p.m.
Sometimes Eugene still noticed how people gawked at him. He was thirty-five-years-old. He had been leered at his whole life. Even as a child, when his peers were roughly the same size as him. His head was larger than his body and that caused his classmates to notice he was different. Over time, he accepted that most people couldn’t help but be fascinated by anything they deemed unusual. He assumed it was the same thing that compelled them to slow down and watch accidents on the side of the road. Essentially, they made themselves feel better, appreciating that they hadn’t been born with the same condition.
And this late in life, it wasn’t a condition at all. It was who he was. Eugene Cassell. Folks always asked him the same questions when they got the guts to sit down and talk with him—”Were your parents little people as well?” No, my parents were oversized, like you. “What do you prefer people call you, midget, or little person?” Well, if you know me, call me Eugene. If you don’t know me, why would you even be talking about me?
Then the ha-ha-ha’s. Almost anything he said was considered humorous. He could read a eulogy at a funeral and people would laugh. That, he could never figure out. Tall women gushed when they heard him speak. “You sound so manly,” they told him. Well, that’s probably because I am a man.
More laughter.
He gave up on trying to get along with the oversized world. He dated tall girls in college. They never considered him anything more than a novelty. Once he learned to accept himself, the so-called normal people became oddities to him. Every advantage they had they took for granted. Just when he was ready to settle into a life of loneliness, he met Brenda. She was a little bit shorter than him and had gone through the same stages of realization.
So while the condescending woman at the jewelry shop gushed and awed as he asked her to show him different engagement rings, he ignored her. The only thought on his mind was the look on Brenda’s face. They were going to meet at Bucco De Beppo’s, downtown, later. Nothing trivial, nothing stupid, like putting the ring in her spaghetti. Halfway through dinner, he would clear his throat, wipe his mouth with his cloth napkin. “Brenda,”—he rehearsed it over and over in his mind—”we both know life is a sick joke. That’s what makes our relationship work. Our mutual allergy to manure.” Then he would get down on his knees and take her hand. “I love you and I want you to be my wife and together we can go through life with our middle-fingers proudly aimed at the rest of the world. What do you say?”
Just about any other woman would find such a proposal offensive. Not Brenda. That’s why she deserved to be married, to know that she was loved.
Eugene bought the finest platinum ring in the store. It cost him six months’ salary, but he didn’t care. Money was like just about everything else in life. It went away no matter how hard you tried to hold onto it. The woman who sold it to him said, without being prompted, “We can size it to her finger after you give it to her.”
“Thanks.” He let the assumption slide and put the box in his jacket pocket. Before leaving, he made change for the bus.
He rode the Metro east, to Meridian Street, where he would transfer to a northbound line. He stood by the bus stop kicking at pebbles on the sidewalk. He hummed his favorite song. Then he sang lyrics he had invented to go with it—” Summertime, and the living’s sleazy. Fish are humpin’ and the girls are high…”
He blacked out before fully comprehending the look in the eyes of a woman driving a silver Lexus that roared up onto the sidewalk and knocked him six feet backwards.
A MORAL MAJORITY
Nicole answered the door in beige Capri pants and a tight, black t-shirt. “Harold?” she said. “Ain’t you early?”
The preacher had sweated through the coat of his fine brown suit.
Nicole stepped aside to let him in. “What’s going on?”
“You have something to drink?” Harold paced the small, one room apartment. He stopped at the king-sized bed, looked at it funny, as though he had never been in it, then continued until he came back to the bed and stared at it once more. “Good grief, Nikki,” he finally said. “This place is a mess.”
She ignored him.
Harold noticed a full bottle of whiskey on one of two oak-stained dressers. “Are you going to offer me something to drink?”
“You see that fifth of Jack Daniels.”
The preacher grabbed the bottle, spun the cap off, and drained half a pint from it. Whiskey ran down his chin. “She’s done it,” he said, then again, “she’s done it, Nikki, she’s done it.”
Nicole leaned her back against the door. She pulled a Lucky Strike from a pack she had rolled up in her sleeve. As she walked over to one of the dressers to find some matches, she said, “Who’s done what, Harold?
“Connie Moore. Jesus Christ. She let herself get pregnant. Says it’s mine.”
“Wally Moore’s daughter?”
Harold nodded.
Nicole’s face twisted so much her mouth and her nose threatened to trade places. She found a box of matches and lit her cigarette. “She ain’t but fourteen.”
Harold stopped moving. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Nicole laughed. “I suppose them boys from the lodge who burn crosses out front is right. You Protestant folks is way superior to us Catholics.”
Harold put the bottle back on the dresser and balled up his fists. “Nikki, I’ve got a situation and you’re the only one in Haggard who’d know how to sweep it under the proverbial rug.” He calmed down and opened his hands. “No offense.”
Nicole rolled her eyes and spit when she exhaled. “None took, Pastor.”
“So what’s your thinking on this? What would you do, you know, if you got yourself pregnant from one of your clients?”
“I’d do what I always do. A doctor in Chicago’ll reach in, grab that little monster, and yank it while it’s still cooking.”
“Good grief.” The preacher scratched his head. “Are you talking about an abortion?”
“Pastor, please,” said Nicole. “You going try and tell me you never had a girl scraped out?”
“It’s not legal, Nikki. What would I say if my flock found out?”
“Well,” she said, “you can sit around and wait for the girl to give birth normal-wise.”
* * *
Connie Moore climbed out of her bedroom window and raced across the lawn in front of her family’s tiny house on State Road 53. She wore her blue dress with big yellow roses on the shoulders, the same one she wore to church every Sunday.
She ran to Harold’s Buick, ripped the passenger door open and jumped in. She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek and squeezed his hand. “Thought I wouldn’t ever see you again,” she said. “I mean private like, like this, after what I told you.”
The preacher pushed her away. “You weren’t lying to me, were you?”
Connie shook her head. “Ain’t bled in two months.”
“Okay,” Harold said. “We’ll take care of that problem tonight.”
Connie looked confused.
“We’re going to Chicago. There’s a doctor there who will deliver the baby ahead of schedule.”
Connie’s lower lip shook. “Chicago?” she said. Harold suggested she find something to listen to on the radio. She tuned it to a station out of West Lafayette playing music he assumed had been recorded by the devil. He asked her who the noisy singer was and she told him, “Pat Boone.”
“Let’s try something else,” he said. He pushed the dial to a gospel channel broadcasting from Crown Point. Hank Williams sang “When God Came and Gathered His Jewels.” Harold smiled.
Connie looked out her window. She twirled her dusty-blonde hair with one hand and pulled at her bubble gum with the other. Once, she actually told Harold she wanted to be an astronaut. It seemed crazy to him that she would enterta
in such a thought, even as a joke. He glanced over at her and saw tears crawling down her face. “What are you sniffling about?”
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “I thought God was showing me how much you loved me. Like He showed Mary.”
“Mary was a virgin.”
“So was I.”
“Look, I’m not God. You’re not Mary.”
She cried.
The preacher put his right arm around her. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You’re going to meet a nice, young man someday and he’ll make you honest and you’ll forget all about our time.”
The girl buried her nose into the side of his shirt. He patted her gently, like a small animal.
They passed Gary and East Chicago. The radio drifted into static. They cruised up the Dan Ryan Expressway. Harold turned off on Thirty-fifth Street and idled near Comiskey Park. He looked at the piece of paper with directions to the doctor Nicole had recommended. As he studied them, Connie sat up.
“Baby’s making my boobs bigger,” she said. She peaked down the top of her dress.
The preacher followed her gaze. “I see that, sweetheart.” He put the instructions away and pulled into traffic. “We’re almost there, now.”
They wove through neighborhoods that folks in Indiana would describe as “bad.” The houses had broken windows repaired with pieces of cardboard. The grass in the gardens out front grew as tall as the rusted fences surrounding them. Music coming from passing cars sounded foreign to Harold. Worse than even Pat Boone. While sitting at a stoplight, he asked Connie if she recognized the singer blasting from a polished Cadillac next to them.
“Sam Cooke,” she said.
He turned onto Michigan Avenue and found the building. Parked across the street. The doctor’s office lurked at the top of a three-story building. Nicole told him to have Connie climb the wooden steps on the side facing the alley. He pulled an envelope stuffed with cash from the collection box out of his coat pocket. After explaining to her where to go, he handed her the money. “Knock twice,” he said. “When the doctor answers the door, ask him what seven times seven is.”