by Allen Eskens
“Yeah, and shitty news moves at the speed of light,” Max said. “But still, I had to hear this from the rumor mill?”
“I've testified in front of a grand jury before, Max. It's no big deal.”
“When you're the target, it's kind of a big deal.”
“Maybe I won't be the target when I'm done. Maybe the grand jury is the best way to clear my name and get this shit behind me.”
“Maybe,” Max said with as much conviction as he could muster. “But just in case…have you thought about maybe…meeting with a lawyer?”
Alexander, who had been sitting with his back to Max, now turned to face his brother. “Lawyer up? Are you joking?”
“No, I—”
“Max, what's your first thought whenever some douchebag you busted lawyers up?”
“I know, but—”
“Answer the question. What do you think?”
Max rolled his eyes and sighed. “I think he's got something to hide.”
“Exactly. I'm not doing it, Max. I hear the whispers already. People treat me like I'm a leper. They think I stole drug money like the rest of those fucks. They think I'm a bad cop—me. I'm not giving them anything more to talk about. I am not getting a lawyer.”
“This isn't about them, Alexander. Fuck them. You can get twisted up in front of a grand jury. I've seen it happen. You get your facts wrong, and they'll charge you with a felony just for lying.”
Alexander's voice began to pick up some gravel as he spoke. “You think I need to lie to the grand jury?”
“That's not what I said.”
“You think I'm guilty?” Alexander's knuckles turned white from gripping his fishing rod too tight. “You think I took from the till?”
“I didn't say that.”
“You didn't?”
“Dammit, Alexander, you know I didn't say that.”
“Funny because that's what I heard.”
“I'm just trying to help. I—”
“I don't need your help. I'm not a kid anymore, Max. Just drop it.”
Max inhaled a deep lungful of autumn air infused with the scent of pine needles and dirt and cigar smoke. He considered dropping the subject, but he couldn't shake the feeling that, over the past three months, he'd been watching his brother drown. It was as though he could look below the surface of the water and see Alexander tangled in weeds. He wanted to reach out a hand to save him, but Alexander wouldn't take it. Alexander would suffer almost any consequence rather than admit to a mistake. The more Max tried to help, the more Alexander pulled away—and the deeper into the weeds he sank.
They trolled a little longer while Max let Alexander calm down. Neither said a word as they completed their first pass across the lake without a bite. After Alexander opened his second beer, Max tiptoed back to the subject.
“How's Desi handling all this?”
Alexander answered with a defensive edge to his voice. “How do you expect Desi to be handling this?”
“I would hope your wife has your back.”
“Like you do? At least she isn't accusing me of being a thief.”
“I never called you a thief. Quit turning this around.”
Alexander stared into the water where his line sliced through the rippling wake left by the boat. Max waited patiently for Alexander to finish his answer. Then Alexander said, “It's hard on her…seeing her husband's name in the paper, linked to a big corruption scandal. There's always going to be some fallout from a thing like this, but all in all she's okay.”
“Desiree's a tough one, all right,” Max said, doing his best to sound convincing. He knew Desiree Rupert well enough to know that Alexander was lying. In the best of times, Desi could shine with the brilliance of the finest lead crystal. To the casual observer, she seemed the perfect catch, a woman of beauty and stature—old-money roots. But Max knew her from close up. He'd watched her turn brittle and thin under pressure. He remembered how she sparkled at the ceremony when Alexander received his Medal of Valor, charming every dignitary in the room. And then she turned around and made Alexander hobble through the rain with a wounded hip to fetch their car, so that he could pick her up at the door—lest she get her hair wet. Max often wondered if Desi had been just one more mistake that Alexander refused to concede.
“Sure,” Alexander said. “In a couple of weeks this'll all blow over and everything will be back to normal.”
“Absolutely,” Max said. “But in the meantime, you know that I'm here for you. Don't you? I mean if you mess with one Rupert, you mess with both…right, Festus?”
Alexander looked over his shoulder and tipped his beer toward Max.
Max said no more. He downed the last swallow of his beer and let the tension sink into the water beneath them. He had done what he came to do. He had let Alexander know that if push ever came to shove, they would always be the Rupert boys. He opened a new beer and let the subject drift away. For the rest of the weekend, they would think of nothing more taxing than which of the brothers would catch the bigger fish.
Lately, Desiree Rupert had been putting in extra hours at work, and she was already gone before Alexander woke up on Monday morning. With a cup of coffee in one hand and a breakfast bar in the other, he headed out the door. As he walked through the garage toward his car, a reflection caught his eye, and he saw his silver tie clip on the concrete floor. Without giving it a second thought, he picked the tie clip up and put it in his pocket.
As he drove to work, his mind wandered from topic to topic: his cases, his weekend at the lake, the shroud of gloom that would again greet him at City Hall, but he found himself returning to the tie clip. How had it fallen onto the floor of his garage? He'd gotten that tie clip, a silver bar with his initials engraved in it, from Desi for an anniversary years ago. He tried to remember the last time that he wore it.
He found it lying on the floor of the garage near where the passenger door of Desi's car would have been. Had he left it in Desi's car and it fell out? No. He'd seen it in his sock drawer recently, he was sure of it. He never wore it to work, preferring to save it for special occasions. As he parked at City Hall, the tie clip in his pocket burned against the skin of his thigh. He stepped out of the car and pulled the clip out. The silver face of the bar bore no inscription—no initials. Instead, he found a tiny diamond in the center of the bar. This wasn't his tie clip.
By the time he finished his slow march to his cubicle, he'd worked through a dozen different scenarios, none of which explained this tie clip being on the garage floor. He'd been away at the lake with his brother all weekend. She was home alone—or should have been. She never mentioned having company. But in the thick silence that filled their lives since the fall of the Task Force, a visiting relative might be something she would fail to mention. Her father occasionally came by after church. He was the kind of man who would wear a tie clip with his suit. Had he stopped over? Or maybe a colleague, or her boss? But why would they be in the garage? For that matter, why would they be there when Alexander was away?
He spent the morning staring at the clip, trying to find an explanation that didn't take him to a dark place, but he found that task nearly impossible.
He thought back to the conversation that he and Max had over the weekend. He thought, particularly, about that carefully worded question that Max had asked: “How's Desi handling all this?”
If Alexander had been honest with his brother, he would have told Max about the fights and the silences, about the fragile truce that allowed the subject of Alexander's entanglements to go unmentioned. He would have told Max about how Desi had taken to spending some nights in the guest bedroom, claiming that the mattress there fit her needs better, an excuse that neither he nor Desi cared to explore. If he'd been honest, Alexander would have mentioned that it had been weeks, maybe months, since Desi touched him with anything approaching affection. It was as if he and Desi had holed up in their separate bastions, leaving enough distance between them to absorb everything that they left unsaid.<
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Alexander must have picked up the phone twenty times that morning, intending to call Desi, to ask her about the tie clip, but every time he went to dial her number, he stopped. He was afraid of what he might hear: the unmistakable hesitation of deception in her voice, the excuse, the story that would only sound plausible because he wanted it to be true. He didn't call because he feared that what she might tell him would crush him.
Desi's marketing-research firm was in the IDS Center—the grand dame of the Minneapolis skyline—a mere six blocks away. They used to meet for lunch almost every day when they were first married. They would take the skyway—a series of hallways that float above the traffic of downtown Minneapolis—and meet each other at a deli in the middle for a quick bite. Although it had been some time since they met for lunch, they were still a mere six blocks apart.
As noon crept closer, the detectives began to slip out of the Frauds Unit in small clusters on their way to lunch. The graying skies had been threatening rain all morning, and now Alexander could see droplets tapping the window. He wouldn't call her. That he knew. No. He would bring the silver tie clip to her office and lay it on her desk. He would watch her reaction and wait for an explanation. He would know the truth by the look on her face. He put the clip in his pocket and headed out of City Hall before he could change his mind.
The skyway brought Alexander to the IDS Center where it opened onto a second-floor balcony overlooking the vast lobby called the Crystal Court. It had glass walls and a ceiling built into squares to catch the sunlight. They rose in terraced layers that gave one the feeling of being inside the core of a god-sized geode. People in suits crisscrossed the atrium, mixing with the gawkers and tourists. The lunch-hour crowd was nearing full chaos.
Alexander made his way toward the elevators, keeping a curious eye on the activity in the courtyard below. He came to a stop when he saw his wife, Desi, standing in the middle of the courtyard, looking at a piece of artwork, her arms folded across her midriff. She gazed intently at some abstract weave of primary colors painted on an unframed canvas, her head tilting slightly as she considered the piece.
She wore a black suit with a bright, crimson blouse that drew attention to the soft, tan skin of her throat. Her long, black hair caught the light in such a way that it cast a shine that he could see from his perch on the balcony, a good thirty yards away. He started to raise his hand in a wave, to call her attention to him, but stopped when he saw a man stride up behind her with quick, confident steps. The man wore a well-tailored suit, the kind of suit that called for a silver tie clip. He placed his hands on Desi's shoulders and smiled as he leaned forward, his face disappearing behind her hair, his head tipping as though whispering something in her ear or…kissing the nape of her neck.
Alexander blinked hard to clear his eyes, focusing his complete attention on his wife and that man. Did Desi lean back? Arch into him? The movement was so subtle that Alexander couldn't be sure. Desi turned around, and the man leaned into her again. Just then, a maintenance worker passed by them, carrying a ladder, blocking Alexander's view of his wife. Did they kiss? They were so close to one another.
Alexander held on to the rail of the balcony, feeling as though the bones in his knees were melting. He stopped breathing. He couldn't move. He stood numb as he watched his wife—the woman he swore to love until her death—walk out the front door of the IDS Center and climb into a cab with another man.
A light drizzle gathered on the tips of Alexander's hair, the droplets growing in size until they fell cold on the back of his neck. He stared over the side of the Third Avenue Bridge, looking down at the Mississippi River at a place where the run divided into two contrasting temperaments. To his left lay the calm upper basin of the St. Anthony Falls Lock and Dam with ducks paddling across a smooth surface that reflected the dark clouds above him. To his right, the river boiled and seethed where a powerful spillway hammered the water into coppery foam before it thundered over the apron of the waterfall.
A jump from that spot on the bridge would be fatal, especially after the undertow at the bottom of the falls finished its work.
A slight wave of vertigo washed over him as he fixed his gaze on the convulsing water. He gripped the steel rail of the bridge with both hands and felt the vibrations of the vehicles that passed behind him. The smell of river water and mud and fish and tree rot rose from below, where it mixed with the scent of city streets and truck exhaust.
He couldn't recall the exact path that brought him to the center of that bridge. He remembered watching the toes of his shoes jut out in front of him, one step after another, clapping down on the wet cement as he walked. And much like a sleepwalker waking up in the wrong room, at some point he stopped walking and looked around to find himself in the middle of the Third Avenue Bridge.
He closed his eyes and tried to pull clarity from the static of his brain, but one thought drowned out everything else: the image of his wife leaving the IDS Center with the man in the suit. The man had put his hands on her shoulders, pulled her into him. She didn't act startled. She was expecting him, waiting for him. She smiled when she saw him. Had they kissed? No. That wasn't a kiss. It couldn't have been. But she had smiled at the man—smiled in a way she hadn't smiled at Alexander since…
A torrent of mental images and accusations flooded his mind: the grand-jury investigation, the accusatory whispers that floated through the halls of the police department, the newspaper article that carried his name, stamped with the headline: POLICE CORRUPTION. A cold dread wrapped around his chest and squeezed.
Then, through the calamity of noise and pain, Alexander heard Max's voice, a vestige from the past, telling him to “square up.” The memory emanated from a time when he and Max both wrestled in middle school. Max told Alexander that if things ever got out of control, he should square up—get to his hands and knees, get stable, focus on taking control of just one thing. Once he got squared up, life would slow down. He could take stock—plan the next move instead of reacting to the other guy's attack. Hearing that voice from the past eased the panic that had gripped Alexander's chest.
“Get control of one thing,” he muttered under his breath. “Quit reacting. Don't let them dictate the outcome. Square up. But how?”
He emptied his mind of the dark images and let it wander until his thoughts found their way to a picture that he kept in his desk drawer, one taken on the night he was awarded the Medal of Valor. It was a picture of him, Desi, and Max standing with the mayor of Minneapolis. The mayor had called Alexander a hero that night, embellishing only slightly as he told the story of Alexander getting shot during a drug sting that set records for the amount of methamphetamine taken off the streets and the number of dealers arrested.
Desi had been so proud of him that day. She brought her entire family to the ceremony. She beamed with pride as she shook the hands of the commanders and congressional leaders. She even blew Alexander a kiss as he walked—cane in hand—across the stage to receive his medal.
Max also looked at Alexander differently that evening. Alexander was no longer the tagalong brother trying to compete in his big brother's world. He had become a hero all on his own—with no help from Max.
Alexander thought back to that day and realized that, more than anything, he wanted to feel that pride again, to see his own goodness in the way his wife and his brother smiled at him, to feel his potency in the touch of his wife's fingers. He had been on top of his game. He was a hell of a good detective, a man adored by his wife and slapped on the back by his peers. He wanted that back.
He leaned into the cold, steel rail and stared at the river below, mesmerized by the water's violence. How had he come to be that man on that bridge? Where had he gone wrong? How could he get back what he had lost?
The screaming in his head was gone now. The dark images had fallen into the rush of water below him, and his breathing had settled back into his chest. There were many things outside of his control, he thought to himself, but being a good de
tective—that he could do. Everything else would flow from that, just as it had before. His wife loved him. His peers respected him. His brother looked up to him. He had been there before—he could get there again.
Then he thought of the Putnam file. Something about that case called to him. Alexander could see a level of sophistication and deception that made that case a nugget of gold in a pan full of gravel. If Alexander was right, then the true James Putnam was dead, and the smart money would bet that he had been killed by the man driving the Porsche. There had to be so much more to that story. How had the imposter killed Putnam? Where did he kill Putnam? Why? The case had merit, and it had dropped into Alexander's lap because no one else wanted to interview that blowhard attorney, Dogget. But now it was Alexander's case.
Alexander started his walk back to City Hall, his mind absorbed by the questions raised by the Putnam case. Why would a man steal another man's life and identity, unless he needed to hide? What kind of evil was he hiding from—or maybe he was the evil and the new identity was his only escape from swift vengeance. The Putnam case might have a simple explanation, but Alexander's instinct told him otherwise.
When Alexander arrived back at his cubicle, he grabbed the Putnam file and pulled the birth certificate showing that James Putnam was born at New York Methodist Hospital. If Putnam had grown up in Brooklyn, he would have left a footprint there. Alexander began calling around to confirm the existence of James Putnam. With each new phone call, he gathered a few more traces of life—school records, his name in the newspaper for being a runner-up in a spelling bee, his high-school graduation notice—small traces but proof nonetheless.
When that line of the investigation dried up, he decided to pay a visit to Ianna Markova, the “hottie” that brought the case to lawyer Dogget. It made sense that she should know something about the real James Putnam, even if she didn't know that she knew it.