The Twenty-Year Death

by Ariel S. Winter

  And I was confused. What two million dollars?

  “I could kill you though. Ooo, my face hurts something fierce, you goddamn bastard pimp. Carlton could have killed me.” She slapped me again. “He could have killed us both. And he doesn’t need to burn a house down to get rid of a couple of bodies, let me tell you.” She was almost laughing now, she was so relieved. “Two million dollars! I knew there was a reason I got mixed up with you. I’d started to wonder, but I knew. I’m a smart one. I always know.”

  We were across University in George Village. A streetlight must have caught us, because I could feel that she was looking at me, and once we were in the shadow of a tree, she pulled around so she was standing in front of me.

  “Oh, baby,” she said, and she reached up and brushed my face and I could feel that it was wet. “Oh, my poor, poor baby.”

  “What...”

  But she pulled me in to her, and pulled my head to her shoulder. She put her hand on the back of my head and ran her fingers in my hair and held me, and it felt good, because my shoulders were shaking, and my face was wet, because, I’m not afraid to say it, I was crying.

  10.

  In the morning I woke up in the hotel’s queen-sized bed next to Vee, and at first I didn’t remember anything about the night before. My head hurt and my mouth was dry and I had a real stiffness, an ache, in my arm, but as hangovers go, this one was mild, and it was kind of nice being there in that bed with a warm body next to me. I pulled back the covers and swung my feet onto the floor. Behind me, Vee rolled from her side onto her back, and I looked at her, her right arm flung over her head, her hair a pool beneath her, her beautiful breasts exposed. And half of her face like a giant blackberry.

  It came back to me then all right. It was like all of the air had been sucked out of my body. I remembered the teardrop of fire that Vee had set down on Joe’s bed, and it made me shudder. I got up and stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the cold faucet in the sink as far as it could go, cupped my hands beneath it, and brought them to my face. The water hit the basin with such force that it splashed my chest as well, getting my undershirt wet. I repeated the process over and over, cupped hands, splash on the face, until my fingers were numb and my shirt was soaked. I turned off the water, and used the sink to prevent me from collapsing.

  In the mirror I watched the water run off the end of my nose and chin. My eyes were frightened. I looked haggard, but I had looked that way plenty of mornings in my drinking days. Hell, I still looked that way most mornings. But my eyes... I made myself look even closer, to see where it was written that I had killed a man, my own son, and burned his body. All I saw was the fear, and that I needed a shave.

  I stood up and pulled the wet shirt over my head, using it to wipe off my chest. The room around me had receded, my insides felt shrunken, my hearing was muffled. I needed to get out. If I stayed in the room, I’d just stew. If I woke Vee, she’d be no comfort, just pissed off that I had woken her. I went back into the bedroom and picked my pants up off the floor where Vee had left them when she had undressed me the night before. They were still weighted down by my wallet and keys and the belt threaded in the loops. I pulled them on, and went out into the living room where I had hung my clothes in the coat closet. I found a new shirt, and put it on without an undershirt, and dug out some fresh socks from my duffel bag, got my shoes on, and went out into the hall.

  The light in the hall was the same, the eternal non-day of electric lights lit twenty-four hours. I needed coffee. I needed a drink. I needed both. I took the elevator down, and stepped into the lobby, where somehow a normal morning was progressing, people coming out of the dining room, checking out at the desk, the doorman helping an elderly woman into a taxi-cab out front, some men sitting with the morning paper and a cigarette in a clutch of couches and easy chairs. I felt as though I were watching a play I didn’t care for. I wanted to scream at them, to tell them they were banal, that their lives would end, and what meaning did they have? How unnatural to sit in a building thirteen stories high made out of materials we couldn’t name and couldn’t say how they were made, in a block of pavement and concrete that someone had had to lay down, where once there had been only nature, and the few people hunting and fishing, just getting by. And sure, having wars. They killed each other too. But they couldn’t conceive of this, a hotel in a city. Yet somebody had, and it was so audacious as to be beyond comprehension.

  But I had to look normal. Natural. A little disorientation was okay; I had a hangover. But nothing was terribly out of the way. I’d feel better once I had some coffee anyway. And the thought made me think about money, how to pay, and I remembered the telegrams I had sent yesterday—could that have been only yesterday?—and I thought I’d better check to see if there’d been any reply, that’s what I would normally do. Right? Of course it was.

  I went to the front desk. The concierge was helping with the morning checkouts, so he was the one who said, “Mr. Rosenkrantz, good morning.” His eyes flicked behind me for a moment, at least I thought they did, and he made this odd little nod.

  “Morning. Do I have any telegrams waiting for me? I’m expecting a couple.”

  His eyes looked at something behind me again, but he had a broad smile on, and said, shaking his head, “No. No telegrams, sir.”

  It was bugging me the way he kept looking behind me, like I wasn’t interesting enough to hold his attention, so when I turned around and there were two men in dark suits almost right behind me, I was surprised. I really was.

  “Mr. Rosenkrantz,” the one on the left said. He was heavyset, a bit of a potbelly, rounded cheeks, with tufts of orange hair showing beneath his hat.

  “Yes?” I said, looking back at the concierge as if for help.

  “Sir, I wonder if you would come with us?”

  My stomach dropped and my headache started pounding. It made it really difficult to think. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “We have news,” the other one said. He was like a movie star, strong jaw, dark brow.

  “We’re Calvert PD,” the orange-haired man said, and I hoped my face didn’t show anything, even as my whole body felt deflated.

  “If you’d just step to the side here, Mr. Rosenkrantz. We want to have a little talk.”

  Just to the side. They weren’t taking me to the station. They weren’t arresting me. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?” I wanted to stall. As long as I was near the desk, the concierge was still part of this, and it couldn’t be too bad.

  “Mr. Rosenkrantz, please.” The heavyset man took a step back and held his hand out to indicate that I should go ahead.

  I went. I didn’t like to, but what else was I going to do. They stayed behind me, but the redheaded man stayed a little to my side, so I could see him out of the corner of my eye.

  “This is fine,” he said, as we came to a support pillar with a large potted plant beside it, and we stopped and I turned towards them.

  “Sir,” the redheaded man said. “I’m Detective Healey and this is Detective Dobrygowski.”

  I looked from one to the other, unseeing, but at the same time hoping that I looked appropriately responsive, the way an ordinary person would if confronted this way.

  “It is with great reluctance and sympathy that I have to inform you that your son has passed on.”

  “What,” I said, blinking rapidly. “What do you mean passed on? I saw him yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, it’s always the hardest thing to tell people.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head, floored. I mean, I knew it before he said it, but hearing him say it was a whole different thing than carrying Joe’s dead body up the stairs. It made it impossible to deny. “What happened?”

  Dobrygowski started, “We won’t know for certain until after an autopsy—”

  I cringed at the word.

  Detective Healey took over. “It appears as though he fell asleep with a lit cigarette and the bed caught fire.”
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  As he said it, he watched me carefully, and that made me shudder, but I figured that was okay. When you lose someone close to you, people act in all kinds of crazy ways, so I figured I was clear no matter what I did, but that didn’t stop it from worrying me. Still, Vee’s plan had worked. That was some relief.

  “We were wondering if you could maybe fill in a little of what happened last night, just for our records,” Detective Healey said.

  Dobrygowski pulled a pad out, and I shivered again.

  “I don’t...”

  “You were there last night. At the house, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah, sure. I mean, I got to the house, but Mary,” I looked him in the eyes, “she’s Joe’s fiancée, they’re getting married,” his lips turned down ever so slightly at the present tense, and that was good. “Mary was leaving, said Joe didn’t want to be bothered.”

  “So you didn’t go inside? You didn’t see your son?”

  I shook my head, stalling for time, while not exactly saying no. My heart was going fast, and my headache was pounding, making the whole room look dull.

  “Because Miss O’Brien said she called your son around midnight, she thought...” Healey looked at Dobrygowski, who nodded, and then Healey looked back at me. “She said you answered the phone.”

  I froze. I’d forgotten that call. I hadn’t even told Vee about that call, and it’s a good thing I hadn’t, because she would have left me to rot.

  “Mr. Rosenkrantz. Isn’t that right? Didn’t you pick up the phone when Miss O’Brien called?”

  I didn’t like the way he said that, like I’d been caught in a lie. But I nodded and hoped I still looked shocked, not frightened. “Yeah. I did. I went back. I didn’t go into the house that first time, but I went back, maybe an hour later.”

  “So that was around midnight?”

  “If you say so. I didn’t look at the time. I was drunk.” And I looked down, as though I were sheepish about admitting I’d been drunk.

  “So you got there around midnight, and you left?”

  “I don’t think I was there more than half an hour. But why is this important?” And I was surprised to suddenly find tears in my eyes.

  “We just like to establish a timeline. It won’t take another minute. Can you go on?”

  I blinked my eyes and swallowed. I was really tearing up. And it’s a good thing I was, but to think that I had more crying in me. I nodded.

  “So you went to see your son, but Miss O’Brien was there, so you left.”

  “She said he didn’t want to see anyone, and I walked down the steps with her. We left at the same time,” I said as a tear fell down my face. I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped my face.

  “I’m sorry to put you through this, Mr. Rosenkrantz,” Healey said.

  Dobrygowski didn’t look sorry. He just had his pencil poised over his notebook.

  “No, it’s good, I understand. I want to know what happened too. That’s my...Joe’s...it’s my only child.” I hoped that wasn’t laying it on too thick, but it was true, and I was really feeling it. I really was.

  “So you went back around midnight...”

  “I went back. We talked for a little bit, drank. He was drunk, I was drunk, and I left.”

  They didn’t seem particularly impressed with this story.

  “If you want to know the truth, he sort of threw me out,” I said. “Our relationship wasn’t always very good. He blamed me for the divorce always. From his mother.”

  “No, we understand. That’s all the same as Miss O’Brien said. I’m sorry to even have to put you through it at a time like this. It really makes us heels, and I hate to do it.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “It’s not all right, but it’s the way it is.”

  I nodded.

  Dobrygowski spoke then. “But why did you say at first that you hadn’t gone into your son’s house?”

  Healey gave him an angry look, but somehow I got the sense that it was a staged look, that I wasn’t quite out of the woods yet. Maybe I wasn’t even close to the edge.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t go in. I said I didn’t go in that first time. I went in the second time, like I told you.”

  “It just seems a little weird to me that you would say you didn’t go in, when you did.”

  “I said I didn’t go in that first time,” I repeated. My tears were gone. I felt worn.

  “Leave it be, Pete. Man just lost his son.”

  Dobrygowski closed up his pad and put it in his inside pocket. “Of course, I’m sorry. Just the detective in me.”

  “You don’t think that there’s any...I mean, that somebody... did...something?” I said.

  The question actually seemed to relieve Healey. I guess that’s the kind of question people ask right up front in cases like these.

  “No, no,” Healey said. “Forget Dobrygowski. We know you didn’t mean anything. But, one last thing. Miss O’Brien said you were here, but you’re not registered. I was just wondering...”

  “I’m staying with...a friend.”

  “Yeah, it was just odd when you weren’t registered, that’s all.”

  I burst a little then. “Why’s it odd? I’m a well-known writer. Sometimes it’s better if people don’t know where I’m staying. There are some crazy people out there.”

  Healey paused before responding. “You don’t have to tell us. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I just don’t like the way this one’s asking me about whether I went into Joe’s house or not when I said I did. And Joe was fine when I left. Drunk, but fine.”

  Healey held out both his hands to calm me. “We didn’t mean anything by it. We know this is a tough thing. We just like to make things clear.”

  I knew I had tripped up then, getting angry like that, but you don’t know what it’s like when you have the police there and they’re asking questions just about something you don’t want them to know. “Well, I don’t like the implications that you think I’m lying or hiding something. My son just died.”

  “We know, Mr. Rosenkrantz. We’re sorry.”

  I rubbed my head, trying to push out the headache. “And you ought to be.”

  Dobrygowski said, “You’ll stay in town until after the funeral now, I take it.”

  Healey looked at him like he could kill him.

  “What are you suggesting,” I started, both hands to my temples now.

  “Mr. Rosenkrantz!” A woman’s voice, and we all three turned. It was Mary, and as soon as her eyes met mine, her face crumpled and she started to cry. I stepped forward, and she was in my arms, her own arms wrapped around me, crying into my chest.

  I looked at the detectives over her head, and even Dobrygowski looked embarrassed. They walked away, and I brought my lips to the top of Mary’s forehead, kissing her, letting her know everything was all right.

  11.

  We held each other for a full minute, which was long enough for me to think about the fact that we hadn’t known each other until the day before, and then—and yeah, I feel guilty about it—that her small young body felt good against mine.

  “Those were the policemen who came to our house this morning,” she said, still pressing her head against my chest.

  “It’s a hard job,” I said.

  “Mommy and Daddy were just impossible, bringing me tissues, and a glass of water, and looking at each other over my head, and walking around like I was going to break, I just had to get out of there.”

  I ran my hand along the hair at the back of her head. “It’s okay.”

  “I knew we had plans for this morning,” she said, her voice cracking, becoming almost a whisper. “I wanted to make things all right with you for Joe.” The crying got worse again, but she was able to pull herself together quickly this time, even if she still held on to me.

  If you think you’ve ever been in a tough place, you can’t even imagine what it was like holding that little girl, as beautiful and sweet as anything, knowing I had
murdered her true love. You can’t even know.

  She pulled back a little, just enough to raise her head so she was looking up at me, but I still had my arms around her, and I was starting to feel excited about her, so close to me like that. “Don’t say I have to go back to them, Mr. Rosenkrantz. I can’t stand another minute of pity, not today. I just need to grieve without feeling like I’m putting on a show.”

  “Sure. You can stay right here with me. Or go anywhere you like.”

  “It’s just that I knew you’d be grieving too. It’s different when the other person is grieving too.” The tears filled up her eyes. “Oh, damn me. All that time this week I tried to be there for Joe while he was mourning. No wonder he was angry. He probably hated me every minute.”

  “Of course he didn’t. Hey, how could he hate you? He was going to marry you.”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes turned down. “I know. It’s only just that it didn’t feel like he was going to marry me anymore. You know? It was kind of like I’d lost him already when Quinn,” her eyes darted to me to see how I would take that familiarity, “when she died. And now I know why.”

  I pulled her against me again and patted her back. “Shhh.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re grieving too.”

  “Shhh. What do you say to some coffee? Do you want to get some coffee, maybe something to eat?”

  She shook her head, rubbing her face on my chest.

  “Should we go somewhere? You need some air.”

  “I just need to lie down.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure. We can go up to my room if you think that’s okay. I just need to go up and...see that everything’s all right.”

  She wiped her cheeks with her hands.

  “Can you wait for me a moment? Will you be okay?”

  She nodded, blinking her tears away. “I don’t know why Joe was so angry at you. I told him I was sure you were perfectly nice, that it was a misunderstanding. I just knew you were. Anybody who’s read your books can see that.”