Falls the Shadow

by William Lashner

  “That it?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Good, then maybe you can leave us be. You hovering there all fat and goofy like a piñata makes it hard to concentrate on anything other than banging your head with a baseball bat, not that I need much concentration to beat this fool.”

  “Take this,” said Simpson, moving his knight with a flourish.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” said Horace, smacking down the horse with a bishop from the corner.

  “Damn,” said Simpson.

  Isabel Chandler was upstairs in the apartment with Julia and Daniel Rose. The place was a jumble of cardboard boxes and black plastic garbage bags stuffed full.

  “We’re moving,” said Julia, beaming. Daniel sat in her lap in shorts and a clean, long-sleeved T-shirt, his head pressed tightly into her neck. “Randy found us a place in Mayfair, like he had been trying to. It’s closer to his job, and there’s a room for Daniel. The school there is supposed to be really good.”

  “That’s great,” I said, wondering why Daniel was hiding from me.

  “Julia has been showing up at most of her parenting classes,” said Isabel, her file open on her lap. “I’ve told her that we expect her attendance to improve, and she promises it will. And Daniel’s teeth are doing really well.”

  “Smile for me, Daniel,” I said.

  Daniel lifted his face from his mother’s chest and, with sad eyes, bared his new teeth for just an instant, before burying his head back into his mother’s neck.

  “You’re moving when, exactly?” said Isabel.

  “Next week,” said Julia. “The new apartment is already empty. Randy’s been spending nights fixing it up for us, using paint the landlord supplied. Powder blue.”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Why don’t we set up an appointment with one of our pediatricians in the area,” said Isabel, “so the doctor can get a jump start on monitoring Daniel’s progress.”

  “Do we have to? Can’t we get settled first?”

  “I think we should set it up now. How’s Daniel’s health been?”

  “He’s been gaining weight,” said Julia. “He’s eating more. It must be his teeth. That doctor, Dr. Pfeffer, he did such a wonderful job.”

  “He’s a helpful guy,” I said. “Make sure you follow his instructions.”

  “We are. Randy is being especially attentive. Everything is going so well.”

  “I’m happy for you, Julia. I really am. Do you mind if I take Daniel for a walk down to the park while you finish up?”

  “We’re pretty much done, aren’t we, Miss Chandler?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why don’t we all go?” said Julia. “Daniel could use some fresh air, and so could I.”

  “Grand,” I said.

  We made an odd group walking down the street toward the park. Isabel and myself in our suits, Julia in jeans and a T-shirt knotted at her side, Daniel holding tightly to her thigh. It seemed evident from the clothing and the group dynamic that Isabel and I were representatives of the state, there to monitor and judge the singular relationship between mother and son. Frankly, I didn’t like the role. Who was in worse shape to judge the mother-son relationship than I? It had taken me years to get up the courage to reestablish a relationship with my own mother, and still, the possibility of her calling in the middle of the night left me gasping. And who was I to judge anyone’s relationship with a child, when all I really knew about children was that they sometimes messed up my suits? But there I was, and it seemed that Julia had finally gotten serious about doing what was required to properly take care of her son. Was I deluding myself to think that maybe my mere presence on the scene, looking out for Daniel’s interests, was having a positive effect? It almost made me feel…What was the word I was going for? I couldn’t grab hold of the exact word, but all of it made me feel…something.

  Damn, maybe this pro bono stuff didn’t blow after all.

  At the park the three adults sat on a bench and talked about Julia’s plans for her son as Daniel wandered aimlessly around the equipment. At one point he started climbing on the jungle gym, bracing himself with his knees, reaching up to a higher bar with his left hand. And then he stopped and carefully climbed down again.

  “I’m going to have a little talk with Daniel,” I said.

  He was standing by the seesaw, gripping the handle in front of one of the seats, pushing it up and down.

  “How’s it going, Daniel?”

  “Okay,” he said without looking at me.

  “Are you excited about moving?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t sound excited.”

  “I like it here.”

  “It will be nice there, too.”

  “What if she can’t find us?”

  “Who?”

  “You know.”

  “Tanya?”

  “How is she?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t found her yet, but I’m still looking, and I’m getting closer. I’m going to find her. And I’ll know where you’ll be, Daniel. I’ll bring her to you.”

  He turned his head and stared at me. “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He doesn’t like her.”

  “I know. I’ll be careful. But what about you, Daniel? Does he like you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He turned away from me again, ambled over to the slide, rubbed his left hand on the shiny metal. I looked over at Isabel and Julia on the bench. Isabel was on her cell phone, her file open on her lap. Julia was staring at Daniel with a troublesome worry on her face. She stood up and started walking toward us. I stepped over to Daniel and situated myself so that the boy was shielded from his mother.

  “What happened to your arm?” I said.

  He drew his right arm close to his body. “Nothing.”

  “Let me see it, Daniel. Please let me.”

  “Nothing.”

  I stooped down, gently took hold of his wrist, pulled his arm until it was straight out from his body. He winced.

  “Did you hurt it playing?”

  “No.”

  “Did you fall off something?”

  “No.”

  “I’m going to roll up your sleeve, okay?”

  “No.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, and then I did, and in that moment something shifted inside me.

  “He burned it on my cigarette,” said Julia, standing now right behind me as I continued to stare at Daniel’s arm.

  “I didn’t know you smoked, Julia,” I said, still stooping before Daniel, still holding his wrist, brushing the hair from his forehead so I didn’t have to look anymore at the arm.

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “I know Randy smokes.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I don’t understand you. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to understand, but I just don’t. First you give away Tanya, and now this. It doesn’t even matter that they are your children, I don’t have any of my own, so I won’t even try to figure out how that must feel. But it is enough for me that they are children and they needed someone, and what they had was you. They needed you to protect them, and you turned away.”

  “It was an accident, I tell you.”

  “There are three burns healed to varying degrees. This last one is an open sore. All three are just the size of a lit cigarette tip. This was not an accident.”

  “We’re going home now,” said Julia.

  “No,” I said. “No, you’re not.”

  “Come on, Daniel,” she said. She reached out for her son.

  Daniel looked at me and didn’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” said Isabel, coming up to us now, still clutching her file, cell phone open in her other hand.

  “Call the police,” I told her. “We need a patrol car and a detective from the Special Victims Unit here right away. And we need to find some safe place for Daniel to stay.”

  67

  I was late for my dat
e with Carol Kingsly.

  What with the police and the paperwork, the arrest warrant sworn out for Randy Fleer. What with returning to Julia’s apartment and packing up Daniel’s clothes in a spare black garbage bag and driving him to Social Services, where Isabel worked the phones to find him a foster home. What with going along with Isabel as she drove Daniel to the house of a nice, smiling couple, parents of two older children, who had volunteered to take a foster child on an emergency basis and had already been interviewed and examined and prequalified. What with all that, I was late, yes, I was late. But I didn’t think it was anything to cry about.

  Obviously I was wrong. Because there was Carol Kingsly, at our table in a crowded little restaurant called Rembrandt’s, a place not far from the great blackened hulk of Eastern State Penitentiary, with a half-drained glass of white wine in front of her, and she was crying.

  “What’s going on?” I said as I sat. “I’m not that late, am I?”

  She just waved away my question and tried to compose herself. She wasn’t doing a whole sobbing-out-loud thing, which would have been really uncomfortable. It was more a soft, contained cry, like her cat had died or something. Except Carol Kingsly didn’t have cats.

  “Carol?” I said. “Are you okay?”

  She gained control, expertly wiped her eyes with her fingertips, leaving her mascara intact. “No,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What happened?”

  “I received some really bad news. I’m not okay.”

  A bolt of terror slashed through me. She had some sort of disease, I could tell. She had cancer. I was sure of it. I had a vision of Carol Kingsly in her hospital bed, her limbs withered, her head shaved, looking up at me with sunken eyes. Gad. Looking up at me with the expectation that I would care for her. Me. Somehow now she was my responsibility? We had only been going out for a couple of weeks, I didn’t even like her all that much, and still I was on the hook? What were the rules on that? And with whom could I lodge my appeal? I had the almost uncontrollable urge to excuse myself, to stand up, step outside, and run like the wind. When it’s fight or flight, my first impulse is always to gallop the hell out of there. But this time I gripped the edge of the table, pressed myself back into my seat, tried to not show my terror.

  “What is it?” I said. “Something serious?”

  “Very.”

  “Tell me. What?”

  “Remember I told you about my yoga instructor, Miranda? Who recommended I start going to Dr. Pfeffer?”

  “Your yoga instructor?”

  “She’s very concerned about me. She said I looked out of sorts, and after class, she gave me a private reading. What she found was terrible.”

  “Your yoga instructor?”

  “Yes. Victor, the quality of my chi has turned. The energies of the five elements are not interacting within me in a positive way. Everything’s feeding upon itself. Water extinguishes fire, fire melts metal, metal cuts wood, wood controls earth, and earth absorbs water. Do you see?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “My life is out of balance. Do you know feng shui?”

  “All that mumbo jumbo about where to place the couch?”

  “It’s not mumbo jumbo, Victor, and it’s about more than interior design, though the interior-design part of it is really lovely. But it’s also about keeping a balance in every part of your life.”

  “And your life is out of balance?”

  “So she says. I have to make a change, or the destructive energy is going to cause serious damage to all my chakras.”

  “Okay,” I said. “That’s okay, Carol. Stay calm. It’s not a disaster. We’ll make some changes. What is the problem? Is it your job?”

  “No.”

  “Your apartment?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you need a new car? An upgraded wardrobe?”

  “Do you think I need an upgraded wardrobe?”

  “Well, you always say there’s not much a new pair of shoes can’t cure.”

  “It’s not my shoes, Victor.”

  “Then what is it?” I said, like a dope.

  She sat and stared at me for a moment, and tears again began to fill her eyes.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Does this mean now? Right away? Can we at least have dinner?”

  “I’m sorry, Victor. I’m so sorry. But I felt that things weren’t exactly perfect with us, even from the start. And you must have, too. There was always this distance between us. I tried, I thought maybe time might help. But now Miranda tells me that I don’t have so much time. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I,” I said, and surprisingly, I was.

  I had never given Carol a real chance, and that was a crime, because if I sensed anything about her, it was that she had a true and yearning heart. Maybe she was too pretty for me, too well dressed, too obvious in her attempts to find answers where there are no real questions. Or maybe she was too damn connected with Dr. Bob. But whatever it was, I had never really made the effort to see her clearly. She had seemed to me like a finished product, picking a man the way she picked a blouse, trying to find something that matched her sense of style, but I think I was wrong in that judgment. She was no different from the rest of us, searching for something solid to hold on to in this world. I don’t know if I could have been that for her, or she for me, but I had blown any possibility of our finding out.

  She downed the rest of her wine, wiped a tear from her cheek with a knuckle, gathered her things, clutched her bag to her chest as she stood. I stood, too. It seemed the polite thing to do.

  “Good-bye, Victor,” she said.

  “Good luck with your…whatever.”

  “My chi.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Thank you,” she said before she started walking off.

  “Carol.” She stopped and turned. “I’ve got something I want you to have.”

  I reached up to my collar, loosened the knot of my yellow tie, untied it, held it out to her.

  “Victor, that’s yours.”

  “It’s not really my color. Keep it as a memento. Or give it to your friend Nick. He could use a neckwear upgrade. Take it. Please.”

  She looked at me for a moment and then took the tie. She closed her eyes as she rubbed the silk against her cheek. Tears welled, and I wouldn’t have been surprised had I heard the sweep of violins.

  “We’ll always have Strawbridge’s,” I said.

  Damn, I thought as I watched her walk out of the restaurant and out of my life, she sure is pretty.

  And then something caught my attention at the bar on the other side of the restaurant. It was an old man, tall and dapper, staring at me through the bar’s entranceway.

  Whit.

  He stood there and stared until he was sure I had seen him, before following Carol out the door. I suppose he figured he didn’t have to stay, that just his presence left enough of a message. This wasn’t simply the inevitable ending of a tepid affair, though it was certainly all of that. This was also another shot across my bow. Dr. Bob, my dentist, had told his patient, Miranda, the yoga instructor, to instruct Carol Kingsly, my sort-of-fulfilling sexual relationship, to give me the boot. And Whit, my old friend Whit, had shown up just so I got the full impact of the message.

  The D.D.S. giveth, the D.D.S. taketh away, blessed be the name of theD.D.S.

  I sat back down at my table and was thinking it through, the breakup, the warning, the sacrifice of my tie, the increasing amount of pressure being brought to bear, when the waitress appeared at the table.

  “There’s only one of you now?” she said.

  “Afraid so.”

  “So what will it be?”

  I looked up at her. She was pretty cute actually, short orange hair, black lipstick, a stud in her nose. She looked like she might be fun. I know she was only a waitress, and men are helplessly attracted to waitresses, it is something in our jeans, but still, it was a pretty good sign. I g
uess it hadn’t taken me too long to get over Carol.

  “Let me have a hamburger,” I said, “and burn it.”

  They have damn good hamburgers at Rembrandt’s, and I suppose, after being pushed around once again by Dr. Bob, I was in the mood for charred red meat.

  68

  A professor in law school used to tell us that we, as lawyers, were like gods of creation in the courtroom. Nothing existed unless we chose to show its existence. We picked the evidence, we picked the witnesses, we framed the questions, we created the universe of the trial. The next day in court, I was one angry deity, ready to shift that universe on its very axis, and I felt, strangely, up to the task.

  I was feeling more myself than I had for weeks. I was bursting with energy, my mood was brighter, I had a little bounce in my step. What was the cause of my newfound confidence? Let’s put it this way: Popeye needs his spinach, Queeg needs his strawberries, Sauron needs his ring. And me, I suppose I need my red polyester tie. With my old friend rescued from the bottom of the sock drawer and back around my neck, I was ready to rumble. And my tag team partner that day was our criminalistics expert, Dr. Anton Grammatikos.

  You want your expert witness to be tall and gray and well spoken, or maybe short and energetic and familiar to the jurors from the O. J. Simpson trial, or at least someone who doesn’t look like he’s ready to sell you a used car at a steep discount. Which is why Anton was available at a moment’s notice and a pauper’s price. But the thing about Anton Grammatikos, despite the underwhelming impression he made on the witness stand, was that he really knew his stuff.

  “Your Honor,” I said after I had exhaustively questioned Anton on his credentials, which, despite his checkered sport coat, unshaven face, and truck driver’s manner, were quite impressive, “I move to qualify Dr. Grammatikos as an expert in the forensic sciences.”

  “Any objection, Ms. Dalton?” said the judge.

  “Could I ask just a few questions on his qualifications, Judge?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Mia Dalton winked at me as she stood up. “Dr. Grammatikos,” she said, “I understand you have written a book on the forensic sciences, isn’t that right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “It’s like one of those educational books, you know, like Golf for Idiots and Piano for Dummies.”