by Lee Goodman
“Who?” he said.
I opened the door a crack, stuck my arm in, waving the flask.
“Granddad,” Upton said, “you’re always welcome here.”
I went in and poured us both a shot. Neither of us is really a drinker, but in each other’s company, we like to flout propriety with this act of rebellion. It has become more important and more frequent since the schoolmarmish Pleasant Holly replaced the crusty Harold Schnair. Harold used to have a nip with us sometimes. Pleasant, if she knew, would send us photocopies from the relevant pages of office “regulations and guidelines” and would probably refer us for alcohol screening.
Janice knocked on Upton’s door. “Fax for Nick,” she said.
It was from Chip: the summary of evidence relating to Subsurface that the Bureau had found in Jimmy Mailing’s place. Upton and I read through it together. Chip had been right. There were a few things we might be able to use. The last page of the fax pertained to items found in Mailing’s car and on his person, including his phone.
I tipped us another shot. The workday was over.
The next morning I got up and went downstairs to make coffee. Tina showered and came down a bit later.
“I’ll get Barn up,” I said.
“Wait.”
“Wait for what?”
Tina poured herself coffee and sat down at the table. She didn’t say anything.
“What’s up, babe?”
“It’s not your fault,” she said.
“What isn’t?”
“Everything.”
I waited.
“I can’t find it,” she said.
“It?”
“How it used to be.”
“How it used to be?”
“Yes.”
“It’s still how it used to be, isn’t it?”
“Maybe it never was,” she said.
“That’s wrong. It definitely was.”
“Maybe it was for you and not for me.”
“It was, Tina. It definitely was. And it still is. Trust me. It really is. There’s just too much happening right now. With Lydia and your health. And the corruption investigation that’s kept me so busy. But things will—”
“I know,” she said. “It is too much. I’m not very good at being me right now.”
“It’ll be back to normal soon. I promise.”
She got up and walked around tidying the kitchen. “I’m aware of loving you,” she said, “but I can’t always find it.”
“Be patient,” I told her. “Don’t panic.” I told her we’d live our lives and things would get back to normal. I told her she was still in shock, that it would be unwise to make big changes. She said she had tried being patient, but the feeling just got bigger. She said she’d tried not to panic, but the panic kept coming to find her. I said I probably hadn’t focused on her enough, with all she was going through. She said I’d been okay, that wasn’t it. I said I’d do better. She said I’d done fine.
“I have ideas,” I said. “Plans. Plans about us. Well, no, not plans, thoughts. I was going to tell you. I was waiting, though, until things settled down, but I’ll tell you now. I had wanted to tell you sometime when we were curled up on the couch with wine, talking, and I’d say it as, like, some hare-brained scheme, and we wouldn’t have to take it real seriously but just toy with the idea and see if it took root. So this isn’t what I pictured, both of us about to leave for work and you feeling how you’re feeling. But I just thought . . .”
“What?”
I cleared my throat, sipped my coffee, and told her my thinking about moving up to the lake and opening a private practice together. It came out urgently, desperately. It sounded preposterous even to me.
She laughed. But where a minute ago she’d been remorseful and compassionate, her laugh was caustic. “Unbelievable,” she said.
“What?”
“Your solution to my feeling alienated is to ignore everything I’ve said and move to a cabin in the woods.” She poured the dregs of her coffee into the sink. “I should have known better,” she said to herself, but plenty loud enough for me to hear.
CHAPTER 25
On Saturday Lizzy met me at Jo Mondo’s. We had a latte together and drove to a building on the edge of downtown. It was in plain sight at the intersection of two busy roads but hidden from notice by its shoe-box architecture and by the fact that there was nothing about it you should ever need to know: FRIENDLY CITY EXECUTIVE SUITES, the sign says: DAY, WEEK, MONTH. I once spoke at a law enforcement conference there (“Recent Changes in the Law of Search and Seizure”), and though I’d driven past the building a thousand times, I had to look up the address that day because I couldn’t place it on my mental map of the city.
I remember when it was built. I had worked in construction a couple of summers during college, and the experience left me with an interest in how buildings are put together. It’s a disappointing thing to watch: two-by-fours, plywood, pipes, wires, Sheetrock. Then siding—plastic or aluminum or fake stone or, in this case, tan stucco. At every step, you expect to see something to make it seem less disposable and less transitory. But no: It is always just one fire, or one earthquake, or one bankruptcy, or one termite infestation, or one design flaw, or one economic downturn away from being a pile of rubble or a vacant derelict.
“This is nice,” Lizzy said. We were looking at a suite. “Suite,” as used in the context of an empty, undifferentiated, impersonal hotel room, meant it had an extra room where Barnaby or Lizzy could stay sometimes. Barnaby would have no say in this, but as for Lizzy, it is probably a fiction I tell myself that on some evening she may actually choose this joyless warehouse of displaced spouses over the goofy and cinnamony country home where she and Ethan play at being married in the laughter-filled, no-questions-asked haven of Flora’s spare room.
Lizzy volunteered to help me find a place. There were lots of one- and two-bedroom apartments available around town, but the act of renting a real apartment instead of a joyless hotel suite would give this sorry chapter greater weight than it deserved: DAY, WEEK, MONTH.
Day: certainly.
Week: worst case.
Month: not a chance.
I pulled the curtain aside from the balcony window and saw that I had a view of office buildings and parking garages.
Lizzy helped me carry things in from the car. I said, “How about if we go out for dinner, Liz? There’s probably an acceptable restaurant nearby.”
“Love to, Dad, but I told Ethan and Mom I’d be home.”
“That’s okay.”
“Come have dinner with us. Mom and Chip would love to have you.”
“No, I’ll stay and get settled. You go.”
When she left, I turned on the TV and found a show about people who clean out abandoned storage units and then sell the shit they find.
I woke up in the night. I tried watching TV or going back to sleep. Eventually, I got up and drove over to my house, parked in front on the street, and dozed off in the car.
CHAPTER 26
Monday morning. I got into the office early and reviewed my list of current cases, taking notes on what needed doing for each one. Then I got coffee for myself and wandered around chatting with people. I stopped in on Upton. He asked about my weekend, and I said it had been fine.
Detective Sabin called me later in the morning to talk about Lydia’s murder. “Let’s meet,” she said.
“Do you have anything new?”
“No, we keep hitting dead ends. So Philbin and I thought it might be good to put our three heads together again, come up with some new ideas.”
I met with Sabin and Philbin at Jo Mondo’s. There were no tables open, so we sat three across at the counter along the window.
“Haven’t heard from you in a while,” I said. “Do you have any new theories?”
“We know who the perp is,” Philbin said. “It’s Henry Tatlock. We have tons of circumstantial. We’re working on finding something physical.”
&nbs
p; “Well, no,” Sabin said. “It’s not so cut-and-dried as Philbin claims.”
Philbin was sitting between Sabin and me. He is huge and she is small. She leaned way forward over her coffee, head almost down on the countertop, to see around him while she spoke.
“Of course it’s cut and dried,” Philbin said.
“Get up, Philly,” Sabin said, appearing behind him, on her feet now. She shoved him on the shoulder. “Move over. Let me sit there.”
Philbin moved over. Sabin sat next to me.
“We have enough circumstantial to make a case and put that freak away where he belongs,” Philbin said. “And I’m sorry if you’re feeling all sentimental about the murderous Henry Tatlock. Honest, I really am.” (This said sarcastically.) He held up his fist and peeled back his index finger so it was pointing straight up. “First, Henry Tatlock, the fiancée-killer, can’t account for his whereabouts at the time Lydia Trevor was shot. Second—”
“Christ’s sake, Philly,” Sabin said, “he’s accounted for his whereabouts. He just doesn’t have anyone to confirm it yet.”
“Second,” Philbin said, pulling another finger from his fist to stand beside the first, “the saintly Mr. Tatlock was consorting with underworld figures, to wit, one Aaron Pursley.”
“For which Henry has a credible explanation,” Sabin said.
“Credible, my ass. And Aaron Pursley is known to be in the firearms-procuring business,” Philbin said. “What a coincidence. Lydia Trevor was shot in the head with a firearm that somebody must have procured from somebody.”
“Have you questioned Pursley?” I asked.
“Gee, never occurred to us.” Philbin said. “Hey, Sabin, you ever think of asking Pursley about any of this?”
“For Christ’s sake, Philly, simmer down,” Sabin said. To me, “Yeah, we spoke to Pursley. At first he wouldn’t say anything. So I told him what Henry had said about looking for his bio family, and Pursley says, ‘Well, I wouldn’t dispute Henry Tatlock’s version of events.’ That’s all he’d say.”
“Known underworld figure,” Philbin repeated. He peeled another finger from his fist. “Third, it turns out Mr. Tatlock’s fiancée was out bucking someone else’s bronco, which, for her being engaged to a guy as explosive as Henry Postal Tatlock, is kind of like playing Russian roulette with five bullets in a six-shooter.”
“Unless I’m mistaken,” I say, “you don’t even know if Henry was aware of Lydia’s affair.”
“Fourth,” Philbin said, and he freed a fourth finger. Sabin, who was sitting with her back to Philbin, rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Lydia left a panicky message for her sister minutes before she was killed, making it clear she was running from someone. And fifth . . .”
“ ‘And fifth,’ ” Sabin mocked, using a cartoon voice.
Philbin extended his thumb and waved his open hand at me. “Fifth, Lydia’s texts with her illicit Romeo made frequent and repeated reference to Henry’s violent temper and unpredictability and to Lydia’s fear of him. Wherefore, to put it in legalese you might understand, counselor, we got it scientifically proved that Henry Tatlock did, with malice aforethought and desirous in his heart to splatter her head like an overripe melon, shoot her with no more compunction than if she was a rabid skunk.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Philly,” Sabin said, “all that is—”
“The guy was a powder keg,” Philbin said. “We’ve asked around. He’s bad news.”
I hadn’t realized what a volatile jerk Philbin was. I had hoped to talk with these two about other theories for the case, other directions to go with the investigation. Now I was pissed.
We were all facing out the window. I’d been watching the sidewalk across the street, where a guy in a gorilla suit was handing out fliers. It wasn’t a busy time of day, so the gorilla spent a lot of time leaning against a building and staring at the sidewalk. The costume was cheap and ratty. The guy seemed tragic.
Philbin pivoted on his stool. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and made his way to the men’s room through the thicket of laptop and iPad and smartphone and tablet users.
“Sorry about him,” Sabin said. “He gets like that.”
“Henry didn’t kill Lydia,” I said.
“I kind of believe you,” Sabin said. “I mean, you know him. We don’t.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I wasn’t sure you two recognized that fact.”
“Tell me about him,” she said in an intimate voice. “There are rumors about him. That he went off on some girl once.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“We’ve been talking to people. Have you heard about anything like that? People talk about him like he’s got one foot in the psych ward. And Philbin always believes the street talk. I like to think I have a more balanced understanding of how rumors work. So help me out here, Nick. What’s the real story?”
I liked Sabin. I liked her Brooklyn accent and her no-bullshit approach, and now I liked that she was more interested in getting some facts than in jailing the first possible suspect. She was attractive, too, not that I was looking, but a guy can’t help noticing. Maybe if I could explain Henry to Sabin, she could get Philbin to back down. “Here’s what I know,” I said. “I know that Henry—”
My cell rang. It was Lizzy. “Hi, Dad. I was just wondering how you’re doing. Are you okay?”
I held up a finger to Sabin and mouthed, “Be right back.” I walked toward the restroom hallway, which was quieter than the café area. “I’m okay, sweetie. Can’t really talk right now, though.”
“Mom says you should come over for dinner tonight.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Let me think. I’ll call you back in a half hour?”
“Sure, Dad.”
“Bye, honey.”
Before returning to Sabin, I went into the men’s room and found Philbin there, also talking on his phone. He nodded. I nodded. I took care of business and walked out, weaving back through the crowd of zombified screen-gazers. I realized that Philbin was just hanging out, delaying to give me time with Sabin, and it struck me like a sledgehammer that I was being played: Philbin had gotten me worked up and indignant about Henry, then he’d gone off to piss, leaving me to be comforted and cooed at by the compassionate Sabin. And I fell for it! Me: hard-bit prosecutor, ready to cozy up, stool to stool at the coffee counter, our heads all but bumping as I spilled Henry’s secrets to the calculating Sabin. She had plied her feminine charms, and I was ready to believe we were allies in trying to wrest the investigation from the oafish Philbin.
Good cop/bad cop. Damn them both. I’d take what I knew to Chip. Let him be the one to crack it open.
I sat back at the counter beside her. “You were saying,” she said.
The gorilla paced the sidewalk across the street. Sometimes he’d hand out a flier and sometimes he’d let people pass without interruption.
I said, “Well, you remember that kid you questioned the day after the murder? The one who found a credit card and wanted to buy computers? What ever happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Sabin said, “but what I want to know—”
“Be right back,” I said. I went up to the counter and ordered a coffee drink, then took it outside and crossed the street. The gorilla offered me a flier. I offered him the cup. “Been watching you,” I said. “Thought maybe you could use a pick-me-up.”
He took the cup warily.
“Vanilla latte,” I said.
He took off the gorilla head. I was expecting a kid like the confused credit-card finder. But the gorilla was closer to my age and unshaved. Homeless, perhaps, impersonating a gorilla to make a few bucks. “Okay,” he said.
I crossed back to the café.
“A humanitarian,” Sabin said.
“Not really. It was just a notion.”
The gorilla sipped the coffee. I tried to catch his eye—I wanted to hold my coffee up in a salute—but he didn’t see me.
“About Henry Tatlock,” Sab
in said. “You have information.”
“Oh, right. Sorry. My information is that Henry is innocent.”
“I know. But something about a girl. Something about people misunderstanding and about careless accusations.”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t know about anything like that.” I looked at the flier I was still holding. BLOWOUT LIQUIDATION SALE!!! It was for one of those places that’s always going out of business but never actually goes.
CHAPTER 27
I tried to get work done in my office, but I couldn’t focus on anything. The meeting with Sabin and Philbin had me too upset. It had started me thinking about Lydia again. I thought how furious Tina had been at her dead sister when we found out about the secret romance. I’d been pissed, too. I was still pissed. Was it really asking so much for Lydia to keep her panties on and to revel in her good fortune at landing a guy like Henry? Damn her. Because not only did it screw up her own life; the shock waves were still spreading out like a tsunami rising up from the surface of a placid ocean.
I was thinking about my own marriage, of course. Tina and I were just finding our groove. Things had been tough. Tina had gotten pregnant as soon as we’d gotten together. It was a difficult pregnancy, followed by life with a colicky infant and the torturous deprivation of sleep—much less sleep for her than for me—followed by the breast cancer scare, then waiting for results, then more waiting during those months when the doctor didn’t like the looks of things. Then the week before Lydia’s death, Tina’s follow-up exam came back clean. It should have been our independence day. Barn had been sleeping through the night for over a year. Tina felt great and loved her work. We were finally free to get on with the long-delayed business of being newlyweds. But Lydia fucked it all up, smiting Tina with this unmanageable sorrow at the very minute we’d thought ourselves delivered.
Damn Lydia. I pulled out my phone to look at that last picture of her. Though it was taken from behind, Tina and Lydia were turning to look at something, so the camera captured a quarter profile each: a cheek, an eye, the jawline, and part of the forehead. They looked very alike except for the texture of skin and crinkle of eyes and neck. You could tell that Tina was several years older.