by Jane Haddam
There was a customer in the store. It wasn’t somebody he recognized. It wasn’t even somebody who looked like somebody he should recognize. It was a white woman, dressed up as if she were a lawyer going to court, or one of those “ladies who lunch” on the way to an expensive restaurant.
“I’d better go get the lady what she wants,” Charles said.
“I’ll get the lady what she wants,” Tyrell said. “I’m not finished with you. I should fire your ass right this minute, and you know it. Breaking the lock on the back door, for God’s sake. You know I’ve got security cameras out there. You know I’ve got them in here.”
Charles mumbled something again, and then, when Tyrell cleared his throat, said, once again too loudly, “Z-bok said we could take out the security cameras.”
“You failed,” Tyrell said.
“We wasn’t doing nothing,” Charles said. “We just needed some money and shit, that was all. We was all flat broke and needed some money to—”
“To?”
“Eat,” Charles said.
“Horse manure. I gave you dinner here myself last night, and it wasn’t small. And don’t tell me Z-bok needed to eat. All that boy ever eats is dope, and you know it. And don’t say ‘shit’ in this store. And it’s we were, not we was. How do you ever expect to get out of here and get on in the real world if you sound like an ignorant—”
“Watch out,” Charles said. “You’ll say one of those words you’re always telling me you’ll fire me for.”
Tyrell was watching out. That was one of the words he did not say, along with most of the swear words that seemed to constitute more and more of the vocabulary of the kids who came through every year. He could see the woman in the security camera looking over the large display of potato chips near the back wall.
“Listen,” he said, “the good news is that you didn’t get anything, and I was the one who caught you. If the alarm had gone off without me here and the police had come, you’d be dead meat. The bad news is I’m mad as hell, and I’m not about to get over it soon. So if you don’t want to land in jail, you’ll un-load the soda crates and put the stock out while I attend to the lady. Then you and I will have more of a talk.”
“I don’t wanna talk,” Charles said. “Talk’s a lot of shit.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Charles said.
Tyrell thought of railing on the kid for the use of the word “shit,” but he didn’t have the time. His interior monologue had started up again. What were you supposed to do in places like this? The answer wasn’t as easy as it seemed when one side or the other started putting out their Holy Writ on How to End Poverty in Our Lifetimes. Tyrell wasn’t even sure he wanted to end poverty. He wasn’t even sure he knew what that was. What he wanted to end was this thing half of everybody seemed to be into, this attitude, this mess. There was a part of him that was sure that if they could just get the fathers to stay with the mothers, and the mothers to stay with the fathers, and everybody to go to church and throw out their television sets, it would all turn out all right.
Or maybe not. Tyrell stood at the counter and watched the woman look through the potato chip bags as if she had never seen anything like them before. She was so thin, he thought she would break in half at the middle in a strong wind.
“Can I help you?” he asked her.
She looked up from the potato chips and smiled at him. It wasn’t much of a smile. She seemed tense.
“How do you do,” she said, coming forward to the counter. “My name is Phillipa Lydgate. I’m a reporter for the Watchminder newspaper. That’s in England.”
Tyrell knew what the Watchminder was. It had a Web site. He read it every once in a while when his news-junkie soul had run out of news sources closer to home.
“Can I get you something?” he asked. Then, because he suddenly wasn’t sure, “They do have potato chips in England, don’t they? That’s not just an American thing.”
“We call them ‘crisps,’“ Phillipa said. “I was looking at the varieties you carry. Some of them I’m not used to. You do carry a lot of varieties.”
“I try to carry what sells.”
“But not fruits and vegetables,” Phillipa Lydgate said. “There is no fresh food in the store. Is that because it doesn’t sell?”
Tyrell could hear Charles throwing soda crates around in the back. He thought he’d let it go. It was the only sign Charles had given so far of his anger, and Tyrell knew that Charles’s anger was vast and deep and not about to go away anytime soon.
“It’s not that kind of store,” Tyrell said. “If you’re looking for fresh produce, you can go down the block to the Korean market. Or to a supermarket, of course.”
“Do black people shop in the Korean market?”
“Everybody shops there. It’s handy.”
“Are black people welcome in the Korean market?”
“Mostly anybody’s welcome in any market as long as they’ve got money to spend and don’t make any trouble.”
“Nutrition can contribute to criminality, did you know that?” Philippa Lydgate said. “It’s a fact. Bad nutrition can cause some people, especially some young men, to be prone to violence. The only way to guard against it is to make sure you eat plenty of fruits and vegetables.”
There were times when Tyrell thought he was going crazy, and this was one of them. At least Charles was no longer throwing around soda crates. He was probably eavesdropping.
“Well,” Tyrell said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
For a moment Phillipa Lydgate looked blank, as if she’d forgotten what she’d come for. Then she said, “I’m sorry, I should have made myself clear. I’m a reporter. I’m doing a series of articles for the Watchminder about life in Red State America.”
“But this isn’t a Red State,” Tyrell said. “Pennsylvania went for Kerry in the last election.”
Phillipa Lydgate didn’t seem to have heard. “I’m interested in your reaction to the arrest of the Plate Glass Killer. You do know that they’ve arrested a man who claims to be the Plate Glass Killer.”
“It was all over the news last night.”
“It’s a white man,” Philippa Lydgate said, “as could have been assumed all along if the police were thinking clearly. Since there are far more white men than black men in the age demographic for heightened levels of criminality, it stands to reason that there will be more white criminals than black criminals. They arrested you once as the Plate Glass Killer, didn’t they?”
“They took me in for questioning.”
“And that was because you are black and not white?” Philippa Lydgate asked.
Tyrell started to relax a little. Ah, he thought. She was one of those. She had a more interesting accent than the sociology graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania, but she was still one of those.
“I think it probably had more to do with the fact that she was found dead in my service alley,” he said, “and that I knew her, although only slightly. And that I’d been in prison for manslaughter.”
Philippa Lydgate blinked. “Manslaughter? There are a lot of black men in prison in America, aren’t there? Juries are much more likely to see black men as likely to be violent than white men.”
“In my case there was no jury. I pled guilty.”
“Did you have a decent lawyer? Poor people often do not have decent legal representation in America because there is no requirement for attorneys to provide free services to the poor as a condition of their continuing in the profession.”
“My lawyer was fine,” Tyrell said. “I just preferred going to jail for manslaughter than going to jail for murder. The time served is shorter. And you get out on parole.”
“Perhaps decent legal representation would have been able to prove your innocence.”
“I doubt it,” Tyrell said. “I caved in the side of a guy’s head with a rusty plumbing pipe in full view of two dozen witnesses and a couple of police officers. Granted it was in
the middle of a fight, but I started the fight.”
Philippa Lydgate blinked. “I can’t believe that. You don’t look at all violent to me.”
“I’m not, anymore. It was a long time ago. I was nineteen, and I was flying on enough—” He was about to say “shit.” The word on the street for drugs was “shit,” and that was even the right word. Drugs were “shit.” “On enough,” he finished off, “beer, wine, marijuana, cocaine. You name it; I’d imbibed it. That was the kind of person I was. And now I’m not.”
“That’s admirable,” Philippa Lydgate said.
“Most of the guys they picked up on suspicion of being the Plate Glass Killer were white,” Tyrell said. “You can find that out on the Internet. There were a little bunch of us, and what we all had in common was that we were near a victim and knew her. It’s just routine. Now that they’ve got the guy, we can all go back to living our normal lives.”
“Yes,” Philippa Lydgate said. She looked around the store again, going slowly from section to section: the potato chips and corn chips and popcorn in plastic bags; the big display of Pop Tarts and boxed cereals; the frozen food cases with their little piles of Hot Pockets and Pizza Rolls. Then she turned back to the counter and looked right past Tyrell to the wall behind him where the cigarettes were.
“You don’t have lottery tickets,” she said. “I thought stores like this always had lottery tickets.”
“I don’t have lottery tickets or girlie magazines,” Tyrell said. “I don’t have liquor either.”
“Very commendable,” Philippa Lydgate said.
Then she turned on the point of one of her very high heels and walked out of the store, Tyrell watched her go down the street. People turned to look at her. She was everything this neighborhood was not.
Charles came out from the back and watched her go, too.
“That one’s trouble,” he said.
There was nothing wrong with his grammar this time at all.
FOUR
1
Later, Gregor wouldn’t be sure what had been worse—that Bennis’s car was sitting at the curb in front of their building as if it had never left Philadelphia, or that Bennis herself wasn’t waiting for him on the second-floor landing. He had no idea exactly what it was he’d expected. At the very least he was prepared for a bang-up row. On the other hand, Bennis being Bennis, all that might be in the offing was one of those long periods where all they did was Talk. Gregor could never figure out what the Talk was about, or where it was supposed to get to, or where it was supposed to end. Right now, he couldn’t figure out what it was he was supposed to say. This morning he would have said that he was not sure he wanted Bennis back in his life no matter how much he missed her. As soon as he saw her car, he knew just how much that wasn’t true. It was as if somebody had suddenly attached springs to his feet. He was happier than he had been in months.
He went up the stairs and looked around, first in her apartment, then in his. There was one very good sign. Her luggage was on his living room floor, not her own, and she’d obviously unpacked some of it and showered and changed while he was out. He checked his watch and was surprised to find that it was almost one. He’d had no idea he’d spent so much time on the problem of Henry Tyder. He looked around his apartment for a note, but found none. He checked his answering machine in case she’d called in and left something there. She did that sometimes. There was nothing. He knew she hadn’t tried to call him on the cell phone because he’d been carrying it, with the ringer on, all day.
He went to the big window in his living room and looked out on Cavanaugh Street as if he would find her sitting on somebody’s front steps. The street was mostly empty, and he hadn’t really expected to see her anyway. Across from him, Lida’s big second-floor living room was empty. Even her grandchildren weren’t visiting this afternoon. He licked his lips. They were as dry as sand. Maybe she was over at Donna and Russ’s. Donna was her closest friend on Cavanaugh Street. The problem was, Bennis didn’t have “close friends” the way most women did. She didn’t have soul mates she told everything to. If she was over at Donna’s, it wouldn’t mean anything. At least, it wouldn’t mean the thing Gregor feared most.
He was starting to feel like an idiot. He looked around at Bennis’s luggage one more time—she’d been to the Bahamas; there was a big leather tote bag with a zip top and the logo of a hotel she’d once taken him to in Nassau—and then went out of the apartment and back downstairs. She’d almost certainly not spent all this time in Nassau. He wondered where she had been. He wondered what she’d been doing. He wondered if she’d gotten her book in on time. He couldn’t remember seeing her in any of the kinds of magazines where she was used to doing interviews. He didn’t like to admit the fact that he’d checked. His palms were sweaty. The back of his neck was damp.
He came out of his building, jaywalked across the street, and headed up the block to Holy Trinity. The church was brand-new, rebuilt from the ground up after it had been bombed to pieces by one of those faux-patriot conspiracy groups that thought George Washington had been a secret enemy of America because he’d been a Freemason. He went around the little passageway to the back—Tibor and Donna always called it the alley, but it was nicer than an alley; alleys were where victims of the Plate Glass Killer were found—and across the courtyard to ring Tibor’s bell.
Tibor came to the door right away. That was nearly unprecedented. If Tibor was alone in the apartment, he was almost always reading a book. If Tibor was reading a book, he was almost always dead to the world. It didn’t matter what the book was either:Nicomachean Ethics, Valley of the Dolls. Tibor was the only person Gregor had ever known with a hardcover copy of Valley of the Dolls.
Tibor opened up. “It’s you,” he said. “I was expecting you.”
Gregor looked down at Tibor’s hand. The book was Ann Coulter’s Slander. He blinked. “I thought you didn’t like Ann Coulter.”
“I don’t, Krekor. She is offensive only to be offensive. There is no point. Do you want to come in?”
“That was the idea. Unless you know where Bennis is and what she’s up to. Then you can just direct me and I’ll go there.”
Tibor stepped back. “She was here only a short time, Krekor, and then she went out again to be on that television program. I watched the program, but that is not the same, is it?”
“What television program?”
Tibor was retreating into the apartment. Like the old one before the bombing, it was big, meant to serve someday for a priest with a family. Tibor had managed to stack every available surface with books, and most of the available wall space, too. There were books in English and Armenian, Russian and Italian, French and German. There were books in three different kinds of Greek. There were Bibles in every language and of every known edition. There were works of Medieval Trinitarian Theology and best sellers about serial killers who liked to phone the police every other day to give them a few clues to the mystery. Gregor suddenly realized what a wonderful thing it would be if real life were like that. There would be no need for an FBI Department of Behavioral Sciences or for all those seminars the Bureau ran for state and local law enforcement about how to deal with sociopaths. Everybody could just sit back and wait for the killers to come to them.
Of course, some serial killers did leave clues or deliberately taunted the police. Those were the ones who were not so much crazy as just plain stupid.
“Krekor,” Tibor said.
“Sorry,” Gregor said. “I was thinking about serial killers.”
“I thought you were thinking about Bennis.”
“I am thinking about Bennis. I’m always thinking about Bennis. Sometimes my brain just gets tired. Do you know what’s going on here? Does anybody? Does Bennis?”
They had reached Tibor’s kitchen, which was to say they had reached a large room with an oversized table and a lot of shiny new appliances. Gregor was always especially taken by the Sub-Zero refrigerator. It was the size and almost the shape of a do
uble wide, and he’d guess Tibor never had anymore in it than a bottle of milk, a tub of margarine, and whatever food the churchwomen had brought over in the hope of making sure he wouldn’t starve. Of course, Tibor always looked like he was starving, no matter what he ate.
The table was completely covered with books. So were the counters. So was half the stove, which probably was not safe. Tibor pushed a few stacks out of the way on the table and pulled out the closest chair. Gregor sat down. The book on top of the stack nearest to him was Build It! An Amateurs Guide to Building a House from the Foundations Up.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I honestly think you’re addicted to reading the way other people are addicted to alcohol.”
Tibor came over and put a cup of black coffee down in front of him. Gregor looked at it dubiously.
“Do not worry, Krekor,” Tibor said. “I did not make it. It’s the coffee bags.”
Gregor took the spoon Tibor handed him and poked around until he found the coffee bag. Unlike with tea bags, it wasn’t a good idea to let coffee bags steep for minutes at a time. He took the bag out and put it on his saucer.
“So,” he said, “have you seen her? Have you talked to her? Is she about to move out on me or has she already done that? And what television program were you talking about?”
To clear a place for himself, Tibor had to take books off the table and put them on the seat of a chair. He pulled an empty chair out and sat down.
“I have seen her,” he said carefully, “but just only seen her. To say hello to. And get a hug. Beyond that, not so much.”
“She came up to you out of the blue, hugged you, and disappeared,” Gregor said.
“Almost,” Tibor said. “She had just called a taxi, and it was waiting.”
“What did she want a taxi for? She had the car. I mean, for God’s sake, the car was the first thing I saw when I came back just now. Parked at the curb. Like it had never been anywhere.”
“She was going downtown, Krekor. Don’t get agitated over the car. She doesn’t like to park downtown. You know that.”