by Jo Barney
The fat old man Danny referred to is Fred, a regular who has been in the apartment enough times to have crossed paths with Danny. But he is a rich fat old man, an important fact Danny didn’t quite get. Of course, Danny’s mother isn’t a ho, at least as far as Jeff knows, but she is a sloppy drunk, and Danny is following her down that path. Like mother, like son.
The glass in a neat pile, he pauses to wipe his bloody nose on a paper towel, and he rejects his next thought, tossing it along with the crumpled paper. Like grandfather, like grandson?
No, he is into the life for the money only. When he has enough, he’ll move on. This always was the plan, with Danny or without him. One of his customers told him he had a good voice, an actor’s voice, and brought him a brochure about the Northwest Acting Academy. He can go to that school if he saves some money, works part-time, maybe finds another steady client who’ll help. He has just finished cleaning up the living room, the garbage bag stashed behind the door in the closet, when his cell rings. It is Fred.
Chapter Eighteen
Ellie
September 2009
Sarah’s been on the davenport, hiding under a pillow, for two days, and she’s driving me nuts. I have read the same page of I is for Innocent three times. “Go do the wash,” I say. “Think about something else.” I hand her the basket of clothes we’ve accumulated in the bathroom.
While she’s gone, I have to plan. I close my book. Once and for all, she’s got to go someplace else. I’m sick to my stomach all the time. I can’t go on listening to her terrible stories, the words that come out like a kitten mewling. I don’t know what to say to someone who doesn’t wear mascara anymore because it just runs off as soon as she puts it on. I don’t know what to pat when I get the urge, and I end up sticking my hands between my knees. I’m not helping her, and I understand once again that I’m not good at taking care of anyone but myself, and sometimes I doubt that. Like right now.
I boil water for coffee and when I try to spoon out a teaspoon of instant, nothing comes up. Shit. We’re out of Folgers. And money. My Social Security check won’t come for three days and at this moment my last quarters are being shoved into the coin box of a dryer, half of which is filled with clothes not my own. The spoon scraping for grains of dried coffee makes my next move obvious.
Tomorrow we’ll go to the Williams House down the street where the medical bus parks. They’ve got people who will know where Sarah can go for help. I wash out the coffee jar with the hot water, pour the yellow dregs into my cup.
I’m sitting down when Sarah shoves the door open with the basket, our stuff separated and folded. “Sorry I took so long. I had to wait for the cops to finish downstairs.”
A knock on the door cuts her off. I answer it and a tall man looks back at me, smiling only a little. I can tell he’s a cop from the bulge under his jacket. Damn, how did they know I was the one who called 911 the other night? Serves me right.
“Sergeant Trommald. May I come in for a minute?” He steps in before I can answer. “I have a few questions. First, I need your name.” I feel Sarah pull back, go to the kitchen, but this visit isn’t about the Nike in the leaves.
“Ellie Miller,” I say.
The cop goes on. “A man has been found dead, beaten to death, in the entry of the building. A medical clinic receipt in his pocket gives a name and his address and notes about the treatment of a young woman whose identity isn’t known.” He looks past my shoulder. “One of the neighbors downstairs tells me that the only young girl in this building is staying in this apartment.”
I hear Sarah close the refrigerator behind me.
“So could I meet her?”
That’s why I can’t stand neighbors. None of their business.
“Sure,” I say, and call to her.
“Someone’s dead?” she asks, poking a piece of baloney into her mouth and chewing in a disinterested, teenage way. I can see she doesn’t want to get involved either.
“He may be a resident of this building. Bearded older man. Did you know him?”
Sarah stops chewing and swallows, her glance flicking my way. “Yeah, if it’s Rick. He helped me once.”
The cop looks at me. “How about you, Mrs. Miller?”
“I know Rick enough to know he is a good guy, a little crazy once in a while, but I like him.”
“A loner?”
“Except when his voices visit. Yeah, a loner.” Like most of us in this building, I almost add.
Sarah has slunk onto the davenport, waiting for what will come next, and there is more, I’m sure, since the sergeant is taking out a pencil. I motion for him to sit down. Sarah scooches over to give him room next to her.
He squints at us over his notebook. “This is the second murder this month in this area. Both transients.”
“So not too high on the list?” Peter’s murder didn’t even make the local paper after the first one-inch column that someone tacked on the bulletin board in the hall.
The sergeant frowns. “All murders are important. Right now, I need someone to identify him. He’s not a pretty sight. The folks downstairs aren’t sure. I’d like you two to come down and take a look before he’s moved on to the morgue.” He pauses to let us understand that this is not an invitation we can refuse. He stands up and we follow him out the door to the elevator.
And when we get off, we see him, curled up under the stairs next to his cart as if he’d gone to sleep just before he got to his door. A trail of blood has followed him from the front door. He’s crawled in from the sidewalk, somehow, his hands and legs red, wet, his face an unrecognizable mash of flesh, his beard matted against his neck.
A silver earring dangles from the one ear I can see—the silver star earring Sarah gave him a few days ago.
For a minute I think that Sarah sees it, too, for she gasps. But she is looking at Rick’s hand. A stub of a finger leaks onto the linoleum.
Chapter Nineteen
Jeff
2003
It would have been a good plan, saving his money, school, if Fred hadn’t gotten weird a few months later. The first time he came though the doorway shaking like a dipso, the man couldn’t talk, only grunt. He slammed the door shut, went to the windows, turned up a slat in the blinds and tried to look out.
“Turn off the light!” he whispered and Jeff did, his own heart racing a little. After a few minutes, Fred found a chair in the dark, slumped into it, and said that it was okay to switch on a lamp—the problem was over.
Jeff poured a finger of brandy from Fred’s bottle waiting on a shelf for him and placed it between shaking fingers. “What?” he asked.
“I was tailed by a big black guy on the bus. He nudged me when I was standing ready to get off, said something like, ‘Watch out,’ to me as the door opened. I looked back and saw that he had gotten off behind me, was behind me.” Fred swallowed, coughed, held the glass in two hands.
“Why were you on the bus?” Who rides the bus these days, anyway, especially someone in a cashmere overcoat? Just asking for it, Jeff thought, until Fred took another sip and answered.
“My wife has placed a tracking device in my car. I heard it ticking this morning. They tick, you know, if you listen. She suspects.”
At first, his client’s fears had amused Jeff. After all, the man was paying part of the rent, and Jeff could put up with a little oddness. “They don’t tick, Fred. Believe me, I know.” And he had told Fred an almost believable story involving a friend who wanted the goods on his stepmother. Fred had calmed down, appreciated the concern Jeff showed him, in a few minutes.
This evening, a week later, after Fred got off the bus at the World Coffee Shop, a couple of blocks from Jeff’s apartment, far enough away that anyone interested in his movements would have to follow him down a couple of narrow dark streets and would be observed easily by Fred, he says that another man, this one in a black raincoat, also got off and paused at the coffee shop. Minutes later Fred looked back and saw the man walking behind him. Fred
is babbling, wet-browed and panicked.
“Why CIA?” Jeff asks. He’s getting a little impatient with Fred’s nonsense.
“My wife. Her brother is in the Secret Service. He denies it, but no one travels like he does in a normal job. She suspects something and told him.” Fred is sure the guy is still out there, waiting, or maybe even in the hall outside, listening with one of those electronic devices even as they speak.
“Fred, the CIA isn’t interested in wives’ suspicions. Unless you are involved in some sort of espionage yourself.” It occurs to Jeff that other than being an accountant who comes quick, he doesn’t know much about Fred. Maybe the guy is some sort of double agent or spy or terrorist. He takes back that thought. Fred is fat, rich enough to keep a lover, a man who doesn’t know or care shit about anything beyond his anxious penis. Jeff unzips his client’s tweed trousers, calms him down, sends him home no longer tremoring.
However, by the third time this scene is played, Jeff has become somewhat paranoid himself. “Next time,” he says, “I’ll meet you at the bus stop, walk you to my apartment.” He does, and they see only a stray cat and a woman with a baby stroller on the opposite sidewalk.
“That’s a cover, don’t you understand? Who’d suspect a woman with a baby?” Fred insists as they enter the apartment. “You don’t care about me, do you? You have to go out and confront her, find out who’s paying her to harass me.” Fred stands with his arms crossed across his broad front, his small black eyes blazing.
Blazing with what? Jeff wonders. The eyes have a familiar cast. His grandfather’s eyes the last time they argued. Out-of-control crazy eyes. It is time to end all this, just like he had to with Grandpa Jack.
“Get out,” Jeff says as he reaches for the doorknob.
Fred’s trembling cheeks pale. “What?”
“Get out. Don’t come back. You’ve gone rotten on me.”
Fred goes from pale to red. “You faggot. After everything I’ve given you—I’ve been paying your way for months. I thought you cared about me. Like I did you. You can’t do this.”
Jeff was about to say yes I can when Fred begins to weep, big chesty gasps that seem to burst from a pit of pure anguish.
“Jesus, Fred.”
Fred throws himself against Jeff, and Jeff can feel the fat stomach quivering, wracked by its god-awful sounds.
Enough.
Jeff unwinds the arms from his neck. “Stop,” he orders. He uses the one threat that can shut the man up. “The neighbors will hear.”
Breathing more slowly, Fred grinds to a stop. He doesn’t look back as he opens the door and stumbles down the hall.
The door is ajar. Jeff looks out, can’t resist calling out, “Be careful, Fred. The CIA is watching.” He hears the elevator door close. Nice ride while it lasted, he thinks. Now what?
* * *
“You murderer!” The middle-aged woman, her red hair a matted halo, her neck loafing into a fur collar, doubles her fists and lunges at him. Jeff steps sideways and lets her through the doorway.
“Who are you?” He has a sinking feeling he already knows.
“Mrs. Fred Berger. And you are his infective. And I am Fred’s. He told me everything, crying, asking me to forgive him. But it’s too late. You’ve killed us both. You will have two deaths on your record, dozens more probably.” At this point, Mrs. Berger’s flushed face crumbles, emits a wail of anguish. “How could you continue to sell your body when you knew it was toxic?” She reaches out to grab his arm, misses, and instead stumbles onto the sofa. “We’re going to die because of you.”
Jeff sits down next to her, rests an arm at the back of her neck, and covers her mouth with his palm to shut her up. He leans into her ear, tells her that he is not the infective, if there is such a word. “Until Fred, I tested clean. And during our months of assignations, I insisted we use condoms despite your husband’s objections. Maybe because of them. Isn’t it possible that along with all that fat, Fred is also carrying a load of guilt he’d like to spread around?”
He tightens his grip on her face when she tries to shake her head. He feels her gasps under his fingers. He keeps talking. “Only makes sense if you are a little nuts.” A woman like this burgundy-haired harridan, screeching she is going to punish him somehow, could easily drive a person over the edge.
“I think you are both a little nuts,” he whispers as her fists flail at him now in a lackluster, defeated way. Her eyes protrude, water, close. He waits for a minute and then removes his hand from her mouth and nose and feels her chest rise as air rushes in. Three breaths later she pushes herself upright and wails, “You’re going to get it!” She aims a flaccid fist at his cheek and stumbles her way to the door. “You wait and see. It won’t be long.”
It would have been very easy to kill her. Jeff goes to the sink to wash the hand that is still wet with the woman’s saliva. Poison, paid assassins, fire? Mrs. Berger, her puffy eyes overflowing with liquid hatred, seems capable of any of those plans. A missed opportunity, perhaps. Her disappearance would certainly simplify things. At the moment, though, even her spit can do him in. Jeff scrubs both hands with soap. AIDs or not, that woman can scare the shit out of a person.
He needs to leave this place. He has to get himself back on track, find another Fred, one who wouldn’t be reluctant about a condom or go schizo over a wife. However, most old men are weird, he’s found. Beginning with Grandpa Jack. So maybe he is through with old men.
Besides, without Danny’s and Fred’s contributions, he won’t be able to pay the rent at the end of month.
Chapter Twenty
Matt
2006
The school’s plush grounds are as impressive as the historic brick building they surround. Bright green grass, kids sitting in the shadows of oak trees, music flowing from a flute, a fluttering drum offering a little backbone to the melody. A paradise, Matt tells himself, an expensive, safe paradise. McKinley Academy will cost more than most good colleges, but his son will get through his days here under the watchful eyes of people who respect differences, value individuality, promote self-esteem.
That’s what both the brochure and Mrs. Glisan, the entrance counselor, assure him and Grace and a reluctant Collin, who recovers his good spirits when he sees the computer room and the ten boys bending into the screens in front of them. “We look for our students’ strengths and build on them. Two of our seniors will be interning in animation studios this summer. Another will be working with a start-up company as a programmer.”
“Yeah? Programming what?” Collin doesn’t quite look at Mrs. Glisan, but his straight back signals his interest.
The woman sighs. “The way I understand it, a small company has developed an idea for helping companies keep track of individual state and county taxes so Internet sales companies will know instantly what to charge customers, tax-wise, and what they will owe the individual states and other governments in taxes.”
The explanation seems to please Collin. He smiles for the first time this morning. Matt hasn’t understood the woman, but the look on Collin’s face tells him something more important. This will be Collin’s school for two or three years. Collin will live at McKinley during the school year, as most of the other students do. Somehow they’ll work out the money part.
As they leave, Matt catches his son looking over the other kids, their clothes, the way they walk along the paths, lie on the grass. Not alone. Not most of them anyway. “I’ll start packing tonight,” he says.
By the time Matt gets back to his desk that afternoon, the unusual joy that has buoyed him on his drive back into town is flagging. He sits down, glances at his blinking phone, at the messages piled in the basket in front of him. A throat-tightening sensation seeps through him. He tries breathing, deep, through his nose. But one can’t breathe away sadness.
He found that out as he heard a doctor diagnose a son whose fingers tapped, arms flew as if he wanted to fly. Now, that same son is leaving. He would never have guessed, all those ye
ars ago, how painful this leaving will be. He reaches for the phone, will call his mother, but he doesn’t. They’ll talk Sunday evening after they’ve watched Collin hang up his clothes in his new room and he has waved them good-bye.
* * *
“You have to contact her,” Grace says. “She’s his mother. She has to step up to her financial responsibilities, if nothing else, after all this time.”
“I don’t know where she is.” Matt has spent the day talking with administrators at Collin’s old high school and in the school district office. They’ve told him that they believe his public-school education with special-ed support is sufficient. They will not recommend his going to a private boarding school, a recommendation that would mean the school district would have to pay the tuition.
This evening, he pours through his investment files, investigates online the possibility of Medicaid help, pencils out the amount of money he can get by closing out his insurance policies. He calls a friend who knows about second mortgages. Nothing worth pursuing. He can make the first-term payment. After that, it’s a crapshoot. Whatever he ends up doing, it will wipe out any hope of a sufficient retirement account, even college for Collin. Maybe he could take a night job, a watchman somewhere. Some of his friends had done it in emergencies. He can’t imagine it.
“You’re a detective. Prove it.”
“Grace, I don’t think I can. I haven’t spoken to Marge in ten years. She’s chosen to become someone other than Collin’s mother. I don’t know who she is now, even if I could find her.”
“Once a mother, always a mother. Believe me, I know.” Grace looks away; her face closes, flooded in a visible wave of grief. “I still miss her, your sister.” Her hands cover her moist eyes; she breathes, five breaths, through her nose, and she is herself again. “I have always felt responsible for her dying, you know. Your father tried to rope her in, keep her under his thumb, but I thought she needed to explore a little, make decisions on her own, not because of someone else’s decree. Especially the decree of a man who drank until he hated the world. Maybe that’s why I let her go out. To escape. Instead she died.”