by Dan Deweese
“I do?” he said.
“An interesting one, I mean.”
“I suppose,” he said, offering me his rough right hand while with his left he removed his badge from his shirt pocket, showed it to me, replaced it, and then from the same pocket extracted a loose cigarette. My eyes must have widened at the sight of the cigarette, because he laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t smoke in the hospital. It’s just the holding it that calms me.”
He possessed a tremendous shock of white hair that stood straight out from his head, and the heavy fabrics he wore further enhanced his dramatic appearance: buttoned nearly to his chin, his flannel shirt was a shade of green so deep as to be almost black, and his dun-colored corduroy pants were fuzzed with age—a broken belt loop rose from one hip like an unruly cowlick. The clothes appeared to be a size too large, and this, in combination with the fact that he couldn’t have stood more than five and a half feet tall, lent him a shrunken quality, as if life had at some point drowned and then roasted him, and though he had survived, it was in this reduced state. He stood near the bed at a point almost even with my head, and I had to crane my neck to look up at him when he asked how long I’d been working at the bank, what the routines were, who I’d been working with the day of the robbery—standard stuff—until he frowned down into his little notebook as if he’d just discovered an obscenity scrawled there in someone else’s hand. “You mentioned the other day that just before the robbery you’d seen an old girlfriend for the first time in a couple years,” he said. “I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about that.”
“About my girlfriend?”
“You said she was your former girlfriend.”
“Sure,” I said. “But why do you want to know about her? She’s not the one who robbed me.”
The detective had maintained a sophisticated though apparently unconscious bit of theatrical business while we talked, putting his cigarette through the standard paces—from fingers to lips and back, propped on the tabletop, and so forth—without ever actually lighting the thing. Now he held it thoughtfully against his temple while fixing me for some seconds with the impassive gaze a headmaster assumes when assessing the prospects of a student.
“If you want, I can get up, and we can walk outside to where you can smoke,” I said.
“It’s your comfort that’s important, not mine,” he said. “Memory works best when you’re relaxed. A man sifts things over when he’s in a porch swing, not when he’s on the rack.”
Skillfully crafted aphorisms have always appealed to me. “What do you want me to sift over?” I said.
“You’re the victim of a crime, and what we’ve discovered is that things go better if we recognize you’re a victim, and let you talk about what’s happened to you—not just the crime, but the effects of the crime. Not just the criminal, as they say, but the personal.”
“I’m just not sure what you mean by the personal.”
He flipped through some pages in his notebook, and then read aloud in a rapid and strangely toneless voice: “Jesus she was amazing in bed, I had no idea what that could be like, I was practically a virgin, I’ve never told anyone this, not even her, so please don’t tell her if you talk to her, but Jesus, that kind of stuff—”
“Stop!” I said. “Did I tell you that? Was Sandra here when I said that?”
“The girl who just left?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “And I was obviously saying crazy stuff. They’ve got me on drugs here. You shouldn’t have talked to me when I was out of my head like that. And I don’t see what this has to do with the robbery.”
“But that’s exactly what I’m wondering,” he said. “I don’t know you, and I don’t know this girlfriend of yours whose name has already slipped my mind.” He flipped through the notebook again.
“Gina,” I said.
“I’ve written Sandra,” he said.
“Yes, Sandra is my girlfriend,” I said with mounting frustration. “But she wasn’t there at all.”
“Right, it was this Gina girl and the other fellow, what’s-his-name.” He flipped more pages. “Here. Grant. The cool customer.”
“The cool customer? Did I say that? Wait, it doesn’t matter if I said it or not. I was obviously drunk on painkillers.”
“Grant and Gina,” he said. “They’re in the bank, you’re in the bank, this Mooncalf fellow’s in the bank—that’s a lot of paths crossing.”
“Well, we’re open to the public,” I said. “But only one person robbed the place.”
“Calm down,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of self-defense that was preposterous, since I remained fully supine on the bed. “I’m not accusing anyone of anything. I know things are probably difficult for you right now, and it can’t be easy having lost your parents at such a young age.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Your parents. You said the other day that they’ve passed on.”
“They haven’t passed on,” I said, exasperated by inaccuracies that, since the detective was relating them, seemed his own.
“You told me to look at all the cards on the flowers and tell you who was missing,” he said. “You said it was family, because you didn’t have any.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re just not close. If I told you they passed on, I don’t know why.”
“So they’re living?”
“As far as I know.”
“Surely you would know if one of your parents had died.”
If I hadn’t been medicated, or maybe if I had just been older than twenty-three and not so quickly cowed by authority, I might have corrected him. My mother was in Florida, and yes, I spoke to her on the phone once every couple months. She had raised me in New Mexico, though, and the man she married when I was in high school—I never called him my stepfather—would certainly have called me if something happened to her. My father, on the other hand, had moved to Minnesota when I was in middle school. A self-taught cook who called himself a chef, he had never been married to or lived with my mother, and when a friend of his convinced him they were going to get rich taking over a failing restaurant in St. Paul, he went for it. The restaurant failed anyway, but he then picked up a job cooking somewhere in Wisconsin. After that he moved every year or two, usually after the restaurant in which he was working shut its doors. Never back to New Mexico, though. I saw him once a year, when he would come to town for a few days to see how much I’d grown, and to assure me that his was not the life he had planned, but the breaks had been bad. It had been almost a year since I had last spoken to him, and if he were to die, whether anyone presiding over the details of his death would know how to contact me—or would even know of my existence—was far from certain. But I was medicated and tired, and that all seemed too much to try and communicate. So what I ended up saying was “We’re not completely out of touch. But they’re thousands of years from here.”
The detective tapped his pad thoughtfully. “I don’t know what that means,” he said.
“My mother is in Florida and my dad is somewhere else. I’m not sure.”
“But you said they were thousands of years away. So you were being poetic?”
“No,” I said. “I meant miles. I’m on medication and it’s mixing up my words.” I collected myself, and made sure to slowly and correctly say: “I’m just not in regular contact with them.”
“Hmm. Estranged, then,” the detective said, making a notation in his pad with all the care and attention of someone filling in a crossword puzzle. Did he really write estranged? I have, over the years, sometimes wondered if he actually wrote anything at all.
From beyond the room’s closed door came the muffled, mellow warning tones of the public address system followed by a woman’s voice calmly announcing, Dr. Murphy, code orange. Dr. Murphy, code orange. I straightened my sheet and blanket, wondering if orange meant someone was dying. Buckle stood in front of the window, tapping h
is cigarette against his lips. Then, as if he’d settled on something, he jotted another note in his pad.
“Did you need to know anything about the robbery itself?” I said.
“No,” he said. “You told me all of that the other day. You were generous and expansive. I think I have everything I need.” He flipped his notepad closed then, and thanked me for my time and effort as he headed toward the door.
“The things I’ve told you are confidential, right?” I said.
He smiled, though whether out of benevolence or amusement, I couldn’t tell. “Of course,” he said. “Everything is strictly confidential. It’s the only way.”
He disappeared into the hall then, leaving me alone, and surrounded by my flowers. There were so many in that small room that I couldn’t help but feel like the star attraction at a funeral.
I HAD SETTLED INTO one of the chairs in the customer waiting area and was pretending to read one of our procedures manuals—and pretending not to be growing more and more desperate and angry about being stuck there—when Catherine, at her desk, announced, “I have the photos.”
Officers Martinez and O’Brien had been waiting, and were already standing behind her and trading enthusiastic comments about whatever image they were looking at as I crossed the lobby. I noticed Catherine open her cell phone and look thoughtfully at it, as if something interesting were happening there, too. She closed it and set it on her desk, though, as I stepped around and joined the officers in looking over her shoulder.
The camera had been to his right, and offered a semiprofile from mid-chest up. His gaze was directed down, probably at the cash he was putting in his bag, though in the absence of any visual context he appeared pensive and downcast, as if focused not on what was before him, but on some other, inward consideration. What I thought, though, was: How many people receive calls or messages from Catherine? When Catherine had called Sandra earlier, Sandra had obviously looked at her phone, saw the call was from Catherine, and decided to answer it.
“Look familiar?” Martinez said.
With a start, I realized that Catherine, Martinez, and O’Brien were all looking at me. “Oh,” I said. “No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ll pull up another one,” Catherine said.
I looked at her cell phone, sitting there on her desk. “Can I borrow your phone for a minute, Catherine?” I said. “I need to make a call about the wedding.”
“Sure.”
I flipped the phone open, dialed, and listened to the little purr of the ringing line.
“He doesn’t look like your usual bank robber,” O’Brien said.
Catherine had pulled up a different photo now: the man was gazing straight ahead, probably at Amber. He had every appearance of a patient and somewhat bored customer going through a standard transaction. I gazed at the face on the screen while on the phone I heard a faint rustling, and then heard my daughter say, “Hello? Catherine?”
“No,” I said. “I’m borrowing her phone, though.”
There was a pulsing silence on the line—a faint, shifting hiss, like the closing of a sealed door. And as the hiss gave way to a clean silence, it was only because I was on the phone that I managed to resist saying something in surprise when I realized I recognized the eyes of the man on the screen.
“Why are you using Catherine’s phone?” Miranda said.
I turned from the desk and walked away from the others. “Because it was sitting here. Where are you?”
There was another bout of static on the line as I looked back at Catherine’s screen and studied the downcast eyes in the photo there. They were older now, and seemed more sad than angry. Son of a bitch, I thought. Mooncalf.
“You tricked me,” Miranda said.
“Are you all right?”
“Oh,” she said, drawing the sound into two syllables. “I suppose.”
I was all the way across the branch by that point, but continued to speak quietly. “Could we meet somewhere?” I asked quietly, moving further across the branch. “To talk?”
I heard her breathe once, and then a second time. “I guess.”
“Where?”
“I need to eat,” she said. “And I left some things at the rehearsal dinner last night, so I need to go by the restaurant. Can we meet there? They open at eleven.”
“Okay. I’ll see you there at eleven.”
“Wait,” she said. “You’re not going to bring anybody, are you?”
“I’ll be alone,” I said. “And no guns.”
“What?” she said.
“It’s a joke.”
“Oh. Because of the not bringing anybody.”
“Yes.”
“That’s good, Dad,” she said. “I’ll see you there.” She hung up.
When I returned to Catherine’s desk and set her phone down, Martinez looked at me. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
He nodded toward Catherine’s screen. “Any recognition here? Friend of yours?”
It was in that moment, while I pretended to study the image, that I made an instinctive decision—more of a reflex, really—that would end up affecting the rest of the day. “Nope,” I said. “I don’t recognize him. Catherine?”
“Me neither,” she said.
Martinez shrugged. “Well, we should be able to run these through our database pretty easily,” he said. “He’s done us a big favor here. The guy takes a good photo.”
“We should frame it,” I said.
And everyone laughed—which caught me by surprise, really. I hadn’t been aware I was making a joke.
IT WAS ONLY A week after my release from the hospital that Grant, Gina, Sandra, and I made good on our plans to go out together. I recall preparing for the evening primarily by studying the skin of my face with closer scrutiny than I ever had before, as if perhaps success, class, and their attendant trappings were nothing more than a question of dermatology. I also checked the back of my head to make sure my hair was properly combed over the shaved spot where the doctors had stitched my wound closed. It wasn’t as hard to cover the stitches as I had worried it would be—a single tug of the comb took care of it.
Sandra had purchased a new fuchsia flower-print dress specifically for that evening, and encouraged by her example, I had gone to a department store and bought a new blazer. By the time we approached the entrance to Bristol’s, then, we had done everything we could to look the part of a sophisticated couple, and all that was left was to carry out our roles. I played my part by feigning boredom as the doorman looked over my identification, while Sandra chose to flutter her eyelids in a way I found unsettling. She also wore a sparkling necklace and earrings I hadn’t seen before. She certainly never wore anything like that when she came into the bank to make weekly deposits for her parents’ business, and neither had she on any of the dates we’d been on since I’d finally gotten up the courage to ask her out. I was pleased to see the gold buttons on my navy blue blazer shining in the muted light of the Bristol’s entryway as we stepped into the club and, seeing neither Grant nor Gina, settled at the black marble bar that ran the length of one side of the room. The rest of the place was filled with small tables and leather furniture arrangements, the latter mostly the more decadent black leather in vogue at the time. The coffee and end tables were glass, their beveled edges a watery green, and it seemed patrons were encouraged to experience the place as a publicly situated living room. The bartender was tall, polite, and delivered our cocktails immediately, acknowledging my payment with a subtle nod. It was still early in the evening, but I noticed occasional wisps of smoke escaping the doorway of a closed back room, in and out of which flowed a steady traffic of husky middle-aged men in wool sweaters, pleated slacks, and tasseled loafers. Most of them exuded a boyish enthusiasm, and some approached the room already brandishing the cigars they would enjoy behind the door. When I wondered aloud if the cigar room was open to the public, Sandra said I wouldn’t fit in even if it was, because I was too young and t
hin. We were discussing how much weight I would need to gain to get into the room when I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to see Grant smiling at me.
“So you’ve survived,” he said, leaning back to examine me. “And no worse for the wear.” He wore a charcoal suit over a royal blue shirt open at the neck, and seemed perfectly relaxed and pleased as he shook my hand. Gina stood next to him, her smile somewhat less natural, though the simplicity of her khaki slacks and loose, long-sleeved white blouse, in concert with her long hair and deep brown eyes, was striking—she seemed equally prepared to sit for high tea or plunge into the bush with a rifle over her shoulder.
“I have a lingering hangover,” I said. “But yes, I think I’ll be all right.”
“You’ve promised me a scotch,” he said.
“I hear I promised a number of things,” I said, my face growing warm.
“You were funny,” Gina said. “And now I can only hope we run into someone famous.”
They shared a laugh at my expense, and I joined them. I began to introduce Sandra, but was quickly reminded that introductions had been taken care of in the hospital, over my unconscious body. The bartender greeted Grant by name, they shared a few private words, and the man departed through a door behind the bar as Grant suggested we settle around one of the large coffee tables that had a love seat behind it and armchairs at either end. Grant said that as the guest of honor, I should take a chair at what he called the head of the table. Sandra sat at the end of the love seat closest to me, Grant sat next to her, and Gina took the armchair at the other end of the coffee table—in the geometry of tennis, Gina and I would have been playing singles while Grant and Sandra looked on. A waitress arrived with glasses and a bottle of wine that she opened expertly. She poured a luminous red swirl into Grant’s glass, and I noted the simple way he inhaled and sipped without dramatizing the process, a skill I had yet to master. Every time a cork was placed before me back then, I felt as if a spotlight had swung in my direction, and I couldn’t help but start communicating with wild shifts of my eyebrows. Grant nodded, the waitress filled our glasses, and Sandra and I now had two drinks in front of us, since we still had the ones we’d ordered at the bar. I could sense Sandra’s discomfort, and watched as she instantly downed the remains of her cocktail and pushed the glass to the other side of the table. We chatted about the wine, which turned out to be something Grant and Gina had discovered on a trip they’d taken to “the wine country,” which I took at first to mean France, though I realized my error soon enough. From the details they related of their trip, I was able to conclude they had been together maybe six months. It was hardly a long amount of time, but still made them seem a more established couple than Sandra and me. And though we were all getting along well—Grant’s narration of their Northern California adventures was interrupted by frequent laughter and joking asides from the ladies—at a certain point I found myself struggling to follow the thread of the story, because even though she was at the other end of the table from me and the room was crowded, I had detected the scent of Gina’s perfume. Not only was the return of my sense of smell, absent since Mooncalf had hit me, something of a momentary miracle, but the fragrance Gina wore that night was the same she had used when she and I had dated a few years before. The aroma instantly called up a whole array of sense memories, and I could picture her as she smiled up at me or down on me or back at me, could see the way she closed her eyes and tilted her head, the way her hair fell, the tones in which she whispered or moaned, the rhythm we fell into as we pressed against one another—