by Tom Larsen
“How are you feeling?”
“I’m alright,” he says without conviction
“Can you eat something? I think you should eat.”
“Not now. Help me with this, will you?”
Lena works his shirt buttons. “Listen to me. We have to think about what we’re doing here. Find some place on the Thruway with a restaurant. We’ll eat and then I want you to rest. Your resistance is low. I’m a nurse, remember?”
“Okay,” he struggles to rise then starts to sag.
“Harry!” she props him up, heavy somehow, like there’s rocks in his pockets.
Oomph, and onto the bed, lays him down as best as she can, but half sliding off.
“Oh baby, help me could ya?” wrapping him in blankets, feeling his head, pacing and smoking with the snow starting up again. Thinks of going out for food but decides against it. If he wakes to her gone who knows what might happen? He needs to eat though. Harry’s fainted before when he drinks without eating, unless it’s something else. The fever’s gone but that could mean anything. She’ll go when he comes around.
Or leave a note! Run out for food and a pharmacy; saw one at the rest stop coming in. Get aspirin and cold pills. Go before it’s too late.
Harry, be right back. Lena
But she can’t do it. He could die; Lena’s seen it happen. Or he misses the note, or can’t make sense of it, thinks it’s a trick. So she stays instead, and now she’s starving.
***
“Eat the peas.”
“No peas.”
“But it’s beef stew, Harry. Peas are good in beef stew.”
“Brown. I need brown food.”
“You look a lot better. So we’ll stay here for a day or two.”
“This guy on the phone, it’s not right that he fingered me. What if you were gonna kill me?”
“He wanted to help. I was hysterical.”
Harry smiles and Lena’s heart breaks a little.
“Hey, this might even be fun,” she’s trying her best. “What the hell, Harry. We don’t have to be at work tomorrow.”
“You saved my life, Lena. I don’t know what I was going to do.”
“Yeah well, just something I picked up from Sister Muriel.”
Harry looks away. “How’d she take it?”
“She was devastated. Everybody, Harry, you don’t know.”
He does look better. The shaving mostly, but clean and the eyes look more like him. Except the teeth, the front one discolored when the light hits it right. How long since he’s been to a dentist? But his color is better. Hearing about all this probably helps, neighbors and friends pulling together for him.
“I mean it Lena. It was over for me.”
“I don’t know what made us think we could do this, Harry. Stay separated for so long, when I think back on it.”
“This other guy in Puerto Vallarta,” Harry stares off. “Just taking over like that, Jesus!”
“Carlos! God Harry, there was nothing he couldn’t do! We really owe it all to him.”
Stay on track, Harry’s thinking. Mexico, the aftermath. Steer Lena clear of what’s been going on with him. Stick with the flu and the liquor to explain the mess. Focus on Mexico. They’ll be okay if they just stay off the daughter, all that. Nowhere near that, or anything Catskill. Thank God he managed to ditch the wallet and those bloody clothes in the car. Stashed them in a dumpster behind the motel office, a miracle Lena wasn’t watching.
“Our one lucky break.”
“Yeah, but one we had to have. Think about it, no Carlos and I’m on my own.”
“That’s why it had to be you Lena, American widow in distress.”
“Carlos said the FBI is there. The local guys are out of it. That means the cops and anybody who worked on, you know, Stevie?”
That scratch under Harry’s ear, how’d he get so banged up anyway? Not that he’s nimble when he’s on a tear, but under his ear? Unless he was crawling or crashing around outside, that would explain the shoes, but it’s been so cold up here. And that wallet left on the bar? Though that kind of thing does happen to Harry. Wallets and money lying on the ground, she’s seen it herself. The guy was drunk, he said. She’s better off not knowing.
“I’m serious Lena. I want to go to Paris.”
“Okay,” until she can think of a way out of it. “I’d love that too, when you’re back on your feet again.”
“Soon Lena, I want to go soon.”
“We don’t even have the money yet. And I have to get a passport. I’ll do that when I get back.”
“Go for a month, maybe. Stay under the radar.”
Better to go now, this week, have Lena meet him when everything clears up. Hard to believe they haven’t found Frank yet. Unless they have and they’re keeping it quiet. But why would they? They’d really have to be zeroed in on to put the two together: Mexico and Cooperstown. No fucking way. Unless he’s missing something. Is he missing something? For all he knows they’ve pieced it together. For all he knows they’re closing in, the sort of hot on your heels that ends in SWAT teams and battering rams.
Lena reaches for his hand. “Look, this is really hard for me. I know you don’t want to hear it, but I need to tell you. About the girl, Lilly?”
“Lena, please.”
“I know you didn’t mean it. What we did? It was wrong, we both know that, but it’s done and we have to live with it.”
He stares at the peas on his plate.
“Did you hear me, Harry? Thinking about it will drive us crazy.”
Us? Despite all she’s been through Lena looks better than ever. Slimmed down and the clothes are new, he’s pretty sure. Getting one over on all those people, straight-faced and cool as a cucumber, Harry knows he never could. That sense of betrayal, he can feel it in his gut. Any way this turns out he’d never be able to face them again.
“I feel like a shit for Sister M.”
“She came to see me. God, she must be a hundred! They’re holding a novena for you.”
Lena skips the rest, Muriel’s doubts, the cigarettes. It will just make Harry feel worse– guiltier, if that’s possible. He’s always had a soft spot for the sisters and soft spots are not the way to go here. Give him some good news. The way the claims are sailing through and, okay Paris, if it helps. Lay off the daughter and whatever he’s been doing, unless he brings it up.
They take a room for two nights. Harry seems alright at times, but mostly like his mind is elsewhere. Lena tries to make him focus. He can’t live in motels forever. He needs to connect, make an effort, save himself.
***
“Hold still would you?”
“I can feel it eating my scalp.”
“It’s just hair coloring.”
“It looks bad. I can see it already.”
He’s right about that. What it looks like is a guy with dyed hair. A detail you might remember once you’ve noticed, so in the end they just shave it off so he looks like one of those holocaust survivors.
“Don’t worry. It’ll grow back. Maybe a beard would help.”
He just sits there looking at himself.
“See Harry? Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”
It’s a struggle, but with Lena pushing a plan takes shape. She finds a short-term rental by the airport and books a week in advance, Executive Suite, with a kitchen so he can cook, though it’s hard to picture it, Harry and supermarkets, that whole thing. So she goes for groceries, mostly nukeables, then the video outlet for movies, long ones, the whole Sopranos, anything to keep him out of the deep end. She thinks of it that way, the surge of panic when you can’t find the bottom.
“Maybe there’s a library in town, Harry. You could get some books. You know how television burns you out.”
“I’ll be alright. You don’t have to worry.”
“I know,” Lena smiles bravely. “It’s all gonna work out fine.”
She leaves in th
e morning. Harry watches her car turn out of the lot and it all falls apart and he knows he’s in trouble. He spends that first hour pacing, hands on his hairless head. Puts the liquor store off for what seems like a long time. But being time it eventually runs out and midnight finds him blacked-out in front of the QVC channel.
***
They plow Frank up the following Wednesday. At first they think a bear got him, but the missing wallet shitcans that theory. By Thursday the consensus is murder, which revs things up, and by Friday they have the bloody club and a motive. Robbery, though Frank turns out to be strapped for a diamond guy, and what about his SUV parked in town? It comes to Harry in dribs and drabs, further details, this just in. A terse no-comment from police and a plea to the public with a scrolling phone number. Anything you might have seen, only no one saw a thing. A waitress remembered Frank but he was by himself, nothing to implicate Harry beside the club and whatever they might be hiding. And the club can’t be traced to him, even if they find fingerprints. Harry’s never been fingerprinted in his life, that he can remember. And you’d remember being fingerprinted, he’s pretty sure.
The newscasts end the same every time, a shot of Frank’s home in Fairmount, bigger than you’d think, new siding, drapes drawn tight, two kids and a wife who refuses to be interviewed. Harry met her once when she picked Frank up at work. All eye makeup in a Flyers sweatshirt. The television says Frank was a roofing contractor and this starts to work on Harry. Frank may have faked the diamond business, but he was no roofer either. Harry grew up with roofers and Frank didn’t have the mouth for it, something going on here.
And since he still can, he throws on his clothes and walks over to the rest stop. Rows of big rigs and cowboys talking on cellphones, more women than you’d figure. Harry cuts through the restaurant to a bank of payphones.
“Central Hotline, can I help you?”
“Yeah, hey, I’m up here hauling pipe to Buffalo and I seen the news. That dead guy they found in Cooperstown?”
“What about him?”
“Right! I seen him a few days before it happened. Or maybe it was the day before, I can’t remember. But it was him.”
“You saw him.”
“That’s right. We got to talking and he told me he was moving diamonds.”
“Sir, can I have your name please?”
“Whoa, this is a hotline ain’t it?”
“You’re aware of the reward?”
“I ain’t interested in no reward. I keep seeing the news and nobody says nothin’ about diamonds. Might wanna look into it.”
Click.
Harry’s ruse works like a charm. The tip’s passed on and by the morning newscast motive has been firmly established. Turns out Frank really was in diamonds, not a player, but a courier, the guy you rob, meaning he was probably connected and almost certainly armed. His brag about the trial testimony, also true, in a smuggling case, with a grant of immunity, more to old Frank than met the eye. And like most tips that pan out, this one will take on a life of its own, people turning on other people, old scores settled etc. And since a lot of guys would kill for diamonds, suspects emerge and the whole investigation steams off in the wrong direction. A real stroke of genius, if Harry could only see it. But his little tip takes a day to get rolling and by then he’s way too blitzed to care.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Girl? You would not recognize the place. All those crazies? Gone. No crackheads, no junkies, just old sick people!“ Alice wipes her fingers on a napkin. “And you know how I feel about sick people, shriveled up white folks lookin’ dead already!”
“Sounds awful.”
“Awful ain’t the word. You know how sick people smell? It’s like something goin’ bad inside ‘em, and the bedpans and sponge baths? Say what you want about those crazies, at least they can wipe their own damn selves.”
“Now they’re on the street.”
“Street, hell! They all livin’ in the subway. I saw Crazy Daisy on the B-line!”
“Wait till they start finding them frozen in the bushes. Walters will pay.” Lena pushes her salad around her plate. The endives taste funny. Everything tastes funny lately.
“Don’t ever see dat man no more. President of the God damn golf course is what he is.”
“What about Strickland’s replacement? What’s he like?”
“Testy, but manageable. We call him Snidely. Snidely Whiplash, you remember Snidely?”
“Rocky and Bullwinkle.”
“Yeah, always skulkin’ around and twirling that moustache.”
“He’s got a moustache?”
“No, but that’s the name we give him.”
“Good to hear the unit hasn’t lost the touch.”
“You gonna eat that, or you just playin’?”
Lena hands her plate over. “I keep thinking of Hewitt. The man deserved better.”
In fact, she’s thinking of Harry. He’s all she thinks about now, what he’s doing up there, a fuzzy picture in her brain. As if thinking about him will keep him safe. The last time they talked he had that foggy affect the patients get, short answers, long pauses.
“Yeah, I miss the patients. Dot too! They got her wrasslin’ big, fat, sick people around like she’s Hulk freakin’ Hogan.”
“I guess it was time to get out. But I miss it sometimes. You guys.”
Thinks a lot about Harry blowing it, in a bar somewhere running his mouth. Half believes that by imagining what it would look like, she cancels out the possibility. What happens instead might be just as bad, but that one thing won’t happen if she pictures it. Other factors come into play and it can get pretty complicated, but it’s a line of logic that’s hardly ever failed her. So she pictures Harry on a bar stool, slurring.
“Speaking of crazies, you see they found that Fairmount fella murdered up in New York? Dogs got him, ugh!” Alice shudders at the thought.
“In the city?”
“No, way upstate. Near a psychiatric facility, wouldn’t you know. I mean killing somebody’s bad enough. But lettin’ the dogs get ‘em! ‘At’s evil, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“I hadn’t heard about it. Lucky for our town the subway only goes to West Oak Lane.”
Alice does that choke-y laugh with the legs bouncing. Lena laughs along and a wave of relief washes over her. So long since anything’s been funny and a laughing Alice is something to see, the chins jiggling and those big apple cheeks! But the wave passes and the cloud blows back over. Not thinking of Harry makes her think of Harry.
“Hewitt really got to you, huh, Lena?”
“He was making such progress.”
“You know, I’m worried about you girlfriend. I called your house over the weekend and you weren’t there. What’s up with that?”
“Oh, uh, Harry has some relatives up in Jersey.”
“Well you should let me know when you’re going out of town.”
“I’m sorry Alice, I . . .”
“What is it, honey? You feelin’ okay?”
Lena makes a face. “I must be coming down with something. I think maybe I better go.”
“Stay at my place for a few days. Jake can take Tamika’s old room.”
“No, that’s okay. I just need some sleep.”
“You’ve had a hard time. I don’t want to see you get sick on top of it. Come on,” Alice gathers her things. “I’m taking you straight home.”
***
Frank Lavin. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Lavin, Lavin nope, nothing, his picture in the paper, younger guy, crooked teeth, Lena’s never seen him before. It’s okay then, just coincidence. Not even that much of a coincidence, two guys from Philly in upstate New York. Big deal. Cooperstown it says, where the baseball Hall of Fame is. Harry didn’t say anything about the Hall of Fame. And he would have mentioned that. Lena folds the paper and shoves her hands between her thighs, Jesus, always freezing nowadays. Her ears like ice, and the tip of her nose cold and
wet like her old dog Barney. Dogs, oh man what they do sometimes. His picture in the paper, the relief she felt when the face was unfamiliar. Her unspoken fear, murder as a recurring theme.
So it’s okay, but she checks the news anyway, again at 11 a.m. for good measure, more coincidence than she’s comfortable with, but nothing to tie to Harry. And he didn’t know she was coming so she would have seen something if there was something to see. What did she see, the wallet, the belt, Harry’s shoes, what could it mean? Does it mean anything? All his talk about the Catskills and he ends up in Albany!
Then she thinks of the scarf, something was on it, could it be blood? Lena checks the dead man’s picture but, of course, he isn’t wearing it. Nothing about a missing wallet, but they don’t always give all the details, leave stuff out to trip up the killer.
Unless it was Harry’s scarf, an old one she’s forgotten he owned. He never said and Lena didn’t ask. She didn’t recognize it, but sometimes he’ll come in wearing something she hasn’t seen before. Not often, but once in a while, a shirt he’s had for years or a sweater. They have a closet full of scarves and hats going back years. Or maybe he bought the scarf while he was up there. That would make sense, except it didn’t look new. What was on it? And where is it? She’s looked around but hasn’t seen it since.
She’s up all night, back and forth, adding it up and sorting it out. Been through so much lately it’s hard to trust her instincts. What are her instincts, anyway? Does she really believe Harry killed Frank Lavin? Can she convince herself he didn’t? Oh Christ, what it could mean! Harry’s up there killing people!
***
“Hello, Carlos?”
***
Guns, right? How easy, just point and pull the trigger. Harry curls his lip, as close to badass as he can manage; stick thin and hairless, like he is. Leans in until his nose hits the mirror, pores like drainage ditches, blackheads and the bushes in his nose, plucks until his eyes water, how fucking old he looks! The web of wrinkles when the light is right, and that front tooth, less than attractive when you throw in the wrinkles and the ears! Look at him! Fucking Dumbo, pinhead fuck! His new look, old bald guy with a gun.