The November Criminals: A Novel

by Sam Munson

  “Yes, it’s quite relaxing,” he yelled, over the sound of the water and the minor clanks, “and being relaxed, you’ll find, is usually the most necessary thing in any situation. Don’t you agree?” He’d returned, by this last question. “Don’t you agree, Addison, that being relaxed is the important thing?”

  “Sir, like I just wanted to talk about Kevin. I see you found the posters. I think the posters are like a good thing. I’ve like been doing them like after and before school. I think they can help bring out uninvestigated aspects of the case.” I was panting by the time I finished. I knew it sounded mechanical. I couldn’t think of anything else, between the cold, which had somehow gotten indoors, my worry about ghosts, and that tickle of superiority. He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked me, low and calm, “Well, do you or don’t you, Addison?” I noticed that he had a pen clipped to the neck of his sweater, which went with the meticulous gait of his speech.

  “No, I’m very relaxed, thank you.”

  He unclipped his pen and sighted me down it.

  “No. No, Addison, that is not what I asked. I asked a general question of principle. Not specifically related to you.” His grin only got stiffer and wider.

  “I agree,” I said, with high and vacuous sympathy.

  “You agree what?”

  Another tide of sweat burst out of my pores. “I agree that like what you said about relaxation? Is important?” This elicited a nod.

  “Well, I suppose I have to accept that, Addison. Although you might be just telling me what you think I want to hear. You have to admit, there’s a good chance that you’re telling me what I want to hear.” As I listened to the easy, full drone of his voice, this weird seizure of sleepiness gripped me. Fucked-up, right? “Addison? Hello? Hello in there?” He was snapping his fingers. “Your attention wandered, Addison. That’s sort of rude, wouldn’t you say?” Before I could agree, the kettle gave a high harmonic moan. “There goes the water,” Mr. Broadus chimed. “Please keep talking.” And so I did. After agreeing—“Yes, I would say it is like sort of rude, Mr. Broadus”—I explained everything. Explained it to that chocolate-colored couch. Above it hung a lithograph, an old map of the city, still a whole rhombus then, before the government had given the ragged quarter west of the Potomac back to Virginia.

  I offered all the pathetic fragments I had. The assembly. My idiot teachers. Mr. Vanderleun. My theft of the file. Noel’s statement about Short Mike. The lax behavior of the police. Lorriner’s assault on my house. My trip to Brander’s Hollow. Murphy, Murphy, Murphy. The postering. The dogfight. My money. And this newest moment. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, you know how empty and sad it sounded. You’ve heard it already. The way you lie to your teachers. Or the way you lie to whichever parent you love and trust more. I didn’t care. I thought I sounded amazing. The rocking chair plunged back and forth beneath me. I did not mention weed. I did not mention the Aeneid. I did not mention Digger. I did not mention Holocaust jokes. So Mr. Broadus—or rather the air where he had been sitting—got the whole story. Minus the useless personal information. My voice had come apart. Luminous haze had started seeping from every object I could see, through the fishbowling of my vision, through the bone-cold of the outdoors that had gotten into his house.

  “Is your like heat working?” I shouted at the end of my précis.

  “Our heat works fine, Addison,” he called from the kitchen. “It’s a new renovation. I can send firewood sellers away because of it.” I shivered. In agreement, I guess. The trails of glowing vapor followed my glance, whenever I moved my eyes. And I just forged ahead.

  “And I’ve like lost a loved one too, Mr. Broadus,” I gasped. A loved one! The big finish! Kevin’s father was still clattering away with the teacups and kettle. He wasn’t much longer about it, though. “Sorry about the delay,” he sang through his rigor-mortis smile as he sailed in. He’d brought only one cup of tea. I didn’t object.

  Water chunked through the second-floor pipes. Mr. Broadus blew on the limpid surface of his tea.

  “Now, Addison, you were telling me before that you had some evidence? About Kevin, I mean. And that you were his friend. Although, as I said, he did not have many friends. His schoolwork was very important to him. I believe in attending to your studies. It’s how I became successful. And I think I would remember you. Wouldn’t you say so?” I tried to slow the squeaks of the chair.

  “Well, Mr. Broadus, I wouldn’t say we were exactly best friends or anything like that, and I certainly didn’t mean to give you the impression that we were best friends or anything like that.” I was starting to sound like a querulous spinster, and Mr. Broadus only widened his grin.

  “I didn’t ask you if you were best friends with my son, Addison. His best friend is named Tarasac Choulamontry. He’s Laotian. I asked if it wouldn’t be likely, given that you say you were friends with Kevin, that I’d remember you?”

  This high buzzing distracted me, right as he said that. More of a ringing, or the onset of deafness. I almost asked him, Do you hear that? But I restricted myself to a direct answer.

  “Yes, I think you would remember me, Mr. Broadus. And I think like there’s been some like miscommunication here?”

  “You mean that you told me you were his friend and you were not his friend?”

  “No, I didn’t mean … I only meant that we were like acquaintances more than friends, if you see what I mean, and that really I never met you before the whole thing, so that’s why you don’t remember me.” The spinsterish whine had crept back into my voice, so I shut up. Mr. Broadus seemed to accept this, although his smile did not vanish, as I’d hoped it would. He only shielded his neck with two hands as his glasses blanked into discs of light.

  “No, but, Mr. Broadus, really I think I can help. I’m sorry but I know I can help. The posters can help.” Mr. Broadus ran a gray tongue over his large lips.

  “I talk to myself, Addison, sometimes when I’m alone. Do you ever do that? It’s a bad habit. But we all have those.” He blew on his tea some more.

  “No, I respect everything that you’ve gone through.” I told him this without managing to meet his eyes. “I respect everything you’ve gone through and I really feel I have something valuable to communicate here.” (What?)

  “Yes, I know you do, Addison,” cooed Mr. Broadus, in his clipped and equable voice, and apologized for not bringing me a cup of tea. Then we said nothing more to each other, for a long moment: Mr. Broadus staring at me over the rim of his cup, me in my frantic stillness, trying to prevent the chair from rocking.

  “I just think if you’ll let me move ahead with my investigations,” I stuttered. Mr. Broadus slurped down the rest of the tea.

  “Why are you here? Really?” His voice contained no recognizable emotion. Only interest. “Do you know what you’re actually doing? Do you know?”

  “I can sympathize with everything you’ve like gone through,” I repeated, because there was no other coherent reply I could make. I’m sure you all can agree: I am a stupid and useless motherfucker. Because of that little tickle, that little hint of saintliness I was groping after with him, that glint. So instead of answering his question, which would have required me to reveal myself as a full-bore fraud, I blurted out, “Can I leave my pager number with you?”

  He waved the blue poster at me. A shade I’d chosen with special pride.

  “Addison. Addison, Addison. You forget that I have it right here. You even mentioned in this flyer that it was a pager number. And you were saying something before about killing some dog? About money? While I was out of the room. As I said, I also talk to myself when I’m alone, so I understand. You were talking to yourself. All your theories. I heard all of it. But it was just something you imagined, Addison. Wasn’t it? That you were discussing with yourself. I can understand that. How could it be real? Nobody decent would behave in such a way. Nobody would do something like this”—and here he waved my poster again—“for reasons that thin. Nobody decent. Do you understand what I�
��m saying? You look confused.” He’d crossed the room and was kneeling to look into my face, hands on his ponderous knees. The bulge of his gut filled out his sweater, elongating the reindeer legs. I managed to meet his eyes. A glaring and icy green, behind the large glasses, under the gray bush of his eyebrows.

  “Don’t you have a better reason, Addison?” The chair groaned beneath me. I groaned with it. The ache in my neck had reached a grinding and miserable pitch. I groaned and covered my face. I could form no words. “Come with me,” Mr. Broadus was saying. “Come with me. Come upstairs.”

  “I haven’t been upstairs before,” I blurted out as I struggled to my feet. Mr. Broadus turned his green gaze on me again, squinting at my non sequitur or maybe my drunk’s wobble.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” he clacked out. And in my single lucid moment so far that day, I came up with a great retort: You sound white! I have a white friend who sounds black! Isn’t that funny! He was already halfway up the short staircase, where I had been perched less than a week ago listening to his wife whistle. So I never said it.

  The pictures of Kevin had been taken down. That shocked me. The pictures had been taken down and my pompous inner voice decried their absence. As though that were my right. The pictures were gone, leaving lighter patches on the white walls of the stairway, and little holes, which looked like dead gnats. The floorboard sang beneath his feet and then mine, and we were upstairs. The layout was simple, a big entrance area with a schoolroom piano, which I had not seen from my previous vantage points. And next to the piano a saxophone on its stand, smaller than Kevin’s. An alto. Kevin played the baritone. There were pictures of the Broaduses as a family on the walls, of Mrs. Broadus and Mr. Broadus when they were younger, one picture where she was wearing a bridal gown and he was wearing a dark, wide-lapeled suit and a dove gray vest and a top hat. He was motioning me on.

  “You went to school with him?” he asked. “You had that same teacher? Mr. Vanderleun, yes? You’re also gifted and talented?”

  “All of those things are true,” I mumbled. We had stopped before a door to which was affixed one of those joke road signs, in crimson and white: KEEP OUT.

  “He liked his privacy,” Mr. Broadus said. “I feel no compunction in telling you that.” Then he opened the door, without saying anything else, and we stood on the threshold and stared.

  Ghosts? Let me tell you what I saw: nothing. The walls had been stripped bare. Paler squares from posters, awards, whatever, all the furniture, bed, dresser, etc., all gone, no blinds on the windows, no dust on the floor, in the gaping closet only quadrangles of shadow, not even bereft hangers. Nothing but pale winter sun and the heavy air of the house. My breath speeded up, and two tearlike drops of sweat plashed down from my eyebrows. He was there. The emptiness itself proved it. I withstood the view. Gnawing my lower lip. Then I turned my face to Mr. Broadus, and I saw that he had clenched his jaw. I was close to tears—not from exhaustion, or guilt and shame, but tears of an emotion beyond those, which lacks a definition and does not need one. Greeks always win. Trojans always lose. Virgil had to weave a large and specious story to redeem their sad fates. The gate of ivory. Mr. Broadus spoke into the desert of his son’s room.

  “You didn’t know him. You were not his friend, and you did not even know him. He had a pager. I don’t know where he got it. He had it for about a year. He had a pager, and he liked his privacy, and spent a lot of time out at night. I never asked him about it. I always believed he should be independent. I taught him that. I trusted him. I found certain indications in his room. After. The police did not find them. He hid them too well. It was like him to do that. To be methodical. I taught him to be methodical. I could show them to you. I can’t show them to you. I destroyed them. This is the first thing I wanted to tell you. Do you understand? Are you sick? You seem confused.” His voice never wavered or lost its metronomic pace. “Do you understand? Are you sick?” He looked at me. I nodded. My one honest answer to him. “They took his watch,” he said. His jaw now shut. “The murderers took his watch. Only the police know that. That was the one fact they kept back. Out of everything. All of it. They planned on verifying the killer. Or weeding out the false callers.” He made a noise, a long, windy huff, high-pitched. “The second thing is that I wanted to see you. To see your face. I thought you’d be older. I don’t know why. We always imagine these things differently.” He moaned again and spoke no further.

  I could have left then. Only the staircase separated me from the street. I could have left and gone back to my false life, and come up with some piece of explanation for why even Kevin’s own father was not on my side. Normally I would have started doing this while I was still standing in the man’s house. But my creative powers had left me, for the moment. There was only Kevin’s empty room. That was the only fact. The ringing in my ears had ascended to this impossible vacuous whir, the noise of rapid wingbeats or an engine. My jagged fast pulse fluttered above my larynx. I had no response. I had to respond. You see that, right? I had come to this point, and action was demanded.

  “I think I can help find out who killed your son.” My teeth knocked against one another as I spoke: I think I c-c-c-an. I was gripping my upper arms in the bitter cold, embracing myself. Mr. Broadus did not seem to have heard me. “I can help,” I clicked out.

  “Addison, are you aware of the fact that right here in Washington, D.C., more than thirty percent of murders go unsolved? That’s what the police told me. Do you really think it even matters, now? Why are you here? What are you doing?” He was still looking into his son’s empty room. “They took his watch. It was some psychopath. Nothing else was stolen. No money. No wallets. Don’t you think, Addison, that this indicates some irrationality on the part of the killers? Couldn’t you have just called me and asked? Before you did all this?” He brandished the blue poster. No words exist for the undersounds he made as he spoke. So I took off my backpack. I offered it to Mr. Broadus. “There’s the money,” I murmured.

  For the first time he raised his voice. “You don’t understand this! Don’t think you do. You never could. You don’t understand the situation.” His voice came from everywhere. I swear to fucking God. He was shoving me, not shoving me, he was jabbing his enormous first and second fingers into my chest, and I was backing up and backing up. He took the bag from me, jerked it away, and lifted it over his head with his left hand and he stabbed at my solar plexus with his right. He did not lumber. He moved with smoothness. And, so to speak, with justice. That I recognized. I knew he was going to hit me with my bag. I wanted to raise my hands in defense. They would not rise. “You cannot understand this, Addison,” he was chanting, blinking hard behind his glasses, “you cannot understand this.” He backed me into the corner with the piano and the saxophone. We had no more space. Nowhere to move. I bowed my head and waited for the blow.

  The lock of the front door clicked open. I recognized its sound. My eyes still shut, I heard a woman call out, “Stan? Who’s that? Stan? What’s wrong?” She had a beautiful voice. As good as her whistle. The bag did not strike me. I opened my eyes. Mrs. Broadus was climbing the stairs. Wearing a reindeer sweater identical to her husband’s, except that the colors had been inverted: it was maroon with gray deer. “There’s the money,” I repeated, “all my money.”

  “Who are you,” asked Mrs. Broadus, no more music in her voice. I started to speak. My legs quaked out from under me. And just before I was gone, just before I slipped into that waiting and echoing dark, the back of my head hit the keyboard of their piano. I can hear the broken chord it made to this day.

  XVI.

  THIS ISN’T ONE OF THOSE ABSURD pieces of writing where it turns out that the narrator has been dead the whoooooole tiiiiiiime! I would never abuse your trust and impose on your goodwill in that way, ladies and gentlemen. My father brought me such a book while I was convalescing. He’d picked it up from the best-seller racks, where he buys all his books. It was called Rage, by Nathan Levitan. The narrator (i
t turns out) is this already-dead college student who got killed in the Vietnam War. Telling the convoluted story of his own death. He gets into a good college, and he gets showily disgusted by the innocent vulgarities of his classmates, and then he starts to “rebel,” gets expelled, loses his academic deferment, ends up in the war, and thus gets shot. I don’t want to sound harsh. I mean, this guy is a published writer and everything. But what the fuck? Do you need much help in guessing what my opinion of that concept is?

  Rage had on the back flap this photo of him, of Levitan, I mean. He looked like a successful insurance salesman, divorced maybe. Really unhappy. Something in the set of his mouth. After I got out of the hospital, I read up on this guy. A, he’s seventy years old. B, in all of his photos he has that same weird, unhappy look, although he is—as far as I can determine—a famous and successful writer. So why does he look so miserable all the time? He writes kind of like he’s miserable, too. You know what I mean? So grim! Why? Why this grimace in his author photos, a look of chagrined concentration, like he’s trying to take a highly spiritual shit? What more does he want out of life? I can’t figure it out. My father brought me this book instead of my Loeb edition of the Aeneid, which I asked him for when he first came to visit me in the hospital. He forgot the Aeneid, as I half expected him to, and he covered his mistake by bringing Rage instead. “It was a staff pick, Addison.” He grinned as he handed it over, and I faked a really good smile right back at him. “They all seem intelligent there. Very upper-percentile.” He’s the one person I know who uses that phrase. It makes me nauseated, sort of. He must have stopped in a rush at a bookstore on the way to Sidney Memorial when he realized he’d forgotten. More than a few bookstores exist on the route from our house. D.C., like most fundamentally barbarous cities, contains a large number of bookstores. As a kind of camouflage to deceive unwary visitors.