by Thomas Laird
“Do you really love me, Derek?”
“You know I do.”
“And none of those things are true.”
“What things, Carrie?”
She sits at the other end of her couch in the living room.
I stand and watch her face.
“What things?” I repeat.
“A Detective Parisi saw me, down at work.”
The blood flushes toward my cheeks. I can feel the scarlet tide across my face.
“What’d he want?”
“He showed me pictures.”
“Pictures?” I ask.
I’m trying to control the blood flow to my face. I don’t want her reading me.
“They were pictures of a prostitute who’d been mauled. He and the other detective said you did that to her.”
“And you believed him? He’s the guy who’s trying to hang Jennifer’s death on me, Carrie. Don’t you get it? He’s trying to turn you against me!”
“Did you do that to that woman, Derek?”
“I can’t believe you’d think it for even a second.”
She eyes me, but she doesn’t move.
“Did you, Derek?”
“I can’t believe—“
“DID YOU?”
I watch her, and I maintain my breathing. I calm myself, and the facial blush dissolves.
“No. Of course I didn’t do it. They’re just trying to pile all this shit on me. I swear to God, Carrie. It’s the truth. I thought you loved me.”
“I don’t know what to think, Derek. After this morning, I don’t know what to believe. Maybe you better stay at your place for a little while, until I get this all straight in my head.”
“Is that what it’s going to take?”
She stands mute.
“Fine. Fucking fine.”
I rush into the bedroom, grab my overnight bag and load it with most of my clothes. I don’t know how long this crazy bitch is going to take to think things out, and I don’t much care, at the moment. I just don’t like her taking control, the way she just did. I’m thinking maybe I should’ve hauled her dumb ass to Louisiana before today, and now I won’t get the pleasure of watching her turn into gator feed with her eyes wide open as they tear into her.
But maybe this will only delay her demise. I can still come back and stick her with that needle and watch her freeze up and turn into a pillar of salt like the broad in the Bible. Lot’s wife?
She’s still sitting on the couch with that grim, determined look she gave me when she suggested I get out. I don’t say anything to her, and I don’t look back over my shoulder at her, like that crazy cow from the Bible story.
*
The house is dead still. There are no ‘disturbances,’ tonight. It’s so quiet that I can’t sleep. I’ve kept the utilities on so the pipes don’t freeze. I have some sheets and blankets and pillow cases in the closet. I left them in case I ever had to return here. You never know with women if they’re going to go hot or cold. I guess this is just Carrie going polar on me. I’m really confident I’ll get the call from her to come back once she sees the cops in IA and Homicide have nothing on her dear husband, and then I’ll be welcomed home to the hilt.
It’s this son of a bitch Parisi again. First, he drags me in while I’m on the job to grill me about the Italians and the arsonist, Pete Andropolis. He’s trying to work on me from the inside, now, poisoning Carrie by showing her photos of that whore I roughed up a little. One of the Italians must have ratted me out, on her. I got a little carried away and I broke the cow’s jaw in several places. She didn’t rat me out until now. I wonder why.
It’s Parisi. It’s always been that guinea bastard. He’s had a hard-on about me since I can remember.
I don’t think it’d be wise to pop the Homicide, at the moment, however. They’re watching me a little too closely. I’ll wait until they give it up. Some Homicides say they never close a homicide case, but there comes a time when you have to fold ‘em. Man hours are man hours, and the cops work in a business-like way when it comes to expenditures. They don’t throw bucks at a lost cause.
Parisi is a different animal, though. He’s been known to go freelance at perps, the legend goes. He had an old man who he inherited that bad attitude from. His father, Jake. Another iconic figure at the CPD. Another straight policeman who supposedly didn’t take money. Self- righteous assholes are what I call them. Better- than- thou preacher men. God’s chosen. Whatever.
I’m going to meet with Parisi eventually. He’s going to pay the toll, just like everyone else.
*
I see him in the café at Headquarters. He’s alone, no Gibron to back him up.
I walk over to the booth he’s sitting in.
“I hear you talked to my wife at her work.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Can’t talk about an ongoing case. Is that it, Parisi?”
“Something like that,” he smiles.
“You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re a joke, Derek, but there’s nothing humorous about you.”
I loom over him.
“Stay the hell away from my wife.”
“I heard you’re living apart.”
The flush returns to my face. I can feel the heat in my cheeks.
“Are you all right, Derek?” he grins.
When I move even closer to him, he thumps the sap on the table top, and it shocks me upright.
“A tough hombre like you shouldn’t be afraid of this little thing. You got six inches and a lot of poundage on me, Skotadi. This is my equalizer. Want to meet him, up close and personal?”
I back up a step.
“You can’t threaten me, Parisi.”
“I thought that was your move, a minute ago. Changed your mind?”
“Stay the hell away from Carrie.”
“I don’t know if I can promise you that. You ought to be more concerned about whether you’re going to reconcile with your lovely wife. Now get the fuck away from me, you waste of flesh.”
I see Gibron approaching from the entry.
“This isn’t even close to being over with, Parisi.”
“That’s the first right thing you’ve said today.”
I walk away, past Gibron, who gives me the evil eye as I push through the doors and into the hallway.
I call Carrie’s number three or four times, but she’s not answering. I wanted to play it stoic and let her be the one to call me, but like I said, I don’t like the way she took command of things. Now I’m in this house, all alone. Not even the leftovers of my former wife are here to keep me company.
I watch her apartment building from across the street. She returns home at the usual time, 6:15 P.M. Then I see the lights in her flat come on a few seconds later. I could try to get in—I still have the keys—but that would only serve to prove the Homicide’s side of the story, and I’m not going to show her that I’m the bad guy in this scenario. She won’t find that out until she takes me back, sometime in the spring when the weather is right for the road trip.
If I snatched her now, there are too many uncontrollable variables. There would be a struggle, and that creates the opportunity for my leaving evidence they could use against me. No, I have to be the one calling the shots from inside that apartment that was recently my home. When I get back in, she’ll never see it coming.
And I know it’ll be a surprise, once she realizes that I’m one of the good guys, not the villain in the piece. She was easy to convince before, but now she’s showing a stubborn side I hadn’t seen before. Up until she threw me out, things all went my way. Then all this with those goddam photos. She never doubted me until then.
Call it a cop’s intuition. Call it whatever you like. I read her like a day-old sports page. I knew her every mood. I knew all the buttons she liked pushed.
Then this grease ball cop comes along and puts a seed of doubt into her empty but gorgeous head, and I’m back living in spookland minus the spook. This just cann
ot stand unresolved. I won’t let it lie.
I watch her from the street through the plate glass window at her boutique-gallery place. Occasionally she comes to the front of it and I can see her. Even from far away, you can make out that delectable symmetry that is her body. I haven’t been away from her very long, but I have a strange need to own that voluptuous frame again. It was mine, and all this crap separated me from her before I could get my fill. I wasn’t nearly done with Carrie.
I feel robbed.
I drive away, down State Street. I have a day to fill up until I go on shift at eleven tonight. It’s prime time, midnights, for all the street creatures to emerge, and perhaps I can entertain myself with some of these night people.
But I have to be wary that someone hasn’t planted a police woman or two out here to troll for me. I wouldn’t put it past them. IA wants my scalp as much as Parisi and Gibron do.
By now the Italians are seriously considering whether they should take the risk of topping a policeman, since I killed a made-man or three. They don’t let things like that go, even though it’s their custom to back off from whacking cops.
I cruise the streets near Old Town, and then I meander up and down Clark Street, and finally I hit Rush Street, where the higher classed working girls operate. It’s a Wednesday night, and usually the action starts to perk up in advance of the weekend.
The late night clubs are rocking. I can hear the music out here in the streets, even though it’s late February and it’s cold as a polar bear’s ass end, out here.
I’m thinking about Carrie’s creamy flesh. She’s ripe, in full blossom. She’s lost, right now. Someone took her away from me.
Someone has to pay.
PART THREE
Chapter 11
Leonard was confused about this new deal regarding being in love. He supposed he loved his mother. He knew damn sure he felt nothing of a positive nature about the old man. There was a link with his father that was biological, he understood, but blood couldn’t carry affection or respect with it. With Joellen it was love and respect and the deepest affection, so he knew it was the authentic thing with her, and he also knew he’d made the right move by marrying her.
Now there was a third party, and Tare wondered if he would love the child as much as he loved its mother. He supposed he would. There was that blood tie business involved with offspring. Even the gators tended to their young ones, at least for a while. But they were cold-blooded critters, and Leonard didn’t reckon any comparisons with humans would float, after a while.
He was hoping it would be a son, but he didn’t let Joellen know about it. A daughter would suit him fine. At least she probably wouldn’t wind up as gator bait in the military, although women were pressing it about engaging in combat like men, lately. Leonard didn’t mind babes with bayonets. They could pull a trigger like anyone else.
But if he had a girl, he was hoping she’d be the girly kind of female. Dresses and makeup and shit. He didn’t want a Bruno for his little princess. Someone who’d wind up as a professional wrestler—or even worse, someone who hunted alligators in this bayou with him.
College was the way for his little pet, although he’d never call her by that name. She’d be no man’s bootblack, either. If it was a girl, he was hoping she wouldn’t become one of those radical feminists, but he would like her to be independent. Go where she wanted and do as she pleased. Not be some house slave or manservant.
He also realized that the die was already cast and that he had no say about which sex it was going to be.
The good news was that Joellen’s nausea had passed, and now she had all kinds of new energy. She cleaned house when it was already immaculate. When he told her to slow down, she gave him the thousand-yard stare that only Leonard was supposed to have acquired back in the jungle. She was the tiger, not Tare.
That included her vitality in the bedroom, as well. He almost couldn’t keep up with her, and he was tentative that his penetration might harm the baby.
“Leonard, you are a fool. You’re not as big as you think you are.”
When she saw the gloom gather on his brow, she put her fingers on his cheeks and scolded him.
“You think you have to have one the size of a Louisville Slugger? You’re fine. You’re just right. And we’re not doing any pornos, so you don’t have to worry about wowing the crowd. You men are such idiots about your little guy!”
Then his face lit back up when he remembered how much she craved him, even after the wedding. Usually the fire burned out after a while, he reckoned, but Joellen’s blazed hotter than it did when they bumped uglies in the pickup truck. He had no complaints about his love life at the present, that was for sure.
Then he got word in the mail that shocked him. Perhaps it was stronger than ‘shocked.’
The War Department was honored to inform him that Leonard Tare was to receive a belated Medal of Honor for his heroism in battle—it had to do with an incident near Bong Son, in Vietnam. Leonard had dragged off three wounded Seals and put himself in grievous jeopardy while single-handedly holding off an assault of more than fifty NVA until reinforcements could thwart the onslaught.
Leonard’s CO had put Tare in for the award, but the CO took one in the melon before the paperwork could be completed, and everything had fallen through. There was nothing more to be heard—until he read this latest missive from the big shots in the Pentagon.
Leonard Tare was to come to Washington D.C. on March 22nd to receive his Medal of Honor. Apparently, someone in Leonard’s outfit in Vietnam had risen to honcho status and he’d chipped away at the powers that be until Tare had the Medal he deserved.
Leonard showed the announcement to Joellen, and she wept. Tare remained dry-eyed until he saw all her waterworks, and then he finally broke down and got his own face wet, too.
He met the President, of course, and the Commander in Chief draped the heavy medal on his chest. Then there was an awkward but heartfelt speech he had to give in front of a crowd of media people, and that evening of March 22nd Joellen and he saw the whole thing on the TV in the fancy hotel room the Feds sprung for, for the two of them.
“You look heavier on television,” Joellen teased.
“I’m no lightweight, anymore, darlin’.”
“You’re perfect. And now you’re a war hero, too.”
“Yeah. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
When they returned to Plank, there was a parade. All the drunks from Tony’s showed up, and Leonard and Joellen rode on the lone fire truck in town that weaved its way through the two blocks that were downtown Plank. The high school band marched behind the fire truck, and all 280 residents showed up, it looked like. At the town square, in front of the Confederate sentinel who stood all covered in bird crap on the sparse lawn, Leonard and Joellen and the 280 homies of Plank, Louisiana, listened to Mayor Jack Stark deliver an oration that lasted thirty-two excruciating minutes. Leonard just wanted to go home, but Joellen was beaming from ear to ear.
Afterward, there was a reception at the VFW, and they served some righteous barbeque chicken and baby-backed ribs, along with gallons of mustard potato salad and grits and greens and all kinds of desserts made by the ladies from the First Baptist Church. The Catholics threw in a half barrel of Lone Star beer, and the non-affiliated townies threw in a half dozen bottles of Old Rebel bourbon, a real drinkin’ likker.
After the drunks were shut off, the pastor at First Baptist said a closing prayer, and then all of the residents wobbled home at 9:00 P.M. to sleep it off.
Leonard, however, stayed sober. He’d only drunk soda pop because he didn’t feel it was dignified for a Medal of Honor winner to get ripped at his own celebration. Besides, he had a hankering for Joellen, and she was sober also, due to her being in the matronly way. So they went home and lit up the sheets. He paid special attention, though, not to slam at her, even though his wife had informed him that his weaponry was such that he wouldn’t do the fetus any harm.
Leonard Ta
re couldn’t give up the midnight fishing altogether, and Joellen tolerated his habit of visiting the bayou in the middle of the night. They both understood that it wasn’t just a hunt for the aquatic denizens of the swamp that prompted the Medal of Honor winner to return to his dock at the witching hour.
He felt compelled to sit with his Lady at least occasionally so that she would know that he hadn’t deserted her altogether.
It was already hot in March. Winter was long gone, and spring in Plank was like August up north in Chicago. It was torrid, humid like a wool blanket, and Leonard could not imagine what kind of tropical summer lay ahead.
She stood in white profusion, in her usual pearl-white hue, at the end of the dock.
He approached her with the perfunctory sawed off canon in his left hand. She certainly wasn’t afraid of the shotgun, so he knew she wouldn’t mind that it was a practical accompaniment because of the still-living beasts who lurked beyond the dock.
“They gave me a medal,” he told her. “I didn’t bring it with, but it was the big one, the Medal of Honor. I haven’t been around because Joellen and I had to go to Washington D.C. to get it. And the President himself put it right over my head. There were all kinds of TV people, and newspaper, too. It was some circus.
“Aren’t you ever going to get to go home, or wherever it is you’re supposed to go? It ain’t right that you get stuck in this goddam swamp forever. I know you didn’t die here. I know he likely killed you in the north and brought you here to…
“It ain’t right. I know your name is Jennifer. You might not know that everyone else calls you the Lady in the Lake or the Lady in White. I know the local punks come out here to see if you’re real. I heard you don’t appear to any of them, and I understand. I only wish I could do something for you. I was going to go up north and…I don’t know what the hell I was going to do. I suppose I figured I was going to drag that son of a bitch down here to this dock and let the reptiles have him. I figured that would be justice, like an eye for an eye, but like I already tried to explain to you, I can’t do any of that, now. We’re going to have a young one, and he’s going to have an old man who’s a helluva lot better than the one I got stuck with. I couldn’t very well kill your husband and then get jailed for it. My son or daughter’s not going to have a convict for a daddy.