Nice Girl Does Noir -- Vol. 1 (Intro by William Kent Krueger)

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “SHOUT?” I asked.

  “Stop Human Oppression and Unrestrained Tyranny,” David said.

  Ted looked up. “Actually, it started out as the Society for Human Opportunity and Unlimited Trust.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  Ted shifted. “I—I must have read it someplace. It’s one of those things that sticks in your mind.”

  David went on. “SHOUT had their own commune in West Philly, not far from the Penn campus. They were way out there, like SDS and the Weathermen. Preaching about cleansing the system and the people’s revolution.”

  A hazy memory jogged my brain. “Didn’t they blow up a bank?”

  “Two points.” David raised his fingers. “They did, and a couple of people were killed.”

  Jamie frowned. “So how come this guy’s out walking around free?”

  “They never proved he was part of the bombing. He claimed there was a ‘gang of four’—two men and two women—who planned and executed the attack. He served a few years as an accessory, but the ones who actually did it are still underground.”

  “Scumbags.” Ted grumbled. A conservative Republican and Vietnam vet, Ted’s idea of a hero is Oliver North. He even resembles the colonel, with a razor-edge haircut and deep-set eyes.

  “Rizzo got even, though.” David said.

  “Who?” Jamie asked.

  “Frank Rizzo, former mayor and police chief of Philadelphia. A few years after the attack, the Philadelphia police stormed their commune and blew it up. Two SHOUT members were killed. The cops claimed they were armed to the teeth.”

  “I remember,” I said.

  “Everybody knew it was a lie,” David said. “It was payback for the bank. But the group fell apart after that.”

  “And your client?” I said.

  “He stayed out of trouble, eventually started a business.” David rubbed his nose. “Remember, this was thirty years ago.”

  “Strange story.” I poured the last of the wine.

  “The guy finally pulled his head out of his rear end,” Ted said.

  I pressed my lips together, curious about Jamie’s opinion. Though she’d led a passionate fight against unnecessary development, helping to thwart a plan for a new village mall, she’d grown up in Connecticut on streets named “Elderberry” with lots of churches. She spent her life following the rules.

  David rolled his wineglass between his palms. “So where were you during the sixties?” No one answered. “OK. I’ll cop first. I dropped out of college and hitchhiked across Europe for a year.”

  I cleared my throat, emboldened by his confession. “I lived in a commune and sold underground newspapers.”

  “You didn’t!” Jamie’s eyes grew wide.

  I nodded, remembering how convinced I was that life would never require a knowledge of furniture, china, or designer clothes. A crusader against a corrupt, repressive system, I wrote for the Revolutionary Times and read my “3M’s”: Mao, Marcuse, and Marx.

  “What happened?” Jamie asked.

  “It didn’t last. They told me I was too bourgeoise.” I spread my hands. “The most I could aspire to was running a safe-house.”

  “A wannabee, huh?” Ted sneered.

  My spine stiffened. “What about you, Ted? Where were you during the revolution?”

  “ROTC then ‘Nam. And damn proud of ‘em both.”

  I suppressed a reply.

  “Your turn, Jamie,” David cut in.

  “Well.” She folded her hands in her lap. “I’ve never told anyone this.” She looked at each of us.

  “Go. You’re with friends.”

  “Okay.” She took a breath. “During our senior high school trip to Washington, we took a tour of the White House.” She cast a sly look at us. “When we got to the Blue Room, I stuck a piece of gum behind the door, right on the door jam.”

  I blinked. David stared. Ted snorted. “You what?”

  She inspected her hands. “And you know what? When we went back a few years ago on one of those tours your Congressman sets up, I felt behind the door of the Blue Room. You’re not going to believe it, but the gum was still there.”

  My mouth dropped open. No one said anything. I started to applaud. “You win, Jamie. You really stuck it to the system.”

  ***

  Rachel and I stopped by Jamie’s a couple of weeks later. Halloween was close, and Rachel wanted to be a hippie. I wondered if she and Conrad had eavesdropped on us the night we had dinner. Or maybe it was Conrad’s idea. With his faded army jacket, pierced ear, and attitude, the fourteen-year-old was the antithesis of his parents.

  I’d managed to scrounge up a pair of old bell—bottoms and a peasant blouse, but we still needed beads and a peace symbol. I didn’t think Jamie would have anything, but Rachel insisted we try.

  Jamie opened the door before we knocked. “Hi. I saw you coming down the street.”

  She led us into the kitchen, a swirl of red quarry tile, gleaming white appliances, and lemon accents. I sat down at a glossy cedar table with a vase of mums on top. A minute later, two glasses of lemonade and a plate of homemade cookies appeared. The cookies were warm.

  “I’m not sure I have anything,” Jamie said after Rachel explained why we were there, “but let’s take a look. Come on.”

  “Is Conrad here?” Rachel asked as they mounted the stairs.

  “No, he’s at —” Jamie’s voice faded, and I couldn’t quite make out where Conrad was supposed to be.

  I munched cookies, idly scanning some papers on the table. Notes from the village’s Quality of Life meeting. Whether to fund a proposed historical society. And how to organize the next Fourth of July celebration.

  The trill of the phone interrupted my eavesdropping. It rang twice. Maybe Jamie couldn’t hear it upstairs. After the fourth ring, Ted’s voice boomed out. “This is 555-9876. Leave a message.” That was Ted. Nothing cute. Barely polite.

  A man’s voice followed. “It’s been a long time, my friend.” I stared at the phone. “We’re anxious to talk and smell the jasmine. We have a lot of catching up to do. We’ll expect to hear from you soon.” The caller disconnected. An uneasy feeling skittered around inside. Talk and smell the jasmine?

  When they came back, Rachel was clutching a string of blue beads. I inspected them. “These are too good.”

  “Mom!” Rachel cried in dismay.

  “What are they?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Lapis lazuli maybe.”

  Rachel’s eyes were shooting darts, but I shook my head. “We can’t, Jamie. What if something happens to them?”

  “I’ll be careful.” Rachel whined.

  “Come on Ellie,” Jamie said. “I trust her.”

  I looked at Jamie, then Rachel, standing next to each other in solidarity. “Okay. I don’t have a prayer against both of you.” Rachel threw her arms around me. “By the way, Jamie, someone left you a strange message. Something about talking and smelling the jasmine.”

  She replayed the tape on the machine, her face blank. “Must be a wrong number. I’ll erase it.” She started to hit delete.

  “What if it’s for Ted?”

  “He talks to everyone on his cell phone.”

  “Still, shouldn’t you save it for him?”

  She took her finger off the button. “You’re probably right.”

  Just then Conrad pushed through the door. Rachel’s face grew crimson, and she seemed to forget how to move. Conrad brushed by her, if he expected nothing less than adoration. I bit my lip.

  ***

  David and I entered the house after dinner Saturday night, warm and languid from too much food and wine. Inside an unnatural stillness greeted us. Blue light from the TV spilled into the hall. The springs of the couch squeaked, and I heard rustles. I peered into the family room.

  Conrad was on one end of the couch, Rachel the other. Their faces were flushed, and the air felt steamy. The coffee table was littered with a videocassette sleeve, the remote, and a couple of glasses. R
achel tried to flash me a guileless smile. I stomped into the room. Rachel was only twelve years old.

  “Do your parents know you’re here, Conrad?”

  He shrugged, seemingly fascinated by something on the wall. I picked up the phone. By the time I’d punched in four digits, he had a change of heart. “My mother’s out of town, Mrs. Foreman. At my grandma’s. I don’t know where my father is.”

  I paused, but then punched in the last digits. This was my daughter.

  Ted picked up right away. “Hi, Ted. This is Ellie.” I explained the situation as dispassionately as I could. He stormed in minutes later and dragged Conrad out. We heard him through the closed door. “You idiot. You know the rules. What the hell were you thinking?”

  I told Rachel we’d talk about it in the morning. She slunk off to bed. David helped me straighten up.

  “It’s all my fault,” I said, plumping the cushions on the couch.

  “How can you say that?” he said.

  “She sees us. We’re not married.”

  “Ellie. We’re adults. She’s not.”

  “She thinks she is.”

  “Oh come on. Every kid experiments with sex.”

  “David. She’s only twelve. Conrad’s fourteen. There’s a big difference.”

  “You’re the one who lived in a commune.” He teased. “And don’t tell me you never played Spin the Bottle.”

  “Rachel and Conrad weren’t playing Spin the Bottle.” I took the glasses into the kitchen. “She might as well be Lindsay Dellinger.”

  David followed me in. “Who?”

  “Lindsay Dellinger. She was one of those girls. You remember, don’t you?” He offered me a slow smile. “See?” I waggled my finger.

  “I don’t know Lindsay Dellinger.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Here it is almost forty years later and the only thing I remember about the girl is her reputation. Which, when I mention it, immediately prompts you to leer. What if Rachel ends up like her?”

  I sprinkled soap in the dishwasher, expecting one of David’s calm, rational replies that would reveal the flaws in my logic. That would convince me Rachel was in no danger of being branded. It didn’t come. I straightened up. He was looking past me. “David?”

  “Sorry. I was just thinking. Remember the guy I told you about the night Ted and Jamie were over?”

  “The guy who wanted to expand his business?”

  “Yeah. Well, he backed out of the deal.”

  “Really.” I wiped my hands on a towel.

  He nodded. “What you said about reputations reminded me.”

  “You’re not surprised, are you?” We started back to the family room. “People can’t paper over their pasts with money.”

  David sat down on the couch. “But he’d come so far. Remade his life. Why would he throw away this opportunity?”

  I dropped down next to him. “Maybe he wasn’t sure he wanted it anymore. Maybe he couldn’t reconcile the image of what he was becoming with what he used to be. Some people never escape their past.”

  “You did.”

  “I was just a wannabee, remember? And in my own way, I paid a price.”

  “But what you did wasn’t intrinsically wrong.”

  I kissed his fingers. “You still believe that people act out of principle, not self-interest.”

  “Is that what Jack did?”

  “I have no idea.” I settled in the crook of his arm. “I guess I’m just jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “Your moral certainty.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t expect Jack to pull out. We’d just talked a week before.”

  “Oh?”

  “We were going over some hedging procedures. When we were done, I asked him whether the acronym for SHOUT had changed at some point. You remember what Ted said at dinner.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, Jack was so quiet I thought we’d been disconnected. Then he asked me how I knew.”

  “What’d you say?”

  David shrugged. “That my girlfriend’s neighbor told us.”

  ***

  The next morning I told Rachel she was too young for the kind of behavior I’d seen the night before and that I didn’t want her seeing Conrad any more. She barely spoke to me afterwards. I counted the days until she turned twenty.

  I debated whether to tell Jamie. Ted had probably filled her in, and I didn’t want her to think I’d gone ballistic. But I didn’t want her to think it had gone unnoticed either. As it happened, the only time I saw her was in passing. She was preoccupied with her mother, who’d suffered a sudden stroke. She was going back to Connecticut.

  ***

  When I was young Halloween used to be my favorite holiday. But now that horror has gone mainstream, I hate it. Even so, I stayed home to “ooo” and “ah” over the headless monsters, blood-soaked vampires, and fearsome witches that roamed our block. Rachel baby-sits a lot of them, and I felt obligated to help grease the wheels of her burgeoning enterprise. What they call in marketing “extending good-will”.

  Between doling out candy, appropriating more for ourselves, we tried to watch a movie. We were barely past the credits when a thump sounded at the door. I asked Rachel to open it. When I heard her scream, I bolted from the couch.

  Rachel was whimpering, one hand clasped across her mouth. I peered out the door. A dead raccoon lay sprawled on the mat. Some of its ribs protruded through its torso, and pieces of entrails with shiny white gristle gleamed in the light. Roadkill.

  ***

  David didn’t come out that weekend. It was just as well. Rachel and I stayed home to watch videos. Afterwards, I flipped on CNN. The anchor reported that a former Sixties radical had been killed in a fire out East. Jack Halsey, according to the newscaster, had been associated with SHOUT, a Philadelphia group responsible for blowing up a bank thirty years ago. I called David. Jack Halsey had been his client.

  ***

  The explosion woke me from a dead sleep. Glass shattered. Alarms blared. I tore out of bed, screaming at Rachel to wake up. A pungent smell wafted through the air, and it was chilly inside. I understood why when, instead of windows, I saw gaping holes framed with shards of glass. We stumbled down the stairs and raced out of the house. The smell was stronger outside. I ran toward it. Toward the Mathesons’.

  The blast had thrown most of the house up in the air, snapping walls and furniture into giant pick-up sticks. Three of the walls had collapsed, leaving a mass of fiery debris. A cloud of dust hovered above, a pale fog against the dark sky.

  As I drew closer, I heard the sounds of disaster. Sirens cut through the air. Neighbors shouted. Doors slammed. Police and firemen converged on the scene. Hoses were uncoiled and jets of water flooded the house. More people arrived, including the fire marshal and his dog. He promptly walked the German shepherd around the perimeter of the property. The dog kept his head down, snuffling everything in its path. That’s how they found Jamie, in the woods behind the house. She was alive, but her leg was broken.

  ***

  I didn’t get much sleep that night. Neither, apparently, did village detective Mike O’Malley. He was at my door by eight the next morning, with Special Agent Reese Brightman. I knew O’Malley, a tall, freckled, no-nonsense cop, and he raised an eyebrow in greeting. Despite the blustery morning, Brightman wore regulation sunglasses.

  O’Malley stepped inside. “I hear you know the Mathesons.”

  I nodded. “Have you found Conrad and Ted?”

  “We found the kid. He was spending the night at a friend’s.”

  “Thank god.”

  “But we can’t locate the husband. You have any idea where he might be?”

  I shook my head.

  O’Malley shifted. “Tell me, Ms. Foreman,” he said, “Did the Mathesons have a strong marriage?”

  I twisted one hand in the other. “It had its ups and downs.”

  “Any infidelity? Affairs?”

  “Not that I know of.” I scanned both th
eir faces. “Why?”

  O’Malley and Brightman exchanged glances. The FBI agent nodded. “We found a body in the house,” O’Malley said. “Female. Pretty well charred.” I swallowed. “She was stabbed before the bomb went off. A kitchen knife.”

  My hand flew to my throat. “And you think—”

  Brightman cut me off. “We don’t know what we think. What about Mrs. Matheson? Wasn’t she supposed to be out of town?”

  An edgy feeling spread through my gut. “She was in Connecticut for a few days, taking care of her mother.”

  “What do you know about Mrs. Matheson’s youth?” Brightman interrupted.

  “Her youth?”

  “Was she involved in any political activities?”

  “Jamie?” I said. “She’s about as political as Martha Stewart.”

  ***

  The victim inside the Matheson house was Pamela Winger, who’d been implicated in the Philadelphia bank explosion thirty years ago. She’d been missing, but according to a source, she and Jack Halsey had stayed in touch. Winger apparently figured that Jamie killed Halsey and flew to Chicago confront her. The source—who had to be Agent Brightman—theorized that Jamie killed Winger, then planted the bomb to destroy the evidence.

  They took Jamie to the Federal lock-up. A few days later I got a message she wanted to see me. I didn’t want to go, but they said I was the only person besides Conrad she’d listed on her visitor request form. I drove downtown, showed my ID, and was escorted to a small room. I slid into a chair. Jamie hobbled in on crutches. Purple smudges ringed her eyes, and the orange prison jump suit hung on her slender frame. But she maneuvered gracefully and sat down as if we were at the Ritz Carlton for tea.

  “How’s Conrad?”

  “Martha said he could stay with them as long as he wanted.”

  Her face relaxed. “She’s a friend, Ellie. So are you.”

  I felt my stomach twist. “Not any more.”

  She reeled back as if I’d slapped her.

  “How could you deceive me like this?” She gave me a blank look. “PTA, church choir, soccer mom. The gum story really had me going.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were one of the SHOUT people who blew up that bank, and you’ve been living a white-bread life ever since.” I shook my head. “And I thought you wouldn’t step on a crack in the sidewalk.”