Bird's-Eye View

by J. F. Freedman

  Billy grunts. “Well, it sure didn’t sound like nothing, the hard-ass way she was coming on,” he replies. “If I was you, man, I’d watch my back.” He flicks a tobacco-stained finger at my license. “Good thing you did buy that gun, pard.” He bangs me on the shoulder with his palm. “Don’t you go chickenin’ out on me when the time comes to use it.”

  “I hope I never have to,” I say honestly.

  He shakes his head like I’m a lamb being delivered to the shearing pen. “That’s why you bought it, old son. ’Cause if you ain’t man enough to use it, for sure you’re gonna lose it.”

  • • •

  Maureen’s ready and waiting when I arrive at her motel. She’s wearing a dress I haven’t seen before. “I bought it in Boston. Do you like it?” She twirls for me. It’s short, above her knees. She’s wearing heels; we’re almost the same height.

  “Looks good on you. Of course, a paper sack would look good on you.” I’m determined to put my conversation with Billy about that female cop out of my mind—I’ll deal with my worries about that later, along with all the others.

  “You’re too kind,” she banters.

  I run my fingers along the inside of her bare thigh. She twitches.

  “How about a quickie?”

  “We’ll be late. You don’t want to be late for dinner at your mother’s.”

  “She can wait.” I take her hand.

  She holds me off. “Later, big boy. We have all night, Fritz. We have all—” She stops.

  Of our lives?

  • • •

  A surprise awaits us when we walk into mom’s house. Not a pleasant one.

  “I see you finally got rid of that stupid suit,” Sam says to me, rising up out of his deck chair, Manhattan in hand. He looks over at Maureen, who’s giving our mother a hug. “The new femme du jour?”

  “A colleague,” I say, stiffly. I wasn’t expecting Sam and his windbag acridity.

  “Colleague?” he scoffs. “With those legs? I’d be working nights and weekends if I had a colleague who looked like her.”

  So much for a congenial evening without sibling rivalry subtexts. “I’m sure Emily would be charmed to hear that,” I fire back. I look over at his spouse, who stands stiffly near Maureen and my mother, looking ill at ease. I don’t recall her ever giving my mother a hug, or of her receiving one from the materfamilias.

  Maureen walks over, links her arm in mine. “Is this the famous lawyer I’ve heard so much about?” she says, smiling at Sam. “Fritz is your biggest fan.”

  “I doubt that,” Sam replies sourly, trying not to ogle her.

  I know what she’s doing—she’s trying to make things nice between us, and hopefully, get on Sam’s good side. What she doesn’t know is that where I’m concerned, Sam doesn’t have a good side.

  Emily joins us, standing shoulder to shoulder with her husband. Her look to Maureen is pure venom—she’s outclassed tonight, and it rankles. “I’m Emily Tullis,” she says, extending a languid hand. “We’re so pleased you could join us. Fritz always brings such interesting dates to our gatherings.”

  “Maureen O’Hara,” Maureen responds, flashing Emily a million-watt smile.

  Husband and wife give her identical “who are you kidding?” looks.

  Maureen smiles. “There’s no relation,” she says, having endured such looks countless times before, I’m sure. “The name is just a coincidence.”

  Sam and Emily regard her dourly. This is going to be a long evening. Hopefully, without too much emotional bloodshed.

  Maureen sees where this is going. “Would you get me a drink, Fritz? One of those gin rickeys you Marylanders are so famous for? Will you excuse us?” she says to Sam and Emily, even as she’s pulling me away, toward the table where the drinks are set up.

  “Sorry about that,” I say to her, when we’re out of hearing range. “If I’d known they were going to be here I’d have taken a rain check.”

  Maureen nods in understanding. “I’m sorry I’m making your life more difficult than it already is.”

  “It has nothing to do with you. You’re caught in tonight’s line of fire, that’s all. It could be anyone I bring around. Sam and I have been at odds since I was born,” I explain. “He could never abide not being the sole male heir.”

  “I’ll try to be as accommodating as possible for the rest of the evening. For your mother’s sake, if nothing else.”

  “Thanks.” We’re on our own tonight, no bartender. “Do you really want a gin rickey?”

  “I don’t even know what a gin rickey is,” she laughs. She has a good laugh—full, rich, melodious. “I said that to get us away from them.”

  “How about a vodka tonic? That I can handle.”

  “Perfect.” She bites my earlobe. “Have I told you lately that I’m crazy about you?”

  “Not lately, no.” It’s hard to make drinks when you’re distracted.

  “I’m saying it now so if I get drunk later you won’t think it’s the booze talking.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  “I’m joking,” she says. “About getting drunk. Or even high. Not the way things are going. Besides, I wouldn’t want your mother to think poorly of me.”

  “My mother’s already enraptured by you, so don’t worry.” I hand her a sweaty glass. “Let’s not think about that tonight. Let’s just have fun.”

  She raises her glass. “To fun.”

  • • •

  The food is excellent, as usual. My mother and Maureen spend the entire time talking and laughing with each other, to the chagrin of Emily, who feels—rightfully so—left out. If Maureen and I were to become permanent (I’m only musing, not projecting) Emily would disappear off the radar screen, as far as mother is concerned. Emily knows that, and her dismay is reflected on her face.

  I’m sure my mother had the best of intentions, inviting Sam and Emily to dine with Maureen and me. She wanted them to meet her, so that if her wish came true we would collectively take the first steps toward being one big, happy family—the Brady Bunch, Maryland division. That, however, is never going to happen. The lack of love between Sam and me is biblical, and any woman I wind up with is not going to be simpatico with Emily.

  Fuck Sam and his dyspeptic wife. Let them hibernate in Baltimore, where they belong.

  After dessert I go out onto the back veranda while my mother shows Maureen her collection of porcelain figurines. The hot, muggy air wraps around me like a wet cocoon. Despite the crap I’m going through with Roach, I’m feeling terrific. The reason is simple—Maureen’s back. I hadn’t realized how much I missed her, how emotionally involved I am with her, until today.

  My reverie is broken by my brother, who ambles out with a bottle of cognac in one hand and a cigar in the other. He didn’t know I was out here—he was expecting the porch to himself, where he could smoke his stogie and drink his brandy alone, away from Emily and the tension between them and the rest of us. Seeing me, he grunts, holds the bottle aloft. “Want some?”

  The offer is ungracious, but we’re trapped together out here, so he feels compelled to act civilized. I’m not going to turn down a good glass of cognac, however, regardless of intent.

  “Sure.”

  “Grab a glass,” he says gruffly. He’s leaning against the railing. His face is flushed, his posture is a pronounced 45 degree lean. During dinner he was drinking wine as fast as he could replenish his glass. In short, he’s snockered.

  I get a snifter from the side table. He pours, spilling some onto my hand.

  “I hope you’re not driving home tonight,” I say.

  “Emily’s driving,” he replies thickly. “She’s the designated driver.”

  I warm the glass in my hands. “I never see you this well lubricated, Sam. Had a bad day?”

  He shakes his head, fumbles with his lighter. Billows of gray-white smoke envelop his head as he draws on his cigar. “No worse than usual.” He downs a healthy swallow of cognac. “That’s quite a looker you
brought to dinner.” He winks at me lewdly. “This is your big brother, Fritz. You don’t have to give me that ‘colleague’ crap. Where’d you pick her up, North Charles Street, by the statue?”

  The statue he’s referring to is the Washington Monument, not the famous one in Washington, D.C., the small one in Baltimore. It’s a well-known spot for johns to rendezvous with hookers. The body of the slain diplomat was found not far from there.

  If Sam wasn’t my brother and we weren’t at our mother’s house I’d punch his lights out. “Don’t be an offensive asshole, Sam. She happens to be a professor—at Harvard, no less. So shut up about what you don’t know, okay?”

  “A professor? Her?” He barks a nasty laugh. “If she’s a professor of anything but mattress-testing, I’m Mel Gibson.”

  “Just shut up, Sam, okay?” I start to walk away. What a jerk my brother can be sometimes.

  Sam speaks to my back. “I’ve been hearing some displeasing things about you, Fritz.”

  I turn around. “Like what?” I challenge him. He’s all mouth tonight, it’s pissing me off more than usual.

  “Things about you and James Roach.”

  My antennae go up. “What about me and Roach?”

  “That you’re fucking around in his affairs, and that he’s unhappy about it.”

  “Where’d you hear that?” This is bad news.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He almost stumbles, braces himself against the railing. “Is it true?”

  I’m fuming. “I want to know who told you, goddamn it!”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Roach?”

  He looks at me like I’m the dumbest shit in the world. “Figure it out, moron.”

  Damn! Roach is calling my family now? I stiffen. “What I do, and who I do it with, is none of your business, Sam.”

  He straightens up. “This is my business.”

  “No, it is not.”

  He pokes me in the chest with a sweaty forefinger, the same kind of poke Roach gave me. I grab the finger, hold it tight. One twist of my wrist and I could break it.

  “Hands off, Sam. I mean it.”

  I wait a moment to let the message settle, then let go. I don’t want to break my brother’s finger, not in my mother’s house.

  “Stay away from Roach,” he orders me.

  I explode. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do! I’ll do anything I want, you hear? I don’t need to hear any of your shit.”

  I look toward the house. No one’s heard us, fortunately. I start to turn away. This time he grabs me by the shirtsleeve. I yank loose.

  “You’re drunk,” I bark at him.

  “And you’re suicidal.”

  “Enough with this shit. My life is none of your goddamned business.”

  He shakes his head. “It is my business, Fritz. Anything you do, anything stupid, which is everything, impacts on this family. Which makes it my business.”

  “Fuck off.” I’m steaming. I start to walk away from him, before I lose it and deck him.

  He won’t let go. He gets in my face, right into it, an inch away. I almost gag from the booze and cigar on his breath. “Men like Roach are dangerous, you naive fool. They don’t tolerate smart-asses like you in their lives, they eliminate them. I don’t know what your beef is with him, but leave him alone!”

  How many times have I heard this now? I’m sick of hearing it, I’m sick of the whole mess.

  “Go home, Sam. Have your wife pour you into your car and go home. Sleep it off. You’re making an ass of yourself.”

  He’s a bulldog. “I’m telling you this for your own good.”

  “My own good? Since when have you been interested in my welfare? I can take care of myself. Now for the last time—leave me alone.”

  He backs off a step. “If you don’t care about me, think about our mother.”

  Oh, that rankles, dragging her into this. “What about her?” I hear a nasty edge in my voice. I don’t like sounding like this, but he’s pushed me to it.

  “She’s getting older.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “Her heart isn’t as strong as it was. She had a small seizure last year, before you came back here. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  I’m taken aback. “No one told me.”

  “You weren’t around. You were too busy dipping your wick in the wrong honeypot,” he says savagely. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “You’re a prick, Sam.”

  “And you’re a . . .” He doesn’t say what he thinks I am. He doesn’t have to—I already know. A wastrel, a fuckup. A lost cause.

  He pulls himself together. “She controls her condition with medication. But it was a warning. She can’t be stressed out, Fritz.”

  “I’m not stressing her out,” I argue. It’s feeble.

  “You will if anything happens to you.”

  I want to say that nothing will happen to me, but I can’t, because it wouldn’t be true, and we both know it.

  “If anything bad befell you, Fritz, it would kill her. Think about that, the next time you dive into the water before you know how deep it is.”

  • • •

  Maureen and I detour by her motel so she can change out of her party clothes. She strips off her dress, washes the makeup from her face, puts on shorts and a blouse, packs a small overnight bag, throws her binoculars into her daypack, reaches for her hiking boots.

  “It isn’t smart for us to go down there tomorrow,” I say with reluctance.

  She turns, caught off guard. “We agreed we’d take a day or two off, then start going down again. This fieldwork is important to me, Fritz. This could be a big boost to my career,” she says. She’s being straight about her ambitions.

  “It’s not a good idea.”

  She stares at me as if trying to see into my brain. “I can’t read your mind—the more I know you the more I realize that—but I do know there are things going on you aren’t telling me. And it’s bothering the shit out of me.” She comes closer. “I’ve told you everything about me, whatever you’ve asked. But when I ask you point-blank about anything that’s upsetting you, you clam up. You dance all around the subject, but you never home in.” She bites her lip. “Am I pushing too fast? Or . . .” She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, then opens them and looks at me. “Or have I been misreading all the signs? Am I in a different place with us than you are? Because if I am, tell me now, please. I’m this close”—she holds her thumb and index finger an eighth of an inch apart—“to falling for you completely. But I can salvage myself, if you tell me, right now, that it’s not going to work between us. It would hurt like hell, but I’d survive. It’s happened before. But you have to tell me.” She pauses. “Or I have to go.”

  She’s thrown down the gauntlet. The moment I’ve been dreading.

  It’s not the depth of the commitment. I think I can handle that; I’m willing to try, that’s the best anyone can do. It’s what I’m hiding, what I have to tell her to be completely straight and honest with her, that has my stomach tied up in a knot.

  It’s now or never. I can’t conceive of the prospect of “never.”

  “I know more about Roach than I’ve been letting on.”

  “I assumed as much,” she says. “Like what?”

  I take her hand. “Let’s sit down.”

  We sit side by side on the faded chenille bedspread. “The police brought me in for questioning about Wallace’s murder.”

  Her face registers shock. “When?”

  “The day it happened. That afternoon.”

  “Why?” she cries.

  “They think I might have been involved,” I say bleakly. Replaying my interview with Ricketts in my mind, there’s no other explanation. I may not be a suspect, officially, but I’m very dubious in their eyes.

  She shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s crazy. Why would they think that?”

  “Because Roach told the police about the dustup between Wallace and me, that
night at my mother’s house. That I’d hit him, threatened him. I’m sure Roach overblew what really happened, but it did happen, I couldn’t deny it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she says hotly. Then she gives me a look that’s both confused and angry. “The police had you in for questioning the same day Wallace was killed?”

  I nod slowly—I can see where this is going. “That afternoon.”

  “So you’d already been to see the police when you told me he’d been killed.”

  “Yes,” I confess.

  “Fritz.” She takes my face in her hand. “Why didn’t you tell me then?” Her hand is trembling as it touches my cheek.

  “I didn’t want you to worry. It was over by then, there would have been nothing you could do.”

  “I could have been there with you. That’s something.” She looks at me, searching my eyes. “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “That’s what I’ve been talking about,” she says. Her voice is shaky. “Trust. Communication.”

  “I know,” I answer forlornly. I feel like such a self-centered ass. A complete dolt, a fool. “Which is why I’m telling you this now.”

  “Is there more?”

  “A lot.”

  She sits back. “I want to know everything. Everything. Leave nothing out. Okay?”

  I nod okay.

  “A man was murdered near here,” I commence, “not long ago.”

  “Where?”

  “On Roach’s farm. His runway.”

  That brings her up straight. “When did it happen?”

  “Over a month ago. Before you came.”

  She whistles through her teeth. “I haven’t heard anything about any murder. Why aren’t people talking about it?”

  “Because no one saw it happen.”

  “Then how do you . . .” She catches herself. “You saw it?”

  I nod.

  “When you were down there, watching the birds?”

  I nod again.

  She’s stunned. “Did you go to the police?”