After I'm Gone

by Laura Lippman

  Still, she wished Bert weren’t so tight. They had almost as much money as the Brewers did, they could cut loose a little more. At least, she thought they could. She didn’t actually know how much money he earned or what their debts and investments were. Bert said it was less than she thought, that being a partner in his father’s firm wouldn’t be really lucrative until his father retired. But that was part of the reason she wanted to get pregnant. She was pretty sure that Bert wouldn’t insist on staying in the apartment once there was a child, even with two bedrooms. She wanted something out near Bambi and Felix, of course, but not in the same style. Something modern, preferably with a pool.

  She and Bambi returned to the table, continuing to dance the slow numbers with their husbands, sitting for the fast, although a few women did the twist together when their husbands refused. They never changed partners, not with Felix and Bambi, not with anyone. Lorraine was getting tired, but she stifled her yawns, intent on midnight and her plans beyond it. Maybe they would conceive tonight. Then their child would have a birthday close to Linda’s.

  By 1:30, Lorraine and Bert were in the car, heading home. They would have gotten out faster if he had tipped the valet a little more, as Felix had. Bert’s driving seemed weavey to Lorraine, but they didn’t have far to go and the roads were dry, free of snow and ice. Once they were home, she changed into a negligee she had bought for this night, lavender so sheer it might as well be see-through. It was, she realized, perfect for Bambi’s coloring. But it was fine with her own and she was very thin, which was the fashion. Some women were even going braless now. Lorraine could if she wanted to, but she couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to.

  Bert looked at her with appreciation, recognizing the significance of the negligee. She wasn’t usually insistent on having her turn, as she thought of it, but she pushed for it tonight, believing, even as she knew it made no sense, that conception would be marked by an orgasm. Perhaps she put too much emphasis on it, because it was a little weak and sputtery, not at all what it should have been. This is it, she told herself. We just made a baby. Then: Everything’s going to be better now. The second thought, unbidden, scared her. Why did things need to be better? Things were wonderful. She tried to shoo it away. We just made a baby.

  She remembered Bambi’s face in the country-club mirror, sad and resigned. Had Bambi seen the same expression in Lorraine’s eyes? Was this what marriage was? Were diamonds the consolation prize for sticking with it for ten, twenty, sixty years? She batted away these melancholic thoughts, blaming Bambi. Bad moods were contagious, like colds. Lorraine’s life was wonderful. It was a new year, a new decade. She was going to have a baby and then everything would fall into place. Maybe she would have boys, who could marry the Brewer girls, except—the boys would be so much younger. No, that wouldn’t work at all, not at all.

  March 9, 2012

  Tubby the onetime bail bondsman was in assisted living up at Edenwald, the kind of place that Sandy wouldn’t have minded for himself and Mary, if they had had the money. Although he guessed they would have taken her away from him, in the end, put her in a nursing wing, and he wouldn’t have had that for anything. Sandy hoped Tubby wasn’t in the nursing wing, or on machines that would make it tough for him to talk. Then again, people often gabbed when the end was near. He had closed more than one case on dying declarations.

  He checked in at the front desk, explained his mission. It always took longer without a badge, although he had an ID and that helped. Yes, official business for the Baltimore Police Department. City, not county. Nothing bad has happened, no, but I need to talk to Mr. Schroeder. The girl was skeptical. He could tell she was very protective of “her” residents, probably worried about scammers, fake stockbrokers, and the like. Sandy wished there had been someone like her looking after his interests when he needed it. If Mary had a flaw, it was that she never questioned anything he did, although maybe it wasn’t fair to call that a flaw. Eventually, the girl called up—Tubby was in the regular apartments, not the health-care wing, as it turned out—but she said there was no answer.

  “Is today the day that Mr. Schroeder goes to the pool for water aerobics?” she asked another attendant.

  Water aerobics. Sandy envisioned a man-manatee crouching in the shallow end of the pool, barely moving. Still, good on him for trying.

  “There’s a bridge game today, in the library. I’m pretty sure he signed up for that.”

  The library was well appointed. There were six tables of foursomes, all women except one man, a lean, leathery strip of a guy, deeply tanned and—what do you know—sporting a full Towson in March. White shoes and white belt, paired with lime trousers. The shoes and belt went nicely with his white hair, and his bright sweater complemented his tan. Pink, Sandy would have said, and Mary would have said, No, coral. Or salmon. Sandy said a lot of things just a little wrong for the pleasure of Mary’s corrections, offered politely and sweetly, usually after a moment of hesitation. He had never met a woman who took less pleasure in contradicting her man. Yeah, that’s not a flaw.

  Cock of the walk, Sandy thought, looking at the guy in the coral sweater. Cock of the walk. True, being the only rooster in this henhouse was a little like being the one-eyed king in the land of the blind, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen to a guy. He just hoped the man could direct him to Tubby Schroeder.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked when Sandy’s alien presence registered in the room.

  “Maybe. They told me I could find Tubby Schroeder here.”

  A confused murmur among the women, but the man laughed heartily. “Tubby Schroeder is long gone, sir. Long gone. But if you want to talk to Tubman Schroeder, that could be arranged. After this rubber.”

  Sandy took a seat in an armchair and waited. The players were intense, possibly because there was a table of prizes for the winners. He didn’t know the game, but he picked up on the fact that Tubby was good at it. So good, in fact, that he was holding back a little, making mistakes out of gallantry. He won, anyway, and excused himself.

  “Hate to take you away from the game,” Sandy apologized.

  “Oh, we break for refreshments now. Your timing is good. Let’s go down to the pub for a little privacy. Tubby, huh? That will be the talk of Edenwald for weeks now. I buried that nickname a long time ago.”

  But his tone was good-natured.

  “Tubman—I never thought about ‘Tubby’ being short for something.”

  “Yes, most people assumed it was about my girth. Tubman Schroeder. Named for Harriet Tubman, or so claimed my crazy lefty mother, who tried to make me into a red diaper baby, but I loved money too much. Still, it’s suitable for a bail bondsman. Let my people go. But, please, no runaways on my underground railroad.”

  He had the kind of patter Sandy had always distrusted, not being capable of it. The strong, silent type, Mary had teased him. A man had to play to his strengths.

  “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Don’t mind at all. I’m seventy-six, and I feel better today than I did at thirty-six. Did you come here for my health secrets?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He was used to talking to women who found him fascinating, Sandy supposed, accustomed to filling up any gaps in a conversation. “Here’s how it worked for me: I had four heart attacks in four years, starting when I was forty-six. The first time, they told me to lose weight and exercise. The second time, they told me to lose weight and exercise. The third time, they told me to lose weight and exercise. The fourth time, they told me to lose weight and exercise. And, for some reason, the advice took on the fourth time. It started with a walk around my dining-room table. I’m not kidding. That’s all I could do at first. I weighed 275 pounds and I walked around my table. But then—I had a pretty big dining-room table.”

  The story had a polish to it, the mark of a tale that had been told many times. Still, it was interesting to Sandy. Peop
le never changed. Until they did.

  They had reached the pub, an inviting place of leather chairs and dim lights, quite empty at midday.

  “So that’s all it took?” Sandy asked. “A walk around the dining-room table?”

  “That’s how it started. And here’s where it ends up. A hundred pounds lighter and I have the smallest pillbox of anyone here. That’s kind of a brag, you know.”

  Sandy knew. He already took two pills with his breakfast, one for blood pressure, another for cholesterol. And a baby aspirin.

  Tubby’s—Tubman’s—light tone changed. “So you’re a cop?”

  “Retired, yes, but I was a police with the city for a long time.”

  “I think I remember you. Not that we met, but our paths must have crossed, here or there. Across a crowded courtroom, to change the song slightly. But it probably wasn’t enchanted.”

  “No, not a lot of enchantment in my business. I work cold cases now.”

  “Felix or Julie? Has to be Julie, I’m guessing. I mean, there’s probably no statute of limitations for federal flight, but, Jesus, who cares at this point. If Felix is alive, he’s older than I am. What would be the point? It’s not like a Nazi war criminal, you know.”

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “He’s going to be a frail old man. Who wants to be the person who brings him back?”

  “You’re not frail.”

  “Felix isn’t me. He never learned from his mistakes.”

  That was interesting. Tubby—Tubman—intended it to be interesting, dropped it with a big thud, all but begging Sandy to jump on it, this observation about Felix and his mistakes. Which, to Sandy’s mind, made it like a dollar on a string, a trick for losers and optimists.

  “Yeah, I’m here to talk about Julie. Her sister says you’re the one who introduced her to Felix.”

  “Her sister tell you anything else of interest?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tubman flagged a waitress. Young, by the standards here, not quite forty and a nice forty, if not a spectacular one. And even she seemed caught in this guy’s charm. What was that about? He had very good manners. Not flirtatious, but kind, which probably worked better. He ordered a red wine for himself—“The cab, the one I like”—and asked Sandy if he wanted anything.

  “I’m good.”

  “It’s the elixir of life. You’ll live forever.”

  “Doesn’t strengthen the case for me.”

  Tubman laughed, thinking Sandy was making a joke.

  “The sister—”

  “Ah, you’re quite the pointer. Not going to let go of the scent, are you? Look, I don’t tell other people’s secrets. Let’s just say that Andrea Norr wasn’t the innocent bystander she’d have you believe.”

  “In Julie’s death?”

  “I don’t want to play that game because then you’ll ask me another question and another question. No, nothing big, nothing to do with Julie’s death. But she knows things, more than she’s ever told. She may have even forgotten how much she knows.”

  “About Felix leaving.”

  “I told you, I’m not playing. For the record, I’ve never thought the two were connected. Felix leaving, Julie disappearing.”

  “Will you tell me why?”

  Tubman had to think about that. His wine arrived and he cupped the bowl with his hands, inhaled it, but Sandy didn’t think such ostentatious enjoyment of wine was his normal style. The guy had been a bail bondsman, a beer-and-a-shot guy who hung out on Baltimore Street back in the day. People don’t change that much. He was stalling.

  “You know, I don’t have any reasons. Just a feeling. In my business, I lived by my hunches, and my hunches served me well. It’s about character, my business. The character of people already thought to be criminals. Yet some thieves have honor and some don’t.”

  “Felix Brewer was your best friend. Did you have a hunch he was going to burn you?”

  Tubman laughed. “Men don’t have best friends. That’s a girl thing. We were friends. Felix, me, Bert. He was a man involved in a criminal enterprise. I was a bail bondsman, Bert was a criminal attorney. We liked each other’s company, and we were useful to each other. At times.”

  “Your friend stuck you with a bond of one hundred thousand dollars, no small sum.”

  “Yes. Yes, he did.”

  Sandy looked around the pub. “You weathered it, I guess.”

  Tubman continued to smell his wine. Maybe he was an ostentatious prick, after all. “If Felix Brewer found a way to compensate me for skipping his bail, you realize there would be serious repercussions for me. IRS, being charged as an accessory.”

  Sometimes, you just had to repeat a thing over and over, not accept the non-replies and the digressions. “Julie Saxony went missing almost ten years from the day that Felix did.”

  “And she was murdered, it turned out. Do you think Felix was murdered?”

  “No, but it’s hard to ignore the juxtaposition.” He liked the occasional fancy word like that, which proved to him that he had mastered his second language, even if he had lost his first. Spanish was almost like a dream to him now. There had been no one who spoke it in Baltimore when he was growing up. Now, it was everywhere, and when he heard it at bus stops, in restaurants, it was like running into an old friend—and having nothing to say. Plus, the accents were odd to his ear.

  “Julie was hard to ignore, wasn’t she?” Tubman smiled over the rim of his glass as if they shared some secret.

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “She was gorgeous. God, she was gorgeous.”

  “You discovered her, as I hear it.”

  “How—oh, the sister. Right. Yes, Bert and I stumbled on Julie at Rexall. Not quite like finding Lana Turner at Schwab’s, but close enough. There was a soda fountain, still. But she was behind it.”

  “Did it bug you that she ended up being Felix’s girlfriend?”

  “No. I took her to him. I knew what I was doing. She was a gift.”

  “Was she yours to give?”

  “Who knows? I took her into Felix’s club and that was that. I didn’t figure her for having such staying power, though. That surprised all of us.”

  “Us?”

  He didn’t answer. He was a smart guy. Smart enough not to talk to a cop at all, if it came to that. But something—Sandy’s not-quite-cop status, Tubby’s own boredom in his plush nest—made him want to play this game. More challenging than bridge with a bunch of wistful ladies.

  “How did his wife feel? About Julie?”

  “I wasn’t Bambi’s confidant. Lorraine, maybe, she could tell you, but I can’t.”

  “Lorraine?”

  “Bert’s wife. Now they’re best friends. Bambi and Lorraine. Like sisters. What do the kids call it? BFAs? BBFs? Something like that.”

  Kids. Sandy’s mind jumped to kids, kids playing a game of hot potato. Andrea Norr had sent him to Tubby. Now Tubby was sending him to Lorraine.

  And everyone kept trying to send him away from Felix, that night ten years before Julie disappeared. Nothing to see here, keep moving. Well, the IRS implications could be enough to scare a guy.

  He got to his feet, thanking Tubby for his time, releasing him to the henhouse.

  “It’s impressive,” he told Tubman. “The way you changed. As you said, almost no one ever does. Did you ever think about why it took the fourth time, the doctor’s advice?”

  “A mystery,” Tubman said in a self-satisfied way.

  “Four heart attacks in four years. You were how old? When the last one happened?”

  “Fifty.”

  “Which would have been, what, 1986?”

  “Thereabouts.” As if he didn’t know the date to the moment of his last heart attack.

  “What month?”

  “August.�
�

  “Right around the time Julie disappeared.”

  “I don’t see what the two things have to do with each other. Oh, wait, I get it—you think I had the last heart attack carrying her body to its resting place in Leakin Park.”

  “I just think it’s an interesting—juxtaposition.” He would have used a synonym if he knew one. “A woman disappears, a woman you discovered, for want of a better term. And, maybe whatever happened to her is somehow connected to the life you introduced her to. Maybe that’s on you. You have your fourth heart attack and suddenly you’re ready to change your life, to do all the things you never could before, as if you suddenly understand what’s at stake, what mortality is. You ever consider that those two things were connected?”

  Tubman’s face lost something then, although Sandy wasn’t able to say what. A bit of color, or maybe just the forced bravado that most older men used to conceal their sadness.

  “Many times,” he said. “Many times.”

  Sandy walked with Tubman back to the library where the bridge women awaited their king. There was a plate of food by his place. “I thought you might be hungry, missing the snack break,” one said. Had women doted on the old Tubby this way? Sandy thought not. The laws of supply and demand, coupled with a hundred-pound weight loss, can work a peculiar kind of magic.

  Sandy got into his car, thinking about the most meaningful moment of the whole interview. You think I had the last heart attack carrying her body to its resting place in Leakin Park.

  That Julie Saxony had been found in Leakin Park was a matter of public record.