A Smudge of Gray: A Novel

by Jonathan Sturak

  The men’s section caught Trevor’s attention as he cut through the cosmetics. Trevor patted a cashmere sweater, searching for his favorite designer. As he passed the shirts embroidered with alligators, he found the familiar pattern that he craved. Trevor eyed a tan-colored windbreaker with the Burberry print lining its collar. He removed it from its hook and let the light yet protective fabric envelop him.

  “Every man looks great in Burberry,” a slippery female voice said.

  Trevor turned and saw the cleavage of a saleswoman smiling at him. The tall college-aged woman slinked his way and fixed the back of his collar.

  “Well, the tradition never changes,” he said.

  “Why don’t you put it on your Saks card?”

  “I like it, but I already have a Burberry trench coat,” Trevor countered as he nodded at himself in the mirror. He saw several strands of hair lying opposite his part. Trevor fixed himself.

  “This would be great for those cool fall mornings on the way to the gym. You obviously must work out.”

  “You’re a good saleswoman, but I don’t think I’ll go for it,” Trevor replied as he removed the jacket and placed it back on its hanger. “Now, if you have some loafers, I may go for that.”

  “Oh, we actually do. Right over here.”

  The saleswoman trekked toward a display table as Trevor eagerly followed. As he passed a collection of scarves, the saleswoman gestured toward a choice of shoes. “Here we are.”

  He passed over a black dress shoe as the woman grabbed a tan leather loafer with her French-manicured nails. Trevor licked his lips as he held the crafted footwear in his hands. He studied the gripping sole, delicate stitching, and Burberry-patterned lining.

  “Now this I like.”

  “We just got those in. They are new in the fall collection. One hundred percent calfskin leather.”

  “Excellent, the very best a shoe can be made from,” Trevor said as he stroked the supple leather.

  “But too bad they have to kill a baby calf,” the woman said with an exaggerated frown.

  “Technically, you don’t need the word baby. Calf already implies it.”

  “It’s just so sad.”

  “Hey, everything in this world must die sooner or later. That’s just the business of life,” Trevor preached. He looked at the shoe again and nodded. “I’d like to try this on. Size eleven.”

  “You’re a big man,” she said, winking. “I’ll be right back.”

  The saleswoman trotted away. Trevor returned the shoe to its spot on the display stand. He crept through the aisle and studied the more ostentatious line of apparel—tartan-patterned hats, ties, and even sunglasses. As Trevor inspected the area like a detective at a crime scene, a burly man walked his way. Trevor tried to avoid eye contact, but it was too late; the man had already sighted him.

  “Do you need any help, sir?” the man asked.

  “I’ve already been serviced, thank you.”

  The man recoiled as the saleswoman returned holding a box.

  “I can help you over here,” she instructed.

  Trevor moved toward a chair with a shoehorn resting on the floor. He sat down as the woman dropped to the floor, opened the box, and caressed Trevor’s legs removing his oxblood boat shoes. Then, she guided his appendage into the hole.

  “Thank you, dear.” Trevor stood up testing the shoes. He walked a few steps, and then bent his knees as the soles bounced back. The shoes felt firm yet soft, snug at the heels for support and loose at the toes for comfort.

  “What do you think?” the saleswoman asked.

  “I like them. Very comfortable and soft. What do you think?” Trevor asked.

  “I think they make you look sexy.”

  “Who looks sexy?” a voice asked, the voice of Mrs. Trevor Malloy.

  “You like ’em, honey?” Trevor turned to his wife and saw Katie and Kevin by her side holding ice cream dishes.

  “They’re perfect for you,” she replied genuinely.

  “They’re pretty, Dad,” Katie chimed in.

  “I’ll take them. I think I’ll wear them out,” Trevor said as he turned to his helper.

  The saleswoman, the once lioness, seemed to turn into a house cat, because Laura had arrived to claim her pack leader. The woman dropped to her knees once again, this time a little lower, as she put Trevor’s older shoes into the box.

  “I’ll take you over here when you’re ready,” she said with a nod.

  Trevor flexed his new shoes and admired them in the mirror as Katie and Kevin sat on the chairs and gorged themselves with their ice cream.

  “I caught you,” Laura whispered to her husband.

  “Caught me?” Trevor replied, a part of him feeling guilty.

  He watched her nod her head and reply with her eyes. He could tell that an ounce of distrust and jealousy had floated to the top of her mind. He knew it was his duty to soothe his wife’s envy, to make her feel like she was the most beautiful woman in the world, which she was to him. Some men used jealousy to massage their egos, but a man who didn’t usually had a woman massage it for him.

  “Oh, honey. These kids working here are just trying to make a buck. I don’t fall for their silly flirting.”

  “So she was flirting?”

  As a spark filled Laura’s face, Trevor scooped her up and stole the breath from her lungs, a feeling that lasted for only a moment—a moment that removed her focus from all the worries in the world and placed it on the man she loved.

  “I love you, Laura. You’re the mother of my offspring,” Trevor murmured into her ear. Then, he kissed her softly.

  “Just remember, a wife sees everything,” she whispered.

  Trevor pulled back with his hands still around Laura’s waist, a feeling that he could never forget no matter what had come his way. He focused on his kids smiling with ice cream mustaches, and then he looked at his wife. An expression of contentment painted her face. No matter what secrets lay in his closet, he knew that he loved this family and would kill to keep them smiling.

  Chapter 10

  The menacing moon glared through a clouded window. A janitor sloshed a murky mop on the floor as a cigarette hung from his harelip. Brian sat at his desk and took a sip of stale coffee as a skeleton crew shifted around him. He looked grubby as stubble masked his handsome face and a stench originated from his sweaty armpits. It looked as if he had been confined to his desk, not by choice, but by sentence. However, the reason he sat under the dim lights surrounded by his own grime was because he knew he had to sit there for the priority in his life, his career, just as he figured the captain, now several pay grades above him, did.

  The electron beam from his CRT computer monitor stabbed his weary eyes. The screen showed a police database. Brian typed “Max Cleaver” into the query field as the DMV mug of the defunct yuppie stared back. The fields underneath showed “Age: 32, Height: 70”, Weight: 180 lbs., Occupation: Attorney.” Brian pointed the cursor over the eight letters making up the deceased man’s profession.

  “Attorney,” Brian mumbled.

  The detective looked down at his desk and brushed a granola bar wrapper off a manila folder. Inside, a standard form stamped with the word “Confidential” was positioned on top of the stack. “Police Report – Dante Lopez – Murder – Status: Unsolved” was scribbled on the form. Brian looked underneath at the same picture that Lt. Foster had shown him at the crime scene—the image of the Hispanic man with a hole in his head. Brian thumbed behind it and looked at a picture of a middle-aged Hispanic man with a Hollywood smile. The man appeared happy as he smiled with a contagious expression. At first glance, the two pictures were a stark contrast of each other and appeared to be two completely different men. But at further inspection, the thick eyebrows, chiseled chin, and plump lips of the departed man resembled the same man who seemed not to have a care in the world. The difference, of course, was the dried blood that seeped from the hole in his head, the hole that transformed the man from bright into dar
k.

  Brian checked another sheet handwritten with black ink. “Age: 47, Height: 73”, Weight: 195 lbs.” filled the boxes. He studied the “Occupation” field and brushed aside a piece of granola. Black ink squiggled inside the box, but it remained illegible as if a doctor had marked it the same way he would prescribe a supply of Viagra.

  “Come on,” Brian barked.

  He looked around his desk, contemplating his next move. A Post-it note fell from the top of his monitor and caught his attention. “Call wife” was scribbled in red ink. Brian remembered that he loved that red pen he once had, now lost in the bowels of the police station. Then something hit him. He flipped the pages in the manila folder back together and searched the front form. Written on the bottom was “Report prepared by Officer Ray White.”

  Brian punched in the officer’s name and badge number into his computer. The database stuttered, but then the screen read “Officer Ray White” followed by his desk and cell phone numbers, all perfectly legible in Courier font.

  The overworked detective peered at his watch: “11:13.” He looked at the janitor mopping back and forth like a pendulum. Brian let the rhythm hypnotize him. He hesitated. He realized it was late, with only the lower-grade officers working the graveyard shift. Brian wondered why he was sitting there staring at pixels that seemed to lead nowhere. He grabbed at straws with the leads he had, and he wondered whether he would be better off getting a good night sleep and starting fresh in the morning.

  The janitor dropped the mop sending a burst of sound waves Brian’s way. He flinched. Brian knew what he had to do. He picked up the phone on his desk and dialed a number.

  The signal screamed across the city and entered the concrete building of a hopping downtown restaurant. It reached its intended target, the muscular Officer Ray White who sat next to his wife and their double date partners.

  “…and you should have seen her when she got back from the orthodontist. She kept doing this little thing with her gums,” Officer White joked.

  “It was so cute,” his wife added.

  Officer White’s cell phone buzzed on his belt. He looked at it, and then at his wife, who shook her head. “Excuse me,” he finally said.

  His wife continued telling the story to the couple across from her, as the officer shifted his eyes around the room at the lively crowd. He answered the phone.

  “This is Officer White.”

  “Officer White, this is Detective Boise. I need to ask about a police file you updated last week.”

  “I can’t hear you. Can you repeat that?”

  “This is Detective Boise from your precinct. I need to ask you a question,” Brian repeated a little louder.

  “Oh, okay. Is this something important? I’m out with my wife,” Officer White rebutted as he glanced at his wife sipping some wine.

  “It’s about a report you filled out—”

  “Hold on. I can’t hear you.” The officer stood up and moved toward the back of the restaurant. He passed tables filled with people whose minds had suppressed the thoughts of work. Officer White ducked into a hall as the chatter dulled to a drone. “Sorry, I’m out with my girl on a date.”

  “This is Detective Boise. I need to ask you something from a police file you created,” Brian said again as the janitor looked at him from across the room.

  “Which one is that?”

  “Do you remember the Dante Lopez murder?”

  “Uh, hmm, I’m not sure.”

  The thirty-five-year-old officer massaged his brow as his brain rattled. Fine wine and his wife’s cleavage had been on his mind and now his phone wanted him to open the box labeled “officer,” the box that he locked every time he put his badge away.

  “Two nine millimeter shots. One between the eyes. On the north side of town,” Brian added.

  Then, the box flung open. “Okay. Yeah, I remember that file.”

  “Do you remember his occupation?”

  “Occupation? Uh, no. I don’t think so,” Officer White replied as he tried to dig in the box. As he dithered, he saw the waiter deliver key lime pie to his spot at the table. The officer watched as the dessert sat alone, abandoned, without an owner to eat it. “Is this that important to find out on a Friday night? I’m off duty.”

  Brian felt his hip bone crack as he digested Officer White’s response. Then, the image of Anne Marie and Jonathan entered his mind. “You’re right. Sorry to bother you. This can probably wait until the day,” Brian responded as he placed the receiver back down.

  The detective took a mouthful of the coffee on his desk and winced from its bitterness. As he stood up, his bones creaked. He shuffled toward the office window. Brian stared at the city through the residue of foul air caked on the window. He watched as the Friday night crowd roamed the roads destined to the city’s nightlife. Two valet drivers stood guard at a lounge bar across the street. As Brian hid behind the grimy window, a black SUV pulled in front of the establishment, prompting to action one of the valet drivers. The young man opened the passenger side door and assisted the lady. She stepped out exposing her mink coat to the brisk air. Then, the valet driver sprang to the driver’s side and helped the polished man wearing a black suit. Brian thought about his wife. He couldn’t even recall the last Friday night date he had taken her on. He realized he needed to see her more, to pamper her, to take her to the mall shopping while he and Jonathan laughed in the play land. As his family filled Brian’s mind, a buzz startled him. It was his desk phone. Before Brian could even open his mouth after picking up the receiver, the voice on the other end burst from the speaker.

  “An attorney. Dante Lopez was a prosecutor on a big mob case.”

  Brian took a moment to digest the outburst, but then he realized that the twelve words answered his question.

  “Thank you very much. You enjoy your date,” Brian replied as he pressed the receiver button with his finger.

  A grin formed on Brian’s face as his case just got more interesting, but then he thought about his wife, the love of his life, the woman who was home on a Friday night without her husband. He removed his finger. A dial tone resonated. Then, he pressed the seven keys to call home.

  Across the city, Anne Marie lay awake on her bed reading the current issue of Taste of Home. She reclined with only the light from her table lamp illuminated and the muffled sound of the city underneath her bed. As she turned the page highlighting the dessert recipes, the phone on the nightstand rang.

  “Hello?” she said even though she knew who it was.

  “Hi. Are you sleeping?”

  His voice massaged Anne Marie’s eardrum and provoked a smile on her face.

  “I just laid down. What are you doing?” she asked as she rested the magazine on her chest.

  “Just working on some leads. I wanted to see how you and Jonathan were.”

  “Is that really why you called?”

  “It is, honey. How are you?”

  “Well, we had a good night. I took him over to my sister’s to eat, and then he played Nintendo all night.”

  Brian grinned. “That sounds nice. He loves playing with that thing.”

  “When will you be home?”

  “I don’t know. I just need to finish up a few things. You don’t need to stay up.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I won’t.” Anne Marie removed the phone from her ear.

  “I love you,” Brian responded, but only the sound of a click replied.

  Brian returned the receiver to its cradle and combed his eyebrow with his finger. He felt nothing, a void in his mind, but then the ache from a migraine loomed. As he scratched his temple, the manila folder in front of him consumed his focus.

  Chapter 11

  A basketball banked off glass and swished into a net. The gymnasium erupted with cheers. A group of youngsters four feet tall looked at the shooter—a skinny kid with a blue jersey. His teammates gave him a pat on the back, and then spread out on the court.

  At the side of the court was a bench lined
with blue and red teams on opposite ends. Behind the teams, a crowd of mainly parents and siblings filled the bleachers. The place was moderately sized and the bleachers were surprisingly dense, like a bingo parlor on the second Wednesday of the month.

  A boy in red with curly hair dribbled the ball between two blue defenders, but then he lost control and watched the ball bounce out of bounds. The crowd collectively sighed.

  “Come on, Anthony!” a boisterous curly-haired man yelled.

  On the sideline in front of the blue team, an older man with white hair and wearing sweat pants paced. He had the appearance of an NBA cutthroat coach, but at further inspection, he had the face of Santa Claus after gastric bypass surgery. He was Coach Wilson, a man with a love for sports that stemmed from his own son’s basketball days as a youth. Even though his son had just turned thirty and had replaced the basketball with a briefcase, Coach Wilson never stopped coaching.

  He watched a burly kid on the red team chuck the ball from the three-point line. It bounced off the top of the glass and somehow went in. Laughs spewed from the crowd followed by some claps. Coach Wilson looked at his team waiting like a line of cadets preparing for a drill sergeant’s orders at six a.m.

  “Jonathan, you’re up. Go get ’em,” the coach prompted.

  Jonathan Boise sprang up and adjusted his shorts. He looked around as if he had no idea what to do. He glanced at his coach, who gestured toward the boy with the untied shoelaces.

  “Go in for Bobby,” Coach Wilson said.

  Jonathan scurried on the court as the boy at the end of the coach’s gesture clumped toward the bench.

  In the crowd, Anne Marie extended her neck as she watched her son enter the game. Her sister, Helen, sat next to her with the same enthusiasm. Helen was an older version of Anne Marie with the same cherry brown hair and complexion. Where she differed from her sister was in style, as Helen chose to flaunt her feminine assets, a way to recruit a sailor.