Keep the Baby, Faith

by William L. DeAndrea

  That was when the police car started pulling up on us. I had a flash of panic—he’s spotted something. I checked all the mirrors, I took my eyes off the road and looked around, drawing a dirty look from my mother, and saw nothing. The gap between us narrowed.

  My next guess was that he was going to pull me over, tell me the whole thing was ridiculous, that he was going back to headquarters and real police work, and that I should go home if I was so nervous. That would have been embarrassing, but I could handle it. The police car kept getting closer.

  I started looking at the figure behind the wheel, expecting a hand signal to get me over to the side of the road. Lights and siren would have been a bit much. I remember a flicker of surprise crossing my brain as I saw his face. I’d caught a glimpse of the man behind the wheel of the police car as we pulled away from the house, hadn’t remembered him being black.

  The surprise was replaced by fear as the police car came closer yet. This guy wasn’t black, or not necessarily. He was wearing a ski mask.

  “Cops don’t wear ski masks,” I said aloud.

  “What are you talking about, Harry?” Sue wanted to know.

  “Holy shit!” I said, and stepped down hard on the accelerator.

  “What is going on? You’re scaring Faith!”

  There was no reason for her not to be scared. That was not a policeman. I remembered the commotion just as we were leaving the shopping center. That might have had something to do with this…

  My speculations were cut short when the police car rammed our rear bumper. The impact was hard enough to jar my head back, but not hard enough to make me lose control of the car. He backed off a little, and repeated the trick.

  Mercedes makes a fine car, but diesel engines stink when it comes to acceleration, and I would’ve traded all the luxury in the world for some decent acceleration at this moment.

  The next bump was a little harder. I was sure the bastard was grinning under the ski mask.

  I undoubtedly would have panicked, but between Faith and my mother, the panic allotment of that car was used up. They were screaming, in counterpoint and two-part harmony, “He’s trying to kill me, he’s trying to kill my baby!” and, “Harry do something, for God’s sake do something!” Sue was sitting quietly in the back seat, wearing the expression of someone who had already been in an auto accident.

  Going apeshit, blaming somebody else, and lapsing into catatonia were my three first choices, too, but since they were taken, the only thing left for me was to think of something.

  And I did, too. I didn’t exactly think of it, I remembered it. It was a sovereign remedy for tailgaters. My father had told me about it, though I don’t actually remember him ever actually doing it. Too dangerous.

  Right now, though, I would have used a nuke if I could figure out how to get one. Danger to my tormentor wasn’t a consideration.

  We were going at a pretty good clip by now, about ninety, double the speed suited to this road. It would be difficult to keep the car on the road driving this fast, even without some maniac trying to (literally) bump me off.

  It was too late to avoid the next bump, and the renewed round of screams that went with it. I kept my foot to the floor and waited for the next one.

  Timing was going to be important. I had to take one hand off the wheel to get ready, which didn’t make things any easier. I waited. The police car dropped back about twenty yards, then increased his speed again, and came forward for another bump.

  I switched on my headlights.

  Which also turned on my taillights. Taillights, appearing suddenly in the daytime, look just like brake lights. He had no choice but to think I’d slammed on my brakes, a move that had a good chance of killing all of us, but was practically guaranteed to send him into a vicious head-to-tail collision that would crush him and the car around him into something approximating a can of Spam.

  I could hear the squeal as the driver of the police car stood on his brakes and locked the wheels. I saw him start to go into a spin, but the road curved, and I lost sight of him.

  I didn’t go back to look. If he had a cop’s car, he might have a cop’s gun. I drove straight to my mother’s house, and phoned the real police, and told them all about it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  LIEUTENANT CRAIG ROGERS CAME up to Scarsdale to talk to us, instead of ordering us to haul ass into the city. Didn’t want to ruin our weekend, he said. Imagine what he could have done if he had wanted to.

  Rogers was the guest of honor at a surprise Saturday-after-Thanksgiving party, thrown by my mother. That she was throwing it was the big surprise. Guests were primarily law-enforcement officials, Rogers and two New York friends, and contingents from the Scarsdale P.D. and the New York State Police, many of whom we’d met yesterday, in the immediate wake of our daring escape from the killer police car.

  I could see why they might want more than one session of questioning. Yesterday I’d learned that the officer assigned to follow us was one Frank Osgood, a young man, five years on the force, good record, maybe not brilliant, but brave and honest, and well-liked by all his comrades, and the rest of that whole catalog of folk-song virtues.

  Officer Osgood was now in intensive care at St. Vincent’s with a fractured skull. He was going to live, and it didn’t look as if there would be any serious brain damage, but the cops made sure to impress upon all of us that even under the best of circumstances, a fractured skull was an unpleasant experience. Some of the uniformed cops gave me the impression that they would be delighted to help me put their assertion to the proof, if I held any doubt, but I was content to take their word for it.

  As far as anyone could tell, someone had been watching the house yesterday in addition to Officer Osgood, someone who had been clever enough to spot the increased police patrols. And, when we finally decided to go out, he’d been smart enough not to follow us, where the police officer would surely have spotted him, but to follow the cop himself.

  He was also smart enough to come up with what The Grayness would undoubtedly call “a bold plan” during the time we were parked at the shopping center buying ice cream. What he did was to go to a distant part of the parking lot, being careful to remain in plain view of the parked squad car. Then he took out a wrench, and started smashing windshields.

  It was plainly Officer Osgood’s duty to stop him. (I keep saying him. Since all my companions saw was a ski mask, and what Officer Osgood saw was locked in a cracked head until he regained consciousness, it could well have been a woman.)

  Osgood’s Duty. The surveillance had been explained to Osgood by the desk sergeant (and, I admit, to the desk sergeant by me) as no big deal, whereas daylight vandalism, by an obvious maniac wielding something that might at any second be used as a deadly weapon, obviously was a big deal. So he went to stop him. He should have called for help, but he didn’t. The Chief yesterday remarked that perhaps Osgood was a little too brave.

  And somehow, the vandal got behind him and patted him on the head with the wrench. It probably wasn’t all that difficult, crouched down behind the maze of parked cars. He left Osgood lying there, took the keys, and calmly took possession of the police car. The commotion I’d noticed as we left the shopping center had been patrons getting out of the movie matinee and discovering what had happened to their cars. Nobody discovered Officer Osgood until more cops came in response to the calls of irate car owners.

  I eventually came to realize that the State Police were at my mother’s house today primarily to help Rogers keep the locals, led by Chief Michael Green, who was a friend of my father’s for twenty-five years and should have known better, from getting out of line and violating the rights of possibly innocent citizens, and worse yet, blowing the case if they turned out not to be innocent.

  I eventually came to realize that, and even to be glad the hat tree was filled with Smokey the Bear hats. It hadn’t occurred to me by the time I told my mother to call Hi Marks and get him over here. The cops had knocked on the door,
and asked if they could come in, very politely, too. My mother sets a lot of store in politeness, and as far as she knew she had no reason to keep them out.

  Once they got inside, it was a different story. They wanted to set up in different rooms, question the four of us separately. One of them started poking around in drawers and under cushions.

  I could understand their problem. All they’d known before yesterday was that they were supposed to keep an eye on the house, and provide reasonable protection when asked. Today, one of them was in the hospital (and one of their squad cars was wrecked). They faced the knowledge that the amount of embarrassment they would experience would be directly proportional to the amount of the story that got out. They would have talked with Rogers by now, and learned that this supposed routine surveillance was part of a much bigger mess than they’d imagined.

  Knowing more, they’d be thinking more to the point, and something would have occurred to the Chief that had kept me awake all last night. Today, he would get answers, or know the reason why.

  Understanding the problem wouldn’t make the experience any more pleasant, especially for my mother. Or for Faith. I wanted a lawyer around.

  It did not solve all the problems. It is impossible for policemen to believe that an innocent person needs a lawyer. My mother’s picking up the phone disappointed the Chief, if it didn’t shock him.

  Chief Green looks more like a math teacher at some small New England college than a policeman. He wears a uniform only on special occasions. Today, apparently, was more special for us than it was for him, since he wore his usual gray business suit. He’s slender, wears glasses, and combs his hair straight back from a receding hairline.

  “You didn’t have to do that, Helen,” he said when my mother hung up the phone.

  My mother was so mad her lips had disappeared. Growing up, I hadn’t seen that look much (what can I say? I was just naturally a good boy), but when I did see it, I used to go hide under the bed.

  “Don’t come busting into my house and try to call me Helen,” my mother told him. “What are we, criminals, that ten of you”—she looked around and counted—“twelve of you have to come with guns to talk to us?”

  “Fourteen, Mom,” Sue said. “Two went upstairs.” She was madder than my mother was, and made me more nervous. Sue was perfectly capable of going over and smacking somebody, and getting us all arrested, or maybe shot.

  “And searching the place without a warrant. There’s a pregnant girl up there asleep. If anybody bothers her, I’ll call the newspapers. My son here works for The Greatest Newspaper in the World.” She interrupted her anger to give me a look of warm pride.

  Hi Marks only lived a few blocks away, so Mom had no trouble filling the time until he got there. It was better, I suppose, than everything standing mute and letting the cops yell at us. Chief Green, and the guy in charge of the State Police contingent, whose name I never did get, were delighted to let her go on with it, working on the time-tested fact that people will frequently let go of things during a tirade that they would hold on to for dear life during more reasoned discourse.

  I didn’t mind, since anyone as experienced with tirades as a Jewish Mother, even the new type, is not going to say anything they don’t want to say. Besides, we had absolutely nothing to hide. My mother could blurt until the Ayatollah made his bar mitzvah, and she couldn’t tell the cops anything they didn’t know, except that they should be ashamed of themselves, harassing a family that had taken in a poor, persecuted girl with no one to turn to, and so on.

  I sneaked a look at Lieutenant Rogers during all of this. He seemed amused. He stood there (behind my mother, and therefore out of the line of fire) until Hi Marks showed up.

  Hi Marks smiled and shook hands with everyone. He has the best tan of anyone in Scarsdale, except possibly my mother. He smokes a cigar, and moves very slowly, with his chest puffed out, like a pigeon looking for a mate. He has wavy silver hair on his head, which I happen to know is a toupee, but which would fool anyone else in the world. He talks and dresses formally. I’ve never heard him use a contraction or seen him without a suit and tie.

  “Michael,” he said. “Helen.” He spread his hands like a patriarch. “What can the matter be between two old friends, that a third friend has to mediate?”

  My mother was about to tell him what the matter could be, when Hi showed he wasn’t there to mediate. “Now, Helen, let us not rush things. Michael, please tell me what is wrong, and then my client and I will confer.”

  “This isn’t necessary, Hi,” the Chief said.

  “Better to err on the side of caution.”

  Craig Rogers came up and murmured in my ear. “I think your mother’s in good hands now.”

  I told him I was sure she was. Hi Marks is still a bachelor because he has been in love with my mother since way before my father died. He was too good a friend to do anything about it then. I didn’t know what was holding him back now. Maybe he was afraid of being rejected. I had this vision of myself as a well-off, well-liked, white-haired bachelor in my sixties, never using contractions and wearing two fresh carnations a day in my lapel. It beat being a drunk in a gutter, I supposed, but I still didn’t like it.

  “Think we can have a little talk in private?”

  “Without my lawyer?”

  “Only guilty people need lawyers,” he told me, but he was smiling as he said it. “Strictly off the record. Come on, Ross. If I double-cross you, write an exposé or something.”

  I took him up to my old room. I sat on the bed. Rogers got to sit on the hideously uncomfortable wooden chair that had come with the desk and the rest of the bedroom set. Part of my success as a journalist (ha) comes from my speed at typing, which in turn is the result of my wanting to get my reports over with so I could get the hell out of that chair before my spine warped. I hoped Rogers would feel the same way about it.

  It didn’t seem to be bothering him. He spent a little time looking at the model Spad hanging from the ceiling, read the autographs on the baseball from the 1967 Yankees, one of the most mediocre baseball teams ever to lace on spikes.

  “Dooley Womack, for God’s sake,” he said. “I’d forgotten all about him.”

  “Shame on you,” I told him. “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

  “No. Unfortunately. You ever read comic strips?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know a guy who does a comic strip. He’s married to a cop, can you believe that?” He shook his head in amazement. “Anyway, this guy can talk about funny stuff. Hours and hours. Jokes and stories. All day.”

  “He must be fun at parties.”

  “I don’t know. The thing is, he can talk about funny stuff because it’s his job and he’s good at it. My job is not-funny stuff.”

  “Like murder.”

  “I am with the homicide squad,” he said, as though I’d been debating it.

  “So talk,” I said. I had the feeling I wasn’t going to like it.

  “We’re going to take Mrs. Letron into custody,” he said.

  “Lucille?” I sounded like Little Richard. “She was trying to run me off the road yesterday? She bashed the cop?”

  “I don’t know,” Rogers said. He was looking into the bottom of my old Magic 8-ball as if he expected to find the answer there. It was probably telling him “it is too early to say,” which was the best I ever seemed to do.

  “I don’t know anything, except nobody has an alibi. Family all lives together, and for hours, nobody sees anybody. We found the police car about a block and a half from the train station, you know.”

  “So it’s possible one of them did it and scooted right back to the city.”

  Rogers nodded. “Even Lucille’s husband. He was let out of the hospital in time for Thanksgiving, but he’s been staying at the Westbrook with his family.”

  “The car chase would have been a little rough on his heart.”

  “Maybe. Anyway, there’s no way we’re ever gonna prove any of this
.”

  My mind decided to get back to the point, and instructed my mouth to take steps in that direction. “Not Lucille,” I said. “You’re arresting the old lady? Alma?”

  “Are you being deliberately dense? Why would I tell you in advance if I was arresting the old woman?” He shook his head, disappointed in me. “Besides, I didn’t say arrested, I said taking into custody.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked. Then before he could tell me, I said, “Anyway, who’s left? The only other Mrs. Letron I know is—”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Faith?” I said. “You’re taking Faith Letron into custody?”

  “Exactly,” he said. There was a big smile on his face. The star pupil had come through at last.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THAT PRETTY WELL POLISHED off what was left of the holiday spirit; Sunday morning I took the train back to the city.

  I followed my usual Sunday morning routine—the Food Emporium, where I fought the crowd for bagels, then to the discount store to fight another mob for the Times, the News, and The Grayness. I hadn’t checked to see if our Road Warrior adventure had made the city papers while I was back home—if it had, it was gone by now. I looked carefully through all three Westchester sections while I toasted bagels (in an appliance I keep just for that purpose), smeared them with cream cheese, and crammed them in my mouth, washing them down with swigs of orange juice. I put the papers aside for closer perusal later, then parked in front of the TV to watch football. Antarctic explorers aren’t as cut off from the mundane affairs of the world as thoroughly as I am when I’m watching a football game, and cut off from the mundane affairs of the world was exactly what I wanted to be that day.

  I was well into the game when the phone rang. I cursed resignedly, and went over to pick it up.

  “Harry Ross?” a woman’s voice demanded.

  It wasn’t my mother, my sister, or Faith, so I figured it must be one of those advertising things, like “Have The Grayness home-delivered for twenty cents a week” or something like that. I wanted to start speaking Spanish or something, but the woman probably did, too. I thought of lying about it. My mother’s influence won—I told the truth from force of habit.