by Ed Gorman
He finished off the second drink and helped himself to a third. “She was sleeping around on me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never even hit her when I found out.” He got up clumsily and stalked over to the drapes and yanked on a cord. A rose-colored, dusk sky filled the room with more melancholy than it could rightly tolerate. “She promised me she’d never fall in love with any of them. And she kept her word.”
He put his drink down on the top of the Tv cabinet. He put his head in his big hands. He wept.
A couple of times he sounded as if he were going to vomit. A couple of times I had the sense that he was going to let go and start smashing
things. A couple of times I forgot myself and felt sorry for him. It’s hard to hate somebody when you see that they’re not any stronger than you are, and break just as easily.
The sirens sounded lonely in the early nightfall. Most people would be sitting down to the evening meal, Dad home from the factory or the store, Mom serving the food, and the kids ready to bolt as soon as their stomachs were full. Mom and Dad would watch Tv and a couple of times during the course of the evening they’d remember why they married each other, those sweet pure remembrances that buttress good marriages, and for those moments they wouldn’t be old married folks, they’d be the kids they’d once been, all full of hope and excitement and each other.
I wondered if Mike had ever had nights like that with Brenda. I somehow doubted it. They’d always been reckless people—he loved to fight, to play high-stakes poker, to tell you how much better-looking his wife was than yours—and he’d liked to parade her in front of other men, almost daring them to approach her.
And this is where it all came to an end. You always wonder where and when your own life will end, I guess. But you don’t wonder where and when the life of the woman you love will end. Now he knew.
I left him there and went out and heated up the half pot of coffee that was still on the stove.
I was just pouring a cup when the reenactment of World War Ii began. It sounded that way, anyway. Later on, I counted the emergency vehicles. Six of them. Including Cliffie on his Harley. The way he backed off his pipes I wondered if he was literally trying to wake the dead.
Cliffie allowed the two men who actually knew what they were doing to take over. Their biggest problem was keeping Cliffie from spoiling evidence.
Because Mike was a well-known former jock, we got Tv people as well as newspaper and radio ones. Cliffie called one of his press conferences and proceeded to say all sorts of stupid and unprofessional things into several microphones.
But he had his khaki uniform and his badge on his person and images of Glenn Ford dancing in his mind, so he was off and flying. If the county attorney, who would have to prosecute this case, was hearing Cliffie he was probably considering suicide.
The crowd came soon after. There must be people who drive around at night looking for accidents and tragedies. They’re just there, suddenly, vampires who live not on blood but on the misery of others. This was a remote area and yet here they were. They know enough to speak discreetly, they know enough not to interfere with the police activities, and they know enough to move here or there when the officials ask them. They don’t want to jeopardize their feeding.
I saw a doctor give Mike an injection that I assume was a sedative; I saw Mike’s lawyer walk through the front door; and I saw a man from the county attorney’s office trying not to smirk while Cliffie shouted various theories at him. They were standing out on the front lawn, off to the side, isolated from the vampires and the press.
I was just about to leave when Cliffie roped me into the conversation with Jim McGuire, a very lowly lawyer in the county attorney’s little fiefdom.
McGuire was scrawny and dressed himself as I often did in suits from the Paris Men’s Shop available only at Sears Roebuck.
He had blue eyes, red lips, and
pipe-smoker yellow teeth.
Cliffie said, “Here’s a guy who can back me up. Tell him, Counselor. You know, about how she slept around.”
I said, “She slept around.”
“A lot of women sleep around,” McGuire said.
“In this town?” Cliffie sounded shocked.
“Yes,” McGuire said, winking at me, “in this very town, Chief.”
But Cliffie was always good on his feet.
“Yeah, well, maybe so, but how many of them got themselves murdered this afternoon?”
“With a mind like that, Chief,” McGuire said, “you should’ve been a trial lawyer.”
Cliffie caught the sarcasm. “Sure, and let killers go free the way McCain here does?” Then, “You know anybody she was sleeping with, McCain?”
“I don’t know this for a fact. But I think David Egan was one of them. I know for sure he spent time with her. I can’t say positively that he slept with her.”
“He slept with everybody,” Cliffie said.
“But he’s dead, so we can eliminate
him for this.”
“Good point,” McGuire said. “Being dead is about the best alibi you can have.”
“I’m gonna tell your boss what a wise guy you are,” Cliffie said. “So knock it off.”
McGuire knew that he’d reached Cliffie’s invisible line in the sand. He said, “This is my first murder, Chief. I’m just trying to sound tough by making jokes. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Cliffie slid his arm around McGuire’s shoulder. “See how nice he talks when he wants to, Counselor? Maybe you could take lessons from him.”
“How much you charge an hour for lessons, McGuire?” I said.
But he knew better than to join in the fun.
“I think I’ll go see how the investigation is going. Thanks, Chief.”
We watched him go and Cliffie said, “I’ve got Mike’s ass nailed on this one. Too bad, too, because he’s one hell of a nice guy.”
“Mike didn’t do it.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I was here before he got home.”
“Maybe he came here earlier, killed her, went back to work and then drove back here and pretended to be out of his mind when he found her. You were here so he put on a little show for you.”
“Whoever killed Sara Griffin and Egan killed Brenda.”
He made a face. “That sounds like the judge talking.”
“That’s me talking. First of all, Mike’ll have an alibi. He was at work all afternoon. And second of all, she was with Egan the night you had him killing Sara Griffin.”
“That was the alibi he wouldn’t tell us about?
Brenda?”
“That’s right.”
“Hell, no wonder he wouldn’t talk.
Mike would’ve killed him.” He shrugged. “So Mike found out about Egan and he killed her.
Simple as that, Counselor. It all ties together—Sara Griffin causes Egan to commit suicide; Mike finds out Brenda was shacking up with Egan and he kills her. A dope could figure that one out.”
And a dope just has, I wanted
to say. But Cliffie’d had enough abuse for today.
“If you say so, Chief,” I said.
Somebody called for him from the front door of the house. I walked back to my car and headed back to town.
On the dance floor, she said, “You smell good.”
“New aftershave.”
“Oh.”
“You smell good, too.”
She smiled nervously. “Same old
perfume.”
“But it’s a good one.”
“I’m glad you like it.”
You know how it goes when you’re both thinking about one thing—in this case how far we’d go tonight—while you’re talking about something else.
So far tonight, over pizza and three mild drinks each, we’d talked about Cliffie pestering her for more information, her mom wanting to get a dog, her sister in Indianapolis worried that her husband was having an affair, how
she was able to smell winter on the air this afternoon, how most people never believed her when she said she could smell winter, and how there was a new intern at the hospital who wasn’t so hot at washing his hands and how a couple of the nurses had decided to say something to one of the staff doctors about the matter.
As the music ended, she said, “You mind if we sit down?”
The restaurant was small, dark, and filled with people who seemed to be quite earnest about having a good time. There was a lot of empty laughter and a lot of drunken kidding with the waitresses and a lot of middle-aged dry-humping on the dance floor whenever a ballad was played.
She said, “I don’t think I’d better have any more alcohol.”
“Yeah, I noticed you staggering around on the dance floor.”
“I overheat is the problem. My body temperature goes up. I feel like I have the flu or something.”
“All right. Next round I’ll order
milk.”
She smiled and said, “Are we going back to your place?”
“If you want to.”
“A part of me wants to.”
“Which part is that?”
“You know what I mean.”
“You mean,” I said, “you’re not sure if you want to go back to my place or not. Whether things are moving too fast. Whether you’re ready.
Whether I’m ready. And that’s very natural.”
“Oh, it is, doctor? And how did you come by all this medical knowledge?”
“I went to the library and read up on breast cancer.”
“Are you serious?”
“Spent an hour there.”
“God, Sam.”
“And part of what I read was that you’d just naturally be uneasy about—”
“You really went to the library?”
I was trying to tell if she was amused or angry. I couldn’t.
She said, “Were there pictures?”
“Photographs, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Uh-huh. There were.”
“Of—af surgery?”
“Of after surgery.”
“I don’t know if I like that, Sam.”
“I’ll tell you what. Let’s dance again.”
“Now?”
“Nat “King” Cole. C’mon.”
We danced. In fact, we danced to the next three records, all ballads. And said not a word. She didn’t hold me quite so tightly now.
And when I accidentally stepped on her foot, she didn’t make any kind of smart remark.
She said, “I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Gone to the library?”
“Yes.”
“But I was just—”
“I know what you were trying to do, Sam. And it’s sweet, it really is. To care about me that much. But I don’t want you to see me as some kind of freak you need to read up on.”
Then she put her head on my shoulder and held me very tight indeed and when I started to say something, she said, “Please don’t say anything, Sam.
Please don’t.”
“I’m drunk already,” she said as she stood up. And she was, in fact, a tad wobbly as she headed for the second time to the john. “I must have a bladder the size of a pea.”
We’d come back to my apartment and despite her earlier resolution to forsake the bottle, she’d been matching me drink for drink. That sounds more impressive than it is, given the fact that I’m a terrible drinker. We’d had two more drinks was all. She went into the john and while I waited for her, I put my head back and tried to remember what it was like the first time I ever got drunk. Either it was when I snuck a quart of Hamms from the refrigerator and slept out in a tent with Mike Totter when we were fourteen; or it was the time Dodie McKay invited me over-I was fifteen—when her folks were out of town. The thing with the quart of beer was that I was also smoking cigarettes and the combination made me really giddy for a long time and then made me vomit. I’m not sure I was drunk, I think I just tested the limits of my stomach. With Dodie, I got drunk enough that I told her how much I loved the beautiful Pamela Forrest and would always love the beautiful Pamela Forrest and if there was an afterlife I would love the beautiful Pamela Forrest then, too. None of which Dodie wanted to hear. She’d invited me over to see if I wanted to go to the freshman dance, an invitation she took back by the end of the evening when she put me on the street to wobble my way home.
It was like a first drunk tonight, that was the best way to describe it. New and novel and giggly as hell.
When Linda came out of the bathroom, she headed straight for my chair. “Okay if I turn all the lights out?”
“What if I’m afraid of the dark?”
“Tough.”
So she went around and turned the lights out and then came over and sat in my lap. It was great there in the dark with her, the feel and smell and womanness and girliness of her, the feel of her hose and the perfect length of neck and the toothpaste scent fresh from my bathroom, a little squeeze of my Colgate no doubt.
“I used to sit in my Dad’s lap when I was little and comb his hair all forward. And then I’d laugh and laugh.”
“Do you want to comb my hair all forward?”
She reached up and clipped off the lamp on the end table next to the armchair we sat in. And that was when she kissed me.
The moonlight cast everything into silver
and shadow relief. The apartment had never looked better.
I let her slide back on me and then I slipped my arm around her back. I didn’t realize she had shorn herself of bra until my hand reached the middle of her spine.
She did it quickly, deftly, while she was still kissing me, unbuttoned her blouse. My hand found its way to her breast and touched it with a kind of lusty fondness or fond lustiness. Take your choice.
She sighed deeply, tilted her head back.
“That feels so good.”
“I’m used to seeing you fishing off that deserted railroad bridge in the summer,” I said. “You always wore white Tshirts without a bra. I always wanted you to stand at an angle to the sun so I could get a glimpse of your breasts.”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me out, Sam?”
She took my hand and kissed it and then placed it on her breast again.
“I was too busy with the Queen of Sheba.”
“The beautiful Pamela Forrest.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“You really think you’re over her?”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“That’s good enough for me.”
She tilted my face up and kissed me again.
“I’m really getting into the mood now. I wasn’t sure I could.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
This time, I kissed her. Teenage lust did wonderful and urgent things to my crotch. There’s nothing like good old teenage lust when you’re in your twenties. Long may it last.
I knew the rules for tonight. The skirt wouldn’t come off let alone the slip and the panties.
Nice and slow and easy. With an emphasis on slow.
But we sure found a lot of things to do within the limits of the rules, let me tell you. You reach a point in foreplay when you think you just may need to be committed to a mental hospital, you’re that goofy.
And then the moment was there. I don’t know why it was the moment—there hadn’t been anything said, she hadn’t urged my hand in any particular direction —but it was the moment and it was time to do it.
I wanted to do it when we were in the depths of a kiss that was making us thrusting gasping
maniacs, because then it would be natural.
And it was natural. I just slipped my hand over. The nerve endings on my palm registered data with my brain—the shock of feeling the thin coarse patterns of the scarring where her breast had been. I wanted to tell myself—tell her—t everything was just fine, that it was just a little scarring was all. No big deal.
But of course it was a big deal. It would take some g
etting used to. As would looking at it in the light sometime.
But then I thought of what this moment must be like for her. How much she’d dreaded it, yet had wanted to get it over with. And how, based on my reading at the library, her future was perilous. The recovery rate for her kind of breast cancer was not good.
She started crying, not hard, not dramatic, and put her head on my shoulder, her tears warm on the side of my neck.
After a time, she raised her head and said, “You want another drink?”
“Not right now.”
“Me neither, I guess.”
She eased herself onto my lap again and I slipped my arms around her.
After a time she said: “I meet with this group of women who’ve had the same kind of surgery.
There’re some men who can’t handle it.”
“Then they’re not men worth knowing. You’re still yourself. That’s what matters.”
“Please don’t lie to me, Sam.”
“I’m not lying. I’m not saying it was easy here tonight. I really was afraid I’d do or say something wrong. But a lot of times the fear is worse than the reality. I’m just happy I finally got to see one of those breasts you used to flaunt at me down at the railroad bridge.”
“Oh, yes, I’m the flaunting type, all right. Roger Darcy was the only boy I would’ve flaunted myself around.”
“Roger Darcy? The kid who used to call in all those false fire alarms?”
“I felt sorry for him.”
“Roger Darcy. He’s probably an
arsonist by now.” A merry kiss of her doing, and once again we went at it, determined to find out just how much you could get away with within tonight’s rules.
You’d be surprised how much fun you can
have within those rules.
Twenty
As you’re breathing your last, say a quick prayer that the priest who buries you is Father Mulcahy and not Father Fitzpatrick.
David Egan had always claimed to be unlucky. And his unluck held right to the end.
Father Fitzpatrick presided over his funeral mass and burial.
Father Peter Fitzpatrick was once a real sharp priest. This was probably sometime around the Civil War. He’d served in several larger cities and then gotten himself sent here instead of retiring. He always said he didn’t want to retire. He was a priest on the model of Mgm central casting priests—white-haired, pleasantly overweight, with a radiant smile for everybody.