Lifeline

by Gerry Boyle

  “Come here,” she said.

  “As long as you ask so nicely,” I said.

  Tate turned and went into her inner sanctum. I followed. The secretary looked at me as though I were Charles Manson. Then looked away.

  I walked in, and Tate was already sitting behind her desk.

  “Close the door,” she said.

  “When did you drop out of finishing school? Never heard of the word please?”

  “Just close it.”

  I pushed the door shut. Took three steps to the desk and picked up the framed photograph of the fat orange-and-white cat.

  “How’s Fluffy? Those diet pills working?”

  “Put it down.”

  Tate said it like it was the last warning before shoot to kill. I gave the cat a long, assessing look and put the picture back on the desk.

  “I can’t believe you’re here. I can only think that it’s in your capacity as witness to felonies and associate of known criminals.”

  “Makes it sound like I hang around with mobsters.”

  “Maybe you did, for all I know. It hasn’t taken you long to seek out the lowlifes around here.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like who?”

  “Jeff Tanner. Donna Marchant. That illustrious gentleman who didn’t like his plea bargain.”

  “You think Donna was a lowlife?”

  “Her life speaks for itself. She may have been cute, but she was a loser.”

  “Does that make you a winner?” I said.

  “Yup.”

  “In the small-pond Olympics, you mean.”

  Tate gave me a look.

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. Fluffy’s mommy.”

  “You don’t get wise with me, McMorrow. Not here.”

  “You want to meet later for a drink? We could talk.”

  Tate put her hand down on the desk, hard. Her fingers were splayed, her nails dark pink and blunt.

  “No, McMorrow, we’ll talk now. We’re going to talk about how it’s totally inappropriate for you to be working in this courtroom.”

  “Funny, people say the same thing about you.”

  “But they have no say.”

  “You have no say,” I said. “The paper could hire Jack the Ripper as a reporter if it wanted to.”

  “But it wouldn’t. Because I’d be all over my friend Albert. And I’m gonna be all over him about you.”

  “Why? Because I said your cat was chubby?”

  “Because you don’t get it, McMorrow. There’s a pecking order here, and you don’t get it. You’re not learning. And you’re a suspect in a murder. Or maybe the cause of one. Maybe if you hadn’t shown up here, Donna Marchant would still be alive.”

  Tate smiled. She had very large teeth and red fleshy gums.

  “And maybe if you had shown just the least bit of sympathy for Donna Marchant, she’d be alive,” I said. “If you hadn’t let her psycho boyfriend out for three hundred bucks. If you hadn’t treated her like dirt every time she walked in here.”

  There was a rumble in the lobby.

  “I’ve got to get into the courtroom,” Tate said, getting up.

  “Some justice to miscarry?”

  “You just don’t get it, McMorrow. I’m going to have to teach you.”

  “Too late,” I said.

  Tate stood close to me, so close I could smell her perfume, see the pores in her nose.

  “You know what they call a reporter without a paper?” she asked, suddenly smiling.

  “No, what?”

  She leaned closer, and I could smell her coffee breath.

  “A gelding,” Tate said. “See you in court.”

  I was the last one in before the bailiff closed the door. I sat in the fourth row back, on the left. The guy to my right was in his fifties, going on eighty-five. He was small and withered by alcohol and had urinated in his pants. The rest of the crowd was comparatively upstanding, at least at first glance.

  The first hour was the plea parade. Hats in hand, they walked up and had their audience with the judge, while Tate herself meted out the sentences. It was like watching them hand out diplomas at a high school graduation, and I was starting to droop when my friend from probation sat down.

  “How’s the news business?” he whispered.

  “Peachy,” I said.

  “You’ve sure got this town stirred up.”

  “I’ve had help,” I said.

  We sat and watched, and then a name was called and a guy came in wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. He was big and rangy and had salt-and-pepper hair pulled back in a ponytail. A young muscle-bound deputy stayed a step behind him.

  “Alphonse Danny Leaman,” the probation guy said. “Criminal extraordinaire. He just got out, like, three weeks ago. In for drugs. Fairly big cocaine dealer down in Waterville at one time. But Alphonse is just a little too crazy. He always gets caught.”

  “Three weeks out and he’s already heading back?”

  “Got drunk, which he isn’t supposed to do, in a bar where he isn’t supposed to go. They got him driving, which he isn’t supposed to do, and they found him with a pocketful of Quaaludes and all this other stuff. Schedule Z drugs. He tried to punch out the cop who stopped him. Some twenty-year-old kid who couldn’t weigh a hundred and forty pounds. Look at this guy. This guy is dangerous.”

  He shook his head.

  “So he’ll be going back inside?”

  “Most likely. Can you believe that? Three weeks and back in, to bleed more money out of the taxpayers. Yes, it’s a wonderful system.”

  The probation guy got up. Alphonse’s court-appointed lawyer looked afraid of his client but still managed to squeak out a not-guilty plea. The deputy led Alphonse out, like a pit bull on a chain. I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley, but for today’s lead, he would do just fine.

  So I had the top to the story; all I had to do was write it.

  I sat there until almost four o’clock, catching Tate’s glares and returning them with smiles. When court adjourned, I followed her into the lobby and started to ask about Alphonse and what she would be recommending for a sentence.

  “No comment, McMorrow,” Tate said, and walked into her office and shut the door.

  “So be that way,” I said, and walked across the lobby to the clerk’s window. A young woman approached and stood in front of me without speaking.

  “Alphonse Leaman. I need all his convictions and arrests. Anything you’ve got in that computer. I’m Jack—”

  “I know who you are,” the woman said, turning to a keyboard. She punched the name and the screen filled up. Then she hit print and three pages oozed from a laser printer at her elbow.

  “Thanks,” I said as she tossed the pages on the counter in front of me.

  The word was still hanging there as she turned her back and walked away.

  “So be that way,” I said. Everyone else was.

  At the Observer office, I was shunned like a wayward Amish. When I walked into the newsroom, heads sank to the keyboards as if in prayer. I walked down the aisle to the news desk, and only my kindred spirit Catherine Plante looked up.

  And then she looked back down.

  I paused and kept walking. Archambault’s light was on but he wasn’t at his desk, which probably was a good thing. With Tate on my ass, I didn’t need an assault charge. Or disorderly conduct. Or one single parking ticket.

  So I kept walking. Albert was on the phone, looking grim. I went out into the hallway to find Charlene and ask her if they had a file on Alphonse. I was standing there when she came out of the restroom. Charlene started.

  “Hi, Charlene,” I said.

  She turned and started down the hall.

  “I need a file. Alphonse Leaman. I need it right away.”

  Charlene turned abruptly and came back. She walked past me and into the morgue. I heard file doors clang, then Charlene was back. She handed me a manila folder, holding it out at arm’s length as if it w
ere an envelope full of excrement.

  “Fast service,” I said, taking the folder. “And no small talk to bog things down.”

  “I don’t have anything to say. Except we didn’t expect to see you here again after what happened to that little girl.”

  “She wasn’t so little.”

  “Well, I think it’s a shame,” Charlene said coldly, finally looking me in the eye. “I wonder how you can live with yourself.”

  “Same way I always have,” I said.

  “You must have lost your conscience a long time ago.”

  “It’s my conscience that keeps me going.”

  “Well, I don’t see how you can just wash your hands of this whole thing so easily.”

  “They’re not washed, and there’s nothing easy about it,” I said. “Unless maybe if you’re watching from the sidelines.”

  Charlene arched an eyebrow and walked away. I stood there for a moment and then walked through the door and down the stairs, ready to file this story by phone. And then I turned around.

  I sat at a computer terminal in the middle of the newsroom, surrounded by silence. For approximately an hour, I wrote my story about Alphonse Leaman and his inability to obey the law, even for short periods of time. I called the arresting officer and he called me back, perhaps out of curiosity. But he answered my questions and I finished my story two hours before deadline.

  I assigned it to the city desk with two taps of the keys, then stood up and stuffed my notebook back in my pocket.

  “At ease, everyone,” I said. “You are now free to continue your conversations.”

  They looked up but still didn’t talk.

  So from a silent newsroom, I could go home to a silent house. Instead, I drove the Oldsmobile around Kennebec. I stopped and bought a tuna sandwich and ate it in an empty parking lot on Main Street. Then I headed up the street to the north end, dodging kids and circling the dreary treeless blocks until I spotted a police cruiser. I followed it back out to Main and down to Dunkin’ Donuts, where I pulled in beside it.

  Lenny got out.

  “I thought that looked like you,” he said, closing his door. “How long they gonna keep your truck?”

  “Until they find next of kin for the cat,” I said.

  We went in and sat on stools, around the corner toward the back. Lenny said he liked to sit there because he could see everybody come in. Many he knew. Some he wanted to see. Some he’d recently arrested and didn’t want behind his back.

  “So you sure it’s okay to be seen with me?” I said.

  “After fourteen years, I decide who I’ll be seen with.”

  “Those state guys made me feel like a criminal.”

  “That’s their job,” Lenny said.

  The waitress came. She called Lenny “honey.” He had coffee with cream and two sugars. I had mine black and she didn’t call me anything.

  “So you’re still going to talk to me?” I said when she’d bustled off.

  “Why not?”

  “After Donna?”

  “I don’t think you meant to hurt her,” Lenny said. “What happened to her could have happened next week or next month. It was a long time building.”

  “So why do those guys act like I’m a suspect?”

  “They just have to try to rattle you. See if you’re lying about anything.”

  “What’d they decide?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t tell me.”

  “What do you think?” I said.

  Lenny sipped his coffee and watched the windows.

  “I haven’t changed my opinion. People are such bad liars, you know? It keeps up my faith in humanity sometimes. That people, even scumbags, find it so hard to not tell the truth.”

  I fingered my cup, which was dirty.

  “So do they think it was Jeff?” I said. “Off the record. Way off.”

  “He’s number one. Donnie is number two. You were supposed to be number three, but I think you’re off the list. If anything, you’re a long, long shot.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  I hesitated.

  “How’d she die?” I said.

  Lenny sipped. Absently fingered the squelch knob on his radio.

  “I haven’t heard, really. Talk is that she had some bumps and bruises but nothing that looked like it’d kill her outright. I heard the sister walked in and found her. She grabbed the little girl and dialed 911. They were waiting outside when the first unit got there.”

  “The sister loves that little girl. So Adrianna was there for it. Was Donna strangled or something?”

  “Not that I’ve heard, but I haven’t heard much. They’re keeping it pretty hush-hush.”

  “They pick Jeff up yet?”

  “Yup. He says he was there earlier, but she was fine when he left. He went drinking, back to The Mansion on Elm Street. He says she must’ve drunk herself into a coma or something. I guess she was hitting the whiskey pretty good that night.”

  I thought of Donna, with her makeup and perfume, legs tucked up on the couch. If I had kissed her, would she be alive? If I had held her, would she still be here? Had the right thing been the wrong thing?

  “She was nice,” I said.

  “Yeah. She tried hard,” Lenny said. “She just didn’t get many good cards dealt to her.”

  “The ex? Donnie?”

  “He says he hadn’t seen her in weeks. Both released after questioning. One of ’em probably lying. I’d say Mr. Tanner’s in deep shit.”

  “So what do the detectives do now?” I asked.

  “Keep asking questions. That’s all they really can do. Go around and talk to people. Keep people talking because lying doesn’t get any easier. Especially if more pieces of the puzzle get uncovered, you know? You uncover a piece here, a piece there, and hope somebody’s story unravels. This’ll probably be one of those.”

  “So the idea is to keep them talking?”

  “Confront them with new facts. Keep them talking and hope somebody cracks.”

  The waitress came back with the pot. Lenny put his hand over his mug. I did the same and she smiled and went down the row, like a gardener watering seedlings.

  “So it isn’t like television,” I said.

  “Nothing like television,” Lenny said.

  “No murderer caught before the hour is up.”

  “Sometimes no murderer at all. You know how many unsolved murders there are in this state?”

  “How many?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but a lot. Twenty. Thirty. They’ve got three or four fresh homicides going down in Portland right now. And it isn’t like they have five hundred people to throw at these things. This isn’t New York.”

  “So they keep telling me.”

  Lenny shifted on his stool, pulled at the radio on his belt.

  “No, if something doesn’t shake loose in this one in the next . . . I don’t know, week or so, then it’s gonna be a long haul.”

  “Before justice is served?” I said.

  “If it is. No guarantees. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said. “Now more than ever.”

  17

  There were three messages when I got back to Prosperity, all from Roxanne. Two were from the Human Services office in Portland. One was from her apartment, complete with phone number.

  I called it. Roxanne answered. There was a man’s voice in the background.

  “Who’s that?” I said.

  “Oh, that’s just Skip.”

  “Just Skip? What’s he doing?”

  “Talking. To Miranda.”

  “Who’s Miranda?”

  “From the office. She lives in Scarborough. She stopped on the way home. You’d like her. She’s talking boats with Skip. I guess she and her husband have a boat. Not as big as Skip’s.”

  “Things are tough all over,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I tried to call you last night.”

  “I was outside.”

&nb
sp; “At eleven thirty?”

  “There were good stars.”

  “How are you doing?” Roxanne asked.

  “Okay, I guess. Trying to adjust to my new role as long-shot murder suspect.”

  “Jack, the police were here today. I mean, not here. At the office. Two of them.”

  I wasn’t surprised.

  “I hope that wasn’t a problem for you.”

  “Oh, no. We’ve got cops coming in and out of the office all the time. They’re just not usually there to talk about us.”

  “And that’s what they wanted? To talk about us?”

  “Where we went. When we got there. When we left. They were very nice. One was kind of short and the other guy was sort of dim. But very good-looking.”

  “Got him where he is today,” I said. “Token handsome homicide cop.”

  There was a burst of laughter in the background.

  “Are we on speakerphone? That wasn’t that funny.”

  “What? No. That’s just Skip and Miranda. He’s really very funny.”

  “I’m glad for him. Is the name of his boat really the Queen Mary?”

  “Yeah. It’s a long story.”

  “You can tell me when you come home.”

  “Home there or home here?” Roxanne asked.

  “Home is here, isn’t it?”

  “Home is wherever we’re together,” she said, more quietly. “Do you need me soon?”

  “I need you right now.”

  “How ’bout tomorrow after work?”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When will you know?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  “I’m here for you, you know,” Roxanne said.

  “And that’s where I want you to stay for me.”

  “While you do what?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said.

  “I’m not sure you’re telling me everything.”

  “I don’t know much. That’s the problem.”

  “Please take care of yourself, Jack.”

  “No problem there,” I said. “All kinds of people are looking out for me.”

  In the background, I could hear Skip laugh.

  I woke up alone, with a phoebe calling from somewhere out behind the house. There were two of them, and they were nesting behind the shed. I fought off the urge to spend the morning watching them and made myself shower and shave.