Cast Of Shadows

by Kevin Guilfoile

  “Oh, yeah. And he does mulch on weekends. Any of that help you?”

  “Maybe,” Philly said. “But you’re very kind. Thanks for having coffee with me.”

  “Oh sure,” Alice said. She held up her cup and licked her lips. “Mess-o Espresso.”

  Canella looked at his watch. He’d never make the last flight back to Chicago. “Is there anything to do around here?”

  “We’re not known for much,” Alice said. “Nothing besides being the birthplace of Jimmy Spears.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Jimmy Spears? The football player? You didn’t notice the big sign on the way into town?”

  “No, didn’t see the sign. But I remember him. Played at Northwestern.” Canella remembered a game in which Spears threw for some ridiculous number of yards and knocked him out of a five-dollar gambling pool he’d entered with some friends. “Is he still in the NFL?”

  Alice nodded. “Miami. We all wish he’d play more than he does. It makes the games on TV a whole lot more fun. Some people got satellite dishes just to watch him stand on the sidelines every week.”

  “Were you working at the school when he went here?”

  “Yes, I was.” Alice leaned forward again. Her smile was tobacco yellow and the joints where her teeth met were dark brown.

  “Nice kid?”

  “Very nice.” Alice said. “All the teachers liked him. All the girls liked him. All the boys liked him. By the time he graduated he was president of student council, captain of the Class A champion football team, won a bunch of ribbons showing cattle. Everyone’s still real proud of him. Of course, the good ones get up and leave town, to Omaha or Lincoln or wherever. The others, the losers like Ricky Weiss, they’re the ones that stick around, which is why this little village will never be more than it is. Jimmy and Ricky were in the same class, I think.”

  “What about these kids?” Canella nodded at the bunches of children improvising their recess on a grass infield framed by a bus circle.

  “These kids are still young,” she said. “It’s up at the high school they all become stinkers. All except Jimmy.”

  Canella drove in rectangles around the local farms, which radiated from the town like bonus squares on a Scrabble board. When he became tired, he pulled over and called Big Rob.

  “What are you working on out there?” Big Rob asked, after his friend had described the remoteness of his location. “The usual. Cheating husband,” he said. “Wife wants some more details, but I don’t know if they’re out here to be found. To tell you the truth, I dread this kind of shit.”

  “Cheating spouses?” Big Rob said. “That’s our bread and butter, Philly.”

  Canella said, “I’m telling you, Biggie. Get out of the city. Come up by me. The North Shore. Do you know what the fastest-growing part of my business is? I call it ‘babysitting.’ No shit. Eighth-graders. Ninth-graders. Sometimes even older kids. Sometimes even younger. Three to four grand a pop. You follow them after school: to parties, basketball games, on Saturday nights while they cruise Main Street. The parents wanna know if they’re tripping on X. Or diddling. Or hanging with the wrong crowd. They just want to be sure the kids are going where they say they’re going, and it’s so easy, Biggie. Christ. These boys and girls have no clue I’m following them, and the parents will pay more to have their kids chased than they will their spouses.”

  “Because they aren’t trying to hide the withdrawals from one another,” Biggie said with an understanding lilt.

  “Yeah, they’re both in on it. This predivorce legwork takes it out of me, though, I tell you.”

  Around six, Philly trolled by Ricky Weiss’s trailer and saw a red pickup in the drive that hadn’t been there two hours before. He parked his rented Focus in the street and walked up to the aluminum door without any thought to what he expected to find inside. He wanted to see his face, hear his voice, and get a look around his home just so he could tell Jackie Moore he did it. Fatten her file. Maybe he could get him talking somehow. Find out something that might connect him to Davis Moore.

  He had thought of a story to tell Rick Weiss, and it was a thin one as far as Canella was concerned. He was counting on Ricky being as dense as everyone said.

  Philly knocked and a man appeared on the other side of the screen. He was short and thin, and his back and legs bent in strange places, like pipe cleanerers. On his head was a mesh baseball cap with the name of a manufacturing company Canella didn’t know. He wore a white V-neck undershirt with so many stains and handprints Philly guessed he rarely wore anything over it. Through its cheap synthetic weave he could see matted brown chest hair that spread like kudzu up to the shaving line just above the man’s collarbone. There was a tattered leather belt looped around the waist of his grass-streaked jeans. In front was a big buckle with a horse on it, which made Philly wonder when he last saw a real buckle worn unironically on a belt. The man didn’t open the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “Hi. Are you Ricky?”

  “Rick,” he said.

  “Rick. Right. Sorry. My name is Phil Canella and I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I’m doing a feature story about Jimmy Spears and I heard you knew him growing up.”

  “Yeah.” Weiss put his nose against the screen and peered at him. “I know Jimmy. What do you want to know?” Philly thought he looked appropriately suspicious.

  “Can I come in?”

  Ricky pushed the door open and Canella stepped past him. A city boy, he had never been inside a trailer home before and this one was nicer than he expected, larger than he would have thought. The kitchen to their left had only a small number of tiny cabinets but the counters were clean and clutter-free. The living room was dusted and the end tables flanking the couch were bare except for a beer can centered on a wooden coaster. Through a cracked door Philly saw the made bed, and the decorative pillows lined up across the headboard. Ricky has a wife, he thought. Or a girlfriend.

  “So what do you want to know?” Weiss said, looking him over slowly.

  “Just a few quick questions,” Philly said, getting Weiss’s permission to take a chair at the kitchen table.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was he like in high school?”

  “What was he like?”

  Philly nodded and began writing in his black, pocket-sized, vinyl-covered notebook, which he had plucked from a leather over-the-shoulder briefcase. He wrote down the brand of beer Weiss was drinking and the size of his television and doodled the shape of the scar that intersected with his right eyebrow.

  “He was all right. For a jock,” Weiss said. He retrieved his beer and took a chair on an adjacent side of the table. “He didn’t hold it over everybody like some of them.”

  “How well did you know him?”

  “What are you after?”

  “Like I said: a story about Jimmy Spears.”

  “There are a hundred people in this town who knew Jimmy better than I did. Why don’t you talk to them?”

  Again, no good answer. “Maybe I already did.”

  “If you had, then you wouldn’t need me, would you?”

  Canella shut his notebook. “I’m sorry. Someone told me you knew him. I’ve made a mistake.” He was trying to act nonchalant, and in doing so, left the notebook unprotected on the table. As soon as Philly said the word “mistake” he understood that he really had made one.

  Weiss reached over and snatched it, turning in his chair to protect it.

  “Hey!” Philly stood up and tried to reach over Ricky’s shoulder, but the greenskeeper spun away. He tore quickly through the pages and Canella tried to imagine what sense he might make from his notes.

  They faced each other, Philly in the kitchen and Ricky in the living room but hardly more than a body’s length apart, and Canella watched helplessly as Ricky squinted his way through scrawled transcriptions of conversations at the diner and the elementary school and notes from other cases that would make no sense at all to him. The one thing Philly kn
ew he wouldn’t find was a single word about Jimmy Spears, NFL football, or the Miami Dolphins.

  He stopped on one page and put his finger on the paper, either to mark his place or to make a point. “You’re with the judge, aren’t ya?”

  Judge? Philly thought. Maybe this wouldn’t be a waste of time after all. “Who’s that?” he said.

  “Don’t fuck with me,” Ricky said in a growling drawl. Canella punctuated his conversation with that word all the time, but Weiss was able to startle him with it now.

  “I’m not fucking with you,” Philly said. “Give me the notebook.”

  Ricky held it behind his back. “I know what the judge is up to.” There was a nervous edge to his voice, but he was also laughing with the relief of an Italian grandmother leaving confession.

  “Why don’t you tell me?” Canella said.

  “ Now you’re fucking with me.” Ricky Weiss glanced at the detective and then turned back to the notebook, which he held very close to his face. “You and Forak are in this together. What are you supposed to do? Take care of me? Blackmail me? Shut me up?”

  “I don’t know anybody named Forak,” Philly said truthfully. “I don’t know any judge. But maybe we can help each other.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Canella was frustrated and embarrassed enough to think about leaving. He stood between Weiss and the door. Even at his age, it would be fairly easy to make a run for it. He hated to lose that notebook, though. “A man came to you a few days ago,” he said quickly. “A man and a woman. You met at the diner.”

  Ricky smiled with half his face. “I thought you said you didn’t know the judge.”

  “He’s not a judge,” Philly said. “He’s a doctor.”

  “What’s going on?”

  Canella, who was a professional liar, hesitated before telling the truth. “That’s what I came here to find out.”

  Weiss took two aggressive steps forward and his right arm snapped like a whip over the table, snatching Canella’s bag and pulling it toward him. Philly, now resigned to honesty in dealing with the enraged greenskeeper, made no attempt to stop him, a gesture he hoped would win the man’s confidence.

  But he had forgotten, somehow, about his gun.

  “What the fuck?” Ricky took the. 38 out and held it in front of him, pointing the barrel toward the ceiling. Philly could tell by the assured grip of Weiss’s long, thin hands that he’d handled a firearm before. “What the hell is a reporter doing with one of these?”

  Philly cursed aloud. He was so stupid. When he had been a cop, he never would have made that mistake.

  The door opened behind him. “Ricky!” A woman shrieked.

  “Shut the door, Peg!” Weiss yelled.

  She did, quickly, closing both the screen and the wooden door behind it. A plastic bag from the drugstore swung from her wrist and a can of shaving cream inside it banged against the door frame. “Ricky, what’s happening?”

  “Shut up, Peggy! I’m thinking!” He kept the gun pointed up and away as he brought his hands to his head.

  “Who is he?” Peg asked. She squeezed hysterical tears from her eyes. “Where did that gun come from?”

  Ricky twitched at the first question. He pulled Canella’s wallet out and pried it open with the end of the. 38.

  “My name is Phil Canella,” he told them. “I’m a private investigator from Chicago.”

  Weiss nodded and showed his driver’s license to Peg, who was at his side now. “Okay. Why did Judge – Doctor, whatever – why did Forak hire you?”

  “His name isn’t Forak. His name is Dr. Davis Moore. And he didn’t hire me. His wife did.”

  “To do what?”

  “To find out if he was having an affair.” Now that Mrs. Weiss was here, Philly was hopeful they could talk their way to a resolution. He wondered if he could ask for a glass of water. His throat was burning.

  “An affair?” Peg muttered. “Ricky! Put that gun down!”

  He ignored her. “That lady. She wasn’t his wife?”

  “No.”

  “Put the gun down, Ricky!”

  “Who was she?”

  “A colleague. Possibly his mistress. I don’t know. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find out.”

  “Do you think she’s in on it?” Ricky asked. “The mistress?”

  “Put the gun down, baby!”

  “In on what?” Weapon pointed at his face or not, Canella was collecting information on his case.

  “He’s a lunatic,” Ricky said. “But you know all about that, I bet.” Psychologists, Philly thought, would accuse a man like Ricky Weiss, waving a gun around on a Thursday afternoon and calling another person a lunatic, of projecting.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jimmy Spears,” Ricky said. “Forak’s going to kill him.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “Ricky! Give me the gun!”

  “I’m not lying,” Philly said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your guy. Forak. He wants to kill Jimmy.”

  Canella almost laughed. “Kill Jimmy Spears? That’s crazy.”

  “He told me himself.” This was a lie, but a lie to which Ricky thought he was entitled, since he was holding the gun.

  “Look, I’ve never met Davis Moore, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to kill some second-string football player-”

  “Put down the gun, Ricky!”

  “ – and I don’t think you mean to hurt anyone, either.”

  “You’re a liar,” Ricky said. “He sent you to do me so he could go ahead and kill Jimmy and there wouldn’t be anyone left to know about it and go to the papers or the cops.”

  “I’m not lying to you, Ricky.”

  “Ricky, get rid of that thing,” Peg said. “Put it down and let’s talk about it.”

  “I don’t mean to hurt anyone,” Ricky said. “I don’t.” But he didn’t put down the gun, which was now pointed uncertainly at Philly’s chest.

  Canella could feel the desperation and fear emitted in hot waves from the trembling Peg. He sensed the situation had turned unpredictable, and that whatever Ricky Weiss knew about Davis Moore had made him desperate. It was no longer safe to be here. He made a decision.

  Run for it.

  When Ricky saw Canella turn, his spinning brain increased its workload by many revolutions per minute. His internal tachometer was redlining. He needed to know more. If he escaped and told Moore that Ricky had figured out the doctor’s plan to kill Jimmy Spears, Moore would just send someone else to do the job right. He had to stop Canella, but Peg had stepped away from the door, and once this man was outside, sprinting to his car, what could Ricky do except run him down and tackle him, which wouldn’t be easy? Someone was likely to see them fighting from the road, especially with Peg screaming the whole while. But even if they didn’t see, what would Ricky do then? Drag Canella back to the trailer? Tie him up? He wasn’t a kidnapper. He couldn’t take care of a dog, much less a hostage. But he had to stop him.

  His brain, running too fast now, too hot, and – in Ricky’s defense – without his explicit permission, knew of only one way.

  Ricky squeezed the handle of the gun without really aiming it. Peg cried out in harmony with the report. Phil Canella’s head jerked back toward him and blood appeared in chunky patterns across the screen door and on the back of his hand, which he had used to push it open. His body contorted in a spasm, his shoulders turned back toward the gun, and then collapsed in an inanimate free fall straight down to his knees and then forward like a tree, his head hitting the aluminum stoop, his feet still inside the trailer, his body propping the door ajar.

  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Peg sobbed.

  Ricky brought the. 38 slowly to his hip and let it fall to the floor, where it made a hollow, impotent sound like a plastic tumbler dropped at a picnic. He was processing everything very quickly. He hadn’t meant to shoot Canella, but he ac
cepted the fact immediately and was already dealing with it. He would need to get rid of the body. He would need to clean up the trailer. He would need to do something about Davis Moore, the only person, as far as he knew, who could link him to this dead man when somebody noticed him missing.

  First, he would need to calm Peg down. She would help him clean up the blood, and help wrap the body in cheap guest sheets, which she bought with her Wal-Mart discount, anyway. He would get rid of it alone. The less Peg knew about the details, the better. He wouldn’t ask friends to help. On TV, that’s how people were always getting caught. Somebody asks somebody else to help him and the second guy gets caught and cuts a deal with the cops. He wouldn’t be stupid that way.

  He thought he might need a good saw.

  Justin at Eight

  – 33 -

  “Because it’s ridiculous, that’s why. Weird.”

  Instead of watching television, Martha would often watch Justin read. Sitting on the couch, with Justin in the big red chair opposite, his seat and hers angled acutely toward the TV, she would drink coffee or hot chocolate, or tonight, with her mother visiting, a glass of Fume Blanc.

  “It’s not weird, Mom,” Martha said, whispering unnecessarily. When Justin was into one of his books, really inside the pages as he was now, the words being silently dictated to his head in a hypnotic patter, his eyes pinched together so tightly that Martha had taken him twice in the last year to see if he needed glasses, she could have fired the antique rifle Terry had left behind when he and his mistress moved to New Mexico, fired it into the ceiling, and not been able to make him flinch.

  “He should be reading Harry Potter. Or the Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew, even,” Martha’s mother said. “That psychiatrist is filling his head with ideas. He’s too young for ideas, and he comes up with too many on his own already.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  “The point is, I don’t think it’s helping. He should be playing sports. Baseball. Football. Hockey. He has problems socializing. Relating to people. Other kids.”

  “The other kids don’t challenge him. The other kids bore him. That’s why he acts out.”