Impulse

by Frederick Ramsay

  “No telling. Anyway, I balked and we settled on using my middle name. It is sufficiently gender nonspecific to go either way. They didn’t put my picture on the dust jackets for years.”

  They ate and caught up on five decades of news. Rosemary had children living in Denver and Houston and grandchildren. The children rarely came to Baltimore so she was left with flying out to them. She had more house than she needed but couldn’t bring herself to sell.

  “It’s hard to let go of things.”

  “Unless there’s a reason, a push to change, we’d all stay right where we are, hang on to friends, familiar routines…doesn’t always work though.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Not always.”

  They finished eating in relative silence. Frank tried and failed to identify a man across the table from him. He stole a glance at Rosemary. He remembered her as not beautiful, but pretty in a tomboy way, button nose and round face and freckles, he definitely remembered freckles. She still had the nose and the face, but the freckles were gone.

  “Too bad,” he said.

  “What’s too bad?”

  “I remembered you as having freckles and now they’re gone. Stupid thing to say, sorry.”

  “Sorry the freckles are gone or sorry you mentioned them?”

  “Both, I think.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve still got them. They’re under a layer of makeup. And you don’t need to be sorry on my account. I’m happy you remembered them. Do you remember anything else?”

  “Yes, I do. You could throw a ball like a boy and you could lay down a bunt better than any of us and could spit through a gap in your teeth.”

  She blushed. “My orthodontist put an end to that trick. You’re a widower? Is that right? I looked you up on the Internet. There’s a lot about you on the Internet.”

  “And the Internet said I was a widower?”

  “Yesss, well sort of. They were a little vague. Are you?”

  “A widower?” Frank looked down at the linen tablecloth. His appetite dropped into his shoes. How to answer that question?

  “My wife disappeared four years ago. She’s presumed dead. That’s how the reports read. But—”

  “I’m sorry.” She knit her brows and added, “This is personal. I shouldn’t….I’m sorry. I didn’t know. The Internet….”

  He looked up and measured the sincerity in her eyes. “She’s dead.” He paused, checked the eyes again, and added, “She was murdered.”

  ***

  Four men stood talking in a small cluster, occasionally darting a glance in his direction. He waited—for what he did not know—but his antennae were up and he felt something coming. He listened with half an ear to Doctor Darnell. Accepted his invitation to sit at the High Table, whatever that was, the next day. He kept Rosemary in his peripheral vision. Now there was a turn. She did look good. Not tall but still slim with hair gone completely white. He thought of Sandy and felt something like early guilt creeping up his spine. Three of the men detached themselves from the fourth and headed his way.

  Darnell excused himself and Frank turned to face the men. He recognized two and guessed he’d figure out the third after they talked a while.

  “How are you, Smitty?” Bill Powers was the All American boy fifty years ago—all conference football, wrestling team, baseball team. You name it, Billy did it. He also had a sister, Frank remembered, who excelled in a different sort of sport, and in her way, managed to be more popular than Billy. He wondered what happened to her. He decided not to ask. Charlie Eveleth and, aha…Tank Forward stood next to him. Fifty years ago he would be looking at power. Now they were just three old men with imposing but irrelevant résumés.

  “We’ve missed you, Smitty. You never came back.”

  “No.”

  They shuffled their feet and two stared at the floor.

  “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but we’re sorry for what we did,” Powers mumbled.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh, Hell, here’s the thing. We are the ones who reported your brother to the Assistant Headmaster.”

  “You?”

  “Us. Yeah, and O’Conner over there. He’s afraid to face you. We didn’t know it would end the way it did.”

  “You turned Jack in for being—”

  “A fairy, yes.”

  “Why? He wasn’t anything, just a kid who acted a little different, thought about things differently. Why?”

  “I don’t know. It was stupid and mean and one of those spur of the moment things kids do, you know? Just some dumb idea that got out of hand and—”

  “He killed himself because of you.”

  “Hey, we couldn’t know. Hell, we didn’t think anything would happen to him. We thought Old Man Bartlett would just ask questions and, you know, call your dad….It would be funny and…that would be that.”

  “But when he was expelled, why didn’t you say something then?”

  “Long gone. We graduated and left. The expulsion came after.”

  “That’s no excuse. You could have saved him.”

  All three men looked past Frank at a spot on the wall behind him. They studied the spot as if their lives depended on it.

  “That’s the problem, Smitty. Lying got you tossed out, too. We could have lost our diplomas, college admissions. Our parents…it was damned if you did, damned if you didn’t. So we, you know, let it slide.”

  Frank wanted to lash out, to hit something. He wanted to grab Billy Powers by the throat and wring the life out of him. Tears filled his eyes.

  “You bastards,” he croaked, “you spineless, cowardly bastards.”

  “Jeez, Smitty, we were just kids, we didn’t know. For God’s sake, we were scared, we didn’t know…and then, later…it was too late.”

  He spun around and headed toward the door.

  “Give me a lift?”

  “What?” he turned only to see Rosemary, a faint smile on her lips that did not cancel the worry in her eyes.

  “I saw you with those guys. I guessed what they were saying and I thought—”

  “You guessed? You guessed what?”

  “My father was the Assistant Headmaster, remember? He nearly died when Jack had to leave. The headmaster—you remember ‘Black Jack’ Perry—he had a thing about homosexuality. He made the decision to expel Jack and there wasn’t anything my dad or yours could do about it, except quit. That didn’t seem like a good option then.”

  “Those idiots killed my brother.”

  “They were young and not too bright and they had lots of help from people who should have known better, Frank. Let it go.”

  “I thought I had, a long time ago. Now I have to start over. It won’t be easy.”

  “If you need to talk—”

  “Why are you doing this, Rosemary?”

  They had made their way outside to the street and the chill May night. She shivered and folded her arms across her chest. “I forgot how chilly it gets at night in May. I didn’t bring a coat.”

  “You said something about a lift.”

  “I came with the Starrs. They want to stay. I want to go…with you, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure, yeah. I’m parked two blocks away. Here…wear my coat.”

  They walked to the car in silence. He opened her door. “It’s been a long time.”

  She turned to face him, her face serious, but he thought he caught a glint in her eye.

  “For a lot of things,” she said.

  Chapter Six

  “You look awful. What were you up to last night, anyway?” Barbara Thomas stared at her father. He thought she looked like a tall version of her mother. He winced.

  “I’m still on Arizona time. It’s five in the morning there.”

  “Is that why you were so late coming in last night, Dad? One o’clock is only eleven your time?”

  “You clocked me in? I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, it got late and the brochure said the dinner ended at ten s
o I thought—”

  “Actually it ended at nine forty-five, at least for me it did. I left early.”

  “So what were you doing from quarter of ten ’til one?”

  “You sound like a cop I know. Am I under investigation here? If so, you’ll have to get in line.”

  She had been leaning forward over the breakfast table. At this, she sat upright and frowned.

  “I didn’t mean anything. I was worried. Forget I said anything.” She stood and started to leave the room. “I’ve got to get the kids moving,” she said.

  “Wait. I’m sorry. It’s just…I get a lot of that now. Every couple of weeks Sergeant Ledezma finds me. I can’t eat a meal in peace. No matter how hard I try to hide, he pops up. ‘One more question, Frank,’ he’ll say. We’re on a first name basis now, you see, and always, it’s a game. Will I say something that will contradict something I said before? After a while, I just might, because he’s asked so many questions in so many ways that by now I don’t remember what I said.”

  “They still think—”

  “That I did it? Yes. But that’s only part of why I’m grumpy. Sit down. I need to talk to you about your Uncle Jack.”

  She sat, her hands folded on the table. “Uncle Jack, he committed suicide, right?”

  “It was a bit more than that.”

  “Well, I know he was expelled from Scott, and then he did it, and you and granddad blamed the school and you never went back and granddad didn’t either after he retired. There’s more?”

  “Your Uncle Jack was expelled because someone reported that he was gay. In those days, being gay got you kicked out, period. Last night, four of my classmates allowed as how they were the ones who turned him in.”

  “That’s awful. What did you do?”

  “I thought about knocking a few heads together, but I didn’t.”

  “Was he gay, Dad?”

  “That’s not the point, and no, he wasn’t—at least not practicing. What he might have become when he took the time to explore that part of his life, I can’t say. Who knows about those things? But then he was just a little…well, he wasn’t gay. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Your Uncle Jack was effeminate. What else he was, if anything, hadn’t surfaced. But that characteristic bought him a lot of grief. I spent some serious time duking it out with some of the morons in the school—a lot of morons, actually. I hated your Uncle Jack sometimes for that. ‘Why can’t you stop being so swish?’ I’d say, and he’d apologize, like it was his fault everyone else acted so stupid.”

  “So what happened last night?”

  “Well, these guys told me they were the ones and wanted to say they were sorry.”

  “You were gracious and forgiving, of course.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, girl. I’m still your old man. No, I yelled at them and if I had been ten years younger, would have decked the four of them, then and there.”

  “That’s why you left early.”

  “Yep.”

  “So what were you doing from quarter of ten ’til one?”

  He studied the woman who began her life as an eight pound wiggling pink blob in his arms and now had grown into the image of her mother. How much could he tell her? How much like her mother was she really? He weighed the risks against the benefits and decided to equivocate. At least for now. Her mother would have understood, but not his daughter, not with her mother missing and only presumed dead.

  “I met some friends. We went drinking.”

  “You don’t drink.”

  “Soft drinks. They did the heavy lifting, and so I had to drive them home.”

  She stared at him a long time. He saw the doubt in her eyes and realized she didn’t buy it.

  “Okay,” she said. “When you’re ready, I’ll be here.” She left the room.

  Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. He never liked Sir Walter Scott. Maybe it had something to do with his name.

  ***

  At first he’d gone along with the police. They had a job to do. If they were less than sensitive about his loss, well that’s police business. But as the weeks wore on, he grew less tolerant of their coldness, their disbelief. He finally asked them what leads they had, how far the investigation had gotten. That’s when the silence and the looks began. That’s when Sergeant Ledezma became part of the furniture. Manny Ledezma studied him. The game seemed to be: If I stare at you long enough, you will confess to whatever crime I think you committed and I can go home to the wife and kiddies. Frank wasn’t playing. He stared back.

  “You think I had something to do with my wife’s disappearance, don’t you?”

  “Did you?”

  “Would I tell you if I had?”

  More silence.

  “You aren’t looking at anyone else, are you?” Frank knew the answer but wanted to hear it from Ledezma.

  Ledezma had those dark brown eyes that romance writers describe as pools women drown in. Soft and inviting. They were set in a fairly ordinary Hispanic face. Deeply tanned and mustached, Ledezma seemed a model police officer, orderly, methodical, and patient. A little short for a cop, he thought. Not the sort you’d cast in a TV show—he knew something about that—but obviously strong and fit.

  “The case is still open.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “No.”

  “No, you didn’t answer my question, or no, you’re not looking at anyone else?”

  Ledezma rose and let himself out the door. “I’ll be back if I have more questions.”

  Frank slammed his fist on the table. How much longer did he have to put up with this? Sandy disappeared years ago. No trace. The insurance company would not pay unless and until the police found a body or made a determination that she was dead. One million dollars in death benefit sitting in an office in Boston. Twice that with the double indemnity. They didn’t want to pay. He got up and slid open the door to the patio. He stood a moment, his back still in the air conditioning while he acclimatized to the hot air outside. His son, down from Seattle, once compared it to walking into a blast furnace. That was before, when he and his son still spoke.

  He stepped onto the patio, closing the door behind him. He watched two overweight golfers three putt the green that served as his backyard…well, he thought of it as his backyard. The smell of cigar smoke drifted over to him and drove him back indoors. What was with this cigar/golf thing anyway? He knew at least half a dozen men who never smoked in their life who now cranked up a stogie the minute they cleared the clubhouse. “It’s a guy thing, I guess,” Sandy had said. “Guys do stuff like that for no reason that I can see. They smoke those terrible cigars, own guns they never shoot, and have to hold the remote. It’s obviously a Freudian thing with you all.”

  “I don’t smoke cigars,” he’d said. He did hold the remote and he did own a gun. The gun no longer lay locked in the desk drawer. Missing, like her. Presumed….

  Ledezma kept after him about the insurance. Well, of course he would. Any cop would. Motive and opportunity, that’s all the DA wanted. Frank had both and no alibi. They weren’t giving him any credit for the stupidity factor. If he were going to kill someone, wouldn’t he have managed all those loose ends better?

  Murder, real murder, is boring, it’s ordinary, and lacks excitement. Most killings are done by desperate, angry, or demented people out of control. They leave a trail a mile wide in their wake and are usually caught. The few who do get away with it, do so because someone or something interferes with the process of finding them.

  He’d recited those lines a hundred times in bookstores and libraries—his stock speech. Who’d have thought they’d come back to haunt him.

  ***

  “You’ll be late for your continental breakfast,” Barbara called from the living room.

  “Going to take a pass on that. I’ll go out for the lunch. The headmaster invited me to sit with him at the High Table, whatever that
is. I guess I’ll do that and find out what’s on his mind. Plots and counter plots, la vie academique. On ne change pas. Or something like that.”

  “Well, try to behave. If the kids are going to enroll at Scott, I want him to have a good impression.”

  “Who said anything about the kids going to Scott?” He sighed. She would wear him down. He knew that. Wear him down with equal parts of “They’re your only grandchildren” and guilt. What a combination.

  Chapter Seven

  Brad Stark wiped the steam from the mirror, peered intently at his reflection, and then adjusted his tie. He ran his finger up its center. The dimple should be tight, but obvious. Satisfied, he stepped back, turned his head right and then left, inspecting each profile out of the corner of his eyes. He ran a hand over his jaw to check for stubble, any miss by his razor. He shifted his weight forward and rose up on his toes. It made him an inch and a half taller, as tall as his wife. Judith Stark spent her life in flats because of him, although she had several pairs of high heels in the closet. She only wore them when she went out without him or when she wished to make a point after one of their fights. Then she’d wear them in his company. It usually worked, and whatever they were fighting about got resolved with an apology from him. He frowned at the thought and considered clearing the shoes from her closet, tossing them all in the trash and laying down the law, once and for all. But he knew he wouldn’t. She knew too much about him; knew how to push his buttons.

  Brad’s strength lay in his ability to compartmentalize. It had served him well, had kept him sane, in fact, at a time when he could easily have crashed. He could shut one door in his mind and open another. His focus would then be wholly redirected and singular. He could even close them permanently, if he needed to.

  Now he refocused. Judith and her shoes and any threat she might pose to him evaporated. In their place, he summoned up Frank Smith—Meredith Smith. If he could extract a sizable donation from him—Lord knows Smith could afford it—then the fiftieth year class gift could be a record and that would please Felix Darnell which in turn meant Brad could relax a little, his job would be secure for the time being. He had not put up the numbers Darnell and the Board of Trustees expected. He could be replaced. Baltimore had a reputation for having one of the densest populations of fund raisers and development professionals in the country. Hiring someone to replace him would pose no problem at all. He took a last quick glance in the mirror, braced his shoulders, and left the bathroom.