Fail

by Rick Skwiot

  “You like?”

  I ran a thumb up the outside of her thigh. “I like very much.”

  We exhausted ourselves and, hours later, fell asleep in each other’s arms. When I woke the next morning she was gone.

  Over time our repertoire grew. Once she arrived with silk ribbons for me to bind her. Another time with beads. Yet another with ointments and vibrators of various sizes.

  Soon we both recognized something different transpiring, which made previous sexual encounters seem insipid by comparison. We’d meet at my apartment after a day spent living asensually, in the intellect, in sterile classrooms and libraries. We’d spend hours tasting and exploring each other—nothing was forbidden, no want taboo, nothing that could not be requested and fulfilled. We soon learned that by limiting ourselves to one weekly liaison, we could intensify that pleasure—pleasure that would deliver me somewhere entirely away from my mind, to a utopia that exceeded my imagination. I have never used hard drugs, but I think I got a glimpse of the euphoria that heroin users claim.

  There was little laughter between us at these times. We entered our candlelit cathedral with solemnity to perform our sacred rites—the seriousness and sense of purpose appropriate as we moved nearer to nature, nearer to God. And only recently, in the last year, has that vision of heaven dimmed.

  Gabriel stroked his mustache wondering if The Gecko had read this part and fired his imagination re: Ellen Cantrell. It gave Gabriel pause as well—and not just because of the erotic distance between Ellen Cantrell and his own ex-wife. And not because the Stone-Cantrell relationship was that unusual—he had known transcendent moments himself, if not with Janet and if not with the intensity felt by the hypersensitive Stone. But it revealed a cosmic connection between Stone and his wife. Its loss—having Paradise stolen from him—would likely produce profound effects. Maybe even to the extent that he might be a danger to himself or others. Gabriel had seen it happen before, far too many times. He thought of Leslie Hardaway, the strangled honor student, and her distraught former lover, a young man who had lost the only beautiful thing he had ever known.

  Saturday morning Gabriel woke to find an email from The Gecko: “Call me as arranged.” He smiled. After a cup of coffee he found the safe number The Gecko had given him, dressed in sweats, and took the elevator to the lobby commons. There he went to the building’s meeting room and called from the fax machine. He heard The Gecko answer and said:

  “Secret agent double-o-sixty-nine?”

  “This is serious.”

  “Okay, okay. What’s up?”

  “Staying on top of the Stone thing like you said. Since I returned his laptop to his wife I’ve been monitoring things. I don’t know what this means, if it’s good or bad, whether it means Stone’s alive or whether—”

  “Spit it out, Gecko.”

  “His two cloud storage accounts where he kept his research, both have been emptied. Either he did it or ‘they’ did it.”

  “‘They’ being, in your estimation…?”

  “It could be the Cyber Crime Unit at headquarters. If I could find this stuff, they certainly could. But if I were the party involved, a party interested in keeping a lid on things, I’d be more inclined to give the job to a private supplier. Or to a knowledgeable relative or confidant. Maybe hand it off to someone who’s got a stake in burying it.”

  “Like the big-money boys at Stadium Towne.”

  “Since I didn’t read the files, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it just as well could have been Stone who deleted it.”

  “Despite it happening the day after Ellen Cantrell again got her hands on his computer and I had alerted Cira to the existence of a journal? Unlikely. Stone was obsessing over his research for months. Why delete it now?”

  After a pause The Gecko said, “A couple possible reasons: One, he discovered he’d been hacked into and moved it to a safer place. Two, someone was holding a gun to his head.”

  “Or he thought they were.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’d rather not know, believe me.”

  Gabriel realized that both of The Gecko’s scenarios could have derived from Gabriel’s confession with Father Mohan, who may have tipped Stone off as he had been asked to do. The first scenario was bad, at least for Gabriel’s purposes: a Jonathan Stone going to ground, digging in for a protracted battle against the mayor et al.; the second scenario, good: a Jonathan Stone intimidated into silence by the thought of the mayor’s gunman, Gabriel, being on his tail with instructions to silence him by whatever means.

  “You back up the files?”

  “No way,” The Gecko said. “Just the two flash drives I gave you. See no evil, hear no evil, download no evil.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll think on it.”

  But Gabriel didn’t know what to think.

  However, he had noted one thing. The Gecko had said, “If I were the party involved,” not “If I was the party involved.” That is, he used the subjunctive mood to express something contrary to fact, improbable, or doubtful, according to English Grammar for Idiots. Similarly, Gabriel had to start thinking as if he were a distraught English professor. Being a detective, he was learning, meant living in the subjunctive.

  - 18 -

  Back upstairs, he finished his coffee and watched the traffic on Skinker, considering what his next move should be. Pressuring Father Mohan may have stirred things up, but he figured it was time to see what a little pressure on Ellen Cantrell would do. He dialed her cell phone and asked to see her. She told him to come by her place in an hour, sounding like she’d just gotten up or hadn’t slept.

  He dressed for success in black blazer with silk tie and motored across the park to grab breakfast at one of his favorite cafés on its east side. Afterward, when Gabriel tried to pay for his omelet, the owner, who manned the cash register, wouldn’t allow it.

  “Next time you pay, Carlo.”

  “You said that last time, Max. And the time before.”

  “Don’t stay away so long,” Max said with a laugh. “Then I won’t forget what I say.” Gabriel knew it wasn’t his sparkling personality that Max liked, but rather the knowledge that a friend on the force was a good thing to have, like when Max’s soft-minded son-in-law got caught up in a drug bust.

  “Can’t stay away from your breakfasts for too long,” Gabriel said and then turned up the collar on his overcoat and pushed out the door onto the street. The Arctic wind still blew, stinging his face. He pulled on his gloves and looked at his watch. He was right on time.

  He walked up Laclede Avenue to Kingshighway Boulevard and the ABC condominiums—an appropriate address for an English teacher. Actually the ABCDs, the names chiseled into the pediments above the four entrances: Aberdeen, Bellevue, Colchester, and Devonshire. A hundred years after construction they were still a desirable place to live and well beyond an honest cop’s pay.

  He got buzzed into the Devonshire, took the elevator to the sixth floor—the penthouse—found the apartment on the right, and knocked.

  Despite it being over an hour since they talked, Ellen Cantrell came to the door in an aquamarine bathrobe. She didn’t look all that great without makeup—circles under her eyes, the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners, and, worse, a general sense of fatigue that clung to her like cheap perfume. She let him in without a word, and he followed her to the kitchen.

  The apartment was tastefully decorated. Older, elegant things. Red brocade wallpaper in the vestibule, French-looking chairs and sofa glimpsed as he passed the living room, landscape paintings or reproductions—Impressionist?—on the walls. Money can buy most anything, including taste and interior decorators. He could not see Ellen Cantrell perusing Martha Stewart magazines to get ideas.

  He sat at the counter as she stood across from him pouring two cups from what appeared to be an industrial-strength coffeemaker. When she set his cup on the counter, her hand shook. She didn’t ask if he wanted sugar or cream.

  “Thanks fo
r seeing me on short notice,” he said.

  “You said you didn’t want to talk on the phone.”

  “Just wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication.”

  She picked up her cup and held it between her hands as if they were cold—or as if she needed to occupy or steady them. “What is it you have to communicate?”

  “I was hoping you might have something to communicate to help me find your husband.”

  She stared at him. “You mean you have nothing new to tell me?” She set her coffee cup down carefully, impatience creeping into her voice. “I’ve already communicated to you everything I can.”

  He sipped his coffee and waited a beat. Then, “There is something new. Something that raises the stakes. Something that suggests some urgency.”

  “What?” She straightened.

  “Your husband’s life may be at risk.”

  “What are you talking about? First you tell me he’s drowned, then he’s alive, and now he’s in danger.”

  Gabriel ran his fingers along the rim of his cup trying to get the language right in his mind.

  “I know why I was chosen for this assignment, Ms. Cantrell. Angelo Cira and I go back thirty years. He trusts me. He values my discretion. I want you to trust me as well. So I will give you my pledge: Nothing we say to each other in the next ten minutes will leave this room by my doing. And I hope not by yours.” Ellen nodded and brushed the hair off her forehead. Gabriel went on, “What did you do with your husband’s laptop once it was returned to you two days ago?”

  “An officer from headquarters came for it.”

  “Did he say why?”

  She shrugged. “No, and I didn’t ask. I figured it was evidence or something.”

  “Did you know what secrets it contained?”

  “Secrets? Jonathan isn’t the type of man to have secrets.”

  “You know nothing about his Cloud IX accounts?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He nodded as if considering her words. “Okay. I didn’t think so.” He waited. Took another long drink of coffee.

  “Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

  He set his cup down. “Did you know your husband had stopped working on his dissertation? That he was instead chronicling the events that led to his getting sacked at the university. That he’s spent months gathering incriminating evidence against his boss and others in what he termed ‘educational malpractice.’ That he was writing about his marital problems and about you and … well….”

  Her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open in an unspoken, Oh. Gabriel held her gaze and continued. “Marital issues aside, the most important thing at this point is what he wrote about ongoing corruption at City Hall, including your involvement in payoffs and kickbacks on the Stadium Towne project.”

  “What?” Her body stiffened like she had just been slapped.

  “Apparently he felt humiliated and vindictive and so put to use his considerable writing and computer skills to dig into things he had no legal right to—including your email and bank accounts. Now, however, since you gave his laptop to headquarters and, by extension, to Angelo, all that information has been deleted from his online cloud accounts.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand to silence her.

  “Now, it could be coincidence. Your husband may have come to his senses and trashed the stuff himself, seeing what damage it could do to you, the mayor, and others. But coincidence just doesn’t smell right in this case since the files—which have existed in some form for months—vanished within forty-eight hours of the downtown boys getting theirs hands on his computer.”

  She went into herself. Gabriel sensed the walls going up. He leaned forward and pressed on.

  “You’re not naïve, Ms. Cantrell. You know they play hardball downtown when they want to shut somebody up. Usually they’re happy enough simply to sully someone’s reputation, ruin him financially, or send him to prison. Not that difficult when you have the police, the judges, the media, and the mob on your side. But your husband may feel he has little left to lose at his point and thus might be hard to silence by traditional means. I’m keen on finding him and talking some sense into him. Unlike some, I’m keen on keeping him alive.”

  Cantrell stared at the marble countertop shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.” When she looked up her bottom lip quivered if just for an instant. “You must be wrong.”

  “You know better than I what you revealed to Jonathan and what he might have discovered on his own—and the potential political and legal damage that could result if he made that information public. So I’m also hoping you can give me a clue, anything that might help me find him before something happens. Before the next body we pull out of the river really is your husband’s.” He waited for that to sink in.

  “Think about where he might be hiding,” he continued. “Any place you vacationed together? Any friends he might have communicated with? We checked the people he had emailed and talked with recently, but no dice. What about cousins, classmates, prior girlfriends?”

  She bit her lip. “We’ve been together since college. There’s no one else … We never traveled much. First there was grad school. Then he was always teaching, and I was working round-the-clock. But Jonathan didn’t seem to mind. He had his books—that’s where he traveled. And his dissertation—Mark Twain, Hannibal, and all that … I just don’t know….”

  With that she seemed to pull even further into herself. He got up and let himself out without a word, leaving her leaning against the kitchen counter, staring off into space. It was a wasted conversation in that she gave him nothing new, but he did take away something from the meeting: Laura Berkman and Jonathan Stone were probably right—Ellen Cantrell didn’t seem all that bright. How people like her got into positions of power he’d never know. Okay, he did know, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

  Despite his plea for confidentiality, he figured she’d panic and immediately call the mayor. Gabriel couldn’t control what Ellen Cantrell did, so he’d just have to wait and see what happened next on that front. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference—Angelo would just think Gabriel was doing his job, scaring her, blowing smoke up her ass to get her to divulge whatever information she might be guarding. The mayor would see that the lieutenant was on the job, following his directive to do whatever necessary to find Stone. But Cantrell would eventually have to decide who to trust to keep her husband alive.

  Unless, of course, that’s not what she wanted.

  - 19 -

  From the the Cantrell’s apartment Gabriel walked two blocks north to Straub’s grocery. Though just midday, he decided to get something for later that evening, figuring to chill again on a Saturday night. If he got bored and restless he could always call Laura Berkman—or Jasmine. But that seemed unlikely. He needed to bear down on finding Stone. It had been two weeks. Something had to break.

  With a piece of sea bass, some Mexican asparagus, and a bottle of white Bordeaux in a shopping bag, he walked back to his car and drove west across the park. After putting away the groceries, he punched the remote, and another bowl game came into focus on the TV. What with all the educational stuff floating around the case—schools, college sports, teachers, grammar lessons, final grades, and Stone’s dissertation—he felt like he was on semester break with everyone else. Might as well have a couple of beers to complete the mood. It was still early, but he popped a cold one and poured out a pile of nuts in a bowl, then muted the TV and settled in on the couch. He opened his laptop and plugged in the first flash drive that The Gecko had given him.

  “The Masks of Mark Twain: Mis-identification, Subterfuge and Disappearance as a River to Truth,” Gabriel read aloud. He might need more than a couple of beers to get through this, he thought.

  He scanned the Table of Contents, where he found chapters on a number of Twain’s works. Gabriel remembered reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in high school, if recal
ling few of its details. As a boy he’d seen movie versions of The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, both also covered here. There was a chapter on Pudd’nhead Wilson—that one he didn’t know. He clicked to it and read.

  As with The Prince and the Pauper, Twain’s undervalued Pudd’nhead Wilson (elevated by its mystery, grim humor, and penetrating portrayal of the antebellum South), depicts two boys of the same age whose identities are switched—in this case one a privileged white aristocrat, the other a “black” slave under the existing law thanks to his 1/32 of African blood. As with other works of Twain analyzed here, this tale’s roots can be traced to his fanciful Hannibal childhood with its class and racial complexities, yearnings for transformation, and the young Samuel Clemens’ obsession with role-playing and disguise….

  Gabriel shrugged. He scrolled back up to Connecticut Yankee and read of Hank Morgan, a 19th century Hartford resident who, after a blow to the head, finds himself transported to medieval England where he is mistaken for a knight. Gabriel skimmed the chapter, finding nothing in the tale—or what Stone had to say about it—that seemed of any help. On to Huckleberry Finn.

  Key to Huckleberry’s transformation—and his ultimate subversion of accepted “wisdom” regarding slavery—is his compulsion to escape his own domestic chains, i.e., his enforced solitude and his father’s drunken violence. During his father’s absence he escapes, devising the elaborate staging of his own death, and sets off down the Mississippi.

  Gabriel looked up, gazing at the gray afternoon outside and the monochromatic park with its black-trunked trees and ashen snow below a leaden sky. He was thinking of Jonathan Stone. He recalled reading in “The Eddy” Stone’s confession of his soiled marital life, his humiliation by his wife’s unfaithfulness, her boozy braggadocio, and his own domestic chains. Good Catholic boy that he was, for whom divorce was not an option, he felt trapped in an unholy alliance with a woman whom he had found to be immoral, corrupt, and criminal.