“When am I gonna have mine?”
“Aren’t you happy?”
“I was happy when you was here.”
“Aren’t you happy with Papa?”
“It ain’t the same.”
Clement felt a hand squeeze his heart, and he moved closer to the door with a heavy foot, his body a stiff line. He remembered his brother as a baby burdened with an overplus of affection and bestowing droolly kisses. Anybody could make him laugh except Papa, who never took to him. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
“Early?”
“Probably.”
“Best time of day is when the dew’s on the grass. Remember you used to say that?”
He was remembering too much, which irritated him. He did not want to be dragged back into a life best forgotten, best left in a box with all the pieces that could cut him. He was outside the room now. “Go to sleep.”
“Clement.” The voice was tentative. “Do you still think of her?”
He was stealing away, angry with himself, angry over dredging up images he felt were no longer a part of him. Outside the house, away from the ruined step, he rose up on his toes, drank the dark air, and killed a mosquito on his arm. Junior’s voice wheedled through a screen.
“Clement.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
• • •
Stretched out on the sofa, James Morgan read until his eyes gave out. Too lazy to kill the lamplight, he placed the open magazine over his face and fell asleep breathing in the shiny scent of the printed page. When the telephone shrilled, he came awake as if someone had flung water in his face. He stumbled to answer it, first over his shoes and then over himself.
“Hello!”
There was no immediate response, and he waited, expecting the worst. It came. “Is this Chief Cock?”
He cringed. “Don’t do this, Arlene.”
“Do I have the wrong number?” Her throaty voice had strength, body, and insinuation. “I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”
“What purpose does it serve?”
“Perhaps I have the right number but the wrong man.”
He regretted the relationship, good only at the beginning, different, dangerous, and ever after hectic, demanding, frivolous. He had hoped it was over, cleanly done with, all wishful thinking. “Tell me what you want.”
She said, “Are you the formidable police chief of Bensington, protector of the common good?”
Her voice was unnerving, part of her weaponry, as effective as her beauty. Once, in the ruffles of silken sheets, she had woken him with a harsh whisper in the shell of his ear: Don’t say a word. My husband’s home. A lie he believed. Her husband was in Europe on business. She had simply wanted to see whether his reaction would be worthy or cowardly. It was an uncertain mix of each.
“Look,” he said, “if you want, we’ll meet. We’ll talk sensibly.”
She was no longer on the line.
• • •
Clement Rayball drove his rented car to a house three streets from the heart of town and parked on the sidewalk, the front bumper nudging a hydrant. The street was heavy with shadows from a density of trees on each side of the street. Slowly he walked over moist grass in need of a cut, approached a lit window with a half-drawn shade, and peered in. Light from a lamp sluiced the solemn face of James Morgan, who seemed just a little older than Clement remembered him. Sharp eyes and an extra sense heightened by military training told him that Morgan was alone. He moved around to the front door and rang the bell.
The door opened on the second ring. Always he had felt a sense of inferiority in Morgan’s presence, and he felt it now, faintly. Some things are never lost — all rooted, he reckoned, in childhood. Nasty business, childhood. He said, “Remember me?”
“Sure I remember you,” Morgan replied in his stocking feet. “You haven’t changed that much. Do you want to come in? If you don’t, the mosquitoes will.”
He stepped just inside the door and planted himself. The light showed up wear in Morgan’s face, which at another time he might have considered an advantage. For a physical moment their eyes locked.
“Stories about you have drifted back, Clement. One is you deal in drugs.”
“In Miami everybody deals in drugs.”
“Then I heard you deal in women.”
“Could be a little of both.”
“How about guns?”
“Wherever there’s a buck.”
Morgan had an easy smile. “You must be doing well.”
“I have good years, bad years. Yours must be all the same.”
“This one’s an exception.” The smile remained. “When you went away I figured you’d never come back. ‘Course, you never had reason till now.”
“My father called me,” Clement said with a hardness creeping into his voice, which could not be helped. His entire boyhood impinged on him.
“Papa’s a short length of fuse that lights up.”
“I know what my father is. It’s my brother I’m concerned with.”
“You have cause.”
Clement had the answer he did not want but would have been surprised had it been otherwise. Fatalistically he accepted it, as he had accepted a lot of other things in life, and drew up his shoulders to leave. “I don’t want to hurt you. You understand that?”
“And I don’t want to hurt you, Clement, but I can’t let another Rayball get away with murder.”
“We’ve got nothing more to say.”
He opened the door and stepped outside. The darkness offered anonymity but not safety — basic knowledge derived from his military training and later exploits in the warmer regions of the Americas. He felt Morgan’s eyes on him as he headed toward his car. When he reached it, Morgan called out to him.
“I wish it were different.”
He did not bother to reply.
6
At the waterline of sleep, where reality and dreams vie for attention, Lydia Lapham heard a car pause on the street and then creep on. That was at midnight. At three she woke short of breath, her heart racing, and was convinced she was dying. The silliest thought consumed her. Never again would she wash out her pantyhose and droop them over the shower rod to dry. Then her breath returned, and her heart caught hold of itself.
At six she was up. At seven, her aunt called, concerned, anxious. Lydia gave assurances that she was all right, which Miss Westerly was hesitant to accept. “Auntie, believe me.” In a mirror she was aware of the dead calm of her face, a perfect match for her voice.
When Chief Morgan called a few minutes later, she said, “I’m going back to work.” She sipped her coffee and heard him say that he thought that was a good idea. “I’m just a little uneasy about it,” she admitted. “People will probably hammer me with kindness.”
“For a while,” he said.
“Did you drive by the house last night?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. Your car has its own sound.”
At nine, with another cup of coffee, she phoned the hospital and told her supervisor that she would be reporting in for the evening shift. Advised that she should take her time, she said, “It is time,” and asked about certain patients. Two had been discharged, one had died.
At the kitchen table she prepared a list, houseplants to replace those that had perished, fresh curtains for her bedroom, new locks for the doors, groceries of the convenient variety. Her mind wandered, first to Matt MacGregor and then to a man to whom she had not denied herself in nursing school. She had been nineteen. His name was Frank, a doctor, married. At the time it had seemed the tragic drama of her life. Now it seemed trivial.
In her bedroom she sorted through a dresser drawer of memorabilia, much of which she intended to throw out, but she found herself preserving the bulk of it. She read through high school test papers on Shakespeare. One question asked for the number of times Caesar’s assassins had stabbed him. Twenty-three. She had gotten it right. Her notebooks from nursing
school revealed a hurried hand, in parts unreadable. The stakes of t’s were left uncrossed, the points of j’s and i’s undotted; n’s, u’s, and v’s were one and the same. Doodlings on the margins were hearts pierced with arrows. At the end she threw away only snapshots of her and Matt taken randomly through the years when she was trying to convince herself he meant everything to her.
She made herself lunch, ate half, and was clearing up when the doorbell rang. Surreptitiously she glimpsed Reverend Stottle through a window. Instantly she shrank back and let him ring and ring. Finally he ceased. His voice came through the door.
“No one feels his parents have the right to die.”
• • •
Matt MacGregor drove to Route 125 and followed it into Andover to the state police barracks, a brick building that flanked the entrance to a state forest. He parked in a visitor’s space and climbed out with a scowl. He was in casual dress except for his sturdy shoes and the police belt in his jeans. Inside, the young, crisp-looking trooper behind the desk gave him a cursory glance. “I’m expected,” he said and felt color rise into the pug of his nose. “The name’s MacGregor.”
“You the officer from Bensington?”
“That’s right.”
He was ushered along a corridor and around a corner to a secluded room, where a small man in a summer-weight civilian suit was waiting at a table, his feminine hands lightly clasped. MacGregor instantly disliked the look of him, too neat, too meticulous. He was like the cleanest of cats. MacGregor half expected him to lick himself.
Rising, the man proffered a hand. He was from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His voice was treacle. “Sit down, Officer MacGregor. Relax.”
MacGregor sat down, but he did not relax. He did not like a room without windows. Nor did he like the machine he was looking at. It looked medical.
“Have you ever taken a polygraph before?”
MacGregor shook his head. “First fucking time.”
• • •
At the health spa at the country club Christine Poole stepped out of her frock and cringed at the sight of her flimsy underpants, which she never should have worn. They were much too small. The waistband had twirled itself into a cord well below the curve of her abdomen and the rest of the garment had shriveled into the crevice of her bottom. Quickly she donned a pink sweatsuit and hurried into the main area, where groups of women were exercising in a forceful atmosphere of good health. Arlene Bowman, a sweet figure in black tights, was waiting for her.
“Do only what you can,” Arlene advised in a way that sounded like a challenge, which she immediately accepted. Arlene sauntered off to an advanced group, and she joined a squall of wide-bodied women trying to touch their toes and settling for their knees. With supreme effort, outdoing them all, she reached her shins, which flushed her face and revved her up. She felt ready to run a mile, scale a small mountain. With great heaves she brushed her ankles and paid the price.
An hour later, girded by a towel, she sat in the sauna and tried to ignore what the weight of her head was doing to the knot in her neck. The twinge in her back forced her to sit ramrod straight. Arlene, enjoying the vapors, her eyes closed, said, “This was only your first day.”
“Maybe my last.” Her hot skin was moist and pink, reminiscent of a shrimp peeled of its glassy pane.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere.”
Arlene opened her eyes and smiled. “If our friend could see us now.”
She did not want to respond but did. “Why would he want to?”
“It would make him wonder.”
“Why should we care?”
“No man has the right to take advantage.”
“I’m not sure he did.”
They kept their voices low because other women, barely visible in the clouds of steam, were sitting beyond them, acquiescing to the wet heat rolling against them. Arlene mopped her face with a towel smaller than the one wrapped around her. Her eyes stood out. “Actually, it was his attitude. The son of a bitch thought he was saving me from something.”
“Such as what?”
“Myself, I imagine. The arrogance of him.”
Christine experienced a small inward shudder, for she had entertained somewhat similar thoughts about him, a man on a mission, a cop protecting marriages by seeing women through trying times. Always, when he was taking his leave, she had felt fully serviced but only half understood. Yes, the gall of him!
Arlene said, “This may come as a surprise to you, but he was my first extramarital affair. I wanted adventure. I wanted a lover who’d do anything for me, take all kinds of risks to be with me, but his biggest concern was that my husband would find out.”
Floating through Christine’s mind was a memory of lying in his arms and vaguely suspecting that she could have been anybody, any mock damsel in distress. “It was not that way with me,” she lied.
“Maybe you expected less. By the way, are you still seeing him?”
“I broke it off, I told you that.”
“He won’t be grieving,” Arlene said and swabbed the back of her narrow neck and the tops of her straight shoulders. Peering through the vapors, she discreetly directed attention to a woman who was sitting by herself. “Do you know who that is?”
Christine glimpsed a topknot of blond hair and scathingly white thighs that were beautifully big. “I have no idea.”
“Sissy Alexander. Does the name mean anything to you?”
“Should it?” she asked and then got the drift. “I don’t need to know all his women.” The pain in her back streaked into her shoulders when she inadvertently moved. Her neck throbbed. With panic she said, “I don’t think I can get up.”
Arlene rose, breasts visible in the top of her towel, and extended a slim hand. “Do it slow.”
She made it to her feet and out of the sauna and then into the privacy of a shower, where she found some relief under the needle spray, which she was reluctant to leave. Afterward, wincing with each wipe, she used the towel on herself but left her hair to dry on its own. The trial was getting into her underwear and dress, a slow and tormenting struggle. In her white pumps her feet were tippy. When she emerged in public she saw Arlene near the water cooler, waiting for her, ready for travel.
“Feeling better?”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got just the thing for you. His name is Pierre.”
• • •
When Thurman Wetherfield had worked for the fire department, he had smelled of smoke even when he had not been near a blaze in months. Now he smelled of hard drinking. His breathing was a wheel sharpening a knife, and his hair, most of it a memory, was the color of cold ash. Perched at the bar of a Lawrence tavern he punched out his cigarette and ignored the man seating himself nearby. His eyes were on pictures on the wall behind the bar, poster-bright drawings of contemporary Boston ball players. Rattling the ice in his empty glass, he felt the man smiling at him.
“Remember me, Thurman?”
He gave a slow look. “Yeah, you’re the Rayball went away. Army, wasn’t it?”
“Special Forces.”
“Yeah, but there wasn’t a war.”
“None we were supposed to be fighting,” Clement said and, peeling a bill from a roll, motioned to the bartender. “Give my friend whatever he’s drinking, a Miller for me.”
Thurman lit another cigarette and said, “You still in those Special Forces?”
“I’ve been out awhile.”
“You look like you done well. Nice watch. Those alligator shoes you’re wearing?”
“You can get them handmade in Florida.”
The bartender brought their drinks, and Thurman took his without thanks. “I’m doing all right too. I got a gal here in Lawrence. We live together.” He rattled his rye and took a solid taste. There was a shaker of salt on the bar. He sprinkled some in his palm and licked it. “You better not flash that roll of yours on the street, you’ll get
knifed. City’s half spic.”
“They won’t bother me. I speak the language.”
“Far as I’m concerned, that’s against the Constitution, but each to his own. I’m broad-minded.”
Clement ran a thumb around the rim of his beer glass, then decided to drink from the bottle. “I heard you left the fire department.”
“Wasn’t never much of a department. Six permanents, the rest volunteers. I got out on disability.”
“I helped you put out a fire once. I think it was one you set.”
Thurman tossed him a suspicious look, which quickly broke into a smile. “Never no proof of that, and it don’t matter anyhow. Too much time gone by.” He shook more salt in his hand and gave it a good lick. “You just wander in here, or was it on purpose?”
“I asked at the firehouse. Fellow there mentioned a few places you might be. Before that, I saw your wife. She didn’t know where you were.”
He winked, man to man. “That’s how I want to keep it.”
“She says she sews for a living.”
“Good money in that.”
“She didn’t look like she was living in luxury.”
Thurman’s noisy breath came out crooked. “She’s got her life, I got mine.”
“I can understand that,” Clement said, glancing away. There were only two other customers, both sitting half hidden around the curve of the bar. The bartender was making himself an Alka-Seltzer. “I’ve been away a long time, Thurman, I need someone to fill me in. You’ve always had a handle on things, right?”
“Sure,” he said importantly. “Firehouse you hear everything, but I don’t get there much anymore. What do you want to know — something about the shooting?”
“That doesn’t interest me. We’ve got a police chief to take care of it.”
“Morgan’s too busy chasing ass,” he snorted with gravel in his voice. The cigarette burned his fingers, and he put it out. “He goes after the rich bitches in the Heights.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hell I am,” he said and used hot fingers to tick off the names of women, here a rumor, there a fact. Then he pointed to the pictures on the wall and singled out the ball player with the biggest smile. “You know who that is, don’t you?”
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