The Devil She Knows

by Bill Loehfelm

  She let John buy her dinner but insisted on paying for her drinks once she got through her third. She didn’t want anyone, especially John, suspecting her of running a sympathy tab. Tracy stayed prompt with the refills no matter how busy she got but largely left Maureen alone with her thoughts, which was greatly appreciated. The young Jedi had a good sense of how to read her customers. Maureen was impressed. That was one spot behind the bar that wouldn’t come open anytime soon.

  Midnight passed before any of the guys tried sending Maureen a drink. As was her standard practice, she refused it. Tracy delivered the denial, handling the transaction with such disarming tact that no feelings got hurt. Either Tracy had admirable ego-preservation skills, Maureen thought, or the guy—pudgy, the thinning white-blond hair over his scalp set off by his pink Polo shirt—hadn’t really wanted to buy her a drink at all and had used the offer as an excuse to talk up Tracy. No doubt Mr. Pink Polo had picked up on Tracy paying Maureen special attention. He’d probably built a whole set of fantasies around it.

  Maureen didn’t keep score of the quality and quantity of drink offers she got when she went out, but she was cognizant of the hour at which this particular one had arrived. Coming this late, the offer, had it really been for her, told Maureen that Mr. Pink Polo, sad sack that he was, viewed her as a second-or maybe even third-tier consideration. A hot resentment boiled up inside her. She wanted to walk over there and smack the guy’s face. For a moment, she regretted not parting the fool and his money for the cheap price of a flirty smile and some small talk—two things that were practically reflex.

  She glanced down the bar again and watched him tell Tracy a story, his head down so his eyes couldn’t fixate on Tracy’s chest. Give him a break, she thought. He’s a regular guy out for a good time, trying to make headway with a pretty girl. Where’s the sin? Mr. Pink and the rest of his shy but reliable herd paid Maureen’s rent and bills with unerring consistency. Without Mr. Pink she’d be out of a job. She didn’t want his drink, but she didn’t have to be such a bitch about it.

  Maureen lowered her eyes to the bar, her own words from earlier biting at her brain: Bitter. You’re a bitter old woman. She sipped her beer and wondered if seven cats would be enough. And did it have to be cats? She hated cats.

  After last call, Maureen headed out to the courtyard. She huddled under a heat lamp, chain-smoking cigarettes. She waited out there for over half an hour, staying out of the way of the cleanup and trying to raise enough nerve to ask John for a ride home. She wasn’t blasted, but as she rehearsed the question, the many possible ways John could misunderstand her intentions got tangled in her mind. Such a simple, even logical, request. They lived in the same apartment building. She’d been drinking all night, and John knew she didn’t have a car, knew she was stuck taking the bus or a cab. He had manners; he probably expected the question.

  Of course, he also had Molly to think about.

  Maureen found the idea that John might think she wanted to fuck him petrifying. She liked John a lot, but letting a man think, even a good man, that he had something you wanted made for bad dynamics. Still, something primal tapped at the base of her skull and reminded her that John was the nearest and safest attractive man.

  What’s giving me trouble, Maureen decided, is that sweaty, sheet-wrapped oblivion, an utterly mindless fuck, is exactly what I need right now. What she had to do was tamp down the cavewoman porn movies in her head when she asked for a ride. Ride? God, should she even use that word? If the question came out too breathy, or if she laid the emphasis on the wrong word, like ride, the misunderstanding could happen. She’d insult him and humiliate herself. And was it really sex she wanted or just a warm distraction from the shock and the grief? She watched John move around the yard, turning off the heaters one by one. He came over to Maureen’s last.

  “Sorry, Maureen,” he said. He looked tired, like maybe he could use some affection himself. Where was Molly anyway? “But I gotta lock these up inside or they get boosted overnight.”

  “So,” Maureen said, “you wanna take me home?” She forced a smile. Walk away, Maureen, she thought. Walk away, leave the bar, cross the street, hop the railing, and throw yourself in the ocean.

  But John spared her. If he’d heard anything illicit in the question, he wasn’t showing it. “No problem. I’m not outta here for another hour or so, but if you don’t mind waiting, I’ll drive you.”

  Maureen nearly melted with relief. She couldn’t tell if it was the avoided embarrassment or the assurance of a safe trip home that did it to her, and she didn’t much care. She held the door open as John wheeled the heater into the bar.

  Not long after their arrival back at the apartment building, Maureen stood, shaking, with her palm pressed against John’s front door. She hadn’t knocked. Through the music playing in the apartment, she could hear John moving around. No voices. No sign of Molly. Maybe she was already asleep, her body warming the bed ahead of John’s arrival. Maureen heard the squeak of metal taps, the drone of rushing water beating the floor of John’s shower. Now she’d have to wait. She sat on the floor, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chest and wrapped in her arms. Her eyes swept up and down the hall, searching, watching.

  Earlier, when they’d reached the stairwell landing for her floor, Maureen had pinned John in place with a sudden rush of insipid small talk. Simple questions about Molly, mostly, to guard against giving out the wrong impression. Polite as he tried to be, John soon grew impatient with the conversation. It was late. He was tired. Regardless, she’d babbled on and on like a drunk who couldn’t accept that the night was over and the bar was closed and nobody had to pretend to care anymore. She was stalling, dreading being in her apartment alone. She knew it, John knew it, and she couldn’t shut herself up.

  For a few brief moments, Maureen had searched for a delicate way of inviting John to her place or getting invited up to his. But a drunk and depressed single girl couldn’t invite a man over at four in the morning and not give the wrong idea. Her own eyes crossing from boredom, Maureen finally thanked John for the ride home, gave his hand a squeeze, and headed, alone, down the hall to her apartment.

  She never made it inside.

  She found her front door ajar when she got to it, throwing her heartbeat into hysterics. She knew, knew, knew she had locked it. Saw herself turning the key as she left for work. Someone else had opened that door. No doubt. She reached out for the doorknob, her fingers hovering over it as if feeling for radiant heat.

  She didn’t live in the best neighborhood. The building had been robbed before, but never her place. Had her turn finally arrived? But building creeps came up the fire escapes and in the windows. They didn’t use the front door. Paul, maybe, the landlord’s kid? He was the de facto handyman. He had keys to the apartments. Had he tipped a few on a Saturday night and overloaded on liquid courage? Hard to believe, she thought. Schoolyard teasing was one thing, staking out her apartment was another. No, it wasn’t Paul.

  She unzipped her bag and searched its insides for her switchblade. She found it, drew it out, and flicked it open, the snick loud in the hall. Her palms started sweating. Her heart was a big bird in a small cage. She listened hard for any sound from inside her place: breathing, shuffling feet, street noise that signaled an open window. She heard nothing. She stayed in the doorway. The other side of it—that was her space. Hers.

  Standing there, she realized that the night after she’d pissed off that creep Sebastian, the same night her manager had died, her home had been broken into for the first time. Coincidence? Maureen peered into the sliver of darkness between the door and the jamb, thought about stepping inside the apartment and hitting the lights. If he was in there alone, she might be quick enough to take him, or at least escape. But if he wasn’t alone, she wouldn’t have a prayer. Her apartment could be empty. A simple explanation for her open door might exist. For the life of her, though, she couldn’t imagine what that explanation could be.

  Stepp
ing softly, she backed away from the door and headed upstairs to John’s apartment.

  John answered Maureen’s weak knocks wearing sweats and a Mötley Crüe T-shirt, one skeptical eyebrow arched high on his forehead. When she’d announced her name through the door, he hadn’t said a word, waiting a long moment before unlocking it. He stepped into the doorway instead of backing up to let her in, a clear signal her visit was not welcome. She swallowed her embarrassment and willed herself to look him in the face.

  “John, somebody broke into my apartment. My door was open.”

  “Goddamn.” John stepped back into his living room, making room for her to enter. “Come in.”

  As the locks clicked into place behind her, Maureen felt her back muscles unwind. She followed John to the couch.

  “Have a seat,” he said.

  Maureen sat dead center on the couch, hands in her lap, while John retrieved his cigarettes from the bedroom. She made herself small, trying to minimize contact not only with his furniture but even with the air in his apartment. She felt like a contaminant, like something tracked into the apartment on a shoe.

  “Drink?” John asked, passing through the living room, smoke dangling from the corner of his mouth. She nodded.

  John returned from the kitchen with a short whiskey for each of them, neat, both glasses in one hand, his cordless phone in the other. The police. He expected her to call the cops. Of course he did. Who wouldn’t? He set her drink and the phone on the coffee table in front of her.

  Maureen took her drink in both hands but left the phone where it was. The whiskey went down easier than she expected. John tossed his cigarettes on the coffee table, waving his hand for her to take one or pick up the phone. She took a cigarette. John leaned over the table to light it for her. She wished he would sit. Maybe not right next to her, but close.

  “What’d they take?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t look. I didn’t even go in. I just…” She looked away from him, into his bedroom. A maroon skirt lay draped over the bottom corner of his bed. She shouldn’t be there. “I was scared. I just wanted to hide.”

  “You did the right thing. A single girl living alone? Somebody could’ve been waiting for you.”

  She turned back to him. Thanks, she thought. Thanks for reminding me what an easy target I am. Guilt bloomed in her chest and she slumped, elbows on her knees. Ease up. The guy was trying to help, to show some support.

  John picked up the phone, offered it to her. “Call the cops. I’ll wait up with you till they get here.”

  Maureen leaned back on the couch. “I don’t wanna bother with the cops. They’ll keep us waiting for two hours so they can fill out forms and tell me they’ll get back to me.” She swept her hair from her face. “I thought maybe you could come downstairs with me?” She stopped. And do what? Be my guard dog? Sad. Even to herself she sounded like a woman spooling out a pathetic come-on: Please protect me, you big strong man. She forced a weak laugh. “You know what? Never mind. It’s practically dawn. Who’s gonna wait around all night for me to get home?”

  “You wanna take that chance? What if he comes back?” John narrowed his eyes at her. “Your gut said split. Why question it now?”

  Maureen set her drink on the coffee table and stood. “Look, I shouldn’t have even come up here. I got frightened for a minute. I panicked. Forget it. I’ll go home and count my losses.”

  She meant to head for the door, but her feet wouldn’t move. Brave came easy while safe in John’s apartment. But even if she got herself out his door, she’d never get through her own. John tossed the phone on the couch.

  “You’re a wreck,” he said. He stepped between her and his door. First he wouldn’t let her in, now he wasn’t letting her out. “You hang around the bar all night giving me the eye. Now you show up at my door spinning some crap about a break-in. This shit ain’t your style. Spill.”

  No, she thought, it’s not my style. Not at all.

  “John,” she said, “I think I’m in a lot of trouble.”

  8

  Once she started talking, Maureen couldn’t stop. She told John about the previous night and that afternoon, starting with surprising Sebastian and Dennis after hours and ending with her bailing in front of everyone at the Narrows. Except for the cocaine, she included every embarrassing detail. John listened, sitting on the arm of the couch. He smoked one cigarette after another, staring out the window across the room, sipping his drink between drags.

  Finally getting the story out, Maureen felt the same airy relief that followed throwing up after a long battle with the spins, like her gut was clean and empty and not spilling over with hot soup. She also felt as if she’d made a terrible mess on someone else’s floor, a mess she couldn’t clean up on her own.

  “So what do you want from me?” John asked.

  Maureen wasn’t sure how to answer that; she hadn’t thought that far ahead. He had listened; that was a start. “I don’t expect you to get involved, but I don’t know what to do. Now that Dennis is dead, there’s no proof that anything I told you really happened. Sebastian’s already angry. I can’t have him finding out I’m talking to the cops, but I can’t help feeling I stepped in some bad shit when I walked out of that office and that maybe I’m still standing in it.”

  John walked across the living room toward the window. What if, Maureen worried, someone hid outside, watching her apartment? Would they see her place was dark and know she hadn’t gone in? Could they see her through John’s window? Maybe John thought the same thing and was heading over to the window to draw the shade. But instead of the window, John approached a framed photograph on the wall beside it. He stared into the picture for a long time. Long enough that Maureen feared he was waiting for her to leave or had forgotten she was even there.

  “My father’s college football team,” John finally said.

  “I heard about what happened to him,” Maureen said, “when I came to work at Cargo.”

  “Yeah, everybody gets that story. I should put it in the training manual. At least then it would get told right.”

  “Did they ever catch who did it?”

  “Depends on who you mean by they.” He tapped the glass over the picture with his finger. “Listen, Maureen. I know a guy who might be able to help you.” He turned to her. “But he’s a cop, and you have to tell him the truth. No games. That’s the best offer I can make.”

  “Do you trust him?” Maureen asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I’ll talk to him.”

  “I’ll call him in a couple hours,” John said. “When the real world wakes up.” He walked into the bedroom.

  Maureen listened as John rooted around in his closet. Was she dismissed for the night? Was he getting ready for bed? She stood, looked at the apartment door, sat back down, stood again. She’d almost worked up the nerve to ask him for instructions when John returned to the living room carrying towels, a blanket, and pillows. He set everything on the couch beside her.

  “Take your coat off, for chrissakes,” he said. He held out his hand. “Gimme your keys.”

  Maureen fished her keys from her coat pocket and handed them over. She peeled off her peacoat. Hands between her knees, she stared up at John, looking, she knew, like a goofy friggin’ puppy.

  “Take a hot shower,” he said. “Try to relax. I left some of Molly’s things on the bed for you to sleep in. Pick whatever you want.” He held up her keys. “I’m not going in, but I’ll lock up your place.” Now he went to the window and pulled the shade over the muted blue glow bleeding into the black sky. “Spend the rest of the night here. The couch is lumpy, but it’s the best I can offer.”

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot. I mean it.” Maureen reached over and touched one of the pillows. The cool, smooth cotton made her so sleepy she didn’t think she could get her shoes off, never mind shower and change. Her pride resurfaced, forcing her to protest against John’s hospitality. “Maybe this is a bad idea
. What’s Molly gonna think? I don’t want to get you in trouble. I’m a woman. Believe me, she’ll know I spent the night.”

  “Don’t worry about Molly,” John said. “If she found out I sent you home alone after what you told me tonight, she’d strangle me in the street.” He held out his hands to Maureen. She slipped hers into them and John pulled her to her feet. “Now hit the showers.”

  Mid-morning, standing on the front stoop of the apartment house, Maureen spat a mouthful of coffee down the front of her coat when a dark Crown Vic turned the corner. Drop the mug and run for it, she thought. Even in this neighborhood, someone will notice a woman in full, terrified flight, at least during the day. They might even do something about it. But as the car slid up to the curb Maureen’s brain argued down her adrenaline, ticking off crucial details to hold her in place. The car was dark green, not black, and it was filthy, neglected. Sebastian’s car had gleamed in the streetlights. Most important, Maureen could see the driver, who was a very large man but not Sebastian. Had to be John’s cop.

  Maureen smeared the spilled liquid into her coat and sipped from her mug as the driver hauled his bulk out of the car. Over a wide spread of belly, he clutched his long wool coat closed in one gloved fist, holding a paper coffee cup in the other. The few surviving wisps of white hair on the top of his head blew straight up in the wind. Along the sides, his hair was a blend of dull, dirty grays. Like a seagull’s wings, Maureen thought. Like the heavy clouds rolling overhead. The man caught her eyes and grinned, his cheeks bunching beneath wet, sad eyes.

  He was slow coming up the steps, as if his back or his knees protested the effort.

  Maureen had sympathy pains. She knew those aches. But she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. This broken-down old man was the white knight John had promised? She corrected herself. John hadn’t promised a white knight; he’d promised a cop.

  The cop extended his hand as he stepped onto the porch, his coat flapping open in the wind. “I’m Detective Nat Waters.”